The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Gadfly, by E. L. Voynich

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Title: The Gadfly

Author: E. L. Voynich

Posting Date: February 1, 2009 [EBook #3431]
Release Date: September, 2002

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GADFLY ***

Produced by Judy Boss

THE GADFLY

By E. L. Voynich

"What have we to do with Thee, Thou Jesus of Nazareth?"

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

MY most cordial thanks are due to the many
persons who helped me to collect, in Italy, the
materials for this story. I am especially indebted
to the officials of the Marucelliana Library of
Florence, and of the State Archives and Civic
Museum of Bologna, for their courtesy and
kindness.

THE GADFLY

PART I.

CHAPTER I.

Arthur sat in the library of the theological seminary at Pisa, looking
through a pile of manuscript sermons. It was a hot evening in June, and
the windows stood wide open, with the shutters half closed for coolness.
The Father Director, Canon Montanelli, paused a moment in his writing to
glance lovingly at the black head bent over the papers.

"Can't you find it, carino? Never mind; I must rewrite the passage.
Possibly it has got torn up, and I have kept you all this time for
nothing."

Montanelli's voice was rather low, but full and resonant, with a silvery
purity of tone that gave to his speech a peculiar charm. It was the
voice of a born orator, rich in possible modulations. When he spoke to
Arthur its note was always that of a caress.

"No, Padre, I must find it; I'm sure you put it here. You will never
make it the same by rewriting."

Montanelli went on with his work. A sleepy cockchafer hummed drowsily
outside the window, and the long, melancholy call of a fruitseller
echoed down the street: "Fragola! fragola!"

"'On the Healing of the Leper'; here it is." Arthur came across the room
with the velvet tread that always exasperated the good folk at home.
He was a slender little creature, more like an Italian in a
sixteenth-century portrait than a middle-class English lad of the
thirties. From the long eyebrows and sensitive mouth to the sma