daged hand to his throat.
"I must refer Your Eminence to Shakspere," he said with a little laugh.
"It's as with the man who can't endure a harmless, necessary cat. My
antipathy is a priest. The sight of the cassock makes my t-t-teeth
ache."

"Oh, if it is only that----" Montanelli dismissed the subject with an
indifferent gesture.

"Still," he added, "abuse is one thing and perversion of fact is
another. When you stated, in answer to my sermon, that I knew the
identity of the anonymous writer, you made a mistake,--I do not accuse
you of wilful falsehood,--and stated what was untrue. I am to this day
quite ignorant of his name."

The Gadfly put his head on one side, like an intelligent robin, looked
at him for a moment gravely, then suddenly threw himself back and burst
into a peal of laughter.

"S-s-sancta simplicitas! Oh, you, sweet, innocent, Arcadian people--and
you never guessed! You n-never saw the cloven hoof?"

Montanelli stood up. "Am I to understand, Signor Rivarez, that you wrote
both sides of the controversy yourself?"

"It was a shame, I know," the Gadfly answered, looking up with wide,
innocent blue eyes. "And you s-s-swallowed everything whole; just as if
it had been an oyster. It was very wrong; but oh, it w-w-was so funny!"

Montanelli bit his lip and sat down again. He had realized from the
first that the Gadfly was trying to make him lose his temper, and had
resolved to keep it whatever happened; but he was beginning to find
excuses for the Governor's exasperation. A man who had been spending two
hours a day for the last three weeks in interrogating the Gadfly might
be pardoned an occasional swear-word.

"We will drop that subject," he said quietly. "What I wanted to see you
for particularly is this: My position here as Cardinal gives me some
voice, if I choose to claim my privilege, in the question of what is
to be done with you. The only use to which I should ever put such a
privilege would be to interfere in case of any violence to you which was
not necessary to prevent you from doing violence to others. I sent for
you, therefore, partly in order to ask whether you have anything to
complain of,--I will see about the irons; but perhaps there is something
else,--and partly because I felt it right, before giving my opinion, to
see for myself what sort of man you are."

"I have nothing to complain of, Your Eminence. 'A la guerre comme a la
guerre.' I am not a schoolboy, to expect any governme