ame is legion--believe in
me as implicitly as do the tonsured dastards of the Vatican."

Another ill-suppressed groan escaped from Trenta, and for a moment
interrupted the count's oration. The miserable cavaliere! He had,
indeed, invoked an explanation, and, cost him what it might, he must
abide it. But he began to think that the explanation had gone too
far. He was sitting there listening to blasphemies. He was actually
imperiling his own soul. He was horrified as he reflected that he
might not obtain absolution when he confessed the awful language
which was addressed to him. Such a risk was really greater than his
submission to etiquette exacted. There were bounds even to that, the
aged chamberlain told himself.

Gracious heavens!--for him, an unquestioning papalino, a sincere
believer in papal infallibility and the temporal power--to hear the
Holy Father called a renegade, and his faithful servants stigmatized
as dastards! It was monstrous!

He secretly resolved that, once escaped from No. 4 at the Universo
Hotel--and he wondered that a thunderbolt had not already struck the
count dead where he stood--he would never allow himself to have any
further intercourse whatever with him.

"I have been elected," continued the count, speaking in the same
emphatic manner, and in the same distinct and harmonious voice,
utterly careless or unobservant of the conflict of feelings under
which the cavaliere was struggling--"head pope, if you please,
cavaliere, so to call me."--("God forbid!" muttered Trenta.)--"It
makes my analogy the clearer--I have been elected by thousands of
devoted followers. But my followers are not slaves, nor am I a tyrant.
I have accepted the glorious title of Priest of the People, and
nothing--_nothing_" the count repeated, vehemently, "shall tempt me
from my duty. I am here at Lucca to establish a mission--to plant
in this fertile soil the sacred banner of freedom--red as the first
streaks of light that lace the eastern heavens; red as the life-blood
from which we draw our being. I am here, under the protection of this
glorious banner, to combat the tyranny upon which the church and the
throne are based. Instead of the fetters of the past, binding mankind
in loathsome trammels of ignorance--instead of the darkness that
broods over a subjugated world--of terrors that rend agonized souls
with horrible tortures--I bring peace, freedom, light, progress. To
the base ideal of perpetual tyranny--both here a