. "One
must bear a heart of stone in his bosom to require it; and that you can
do so only proves that you have never known what it is to love!"

"And that I can do so should prove to you that I have indeed known it,
my son!" sadly responded the pope.

"Whoever has known love knows that there can be no renunciation!"

"And whoever has known love can renounce!" exclaimed the pope, with
animation. "Listen to me, my son, and may the sad story of a short
happiness and long expiation serve you as a warning example! You think
I cannot have known love? Ah, I tell you I have experienced all its joys
and all its sorrows--that in the intoxication of rapture I once forgot
my vows, my duties, my holy resolutions, and, doubly criminal, I also
taught her whom I loved to forget her own sacred duties and to sin! Ah,
you call me a saint, and yet I have been the most abject of sinners!
Under this Franciscan vesture beat a tempestuous, fiery heart that
derided God and His laws; a heart that would have given my soul to the
evil one, had he promised to give me in exchange the possession of my
beloved! She was beautiful, and of a heavenly disposition; and hence,
when she passed through the aisles of the church, with her slight fairy
form, her angelic face veiled by her long dark locks, her eyes beaming
with love and pleasure, a heavenly smile playing about her lips--ah,
when she thus passed through the church, her feet scarcely touching the
floor, then I, who awaited her in the confessional, felt myself nearly
frantic with ecstasy, my brain turned, my eyes darkened, there was a
buzzing in my ears, and I attempted to implore the aid and support of
God."

"You should have appealed to Cupid!" said the cardinal, laughing. "In
such a case aid could come only from the god of ancient Rome, not of the
modern!"

The old man noticed not his words. Wholly absorbed in his reminiscences,
he listened only to the voice of his own breast, saw only the form of
the beautiful woman he had once so dearly loved!

"God listened not to my fervent prayers," he continued, with a sigh, "or
perhaps my stormily beating heart heard not the voice of God, because I
listened only to her; because with intoxicated senses I was listening
to the modest, childishly pure confession which she, kneeling in the
confessional, was whispering in my ears; because I felt her breath
upon my cheeks and in every trembling nerve of my being. And one day,
overcome by his glowing passio