ominable stories were true, those tales of
poisoned knives and flowers, of prelates and even dilatory popes being
suppressed by a drop or a grain of something administered to them in
their morning chocolate. That passionate tragical Santobono was really a
poisoner, Pierre could no longer doubt it, for a lurid light now
illumined the whole of the previous day: there were the words of ambition
and menace which had been spoken by Cardinal Sanguinetti, the eagerness
to act in presence of the probable death of the reigning pope, the
suggestion of a crime for the sake of the Church's salvation, then that
priest with his little basket of figs encountered on the road, then that
basket carried for hours so carefully, so devoutly, on the priest's
knees, that basket which now haunted Pierre like a nightmare, and whose
colour, and odour, and shape he would ever recall with a shudder. Aye,
poison, poison, there was truth in it; it existed and still circulated in
the depths of the black world, amidst all the ravenous, rival longings
for conquest and sovereignty.

And all at once the figure of Prada likewise arose in Pierre's mind. A
little while previously, when Benedetta had so violently accused the
Count, he, Pierre, had stepped forward to defend him and cry aloud what
he knew, whence the poison had come, and what hand had offered it. But a
sudden thought had made him shiver: though Prada had not devised the
crime, he had allowed it to be perpetrated. Another memory darted keen
like steel through the young priest's mind--that of the little black hen
lying lifeless beside the shed, amidst the dismal surroundings of the
_osteria_, with a tiny streamlet of violet blood trickling from her beak.
And here again, Tata, the parrot, lay still soft and warm at the foot of
her stand, with her beak stained by oozing blood. Why had Prada told that
lie about a battle between two fowls? All the dim intricacy of passion
and contention bewildered Pierre, he could not thread his way through it;
nor was he better able to follow the frightful combat which must have
been waged in that man's mind during the night of the ball. At the same
time he could not again picture him by his side during their nocturnal
walk towards the Boccanera mansion without shuddering, dimly divining
what a frightful decision had been taken before that mansion's door.
Moreover, whatever the obscurities, whether Prada had expected that the
Cardinal alone would be killed, or had h