hat the assassin was gone. And
moody misgivings heaved within her, precursors of vain remorse. Gerard
and Margaret were before their age. This was your true mediaeval.
Proud, amorous, vindictive, generous, foolish, cunning, impulsive,
unprincipled: and ignorant as dirt.

Power is the curse of such a creature.

Forced to do her own crimes, the weakness of her nerves would have
balanced the violence of her passions, and her bark been worse than her
bite. But power gives a feeble, furious woman, male instruments. And the
effect is as terrible as the combination is unnatural.

In this instance it whetted an assassin's dagger for a poor forlorn
wretch just meditating suicide.

CHAPTER LXV

It happened, two days after the scene I have endeavoured to describe,
that Gerard, wandering through one of the meanest streets in Rome, was
overtaken by a thunderstorm, and entered a low hostelry. He called for
wine, and the rain continuing, soon drank himself into a half stupid
condition, and dozed with his head on his hands and his hands upon the
table.

In course of time the room began to fill and the noise of the rude
guests to wake him.

Then it was he became conscious of two figures near him conversing in a
low voice.

One was a pardoner. The other by his dress, clean but modest, might have
passed for a decent tradesman; but the way he had slouched his hat over
his brows, so as to hide all his face except his beard, showed he was
one of those who shun the eye of honest men, and of the law. The pair
were driving a bargain in the sin market. And by an arrangement
not uncommon at that date, the crime to be forgiven was yet to be
committed--under the celestial contract.

He of the slouched hat was complaining of the price pardons had reached.
"If they go up any higher we poor fellows shall be shut out of heaven
altogether."

The pardoner denied the charge flatly. "Indulgences were never cheaper
to good husbandmen."

The other inquired, "Who were they?"

"Why, such as sin by the market, like reasonable creatures. But if you
will be so perverse as go and pick out a crime the Pope hath set his
face against, blame yourself, not me!"

Then, to prove that crime of one sort or another was within the means of
all but the very scum of society, he read out the scale from a written
parchment.

It was a curious list; but not one that could be printed in this book.
And to mutilate it would be to misrepresent it. It is to be f