ted by threatening, not for the first
time, to leave him unless he would consent to lead an honest life. The
good fathers of the convent lent their aid, and Lodovico and Teresa
were sent by sea to Leghorn, where Teresa had friends, and the assassin
settled down and became a porter.

He found it miserably dull work at first; and said so.

But methinks this dull life of plodding labour was better for him, than
the brief excitement of being hewn in pieces by the Princess Claelia's
myrmidons. His exile saved the unconscious penitent from that fate; and
the princess, balked of her revenge, took to brooding, and fell into a
profound melancholy; dismissed her confessor, and took a new one with
a great reputation for piety, to whom she confided what she called her
griefs. The new confessor was no other than Fra Jerome. She could not
have fallen into better hands.

He heard her grimly out. Then took her and shook the delusions out of
her as roughly as if she had been a kitchen-maid. For, to do this hard
monk justice, on the path of duty he feared the anger of princes as
little as he did the sea. He showed her in a few words, all thunder and
lightning, that she was the criminal of criminals.

"Thou art the devil, that with thy money hath tempted one man to slay
his fellow, and then, blinded with self-love, instead of blaming and
punishing thyself, art thirsting for more blood of guilty men, but not
so guilty as thou."

At first she resisted, and told him she was not used to be taken to task
by her confessors. But he overpowered her, and so threatened her with
the Church's curse here and hereafter, and so tore the scales off her
eyes, and thundered at her, and crushed her, that she sank down and
grovelled with remorse and terror at the feet of the gigantic Boanerges.

"Oh, holy father, have pity on a poor weak woman, and help me save my
guilty soul. I was benighted for want of ghostly counsel like thine,
good father. I waken as from a dream.

"Doff thy jewels," said Fra Jerome sternly.

"I will. I will."

"Doff thy silk and velvet; and in humbler garb than wears thy meanest
servant, wend thou instant to Loretto."

"I will," said the princess faintly.

"No shoes; but a bare sandal.'

"No father."

"Wash the feet of pilgrims both going and coming; and to such of them as
be holy friars tell thy sin, and abide their admonition."

"Oh, holy father, let me wear my mask."

"Humph!"

"Oh, mercy! Bethink thee! My featu