k on it from a colder and more
distant point of view, doubts may be suggested whether this _naive_
impressibility to religious influences, this simple, whole-hearted
abandonment to their expression, had any real practical value. The fact
that any or all of the actors might before night rob or stab or lie
quite as freely as if it has not occurred may well give reason for such
a question. Be this as it may, the phenomenon is not confined to Italy
or the religion of the Middle Ages, but exhibits itself in many a
prayer-meeting and camp-meeting of modern days. For our own part, we
hold it better to have even transient upliftings of the nobler and more
devout element of man's nature than never to have any at all, and that
he who goes on in worldly and sordid courses, without ever a spark of
religious enthusiasm or a throb of aspiration, is less of a man than he
who sometimes soars heavenward, though his wings be weak and he fall
again.

In all this scene Agostino Sarelli took no part. He had simply given
orders for the safe-conduct of Agnes, and then retired to his own room.
From a window, however, he watched the procession as it passed through
the gates of the city, and his resolution was immediately taken to
proceed at once by a secret path to the place where the pilgrims should
emerge upon the high-road.

He had been induced to allow the departure of Agnes, from seeing the
utter hopelessness by any argument or persuasion of removing a barrier
that was so vitally interwoven with the most sensitive religious nerves
of her being. He saw in her terrified looks, in the deadly paleness of
her face, how real and unaffected was the anguish which his words gave
her; he saw that the very consciousness of her own love to him produced
a sense of weakness which made her shrink in utter terror from his
arguments.

"There is no remedy," he said, "but to let her go to Rome and see with
her own eyes how utterly false and vain is the vision which she draws
from the purity of her own believing soul. What Christian would not wish
that these fair dreams had any earthly reality? But this gentle dove
must not be left unprotected to fly into that foul, unclean cage of
vultures and harpies. Deadly as the peril may be to me to breathe the
air of Rome, I will be around her invisibly to watch over her."

CHAPTER XXVI.

ROME.

A vision rises upon us from the land of shadows. We see a wide plain,
miles and miles in extent, rolling in soft