a despairing, confiding movement, such
as one makes, when, after a long struggle of anguish, one has found a
refuge; and the churchman within inclining his ear to the grating, the
confession begins.

Could we only be clairvoyant, it would be worth our while to note the
difference between the two faces, separated only by the thin grating of
the confessional, but belonging to souls whom an abyss wide as eternity
must forever divide from any common ground of understanding.

On the one side, with ear close to the grate, is a round, smoothly
developed Italian head, with that rather tumid outline of features which
one often sees in a Roman in middle life, when easy living and habits of
sensual indulgence begin to reveal their signs in the countenance, and
to broaden and confuse the clear-cut, statuesque lines of early youth.
Evidently, that is the head of an easy-going, pleasure-loving man, who
has waxed warm with good living, and performs the duties of his office
with an unctuous grace as something becoming and decorous to be gone
through with. Evidently, he is puzzled and half-contemptuous at the
revelations which come through the grating in hoarse whispers from those
thin, trembling lips. That other man, who speaks with the sweat of
anguish beaded on his brow, with a mortal pallor on his thin, worn
cheeks, is putting questions to the celestial guide within which seem to
that guide the ravings of a crazed lunatic; and yet there is a deadly,
despairing earnestness in the appeal that makes an indistinct knocking
at the door of his heart, for the man is born of woman, and can feel
that somehow or other these are the words of a mighty agony.

He addresses him some words of commonplace ghostly comfort, and gives a
plenary absolution. The Capuchin monk rises up and stands meekly wiping
the sweat from his brow, the churchman leaves his box, and they meet
face to face, when each starts, seeing in the other the apparition of a
once well-known countenance.

"What! Lorenzo Sforza!" said the churchman. "Who would have thought it?
Don't you remember me?"

"Not Lorenzo Sforza," said the other, a hectic brilliancy flushing his
pale cheek; "that name is buried in the tomb of his fathers; he you
speak to knows it no more. The unworthy Brother Francesco, deserving
nothing of God or man, is before you."

"Oh, come, come!" said the other, grasping his hand in spite of his
resistance; "that is all proper enough in its place; but between