Carriages rumbled in the street, steps sounded, and women’s dresses rustled in the corridor; sitting motionless there in the dark she did not hear. She had put out the light that she might think, that she might see only her own thoughts, only that idea which had taken possession of her while coming down-stairs at Casa Guarnacci leaning on the Professor’s arm, after she had heard those terrible words: “We fear he will not live!” and had almost lost consciousness. In the carriage with Signora Albacina, in the room with her brother, even while obliged to talk with one or the other, to pay attention to so many different things, this idea, this proposal, which the burning heart was making to the will, had been continually flashing within her. Now it flashed no longer. Jeanne contemplated it lying quiet within her. In that figure sitting motionless on the bed, in the darkness, two souls were confronting each other in silence. A humble Jeanne, passionate, sure of being able to sacrifice all to love, was measuring her strength against a Jeanne unconsciously haughty, and sure of possessing a hard and cold truth. The rumbling of the carriages was dying out in the street; the steps and the rustlings were less frequent in the corridor. Suddenly the two Jeannes seemed to mingle once more and become one, who thought:
“When they announce his death to me, I shall be able to say to myself: At least, you did that!”
She rose, turned on the light, seated herself at the writing-table, chose a sheet of paper, and wrote:
“To Piero Maironi, the night of October 29,——
“I believe.
“JEANNE DESSALLE.”
When she had written, she gazed a long, long time at the solemn words.
The longer she gazed, the farther the two Jeannes seemed to draw apart. The unconsciously proud Jeanne overpowered and crushed the other almost without a struggle. Filled with a mortal bitterness, she tore the sheet, stained with the word it was impossible to maintain, impossible even to write honestly. The light once more extinguished, she accused the Almighty—if, indeed, He existed—of cruelty, and wept in this darkness of her own making, wept unrestrainedly.
The clock of St. Peter’s struck eight. Benedetto left a little group of people at the corner of Via di Porta Angelica, and turned, alone, into Bernini’s colonnade, his steps directed towards the bronze portal. He paused to listen to the roar of the fountains, to gaze at the clustered lights of the four candelabra round the obelisk, and—tremulous, opaque against the moon’s face—the mighty jet of the fountain on the left. In five minutes, or, perhaps, in fifteen minutes, he would find himself in the presence of the Pope. His mind was concentrated on this culminating point, and vibrated there as did the sparkling, ever-rising water at the apex of the mighty jet. The square was empty. No one would see him enter the Vatican save that spectral diadem of saints standing rigid over there on the summit of the opposite colonnade. The saints and the fountains were saying to him with one voice, that he believed he was passing through a solemn hour, but that this atom of time, he himself and the Pontiff, would soon pass away, would be lost for ever in the kingdom of forgetfulness, while the fountains continued their monotonous lament, and the saints their silent contemplation. But he, on the contrary, felt that the word of truth is the word of eternal life, and, concentrating his thoughts once more within himself, he closed his eyes and prayed with intense fervour, as for two days he had prayed that the Spirit might awaken this word in his breast, might bring it to his lips when he should stand before the Pope.
He had expected some one between eight o’clock and a quarter past. The quarter had already struck, and no one had appeared. He turned and gazed at the bronze portal. Only one wing of it was open, and he could see lights beyond. From time to time small groups of dwarfish figures passed into it, as tiny, heedless moths might fly into the yawning jaws of a lion. At last a priest approached the portal from within and beckoned. Benedetto drew near. The priest said: