‘I have not yet done so,’ said the Père calmly, ‘there is the letter, just as I folded and sealed it; from that moment to this it has never quitted my possession. It may be, that, as you would suspect, even this might be sleight-of-hand. It may be, sir, that the paper contains no writing.’
‘Let us see,’ cried the Cardinal, taking the letter and breaking it open. ‘Madonna!’ exclaimed he suddenly. ‘Look here’; and his finger then tremblingly pointed to the word, ‘Caraffa,’ traced in small letters and with a very faint ink in the middle of the page.
‘And to this you swear, on your soul’s safety,’ cried Caraffa eagerly.
He bent forward till his lips touched the large golden cross which, as a pectoral, the Cardinal wore, and muttered, ‘By this emblem, I swear it.’
‘Such influence is demoniacal, none can doubt it; who is this woman, and whence came she?’
‘So much of her story as I know is briefly told,’ said Massoni, who related all that he had heard of the Egyptian, concluding with the steps by which he had her arrested and confined in the convent of St. Maria Maggiore, on the Tiber.
‘There was an age when such a woman had been sent to the stake,’ said Caraffa fiercely. ‘Is it a wiser policy that pardons her?’
‘Yes; if by her means a good end can be served,’ interrupted the Père; ‘if through what she can reveal, errors may be avoided, perils averted, and successes gained; if, in short, Satan can be used as slave, not master.’
‘And wherefore should she be opposed to me? broke in Caraffa, whose thoughts reverted to what concerned himself personally.
‘As a true and faithful priest, as an honoured prince of the Church, you must be her enemy,’ said the Père; and, though the words were spoken in all seeming sincerity, the Cardinal’s dark eyes scanned the speaker’s face keenly and severely. As if failing, however, to detect any equivocation in his manner, Caraffa addressed himself to another course of thought and said—