"That is not true."
"I have seen it. I will swear it to the priest's face. Oh, if only he were here now!"
"He is not far away. He told me--he was the first one of you all to greet me at the parade--that he longed to see me, he must speak to me at once. I appointed this place; as soon as the King dismissed me I would be here. Do you see? He is already coming down the colonnade."
CHAPTER VI
The tall, haggard priest who now came slowly into the hall was several years older than Gelimer. A wide, dark-brown upper garment fell in mantle-like folds from his broad shoulders: his figure, and still more his unusually striking face, produced an impression of the most tenacious will. The features, it is true, were too sharply cut to be handsome; but no one who saw them ever forgot them. Strongly marked thick black brows shaded penetrating black eyes, which, evidently by design, were always cast down; the eagle nose, the firmly closed thin lips, the sunken cheeks, the pallid complexion, whose dull lustre resembled light yellow marble, combined to give the countenance remarkable character. Lips, cheeks, and chin were smoothly shaven, and so, too, was the black hair, more thickly mingled with gray than seemed quite suited to his age,--little more than forty years. Each of his rare gestures was so slow, so measured, that it revealed the rigid self-control practised for decades, by which this impenetrable man ruled himself--and others. His voice sounded expressionless, as if from deep sadness or profound weariness, but one felt that it was repressed; it was a rare thing to meet his eyes, but they often flashed with a sudden fire, and then intense passion glowed in their depths. Nothing that passed in this man's soul was recognizable in his features; only the thin lips, firmly as he closed them, sometimes betrayed by a slight, involuntary quiver that this rigid, corpse-like face was not a death-mask.
Gelimer had started up the instant he saw the priest, and now, hurrying toward him, clasped the motionless figure, which stood with arms hanging loosely before him, ardently to his heart.
"Verus, my Verus!" he cried, "my guardian angel! And you!--you!--they are trying to make me distrust. Really, brother, the stars would sooner change from God's eternal order in the heavens than this man fail in his fidelity to me." He kissed him on the cheek. Verus remained perfectly unmoved. Zazo watched the pair wrathfully.
"He has more love, more feeling," he muttered, stroking his thick beard, "for that Roman, that alien, than for--Speak, priest, can you deny that last Sunday, after midnight, Pudentius--ah, your lips quiver--Pudentius of Tripolis was secretly admitted by you through the little door in the eastern gate and received in your house, beside your basilica? Speak!"
Gelimer's eyes rested lovingly on his friend, and, smiling faintly, he shook his head. Verus was silent.
"Speak," Zazo repeated. "Deny it if you dare. You did not suspect that I was watching in the tower after I had relieved the guard. I had long suspected the gate-keeper; he was once a slave of Pudentius. You bought and freed him. Do you see, brother? He is silent! I will arrest him at once. We will search for secret letters his house, his chest, the altars, the sarcophagi of his church, nay, even his clothes."