"Very good! Now tell me what the relations are to be between this man and myself?"
"Patience, boy! I promised you another story, and here it is:
"The Destatore having become addicted to wine in his last years——"
"So the Destatore is dead, is he, uncle? You did not tell me of his death."
"I will tell you about it, although it is a very painful subject to me! I told you of an abominable crime that he committed. He surprised and carried off a girl,—a mere child,—who was walking with a nurse in this neighborhood, and set her free again in two hours. But, alas! two hours too late! No one witnessed his infamous act, but that very evening he boasted of it to me and sneered at my indignation. I was beside myself with horror and wrath, so that I cursed him, consigned him to the furies, and abandoned him to enter this convent, where I soon took the vows. I loved that man. I had been for many years under his influence; and when I saw him ruining and degrading himself, I feared that I might be led to follow his example. I determined to place between him and myself an insurmountable barrier. I became a monk; that was one of the most potent reasons for my decision.
"My desertion affected him more deeply than I expected. He came secretly to Bel Passo and resorted to every expedient—prayers and threats—to induce me to return. He was eloquent, because he had an ardent and sincere heart, despite his vagaries. I was inexorable, however, and I did my utmost to convert him. I am not eloquent; I was even less so at that time; but I felt so intensely all that I said to him—and faith had taken so strong a hold upon my heart—that my arguments made a profound impression upon him. I induced him to repair his crime as far as possible by marrying the innocent victim of his violence. I went to her by night and obtained her consent to look once more upon the detested brigand's features. They were married that night, secretly but legally, in the chapel before the altar where you prayed just now with me. And when he saw that beautiful, pale-cheeked, terrified maiden, the Prince of Castro-Reale was seized with remorse, and began to love her who was destined always to abhor him! He entreated her to fly with him, and, irritated by her refusal, thought of abducting her. But I had given that child my word, and she displayed a strength of character and a pride far beyond her years. She told him that she would never see him again; and clinging to my gown and our prior's—a worthy man who carried all his secrets with him to the grave—she cried: 'You swore that you would not leave me alone with that man a minute, and would take me back to the door of my home as soon as the marriage ceremony was finished. Do not desert me, or I will beat out my brains on the steps of your church!'
"She would have done as she said, the noble-hearted girl! But I had sworn! I took her home in safety, and she never saw the Destatore again.
"As for him, his suffering was beyond words. Resistance inflamed his passion, and, for the first time in his life, he who had seduced and abandoned so many women learned what love is. But he also learned what remorse is, and from that day his mind was diseased. I hoped that he would be truly converted. I had no thought of making a monk of him like myself, but I wanted him to take up his old work, to renounce useless crimes, debauchery and folly. I tried to convince him that, if he should become once more the avenger of his country and the soul of our hope of deliverance, his young wife would forgive him and consent to share his painful but glorious destiny. Doubtless I myself would have thrown my frock to the dogs and followed him.
"But, alas! it would be too easy for men to mend their ways if crime and vice would relax their grasp upon their victims as readily as we desire. The Destatore was no longer himself; he had become too thoroughly the man of the past. The remorse that I aroused in him disturbed his reason without appeasing his savage instincts. Sometimes a raving madman, sometimes timid and superstitious, he would pray one day in our humble chapel, bathed in tears; and the next day would return to his vomit—as the Scripture says. He tried to kill all his companions; he tried to kill me. He committed many more excesses, and one morning—it is hard for me to carry my story through to the end, Michel, it gives me so much pain!—one morning he was found dead at the foot of a cross, not far from our convent. He had blown out his brains with a pistol!"
"That was a horrible fate," said Michel, "and I do not know whether it is the tone of your voice, uncle, or the ghastly memories of the place where we are, but my emotions at this moment are most painful. It may be that I heard my father tell the story in my childhood, and that the memory of the terror it caused me then is revived by your words."