Arabella bowed her beautiful head and approached Szekuly, who was scarcely able to stand, so great was his emotion.
"Colonel Szekuly," said she, in a whisper, "you lent me fifty thousand florins upon some Italian securities of mine. They are all forgeries. I forged them myself, as well as all the fine letters of introduction with which I befooled the aristocracy of Vienna."
Szekuly stared for one moment at his tormentor, then hastily pressing his hand to his heart, he sank with a low sigh upon the marble floor.
The countess laughed out loud. "He has fainted!" exclaimed she. "Contemptible world, wherein men act like women, and women like men! Come, gentlemen, I am ready to follow you; but my innocence will speedily be reestablished, and the emperor, then, will owe me an apology for his want of courtesy."
CHAPTER CLIX.
THE POPE'S DEPARTURE.
The people of Vienna were enraptured to the last with the visit of the pope. Whenever he appeared, they sank upon their knees, as, with his bewitching smile, he gave them his benediction. But these accidental meetings did not satisfy the zeal of the Viennese: they longed to receive a formal and solemn blessing, pronounced in the cathedral from the papal throne.
High upon his throne sat the holy father in his pontifical robes, his triple crown upon his head, and the diamond cross of his order upon his breast. His canopy was of velvet, richly embroidered with gold, and around him were grouped the princes of the church. But the pope, his large expressive eyes fixed upon the altar, seemed isolated from all ecclesiastical pomp, mindful alone of the God whose representative on earth he was. And when he rose to give the papal benediction, the handsome face of Pius Sixth beamed with holy inspiration, while the people, filled with love and joy, knelt to receive the blessing which had been transmitted to them in uninterrupted succession from the holy Apostles themselves.
But however the loving heart of the pope might rejoice at his reception by the people, there were two men in Vienna who resisted him with all the pride of individuality and all the consciousness of their own worth and consequence.
The first of these was the emperor. He had sought continually to remind the sovereign pontiff that although the head of Christendom might be his guest, he, Joseph, was sole lord of his own domains. He had ordered that all ecclesiastic ordinances, before being printed, should receive the imperial exequatur. The pope had desired during his stay to issue a bull in relation to the newly-erected church of St. Michael. The bull had been returned for the signature of the emperor.