Father Johannes Lampadisti had been often with the Queen in the past year, and had become her trusted counsellor, and almoner in many matters relating to the people, so that the guards and servants of the palace knew that when the wild prior of the convent from the mountain of the Troödos appeared in the palace court-yard asking audience of the Queen, he was never to be denied.
"Most reverend Father," she said, stretching out her hand to greet him, yet with no hint of welcome in her wan face, "they have stripped me of every joy; I had thought the Holy Christus and the Blessed Mother of Sorrows had been more kind!"
"Daughter!" he exclaimed, startled at her mood; "cry not out against the will of Heaven, lest thou sin because of thine unendurable anguish."
The words had escaped him, involuntarily, but already he was chiding himself that he could bring her, at such a time, even the shadow of a reproach.
But Caterina was beyond any perception of minor shades of feeling. She answered him in the same passionless tone in which she had greeted him, with no suggestion of self-pity, nor any claim for sympathy in her manner, as she motioned him to a seat near her.
"Nay, Father," she said, "in this hath Heaven been merciful: I feel nothing; my heart is a stone. For this I thank the Holy Mother; she knew that I could not bear it, else."
She made the statement simply, as if it implied nothing unusual, and waited for him to speak.
But for once Father Johannes had no words; his eyes grew dim as he looked at the young, passive face of the Queen, "stripped of every joy," alone on the threshold of life. "Daughter," he said, stumblingly, "I fain would comfort thee."
"Nay, Father," she answered, still without emotion, "there is no comfort. Let us speak of other things."
"Nay, of this," he said, with an awkward wave of his rough brown hand, as if he would have put everything else away: and then relapsed into silence, for in the presence of the grief which had mastered her, words seemed to have lost their meaning.