With a sweep of the hand he bade the others stand aside.
"Go!"—The command was tinged with scorn and contempt.
"I vouch for this monk!" Francesco heard him address the Senator of Rome, as with head bowed down he walked slowly away. But with a sharp pang another voice smote his unwittingly listening ear.
"A renegade!"
It was the voice of Raniero Frangipani.—
On that night, when Francesco returned to the inn and had repaired to his chamber, he lay on his bed without moving, without even thinking.
He had passed into a strange, half-apathetic state, in which his own misery was hardly more to him than a dull and mechanical weight, pressing on some wooden thing that had forgotten to be a soul.
In truth, it seemed of little consequence how all ended. The one thing that mattered to any sentient being, was to be spared the unbearable pain.
It seemed to him as if he had left some terrible shadow of himself, some ghostly trail of his personality, to haunt the room. He sat trembling and cowering, not daring to look up, lest he should see the phantom presence of his other self.
At last the pain worked as its own anaesthetic.