And Theresa dropped the naked candle she had been holding aloft into the great chest of dull black grains which stood open by her side.
And after that it mattered little that at the same moment beyond the Alla the trumpets of Hugo, Prince of Plassenburg, blew their first awakening blast.
CHAPTER LIII
THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH VISIBLE
"So," said Pope Sixtus amicably, "your brother was killed by the great explosion of Friar Roger's powder in the camp of the enemy! Truly, as I have often said, God is not with the Greek Church. They are schismatics if not plain heretics!"
He was a little bored with this young man from the North, and began to remember the various distractions which were waiting for him in his own private wing of the Vatican. Still, the Church needed such young war-gods as this Prince Conrad. There were signs, too, that in a little she might need them even more.
The Pope's mind travelled fast. He had a way of murmuring broken sentences to himself which to his intimates showed how far his thoughts had wandered.
It was the Vatican garden in the month of April. Holy Week was past, and the mind of the Vicar of Christ dwelt contentedly upon the great gifts and offerings which had flowed into his treasury. Conrad could not have arrived more opportunely. Beneath, the eye travelled over the hundred churches of Rome and the red roofs of her palaces—to the Tiber no longer tawny, but well-nigh as blue as the Alla itself; then further still to the grey Campagna and the blue Alban Hills. But the Pope's eye was directed to something nearer at hand.