"I have, indeed, much to confess, Holy Father, much I could not pour into any ears but thine."
"Yes—yes—I am all attention," murmured the Pontiff, his ears pricking and twitching with anticipation, and the famous likeness to a goat coming out in his face. "Go on! Go on, my son. Confession is the breathing health of the soul! (If this young man can tell me aught I do not know—by Peter, I will make him my private chaplain!)."
Then Conrad summoned up all his courage and put his soul's sickness into the sentence which he had been conning all the way from the city of Courtland.
"My father," he said, very low, his head bent down, "I, who am a priest, have loved the Lady Joan, my brother's wife!"
"Ha," said Sixtus, pursing his lips, "that is bad—very bad. (Bones of Saint Anthony! I did not think he had the spirit!) Penance must be done—yes, penance and payment! But hath the matter been secret? There has, I hope, been no open scandal; and of course it cannot continue now that your brother is dead. While he was alive all was well; but dead—oh, that is different! You have now no cloak for your sin! These open sores do the Church much harm! I have always avoided such myself!"
The young man listened with a swiftly lowering brow.
"Holy Father," he said; "I think you mistake me. I spoke not of sin committed. The Princess Joan is pure as an angel, unstained by evil or the thought of it! She sits above the reach of scandalous tongues!"
("Humph—what, then, is the man talking about? Some cold northern snowdrift! Strange, strange! I thought he had been a lad of spirit!")
But aloud Sixtus said, with a surprised accent, "Then why do you come to me?"
"Sire, I am a priest, and even the thought of love is sin!"