Inglesant sat looking at the Jesuit with a singular expression in his eyes, which the latter did not understand. Yes, surely it was a very different offer from that of Serenus de Cressy, yet Inglesant did not delay to answer from any indecision; from the moment the Jesuit began to speak he knew that he should go. But he took a kind of melancholy pleasure in contrasting the two paths, the two men, the different choice they offered him, and in reading a half sad, half sarcastic commentary on himself. After a minute or two, he said,— "I thank you much for your good-will and quite undeserved patronage. It is by far too good an offer to be refused, and I gladly accept it. You know, doubtless, what has happened to me, especially within these last few days, and that I have no friend left on earth save yourself; such a journey as that which you propose to me will, at the least, distract my thoughts from such a melancholy fate as mine." "I knew of your brother’s murder," said the Jesuit; "I have heard of the man before—one of those utterly lost and villanous natures which no country but Italy ever produced. Do you wish to seek him?" Inglesant told him that one of his principal objects in staying in Paris was to seek his assistance for that purpose; and that he felt it a sacred duty, which he owed to his brother, that his murderer should not escape unpunished. "I have no doubt I can learn where he is," said the other; "but I do not well see what you can do when you have found him, unless it happens to be in a place where you have powerful friends. It is true that he is so generally known and hated in Italy, that you might easily get help in punishing him should you meet him there; but he is hardly likely to return to his native country, except for some powerful reason." "If I can do nothing else," said Inglesant bitterly, "I can tell him who I am and shoot him dead, or run him through the body. He murdered my brother, just as he had come back to me—to me in prison and alone, and was a loving friend and brother to me, and would have been through life. Do you suppose that I should spare him, or that any moment will be so delightful to me as the one in which I see him bleed to death at my feet, as I saw my poor brother, struck by his hand, as he shall be by mine?" The Jesuit looked at Inglesant with surprise. The terrible earnestness of his manner, and the unrelenting and grim pleasure he seemed to take at the prospect of revenge, seemed so inconsistent with the refined and religious tone of his ordinary character, approaching almost to weakness; but the next moment he thought, "Why should I wonder at it? The man who has gone through what he did without flinching must have a strength of purpose about him far other than some might think." He said aloud,—