"_Aqua Tophania_," continued the marshal. "Ah! you start? You recognize the phial? Yes, it has been taken from a secret drawer of your own cabinet. Why a holy cardinal should have poison in his possession is best known to himself. I can, however, testify to its efficacy, for the condemned criminal upon whom I experimented to-day died within five minutes. Pasqual Ravenna, your servants on their return will find you leaning over the table dead, clutching this empty phial in your hand. To-morrow all Slavowitz will be discussing the suicide of the cardinal archbishop. Your nephew, Redwitz of Zamoska, may send off his three sealed packets, and very much surprised the recipients will be to find nothing within them but blank papers, for the originals have been abstracted, read by the princess, and burnt." Like one dazed by a heavy blow, Ravenna stared vacantly at the speaker, and then his eye, mechanically sinking lighted upon something white near his feet. It was the letter that he had recently written. The sight of it suddenly quickened his blood and suggested a plan for outwitting his assassins. He was still seated at the table, and with his foot he gently pushed the letter forward till it lay concealed beneath the fringe of the overhanging damask cloth. Upon the table itself there lay before him a document almost as dangerous as the letter. This was a roll of vellum with papal seals attached. It was beyond him to conceal this document from Zabern, whose face was set upon it with grim satisfaction. "What have we here?" he cried, stooping over the table, and lifting the vellum. "The papal bull, as I live," he continued, glancing his eye rapidly over the document, and reading snatches from it. "'We, Pio Nono ... do herewith commission our faithful brother in Christ, Pasqual Ravenna'--Angels of light! such names mingled! Christ and Ravenna!--'commission him to pronounce sentence of anathema and excommunication against the so-called Natalie Lilieska,'--so-called, so-called," muttered Zabern, stopping in his reading with a sudden fear, and hardly daring to continue the perusal; "what does that mean?--'in that while claiming to be lawful Princess of Czernova, and a daughter of the True Church, she is an impostor who ...' Oh, devil that you are!" cried Zabern, breaking off, and grinding his teeth in anger, "so you have told that story to the Pope?" "It is known to all the Vatican," replied Ravenna, hoping that the knowledge of the fact would restrain Zabern from his dreadful purpose. "The Pope will understand why I am murdered, and to whom the deed should be ascribed. You will do well to pause and reflect." Zabern's face grew terrible in its expression, as he realized the desperate strait to which Barbara was now reduced. If the Pope were master of her secret, not only could he anathematize, but he had likewise the power of deposing her whenever he chose.