"'Pause and reflect'?" said Zabern, repeating Ravenna's words. "Why, this disposes me more than ever to slay you. What motive have I for keeping you alive? So, cardinal," he continued, after a brief pause, "you would have come to the coronation, robed in full canonicals, with the Latin clergy of Czernova at your back, to interdict Abbot Faustus from performing the ceremony, to read the Pope's rescript, and to anathematize the princess with bell, book, and candle. Vain your hopes! This papal bull shall not be read in the cathedral to-morrow, for here is the end of it." With these words Zabern raised the document to the flame of the candelabrum, and there held it till the vellum had shrivelled to blackened flakes. "That the Pope should sign his name to such rhodomontade!" he muttered contemptuously. "He threatens us; let him beware of his own downfall. The House of Savoy shall be our avengers. The Sardinian king will never rest till he himself shall reign at Rome." A prediction destined to be fulfilled. Zabern, resolving to show cause for the slaying of Ravenna, seated himself in a chair, rested his elbow upon the table, his face upon his hand, and glared across the crimson damask. "Cardinal, when you told the Pope that story, did you tell him the whole of it? How the Princess Natalie met her death, for example?" "The Princess Natalie committed suicide at Castel Nuovo." "True; and so you told her father, Prince Thaddeus, but you did not tell him her reason for the act. Let us hear it." Ravenna was silent. "The truth is that you had become possessed of unhallowed desires towards that fair princess during your tour with her around the shores of the Adriatic. When at Zara you proposed a visit to your place, Castel Nuovo, and the princess, doubting nothing, willingly accompanied you. While there you made certain proposals to her, who was so innocent in mind that she failed to understand you, and wonderingly repeated your words to the housekeeper Jacintha. Full well did Jacintha know your object in bringing that young girl there. For, holy cardinal, Natalie was not the first. You were ever eloquent in persuading youthful widows and maidens to renounce the world and to take the veil. It was your practice to escort your victims to some convent in Dalmatia, and the journey was always broken at Castel Nuovo. When your _protégées_ left that place they had good reason for wishing to hide themselves in a convent. "To such a point of depravity and recklessness had your nature grown that you could not refrain, even where a princess was concerned. At Castel Nuovo there was a secret passage leading from your study to the chamber where Natalie slept. In the silence and darkness of the night you stole down to accomplish your wicked purpose. When I think of the shame and horror of that poor girl's awakening, her imploring words and cries--"