My mind moved through these happenings as a man moves through a dense fog, faltering and hesitating at every step. I took the parchment and considered it. Satisfied as to its nature, however mystified as to how the Pope had come to intervene, I folded the document and thrust it into my belt. Then the familiars of the Holy Office assisted me to resume my garments; and all was done now in utter silence, and for my own part in the same mental and dream-like confusion. At length the inquisitor waved a huge hand doorwards. “Ite!” he said, and added, whilst his raised hand seemed to perform a benedictory gesture--“Pax Domini sit tecum.” “Et cum spiritu tuo,” I replied mechanically, as, turning, I stumbled out of that dread place in the wake of the messenger who had brought the bull, and who went ahead to guide me. CHAPTER IX. THE RETURN Above in the blessed sunlight, which hurt my eyes--for I had not seen it for a full week--I found Galeotto awaiting me in a bare room; and scarcely was I aware of his presence than his great arms went round me and enclasped me so fervently that his corselet almost hurt my breast, and brought back as in a flash a poignant memory of another man fully as tall, who had held me to him one night many years ago, and whose armour, too, had hurt me in that embrace. Then he held me at arms' length and considered me, and his steely eyes were blurred and moist. He muttered something to the familiar, linked his arm through mine and drew me away, down passages, through doors, and so at last into the busy Roman street. We went in silence by ways that were well known to him but in which I should assuredly have lost myself, and so we came at last to a fair tavern--the Osteria del Sole--near the Tower of Nona. His horse was stalled here, and a servant led the way above-stairs to the room that he had hired. How wrong had I not been, I reflected, to announce before the Inquisition that I should have no regrets in leaving this world. How ungrateful was that speech, considering this faithful one who loved me for my father's sake! And was there not Bianca, who, surely--if her last cry, wrung from her by anguish, contained the truth--must love me for my own? How sweet the revulsion that now came upon me as I sank into a chair by the window, and gave myself up to the enjoyment of that truly happy moment in which the grey shadow of death had been lifted from me. Servants bustled in, to spread the board with the choice meats that Galeotto had ordered, and great baskets of luscious fruits and flagons of red Puglia wine; and soon we seated ourselves to the feast.