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CHAPTER V.
I HAD settled it in my own mind that we had better make the town
of Fondi, close on the frontier, our headquarters, to begin with,
and I had arranged, with the assistance of the embassy, that the
leaden coffin should follow us so far, securely nailed up in its
packing-case. Besides our passports, we were well furnished with
letters of introduction to the local authorities at most of the
important frontier towns, and, to crown all, we had money enough
at our command (thanks to Monkton's vast fortune) to make sure of
the services of any one whom we wanted to assist us all along our
line of search. These various resources insured us every facility
for action, provided always that we succeeded in discovering the
body of the dead duelist. But, in the very probable event of our
failing to do this, our future prospects--more especially after
the responsibility I had undertaken--were of anything but an
agreeable nature to contemplate. I confess I felt uneasy, almost
hopeless, as we posted, in the dazzling Italian sunshine, along
the road to Fondi.
We made an easy two days' journey of it; for I had insisted, on
Monkton's account, that we should travel slowly.
On the first day the excessive agitation of my companion a little
alarmed me; he showed, in many ways, more symptoms of a
disordered mind than I had yet observed in him. On the second
day, however, he seemed to get accustomed to contemplate calmly
the new idea of the search on which we were bent, and, except on
one point, he was cheerful and composed enough. Whenever his dead
uncle formed the subject of conversation, he still persisted--on
the strength of the old prophecy, and under the influence of the
apparition which he saw, or thought he saw always--in asserting
that the corpse of Stephen Monkton, wherever it was, lay yet
unburied. On every other topic he deferred to me with the utmost
readiness and docility; on this he maintained his strange opinion
with an obstinacy which set reason and persuasion alike at
defiance.
On the third day we rested at Fondi. The packing-case, with the
coffin in it, reached us, and was deposited in a safe place under
lock and key. We engaged some mules, and found a man to act as
guide who knew the country thoroughly. It occurred to me that we
had better begin by confiding th e real object of our journey
only to the most trustworthy people we could find among the
better-educated classes. For this reason we followed, in one
respect, the example of the fatal dueling-party, by starting,
early on the morning of the fourth day, with sketch-books and
color-boxes, as if we were only artists in search of the
picturesque.
After traveling some hours in a northerly direction within the
Roman frontier, we halted to rest ourselves and our mules at a
wild little village far out of the track of tourists in general.
The only person of the smallest importance in the place was the
priest, and to him I addressed my first inquiries, leaving
Monkton to await my return with the guide. I spoke Italian quite
fluently, and correctly enough for my purpose, and was extremely
polite and cautious in introducing my business, but in spite of
all the pains I took, I only succeeded in frightening and
bewildering the poor priest more and more with every fresh word I
said to him. The idea of a dueling-party and a dead man seemed to
scare him out of his senses. He bowed, fidgeted, cast his eyes up
to heaven, and piteously shrugging his shoulders, told me, with
rapid Italian circumlocution, that he had not the faintest idea
of what I was talking about. This was my first failure. I confess
I was weak enough to feel a little dispirited when I rejoined
Monkton and the guide.
After the heat of the day was over we resumed our journey.
About three miles from the village, the road, or rather
cart-track, branched off in two directions. The path to the
right, our guide informed us, led up among the mountains to a
convent about six miles off. If we penetrated beyond the convent
we should soon reach the Neapolitan frontier. The path to the
left led far inward on the Roman territory, and would conduct us
to a small town where we could sleep for the night. Now the Roman
territory presented the first and fittest field for our search,
and the convent was always within reach, supposing we returned to
Fondi unsuccessful. Besides, the path to the left led over the
widest part of the country we were starting to explore, and I was
always for vanquishing the greatest difficulty first; so we
decided manfully on turning to the left. The expedition in which
this resolution involved us lasted a whole week, and produced no
results. We discovered absolutely nothing, and returned to our
headquarters at Fondi so completely baffled that we did not know
whither to turn our steps next.
I was made much more uneasy by the effect of our failure on
Monkton than by the failure itself. His resolution appeared to
break down altogether as soon as we began to retrace our steps.
He became first fretful and capricious, then silent and
desponding. Finally, he sank into a lethargy of body and mind
that seriously alarmed me. On the morning after our return to
Fondi he showed a strange tendency to sleep incessantly, which
made me suspect the existence of some physical malady in his
brain. The whole day he hardly exchanged a word with me, and
seemed to be never fairly awake. Early the next morning I went
into his room, and found him as silent and lethargic as ever. His
servant, who was with us, informed me that Alfred had once or
twice before exhibited such physical symptoms of mental
exhaustion as we were now observing during his father's lifetime
at Wincot Abbey. This piece of information made me feel easier,
and left my mind free to return to the consideration of the
errand which had brought us to Fondi.
I resolved to occupy the time until my companion got better in
prosecuting our search by myself. That path to the right hand
which led to the convent had not yet been explored. If I set off
to trace it, I need not be away from Monkton more than one night,
and I should at least be able, on my return, to give him the
satisfaction of knowing that one more uncertainty regarding the
place of the duel had been cleared up. These considerations
decided me. I left a message for my friend in case he asked where
I had gone, and set out once more for the village at which we had
halted when starting on our first expedition.
Intending to walk to the convent, I parted company with the guide
and the mules where the track branched off, leaving them to go
back to the village and await my return.
For the first four miles the path gently ascended through an open
country, then became abruptly much steeper, and led me deeper and
deeper among thickets and endless woods. By the time my watch
informed me that I must have nearly walked my appointed distance,
the view was bounded on all sides and the sky was shut out
overhead by an impervious screen of leaves and branches. I still
followed my only guide, the steep path; and in ten minutes,
emerging suddenly on a plot of tolerably clear and level ground,
I saw the convent before me.
It was a dark, low, sinister-looking place. Not a sign of life or
movement was visible anywhere about it. Green stains streaked the
once white facade of the chapel in all directions. Moss clustered
thick in every crevice of the heavy scowling wall that surrounded
the convent. Long lank weeds grew out of the fissures of roof and
parapet, and, drooping far downward, waved wearily in and out of
the barred dormitory windows. The very cross opposite the
entrance-gate, with a shocking life-sized figure in wood nailed
to it, was so beset at the base with crawling creatures, and
looked so slimy, green, and rotten all the way up, that I
absolutely shrank from it.
A bell-rope with a broken handle hung by the gate. I approached
it--hesitated, I hardly knew why--looked up at the convent again,
and then walked round to the back of the building, partly to gain
time to consider what I had better do next, partly from an
unaccountable curiosity that urged me, strangely to myself, to
see all I could of the outside of the place before I attempted to
gain admission at the gate.
At the back of the convent I found an outhouse, built on to the
wall--a clumsy, decayed building, with the greater part of the
roof fallen in, and with a jagged hole in one of its sides, where
in all probability a window had once been. Behind the outhouse
the trees grew thicker than ever. As I looked toward them I could
not determine whether the ground beyond me rose or fell--whether
it was grassy, or earthy, or rocky. I could see nothing but the
all-pervading leaves, brambles, ferns, and long grass.
Not a sound broke the oppressive stillness. No bird's note rose
from the leafy wilderness around me; no voices spoke in the
convent garden behind the scowling wall; no clock struck in the
chapel-tower; no dog barked in the ruined outhouse. The dead
silence deepened the solitude of the place inexpressibly. I began
to feel it weighing on my spirits--the more, because woods were
never favorite places with me to walk in. The sort of pastoral
happiness which poets often represent when they sing of life in
the woods never, to my mind, has half the charm of life on the
mountain or in the plain. When I am in a wood, I miss the
boundless loveliness of the sky, and the delicious softness that
distance gives to the earthly view beneath. I feel oppressively
the change which the free air suffers when it gets imprisoned
among leaves, and I am always awed, rather than pleased, by that
mysterious still light which shines with such a strange dim
luster in deep places among trees. It may convict me of want of
taste and absence of due feeling for the marvelous beauties of
vegetation, but I must frankly own that I never penetrate far
into a wood without finding that the getting out of it again is
the pleasantest part of my walk--the getting out on to the barest
down, the wildest hill-side, the bleakest mountain top--the
getting out anywhere, so that I can see the sky over me and the
view before me as far as my eye can reach.
After such a confession as I have now made, it will appear
surprising to no one that I should have felt the strongest
possible inclination, while I stood by the ruined outhouse, to
retrace my steps at once, and make the best of my way out of the
wood. I had, indeed, actually turned to depart, when the
remembrance of the er rand which had brought me to the convent
suddenly stayed my feet. It seemed doubtful whether I should be
admitted into the building if I rang the bell; and more than
doubtful, if I were let in, whether the inhabitants would be able
to afford me any clew to the information of which I was in
search. However, it was my duty to Monkton to leave no means of
helping him in his desperate object untried; so I resolved to go
round to the front of the convent again, and ring at the
gate-bell at all hazards.
By the merest chance I looked up as I passed the side of the
outhouse where the jagged hole was, and noticed that it was
pierced rather high in the wall.
As I stopped to observe this, the closeness of the atmosphere in
the wood seemed to be affecting me more unpleasantly than ever.
I waited a minute and untied my cravat.
Closeness? surely it was something more than that. The air was
even more distasteful to my nostrils than to my lungs. There was
some faint, indescribable smell loading it--some smell of which I
had never had any previous experience--some smell which I thought
(now that my attention was directed to it) grew more and more
certainly traceable to its source the nearer I advanced to the outhouse.
By the time I had tried the experiment two or three times, and
had made myself sure of this fact, my curiosity became excited.
There were plenty of fragments of stone and brick lying about me.
I gathered some of them together, and piled them up below the
hole, then mounted to the top, and, feeling rather ashamed of
what I was doing, peeped into the outhouse.
The sight of horror that met my eyes the instant I looked through
the hole is as present to my memory now as if I had beheld it
yesterday. I can hardly write of it at this distance of time
without a thrill of the old terror running through me again to
the heart.
The first impression conveyed to me, as I looked in, was of a
long, recumbent object, tinged with a lightish blue color all
over, extended on trestles, and bearing a certain hideous,
half-formed resemblance to the human face and figure. I looked
again, and felt certain of it. There were the prominences of the
forehead, nose, and chin, dimly shown as under a veil--there, the
round outline of the chest and the hollow below it--there, the
points of the knees, and the stiff, ghastly, upturned feet. I
looked again, yet more attentively. My eyes got accustomed to the
dim light streaming in through the broken roof, and I satisfied
myself, judging by the great length of the body from head to
foot, that I was looking at the corpse of a man--a corpse that
had apparently once had a sheet spread over it, and that had lain
rotting on the trestles under the open sky long enough for the
linen to take the livid, light-blue tinge of mildew and decay
which now covered it.
How long I remained with my eyes fixed on that dread sight of
death, on that tombless, terrible wreck of humanity, poisoning
the still air, and seeming even to stain the faint descending
light that disclosed it, I know not. I remember a dull, distant
sound among the trees, as if the breeze were rising--the slow
creeping on of the sound to near the place where I stood--the
noiseless whirling fall of a dead leaf on the corpse below me,
through the gap in the outhouse roof--and the effect of awakening
my energies, of relaxing the heavy strain on my mind, which even
the slight change wrought in the scene I beheld by the falling
leaf produced in me immediately. I descended to the ground, and,
sitting down on the heap of stones, wiped away the thick
perspiration which covered my face, and which I now became aware
of for the first time. It was something more than the hideous
spectacle unexpectedly offered to my eyes which had shaken my
nerves as I felt that they were shaken now. Monkton's prediction
that, if we succeeded in discovering his uncle's body, we should
find it unburied, recurred to me the instant I saw the trestles
and their ghastly burden. I felt assured on the instant that I
had found the dead man--the old prophecy recurred to my memory--a
strange yearning sorrow, a vague foreboding of ill, an
inexplicable terror, as I thought of the poor lad who was
awaiting my return in the distant town, struck through me with a
chill of superstitious dread, robbed me of my judgment and
resolution, and left me when I had at last recovered myself, weak
and dizzy, as if I had just suffered under some pang of
overpowering physical pain.
I hastened round to the convent gate and rang impatiently at the
bell--waited a little while and rang again--then heard footsteps.
In the middle of the gate, just opposite my face, there was a
small sliding panel, not more than a few inches long; this was
presently pushed aside from within. I saw, through a bit of iron
grating, two dull, light gray eyes staring vacantly at me, and
heard a feeble husky voice saying:
"What may you please to want?'
"I am a traveler--" I began.
"We live in a miserable place. We have nothing to show travelers
here."
"I don't come to see anything. I have an important question to
ask, which I believe some one in this convent will be able to
answer. If you are not willing to let me in, at least come out
and speak to me here."
"Are you alone?"
"Quite alone."
"Are there no women with you?"
"None."
The gate was slowly unbarred, and an old Capuchin, very infirm,
very suspicious, and very dirty, stood before me. I was far too
excited and impatient to waste any time in prefatory phrases; so,
telling the monk at once how I had looked through the hole in the
outhouse, and what I had seen inside, I asked him, in plain
terms, who the man had been whose corpse I had beheld, and why
the body was left unburied?
The old Capuchin listened to me with watery eyes that twinkled
suspiciously. He had a battered tin snuff-box in his hand, and
his finger and thumb slowly chased a few scattered grains of
snuff round and round the inside of the box all the time I was
speaking. When I had done, he shook his head and said: "That was
certainly an ugly sight in their outhouse; one of the ugliest
sights, he felt sure, that ever I had seen in all my life!"
"I don't want to talk of the sight," I rejoined, impatiently; "I
want to know who the man was, how he died, and why he is not
decently buried. Can you tell me?"
The monk's finger and thumb having captured three or four grains
of snuff at last, he slowly drew them into his nostrils, holding
the box open under his nose the while, to prevent the possibility
of wasting even one grain, sniffed once or twice
luxuriously--closed the box--then looked at me again with his
eyes watering and twinkling more suspiciously than before.
"Yes," said the monk, "that's an ugly sight in our outhouse--a
very ugly sight, certainly!"
I never had more difficulty in keeping my temper in my life than
at that moment. I succeeded, however, in repressing a very
disrespectful expression on the subject of monks in general,
which was on the tip of my tongue, and made another attempt to
conquer the old man's exasperating reserve. Fortunately for my
chances of succeeding with him, I was a snuff-taker myself, and I
had a box full of excellent English snuff in my pocket, which I
now produced as a bribe. It was my last resource.
"I thought your box seemed empty just now," said I; "will you try
a pinch out of mine?"
The offer was accepted with an almost youthful alacrity of
gesture. The Capuchin took the largest pinch I ever saw held
between any man's finger and thumb--inhaled it slowly without
spilling a single grain--half closed his eyes--and, wagging his
head gently, patted me paternally on the back.
"Oh, my son," said the monk, "what delectable snuff! Oh, my son
and amiable traveler, give the spiritual father who loves you yet
another tiny, tiny pinch!"
"Let me fill your box for you. I shall have plenty left for
myself."
The battered tin snuff-box was given to me before I had done
speaking; the paternal hand patted my back more approvingly than
ever; the feeble, husky voice grew glib and eloquent in my
praise. I had evidently found out the weak side of the old
Capuchin, and, on returning him his box, I took instant
advantage of the discovery.
"Excuse my troubling you on the subject again," I said, "but I
have particular reasons for wanting to hear all that you can tell
me in explanation of that horrible sight in the outhouse."
"Come in," answered the monk.
He drew me inside the gate, closed it, and then leading the way
across a grass-grown courtyard, looking out on a weedy
kitchen-garden, showed me into a long room with a low ceiling, a
dirty dresser, a few rudely-carved stall seats, and one or two
grim, mildewed pictures for ornaments. This was the sacristy.
"There's nobody here, and it's nice and cool," said the old
Capuchin. It was so damp that I actually shivered. "Would you
like to see the church?" said the monk; "a jewel of a church, if
we could keep it in repair; but we can't. Ah! malediction and
misery, we are too poor to keep our church in repair!"
Here he shook his head and began fumbling with a large bunch of
keys.
"Never mind the church now," said I. "Can you, or can you not,
tell me what I want to know?"
"Everything, from beginning to end--absolutely everything. Why, I
answered the gate-bell--I always answer the gate-bell here," said
the Capuchin.
"What, in Heaven's name, has the gate-bell to do with the
unburied corpse in your house?"
"Listen, son of mine, and you shall know. Some time ago--some
months--ah! me, I'm old; I've lost my memory; I don't know how
many months--ah! miserable me, what a very old, old monk I am!"
Here he comforted himself with another pinch of snuff.
"Never mind the exact time," said I. "I don't care about that."
"Good," said the Capuchin. "Now I can go on. Well, let us say it
is some months ago--we in this convent are all at
breakfast--wretched, wretched breakfasts, son of mine, in this
convent!--we are at breakfast, and we hear bang! bang! twice
over. 'Guns,' says I. 'What are they shooting for?' says Brother
Jeremy. 'Game,' says Brother Vincent. 'Aha! game,' says Brother
Jeremy. 'If I hear more, I shall send out and discover what it
means,' says the father superior. We hear no more, and we go on
with our wretched breakfasts."
"Where did the report of firearms come from?" I inquired.
"From down below--beyond the big trees at the back of the
convent, where there's some clear ground--nice ground, if it
wasn't for the pools and puddles. But, ah! misery, how damp we
are in these parts! how very, very damp!"
"Well, what happened after the report of firearms?"
"You shall hear. We are still at breakfast, all silent--for what
have we to talk about here? What have we but our devotions, our
kitchen-garden, and our wretched, wretched bits of breakfasts and
dinners? I say we are all silent, when there comes suddenly such
a ring at the bell as never was heard before--a very devil of a
ring--a ring that caught us all with our bits--our wretched,
wretched bits!--in our mouths, and stopped us before we could
swallow them. 'Go, brother of mine,' says the father superior to
me, 'go; it is your duty--go to the gate.' I am brave--a very
lion of a Capuchin. I slip out on tiptoe--I wait--I listen--I
pull back our little shutter in the gate--I wait, I listen
again--I peep through the hole--nothing, absolutely nothing that
I can see. I am brave--I am not to be daunted. What do I do next?
I open the gate. Ah! sacred Mother of Heaven, what do I behold
lying all along our threshold? A man--dead!--a big man; bigger
than you, bigger than me, bigger than anybody in this
convent--buttoned up tight in a fine coat, with black eyes,
staring, staring up at the sky, and blood soaking through and
through the front of his shirt. What do I do? I scream once--I
scream twice--and run back to the father superior!"
All the particulars of the fatal duel which I had gleaned from
the French newspaper in Monkton's room at Naples recurred vividly
to my memory. The suspicion that I had felt when I looked into the outhouse became a certainty as I listened to
the old monk's last words.
"So far I understand," said I. "The corpse I have just seen in
the outhouse is the corpse of the man whom you found dead outside
your gate. Now tell me why you have not given the remains decent
burial."
"Wait--wait--wait," answered the Capuchin. "The father superior
hears me scream and comes out; we all run together to the gate;
we lift up the big man and look at him close. Dead! dead as this
(smacking the dresser with his hand). We look again, and see a
bit of paper pinned to the collar of his coat. Aha! son of mine,
you start at that. I thought I should make you start at last."
I had started, indeed. That paper was doubtless the leaf
mentioned in the second's unfinished narrative as having been
torn out of his pocketbook, and inscribed with the statement of
how the dead man had lost his life. If proof positive were wanted
to identify the dead body, here was such proof found.
"What do you think was written on the bit of paper?" continued
the Capuchin "We read and shudder. This dead man has been killed
in a duel--he, the desperate, the miserable, has died in the
commission of mortal sin; and the men who saw the killing of him
ask us Capuchins, holy men, servants of Heaven, children of our
lord the Pope--they ask us to give him burial! Oh! but we are
outraged when we read that; we groan, we wring our hands, we turn
away, we tear our beards, we--"
"Wait one moment," said I, seeing that the old man was heating
himself with his narrative, and was likely, unless I stopped him,
to talk more and more fluently to less and less purpose--"wait a
moment. Have you preserved the paper that was pinned to the dead
man's coat; and can I look at it?"
The Capuchin seemed on the point of giving me an answer, when he
suddenly checked himself. I saw his eyes wander away from my
face, and at the same moment heard a door softly opened and
closed again behind me.
Looking round immediately, I observed another monk in the
sacristy--a tall, lean, black-bearded man, in whose presence my
old friend with the snuff-box suddenly became quite decorous and
devotional to look at. I suspected I was in the presence of the
father superior, and I found that I was right the moment he
addressed me.
"I am the father superior of this convent," he said, in quiet,
clear tones, and looking me straight in the face while he spoke,
with coldly attentive eyes. "I have heard the latter part of your
conversation, and I wish to know why you are so particularly
anxious to see the piece of paper that was pinned to the dead
man's coat?"
The coolness with which he avowed that he had been listening, and
the quietly imperative manner in which he put his concluding
question, perplexed and startled me. I hardly knew at first what
tone I ought to take in answering him. He observed my hesitation,
and attributing it to the wrong cause, signed to the old Capuchin
to retire. Humbly stroking his long gray beard, and furtively
consoling himself with a private pinch of the "delectable snuff,"
my venerable friend shuffled out of the room, making a profound
obeisance at the door just before he disappeared.
"Now," said the father superior, as coldly as ever, "I am
waiting, sir, for your reply."
"You shall have it in the fewest possible words," said I,
answering him in his own tone. "I find, to my disgust and horror,
that there is an unburied corpse in an outhouse attached to your
convent. I believe that corpse to be the body of an English
gentleman of rank and fortune, who was killed in a duel. I have
come into this neighborhood with the nephew and only relation of
the slain man, for the express purpose of recovering his remains;
and I wish to see the paper found on the body, because I believe
that paper will identify it to the satisfaction of the relative
to whom I have referred. Do you find my reply sufficiently
straightforward? And do you mean to give me permission to look at
the paper?"
"I am satisfied with your reply, and see no reason for refusing
you a sight of the paper," said the father superior; "but I have
something to say first. In speaking of the impression produced on
you by beholding the corpse, you used the words 'disgust' and
'horror.' This license of expression in relation to what you have
seen in the precincts of a convent proves to me that you are out
of the pale of the Holy Catholic Church. You have no right,
therefore, to expect any explanation; but I will give you one,
nevertheless, as a favor. The slain man died, unabsolved, in the
commission of mortal sin. We infer so much from the paper which
we found on his body; and we know, by the evidence of our own
eyes and ears, that he was killed on the territories of the
Church, and in the act of committing direct violation of those
special laws against the crime of dueling, the strict enforcement
of which the holy father himself has urged on the faithful
throughout his dominions by letters signed with his own hand.
Inside this convent the ground is consecrated, and we Catholics
are not accustomed to bury the outlaws of our religion, the
enemies of our holy father, and the violators of our most sacred
laws in consecrated ground. Outside this convent we have no
rights and no power; and, if we had both, we should remember that
we are monks, not grave-diggers, and that the only burial with
which we can have any concern is burial with the prayers of the
Church. That is all the explanation I think it necessary to give.
Wait for me here, and you shall see the paper." With those words
the father superior left the room as quietly as he had entered
it.
I had hardly time to think over this bitter and ungracious
explanation, and to feel a little piqued by the language and
manner of the person who had given it to me, before the father
superior returned with the paper in his hand. He placed it before
me on the dresser, and I read, hurriedly traced in pencil, the
following lines:
"This paper is attached to the body of the late Mr. Stephen
Monkton, an Englishman of distinction. He has been shot in a
duel, conducted with perfect gallantry and honor on both sides.
His body is placed at the door of this convent, to receive burial
at the hands of its inmates, the survivors of the encounter being
obliged to separate and secure their safety by immediate flight.
I, the second of the slain man, and the writer of this
explanation, certify, on my word of honor as a gentleman that the
shot which killed my principal on the instant was fired fairly,
in the strictest accordance with the rules laid down beforehand
for the conduct of the duel.
"(Signed), F."
"F." I recognized easily enough as the initial letter of
Monsieur Foulon's name, the second of Mr. Monkton, who had died
of consumption at Paris.
The discovery and the identification were now complete. Nothing
remained but to break the news to Alfred, and to get permission
to remove the remains in the outhouse. I began almost to doubt
the evidence of my own senses when I reflected that the
apparently impracticable object with which we had left Naples was
already, by the merest chance, virtually accomplished.
"The evidence of the paper is decisive," said I, handing it back.
"There can be no doubt that the remains in the outhouse are the
remains of which we have been in search. May I inquire if any
obstacles will be thrown in our way should the late Mr. Monkton's
nephew wish to remove his uncle's body to the family burial-place
in England?"
"Where is this nephew?" asked the father superior.
"He is now awaiting my return at the town of Fondi."
"Is he in a position to prove his relationship?"
"Certainly; he has papers with him which will place it beyond a
doubt."
"Let him satisfy the civil authorities of his claim, and he need
expect no obstacle to his wishes from any one here."
I was in no humor for talking a moment longer with my
sour-tempered companion than I could help. The day was wearing on
me fast; and, whether night overtook me or not, I was resolved
never to stop on my return till I got back to Fondi. Accordingly,
after telling the father superior that he might expect to hear
from me again immediately, I made my bow and hastened out of the
sacristy.
At the convent gate stood my old friend with the tin snuff-box,
waiting to let me out.
"Bless you, may son," said the venerable recluse, giving me a
farewell pat on the shoulder, "come back soon to your spiritual
father who loves you, and amiably favor him with another tiny,
tiny pinch of the delectable snuff."
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