and eat!"
     He had  caught up the sun with the Host and  lifted it above  his head;
and now flung it crashing  down upon the floor. At  the ring of the metal on
stone the  clergy rushed  forward  together,  and  twenty  hands  seized the
madman.
     Then,  and  only then,  the silence  of the  people broke  in  a  wild,
hysterical  scream;  and, overturning  chairs  and  benches, beating  at the
doorways, trampling one upon another, tearing down curtains and  garlands in
their haste, the surging, sobbing human flood poured out upon the street.

        EPILOGUE.

     "GEMMA, there's a man downstairs who wants  to see  you." Martini spoke
in the subdued tone which they had  both unconsciously adopted during  these
last ten days. That,  and  a  certain slow evenness  of speech and movement,
were the sole expression which either of them gave to their grief.
     Gemma, with bare arms and an apron over her  dress,  was  standing at a
table, putting up little packages of  cartridges for  distribution.  She had
stood over the work since early morning; and now,  in the glaring afternoon,
her face looked haggard with fatigue.
     "A man, Cesare? What does he want?"
     "I don't know, dear. He wouldn't tell me. He said  he must speak to you
alone."
     "Very well." She took  off her apron and pulled down the sleeves of her
dress. "I must go to him, I suppose; but very likely it's only a spy."
     "In any case, I shall be in the next room, within call. As soon  as you
get rid  of him you had better go and lie down a bit. You have been standing
too long to-day."
     "Oh, no! I would rather go on working."
     She went slowly down the stairs, Martini following in silence.  She had
grown to  look ten years older in these few days, and the gray streak across
her hair had widened into a broad  band.  She  mostly kept her  eyes lowered
now; but  when,  by chance,  she  raised them,  he shivered at the horror in
their shadows.
     In the little parlour she found  a clumsy-looking man standing with his
heels  together  in the middle  of  the  floor.  His whole  figure  and  the
half-frightened way he looked up when she came in, suggested to her  that he
must  be one of  the  Swiss  guards. He  wore a  countryman's blouse,  which
evidently did not belong to him, and kept glancing round as though afraid of
detection.
     "Can you speak German?" he asked in the heavy Zurich patois.
     "A little. I hear you want to see me."
     "You are Signora Bolla? I've brought you a letter."
     "A--letter?" She was beginning to tremble, and  rested one hand  on the
table to steady herself.
     "I'm one of the guard over there." He pointed out of  the window to the
fortress on the hill. "It's from--the man that was shot  last week. He wrote
it the night before. I promised him I'd give it into your own hand myself."
     She bent her head down. So he had written after all.
     "That's why  I've been so long bringing  it," the soldier went on.  "He
said I was not to give it to anyone but you, and I couldn't get off before--
they watched me so. I had to borrow these things to come in."
     He was fumbling in the breast of  his blouse.  The weather was hot, and
the  sheet  of  folded  paper  that he pulled out  was  not  only dirty  and
crumpled, but damp. He stood for a moment  shuffling his feet uneasily; then
put up one hand and scratched the back of his head.
     "You  won't  say  anything," he began again timidly, with a distrustful
glance at her. "It's as much as my life's worth to have come here."
     "Of course I shall not say anything. No, wait a minute----"
     As he turned to go, she stopped him, feeling for her purse; but he drew
back, offended.
     "I don't  want your money," he said roughly. "I did it for him--because
he  asked  me  to. I'd have done more than  that  for him. He'd been good to
me--God help me!"
     The little catch in his voice made her look up. He was slowly rubbing a
grimy sleeve across his eyes.
     "We had  to shoot," he went on under his breath; "my mates and I. A man
must obey orders. We bungled  it, and  had to fire again-- and he laughed at
us--he called us the awkward squad--and he'd been good to me----"
     There was silence in the  room. A moment later  he straightened himself
up, made a clumsy military salute, and went away.
     She stood still for a little while with the paper in her hand; then sat
down  by the open window to read. The letter  was closely written in pencil,
and in some  parts  hardly legible. But the first  two words stood out quite
clear upon the page; and they were in English:
     "Dear Jim."
     The writing  grew suddenly blurred  and misty.  And  she  had  lost him
again--had lost him again! At the sight  of  the familiar  childish nickname
all the  hopelessness of her bereavement  came over her afresh, and she  put
out her  hands in blind desperation, as though the weight of the earth-clods
that lay above him were pressing on her heart.
     Presently she took up the paper again and went on reading:
     "I  am  to be  shot at sunrise to-morrow. So  if I am to keep at all my
promise to tell you everything, I must keep it now. But, after all, there is
not much  need of explanations between you and me. We always understood each
other without many words, even when we were little things.
     "And  so, you see,  my dear,  you had no need to break  your heart over
that old  story  of the blow. It was a  hard hit, of course; but I have  had
plenty of others as hard, and yet I have managed  to get over them,--even to
pay  back a few  of them,--and here  I  am still, like  the mackerel in  our
nursery-book  (I forget its name), 'Alive and kicking, oh!'  This is my last
kick,  though; and  then,  to-morrow morning, and--'Finita la Commedia!' You
and I will translate that: 'The variety show is over';  and will give thanks
to the gods  that they  have had, at  least, so much mercy  on us. It is not
much, but  it is  something; and for this and all other  blessings may we be
truly thankful!
     "About that  same  to-morrow morning, I  want both  you  and Martini to
understand  clearly that I am quite happy  and  satisfied, and could  ask no
better thing  of Fate. Tell that to  Martini  as a message from  me; he is a
good  fellow and a  good  comrade, and he will understand. You see,  dear, I
know  that  the  stick-in-the-mud people  are  doing  us  a  good  turn  and
themselves a bad one by  going back to secret trials and executions so soon,
and  I know that if you who are left stand  together steadily  and hit hard,
you will see great things. As for me, I shall go out into the courtyard with
as light a heart as any child starting home for the holidays. I have done my
share of the work, and this death-sentence is the proof that I have done  it
thoroughly. They kill me because they are afraid  of me; and what  more  can
any man's heart desire?
     "It desires just one thing more, though. A man who  is going to die has
a right  to a personal fancy,  and mine  is  that you should  see why I have
always been such a sulky brute to  you, and so slow to forget old scores. Of
course, though, you understand why, and I tell you only for the pleasure  of
writing the words. I loved you,  Gemma, when you were an ugly little girl in
a  gingham  frock, with a scratchy tucker  and your hair in a pig-tail  down
your back; and I love you still. Do you remember that day when I kissed your
hand, and when you so piteously begged me 'never to do that again'? It was a
scoundrelly trick to play, I know; but you must forgive that; and now I kiss
the  paper  where I have written your name. So I have kissed  you twice, and
both times without your consent.
     "That is all. Good-bye, my dear."
     There was no signature, but a verse which they had learned together  as
children was written under the letter:
     "Then am I A happy fly, If I live Or if I die."
     . . . . .
     Half an hour later Martini entered the room,  and, startled out  of the
silence  of half a life-time, threw down  the  placard  he was  carrying and
flung his arms about her.
     "Gemma! What is it, for God's sake? Don't sob like that--you that never
cry! Gemma! Gemma, my darling!"
     "Nothing, Cesare; I will tell you afterwards--I  --can't  talk about it
just now."
     She  hurriedly  slipped the tear-stained  letter into  her pocket; and,
rising, leaned out of the  window to hide  her face. Martini held his tongue
and bit his moustache. After  all these years he had betrayed himself like a
schoolboy--and she had not even noticed it!
     "The Cathedral bell is tolling," she said after a little while, looking
round with recovered self-command. "Someone must be dead."
     "That is what I came  to  show you," Martini  answered in his  everyday
voice. He picked up the placard from the floor and handed it to her. Hastily
printed  in large type was a black-bordered  announcement that: "Our  dearly
beloved Bishop, His Eminence  the  Cardinal, Monsignor Lorenzo  Montanelli,"
had died  suddenly at Ravenna,  "from  the rupture of  an  aneurism  of  the
heart."
     She  glanced  up  quickly from  the paper,  and  Martini  answered  the
unspoken suggestion in her eyes with a shrug of his shoulders.
     "What  would you  have, Madonna?  Aneurism  is as  good  a word as  any
other."