“Thank you,” said Agostino, “I think I would be alone a little while.  My head is confused, and I would fain think over matters a little quietly.”

“Well, au revoir, then.  I must leave you to the company of the saints.  But be sure and come early.”

So saying, he threw his cloak over his shoulder and sauntered carelessly down the marble steps, humming again the gay air with which he had ascended.

Left alone, Agostino once more cast a glance on the strangely solemn and impressive scene around him.  He was standing on a platform of the central tower which overlooked the whole building.  The round, full moon had now risen in the horizon, displacing by her solemn brightness the glow of twilight; and her beams were reflected by the delicate frost-work of the myriad pinnacles which rose in a bewildering maze at his feet.  It might seem to be some strange enchanted garden of fairy-land, where a luxuriant and freakish growth of Nature had been suddenly arrested and frozen into eternal stillness.  Around in the shadows at the foot of the Cathedral the lights of the great gay city twinkled and danced and veered and fluttered like fire-flies in the damp, dewy shadows of some moist meadow in summer.  The sound of clattering hoofs and rumbling wheels, of tinkling guitars and gay roundelays, rose out of that obscure distance, seeming far off and plaintive like the dream of a life that is past.  The great church seemed a vast world; the long aisles of statued pinnacles with their pure floorings of white marble appeared as if they might be the corridors of heaven; and it seemed as if the crowned and sceptred saints in their white marriage-garments might come down and walk there, without ever a spot of earth on their unsullied whiteness.

In a few moments Father Antonio had glided back to the side of the young man, whom he found so lost in reverie that not till he laid his hand upon his arm did he awaken from his meditations.

“Ah!” he said, with a start, “my father, is it you?”

“Yes, my son.  What of your conference?  Have you learned anything?”

“Father, I have learned far more than I wished to know.”

“What is it, my son?  Speak it at once.”

“Well, then, I fear that the letter of our holy father to the King of France has been intercepted here in Milan, and sent to the Pope.”

“What makes you think so?” said the monk, with an eagerness that showed how much he felt the intelligence.

“My cousin tells me that a person of consideration in the Duke’s household, who is supposed to be in a position to know, told him that it was so.”

Agostino felt the light grasp which the monk had laid upon his arm gradually closing with a convulsive pressure, and that he was trembling with intense feeling.

“Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight!” he said, after a few moments of silence.

“It is discouraging,” said Agostino, “to see how little these princes care for the true interests of religion and the service of God,—­how little real fealty there is to our Lord Jesus.”