“And that I can do so should prove to you that I have indeed known it, my son!” sadly responded the pope.

“Whoever has known love knows that there can be no renunciation!”

“And whoever has known love can renounce!” exclaimed the pope, with animation.  “Listen to me, my son, and may the sad story of a short happiness and long expiation serve you as a warning example!  You think I cannot have known love?  Ah, I tell you I have experienced all its joys and all its sorrows—­that in the intoxication of rapture I once forgot my vows, my duties, my holy resolutions, and, doubly criminal, I also taught her whom I loved to forget her own sacred duties and to sin!  Ah, you call me a saint, and yet I have been the most abject of sinners!  Under this Franciscan vesture beat a tempestuous, fiery heart that derided God and His laws; a heart that would have given my soul to the evil one, had he promised to give me in exchange the possession of my beloved!  She was beautiful, and of a heavenly disposition; and hence, when she passed through the aisles of the church, with her slight fairy form, her angelic face veiled by her long dark locks, her eyes beaming with love and pleasure, a heavenly smile playing about her lips—­ah, when she thus passed through the church, her feet scarcely touching the floor, then I, who awaited her in the confessional, felt myself nearly frantic with ecstasy, my brain turned, my eyes darkened, there was a buzzing in my ears, and I attempted to implore the aid and support of God.”

“You should have appealed to Cupid!” said the cardinal, laughing.  “In such a case aid could come only from the god of ancient Rome, not of the modern!”

The old man noticed not his words.  Wholly absorbed in his reminiscences, he listened only to the voice of his own breast, saw only the form of the beautiful woman he had once so dearly loved!

“God listened not to my fervent prayers,” he continued, with a sigh, “or perhaps my stormily beating heart heard not the voice of God, because I listened only to her; because with intoxicated senses I was listening to the modest, childishly pure confession which she, kneeling in the confessional, was whispering in my ears; because I felt her breath upon my cheeks and in every trembling nerve of my being.  And one day, overcome by his glowing passion, the monk so far forgot his sworn duty as to confess his immodest and insane love for the wife of another man!”

“Ah, she was, then, married?” remarked the cardinal.

“Yes, she was married; sold by her own parents, sacrificed at the shrine of mammon, married to a man whom she did not and could not love, and who pursued her with an insane jealousy.  Ah, she suffered and suffered with the uncomplaining calmness of an angel.  And I, did I not also suffer?  We wept together, we complained together, until our hearts at length forgot complaining, and an unspeakable, a terrible happiness, made us forget our troubles.  I had forgotten all—­my God, my clerical vows; she also had forgotten all—­her husband, her vow of fidelity; and if a thought of these things sometimes intruded upon our moments of happiness, it only caused us to plunge into new delights, and to lull ourselves anew into a blessed forgetfulness!”