"Oh, if it is only that----" Montanelli dismissed the subject with an indifferent gesture. "Still," he added, "abuse is one thing and perversion of fact is another.
When you stated, in answer to my sermon, that I knew the identity of the anonymous writer, you made a mistake,--I do not accuse you of wilful falsehood,--and stated what was untrue.
I am to this day quite ignorant of his name."
The Gadfly put his head on one side, like an intelligent robin, looked at him for a moment gravely, then suddenly threw himself back and burst into a peal of laughter.
"S-s-sancta simplicitas!
Oh, you, sweet, innocent, Arcadian people--and you never guessed!
You n-never saw the cloven hoof?"
Montanelli stood up.
"Am I to understand, Signor Rivarez, that you wrote both sides of the controversy yourself?"
"It was a shame, I know," the Gadfly answered, looking up with wide, innocent blue eyes.
"And you s-s-swallowed everything whole; just as if it had been an oyster.
It was very wrong; but oh, it w-w-was so funny!"
Montanelli bit his lip and sat down again.
He had realized from the first that the Gadfly was trying to make him lose his temper, and had resolved to keep it whatever happened; but he was beginning to find excuses for the Governor's exasperation.
A man who had been spending two hours a day for the last three weeks in interrogating the Gadfly might be pardoned an occasional swear-word.
"We will drop that subject," he said quietly. "What I wanted to see you for particularly is this: My position here as Cardinal gives me some voice, if I choose to claim my privilege, in the question of what is to be done with you.
The only use to which I should ever put such a privilege would be to interfere in case of any violence to you which was not necessary to prevent you from doing violence to others.
I sent for you, therefore, partly in order to ask whether you have anything to complain of,--I will see about the irons; but perhaps there is something else,--and partly because I felt it right, before giving my opinion, to see for myself what sort of man you are."
"I have nothing to complain of, Your Eminence.
'A la guerre comme a la guerre.'
I am not a schoolboy, to expect any government to pat me on the head for s-s-smuggling firearms onto its territory.
It's only natural that they should hit as hard as they can.
As for what sort of man I am, you have had a romantic confession of my sins once.
Is not that enough; or w-w-would you like me to begin again?"
"I don't understand you," Montanelli said coldly, taking up a pencil and twisting it between his fingers.
"Surely Your Eminence has not forgotten old Diego, the pilgrim?" He suddenly changed his voice and began to speak as Diego:
"I am a miserable sinner------"
The pencil snapped in Montanelli's hand.
"That is too much!" he said.
The Gadfly leaned his head back with a soft little laugh, and sat watching while the Cardinal paced silently up and down the room.
"Signor Rivarez," said Montanelli, stopping at last in front of him, "you have done a thing to me that a man who was born of a woman should hesitate to do to his worst enemy.
You have stolen in upon my private grief and have made for yourself a mock and a jest out of the sorrow of a fellow-man.
I once more beg you to tell me: Have I ever done you wrong?
And if not, why have you played this heartless trick on me?"
The Gadfly, leaning back against the chair-cushions, looked up with his subtle, chilling, inscrutable smile
"It am-m-mused me, Your Eminence; you took it all so much to heart, and it rem-m-minded me-- a little bit--of a variety show----"
Montanelli, white to the very lips, turned away and rang the bell.
"You can take back the prisoner," he said when the guards came in.
After they had gone he sat down at the table, still trembling with unaccustomed indignation, and took up a pile of reports which had been sent in to him by the parish priests of his diocese. Presently he pushed them away, and, leaning on the table, hid his face in both hands.
The Gadfly seemed to have left some terrible shadow of himself, some ghostly trail of his personality, to haunt the room; and Montanelli sat trembling and cowering, not daring to look up lest he should see the phantom presence that he knew was not there. The spectre hardly amounted to a hallucination. It was a mere fancy of overwrought nerves; but he was seized with an unutterable dread of its shadowy presence--of the wounded hand, the smiling, cruel mouth, the mysterious eyes, like deep sea water----
He shook off the fancy and settled to his work.
All day long he had scarcely a free moment, and the thing did not trouble him; but going into his bedroom late at night, he stopped on the threshold with a sudden shock of fear.
What if he should see it in a dream?
He recovered himself immediately and knelt down before the crucifix to pray.
But he lay awake the whole night through.
CHAPTER IV.
MONTANELLI'S anger did not make him neglectful of his promise.
He protested so emphatically against the manner in which the Gadfly had been chained that the unfortunate Governor, who by now was at his wit's end, knocked off all the fetters in the recklessness of despair.
"How am I to know," he grumbled to the adjutant, "what His Eminence will object to next?
If he calls a simple pair of handcuffs 'cruelty,' he'll be exclaiming against the window-bars presently, or wanting me to feed Rivarez on oysters and truffles.