with its package containing his single worldly luxury.

As the little, ancient bronze bell continued swinging in the tower, its
plaintive call reached something in the Padre's memory. Softly, absently,
he began to sing. He took up the slow strain not quite correctly, and
dropped it, and took it up again, always in cadence with the bell.

[musical score appears here]

At length he heard himself, and, glancing at the belfry, smiled a little.
"It is a pretty tune," he said, "and it always made me sorry for poor Fra
Diavolo. Auber himself confessed to me that he had made it sad and put
the hermitage bell to go with it, because he too was grieved at having to
kill his villain, and wanted him, if possible, to die in a religious
frame of mind. And Auber touched glasses with me and said--how well I
remember it!--'Is it the good Lord, or is it merely the devil, that makes
me always have a weakness for rascals?' I told him it was the devil. I
was not a priest then. I could not be so sure with my answer now." And
then Padre Ignacio repeated Auber's remark in French: "'Est-ce le bon
Dieu, oui est-ce bien le diable, qui veut tonjours que j'aime les
coquins?" I don't know! I don't know! I wonder if Auber has composed
anything lately? I wonder who is singing 'Zerlina' now?"

He cast a farewell look at the ocean, and took his steps between the
monastic herbs, the jasmines and the oleanders to the sacristy. "At
least," he said, "if we cannot carry with us into exile the friends and
the places we have loved, music will go whither we go, even to an end of
the world such as this.--Felipe!" he called to his organist. "Can they
sing the music I taught them for the Dixit Dominus to-night?"