in her most retired and solemn hours might at last come to fill all her
heart with a presence too dangerously dear. He must direct her gaze up
those mystical heights where an unearthly marriage awaited her, its sealed
and spiritual bride; he must hurry her footsteps onward to the irrevocable
issue.

All this was before him. But ere it could be done, he must subdue
himself,--he must become calm and pulseless, in deadly resolve; and what
prayer, what penance might avail for this? If all that he had already
tried had so miserably failed, what hope? He resolved to quit for a season
all human society, and enter upon one of those desolate periods of retreat
from earthly converse well known in the annals of saintship as most
prolific in spiritual victories.

Accordingly, on the day after the conversation with Father Johannes, he
startled the monks by announcing to them that he was going to leave them
for several days.

"My brothers," he said, "the weight of a fearful penance is laid upon me,
which I must work out alone. I leave you today, and charge you not to
seek to follow my footsteps; but, as you hope to escape hell, watch and
wrestle for me and yourselves during the time I am gone. Before many days
I hope to return to you with renewed spiritual strength."

That evening, while Agnes and her uncle were sitting together in their
orange-garden, mingling their parting prayers and hymns, scenes of a very
different description surrounded the Father Francesco.

One who looks on the flowery fields and blue seas of this enchanting
region thinks that the Isles of the Blest could scarcely find on earth a