Holy Father--"_Filius urbis et orbis_." How bitterly the city had
treated him!

A knock sounded at his door. He walked to it and flung it open. His
anger had come to the overflowing of speech. At first he saw only a
hand at the door-casing, groping with a blind man's uncertainty. Then
he saw the old General.

In the soul of Ramoni rose an awful revulsion against the old man.
Instantly, with a memory of that first day in the cloister garden, of
those following days that gave him the unexpected, uncanny glimpses of
the priest, he centered all his bitterness upon Denfili. So fearful
was his anger as he held it back with the rein of years of
self-control, that he wondered to see Father Denfili smiling.

"May I enter, my son?" he asked.

"You may enter."

The old man groped his way to a chair. Ramoni watched him with
glowering rage. When Father Denfili turned his sightless eyes upon him
he did not flinch.

"You are disappointed, my son?" the old man asked with a gentleness
that Ramoni could not apprehend, "and you can not sleep?"

Ramoni's anger swept the question aside. "Have you come here, Father
Denfili," he cried, "to find out how well you have finished the
persecution you began ten years ago? If you have, you may be quite
consoled. It is finished to-night." His anger, rushing over the gates,