bright and rosy against a pewter-like sky. Then the fiery vapour was
dissipated, and the sunset ended by fading away. One by one the stars
came out in the pacified vault, now of an ashen blue, while the lights of
Rome, still far away on the verge of the horizon, scintillated like the
lamps of light-houses.

And Prada, amidst the dreamy silence of his companions and the infinite
melancholy of the evening and the inexpressible distress which even he
experienced, continued to ask himself what course he should adopt. Again
and again he mentally repeated that he could not allow people to be
poisoned. The figs were certainly intended for Cardinal Boccanera, and on
the whole it mattered little to him whether there were a cardinal the
more or the fewer in the world. Moreover, it had always seemed to him
best to let Destiny follow its course; and, infidel that he was, he saw
no harm in one priest devouring another. Again, it might be dangerous for
him to intervene in that abominable affair, to mix himself up in the
base, fathomless intrigues of the black world. But on the other hand the
Cardinal was not the only person who lived in the Boccanera mansion, and
might not the figs go to others, might they not be eaten by people to
whom no harm was intended? This idea of a treacherous chance haunted him,
and in spite of every effort the figures of Benedetta and Dario rose up
before him, returned and imposed themselves on him though he again and
again sought to banish them from his mind. What if Benedetta, what if
Dario should partake of that fruit? For Benedetta he felt no fear, for he
knew that she and her aunt ate their meals by themselves, and that their
cuisine and the Cardinal's had nothing in common. But Dario sat at his
uncle's table every day, and for a moment Prada, pictured the young
Prince suddenly seized with a spasm, then falling, like poor Monsignor
Gallo, into the Cardinal's arms with livid face and receding eyes, and
dying within two hours.