receded farther and farther into the depth of their dark sockets, whilst
his whole face became withered, aged as it were, and covered with an
earthy pallor. A moment previously he had closed his eyes, and the only
sign that he still lived was the heaving of his chest induced by painful
respiration. And leaning over his poor dying face stood Benedetta,
sharing his sufferings, and mastered by such impotent grief that she also
was unrecognisable, so white, so distracted by anguish, that it seemed as
if death were gradually taking her at the same time as it was taking him.

In the recess by the window whither Cardinal Boccanera had led Doctor
Giordano, a few words were exchanged in low tones. "He is lost, is he
not?"

The doctor made the despairing gesture of one who is vanquished: "Alas!
yes. I must warn your Eminence that in an hour all will be over."

A short interval of silence followed. "And the same malady as Gallo, is
it not?" asked the Cardinal; and as the doctor trembling and averting his
eyes did not answer he added: "At all events of an infectious fever!"

Giordano well understood what the Cardinal thus asked of him: silence,
the crime for ever hidden away for the sake of the good renown of his
mother, the Church. And there could be no loftier, no more tragical
grandeur than that of this old man of seventy, still so erect and
sovereign, who would neither suffer a slur to be cast upon his spiritual
family, nor consent to his human family being dragged into the inevitable
mire of a sensational murder trial. No, no, there must be none of that,
there must be silence, the eternal silence in which all becomes
forgotten.