break their arms. Cannot you see that their fingers are almost dug into
one another's shoulders? No, they can never be parted!"

Thereupon Cardinal Boccanera intervened. God had not granted the miracle;
and he, His minister, was livid, tearless, and full of icy despair. But
he waved his arm with a sovereign gesture of absolution and
sanctification, as if, Prince of the Church that he was, disposing of the
will of Heaven, he consented that the lovers should appear in that
embrace before the supreme tribunal. In presence of such wondrous love,
indeed, profoundly stirred by the sufferings of their lives and the
beauty of their death, he showed a broad and lofty contempt for mundane
proprieties. "Leave them, leave me, my sister," said he, "do not disturb
their slumber. Let their eyes remain open since they desire to gaze on
one another till the end of time without ever wearying. And let them
sleep in one another's arms since in their lives they did not sin, and
only locked themselves in that embrace in order that they might be laid
together in the ground."

And then, again becoming a Roman Prince whose proud blood was yet hot
with old-time deeds of battle and passion, he added: "Two Boccaneras may
well sleep like that; all Rome will admire them and weep for them. Leave
them, leave them together, my sister. God knows them and awaits them!"

All knelt, and the Cardinal himself repeated the prayers for the dead.
Night was coming, increasing gloom stole into the chamber, where two
burning tapers soon shone out like stars.

And then, without knowing how, Pierre again found himself in the little
deserted garden on the bank of the Tiber. Suffocating with fatigue and
grief, he must have come thither for fresh air. Darkness shrouded the