divine the vicinity of the Basilica, for there is a smell as of incense,
a cloisteral quiescence as of the slumber of centuries. And at one corner
the Palace of the Holy Office rises up with heavy, disquieting bareness,
only a single row of windows piercing its lofty, yellow front. The wall
which skirts a side street looks yet more suspicious with its row of even
smaller casements, mere peep-holes with glaucous panes. In the bright
sunlight this huge cube of mud-coloured masonry ever seems asleep,
mysterious, and closed like a prison, with scarcely an aperture for
communication with the outer world.

Pierre shivered, but then smiled as at an act of childishness, for he
reflected that the Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition, nowadays the
Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, was no longer the institution it
had been, the purveyor of heretics for the stake, the occult tribunal
beyond appeal which had right of life and death over all mankind. True,
it still laboured in secrecy, meeting every Wednesday, and judging and
condemning without a sound issuing from within its walls. But on the
other hand if it still continued to strike at the crime of heresy, if it
smote men as well as their works, it no longer possessed either weapons
or dungeons, steel or fire to do its bidding, but was reduced to a mere
/role/ of protest, unable to inflict aught but disciplinary penalties
even upon the ecclesiastics of its own Church.

When Pierre on entering was ushered into the reception-room of Monsignor
Nani who, as assessor, lived in the palace, he experienced an agreeable
surprise. The apartment faced the south, and was spacious and flooded
with sunshine. And stiff as was the furniture, dark as were the hangings,
an exquisite sweetness pervaded the room, as though a woman had lived in
it and accomplished the prodigy of imparting some of her own grace to all
those stern-looking things. There were no flowers, yet there was a