"Holy Father, I strove to obey the command of Christ--'Forgive that
ye may be forgiven'!--I cannot be sorry that I did so obey it;--for
now the offender is beyond the reach of either punishment or
absolution. He must answer for his deeds to God alone!"
The Pope turned his eyes slowly round in his waxenlike head to
Gherardi--then to Moretti--and seeing confirmation of the news in
their looks, fixed them again as immovably as before upon the
Cardinal. The faint shadow of a cold smile flickered on his long
slit-like mouth.
"Dead!" he murmured, and he nodded slowly, and beat with one finger
on the back of the other hand, as though keeping time mechanically
to some funeral march in his brain. "Dead! A fortunate thing for
him! An escape from worse than death, so far as this life is
concerned! But what of the next?--'where the worm dieth not and the
fire is not quenched!'" And here the representative of St. Peter
smiled pallidly. "Dead!--but his works live after him; and his sin-
begotten son also lives, to spread his pernicious writings through
the world, and incite the already disobedient to further license.
Therefore the Church must still publicly condemn his memory, as a
warning to the faithful.
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