"We will raise it again when the painter lives--or dies!" he said
brokenly.
They left the studio, Prince Pietro extinguishing the lights, and
giving orders to his servant to put a strong bar across the door
they had forced open,--and the Cardinal, feeling more lonely than he
had done for many days, owing to the temporary absence of Manuel who
was keeping watch over Angela, returned to his own apartments full
of grave thoughts and anxious trouble. He had meant to leave Rome at
once,--but now, such a course seemed more than impossible. Yet he
knew that the scene which had, through himself indirectly, occurred
at the Vatican, would have its speedy results in some decisive and
vengeful action, if not on the part of the Supreme Pontiff, then
through his ministers and advisers, and Bonpre was sufficiently
acquainted with the secret ways of the Church he served, to be well
aware of its relentlessness in all cases where its authority was
called into question. The first step taken, so he instinctively
felt, would be to deprive him of Manuel's companionship,--the next
perhaps, to threaten him with the loss of his own diocese. He sighed
heavily,--yet in his own tranquil and pious mind he could not say
that he resented the position his affairs had taken.
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