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Updated: June 8, 2025
Arthur's eyes travelled slowly down the page, past the unsteady letters in which her name was written, to the strong, familiar signature: "Lorenzo Montanelli." For a moment he stared at the writing; then, without a word, refolded the paper and laid it down. James rose and took his wife by the arm. "There, Julia, that will do.
They will only ache; you c-c-can't make them burn properly." Montanelli looked at him again in the same close, scrutinizing way; then rose and opened a drawer full of surgical appliances. "Give me the hand," he said. The Gadfly, with a face as hard as beaten iron, held out the hand, and Montanelli, after bathing the injured place, gently bandaged it. Evidently he was accustomed to such work.
"That is what I came to show you," Martini answered in his everyday voice. He picked up the placard from the floor and handed it to her. Hastily printed in large type was a black-bordered announcement that: "Our dearly beloved Bishop, His Eminence the Cardinal, Monsignor Lorenzo Montanelli," had died suddenly at Ravenna, "from the rupture of an aneurism of the heart."
I cried out to you to help me to give me poison or a knife something to put an end to it all before I went mad. And you ah !" He drew one hand across his eyes. Montanelli was still clasping the other. "I saw in your face that you had heard, but you never looked round; you went on with your prayers.
"You have to choose between us," he repeated once more. Montanelli drew from his breast a little case containing a bit of soiled and crumpled paper. "Look!" he said. "I believed in you, as I believed in God. God is a thing made of clay, that I can smash with a hammer; and you have fooled me with a lie." The Gadfly laughed and handed it back. "How d-d-delightfully young one is at nineteen!
If we keep near to the bridge we shall be sure to see him well he is staying on the Lung'Arno, you know." "But what has given you such a sudden fancy to see Montanelli? You never used to care about famous preachers." "It is not famous preachers; it is the man himself; I want to see how much he has changed since I saw him last." "When was that?" "Two days after Arthur's death."
As the Cardinal did not awake from his stupor, Colonel Ferrari repeated, louder: "Your Eminence!" Montanelli looked up. "He is dead." "Quite dead, your Eminence. Will you not come away? This is a horrible sight." "He is dead," Montanelli repeated, and looked down again at the face. "I touched him; and he is dead."
His savage attacks upon Montanelli had annoyed even his admirers; and Galli himself, who at first had been inclined to uphold everything the witty satirist said or did, began to acknowledge with an aggrieved air that Montanelli had better have been left in peace. "Decent cardinals are none so plenty. One might treat them politely when they do turn up."
They had intended to stay a few days at Geneva; but at the first sight of the glaring white streets and dusty, tourist-crammed promenades, a little frown appeared on Arthur's face. Montanelli watched him with quiet amusement. "You don't like it, carino?" "I hardly know. It's so different from what I expected. Yes, the lake is beautiful, and I like the shape of those hills."
As Montanelli entered the room where Arthur was waiting for him at the supper table, he saw that the lad seemed to have shaken off the ghostly fancies of the dark, and to have changed into quite another creature. "Oh, Padre, do come and look at this absurd dog! It can dance on its hind legs." He was as much absorbed in the dog and its accomplishments as he had been in the after-glow.
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