Marjorie Bowen

“ Noting the novice's intent gaze, a flush crept into the man's dark cheek.
"I am a stranger," he said. "I want to ask you of Cardinal Caprarola. He officiated here to—day?"
"Yea," answered the novice. "What can I tell you of him? He is the greatest man in Rome—now his Holiness is dying," he added.
"Why, I have heard of him—even in Constantinople. I think I saw him—many years ago, before I went to the East."
The novice began to extinguish the candles round the shrine.
"It may be, sir," he said. "His Eminence was a poor youth as I might be; he came from Flanders." ”

“ But more than these details did the stranger's face strike the novice; a face almost as perfect as the masks of the gods found in the temples; the rounded and curved features were over-full for a man, and the expression was too indifferent, troubled, almost weak, to be attractive, but taken in itself the face was noticeably beautiful. ”

“ Cardinal Caprarola was no ascetic whatever the youth Blaise may have been, and for a moment Theirry was bewildered and disappointed—could a saint live thus? Then he reflected; good it was to consider that God, and not the Devil, who so often used beauty and wealth for his lures, had given a man this. ”