. The sorceress of Rome. toCastel San Angelo. No sooner had the Senator of Rome departed, than theconjurers familiar tore the trappings from his person andstood revealed to his companion as Benilo, the Chamberlain. Dog! Liar! Impostor, he hissed into Dom Sabbatsface, while kicking and buffeting him. Marozia has beendead some fifty years. How dare you perpetrate this monstrousfraud ? Was it this I bade you tell the Senator of Rome ? Dom Sabbat cringed before the blows and the flaming mad-ness in the Chamberlains eyes. Folding his arms over hischest and bending low he replied with feigned contri
. The sorceress of Rome. toCastel San Angelo. No sooner had the Senator of Rome departed, than theconjurers familiar tore the trappings from his person andstood revealed to his companion as Benilo, the Chamberlain. Dog! Liar! Impostor, he hissed into Dom Sabbatsface, while kicking and buffeting him. Marozia has beendead some fifty years. How dare you perpetrate this monstrousfraud ? Was it this I bade you tell the Senator of Rome ? Dom Sabbat cringed before the blows and the flaming mad-ness in the Chamberlains eyes. Folding his arms over hischest and bending low he replied with feigned contrition: It was not for me to compel the spirits answer! And asfor the corpse, twas Marozias. Thus read you the devilsfavour. Until blessed by the holy rite, the body cannot returnto its native dust. Then it was Marozias spirit we beheld ? Benilo queriedwith a shudder, as they left the churchyard. Marozias spirit, repUed Dom Sabbat. Yet who wouldraise a fabric on the memory of a lie ? 323 CHAPTER XII THE HERMITAGE OF NILUS. TEPHANIAS sleep had beenbroken and restless. She tossedand turned in her pillows andpushed back the hair from herfevered cheeks and throbbingtemples ih vain. It was wearywork, to. lie gazing with eyeswide open at the flickeringshadows cast by the night-lampon the opposite wall. It wasstiU less productive of sleep to shut them tight and to abandonherself to the visions thus evoked, which stood out in life-likecolours and refused to be dispelled. Do what she would to forget him, to conjure up some otherobject in her soul, there stood the son of Theophano, toweringlike a demi-god over the mean, effeminate throng of hercotmtrymen. Her whole being had changed in the brief spaceof time, since first they had met face to face. Then the womansheart, filled with implacable hatred of that imperial phantom,which had twice wrested the dominion of Rome from theSenators iron grasp, filled with hatred of the unwelcomeintruder, had given one great bound for joy at the certainty
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