"And the same malady as Gallo, is it not ?" asked the Cardinal; and as the doctor trembling and averting his eyes did not answer he added: "At all events of an infectious fever!" Giordano well understood what the Cardinal thus asked of him: silence, the crime for ever hidden away for the sake of the good renown of his mother, the Church.

And there could be no loftier, no more tragical grandeur than that of this old man of seventy, still so erect and sovereign, who would neither suffer a slur to be cast upon his spiritual family, nor consent to his human family being dragged into the inevitable mire of a sensational murder trial.

No, no, there must be none of that, there must be silence, the eternal silence in which all becomes forgotten.
At last the doctor bowed with his gentle air of discretion.

"Evidently, of an infectious fever as your Eminence so well says," he replied.
Two big tears then again appeared in Boccanera's eyes.

Now that he had screened the Deity from attack in the person of the Church, his heart as a man again bled.