Holding his hands to his face as if he desired to annihilate himself, the secretary was shivering in every limb as much with fear as with fever.

At a moment when no fresh visitors were arriving he had succumbed to an attack of terrified despair.
"_Mon Dieu_! What is the matter with you ?" asked Pierre stepping forward, "are you ill, can I help you ?" But Don Vigilio, suffocating and still hiding his face, could only gasp between his close-pressed hands "Ah! Paparelli, Paparelli!" "What is it?
What has he done to you ?" asked the other astonished.
Then the secretary disclosed his face, and again yielded to his quivering desire to confide in some one.

"Eh?
what he has done to me?
Can't you feel anything, can't you see anything then?
Didn't you notice the manner in which he took possession of Cardinal Sanguinetti so as to conduct him to his Eminence?
To impose that suspected, hateful rival on his Eminence at such a moment as this, what insolent audacity! And a few minutes previously did you notice with what wicked cunning he bowed out an old lady, a very old family friend, who only desired to kiss his Eminence's hand and show a little real affection which would have made his Eminence so happy! Ah! I tell you that he's the master here, he opens or closes the door as he pleases, and holds us all between his fingers like a pinch of dust which one throws to the wind!" Pierre became anxious, seeing how yellow and feverish Don Vigilio was: "Come, come, my dear fellow," he said, "you are exaggerating!" "Exaggerating?
Do you know what happened last night, what I myself unwillingly witnessed?
No, you don't know it; well, I will tell you." Thereupon he related that Donna Serafina, on returning home on the previous day to face the terrible catastrophe awaiting her, had already been overcome by the bad news which she had learnt when calling on the Cardinal Secretary and various prelates of her acquaintance.

She had then acquired a certainty that her brother's position was becoming extremely bad, for he had made so many fresh enemies among his colleagues of the Sacred College, that his election to the pontifical throne, which a year previously had seemed probable, now appeared an impossibility.

Thus, all at once, the dream of her life collapsed, the ambition which she had so long nourished lay in dust at her feet.