the man whom I dread."
"Who can he be?" asked the lady superior, with secret and involuntary fright.
"Who?" said the Italian, approaching the princess-abbess under the sway of mysterious exaltation. "I am certain that he is one of those devils who war against mankind, endowed by their Prince Satan with superhuman power."
"What are you telling me?" said the other, regarding the woman to make sure that she was not mad.
"What a wretch am I to have fallen across the path of this demon," groaned Lorenza, writhing her lovely arms, seemingly reft from a flawless ancient statue. "I am possessed of a fiend," she gasped, going up to the lady and speaking in a low voice, as if afraid to hear her own tones.
"Possessed! Speak out, if you are in your senses."
"I am not mad, though I may become so, if you drive me away."
"But allow me to say that I see you like a creature favored by heaven; you seem rich and are beauteous; you express yourself correctly, and your face does not wear traces of the terrible and mysterious complaint called demoniac possession."
"In my life, madame, and its adventures resides the sinister secret which I wish I could keep from myself. Lady, I am a Roman, where my father came of the old patricians, but like most Roman nobles, he is poor. I have also a mother and elder brother. In France, when an aristocratic family has a son and a daughter, she is put into a nunnery that the money which should have been her marriage portion shall buy the son a military commission. Among us, the daughter is sacrificed to help the son rise in holy orders. I was given no education, while my brother was trained to be a cardinal, as my mother simply said. I was destined to take the veil among the Subiaco Carmelites. Such a future had been held out to me from youth as a necessity. I had no will or strength in the matter. I was not consulted but ordered, and had to obey. We Roman girls love society without knowing anything about it, as the suffering souls in paradise love heaven. I was surrounded by examples which would have doomed me, had the idea of resistance come to me, but none such came. But my mother fondled me a little more than usual when the fatal day dawned.
"My father gathered five hundred Roman crowns to pay my entrance fee into the convent, and we set out for Subiaco. It is some nine leagues from Rome; but the mountain roads were so bad that we were five hours getting over three of them. But the journey pleased me, though it might be fatiguing. I smiled on it as my last pleasure, and along the road bade farewell to the trees, bushes, stones and the dried grass itself. I feared that in the nunnery would be not even grass and flowers.
"Suddenly, amid my dreams, and as we were passing between a grove and a pile of rocks, the carriage stopped. I heard my mother scream, and my father jumped to get his pistols. My eyes and mind dropped from the skies to the earth, for we were stopped by highwaymen."
"Poor girl!" exclaimed Princess Louise, interested in the tale.
"I was not frightened, for the brigands waylaid us for money, and what they took was to pay my way into the nunnery; hence there would be a delay until it was made up again, and I knew that it would take time and trouble. But when, after sharing this plunder, the bandits, instead of letting us go our way, sprang upon me, and I saw my father's efforts to defend me and my mother's tears in entreaty, then I comprehended that a great though unknown misfortune threatened me, and I began to call for mercy. It was natural, though I knew that it was useless calling and that nobody would hear in this wild spot. Hence, without heeding my father's struggles, my mother's weeping, or my appeals, the banditti tied my hands behind my back, and began throwing dice on one of their handkerchiefs spread on the ground, while burning me with hideous glances, which I understood from terror giving me clearness of sight.
"What most frightened me was not to see any stake on the board. I shuddered as the dice cup passed from hand to hand, at the thought that I was the stake.
"All of a sudden, one of them, with a yell of triumph, jumped up, while the others ground their teeth and swore. He ran up to me, took me in his arms and pressed his lips to mine. The contact of redhot iron could not have drawn a more heartrending scream from me.
"'Rather death, O God!' I shrieked.
"My mother writhed on the ground where my father lay, in a dead swoon. My only hope was that one of the losing villains would kill me out of spite with the dagger he held in his clenched fist. I waited for this stroke—longed, prayed for it.
"Suddenly a horseman rode up the path. He spoke to one of the sentinels, who let him pass, exchanging a sign with him. He was of medium stature, imposing in mien and resolute in gaze. He came on at the walking pace of his horse, calm and tranquil. He stopped in front of me. The bandit who had clutched me turned round sharply at the first blow of the whistle which the stranger carried in the handle of his riding whip. He let me drop to the ground.
"'Come here,' said the horseman, and as the bandit hesitated, he formed a triangle with his arms, crossing his forefingers upon his breast.
"As though this were the token of a mighty master, the robber went up to the stranger, who stooped down to his ear, and said:
"'Mak.'
"I am sure he uttered but this single word, for I looked at him as one looks at the knife about to slay oneself, and listened as one does for the sentence of life or death.
"'Benak,' answered the highwayman.
"Subdued like a lion, with growling, he returned to me, untied the rope round my wrists, and did the same release for my parents. As the coin had been shared, every man went and put his portion on a flat rock. Not a piece was missing. Meanwhile I felt myself coming to life again in the hands of my father and mother.
"'Be off,' said the deliverer to the robbers, who obeyed and dived into the wood to the last man.
"'Lorenza Feliciani,' said the stranger, covering me with a superhuman gaze, 'you are free to go your way.'
"My father and mother thanked the stranger who knew me and yet was unknown to us. They stepped into the carriage where I followed them with regret, for some unknown power irresistibly attracted me toward my savior. He remained unstirring in the same spot, as if to continue between us and harm. I looked at him as long as I could and the oppression on my bosom did not go off until he was lost to view. In a couple of hours we reached Subiaco."
"But who was this extraordinary man?" cried Princess Louise, moved by the simplicity of the story.
"Kindly let me finish. Alas! this is not the whole of it.
"On the road, we three did nothing but talk about the singular liberator who had come mysteriously and powerfully like an agent of heaven. Less credulous than me, my father suspected him to be one of those heads of the robber leagues infesting the suburbs of Rome, who have absolute authority to reward, punish and share. Though I could not argue against my father's experience, I obeyed instinct and the effect of my gratitude, and did not believe him a robber. In my prayers to the Madonna, I set aside a special one for her to bless my savior.
"That same day I entered the convent. As the money was ready, nothing prevented my reception. I was sad but more resigned than ever. A superstitious Italian, I believed that heaven had protected me from the devils to hand me over pure to the religious haven. So I yielded with eagerness to the wishes of my parents and the lady superior. A petition to be made a nun without having to go through the novitiate in the white veil was placed before me, and I signed it. My father had written it in such fervent strains that the pope must have thought the request was the ardent aspiration of a soul disgusted with the world and turning to
