Throughout the reading, the fleshy eyes of the inquisitor had been steadily, inscrutably regarding me. He passed a hand over his pendulous chin, as the thin voice faded into silence.
“I have heard a tangle of falsehood,” answered I. “Never was truth more untruly told than this.”
The beady eyes vanished behind narrowing creases of fat; and yet I knew that they were still regarding me. Presently they appeared again.
“Do you deny that the image contained this hideous engine of fraud?”
“Set it down,” he eagerly bade one of the amanuenses. “He confesses thus much.” And then to me--“Do you deny that you occupied that hermitage during the season named?”
“Set it down,” he said again. “What, then, remains?” he asked me.
“It remains that I knew nothing of the fraud. The trickster was a pretended monk who dwelt there before me and at whose death I was present. I took his place thereafter, implicitly believing in the miraculous image, refusing, when its fraud was ultimately suggested to me, to credit that any man could have dared so vile and sacrilegious a thing. In the end, when it was broken and its fraud discovered, I quitted that ghastly shrine of Satan's in horror and disgust.”
There was no emotion on the huge, yellow face. “That is the obvious defence,” he said slowly. “But it does not explain the appropriation of the moneys.”
“I appropriated none,” I cried angrily. That is the foulest lie of all.”
“Certainly they were made; though to what extent I am unaware. A vessel of baked earth stood at the door to receive the offerings of the faithful. It had been my predecessor's practice to distribute a part of these alms among the poor; a part, it was said, he kept to build a bridge over the Bagnanza torrent, which was greatly needed.”
“Well, well?” quoth he. “And when you left you took with you the moneys that had been collected?”
“I did not,” I answered. “I gave the matter no thought. When I left I took nothing with me--not so much as the habit I had worn in that hermitage.”
There was a pause. Then he spoke slowly. “Such is not the evidence before the Holy Office.”
“What evidence?” I cried, breaking in upon his speech. “Where is my accuser? Set me face to face with him.”
Slowly he shook his huge head with its absurd fringe of greasy locks about the tonsured scalp--that symbol of the Crown of Thorns.