Several visitors had joined the party since Odo's entrance; and it was
from a group of these later arrivals that the voice had reached him. He
looked round and saw a man of refined and scholarly appearance, dressed
en abbe, as was the general habit in Rome and Naples, and holding in one
hand the celebrated blue vase cut in cameo which Sir William had
recently purchased from the Barberini family.
"These reliefs," the stranger was saying, "whether cut in the substance
itself, or afterward affixed to the glass, certainly belong to the
Grecian period of cameo-work, and recall by the purity of their design
the finest carvings of Dioskorides." His beautifully-modulated Italian
was tinged by a slight foreign accent, which seemed to connect him still
more definitely with the episode his voice recalled. Odo turned to a
gentleman at his side and asked the speaker's name.
"That," was the reply, "is the abate de Crucis, a scholar and
cognoscente, as you perceive, and at present attached to the household
of the Papal Nuncio."
Instantly Odo beheld the tumultuous scene in the Duke's apartments, and
heard the indictment of Heiligenstern falling in tranquil accents from
the very lips which were now, in the same tone, discussing the date of a
Greek cameo vase. Even in that moment of disorder he had been struck by
the voice and aspect of the agent of the Holy Office, and by a singular
distinction that seemed to set the man himself above the coil of
passions in which his action was involved.
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