You carry life and death in your right hand, and against your will no man or woman in your lordship can prevail." He spoke the truth, a mighty truth which had stood like a mountain before me all these months, yet which I had not seen.
"I shall go or remain as you decree, my lord," he added; and then, almost in a snarl of defiance, "I obey none other," he concluded, "nor pope nor devil." "Agostino, I am waiting for you," came my mother's voice from the doorway.
Something had me by the throat.

It was Temptation, and old Falcone was the tempter.

More than that was he--though how much more I did not dream, nor with what authority he acted there.

He was the Mentor who showed me the road to freedom and to manhood; he showed me how at a blow I might shiver the chains that held me, and shake them from me like the cobwebs that they were.

He tested me, too; tried my courage and my will; and to my undoing was it that he found me wanting in that hour.