usually only die with ourselves.

'When I look at him,' said the Pere sadly, 'I distrust them all.'

'You are not wont to be so easily discouraged.' 'Easily
discouraged--easily discouraged! It is a strange reproach to bring
against me,' said the Pere, with a calm collectedness; 'nor is that the
character all Rome would give me. But why am I steadfast of purpose and
firm of plan? Because, ere I engage in an enterprise, I weigh well the
means of success, and canvass all its agencies. The smallest stream that
ever dashed down a mountain has strength in the impulse of its course,
while if it meandered through a plain it had been a rivulet. This is a
lesson we may reap profit from.'

Carrol did not answer, and Massoni, covering his face with his hands,
seemed lost in deep thought; at last he said--

'What was your pretext to induce him to come back here?'

'To hear tidings of his family and kindred.'

'Did you intimate to him that they were of rank and station?'

'Yes, of the very highest.'

'How did the news affect him?'

'It was hard at first to convince him that they could be true. He had,
besides, been so often tricked and deceived by false intelligence,
and made the sport of craftier heads, that it was difficult to win his
confidence; nor did I succeed until I told him certain facts about his
early life, whose correctness he acknowledged.'

'I had imagined him most unlike what I see. If Charles Edward had left a
daughter she might have resembled this.'

'Still that very resemblance is of great value.'

'What signifies that a thing may look like gold, when at the first touch
of the chemist's test it blackens and betrays itself?'

'He may be more of a Stuart even than he looks. It is too rash to judge
of him as we see him now.'

'Be it so,' said the Pere, with a sort of resignation; 'but if I have
not lost my skill in reading temperament, this youth is not to our
purpose. At all events,' resumed he, more rapidly, 'his Eminence need
not see him yet. Enough when I say that the fatigues of the road have
brought on some fever, and that he is confined to bed. Within a week, or
even less, I shall be able to pronounce if we may employ him. I have no
mind to hear your news to-night; this disappointment has unmanned me;
but to-morrow, Carrol, to-morrow the day will be all our own, and I all
myself. And so good-night, and good rest.'

CHAPTER X. THE CARDINAL AT HIS DEVOTIONS

If the night which followed th