fitly graced by a halo than by a tiara.
But the vulgar are incapable of placing themselves at this point of view.
They know that the rats hardly squeaked under Innocent, and that they swarm
under Alexander. What wonder if they suspect your Holiness of familiarity
with Beelzebub, the patron of vermin, and earnestly desire that he would
take you to himself? Vainly have I represented to them the unreasonableness
of imposing upon him a trouble he may well deem superfluous, considering
your Holiness's infirm health and advanced age. Vainly, too, have I pointed
out that your anathema has actually produced all the effect that could
have been reasonably anticipated from any similar manifesto on your
predecessor's part. They won't see it. And, in fact, might I humbly advise,
it does appear impolitic to hurl anathemas unless your Holiness knows that
some one will be hit. It might be opportune, for example, to excommunicate
Father Molinos, now fast in the dungeons of St. Angelo, unless, indeed, the
rats have devoured him there. But I question the expediency of going much
further."

"Cardinal," said the Pope, "you think yourself prodigiously clever, but you
ought to know that the state of public opinion allowed us no alternative.
Moreover, I will give you a wrinkle, in case you should ever come to be
Pope yourself. It is unwise to allow ancient prerogatives to fall entirely
into desuetude. Far-seeing men prognosticate a great revival of
sacerdotalism in the nineteenth century, and what is impotent in an age of
sense may be formidable in an age of nonsense. Further, we know not from
one day to another whether we may not be absolutely necessitated to
excommunicate that fautor of Gallicanism, Louis the Fourteenth, and before
launching our bolt at a king, we may think well to test its efficacy upon a
rat. _Fiat experimentum._ And now to return to our rats, from which we have
ratted. Is there indeed no hope?"

"_Lateat scintillula forsan_," said the Cardinal mysteriously.

"Ha! How so?" eagerly demanded Alexander.

"Our hopes," answered the Cardinal, "are associated with the recent advent
to this city of an extraordinary personage."

"Explain," urged the Pope.

"I speak," resumed the Cardinal, "of an aged man of no plebeian mien or
bearing, albeit most shabbily attired in the skins, now fabulously cheap,
of the vermin that torment us; who, professing to practise as an herbalist,
some little time ago established himself in an obsc