sorry facts from which to derive the baptismal registry of a
future cardinal. And yet something must be done, and
speedily too. On the question of birth the Sacred College is
peremptory. You will say that there ought to be no
difficulty in devising a genealogy where there are no
adverse claims to conflict; and if I could go over to
Ireland, perhaps the matter might be easy enough. At this
moment, however, my presence here is all-essential, while I
am not without a hope that accident may afford me a clew to
what I seek. A few days ago I was sent for from Malgherra to
attend the dying bed of a young officer, whose illness had
so completely disordered his brain that he forgot every word
of the foreign language he was accustomed to speak, and
could only understand or reply in his native English.
Although I had other and more pressing cases to attend to,
the order coming from an archduke made obedience imperative,
and so I hastened over to Verona, where the sick youth lay.
Conceive my surprise, Michel, to discover that he was the
same Dalton,--the boy whom I have so often adverted to, as
eternally crossing my path in life,--the relative of that
Godfrey who was my early patron. I have already confessed to
you, Michel, that I felt towards this youth in a way for
which my calmest reason could render no account. Gamblers
have often told me of certain antipathies they have
experienced, and that the mere presence of an individual--
one totally unknown to them, perhaps--has been so ominous of
ill-luck that they dare not risk a bet while he remained in
the room. I know you will say that men who pass their lives
in the alternation of hope and fear become the slaves of
every shadow that crosses the imagination, and that they are
sorry pilots to trust to. So they are, Michel; they art
meanly minded, they are sordid, and they are low; their
thoughts never soar above the card or the hazard table; they
are dead to all emotions of family and affection; the very
events that are convulsing the world are less audible to
their ears than the ring of the dice-box; and yet, with all
this--would you believe it?--they are deep in the mysteries
of portents. Their intense study of what we call chance has
taught them to combine and arrange and discipline every