tnesses. That must not happen again."

There was an obvious answer, but no one made it. Cardinal
Bellairs stood up, lifting himself with his stick.

"It is very good of you," he said quietly. "I understand why you
make the offer. But it is impossible. Monsignor, will you talk
with His Eminence a little? There are one or two things he wishes
to tell you. I have to see the Holy Father, but I will be with
you again soon."

The priest stood up too.

"I must come with you to His Holiness," he said. "I will abide
by his decision."

The other shook his head, again smiling almost indulgently.
Monsignor turned swiftly to the Italian.

"Your Eminence," he said, "will you get this favour for me? I
must see the Holy Father after Cardinal Bellairs has seen him,
since I may not go with him."

The English Cardinal turned with a little abrupt movement and
stood looking at him. There was a silence.

"Well--come," he said.

(II)

The contrast between these two great Princes of the Church and
their Lord and Master struck Monsignor very strongly, in spite of
his excitement, as he followed his chief into the Pope's room,
and saw an almost startlingly commonplace man, of middle size,
rise up from the table at which he was writing.

He was a Frenchman, Monsignor knew, and not an exceptional
Frenchman. There was nothing sensational or even impressive about
his appearance, except his white dress and insignia; and even
these, upon him, seemed somehow rather tame and ordinary. His
voice, when he spoke presently, was of an ordinary kind of pitch
and his speaking rather rapid; his eyes were a commonplace grey,
his nose a little fleshy, and his mouth completely
undistinguished. He was, in short, completely unlike the Pope of
fiction and imagination; there was nothing of the Pontiff about
him in his manner. He might have been a clean-shaven business man
of average ability, who had chosen to dress himself up in a white
cassock and to sit in an enormous room furnished in crimson
damask and gold, with chandeliers, at a rather inconvenient
writing-desk. Even at this dramatic moment Monsignor found
himself wondering how in the world this man had risen to the
highest office on earth. (He had been the son of a postmaster in
Tours, the priest remembered.)

The Pope murmured an unintelligible greeting as the two, after
kissing his ring, sat down beside the writing-table.

"So you have come to take your leave, your Eminence?" he began.