orce that startled me. 'Because you
have heard, sir, that my power is gone! Because you have heard that I,
who was yesterday the King's right hand, am to-day dried up, withered
and paralysed! Because you have heard--but have a care! have a care!'
he continued with extraordinary vehemence, and in a voice like a dog's
snarl. 'You and those others! Have a care, I say, or you may find
yourselves mistaken yet.'

'As Heaven shall judge me,' I answered solemnly, 'that is not true.
Until I reached Paris last night I knew nothing of this report. I came
here with a single mind, to redeem my honour by placing again in your
Eminence's hands that which you gave me on trust, and here I do place
it.'

For a moment he remained in the same attitude, staring at me fixedly.
Then his face relaxed somewhat.

'Be good enough to ring that bell,' he said.

It stood on a table near me. I rang it, and a velvet-footed man in black
came in, and gliding up to the Cardinal, placed a paper in his hand. The
Cardinal looked at it; while the man stood with his head obsequiously
bent, and my heart beat furiously.

'Very good,' his Eminence said, after a pause which seemed to me to be
endless, 'Let the doors be thrown open.'

The man bowed low, and retired behind the screen. I heard a little bell
ring somewhere in the silence, and in a moment the Cardinal stood up.

'Follow me!' he said, with a strange flash of his keen eyes.

Astonished, I stood aside while he passed to the screen; then I followed
him. Outside the first door, which stood open, we found eight or nine
persons--pages, a monk, the major-domo, and several guards waiting like
mutes. These signed to me to precede them and fell in behind us, and in
that order we passed through the first room and the second, where the
clerks stood with bent heads to receive us. The last door, the door of
the ante-chamber, flew open as we approached, voices cried, 'Room! Room
for his Eminence!' we passed through two lines of bowing lackeys, and
entered--an empty chamber.

The ushers did not know how to look at one another; the lackeys trembled
in their shoes. But the Cardinal walked on, apparently unmoved, until he
had passed slowly half the length of the chamber. Then he turned himself
about, looking first to one side and then to the other, with a low laugh
of derision.

'Father,' he said in his thin voice, 'what does the Psalmist say? "I am
become like a pelican in the wilderness and like an owl that