ce and humility, but ecclesiastical from ear to ear
and brow to chin; the forehead was slightly compressed at the temples,
and beneath the white cap lay white hair. It had been the subject of
laughter at the music-halls nine years before, when the composite face
of well-known priests had been thrown on a screen, side by side with the
new Pope's, for the two were almost indistinguishable.

Percy found himself trying to sum it up, but nothing came to him except
the word "priest." It was that, and that was all. _Ecce sacerdos
magnus!_ He was astonished at the look of youth, for the Pope was
eighty-eight this year; yet his figure was as upright as that of a man
of fifty, his shoulders unbowed, his head set on them like an athlete's,
and his wrinkles scarcely perceptible in the half light. _Papa
Angelicus!_ reflected Percy.

The Cardinal ceased his explanations, and made a little gesture. Percy
drew up all his faculties tense and tight to answer the questions that
he knew were coming.

"I welcome you, my son," said a very soft, resonant voice.

Percy bowed, desperately, from the waist.

The Pope dropped his eyes again, lifted a paper-weight with his left
hand, and began to play with it gently as he talked.

"Now, my son, deliver a little discourse. I suggest to you three
heads--what has happened, what is happening, what will happen, with a
peroration as to what should happen."

Percy drew a long breath, settled himself back, clasped the fingers of
his left hand in the fingers of his right, fixed his eyes firmly upon
the cross-embroidered red shoe opposite, and began. (Had he not
rehearsed this a hundred times!)

* * * * *

He first stated his theme; to the effect that all the forces of the
civilised world were concentrating into two camps--the world and God. Up
to the present time the forces of the world had been incoherent and
spasmodic, breaking out in various ways--revolutions and wars had been
like the movements of a mob, undisciplined, unskilled, and unrestrained.
To meet this, the Church, too, had acted through her Catholicity--
dispersion rather than concentration: _franc-tireurs_ had been opposed
to _franc-tireurs_. But during the last hundred years there had been
indications that the method of warfare was to change. Europe, at any
rate, had grown weary of internal strife; the unions first of Labour,
then of Capital, then of Labour and Capital combined, illustrated this
in the economic sphere; the peaceful