“I shall hardly trust myself upon these stairs again,” he remarked, “unless under the escort of your Holiness’s terrier.”

“Take him, my son, and a cruse of holy water to boot,” the Pope responded.  “Now, how go things in the city?”

“As ill as may be, your Holiness.  Not a saint stirs a finger to help us.  The country-folk shun the city, the citizens seek the country.  The multitude of enemies increases hour by hour.  They set at defiance the anathemas fulminated by your Holiness, the spiritual censures placarded in the churches, and the citation to appear before the ecclesiastical courts, although assured that their cause shall be pleaded by the ablest advocates in Rome.  The cats, amphibious with alarm, are taking to the Tiber.  Vainly the city reeks with toasted cheese, and the Commissary-General reports himself short of arsenic.”

“And how are the people taking it?” demanded Alexander.  “To what cause do they attribute the public calamity?”

“Generally speaking, to the sins of your Holiness,” replied the Cardinal.

“Cardinal!” exclaimed Alexander indignantly.

“I crave pardon for my temerity,” returned Barbadico.  “It is with difficulty that I force myself to speak, but I am bound to lay the ungrateful truth before your Holiness.  The late Pope, as all men know, was a personage of singular sanctity.”

“Far too upright for this fallen world,” observed Alexander with unction.

“I will not dispute,” responded the Cardinal, “that the head of Innocent the Eleventh might have been more 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.”