The new Cardinal started as one from a dream.

“What is it, Father Jervis? . . .”

The old man looked at him closely; then he laid his hand on his arm.

“Your Eminence, the King is waiting.  Do you not remember?  Your Eminence was to give the signal.”

Beneath, like huge voices speaking a single word all at once, roared the old guns from the Tower and Greenwich and the palaces.

The Cardinal shook his head.

“I . . .  I forget,” he said; “I was thinking. . . .  What am I to do?”

The old priest looked at him again earnestly, without speaking.  Then he leaned forward closer still.

“Will your Eminence authorize me to give the signals?”

“Yes, yes, Father . . . anything.  What am I to do?  Have I to say anything?”

His eyes had a look of dawning terror in them as he glanced from side to side.  The priest once again laid his hand on the lace-covered wrist and held it there steadily.

“Nothing at all, your Eminence.  You have simply to sit still.  I will arrange everything.”

Still standing there, he turned slightly and made a sharp gesture behind the throne with his left hand.  A bell sounded instantly.  There was a moment’s silence.  Then once again a bell; and a chorus answered it.

Very slowly the Cardinal lifted his head, and saw before him the Royal barge sway ever so slightly, conscious himself that through his own vessel a vibration was beginning to run as the huge engines beneath moved into action.  Again roared the guns far down the river, and, as the bellow ceased, from a thousand steeples broke out the clamour of brazen tongues. . . .

He sat still; he knew at least that this he must do. . . .  Surely this obscurity of brain would pass again in a moment.  He was going to meet the Holy Father, was he not? . . . down there, down that road of light and air, along which now his great barge floated side by side with the King’s.  That was it.  He remembered again now as his memory flickered in glimpses.  This was the great Progress round the world of the new Arbiter of the World, the Vicar of the Prince of Peace, come into his Kingdom at last.

He kept his eyes steadily before him, scarcely seeing the flash of the river as it swept beneath him and away, or on all sides the dipping flags, the monstrous gilded prows, the bravery of colour, down this broad road on which he went, scarcely conscious that, as he passed, the great barges wheeled behind him to follow to the meeting; scarcely hearing the tremendous music that, sweeping up from the crowded streets below, wafted up to him the adoration of a free people who had learned at last that the Law of Liberty was the Law of Love. . . .

Ah! there at last they came. . . .

Far down, rising every instant higher above the summer haze, outlined against a heaven of intensest blue, approached a cloud that sparkled as it came, that broke into a thousand points of colour—­a long, flat cloud, seen at first as a steamer stretched across the sky, curving down behind, as it seemed, into the haze from which it came.  On and up it came, growing every instant, widening and deepening, ever more and more clear in colour and form and depth.