I think must have lost in the telling, for they were not witty at all when I heard them.  It appeared that my cousin had spoken with the King three or four times, at City-banquets and such like; and he would know all that His Majesty had said to me.  But much I would not tell him, and some I could not:  I could not that is, even if I would, have conveyed to him the strange compassion that I felt, and the yet more strange affection, for this King who might have done so much, and who did so little—­except what he should not; and I would not on any account tell him of what the King had said as to Rome and his desires and procrastinations.  But I told him how I had met Father Whitbread, and how I was to go and see him on the morrow.

“Why, I will come with you myself,” he said.  “I know Mr. Fenwick’s lodgings very well:  and we will ride afterwards as far as Waltham Cross, and lie there; and so to Hare Street for dinner next day.”

All the way home again, and when my Cousin Dorothy was gone to bed, and we sat over a couple of tankards of College Ale, he would talk of nothing but the Jesuits.

“They are too zealous,” he said.  “I am as good a Catholic as any man in England or Rome; but I like not this over-zeal.  They are everywhere, these good fathers; and it will bring trouble on them.  They hold their consults even in London, which I think over-rash; and no man knows what passes at them.  Now I myself—­” and so his tongue wagged on, telling of his own excellence and prudence, and even his own spirituality, while his eyes watered with the ale that he drank, and his face grew ever more red.  And yet there was no true simplicity in the man; he had that kind of cunning that is eked out with winks and becks and nods that all the world could see.  He talked of my Cousin Dorothy, too, and her virtues, and what a great lady she would be some day when these virtues were known; and he, declared that in spite of this he would never let her go to Court; and then once more he went back again to his earlier talk of the corruptions there, and of what my Lady this and Her Grace of that had said and done and thought.

* * * * *

Mr. Fenwick’s lodgings in Drury Lane were such as any man might have.  The Jesuit Fathers lived apart in London—­Father Whitbread in the City, Father Ireland in Russell Street, and Father Harcourt, who was called the “Rector of London,” I heard, in Duke Street, near the arch—­lest too much attention should be drawn to them if they were all together.  They were pleasant quiet men, and received me very kindly—­for my cousin who had forgot some matter he had to do before he went into the country, was gone down into the City to see to it.  Mr. Grove, whom I learned later to be a lay brother of the Society, opened the door to me; and shewed me to the room where they were all three together.

They were all three of them just such men as you might meet anywhere, in coffee-houses or taverns, none of them under forty or over sixty years old.  Father Harcourt was seventy—­but he was not there.  They were in sober suits, such as a lawyer might wear, and carried swords.  These were not all the Jesuits thereabouts; for I heard them speak of Father John Gavan and Father Anthony Turner (who were in the country on that day), and others.