“Well, my Lord Abbot?” he said again.  “Let us hear what you have to say.”

Then my lord began to speak; and before he was half-done I wished myself anywhere else in the world.  For, as great men alone are capable, he could be as lavish of praise as of blame.  He said that I was all that of which His Holiness had spoken; that I had been obedient and exact as a novice; and he said other things too of which even under obedience I could not speak.  Then too he added what he had never said to me before, that he was not sure that I had no vocation; but that since God spoke through exterior circumstances as well as through interior drawings, His Holy Will seemed to point, at least at present, to a life in the world for me; that he was sure I would be as obedient there as here; that I had learned not only to use my tongue but, what is much harder, to hold it.  And he ended by begging the Holy Father to take me into his service and to use me in the ways in which perhaps I might be useful.  All this, of course, I now understand to have been rehearsed before; but just at that time I had no more than a suspicion that this was so.

When he had finished, His Holiness once more turned and looked at me; and I upon the ground:  and then at last he spoke.

“My son,” he said, “you have heard what his Reverence has said of you; and I too have heard it, and not to-day for the first time.  It seems that you are right in thinking that for the present at any rate you have no vocation to Holy Religion.  Well, then, the question is as to what is your Vocation, for Our Lord never leaves any man without a Vocation of some kind.  You are very young for such service as that on which we think to send you; for we shall send you to the Court of England first, and then perhaps now and again to France; but you look five years at least older than your age, and, I am told, have ten times its discretion.  I need not tell you that you will have no very heavy mission given to you at first; you must mix freely with the world and use your wits and see what is best to be done, sending back reports to the Cardinal Secretary.  You will live at your own charges, as you yourself have said that you wished to do; but you may draw upon us here for any journeys that you may undertake upon our business up to a certain amount.  In a word you will be in the diplomatic service of the Holy See, though without direct office or commission beyond that which I now give you myself.  You will have full liberty to make a career for yourself in the English or French Courts, so long as this comes always second to your service to ourselves.  If you acquit yourself well—­in the way which will be explained to you later—­you may make a career with us too, and will have rewards if you want them:  but for the present there must be no talk of that.  As you must be in the world yet not of it; so you must be of the Court of Rome yet not in it.  It is a delicate position that you will hold; and, to compensate for the informality of it, you will have the more liberty on your side, to make a career, as I have said, or to marry, if God calls you to that, or in any other way....  Does that content you, my son?”