Many cardinals and princes of the Church, many noblemen and foreign ambassadors, were assembled in the pope’s audience-room, and as Ganganelli entered, they all received him with joyful acclamations, and humbly fell upon their knees before the head of the church, the vicegerent of God, who, with solemn majesty, bestowed upon them his blessing, and then condescendingly conversed with them.  That was a ceremony to which the pope was obliged to subject himself once a week, and which he reckoned as not one of the least of the troubles attendant upon his exalted position.  Hence he was well pleased when this hour was over, and he at length was relieved of the presence of all these eulogistic and flattering gentlemen.

Only Cardinal Bernis had remained behind, and to him Ganganelli, giving him his hand, and drawing a deep breath, said: 

“What a mass of false and hypocritical phrases we have again been obliged to swallow!  These cardinals have the impudence to speak to me of their love and veneration; they do not hesitate so to lie with the same lips which to-day have already pronounced blessings and pious words of edification!  But let us forget these hypocrites.  Business is over, and it is kind of you to come and chat with me for one little hour.  You know I love you very much, my good friend Bernis, although you do pay homage to the heathen divinities, and, as a real renegade, have constituted yourself a priest of the muses.”

“Ah, you speak of my youthful sins,” said the cardinal, smiling.  “They are long since past, and sleep with my youthful happiness.”

“That must be a wide bed which enables them all to find place side by side,” responded Ganganelli, laughing, and holding up his forefinger threateningly to the cardinal.

“But what is that you are drawing from your breast-pocket with such an important air?”

“A letter from the Marquise de Pompadour, holy father,” seriously replied the cardinal—­“a letter in which I am commanded to communicate to you, the father of Christendom, the acquiescence of France in your proposed abolition of the order of the Jesuits.  Here is a private letter addressed to me by the marquise, and here the official letter signed by King Louis, which is destined for your holiness.”

The pope took the papers, and while he was reading them his face turned deadly pale, and a dark cloud gathered upon his brow.

“France also acquiesces,” said he, when he had finished the reading.  “How is it, then—­were you not yourself against the abolition of the order, and were you not in accordance with the Spanish ambassador, your friend of many years?”

“This friendship of many years is to-day destroyed by a fish, and drives us a helpless wreck upon the wildly-rolling waves,” said the cardinal, shrugging his shoulders.

Ganganelli paid no attention to him.  Serious and thoughtful, he walked up and down the room, while his heavenward-directed eye seemed to address a great and all-important question to the Being there above, which received no answer.