It was a brilliant, soft autumnal Sunday morning when Cardinal Bonpre, mindful of Abbe Vergniaud’s request that he should be present to hear him preach, took his slow and thoughtful way to the church of the Lorette, accompanied by his niece Angela and Manuel.  The building was crammed, and had not the Abbe been previously careful to reserve seats, and to mention the Cardinal’s name to the custodian, he would have scarcely obtained admission.  As it was, however, he passed slowly up the centre aisle without hindrance, followed by Manuel and Angela, and watched by a good many inquisitive persons, who wondered as they looked, who the boy was that walked after His Eminence with such easy self-possession,—­with such a noble and modest bearing, and with such a strangely thoughtful face.  A few whispered and nudged each other as “the Sovrani” passed them, dressed in her usual quiet black, her head slightly bent and her eyes downcast.  The Marquis Fontenelle, seated in an attitude which suggested a languid indifference to all persons and events, lifted his bright hazel eyes as she passed,—­and a sudden wave of consciousness swept over him,—­uneasy consciousness that perhaps this small slight woman despised him.  This was not quite a pleasant reflection for a man and a Marquis to boot,—­one who could boast of an ancient and honourable family pedigree dating back to the fighting days of Coeur-de-Lion and whose coat-of-arms was distinguished by three white lilies of France on one of its quarterings.  The lilies of France!—­emblems of honour, loyalty, truth, and chivalry!—­what smudged and trampled blossoms they seem to day!  He frowned as this fancy crossed his mind, and turned his eyes away from the following of Angela’s slight form up the aisle; and his glance fell instead on a face he detested, because it was almost the counterpart of his own,—­the face of the great French actor Miraudin.  The same clean-shaven classic face and clustering hair,—­the same glittering, amorous hazel eyes;—­the same charming and kindly smile,—­all these attributes were in Miraudin’s face, indefinably coarsened, while in Fontenelle’s they remained refined and inicative of the highest breeding.  The Marquis moved uneasily in his seat,—­he saw himself in the famous actor,—­himself as he would be, if he continued his career of self-indulgence,—­for Miraudin though gifted with a genius that could move all Paris to the wildest excesses of admiration, was in private life known as a man of detestable reputation, whose liaisons with women were endless, but who, in his extreme egotism and callousness had never been known to yield to the saving grace of a “grande passion,”—­one of those faithful passions which sometimes make the greatness of both man and woman concerned, and adorn the pages of dull history with the brilliancy of deathless romance.  Was he, Guy Beausire de Fontenelle no better, no nobler, no higher, in his desires and ambitions than Miraudin?  What was he doing with the three lilies emblazoned