“Without me, my lord Cardinal?” asked Manuel softly.

“No, not without you!” and Bonpre looked at him with a smile, “Not without you!  I have no wish to be so much alone as your absence would make me.  Come!”

And lifting the heavy velvet portiere at the door, he held it back for his “foundling” to pass,—­and then slowly followed.

XX.

On the first floor of an ancient mansion, in a street which slopes down towards the Tiber, there is a suite of dreary old rooms which must evidently have once belonged to some great “Prince of the Church”, (to use the term which Cardinal Bonpre held so much in aversion,) if one may form any opinion from the ecclesiastical designs on the faded green hangings, which cling like moss to the damp walls, and give an additional melancholy to the general gloom The “salon” or audience-chamber is perhaps the best in repair, and possesses a gorgeous, painted ceiling, bordered by a frieze of red and gold, together with one or two large pictures, which perhaps if cleaned might show the touch of some great Master, but which in their sad condition of long neglect, present nothing to the view but a dark blur of indistinct outlines.  The rooms in their entirety composed the business, or town dwelling of Monsignor Gherardi, one of the cleverest, most astute, and most unscrupulous of men, to whom Religion was nothing more than a means of making money and gaining power.  There was scarcely a Roman Catholic “community” in the world, in which Gherardi had not a share,—­and he was particularly concerned in “miraculous shrines”, which were to him exactly in the same category as “companies” are to the speculator on the Stock Exchange.  He had been cautious, prudent, and calculating from his earliest years,—­from the time when, as the last male scion of the house of Gherardi he had been educated for the Ecclesiastical career at the “College of Nobles”.  He had read widely, and no religious or social movement took place anywhere without his knowing of it and admitting it into his calculations as a sort of new figure in his barking sum.  He was an extensive shareholder in the “Lourdes” business; and a careful speculator in all the religious frenzies of the uneducated and superstitious.  His career had been very successful so far.  He had amassed a considerable fortune; and away out towards Frascati he had a superb Villa, furnished with every modern luxury and convenience, (not rented in his own name, but in that of a man whom he paid heavily to serve him as his tool and menial,)—­where a beautiful Neapolitan danseuse condescended to live as his mistress;—­he was a diplomat for himself if not for his country, and kept his finger on the pulse of European politics as well as on the fluctuating fevers of new creeds.  But he never troubled himself seriously as to the possible growth of any “movement”, or “society”, or “crusade”; as experience had taught him that no matter how ardently thinkers may propound theories, and enthusiasts support them, there is always a dense and steady wave of opposition surging against everything new,—­and that few can be found whose patience will hold out sufficiently long to enable them to meet and ride over that wet wall of dull resistance.