Cardinal Felix had risen, and now stood upright, making a feeble gesture with his hands, as though seeking to keep back the crushing weight of some too overwhelming conviction,—­“Yes—­you would silence me!—­but you cannot!—­I read your heart!  You love God . . . and I—­I love Him too!  You would serve Him!—­and I—­I would obey Him!  Ah, do not struggle with yourself, dear and noble friend!  If you were thrice crowned a martyr and saint you could not see otherwise than clearly—­you could not but accept Truth when Truth is manifested to you,—­you could not swear falsely before God!  Would the Christ not say now as He said so many centuries ago—­’My House is called the house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves!’ Is it not truly a den of thieves?  What has the Man of Sorrows to do with all the evil splendour of St. Peter’s?—­its bronzes, its marbles, its colossal statues of dead gods, its glittering altars, its miserable dreary immensity, its flaring gilding and insolent vulgarity of cost!  Oh, what a loneliness is that of Christ in this world!  What a second Agony in Gethsemane!”

The sweet voice broke—­the fair head was turned away,—­and Cardinal Felix, overcome by such emotion as he found it impossible to explain, suddenly sank on his knees, and stretched out his arms to the young slight creature who spoke with such a passion and intensity of yearning.

“Child!” he said, with tremulous appeal in his accents, “For God’s sake’—­you who express your thoughts with such eloquence and fervent pain!—­tell me, who are you?  My mind is caught and controlled by your words,—­you are too young to think as you do, or to speak as you do,—­yet some authority you seem to possess, which I submit to, not knowing why; I am very old, and maybe growing foolish in my age--many troubles are gathering about me in these latter days,—­do not make them more than I can bear!”

His words were to himself incoherent, and yet it seemed as if Manuel understood them.  Suffering himself to be clasped for a moment by the old man’s trembling hands, he nevertheless gently persuaded and assisted him to rise, and when he was once more seated, stood quietly by his side, waiting till he should have recovered from his sudden agitation.

“Dear friend, you are weary and troubled in spirit,” he said tenderly then, “And my words seem to you only terrible because they are true!  If they grieve you, it is because the grief in your heart echoes mine!  And if I do think and speak more seriously than I should, it is for the reason that I have been so much alone in the world,—­left to myself, with my own thoughts of God, which are not thoughts such as many care for.  I would not add to your sorrows,—­I would rather lighten them if I could—­but I feel and fear that I shall be a burden upon you before long!”

“Never!” exclaimed Bonpre fervently, “Never a burden on me, child!  Surely while I live you will not leave me?”