The saintly life and noble deeds of Felix Bonpre had reached him from time to time through various rumours repeated by different priests and dignitaries of the Church, who had travelled as far as the distant little Cathedral-town embowered among towering pines and elm trees, where the Cardinal had his abiding seat of duty;—­and he had been anxious to meet the man who in these days of fastidious feeding and luxurious living, had managed to gain such a holy reputation as to be almost canonized in some folks’ estimation before he was dead.  Hearing that Bonpre intended to stay a couple of nights in Rouen, he cordially invited him to spend that time at his house,—­but the invitation had been gratefully yet firmly refused, much to the Archbishop’s amazement.  This amazement increased considerably when he learned that the dingy, comfortless, little Hotel Poitiers had been selected by the Cardinal as his temporary lodging,—­and it was not without a pious murmur concerning “the pride which apes humility” that he betook himself to that ancient and despised hostelry, which had nothing whatever in the way of a modern advantage to recommend it,—­neither electric light, nor electric bell, nor telephone.  But he felt it incumbent upon him to pay a fraternal visit to the Cardinal, who had become in a manner famous without being at all aware of his fame,—­and when finally in his presence, he was conscious not only of a singular disappointment, but an equally singular perplexity.  Felix Bonpre was not at all the sort of personage he had expected to see.  He had imagined that a Churchman who was able to obtain a character for saintliness in days like these, must needs be worldly-wise and crafty, with a keen perception and comprehension of the follies of mankind, and an ability to use these follies advantageously to further his own ends.  Something of the cunning and foresight of an ancient Egyptian sorcerer was in the composition of the Archbishop himself, for he judged mankind alone by its general stupidity and credulity;—­ stupidity and credulity which formed excellent ground for the working of miracles, whether such miracles were wrought in the name of Osiris or Christ.  Mokanna, the “Veiled Prophet,” while corrupt to the core with unnameable vices, had managed in his time to delude the people into thinking him a holy man; and,—­without any adequate reason for his assumption,—­the Archbishop had certainly prepared himself to meet in Felix Bonpre, a shrewd, calculating, clever priest, absorbed in acting the part of an excessive holiness in order to secure such honour in his diocese as should attract the particular notice of the Vatican.  “Playing for Pope,” in fact, had been the idea with which the archbishop had invested the Cardinal’s reputed sanctity, and he was astonished and in a manner irritated to find himself completely mistaken.  He had opened the conversation by the usual cordial trivialities of ordinary greeting, to which Bonpre had responded with the suave courtesy and refined gentleness which always dignified his manner,—­and then the Archbishop had ventured to offer a remonstrance on the unconventional—­“Shall we call it eccentric?” he suggested, smiling amicably,—­conduct of the Cardinal in choosing to abide in such a comfortless lodging as the Hotel Poitiers.