with dreadful exactitude a corpse in burial clothes just lifted from its coffin and placed stiffly upright in a sitting position.  Involuntarily Cardinal Bonpre, as he made the usual necessary genuflections, thought, with a shrinking interior sense of horror at the profanity of his own idea, that the Holy Father as he then appeared, might have posed to a painter of allegories, as the frail ghost of a dead Faith.  For he looked so white and slender and fragile and transparent,—­he sat so rigidly, so coldly, without a movement or a gesture, that it seemed as if the touch of a hand might break him into atoms, so brittle and delicate a figure of clay was he.  When he spoke, his harsh voice, issuing from the long thin lips which scarcely moved, even in utterance, was startling in its unmelodious loudness, the more so when its intonation was querulous, as now.

“It is regrettable, my lord Cardinal,” he said slowly, keeping his dark eyes immovably fixed on the venerable Felix,—­“that I should be compelled to send for you so soon again on the same matters which, since your arrival in Rome, have caused me so much anxiety.  This miracle,—­of which you are declared to be the worker,—­though for some inscrutable reason, you persist in denying your own act,—­is not yet properly authenticated.  And, to make the case worse, it seems that the unfortunate man, Claude Cazeau, whom we entrusted with our instructions to the Archbishop of Rouen, has suddenly disappeared, leaving no trace.  Naturally there are strong suspicions that he has met with a violent death,—­perhaps at the hands of the Freemasons, who are ever at work conspiring against the Faith,—­or else through the intrigues of the so-called ‘Christian Democrats,’ of whom ‘Gys Grandit’ is a leader.  In any case, it is most reprehensible that you, a Cardinal-prince of the Church, should have permitted yourself to become involved in such a doubtful business.  The miracle may have taken place,—­but if so, you should have no cause to deny your share in it; and however much you may be gifted with the power of healing, I cannot reconcile your duty to us with the Vergniaud scandal!  Since you were here last, I have investigated that matter thoroughly,—­I have read a full report of the blasphemous address the Abbe preached from his pulpit in Paris, and I cannot, no I cannot”—­here the Pope raised his thin white hand with a gesture of menace that was curiously powerful for one so seemingly frail—­“I cannot forgive or forget the part you have taken in this deplorable affair!”

The Cardinal looked up with a touch of pain and protest.

“Holy Father, I strove to obey the command of Christ—­’Forgive that ye may be forgiven’!—­I cannot be sorry that I did so obey it;—­for now the offender is beyond the reach of either punishment or absolution.  He must answer for his deeds to God alone!”

The Pope turned his eyes slowly round in his waxenlike head to Gherardi—­then to Moretti—­and seeing confirmation of the news in their looks, fixed them again as immovably as before upon the Cardinal.  The faint shadow of a cold smile flickered on his long slit-like mouth.