“The world is empty because God is leaving it,” he said, sorrowfully raising his eyes to the tranquil heavens,—­“and the joy of existence is departing because the Divine and Holy Spirit of things is being withdrawn!”

He moved on a few paces,—­and once more through the deep stillness the little sobbing cry of sorrow was wafted tremulously to his ears.  It came or seemed to come from the Cathedral, and quickening his steps he went thither.  The deeply hollowed portal, full of black shadows, at first showed nothing but its own massively sculptured outlines—­then—­all at once the Cardinal perceived standing within the embrasured darkness, the slight shrinking figure of a child.  A boy’s desolate little figure,—­with uplifted hands clasped appealingly and laid against the shut Cathedral door, and face hidden and pressed hard upon those hands, as though in mute and inconsolable despair.  As the Cardinal softly drew nearer, a long shuddering sigh from the solitary little creature moved his heart anew to pity, and speaking in accents of the utmost gentleness he said—­

“My poor child, what troubles you?  Why are you here all alone, and weeping at this late hour?  Have you no home?—­no parents?”

Slowly the boy turned round, still resting his small delicate hands against the oaken door of the Cathedral, and with the tears yet wet upon his cheeks, smiled.  What a sad face he had!—­worn and weary, yet beautiful!—­what eyes, heavy with the dews of sorrow, yet tender even in pain!  Startled by the mingled purity and grief of so young a countenance, the Cardinal retreated for a moment in amaze,—­then approaching more closely he repeated his former question with increased interest and tenderness—­

“Why are you weeping here alone?”

“Because I am left alone to weep,” said the boy, answering in a soft voice of vibrating and musical melancholy—­“For me, the world is empty.”

An empty world!  His dream-impression of universal desolation and desertion came suddenly back upon the prelate’s mind, and a sudden trembling seized him, though he could discover in himself no cause for fear.  Anxiously he surveyed the strange and solitary little wayfarer on the threshold of the Cathedral, and while he thus looked, the boy said wistfully—­

“I should have rested here within, but it is closed against me.”

“The doors are always locked at night, my child,” returned the Cardinal, recovering from his momentary stupor and bewilderment, “But I can give you shelter.  Will you come with me?”

With a half-questioning, half-smiling look of grateful wonder, the boy withdrew his hands from their uplifted, supplicating and almost protesting attitude against the locked Cathedral-door, and moving out of the porch shadows into the wide glory of the moonlight, he confronted his interlocutor—­

“Will I come with you?” he said—­“Nay, but I see you are a Cardinal of the Church, and it is I should ask ‘will you receive me?’ You do not know who I am—­nor where I came from, and I, alas! may not tell you!  I am alone; all—­all alone,—­for no one knows me in the world,- -I am quite poor and friendless, and have nothing where—­with to pay you for your kindly shelter—­I can only bless you!”