“Whom have we here?” he exclaimed, “One of your acolytes, Monseigneur?”

“No,” replied the Cardinal, his eyes resting on the fair face of the lad with a wistful affection, “A little stray disciple of our Lord,- -to whom I have ventured to offer protection.  There is none to question my right to do so, for he is quite alone in the world.”

And in a few words he related how he had discovered the boy on the previous night, weeping outside the Cathedral in Rouen.  Angela Sovrani listened attentively, her violet eyes darkening and deepening as she heard,—­now and then she raised them to look at the youthful waif who stood so quietly while the story of his troubles was told in the gentle and sympathetic way which was the Cardinal’s usual manner of speech, and which endeared him so much to all.  “And for the present,” finished Bonpre, smiling—­“he stays with me, and already I have found him skilled in the knowledge of many things,—­ he can read Scripture with a most musical and clear emphasis,—­and he is a quick scribe, so that he will be valuable to me in more ways than one.”

“Ah!” and the Abbe turned himself round in his chair to survey the boy more attentively, “You can read Scripture?  But can you understand it?  If you can, you are wiser than I am!”

Manuel regarded him straightly.

“Was it not once said in Judaea that “It is the spirit that QUICKENETH’?” he asked.

“True!—­And from that you would infer . . . ?”

“That when one cannot understand Scripture, it is perhaps for the reason that ’the letter KILLETH, because lacking the spirit that giveth life.”

The boy spoke gently and with grace and modesty,—­but something in the tone of his voice had a strange effect on the cynical temperament of Abbe Vergniaud.

“Here,” he mused, “is a lad in whom the principle of faith is strong and pure,—­shall I drop the poison of doubt into the open flower of his mind, or leave it uncontaminated?” Aloud he said, kindly,

“You speak well,—­you have evidently thought for yourself.  Who taught you to recognise ’the Spirit that giveth life’?”

Manuel smiled.

“Does that need teaching?” he asked.

Radiance shone in his eyes,—­the look of purity and candour on his young face was infinitely touching to the two men who beheld it,—­ the one worn with age and physical languors, the other equally worn in mind, if not in body.  In the brief silence which followed,—­a silence of unexpressed feeling,—­a soft strain of organ-music came floating deliciously towards them,—­a delicate thread of grave melody which wove itself in and out the airspaces, murmuring suggestions of tenderness and appeal.  Angela smiled, and held up one finger, listening.

“That is Mr. Leigh!” she said, “He is in my studio improvising.”

“Happy Mr. Leigh!” said the Abbe with a little malicious twinkle in his eyes, “To be allowed to improvise at all in the studio of the Sovrani!”