“No, I will give you the right pass-word,” said the cardinal, a fervid glow of enthusiasm lighting up his features.  “It is Christ in all, and through all!  Christ only;—­Christ, the friend and brother of man;—­the only Divine Teacher this world has ever had, or ever will have!”

“You believe in Him really,—­truly,—­then?” exclaimed the Abbe wonderingly.

“Really—­truly, and with all my heart and soul!” responded the Cardinal firmly,—­“Surely, you too, believe?”

“No,” said the Abbe firmly, “I do not!  I would as soon believe that the lad you have just rescued from the streets of Rouen is divine, as that there is any divinity in the Man of Nazareth!”

He rose up as he spoke in a kind of petulance,—­then started slightly as he found himself face to face with Manuel.  The boy had entered noiselessly and stood for a moment glancing from one priest of the Church to the other.  A faint smile was on his face,—­his blue eyes were full of light.

“Did you call me, my lord Cardinal?” he asked.

The Cardinal looked up.

“No, my child!”

“I thought I heard you.  If you should need me, I am close at hand.”

He went away as quietly as he had entered; and the same silence followed his departure as before,—­a silence which was only disturbed by the occasional solemn and sweet vibrations of the distant music from the studio.

VIII.

“A strange lad!” said Abbe Vergniaud, abruptly.

“Strange?  In what way do you find him so?” asked the Cardinal with a touch of anxiety.

The Abbe knitted his brows perplexedly, and took a short turn up and down the room.  Then he laughed.

“Upon my word, I cannot tell you!” he declared, with one of those inimitable gestures common to Frenchmen, a gesture which may mean anything or nothing,—­“But he speaks too well, and, surely, thinks too much for his years.  Is there nothing further to tell of him save what you have already said?  Nothing that you know of him, beyond the plain bare fact of having found him weeping alone outside the doors of the Cathedral?”

“Nothing indeed!” replied the Cardinal bewildered.  “What else should there be?”

The Abbe hesitated a moment, and when he spoke again it was in a softer and graver tone.  “Forgive me!  Of course there could be nothing else with you.  You are so different to all other Churchmen I have ever known.  Still, the story of your foundling is exceptional;- -you will own that it is somewhat out of the common course of things, for a Cardinal to suddenly constitute himself the protector and guardian of a small tramp—­for this boy is nothing else.  Now, if it were any other Cardinal-Archbishop than yourself, I should at once say that His Eminence knew exactly where to find the mother of his protege!”

“Vergniaud!” exclaimed the Cardinal.

“Forgive me!  I said ‘forgive me’ as a prelude to my remarks,” resumed Vergniaud, “I am talking profanely, sceptically, and cynically,—­I am talking precisely as the world talks, and as it always will talk.”