Wordly-wise, indolent, good-natured and, like most Southerners, a thorough-going pagan, Don Francesco was deservedly popular as ecclesiastic.  Women adored him; he adored women.  He passed for an unrivalled preacher; his golden eloquence made converts everywhere, greatly to the annoyance of the parroco, the parish priest, who was doubtless sounder on the Trinity but a shocking bad orator and altogether deficient in humanity, and who nearly had a fit, they said, when the other was created Monsignor.  Don Francesco was a fisher of men, and of women.  He fished ad MAIOREM DEI GLORIAM, and for the fun of the thing.  It was his way of taking exercise, he once confessed to his friend Keith; he was too fat to run about like other people—­he could only talk.  He fished among natives, and among foreigners.

Foreigners were hard to catch, on Nepenthe.  They came and went in such breathless succession.  Of the permanent residents only the Duchess, always of High Church leanings, had of late yielded to his blandishments.  She was fairly hooked.  Madame Steynlin, a lady of Dutch extraction whose hats were proverbial, was uncompromisingly Lutheran.  The men were past redemption, all save the Commissioner who, however, was under bad influences and an incurable wobbler, anyhow.  Eames, the scholar, cared for nothing but his books.  Keith, a rich eccentric who owned one of the finest villas and gardens on the place, only came to the island for a few weeks every year.  He knew too much, and had travelled too far, to be anything but a hopeless unbeliever; besides, he was a particular friend of his, with whom he agreed, in his heart of hearts, on every subject.  The frequenters of the Club were mostly drunkards, derelicts, crooks, or faddist—­not worth catching.

Arriages began to arrive on the scene.  That of Don Francesco drove up first of all.  He stepped out and sailed across the piazza like a schooner before the wind.  But his discourse, usually ample and florid as befitted both his person and his calling, was couched on this occasion in Tacitean brevity.

“We have landed a queer fish, Duchess,” he remarked.  “He calls himself Bishop of Bim-Bam-Bum, and resembles a broken-down matrimonial agent.  So lean!  So yellow!  His face all furrowed!  He has lived very viciously, that man.  Perhaps he is mad.  In every case, look to your purse, Mr. Denis.  He’ll be here in a minute.”

“That’s quite right,” said the young man.  “The Bishop of Bampopo.  It’s in the new York Herald.  Sailing by the Mozambique.  But they didn’t say he was coming to the island.  I wonder what he wants here?”

Don Francesco was aghast.

“Indeed?” he asked.  “A bishop, and so yellow!  He must have thought me very rude,” he added.

“You couldn’t be rude if you tried,” said the Duchess, giving him a playful slap with her fan.

She was burning with ardour to be the first to introduce such a lion to the local society.  But fearful of making a Faux Pas, she said: