“Not if she had a spark of the true zeal,” said Mrs. O’Donovan Florence.  “Any wife can make her husband’s life a burden to him, if she will conscientiously lay herself out to do so.  The man would be glad to submit, for the sake of peace in his household.  I often sigh for the good old days of the Inquisition; but it’s still possible, in the blessed seclusion of the family circle, to apply the rack and the thumbscrew in a modified form.  I know a dozen fine young Protestant men in London whom I’m labouring to convert, and I feel I ’m defeated only by the circumstance that I’m not in a position to lead them to the altar in the full meaning of the expression.”

“A dozen?” the Cardinal laughed.  “Aren’t you complicating the question of mixed marriages with that of plural marriage?”

“’T was merely a little Hibernicism, for which I beg your Eminence’s indulgence,” laughed she.  “But what puts the most spokes in a proselytiser’s wheel is the Faith itself.  If we only deserved the reputation for sharp practice and double dealing which the Protestants have foisted upon us, it would be roses, roses, all the way.  Why are we forbidden to let the end justify the means?  And where are those accommodements avec le ciel of which we’ve heard?  We’re not even permitted a few poor accommodements avec le monde.”

“Look at my uncle’s face,” whispered the Duchessa to Peter.  The Cardinal’s fine old face was all alight with amusement.  “In his fondness for taking things by their humorous end, he has met an affinity.”

“It will be a grand day for the Church and the nations, when we have an Irish Pope,” Mrs. O’Donovan Florence continued.  “A good, stalwart, militant Irishman is what’s needed to set everything right.  With a sweet Irish tongue, he’d win home the wandering sheep; and with a strong Irish arm, he’d drive the wolves from the fold.  It’s he that would soon sweep the Italians out of Rome.”

“The Italians will soon be swept out of Rome by the natural current of events,” said the Cardinal.  “But an Irish bishop of my acquaintance insists that we have already had many Irish Popes, without knowing it.  Of all the greatest Popes he cries, ‘Surely, they must have had Irish blood.’  He’s perfectly convinced that Pius the Ninth was Irish.  His very name, his family-name, Ferretti, was merely the Irish name, Farrity, Italianised, the good bishop says.  No one but an Irishman, he insists, could have been so witty.”

Mrs. O’Donovan Florence looked intensely thoughtful for a moment . . . .  Then, “I ’m trying to think of the original Irish form of Udeschini,” she declared.

At which there was a general laugh.

“When you say ‘soon,’ Eminence, do you mean that we may hope to see the Italians driven from Rome in our time?” enquired Madame de Lafere.

“They are on the verge of bankruptcy—­for their sins,” the Cardinal answered.  “When the crash comes—­and it can’t fail to come before many years—­there will necessarily be a readjustment.  I do not believe that the conscience of Christendom will again allow Peter to be deprived of his inheritance.”