followed.  And then the valet, closing the door behind them, and pulling the rich curtain across, sat down himself close outside it to be within call when the Holy Father should summon his attendance by means of a bell which hung immediately over his head.  And to while away the time he pulled from his pocket that day’s issue of a well-known Republican paper,—­ one of the most anti-Papal tendency, thereby showing that his constant humble attendance upon the Head of the Church had not made him otherwise than purely human, or eradicated from his nature that peculiar quality with which most of us are endowed, namely, the perversity of spirit which leads us often to say and do things which are least expected of us.  The Pope’s confidential valet was not exempt from this failing.  He like the Monsignori, enjoyed the exciting rush and secret risk of money speculation,—­he also had his little schemes of self-advancement; and, as is natural to all who are engaged in a certain kind of service, he took care to read everything that could be said by outsiders against the person or persons whom he served.  Thus, despite the important capacity he filled, he was not a grade higher than the ordinary butler, who makes it his business to know all the peccadilloes and failings of his master.  “No man is a hero to his valet” is a very true axiom,—­ and even the Head of the Church, the Manifestation of the Divine, the “Infallible in Council,” was a mere Nothing to the little man in black who had the power to insist on His Holiness changing a soiled cassock for a clean one.

XXVIII.

There are certain moments in life which seem weighted with the history of ages—­when all the past, present and future merge into the one omnipresent Now,—­moments, which if we are able to live through them with courage, may decide a very eternity of after-glory—­but which, if we fail to comprehend their mission, pass, taking with them the last opportunity of all good that shall ever be granted to us in this life.  Such a moment appeared, to the reflective mind of Cardinal Bonpre, to have presented itself to him, as for the second time in ten days, he found himself face to face with the Sovereign Pontiff, the pale and aged man with the deep dark eyes set in such cavernous sockets, that as they looked out on the world through that depth of shadow, seemed more like great jewels in the head of a galvanised skeleton than the eyes of a living human being.  On this occasion the Pope was enthroned in a kind of semi-state, on a gilded chair covered with crimson velvet; and a rich canopy of the same material, embroidered and fringed with gold, drooped in heavy folds above him.  Attired in the usual white,—­white cassock, white skull cap, and white sash ornamented with the emblematic keys of St. Peter, embroidered in gold thread at the ends,—­his unhandsome features, pallid as marble, and seemingly as cold,—­bloodless everywhere, even to the lips,—­suggested