The Cardinal ceased his explanations, and made a little gesture.  Percy drew up all his faculties tense and tight to answer the questions that he knew were coming.

“I welcome you, my son,” said a very soft, resonant voice.

Percy bowed, desperately, from the waist.

The Pope dropped his eyes again, lifted a paper-weight with his left hand, and began to play with it gently as he talked.

“Now, my son, deliver a little discourse.  I suggest to you three heads—­what has happened, what is happening, what will happen, with a peroration as to what should happen.”

Percy drew a long breath, settled himself back, clasped the fingers of his left hand in the fingers of his right, fixed his eyes firmly upon the cross-embroidered red shoe opposite, and began. (Had he not rehearsed this a hundred times!)

* * * * *

He first stated his theme; to the effect that all the forces of the civilised world were concentrating into two camps—­the world and God.  Up to the present time the forces of the world had been incoherent and spasmodic, breaking out in various ways—­revolutions and wars had been like the movements of a mob, undisciplined, unskilled, and unrestrained.  To meet this, the Church, too, had acted through her Catholicity—­ dispersion rather than concentration:  franc-tireurs had been opposed to franc-tireurs.  But during the last hundred years there had been indications that the method of warfare was to change.  Europe, at any rate, had grown weary of internal strife; the unions first of Labour, then of Capital, then of Labour and Capital combined, illustrated this in the economic sphere; the peaceful partition of Africa in the political sphere; the spread of Humanitarian religion in the spiritual sphere.  Over against this must be placed the increased centralisation of the Church.  By the wisdom of her pontiffs, over-ruled by God Almighty, the lines had been drawing tighter every year.  He instanced the abolition of all local usages, including those so long cherished by the East, the establishment of the Cardinal-Protectorates in Rome, the enforced merging of all friars into one Order, though retaining their familiar names, under the authority of the supreme General; all monks, with the exception of the Carthusians, the Carmelites and the Trappists, into another; of the three excepted into a third; and the classification of nuns after the same plan.  Further, he remarked on the more recent decrees, establishing the sense of the Vatican decision on infallibility, the new version of Canon Law, the immense simplification that had taken place in ecclesiastical government, the hierarchy, rubrics and the affairs of missionary countries, with the new and extraordinary privileges granted to mission priests.  At this point he became aware that his self-consciousness had left him, and he began, even with little gestures, and a slightly raised voice, to enlarge on the significance of the last month’s events.