It was the gracious wish of the Holy Father to enhance the honour bestowed by conferring it with his own apostolic hand; and, doubtless, as soon as Lent should be over, it would be intimated to the Marchese that the Holy Father was desirous of seeing him at Rome.  When he came back thence his fellow-citizens would, in all probability, wish to mark, by some little festivity or otherwise, with which he, on the part of the government, should have great pleasure in associating himself, their sense of the honour done to their city in the person of its most distinguished citizen.

The Marchese, while the Cardinal Legate was making all these gracious communications, strove to look as “like the time” and the occasion as he could.  At first it was very difficult to him to do so at all satisfactorily.  The influence of that other interview, from which he had so recently come, was too strong upon him.  All the images and ideas called up by the Cardinal’s words were too violently at variance, and too incompatible with those other desires and thoughts to affect him otherwise than as raising additional obstacles and piling up more and more difficulties in the path before him.  But, as the interview with the courteous and dignified churchman proceeded,—­as the genius loci of the Cardinal’s library began to exert its influence—­as all the hopes and ambitions and prospects which were opened before his eyes, falling into their natural and proper connection of continuity with all his former life, so linked the present moment with that past life as to make all that had filled the last few weeks seem like a fevered dream,—­ gradually the Marchese entered more and more into the spirit of the Cardinal’s conversation.  Gradually all that he had hitherto lived for came to seem to him again to be all that was worth living for.  Old habitual thoughts and ideas, the growth and outcome of a whole life, once again asserted their wonted supremacy; and the Marchese Lamberto marvelled that it should be possible for that to happen to him which had happened to him.

Ah! if only weak men were as prone to run away from temptation as they are to run away from the difficulties that are created by yielding to it.  But they are ever as brave to run the risks of confronting the tempter, as cowardly to face the results of having done so.

The Cardinal had not failed to mark the air of constraint and dispirited lassitude which had characterized the Marchese during the commencement of their conversation.  And he, as others had done, attributed it to the supposition that the Marchese was very rapidly growing old—­likely enough, was breaking up.  Nor did he less observe the very notable change in him as their interview proceeded—­the result, as the churchman flattered himself, of the charms of his own eloquence and felicitous manner.  He was himself a good twenty years older than the Marchese; but he had been put into great good humour that morning by private letters accompanying the official