"Well, well," said he, indulgently, "he has, at all events, a live advocate. I did not gather you were so devoted to the vocation;" and he laughed a little to belie the words, and so we parted company.
It was in no complacent mood, as you may guess, that I returned to the college, and, indeed, I loitered some while before the gates or ever I could make up my mind to enter them. The picture weighed upon my conscience, and seemed like to effect my Lord Bolingbroke's evident purpose, though by means of a very different argument. It was not the priest, but myself, the hypocrite, who was the dead man speaking; and thus, strangely enough, as I had reason to think it afterwards, I came to imagine the picture with myself as its central figure. I would see it at nights as I lay awake in my bed, painted with fire upon the dark spaces of the room, and the face that bore the shame of hypocrisy discovered, and with that shame the agony of punishment was mine. Or, again, a word of reproof; the mere sight of my Marco Polo was sufficient to bring it into view, and for the rest of that day it would bear me company, hanging before my eyes when I sat down to my books, and moving in front of me when I walked, as it had moved in front of me through the streets of Paris on that first and only occasion of my seeing it. For, though many a time I passed and repassed the monastery of the Chartreux, I never sought admittance. I saw the picture no more than once; but, indeed, I was in no danger of forgetting it, and within the compass of a few months events befell me which fixed it for ever in my memory. I have but to shut my eyes, and I see it after this long interspace of years, definite in every detail. I have but to open them, and, sitting at this table at which I write, I behold, actually painted, the second picture into which my imagination then transformed the first—the picture of myself as the dead man speaking.
CHAPTER III.
[MY KINSMAN AND I RIDE DIFFERENT WAYS.]
Two days later, being deputed upon some errand, the import of which I have forgotten, I chanced to pass by the barrier of the Rue de Grenelle, and a travelling-carriage drew up at my side. My eyes were bent upon the ground, so that I took no heed of it until I heard my name cried. I looked up, and there was my Lord Bolingbroke at the window.
"You see, Lawrence," he said, "I leave Paris as I promised Stair, and I travel into Dauphiné."
"But by a roundabout road," I answered eagerly. "It is possible that you might take St. Germains on the way;" for it had reached my ears that Queen Mary of Modena was desirous to try her persuasions upon him.
"No," he returned, with a shake of the head; "I have my poor friends in England to consider. I should provide a fine excuse for ill-using them if I made common cause with the Chevalier. They have served me; it is my turn to serve them; and I shall be better employed that way than in weaving fairy-stories with Queen Abdicate.—But what's the trouble?" he continued, with a change of tone. "You walked as though the world had withered at your feet."
"Nay," I answered, with a laugh, "there is no trouble. I was merely wondering——" and I hesitated.
"At what?" he asked curiously.