"Too bad, too bad," began his visitor, in suave tones, "that a hempen rope should be the end of so promising a youth."
"How say you?" exclaimed the Bishop, startled.
"I say that, though we thought so cannily to have put salt on the tail of our bird, yet having left him alone in the gilded cage, he hath found it in his power to fly away."
The Bishop's dream-structure in which he had just been wandering fell to the ground with a crash. The thought of that beautiful youth by his side, enthusiastic, eloquent, fearless, assisting him, brightening his declining years, had been very sweet. Momentarily he had been expecting his arrival to be announced. And this was the end of his hopes! He was too profoundly chagrined not to show it.
"H'm!" he said, half to himself, "I had thought to bring him home with me."
"Doubtless," insinuated the Cardinal Barsini, "had he come to my Lord Bishop's hospitable mansion, he would have found the cage altogether too heavily gilded to have stirred his wings."
"He was deep in prayer. What could I?"
"Ill it behooves me to suggest. However it might have been, since it is true that he hath slipped from between our fingers, Holy Church will have to limp along as best she can without his valuable aid."
His listener winced at the irony, but returned it with interest.