“Some letters of his have fallen into the hands of the servants of the Church; they are here: read them, my son.”
Albornoz received and deliberately scanned the letters; this done, he replaced them on the table, and remained for a few moments silent and absorbed.
“What think you, my son?” said the Pope, at length, with an impatient and even peevish tone.
“I think that, with Montreal’s hot genius and John di Vico’s frigid villany, your Holiness may live to envy, if not the quiet, at least the revenue, of the Professor’s chair.”
“How, Cardinal!” said the Pope, hastily, and with an angry flush on his pale brow. The Cardinal quietly proceeded.
“By these letters it seems that Montreal has written to all the commanders of free lances throughout Italy, offering the highest pay of a soldier to every man who will join his standard, combined with the richest plunder of a brigand. He meditates great schemes then!—I know the man!”
“Well,—and our course?”
“Is plain,” said the Cardinal, loftily, and with an eye that flashed with a soldier’s fire. “Not a moment is to be lost! Thy son should at once take the field. Up with the Banner of the Church!”
“But are we strong enough? our numbers are few. Zeal slackens! the piety of the Baldwins is no more!”
“Your Holiness knows well,” said the Cardinal, “that for the multitude of men there are two watchwords of war—Liberty and Religion. If Religion begins to fail, we must employ the profaner word. ‘Up with the Banner of the Church—and down with the tyrants!’ We will proclaim equal laws and free government; (In correcting the pages of this work, in the year 1847...strange coincidences between the present policy of the Roman Church and that by which in the 14th century it recovered both spiritual and temporal power cannot fail to suggest themselves.) and, God willing, our camp shall prosper better with those promises than the tents of Montreal with the more vulgar shout of ‘Pay and Rapine.’”