‘You shall hear, Madame la Marquise. About six or eight months back, the Queen’s almoner, l’Abbé Jostinard, forwarded, of course by order of her Majesty, certain names of individuals in the royal household to Rome, imploring on their behalf the benediction of the Holy Father—a very laudable measure, not unfrequent in former reigns, but somehow lamentably fallen into disuse.’ There was a strange, quaint expression in his eye as he uttered these last words, which did not escape the attention of the Marquise. ‘Among these,’ resumed he, ‘there was included the Chevalier de Fitzgerald. Now, Madame, you are well aware that His Holiness takes especial pains to know that the recipients of the holy favour are persons worthy, by their lives and habits, of this precious blessing: while, therefore, for each of the others so recommended there were friends and relatives in abundance to vouch—the Rochemards, the Guesclins, the Tresignés can always find sufficient bail—this poor Chevalier stood friendless and alone, none to answer for, none to acknowledge him. Now, Madame, this might seem bad enough, but it was not all, for, not satisfied with excluding him from the sacred benediction, the consulta began speculating who and what he might be, whence he came, and so on. The most absurd conjectures, the wildest speculations, grew out of these researches: some tracing him to this, others to that origin, but all agreeing that he belonged to that marvellous order whom people are pleased to call adventurers. In the midst of this controversy distinguished names became entangled, some one would have said too high for the breath of scandal to attain—your own, Madame la Marquise——’
‘Mine! how mine?’ cried she eagerly.
‘A romantic story of a sojourn in a remote villa in the Apennines—a tale positively interesting of a youth rescued from brigands or Bohemians, I forget which—pray assist me.’
‘Continue, sir,’ said the Marquise, whose compressed lips and sparkling eyes denoted the anger she could barely control.
‘I am a most inadequate narrator, Madame—in fact, I am not sure that I should have lent much attention to this story at all if the Queen’s name and your own had not been interwoven with it.’
‘And how the Queen’s, sir I?’ cried she haughtily.
‘Ah, Madame la Marquise, ask yourself how, in this terrible time in which we live, the purest and the best are sullied by the stain of that calumny the world sows broadcast! Is it not a feature of our age that none can claim privilege nor immunity? Popular orators have no more fertile theme than when showing that station, rank, high duties, even holy cares are all maintained by creatures of mere flesh and blood, inheritors of human frailties, heirs of mortal weakness. Cardinals have lived whose hearts have known ambition—empresses have felt even love.’
‘Monseigneur, this is enough,’ said the Marquise, rising, and darting at him a look of haughty indignation.
‘Not altogether, Madame,’ said he calmly, motioning her to be reseated. ‘To-morrow, or next day, this scandal—for it is a scandal—will be the talk of Paris. Whence came this youth? who is he? how came he by his title of Chevalier? will be asked in every salon, in every café, at every corner. Madame de Bauffremont’s name, and one even yet higher, will figure in these recitals. Some will suppose this, others suggest that, and the world—the world, Madame la Marquise—will believe all!’
‘My Lord Bishop,’ she began, but passion so overwhelmed her that she could not continue. Meanwhile he resumed—