‘Isn’t it something that posterity will ever hear of me at all?’ said Kelly. ‘Is it not fame, at any rate? If there should be any records of our life together, who knows but a clever commentator will find out that but for me and my influence the Prince of Wales would have been a downright beast?—“that Kelly humanised your Royal Highness, kept you from all the contamination of cardinals and scheming Monsignori, rallied your low spirits, comforted your dark hours, and enjoyed your bright ones.”’
‘For what—for what? what was his price?’ cried Charles eagerly.
‘Because he felt in his heart that, sooner or later, you ‘d be back, King of England and Ireland, and George Kelly wouldn’t be forgotten. No, faith; Archbishop of Westminster; and devil a less I’d be—that’s the price, if you wish to hear it!’
The Prince laughed heartily, as he ever did when the friar gave way to his impertinent humour, and then, sitting up in his bed, told Kelly to order coffee. To his last hour, coffee seemed to exercise the most powerful effect on him, clearing his faculties after hours of debauch, and enabling him to apply himself to business when he appeared to be utterly exhausted. Kelly, who well knew how to adapt himself to each passing shade of temperament, followed the Prince into a small dressing-room in silence, and remained standing at a short distance behind his chair.
‘Tell Conway,’ said he, pointing to a mass of papers on the table, ‘that these must wait. I ‘ll go down to Albano tomorrow or next day for a change of air. I ‘ll not hear of anything till I return. Cardinal Altieri knows better than I do what Sir Horace Mann writes home to England. This court is in perfect understanding with St. James’s. As to the Countess, Kelly, let it not be spoken of again; you hear me? What paper is that in your hand?’
‘A petition, I believe, sire; at least, the quarter it comes from would so bespeak it.’
‘Throw it on the fire, then. Is it not enough to live thus, but that I must be reminded thirty, forty times a day of my poverty and incapacity? Am I to be flouted with my fallen fortune? On the fire with it, at once!’
‘Poor Luke’s prayers were offered at an untimely moment,’ said Kelly, untying the scroll, as if preparing to obey. ‘Maybe, after all, he is asking for a new rosary, or a pair of sandals. Shall I read it, sire?’
The Prince made no reply, and Kelly, who thoroughly understood his humour, made no further effort to obtain a hearing for his friend; but, tearing the long scroll in two, he muttered the first line that caught his eye:
‘"Petition of Mary Fitzgerald.”’