Whatever interest the scene might have had for Massoni was speedily increased by the first words which met his ears. It was the Cardinal who said—
‘I own to you, Kelly, until what you have told me I had put little faith in the whole story of this youth; and there is then really such?’
‘There is, or at least there was, your Eminence. I remember as well as if it was yesterday the evening he came to the palace to see the Prince. A poor countryman of my own, a Carthusian, brought him, and took him back again to the college. The boy was afterward sent to a villa somewhere near Orvieto.’
‘Was the youth acknowledged by his Royal Highness as his son?’ asked the Cardinal.
‘The Prince never spoke of him to me till the day before his death. He then said, “Can you find out that Carthusian for me, Kelly?—I should like to speak with him.” I told him that he had long since left Rome and even Italy. The last tidings of him came from Ireland, where he was living as a dependant on some reduced family.
‘"There is no time to fetch him from Ireland,” said his Highness; “and yet, Kelly, I ‘d give a thousand pounds that he were here.” He then asked me if I remembered a certain boy, dressed like a colleger of the Jesuits, who came one night long ago to the palace with this same Carthusian.
‘I said, yes; that though his Royal Highness believed that I was away from Rome that night, I came back post-haste from Albano; and finding myself in one of the corridors, I waited till Fra Luke came out from his interview, with the boy beside him.
‘"True, true, Kelly; I meant you to have known nothing of this visit. So then you saw the boy? What thought you of him?”
‘"I saw and marked him well, for his fair hair and skin were so distinctively English, they made a deep impression upon me.”
‘"He had the mouth, too, Kelly—a little pouting and over full-lipped. Did you mark that?”