‘I have already, and at great length, explained to your Eminence, the importance of connecting the great convulsion of the day, with a movement in favour of monarchy and the Church. When men wandered from the one, they deserted the other. Let us see if the beacon that lights to the throne should not show the path to the shrine also.’
‘You would assuredly accept a very humble instrument to begin your work with.’
‘A fisherman and a tent-maker sustained a grander cause against a whole world!’
The Cardinal started. He was not, for a second or two, quite satisfied that the reply was devoid of profanity. The calm seriousness of Massoni’s face, however, showed that the speech was not uttered in a spirit of levity.
‘Père Massoni,’ said the Cardinal seriously, ‘let us bethink ourselves well ere we are committed to the cause of this youth. Are we so sure that it is a charge will repay us?’
‘I have given the matter the best and maturest reflection,’ said the Père; ‘I have tested it in all ways as a question of right, of justice, and of expediency; I have weighed its influence on the present, and its consequences on the future; and I see no obstacles or difficulties, save such as present themselves where a great work is to be achieved.’
‘Had you lived in as close intimacy with the followers of the Stuarts as I have, Massoni, you would pause ere you linked the fortunes of an enterprise with a family so unlucky. Do you know,’ added he earnestly, ‘there was scarcely a mishap of the last expedition not directly traceable to the Prince.’
The Père shook his head in dissent.
‘You have not then heard, as I have, of his rashness, his levity, his fickleness, and worse than all these, his obstinacy.’
‘There is not one of these qualities without another name,’ said the Père, with a sad smile; ‘and they would read as truthfully if called bravery, high-heartedness, versatility, and resolution; but were it all as your Eminence says, it matters not. Here is an enterprise totally different. The cause of the Stuarts appealed to the chivalry of a people, and what a mere fragment of a nation accepts or recognises such a sympathy! The cause of the Church will appeal to all that calls itself Catholic. The great element of failure in the Jacobite cause was that it never was a religious struggle: it was the assertion of legitimacy, the rights of a dynasty; and the question of the Faith was only an incident of the conflict. Here,’ he added proudly, ‘it will be otherwise, and the greatest banner in the fight will be inscribed with a cross!’