‘Not one, not one—stay, I am wrong. The cripple who sells the water-melons at the corner of the Babuino, he has been here; and Giacchino, the strolling actor, comes every morning and says, “Give my duty to his Royal Highness.”’
A muttered curse broke from O’Sullivan, and Kelly went on: ‘It was on Wednesday last he wished to have a mass in the chapel here, and I went to the Quirinal to say so. They should, of course, have sent a cardinal; but who came?—the Vicar of Santa Maria maggiore. I shut the door in his face, and told him that the highest of his masters might have been proud to come in his stead.’
‘They are tired of us all, Kelly,’ sighed the chieftain. ‘I have walked every day of the eight long years I have passed here in the Vatican gardens, and it was only yesterday a guard stopped me to ask if I were noble?—ay, by Heaven, if I were noble! I gulped down my passion and answered, “I am a gentleman in the service of his Royal Highness of England”; and he said, “That may well be, and yet give you no right to enter here.” The old Cardinal Balfi was passing, so I just said to his Eminence, “Give me your arm, for you are my junior by three good years.” Ay, and he did it too, and I passed in; but I’ll go there no more! no more!’ muttered he sadly. ‘Insults are hard to bear when one’s arm is too feeble to resent them.’
Kelly sighed too; and neither spoke for some seconds. ‘What heavy breathings are those I hear?’ cried Kelly suddenly; ‘some one has overheard us.’
‘Have no fear of that,’ replied the other; ‘it is a stout friar, taking his evening nap, on the stone bench yonder.’
Kelly hastened to the spot, and by the struggling gleam of the lamp could just recognise Fra Luke as he lay sleeping, snoring heavily.
‘You know him, then?’ asked O’Sullivan.
‘That do I: he is a countryman of ours, and as honest a soul as lives; but yet I’d just as soon not see him here Fra Luke,’ said he, shaking the sleeper’s shoulder, ‘Fra Luke. By St. Joseph! they must have hard mattresses up there at the convent, or he ‘d not sleep so soundly here.’
The burly friar at last stirred, and shook himself like some great water-dog, and then turning his eyes on Kelly, gradually recalled where he was. ‘Would he see me, Laurence? would he just let me say one word to him?’ muttered he in Kelly’s ear.
‘Impossible, Fra Luke; he is on a bed of sickness. God alone knows if he is ever to rise up from it!’