“Good-morning, my dear Louis,” he said. “I wanted to see you before you started, to tell you that, with your permission, I shall have a guest at dinner to-day.”
“I shall be delighted,” responded the young man, pulling on his gloves. “It is not, by any good chance, a lady—one of your parishioners, of course.”
“If you want to give a dinner-party a to the tenants’ wives,” replied M. des Graves imperturbably, “I do not see why you should deprive yourself of the pleasure. No, it is merely a priest who is coming to see me, and to whom I should be glad if you would extend your hospitality. He will be here this morning, and has come a long way—from Rome, in fact.”
Louis gave vent to a little whistle. “And is travelling about in France at this juncture? Rather a dangerous occupation. Bring him by all means. He will stay the night?”
M. des Graves replied that he was not sure, and Louis went down the steps to his impatient horse.
He rode far that morning, and had almost forgotten about the prospective guest, so that when he entered the dining-room he was surprised to see, standing by the window in converse with M. des Graves, a tall thin man in lay dress. Turning round, he revealed to Saint-Ermay’s view an emaciated face with a bird-like nose and tight, thin-lipped mouth.
“Louis,” said the Curé, “let me present you to Monsignor Giuseppe Cantagalli. Monsignore, M. le Vicomte de Saint-Ermay.”
The newcomer’s bow savoured as much of a court as Louis’ own. His peculiarly polished air was indeed the first thing to strike the young man as they sat at meat together; next, the resolution which lay coiled beneath it, like a spring of steel. The very way he carried his head, his neat, precise enunciation, were indications of it. Last of all the Vicomte noticed the extreme deference which he surprisingly paid to the Curé.
Monsignor Cantagalli did stay overnight, and at supper Louis got another impression of him. He had been talking easily and rather racily about the Curia, seeming to fling about great names in rather a careless fashion, but giving the listener no clue to the reason of his visit, which Louis, though he would have liked to know it, was much too well-bred to ask outright. The Pope’s patronage of the arts, his love of building, his munificence to the newly-founded Vatican museum next engaged his tongue, and it was plain that he himself appreciated to the full the advantages of living under a cultured Pontiff in an almost Renaissance Rome. Thence the talk had drifted on to the persecution of the Church in Vendée. Enquiring about the expatriated priests, Monsignor Cantagalli had been told the story of one, old and ill, who had been dragged, in a state unfit to travel, to Les Sables, and had there died from the effects of his journey.
Instead of showing pity or horror, the Italian broke into exclamations of envy. “Dio mio, how glorious! May I die the death of the righteous, and may my last end be like his!” he said, crossing himself. “And one has wondered whether there was a chance of martyrdom nowadays! Here in France you have it. How enormously favoured a country!”