“No, not a pilgrimage. I may be there for the rest of my life. . . . Louis, do you remember Monsignor Cantagalli?”
“Yes. He annoyed me very much.”
“I am sure you must have wondered why he came to Chantemerle. It was to bring me a command from the Holy Father . . . an unexpected command, touching a matter of which I never thought to hear an echo again——”
But the Vicomte, raising himself in bed, broke in upon him in a sudden violent excitement. “He called you Eminence! I did not believe my ears. . . . Father, it can’t be!”
“No, indeed, my child, I do not wonder at your astonishment,” said the priest, with a touching humility. “There could not be any one so unworthy; I knew that long ago. Nevertheless——”
“Long ago!” exclaimed Louis, with a hand to his head as if he were dizzy. “Good God! how long, then, have you——”
M. des Graves got up and came over to him. “If you will only lie down, Louis, I will tell you the whole story. Let me move that pillow for you first. . . . That’s better. . . . Well, then, there was once a young man, well born and tolerably rich, who at an early age took orders, because his family had influence in ecclesiastical quarters, and because it was the tradition for the third son of his house. He was gifted, and very ambitious. From the first he turned his attention to diplomacy, and here, in an extraordinary way, everything prospered to which he set his hand. Very soon he was swimming on a full tide of success; he was known to be favoured by the Pope; wherever he went he was courted and flattered. And thus circumstances fostered his naturally great ambition till it became an overmastering passion, the very mainspring of his life. Then there came to him a supreme chance of distinguishing himself—a chance such as has seldom fallen to the lot of so young a man. The Pope—it was Clement XIII.—entrusted him with a very difficult and delicate mission to the late King—I mean Louis XV.—and the priest’s conduct of this negotiation brought him to a pinnacle of esteem whence nothing seemed too much for him to grasp. Besides the Pope’s favour he now had the King’s, who told him in no veiled terms that he regretted the days of the great cardinal-ministers, of Fleury, of Richelieu. Yet the hour when the King said that to him, in the park of Fontainebleau, was followed by a stronger renewal of that sense of vague discomfort which, all the while that he walked on this golden path, had followed him like a shadow, trying to whisper to him something which he would not hear.”
“But why?” asked the young man rather impatiently. “What is there wrong in success?”
“Nothing, my son, if it is in God’s purpose for us and if we use it to His glory, being ourselves indifferent to it. But that was just what the priest had never done. He wanted the success for its own sake—though he told himself, indeed, that all he did was to be for the advancement of the Church.”
“Well?” said Saint-Ermay.