"Did Your Eminency ever note that very few clergymen are capable—capable—of forming an unprejudiced proper original opinion—of judging on the evidence before them and on nothing else."
"I have excellent reason to believe that what Your Holiness says is correct."
"It is so much easier to echo than to discriminate. Now, if you please, we will go back to the Compromise. What brought Us again to Your Eminency's remembrance in the Conclave?"
"Holy Father, that was most strange. We compromissaries were quite as unable to agree as the Sacred College had been. And then, at the end of one of our sessions, I was struck by the extraordinary likeness of Cardinal della Volta to someone whom I remembered having seen, but whose name I had forgotten. It was the merest accident: but I came away wracking my brains about it. Another curious thing happened the same night. Having some papers to sign, I happened to go to my dispatch-box; and, quite by accident, I came across Edward Lancaster's letters about Your Holiness——"
"We do not call these things 'accidents.'"
"Nor do I, Holy Father, now. Well: for want of something better to do, I suppose, I looked over half-a-dozen of the letters: and I determined to go further into the matter on my return to England. But, early the very next morning, it suddenly flashed across my mind that I myself had seen Your Holiness——"
"In 1894."
"Ah yes, in 1894; and that Cardinal della Volta was Your Holiness's Double. This sent me back to the letters again; and I became more and more convinced that an immense and almost irreparable wrong had been done. I cannot tell You how strongly I felt that, Holy Father."
"But what made you—well, practically impose Us on the compromissaries?"