“Why not make the acquaintance of a Cardinal, once he is kind enough to wish to receive you?” answered Gzhatski. “You have decided to join the Catholic Church, and you ought to know more of its priesthood. Père Etienne alone is insufficient—there are plenty of other enlightened and clever men among the Roman priests—they are by no means all furious fanatics!”
XVI
Irene had to agree, and punctually at seven o’clock she presented herself at the Cardinal’s house. Her conscience reproached her a little for troubling a man so occupied with important affairs, but she had heard so much about this famous Cardinal that curiosity won the day over her scruples.
Cardinal R⸺ was one of the most distinguished members of the Papal Court. He was nicknamed “le Pape manqué,” because at the last election he had received the greatest number of votes. His pronounced French sympathies, however, had, in the eyes of the other Catholic countries, stood in his way, with the result that, in answer to his election, the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador had announced the “veto” of the Austrian Emperor. The amazed Cardinals, though they had long forgotten this ancient privilege of the Austrian crown, were obliged to submit, and the next candidate was elected Pope. It is a characteristic fact that Pius X. was so annoyed at his election that, on becoming Pope against his will, his first action was to annul for ever the Austrian right of “veto.”
Remembering this episode, Irene involuntarily felt a great respect for the man who had had the courage of his opinions and sympathies to the extent of paying for them by losing the Papacy. Such honesty seemed hardly in keeping with the traditional spirit of intrigue and deceit with which the Papal court was supposed to be permeated, and which Irene had so frequently heard discussed in Russia.
The Cardinal lived in a small detached house, within the precincts of the Vatican, and Irene was struck, by no means for the first time, by the resemblance between these Vatican houses and courtyards, and the inner courts and arch-priest’s dwellings of Russian monasteries. There was in both the same sense of chill and isolation and lifelessness. Even the waiting-room into which a slow old servant led Irene was exactly like the room of a Russian monastic priest. The same clumsy wooden furniture upholstered in red velvet, the same religious pictures. The only things that were missing were the typical and inevitable strip of canvas that runs like a pathway right across the floors of all our Russian priestly houses, and the extraordinary variety of worsted cushions, with their wonderful patterns of fantastic animals and flowers, embroidered for our priests by pious Russian parishioners.
A young secretary twice passed through the waiting-room, throwing, each time, a quick but scrutinizing glance at Irene. Finally, unable to restrain himself any longer, he approached her, with a charming smile:
“Voudriez vous me dire, Mademoiselle,” he inquired, “le motif pour lequel vous désirez voir Son Eminence?”