VIII.
"A strange lad!" said Abbe Vergniaud, abruptly.
"Strange? In what way do you find him so?" asked the Cardinal with a touch of anxiety.
The Abbe knitted his brows perplexedly, and took a short turn up and down the room. Then he laughed.
"Upon my word, I cannot tell you!" he declared, with one of those inimitable gestures common to Frenchmen, a gesture which may mean anything or nothing,—"But he speaks too well, and, surely, thinks too much for his years. Is there nothing further to tell of him save what you have already said? Nothing that you know of him, beyond the plain bare fact of having found him weeping alone outside the doors of the Cathedral?"
"Nothing indeed!" replied the Cardinal bewildered. "What else should there be?"
The Abbe hesitated a moment, and when he spoke again it was in a softer and graver tone. "Forgive me! Of course there could be nothing else with you. You are so different to all other Churchmen I have ever known. Still, the story of your foundling is exceptional;—you will own that it is somewhat out of the common course of things, for a Cardinal to suddenly constitute himself the protector and guardian of a small tramp—for this boy is nothing else. Now, if it were any other Cardinal-Archbishop than yourself, I should at once say that His Eminence knew exactly where to find the mother of his protege!"
"Vergniaud!" exclaimed the Cardinal.
"Forgive me! I said 'forgive me' as a prelude to my remarks," resumed Vergniaud, "I am talking profanely, sceptically, and cynically,—I am talking precisely as the world talks, and as it always will talk."
"The world may talk itself out of existence, before it can hinder me from doing what I conceive to be my duty," said Felix Bonpre, calmly, "The lad is alone and absolutely friendless,—it is but fitting and right that I should do what I can for him."