XI. A SOUNDING-LINE IN THE DARK WORLD
THE ADVICE OF TWO ABBÉS
The Abbé Preciozi several times advised Cæsar to make a new attempt at a reconciliation with the Cardinal; but Cæsar always refused.
“He is a man incapable of understanding me,” he would insist with naïve arrogance.
Preciozi felt a great liking for his new friend, who invited him to meals at good hotels and treated him very frequently. Almost every morning he went to call on Cæsar on one pretext or another, and they would go for a walk and chat about various things.
Preciozi was beginning to believe that his friend was a man with a future. Some explanations that Cæsar gave him about the mechanism of the stock-exchange convinced the abbé that he was in the presence of a great financier.
Preciozi talked to all his friends and acquaintances about Cardinal Fort’s nephew, picturing him as an extraordinary man; some took these praises as a joke; others thought that it was really very possible that the Spaniard had great talent; only one abbé, who was a teacher in a college, felt a desire to meet the Cardinal’s nephew, and Preciozi introduced him to Cæsar.
This abbé was named Cittadella, and he was fat, rosy, and blond; he looked more like a singer than a priest.
Cæsar invited the two abbés to dine at a restaurant and requested Preciozi to do the ordering.
“So you are a nephew of Cardinal Fort’s?” asked Cittadella. “Yes.”