“I may say that you are considered our most valuable correspondent—certainly in England. That is why you are summoned. You are to help us here in future—a kind of consultor: any one can relate facts; not every one can understand them.... You look very young, father. How old are you?”
“I am thirty-three, your Eminence.”
“Ah! your white hair helps you.... Now, father, will you come with me into my room? It is now eight o’clock. I will keep you till nine—no longer. Then you shall have some rest, and at eleven I shall take you up to his Holiness.”
Percy rose with a strange sense of elation, and ran to open the door for the Cardinal to go through.
III
At a few minutes before eleven Percy came out of his little white-washed room in his new ferraiuola, soutane and buckle shoes, and tapped at the door of the Cardinal’s room.
He felt a great deal more self-possessed now. He had talked to the Cardinal freely and strongly, had described the effect that Felsenburgh had had upon London, and even the paralysis that had seized upon himself. He had stated his belief that they were on the edge of a movement unparalleled in history: he related little scenes that he had witnessed—a group kneeling before a picture of Felsenburgh, a dying man calling him by name, the aspect of the crowd that had waited in Westminster to hear the result of the offer made to the stranger. He showed him half-a-dozen cuttings from newspapers, pointing out their hysterical enthusiasm; he even went so far as to venture upon prophecy, and to declare his belief that persecution was within reasonable distance.
“The world seems very oddly alive,” he said; “it is as if the whole thing was flushed and nervous.”
The Cardinal nodded.
“We, too,” he said, “even we feel it.”