Monsignor shook his head.
"I don't see how the people ever consented to give up the power when once they'd got it."
"Why, in the same way that kings used to lose it in the old days—by revolution."
"Revolution? Who revolted?"
"The many who were tyrannised over by the few. For that's what democracy really means."
Monsignor smiled at what he conceived to be a paradox.
"Well, I must go to the Cardinal," he said. "It's just on ten o'clock."
CHAPTER II
(I)
It was three weeks later that the Benedictines took formal possession of Westminster Abbey, and simultaneously that Pontifical High Mass was sung in the University churches of Oxford, Cambridge, and Durham, to mark the inauguration of their new life.