The Daughter of an Empress

Only Cardinal Bernis had remained behind, and to him Ganganelli, giving

him his hand, and drawing a deep breath, said: "What a mass of false and hypocritical phrases we have again been

obliged to swallow! These cardinals have the impudence to speak to me of

their love and veneration; they do not hesitate so to lie with the same

lips which to-day have already pronounced blessings and pious words of

edification! But let us forget these hypocrites. Business is over, and

it is kind of you to come and chat with me for one little hour. You know

I love you very much, my good friend Bernis, although you do pay homage

to the heathen divinities, and, as a real renegade, have constituted

yourself a priest of the muses."

"Ah, you speak of my youthful sins," said the cardinal, smiling. "They

are long since past, and sleep with my youthful happiness."

"That must be a wide bed which enables them all to find place side by

side," responded Ganganelli, laughing, and holding up his forefinger

threateningly to the cardinal.

"But what is that you are drawing from your breast-pocket with such an

important air?"

"A letter from the Marquise de Pompadour, holy father," seriously

replied the cardinal--"a letter in which I am commanded to communicate

to you, the father of Christendom, the acquiescence of France in your

proposed abolition of the order of the Jesuits. Here is a private letter

addressed to me by the marquise, and here the official letter signed by

King Louis, which is destined for your holiness."

The pope took the papers, and while he was reading them his face turned

deadly pale, and a dark cloud gathered upon his brow.

"France also acquiesces," said he, when he had finished the reading.

"How is it, then--were you not yourself against the abolition of the

order, and were you not in accordance with the Spanish ambassador, your

friend of many years?"

"This friendship of many years is to-day destroyed by a fish, and drives

us a helpless wreck upon the wildly-rolling waves," said the cardinal,

shrugging his shoulders.

Ganganelli paid no attention to him. Serious and thoughtful, he walked

up and down the room, while his heavenward-directed eye seemed to

address a great and all-important question to the Being there above,

which received no answer.

"I clearly see how it will be," finally murmured the pope, as if talking

to himself. "I shall complete the work I have begun--it is God Himself

who has opened the way for it, but this way will at the same time lead

me to my grave."

"What dark thoughts are these?" said Bernis, approaching him. "This

bold and high-hearted resolution will not bring you death, but fame and

immortality."

"It will at least lead me to immortality," said the pope, with a faint

smile. "The dead are all immortal. But think not so little of me as to

suppose I would now timidly shrink from doing that which I have once

recognized as right and necessary. Only there are necessities of a very

painful and dreadful kind. Such a necessity is war. And is it not a war

that I commence, and does it not involve the destruction of all those

thousands who call themselves the followers of Loyola, and belong to the

Society of Jesus? Ah, believe me, this Society of Jesus is a hydra, and

we shall never succeed in entirely extirpating it. I may now separate my

own head from my body; but a day will come when the head of this hydra

will have grown again, and when it will rise from the dead with renewed

vitality, while I shall be mouldering in my grave. Say not, therefore,

that I know not how to destroy them, and if you do say it, at least add

that I lacked not the will, but that I gave for it my own life."