ey.'

'Better had he kept his bed till death released him. I tell you it is
not of such stuff as this adventurers are made. His very appearance
would dash men with discouragement.'

'Bethink you what he has gone through, Pere; the sights and scenes
of horror that have met his eyes--the daily carnage amid which he
lived--himself, twice rescued from the scaffold, by what seems like
a miracle--his days and nights of suffering in friendless misery too.
Remember, also, how little of hope there was to cheer him through all
this. If ever there was one forlorn and destitute, it was he.'

'I think not of _him_, but of the cause he should have served,' said the
Pere; 'and once more I say, this youth is unequal to "the event." His
father had faults enough to have wrecked a dozen enterprises: he was
rash, reckless, and unstable; but his rashness took the form of courage,
and his very fickleness had a false air of versatility. Men regarded it
as an element full of resources; but this sickly boy only recalls in his
features every weakness of his race. What can we do with _him_?'

'Men have fought valiantly for royalties that offered less to their
regard,' said Carrol.

'Ay, Carrol, when the throne is fixed, men will rally to maintain it,
even though he who wears the crown be little worthy of their reverence;
but when the question is to reestablish a fallen dynasty--to replace
one branch by another, the individual becomes of immense importance;
personal qualities assume then all the proportions of claims, and men
calculate on the future by the promises of the present. Tell me frankly
what could you augur for a cause of which this youth was to be the
champion?'

Carrol did not break silence for some time; at length he said--

'You told me once, and I have never forgotten it, a remarkable story of
Monsignor Saffi, the Bishop of Volterra-----'

'I know what you allude to--how the simple-minded bishop became the
craftiest of cardinals. Ay, elevation will now and then work such
miracles; but it is because they are miracles we are not to calculate on
their recurrence.'

'I would not say that this is not the case to hope for a similar
transformation. They who knew Fitzgerald in his better, stronger days,
describe him as one capable of the most daring exploits, full of heroism
and of a boundless ambition, fed by some mysterious sentiment that
whispers within him that he was destined for high achievement. These are
inspirations that