lowly along the quiet street, looked into the carriage. It seemed to
Jeanne almost an offence that there were people who could be so calm.
Ah, God! The doctor had promised to send her a bulletin to the Grand
Hotel at seven o'clock. It was not yet three. More than four hours to
wait. And what would the bulletin say? She bit her lips, stifling a sob
in her throat. Ah! here is Donna Rosetta at last. The footman opens the
door, she gives him an order:

"Palazzo Braschi!" As she enters the carriage she casts a little book
at her feet, and, instead of speaking, rubs her lips vehemently with her
perfumed handkerchief. Finally she says, with a shudder, that she was
obliged to kiss the Cardinal's hand, and that it was anything but clean.
But at any rate the visit was successful. Ah, if her husband only knew!
She had played a really horrible part. The Cardinal was the very one
who had once met Giovanni Selva in the library of Santa Scolastica at
Subiaco, and had assailed him, telling him he was a profaner of the
sacred walls, and promising him that he would most certainly go to hell,
or even further down! Donna Rosetta had fanned his fire, in order to
break up the secret accord between the Vatican and Palazzo Braschi. She
had told him that the religious _haute_ of Turin much desired the
man chosen by the Vatican, and obnoxious to the Quirinal. The wily
Cardinal--whom she had once met in the salon of a French prelate--had
at first answered only, with that accent of his, neither French nor
Italian:

_"C'est vous qui me dites ca? C'est vous qui me dites ca?"_

In fact, Donna Rosetta had replied, laughing:

_"Oh c'est enorme, je le sais!"_

It was a speech which might cost her husband his title of Excellency.
But then "the most eminent one" had as good as promised her that the
desires of the Turin _haute_ should be satisfied.

_"Ce sera lui, ce sera lui!"_ Finally he had said to her:

_"Comment donc, madame, avez-vous epouse un francmacon? Un des pires,
aussi! Un des pires! Faites lui lire cela!"_

And he had given her a little book on the doctrines of hell and the
inevitable damnation of Freemasons. It was this little book she had cast
at her feet on entering the carriage.

"Fancy my husband reading that rubbish!" she said.

But what was all this to Jeanne? Jeanne was impatient to hear the news
from the Ministry of the Interior. And now, whom were they going to see?
The Minister, or the Under-Secretary of State?

They w