"I did."

"And you think that that will be officially authorized now--I
mean that there will be definite colonies where the infidels will
be allowed complete liberty?"

"Under restrictions--yes."

"What sort of restrictions?"

"Well, they won't be allowed to have an army or an aery----"

"Eh?"

"An aery," repeated Father Jervis--"an air-fleet, I mean. That
wouldn't do: they might make war."

"I see."

"I don't see what better safety-valve could be suggested. They
could work out their own ideas there as much as they liked. Of
course, details would come later."

"And the rest of the Proclamation?" asked the other,
lifting the sheet.

"I think we've got at the essentials," said the priest, glancing
again at his own copy, "and at the immediate results. Of course,
all his other measures don't come into force till the Houses pass
them. In fact, nothing of the Proclamation has force until that
happens. I expect the Bill for the Establishment of Catholicism
will take some time. We shall get ours through before that.
They'll pass a few small measures immediately, no doubt--as to
the Court chaplains and so on."

There was a pause.

"I really think we've got at the principles," said the priest
again, meditatively. "Are they clear to you?"

Monsignor rose.

"I think so," he said. "I'm very much obliged, Father. I'm sorry
I was stupid just now; but you know it's extraordinarily
bewildering to me. I still don't seem to be able to grasp all you
said about Democracy."

The old priest smiled reassuringly.

"Well, you see, the universal franchise reduced Democracy _ad
absurdum_ fifty years ago. Even the uneducated saw that. And then
there came the reaction to the old king-idea again."

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 li