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."

Thus speaking, the pope slightly nodded an adieu to the cardinal, and
withdrew into his study, the door of which he carefully closed after
him.

There was he long heard to walk the room with measured steps. Then all
was still. No one ventured to disturb him. Hours passed. Lorenzo, with
a fearful presentiment, knelt before the door. He laid his ear to the
keyhole and tried to listen. All was still within, nothing stirred.
At length he ventured to call the pope's name--at