ning forward. "I speak essentially for
myself. One does not mind admitting it to a man like yourself. All the
world knows that you are a Carlist at heart."

"Does it?"

"Yes--and you must take comfort. I think you are on the right road now."

"I hope we are."

"I am sure of it. Money. That is the only way. To go to the right people
with money in both hands."

He sat back and looked at the Sarrions with his little, cunning eyes
twinkling beneath his gold laced cap. The expansiveness would not last
much longer. Sarrion's dark glance was diagnosing the man with a deadly
skill.

"The thing," he said slowly, "is to strike while the iron is hot."

He spoke in the symbolic way of a people much given to proverbial wisdom
and the dark uses of allegory. He might have meant much or nothing. As it
happened, the Count de Sarrion meant nothing; for he knew nothing.

"That is what I say. Give me a couple of months, I want no more."

"No?" said Sarrion, looking at him with much admiration. "Is that so?"

"Two months--and the sum of money I named."

"Ah! In two months," reflected Sarrion. "Rome, you know, was not built in
a day."

The General gave his cackling laugh.

"Aha! " he cried, "I see that you know all about it. You gave me my
cue--the word Rome, eh? To see how much I know!"

And the great soldier-statesman leant back in his seat again, well
pleased with himself.

"I understand," he said, "that it amounts to this; the sanction of the
Vatican is required to the remittance of the usual novitiate in the case
of a young person who is in a great hurry to take the veil; once that is
obtained the money is set at liberty and all goes merrily. There is
enough to--well, let us say--to convince my whole army corps, and my
humble self. And the Vatican will, of course, consent. I fancy that is
how it stands."

He tapped his pocket as if the golden "pieces de conviction" were
already there, and closed his eye like any common person; like, for
instance, his own father, who was an Andalusian innkeeper.

"I fancy that is how it is," said Sarrion, turning gravely to Marcos. "Is
it not so?"

"That is how it is," replied Marcos.

The effect of the good dinner was already wearing off. The train had
started, and General Pacheco found himself disinclined for further
conversation. He begged leave to ease some of the tighter straps and
hooks of his smart tunic, opening the collar of solid gold lace that
encircled his thick neck.