day afternoon at San
Carlo? I shall be there to hear you. So will all Rome, I suppose. Ah,
you do well here! '_Filius urbis et orbis_--son of the city and the
world.' It's a great title, Ramoni!"

They had come in front of the bench where Father Denfili told his
beads. The prelate turned to the old General of San Ambrogio with
deference. "Is it not so, Father?" he asked. But Father Denfili raised
his sightless eyes as if he sought to focus them upon the group before
him. Father Ramoni, laughingly dissenting, suddenly felt his joy
congealing into a cold fear that bound his heart. He turned away
angrily, then recovered himself in time. Father Denfili was no longer
on the bench beside the pond. He was groping his way back to the
chapel.

It was a month before the Consistory met to nominate the new hierarchy
for Marqua. It had been expected that the first meeting would end in
decisive action and that, immediately afterward, the great missionary
of the Community of San Ambrogio would return with increased authority
and dignity to his charge. But something--one of those mysterious
"somethings" peculiar to Rome--had happened, and the nominations were
postponed.

In the month that Father Ramoni remained in Rome he had tasted the
fruits of his old popular success. On his first Sunday at home he
preached in San Carlo as well as ever--better than ever. And the awed
crowd he looked down on at the end of his sermon took away from the
church the tidings of his greater power. From that time nearly every
moment was taken by the demands of people of position and authority,
who wished to make the most of him before he went back to Marqua. He
scarcely saw his brethren at all, except after his Mass, when he went
to the refectory for his morning coffee. He had no time to loiter in
the garden, and the story of the conversion of the people of Marqua
was left to the quiet Fr. Pietro, who told the splendid tales of his
Superior's great work, till Father Tomasso and Brother Luigi prayed to
be given the opportunity to be Ramoni's servants in the far-away land
of the western world. But, if Ramoni was but seldom in the cloister,
he did not avoid Father Denfili. The old blind priest seemed to meet
him everywhere, in the afternoons on the Pincio, in the churches where
he preached, in the subdued crowds at ecclesiastical assemblies. Once
Ramoni caught a glimpse of his face lifted toward him during a
conference; and a remembrance of that old look i