pe's face and down again; but I said nothing.

"Eh, my son?" he said again with a certain sharpness.

"Holy Father, I have been taught never to contradict my superiors; but
indeed in this--"

"Bravo!" said Innocent.

Then he turned to my Lord Abbot, as if I were no longer in the room.

"The question," he said, "is not only whether this young gentleman is
capable of hearing everything and saying nothing, of preserving his
virtue, of handling locked caskets without even desiring to look inside
unless it is his business, of living in the world yet not being of
it--but whether he is willing to do all this without being paid for
it--except perhaps his bare expenses."

My Lord Abbot said nothing.

"I can have a thousand paid servants," said Innocent, "who are worth
exactly their wages; but, since money cannot buy virtue or discretion or
courage, in such servants I cannot demand those things. And I can have a
thousand foolish servants who could earn no wages anywhere because of
their foolishness, and these never have discretion and not often either
virtue or courage. But what I wish is to have servants who are as wise
sons to me--who have all these things, and will use them for love's
sake--for the love of Holy Church and of Christ and His Mother, and who
will be content with the wages that These give."

He stopped suddenly and looked at me quickly again; and my heart burned
in my breast; for this that he was saying was all that I most desired;
and I saw by that that my talk must have been reported to him. I loved
Holy Church then, and the cause of Jesus and Mary, as young men do love,
and as I hope to love till I die. I asked nothing better than to serve
such causes as these even to death. It was not for lack of ardour that I
wished to leave the monastery; it was because, truthfully, I had a
fever on me of greater activity; because, truthfully, I was not sure of
my vocation; because, truthfully, I doubted whether such gifts and such
wealth and such education as were mine could not be used better in the
world than in the cloister. I knew that I could take a place to-morrow
in either the French or the English Court, without disgracing myself or
others; and it was precisely of this that I had spoken to my Lord Abbot;
and here was our Holy Father himself putting into words those very
ambitions that I had. I met his eyes, and knew that I was beginning to
flush.

"Well, my son?" he said.

"Holy Father," I said, "my virt