'You will be well cared for, and with kindness, n.o.ble lady,' said the other.

'It is alike to me; I am ready,' said she, rising, and preparing to follow them.

CHAPTER XVI. INTRIGUE

The life of a man has been aptly compared to the course of a stream: now clear, now troubled, now careering merrily onward in joyous freedom, now forcing its turbid course amid shoals and rocks; but in no circ.u.mstance does the comparison more truthfully apply than in those still intervals when, the impulse of force spent, the waveless pool succeeds to the rapid river. There are few men, even among the most active and energetic, who have not known such periods in life. With some these are seasons of concentration--times profitably pa.s.sed in devising plans for the future. Others chafe under the wearisome littleness of the hour, and long for the days of activity and toil; and some there are to whom these intervals have all the charm of a happy dream, and who love to indulge themselves in a bliss such as in the busy world can never be their fortune to enjoy.

Among these last, a true disciple of the school who take refuge in the ideal and the imaginative as the sole remedy against the ills of actual life, was Gerald Fitzgerald. When he arose from his sick-bed, it was with a sort of dreamy, indistinct consciousness that he was of high rank and station; one whose claims, however in abeyance now, must be admitted hereafter; that for the great part he was yet to fill, time alone was wanting. As to the past, it was a dream-land wherein he ventured with fear. It was in vain he asked himself, how much of it was true or false?

Had this event really occurred? Had that man ever lived? The broken incidents of a fevered head, mingled with the terrible realities he had gone through; and there were many of his mere fancies that engaged his credulity more powerfully than some of the actual events of his chequered life.

His convalescence was pa.s.sed at the Cardinal's villa of Orvieto; and if anything could have added to the strange confusion which oppressed him, it was the curious indistinct impression his mind preserved of the place itself. The gardens, fountains, statues, were all familiar. How had they been so revealed to him? As he strolled through the great rooms, objects struck him as well known; and yet, the Pere Ma.s.soni had said to him: 'Orvieto will interest you; you have never been there'; and his Eminence, in his invitation, suggested the same thought. Day after day he pondered over this difficulty, and he continually turned over in his mind this question: 'Is there some inner picture in my being of all that I am to meet with in life? Has existence only to unroll a tableau, every detail of which is graven on my heart? Have other men these conflicts within their minds? Is it that by some morbid condition of memory _I_ am thus tortured? and must I seek relief by trying to forget?' The struggle thus suggested, rendered him daily more taciturn and thoughtful. He would sit for hours long without a word; and time glided on absolutely as though in a sleep.

If Gerald's life was pa.s.sed in this inactivity, the Pere Ma.s.soni's days were fully occupied. From Ireland the tidings had long been of the most discouraging kind. The great cause which should have been confided to the guidance of the Church, and such as the Church could have trusted, had been shamefully betrayed into the hands of a party deeply imbued with all the principles of the French Revolution; men taught in the infamous doctrines of Voltaire and Volney, and who openly professed to hate a church even more than a monarchy. How the North of Ireland had taken the lead in insurrection--how the Presbyterians, sworn enemies as they were to Catholicism, had enrolled themselves in the cause of revolt--how all the ready, active and zealous leaders were among that cla.s.s and creed, the Priest Carrol had not failed to write him word; nor did it need the priest's suggestive comments to make the clever Jesuit aware of all the peril that this portended. Was it too late to counteract these evils? by what means could men be brought back from the fatal infatuation of those terrible doctrines? how was the banner of the Faith to be brought to the van of the movement? were the thoughts unceasingly in his mind. The French were willing to aid the Irish, so also were the Dutch; but the intervention would only damage the cause the Pere cared for. Nor did he dare to confide these doubts to the Cardinal and ask his counsel on them, since, to his Eminence he had continually represented the case of Ireland in a totally different light. He had taught him to believe the people all jealous for the Faith, cruelly oppressed by England, hating the dynasty that ruled them, and eagerly watching for the return of the Stuarts, if haply there yet lived one to renew the traditions of that ill.u.s.trious house. By dint of instances, and no small persuasive power, he at last had so far succeeded as to enlist the sympathies of his Eminence in the youth personally, and was now plotting by what means he could consummate that interest by a marriage between Gerald and the beautiful Guglia Ridolfi.

This was a project which, if often indistinctly hinted at between them, had never yet been seriously treated, and Ma.s.soni well knew that with Caraffa success was a mere accident, and that what he would reject one day with scorn he would accept the next with eagerness and joy. Besides, the gloomy tidings he constantly received from Ireland indisposed the Pere to incur any needless hazards. If the Chevalier was not destined to play a great part in life, the Cardinal would never forgive an alliance that conferred neither wealth nor station. The barren honour of calling a prince of the House of Stuart his nephew would ill requite him for maintaining a mere pensioner and a dependant. Against these considerations there was the calculation how far the cause of Fitzgerald might profit by the aid such a man as Caraffa could contribute, when once pledged to success by everything personally near and dear to himself. Might not the great churchman, then, be led to make the cause the main object of all his wishes?

The Cardinal was one of those men, and they are large enough to form a cla.s.s, who imagine that they owe every success they obtain in life, in some way or other, to their own admirable skill and forethought; their egotism blinding them against all the aid the suggestions of others have afforded, they arrive at a self-reliance which is actually marvellous.

To turn to good account this peculiarity of disposition, Ma.s.soni now addressed himself zealously and actively. He well knew that if the Cardinal only fancied that the alliance of his niece with the Chevalier was a scheme devised by himself--one of which none but a man of his deep subtlety and sagacity could ever have thought--the plot would have an irresistible attraction for him. The wily Jesuit meditated long over this plan, and, at last, hit upon an expedient that seemed hopeful.

Among the many agents whom he employed over Europe, was one calling himself the Count Delia Rocca, a fellow of infinite craft and effrontery, and who, though of the very humblest origin and most questionable morals, had actually gained a footing among the very highest and most exclusive of the French royalists. He had been frequently intrusted with confidential messages between the Courts of France and Spain, and acquired a sort of courtier-like air and breeding, which lost nothing by any diffidence or modesty on his part.

Ma.s.soni's plan was to pretend to the Cardinal that Delia Rocca had been sent out to Rome by the Count D'Artois, with the decoration of St.

Louis for the Chevalier, and a secret mission to sound the young Stuart Prince, as to his willingness to ally himself with the House of Bourbon, by marriage. For such a pretended mission the Count was well suited; sufficiently acquainted with the habits of great people to represent their conversation correctly, and well versed in that half ambiguous tone, affected by diplomatists of inferior grade, he was admirably calculated to play the part a.s.signed him.

To give a greater credence to the mission, it was necessary that the Cardinal York should be also included in the deception; but nothing was ever easier than to make a dupe of his Royal Highness. A number of well-turned compliments from his dear cousins of 'France' some little allusions to the 'long ago' at St. Germains, when the exiled Stuarts lived there, and a note, cleverly imitated, in the Count D'Artois' hand, were quite enough to win the old man's confidence. The next step was to communicate Delia Rocca's arrival to the Cardinal Caraffa, and this Ma.s.soni did with all due secrecy, intimating that the event was one upon which he desired to take the pleasure of his Eminence.

Partly from offended pride, on not being himself sought for by the envoy, and partly to disguise from Ma.s.soni the jealousy he always felt on the score of Cardinal York's superior rank, Caraffa protested that the tidings had no interest for him whatever; that any sentiments he entertained for the young Chevalier were simply such as a sincere pity suggested; that he never heard of a cause so utterly hopeless; that even if powerful allies were willing and ready to sustain his pretensions, the young man's own defects of character would defeat their views; that, from all he could hear--for of himself he owned to know nothing--Gerald was the last man in Europe to lead an enterprise which required great daring and continual resources, and, in fact, none could be his partisan save from a sense of deep compa.s.sion.

The elaborate pains he took to impress all this upon Ma.s.soni convinced the Pere that it was not the real sentiment of his Eminence, and he was not much surprised at a hasty summons to the Cardinal's palace on the evening of the day he had first communicated the news.

'The first mine has been sprung!' muttered Ma.s.soni, as he read the order and prepared to obey it.

The Cardinal was in his study when the Pere arrived, and, continued to pace up and down the room, briefly addressing a few words as Ma.s.soni entered and saluted him.

'The old Cardinal Monga had a saying, that if some work were not found out to employ the Jesuits, they were certain to set all Europe in a flame. Was there not some truth in the remark, Pere Ma.s.soni? Answer me frankly and fairly, for you know the body well!' Such was the speech by which he addressed him.

'Had his Eminence reckoned the times in which Jesuit zeal and wisdom had rescued the world from peril, it would have been a fitter theme for his wisdom.'

'It is not to be denied that they are meddlers, sir,' said the Cardinal haughtily.

'So are the sailors in a storm-tossed vessel. The good Samaritan troubled himself with what, others might have said, had no concern for him.'

'I will not discuss it,' said his Eminence abruptly. 'The world has formed its own vulgar estimate of your order, and I, at least, agree with the majority. He paused for a second or two, and then, with a tone of some irritation, said, 'What is this story Rome is full of, about some Egyptian woman, or a Greek, arrested and confined by a warrant of the Holy Office; they have mingled your name with it, somehow?'

'A grave charge, your Eminence; Satanic possession and witchcraft----'

'Ma.s.soni,' broke in Caraffa, with a malicious twinkle of his dark eye, 'remember, I beseech you, that we are alone. What do you mean, then, by witchcraft?'

'Were I to say to your Eminence that, after a certain interview with you, I had come away, a.s.suring myself that other sentiments were in your heart than those you had avowed to me; that you had but half revealed this, totally ignored that, affected credulity here, disbelief there, my subtlety, whether right or wrong, would resolve itself into a mere common gift--the practised habit of one skilled to decipher motives; but if, while in your presence, standing as I now do here, I could, with an effort of argument or abstraction, open your whole heart before me, and read there as in a book, and, while doing this, place you in circ.u.mstances where your most secret emotions must find vent, so that not a corner nor a nook of your nature should be strange to me, by what name would you call such an influence?'

'What you describe now has never existed, Ma.s.soni. Tricksters and mountebanks have pretended to such power in every age, but they have had no other dupes than the unlettered mult.i.tude.'

'How say you, then, if I be a believer here? What say you, if I have tested this woman's power, and proved it? What say you, if all she has predicted has uniformly come to pa.s.s; not a day, nor a date, nor an hour mistaken! I will give an instance. Of Delia Rocca's mission and its objects here, I had not the very faintest antic.i.p.ation. That the exiled family of France cherished hope enough to speculate on some remote future, I did not dream of suspecting; and yet, through her foretelling, I learned the day he would arrive at Rome, the very hotel he would put up at, the steps he would adopt to obtain an audience of the Chevalier, the attempts he would make to keep his mission a secret from me; nay, to the very dress in which he would present himself, I knew and was prepared for all.'

'All this might be concerted; what more easy than to plan any circ.u.mstance you have detailed, and by imposing on your credulity secure your co-operation?'

'Let me finish, sir. I asked what success would attend his plan, and learned that destiny had yet left this doubtful--that all was yet dependent on the will of one whose mind was still unresolved. I pressed eagerly to learn his name, she refused to tell me, openly avowing that she would thwart his influence, if in her power. I grew angry and even scoffed at her pretended powers, declaring, as you have just suggested, that all she had told me might be nothing beyond a well-arranged scheme.

"For once, then, you shall have a proof," said she, "and never shall it be repeated; fold that sheet of paper there, as a letter, and seal it carefully and well. The name I have alluded to is written within," said she. I started, for the paper contained no writing--not a word, not a syllable--I had scanned it carefully ere I folded it. Of this I can pledge my solemn and sacred word.'

'Well, when you broke the seal,' burst in the Cardinal.

'I have not yet done so,' said the Pere calmly, 'there is the letter, just as I folded and sealed it; from that moment to this it has never quitted my possession. It may be, that, as you would suspect, even this might be sleight-of-hand. It may be, sir, that the paper contains no writing.'

'Let us see,' cried the Cardinal, taking the letter and breaking it open. 'Madonna!' exclaimed he suddenly. 'Look here'; and his finger then tremblingly pointed to the word, 'Caraffa,' traced in small letters and with a very faint ink in the middle of the page.

'And to this you swear, on your soul's safety,' cried Caraffa eagerly.

He bent forward till his lips touched the large golden cross which, as a pectoral, the Cardinal wore, and muttered, 'By this emblem, I swear it.'

'Such influence is demoniacal, none can doubt it; who is this woman, and whence came she?'

'So much of her story as I know is briefly told,' said Ma.s.soni, who related all that he had heard of the Egyptian, concluding with the steps by which he had her arrested and confined in the convent of St. Maria Maggiore, on the Tiber.

'There was an age when such a woman had been sent to the stake,' said Caraffa fiercely. 'Is it a wiser policy that pardons her?'

'Yes; if by her means a good end can be served,' interrupted the Pere; 'if through what she can reveal, errors may be avoided, perils averted, and successes gained; if, in short, Satan can be used as slave, not master.'

'And wherefore should she be opposed to _me_? broke in Caraffa, whose thoughts reverted to what concerned himself personally.

'As a true and faithful priest, as an honoured prince of the Church, you must be her enemy,' said the Pere; and, though the words were spoken in all seeming sincerity, the Cardinal's dark eyes scanned the speaker's face keenly and severely. As if failing, however, to detect any equivocation in his manner, Caraffa addressed himself to another course of thought and said--

'Have you questioned her, then, as to this young man's chances?'

'She will not speak of them,' was the abrupt reply.

'Have they met?'

'Once, and only once; and of the meeting his memory preserves no trace whatever, since it was during his fever, and when his mind was wandering and incoherent.'

'Could I see her, without being known? could I speak with her myself?'

Ma.s.soni shook his head doubtingly, 'No disguise would avail against her craft.'

Caraffa pondered long over his thoughts, and at last said--'I have a strong desire to see her, even though I should not speak to her. What say you, Ma.s.soni?'

'It shall be as pleases your Eminence,' was the meek answer.