Ah! what a sorry figure you Frenchmen will cut at the next Conclave! And so why do you show such blind and foolish hatred of those Jesuits, who, politically, are your friends?
Why don't you employ their intelligent zeal, which is ready to serve you, so that you may assure yourselves the help of the next, the coming pope?
It is necessary for you that he should be on your side, that he should continue the work of Leo XIII, which is so badly judged and so much opposed, but which cares little for the petty results of to-day, since its purpose lies in the future, in the union of all the nations under their holy mother the Church.

Tell Cardinal Bergerot, tell him plainly that he ought to be with us, that he ought to work for his country by working for us.

The coming pope, why the whole question lies in that, and woe to France if in him she does not find a continuator of Leo XIII!" Nani had again risen, and this time he was going off.

Never before had he unbosomed himself at such length.

But most assuredly he had only said what he desired to say, for a purpose that he alone knew of, and in a firm, gentle, and deliberate voice by which one could tell that each word had been weighed and determined beforehand.