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Shortly after assuming the mastership of his first school he had obtained an introduction to the Bishop of a diocese far from his native county, who had looked upon him as a promising young man and taken him in hand. He was now in the second year of his residence at the theological college of the cathedral-town, and would soon be presented for ordination.
"How odd it is that his characters talk so well in his books, and that he is such a stick!" thought Mrs. Selldon. "I suppose it's the effect of cathedral-town atmosphere," reflected the author. "I suppose he is eaten up with conceit and won't trouble himself to talk to me," thought the hostess. By the time the fish had been removed they had arrived at a state of mutual contempt.
Nothing could have been simpler than his life and actions since he left his own Cathedral-town, he had prayed for a sick child, he had sympathised with a sorry sinner, that was all. And such deeds as these were commanded by Christ. Yet the Head of the Church for these same things viewed him with wrath and suspicion!
And now we reach Freetown proper, which may be called Cathedral-Town or Jail-Town. At a distance the 'Liverpool' or 'London of West Africa, as the lieges wildly entitle it, is not unpicturesque; but the style of beauty is that of a baronial castle on the Rhine with an unpensioned proprietor, ruinous and tumbledown.
I knew him at once for an Englishman; his Russian uniform only accented the cathedral-town, small public-school atmosphere of his appearance. He was exactly what I had expected. He was not, however, alone, and that surprised me.
The saintly life and noble deeds of Felix Bonpre had reached him from time to time through various rumours repeated by different priests and dignitaries of the Church, who had travelled as far as the distant little Cathedral-town embowered among towering pines and elm trees, where the Cardinal had his abiding seat of duty; and he had been anxious to meet the man who in these days of fastidious feeding and luxurious living, had managed to gain such a holy reputation as to be almost canonized in some folks' estimation before he was dead.
Proceeding still farther northward from the charming vale of Wharfe, we come to the valley of the Ure, which flows into the Ouse, a main tributary of the Humber, and to the famous cathedral-town of Ripon. This is a place of venerable antiquity, for it has been over twelve centuries since a band of Scotch monks came from Melrose to establish a monastery on the sloping headland above the Ure.
Cardinal Felix Bonpre, a man living far away in an obscure cathedral-town of France, where he had become renowned for good works and saintly living, had now, after many years, come out of his long voluntary retirement, and had performed a miracle! "And very well done too!" murmured Monsignor Gherardi, smiling to himself, "Well prepared, well thought out, and successfully accomplished!
With smiling and resigned patience the Cardinal obeyed not so much the command of his medical attendant, as the anxious desire of his people, and thereupon departed from his own Cathedral-town on a tour of several months, during which time he inwardly resolved to try and probe for himself the truth of how the world was going, whether on the downward road to destruction and death, or up the high ascents of progress and life.
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