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Updated: June 16, 2025
Cardinal Bonpre, greatly moved by the whole unprecedented scene, placed himself in front of Angela as a shield and defence from the crowd; but before he had time to consider how he should best pilot her through the pushing and scrambling throng, a way was made for him by Manuel, who, with a quiet step and unruffled bearing, walked through the thickest centre of the crowd, which parted easily on either side of him, as though commanded to do so by some unheard but absolute authority.
As the most brilliant diamond will look like common glass on the rough red hand of a cook, while common glass will simulate the richness of the real gem on the delicate white finger of a daintily-bred woman, so the emblem of salvation seemed a mere bauble and toy on the breast of the Archbishop, while it assumed its most reverent and sacred aspect as worn by Felix Bonpre.
She listened with an impassive countenance while Babette poured out her story of the great Cardinal, the Cardinal Felix Bonpre, whom people said was a saint, -how he had come unexpectedly to stay two nights at the Hotel Poitiers, how "petite maman" had declared he was so good that even angels might visit him, how kind and gentle and grand he seemed, "Yes," said Babette somewhat eagerly, "there was no doubt that he LOOKED good, and we have told him all about Fabien and he has promised to bless him and ask Our Lord to cure his lameness."
Cardinal Bonpre, always observant, noticed his action. "You will not leave the flowers there?" he queried. "No. The picture is a sacred thing! it is an almost living Christ! -in whom Varillo does not believe!" The Cardinal lifted his eyes protestingly. "Yet you let the child marry him?" Sovrani passed one hand wearily across his brows.
Cardinal Bonpre, as I said before, is in the way and unless he can account fully and frankly for his strange companionship with a mere child-wanderer picked out of the streets, he will lose his diocese. If he persists in denying all knowledge of the boy's origin he will lose his Cardinal's hat. There is nothing more to be said! But there is one remedy for all this mischief and it rests with YOU!"
The air, perfumed with incense-odours, seemed weighted with the memory of prayers and devotional silences, -and in the midst of it all, surrounded by the defaced and crumbling emblems of life and death, and the equally decaying symbols of immortality, with the splendours of the sinking sun shedding roseate haloes about him, walked one for whom eternal truths outweighed all temporal seemings, Cardinal Felix Bonpre, known favourably, and sometimes alluded to jestingly at the Vatican, as "Our good Saint Felix."
No time to lose Cardinal Bonpre must leave Rome at nightfall." Leisurely he crossed the road, and walking with as slow a step as the priest he had noticed, came opposite to him face to face.
"I do not believe it," said Varillo indifferently, "The days of miracles are past. And from what I know, and from what Angela has told me of her uncle, Cardinal Bonpre, he would never lend himself to such nonsense." "Well, I only tell you what is just now the talk at the Vatican," said Sylvie, "Your worthy uncle-in-law that is to be, may be Pope yet! Have you heard from Angela?" "Every day.
Cardinal Felix Bonpre sat alone in the largest and loneliest room of the large and lonely suite of rooms allotted to him in the Palazzo Sovrani, alone at a massive writing table near the window, his head resting on one hand, and his whole figure expressive of the most profound dejection.
This sorrowful foreboding had for a long time preyed upon him, physically as well as mentally; always thin, he had grown thinner and more careworn, till at the beginning of the year his health had threatened to break down altogether. Cardinal Bonpre must travel, he said, and seek rest and minddistraction in the contemplation of new and varying scenes.
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