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Updated: May 14, 2025
"'I am not yet sure. Cardinal Malpas tells me that Felsenburgh gave his provisional consent on the previous day." "Very good. That is all you know, then?" "'I was called up an hour ago by Cardinal Ruspoli again. He tells me that he fears a riot in Florence; it will be the first of many revolutions, he says." "Does he ask for anything?" "'Only for directions."
That might conceivably be genuine: he turned it over and saw the name of a New York firm on the back. Then he turned to the third. This presented a long, clean-shaven face with pince-nez, undeniably clever, but scarcely strong: and Felsenburgh was obviously a strong man.
Yet he recognised its inevitability. The fact was announced to him as indisputable; it was to be; there was nothing to be said. But it was as if one more gulf had opened, and he stared into it with a dull, sick horror, incapable of expression. The Cardinal first broke the silence. "Father Franklin," he said, "I have seen to-day a picture of Felsenburgh. Do you know whom I at first took it for?"
It had all been done in a few minutes by the dying man's bedside. The two old men had insisted. The German bad even recurred once more to the strange resemblance between Percy and Julian Felsenburgh, and had murmured his old half-heard remarks about the antithesis, and the Finger of God; and Percy, marvelling at his superstition, had accepted, and the election was recorded.
He says that any religion is better than none, but that, for himself, he just can't believe any longer. Now what does all that mean?... I tell you something is going to happen. God knows what! And I can't get Felsenburgh out of my head.... Father Franklin " "Yes?" "Have you noticed how few great men we've got? It's not like fifty years ago, or even thirty.
At least, so I think.... Father, who in God's name is Felsenburgh?" Percy was so startled at the sudden introduction of this name again, that he stared a moment without speaking. Outside, the summer night was very still. There was a faint vibration now and again from the underground track that ran twenty yards from the house where they sat; but the streets were quiet enough round the Cathedral.
It was possible to hate Felsenburgh, and to fear him; but never to be amused at him. But plainly the supreme pleasure of the writer was to trace the analogy between his hero and nature. In both there was the same apparent contradictoriness the combination of utter tenderness and utter ruthlessness.
For man had learned at last that the race was all and self was nothing; the cell had discovered the unity of the body; even, the greatest thinkers declared, the consciousness of the individual had yielded the title of Personality to the corporate mass of man and the restlessness of the unit had sunk into the peace of a common Humanity, for nothing but this could explain the cessation of party strife and national competition and this, above all, had been the work of Felsenburgh.
It was an extraordinary likeness the same young face and white hair. Mabel, of course, had not noticed it; for she had only seen Felsenburgh at a great distance; and he himself had soon been reassured. And as for his mother it was terrible enough; if it had not been for Mabel there would have been violence done last night. How collected and reasonable she had been!
Felsenburgh, it seemed, had employed none of those methods common in modern politics. He controlled no newspapers, vituperated nobody, championed nobody: he had no picked underlings; he used no bribes; there were no monstrous crimes alleged against him. It seemed rather as if his originality lay in his clean hands and his stainless past that, and his magnetic character.
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