Only Cardinal Bernis had remained behind, and to him Ganganelli, giving
him his hand, and drawing a deep breath, said: "What a mass of false and hypocritical phrases we have again been
obliged to swallow! These cardinals have the impudence to speak to me of
their love and veneration; they do not hesitate so to lie with the same
lips which to-day have already pronounced blessings and pious words of
edification! But let us forget these hypocrites. Business is over, and
it is kind of you to come and chat with me for one little hour. You know
I love you very much, my good friend Bernis, although you do pay homage
to the heathen divinities, and, as a real renegade, have constituted
yourself a priest of the muses."
"Ah, you speak of my youthful sins," said the cardinal, smiling. "They
are long since past, and sleep with my youthful happiness."
"That must be a wide bed which enables them all to find place side by
side," responded Ganganelli, laughing, and holding up his forefinger
threateningly to the cardinal.
"But what is that you are drawing from your breast-pocket with such an
important air?"
"A letter from the Marquise de Pompadour, holy father," seriously
replied the cardinal--"a letter in which I am commanded to communicate
to you, the father of Christendom, the acquiescence of France in your
proposed abolition of the order of the Jesuits. Here is a private letter
addressed to me by the marquise, and here the official letter signed by
King Louis, which is destined for your holiness."
The pope took the papers, and while he was reading them his face turned
deadly pale, and a dark cloud gathered upon his brow.
"France also acquiesces," said he, when he had finished the reading.
"How is it, then--were you not yourself against the abolition of the
order, and were you not in accordance with the Spanish ambassador, your
friend of many years?"
"This friendship of many years is to-day destroyed by a fish, and drives
us a helpless wreck upon the wildly-rolling waves," said the cardinal,
shrugging his shoulders.
Ganganelli paid no attention to him. Serious and thoughtful, he walked
up and down the room, while his heavenward-directed eye seemed to
address a great and all-important question to the Being there above,
which received no answer.
"I clearly see how it will be," finally murmured the pope, as if talking
to himself. "I shall complete the work I have begun--it is God Himself
who has opened the way for it, but this way will at the same time lead
me to my grave."
"What dark thoughts are these?" said Bernis, approaching him. "This
bold and high-hearted resolution will not bring you death, but fame and
immortality."
"It will at least lead me to immortality," said the pope, with a faint
smile. "The dead are all immortal. But think not so little of me as to
suppose I would now timidly shrink from doing that which I have once
recognized as right and necessary. Only there are necessities of a very
painful and dreadful kind. Such a necessity is war. And is it not a war
that I commence, and does it not involve the destruction of all those
thousands who call themselves the followers of Loyola, and belong to the
Society of Jesus? Ah, believe me, this Society of Jesus is a hydra, and
we shall never succeed in entirely extirpating it. I may now separate my
own head from my body; but a day will come when the head of this hydra
will have grown again, and when it will rise from the dead with renewed
vitality, while I shall be mouldering in my grave. Say not, therefore,
that I know not how to destroy them, and if you do say it, at least add
that I lacked not the will, but that I gave for it my own life."