The cardinal patiently waited in the shadow of a taxus-bush until the
street become for a moment empty and solitary. Then he hastened to a
side-door of the building, and, sure of being unobserved, entered.
A deep and quiet silence pervaded these long and deserted
cloister-passages. It seemed as if a death-veil lay upon the whole
building--as if it were depopulated, desolated. Nowhere the least trace
of that busy, stirring life, usually prevailing in these corridors--no
longer those bands of scholars that formerly peopled these passages--the
doors of the great school-room open, the benches unoccupied, the
lecturer's chair, from which the pious fathers formerly with such subtle
wisdom explained and defended their dangerous doctrines, these also are
desolate. The reign of the Jesuits was over; Ganganelli had thrust
them from the throne, and they cursed him as their murderer! He had
suppressed their sacred order, he had commanded them to lay aside their
peculiar costume and adopt that of other monkish orders, or the usual
dress of abbes. But from their property he had not been able to expel
them in this college Il Jesu--within their cloisters his power had
not been able to penetrate. There they remained, what they had been,
the holy fathers of Jesus, the pious defenders of craft and Christian
deception, the cunning advocates of regicide, the proud servants of the
only salvation-dispensing Church!--there, with rage in their hearts,
they meditated plans of vengeance against this criminal pope who had
condemned them to a living death; who, like a wicked magician, had
changed their sacred college into an open grave! He had killed them, and
he, should he nevertheless live?
With these fatal questions did the holy fathers occupy themselves,
reflecting upon them in their gloomy leisure, and in low whisperings
consulting with their prior. And in such secret consultation did
Cardinal Francesco Albani find the prior with his confidant in the
refectorium.
"Do not let me disturb you," he said laughing; "I see by your faces you
are engaged in conversation upon the subject in which I yesterday took a
part. That is very well--we can resume it where we yesterday broke off,
and again knot the threads which I yesterday so violently rent. With
which knot shall we begin?"
The eyes of the pious Jesuit father flashed with joy. Francesco Albani
was inclined to favor their plans and wishes; they saw that in his
cunning smile, in his return to them.
"We were speaking of the sacred and important duty you will have to
perform to-morrow, your eminence," said the prior, with a winning smile.
"Ah, yes, I remember," said the cardinal, with apparent indifference.
"We spoke of the to-morrow's communion of his holiness the pope."
"And of the fact that you, your eminence, would to-morrow have to
discharge the important duty of pouring the sacred wine into the golden
chalice of the vicegerent of God," said the prior.