his legs, struck the arm of his chair, and burst into a laugh so merry
and so prolonged that the earl, perforce, joined him.

"It's funny," said the latter, finally, "but, all the same, it's
serious."

"Oh, Love!" exclaimed the cardinal; "you little naked boy with wings and
a bow! You give us more trouble than all the rest of the heathen deities
combined--you fly about so--you appear in such strange places--you
compel mortals to do such remarkable things--you debauch my pigeons,
and, when the ill is done, you send your victims to me, or another
priest, and ask for absolution, so that they may begin all over again."

"Do I get the cup?" asked the earl, with some impatience.

"My lord," said the cardinal, "if the cup were mine, I have a fancy that
I would give it to you, with my blessing and my best wishes; but when
you ask me to sell it to you, it is as though you asked your queen to
sell you the Kohinoor. She dare not, if she could. She could not, if she
dare. Both the diamond and the cup were, doubtless, stolen. The diamond
was taken in this century; the cup was looted so long ago that no one
knows. A sad attribute of crime is that time softens it. There is a
mental statute of limitations that converts possession into ownership.
'We stole the Kohinoor so long ago,' says the Englishman, 'that we own
it now.' So it is with the cup. Where did it come from? It is doubtless
Byzantine, but where did its maker live; in Byzantium or here, in
Venice? We used to kidnap Oriental artists in the good old days when art
was a religion. This cup was made by one whom God befriended; by a brain
steeped in the love of the beautiful; by a hand so cunning that when it
died art languished; by a power so compelling that the treasuries of the