"Eh well," he said. "You shall go if you wish it."



(III)

There was only a very small group of people collected to see the
second envoy leave for Berlin. The hour and place of starting had
been kept secret, on purpose to avoid a crowd; and beyond three
or four from the English College, with half a dozen private
friends of the Cardinal, a few servants, and perhaps a dozen
passers-by who had collected below in curiosity at seeing a
racing-volor attached to one of the disused flying stages on the
hill behind the Vatican--no one else, in the crowds that swarmed
now in the streets and squares of Rome, was even certain that an
envoy was going, still less of his identity.

Monsignor found himself, ten minutes before the start,
standing alone on the alighting-stage, while the Cardinal
still talked below.

As he stood there, now looking out over the city, where beneath
the still luminous sky the lights were already beginning to
kindle, and where in one or two of the larger squares he could
make out the great crowds moving to and fro--now staring at the
long and polished sides of the racing boat that swayed light as a
flower with the buoyancy of the inrushing gas--as he saw all
these things with his outward eyes, he was trying to understand
something of the new impulses and thoughts that surged through
him. He could have given little or no account of the reasons why