"Because I am left alone to weep," said the boy, answering in a soft
voice of vibrating and musical melancholy--"For me, the world is
empty."

An empty world! His dream-impression of universal desolation and
desertion came suddenly back upon the prelate's mind, and a sudden
trembling seized him, though he could discover in himself no cause
for fear. Anxiously he surveyed the strange and solitary little
wayfarer on the threshold of the Cathedral, and while he thus
looked, the boy said wistfully--

"I should have rested here within, but it is closed against me."

"The doors are always locked at night, my child," returned the
Cardinal, recovering from his momentary stupor and bewilderment,
"But I can give you shelter. Will you come with me?"

With a half-questioning, half-smiling look of grateful wonder, the
boy withdrew his hands from their uplifted, supplicating and almost
protesting attitude against the locked Cathedral-door, and moving
out of the porch shadows into the wide glory of the moonlight, he
confronted his interlocutor--

"Will I come with you?" he said--"Nay, but I see you are a Cardinal
of the Church, and it is I should ask 'will you receive me?' You do
not know who I am--nor where I came from, and I, alas! may not tell
you! I am alone; all--all alone,--for no one knows me in the world,-
-I am quite poor and friendless, and have nothing where--with to pay
you for your kindly shelter--I can only bless you!"