three was Senior Chancellor's Medallist, and seven years later, sent
to Rome was quickly received into the Vatican household. It was
recognized that I had a future: both gifts and graces; piety; a
versatile tongue; a powerful voice; some learning; could dine, I
could look august; above all, I knew my man and could talk him over.
My great day came when, one morning, in St. Gregory the Great on
Mount Coelius, I was consecrated Bishop Coadjutor to his Eminence
the Archbishop of Westminster. Now I was on the heights. My life
during the next ten years was a life of bustling action--and was led
always with one unselfish object. No man ever spoke a greater number
of words than I, Hogarth. I have breakfasted with the Prime
Minister, lunched with a President of the Conference, and dined with
the Bishop of London: between the three meals I have written a
hundred letters and pitched into ten cabs. Such a life is very
exhilarating, in comparison, for example, with quarrying. Oh, my God
what am I fallen! Most of that time I was running over Europe: from
Madrid to Vienna, from Rouen to Rome. It happened that the
Archbishop of Paris was organizing a scheme of Church-workhouses in
France, in the absence of municipal ones, such as we have here....
Well, it was a grand thing, but was falling through for lack of
funds: so I, on my way to Rome, undertook the mission to plead the
cause before his Holiness, and succeeded to this extent that, on my
return, I had with me a casket from the good old man containing
seven diamonds, which I might either dispose of personally, or hand
over to the Paris fund. Now, it was during my stay at Rome that that
series of events, culminating in the Jewish exodus from Europe,
occurred; and on my journey home I was seized with the mighty
thought that, since many of the Jews were perishing of want, _that_
was the moment to reach their spirit through the body, and add their
race to the trophies of the Church. Was it not a thought? You