Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/81

70 Looking at him, it was hard to believe that the race of prince-bishops had died out, for he was a very princely person. He was not like St. Philip Neri, he was not like Reginald de la Pole, he was not like Acacius, or François Xavier, or the great martyred man who looked across to England with those sublime words—"Terram Anglicæ video, et favente Domino terram intrabo, sciens tamen certissimè quod mihi immineat passio"—and kept his oath, and went. Monsignore was not like any of these; but he was excessively like Cardinal Bembo, he was excessivelj like Cardinal Mazarin.

Victor Vane bowed before him with the grace of a courtier and the reverence of a son of the Church; with the Paris literati he was a Cartesian, with the Germans a Spinozian, with the English men of science a Rationalist, a Pantheist, a Monotheist, or a Darwinian, with the Mountain an Atheist, as best suited; but with the Monsignori he was always deferential to the Faith. They met as those who have often met for the advancement of mutual aims, but they met also as those who have to play a delicate game with each other, in which the cards must be studiously concealed. Both were perfect diplomatists, The game opened gracefully, courteously, cautiously, with a little trifling on either