ignorant mispresentations of fact, in a column and three-quarters of print.--Well?" He inquired, with a full straight gaze at the attendant cardinal. "What are You going to do now?" "We will ponder the matter which Your Eminency has submitted to Us; and at a convenient time We will declare Our pleasure. The paper may be left with Us. Your Eminency has permission to retire." Ragna strode towards the door. At the threshold, he turned and bayed, "Abdicate!" "No: We will not abdicate," said Hadrian. The Secretary-of-State rushed away. As he went swishing, snarling at all and sundry, through the antechamber where the gentlemen were in waiting, Sir Iulo suddenly shot-out his arms straight and rectangularly level with his shoulders, swung-up a stiff right leg in a verisimilar fashion, rigidly sank on his left toes till he sat on his left heel, recovered his first position with a jerk, changed legs and repeated the performance with the right. It was done in a second of time; and his white teeth glittered in a grin as his muscles relaxed. There are few more nerve-shattering spectacles than this of a lithe and graceful young gentleman in scarlet behaving, without any warning whatever, exactly like a monkey on a stick, manifesting the same startling descendent and ascendent angularity, the same imperturbable inevitable intolerable agility. Cardinal Ragna denounced him as a devil where he stood; and swirled away in a vermilion billow of watered-silk. As soon as He was left alone, Hadrian made the very firmest possible act of will determining neither to bend nor to break. This done, He ate His supper with careful deliberation; sent-away the tray; and ordered a large pot-full of black coffee. Then He locked all doors and allowed Himself a period of disintegration preparatory to redintegration, a period of slackness preparatory to intensification. Now He severely suffered. He read the article on the _Strange Career of the Pope_ again and again, till His head swam with the horror of it. This was the worst thing which ever had happened to Him. His previous experience of newspaper libels was as nothing in comparison. All through the bitter bitter years of His struggle for life, He had known Himself for a fighter. As a fighter, He had expected blows in return for those which He gave. And, when all was said and done, his fighting had not been to Him a source of unmitigated pain. For one thing, He had had pleasure in knowing that He scrupulously fought unscrupulous foes, that He fought a losing battle, that he fought a million times His weight, that He fought bare-handed against armed champions all the time. That knowledge it was--the knowledge that He had contended (not as a hero but) as heroes have contended--which alone had upheld him. And now---- But this---- It depicted Him as simply contemptible. Inspection of the image of Himself, which the _Catholic Hour_ with such ferocious flocculence delineated, brought Him to the verge of physical nausea.