Calumny culminated with a concoction of the calvous Crowe's. It was admitted that the high-water mark was reached. Hitherto, the very virulence of the assaults had engendered a certain amount of unexpressed sympathy among stock-brokers, naval, Varsity, and other thoughtful men. "Our Representative" had called at Archbishop's House, had interviewed Monsignor this and Monsignor Canon that, inviting the candid expression of opinion on the subject of Pontifical Infallibility, as viewed in the fight of recent journalistic enterprize and research. The distinction between infallibility and impeccability had been impressed upon "Our Representative": but that was all. No defence was offered either by the Pope or by His poor benighted papists. Then, by slow degrees, the elect, the intelligent, began to persuade themselves that, after all, the early misdemeanours of George Arthur Rose, if they were as stated, were altogether apart from the pontifical acts of Hadrian the Seventh. The latter distinctly were admired throughout the world: the former--well, they were a pity. So, public opinion was. And then came Mrs. Crowe. She had a song to sing (oh!) of secret debauchery on the part of Hadrian the Seventh. She was concise in the matter of names and dates and places. She alleged that, at dusk on a certain evening in September, the 29th, she herself had seen the Pope, disguised in black like an ordinary priest, taking tea--He Who never ate in public--with two nameless women (far too beautiful to be respectable in her opinion) in a house on Via Morino. She was in the street. His so-called Holiness and His female companions were by the lighted window. Presently the blinds were closed; and she knew not what went on behind them. She watched the house for an hour and a half; and then the Pope came out muffling His face, (a thing He never at any other time had been known to do, but necessary on this occasion to complete His disguise). He walked away; and she followed Him: saw Him stop at the Attendolo Palace, and (finally) enter the Vatican saluted by the guards at the bronze gates. She related the incident with such particularity and in such a manner, that a great many people fancied that they thoroughly understood. In a sort of way the good lady did more than most people have done towards effecting the Reunion of Christendom: for _The Cliff_ deliriously discursed (from Revelations) of a great red dragon and seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns upon his heads, and of a beast rising out of the sea and seven heads and ten horns and ten crowns on his horns; and _The Catholic Hour_ simultaneously washed its hands in innocency advertizing unctuous rectitude in a leading article entitled "The Third Borgia." CHAPTER XIX