Private conferences occupied time: candles burned late into the night. Violet silk robes sussurated between violet serge curtains everywhere. There were colloquies, hints, exhortations, arguments, promises, promises dictated, suggested, given. Ragna took the opinion of his friends concerning a commodious pontifical name. Vivole offered him "Formosus the Second" and a pinch of Capuchin snuff out of the pages of his breviary: but Berstein preferred "Aloysius the First." The Secretary of State would bear both in mind. Cohesion in clots began. The French, Germans, Spaniards, and Erse, already were united in four groups. What the leader of each group would do, the nine, the four, the three, and the two would do. By demonstrating that cardinal-deacons occasionally were raised to Titles, or Suburban sees, by Popes Whom they had elected, Cardinal-Archdeacon Macca collected a little diaconal fraction of four, himself, Pietratti, Sega, and Pepato. Ten Italians, viz. Conella, Manco, di Petra, Ferita, Creta, Cassia, Gennaio, di Bonti, Sarda, Bosso, agreed to vote together. Mundo refused to join the Spaniards; and Nefski, the Germans, on account of sundry events in Poland. Ferraio, Archbishop of Milan, would stick to Fiamma under all circumstances, because they both had been raised to the cardinalature together. Saviolli threw in his lot with the Keltic and American cardinals. Della Volta was in sympathy with Saviolli and his friends. Del Drudo delivered himself of the cryptic sentence that one who had been a major-domo ought to know a fresh egg from a stale one. And Cardinal-Vicar Respiro, and Riciso, Archbishop of Turin, agreed with del Drudo. So in the morning the third capitular assembly revealed an extraordinary state of affairs. Orezzo lost all his supporters but four, viz. Moccolo, Agnello, Anziano, Portolano. Serafino-Vagellaio lost all votes except his brother's. Gentilotto lost all but three, viz. Fiamma, Zafferano, Mantenuti. Fiamma retained his loyal eleven. And Ragna began to score. First, he kept Orezzo and Serafino-Vagellaio, the Benedictine, the Capuchin, the Jesuit, and the three Spaniards. The nine French (for a wonder) remained constant to him for two consecutive days. So did the two Erse: indeed O'Tuohy, who as a student had vowed that he never would look a woman in the face, (and kept his vow,) was as persistent as he had been when Leo XIII. had tried to force him into the primacy of Eblana in the teeth of electors who rejected him. The four Germans, the four deacons, and the decade of Italians also joined Ragna, whose tally went in jumps (so to speak) from two, to five, and eight, and seventeen, and nineteen, and twenty-three, and twenty-seven, and thirty-seven----