Ragna's massive prognathous jaw, the colour of porphyry, bulged in emitting a suggestion. As the College seemed unlikely to come to any agreement, why not elect an old man, who, in the course of nature, only could live a year or two, and whose demise would necessitate another Conclave at an early date? He unselfishly would designate Orezzo. There, for example, was a cardinal to whom the paparchy was by way of being owed since 1878, when he actually had lost it to Leo. Let Orezzo now be elected; and, during his brief pontificature, let the Most Eminent Lords devote their energies towards arrangements for giving him a generous glorious and enlightened successor, who, in this reactionary age, was experienced in all the devious subtilties of secular diplomacy, and who was under sixty-five years old. The Sacred College rejected the bare idea. What! Elect a Pope who, out of sheer personal antipathy, would make it his business to annul the policy of Leo? What! elect a Pope who had spent more than a quarter of a century in composing and reciting litanies of complaints against Leo's management of the Church? What! Elect a Pope who had proved himself to be purely barbarian by the ferocity of his ritual tapping on the forehead of the dead Leo? Di meliora!! Ragna adroitly disclaimed a personal predilection for Orezzo. That idea was dismissed. "Then what?" was the general question. "The Way of Compromise," cooed Vincenzo-Vagellaio. There was another capitular session in the Xystine Chapel. By means of the snips of parchment, the lead balls, the huge violet burse, nine cardinals were chosen by lot and appointed as Cardinal-Compromissaries. Singularly enough they were Courtleigh, Mundo, Fiamma, Grace, Ferraio, Saviolli, Nefski, Gentilotto, and della Volta. The College executed a compromise in writing, no one contradicting or opposing it, whereby these nine were invested with absolute power and faculty to make provision of a pastor for the Holy Roman Church. The Compromissaries conferred. To begin with, they mutually protested that they would not be understood to give their consent by all sorts of words or expressions which might fall from them in the heat of debate, unless they expressly set the same down in writing. Then, they looked whole inquisitions one at another, saying nothing. And, after half-an-hour they adjourned till the morrow: gathered up their trains; and swept each to his separate cell. Stupid conclavists tried to read their expressions. As well try to find out his thoughts from the sole of his unworn shoe as from the face of a cardinal. The cardinalitial mask is as superior (in impenetrable pachydermatosity) to that of the proverbial public-schoolboy, as is the cuticle of a crocodile to that of _pulex irritans_.