Cheiral was not a very clever man. He took few things into consideration, and always acted on reasons so futile that they were difficult to unravel. And so it was thought, that, being still young, he was swayed by personal motives. At the present time he had just finished reading a book by M. Imbert de Saint-Amand on the Tuileries during the second Empire; the splendour of the brilliant court had particularly taken his fancy, and the book had fired him with the desire to live, like the Duc de Morny, a life in which politics should be combined with pleasure and power of every description. He looked at Madame Worms-Clavelin in a manner the significance of which she thoroughly comprehended as she sat there silent with lowered gaze. “My uncle,” went on Cheiral, “gives me a free hand in this matter, which does not interest him at all. I can set about it in two ways. I can propose without further delay the four candidates accepted by the Holy Father, or I can tell the Nuncio that things will remain at a standstill until the Holy See has approved of six candidates. I have not yet made up my mind, but should be delighted to talk the matter over with you. Shall I expect you to-morrow afternoon at five o’clock, and wait for you in a closed carriage at the end of the Rue Vigny by the gates of the Park Monceau?” “There’s not much risk in that,” thought Madame Worms-Clavelin, her only reply a slight quivering of her downcast lids. CHAPTER XVIII Madame de Bonmont had no difficulty in bringing Raoul Marcien and M. l’Abbé Guitrel together at her house. The meeting was all that could be desired, for on his part M. l’Abbé Guitrel was full of unction, and Raoul, being a society man, knew what was due to the Church. “Monsieur l’Abbé,” he said, “I come of a family of priests and soldiers. I have been a soldier myself, and that means----” He did not finish his sentence, for M. Guitrel held out his hand with a smile, saying: “We may call it the alliance of the sword and the aspersorium.” Then immediately resuming his priestly gravity: “And that is the most natural and the best of all alliances. We priests are soldiers too, and as far as I am concerned I am very fond of the army.” Madame de Bonmont gazed with sympathetic eyes at the Abbé, who continued: “In the diocese to which I belong we have started clubs, where the soldiers can read good books as they smoke their cigars. The work is under the patronage of Monseigneur Charlot, and is both flourishing and useful. Let us not be unjust toward the age in which we live; if it contains much evil it also holds much that is good. We are engaged in a great fight, and that is, perhaps, to be preferred to the lukewarm state of those whom a great Christian poet has described as being shut out from both Heaven and Hell.”