But, as his modest garb and his dusty shoes indicated a man of the people rather than a great painter in embryo, the cardinal's people and the cardinal himself naturally expected to see him kneel, which he did not do, and his neglect scandalized them terribly. The cardinal was the first to notice it, and as his bearers were about to pass through the gate, he made a sign with his eyebrows which was instantly read by his physician, who rode always beside him, and was ordered to keep his eyes always fixed upon those of his eminence. The doctor had just enough wit to understand from the cardinal's expression that he wished to manifest some desire or other; so he ordered a halt, and advised Abbé Ninfo, his eminence's secretary, the same who had opened the gate with his own hand, and with a key taken from his own pocket. The abbé hastened forward, as he had done before, and placed his body in front of the door of the chair in such way as to conceal it from the rest of the procession. Thereupon there took place between his eminence and him a mysterious dialogue, so mysterious that no one could say whether his eminence made himself understood by speech, or simply by the play of his features. Ordinarily the paralytic dignitary uttered nothing more than unintelligible grunts, which became a frightful roar when he was angry; but Abbé Ninfo understood those grunts so well, when assisted by his eminence's expressive glance and his intimate knowledge of his character and designs, that he interpreted his master's wishes and ordered them executed with an intelligence, a rapidity and a careful attention to details which bordered on the marvellous. Indeed it seemed altogether too supernatural to be accepted as genuine by the other subordinate priests, and they declared that his eminence had retained the power of speech, but that by virtue of the most profound diplomacy, he preferred not to use that power except with Abbé Ninfo. Doctor Recuperati asserted however that his eminence's tongue was paralyzed as completely as his arms and legs, and that the only living portions of his being were the organs of the brain and of the digestion. "With those," he said, "a man may live to be a hundred years old, aye, and shake the world, as Jupiter shook Olympus, simply by contracting his eyebrow."