The Prelate was a man of some forty-five years, with boldly marked features, and sharp fiery eyes, indicating an incessantly active mind. The light fell mildly on his tonsured crown, encircled by brown hair, streaked with gray, and his bold forehead and compressed lip. His form broad in the shoulders, muscular in the chest, and slightly inclined to corpulence, was clad in a long robe of dark purple, reaching from his throat to his feet. There was a cross on his right breast and a diamond ring on the little finger of his left-hand. Thus alone, in his most private room--the labors of the day accomplished and the world shut out--the Prelate was absorbed in the mazes of a delightful reverie. He fixed his eyes upon a picture which hung over the mantle, on the left. It was a portrait of Cardinal Dubois, who in the days of the Regency, trailed his Red Hat in the mire of nameless debaucheries. "Fool!" muttered the Prelate, "he had not even sense to hide his vices, under the thinnest vail of decency." He turned his eyes to a portrait which hung over the mantle on the right. "There was a man!" he muttered, and a smile shot over his face. The portrait was that of Cardinal Richelieu who butchered the Huguenots in France, while he was supplying armies to aid the Protestants of Germany. Richelieu, one of those Politicians who seem to regard the Church simply as a machine for the advancement of their personal ambition,--the cross as a glittering bauble, only designed to dazzle the eyes of the masses,--the seamless Cloak of the Redeemer, as a cloak intended to cover outrages the most atrocious, which are done in the name of God. "He was a man!" repeated the Prelate. "He moulded the men and events of his time, and,----" he stopped. He smiled. "Why cannot I mould to my own purposes, the men and events of my time, using the Church as a convenient engine?" Some thought like this seemed to flit over his mind. Having attentively turned his gaze from Cardinal Dubois to Cardinal Richelieu, the Prelate at length fixed his eyes upon a marble bust, which stood in the center of the mantle. And his lips moved, and his eyes flashed, and his right hand waved slowly to and fro, before his face, as though he saw a glorious future, drawn in the air, by a prophetic pencil. The marble bust upon which he gazed, was the bust of one, who from the very lowest walk in life had risen to be Pope: and one of the strongest, sternest Popes that ever held the scepter of the Vatican. "It can be won," ejaculated the Prelate, "and the means lie here," he placed his hand upon a Map which lay on the table. It was a map of the American Continent. "I came up stairs without ceremony," said a calm even voice; "your Grace's servant informed me, that you expected me."