The boy had
entered noiselessly and stood for a moment glancing from one priest
of the Church to the other. A faint smile was on his face,--his blue
eyes were full of light.
"Did you call me, my lord Cardinal?" he asked.
The Cardinal looked up.
"No, my child!"
"I thought I heard you. If you should need me, I am close at hand."
He went away as quietly as he had entered; and the same silence
followed his departure as before,--a silence which was only
disturbed by the occasional solemn and sweet vibrations of the
distant music from the studio.
VIII.
"A strange lad!" said Abbe Vergniaud, abruptly.
"Strange? In what way do you find him so?" asked the Cardinal with a
touch of anxiety.
The Abbe knitted his brows perplexedly, and took a short turn up and
down the room. Then he laughed.
"Upon my word, I cannot tell you!" he declared, with one of those
inimitable gestures common to Frenchmen, a gesture which may mean
anything or nothing,--"But he speaks too well, and, surely, thinks
too much for his years. Is there nothing further to tell of him save
what you have already said? Nothing that you know of him, beyond the
plain bare fact of having found him weeping alone outside the doors
of the Cathedral?"
"Nothing indeed!" replied the Cardinal bewildered.
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