Little
did the austere Abbess, who was the chief mourner at these
obsequies, guess that the actor Miraudin, whose grave had been
hastily dug in Rome, had also a right to be laid in the same marble
vault;--proud and cold and stern as her heart had grown through long
years of pain and disappointment, it is possible that had she known
this, her sufferings might have been still more poignant. But the
secret had died with the dead so far as the world went;--there
remained but the Eternal Record on which the bond of brotherhood was
inscribed,--and in that Eternal Record some of us do our best not to
believe, notwithstanding the universal secret dread that we shall
all be confronted with it at last.
Meanwhile, events were moving rapidly, and the net of difficult
circumstance was weaving itself round the good Cardinal Bonpre in a
manner that was strangely perplexing to his clear and just mind. He
had received a letter from Monsignor Moretti, worded in curtly civil
terms, to the effect that as the Cardinal's miracle of healing had
been performed in France, he, as on Vatican service in Paris, found
it his duty to enquire thoroughly into all the details. For this
cause, he, Monsignor Moretti, trusted it would suit the Cardinal's
convenience to remain in Rome till the return of Monsieur Claude
Cazeau, secretary to the Archbishop of Rouen, who had been
despatched back to that city on the business connected with this
affair.
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