CHAPTER XLII.
The Axe to the Root of the Tree.
As Cardinal Power sat in a saloon carriage of the grande rapide, rushing through the night across France, he could not close his eyes until the small hours were past, oppressed by the weighty thoughts which filled his mind ever since our heroine and her friend took leave of him at his house in Westminster. Yet the present journey was not made solely as a result of that interview. The telegram we saw delivered to him by his servant on the morning after the two girls’ visit, had apprised him of the consummation of the crisis at Rome. The persecuted Papacy had just received the last vial of lovely Beatrice’s wrath, in the form of a notice to quit Italy, ‘bag and baggage,’ within forty-eight hours, on pain of imprisonment with hard labour. Cardinal Power, on reading the message, shed no filial tears over the discomfiture of his Master’s Vicar; but, on the contrary, muttered to himself, ‘Now’s my time, then, if that girl is right. Catch them on the edge of the gulf, and throw them. The Lord shall reign for ever and ever, but I will govern meanwhile.’
His mind was made up; he had grasped the possibilities of the situation, and resolved to become master of it; and as the flying train carried him Romewards, he pondered the manner of making known to the Roman curia his
