Astonished, I stood aside while he passed to the screen; then I
followed him. Outside the first door, which stood open, we found
eight or nine persons--pages, a monk, the major-domo, and several
guards waiting like mutes. These signed to me to precede them
and fell in behind us, and in that order we passed through the
first room and the second, where the clerks stood with bent heads
to receive us. The last door, the door of the ante-chamber, flew
open as we approached, voices cried, 'Room! Room for his
Eminence!' we passed through two lines of bowing lackeys, and
entered--an empty chamber.
The ushers did not know how to look at one another; the lackeys
trembled in their shoes. But the Cardinal walked on, apparently
unmoved, until he had passed slowly half the length of the
chamber. Then he turned himself about, looking first to one side
and then to the other, with a low laugh of derision.
'Father,' he said in his thin voice, 'what does the Psalmist say?
"I am become like a pelican in the wilderness and like an owl
that is in the desert!"'
The monk mumbled assent.
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