The women love the Jesuits, these good fathers who furnish them
with an excuse for every weakness, and hold a little back door open for
every sin. That is very convenient for these good women! Yes, yes, the
women--I think I know them."
And, smiling, the cardinal sank deeper into himself, dreaming of past,
of charming times, when he had not yet counted sixty-five years. He
dreamed of Venice, and of a beautiful nun he had loved there, and who
for him had often left her cloister in the night-time, and, warm and
glowing with passion, had come to him. He dreamed of these heavenly
hours, where all pleasure and all happiness had been compressed into one
blessed intoxication of bliss, where the chaste priestess of the Church
had for him changed to a sparkling priestess of joy!
"Yes, that was long ago!" murmured the cardinal, as at length he awoke
from his blissful dreams of the past.
"Those were beautiful times--I was then young and happy; I was then a
man, and now--now am old; love has withered, and with it poesy! I am now
nothing but a diplomatist."
There was a low knock at the door. The cardinal hastily but carefully
returned the portrait of his beautiful nun to the secret drawer in his
writing-table whence it had been taken, and bade the knocker to enter.
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