a Venial Sin. It's in the catechism. Well, naturally enough the miserable little wretches, who can't possibly grasp the subtilty of a distinguo, put undue importance on that abominable world 'only'; and they grow up as the most despicable of all liars. Ouf! I learned all this from a thin thing named Danielson, just after my return to the faith of my forefathers. He lied to me. In my innocence I took his word. Then I found him out; and preached on the enormity of his crime. 'Well, sir,' says he as bold as brass, 'it's only a Venial Sin!'" [Pg 34] "George, you're beside the point," the bishop said. "His Eminency will indulge me. What was I saying? Oh,—that I had had enough of being rebuffed by bishops. I came to that conclusion when His Lordship of Chadsee blandly told me that I never would get a bishop to accept my services as long as I continued to tell the truth about my experiences. I stopped competing for rebuffs then. I do not propose to begin again until I am the possessor of a cheque-book." The cardinal was gazing through the leaves of an india-rubber plant out of the window; his magnificent eyes were drained of all expression. When the nervose deliberately-hardened and pathetic voice of the speaker ceased, he brought the argument to a focus with these words, "George Arthur Rose, I summon you to offer yourself to me." "I am not ready to offer myself to Your Eminency." "Not ready?" "I hoped that I had made it clear to you that, in regard to my Vocation, I am 'marking time,' until I shall have earned enough to pay my debts incurred on the strength of my faith in the honour of a parcel of archiepiscopal and episcopal and clerical sharpers, and also a sum sufficient to produce me a small and certain annuity——" [Pg 35] [Pg 35] "You keep harping upon that string," the cardinal complained. "It is the only string which you have left unbroken on my lute." "I see you are a very sensitive subject, Mr. Rose. I think that long brooding over your wrongs has fixed in you some such pagan and erroneous idea as that which Juvenal expresses in the verse where he says that poverty makes a man ridiculous." "Nothing of the kind," George retorted with all his claws out. "On the contrary, it is I—the creature of you, my Lord Cardinal,
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