"Nay!" bows the Minister. "Stranger no longer!
A friend of Mastai's! How could I refuse?''

It seemed that the note the Bishop had penned,
     Which had come by the post
     In two days at most,
  Begging Bernetti to "save from sinking
  One of the real right way of thinking,"
  Had been sugar and cream from end to end.
  Acting on which with a will I trow,
  Bernetti had put his hand to the plough;
  And before Montani, a little elate,
  Made his last bow, he was told that his fate
Should be fixed to his liking, and all set straight,
     As soon as the law would allow.

                               XII

  But it didn't allow for several days;
  Nay, the cause seemed sticking in miry ways,
  And taking a turn, which may be defined
  As a chill of the semi-chronic kind.
  And poor Montani, who'd squandered more
  Cash than he ought, from his shallow store,
  Thought it was better to hie him home
  Than wait for success that was sure to come.
  So he left his card at the Minister's gate
(Who'd a pain in his head, and had got up late),
And, while he was packing his small portmanteau,
—Which his friend the Roman would lend a hand to—
     Out of his best frilled shirt there fell
     A small sealed letter; he knew it well,
With its superscription so neat and pretty,
"His Excellence Cardinal Sec. Bernetti."
  "Faith!" says the friend, "before you bum it,
  Open that letter—you can't return it!
  A mere introductory line or so.
  Still, I confess I should like to know
How those old fogies palaver each other."
He broke the enclosure, and read . . ."Dear Brother!"
One of those rascals, of whom we've too many,
A vile sans-culotte of the name of Montani,
Once judge of the Census and Gonfalonièr;
—He was mainly turned out by my foresight and care—
Has been here to consult me about the affair;
For it seems he's intending—his cash running short—
To petition—a sneak!—for employment at court.
He'll bring you a letter under my hand,
Requesting you'll help him at Rome; for remember,
Those villains have always sharp knives at command,
And I live among them, from June to December.
But I hardly need beg, when he calls at your palace,
That you'll snub him . . . exclude him . . . put spokes in his wheel . . .
And . . . perhaps he'll do something to merit cold steel,
  Or promotion ... as high as the gallows!
We've got our share of these knaves . . . God mend 'em!
Ranting of Italy, Freedom, and Right.
You, who've St. Angelo, know where to send 'em.
Verbum sapienti! God bless you! Goodnight!—
Stick to ' non possumus.' There our defence is.
Yours,
            JOHANN. MASTAI. EPIS. IMOLENSIS.
P.S. By-the-by, if he hasn't appeared,
Tell your porter, the fellow's A MAN WITH A BEARD."

                              X!!!

  Such was the writing that met their eyes.
The "sans-culotte rascals" laid it down;
And first they stared with a blank surprise,
Then laughed a laugh that was not their own.
For now they could measure the gulf which lay
  Yawning, and black, and full in their way.
Now they could value the honeyed civility
Born from the bramble of priestly hostility.
Whence came the cheek, they could now understand;
For a clue, once caught, runs up to the hand.
They saw that their riddle at last was read,
By the Cardinal Minister's pain in the head;
     And they both confessed
     That the pride of the jest
  Was . . . their trusting such ropes of sand!
  They, who had dreamed they could read at sight
  The crabbed cypher of priestly wiles,
     With its black for white,
     And its wrong made right;
  To be puzzled, and pozed, and outwitted quite
     By a batch of prelatical smiles!
  So the laugh was tagged with a shrewd remorse.
  Conscience spoke up, and was heard perforce,
     And each grew shy
     Of the other's eye,
  As they locked the portmanteau and said "Goodby;"
  Tacitly swearing never again
  To carry a candle in Beelzebub's train,
  Or, knowing the better, to pick out the worse.

                              XIV.

Home went Montani, much lighter of pelf,
Rumbling along by the "Roman Express."
His failure at Rome had turned out a success,
For he'd lost his last scudo, and won back . . . himself.
  Deeply he vowed that no lip-deep complying,
  No shuffling and quibbling, no Master-denying
     Should sully him more,
     Nor make his heart sore
With wasting its manhood in wearily trying
To find out where reticence slides into lying;
While striking a balance 'twixt substance and form
And striving to save its core sound from the worm!
  So his cheery face was as fresh as a rose,
His beard was still bushy, and grew as it chose,
His grey eye was fearless, and bluff was his nose,
     And his laugh rang as true as of yore!
  He never skulked into doorways now
When the Bishop's wheels on the pavement sounded,
But pulled off his hat with . . . O such a bow!
     That his Eminence . . . looked confounded!
  As to the family ways and means;
Thick shoes, maccaroni, and haricot beans;
  He toiled for them bravely from dawn to dark,
  Drudging away as a banker's clerk.
  And, after hours, in his awning's shade,
As he sipped his glassful of lemonade
     With a few old chums,
     Forgetting his sums,
  He'd often allude to the blunder he'd made;
And sometimes prophesy (birri permitting)
Great days ahead, through the darkness flitting,
When a righteous reform should unfold by degrees its
     Light to men's eyes,
     Untainted by spies,
  Or severe domiciliary visits!

                            XV

  And when Mistress Montani did one day sneer
  (For the ghostly director still had her ear)