"Oh isn't He just splendid!" she yapped.
Then chamberlains manœuvred the Liblabs into position at the foot of the throne steps. Jerry by common consent had been chosen spokesman; and the united intellect of the Fellowship had drawn up the address which he, with ostentatious calmness, began to read. The Pope's ringed hand lay on His knee: His left elbow rested on the crimson chair and the hand supported the keen unfathomable face. He had prepared His plans: but He alertly was listening, lest unforeseen necessity for alteration should arise. He was watching with half-shut eyes and wide-open mind for an opportunity. None came. His prevision had been singularly accurate. The Liblab Fellowship really had nothing to say to Him, beyond turgid sesquipedalian verbosity expressive of its own disinterestedness, and fulsome adulation calculated (according to the Fellowshippers' lights) to tickle the conceit of any average man. It would have been funny, if it had not been terribly tiresome: impertinent, if it had not been pitiable. Sant's tongue clacked on his drying palate. To himself, his voice sounded quite strange in that atmosphere of splendid colour and fragrant odour. Mrs. Crowe quivered; and wondered. The others were in a torpor. No one listened to the reader, except the Pope. The curia rustled and whispered, exchanging jewelled snuff-boxes. The guards resembled tinted statues tipped with steel.
"We have the honour to remain, in the cause of humanity," concluded Jerry Sant, reciting the common-place names of the signatories, "On behalf of the Liblab Fellowship." He refolded the foolscap sheets, and drew them through his fingers, looking as though he were about to hand them with a flourish to the Pope. A frilled black-velvet flunkey took them from him, gave them to a purple prelate, who passed them to a vermilion cardinal, who kneeled and presented them. The stately Cardinal Van Kristen moved from the side presenting a second manuscript. Hadrian unfolded it and began to read His reply. It was courteous and concise, distant and independent, simply an allocution on the distinction necessary to be drawn between Demagogues and Demos, the worthiness of the latter, the doubtfulness of the former. At the end there was a silence. Chamberlains discreetly made it known to the Fellowshippers that homage might be rendered by any who desired to render it; and gave instructions as to the customary manner. Twelve of the demagogues preferred a non-committal pose, having fear of the snorts of the Salpinx; and, of these, two found it convenient to glare uncompromisingly, letting it be seen that they regarded their host as the Man of Sin. But eight approached the throne. Five of them bowed, as over the counter: one kneeled on one knee and read his maker's name in his hat: Sant held his own elbows and looked along his nose; and Mrs. Crowe laid her lips on the cross gold-embroidered on the Pontiff's crimson shoe. That was all. These people were bewildered, almost inebriated by the magnificence of the scene, by the more than regal ceremonial, by the immense psychical distance which divided them from the clean white exquisitely simple figure under the lofty canopy, by the quiet fastidious voice purring unknown words from an unimagined world, by the delphic splendour of Apostolic Benediction waved from the sedia gestatoria retiring in a pageant of flabellifers. On leaving the Vatican, they were thoroughly dazed: they knew not whether their diplomacy had been successful or unsuccessful. Jerry Sant had an indistinct notion that he might expect to be summoned after night-fall; and surreptitiously introduced to some pontifical hole or corner in order to be bribed. Mrs. Crowe exulted in a new emotion. She actually had touched Him: and she thrilled: and she was sure that this was only a beginning.
When Hadrian was about to descend alone into St. Peter's to say His night prayers, He observed one of His gentlemen practising a new and curious gymnastic in the first antechamber. Sir Iulo was in solitude; and he did not hear the feline footfall which came near. He had a longish knife in his right hand, held behind his back. Then, with his teeth clenched, and his eyes firmly fixed on an imaginary pair of eyes in front of him, and every sinew of him at its tensest, he suddenly whipped hand and knife face-high to the front hilt-upward, down to arms' length and forward-up again point-upward, all with frightful force and rapidity. Hadrian watched him during five performances. Then Sir Iulo became aware of the Presence; and relaxed into upright stillness, grinning and glittering.
"What is this game?" the Pope enquired.
"Not game: but for the protection of You."
"Protection? Protection from what?"
"From those most horrible peoples who have been to-day here pursuing some vendettaccia."
"Do you mean those Liblabs?"
"But yes, those Libberlabberersser: especially a Libberlabber who has read, and a she-Libberlabber who goes with him. It is I who have seen of them both the eye. From which I vibrate a knife most commodious for the bellies of those. His Holiness can rest secure."