“Well, I should think so!”
“And the Jesuits have some power still?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Yes, man. They give the Church its direction. Oh, nobody fools the Society. You can see what happened to Cardinal Tindaro.”
“I don’t know what did happen to him,” said Cæsar, with indifference.
“No?”
“No.”
“Well, Cardinal Tindaro decided to follow the inspirations of the Society and made many Jesuits Cardinals with the object that when Pope Leo XIII died, they should elect him Pope; but the Jesuits smelled the rat, and when Leo XIII got very ill, the Council of Assistants of the Society had a meeting and decided that Tindaro should not be Pope, and ordered the Austrian Court to oppose its veto. When the election came, the Jesuit Cardinals gave Tindaro a fat vote, out of gratitude, but calculated not to be enough to raise him to the throne, and in case it was, the Austrian Cardinal and the Hungarian had their Empire’s veto to Tindaro’s election in their pocket.”
“And this Tindaro, is he intelligent?”