CHAPTER 65 

Lady St. Jerome was much interested in the accounts which the cardinal and Lothair gave her of their excursions in the city and their visits. 

"It is very true," she said, "I never knew such good people; and they ought to be; so favored by Heaven, and leading a life which, if any thing earthly can, must give them, however faint, some foretaste of our joys hereafter. Did your eminence visit the Pellegrini?" This was the hospital, where Miss Arundel had found Lothair. 

The cardinal looked grave. "No," he replied. "My object was to secure for our young friend some interesting but not agitating distraction from certain ideas which, however admirable and transcendently important, are nevertheless too high and profound to permit their constant contemplation with impunity to our infirm natures. Besides," he added, in a lower, but still distinct tone, "I was myself unwilling to visit in a mere casual manner the scene of what I must consider the greatest event of this century." 

"But you have been there?" inquired Lady St. Jerome. 

His eminence crossed himself. 

In the course of the evening Monsignore Catesby told Lothair that a grand service was about to be celebrated in the church of St. George: thanks were to be offered to the Blessed Virgin by Miss Arundel for the miraculous mercy vouchsafed to her in saving the life of a countryman, Lothair. "All her friends will make a point of being there," added the monsignore, "even the Protestants and some Russians. Miss Arundel was very unwilling at first to fulfil this office, but the Holy Father has commanded it. I know that nothing will induce her to ask you to attend; and yet, if I were you, I would turn it over in your mind. I know she said that she would sooner that you were present than all her English friends together. However, you can think about it. One likes to do what is proper." 
and?
even the Protestants and some Russians