The precise details of what followed are doubtful. It is only
possible to discern with clearness, amid a vast cloud of official
documents and unofficial correspondences in English, Italian, and
Latin, of Papal decrees and voluminous scritture, of confidential
reports of episcopal whispers and the secret agitations of
Cardinals, the form of Manning, restless and indomitable,
scouring like a stormy petrel the angry ocean of debate. Wiseman,
dilatory, unbusinesslike, and infirm, was ready enough to leave
the conduct of affairs in his hands. Nor was it long before
Manning saw where the key of the whole position lay. As in the
old days, at Chichester, he had secured the goodwill of Bishop
Shuttleworth by cultivating the friendship of Archdeacon Hare, so
now, on this vaster scale of operations, his sagacity led him
swiftly and unerringly up the little winding staircase in the
Vatican and through the humble door which opened into the cabinet
of Monsignor Talbot, the private secretary of the Pope. Monsignor
Talbot was a priest who embodied in a singular manner, if not the
highest, at least the most persistent traditions of the Roman
Curia. He was a master of various arts which the practice of ages
has brought to perfection under the friendly shadow of the triple
tiara. He could mingle together astuteness and holiness without
any difficulty; he could make innuendoes as naturally as an
ordinary man makes statements of fact; he could apply flattery
with so unsparing a hand that even Princes of the Church found it
sufficient; and, on occasion, he could ring the changes of
torture on a human soul with a tact which called forth universal
approbation.
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