These signed to me to precede them and fell in behind us, and in that order we passed through the first room and the second, where the clerks stood with bent heads to receive us.

The last door, the door of the ante-chamber, flew open as we approached, voices cried, 'Room! Room for his Eminence!' we passed through two lines of bowing lackeys, and entered--an empty chamber.
The ushers did not know how to look at one another; the lackeys trembled in their shoes.

But the Cardinal walked on, apparently unmoved, until he had passed slowly half the length of the chamber.

Then he turned himself about, looking first to one side and then to the other, with a low laugh of derision.
'Father,' he said in his thin voice, 'what does the Psalmist say?
"I am become like a pelican in the wilderness and like an owl that is in the desert!"' The monk mumbled assent.
'And later in the same psalm, is it not written, "They shall perish, but thou shalt endure ?"' 'It is so,' the father answered.

'Amen.' 'Doubtless though, that refers to another life,' the Cardinal said, with his slow wintry smile.