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that of the King of Naples supplant that of France, while the various parties accused each other of heresy? Would not the Papacy return to Rome? `Which my father so much wished to avoid,' Philippe of Poitiers said to himself. `Is his work, already so much damaged by Louis and by our Uncle Valois, to be destroyed completely?'
    For a few moments Cardinal Dueze felt that the young man had forgotten his presence. But suddenly Poitiers asked: `Will the Gascon party maintain the candidature of Cardinal de Pelagrue? Do you think that your pious colleagues are at last prepared to sit-in Conclave? Sit down here, Monseigneur, and
    tell me your thought on the matter. How far have we advanced?'
    The Cardinal had seen many sovereigns and ministers during the third of a century he had been concerned with the affairs of kingdoms, but he had never before met one with such self - control. Here was a prince, aged twenty-three, to whom he had just announced the death of his brother and the vacancy of the throne, and he seemed to have no more urgent concern than the complications of the Conclave.
    Sitting side by side near a window, on a chest covered with damask, the Cardinal's feet barely touching the ground and the Count of Poitiers' thin ankle slowly moving from side to side, the two men had a long conversation. It appeared from Dueze's summary of the situation that they were more or less back where they had been two years ago, after the death of Clement V.
    The party of the ten Gascon cardinals, which was also called the French par ty, was still the largest, but n ot large enough by itself to ensure the necessary majority; of two-thirds of the Sacred College; sixteen votes, The Gascons considered themselves the depositories of the late Pope's thought. They all owed their hats to him, held out firmly for the See of Avignon and showed themselves remarkably united against the other two parties. But there was a good deal of secret competition among them; the ambitions of Arnaud de Fougeres, Arnaud Nouvel and Arnaud de Pelagrue all flourished. They made mutual promises while scheming for one another's downfall.
    `The war of the three Arnauds,' said Dueze in his whispering voice. `Now let's have a look at the Italian party.'
    There were only eight of them, but divided into three sections. The redoubtable Cardinal Caetani, nephew of Pope Boniface VIII, was opposed to the two Cardinals Colonna by a time - honoured family feud which had become an inexorable hatred since the Anagni affair and the blow in the face Colonna had given Boniface. The other Italians wavered between these adversaries. Stefaneschi, from hostility to Philip the Fair's policy, supported Caetani, whose relation moreover he was. Napoleon Orsini tacked about. The eight were only agreed on a single point: the return of the Papacy to the Eternal City. On that point they were fiercely determined.
    `You know well, Monseigneur,' continued Dueze, `that at one moment we ran the risk of schism; and indeed we still do so. Our Italians refused to meet i n France and they let it be known, but a little while ago, that if a Gascon pope were elected, they would refuse him recognition and would set up a pope of their own In Rome.'
    `There will be no schism,' said the Count of Poitiers calmly.
    `Thanks to you, Monseigneur, thanks to you. I am happy to recognize it, and I tell everyone so. Going, as you have, from town to town with sage advice, if you have not yet found the shepherd, you have at least gathered the flock.'
    `Expensive sheep, Monseigneur! Do you know that I left Paris with sixteen thousand livres, and that only the other week I had to have as much again sent to me? Jason was nothing compared to me. I hope that all thes e golden fleeces won't slip through-my fingers,' said the Count of Poitiers, screwing up his eyes slightly to look the Cardinal in the face.
    The Cardinal, who had done very well out of this largesse by roundabout ways, did not take up the allusion directly but