'What can you want? There'll be lots of servants about.'
'I'll have this bar down, at any rate.' And he did succeed in having removed the bar which had been specially put up to prevent his intrusion on his own guests in his own house. 'I look upon that fellow's coming here as a very singular sign of the times,' he went on to say. 'They'll want before long to know where I have my clothes made, and who measures me for my boots!' Perhaps the most remarkable circumstance in the career of this remarkable man was the fact that he came almost to believe in himself.
Father Barham went away certainly disgusted; and yet not altogether disheartened. The man had not declared that he was not a Roman Catholic. He had shown himself to be a brute. He had blasphemed and cursed. He had been outrageously uncivil to a man whom he must have known to be a minister of God. He had manifested himself to this priest, who had been born an English gentleman, as being no gentleman. But, not the less might he be a good Catholic,--or good enough at any rate to be influential on the right side. To his eyes Melmotte, with all his insolent vulgarity, was infinitely a more hopeful man than Roger Carbury. 'He insulted me,' said Father Barham to a brother religionist that evening within the cloisters of St Fabricius.
'Did he intend to insult you?'
'Certainly he did. But what of that? It is not by the hands of polished men, nor even of the courteous, that this work has to be done. He was preparing for some great festival, and his mind was intent upon that.'
'He entertains the Emperor of China this very day,' said the brother priest, who, as a resident in London, heard from time to time what was being done.
'The Emperor of China! Ah, that accounts for it. I do think that he is on our side, even though he gave me but little encouragement for saying so. Will they vote for him, here at Westminster?'
'Our people will. They think that he is rich and can help them.'
'There is no doubt of his wealth, I suppose,' said Father Barham.
'Some people do doubt;--but others say he is the richest man in the world.'
'He looked like it,--and spoke like it,' said Father Barham. 'Think what such a man might do, if he be really the wealthiest man in the world! And if he had been against us would he not have said so? Though he was uncivil, I am glad that I saw him.' Father Barham, with a simplicity that was singularly mingled with his religious cunning, made himself believe before he returned to Beccles that Mr Melmotte was certainly a Roman Catholic.