"True, the Pope is a sovereign still, and he is surrounded by his
officers of state--Cardinal Secretary, Majordomo, Master of Ceremonies,
Steward, Chief of Police, Swiss Guards, Noble Guard and Palatine Guard,
as well as the Papal Guard who live in the garden and patrol the
precincts night and day."
"Then where the nation ... prisoner, you say?"
"Prisoner indeed! Not even able to look out of his windows on to this
piazza on the 20th of September without the risk of insult and
outrage--and Heaven knows what will happen when he ventures out to-day!"
"Well! this goes clear ahead of me!"
Beyond the outer cordon of troops many carriages were drawn up in
positions likely to be favourable for a view of the procession. In one
of these sat a Frenchman in a coat covered with medals, a florid,
fiery-eyed old soldier with bristling white hair. Standing by his
carriage door was a typical young Roman, fashionable, faultlessly
dressed, pallid, with strong lower jaw, dark watchful eyes, twirled-up
moustache and cropped black mane.
"Ah, yes," said the old Frenchman. "Much water has run under the bridge
since then, sir. Changed since I was here? Rome? You're right, sir.
'When Rome falls, falls the world;' but it can alter for all that, and
even this square has seen its transformations. Holy Office stands where
it did, the yellow building behind there, but this palace, for
instance--this one with the people in the balcony...."
The Frenchman pointed to the travertine walls of a prison-like house on
the farther side of the piazza.
"Do you know whose palace that is?"
"Baron Bonelli's, President of the Council and Minister of the
Interior."
"Precisely! But do you know whose palace it used to be?"
"Belonged to the English Wolsey, didn't it, in the days when he wanted
the Papacy?"
"Belonged in my time to the father of the Pope, sir--old Baron Leone!"
"Leone! That's the family name of the Pope, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir, and the old Baron was a banker and a cripple. One foot in the
grave, and all his hopes centred in his son. 'My son,' he used to say,
'will be the richest man in Rome some day--richer than all their Roman
princes, and it will be his own fault if he doesn't make himself Pope.'"
"He has, apparently."
"Not that way, though. When his father died, he sold up everything, and
having no relations looking to him, he gave away every penny to the
poor. That's how the old banker's palace fell into the hands of the
Prime Minister of Italy--an infidel, an Antichrist."