"Your Holiness is in low spirits. And to-day of all days! Ah, how happy
is the Church which has seen the hand of God place in the chair of St.
Peter a soul capable of comprehending the necessities of His children
and a heart desirous of satisfying them!"
"I hardly know what is to come of this interview, Father, but I must
leave myself in the hands of the Holy Spirit."
"There is no help for it now, your Holiness."
"Perhaps I should not have gone so far but for this wave of anarchy
which is sweeping over the world.... You believe the man Rossi is
secretly an anarchist?"
"I am afraid he is, your Holiness, and one of the worst enemies of the
Church and the Holy Father."
"They say he was an orphan from his infancy, and never knew father, or
mother, or home."
"Pitiful, very pitiful!"
"I have heard that his public life is not without a certain perverted
nobility, and that his private life is pure and good."
"His relation to the lady would seem to say so, your Holiness."
"But the Holy Father may be sorry for a wayward son, and yet be forced
to condemn him for all that. He must cut himself off from all such men,
lest his adversaries should say that, while preaching peace and the
moral law, he is secretly encouraging the devilish agents of atheism,
anarchy, and rebellion."
"Perhaps so, your Holiness."
"Father, do you think the care of temporal things is ever a danger and
temptation?"
"Sometimes I think it is, your Holiness, and that the Holy Father would
be better without lands or fleshly armies."
"How late they are!" said the Pope; but at the same moment the door
opened, and a Noble Guard knelt on the threshold.
"Well?"
"The personages you expect have come, your Holiness."
"Bring them in," said the Pope.
XIII
The young King, who wore the uniform of a cavalry officer, with sword
and long blue cloak, knelt to the Pope and kissed his ring, while the
Prime Minister, who was in ordinary civilian costume, bowed deeply, but
remained standing.
"Pray sit," said the Pope, seating himself in the gilded arm-chair, with
the Capuchin on his left.
The King sat on one of the wooden stools in front of the Pope, but the
Baron continued to stand by his side. Between the Pope and the King was
a wooden table on which two large candles were burning. The young King
was pale, and the expression of his twitching face was one of pain.