That was his title ecclesiastical. He had two other titles.

He was a Prince of the Udeschini by accident of birth. But his

third title was perhaps his most curious. It had been

conferred upon him informally by the populace of the Roman slum

in which his titular church, St. Mary of the Lilies, was

situated: the little Uncle of the Poor.

As Italians measure wealth, Cardinal Udeschini was a wealthy

man. What with his private fortune and official stipends, he

commanded an income of something like a hundred thousand lire.

He allowed himself five thousand lire a year for food,

clothing, and general expenses. Lodging and service he had for

nothing in the palace of his family. The remaining ninety-odd

thousand lire of his budget . . . Well, we all know that

titles can be purchased in Italy; and that was no doubt the

price he paid for the title I have mentioned.

However, it was not in money only that Cardinal Udeschim paid.

He paid also in labour. I have said that his titular church

was in a slum. Rome surely contained no slum more fetid, none

more perilous--a region of cut-throat alleys, south of the

Ghetto, along the Tiber bank. Night after night, accompanied

by his stout young vicar, Don Giorgio Appolloni, the Cardinal

worked there as hard as any hard-working curate: visiting the

sick, comforting the afflicted, admonishing the knavish,

persuading the drunken from their taverns, making peace between

the combative. Not infrequently, when he came home, he would

add a pair of stilettos to his already large collection of such

relics. And his homecomings were apt to be late--oftener than

not, after midnight; and sometimes, indeed, in the vague

twilight of morning, at the hour when, as he once expressed it

to Don Giorgio, "the tired burglar is just lying down to rest."

And every Saturday evening the Cardinal Prefect of Archives and

Inscriptions sat for three hours boxed up in his confessional,

like any parish priest--in his confessional at St. Mary of the

Lilies, where the penitents who breathed their secrets into his

ears, and received his fatherly counsels . . . I beg your

pardon. One must not, of course, remember his rags or his

sores, when Lazarus approaches that tribunal.

But I don't pretend that the Cardinal was a saint; I am sure he

was not a prig. For all his works of supererogation, his life

was a life of pomp and luxury, compared to the proper saint's

life. He wore no hair shirt; I doubt if he knew the taste of

the Discipline. He had his weaknesses, his foibles--even, if

you will, his vices. I have intimated that he was fond of a

jest. "The Sacred College," I heard him remark one day, "has

fifty centres of gravity. I sometimes fear that I am its

centre of levity." He was also fond of music. He was also

fond of snuff: "'T is an abominable habit," he admitted. "I can't tolerate it

at all--in others. When I was Bishop of Cittareggio, I

discountenanced it utterly among my clergy. But for myself--I

need not say there are special circumstances. Oddly enough, by

the bye, at Cittareggio each separate member of my clergy was

able to plead special circumstances for himself I have tried to

give it up, and the effort has spoiled my temper--turned me

into a perfect old shrew. For my friends' sake, therefore, I

appease myself with an occasional pinch. You see, tobacco is

antiseptic. It's an excellent preservative of the milk of

human kindness."




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