"Go in peace and with my blessing, my child. I bless you! May my

fatherly blessing keep you pure in heart, may it strengthen you in all

temptations, comfort you in all trials, avert from you every evil omen,

and bring you into the fold of Christ's children at the last."

The Participante stepped forward and signed to Roma to withdraw. She

rose and left the presence chamber, stepping backward and too much moved

to speak. Not until the door had been closed did she realise that she

was crossing the throne room, and that the Bussolante was walking beside

her.

IV

When the Pope walked in his garden that afternoon as usual, the old

Capuchin was with him. From the door of the Vatican they drove in the

Pope's landau with two of the Noble Guard riding beside the carriage,

and one of the chamberlains walking behind it, through lanes enshrouded

in laurel and ilex, until they reached the summer-house on the top of

the hill. There the old men stepped down, the Pope in his white cassock,

white overcoat and red hat, the Capuchin in his brown habit, skull-cap

and sandals. The Pope's cat, a creature of reddish coat, which followed

him into the garden as a dog follows his master, leapt out of the

carriage after them.

The Pope was more than usually grave and silent. Once or twice the

Capuchin said, "And how did you find my young penitent this morning?"

"Bene, bene!" the Pope replied.

But at length the Pope, scraping the gravel at his feet with the ferrule

of his walking-stick, began to speak on his own initiative.

"Father!"

"Your Holiness?"

"The inscrutable decree of God which made me your Pontiff has not

altered our relations to each other as men?"

The Capuchin took snuff and answered, "Your Holiness is always so good

as to say so."

"You are my master now just as you were thirty years ago, and there is

something I wish to ask of you."

"What is it, your Holiness?"

"You have been a confessor many years, Father?"

"Forty years, your Holiness."

"In that time you have had many difficult cases?"

"Very many."

"Father, has it ever happened that a penitent, has revealed to you a

conspiracy to commit a crime?"

"More than once it has happened."

"And what have you done?"

"Persuaded him to reveal it to the civil authorities, or else tell it to

me outside the confessional."




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