"You come to me, sir, when you have exhausted all other means of

obtaining your end?"

"Naturally the Government wishes if possible to spare your Holiness an

unusual and painful ordeal."

"The lady has resisted all other influences?"

"She has resisted all influences which can be brought to bear upon her

by the proper authorities."

"I have heard of it, sir. I have heard what your 'authorities' have done

to humble a helpless woman. She had been the victim of a heartless man,

and by knowledge of that fact your 'authorities' have tempted and tried

her. They tried her with poverty, with humiliation, with jealousy and

the shadow of shame. But the blessed God upheld her in the love which

had awakened her soul, and she withstood them to the last."

The Baron, for the first time, looked confused.

"I have also heard that in order to achieve the same end one of your

gaols has been the scene of a scandal which has outraged every divine

and human law."

"Your Holiness must not accept for truth all that is printed in the

halfpenny papers."

"Is it true that in the cell where a helpless unfortunate was paying the

penalty of his crime your 'authorities' introduced a police agent in

disguise to draw him into a denunciation of his accomplice?"

"These are matters of state, your Holiness. I do not assert them and I

do not deny."

"In the name of humanity I ask you are such 'authorities' punished, or

do they sit in the cabinets of your Ministers of the Interior?"

"No doubt the officials went too far, your Holiness; but shall we, for

the sake of a miserable malefactor who told one story to-day and another

to-morrow, drag our public service through courts of law? Pity for such

persons is morbid sentimentality, your Holiness, unworthy of a strong

and enlightened Government."

"Then God destroy all such Governments, sir, and the bad and unchristian

system which supports them! Allow that the man was a miserable

malefactor, it was not he alone that was offended, but in his poor,

degraded person the spirit of Justice. What did your 'authorities' do?

They tortured the man by his love for his wife, by the memory of his

murdered child, by all that was true and noble and divine in him. They

crucified the Christ in that helpless man, and you stand here in the

presence of the Vicar of Christ to excuse and defend them."

The Pope had risen in his chair and lifted one hand over his head with a

majestic gesture. Involuntarily the young King, who had been ashen pale

for some moments, dropped to his knees, but the Baron only folded his

arms and stiffened his legs.




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