"Did you hear him, Father?" said the Pope. "Isn't it almost enough to

justify a man like Rossi that he has to meet a despot like that?"

"We'll talk of it to-morrow," said the Capuchin.

The friar touched a bell, and the palfrenieri returned with the

chair.

XIV

Next day, being Good Friday, was passed by the Pope in religious

retreat, which was interrupted by indispensable business only. After

Mass of the Presanctified he sat in his study with his confessor, while

his chaplain in black passed through on tiptoe from the private chapel,

and his chamberlains, tired out by the ceremonies of yesterday, dozed on

their stools in the outer hall.

The day was bright but the room was darkened, and the hearts of the two

old men were heavy. Over the face of the Pope there was a cloud of

trouble, and the countenance of the Capuchin was solemn to the point of

sternness. The friar sat in the old-fashioned easy-chair with his bare

feet showing from under the edge of his brown habit; the Pope lay on the

lounge with both hands in the vertical pockets of his white woollen

cassock.

"Your Holiness is not well this morning?"

"Not very well, Father Pifferi."

"Your Holiness was disturbed by the interview in the Sacristy. But you

should think no more about it. In any case, what the Minister proposed

was impossible, therefore you must dismiss it from your mind. To ask a

wife to reveal the secrets of her husband would be tyranny worse than

the rack. Besides, it would be uncanonical, and your Holiness could

never consider it."

"How so?"

"Didn't your Holiness promise that whatever the nature of this poor

lady's confidence you would hold it as sacred as the confessional?"

"Well?"

"What is the confessional, your Holiness? It is a tribunal in which the

priest is judge and the penitent a prisoner who pleads guilty. Is the

priest to call witnesses to prove other crimes? He has no right and no

power to do so."

"But where the penitent wittingly or unwittingly is in the position of

an accomplice, what then, Father Pifferi?"

"Even then it is expressly forbidden to demand the names of others upon

the plea of preventing evil. How can you hold this lady's confidence as

sacred and yet ask her to denounce her husband?"

The Pope rose with a face full of pain, walked to the bookcase, and

took down a book. "Listen, Father," he said, and he began to read:-




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