"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."