"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.