"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:-