"If the penitent was obliged under pain of mortal sin to reveal his
accomplices to repair a common injury, I have maintained against other
theologians that even then the confessor cannot oblige him to do so."
"There!" cried the Capuchin. "What did I say? Gaume is wise, and the
other theologians, who are they?"
"Only," continued the Pope, turning a page and holding up one finger,
"he can and must oblige him to make known his accomplices to other
persons who can arrest the scandal."
The Capuchin took a long breath. "Is that what the Holy Father intends
to do in this instance?"
"He can and must."
The Capuchin dropped his head, and there was a long pause, in which the
Pope walked nervously about the room.
"Poor child!" said the Capuchin. "But perhaps her heart has been too
much set on human love."
The Pope sighed.
"Yet who are we, whose hearts are closed to earthly affection, to
prescribe a limit to human love?"
"Who indeed?" said the Pope.
"Do you recall her resemblance to any one, your Holiness?"
The Pope stopped in his walk and looked towards the curtained window.
"The same soft voice and radiant smile, the same attitude of idolatry
towards the husband she is devoted to, the same...."
"The Sisters of the Sacred Heart will take her when all is over," said
the Pope.
"And the man, too, whatever his errors, has a certain grandeur of soul,
that lifts him far above these chief gaolers and detectives who call
themselves statesmen and diplomatists, these scavengers of
civilisation."
"He must go back to America and begin life again," said the Pope.
Two hours later Father Pifferi went off to fetch Roma, and the Pope sat
down to his mid-day meal. The room was very quiet, and in the absence of
the church bells the city seemed to sit in silence. Cortis stood behind
the Pope's chair, and the cat sat on a stool at the opposite side of the
table.
The chamberlains, lay and ecclesiastical, waited in the ante-camera, and
the Swiss and Noble Guards, the Palatine Guards, and the palfrenieri
dotted the decorated halls that led to the royal stairs.
But the saintly old man, who had a palace yet no home, servants yet no
family, an army yet no empire, who was the father of all men, yet knew
no longer the ordinary joys and sorrows of human life, sat alone in his
little plain apartment and ate his simple dish of spinach and beans.