"'Not really his name' was what she said."
"His mother was deceived by every one, and she drowned herself in the
Tiber."
"That was so, your Holiness."
"He was nursed in the Foundling, brought up in the Campagna, and then
sold as a boy into England."
"It is really extraordinary," said Father Pifferi.
"Most extraordinary," repeated the Pope.
They looked steadily at each other for a moment, and then walked on in
silence. Little sparks of blue light pulsed and throbbed and floated
before their faces, and the moon itself, like a greater firefly, came
and went in the interstices of the thin-leaved trees. The Pope, who
shuffled in his walking, stopped again.
"Your Holiness?"
"Who can he be, I wonder?"
The Capuchin drew a deep breath. "We shall know everything to-morrow
morning."
"Yes," said the Pope, "we shall know everything to-morrow morning."
Some dark phantom of the past was hovering about them, and they were
afraid to challenge it.
At that moment the silence of the listening air was broken by a long
clear call, which rang out through the night without any warning, and
then stopped as suddenly.
"The nightingale," said the Pope.
A mighty flood of melody floated down from some unseen place, in varying
strains of divine music broken by many pauses, and running through every
phase of jubilation, sorrow, and pain. It ended in a low wail of
unutterable sadness, a pleading, yearning cry of anguish, which seemed
to call on God Himself to hear. When it was over, and all was hushed
around, the world seemed to have become void.
The Pope's feet shuffled on the gravel. "I shall never forget it," he
said.
"It was wonderful," said the Capuchin.
"I was thinking of that poor lady," said the Pope. "Her pleading voice
will ring in my ears as long as I live."
"Poor child!" said the Capuchin.
"After all, we could not have acted otherwise. Don't you think so,
Father Pifferi? Considering everything, we could not possibly have acted
otherwise."
"Perhaps we could not, your Holiness."
They turned the bend of an avenue, where the path under their feet
rustled with the thick blossom shed from the overhanging Judas trees.
"Surely this is where the little mother bird used to be," said the Pope.
"So it is," said the friar.
"Strange, she has not sprung out as usual. Ah, Meesh is not here, and
perhaps that's the reason." And feeling for the old sarcophagus, the
Pope put his hand gently down into it. A moment afterwards he said in
another tone: "Father, the young birds are gone."