He had risen in the exaltation of his emotion, and raised one hand over
his head, but Roma, in the toils of the terrible error, had dropped to
her knees at his feet.
"Oh, I cannot die with a lie on my lips. Holy Father, let me make my
confession."
A vague foreshadowing of the coming revelation seemed to light on the
Pope, and he sat down again without a word. Mechanically he prepared to
receive the penitent into the Church, questioning her, instructing her,
calling on her to repeat the profession of faith, and finally baptizing
her conditionally.
"Baptism wipes out all your sins, my daughter," he said, "but if for
your soul's comfort you wish to make a full confession before I give you
the Blessed Sacrament...."
"I do. I have wished it ever since the end of my trial, and that was why
I asked for Father Pifferi."
"Then take care--accuse nobody else, my daughter."
Roma put her hands together, repeated the Confiteor, and then said: "Father, I am a great, great sinner, and when I charged myself in court
with having killed the Minister, I told falsehood to shield another."
"My child!" The Pope had risen to his feet.
There was a moment of painful silence, and then the Pope sat down again
with rigid limbs, saying in a husky voice: "Go on, my daughter."
Roma went on with her confession. She told of the mad impulse that came
to her to kill the Baron after he had forced her to denounce her
husband. She told of her preparations for killing him, and of the
incidents of the night of the crime when she was making ready to set out
on her awful errand.
"But he came to me in my own rooms at that very moment, your Holiness,
and then...."
"In ... your own rooms?"
"Yes, indeed, and that was really the cause of everything."
"How so?"
"Somebody else came afterwards."
"Somebody else?"
"A friend."
"A ... friend?"
She hesitated for a moment, and then put her hand into her breast and
drew out the warrant.
"This one," she said, in a voice that was scarcely audible.
The Pope took the paper, and it rustled as he opened it. There was no
other sound in the prison cell except the rasping noise of his rapid
breathing.
"David Leone! You don't mean to say--to imply...."
The Pope's eyes wandered vaguely around, but they came back to the face
at his feet, and he said: "No, no! You cannot mean that, my child. Tell me I have misunderstood
you and come to a wrong conclusion."