"He never knew his father--not even by name. His mother was a poor unhappy woman who had been cruelly deceived by everybody. She drowned herself in the Tiber."

"Poor soul," said the Pope.

"He was nursed in the Foundling, your Holiness, and brought up in a straw hut in the Campagna, and then sold as a boy into England."

The Pope moved uneasily in his seat.

"My father found him on the streets of London on a winter's night, your Holiness, carrying a squirrel and an accordion. He wore a ragged suit of velveteens which used to be laughed at by the London boys, and that was all that sheltered his little body from the cold. 'Some poor man's child,' my father thought. But who can say if it was so, your Holiness?"

The Pope was silent. A sudden change had come over his face. Roma's eyes were held down, her voice was agitated, she was scarcely able to speak.

"My father was angry with the boy's father, I remember, and if at that time he had known where to find him I think he would have denounced him to the public or even the police."

The Pope's head sank on his breast; the Capuchin looked steadfastly at Roma.

"But who knows if he was really to blame, your Holiness? He may have been a good man after all--one of those who have to suffer all their lives for the sins of others. Perhaps ... perhaps that very night he was walking the streets of London, looking in vain among its waifs and outcasts for the little lost boy who owned his own blood and bore his name."

The Pope's face was white and quivering. His elbows rested on the arms of his chair and his wrinkled hands were tightly clasped.

Roma stopped. There was a prolonged silence. The atmosphere of the room seemed to be whirling round with frightful rapidity to one terrific focus.

"Holy Father," said Roma at length, in a low tone, "if David Rossi were _your own son_, would you still ask me to denounce him?"

The Pope lifted a face full of suffering and said in his deep, vibrating voice, "Yes, yes! More than ever for that--a thousand times more than ever."

"Then _I will do it_," said Roma.

The Pope rose up in great emotion, laid both hands on her shoulder, and said, "Go in peace, my daughter, and may God grant you at least a little repose."

XVIII

After recitation of the Rosary, the Pope, who had kept his religious retreat throughout the day, announced, to the astonishment of his chamberlains, his desire to walk in the garden at night. With Father Pifferi carrying a long Etruscan lamp he walked down the dark corridors with their surprised _palfrenieri_, and across the open courtyards with their startled sentinels, to where the arches of the Vatican opened upon the soft spring sky.

The night was warm and quiet, and the moon, which had just risen and was near the full, shone with steady brilliance.

The venerable old men walked without speaking, and only the beating of their sticks on the gravel seemed to break the empty air. At length the Pope stopped and said:

"How strange it all was, Father Pifferi!"

"Very strange, your Holiness," said the Capuchin.

"Rossi is not his name, it seems."

"'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."

"Flown, no doubt," said the friar.

"No. See," said the Pope, and he brought up a little nest filled with a ruin of fluff and feathers.