"Can you tell me if in any of these letters he has said anything of a certain revolutionary propaganda?"

The Capuchin, with his finger and thumb half raised, stopped and said, "I forbid the question, sir."

"Father General!"

"I mean that I counsel the lady not to answer it."

The Procurator General suppressed another smile, directed this time at Roma, and said, "_Bene!_"

"Be calm, my daughter," whispered the Capuchin.

"At least," said the Procurator General, "you can now be certain that you had seen the Honourable Rossi before you met him in Rome?"

"I can."

"In fact you recognise in the illustrious Deputy the young man condemned in contumacy eighteen years ago?"

"I do."

"Perhaps in his letters or conversations he has even admitted the identity?"

"He has."

"Only one more question, Donna Roma," said the Procurator General, with another smile. "Your father's name in England was Doctor Roselli, and the name of his young confederate----"

"Courage, my child," whispered the Capuchin, taking Roma's ice-cold hand in his own trembling one.

"The name of his young confederate was----"

"David Leone," said Roma, lifting her eyes to the face of Father Pifferi.

"So David Leone and David Rossi are one and the same person?"

"Yes," said Roma, and the Capuchin dropped back in his seat as if he had been dealt a blow.

"Thank you. I need trouble you no more. My secretary will now prepare the _precis_."

Commendatore Angelelli returned with the Carabineer, and there was some talking in low tones. "Report for the Committee of the Chamber, sir?"

"That is unnecessary at this moment, the House having risen for Easter."

"Warrant for the arrest, then?" "Certainly. Here is the form. Fill it up, and I will sign."

While the secretary wrote his _precis_ at one side of the table, the Chief of Police prepared his _mandato_ at the other side, repeating the words to the Carabineer who stood behind his chair. "We ... considering the conclusions of the Public Minister ... according to Article 187 of the Code ... order the arrest of David Leone, commonly called David Rossi ... imputed guilty of attempted regicide in the year ... and tried and condemned in contumacy for the crime contemplated in Article.... And to such effects we require the Corps of the Royal Carabineers to conduct him before us to be interrogated on the facts above stated, and call on all officials and agents of the public force to lend a strong hand for the execution of the present warrant. Age, 34 years. Height, 1.79 metres. Forehead, lofty. Eyes, large and dark. Nose, Roman. Hair, black with short curls. Beard and moustache, clean shaven. _Corporatura_, distinguished."

When the secretary had finished his _precis_ he read it aloud to Roma and his superior.

"Good! Give the lady the pen. You will sign this paper, Donna Roma--and that will do."

Roma and Father Pifferi had both risen. "Courage," the Capuchin tried to say, but his quivering lips emitted no sound. Roma stood a moment with the pen in her fingers, and her great eyes looked slowly round the room.

Then she stooped and wrote her name rapidly.

At the same moment the Procurator General signed the warrant, whereupon the Chief of Police handed it to the Carabineer, saying, "Lose no time--Chiasso," and the soldier went out hurriedly.

Roma held the pen a moment longer, and then it dropped out of her fingers.

"Come," said the Capuchin, and they left the room.

There was a crowd on the embankment by the corner of the Ripetta bridge.

The body of a beggar had been brought out of the river, and it was lying there for the formal inspection of the officials who report on cases of sudden death. Roma stopped to look at the dead man. It was Old John. He had committed suicide.

XX

It was said at the Vatican that the Pope had not slept all night. The attendant whose duty it was to lie awake while the Holy Father expected to sleep said he heard him praying in the dark hours, and at one moment he heard him singing a hymn.

To the Pope it had been a night of searching self-examination. Pictures of his life had passed before him in swift review, pulsing and throbbing out of the darkness like the light of a firefly, now come, now gone.

First the Conclave, the three scrutators, and himself as one of them.

The first scrutiny, the second scrutiny, the third scrutiny and his own name going up, up, up, as he proclaimed the votes in a loud voice so that all in the chapel might hear. One vote more to his own name, another, still another; his fear, his fainting; the gentle tones of an old Cardinal, saying, "Take your time, brother; rest, repose a while."

Then the election, the awful sense of being God's choice, the almost unearthly joy of the supreme moment when he became the Vicar of Christ on earth.

Then the stepping forth from the dim conclave into the full light of day to be proclaimed the representative of the Almighty, the living voice of God, the infallible one. The sunless chapel, the white and crimson vestments, the fisherman's ring, the vast crowd in the blazing light of the piazza, the sudden silence, and the clear cry of the Cardinal Deacon ringing out under the blue sky, "I announce to you joyful tidings--the Most Eminent and Reverend Cardinal Leone, having taken the name of Pius X., is elected Pope." Then the call of silver trumpets, the roar of ten thousand human throats, the surging mass of living men below the balcony, and the joy-bells ringing out the glad news from every church tower in Rome, that a new King and Pontiff had been given by God to His World.

Somewhere in the dark hours the Pope dozed off, and then Sleep, the maker of visions, dispelled his dream. Another picture--a picture which had pursued him at intervals both in sleeping and waking hours, ever since the great day when he stepped out on to the balcony and was saluted as a god--came to him again that night. He called it his presentiment. The scene was always the same. A darkened room, a chapel, an altar, himself on his knees, with the sense of Someone bending over him, and an awful voice saying into his ears:--"You, the Vicar of Jesus Christ; you, the rock on which the Saviour built His Church; you, the living voice of God; you, the infallible one; you, who fill the most exalted dignity on earth--_remember you are but clay_!"

The Pope awoke with a start, and to break the oppression of painful thoughts he turned on the light, propped himself up in bed, and taking a book from the night table, he began to read. It was the Catholic legend of a father doomed to destroy his son, or suffer the son to destroy the father. They had been separated early in the son's life, and now that they met again they met as foes, and the son drew his sword upon his father without knowing who he was!

One by one the incidents of the history linked themselves with the incidents of the day before, and the lonely old man of the Vatican--childless, kinless, homeless for all his state, and cut off from every human tie--began to think of things that were still farther back than the conclave and the proclamation--things of the dead past which nature had seemed to bury with so kind a hand, covering the grave with grass and flowers.

A sweet young face, timid and trustful; a sudden shock such as makes the world crumble beneath a man's feet; a vague sense of guilt and shame, unreasonable, unmerited, unjustifiable, yet not to be put away; a blank period of humiliation; the opening of eyes in a new world; the humblest place in a religious house, the kitchen of the Noviciate. Then a great yearning, a great restlessness; coming out of the convent; dispensations; holy orders; works of charity; travels in foreign lands and searchings day and night in the streets of a cruel city for some one who had been lost and was never found.

The Pope put down the book and turned out the light. It was then that he sang and prayed.

When Cortis came with the Pope's breakfast in the frayed edge of the morning, the chamberlain outside the bedroom door whispered to the valet, "The Holy Father has been with the angels all night long."

There was a Papal "Chapel" in St. Peter's that morning, with a procession of white vestments in honour of the Mass of the Resurrection, but the Pope did not attend. He sat alone in his simple chamber, with curtains drawn across the marble columns to obscure the bed, fingering the crucifix which hung from his neck, and waiting for the ringing of the Easter bells.

The little door to the private corridor opened quietly, and Father Pifferi entered the room.

"Well?" said the Pope.

"It is all over," said the Capuchin.

"Did the poor child ... did she bear up bravely?"

"Very bravely, your Holiness."

"No weakness, no hysteria? She did not faint or break down at the end?"