_ PART NINE. THE PEOPLE
CHAPTER IV
"The dress of a simple priest to-day, Gaetanino," said the Pope, when his valet came to his bedroom on the following morning.
After Mass and the usual visit of the Cardinal Secretary, the Pope called for the young Count de Raymond.
"We'll go down to our guest first," he said, putting into the side-pocket of his cassock the letters which the Noble Guard had given him.
They found Rossi sitting in a large, sparsely furnished room, by an almost untouched breakfast. He lifted his head when he heard steps, and rose as the Pope entered. His pale face was a picture of despair. "Something has died in him," thought the Pope, and an aching sadness, which had been gnawing at his heart for days, returned.
"They make you comfortable in this old place, my son?"
"Yes, your Holiness."
"And you have everything you wish for?"
"More than I deserve, your Holiness."
"You have suffered, my son. But, in the providence of God, who knows what may happen yet? Don't lose heart. Take an old man's word for it--life is worth living. The Holy Father has found it so in spite of many sorrows."
A kind of pitying smile passed over the young man's miserable face. "Mine is a sorrow your Holiness can know nothing about--I have lost my wife," he said.
There was a moment of silence. Then the Pope said in a voice that shook slightly, "You don't mean that your wife _is_ dead, but only...."
"Only," said Rossi, with a curl of the lip, "that it was she who betrayed me."
"It's hard, my son, very hard. But who knows what influences...."
"Curse them! Curse the influences, whatever they were, which caused a wife to betray her husband."
The Pope, who was sitting with both hands on the knob of his stick, quivered perceptibly. "My son," he said, "you have much to justify you, and it is not for me to gainsay you altogether. But God rules His world in righteousness, and if this had not happened, who knows but what worse might have befallen you?"
"Nothing worse _could_ have befallen me, your Holiness."
There was another moment of silence, and then the Pope said, "Yes, I understand what it is to build one's faith on a human foundation. The foundation fails, and then the heart sinks, the soul totters. But bad as this ... this betrayal is, you do very wrong if you refuse to see that it saved you from the consequences--the awful consequences before God and man--of your intended conduct."
"What conduct, your Holiness?"
"The terrible conduct which formed the basis of your plans on returning to Rome."
"You mean ... what the newspapers talked about?"
The Pope bent his head.
"A conspiracy to kill the King?"
Again the Pope bent his head.
"You believed that, your Holiness?"
"Unhappily I was compelled to do so."
"And she ... do you suppose she believed it?"
"She believed you were engaged in conspiracies. There was nothing else she could believe in the light of what you had said and written."
After a moment Rossi began to laugh. "And yet you say the world is ruled in righteousness!" he said.
The Pope's face was whitening. "Do you tell me it was a mistake?" he asked.
"Indeed I do. The only conspiracies I was engaged in were conspiracies to found associations of freedom which had been forbidden by the tyrannical new decree. But what matter? If an error like that can lead to results like these, what's the good of trying?" And he laughed again.
The Pope, who was deeply moved, looked up into the young man's tortured face, without knowing that his own tears were streaming. Old memories were astir within him, and he was carried back into the past of his own life. He was remembering the days when he too had reeled beneath the blow of a terrible fate, and all his hopes and beliefs had been mown down as by a scythe. But God had been good. His gracious hand had healed the wound and made all things well.
Taking the letters from the pocket of his cassock, the Pope laid them on the table.
"These are for you, my son," he said, and then he turned away.
Going down the narrow roofed-in passage to the Castle of St. Angelo, with shafts of morning sunshine slanting through its lancet windows, and the voices of children at play coming up from the street below, the Pope told himself that he must be severe with Roma. The only thing irremediable in all that had happened was the assassination, and though that, in God's hands, had teen turned to the good of the people, yet it raised a barrier between two unhappy souls that might never in this life be passed.
"Poor child! Poor flower broken by the storms of fate! But I must reprove her. Before I give her the Blessed Sacrament she must confess and show a full contrition." _