_ PART SEVEN. THE POPE
CHAPTER XII
The ceremonies in St. Peter's on Maundy Thursday exceeded in pomp and magnificence anything that could be remembered in Rome.
It was a great triumph for the Church. In the face of the anti-religious Governments of Europe she had proved that the mightiest sentiment of the people was the sentiment of religion.
The Papal Court was proud of itself. Some of its members made no effort to conceal their delight at the blow they had struck at the ruling classes. But there was one man in Rome who felt no joy in his triumph. It was the Pope.
At nine o'clock at night he visited the "urn" called the "Sepulchre." Borne amid the light of torches on his _sedia_ with his _flabelli_ waving on either hand, under a white canopy upheld by prelates, he passed through the glittering rooms of his own palace, along the dark corridors of the Vatican and down the marble stairs, accompanied by his guards in helmets and preceded by the papal cross covered with a violet veil, into the great Basilica, lit only by large candles in iron stands, and looking plain and barn-like and full of shadows in the gloom and the smoky air. But after he had visited the Sepulchre, gorgeously illuminated, while the cantors sang the _Verbum Caro_, after he had knelt in silence and had risen, and the torches of his procession had been put out, and he had returned to his chair to be borne into the Sacristy, and the poor people, lifted to a height of emotion not often reached by the human soul, had broken again into a last delirious shout of affection, he dropped his head and wept.
At that moment the Sacristy was empty save for the custodian in black cassock and biretta, who was warming his hands over a large bronze scaldino; but in the Archpriest's room adjoining, with its gilt arm-chair and stools of red plush, Father Pifferi in his ordinary brown habit was waiting for the Pope. The bearers put down the chair, knelt and kissed the Pope's feet in spite of his protest, backed themselves out with deep obeisance, and left the two old men together.
"Have they arrived?" asked the Pope.
"Not yet, your Holiness," said the Capuchin.
"Father, have you any faith in presentiments?"
"Sometimes, your Holiness. When they continue and are persistent..."
"I have had a presentiment which has been with me all my life--all my life as Pope, at all events. The blessed God who abases and lifts up has thought fit to raise my lowliness to the most sublime dignity that exists on earth, but I have always lived in the fear that some day I should be torn down from it, and the Church would suffer."
"God forbid, your Holiness!"
"That was why I refused every place and every honour. You know how I refused them, Father!"
"Yes, but God knew better, your Holiness, and He preserved you to be a blessing and a comfort to His people."
"His holy will be done! But the shadow which has been over me will not be lifted. Cause prayers to be said for me. Pray for me yourself, Father."
"Your Holiness is in low spirits. And to-day of all days! Ah, how happy is the Church which has seen the hand of God place in the chair of St. Peter a soul capable of comprehending the necessities of His children and a heart desirous of satisfying them!"
"I hardly know what is to come of this interview, Father, but I must leave myself in the hands of the Holy Spirit."
"There is no help for it now, your Holiness."
"Perhaps I should not have gone so far but for this wave of anarchy which is sweeping over the world.... You believe the man Rossi is secretly an anarchist?"
"I am afraid he is, your Holiness, and one of the worst enemies of the Church and the Holy Father."
"They say he was an orphan from his infancy, and never knew father, or mother, or home."
"Pitiful, very pitiful!"
"I have heard that his public life is not without a certain perverted nobility, and that his private life is pure and good."
"His relation to the lady would seem to say so, your Holiness."
"But the Holy Father may be sorry for a wayward son, and yet be forced to condemn him for all that. He must cut himself off from all such men, lest his adversaries should say that, while preaching peace and the moral law, he is secretly encouraging the devilish agents of atheism, anarchy, and rebellion."
"Perhaps so, your Holiness."
"Father, do you think the care of temporal things is ever a danger and temptation?"
"Sometimes I think it is, your Holiness, and that the Holy Father would be better without lands or fleshly armies."
"How late they are!" said the Pope; but at the same moment the door opened, and a Noble Guard knelt on the threshold.
"Well?"
"The personages you expect have come, your Holiness."
"Bring them in," said the Pope. _