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authority, the sole possible bond of charity and peace--as the Father, in

fact, who alone could stamp out injustice among his children, destroy

misery, and re-establish the liberating Law of Work by bringing the

nations back to the faith of the primitive Church, the gentleness and the

wisdom of the true Christian community. And in the deep silence of that

room the great figure which he thus set up assumed invincible

all-powerfulness, extraordinary majesty.

"Oh, I beseech you, Holy Father, listen to me," he said. "Do not even

strike me, strike no one, neither a being nor a thing, anything that can

suffer under the sun. Show kindness and indulgence to all, show all the

kindness and indulgence which the sight of the world's sufferings must

have set in you!"

And then, seeing that Leo XIII still remained silent and still left him

standing there, he sank down upon his knees, as if felled by the growing

emotion which rendered his heart so heavy. And within him there was a

sort of _debacle_; all his doubts, all his anguish and sadness burst

forth in an irresistible stream. There was the memory of the frightful

day that he had just spent, the tragic death of Dario and Benedetta,

which weighed on him like lead; there were all the sufferings that he had

experienced since his arrival in Rome, the destruction of his illusions,

the wounds dealt to his delicacy, the buffets with which men and things

had responded to his young enthusiasm; and, lying yet more deeply within

his heart, there was the sum total of human wretchedness, the thought of

famished ones howling for food, of mothers whose breasts were drained and

who sobbed whilst kissing their hungry babes, of fathers without work,

who clenched their fists and revolted--indeed, the whole of that hateful

misery which is as old as mankind itself, which has preyed upon mankind

since its earliest hour, and which he now had everywhere found increasing

in horror and havoc, without a gleam of hope that it would ever be

healed. And withal, yet more immense and more incurable, he felt within

him a nameless sorrow to which he could assign no precise cause or

name--an universal, an illimitable sorrow with which he melted

despairingly, and which was perhaps the very sorrow of life.

"O Holy Father!" he exclaimed, "I myself have no existence and my book

has no existence. I desired, passionately desired to see your Holiness

that I might explain and defend myself. But I no longer know, I can no

longer recall a single one of the things that I wished to say, I can only

weep, weep the tears which are stifling me. Yes, I am but a poor man, and

the only need I feel is to speak to you of the poor. Oh! the poor ones,

oh! the lowly ones, whom for two years past I have seen in our faubourgs

of Paris, so wretched and so full of pain; the poor little children that

I have picked out of the snow, the poor little angels who had eaten

nothing for two days; the women too, consumed by consumption, without

bread or fire, shivering in filthy hovels; and the men thrown on the

street by slackness of trade, weary of begging for work as one begs for

alms, sinking back into night, drunken with rage and harbouring the sole

avenging thought of setting the whole city afire! And that night too,

that terrible night, when in a room of horror I beheld a mother who had

just killed herself with her five little ones, she lying on a palliasse

suckling her last-born, and two little girls, two pretty little blondes,

sleeping the last sleep beside her, while the two boys had succumbed

farther away, one of them crouching against a wall, and the other lying

upon the floor, distorted as though by a last effort to avoid death!...

O Holy Father! I am but an ambassador, the messenger of those who suffer

and who sob, the humble delegate of the humble ones who die of want

beneath the hateful harshness, the frightful injustice of our present-day

social system! And I bring your Holiness their tears, and I lay their

tortures at your Holiness's feet, I raise their cry of woe, like a cry

from the abyss, that cry which demands justice unless indeed the very

heavens are to fall! Oh! show your loving kindness, Holy Father, show

compassion!"

The young man had stretched out his arms and implored Leo XIII with a

gesture as of supreme appeal to the divine compassion. Then he continued:

"And here, Holy Father, in this splendid and eternal Rome, is not the

want and misery as frightful! During the weeks that I have roamed hither

and thither among the dust of famous ruins, I have never ceased to come

in contact with evils which demand cure. Ah! to think of all that is

crumbling, all that is expiring, the agony of so much glory, the fearful

sadness of a world which is dying of exhaustion and hunger! Yonder, under

your Holiness's windows, have I not seen a district of horrors, a

district of unfinished palaces stricken like rickety children who cannot

attain to full growth, palaces which are already in ruins and have become

places of refuge for all the woeful misery of Rome? And here, as in

Paris, what a suffering multitude, what a shameless exhibition too of the

social sore, the devouring cancer openly tolerated and displayed in utter

heedlessness! There are whole families leading idle and hungry lives in

the splendid sunlight; fathers waiting for work to fall to them from

heaven; sons listlessly spending their days asleep on the dry grass;

mothers and daughters, withered before their time, shuffling about in

loquacious idleness. O Holy Father, already to-morrow at dawn may your

Holiness open that window yonder and with your benediction awaken that

great childish people, which still slumbers in ignorance and poverty! May

your Holiness give it the soul it lacks, a soul with the consciousness of

human dignity, of the necessary law of work, of free and fraternal life

regulated by justice only! Yes, may your Holiness make a people out of

that heap of wretches, whose excuse lies in all their bodily suffering

and mental night, who live like the beasts that go by and die, never

knowing nor understanding, yet ever lashed onward with the whip!"

Pierre's sobs were gradually choking him, and it was only the impulse of

his passion which still enabled him to speak. "And, Holy Father," he

continued, "is it not to you that I ought to address myself in the name

of all these wretched ones? Are you not the Father, and is it not before

the Father that the messenger of the poor and the lowly should kneel as I

am kneeling now? And is it not to the Father that he should bring the

huge burden of their sorrows and ask for pity and help and justice? Yes,

particularly for justice! And since you are the Father throw the doors

wide open so that all may enter, even the humblest of your children, the

faithful, the chance passers, even the rebellious ones and those who have

gone astray but who will perhaps enter and whom you will save from the

errors of abandonment! Be as the house of refuge on the dangerous road,

the loving greeter of the wayfarer, the lamp of hospitality which ever

burns, and is seen afar off and saves one in the storm! And since, O

Father, you are power be salvation also! You can do all; you have

centuries of domination behind you; you have nowadays risen to a moral

authority which has rendered you the arbiter of the world; you are there

before me like the very majesty of the sun which illumines and

fructifies! Oh! be the star of kindness and charity, be the redeemer;

take in hand once more the purpose of Jesus, which has been perverted by

being left in the hands of the rich and the powerful who have ended by

transforming the work of the Gospel into the most hateful of all

monuments of pride and tyranny! And since the work has been spoilt, take

it in hand, begin it afresh, place yourself on the side of the little

ones, the lowly ones, the poor ones, and bring them back to the peace,

the fraternity, and the justice of the original Christian communion. And

say, O Father, that I have understood you, that I have sincerely

expressed in this respect your most cherished ideas, the sole living

desire of your reign! The rest, oh! the rest, my book, myself, what

matter they! I do not defend myself, I only seek your glory and the

happiness of mankind. Say that from the depths of this Vatican you have

heard the rending of our corrupt modern societies! Say that you have

quivered with loving pity, say that you desire to prevent the awful

impending catastrophe by recalling the Gospel to the hearts of your

children who are stricken with madness, and by bringing them back to the

age of simplicity and purity when the first Christians lived together in

innocent brotherhood! Yes, it is for that reason, is it not, that you

have placed yourself, Father, on the side of the poor, and for that

reason I am here and entreat you for pity and kindness and justice with

my whole soul!"

Then the young man gave way beneath his emotion, and fell all of a heap

upon the floor amidst a rush of sobs--loud, endless sobs, which flowed

forth in billows, coming as it were not only from himself but from all

the wretched, from the whole world in whose veins sorrow coursed mingled

with the very blood of life. He was there as the ambassador of suffering,

as he had said. And indeed, at the foot of that mute and motionless pope,

he was like the personification of the whole of human woe.

Leo XIII, who was extremely fond of talking and could only listen to

others with an effort, had twice raised one of his pallid hands to

interrupt the young priest. Then, gradually overcome by astonishment,

touched by emotion himself, he had allowed him to continue, to go on to

the end of his outburst. A little blood even had suffused the snowy

whiteness of the Pontiff's face whilst his eyes shone out yet more

brilliantly. And as soon as he saw the young man speechless at his feet,

shaken by those sobs which seemed to be wrenching away his heart, he

became anxious and leant forward: "Calm yourself, my son, raise

yourself," he said.

But the sobs still continued, still flowed forth, all reason and respect

being swept away amidst that distracted plaint of a wounded soul, that

moan of suffering, dying flesh.

"Raise yourself, my son, it is not proper," repeated Leo XIII. "There,

take that chair." And with a gesture of authority he at last invited the

young man to sit down.

Pierre rose with pain, and at once seated himself in order that he might

not fall. He brushed his hair back from his forehead, and wiped his

scalding tears away with his hands, unable to understand what had just

happened, but striving to regain his self-possession.

"You appeal to the Holy Father," said Leo XIII. "Ah! rest assured that

his heart is full of pity and affection for those who are unfortunate.

But that is not the point, it is our holy religion which is in question.

I have read your book, a bad book, I tell you so at once, the most

dangerous and culpable of books, precisely on account of its qualities,

the pages in which I myself felt interested. Yes, I was often fascinated,

I should not have continued my perusal had I not felt carried away,

transported by the ardent breath of your faith and enthusiasm. The

subject 'New Rome' is such a beautiful one and impassions me so much! and

certainly there is a book to be written under that title, but in a very

different spirit to yours. You think that you have understood me, my son,

that you have so penetrated yourself with my writings and actions that

you simply express my most cherished ideas. But no, no, you have not

understood me, and that is why I desired to see you, explain things to

you, and convince you."

It was now Pierre who sat listening, mute and motionless. Yet he had only

come thither to defend himself; for three months past he had been

feverishly desiring this interview, preparing his arguments and feeling

confident of victory; and now although he heard his book spoken of as

dangerous and culpable he did not protest, did not reply with any one of

those good reasons which he had deemed so irresistible. But the fact was

that intense weariness had come upon him, the appeal that he had made,

the tears that he had shed had left him utterly exhausted. By and by,

however, he would be brave and would say what he had resolved to say.

"People do not understand me, do not understand me!" resumed Leo XIII

with an air of impatient irritation. "It is incredible what trouble I

have to make myself understood, in France especially! Take the temporal

power for instance; how can you have fancied that the Holy See would ever

enter into any compromise on that question? Such language is unworthy of

a priest, it is the chimerical dream of one who is ignorant of the

conditions in which the papacy has hitherto lived and in which it must

still live if it does not desire to disappear. Cannot you see the

sophistry of your argument that the Church becomes the loftier the more

it frees itself from the cares of terrestrial sovereignty? A purely

spiritual royalty, a sway of charity and love, indeed, 'tis a fine

imaginative idea! But who will ensure us respect? Who will grant us the

alms of a stone on which to rest our head if we are ever driven forth and

forced to roam the highways? Who will guarantee our independence when we

are at the mercy of every state?... No, no! this soil of Rome is ours,

we have inherited it from the long line of our ancestors, and it is the

indestructible, eternal soil on which the Church is built, so that any

relinquishment would mean the downfall of the Holy Catholic Apostolic and

Roman Church. And, moreover, we could not relinquish it; we are bound by

our oath to God and man."

He paused for a moment to allow Pierre to answer him. But the latter to

his stupefaction could say nothing, for he perceived that this pope spoke

as he was bound to speak. All the heavy mysterious things which had

weighed the young priest down whilst he was waiting in the ante-room, now

became more and more clearly defined. They were, indeed, the things which