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The Eternal City, a novel by Hall Caine |
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Part 7. The Pope - Chapter 18 |
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_ PART SEVEN. THE POPE CHAPTER 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. "Meesh has been here indeed," said the friar. The venerable old men walked on in silence until they re-entered the vaulted courtyards of the Vatican. Then the Pope turned to the Capuchin and said in a breaking voice, "You'll go with the poor lady to the Procura in the morning, Father Pifferi. If the magistrates ask questions which they should not ask, you will protect her, and even forbid her to reply, and if she breaks down at the last moment you will support and comfort her. After that ... we must leave all to the Holy Spirit. God's hand is in this thing ... it is in everything. He will bring out all things well--well for us, well for the Church, well for the poor lady, and even for her husband, whoever he may be." "Whoever he may be," repeated the Capuchin. _ |
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