The Baron bowed very low. "The Government does not presume so far," he
said. "It only hopes that your Holiness will require your informant to
do so."
"Then you want me to outrage a confidence?"
"It was not a confession, your Holiness, and even if it had been, as
your Holiness knows better than we do, it would not be without precedent
to reveal the facts which are necessary to be known in order to prevent
crime."
The Capuchin's sandals were scraping on the floor, but the Pope raised
his left hand, and the friar fell back.
"You are aware," said the Pope, "that the lady you speak of as my
informant is married to the Deputy?"
"We are aware that she thinks she is."
"Thinks?" said the indignant voice of the Capuchin, but the Pope's left
hand was raised again.
"In short, sir, you ask me to require the wife to sacrifice her
husband."
"If your Holiness calls it so,--to perform an act that will preserve the
public peace...."
"I _do_ call it so."
The Baron bowed, the young King was restless, and there was a moment's
silence. Then the Pope said:
"Putting aside the extreme unlikelihood that the lady knows more than
she has said, and we have already communicated, what possible inducement
do you expect us to offer her that she should sacrifice her husband?"
"Her husband's life," said the Baron.
"His life?"
"Your Holiness may not know that the Governments of Europe, having
ascertained the existence of a widespread plot against civil society,
have joined in measures of repression. One of these is the extension to
all countries of what is called the Belgian clause in treaties, whereby
persons guilty of regicide or of plots directed against the lives of
sovereigns are made liable to extradition."
"Well?"
"The Deputy Rossi is now in Berlin. If he were denounced with the
conditions required by law as conspiring against the life of the King,
we might have him arrested to-night and brought back as a common
murderer."
"Well?"
"Your Holiness may not have heard that since the late unhappy riots the
Parliament, in spite of the protests of his Majesty, has re-established
capital punishment for all forms of high treason."
"Therefore," said the Pope, "if the wife were to denounce her husband
for participation in this conspiracy he would be sentenced to death."
"For this conspiracy--yes," said the Baron. "But the present is not the
only conspiracy the man Rossi has engaged in. Eighteen years ago he was
condemned in contumacy for conspiracy against the life of the late King.
He has not yet suffered for his crime, because of the difficulty of
bringing it home. In that case, as in this, there is only one person
known to the authorities who can fulfil the conditions required by law.
That person is the informant of your Holiness."
"Well?"
"If your Holiness can prevail upon the lady to identify her lover as the
man condemned for the former conspiracy, you will be helping her to save
her husband's life from the penalty due for the present one."
"How so?"
"His Majesty is willing to promise your Holiness that, whatever the
result of a new trial in assize to follow the old one in contumacy, he
will grant a complete pardon."
"And then?"
"Then the Deputy Rossi will be banished, the threatened conspiracy will
be crushed, the public peace will be preserved, and the King's life will
be saved."
The Pope leaned forward on the arms of his chair, but he did not speak,
and there was silence for some moments.
"Thus your Holiness must see," said the Baron suavely, "that, in asking
you to obtain the denunciation of the man Rossi, the Government is only
looking to your Holiness to fulfil the mission of mercy to which your
venerated position has destined you."
"And if I refused to exercise this mission of mercy?"
The Baron bowed gravely. "Your Holiness will not refuse," he said.
"But if I do--what then?"
"Then ... your Holiness.... I was about to say something."
"I am listening."
"The man we speak of is the bitterest enemy of the Church. Whatever his
hypocrisies, he is at once an atheist and a freemason, sworn to allow no
private interests or feelings, no bonds of patriotism or blood, to turn
him aside from his purpose, which is to overthrow Society and the
Church."
"Well?"
"He is also a bitter personal enemy of the Holy Father, and knows no
object so dear as that of tearing him from his place and shaking the
throne of St. Peter."
"Well, sir?"
"The police and the army of the Government are the only forces by which
the Holy Father can be protected, and without them the bad elements
which lurk in every community would break out, the Holy Father would be
driven from Rome, and his priests assaulted in the streets."
"But what will happen if I refuse to outrage the sanctity of an immortal
soul in spite of all this danger?"
"Your Holiness asks me what will happen if you refuse to obtain the
denunciation of a man whom your Holiness knows to be conspiring against
public order?"
"I do."
"What will happen will be ... your Holiness, I am speaking...."
"Go on."
"That, if the crime is committed and the King is killed, I, the Minister
of his Majesty, will be in a position to say--and to call upon this
friar to witness--that the Pope knew of it beforehand, and under the
most noble sentiments about the sanctity of an immortal soul gave a
supreme encouragement of regicide."
"And then, sir?"
"The world draws no nice distinctions, your Holiness, and the Vatican is
now at war with nearly all the powers and peoples of Europe. In the
presence of a monstrous crime against the most innocent and the most
highly placed, the world would say that what the Pope did not prevent
the Pope desired, what the Pope desired the Pope designed, and that the
Vicar of the Prince of Peace attempted to rebuild his temporal power by
means of the plots of conspirators and the daggers of assassins."
The sandals of the Capuchin were scraping the floor again, and once more
the Pope put up his hand.
"You come to me, sir, when you have exhausted all other means of
obtaining your end?"
"Naturally the Government wishes if possible to spare your Holiness an
unusual and painful ordeal."
"The lady has resisted all other influences?"
"She has resisted all influences which can be brought to bear upon her
by the proper authorities."
"I have heard of it, sir. I have heard what your 'authorities' have done
to humble a helpless woman. She had been the victim of a heartless man,
and by knowledge of that fact your 'authorities' have tempted and tried
her. They tried her with poverty, with humiliation, with jealousy and
the shadow of shame. But the blessed God upheld her in the love which
had awakened her soul, and she withstood them to the last."
The Baron, for the first time, looked confused.
"I have also heard that in order to achieve the same end one of your
gaols has been the scene of a scandal which has outraged every divine
and human law."
"Your Holiness must not accept for truth all that is printed in the
halfpenny papers."
"Is it true that in the cell where a helpless unfortunate was paying the
penalty of his crime your 'authorities' introduced a police agent in
disguise to draw him into a denunciation of his accomplice?"
"These are matters of state, your Holiness. I do not assert them and I
do not deny."
"In the name of humanity I ask you are such 'authorities' punished, or
do they sit in the cabinets of your Ministers of the Interior?"
"No doubt the officials went too far, your Holiness; but shall we, for
the sake of a miserable malefactor who told one story to-day and another
to-morrow, drag our public service through courts of law? Pity for such
persons is morbid sentimentality, your Holiness, unworthy of a strong
and enlightened Government."
"Then God destroy all such Governments, sir, and the bad and unchristian
system which supports them! Allow that the man _was_ a miserable
malefactor, it was not he alone that was offended, but in his poor,
degraded person the spirit of Justice. What did your 'authorities' do?
They tortured the man by his love for his wife, by the memory of his
murdered child, by all that was true and noble and divine in him. They
crucified the Christ in that helpless man, and you stand here in the
presence of the Vicar of Christ to excuse and defend them."
The Pope had risen in his chair and lifted one hand over his head with a
majestic gesture. Involuntarily the young King, who had been ashen pale
for some moments, dropped to his knees, but the Baron only folded his
arms and stiffened his legs.
"Have you ever thought, sir, of the end of the unjust Minister? Think of
his dying hour, tortured with the memory of young lives dissolved,
mothers dead, widows desolate, and orphans in tears. Think of the day
after his death, when he who has passed through the world like the
scourge of God lies at its feet, and no one so mean but he may spurn the
dishonoured carcass. You are aiming high, your Excellency, but beware,
beware!"
The Pope sat, and the King rose to his feet.
"Your Majesty," said the Pope, "the day will come when we must both
present ourselves before God to render to Him an account of our deeds,
and I, being far more advanced in years, will assuredly be the first.
But I would not dare to meet the eye of my Judge if I did not this day
warn you of the dangers in which you stand. Only God knows by what
inscrutable decree of Providence one man is made a Pope or a King, while
another man, his equal or superior, is made a beggar or a slave. But God
who made Popes and Kings meant them to be the fathers, not the seducers
of their subjects. A sovereign may be a man of good intentions, but if
he is weak, and allows himself to fall into the hands of despotic
Ministers, he is a worse affliction than the cruellest tyrant. Think
well, your Majesty! A throne may be a quagmire, and a man may be buried
in it, and buried alive."
The young King began to falter some incoherent words, but without
listening the Pope rose to end the audience.
"You promise me," said the Pope, "that if--I say _if_--in order to avoid
bloodshed and to prevent a crime, I obtain from this lady the
identification of her husband as the person condemned for the former
conspiracy, you will spare and pardon him whatever happens?"
"Holy Father, I give you my solemn word for it."
"Then leave me! Let me think!... Wait! If she consents, where must she
go to?"
"To the Procura by the Ponte Ripetta, and, as time presses, at ten
o'clock on Saturday morning," said the Baron.
"Leave me! Leave me!"
The King knelt again and kissed the Pope's hand, but the Baron only
bowed as he passed out behind his sovereign.
The opening of the doors let in a wave of sound that was like the roll
of a great wind in a cave. Tenebræ had been going on for some time in
the Basilica, and the people were singing the Miserere.
"Did you hear him, Father?" said the Pope. "Isn't it almost enough to
justify a man like Rossi that he has to meet a despot like that?"
"We'll talk of it to-morrow," said the Capuchin.
The friar touched a bell, and the _palfrenieri_ returned with the
chair.