It was said at the Vatican that the Pope had not slept all night. The
attendant whose duty it was to lie awake while the Holy Father expected
to sleep said he heard him praying in the dark hours, and at one moment
he heard him singing a hymn.
To the Pope it had been a night of searching self-examination. Pictures
of his life had passed before him in swift review, pulsing and throbbing
out of the darkness like the light of a firefly, now come, now gone.
First the Conclave, the three scrutators, and himself as one of them.
The first scrutiny, the second scrutiny, the third scrutiny and his own
name going up, up, up, as he proclaimed the votes in a loud voice so
that all in the chapel might hear. One vote more to his own name,
another, still another; his fear, his fainting; the gentle tones of an
old Cardinal, saying, "Take your time, brother; rest, repose a while."
Then the election, the awful sense of being God's choice, the almost
unearthly joy of the supreme moment when he became the Vicar of Christ
on earth.
Then the stepping forth from the dim conclave into the full light of day
to be proclaimed the representative of the Almighty, the living voice of
God, the infallible one. The sunless chapel, the white and crimson
vestments, the fisherman's ring, the vast crowd in the blazing light of
the piazza, the sudden silence, and the clear cry of the Cardinal Deacon
ringing out under the blue sky, "I announce to you joyful tidings--the
Most Eminent and Reverend Cardinal Leone, having taken the name of Pius
X., is elected Pope." Then the call of silver trumpets, the roar of ten
thousand human throats, the surging mass of living men below the
balcony, and the joy-bells ringing out the glad news from every church
tower in Rome, that a new King and Pontiff had been given by God to His
World.
Somewhere in the dark hours the Pope dozed off, and then Sleep, the
maker of visions, dispelled his dream. Another picture--a picture which
had pursued him at intervals both in sleeping and waking hours, ever
since the great day when he stepped out on to the balcony and was
saluted as a god--came to him again that night. He called it his
presentiment. The scene was always the same. A darkened room, a chapel,
an altar, himself on his knees, with the sense of Someone bending over
him, and an awful voice saying into his ears:--"You, the Vicar of Jesus
Christ; you, the rock on which the Saviour built His Church; you, the
living voice of God; you, the infallible one; you, who fill the most
exalted dignity on earth--_remember you are but clay_!"
The Pope awoke with a start, and to break the oppression of painful
thoughts he turned on the light, propped himself up in bed, and taking a
book from the night table, he began to read. It was the Catholic legend
of a father doomed to destroy his son, or suffer the son to destroy the
father. They had been separated early in the son's life, and now that
they met again they met as foes, and the son drew his sword upon his
father without knowing who he was!
One by one the incidents of the history linked themselves with the
incidents of the day before, and the lonely old man of the
Vatican--childless, kinless, homeless for all his state, and cut off
from every human tie--began to think of things that were still farther
back than the conclave and the proclamation--things of the dead past
which nature had seemed to bury with so kind a hand, covering the grave
with grass and flowers.
A sweet young face, timid and trustful; a sudden shock such as makes the
world crumble beneath a man's feet; a vague sense of guilt and shame,
unreasonable, unmerited, unjustifiable, yet not to be put away; a blank
period of humiliation; the opening of eyes in a new world; the humblest
place in a religious house, the kitchen of the Noviciate. Then a great
yearning, a great restlessness; coming out of the convent;
dispensations; holy orders; works of charity; travels in foreign lands
and searchings day and night in the streets of a cruel city for some one
who had been lost and was never found.
The Pope put down the book and turned out the light. It was then that he
sang and prayed.
When Cortis came with the Pope's breakfast in the frayed edge of the
morning, the chamberlain outside the bedroom door whispered to the
valet, "The Holy Father has been with the angels all night long."
There was a Papal "Chapel" in St. Peter's that morning, with a
procession of white vestments in honour of the Mass of the Resurrection,
but the Pope did not attend. He sat alone in his simple chamber, with
curtains drawn across the marble columns to obscure the bed, fingering
the crucifix which hung from his neck, and waiting for the ringing of
the Easter bells.
The little door to the private corridor opened quietly, and Father
Pifferi entered the room.
"Well?" said the Pope.
"It is all over," said the Capuchin.
"Did the poor child ... did she bear up bravely?"
"Very bravely, your Holiness."
"No weakness, no hysteria? She did not faint or break down at the end?"
"On the contrary, she was composed--perfectly composed and quiet."
"Thank God!"
"It was most extraordinary. A woman denouncing her husband, and yet so
calm, so terribly calm."
"God helped her to bear her burden. God help all of us in our hour of
need!"