A cry of delight greeted this proposal. Isabel ran gaily in front to lead the party into her own little bedroom, where, under a loose plank, which this observant child had discovered, and the knowledge of which she had kept to herself with that marvellous secrecy of which children are sometimes capable, lay—the Humbert millions!
Isabel was a little disappointed to find, when the box was opened, that her bricks had been changed into stupid pieces of paper. But I explained that a fairy had been at work, and that a new and better set of bricks would arrive by the next post.
And so, I am relieved to say, terminated my connection with the Humbert Case.
XII
THE BLACK POPE
I must be pardoned if I exercise a certain reserve in telling the story of the most delicate of all the affairs in which I have been engaged. While the interests concerned were, in their own nature, purely political, the fact that they centred round the spiritual Head of Christendom imposes on me restraints which I am bound to recognise.
I cannot recall at this moment whether, in the course of these reminiscences, I have had occasion to mention that I was honoured on several occasions by the confidence of the illustrious Pontiff who, in the course of less than a generation, exalted the Papacy to a height of power and reverent esteem such as it had scarcely enjoyed since the Middle Ages.
To me, as to all who have paid any attention to the history of their own times, the passing away of Leo XIII. marked an epoch in the history of the world. I was in Paris, awaiting the announcement which would plunge two continents into mourning, when, an hour before the fatal bulletin reached the newspaper offices, I received a despatch desiring me to start immediately for Rome, and wait upon the young King of Italy in the Palace of the Quirinal.
Whether in consequence of my connection with the Vatican or not, it happened that I had never been directly employed in the service of the House of Savoy. I have told the story of my unavailing efforts to save the life of King Humbert; but on that occasion I acted as the agent of the friendly monarch of another country.
During my journey to Rome in obedience to the royal summons, my mind was deeply exercised by the problem presented by the disastrous breach between the Italian Kingship and the Papacy.
When the troops of Victor Emmanuel I., thirty-four years ago, marched into the City of the Popes, to make it the capital of United Italy, no one foresaw the difficulties which would flow from the refusal of the Popes to abandon their rights as the temporal Sovereigns of Rome and the States of the Church.