‘Will you tell me whether that constitutes any obstacle to your serving me?’ he inquired.
I hesitated.
‘I should feel embarrassed if your Majesty were to ask me to act against the Vatican,’ I ventured to say.
‘But suppose I were to ask you to undertake the office of mediator, to promote a reconciliation between the Papacy and the Italian nation?’
‘Then, sire, you would be offering me the task which I covet above all others, and which I should feel to be the crown of my career.’
The young King made a gesture of delight.
‘That is fortunate indeed! Listen, monsieur! From a boy my heart has bled at the thought of this miserable estrangement, so fraught with danger to the cause of religion as well as to the national freedom. In addition I must tell you that I feel very deeply my own position. I have a conviction that our House cannot prosper while it remains under the curse of the Church.
‘As far as I am concerned,’ Victor Emmanuel went on, ‘there is no sacrifice I am not prepared to make, even to the laying down of my crown, in order to win the forgiveness of the Holy See, and to establish good relations between the Church and the nation. But I need not say that I can do nothing by myself. Unless I can succeed in carrying the Parliament and the people with me, I should simply make things worse than they are at present.’
His Majesty paused for a minute, and then resumed, watching my face anxiously.
‘I have been seeking for years for some means of appeasing the Holy Father that would not be rejected by the secular politicians. And the plan which has developed itself in my mind is this:—