“Benedico te in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.”
The Pontiff rapidly ascended the five steps, and disappeared.
Benedetto remained upon his knees, wrapt in that benediction which, it seemed to him, had come from Christ Himself. On hearing steps in the gallery he rose. A few moments later he was returning to the bronze portal, accompanied by Don Teofilo.
III.
The room on the fourth floor was hardly decent. An iron bedstead, a pedestal, a writing-desk, with a few torn and dilapidated books, a deal chest of drawers, an iron washstand, and a few straw-bottomed chairs, were all it contained. A suit of grey clothes was hanging from one nail, a broad-brimmed black hat from another. Frequent flashes of lightning could be seen through the open window; breaths of the dark, stormy night blew in, causing the flame of the petroleum lamp on the pedestal to flare and the light and the shadows to tremble, as they fell upon the not too clean sheets, the two fleshless hands, the cluster of roses lying loose between them, on the flannel shirt of the sick man, who had pulled himself up into a sitting position, and on his deeply lined, thin face, greyish with a month-old beard. On the other side of the poor bed in the gloaming stood Benedetto. The sick man gazed at the flowers in silence. His hands and his lips trembled.
He had been a monk. At thirty he had thrown off the cowl and married. A man of little culture, of few talents, he had managed to make a poor living for his wife and two daughters, working as a copyist. The wife was dead, the daughters had been led astray, and now he himself was dying slowly, there in that fourth-floor room, in Via della Marmorata, near the corner of Via Manuzio, wasted by misery, by disease, by the bitterness of his soul.
A sob he could not check broke from his lips. He opened his arms, encircled Benedetto’s neck, and drew his head towards him in an embrace. Then, suddenly, he pushed him away, and covered his face with his hands.
“I am not worthy! I am not worthy!” said he.
But now Benedetto in his turn encircled the man’s neck, kissed him, and answered:
“Nor am I worthy of this blessing the Lord has sent me!”