"He is four," answered the mother, "and in two or three years I hope he will make his first communion."
The pope looked earnestly into the child's clear eyes. "Whom do you receive in holy communion?" he asked.
"Jesus Christ," was the prompt answer.
"And who is Jesus Christ?"
"Jesus Christ is God," replied the boy, no less quickly.
"Bring him to me to-morrow," said Pius, turning to the mother, "and I will give him holy communion myself."
François Laval describes the impression made on the children of a pilgrimage of 400 first communicants who went from France to thank Pius X in 1912. "As soon as they had returned from Rome," he says, "I went to see some little friends of mine to question them. There was no need, they talked without stopping of all they had seen. Everything had been wonderful, but most wonderful of all—wonderful enough almost to blot out the memory of everything else—had been the pope. They had not been a bit shy with him, they explained—it was impossible, he was so kind. 'The tears were in his eyes—but lots of us were crying too,' nearly all who could get near enough to speak to him were begging him for graces. 'Cure my sister, Holy Father; convert my father; I want to be a priest . . . and I a missionary!' It must have been rather like that when the people came to Jesus in Galilee."
"It seems to me," added the writer, "that in these days, when so many people are trying to enforce obedience, and failing signally in the attempt, that there is only one man in the world who is really master of the minds and hearts of others—an old man clothed in white garments . . . ."