Ragna snarled and burst out of the phalanx. There was a tinge of truculence about him. "Holiness, Pope Leo wished to have had it opened on the day of His Own election; but it was impossible. Impossible! Capisce? The rust of the stanchions, the solidity of the cement——"
"All that We know. The gentleness of Pope Leo was persuaded. We are not gentle; and We are not to be persuaded by violence."
Orezzo, though secretly inchanted that anyone should act differently to his one antipathy, Pope Leo, was rather shocked at the notion of blessing the City and the World while (what he held to be) the Piedmontese Usurper was occupying Peter's so-called Patrimony and Intangible Rome. It is an ingrained idea with his school that peoples should excruciate for the petty spites of potentates. But he tried urbanity. "Holy Father have pity upon us; and deliver us as soon as possible from the miseries which afflict us in this Conclave. Deign blessings to the faithful in the church to-day; and we will see what can be done about the other affair to-morrow."
Hadrian looked a little amused. The Bishop of Caerleon thought that he never had seen more cruelly dispassionate inflexibility. At a sign from the Pope, the master-mason came forward and fell on his knees. Hadrian stooped.
"Son, open that window."
Through and through vermilion billows the masons dived and thrust across the breadth of the gallery, conveying ladders, crowbars, hammers. Conclavial porters threw down rolls of carpet which they were about to spread, and sat upon them. Berstein squawked and expectorated. Hadrian winced: and marked the man. At the clang of hammers, masonry began to fall: a white dust hovered in the air: the vermilion college swept away with the white Pope. Some went to the end of the gallery, where loud voices became protestant: midway, the Germans halted with most of the Italians: they conversed more moderately. A few paces beyond the range of operations, the Pope remained quite still: by His side, He detained Macca with His cross: behind Him, congregated the Bishop of Caerleon and the nine Cardinal-Compromissaries.
In a break of the clang of the hammers, Hadrian intoned "Kyrie eleēson." Mundo gave prompt response. The assemblage at first failed to catch the idea: but, by degrees, voice acceded to voice; and the Litanies of the Saints magniloquently reverberated through the gallery.
Outside, in the Square of St. Peter's, only a few hundreds of people were collected. Interest in the proceedings of the Conclave was nearly dead; and several special correspondents were beginning to think seriously of the superior excitements of a murder-trial at New Bailey. But many old-fashioned Romans wished to be able to tell their grand-children that they themselves had been in the square when the Pope was proclaimed in the church; and, again, on the morning of St George's Day, no smoke had been vomited from the Xystine chimney. The affair was very mysterious! What combinations behind those white walls!
Inside the basilica, there were thousands of expectant people, officials of the Vatican, cardinalitial familiars, prelates, penitentiaries, beneficiaries, who had not been immured in the Conclave. Also there were lords and ladies of eminent quality belonging to the Black (or clerical) Party, who had been admitted with meticulous secrecy (in broad day-light and in face of all Rome) by a privy door. Every day for weeks, they had come and waited, hoping to be among the first to salute the Pope. To go to St. Peter's in the morning before dinner, and in the evening before supper, had become the mode in a society which has few and futile dissipations of its own and to which the comity of the Quirinale and White Society is forbidden fruit. Some, who were near the great doorway, thought they heard faint tappings in the gallery over-head. Rumour protruded her tongue: certainly there were tappings, more ponderous, more insistent. Certainly the balcony was being opened. Then the crashing ceased. In the hush, surmises were born; and stifled: or nurtured. A loose Benedictine with a face of a flesher, who was leaning against one of the great piers, suddenly asseverated that the tapping had begun again: but in another place—further away, he said. An honorary decurial chamberlain-of-the-cloak-and-sword sniffed long-nosedly, picking a vandyke beardlet; and stuttered, "They're n-n-never o-opening the outer b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-balcony." That notion resembled the spark between negative and positive poles. It vibrated and glittered; and fell upon a heap of human combustibles.