"The Church requires not her subjects to think for her, nor to interpret her spirit. What she exacts, is unfaltering obedience!"
There was something in the Pontiff's tone which startled Francesco. He was conscious that Clement avoided touching on the business of his summons to Rome, as if to force him to betray his own trend of mind. Yet he shrank unwittingly from uttering the words which hovered on his lips. He felt instinctively there was no mercy within these walls, and at the thought he was seized with a secret dread.
The silence at last grew irksome. Francesco felt a cold hand clutching at his heart.
If the sacrifice had been in vain! If he had been tricked into selling his birthright, tricked into bartering his happiness for a shroud! He felt the flood-gates of his memory re-open; he felt the portals of the past, which had been locked and barred, swing back upon their hinges, grating deep down into his soul. The mad longing for the world bounded back into his heart.
Still the Pontiff did not speak.
"I have been summoned from Monte Cassino," Francesco at last spoke with an assumption of courage which he was far from feeling. "I am waiting the commands of your Holiness!"
The Pontiff nodded.
"These are grievous times indeed; the Church must needs summon her faithful about her, to become militant in her service!"
"What would your Holiness have me do?" said Francesco.
"The service that will be demanded of you is to be commensurate with the boon you have come to ask at our hands," Clement replied at last.