"But what will happen if I refuse to outrage the sanctity of an immortal soul in spite of all this danger?"
"Your Holiness asks me what will happen if you refuse to obtain the denunciation of a man whom your Holiness knows to be conspiring against public order?"
"I do."
"What will happen will be ... your Holiness, I am speaking...."
"Go on."
"That, if the crime is committed and the King is killed, I, the Minister of his Majesty, will be in a position to say—and to call upon this friar to witness—that the Pope knew of it beforehand, and under the most noble sentiments about the sanctity of an immortal soul gave a supreme encouragement of regicide."
"And then, sir?"
"The world draws no nice distinctions, your Holiness, and the Vatican is now at war with nearly all the powers and peoples of Europe. In the presence of a monstrous crime against the most innocent and the most highly placed, the world would say that what the Pope did not prevent the Pope desired, what the Pope desired the Pope designed, and that the Vicar of the Prince of Peace attempted to rebuild his temporal power by means of the plots of conspirators and the daggers of assassins."
The sandals of the Capuchin were scraping the floor again, and once more the Pope put up his hand.
"You come to me, sir, when you have exhausted all other means of obtaining your end?"