"Naturally the Government wishes if possible to spare your Holiness an unusual and painful ordeal."
"The lady has resisted all other influences?"
"She has resisted all influences which can be brought to bear upon her by the proper authorities."
"I have heard of it, sir. I have heard what your 'authorities' have done to humble a helpless woman. She had been the victim of a heartless man, and by knowledge of that fact your 'authorities' have tempted and tried her. They tried her with poverty, with humiliation, with jealousy and the shadow of shame. But the blessed God upheld her in the love which had awakened her soul, and she withstood them to the last."
The Baron, for the first time, looked confused.
"I have also heard that in order to achieve the same end one of your gaols has been the scene of a scandal which has outraged every divine and human law."
"Your Holiness must not accept for truth all that is printed in the halfpenny papers."
"Is it true that in the cell where a helpless unfortunate was paying the penalty of his crime your 'authorities' introduced a police agent in disguise to draw him into a denunciation of his accomplice?"
"These are matters of state, your Holiness. I do not assert them and I do not deny."
"In the name of humanity I ask you are such 'authorities' punished, or do they sit in the cabinets of your Ministers of the Interior?"