"Do you recall her resemblance to any one, your Holiness?"
The Pope stopped in his walk and looked towards the curtained window.
"The same soft voice and radiant smile, the same attitude of idolatry towards the husband she is devoted to, the same...."
"The Sisters of the Sacred Heart will take her when all is over," said the Pope.
"And the man, too, whatever his errors, has a certain grandeur of soul, that lifts him far above these chief gaolers and detectives who call themselves statesmen and diplomatists, these scavengers of civilisation."
"He must go back to America and begin life again," said the Pope.
Two hours later Father Pifferi went off to fetch Roma, and the Pope sat down to his mid-day meal. The room was very quiet, and in the absence of the church bells the city seemed to sit in silence. Cortis stood behind the Pope's chair, and the cat sat on a stool at the opposite side of the table.
The chamberlains, lay and ecclesiastical, waited in the ante-camera, and the Swiss and Noble Guards, the Palatine Guards, and the palfrenieri dotted the decorated halls that led to the royal stairs.
But the saintly old man, who had a palace yet no home, servants yet no family, an army yet no empire, who was the father of all men, yet knew no longer the ordinary joys and sorrows of human life, sat alone in his little plain apartment and ate his simple dish of spinach and beans.