The Maestro di Camera had hardly gone from the Pope's bedroom when the Secretary of State entered it with hasty steps.
"Your Holiness," he said, "you will not allow yourself to receive this person? It is sufficiently clear that he must have escaped from the police during the night, probably by the help of confederates, and to shelter him will be to come into collision with the civil authorities."
"The young man demands sanctuary, your Eminence, and whatever the consequences we have no right to refuse it."
"But sanctuary is obsolete, your Holiness."
"Nothing can be obsolete that is of divine institution, your Eminence."
"But, your Holiness, it can only exist by virtue of concession from the State, and the present relation of the Church to the State of Italy..."
"Your Eminence, I will ask you to let the young man come in."
"Your Holiness, I beg, I pray, reflect..."
"Let the young man come in, your Em..."
The Pope had not finished when the words were struck out of his mouth by an apparition which appeared at his bedroom door. It was that of a young man, whose eyes were wild, whose nostrils were quivering, and whose clothes hung about him in rags as if they had been torn in a recent struggle. He had a look of despair and suffering, yet it was the same to the Pope at that moment as if he were looking at his own features in a glass.