The crowd pressed in; but still another crowd remained outside, keeping their places for the papal benediction, and listening for the silvery burst of trumpets inside which should tell that the risen God stood on the central altar of Christendom.
Among this crowd was a group, for which they made way, as it crossed the piazza and approached the steps. Yet it was only two poor laborers who supported a sick man between them.
The thin and transparent face of this invalid, bathed now in the perspiration of weakness, showed that he was worn by consumption or by a long and exhausting fever. He was so weak, indeed, that his two assistants supported him in their arms; and when they reached the stone posts at the foot of the steps, he knelt there, and leaned against one of them, almost insensible.
A lady, following closely behind, wet her handkerchief in cologne-water, and handed it over his shoulder to one of the men, but did not herself speak to them. He revived a little at that, and, still leaning against the central post, remained fixed in prayer.
A whisper began to creep among the poor people about. Some of them had seen this man, and knew what they conceived to be his story, and they told it in intervals of listening to the strains of heavenly music faintly heard now and then from the church.
“He is a penitent,” one whispered, “and has been doing penance here as a laborer, though he is so rich—so rich! Some say that he killed his own mother; but who knows? The beautiful signore! Look at his face! She must have provoked him; and perhaps she was a very wicked woman. Ah! I could tell stories of mothers. They are not all like the blessed Madonna.—There are the trumpets! Alleluia! alleluia! Blessed is he who cometh in the name of the Lord!—And so this poor signore has been living a hard life, and is about to die; and he has come at last to get the Holy Father's blessing. He would not ask for it before. But, indeed, he might, for he is as holy as the blessed Labré, though he sleeps in a bed and works for his living, instead of begging it. The [pg 691] pale signora who stands behind him is his sister. She has been in Rome all these years, watching over him, without his knowing it. See! she stands out of his sight now. He worked up to a week ago, and then he fell one day in a faint. She was near by, and called a carriage to take him home. And since then she has had a room in the same house, but told the padrona not to let him know. She is rich, for all her poor clothes. She puts something into every hand that is held out to her. See the way she looks at him!—Ah! there they come.”
Mass was over, and the crowd in the church came pouring out. It was with difficulty that Lawrence Gerald's protectors could keep his place in that pressure. But that he had revived, they could not have done so. With the first intimation that the moment for which he had so long waited was at hand, he had roused himself, and exerted his whole strength. Upright on his knees, with his arms clinging to the post against which he leaned, he fixed his eager eyes upon the balcony where the Pope would in a short time appear. He saw nothing else, not even two familiar forms and faces directly in front of him, which he could scarcely have seen even then with indifference.
“My God!” exclaimed Honora Schöninger, and clung to her husband's arm. “Look, Max! It is Lawrence, and he is dying!”
Mr. Schöninger drew his wife aside. “It is no time to recognize him now,” he said. “And there is Annette behind him. Poor fellow! poor fellow!”
Annette pressed close to her husband, ready to catch him if he should fall. She knew that he had had an exhausting day. He had risen at early dawn to hear Mass and receive communion, though not really able to leave his bed, and had afterwards spent his remaining strength in the first careful toilet he had made for years. After having so long heaped every indignity on his own body, to-day he had seemed desirous of treating it with respect as the temple of God. He still wore the dress of the laborer, but his face was shorn of its ill-tended beard, his hair brushed once more into silken waves, and his linen snowy white. And more exhausting than these efforts had been the excitement of mind under which he labored, and his fear lest in some way he should miss the benediction he so longed for.