imaginative idea! But who will ensure us respect? Who will grant us the
alms of a stone on which to rest our head if we are ever driven forth and
forced to roam the highways? Who will guarantee our independence when we
are at the mercy of every state?... No, no! this soil of Rome is ours,
we have inherited it from the long line of our ancestors, and it is the
indestructible, eternal soil on which the Church is built, so that any
relinquishment would mean the downfall of the Holy Catholic Apostolic and
Roman Church. And, moreover, we could not relinquish it; we are bound by
our oath to God and man."

He paused for a moment to allow Pierre to answer him. But the latter to
his stupefaction could say nothing, for he perceived that this pope spoke
as he was bound to speak. All the heavy mysterious things which had
weighed the young priest down whilst he was waiting in the ante-room, now
became more and more clearly defined. They were, indeed, the things which
he had seen and learnt since his arrival in Rome, the disillusions, the
rebuffs which he had experienced, all the many points of difference
between existing reality and imagination, whereby his dream of a return
to primitive Christianity was already half shattered. And in particular
he remembered the hour which he had spent on the dome of St. Peter's,
when, in presence of the old city of glory so stubbornly clinging to its
purple, he had realised that he was an imbecile with his idea of a purely
spiritual pope. He had that day fled from the furious shouts of the
pilgrims acclaiming the Pope-King. He had only accepted the necessity for
money, that last form of servitude still binding the Pope to earth. But
all had crumbled afterwards, when he had beheld the real Rome, the
ancient city of pride and domination where the papacy can never be
complete without the temporal power. Too many bonds, dogma, tradition,
environment, the very soil itself rendered the Church for ever immutable.
It was only in appearances that she could make concessions, and a time
would even arrive when her concessions would cease, in presence of the
impossibility of going any further without committing suicide. If his,
Pierre's, dream of a New Rome were ever to be realised, it would only be
faraway from ancient Rome. Only in some distant region could the new
Christianity arise, for Catholicism was bound to die on the spot when the
last of the popes, riveted to that land of ruins, should disappear
bene