e City with the neutralisation of a
road leading to the sea? Nothing is not enough, one cannot start from
nothing to attain to everything, whereas that Civitas Leonina, that bit
of a city, would already be a little royal ground, and it would then only
be necessary to conquer the rest, first Rome, next Italy, then the
neighbouring states, and at last the whole world. Never has the Church
despaired, even when, beaten and despoiled, she seemed to be at the last
gasp. Never will she abdicate, never will she renounce the promises of
the Christ, for she believes in a boundless future and declares herself
to be both indestructible and eternal. Grant her but a pebble on which to
rest her head, and she will hope to possess, first the field in which
that pebble lies, and then the empire in which the field is situated. If
one pope cannot achieve the recovery of the inheritance, another pope,
ten, twenty other popes will continue the work. The centuries do not
count. And this explains why an old man of eighty-four has undertaken
colossal enterprises whose achievement requires several lives, certain as
he is that his successors will take his place, and that the work will
ever and ever be carried forward and completed.

As these thoughts coursed through his mind, Pierre, overlooking that
ancient city of glory and domination, so stubbornly clinging to its
purple, realised that he was an imbecile with his dream of a purely
spiritual pope. The notion seemed to him so different from the reality,
so out of place, that he experienced a sort of shame-fraught despair. The
new pope, consonant to the teachings of the Gospel, such as a purely
spiritual pope reigning over souls alone, would be, was virtually beyond
the ken of a Roman prelate. At thought of that papal court congealed in
ritual, pride, and authority, Pierre suddenly understood what horror and
repugnance such a pastor would inspire. How great must be the
astonishment and contempt of the papal prelates for that singular notion
of the northern mind, a pope without dominions or subjects, military
household or royal honours, a pope who would be, as it were, a spirit,
exercising purely moral authority, dwelling in the depths of God's
temple, and governing the world solely with gestures of benediction and
deeds of kindliness and love! All that was but a misty Gothic invention
for this Latin clergy, these priests of light and magnificence, who were
certainly pious and even superstitious, b