walking beside
her.

IV

When the Pope walked in his garden that afternoon as usual, the old
Capuchin was with him. From the door of the Vatican they drove in the
Pope's landau with two of the Noble Guard riding beside the carriage,
and one of the chamberlains walking behind it, through lanes enshrouded
in laurel and ilex, until they reached the summer-house on the top of
the hill. There the old men stepped down, the Pope in his white cassock,
white overcoat and red hat, the Capuchin in his brown habit, skull-cap
and sandals. The Pope's cat, a creature of reddish coat, which followed
him into the garden as a dog follows his master, leapt out of the
carriage after them.

The Pope was more than usually grave and silent. Once or twice the
Capuchin said, "And how did you find my young penitent this morning?"

"_Bene, bene!_" the Pope replied.

But at length the Pope, scraping the gravel at his feet with the ferrule
of his walking-stick, began to speak on his own initiative.

"Father!"

"Your Holiness?"

"The inscrutable decree of God which made me your Pontiff has not
altered our relations to each other as men?"

The Capuchin took snuff and answered, "Your Holiness is always so good
as to say so."

"You are my master now just as you were thirty years ago, and there is
something I wish to ask of you."

"What is it, your Holiness?"

"You have been a confessor many years, Father?"

"Forty years, your Holiness."

"In that time you have had many difficult cases?"

"Very many."

"Father, has it ever happened that a penitent, has revealed to you a
conspiracy to commit a crime?"

"More than once it has happened."

"And what have you done?"

"Persuaded him to reveal it to the civil authorities, or else tell it to
me outside the confessional."

"Has the penitent ever refused to do so?"

"Never."

"But if ... if the case were such as made it difficult for the penitent
to reveal the conspiracy to the civil authorities, having regard to the
penalties the revelation would bring with it ... if by reason of ties of
blood and affection such revelation were humanly impossible, and it
would even be cruel to ask for it, what would you do then?"

"Nothing, your Holiness."

"Not even if the crime to be committed were a serious one, and it
touched you very nearly?"

The Capuchin shook out his coloured print handkerchief and said, "That
could make no difference, your Holiness."