There was another moment of silence, and then the Pope said, "Yes, I
understand what it is to build one's faith on a human foundation. The
foundation fails, and then the heart sinks, the soul totters. But bad as
this ... this betrayal is, you do very wrong if you refuse to see that
it saved you from the consequences--the awful consequences before God
and man--of your intended conduct."

"What conduct, your Holiness?"

"The terrible conduct which formed the basis of your plans on returning
to Rome."

"You mean ... what the newspapers talked about?"

The Pope bent his head.

"A conspiracy to kill the King?"

Again the Pope bent his head.

"You believed that, your Holiness?"

"Unhappily I was compelled to do so."

"And she ... do you suppose she believed it?"

"She believed you were engaged in conspiracies. There was nothing else
she could believe in the light of what you had said and written."

After a moment Rossi began to laugh. "And yet you say the world is ruled
in righteousness!" he said.

The Pope's face was whitening. "Do you tell me it was a mistake?" he
asked.

"Indeed I do. The only conspiracies I was engaged in were conspiracies
to found associations of freedom which had been forbidden by the
tyrannical new decree. But what matter? If an error like that can lead
to results like these, what's the good of trying?" And he laughed again.

The Pope, who was deeply moved, looked up into the young man's tortured
face, without knowing that his own tears were streaming. Old memories
were astir within him, and he was carried back into the past of his own
life. He was remembering the days when he too had reeled beneath the
blow of a terrible fate, and all his hopes and beliefs had been mown
down as by a scythe. But God had been good. His gracious hand had healed
the wound and made all things well.

Taking the letters from the pocket of his cassock, the Pope laid them on
the table.

"These are for you, my son," he said, and then he turned away.

Going down the narrow roofed-in passage to the Castle of St. Angelo,
with shafts of morning sunshine slanting through its lancet windows, and
the voices of children at play coming up from the street below, the Pope
told himself that he must be severe with Roma. The only thing
irremediable in all that had happened was the assassination, and though
that, in God's hands, had teen turned to the good of the people, yet it
raised a barrier between two unhappy soul