by the arm and forcing him to look into a
transversal allee through the copse, "there he is, the doctor who holds
the remedy for that malady of the soul as for all the others. Do
not show yourself. They will have forgotten our presence. But, look,
look!....Ah, what a meeting!"

The personage who appeared suddenly in that melancholy, deserted garden,
and in a manner almost supernatural, so much did his presence form a
living commentary to the discourse of the impassioned nobleman, was
no other than the Holy Father himself, on the point of entering his
carriage for his usual drive. Dorsenne, who only knew Leo XIII from
his portraits, saw an old man, bent, bowed, whose white cassock gleamed
beneath the red mantle, and who leaned on one side upon a prelate of
his court, on the other upon one of his officers. In drawing back,
as Montfanon had advised, in order not to bring a reprimand upon
the keepers, he could study at his leisure the delicate face of the
Sovereign Pontiff, who paused at a bed of roses to converse familiarly
with a kneeling gardener. He saw the infinitely indulgent smile of
that spirituelle mouth. He saw the light of those eyes which seemed
to justify by their brightness the 'lumen in coelo' applied to the
successor of Pie IX by a celebrated prophecy. He saw the venerable
hand, that white, transparent hand, which was raised to give the solemn
benediction with so much majesty, turn toward a fine yellow rose, and
the fingers bend the flower without plucking it, as if not to harm the
frail creation of God. The old Pope for a second inhaled its perfume and
then resumed his walk toward the carriage, vaguely to be seen between
the trunks of the green oaks. The black horses set off at a trot, and
Dorsenne, turning again toward Montfanon, perceived large tears upon
the lashes of the former zouave, who, forgetting the rest of their
conversation, said, with a sigh: "And that is the only pleasure allowed
him, who is, however, the successor of the first apostle, to inhale his
flowers and drive in a carriage as rapidly as his horses can go! They
have procured four paltry kilometers of road at the foot of the terrace
where we were half an hour since. And he goes on, he goes on, thus
deluding himself with regard to the vast space which is forbidden him. I
have seen many tragical sights in my life. I have been to the war, and I
have spent one entire night wounded on a battlefield covered with snow,
among the dead, grazed