But, as the Duchess had little confidence in any priest, and was curious to know a man to whom such a romantic past was attributed, and as her companions--one woman in particular--shared her curiosity she resolved, at any cost, to find a means of approaching him.
An elderly, English gentlewoman was of her party; a lady famous for her wealth and her peculiar _toilettes_, for her theosophic and Christian mysticism, metaphysically in love with the Pope and also with the Duchess who laughed at her friends.

These friends, on beholding Benedetto in that strange outfit, exchanged glances and smiles which very nearly became giggles; but the elderly Englishwoman forestalling them all constituted herself their spokeswoman.

She said, in bad French, that she was aware she was speaking to a man of culture, that she, with her friends, of both sexes and of all nationalities, was working to unite all Christian Churches under the Pope, reforming Catholicism in certain particulars which were really too absurd, and which no one honestly believed were of any further use, such particulars as ecclesiastical celibacy and the dogma of hell.

She needed a saint to accomplish these reforms.

Benedetto would be that saint, because a spirit (she herself was not a spiritualist, but a friend of hers was), the Spirit of the Countess Blavatzky herself, had revealed this fact.
It was therefore necessary that he should come to Rome, and there his saintly gifts would also enable him to render a service to the Duchess di Civitella, here present.