Again, however, he made an effort to calm himself, and resumed in a more gentle voice: "At all events the fold is always open, my dear son, and here you are back in it since you have repented.

You cannot imagine how happy it makes me." In his turn Pierre strove to show himself conciliatory in order that he might not further ulcerate that violent, grief-stricken soul: "Your Eminence," said he, "may be sure that I shall endeavour to remember every one of the kind words which your Eminence has spoken to me, in the same way as I shall remember the fatherly greeting of his Holiness Leo XIII." This sentence seemed to throw Boccanera into agitation again.

At first only murmured, restrained words came from him, as if he were struggling against a desire to question the young priest.

"Ah yes! you saw his Holiness, you spoke to him, and he told you I suppose, as he tells all the foreigners who go to pay their respects to him, that he desires conciliation and peace.

For my part I now only see him when it is absolutely necessary; for more than a year I have not been received in private audience." This proof of disfavour, of the covert struggle which as in the days of Pius IX kept the Holy Father and the _Camerlingo_ at variance, filled the latter with bitterness.