"Ah! that man, ah! that man who by his vanity and craving for success will have proved the ruin of the Church, that man who has never ceased corrupting everything, dissolving everything, crumbling everything in order to reign over the world which he fancies he will reconquer by those means, why, Almighty God, why hast Thou not already called him to Thee ?" So sincere was the accent in which that appeal to Death was raised, to such a point was hatred magnified by a real desire to save the Deity imperilled here below, that a great shudder swept through Pierre also.

He now understood that Cardinal Boccanera who religiously and passionately hated Leo XIII; he saw him in the depths of his black palace, waiting and watching for the Pope's death, that death which as _Camerlingo_ he must officially certify.

How feverishly he must wait, how impatiently he must desire the advent of the hour, when with his little silver hammer he would deal the three symbolic taps on the skull of Leo XIII, while the latter lay cold and rigid on his bed surrounded by his pontifical Court.
Ah! to strike that wall of the brain, to make sure that nothing more would answer from within, that nothing beyond night and silence was left there.

And the three calls would ring out: "Gioachino! Gioachino! Gioachino!" And, the corpse making no answer, the _Camerlingo_ after waiting for a few seconds would turn and say: "The Pope is dead!" "Conciliation, however, is the weapon of the times," remarked Pierre, wishing to bring the Cardinal back to the present, "and it is in order to make sure of conquering that the Holy Father yields in matters of form." "He will not conquer, he will be conquered," cried Boccanera.

"Never has the Church been victorious save in stubbornly clinging to its integrality, the immutable eternity of its divine essence.