He raised him aloft as the sole remaining moral authority, the sole possible bond of charity and peace--as the Father, in fact, who alone could stamp out injustice among his children, destroy misery, and re-establish the liberating Law of Work by bringing the nations back to the faith of the primitive Church, the gentleness and the wisdom of the true Christian community.

And in the deep silence of that room the great figure which he thus set up assumed invincible all-powerfulness, extraordinary majesty.
"Oh, I beseech you, Holy Father, listen to me," he said.

"Do not even strike me, strike no one, neither a being nor a thing, anything that can suffer under the sun.

Show kindness and indulgence to all, show all the kindness and indulgence which the sight of the world's sufferings must have set in you!" And then, seeing that Leo XIII still remained silent and still left him standing there, he sank down upon his knees, as if felled by the growing emotion which rendered his heart so heavy.

And within him there was a sort of _debacle_; all his doubts, all his anguish and sadness burst forth in an irresistible stream.