He had that day fled from the furious shouts of the pilgrims acclaiming the Pope-King.

He had only accepted the necessity for money, that last form of servitude still binding the Pope to earth.

But all had crumbled afterwards, when he had beheld the real Rome, the ancient city of pride and domination where the papacy can never be complete without the temporal power.

Too many bonds, dogma, tradition, environment, the very soil itself rendered the Church for ever immutable.
It was only in appearances that she could make concessions, and a time would even arrive when her concessions would cease, in presence of the impossibility of going any further without committing suicide.

If his, Pierre's, dream of a New Rome were ever to be realised, it would only be faraway from ancient Rome.