"Moreover, my son," he said, "I did not expect less of one of your distinguished mind.

There can be no loftier enjoyment than that of owning one's error, doing penance, and submitting." He had again taken the glass off the little table beside him and was stirring the last spoonful of syrup before drinking it.

And Pierre was amazed at again finding him as he had found him at the outset, shrunken, bereft of sovereign majesty, and simply suggestive of some aged _bourgeois_ drinking his glass of sugared water before getting into bed.
It was as if after growing and radiating, like a planet ascending to the zenith, he had again sunk to the level of the soil in all human mediocrity.

Again did Pierre find him puny and fragile, with the slender neck of a little sick bird, and all those marks of senile ugliness which rendered him so exacting with regard to his portraits, whether they were oil paintings or photographs, gold medals, or marble busts, for of one and the other he would say that the artist must not portray "Papa Pecci" but Leo XIII, the great Pope, of whom he desired to leave such a lofty image to posterity.

And Pierre, after momentarily ceasing to see them, was again embarrassed by the handkerchief which lay on the Pope's lap, and the dirty cassock soiled by snuff.