So much Percy saw as he performed the first genuflection.

Then he dropped his eyes, advanced, genuflected again with the other, advanced once more, and for the third time genuflected, lifting the thin white hand, stretched out, to his lips.

He heard the door close as he stood up.
"Father Franklin, Holiness," said the Cardinal's voice at his ear.
A white-sleeved arm waved to a couple of chairs set a yard away, and the two sat down.
* * * * * While the Cardinal, talking in slow Latin, said a few sentences, explaining that this was the English priest whose correspondence had been found so useful, Percy began to look with all his eyes.
He knew the Pope's face well, from a hundred photographs and moving pictures; even his gestures were familiar to him, the slight bowing of the head in assent, the tiny eloquent movement of the hands; but Percy, with a sense of being platitudinal, told himself that the living presence was very different.
It was a very upright old man that he saw in the chair before him, of medium height and girth, with hands clasping the bosses of his chair-arms, and an appearance of great and deliberate dignity.

But it was at the face chiefly that he looked, dropping his gaze three or four times, as the Pope's blue eyes turned on him.

They were extraordinary eyes, reminding him of what historians said of Pius X.; the lids drew straight lines across them, giving him the look of a hawk, but the rest of the face contradicted them.