“Clergy?” the Kaiser demurred. “Now are you really sure that the clergy are your enemies?”
“Yes, in their heart of hearts. Don’t you understand that we robbed them? Don’t you know that this very palace of the Quirinale, in which I am receiving Your Imperial Majesty, is stolen property?”
“Yes, yes. But this Englishman? Surely He makes a difference?”
“To some extent. But He cannot extirpate in a moment the hatred and envy with which my House and I are regarded by the clergy whom we dispossessed. For nearly forty years, to hate us has been part of the clerical education. A weed of that kind cannot be rooted up at once. It is ingrained. Perhaps in another generation—Basta!”
“Meanwhile?”
“Meanwhile what?”
“Well, hasn’t the Pope made things easier for you?”
“Yes, in a way. But what is His object? What concession, for example—”
“He doesn’t seem to have left Himself any opening for extorting concessions.”
“But did Your Imperial Majesty ever hear of a priest who gave something for nothing?”
“One of my cardinals tells me that this is a madman, whose pose is to be primitive, apostolic.”
“Ha! For a primitive apostle He has a singularly dictatorial method. Have you read His ‘Epistles,’ and His denunciations of the socialists, for example?”
“I have. I entirely approve of them. They have assisted me greatly in dealing with some rebels of my own.”
“Oh no one could find fault with His sentiments—so far. But they are so unusual, so extra-pontifical, that one wonders what they are concealing.”
“Is Your Majesty sure that they conceal something?”
“No, I’m not. Of course I have no means of arriving at certainty. That could only be obtained from the Pope Himself; and only from Him if He were willing to give it.”
“Has Your Majesty asked Him?”
“Certainly not. We continue to misunderstand one another. Your Imperial Majesty knows that there is no means of communication between my government and the Vatican. All we get is hearsay; and all they get is gossip.”
“Why do you not request Hadrian to receive you—you yourself? I imagine that He would not refuse.”
“Perhaps not. I believe that He has been preparing for me some such trap as that. But I distrust the Greeks even when they bear gifts. They say He says His prayers in Greek, by the by.”
“I am about to request His Holiness to receive me.”
“Your Imperial Majesty’s case is different. You are not likely to have fresh insults and fresh humiliations offered to you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I cherish the memory of all ecclesiastical pinpricks which formerly were administered to my father and grandfather.”
“Pinpricks? What do you call pinpricks?”
“For example, in 1878, Pio Nono, from His Own deathbed, sent to reconcile my excommunicated grandfather, who was enabled to die in the Embrace of The Lord. A little later, died also Pio Nono. My father voluntarily returned the courtesy, sending his adjutant to offer condolence to the Conclave. Leone, who then was Chamberlain, ordered the Swiss Guard to refuse entrance to the royal envoy at the bronze gates—to refuse the message even.”
“Very clerical!” the Emperor said; and pondered a moment. Then “Will Your Majesty go to the Vatican with me?”
“No, Sire: I never will go to the Vatican,” the King replied.
A telegram signed “Wilhelm I.R.” addressed to the Prince-Bishop of Breslau brought Cardinal Popk to his sovereign at the German Embassy in Rome. On hearing the Kaiser’s intention, he did his very best to persuade him away from it; and curtly was required to explain himself.
“Majesty,” said His Eminency, “no good can come of such a meeting, and much harm may. Our Most Holy Father is English; and, being English, He has the English quality of cynicism. With Him it is ‘Et Petro et Nobis’ in the highest degree. He is a man of strong likes and dislikes, fervently patriotic and therefore fervently anti-German—”
“Your Eminency knows that?”
“I have no explicit information: but, seeing the estimation in which those islanders hold us, I judge so. Sire, I beseech you to pause. I beseech you, I beseech you on behalf of your loyal Catholic subjects, that you will not expose your imperial person to the risk of an affront.”
“An affront, indeed!”
“Majesty, remember what happened when you first visited Pope Leo.”
William II laughed. “Cardinal, you are a very good German, and a—well, queer Roman.”
“Sire, I distinguish. I implicitly obey Hadrian as Vicar of Christ: I dislike Him as a cynical Englishman. I am anxious that Your Majesty may not have occasion to dislike this Englishman who is the spiritual director of your loyal Catholic subjects.”
“Your Eminency’s solicitude is most creditable. But I have met Englishmen whom I immensely admire for certain qualities which they possess and which we Germans lack. What you have said piques my curiosity. I wish to meet this particular Englishman; and I wish Your Eminency to arrange it. I promise you that, whether He affronts me or not, I will not afflict my Catholic subjects with another Kulturkampf—if that is what you fear. However, if you still hesitate to oblige your Kaiser, I will apply through my legation: or, better, I will apply through the Cardinal-bishop of Albano who used to be at Munich.”
The Cardinal-Prince-Bishop of Breslau went to the Vatican without any more ado;
