It was the Cardinal-Secretary-of-State who did himself the pleasure of acquainting the Holy Father with the result of Jerry Sant’s manoeuvre. His Eminency, on the whole, never had had a more congenial duty to perform in all his life. He swirled into the Presence one evening at dusk when Hadrian was waiting for the lamps, sitting by the undraped window watching the dark figures passing over the grey square and the specks of yellow light springing in the houses of the Borgo. Ragna brought a newspaper which he thrust into the Pope’s hands.
“See what a scoundrel you are!” he truculently snarled. “Fly! All is discovered! The Catholic Hour is exposing you finely!”
“Oh,” said Hadrian, unimpassionately turning from the window, and speaking with extreme frigidity.
“Light some candles, please.” He took the paper: put up His left hand to shade His eyes; and looked at the sheet. As He read His pontifical name and His secular name, His blood began to tingle: for He still loathed publicity. As He read on, His blood began to boil. It was a frightful tale which He was reading—frightful, because He saw at a glance that it was quite unanswerable. It was unanswerable because there are some things of which the merest whisper suffices to destroy—whose effect does not depend on truthfulness. It was unanswerable because it was anonymous. It was unanswerable because He never could bring Himself to condescend. … Who could have attacked Him with such malignant ingenuity? The names of half a dozen filthy hounds occurred to Him in as many seconds: but He was not able to recognize any particular paw. He read on. He was conscious that His face was aflame with indignation: but it was in shadow. Coming to a clear chronological error, He chuckled. That taught Him that His voice was under control; and He remembered that the invidious eyes of Ragna were upon Him. From time to time thereafter, He produced a short contemptuous word or laugh by way of commentary as He came to excessive absurdities; and, so, gradually He possessed Himself again. Thus, He skimmed the article. At the end He looked up at the cardinal. “Yes,” He said, “We appear to be a very disreputable character. Now We will go through the thing again, and note the actual errors of fact.” He returned to the top of the first column: and began to read more analytically. In progress, He counted aloud “One, two,”—up to “thirty-three absolute and deliberate lies, exclusive of gratuitous or ignorant mispresentations of fact, in a column and three-quarters of print.—Well?” He inquired, with a full straight gaze at the attendant cardinal.
“What are You going to do now?”
“We will ponder the matter which Your Eminency has submitted to Us; and at a convenient time We will declare Our pleasure. The paper may be left with Us. Your Eminency has permission to retire.” Ragna strode towards the door. At the threshold, he turned and bayed, “Abdicate!”
“No: We will not abdicate,” said Hadrian.
The Secretary-of-State rushed away. As he went swishing, snarling at all and sundry, through the antechamber where the gentlemen were in waiting, Sir Iulo suddenly shot-out his arms straight and rectangularly level with his shoulders, swung-up a stiff right leg in a verisimilar fashion, rigidly sank on his left toes till he sat on his left heel, recovered his first position with a jerk, changed legs and repeated the performance with the right. It was done in a second of time; and his white teeth glittered in a grin as his muscles relaxed. There are few more nerve-shattering spectacles than this of a lithe and graceful young gentleman in scarlet behaving, without any warning whatever, exactly like a monkey on a stick, manifesting the same startling descendent and ascendent angularity, the same imperturbable inevitable intolerable agility. Cardinal Ragna denounced him as a devil where he stood; and swirled away in a vermilion billow of watered-silk.
As soon as He was left alone, Hadrian made the very firmest possible act of will determining neither to bend nor to break. This done, He ate His supper with careful deliberation; sent-away the tray; and ordered a large pot-full of black coffee. Then He locked all doors and allowed Himself a period of disintegration preparatory to redintegration, a period of slackness preparatory to intensification. Now He severely suffered. He read the article on the “Strange Career of the Pope” again and again, till His head swam with the horror of it. This was the worst thing which ever had happened to Him. His previous experience of newspaper libels was as nothing in comparison. All through the bitter bitter years of His struggle for life, He had known Himself for a fighter. As a fighter, He had expected blows in return for those which He gave. And, when all was said and done, his fighting had not been to Him a source of unmitigated pain. For one thing, He had had pleasure in knowing that He scrupulously fought unscrupulous foes, that He fought a losing battle, that he fought a million times His weight, that He fought barehanded against armed champions all the time. That knowledge it was—the knowledge that He had contended (not as a hero but) as heroes have contended—which alone had upheld
