Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/168

178 The persons waiting in the room, were called in to the Pope in the order in which they had arrived. They went in by twos or threes at a time. I was summoned to enter alone, as I had come.

Before entering the Pope's room I had to wait yet a little while in a well-lighted corridor, where two Cardinals politely took charge of me. The oldest, still young—a handsome, fair, very tall gentleman, with quite a worldly appearance, under the ecclesiastic cloak and cap, (Monsignore di Merode), talked about my writings, with which I am sure that he was only acquainted from a critical notice of them, which has lately appeared in a French paper, the Constitutionel.

He supposed that I was “a Catholic?”

I replied in the negative.

“Oh! but you must become one. You must be converted; you must not stop half-way! A lady, such as you”—and so on.

He was interrupted by the summons to the Pope. I entered, attended by Monsignore di Merode, who knelt at the door, and then left me alone with “His Holiness.” I saw at the further end of an oblong, light, and very simply furnished room, a man of a stout but handsome figure, standing at a writing-table, dressed in a long white garment, with scarlet lapels and cap. I made one low courtesy at the door, another in the middle of the room in obedience to the Pope's sign to me to advance, and yet a third as I approached him and took my stand on the same little carpet with him, which I did in accordance with his friendly indication