Whatever we think of the
wisdom or the reason of the papal protest against the occupation of the
States of the Church by the Italian people, these windows have their
pathos.
The pope immures himself in the Vatican and takes his walks in
the Vatican gardens, whose beauty I could have envied him, if he had not
been a prisoner, when I caught a glimpse of them one morning, with the
high walls of their privet and laurel alleys blackening in the sun.
But otherwise the severest Protestant could not cherish so unkind a
feeling toward the gentle priest whom all men speak well of for his
piety and humility. It is a touching fact of his private life that his
three maiden sisters, who wish to be as near him as they can, have their
simple lodging over a shop for the sale of holy images in a street
opening into the Piazza of St. Peter's. We all know that they are of a
Venetian family neither rich nor great; their pride and joy is solely in
him, as it well might be, and it is said that when they come to hear him
in some high function at the Sistine Chapel their rapture of affection
and devotion is as evident as it is sweet and touching.
Their relation to him is the supremely poetic fact of a situation which
even one who knows of it merely by hearsay cannot refuse to feel. The
tragical effect of the situation is in the straining and sundering of
family ties among those who take one side or the other in the difference
of the monarchy and papacy.
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