Pierre was in his Holiness's bed-room. He had feared one of those
overwhelming attacks of emotion which madden or paralyse one. He had been
told of women reaching the Pope's presence in a fainting condition,
staggering as if intoxicated, while others came with a rush, as though
upheld and borne along by invisible pinions. And suddenly the anguish of
his own spell of waiting, his intense feverishness, ceased in a sort of
astonishment, a reaction which rendered him very calm and so restored his
clearness of vision, that he could see everything. As he entered he
distinctly realised the decisive importance of such an audience, he, a
mere petty priest in presence of the Supreme Pontiff, the Head of the
Church. All his religious and moral life would depend on it; and possibly
it was this sudden thought that thus chilled him on the threshold of the
redoubtable sanctuary, which he had approached with such quivering steps,
and which he would not have thought to enter otherwise than with
distracted heart and loss of senses, unable to do more than stammer the
simple prayers of childhood.

Later on, when he sought to classify his recollections he remembered that
his eyes had first lighted on Leo XIII, not, however, to the exclusion of
his surroundings, but in conjunction with them, that spacious room hung
with yellow damask whose alcove, adorned with fluted marble columns, was
so deep that the bed was quite hidden away in it, as well as other
articles of furniture, a couch, a wardrobe, and some trunks, those famous
trunks in which the treasure of the Peter's Pence was said to be securely
locked. A sort of Louis XIV writing-desk with ornaments of engraved brass
stood face to face with a large gilded and painted Louis XV pier table on
which a lamp was burning beside a lofty crucifix. The room was virtually
bare, only three arm-chairs and four or five other chairs, upholstered in
light silk, being disposed here and there over the well-worn carpet. And