on one of the arm-chairs sat Leo XIII, near a small table on which
another lamp with a shade had been placed. Three newspapers, moreover,
lay there, two of them French and one Italian, and the last was half
unfolded as if the Pope had momentarily turned from it to stir a glass of
syrup, standing beside him, with a long silver-gilt spoon.

In the same way as Pierre saw the Pope's room, he saw his costume, his
cassock of white cloth with white buttons, his white skull-cap, his white
cape and his white sash fringed with gold and broidered at either end
with golden keys. His stockings were white, his slippers were of red
velvet, and these again were broidered with golden keys. What surprised
the young priest, however, was his Holiness's face and figure, which now
seemed so shrunken that he scarcely recognised them. This was his fourth
meeting with the Pope. He had seen him walking in the Vatican gardens,
enthroned in the Hall of Beatifications, and pontifying at St. Peter's,
and now he beheld him on that arm-chair, in privacy, and looking so
slight and fragile that he could not restrain a feeling of affectionate
anxiety. Leo's neck was particularly remarkable, slender beyond belief,
suggesting the neck of some little, aged, white bird. And his face, of
the pallor of alabaster, was characteristically transparent, to such a
degree, indeed, that one could see the lamplight through his large
commanding nose, as if the blood had entirely withdrawn from that organ.
A mouth of great length, with white bloodless lips, streaked the lower
part of the papal countenance, and the eyes alone had remained young and
handsome. Superb eyes they were, brilliant like black diamonds, endowed
with sufficient penetration and strength to lay souls open and force them
to confess the truth aloud. Some scanty white curls emerged from under
the white skull-cap, thus whitely crowning the thin white face, whose
ugliness was softened by all this whiteness, this spiritual whiteness in
which Leo XIII's flesh seemed as it were but pure lily-white florescence.