want and misery as frightful! During the weeks that I have roamed hither
and thither among the dust of famous ruins, I have never ceased to come
in contact with evils which demand cure. Ah! to think of all that is
crumbling, all that is expiring, the agony of so much glory, the fearful
sadness of a world which is dying of exhaustion and hunger! Yonder, under
your Holiness's windows, have I not seen a district of horrors, a
district of unfinished palaces stricken like rickety children who cannot
attain to full growth, palaces which are already in ruins and have become
places of refuge for all the woeful misery of Rome? And here, as in
Paris, what a suffering multitude, what a shameless exhibition too of the
social sore, the devouring cancer openly tolerated and displayed in utter
heedlessness! There are whole families leading idle and hungry lives in
the splendid sunlight; fathers waiting for work to fall to them from
heaven; sons listlessly spending their days asleep on the dry grass;
mothers and daughters, withered before their time, shuffling about in
loquacious idleness. O Holy Father, already to-morrow at dawn may your
Holiness open that window yonder and with your benediction awaken that
great childish people, which still slumbers in ignorance and poverty! May
your Holiness give it the soul it lacks, a soul with the consciousness of
human dignity, of the necessary law of work, of free and fraternal life
regulated by justice only! Yes, may your Holiness make a people out of
that heap of wretches, whose excuse lies in all their bodily suffering
and mental night, who live like the beasts that go by and die, never
knowing nor understanding, yet ever lashed onward with the whip!"

Pierre's sobs were gradually choking him, and it was only the impulse of
his passion which still enabled him to speak. "And, Holy Father," he
continued, "is it not to you that I ought to address myself in the name
of all these wretched ones? Are you not the Father, and is it not before
the Father that the messenger of the poor and the lowly should kneel as I