es were given a second time; a second time they came
short. It was like holy Samuel choosing Eliab instead of David. Then
matters were in confusion; one name and another were mentioned, and no
progress was made.

At length and at last, and not till all others were thought of who could
enter into the minds of the electors, the Cardinal Alessandrino himself
began to attract attention. He seems not to have been known to the
Fathers of the conclave in general; a Dominican Friar, of humble rank,
ever taken up in the duties of his rule and his special employments,
living in his cell, knowing little or nothing of mankind--such a one St.
Carlo, the son of a prince and the nephew of a Pope, had no means of
knowing; and the intimacy, consequent on their cooeperation in behalf of
Cardinal Sirleto, was the first real introduction which the one Saint
had to the other. It was just at this moment that our own St. Philip was
in his small room at St. Girolamo, with Marcello Ferro, one of his
spiritual children, when, lifting up his eyes to heaven, and going
almost into an ecstasy, he said: "The Pope will be elected on Monday."
On one of the following days, as they were walking together, Marcello
asked him who was to be Pope. Philip answered, "Come, I will tell you;
the Pope will be one whom you have never thought of, and whom no one has
spoken of as likely; and that is Cardinal Alessandrino; and he will be
elected on Monday evening without fail." The event accomplished the
prediction; the statesman and the man of the world, the accomplished and
exemplary and amiable scholar, were put aside to make way for the Saint.
He took the name of Pius.

I am far from denying that St. Pius was stern and severe, as far as a
heart burning within and melting with the fulness of divine love could
be so; and this was the reason that the conclave was so slow in electing
him. Yet such energy and vigour as his was necessary for his times. He
was emphatically a soldier of Christ in a time of insurrection and
rebellion, when, in a spiritual sense, martial law was proclaimed. St.
Philip, a private priest, might follow his bent, in casting his net for
souls, as he expressed himself, and enticing them to the truth; but the
Vicar of Christ had to right and to steer the vessel, when it was in
rough waters, and among breakers. A Protestant historian on this point
does justice to him. "When Pope," he says, "he lived in all the
austerity of his monastic life, faste