_Papa Angelicus_ whom he was about to see; that amazing old man
who had been appointed Secretary of State just fifty years ago, at the
age of thirty, and Pope nine years previously. It was he who had carried
out the extraordinary policy of yielding the churches throughout the
whole of Italy to the Government, in exchange for the temporal lordship
of Rome, and who had since set himself to make it a city of saints. He
had cared, it appeared, nothing whatever for the world's opinion; his
policy, so far as it could be called one, consisted in a very simple
thing: he had declared in Epistle after Epistle that the object of the
Church was to do glory to God by producing supernatural virtues in man,
and that nothing at all was of any significance or importance except so
far as it effected this object. He had further maintained that since
Peter was the Rock, the City of Peter was the Capital of the world, and
should set an example to its dependency: this could not be done unless
Peter ruled his City, and therefore he had sacrificed every church and
ecclesiastical building in the country for that one end. Then he had set
about ruling his city: he had said that on the whole the latter-day
discoveries of man tended to distract immortal souls from a
contemplation of eternal verities--not that these discoveries could be
anything but good in themselves, since after all they gave insight into
the wonderful laws of God--but that at present they were too exciting to
the imagination. So he had removed the trams, the volors, the
laboratories, the manufactories--saying that there was plenty of room
for them outside Rome--and had allowed them to be planted in the
suburbs: in their place he had raised shrines, religious houses and
Calvaries. Then he had attended further to the souls of his subjects.
Since Rome was of limited area, and, still more because the world
corrupted without its proper salt, he allowed no man under the age of
fifty to live within its walls for more than one month in each year,
except those who received his permit. They might live, of course,
immediately outside the city (and they did, by tens of thousands), but
they were to understand that by doing so they sinned against the spirit,
though not the letter, of their Father's wishes. Then he had divided the
city into national quarters, saying that as each nation had its peculiar
virtues, each was to let its light shine steadily in its proper place.
Rents had instantly begu