on,
or Our Lady; and all had the privilege of the portable altar, now
permitted to be wood. Further ritual requirements were relaxed; mass
might be said with any decent vessels of any material capable of
destruction, such as glass or china; bread of any description might be
used; and no vestments were obligatory except the thin thread that now
represented the stole; lights were non-essential; none need wear the
clerical habit; and rosary, even without beads, was always permissible
instead of the Office.

In this manner priests were rendered capable of giving the sacraments
and offering the holy sacrifice at the least possible risk to
themselves; and these relaxations had already proved of enormous benefit
in the European prisons, where by this time many thousands of Catholics
were undergoing the penalty of refusing public worship.

* * * * *

The Pope's private life was as simple as His room. He had one Syrian
priest for His chaplain, and two Syrian servants. He said His mass each
morning, Himself wearing vestments and His white habit beneath, and
heard a mass after. He then took His coffee, after changing into the
tunic and burnous of the country, and spent the morning over business.
He dined at noon, slept, and rode out, for the country by reason of its
indeterminate position was still in the simplicity of a hundred years
ago. He returned at dusk, supped, and worked again till late into the
night.

That was all. His chaplain sent what messages were necessary to
Damascus; His servants, themselves ignorant of His dignity, dealt with
the secular world so far as was required, and the utmost that seemed to
be known to His few neighbours was that there lived in the late Sheikh's
little house on the hill an eccentric European with a telegraph office.
His servants, themselves devout Catholics, knew Him for a bishop, but no
more than that. They were told only that there was yet a Pope alive, and
with that and the sacraments were content.

To sum up, therefore--the Catholic world knew that their Pope lived
under the name of Silvester; and thirteen persons of the entire human
race knew that Franklin had been His name, and that the throne of Peter
rested for the time in Nazareth.

It was, as a Frenchman had said, just a hundred years ago. Catholicism
survived; but no more.

III

And as for His inner life, what can be said of that? He lay now back in
his wooden chair, thinking with closed eyes.

He could not hav