"
Benedetto knelt down. The Pope's voice sounded very solemn in the
darkness:
"_Benedico te in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti_."
The Pontiff rapidly ascended the five steps, and disappeared.
Benedetto remained upon his knees, wrapt in that benediction which, it
seemed to him, had come from Christ Himself. On hearing steps in the
gallery he rose. A few moments later he was returning to the bronze
portal, accompanied by Don Teofilo.
III
The room on the fourth floor was hardly decent. An iron bedstead, a
pedestal, a writing-desk, with a few torn and dilapidated books, a deal
chest of drawers, an iron washstand, and a few straw-bottomed chairs,
were all it contained. A suit of grey clothes was hanging from one nail,
a broad-brimmed black hat from another. Frequent flashes of lightning
could be seen through the open window; breaths of the dark, stormy night
blew in, causing the flame of the petroleum lamp on the pedestal to
flare and the light and the shadows to tremble, as they fell upon the
not too clean sheets, the two fleshless hands, the cluster of roses
lying loose between them, on the flannel shirt of the sick man, who had
pulled himself up into a sitting position, and on his deeply lined, thin
face, greyish with a month-old beard.
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