The king and the pope were therefore not very real enemies, it
was said by those who tried to believe themselves better informed than
others.
To the passing or tarrying stranger the situation does not offer many
dramatic aspects. When you are going to St. Peter's, if you will look up
at the plain wall of the Vatican palace you will see two windows with
their shutters open, and these are the windows of the rooms where Pius
X. lives, a voluntary captive; the closed blinds are those of the rooms
where Leo XIII. died, a voluntary captive. Whatever we think of the
wisdom or the reason of the papal protest against the occupation of the
States of the Church by the Italian people, these windows have their
pathos. The pope immures himself in the Vatican and takes his walks in
the Vatican gardens, whose beauty I could have envied him, if he had not
been a prisoner, when I caught a glimpse of them one morning, with the
high walls of their privet and laurel alleys blackening in the sun.
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