Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 158, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 July 1912 — TELLS OF AUDIENCE [ARTICLE]

TELLS OF AUDIENCE

' $ Pen Picture of Pope Pius X. Shows His KMy Nature. Little Girl at Vatican Who Feared Pontiff’s Admiration of Her Bambino, a Replica of the Infant Christ, t Rome—A delightful picture of Pope Pius X., illustrating his profoundly genial nature and exhibiting his love of childhood, is given by John Savile Judd In an account of mi audience with the pope, one of those gatherings to which large contingents of the faithful are admitted. Among those waiting in the audience chamber was a little girl of perhaps six years old; she stood next to her mother, who held on a metal dish a figure of the infant Jesus, wrapped around as. the Italian pear gantry wrap their children today. “The effect of it,” said Mr. Judd, "was rather as if a doll had been stuffed into a white satin embroidered pincushion and a cardboard halo added. But the care that had been taken, the reverence in the care to produce a bambino worthy of a blessing, was beyond all reproach and abundantly evident, since the big eyes of the little girl were constantly raised to the dish, md now and- then a little hand reached up to touch it as if to make sure that It wag still there. * —— "Suddenly a chamberlaim made a sign for all to kneel and Pius X. entered, followed by a clerical chamberlain in a purple cassock. He walked slowly along the side of the room on my right and the eight people in the row that he would come to last were motioned to stand. "I scarcely saw his face at first; he walked as an old man would walk, his head bowed. He is seventy-seven years old. Straight, soft and nearly white hair came an inch over the collar of his waste cassock. He gave such person his hand; each- kissed his ring. He sfroked the curly head of a boy in a sailor suit. “When he walked down the row opposite I still could not see his countenance, for the kneeling figures were facing me and he bent to each of them ministering. “Then he turned to the row at right angles to me and came to the woman holding the metal tray with the bambino in her hand. He touched the poor embroidery work as if in admiration.

He asked a question, evidently 'Who helped to work It?’ for he stooped to the little girl and petted her on the cheek. “Then he took up the bambino and asked.another question. The mother got red and made an'expression of acquiescence. "But ‘No, no,’ came from the little girl He had surely asked ‘ls this a present that you have brought for mb?’ At the child’s ‘No, no,’ he turned round and threw back his head and laughed. “What a humorous laugh! I never knew that a man could laugh so sweetly. He looked old no more. He has teeth set far apart, ‘lucky’ teeth. And his eyes have the kindly wrinkles about them and love of children in them. There, too, was the understanding that found ready answer in the great eyes of the child. “She smiled back at him; It was a joke about taking her bambino; she had known it all the time; she could trust that face, nodr grown so calm and grave as he bent down to her that she might kiss his ring. “Then the pontiff passed to the two rooms beyond for a few minutes and came back to us. He noticed specially as he passed a girl of fourteen, and he stopped and spoke to her, as if to make up for having made no exception before. "The audience was over. We rose w> our feet. I looked back along the corridor which led to the private apartments, the dining room ( for the food that coMs him but five francs a day, the bedroom with-the camp bed; and I caught a last sight of him. He was talking to a chamberlain covered with orders and decorations; he was telling a little story. I saw him shake his head and put out his hand. He was mimicking the little girl saying, ‘No, no,’ and I saw his gentle, whimsical smile again.”