Judges and juries had been known to faint with emotion
at his dramatic gestures, his fiery eloquence. He could pull anybody
out of a scrape. Wherever he spoke the Court was crowded to listen to
his impassioned arguments, to look upon the cold fire of his blue eyes,
his carefully adjusted dress, his fair hair turning to grey, his smooth
face which he kept shaven for no other reason--so he used to
declare--than because he reverenced the fashions of the old papal
regime. "Just like an Englishman," people said.
He had lately put on flesh; it inspired confidence. Moreover, he never
married; that also was something out of the common--it pointed to
independence, to lack of ordinary human frailties. In short, he was so
perfect a compound of vice and intelligence that even his dearest
friends could not put their finger on the exact spot where the one
began and the other ended. And the whole of this unique mixture was
placed at the disposal of the Vatican. Don Giustino was the implacable
enemy of modernism, a living disproof of the vulgar assertion that
freemasonry is the sole key to success in modern Italy.
Pages:
652
653
654
655
656
657
658
659
660
661
662
663
664
665
666
667
668
669
670
671
672
673
674
675
676