What happened after we got out of the carriage at the bronze gate near St. Peter’s I can only describe from a vague and feverish memory.  I remember going up a great staircase, past soldiers in many-coloured coats, into a vast corridor, where there were other soldiers in other costumes.  I remember going on and on, through salon after salon, each larger and more luxurious than the last, and occupied by guards still more gorgeously dressed than the guards we had left behind.  I remember coming at length to a door at which a Chamberlain, wearing a sword, knelt and knocked softly, and upon its being opened announced our names.  And then I remember that after all this grandeur as of a mediaeval court I found myself in a plain room like a library with a simple white figure before me, and . . .  I was in the presence of the Holy Father himself.

Can I ever forget that moment?

I had always been taught in the Convent to think of the Pope with a reverence only second to that which was due to the Saints, so at first I thought I should faint, and how I reached the Holy Father’s feet I do not know.  I only know that he was very sweet and kind to me, holding out the delicate white hand on which he wore the fisherman’s emerald ring, and smoothing my head after I had kissed it.

When I recovered myself sufficiently to look up I saw that he was an old man, with a very pale and saintly face; and when he spoke it was in such a soft and fatherly voice that I loved and worshipped him.

“So this is the little lady,” he said, “who is to be the instrument in the hands of Providence in bringing back an erring family into the folds of Mother Church.”

Somebody answered him, and then he spoke to me about marriage, saying it was a holy state, instituted by the Almighty under a natural law and sanctioned by our divine Redeemer into the dignity of a Sacrament, so that those who entered it might live together in peace and love.

“It is a spiritual and sacred union, my child,” he said, “a type of the holy mystery of Christ’s relation to His Church.”

Then he told me I was to make the best possible preparation for marriage in order to obtain the abundant graces of God, and to approach the altar only after penance and communion.

“And when you leave the church, my daughter,” he said, “do not profane the day of your marriage by any sinful thought or act, but remember to bear yourself as if Jesus Christ Himself were with you, as He was at the marriage-feast in Cana of Galilee.”

Then he warned me that when I entered into the solemn contract of holy matrimony I was to do so in the full consciousness that it could not be broken but by death.

“Whom God has joined together let no man put asunder—­remember that, too, my daughter.”

Finally he said something about children—­that a Catholic marrying a person of another religion must not enter into any agreement whereby any of her children should be brought up in any other than the Catholic faith.