FIRST STEP

On a small iron bench in the Pincian Hill gardens slept a holy man. His breviary had fallen from his lap to the grassy turf. Children gravely gathered beside him, for it seemed to them there could be no mistaking the man's grey hair, his glasses, his still, regular features. "Is it he?" whispered one to another.

"It is, it is he," they cried excitedly. "Il Papa, it is he, the Pope!"

The excitement awakened the sleeper, who cried out as he arose: "No, no, I am not the Pontiff! Deny it! Deny it!"

Down the Pincian Hill with cassock billowing behind him fled the holy one, now thoroughly alarmed. He was only a humble Benedictine monk, but so strongly did he resemble Pius XI that, unconvinced by his protests, one of the children reverently picked up and treasured the little breviary lying on the ground. In humble Roman homes it is now fully believed that the Pope's first step into the great world since his "liberation," was in the simple quality and disguise of a lowly monk and for the gentle purpose of dozing on a park bench.

Last week came definite news of what Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti's first momentous step outside the Vatican would be. On June 24, feast of the nativity of St. John the Baptist, he will step into his new Fiat car and drive to the Church of St. John Lateran,* where he will celebrate a mass. The papal motor will contain a sort of back-seat throne, where the Pope alone may sit. Facing the throne will be two chairs where high dignitaries will sit. Thus no one will sit beside the Pope and none, except, of course, the driver, will turn his back upon him when he drives through Roman streets. In such state rides no other monarch, not even Japan's "Son of Heaven" Emperor.

*The "mother of all churches," where stood the first Papal chapel.