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Show "THERE ARE KINGS AND KINGS!" (Special Correspondence New York Freeman's Journal.) Rome, April 30. Rome is this week the center of a very extraordinary series se-ries of events, produced by two royal visits. Edward of England came here last Monday and has left again this morning; William of Germany is to arrive on Saturday and will remain for the best part of a week. The visit of both these sovereigns has been promoted pro-moted in the main by the desire to show friendship for Italy, but neither king nor kaiser have found it possible to ignore the presence in the Eternal City of the Dethroned Monarch, who is obliged to spend his days and to rule the Universal Church within the walls of the Vatican. Only there is a vast difference in the way these two sovereigns sov-ereigns treat the Holy Fattier. First, with regard to the. king of England. Shortly after the announcement of his visit to Rome was made in the papers, an English prelate residing in Rome went one day to the Vatican and suggested sug-gested that it would be advisable to have a sort of invitation tendered him to visit the Holy Father. The answer given was a very sharp and a very clear one: "The Father of Christendom does n? rlcit'c frnm the mOSt ttOW- UUl OUU"' .v erful monarch on earth; he is glad to accord an audience to any prince who desires it and is willing to comply com-ply with the conditions rendered necessary nec-essary by the present unfortunate state of things in Rome." The prelate retired, but the newspapers newspa-pers continued to speculate on the royal visit to the Vatican. Some of them declared that it would be made from the English college, others from some private residence or one- of the hotels of tne city, but finally the greater number of them settled down to the conclusion that the king would leave for the Vatican from the British embassy to the Quirinal. Some but-j prise was manifested that no official disclaimer of this last solution was forthconfing from the authorities of the Holy See who regulate such questions ques-tions The surprise was misplaced, however. It is a maxim ui national na-tional law that an embassy becomes ipso facto a royal residence when the sovereign is in it-and as such is regarded re-garded as a portion of the territory over which he rules. The Holy Father might, therefore, very well receive a visit from the king of England' from the British embassy em-bassy to the Quirinal without in any way recognizing the official connection of the place with the Italian monarchy which has fastened' itself on to Rome SS a leech. Meanwhile King Edward's Ed-ward's arrival In Rome was only 24 tours distant, and no intimation had as vet been received at the Vatican of. hfs desire to see the Holy Father. It was generally known that be him, ceif was anxious for the interview, for ne is about to pay a visit to Catholic Ireland and the nature of the reception recep-tion he would receive there if he came to Rpe and left it without seeing the i . - r 11 rrr 'Ti Holy Father was grimly evident to him. On the other hand, the true blue Protestants of England were beginning begin-ning to squeal with alarm at the bare thought that their sovereign, who has publicly sworn that Mass is a blasphemous blasphe-mous fable, etc., could for a moment contemplate putting nimself Into the lair of the Man of Sin. The monarch and his advisers were in a quandary, but they finally settled to adpot the more pleasant and less dangerous of the alternatives, and the Vatican was officially informed that his majesty, King Edward VII. of England, desired to visit His Holiness, Leo XIII. This much was arranged last Saturday evening eve-ning the details were negotiated only on Tuesday morning. It was settled, therefore, that the king should leave the Quirinal palace, where he has been the guest of the king of Italy, take up his residence temporarily at the British Brit-ish embassy, and thence proceed to the Vatican in state. The people of Rome were well pleased with the solution, solu-tion, and thousands of them lined the streets to witness the royal cortege moving on its way. They were doomed to disappointment, however at least to some extent. For when the royal procession appeared it was seen to consist of three closed carriages, tne first two containing King Edward and three members of his suite, all in state dress, and the third containing two detectives in frock coats and silk hats. King Edward was received at the Vatican with the honors due to his rank, and remained for almost half an hour in private colloquy with the Holy Father. The newspapers have since told the world what the two sovereigns sover-eigns said to each other and what the newspapers have invented may be the truth, but as a matter of fact nobody no-body really knows to this hour what Pope Leo did say to King Edward, or what King Edward said to Pope Leo. Only it is quite certain that the king was mightily impressed by the pontiff, and his first remark on leaving the audience chamber was that His Holiness Holi-ness might have been only 60 Instead of 93, and that his conversation was hrimfnl nf lnoiditv and knowledee of the topics that had come up for discussion. dis-cussion. Before leaving, too, he expressed ex-pressed an earnest desire to have the Holy Father's photograph and autograph auto-graph in memory of the occasion a wish which was at once gratified by the Holy Father. The visit over, King Edward left the Vatican and returned straight to the Quirinal. Neither he nor his advisers ad-visers seem to have reflected for a moment on the impropriety of the step. Furthermore, the four of them had scarcely doffed the gorgeous state uniforms in which they had visited the Holy Father than the minister plenipotentiary pleni-potentiary sat down to concoct an extraordinary ex-traordinary account of the whole thing for the British public. "His majesty," he wrote, "had just been to see Pope Leo XIII. in the Vatican, 'privately and not officially.' And he had gone there in gracious compliance with the wish expressed by the Pope!" He might have added, but he did not, that his majesty, the king of Great Britain and Ireland, emperor of India, etc., etc., and so forth, positively dare not call his soul his own, through fear of the noisy ranters of Exeter hall. But there are kings and kings-even kings-even in these days of triumphant democracy, and Kaiser William is one of the latter. He is a strange ana-v;i.m ana-v;i.m fnr o twenttoth opntnrv em peror, for he is possessed of a backbone back-bone which is regulated entirely by his own impulse and not by the wires worked by politicians or fanatics." His country and Italy are allies; he has been visited by King Victor Emmanuel Emman-uel in Berlin; he Is a Protestant of Protestants. And yet now that he is about to visit the present capital of Italy, and to become the guest of the Italian sovereign, he has taken the best of care to show every mark of respect re-spect to the other sovereign who has been deprived of his Independence, months ago he sent an official announcement an-nouncement of his intended visit to Rome; he made all the necessary arrangements ar-rangements for a state visit to the Holy Father, and yesterday morning some thonsands of spectators assembled assem-bled at the railway station to see the handsome horses and coaches which he has sent hither, and which are to be used only when he leaves the German Ger-man embassy to go to the Holy See to nay his respects to Pope Leo XIII. VOX TJRBIS. |