You--God bless you--have to deal with the Lord alone; I have to deal also with the men the Lord has placed around me, among whom I have to steer my course according to charity and prudence, and above all, I must adapt my counsels, my commands, to the different capacities, the different states of mind, of so many millions of men.

I am like a poor schoolmaster who, out of seventy scholars, has twenty who are below the average, forty of ordinary ability, and only ten who are really brilliant.

He cannot carry on the school for the benefit of the ten brilliant pupils alone, and I cannot govern the Church for you alone and for those who are like you.

Consider this for instance.

Christ paid tribute to the State, and I--not as the Pontiff, but as a citizen--would gladly pay my tribute of homage, there in that palace whose lights you saw shining, did I not fear by so doing to offend the sixty scholars, to lose even one of those souls which are as precious to me as the others.
And it would be the same if I caused certain books to be removed from the Index, if I called to the Sacred College certain men who have the reputation of not being strictly orthodox, if, during an epidemic, I should go--_ex abrupto_--to visit the hospitals of Rome." "Oh, Your Holiness!" Benedetto exclaimed, "forgive me, but it is not certain that those souls, so ready to be scandalised by the Vicar of Christ for such causes as these, will be saved at last, whereas it is certain that very many other souls would be secured which otherwise cannot be won over." "And then," the Pope continued, as if he had not heard him, "I am old; I am weary; the cardinals do not know whom they have placed here.