The Roanoke times. [volume] (Roanoke, Va.) 1890-1895, 1895-03-28
a QUAINT OLD LIBRARIAN.
Stories OF tho Vatican and ITS Affiliations
WITH tho English Court

St"ric3 OF tho Vatican and ITS hmliat!on,
with tho English Court
The archaeologist of fiction has n
parchment skin and is as dry as his ia
voritc folios. But Mgr. Carini, first
guardian of the vatican library, was SO
much man of flesh and blood that his
sudden death the other day in Rome is
attributed 10y some who know him to
the intense ciagrin he suffered in con
sequence of the rcccet thcfts from the
oook-shelvcs under his care. That is
not n likely tale, however; nor is the
sensational hint of poison, though re-
produced in II London paper, worth n
moments attention. Mgr. Carini. who
recently died of fit of apoplcxy, which
seized him in St Peters as he was sing
ing vespers, had for his father gen
eral of the Italian revolution, who,
nevertheless, sent his son to n Jesuit
college in his native city, Palermo
Gen. Carini, when in command at
Pcrugia, made the acquaintance of
Cardinal Pecci, the archbishop there.
Some playful words of the general as
to his sons entering the service of the
cardinal should he ever be made pope
were recalled by Cardinal Pecci after
his elevation, and young Carini was
summoned to Rome and to quite in
innate friendship with the pope. And
Carini had another great friend in
Crispi, who, indeed, has inserted in the
oftclal paper an expression of his pa
ternal regard for the dead librarian.
AS the intimate of the pope and of the
premier, Carini occupied II unique posi-
ton in Rome, which makes his loss the
greater. When the pope was told that
his young protcge had died while being
carried from st. Peters into the vatican
he was trclnulous with agitation. The
ease of the Canadian prcmier's death ut
Windsor was at once recalled, and there
Is always something soothing to the
pope in anything which connects, rs
the queens and his own jubilee did. the
court of Rome and the court of Eng
land. The fact is TINT the figure of the
queen of England has always held ro-
mantle corner in the heart of Leo NH.
The queen was then-and has always
remained in his memory "A young
woman, with the prestige of being not
only the queen of England, but the
head of Il formidable church, when the
nuncio saw her at the court of King
Leopold III brussels. Once again he
saw her in her own London at q
state reception, at which, however, he
was not specially presented to her.
That was iii the month of February,
1S46-a month which he spent in Lon
don, for the first two days as the guest
OF the marquis of Lisbon, the brazilian
minister, who accompanied him from
Brussels TO London, and afterward in
apartments in one of the streets of Pic
cndilly, the name of which he cannot
recall. Indeed, the only house except
buckingham palace and the house of
commons which he can be certain that
he visit ed is the Cambridge house of old
days i'll Piccadilly, he was taken
by the Austrian ambassador to n recep-
ton given by Lady Palmerston, and any
member OF the Naval and Military club
who explains himself in Rome may
count on return of hospitality at the
vatican, and Il talk with the pontitf-
the only rontiff who has ever been
there-about Piccadilly. These rcmin-
iscences are gathered from such talk,
and they show how inauthcntic are the
oft-repeated paragraphs about the flu
turc pontiff's intimacy with her ma csty
and his stay at Windsor castle, which,
as matter of fact, he has never seen.