The attendants looked everywhere for the Almoner or Chaplain of the Institution, but he was not to be found. The Pope said, “I will take his place,” and to him the dying man made his confession, from him received the last Sacraments, and passed away, comforted and in peace. The next morning the Almoner was dismissed. One day the Holy Father, walking in the Quirinal Gardens, passed a sentry on duty. The man silently held out a loaf of bread for his inspection. Pius IX took it, examined it, and asked one question, “Do you always get bread as bad as this?” “Always, Santo Padre,” was the reply. A sudden descent on the Commissariat department showed that he had spoken the truth. When the sun rose again the cheating commissary was repenting of his sins in prison. There is a beautifully practical side to autocratic government! Justice had nothing to blush for in the Rome of those days, and the poor could obtain it as promptly and easily as the rich. There were three separate institutions devoted entirely to the legal defence and protection of persons who could not pay for the services of a lawyer. One was the Arch-Confraternity of St. Ives, thus named after the Saint still so dear to the people of Brittany, the lawyer who was a priest and who devoted all his talents to the defence and protection of the poor. But long before his time (he died on the 19th of May, 1303) St. Gregory had instituted in Rome seven official defenders of the poor, one for each Region of the city. They were called “defensori”; some eight hundred years later their official descendants, the College of Procurators, took the title of “the Rights of the Poor,” and there was also a civil office established by Urban VIII, of which the holder, who had to be a noble and a layman, took the title of “Advocate of the Poor,” exercising his powers in cases that came outside any ecclesiastical administration. The Congregation of St. Ives remained the great standby of the lower classes down to my own time. It was partly a religious sodality, comprising both prelates and lawyers, who met every Sunday for pious exercises, which were followed by a careful examination of such appeals as had been laid before them during the week. They took up all just and genuine claims and defended them at their own expense. Besides looking after the rights of their humble fellow-countrymen, they undertook the cases of all poor strangers who got into trouble in the city.