All devout and loyal subjects of the Papacy were grieving at that time over the trials inflicted by Napoleon on Pius VI, kept a prisoner far from his own dominions, and subjected to many insults and privations. The Countess one evening told her son that he must pray for the Holy Father, thus suffering at the hands of wicked men. The child was deeply impressed; he obeyed, and prayed with tears for the Pope, and then, in his young logic, proposed to pray for the prompt punishment of his persecutors. Great was the surprise of the ardent little champion when his mother pointed out that that would be wrong—he must pray for their conversion instead! Giovanni Maria was about ten years old when, romping about the ground of his father’s country house, he fell into a pond and was nearly drowned. At first the accident seemed to have had only slight effects, but the malady which showed itself a little later, and from which he suffered so long, was, probably with reason, ascribed to that cause. It was a great sorrow to his father, who was bent upon his son’s entering the army, a desire which the boy was ready to satisfy through filial sentiment, but which went contrary to all his own wishes and to those of his mother. He was sent to an ecclesiastical school, of course—no other could be thought of then for a gentleman’s son—and, in spite of bad health, worked hard and attained much distinction. As he grew up, tall, handsome, and brilliantly intelligent, his father repeatedly applied for a commission in the Noble Guards for him, but Prince Barberini, then the chief authority in the Papal army, sternly refused to grant it, saying that an officer subject to epileptic attacks would be a danger to himself and others.[4] By the time he was seventeen it was fairly clear to all that he could never be a soldier, a relief to him and his mother, though a terrible disappointment to the old Count. They had already brought him to Rome, and under the care of his Uncle Paulinus, a Canon of St. Peter’s, he worked assiduously at his theological studies, always hoping and praying that the strange malady which had kept him out of the army would not, in the end, keep him out of the Church.