Immediately after his election, when leaving the balcony from which he had given his first blessing inside St. Peter's, Pius X expressed his wish to go and visit Cardinal Herrero y Espinosa, Archbishop of Valencia, an old man eighty years of age who was lying sick in his cell. He had been taken ill a few days before and had received the last sacraments. The pope blessed and prayed over him. Three days later the man for whom the doctors had declared there was little hope was well enough to get up. He returned soon after to Spain, cured, as he himself always declared, by the prayer of Pius X. The news of the election was received with joy in Italy. Outside of that country Pius X was little known. "What kind of a pope will he be?" was the question on many lips. The world had not long to wait for the answer. Two months had scarcely passed before his first encyclical letter rang through the Catholic world. "It matters not to tell with what tears and earnest prayers we sought to avoid this appalling burden of the pontifical office," he begins. "We could not be other than disturbed at being appointed the successor of one who, after having most wisely ruled the Church for well-nigh six-and-twenty years, showed such power of genius and so shone with virtue that even adversaries were constrained to admire him." Going straight to the heart of the world's unrest, the pope lays bare the cause of the disease--"the falling away from and forsaking God, than which there is nothing more nearly allied to perdition. As, borne up by God's might, we set our hand to the work of withstanding this great evil, we proclaim that in bearing the pontifical office this is our one purpose, 'to restore all things in Christ, so that Christ may be all in all'." Beautiful words, which embody the teaching and the work of a lifetime spent in God's service. No empty ideal either, but the one that Giuseppe Sarto had set steadfastly before himself from the very day of his consecration to the priesthood, to which he had devoted himself strenuously ever since. He foresaw the hostile judgments that were to be expected from certain quarters on every action of the head of the Catholic Church. "There will be some, assuredly, who, measuring divine things by those that are human, will study our mind to wrest it to earthly ends and the aims of parties. To cut off this vain hope of theirs, we affirm in all truth that in human society we desire to be nothing, and by the help of God we will be nothing, but the minister of God whose authority we bear. God's cause is our cause, to which we are determined to devote all our strength and life itself Therefore, if any ask of us a token to show forth the purpose of our mind, we shall ever give this one alone--'to restore all things in Christ'."