And although Lomeli greeted them just as warmly as he did the others—they were his neighbours, after all—he couldn’t help noticing that they lacked the precious gift of awe he had detected in those who had travelled from across the world. Good men though they were, they were somehow knowing; they were blasé. Lomeli had recognised this spiritual disfigurement in himself. He had prayed for the strength to fight it. The late Pope used to rail against it to their faces: “Be on your guard, my brothers, against developing the vices of all courtiers down the ages—the sins of vanity and intrigue and
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