18
PARTISAN REVIEW
bility that the sender was a floater and thought of having the an–
nouncement broadcast from every pulpit in the diocese. He would
need the Archbishop's permission for that, though, and he didn't
dare to ask for something he probably wouldn't get. The Archbishop
had instructed him not to make too much of the matter. The sender
would have to be found at Cathedral, or not at all.
If
not at all,
Father Udovic, having done his best, would understand that he
wasn't supposed to know any more about the envelope than he did.
He would file it away, and some other chancellor, some other arch–
bishop, perhaps, would inherit it. The envelope was most likely harm–
less anyway, but Father Udovic wasn't so much relieved as bored
by the probability that some poor soul was trusting the Archbishop
to put the envelope into the hands of the Holy Father, hoping for
rosary beads blessed by him, or for his autographed picture, and en–
closing a small offering, perhaps a spiritual bouquet. Toward the
end of the week, Father Udovic told the Archbishop that he liked to
think that the envelope contained a spiritual bouquet from a little
child, and that its contents had already been delivered, so to speak, its
prayers and communions already credited to the Holy Father's ac–
count in heaven.
"I must say I hadn't thought of that," said the Archbishop.
Unfortunately for his peace of mind Father Udovic wasn't al–
ways able to believe that the sender was a little child.
The most persistent of those coming to him in reverie was a
middle-aged woman saying she hadn't received a special Peter's Pence
envelope, had been out of town a few weeks, and so hadn't heard or
read the announcement. When Father Udovic tried her on the mean–
ing of the
«Personal»
on the envelope, however, the woman just went
away, and so did all the other suspects under questioning-except
one. This was a rich old man suffering from scrupulosity. He wanted
his alms to be in secret, as it said in Scripture, lest he be deprived of
his eternal reward, but not
entirely
in secret. That was as far as Father
Udovic could figure the old man. Who was he?
An
audacious old
Protestant who hated communism, or could some future Knight of
St. Gregory be taking his first awkward step? The old man was pretty
hard to believe in, and the handwriting on the envelope sometimes
struck Father Udovic as that of a woman. This wasn't necessarily
bad. Women controlled the nation's wealth. He'd seen the figures on
