The pope delighted in the letters he received from many little first communicants thanking him for their joy at being admitted to the holy table; he loved children dearly and they returned his affection, crowding round him, speaking to him without the slightest fear or shyness, and giving him their confidence at once. He loved to give them communion with his own hands; there was an affinity between the white-souled pontiff and the white-souled children who knelt at his feet--the innocence that had fought and conquered and the innocence that was as yet untried. All the little first communicants of Rome, gentle or simple, were invited to the Vatican. He would give them a short instruction suited to their understanding, ending with the hope that their last communion would be as fervent and loving as the first. Then he would talk to them, and they to him, simply and without any ceremony. Unconventional sometimes were the appellations by which they called him. "Yes, Pope," would be the answer to a question. But the very little ones, seeing the gracious white figure bending over them and looking up into the gentle holy face of him that spoke, would sometimes answer softly, "Yes, Jesus."
An Englishwoman who had a private audience with the pope brought her little boy of four to receive his blessing. While she was talking the child stood at a little distance looking on; but presently he crept up to the pope, put his hands on his knees and looked up into his face. "How old is he?" asked Pius, stroking the little head.
"He is four," answered the mother, "and in two or three years I hope he will make his first communion."
The pope looked earnestly into the child's clear eyes. "Whom do you receive in holy communion?" he asked.
"Jesus Christ is God," replied the boy, no less quickly.
"Bring him to me to-morrow," said Pius, turning to the mother, "and I will give him holy communion myself."
François Laval describes the impression made on the children of a pilgrimage of 400 first communicants who went from France to thank Pius X in 1912. "As soon as they had returned from Rome," he says, "I went to see some little friends of mine to question them. There was no need, they talked without stopping of all they had seen. Everything had been wonderful, but most wonderful of all--wonderful enough almost to blot out the memory of everything else--had been the pope. They had not been a bit shy with him, they explained--it was impossible, he was so kind. 'The tears were in his eyes--but lots of us were crying too,' nearly all who could get near enough to speak to him were begging him for graces. 'Cure my sister, Holy Father; convert my father; I want to be a priest . . . and I a missionary!' It must have been rather like that when the people came to Jesus in Galilee."