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If he was slow to arrive at decisions, he partly made up for it by a relentless, austere capacity for hard work. Even at his summer residence, Castel Gandolfo, Pope Pius had a mania about wasting a second. Sitting under a red umbrella in the shade of a huge ilex tree (he could not bear strong sunlight), or walking briskly in his shaded garden, he kept his nose buried in documents he was studying. During his solitary, silent and frugal meals, Pius listened to the news broadcasts, but so chary was he of an unnecessary word that once when he sneezed and his normally silent barber instinctively exclaimed "Salute!" the Pope replied "Grazie," then quickly warned, "Basta, basta,"—enough, enough.
Last Illness. Though he had been sickly as a child, his constitution was remarkable, and he rallied amazingly from his serious illness four years ago (TIME, Dec. 13, 1954). He was in good health until the recurrence, a week ago, of the gastric pain and hiccups that had plagued him in 1954. He soon struggled back into his stringent schedule, but one day last week, as his doctor was examining him, he suddenly cried in alarm, "Dio mio, non ci vedo!—My God, I cannot see!" It was a stroke. The Pope fought back. His vision restored, he summoned his substitute Secretary of State, Angelo Dell'Acqua, and sharply demanded: "Why have the audiences been canceled?" He received Holy Communion and Extreme Unction from his German Jesuit secretary, Father Robert Leiber, but he peeked at the thermometer when his temperature was being taken and said "non é grave" when he saw it was only 99°. That night he drank a glass of red wine and called for a recording of Beethoven's First Symphony. At 7:30 the next morning, a second stroke left him unconscious. But it took his stubborn body nearly 20 hours to die.
The ancient, ponderous rituals began. Swiss Guards drew a heavy iron chain across the Gandolfo Palace entrance, and in Rome the great bronze doors of St. Peter's clanged shut. Attendants removed the flannel pajamas in which the Pope died and dressed the body in a white silk cassock and an ermine-trimmed crimson velvet cape. Sister Pasqualina, the German nun who had been the Pope's devoted housekeeper, had a small ritual of her own. She assembled the Pope's half-dozen pet birds and, carrying their cage and two suitcases, left for an unannounced destination. Her task was done.
Two members of the Noble Guard, with golden helmets and drawn swords, took up a vigil at the bedside. Later they guarded the body during its 15-mile-long trip to the Vatican, through the Roman streets that the first native Roman Pope in 200 years had loved well, passing a stone's throw from the house where he was born.