第 4 页

Since his mother's part in his nature had regained ascendency, the broad,

straight forehead, the intellectual air which he owed to his father

seemed to have grown less conspicuous, while his kind and somewhat large

mouth, and his delicate chin, bespeaking infinite affection, dominated,

revealing his soul, which also glowed in the kindly sparkle of his eyes.

Ah! how tender and glowing were the eyes with which he gazed upon the

Rome of his book, the new Rome that he had dreamt of! If, first of all,

the _ensemble_ had claimed his attention in the soft and somewhat veiled

light of that lovely morning, at present he could distinguish details,

and let his glance rest upon particular edifices. And it was with

childish delight that he identified them, having long studied them in

maps and collections of photographs. Beneath his feet, at the bottom of

the Janiculum, stretched the Trastevere district with its chaos of old

ruddy houses, whose sunburnt tiles hid the course of the Tiber. He was

somewhat surprised by the flattish aspect of everything as seen from the

terraced summit. It was as though a bird's-eye view levelled the city,

the famous hills merely showing like bosses, swellings scarcely

perceptible amidst the spreading sea of house-fronts. Yonder, on the

right, distinct against the distant blue of the Alban mountains, was

certainly the Aventine with its three churches half-hidden by foliage;

there, too, was the discrowned Palatine, edged as with black fringe by a

line of cypresses. In the rear, the Coelian hill faded away, showing only

the trees of the Villa Mattei paling in the golden sunshine. The slender

spire and two little domes of Sta. Maria Maggiore alone indicated the

summit of the Esquiline, right in front and far away at the other end of

the city; whilst on the heights of the neighbouring Viminal, Pierre only

perceived a confused mass of whitish blocks, steeped in light and

streaked with fine brown lines--recent erections, no doubt, which at that

distance suggested an abandoned stone quarry. He long sought the Capitol

without being able to discover it; he had to take his bearings, and ended

by convincing himself that the square tower, modestly lost among

surrounding house-roofs, which he saw in front of Sta. Maria Maggiore was

its campanile. Next, on the left, came the Quirinal, recognisable by the

long facade of the royal palace, a barrack or hospital-like facade, flat,

crudely yellow in hue, and pierced by an infinite number of regularly

disposed windows. However, as Pierre was completing the circuit, a sudden

vision made him stop short. Without the city, above the trees of the

Botanical Garden, the dome of St. Peter's appeared to him. It seemed to

be poised upon the greenery, and rose up into the pure blue sky, sky-blue

itself and so ethereal that it mingled with the azure of the infinite.

The stone lantern which surmounts it, white and dazzling, looked as

though it were suspended on high.

Pierre did not weary, and his glances incessantly travelled from one end

of the horizon to the other. They lingered on the noble outlines, the

proud gracefulness of the town-sprinkled Sabine and Alban mountains,

whose girdle limited the expanse. The Roman Campagna spread out in far

stretches, bare and majestic, like a desert of death, with the glaucous

green of a stagnant sea; and he ended by distinguishing "the stern round

tower" of the tomb of Cecilia Metella, behind which a thin pale line

indicated the ancient Appian Way. Remnants of aqueducts strewed the short

herbage amidst the dust of the fallen worlds. And, bringing his glance

nearer in, the city again appeared with its jumble of edifices, on which

his eyes lighted at random. Close at hand, by its loggia turned towards

the river, he recognised the huge tawny cube of the Palazzo Farnese. The

low cupola, farther away and scarcely visible, was probably that of the

Pantheon. Then by sudden leaps came the freshly whitened walls of San

Paolo-fuori-le-Mura,* similar to those of some huge barn, and the statues

crowning San Giovanni in Laterano, delicate, scarcely as big as insects.

Next the swarming of domes, that of the Gesu, that of San Carlo, that of

St'. Andrea della Valle, that of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini; then a

number of other sites and edifices, all quivering with memories, the

castle of St'. Angelo with its glittering statue of the Destroying Angel,

the Villa Medici dominating the entire city, the terrace of the Pincio

with its marbles showing whitely among its scanty verdure; and the

thick-foliaged trees of the Villa Borghese, whose green crests bounded

the horizon. Vainly however did Pierre seek the Colosseum.

* St. Paul-beyond-the-walls.

The north wind, which was blowing very mildly, had now begun to dissipate

the morning haze. Whole districts vigorously disentangled themselves, and

showed against the vaporous distance like promontories in a sunlit sea.

Here and there, in the indistinct swarming of houses, a strip of white

wall glittered, a row of window panes flared, or a garden supplied a

black splotch, of wondrous intensity of hue. And all the rest, the medley

of streets and squares, the endless blocks of buildings, scattered about

on either hand, mingled and grew indistinct in the living glory of the

sun, whilst long coils of white smoke, which had ascended from the roofs,

slowly traversed the pure sky.

Guided by a secret influence, however, Pierre soon ceased to take

interest in all but three points of the mighty panorama. That line of

slender cypresses which set a black fringe on the height of the Palatine

yonder filled him with emotion: beyond it he saw only a void: the palaces

of the Caesars had disappeared, had fallen, had been razed by time; and

he evoked their memory, he fancied he could see them rise like vague,

trembling phantoms of gold amidst the purple of that splendid morning.

Then his glances reverted to St. Peter's, and there the dome yet soared

aloft, screening the Vatican which he knew was beside the colossus,

clinging to its flanks. And that dome, of the same colour as the heavens,

appeared so triumphant, so full of strength, so vast, that it seemed to

him like a giant king, dominating the whole city and seen from every spot

throughout eternity. Then he fixed his eyes on the height in front of

him, on the Quirinal, and there the King's palace no longer appeared

aught but a flat low barracks bedaubed with yellow paint.

And for him all the secular history of Rome, with its constant

convulsions and successive resurrections, found embodiment in that

symbolical triangle, in those three summits gazing at one another across

the Tiber. Ancient Rome blossoming forth in a piling up of palaces and

temples, the monstrous florescence of imperial power and splendour; Papal

Rome, victorious in the middle ages, mistress of the world, bringing that

colossal church, symbolical of beauty regained, to weigh upon all

Christendom; and the Rome of to-day, which he knew nothing of, which he

had neglected, and whose royal palace, so bare and so cold, brought him

disparaging ideas--the idea of some out-of-place, bureaucratic effort,

some sacrilegious attempt at modernity in an exceptional city which

should have been left entirely to the dreams of the future. However, he

shook off the almost painful feelings which the importunate present

brought to him, and would not let his eyes rest on a pale new district,

quite a little town, in course of erection, no doubt, which he could

distinctly see near St. Peter's on the margin of the river. He had dreamt

of his own new Rome, and still dreamt of it, even in front of the

Palatine whose edifices had crumbled in the dust of centuries, of the

dome of St. Peter's whose huge shadow lulled the Vatican to sleep, of the

Palace of the Quirinal repaired and repainted, reigning in homely fashion

over the new districts which swarmed on every side, while with its ruddy

roofs the olden city, ripped up by improvements, coruscated beneath the

bright morning sun.

Again did the title of his book, "NEW ROME," flare before Pierre's eyes,

and another reverie carried him off; he lived his book afresh even as he

had just lived his life. He had written it amid a flow of enthusiasm,

utilising the _data_ which he had accumulated at random; and its division

into three parts, past, present, and future, had at once forced itself

upon him.

The PAST was the extraordinary story of primitive Christianity, of the

slow evolution which had turned this Christianity into present-day

Catholicism. He showed that an economical question is invariably hidden

beneath each religious evolution, and that, upon the whole, the

everlasting evil, the everlasting struggle, has never been aught but one

between the rich and the poor. Among the Jews, when their nomadic life

was over, and they had conquered the land of Canaan, and ownership and

property came into being, a class warfare at once broke out. There were

rich, and there were poor; thence arose the social question. The

transition had been sudden, and the new state of things so rapidly went

from bad to worse that the poor suffered keenly, and protested with the

greater violence as they still remembered the golden age of the nomadic

life. Until the time of Jesus the prophets are but rebels who surge from

out the misery of the people, proclaim its sufferings, and vent their

wrath upon the rich, to whom they prophesy every evil in punishment for

their injustice and their harshness. Jesus Himself appears as the

claimant of the rights of the poor. The prophets, whether socialists or

anarchists, had preached social equality, and called for the destruction

of the world if it were unjust. Jesus likewise brings to the wretched

hatred of the rich. All His teaching threatens wealth and property; and

if by the Kingdom of Heaven which He promised one were to understand

peace and fraternity upon this earth, there would only be a question of

returning to a life of pastoral simplicity, to the dream of the Christian

community, such as after Him it would seem to have been realised by His

disciples. During the first three centuries each Church was an experiment

in communism, a real association whose members possessed all in

common--wives excepted. This is shown to us by the apologists and early

fathers of the Church. Christianity was then but the religion of the

humble and the poor, a form of democracy, of socialism struggling against

Roman society. And when the latter toppled over, rotted by money, it

succumbed far more beneath the results of frantic speculation, swindling

banks, and financial disasters, than beneath the onslaught of barbarian

hordes and the stealthy, termite-like working of the Christians.

The money question will always be found at the bottom of everything. And

a new proof of this was supplied when Christianity, at last triumphing by

virtue of historical, social, and human causes, was proclaimed a State

religion. To ensure itself complete victory it was forced to range itself

on the side of the rich and the powerful; and one should see by means of

what artfulness and sophistry the fathers of the Church succeeded in

discovering a defence of property and wealth in the Gospel of Jesus. All

this, however, was a vital political necessity for Christianity; it was

only at this price that it became Catholicism, the universal religion.

From that time forth the powerful machine, the weapon of conquest and

rule, was reared aloft: up above were the powerful and the wealthy, those

whose duty it was to share with the poor, but who did not do so; while

down below were the poor, the toilers, who were taught resignation and

obedience, and promised the kingdom of futurity, the divine and eternal

reward--an admirable monument which has lasted for ages, and which is

entirely based on the promise of life beyond life, on the

inextinguishable thirst for immortality and justice that consumes

mankind.

Pierre had completed this first part of his book, this history of the

past, by a broad sketch of Catholicism until the present time. First

appeared St. Peter, ignorant and anxious, coming to Rome by an

inspiration of genius, there to fulfil the ancient oracles which had

predicted the eternity of the Capitol. Then came the first popes, mere

heads of burial associations, the slow rise of the all-powerful papacy

ever struggling to conquer the world, unremittingly seeking to realise

its dream of universal domination. At the time of the great popes of the

middle ages it thought for a moment that it had attained its goal, that

it was the sovereign master of the nations. Would not absolute truth and

right consist in the pope being both pontiff and ruler of the world,

reigning over both the souls and the bodies of all men, even like the

Deity whose vicar he is? This, the highest and mightiest of all

ambitions, one, too, that is perfectly logical, was attained by Augustus,

emperor and pontiff, master of all the known world; and it is the

glorious figure of Augustus, ever rising anew from among the ruins of

ancient Rome, which has always haunted the popes; it is his blood which

has pulsated in their veins.

But power had become divided into two parts amidst the crumbling of the

Roman empire; it was necessary to content oneself with a share, and leave

temporal government to the emperor, retaining over him, however, the

right of coronation by divine grant. The people belonged to God, and in

God's name the pope gave the people to the emperor, and could take it

from him; an unlimited power whose most terrible weapon was

excommunication, a superior sovereignty, which carried the papacy towards

real and final possession of the empire. Looking at things broadly, the

everlasting quarrel between the pope and the emperor was a quarrel for

the people, the inert mass of humble and suffering ones, the great silent

multitude whose irremediable wretchedness was only revealed by occasional

covert growls. It was disposed of, for its good, as one might dispose of

a child. Yet the Church really contributed to civilisation, rendered

constant services to humanity, diffused abundant alms. In the convents,