第 62 页

last Don Vigilio leant forward, his eyes sparkling, and with a feverish

shiver murmured: "It is they, you know, always they, at the bottom of

everything."

Pierre, who did not understand, felt astonished, indeed somewhat anxious

at such a strange remark coming without any apparent transition. "Who are

_they_?" he asked.

"The Jesuits!"

In this reply the little, withered, yellow priest had set all the

concentrated rage of his exploding passion. Ah! so much the worse if he

had perpetrated a fresh act of folly. The cat was out of the bag at last!

Nevertheless, he cast a final suspicious glance around the walls. And

then he relieved his mind at length, with a flow of words which gushed

forth the more irresistibly since he had so long held them in check. "Ah!

the Jesuits, the Jesuits! You fancy that you know them, but you haven't

even an idea of their abominable actions and incalculable power. They it

is whom one always comes upon, everywhere, in every circumstance.

Remember _that_ whenever you fail to understand anything, if you wish to

understand it. Whenever grief or trouble comes upon you, whenever you

suffer, whenever you weep, say to yourself at once: 'It is they; they are

there!' Why, for all I know, there may be one of them under that bed,

inside that cupboard. Ah! the Jesuits, the Jesuits! They have devoured

me, they are devouring me still, they will leave nothing of me at last,

neither flesh nor bone."

Then, in a halting voice, he related the story of his life, beginning

with his youth, which had opened so hopefully. He belonged to the petty

provincial nobility, and had been dowered with a fairly large income,

besides a keen, supple intelligence, which looked smilingly towards the

future. Nowadays, he would assuredly have been a prelate, on the road to

high dignities, but he had been foolish enough to speak ill of the

Jesuits and to thwart them in two or three circumstances. And from that

moment, if he were to be believed, they had caused every imaginable

misfortune to rain upon him: his father and mother had died, his banker

had robbed him and fled, good positions had escaped him at the very

moment when he was about to occupy them, the most awful misadventures had

pursued him amidst the duties of his ministry to such a point indeed,

that he had narrowly escaped interdiction. It was only since Cardinal

Boccanera, compassionating his bad luck, had taken him into his house and

attached him to his person, that he had enjoyed a little repose. "Here I

have a refuge, an asylum," he continued. "They execrate his Eminence, who

has never been on their side, but they haven't yet dared to attack him or

his servants. Oh! I have no illusions, they will end by catching me

again, all the same. Perhaps they will even hear of our conversation this

evening, and make me pay dearly for it; for I do wrong to speak, I speak

in spite of myself. They have stolen all my happiness, and brought all

possible misfortune on me, everything that was possible, everything--you

hear me!"

Increasing discomfort was taking possession of Pierre, who, seeking to

relieve himself by a jest, exclaimed: "Come, come, at any rate it wasn't

the Jesuits who gave you the fever."

"Yes, yes, it was!" Don Vigilio violently declared. "I caught it on the

bank of the Tiber one evening, when I went to weep there in my grief at

having been driven from the little church where I officiated."

Pierre, hitherto, had never believed in the terrible legend of the

Jesuits. He belonged to a generation which laughed at the idea of

wehr-wolves, and considered the _bourgeois_ fear of the famous black men,

who hid themselves in walls and terrorised families, to be a trifle

ridiculous. To him all such things seemed to be nursery tales,

exaggerated by religious and political passion. And so it was with

amazement that he examined Don Vigilio, suddenly fearing that he might

have to deal with a maniac.

Nevertheless he could not help recalling the extraordinary story of the

Jesuits. If St. Francis of Assisi and St. Dominic are the very soul and

spirit of the middle ages, its masters and teachers, the former a living

expression of all the ardent, charitable faith of the humble, and the

other defending dogma and fixing doctrines for the intelligent and the

powerful, on the other hand Ignatius de Loyola appeared on the threshold

of modern times to save the tottering heritage by accommodating religion

to the new developments of society, thereby ensuring it the empire of the

world which was about to appear.

At the advent of the modern era it seemed as if the Deity were to be

vanquished in the uncompromising struggle with sin, for it was certain

that the old determination to suppress Nature, to kill the man within

man, with his appetites, passions, heart, and blood, could only result in

a disastrous defeat, in which, indeed, the Church found herself on the

very eve of sinking; and it was the Jesuits who came to extricate her

from this peril and reinvigorate her by deciding that it was she who now

ought to go to the world, since the world seemed unwilling to go any

longer to her. All lay in that; you find the Jesuits declaring that one

can enter into arrangements with heaven; they bend and adjust themselves

to the customs, prejudices, and even vices of the times; they smile, all

condescension, cast rigourism aside, and practice the diplomacy of

amiability, ever ready to turn the most awful abominations "to the

greater glory of God." That is their motto, their battle-cry, and thence

springs the moral principle which many regard as their crime: that all

means are good to attain one's end, especially when that end is the

furtherance of the Deity's interests as represented by those of the

Church. And what overwhelming success attends the efforts of the Jesuits!

they swarm and before long cover the earth, on all sides becoming

uncontested masters. They shrive kings, they acquire immense wealth, they

display such victorious power of invasion that, however humbly they may

set foot in any country, they soon wholly possess it: souls, bodies,

power, and fortune alike falling to them. And they are particularly

zealous in founding schools, they show themselves to be incomparable

moulders of the human brain, well understanding that power always belongs

to the morrow, to the generations which are growing up and whose master

one must be if one desire to reign eternally. So great is their power,

based on the necessity of compromise with sin, that, on the morrow of the

Council of Trent, they transform the very spirit of Catholicism,

penetrate it, identify it with themselves and become the indispensable

soldiers of the papacy which lives by them and for them. And from that

moment Rome is theirs, Rome where their general so long commands, whence

so long go forth the directions for the obscure tactics which are blindly

followed by their innumerable army, whose skilful organisation covers the

globe as with an iron network hidden by the velvet of hands expert in

dealing gently with poor suffering humanity. But, after all, the most

prodigious feature is the stupefying vitality of the Jesuits who are

incessantly tracked, condemned, executed, and yet still and ever erect.

As soon as their power asserts itself, their unpopularity begins and

gradually becomes universal. Hoots of execration arise around them,

abominable accusations, scandalous law cases in which they appear as

corruptors and felons. Pascal devotes them to public contempt,

parliaments condemn their books to be burnt, universities denounce their

system of morals and their teaching as poisonous. They foment such

disturbances, such struggles in every kingdom, that organised persecution

sets in, and they are soon driven from everywhere. During more than a

century they become wanderers, expelled, then recalled, passing and

repassing frontiers, leaving a country amidst cries of hatred to return

to it as soon as quiet has been restored. Finally, for supreme disaster,

they are suppressed by one pope, but another re-establishes them, and

since then they have been virtually tolerated everywhere. And in the

diplomatic self-effacement, the shade in which they have the prudence to

sequester themselves, they are none the less triumphant, quietly

confident of their victory like soldiers who have once and for ever

subdued the earth.

Pierre was aware that, judging by mere appearances, the Jesuits were

nowadays dispossessed of all influence in Rome. They no longer officiated

at the Gesu, they no longer directed the Collegio Romano, where they

formerly fashioned so many souls; and with no abode of their own, reduced

to accept foreign hospitality, they had modestly sought a refuge at the

Collegio Germanico, where there is a little chapel. There they taught and

there they still confessed, but without the slightest bustle or display.

Was one to believe, however, that this effacement was but masterly

cunning, a feigned disappearance in order that they might really remain

secret, all-powerful masters, the hidden hand which directs and guides

everything? People certainly said that the proclamation of papal

Infallibility had been their work, a weapon with which they had armed

themselves whilst feigning to bestow it on the papacy, in readiness for

the coming decisive task which their genius foresaw in the approaching

social upheavals. And thus there might perhaps be some truth in what Don

Vigilio, with a shiver of mystery, related about their occult

sovereignty, a seizin, as it were, of the government of the Church, a

royalty ignored but nevertheless complete.

As this idea occurred to Pierre, a dim connection between certain of his

experiences arose in his mind and he all at once inquired: "Is Monsignor

Nani a Jesuit, then?"

These words seemed to revive all Don Vigilio's anxious passion. He waved

his trembling hand, and replied: "He? Oh, he's too clever, too skilful by

far to have taken the robe. But he comes from that Collegio Romano where

his generation grew up, and he there imbibed that Jesuit genius which

adapted itself so well to his own. Whilst fully realising the danger of

wearing an unpopular and embarrassing livery, and wishing to be free, he

is none the less a Jesuit in his flesh, in his bones, in his very soul.

He is evidently convinced that the Church can only triumph by utilising

the passions of mankind, and withal he is very fond of the Church, very

pious at bottom, a very good priest, serving God without weakness in

gratitude for the absolute power which God gives to His ministers. And

besides, he is so charming, incapable of any brutal action, full of the

good breeding of his noble Venetian ancestors, and deeply versed in

knowledge of the world, thanks to his experiences at the nunciatures of

Paris, Vienna, and other places, without mentioning that he knows

everything that goes on by reason of the delicate functions which he has

discharged for ten years past as Assessor of the Holy Office. Yes, he is

powerful, all-powerful, and in him you do not have the furtive Jesuit

whose robe glides past amidst suspicion, but the head, the brain, the

leader whom no uniform designates."

This reply made Pierre grave, for he was quite willing to admit that an

opportunist code of morals, like that of the Jesuits, was inoculable and

now predominated throughout the Church. Indeed, the Jesuits might

disappear, but their doctrine would survive them, since it was the one

weapon of combat, the one system of strategy which might again place the

nations under the dominion of Rome. And in reality the struggle which

continued lay precisely in the attempts to accommodate religion to the

century, and the century to religion. Such being the case, Pierre

realised that such men as Monsignor Nani might acquire vast and even

decisive importance.

"Ah! if you knew, if you knew," continued Don Vigilio, "he's everywhere,

he has his hand in everything. For instance, nothing has ever happened

here, among the Boccaneras, but I've found him at the bottom of it,

tangling or untangling the threads according to necessities with which he

alone is acquainted."

Then, in the unquenchable fever for confiding things which was now

consuming him, the secretary related how Monsignor Nani had most

certainly brought on Benedetta's divorce case. The Jesuits, in spite of

their conciliatory spirit, have always taken up a hostile position with

regard to Italy, either because they do not despair of reconquering Rome,

or because they wait to treat in due season with the ultimate and real

victor, whether King or Pope. And so Nani, who had long been one of Donna

Serafina's intimates, had helped to precipitate the rupture with Prada as

soon as Benedetta's mother was dead. Again, it was he who, to prevent any

interference on the part of the patriotic Abbe Pisoni, the young woman's

confessor and the artisan of her marriage, had urged her to take the same

spiritual director as her aunt, Father Lorenza, a handsome Jesuit with

clear and kindly eyes, whose confessional in the chapel of the Collegio

Germanico was incessantly besieged by penitents. And it seemed certain

that this manoeuvre had brought about everything; what one cleric working

for Italy had done, was to be undone by another working against Italy.

Why was it, however, that Nani, after bringing about the rupture, had

momentarily ceased to show all interest in the affair to the point even

of jeopardising the suit for the dissolution of the marriage? And why was

he now again busying himself with it, setting Donna Serafina in action,

prompting her to buy Monsignor Palma's support, and bringing his own

influence to bear on the cardinals of the Congregation? There was mystery

in all this, as there was in everything he did, for his schemes were

always complicated and distant in their effects. However, one might

suppose that he now wished to hasten the marriage of Benedetta and Dario,

in order to stop all the abominable rumours which were circulating in the