第 64 页

looked, feeling yet more astonished when he had examined the blackened,

forsaken panel in its sorry frame.

"Where did it come from?" resumed Pierre; "why has it been stowed away in

this room?"

"Oh!" replied Don Vigilio, with a gesture of indifference, "it's nothing.

There are heaps of valueless old paintings everywhere. That one, no

doubt, has always been here. But I don't know; I never noticed it

before."

Whilst speaking he had at last risen to his feet, and this simple action

had brought on such a fit of shivering that he could scarcely take leave,

so violently did his teeth chatter with fever. "No, no, don't show me

out," he stammered, "keep the lamp here. And to conclude: the best course

is for you to leave yourself in the hands of Monsignor Nani, for he, at

all events, is a superior man. I told you on your arrival that, whether

you would or not, you would end by doing as he desired. And so what's the

use of struggling? And mind, not a word of our conversation to-night; it

would mean my death."

Then he noiselessly opened the doors, glanced distrustfully into the

darkness of the passage, and at last ventured out and disappeared,

regaining his own room with such soft steps that not the faintest

footfall was heard amidst the tomb-like slumber of the old mansion.

On the morrow, Pierre, again mastered by a desire to fight on to the very

end, got Don Vigilio to recommend him to the Pope's confessor, the

Franciscan friar with whom the secretary was slightly acquainted.

However, this friar proved to be an extremely timid if worthy man,

selected precisely on account of his great modesty, simplicity, and

absolute lack of influence in order that he might not abuse his position

with respect to the Holy Father. And doubtless there was an affectation

of humility on the latter's part in taking for confessor a member of the

humblest of the regular orders, a friend of the poor, a holy beggar of

the roads. At the same time the friar certainly enjoyed a reputation for

oratory; and hidden by a veil the Pope at times listened to his sermons;

for although as infallible Sovereign Pontiff Leo XIII could not receive

lessons from any priest, it was admitted that as a man he might reap

profit by listening to good discourse. Nevertheless apart from his

natural eloquence, the worthy friar was really a mere washer of souls, a

confessor who listens and absolves without even remembering the

impurities which he removes in the waters of penitence. And Pierre,

finding him really so poor and such a cipher, did not insist on an

intervention which he realised would be futile.

All that day the young priest was haunted by the figure of that ingenuous

lover of poverty, that delicious St. Francis, as Narcisse Habert was wont

to say. Pierre had often wondered how such an apostle, so gentle towards

both animate and inanimate creation, and so full of ardent charity for

the wretched, could have arisen in a country of egotism and enjoyment

like Italy, where the love of beauty alone has remained queen. Doubtless

the times have changed; yet what a strong sap of love must have been

needed in the old days, during the great sufferings of the middle ages,

for such a consoler of the humble to spring from the popular soil and

preach the gift of self to others, the renunciation of wealth, the horror

of brutal force, the equality and obedience which would ensure the peace

of the world. St. Francis trod the roads clad as one of the poorest, a

rope girdling his grey gown and his bare feet shod with sandals, and he

carried with him neither purse nor staff. And he and his brethren spoke

aloud and freely, with sovereign florescence of poetry and boldness of

truth, attacking the rich and the powerful, and daring even to denounce

the priests of evil life, the debauched, simoniacal, and perjured

bishops. A long cry of relief greeted the Franciscans, the people

followed them in crowds--they were the friends, the liberators of all the

humble ones who suffered. And thus, like revolutionaries, they at first

so alarmed Rome, that the popes hesitated to authorise their Order. When

they at last gave way it was assuredly with the hope of using this new

force for their own profit, by conquering the whole vague mass of the

lowly whose covert threats have ever growled through the ages, even in

the most despotic times. And thenceforward in the sons of St. Francis the

Church possessed an ever victorious army--a wandering army which spread

over the roads, in the villages and through the towns, penetrating to the

firesides of artisan and peasant, and gaining possession of all simple

hearts. How great the democratic power of such an Order which had sprung

from the very entrails of the people! And thence its rapid prosperity,

its teeming growth in a few years, friaries arising upon all sides, and

the third Order* so invading the secular population as to impregnate and

absorb it. And that there was here a genuine growth of the soil, a

vigorous vegetation of the plebeian stock was shown by an entire national

art arising from it--the precursors of the Renascence in painting and

even Dante himself, the soul of Italia's genius.

* The Franciscans, like the Dominicans and others, admit, in

addition to the two Orders of friars and nuns, a third Order

comprising devout persons of either sex who have neither the

vocation nor the opportunity for cloistered life, but live in

the world, privately observing the chief principles of the

fraternity with which they are connected. In central and

southern Europe members of these third Orders are still

numerous.--Trans.

For some days now, in the Rome of the present time, Pierre had been

coming into contact with those great Orders of the past. The Franciscans

and the Dominicans were there face to face in their vast convents of

prosperous aspect. But it seemed as if the humility of the Franciscans

had in the long run deprived them of influence. Perhaps, too, their

_role_ as friends and liberators of the people was ended since the people

now undertook to liberate itself. And so the only real remaining battle

was between the Dominicans and the Jesuits, both of whom still claimed to

mould the world according to their particular views. Warfare between them

was incessant, and Rome--the supreme power at the Vatican--was ever the

prize for which they contended. But, although the Dominicans had St.

Thomas on their side, they must have felt that their old dogmatic science

was crumbling, compelled as they were each day to surrender a little

ground to the Jesuits whose principles accorded better with the spirit of

the century. And, in addition to these, there were the white-robed

Carthusians, those very holy, pure, and silent meditators who fled from

the world into quiet cells and cloisters, those despairing and consoled

ones whose numbers may decrease but whose Order will live for ever, even

as grief and desire for solitude will live. And then there were the

Benedictines whose admirable rules have sanctified labour, passionate

toilers in literature and science, once powerful instruments of

civilisation, enlarging universal knowledge by their immense historical

and critical works. These Pierre loved, and with them would have sought a

refuge two centuries earlier, yet he was astonished to find them building

on the Aventine a huge dwelling, for which Leo XIII has already given

millions, as if the science of to-day and to-morrow were yet a field

where they might garner harvests. But _cui bono_, when the workmen have

changed, and dogmas are there to bar the road--dogmas which totter, no

doubt, but which believers may not fling aside in order to pass onward?

And finally came the swarm of less important Orders, hundreds in number;

there were the Carmelites, the Trappists, the Minims, the Barnabites, the

Lazzarists, the Eudists, the Mission Fathers, the Servites, the Brothers

of the Christian Doctrine; there were the Bernadines, the Augustinians,

the Theatines, the Observants, the Passionists, the Celestines, and the

Capuchins, without counting the corresponding Orders of women or the Poor

Clares, or the innumerable nuns like those of the Visitation and the

Calvary. Each community had its modest or sumptuous dwelling, certain

districts of Rome were entirely composed of convents, and behind the

silent lifeless facades all those people buzzed, intrigued, and waged the

everlasting warfare of rival interests and passions. The social evolution

which produced them had long since ceased, still they obstinately sought

to prolong their life, growing weaker and more useless day by day,

destined to a slow agony until the time shall come when the new

development of society will leave them neither foothold nor breathing

space.

And it was not only with the regulars that Pierre came in contact during

his peregrinations through Rome; indeed, he more particularly had to deal

with the secular clergy, and learnt to know them well. A hierarchical

system which was still vigorously enforced maintained them in various

ranks and classes. Up above, around the Pope, reigned the pontifical

family, the high and noble cardinals and prelates whose conceit was great

in spite of their apparent familiarity. Below them the parish clergy

formed a very worthy middle class of wise and moderate minds; and here

patriot priests were not rare. Moreover, the Italian occupation of a

quarter of a century, by installing in the city a world of functionaries

who saw everything that went on, had, curiously enough, greatly purified

the private life of the Roman priesthood, in which under the popes women,

beyond all question, played a supreme part. And finally one came to the

plebeian clergy whom Pierre studied with curiosity, a collection of

wretched, grimy, half-naked priests who like famished animals prowled

around in search of masses, and drifted into disreputable taverns in the

company of beggars and thieves. However, he was more interested by the

floating population of foreign priests from all parts of Christendom--the

adventurers, the ambitious ones, the believers, the madmen whom Rome

attracted just as a lamp at night time attracts the insects of the gloom.

Among these were men of every nationality, position, and age, all lashed

on by their appetites and scrambling from morn till eve around the

Vatican, in order to snap at the prey which they hoped to secure. He

found them everywhere, and told himself with some shame that he was one

of them, that the unit of his own personality served to increase the

incredible number of cassocks that one encountered in the streets. Ah!

that ebb and flow, that ceaseless tide of black gowns and frocks of every

hue! With their processions of students ever walking abroad, the

seminaries of the different nations would alone have sufficed to drape

and decorate the streets, for there were the French and the English all

in black, the South Americans in black with blue sashes, the North

Americans in black with red sashes, the Poles in black with green sashes,

the Greeks in blue, the Germans in red, the Scots in violet, the Romans

in black or violet or purple, the Bohemians with chocolate sashes, the

Irish with red lappets, the Spaniards with blue cords, to say nothing of

all the others with broidery and bindings and buttons in a hundred

different styles. And in addition there were the confraternities, the

penitents, white, black, blue, and grey, with sleeveless frocks and capes

of different hue, grey, blue, black, or white. And thus even nowadays

Papal Rome at times seemed to resuscitate, and one could realise how

tenaciously and vivaciously she struggled on in order that she might not

disappear in the cosmopolitan Rome of the new era. However, Pierre,

whilst running about from one prelate to another, frequenting priests and

crossing churches, could not accustom himself to the worship, the Roman

piety which astonished him when it did not wound him. One rainy Sunday

morning, on entering Santa Maria Maggiore, he fancied himself in some

waiting-room, a very splendid one, no doubt, but where God seemed to have

no habitation. There was not a bench, not a chair in the nave, across

which people passed, as they might pass through a railway station,

wetting and soiling the precious mosaic pavement with their muddy shoes;

and tired women and children sat round the bases of the columns, even as

in railway stations one sees people sitting and waiting for their trains

during the great crushes of the holiday season. And for this tramping

throng of folks of small degree, who had looked in _en passant_, a priest

was saying a low mass in a side chapel, before which a narrow file of

standing people had gathered, extending across the nave, and recalling

the crowds which wait in front of theatres for the opening of the doors.

At the elevation of the host one and all inclined themselves devoutly,

but almost immediately afterwards the gathering dispersed. And indeed why

linger? The mass was said. Pierre everywhere found the same form of

attendance, peculiar to the countries of the sun; the worshippers were in

a hurry and only favoured the Deity with short familiar visits, unless it

were a question of some gala scene at San Paolo or San Giovanni in

Laterano or some other of the old basilicas. It was only at the Gesu, on

another Sunday morning, that the young priest came upon a high-mass

congregation, which reminded him of the devout throngs of the North. Here

there were benches and women seated, a worldly warmth and cosiness under

the luxurious, gilded, carved, and painted roof, whose tawny splendour is

very fine now that time has toned down the eccentricities of the

decoration. But how many of the churches were empty, among them some of

the most ancient and venerable, San Clemente, Sant' Agnese, Santa Croce

in Gerusalemme, where during the offices one saw but a few believers of

the neighbourhood. Four hundred churches were a good many for even Rome

to people; and, indeed, some were merely attended on fixed ceremonial

occasions, and a good many merely opened their doors once every year--on