John Inglesant: A Romance (Volume 2 of 2)
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Title: John Inglesant: A Romance (Volume 2 of 2)
Creator: J. H. Shorthouse
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHN INGLESANT: A ROMANCE (VOLUME 2 OF 2) ***
Produced by Al Haines.
JOHN INGLESANT
A Romance
by
John Henry Shorthouse
[Greek: Agapetoi, nun tekna Theou esmen, kai
oupo ephanerothe ti esometha.]
VOL. II.
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1881
_Printed by_ R & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_.
*JOHN INGLESANT.*
*CHAPTER I.*
Inglesant travelled to Marseilles, and by packet boat to Genoa. The
beauty of the approach by sea to this city, and the lovely gardens and
the country around gave him the greatest delight. The magnificent
streets of palaces, mostly of marble, and the thronged public places,
the galleries of paintings, and the museums, filled his mind with
astonishment; and the entrance into Italy, wonderful as he had expected
it to be, surpassed his anticipation. He stayed some time in Genoa, to
one or more of the Jesuit fathers in which city he had letters. Under
the guidance of these cultivated men he commenced an education in art,
such as in these days can be scarcely understood. From his coming into
Italy a new life had dawned upon him in the music of that country.
Fascinated as he had always been with the Church music at London and
Oxford, for several years he had been cut off from all such enjoyment,
and, at its best, it was but the prelude to what he heard now. For
whole hours he would remain on his knees at mass, lost and wandering in
that strange world of infinite variety, the mass music--so various in
its phases, yet with a monotone of pathos through it all. The musical
parties were also a great pleasure. He played the violin a little in
England, and rapidly improved by the excellent tuition he met with here.
He became, however, a proficient in what the Italians called the viola
d'amore, a treble viol, strung with wire, which attracted him by its
soft and sweet tone. Amid a concord of sweet sounds, within hearing of
the splash of fountains, and surrounded by the rich colours of an
Italian interior, the young Englishman found himself in a new world of
delight. As the very soul of music, at one moment merry and the next mad
with passion and delightful pain, uttered itself in the long-continued
tremor of the violins, it took possession in all its power of
Inglesant's spirit. The whole of life is recited upon the plaintive
strings, and by their mysterious effect upon the brain fibres, men are
brought into sympathy with life in all its forms, from the gay promise
of its morning sunrise to the silence of its gloomy night.
From Genoa he went to Sienna, where he stayed some time--the dialect
here being held to be very pure, and fit for foreigners to accustom
themselves to. He spoke Italian before with sufficient ease, and
associating with several of the religious in this city he soon acquired
the language perfectly. There can be nothing more delightful than the
first few days of life in Italy in the company of polished and congenial
men. Inglesant enjoyed life at Sienna very much; the beautiful clean
town, all marble and polished brick, the shining walls and pavement
softened and shaded by gardens and creeping vines, the piazza and
fountains, the cool retired walks with distant prospects, the Duomo,
within and without of polished marble inexpressibly beautiful, with its
exceeding sweet music and well-tuned organs, the libraries full of
objects of the greatest interest, the statues and antiquities everywhere
interspersed.
The summer and winter passed over, and he was still in Sienna, and
seemed loth to leave. He associated mostly with the ecclesiastics to
whom he had brought letters of introduction, for he was more anxious at
first to become acquainted with the country and its treasures of art and
literature than to make many acquaintances. He kept himself so close
and studious that he met with no adventures such as most travellers,
especially those who abandon themselves to the dissolute courses of the
country, meet with,--courses which were said at that time to be able to
make a devil out of a saint. He saw nothing of the religious system but
what was excellent and delightful, seeing everything through the medium
of his friends. He read all the Italian literature that was considered
necessary for a gentleman to be acquainted with; and though the learning
of the Fathers was not what it had been a century ago, he still found
several to whom he could talk of his favourite Lucretius and of the
divine lessons of Plato.
When he had spent some time in this way in Italy, and considered himself
fitted to associate with the inhabitants generally, the Benedictines
took Inglesant to visit the family of Cardinal Chigi, who was afterwards
Pope, and who was a native of Sienna. The cardinal himself was in Rome,
but his brother, Don Mario, received Inglesant politely, and introduced
him to his son, Don Flavio, and to two of his nephews. With one of
these, Don Agostino di Chigi, Inglesant became very intimate, and spent
much of his time at his house. In this family he learnt much of the
state of parties in Rome, and was advised in what way to comport himself
when he should come there. The Cardinal Panzirollo, who with the
Cardinal-Patron (Pamphilio), had lately been in great esteem, had just
died, having weakened his health by his continued application to
business, and the Pope had appointed Cardinal Chigi his successor as
first Secretary of State. The Pope's sister-in-law, Donna Olympia
Maldachini, was supposed to be banished, but many thought this was only
a political retreat, and that she still directed the affairs of the
Papacy. At any rate she soon returned to Rome and to power. This
extraordinary woman, whose loves and intrigues were enacted on the stage
in Protestant countries, was the sister-in-law of the Pope, and was said
to live with him in criminal correspondence, and to have charmed him by
some secret incantation--the incantation of a strong woman over a weak
and criminal man. For a long time she had abused her authority in the
most scandalous manner, and exerted her unbounded ascendency over the
Pope to gratify her avarice and ambition, which were as unbounded as her
power. She disposed of all benefices, which she kept vacant till she
was fully informed of their value; she exacted a third of the entire
value of all offices, receiving twelve years' value for an office for
life. She gave audience upon public affairs, enacted new laws,
abrogated those of former Popes, and sat in council with the Pope with
bundles of memorials in her hands. Severe satires were daily pasted on
the statue of Pasquin at Rome; yet it seemed so incredible that Cardinal
Panzirollo, backed though he was by the Cardinal-Nephew, should be able
to overthrow the power of this woman by a representation he was said to
have made to the Pope, that when Innocent at length, with great
reluctance banished Olympia, most persons supposed it was only a
temporary piece of policy.
The Chigi were at this time living in Sienna, in great simplicity, at
their house in the Strada Romana, and in one or two small villas in the
neighbourhood; but they were of an ancient and noble family of this
place, and were held in great esteem, and were all of them men of
refinement and carefully educated. They had made considerable figure in
Rome during the Pontificate of Julius II.; but afterwards meeting with
misfortunes, were obliged to return to Sienna, where they had continued
to reside ever since. At this time there was no idea that the Cardinal
of this house would be the next Pope, and though well acquainted with
the politics of Rome, the family occupied themselves mostly with other
and more innocent amusements--in the arrangement of their gardens and
estates, in the duties of hospitality, and in artistic, literary, and
antiquarian pursuits. The University and College of Sienna had produced
many excellent scholars and several Popes, and the city itself was full
of remains of antique art, and was adorned with many modern works of
great beauty--the productions of that school which takes its name from
the town. Among such scenes as these, and with such companions,
Inglesant's time passed so pleasantly that he was in no hurry to go on
to Rome.
The country about the city was celebrated for hunting, and the wild boar
and the stag afforded excellent and exciting, if sometimes dangerous
sport. Amid the beautiful valleys, rich with vineyards, and overlooked
by rocky hills and castled summits, were scenes fitted both for pleasure
and sport; and the hunting gave place, often and in a moment, to _al
fresco_ banquets, and conversations and pleasant dalliance with the
ladies, by the cool shade near some fountain, or under some over-arching
rock. Under the influence of these occupations, so various and so
attractive both to the mind and body, and thanks to so many novel
objects and continual change of scene, Inglesant's health rapidly
improved, and his mind recovered much of the calm and cheerfulness which
were natural to it. He thought little of the Italian, and the terrible
thoughts with which he had connected him were for the time almost
forgotten, though, from time to time, when any accident recalled the
circumstances to his recollection, they returned upon his spirits with a
melancholy effect.
The first time that these gloomy thoughts overpowered him since his
arrival at Sienna was on the following occasion. He had been hunting
with a party of friends in the valley of Montalcino one day in early
autumn. The weather previously had been wet, and the rising sun had
drawn upward masses of white vapour, which wreathed the green foliage
and the vine slopes, where the vintage was going on, and concealed from
sight the hills on every side. A pale golden light pervaded every
place, and gave mystery and beauty to the meanest cottages and
farm-sheds. The party, having missed the stag, stopped at a small
osteria at the foot of a sloping hill, and Inglesant and another
gentleman wandered up into the vineyard that sloped upwards behind the
house. As they went up, the vines became gradually visible out of the
silvery mist, and figures of peasant men and women moved about--vague
and half-hidden until they were close to them; pigeons and doves flew in
and out. Inglesant's friend stopped to speak to some of the peasant
girls; but Inglesant himself, tempted by the pleasing mystery that the
mountain slope--apparently full of hidden and beautiful life--presented,
wandered on, gradually climbing higher and higher, till he had left the
vintage far below him, and heard no sound but that of the grasshoppers
among the grass and the olive trees, and the distant laugh of the
villagers, or now and then the music of a hunting horn, which one of the
party below was blowing for his own amusement. The mist was now so
thick that he could see nothing, and it was by chance that he even kept
the ascending path. The hill was rocky here and there, but for the most
part was covered with short grass, cropped by the goats which Inglesant
startled as he came unexpectedly upon them in the mist. Suddenly, after
some quarter of an hour's climbing, he came out of the mist in a moment,
and stood under a perfectly clear sky upon the summit of the hill. The
blue vault stretched above him without a cloud, all alight with the
morning sun; at his feet the grassy hill-top sparkling in dew, not yet
dried up, and vocal with grasshoppers, not yet silenced by the heat.
Nothing could be seen but wreaths of cloud. The hill-top rose like an
island out of a sea of vapour, seething and rolling round in misty
waves, and lighted with prismatic colours of every hue. Out of this
sea, here and there, other hill-tops, on which goats were browsing, lay
beneath the serene heaven; and rocky points and summits, far higher than
these, reflected back the sun. He would have seemed to stand above all
human conversation and walks of men, if every now and then some break in
the mist had not taken place, opening glimpses of landscapes and
villages far below; and also the sound of bells, and the music of the
horn, came up fitfully through the mist. Why, he did not know, but as
he gazed on this, the most wonderful and beautiful sight he had ever
seen, the recollection of Serenus de Cressy returned upon his mind with
intense vividness; and the contrast between the life he was leading in
Italy, amid every delight of mind and sense, and the life the
Benedictine had offered him in vain, smote upon his conscience with
terrible force. Upon the lonely mountain top, beneath the serene
silence, he threw himself upon the turf, and, overwhelmed with a sudden
passion, repented that he had been born. Amid the extraordinary
loveliness, the most gloomy thoughts took possession of him, and the
fiend seemed to stand upon the smiling mount and claim him for himself.
So palpably did the consciousness of his choice, worldly as he thought
it, cause the presence of evil to appear, that in that heavenly solitude
he looked round for the murderer of his brother. The moment appeared to
him, for the instant, to be the one appointed for the consummation of
his guilt. The horn below sounding the recall drew his mind out of this
terrible reverie, and he came down the hill (from which the mist was
gradually clearing) as in a dream. He rejoined his company, who remarked
the wild expression of his face.
His old disease, in fact, never entirely left him; he walked often as in
a dream, and when the fit was upon him could never discern the real and
the unreal. He knew that terrible feeling when the world and all its
objects are slipping away, when the brain reels, and seems only to be
kept fixed and steady by a violent exertion of the will; and the mind is
confused and perplexed with thoughts which it cannot grasp, and is full
of fancies of vague duties and acts which it cannot perform, though it
is convinced that they are all important to be done.
The Chigi family knew of Inglesant's past life, and of his acquaintance
with the Archbishop of Fermo, the Pope's Nuncio, and they advised him to
make the acquaintance of his brother, the Cardinal Rinuccini, before
going to Rome.
"If you go to Rome in his train, or have him for a patron on your
arrival, you will start in a much better position than if you enter the
city an entire stranger,--and the present is not a very favourable time
for going to Rome. The Pope is not expected to live very long. Donna
Olympia and the Pamphili, or pretended Pamphili (for the Cardinal-Nephew
is not a Pamphili at all), are securing what they can, using every
moment to enrich themselves while they have the power. The moment the
Pope dies they fall, and with them all who have been connected with
them. It is therefore useless to go to Rome at present, except as a
private person to see the city, and this you can do better in the suite
of the Cardinal than in any other way. You may wonder that we do not
offer to introduce you to our uncle the Cardinal Chigi; but we had
rather that you should come to Rome at first under the patronage of
another. You will understand more of our reasons before long;
meanwhile, we will write to our uncle respecting you, and you may be
sure that he will promote your interests as much as is in his power."
The Cardinal Rinuccini was at that time believed to be at his own villa,
situated in a village some distance from Florence to the north, and Don
Agostino offered to accompany Inglesant so far on his journey.
This ride, though a short one, was very pleasant, and endeared the two
men to each other more than ever. They travelled simply, with a very
small train, and did not hurry themselves on the route. Indeed, they
travelled so leisurely that they were very nearly being too late for
their purpose. On their arrival at the last stage before reaching
Florence, they stopped for the night at a small osteria, and had no
sooner taken up their quarters than a large train arrived at the inn,
and on their inquiry they were informed it was the Cardinal Rinuccini
himself on his way to Rome. They immediately sent their names to his
Eminence, saying they had been coming to pay their respects to him, and
offering to resign their apartment, which was the best in the house.
The Cardinal, who travelled in great state, with his four-post bed and
furniture of all kinds with him, returned a message that he could not
disturb them in their room; that he remembered Mr. Inglesant's name in
some letters from his brother; and that he should be honoured by their
company to supper.
The best that the village could afford was placed on the Cardinal's
table, and their host entertained the two young men with great courtesy.
He was descended from a noble family in Florence, which boasted among
its members Octavio Rinuccini the poet, who came to Paris in the suite
of Marie de Medicis, and is said by some to have been the inventor of
the Opera. Besides the Pope's Legate another brother of the Cardinal's,
Thomas Battista Rinuccini, was Great Chamberlain to the Grand Duke of
Tuscany. All the brothers had been carefully educated, and were men of
literary tastes; but while the Archbishop had devoted himself mostly to
politics, the Cardinal had confined himself almost entirely to literary
pursuits. He owed his Cardinal's hat to the Grand Duke, who was
extremely partial to him, and promoted his interests in every way. He
was a man of profound learning, and an enthusiastic admirer of
antiquity, but was also an acute logician and theologian, and perfectly
well-read in Church history, and in the controversy of the century, both
in theology and philosophy. Before the end of supper Inglesant found
that he was acquainted with the writings of Hobbes, whom he had met in
Italy, and of whom he inquired with interest, as soon as he found
Inglesant had been acquainted with him.
The following morning the Cardinal expressed his sorrow that the
business which took him to Rome was of so important a nature that it
obliged him to proceed without delay. He approved of the advice that
Inglesant had already received, and recommended him to proceed to
Florence with Don Agostino, as he was so near; so that he might not have
his journey for nothing, and might see the city under very favourable
circumstances. Inglesant was the more ready to agree to this as he
wished to see as much of Italy as he could, unshackled by the company of
the great, which, in the uncertain state of health both of his body and
mind, was inexpressibly burdensome to him. He had already seen in this
last journey a great deal of the distress and bad government which
prevailed everywhere; and he wished to make himself acquainted, in some
measure, with the causes of this distress before going to Rome. As he
rode through the beautiful plains he had been astonished at the few
inhabitants, and at the wretchedness of the few. Italy had suffered
greatly in her commerce by the introduction of Indian silks into Europe.
Some of her most flourishing cities had been depopulated, their nobles
ruined; and long streets of neglected palaces, deserted and left in
magnificent decay, presented a melancholy though romantic spectacle.
But bad government, and the oppression and waste caused by the
accumulated wealth and idleness of the innumerable religious orders, had
more to do in ruining the prosperity of the country than any commercial
changes; and proofs of this fact met the traveller's eye on every hand.
It seemed to Inglesant that it was very necessary that he should satisfy
himself upon some of these points before becoming involved in any
political action in the country; and he shrank from entering Rome at
present, and from attaching himself to any great man or any party. In a
country where the least false step is fatal, and may plunge a man in
irretrievable ruin, or consign him to the dungeons of the Holy Office,
it is certainly prudent in a stranger to be wary of his first steps.
Having communicated these resolutions to his friend, the two young men,
on their arrival at Florence, took lodgings privately in the Piazza del
Spirito Santo; and occupied their time for some days in viewing the
city, and visiting the churches and museums, as though they had been
simply travellers from curiosity.
Inglesant believed the Italian to be in Rome, which was a further reason
for delaying his journey there. He believed that he was going to engage
in some terrible conflict, and he wished to prepare himself by an
acquaintance with every form of life in this strange country. The
singular scenes that strike a stranger in Italy--the religious
processions, the character and habits of the poorer classes, their ideas
of moral obligation, their ecclesiastical and legal government--all
appeared to him of importance to his future fate.
As he was perfectly unacquainted with the person of his enemy, there was
a sort of vague expectation--not to say dread--always present to his
mind; for, though he fancied that it would be in Rome that he should
find the Italian, yet it was not at all impossible that at any
moment--it might be in Florence, or in the open country--he might be the
object of a murderous attack. His person was doubtless known to the
murderer of his brother, and he thus walked everywhere in the full
light, while his enemy was hidden in the dark.
These ideas were seldom absent from his mind, and the image of the
murderer was almost constantly before his eyes. Often, as some marked
figure crossed his path, he started and watched the retreating form,
wondering whether the object of his morbid dread was before him. Often,
as the uncovered corpse was borne along the streets, the thought struck
him that perhaps his fear and his search were alike needless, and that
before him on the bier, harmless and strewn with flowers, lay his
terrible foe. These thoughts naturally prevented his engaging
unrestrainedly in the pursuits of his age and rank, and he often let Don
Agostino go alone into the gay society which was open to them in
Florence.
In pursuit of his intention Inglesant took every opportunity, without
incurring remark, of associating with the lower orders, and learning
their habits, traditions, and tone of thought. He chose streets which
led through the poorer parts of the town in passing from one part to
another, and in this way, and in the course of his visits to different
churches and religious houses, he was able to converse with the common
people without attracting attention. In excursions into the country,
whether on parties of pleasure or for sport, he was also able to throw
himself in the same way among the peasantry. Under the pretence of
shooting quails he passed several days in more than one country village,
and had become acquainted with several of the cures, from whom he gained
much information respecting the habits of the people, and of their ideas
of crime and of lawful revenge.
One of these cures--a man of penetration and intellect--strongly advised
him to see Venice before he went to Rome.
"Venice," he said to him, "is the sink of all wickedness, and as such it
is desirable that you should see the people there, and mix with them;
besides, as such, it is not at all unlikely that the man you seek may be
found there."
"What is the cause of this wickedness?" asked Inglesant.
"There are several causes," replied the priest. "One is that the Holy
Office there is under the control of the State, and is therefore almost
powerless. Wickedness and license of all kinds are therefore
unrestrained."
Inglesant mentioned this advice to Don Agostino, and his desire to
proceed to Venice; but as the other was unwilling to leave Florence till
the termination of the Carnival, which was now approaching, he was
obliged to postpone his intention for some weeks.
On one of the opening days of the Carnival, Inglesant had accompanied
Don Agostino to a magnificent supper given by the Grand Duke at his
villa and gardens at the Poggia Imperiale, some distance outside the
Romana gate.
Inglesant had succeeded in throwing off for a time his gloomy thoughts,
and had taken his share in the gaiety of the festival; but the effort
and the excitement had produced a reaction, and towards morning he had
succeeded in detaching himself from the company, many of whom--the
banquet being over--were strolling in the lovely gardens in the cool air
which preceded the dawn, and he returned alone to the city. As this was
his frequent custom, his absence did not surprise Don Agostino, who
scarcely noticed his friend's eccentricities.
When Inglesant reached Florence, the sun had scarcely risen, and in the
miraculously clear and solemn light the countless pinnacles and marble
fronts of the wonderful city rose with sharp colour and outline into the
sky. It lay with the country round it studded with the lines of cypress
and encompassed by the massy hills--silent as the grave, and lovely as
paradise; and ever and anon, as it lay in the morning light, a breeze
from the mountains passed over it, rustling against the marble facades
and through the belfries of its towers, like the whisper of a God. Now
and again, clear and sharp in the liquid air, the musical bells of the
Campanili rang out the time. The cool expanse of the gardens, the
country walk, the pure air, and the silent city, seemed to him to chide
and reprove the license and gaiety of the night. Excited by the events
of the Carnival, his mind and imagination were in that state in which,
from the inward fancy, phantoms are projected upon the real stage of
life, and, playing their fantastic parts, react upon the excited sense,
producing conduct which in turn is real in its result.
As Inglesant entered the city and turned into one of the narrow streets
leading up from the Arno, the market people were already entering by the
gates, and thronging up with their wares to the Piazze and the markets.
Carpenters were already at work on the scaffolds and other preparations
for the concluding festivals of the Carnival; but all these people, and
all their actions, and even the sounds that they produced, wore that
unreal and unsubstantial aspect which the very early morning light casts
upon everything.
As Inglesant ascended the narrow street, between the white stone houses
which set off the brilliant blue above, several porters and
countrywomen, carrying huge baskets and heaps of country produce,
ascended with him, or passed him as he loitered along, and other more
idle and equivocal persons, who were just awake, looked out upon him
from doorways and corners as he passed. He had on a gala dress of silk,
somewhat disordered by the night and by his walk, and must have appeared
a suitable object for the lawless attempts of the ladroni of a great
city; but his appearance was probably not sufficiently helpless to
encourage attack.
Half-way up the street, at the corner of a house, stood an image of the
Virgin, round which the villagers stopped for a moment, as much to rest
as to pay their devotions. As Inglesant stopped also, he noticed an old
man of a wretched and abject demeanour, leaning against the wall of the
house as though scarcely able to stand, and looking eagerly at some of
the provisions which were carried past him. True to his custom,
Inglesant--when he had given him some small coin as an alms--began to
speak to him.
"You have carried many such loads as these, father, I doubt not, in your
time, though it must be a light one now."
"I am past carrying even myself," said the other, in a weak and whining
voice; "but I have not carried loads all my life. I have kept a shop on
the Goldsmith's Bridge, and have lived at my ease. Now I have nothing
left me but the sun--the sun and the cool shade."
"Yours is a hard fate."
"It is a hard and miserable world, and yet I love it. It has done me
nothing but evil, and yet I watch it and seek out what it does, and
listen to what goes on, just as if I thought to hear of any good fortune
likely to come to me. Foolish old man that I am! What is it to me what
people say or do, or who dies, or who is married? and why should I come
out here to see the market people pass, and climb this street to hear of
the murder that was done here last night, and look at the body that lies
in the room above?"
"What murder?" said Inglesant. "Who was murdered, and by whom?"
"He is a foreigner; they say an Inglese--a traveller here merely. Who
murdered him I know not, though they do say that too."
"Where is the body?" said Inglesant. "Let us go up." And he gave the
old man another small coin.
The old man looked at him for a moment with a peculiar expression.
"Better not, Signore," he said; "better go home."
"Do not fear for me," said Inglesant; "I bear a charmed life; no steel
can touch me, nor any bullet hurt me, till my hour comes; and my hour is
not yet."
The old man led the way to an open door, carved with tracery and
foliaged work, and they ascended a flight of stairs. It was one of those
houses, so common in Italian towns, whose plain and massive exterior,
pierced with few and narrow windows, gives no idea of the size and
splendour of the rooms within. When they reached the top of the stairs,
Inglesant saw that the house had once, and probably not long before,
been the residence of some person of wealth. They passed through
several rooms with carved chimney-pieces and cornices, and here and
there even some massive piece of furniture still remained. From the
windows that opened on the inner side Inglesant could see the tall
cypresses of a garden, and hear the splash of fountains. But the house
had fallen from its high estate, and was now evidently used for the
vilest purposes. After passing two or three rooms, they reached an
upper hall or dining-room of considerable length, and painted in fresco
apparently of some merit. A row of windows on the left opened on the
garden, from which the sound of voices and laughter came up.
The room was bare of furniture, except towards the upper end, where was
a small and shattered table, upon which the body of the murdered man was
laid. Inglesant went up and stood by its side.
There was no doubt whose countryman he had been. The fair English boy,
scarcely bordering upon manhood--the heir, probably, of bright
hopes--travelling with a careless or incompetent tutor, lay upon the
small table, his long hair glistening in the sunlight, his face peaceful
and smiling as in sleep. The fatal rapier thrust, marked by the stain
upon the clothes, was the sole sign that his mother--waking up probably
at that moment in distant England, with his image in her heart--was
bereaved for ever of her boy. Inglesant stood silent a few moments,
looking sadly down; that other terrible figure, upon the white
hearthstone, was so constantly in his mind, that this one, so like it,
scarcely could be said to recall the image of his murdered brother; but
the whole scene certainly strengthened his morbid fancy, and it seemed
to him that he was on the footsteps of the murderer, and that his fate
was drawing near.
"His steps are still in blood," he said aloud; "and it is warm; he
cannot be far off."
He turned, as he spoke, to look for the old man, but he was gone, and in
his place a ghastly figure met Inglesant's glance.
Standing about three feet from the table, a little behind Inglesant, and
also looking fixedly at the murdered boy, was the figure of a corpse.
The face was thin and fearfully white, and the whole figure was wrapped
and swathed in grave-clothes, somewhat disordered and loosened, so as to
give play to the limbs. This form took no notice of the other's
presence, but continued to gaze at the body with its pallid ghastly
face.
Inglesant scarcely started. Nothing could seem more strange and unreal
to him than what was passing on every side. That the dead should return
and stand by him seemed to him not more fearful and unreal than all the
rest.
Suddenly the corpse turned its eyes upon Inglesant, and regarded him
with a fixed and piercing glance.
"You spoke of the author of this deed as though you knew him," it said.
"I am on the track of a murderer, and my fate is urging me on. It seems
to me that I see his bloody steps."
"This was no murder," said the corpse, in an irritated and impatient
voice. "It was a chance melee, and an unfortunate and unhappy thrust;
we do not even know the name of the man who lies there. Are you the
avenger of blood, that you see murder at every step?"
"I am in truth the avenger of blood," said Inglesant in a low and
melancholy voice; "would I were not."
The corpse continued to look at Inglesant fixedly, and would have
spoken, but the voices which had been heard in the garden now seemed to
come nearer, and hurried steps approached the room. The laughter that
Inglesant had heard was stilled, and deep and solemn voices strove
together, and one above the rest said, "Bring up the murderer."
The corpse turned round impatiently, and the next moment from a small
door, which opened on a covered balcony and outside staircase to the
garden, there came hurriedly in a troop of the most strange and
fantastic figures that the eye could rest upon. Angels and demons, and
savage men in lions' skins, and men with the heads of beasts and birds,
swarmed tumultuously in, dragging with them an unfortunate being in his
night-clothes, and apparently just out of bed, whom they urged on with
blows. This man, who was only half-awake, was evidently in the
extremity of terror, and looked upon himself as already in the place of
eternal torment. He addressed now one and now another of his
tormentors, as well as he could find breath, in the most abject terms,
endeavouring, in the most ludicrous manner, to choose the titles and
epithets to address them most in accordance with the individual
appearance that the spectre he entreated wore to his dazzled
eyes--whether a demon or an angel, a savage or a man-beast. When he saw
the murdered man, and the terrible figure that stood by Inglesant, he
nearly fainted with terror; but, on many voices demanding loudly that he
should be brought in contact with the body of his victim, he recovered a
little, and recognizing in Inglesant, at least, a being of an earthly
sphere, and by his dress a man of rank, he burst from his tormentors,
and throwing himself at his feet, he entreated his protection, assuring
him that he had been guilty of no murder, having just been dragged from
a sound sleep, and being even ignorant that a murder had been committed.
Inglesant took little notice of him, but the corpse interposed between
the man and the fantastic crew. It was still apparently in a very bad
humour, especially with Inglesant, and said imperiously,--"We have
enough and too much of this foolery. Have not some of you done enough
mischief for one night? This gentleman says he is on the track of a
murderer, and will have it that he sees his traces in this unfortunate
affair."
At these words the masquers crowded round Inglesant with wild and
threatening gestures, apparently half earnest and half the result of
wine, and as many of them were armed with great clubs, the consequences
might have seemed doubtful to one whose feelings were less excited than
Inglesant's were.
He, however, as though the proceeding were a matter of course, merely
took off his hat, and addressed the others in explanation.
"I am indeed in pursuit of a murderer, the murderer of my brother--a
gallant and noble gentleman who was slain foully in cold blood. The
murderer was an Italian, his name Malvolti. Do any of you, signori,
happen to have heard of such a man?"
There was a pause after this singular address, but the next moment a
demon of terrific aspect forced his way to the front, saying in a tone
of drunken consequence,--
"I knew him formerly at Lucca; he was well born and my friend."
"He was, and is, a scelerat and a coward," said Inglesant fiercely. "It
would be well to be more careful of your company, sir."
"Have I not said he was my friend, sir?" cried the demon, furious with
passion. "Who will lend me a rapier?"
A silent and melancholy person, with the head of an owl, who had several
under his arm, immediately tendered him one with a low bow, and the
masquers fell back in a circle, while the demon, drawing his weapon,
threw himself into an attitude and attacked Inglesant, who, after
looking at him for a moment, also drew his rapier and stood upon his
guard. It soon appeared that the demon was a very moderate fencer; in
less than a minute his guard was entered by Inglesant's irresistible
tierce, and he would have been infallibly run through the body had he
not saved himself by rolling ignominiously on the ground.
This incident appeared to restore the corpse to good humour; it laughed,
and turning to the masquers said,--
"Gentlemen, let me beg of you to disperse as quickly as possible before
the day is any farther advanced. You know of the rendezvous at one
o'clock. I will see the authorities as to this unhappy affair. Sir,"
he continued, turning to Inglesant, "you are, I believe, the friend of
Don Agostino di Chigi, whom he has been introducing into Florentine
society; if it will amuse you to see a frolic of the Carnival carried
out, of which this is only the somewhat unfortunate rehearsal, and will
meet me this afternoon at two o'clock, at the Great Church in the Via
Larga, I shall be happy to do my best to entertain you; a simple domino
will suffice. I am the Count Capece."
Inglesant gave his name in return. He apologized for not accepting the
Count's courtesy, on the plea of ill-health, but assured him he would
take advantage of his offer to cultivate his acquaintance. They left
the house together, the Count covering himself with a cloak, and
Inglesant accompanied him to the office of police, from whence he went
to his lodging and to his bed.
He arose early in the afternoon, and remembering the invitation he had
received, he went out into the Via Larga. The streets formed a strange
contrast to the stillness and calm of the cool morning. The afternoon
was hot, and the city crowded with people of every class and rank. The
balconies and windows of the principal streets were full of ladies and
children; trophies and embroideries hung from the houses and crossed the
street. Strings of carriages and country carts, dressed with flowers
and branches of trees, paraded the streets. Every variety of fantastic
and grotesque costume, and every shade of colour, filled and confused
the eye. Music, laughter, and loud talking filled the ear. Inglesant,
from his simple costume and grave demeanour, became the butt of several
noisy parties; but used as he was to great crowds, and to the confused
revelries of Courts, he was able to disentangle himself with mutual
good-humour. He recognized his friends of the morning, who were
performing a kind of comedy on a country cart, arched with boughs, in
imitation of the oldest form of the itinerant theatre. He was
recognized by them also, for, in a pause of the performance, as he was
moving down a bye-street, he was accosted by one of the company,
enveloped in a large cloak. He had no difficulty in recognizing beneath
this concealment his antagonist of the morning, who still supported his
character of demon.
"I offer you my apologies for the occurrences of this morning, signore,"
he said, "having been informed by my friends more closely concerning
them than I can myself recollect. I am also deeply interested in the
person of whom you spoke, who formerly was a friend of mine; and I must
also have been acquainted with the signore, your brother, of which I am
the more certain as your appearance every moment recalls him more and
more to my mind. I should esteem it a great favour to be allowed to
speak at large with you on these matters. If you will allow me to pay
my respects at your lodgings, I will conduct you to my father's house,
il Conte Pericon di Visalvo, where I can show you many things which may
be of interest to you respecting the man whom I understand you seek."
Inglesant replied that he should gladly avail himself of his society,
and offered to come to the Count's house early the next day.
He found the house, a sombre plain one, in a quiet street, with a tall
front pierced with few windows. At the low door hung a wine-flask, as a
sign that wine was sold within; for the sale of wine by retail was
confined to the gentry, the common people being only allowed to sell
wholesale. The Count was the fortunate possessor of a very fine
vineyard, which made his wine much in request, and Inglesant found the
whole ground-floor of his house devoted to this retail traffic. Having
inquired for the Count, he was led up the staircase into a vestibule,
and from thence into the Count's own room. This was a large apartment
with windows looking on to the court, with a suite of rooms opening
beyond it. It was handsomely furnished, with several cages full of
singing birds in the windows. Outside, the walls of the houses forming
the courtyard were covered with vines and creeping jessamine and other
plants, and a fountain splashed in the centre of the court, which was
covered with a coloured awning.
The old Count received Inglesant politely. He was a tall, spare old
man, with a reserved and dignified manner, more like that of a Spaniard
than of an Italian. Rather to Inglesant's surprise he introduced him to
his daughter, on whom, as she sat near one of the windows, Inglesant's
eyes had been fixed from the moment he had entered the room. The
Italians were so careful of the ladies of their families, and it was so
unusual to allow strangers to see them, that his surprise was not
unnatural, especially as the young lady before him was remarkably
beautiful. She was apparently very young, tall and dark-eyed, with a
haughty and indifferent manner, which concentrated itself entirely upon
her father.
The Count noticed Inglesant's surprise at the cordiality of his
reception, and seemed to speak as if in explanation.
"You are no stranger to us, signore," he said; "my son has not only
commended you to me, but your intimacy with Count Agostino has endeared
you already to us who admire and love him."
As Agostino had told him the evening before that he knew little of these
people, though he believed the old Count to be respectable, this rather
increased Inglesant's surprise; but he merely said that he was fortunate
in possessing a friend whose favour procured him such advantages.
"My son's affairs," continued the old man, "unavoidably took him abroad
this morning, but I wait his return every moment."
Inglesant suspected that the Cavaliere, who appeared to him to be a
complete debauchee, had not been at home at all that night; but if that
were the case, when he entered the room a few moments afterwards, his
manner was completely self-possessed and quiet, and showed no signs of a
night of revelry.
As soon as they were seated the Cavaliere began to explain to Inglesant
that both his father and himself were anxious to see him, to confer
respecting the unfortunate circumstances which, as they imagined, had
brought him to Italy upon a mission which they assured him was madly
imprudent.
"Our nation, signore," said the Cavaliere, "is notorious for two
passions--jealousy and revenge. Both of these, combined with
self-interest, induced Malvolti to commit the foul deed which he
perpetrated upon your brother. While in Italy your brother crossed him
in some of his amours, and also resented some indiscretions, which the
manners of our nation regard with tolerance, but which your discreeter
countrymen resent with unappeasable disgust. Our people never forgive
injuries; nay, they entail them on their posterity. We ourselves left
our native city, Lucca, on account of one of these feuds, which made it
unsafe for us to remain; and I could show you a gentleman's house in
Lucca whose master has never set foot out of doors for nine years, nay,
scarcely looked out of window, for fear of being shot by an antagonist
who has several times planted ambushes to take away his life. It is
considered a disgrace to a family that one of its members has forgiven
an injury; and a mother will keep the bloody clothes of her murdered
husband, to incite her young sons to acts of vengeance. You will see,
signore, the evil which such ideas as these winds about our lives; and
how unwise it must be in a stranger to involve himself needlessly in
such an intrigue, in a foreign country, unknown and comparatively
without friends. Italy swarms with bravos hired to do the work of
vengeance; merchants are assaulted in their warehouses in open day; in
the public streets the highest personages in the land are not safe. What
will be the fate then of a stranger whose death is necessary to the
safety of an Italian?"
"I understand you, signore," said Inglesant, "and I thank you for your
good-will, but you are somewhat mistaken. I am not seeking the man of
whom we speak, though, I confess, I came to Italy partly with the
expectation of meeting him, when it is the will of God, or the will of
the Devil whom He permits to influence the affairs of men, that this man
and I should meet. I shall not attempt to avoid the interview; it would
be useless if I did. The result of that meeting who can tell! But as I
said yesterday to the Count Capece, till my hour comes I bear a charmed
life that cannot be taken, and any result I regard with supreme
indifference, if so be I may, by any means, escape in the end the snares
of the Devil, who seeks to take me captive at his will."
The two gentlemen regarded Inglesant with profound astonishment as he
uttered these words; and the young lady in the window raised her eyes
towards him as he was speaking (he spoke very pure Italian) with some
appearance of interest.
After a pause Inglesant went on, "I also venture to think, signore," he
said, "that you are unaware of the position of this man, and of the
condition to which his crimes have brought him. I am well informed from
sure sources that he is without friends, and that his crimes have raised
him more enemies in this country even than elsewhere; so that he is
afraid to appear openly, lest he fall a victim to his own countrymen.
He is also in abject poverty, and is therefore to a great extent
powerless to do evil."
The Cavaliere smiled. "You do not altogether know this country,
signore," he said; "there are always so many different factions and
interests at work that a daring useful man is never without patrons, who
will support and further his private interests in return for the service
he may render them; and (though you may not be fully aware of it) it is
because it is notorious that you are yourself supported and protected by
a most powerful and widely spread faction, that your position in this
country is as assured and safe as it is."
His words certainly struck Inglesant. The idea that he was already a
known and marked man in this wonderful country, and playing an
acknowledged part in its fantastic drama, was new to him, and he
remained silent.
"From all ordinary antagonists," continued the Cavaliere, "this
knowledge is sufficient to secure you; no man would wish, unless ruined
and desperate, to draw on his head the swift and certain punishment
which a hand raised against your life would be sure to invoke. But a
reckless despairing man stops at nothing; and should you, by your
presence even, endanger this man's standing in the favour of some
new-found patron, or impede the success of some freshly planned
scheme--perhaps the last hope of his ruined life--I would not buy your
safety at an hour's rate."
While the Cavaliere was speaking it was evident that his sister was
listening with great attention. The interest that she manifested, and
the singular attraction that Inglesant felt towards her, so occupied his
thoughts that he could scarcely attend to what the other was saying,
though he continued speaking for some time. It is possible that the
Cavaliere noticed this, for Inglesant was suddenly conscious that he was
regarding him fixedly and with a peculiar expression. He apologized for
his inattention on the ground of ill-health, and soon after took his
leave, having invited the Cavaliere to visit him at his lodgings.
As Inglesant walked back through the streets of the city, he was
perplexed at his own sensations, which appeared so different from any he
had previously known. The attraction he experienced towards the lady he
had just seen was quite different from the affection he had felt for
Mary Collet. That was a sentiment which commended itself to his reason
and his highest feelings. In her company he felt himself soothed,
elevated above himself, safe from danger and from temptation. In this
latter attraction he was conscious of a half-formed fear, of a sense of
glamour and peril, and of an alluring force independent of his own
free-will. The opinion he had formed of her brother's character may
have had something to do with these feelings, and the sense of perpetual
danger and insecurity with which he walked this land of mystery and
intrigue no doubt increased it. He half resolved not to visit the old
nobleman again; but even while forming the resolution he knew that he
should break it.
The circumstances in which he was placed, indeed, almost precluded such
a course. The very remarkable beauty of the young lady, and the
extraordinary unreserve with which he had been introduced to
her--unreserve so unusual in Italy--while it might increase the
misgiving he felt, made it very difficult for him to decline the
acquaintance. The girl's beauty was of a kind unusual in Italy, though
not unknown there, her hair being of a light brown, contrasting with her
magnificent eyes, which were of the true Italian splendour and
brilliancy. She had doubtless been kept in the strictest seclusion, and
Inglesant could only wonder what could have induced the old Count to
depart from his usual caution.
The next day, being Ash Wednesday, Inglesant was present at the Duomo at
the ceremony of the day, when the vast congregation received the
emblematic ashes upon their foreheads. The Cavaliere was also present
with his sister, whose name Inglesant discovered to be Lauretta. Don
Agostino, to whom Inglesant had related the adventure, and the
acquaintance to which it had led, was inclined to suspect these people
of some evil purpose, and made what inquiries he could concerning them;
but he could discover nothing to their discredit, further than that the
Cavaliere was a well-known debauchee, and that he had been involved in
some intrigue, in connection with some of the present Papal family,
which had not proved successful. He was in consequence then in disgrace
with Donna Olympia and her faction,--a disappointment which it was said
had rendered his fortunes very desperate, as he was very deeply involved
in debts of all kinds. Don Agostino, the Carnival being over, was
desirous of returning to Sienna, unless Inglesant made up his mind to go
at once to Venice, in which case he offered to accompany him. His
friend, however, did not appear at all desirous of quitting Florence, at
any rate hastily, and Don Agostino left him and returned home, the two
friends agreeing to meet again before proceeding to Venice.
His companion gone, Inglesant employed himself in frequenting all those
churches to which Lauretta was in the habit of resorting during the Holy
Season; and as every facility appeared to be given him by her friends,
he became very intimate with her, and she on her part testified no
disinclination to his society. It will probably occur to the reader
that this conduct was not consistent with the cautious demeanour which
Inglesant had resolved upon; but such resolutions have before now proved
ineffectual under similar circumstances, and doubtless the like will
occur again. Lauretta looked round as a matter of course, as she came
out of the particular church she had that day chosen, for the handsome
cavalier who was certain to be ready to offer the drop of holy water;
and more than one rival whom the beautiful devotee had attracted to the
service, noticed with envy the kindly look of the masked eyes which
acknowledged the courtesy; and, indeed, it is not often that ladies'
eyes have rested upon a lover more attractive to a girl of a refined
nature than did Lauretta's, when, in the dawn of the March mornings, she
saw John Inglesant waiting for her on the marble steps. It is true that
she thought the Cavaliere Inglese somewhat melancholy and sad, but her
own disposition was reserved and pensive; and in her presence
Inglesant's melancholy was so far charmed away that it became only an
added grace of sweetness of manner, and of tender deference and
protection. The servant of the polished King of England, the companion
of Falkland and of Caernarvon, the French Princess's favourite page,
trained in every art that makes life attractive, that makes life itself
the finest art, with a memory and intellect stored with the poetry and
learning of the antique world,--it would have been strange if, where
once his fancy was touched, Inglesant had not made a finished and
attractive lover.
The familiar streets of Florence, the bridges, or the walks by the Arno,
assumed a new charm to the young girl, when she saw them in company with
her pleasant and courteous friend; and whether in the early morning it
was a few spring flowers that he brought her, or a brilliant jewel that
he placed upon her finger as he parted in the soft Italian night, it was
the giver, and the grace with which the gift was made, that won the
romantic fancy of the daughter of the south. Their talk was not of the
kind that lovers often use. He would indeed begin with relating stories
of the English Court, in the bright fleeting days before the war, of the
courtly refined revels, of the stately dances and plays, and of the
boating parties on the wooded Thames; but most often the narrative
changed its tone instinctively, and went on to speak of sadder and
higher things; of self-denial and devotion of ladies and children, who
suffered for their King without complaint; of the Ferrars and their holy
life; of the martyred Archbishop and of the King's death; and sometimes
perhaps of some sight of battle and suffering the narrator himself had
seen, as when the evening sun was shining upon the glassy slope of
Newbury, and he knelt beside the dying Caernarvon, unmindful of the
bullets that fell around.
"You have deserved well of the King," he whispered: "have you no request
that I may make to him, nothing for your children, or your wife?"
And with his eyes fixed upon the western horizon the Earl replied,--
"No, I will go hence with no request upon my lips but to the King of
kings."
How all this pleasant dalliance would have terminated, had it continued,
we have no means of knowing, for a sudden and unexpected end was put to
it, at any rate for a time.
Easter was over, and the Cavaliere had invited Inglesant to join in a
small party to spend a day or two at his vineyard and country house
among the Apennines, assuring him that at that time of the year the
valleys and hill-slopes were very delightful.
The evening before the day on which the little company was to start,
Inglesant had an engagement at one of the theatres in Florence, where a
comedy or pantomime was being performed. The comedies in Italy at this
time were paltry in character in everything except the music, which was
very good. Inglesant accompanied a Signore Gabriotto, a violin player,
who was engaged at the theatre, and of whom Inglesant had taken lessons,
and with whom he had become intimate. This man was not only an admirable
performer on the violin, but was a man of cultivation and taste. He had
given much study to the music of the ancients, and especially to their
musical instruments, as they are to be seen in the hands of the Apollos,
muses, fauns, satyrs, bacchanals, and shepherds of the classic
sculptors. As they walked through the streets in the evening sunlight,
he favoured his companion, whom he greatly admired as an excellent
listener, with a long discourse on this subject, showing how useful such
an inquiry was, not only to obtain a right notion of the ancient music,
but also to help us to obtain pleasanter instruments if possible than
those at present in use.
"Not, signore," he said, "that I think we have much to learn from the
ancients; for if we are to judge their instruments by the appearance
they make in marble, there is not one that is comparable to our violins;
for they seem, as far as I can make out, all to have been played on
either by the bare fingers or the plectrum, so that they could not add
length to their notes, nor could they vary them by that insensible
swelling and dying away of sound upon the same string which gives so
wonderful a sweetness to our modern music. And as far as I can see,
their stringed instruments must have had very low and feeble voices from
the small proportion of wood used (though it is difficult to judge of
this, seeing that all our examples are represented in marble), which
would prevent the instruments containing sufficient air to render the
strokes full or sonorous. Now my violin," continued the Italian with
enthusiasm, "does not speak only with the strings, it speaks all over,
as though it were a living creature that was all voice, or, as is really
the case, as though it were full of sound."
"You have a wonderful advantage," said Inglesant, "you Italians, that
is, in the cultivation of the art of life; for you have the unbroken
tradition, and habit and tone of mind, from the old world of pleasure
and art--a world that took the pleasures of life boldly, and had no
conscience to prevent its cultivating and enjoying them to the full.
But I must say that you have not, to my mind, improved during the lapse
of centuries, nor is the comedy we shall see to-night what might be
expected of a people who are the descendants of the old Italians who
applauded Terence."
"The comedy to-night," said the Italian, "would be nothing without the
music, the acting is a mere pretence."
"The comedy itself," said Inglesant, "would be intolerable but for the
buffoons, and the people show their sense in demanding that place shall
be found in every piece for these worthies. The play itself is stilted
and unreal, but there is always something of irony and wit in these
characters, which men have found full of satire and humour for four
thousand years: Harlequin the reckless fantastic youth, Pantaleone the
poor old worn-out 'Senex,' and Corviello the rogue. In their absurd
impertinences, in their impossible combinations, in their mistakes and
tumbles, in their falling over queens and running up against monarchs,
men have always seemed to see some careless, light-hearted,
half-indifferent sarcasm and satire upon their own existence."
When they reached the theatre, the slant rays of the setting sun were
shining between the lofty houses, and many people were standing about
the doors. Inglesant accompanied the violinist to the door of the
playhouse, and took his place near the orchestra, at either end of which
were steps leading up on to the stage. The evening sunlight penetrated
into the house through Venetian blinds, lighting up the fittings and the
audience with a sort of mystic haze. The sides of the stage were
crowded with gentlemen, some standing, others sitting on small stools.
Many of the audience were standing, the rest seated on benches. The
part occupied in modern theatres by the boxes was furnished with raised
seats, on which ladies and people of distinction were accommodated.
There was no gallery.
As the first bars of the overture struck upon Inglesant's ear, with a
long-drawn tremor of the bass viols and a shrill plaintive note of the
treble violins, an irresistible sense of loneliness and desolation and a
strange awe crept over him and weighed down his spirits. As the
fantastic music continued, in which gaiety and sadness were mysteriously
mingled, the reverberation seemed to excite each moment a clearer
perception of those paths of intrigue and of danger in which he seemed
to walk. The uneasy sentiment which accompanied, he knew not why, his
attachment to Lauretta, and the insidious friendship of the Cavaliere,
the sense of insecurity which followed his footsteps in this land of
dark and sinful deeds, passed before his mind. It seemed to his excited
fancy at that moment that the end was drawing very near, and amid the
fascination of the lovely music he seemed to await the note of the
huntsman's horn which would announce that the toils were set, and that
the chase was up. From the kind of trance in which he stood he was
aroused by hearing a voice, distinct to his ear and perfectly audible,
though apparently at some considerable distance, say--
"Who is that man by the curtain, in black satin, with the Point de
Venice lace?"
And another voice, equally clear, answered, "His name is Inglesant, an
agent of the Society of the Gesu."
Inglesant turned; but, amid the crowd of faces behind him, he could
discern nothing that indicated the speakers, nor did any one else seem
to have noticed anything unusual. The next moment the music ceased, and
with a scream of laughter Harlequin bounded on the stage, followed by
Pantaleone in an eager and tottering step, and after them a wild rout of
figures, of all orders and classes, who flitted across the stage amid
the applause of the people, and suddenly disappeared; while Harlequin
and Pantaleone as suddenly reappearing, began a lively dialogue,
accompanied by a quick movement of the violins. As Inglesant took his
eyes off the stage for a moment, they fell on the figure of a man
standing on the flight of steps at the farther end of the orchestra, who
regarded him with a fixed and scrutinizing gaze. It was a tall and dark
man, whose expression would have been concealed from Inglesant but for
the fiery brilliancy of his eyes. Inglesant's glance met his as in a
dream, and remained fixed as though fascinated, at which the gaze of the
other became, if possible, more intense, as though he too were
spell-bound and unable to turn away. At this moment the dialogue on the
stage ceased, and a girl advanced to the footlights with a song,
accompanied by the band in an air adapted from the overture, and
containing a repetition of the opening bars. The association of sound
broke the spell, and Inglesant turned his eyes upon the singer; when he
looked again his strange examiner was gone.
The girl who was singing was a Roman, reputed the best treble singer
then in Italy. The sun by this time was set, and the short twilight
over. The theatre was sparsely lighted by candles, nearly the whole of
the available light being concentrated upon the stage. This arrangement
produced striking effects of light and shade, more pleasing than are the
brilliantly lighted theatres of modern days. The figures on the stage
came forward into full and clear view, and faded again into obscurity in
a mysterious way very favourable to romantic illusion, and the
theatrical arrangements were not seen too clearly. The house itself was
shadowy, and the audience unreal and unsubstantial; the whole scene wore
an aspect of glamour and romance wanting at the present day.
When the girl's song was over there was a movement among the gentlemen
on the stage, several coming down into the house. Inglesant took
advantage of this, and went up on the stage, from which he might hope to
see something of the stranger who had been watching him so closely, if
he were still in the theatre.
Several of the actors who were waiting for their turn mingled with the
gentlemen, talking to their acquaintance. The strange light thrown on
the centre of the stage in which two or three figures were standing, the
multitude of dark forms in the surrounding shadow, the dim recesses of
the theatre itself full of figures, the exquisite music, now soft and
plaintive, anon gay and dance-like, then solemn and melancholy, formed a
singular and attractive whole. Lauretta had declined to come that
night, but Inglesant thought it was not improbable that the Cavaliere
would be there, and he was curious to see whether he could detect him in
company with the mysterious stranger. From the moment that he had heard
the distant voice inquiring his name, the familiar idea had again
occurred to his mind that this could be none other than the murderer of
his brother, of whom he was in search; but this thought had occurred so
often, and in connection with so many persons, that had it not been for
the fixed and peculiar glance with which the stranger had regarded him,
he would have thought little of it. He was, however, unable to
distinguish either of the persons of whom he was in search from the
crowd that filled the theatre; and his attention was so much diverted by
the constantly changing scene before him that he soon ceased to attempt
to do so. At that moment the opening movement of the overture was again
repeated by the band, and was made the theme of an elaborate variation,
in which the melancholy idea of the music was rendered in every variety
of shade by the plaintive violins. Every phase of sorrow, every form and
semblance of grief that Inglesant had ever known, seemed to float
through his mind, in sympathy with the sounds which, inarticulate to the
ear, possessed a power stronger than that of language to the mental
sense. The anticipation of coming evil naturally connected itself with
the person of Lauretta, and he seemed to see her lying dead before him
upon the lighted stage, or standing in an attitude of grief, looking at
him with wistful eyes. This last image was so strongly presented to his
imagination that it partook almost of the character of an apparition;
and before it the crowded theatre, the gaily dressed forms upon the
stage, the fantastic actors, seemed to fade, and alone on the deserted
boards the figure of Lauretta, as he had last seen it, slight and
girl-like, yet of noble bearing, stood gazing at him with wild and
apprehensive eyes. Curiously too, as his fancy dwelt upon this figure,
it saw in her hand a sealed letter fastened with a peculiarly twisted
cord.
The burden of sorrow and of anticipated evil became at last too heavy to
be borne, and Inglesant left the theatre and returned to his lodgings.
But here he could not rest. Though he had no reason to visit the Count
that night, and though it was scarcely seemly, indeed, that he should do
so, yet, impelled by a restless discomfort which he sought to quiet, he
wandered again into the streets, and found himself not unnaturally
before the old nobleman's dwelling. Once here, the impulse was too
strong to be denied, and he knocked at the low sunken door. The house
seemed strangely quiet and deserted, and it was some time before an old
servant who belonged to the lower part of the establishment, devoted to
the sale of the wine, appeared at the wicket, and, on being assured whom
it was who knocked at that unseasonable hour, opened the door.
The house was empty, he averred. The family had suddenly departed,
whither he knew not. If the signore was pleased to go upstairs, he
believed he would find some letters for him left by the Cavaliere.
Inglesant followed the old man, who carried a common brass lamp, which
cast an uncertain and flickering glare, the sense of evil growing
stronger at every step he took. His guide led him into the room in
which he had first seen Lauretta, which appeared bare and deserted, but
showed no sign of hasty departure. Upon a marble table inlaid with
coloured stones were two letters, both directed to Inglesant. The one
was from the Cavaliere, excusing their departure on the ground of sudden
business of the highest political importance, the other from Lauretta,
written in a hasty trembling hand. It contained but a few lines--"that
she was obliged to follow her father;" but Inglesant hesitated a moment
before he broke the seal, for it was tied round with a curiously twisted
cord of blue and yellow silk, as he had seen in the vision his fancy had
created.
*CHAPTER II.*
Lauretta's letter had informed Inglesant that she would endeavour to let
him know where she was; and with that hope he was obliged to be content,
as by no effort he could make could he discover any trace of the
fugitive's route. Florence, however, became distasteful to him, and he
would have left it sooner but for an attack of fever which prostrated
him for some time. Few foreigners were long in Italy, in those days,
without suffering from the climate and the miasmas and unhealthy
vapours, which, especially at night, were so hurtful even to those
accustomed to the country. In his illness Inglesant was carefully
nursed by some of the Jesuit fathers, and those whom they recommended;
and it is possible that they took care that he should not be left too
much to the care of the physicians, whose attentions, at that period at
any rate, were so often fatal to their patients. In the course of a few
weeks he was sufficiently recovered to think of leaving Florence, and he
despatched a messenger to Don Agostino, begging him to meet him at
Lucca, where they might decide either to visit Venice or go on straight
to Rome. It was not without some lingering hope that he might find
Lauretta in the town of her birth, that he set out for Lucca, but
misfortune followed his path. It was reported that the plague had
broken out in Florence, and travellers who were known to have come from
thence were regarded with great suspicion. Inglesant's appearance,
recently recovered from sickness, was not in his favour; and at
Fucecchio, a small town on the road to Lucca, he was arrested by the
authorities, and confined by them in the pest-house for forty days. It
was a building which had formerly been a gentleman's house, and
possessed a small garden surrounded by a high wall. In this dreary
abode Inglesant passed many solitary days, the other inmates being three
or four unfortunates like himself,--travellers on business through the
country,--who, their affairs being injured by their detention, were
melancholy and despondent. He was short of money, and for some time was
unable to communicate with any of his friends either in Florence or
Sienna. With nothing but his own misfortunes to brood upon, and with
the apprehension of the future, which almost amounted to religious
melancholy, frequently before his mind, it is surprising that he kept
his reason. To add to his misfortunes, when the greater portion of the
time fixed for his detention was expired, one of the inmates of the
pest-house suddenly died; and although the physicians pronounced his
disease not to be the plague, yet the authorities decreed that all
should remain another forty days within its dreary walls. The death of
this person greatly affected Inglesant, as he was the only one of the
inmates with whom he had contracted any intimacy.
During the first part of his sojourn here, there was brought to the
house, as an inmate, a wandering minstrel, who, the first evening of his
stay, attracted the whole of the gloomy society around him by his
playing. He played upon a small and curiously shaped instrument called
a vielle, somewhat like a child's toy, with four strings, and a kind of
small wheel instead of a bow. It was commonly used by blind men and
beggars in the streets, and was considered a contemptible instrument,
though some of these itinerant performers attained to such skill upon it
that they could make their hearers laugh and dance, and it was said even
weep, as they stood around them in the crowded streets. Inglesant soon
perceived that the man was no contemptible musician, and after his
performance was over he entered into conversation with him, asking him
why he, who could play so well, was content with so poor an instrument.
The man, who appeared to have a great deal of intelligence and humour,
said that he was addicted to a wandering and unsettled life, among the
poorer and disorderly classes in the low quarters of cities, in mountain
villages, and in remote hostelries and forest inns; that the possession
of a valuable viol, or other instrument, even if he should practice
sufficient self-denial to enable him to save money to purchase such a
one, would be a constant anxiety to him, and a source of danger among
the wild companions with whom he often associated. "Besides, signore,"
he said, "I am attached to this poor little friend of mine, who will
speak to me though to none else. I have learnt the secrets of its
heart, and by what means it may be made to discourse eloquently of human
life. You may despise my instrument, but I can assure you it is far
superior to the guitar, though that is so high bred and genteel a
gentleman, found in all romances and ladies' bowers. For any music that
depends upon the touch of a string, and is limited in the duration of
the distinct sounds, is far inferior to this little fellow's voice."
"You seemed trained to the profession of music," said Inglesant.
"I was serving-lad to an old musician in Rome, who not only played on
several instruments, but gave a great deal of time to the study of the
science of harmony, and of the mysteries of music. He was fond of me,
and taught me the viol, as I was apt to learn."
"I have heard of musicians," said Inglesant, "who have written on the
philosophy of sound. He was doubtless one of them."
"There are things concerning musical instruments," said the man, "very
wonderful; such as the laws concerning the octaves of flutes, which,
make them how you will, you can never alter, and which show how the
principles of harmony prevail in the dead things of the world, which we
think so blockish and stupid; and what is more wonderful still, the
passions of men's souls, which are so wild and untamable, are all ruled
and kept in a strict measure and mean, for they are all concerned in and
wrought upon by music. And what can be more wonderful than that a
maestro in the art can take delight in sound, though he does not hear
it; and when he looks at some black marks upon paper, he hears
intellectually, and by the power of the soul alone?"
"You speak so well of these things," said Inglesant, "that I wonder you
are content to wander about the world at village fairs and country
weddings, and do not rather establish yourself in some great town, where
you might follow your genius and earn a competence and fame."
"I have already told you," replied the man, "that I am wedded to this
kind of life; and if you could accompany me for some months, with your
viol d'amore, across the mountains, and through the deep valleys, and
into the old towns where no travellers ever come, and where all stands
still from century to century, you would never leave it, any more than I
shall. I could tell you of many strange sights I have witnessed, and if
we stay long in this place, perhaps you will be glad to hear some tales
to while away the time."
"You spoke but now," said Inglesant, "of the power that music has over
the passions of men. I should like to hear somewhat more of this."
"I will tell you a curious tale of that also," said the man.
THE VIELLE-PLAYER'S STORY.
"Some twenty-five years ago there lived in Rome two friends, who were
both musicians, and greatly attached to each other. The elder, whose
name was Giacomo Andria, was maestro di capella of one of the churches,
the other was an accomplished lutinist and singer. The elder was a
cavaliere and a man of rank; the younger of respectable parentage, of
the name of Vanneo. The style of music in which each was engaged was
sufficiently different to allow of much friendly contention; and many
lively debates took place as to the respective merits of 'Sonate da
Chiesa' and 'Sonate da Camera.' Their respective instruments also
afforded ground for friendly dispute. Vanneo was very desirous that his
friend should introduce viols and other instruments into the service, in
concert with the voices, in the Church in which Vanneo himself sang in
the choir; but the Cavaliere, who considered this a practice derived
from the theatre, refused to avail himself of any instrument save the
organ. Vanneo was more successful in inducing his friend to practice
upon his favourite instrument the lute, though Andria pretended at first
to despise it as a ladies' toy, and liable to injure the shape of the
performer. His friend, however, though devoted to secular music,
brought to the performance and composition of it so much taste and
correct feeling, that Andria was ravished in spite of himself, and of
his preference to the solemn music of the Church. Vanneo excelled in
contrasting melancholy and pensive music with bright and lively cords,
mingling weeping and laughter in some of the sweetest melodies that
imagination ever suggested. He accompanied his own voice on the lute,
or he composed pieces for a single voice with accompaniment for violins.
In a word, he won his friend over to this grave chamber music, in some
respects more pathetic and serious than the more monotonous masses and
sonatas of the Church composers. Vanneo composed expressly for this
purpose fantasies on the chamber organ, interposed, now and then, with
stately and sweet dance music, such as Pavins (so named from the walk of
a peacock) Allemaines, and other delightful airs, upon the violins and
lute. In these fancies he blended, as it were, pathetic stories, gay
festivities, and sublime and subtle ideas, all appealing to the secret
and intellectual faculties, so that the music became not only an
exponent of life but a divine influence. After these delightful
meetings had continued for several years, circumstances obliged Vanneo
to accompany a patron to France, and from thence he went over into
England, to the great King of that nation, as one of his private
musicians; for the Queen of England was a French Princess, and was fond
of the lute. His departure was a great grief to the Cavaliere, who
devoted himself more than ever to Church music and to the offices of
religion. He was a man of very devout temper, and was distinguished for
his benevolent disposition, and especially for his compassion for the
poor, whom he daily relieved in crowds at his own door, and in the
prisons of Rome, which he daily visited. From time to time he heard
from his friend, to whom he continued strongly attached."
"I was brought up at the English Court," said Inglesant, "and have been
trying to recall such a man, but cannot recollect the name you mention,
though I remember several lutinists and Italians."
"I tell the story as I heard it," replied the other. "The man may have
changed his name in a foreign country. One day the Cavaliere had
received a letter from his friend, brought to him by some English
gentleman travelling to Rome. Having read it, and spent some time with
the recollections that its perusal suggested to his mind, he set himself
to the work in which he was engaged--the composition of a motet for some
approaching festival of the Church; but although he attempted to fix his
mind upon his occupation, and was very anxious to finish his work, he
found himself unable to do so. The remembrance of his friend took
complete possession of his mind; and his imagination, instead of
dwelling on the solemn music of the motet, wandered perversely into the
alluring world of phantasied melody which Vanneo had composed. Those
sad and pensive adagios, passing imperceptibly into the light gaiety of
a festival, never seemed so delightful as at that moment. He rose from
time to time, and walked to and fro in his chamber, and as he did so he
involuntarily took up a lute which Vanneo had left with him as a parting
gift, and which always lay within reach. As he carelessly touched the
strings, something of his friend's spirit seemed to have inspired him,
and the lute breathed again with something of the old familiar charm.
Each time that he took it up, the notes formed themselves again under
his hand into the same melody, and at last he took up a sheet of paper,
intended for the motet, and scored down the air he had involuntarily
composed. His fancy being pleased with the occurrence, he elaborated it
into a lesson, and showed it to several of his associates. He gave it
the name of 'gli amici,' and it became very popular among the masters in
Rome as a lesson for their pupils on the lute. Among those who thus
learnt it was a youth who afterwards became page to a Florentine
gentleman, one Bernard Guasconi, who went into England and took service
under the King of that country, who, as you doubtless know better than I
do, was at war with his people."
"I know the Cavaliere Guasconi," said Inglesant, "and saw him lately in
Florence, where he is training running horses for the Grand Duke."
"This war," continued the man, "appears to have been the ruin of Vanneo;
for the English people, besides hating their King, took to hating all
kinds of music, and all churches and choristers. Vanneo lost his place
as one of the King's musicians, and not being able to earn his living by
teaching music where so few cared to learn, he was forced to enlist as a
soldier in one of the King's armies, and was several times near losing
his life. He escaped these dangers, however; but the army in which he
served being defeated and dispersed, he wandered about the country,
wounded, and suffering from sickness and want of food. He supported
himself miserably, partly by charity, especially among the Loyalist
families, and partly by giving singing lessons to such as desired them.
He was without friends, or any means of procuring money to enable him to
return to Italy. As he was walking in this manner one day in the
streets of London, without any hope, and with scarcely any life, he
heard the sound of music. It was long since the melody of a lute, once
so familiar, had fallen on his ear; and as he stopped to listen, the
notes came to him through the thick moist air like an angelic and divine
murmur from another world. The music seemed to come from a small room
on the ground-floor of a poor inn, and Vanneo opened the door and went
in. He found a young man, plainly dressed, playing on a double-necked
theorbo-lute, which, from the number of its strings, enables, as you
know, the skilful lutinist to play part music, with all the varieties of
fugues and other graces and ornaments of the Italian manner. The piece
which the young man was playing consisted of an allegro and yet sweet
movement on the tenor strings, with a sustained harmony in thorough
bass. The melody, being carefully distributed through the parts, spoke
to Vanneo of gaiety and cheerfulness, as of his old Italian life,
strangely combined at the same time with a soothing and pathetic
melancholy, like a corpse carried through the streets of a gay city,
strewn with flowers and accompanied with tapers and singing of boys.
The whole piece finished with a pastorale, or strain of low and sweet
notes. As Vanneo listened he was transported out of himself. It was
not alone the beauty of the music which ravished him, but he was
conscious that a mysterious presence, as of his friend the Cavaliere,
was with him, and that at last the perfect sympathy which he had sought
so long was established; and that in the music he had heard a common
existence and sphere of life was at last created, in which they both
lived, not any longer separate from each other, but enjoying as it were
one common being of melody and ecstatic life of sound. When the music
ceased Vanneo accosted the lutinist, and inquired the name of the
composer; but this the young man could not tell him. He only knew it
was a favourite lesson for skilful pupils among the music-masters in
Rome, and as such he had learnt it. Vanneo was confident the piece had
been written by Andria, and by none other, and told the young man so.
By this time they had discovered that they were fellow-countrymen, and
the lutinist sent for refreshments, of which Vanneo stood very much in
need. He also told him that his name was Scacchi, and that he was page
to the Signore Bernard Guasconi, who was then in arms for the King, and
was besieged in some town of which I have forgotten the English name."
"It was Colchester," said Inglesant; "I was in prison at the time of the
siege; but I know the history of it and its sad ending."
"Becoming very familiar with Vanneo, he advised him to accompany him to
Colchester. His master, he said, would doubtless be set at liberty
immediately as a foreigner and a friend of the Grand Duke's, and he
could accompany him home to Italy as a domestic. As no better prospect
was open to Vanneo of returning to his native country, he gladly
accepted the page's offer, and agreed to accompany him next day. The
besiegers of the town which you call Colchester were engaging persons
from all parts of the country to work their trenches, and the town not
being far from London, many persons went from that place to earn the
wages offered. Many of the Loyalists also took advantage of this
pretext, intending to join the besieged if a favourable opportunity
offered. To one of these parties Vanneo and the page joined themselves.
You may wonder that I know so much of these matters, but I have heard
the story several times repeated by the page himself. The weather was
very cold and wet, and the companions underwent much hardship on their
march. They travelled through a flat and marshy country, full of woods
and groves of trees, and crossed with dykes and streams. Vanneo,
however, who had endured so much privation and suffering, began to sink
under his fatigues. After travelling for more than two days they
arrived at the leaguer. They were told that the besieged were expected
every day to surrender at discretion; but they were sent into the
trenches with several other volunteers to relieve those already there,
many of whom were exhausted with the work, and were deserting. As they
arrived at the extreme limit of the lines the besiegers had planted four
great pieces of battering cannon against the town, and fired great shot
all the forenoon, without, however, doing much damage. The Royalists
mustered all their troops upon the line, intending, as it afterwards
appeared, to break out at night and force their way through the leaguer.
The lines were so close that the soldiers could throw stones at each
other as they lay in the trenches; and Vanneo and the page could see the
King's officers plainly upon the city walls. The Royalists did not
fire, being short of ammunition, and in the night a mutiny took place
among some of the foot-soldiers, which prevented the project of cutting
their way out from taking effect. The soldiers of both armies were now
already mixed on many places upon the line, and no fire was given on
either side, as though the Royalists were already prisoners. The page
left Vanneo, who was worn-out and ill, and easily made his way into the
town, where he found his master. When he returned to the trenches he
found Vanneo very ill, and a physician with him, a doctor of the town,
named Gibson, as I remember, who told the page that he thought his
companion was dying. Vanneo, in fact, appeared to be insensible, his
eyes were closed, and he was perfectly pale. He lay in a small house,
just within the lines, which had been deserted by its inhabitants, who
were weavers. The gentlemen were under arrest in the town, and it was
reported that several were to be immediately shot, of whom it was
whispered the Signore Guasconi was to be one. About two in the
afternoon the general of the besieging army entered the town, and a
great rabble of the soldiers with him. The latter broke into many
houses to search for plunder, and among them into that in which Vanneo
was lying. As they came into the room and saw the dying man, they
stopped and began to question the page as to who he was. Before he
could reply Vanneo opened his eyes with a smile, raised himself suddenly
from the straw on which he lay, and, stretching out his hand eagerly as
one who welcomes a friend, exclaimed in Italian, 'Cavaliere, the
consonance is complete;' and having said this he fell back upon the
straw again, and, the smile still upon his face, he died."
The musician stopped a moment, and then glancing at Inglesant with a
curious look said, "It is confidently said that about that very moment
the Cavaliere Andria died at Rome; at any rate when the page returned to
Italy and inquired for him at Rome, he was dead. He caught a fever in
one of his visits to the prisons, and died in a few days."
"Did the page tell you of the two gentlemen who were shot at
Colchester?" said Inglesant.
"Yes, he told me that Guasconi stood by with his doublet off expecting
his turn; but when the others were shot he was taken back to his prison.
They only found out he was an Italian by his asking leave to write to
the Grand Duke."
"I have been told," he continued, "that this poor King was a great lover
of music, and played the bass viol himself."
"He was a great admirer of Church music," said Inglesant; "I have often
seen him appoint the service and anthems himself."
As the conversation of this man was a great entertainment to Inglesant,
so his sudden and unexpected death was a great shock to him. The
physician could give no clear explanation of his decease, and the
general opinion was that he died of the plague, though it was, of
course, the interest of every one in the pest-house that this should not
be acknowledged.
A few days after the burial two of the Jesuit Fathers arrived from
Florence, accompanied by Don Agostino, who, having in vain waited for
his friend at Lucca, had sought him at Florence, and finally traced him
to his dreary prison. By their influence Inglesant was allowed to
depart; and actuated still by his desire to see Venice, set out,
accompanied by Don Agostino, in the hope of reaching that city. They
crossed the Apennines, and journeyed by Modena, Mantua, Verona, and
Padua. These places, which at other times would have excited in
Inglesant the liveliest interest, were passed by him now as in a dream.
The listless indifference which grew day by day, developed at Padua into
absolute illness; and Agostino took lodgings for his friend in one of
the deserted palaces of which the city was full. A few days' rest from
travel, and from the excitement produced by novel scenes and by the
scorching plains, had a soothing and beneficent effect; but Venice being
reported to be at that time peculiarly unhealthy, and Inglesant becoming
sensible that he was physically unable to prosecute any inquiries there,
the friends resolved to abandon their journey in that direction, and to
return towards Rome. At this juncture Don Agostino received letters
which compelled him to return hastily to Sienna, and after spending a
few days with his friend, he left, promising to return shortly and
accompany Inglesant to Rome, when he was sufficiently recruited by a few
weeks' repose.
The failure of the silk trade, owing to the importation of silk from
India into Europe, had destroyed the prosperity of many parts of Italy;
and in Padua long streets of deserted mansions attested by their beauty
the wealth and taste of the nobility, whom the loss of the rents of
their mulberry groves had reduced to ruin. Many houses being empty,
rents were exceedingly cheap, and the country being very plentiful in
produce, and the air very good, a little money went a long way in Padua.
There was something about the quiet gloomy town, with its silent narrow
streets and its long and dim arcades,--by which you might go from one
end of the city to the other under a shady covert,--that soothed
Inglesant's weary senses and excited brain.
His was that sad condition in which the body and the mind, being
equally, like the several strings of an ill-kept lute, out of tune,
jarred upon each other, the pains of the body causing phantasms and
delusions of the mind. His disappointment and illness at Florence, his
long confinement in the pest-house, and the sudden death of his friend
the poor musician, preyed upon his spirits and followed him even in his
dreams; and his body being weakened by suffering, and his mind depressed
by these gloomy events and images, the old spiritual terrors returned
with augmented force. Nature herself, in times of health and happiness
so alluring and kind, turns against the wretch thus deprived of other
comfort. The common sights and events of life, at one time so full of
interest, became hateful to him; and amid the solemn twilights and
gorgeous sunsets of Italy, his imagination was oppressed by an
intolerable presentiment of coming evil. Finally, he despaired of
himself, his past life became hateful to him, and nothing in the future
promised a hope of greater success. He saw himself the mere tool of a
political faction, and to his disordered fancy as little better than a
hireling bravo and mercenary. The rustling of leaves, the falling of
water, the summer breeze, uttered a pensive and melancholy voice, which
was not soothing, but was like the distant moaning of sad spirits
foreboding disaster and disgrace. On his first arrival in Padua Don
Agostino had introduced him to two or three ecclesiastics, whose
character and conversation he thought would please his friend; but
Inglesant made little effort to cultivate their acquaintance. His
principal associate was the Prior of the Benedictine monastery, a mile
or two beyond the Ferrara Gate, who, becoming at last distressed at his
condition, advised him to consult a famous physician named Signore
Jovanni Zecca.
This man had the reputation of a wit, maintained chiefly by a constant
study of Boccalini's "Parnassus," with quotations from which work he
constantly adorned his discourse. He found Inglesant prostrate on a
couch in his apartment, with the Prior by his side. The room had been
the state reception room of the former possessor, and the windows, which
were open, looked upon the wide space within one of the gates. It was
the most busy part of the city, and for that reason the rooms had been
chosen by Don Agostino, as commanding the most agreeable and lively
prospect.
The Prior having explained to the physician the nature of Inglesant's
malady, as far as he was acquainted with it, inquired whether the
situation of the rooms seemed suitable to the doctor, or whether it
would be well to remove to some country house. The scene from the
windows indeed was very lively, and might be considered too distracting
for an invalid. The prospect commanded the greater part of the Piazza,
or Place d'Armes, the gate and drawbridges and the glacis outside, with
a stretch of country road beyond, lined with poplars. This extensive
stage was occupied by ever-varying groups,--soldiers on guard in stiff
and picturesque uniform, men carrying burdens, pack-horses, oxen, now
and then a carriage with a string of horses and with running footmen,
peasant women, priests, children, and beggars, with sometimes a
puppet-show, or a conjuror with apes, and side by side with these last,
in strange incongruity, the procession of the Host.
"From what I know of this gentleman's malady and disposition," said the
physician, "I should suppose that these sights and sounds, though
perhaps hurtful to his physical nature, are so dear to his moral nature
that to speak against them were useless. These sounds, though
physically unpleasant, contain to the philosophic mind such moral beauty
as to be attractive in the highest degree, and to such a nature as this
my patient possesses offer a fascination which it would be unwise to
contend against."
"If," said the Prior to Inglesant with a smile, "your case requires
philosophic treatment, you are fortunate in having secured the advice of
Signore Zecca, who has the reputation of a philosopher and wit, as well
as that of a most skilful physician."
"With respect to my calling as a physician, I may make some claim
certainly," said the doctor, "if descent has any title to confer
excellence, for my great-grandfather was that celebrated Jovanni Zecca,
after whom I am named, the Physician of Bologna, whom you will find
mentioned in the most witty 'Ragguagli' of Messere Tragano Boccalini;
therefore, if I fail in my profession, it is not for want of generations
of experience and precept; but as regards my proficiency as a
philosopher, I have no one to depend upon but myself, and my proficiency
is indeed but small."
"You are pleased to say so, Signore Fisico," said Inglesant languidly,
"with the modesty usual with great minds; nevertheless the remark which
you have just made shows you to be familiar with the deepest of all
philosophy, that of human life. It is my misfortune that I am too deeply
impressed already with the importance of this philosophy, and it is my
inadequate following of its teaching which is killing me."
"It is a subject of curious study," said the physician, "for perplexity
perhaps, certainly for much satire, but scarcely, I should think, for
martyrdom. The noblest things in life are mixed with the most ignoble,
great pretence with infinite substance, vain-glory with solidness. The
fool of one moment, the martyr of the next: as in the case of that
Spaniard mentioned by Messere Boccalini, whose work doubtless you know,
signore, but if not, I should recommend its perusal as certain to do
much to work your cure. This man--the Spaniard, I mean--dying most
gallantly upon the field of honour, entreated his friend to see him
buried without unclothing him; and with these words died. His body,
being afterwards examined, it was found that he who was so sprucely
dressed, and who had a ruff about his neck so curiously wrought as to be
of great value, had never a shirt on his back. This discovery caused
great laughter among the vulgar sort of mankind; but by order of Apollo,
the great ruler of learning and philosophy, this Spaniard was given a
public and splendid funeral, equal to a Roman triumph; and an oration
was pronounced over him, who was so happy that, in his great calamity,
he was careful of his reputation before his life. His noble funeral
seems to me rather to proclaim the fact that our worst meannesses cannot
deprive us of the dignity of that pity which is due to human nature
standing by the brink of an open grave. A man has mistaken the secret
of human life who does not look for greatness in the midst of folly, for
sparks of nobility in the midst of meanness; and the well-poised mind
distributes with impartiality the praise and the blame."
"It is my misfortune," replied Inglesant, "that my mind is incapable of
this well-poised impartiality, but is worn out by the unworthy conflict
which the spirit within us wages with the meannesses of life. As the
Psalmist says, 'The very abjects make mouths at me, and cease not.'
"You are like those people, signore," said the physician, "mentioned by
Messere Boccalini, whom the greatest physicians failed to cure, but who
were immediately restored to active health by the simple and common
remedies of a quack. You seek for remedies among the stars and the
eternal verities of creation, whereas your ailment of mind arises
doubtless from some physical derangement, which perchance a learner in
healing might overcome."
"The fatal confusion of human life," said Inglesant, "is surely too
obvious a fact to be accounted for by the delusions of physical
disease."
The physician looked at Inglesant for a moment and said,--
"Some time, signore, I will tell you a story, not out of Boccalini,
which perchance will convince you that, strange as it may seem, the
realities of life and the delusions of disease are not so dissimilar as
you think."
"If it be so," said Inglesant, "your prescription is more terrible than
my complaint."
"I do not see that," replied the other. "I have said nothing but what
should show you how unwise you will be, if you overlook the bodily
ailment in searching into the diseases of the soul."
"I am well aware," replied Inglesant, "that my ailment is one of the
body as well as of the mind; but were my body made perfectly whole and
sound, my cure could scarcely be said to be begun."
"I hold that most of the sorrows and perplexities of the mind are to be
traced to a diseased body," replied the physician, not paying much
attention to what his patient said; "the passion of the heart, heavy and
dull spirits, vain imaginations, the vision of spectres and phantoms,
grief and sorrow without manifest cause,--all these things may be cured
by purging away melancholy humours from the body, especially as I
conceive from the meseraic veins; and the heart will then be comforted,
in the taking away the material cause of sorrow, which is not to be
looked for in the world of spirits, nor in any providential government
of God, nor even in outward circumstances and perplexities, but in the
mechanism of the body itself."
"What cures do you propound that may be hoped to work such happy
results?" said the Prior, for Inglesant did not speak.
"We have many such cures in physics--physics studied by the light of the
heavenly science," said the physician; "such as the Saturica Sancti
Juliani, which grows plentifully on the rough cliffs of the Tyrrhenian
Sea, as the old Greek chronographers called it, called St. Julian's
Rock; the Epithymum, or thyme, which is under Saturn, and therefore very
fitted for melancholy men; the Febrifuga, or, in our Italian tongue,
Artemisia Tenuifolia, good for such as be melancholy, sad, pensive, and
without power of speech; the distilled water of the Fraga, or
Strawberry, drunk with white wine reviveth the spirits, and as the holy
Psalmist says, 'Laetificat cor hominis;' and the herb Panax, which grows
on the top of the Apennine, and is cherished in all the gardens of Italy
for its wonderful healing qualities; but the liquor of it, which you may
buy in Venice, is not distilled in Italy, but is brought from
Alexandria, a city of Egypt."
"You do not speak of the chemical medicines," said Inglesant, "which
were much thought of in England when I was in Oxford; and many wonderful
cures were worked by them, though I remember hearing that the young
doctor who first introduced them, and wrought some great cures, died
himself soon after."
"I have indeed no faith in the new doctrine of chemical compositions and
receipts," said the physician, "which from mere empirics must needs be
very dangerous, but from a man that is well grounded in the old way may
do strange things. The works of God are freely given to man. His
medicines are common and cheap; it is the medicines of the new
physicians that are so dear and scarce to find."
Signore Zecca soon after took his leave, promising to send Inglesant a
cordial, the ingredients of which he said were gathered on "a Friday in
the hour of Jupiter," and which would be sufficient to give sleep,
pleasant dreams, and quiet rest to the most melancholy man in the world.
For, as he sensibly observed, "waking is a symptom which much tortures
melancholy men, and must therefore be speedily helped, and sleep by all
means procured. To such as you especially, who have what I call the
temperament of sensibility, are fearful of pain, covet music and sleep,
and delight in poetry and romance, sleep alone is often a sufficient
remedy."
The doctor frequently visited Inglesant, who found his humour and
curious learning entertaining; and on one occasion, when they were alone
together, he reminded him of his promise to relate a story which would
prove his assertion that the ills of the soul were occasioned by those
of the body.
* * * * *
NOTE.--The MSS. are here imperfect.
*CHAPTER III.*
In spite, however, of the reasonings and prescriptions of the physician,
the oppression upon Inglesant's brain became more intolerable. Every
new object seemed burnt into it by the sultry outward heat, and by his
own fiery thoughts. The livid scorched plains, with the dark foliage,
the hot piazzas and highways, seemed to him thronged with ghastly
phantoms, all occupied more or less in some evil or fruitless work. As
to his physical sense all objects seemed distorted and awry, so to his
mental perception the most ordinary events bore in them the germs,
however slight, of that terrible act of murderous terror that had marred
and ruined his own life. In some form or other, in the passionate look,
in the gambler's gesture, in the lover's glance, in the juggler's
grimace, in the passion of the little child, he saw the stealthy trail
of the Italian murderer, before whose cowardly blow his brother fell.
The cool neglected courts of Padua afforded no relief to his racked
brain, no solace to his fevered fancy. He frequented the shadowed
churches and the solemn masses daily without comfort; for his conscience
was once more weighted with the remembrance of Serenus de Cressy, and of
his own rejection of the narrow path of the Holy Cross. A sense of
oppression and confusion rested upon him mentally and physically, so
that he could see no objects steadily and clearly; but without was a
phantasmagoria of terrible bright colours, and within a mental chaos and
disorder without a clue. A constant longing filled his mind to accept
De Cressy's offer, and he would have returned to France but for the
utter impossibility of making the journey in his condition of health.
He withdrew himself more and more from society, and at last, without
informing his friends of his intention, he retired to a small monastery
without the city, about a mile from the Traviso Gate, and requested to
be admitted as a novice. The result of this step at the outset was
beneficial; for the perfect seclusion, and the dim light of the cells
and shaded garden, relieved the brain, and restored the disordered sense
of vision.
It was some time before Don Agostino received intelligence, through the
Prior, of this step of his friend's. He immediately came to Padua, and
had several interviews with Inglesant, but apparently failed to produce
any impression upon him. He then returned to Florence, and induced the
Cardinal Rinuccini, from whose influence upon Inglesant he hoped much,
to accompany him to Padua.
The Cardinal was a striking-looking and singularly handsome man, his
countenance resembling the reputed portraits of Moliere, whose bust
might be taken for that of a pagan god. There was the same open free
expression, as of a man who confined his actions by no bounds, who
tasted freely of that tree of good and evil, which, it is reported,
transforms a man into a god, and of that other tree which, since the
flaming sword of the cherubim kept the way to the true, has passed in
the world for the tree of life; who had no prejudices nor partialities,
but included all mankind, and all the opinions of men, within the wide
range of perfect tolerance and lofty indifference. He found Inglesant
in his novice's dress, walking in the small walled-in garden of the
monastery, beneath the mulberry trees, his breviary in his hand. After
the first greeting the Cardinal inquired touching his health.
"You are familiar with English, Eminence," replied Inglesant, "and
remember Hamlet; and you will therefore understand the state of a man
for whom the world is too strong."
"It is only the weak," replied the Cardinal, "for whom the world is too
strong. You know what Terence says, 'Ita vita est hominum quasi cum
ludas tesseris,' or, as we should rather say, 'Life is like a game of
cards;' you cannot control the cards, but of such as turn up you must
make the most."
"Illud quod cecidit forte, id arte ut corrigas."
"The freewill, the reason, and the power of self-command, struggle
perpetually with an array of chance incidents, of mechanical forces, of
material causes, beyond foresight or control, but not beyond skilful
management. This gives a delicate zest and point to life, which it
would surely want if we had the power to frame it as we would. We did
not make the world, and are not responsible for its state; but we can
make life a fine art, and, taking things as we find them, like wise men,
mould them as may best serve our own ends."
"We are not all wise, your Eminence, and the ends that some of us make
our aim are far beyond our reach."
"I was ever moderate in my desires," said the Cardinal with a smile; "I
shoot at none of these high-flying game. I am content to live from day
to day, and leave the future to the gods; in the meantime sweetening
life as I can with some pleasing toys, here and there, to relish it."
"You have read Don Quixote, Eminence," said Inglesant; "and no doubt
hold him to have been mad."
"He was mad, doubtless," replied the Cardinal smiling.
"I am mad, like him," replied the other.
"I understand you," said the Cardinal; "it is a noble madness, from
which we inferior natures are free; nevertheless, it may be advisable
for a time to consult some worldly physician, that by his help this
nobleness may be preserved a little longer upon earth and among men."
"No worldly physician knows the disease, much less the cure," said
Inglesant. "Don Quixote died in his bed at last, talked down by petty
common-place, acknowledging his madness, and calling his noble life a
mistake; how much more shall I, whose life has been the more ignoble for
some transient gleams of splendour which have crossed its path in vain!
The world is too strong for me, and heaven and its solution of life's
enigma too far off."
"There is no solution, believe me," said the Cardinal, "no solution of
life's enigma worth the reading. But suppose there be, you are more
likely to find it at Rome than here. Put off that monk's dress, and
come with me to Rome. What solution can you hope to find, brooding on
your own heart, on this narrow plot of grass, shut in by lofty walls?
You, and natures like yours, make this great error; you are moralizing
and speculating upon what life ought to be, instead of taking it as it
is; and in the meantime it slips by you, and you are nothing, and life
is gone. I have heard, and you doubtless, in a fine concert of viols,
extemporary descant upon a thorough bass in the Italian manner, when
each performer in turn plays such variety of descant, in concordance to
the bass, as his skill and present invention may suggest to him. In
this manner of play the consonances invariably fall true upon a given
note, and every succeeding note of the ground is met, now in the unison
or octave, now in the concords, preserving the melody throughout by the
laws of motion and sound. I have thought that this is life. To a
solemn bass of mystery and of the unseen, each man plays his own descant
as his taste or fate suggests; but this manner of play is so governed
and controlled by what seems a fatal necessity, that all melts into a
species of harmony; and even the very discords and dissonances, the wild
passions and deeds of men, are so attempered and adjusted that without
them the entire piece would be incomplete. In this way I look upon life
as a spectacle, 'in theatro ludus.' Have you sat so long that you are
tired already of the play?"
"I have read in some book,"[#] said Inglesant, "that it is not the
play--only the rehearsal. The play itself is not given till the next
life. But for the rest your Eminence is but too right. There is no
solution within my own heart, and no help within these walls."
[#] What this book is I do not know. The remark was made by Jean Paul,
in Hesperus, some hundred years after Inglesant's day.
There can be little doubt that had Inglesant remained much longer in the
monastery, he would have sunk into a settled melancholy. The quiet and
calm, while it soothed his brain, and relieved it of the phantoms that
distracted it, allowed the mind to dwell exclusively upon those
depressing thoughts and ideas which were exhausting his spirit and
reducing him well-nigh to despair. However undesirable at other times
the Cardinal's philosophic paganism might be, no doubt, at this moment,
his society was highly beneficial to Inglesant, to whom, indeed, his
conversation possessed a peculiar charm. It could, indeed, scarcely
fail to attract one who himself sympathized with that philosophy of
tolerance of, and attraction to, the multiform aspects of life which
Paganism and the Cardinal equally followed. On the other hand,
Rinuccini had from the first been personally strongly attracted towards
Inglesant, and, as a matter of policy, attached just importance to
securing his services, both on account of what he had learnt from his
brother, and from the report of the Jesuits.
After some further conversation the Cardinal returned to Padua in
triumph, bringing Inglesant with him, whom he loaded with kindness and
attention. A suite of apartments was placed at his disposal, certain of
the Cardinal's servants were ordered to attend him, and the finest
horses were devoted to his use on the approaching journey. After
waiting in Padua some days, to make preparations which were necessary in
the neglected state of Inglesant's affairs, they set out for Rome. Don
Agostino was still in Florence, the politics of his family not suffering
him to visit the papal city at present.
Their first day's journey took them, through the fertile and
well-cultivated Venetian States, to Rovigo, where they crossed the Po,
dividing the territory of the Republic from the Ferrarese, which State
had lately been acquired by the Pope.
This country, which, while it possessed princes of its own, had been one
of the happiest and most beautiful parts of Italy, was now abandoned and
uncultivated to such an extent that the grass was left unmown on the
meadows. At Ferrara, a vast city which appeared to Inglesant like a
city of the dead as he walked through streets of stately houses without
an inhabitant, the chief concourse of people was the crowd of beggars
who thronged round the Cardinal's coach. After dinner Inglesant left
his companion, who liked to linger over his wine, and walked out into
the quiet streets. The long, deserted vistas of this vast city,
sleeping in the light and shadow of the afternoon sun, disturbed now and
then only by a solitary footstep, pleased his singular fancies as Padua
had done. He entered several of the Churches, which were mean and
poorly adorned, and spoke to several of the priests and loiterers.
Everywhere he heard complaints of the poverty of the place, of the
misery of the people, of the bad unwholesome air, caused by the dearth
of inhabitants to cultivate the land. When he came to inquire into the
causes of this, most held their peace; but one or two idlers, bolder or
more reckless than the rest, seeing that he was a foreigner, and
ignorant that he was riding in the train of a Cardinal, whispered to him
something of the severity of the Papal government, and of the heavy
taxes and frequent confiscations by which the nephews of several Popes
had enriched themselves, and devoured many of the principal families of
the city, and driven away many more. "They talk of the bad air," said
one of these men to Inglesant; "the air was the same a century ago, when
this city was flourishing under its own princes--princes of so eminent a
virtue, and of so heroical a nobleness, that they were really the
Fathers of their country. Nothing," he continued with a mute gesture of
the hands, "can be imagined more changed than this is now."
"But Bologna is under the Pope, also," said Inglesant, "and is
flourishing enough."
"Bologna," he answered, "delivered itself up to the Popedom upon a
capitulation, by which there are many privileges reserved to it. Crimes
there are only punished in the persons of those who commit them. There
are no confiscations of estates; and the good result of these privileges
is evident, for, though Bologna is neither on a navigable river nor the
centre of a sovereignty where a Court is kept, yet its happiness and
wealth amaze a stranger; while we, once equally fortunate, are like a
city in a dream."
Inglesant returned to the inn to the Cardinal, and related what he had
heard; to all which dismal stories the Prelate only replied by
significant gesture.
The next morning, however, as he was entering his carriage followed by
his friend, he seemed to take particular notice of the crowd of beggars
that surrounded the inn. In Inglesant's eyes they only formed part
(together with the strange, quiet streets, the shaded gardens, and the
ever-changing scenes of their journey) in that shifting phantasm of form
and colour, meaningless to him, except as it might suddenly, and in some
unexpected way, become a part and scene of the fatal drama that had
seized upon and crippled his life. But to the Cardinal, who had the
training of a politician, though he subordinated politics to enjoyment,
these swarms of beggars and these decaying states had at times a deeper
interest.
"These people," he said, as the carriage moved on, "certainly seem very
miserable, as you told me last night. To those whose tastes lay that
way it would not be a useless business to inquire into these matters,
and to try to set them right. Some day, probably far distant, some of
us, or those like us who clothe in scarlet and fine linen, will have to
pay a reckoning for these things."
"They are less unhappy than I am," said Inglesant. "As to the luxurious
persons of whom you speak, it has been my fate to be of their party all
my life, and to serve them for very poor reward; and I doubt not that,
when their damnation, of which your Eminence speaks, arrives, I shall
share it with them. But it might seem to one who knows little of such
things that some such attempt might be looked for from a sworn soldier
and prince of the Church."
The Cardinal smiled. The freedom with which Inglesant's sarcastic
humour showed itself at times, when the melancholy fit was upon him, was
one of the sources of attraction which attached the young Englishman to
his person.
"Life is short," he said, "and the future very uncertain; martyrs have
died, nay, still harder fate, have lived long lives of such devotion as
that which you wish me to attempt, and we see very little result.
Christianity is not of much use apparently to many of the nations of the
earth. Now, on my side, as I pass my life, I certainly enjoy this
world, and I as certainly have cultivated my mind to sustain, as far as
I can foresee the probable, the demand and strain that will be put upon
it, both in the exit from this life, and in the entrance upon another.
Why then should I renounce these two positive goods, and embrace a life
of restless annoyance and discomfort, of antagonism to existing systems
and order, of certain failure, disappointment, and the peevish
protestation of a prophet to whom the world will not listen?"
"There is no reason why, certainly," said Inglesant, "for a sane man
like your Eminence. I see clearly it must only have been madmen who in
all ages have been driven into the fire and upon the sword's point in
pursuit of an idea which they fancied was worth the pain, but which, as
they never realized it, they could never put to the test."
"I perceive your irony," said the Cardinal, "and I recognize your wit.
What astonishes me is the interest you take in these old myths and
dreary services. The charm of novelty must have worn itself out by this
time."
"Christ is real to many men," said Inglesant, "and the world seems to
manifest within itself a remedial power such as may be supposed to be
His."
"I do not dispute such a power," replied the Cardinal; "I only wonder at
the attachment to these old myths which profess to expound it."
"The world has now been satisfied with them for some centuries," said
Inglesant; "and for my own part, even in the blaze of a purer Mythos, I
cannot help thinking that some of us will look back with longing to 'one
of the days of the Son of man.' I do not perceive either that your
Eminence attempts to improve matters."
"I can afford to wait," replied the Cardinal, with lofty indifference;
"the myths of the world are slow to change."
"This one certainly," replied Inglesant, with a smile, "has been slow to
change, perhaps because men found in it something that reminded them of
their daily life. It speaks of suffering and of sin. The cross of
Christ is composed of many other crosses--is the centre, the type, the
essence of all crosses. We must _suffer_ with Christ whether we
_believe_ in Him or not. We must suffer for the sin of others as for our
own; and in this suffering we find a healing and purifying power and
element. That is what gives to Christianity, in its simplest and most
unlettered form, its force and life. Sin and suffering for sin: a
sacrifice, itself mysterious, offered mysteriously to the Divine Nemesis
or Law of Sin,--dread, undefined, unknown, yet sure and irresistible,
with the iron necessity of law. This the intellectual Christ, the
Platonic-Socrates, did not offer: hence his failure, and the success of
the Nazarene. Vicisti Galilaee."
*CHAPTER IV.*
Among the letters of introduction to persons in Rome which Inglesant
carried with him, was one from Father St. Clare to the Rector of the
English College, a Jesuit. The Cardinal had invited him to remain an
inmate of his family, but there were several reasons which induced
Inglesant to decline the offer. He was desirous of observing the
situation and habits of the great city in a more unfettered way than he
would probably be able to do if attached to the household of a great
man. This reason alone would probably have decided him, but it was not
the only one. In proportion as his mind recovered its natural tone, and
was able to throw off the depression which had so long troubled him,
another source of perplexity had taken its place. Most men, in those
days, with the exception of very determined Puritans, approached Rome
with feelings of veneration and awe. Inglesant's training and
temperament inclined him to entertain these feelings as strongly perhaps
as any man of the day; but since he had been in Italy, his eyes and ears
had not been closed, and it had been impossible for him to resist a
growing impression, scarcely perhaps amounting to conviction, that the
nearer he approached the Papal capital the more wretched and worse
governed did the country appear on every side. In the muttered
complaints which reached his ear these evils were charged partly upon
the abuses of the Papal chair itself, but principally upon the tyranny
and oppression of the society of the Jesuits. Inglesant made these
observations mostly in the taverns or cafes in the evenings when those
who were present, perceiving him to be a foreigner, were more disposed
to be communicative than they otherwise would have been. But the
Cardinal was known to associate rather with the Fathers of the Oratory
than with the Jesuits; and men did not hesitate therefore to speak
somewhat freely on these matters to his familiar companion. These
accusations did not destroy Inglesant's faith in the Society, but they
made him anxious to hear the other side, and to see, if possible from
within, the working of this great and powerful organization, and to
understand the motives which prompted those actions which were so much
blamed, and which were apparently productive of such questionable
fruits. If this were to be done, it must be done at once. He came to
Rome recommended to the Jesuits' College, almost an accredited agent. He
would be received without suspicion, and would probably be enabled to
obtain an insight into much of their policy. But if at the outset he
associated himself with persons and interests hostile, or at least
indifferent, to those of the party to which he belonged, and which he
wished to understand, this opportunity would doubtless soon be lost to
him. Acting upon these considerations, he parted from the Cardinal, to
whom he confided his motives, and made his way to the English College or
house, which was situated in the street leading to St. Peter's and the
Vatican, and not far from the Bridge and Castle of St. Angelo.
The College was a large and fair house, standing in several courts and
gardens. Inglesant was received with courtesy by the rector, who said
that he remembered seeing him in London, and that he had also been at
his father's house in Wiltshire. He named to him several Priests who had
also been there; but so many Papists had been constantly coming and
going at Westacre, during the time that Father St. Clare had resided
there, that Inglesant could not recall them to mind. The rector,
however, mentioned one whom he remembered, the gentleman who had given
him St. Theresa's Life. He advised Inglesant to remain some days at the
College, as the usual and natural resort of all Englishmen connected in
any way with the Court and Church of Rome, promising him pleasant rooms.
He showed him his apartment, a small but handsome guest-chamber, looking
upon a garden, with a sort of oratory or closet adjoining, with an altar
and crucifix. The bell rang for supper, but the rector had that meal
laid for himself and his guest in his private room. The students, and
those who took their meals at the common table, had but one good meal in
the day, that being a most excellent one. Their supper consisted of a
glass of wine and a manchet of bread.
The rector and Inglesant had much talk together, and after the latter
had satisfied his host, as best he could, upon all those points--and
they were many--connected with the state of affairs in England upon
which he desired information, the rector began in his turn to give his
guest a description of affairs in Rome, and of those things which he
should see, and how best to see them.
"I will not trouble you now," he said, "with any policy or State
affairs. You will no doubt wish to spend the next few days in seeing
the wonderful sights of this place, and in becoming familiar with its
situation, so that you may study them more closely afterwards. A man
must indeed be ill-endowed by nature who does not find in Rome delight
in every branch of learning and of art. The libraries are open, and the
students have access to the rarest books; in the Churches the most
exquisite voices are daily heard, the palaces are crowded with pictures
and with statues, ancient and modern. You have, besides, the stately
streets and noble buildings of every age, the presence of strangers from
every part of the world, villas covered with 'bassi relievi,' and the
enjoyment of nature in enchanting gardens. To a man who loves the
practices of devotion I need not mention the life-long employment among
the Churches, relics, and processions. It is this last that gives the
unique completeness of the Roman life within itself. To the abundance
of its earthly wealth, to the delights of its intellectual
gratifications, is added a feeling of unequalled security and
satisfaction, kept alive, in a pious mind, by the incessant
contemplation of the objects of its reverence. I do not know if you are
by taste more of a scholar than of a religious, but both tastes are
worthy of cultivation, nor is all spiritual learning necessarily
confined to the last. There is much that is very instructive in the
lessons which the silent stones and shattered monuments of the fallen
cities over which we walk teach us. It has been well observed that
everything that has been dug out of the ruins of ancient Rome has been
found mutilated, either by the barbarians, fanaticism, or time; and one
of our poets, Janus Vitalis, seeing all the massive buildings mouldered
or mouldering away, and the ever-changing Tiber only remaining the same,
composed this ingenious and pleasing verse--
'Disce hinc quid possit fortuna; immota labascunt;
Et quae perpetuo sunt fluitura, manent.'
You will find that the Italian humour delights much in such thoughts as
these, which make the French and other nations accuse us of melancholy.
The Italian has a strong fancy, yet a strong judgment, and this makes
him delight in such things as please the fancy, while at the same time
they are in accordance with judgment and with reason. He delights in
music, medals, statues, and pictures, as things which either divert his
melancholy or humour it; and even the common people, such as shoemakers,
have formed curious collections of medals of gold, silver, and brass,
such as would have become the cabinet of a prince. Do you wish to begin
with the Churches or with the antiquities?"
Inglesant said he wished to see the Churches first of all.
"You will, no doubt," said the rector, "find a great satisfaction in
such a choice. You will be overcome with the beauty and solemnity of
these sacred places, and the sweetness of the organs and of the singing
will melt your heart. At the same time, I should wish to point out to
you, to whom I wish to speak without the least reserve, that you will no
doubt see some things which will surprise you, nay, which may even
appear to you to be, to say the least, of questionable advantage. You
must understand once for all, and constantly bear in mind, that this
city is like none other, and that many things are natural and proper
here which would be strange and ill-fitted elsewhere. Rome is the
visible symbol and representation of the Christian truth, and we live
here in a perpetual masque or holy interlude of the life of the Saviour.
As in other countries and cities, outward representations are placed
before the people of the awful facts and incidents on which their
salvation rests, so here this is carried still farther, as indeed was
natural and almost inevitable. It was a very small step from the
representation of the flagellation of Christ to the very pillar on which
He leant. Indeed, where these representations were enacted, the simple
country people readily and naturally conceived them to have taken place.
Hence, when you are shown the three doors of Pilate's house in which
Jesus passed and repassed to and from judgment, the steps up which He
walked, the rock on which He promised to build His Church, the stone on
which the cock stood and crowed when Peter denied Him, part of His coat
and of His blood, and several of the nails of His cross,--more possibly
than were originally used, over which the heretics have not failed to
make themselves very merry;--when you see all these things, I say, and
if you feel, as I do not say you will feel--but if you feel any
hesitancy or even some repulsion, as though these miraculous things were
to you matters more of doubt than worship, you will not fail at once to
see the true nature and bearing of these things, nor to apply to them
the solution which your philosophy has doubtless given already to many
difficult questions of this life. These things are true to each of us
according as we see them; they are, in fact, but shadows and likenesses
of the absolute truth that reveals itself to men in different ways, but
always imperfectly and as in a glass. To the simple-hearted peasant
that pavement upon which in his mind's eye he sees Jesus walking, is
verily and indeed pressed by the Divine feet; to him this pillar, the
sight of which makes the stinging whips creep along his flesh, is the
pillar to which the Lord was tied. Our people, both peasant and noble,
are of the nature of children--children who are naughty one moment and
sincerely penitent the next. They are now wildly dissolute, the next
day prostrate before the cross; and as such, much that is true and
beautiful in their lives seems otherwise to the cold and world-taught
heart. But our Lord honoured the childlike heart, and will not send
away our poor peasants when they come to Him with their little
offerings, even though they lay them at the feet of a Bambino doll."
"But do you not find," said Inglesant, "that this devotion, which is so
ephemeral, is rather given to the sensible object than to the unseen
Christ?"
"It may be so," said the rector; "there is no good but what has its
alloy; but it is a real devotion, and it reaches after Christ. Granted
that it is dark, no doubt in the darkness it finds Him, though it cannot
see His form."
"Doubtless," said Inglesant, who saw that the rector did not wish to
dwell on this part of the subject, "as we say in our service in England,
we are the sheep of His pasture, and we are all branded with the mark
which He puts upon His sheep--the innate knowledge of God in the soul.
I remember hearing of a man who believed that he had a guardian spirit
who awoke him every morning with the audible words, 'Who gets up first
to pray?' If this man was deluded, it could not have been by Satan."
In the morning, when Inglesant awoke, he saw from his window, over the
city wall, the Monte Mario, with its pine woods, and the windows of its
scattered houses, lighted by the rising sun. The air was soft and
balmy, and he remained at the open window, letting his mind grow certain
of the fact that he was in Rome. In the clear atmosphere of the Papal
city there was a strange shimmer of light upon the distant hills, and on
the green tufts and hillocks of the waste ground beyond the walls. The
warm air fanned his temples, and in the stillness of the early morning a
delicious sense of a wonderful and unknown land, into the mysteries of
which he was about to enter, filled his mind.
It was indeed a strange world which lay before him, and resembled
nothing so much as that to which the rector had aptly compared it the
night before, a sacred interlude full of wild and fantastic sights;
Churches more sublime than the dreams of fancy painted, across whose
marble pavements saints and angels moved familiarly with men; pagan
sepulchres and banqueting chambers, where the phantoms flickered as in
Tartarus itself; vaults and Christian catacombs, where the cry of
martyrs mingled with the chanting of masses sung beneath the sod, and
where the torch-light flashed on passing forms of horror, quelled
everywhere by the figure of the Crucified, that at every turn kept the
place; midnight processions and singing, startling the darkness and
scaring the doers of darkness, mortal and immortal, that lurked among
the secret places, where the crimes of centuries stood like ghastly
corpses at every step; and above all and through all the life of Jesus,
enacted and re-enacted year after year and day by day continually, not
in dumb show or memorial only, but in deed and fact before the eyes of
men, as if, in that haunt of demons and possessed, in that sink of past
and present crime, nothing but the eternal presence and power of Jesus
could keep the fiends in check.
The rector took Inglesant over the College, and showed him the life and
condition of the inmates under its most pleasing aspect. As he then saw
it it reminded him of a poem he had heard Mr. Crashaw read at Little
Gidding, describing a religious house and condition of life, and he
quoted part of it to the rector:--
"No cruel guard of diligent cares, that keep
Crowned woes awake, as things too wise for sleep:
But reverend discipline, and religious fear,
And soft obedience, find sweet biding here;
Silence and sacred rest, peace and pure joys."
When they had seen the College the rector said,--
"We will go this morning to St. Peter's. It is better that you should
see it at once, though the first sight is nothing. Then at three o'clock
we will attend vespers at the Capello del Coro, where there is fine
music every day in the presence of a cardinal; afterwards, as Rome is
very full, there will be a great confluence of carriages in the Piazza
of the Farnese Palace, which is a favourite resort. There I can show
you many of the great ones, whom it is well you should know by sight,
and hear something of, before you are presented to them."
As they passed out into the street of the city the rector began a
disquisition on the discovery of antiquities in Rome. He advised
Inglesant to study the cabinets of medals which he would meet with in
the museums and palaces, as they would throw great light upon the
statues and other curiosities.
"A man takes a great deal more pleasure," he said, "in surveying the
ancient statues, who compares them with medals, than it is possible for
him to do without some such knowledge, for the two arts illustrate each
other. The coins throw a great light upon many points of ancient
history, and enable us to distinguish the kings and consuls, emperors
and empresses, the deities and virtues, with their ensigns and trophies,
and a thousand other attributes and images not to be learnt or
understood in any other way. I have a few coins myself, which I shall
be glad to show you, and a few gems, among which is an Antinous cut in a
carnelian which I value very highly. It represents him in the habit of
a Mercury, and is the finest Intaglio I ever saw. I obtained it by
accident from a peasant, who found it while digging in his vineyard."
Inglesant was too much occupied watching the passers-by in the thronged
streets to pay much attention to what he said. The crowded pavements of
Rome offered to his eyes a spectacle such as he had never seen, and to
his imagination a fanciful pageant such as he had never pictured even in
his dreams. The splendid equipages with their metal work of massive
silver, the strange variety of the clerical costumes, the fantastic
dresses of the attendants and papal soldiers, the peasants and pilgrims
from all countries, even the most remote, crossed his vision in an
entangled maze.
As they crossed the bridge of St. Angelo, the rector informed him of the
invaluable treasures of antique art which were supposed to lie beneath
the muddy waters of the river. They passed beneath the castle, and a few
moments more brought them to the piazza in front of the Church.
The colonnade was not finished, one side of it being then in course of
completion; but in all its brilliant freshness, with the innumerable
statues, white from the sculptor's hand, it had an imposing and stately
effect. The great obelisk, or Guglia, as the Italians called it, had
been raised to its position some seventy years before, but only one of
the great fountains was complete. Crossing the square, which was full
of carriages, and of priests and laymen on foot, the rector and
Inglesant ascended the marble stairs which had formed part of the old
Basilica, and up which Charlemagne was said to have mounted on his
knees, and passing through the gigantic porch, with its enormous pillars
and gilt roof, the rector pushed back the canvas-lined curtain that
closed the doorway, and they entered the Church.
The masons were at work completing the marble covering of the massive
square pillars of the nave; but though the work was unfinished, it was
sufficient to produce an effect of inexpressible richness and splendour.
The vast extent of the pavement, prepared as for the heavenly host with
inlaying of colours of polished stone, agate, serpentine, porphyry, and
chalcedon; the shining walls, veined with the richest marbles, and
studded with gems; the roof of the nave, carved with foliage and roses
overlaid with gold; the distant walls and chambers of imagery, dim with
incense, through which shone out, scarcely veiled, the statues and
tombs, the paintings and crucifixes and altars, with their glimmering
lights;--all settled down, so to speak, upon Inglesant's soul with a
perception of subdued splendour, which hushed the spirit into a silent
feeling which was partly rest and partly awe.
But when, having traversed the length of the nave without uttering a
word, he passed from under the gilded roofs, and the spacious dome,
lofty as a firmament, expanded itself above him in the sky, covered with
tracery of the celestial glories and brilliant with mosaic and stars of
gold; when, opening on all sides to the wide transepts, the limitless
pavement stretched away beyond the reach of sense; when, beneath this
vast work and finished effort of man's devotion, he saw the high altar,
brilliant with lights, surmounted and enthroned by its panoply of
clustering columns and towering cross; when, all around him, he was
conscious of the hush and calmness of worship, and felt in his inmost
being the sense of vastness, of splendour, and of awe;--he may be
pardoned if, kneeling upon the polished floor, he conceived for the
moment that this was the house of God, and that the gate of heaven was
here.
* * * * *
*CHAPTER V.*
"It is almost impossible for a man to form in his imagination," said the
rector to Inglesant, as they left the Church, "such beautiful and
glorious scenes as are to be met with in the Roman Churches and Chapels.
The profusion of the ancient marble found within the city itself, and
the many fine quarries in the neighbourhood, have made this result
possible; and notwithstanding the incredible sums of money which have
been already laid out in this way, the same work is still going forward
in other parts of Rome; the last effort still endeavouring to outshine
those that went before it."
Inglesant found this assertion to be true. As he entered Church after
Church, during the first few days of his sojourn in Rome, he found the
same marble walls, the same inlaid tombs, the same coloured pavements.
In the sombre autumn afternoons this splendour was toned down and
veiled, till it produced an effect which was inexpressibly noble,--a dim
brilliance, a subdued and restrained glory, which accorded well with the
enervating perfume and the strains of romantic music that stole along
the aisles. In these Churches, and in the monasteries adjoining,
Inglesant was introduced to many priests and ecclesiastics, among whom
he might study most of the varieties of devout feeling, and of religious
life in all its forms. To many of these he was not drawn by any feeling
of sympathy; many were only priests and monks in outward form, being in
reality men of the world, men of pleasure, or antiquarians and artists.
But, introduced to the society of Rome in the first place as a "devoto,"
he became acquainted naturally with many who aspired to, and who were
considered to possess, exceptional piety. Among these he was greatly
attracted by report towards a man who was then beginning to attract
attention in Rome, and to exert that influence over the highest and most
religious natures, which, during a period of twenty years, became so
overpowering as at one time to threaten to work a complete revolution in
the system and policy of Rome. This was Michael de Molinos, a Spanish
monk, who, coming to Rome some years before, began to inculcate a method
of mystical devotion which he had no doubt gathered from the followers
of St. Theresa, who were regarded with great veneration in Spain, where
the contemplative devotion which they taught was held in high esteem.
On his first coming to Rome Molinos refused all ecclesiastical
advancement, and declined to practise those austerities which were so
much admired. He associated with men of the most powerful minds and of
the most elevated thoughts, and being acknowledged at once to be a man
of learning and of good sense, his influence soon became perceptible.
To all who came to him for spiritual comfort and advice he insisted on
the importance of mental devotion, of daily communion, and of an inward
application of the soul to Jesus Christ and to His death. So attractive
were his personal qualities, and so alluring his doctrine to minds which
had grown weary of the more formal ceremonies and acts of bodily penance
and devotion, that thousands thronged his apartments, and "the method of
Molinos" became not only a divine message to many, but even the
fashionable religion of Rome.
It spoke to men of an act of devotion, which it called the contemplative
state, in which the will is so united to God and overcome by that union
that it adores and loves and resigns itself up to Him, and, not exposed
to the wavering of the mere fancy, nor wearied by a succession of formal
acts of a dry religion, it enters into the life of God, into the
heavenly places of Jesus Christ, with an indescribable and secret joy.
It taught that this rapture and acquiescence in the Divine Will, while
it is the highest state and privilege of devotion, is within the reach
of every man, being the fruit of nothing more than the silent and humble
adoration of God that arises out of a pure and quiet mind; and it
offered to every man the prospect of this communion--a prospect to which
the very novelty and vagueness gave a hitherto unknown delight--in
exchange for the common methods of devotion which long use and constant
repetition had caused to appear to many but as dead and lifeless forms.
Those who followed this method generally laid aside the use of the
rosary, the daily repeating of the breviary, together with the common
devotion of the saints, and applied themselves to preserve their minds
in an inward calm and quiet, that they might in silence perform simple
acts of faith, and feel those inward motions and directions which they
believed would follow upon such acts.
To such a doctrine as this, taught by such a man, it is not surprising
that Inglesant was soon attracted, and he visited Molinos's rooms
several times. On one of these occasions he met in the anteroom a
gentleman he had seen more than once before, but had never spoken to.
He was therefore somewhat surprised when he accosted him, and seemed
desirous of some private conference. Inglesant knew that he was the
Count Vespiriani, and had heard him described as of a noble and refined
nature, and a hearty follower of Molinos. They left the house together,
and driving to the gardens of the Borghese Palace, they walked for some
time.
The Count began by expressing his pleasure that at so early a period of
his residence in Rome Inglesant had formed the acquaintance of Molinos.
"You are perhaps," he said, "not aware of the importance of the
movement, nor of the extent to which some of us are not without hope
that it may ultimately reach. Few persons are aware of the numbers
already devoted to it, including men of every rank in the Church and
among the nobility, and of every variety of opinion and of principle.
It cannot be supposed that all these persons act thus under the
influence of any extraordinary elevation of piety or devotion. To what
then can their conduct be ascribed? It cannot have escaped your notice,
since you have been in Italy, that there is much that is rotten in the
state of government, and to be deplored in the condition of the people.
I do not know in what way you may have accounted for this lamentable
condition of affairs in your own mind; but among ourselves (those among
us at any rate who are men of intelligence and of experience of the life
of other countries, and especially Protestant ones) there is but one
solution--the share that priests have in the government, not only in the
Pope's territory, but in all the other courts of Italy where they have
the rule. This does not so much arise from any individual errors or
misdoing as from the necessary unfitness of ecclesiastics to interfere
in civil affairs. They have not souls large enough nor tender enough
for government; they are trained in an inflexible code of morals and of
conduct from which they cannot swerve. To this code all human needs
must bow. They are cut off from sympathy with their fellows on most
points; and their natural inclinations, which cannot be wholly
suppressed, are driven into unworthy and mean channels; and they acquire
a narrowness of spirit and a sourness of mind, together with a bias to
one side only of life, which does not agree with the principles of human
society. All kinds of incidental evils arise from these sources, in
stating which I do not wish to accuse those ecclesiastics of unusual
moral turpitude. Among them is the fact that, having individually so
short and uncertain a time for governing, they think only of the
present, and of serving their own ends, or satisfying their own
conceptions, regardless of the ultimate happiness or misery which must
be the consequence of what they do. Whatever advances the present
interests of the Church or of themselves, for no man is free altogether
from selfish motives--whatever enriches the Church or their own
families, for no man can help interesting himself in those of his own
house,--is preferred to all wise, great, or generous counsels. You will
perhaps wonder what the mystic spiritual religion of Molinos has to do
with all this, but a moment's explanation will, I think, make it very
clear to you. The hold which the priests have upon the civil government
is maintained solely by the tyranny which they exercise over the
spiritual life of men. It is the opinion of Molinos that this function
is misdirected, and that in the place of a tyrant there should appear a
guide. He is about to publish a book called 'Il Guida Spirituale,'
which will appear with several approbations before it,--one by the
general of the Franciscans, who is a Qualificator of the Inquisition,
and another by a member of the society to which you are attached, Father
Martin de Esparsa, also one of the Qualificators. This book, so
authorized and recommended, cannot fail not only to escape censure, but
to exert a powerful influence, and will doubtless be highly esteemed.
Now the importance of Molinos's doctrine lies in this, that he presses
the point of frequent communion, and asserts that freedom from mortal
sin is the only necessary qualification. At the same time he guards
himself from the charge of innovation by the very title and the whole
scope of his book, which is to insist upon the necessity of a spiritual
director and guide. You will see at once what an important step is here
gained; for the doctrine being once admitted that mortal sin only is a
disqualification for receiving the sacrament, and the necessity of
confession before communion being not expressed, the obligation of
coming always to the priest, as the minister of the sacrament of
penance, before every communion, cannot long be insisted upon. Indeed,
it will become a rule by which all spiritual persons who adhere to
Molinos's method will conduct their penitents, that they may come to the
sacrament when they find themselves out of the state of mortal sin,
without going at every time to confession; and it is beginning to be
observed already in Rome that those who, under the influence of this
method, are becoming more strict in their lives, more retired and
serious in their mental devotions, are become less zealous in their
whole deportment as to the exterior parts of religion. They are not so
assiduous at mass, nor in procuring masses for their friends, nor are
they so frequent at confession or processions. I cannot tell you what a
blessing I anticipate for mankind should this method be once allowed;
what a freedom, what a force, what a reality religion would obtain! The
time is ripe for it, and the world is prepared. The best men are giving
their adherence; I entreat you to lend your aid. The Jesuits are
wavering; they have not yet decided whether the new method will prevail
or not. The least matter will turn the scale. You may think that it is
of little importance which side you take, but if so, you are mistaken.
You are not perhaps aware of the high estimation in which the reports
and letters which have preceded you have caused you to be held at the
Jesuits' College. You are supposed to have great influence with the
English Catholics and Protestant Episcopalians, and the idea of
promoting Catholic progress in England is the dearest to the mind of the
Roman Ecclesiastic."
Inglesant listened to the Count attentively, and did not immediately
reply. At last he said,--
"What you have told me is of the greatest interest, and commends itself
to my conscience more than you know. As to the present state and
government of Italy I am not competent to speak. One of the things
which I hoped to learn in Rome was the answer to some complaints which I
have heard in other parts of Italy. I fear also that you may be too
sanguine as to the result of such freedom as you desire. This age is
witness of the state to which too much freedom has brought England, my
own country, a land which a few years ago was the happiest and
wealthiest of all countries, now utterly ruined and laid waste. The
freedom which you desire, and the position of the clergy which you
approve, is somewhat the same as that which existed in the Protestant
Episcopal Church of England; but the influence they possessed was not
sufficient to resist the innovations and wild excesses of the Sectaries.
The freedom which I desire for myself I am willing to renounce when I
see the evil which the possession of it works among others and in the
State. What you attempt, however, is an experiment in which I am not
unwilling to be interested; and I shall be very curious to observe the
result. The main point of your method, the freedom of the blessed
sacrament, is a taking piece of doctrine, for the holding of which I
have always been attracted to the Episcopal Church of England. It is,
as you say, a point of immense importance, upon which in fact the whole
system of the Church depends. I have been long seeking for some
solution of the mysterious difficulties of the religious life. It may
be that I shall find it in your society, which I perceive already to
consist of men of the highest and most select natures, with whom, come
what may, it is an honour to be allied. You may count on my adherence;
and though I may seem a half-hearted follower, I shall not be found
wanting when the time of action comes. I should wish to see more of
Molinos."
"I am not at all surprised," said the Count, "that you do not at once
perceive the full force of what I have said. It requires to be an
Italian, and to have grown to manhood in Italy, to estimate justly the
pernicious influence of the clergy upon all ranks of society. I have
travelled abroad, and when I have seen such a country as Holland, a land
divided between land and sea, upon which the sun rarely shines, with a
cold and stagnant air, and liable to be destroyed by inundations; when I
see this country rich and flourishing, full of people, happy and
contented, with every mark of plenty, and none at all of want; when I
see all this, and then think of my own beautiful land, its long and
happy summers, its rich and fruitful soil, and see it ruined and
depopulated, its few inhabitants miserable and in rags, the scorn and
contempt instead of the envy of the world; when I think of what she was
an age or two ago, and reflect upon the means by which such a fall, such
a dispeopling, and such a poverty, has befallen a nation and a climate
like this;--I dare not trust myself to speak the words which arise to my
lips. Those with whom you associate will doubtless endeavour to prevent
these melancholy truths from being perceived by you, but they are too
evident to be concealed. Before long you will have painful experience
of their existence."
"You say," said Inglesant, "that one or two ages ago Italy was much more
prosperous than at present; were not the priests as powerful then as
now?"
"I do not deny," replied the Count, "that there have been other causes
which have tended to impoverish the country, but under a different
government many of these might have been averted or at any rate
mitigated. When the commerce of the country was flourishing the power
of the wealthy merchants and the trading princes was equal or superior
to that of the priests, especially in the leading States. As their
influence and wealth declined, the authority of the clergy increased. A
wiser policy might have discovered other sources of wealth and of
occupation for the people; they only thought of establishing the
authority of the Church, of adorning the altars, of filling the Papal
coffers."
Inglesant may have thought that he perceived a weak point in this
explanation, but he made no reply, and the Count supposed he was
satisfied.
A few days afterwards he had the opportunity of a long and private
conversation with Molinos.
The Spaniard was a man of tall and graceful exterior, with a smile and
manner which were indescribably alluring and sweet. Inglesant confided
to him something of his past history, and much of his mental troubles
and perplexities. He spoke of De Cressy and of the remorse which had
followed his rejection of the life of self-denial which the Benedictine
had offered him. Molinos's counsel was gentle and kindly.
"It was said to me long ago," said Inglesant, "that 'there are some men
born into the world with such happy dispositions that the cross for a
long time seems very light, if not altogether unfelt. The strait path
runs side by side with the broad and pleasant way of man's desires; so
close are they that the two cannot be discerned apart. So the man goes
on, the favourite seemingly both of God and his fellows; but let him not
think that he shall always escape the common doom. God is preparing
some great test for him, some great temptation, all the more terrible
for being so long delayed. Let him beware lest his spiritual nature be
enervated by so much sunshine, so that when the trial comes, he may be
unable to meet it. His conscience is easier than other men's; what are
sins to them are not so to him. But the trial that is prepared for him
will be no common one; it will be so fitted to his condition that he
cannot palter with it nor pass it by; he must either deny his God or
himself.' This was said to me by one who knew me not; but it was said
with something of a prophetic instinct, and I see in these words some
traces of my own fate. For a long time it seemed to me that I could
serve both the world and God, that I could be a courtier in kings'
houses and in the house of God, that I could follow the earthly learning
and at the same time the learning that is from above. But suddenly the
chasm opened beneath my feet; two ways lay before me, and I chose the
broad and easy path; the cross was offered to me, and I drew back my
hand; the winnowing fan passed over the floor, and I was swept away with
the chaff."
"I should prefer to say," replied the Spaniard,--and as he spoke, his
expression was wonderfully compassionate and urbane,--"I should prefer
to say that there are some men whom God is determined to win by love.
Terrors and chastisements are fit for others, but these are the select
natures, or, as you have yourself termed them, the courtiers of the
household of God. Believe me, God does not lay traps for any, nor is He
mistaken in His estimate. If He lavishes favour upon any man, it is
because he knows that that man's nature will respond to love. It is the
habit of kings to assemble in their houses such men as will delight them
by their conversation and companionship, 'amor ac deliciae generis
humani,' whose memory is fresh and sweet ages after, when they be dead.
Something like this it seems to me God is wont to do, that He may win
these natures for the good of mankind and for His own delight. It is
true that such privilege calls for a return; but what will ensure a
return sooner than the consideration of such favour as this? You say
you have been unworthy of such favour, and have forfeited it for ever.
You cannot have forfeited it, for it was never deserved. It is the
kingly grace of God, bestowed on whom He will. If I am not mistaken in
your case, God will win you, and He will win you by determined and
uninterrupted acts of love. It may be that in some other place God
would have found for you other work; you have failed in attaining to
that place; serve Him where you are. If you fall still lower, or
imagine that you fall lower, still serve Him in the lowest room of all.
Wherever you may find yourself, in Courts or pleasure-houses or gardens
of delight, still serve Him, and you will bid defiance to imaginations
and powers of evil, that strive to work upon a sensitive and excited
nature, and to urge it to despair. Many of these thoughts which we look
upon as temptations of God are but the accidents of our bodily
temperaments. How can you, nursed in Courts, delicately reared and
bred, trained in pleasure, your ear and eye and sense habituated to
music and soft sounds, to colour and to beauty of form, your brain
developed by intellectual effort and made sensitive to the slightest
touch--how can religious questions bear the same aspect to you as to a
man brought up in want of the necessaries of life, hardened by toil and
exposure, unenlightened by learning and the arts, unconscious of the
existence even of what is agony or delight to you? Yet God is equally
with both of these; in His different ways He will lead both of them,
would they but follow, through that maze of accident and casualty in
which they are involved, and out of the tumult of which coil they
complain to the Deity of what is truly the result of their own
temperaments, ancestry, and the besetments of life. I tell you this
because I have no fear that it will exalt you, but to keep you from
unduly depreciating yourself, and from that terrible blasphemy that
represents God as laying snares for men in the guise of pretended
kindness. God is with all, with the coarse and dull as with the refined
and pure, but He draws them by different means,--those by terror, these
by love."
Inglesant said little in answer to these words, but they made a deep
impression upon him. They lifted a weight from his spirits, and enabled
him henceforward to take some of the old pleasure in the light of heaven
and the occurrences of life. He saw much of Molinos, and had long
conferences with him upon the solution of the greatest of all problems,
that of granting religious freedom, and at the same time maintaining
religious truth. Molinos thought that his system solved this problem,
and although Inglesant was not altogether convinced of this, yet he
associated himself heartily, if not wholly, with the Quietists, as
Molinos's followers were called, in so much that he received some
friendly cautions from the Jesuit College not to commit himself too far.
* * * * *
It must not be supposed, however, that he was altogether absorbed in
such thoughts or such pursuits. To him, as to all the other inhabitants
of Rome, each in his own degree and station, the twofold aspect of
existence in the strange Papal city claimed his alternate regard, and
divided his life and his intellect. The society of Rome, at one moment
devout, the next philosophic, the next antiquarian, artistic,
pleasure-seeking, imparted to all its members some tincture of its
Protean character. The existence of all was coloured by the many-sided
prism through which the light of every day's experience was seen.
Inglesant's acquaintance with the Cardinal introduced him at once to all
the different coteries, and procured him the advantage of a companion
who exerted a strong and cultivated mind to exhibit each subject in its
completest and most fascinating aspect. Accompanied by the Cardinal,
and with one or other of the literati of Rome, each in his turn a master
of the peculiar study to which the day was devoted, Inglesant wandered
day after day through all the wonderful city, through the palaces,
ruins, museums, and galleries. He stood among the throng of statues,
that strange maze of antique life, which some enchanter's wand seems
suddenly to have frozen into marble in the midst of its intricate dance,
yet so frozen as to retain, by some mysterious art, the warm and
breathing life. He saw the men of the old buried centuries, of the magic
and romantic existence when the world was young. The beautiful gods
with their white wands; the grave senators and stately kings; the fauns
and satyrs that dwelt in the untrodden woods; the pastoral flute
players, whose airs yet linger within the peasant's reeds; the slaves
and craftsmen of old Rome, with all their postures, dress, and bearing,
as they walked those inlaid pavements, buried deep beneath the soil,
whose mosaic figures every now and then are opened to the faded life of
to-day. Nor less entrancing were those quaint fancies upon the classic
tombs, which showed in what manner the old pagan looked out into the
spacious ether and confronted death,--a child playing with a comic
masque, bacchanals, and wreaths of flowers, hunting parties and battles,
images of life, of feasting and desire; and finally, the inverted torch,
the fleeting seasons ended, and the actor's part laid down.
Still existing as a background to this phantom life was the stage on
which it had walked; the ruined splendour of Rome, in its setting of
blue sky and green foliage, of ivy and creeping plants, of laurels and
ilex, enfolded in a soft ethereal radiance that created everywhere a
garden of romance.
"Nothing delights and entertains me so much in this country," said
Inglesant one day to a gentleman with whom he was walking, "as the
contrasts which present themselves on every hand, the peasant's hut
built in the ruins of a palace, the most exquisite carving supporting
its tottering roof, cattle drinking out of an Emperor's tomb, a theatre
built in a mausoleum, and pantomime airs and the "plaudite" heard amid
the awful silence of the grave; here a Christ, ghastly, naked, on a
cross; there a charming god, a tender harmony of form and life;
triumphal arches sunk in the ruins not of their own only, but of
successive ages, monuments far more of decay and death than of glory or
fame; Corinthian columns canopied with briars, ivy, and wild vine, the
delicate acanthus wreaths stained by noisome weeds. The thoughts that
arise from the sight of these contrasts are pleasing though melancholy,
such ideas, sentiments, and feelings as arise in the mind and in the
heart at the foot of antique columns, before triumphal arches, in the
depths of ruined tombs, and on mossy banks of fountains; but there are
other contrasts which bring no such soothing thoughts with them, nothing
but what may almost be called despair; profusion of magnificence and
wealth side by side with the utmost wretchedness; Christ's altar blazing
with jewels and marble, misery indescribable around; luxury, and
enjoyment, and fine clothes almost hustled by rags, and sores, and
filth. Amid the lesson of past ages, written on every ruined column and
shattered wall, what a distance still exists between the poor and the
rich! Should the poor man wish to overpass it, he is driven back at
once into his original wretchedness, or condemned more mercifully to
death, while every ruined column and obelisk cries aloud, 'Let
everything that creeps console itself, for everything that is elevated
falls.'"
"We Romans," said the gentleman, "preserve our ruins as beggars keep
open their sores. They are preserved not always from taste; nor from a
respect of antiquity, but sometimes from mere avarice, for they attract
from every corner of the world that crowd of strangers whose curiosity
has long furnished a maintenance to three-fourths of Italy. But you
were speaking of the charming gods of the ancients. We are not inferior
to them. Have you seen the Apollo of Bermini pursuing Daphne, in the
Borghese Palace? His hair waves in the wind, you hear the entreaties of
the god."
"Yes, I have seen it," said Inglesant; "it is another of those wonderful
contrasts with which Rome abounds. We are Catholic and Pagan at the
same time."
"It is true," said the other; "nevertheless, in the centre of the
blood-stained Colisseo stands a crucifix. The Galilean has triumphed."
Inglesant stopped. They were standing before the Apollo in the
Belvedere gardens. Inglesant took from beneath his vest a crucifix in
ivory, exquisitely carved, and held it beside the statue of the god.
The one the noblest product of buoyant life, the proudest perfection of
harmonious form, purified from all the dross of humanity, the head
worthy of the god of day and of the lyre, of healing and of help, who
bore in his day the self-same name that the other bore, "the great
physician;" the other, worn and emaciated, helpless, dying, apparently
without power, forgotten by the world. "Has the Galilean triumphed? Do
you prefer the Christ?" he said.
The gentleman smiled. "The benign god," he said, "has doubtless many
votaries, even now."
It is probable that the life of Rome was working its effect upon
Inglesant himself. Under its influence, and that of the Cardinal, his
tone of thought became considerably modified. In a strange and
unexpected way, in the midst of so much religion, his attention was
diverted from the religious side of life, and his views of what was
philosophically important underwent considerable change. He read
Lucretius less, and Terence and Aristophanes more. Human life, as he
saw it existing around him, became more interesting to him than theories
and opinions. Life in all its forms, the Cardinal assured him, was the
only study worthy of man; and though Inglesant saw that such a general
assertion only encouraged the study of human thought, yet it seemed to
him that it directed him to a truth which he had hitherto perhaps
overlooked, and taught him to despise and condemn nothing in the common
path of men in which he walked. If this were true, the more carefully
he studied this common life, and the more narrowly he watched it, the
more worthy it would appear of regard; the dull and narrow streets, the
crowded dwellings, the base and vulgar life, the poverty and distress of
the poorer classes, would assume an interest unknown to him before.
"This life and interest," the Cardinal would say, "finds its best
exponent in the old pantomime and burlesque music of Italy. The real,
every-day, commonplace, human life, which originates absolutely among
the people themselves, speaks in their own music and street airs; but
when these are touched by a master's hand, it becomes revealed to us in
its essence, refined and idealized, with all its human features, which,
from their very familiarity, escape our recognition as we walk the
streets. In the peculiarity of this music, its graceful delicacy and
lively frolic and grotesqueness, I think I find the most perfect
presentment, to the ear and heart, of human life, especially as the
slightest variation of time or setting reveals in the most lively of
these airs depths of pathos and melodious sorrow, completing thus the
analogy of life, beneath the gayest phases of which lie unnoticed the
saddest realities."
"I have often felt," said Inglesant, "that old dance-music has an
inexpressible pathos; as I listen to it I seem to be present at long
past festivities, whose very haunts are swept away and forgotten; at
evenings in the distant past, looked forward to as all-important, upon
whose short and fleeting hours the hopes and enjoyments of a lifetime
were staked, now lost in an undistinguished oblivion and dust of death.
The young and the beautiful who danced to these quaint measures, in a
year or two had passed away, and other forms equally graceful took their
place. Fancies and figures that live in sound, and pass before the eyes
only when evoked by such melodies, float down the shadowy way and pass
into the future, where other gay and brilliant hours await the young, to
be followed as heretofore by pale and disappointed hopes and sad
realities, and the grave."
"What do you mean," said the Cardinal, "by figures that live in sound?"
"It seems to me," said Inglesant, "that the explanation of the power of
music upon the mind is, that many things are elements which are not
reckoned so, and that sound is one of them. As the air and fire are
said to be peopled by fairy inhabitants, as the spiritual man lives in
the element of faith, so I believe that there are creatures which live
in sound. Every lovely fancy, every moment of delight, every thought
and thrill of pleasure which music calls forth, or which, already
existing, is beautified and hallowed by music, does not die. Such as
these become fairy existences, spiritual creatures, shadowy but real,
and of an inexpressibly delicate grace and beauty, which live in melody,
and float and throng before the sense whenever the harmony that gave and
maintains their life exists again in sound. They are children of the
earth, and yet above it; they recall the human needs and hopes from
which they sprang. They have shadowy sex and rank, and diversity of
bearing, as of the different actors' parts that fill the stage of life.
Poverty and want are there, but, as in an allegory or morality, purified
and released from suffering. The pleasures and delights of past ages
thus live again in sound, the sorrows and disappointments of other days
and of other men mingle with our own, and soften and subdue our hearts.
Apollo and Orpheus tamed the savage beasts; music will soften our rugged
nature, and kindle in us a love of our kind and a tolerance of the petty
failings and the shortcomings of men."
It was not only music that fostered and encouraged in Rome an easy
tolerant philosophy. No society could be more adapted than that of the
Papal city to such an end. A people whose physical wants were few and
easily supplied (a single meal in such a climate, and that easily
procured, sufficing for the day); a city full of strangers, festivals
and shows; a conscience absolutely at rest; a community entirely set
apart from politics, absolutely at one with its government by habit, by
interest, and by religion;--constituted a unique state and mental
atmosphere, in which such philosophy naturally flourished. The early
hours of the day were spent in such business as was necessary for all
classes to engage in, and were followed by the dinner of fruit,
vegetables, fish, and a little meat. From dinner all went to sleep,
which lasted till six o'clock in the evening. Then came an hour's
trifling over the toilette, all business was at an end, and all the
shops were shut. Till three o'clock in the morning the hours were
devoted to enjoyment. Men, women, and children repaired to the public
walks, to the corso and squares, to conversation in coteries, to
assemblies in arcaded and lighted gardens, to collations in taverns.
Even the gravest and most serious gave themselves up to relaxation and
amusement till the next day. Every evening was a festival; every
variety of character and conversation enlivened these delicious hours,
these soft and starry nights.
Nothing pleased Inglesant's fancy so much, or soothed his senses so
completely, as this second dawn of the day and rising to pleasure in the
cool evening. Soothed and calmed by sleep, the irritated nerves were
lulled into that delicious sense for which we have no name, but which we
compare to flowing water, and to the moistening of a parched and dusty
drought. All thoughts of trouble and of business were banished by the
intervening hours of forgetfulness, from which the mind, half-aroused
and fresh from dreamland, awoke to find itself in a world as strange and
fantastic as the land of sleep which it had left; a land bathed in
sunset light, overarched by rainbows, saluted by cool zephyrs, soothed
by soft strains of music, delighted and amused by gay festivals, peopled
by varied crowds of happy people, many-coloured in dress, in green walks
sparkling with fairy lamps, and seated at al fresco suppers, before cosy
taverns famous for delicious wines, where the gossip of Europe, upon
which Rome looked out as from a Belvedere, intrigue, and the promotions
of the morning, were discussed.
Inglesant had taken lodgings in an antique villa on the Aventine,
surrounded by an uncultivated garden and by vineyards. The house was
partly deserted and partly occupied by a family of priests, and he slept
here when he was not at the Cardinal's palace, or with other of his
friends. The place was quiet and remote from the throng and noise of
Rome; in the gardens were fountains in the cool shade; frescos and
paintings had been left on the walls and in the rooms by the owner of
the villa; the tinkling of convent bells sounded from the slopes of the
hills through the laurels and ilex and across the vines; every now and
then the chanting of the priests might be heard from a small Chapel at
the back of the house.
Inglesant awoke from his mid-day sleep one evening to the splash of the
fountain, and the scent of the fresh-turned earth in the vineyard, and
found his servant arranging his room for his toilette. He was to sup
that evening at the Cardinal's with some of the Fathers of the Oratory,
and he dressed, as was usual with him even in his most distracted moods,
with scrupulous care. A sedan was waiting for him, and he set out for
the Cardinal's palace.
It was a brilliant evening; upon the hill-sides the dark trees stood out
against the golden sky, the domes and pinnacles of the Churches shone in
the evening light. In the quiet lanes, in the neighbourhood of the
Aventine, the perfume of odoriferous trees was wafted over lofty garden
walls; quiet figures flitted to and fro, a distant hum of noisy streets
scarcely reached the ear, mingled with the never-ceasing bells. That
morning, before he went to sleep, Inglesant had been reading "The Birds"
of Aristophanes, with a voluminous commentary by some old scholar, who
had brought together a mass of various learning upon the subject of
grotesque apologue, fable, and the fanciful representation of the facts
and follies of human life under the characters of animals and of
inanimate objects. A vast number of examples of curious pantomime and
other stage characters were given, and the idea preserved throughout
that, by such impersonations, the voices of man's existence were able to
speak with clearness and pathos, and were more sure of being listened to
than when they assumed the guise of a teacher or divine. Beneath a
grotesque and unexpected form they conceal a gravity more sober than
seriousness itself, as irony is more sincere than the solemnity which it
parodies. Truth drops her stilted gait, and becomes natural and real, in
the midst of ludicrous and familiar events. The broad types of life's
players into which the race is divided, especially the
meanest,--thieves, beggars, outcasts,--with whom life is a reality
stripped of outward show, will carry a moral and a teaching more aptly
than the privileged and affected classes. Mixed with these are animals
and familiar objects of household life, to which everyday use has given
a character of their own. These, not in the literal repulsiveness or
dulness of their monotonous existence, but abstracted, as the types or
emblems of the ideas associated with each one--not a literal beggar, in
his dirt and loathsomeness, but poverty, freedom, helplessness, and
amusing knavery, personified in the part of a beggar--not a mere article
of household use in its inanimate stupidity, but every idea and
association connected with the use of such articles by generations of
men and women;--these and such as these, enlivened by the sparkle of
genius, set forth in gay and exquisite music, and by brilliant repartee
and witty dialogue, certainly cannot be far behind the very foremost
delineation of human life.
Educated in the Court of King Charles to admire Shakespeare and the
Elizabethan stage, Inglesant was better able to understand these things
than the Italians were, suggestive as the Italian life itself was of
such reflections. The taste for music and scenery had driven dialogue
and character from the stage. Magnificent operas, performed by
exquisite singers, and accompanied by mechanical effects of stupendous
extent, were almost the only scenic performances fashionable in Italy;
but this was of less consequence where every street was a stage, and
every festival an elaborate play. The Italians were pantomimic and
dramatic in the highest degree without perceiving it themselves. The
man who delights in regarding this life as a stage cannot attach an
overwhelming importance to any incident; he observes life as a
spectator, and does not engage in it as an actor; but the Italian was
too impetuous to do this--he took too violent an interest in the events
themselves.
The narrow streets through which Inglesant's chair passed terminated at
last in a wide square. It was full of confused figures, presenting to
the eye a dazzling movement of form and colour, of which last, owing to
the evening light, the prevailing tint was blue. A brilliant belt of
sunset radiance, like molten gold along the distant horizon, threw up
the white houses into strong relief. Dark cypress trees rose against
the glare of the yellow sky, tinged with blue from the fathomless azure
above. The white spray of fountains flashed high over the heads of the
people in the four corners of the square, and long lance-like gleams of
light shot from behind the cypresses and the white houses, refracting a
thousand colours in the flashing water. A murmur of gay talk filled the
air, and a constant change of varied form perplexed the eye.
Inglesant alighted from his chair, and, directing his servants to
proceed at once to the Cardinal's, crossed the square on foot.
Following so closely on his previous dreamy thoughts, he was intensely
interested and touched by this living pantomime. Human life had never
before seemed to him so worthy of regard, whether looked at as a whole,
inspiring noble and serious reflections, or viewed in detail when each
separate atom appears pitiful and often ludicrous. The infinite
distance between these two poles, between the aspirations and the
exhortations of conscience, which have to do with humanity as a whole,
and the actual circumstances and capacities of the individual, with
which satirists and humourists have ever made free to jest,--this
contrast, running through every individual life as well as through the
mass of existence, seemed to him to be the true field of humour, and the
real science of those "Humanities" which the schools pedantically
professed to teach.
Nothing moved in the motley crowd before him but what illustrated this
science,--the monk, the lover, the soldier, the improvisatore, the
matron, the young girl; here the childish hand brandishing its toy,
there the artisan, and the shop girl, and the maid-servant, seeking such
enjoyment as their confined life afforded; the young boyish companions
with interlaced arms, the benignant priest, every now and then the
stately carriage slowly passing by to its place on the corso, or to the
palace or garden to which its inmates were bound.
Wandering amid this brilliant fantasia of life, Inglesant's heart smote
him for the luxurious sense of pleasure which he found himself taking in
the present movement and aspect of things. Doubtless this human
philosophy, if we may so call it, into which he was drifting, has a
tendency, at least, very different from much of the teaching which is
the same in every school of religious thought. Love of mankind is
inculcated as a sense of duty by every such school; but by this is
certainly not intended love of and acquiescence in mankind as it is.
This study of human life, however, this love of human existence, is
unconnected with any desire for the improvement either of the individual
or of the race. It is man as he is, not man as he might be, or as he
should be, which is a delightful subject of contemplation to this
tolerant philosophy which human frailty finds so attractive. Man's
failings, his self-inflicted miseries, his humours, the effect of his
very crimes and vices, if not even those vices themselves, form a chief
part in the changing drama upon which the student's eyes are so eagerly
set, and without these it would lose its interest and attraction. A
world of perfect beings would be to such a man of all things the most
stale and unprofitable. Humour and pathos, the grotesque contrast
between a man's aspirations and his actual condition, his dreams and his
mean realities, would be altogether wanting in such a world.
Indignation, sorrow, satire, doubt, and restlessness, allegory, the very
soul and vital salt of life, would be wanting in such a world. But if a
man does not desire a perfect world, what part can he have in the
Christian warfare? It is true that an intimate study of a world of sin
and of misfortune throws up the sinless character of the Saviour into
strong relief; but the student accepts this Saviour's character and
mission as part of the phenomena of existence, not as an irreconcilable
crusade and battle-cry against the powers of the world on every hand.
The study of life is indeed equally possible to both schools; but the
pleased acquiescence in life as it is, with all its follies and
fantastic pleasures, is surely incompatible with following the footsteps
of the Divine Ascetic who trod the wine-press of the wrath of God. With
all their errors, they who rejected the world and all its allurements,
and taught the narrow life of painful self-denial, must be more nearly
right than this.
Nevertheless, even before this last thought was completely formed in his
mind, the sight of the moving people, and of the streets of the
wonderful city opening out on every side, full of palaces and glittering
shops and stalls, and crowded with life and gaiety, turned his halting
choice back again in the opposite direction, and he thought something
like this:--
"How useless and even pitiful is the continued complaint of moralists
and divines, to whom none lend an ear, whilst they endeavour, age after
age, to check youth and pleasure, and turn the current of life and
nature backward on its course. For how many ages in this old Rome, as in
every other city, since Terence gossipped of the city life, has this
frail faulty humanity for a few hours sunned itself on warm afternoons
in sheltered walks and streets, and comforted itself into life and
pleasure, amid all its cares and toils and sins. Out of this shifting
phantasmagoria comes the sound of music, always pathetic and sometimes
gay; amid the roofs and belfries peer the foliage of the public walks,
the stage upon which, in every city, life may be studied and taken to
heart; not far from these walks is, in every city, the mimic stage, the
glass in which, in every age and climate, human life has seen itself
reflected, and has delighted, beyond all other pleasures, in pitying its
own sorrows, in learning its own story, in watching its own fantastic
developments, in foreshadowing its own fate, in smiling sadly for an
hour over the still more fleeting representation of its own fleeting
joys. For ever, without any change, the stream flows on, spite of
moralist and divine, the same as when Phaedria and Thais loved each
other in old Rome. We look back on these countless ages of city life,
cooped in narrow streets and alleys and paved walks, breathing itself in
fountained courts and shaded arcades, where youth and manhood and old
age have sought their daily sustenance not only of bread but of
happiness, and have with difficulty and toil enough found the one and
caught fleeting glimpses of the other, between the dark thunder clouds,
and under the weird, wintry sky of many a life. Within such a little
space how much life is crowded, what high hopes, how much pain! From
those high windows behind the flower-pots young girls have looked out
upon life, which their instincts told them was made for pleasure, but
which year after year convinced them was, somehow or other, given over
to pain. How can we read this endless story of humanity with any thought
of blame? How can we watch this restless quivering human life, this
ceaseless effort of a finite creature to attain to those things which
are agreeable to its created nature, alike in all countries, under all
climates and skies, and whatever change of garb or semblance the long
course of years may bring, with any other thought than that of tolerance
and pity--tolerance of every sort of city existence, pity for every kind
of toil and evil, year after year repeated, in every one of earth's
cities, full of human life and handicraft, and thought and love and
pleasure, as in the streets of that old Jerusalem over which the Saviour
wept."
* * * * *
The conversation that evening at the Cardinal's villa turned upon the
antiquities of Rome. The chief delight of the Fathers of the Oratory
was in music, but the Cardinal preferred conversation, especially upon
Pagan literature and art. He was an enthusiast upon every subject
connected with the Greeks,--art, poetry, philosophy, religion; upon all
these he founded theories and deductions which showed not only an
intimate acquaintance with Greek literature, but also a deep familiarity
with the human heart. A lively imagination and eloquent and polished
utterance enabled him to extract from the baldest and most obscure myths
and fragments of antiquity much that was fascinating, and, being founded
on a true insight into human nature, convincing also.
Inglesant especially sympathized with and understood the tone of thought
and the line of reasoning with which the Cardinal regarded Pagan
antiquity; and this appreciation pleased the Cardinal, and caused him to
address much of his conversation directly to him.
The villa was full of objects by which thought and conversation were
attracted to such channels. The garden was entered by a portico or
door-case adorned with ancient statues, the volto or roof of which was
painted with classic subjects, and the lofty doors themselves were
covered with similar ones in relief. The walls of the house, towards
the garden, were cased with bas-reliefs,--"antique incrustations of
history" the Cardinal called them,--representing the Rape of Europa, of
Leda, and other similar scenes. These antique stones and carvings were
fitted into the walls between the rich pilasters and cornicing which
adorned the front of the villa, and the whole was crossed with tendrils
of citron and other flowering shrubs, trained with the utmost art and
nicety, so as to soften and ornament without concealing the sculpture.
The gardens were traversed by high hedges of myrtle, lemon, orange, and
juniper, interspersed with mulberry trees and oleanders, and were
planted with wide beds of brilliant flowers, according to the season,
now full of anemones, ranunculuses, and crocuses. The whole was formed
upon terraces, fringed with balustrades of marble, over which creeping
plants were trained with the utmost skill, only leaving sufficient
stone-work visible to relieve the foliage. The walks were full of
statues and pieces of carving in relief. The rooms were ornamented in
the same taste, and the chimney of the one in which the supper was laid
was enriched with sculpture of wonderful grace and delicacy.
One of the Fathers of the Oratory asked Inglesant whether he had seen
the Venus of the Medicean palace, and what he thought of it compared
with the Venus of the Farnese; and when he had replied, the other turned
to the Cardinal and inquired whether, in his opinion, the Greeks had any
higher meaning or thought in these beautiful delineations of human form
than mere admiration and pleasure.
"The higher minds among them assuredly," said the Cardinal; "but in
another and more important sense every one of them, even the most
unlettered peasant who gazed upon the work, and the most worldly artist
buried in the mere outward conceptions of his art, were consciously or
unconsciously following, and even worshipping, a divinity and a truth
than which nothing can be higher or more universal. For the truth was
too powerful for them, and so universal that they could not escape.
Human life, in all the phases of its beauty and its deformity, is so
instinct with the divine nature, that, in merely following its variety,
you are learning the highest lessons, and teaching them to others."
"What may you understand by being instinct with the divine nature?" said
the Priest, not unnaturally.
"I mean that general consensus and aggregate of truth in which human
nature and all that is related to it is contained. That divine idea,
indeed, in which all the facts of human life and experience are drawn
together, and exalted to their utmost perfection and refinement, and are
seen and felt to form a whole of surpassing beauty and nobleness, in
which the divine image and plastic power in man is clearly discerned and
intellectually received and appropriated."
The Priest did not seem altogether to understand this, and remained
silent.
"But," said Inglesant, "much of this pursuit of the beautiful must have
been associated, in the ideas of the majority of the people, with
thoughts and actions the most unlovely and undesirable according to the
intellectual reason, however delightful to the senses."
"Even in these orgies," replied the Cardinal, "in the most profligate
and wild excesses of license, I see traces of this all-pervading truth;
for the renouncing of all bound and limit is in itself a truth, when any
particular good, though only sensual, is freed and perfected. This is,
no doubt, what the higher natures saw, and it was this that reconciled
them to the license of the people and of the unilluminated. In all
these aberrations they saw ever fresh varieties and forms of that truth
which, when it was intellectually conceived, it was their greatest
enjoyment to contemplate, and which, no doubt, formed the material of
the instructions which the initiated into the mysteries received. It is
impossible that this could be otherwise, for there can be no philosophy
if there be no human life from which to derive it. The intellectual
existence and discourses of Socrates cannot be understood, except when
viewed in connection with the sensual and common existence and carnal
wisdom of Aristophanes, any more than the death of the one can be
understood without we also understand the popular thought and feeling
delineated to us by the other. And why should we be so ungrateful as to
turn round on this 'beast within the man,' if you so choose to call
it,--the human body and human delight to which we owe not only our own
existence and all that makes life desirable, but also that very
loftiness and refinement of soul, that elevated and sublime philosophy,
which could not exist but for the contrast and antithesis which popular
life presents? Surely it is more philosophical to take in the whole of
life, in every possible form, than to shut yourself up in one doctrine,
which, while you fondly dream you have created it, and that it is
capable of self-existence, is dependent for its very being on that human
life from which you have fled, and which you despise. This is the whole
secret of the pagan doctrine, and the key to those profound views of
life which were evolved in their religion. This is the worship of
Priapus, of human life, in which nothing comes amiss or is to be
staggered at, however voluptuous or sensual, for all things are but
varied manifestations of life; of life, ruddy, delicious, full of
fruits, basking in sunshine and plenty, dyed with the juice of grapes;
of life in valleys cooled by snowy peaks, amid vineyards and shady
fountains, among which however, 'Saepe Faunorum voces exauditae, saepe
visae formae Deorum.'"
"This, Signore Inglesant," said the Priest, passing the wine across the
table, with a smile, "is somewhat even beyond the teaching of your
friends of the society of the Gesu; and would make their doctrine even,
excellently as it already suits that purpose, still more propitious
towards the frailty of men."
Inglesant filled his glass, and drank it off before he replied. The wine
was of the finest growth of the delicious Alban vineyards; and as the
nectar coursed through his veins, a luxurious sense of acquiescence
stole over him. The warm air, laden with perfume from the shaded
windows, lulled his sense; a stray sunbeam lighted the piles of fruit
and the deeply embossed gold of the service on the table before him, and
the mellow paintings and decorated ceiling of the room. As he slowly
drank his wine the memory of Serenus de Cressy, and of his doctrine of
human life, rose before his mind, and his eyes were fixed upon the
deep-coloured wine before him, as though he saw there, as in a magic
goblet, the opposing powers that divide the world. It seemed to him
that he had renounced his right to join in the conflict, and that he
must remain as ever a mere spectator of the result; nevertheless he
said,--
"Your doctrine is delightful to the philosopher and to the man of
culture, who has his nature under the curb, and his glance firmly fixed
upon the goal; but to the vulgar it is death; and indeed it was death
until the voice of another God was heard, and the form of another God
was seen, not in vineyards and rosy bowers, but in deserts and stony
places, in dens and caves of the earth, and in prisons and on crosses of
wood."
"It is treason to the idea of cultured life," said the Cardinal, "to
evoke such gloomy images. My theory is at least free from such faults
of taste."
"Do not fear me," said Inglesant; "I have no right to preach such a
lofty religion. An asceticism I never practised it would ill-become me
to advocate."
"You spoke of the death of Socrates," said the Priest; "does this event
fall within the all-embracing tolerance of your theory?"
"The death of Socrates," said the Cardinal, "appears to have been
necessary to preserve the framework of ordinary every-day society from
falling to pieces. At any rate men of good judgment in that day thought
so, and they must have known best. You must remember that it was
Socrates that was put to death, not Plato, and we must not judge by what
the latter has left us of what the former taught. The doctrine of
Socrates was purely negative, and undermined the principle of belief not
only in the Gods but in everything else. His dialectic was excellent
and noble, his purpose pure and exalted, the clearing of men's mind's of
false impressions; but to the common fabric of society his method was
destruction. So he was put to death, unjustly of course, and contrary
to the highest law, but according to the lower law of expediency,
justly; for society must preserve itself even at the expense of its
noblest thinkers. But," added the Cardinal with a smile, "we have only
to look a little way for a parallel. It
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