*CHAPTER V.*
"It is almost impossible for a man to form in his imagination," said therector to Inglesant, as they left the Church, "such beautiful andglorious scenes as are to be met with in the Roman Churches and Chapels.The profusion of the ancient marble found within the city itself, andthe many fine quarries in the neighbourhood, have made this resultpossible; and notwithstanding the incredible sums of money which havebeen already laid out in this way, the same work is still going forwardin other parts of Rome; the last effort still endeavouring to outshinethose that went before it."
Inglesant found this assertion to be true. As he entered Church afterChurch, during the first few days of his sojourn in Rome, he found thesame marble walls, the same inlaid tombs, the same coloured pavements.In the sombre autumn afternoons this splendour was toned down andveiled, till it produced an effect which was inexpressibly noble,--a dimbrilliance, a subdued and restrained glory, which accorded well with theenervating perfume and the strains of romantic music that stole alongthe aisles. In these Churches, and in the monasteries adjoining,Inglesant was introduced to many priests and ecclesiastics, among whomhe might study most of the varieties of devout feeling, and of religiouslife in all its forms. To many of these he was not drawn by any feelingof sympathy; many were only priests and monks in outward form, being inreality 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 wereconsidered to possess, exceptional piety. Among these he was greatlyattracted by report towards a man who was then beginning to attractattention in Rome, and to exert that influence over the highest and mostreligious natures, which, during a period of twenty years, became sooverpowering as at one time to threaten to work a complete revolution inthe system and policy of Rome. This was Michael de Molinos, a Spanishmonk, who, coming to Rome some years before, began to inculcate a methodof mystical devotion which he had no doubt gathered from the followersof St. Theresa, who were regarded with great veneration in Spain, wherethe contemplative devotion which they taught was held in high esteem.On his first coming to Rome Molinos refused all ecclesiasticaladvancement, and declined to practise those austerities which were somuch admired. He associated with men of the most powerful minds and ofthe most elevated thoughts, and being acknowledged at once to be a manof learning and of good sense, his influence soon became perceptible.To all who came to him for spiritual comfort and advice he insisted onthe importance of mental devotion, of daily communion, and of an inwardapplication of the soul to Jesus Christ and to His death. So attractivewere his personal qualities, and so alluring his doctrine to minds whichhad grown weary of the more formal ceremonies and acts of bodily penanceand devotion, that thousands thronged his apartments, and "the method ofMolinos" became not only a divine message to many, but even thefashionable religion of Rome.
It spoke to men of an act of devotion, which it called the contemplativestate, in which the will is so united to God and overcome by that unionthat it adores and loves and resigns itself up to Him, and, not exposedto the wavering of the mere fancy, nor wearied by a succession of formalacts of a dry religion, it enters into the life of God, into theheavenly places of Jesus Christ, with an indescribable and secret joy.It taught that this rapture and acquiescence in the Divine Will, whileit is the highest state and privilege of devotion, is within the reachof every man, being the fruit of nothing more than the silent and humbleadoration of God that arises out of a pure and quiet mind; and itoffered to every man the prospect of this communion--a prospect to whichthe very novelty and vagueness gave a hitherto unknown delight--inexchange for the common methods of devotion which long use and constantrepetition had caused to appear to many but as dead and lifeless forms.Those who followed this method generally laid aside the use of therosary, the daily repeating of the breviary, together with the commondevotion of the saints, and applied themselves to preserve their mindsin an inward calm and quiet, that they might in silence perform simpleacts of faith, and feel those inward motions and directions which theybelieved would follow upon such acts.
To such a doctrine as this, taught by such a man, it is not surprisingthat Inglesant was soon attracted, and he visited Molinos's roomsseveral times. On one of these occasions he met in the anteroom agentleman he had seen more than once before, but had never spoken to.He was therefore somewhat surprised when he accosted him, and seemeddesirous of some private conference. Inglesant knew that he was theCount Vespiriani, and had heard him described as of a noble and refinednature, and a hearty follower of Molinos. They left the house together,and driving to the gardens of the Borghese Palace, they walked for sometime.
The Count began by expressing his pleasure that at so early a period ofhis residence in Rome Inglesant had formed the acquaintance of Molinos.
"You are perhaps," he said, "not aware of the importance of themovement, nor of the extent to which some of us are not without hopethat it may ultimately reach. Few persons are aware of the numbersalready devoted to it, including men of every rank in the Church andamong the nobility, and of every variety of opinion and of principle.It cannot be supposed that all these persons act thus under theinfluence of any extraordinary elevation of piety or devotion. To whatthen 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 thestate 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 lamentablecondition of affairs in your own mind; but among ourselves (those amongus at any rate who are men of intelligence and of experience of the lifeof other countries, and especially Protestant ones) there is but onesolution--the share that priests have in the government, not only in thePope's territory, but in all the other courts of Italy where they havethe rule. This does not so much arise from any individual errors ormisdoing as from the necessary unfitness of ecclesiastics to interferein civil affairs. They have not souls large enough nor tender enoughfor government; they are trained in an inflexible code of morals and ofconduct from which they cannot swerve. To this code all human needsmust bow. They are cut off from sympathy with their fellows on mostpoints; and their natural inclinations, which cannot be whollysuppressed, are driven into unworthy and mean channels; and they acquirea narrowness of spirit and a sourness of mind, together with a bias toone side only of life, which does not agree with the principles of humansociety. All kinds of incidental evils arise from these sources, instating which I do not wish to accuse those ecclesiastics of unusualmoral turpitude. Among them is the fact that, having individually soshort and uncertain a time for governing, they think only of thepresent, and of serving their own ends, or satisfying their ownconceptions, regardless of the ultimate happiness or misery which mustbe the consequence of what they do. Whatever advances the presentinterests of the Church or of themselves, for no man is free altogetherfrom selfish motives--whatever enriches the Church or their ownfamilies, for no man can help interesting himself in those of his ownhouse,--is preferred to all wise, great, or generous counsels. You willperhaps wonder what the mystic spiritual religion of Molinos has to dowith all this, but a moment's explanation will, I think, make it veryclear to you. The hold which the priests have upon the civil governmentis maintained solely by the tyranny which they exercise over thespiritual life of men. It is the opinion of Molinos that this functionis misdirected, and that in the place of a tyrant there should appear aguide. He is about to publish a book called 'Il Guida Spirituale,'which will appear with several approbations before it,--one by thegeneral of the Franciscans, who is a Qualificator of the Inquisition,and another by a member of the society to which you are attached, FatherMartin de Esparsa, also one of the Qualificators. This book, soauthorized and recommended, cannot fail not only to escape censure, butto exert a powerful influence, and will doubtless be highly esteemed.Now the importance of Molinos's doctrine lies in this, that he press
esthe point of frequent communion, and asserts that freedom from mortalsin is the only necessary qualification. At the same time he guardshimself from the charge of innovation by the very title and the wholescope of his book, which is to insist upon the necessity of a spiritualdirector and guide. You will see at once what an important step is heregained; for the doctrine being once admitted that mortal sin only is adisqualification for receiving the sacrament, and the necessity ofconfession before communion being not expressed, the obligation ofcoming always to the priest, as the minister of the sacrament ofpenance, before every communion, cannot long be insisted upon. Indeed,it will become a rule by which all spiritual persons who adhere toMolinos's method will conduct their penitents, that they may come to thesacrament when they find themselves out of the state of mortal sin,without going at every time to confession; and it is beginning to beobserved already in Rome that those who, under the influence of thismethod, are becoming more strict in their lives, more retired andserious in their mental devotions, are become less zealous in theirwhole deportment as to the exterior parts of religion. They are not soassiduous at mass, nor in procuring masses for their friends, nor arethey so frequent at confession or processions. I cannot tell you what ablessing I anticipate for mankind should this method be once allowed;what a freedom, what a force, what a reality religion would obtain! Thetime is ripe for it, and the world is prepared. The best men are givingtheir adherence; I entreat you to lend your aid. The Jesuits arewavering; they have not yet decided whether the new method will prevailor not. The least matter will turn the scale. You may think that it isof little importance which side you take, but if so, you are mistaken.You are not perhaps aware of the high estimation in which the reportsand letters which have preceded you have caused you to be held at theJesuits' College. You are supposed to have great influence with theEnglish Catholics and Protestant Episcopalians, and the idea ofpromoting Catholic progress in England is the dearest to the mind of theRoman Ecclesiastic."
Inglesant listened to the Count attentively, and did not immediatelyreply. At last he said,--
"What you have told me is of the greatest interest, and commends itselfto my conscience more than you know. As to the present state andgovernment of Italy I am not competent to speak. One of the thingswhich I hoped to learn in Rome was the answer to some complaints which Ihave heard in other parts of Italy. I fear also that you may be toosanguine as to the result of such freedom as you desire. This age iswitness of the state to which too much freedom has brought England, myown country, a land which a few years ago was the happiest andwealthiest of all countries, now utterly ruined and laid waste. Thefreedom which you desire, and the position of the clergy which youapprove, is somewhat the same as that which existed in the ProtestantEpiscopal Church of England; but the influence they possessed was notsufficient to resist the innovations and wild excesses of the Sectaries.The freedom which I desire for myself I am willing to renounce when Isee the evil which the possession of it works among others and in theState. What you attempt, however, is an experiment in which I am notunwilling to be interested; and I shall be very curious to observe theresult. The main point of your method, the freedom of the blessedsacrament, is a taking piece of doctrine, for the holding of which Ihave always been attracted to the Episcopal Church of England. It is,as you say, a point of immense importance, upon which in fact the wholesystem of the Church depends. I have been long seeking for somesolution of the mysterious difficulties of the religious life. It maybe that I shall find it in your society, which I perceive already toconsist of men of the highest and most select natures, with whom, comewhat 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 foundwanting when the time of action comes. I should wish to see more ofMolinos."
"I am not at all surprised," said the Count, "that you do not at onceperceive the full force of what I have said. It requires to be anItalian, and to have grown to manhood in Italy, to estimate justly thepernicious influence of the clergy upon all ranks of society. I havetravelled abroad, and when I have seen such a country as Holland, a landdivided between land and sea, upon which the sun rarely shines, with acold and stagnant air, and liable to be destroyed by inundations; when Isee this country rich and flourishing, full of people, happy andcontented, with every mark of plenty, and none at all of want; when Isee all this, and then think of my own beautiful land, its long andhappy summers, its rich and fruitful soil, and see it ruined anddepopulated, its few inhabitants miserable and in rags, the scorn andcontempt instead of the envy of the world; when I think of what she wasan age or two ago, and reflect upon the means by which such a fall, sucha dispeopling, and such a poverty, has befallen a nation and a climatelike this;--I dare not trust myself to speak the words which arise to mylips. Those with whom you associate will doubtless endeavour to preventthese melancholy truths from being perceived by you, but they are tooevident to be concealed. Before long you will have painful experienceof their existence."
"You say," said Inglesant, "that one or two ages ago Italy was much moreprosperous than at present; were not the priests as powerful then asnow?"
"I do not deny," replied the Count, "that there have been other causeswhich have tended to impoverish the country, but under a differentgovernment many of these might have been averted or at any ratemitigated. When the commerce of the country was flourishing the powerof the wealthy merchants and the trading princes was equal or superiorto that of the priests, especially in the leading States. As theirinfluence and wealth declined, the authority of the clergy increased. Awiser policy might have discovered other sources of wealth and ofoccupation for the people; they only thought of establishing theauthority of the Church, of adorning the altars, of filling the Papalcoffers."
Inglesant may have thought that he perceived a weak point in thisexplanation, but he made no reply, and the Count supposed he wassatisfied.
A few days afterwards he had the opportunity of a long and privateconversation with Molinos.
The Spaniard was a man of tall and graceful exterior, with a smile andmanner which were indescribably alluring and sweet. Inglesant confidedto him something of his past history, and much of his mental troublesand perplexities. He spoke of De Cressy and of the remorse which hadfollowed his rejection of the life of self-denial which the Benedictinehad offered him. Molinos's counsel was gentle and kindly.
"It was said to me long ago," said Inglesant, "that 'there are some menborn into the world with such happy dispositions that the cross for along time seems very light, if not altogether unfelt. The strait pathruns side by side with the broad and pleasant way of man's desires; soclose are they that the two cannot be discerned apart. So the man goeson, the favourite seemingly both of God and his fellows; but let him notthink that he shall always escape the common doom. God is preparingsome great test for him, some great temptation, all the more terriblefor being so long delayed. Let him beware lest his spiritual nature beenervated by so much sunshine, so that when the trial comes, he may beunable to meet it. His conscience is easier than other men's; what aresins to them are not so to him. But the trial that is prepared for himwill be no common one; it will be so fitted to his condition that hecannot palter with it nor pass it by; he must either deny his God orhimself.' This was said to me by one who knew me not; but it was saidwith something of a prophetic instinct, and I see in these words sometraces of my own fate. For a long time it seemed to me that I couldserve 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 learningand at the same time the learning that is from above. But suddenly thechasm opened beneath my feet; two ways lay before me, and I chose thebroad and easy path; the cross was offered to me, and I drew back myhand; the winnowing fan passed over the floor, and I was swept away withthe chaff."
"I should prefer to say," replied the Spaniard,--and as he spoke, hisexpression was wonderfully compassionate and urbane,--"I should pr
eferto 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 selectnatures, or, as you have yourself termed them, the courtiers of thehousehold of God. Believe me, God does not lay traps for any, nor is Hemistaken in His estimate. If He lavishes favour upon any man, it isbecause he knows that that man's nature will respond to love. It is thehabit of kings to assemble in their houses such men as will delight themby their conversation and companionship, 'amor ac deliciae generishumani,' 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 winthese natures for the good of mankind and for His own delight. It istrue that such privilege calls for a return; but what will ensure areturn sooner than the consideration of such favour as this? You sayyou have been unworthy of such favour, and have forfeited it for ever.You cannot have forfeited it, for it was never deserved. It is thekingly grace of God, bestowed on whom He will. If I am not mistaken inyour case, God will win you, and He will win you by determined anduninterrupted acts of love. It may be that in some other place Godwould have found for you other work; you have failed in attaining tothat place; serve Him where you are. If you fall still lower, orimagine that you fall lower, still serve Him in the lowest room of all.Wherever you may find yourself, in Courts or pleasure-houses or gardensof delight, still serve Him, and you will bid defiance to imaginationsand powers of evil, that strive to work upon a sensitive and excitednature, and to urge it to despair. Many of these thoughts which we lookupon as temptations of God are but the accidents of our bodilytemperaments. How can you, nursed in Courts, delicately reared andbred, trained in pleasure, your ear and eye and sense habituated tomusic and soft sounds, to colour and to beauty of form, your braindeveloped by intellectual effort and made sensitive to the slightesttouch--how can religious questions bear the same aspect to you as to aman brought up in want of the necessaries of life, hardened by toil andexposure, unenlightened by learning and the arts, unconscious of theexistence even of what is agony or delight to you? Yet God is equallywith both of these; in His different ways He will lead both of them,would they but follow, through that maze of accident and casualty inwhich they are involved, and out of the tumult of which coil theycomplain to the Deity of what is truly the result of their owntemperaments, ancestry, and the besetments of life. I tell you thisbecause I have no fear that it will exalt you, but to keep you fromunduly depreciating yourself, and from that terrible blasphemy thatrepresents God as laying snares for men in the guise of pretendedkindness. God is with all, with the coarse and dull as with the refinedand pure, but He draws them by different means,--those by terror, theseby love."
Inglesant said little in answer to these words, but they made a deepimpression upon him. They lifted a weight from his spirits, and enabledhim henceforward to take some of the old pleasure in the light of heavenand the occurrences of life. He saw much of Molinos, and had longconferences with him upon the solution of the greatest of all problems,that of granting religious freedom, and at the same time maintainingreligious truth. Molinos thought that his system solved this problem,and although Inglesant was not altogether convinced of this, yet heassociated himself heartily, if not wholly, with the Quietists, asMolinos's followers were called, in so much that he received somefriendly cautions from the Jesuit College not to commit himself too far.
* * * * *
It must not be supposed, however, that he was altogether absorbed insuch thoughts or such pursuits. To him, as to all the other inhabitantsof Rome, each in his own degree and station, the twofold aspect ofexistence in the strange Papal city claimed his alternate regard, anddivided his life and his intellect. The society of Rome, at one momentdevout, the next philosophic, the next antiquarian, artistic,pleasure-seeking, imparted to all its members some tincture of itsProtean character. The existence of all was coloured by the many-sidedprism through which the light of every day's experience was seen.Inglesant's acquaintance with the Cardinal introduced him at once to allthe different coteries, and procured him the advantage of a companionwho exerted a strong and cultivated mind to exhibit each subject in itscompletest and most fascinating aspect. Accompanied by the Cardinal,and with one or other of the literati of Rome, each in his turn a masterof the peculiar study to which the day was devoted, Inglesant wanderedday 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 seemssuddenly to have frozen into marble in the midst of its intricate dance,yet so frozen as to retain, by some mysterious art, the warm andbreathing life. He saw the men of the old buried centuries, of the magicand romantic existence when the world was young. The beautiful godswith their white wands; the grave senators and stately kings; the faunsand satyrs that dwelt in the untrodden woods; the pastoral fluteplayers, whose airs yet linger within the peasant's reeds; the slavesand 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 ofto-day. Nor less entrancing were those quaint fancies upon the classictombs, which showed in what manner the old pagan looked out into thespacious ether and confronted death,--a child playing with a comicmasque, 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 onwhich it had walked; the ruined splendour of Rome, in its setting ofblue sky and green foliage, of ivy and creeping plants, of laurels andilex, enfolded in a soft ethereal radiance that created everywhere agarden of romance.
"Nothing delights and entertains me so much in this country," saidInglesant one day to a gentleman with whom he was walking, "as thecontrasts which present themselves on every hand, the peasant's hutbuilt in the ruins of a palace, the most exquisite carving supportingits tottering roof, cattle drinking out of an Emperor's tomb, a theatrebuilt in a mausoleum, and pantomime airs and the "plaudite" heard amidthe awful silence of the grave; here a Christ, ghastly, naked, on across; there a charming god, a tender harmony of form and life;triumphal arches sunk in the ruins not of their own only, but ofsuccessive ages, monuments far more of decay and death than of glory orfame; Corinthian columns canopied with briars, ivy, and wild vine, thedelicate acanthus wreaths stained by noisome weeds. The thoughts thatarise from the sight of these contrasts are pleasing though melancholy,such ideas, sentiments, and feelings as arise in the mind and in theheart at the foot of antique columns, before triumphal arches, in thedepths of ruined tombs, and on mossy banks of fountains; but there areother contrasts which bring no such soothing thoughts with them, nothingbut what may almost be called despair; profusion of magnificence andwealth side by side with the utmost wretchedness; Christ's altar blazingwith jewels and marble, misery indescribable around; luxury, andenjoyment, and fine clothes almost hustled by rags, and sores, andfilth. Amid the lesson of past ages, written on every ruined column andshattered wall, what a distance still exists between the poor and therich! Should the poor man wish to overpass it, he is driven back atonce into his original wretchedness, or condemned more mercifully todeath, while every ruined column and obelisk cries aloud, 'Leteverything that creeps console itself, for everything that is elevatedfalls.'"
"We Romans," said the gentleman, "preserve our ruins as beggars keepopen their sores. They are preserved not always from taste; nor from arespect of antiquity, but sometimes from mere avarice, for they attractfrom every corner of the world that crowd of strangers whose curiosityhas long furnished a maintenance to three-fourths of Italy. But youwere speaking of the charming gods of the ancients. We are not inferiorto them. Have you seen the Apollo of Bermini pursuing Daphne, in theBorghese Palace? His hair waves in the wind, you hear the entreaties ofthe god."
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"Yes, I have seen it," said Inglesant; "it is another of those wonderfulcontrasts with which Rome abounds. We are Catholic and Pagan at thesame time."
"It is true," said the other; "nevertheless, in the centre of theblood-stained Colisseo stands a crucifix. The Galilean has triumphed."
Inglesant stopped. They were standing before the Apollo in theBelvedere gardens. Inglesant took from beneath his vest a crucifix inivory, exquisitely carved, and held it beside the statue of the god.The one the noblest product of buoyant life, the proudest perfection ofharmonious form, purified from all the dross of humanity, the headworthy of the god of day and of the lyre, of healing and of help, whobore in his day the self-same name that the other bore, "the greatphysician;" the other, worn and emaciated, helpless, dying, apparentlywithout power, forgotten by the world. "Has the Galilean triumphed? Doyou prefer the Christ?" he said.
The gentleman smiled. "The benign god," he said, "has doubtless manyvotaries, even now."
It is probable that the life of Rome was working its effect uponInglesant himself. Under its influence, and that of the Cardinal, histone of thought became considerably modified. In a strange andunexpected way, in the midst of so much religion, his attention wasdiverted from the religious side of life, and his views of what wasphilosophically important underwent considerable change. He readLucretius less, and Terence and Aristophanes more. Human life, as hesaw it existing around him, became more interesting to him than theoriesand opinions. Life in all its forms, the Cardinal assured him, was theonly study worthy of man; and though Inglesant saw that such a generalassertion only encouraged the study of human thought, yet it seemed tohim that it directed him to a truth which he had hitherto perhapsoverlooked, and taught him to despise and condemn nothing in the commonpath of men in which he walked. If this were true, the more carefullyhe studied this common life, and the more narrowly he watched it, themore worthy it would appear of regard; the dull and narrow streets, thecrowded dwellings, the base and vulgar life, the poverty and distress ofthe poorer classes, would assume an interest unknown to him before.
"This life and interest," the Cardinal would say, "finds its bestexponent in the old pantomime and burlesque music of Italy. The real,every-day, commonplace, human life, which originates absolutely amongthe people themselves, speaks in their own music and street airs; butwhen these are touched by a master's hand, it becomes revealed to us inits essence, refined and idealized, with all its human features, which,from their very familiarity, escape our recognition as we walk thestreets. In the peculiarity of this music, its graceful delicacy andlively frolic and grotesqueness, I think I find the most perfectpresentment, to the ear and heart, of human life, especially as theslightest variation of time or setting reveals in the most lively ofthese airs depths of pathos and melodious sorrow, completing thus theanalogy of life, beneath the gayest phases of which lie unnoticed thesaddest realities."
"I have often felt," said Inglesant, "that old dance-music has aninexpressible pathos; as I listen to it I seem to be present at longpast festivities, whose very haunts are swept away and forgotten; atevenings in the distant past, looked forward to as all-important, uponwhose short and fleeting hours the hopes and enjoyments of a lifetimewere staked, now lost in an undistinguished oblivion and dust of death.The young and the beautiful who danced to these quaint measures, in ayear or two had passed away, and other forms equally graceful took theirplace. Fancies and figures that live in sound, and pass before the eyesonly when evoked by such melodies, float down the shadowy way and passinto the future, where other gay and brilliant hours await the young, tobe followed as heretofore by pale and disappointed hopes and sadrealities, 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 ofmusic upon the mind is, that many things are elements which are notreckoned so, and that sound is one of them. As the air and fire aresaid to be peopled by fairy inhabitants, as the spiritual man lives inthe element of faith, so I believe that there are creatures which livein sound. Every lovely fancy, every moment of delight, every thoughtand thrill of pleasure which music calls forth, or which, alreadyexisting, is beautified and hallowed by music, does not die. Such asthese 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 andmaintains their life exists again in sound. They are children of theearth, and yet above it; they recall the human needs and hopes fromwhich they sprang. They have shadowy sex and rank, and diversity ofbearing, as of the different actors' parts that fill the stage of life.Poverty and want are there, but, as in an allegory or morality, purifiedand released from suffering. The pleasures and delights of past agesthus live again in sound, the sorrows and disappointments of other daysand of other men mingle with our own, and soften and subdue our hearts.Apollo and Orpheus tamed the savage beasts; music will soften our ruggednature, and kindle in us a love of our kind and a tolerance of the pettyfailings and the shortcomings of men."
It was not only music that fostered and encouraged in Rome an easytolerant philosophy. No society could be more adapted than that of thePapal city to such an end. A people whose physical wants were few andeasily supplied (a single meal in such a climate, and that easilyprocured, sufficing for the day); a city full of strangers, festivalsand shows; a conscience absolutely at rest; a community entirely setapart from politics, absolutely at one with its government by habit, byinterest, and by religion;--constituted a unique state and mentalatmosphere, in which such philosophy naturally flourished. The earlyhours of the day were spent in such business as was necessary for allclasses 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'strifling over the toilette, all business was at an end, and all theshops were shut. Till three o'clock in the morning the hours weredevoted to enjoyment. Men, women, and children repaired to the publicwalks, to the corso and squares, to conversation in coteries, toassemblies in arcaded and lighted gardens, to collations in taverns.Even the gravest and most serious gave themselves up to relaxation andamusement till the next day. Every evening was a festival; everyvariety of character and conversation enlivened these delicious hours,these soft and starry nights.
Nothing pleased Inglesant's fancy so much, or soothed his senses socompletely, as this second dawn of the day and rising to pleasure in thecool evening. Soothed and calmed by sleep, the irritated nerves werelulled into that delicious sense for which we have no name, but which wecompare to flowing water, and to the moistening of a parched and dustydrought. All thoughts of trouble and of business were banished by theintervening hours of forgetfulness, from which the mind, half-arousedand fresh from dreamland, awoke to find itself in a world as strange andfantastic as the land of sleep which it had left; a land bathed insunset light, overarched by rainbows, saluted by cool zephyrs, soothedby soft strains of music, delighted and amused by gay festivals, peopledby varied crowds of happy people, many-coloured in dress, in green walkssparkling with fairy lamps, and seated at al fresco suppers, before cosytaverns famous for delicious wines, where the gossip of Europe, uponwhich Rome looked out as from a Belvedere, intrigue, and the promotionsof 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 waspartly deserted and partly occupied by a family of priests, and he slepthere when he was not at the Cardinal's palace, or with other of hisfriends. The place was quiet and remote from the throng and noise ofRome; in the gardens were fountains in the cool shade; frescos andpaintings had been left on the walls and in the rooms by the owner ofthe villa; the tinkling of convent bells sounded from the slopes of thehills through the laurels and ilex and across the vines; every now andthen the chanting of the pries
ts might be heard from a small Chapel atthe back of the house.
Inglesant awoke from his mid-day sleep one evening to the splash of thefountain, and the scent of the fresh-turned earth in the vineyard, andfound his servant arranging his room for his toilette. He was to supthat 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 forthe Cardinal's palace.
It was a brilliant evening; upon the hill-sides the dark trees stood outagainst the golden sky, the domes and pinnacles of the Churches shone inthe evening light. In the quiet lanes, in the neighbourhood of theAventine, the perfume of odoriferous trees was wafted over lofty gardenwalls; quiet figures flitted to and fro, a distant hum of noisy streetsscarcely reached the ear, mingled with the never-ceasing bells. Thatmorning, before he went to sleep, Inglesant had been reading "The Birds"of Aristophanes, with a voluminous commentary by some old scholar, whohad brought together a mass of various learning upon the subject ofgrotesque apologue, fable, and the fanciful representation of the factsand follies of human life under the characters of animals and ofinanimate objects. A vast number of examples of curious pantomime andother stage characters were given, and the idea preserved throughoutthat, by such impersonations, the voices of man's existence were able tospeak with clearness and pathos, and were more sure of being listened tothan when they assumed the guise of a teacher or divine. Beneath agrotesque and unexpected form they conceal a gravity more sober thanseriousness itself, as irony is more sincere than the solemnity which itparodies. Truth drops her stilted gait, and becomes natural and real, inthe midst of ludicrous and familiar events. The broad types of life'splayers into which the race is divided, especially themeanest,--thieves, beggars, outcasts,--with whom life is a realitystripped of outward show, will carry a moral and a teaching more aptlythan the privileged and affected classes. Mixed with these are animalsand familiar objects of household life, to which everyday use has givena character of their own. These, not in the literal repulsiveness ordulness of their monotonous existence, but abstracted, as the types oremblems of the ideas associated with each one--not a literal beggar, inhis dirt and loathsomeness, but poverty, freedom, helplessness, andamusing knavery, personified in the part of a beggar--not a mere articleof household use in its inanimate stupidity, but every idea andassociation connected with the use of such articles by generations ofmen and women;--these and such as these, enlivened by the sparkle ofgenius, set forth in gay and exquisite music, and by brilliant reparteeand witty dialogue, certainly cannot be far behind the very foremostdelineation of human life.
Educated in the Court of King Charles to admire Shakespeare and theElizabethan stage, Inglesant was better able to understand these thingsthan the Italians were, suggestive as the Italian life itself was ofsuch reflections. The taste for music and scenery had driven dialogueand character from the stage. Magnificent operas, performed byexquisite singers, and accompanied by mechanical effects of stupendousextent, were almost the only scenic performances fashionable in Italy;but this was of less consequence where every street was a stage, andevery festival an elaborate play. The Italians were pantomimic anddramatic in the highest degree without perceiving it themselves. Theman who delights in regarding this life as a stage cannot attach anoverwhelming importance to any incident; he observes life as aspectator, and does not engage in it as an actor; but the Italian wastoo impetuous to do this--he took too violent an interest in the eventsthemselves.
The narrow streets through which Inglesant's chair passed terminated atlast in a wide square. It was full of confused figures, presenting tothe eye a dazzling movement of form and colour, of which last, owing tothe evening light, the prevailing tint was blue. A brilliant belt ofsunset radiance, like molten gold along the distant horizon, threw upthe white houses into strong relief. Dark cypress trees rose againstthe glare of the yellow sky, tinged with blue from the fathomless azureabove. The white spray of fountains flashed high over the heads of thepeople in the four corners of the square, and long lance-like gleams oflight shot from behind the cypresses and the white houses, refracting athousand colours in the flashing water. A murmur of gay talk filled theair, and a constant change of varied form perplexed the eye.
Inglesant alighted from his chair, and, directing his servants toproceed at once to the Cardinal's, crossed the square on foot.Following so closely on his previous dreamy thoughts, he was intenselyinterested and touched by this living pantomime. Human life had neverbefore seemed to him so worthy of regard, whether looked at as a whole,inspiring noble and serious reflections, or viewed in detail when eachseparate atom appears pitiful and often ludicrous. The infinitedistance between these two poles, between the aspirations and theexhortations of conscience, which have to do with humanity as a whole,and the actual circumstances and capacities of the individual, withwhich satirists and humourists have ever made free to jest,--thiscontrast, running through every individual life as well as through themass of existence, seemed to him to be the true field of humour, and thereal science of those "Humanities" which the schools pedanticallyprofessed to teach.
Nothing moved in the motley crowd before him but what illustrated thisscience,--the monk, the lover, the soldier, the improvisatore, thematron, the young girl; here the childish hand brandishing its toy,there the artisan, and the shop girl, and the maid-servant, seeking suchenjoyment as their confined life afforded; the young boyish companionswith interlaced arms, the benignant priest, every now and then thestately carriage slowly passing by to its place on the corso, or to thepalace or garden to which its inmates were bound.
Wandering amid this brilliant fantasia of life, Inglesant's heart smotehim for the luxurious sense of pleasure which he found himself taking inthe present movement and aspect of things. Doubtless this humanphilosophy, if we may so call it, into which he was drifting, has atendency, at least, very different from much of the teaching which isthe same in every school of religious thought. Love of mankind isinculcated as a sense of duty by every such school; but by this iscertainly not intended love of and acquiescence in mankind as it is.This study of human life, however, this love of human existence, isunconnected with any desire for the improvement either of the individualor of the race. It is man as he is, not man as he might be, or as heshould be, which is a delightful subject of contemplation to thistolerant philosophy which human frailty finds so attractive. Man'sfailings, his self-inflicted miseries, his humours, the effect of hisvery crimes and vices, if not even those vices themselves, form a chiefpart in the changing drama upon which the student's eyes are so eagerlyset, and without these it would lose its interest and attraction. Aworld of perfect beings would be to such a man of all things the moststale and unprofitable. Humour and pathos, the grotesque contrastbetween a man's aspirations and his actual condition, his dreams and hismean realities, would be altogether wanting in such a world.Indignation, sorrow, satire, doubt, and restlessness, allegory, the verysoul and vital salt of life, would be wanting in such a world. But if aman does not desire a perfect world, what part can he have in theChristian warfare? It is true that an intimate study of a world of sinand of misfortune throws up the sinless character of the Saviour intostrong relief; but the student accepts this Saviour's character andmission as part of the phenomena of existence, not as an irreconcilablecrusade and battle-cry against the powers of the world on every hand.The study of life is indeed equally possible to both schools; but thepleased acquiescence in life as it is, with all its follies andfantastic pleasures, is surely incompatible with following the footstepsof the Divine Ascetic who trod the wine-press of the wrath of God. Withall their errors, they who rejected the world and all its allurements,and taught the narrow life of painful self-denial, must be more nearlyright than this.
Nevertheless, even before this last thought was completely formed in hismind, the sight of the moving people, and of the streets of thewonderful city opening out on every side, full
of palaces and glitteringshops and stalls, and crowded with life and gaiety, turned his haltingchoice back again in the opposite direction, and he thought somethinglike this:--
"How useless and even pitiful is the continued complaint of moralistsand divines, to whom none lend an ear, whilst they endeavour, age afterage, to check youth and pleasure, and turn the current of life andnature backward on its course. For how many ages in this old Rome, as inevery other city, since Terence gossipped of the city life, has thisfrail faulty humanity for a few hours sunned itself on warm afternoonsin sheltered walks and streets, and comforted itself into life andpleasure, amid all its cares and toils and sins. Out of this shiftingphantasmagoria comes the sound of music, always pathetic and sometimesgay; 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 toheart; not far from these walks is, in every city, the mimic stage, theglass in which, in every age and climate, human life has seen itselfreflected, and has delighted, beyond all other pleasures, in pitying itsown sorrows, in learning its own story, in watching its own fantasticdevelopments, in foreshadowing its own fate, in smiling sadly for anhour over the still more fleeting representation of its own fleetingjoys. For ever, without any change, the stream flows on, spite ofmoralist and divine, the same as when Phaedria and Thais loved eachother in old Rome. We look back on these countless ages of city life,cooped in narrow streets and alleys and paved walks, breathing itself infountained courts and shaded arcades, where youth and manhood and oldage have sought their daily sustenance not only of bread but ofhappiness, and have with difficulty and toil enough found the one andcaught fleeting glimpses of the other, between the dark thunder clouds,and under the weird, wintry sky of many a life. Within such a littlespace how much life is crowded, what high hopes, how much pain! Fromthose high windows behind the flower-pots young girls have looked outupon life, which their instincts told them was made for pleasure, butwhich year after year convinced them was, somehow or other, given overto pain. How can we read this endless story of humanity with any thoughtof blame? How can we watch this restless quivering human life, thisceaseless effort of a finite creature to attain to those things whichare agreeable to its created nature, alike in all countries, under allclimates and skies, and whatever change of garb or semblance the longcourse of years may bring, with any other thought than that of toleranceand pity--tolerance of every sort of city existence, pity for every kindof toil and evil, year after year repeated, in every one of earth'scities, full of human life and handicraft, and thought and love andpleasure, as in the streets of that old Jerusalem over which the Saviourwept."
* * * * *
The conversation that evening at the Cardinal's villa turned upon theantiquities of Rome. The chief delight of the Fathers of the Oratorywas in music, but the Cardinal preferred conversation, especially uponPagan literature and art. He was an enthusiast upon every subjectconnected with the Greeks,--art, poetry, philosophy, religion; upon allthese he founded theories and deductions which showed not only anintimate acquaintance with Greek literature, but also a deep familiaritywith the human heart. A lively imagination and eloquent and polishedutterance enabled him to extract from the baldest and most obscure mythsand fragments of antiquity much that was fascinating, and, being foundedon a true insight into human nature, convincing also.
Inglesant especially sympathized with and understood the tone of thoughtand the line of reasoning with which the Cardinal regarded Paganantiquity; and this appreciation pleased the Cardinal, and caused him toaddress much of his conversation directly to him.
The villa was full of objects by which thought and conversation wereattracted to such channels. The garden was entered by a portico ordoor-case adorned with ancient statues, the volto or roof of which waspainted with classic subjects, and the lofty doors themselves werecovered with similar ones in relief. The walls of the house, towardsthe garden, were cased with bas-reliefs,--"antique incrustations ofhistory" the Cardinal called them,--representing the Rape of Europa, ofLeda, and other similar scenes. These antique stones and carvings werefitted into the walls between the rich pilasters and cornicing whichadorned the front of the villa, and the whole was crossed with tendrilsof citron and other flowering shrubs, trained with the utmost art andnicety, so as to soften and ornament without concealing the sculpture.The gardens were traversed by high hedges of myrtle, lemon, orange, andjuniper, interspersed with mulberry trees and oleanders, and wereplanted with wide beds of brilliant flowers, according to the season,now full of anemones, ranunculuses, and crocuses. The whole was formedupon terraces, fringed with balustrades of marble, over which creepingplants were trained with the utmost skill, only leaving sufficientstone-work visible to relieve the foliage. The walks were full ofstatues and pieces of carving in relief. The rooms were ornamented inthe same taste, and the chimney of the one in which the supper was laidwas enriched with sculpture of wonderful grace and delicacy.
One of the Fathers of the Oratory asked Inglesant whether he had seenthe Venus of the Medicean palace, and what he thought of it comparedwith the Venus of the Farnese; and when he had replied, the other turnedto the Cardinal and inquired whether, in his opinion, the Greeks had anyhigher meaning or thought in these beautiful delineations of human formthan mere admiration and pleasure.
"The higher minds among them assuredly," said the Cardinal; "but inanother and more important sense every one of them, even the mostunlettered peasant who gazed upon the work, and the most worldly artistburied in the mere outward conceptions of his art, were consciously orunconsciously following, and even worshipping, a divinity and a truththan which nothing can be higher or more universal. For the truth wastoo powerful for them, and so universal that they could not escape.Human life, in all the phases of its beauty and its deformity, is soinstinct 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?" saidthe Priest, not unnaturally.
"I mean that general consensus and aggregate of truth in which humannature and all that is related to it is contained. That divine idea,indeed, in which all the facts of human life and experience are drawntogether, and exalted to their utmost perfection and refinement, and areseen and felt to form a whole of surpassing beauty and nobleness, inwhich the divine image and plastic power in man is clearly discerned andintellectually received and appropriated."
The Priest did not seem altogether to understand this, and remainedsilent.
"But," said Inglesant, "much of this pursuit of the beautiful must havebeen associated, in the ideas of the majority of the people, withthoughts and actions the most unlovely and undesirable according to theintellectual reason, however delightful to the senses."
"Even in these orgies," replied the Cardinal, "in the most profligateand 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 anyparticular good, though only sensual, is freed and perfected. This is,no doubt, what the higher natures saw, and it was this that reconciledthem to the license of the people and of the unilluminated. In allthese aberrations they saw ever fresh varieties and forms of that truthwhich, when it was intellectually conceived, it was their greatestenjoyment to contemplate, and which, no doubt, formed the material ofthe instructions which the initiated into the mysteries received. It isimpossible that this could be otherwise, for there can be no philosophyif there be no human life from which to derive it. The intellectualexistence and discourses of Socrates cannot be understood, except whenviewed in connection with the sensual and common existence and carnalwisdom of Aristophanes, any more than the death of the one can beunderstood without we also understand the popular thought and feelingdelineated to us by the other. And why should we be so ungrateful as toturn round on this 'beast within the man,' if you so choose to callit,--the human body and human delight
to which we owe not only our ownexistence and all that makes life desirable, but also that veryloftiness and refinement of soul, that elevated and sublime philosophy,which could not exist but for the contrast and antithesis which popularlife presents? Surely it is more philosophical to take in the whole oflife, in every possible form, than to shut yourself up in one doctrine,which, while you fondly dream you have created it, and that it iscapable of self-existence, is dependent for its very being on that humanlife from which you have fled, and which you despise. This is the wholesecret of the pagan doctrine, and the key to those profound views oflife which were evolved in their religion. This is the worship ofPriapus, of human life, in which nothing comes amiss or is to bestaggered at, however voluptuous or sensual, for all things are butvaried manifestations of life; of life, ruddy, delicious, full offruits, basking in sunshine and plenty, dyed with the juice of grapes;of life in valleys cooled by snowy peaks, amid vineyards and shadyfountains, among which however, 'Saepe Faunorum voces exauditae, saepevisae formae Deorum.'"
"This, Signore Inglesant," said the Priest, passing the wine across thetable, with a smile, "is somewhat even beyond the teaching of yourfriends of the society of the Gesu; and would make their doctrine even,excellently as it already suits that purpose, still more propitioustowards the frailty of men."
Inglesant filled his glass, and drank it off before he replied. The winewas of the finest growth of the delicious Alban vineyards; and as thenectar coursed through his veins, a luxurious sense of acquiescencestole over him. The warm air, laden with perfume from the shadedwindows, lulled his sense; a stray sunbeam lighted the piles of fruitand the deeply embossed gold of the service on the table before him, andthe mellow paintings and decorated ceiling of the room. As he slowlydrank his wine the memory of Serenus de Cressy, and of his doctrine ofhuman life, rose before his mind, and his eyes were fixed upon thedeep-coloured wine before him, as though he saw there, as in a magicgoblet, the opposing powers that divide the world. It seemed to himthat he had renounced his right to join in the conflict, and that hemust remain as ever a mere spectator of the result; nevertheless hesaid,--
"Your doctrine is delightful to the philosopher and to the man ofculture, who has his nature under the curb, and his glance firmly fixedupon the goal; but to the vulgar it is death; and indeed it was deathuntil the voice of another God was heard, and the form of another Godwas seen, not in vineyards and rosy bowers, but in deserts and stonyplaces, in dens and caves of the earth, and in prisons and on crosses ofwood."
"It is treason to the idea of cultured life," said the Cardinal, "toevoke such gloomy images. My theory is at least free from such faultsof taste."
"Do not fear me," said Inglesant; "I have no right to preach such alofty religion. An asceticism I never practised it would ill-become meto advocate."
"You spoke of the death of Socrates," said the Priest; "does this eventfall within the all-embracing tolerance of your theory?"
"The death of Socrates," said the Cardinal, "appears to have beennecessary to preserve the framework of ordinary every-day society fromfalling to pieces. At any rate men of good judgment in that day thoughtso, and they must have known best. You must remember that it wasSocrates that was put to death, not Plato, and we must not judge by whatthe latter has left us of what the former taught. The doctrine ofSocrates was purely negative, and undermined the principle of belief notonly in the Gods but in everything else. His dialectic was excellentand noble, his purpose pure and exalted, the clearing of men's mind's offalse impressions; but to the common fabric of society his method wasdestruction. So he was put to death, unjustly of course, and contraryto the highest law, but according to the lower law of expediency,justly; for society must preserve itself even at the expense of itsnoblest thinkers. But," added the Cardinal with a smile, "we have onlyto look a little way for a parallel. It is not, however, a perfect one;for while the Athenians condemned Socrates to a death painless anddignified, the moderns have burnt Servetus, whose doctrine containednothing dangerous to society, but turned on a mere point of the schools,at the stake."
"Why do they not burn you, Cardinal?" said one of the Oratorians, whohad not yet spoken, a very intimate friend of the master of the house.
"They do not know whom to begin with in Rome," he replied; "if they oncecommenced to burn, the holocaust would be enormous before the sacrificewas complete."
"I would they would burn Donna Olympia," said the same Priest; "is ittrue that she has returned?"
"Have patience," said the Cardinal; "from what I hear you will not havelong to wait."
"I am glad you believe in purgatory," said the Priest who had spokenfirst. "I did not know that your Eminence was so orthodox."
"You mistake. I do not look so far. I am satisfied with the purgatoryof this life. I merely meant that I fear we shall not long have hisHoliness among us."
"The moderns have burnt others besides Servetus," said one of theguests--"Vaninus, for instance."
"I did not instance Vaninus," said the Cardinal, "because his punishmentwas more justifiable, and nearer to that of Socrates. Vaninus taughtatheism, which is dangerous to society, and he courted his death. Isuppose, Mr. Inglesant, that your bishops would burn Mr. Hobbes if theydared."
"I know little of the Anglican bishops, Eminence," replied Inglesant;"but from that little I should imagine that it is not impossible."
"What does Mr. Hobbes teach?" said one of the party.
The Cardinal looked at Inglesant, who shook his head.
"What he teaches would require more skill than I possess to explain.What they would say that they burnt him for would be for teachingatheism and the universality of matter. I fancy that it is at leastdoubtful whether even Vaninus meant to deny the existence of God. Ihave been told that he was merely an enthusiastic naturalist, who couldsee nothing but nature, which was his god. But as for Mr. Hobbes'sopinions, he seems to me to have proclaimed a third authority inaddition to the two which already claimed the allegiance of the world.We had first the authority of a Church, then of a book, now Mr. Hobbesasserts the authority of reason; and the supporters of the book, evenmore fiercely than those of the Church, raise a clamour against him.His doctrines are very insidiously and cautiously expressed, and itproves the acuteness of the Anglican divines that they have detected,under the plausible reasoning of Mr. Hobbes, the basis of a logicalargument which would, if unconfuted, destroy the authority of HolyScripture."
The Cardinal looked at Inglesant curiously, as though uncertain whetherhe was speaking in good faith or not, but the subject did not seem topossess great interest to the company at table, and the conversationtook another turn.
John Inglesant: A Romance (Volume 2 of 2) Page 5
