“Dear friend, you must trust me!” he said, “They have sent for me, have they not, to this place you call the Vatican? They desire to see me, and to question me. That being so, whatever God bids me say, I will say; fearing nothing!”
A strong tremour shook the Cardinal’s nerves, — he essayed to find words of wisdom and instruction, but somehow language failed him, — he felt blinded and strengthless, and warned by this impending sense of feebleness, made an instant effort to brace himself up and master the strange fainting that threatened to overwhelm him as it had frequently done before. He succeeded, and without speaking again to Manuel, but only bending one earnest look upon him, he quitted his rooms and proceeded slowly down the great marble staircase of the Palazzo Sovrani, — a staircase famous even in Rome for its architectural beauty — Manuel stepping lightly at his side — and reaching his carriage, entered it with his foundling, and was rapidly driven away.
Arrived at the Vatican, the largest palace in the world, which contains, so historians agree in saying, no less than eleven thousand different apartments with their courts and halls and corridors, they descended at the Portone di Bronzo, — the Swiss Guard on duty saluting as the Cardinal passed in. On they went into the vestibule, chilly and comfortless, of the Scala Pia; — and so up the stone stairs to the Cortile do San Damaso, and thence towards the steps which lead to the Pope’s private apartments. Another Guard met them here and likewise saluted, — in fact, almost at every step of the way, and on every landing, guards were on duty, either standing motionless, or marching wearily up and down, the clank, clank of their footsteps waking dismal echoes from the high vaulted roofs and uncarpeted stone corridors. At last they reached the Sala Clementina, a vast unfurnished hall, rich only with mural decorations and gilding, and here another Guard met them who, without words, escorted the Cardinal and his young companion through a number of waiting-rooms, made more or less magnificent by glorious paintings, wonderful Gobelin tapestries, and unique sculptures, till they reached at last what is called the anti-camera segreto, where none but Cardinals are permitted to enter and wait for an audience with the Supreme Pontiff. At the door of this “Holy of Holies” stood a Guarda Nobile on sentry duty, — but he might have been a figure of painted marble for all the notice he took of their approach. As they passed into the room, which was exceedingly high and narrow, Monsignor Gherardi rose from a table near the window, and received the Cardinal with a kind of stately gravity which suitably agreed with the coldness and silence of the general surroundings. A small lean man, habited in black, also came forward, exchanging a few low whispered words with Gherardi as he did so, and this individual, after saluting the Cardinal, mysteriously disappeared through a little door to the right. He was the Pope’s confidential valet, — a personage who was perhaps more in the secrets of everybody and everything than even Gherardi himself.
“I am afraid we shall have to keep you waiting a little while,” said Gherardi, in his smooth rich voice, which despite its mellow ring had something false about it, like the tone produced by an invisible crack in a fine bell, “Your young friend,” and here he swept a keen, inquisitive glance over Manuel from face to feet, and from feet to face again, “will perhaps be tired?”
“I am never tired!” answered Manuel.
“Nor impatient?” asked Gherardi with a patronising air.
“Nor impatient!”
“Wonderful boy! If you are never tired or impatient, you will be eminently fitted for the priesthood,” said Gherardi, his lip curling with a faint touch of derision, “For even the best of us grow sometimes weary in well-doing!”
And turning from him with a movement which implied both hauteur and indifference, he addressed himself to Bonpre, whose face was clouded, and whose eyes were troubled.
“The unfortunate affair of our friend Vergniaud will be settled to-day,” he began, when the Cardinal raised one hand with a gentle solemnity.
“It is settled!” he returned, “Not even the Church can intervene between Vergniaud and his Maker now!”
Gherardi uttered an exclamation of undisguised annoyance.
“Dead!” he ejaculated, his forehead growing crimson with the anger he inwardly repressed— “Since when?”
“Last night he passed away,” replied the Cardinal. “according to the telegram I have just received from — his son. But he has been dying for some time, and what he told me in Paris was no lie. I explained his exact position to you quite recently, on the day you visited my niece at her studio. He had a serious valvular disease of the heart, — he might, as the doctors said, have lived, at the utmost, two years — but the excitement of recent events has evidently proved too much for him. As I told you, he felt that his death might occur at any moment, and he did not wish to leave the world under a false impression of his character. I trust that now the Holy Father may be inclined to pardon him, in death, if not in life!”
Gherardi walked up and down the narrow room impatiently.
“I doubt it!” he said at last, “I very much doubt it! The man may be dead, but the scandal he caused remains. And his death has made the whole position very much more difficult for you, my lord Cardinal! For as Vergniaud is not alive to endure the penalty of his offence, it is probable YOU may have to suffer for having condoned it!”
Felix Bonpre bent his head gently.
“I shall be ready and willing to suffer whatever God commands!” he answered, “For I most faithfully believe that nothing can injure my soul while it rests, as I humbly place it, in His Holy keeping!”
Gherardi paused in his pacing to and fro, and gazed at the frail figure, and fine old face before him, with mingled compassion and curiosity.
“You should have lived in the early days of the Faith,” he said, “You are too literal — too exact in your following of Christian ethics. That sort of thing does not work nowadays. Dogma must be maintained!”
“What is dogma?” asked Manuel suddenly.
Gherardi gave him a careless glance.
“Cardinal Bonpre must teach you that in extenso!” he replied, with a little smile— “But briefly, — dogma is an opinion or theory derived from the Gospels, and formulated as doctrine, by the Church.”
“An opinion or theory of man, founded on the words of Christ?” said Manuel.
“Just so!”
“But if Christ was divine, should any man presume to formulate a theory on what He Himself said?” asked Manuel. “Are not his own plain words enough?”
Gherardi stared at the young speaker half angrily.
“His own plain words enough?” he repeated mechanically. “What do you mean, boy?”
“I mean,” answered Manuel simply, “that if He were truly a Manifestation of God in Himself, as the Church declares Him to be, I WONDER THAT MAN CAN DARE TO FORMULATE MERE DOGMA ON GOD’S OWN UTTERANCE!”
There was a dead pause. After a few minutes of chill silence Gherardi addressed the Cardinal.
“Your young friend has a dangerous tongue!” he said sternly, “You had best warn or command him that he set a guard upon it in the Holy Father’s presence!”
“There is no need to either warn or command me!” said Manuel, a smile irradiating his fair face as he met the angry eyes of Gherardi with the full calmness of his own— “I have been sent for, and I am here. Had I not been sent for I should not have come. Now that I have been called to answer for myself I will answer, — with truth and without fear. For what can any man cause me to suffer if I am to myself true?”
Another heavy pause ensued. An invisible something was in the air, — a sense of that vast supernatural which is deeply centered at the core of the natural universe, — a grave mystery which seemed to envelop all visible things with a sudden shadow of premonitory fear. The silence prevailing was painful — almost terrible. A great ormolu clock in the room, one of the Holy Father’s “Jubilee” gifts, ticked the minutes slowly away with a jewel-studded pendulum, which in its regular movements to and fro sounded insolently obtrus
ive in such a stillness. Gherardi abstractedly raised his eyes to a great ivory crucifix which was displayed upon the wall against a background of rich purple velvet, — Manuel was standing immediately in front of it, and the tortured head of the carven Christ drooped over him as though in a sorrow-stricken benediction. A dull anger began to irritate Gherardi’s usually well-tempered nerves, and he was searching in his mind for some scathing sentence wherewith to overwhelm and reprove the confident ease of the boy, when the door leading to the Pope’s apartments was slowly pushed open to admit the entrance of Monsignor Moretti. Cardinal Bonpre had not seen him since the day of the Vergniaud scandal in Paris, — and a faint colour came into his pale cheeks as he noted the air of overbearing condescension and authority with which Moretti, here on his own ground, as one of the favorites of the Pope, greeted him.
“The Holy Father is ready to receive you,” he said, “But I regret to inform your Eminence that His Holiness can see no way to excuse or condone the grave offence of the Abbe Vergniaud, — moreover, the fact of the sin-begotten son being known to the world as Gys Grandit, makes it more than ever necessary that the ban of excommunication should be passed upon him. Especially, as those uninstructed in the Faith, are under the delusion that the penalty of excommunication has become more or less obsolete, and we have now an opportunity for making publicly known the truth that it still exists, and may be used by the Church in extreme situations, when judged politic and fitting.”
“Then in this case the Church must excommunicate the dead!” said the Cardinal quietly.
Moretti’s face turned livid.
“Dead?” he exclaimed, “I do not believe it!”
Silently Bonpre handed him the telegram received that morning. Moretti read it, his eyes sparkling with rage.
“How do I know this is not a trick?” he said, “The accursed atheist of a son may have telegraphed a lie!”
“I hardly think he would condescend to that!” returned the Cardinal calmly, “It would not be worth his while. You must remember, that to one of his particular views, Church excommunication, either for his father or himself, would mean nothing. He makes himself responsible for his conduct to God only. And whatever his faults he certainly believes in God!”
Moretti read through the telegram again.
“We must place this before His Holiness,” he said, “And it will very seriously annoy him! I fear your Eminence,” here he gave a quick meaning look at Bonpre, “will be all the more severely censured for having pardoned the Abbe’s sins.”
“Is it wrong to forgive sinners?” asked Manuel, his clear young voice breaking through the air like a silver bell rung suddenly,— “And when one cannot reach the guilty, should one punish the innocent?”
Moretti scowled fiercely at the fair candid face turned enquiringly near his own.
“You are too young to ask questions!” he said roughly— “Wait to be questioned yourself — and think twice — aye three times before you answer!”
The bright expression of the boy’s countenance seemed to become intensified as he heard.
“‘Take no thought how or what ye shall speak, for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak!’” he said softly—”’For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you!’”
Moretti flushed angrily, and his hand involuntarily clenched.
“Those words were addressed by our Lord to His Apostles,” he retorted— “Apostles, of whom our Holy Father the Pope is the one infallible representative. They were not spoken to an ignorant lad who barely knows his catechism!”
“Yet were not the Apostles themselves told,” went on Manuel steadily, “to be humble as ignorant children if they would enter the Kingdom of Heaven? And did not Christ say, ‘Whoso offendeth one of these little ones which believe in Me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depths of the sea!’ I am sure there are many such little ones who believe in Christ, — perhaps too, without knowing any catechism, — and even Apostles must beware of offending them!”
“Does this boy follow your teaching in the quoting of Scripture with so glib a tongue?” asked Moretti, turning sharply round upon the Cardinal.
Bonpre returned his angry look with one of undisturbed serenity.
“My son, I have taught him nothing!” he replied, “I have no time as yet — and I may add — no inclination, to become his instructor. He speaks from his own nature.”
“It is a nature that needs training!” said Gherardi, smiling blandly, and silencing by a gesture Moretti’s threatening outburst of wrath, “To quote Scripture rashly, without due consideration for the purpose to which it is to be applied, does not actually constitute an offence, but it displays a reprehensible disregard and ignorance of theology. However, theology,” here he smiled still more broadly, “is a hard word for the comprehension of the young! This poor little lad cannot be expected to grasp its meaning.”
Manuel raised his bright eyes and fixed them steadily on the priest’s countenance.
“Oh, yes!” he said quietly, “I understand it perfectly! Originally it meant the Word or Discourse of God, — it has now come to mean the words or discourses, or quarrels and differences of men on the things of God! But God’s Word remains God’s Word — eternally, invincibly! No man can alter it, and Christ preached it so plainly that the most simple child cannot fail to understand it!”
Moretti was about to speak when again Gherardi interrupted him.
“Patience! Patience!” he said soothingly, “Perchance we must say” — this with a flash of derision from his dark crafty eyes, “that a prophet hath arisen in Israel! Listen to me, boy! If Christ spoke as plainly as you say, and if all He preached could be understood by the people, why should He have founded a Church to teach His doctrine?”
“He did not found a Church,” answered Manuel, “He tried to make a Human Brotherhood. He trusted twelve men. They all forsook Him in His hour of need, and one betrayed Him! When He died and arose again from the dead, they sought to give themselves a Divine standing on His Divinity. They preached His Word to the world — true! — but they preached their own as well! Hence the Church!”
Moretti’s angry eyes rolled in his head with an excess of wrath and amazement.
“Surely some evil spirit possesses this boy!” he exclaimed irately, “Retro me Sathanas! He is a rank heretic — a heathen! And yet he lives in the companionship of Cardinal Felix Bonpre!”
Both priests looked at the Cardinal in angry astonishment, but he stood silent, one wrinkled hand holding up the trailing folds of his scarlet robe, — his head slightly bent, and his whole attitude expressive of profound patience and resignation. Manuel turned his eyes upon him and smiled tenderly.
“It is not the fault of Cardinal Bonpre that I think my own thoughts,” he said, “or that I speak as I have spoken from the beginning. He found me lost and alone in the world, — and he sheltered me, knowing not whom he sheltered! Let what blame there is in me therefore be mine alone, and not his or another’s!”
His young voice, so full of sweetness, seemed to melt the cold and heavy silence into vibrations of warm feeling, and a sudden sense of confusion and shame swept over the callous and calculating minds of the two men, miscalled priests, as they listened. But before they could determine or contrive an answer, the door was thrown open, and the lean man in black entered, and pausing on the threshold bowed slightly, — then raising his hand with a gesture which invited all to follow him, turned again and walked on in front, — then crossing a small antechamber, he drew aside a long curtain of purple damask heavily fringed with gold, and opened a farther door. Here he stood back, and allowed Cardinal Bonpre to pass in first, attended by Manuel, — Monsignori Gherardi and Moretti followed. And then the valet, closing the door behind them, and pulling the rich curtain across, sat down himself close outside it to be within call when the Holy Father should summon his attendance by means of a bell wh
ich hung immediately over his head. And to while away the time he pulled from his pocket that day’s issue of a well-known Republican paper, — one of the most anti-Papal tendency, thereby showing that his constant humble attendance upon the Head of the Church had not made him otherwise than purely human, or eradicated from his nature that peculiar quality with which most of us are endowed, namely, the perversity of spirit which leads us often to say and do things which are least expected of us. The Pope’s confidential valet was not exempt from this failing. He like the Monsignori, enjoyed the exciting rush and secret risk of money speculation, — he also had his little schemes of self-advancement; and, as is natural to all who are engaged in a certain kind of service, he took care to read everything that could be said by outsiders against the person or persons whom he served. Thus, despite the important capacity he filled, he was not a grade higher than the ordinary butler, who makes it his business to know all the peccadilloes and failings of his master. “No man is a hero to his valet” is a very true axiom, — and even the Head of the Church, the Manifestation of the Divine, the “Infallible in Council,” was a mere Nothing to the little man in black who had the power to insist on His Holiness changing a soiled cassock for a clean one.
XXVIII.
There are certain moments in life which seem weighted with the history of ages — when all the past, present and future merge into the one omnipresent Now, — moments, which if we are able to live through them with courage, may decide a very eternity of after-glory — but which, if we fail to comprehend their mission, pass, taking with them the last opportunity of all good that shall ever be granted to us in this life. Such a moment appeared, to the reflective mind of Cardinal Bonpre, to have presented itself to him, as for the second time in ten days, he found himself face to face with the Sovereign Pontiff, the pale and aged man with the deep dark eyes set in such cavernous sockets, that as they looked out on the world through that depth of shadow, seemed more like great jewels in the head of a galvanised skeleton than the eyes of a living human being. On this occasion the Pope was enthroned in a kind of semi-state, on a gilded chair covered with crimson velvet; and a rich canopy of the same material, embroidered and fringed with gold, drooped in heavy folds above him. Attired in the usual white, — white cassock, white skull cap, and white sash ornamented with the emblematic keys of St. Peter, embroidered in gold thread at the ends, — his unhandsome features, pallid as marble, and seemingly as cold, — bloodless everywhere, even to the lips, — suggested with dreadful exactitude a corpse in burial clothes just lifted from its coffin and placed stiffly upright in a sitting position. Involuntarily Cardinal Bonpre, as he made the usual necessary genuflections, thought, with a shrinking interior sense of horror at the profanity of his own idea, that the Holy Father as he then appeared, might have posed to a painter of allegories, as the frail ghost of a dead Faith. For he looked so white and slender and fragile and transparent, — he sat so rigidly, so coldly, without a movement or a gesture, that it seemed as if the touch of a hand might break him into atoms, so brittle and delicate a figure of clay was he. When he spoke, his harsh voice, issuing from the long thin lips which scarcely moved, even in utterance, was startling in its unmelodious loudness, the more so when its intonation was querulous, as now.
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22) Page 500
