by Isak Dinesen
“Father Jacopo folded his hands. ‘A rose of Sharon,’ he said. ‘Aye, and does not the rose clearly exhibit to our eyes the signature of the workshop from which she is issued? And does not the heap of wheat, too, exhibit it?’
“And as he realized to what extent his own soul was the lover of the woman’s soul, he added slowly, in a voice which trembled a little because he was clasping his hands so hard, these lines from the Song of Songs: ‘Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm, for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love’—and for a moment he called to mind Lady Flora’s great wealth—‘it would utterly be contemned.’
“On another day he once more dwelled upon the idea of human fellowship and said: ‘The third article of our creed itself speaks of the Communion of Saints—’
“ ‘Thank you, I know it, I know it by heart,’ Lady Flora interrupted. ‘The Communion of Saints, the Resurrection of the body—’
“ ‘And the Life everlasting,’ Father Jacopo finished tranquilly. ‘Of the Communion of Saints because—amongst human beings—without communion no real sanctity will be obtained. A hand, a foot or an eye only gains the divine signature when integrated into a body. We are all branches on the same tree—’
“ ‘I have always liked trees,’ said Lady Flora, ‘and make no objection to talking about them. But I am a tree in myself, Father Jacopo, and no branch.’
“ ‘We are all,’ Father Jacopo continued, ‘limbs of the same Body.’
“ ‘Oh, do spare me, just for once, your limbs and bodies,’ Lady Flora exclaimed. ‘And do stick to botany, and to that heap of wheat of which the other day you talked so beautifully.’
“ ‘That is not possible,’ Father Jacopo declared with much force. ‘That the wheat is transformed into Body—in this lies the inmost mystery of our communion! You doubt,’ he went on, carried away by his theme, ‘that we be all one!—and yet you are aware that one is dead for us all!’
“ ‘Not for me,’ Lady Flora said briskly. ‘I beg to be excused! Never in my life have I asked any human being—much less any god—to die for me, and I must insist that my own personal account be kept altogether outside this statement. A great deal of rubbish,’ she went on, ‘in the course of my life I have had foisted upon me—especially here in Italy—and have been paying for it too, in good sound sterling. But what I have neither ordered nor paid for I will not receive.’
“At that Father Jacopo realized that Lady Flora’s great sin was not that she ever refused to give—for more than anyone he was acquainted with her exceptional generosity and beneficence—but that she refused to receive, and he grew heavy at heart. He sat immovable and dumb for such a long time that in the end she turned round toward him in her chair.
“ ‘Alas, Lady Flora, my child,’ he at last said, ‘allow my frail reason time to comprehend the extent of your heroic unreason! I cannot at this moment, not tonight, speak to you of your relation to Heaven. I am an unworthy priest, and it appears as if Heaven will not employ me as its spokesman; when I make the attempt, it withdraws itself from me!
“ ‘But I am a man,’ he continued very slowly and in great agitation of mind, ‘let me speak to you of your relation to mankind.
“ ‘There are many things in life which a human being—and in particular a highly talented and privileged human being like you, my daughter—may attain by personal endeavor. But there exists a true humanity, which will ever remain a gift, and which is to be accepted by one human being as it is given to him by a fellow human. The one who gives has himself been a receiver. In this way, link by link, a chain is made from land to land and from generation to generation. Rank, wealth and nationality in this matter all go for nothing. The poor and downtrodden can hand over the gift to kings, and kings will pass it on to their favorites at Court or to an itinerant dancer in their city. The Negro slave may give it to the slave-owner or the slave-owner to the slave. Strange and wonderful it is to consider how in such community we are bound to foreigners whom we have never seen and to dead men and women whose names we have never heard and shall never hear, more closely even than if we were all holding hands.’
“ ‘Bah, this is theology,’ said Lady Flora. ‘It is very amusing to discuss theology with you, Father Jacopo. But in my family we have always been practical people.’
“Father Jacopo now realized that he would never by words or arguments prevail against the obstinate lady. Yet here in Rome he was somewhat more hopeful than he had been in her villa in Tuscany. For as he walked about the old squares and streets and entered the churches—ever carrying her with him in his mind—he reflected that the Eternal City itself must possess the remedy against her ailment, and must itself know when and how to use it.
“One day Father Jacopo sat for a long time in the basilica of San Pietro. In here he felt that the dimensions of the mighty building, as if on their own and without our reflecting upon it, would swallow up and do away with all difference of size between human beings. And it came to him that this would be the right place to take Lady Flora.
“So as soon as her invalidism permitted, he asked her to visit San Pietro in his company.
“He had planned beforehand what round to make, and in what order to point out to his companion the treasure of the basilica. But he did not carry out his program.
“ ‘For as by the side of the lady I entered the church,’ he said as he told me his tale, ‘it seemed to me that I was seeing it with her own eyes! This was the very first time that its vault rose above me and that its walls embraced me. And my happiness at the idea that such glory was to be found on earth made me dumb.’
“Nor did Lady Flora speak. For more than three hours she dwelt in the church, and as very slowly she finished her round it seemed to Father Jacopo that her step grew lighter.
“In the end she stood still in front of the statue of St. Peter himself, and for a long time remained standing before it. She paid no attention to the worshippers, who walked past her in order to kiss the foot of the figure. She raised her eyes to the head of the great Apostle, and for a while looked him gravely in the face. Thereupon she lowered her gaze to the hand of bronze, which holds the key of heaven, and to Father Jacopo it looked as if she compared it to her own, which was clutching the ivory handle of her parasol. The moment to her faithful friend was solemn and strangely joyful. His tongue was loosened, almost without knowing it he broke into the proclamation of the basilica itself: ‘Tu es Petrus, et super banc petram œdificabo ecclesiam meam!’
“In the coach Lady Flora said, smiling: ‘Is that something great, now—to let oneself be crucified head downward? One would not be able to help laughing!’
“After this day San Pietro became the favorite goal for Lady Flora’s drives in Rome. Her coachman, when she had taken her seat in the carriage, without waiting for orders would steer his team toward the big square, and each time she terminated her walk in the church in front of St. Peter’s own figure.
“One early morning, while the church was still almost empty, Father Jacopo happened to enter it and to see Lady Flora standing, erect as ever, lost in contemplation of the statue. He did not approach, but silently observed the group which the two formed.
“ ‘Is the woman now,’ he asked himself, ‘for the first time in her life, filled with reverence and transported by the greatness of a human form? Her pride of birth is boundless,’ he further reflected, for through his noble penitents he was acquainted with aristocratic arrogance. ‘In disdain even of royal houses she reckons her ancestors, the Scots chieftains, back to heathen ages. Does she, now, dare to feel consanguinity with the fisherman from the lake of Genesareth?’ He could not tear himself from the sight of the immovable seated and the immovable standing figure. His thoughts ran on, for he was, as I have already said, a man of intuition and imagination.
“ ‘Is her courage,’ he asked himself, �
�boundless too? Does she fancy that at this moment the Dark One before her perceives a consanguinity with a person of flesh and blood? The great scholars will have it that this bronze St. Peter has once been the Jove of ancient Rome, enthroned on the Capitol, and that he is only in so far recast as the thunderbolt in his hand has been replaced by the key. Of this a simple priest can know nothing. But if it be so, then surely a divine energy has passed through the bronze, so that now all lines and forms therein are those of Peter himself. Surely, then, the transformed will have power to transform. And surely the woman who sets her pride in denying all, will find help with him who, before the cock crew the third time, three times had denied!’
“Lady Flora’s sojourn in Rome now, according to her plans for the journey, approached its end. From Rome she would go southwards, first to Naples and Sicily and later on to Greece. Since the time when the great and beloved poet Lord Byron glorified, and died for, this country, its soil to his countrymen has become both sacred and familiar, and it is to them a new colony, which the mighty British kingdom has acquired, this time by spiritual arms.
“It was at this stage of events that Father Jacopo looked me up, in considerable agitation of mind, and told me his and Lady Flora’s story.
“ ‘And now, my Atanasio,’ he said, ‘you will have to come to my aid, and to give me your advice.
“ ‘A couple of evenings ago I sat with Lady Flora in her red salon. Suddenly she turned toward me, with more hardness and mockery in her face than I have ever seen there, and asked me: “How, Father Jacopo, have you come upon the idea that I be afraid of you?”
“ ‘Any such thought had been far from me, and I told her so. “Oh, do not beat about the bush now,” she said. “For indeed you permit yourself to believe that the hocus-pocus of your Rome, its holy water and rosaries and saints’ bones—in the twinkling of an eye, and whether I myself consent or not—shall change me into a meek little lamb within Saint Peter’s fold. You permit yourself to believe that I have already, in some alarm, experienced a need to go down on all fours, and that this alarm is the real reason for my departure—aye, for my flight—from Rome! But you are a simpleton, good Father. You are wasting your time pouring water on a Highlander, and no Gordon willl ever be bitten by the teeth of your holy skulls. I warrant you that they would crack in the attempt! For no outside touch will ever leave a mark on us, but it is we, my friend, who mark and stamp the things that touch us.
“ ‘ “Look here,” she continued, “in order to please you, and in gratitude for your kind guidance in Rome, I am still willing to go down on all fours. On my knees”—here she struck one of her mighty knees—“I shall ascend your holy stair, the Scala Santa! And you will see for yourself, then, that while my weight may have polished or worn your steps a bit, I myself”—and here she struck her mighty bosom—“shall be no softer and no more polished on the top of the stair than I was at the bottom of it! Come, my kind and wise friend, I shall order my carriage, and we will go there at once, and together!”
“ ‘I had to think,’ said Father Jacopo, ‘before I answered her: “Indeed, Milady, if—without any human companion, in the depth of night, and with the night of unbelief in your own heart—you would imitate this act of penance of the believers, I should feel that it was all done in vain. Aye, I might tremble to imagine who was now in reality accompanying you. But if you would consent to carry through the act as a common member of the long row of humble, poor sinners, I should feel that you might still partake of the blessing of human fellowship.”
“ ‘She looked at me and laughed again. “O la la,” she said, “a fox and a priest—the two will always have one more way out than you expect, and it is hard for decent people to run them to earth. How often have I told you that the breath of your humble sinners is odious to me!”
“ ‘She recited some lines out of a book:
“……. mechanic slaves
With greasy aprons, rules and hammers, shall
Uplift us to the view;—in their thick breaths,
Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded,
And forc’d to drink their vapor …
“ ‘ “Nay, give me an honest Scots northwestern! We two have got much in common, and can speak to one another.
“ ‘ “For the blessing of your human fellowship, Father Jacopo—what does it mean but that one man leans on another, because none of the whole crowd has energy to stand on his own legs. Your long row of humble poor sinners squeeze together, body to body, to keep warm. Oh, let them be cold, and keep their self-respect!
“ ‘ “I shall tell you something, Father Jacopo,” she continued slowly. “While, formerly, the human body, with its vapors, to me was the most unpleasant; lately, here in Rome, it is the face that I loathe, because of the dishonesty and hypocrisy which I read in it. In the City of Rome there is but one honest face, and that is fifteen hundred years old.”
“ ‘She said no more, and I left her and walked away.
“ ‘But when I was alone,’ Father Jacopo finished, ‘I bethought myself of many things, and a question was put to me, which I myself cannot answer. Therefore I have come to you. Am I not committing a double wrong by allowing a haughty and unbelieving woman to share in the devotion of the humble and faithful? Shall I not thereby be blaspheming against the sacred act and against the sacred idea of community?’
“Like Father Jacopo himself,” the Cardinal said, “I had to think before I spoke.
“ ‘My Jacopo,’ I said at last. ‘Be you without fear. It is not impossible that, in the wisdom of your simplicity, you have found the surest means of hindering the purpose of this woman, whom you call haughty and unbelieving. I cannot see her taking her stand in your humble and faithful row. Her dégout of human touch is very deep; she shakes hands with nobody. Very likely the great lady, in the countenance of a person to whom she gave her hand, has read amazement at the size of that hand. And, my friend, what handgrip would she find, in all Rome, to respond to her own?
“ ‘But if, in spite of all, she should take you at your word, then you may trustfully lay the responsibility for the blasphemy on my shoulders. For I tell you, Jacopo: there will be no blasphemy.
“ ‘There are in Rome—and in the world—so many poor wretches who yell and whine over the worthlessness of the world, and their own wretchedness, as over a toothache, and who cry out for salvation as for a hot poultice—or out with the tooth!—that one may well wonder at the patience of the Lord. But the human being, who in such dead earnest challenges—not Heaven, for Heaven is not to be challenged—but her own nature, Heaven will not let down. Through her own nature it will mightily answer her.
“ ‘She is right: she is a noblewoman, and it is she who will transform the things that touch or strike her—not the outside things that will ever transform her.
“ ‘The matter now stands between high powers. You and I, Jacopo, can but wait and see.’
“Father Jacopo let himself be consoled by my words, he thanked me and walked away.
“I did not see him again. Some time after our talk together I was informed that Lady Flora, in accordance with her plan, had left Rome. I much regretted not to have seen her before her departure, for I should have been happy to thank her for her very handsome donation to the Basilica of St. John Lateran.
“A few months later I learned that Father Jacopo had applied for and obtained the modest office of parish priest in his native parish, a long way from Rome, in Piemonte.”
The Cardinal here made a long pause.
“The last chapter of—or the epilogue to—the story which I have had the honor to tell you, I know from the heroine.
“In the following spring I paid a visit to the Bath of Monte Scalzo, in Ascoli.
“Oh, how live and soothing is the air of that neighborhood to breathe! How exquisite in its pureness! With what noble force and mastery does it blue the distant mountains! This is the real country of my childhood. The austere, medieval castle, my father’s residence, stands f
ar away from here; it is the dowry of my mother, the Villa Belvicino, which is pasted like a swallow’s nest between the long slopes and the endless olive groves. When I was a child she often took me with her here, and we were alone together and perfectly happy.
“In Monte Scalzo I looked up one of the guests of the Bath, an old friend.
“The human misery for which people resort to this particular Bath is that which has been named after the goddess of love of our own Roman ancestors. And the treatment which the Bath offers them, follows the old saying: ‘Hora cum Venere, decem annu cum Mercurio.’ Yet the visitors of the Bath never blab about their intimacy with the goddess, but they very courteously inquire after one another’s facial erysipelas, migraine or rheumatism.
“Their circle was naturally amiable, unprejudiced and fearless, and I felt content and easy in mind in their company. Many pleasant hours were passed at the card table, others were dedicated to music or to philosophical discussions. The lively conversation would also run on common friends and acquaintances, but would always be free of malice.
“This season it had become a fashion among the ladies and gentlemen of the Bath to designate both present and absent friends by fictitious, romantic names—frequently taken from mythology, history or the classics. Until the newcomer in their circle had become accustomed to the pleasantry it might cause him some embarrassment.
“A lady of the coterie, who was away at the moment, and who obviously was sincerely missed by everyone, was referred to as Diana, or at other times as Principessa Daria, or as just Daria—and always with quite exceptional affection and respect. I was therefore surprised when I realized that this name was in fact an abbreviation of the word dromedaria, which seemed to me a gross nickname for a woman of high rank and—as I gathered—past the prime of youth. But a gentleman of the society, a famous orientalist, smilingly undertook to enlighten me.
