Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  “Is it as serious as that?” asked Don Matteo, very much surprised, for only the very gravest matters, and generally the most terrible crimes, are referred to the bishop by a confessor.

  “It is a grave matter,” answered Don Teodoro. “Have the kindness to get your stole, and I will make my confession, here. But we will lock the enter door of the outer room, if you please.”

  He was shivering, and his face was white as he rose to go and slip the bolt. Re-entering the room, he locked the inner door also behind him. Don Matteo had produced from a drawer an old violet stole with tarnished silver embroidery. It was carefully wrapped up in thin, clean, white paper. A priest always wears the stole in administering any of the seven sacraments. He passed it over his head, and the broad bands fell over his breast, and he held the ends, upon which were embroidered small Greek crosses, in one of his hands. Grave and silent, he sat down beside the table, resting his elbow upon it and shading his eyes with his other hand.

  Don Teodoro knelt down, beside him at the table, and each said his part of the preliminary form in a low voice. When Don Teodoro had said the first half of the ‘Confiteor,’ he was silent for some time, and Don Matteo was aware that his tall, thin frame was trembling, for the table shook under his elbow. Then he began to speak, as follows: —

  “I must tell the story of my life. My father was an officer in the army of King Ferdinand, under the former government, and I was his only child. He had a little fortune, and his pay was relatively large for those days, so that I was brought up as a gentleman’s son. My father, who had been so fortunate as to make many advantageous friendships in the course of his career, wished me to enter the military academy and the army. By his interest I should have had rapid advancement. But this was not my inclination. Ever since I can remember anything, I know that I ardently wished to be a priest. As a little boy, I used to make a small altar in a dark room behind my own, and I used to adorn it and dress it for the feast days, and light tapers on it, and save my pocket money to buy tiny silver ornaments for it. Before I could read I knew the Rosary and the short Litanies, and I used to say them very devoutly before my little altar, with genuflexions and other gestures such as I saw the priests make in church. My father smiled sometimes, but he did not interfere. He was a devout man, though he was a soldier. I had some facility for learning, also, and was fond of all books. My mother died when I was four years old.

  “I need not tell how the devout passion increased in me as I grew older. I passed through all the stages of such development very quickly. My father believed that I had a true vocation for the Church, and yielding to my entreaties and to the advice of his friends, who told him that he could never make a soldier of such a boy, he allowed me to enter a seminary. I was very happy, and my love of books and my earnest desire to be a priest continued to increase. I was made a deacon and received the tonsure. Then I fell ill. It was the will of Heaven, for I never was ill before that, nor have been since. It was a long illness, a dangerous fever. Just before that time, while I was in the seminary, my father had married a second time, a young and very beautiful woman, scarcely two years older than I. They both took care of me, and she was very kind and liked me from the first.

  “I loved her. That was perhaps an illness also, for I never suffered in that way again. It was very terrible, for I knew what a great sin it was to love my father’s wife. I never told her that I loved her, and she was always the same, kind and good. My heart was red-hot iron in my breast, day and night, and it was very long before I was really well again. After that, I confessed my sin many times, but I could not feel repentance for it. My father wondered, and so did she, why I would not go back to the seminary for the few months that remained to complete my studies. It would have been better if I had gone back. But I loved her, and I could not. I could not confess the sin in my heart to the confessor of the seminary, for whom I had great esteem and who had known me so long, I was ashamed, and waited, thinking that it would pass. But I wished to escape.

  “I joined myself as a lay brother to a Franciscan mission that was going to Africa. My father made many objections to this, but I overcame them. I think he guessed that I loved his wife, and though he loved me, too, he was glad that I should go away. As for me, I trusted that in the labours of a distant mission I should forget my love, feel honest repentance, receive absolution, and be ordained a true priest by a missionary bishop.

  “We were seven who started together upon that mission. After two years I alone was left alive. One after the other they died of the fever of that country. We had written for help, but I knew afterwards that our letters had not reached the sea. That was why no one came to bring help. We had converted people amongst those savages and had built a chapel. Even those who were not converted were friendly, for we had taught them many things. My companions all died, one by one, and I buried the last. But I myself was never ill of the fever. Yet the people there clung around me. I committed a great sin. They had no priest, and they did not understand that I was not one, for I dressed like the others. If there were no more services in the little chapel, they would think that Christianity was dead, and they would fall back to their former condition. I took the sin upon myself, and I said mass for them, knowing that it was no mass, and praying that God would forgive me, and that it might not be a sacrilege. I did not fall ill. I lived amongst them, and received their confessions and administered all the sacraments when they were required, for the space of a year and a half, during which I sent many appeals for help. But in my letters I did not explain what I was doing, for I intended to go to the bishop if I ever got home alive, and confess to him.

  “At last help came, priests and lay brothers. It pleased Heaven that they should come at last at the very moment when I was saying mass for the people. Of course there was no bishop amongst them, and none of them knew that I was not a priest. I should have confessed the truth to the eldest of them, but I had no courage, for I did not do it at once, but put it off, and as every priest said mass every day, I said mine, too, on the first morning after the others had come. I wished to go away at once. But I alone knew all the people, and could preach a little in their language, and I was much loved by them, for I had been alone with them during eighteen months. So my new brethren would not let me go, and after what I had done so far, I was ashamed to tell the truth about myself. They looked up to me as a superior, because I had been so long in the mission and had lived through what had killed so many. They thought me very humble and praised my humility. But it was not humility — it was shame.

  “During two years more I remained with them, and two of them died, but the rest lived, for I had learned how men should live in that country in order to escape the fevers, and I taught them. The mission grew, and many people were converted. Then they began to speak of sending home two of their number to Rome, to give an account of the work, and to get more help, if possible, in order that the conversion might be carried further into the country; and they decided to do so. It was my right to be one of the two, and I took it. My companion was a young priest less strong than the rest, and we left the mission and after a long journey we got home safely. I meant to go to the first bishop I met, and make my confession.

  “But when we came to Rome and we were giving an account of what had been done, the young priest thrust me forward to speak, as was natural, and I seemed to be a personage of importance, because I had lived through so many perils and had outlived so many. We two were invited to dinner by cardinals, and were admitted to a private audience of the Pope. Everybody seemed to know what I had done, and even the liberal newspapers praised my courage and devotion.

  “I had no courage, for being full of vanity, I never confessed my sin. But I would not go back to the mission, and when I could leave Rome, I left the young priests there and went to Naples to see my father. He had read what had been written about me, and was proud of me, and he received me gladly, for he loved me and was a devout man. Six years had passed since I had seen his wife, and thou
gh I trembled when I was just about to see her, yet when she entered the room I knew that I did not love her any more, and I was very much pleased to find that this sin, at least, had left me.

  “I lived with them several years, devoting myself to study, and I used to say my mass in a church close by. For I was a priest by nature and heart, and I had grown so used to my sin of sacrilege, that I shut my eyes, and told myself that it was the wish of Heaven. But the truth is, I was a coward. It was then that you first knew me and you know how my father died and my stepmother married again, and how I undertook to be the tutor of poor Bosio Macomer. But with years, the city grew distasteful to me, and I wished to be alone, for Bosio was grown up, and I had no heart for teaching any one else. I was also very poor, having spent what my father left me, both on books, and in other ways of which I need not speak because there was nothing wrong in what I did with the money.

  “And then, Count Macomer — the one who is now insane — offered to make me curate of Muro and chaplain of the castle of the Serra, all of which you know. And I, accustomed to my wickedness, and feeling myself a priest, though I was not one, accepted it for the peace of it.

  “It is a very terrible thing. For all the sacraments I have administered in these many years have been of no value; but the worst, for its consequences, is that none of the many hundreds I have married, are truly married, and that if the truth were known to them, the confusion would be beyond my power to imagine. But Christians they are, for a layman may baptize, even though he be not in a state of grace.

  “And for the other sacraments, the sin is all mine, as you see, and God will be good to them all, according to the intention and belief they had. And now a worse thing has happened, though it was not my fault, excepting that the original fault is all mine. For Don Gianluca della Spina was lying at the point of death, and there were with him the princess and Don Sigismondo Taquisara, the Baron of Guardia, his friend. The princess desired to be married to Don Gianluca, before he died, and sent for me in great haste and commanded me to marry them. As I raised my eyes to speak, for it was impossible to resist her will, the Taquisara thought that Don Gianluca was dead and took the princess’s hand from the dead man’s, as he thought, and as I suppose — and I gave them the benediction. But when I looked down, it was the Baron of Guardia who appeared to have been married to the princess, for their right hands were clasped; and I cannot tell whether, if I were a true priest, they would have been married or not.

  “But the princess and Don Gianluca believe that I made them husband and wife, though the Taquisara knows that something was wrong, since he held her hand. For Don Gianluca has recovered, and they are now about to have a civil marriage and announce it to their friends.

  “It was the will of God that my own sin should follow me to the end, and that it should be the means of freeing these three persons from their terrible position. For the Baron of Guardia believes that he is married to the princess, and she believes that she is Don Gianluca’s wife. But as yet no further harm is done, and the Taquisara is the bravest gentleman and the truest man to his friend that ever drew breath. Therefore I have made this confession. And I will abide all the consequences. The bishop before whom you will lay the case will know what is to be done. It will be in his power, I presume, to acquaint the princess with the fact that she is not married at all, and must be married by a true priest; and to do so, without injuring the poor people of Muro who have been the victims of my sin for many years.

  “That is my confession. And now, if I have not made all clear to you, I beg you to ask me such questions as you think fit, for it is not in your power to give me absolution.”

  Don Teodoro was exhausted. His face sank upon his folded hands on the edge of the table, and his shoulders trembled.

  “My poor friend! My poor friend!” repeated Don Matteo, in a low and wondering tone. “No — it is quite clear,” he added. “There is nothing which I have not understood. But I can say nothing, my poor friend! Pray — pray for forgiveness. God will forgive you, for you have done evil only to yourself, and never anything but good to others.”

  Don Teodoro in a hardly audible voice repeated the second half of the ‘Confiteor’ and remained on his knees a little while longer. Don Matteo covered his eyes with his hands, and during several minutes there was silence. Then the two old men rose and looked at each other for a moment.

  “Courage!” said Don Matteo, and he gently patted his friend’s shoulder.

  He took off his stole, folded it carefully, and wrapped it in its clean white paper again, before putting it away. But he did that by force of habit. Confessors hear strange things sometimes and are not easily disconcerted, but Don Teodoro’s was the strangest tale that had ever come to Don Matteo’s ears. Again he came and patted Don Teodoro’s shoulder in a way of kindly encouragement.

  Then he took his three-cornered hat and went out without a word. In such a case there was no time to be lost.

  Cardinal Campodonico was at that time the archbishop of Naples, and he received Don Matteo immediately, for the priest was a man of extraordinarily brilliant gifts and well known to the prelate, who liked him and had caused him to be made a canon of the cathedral not many years earlier.

  Don Matteo, as was right in such a position, laid the whole matter before him as a theoretical case of conscience, without names, and without any useless details which might by any possibility give a clue to his real penitent’s identity. He stated it all with great clearness and force, but he dwelt much upon the spotless life of charity and good works which the man had led, in spite of his one chief sin. He knew, when Don Teodoro spoke of having spent his father’s fortune, that almost every penny of it had gone to the poor of Naples in one way or another, and he had seen at a glance how his poor friend had in his youth exaggerated his boyish admiration for his stepmother. But Don Matteo put the main point very clearly before the cardinal — always as a purely theoretical case of conscience, asking what a confessor’s duty would be in such an extremely difficult situation.

  The cardinal listened attentively, and then was silent for some time.

  “The first thing to be done,” he said at last, “would be to make a priest of him. He is evidently a man with a vocation, and the chain of circumstances which led him into this sin and difficulty is a very strange one. I hardly know what to say of it — left alone with savages only just converted — well, he was wrong, of course. But the man you represent in your theoretical case is supposed to be in all other respects almost a holy man.”

  “Yes, a man of holy life,” said Don Matteo, earnestly.

  “I do not see how a man of such disposition could have been so lacking in courage afterwards,” said the cardinal.

  “But suppose that it were exactly as I represent the case, Eminence, what should the confessor do?”

  The cardinal looked into his eyes long and gravely.

  “I should think it best to make a priest of him as soon as possible,” he said at last.

  “But how? No bishop could ordain him a priest without knowing his story.”

  “I would ordain him, if he came to me. I think I should be doing right.”

  “But then your Eminence would know him, and the secret of confession would have been betrayed.”

  “That is true. Let him go to another bishop and tell his story.”

  “Another bishop might not think as your Eminence does. Besides, the question is what the confessor is to do under the circumstances.”

  The cardinal suddenly rose, went to the broad window, and looked out thoughtfully. Don Matteo stood up respectfully, waiting. It seemed to him a long time before the prelate turned, and what he did then surprised the priest very much, for he went to each of the three doors of the room in succession, opened it, looked out, closed it again and locked it. Then he came back to Don Matteo.

  “Are you, to the best of your belief, in a state of grace, my friend?” he asked in a low voice. “Have you no mortal sin on your conscience? Reflect well. Th
is is a grave matter.”

  “I cannot think of any, Eminence,” answered the good priest, after a moment’s pause.

  “Very well. We are alone here. The case of conscience you have laid before me is a very extraordinary one. I do not wish to know whether it has actually come before you in confession. But if it has, — or if it should, — I should wish you to be in a position to help that poor man and set his life straight, by the grace of God, without injuring him, and, above all, without injuring any of those persons to whom he has administered the sacraments. I have known you a long time, Don Matteo, and I can trust you to make no use of any power I give you, before the world. I have the power and the right to consecrate a bishop any priest whom I think a fit person. Kneel down here, say the ‘Confiteor,’ and I will lay my hands on you. You could then give the penitent absolution and ordain him a priest privately.”

  Don Matteo started in utmost surprise, and hesitated an instant.

  “Kneel down,” said the cardinal. “I take this upon myself.”

  The priest knelt, and the solemn words sounded low in the quiet little room, as the archbishop laid his hands upon Don Matteo’s grey head. When the latter rose, he kissed the cardinal’s ring, trembling a little, for it had all been very unexpected. The cardinal embraced him in the ecclesiastical fashion, and then, to his further amazement, drew off his episcopal ring and slipped it upon Don Matteo’s finger, took his own bishop’s cross and chain from his neck and hung it about Don Matteo’s neck.

  “Keep them both in memory of this morning,” said the prelate. “But hide the chain and the cross under your cassock, for people need not see that you are a bishop, when you sit among the canons in church. You know it, I know it, your penitent must know it if the case is a real one, and the Pope shall know it — but no one else living need ever guess it. Will you kindly unlock the doors? Thank you. We will not mention this occurrence again, if we can help it. Good morning, Don Matteo — good morning, my friend.”