‘Father Gilmore?’
This was he. Langrand did not give his own name but, to thaw the ice – the cleric looked cranky – mentioned Monsignor Santi and pretended to have just left his company.
‘Monsignor Santi’s?’ The cleric sounded incredulous. ‘You were with him now? Here in Rome? This evening?’
‘Yes.’ Langrand believed in using one’s connections and thought nothing of a white lie. The priest’s scowl had become alarming and, to soften him, he added, ‘He says you’re the ideal man to save a shop-soiled soul!’ This did not elicit a smile.
‘Ha!’ snapped the priest in a disconcerting way.
He was, Langrand saw, unworldly. Never mind. This man was a mere medium and he, the penitent, must marshal his arguments for God – who, to be sure, knew them already, since they had appeared some years back in a pamphlet, commissioned and paid for by Langrand, entitled Taking Usury – Is It A Sin? The author, an agile cleric, had declared such scruples to be as archaic as those the Apostles had once harboured against baptizing Gentiles.
Priest and penitent now inserted themselves into the confessional and the count found that speaking without having to doctor his effects brought surprising relief. What he had been needing, he saw now, was not to argue his case, as his friends had wished, before the Cour d’Assises of Brabant, but to look coolly at it, as he had not hitherto dared to do. In the enabling presence of the invisible priest, he worked at putting his doubts into words simple enough to get past the brass screen and his listener’s French.
A growl interrupted him: ‘Recite the Confiteor.’
A stickler, thought the count. A growler and a stickler! But he was consoled by the ritual words: ‘I confess to Almighty God, to Blessed Mary Ever Virgin, to Blessed Michael …’ Empanelling this jury, which had undoubtedly seen worse, was a way of emancipating himself from the particular and perhaps inadequate presence – he could smell onions – of the growler who had begun to shuffle his feet. It was also a way to leap beyond his own temporal limits, and Langrand might have attempted this – after all he was a vaulter and an experimenter – had it not been for the abrupt and savage assault now made on his person. This did have premonitory signs. It was with a divided mind that he, who was adept through long practice at thinking of more than one thing at a time, cited the opinions on usury of the pamphlet which he had financed and those of Bobo/Bibi on bankruptcy. While so doing, he was mentally querying their value, biting them as he might have bitten coins, while monitoring the groans and growls which greeted his words.
Hearing the hissed imprecation ‘Homo mercator!’, he craned from his own niche to where the red curtains on the front of the priest’s part of the confessional mimicked – for the cloth was shuddering – a matador’s muleta. Hands shot suddenly between them and, hurtling after them, came a cassocked fury with a stole around its neck. So speedy was the eruption that the confessor’s door was still swinging as he reached the financier, hauled him from his niche and propelled him, feet skating beneath him, down the nave.
‘Out!’ howled the scourge and purifier. ‘Fuori! Hors d’ici!’ Gilmore was driving the merchant from the temple. Langrand saw this at once. An omen-watcher, he had the answer for which he had come and, though a fit man, did not struggle. God would not help.
‘Father Gilmore! Have you taken leave of your senses?’
A lacily surpliced figure had emerged from the sacristy and stopped the priest long enough for his victim to apply a trick remembered from the days in his father’s tavern. Ducking quickly, Langrand broke his captor’s grip, unbalanced him and fled. The new arrival was someone he had met before. Some English or Irish cardinal. Cullen, was it? He didn’t want to meet him now.
Outside, finding that he had dropped his lacey talisman, his grandfather’s cap, he took this as a conclusive sign: God and Mammon had forsaken him. He had lost his luck.
Twenty-eight
Cocky Nazareno, the valet who looked after Mr Russell, was himself looked after by certain gentlemen who represented Italian interests. They slipped him a retainer and paid for information supplied. Cocky sold them what came his way – old letters, used blotting paper, etc. without any qualms. Indeed, he suspected Russell of closing an eye and looking, like many another, to the future. Cocky was his stall, the diplomatist’s diplomatist. That, anyway, was Cocky’s guess.
So, when chance – or Mr Russell? – delivered into his hands a run of dispatches to England, plus a letter from Lord Acton which the diplomatic bag was helping on its way to Munich, Cocky copied extracts from the dispatches, noted the addressee’s name on Lord Acton’s sealed letter, and passed everything on to his paymasters.
Earl of C. to O.R.
Private.
F.O., 1870
I agree with you that this monstrous assault on the reason of mankind is the only chance of mankind being roused to resistance against being thrust back into the darkest periods of Church despotism, and cannot therefore regard the prospects of papal triumph with the alarm of Gladstone …
O.R. to Earl of C
Rome, 24 January 1870
Opposition leaders admit that their party could not have been organised without Lord Acton … I bow before his genius but adhere to my conviction that humanity will gain more in the end by the dogmatic definition of Papal Infallibility than by the contrary.
The Papal Condemnation of the Fenians will be … read from the Altar by every priest in Ireland …
O.R. to Earl of C.
Rome, 24 March 1870
Efforts at improving the acoustics in the Council Chamber have had no success, but requests for a change of venue are doomed by the Pope’s belief that powers emanating from St Peter’s tomb will inspire the bishops with veneration for himself: a feeling which his conduct has all but eroded. He calls Opposition members ‘mad’, ‘ignorant’ and ‘leaders of the blind’ and sends out apostolic letters congratulating those who attack their writings. Meanwhile, a papal decree has ruled that a bill may henceforth be passed by a minority of one. Thus the ideal of moral unanimity is quite abandoned.
Bitterness has ensued. When Bishop Strossmayer, the great Opposition orator, urged that a Council lacking such unanimity lacked ecumenicity, there were attempts to shout him down, and when he said that Vatican policies towards non-Catholic sects were uncharitable and that there were Protestant writers whom Catholics might usefully read – there was a riot. Bishops yelled ‘Hereticus! Hereticus!’ And when Strossmayer cried ‘Hoc non est Concilius!’, ‘This is no Council!’, some five hundred rushed round the tribune shaking their fists and yelling ‘We all condemn you!’ ‘Not all!’ called his supporters. But the rioters drowned them out, yelling ‘We all do! Omnes, omnes te damnamus!’ Thereupon, the five presiding Cardinal Legates rang their five bells, the speaker was obliged to come down from the rostrum and the Council broke up. So much for freedom of speech! The consequences of this incident could challenge the legitimacy of the Council’s decrees. Hoc non est Concilius?
Rome, 25 March 1870, Feast of the Annunciation
A ribbon of golden sand marked the route the Pope would take when he came to celebrate mass at the Minerva Church. Sun blazed. Banners floated and bells pealed. Behind Nicola someone murmured: ‘All this to dazzle the riffraff and overawe bishops.’ He thought the voice might belong to a member of the French garrison.
‘The overawing,’ said another voice, ‘has turned to browbeating. Did you hear about the Bishop of Mainz?’
Clergy then! Only they – one must fervently hope – could know about poor Bishop Ketteler. Nicola had been at a meeting of the Minority when the bishop, fresh from a papal audience, had arrived in a state of shock. What had happened was that he, feeling duty-bound to enlighten the Pope, had armed himself with notes and precedents in the hope of persuading him that certain conditions were indispensable if a Council was to be a Council, and not what prominent bishops were now calling the ‘robber synod’ and ‘the Vatican Farce’. It was a crime, thought the conscie
ntious German, to allow a philistine pontiff to discredit the Church. Accordingly, having rehearsed his arguments, he craved an audience, only to be floored by Mastai’s opening gambit.
Ketteler – powerful chin, fine eyes, and a sweep of forehead from which his pale hair had retreated – looked like a pope. Noble but sensitive – there were delicate shadows at the corner of that firm mouth – he must have risen from kissing the pontifical hand so that for a moment the two were face to face: the troubled bishop and Mastai whose features had the contours of a currant bun.
‘Do you love me?’ was Mastai’s greeting. ‘Amos me?’
Mainz said he did.
‘Amas me?’ Subtly, the repetition changed the query’s thrust.
The bishop, submissively, repeated, ‘Yes, Holy Father.’
‘Amas me?’
It had now become a threat. It meant, if it meant anything, as the bishop later told his fellows, ‘forget your precedents, your sheaf of notes, tradition and the law, and give me what I want’. ‘Love,’ here the German was overtaken by scandalised and near-hysterical laughter, ‘is to conquer thought.’
‘Viva il Papa!’
This signal that the procession was about to arrive was, as always, given by professional cheerers known locally as ‘the hundred bald men’.
‘Long live the infallible Pope!’
A catcall cut in: ‘May he live somewhere else!’
Amused, the crowd altered ‘viva’ to ‘via’ (‘away with him’) which was dangerous, but not very, and it was a while before the ‘Viva’s won. By then the procession had glittered into view, manifesting the pomp and confidence which, at whatever cost to its Treasury, the Vatican needed desperately to show.
First – craning his neck, Nicola could just see the wagging of their swords – came a platoon of police, then a bedizened batti-strada followed by carriages full of officers and men on foot surrounding a cross-bearer on a caparisoned mule.
And now, arresting the cries of fritter-and-lemonade-vendors, came the Pope’s coach. Adazzle with gilt, it was driven by postilions, for the coachman’s box had been replaced by a brace of angels holding up a tiara. Inside it sat Pius facing two cardinals.
A dip rippled the crowd as people knelt, and Nicola sank too, prey to a clash of impulses as painful as if a knot were clamped around his heart. Exalting and at the same time casting him down was a contagion at which non-Romans, like Bishop Ketteler, might not even guess. The Pope, murmured the tribal pulse in his blood, may be senile and sour, but he is ours and we, in a visceral way, are part of him, since he is our Vicar as well as God’s with Whom we commune in this city where the whole world comes to worship!
‘Viva Pio Nono!’ The crowd was mesmerised by its own cry.
Rising from his knees, Nicola came face to face with Prospero who said approvingly, ‘He knows how to win love!’
‘He exacts it like a tax!’ Nicola felt as if he had, somehow, let down Amandi and the Bishop of Mainz.
Prospero’s nod ignored churlishness. There was a rumour that he was in line for major office. ‘Love,’ he said, ‘is surely the essence of Christ’s message.’
‘Love of whom?’ The last of the procession was passing, a platoon of sweating dragoons. ‘The poor? The Germans say …’
‘Oh don’t quote them! Abstraction is all they deal in.’
‘No, they can be specific. They say we complicate marriage laws so as to make them send us money for dispensations. When a woman trapped in a brutal marriage has none …’
‘Germans always complain about money. Luther …’
‘… she doesn’t get one, no matter how good her case. Where’s the love there?’
‘Nicola!’ Prospero’s use of the first name had the thrusting intimacy of a kiss, ‘has it ever struck you that civilisations are destroyed not by the foolish but by the clever? Any fabric has flaws and the clever pick at them until there is no fabric left!’
They had reached the door of the Minerva Church. Nicola decided to ask Prospero about the Sodalitium Pianum.
But the Pope, who had descended from his coach, was being cheered and again a counter-cheer cut in: ‘The baldies are on duty! Long live the baldies!’ The Pope and his entourage moved quickly into the church. A last half-laughing cheer triggered Prospero’s anger. ‘See the company you’ve joined!’ he was exclaiming when an emollient voice intervened.
‘Cari Monsignori!’ Father Grassi slid between them, congratulating himself on finding such good, old friends together. Friendship was more precious now than ever. Even the Holy Father was showing strain and who could blame him! Had Christ not cursed the barren fig tree? Barren rhetoric was our torment! Poor Mainz, though! Grassi tittered. Germans don’t like to be silenced. ‘Which reminds me, I suppose neither of you have any tidings for me on this Annunciation Day? No? What a pity! If we only knew which German was divulging our secrets, we could stop suspecting them all. It would be a step towards brotherhood and reconciliation.’
O.R. to Earl of C.
Secret.
Count Daru, the French Foreign Minister … also wrote a widely quoted letter saying ‘We would be unable to keep our troops in Rome a single day after the proclamation of infallibility … Public opinion in France would not allow it.’
Unfortunately for the Count, the Pope does not believe this. When Cardinal Antonelli advised prudence, he replied, ‘I have the Mother of God on my side.’ He is convinced that the Virgin’s protection calls him to a special destiny.
News that the schema on Infallibility is to be brought forward out of turn has roused indignation and Count Daru received a Memorandum from the Opposition Bishops asking France to insist that the Council be prorogued to prevent a moral schism in the Church.
O.R. to Earl of C.
The fate of Count Daru bears out my belief that an Italian priest can always get the better of a French statesman. Following his efforts to help the Opposition, ultramontane bishops were sent to softsoap susceptible members of the French cabinet and remind them that in the May plebiscite they will need the Catholic vote. The outcome was Count Daru’s resignation!!
O. R. to Earl of C.
Private and secret.
The Irish bishops are a hopeless set of humbugs! Cunning and deceitful as Neapolitans, they all declare themselves delighted with the stringency of the peace preservation law for Ireland and the suppression of pestilent newspapers … But who can tell whether they are sincere?
Miss F and her companion are undoubtedly innocent, though their maid who is young and handsome may have been imprudent during their absence. Miss F often lent her rooms for meetings of the Minority which she did not herself attend. She also invited prelates to receptions, and the Holy Office or Inquisition, thinking these occasions too attractive for ecclesiastics, appealed to the Pope.
The ‘enamoured priest’ has no doubt been imprisoned in a convent where he may linger many years and, to save others from a like fate, the Pope has ordered the cause of the danger to be banished. Miss F’s theory is that the ‘priest’ was an agent provocateur and the whole incident concocted to harass the Opposition and discredit her. She claims – a little excitably, I fear – that this trick was played on her once before. Naturally, I cannot openly doubt the word of an English lady, and so my position has been difficult. At last, we have reached a compromise and I have managed to persuade her that, whatever the truth of her suspicions, there is nothing to be gained by airing them. Meanwhile, Archbishop Manning has been most kind and energetic and Cardinal Antonelli tells me that it is thanks to his intervention that the Pope will allow Miss F’s maid to return to Rome.
The ladies are indignantly vociferous in her defence and not at all grateful to His Lordship whom they credit with the most Machiavellian of natures.
O.R. to Earl of C.
F.O., 2 May 1870
The Opposition bishops’ reliance upon the non-ecumenicity of the Council, a modern notion, must make Pio Nono laugh. Acton & Co. have made a gallant swim in the to
rrent but have known for a long time past that it was carrying them away.
O.R. to Earl of C.
June
As Your Lordship knows, the Infallibility Schema has been brought on out of order despite protests. The Fathers have now met thirteen times to consider it and made so little progress that the discussion is expected to last into July. The heat increases. Bishops, many of them old and used to cooler climates, grow sick. The Pope resists requests to prorogue the Council. ‘Let them croak!’ he is said to have said. ‘Che crepino!’ Some have. Others leave for their dioceses and when they belong to the Opposition the Vatican is glad.
Mr Gladstone, you remind me, thinks that if Opposition Bishops could join in a protest against Infallibility and leave Rome ‘en masse’ it would be a great blow to Ecumenicity. I think so too but fail to find in them that resolution which makes martyrs. The Roman Catholic Church is discrediting itself and should be allowed to do so. As for us, our good relations with the Vatican have led to the condemnation of Fenianism. We should not compromise them.
Since the Italians had no official representatives in Rome, Nicola had long guessed Martelli to be one of their unofficial ones, and was not surprised when he arrived with a copy of an English diplomatist’s letter. ‘Read this,’ he invited.
O.R. to Earl of C.
Rumours of a war likely to interrupt the Council have thrown Infallibilists into a panic and revived the idea of a definition by acclamation. My source is Manning …
The plan is to get an acknowledged visionary to inform the Council of the Virgin’s support for such a move. This, if well managed – and Rome does not lack impresarii – will lead the bishops to see themselves as the recipients of a divine message which, together with their bruised consciences and yearning for unity, will quite sap their resistance.
The Judas Cloth Page 63
