Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

Become thou king of sacrifice; ascend

  The holy hill of God; on these perverse

  Launch thou thy thunderbolts; and feared again

  And great thou wilt be. Tell me, Adrian,

  Must thou not bear a burden that were heavy

  Even for angels? Wherefore wilt thou join

  Death unto life, and make the word of God,

  That says, “My kingdom is not of this world,”

  A lie? Oh, follow Christ’s example here

  In Rome; it pleased both God and her

  To abase the proud and to uplift the weak.

  I’ll kiss the foot that treads on kings!

  Adrian. Arnaldo,

  I parley not, I rule; and I, become

  On earth as God in heaven, am judge of all,

  And none of me; I watch, and I dispense

  Terrors and hopes, rewards and punishments,

  To peoples and to kings; fountain and source

  Of life am I, who make the Church of God

  One and all-powerful. Many thrones and peoples

  She has seen tost upon the madding waves

  Of time, and broken on the immovable rock

  Whereon she sits; and since one errless spirit

  Rules in her evermore, she doth not rave

  For changeful doctrine, but she keeps eternal

  The grandeur of her will and purposes.

  ... Arnaldo,

  Thou movest me to pity. In vain thou seek’st

  To warm thy heart over these ruins, groping

  Among the sepulchers of Rome. Thou’lt find

  No bones to which thou canst say, “Rise!” Ah, here

  Remaineth not one hero’s dust. Thou thinkest

  That with old names old virtues shall return?

  And thou desirest tribunes, senators,

  Equestrian orders, Rome! A greater glory

  Thy sovereign pontiff is who doth not guard

  The rights uncertain of a crazy rabble;

  But tribune of the world he sits in Rome,

  And “I forbid,” to kings and peoples cries.

  I tell thee a greater than the impious power

  That thou in vain endeavorest to renew

  Here built the dying fisherman of Judea.

  Out of his blood he made a fatherland

  For all the nations, and this place, that once

  A city was, became a world; the borders

  That did divide the nations, by Christ’s law

  Are ta’en away, and this the kingdom is

  For which he asked his Father in his prayer.

  The Church has sons in every race; I rule,

  An unseen king, and Rome is everywhere!

  Arnaldo. Thou errest, Adrian. Rome’s thunderbolts

  Wake little terror now, and reason shakes

  The bonds that thou fain would’st were everlasting.

  ... Christ calls to her

  As of old to the sick man, “Rise and walk.”

  She ‘ll tread on you if you go not before.

  The world has other truth besides the altar’s.

  It will not have a temple that hides heaven.

  Thou wast a shepherd: be a father. The race

  Of man is weary of being called a flock.

  Adrian’s final reply is, that if Arnaldo will renounce his false doctrine and leave Rome, the Pope will, through him, give the Lombard cities a liberty that shall not offend the Church. Arnaldo refuses, and quits Adrian’s presence. It is quite needless to note the bold character of the thought here, or the nobility of the poetry, which Niccolini puts as well into the mouth of the Pope whom he hates as the monk whom he loves.

  Following this scene is one of greater dramatic force, in which the Cardinal Guido, sent to the Campidoglio by the Pope to disperse the popular assembly, is stoned by the people and killed. He dies full of faith in the Church and the righteousness of his cause, and his body, taken up by the priests, is carried into the square before St. Peter’s. A throng, including many women, has followed; and now Niccolini introduces a phase of the great Italian struggle which was perhaps the most perplexing of all. The subjection of the women to the priests is what has always greatly contributed to defeat Italian efforts for reform; it now helps to unnerve the Roman multitude; and the poet finally makes it the weakness through which Arnaldo is dealt his death. With a few strokes in the scene that follows the death of Guido, he indicates the remorse and dismay of the people when the Pope repels them from the church door and proclaims the interdict; and then follow some splendid lyrical passages, in which the Pope commands the pictures and images to be veiled and the relics to be concealed, and curses the enemies of the Church. I shall but poorly render this curse by a rhymeless translation, and yet I am tempted to give it:

  The Pope. To-day let the perfidious

  Learn at thy name to tremble,

  Nor triumph o’er the ruinous

  Place of thy vanished altars.

  Oh, brief be their days and uncertain;

  In the desert their wandering footsteps,

  Every tremulous leaflet affright them!

  The Cardinals. Anathema, anathema, anathema!

  Pope. May their widows sit down ‘mid the ashes

  On the hearths of their desolate houses,

  With their little ones wailing around them.

  Cardinals. Anathema, anathema, anathema!

  Pope. May he who was born to the fury

  Of heaven, afar from his country

  Be lost in his ultimate anguish.

  Cardinals. Anathema, anathema, anathema!

  Pope. May he fly to the house of the alien oppressor

  That is filled with the spoil of his brothers, with women

  Destroyed by the pitiless hands that defiled them;

  There in accents unknown and derided, abase him

  At portals ne’er opened in mercy, imploring

  A morsel of bread.

  Cardinals. Be that morsel denied him!

  Pope. I hear the wicked cry: I from the Lord

  Will fly away with swift and tireless feet;

  His anger follows me upon the sea;

  I’ll seek the desert; who will give me wings?

  In cloudy horror, who shall lead my steps?

  The eye of God maketh the night as day.

  O brothers, fulfill then

  The terrible duty;

  Throw down from the altars

  The dim-burning tapers;

  And be all joy, and be the love of God

  In thankless hearts that know not Peter, quenched,

  As is the little flame that falls and dies,

  Here in these tapers trampled under foot.

  In the first scene of the third act, which is a desolate place in the Campagna, near the sea, Arnaldo appears. He has been expelled from Rome by the people, eager for the opening of their churches, and he soliloquizes upon his fate in language that subtly hints all his passing moods, and paints the struggle of his soul. It appears to me that it is a wise thing to make him almost regret the cloister in the midst of his hatred of it, and then shrink from that regret with horror; and there is also a fine sense of night and loneliness in the scene:

  Like this sand

  Is life itself, and evermore each path

  Is traced in suffering, and one footprint still

  Obliterates another; and we are all

  Vain shadows here that seem a little while,

  And suffer, and pass. Let me not fight in vain,

  O Son of God, with thine immortal word,

  Yon tyrant of eternity and time,

  Who doth usurp thy place on earth, whose feet

  Are in the depths, whose head is in the clouds,

  Who thunders all abroad, The world is mine!

  Laws, virtues, liberty I have attempted

  To give thee, Rome. Ah! only where death is

  Abides thy glory. Here the laurel only

  Flourishes on the ruins and the tombs.

  I will
repose upon this fallen column

  My weary limbs. Ah, lower than this ye lie,

  You Latin souls, and to your ancient height

  Who shall uplift you? I am all weighed down

  By the great trouble of the lofty hopes

  Of Italy still deluded, and I find

  Within my soul a drearer desert far

  Than this, where the air already darkens round,

  And the soft notes of distant convent bells

  Announce the coming night.... I cannot hear them

  Without a trembling wish that in my heart

  Wakens a memory that becomes remorse....

  Ah, Reason, soon thou languishest in us,

  Accustomed to such outrage all our lives.

  Thou know’st the cloister; thou a youth didst enter

  That sepulcher of the living where is war, —

  Remember it and shudder! The damp wind

  Stirs this gray hair. I’m near the sea.

  Thy silence is no more; sweet on the ear

  Cometh the far-off murmur of the floods

  In the vast desert; now no more the darkness

  Imprisons wholly; now less gloomily

  Lowers the sky that lately threatened storm.

  Less thick the air is, and the trembling light

  O’ the stars among the breaking clouds appears.

  Praise to the Lord! The eternal harmony

  Of all his work I feel. Though these vague beams

  Reveal to me here only fens and tombs,

  My soul is not so heavily weighed down

  By burdens that oppressed it....

  I rise to grander purposes: man’s tents

  Are here below, his city is in heaven.

  I doubt no more; the terror of the cloister

  No longer assails me.

  Presently Giordano comes to join Arnaldo in this desolate place, and, in the sad colloquy which follows, tells him of the events of Rome, and the hopelessness of their cause, unless they have the aid and countenance of the Emperor. He implores Arnaldo to accompany the embassy which he is about to send to Frederick; but Arnaldo, with a melancholy disdain, refuses. He asks where are the Swiss who accompanied him to Rome, and he is answered by one of the Swiss captains, who at that moment appears. The Emperor has ordered them to return home, under penalty of the ban of the empire. He begs Arnaldo to return with them, but Arnaldo will not; and Giordano sends him under a strong escort to the castle of Ostasio. Arnaldo departs with much misgiving, for the wife of Ostasio is Adelasia, a bigoted papist, who has hitherto resisted the teaching to which her husband has been converted.

  As the escort departs, the returning Swiss are seen. One of their leaders expresses the fear that moves them, when he says that the Germans will desolate their homes if they do not return to them. Moreover, the Italian sun, which destroys even those born under it, drains their life, and man and nature are leagued against them there. “What have you known here!” he asks, and his soldiers reply in chorus:

  The pride of old names, the caprices of fate,

  In vast desert spaces the silence of death,

  Or in mist-hidden lowlands, his wandering fires;

  No sweet song of birds, no heart-cheering sound,

  But eternal memorials of ancient despair,

  And ruins and tombs that waken dismay

  At the moan of the pines that are stirred by the wind.

  Full of dark and mysterious peril the woods;

  No life-giving fountains, but only bare sands,

  Or some deep-bedded river that silently moves,

  With a wave that is livid and stagnant, between

  Its margins ungladdened by grass or by flowers,

  And in sterile sands vanishes wholly away.

  Out of huts that by turns have been shambles and tombs,

  All pallid and naked, and burned by their fevers,

  The peasant folk suddenly stare as you pass,

  With visages ghastly, and eyes full of hate,

  Aroused by the accent that’s strange to their ears.

  Oh, heavily hang the clouds here on the head!

  Wan and sick is the earth, and the sun is a tyrant.

  Then one of the Swiss soldiers speaks alone:

  The unconquerable love of our own land

  Draws us away till we behold again

  The eternal walls the Almighty builded there.

  Upon the arid ways of faithless lands

  I am tormented by a tender dream

  Of that sweet rill which runs before my cot.

  Oh, let me rest beside the smiling lake,

  And hear the music of familiar words,

  And on its lonely margin, wild and fair,

  Lie down and think of my beloved ones.

  There is no page of this tragedy which does not present some terrible or touching picture, which is not full of brave and robust thought, which has not also great dramatic power. But I am obliged to curtail the proof of this, and I feel that, after all, I shall not give a complete idea of the tragedy’s grandeur, its subtlety, its vast scope and meaning.

  There is a striking dialogue between a Roman partisan of Arnaldo, who, with his fancy oppressed by the heresy of his cause, is wavering in his allegiance, and a Brescian, whom the outrages of the priests have forever emancipated from faith in their power to bless or ban in the world to come. Then ensues a vivid scene, in which a fanatical and insolent monk of Arnaldo’s order, leading a number of soldiers, arrests him by command of Adrian. Ostasio’s soldiers approaching to rescue him, the monk orders him to be slain, but he is saved, and the act closes with the triumphal chorus of his friends. Here is fine occasion for the play of different passions, and the occasion is not lost.

  With the fourth act is introduced the new interest of the German oppression; and as we have had hitherto almost wholly a study of the effect of the papal tyranny upon Italy, we are now confronted with the shame and woe which the empire has wrought her. Exiles from the different Lombard cities destroyed by Barbarossa meet on their way to seek redress from the Pope, and they pour out their sorrows in pathetic and passionate lyrics. To read these passages gives one a favorable notion of the liberality or the stupidity of the government which permitted the publication of the tragedy. The events alluded to were many centuries past, the empire had long ceased to be; but the Italian hatred of the Germans was one and indivisible for every moment of all times, and we may be sure that to each of Niccolini’s readers these mediaeval horrors were but masks for cruelties exercised by the Austrians in his own day, and that in those lyrical bursts of rage and grief there was full utterance for his smothered sense of present wrong. There is a great charm in these strophes; they add unspeakable pathos to a drama which is so largely concerned with political interests; and they make us feel that it is a beautiful and noble work of art, as well as grand appeal to the patriotism of the Italians and the justice of mankind.

  When we are brought into the presence of Barbarossa, we find him awaiting the arrival of Adrian, who is to accompany him to Rome and crown him emperor, in return for the aid that Barbarossa shall give in reducing the rebellious citizens and delivering Arnaldo into the power of the papacy. Heralds come to announce Adrian’s approach, and riding forth a little way, Frederick dismounts in order to go forward on foot and meet the Pope, who advances, preceded by his clergy, and attended by a multitude of his partisans. As Frederick perceives the Pope and quits his horse, he muses:

  I leave thee,

  O faithful comrade mine in many perils,

  Thou generous steed! and now, upon the ground

  That should have thundered under thine advance,

  With humble foot I silent steps must trace.

  But what do I behold? Toward us comes,

  With tranquil pride, the servant of the lowly,

  Upon a white horse docile to the rein

  As he would kings were; all about the path

  That Adrian moves on, warriors and people

  Of
either sex, all ages, in blind homage,

  Mingle, press near and fall upon the ground,

  Or one upon another; and man, whom God

  Made to look up to heaven, becomes as dust

  Under the feet of pride; and they believe

  The gates of Paradise would be set wide

  To any one whom his steed crushed to death.

  With me thou never hast thine empire shared;

  Thou alone hold’st the world! He will not turn

  On me in sign of greeting that proud head,

  Encircled by the tiara; and he sees,

  Like God, all under him in murmured prayer

  Or silence, blesses them, and passes on.

  What wonder if he will not deign to touch

  The earth I tread on with his haughty foot!

  He gives it to be kissed of kings; I too

  Must stoop to the vile act.

  Since the time of Henry II. it had been the custom of the emperors to lead the Pope’s horse by the bridle, and to hold his stirrup while he descended. Adrian waits in vain for this homage from Frederick, and then alights with the help of his ministers, and seats himself in his episcopal chair, while Frederick draws near, saying aside:

  I read there in his face his insolent pride

  Veiled by humility.

  He bows before Adrian and kisses his foot, and then offers him the kiss of peace, which Adrian refuses, and haughtily reminds him of the fate of Henry. Frederick answers furiously that the thought of this fate has always filled him with hatred of the papacy; and Adrian, perceiving that he has pressed too far in this direction, turns and soothes the Emperor:

  I am truth,

  And thou art force, and if thou part’st from me,

  Blind thou becomest, helpless I remain.

  We are but one at last....

  Caesar and Peter,

  They are the heights of God; man from the earth

  Contemplates them with awe, and never questions

  Which thrusts its peak the higher into heaven.

  Therefore be wise, and learn from the example

  Of impious Arnaldo. He’s the foe

  Of thrones who wars upon the altar.

  But he strives in vain to persuade Frederick to the despised act of homage, and it is only at the intercession of the Emperor’s kinsmen and the German princes that he consents to it. When it is done in the presence of all the army and the clerical retinue, Adrian mounts, and says to Frederick, with scarcely hidden irony: