and don't know it! Ah! how well I recognise in that the Roman princes
who, unless their masterpieces have been labelled, are for the most part
utterly at sea among them! No doubt this one has suffered a little, but a
simple cleaning would make a marvel, a famous picture of it, for which a
museum would at least give--"
He abruptly stopped, completing his sentence with a wave of the hand and
not mentioning the figure which was on his lips. And then, as Victorine
came in followed by Giacomo to lay the little table for Pierre's supper,
he turned his back upon the Botticelli and said no more about it. The
young priest's attention was aroused, however, and he could well divine
what was passing in the other's mind. Under that make-believe Florentine,
all angelicalness, there was an experienced business man, who well knew
how to look after his pecuniary interests and was even reported to be
somewhat avaricious. Pierre, who was aware of it, could not help smiling
therefore when he saw him take his stand before another picture--a
frightful Virgin, badly copied from some eighteenth-century canvas--and
exclaim: "Dear me! that's not at all bad! I've a friend, I remember, who
asked me to buy him some old paintings. I say, Victorine, now that Donna
Serafina and the Cardinal are left alone do you think they would like to
rid themselves of a few valueless pictures?"
The servant raised her arms as if to say that if it depended on her,
everything might be carried away. Then she replied: "Not to a dealer,
sir, on account of the nasty rumours which would at once spread about,
but I'm sure they would be happy to please a friend. The house costs a
lot to keep up, and money would be welcome."
Pierre then vainly endeavoured to persuade Narcisse to stay and sup with
him, but the young man gave his word of honour that he was expected
elsewhere and was even late. And thereupon he ran off, after pressing the
priest's hands and affectionately wishing him a good journey.
Eight o'clock was striking, and Pierre seated himself at the little
table, Victorine remaining to serve him after dismissing Giacomo, who had
brought the supper things upstairs in a basket. "The people here make me
wild," said the worthy woman after the other had gone, "they are so slow.
And besides, it's a pleasure for me to serve you your last meal, Monsieur
l'Abbe. I've had a little French dinner cooked for you, a /sole au
gratin/ and a roast fowl."
Pierre was touched by this attention, and pleased to have the company of
a compatriot whilst he partook of his final meal amidst the deep silence
of the old, black, deserted mansion. The buxom figure of Victorine was
still instinct with mourning, with grief for the loss of her dear
Contessina, but her daily toil was already setting her erect again,
restoring her quick activity; and she spoke almost cheerfully whilst
passing plates and dishes to Pierre. "And to think Monsieur l'Abbe," said
she, "that you'll be in Paris on the morning of the day after to-morrow!
As for me, you know, it seems as if I only left Auneau yesterday. Ah!
what fine soil there is there; rich soil yellow like gold, not like their
poor stuff here which smells of sulphur! And the pretty fresh willows
beside our stream, too, and the little wood so full of moss! They've no
moss here, their trees look like tin under that stupid sun of theirs
which burns up the grass. /Mon Dieu/! in the early times I would have
given I don't know what for a good fall of rain to soak me and wash away
all the dust. Ah! I shall never get used to their awful Rome. What a
country and what people!"
Pierre was quite enlivened by her stubborn fidelity to her own nook,
which after five and twenty years of absence still left her horrified
with that city of crude light and black vegetation, true daughter as she
was of a smiling and temperate clime which of a morning was steeped in
rosy mist. "But now that your young mistress is dead," said he, "what
keeps you here? Why don't you take the train with me?"
She looked at him in surprise: "Go off with you, go back to Auneau! Oh!
it's impossible, Monsieur l'Abbe. It would be too ungrateful to begin
with, for Donna Serafina is accustomed to me, and it would be bad on my
part to forsake her and his Eminence now that they are in trouble. And
besides, what could I do elsewhere? No, my little hole is here now."
"So you will never see Auneau again?"
"No, never, that's certain."
"And you don't mind being buried here, in their ground which smells of
sulphur?"
She burst into a frank laugh. "Oh!" she said, "I don't mind where I am
when I'm dead. One sleeps well everywhere. And it's funny that you should
be so anxious as to what there may be when one's dead. There's nothing,
I'm sure. That's what tranquillises me, to feel that it will be all over
and that I shall have a rest. The good God owes us that after we've
worked so hard. You know that I'm not devout, oh! dear no. Still that
doesn't prevent me from behaving properly, and, true as I stand here,
I've never had a lover. It seems foolish to say such a thing at my age,
still I say it because it's the sober truth."
She continued laughing like the worthy woman she was, having no belief in
priests and yet without a sin upon her conscience. And Pierre once more
marvelled at the simple courage and great practical common sense of this
laborious and devoted creature, who for him personified the whole
unbelieving lowly class of France, those who no longer believe and will
believe never more. Ah! to be as she was, to do one's work and lie down
for the eternal sleep without any revolt of pride, satisfied with the one
joy of having accomplished one's share of toil!
When Pierre had finished his supper Victorine summoned Giacomo to clear
the things away. And as it was only half-past eight she advised the
priest to spend another quiet hour in his room. Why go and catch a chill
by waiting at the station? She could send for a cab at half-past nine,
and as soon as it arrived she would send word to him and have his luggage
carried down. He might be easy as to that, and need trouble himself about
nothing.
When she had gone off Pierre soon sank into a deep reverie. It seemed to
him, indeed, as if he had already quitted Rome, as if the city were far
away and he could look back on it, and his experiences within it. His
book, "New Rome," arose in his mind; and he remembered his first morning
on the Janiculum, his view of Rome from the terrace of San Pietro in
Montorio, a Rome such as he had dreamt of, so young and ethereal under
the pure sky. It was then that he had asked himself the decisive
question: Could Catholicism be renewed? Could it revert to the spirit of
primitive Christianity, become the religion of the democracy, the faith
which the distracted modern world, in danger of death, awaits in order
that it may be pacified and live? His heart had then beaten with hope and
enthusiasm. After his disaster at Lourdes from which he had scarcely
recovered, he had come to attempt another and supreme experiment by
asking Rome what her reply to his question would be. And now the
experiment had failed, he knew what answer Rome had returned him through
her ruins, her monuments, her very soil, her people, her prelates, her
cardinals, her pope! No, Catholicism could not be renewed: no, it could
not revert to the spirit of primitive Christianity; no, it could not
become the religion of the democracy, the new faith which might save the
old toppling societies in danger of death. Though it seemed to be of
democratic origin, it was henceforth riveted to that Roman soil, it
remained kingly in spite of everything, forced to cling to the principle
of temporal power under penalty of suicide, bound by tradition, enchained
by dogma, its evolutions mere simulations whilst in reality it was
reduced to such immobility that, behind the bronze doors of the Vatican,
the papacy was the prisoner, the ghost of eighteen centuries of atavism,
indulging the ceaseless dream of universal dominion. There, where with
priestly faith exalted by love of the suffering and the poor, he had come
to seek life and a resurrection of the Christian communion, he had found
death, the dust of a destroyed world in which nothing more could
germinate, an exhausted soil whence now there could never grow aught but
that despotic papacy, the master of bodies as it was of souls. To his
distracted cry asking for a new religion, Rome had been content to reply
by condemning his book as a work tainted with heresy, and he himself had
withdrawn it amidst the bitter grief of his disillusions. He had seen, he
had understood, and all had collapsed. And it was himself, his soul and
his brain, which lay among the ruins.
Pierre was stifling. He rose, threw the window overlooking the Tiber wide
open, and leant out. The rain had begun to fall again at the approach of
evening, but now it had once more ceased. The atmosphere was very mild,
moist, even oppressive. The moon must have arisen in the ashen grey sky,
for her presence could be divined behind the clouds which she illumined
with a vague, yellow, mournful light. And under that slumberous glimmer
the vast horizon showed blackly and phantom-like: the Janiculum in front
with the close-packed houses of the Trastevere; the river flowing away
yonder on the left towards the dim height of the Palatine; whilst on the
right the dome of St. Peter's showed forth, round and domineering in the
pale atmosphere. Pierre could not see the Quirinal but divined it to be
behind him, and could picture its long facade shutting off part of the
sky. And what a collapsing Rome, half-devoured by the gloom, was this, so
different from the Rome all youth and dreamland which he had beheld and
passionately loved on the day of his arrival! He remembered the three
symbolic summits which had then summed up for him the whole long history
of Rome, the ancient, the papal, and the Italian city. But if the
Palatine had remained the same discrowned mount on which there only rose
the phantom of the ancestor, Augustus, emperor and pontiff, master of the
world, he now pictured St. Peter's and the Quirinal as strangely altered.
To that royal palace which he had so neglected, and which had seemed to
him like a flat, low barrack, to that new Government which had brought
him the impression of some attempt at sacrilegious modernity, he now
accorded the large, increasing space that they occupied in the panorama,
the whole of which they would apparently soon fill; whilst, on the
contrary, St. Peter's, that dome which he had found so triumphal, all
azure, reigning over the city like a gigantic and unshakable monarch, at
present seemed to him full of cracks and already shrinking, as if it were
one of those huge old piles, which, through the secret, unsuspected decay
of their timbers, at times fall to the ground in one mass.
A murmur, a growling plaint rose from the swollen Tiber, and Pierre
shivered at the icy abysmal breath which swept past his face. And his
thoughts of the three summits and their symbolic triangle aroused within
him the memory of the sufferings of the great silent multitude of poor
and lowly for whom pope and king had so long disputed. It all dated from
long ago, from the day when, in dividing the inheritance of Augustus, the
emperor had been obliged to content himself with men's bodies, leaving
their souls to the pope, whose one idea had henceforth been to gain the
temporal power of which God, in his person, was despoiled. All the middle
ages had been disturbed and ensanguined by the quarrel, till at last the
silent multitude weary of vexations and misery spoke out; threw off the
papal yoke at the Reformation, and later on began to overthrow its kings.
And then, as Pierre had written in his book, a new fortune had been
offered to the pope, that of reverting to the ancient dream, by
dissociating himself from the fallen thrones and placing himself on the
side of the wretched in the hope that this time he would conquer the
people, win it entirely for himself. Was it not prodigious to see that
man, Leo XIII, despoiled of his kingdom and allowing himself to be called
a socialist, assembling under his banner the great flock of the
disinherited, and marching against the kings at the head of that fourth
estate to whom the coming century will belong? The eternal struggle for
possession of the people continued as bitterly as ever even in Rome
itself, where pope and king, who could see each other from their windows,
contended together like falcon and hawk for the little birds of the
woods. And in this for Pierre lay the reason why Catholicism was fatally
condemned; for it was of monarchical essence to such a point that the
Apostolic and Roman papacy could not renounce the temporal power under
penalty of becoming something else and disappearing. In vain did it feign
a return to the people, in vain did it seek to appear all soul; there was
no room in the midst of the world's democracies for any such total and
universal sovereignty as that which it claimed to hold from God. Pierre
ever beheld the Imperator sprouting up afresh in the Pontifex Maximus,
and it was this in particular which had killed his dream, destroyed his
book, heaped up all those ruins before which he remained distracted
without either strength or courage.
The sight of that ashen Rome, whose edifices faded away into the night,
at last brought him such a heart-pang that he came back into the room and
fell on a chair near his luggage. Never before had he experienced such
distress of spirit, it seemed like the death of his soul. After his
disaster at Lourdes he had not come to Rome in search of the candid and
complete faith of a little child, but the superior faith of an
intellectual being, rising above rites and symbols, and seeking to ensure
the greatest possible happiness of mankind based on its need of
certainty. And if this collapsed, if Catholicism could not be rejuvenated
and become the religion and moral law of the new generations, if the Pope
at Rome and with Rome could not be the Father, the arch of alliance, the
spiritual leader whom all hearkened to and obeyed, why then, in Pierre's
eyes, the last hope was wrecked, the supreme rending which must plunge
present-day society into the abyss was near at hand. That scaffolding of
Catholic socialism which had seemed to him so happily devised for the
consolidation of the old Church, now appeared to him lying on the ground;
and he judged it severely as a mere passing expedient which might perhaps
for some years prop up the ruined edifice, but which was simply based on
an intentional misunderstanding, on a skilful lie, on politics and
diplomacy. No, no, that the people should once again, as so many times
before, be duped and gained over, caressed in order that it might be
enthralled--this was repugnant to one's reason, and the whole system
appeared degenerate, dangerous, temporary, calculated to end in the worst
catastrophes. So this then was the finish, nothing remained erect and
stable, the old world was about to disappear amidst the frightful
sanguinary crisis whose approach was announced by such indisputable
signs. And he, before that chaos near at hand, had no soul left him,
having once more lost his faith in that decisive experiment which, he had
felt beforehand, would either strengthen him or strike him down for ever.
The thunderbolt had fallen, and now, O God, what should he do?
To shake off his anguish he began to walk across the room. Aye, what
should he do now that he was all doubt again, all dolorous negation, and
that his cassock weighed more heavily than it had ever weighed upon his
shoulders? He remembered having told Monsignor Nani that he would never
submit, would never be able to resign himself and kill his hope in
salvation by love, but would rather reply by a fresh book, in which he
would say in what new soil the new religion would spring up. Yes, a
flaming book against Rome, in which he would set down all he had seen, a
book which would depict the real Rome, the Rome which knows neither
charity nor love, and is dying in the pride of its purple! He had spoken
of returning to Paris, leaving the Church and going to the point of
schism. Well, his luggage now lay there packed, he was going off and he
would write that book, he would be the great schismatic who was awaited!
Did not everything foretell approaching schism amidst that great movement
of men's minds, weary of old mummified dogmas and yet hungering for the
divine? Even Leo XIII must be conscious of it, for his whole policy, his
whole effort towards Christian unity, his assumed affection for the
democracy had no other object than that of grouping the whole family
around the papacy, and consolidating it so as to render the Pope
invincible in the approaching struggle. But the times had come,
Catholicism would soon find that it could grant no more political
concessions without perishing, that at Rome it was reduced to the
immobility of an ancient hieratic idol, and that only in the lands of
propaganda, where it was fighting against other religions, could further
evolution take place. It was, indeed, for this reason that Rome was
condemned, the more so as the abolition of the temporal power, by
accustoming men's minds to the idea of a purely spiritual papacy, seemed
likely to conduce to the rise of some anti-pope, far away, whilst the
successor of St. Peter was compelled to cling stubbornly to his Apostolic
and Roman fiction. A bishop, a priest would arise--where, who could tell?
Perhaps yonder in that free America, where there are priests whom the
struggle for life has turned into convinced socialists, into ardent
democrats, who are ready to go forward with the coming century. And
whilst Rome remains unable to relinquish aught of her past, aught of her
mysteries and dogmas, that priest will relinquish all of those things
which fall from one in dust. Ah! to be that priest, to be that great
reformer, that saviour of modern society, what a vast dream, what a part,
akin to that of a Messiah summoned by the nations in distress. For a
moment Pierre was transported as by a breeze of hope and triumph. If that
great change did not come in France, in Paris, it would come elsewhere,
yonder across the ocean, or farther yet, wherever there might be a
sufficiently fruitful soil for the new seed to spring from it in
overflowing harvests. A new religion! a new religion! even as he had
cried on returning from Lourdes, a religion which in particular should
not be an appetite for death, a religion which should at last realise
here below that Kingdom of God referred to in the Gospel, and which
should equitably divide terrestrial wealth, and with the law of labour
ensure the rule of truth and justice.
In the fever of this fresh dream Pierre already saw the pages of his new
book flaring before him when his eyes fell on an object lying upon a
chair, which at first surprised him. This also was a book, that work of
Theophile Morin's which Orlando had commissioned him to hand to its
author, and he felt annoyed with himself at having left it there, for he
might have forgotten it altogether. Before putting it into his valise he
retained it for a moment in his hand turning its pages over, his ideas
changing as by a sudden mental revolution. The work was, however, a very
modest one, one of those manuals for the bachelor's degree containing
little beyond the first elements of the sciences; still all the sciences
were represented in it, and it gave a fair summary of the present state
of human knowledge. And it was indeed Science which thus burst upon
Pierre's reverie with the energy of sovereign power. Not only was
Catholicism swept away from his mind, but all his religious conceptions,
every hypothesis of the divine tottered and fell. Only that little school
book, nothing but the universal desire for knowledge, that education
which ever extends and penetrates the whole people, and behold the
mysteries became absurdities, the dogmas crumbled, and nothing of ancient
faith was left. A nation nourished upon Science, no longer believing in
mysteries and dogmas, in a compensatory system of reward and punishment,
is a nation whose faith is for ever dead: and without faith Catholicism
cannot be. Therein is the blade of the knife, the knife which falls and
severs. If one century, if two centuries be needed, Science will take
them. She alone is eternal. It is pure /naivete/ to say that reason is
not contrary to faith. The truth is, that now already in order to save
mere fragments of the sacred writings, it has been necessary to
accommodate them to the new certainties, by taking refuge in the
assertion that they are simply symbolical! And what an extraordinary
attitude is that of the Catholic Church, expressly forbidding all those
who may discover a truth contrary to the sacred writings to pronounce
upon it in definitive fashion, and ordering them to await events in the
conviction that this truth will some day be proved an error! Only the
Pope, says the Church, is infallible; Science is fallible, her constant
groping is exploited against her, and divines remain on the watch
striving to make it appear that her discoveries of to-day are in
contradiction with her discoveries of yesterday. What do her sacrilegious
assertions, what do her certainties rending dogma asunder, matter to a
Catholic since it is certain that at the end of time, she, Science, will
again join Faith, and become the latter's very humble slave! Voluntary
blindness and impudent denial of things as evident as the sunlight, can
no further go. But all the same the insignificant little book, the manual
of truth travels on continuing its work, destroying error and building up
the new world, even as the infinitesimal agents of life built up our
present continents.
In the sudden great enlightenment which had come on him Pierre at last
felt himself upon firm ground. Has Science ever retreated? It is
Catholicism which has always retreated before her, and will always be
forced to retreat. Never does Science stop, step by step she wrests truth
from error, and to say that she is bankrupt because she cannot explain
the world in one word and at one effort, is pure and simple nonsense. If
she leaves, and no doubt will always leave a smaller and smaller domain
to mystery, and if supposition may always strive to explain that mystery,
it is none the less certain that she ruins, and with each successive hour
will add to the ruin of the ancient hypotheses, those which crumble away
before the acquired truths. And Catholicism is in the position of those
ancient hypotheses, and will be in it yet more thoroughly to-morrow. Like
all religions it is, at the bottom, but an explanation of the world, a
superior social and political code, intended to bring about the greatest
possible sum of peace and happiness on earth. This code which embraces
the universality of things thenceforth becomes human, and mortal like
everything that is human. One cannot put it on one side and say that it
exists on one side by itself, whilst Science does the same on the other.
Science is total and has already shown Catholicism that such is the case,
and will show it again and again by compelling it to repair the breaches
incessantly effected in its ramparts till the day of victory shall come
with the final assault of resplendent truth. Frankly, it makes one laugh
to hear people assign a /role/ to Science, forbid her to enter such and
such a domain, predict to her that she shall go no further, and declare
that at this end of the century she is already so weary that she
abdicates! Oh! you little men of shallow or distorted brains, you
politicians planning expedients, you dogmatics at bay, you authoritarians
so obstinately clinging to the ancient dreams, Science will pass on, and
sweep you all away like withered leaves!