all it told him of sovereign Science. She cannot become bankrupt, for she
does not promise the absolute, she is simply the progressive conquest of
truth. Never has she pretended that she could give the whole truth at one
effort, that sort of edifice being precisely the work of metaphysics, of
revelation, of faith. The /role/ of Science, on the contrary, is only to
destroy error as she gradually advances and increases enlightenment. And
thus, far from becoming bankrupt, in her march which nothing stops, she
remains the only possible truth for well-balanced and healthy minds. As
for those whom she does not satisfy, who crave for immediate and
universal knowledge, they have the resource of seeking refuge in no
matter what religious hypothesis, provided, if they wish to appear in the
right, that they build their fancy upon acquired certainties. Everything
which is raised on proven error falls. However, although religious
feeling persists among mankind, although the need of religion may be
eternal, it by no means follows that Catholicism is eternal, for it is,
after all, but one form of religion, which other forms preceded and which
others will follow. Religions may disappear, but religious feeling will
create new ones even with the help of Science. Pierre thought of that
alleged repulse of Science by the present-day awakening of mysticism, the
causes of which he had indicated in his book: the discredit into which
the idea of liberty has fallen among the people, duped in the last social
reorganisation, and the uneasiness of the /elite/, in despair at the void
in which their liberated minds and enlarged intelligences have left them.
It is the anguish of the Unknown springing up again; but it is also only
a natural and momentary reaction after so much labour, on finding that
Science does not yet calm our thirst for justice, our desire for
security, or our ancient idea of an eternal after-life of enjoyment. In
order, however, that Catholicism might be born anew, as some seem to
think it will be, the social soil would have to change, and it cannot
change; it no longer possesses the sap needful for the renewal of a
decaying formula which schools and laboratories destroy more and more
each day. The ground is other than it once was, a different oak must
spring from it. May Science therefore have her religion, for such a
religion will soon be the only one possible for the coming democracies,
for the nations, whose knowledge ever increases whilst their Catholic
faith is already nought but dust.
And all at once, by way of conclusion, Pierre bethought himself of the
idiocy of the Congregation of the Index. It had condemned his book, and
would surely condemn the other one that he had thought of, should he ever
write it. A fine piece of work truly! To fall tooth and nail on the poor
books of an enthusiastic dreamer, in which chimera contended with
chimera! Yet the Congregation was so foolish as not to interdict that
little book which he held in his hands, that humble book which alone was
to be feared, which was the ever triumphant enemy that would surely
overthrow the Church. Modest it was in its cheap "get up" as a school
manual, but that did not matter: danger began with the very alphabet,
increased as knowledge was acquired, and burst forth with those /resumes/
of the physical, chemical, and natural sciences which bring the very
Creation, as described by Holy Writ, into question. However, the Index
dared not attempt to suppress those humble volumes, those terrible
soldiers of truth, those destroyers of faith. What was the use, then, of
all the money which Leo XIII drew from his hidden treasure of the Peter's
Pence to subvention Catholic schools, with the thought of forming the
believing generations which the papacy needed to enable it to conquer?
What was the use of that precious money if it was only to serve for the
purchase of similar insignificant yet formidable volumes, which could
never be sufficiently "cooked" and expurgated, but would always contain
too much Science, that growing Science which one day would blow up both
Vatican and St. Peter's? Ah! that idiotic and impotent Index, what
wretchedness and what derision!
Then, when Pierre had placed Theophile Morin's book in his valise, he
once more returned to the window, and while leaning out, beheld an
extraordinary vision. Under the cloudy, coppery sky, in the mild and
mournful night, patches of wavy mist had risen, hiding many of the
house-roofs with trailing shreds which looked like shrouds. Entire
edifices had disappeared, and he imagined that the times were at last
accomplished, and that truth had at last destroyed St. Peter's dome. In a
hundred or a thousand years, it would be like that, fallen, obliterated
from the black sky. One day, already, he had felt it tottering and
cracking beneath him, and had foreseen that this temple of Catholicism
would fall even as Jove's temple had fallen on the Capitol. And it was
over now, the dome had strewn the ground with fragments, and all that
remained standing, in addition to a portion of the apse, where five
columns of the central nave, still upholding a shred of entablature, and
four cyclopean buttress-piers on which the dome had rested--piers which
still arose, isolated and superb, looking indestructible among all the
surrounding downfall. But a denser mist flowed past, another thousand
years no doubt went by, and then nothing whatever remained. The apse, the
last pillars, the giant piers themselves were felled! The wind had swept
away their dust, and it would have been necessary to search the soil
beneath the brambles and the nettles to find a few fragments of broken
statues, marbles with mutilated inscriptions, on the sense of which
learned men were unable to agree. And, as formerly, on the Capitol, among
the buried remnants of Jupiter's temple, goats strayed and climbed
through the solitude, browsing upon the bushes, amidst the deep silence
of the oppressive summer sunlight, which only the buzzing flies
disturbed.
Then, only then, did Pierre feel the supreme collapse within him. It was
really all over, Science was victorious, nothing of the old world
remained. What use would it be then to become the great schismatic, the
reformer who was awaited? Would it not simply mean the building up of a
new dream? Only the eternal struggle of Science against the Unknown, the
searching, pursuing inquiry which incessantly moderated man's thirst for
the divine, now seemed to him of import, leaving him waiting to know if
she would ever triumph so completely as to suffice mankind, by satisfying
all its wants. And in the disaster which had overcome his apostolic
enthusiasm, in presence of all those ruins, having lost his faith, and
even his hope of utilising old Catholicism for social and moral
salvation, there only remained reason that held him up. She had at one
moment given way. If he had dreamt that book, and had just passed through
that terrible crisis, it was because sentiment had once again overcome
reason within him. It was his mother, so to say, who had wept in his
heart, who had filled him with an irresistible desire to relieve the
wretched and prevent the massacres which seemed near at hand; and his
passion for charity had thus swept aside the scruples of his
intelligence. But it was his father's voice that he now heard, lofty and
bitter reason which, though it had fled, at present came back in all
sovereignty. As he had done already after Lourdes, he protested against
the glorification of the absurd and the downfall of common sense. Reason
alone enabled him to walk erect and firm among the remnants of the old
beliefs, even amidst the obscurities and failures of Science. Ah! Reason,
it was through her alone that he suffered, through her alone that he
could content himself, and he swore that he would now always seek to
satisfy her, even if in doing so he should lose his happiness.
At that moment it would have been vain for him to ask what he ought to
do. Everything remained in suspense, the world stretched before him still
littered with the ruins of the past, of which, to-morrow, it would
perhaps be rid. Yonder, in that dolorous faubourg of Paris, he would find
good Abbe Rose, who but a few days previously had written begging him to
return and tend, love, and save his poor, since Rome, so dazzling from
afar, was dead to charity. And around the good and peaceful old priest he
would find the ever growing flock of wretched ones; the little fledglings
who had fallen from their nests, and whom he found pale with hunger and
shivering with cold; the households of abominable misery in which the
father drank and the mother became a prostitute, while the sons and the
daughters sank into vice and crime; the dwellings, too, through which
famine swept, where all was filth and shameful promiscuity, where there
was neither furniture nor linen, nothing but purely animal life. And then
there would also come the cold blasts of winter, the disasters of slack
times, the hurricanes of consumption carrying off the weak, whilst the
strong clenched their fists and dreamt of vengeance. One evening, too,
perhaps, he might again enter some room of horror and find that another
mother had killed herself and her five little ones, her last-born in her
arms clinging to her drained breast, and the others scattered over the
bare tiles, at last contented, feeling hunger no more, now that they were
dead! But no, no, such awful things were no longer possible: such black
misery conducting to suicide in the heart of that great city of Paris,
which is brimful of wealth, intoxicated with enjoyment, and flings
millions out of window for mere pleasure! The very foundations of the
social edifice were rotten; all would soon collapse amidst mire and
blood. Never before had Pierre so acutely realised the derisive futility
of Charity. And all at once he became conscious that the long-awaited
word, the word which was at last springing from the great silent
multitude, the crushed and gagged people was /Justice/! Aye, Justice not
Charity! Charity had only served to perpetuate misery, Justice perhaps
would cure it. It was for Justice that the wretched hungered; an act of
Justice alone could sweep away the olden world so that the new one might
be reared. After all, the great silent multitude would belong neither to
Vatican nor to Quirinal, neither to pope nor to king. If it had covertly
growled through the ages in its long, sometimes mysterious, and sometimes
open contest; if it had struggled betwixt pontiff and emperor who each
had wished to retain it for himself alone, it had only done so in order
that it might free itself, proclaim its resolve to belong to none on the
day when it should cry Justice! Would to-morrow then at last prove that
day of Justice and Truth? For his part, Pierre amidst his anguish--having
on one hand that need of the divine which tortures man, and on the other
sovereignty of reason which enables man to remain erect--was only sure of
one thing, that he would keep his vows, continue a priest, watching over
the belief of others though he could not himself believe, and would thus
chastely and honestly follow his profession, amidst haughty sadness at
having been unable to renounce his intelligence in the same way as he had
renounced his flesh and his dream of saving the nations. And again, as
after Lourdes, he would wait.
So deeply was he plunged in reflection at that window, face to face with
the mist which seemed to be destroying the dark edifices of Rome, that he
did not hear himself called. At last, however, he felt a tap on the
shoulder: "Monsieur l'Abbe!" And then as he turned he saw Victorine, who
said to him: "It is half-past nine; the cab is there. Giacomo has already
taken your luggage down. You must come away, Monsieur l'Abbe."
Then seeing him blink, still dazed as it were, she smiled and added: "You
were bidding Rome goodbye. What a frightful sky there is."
"Yes, frightful," was his reply.
Then they descended the stairs. He had handed her a hundred-franc note to
be shared between herself and the other servants. And she apologised for
going down before him with the lamp, explaining that the old palace was
so dark that evening one could scarcely see.
Ah! that departure, that last descent through the black and empty
mansion, it quite upset Pierre's heart. He gave his room that glance of
farewell which always saddened him, even when he was leaving a spot where
he had suffered. Then, on passing Don Vigilio's chamber, whence there
only came a quivering silence, he pictured the secretary with his head
buried in his pillows, holding his breath for fear lest he should speak
and attract vengeance. But it was in particular on the second and first
floor landings, on passing the closed doors of Donna Serafina and the
Cardinal, that Pierre quivered with apprehension at hearing nothing but
the silence of the grave. And as he followed Victorine, who, lamp in
hand, was still descending, he thought of the brother and sister who were
left alone in the ruined palace, last relics of a world which had half
passed away. All hope of life had departed with Benedetta and Dario, no
resurrection could come from that old maid and that priest who was bound
to chastity. Ah! those interminable and lugubrious passages, that frigid
and gigantic staircase which seemed to descend into nihility, those huge
halls with cracking walls where all was wretchedness and abandonment! And
that inner court, looking like a cemetery with its weeds and its damp
porticus, where remnants of Apollos and Venuses were rotting! And the
little deserted garden, fragrant with ripe oranges, whither nobody now
would ever stray, where none would ever meet that adorable Contessina
under the laurels near the sarcophagus! All was now annihilated in
abominable mourning, in a death-like silence, amidst which the two last
Boccaneras must wait, in savage grandeur, till their palace should fall
about their heads. Pierre could only just detect a faint sound, the
gnawing of a mouse perhaps, unless it were caused by Abbe Paparelli
attacking the walls of some out-of-the-way rooms, preying on the old
edifice down below, so as to hasten its fall.
The cab stood at the door, already laden with the luggage, the box beside
the driver, the valise on the seat; and the priest at once got in.
"Oh! You have plenty of time," said Victorine, who had remained on the
foot-pavement. "Nothing has been forgotten. I'm glad to see you go off
comfortably."
And indeed at that last moment Pierre was comforted by the presence of
that worthy woman, his compatriot, who had greeted him on his arrival and
now attended his departure. "I won't say 'till we meet again,' Monsieur
l'Abbe," she exclaimed, "for I don't fancy that you'll soon be back in
this horrid city. Good-bye, Monsieur l'Abbe."
"Good-bye, Victorine, and thank you with all my heart."
The cab was already going off at a fast trot, turning into the narrow
sinuous street which leads to the Corso Vittoria Emanuele. It was not
raining and so the hood had not been raised, but although the damp
atmosphere was comparatively mild, Pierre at once felt a chill. However,
he was unwilling to stop the driver, a silent fellow whose only desire
seemingly was to get rid of his fare as soon as possible. When the cab
came out into the Corso Vittoria Emanuele, the young man was astonished
to find it already quite deserted, the houses shut, the footways bare,
and the electric lamps burning all alone in melancholy solitude. In
truth, however, the temperature was far from warm and the fog seemed to
be increasing, hiding the house-fronts more and more. When Pierre passed
the Cancelleria, that stern colossal pile seemed to him to be receding,
fading away; and farther on, upon the right, at the end of the Via di Ara
Coeli, starred by a few smoky gas lamps, the Capitol had quite vanished
in the gloom. Then the thoroughfare narrowed, and the cab went on between
the dark heavy masses of the Gesu and the Altieri palace; and there in
that contracted passage, where even on fine sunny days one found all the
dampness of old times, the quivering priest yielded to a fresh train of
thought. It was an idea which had sometimes made him feel anxious, the
idea that mankind, starting from over yonder in Asia, had always marched
onward with the sun. An east wind had always carried the human seed for
future harvest towards the west. And for a long while now the cradle of
humanity had been stricken with destruction and death, as if indeed the
nations could only advance by stages, leaving exhausted soil, ruined
cities, and degenerate populations behind, as they marched from orient to
occident, towards their unknown goal. Nineveh and Babylon on the banks of
the Euphrates, Thebes and Memphis on the banks of the Nile, had been
reduced to dust, sinking from old age and weariness into a deadly
numbness beyond possibility of awakening. Then decrepitude had spread to
the shores of the great Mediterranean lake, burying both Tyre and Sidon
with dust, and afterwards striking Carthage with senility whilst it yet
seemed in full splendour. In this wise as mankind marched on, carried by
the hidden forces of civilisation from east to west, it marked each day's
journey with ruins; and how frightful was the sterility nowadays
displayed by the cradle of History, that Asia and that Egypt, which had
once more lapsed into childhood, immobilised in ignorance and degeneracy
amidst the ruins of ancient cities that once had been queens of the
world!
It was thus Pierre reflected as the cab rolled on. Still he was not
unconscious of his surroundings. As he passed the Palazzo di Venezia it
seemed to him to be crumbling beneath some assault of the invisible, for
the mist had already swept away its battlements, and the lofty, bare,
fearsome walls looked as if they were staggering from the onslaught of
the growing darkness. And after passing the deep gap of the Corso, which
was also deserted amidst the pallid radiance of its electric lights, the
Palazzo Torlonia appeared on the right-hand, with one wing ripped open by
the picks of demolishers, whilst on the left, farther up, the Palazzo
Colonna showed its long, mournful facade and closed windows, as if, now
that it was deserted by its masters and void of its ancient pomp, it
awaited the demolishers in its turn.
Then, as the cab at a slower pace began to climb the ascent of the Via
Nazionale, Pierre's reverie continued. Was not Rome also stricken, had
not the hour come for her to disappear amidst that destruction which the
nations on the march invariably left behind them? Greece, Athens, and
Sparta slumbered beneath their glorious memories, and were of no account
in the world of to-day. Moreover, the growing paralysis had already
invaded the lower portion of the Italic peninsula; and after Naples
certainly came the turn of Rome. She was on the very margin of the death
spot which ever extends over the old continent, that margin where agony
begins, where the impoverished soil will no longer nourish and support
cities, where men themselves seem stricken with old age as soon as they
are born. For two centuries Rome had been declining, withdrawing little
by little from modern life, having neither manufactures nor trade, and
being incapable even of science, literature, or art. And in Pierre's
thoughts it was no longer St. Peter's only that fell, but all
Rome--basilicas, palaces, and entire districts--which collapsed amidst a
supreme rending, and covered the seven hills with a chaos of ruins. Like
Nineveh and Babylon, and like Thebes and Memphis, Rome became but a
plain, bossy with remnants, amidst which one vainly sought to identify
the sites of ancient edifices, whilst its sole denizens were coiling
serpents and bands of rats.
The cab turned, and on the right, in a huge gap of darkness Pierre
recognised Trajan's column, but it was no longer gilded by the sun as
when he had first seen it; it now rose up blackly like the dead trunk of
a giant tree whose branches have fallen from old age. And farther on,
when he raised his eyes while crossing the little triangular piazza, and
perceived a real tree against the leaden sky, that parasol pine of the
Villa Aldobrandini which rises there like a symbol of Rome's grace and
pride, it seemed to him but a smear, a little cloud of soot ascending
from the downfall of the whole city.
With the anxious, fraternal turn of his feelings, fear was coming over
him as he reached the end of his tragic dream. When the numbness which
spreads across the aged world should have passed Rome, when Lombardy
should have yielded to it, and Genoa, Turin, and Milan should have fallen
asleep as Venice has fallen already, then would come the turn of France.
The Alps would be crossed, Marseilles, like Tyre and Sidon, would see its
port choked up by sand, Lyons would sink into desolation and slumber, and
at last Paris, invaded by the invincible torpor, and transformed into a
sterile waste of stones bristling with nettles, would join Rome and
Nineveh and Babylon in death, whilst the nations continued their march
from orient to occident following the sun. A great cry sped through the
gloom, the death cry of the Latin races! History, which seemed to have
been born in the basin of the Mediterranean, was being transported
elsewhere, and the ocean had now become the centre of the world. How many
hours of the human day had gone by? Had mankind, starting from its cradle
over yonder at daybreak, strewing its road with ruins from stage to
stage, now accomplished one-half of its day and reached the dazzling hour
of noon? If so, then the other half of the day allotted to it was
beginning, the new world was following the old one, the new world of
those American cities where democracy was forming and the religion of
to-morrow was sprouting, those sovereign queens of the coming century,
with yonder, across another ocean, on the other side of the globe, that
motionless Far East, mysterious China and Japan, and all the threatening
swarm of the yellow races.
However, while the cab climbed higher and higher up the Via Nazionale,
Pierre felt his nightmare dissipating. There was here a lighter
atmosphere, and he came back into a renewal of hope and courage. Yet the
Banca d'Italia, with its brand-new ugliness, its chalky hugeness, looked
to him like a phantom in a shroud; whilst above a dim expanse of gardens
the Quirinal formed but a black streak barring the heavens. However, the
street ever ascended and broadened, and on the summit of the Viminal, on
the Piazza delle Terme, when he passed the ruins of Diocletian's baths,
he could breathe as his lungs listed. No, no, the human day could not
finish, it was eternal, and the stages of civilisation would follow and
follow without end! What mattered that eastern wind which carried the
nations towards the west, as if borne on by the power of the sun! If
necessary, they would return across the other side of the globe, they
would again and again make the circuit of the earth, until the day should
come when they could establish themselves in peace, truth, and justice.
After the next civilisation on the shores of the Atlantic, which would
become the world's centre, skirted by queenly cities, there would spring
up yet another civilisation, having the Pacific for its centre, with
seaport capitals that could not be yet foreseen, whose germs yet
slumbered on unknown shores. And in like way there would be still other
civilisations and still others! And at that last moment, the inspiriting
thought came to Pierre that the great movement of the nations was the
instinct, the need which impelled them to return to unity. Originating in
one sole family, afterwards parted and dispersed in tribes, thrown into
collision by fratricidal hatred, their tendency was none the less to
become one sole family again. The provinces united in nations, the
nations would unite in races, and the races would end by uniting in one
immortal mankind--mankind at last without frontiers, or possibility of
wars, mankind living by just labour amidst an universal commonwealth. Was
not this indeed the evolution, the object of the labour progressing
everywhere, the finish reserved to History? Might Italy then become a
strong and healthy nation, might concord be established between her and
France, and might that fraternity of the Latin races become the beginning
of universal fraternity! Ah! that one fatherland, the whole earth
pacified and happy, in how many centuries would that come--and what a
dream!
Then, on reaching the station the scramble prevented Pierre from thinking
any further. He had to take his ticket and register his luggage, and
afterwards he at once climbed into the train. At dawn on the next day but
one, he would be back in Paris.