Fra Paolo Sarpi--this friar so grave and great and unemotional--had been
since he had entered the convent in his precocious boyhood the central
figure, fascinating the interest of his community by the marvel of his
progress, so that those who had been his teachers stood reverently
aside, before he had attained to manhood, recognizing gifts beyond their
leading which had already won homage from the savants of Europe and
crowned the order of the Servi with unexampled honors. The element of
the unusual in the young Paolo's endowments had transformed this
Benjamin of the convent into a hero, and surrounded the calm flow of his
studious life with a halo of romance for these Servite friars; yet the
good Fra Giulio in those early days, having little learning wherewith to
estimate his progress and watching over him like a father, had been
grieved at his strange placidity. "He sorely needeth some touch of
emotion," he said yearningly; "methinks I love the lad as if he were
mine own son, and I feel something lacking in his life."
"Fret not the lad needlessly with those fanciful notions of thine," Fra
Gianmaria had retorted with much asperity. "It is the most marvelous
piece of mental mechanism that I have ever dreamed. Already he hath
attained to larger knowledge than thou, with thy gray hairs, canst
comprehend."
Fra Giulio had crossed himself devoutly, as if confessing to some
earthliness. "I measure not my simple mind with that of a genius, my
brother; for so God hath endowed our lad. Yet it may be that He meaneth
man to garner other blessings besides knowledge. We received him as a
child into our fold, and we are responsible for his development. But his
condition is not normal."
"Genius is abnormal," Fra Gianmaria had responded shortly.
"He hath no wish but for this ceaseless mental labor; all natural
youthful fancies, all joy in the things of beauty--for these he careth
naught."
The elder friar's troubled utterance had stirred no tremor in his
companion's stern reply. "Thou and I, my brother, have attained by
penances and years of abnegation to that mood which hath been granted
the boy as a gift to fit him for the cloister life. It were small
kindness to implant a struggle of which he knows not the beginnings."
And now, after all these years, through which the good Fra Giulio had
watched this son of his affections, whom he loved with a love "passing
the loves of earth" he pathetically told himself,--"as if God thus made
up to him for all the loves he had resigned,"--now that the name of Fra
Paolo was uttered with reverence while his own was unknown, he still
expressed his heart in many tender cares, providing the new cassock
before the scholar had noticed that the one he wore was seamed and
frayed, with such other gentle ministries as the convent rule permitted
toward one who never gave a worldly thought to the morrow.
And still, after all these years, the fatherly friar often fondly
recurred to a time when he had first seemed to catch some dim, shadowed
glimpse of that inner self which Fra Paolo so rarely expressed. He had
been endeavoring to rouse the lad to enthusiasm. "Never have I known one
show so little pleasure in nature," he had said. They were standing on
the terrace of a convent among the hills beyond the plains of Venetia,
and the view was beautiful and new for the youth.
"What is nature?" the lad had responded quietly.
"Nature?" Fra Giulio echoed, startled at the question. "Why, nature is
God's creation. Dost thou not find this bit of nature beautiful?"
"It is pleasant," the young friar had assented, without enthusiasm. "But
hath God created anything nobler than the mind and soul of man? The
earth is but for his habitation."
"Nay," the old man had replied, in a tone of disappointment, "it is more
for me--much more for those whom we call poets."
"Poets are dreamers," the lad had said, turning to his old friend with a
smile which seemed affectionate, yet was baffling, and went not deep
enough for love. "I would not dream; I must know."
"A little dreaming would not hurt thee, my Paolo; for sometimes it
seemeth to those who care for thee that thou needest rest."
"Rest is satisfaction," the lad answered quickly. "If there be a problem
to be solved, I would rather think than dream. I would rather come in
contact with the nobler activities--the mental and spiritual
forces--through the minds and works of men. I would find such attrition
more helpful than this phase of creation which thou callest 'nature,'
whose unfolding is more passive, depending on its inherent law."
"This also is of God's gift, Paolo mio," Fra Giulio had said yearningly.
"Sometimes thou seemest to find too little beauty in thy life, and when
I brought thee hither I hoped it might move thy soul."
"What can be more beautiful," the young philosopher had questioned
earnestly, "than the fitting of all to each, the search for hidden keys,
the linking of problems that seemed apart? These are the things that
move me. I must walk soberly, Fra Giulio, lest I miss some revelation,
so sacred and so mysterious is knowledge! And the love of it leaves me
no room for questions of outside beauty--this ordered beauty of hidden
law is so wonderful!"
For one moment, as Fra Giulio had looked at him, he fancied that he had
seen deeper into his eyes than ever before; then the veil had seemed to
rise up from the boy's heart and close over its depths. If it had been a
moment of self-revelation the young friar was again protected by that
baffling calm as he glanced about him, turning affectionately to his old
friend. "It pleaseth me that thou art pleased," he said.
Fra Giulio had answered with a sigh. It was hard for one who loved so
truly to get so near, yet be no nearer. "I could wish that thou also
shouldst take pleasure in this beauty, my Paolo, for thou art missing a
joy that God permits."
Then the youthful scholar had turned his eyes upon him silently; and it
had seemed to the old man, in his great love, that a sudden glory had
transfigured the grave young face like a consecration. He still
remembered the tones of that clear voice saying serenely: "My Father,
when God speaketh a message in our souls, the peace and beauty which
come to us as we follow its call, are in the measure which He hath
decreed for us."
Now that the convent rang with his triumphs, and Fra Paolo was often
absent from his cell on missions of honor, the old friar sometimes
wondered how many of those philosophic and scientific truths which had
made him famous as an original thinker had come to the lad in
glimmerings on that first night among the hills, when, turning to his
old friend and stretching out his hands with a solemn, imploring motion
which seemed to confess a desperate need of isolation, he had said only,
"Let me think!"
Had his seeming nearness to the stars in the convent _loggia_ brought
him a premonition of the later message which had made him the "friend
and master" of Galileo?
Did he develop his "Laws of Sound" in that voiceful silence; or was it
in that solitude he had first watched the gentle ebb and flow of his own
life-current and learned the secret which Harvey, later, uttered to the
world?
Or had he been wholly absorbed in those philosophical questions which he
so brilliantly disputed at the learned Court of Mantua?
But to be near him was only to wonder more at the mystery which
enveloped him; and Fra Giulio, now that the lad had reached his prime,
often went reverently back to that night under the stars, when the
gifted youth had first stood, distanced as it were from men, remote from
human habitations and alone with the One whom only he acknowledged as
Master--then, perhaps, he had first been conscious of his latent power;
surely then the manifold message of his life must have whispered within
him many premonitions!
The time was long past when a question could arise as to the right of
the Augustinians to rich possessions in church and convent; and the
priceless treasures of art, flung sometimes in atonement upon their
quiet walls by a world-worn artist, or sent in propitiation for some
unconfessed sin by a prince of Church or State, were found side by side
with the gifts and legacies of the faithful, which, in sincere devotion,
they often impoverished their families to bestow.
But none of these things had charms for Fra Paolo. Not even the beauty
of the cloisters, where the low, gray arches rested on slender shafts of
marble, wrought and twisted into as many devices, drew his thoughts from
the ceaseless contemplation of his problems; not even the petted
rose-tree, lovingly trained by the gentle Fra Francesco and lifting its
pink glory to the crest of the colonnade, won his eyes to wander from
the absorbing treasures of the great library where he passed his days.
Here many a brother had taught himself patience over the fine, endless
text of an ancient gospel, or wrought into the exquisite illumination of
some missal which stood to him in the place of his daily living those
yearning, torturing, hungering affections which had so enriched a gentle
home--as a brother, less disciplined, had carved his unruly tempers into
the grotesque figures of the reading desks. But for Fra Paolo the great
library of the convent held no unsatisfied yearnings--only an infinite
content and power to achieve.
From the days when those curious in philosophical research had flocked
from the neighboring universities to see this professor of theology who
could not be conquered in argument, and had been confronted by a
smooth-faced lad of twenty, until now, he was still the glory of the
Servi; and well might the friars watch in triumph, as one by one he
gathered laurels for their order. A little human flush of triumph or of
self-conceit would have added charm to his argument, but these notes
were lacking; clearly, logically, unanswerably, he met each question,
convincing without emotion and hastening from the gay court, of which
these intellectual tourneys were the delight, to the welcome seclusion
of the convent. If he seemed to have missed a real childhood,--its
follies, its innocent pleasures, its winsome affections,--so later, the
temptations that would naturally beset a career so extraordinary fell
harmlessly away from him, for a passion for knowledge burned within him,
consuming all ignoble motives and keeping this young scholar, in friar's
robes, in marvelous singleness of heart, in the midst of a flattering
and luxurious court.
Always he had been a law to himself, both morally and intellectually;
never before did it seem that genius had been cast in a mold so orderly
and calm. In that state of intense concentration which was his habitual
mood, he accomplished without apparent effort the things for which
others paid by a life-time of struggle; and morally he had no visible
combats, not seeming to be even reached by the things which tempted
other men. His wants were fewer than the simplest rule of his convent
allowed, and it seemed less that he had triumphed over the usual earthly
temptations than that he had been created abnormally free from them that
his whole strength might spend itself in the solving of problems. In a
certain sense he stood mysteriously alone, though his friends were many
and devoted and among the wise and venerated of the earth; but there was
always a door closed to them beyond the affection which he returned
them. "Always," he said once, "we veil our faces": yet none doubted his
sincerity.
From time to time, as the years sped, some echo of the jealousy which
his phenomenal success and the boldness of his bearing naturally evoked,
penetrated to the cloisters of the Servi; and more than once there had
been a denunciation to the Inquisition to discuss; some one in authority
had found fault with his theological opinions and denounced him for his
reading of a passage in Genesis, upon which he based his argument--the
affair was grave indeed.
"Ah, the pity of it--the pity of it!" Fra Giulio had exclaimed. "They
should show mercy--he is still so young a man!"
"Ay, young enough to need much discipline," bravely muttered a friar
who dared to disbelieve in their prodigy.
"Silence!" commanded Father Gianmaria, who was now the Superior, in a
stentorian tone; for within these walls there was no appeal from his
judgment or his temper. "The man who speaks only what he _knows_ is old
in wisdom;" and turning he addressed the company in great dignity: "It
doth appear that Rome approveth Fra Paolo's rendering and hath gravely
censured the Inquisitor who hath cited him, commanding him to meddle
only with that of which he hath some understanding."
"There are then tale-bearers whose jealousy would ruin our Paolo!" Fra
Giulio had exclaimed in anxiety.
"It was none other than Fra Paolo himself who carried the tale," the
Superior retorted in scorn of the old man's weak affection. "Fra Paolo
refused to appear before the Inquisitor who had cited him, who, he
alleged, knew not Hebrew nor Greek, and had therefore no knowledge upon
which to base his judgment; and on this ground Fra Paolo appealed to
Rome."
"It were a pity," said a gentle-faced young friar, who had been
listening silently, but with an expression of deep and affectionate
interest, "that one of so rare learning should remain long in a position
of danger to orthodoxy. Already the Court of Mantua hath been censured
by the Holy Father for heretical opinions."
"Nay; but for harboring heretics, hunted and driven," Fra Giulio
corrected warmly. "There be deeds of mercy that will be forgiven us."
A look of perplexity crossed the candid, boyish face of Fra Francesco.
"But the law of obedience is more simple," he said timidly; "and our
Holy Father--"
"Thou, not yet out of thy novitiate, doest well, verily, to prate of
obedience and doctrines," interrupted Father Gianmaria, less severely
than he was wont to treat such breaches of etiquette; for Fra Francesco
had deep, spiritual, loving eyes, in which an unuttered wonder sometimes
seemed to chide, for all his gentleness; and his ways were winsome.
So, through the years, whether he were present or absent, the life of
the convent had centered about Fra Paolo, who now, after many missions
of importance, had once more returned to his old cell in the Servi, with
another added for his books and labors, since often it suited him to be
alone. The breath of jealousy still clouded the serenity of his sky, and
he was not without some unfulfilled longings; but no scandal had ever
touched him. He was great enough now to be smitten through his friends,
and the good Fra Giulio had been the victim taken in his stead; upon Fra
Paolo's last homecoming to the convent the loving, fatherly greeting had
failed him.
"Ask the nuns, to whom he is father confessor; they will have no other,
and refuse admittance to one of our order who hath been sent to take
this duty upon him. And our good Fra Giulio hath been removed in
humiliation, and languisheth in Bologna, by order of the Patriarch who
hath been won by the tale of one who loveth thee not."
"There is no more to it than that?" Fra Paolo questioned.
"Nay, no more, my brother," Fra Francesco answered with conviction.
"The name then?" said Fra Paolo; and when it had been told him he
recognized the man as one in whom trust was misplaced, and one who
intrigued for power.
"The charge?" he asked again. And when he had patiently learned the
details of which Fra Giulio's long and faithful service gave little
hint, he gathered evidence wherewith to refute them, and journeyed
swiftly back to Rome, returning, triumphant, to reinstate the good old
friar with honor in the home and offices he loved--the manner of his
return making amends to Fra Giulio for the pain he had suffered, so
sweet it seemed to him to owe to this son of his affections all the
gladness of his later days.