“Don Ippolito has come, signorina,” said Nina, the next morning,
approaching Florida, where she sat in an attitude of listless patience,
in the garden.
“Don Ippolito!” echoed the young girl in a weary tone. She rose and
went into the house, and they met with the constraint which was but too
natural after the events of their last parting. It is hard to tell
which has most to overcome in such a case, the forgiver or the forgiven.
Pardon rankles even in a generous soul, and the memory of having
pardoned embarrasses the sensitive spirit before the object of its
clemency, humbling and making it ashamed. It would be well, I suppose,
if there need be nothing of the kind between human creatures, who cannot
sustain such a relation without mutual distrust. It is not so ill with
them when apart, but when they meet they must be cold and shy at first.
“Now I see what you two are thinking about,” said Mrs. Vervain, and a
faint blush tinged the cheek of the priest as she thus paired him off
with her daughter. “You are thinking about what happened the other
day; and you had better forget it. There is no use brooding over
these matters. Dear me! if _I_ had stopped to brood over every little
unpleasant thing that happened, I wonder where I should be now? By the
way, where were _you_ all day yesterday, Don Ippolito?”
“I did not come to disturb you because I thought you must be very tired.
Besides I was quite busy.”
“Oh yes, those inventions of yours. I think you are _so_ ingenious! But
you mustn’t apply too closely. Now really, yesterday,--after all you had
been through, it was too much for the brain.” She tapped herself on the
forehead with her fan.
“I was not busy with my inventions, madama,” answered Don Ippolito,
who sat in the womanish attitude priests get from their drapery, and
fingered the cord round his three-cornered hat. “I have scarcely touched
them of late. But our parish takes part in the procession of Corpus
Domini in the Piazza, and I had my share of the preparations.”
“Oh, to be sure! When is it to be? We must all go. Our Nina has been
telling Florida of the grand sights,--little children dressed up like
John the Baptist, leading lambs. I suppose it’s a great event with you.”
The priest shrugged his shoulders, and opened both his hands, so that
his hat slid to the floor, bumping and tumbling some distance away. He
recovered it and sat down again. “It’s an observance,” he said coldly.
“And shall you be in the procession?”
“I shall be there with the other priests of my parish.”
“Delightful!” cried Mrs. Vervain. “We shall be looking out for you.
I shall feel greatly honored to think I actually know some one in the
procession. I’m going to give you a little nod. You won’t think it very
wrong?”
She saved him from the embarrassment he might have felt in replying, by
an abrupt lapse from all apparent interest in the subject. She turned to
her daughter, and said with a querulous accent, “I wish you would throw
the afghan over my feet, Florida, and make me a little comfortable
before you begin your reading this morning.” At the same time she feebly
disposed herself among the sofa cushions on which she reclined, and
waited for some final touches from her daughter. Then she said, “I’m
just going to close my eyes, but I shall hear every word. You are
getting a beautiful accent, my dear, I know you are. I should think
Goldoni must have a very smooth, agreeable style; hasn’t he now, in
Italian?”
They began to read the comedy; after fifteen or twenty minutes Mrs.
Vervain opened her eyes and said, “But before you commence, Florida,
I wish you’d play a little, to get me quieted down. I feel so very
flighty. I suppose it’s this sirocco. And I believe I’ll lie down in the
next room.”
Florida followed her to repeat the arrangements for her comfort. Then
she returned, and sitting down at the piano struck with a sort of soft
firmness a few low, soothing chords, out of which a lulling melody grew.
With her fingers still resting on the keys she turned her stately head,
and glanced through the open door at her mother.
“Don Ippolito,” she asked softly, “is there anything in the air of
Venice that makes people very drowsy?”
“I have never heard that, madamigella.”
“I wonder,” continued the young girl absently, “why my mother wants to
sleep so much.”
“Perhaps she has not recovered from the fatigues of the other night,”
suggested the priest.
“Perhaps,” said Florida, sadly looking toward her mother’s door.
She turned again to the instrument, and let her fingers wander over the
keys, with a drooping head. Presently she lifted her face, and smoothed
back from her temples some straggling tendrils of hair. Without looking
at the priest she asked with the child-like bluntness that characterized
her, “Why don’t you like to walk in the procession of Corpus Domini?”
Don Ippolito’s color came and went, and he answered evasively, “I have
not said that I did not like to do so.”
“No, that is true,” said Florida, letting her fingers drop again on the
keys.
Don Ippolito rose from the sofa where he had been sitting beside her
while they read, and walked the length of the room. Then he came towards
her and said meekly, “Madamigella, I did not mean to repel any interest
you feel in me. But it was a strange question to ask a priest, as I
remembered I was when you asked it.”
“Don’t you always remember that?” demanded the girl, still without
turning her head.
“No; sometimes I am suffered to forget it,” he said with a tentative
accent.
She did not respond, and he drew a long breath, and walked away in
silence. She let her hands fall into her lap, and sat in an attitude
of expectation. As Don Ippolito came near her again he paused a second
time.
“It is in this house that I forget my priesthood,” he began, “and it
is the first of your kindnesses that you suffer me to do so, your good
mother, there, and you. How shall I repay you? It cut me to the heart
that you should ask forgiveness of me when you did, though I was hurt
by your rebuke. Oh, had you not the right to rebuke me if I abused the
delicate unreserve with which you had always treated me? But believe me,
I meant no wrong, then.”
His voice shook, and Florida broke in, “You did nothing wrong. It was I
who was cruel for no cause.”
“No, no. You shall not say that,” he returned. “And why should I have
cared for a few words, when all your acts had expressed a trust of me
that is like heaven to my soul?”
She turned now and looked at him, and he went on. “Ah, I see you do not
understand! How could you know what it is to be a priest in this most
unhappy city? To be haunted by the strict espionage of all your own
class, to be shunned as a spy by all who are not of it! But you two have
not put up that barrier which everywhere shuts me out from my kind.
You have been willing to see the man in me, and to let me forget the
priest.”
“I do not know what to say to you, Don Ippolito. I am only a foreigner,
a girl, and I am very ignorant of these things,” said Florida with a
slight alarm. “I am afraid that you may be saying what you will be sorry
for.”
“Oh never! Do not fear for me if I am frank with you. It is my refuge
from despair.”
The passionate vibration of his voice increased, as if it must break
in tears. She glanced towards the other room with a little movement or
stir.
“Ah, you needn’t be afraid of listening to me!” cried the priest
bitterly.
“I will not wake her,” said Florida calmly, after an instant.
“See how you speak the thing you mean, always, always, always! You could
not deny that you meant to wake her, for you have the life-long habit of
the truth. Do you know what it is to have the life-long habit of a lie?
It is to be a priest. Do you know what it is to seem, to say, to do,
the thing you are not, think not, will not? To leave what you believe
unspoken, what you will undone, what you are unknown? It is to be a
priest!”
Don Ippolito spoke in Italian, and he uttered these words in a voice
carefully guarded from every listener but the one before his face. “Do
you know what it is when such a moment as this comes, and you would
fling away the whole fabric of falsehood that has clothed your life--do
you know what it is to keep still so much of it as will help you to
unmask silently and secretly? It is to be a priest!”
His voice had lost its vehemence, and his manner was strangely subdued
and cold. The sort of gentle apathy it expressed, together with a
certain sad, impersonal surprise at the difference between his own and
the happier fortune with which he contrasted it, was more touching than
any tragic demonstration.
As if she felt the fascination of the pathos which she could not fully
analyze, the young girl sat silent. After a time, in which she seemed to
be trying to think it all out, she asked in a low, deep murmur: “Why did
you become a priest, then?”
“It is a long story,” said Don Ippolito. “I will not trouble you with it
now. Some other time.”
“No; now,” answered Florida, in English. “If you hate so to be a priest,
I can’t understand why you should have allowed yourself to become one.
We should be very unhappy if we could not respect you,--not trust you as
we have done; and how could we, if we knew you were not true to yourself
in being what you are?”
“Madamigella,” said the priest, “I never dared believe that I was in the
smallest thing necessary to your happiness. Is it true, then, that
you care for my being rather this than that? That you are in the least
grieved by any wrong of mine?”
“I scarcely know what you mean. How could we help being grieved by what
you have said to me?”
“Thanks; but why do you care whether a priest of my church loves his
calling or not,--you, a Protestant? It is that you are sorry for me as
an unhappy man, is it not?”
“Yes; it is that and more. I am no Catholic, but we are both
Christians”--
Don Ippolito gave the faintest movement of his shoulders.
--“and I cannot endure to think of your doing the things you must do as
a priest, and yet hating to be a priest. It is terrible!”
“Are all the priests of your faith devotees?”
“They cannot be. But are none of yours so?”
“Oh, God forbid that I should say that. I have known real saints among
them. That friend of mine in Padua, of whom I once told you, became
such, and died an angel fit for Paradise. And I suppose that my poor
uncle is a saint, too, in his way.”
“Your uncle? A priest? You have never mentioned him to us.”
“No,” said Don Ippolito. After a certain pause he began abruptly, “We
are of the people, my family, and in each generation we have sought to
honor our blood by devoting one of the race to the church. When I was a
child, I used to divert myself by making little figures out of wood and
pasteboard, and I drew rude copies of the pictures I saw at church. We
lived in the house where I live now, and where I was born, and my mother
let me play in the small chamber where I now have my forge; it was
anciently the oratory of the noble family that occupied the whole
palace. I contrived an altar at one end of it; I stuck my pictures about
the walls, and I ranged the puppets in the order of worshippers on the
floor; then I played at saying mass, and preached to them all day long.
“My mother was a widow. She used to watch me with tears in her eyes.
At last, one day, she brought my uncle to see me: I remember it all far
better than yesterday. ‘Is it not the will of God?’ she asked. My uncle
called me to him, and asked me whether I should like to be a priest
in good earnest, when I grew up? ‘Shall I then be able to make as many
little figures as I like, and to paint pictures, and carve an altar like
that in your church?’ I demanded. My uncle answered that I should have
real men and women to preach to, as he had, and would not that be much
finer? In my heart I did not think so, for I did not care for that part
of it; I only liked to preach to my puppets because I had made them.
But said, ‘Oh yes,’ as children do. I kept on contriving the toys that I
played with, and I grew used to hearing it told among my mates and about
the neighborhood that I was to be a priest; I cannot remember any other
talk with my mother, and I do not know how or when it was decided.
Whenever I thought of the matter, I thought, ‘That will be very well.
The priests have very little to do, and they gain a great deal of money
with their masses; and I shall be able to make whatever I like.’ I only
considered the office then as a means to gratify the passion that has
always filled my soul for inventions and works of mechanical skill and
ingenuity. My inclination was purely secular, but I was as inevitably
becoming a priest as if I had been born to be one.”
“But you were not forced? There was no pressure upon you?”
“No, there was merely an absence, so far as they were concerned, of any
other idea. I think they meant justly, and assuredly they meant kindly
by me. I grew in years, and the time came when I was to begin my
studies. It was my uncle’s influence that placed me in the Seminary of
the Salute, and there I repaid his care by the utmost diligence. But it
was not the theological studies that I loved, it was the mathematics
and their practical application, and among the classics I loved best
the poets and the historians. Yes, I can see that I was always a mundane
spirit, and some of those in charge of me at once divined it, I think.
They used to take us to walk,--you have seen the little creatures in
their priest’s gowns, which they put on when they enter the school, with
a couple of young priests at the head of the file,--and once, for an
uncommon pleasure, they took us to the Arsenal, and let us see the
shipyards and the museum. You know the wonderful things that are there:
the flags and the guns captured from the Turks; the strange weapons of
all devices; the famous suits of armor. I came back half-crazed; I wept
that I must leave the place. But I set to work the best I could to carve
out in wood an invention which the model of one of the antique galleys
had suggested to me. They found it,--nothing can be concealed outside
of your own breast in such a school,--and they carried me with my
contrivance before the superior. He looked kindly but gravely at me: ‘My
son,’ said he, ‘do you wish to be a priest?’ ‘Surely, reverend father,’
I answered in alarm, ‘why not?’ ‘Because these things are not for
priests. Their thoughts must be upon other things. Consider well of it,
my son, while there is yet time,’ he said, and he addressed me a long
and serious discourse upon the life on which I was to enter. He was a
just and conscientious and affectionate man; but every word fell like
burning fire in my heart. At the end, he took my poor plaything, and
thrust it down among the coals of his _scaldino_. It made the scaldino
smoke, and he bade me carry it out with me, and so turned again to his
book.
“My mother was by this time dead, but I could hardly have gone to her,
if she had still been living. ‘These things are not for priests!’ kept
repeating itself night and day in my brain. I was in despair, I was in
a fury to see my uncle. I poured out my heart to him, and tried to make
him understand the illusions and vain hopes in which I had lived. He
received coldly my sorrow and the reproaches which I did not spare
him; he bade me consider my inclinations as so many temptations to be
overcome for the good of my soul and the glory of God. He warned me
against the scandal of attempting to withdraw now from the path marked
out for me. I said that I never would be a priest. ‘And what will you
do?’ he asked. Alas! what could I do? I went back to my prison, and in
due course I became a priest.
“It was not without sufficient warning that I took one order after
another, but my uncle’s words, ‘What will you do?’ made me deaf to these
admonitions. All that is now past. I no longer resent nor hate; I seem
to have lost the power; but those were days when my soul was filled with
bitterness. Something of this must have showed itself to those who had
me in their charge. I have heard that at one time my superiors had grave
doubts whether I ought to be allowed to take orders. My examination,
in which the difficulties of the sacerdotal life were brought before me
with the greatest clearness, was severe; I do not know how I passed it;
it must have been in grace to my uncle. I spent the next ten days in a
convent, to meditate upon the step I was about to take. Poor helpless,
friendless wretch! Madamigella, even yet I cannot see how I was to
blame, that I came forth and received the first of the holy orders, and
in their time the second and the third.
“I was a priest, but no more a priest at heart than those Venetian
conscripts, whom you saw carried away last week, are Austrian soldiers.
I was bound as they are bound, by an inexorable and inevitable law.
“You have asked me why I became a priest. Perhaps I have not told
you why, but I have told you how--I have given you the slight outward
events, not the processes of my mind--and that is all that I can do. If
the guilt was mine, I have suffered for it. If it was not mine, still I
have suffered for it. Some ban seems to have rested upon whatever I have
attempted. My work,--oh, I know it well enough!--has all been cursed
with futility; my labors are miserable failures or contemptible
successes. I have had my unselfish dreams of blessing mankind by some
great discovery or invention; but my life has been barren, barren,
barren; and save for the kindness that I have known in this house, and
that would not let me despair, it would now be without hope.”
He ceased, and the girl, who had listened with her proud looks
transfigured to an aspect of grieving pity, fetched a long sigh. “Oh,
I am sorry for you!” she said, “more sorry than I know how to tell. But
you must not lose courage, you must not give up!”
Don Ippolito resumed with a melancholy smile. “There are doubtless
temptations enough to be false under the best of conditions in this
world. But something--I do not know what or whom; perhaps no more my
uncle or my mother than I, for they were only as the past had made
them--caused me to begin by living a lie, do you not see?”
“Yes, yes,” reluctantly assented the girl.
“Perhaps--who knows?--that is why no good has come of me, nor can come.
My uncle’s piety and repute have always been my efficient help. He is
the principal priest of the church to which I am attached, and he has
had infinite patience with me. My ambition and my attempted inventions
are a scandal to him, for he is a priest of those like the Holy Father,
who believe that all the wickedness of the modern world has come from
the devices of science; my indifference to the things of religion is a
terror and a sorrow to him which he combats with prayers and penances.
He starves himself and goes cold and faint that God may have mercy and
turn my heart to the things on which his own is fixed. He loves my soul,
but not me, and we are scarcely friends.”
Florida continued to look at him with steadfast, compassionate eyes.
“It seems very strange, almost like some dream,” she murmured, “that you
should be saying all this to me, Don Ippolito, and I do not know why I
should have asked you anything.”
The pity of this virginal heart must have been very sweet to the man
on whom she looked it. His eyes worshipped her, as he answered her
devoutly, “It was due to the truth in you that I should seem to you what
I am.”
“Indeed, you make me ashamed!” she cried with a blush. “It was selfish
of me to ask you to speak. And now, after what you have told me, I am
so helpless and I know so very little that I don’t understand how to
comfort or encourage you. But surely you can somehow help yourself. Are
men, that seem so strong and able, just as powerless as women, after
all, when it comes to real trouble? Is a man”--
“I cannot answer. I am only a priest,” said Don Ippolito coldly, letting
his eyes drop to the gown that fell about him like a woman’s skirt.
“Yes, but a priest should be a man, and so much more; a priest”--
Don Ippolito shrugged his shoulders.
“No, no!” cried the girl. “Your own schemes have all failed, you say;
then why do you not think of becoming a priest in reality, and getting
the good there must be in such a calling? It is singular that I should
venture to say such a thing to you, and it must seem presumptuous and
ridiculous for me, a Protestant--but our ways are so different.”... She
paused, coloring deeply, then controlled herself, and added with grave
composure, “If you were to pray”--
“To what, madamigella?” asked the priest, sadly.
“To what!” she echoed, opening her eyes full upon him. “To God!”
Don Ippolito made no answer. He let his head fall so low upon his breast
that she could see the sacerdotal tonsure.
“You must excuse me,” she said, blushing again. “I did not mean to wound
your feelings as a Catholic. I have been very bold and intrusive. I
ought to have remembered that people of your church have different
ideas--that the saints”--
Don Ippolito looked up with pensive irony.
“Oh, the poor saints!”
“I don’t understand you,” said Florida, very gravely.
“I mean that I believe in the saints as little as you do.”
“But you believe in your Church?”
“I have no Church.”
There was a silence in which Don Ippolito again dropped his head upon
his breast. Florida leaned forward in her eagerness, and murmured, “You
believe in God?”
The priest lifted his eyes and looked at her beseechingly. “I do not
know,” he whispered. She met his gaze with one of dumb bewilderment. At
last she said: “Sometimes you baptize little children and receive them
into the church in the name of God?”
“Yes.”
“Poor creatures come to you and confess their sins, and you absolve
them, or order them to do penances?”
“Yes.”
“And sometimes when people are dying, you must stand by their death-beds
and give them the last consolations of religion?”
“It is true.”
“Oh!” moaned the girl, and fixed on Don Ippolito a long look of wonder
and reproach, which he met with eyes of silent anguish.
“It is terrible, madamigella,” he said, rising. “I know it. I would fain
have lived single-heartedly, for I think I was made so; but now you see
how black and deadly a lie my life is. It is worse than you could have
imagined, is it not? It is worse than the life of the cruelest bigot,
for he at least believes in himself.”
“Worse, far worse!”
“But at least, dear young lady,” he went on piteously, “believe me
that I have the grace to abhor myself. It is not much, it is very, very
little, but it is something. Do not wholly condemn me!”
“Condemn? Oh, I am sorry for you with my whole heart. Only, why must you
tell me all this? No, no; you are not to blame. I made you speak; I made
you put yourself to shame.”
“Not that, dearest madamigella. I would unsay nothing now, if I could,
unless to take away the pain I have given you. It has been more a relief
than a shame to have all this known to you; and even if you should
despise me”--
“I don’t despise you; that isn’t for me; but oh, I wish that I could
help you!”
Don Ippolito shook his head. “You cannot help me; but I thank you for
your compassion; I shall never forget it.” He lingered irresolutely with
his hat in his hand. “Shall we go on with the reading, madamigella?”
“No, we will not read any more to-day,” she answered.
“Then I relieve you of the disturbance, madamigella,” he said; and after
a moment’s hesitation he bowed sadly and went.
She mechanically followed him to the door, with some little gestures
and movements of a desire to keep him from going, yet let him go, and so
turned back and sat down with her hands resting noiseless on the keys of
the piano.