order to be more free in his movements. Clad only in a short brown
jacket, he displayed the mighty muscles of his hairy arms in the
sunlight, and at every blow that he dealt the rocky mass, shivering it
into fragments, he gave a sort of savage grunt. But, when he saw the
young artist, he drew himself up and showed a mild and serene
countenance.
"You come just in time, young man," he said. "I was thinking about you,
and I have many questions to ask you."
"I thought, uncle, that you had, on the contrary, many things to tell
me."
"Yes, doubtless I should have, if I knew what sort of man you are; but,
except for the tie of relationship that unites us, you are a stranger to
me; and, whatever your father may say, blinded perhaps by his affection,
I do not know whether you are really a man. What do you think of the
position in which you find yourself?"
"To avoid my having to answer your questions by asking others, you would
do well, perhaps, my dear uncle, to put them clearly in the first
instance. When I know what my position is, I shall be able to tell you
what I think of it."
"Then you know nothing of the secrets in which you are concerned?" said
the Capuchin, examining Michel with a stern and searching gaze; "you
have not even a suspicion of them? You have never guessed anything?
Nobody has ever told you anything?"
"I know that my father was involved in a political conspiracy long ago,
about the time of my birth, I think. But at that time I was quite unable
to decide whether he was in the right or in the wrong. Since then he has
never explained his position to me in that respect."
"He lacks confidence in you, then, or you take little interest in his
welfare?"
"I have questioned him at times; he has always answered evasively. I
have never drawn therefrom, as you do, uncle, the conclusion that he
distrusted me; that would have seemed impossible to me; but I have
always thought that, having really had a hand in the business, he was
bound by oaths, as is the case in all secret societies. So I should have
thought that I failed in the respect I owe him, if I had questioned him
farther."
"That is well said; but does it not conceal a profound indifference
touching the affairs of your native country, and a selfish disregard of
the sacred cause of its liberty?"
Michel was a little embarrassed by this question, so concisely put.
"Come," continued Fra Angelo, "answer without fear, I am only asking for
the truth."
"Very well, I will answer you, uncle," said Michel, meeting the monk's
cold glance, which distressed him in spite of himself, for he would have
liked to have the regard of that man, whose face, voice, and bearing
commanded his respect and sympathy. "I will tell you what I think, since
you wish to know it, and also what I am, at the risk of losing your
good-will. Convince me that the cause of liberty, so far as Italy and
Sicily are concerned, is really the cause of the men who are deprived of
liberty, and you will see that I will devote myself to it, I do not say
with enthusiasm, but with frantic zeal. But alas! hitherto I have always
seen men sacrifice themselves simply to change masters, while the noble
and wealthy classes used them for their own profit, in the name of this
or that idea. That is why, while I am not indifferent to the spectacle
of the misery and oppression of my fellow-countrymen, I have never
chosen to conspire under the auspices and for the benefit of the
patricians, who are so eager in inciting us to conspire."
"O mankind! O mankind! _everyone for himself_ will always be your
motto!" cried the Capuchin, springing to his feet as if beside himself
with indignation; then, resuming his seat with a strange and bitter
laugh, he added, looking at Michel with an ironical expression: "Signor
prince, _excellenza_, you are pleased to make sport of us, I judge!"
XXI
FRA ANGELO
The Capuchin's strange outbreak caused Michel the most profound
embarrassment; but, being determined to maintain his independence and
sincerity, he affected a tranquillity which he did not feel.
"Why do you call me _prince_ and _excellenza_, my dear uncle?" he said,
forcing himself to smile; "is it because I spoke like a patrician?"
"Precisely; every one for himself, I tell you!" replied Fra Angelo,
resuming his melancholy gravity. "If that is the spirit of the age which
you have been studying at Rome, if that is the new philosophy upon which
the young men in other lands are fed, we have not seen the end of our
misfortunes, and we can continue to tell our beads in silence. Alas!
alas! here is a fine state of affairs! the children of our people will
not stir for fear of saving their former masters with them, and the
patricians will not dare to lift a finger for fear of being devoured by
their former slaves! God save the mark! Meanwhile, the foreign tyranny
laughs and grows fat upon our spoils; our mothers and sisters ask alms
or prostitute themselves; our brothers and our friends die on dung-heaps
or on the gallows! It is a noble spectacle, and I am amazed,
Michelangelo, that you came from Rome, where you had before your eyes
naught but the splendors of the Holy See and the masterpieces of art, to
contemplate our poor Sicily, with her population of beggars, her ruined
nobles, her lazy or brutalized monks! Why did you not take a pleasure
trip to Naples? you would have seen wealthier nobles there and a more
opulent government, made so by the taxes which are causing us to die of
starvation; a more tranquil people, who worry but little over the fate
of their neighbors. 'What do we care for Sicily? it is a conquered
country and its people are not our brothers.'--That is what they say at
Naples. Go to Palermo, where they will tell you that Catania is not to
be pitied and can save itself unassisted, with its silk worms. Go to
Messina, where they will tell you that Messina is no part of Sicily, and
that they have no use for its bad counsels and its evil spirit. Go to
France; the newspapers there say every day that pious, cowardly peoples
like us deserve their fate. Go to Ireland; they will tell you that they
want no help from the heretics of France. Go everywhere, and everywhere
you will find yourself well abreast of the ideas of your time; for
people will say to you everywhere what you just said: 'Everyone for
himself!'"
Fra Angelo's words, his tone and his countenance made a deep impression
upon Michel, and he was honest enough to confess it to himself at once.
The artistic chord was struck, and what would have seemed to him in any
other man mere sophistry and declamation, seemed simple and mighty in
the mouth of that monk.
"My father," he said with ingenuous candor, "it may be that you are
right to scold me as you do. I have no idea at all; and yet I might
offer, in defence of my scepticism, many arguments which come and go in
my mind as I listen to you. It does not seem to me that I am as wicked
and as contemptible as you think. But with you I am much more eager to
improve myself than to defend myself. Please go on."
"Yes, yes, I understand," rejoined Fra Angelo, proudly. "You are a
painter, and you are studying me; that is all. This language seems
strange to you in the mouth of a monk, and you are thinking of nothing
but the picture you will paint of St. John preaching in the wilderness!"
"Do not laugh at me, I entreat you, uncle; you do not need to do it to
show me that you have more wit and learning than I. You chose to
question me; I told you my thought honestly. I hate oppression, whether
it appears in the shape of the past or the present. I should not like to
be the mere instrument of another man's passions and to sacrifice my
future as an artist to the reconstruction of the fortunes and honors of
a few great families who are naturally ungrateful and instinctively
despotic. I believe that a revolution in such a country as ours would
have no other result. I feel that I am man enough to take a gun to
defend my father's life and my sister's honor. But, when it comes to
joining some mysterious society, whose members act with their eyes
closed, and see neither the hand that guides them nor the goal toward
which they are proceeding--unless you can prove to me forcibly and
convincingly that it is my duty--I will not do it, though you were to
curse me, my dear uncle, or to make sport of me, which is much worse."
"What makes you think that I want you to join anything of that sort?"
said Fra Angelo, with a shrug. "I admire your distrustful nature. I like
to see that your first feeling with regard to your father's brother is
the fear of being tricked by him. I wanted to know you, young man, and I
am very much cast down by what I know of you."
"What do you know of me, pray?" cried Michel, testily. "Come, try me in
proper form, and let me know what my crimes are."
"Your whole crime consists in not being the man you should be," replied
Fra Angelo; "and that is very unfortunate for us."
"I understand no better."
"I know that you cannot understand what I am thinking at this moment!
otherwise you would not have spoken so before me."
"In heaven's name, explain yourself," said Michel, unable to endure
these attacks any longer. "It seems to me that we are fighting a duel in
the darkness. I cannot parry your blows, and I apparently strike you
when I am trying to defend myself. With what do you reproach me, or what
do you ask of me? If I am a man of my time and of my class, is it my
fault? I have just stepped foot for the first time on this island
devoted to the worship of the past. I am not an atheist, but I am not
pious. I do not believe in the superiority of certain classes, nor in
the necessary inferiority of my own. I do not feel that I am the born
servant of the old patricians, the old prejudices, and the old
institutions of my native land. I place myself on a level with the
haughtiest and most venerated heads, in order to pass judgment on them,
so that I may know whether I should bend my head before true merit, or
protect myself against unwarranted prestige. That is the whole of it,
uncle, I give you my word. Now you know me. I admire what is noble,
great and sincere before God. My heart is susceptible of affection and
my mind prostrates itself before virtue. I love art, and I am ambitious
of renown, I agree; but I love serious art and seek pure renown. I will
not sacrifice any one of my duties to them; but I will not accept false
duties, and I will spurn false principles. Am I a miserable wretch for
that? and must I, in order to have the honor of being a true Sicilian,
become a monk in your convent, or a brigand on the mountain?"
Michel's spirited outburst did not displease the Capuchin. He listened
to it with interest, and his face softened. But the young man's last
words produced the effect of an electric shock upon him. He leaped up
from his bench, and seizing Michel's arm with that herculean strength of
which he had given him a specimen in the morning, exclaimed: "What is
that metaphor? What are you talking about?"
But, observing Michel's air of stupefaction at this new outbreak, he
began to laugh: "Well, even if you do know it--even if your father has
told you--what does it matter? Other people know it, and I am none the
worse off. Well, my child, you have unconsciously used a very powerful
illustration; it was what one might call the marrow of the truth. All
men are not made to be fed upon it; there are milder and more digestible
truths which suffice for the majority. But to those who desire to be
absolutely logical in their opinions and their acts, what seems to you a
paradox is the merest commonplace. You look at me in amazement? I tell
you that you did, without knowing it, speak like an oracle when you said
that, in order to have the honor of being a true Sicilian, one must be a
monk in my convent, or a brigand on the mountain. I should prefer that
you would be one or the other, rather than a cosmopolitan artist as you
aspire to be. Listen to a story, and try to understand it:
"There was once in Sicily a poor devil, but blessed with a vivid
imagination and a certain amount of courage, who, being unable to endure
the disasters by which his country was overwhelmed, took his gun one
fine morning and went into the mountains, resolved to lose his own life,
or to destroy one by one as many of the enemy as possible, pending the
day when he could fall upon them in a body with the outlaws whom he
joined. They formed a large and select band. Their leader was a noble,
the last descendant of one of the greatest families of the
country--Prince Cæsar de Castro-Reale. Remember that name. You may
never have heard it, but a time will come when it will have more
interest for you.
"In the woods and mountains the prince had taken the name of
_Destatore_,[1] by which name he was known, loved, and feared for ten
years, nobody suspecting that he was the young and brilliant nobleman
who had run through his fortune at Palermo, and led a most dissipated
life with his friends and mistresses.
"Before speaking of the poor devil who turned brigand from patriotic
despair, I must say a few words of the noble patrician who had become a
leader of brigands for the same reason. It will assist you to a
knowledge of your country and your countrymen. _Il Destatore_ was a man
of thirty years, handsome, well-educated, lovable, brave and
generous,--he had all the characteristics of a hero; but he was
persecuted and crushed by the Neapolitan government, who detested him
particularly because of the influence he exerted over the common people.
He resolved to put an end to the life he was leading, to consume the
balance of his fortune, which was reduced every day by taxes to the
profit of the enemy; in short, to drown his sorrow in drunkenness, and
to kill himself or brutalize himself in debauchery.
"He succeeded only in ruining himself. His robust health withstood all
sorts of excess, his sorrow survived his dissipation, and when he found
that, instead of falling asleep, he became intensely excited in his
cups, that a frantic rage took possession of him, and that it would be
necessary for him to run a sword through his body, or, as he said, to
eat à la Neapolitan, he disappeared and became a bandit. He was
supposed to have been drowned, and his inheritance never caused his
nephews any great embarrassment or afforded much profit to the
authorities.
"Thereafter he was a tiger, a devouring lion, who spread terror through
the country districts and avenged his fatherland in the bloodiest way.
The poor devil whom I mentioned at the outset of my story became
passionately attached to him, and served him with fanatical loyalty. He
never stopped to think whether he was _worshipping the past_, or bending
the knee to a man who deemed himself superior to him, but who was only
his equal before God; whether he was fighting and risking his life for
the benefit of a _master_, who might prove to be _ungrateful and
despotic_; whether, after destroying the foreign tyranny, as they hoped
to do, they would fall again under the yoke of the _old prejudices_, the
_old abuses_, the nobles, and the monks. No, all those shades of
distrust were too subtle for such a straightforward and simple mind as
his. To beg would have seemed a degradation to him in those days; and as
for work! why he had never done anything in his life but work, and work
zealously, for he loved work, and was not afraid of it. But I do not
know whether you have noticed as yet that in Sicily every man does not
work who wants to. Although we have the richest and most fertile soil in
the world, taxation has destroyed commerce, agriculture, all the
industries and all the arts. The man of whom I speak had sought the
hardest, roughest, varieties of labor in the salt marshes, in the mines,
even in the very bowels of the earth, which, on the surface, was
devastated and neglected. Work was lacking everywhere, and all the
enterprises in which he had been employed being abandoned, one after
another, he was reduced to begging alms of his fellows who were as badly
off as he, or to stealing. He preferred to _take_ openly.
"But in the _Destatore's_ band they took with discernment and justice.
They maltreated and held to ransom none but enemies of the country or
traitors. They had a secret understanding with every well-meaning or
unfortunate man. They hoped to form a party large enough to attempt to
seize one of the three principal cities, Palermo, Catania, or Messina.
"But Palermo, before placing confidence in us, demanded that we should
be led by a noble; and as the _Destatore_ was supposed to be an
adventurer of low birth, he was rejected. If he had told his true name,
it would have been worse. He was execrated throughout the country for
his previous conduct, and that was a difficulty for which he could blame
no one but himself.
"At Messina our proposals were rejected, on the plea that the Neapolitan
government had done great things for the commerce of that city, and
that, all things considered, peace at any price, with flourishing trade
and the hope of growing rich, was preferable to a patriotic war with
confusion and anarchy. At Catania they told us that they could not do
anything without the concurrence of Messina, and would not do anything
without that of Palermo. In fact they definitely refused to assist us in
any way; and, after putting us off from year to year, they informed us
that the trade of brigand had gone out of fashion, and that it was very
bad taste to persist in it when we could sell out to the government and
make our fortunes in its service. They forgot to add, it is true, that,
in order to resume his place in society, it would have been necessary
for the Prince of Castro-Reale to become the enemy of his country and
accept some military or civil post, the duties of which consisted in
dispersing insurrections with cannon, and in pursuing, denouncing, and
hanging his old comrades.
"The _Destatore_, seeing that his mission was at an end, and that, in
order to live by his gun, he must thenceforth prey upon his
fellow-countrymen, fell into a state of profound depression. Wandering
among the wildest ravines on the island, and making bold forays,
sometimes to the very gates of the cities, he lived for a time upon
foreign travellers who were rash enough to visit the island. That trade
was not worthy of him, for those foreigners were, for the most part,
entirely free from blame for our ills, and so utterly incapable of
defending themselves, that it was a pity to rob them. The brave fellows
who followed him were disgusted with such wretched business, and every
day brought its quota of desertions. To be sure those scrupulous fellows
did worse when they left him; for some, being frowned upon everywhere,
relapsed into idleness and poverty; others were forced to join the
forces of the government, who considered them good soldiers, and made
gendarmes and spies of them.
"Thus there remained with the _Destatore_ only the more determined
malefactors, who robbed and murdered, without scrutiny, everyone who
came in their way. A single one was still honest, and refused to take
part in this highwayman's business. It was the poor devil whose story I
am telling you. Nor on the other hand would he leave his unfortunate
captain; he loved him, and his heart was broken at the idea of
abandoning him to traitors who would murder him some fine morning when
they had no one to rob, or would force him into useless crimes for their
own gratification.
"The _Destatore_ did full justice to his poor friend's devotion. He had
appointed him his lieutenant--an absurd title in a band which now
consisted of only a handful of knaves. He still allowed him to tell him
the truth sometimes, and to give him good advice; but as a general rule
he drove him away angrily, for the leader's temper became more and more
soured from day to day, and the savage virtues which he had acquired in
the days of enthusiasm and gallant exploits gave way to the vices of the
past, children of despair, ill-omened guests which resumed possession of
his storm-beaten soul.
"Drunkenness and lust took possession of him, as in the early days of
idleness and discouragement. He fell below himself, and one day--an
accursed day, which will never be blotted from my memory--he committed a
terrible crime, a dastardly, detestable crime! If I had witnessed it, I
would have killed him on the spot. But the _Destatore's_ last remaining
friend did not learn of it until the next day; and on that next day he
left him, after bitterly upbraiding him for his infamy.
"Thereupon that poor devil, having no one to love, and being unable to
do anything for his unhappy country, began to wonder what was going to
become of him. His heart, still ardent and youthful, turned toward
religion, and being of the opinion that an honest monk, thoroughly
imbued with the ideas of the Bible, might do a good work, preach virtue
to the powerful, give instruction and assistance to the poor and the
ignorant, he assumed the frock of a Capuchin, received the lesser
orders, and retired to this convent. He accepted the duty of mendicancy
imposed upon his order, as an expiation of his sins, and found it
preferable to pillage, in that he applied thereafter to the rich in
behalf of the poor, without violence and without cunning. It is inferior
in a certain sense; it is less sure and less expeditious. But, all
things considered, a man who wants to do the greatest possible amount of
good should be a brigand in his youth; and he who simply wants to do the
least possible harm should be a monk in his old age: you said so
yourself.
"There is my story; do you understand it?"
"Perfectly, uncle; it is very interesting indeed, and, in my eyes, the
principal hero of the romance is not the Prince of Castro-Reale, but the
monk who is speaking to me."
[Footnote 1: He who slumbers not.]
XXII
THE FIRST STEP ON THE MOUNTAIN
Fra Angelo and his nephew were silent for a few moments. The monk was
absorbed by the bitter yet glorious memories of his younger days. Michel
gazed at him with delight; and, no longer wondering at the martial air
and muscular strength concealed beneath the frock, mused with the
admiration of an artist upon the strange poesy of that life of devotion
to a single idea. If there was something abnormal and, to a certain
extent, entertaining in the history of the Capuchin, who still boasted
of his life as a bandit and seriously regretted it, there was something
truly noble in the way in which the ex-brigand preserved his individual
dignity, compromised as it had been in such extraordinary adventures.
Dagger or crucifix in hand, slaying traitors in the forest or begging
for the poor at the gates of palaces, he was always the same, proud,
ingenuous, unbending in his ideas, seeking to do good by the most
vigorous methods, detesting cowardly acts with such intensity that he
was still quite capable of punishing them with his own hand, utterly
unable to understand the selfish motives by which the world is governed,
or to believe that any man would not be ready at any moment to attempt
the impossible rather than palter with the expedients suggested by cold
circumspection.
"Why do you admire the secondary hero of my story?" he said to his
nephew when he emerged from his reverie. "Self-sacrifice and patriotism
must amount to something in your eyes, for that man had no other motive,
and, in the present state of society, would have been only a poor
fool--perhaps a lunatic."
"Yes, uncle, sincere devotion and the sacrifice of one's whole
individuality to an idea are noble things, and if I had known you in
those days--if I had been a man grown--I should probably have followed
you into the mountains. I might have been less devotedly attached than
you were to the Prince of Castro-Reale, but I trust I should have had
the same illusions and the same love for the cause of my country."
"Really, young man?" said Fra Angelo, fixing his penetrating eyes upon
Michel's face.
"Really, uncle," the young man replied, proudly raising his head, and
sustaining that searching glance with the assurance of conviction.
"And is it too late now to attempt anything, my poor boy?" said Fra
Angelo, with a sigh. "Has the time passed when we can believe in the
triumph of the truth, and is the new society, which I have had no better
chance to study in my cloister than in my bandit's cave, determined to
allow itself to be crushed forever?"