PART I.

ROME

FROM “THE THREE CITIES”

By Émile Zola

Translated By Ernest A. Vizetelly

PREFACE

IN submitting to the English-speaking public this second volume of M.

Zola’s trilogy “Lourdes, Rome, Paris,” I have no prefatory remarks to

offer on behalf of the author, whose views on Rome, its past, present,

and future, will be found fully expounded in the following pages. That a

book of this character will, like its forerunner “Lourdes,” provoke

considerable controversy is certain, but comment or rejoinder may well be

postponed until that controversy has arisen. At present then I only

desire to say, that in spite of the great labour which I have bestowed on

this translation, I am sensible of its shortcomings, and in a work of

such length, such intricacy, and such a wide range of subject, it will

not be surprising if some slips are discovered. Any errors which may be

pointed out to me, however, shall be rectified in subsequent editions. I

have given, I think, the whole essence of M. Zola’s text; but he himself

has admitted to me that he has now and again allowed his pen to run away

with him, and thus whilst sacrificing nothing of his sense I have at

times abbreviated his phraseology so as slightly to condense the book. I

may add that there are no chapter headings in the original, and that the

circumstances under which the translation was made did not permit me to

supply any whilst it was passing through the press; however, as some

indication of the contents of the book--which treats of many more things

than are usually found in novels--may be a convenience to the reader, I

have prepared a table briefly epitomising the chief features of each

successive chapter.

E. A. V.

MERTON, SURREY, ENGLAND,

April, 1896.

CONTENTS TO PART I. I

“NEW ROME”--Abbe Froment in the Eternal City--His First Impressions--His

Book and the Rejuvenation of Christianity

II

“BLACK MOUTH, RED SOUL”--The Boccaneras, their Mansion, Ancestors,

History, and Friends

III

ROMANS OF THE CHURCH--Cardinals Boccanera and Sanguinetti--Abbes

Paparelli and Santobono--Don Vigilio--Monsignor Nani

CONTENTS TO PART II. IV

ROMANS OF NEW ITALY--The Pradas and the Saccos--The Corso and the Pincio

V

THE BLOOD OF AUGUSTUS--The Palaces of the Caesars--The Capitol--The

Forum--The Appian Way--The Campagna--The Catacombs--St. Peter’s.

VI

VENUS AND HERCULES--The Vatican--The Sixtine Chapel--Michael Angelo and

Raffaelle--Botticelli and Bernini--Gods and Goddesses--The Gardens--Leo

XIII--The Revolt of Passion

CONTENTS TO PART III. VII

PRINCE AND PONTIFF--The International Pilgrimage--The Papal Revenue--A

Function at St. Peter’s--The Pope-King--The Temporal Power

VIII

THE POOR AND THE POPE--The Building Mania--The Financial Crash--The

Horrors of the Castle Fields--The Roman Workman--May Christ’s Vicar

Gamble?--Hopes and Fears of the Papacy

IX

TITO’s WARNING--Aspects of Rome--The Via Giulia--The Tiber by Day--The

Gardens--The Villa Medici---The Squares--The Fountains--Poussin and the

Campagna--The Campo Verano--The Trastevere--The “Palaces”--Aristocracy,

Middle Class, Democracy--The Tiber by Night

CONTENTS TO PART IV. X

FROM PILLAR TO POST--The Propaganda--The Index--Dominicans, Jesuits,

Franciscans--The Secular Clergy--Roman Worship--Freemasonry--Cardinal

Vicar and Cardinal Secretary--The Inquisition.

XI

POISON!--Frascati--A Cardinal and his Creature--Albano, Castel Gandolfo,

Nemi--Across the Campagna--An Osteria--Destiny on the March

XII

THE AGONY OF PASSION--A Roman Gala--The Buongiovannis--The Grey

World--The Triumph of Benedetta--King Humbert and Queen Margherita--The

Fig-tree of Judas

XIII

DESTINY!--A Happy Morning--The Mid-day Meal--Dario and the Figs--Extreme

Unction--Benedetta’s Curse--The Lovers’ Death

CONTENTS TO PART V. XIV

SUBMISSION--The Vatican by Night--The Papal Anterooms--Some Great

Popes--His Holiness’s Bed-room--Pierre’s Reception--Papal Wrath--Pierre’s

Appeal--The Pope’s Policy--Dogma and Lourdes--Pierre Reprobates his Book

XV

A HOUSE OF MOURNING--Lying in State--Mother and Son--Princess and

Work-girl--Nani the Jesuit--Rival Cardinals--The Pontiff of Destruction

XVI

JUDGMENT--Pierre and Orlando--Italian Rome--Wanted, a Democracy--Italy

and France--The Rome of the Anarchists--The Agony of Guilt--A

Botticelli--The Papacy Condemned--The Coming Schism--The March of

Science--The Destruction of Rome--The Victory of Reason--Justice not

Charity--Departure--The March of Civilisation--One Fatherland for All

Mankind

ROME

PART I.

I.

THE train had been greatly delayed during the night between Pisa and

Civita Vecchia, and it was close upon nine o’clock in the morning when,

after a fatiguing journey of twenty-five hours’ duration, Abbe Pierre

Froment at last reached Rome. He had brought only a valise with him, and,

springing hastily out of the railway carriage amidst the scramble of the

arrival, he brushed the eager porters aside, intent on carrying his

trifling luggage himself, so anxious was he to reach his destination, to

be alone, and look around him. And almost immediately, on the Piazza dei

Cinquecento, in front of the railway station, he climbed into one of the

small open cabs ranged alongside the footwalk, and placed the valise near

him after giving the driver this address:

“Via Giulia, Palazzo Boccanera.” *

* Boccanera mansion, Julia Street.

It was a Monday, the 3rd of September, a beautifully bright and mild

morning, with a clear sky overhead. The cabby, a plump little man with

sparkling eyes and white teeth, smiled on realising by Pierre’s accent

that he had to deal with a French priest. Then he whipped up his lean

horse, and the vehicle started off at the rapid pace customary to the

clean and cheerful cabs of Rome. However, on reaching the Piazza delle

Terme, after skirting the greenery of a little public garden, the man

turned round, still smiling, and pointing to some ruins with his whip,

“The baths of Diocletian,” said he in broken French, like an obliging

driver who is anxious to court favour with foreigners in order to secure

their custom.

Then, at a fast trot, the vehicle descended the rapid slope of the Via

Nazionale, which dips down from the summit of the Viminalis,* where the

railway station is situated. And from that moment the driver scarcely

ceased turning round and pointing at the monuments with his whip. In this

broad new thoroughfare there were only buildings of recent erection.

Still, the wave of the cabman’s whip became more pronounced and his voice

rose to a higher key, with a somewhat ironical inflection, when he gave

the name of a huge and still chalky pile on his left, a gigantic erection

of stone, overladen with sculptured work-pediments and statues.

* One of the seven hills on which Rome is built. The other six

are the Capitoline, Aventine, Quirinal, Esquiline, Coelian,

and Palatine. These names will perforce frequently occur in

the present narrative.

“The National Bank!” he said.

Pierre, however, during the week which had followed his resolve to make

the journey, had spent wellnigh every day in studying Roman topography in

maps and books. Thus he could have directed his steps to any given spot

without inquiring his way, and he anticipated most of the driver’s

explanations. At the same time he was disconcerted by the sudden slopes,

the perpetually recurring hills, on which certain districts rose, house

above house, in terrace fashion. On his right-hand clumps of greenery

were now climbing a height, and above them stretched a long bare yellow

building of barrack or convent-like aspect.

“The Quirinal, the King’s palace,” said the driver.

Lower down, as the cab turned across a triangular square, Pierre, on

raising his eyes, was delighted to perceive a sort of aerial garden high

above him--a garden which was upheld by a lofty smooth wall, and whence

the elegant and vigorous silhouette of a parasol pine, many centuries

old, rose aloft into the limpid heavens. At this sight he realised all

the pride and grace of Rome.

“The Villa Aldobrandini,” the cabman called.

Then, yet lower down, there came a fleeting vision which decisively

impassioned Pierre. The street again made a sudden bend, and in one

corner, beyond a short dim alley, there was a blazing gap of light. On a

lower level appeared a white square, a well of sunshine, filled with a

blinding golden dust; and amidst all that morning glory there arose a

gigantic marble column, gilt from base to summit on the side which the

sun in rising had laved with its beams for wellnigh eighteen hundred

years. And Pierre was surprised when the cabman told him the name of the

column, for in his mind he had never pictured it soaring aloft in such a

dazzling cavity with shadows all around. It was the column of Trajan.

The Via Nazionale turned for the last time at the foot of the slope. And

then other names fell hastily from the driver’s lips as his horse went on

at a fast trot. There was the Palazzo Colonna, with its garden edged by

meagre cypresses; the Palazzo Torlonia, almost ripped open by recent

“improvements”; the Palazzo di Venezia, bare and fearsome, with its

crenelated walls, its stern and tragic appearance, that of some fortress

of the middle ages, forgotten there amidst the commonplace life of

nowadays. Pierre’s surprise increased at the unexpected aspect which

certain buildings and streets presented; and the keenest blow of all was

dealt him when the cabman with his whip triumphantly called his attention

to the Corso, a long narrow thoroughfare, about as broad as Fleet

Street,* white with sunshine on the left, and black with shadows on the

right, whilst at the far end the Piazza del Popolo (the Square of the

People) showed like a bright star. Was this, then, the heart of the city,

the vaunted promenade, the street brimful of life, whither flowed all the

blood of Rome?

* M. Zola likens the Corso to the Rue St. Honore in Paris, but

I have thought that an English comparison would be preferable

in the present version.--Trans.

However, the cab was already entering the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, which

follows the Via Nazionale, these being the two piercings effected right

across the olden city from the railway station to the bridge of St.

Angelo. On the left-hand the rounded apsis of the Gesu church looked

quite golden in the morning brightness. Then, between the church and the

heavy Altieri palace which the “improvers” had not dared to demolish, the

street became narrower, and one entered into cold, damp shade. But a

moment afterwards, before the facade of the Gesu, when the square was

reached, the sun again appeared, dazzling, throwing golden sheets of

light around; whilst afar off at the end of the Via di Ara Coeli, steeped

in shadow, a glimpse could be caught of some sunlit palm-trees.

“That’s the Capitol yonder,” said the cabman.

The priest hastily leant to the left, but only espied the patch of

greenery at the end of the dim corridor-like street. The sudden

alternations of warm light and cold shade made him shiver. In front of

the Palazzo di Venezia, and in front of the Gesu, it had seemed to him as

if all the night of ancient times were falling icily upon his shoulders;

but at each fresh square, each broadening of the new thoroughfares, there

came a return to light, to the pleasant warmth and gaiety of life. The

yellow sunflashes, in falling from the house fronts, sharply outlined the

violescent shadows. Strips of sky, very blue and very benign, could be

perceived between the roofs. And it seemed to Pierre that the air he

breathed had a particular savour, which he could not yet quite define,

but it was like that of fruit, and increased the feverishness which had

possessed him ever since his arrival.

The Corso Vittorio Emanuele is, in spite of its irregularity, a very fine

modern thoroughfare; and for a time Pierre might have fancied himself in

any great city full of huge houses let out in flats. But when he passed

before the Cancelleria,* Bramante’s masterpiece, the typical monument of

the Roman Renascence, his astonishment came back to him and his mind

returned to the mansions which he had previously espied, those bare,

huge, heavy edifices, those vast cubes of stone-work resembling hospitals

or prisons. Never would he have imagined that the famous Roman “palaces”

were like that, destitute of all grace and fancy and external

magnificence. However, they were considered very fine and must be so; he

would doubtless end by understanding things, but for that he would

require reflection.**

* Formerly the residence of the Papal Vice-Chancellors.

** It is as well to point out at once that a palazzo is not a

palace as we understand the term, but rather a mansion.--Trans.

All at once the cab turned out of the populous Corso Vittorio Emanuele

into a succession of winding alleys, through which it had difficulty in

making its way. Quietude and solitude now came back again; the olden

city, cold and somniferous, followed the new city with its bright

sunshine and its crowds. Pierre remembered the maps which he had

consulted, and realised that he was drawing near to the Via Giulia, and

thereupon his curiosity, which had been steadily increasing, augmented to

such a point that he suffered from it, full of despair at not seeing more

and learning more at once. In the feverish state in which he had found

himself ever since leaving the station, his astonishment at not finding

things such as he had expected, the many shocks that his imagination had

received, aggravated his passion beyond endurance, and brought him an

acute desire to satisfy himself immediately. Nine o’clock had struck but

a few minutes previously, he had the whole morning before him to repair

to the Boccanera palace, so why should he not at once drive to the

classic spot, the summit whence one perceives the whole of Rome spread

out upon her seven hills? And when once this thought had entered into his

mind it tortured him until he was at last compelled to yield to it.

The driver no longer turned his head, so that Pierre rose up to give him

this new address: “To San Pietro in Montorio!”

On hearing him the man at first looked astonished, unable to understand.

He indicated with his whip that San Pietro was yonder, far away. However,

as the priest insisted, he again smiled complacently, with a friendly nod

of his head. All right! For his own part he was quite willing.

The horse then went on at a more rapid pace through the maze of narrow

streets. One of these was pent between high walls, and the daylight

descended into it as into a deep trench. But at the end came a sudden

return to light, and the Tiber was crossed by the antique bridge of

Sixtus IV, right and left of which stretched the new quays, amidst the

ravages and fresh plaster-work of recent erections. On the other side of

the river the Trastevere district also was ripped open, and the vehicle

ascended the slope of the Janiculum by a broad thoroughfare where large

slabs bore the name of Garibaldi. For the last time the driver made a

gesture of good-natured pride as he named this triumphal route.

“Via Garibaldi!”

The horse had been obliged to slacken its pace, and Pierre, mastered by

childish impatience, turned round to look at the city as by degrees it

spread out and revealed itself behind him. The ascent was a long one;

fresh districts were ever rising up, even to the most distant hills.

Then, in the increasing emotion which made his heart beat, the young

priest felt that he was spoiling the contentment of his desire by thus

gradually satisfying it, slowly and but partially effecting his conquest

of the horizon. He wished to receive the shock full in the face, to

behold all Rome at one glance, to gather the holy city together, and

embrace the whole of it at one grasp. And thereupon he mustered

sufficient strength of mind to refrain from turning round any more, in

spite of the impulses of his whole being.

There is a spacious terrace on the summit of the incline. The church of

San Pietro in Montorio stands there, on the spot where, as some say, St.

Peter was crucified. The square is bare and brown, baked by the hot

summer suns; but a little further away in the rear, the clear and noisy

waters of the Acqua Paola fall bubbling from the three basins of a

monumental fountain amidst sempiternal freshness. And alongside the

terrace parapet, on the very crown of the Trastevere, there are always

rows of tourists, slim Englishmen and square-built Germans, agape with

traditional admiration, or consulting their guide-books in order to

identify the monuments.

Pierre sprang lightly from the cab, leaving his valise on the seat, and

making a sign to the driver, who went to join the row of waiting cabs,

and remained philosophically seated on his box in the full sunlight, his

head drooping like that of his horse, both resigning themselves to the

customary long stoppage.

Meantime Pierre, erect against the parapet, in his tight black cassock,

and with his bare feverish hands nervously clenched, was gazing before

him with all his eyes, with all his soul. Rome! Rome! the city of the

Caesars, the city of the Popes, the Eternal City which has twice

conquered the world, the predestined city of the glowing dream in which

he had indulged for months! At last it was before him, at last his eyes

beheld it! During the previous days some rainstorms had abated the

intense August heat, and on that lovely September morning the air had

freshened under the pale blue of the spotless far-spreading heavens. And

the Rome that Pierre beheld was a Rome steeped in mildness, a visionary

Rome which seemed to evaporate in the clear sunshine. A fine bluey haze,

scarcely perceptible, as delicate as gauze, hovered over the roofs of the

low-lying districts; whilst the vast Campagna, the distant hills, died

away in a pale pink flush. At first Pierre distinguished nothing, sought

no particular edifice or spot, but gave sight and soul alike to the whole

of Rome, to the living colossus spread out below him, on a soil

compounded of the dust of generations. Each century had renewed the

city’s glory as with the sap of immortal youth. And that which struck

Pierre, that which made his heart leap within him, was that he found Rome

such as he had desired to find her, fresh and youthful, with a volatile,

almost incorporeal, gaiety of aspect, smiling as at the hope of a new

life in the pure dawn of a lovely day.

And standing motionless before the sublime vista, with his hands still

clenched and burning, Pierre in a few minutes again lived the last three

years of his life. Ah! what a terrible year had the first been, spent in

his little house at Neuilly, with doors and windows ever closed,

burrowing there like some wounded animal suffering unto death. He had

come back from Lourdes with his soul desolate, his heart bleeding, with

nought but ashes within him. Silence and darkness fell upon the ruins of

his love and his faith. Days and days went by, without a pulsation of his

veins, without the faintest gleam arising to brighten the gloom of his

abandonment. His life was a mechanical one; he awaited the necessary

courage to resume the tenor of existence in the name of sovereign reason,

which had imposed upon him the sacrifice of everything. Why was he not

stronger, more resistant, why did he not quietly adapt his life to his

new opinions? As he was unwilling to cast off his cassock, through

fidelity to the love of one and disgust of backsliding, why did he not

seek occupation in some science suited to a priest, such as astronomy or

archaeology? The truth was that something, doubtless his mother’s spirit,

wept within him, an infinite, distracted love which nothing had yet

satisfied and which ever despaired of attaining contentment. Therein lay

the perpetual suffering of his solitude: beneath the lofty dignity of

reason regained, the wound still lingered, raw and bleeding.

One autumn evening, however, under a dismal rainy sky, chance brought him

into relations with an old priest, Abbe Rose, who was curate at the

church of Ste. Marguerite, in the Faubourg St. Antoine. He went to see

Abbe Rose in the Rue de Charonne, where in the depths of a damp ground

floor he had transformed three rooms into an asylum for abandoned

children, whom he picked up in the neighbouring streets. And from that

moment Pierre’s life changed, a fresh and all-powerful source of interest

had entered into it, and by degrees he became the old priest’s passionate

helper. It was a long way from Neuilly to the Rue de Charonne, and at

first he only made the journey twice a week. But afterwards he bestirred

himself every day, leaving home in the morning and not returning until

night. As the three rooms no longer sufficed for the asylum, he rented

the first floor of the house, reserving for himself a chamber in which

ultimately he often slept. And all his modest income was expended there,

in the prompt succouring of poor children; and the old priest, delighted,

touched to tears by the young devoted help which had come to him from

heaven, would often embrace Pierre, weeping, and call him a child of God.

It was then that Pierre knew want and wretchedness--wicked, abominable

wretchedness; then that he lived amidst it for two long years. The

acquaintance began with the poor little beings whom he picked up on the

pavements, or whom kind-hearted neighbours brought to him now that the

asylum was known in the district--little boys, little girls, tiny mites

stranded on the streets whilst their fathers and mothers were toiling,

drinking, or dying. The father had often disappeared, the mother had gone

wrong, drunkenness and debauchery had followed slack times into the home;

and then the brood was swept into the gutter, and the younger ones half

perished of cold and hunger on the footways, whilst their elders betook

themselves to courses of vice and crime. One evening Pierre rescued from

the wheels of a stone-dray two little nippers, brothers, who could not

even give him an address, tell him whence they had come. On another

evening he returned to the asylum with a little girl in his arms, a

fair-haired little angel, barely three years old, whom he had found on a

bench, and who sobbed, saying that her mother had left her there. And by

a logical chain of circumstances, after dealing with the fleshless,

pitiful fledglings ousted from their nests, he came to deal with the

parents, to enter their hovels, penetrating each day further and further

into a hellish sphere, and ultimately acquiring knowledge of all its

frightful horror, his heart meantime bleeding, rent by terrified anguish

and impotent charity.

Oh! the grievous City of Misery, the bottomless abyss of human suffering

and degradation--how frightful were his journeys through it during those

two years which distracted his whole being! In that Ste. Marguerite

district of Paris, in the very heart of that Faubourg St. Antoine, so

active and so brave for work, however hard, he discovered no end of

sordid dwellings, whole lanes and alleys of hovels without light or air,

cellar-like in their dampness, and where a multitude of wretches wallowed

and suffered as from poison. All the way up the shaky staircases one’s

feet slipped upon filth. On every story there was the same destitution,

dirt, and promiscuity. Many windows were paneless, and in swept the wind

howling, and the rain pouring torrentially. Many of the inmates slept on

the bare tiled floors, never unclothing themselves. There was neither

furniture nor linen, the life led there was essentially an animal life, a

commingling of either sex and of every age--humanity lapsing into

animality through lack of even indispensable things, through indigence of

so complete a character that men, women, and children fought even with

tooth and nail for the very crumbs swept from the tables of the rich. And

the worst of it all was the degradation of the human being; this was no

case of the free naked savage, hunting and devouring his prey in the

primeval forests; here civilised man was found, sunk into brutishness,

with all the stigmas of his fall, debased, disfigured, and enfeebled,

amidst the luxury and refinement of that city of Paris which is one of

the queens of the world.

In every household Pierre heard the same story. There had been youth and

gaiety at the outset, brave acceptance of the law that one must work.

Then weariness had come; what was the use of always toiling if one were

never to get rich? And so, by way of snatching a share of happiness, the

husband turned to drink; the wife neglected her home, also drinking at

times, and letting the children grow up as they might. Sordid

surroundings, ignorance, and overcrowding did the rest. In the great

majority of cases, prolonged lack of work was mostly to blame; for this

not only empties the drawers of the savings hidden away in them, but

exhausts human courage, and tends to confirmed habits of idleness. During

long weeks the workshops empty, and the arms of the toilers lose

strength. In all Paris, so feverishly inclined to action, it is

impossible to find the slightest thing to do. And then the husband comes

home in the evening with tearful eyes, having vainly offered his arms

everywhere, having failed even to get a job at street-sweeping, for that

employment is much sought after, and to secure it one needs influence and

protectors. Is it not monstrous to see a man seeking work that he may

eat, and finding no work and therefore no food in this great city

resplendent and resonant with wealth? The wife does not eat, the children

do not eat. And then comes black famine, brutishness, and finally revolt

and the snapping of all social ties under the frightful injustice meted

out to poor beings who by their weakness are condemned to death. And the

old workman, he whose limbs have been worn out by half a century of hard

toil, without possibility of saving a copper, on what pallet of agony, in

what dark hole must he not sink to die? Should he then be finished off

with a mallet, like a crippled beast of burden, on the day when ceasing

to work he also ceases to eat? Almost all pass away in the hospitals,

others disappear, unknown, swept off by the muddy flow of the streets.

One morning, on some rotten straw in a loathsome hovel, Pierre found a

poor devil who had died of hunger and had been forgotten there for a

week. The rats had devoured his face.

But it was particularly on an evening of the last winter that Pierre’s

heart had overflowed with pity. Awful in winter time are the sufferings

of the poor in their fireless hovels, where the snow penetrates by every

chink. The Seine rolls blocks of ice, the soil is frost-bound, in all

sorts of callings there is an enforced cessation of work. Bands of

urchins, barefooted, scarcely clad, hungry and racked by coughing, wander

about the ragpickers’ “rents” and are carried off by sudden hurricanes of

consumption. Pierre found families, women with five and six children, who

had not eaten for three days, and who huddled together in heaps to try to

keep themselves warm. And on that terrible evening, before anybody else,

he went down a dark passage and entered a room of terror, where he found

that a mother had just committed suicide with her five little

ones--driven to it by despair and hunger--a tragedy of misery which for a

few hours would make all Paris shudder! There was not an article of

furniture or linen left in the place; it had been necessary to sell

everything bit by bit to a neighbouring dealer. There was nothing but the

stove where the charcoal was still smoking and a half-emptied palliasse

on which the mother had fallen, suckling her last-born, a babe but three

months old. And a drop of blood had trickled from the nipple of her

breast, towards which the dead infant still protruded its eager lips. Two

little girls, three and five years old, two pretty little blondes, were

also lying there, sleeping the eternal sleep side by side; whilst of the

two boys, who were older, one had succumbed crouching against the wall

with his head between his hands, and the other had passed through the

last throes on the floor, struggling as though he had sought to crawl on

his knees to the window in order to open it. Some neighbours, hurrying

in, told Pierre the fearful commonplace story; slow ruin, the father

unable to find work, perchance taking to drink, the landlord weary of

waiting, threatening the family with expulsion, and the mother losing her

head, thirsting for death, and prevailing on her little ones to die with

her, while her husband, who had been out since the morning, was vainly

scouring the streets. Just as the Commissary of Police arrived to verify

what had happened, the poor devil returned, and when he had seen and

understood things, he fell to the ground like a stunned ox, and raised a

prolonged, plaintive howl, such a poignant cry of death that the whole

terrified street wept at it.

Both in his ears and in his heart Pierre carried away with him that

horrible cry, the plaint of a condemned race expiring amidst abandonment

and hunger; and that night he could neither eat nor sleep. Was it

possible that such abomination, such absolute destitution, such black

misery leading straight to death should exist in the heart of that great

city of Paris, brimful of wealth, intoxicated with enjoyment, flinging

millions out of the windows for mere pleasure? What! there should on one

side be such colossal fortunes, so many foolish fancies gratified, with

lives endowed with every happiness, whilst on the other was found

inveterate poverty, lack even of bread, absence of every hope, and

mothers killing themselves with their babes, to whom they had nought to

offer but the blood of their milkless breast! And a feeling of revolt

stirred Pierre; he was for a moment conscious of the derisive futility of

charity. What indeed was the use of doing that which he did--picking up

the little ones, succouring the parents, prolonging the sufferings of the

aged? The very foundations of the social edifice were rotten; all would

soon collapse amid mire and blood. A great act of justice alone could

sweep the old world away in order that the new world might be built. And

at that moment he realised so keenly how irreparable was the breach, how

irremediable the evil, how deathly the cancer of misery, that he

understood the actions of the violent, and was himself ready to accept

the devastating and purifying whirlwind, the regeneration of the world by

flame and steel, even as when in the dim ages Jehovah in His wrath sent

fire from heaven to cleanse the accursed cities of the plains.

However, on hearing him sob that evening, Abbe Rose came up to

remonstrate in fatherly fashion. The old priest was a saint, endowed with

infinite gentleness and infinite hope. Why despair indeed when one had

the Gospel? Did not the divine commandment, “Love one another,” suffice

for the salvation of the world? He, Abbe Rose, held violence in horror

and was wont to say that, however great the evil, it would soon be

overcome if humanity would but turn backward to the age of humility,

simplicity, and purity, when Christians lived together in innocent

brotherhood. What a delightful picture he drew of evangelical society, of

whose second coming he spoke with quiet gaiety as though it were to take

place on the very morrow! And Pierre, anxious to escape from his

frightful recollections, ended by smiling, by taking pleasure in Abbe

Rose’s bright consoling tale. They chatted until a late hour, and on the

following days reverted to the same subject of conversation, one which

the old priest was very fond of, ever supplying new particulars, and

speaking of the approaching reign of love and justice with the touching

confidence of a good if simple man, who is convinced that he will not die

till he shall have seen the Deity descend upon earth.

And now a fresh evolution took place in Pierre’s mind. The practice of

benevolence in that poor district had developed infinite compassion in

his breast, his heart failed him, distracted, rent by contemplation of

the misery which he despaired of healing. And in this awakening of his

feelings he often thought that his reason was giving way, he seemed to be

retracing his steps towards childhood, to that need of universal love

which his mother had implanted in him, and dreamt of chimerical

solutions, awaiting help from the unknown powers. Then his fears, his

hatred of the brutality of facts at last brought him an increasing desire

to work salvation by love. No time should be lost in seeking to avert the

frightful catastrophe which seemed inevitable, the fratricidal war of

classes which would sweep the old world away beneath the accumulation of

its crimes. Convinced that injustice had attained its apogee, that but

little time remained before the vengeful hour when the poor would compel

the rich to part with their possessions, he took pleasure in dreaming of

a peaceful solution, a kiss of peace exchanged by all men, a return to

the pure morals of the Gospel as it had been preached by Jesus.

Doubts tortured him at the outset. Could olden Catholicism be

rejuvenated, brought back to the youth and candour of primitive

Christianity? He set himself to study things, reading and questioning,

and taking a more and more passionate interest in that great problem of

Catholic socialism which had made no little noise for some years past.

And quivering with pity for the wretched, ready as he was for the miracle

of fraternisation, he gradually lost such scruples as intelligence might

have prompted, and persuaded himself that once again Christ would work

the redemption of suffering humanity. At last a precise idea took

possession of him, a conviction that Catholicism purified, brought back

to its original state, would prove the one pact, the supreme law that

might save society by averting the sanguinary crisis which threatened it.

When he had quitted Lourdes two years previously, revolted by all its

gross idolatry, his faith for ever dead, but his mind worried by the

everlasting need of the divine which tortures human creatures, a cry had

arisen within him from the deepest recesses of his being: “A new

religion! a new religion!” And it was this new religion, or rather this

revived religion which he now fancied he had discovered in his desire to

work social salvation--ensuring human happiness by means of the only

moral authority that was erect, the distant outcome of the most admirable

implement ever devised for the government of nations.

During the period of slow development through which Pierre passed, two

men, apart from Abbe Rose, exercised great influence on him. A benevolent

action brought him into intercourse with Monseigneur Bergerot, a bishop

whom the Pope had recently created a cardinal, in reward for a whole life

of charity, and this in spite of the covert opposition of the papal

_curia_ which suspected the French prelate to be a man of open mind,

governing his diocese in paternal fashion. Pierre became more impassioned

by his intercourse with this apostle, this shepherd of souls, in whom he

detected one of the good simple leaders that he desired for the future

community. However, his apostolate was influenced even more decisively by

meeting Viscount Philibert de la Choue at the gatherings of certain

workingmen’s Catholic associations. A handsome man, with military

manners, and a long noble-looking face, spoilt by a small and broken nose

which seemed to presage the ultimate defeat of a badly balanced mind, the

Viscount was one of the most active agitators of Catholic socialism in

France. He was the possessor of vast estates, a vast fortune, though it

was said that some unsuccessful agricultural enterprises had already

reduced his wealth by nearly one-half. In the department where his

property was situated he had been at great pains to establish model

farms, at which he had put his ideas on Christian socialism into

practice, but success did not seem to follow him. However, it had all

helped to secure his election as a deputy, and he spoke in the Chamber,

unfolding the programme of his party in long and stirring speeches.

Unwearying in his ardour, he also led pilgrimages to Rome, presided over

meetings, and delivered lectures, devoting himself particularly to the

people, the conquest of whom, so he privately remarked, could alone

ensure the triumph of the Church. And thus he exercised considerable

influence over Pierre, who in him admired qualities which himself did not

possess--an organising spirit and a militant if somewhat blundering will,

entirely applied to the revival of Christian society in France. However,

though the young priest learnt a good deal by associating with him, he

nevertheless remained a sentimental dreamer, whose imagination,

disdainful of political requirements, straightway winged its flight to

the future abode of universal happiness; whereas the Viscount aspired to

complete the downfall of the liberal ideas of 1789 by utilising the

disillusion and anger of the democracy to work a return towards the past.

Pierre spent some delightful months. Never before had neophyte lived so

entirely for the happiness of others. He was all love, consumed by the

passion of his apostolate. The sight of the poor wretches whom he

visited, the men without work, the women, the children without bread,

filled him with a keener and keener conviction that a new religion must

arise to put an end to all the injustice which otherwise would bring the

rebellious world to a violent death. And he was resolved to employ all

his strength in effecting and hastening the intervention of the divine,

the resuscitation of primitive Christianity. His Catholic faith remained

dead; he still had no belief in dogmas, mysteries, and miracles; but a

hope sufficed him, the hope that the Church might still work good, by

connecting itself with the irresistible modern democratic movement, so as

to save the nations from the social catastrophe which impended. His soul

had grown calm since he had taken on himself the mission of replanting

the Gospel in the hearts of the hungry and growling people of the

Faubourgs. He was now leading an active life, and suffered less from the

frightful void which he had brought back from Lourdes; and as he no

longer questioned himself, the anguish of uncertainty no longer tortured

him. It was with the serenity which attends the simple accomplishment of

duty that he continued to say his mass. He even finished by thinking that

the mystery which he thus celebrated--indeed, that all the mysteries and

all the dogmas were but symbols--rites requisite for humanity in its

childhood, which would be got rid of later on, when enlarged, purified,

and instructed humanity should be able to support the brightness of naked

truth.

And in his zealous desire to be useful, his passion to proclaim his

belief aloud, Pierre one morning found himself at his table writing a

book. This had come about quite naturally; the book proceeded from him

like a heart-cry, without any literary idea having crossed his mind. One

night, whilst he lay awake, its title suddenly flashed before his eyes in

the darkness: “NEW ROME.” That expressed everything, for must not the new

redemption of the nations originate in eternal and holy Rome? The only

existing authority was found there; rejuvenescence could only spring from

the sacred soil where the old Catholic oak had grown. He wrote his book

in a couple of months, having unconsciously prepared himself for the work

by his studies in contemporary socialism during a year past. There was a

bubbling flow in his brain as in a poet’s; it seemed to him sometimes as

if he dreamt those pages, as if an internal distant voice dictated them

to him.

When he read passages written on the previous day to Viscount Philibert

de la Choue, the latter often expressed keen approval of them from a

practical point of view, saying that one must touch the people in order

to lead them, and that it would also be a good plan to compose pious and

yet amusing songs for singing in the workshops. As for Monseigneur

Bergerot, without examining the book from the dogmatic standpoint, he was

deeply touched by the glowing breath of charity which every page exhaled,

and was even guilty of the imprudence of writing an approving letter to

the author, which letter he authorised him to insert in his work by way

of preface. And yet now the Congregation of the Index Expurgatorius was

about to place this book, issued in the previous June, under interdict;

and it was to defend it that the young priest had hastened to Rome,

inflamed by the desire to make his ideas prevail, and resolved to plead

his cause in person before the Holy Father, having, he was convinced of

it, simply given expression to the pontiff’s views.

Pierre had not stirred whilst thus living his three last years afresh: he

still stood erect before the parapet, before Rome, which he had so often

dreamt of and had so keenly desired to see. There was a constant

succession of arriving and departing vehicles behind him; the slim

Englishmen and the heavy Germans passed away after bestowing on the

classic view the five minutes prescribed by their guidebooks; whilst the

driver and the horse of Pierre’s cab remained waiting complacently, each

with his head drooping under the bright sun, which was heating the valise

on the seat of the vehicle. And Pierre, in his black cassock, seemed to

have grown slimmer and elongated, very slight of build, as he stood there

motionless, absorbed in the sublime spectacle. He had lost flesh after

his journey to Lourdes, his features too had become less pronounced.

Since his mother’s part in his nature had regained ascendency, the broad,

straight forehead, the intellectual air which he owed to his father

seemed to have grown less conspicuous, while his kind and somewhat large

mouth, and his delicate chin, bespeaking infinite affection, dominated,

revealing his soul, which also glowed in the kindly sparkle of his eyes.

Ah! how tender and glowing were the eyes with which he gazed upon the

Rome of his book, the new Rome that he had dreamt of! If, first of all,

the _ensemble_ had claimed his attention in the soft and somewhat veiled

light of that lovely morning, at present he could distinguish details,

and let his glance rest upon particular edifices. And it was with

childish delight that he identified them, having long studied them in

maps and collections of photographs. Beneath his feet, at the bottom of

the Janiculum, stretched the Trastevere district with its chaos of old

ruddy houses, whose sunburnt tiles hid the course of the Tiber. He was

somewhat surprised by the flattish aspect of everything as seen from the

terraced summit. It was as though a bird’s-eye view levelled the city,

the famous hills merely showing like bosses, swellings scarcely

perceptible amidst the spreading sea of house-fronts. Yonder, on the

right, distinct against the distant blue of the Alban mountains, was

certainly the Aventine with its three churches half-hidden by foliage;

there, too, was the discrowned Palatine, edged as with black fringe by a

line of cypresses. In the rear, the Coelian hill faded away, showing only

the trees of the Villa Mattei paling in the golden sunshine. The slender

spire and two little domes of Sta. Maria Maggiore alone indicated the

summit of the Esquiline, right in front and far away at the other end of

the city; whilst on the heights of the neighbouring Viminal, Pierre only

perceived a confused mass of whitish blocks, steeped in light and

streaked with fine brown lines--recent erections, no doubt, which at that

distance suggested an abandoned stone quarry. He long sought the Capitol

without being able to discover it; he had to take his bearings, and ended

by convincing himself that the square tower, modestly lost among

surrounding house-roofs, which he saw in front of Sta. Maria Maggiore was

its campanile. Next, on the left, came the Quirinal, recognisable by the

long facade of the royal palace, a barrack or hospital-like facade, flat,

crudely yellow in hue, and pierced by an infinite number of regularly

disposed windows. However, as Pierre was completing the circuit, a sudden

vision made him stop short. Without the city, above the trees of the

Botanical Garden, the dome of St. Peter’s appeared to him. It seemed to

be poised upon the greenery, and rose up into the pure blue sky, sky-blue

itself and so ethereal that it mingled with the azure of the infinite.

The stone lantern which surmounts it, white and dazzling, looked as

though it were suspended on high.

Pierre did not weary, and his glances incessantly travelled from one end

of the horizon to the other. They lingered on the noble outlines, the

proud gracefulness of the town-sprinkled Sabine and Alban mountains,

whose girdle limited the expanse. The Roman Campagna spread out in far

stretches, bare and majestic, like a desert of death, with the glaucous

green of a stagnant sea; and he ended by distinguishing “the stern round

tower” of the tomb of Cecilia Metella, behind which a thin pale line

indicated the ancient Appian Way. Remnants of aqueducts strewed the short

herbage amidst the dust of the fallen worlds. And, bringing his glance

nearer in, the city again appeared with its jumble of edifices, on which

his eyes lighted at random. Close at hand, by its loggia turned towards

the river, he recognised the huge tawny cube of the Palazzo Farnese. The

low cupola, farther away and scarcely visible, was probably that of the

Pantheon. Then by sudden leaps came the freshly whitened walls of San

Paolo-fuori-le-Mura,* similar to those of some huge barn, and the statues

crowning San Giovanni in Laterano, delicate, scarcely as big as insects.

Next the swarming of domes, that of the Gesu, that of San Carlo, that of

St’. Andrea della Valle, that of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini; then a

number of other sites and edifices, all quivering with memories, the

castle of St’. Angelo with its glittering statue of the Destroying Angel,

the Villa Medici dominating the entire city, the terrace of the Pincio

with its marbles showing whitely among its scanty verdure; and the

thick-foliaged trees of the Villa Borghese, whose green crests bounded

the horizon. Vainly however did Pierre seek the Colosseum.

* St. Paul-beyond-the-walls.

The north wind, which was blowing very mildly, had now begun to dissipate

the morning haze. Whole districts vigorously disentangled themselves, and

showed against the vaporous distance like promontories in a sunlit sea.

Here and there, in the indistinct swarming of houses, a strip of white

wall glittered, a row of window panes flared, or a garden supplied a

black splotch, of wondrous intensity of hue. And all the rest, the medley

of streets and squares, the endless blocks of buildings, scattered about

on either hand, mingled and grew indistinct in the living glory of the

sun, whilst long coils of white smoke, which had ascended from the roofs,

slowly traversed the pure sky.

Guided by a secret influence, however, Pierre soon ceased to take

interest in all but three points of the mighty panorama. That line of

slender cypresses which set a black fringe on the height of the Palatine

yonder filled him with emotion: beyond it he saw only a void: the palaces

of the Caesars had disappeared, had fallen, had been razed by time; and

he evoked their memory, he fancied he could see them rise like vague,

trembling phantoms of gold amidst the purple of that splendid morning.

Then his glances reverted to St. Peter’s, and there the dome yet soared

aloft, screening the Vatican which he knew was beside the colossus,

clinging to its flanks. And that dome, of the same colour as the heavens,

appeared so triumphant, so full of strength, so vast, that it seemed to

him like a giant king, dominating the whole city and seen from every spot

throughout eternity. Then he fixed his eyes on the height in front of

him, on the Quirinal, and there the King’s palace no longer appeared

aught but a flat low barracks bedaubed with yellow paint.

And for him all the secular history of Rome, with its constant

convulsions and successive resurrections, found embodiment in that

symbolical triangle, in those three summits gazing at one another across

the Tiber. Ancient Rome blossoming forth in a piling up of palaces and

temples, the monstrous florescence of imperial power and splendour; Papal

Rome, victorious in the middle ages, mistress of the world, bringing that

colossal church, symbolical of beauty regained, to weigh upon all

Christendom; and the Rome of to-day, which he knew nothing of, which he

had neglected, and whose royal palace, so bare and so cold, brought him

disparaging ideas--the idea of some out-of-place, bureaucratic effort,

some sacrilegious attempt at modernity in an exceptional city which

should have been left entirely to the dreams of the future. However, he

shook off the almost painful feelings which the importunate present

brought to him, and would not let his eyes rest on a pale new district,

quite a little town, in course of erection, no doubt, which he could

distinctly see near St. Peter’s on the margin of the river. He had dreamt

of his own new Rome, and still dreamt of it, even in front of the

Palatine whose edifices had crumbled in the dust of centuries, of the

dome of St. Peter’s whose huge shadow lulled the Vatican to sleep, of the

Palace of the Quirinal repaired and repainted, reigning in homely fashion

over the new districts which swarmed on every side, while with its ruddy

roofs the olden city, ripped up by improvements, coruscated beneath the

bright morning sun.

Again did the title of his book, “NEW ROME,” flare before Pierre’s eyes,

and another reverie carried him off; he lived his book afresh even as he

had just lived his life. He had written it amid a flow of enthusiasm,

utilising the _data_ which he had accumulated at random; and its division

into three parts, past, present, and future, had at once forced itself

upon him.

The PAST was the extraordinary story of primitive Christianity, of the

slow evolution which had turned this Christianity into present-day

Catholicism. He showed that an economical question is invariably hidden

beneath each religious evolution, and that, upon the whole, the

everlasting evil, the everlasting struggle, has never been aught but one

between the rich and the poor. Among the Jews, when their nomadic life

was over, and they had conquered the land of Canaan, and ownership and

property came into being, a class warfare at once broke out. There were

rich, and there were poor; thence arose the social question. The

transition had been sudden, and the new state of things so rapidly went

from bad to worse that the poor suffered keenly, and protested with the

greater violence as they still remembered the golden age of the nomadic

life. Until the time of Jesus the prophets are but rebels who surge from

out the misery of the people, proclaim its sufferings, and vent their

wrath upon the rich, to whom they prophesy every evil in punishment for

their injustice and their harshness. Jesus Himself appears as the

claimant of the rights of the poor. The prophets, whether socialists or

anarchists, had preached social equality, and called for the destruction

of the world if it were unjust. Jesus likewise brings to the wretched

hatred of the rich. All His teaching threatens wealth and property; and

if by the Kingdom of Heaven which He promised one were to understand

peace and fraternity upon this earth, there would only be a question of

returning to a life of pastoral simplicity, to the dream of the Christian

community, such as after Him it would seem to have been realised by His

disciples. During the first three centuries each Church was an experiment

in communism, a real association whose members possessed all in

common--wives excepted. This is shown to us by the apologists and early

fathers of the Church. Christianity was then but the religion of the

humble and the poor, a form of democracy, of socialism struggling against

Roman society. And when the latter toppled over, rotted by money, it

succumbed far more beneath the results of frantic speculation, swindling

banks, and financial disasters, than beneath the onslaught of barbarian

hordes and the stealthy, termite-like working of the Christians.

The money question will always be found at the bottom of everything. And

a new proof of this was supplied when Christianity, at last triumphing by

virtue of historical, social, and human causes, was proclaimed a State

religion. To ensure itself complete victory it was forced to range itself

on the side of the rich and the powerful; and one should see by means of

what artfulness and sophistry the fathers of the Church succeeded in

discovering a defence of property and wealth in the Gospel of Jesus. All

this, however, was a vital political necessity for Christianity; it was

only at this price that it became Catholicism, the universal religion.

From that time forth the powerful machine, the weapon of conquest and

rule, was reared aloft: up above were the powerful and the wealthy, those

whose duty it was to share with the poor, but who did not do so; while

down below were the poor, the toilers, who were taught resignation and

obedience, and promised the kingdom of futurity, the divine and eternal

reward--an admirable monument which has lasted for ages, and which is

entirely based on the promise of life beyond life, on the

inextinguishable thirst for immortality and justice that consumes

mankind.

Pierre had completed this first part of his book, this history of the

past, by a broad sketch of Catholicism until the present time. First

appeared St. Peter, ignorant and anxious, coming to Rome by an

inspiration of genius, there to fulfil the ancient oracles which had

predicted the eternity of the Capitol. Then came the first popes, mere

heads of burial associations, the slow rise of the all-powerful papacy

ever struggling to conquer the world, unremittingly seeking to realise

its dream of universal domination. At the time of the great popes of the

middle ages it thought for a moment that it had attained its goal, that

it was the sovereign master of the nations. Would not absolute truth and

right consist in the pope being both pontiff and ruler of the world,

reigning over both the souls and the bodies of all men, even like the

Deity whose vicar he is? This, the highest and mightiest of all

ambitions, one, too, that is perfectly logical, was attained by Augustus,

emperor and pontiff, master of all the known world; and it is the

glorious figure of Augustus, ever rising anew from among the ruins of

ancient Rome, which has always haunted the popes; it is his blood which

has pulsated in their veins.

But power had become divided into two parts amidst the crumbling of the

Roman empire; it was necessary to content oneself with a share, and leave

temporal government to the emperor, retaining over him, however, the

right of coronation by divine grant. The people belonged to God, and in

God’s name the pope gave the people to the emperor, and could take it

from him; an unlimited power whose most terrible weapon was

excommunication, a superior sovereignty, which carried the papacy towards

real and final possession of the empire. Looking at things broadly, the

everlasting quarrel between the pope and the emperor was a quarrel for

the people, the inert mass of humble and suffering ones, the great silent

multitude whose irremediable wretchedness was only revealed by occasional

covert growls. It was disposed of, for its good, as one might dispose of

a child. Yet the Church really contributed to civilisation, rendered

constant services to humanity, diffused abundant alms. In the convents,

at any rate, the old dream of the Christian community was ever coming

back: one-third of the wealth accumulated for the purposes of worship,

the adornment and glorification of the shrine, one-third for the priests,

and one-third for the poor. Was not this a simplification of life, a

means of rendering existence possible to the faithful who had no earthly

desires, pending the marvellous contentment of heavenly life? Give us,

then, the whole earth, and we will divide terrestrial wealth into three

such parts, and you shall see what a golden age will reign amidst the

resignation and the obedience of all!

However, Pierre went on to show how the papacy was assailed by the

greatest dangers on emerging from its all-powerfulness of the middle

ages. It was almost swept away amidst the luxury and excesses of the

Renascence, the bubbling of living sap which then gushed from eternal

nature, downtrodden and regarded as dead for ages past. More threatening

still were the stealthy awakenings of the people, of the great silent

multitude whose tongue seemed to be loosening. The Reformation burst

forth like the protest of reason and justice, like a recall to the

disregarded truths of the Gospel; and to escape total annihilation Rome

needed the stern defence of the Inquisition, the slow stubborn labour of

the Council of Trent, which strengthened the dogmas and ensured the

temporal power. And then the papacy entered into two centuries of peace

and effacement, for the strong absolute monarchies which had divided

Europe among themselves could do without it, and had ceased to tremble at

the harmless thunderbolts of excommunication or to look on the pope as

aught but a master of ceremonies, controlling certain rites. The

possession of the people was no longer subject to the same rules.

Allowing that the kings still held the people from God, it was the pope’s

duty to register the donation once for all, without ever intervening,

whatever the circumstances, in the government of states. Never was Rome

farther away from the realisation of its ancient dream of universal

dominion. And when the French Revolution burst forth, it may well have

been imagined that the proclamation of the rights of man would kill that

papacy to which the exercise of divine right over the nations had been

committed. And so how great at first was the anxiety, the anger, the

desperate resistance with which the Vatican opposed the idea of freedom,

the new _credo_ of liberated reason, of humanity regaining

self-possession and control. It was the apparent _denouement_ of the long

struggle between the pope and the emperor for possession of the people:

the emperor vanished, and the people, henceforward free to dispose of

itself, claimed to escape from the pope--an unforeseen solution, in which

it seemed as though all the ancient scaffolding of the Catholic world

must fall to the very ground.

At this point Pierre concluded the first part of his book by contrasting

primitive Christianity with present-day Catholicism, which is the triumph

of the rich and the powerful. That Roman society which Jesus had come to

destroy in the name of the poor and humble, had not Catholic Rome

steadily continued rebuilding it through all the centuries, by its policy

of cupidity and pride? And what bitter irony it was to find, after

eighteen hundred years of the Gospel, that the world was again collapsing

through frantic speculation, rotten banks, financial disasters, and the

frightful injustice of a few men gorged with wealth whilst thousands of

their brothers were dying of hunger! The whole redemption of the wretched

had to be worked afresh. However, Pierre gave expression to all these

terrible things in words so softened by charity, so steeped in hope, that

they lost their revolutionary danger. Moreover, he nowhere attacked the

dogmas. His book, in its sentimental, somewhat poetic form, was but the

cry of an apostle glowing with love for his fellow-men.

Then came the second part of the work, the PRESENT, a study of Catholic

society as it now exists. Here Pierre had painted a frightful picture of

the misery of the poor, the misery of a great city, which he knew so well

and bled for, through having laid his hands upon its poisonous wounds.

The present-day injustice could no longer be tolerated, charity was

becoming powerless, and so frightful was the suffering that all hope was

dying away from the hearts of the people. And was it not the monstrous

spectacle presented by Christendom, whose abominations corrupted the

people, and maddened it with hatred and vengeance, that had largely

destroyed its faith? However, after this picture of rotting and crumbling

society, Pierre returned to history, to the period of the French

Revolution, to the mighty hope with which the idea of freedom had filled

the world. The middle classes, the great Liberal party, on attaining

power had undertaken to bring happiness to one and all. But after a

century’s experience it really seemed that liberty had failed to bring

any happiness whatever to the outcasts. In the political sphere illusions

were departing. At all events, if the reigning third estate declares

itself satisfied, the fourth estate, that of the toilers,* still suffers

and continues to demand its share of fortune. The working classes have

been proclaimed free; political equality has been granted them, but the

gift has been valueless, for economically they are still bound to

servitude, and only enjoy, as they did formerly, the liberty of dying of

hunger. All the socialist revendications have come from that; between

labour and capital rests the terrifying problem, the solution of which

threatens to sweep away society. When slavery disappeared from the olden

world to be succeeded by salaried employment the revolution was immense,

and certainly the Christian principle was one of the great factors in the

destruction of slavery. Nowadays, therefore, when the question is to

replace salaried employment by something else, possibly by the

participation of the workman in the profits of his work, why should not

Christianity again seek a new principle of action? The fatal and

proximate accession of the democracy means the beginning of another phase

in human history, the creation of the society of to-morrow. And Rome

cannot keep away from the arena; the papacy must take part in the quarrel

if it does not desire to disappear from the world like a piece of

mechanism that has become altogether useless.

* In England we call the press the fourth estate, but in France

and elsewhere the term is applied to the working classes, and

in that sense must be taken here.--Trans.

Hence it followed that Catholic socialism was legitimate. On every side

the socialist sects were battling with their various solutions for the

privilege of ensuring the happiness of the people, and the Church also

must offer her solution of the problem. Here it was that New Rome

appeared, that the evolution spread into a renewal of boundless hope.

Most certainly there was nothing contrary to democracy in the principles

of the Roman Catholic Church. Indeed she had only to return to the

evangelical traditions, to become once more the Church of the humble and

the poor, to re-establish the universal Christian community. She is

undoubtedly of democratic essence, and if she sided with the rich and

the powerful when Christianity became Catholicism, she only did so

perforce, that she might live by sacrificing some portion of her

original purity; so that if to-day she should abandon the condemned

governing classes in order to make common cause with the multitude of

the wretched, she would simply be drawing nearer to Christ, thereby

securing a new lease of youth and purifying herself of all the political

compromises which she formerly was compelled to accept. Without

renouncing aught of her absolutism the Church has at all times known how

to bow to circumstances; but she reserves her perfect sovereignty,

simply tolerating that which she cannot prevent, and patiently waiting,

even through long centuries, for the time when she shall again become

the mistress of the world.

Might not that time come in the crisis which was now at hand? Once more,

all the powers are battling for possession of the people. Since the

people, thanks to liberty and education, has become strong, since it has

developed consciousness and will, and claimed its share of fortune, all

rulers have been seeking to attach it to themselves, to reign by it, and

even with it, should that be necessary. Socialism, therein lies the

future, the new instrument of government; and the kings tottering on

their thrones, the middle-class presidents of anxious republics, the

ambitious plotters who dream of power, all dabble in socialism! They all

agree that the capitalist organisation of the State is a return to pagan

times, to the olden slave-market; and they all talk of breaking for ever

the iron law by which the labour of human beings has become so much

merchandise, subject to supply and demand, with wages calculated on an

estimate of what is strictly necessary to keep a workman from dying of

hunger. And, down in the sphere below, the evil increases, the workmen

agonise with hunger and exasperation, while above them discussion still

goes on, systems are bandied about, and well-meaning persons exhaust

themselves in attempting to apply ridiculously inadequate remedies.

There is much stir without any progress, all the wild bewilderment which

precedes great catastrophes. And among the many, Catholic socialism,

quite as ardent as Revolutionary socialism, enters the lists and strives

to conquer.

After these explanations Pierre gave an account of the long efforts made

by Catholic socialism throughout the Christian world. That which

particularly struck one in this connection was that the warfare became

keener and more victorious whenever it was waged in some land of

propaganda, as yet not completely conquered by Roman Catholicism. For

instance, in the countries where Protestantism confronted the latter, the

priests fought with wondrous passion, as for dear life itself, contending

with the schismatical clergy for possession of the people by dint of

daring, by unfolding the most audacious democratic theories. In Germany,

the classic land of socialism, Mgr. Ketteler was one of the first to

speak of adequately taxing the rich; and later he fomented a wide-spread

agitation which the clergy now directs by means of numerous associations

and newspapers. In Switzerland Mgr. Mermillod pleaded the cause of the

poor so loudly that the bishops there now almost make common cause with

the democratic socialists, whom they doubtless hope to convert when the

day for sharing arrives. In England, where socialism penetrates so very

slowly, Cardinal Manning achieved considerable success, stood by the

working classes on the occasion of a famous strike, and helped on a

popular movement, which was signalised by numerous conversions. But it

was particularly in the United States of America that Catholic socialism

proved triumphant, in a sphere of democracy where the bishops, like Mgr.

Ireland, were forced to set themselves at the head of the working-class

agitation. And there across the Atlantic a new Church seems to be

germinating, still in confusion but overflowing with sap, and upheld by

intense hope, as at the aurora of the rejuvenated Christianity of

to-morrow.

Passing thence to Austria and Belgium, both Catholic countries, one found

Catholic socialism mingling in the first instance with anti-semitism,

while in the second it had no precise sense. And all movement ceased and

disappeared when one came to Spain and Italy, those old lands of faith.

The former with its intractable bishops who contented themselves with

hurling excommunication at unbelievers as in the days of the Inquisition,

seemed to be abandoned to the violent theories of revolutionaries, whilst

Italy, immobilised in the traditional courses, remained without

possibility of initiative, reduced to silence and respect by the presence

of the Holy See. In France, however, the struggle remained keen, but it

was more particularly a struggle of ideas. On the whole, the war was

there being waged against the revolution, and to some it seemed as though

it would suffice to re-establish the old organisation of monarchical

times in order to revert to the golden age. It was thus that the question

of working-class corporations had become the one problem, the panacea for

all the ills of the toilers. But people were far from agreeing; some,

those Catholics who rejected State interference and favoured purely moral

action, desired that the corporations should be free; whilst others, the

young and impatient ones, bent on action, demanded that they should be

obligatory, each with capital of its own, and recognised and protected by

the State.

Viscount Philibert de la Choue had by pen and speech carried on a

vigorous campaign in favour of the obligatory corporations; and his great

grief was that he had so far failed to prevail on the Pope to say whether

in his opinion these corporations should be closed or open. According to

the Viscount, herein lay the fate of society, a peaceful solution of the

social question or the frightful catastrophe which must sweep everything

away. In reality, though he refused to own it, the Viscount had ended by

adopting State socialism. And, despite the lack of agreement, the

agitation remained very great; attempts, scarcely happy in their results,

were made; co-operative associations, companies for erecting workmen’s

dwellings, popular savings’ banks were started; many more or less

disguised efforts to revert to the old Christian community organisation

were tried; while day by day, amidst the prevailing confusion, in the

mental perturbation and political difficulties through which the country

passed, the militant Catholic party felt its hopes increasing, even to

the blind conviction of soon resuming sway over the whole world.

The second part of Pierre’s book concluded by a picture of the moral and

intellectual uneasiness amidst which the end of the century is

struggling. While the toiling multitude suffers from its hard lot and

demands that in any fresh division of wealth it shall be ensured at least

its daily bread, the _elite_ is no better satisfied, but complains of the

void induced by the freeing of its reason and the enlargement of its

intelligence. It is the famous bankruptcy of rationalism, of positivism,

of science itself which is in question. Minds consumed by need of the

absolute grow weary of groping, weary of the delays of science which

recognises only proven truths; doubt tortures them, they need a complete

and immediate synthesis in order to sleep in peace; and they fall on

their knees, overcome by the roadside, distracted by the thought that

science will never tell them all, and preferring the Deity, the mystery

revealed and affirmed by faith. Even to-day, it must be admitted, science

calms neither our thirst for justice, our desire for safety, nor our

everlasting idea of happiness after life in an eternity of enjoyment. To

one and all it only brings the austere duty to live, to be a mere

contributor in the universal toil; and how well one can understand that

hearts should revolt and sigh for the Christian heaven, peopled with

lovely angels, full of light and music and perfumes! Ah! to embrace one’s

dead, to tell oneself that one will meet them again, that one will live

with them once more in glorious immortality! And to possess the certainty

of sovereign equity to enable one to support the abominations of

terrestrial life! And in this wise to trample on the frightful thought of

annihilation, to escape the horror of the disappearance of the _ego_, and

to tranquillise oneself with that unshakable faith which postpones until

the portal of death be crossed the solution of all the problems of

destiny! This dream will be dreamt by the nations for ages yet. And this

it is which explains why, in these last days of the century, excessive

mental labour and the deep unrest of humanity, pregnant with a new world,

have awakened religious feeling, anxious, tormented by thoughts of the

ideal and the infinite, demanding a moral law and an assurance of

superior justice. Religions may disappear, but religious feelings will

always create new ones, even with the help of science. A new religion! a

new religion! Was it not the ancient Catholicism, which in the soil of

the present day, where all seemed conducive to a miracle, was about to

spring up afresh, throw out green branches and blossom in a young yet

mighty florescence?

At last, in the third part of his book and in the glowing language of an

apostle, Pierre depicted the FUTURE: Catholicism rejuvenated, and

bringing health and peace, the forgotten golden age of primitive

Christianity, back to expiring society. He began with an emotional and

sparkling portrait of Leo XIII, the ideal Pope, the Man of Destiny

entrusted with the salvation of the nations. He had conjured up a

presentment of him and beheld him thus in his feverish longing for the

advent of a pastor who should put an end to human misery. It was perhaps

not a close likeness, but it was a portrait of the needed saviour, with

open heart and mind, and inexhaustible benevolence, such as he had

dreamed. At the same time he had certainly searched documents, studied

encyclical letters, based his sketch upon facts: first Leo’s religious

education at Rome, then his brief nunciature at Brussels, and afterwards

his long episcopate at Perugia. And as soon as Leo became pope in the

difficult situation bequeathed by Pius IX, the duality of his nature

appeared: on one hand was the firm guardian of dogmas, on the other the

supple politician resolved to carry conciliation to its utmost limits. We

see him flatly severing all connection with modern philosophy, stepping

backward beyond the Renascence to the middle ages and reviving Christian

philosophy, as expounded by “the angelic doctor,” St. Thomas Aquinas, in

Catholic schools. Then the dogmas being in this wise sheltered, he

adroitly maintains himself in equilibrium by giving securities to every

power, striving to utilise every opportunity. He displays extraordinary

activity, reconciles the Holy See with Germany, draws nearer to Russia,

contents Switzerland, asks the friendship of Great Britain, and writes to

the Emperor of China begging him to protect the missionaries and

Christians in his dominions. Later on, too, he intervenes in France and

acknowledges the legitimacy of the Republic.

From the very outset an idea becomes apparent in all his actions, an idea

which will place him among the great papal politicians. It is moreover

the ancient idea of the papacy--the conquest of every soul, Rome capital

and mistress of the world. Thus Leo XIII has but one desire, one object,

that of unifying the Church, of drawing all the dissident communities to

it in order that it may be invincible in the coming social struggle. He

seeks to obtain recognition of the moral authority of the Vatican in

Russia; he dreams of disarming the Anglican Church and of drawing it into

a sort of fraternal truce; and he particularly seeks to come to an

understanding with the Schismatical Churches of the East, which he

regards as sisters, simply living apart, whose return his paternal heart

entreats. Would not Rome indeed dispose of victorious strength if she

exercised uncontested sway over all the Christians of the earth?

And here the social ideas of Leo XIII come in. Whilst yet Bishop of

Perugia he wrote a pastoral letter in which a vague humanitarian

socialism appeared. As soon, however, as he had assumed the triple crown

his opinions changed and he anathematised the revolutionaries whose

audacity was terrifying Italy. But almost at once he corrected himself,

warned by events and realising the great danger of leaving socialism in

the hands of the enemies of the Church. Then he listened to the bishops

of the lands of propaganda, ceased to intervene in the Irish quarrel,

withdrew the excommunications which he had launched against the American

“knights of labour,” and would not allow the bold works of Catholic

socialist writers to be placed in the Index. This evolution towards

democracy may be traced through his most famous encyclical letters:

_Immortale Dei_, on the constitution of States; _Libertas_, on human

liberty; _Sapientoe_, on the duties of Christian citizens; _Rerum

novarum_, on the condition of the working classes; and it is particularly

this last which would seem to have rejuvenated the Church. The Pope

herein chronicles the undeserved misery of the toilers, the undue length

of the hours of labour, the insufficiency of salaries. All men have the

right to live, and all contracts extorted by threats of starvation are

unjust. Elsewhere he declares that the workman must not be left

defenceless in presence of a system which converts the misery of the

majority into the wealth of a few. Compelled to deal vaguely with

questions of organisation, he contents himself with encouraging the

corporative movement, placing it under State patronage; and after thus

contributing to restore the secular power, he reinstates the Deity on the

throne of sovereignty, and discerns the path to salvation more

particularly in moral measures, in the ancient respect due to family ties

and ownership. Nevertheless, was not the helpful hand which the august

Vicar of Christ thus publicly tendered to the poor and the humble, the

certain token of a new alliance, the announcement of a new reign of Jesus

upon earth? Thenceforward the people knew that it was not abandoned. And

from that moment too how glorious became Leo XIII, whose sacerdotal

jubilee and episcopal jubilee were celebrated by all Christendom amidst

the coming of a vast multitude, of endless offerings, and of flattering

letters from every sovereign!

Pierre next dealt with the question of the temporal power, and this he

thought he might treat freely. Naturally, he was not ignorant of the fact

that the Pope in his quarrel with Italy upheld the rights of the Church

over Rome as stubbornly as his predecessor; but he imagined that this was

merely a necessary conventional attitude, imposed by political

considerations, and destined to be abandoned when the times were ripe.

For his own part he was convinced that if the Pope had never appeared

greater than he did now, it was to the loss of the temporal power that he

owed it; for thence had come the great increase of his authority, the

pure splendour of moral omnipotence which he diffused.

What a long history of blunders and conflicts had been that of the

possession of the little kingdom of Rome during fifteen centuries!

Constantine quits Rome in the fourth century, only a few forgotten

functionaries remaining on the deserted Palatine, and the Pope naturally

rises to power, and the life of the city passes to the Lateran. However,

it is only four centuries later that Charlemagne recognises accomplished

facts and formally bestows the States of the Church upon the papacy. From

that time warfare between the spiritual power and the temporal powers has

never ceased; though often latent it has at times become acute, breaking

forth with blood and fire. And to-day, in the midst of Europe in arms, is

it not unreasonable to dream of the papacy ruling a strip of territory

where it would be exposed to every vexation, and where it could only

maintain itself by the help of a foreign army? What would become of it in

the general massacre which is apprehended? Is it not far more sheltered,

far more dignified, far more lofty when disentangled from all terrestrial

cares, reigning over the world of souls?

In the early times of the Church the papacy from being merely local,

merely Roman, gradually became catholicised, universalised, slowly

acquiring dominion over all Christendom. In the same way the Sacred

College, at first a continuation of the Roman Senate, acquired an

international character, and in our time has ended by becoming the most

cosmopolitan of assemblies, in which representatives of all the nations

have seats. And is it not evident that the Pope, thus leaning on the

cardinals, has become the one great international power which exercises

the greater authority since it is free from all monarchical interests,

and can speak not merely in the name of country but in that of humanity

itself? The solution so often sought amidst such long wars surely lies in

this: Either give the Pope the temporal sovereignty of the world, or

leave him only the spiritual sovereignty. Vicar of the Deity, absolute

and infallible sovereign by divine delegation, he can but remain in the

sanctuary if, ruler already of the human soul, he is not recognised by

every nation as the one master of the body also--the king of kings.

But what a strange affair was this new incursion of the papacy into the

field sown by the French Revolution, an incursion conducting it perhaps

towards the domination, which it has striven for with a will that has

upheld it for centuries! For now it stands alone before the people. The

kings are down. And as the people is henceforth free to give itself to

whomsoever it pleases, why should it not give itself to the Church? The

depreciation which the idea of liberty has certainly undergone renders

every hope permissible. The liberal party appears to be vanquished in the

sphere of economics. The toilers, dissatisfied with 1789 complain of the

aggravation of their misery, bestir themselves, seek happiness

despairingly. On the other hand the new _regimes_ have increased the

international power of the Church; Catholic members are numerous in the

parliaments of the republics and the constitutional monarchies. All

circumstances seem therefore to favour this extraordinary return of

fortune, Catholicism reverting to the vigour of youth in its old age.

Even science, remember, is accused of bankruptcy, a charge which saves

the _Syllabus_ from ridicule, troubles the minds of men, and throws the

limitless sphere of mystery and impossibility open once more. And then a

prophecy is recalled, a prediction that the papacy shall be mistress of

the world on the day when she marches at the head of the democracy after

reuniting the Schismatical Churches of the East to the Catholic,

Apostolic, and Roman Church. And, in Pierre’s opinion, assuredly the

times had come since Pope Leo XIII, dismissing the great and the wealthy

of the world, left the kings driven from their thrones in exile to place

himself like Jesus on the side of the foodless toilers and the beggars of

the high roads. Yet a few more years, perhaps, of frightful misery,

alarming confusion, fearful social danger, and the people, the great

silent multitude which others have so far disposed of, will return to the

cradle, to the unified Church of Rome, in order to escape the destruction

which threatens human society.

Pierre concluded his book with a passionate evocation of New Rome, the

spiritual Rome which would soon reign over the nations, reconciled and

fraternising as in another golden age. Herein he even saw the end of

superstitions. Without making a direct attack on dogma, he allowed

himself to dream of an enlargement of religious feeling, freed from

rites, and absorbed in the one satisfaction of human charity. And still

smarting from his journey to Lourdes, he felt the need of contenting his

heart. Was not that gross superstition of Lourdes the hateful symptom of

the excessive suffering of the times? On the day when the Gospel should

be universally diffused and practised, suffering ones would cease seeking

an illusory relief so far away, assured as they would be of finding

assistance, consolation, and cure in their homes amidst their brothers.

At Lourdes there was an iniquitous displacement of wealth, a spectacle so

frightful as to make one doubt of God, a perpetual conflict which would

disappear in the truly Christian society of to-morrow. Ah! that society,

that Christian community, all Pierre’s work ended in an ardent longing

for its speedy advent: Christianity becoming once more the religion of

truth and justice which it had been before it allowed itself to be

conquered by the rich and the powerful! The little ones and the poor ones

reigning, sharing the wealth of earth, and owing obedience to nought but

the levelling law of work! The Pope alone erect at the head of the

federation of nations, prince of peace, with the simple mission of

supplying the moral rule, the link of charity and love which was to unite

all men! And would not this be the speedy realisation of the promises of

Christ? The times were near accomplishment, secular and religious society

would mingle so closely that they would form but one; and it would be the

age of triumph and happiness predicted by all the prophets, no more

struggles possible, no more antagonism between the mind and the body, but

a marvellous equilibrium which would kill evil and set the kingdom of

heaven upon earth. New Rome, the centre of the world, bestowing on the

world the new religion!

Pierre felt that tears were coming to his eyes, and with an unconscious

movement, never noticing how much he astonished the slim Englishmen and

thick-set Germans passing along the terrace, he opened his arms and

extended them towards the _real_ Rome, steeped in such lovely sunshine

and stretched out at his feet. Would she prove responsive to his dream?

Would he, as he had written, find within her the remedy for our

impatience and our alarms? Could Catholicism be renewed, could it return

to the spirit of primitive Christianity, become the religion of the

democracy, the faith which the modern world, overturned and in danger of

perishing, awaits in order to be pacified and to live?

Pierre was full of generous passion, full of faith. He again beheld good

Abbe Rose weeping with emotion as he read his book. He heard Viscount

Philibert de la Choue telling him that such a book was worth an army. And

he particularly felt strong in the approval of Cardinal Bergerot, that

apostle of inexhaustible charity. Why should the Congregation of the

Index threaten his work with interdiction? Since he had been officiously

advised to go to Rome if he desired to defend himself, he had been

turning this question over in his mind without being able to discover

which of his pages were attacked. To him indeed they all seemed to glow

with the purest Christianity. However, he had arrived quivering with

enthusiasm and courage: he was all eagerness to kneel before the Pope,

and place himself under his august protection, assuring him that he had

not written a line without taking inspiration from his ideas, without

desiring the triumph of his policy. Was it possible that condemnation

should be passed on a book in which he imagined in all sincerity that he

had exalted Leo XIII by striving to help him in his work of Christian

reunion and universal peace?

For a moment longer Pierre remained standing before the parapet. He had

been there for nearly an hour, unable to drink in enough of the grandeur

of Rome, which, given all the unknown things she hid from him, he would

have liked to possess at once. Oh! to seize hold of her, know her,

ascertain at once the true word which he had come to seek from her! This

again, like Lourdes, was an experiment, but a graver one, a decisive one,

whence he would emerge either strengthened or overcome for evermore. He

no longer sought the simple, perfect faith of the little child, but the

superior faith of the intellectual man, raising himself above rites and

symbols, working for the greatest happiness of humanity as based on its

need of certainty. His temples throbbed responsive to his heart. What

would be the answer of Rome?

The sunlight had increased and the higher districts now stood out more

vigorously against the fiery background. Far away the hills became gilded

and empurpled, whilst the nearer house-fronts grew very distinct and

bright with their thousands of windows sharply outlined. However, some

morning haze still hovered around; light veils seemed to rise from the

lower streets, blurring the summits for a moment, and then evaporating in

the ardent heavens where all was blue. For a moment Pierre fancied that

the Palatine had vanished, for he could scarcely see the dark fringe of

cypresses; it was as though the dust of its ruins concealed the hill. But

the Quirinal was even more obscured; the royal palace seemed to have

faded away in a fog, so paltry did it look with its low flat front, so

vague in the distance that he no longer distinguished it; whereas above

the trees on his left the dome of St. Peter’s had grown yet larger in the

limpid gold of the sunshine, and appeared to occupy the whole sky and

dominate the whole city!

Ah! the Rome of that first meeting, the Rome of early morning, whose new

districts he had not even noticed in the burning fever of his

arrival--with what boundless hopes did she not inspirit him, this Rome

which he believed he should find alive, such indeed as he had dreamed!

And whilst he stood there in his thin black cassock, thus gazing on her

that lovely day, what a shout of coming redemption seemed to arise from

her house-roofs, what a promise of universal peace seemed to issue from

that sacred soil, twice already Queen of the world! It was the third

Rome, it was New Rome whose maternal love was travelling across the

frontiers to all the nations to console them and reunite them in a common

embrace. In the passionate candour of his dream he beheld her, he heard

her, rejuvenated, full of the gentleness of childhood, soaring, as it

were, amidst the morning freshness into the vast pure heavens.

But at last Pierre tore himself away from the sublime spectacle. The

driver and the horse, their heads drooping under the broad sunlight, had

not stirred. On the seat the valise was almost burning, hot with rays of

the sun which was already heavy. And once more Pierre got into the

vehicle and gave this address:

“Via Giulia, Palazzo Boccanera.”

II.

THE Via Giulia, which runs in a straight line over a distance of five

hundred yards from the Farnese palace to the church of St. John of the

Florentines, was at that hour steeped in bright sunlight, the glow

streaming from end to end and whitening the small square paving stones.

The street had no footways, and the cab rolled along it almost to the

farther extremity, passing the old grey sleepy and deserted residences

whose large windows were barred with iron, while their deep porches

revealed sombre courts resembling wells. Laid out by Pope Julius II, who

had dreamt of lining it with magnificent palaces, the street, then the

most regular and handsome in Rome, had served as Corso* in the sixteenth

century. One could tell that one was in a former luxurious district,

which had lapsed into silence, solitude, and abandonment, instinct with a

kind of religious gentleness and discretion. The old house-fronts

followed one after another, their shutters closed and their gratings

occasionally decked with climbing plants. At some doors cats were seated,

and dim shops, appropriated to humble trades, were installed in certain

dependencies. But little traffic was apparent. Pierre only noticed some

bare-headed women dragging children behind them, a hay cart drawn by a

mule, a superb monk draped in drugget, and a bicyclist speeding along

noiselessly, his machine sparkling in the sun.

* The Corso was so called on account of the horse races held in

it at carnival time.--Trans.

At last the driver turned and pointed to a large square building at the

corner of a lane running towards the Tiber.

“Palazzo Boccanera.”

Pierre raised his head and was pained by the severe aspect of the

structure, so bare and massive and blackened by age. Like its neighbours

the Farnese and Sacchetti palaces, it had been built by Antonio da

Sangallo in the early part of the sixteenth century, and, as with the

former of those residences, the tradition ran that in raising the pile

the architect had made use of stones pilfered from the Colosseum and the

Theatre of Marcellus. The vast, square-looking facade had three upper

stories, each with seven windows, and the first one very lofty and noble.

Down below, the only sign of decoration was that the high ground-floor

windows, barred with huge projecting gratings as though from fear of

siege, rested upon large consoles, and were crowned by attics which

smaller consoles supported. Above the monumental entrance, with folding

doors of bronze, there was a balcony in front of the central first-floor

window. And at the summit of the facade against the sky appeared a

sumptuous entablature, whose frieze displayed admirable grace and purity

of ornamentation. The frieze, the consoles, the attics, and the door-case

were of white marble, but marble whose surface had so crumbled and so

darkened that it now had the rough yellowish grain of stone. Right and

left of the entrance were two antique seats upheld by griffons also of

marble; and incrusted in the wall at one corner, a lovely Renascence

fountain, its source dried up, still lingered; and on it a cupid riding a

dolphin could with difficulty be distinguished, to such a degree had the

wear and tear of time eaten into the sculpture.

Pierre’s eyes, however, had been more particularly attracted by an

escutcheon carved above one of the ground-floor windows, the escutcheon

of the Boccaneras, a winged dragon venting flames, and underneath it he

could plainly read the motto which had remained intact: “_Bocca nera,

Alma rossa_” (black mouth, red soul). Above another window, as a pendant

to the escutcheon, there was one of those little shrines which are still

common in Rome, a satin-robed statuette of the Blessed Virgin, before

which a lantern burnt in the full daylight.

The cabman was about to drive through the dim and gaping porch, according

to custom, when the young priest, overcome by timidity, stopped him. “No,

no,” he said; “don’t go in, it’s useless.”

Then he alighted from the vehicle, paid the man, and, valise in hand,

found himself first under the vaulted roof, and then in the central court

without having met a living soul.