Prada’s pallor increased at this, and his whole face quivered: “Ah! it is

to see my father. He is not very well, be gentle with him,” he replied,

and as he spoke, his look of anguish clearly proclaimed what he feared

from Pierre, some imprudent word, perhaps even a final mission, the

malediction of that man and woman whom he had killed. And surely if his

father knew, he would die as well. “Ah! how annoying it is,” he resumed,

“I can’t go up with you! There are gentlemen waiting for me. Yes, how

annoyed I am. As soon as possible, however, I will join you, yes, as soon

as possible.”

He knew not how to stop the young priest, whom he must evidently allow to

remain with his father, whilst he himself stayed down below, kept there

by his pecuniary worries. But how distressful were the eyes with which he

watched Pierre climb the stairs, how he seemed to supplicate him with his

whole quivering form. His father, good Lord, the only true love, the one

great, pure, faithful passion of his life!

“Don’t make him talk too much, brighten him, won’t you?” were his parting

words.

Up above it was not Batista, the devoted ex-soldier, who opened the door,

but a very young fellow to whom Pierre did not at first pay any

attention. The little room was bare and light as on previous occasions,

and from the broad curtainless window there was the superb view of Rome,

Rome crushed that day beneath a leaden sky and steeped in shade of

infinite mournfulness. Old Orlando, however, had in no wise changed, but

still displayed the superb head of an old blanched lion, a powerful

muzzle and youthful eyes, which yet sparkled with the passions which had

growled in a soul of fire. Pierre found the stricken hero in the same

arm-chair as previously, near the same table littered with newspapers,

and with his legs buried in the same black wrapper, as if he were there

immobilised in a sheath of stone, to such a point that after months and

years one was sure to perceive him quite unchanged, with living bust, and

face glowing with strength and intelligence.

That grey day, however, he seemed gloomy, low in spirits. “Ah! so here

you are, my dear Monsieur Froment,” he exclaimed, “I have been thinking

of you these three days past, living the awful days which you must have

lived in that tragic Palazzo Boccanera. Ah, God! What a frightful

bereavement! My heart is quite overwhelmed, these newspapers have again

just upset me with the fresh details they give!” He pointed as he spoke

to the papers scattered over the table. Then with a gesture he strove to

brush aside the gloomy story, and banish that vision of Benedetta dead,

which had been haunting him. “Well, and yourself?” he inquired.

“I am leaving this evening,” replied Pierre, “but I did not wish to quit

Rome without pressing your brave hands.”

“You are leaving? But your book?”

“My book--I have been received by the Holy Father, I have made my

submission and reprobated my book.”

Orlando looked fixedly at the priest. There was a short interval of

silence, during which their eyes told one another all that they had to

tell respecting the affair. Neither felt the necessity of any longer

explanation. The old man merely spoke these concluding words: “You have

done well, your book was a chimera.”

“Yes, a chimera, a piece of childishness, and I have condemned it myself

in the name of truth and reason.”

A smile appeared on the dolorous lips of the impotent hero. “Then you

have seen things, you understand and know them now?”

“Yes, I know them; and that is why I did not wish to go off without

having that frank conversation with you which we agreed upon.”

Orlando was delighted, but all at once he seemed to remember the young

fellow who had opened the door to Pierre, and who had afterwards modestly

resumed his seat on a chair near the window. This young fellow was a

youth of twenty, still beardless, of a blonde handsomeness such as

occasionally flowers at Naples, with long curly hair, a lily-like

complexion, a rosy mouth, and soft eyes full of a dreamy languor. The old

man presented him in fatherly fashion, Angiolo Mascara his name was, and

he was the grandson of an old comrade in arms, the epic Mascara of the

Thousand, who had died like a hero, his body pierced by a hundred wounds.

“I sent for him to scold him,” continued Orlando with a smile. “Do you

know that this fine fellow with his girlish airs goes in for the new

ideas? He is an Anarchist, one of the three or four dozen Anarchists that

we have in Italy. He’s a good little lad at bottom, he has only his

mother left him, and supports her, thanks to the little berth which he

holds, but which he’ll lose one of these fine days if he is not careful.

Come, come, my child, you must promise me to be reasonable.”

Thereupon Angiolo, whose clean but well-worn garments bespoke decent

poverty, made answer in a grave and musical voice: “I am reasonable, it

is the others, all the others who are not. When all men are reasonable

and desire truth and justice, the world will be happy.”

“Ah! if you fancy that he’ll give way!” cried Orlando. “But, my poor

child, just ask Monsieur l’Abbe if one ever knows where truth and justice

are. Well, well, one must leave you the time to live, and see, and

understand things.”

Then, paying no more attention to the young man, he returned to Pierre,

while Angiolo, remaining very quiet in his corner, kept his eyes ardently

fixed on them, and with open, quivering ears lost not a word they said.

“I told you, my dear Monsieur Froment,” resumed Orlando, “that your ideas

would change, and that acquaintance with Rome would bring you to accurate

views far more readily than any fine speeches I could make to you. So I

never doubted but what you would of your own free will withdraw your book

as soon as men and things should have enlightened you respecting the

Vatican at the present day. But let us leave the Vatican on one side,

there is nothing to be done but to let it continue falling slowly and

inevitably into ruin. What interests me is our Italian Rome, which you

treated as an element to be neglected, but which you have now seen and

studied, so that we can both speak of it with the necessary knowledge!”

He thereupon at once granted a great many things, acknowledged that

blunders had been committed, that the finances were in a deplorable

state, and that there were serious difficulties of all kinds. They, the

Italians, had sinned by excess of legitimate pride, they had proceeded

too hastily with their attempt to improvise a great nation, to change

ancient Rome into a great modern capital as by the mere touch of a wand.

And thence had come that mania for erecting new districts, that mad

speculation in land and shares, which had brought the country within a

hair’s breadth of bankruptcy.

At this Pierre gently interrupted him to tell him of the view which he

himself had arrived at after his peregrinations and studies through Rome.

“That fever of the first hour, that financial _debacle_,” said he, “is

after all nothing. All pecuniary sores can be healed. But the grave point

is that your Italy still remains to be created. There is no aristocracy

left, and as yet there is no people, nothing but a devouring middle

class, dating from yesterday, which preys on the rich harvest of the

future before it is ripe.”

Silence fell. Orlando sadly wagged his old leonine head. The cutting

harshness of Pierre’s formula struck him in the heart. “Yes, yes,” he

said at last, “that is so, you have seen things plainly; and why say no

when facts are there, patent to everybody? I myself had already spoken to

you of that middle class which hungers so ravenously for place and

office, distinctions and plumes, and which at the same time is so

avaricious, so suspicious with regard to its money which it invests in

banks, never risking it in agriculture or manufactures or commerce,

having indeed the one desire to enjoy life without doing anything, and so

unintelligent that it cannot see it is killing its country by its

loathing for labour, its contempt for the poor, its one ambition to live

in a petty way with the barren glory of belonging to some official

administration. And, as you say, the aristocracy is dying, discrowned,

ruined, sunk into the degeneracy which overtakes races towards their

close, most of its members reduced to beggary, the others, the few who

have clung to their money, crushed by heavy imposts, possessing nought

but dead fortunes which constant sharing diminishes and which must soon

disappear with the princes themselves. And then there is the people,

which has suffered so much and suffers still, but is so used to suffering

that it can seemingly conceive no idea of emerging from it, blind and

deaf as it is, almost regretting its ancient bondage, and so ignorant, so

abominably ignorant, which is the one cause of its hopeless, morrowless

misery, for it has not even the consolation of understanding that if we

have conquered and are trying to resuscitate Rome and Italy in their

ancient glory, it is for itself, the people, alone. Yes, yes, no

aristocracy left, no people as yet, and a middle class which really

alarms one. How can one therefore help yielding at times to the terrors

of the pessimists, who pretend that our misfortunes are as yet nothing,

that we are going forward to yet more awful catastrophes, as though,

indeed, what we now behold were but the first symptoms of our race’s end,

the premonitory signs of final annihilation!”

As he spoke he raised his long quivering arms towards the window, towards

the light, and Pierre, deeply moved, remembered how Cardinal Boccanera on

the previous day had made a similar gesture of supplicant distress when

appealing to the divine power. And both men, Cardinal and patriot, so

hostile in their beliefs, were instinct with the same fierce and

despairing grandeur.

“As I told you, however, on the first day,” continued Orlando, “we only

sought to accomplish logical and inevitable things. As for Rome, with her

past history of splendour and domination which weighs so heavily upon us,

we could not do otherwise than take her for capital, for she alone was

the bond, the living symbol of our unity at the same time as the promise

of eternity, the renewal offered to our great dream of resurrection and

glory.”

He went on, recognising the disastrous conditions under which Rome

laboured as a capital. She was a purely decorative city with exhausted

soil, she had remained apart from modern life, she was unhealthy, she

offered no possibility of commerce or industry, she was invincibly preyed

upon by death, standing as she did amidst that sterile desert of the

Campagna. Then he compared her with the other cities which are jealous of

her; first Florence, which, however, has become so indifferent and so

sceptical, impregnated with a happy heedlessness which seems inexplicable

when one remembers the frantic passions, and the torrents of blood

rolling through her history; next Naples, which yet remains content with

her bright sun, and whose childish people enjoy their ignorance and

wretchedness so indolently that one knows not whether one ought to pity

them; next Venice, which has resigned herself to remaining a marvel of

ancient art, which one ought to put under glass so as to preserve her

intact, slumbering amid the sovereign pomp of her annals; next Genoa,

which is absorbed in trade, still active and bustling, one of the last

queens of that Mediterranean, that insignificant lake which was once the

opulent central sea, whose waters carried the wealth of the world; and

then particularly Turin and Milan, those industrial and commercial

centres, which are so full of life and so modernised that tourists

disdain them as not being “Italian” cities, both of them having saved

themselves from ruin by entering into that Western evolution which is

preparing the next century. Ah! that old land of Italy, ought one to

leave it all as a dusty museum for the pleasure of artistic souls, leave

it to crumble away, even as its little towns of Magna Graecia, Umbria,

and Tuscany are already crumbling, like exquisite _bibelots_ which one

dares not repair for fear that one might spoil their character. At all

events, there must either be death, death soon and inevitable, or else

the pick of the demolisher, the tottering walls thrown to the ground, and

cities of labour, science, and health created on all sides; in one word,

a new Italy really rising from the ashes of the old one, and adapted to

the new civilisation into which humanity is entering.

“However, why despair?” Orlando continued energetically. “Rome may weigh

heavily on our shoulders, but she is none the less the summit we coveted.

We are here, and we shall stay here awaiting events. Even if the

population does not increase it at least remains stationary at a figure

of some 400,000 souls, and the movement of increase may set in again when

the causes which stopped it shall have ceased. Our blunder was to think

that Rome would become a Paris or Berlin; but, so far, all sorts of

social, historical, even ethnical considerations seem opposed to it; yet

who can tell what may be the surprises of to-morrow? Are we forbidden to

hope, to put faith in the blood which courses in our veins, the blood of

the old conquerors of the world? I, who no longer stir from this room,

impotent as I am, even I at times feel my madness come back, believe in

the invincibility and immortality of Rome, and wait for the two millions

of people who must come to populate those dolorous new districts which

you have seen so empty and already falling into ruins! And certainly they

will come! Why not? You will see, you will see, everything will be

populated, and even more houses will have to be built. Moreover, can you

call a nation poor, when it possesses Lombardy? Is there not also

inexhaustible wealth in our southern provinces? Let peace settle down,

let the South and the North mingle together, and a new generation of

workers grow up. Since we have the soil, such a fertile soil, the great

harvest which is awaited will surely some day sprout and ripen under the

burning sun!”

Enthusiasm was upbuoying him, all the _furia_ of youth inflamed his eyes.

Pierre smiled, won over; and as soon as he was able to speak, he said:

“The problem must be tackled down below, among the people. You must make

men!”

“Exactly!” cried Orlando. “I don’t cease repeating it, one must make

Italy. It is as if a wind from the East had blown the seed of humanity,

the seed which makes vigorous and powerful nations, elsewhere. Our people

is not like yours in France, a reservoir of men and money from which one

can draw as plentifully as one pleases. It is such another inexhaustible

reservoir that I wish to see created among us. And one must begin at the

bottom. There must be schools everywhere, ignorance must be stamped out,

brutishness and idleness must be fought with books, intellectual and

moral instruction must give us the industrious people which we need if we

are not to disappear from among the great nations. And once again for

whom, if not for the democracy of to-morrow, have we worked in taking

possession of Rome? And how easily one can understand that all should

collapse here, and nothing grow up vigorously since such a democracy is

absolutely absent. Yes, yes, the solution of the problem does not lie

elsewhere; we must make a people, make an Italian democracy.”

Pierre had grown calm again, feeling somewhat anxious yet not daring to

say that it is by no means easy to modify a nation, that Italy is such as

soil, history, and race have made her, and that to seek to transform her

so radically and all at once might be a dangerous enterprise. Do not

nations like beings have an active youth, a resplendent prime, and a more

or less prolonged old age ending in death? A modern democratic Rome, good

heavens! The modern Romes are named Paris, London, Chicago. So he

contented himself with saying: “But pending this great renovation of the

people, don’t you think that you ought to be prudent? Your finances are

in such a bad condition, you are passing through such great social and

economic difficulties, that you run the risk of the worst catastrophes

before you secure either men or money. Ah! how prudent would that

minister be who should say in your Chamber: ‘Our pride has made a

mistake, it was wrong of us to try to make ourselves a great nation in

one day; more time, labour, and patience are needed; and we consent to

remain for the present a young nation, which will quietly reflect and

labour at self-formation, without, for a long time yet, seeking to play a

dominant part. So we intend to disarm, to strike out the war and naval

estimates, all the estimates intended for display abroad, in order to

devote ourselves to our internal prosperity, and to build up by

education, physically and morally, the great nation which we swear we

will be fifty years hence!’ Yes, yes, strike out all needless

expenditure, your salvation lies in that!”

But Orlando, while listening, had become gloomy again, and with a vague,

weary gesture he replied in an undertone: “No, no, the minister who

should use such language would be hooted. It would be too hard a

confession, such as one cannot ask a nation to make. Every heart would

bound, leap forth at the idea. And, besides, would not the danger perhaps

be even greater if all that has been done were allowed to crumble? How

many wrecked hopes, how much discarded, useless material there would be!

No, we can now only save ourselves by patience and courage--and forward,

ever forward! We are a very young nation, and in fifty years we desired

to effect the unity which others have required two hundred years to

arrive at. Well, we must pay for our haste, we must wait for the harvest

to ripen, and fill our barns.” Then, with another and more sweeping wave

of the arm, he stubbornly strengthened himself in his hopes. “You know,”

said he, “that I was always against the alliance with Germany. As I

predicted, it has ruined us. We were not big enough to march side by side

with such a wealthy and powerful person, and it is in view of a war,

always near at hand and inevitable, that we now suffer so cruelly from

having to support the budgets of a great nation. Ah! that war which has

never come, it is that which has exhausted the best part of our blood and

sap and money without the slightest profit. To-day we have nothing before

us but the necessity of breaking with our ally, who speculated on our

pride, who has never helped us in any way, who has never given us

anything but bad advice, and treated us otherwise than with suspicion.

But it was all inevitable, and that’s what people won’t admit in France.

I can speak freely of it all, for I am a declared friend of France, and

people even feel some spite against me on that account. However, explain

to your compatriots, that on the morrow of our conquest of Rome, in our

frantic desire to resume our ancient rank, it was absolutely necessary

that we should play our part in Europe and show that we were a power with

whom the others must henceforth count. And hesitation was not allowable,

all our interests impelled us toward Germany, the evidence was so binding

as to impose itself. The stern law of the struggle for life weighs as

heavily on nations as on individuals, and this it is which explains and

justifies the rupture between the two sisters, France and Italy, the

forgetting of so many ties, race, commercial intercourse, and, if you

like, services also. The two sisters, ah! they now pursue each other with

so much hatred that all common sense even seems at an end. My poor old

heart bleeds when I read the articles which your newspapers and ours

exchange like poisoned darts. When will this fratricidal massacre cease,

which of the two will first realise the necessity of peace, the necessity

of the alliance of the Latin races, if they are to remain alive amidst

those torrents of other races which more and more invade the world?” Then

gaily, with the _bonhomie_ of a hero disarmed by old age, and seeking a

refuge in his dreams, Orlando added: “Come, you must promise to help me

as soon as you are in Paris. However small your field of action may be,

promise me you will do all you can to promote peace between France and

Italy; there can be no more holy task. Relate all you have seen here, all

you have heard, oh! as frankly as possible. If we have faults, you

certainly have faults as well. And, come, family quarrels can’t last for

ever!”

“No doubt,” Pierre answered in some embarrassment. “Unfortunately they

are the most tenacious. In families, when blood becomes exasperated with

blood, hate goes as far as poison and the knife. And pardon becomes

impossible.”

He dared not fully express his thoughts. Since he had been in Rome,

listening, and considering things, the quarrel between Italy and France

had resumed itself in his mind in a fine tragic story. Once upon a time

there were two princesses, daughters of a powerful queen, the mistress of

the world. The elder one, who had inherited her mother’s kingdom, was

secretly grieved to see her sister, who had established herself in a

neighbouring land, gradually increase in wealth, strength, and

brilliancy, whilst she herself declined as if weakened by age,

dismembered, so exhausted, and so sore, that she already felt defeated on

the day when she attempted a supreme effort to regain universal power.

And so how bitter were her feelings, how hurt she always felt on seeing

her sister recover from the most frightful shocks, resume her dazzling

_gala_, and continue to reign over the world by dint of strength and

grace and wit. Never would she forgive it, however well that envied and

detested sister might act towards her. Therein lay an incurable wound,

the life of one poisoned by that of the other, the hatred of old blood

for young blood, which could only be quieted by death. And even if peace,

as was possible, should soon be restored between them in presence of the

younger sister’s evident triumph, the other would always harbour deep

within her heart an endless grief at being the elder yet the vassal.

“However, you may rely on me,” Pierre affectionately resumed. “This

quarrel between the two countries is certainly a great source of grief

and a great peril. And assuredly I will only say what I think to be the

truth about you. At the same time I fear that you hardly like the truth,

for temperament and custom have hardly prepared you for it. The poets of

every nation who at various times have written on Rome have intoxicated

you with so much praise that you are scarcely fitted to hear the real

truth about your Rome of to-day. No matter how superb a share of praise

one may accord you, one must all the same look at the reality of things,

and this reality is just what you won’t admit, lovers of the beautiful as

you ever are, susceptible too like women, whom the slightest hint of a

wrinkle sends into despair.”

Orlando began to laugh. “Well, certainly, one must always beautify things

a little,” said he. “Why speak of ugly faces at all? We in our theatres

only care for pretty music, pretty dancing, pretty pieces which please

one. As for the rest, whatever is disagreeable let us hide it, for

mercy’s sake!”

“On the other hand,” the priest continued, “I will cheerfully confess the

great error of my book. The Italian Rome which I neglected and sacrificed

to papal Rome not only exists but is already so powerful and triumphant

that it is surely the other one which is bound to disappear in course of

time. However much the Pope may strive to remain immutable within his

Vatican, a steady evolution goes on around him, and the black world, by

mingling with the white, has already become a grey world. I never

realised that more acutely than at the _fete_ given by Prince

Buongiovanni for the betrothal of his daughter to your grand-nephew. I

came away quite enchanted, won over to the cause of your resurrection.”

The old man’s eyes sparkled. “Ah! you were present?” said he, “and you

witnessed a never-to-be-forgotten scene, did you not, and you no longer

doubt our vitality, our growth into a great people when the difficulties

of to-day are overcome? What does a quarter of a century, what does even

a century matter! Italy will again rise to her old glory, as soon as the

great people of to-morrow shall have sprung from the soil. And if I

detest that man Sacco it is because to my mind he is the incarnation of

all the enjoyers and intriguers whose appetite for the spoils of our

conquest has retarded everything. But I live again in my dear

grand-nephew Attilio, who represents the future, the generation of brave

and worthy men who will purify and educate the country. Ah! may some of

the great ones of to-morrow spring from him and that adorable little

Princess Celia, whom my niece Stefana, a sensible woman at bottom,

brought to see me the other day. If you had seen that child fling her

arms about me, call me endearing names, and tell me that I should be

godfather to her first son, so that he might bear my name and once again

save Italy! Yes, yes, may peace be concluded around that coming cradle;

may the union of those dear children be the indissoluble marriage of Rome

and the whole nation, and may all be repaired, and all blossom anew in

their love!”

Tears came to his eyes, and Pierre, touched by his inextinguishable

patriotism, sought to please him. “I myself,” said he, “expressed to your

son much the same wish on the evening of the betrothal _fete_, when I

told him I trusted that their nuptials might be definitive and fruitful,

and that from them and all the others there might arise the great nation

which, now that I begin to know you, I hope you will soon become!”

“You said that!” exclaimed Orlando. “Well, I forgive your book, for you

have understood at last; and new Rome, there she is, the Rome which is

ours, which we wish to make worthy of her glorious past, and for the

third time the queen of the world.”

With one of those broad gestures into which he put all his remaining

life, he pointed to the curtainless window where Rome spread out in

solemn majesty from one horizon to the other. But, suddenly he turned his

head and in a fit of paternal indignation began to apostrophise young

Angiolo Mascara. “You young rascal!” said he, “it’s our Rome which you

dream of destroying with your bombs, which you talk of razing like a

rotten, tottering house, so as to rid the world of it for ever!”

Angiolo had hitherto remained silent, passionately listening to the

others. His pretty, girlish, beardless face reflected the slightest

emotion in sudden flashes; and his big blue eyes also had glowed on

hearing what had been said of the people, the new people which it was

necessary to create. “Yes!” he slowly replied in his pure and musical

voice, “we mean to raze it and not leave a stone of it, but raze it in

order to build it up again.”

Orlando interrupted him with a soft, bantering laugh: “Oh! you would

build it up again; that’s fortunate!” he said.

“I would build it up again,” the young man replied, in the trembling

voice of an inspired prophet. “I would build it up again oh, so vast, so

beautiful, and so noble! Will not the universal democracy of to-morrow,

humanity when it is at last freed, need an unique city, which shall be

the ark of alliance, the very centre of the world? And is not Rome

designated, Rome which the prophecies have marked as eternal and

immortal, where the destinies of the nations are to be accomplished? But

in order that it may become the final definitive sanctuary, the capital

of the destroyed kingdoms, where the wise men of all countries shall meet

once every year, one must first of all purify it by fire, leave nothing

of its old stains remaining. Then, when the sun shall have absorbed all

the pestilence of the old soil, we will rebuild the city ten times more

beautiful and ten times larger than it has ever been. And what a city of

truth and justice it will at last be, the Rome that has been announced

and awaited for three thousand years, all in gold and all in marble,

filling the Campagna from the sea to the Sabine and the Alban mountains,

and so prosperous and so sensible that its twenty millions of inhabitants

after regulating the law of labour will live with the unique joy of

being. Yes, yes, Rome the Mother, Rome the Queen, alone on the face of

the earth and for all eternity!”

Pierre listened to him, aghast. What! did the blood of Augustus go to

such a point as this? The popes had not become masters of Rome without

feeling impelled to rebuild it in their passion to rule over the world;

young Italy, likewise yielding to the hereditary madness of universal

domination, had in its turn sought to make the city larger than any

other, erecting whole districts for people who had never come, and now

even the Anarchists were possessed by the same stubborn dream of the

race, a dream beyond all measure this time, a fourth and monstrous Rome,

whose suburbs would invade continents in order that liberated humanity,

united in one family, might find sufficient lodging! This was the climax.

Never could more extravagant proof be given of the blood of pride and

sovereignty which had scorched the veins of that race ever since Augustus

had bequeathed it the inheritance of his absolute empire, with the

furious instinct that the world legally belonged to it, and that its

mission was to conquer it again. This idea had intoxicated all the

children of that historic soil, impelling all of them to make their city

The City, the one which had reigned and which would reign again in

splendour when the days predicted by the oracles should arrive. And

Pierre remembered the four fatidical letters, the S.P.Q.R. of old and

glorious Rome, which like an order of final triumph given to Destiny he

had everywhere found in present-day Rome, on all the walls, on all the

insignia, even on the municipal dust-carts! And he understood the

prodigious vanity of these people, haunted by the glory of their

ancestors, spellbound by the past of their city, declaring that she

contains everything, that they themselves cannot know her thoroughly,

that she is the sphinx who will some day explain the riddle of the

universe, that she is so great and noble that all within her acquires

increase of greatness and nobility, in such wise that they demand for her

the idolatrous respect of the entire world, so vivacious in their minds

is the illusive legend which clings to her, so incapable are they of

realising that what was once great may be so no longer.

“But I know your fourth Rome,” resumed Orlando, again enlivened. “It’s

the Rome of the people, the capital of the Universal Republic, which

Mazzini dreamt of. Only he left the pope in it. Do you know, my lad, that

if we old Republicans rallied to the monarchy, it was because we feared

that in the event of revolution the country might fall into the hands of

dangerous madmen such as those who have upset your brain? Yes, that was

why we resigned ourselves to our monarchy, which is not much different

from a parliamentary republic. And now, goodbye and be sensible, remember

that your poor mother would die of it if any misfortune should befall

you. Come, let me embrace you all the same.”

On receiving the hero’s affectionate kiss Angiolo coloured like a girl.

Then he went off with his gentle, dreamy air, never adding a word but

politely inclining his head to the priest. Silence continued till

Orlando’s eyes encountered the newspapers scattered on the table, when he

once more spoke of the terrible bereavement of the Boccaneras. He had

loved Benedetta like a dear daughter during the sad days when she had

dwelt near him; and finding the newspaper accounts of her death somewhat

singular, worried in fact by the obscure points which he could divine in

the tragedy, he was asking Pierre for particulars, when his son Luigi

suddenly entered the room, breathless from having climbed the stairs so

quickly and with his face full of anxious fear. He had just dismissed his

contractors with impatient roughness, giving no thought to his serious

financial position, the jeopardy in which his fortune was now placed, so

anxious was he to be up above beside his father. And when he was there

his first uneasy glance was for the old man, to make sure whether the

priest by some imprudent word had not dealt him his death blow.

He shuddered on noticing how Orlando quivered, moved to tears by the

terrible affair of which he was speaking; and for a moment he thought he

had arrived too late, that the harm was done. “Good heavens, father!” he

exclaimed, “what is the matter with you, why are you crying?” And as he

spoke he knelt at the old man’s feet, taking hold of his hands and giving

him such a passionate, loving glance that he seemed to be offering all

the blood of his heart to spare him the slightest grief.

“It is about the death of that poor woman,” Orlando sadly answered. “I

was telling Monsieur Froment how it grieved me, and I added that I could

not yet understand it all. The papers talk of a sudden death which is

always so extraordinary.”

The young Count rose again looking very pale. The priest had not yet

spoken. But what a frightful moment was this! What if he should reply,

what if he should speak out?

“You were present, were you not?” continued the old man addressing

Pierre. “You saw everything. Tell me then how the thing happened.”

Luigi Prada looked at Pierre. Their eyes met fixedly, plunging into one

another’s souls. All began afresh in their minds, Destiny on the march,

Santobono encountered with his little basket, the drive across the

melancholy Campagna, the conversation about poison while the little

basket was gently rocked on the priest’s knees; then, in particular, the

sleepy _osteria_, and the little black hen, so suddenly killed, lying on

the ground with a tiny streamlet of violet blood trickling from her beak.

And next there was that splendid ball at the Buongiovanni mansion, with

all its _odore di femina_ and its triumph of love: and finally, before

the Palazzo Boccanera, so black under the silvery moon, there was the man

who lighted a cigar and went off without once turning his head, allowing

dim Destiny to accomplish its work of death. Both of them, Pierre and

Prada, knew that story and lived it over again, having no need to recall

it aloud in order to make certain that they had fully penetrated one

another’s soul.

Pierre did not immediately answer the old man. “Oh!” he murmured at last,

“there were frightful things, yes, frightful things.”

“No doubt--that is what I suspected,” resumed Orlando. “You can tell us

all. In presence of death my son has freely forgiven.”

The young Count’s gaze again sought that of Pierre with such weight, such

ardent entreaty that the priest felt deeply stirred. He had just

remembered that man’s anguish during the ball, the atrocious torture of

jealousy which he had undergone before allowing Destiny to avenge him.

And he pictured also what must have been his feelings after the terrible

outcome of it all: at first stupefaction at Destiny’s harshness, at this

full vengeance which he had never desired so ferocious; then icy calmness

like that of the cool gambler who awaits events, reading the newspapers,

and feeling no other remorse than that of the general whose victory has

cost him too many men. He must have immediately realised that the

Cardinal would stifle the affair for the sake of the Church’s honour; and

only retained one weight on his heart, regret possibly for that woman

whom he had never won, with perhaps a last horrible jealousy which he did

not confess to himself but from which he would always suffer, jealousy at

knowing that she lay in another’s arms in the grave, for all eternity.

But behold, after that victorious effort to remain calm, after that cold

and remorseless waiting, Punishment arose, the fear that Destiny,

travelling on with its poisoned figs, might have not yet ceased its

march, and might by a rebound strike down his own father. Yet another

thunderbolt, yet another victim, the most unexpected, the being he most

adored! At that thought all his strength of resistance had in one moment

collapsed, and he was there, in terror of Destiny, more at a loss, more

trembling than a child.

“The newspapers, however,” slowly said Pierre as if he were seeking his

words, “the newspapers must have told you that the Prince succumbed

first, and that the Contessina died of grief whilst embracing him for the

last time.... As for the cause of death, _mon Dieu_, you know that

doctors themselves in sudden cases scarcely dare to pronounce an exact

opinion--”

He stopped short, for within him he had suddenly heard the voice of

Benedetta giving him just before she died that terrible order: “You, who

will see his father, I charge you to tell him that I cursed his son. I

wish that he should know, it is necessary that he should know, for the

sake of truth and justice.” And was he, oh! Lord, about to obey that

order, was it one of those divine commands which must be executed even if

the result be a torrent of blood and tears? For a few seconds Pierre

suffered from a heart-rending combat within him, hesitating between the

act of truth and justice which the dead woman had called for and his own

personal desire for forgiveness, and the horror he would feel should he

kill that poor old man by fulfilling his implacable mission which could

benefit nobody. And certainly the other one, the son, must have

understood what a supreme struggle was going on in the priest’s mind, a

struggle which would decide his own father’s fate, for his glance became

yet more suppliant than ever.

“One first thought that it was merely indigestion,” continued Pierre,

“but the Prince became so much worse, that one was alarmed, and the

doctor was sent for--”

Ah! Prada’s eyes, they had become so despairing, so full of the most

touching and weightiest things, that the priest could read in them all

the decisive reasons which were about to stay his tongue. No, no, he

would not strike an innocent old man, he had promised nothing, and to

obey the last expression of the dead woman’s hatred would have seemed to

him like charging her memory with a crime. The young Count, too, during

those few minutes of anguish, had suffered a whole life of such

abominable torture, that after all some little justice was done.

“And then,” Pierre concluded, “when the doctor arrived he at once

recognised that it was a case of infectious fever. There can be no doubt

of it. This morning I attended the funeral, it was very splendid and very

touching.”

Orlando did not insist, but contented himself with saying that he also

had felt much emotion all the morning on thinking of that funeral. Then,

as he turned to set the papers on the table in order with his trembling

hands, his son, icy cold with perspiration, staggering and clinging to

the back of a chair in order that he might not fall, again gave Pierre a

long glance, but a very soft one, full of distracted gratitude.

“I am leaving this evening,” resumed Pierre, who felt exhausted and

wished to break off the conversation, “and I must now bid you farewell.

Have you any commission to give me for Paris?”

“No, none,” replied Orlando; and then, with sudden recollection, he

added, “Yes, I have, though! You remember that book written by my old

comrade in arms, Theophile Morin, one of Garibaldi’s Thousand, that

manual for the bachelor’s degree which he desired to see translated and

adopted here. Well, I am pleased to say that I have a promise that it

shall be used in our schools, but on condition that he makes some

alterations in it. Luigi, give me the book, it is there on that shelf.”

Then, when his son had handed him the volume, he showed Pierre some notes

which he had pencilled on the margins, and explained to him the

modifications which were desired in the general scheme of the work. “Will

you be kind enough,” he continued, “to take this copy to Morin himself?

His address is written inside the cover. If you can do so you will spare

me the trouble of writing him a very long letter; in ten minutes you can

explain matters to him more clearly and completely than I could do in ten

pages.... And you must embrace Morin for me, and tell him that I still

love him, oh! with all my heart of the bygone days, when I could still

use my legs and we two fought like devils side by side under a hail of

bullets.”

A short silence followed, that pause, that embarrassment tinged with

emotion which precedes the moment of farewell. “Come, good-bye,” said

Orlando, “embrace me for him and for yourself, embrace me affectionately

like that lad did just now. I am so old and so near my end, my dear

Monsieur Froment, that you will allow me to call you my child and to kiss

you like a grandfather, wishing you all courage and peace, and that faith

in life which alone helps one to live.”

Pierre was so touched that tears rose to his eyes, and when with all his

soul he kissed the stricken hero on either cheek, he felt that he

likewise was weeping. With a hand yet as vigorous as a vice, Orlando

detained him for a moment beside his arm-chair, whilst with his other

hand waving in a supreme gesture, he for the last time showed him Rome,

so immense and mournful under the ashen sky. And his voice came low,

quivering and suppliant. “For mercy’s sake swear to me that you will love

her all the same, in spite of all, for she is the cradle, the mother!

Love her for all that she no longer is, love her for all that she desires

to be! Do not say that her end has come, love her, love her so that she

may live again, that she may live for ever!”

Pierre again embraced him, unable to find any other response, upset as he

was by all the passion displayed by that old warrior, who spoke of his

city as a man of thirty might speak of the woman he adores. And he found

him so handsome and so lofty with his old blanched, leonine mane and his

stubborn belief in approaching resurrection, that once more the other old

Roman, Cardinal Boccanera, arose before him, equally stubborn in his

faith and relinquishing nought of his dream, even though he might be

crushed on the spot by the fall of the heavens. These twain ever stood

face to face, at either end of their city, alone rearing their lofty

figures above the horizon, whilst awaiting the future.

Then, when Pierre had bowed to Count Luigi, and found himself outside

again in the Via Venti Settembre he was all eagerness to get back to the

Boccanera mansion so as to pack up his things and depart. His farewell

visits were made, and he now only had to take leave of Donna Serafina and

the Cardinal, and to thank them for all their kind hospitality. For him

alone did their doors open, for they had shut themselves up on returning

from the funeral, resolved to see nobody. At twilight, therefore, Pierre

had no one but Victorine to keep him company in the vast, black mansion,

for when he expressed a desire to take supper with Don Vigilio she told

him that the latter had also shut himself in his room. Desirous as he was

of at least shaking hands with the secretary for the last time, Pierre

went to knock at the door, which was so near his own, but could obtain no

reply, and divined that the poor fellow, overcome by a fresh attack of

fever and suspicion, desired not to see him again, in terror at the idea

that he might compromise himself yet more than he had done already.

Thereupon, it was settled that as the train only started at seventeen

minutes past ten Victorine should serve Pierre his supper on the little

table in his sitting-room at eight o’clock. She brought him a lamp and

spoke of putting his linen in order, but he absolutely declined her help,

and she had to leave him to pack up quietly by himself.

He had purchased a little box, since his valise could not possibly hold

all the linen and winter clothing which had been sent to him from Paris

as his stay in Rome became more and more protracted. However, the packing

was soon accomplished; the wardrobe was emptied, the drawers were

visited, the box and valise filled and securely locked by seven o’clock.

An hour remained to him before supper and he sat there resting, when his

eyes whilst travelling round the walls to make sure that he had forgotten

nothing, encountered that old painting by some unknown master, which had

so often filled him with emotion. The lamplight now shone full upon it;

and this time again as he gazed at it he felt a blow in the heart, a blow

which was all the deeper, as now, at his parting hour, he found a symbol

of his defeat at Rome in that dolent, tragic, half-naked woman, draped in

a shred of linen, and weeping between her clasped hands whilst seated on

the threshold of the palace whence she had been driven. Did not that

rejected one, that stubborn victim of love, who sobbed so bitterly, and

of whom one knew nothing, neither what her face was like, nor whence she

had come, nor what her fault had been--did she not personify all man’s

useless efforts to force the doors of truth, and all the frightful

abandonment into which he falls as soon as he collides with the wall

which shuts the unknown off from him? For a long while did Pierre look at

her, again worried at being obliged to depart without having seen her

face behind her streaming golden hair, that face of dolorous beauty which

he pictured radiant with youth and delicious in its mystery. And as he

gazed he was just fancying that he could see it, that it was becoming his

at last, when there was a knock at the door and Narcisse Habert entered.

Pierre was surprised to see the young _attache_, for three days

previously he had started for Florence, impelled thither by one of the

sudden whims of his artistic fancy. However, he at once apologised for

his unceremonious intrusion. “Ah! there is your luggage!” he said; “I

heard that you were going away this evening, and I was unwilling to let

you leave Rome without coming to shake hands with you. But what frightful

things have happened since we met! I only returned this afternoon, so

that I could not attend the funeral. However, you may well imagine how

thunderstruck I was by the news of those frightful deaths.”

Then, suspecting some unacknowledged tragedy, like a man well acquainted

with the legendary dark side of Rome, he put some questions to Pierre but

did not insist on them, being at bottom far too prudent to burden himself

uselessly with redoubtable secrets. And after Pierre had given him such

particulars as he thought fit, the conversation changed and they spoke at

length of Italy, Rome, Naples, and Florence. “Ah! Florence, Florence!”

Narcisse repeated languorously. He had lighted a cigarette and his words

fell more slowly, as he glanced round the room. “You were very well

lodged here,” he said, “it is very quiet. I had never come up to this

floor before.”

His eyes continued wandering over the walls until they were at last

arrested by the old painting which the lamp illumined, and thereupon he

remained for a moment blinking as if surprised. And all at once he rose

and approached the picture. “Dear me, dear me,” said he, “but that’s very

good, that’s very fine.”

“Isn’t it?” rejoined Pierre. “I know nothing about painting but I was

stirred by that picture on the very day of my arrival, and over and over

again it has kept me here with my heart beating and full of indescribable

feelings.”

Narcisse no longer spoke but examined the painting with the care of a

connoisseur, an expert, whose keen glance decides the question of

authenticity, and appraises commercial value. And the most extraordinary

delight appeared upon the young man’s fair, rapturous face, whilst his

fingers began to quiver. “But it’s a Botticelli, it’s a Botticelli! There

can be no doubt about it,” he exclaimed. “Just look at the hands, and

look at the folds of the drapery! And the colour of the hair, and the

technique, the flow of the whole composition. A Botticelli, ah! _mon

Dieu_, a Botticelli.”

He became quite faint, overflowing with increasing admiration as he

penetrated more and more deeply into the subject, at once so simple and

so poignant. Was it not acutely modern? The artist had foreseen our

pain-fraught century, our anxiety in presence of the invisible, our

distress at being unable to cross the portal of mystery which was for

ever closed. And what an eternal symbol of the world’s wretchedness was

that woman, whose face one could not see, and who sobbed so distractedly

without it being possible for one to wipe away her tears. Yes, a

Botticelli, unknown, uncatalogued, what a discovery! Then he paused to

inquire of Pierre: “Did you know it was a Botticelli?”

“Oh no! I spoke to Don Vigilio about it one day, but he seemed to think

it of no account. And Victorine, when I spoke to her, replied that all

those old things only served to harbour dust.”

Narcisse protested, quite stupefied: “What! they have a Botticelli here

and don’t know it! Ah! how well I recognise in that the Roman princes

who, unless their masterpieces have been labelled, are for the most part

utterly at sea among them! No doubt this one has suffered a little, but a

simple cleaning would make a marvel, a famous picture of it, for which a

museum would at least give--”

He abruptly stopped, completing his sentence with a wave of the hand and

not mentioning the figure which was on his lips. And then, as Victorine

came in followed by Giacomo to lay the little table for Pierre’s supper,

he turned his back upon the Botticelli and said no more about it. The

young priest’s attention was aroused, however, and he could well divine

what was passing in the other’s mind. Under that make-believe Florentine,

all angelicalness, there was an experienced business man, who well knew

how to look after his pecuniary interests and was even reported to be

somewhat avaricious. Pierre, who was aware of it, could not help smiling

therefore when he saw him take his stand before another picture--a

frightful Virgin, badly copied from some eighteenth-century canvas--and

exclaim: “Dear me! that’s not at all bad! I’ve a friend, I remember, who

asked me to buy him some old paintings. I say, Victorine, now that Donna

Serafina and the Cardinal are left alone do you think they would like to

rid themselves of a few valueless pictures?”

The servant raised her arms as if to say that if it depended on her,

everything might be carried away. Then she replied: “Not to a dealer,

sir, on account of the nasty rumours which would at once spread about,

but I’m sure they would be happy to please a friend. The house costs a

lot to keep up, and money would be welcome.”

Pierre then vainly endeavoured to persuade Narcisse to stay and sup with

him, but the young man gave his word of honour that he was expected

elsewhere and was even late. And thereupon he ran off, after pressing the

priest’s hands and affectionately wishing him a good journey.

Eight o’clock was striking, and Pierre seated himself at the little

table, Victorine remaining to serve him after dismissing Giacomo, who had

brought the supper things upstairs in a basket. “The people here make me

wild,” said the worthy woman after the other had gone, “they are so slow.

And besides, it’s a pleasure for me to serve you your last meal, Monsieur

l’Abbe. I’ve had a little French dinner cooked for you, a _sole au

gratin_ and a roast fowl.”

Pierre was touched by this attention, and pleased to have the company of

a compatriot whilst he partook of his final meal amidst the deep silence

of the old, black, deserted mansion. The buxom figure of Victorine was

still instinct with mourning, with grief for the loss of her dear

Contessina, but her daily toil was already setting her erect again,

restoring her quick activity; and she spoke almost cheerfully whilst

passing plates and dishes to Pierre. “And to think Monsieur l’Abbe,” said

she, “that you’ll be in Paris on the morning of the day after to-morrow!

As for me, you know, it seems as if I only left Auneau yesterday. Ah!

what fine soil there is there; rich soil yellow like gold, not like their

poor stuff here which smells of sulphur! And the pretty fresh willows

beside our stream, too, and the little wood so full of moss! They’ve no

moss here, their trees look like tin under that stupid sun of theirs

which burns up the grass. _Mon Dieu_! in the early times I would have

given I don’t know what for a good fall of rain to soak me and wash away

all the dust. Ah! I shall never get used to their awful Rome. What a

country and what people!”

Pierre was quite enlivened by her stubborn fidelity to her own nook,

which after five and twenty years of absence still left her horrified

with that city of crude light and black vegetation, true daughter as she

was of a smiling and temperate clime which of a morning was steeped in

rosy mist. “But now that your young mistress is dead,” said he, “what

keeps you here? Why don’t you take the train with me?”

She looked at him in surprise: “Go off with you, go back to Auneau! Oh!

it’s impossible, Monsieur l’Abbe. It would be too ungrateful to begin

with, for Donna Serafina is accustomed to me, and it would be bad on my

part to forsake her and his Eminence now that they are in trouble. And

besides, what could I do elsewhere? No, my little hole is here now.”

“So you will never see Auneau again?”

“No, never, that’s certain.”

“And you don’t mind being buried here, in their ground which smells of

sulphur?”

She burst into a frank laugh. “Oh!” she said, “I don’t mind where I am

when I’m dead. One sleeps well everywhere. And it’s funny that you should

be so anxious as to what there may be when one’s dead. There’s nothing,

I’m sure. That’s what tranquillises me, to feel that it will be all over

and that I shall have a rest. The good God owes us that after we’ve

worked so hard. You know that I’m not devout, oh! dear no. Still that

doesn’t prevent me from behaving properly, and, true as I stand here,

I’ve never had a lover. It seems foolish to say such a thing at my age,

still I say it because it’s the sober truth.”

She continued laughing like the worthy woman she was, having no belief in

priests and yet without a sin upon her conscience. And Pierre once more

marvelled at the simple courage and great practical common sense of this

laborious and devoted creature, who for him personified the whole

unbelieving lowly class of France, those who no longer believe and will

believe never more. Ah! to be as she was, to do one’s work and lie down

for the eternal sleep without any revolt of pride, satisfied with the one

joy of having accomplished one’s share of toil!

When Pierre had finished his supper Victorine summoned Giacomo to clear

the things away. And as it was only half-past eight she advised the

priest to spend another quiet hour in his room. Why go and catch a chill

by waiting at the station? She could send for a cab at half-past nine,

and as soon as it arrived she would send word to him and have his luggage

carried down. He might be easy as to that, and need trouble himself about

nothing.

When she had gone off Pierre soon sank into a deep reverie. It seemed to

him, indeed, as if he had already quitted Rome, as if the city were far

away and he could look back on it, and his experiences within it. His

book, “New Rome,” arose in his mind; and he remembered his first morning

on the Janiculum, his view of Rome from the terrace of San Pietro in

Montorio, a Rome such as he had dreamt of, so young and ethereal under

the pure sky. It was then that he had asked himself the decisive

question: Could Catholicism be renewed? Could it revert to the spirit of

primitive Christianity, become the religion of the democracy, the faith

which the distracted modern world, in danger of death, awaits in order

that it may be pacified and live? His heart had then beaten with hope and

enthusiasm. After his disaster at Lourdes from which he had scarcely

recovered, he had come to attempt another and supreme experiment by

asking Rome what her reply to his question would be. And now the

experiment had failed, he knew what answer Rome had returned him through

her ruins, her monuments, her very soil, her people, her prelates, her

cardinals, her pope! No, Catholicism could not be renewed: no, it could

not revert to the spirit of primitive Christianity; no, it could not

become the religion of the democracy, the new faith which might save the

old toppling societies in danger of death. Though it seemed to be of

democratic origin, it was henceforth riveted to that Roman soil, it

remained kingly in spite of everything, forced to cling to the principle

of temporal power under penalty of suicide, bound by tradition, enchained

by dogma, its evolutions mere simulations whilst in reality it was

reduced to such immobility that, behind the bronze doors of the Vatican,

the papacy was the prisoner, the ghost of eighteen centuries of atavism,

indulging the ceaseless dream of universal dominion. There, where with

priestly faith exalted by love of the suffering and the poor, he had come

to seek life and a resurrection of the Christian communion, he had found

death, the dust of a destroyed world in which nothing more could

germinate, an exhausted soil whence now there could never grow aught but

that despotic papacy, the master of bodies as it was of souls. To his

distracted cry asking for a new religion, Rome had been content to reply

by condemning his book as a work tainted with heresy, and he himself had

withdrawn it amidst the bitter grief of his disillusions. He had seen, he

had understood, and all had collapsed. And it was himself, his soul and

his brain, which lay among the ruins.

Pierre was stifling. He rose, threw the window overlooking the Tiber wide

open, and leant out. The rain had begun to fall again at the approach of

evening, but now it had once more ceased. The atmosphere was very mild,

moist, even oppressive. The moon must have arisen in the ashen grey sky,

for her presence could be divined behind the clouds which she illumined

with a vague, yellow, mournful light. And under that slumberous glimmer

the vast horizon showed blackly and phantom-like: the Janiculum in front

with the close-packed houses of the Trastevere; the river flowing away

yonder on the left towards the dim height of the Palatine; whilst on the

right the dome of St. Peter’s showed forth, round and domineering in the

pale atmosphere. Pierre could not see the Quirinal but divined it to be

behind him, and could picture its long facade shutting off part of the

sky. And what a collapsing Rome, half-devoured by the gloom, was this, so

different from the Rome all youth and dreamland which he had beheld and

passionately loved on the day of his arrival! He remembered the three

symbolic summits which had then summed up for him the whole long history

of Rome, the ancient, the papal, and the Italian city. But if the

Palatine had remained the same discrowned mount on which there only rose

the phantom of the ancestor, Augustus, emperor and pontiff, master of the

world, he now pictured St. Peter’s and the Quirinal as strangely altered.

To that royal palace which he had so neglected, and which had seemed to

him like a flat, low barrack, to that new Government which had brought

him the impression of some attempt at sacrilegious modernity, he now

accorded the large, increasing space that they occupied in the panorama,

the whole of which they would apparently soon fill; whilst, on the

contrary, St. Peter’s, that dome which he had found so triumphal, all

azure, reigning over the city like a gigantic and unshakable monarch, at

present seemed to him full of cracks and already shrinking, as if it were

one of those huge old piles, which, through the secret, unsuspected decay

of their timbers, at times fall to the ground in one mass.

A murmur, a growling plaint rose from the swollen Tiber, and Pierre

shivered at the icy abysmal breath which swept past his face. And his

thoughts of the three summits and their symbolic triangle aroused within

him the memory of the sufferings of the great silent multitude of poor

and lowly for whom pope and king had so long disputed. It all dated from

long ago, from the day when, in dividing the inheritance of Augustus, the

emperor had been obliged to content himself with men’s bodies, leaving

their souls to the pope, whose one idea had henceforth been to gain the

temporal power of which God, in his person, was despoiled. All the middle

ages had been disturbed and ensanguined by the quarrel, till at last the

silent multitude weary of vexations and misery spoke out; threw off the

papal yoke at the Reformation, and later on began to overthrow its kings.

And then, as Pierre had written in his book, a new fortune had been

offered to the pope, that of reverting to the ancient dream, by

dissociating himself from the fallen thrones and placing himself on the

side of the wretched in the hope that this time he would conquer the

people, win it entirely for himself. Was it not prodigious to see that

man, Leo XIII, despoiled of his kingdom and allowing himself to be called

a socialist, assembling under his banner the great flock of the

disinherited, and marching against the kings at the head of that fourth

estate to whom the coming century will belong? The eternal struggle for

possession of the people continued as bitterly as ever even in Rome

itself, where pope and king, who could see each other from their windows,

contended together like falcon and hawk for the little birds of the

woods. And in this for Pierre lay the reason why Catholicism was fatally

condemned; for it was of monarchical essence to such a point that the

Apostolic and Roman papacy could not renounce the temporal power under

penalty of becoming something else and disappearing. In vain did it feign

a return to the people, in vain did it seek to appear all soul; there was

no room in the midst of the world’s democracies for any such total and

universal sovereignty as that which it claimed to hold from God. Pierre

ever beheld the Imperator sprouting up afresh in the Pontifex Maximus,

and it was this in particular which had killed his dream, destroyed his

book, heaped up all those ruins before which he remained distracted

without either strength or courage.

The sight of that ashen Rome, whose edifices faded away into the night,

at last brought him such a heart-pang that he came back into the room and

fell on a chair near his luggage. Never before had he experienced such

distress of spirit, it seemed like the death of his soul. After his

disaster at Lourdes he had not come to Rome in search of the candid and

complete faith of a little child, but the superior faith of an

intellectual being, rising above rites and symbols, and seeking to ensure

the greatest possible happiness of mankind based on its need of

certainty. And if this collapsed, if Catholicism could not be rejuvenated

and become the religion and moral law of the new generations, if the Pope

at Rome and with Rome could not be the Father, the arch of alliance, the

spiritual leader whom all hearkened to and obeyed, why then, in Pierre’s

eyes, the last hope was wrecked, the supreme rending which must plunge

present-day society into the abyss was near at hand. That scaffolding of

Catholic socialism which had seemed to him so happily devised for the

consolidation of the old Church, now appeared to him lying on the ground;

and he judged it severely as a mere passing expedient which might perhaps

for some years prop up the ruined edifice, but which was simply based on

an intentional misunderstanding, on a skilful lie, on politics and

diplomacy. No, no, that the people should once again, as so many times

before, be duped and gained over, caressed in order that it might be

enthralled--this was repugnant to one’s reason, and the whole system

appeared degenerate, dangerous, temporary, calculated to end in the worst

catastrophes. So this then was the finish, nothing remained erect and

stable, the old world was about to disappear amidst the frightful

sanguinary crisis whose approach was announced by such indisputable

signs. And he, before that chaos near at hand, had no soul left him,

having once more lost his faith in that decisive experiment which, he had

felt beforehand, would either strengthen him or strike him down for ever.

The thunderbolt had fallen, and now, O God, what should he do?

To shake off his anguish he began to walk across the room. Aye, what

should he do now that he was all doubt again, all dolorous negation, and

that his cassock weighed more heavily than it had ever weighed upon his

shoulders? He remembered having told Monsignor Nani that he would never

submit, would never be able to resign himself and kill his hope in

salvation by love, but would rather reply by a fresh book, in which he

would say in what new soil the new religion would spring up. Yes, a

flaming book against Rome, in which he would set down all he had seen, a

book which would depict the real Rome, the Rome which knows neither

charity nor love, and is dying in the pride of its purple! He had spoken

of returning to Paris, leaving the Church and going to the point of

schism. Well, his luggage now lay there packed, he was going off and he

would write that book, he would be the great schismatic who was awaited!

Did not everything foretell approaching schism amidst that great movement

of men’s minds, weary of old mummified dogmas and yet hungering for the

divine? Even Leo XIII must be conscious of it, for his whole policy, his

whole effort towards Christian unity, his assumed affection for the

democracy had no other object than that of grouping the whole family

around the papacy, and consolidating it so as to render the Pope

invincible in the approaching struggle. But the times had come,

Catholicism would soon find that it could grant no more political

concessions without perishing, that at Rome it was reduced to the

immobility of an ancient hieratic idol, and that only in the lands of

propaganda, where it was fighting against other religions, could further

evolution take place. It was, indeed, for this reason that Rome was

condemned, the more so as the abolition of the temporal power, by

accustoming men’s minds to the idea of a purely spiritual papacy, seemed

likely to conduce to the rise of some anti-pope, far away, whilst the

successor of St. Peter was compelled to cling stubbornly to his Apostolic

and Roman fiction. A bishop, a priest would arise--where, who could tell?

Perhaps yonder in that free America, where there are priests whom the

struggle for life has turned into convinced socialists, into ardent

democrats, who are ready to go forward with the coming century. And

whilst Rome remains unable to relinquish aught of her past, aught of her

mysteries and dogmas, that priest will relinquish all of those things

which fall from one in dust. Ah! to be that priest, to be that great

reformer, that saviour of modern society, what a vast dream, what a part,

akin to that of a Messiah summoned by the nations in distress. For a

moment Pierre was transported as by a breeze of hope and triumph. If that

great change did not come in France, in Paris, it would come elsewhere,

yonder across the ocean, or farther yet, wherever there might be a

sufficiently fruitful soil for the new seed to spring from it in

overflowing harvests. A new religion! a new religion! even as he had

cried on returning from Lourdes, a religion which in particular should

not be an appetite for death, a religion which should at last realise

here below that Kingdom of God referred to in the Gospel, and which

should equitably divide terrestrial wealth, and with the law of labour

ensure the rule of truth and justice.

In the fever of this fresh dream Pierre already saw the pages of his new

book flaring before him when his eyes fell on an object lying upon a

chair, which at first surprised him. This also was a book, that work of

Theophile Morin’s which Orlando had commissioned him to hand to its

author, and he felt annoyed with himself at having left it there, for he

might have forgotten it altogether. Before putting it into his valise he

retained it for a moment in his hand turning its pages over, his ideas

changing as by a sudden mental revolution. The work was, however, a very

modest one, one of those manuals for the bachelor’s degree containing

little beyond the first elements of the sciences; still all the sciences

were represented in it, and it gave a fair summary of the present state

of human knowledge. And it was indeed Science which thus burst upon

Pierre’s reverie with the energy of sovereign power. Not only was

Catholicism swept away from his mind, but all his religious conceptions,

every hypothesis of the divine tottered and fell. Only that little school

book, nothing but the universal desire for knowledge, that education

which ever extends and penetrates the whole people, and behold the

mysteries became absurdities, the dogmas crumbled, and nothing of ancient

faith was left. A nation nourished upon Science, no longer believing in

mysteries and dogmas, in a compensatory system of reward and punishment,

is a nation whose faith is for ever dead: and without faith Catholicism

cannot be. Therein is the blade of the knife, the knife which falls and

severs. If one century, if two centuries be needed, Science will take

them. She alone is eternal. It is pure _naivete_ to say that reason is

not contrary to faith. The truth is, that now already in order to save

mere fragments of the sacred writings, it has been necessary to

accommodate them to the new certainties, by taking refuge in the

assertion that they are simply symbolical! And what an extraordinary

attitude is that of the Catholic Church, expressly forbidding all those

who may discover a truth contrary to the sacred writings to pronounce

upon it in definitive fashion, and ordering them to await events in the

conviction that this truth will some day be proved an error! Only the

Pope, says the Church, is infallible; Science is fallible, her constant

groping is exploited against her, and divines remain on the watch

striving to make it appear that her discoveries of to-day are in

contradiction with her discoveries of yesterday. What do her sacrilegious

assertions, what do her certainties rending dogma asunder, matter to a

Catholic since it is certain that at the end of time, she, Science, will

again join Faith, and become the latter’s very humble slave! Voluntary

blindness and impudent denial of things as evident as the sunlight, can

no further go. But all the same the insignificant little book, the manual

of truth travels on continuing its work, destroying error and building up

the new world, even as the infinitesimal agents of life built up our

present continents.

In the sudden great enlightenment which had come on him Pierre at last

felt himself upon firm ground. Has Science ever retreated? It is

Catholicism which has always retreated before her, and will always be

forced to retreat. Never does Science stop, step by step she wrests truth

from error, and to say that she is bankrupt because she cannot explain

the world in one word and at one effort, is pure and simple nonsense. If

she leaves, and no doubt will always leave a smaller and smaller domain

to mystery, and if supposition may always strive to explain that mystery,

it is none the less certain that she ruins, and with each successive hour

will add to the ruin of the ancient hypotheses, those which crumble away

before the acquired truths. And Catholicism is in the position of those

ancient hypotheses, and will be in it yet more thoroughly to-morrow. Like

all religions it is, at the bottom, but an explanation of the world, a

superior social and political code, intended to bring about the greatest

possible sum of peace and happiness on earth. This code which embraces

the universality of things thenceforth becomes human, and mortal like

everything that is human. One cannot put it on one side and say that it

exists on one side by itself, whilst Science does the same on the other.

Science is total and has already shown Catholicism that such is the case,

and will show it again and again by compelling it to repair the breaches

incessantly effected in its ramparts till the day of victory shall come

with the final assault of resplendent truth. Frankly, it makes one laugh

to hear people assign a _role_ to Science, forbid her to enter such and

such a domain, predict to her that she shall go no further, and declare

that at this end of the century she is already so weary that she

abdicates! Oh! you little men of shallow or distorted brains, you

politicians planning expedients, you dogmatics at bay, you authoritarians

so obstinately clinging to the ancient dreams, Science will pass on, and

sweep you all away like withered leaves!

Pierre continued glancing through the humble little book, listening to

all it told him of sovereign Science. She cannot become bankrupt, for she

does not promise the absolute, she is simply the progressive conquest of

truth. Never has she pretended that she could give the whole truth at one

effort, that sort of edifice being precisely the work of metaphysics, of

revelation, of faith. The _role_ of Science, on the contrary, is only to

destroy error as she gradually advances and increases enlightenment. And

thus, far from becoming bankrupt, in her march which nothing stops, she

remains the only possible truth for well-balanced and healthy minds. As

for those whom she does not satisfy, who crave for immediate and

universal knowledge, they have the resource of seeking refuge in no

matter what religious hypothesis, provided, if they wish to appear in the

right, that they build their fancy upon acquired certainties. Everything

which is raised on proven error falls. However, although religious

feeling persists among mankind, although the need of religion may be

eternal, it by no means follows that Catholicism is eternal, for it is,

after all, but one form of religion, which other forms preceded and which

others will follow. Religions may disappear, but religious feeling will

create new ones even with the help of Science. Pierre thought of that

alleged repulse of Science by the present-day awakening of mysticism, the

causes of which he had indicated in his book: the discredit into which

the idea of liberty has fallen among the people, duped in the last social

reorganisation, and the uneasiness of the _elite_, in despair at the void

in which their liberated minds and enlarged intelligences have left them.

It is the anguish of the Unknown springing up again; but it is also only

a natural and momentary reaction after so much labour, on finding that

Science does not yet calm our thirst for justice, our desire for

security, or our ancient idea of an eternal after-life of enjoyment. In

order, however, that Catholicism might be born anew, as some seem to

think it will be, the social soil would have to change, and it cannot

change; it no longer possesses the sap needful for the renewal of a

decaying formula which schools and laboratories destroy more and more

each day. The ground is other than it once was, a different oak must

spring from it. May Science therefore have her religion, for such a

religion will soon be the only one possible for the coming democracies,

for the nations, whose knowledge ever increases whilst their Catholic

faith is already nought but dust.

And all at once, by way of conclusion, Pierre bethought himself of the

idiocy of the Congregation of the Index. It had condemned his book, and

would surely condemn the other one that he had thought of, should he ever

write it. A fine piece of work truly! To fall tooth and nail on the poor

books of an enthusiastic dreamer, in which chimera contended with

chimera! Yet the Congregation was so foolish as not to interdict that

little book which he held in his hands, that humble book which alone was

to be feared, which was the ever triumphant enemy that would surely

overthrow the Church. Modest it was in its cheap “get up” as a school

manual, but that did not matter: danger began with the very alphabet,

increased as knowledge was acquired, and burst forth with those _resumes_

of the physical, chemical, and natural sciences which bring the very

Creation, as described by Holy Writ, into question. However, the Index

dared not attempt to suppress those humble volumes, those terrible

soldiers of truth, those destroyers of faith. What was the use, then, of

all the money which Leo XIII drew from his hidden treasure of the Peter’s

Pence to subvention Catholic schools, with the thought of forming the

believing generations which the papacy needed to enable it to conquer?

What was the use of that precious money if it was only to serve for the

purchase of similar insignificant yet formidable volumes, which could

never be sufficiently “cooked” and expurgated, but would always contain

too much Science, that growing Science which one day would blow up both

Vatican and St. Peter’s? Ah! that idiotic and impotent Index, what

wretchedness and what derision!

Then, when Pierre had placed Theophile Morin’s book in his valise, he

once more returned to the window, and while leaning out, beheld an

extraordinary vision. Under the cloudy, coppery sky, in the mild and

mournful night, patches of wavy mist had risen, hiding many of the

house-roofs with trailing shreds which looked like shrouds. Entire

edifices had disappeared, and he imagined that the times were at last

accomplished, and that truth had at last destroyed St. Peter’s dome. In a

hundred or a thousand years, it would be like that, fallen, obliterated

from the black sky. One day, already, he had felt it tottering and

cracking beneath him, and had foreseen that this temple of Catholicism

would fall even as Jove’s temple had fallen on the Capitol. And it was

over now, the dome had strewn the ground with fragments, and all that

remained standing, in addition to a portion of the apse, where five

columns of the central nave, still upholding a shred of entablature, and

four cyclopean buttress-piers on which the dome had rested--piers which

still arose, isolated and superb, looking indestructible among all the

surrounding downfall. But a denser mist flowed past, another thousand

years no doubt went by, and then nothing whatever remained. The apse, the

last pillars, the giant piers themselves were felled! The wind had swept

away their dust, and it would have been necessary to search the soil

beneath the brambles and the nettles to find a few fragments of broken

statues, marbles with mutilated inscriptions, on the sense of which

learned men were unable to agree. And, as formerly, on the Capitol, among

the buried remnants of Jupiter’s temple, goats strayed and climbed

through the solitude, browsing upon the bushes, amidst the deep silence

of the oppressive summer sunlight, which only the buzzing flies

disturbed.

Then, only then, did Pierre feel the supreme collapse within him. It was

really all over, Science was victorious, nothing of the old world

remained. What use would it be then to become the great schismatic, the

reformer who was awaited? Would it not simply mean the building up of a

new dream? Only the eternal struggle of Science against the Unknown, the

searching, pursuing inquiry which incessantly moderated man’s thirst for

the divine, now seemed to him of import, leaving him waiting to know if

she would ever triumph so completely as to suffice mankind, by satisfying

all its wants. And in the disaster which had overcome his apostolic

enthusiasm, in presence of all those ruins, having lost his faith, and

even his hope of utilising old Catholicism for social and moral

salvation, there only remained reason that held him up. She had at one

moment given way. If he had dreamt that book, and had just passed through

that terrible crisis, it was because sentiment had once again overcome

reason within him. It was his mother, so to say, who had wept in his

heart, who had filled him with an irresistible desire to relieve the

wretched and prevent the massacres which seemed near at hand; and his

passion for charity had thus swept aside the scruples of his

intelligence. But it was his father’s voice that he now heard, lofty and

bitter reason which, though it had fled, at present came back in all

sovereignty. As he had done already after Lourdes, he protested against

the glorification of the absurd and the downfall of common sense. Reason

alone enabled him to walk erect and firm among the remnants of the old

beliefs, even amidst the obscurities and failures of Science. Ah! Reason,

it was through her alone that he suffered, through her alone that he

could content himself, and he swore that he would now always seek to

satisfy her, even if in doing so he should lose his happiness.

At that moment it would have been vain for him to ask what he ought to

do. Everything remained in suspense, the world stretched before him still

littered with the ruins of the past, of which, to-morrow, it would

perhaps be rid. Yonder, in that dolorous faubourg of Paris, he would find

good Abbe Rose, who but a few days previously had written begging him to

return and tend, love, and save his poor, since Rome, so dazzling from

afar, was dead to charity. And around the good and peaceful old priest he

would find the ever growing flock of wretched ones; the little fledglings

who had fallen from their nests, and whom he found pale with hunger and

shivering with cold; the households of abominable misery in which the

father drank and the mother became a prostitute, while the sons and the

daughters sank into vice and crime; the dwellings, too, through which

famine swept, where all was filth and shameful promiscuity, where there

was neither furniture nor linen, nothing but purely animal life. And then

there would also come the cold blasts of winter, the disasters of slack

times, the hurricanes of consumption carrying off the weak, whilst the

strong clenched their fists and dreamt of vengeance. One evening, too,

perhaps, he might again enter some room of horror and find that another

mother had killed herself and her five little ones, her last-born in her

arms clinging to her drained breast, and the others scattered over the

bare tiles, at last contented, feeling hunger no more, now that they were

dead! But no, no, such awful things were no longer possible: such black

misery conducting to suicide in the heart of that great city of Paris,

which is brimful of wealth, intoxicated with enjoyment, and flings

millions out of window for mere pleasure! The very foundations of the

social edifice were rotten; all would soon collapse amidst mire and

blood. Never before had Pierre so acutely realised the derisive futility

of Charity. And all at once he became conscious that the long-awaited

word, the word which was at last springing from the great silent

multitude, the crushed and gagged people was _Justice_! Aye, Justice not

Charity! Charity had only served to perpetuate misery, Justice perhaps

would cure it. It was for Justice that the wretched hungered; an act of

Justice alone could sweep away the olden world so that the new one might

be reared. After all, the great silent multitude would belong neither to

Vatican nor to Quirinal, neither to pope nor to king. If it had covertly

growled through the ages in its long, sometimes mysterious, and sometimes

open contest; if it had struggled betwixt pontiff and emperor who each

had wished to retain it for himself alone, it had only done so in order

that it might free itself, proclaim its resolve to belong to none on the

day when it should cry Justice! Would to-morrow then at last prove that

day of Justice and Truth? For his part, Pierre amidst his anguish--having

on one hand that need of the divine which tortures man, and on the other

sovereignty of reason which enables man to remain erect--was only sure of

one thing, that he would keep his vows, continue a priest, watching over

the belief of others though he could not himself believe, and would thus

chastely and honestly follow his profession, amidst haughty sadness at

having been unable to renounce his intelligence in the same way as he had

renounced his flesh and his dream of saving the nations. And again, as

after Lourdes, he would wait.

So deeply was he plunged in reflection at that window, face to face with

the mist which seemed to be destroying the dark edifices of Rome, that he

did not hear himself called. At last, however, he felt a tap on the

shoulder: “Monsieur l’Abbe!” And then as he turned he saw Victorine, who

said to him: “It is half-past nine; the cab is there. Giacomo has already

taken your luggage down. You must come away, Monsieur l’Abbe.”

Then seeing him blink, still dazed as it were, she smiled and added: “You

were bidding Rome goodbye. What a frightful sky there is.”

“Yes, frightful,” was his reply.

Then they descended the stairs. He had handed her a hundred-franc note to

be shared between herself and the other servants. And she apologised for

going down before him with the lamp, explaining that the old palace was

so dark that evening one could scarcely see.

Ah! that departure, that last descent through the black and empty

mansion, it quite upset Pierre’s heart. He gave his room that glance of

farewell which always saddened him, even when he was leaving a spot where

he had suffered. Then, on passing Don Vigilio’s chamber, whence there

only came a quivering silence, he pictured the secretary with his head

buried in his pillows, holding his breath for fear lest he should speak

and attract vengeance. But it was in particular on the second and first

floor landings, on passing the closed doors of Donna Serafina and the

Cardinal, that Pierre quivered with apprehension at hearing nothing but

the silence of the grave. And as he followed Victorine, who, lamp in

hand, was still descending, he thought of the brother and sister who were

left alone in the ruined palace, last relics of a world which had half

passed away. All hope of life had departed with Benedetta and Dario, no

resurrection could come from that old maid and that priest who was bound

to chastity. Ah! those interminable and lugubrious passages, that frigid

and gigantic staircase which seemed to descend into nihility, those huge

halls with cracking walls where all was wretchedness and abandonment! And

that inner court, looking like a cemetery with its weeds and its damp

porticus, where remnants of Apollos and Venuses were rotting! And the

little deserted garden, fragrant with ripe oranges, whither nobody now

would ever stray, where none would ever meet that adorable Contessina

under the laurels near the sarcophagus! All was now annihilated in

abominable mourning, in a death-like silence, amidst which the two last

Boccaneras must wait, in savage grandeur, till their palace should fall

about their heads. Pierre could only just detect a faint sound, the

gnawing of a mouse perhaps, unless it were caused by Abbe Paparelli

attacking the walls of some out-of-the-way rooms, preying on the old

edifice down below, so as to hasten its fall.

The cab stood at the door, already laden with the luggage, the box beside

the driver, the valise on the seat; and the priest at once got in.

“Oh! You have plenty of time,” said Victorine, who had remained on the

foot-pavement. “Nothing has been forgotten. I’m glad to see you go off

comfortably.”

And indeed at that last moment Pierre was comforted by the presence of

that worthy woman, his compatriot, who had greeted him on his arrival and

now attended his departure. “I won’t say ‘till we meet again,’ Monsieur

l’Abbe,” she exclaimed, “for I don’t fancy that you’ll soon be back in

this horrid city. Good-bye, Monsieur l’Abbe.”

“Good-bye, Victorine, and thank you with all my heart.”

The cab was already going off at a fast trot, turning into the narrow

sinuous street which leads to the Corso Vittoria Emanuele. It was not

raining and so the hood had not been raised, but although the damp

atmosphere was comparatively mild, Pierre at once felt a chill. However,

he was unwilling to stop the driver, a silent fellow whose only desire

seemingly was to get rid of his fare as soon as possible. When the cab

came out into the Corso Vittoria Emanuele, the young man was astonished

to find it already quite deserted, the houses shut, the footways bare,

and the electric lamps burning all alone in melancholy solitude. In

truth, however, the temperature was far from warm and the fog seemed to

be increasing, hiding the house-fronts more and more. When Pierre passed

the Cancelleria, that stern colossal pile seemed to him to be receding,

fading away; and farther on, upon the right, at the end of the Via di Ara

Coeli, starred by a few smoky gas lamps, the Capitol had quite vanished

in the gloom. Then the thoroughfare narrowed, and the cab went on between

the dark heavy masses of the Gesu and the Altieri palace; and there in

that contracted passage, where even on fine sunny days one found all the

dampness of old times, the quivering priest yielded to a fresh train of

thought. It was an idea which had sometimes made him feel anxious, the

idea that mankind, starting from over yonder in Asia, had always marched

onward with the sun. An east wind had always carried the human seed for

future harvest towards the west. And for a long while now the cradle of

humanity had been stricken with destruction and death, as if indeed the

nations could only advance by stages, leaving exhausted soil, ruined

cities, and degenerate populations behind, as they marched from orient to

occident, towards their unknown goal. Nineveh and Babylon on the banks of

the Euphrates, Thebes and Memphis on the banks of the Nile, had been

reduced to dust, sinking from old age and weariness into a deadly

numbness beyond possibility of awakening. Then decrepitude had spread to

the shores of the great Mediterranean lake, burying both Tyre and Sidon

with dust, and afterwards striking Carthage with senility whilst it yet

seemed in full splendour. In this wise as mankind marched on, carried by

the hidden forces of civilisation from east to west, it marked each day’s

journey with ruins; and how frightful was the sterility nowadays

displayed by the cradle of History, that Asia and that Egypt, which had

once more lapsed into childhood, immobilised in ignorance and degeneracy

amidst the ruins of ancient cities that once had been queens of the

world!

It was thus Pierre reflected as the cab rolled on. Still he was not

unconscious of his surroundings. As he passed the Palazzo di Venezia it

seemed to him to be crumbling beneath some assault of the invisible, for

the mist had already swept away its battlements, and the lofty, bare,

fearsome walls looked as if they were staggering from the onslaught of

the growing darkness. And after passing the deep gap of the Corso, which

was also deserted amidst the pallid radiance of its electric lights, the

Palazzo Torlonia appeared on the right-hand, with one wing ripped open by

the picks of demolishers, whilst on the left, farther up, the Palazzo

Colonna showed its long, mournful facade and closed windows, as if, now

that it was deserted by its masters and void of its ancient pomp, it

awaited the demolishers in its turn.

Then, as the cab at a slower pace began to climb the ascent of the Via

Nazionale, Pierre’s reverie continued. Was not Rome also stricken, had

not the hour come for her to disappear amidst that destruction which the

nations on the march invariably left behind them? Greece, Athens, and

Sparta slumbered beneath their glorious memories, and were of no account

in the world of to-day. Moreover, the growing paralysis had already

invaded the lower portion of the Italic peninsula; and after Naples

certainly came the turn of Rome. She was on the very margin of the death

spot which ever extends over the old continent, that margin where agony

begins, where the impoverished soil will no longer nourish and support

cities, where men themselves seem stricken with old age as soon as they

are born. For two centuries Rome had been declining, withdrawing little

by little from modern life, having neither manufactures nor trade, and

being incapable even of science, literature, or art. And in Pierre’s

thoughts it was no longer St. Peter’s only that fell, but all

Rome--basilicas, palaces, and entire districts--which collapsed amidst a

supreme rending, and covered the seven hills with a chaos of ruins. Like

Nineveh and Babylon, and like Thebes and Memphis, Rome became but a

plain, bossy with remnants, amidst which one vainly sought to identify

the sites of ancient edifices, whilst its sole denizens were coiling

serpents and bands of rats.

The cab turned, and on the right, in a huge gap of darkness Pierre

recognised Trajan’s column, but it was no longer gilded by the sun as

when he had first seen it; it now rose up blackly like the dead trunk of

a giant tree whose branches have fallen from old age. And farther on,

when he raised his eyes while crossing the little triangular piazza, and

perceived a real tree against the leaden sky, that parasol pine of the

Villa Aldobrandini which rises there like a symbol of Rome’s grace and

pride, it seemed to him but a smear, a little cloud of soot ascending

from the downfall of the whole city.

With the anxious, fraternal turn of his feelings, fear was coming over

him as he reached the end of his tragic dream. When the numbness which

spreads across the aged world should have passed Rome, when Lombardy

should have yielded to it, and Genoa, Turin, and Milan should have fallen

asleep as Venice has fallen already, then would come the turn of France.

The Alps would be crossed, Marseilles, like Tyre and Sidon, would see its

port choked up by sand, Lyons would sink into desolation and slumber, and

at last Paris, invaded by the invincible torpor, and transformed into a

sterile waste of stones bristling with nettles, would join Rome and

Nineveh and Babylon in death, whilst the nations continued their march

from orient to occident following the sun. A great cry sped through the

gloom, the death cry of the Latin races! History, which seemed to have

been born in the basin of the Mediterranean, was being transported

elsewhere, and the ocean had now become the centre of the world. How many

hours of the human day had gone by? Had mankind, starting from its cradle

over yonder at daybreak, strewing its road with ruins from stage to

stage, now accomplished one-half of its day and reached the dazzling hour

of noon? If so, then the other half of the day allotted to it was

beginning, the new world was following the old one, the new world of

those American cities where democracy was forming and the religion of

to-morrow was sprouting, those sovereign queens of the coming century,

with yonder, across another ocean, on the other side of the globe, that

motionless Far East, mysterious China and Japan, and all the threatening

swarm of the yellow races.

However, while the cab climbed higher and higher up the Via Nazionale,

Pierre felt his nightmare dissipating. There was here a lighter

atmosphere, and he came back into a renewal of hope and courage. Yet the

Banca d’Italia, with its brand-new ugliness, its chalky hugeness, looked

to him like a phantom in a shroud; whilst above a dim expanse of gardens

the Quirinal formed but a black streak barring the heavens. However, the

street ever ascended and broadened, and on the summit of the Viminal, on

the Piazza delle Terme, when he passed the ruins of Diocletian’s baths,

he could breathe as his lungs listed. No, no, the human day could not

finish, it was eternal, and the stages of civilisation would follow and

follow without end! What mattered that eastern wind which carried the

nations towards the west, as if borne on by the power of the sun! If

necessary, they would return across the other side of the globe, they

would again and again make the circuit of the earth, until the day should

come when they could establish themselves in peace, truth, and justice.

After the next civilisation on the shores of the Atlantic, which would

become the world’s centre, skirted by queenly cities, there would spring

up yet another civilisation, having the Pacific for its centre, with

seaport capitals that could not be yet foreseen, whose germs yet

slumbered on unknown shores. And in like way there would be still other

civilisations and still others! And at that last moment, the inspiriting

thought came to Pierre that the great movement of the nations was the

instinct, the need which impelled them to return to unity. Originating in

one sole family, afterwards parted and dispersed in tribes, thrown into

collision by fratricidal hatred, their tendency was none the less to

become one sole family again. The provinces united in nations, the

nations would unite in races, and the races would end by uniting in one

immortal mankind--mankind at last without frontiers, or possibility of

wars, mankind living by just labour amidst an universal commonwealth. Was

not this indeed the evolution, the object of the labour progressing

everywhere, the finish reserved to History? Might Italy then become a

strong and healthy nation, might concord be established between her and

France, and might that fraternity of the Latin races become the beginning

of universal fraternity! Ah! that one fatherland, the whole earth

pacified and happy, in how many centuries would that come--and what a

dream!

Then, on reaching the station the scramble prevented Pierre from thinking

any further. He had to take his ticket and register his luggage, and

afterwards he at once climbed into the train. At dawn on the next day but

one, he would be back in Paris.

END

*****