VIII

It was the Carnival week again--the mad blaspheming week of revelry

and devilry. The streets were rainbow with motley wear and thunderous

with the roar and laughter of the crowd, recruited by a vast inflow of

strangers; from the windows and roofs, black with heads, frolicsome

hands threw honey, dirty water, rotten eggs, and even boiling oil upon

the pedestrians and cavaliers below. Bloody tumults broke out,

sacrilegious masqueraders invaded the churches. They lampooned all

things human and divine; the whip and the gallows liberally applied

availed naught to check the popular licence. Every prohibitory edict

became a dead letter. In such a season the Jews might well tremble,

made over to the facetious Christian; always excellent whetstones for

wit, they afforded peculiar diversion in Carnival times. On the first

day a deputation of the chief Jews, including the three gonfaloniers

and the rabbis, headed the senatorial _cortége_, and, attired in a

parti-colored costume of red and yellow, marched across the whole

city, from the Piazza of the People to the Capitol, through a double

fire of scurrilities. Arrived at the Capitol, the procession marched

into the Hall of the Throne, where the three Conservators and the

Prior of the Caporioni sat on crimson velvet seats with the fiscal

advocate of the Capitol in his black toga and velvet cap. The Chief

Rabbi knelt upon the first step of the throne, and, bending his

venerable head to the ground, pronounced a traditional formula: "Full

of respect and of devotion for the Roman people, we, chiefs and rabbis

of the humble Jewish community, present ourselves before the exalted

throne of Your Eminences to offer them respectfully fidelity and

homage in the name of our co-religionists, and to implore their

benevolent commiseration. For us, we shall not fail to supplicate the

Most High to accord peace and a long tranquillity to the Sovereign

Pontiff, who reigns for the happiness of all; to the Apostolic Holy

Seat, as well as to Your Eminences, to the most illustrious Senate,

and to the Roman people."

To which the Chief of the Conservators replied: "We accept with

pleasure the homage of fidelity, of vassalage, and of respect, the

expression of which you renew to-day in the name of the entire Jewish

community, and, assured that you will respect the laws and orders of

the Senate, and that you will pay, as in the past, the tribute and the

dues which are incumbent upon you, we accord you our protection in the

hope that you will know how to make yourself worthy of it." Then,

placing his foot upon the Rabbi's neck, he cried: "Andate!" (Begone!)

Rising, the Rabbi presented the Conservators with a bouquet and a cup

containing twenty crowns, and offered to decorate the platform of the

Senator on the Piazza of the People. And then the deputation passed

again in its motley gear through the swarming streets of buffoons,

through the avenue of scurrilities, to renew its hypocritical

protestations before the throne of the Senator.

Mock processions parodied this march of Jews. The fishmongers, who,

from their proximity to the Ghetto, were aware of its customs,

enriched the Carnival with divers other parodies; now it was a

travesty of a rabbi's funeral, now a long cavalcade of Jews galloping

upon asses, preceded by a mock rabbi on horseback, with his head to

the steed's tail, which he grasped with one hand, while with the other

he offered an imitation Scroll of the Law to the derision of the mob.

Truly, the baiting of the Jews added rare spice to the fun of the

Carnival; their hats were torn off, filth was thrown in their faces.

This year the Governor of Rome had interfered, forbidding anything to

be thrown at them except fruit. A noble marquis won facetious fame by

pelting them with pineapples. But it was not till the third day, after

the asses and buffaloes had raced, that the Jews touched the extreme

of indignity, for this was the day of the Jew races.

The morning dawned blue and cold; but soon the clouds gathered, and

the jostling revellers scented with joy the prospect of rain. At the

Arch of San Lorenza, in Lucina, in the long narrow street of the Via

Corso, where doorways and casements and roofs and footways were agrin

with faces, half a dozen Jews or so were assembled pell-mell. They had

just been given a hearty meal, but they did not look grateful. Almost

naked, save for a white cloak of the meagrest dimensions, comically

indecent, covered with tinsel and decorated with laurels, they stood

shivering, awaiting the command to "Go!" to run the gauntlet of all

this sinister crowd, overwelling with long-repressed venom, seething

with taunts and lewdness. At last a mounted officer gave the word,

and, amid a colossal shout of glee from the mob, the half-naked,

grotesque figures, with their strange Oriental faces of sorrow,

started at a wild run down the Corso. The goal was the Castle of St.

Angelo. Originally the race-course ended with the Corso, but it had

been considerably lengthened to gratify a recent Pope who wished to

have the finish under his windows as he sat in his semi-secret Castle

chamber amid the frescoed nudes of Giulio Romano. Fast, fast flew the

racers, for the sooner the goal was reached the sooner would they find

respite from this hail of sarcasm mixed with weightier stones, and

these frequent proddings from the lively sticks of the bystanders, or

of the fine folk obstructing the course in coaches in defiance of

edict. And to accelerate their pace still further, the mounted

officer, with a squad of soldiers armed _cap-à-pie_, galloped at their

heels, ever threatening to ride them down. They ran, ran, puffing,

panting, sweating, apoplectic; for to the end that they might nigh

burst with stitches in the side had a brilliant organizer of the

_fête_ stuffed them full with preliminary meat. Oh, droll! oh,

delicious! oh, rare for Antony! And now a young man noticeable by his

emaciated face and his premature baldness was drawing to the front

amid ironic cheers. When the grotesque racers had passed by, noble

cavaliers displayed their dexterity at the quintain, and beautiful

ladies at the balconies--not masked, as in France, but radiantly

revealed--changed their broad smiles to the subtler smiles of

dalliance. And then suddenly the storm broke--happy ally of the

_fête_--jocosely drenching the semi-nude runners. On, on they sped,

breathless, blind, gasping, befouled by mud, and bruised by missiles,

with the horses' hoofs grazing their heels; on, on along the thousand

yards of the endless course; on, on, sodden and dripping and

stumbling. They were nearing the goal. They had already passed San

Marco, the old goal. The young Jew was still leading, but a fat old

Jew pressed him close. The excitement of the crowd redoubled. A

thousand mocking voices encouraged the rivals. They were on the

bridge. The Castle of St. Angelo, whose bastions were named after the

Apostles, was in sight. The fat old Jew drew closer, anxious, now

that he was come so far, to secure the thirty-six crowns that the

prize might be sold for. But the favorite made a mighty spurt. He

passed the Pope's window, and the day was his. The firmament rang with

laughter as the other candidates panted up. A great yell greeted the

fall of the fat old man in the roadway, where he lay prostrate.

An official tendered the winner the _pallio_ which was the prize--a

piece of red Venetian cloth. The young Jew took it, surveying it with

a strange, unfathomable gaze, but the Judge interposed.

"The captain of the soldiers tells me they did not start fair at the

Arch. They must run again to-morrow." This was a favorite device for

prolonging the fun. But the winner's eyes blazed ominously.

"Nay, but we started as balls shot from a falconet."

"Peace, peace, return him the _pallio_," whispered a racer behind him,

tugging apprehensively at his one garment.

"They always adjudge it again to the first winner." But the young man

was reckless.

"Why did not the captain stop us, then?" he asked.

"Keep thy tongue between thy dog's teeth," retorted the Judge. "In any

event the race must be run again, for the law ordains eight runners as

a minimum."

"We are eight," replied the young Jew.

The Judge glared at the rebel; then, striking each rueful object with

a stick, he counted out, "One--two--three--four--five--six--seven!"

"Eight," persisted the young man, perceiving for the first time the

old Jew on the ground behind him, and stooping to raise him.

"That creature! Basta! He does not count. He is drunk."

"Thou hell-begotten hound!" and straightening himself suddenly, the

young Jew drew a crucifix from within his cloak. "Thou art right!" he

cried in a voice of thunder. "There are only seven Jews, for I--I am

no Jew. I am Fra Giuseppe!" And the crucifix whirled round, clearing a

space of awe about him.

The Judge cowered back in surprise and apprehension. The soldiers sat

their horses in stony amazement, the seething crowd was stilled for a

moment, struck to silent attention. The shower had ceased and a ray of

watery sunlight glistened on the crucifix.

"In the name of Christ I denounce this devil's mockery of the Lord's

chosen people," thundered the Dominican. "Stand back all. Will no one

bring this poor old man a cup of cold water?"

"Hasn't Heaven given him enough cold water?" asked a jester in the

crowd. But no one stirred.

"Then may you all burn eternally," said the Friar. He bent down again

and raised the old man's head tenderly. Then his face grew sterner and

whiter. "He is dead," he said. "The Christ he denied receive him into

His mercy." And he let the corpse fall gently back and closed the

glassy eyes. The bystanders had a momentary thrill. Death had lent

dignity even to the old Jew. He lay there, felled by an apoplectic

stroke, due to the forced heavy meal, the tinsel gleaming grotesquely

on his white sodden cloak, his naked legs rigid and cold. From afar

the rumors of revelry, the _brouhaha_ of a mad population, saluted his

deaf ears, the distant music of lutes and viols. The captain of the

soldiers went hot and cold. He had harried the heels of the rotund

runner in special amusement, but he had not designed murder. A wave of

compunction traversed the spectators. But the Judge recovered himself.

"Seize this recreant priest!" he cried. "He is a backslider. He has

gone back to his people. He is become a Jew again--he shall be flayed

alive."

"Back, in the name of Holy Church!" cried Fra Giuseppe, veering round

to face the captain, who, however, had sat his horse without moving.

"I am no Jew. I am as good a Christian as his Holiness, who but just

now sat at yon jalousie, feasting his eyes on these heathen

saturnalia."

"Then why didst thou race with the Jews? It is contamination. Thou

hast defiled thy cloth."

"Nay, I wore not my cloth. Am I not half naked? Is this the cloth I

should respect--this gaudy frippery, which your citizens have made a

target for filth and abuse?"

"Thou hast brought it on thyself," put in the captain mildly.

"Wherefore didst thou race with this pestilent people?"

The Dominican bowed his head. "It is my penance," he said in tremulous

tones. "I have sinned against my brethren. I have aggravated their

griefs. Therefore would I be of them at the moment of their extremest

humiliation, and that I might share their martyrdom did I beg his

place from one of the runners. But penance is not all my motive." And

he lifted up his eyes and they blazed terribly, and his tones became

again a thunder that rolled through the crowd and far down the bridge.

"Ye who know me, faithful sons and daughters of Holy Church, ye who

have so often listened to my voice, ye into whose houses I have

brought the comfort of the Word, join with me now in ending the long

martyrdom of the Jews, your brethren. It is by love, not hate, that

Christ rules the world. I deemed that it would move your hearts to see

me, whom I know ye love, covered with filth, which ye had never thrown

had ye known me in this strange guise. But lo, this poor old man

pleadeth more eloquently than I. His dead lips shake your souls. Go

home, go home from this Pagan mirth, and sit on the ground in

sackcloth and ashes, and pray God He make you better Christians."

There was an uneasy stir in the crowd: the fantastic mud-stained

tinsel cloak, the bare legs of the speaker, did but add to his

impressiveness; he seemed some strange antique prophet, come from the

far ends of the world and time.

"Be silent, blasphemer," said the Judge. "The sports have the

countenance of the Holy Father. Heaven itself hath cursed these

stinking heretics. Pah!" he spurned the dead Jew with his foot. The

Friar's bosom swelled. His head was hot with blood.

"Not Heaven but the Pope hath cursed them," he retorted vehemently.

"Why doth he not banish them from his dominions? Nay, he knows how

needful they are to the State. When he exiled them from all save the

three cities of refuge, and when the Jewish merchants of the seaports

of the East put our port of Ancona under a ban, so that we could not

provision ourselves, did not his Holiness hastily recall the Jews,

confessing their value? Which being so, it is love we should offer

them, not hatred and a hundred degrading edicts."

"Thou shalt burn in the Forum for this," spluttered the Judge. "Who

art thou to set thyself up against God's Vicar?"

"He God's Vicar? Nay, I am sooner God's Vicar. God speaks through me."

His wan, emaciated face had grown rapt and shining; to the awed mob he

loomed gigantic.

"This is treason and blasphemy. Arrest him!" cried the Judge.

The Friar faced the soldiers unflinchingly, though only the body of

the old Jew divided him from their prancing horses.

"Nay," he said softly, and a sweet smile mingled with the mystery of

his look. "God is with me. He hath set this bulwark of death between

you and my life. Ye will not fight under the banner of the

Anti-Christ."

"Death to the renegade!" cried a voice in the crowd. "He calls the

Pope Anti-Christ."

"Ay, he who is not for us is against us. Is it for Christ that he

rules Rome? Is it only the Jews whom he vexes? Hath not his rage for

power brought the enemy to the gates of Rome? Have not his companies

of foreign auxiliaries flouted our citizens? Ye know how Rome hath

suffered through the machinations of his bastard son, with his

swaggering troop of cut-throats. Is it for Christ that he hath

begotten this terror of our streets?"

"Down with Baccio Valori!" cried a stentorian voice, and a dozen

enthusiastic throats echoed the shout.

"Ay, down with Baccio Valori!" cried the Dominican.

"Down with Baccio Valori!" repeated the ductile crowd, its holiday

humor subtly passing into another form of recklessness. Some who loved

the Friar were genuinely worked upon, others in mad, vicious mood were

ready for any diversion. A few, and these the loudest, were

swashbucklers and cutpurses.

"Ay, but not Baccio Valori alone!" thundered Fra Giuseppe. "Down with

all those bastard growths that flourish in the capital of Christendom.

Down with all that hell-spawn, which is the denial of Christ; down

with the Pardoner! God is no tradesman that he should chaffer for the

forgiveness of sins. Still less--oh blasphemy!--of sins undone. Our

Lady wants none of your wax candles. It is a white heart, it is the

flame of a pure soul that the Virgin Mother asks for. Away with your

beads and mummeries, your paternosters and genuflections! Away with

your Carnivals, your godless farewells to meat! Ye are all foul. This

is no city of God, it is a city of hired bravos and adulterous

abominations and gluttonous feasts, and the lust of the eye, and the

pride of the flesh. Down with the foul-blooded Cardinal, who gossips

at the altar, and borrows money of the despised Jews for his secret

sins! Down with the monk whose missal is Boccaccio! Down with God's

Vicegerent who traffics in Cardinals' hats, who dare not take the

Eucharist without a Pretaster, who is all absorbed in profane Greek

texts, in cunning jewel-work, in political manoeuvres and domestic

intrigues, who comes caracoling in crimson and velvet upon his proud

Neapolitan barb, with his bareheaded Cardinals and his hundred

glittering horsemen. He the representative of the meek Christ who rode

upon an ass, and said, 'Sell that thou hast and give to the poor, and

come follow me'! Nay," and the passion of righteousness tore his frame

and thralled his listeners, "though he inhabit the Vatican, though a

hundred gorgeous bishops abase themselves to kiss his toe, yet I

proclaim here that he is a lie, a snare, a whited sepulchre, no

protector of the poor, no loving father to the fatherless, no

spiritual Emperor, no Vicar of Christ, but Anti-Christ himself."

"Down with Anti-Christ!" yelled a pair of Corsican cut-throats.

"Down with Anti-Christ!" roared the crowd, the long-suppressed hatred

of the ruling power finding vent in a great wave of hysteric emotion.

"Captain, do thy duty!" cried the Judge.

"Nay, but the Friar speaks truth. Bear the old man away, Alessandro!"

"Is Rome demented? Haste for the City Guards, Jacopo!"

Fra Giuseppe swiftly tied the _pallio_ to his crucifix, and, waving

the red cloth on high, "This is the true flag of Christ!" he cried.

"This, the symbol of our brethren's martyrdom! See, 'tis the color of

the blood He shed for us. Who is for Jesus, follow me!"

"For Christ, for Jesus! _Viva Gesú!_" A far-rumbling thunder broke

from the swaying mob. His own fire caught extra flame from theirs.

"Follow me! This day we will bear witness to Christ, we will establish

His kingdom in Rome."

There was a wild rush, the soldiers spurred their horses, people fell

under their hoofs, and were trampled on. It was a moment of frenzy.

The Dominican ran on, waving the red _pallio_, his followers

contagiously swollen at every by-street. Unchecked he reached the

great Piazza, where a new statue of the Pope gleamed white and

majestic.

"Down with Anti-Christ!" shouted a cutpurse.

"Down with Anti-Christ!" echoed the mob.

The Friar waved his hand, and there was silence. He saw the yellow

gleam of a Jew's head in the crowd, and called upon him to fling him

his cap. It was hurled from hand to hand. Fra Giuseppe held it up in

the air. "Men of Rome, Sons of Holy Church, behold the contumelious

mark we set upon our fellow-men, so that every ruffian may spit upon

them. Behold the yellow--the color of shame, the stigma of women that

traffic in their womanhood--with which we brand the venerable brows of

rabbis and the heads of honorable merchants. Lo! I set it upon the

head of this Anti-Christ, a symbol of our hate for all that is not

Love." And raising himself on the captain's stirrup, he crowned the

statue with the yellow badge.

A great shout of derision rent the air. There was a multifarious

tumult of savage voices.

"Down with Anti-Christ! Down with the Pope! Down with Baccio Valori!

Down with the Princess Teresa!"

But in another moment all was a wild _mêlée_. A company of City

Guards--pikemen, musketeers, and horsemen with two-handed swords

dashed into the Piazza from one street, the Pope's troops from

another. They charged the crowd. The soldiers of the revolting

captain, revolting in their turn, wheeled round and drove back their

followers. There was a babel of groans and shrieks and shouts, muskets

rang out, daggers flashed, sword and pike rang against armor, sparks

flew, smoke curled, and the mob broke and scurried down the streets,

leaving the wet, scarlet ground strewn with bodies.

And long ere the roused passions of the riffraff had assuaged

themselves by loot and outrage in the remoter streets, in the darkest

dungeon of the Nona Tower, on a piece of rotten mattress, huddled in

his dripping tinselled cloak, and bleeding from a dozen cuts, Joseph

the Dreamer lay prostrate, too exhausted from the fierce struggle with

his captors to think on the stake that awaited him.