“Alexander Octavus mures, qui Urbem supra modum vexabant, anathemate
perculit.”—_Palatius. Fasti Cardinalium_, tom. v.p. 46.
I
“Rome and her rats are at the point of battle!”
This metaphor of Menenius Agrippa’s became, history records, matter of
fact in 1689, when rats pervaded the Eternal City from garret to
cellar, and Pope Alexander the Eighth seriously apprehended the fate of
Bishop Hatto. The situation worried him sorely; he had but lately
attained the tiara at an advanced age—the twenty-fourth hour, as he
himself remarked in extenuation of his haste to enrich his nephews. The
time vouchsafed for worthier deeds was brief, and he dreaded descending
to posterity as the Rat Pope. Witty and genial, his sense of humour
teased him with a full perception of the absurdity of his position.
Peter and Pasquin concurred in forbidding him to desert his post; and
he derived but small comfort from the ingenuity of his flatterers, who
compared him to St. Paul contending with beasts at Ephesus.
It wanted three half-hours to midnight, as Alexander sat amid traps and
ratsbane in his chamber in the Vatican, under the protection of two
enormous cats and a British terrier. A silver bell stood ready to his
hand, should the aid of the attendant chamberlains be requisite. The
walls had been divested of their tapestries, and the floor gleamed with
pounded glass. A tome of legendary lore lay open at the history of the
Piper of Hamelin. All was silence, save for the sniffing and scratching
of the dog and a sound of subterranean scraping and gnawing.
“Why tarries Cardinal Barbadico thus?” the Pope at last asked himself
aloud. The inquiry was answered by a wild burst of squeaking and
clattering and scurrying to and fro, as who should say, “We’ve eaten
him! We’ve eaten him!”
But this exultation was at least premature, for just as the terrified
Pope clutched his bell, the door opened to the narrowest extent
compatible with the admission of an ecclesiastical personage of
dignified presence, and Cardinal Barbadico hastily squeezed himself
through.
“I shall hardly trust myself upon these stairs again,” he remarked,
“unless under the escort of your Holiness’s terrier.”
“Take him, my son, and a cruse of holy water to boot,” the Pope
responded. “Now, how go things in the city?”
“As ill as may be, your Holiness. Not a saint stirs a finger to help
us. The country-folk shun the city, the citizens seek the country. The
multitude of enemies increases hour by hour. They set at defiance the
anathemas fulminated by your Holiness, the spiritual censures placarded
in the churches, and the citation to appear before the ecclesiastical
courts, although assured that their cause shall be pleaded by the
ablest advocates in Rome. The cats, amphibious with alarm, are taking
to the Tiber. Vainly the city reeks with toasted cheese, and the
Commissary-General reports himself short of arsenic.”
“And how are the people taking it?” demanded Alexander. “To what cause
do they attribute the public calamity?”
“Generally speaking, to the sins of your Holiness,” replied the
Cardinal.
“Cardinal!” exclaimed Alexander indignantly.
“I crave pardon for my temerity,” returned Barbadico. “It is with
difficulty that I force myself to speak, but I am bound to lay the
ungrateful truth before your Holiness. The late Pope, as all men know,
was a personage of singular sanctity.”
“Far too upright for this fallen world,” observed Alexander with
unction.
“I will not dispute,” responded the Cardinal, “that the head of
Innocent the Eleventh might have been more fitly graced by a halo than
by a tiara. But the vulgar are incapable of placing themselves at this
point of view. They know that the rats hardly squeaked under Innocent,
and that they swarm under Alexander. What wonder if they suspect your
Holiness of familiarity with Beelzebub, the patron of vermin, and
earnestly desire that he would take you to himself? Vainly have I
represented to them the unreasonableness of imposing upon him a trouble
he may well deem superfluous, considering your Holiness’s infirm health
and advanced age. Vainly, too, have I pointed out that your anathema
has actually produced all the effect that could have been reasonably
anticipated from any similar manifesto on your predecessor’s part. They
won’t see it. And, in fact, might I humbly advise, it does appear
impolitic to hurl anathemas unless your Holiness knows that some one
will be hit. It might be opportune, for example, to excommunicate
Father Molinos, now fast in the dungeons of St. Angelo, unless, indeed,
the rats have devoured him there. But I question the expediency of
going much further.”
“Cardinal,” said the Pope, “you think yourself prodigiously clever, but
you ought to know that the state of public opinion allowed us no
alternative. Moreover, I will give you a wrinkle, in case you should
ever come to be Pope yourself. It is unwise to allow ancient
prerogatives to fall entirely into desuetude. Far-seeing men
prognosticate a great revival of sacerdotalism in the nineteenth
century, and what is impotent in an age of sense may be formidable in
an age of nonsense. Further, we know not from one day to another
whether we may not be absolutely necessitated to excommunicate that
fautor of Gallicanism, Louis the Fourteenth, and before launching our
bolt at a king, we may think well to test its efficacy upon a rat.
_Fiat experimentum._ And now to return to our rats, from which we have
ratted. Is there indeed no hope?”
“_Lateat scintillula forsan_,” said the Cardinal mysteriously.
“Ha! How so?” eagerly demanded Alexander.
“Our hopes,” answered the Cardinal, “are associated with the recent
advent to this city of an extraordinary personage.”
“Explain,” urged the Pope.
“I speak,” resumed the Cardinal, “of an aged man of no plebeian mien or
bearing, albeit most shabbily attired in the skins, now fabulously
cheap, of the vermin that torment us; who, professing to practise as an
herbalist, some little time ago established himself in an obscure
street of no good repute. A tortoise hangs in his needy shop, nor are
stuffed alligators lacking. Understanding that he was resorted to by
such as have need of philters and love-potions, or are incommoded by
the longevity of parents and uncles, I was about to have him arrested,
when I received a report which gave me pause. This concerned the
singular intimacy which appeared to subsist between him and our
enemies. When he left home, it was averred, he was attended by troops
of them obedient to his beck and call, and spies had observed him
banqueting them at his counter, the rats sitting erect and comporting
themselves with perfect decorum. I resolved to investigate the matter
for myself. Looking into his house through an unshuttered window, I
perceived him in truth surrounded by feasting and gambolling rats; but
when the door was opened in obedience to my attendants’ summons, he
appeared to be entirely alone. Laying down a pestle and mortar, he
greeted me by name with an easy familiarity which for the moment quite
disconcerted me, and inquired what had procured him the honour of my
visit. Recovering myself, and wishing to intimidate him:
“‘I desire in the first place,’ I said, ‘to point out to you your grave
transgression of municipal regulations in omitting to paint your name
over your shop.’
“‘Call me Rattila,’ he rejoined with unconcern, ‘and state your further
business.’
“I felt myself on the wrong tack, and hastened to interrogate him
respecting his relations with our adversaries. He frankly admitted his
acquaintance with rattery in all its branches, and his ability to
deliver the city from this scourge, but his attitude towards your
Holiness was so deficient in respect that I question whether I ought to
report it.”
“Proceed, son,” said the Pope; “we will not be deterred from providing
for the public weal by the ribaldry of a ratcatcher.”
“He scoffed at what he termed your Holiness’s absurd position, and
affirmed that the world had seldom beheld, or would soon behold again,
so ridiculous a spectacle as a Pope besieged by rats. ‘I can help your
master,’ he continued, ‘and am willing; but my honour, like his, is
aspersed in the eyes of the multitude, and he must come to my aid, if I
am to come to his.’
“I prayed him to be more explicit, and offered to be the bearer of any
communication to your Holiness.
“‘I will unfold myself to no one but the Pope himself,’ he replied,
‘and the interview must take place when and where I please to appoint.
Let him meet me this very midnight, and alone, in the fifth chamber of
the Appartamento Borgia.’
“‘The Appartamento Borgia!’ I exclaimed in consternation. ‘The saloons
which the wicked Pope Alexander the Sixth nocturnally perambulates,
mingling poisons that have long lost their potency for Cardinals who
have long lost their lives!’
“‘Have a care!’ he exclaimed sharply. ‘You speak to his late Holiness’s
most intimate friend.’
“‘Then,’ I answered, ‘you must obviously be the Devil, and I am not at
present empowered to negotiate with your Infernal Majesty. Consider,
however, the peril and inconvenience of visiting at dead of night rooms
closed for generations. Think of the chills and cobwebs. Weigh the
probability of his Holiness being devoured by rats.’
“‘I guarantee his Holiness absolute immunity from cold,’ he replied,
‘and that none of my subjects shall molest him either going or
returning.’
“‘But,’ I objected, ‘granting that you are not the Devil, how the
devil, let me ask, do you expect to gain admittance at midnight to the
Appartamento Borgia?’
“‘Think you I cannot pass through a stone wall?’ answered he, and
vanished in an instant. A tremendous scampering of rats immediately
ensued, then all was silence.
“On recovering in some measure from my astounded condition, I caused
strict search to be made throughout the shop. Nothing came to light but
herbalists’ stuff and ordinary medicines. And now, Holy Father, your
Holiness’s resolution? Reflect well. This Rattila may be the King of
the Rats, or he may be Beelzebub in person.”
Alexander the Eighth was principally considered by his contemporaries
in the light of a venerable fox, but the lion had by no means been
omitted from his composition.
“All powers of good forbid,” he exclaimed, “that a Pope and a Prince
should shrink from peril which the safety of the State summons him to
encounter! I will confront this wizard, this goblin, in the place of
his own appointing, under his late intimate friend’s very nose. I am a
man of many transgressions, but something assures me that Heaven will
not deem this a fit occasion for calling them to remembrance. Time
presses; I lead on; follow, Cardinal Barbadico, follow! Yet stay, let
us not forget temporal and spiritual armouries.”
And hastily providing himself with a lamp, a petronel, a bunch of keys,
a crucifix, a vial of holy water, and a manual of exorcisms, the Pope
passed through a secret door in a corner of his chamber, followed by
the Cardinal bearing another lamp and a naked sword, and preceded by
the dog and the two cats, all ardent and undaunted as champions bound
to the Holy Land for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre.