II

The wizard had kept his word. Not a rat was seen or heard upon the

pilgrimage, which was exceedingly toilsome to the aged Pope, from the

number of passages to be threaded and doors to be unlocked. At length

the companions stood before the portal of the Appartamento Borgia.

“Your Holiness must enter alone,” Cardinal Barbadico admonished, with

manifest reluctance.

“Await my return,” enjoined the Pontiff, in a tone of more confidence

than he could actually feel, as, after much grinding and grating, the

massive door swung heavily back, and he passed on into the dim,

unexplored space beyond. The outer air, streaming in as though eager to

indemnify itself for years of exile, smote and swayed the flame of the

Pope’s lamp, whose feeble ray flitted from floor to ceiling as the

decrepit man, weary with the way he had traversed and the load he was

bearing, tottered and stumbled painfully along, ever and anon arrested

by a closed door, which he unlocked with prodigious difficulty. The

cats cowered close to the Cardinal; the dog at first accompanied the

Pope, but whined so grievously, as though he beheld a spirit, that

Alexander bade him back.

Supreme is the spell of the _genius loci_. The chambers traversed by

the Pope were in fact adorned with fair examples of the painter’s art,

mostly scriptural in subject, but some inspired with the devout

Pantheism in which all creeds are reconciled. All were alike invisible

to the Pontiff, who, with the dim flicker of his lamp, could no more

discern Judaea wed with Egypt on the frescoed ceiling than, with the

human limitation of his faculties, he could foresee that the

ill-reputed rooms would one day harbour a portion of the Vatican

Library, so greatly enriched by himself. Nothing but sinister memories

and vague alarms presented themselves to his imagination. The

atmosphere, heavy and brooding from the long exclusion of the outer

air, seemed to weigh upon him with the density of matter, and to afford

the stuff out of which phantasmal bodies perpetually took shape and, as

he half persuaded himself, substance. Creeping and tottering between

bowl and cord, shielding himself with lamp and crucifix from

Michelotto’s spectral poniard and more fearful contact with fleshless

Vanozzas and mouldering Giulias, the Pope urged, or seemed to urge, his

course amid phantom princes and cardinals, priests and courtesans,

soldiers and serving-men, dancers, drinkers, dicers, Bacchic and

Cotyttian workers of whatsoever least beseemed the inmates of a

Pontifical household, until, arrived in the fifth chamber, close by

the, to him, invisible picture of the Resurrection, he sank exhausted

into a spacious chair that seemed placed for his reception, and for a

moment closed his eyes. Opening them immediately afterwards, he saw

with relief that the phantoms had vanished, and that he confronted what

at least seemed a fellow-mortal, in the ancient ratcatcher, habited

precisely as Cardinal Barbadico had described, yet, for all his mean

apparel, wearing the air of one wont to confer with the potentates of

the earth on other subjects than the extermination of rats.

“This is noble of your Holiness—really,” he said, bowing with mock

reverence. “A second Leo the Great!”

“I tell you what, my man,” responded Alexander, feeling it very

necessary to assert his dignity while any of it remained, “you are not

to imagine that, because I have humoured you so far as to grant you an

audience at an unusual place and time, I am going to stand any amount

of your nonsense and impertinence. You can catch our rats, can you?

Catch them then, and you need not fear that we shall treat you like the

Pied Piper of Hamelin. You have committed sundry rascalities, no doubt?

A pardon shall be made out for you. You want a patent or a privilege

for your ratsbane? You shall have it. So to work, in the name of St.

Muscipulus! and you may keep the tails and skins.”

“Alexander,” said the ratcatcher composedly, “I would not commend or

dispraise you unduly, but this I may say, that of all the Popes I have

known you are the most exuberant in hypocrisy and the most deficient in

penetration. The most hypocritical, because you well know, and know

that I know that you know, that you are not conversing with an ordinary

ratcatcher: had you deemed me such, you would never have condescended

to meet me at this hour and place. The least penetrating, because you

apparently have not yet discovered to whom you are speaking. Do you

really mean to say that you do not know me?”

“I believe I have seen your face before,” said Alexander, “and all the

more likely as I was inspector of prisons when I was Cardinal.”

“Then look yonder,” enjoined the ratcatcher, as he pointed to the

frescoed wall, at the same time vehemently snapping his fingers.

Phosphoric sparks hissed and crackled forth, and coalesced into a blue

lambent flame, which concentrated itself upon a depicted figure, whose

precise attitude the ratcatcher assumed as he dropped upon his knees.

The Pope shrieked with amazement, for, although the splendid Pontifical

vestments had become ragged fur, in every other respect the kneeling

figure was the counterpart of the painted one, and the painted one was

Pinturicchio’s portrait of Pope Alexander the Sixth kneeling as a

witness of the Resurrection.

Alexander the Eighth would fain have imitated his predecessor’s

attitude, but terror bound him to his chair, and the adjuration of his

patron St. Mark which struggled towards his lips never arrived there.

The book of exorcisms fell from his paralysed hand, and the vial of

holy water lay in shivers upon the floor. Ere he could collect himself,

the dead Pope had seated himself beside the Pope with one foot in the

grave, and, fondling a ferret-skin, proceeded to enter into

conversation.

“What fear you?” he asked. “Why should I harm you? None can say that I

ever injured any one for any cause but my own advantage, and to injure

your Holiness now would be to obstruct a design which I have

particularly at heart.”

“I crave your Holiness’s forgiveness,” rejoined the Eighth Alexander,

“but you must be aware that you left the world with a reputation which

disqualifies you for the society of any Pope in the least careful of

his character. It positively compromises me to have so much as the

ghost of a person so universally decried as your Holiness under my

roof, and you would infinitely oblige me by forthwith repairing to your

own place, which I take to be about four thousand miles below where you

are sitting. I could materially facilitate and accelerate your

Holiness’s transit thither if you would be so kind as to hand me that

little book of exorcisms.”

“How is the fine gold become dim!” exclaimed Alexander the Sixth.

“Popes in bondage to moralists! Popes nervous about public opinion! Is

there another judge of morals than the Pope speaking _ex cathedra_, as

I always did? Is the Church to frame herself after the prescriptions of

heathen philosophers and profane jurists? How, then, shall she be

terrible as an army with banners? Did I concern myself with such

pedantry when the Kings of Spain and Portugal came to me like cats

suing for morsels, and I gave them the West and the East?”

“It is true,” Alexander the Eighth allowed, “that the lustre of the

Church hath of late been obfuscated by the prevalence of heresy.”

“It isn’t the heretics,” Borgia insisted. “It is the degeneracy of the

Popes. A shabby lot! You, Alexander, are about the best of them; but

the least Cardinal about my Court would have thought himself bigger

than you.”

Alexander’s spirit rose. “I would suggest,” he said, “that this haughty

style is little in keeping with the sordid garb wherein your Holiness,

consistent after death as in your life, masquerades to the scandal and

distress of the faithful.”

“How can I other? Has your Holiness forgotten your Rabelais?”

“The works of that eminent Doctor and Divine,” answered Alexander the

Eighth, “are seldom long absent from my hands, yet I fail to remember

in what manner they elucidate the present topic.”

“Let me refresh your memory,” rejoined Borgia, and, producing a volume

of the Sage of Meudon, he turned to the chapter descriptive of the

employments of various eminent inhabitants of the nether world, and

pointed to the sentence:

“LE PAPE ALEXANDRE ESTOYT PRENEUR DE RATZ.” [*]

*) _Pantagruel_, Book XI. ch. 30.

“Is this indeed sooth?” demanded his successor.

“How else should François Rabelais have affirmed it?” responded Borgia.

“When I arrived in the subterranean kingdom, I found it in the same

condition as your Holiness’s dominions at the present moment, eaten up

by rats. The attention which, during my earthly pilgrimage, I had

devoted to the science of toxicology indicated me as a person qualified

to abate the nuisance, which commission I executed with such success,

that I received the appointment of Ratcatcher to his Infernal Majesty,

and so discharged its duties as to merit a continuance of the good

opinion which had always been entertained of me in that exalted

quarter. After a while, however, interest began to be made for me in

even more elevated spheres. I had not been able to cram Heaven with

Spaniards, as I had crammed the Sacred College—on the contrary. Truth

to speak, my nation has not largely contributed to the population of

the regions above. But some of us are people of consequence. My

great-grandson, the General of the Jesuits, who, as such, had the ear

of St. Ignatius Loyola, represented that had I adhered strictly to my

vows, he could never have come into existence, and that the Society

would thus have wanted one of its brightest ornaments. This argument

naturally had great weight with St. Ignatius, the rather as he, too,

was my countryman. Much also was said of the charity I had shown to the

exiled Jews, which St. Dominic was pleased to say made him feel ashamed

of himself when he came to think of it; for my having fed my people in

time of dearth, instead of contriving famines to enrich myself, as so

many Popes’ nephews have done since; and of the splendid order in which

I kept the College of Cardinals. Columbus said a good word for me, and

Savonarola did not oppose. Finally I was allowed to come upstairs, and

exercise my profession on earth. But mark what pitfalls line the good

man’s path! I never could resist tampering with drugs of a deleterious

nature, and was constantly betrayed by the thirst for scientific

experiment into practices incompatible with the public health. The good

nature which my detractors have not denied me was a veritable snare. I

felt for youth debarred from its enjoyments by the unnatural vitality

of age, and sympathised with the blooming damsel whose parent alone

stood between her and her lover. I thus lived in constant apprehension

of being ordered back to the Netherlands, and yearned for the wings of

a dove, that I might flee away and be out of mischief. At last I

discovered that my promotion to a higher sphere depended upon my

obtaining a testimonial from the reigning Pope. Let a solemn procession

be held in my honour, and intercession be publicly made for me, and I

should ascend forthwith. I have consequently represented my case to

many of your predecessors: but, O Alexander, you seventeenth-century

Popes are a miserable breed! No fellow-feeling, no _esprit de corps.

Heu pietas! heu prisca fides_! No one was so rude as your ascetic

antecessor. The more of a saint, the less of a gentleman. Personally

offensive, I assure you! But the others were nearly as bad. The haughty

Paul, the fanatic Gregory, the worldly Urban, the austere Innocent the

Tenth, the affable Alexander the Seventh, all concurred in assuring me

that it was deeply to be regretted that I should ever have been

emancipated from the restraints of the Stygian realm, to which I should

do well to return with all possible celerity; that it would much

conduce to the interests of the Church if my name could be forgotten;

and that as for doing anything to revive its memory, they would just as

soon think of canonising Judas Iscariot.”

“And therefore your Holiness has brought these rats upon us, enlisted,

I nothing doubt, in the infernal regions?”

“Precisely so: Plutonic, necyomantic, Lemurian rats, kindly lent by the

Prince of Darkness for the occasion, and come dripping from Styx to

squeak and gibber in the Capitol. But I note your Holiness’s admission

that they belong to a region exempt from your jurisdiction, and that,

therefore, your measures against them, except as regards their status

as belligerents, are for the most part illegitimate and _ultra vires_.”

“I would argue that point,” replied Alexander the Eighth, “if my lungs

were as tough as when I pleaded before the Rota in Pope Urban’s time.

For the present I confine myself to formally protesting against your

Holiness’s unprecedented and parricidal conduct in invading your

country at the head of an army of loathsome vermin.”

“Unprecedented!” exclaimed Borgia. “Am I not the modern Coriolanus? Did

Narses experience blacker ingratitude than I? Where would the temporal

power be but for me? Who smote the Colonna? Who squashed the Orsini?

Who gave the Popes to dwell quietly in their own house? Monsters of

unthankfulness!”

“I am sure,” said Alexander the Eighth soothingly, “that my

predecessors’ inability to comply with your Holiness’s request must

have cost them many inward tears, not the less genuine because entirely

invisible and completely inaudible. A wise Pope will, before all

things, consider the spirit of his age. The force of public opinion,

which your Holiness lately appeared to disparage, was, in fact, as

operative upon yourself as upon any of your successors. If you achieved

great things in your lifetime, it was because the world was with you.

Did you pursue the same methods now, you would soon discover that you

had become an offensive anachronism. It will not have escaped your

Holiness’s penetration that what moralists will persist in terming the

elevation of the standard of the Church, is the result of the so-called

improvement of the world.”

“There is a measure of truth in this,” admitted Alexander the Sixth,

“and the spirit of this age is a very poor spirit. It was my felicity

to be a Pope of the Renaissance. Blest dispensation! when men’s view of

life was large and liberal; when the fair humanities flourished; when

the earth yielded up her hoards of chiselled marble and breathing

bronze, and new-found agate urns as fresh as day; when painters and

sculptors vied with antiquity, and poets and historians followed in

their path; when every benign deity was worshipped save Diana and

Vesta; when the arts of courtship and cosmetics were expounded by

archbishops; when the beauteous Imperia was of more account than the

eleven thousand virgins; when obnoxious persons glided imperceptibly

from the world; and no one marvelled if he met the Pope arm in arm with

the Devil. How miserable, in comparison, is the present sapless age,

with its prudery and its pedantry, and its periwigs and its painted

coaches, and its urban Arcadias and the florid impotence and

ostentatious inanity of what it calls its art! Pope Alexander! I see in

the spirit the sepulchre destined for _you_, and I swear to you that my

soul shivers in my ratskins! Come, now! I do not expect you to emulate

the Popes of my time, but show that your virtues are your own, and your

faults those of your epoch. Pluck up a spirit! Take bulls by the horns!

Look facts in the face! Think upon the images of Brutus and Cassius!

Recognise that you cannot get rid of me, and that the only safe course

is to rehabilitate me. I am not a candidate for canonisation just now;

but repair past neglect and appease my injured shade in the way you wot

of. If this is done, I pledge my word that every rat shall forthwith

evacuate Rome. Is it a bargain? I see it is; you are one of the good

old sort, though fallen on evil days.”

Renaissance or Rats, Alexander the Eighth yielded.

“I promise,” he declared.

“Your hand upon it!”

Subduing his repugnance and apprehension by a strong effort, Alexander

laid his hand within the spectre’s clammy paw. An icy thrill ran

through his veins, and he sank back senseless into his chair.