The Saint Part 34

Benedetto did not answer this unexpected question at once.

"Well, well," his interlocutor continued. "It is not of much importance at present. We are not in a court of justice. I hold that if one is going to do good, it is best to do it in one's own name. But then I do not go to church, and my views differ from yours. However, as I said before, it is of no importance. Do you know who I am? Did the _delegato_ tell you?"

"No, sir."

"Very well, then; I am a functionary of the State, who takes some interest in the public security, and who has a certain amount of power--yes, a certain amount of power. Now I am going to prove to you that I take an interest in you also. I regret to say, you are in a critical position, my dear Signor Maironi, or Signor Benedetto, at your choice. An accusation of a really serious nature has been lodged against you with the judicial authorities, and I see that not only your reputation for saintliness is in danger, but also your personal liberty, and hence your preaching, at least for several years."

A flame spread over Benedetto's face, and his eyes flashed.

"Leave the saintliness and the reputation alone," said he.

The august functionary of the State continued, unmoved:

"I have wounded you. But you must know that your reputation for saintliness is threatened by other dangers. Other things are said about you which have nothing to do with the penal code,--you may be quite easy on that score--but which are not in perfect harmony with Catholic morals. I a.s.sure you these things are believed by many. I am simply stating the facts; it is really no business of mine. After all, saintliness is never a reality; it is always more or less an idealisation of the image by the mirror. If there is saintliness anywhere, it is in the mirror, in the people who believe in the saints.

I myself do not believe in them. But let us come to serious matters. I was obliged to say some unpleasant things to you, I even wounded you; now I will apply the remedy. I am not a believer, but, nevertheless, I appreciate the religious principle as an element of public order, and this is also the view taken by my superiors and the view taken by the Government itself. Therefore the Government cannot approve of proceedings of such a scandalous nature against one whom the people regard as a saint, proceedings which might possibly stir up disorder.

But that is not all! We know that you stand in high favour with the Pope, who sees you often. Now the 'powers that be' have no desire to cause the Pope any personal annoyance. They have the good intention to spare him this unpleasantness if possible. And it will be possible on one condition. Here in Rome you have active enemies--not on our side, not on the Liberal side, you know!--who are scheming to ruin you completely, to rob you of your reputation and everything. If you wish to know my opinion exactly, I will tell you that I think, from a Catholic point of view, they are right. I modify somewhat, for my use and for theirs, the famous motto of the Jesuits, _'Aut sint ut sunt,'_ and I make it, _'Aut non erunt.'_ They tell me you are a Liberal Catholic.

That simply means that you are not a Catholic. But let us proceed. Your enemies have denounced you to the Public Prosecutor, and it would be our duty to send the _carabinieri_ to arrest Signor Pietro Maironi, condemned, in his absence, by the a.s.size Court at Brescia, for having failed to serve on a jury when summoned. But that is a slight matter.

You imagine you healed some people at Jenne, and you are accused not only of practising medicine unlawfully, but even of having poisoned a patient--nothing less! Now we have the means of saving you. We will manage to hush up this accusation. But if you remain in Rome, your enemies here will make so much noise that it will be impossible for us to feign deafness. You must go away to some distant place, and go at once! It would be better to go out of Italy. Try France, where there is a famine of saintliness. Or, at least--do you not own a house on Lake Lugano? There are some sisters in it now, are there not? Sisters and saints go extremely well together. Join the sisters, and let this storm blow over."

The Commendatore spoke very slowly, very seriously, hiding his irony under an indifference which was even more insolent.

Benedetto rose, resolute and severe.

"I was with a sick man," he said, "who needed my illegal medicine. It would have been better to leave me at my post. You and the Government are my worst enemies if you offer me the means to fly from justice.

Perform your duty by sending the _carabinieri_ to arrest me for not serving on the jury. I will prove that it was impossible for me to have received the summons. Let the Public Prosecutor do his duty by proceeding against me on the strength of the affair at Jenne; you will always find me at Villa Mayda. Tell your superiors this: tell them that I shall not stir from Rome, that I fear only one Judge, and let them fear Him also in their false hearts, for He will be more terrible against falseness of heart than against honest violence!"

The Commendatore, who had not been prepared for this blow, grew livid with impotent rage, and was about to burst into a torrent of angry words when the dull rumble of a carriage was heard entering the courtyard. He looked away from Benedetto and listened. Benedetto grasped the back of his chair that he might not be tempted to turn his back on him. The other man roused himself; the angry light, which for a moment had died down, blazed forth again in his eyes. He threw aside the newspaper which he had held in his hand all the time, and bringing his fist down heavily upon the table, he exclaimed:

"What are you doing? Do not dare to move!"

The two men looked at each other fixedly for a few seconds in silence, one with a look of majestic authority, the other stern and forbidding.

The official continued violently:

"Shall I have you arrested here?"

Benedetto was still looking at him in silence; at length he answered:

"I am waiting. Do as you please."

An usher, who had knocked several times in vain, now appeared on the threshold and bowed to the Commendatore without speaking. The Commendatore answered at once: "I am coming," and, rising hastily, left the room with a strange expression on his face, where anger was disappearing, and obsequiousness was dawning.

The usher returned immediately, and told Benedetto to wait.

A quarter of an hour pa.s.sed. Benedetto, s.h.i.+vering, his heart in a tumult, his head on fire, excited and exhausted by fever, had once more sunk upon his chair, while the most disconnected thoughts whirled through his brain. May G.o.d forgive this man! Forgive them all! What joy if the Pontiff should forbid the condemnation of Selva! How does the person who may not write to me know? And now, why are they keeping me waiting? What more can they want with me? Oh! what if with this fever I should no longer be master of my thoughts or of my words? How terrible!

My G.o.d, my G.o.d, do not permit that! But what horrible baseness there is in the world, what shameful, hidden fornication between these people of the Church and of the State, who hate each other, who despise each other! Why, why dost Thou permit it, Lord? Still no one comes! This fever! My G.o.d, my G.o.d! let me remain master of my thoughts, of my words.

G.o.d of Truth! Thy servant is in the hands of his conspiring enemies: give him strength to glorify Thee, even in the burning fire! Those two persons are thinking of me now. I must not think of them! They are not sleeping, but thinking of me! I am not ungrateful, not ungrateful; but I must not think of them! I will think of thee, venerable Saint of the Vatican, who sleepest and knowest not! Ah! those narrow stairs which I shall never more ascend! That sweet face, full of the Holy Spirit, I shall never see again! Still--G.o.d be praised!--I did not behold it in vain! What am I doing here? Why do I not go away? But could I go away?

Oh! this fever!

He rose, and tried to read the hour on the round face of a clock which showed white in the darkness. It was five minutes to eleven. Outside, the thunder-storm still raged. The power of the maddened elements, the power of time which was pus.h.i.+ng the tiny hands there on the face of the clock, seemed friendly to Benedetto, in their indifferent predominance over the human power, in whose stronghold he was, and which held him at its mercy. But the fever, the ever-increasing fever! He was burning with thirst. If only he could open a window, hold out his mouth to the waters of heaven!

An electric bell sounded, and at last he hears steps in the anteroom.

Here is the Commendatore, in his hat and overcoat. He closes the door behind him, gathers up the papers lying on the table, and says to Benedetto, with a disdainful air:

"Mark this. We give you three days in which to leave Rome. Do you understand?" Without even waiting for an answer, he pressed a bell. The usher entered, and he commanded:

"Show him out!"

On reaching the great stairway with his guide, Benedetto, believing himself free to descend, begged for a little water.

"Water?" the usher replied. "I cannot go for it now. His Excellency is waiting. Please step this way."

To Benedetto's' great astonishment, he invited him to enter the lift.

"Both their Excellencies," said the usher, correcting himself, and, as the lift ascended to the second floor, he looked at Benedetto as at one about to receive a great honour which he does not appear to deserve.

When they reached the second floor, the two traversed an immense hall dimly lighted. From this hall Benedetto was shown into an apartment so brilliantly illumined as to cause him discomfort and suffering, and he was nearly blinded.

Two men, seated in the two corners of a large sofa, were waiting for him, each in a different att.i.tude, the younger with his hands in his pockets, his legs crossed, and his head leaning against the back of the couch; the elder with his body bent forward, and continuously stroking his grey beard, first with one hand and then with the other. The first individual had a sarcastic expression, the second a searching, melancholy, kindly one. The latter, who evidently possessed the greater authority of the two, invited Benedetto to be seated in an easy-chair, opposite to him.

"You must not think, dear Signor Maironi," said he in a voice both harmonious and deep, and which seemed, in a way, to correspond with the melancholy look in his eyes, "you must not think that we are here as two powerful arms of the State. We are here, at the present moment, as two individuals of a very rare species, two statesmen who know their business well, and who despise it still more. We are two great idealists, who know how to lie in a most ideal manner to those who deserve nothing better, and who also know how to adore Truth; two democrats, but nevertheless two adorers of that recondite Truth which has never been touched by the dirty hands of old Demos."

Having spoken thus, the man of the flowing grey beard once more began to stroke it, first with one hand, then with the other, and, puckering his eyes, which sparkled with a shrewd smile, for he was pleased with his own words, watched for surprise on Benedetto's face.

"We are, moreover, believers also," he continued.

The other personage, without raising his head from the back of the couch, lifted his open hands, and said, almost solemnly:

"Steady!" "Let the word pa.s.s, my dear friend," the first speaker said, without looking towards him. "We are both believers, but in different ways. I believe in G.o.d with all my might, and my might is great, and I shall have Him with me always, You believe in G.o.d, with all your weaknesses, and they are few, and you will not have Him with you until you are upon your death-bed."

Another shrewd and self-complacent smile, another pause. The friend shook his head, raising his eyebrows as if he had heard a jest deserving only of commiseration, but not of an answer.

"I, for my part," the deep and harmonious voice went on, "am also a Christian. Not a Catholic, but a Christian. Indeed, because I am a Christian am an anti-Catholic. My heart is Christian, and my brain is Protestant. It is with joy that I see in Catholicism signs, not of decrepitude, but of putrefaction. Charity is being dissolved in the most sincerely Catholic hearts into a dark mud, full of the worms of hatred.

I see Catholicism cracking in many places, and I see the ancient idolatry upon which it has raised itself bursting forth through the cracks. What few youthful, healthy, and vital energies appear within it, all tend to separate from it. I know that you are a radical Catholic, that you are the friend of a man who is really sound and strong, and who calls himself a Catholic, but who is p.r.o.nounced a heretic by true Catholics; and a heretic he certainly is. I have been told you are a pupil of this n.o.ble heretic, who labours for reforms and who, at the same time, tries to influence the Pontiff. Now, I myself am looking for a great reformer, but he must be an antipope; not antipope in the narrow, historical sense, but an antipope in the Lutheran sense of the word. Curiosity p.r.i.c.ks us to know in what way you believe it possible to rejuvenate this poor old Papacy, of which we laymen are ahead not only in the conquest of civilisation, but also in the science of G.o.d, even in the science of Christ, this Papacy which follows us at a great distance, panting and stopping by the way every now and then, hanging back like an animal which smells the shambles, and then, when it is pulled very hard, jumping forward, only to stop again until the rope is twitched once more. Explain your idea of Catholic reform to us. Let us hear it."

Benedetto remained silent.

"Speak," continued the unknown deity who appeared to reign in that place. "My friend is not Herod, nor am I Pilate. We might perhaps both become apostles of your idea."

His friend once more extended his wide-open hands, without raising his head from the sofa-back, and said again, with a stronger accent on the first syllable:

"Steady!"

Benedetto was silent.

"It appears to me, _caro mio_," said the friend, turning his head alone towards his colleague, "that this promises to be the first time your eloquence has failed you. Here the model of the _nihil respondit_ is taken very seriously."

Benedetto shuddered, horrified at this allusion to the Divine Master, and the fear of seeming a presumptuous imitator. At that moment he ceased to feel his illness--the fever, the thirst, the heaviness of his head.