A Golden Book of Venice Part 24

He had gathered the few books from her oratory and boudoir, and at intervals when he could control his thought he pored over them, treasuring every faint pencil-line, every sentence blotted by tears, as an indication of having specially occupied her. Now that he could no longer discuss these moods, how eagerly he sought for the light she would so gladly have given him in those past, happier days!

In vain he asked of the Lady Beata whether they had discussed these thoughts together--whether Fra Francesco had brought her the little worn volumes.

"My lord, I know not," she answered coldly, resolved in her own heart to tell him nothing that he did not already know, since only now it had pleased him to concern himself with that religious att.i.tude which was costing Marina so dearly. For the whole strength of the love she would once have yielded him for the asking, the Lady Beata now lavished upon Marina, in jealous devotion.

But he could not be angry with Fra Francesco, who had only been faithful in sharing his belief with her, while he, her husband, had refused to help her. "My G.o.d!" he groaned; "why are we blind until the anguish comes!"

As he drearily paced the stately chambers--so empty without Marina--what would he not have given to hear her voice again repeat those eager questions he had been so willing to repress! How could it ever have vexed him that she should wish to understand the question that was occupying Venice! But now he remembered having grown less and less patient with her as she had returned to this theme, until, in self-defense, she had said with gentle dignity, yet half-surprised at his irritation:

"Marco, have a little patience with me. Remember that our young n.o.bles are trained in knowledge of these laws of Venice from quite early boyhood."

"It is part training, if thou wilt," he had answered lightly; "or in these questions women are stupid--I know not. But these matters concern them not." And after that, he remembered now with shame, she had troubled him no more, and he had felt it a relief; for during the few discussions they had had together he had been aware that they approached the question from a radically different point of view. He had never taken the trouble to comprehend her ground nor to give her reasons for his own; he had simply made a.s.sertions, with a sense of irritation that any repet.i.tion should be called for in a matter quite out of a woman's province; for the women of Venice had no part in that salon influence on politics which was ascribed to their sisters of France, and her attempts to gain understanding for a personal judgment had chafed him like an interference in his own special field. He, with his subtly trained intellect and legal knowledge, could so easily have convinced her, he told himself remorsefully; but he had not taken the trouble even to look through her lens, while she had been so eager to understand his point of view--and only that she might reach the truth!

Now he had much time to understand it all! He recalled a strange, hurt look when her questions had ceased, but it had not troubled him then; she would forget it,--would understand that he preferred to talk about other things,--he had said to himself, and he had been careful in gracious little ways to show her that he was not displeased. And she had been wise and had vexed him no more; there had been no arguments on this or any other theme. And then the days of strain had come and the labors of the Council had absorbed him. Now he saw that she had been too proud and strong to subject herself to repeated insinuations of inferiority of understanding, as she had been too loving and dutiful to prolong the contest. And so--he groaned aloud as his mistake revealed itself to him in those long, unhappy hours--he had lost the dear opportunity of leading her aright; for he contemplated but one possible issue of such an attempt on his part; he had scorned her entreaty when she came to him for understanding of a mystery that was killing her, and he had driven her to take up the study alone, with the help of her father confessor, who knew but one side of the vexed question, and that _not_ the side of Venice!

He was sure that it was a matter of conscience and not of contest with Marina, therefore she _must_ know; he should have realized that! How had Fra Francesco met her questions? Had he told her it was a matter beyond the comprehension of women? Or had he been patient with her difficulties and solved them with terrible positiveness? Was it he who had brought her these manuals on "Fasts and Penances," "The Use and Nature of the Interdict," "The Duty of the Believer," which completed for her the pictures of horror her faith had already outlined? Marcantonio had taken in all their dread meaning in rapid glances. How could she believe those terrible things he had seen in her eyes--those terrible, terrible things!

Nay, how should she not believe them? And how implicitly she must have believed them to have endured so much in hope of averting this doom!

"Marina! Carina!" his heart went out to her in a great wail of pity; a woman--so tender, so young--kneeling at night in her chapel, alone with the vision of the horror she was praying to avert; bearing the fasting and the penance and the weakness, all alone, in the hope that G.o.d would be merciful; gathering up her failing strength so bravely for that thankless scene in the Senate. And he, her husband, who had never meant that his love should fail her, could have spared her all this pain by a little comprehension! Could she ever forgive him? And would she understand some day? Might he reason it all out lovingly with her when her strength came back to her--"For baby's sake!" that sweet, womanly, natural plea which he had disregarded?

"Signor Santorio," he moaned, "if I might but reason with her, I might cure her!"

"Nay," said Santorio, "not yet; the shadow hath not left her eyes. Let her forget."

She had been growing stronger, they said, doing quite pa.s.sively the things they asked of her toward her restoration; she recognized them all, but she expressed neither wish nor emotion, lying chiefly with closed eyes in the cavernous depths of the great invalid chair where they laid her each day, yet responding by some movement if they called her name--rarely with any words; nothing roused her from that mood of unbroken brooding.

"She will not forget," the great Santorio said in despair. "We must try to rouse her. Let her child be brought."

The ghost of a smile flitted for an instant about her pale lips and over the shadowy horror in her eyes, as Marcantonio leaned over her with their boy in his arms. "Carina," he cried imploringly, "our little one needeth thee!"

She half-opened her arms, but this wraith of the mother, he remembered, frightened the child, who clung sobbing to his father.

Marina fell back with a cry of grief, struggling for the words which came slowly--her first connected speech since her illness. "It is the curse! It parts even mothers and children!"

A strange strength seemed to have come to her; a sudden light gleamed in her eyes; she turned from one to the other, as if seeking some one in authority to answer her question, and fixed upon Santorio's as the strongest face.

"The official acts of a Pope are infallible?" she questioned, with feverish insistence, after the first futile attempt to speak. "The Holy Father who succeeds him may not undo his acts of mercy?"

"Yes, yes, it is true," Santorio a.s.sented, waiting eagerly for the sequence.

A little color had crept into her cheeks; her hands were burning; they grasped the physician's arm like a vise; the change was alarming.

"The edict cannot hurt my baby! Santissima Maria, thou hast saved him!"

she cried. "For he hath the special blessing of his Holiness Pope Clement, and our Holy Father cannot reach him with this curse of Venice!"

"We cannot keep her mind from it," said Santorio, aside to Marcantonio; "it is essential to calm it with the right view--no argument, it might induce the most dangerous excitement. Send for some bishop or theologian who takes the right view; let him present it as a fact, and with authority; her life depends upon it."

He leaned down to his patient in deep commiseration to tell her that all was well--that Venice was under no ban, that G.o.d's blessing still shielded her churches and her children; but she raised her eyes steadily to his, and the strength of the belief, which he saw clearly written within them, filled him with awe and hushed his speech. How was it possible to make her understand!

"Nay," said Marina faintly, still holding him with her sad, solemn eyes, "do not speak. Since Fra Francesco comes no more there is but one who speaketh truth to me. It is the vision of my beautiful Mater Dolorosa of San Donato, which leaveth me not."

There was a stir in the depths of the streets below--a noise of the populace coming nearer, following along the banks of the Ca.n.a.l Grande, as if the cause of their excitement were in some hurried movement on its placid waters; the shouts and jeers of the strident voices were broken by authoritative commands of the Signori della Notte--the officers of police--and the tramp of their guards failing to create order; and above the hubbub rose the cry, distinctly repeated again and again--the cry of an angry populace, "Ande in malora! Ande in malora!"

("Curses go with you!")

XXII

Even Giustinian Giustiniani came and went heavily, asking for the latest change before he returned to the Senate Chamber, and carrying with him always a vision of that white, pleading face which had so wrought upon his anger when he had seen it luminous with her hope for Venice. But now his anger was transferred to her confessor who had bewitched her, to all those Roman prelates who had paid her court--a mere child, not able to defend herself nor to understand, killing herself for a question beyond her! And Marcantonio, for love of her, useless and unmanned! It was more than his senatorial pride could endure to find himself powerless under such complications. To appease his wrath he denounced Fra Francesco through the Bocca di Leone, but when the friar was sought for, by order of the Ten, he was not found. Fra Paolo was appealed to, for he was the friend of the gentle confessor; but he had not known his plans. "If his conscience held him not, it was well for him to flee," he said, "and best for Venice."

But when Fra Paolo was alone in his cell, which, in those days of greatness, he would not exchange for quarters at the Ducal Palace though the Senate pleaded, the memory of a confidential talk held since this quarrel with Rome began brought a hint of the reason for this sudden flight.

He was tender of conscience and strong of faith, this good Fra Francesco; always sad, but never stern toward Fra Paolo's failure to hold a belief implicit as his own in some doctrines of his beloved Church which he held to be vital. Yet his reverence for Fra Paolo's great knowledge and holy life made him unwilling to criticize where he unconsciously questioned. It was the severest test of friendship to keep his faith and affectionate devotion in one who was taking so prominent a part in a movement opposing papal authority; but sometimes, when Fra Paolo had uttered many things he would not have tolerated in any other priest, Fra Francesco said only to himself, in great sadness, "It is G.o.d who maketh men different; we do not know the why!"

The gentle friar sometimes wondered in himself that he could not openly say to Fra Paolo when they met, after matins, the many things which had lain hot in his heart through the night--for how _could_ it be right to oppose the supreme authority? But when the placid face of his friend met his, bathed in the fresh benediction of his altar service--new each morning and never omitted--he forgot the horror with which he had been reasoning that Fra Paolo was hastening the curse upon Venice.

But if Fra Paolo derived no added _finesse_ for his masterful thought from the confidences he so often unconsciously invited from this lifelong friend, his faith in the sincerity and spiritual depth of this brother friar who, out of love for him, listened to much that pained him, taught him to value at its highest this opportunity of the closest scrutiny of his own motives, as he noted the impression of their talk on a nature as sincere and spiritual as it was transparent.

But that night, when they had pa.s.sed from the cloister into Fra Paolo's study-cell, continuing as they walked the train of thought they had been discussing, his listener soon became so distrait that Fra Paolo, who was singularly conscious of unspoken moods, dropped the problem he was unfolding and laid his hand upon his shoulder with the rare tenderness expressed only where he hoped that he might serve.

"We were speaking of weighty matter and thy thoughts are not with me.

Tell me thy trouble."

"It is a question of responsibility--the burden of the confessional,"

Fra Francesco answered simply.

Fra Paolo drew back his hand, and his tone was a shade less tender.

"Of all that hath been reposed in thee under that sacred seal thou must bear the burden alone."

"My brother, dost thou think I can forget my vow?" Fra Francesco exclaimed, reproachfully. "I spake not of that which hath been reposed in me, but of my duty growing out of that sacred office. It was for this I wanted counsel, and I had sought thee before to pray thee to confess me; but I know thy views and I ask thee not."

"Yet as brothers of one holy order thou mayest confide in me, if perchance it may bring thee comfort. For us of the Servi it is our duty of service."

Fra Francesco sat for a moment in silence. "Life is heavy," he said slowly, "and hard to interpret. Yet I seem to feel that thou wilt understand, though it be in the very matter of our difference. There is one--highly placed and n.o.ble in spirit, and to the Church a most devoted daughter--who cometh to me for teaching in this matter of the interdict.

She asketh of me all its meaning--what it shall bring to Venice?"

"Thou tell her, then, it shall bring naught. For if it be p.r.o.nounced it will be unjustly, and without due cause."

"Nay, Paolo, my brother; it is written in the nineteenth maxim of the 'Dictatus Papae' 'That none may judge the Pope.'"

"My brother, who gave thee thy conscience and thine intellect?" Fra Paolo questioned sternly. "And hath He who gave them thee so taught thee to yield them that it should be as if thou had'st not these gifts which, verily, distinguish man from the animals--to whom instinct sufficeth?

Yet, if thou would'st have answer from one of our own casuists in whom thou dost place thy trust, the Cardinal Bellarmino, in his second book on the Roman Pontiffs, will teach thee that without prejudice to this maxim of Gregory thou mayest refuse obedience to a command extending beyond the jurisdiction of him who commands; as Gaetano in his first treatise on the 'Power of the Pope,' will also tell thee. For the peace of thine own mind, my brother, I would I might make thee understand!"

"Nay," answered Fra Francesco, not less earnestly. "Peace for him who hath faith cometh not with one intellectual solution, nor another; but with calm purpose to do the right, however it may be revealed."

"Which, as thou knowest, Francesco, Venice seeketh--and naught else. It is a matter of law in which thou hast made no studies, and therefore hard for thee. Now must I to the Council Chamber, but later I would willingly show thee all the argument. But of this be sure. The Republic will not offend against the liberty of the Holy Church; but she will protect her own."