The Cloister and the Hearth Part 100

"I search in vain for a copy of it to add to my poor library."

"It is well. Then the strict orders I gave four years ago to destroy every copy in Italy, have been well discharged. However, for your comfort, on my being made Pope, some fool turned it into French: so that you may read it, at the price of exile."

"Reduced to this strait we throw ourselves on your holiness's generosity. Vouchsafe to give us your infallible judgment on it!"

"Gently, gently, good Francesco. A Pope's novels are not matters of faith. I can but give you my sincere impression. Well then the work in question had, as far as I remember, all the vices of Boccaccio, without his choice Italian."

_Fra Colonna._] "Your holiness is known for slighting aeneas Silvius as other men never slighted him. I did him injustice to make you his judge.

Perhaps your holiness will decide more justly between these two boys--about blessing the beasts."

The Pope demurred. In speaking of Plutarch he had brightened up for a moment, and his eye had even flashed; but his general manner was as unlike what youthful females expect in a Pope as you can conceive. I can only describe it in French. Le gentilhomme blase. A high bred, and highly cultivated gentleman, who had done, and said, and seen, and known everything, and whose body was nearly worn out. But double languor seem to seize him at the father's proposal.

"My poor Francesco," said he "bethink thee that I have had a life of controversy, and am sick on't, sick as death. Plutarch drew me to this calm retreat; not divinity."

"Nay, but, your holiness, for moderating of strife between two hot young bloods.

'?a?a???? ?? e?????p????.'"

"And know you nature so ill, as to think either of these high-mettled youths will reck what a poor old Pope saith?"

"Oh! your holiness," broke in Gerard, blushing and gasping, "sure, here is one who will treasure your words all his life as words from Heaven."

"In that case," said the Pope, "I am fairly caught. As Francesco here would say--

'??? est?? ?st?? est' a??? e?e??e???.'

I came to taste that eloquent heathen, dear to me e'en as to thee, thou paynim monk; and I must talk divinity, or something next door to it. But the youth hath a good, and a winning face, and writeth Greek like an angel. Well then, my children, to comprehend the ways of the Church, we should still rise a little above the earth, since the Church is between heaven and earth, and interprets betwixt them.

"The question is then, not how vulgar men feel, but how the common Creator of man and beast doth feel, towards the lower animals. This, if we are too proud to search for it in the lessons of the Church, the next best thing is to go to the most ancient history of men and animals."

_Colonna._] "Herodotus."

"Nay, nay; in this matter Herodotus is but a mushroom. Finely were we sped for ancient history, if we depended on your Greeks, who did but write on the last leaf of that great book, Antiquity."

The friar groaned. Here was a Pope uttering heresy against his demiG.o.ds.

"'Tis the Vulgate I speak of. A history that handles matters three thousand years before him pedants call 'the Father of History.'"

_Colonna._] "Oh! the Vulgate? I cry your holiness mercy. How you frightened me. I quite forgot the Vulgate."

"Forgot it? art sure thou ever readst it, Francesco mio?"

"Not quite, your holiness. 'Tis a pleasure I have long promised myself, the first vacant moment. Hitherto these grand old heathen have left me small time for recreation."

_His Holiness._] "First then you will find in Genesis that G.o.d, having created the animals, drew a holy pleasure, undefinable by us, from contemplating of their beauty. Was it wonderful? See their myriad forms; their lovely hair, and eyes, their grace, and of some the power and majesty; the colour of others, brighter than roses, or rubies. And when, for man's sin, not their own, they were destroyed, yet were two of each kind spared.

"And when the ark and its trembling inmates tumbled solitary on the world of water, then, saith the word, 'G.o.d remembered Noah, _and the cattle that were with him in the ark_.'

"Thereafter G.o.d did write his rainbow in the sky as a bond that earth should be flooded no more; and between whom the bond? between G.o.d and man, nay: between G.o.d and man, _and every living creature of all flesh_; or my memory fails me with age. In Exodus G.o.d commanded that the cattle should share the sweet blessing of the one day's rest. Moreover he forbade to muzzle the ox that trod out the corn. 'Nay let the poor overwrought soul s.n.a.t.c.h a mouthful as he goes his toilsome round: the bulk of the grain shall still be for man.' Ye will object perchance that St. Paul, commenting this, saith rudely, 'Doth G.o.d care for oxen?'

Verily, had I been Peter, instead of the humblest of his successors, I had answered him. 'Drop thy theatrical poets, Paul, and read the scriptures: then shalt thou know whether G.o.d careth only for men and sparrows, or for all his creatures. O Paul,' had I made bold to say, 'think not to learn G.o.d by looking into Paul's heart, nor any heart of man, but study that which he hath revealed concerning himself.'

"Thrice he forbade the Jews to boil the kid in his mother's milk; not that this is cruelty, but want of thought and gentle sentiments, and so paves the way for downright cruelty. A prophet riding on an a.s.s did meet an angel. Which of these two, Paulo judice, had seen the heavenly spirit? marry, the prophet. But it was not so. The man, his vision cloyed with sin, saw nought. The poor despised creature saw all. Nor is this recorded as miraculous. Poor proud things, we overrate ourselves.

The angel had slain the prophet and spared the a.s.s, but for that creature's clearer vision of essences divine. He said so, methinks. But in sooth I read it many years agone. Why did G.o.d spare repentant Nineveh? Because in that city were sixty thousand children, _besides much cattle_.

"Profane history and vulgar experience add their mite of witness. The cruel to animals end in cruelty to man; and strange and violent deaths, marked with retribution's b.l.o.o.d.y finger, have in all ages fallen from heaven on such as wantonly harm innocent beasts. This I myself have seen. All this duly weighed, and seeing that, despite this Francesco's friends, the Stoics, who in their vanity say the creatures all subsist for man's comfort, there be snakes and scorpions which kill 'Dominum terrae' with a nip, musquitoes which eat him piecemeal, and tigers and sharks, which crack him like an almond, we do well to be grateful to these true, faithful, patient four-footed friends, which, in lieu of powdering us, put forth their strength to relieve our toils, and do feed us like mothers from their gentle dugs.

"Methinks then the Church is never more divine than in this benediction of our four-footed friends, which has revolted yon great theological authority, the captain of the Pope's guards; since here she inculcates humility and grat.i.tude, and rises towards the level of the mind divine, and interprets G.o.d to man, G.o.d the creator, parent, and friend, of man and beast.

"But all this, young Gentles you will please to receive, not as delivered by the Pope ex cathedra, but uttered carelessly, in a free hour, by an aged clergyman. On that score you will perhaps do well to entertain it with some little consideration. For old age must surely bring a man somewhat, in return for his digestion (his "dura puerorum ilia," eh, Francesco), which it carries away."

Such was the purport of the Pope's discourse; but the manner high-bred, languid, kindly, and free from all tone of dictation. He seemed to be gently probing the matter in concert with his hearers, not playing Sir Oracle. At the bottom of all which was doubtless a slight touch of humbug, but the humbug that embellishes life; and all sense of it was lost in the subtle Italian grace of the thing.

"I seem to hear the oracle of Delphi," said Fra Colonna, enthusiastically.

"I call that good sense," shouted Jacques Bonaventura.

"Oh, captain, good sense!" said Gerard, with a deep and tender reproach.

The Pope smiled on Gerard. "Cavil not at words; that was an unheard-of concession from a rival theologian."

He then asked for all Gerard's work, and took it away in his hand. But, before going, he gently pulled Fra Colonna's ear, and asked him whether he remembered when they were school-fellows together, and robbed the Virgin by the roadside of the money dropped into her box. "You took a flat stick and applied birdlime to the top, and drew the money out through the c.h.i.n.k, you rogue," said his holiness, severely.

"To every signor his own honour," replied Fra Colonna. "It was your holiness's good wit invented the manuvre. I was but the humble instrument."

"It is well. Doubtless you know 'twas sacrilege."

"Of the first water: but I did it in such good company, it troubles me not."

"Humph! I have not even that poor consolation. What did we spend it in, dost mind?"

"Can your holiness ask? Why, sugar-plums."

"What, all on't?"

"Every doit."

"These are delightful reminiscences, my Francesco. Alas! I am getting old. I shall not be here long. And I am sorry for it, for thy sake. They will go and burn thee when I am gone. Art far more a heretic than Huss, whom I saw burned with these eyes; and oh, he died like a martyr."

"Ay, your holiness: but I believe in the Pope; and Huss did not."

"Fox! They will not burn thee; wood is too dear. Adieu, old playmate; adieu, young gentlemen; an old man's blessing be on you."

That afternoon the Pope's secretary brought Gerard a little bag: in it were several gold pieces.

He added them to his store.

Margaret seemed nearer and nearer.