The Roman Question Part 11

"I can do nothing for your Excellency to-day," said Antonio. "Come here to-morrow at the same hour, and I think you'll have reason to be satisfied."

Berti was punctual to the appointment. Signor Antonio, for fear of being swindled, asked for an accurate description of the missing article. This having been given, he at once produced the snuff-box.

"Your Excellency will please to pay me two scudi," he said; "I should have charged you four, but that you are recommended to me by a magistrate whom I particularly esteem."

It would appear that all the Roman magistrates are not equally estimable; at least to judge from what happened to the Marquis de Sesmaisons. He was robbed of half-a-dozen silver spoons and forks. He imprudently lodged a complaint with the authorities. Being asked for an exact description of the stolen articles, he sent the remaining half-dozen to speak for themselves to the magistrate who had charge of the affair. It is chronicled that he never again saw either the first or the second half-dozen!

The malversations of public functionaries are tolerated so long as they do not directly touch the higher powers. Officials of every degree hold out their hands for a present. The Government rather encourages the system than the reverse. It is just so much knocked off the salaries.

The Government even overlooks embezzlement of public money, provided the guilty party be an ecclesiastic, or well affected to the present order of things. The errors of friends are judged _en famille_. If a Prelate make a mistake, he is reprimanded, and dismissed, which means that his situation is changed for a better one.

Monsignor N---- gets the holy house of Loretto into financial trouble.

The consequence is that Monsignor N---- is removed to Rome, and placed at the head of the hospital of the Santo Spirito. Probably this is done because the latter establishment is richer and more difficult to get into financial trouble than the holy house of Loretto.

Monsignor A---- was an Auditor of the Rota, and made a bad judge. He was made a Prefect of Bologna. He failed to give satisfaction at Bologna, and was made a Minister, and still remains so.

If occasionally officials of a certain rank are punished, if even the law is put in force against them with unusual vigour, rest a.s.sured the public interest has no part in the business. The real springs of action are to be sought elsewhere. Take as an example the Campana affair, which created such a sensation in 1858.

This unfortunate Marquis succeeded his father and his grandfather as Director of the Monte di Pieta, or public p.a.w.nbroking establishment.

His office placed him immediately under the control of the Finance Minister. It was that Minister's duty to overlook his acts, and to prevent him from going wrong.

Campana went curiosity mad. The pa.s.sion of collecting, which has proved the ruin of so many well-meaning people, drove him to his destruction. He bought pictures, marbles, bronzes, Etruscan vases. He heaped gallery on gallery. He bought at random everything that was offered to him. Rome never had such a terrible buyer. He bought as people drink, or take snuff, or smoke opium. When he had no more money of his own left to buy with, he began to think of a loan. The coffers of the Monte di Pieta were at hand: he would borrow of himself, upon the security of his collection. The Finance Minister Galli offered no difficulties. Campana was in favour at Court, esteemed by the Pope, liked by the Cardinals; his principles were known, he had proved his devotion to those in power. The Government never refuses its friends anything. In short Campana was allowed to lend himself 4,000, for which he gave security to a much larger amount.

But the order by which the Minister gave him permission to draw from the coffers of the Monte di Pieta was so loosely drawn up, that he was enabled to take, without any fresh authority, a trifle of something like 106,000. This he took between the 12th of April, 1854, and the 1st of December 1856, a period of nineteen months and a half.

There was no concealment in the transaction; it certainly was irregular, but it was not clandestine. Campana paid himself the interest of the money he had lent himself. In 1856 he was paternally reprimanded. He received a gentle rap over the knuckles, but there was not the least idea of tying his hands. He stood well at Court.

The unfortunate man still went on borrowing. They had not even taken the precaution to close his coffers against himself. Between the 1st of December, 1856, and the 7th of November, 1857, he took a further sum of about 103,000. But he gave grand parties; the Cardinals adored him; testimonies of satisfaction poured in upon him from all sides.

The real truth is that a national p.a.w.nbroking establishment is of no use to the Church, it is only required for the nation. Campana might have borrowed the very walls of the building, without the Pontifical Court meddling in the matter.

Unluckily for him, the time came when it answered the purpose of Antonelli to send him to the galleys. This great statesman had three objects to gain by such a course. Firstly, he would stop the mouth of diplomacy, and silence the foreign press, which both charged the Pope with tolerating an abuse. Secondly, he would humiliate one of those laymen who take the liberty to rise in the world without wearing violet hose. Lastly, he should be able to bestow Campana's place upon one of his brothers, the worthy and interesting Filippo Antonelli.

He took a long time to mature his scheme, and laid his train silently and secretly. He is not a man to take any step inconsiderately. While Campana was going and coming, and giving dinners, and buying more statues, in blissful ignorance of the lowering storm, the Cardinal negotiated a loan at Rothschild's, made arrangements to cover the deficit, and instructed the Procuratore Fiscale to draw up an indictment for peculation.

The accusation fell like a thunderbolt upon the poor Marquis. From his palace to his prison was but a step. As he entered there, he rubbed his eyes, and asked himself, ingenuously enough, whether this move was not all a horrible dream. He would have laughed at any one who had told him he was seriously in danger. He charged with peculation! Out upon it! Peculation meant the clandestine application by a public officer of public funds to his private profit: whereas he had taken nothing clandestinely, and was ruined root and branch. So he quietly occupied himself in his prison by writing sonnets, and when an artist came to pay him a visit, he gave him an order for a new work.

In spite of the eloquent defence made in his behalf by a young advocate, the tribunal condemned him to twenty years' hard labour. At this rate, the Minister who had allowed him to borrow the money should certainly have been beheaded. But the lambs of the clergy don't eat one another.

The advocate who had defended Campana was punished for having pleaded too eloquently, by being forbidden to practise in Court for three months.

You may imagine that this cruel sentence cast a stigma upon Campana.

Not a bit of it. The people, who have often experienced his generosity, regard him as a martyr. The middle cla.s.s despises him much less than it does many a yet unpunished functionary. His old friends of the n.o.bility and of the Sacred College often shake him by the hand.

I have known Cardinal Tosti, at once his gaoler and his friend, let him have the use of his private kitchen.

Condemnations are a dishonour only in countries where the judges are honoured. All the world knows that the pontifical magistrates are not instruments of justice, but tools of power.

CHAPTER XV.

TOLERANCE.

If crimes against Heaven are those which the Church forgives the least, every man who is not even nominally a Catholic, is of course in the eyes of the Pope a rogue and a half.

These criminals are very numerous: the geographer Balbi enumerates some six hundred millions of them on the surface of the globe. The Pope continues to d.a.m.n them all conformably with the tradition of the Church; but he has given up levying armies to make war upon them here below.

Things are improved when we daily find the Head of the Roman Catholic Church in friendly intercourse with the foes of his religion. He partakes of the liberality of a Mussulman Prince; he receives a schismatic Empress as a loving father; he converses familiarly with a Queen who has abjured Catholicism to marry a Protestant; he receives with distinction the aristocracy of the New Jerusalem; he sends his Majordomo to attend upon a young heretic prince[11] travelling _incognito_. I hardly know whether Gregory VII. would approve this tolerance; nor can I tell how it is judged in the other world by the instigators of the Crusades, or by the advisers of the Ma.s.sacre of St.

Bartholomew. For my own part, I should award it unbounded praise, if I could believe it took its source in a spirit of enlightenment and Christian charity. I should regard it differently, if I thought it was to be traced to calculations of policy and interest.

The difficulty is to penetrate the secret thoughts of the Sovereign Pontiff; to find a key to the real motive of his tolerance. Natural mildness and interested mildness resemble each other in their effects, but differ widely in their causes. When the Pope and the Cardinals overwhelm M. de Rothschild with a.s.surances of their highest consideration, are we to conclude that an Israelite is equal to a Roman Catholic in their eyes, as he is in yours or mine? Or are we to conclude that they deem it expedient to mask their real sentiments because M. de Rothschild has millions to spare?

This delicate problem is not difficult to solve. We have but to seek out a Jew in Rome who is _not_ the possessor of millions, and to ask him how he is considered and treated by the Popes. If the Government really make no difference between this citizen who is a Jew, and another who is a Catholic, I will say the Popes have become tolerant in earnest. If, on the contrary, we find that the administration accords this poor Jew a social position somewhere between man and the dog, then I am bound to set down the fine speeches made to M. de Rothschild, as proceeding from calculations of interest, and as inferring a sacrifice of dignity.

Now mark, and judge for yourselves. There were Jews in Italy before there were Christians in the world. Roman polytheism, which tolerated everything except the kicks administered by Polyeucte to the statue of Jupiter, gave a place to the G.o.d of Israel. Afterwards came the Christians, and they were tolerated till they conspired against the laws. They were often confounded with the Jews, because they came from the same corner of the East. Christianity increased by means of pious conspiracies; enrolled slaves braved their masters, and became master in its turn. I don't blame it for practising reprisals, and cutting the pagans' throats; but in common justice it has killed too many Jews.

Not at Rome. The Popes kept a specimen of the accursed race to bring before G.o.d at the last judgment. The Scripture had warned the Jews that they should live miserably till the consummation of time. The Church, ever mindful of prophecy, undertook to keep them alive and miserable. She made enclosures for them, as we do in our _Jardin des Plantes_ for rare animals. At first they were folded in the valley of Egeria, then they were penned in the Trastevere, and finally cribbed in the Ghetto. In the daytime they were allowed to go about the city, that the people might see what a dirty, degraded being a man is when he does not happen to be a Christian; but when night came they were put under lock and key. The Ghetto used to close just as the Faithful were on their way to d.a.m.nation at the theatre.

On the occasion of certain solemnities the Munic.i.p.al Council of Rome amused the populace with _Jew races_.

When modern philosophy had somewhat softened Catholic manners, horses were subst.i.tuted for Jews. The Senator of the city used annually to administer to them an official kick in the seat of honour: which token of respect they acknowledged by a payment of 800 scudi. At every accession of a Pope, they were obliged to range themselves under the Arch of t.i.tus, and to offer the new Pontiff a Bible, in return for which he addressed to them an insulting observation. They paid a perpetual annuity of 450 scudi to the heirs of a renegade who had abused them. They paid the salary of a preacher charged to work at their conversion every Sat.u.r.day, and if they stayed away from the sermon they were fined. But they paid no taxes in the strict sense of the word, because they were not citizens. The law regarded them in the light of travellers at an inn. The license to dwell in Rome was provisional, and for many centuries it was renewed every year. Not only were they without any political rights, but they were deprived of even the most elementary civil rights. They could neither possess property, nor engage in manufactures, nor cultivate the soil: they lived by botching and brokage. How they lived at all surprises me.

Want, filth, and the infected atmosphere of their dens, had impoverished their blood, made them wan and haggard, and stamped disgrace upon their looks. Some of them scarcely retained the semblance of humanity. They might have been taken for brutes; yet they were notoriously intelligent, apt at business, resigned to their lot, good-tempered, kind-hearted, devoted to their families, and irreproachable in their general conduct.

I need not add that the Roman rabble, bettering the instruction of Catholic monks, spurned them, reviled them, and robbed them. The law forbade Christians to hold converse with them, but to steal anything from them was a work of grace.

The law did not absolutely sanction the murder of a Jew; but the tribunals regarded the murderer of a man in a different light from the murderer of a Jew. Mark the line of pleading that follows.

"Why, Gentlemen, does the law severely punish murderers, and sometimes go the length of inflicting upon them the penalty of death? Because he who murders a Christian murders at once a body and a soul. He sends before the Sovereign Judge a being who is ill-prepared, who has not received absolution, and who falls straight into h.e.l.l--or, at the very least, into purgatory. This is why murder--I mean the murder of a Christian--cannot be too severely punished. But as for us (counsel and client), what have we killed? Nothing, Gentlemen, absolutely nothing but a wretched Jew, predestined for d.a.m.nation. You know the obstinacy of his race, and you know that if he had been allowed a hundred years for his conversion, he would have died like a brute, without confession. I admit that we have advanced by some years the maturity of celestial justice; we have hastened a little for him an eternity of torture which sooner or later must inevitably have been his lot. But be indulgent, Gentlemen, towards so venial an offence, and reserve your severity for those who attempt the life and salvation of a Christian!"

This speech would be nonsense at Paris. It was sound logic at Rome, and, thanks to it, the murderer got off with a few months'

imprisonment.

You will ask why the Jews have not fled a hundred leagues from this Slough of Despond. The answer is, because they were born there.

Moreover, the taxation is light, and rent is moderate. Add that, when famine has been in the land, or the inundations of the Tiber have spread ruin and devastation around, the scornful charity of the Popes has flung them some bones to gnaw. Then again, travelling costs money, and pa.s.sports are not to be had for the asking in Rome.

But if, by some miracle of industry, one of these unfortunate children of Israel has managed to acc.u.mulate a little money, his first thought has been to place his family beyond the reach of the insults of the Ghetto. He has realized his little fortune, and has gone to seek liberty and consideration in some less Catholic country. This accounts for the fact that the Ghetto was no richer at the accession of Pius IX. than it was in the worst days of the Middle Ages.

History has made haste to write in letters of gold all the good deeds of the reigning Pope, and, above all, the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the Jews.

Pius IX. has removed the gates of the Ghetto. He allows the Jews to go about by night as well as by day, and to live where they like. He has exempted them from the munic.i.p.al kick and the 800 scudi which it cost them. He has closed the little church where these poor people were catechized every Sat.u.r.day, against their will, and at their own expense. His accession may be regarded, then, as an era of deliverance for the people of Israel who have set up their tents in Rome.

Europe, which sees things from afar, naturally supposes that under so tolerant a sway as that of Pius IX., Jews have thronged from all parts of the world into the Papal States. But see how paradoxical a science is that of statistics. From it we learn that in 1842, under Gregory XVI., during the captivity of Babylon, the little kingdom of the Pope contained 12,700 Jews. We further learn that in 1853, in the teeth of such reforms, such a shower of benefits, such justice, and such tolerance, the Israelites in the kingdom were reduced to 9,237. In other words, 3,463 Jews--more than a quarter of the Jewish population--had withdrawn from the paternal action of the Holy Father.

Either this people is very ungrateful, or we don't know the whole state of the case.

While I was at Rome, I had secret inquiries on the subject made of two notables of the Ghetto. When the poor people heard the object I had in view in my inquiries, they expressed great alarm. "For Heaven's sake don't pity us!" they cried.