The Roman Question Part 13

"Resolved on conquering herself by this courageous determination, and on triumphing over opposing nature itself,--powerfully urged thereto by another word of Christ, who said that in order to go to him we must hate our relations, when the love we bear them stands in the way,--she went and solemnly performed a great act of renunciation before the altar of the most holy Sacrament.

There, flinging herself on her knees, her heart kindling with an ardent flame of charity towards G.o.d, she offered up to Him all the natural affections of her heart, more especially those which she felt were the strongest within her for the nearest and dearest of her relations. In this heroic action she obtained the intervention of the most holy Virgin, as may be seen by a letter in her handwriting addressed to a regular priest, wherein she promises, by the aid of the holy Virgin, to attach herself no more either to her relations, or to any other earthly object. This renunciation was so resolutely courageous and so sincere that from that hour her brothers, sisters, nephews, and all her kindred became to her objects of total indifference; and she deemed herself thenceforth so much an orphan and alone in the world, that she was enabled to see and converse with her aforesaid relations when they came to see her at the convent, as if they were persons utterly unknown to her.

"She had made herself in Paradise an entirely spiritual family, selected from among the saints who had been the greatest sinners. Her father was St. Augustin; her mother St. Mary the Egyptian; her brother St. William the Hermit, ex-Duke of Aquitaine; her sister St. Margaret of Cortona; her uncle St. Peter, the Prince of the Apostles; her nephews the three children of the furnace of Babylon."

Now here is a book that you, probably, attribute to the monkish ages; a book expressing the isolated sentiments of a mind obscured by the gloom of the cloisters.

In order to convince you of your error, I will give you its t.i.tle and date, and the opinion concerning it expressed by the rulers of Rome.

"Life of the Virgin Saint Jacintha Mariscotti, a professed Nun of the Third Order of the Seraphic Father St. Francis, written by the Father Flaminius Mary Hanibal of Latara, Brother Observant of the Order of the Minors. Rome, 1805.

Published by Antonio Fulgoni, by permission of the Superiors.

"Approbation.--The book is to the glory and honour of the Catholic Religion and the ill.u.s.trious Order of St. Francis, and to the spiritual profit of those persons who desire to enter into the way of perfection.

"Brother Thomas Mancini, of the Order of Preachers, Master, ex-Provincial, and Consultor of Sacred Rites.

"Imprimatur. Brother Thomas Vincent Pani, of the Order of Preachers, Master of the Sacred Apostolical Palace."

Now here we have a woman, a writer, a censor, and a Master of the Palace, who are ready to strangle the whole human race for the sake of hastening its arrival in Paradise. These people are only doing their duty.

Just look out into the street. Four men of different ages are kneeling in the mud before a Madonna, whining out prayers. Presently, fifteen or twenty others come upon you, chanting a canticle to the glory of Mary. Perhaps you think they are yielding to a natural inspiration, and freely working out their salvation. I thought so myself, till I was told that they were paid fifteen-pence for thus edifying the bystanders. This comedy in the open air is subsidized by the Government. And the Government does its duty.

The streets and roads swarm with beggars. Under lay governments the poor either receive succour in their own homes, or are admitted to houses of public charity; they are not allowed to obstruct the public thoroughfares, and tyrannize over the pa.s.sengers. But we are in an ecclesiastical country. On the one hand, poverty is dear to G.o.d; on the other, alms-giving is a deed of piety. If the Pope could make one half of his subjects hold out their hands, and the other half put a halfpenny into each extended palm, he would effect the salvation of an entire people.

Mendicity, which lay sovereigns regard as an ugly sore in the State, to be healed, is tended and watered as a fair flower by a clerical government. Pray give something to yonder sham cripple; give to that cadger who pretends to have lost an arm; and be sure you don't forget that blind young man leaning on his father's arm! A medical man of my acquaintance offered yesterday to restore his sight, by operating for the cataract. The father cried aloud with indignant horror at the proposal; the boy is a fortune to him. Drop an alms for the son into the father's bowl; the Pope will let you into Paradise, of which he keeps the keys.

The Romans themselves are not duped by their beggars. They are too sharp to be taken in by these swindlers in misery. Still they put their hands into their pockets; some from weakness or humanity, some from ostentation, some to gain Paradise. If you doubt my a.s.sertion, try an experiment which I once did, with considerable success. One night, between nine and ten o'clock, I begged all along the Corso. I was not disguised as a beggar. I was dressed as if I were on the Boulevards at Paris. Still, between the Piazza del Popolo and the Piazza di Venezia, I _made_ sixty-three baiocchi (about three shillings). If I were to try the same joke at Paris, the _sergents-de-ville_ would very properly think it their duty to walk me off to the nearest police-station. The Pontifical Government encourages mendicity by the protection of its agents, and recommends it by the example of its friars. The Pontifical Government does its duty.

Prost.i.tution flourishes in Rome, and in all the large towns of the States of the Church. The police is too paternal to refuse the consolations of the flesh to three millions of persons out of whom five or six thousand have taken the vow of celibacy. But in proportion as it is indulgent to vice, it is severe in cases of scandal. It only allows light conduct in women when they are sheltered by the protection of a husband.[12] It casts the cloak of j.a.phet over the vices of the Romans, in order that the pleasures of one nation may not be a scandal to others. Rather than admit the existence of the evil, it refuses to place it under proper restraint: lay governments appear to sanction the social evil, when they place it under the control of the law. The clerical police is perfectly aware that its n.o.ble and wilful blindness exposes the health of an entire people to certain danger. But it rubs its hands at the reflection that the sinners are punished by the very sin itself. The clerical police does its duty.

The inst.i.tution of the lottery is retained by the Popes, not as a source of revenue only. Lay governments have long since abolished it, because in a well-organized state, where industry leads to everything, citizens should be taught to rely upon nothing but their industry. But in the kingdom of the Church, where industry leads to nothing, not only is the lottery a consolation to the poor, but it forms an integral part of the public education. The sight of a beggar suddenly enriched, as it were by enchantment, goes far to make the ignorant mult.i.tude believe in miracles. The miracle of the loaves and fishes was scarcely more marvellous than the changing of tenpence into two hundred and fifty pounds. A high prize is like a present from G.o.d; it is money falling from Heaven. This people know that no human power can oblige three particular numbers to come out together; so they rely on the divine mercy alone. They apply to the Capuchin friars for lucky numbers; they recite special prayers for so many days; they humbly call for the inspiration of Heaven before going to bed; they see in dreams the Madonna stuck all over with figures; they pay for ma.s.ses at the Churches; they offer the priest money if he will put three numbers under the chalice at the moment of the consecration. Not less humbly did the courtiers of Louis XIV. range themselves in the antechamber he was to pa.s.s through, in the hope of obtaining a look or a favour. The drawing of the lottery is public, as are the University lectures in France. And, verily, it is a great and salutary lesson. The winners learn to praise G.o.d for his bounties: the losers are punished for having unduly coveted worldly pelf. Everybody profits--most of all the Government, which makes 80,000 a year by it, besides the satisfaction of having done its duty.

Yes, the holy preceptors of the nation fulfil their duty towards G.o.d, and towards themselves. But it does not necessarily follow that they always manage the affairs of G.o.d and of the Government well.

"On rencontre sa destinee Souvent par les chemins qu'on prend pour l'eviter."

La Fontaine tells us this, and the Pope proves it to us. In spite of the attention paid to religious instruction, the sermons, the good books, the edifying spectacles, the lottery, and so many other good things, faith is departing. The general aspect of the country does not betray the fact, because the fear of scandal pervades all society; but the devil loses nothing by that. Perhaps the citizens have the greater dislike to religion, from the very fact of its reigning over them. Our master is our enemy. G.o.d is too much the master of these people not to be treated by them in some degree as an enemy.

The spirit of opposition is called atheism, where the Tuileries are called the Vatican. A young ragam.u.f.fin, who drove me from Rimini to Santa Maria, let slip a terrible expression, which I have often thought of since: "G.o.d?"--he said, "if there be one, I dare say he's a priest like the rest of 'em."

Reflect upon these words, reader! When I examine them closely, I start back in terror, as before those crevices of Vesuvius, which give you a glimpse of the abyss below.

Has the temporal power served its own interests better than it has those of G.o.d? I doubt it. The deputation of Rome was Red in 1848. It was Rome that chose Mazzini. It is Rome that still regrets him in the low haunts of the Regola, on that miry bank of the Tiber, where secret societies swarm at this moment, like gnats on the sh.o.r.es of the Nile.

If these deplorable fruits of a model education were pointed out to the philosopher Gavarni, he would probably exclaim, "Bring up nations, in order that they may hate and despise you!"

CHAPTER XVII.

FOREIGN OCCUPATION.

The Pope is loved and revered in all Catholic countries--except his own.

It is, therefore, perfectly just and natural that one hundred and thirty-nine millions of devoted and respectful men should render him a.s.sistance against three millions of discontented ones. It is not enough to have given him a temporal kingdom, or to have restored that kingdom to him when he had the misfortune to lose it; one must lend him a permanent support, unless the expense of a fresh restoration is to be incurred every year.

This is the principle of the foreign occupation. We are one hundred and thirty-nine millions of Catholics, who have violently delegated to three millions of Italians the honour of boarding and lodging our spiritual chief. If we were not to leave a respectable army in Italy to watch over the execution of our commands, we should be doing our work by halves.

In strict logic, the security of the Pope should be guaranteed at the common expense of the Catholic Powers. It seems quite natural that each nation interested in the oppression of the Romans should furnish its contingent of soldiers. Such a system, however, would have the effect of turning the castle of St. Angelo into another Tower of Babel. Besides, the affairs of this world are not all regulated according to the principles of logic.

The only three Powers which contributed to the re-establishment of Pius IX. were France, Austria, and Spain. The French besieged Rome; the Austrians seized the places of the Adriatic; the Spaniards did very little, not from the want either of goodwill or courage, but because their allies left them nothing to do.

If a private individual may be permitted to probe the motives upon which princes act, I would venture to suggest that the Queen of Spain had nothing in view but the interests of the Church. Her soldiers came to restore the Pope to his throne; they went as soon as he was reseated on it. This was a chivalrous policy.

Napoleon III. also considered the restoration of the Pope to a temporal throne necessary to the good of the Church. Perhaps he thinks so still--though I couldn't swear to it. But his motives of action were complicated. Simple President of the French Republic, heir to a name which summoned him to the throne, resolved to exchange his temporary magistracy for an imperial crown, he had the greatest possible interest in proving to Europe how republics are put down. He had already conceived the idea of playing that great part of champion of order, which has since caused him to be received by all Sovereigns first as a brother, and afterwards as an arbitrator. Lastly, he knew that the restoration of the Pope would secure him a million of Catholic votes towards his election to the imperial crown. But to these motives of personal interest were added some others, if possible, of a loftier character. The heir of Napoleon and of the liberal Revolution of '89, the man who read his own name on the first page of the civil code, the author of so many works breathing the spirit of new ideas and the pa.s.sionate love of progress, the silent dreamer whose busy brain already teemed with the germs of all the prosperity we have enjoyed for the last ten years, was incapable of handing over three millions of Italians to reaction, lawlessness, and misery. If he had firmly resolved to put down the Republic at Rome, he was not less firm in his resolution to suppress the abuses, the injustice, and all the traditional oppressions which drove the Italians to revolt. In the opinion of the head of the French Republic, the way to be again victorious over anarchy, was to deprive it of all pretext and all cause for its existence.

He knew Rome; he had lived there. He knew, from personal experience, in what the Papal government differed from good governments. His natural sense of justice urged him to give the subjects of the Holy Father, in exchange for the political autonomy of which he robbed them, all the civil liberties and all the inoffensive rights enjoyed in civilized States.

On the 18th of August, 1849, he addressed to M. Edgar Ney a letter, which was, in point of fact, a _memorandum_ addressed to the Pope.

_AMNESTY, SECULARIZATION, THE CODE NAPOLEON, A LIBERAL GOVERNMENT_: these were the gifts he promised to the Romans in exchange for the Republic, and demanded of the Pope in return for a crown. This programme contained, in half-a-dozen words, a great lesson to the sovereign, and a great consolation to the people.

But it is easier to introduce a Breguet spring into a watch made when Henri IV. was king, than a single reform into the old pontifical machine. The letter of the 18th of August was received by the friends of the Pope as an "insult to his rights, good sense, justice, and majesty!"[13] Pius IX. took offence at it; the Cardinals made a joke of it. This determination, this prudence, this justice, on the part of a man who held them all in his hand, appeared to them immeasurably comical. They still laugh at it. Don't name M. Edgar Ney before them, or you'll make them laugh till their sides ache.

The Emperor of Austria never committed the indiscretion of writing such a letter as that of the 18th of August. The fact is, the Austrian policy in Italy differs materially from ours.

France is a body very solid, very compact, very firm, very united, which has no fear of being encroached upon, and no desire to encroach on others. Her political frontiers are nearly her natural limits; she has little or nothing to conquer from her neighbours. She can, therefore, interfere in the events of Europe for purely moral interests, without views of conquest being attributed to her. One or two of her leaders have suffered themselves to be carried somewhat too far by the spirit of adventure; the nation has never had, what may be called, geographical ambition. France does not disdain to conquer the world by the dispersion of her ideas, but she desires nothing more.

That which const.i.tutes the beauty of our history, to those who take an elevated view of it, is the twofold object, pursued simultaneously by the Sovereign and the nation, of concentrating France, and spreading French ideas.

The old Austrian diplomacy has been, for the last six hundred years, incessantly occupied in st.i.tching together bits of material, without ever having been able to make a coat. It does not consider either the colour or the quality of the cloth, but always keeps the needle going.

The thread it uses is often white, and it not infrequently breaks--when away goes the new patch! Then another has to be found.

A province is detached--two more are laid hold of. The piece gets rent down the middle--a rag is caught up, then another, and whatever comes to hand is sewn together in breathless haste. The effect of this st.i.tching monomania has been, to keep constantly changing the map of Europe, to bring together, as chance willed it, races and religions of every pattern, and to trouble the existence of twenty peoples, without making the unity of a nation. Certain Machiavellic old gentlemen sitting round a green cloth at Vienna, direct this work, measure the material, rub their hands complacently when it stretches, s.n.a.t.c.h off their wigs in despair when a piece is torn, and look on all sides for another wherewith to replace it. In the Middle Ages, the sons of the house used to be sent to visit foreign princesses: they made love to their royal and serene highnesses in German, and always brought back with them some shred of territory. But now that princesses receive their dowers in hard cash, recourse is had to violent measures in order to procure pieces of material; they are seized by soldiers; and there are some large stains of blood upon this harlequin's cloak!

Almost all the states of Italy, the kingdom of Naples, Sardinia, Sicily, Modena, Parma, Placentia, and Guastalla, have been in turn st.i.tched to the same piece as Bohemia, Transylvania, and Croatia. Rome would have shared the same fate, if papal excommunications had not broken the thread. In 1859 it is Venice and Milan that pay for everybody, till it comes to the turn of Tuscany, Modena, and Ma.s.sa, to be patched on in virtue of certain reversionary rights.

What must have been the satisfaction of Austrian diplomatists when they were enabled to throw their troops into the kingdom of the Pope, without remonstrances from anybody! Beyond all doubt, the interests of the Church were those which least occupied them. And as for taking any interest in the unfortunate subjects of Pius IX., or demanding for them any rights, or any liberties, Austria never thought of it for a moment. The old Danade only saw an opportunity for pouring another people into her ill-made and unretentive cask.

While the French army cautiously cannonaded the capital of the arts, spared public monuments, and took Rome, so to speak, with gloved hands, the Austrian soldiers carried the beautiful cities of the Adriatic--_a la Croate_! As victors, we treated gently those we had conquered, from motives of humanity; Austria, those she had conquered, brutally, from motives of conquest. She regarded the fair country of the Legations and the Marches as another Lombardy, which she would be well disposed to keep.

We occupied Rome, and the port of Civita Vecchia; the Austrians took for themselves all the country towards the Adriatic. We established our quarters in the barracks a.s.signed to us by the munic.i.p.ality; the Austrians built complete fortresses, as is their practice, with the money of the people they were oppressing. For six or seven years their army lived at the expense of the country. They sent their regiments naked, and when poor Italy had clothed them, others came to replace them.

Their army was looked upon with no very favourable eye; neither indeed was ours: the radical party was opposed both to their presence and ours. Some stray soldiers of both armies were killed. The French army defended itself courteously, the Austrian army revenged itself. In three years, from the first of January, 1850, to the 1st of January, 1853, we shot three murderers. Austria has a heavier hand: she has executed not only criminals, but thoughtless, and even innocent people. I have already given some terrible figures, and will spare you their repet.i.tion.

From the day when the Pope condescended to return home, the French army withdrew into the background; it hastened to restore to the pontifical government all its powers. Austria has only restored what it could not keep. She even still undertakes to repress political crimes. She feels personally wronged if a cracker is let off, if a musket is concealed: in short, she fancies herself in Lombardy.

At Rome, the French place themselves at the disposal of the Pope for the maintenance of order and public security. Our soldiers have too much honesty to let a murderer or a thief who is within their reach escape. The Austrians pretend that they are not gendarmes, to arrest malefactors; each individual soldier considers himself the agent of the old diplomatists, charged with none but political functions: police matters are not within his province. What is the consequence?

The Austrian army, after carefully disarming the citizens, delivers them over to malefactors, without the means of protection.