The Saint's Tragedy Part 13

C. Hugo. n.o.body asked them to eat it; n.o.body asked them to be there to eat it; if they will breed like rabbits, let them feed like rabbits, say I--I never married till I could keep a wife.

Abbot. Ah, Count Walter! How sad to see a man of your sense so led away by his feelings! Had but this dispensation been left to work itself out, and evolve the blessing implicit in all heaven's chastenings! Had but the stern benevolences of providence remained undisturbed by her ladyship's carnal tenderness--what a boon had this famine been!

C. Wal. How then, man?

Abbot. How many a poor soul would be lying--Ah, blessed thought!-- in Abraham's bosom; who must now toil on still in this vale of tears!--Pardon this pathetic dew--I cannot but feel as a Churchman.

3d Count. Look at it in this way, Sir. There are too many of us-- too many--Where you have one job you have three workmen. Why, I threw three hundred acres into pasture myself this year--it saves money, and risk, and trouble, and t.i.thes.

C. Wal. What would you say to the Princess, who talks of breaking up all her parks to wheat next year?

3d Count. Ask her to take on the thirty families, who were just going to tramp off those three hundred acres into the Rhine-land, if she had not kept them in both senses this winter, and left them on my hands--once beggars, always beggars.

C. Hugo. Well, I'm a practical man, and I say, the sharper the famine, the higher are prices, and the higher I sell, the more I can spend; so the money circulates, Sir, that's the word--like water-- sure to run downwards again; and so it's as broad as it's long; and here's a health--if there was any beer--to the farmers' friends, 'A b.l.o.o.d.y war and a wet harvest.'

Abbot. Strongly put, though correctly. For the self-interest of each it is which produces in the aggregate the happy equilibrium of all.

C. Wal. Well--the world is right well made, that's certain; and He who made the Jews' sin our salvation may bring plenty out of famine, and comfort out of covetousness. But look you, Sirs, private selfishness may be public weal, and yet private selfishness be just as surely d.a.m.ned, for all that.

3d Count. I hold, Sir, that every alms is a fresh badge of slavery.

C. Wal. I don't deny it.

3d Count. Then teach them independence.

C. Wal. How? By tempting them to turn thieves, when begging fails?

By keeping their stomachs just at desperation-point? By starving them out here, to march off, starving all the way, to some town, in search of employment, of which, if they find it, they know no more than my horse? Likely! No, Sir, to make men of them, put them not out of the reach, but out of the need, of charity.

3d Count. And how, prithee? By teaching them, like our fair Landgravine, to open their mouth for all that drops? Thuringia is become a kennel of beggars in her hands.

C. Wal. In hers? In ours, Sir!

Abbot. Idleness, Sir, deceit, and immorality, are the three children of this same barbarous self-indulgence in almsgiving.

Leave the poor alone. Let want teach them the need of self- exertion, and misery prove the foolishness of crime.

C. Wal. How? Teach them to become men by leaving them brutes?

Abbot. Oh, Sir, there we step in, with the consolations and instructions of the faith.

C. Wal. Ay, but while the gra.s.s is growing the steed is starving; and in the meantime, how will the callow chick Grace stand against the tough old game-c.o.c.k Hunger?

3d Count. Then how, in the name of patience, would you have us alter things?

C. Wal. We cannot alter them, Sir--but they will be altered, never fear.

Omnes. How? How?

C. Wal. Do you see this hour-gla.s.s?--Here's the state: This air stands for the idlers;--this sand for the workers.

When all the sand has run to the bottom, G.o.d in heaven just turns the hour-gla.s.s, and then--

C. Hugo. The world's upside down.

C. Wal. And the Lord have mercy upon us!

Omnes. On us? Do you call us the idlers?

C. Wal. Some dare to do so--But fear not--In the fulness of time, all that's lightest is sure to come to the top again.

C. Hugo. But what rascal calls us idlers?

Omnes. Name, name.

C. Wal. Why, if you ask me--I heard a shrewd sermon the other day on that same idleness and immorality text of the Abbot's.--'Twas Conrad, the Princess's director, preached it. And a fashionable cap it is, though it will fit more than will like to wear it. Shall I give it you? Shall I preach?

C. Hugo. A tub for Varila! Stand on the table, now, toss back thy hood like any Franciscan, and preach away.

C. Wal. Idleness, quoth he [Conrad, mind you],--idleness and immorality? Where have they learnt them, but from your n.o.bles?

There was a saucy monk for you. But there's worse coming.

Religion? said he, how can they respect it, when they see you, 'their betters,' fattening on church lands, neglecting sacraments, defying excommunications, trading in benefices, hiring the clergy for your puppets and flatterers, making the ministry, the episcopate itself, a lumber-room wherein to stow away the idiots and spendthrifts of your families, the confidants of your mistresses, the cast-off pedagogues of your boys?

Omnes. The scoundrel!

C. Wal. Was he not?--But hear again--Immorality? roars he; and who has corrupted them but you? Have you not made every castle a weed- bed, from which the newest corruptions of the Court stick like thistle-down, about the empty heads of stable-boys and serving maids? Have you not kept the poor worse housed than your dogs and your horses, worse fed than your pigs and your sheep? Is there an ancient house among you, again, of which village gossips do not whisper some dark story of l.u.s.t and oppression, of decrepit debauchery, of hereditary doom?

Omnes. We'll hang this monk.

C. Wal. Hear me out, and you'll burn him. His sermon was like a hailstorm, the tail of the shower the sharpest. Idleness? he asked next of us all: how will they work, when they see you landlords sitting idle above them, in a fool's paradise of luxury and riot, never looking down but to squeeze from them an extra drop of honey-- like sheep-boys stuffing themselves with blackberries while the sheep are licking up flukes in every ditch? And now you wish to leave the poor man in the slough, whither your neglect and your example have betrayed him, and made his too apt scholarship the excuse for your own remorseless greed! As a Christian, I am ashamed of you all; as a Churchman, doubly ashamed of those prelates, hired stalking-horses of the rich, who would fain gloss over their own sloth and cowardice with the wisdom which cometh not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish; aping the artless cant of an aristocracy who made them--use them--and despise them. That was his sermon.

Abbot. Paul and Barnabas! What an outpouring of the spirit!--Were not his hoodship the Pope's legate, now--accidents might happen to him, going home at night; eh, Sir Hugo?

C. Hugo. If he would but come my way!

For 'the mule it was slow, and the lane it was dark, When out of the copse leapt a gallant young spark.

Says, 'Tis not for nought you've been begging all day: So remember your toll, since you travel our way.'

Abbot. Hush! Here comes the Landgrave.

[Lewis enters.]

Lewis. Good morrow, gentles. Why so warm, Count Walter?

Your blessing, Father Abbot: what deep matters Have called our worships to this conference?

C. Hugo [aside]. Up, Count; you are spokesman.

3d Count. Exalted Prince, Whose peerless knighthood, like the remeant sun, After too long a night, regilds our clay, Late silvered by the reflex lunar beams Of your celestial lady's matron graces--

Abbot [aside]. Ut vinum optimum amati mei Dulciter descendens!

3 Count. Think not we mean to praise or disapprove-- The acts of saintly souls must only plead In foro conscientiae: grosser minds, Whose humbler aim is but the public weal, Know of no mesh which holds them: yet, great Prince, Some dare not see their sovereign's strength postponed To private grace, and sigh, that generous hearts, And ladies' tenderness, too oft forgetting That wisdom is the highest charity, Will interfere, in pardonable haste, With heaven's stern providence.