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The Eternal City, a novel by Hall Caine |
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Part 7. The Pope - Chapter 13 |
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_ PART SEVEN. THE POPE CHAPTER XIII The young King, who wore the uniform of a cavalry officer, with sword and long blue cloak, knelt to the Pope and kissed his ring, while the Prime Minister, who was in ordinary civilian costume, bowed deeply, but remained standing. "Pray sit," said the Pope, seating himself in the gilded arm-chair, with the Capuchin on his left. The King sat on one of the wooden stools in front of the Pope, but the Baron continued to stand by his side. Between the Pope and the King was a wooden table on which two large candles were burning. The young King was pale, and the expression of his twitching face was one of pain. "It was good of your Holiness to see us," he said, "and perhaps the gravity of our errand may excuse the informality of our visit." The Pope, who was leaning forward on the arms of his chair, only bent his head. "His Excellency," said the King, indicating the Baron, "tells me he has gained proof of an organised conspiracy against my life, and he says that your Holiness holds the secret of the conspirators." The Pope, without responding, looked steadily into the face of the young King, who became nervous and embarrassed. "Not that I'm afraid," he said, "personally afraid. But naturally I must think of others--my family--my people--even of Italy--and if your Holiness...if your...your Holiness..." The Baron, who had been standing with one arm across his breast, and the other supporting his chin, intervened at this moment. "Your Majesty," he said, "with your Majesty's permission, and that of his Holiness," he bowed to both sovereigns, "it may be convenient if I state shortly the object of our visit." The young King drew a breath of relief, and the Pope, who was still silent, bent his head again. "Some days ago your Holiness was good enough to warn his Majesty's Government that from private sources of information you had reason to fear that an assault against the public peace was to be attempted." The Pope once more assented. "Since then the Government has received corroboration of the gracious message of your Holiness, coupled with very definite predictions of the nature of the revolt intended. In short, we have been told by our correspondents abroad that a conspiracy of European proportions, involving the subversive elements of England, France, and Germany, is to be directed against Rome as a centre of revolution, and that an attempt is to be made to assail constituted society by striking at our King." "Well, sir?" "Your Holiness may have heard that it is the intention of the Government and the nation to honour the anniversary of his Majesty's accession by a festival. The anniversary falls on Monday next, and we have reason to fear that Monday is the day intended for the outbreak of this vile conspiracy." "Well?" "Your Holiness may have differences with his Majesty, but you cannot desire that the cry of suffering should mingle with the strains of the royal march." "If your Government knows all this, it has its remedy--let it alter the King's plans." "The advice with which your Holiness honours us is scarcely practicable. For the Government to alter the King's plans would be to alarm the populace, demoralise the services, and to add to the unhappy excitement which it is the object of the festival allay." "But why do you come to me?" "Because, your Holiness, our information, although conclusive, is too indefinite for effective action, and we believe your Holiness can supply the means by which we may preserve public order, and"--with an apologetic gesture--"save the life of the King." The Pope was moving uneasily in his chair. "I will ask you to be good enough to speak more plainly," he said. The Baron's heavy moustache rose at one corner to a fleeting smile. "Your Holiness," he said, "is already aware that accident disclosed to us the source of your information. It was a lady. This knowledge enabled us to judge who was the subject of her communication. It was the lady's lover. Official channels give us proof that he is engaged abroad in plots against public order, and thus..." "If you know all this, sir, what do you want with me?" "Your Holiness may not be aware that the person in question is a Deputy, and that a Deputy cannot be arrested without the fulfilment of various conditions prescribed by law. One of those conditions is that some one should be in a position to denounce him." The Pope half rose from his chair. "You ask me to denounce him?" The Baron bowed very low. "The Government does not presume so far," he said. "It only hopes that your Holiness will require your informant to do so." "Then you want me to outrage a confidence?" "It was not a confession, your Holiness, and even if it had been, as your Holiness knows better than we do, it would not be without precedent to reveal the facts which are necessary to be known in order to prevent crime." The Capuchin's sandals were scraping on the floor, but the Pope raised his left hand, and the friar fell back. "You are aware," said the Pope, "that the lady you speak of as my informant is married to the Deputy?" "We are aware that she thinks she is." "Thinks?" said the indignant voice of the Capuchin, but the Pope's left hand was raised again. "In short, sir, you ask me to require the wife to sacrifice her husband." "If your Holiness calls it so,--to perform an act that will preserve the public peace...." "I _do_ call it so." The Baron bowed, the young King was restless, and there was a moment's silence. Then the Pope said: "Putting aside the extreme unlikelihood that the lady knows more than she has said, and we have already communicated, what possible inducement do you expect us to offer her that she should sacrifice her husband?" "Her husband's life," said the Baron. "His life?" "Your Holiness may not know that the Governments of Europe, having ascertained the existence of a widespread plot against civil society, have joined in measures of repression. One of these is the extension to all countries of what is called the Belgian clause in treaties, whereby persons guilty of regicide or of plots directed against the lives of sovereigns are made liable to extradition." "Well?" "The Deputy Rossi is now in Berlin. If he were denounced with the conditions required by law as conspiring against the life of the King, we might have him arrested to-night and brought back as a common murderer." "Well?" "Your Holiness may not have heard that since the late unhappy riots the Parliament, in spite of the protests of his Majesty, has re-established capital punishment for all forms of high treason." "Therefore," said the Pope, "if the wife were to denounce her husband for participation in this conspiracy he would be sentenced to death." "For this conspiracy--yes," said the Baron. "But the present is not the only conspiracy the man Rossi has engaged in. Eighteen years ago he was condemned in contumacy for conspiracy against the life of the late King. He has not yet suffered for his crime, because of the difficulty of bringing it home. In that case, as in this, there is only one person known to the authorities who can fulfil the conditions required by law. That person is the informant of your Holiness." "Well?" "If your Holiness can prevail upon the lady to identify her lover as the man condemned for the former conspiracy, you will be helping her to save her husband's life from the penalty due for the present one." "How so?" "His Majesty is willing to promise your Holiness that, whatever the result of a new trial in assize to follow the old one in contumacy, he will grant a complete pardon." "And then?" "Then the Deputy Rossi will be banished, the threatened conspiracy will be crushed, the public peace will be preserved, and the King's life will be saved." The Pope leaned forward on the arms of his chair, but he did not speak, and there was silence for some moments. "Thus your Holiness must see," said the Baron suavely, "that, in asking you to obtain the denunciation of the man Rossi, the Government is only looking to your Holiness to fulfil the mission of mercy to which your venerated position has destined you." "And if I refused to exercise this mission of mercy?" The Baron bowed gravely. "Your Holiness will not refuse," he said. "But if I do--what then?" "Then ... your Holiness.... I was about to say something." "I am listening." "The man we speak of is the bitterest enemy of the Church. Whatever his hypocrisies, he is at once an atheist and a freemason, sworn to allow no private interests or feelings, no bonds of patriotism or blood, to turn him aside from his purpose, which is to overthrow Society and the Church." "Well?" "He is also a bitter personal enemy of the Holy Father, and knows no object so dear as that of tearing him from his place and shaking the throne of St. Peter." "Well, sir?" "The police and the army of the Government are the only forces by which the Holy Father can be protected, and without them the bad elements which lurk in every community would break out, the Holy Father would be driven from Rome, and his priests assaulted in the streets." "But what will happen if I refuse to outrage the sanctity of an immortal soul in spite of all this danger?" "Your Holiness asks me what will happen if you refuse to obtain the denunciation of a man whom your Holiness knows to be conspiring against public order?" "I do." "What will happen will be ... your Holiness, I am speaking...." "Go on." "That, if the crime is committed and the King is killed, I, the Minister of his Majesty, will be in a position to say--and to call upon this friar to witness--that the Pope knew of it beforehand, and under the most noble sentiments about the sanctity of an immortal soul gave a supreme encouragement of regicide." "And then, sir?" "The world draws no nice distinctions, your Holiness, and the Vatican is now at war with nearly all the powers and peoples of Europe. In the presence of a monstrous crime against the most innocent and the most highly placed, the world would say that what the Pope did not prevent the Pope desired, what the Pope desired the Pope designed, and that the Vicar of the Prince of Peace attempted to rebuild his temporal power by means of the plots of conspirators and the daggers of assassins." The sandals of the Capuchin were scraping the floor again, and once more the Pope put up his hand. "You come to me, sir, when you have exhausted all other means of obtaining your end?" "Naturally the Government wishes if possible to spare your Holiness an unusual and painful ordeal." "The lady has resisted all other influences?" "She has resisted all influences which can be brought to bear upon her by the proper authorities." "I have heard of it, sir. I have heard what your 'authorities' have done to humble a helpless woman. She had been the victim of a heartless man, and by knowledge of that fact your 'authorities' have tempted and tried her. They tried her with poverty, with humiliation, with jealousy and the shadow of shame. But the blessed God upheld her in the love which had awakened her soul, and she withstood them to the last." The Baron, for the first time, looked confused. "I have also heard that in order to achieve the same end one of your gaols has been the scene of a scandal which has outraged every divine and human law." "Your Holiness must not accept for truth all that is printed in the halfpenny papers." "Is it true that in the cell where a helpless unfortunate was paying the penalty of his crime your 'authorities' introduced a police agent in disguise to draw him into a denunciation of his accomplice?" "These are matters of state, your Holiness. I do not assert them and I do not deny." "In the name of humanity I ask you are such 'authorities' punished, or do they sit in the cabinets of your Ministers of the Interior?" "No doubt the officials went too far, your Holiness; but shall we, for the sake of a miserable malefactor who told one story to-day and another to-morrow, drag our public service through courts of law? Pity for such persons is morbid sentimentality, your Holiness, unworthy of a strong and enlightened Government." "Then God destroy all such Governments, sir, and the bad and unchristian system which supports them! Allow that the man _was_ a miserable malefactor, it was not he alone that was offended, but in his poor, degraded person the spirit of Justice. What did your 'authorities' do? They tortured the man by his love for his wife, by the memory of his murdered child, by all that was true and noble and divine in him. They crucified the Christ in that helpless man, and you stand here in the presence of the Vicar of Christ to excuse and defend them." The Pope had risen in his chair and lifted one hand over his head with a majestic gesture. Involuntarily the young King, who had been ashen pale for some moments, dropped to his knees, but the Baron only folded his arms and stiffened his legs. "Have you ever thought, sir, of the end of the unjust Minister? Think of his dying hour, tortured with the memory of young lives dissolved, mothers dead, widows desolate, and orphans in tears. Think of the day after his death, when he who has passed through the world like the scourge of God lies at its feet, and no one so mean but he may spurn the dishonoured carcass. You are aiming high, your Excellency, but beware, beware!" The Pope sat, and the King rose to his feet. "Your Majesty," said the Pope, "the day will come when we must both present ourselves before God to render to Him an account of our deeds, and I, being far more advanced in years, will assuredly be the first. But I would not dare to meet the eye of my Judge if I did not this day warn you of the dangers in which you stand. Only God knows by what inscrutable decree of Providence one man is made a Pope or a King, while another man, his equal or superior, is made a beggar or a slave. But God who made Popes and Kings meant them to be the fathers, not the seducers of their subjects. A sovereign may be a man of good intentions, but if he is weak, and allows himself to fall into the hands of despotic Ministers, he is a worse affliction than the cruellest tyrant. Think well, your Majesty! A throne may be a quagmire, and a man may be buried in it, and buried alive." The young King began to falter some incoherent words, but without listening the Pope rose to end the audience. "You promise me," said the Pope, "that if--I say _if_--in order to avoid bloodshed and to prevent a crime, I obtain from this lady the identification of her husband as the person condemned for the former conspiracy, you will spare and pardon him whatever happens?" "Holy Father, I give you my solemn word for it." "Then leave me! Let me think!... Wait! If she consents, where must she go to?" "To the Procura by the Ponte Ripetta, and, as time presses, at ten o'clock on Saturday morning," said the Baron. "Leave me! Leave me!" The King knelt again and kissed the Pope's hand, but the Baron only bowed as he passed out behind his sovereign. The opening of the doors let in a wave of sound that was like the roll of a great wind in a cave. Tenebrae had been going on for some time in the Basilica, and the people were singing the Miserere. "Did you hear him, Father?" said the Pope. "Isn't it almost enough to justify a man like Rossi that he has to meet a despot like that?" "We'll talk of it to-morrow," said the Capuchin. The friar touched a bell, and the _palfrenieri_ returned with the chair. _ |
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