Lesbia Newman (1889)/Chapter 42
CHAPTER XLII.
The Axe to the Root of the Tree.
As Cardinal Power sat in a saloon carriage of the grande rapide, rushing through the night across France, he could not close his eyes until the small hours were past, oppressed by the weighty thoughts which filled his mind ever since our heroine and her friend took leave of him at his house in Westminster. Yet the present journey was not made solely as a result of that interview. The telegram we saw delivered to him by his servant on the morning after the two girls’ visit, had apprised him of the consummation of the crisis at Rome. The persecuted Papacy had just received the last vial of lovely Beatrice’s wrath, in the form of a notice to quit Italy, ‘bag and baggage,’ within forty-eight hours, on pain of imprisonment with hard labour. Cardinal Power, on reading the message, shed no filial tears over the discomfiture of his Master’s Vicar; but, on the contrary, muttered to himself, ‘Now’s my time, then, if that girl is right. Catch them on the edge of the gulf, and throw them. The Lord shall reign for ever and ever, but I will govern meanwhile.’
His mind was made up; he had grasped the possibilities of the situation, and resolved to become master of it; and as the flying train carried him Romewards, he pondered the manner of making known to the Roman curia his change of mind, which no doubt would startle them almost as much as that of Madame Pisa-Vitri. One thing seemed clear; his demeanour must be bold. The venture might retrieve the fortunes of his Church, and mark him as her most distinguished son; while if it failed, if he were to be rebuffed and disowned as a heretic—why, schism had rent the old structure in twain before; and a new and more formidable one, which he would conduct, should rend it in pieces. A Catholic and a prelate, if you please; but a man of ambition first. A Christian, of course, no doubt; but neither Christ, nor all his apostolic successors, should stand in Cardinal Power’s light, if he could help it. That was settled, and now he could go to sleep, just as grey morning began to spread over the meadows and blossoming orchards of the southern provinces.
********
It was the morning of the second day after the Cardinal had left England; consternation was rife at the Vatican, for the blow had fallen suddenly. The Pope held consultation with his most trusted advisers in his audience-chamber, which was besieged by a number of old inmates of the vast palace, whom the stern summons of the police had routed out of their seclusion, as smoke drives crawling insects out of the crannies of a wall. The day had come when, by the decree of the Government, which practically was ruled by Madame Pisa-Vitri, the papacy, with all its belongings, must quit its ancient home by sunset. A long special train would convey the company at that hour to Civita Vecchia, where a large and well-appointed steamer would lie ready to start for any destination out of the Italian dominions, and within a few days’ voyage, which the exiled pontiff might fix on for his abode. The meeting in the audience-chamber was an excited one for such an assembly; in the hour of common adversity, much etiquette was thrown aside. The difference of opinion turned on the pressing question of removal, some preferring one destination, some another. The discussion was at its height, and the pontiff was undecided whose advice to follow, when suddenly the British Legate walked in unannounced.
After the formal salutations were over, he said, speaking in French, on account of the presence of various foreign prelates whom he recognised,—
‘Holy Father, and brethren priests and dignitaries,—I have come hither, as in duty bound, upon receipt of the disastrous intelligence which reached me two days ago. It is not the first time that the hand of the persecutor has been heavy upon us, nor the first time that a Pope has been driven from Rome; but though not the first, I believe it is the most serious. The foundations are cast down; our priesthood is forcibly suspended from its functions, except on condition of violating that law of celibacy which has been its principle of cohesion through centuries of trial; the training of the young is taken away from us; and the ‘devout female sex,’ as we have been accustomed to call it, is learning rebellion and the spirit of domination, so that its influence is no longer on the Lord’s side’—here the prelate paused, produced a snuff-box and deliberately took a pinch, to the surprise and impatience of his august audience, to whom the action appeared singularly out of place; then, shutting the box with a loud snap, and returning it to his pocket—‘Hem! no longer on the Lord’s side. They are actually going to take this ancient building away from the Vicar of Christ, and turn it into a school for the training of young women into further rebellion, the training of them into such courses as that of our persecutress Madame Pisa-Vitri. How will it fare with holy Church when her daughters all trample upon her neck? Then they are taking her sons, too; the priests, the Levites, are being secularised; barrack life is their lot for two precious years, and they who were being trained for the altar parade the streets in a grotesque uniform, and fill the taverns with profane songs and jests. All this might be borne; but they are taking away our livelihood, by making it depend on the voluntary offerings of those who are daily becoming more estranged from us, and who insist upon our reversing all the customs and morals which our great history has handed down. Turn whither you will, ruin stares us in the face, insult is heaped upon us, and our total destruction within a very short time can only be averted by a miracle. Egressus est a filia Sion omnis decor ejus-facti sunt principes ejus velut arietes non inventientes pascua; et abierunt alsque fortitudine ante faciem subsequentis.’
The cardinal resumed his seat, but had quite marred the effect of this magnificent passage from the Lamentation, by taking out his snuff-box again in the middle of it.
‘But, Cardinal Power, have you no advice to offer in the emergency?’ asked the pontiff mildly. ‘Our evils are only too apparent; we would gladly hear how they are to be met.’
‘That is what I am ready to do, Holy Father,’ he replied, rising again, ‘but I feared to encroach upon the nights of other speakers. However, since you graciously give me leave, I will state my views as to the Church’s future. To assist you out of the present trouble is not in my power: I cannot work miracles of that kind. You will all have to leave this place in a few hours for a foreign land, and you do not need me to tell you that any show of resistance could only expose you to popular derision, and fill the comic newspapers of the week with amusing pictures. There is nothing for it but to submit with dignity and go. With your consent, I will go with you, for I have a mission which must not be neglected. Do you wish to hear, brethren, what that mission is, the accomplishment of which can, it is my belief, save the Church; or would you rather wait until I can speak to you about it at more leisure and in quiet?’
As the feeling of the assembly was evidently in favour of hearing something of Cardinal Power’s ideas at once, he skilfully broached the all-embracing subject upon which our heroine, aided first by her uncle and later by her friend, had succeeded in forming his mind. Amazement at the novel doctrine, coming from one in his position, was depicted on every countenance; and when the speaker, warming as he proceeded, concluded with a torrent of newly found but not the less fervent—or fervently acted—devotion to the Queen of Heaven, the Pope himself, under the fiery influence, rose to his feet and heard the remainder standing. There was a deep silence of some seconds, then the pontiff asked calmly, as he resumed his seat,—
‘But, Cardinal Power, the innovation you advocate, would it not subvert the Christian religion altogether?’
‘Ruat Christiana religio, vivat Eclesia!’ thundered the cardinal, stamping his foot with vehemence, a thing he had never been known to do before, even in private. But he spoke as one controlled by a guiding spirit; could Lesbia Newman have been present, she would have thought hers had passed into him.
Everyone sat as petrified, until the Pope spoke again in his quiet tones.
‘But, Cardinal Power, would the Church accept life on such terms?’
The cardinal answered in slow, measured accents,—
‘Holy Father, if the Church will not accept life on those terms, who will be the gainer by her decease? The gainer will be some modern sect, ready to make its fortune by pandering to carnal lusts unfettered by lofty spiritual aims or by any feeling of noblesse oblige. And even while I speak to you here to-day such a sect, under the name of Mylittists, which I fear uses religion only as a cloak for licentiousness, has sprung up in London out of the débris of the shattered Establishment, and is pushing its way with such rapid success that—’
‘Pardon, your Eminence,’ interrupted one of the Italian prelates, ‘but surely you do not ask Rome to vie in the race for popularity with this or that sect of infidels?’
‘With this or that one, no, Cardinal Borsa,’ he answered, ‘but to compete with the whole world of sects is just what Rome must do, or how shall she survive, how lift up her head out of the present disasters and still worse ones that may be yet to come? You do wrong to sneer at popularity; it is our breath of life, our last and only resource. Now look here, brethren,’ he continued, in a louder and sterner voice, ‘should my views prove unacceptable to the reverend assembly I have the honour of addressing at this moment, there is another influential quarter where they may possibly be more favourably received—I will lay them before Madame Pisa-Vitri.’
His hearers all turned their faces, and most of them shifted uneasily in their seats, but nothing was said.
‘It would not be the first time,’ pursued the cardinal, in the same stern voice, ‘that a staunch friend has been turned into a dangerous enemy. The case of Madame Pisa-Vitri herself is an instance. She was your devoted adherent; now you have the pleasure of feeling her claws. You may have to feel mine too, if her ladyship and I should become allied, united in the determination to reform holy Church more drastically than ever Luther or anyone else did. It would be the last schism you will ever suffer, for the sufficient reason that it would be fatal. I can count upon a large following in England, and especially in Ireland; for thousands who are not now Catholics will be ready to adopt my Catholicism. In Italy, your own home, you are overthrown already; how long will it be before intelligent France shapes her course to the wind? What will become of the Papacy, disestablished, disendowed, exiled, torn by schism and beaten by a rival who sits in its seat and flourishes in its place? Therefore beware! You leave the kingdom this night because you have provoked Beatrice Pisa-Vitri. Submit to her, and she may pardon you. But if you provoke me too, I will see that she does not pardon you, and that you never come back.’
The cardinal resumed his seat amid a chilling silence, followed by a low murmur of disapprobation, as the gravity of the situation forced itself upon the minds of his hearers. The pontiff alone remained unruffled and absorbed in deep thought. Presently he rose, and, holding up his hand for silence among the murmurers, said gently,—
‘Be not disturbed, brethren, by the over-zeal of his Eminence our nuncio to England, but rather lay to heart those discreet words of Gamaliel, ‘If this counsel or this work be of men, it will be overthrown; but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it, lest haply ye be found godfighters.’ We may accept it as certain, that if in the future the Catholic Church is to bear rule at all, it must be a rule by love.’
‘Are we to understand, then,’ inquired the French prelate, ‘that this startling heresy—so it seems to us—commends itself to the approval of your Holiness?’
‘It is too great a question to decide off-hand, Monseigneur de Rheims,’ replied the Pope; ‘it will be necessary to convoke an Æcumenical Council. We have now to meet the exigencies of the day, and there are but three hours for our preparations. I salute you, brethren; the audience is at an end.’
No more questions were asked, but the assembly, quite taken aback by the turn of affairs, regarded the pontiff in mute wonder as he passed out of the chamber. The French prelate alone found voice,—
‘Æcumenical Council upon that! The head of the Church wills it! Then brethren, we may say Actum est de fide Christi.’
‘Et salva facta est Ecclesia,’ replied Cardinal Power, also passing out, with a gleam of triumph on his face.
A few hours afterwards the gibbous moon laid clear-cut black shadows from the guarded Vatican, but a broad belt of rippling shimmer upon the ground swell of the Mediterranean, over which the steamship rolled on her outward way to England.