The Strolling Saint Page 7

My reasoning followed the syllogism that God being good and God having created the world, it was not possible that the creation should be evil. It was well enough to say that the devil was loose in it. But that was not to say that the devil had created it; and it would be necessary to prove this ere it could be established that it was evil in itself—as many theologians appeared to seek to show—and a place to be avoided.

  Such was the question that very frequently arose in my mind, ultimately to be dismissed as a lure of Satan's to imperil my poor soul. It battled for existence now amid my fears; and it gained some little ascendancy.

  "And whither am I to go?" I asked. "To Pavia, or to the University of Bologna?"

  "Had my advice been heeded," said he, "one or the other would have been your goal. But your mother took counsel with Messer Arcolano."

  He shrugged, and there was contempt in the lines of his mouth. He distrusted Arcolano, the regular cleric who was my mother's confessor and spiritual adviser, exerting over her a very considerable influence. She, herself, had admitted that it was this Arcolano who had induced her to that horrid traffic in my father's life and liberty which she was mercifully spared from putting into effect.

  "Messer Arcolano," he resumed after a pause, "has a good friend in Piacenza, a pedagogue, a doctor of civil and canon law, a man who, he says, is very learned and very pious, named Astorre Fifanti. I have heard of this Fifanti, and I do not at all agree with Messer Arcolano. I have said so. But your mother . . ." He broke off. "It is decided that you go to him at once, to take up your study of the humanities under his tutelage, and that you abide with him until you are of an age for ordination, which your mother hopes will be very soon. Indeed, it is her wish that you should enter the subdeaconate in the autumn, and your novitiate next year, to fit you for the habit of St. Augustine."

  He fell silent, adding no comment of any sort, as if he waited to hear what of my own accord I might have to urge. But my mind was incapable of travelling beyond the fact that I was to go out into the world tomorrow.

  The circumstance that I should become a monk was no departure from the idea to which I had been trained, although explicitly no more than my mere priesthood had been spoken of. So I lay there without thinking of any words in which to answer him.

  Gervasio considered me steadily, and sighed a little. "Agostino," he said presently, "you are upon the eve of taking a great step, a step whose import you may never fully have considered. I have been your tutor, and your rearing has been my charge. That charge I have faithfully carried out as was ordained me, but not as I would have carried it out had I been free to follow my heart and my conscience in the matter.

  "The idea of your ultimate priesthood has been so fostered in your mind that you may well have come to believe that to be a priest is your own inherent desire. I would have you consider it well now that the time approaches for a step which is irrevocable."

  His words and his manner startled me alike.

  "How?" I cried. "Do you say that it might be better if I did not seek ordination? What better can the world offer than the priesthood? Have you not, yourself, taught me that it is man's noblest calling?"

  "To be a good priest, fulfilling all the teachings of the Master, becoming in your turn His mouthpiece, living a life of self-abnegation, of self-sacrifice and purity," he answered slowly, "that is the noblest thing a man can be. But to be a bad priest—there are other ways of being damned less hurtful to the Church."

  "To be a bad priest?" quoth I. "Is it possible to be a bad priest?"

  "It is not only possible, my son, but in these days it is very frequent. Many men, Agostino, enter the Church out of motives of self-seeking. Through such as these Rome has come to be spoken of as the Necropolis of the Living. Others, Agostino—and these are men most worthy of pity—enter the Church because they are driven to it in youth by ill-advised parents. I would not have you one of these, my son."

  I stared at him, my amazement ever growing. "Do you . . . do you think I am in danger of it?" I asked.

  "That is a question you must answer for yourself. No man can know what is in another's heart. I have trained you as I was bidden train you. I have seen you devout, increasing in piety, and yet . . ." He paused, and looked at me again. "It may be that this is no more than the fruit of your training; it may be that your piety and devotion are purely intellectual. It is very often so. Men know the precepts of religion as a lawyer knows the law. It no more follows out of that that they are religious—though they conceive that it does—than it follows that a lawyer is law-abiding. It is in the acts of their lives that we must seek their real natures, and no single act of your life, Agostino, has yet given sign that the call is in your heart.

  "Today, for instance, at what is almost your first contact with the world, you indulge your human feelings to commit a violence; that you did not kill is as much an accident as that you broke Rinolfo's leg. I do not say that you did a very sinful thing. In a worldly youth of your years the provocation you received would have more than justified your action. But not in one who aims at a life of humility and self-forgetfulness such as the priesthood imposes."

  "And yet," said I, "I heard you tell my mother below stairs that I was nearer sainthood than either of you."

  He smiled sadly, and shook his head. "They were rash words, Agostino. I mistook ignorance for purity—a common error. I have pondered it since, and my reflection brings me to utter what in this household amounts to treason."

  "I do not understand," I confessed.

  "My duty to your mother I have discharged more faithfully perhaps than I had the right to do. My duty to my God I am discharging now, although to you I may rather appear as an advocatus diaboli. This duty is to warn you; to bid you consider well the step you are to take.

  "Listen, Agostino. I am speaking to you out of the bitter experience of a very cruel life. I would not have you tread the path I have trodden. It seldom leads to happiness in this world or the next; it seldom leads anywhere but straight to Hell."

  He paused, and I looked into his haggard face in utter stupefaction to hear such words from the lips of one whom I had ever looked upon as goodness incarnate.

  "Had I not known that some day I must speak to you as I am speaking now, I had long since abandoned a task which I did not consider good. But I feared to leave you. I feared that if I were removed my place might be taken by some time-server who to earn a livelihood would tutor you as your mother would have you tutored, and thrust you forth without warning upon the life to which you have been vowed.

  "Once, years ago, I was on the point of resisting your mother." He passed a hand wearily across his brow. "It was on the night that Gino Falcone left us, driven forth by her because she accounted it her duty. Do you remember, Agostino?"

  "O, I remember!" I answered.

  "That night," he pursued, "I was angered—righteously angered to see so wicked and unchristian an act performed in blasphemous self-righteousness. I was on the point of denouncing the deed as it deserved, of denouncing your mother for it to her face. And then I remembered you. I remembered the love I had borne your father, and my duty to him, to see that no such wrong was done you in the end as that which I feared. I reflected that if I spoke the words that were burning my tongue for utterance, I should go as Gino Falcone had gone.

  "Not that the going mattered. I could better save my soul elsewhere than here in this atmosphere of Christianity misunderstood; and there are always convents of my order to afford me shelter. But your being abandoned mattered; and I felt that if I went, abandoned you would be to the influences that drove and moulded you without consideration for your nature and your inborn inclinations. Therefore I remained, and left Falcone's cause unchampioned. Later I was to learn that he had found a friend, and that he was . . . that he was being cared for."

  "By whom?" quoth I, more interested perhaps in this than in anything that he had yet said.

  "By one who was your father's friend," he said, after a moment's hesitation, "a soldi
er of fortune by name of Galeotto—a leader of free lances who goes by the name of Il Gran Galeotto. But let that be. I want to tell you of myself, that you may judge with what authority I speak.

  "I was destined, Agostino, for a soldier's life in the following of my valiant foster-brother, your father. Had I preserved the strength of my early youth, undoubtedly a soldier's harness would be strapped here today in the place of this scapulary. But it happened that an illness left me sickly and ailing, and unfitted me utterly for such a life. Similarly it unfitted me for the labour of the fields, so that I threatened to become a useless burden upon my parents, who were peasant-folk. To avoid this they determined to make a monk of me; they offered me to God because they found me unfitted for the service of man; and, poor, simple, self-deluded folk, they accounted that in doing so they did a good and pious thing.

  "I showed aptitude in learning; I became interested in the things I studied; I was absorbed by them in fact, and never gave a thought to the future; I submitted without question to the wishes of my parents, and before I awakened to a sense of what was done and what I was, myself, I was in orders."

  He sank his voice impressively as he concluded—"For ten years thereafter, Agostino, I wore a hair-shirt day and night, and for girdle a knotted length of whipcord in which were embedded thorns that stung and chafed me and tore my body. For ten years, then, I never knew bodily ease or proper rest at night. Only thus could I bring into subjection my rebellious flesh, and save myself from the way of ordinary men which to me must have been a path of sacrilege and sin. I was devout. Had I not been devout and strong in my devotion I could never have endured what I was forced to endure as the alternative to damnation, because without consideration for my nature I had been ordained a priest.

  "Consider this, Agostino; consider it well. I would not have you go that way, nor feel the need to drive yourself from temptation by such a spur. Because I know—I say it in all humility, Agostino, I hope, and thanking God for the exceptional grace He vouchsafed me to support me—that for one priest without vocation who can quench temptation by such agonizing means, a hundred perish, which is bad; and by the scandal of their example they drive many from the Church and set a weapon in the hands of her enemies, which is a still heavier reckoning to meet hereafter."

  A spell of silence followed. I was strangely moved by his tale, strangely impressed by the warning that I perceived in it. And yet my confidence, I think, was all unshaken.

  And when presently he rose, took up his taper, and stood by my bedside to ask me once again did I believe myself to be called, I showed my confidence in my answer.

  "It is my hope and prayer that I am called, indeed," I said. "The life that will best prepare me for the world to come is the life I would follow."

  He looked at me long and sadly. "You must do as your heart bids you," he sighed. "And when you have seen the world, your heart will have learnt to speak to you more plainly." And upon that he left me.

  Next day I set out.

  My leave-takings were brief. My mother shed some tears and many prayers over me at parting. Not that she was moved to any grief at losing me. That were a grief I should respect and the memory of which I should treasure as a sacred thing. Her tears were tears of dread lest, surrounded by perils in the world, I should succumb and thus falsify her vows.

  She, herself, confessed it in the valedictory words she addressed to me. Words that left the conviction clear upon my mind that the fulfilment of her vow was the only thing concerning me that mattered. To the price that later might be paid for it I cannot think that she ever gave a single thought.

  Tears there were too in the eyes of Fra Gervasio. My mother had suffered me to do no more than kiss her hand—as was my custom. But the friar took me to his bosom, and held me tight a moment in his long arms.

  "Remember!" he murmured huskily and impressively. And then, putting me from him, "God help and guide you, my son," were his last words.

  I went down the steps into the courtyard where most of the servants were gathered to see their lord's departure, whilst Messer Arcolano, who was to go with me, paused to assure my mother of the care that he would have of me, and to receive her final commands concerning me.

  Four men, mounted and armed, stood waiting to escort us, and with them were three mules, one for Arcolano, one for myself, and the third already laden with my baggage.

  A servant held my stirrup, and I swung myself up into the saddle, with which I was but indifferently acquainted. Then Arcolano mounted too, puffing over the effort, for he was a corpulent, rubicund man with the fattest hands I have ever seen.

  I touched my mule with the whip, and the beast began to move. Arcolano ambled beside me; and behind us, abreast, came the men-at-arms. Thus we rode down towards the gateway, and as we went the servants murmured their valedictory words.

  "A safe journey, Madonnino!"

  "A good return, Madonnino!"

  I smiled back at them, and in the eyes of more than one I detected a look of commiseration.

  Once I turned, when the end of the quadrangle was reached, and I waved my cap to my mother and Fra Gervasio, who stood upon the steps where I had left them. The friar responded by waving back to me. But my mother made no sign. Likely enough her eyes were upon the ground again already.

  Her unresponsiveness almost angered me. I felt that a man had the right to some slight display of tenderness from the woman who had borne him. Her frigidity wounded me. It wounded me the more in comparison with the affectionate clasp of old Gervasio's arms. With a knot in my throat I passed from the sunlight of the courtyard into the gloom of the gateway, and out again beyond, upon the drawbridge. Our hooves thudded briskly upon the timbers, and then with a sharper note upon the cobbles beyond.

  I was outside the walls of the castle for the first time. Before me the long, rudely paved street of the borgo sloped away to the market-place of the town of Mondolfo. Beyond that lay the world, itself—all at my feet, as I imagined.

  The knot in my throat was dissolved. My pulses quickened with anticipation. I dug my heels into the mule's belly and pushed on, the portly cleric at my side.

  And thus I left my home and the gloomy, sorrowful influence of my most dolorous mother.

  BOOK II

  GIULIANA

  CHAPTER I

  THE HOUSE OF ASTORRE FIFANTI

  LET me not follow in too close detail the incidents of that journey lest I be in danger of becoming tedious. In themselves they contained laughable matter enough, but in the mere relation they may seem dull.

  Down the borgo, ahead of us, ran the rumour that here was the Madonnino of Mondolfo, and the excitement that the announcement caused was something at which I did not know whether to be flattered or offended.

  The houses gave up their inhabitants, and all stood at gaze as we passed, to behold for the first time this lord of theirs of whom they had heard Heaven knows what stories—for where there are elements of mystery human invention can be very active.

  At first so many eyes confused me; so that I kept my own steadily upon the glossy neck of my mule. Very soon, however, growing accustomed to being stared at, I lost some of my shyness, and now it was that I became a trouble to Messer Arcolano. For as I looked about me there were a hundred things to hold my attention and to call for inquiry and nearer inspection.

  We had come by this into the market-place, and it chanced that it was a market-day and that the square was thronged with peasants from the Val di Taro who had come to sell their produce and to buy their necessaries.

  I was for halting at each booth and inspecting the wares, and each time that I made as if to do so, the obsequious peasantry fell away before me, making way invitingly. But Messer Arcolano urged me along, saying that we had far to go, and that in Piacenza there were better shops and that I should have more time to view them.

  Then it was the fountain with its surmounting statues that caught my eye—Durfreno's group of Hercules strangling the Laocoon—and I must draw rein and cry
out in my amazement at so wonderful a piece of work, plaguing Arcolano with a score of questions concerning the identity of this Hercules and how he came beset by so monstrous a reptile, and whether he had succeeded in the end in his attempt to strangle it.

  Arcolano, out of patience by now, answered me shortly that the reptile was the sculptor's pious symbolization of sin, which St. Hercules was overcoming.

  I am by no means sure that such was not indeed his own conception of the matter, and that there did not exist in his mind some confusion as to whether the pagan demigod had a place in the Calendar or not. For he was an uncultured, plebeian fellow, and what my mother should have found in him to induce her to prefer him for her confessor and spiritual counsellor to the learned Fra Gervasio is one more of the many mysteries which an attempt to understand her must ever present to me.

  Then there were the young peasant girls who thronged about and stood in groups, blushing furiously under my glance, which Arcolano vainly bade me lower. A score of times did it seem to me that one of these brown-legged, lithe, comely creatures was my little Luisina; and more than once I was on the point of addressing one or another, to discover my mistake and be admonished for my astounding frivolousness by Messer Arcolano.

  And when once or twice I returned the friendly laughter of these girls, whilst the grinning serving-men behind me would nudge one another and wink to see me—as they thought—so very far off the road to priesthood to which I was vowed, hot anathema poured from the fat cleric's lips, and he urged me roughly to go faster.

  His tortures ended at last when we came into the open country. We rode in silence for a mile or two, I being full of thought of all that I had seen, and infected a little by the fever of life through which I had just passed. At last, I remember that I turned to Arcolano, who was riding with the ears of his mule in line with my saddle-bow, and asked him to point out to me where my dominions ended.

  The meek question provoked an astonishingly churlish answer. I was shortly bidden to give my mind to other than worldly things; and with that he began a homily, which lasted for many a weary mile, upon the vanities of the world and the glories of Paradise—a homily of the very tritest, upon subjects whereupon I, myself, could have dilated to better purpose than could His Ignorance.