'What Church?'

'What but the one Church--the Catholic!'

'Why, there are fifty, child, and each with five hundred controversies within it. Popes denying Councils; Councils rejecting Popes; Synods against Bishops; Bishops against Presbyters. What a mockery is it all!'

cried he pa.s.sionately. 'We who, in our imperfect forms of language, have not even names for separate odours, but say, "this smells like the violet," and "that like the rose," presume to talk of eternity and that vast universe around us, as though our paltry vocabulary could compa.s.s such themes! But to come back: were you happy there?'

'No; I could not bear the life, nor did I wish to be a priest.'

'What would you be, then?'

'I wish I knew,' said the boy fervently.

'I'm a bad counsellor,' said the other, with a bitter smile; 'I have tried several things, and failed in all.'

'I never could have thought that you could fail,' said Gerald slowly, as in calm composure he gazed on the ma.s.sive features before him.

'I have done with failure now,' said the other; 'I mean to achieve success next. It is something to have learned a great truth, and this is one, boy--our world is a huge hunting-ground, and it is better to play wolf than lamb. Don't turn your eyes to those walls, as if the fellows depicted there could gainsay me--they were but sorry scoundrels, the bad ones; the best were but weakly good.'

'You do but pain me when you speak thus,' said Gerald; 'you make me think that you are one who, having done some great crime, waits to avenge the penalty he has suffered on the world that inflicted it.'

'What if you were partly right, boy! Not but I would protest against the word crime, or even fault, as applied to me; still you are near enough to make your guess a good one. I have a debt to pay, and I mean to pay it.'

'I wish I had never quitted the college.' said the boy, and the tears rolled heavily down his cheeks.

'It is not too late to retrace your steps. The cell and the scourge--the fathers know the use of both--will soon condone your offence; and when they have sapped the last drop of manhood out of your nature, you will be all the fitter for your calling.'

With these harsh words, uttered in tones as cruel, the stranger left the room; while Gerald, covering his face with both hands, sobbed as though his heart were breaking.

'Ah! Gabriel has been talking to him. I knew how it would be,' muttered old Pippo, as he cast a glance within the room. 'Poor child! better for him had he left him to die in the Maremma.'

CHAPTER IX. THE 'COUR' OF THE ALTIERI

A LONG autumn day was drawing to its close in Rome, and gradually here and there might be seen a few figures stealing listlessly along, or seated in melancholy mood before the shop-doors, trying to catch a momentary breath of air ere the hour of sunset should fall. All the great and n.o.ble of the capital had left a month before for the sea-side, or for Albano, or the shady valleys above Lucca. You might walk for days and never meet a carriage. It was a city in complete desolation. The gra.s.s sprang up between the stones, and troops of seared leaves, carried from the gardens, littered the empty streets. The palaces were barred up and fastened, the ma.s.sive doors looking as if they had not opened for centuries. In one alone, throughout the entire city, did any signs of habitation linger, and here a single lamp threw its faint light over a wide courtyard, giving a ghost-like air to the vaulted corridors and dim distances around. All was still and silent within the walls; not a light gleamed from a window, not a sound issued. A solitary figure walked with weary footsteps up and down, stopping at times to listen, as if he heard the noise of one approaching, and then resuming his dreary round again.

As night closed in, a second stranger made his appearance, and timidly halting at the porter's lodge, asked leave to enter; but the porter had gone to refresh himself at a neighbouring cafe, and the visitor pa.s.sed in of his own accord. He was in a friar's robe, and by his dusty dress and tired look showed that he had had a long journey; indeed, so overcome was he with fatigue that he sat down at once on a stone bench, depositing his heavy bag beside him. The oppressive heat, the fatigue, the silence of the lonesome spot, all combined, composed him to sleep; and poor Fra Luke, for it was he, crossed his arms before him, and snored away manfully.

Astonished by the deep-drawn breathing, the other stranger drew nigh, and, as well as the imperfect light permitted, examined him. He himself was a man of immense stature, and, though bowed and doubled by age, showed the remnant of a powerful frame: his dress was worn and shabby, but in its cut and in the fashion he wore it, bespoke the gentleman. He gazed long and attentively at the sleeping friar, and then approaching, he took up the bag that lay on the bench. It was weighty, and contained money--a considerable sum, too, as the stranger remarked, while he replaced it. The heavy bang of a door at this moment, and the sound of feet, however, recalled him from this contemplation, and at the same time a low whistle was heard, and a voice, in a subdued tone, called out, 'O'Sullivan!'

'Here!' cried the stranger, who was quickly joined by another.

'I am sorry to have kept you so long, chief,' said the latter; 'but he detained me, watching me so closely, too, that I feared to leave the room.'

'And how is he--better?'

'Far from it; he seems to be sinking every hour. His irritability is intense; eternally asking who have called to inquire after him--if Boyer had been to ask, if the Cardinal Caraffa had come. In fact, so eagerly set is his mind on these things, I have been obliged to make the coachman drive repeatedly into the courtyard, and by a loud uproar without convey the notion of a press of visitors.'

'Has he asked after Barra or myself?' said the chieftain, after a pause.

'Yes; he said twice, "We must have our old followers up here--to-morrow or the next day." But his mind is scarcely settled, for he talked of Florence and the d.u.c.h.ess, and then went off about the insult of that arrest in France, which preys upon him incessantly.'

'And why should it not, Kelly? Was there ever such baseness as that of Louis? Take my word for it, there's a heavy day of reckoning to come to that house yet for this iniquity. It's a sore trouble to me to think it will not be in my time, but it is not far off.'

'Everything is possible now,' said Kelly. 'Heaven knows what's in store for any of us! Men are talking in a way I never heard before. Boyer told me, two days ago, that the garrison of Paris was to be doubled, and Vincennes placed in a perfect state of defence.'

A bitter laugh from the old chieftain showed how he relished these symptoms of terror.

'It will be no laughing matter when it comes,' said Kelly gravely.

'But who _have_ called here? Tell me their names,' said O'Sullivan sternly.

'Not one, not one--stay, I am wrong. The cripple who sells the water-melons at the corner of the Babuino, he has been here; and Giacchino, the strolling actor, comes every morning and says, "Give my duty to his Royal Highness."'

A muttered curse broke from O'Sullivan, and Kelly went on: 'It was on Wednesday last he wished to have a ma.s.s in the chapel here, and I went to the Quirinal to say so. They should, of course, have sent a cardinal; but who came?--the Vicar of Santa Maria maggiore. I shut the door in his face, and told him that the highest of his masters might have been proud to come in his stead.'

'They are tired of us all, Kelly,' sighed the chieftain. 'I have walked every day of the eight long years I have pa.s.sed here in the Vatican gardens, and it was only yesterday a guard stopped me to ask if I were n.o.ble?--ay, by Heaven, if I were n.o.ble! I gulped down my pa.s.sion and answered, "I am a gentleman in the service of his Royal Highness of England"; and he said, "That may well be, and yet give you no right to enter here." The old Cardinal Balfi was pa.s.sing, so I just said to his Eminence, "Give me your arm, for you are my junior by three good years."

Ay, and he did it too, and I pa.s.sed in; but I'll go there no more! no more!' muttered he sadly. 'Insults are hard to bear when one's arm is too feeble to resent them.'

Kelly sighed too; and neither spoke for some seconds. 'What heavy breathings are those I hear?' cried Kelly suddenly; 'some one has overheard us.'

'Have no fear of that,' replied the other; 'it is a stout friar, taking his evening nap, on the stone bench yonder.'

Kelly hastened to the spot, and by the struggling gleam of the lamp could just recognise Fra Luke as he lay sleeping, snoring heavily.

'You know him, then?' asked O'Sullivan.

'That do I: he is a countryman of ours, and as honest a soul as lives; but yet I'd just as soon not see him here Fra Luke,' said he, shaking the sleeper's shoulder, 'Fra Luke. By St. Joseph! they must have hard mattresses up there at the convent, or he 'd not sleep so soundly here.'

The burly friar at last stirred, and shook himself like some great water-dog, and then turning his eyes on Kelly, gradually recalled where he was. 'Would he see me, Laurence? would he just let me say one word to him?' muttered he in Kelly's ear.

'Impossible, Fra Luke; he is on a bed of sickness. G.o.d alone knows if he is ever to rise up from it!'

The Fra bent his head, and for some minutes continued to pray with great fervour, then turning to Kelly, said: * If it's dying he is, there's no good in disturbing his last moments; but if he was to get well enough to hear it, Laurence, will you promise to let me have two or three minutes beside his bed? Will you, at least* ask him if he 'd see Fra Luke? He 'll know why himself.'

'My poor fellow,' said Kelly kindly, 'like all the world, you fancy that the things which touch yourself must be nearest to the hearts of others.

I don't want to learn your secret, Luke--Heaven knows I have more than I wish for in my keeping already!--but take my word for it, the Prince has cares enough on his mind without your asking him to hear yours.'

'Will you give him this, then,' said the Fra, handing him the bag with the money; 'there's a hundred crowns in it just as he gave it to me, Monday was a fortnight. Tell him that--'here he stopped and wiped his forehead, in confusion of thought; 'tell him that it 's not wanting any more for--for what he knows; that it's all over now; not that he's dead, though--G.o.d be praised!--but what am I saying? Oh dear! oh dear! after my swearing never to speak of him!'

'You are safe with me, Luke, depend on that. Only, as to the money, take my advice, and just keep it. He 'll never want to hear more of it.

Many a hundred crowns have left this on a worse errand, whatever be its fate.'

'I wouldn't, to save my life! I wouldn't, if it was to keep me from the galleys!'

'Have your own way, then,' said Kelly sharply; 'I must not loiter here'; and so saying, took the bag from the friar's hand, and moved over toward where O'Sullivan was standing.