Part 11

An excellent tenor and an experienced accompanist, never very far away in Rome, were immediately forthcoming. They disappeared for a moment with Madame L⸺, and then returned to the principal drawing-room, into which all the visitors crowded to admire and enjoy what was sure to be an exquisite performance.

The artists sang excerpts from “Traviata” and “Tosca,” and, as her last number, Madame L⸺ gave some Russian melodies.

The applause was rapturous. With remarkable warmth and kindness, many of the listeners congratulated not only L⸺ herself, but also all the other Russians who happened to be present. For the first time in her life, Irene realized that it was possible to be proud of someone else’s success.

“These foreigners,” observed the Bulgarian Minister to Irene, in perfect Russian, “always imagine that we Slavs live on tallow candles. It is good to be able to show them what our songs are like, and our singers and our national Slavonic genius.”

While listening to L⸺, Irene had observed the public, and had noticed many envious glances levelled at the singer. “Why should she have everything?” they seemed to say—“beauty, talent, splendid dresses, and jewels!”

Irene would have liked to console them with the answer that every singer, every actress, indeed every great talent is endowed by fate not only with wealth and success, but also with a profound capacity for suffering. No one can sing well, play well, or write well, without living through moments of the deepest pain and anguish. Every real talent has known times of torturing depression when the heart in its agony has cried out to God: “Why hast Thou forsaken me? What have I done that I should suffer so?”

And then, at the very darkest moment, suddenly, the veil is torn from their eyes! Truth, with her flaming torch, stands before them, and they understand that God sends them suffering to strengthen and ennoble their talent, that it may touch men’s hearts and show to tired wanderers on earth glimpses of heaven.

Having once grasped this fact, men and women of talent humbly bow their heads before God’s will. Uncomplainingly and nobly they bear the insatiable yearning that tears their souls, accepting success with indifference, since they know that their own personal fame is but a secondary matter, and plays but a minor part in their mission on earth.

Irene felt that there comes a moment in the life not only of every artist, writer, or musician, but also in that of every thinking human being, when nature asks him her great question: “Canst thou relinquish personal interests and help me in my work for humanity?” On his answer depends his soul’s serenity, the peace of his old age, and his faith in God and the justice of God’s ways. For should he indeed refuse, should he harden his heart against his brothers, a despair so boundless will take possession of his soul that there will be no escape or loophole but—suicide.

Irene wondered, with a shudder, what her own answer to the fateful question would be.

XV

“Let us go to the Palazzo M⸺,” suggested Gzhatski to Irene one bright, sunny morning towards the middle of March. “They have a very interesting family festival there to-day, and except in Rome you will nowhere see anything similar.”

So they drove to the old quarter of Rome, where most of the palaces of the Roman aristocracy are to be found.

The exterior of the Palazzo M⸺ was in no sense strikingly beautiful. It was built in something like a semi-circle, which fact seemed in old times, when the street was narrow, perfectly natural. Now, however, the Corso being straight and broad, the effect is peculiar. At some time in the Middle Ages, Saint Philip of Neri had worked a miracle in this palace, having brought back to life a dead child of the M⸺ family.

Saint Philip had entered the room a moment after little Paolo M⸺ had breathed his last, and had found the parents sobbing with grief and despair over the body of their beloved boy. Touched by their sorrow, the Saint had commanded the departed one to arise, upon which Paolo had immediately come back to life. “Why have you brought me back to earth?” he had asked his parents, in tones of reproach. “I was so happy _there_!” Struck by these words, the parents had prayed Saint Philip to let Paolo die again, and the Saint, with a wave of his hand, had released the innocent young soul, that it might fly back to a happier world.

This miracle had been performed on a 16th of March, and, to the present day, the top floor of the palazzo, with the chapel in which the remains of Saint Philip repose, is thrown open every year on that date to the people of Rome. In an unbroken stream the neighbouring poor with their little children, monks and nuns, as well as the inevitable tourists, ascend and descend the splendid staircase. The entrance to the palace is decorated for the occasion with flags and brightly-coloured draperies. In the doorway stands a servant in gold-embroidered uniform, the courtyard is crowded, and heads peep from all the little windows of the third floor.

The rooms leading to the chapel are low, with wood-panelled ceilings, narrow windows, and furniture of the Middle Ages. The chapel itself is brilliantly illuminated. Women, one after another, fall on their knees and pray fervently. This is a children’s festival, particularly dear to mothers. Monks and nuns repeat the legend in detail to the assembled crowd, the Roman poor listening reverently and with emotion, the tourists looking on with mocking smiles.

On the same day, in the great reception rooms below, the princely M⸺ family receives its friends, from four to seven. The family is of ancient and historic lineage, tracing its origin back to pre-Christian Rome. Like all the rest of the Roman aristocracy the princes are religious Catholics, firm in their allegiance to the Vatican.

Irene’s gaze wandered in mute admiration round the enormous entrance-hall, with its magnificent painted ceiling, its antique statues, and the crimson baldaquin at one of its walls. Only the most ancient families in Rome possess such a baldaquin. Under it stands the chair reserved in old days for the use of the Pope, who frequently honoured noble Romans with his visits. Across the balustrade surrounding this throne, footmen, in most wonderful blue and cerise liveries, were laying the wraps of arriving visitors, to whom at the same time a house-steward in black dress clothes and a heavy chain was handing a visitors’ book for signature. Beyond the hall could be seen long enfilades of rooms, with magnificent tapestries, pictures, statues, and many other ancient treasures of art not to be met with elsewhere. Irene particularly noticed a jewel-case in the shape of a girl’s figure carved in wood, and coloured.

The guests were assembled in the principal drawing-room, an immense room with a painted wooden ceiling of the fifteenth century. The walls were hung with crimson brocade, and covered with pictures by old masters. The portières were of heavy crimson velvet, the furniture was massive and gilt. In the middle of the room, over the red felt with which the floor was covered, lay two large white bear-skins, the only compatriots Irene met at this reception.

The whole M⸺ family was present, grandfather, grandmother, and grandson (a handsome boy of fifteen, dressed in the uniform of one of the Roman colleges)—even an eight-months-old infant in a film of white lace, presiding majestically on the knees of his nurse, an Albanian peasant woman, attired in her picturesque national costume. The tiny prince seemed to be enjoying himself more than anyone else, energetically and with gurgles of delight pulling the moustache of every man and tearing off the veil of every lady who bent over him! It was charming to see the indescribable tenderness with which the whole family regarded this latest representative of their ancient race!

In general, the festival was patriarchal and aristocratic to the highest degree—aristocratic in the true fashion of ancient times, when the nobles, really loving the people, befriended them and opened their doors to them on all festive occasions. It was so in all countries, and that wholly un-Christian and senseless gulf which now separates one class from another only came into being with the formation of the middle class, uncertain of itself, having no ground under its feet, dragging hopelessly after the aristocracy, and kicking back with hatred and repulsion the lower classes from which it had so recently risen.

At one end of the drawing-room stood a tea table, and, according to a charming Roman custom, tea, chocolate, and ices were offered to the visitors. Italians can drink hot chocolate and eat ices almost at the same time, without dying!

Irene sat down in a corner, and watched the scene before her with delighted interest. She thought of how, in Petrograd, anything connected with Catherine the Great or Alexander I. was considered ancient. Such antiquity might, here, in this Roman Palace, be looked upon as positively modern! For the first time, Irene realized the youth of her own country. The proud girl, considering herself on an equality with the greatest Russian families, felt a little humiliated at the thought that the ancestors of her princely hosts once walked about the Forum in togas, took part in the government of ancient Rome and in the creation of a great art and a great literature, and gave their laws to the whole civilized world. She tried to picture to herself the Russia of that time: a wilderness peopled by savage hordes in skins of wild beasts, nomad tribes, wandering through forests and swamps and deserts.…

Her dreams were interrupted by the old Prince, who, noticing that she was alone, and prompted by his antique and aristocratic sense of hospitality, approached to entertain her. Irene broached the subject of the legend, and naïvely added that she supposed the chapel and adjoining rooms were only opened for this one day every year.

“No, indeed,” answered the Prince with a smile—“the rooms are in constant use, and our Chaplain holds daily services in the chapel.”

Irene felt confused, and at the same time a curious feeling of envy came over her.

“How happy these people are,” she thought, to have lived for so many centuries in the same town, in the same house, surrounded by legends and traditions and the shadows of their ancestors! All this is real—they are not masquerading in strange costumes and beliefs and customs, like emigrants of all nationalities, who spend their lives in travelling North, South, East and West, in search of new sensations and impressions. There came to Irene’s mind the thought of one of her friends, a girl with a mania for having herself photographed in the national costume of every country she visited. An entire little shelf in Irene’s Petrograd drawing-room was covered with frames from which smiled the young girl’s round, laughing, purely Slavonic little face, here under the fez of a Crimean Tartar maid, there under a Spanish mantilla, elsewhere in the guise of a Neapolitan fisher-girl. Had not Irene’s own wish to enter a convent also been nothing much more than a desire to dress up in a picturesque costume?

These thoughts reminded her of Père Etienne, and on returning to her _pension_, Irene wrote and asked him to come and see her. She had seen very little of him lately. Père Etienne felt that something had happened to change Irene’s ideas during her stay at Assisi—but, however much he questioned her, he couldn’t discover what that something had been. Seeing that she had drifted into social life, he regretfully left off paying her his daily visits. Like all true pastors, he always attached himself to his spiritual children, and was sincerely grieved when the circumstances of life separated him from them. The warm-hearted old man now consoled himself with the thought that he had been mistaken in taking convent life to be Irene’s vocation, and that she would be happier if she married her compatriot. In his heart, however, there still lingered an intuition that would not let him believe in matrimonial happiness for her. No one understands human nature better than a clever priest, who hears countless confessions and looks into the deepest recesses of the countless souls that are laid bare before him.

On receiving Irene’s invitation, he went to her immediately, and they spent a charming evening together. The convent in the Via Gallia was not even mentioned. They spoke of Saint Philip of Neri, of his life and his pupils, of miracles and prayer.

The following day Irene awoke in a pious mood, and put off Gzhatski, who had arranged to take her to some local function. Gzhatski, clever strategist that he was, guessed what had happened, and hastened to create a diversion. He disappeared for a time, made mysterious arrangements, and kept mysterious appointments, and after three days, arrived suddenly to inform Irene that Cardinal R⸺ would receive her in audience at seven o’clock that evening.

“Receive me!” exclaimed Irene in surprise. “But why should I go to him?”

“Why not make the acquaintance of a Cardinal, once he is kind enough to wish to receive you?” answered Gzhatski. “You have decided to join the Catholic Church, and you ought to know more of its priesthood. Père Etienne alone is insufficient—there are plenty of other enlightened and clever men among the Roman priests—they are by no means all furious fanatics!”

XVI

Irene had to agree, and punctually at seven o’clock she presented herself at the Cardinal’s house. Her conscience reproached her a little for troubling a man so occupied with important affairs, but she had heard so much about this famous Cardinal that curiosity won the day over her scruples.

Cardinal R⸺ was one of the most distinguished members of the Papal Court. He was nicknamed “le Pape manqué,” because at the last election he had received the greatest number of votes. His pronounced French sympathies, however, had, in the eyes of the other Catholic countries, stood in his way, with the result that, in answer to his election, the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador had announced the “veto” of the Austrian Emperor. The amazed Cardinals, though they had long forgotten this ancient privilege of the Austrian crown, were obliged to submit, and the next candidate was elected Pope. It is a characteristic fact that Pius X. was so annoyed at his election that, on becoming Pope against his will, his first action was to annul for ever the Austrian right of “veto.”

Remembering this episode, Irene involuntarily felt a great respect for the man who had had the courage of his opinions and sympathies to the extent of paying for them by losing the Papacy. Such honesty seemed hardly in keeping with the traditional spirit of intrigue and deceit with which the Papal court was supposed to be permeated, and which Irene had so frequently heard discussed in Russia.

The Cardinal lived in a small detached house, within the precincts of the Vatican, and Irene was struck, by no means for the first time, by the resemblance between these Vatican houses and courtyards, and the inner courts and arch-priest’s dwellings of Russian monasteries. There was in both the same sense of chill and isolation and lifelessness. Even the waiting-room into which a slow old servant led Irene was exactly like the room of a Russian monastic priest. The same clumsy wooden furniture upholstered in red velvet, the same religious pictures. The only things that were missing were the typical and inevitable strip of canvas that runs like a pathway right across the floors of all our Russian priestly houses, and the extraordinary variety of worsted cushions, with their wonderful patterns of fantastic animals and flowers, embroidered for our priests by pious Russian parishioners.

A young secretary twice passed through the waiting-room, throwing, each time, a quick but scrutinizing glance at Irene. Finally, unable to restrain himself any longer, he approached her, with a charming smile:

“Voudriez vous me dire, Mademoiselle,” he inquired, “le motif pour lequel vous désirez voir Son Eminence?”

Irene did not know how to answer. She really could not say that she had come simply to pacify a troublesome friend!

“J’ai entendu parler de la sympathie que Son Eminence éprouve pour les Russes,” she stammered vaguely.

“Oh oui! Oh oui!” said the secretary, nodding his head. “Les sympathies de Son Eminence pour la Russie sont bien connues. Cependant, Mademoiselle, il me semble que vous devez avoir une raison plus … plus …”

The secretary was evidently at a loss to find the right word. Noticing that he was regarding her enormous muff with interest, Irene remembered that an attempt to assassinate a highly-placed personage, had recently been made in Rome.

“I understand your anxiety,” she remarked. “There are visitors who arrive with a bomb in their muffs!” With these words, as though accidentally, she made a movement with her muff, bringing it close to the secretary’s eyes. He glanced sharply into it, and was evidently appeased.

“Oh! certes, Son Eminence sera très satisfaite de vous voir, Mademoiselle,” he said. “Veuillez attendre quelques instants au salon; Son Eminence ne tardera pas à rentrer.”

The waiting-room, in the meantime, was filling with people. An old Monsignor entered, and Irene bowed to him. To her surprise, however, he not only did not reply, but never even glanced in her direction. Another priest entered, and again the same thing happened. Then came three Capuchin monks who made obvious efforts to look at anything but Irene, and sat down at the furthest possible point from her. The proud, sensitive woman felt deeply offended and annoyed.

“Do they take me for a leper?” she thought angrily, “or am I so hideous that it disgusts them to look at me?” Suddenly, however, a humorous idea flashed through her mind. Irene had so long ago left off thinking of herself as in any sense an attractive woman, that the sudden idea of being regarded by anyone in the light of a possible temptation, caused her, quite unexpectedly, to burst into a loud peal of laughter. The monks frowned, and Irene hastened to hide her laughing face in the muff that had so alarmed the young secretary.

At this moment there burst into the room, noisily, and talking in strident tones, two lean and yellow English old maids with scant greyish hair, and enormous fashionable hats. Chattering fast and animatedly, they sat down exactly opposite the Capuchins, and robbed these victims of the only blank wall at which they could safely gaze without jeopardizing the salvation of their souls.

What were the poor monks to do? The devil evidently had awful designs on them that evening, and terrible temptation peered at them from every corner of the Cardinal’s waiting-room. As though by order, they all lowered their eyelids, and remained, as though turned into stone, with their gaze riveted on the floor.

The door opened, and Irene was asked to pass into the Cardinal’s presence.

A dimly illuminated ante-room led into the drawing-room. Here, the furniture was a little more comfortable, and there were pictures and flowers. The cardinal stood at his writing-table, not in his red robes, as Irene had expected, but in black with narrow red edgings. A somewhat worn red cardinal’s cap lay on the table. The great priest looked at Irene in silence, and with a questioning expression. She approached, kissed the ring on his left hand, and thanked him for the honour he was conferring on her by receiving her. He smiled, and the man of the world awoke in him. Asking Irene to sit down on a small sofa, he began to question her about Russia, his words revealing a great knowledge of Russian Church matters. He seemed specially interested in a certain small group of Russian priests, who had recently been sent by the Synod to do penance in far-distant monasteries.

“Mais enfin, que veulent-ils? Que demandent-ils? Quel est le but de leur révolte?” asked the Cardinal.

“I think,” answered Irene simply, “that they wanted to convoke a council, with the object of reinstating the Patriarchy.”

The Cardinal frowned, and a shadow passed over his face. “Totally unnecessary,” he muttered somewhat hurriedly. “Totally unnecessary.” And he changed the subject, asking Irene what she had seen in Rome, and how she liked the Catacombs.

“I like the Russian catacombs much better,” she answered.

“Yes—I know—you mean the Kieff ones. But they date only from the ninth century. Remember,” exclaimed the Cardinal rapturously, “that here, in Rome, the earliest Christian martyrs are buried.”

Irene asked where the remains of the Apostle Andrew were preserved.

“Andrew?” repeated the Cardinal, stopping to think a moment. “Yes—the head is in the shrine of St. Peter’s, and the rest of the remains are distributed among various churches.”

“I ask this,” explained Irene, in answer to the Cardinal’s questioning glance, “because the Apostle Andrew is particularly dear to Russians, having been the first to teach us Christianity.”

“Of course—I know! Andrew, the brother of Saint Peter,” said the Cardinal with a subtle smile, as though wishing to underline the fact that Rome and Russia had received Christianity from two brothers. “Well, and what churches have you seen in Rome?”

Irene mentioned several of the most famous.

“Have you been to the church of Saint Cecilia?” asked the Cardinal a little uncertainly. “No?”—he was clearly disappointed. “You should go there without fail. It is my church—it has some very interesting subterranean passages.”

A tender smile suddenly illuminated the stern features of this old and serious man. Irene afterwards ascertained that Cardinal R⸺ had spent his whole fortune on the restoration and preservation of the church of Saint Cecilia. She went to see this church on the following day. The ancient shrine gleamed with cleanliness and freshness. Small electric lamps burned before the marble statue of Saint Cecilia, and flowers stood before each of her images. Irene visited the underground sepulchre that holds the remains of the Saint, and was charmed with the elegant new chapel, its small, slim columns, and its exquisite mosaics in the Byzantine style. Thus might one decorate and beautify the tomb of a beloved daughter. On entering this chapel Irene understood the true character of Cardinal R⸺, and knew that his stern exterior concealed a tender, loving heart, which, in the absence of personal family ties, had ardently attached itself to a poetical shadow, to someone’s pure and lovely image, to someone’s spotless and sacred memory.

Gzhatski was much pleased with the impression produced upon Irene by Cardinal R⸺, and announced that she must now make the acquaintance of Monsignor Lefrène, of whom all Rome was talking.

Monsignor Lefrène, a clever and highly intellectual Frenchman, had written a history of the Christian Church. The book had been published, sold, and widely read, when suddenly the Jesuit Fathers, who always play the part of defenders of Catholic purity, announced that Lefrène’s history was dangerous to the faithful.

“It contains nothing contrary to Catholic dogmas,” they wrote, “but its whole tone and tendency is offensive, and likely to do much harm.”