Part 6

He watched the passing crowd with animosity. They all seemed to him to be dressed in their Sunday best! There go two young Italian brunettes, in fashionable tight skirts, with wide fur scarves on their shoulders, showing, under their short dresses, dainty feet, shod as for a ball in elegant open shoes over open-work silk stockings. Here is a baby being taken for a walk, in a little white piqué summer coat, a hat to match, and a huge collar of white goat-fur! And behind comes something quite wild—two little boys and a girl in sailor suits, without coats, and with bare legs and necks—yet the little girl carries an enormous muff, and the boys have sealskin caps!

“I suppose they have heard that people wear furs in the winter, but they don’t know exactly how, so they have made guys of themselves!” muttered Gzhatski crossly.

His loneliness was even greater than his despair. He had already decided to risk his health and return to Russia, when his meeting with Irene turned his thoughts into another channel. He had no difficulty in assuring himself that she was the victim of Jesuit priests, that the poor girl was being wickedly deceived, and that it was his duty as a compatriot to come to her aid and save her. With all the accumulated energy of all those idle weeks, he threw himself into the struggle with Père Etienne, and in spite of Irene’s wish to bring her two friends together, Gzhatski curtly refused to make the acquaintance of the “Catholic rogue.” He was very annoyed to see how obstinately Irene defended her friendship with the priest, and used all his eloquence to disillusion her on the subject of convent life.

“And what is the meaning of that insufferable manner,” he cried irritably, “in which all priests make a prisoner of Christ, and announce to the world that He can only be found in their churches? They lie! I don’t deny that in the early days of Christianity, monasteries and convents really represented Christian oases in a pagan desert. But that time has long since passed. Christ has long ago left the monasteries, and dwells among us, in our science, our literature, our law. We may quarrel as much as we please, we may accuse each other of treachery, but in spite of everything, we are all going along the path of Christian progress. Every time we liberate slaves in America or serfs in Russia, every time we abolish torture or corporal punishment, we are proclaiming liberty and brotherhood, we are serving Christ, and Christ is among us. Let them say, if they will, that the foundations of Christianity are shaking, that Christianity is at its last ebb, and must make way for a new religion. It is absurd even to listen to these wild speeches. Christianity is eternal, if only because Christ did not invent anything strange or new or incomprehensible, but expressed clearly and simply truths which every human being feels dimly in his soul. It is not Christianity that will disappear, but its old and worn-out forms. Christianity is slowly and surely passing from the realms of legend and romance into real daily life, where it will take root more and more firmly, until it reigns supreme on earth. As to your convents, they are nothing but empty hives that the working-bees have long ago abandoned, while the monks are drones who have remained behind to linger lazily in the old place until they die. Is it possible that you, with your heart and your intelligence, can wish to end your life among these unnecessary, useless, sleeping drones?”

Irene listened in dismay. Both Gzhatski and Père Etienne spoke so eloquently and with such conviction. Which of them was in the right?

“And what a wild idea!” exclaimed Gzhatski furiously, “to become a nun! Do you really think there are not enough nuns in Rome without you? Why, the whole town is teeming with convents that give one no peace with their everlasting bells. How many sick women and weak children are there in Rome, who need rest and sleep? And yet those imbeciles start their pandemonium at five o’clock every morning. You see, they have to save their precious souls. We in Russia, with our modest monks and nuns, can hardly grasp the extent of the impudence of these Southern religious orders, and the fury to which they can drive people. I perfectly understand why they were expelled from France, and I only profoundly regret that they have not yet been expelled from Italy. Just look what they have done with Rome. It is no longer a city, it is one huge cemetery. I can’t listen to that eternal dull sound of bells. It always seems to me that they are burying me alive, and celebrating masses for the peace of my sinful soul. I always feel inclined to cry out: ‘You lie! I am alive! And I am going to live a long time yet, and do many useful things.’”

In his enthusiasm, Gzhatski sometimes took recourse to means of which he himself would at another time have disapproved. Thus, on one occasion, he began, with a malicious smile and in some excitement, almost before he had shaken hands:

“You always go to the Via Gallio. But do you know by what nickname your Sœurs Mauves are known in Roman Society?”

“Nickname?” questioned Irene. “I did not know nuns could have nicknames.”

“They are called ‘Les Hetairas du bon Dieu,’” said Gzhatski, lowering his voice.

Irene was angry.

“Are you not ashamed of yourself?” she exclaimed indignantly. “You call yourself a gentleman, and you find it possible to insult these saintly women, who deserve the profoundest respect. I quite believe that the young people of the present day are capable of inventing this or any other obscenity. In their eyes, all women are low and worthless, and they cannot imagine or understand anything good or noble. But _you_—_you_! That you should repeat such things!”

“Well, well, I beg your pardon,” said the confused and apologetic Gzhatski. “I did not mean to offend you. I only wanted to tell you how painful to me is the thought that you, my countrywoman, will also be known by this shameful title.”

But the offended Irene would not listen to his apologies. Immediately after Gzhatski’s departure (a somewhat hasty departure on this occasion), she went off to the convent. She hurried along, with the feeling one has when one rushes to friends who have just suffered some trouble or misfortune. Although Irene had never seen the face of a single one of the sisters, nor had spoken to any of them, she had gradually, through these daily hours of common prayer, come to regard them as her personal friends. She was therefore anxious, on this occasion, to prove by her presence her resentment of the insult offered to them by idle, vulgar gossips.

Evensong was almost at an end when Irene entered the church. There were very few people, the choir was singing an exultant hymn, the nuns were frozen into a sort of beatific ecstasy. Irene gazed at them long and seriously, and suddenly realized that no insult could possibly reach them, that it was beyond the power of anyone to offend them. They were above all earthly troubles; nothing earthly had any value for them, all their hopes and dreams were concentrated in the next world. Thus, an emigrant, during his first days on board ship, thinks restlessly of the home he has left behind him, but when weeks have slipped away, his interest in the past grows fainter, and he thinks and dreams only of what he will find in the new land.

Père Etienne noticed Irene’s restlessness, but although he was well aware of her friendship with Gzhatski, never mentioned the Russian’s name. The clever, self-controlled priest neither opposed nor contradicted Gzhatski’s views on Roman Catholicism, views which made themselves clearly felt in all Irene’s words and arguments. He only more eloquently than ever advocated the convent. Under his influence, Irene saw before her a happy, peaceful old age, illuminated by constant sunshine, in the lap of luxurious Southern nature. And then came Gzhatski to destroy this dream; for, listening to his words, as eloquent as any of Père Etienne’s, she grew vaguely ashamed of having abandoned her home and her country, that dear Russia, of which Gzhatski spoke with such love and enthusiasm. He tried hard, indeed, to point out to Irene all the charm and goodness of the Russian people, and bitterly reproached her for having so light-mindedly hardened her heart and turned away from them.

“You have invented for yourself all sorts of fantastic heroes,” he said. And you are unreasonably cross because you do not meet them in real life. Be reasonable, Irene Pavlovna! Human beings are simply animals. It is not so very long since they lived in caves and dressed in skins. They have not been lazy. They have worked zealously at themselves, and have attained much. It is not their fault if it needs another thousand centuries to perfect them, to entirely overthrow the animal, and to attain the spiritual ideal that God has placed before them. If you personally have already attained all this, that is your special good luck; but, pardon me, I doubt it exceedingly. Your life is not at an end yet, and the savage beast may yet awaken in you quite unexpectedly. I, of course, perfectly understand your dislike of the Petrograd career-hunters. I do not greatly admire them myself. Nevertheless, I still assert that ambition, especially in Russia, is more a virtue than a vice. We Slavs are so listless and lazy, that without ambition we become, at the very best, Oblomoffs,[2] and at the worst, primitive beasts. You don’t know the kind of types one meets in our far away provinces.

“You are very proud of the fact that you care nothing for wealth or rank. But do you know, Irene Pavlovna, that this is only another sign of a morbid, diseased nature? I always have the feeling that your ancestors must have lived too forcibly, too passionately—they have left you the legacy of an exhausted organism, and you no longer have the strength to love or care for anything. In your place, I should try to cultivate artificially some passion that would attach you more firmly to Mother Earth!”

[1] A sledge with three horses abreast.—ED.

[2] A famous character in a novel by Goncharoff, the type of a talented failure.

VIII

Père Etienne, feeling that the struggle with Gzhatski was getting beyond his strength, began to look round for help, and, as a first step, advised Irene to hear some of the sermons that are preached on certain days at most of the principal Roman churches. On the following Sunday, she made her way to San Luigi dei Francesi, a church famous for the eloquence of its preachers. The sermon was to be preached at four o’clock, before Vespers. The organ was playing softly as Irene entered the splendid edifice, with its magnificent marble pillars and bronze decoration. Italian preachers in Rome usually speak from a broad covered rostrum, lined with red cloth, in which frame the preacher, unable to restrain his excitement, strides backwards and forwards, and gesticulates wildly, alternately throwing himself into a chair, and rising again. These broad rostrums are of very ancient origin; their prototype is still to be found among the ruins of the Forum, where they served, in bygone days of the Republic, as platforms from which the populace was addressed.

French preachers do not gesticulate. They mount a little winding stairway, to a round narrow pulpit, with an umbrella-like baldaquin, in which their little figures white-robed, and with black pelerines, look like Chinese dolls. While the Italian priest, in his passionate ardour, smites his chest and thunders at the congregation, his French brother pronounces a calm, well-thought out speech, whose aim is to astonish by its brilliant wit and its fine subtlety.

On this occasion, the sermon was on the subject of the cult of early Christian martyrs. It was, indeed, rather an historical lecture than a sermon. The preacher made a perfectly expressed and masterly exposition of various facts hitherto unknown to Irene, about the catacombs; the high honour in which the tombs of the first Christian martyrs were held, and the respect shown even to false martyrs, _i.e._, to deceased Christians, given out by their ambitious relatives as saints who had died for the Faith. These falsifications had, according to the preacher, assumed such enormous proportions, that it had been found necessary, in about the second century, to organize a special commission with the purpose of looking into the matter.

“Et comme un faux gentilhomme est exclu de l’armorial,” added the preacher, a little irrelevantly, “ainsi ces faux martyrs furent bannis du martyrologe.”

Irene listened with interest, but wondered a little how this scientific, historical, slightly satirical lecture could touch or help the souls of the listeners. In half an hour it was over, and Irene rose to go, when suddenly the altar was brightly illuminated, the organ began to play, and from the gallery floated the dulcet tones of the beautiful angel-voiced choir. Irene had never heard such passionate romantic singing, except at the opera. It awakened no religious inspiration in her; on the contrary, closing her eyes in complete enjoyment, caressed by the softness of those delicious waves of sound, she saw before her her once-idolized singer Battestini, in the title rôle of Rubinstein’s “Demon.” The unhappy “exiled spirit” was wandering in the desert, solitary, forsaken, heartbroken, hopelessly in love!

“All the sorrow, all the suffering of life,” he sobbed passionately from the gallery, “is caused by solitude. Live together in couples! Love, caress, and comfort one another! And above all things, lose no time! Enjoy the delights of love, while you can!”

The sound of dull, stifled sobbing fell on Irene’s ear. It emanated from a grey-haired old man beside her, who had fallen on his knees and buried his face in his hands.

“He weeps because it is too late for him to love,” concluded Irene, as she glanced pityingly at the bent figure of the old man.

The service ended; the great doors opened, and the warm, golden, Roman evening rushed into the church. Irene turned her steps homewards, enjoying the blue sky, and the gay good-natured Sunday crowd that filled the streets. Somewhere in the distance a military band was playing, the air was full of laughter and merriment. Pretty children, in their best frocks, and with little bare legs, were frolicking about to the evident delight of their parents, who watched them with tender caressing smiles.

“How glorious, how beautiful life is!” thought Irene, still under the impression of the singing. But having traversed two streets and turned into the Piazza Venezia, she suddenly stopped short, horror-struck.

“But they did not sing about earthly love _at all_!” she exclaimed to herself in complete confusion. “How could such thoughts ever be awakened by their prayers? How did it happen? How came I to fall into such an error?”

Irene was both amazed and ashamed, and decided to say nothing to Père Etienne about her impressions of the service. This, however, was not as easy as it seemed. The wily priest cross-examined her severely, and of course, Irene ended by admitting everything. Père Etienne frowned. He knew all about this tragic “Demon,” singing so passionately in the desert—he had met him twice in the corridor, on the way to Irene’s room!

“You are far too impressionable,” he observed severely, “and music evidently irritates your nerves. You will do better to attend the lectures of Monsignor Berra, in the convent of the Ursulines.”

Irene agreed, and, on the appointed day, knocked at the small door of the convent in the Via Flavia. The sister who answered her knock glanced at the pass ticket in Irene’s hand, and led her through a quadrangle with slim Gothic columns. Irene was astonished at the silence. Only a few steps away was the crowded, noisy street—yet here reigned the stillness of the grave. She raised the leather curtain with which the doors of churches in Rome are always covered during the winter, and found herself in a cold, damp, but very elegant chapel, filled with ladies, young girls, and children. Men were not admitted here—only two abbots were modestly hiding themselves in a corner.

The nuns, true to their traditions, did not show themselves at all, but from somewhere on high came the sound of the organ, while the fresh young voices of the convent school children sang the prayers.

“Well,” thought Irene with a smile, “at least this singing will not lead me into temptation!”

After a short service, Monsignor Berra, a handsome, clever old man, entered the pulpit. Expressing himself in that most elegant French that was once spoken at the French Court, but that is now forgotten by all except, perhaps, the clergy, he began a lecture on Esther.

Irene listened with pleasure to the subtle, clever, witty phrases of the priest, punctuated by long quotations from Racine, whose name, however, Berra did not mention, speaking of him only as “the most Christian of all poets.” But as the lecture continued, it seemed to grow strangely familiar to Irene, and suddenly she remembered what association it awakened in her mind. A few days previously, Lady Muriel had taken her to the Palazzo of the N⸺ Embassy, to see its famous, beautiful tapestries. One of the rooms was lined entirely with scenes from the story of Esther, embroidered after seventeenth-century designs. The figures, indeed, represented neither Persians nor Jews, but simply French Marquises and Viscounts, who had temporarily doffed their powdered wigs, and had amused themselves by dressing up in Persian disguises.

“When I look at Esther,” the witty daughter of the Ambassador had remarked to Irene, pointing to the tapestry, “I always wonder how long she practised and rehearsed fainting, before carrying it out so gracefully!”

Listening to Berra, Irene had quite this same impression of an “imitation” Esther! Described by him, the primitive, passionate Jewess became an affected lady of the Court of Louis XV., one of those numerous favourites who knew well how to use their coquetry in order to manage, to their perfect satisfaction, their own little affairs and those of all their relatives and friends!

Towards the end of the lecture, the preacher abandoned his tone of levity, and grew serious. In connection with Esther’s fervent prayer, he remarked that if our prayers remain unanswered to-day, it is only because they are so cold and proud.

“Imagine, Mesdames,” he said, “a beggar who would approach you in the street, asking for alms, in a cold, proud voice, as though he were demanding his due! Would you not be justly incensed? Would you not turn away and rather bestow your bounty upon one who asks it humbly and in tears? Pray then also to God like humble supplicants, trusting in His mercy and goodness.”

Irene returned home, much impressed by these words. “Yes,” she thought—she was undoubtedly to be counted among the proud beggars! She knew her own virtues, and she considered she had a right to demand a reward from God. How would it be if she were to change the nature of her prayers? And, under the impulse of a new hope, she fell on her knees, weeping, sobbing, praying: “Lord! I am but a humble supplicant! I resign all my rights and privileges! I ask only for mercy! Send me happiness—and if that is impossible, then give me at least rest, that spiritual rest for which my soul hungers!”

Irene prayed passionately, and with bitter tears—but all the time, reason was whispering in answer: “What are you asking? you know that you are praying for the impossible. Happiness for you can take only one form, that of love, love, love, that love of which you have been dreaming all your life! But think a little—how is that possible at your age? Love is nature’s method of continuing our race. That is why young girls are gifted with such attractions for young men. At your age, to have children is impossible—that is why beauty has been taken from you, and men pass you by with indifference. You ask for spiritual rest, but that is only attainable by people who have fulfilled the duties imposed on them by nature. You were born to be a wife and a mother—Where is your husband? Where are your children? Where is your family? God created the world on a foundation of logical laws, and, however passionately you may pray, He cannot change these laws.”

Irene arose in despair. Oh! that accursed helpless logic, that kills all prayer and destroys all hope!

Time passed, and Irene’s nervousness increased day by day. Sermons, church services, her disputes with Gzhatski, all this alike irritated and enervated her. Père Etienne observed the poor woman with real pity, but could devise no means of comforting or helping her. Happening on one occasion to mention a famous convent at Assisi, which he thought Irene might some day do well to visit with the object of retreat and prayer, she caught at the idea. On the following day, strictly forbidding the porter at the _pension_ to disclose her new address to _anyone_, and without saying good-bye to Gzhatski, she left Rome.

IX

On her arrival at Assisi, Irene immediately felt a little calmer than she had done in Rome. She had often noticed that when staying in mountainous districts her nerves grew quieter, and she felt, for the time being, less depressed. She loved the scent of the fresh mountain air, and it seemed to her, under its influence, as though, after all, life might still have in store for her many happy hours. An old doctor who had once treated her in Paris had called her in fun “la femme des montagnes”—perhaps, indeed, she should have lived always at high altitudes.

Assisi, in addition, was a delightful place. From the hills among which the little town with its famous monastery nestled, there was a glorious view over an immense plain, dotted with houses, churches, gardens, and villages. In the distance rose the peaks of the Apennines.

The impression of this view was rendered all the more enchanting by that wonderful colouring, so well known to all who have visited Umbria or Tuscany in the spring. The mountains were nearly always wreathed in an azure mist; the shadows were deep blue, little white cloudlets floated in the turquoise sky; the valley was green under its carpet of velvet grass, powdered already with daisies; the fruit-trees in the orchards were covered with a wealth of pink and white blossom. Such landscapes can be seen only in the pictures of the Italian old masters, for they alone, of all painters, have possessed the gift of reproducing all the softness and harmony of their native colouring.

Assisi has, to this day, preserved its character of a mediæval Borgo, and has probably changed but little since the days of St. Francis. An old ruined fortress crowns the higher of a group of hills, and from this point run in all directions narrow, ill-paved little streets, illuminated at night, as in old times, by feeble lanterns hanging on wires stretched across the roadway. Nobody seems to live in the monotonous, grey stone houses with eternally closed shutters; nobody ever seems to walk in the deserted streets and dark alleys. Only an occasional donkey tied to a wall stands meditatively in the middle of the road, and from time to time moves his long ears as a sign of life. Now and then there float across the air from some cellar the beat of a carpenter’s hammer, and the subdued tones of his voice, singing about the “faithless Fiametta.” Life seems to have stopped at the twelfth century, since when everything has lain still in an enchanted sleep. Even the numerous tourists do not succeed in awakening the slumbering town. The inhabitants are mostly monks and nuns, with a scattering of Polish Catholics, and English old maids, who come to kneel at the shrine of St. Francis.