John Inglesant: A Romance (Volume 2 of 2), Page 3

  *CHAPTER III.*

  In spite, however, of the reasonings and prescriptions of the physician,the oppression upon Inglesant's brain became more intolerable. Everynew object seemed burnt into it by the sultry outward heat, and by hisown fiery thoughts. The livid scorched plains, with the dark foliage,the hot piazzas and highways, seemed to him thronged with ghastlyphantoms, all occupied more or less in some evil or fruitless work. Asto his physical sense all objects seemed distorted and awry, so to hismental perception the most ordinary events bore in them the germs,however slight, of that terrible act of murderous terror that had marredand ruined his own life. In some form or other, in the passionate look,in the gambler's gesture, in the lover's glance, in the juggler'sgrimace, in the passion of the little child, he saw the stealthy trailof the Italian murderer, before whose cowardly blow his brother fell.The cool neglected courts of Padua afforded no relief to his rackedbrain, no solace to his fevered fancy. He frequented the shadowedchurches and the solemn masses daily without comfort; for his consciencewas once more weighted with the remembrance of Serenus de Cressy, and ofhis own rejection of the narrow path of the Holy Cross. A sense ofoppression and confusion rested upon him mentally and physically, sothat he could see no objects steadily and clearly; but without was aphantasmagoria of terrible bright colours, and within a mental chaos anddisorder without a clue. A constant longing filled his mind to acceptDe Cressy's offer, and he would have returned to France but for theutter impossibility of making the journey in his condition of health.He withdrew himself more and more from society, and at last, withoutinforming his friends of his intention, he retired to a small monasterywithout the city, about a mile from the Traviso Gate, and requested tobe admitted as a novice. The result of this step at the outset wasbeneficial; for the perfect seclusion, and the dim light of the cellsand shaded garden, relieved the brain, and restored the disordered senseof vision.

  It was some time before Don Agostino received intelligence, through thePrior, of this step of his friend's. He immediately came to Padua, andhad several interviews with Inglesant, but apparently failed to produceany impression upon him. He then returned to Florence, and induced theCardinal Rinuccini, from whose influence upon Inglesant he hoped much,to accompany him to Padua.

  The Cardinal was a striking-looking and singularly handsome man, hiscountenance resembling the reputed portraits of Moliere, whose bustmight be taken for that of a pagan god. There was the same open freeexpression, as of a man who confined his actions by no bounds, whotasted freely of that tree of good and evil, which, it is reported,transforms a man into a god, and of that other tree which, since theflaming sword of the cherubim kept the way to the true, has passed inthe world for the tree of life; who had no prejudices nor partialities,but included all mankind, and all the opinions of men, within the widerange of perfect tolerance and lofty indifference. He found Inglesantin his novice's dress, walking in the small walled-in garden of themonastery, beneath the mulberry trees, his breviary in his hand. Afterthe first greeting the Cardinal inquired touching his health.

  "You are familiar with English, Eminence," replied Inglesant, "andremember Hamlet; and you will therefore understand the state of a manfor whom the world is too strong."

  "It is only the weak," replied the Cardinal, "for whom the world is toostrong. You know what Terence says, 'Ita vita est hominum quasi cumludas tesseris,' or, as we should rather say, 'Life is like a game ofcards;' you cannot control the cards, but of such as turn up you mustmake the most."

  "Illud quod cecidit forte, id arte ut corrigas."

  "The freewill, the reason, and the power of self-command, struggleperpetually with an array of chance incidents, of mechanical forces, ofmaterial causes, beyond foresight or control, but not beyond skilfulmanagement. This gives a delicate zest and point to life, which itwould surely want if we had the power to frame it as we would. We didnot make the world, and are not responsible for its state; but we canmake life a fine art, and, taking things as we find them, like wise men,mould them as may best serve our own ends."

  "We are not all wise, your Eminence, and the ends that some of us makeour aim are far beyond our reach."

  "I was ever moderate in my desires," said the Cardinal with a smile; "Ishoot at none of these high-flying game. I am content to live from dayto day, and leave the future to the gods; in the meantime sweeteninglife as I can with some pleasing toys, here and there, to relish it."

  "You have read Don Quixote, Eminence," said Inglesant; "and no doubthold him to have been mad."

  "He was mad, doubtless," replied the Cardinal smiling.

  "I am mad, like him," replied the other.

  "I understand you," said the Cardinal; "it is a noble madness, fromwhich we inferior natures are free; nevertheless, it may be advisablefor a time to consult some worldly physician, that by his help thisnobleness may be preserved a little longer upon earth and among men."

  "No worldly physician knows the disease, much less the cure," saidInglesant. "Don Quixote died in his bed at last, talked down by pettycommon-place, acknowledging his madness, and calling his noble life amistake; how much more shall I, whose life has been the more ignoble forsome transient gleams of splendour which have crossed its path in vain!The world is too strong for me, and heaven and its solution of life'senigma too far off."

  "There is no solution, believe me," said the Cardinal, "no solution oflife's enigma worth the reading. But suppose there be, you are morelikely to find it at Rome than here. Put off that monk's dress, andcome with me to Rome. What solution can you hope to find, brooding onyour own heart, on this narrow plot of grass, shut in by lofty walls?You, and natures like yours, make this great error; you are moralizingand speculating upon what life ought to be, instead of taking it as itis; and in the meantime it slips by you, and you are nothing, and lifeis gone. I have heard, and you doubtless, in a fine concert of viols,extemporary descant upon a thorough bass in the Italian manner, wheneach performer in turn plays such variety of descant, in concordance tothe bass, as his skill and present invention may suggest to him. Inthis manner of play the consonances invariably fall true upon a givennote, and every succeeding note of the ground is met, now in the unisonor octave, now in the concords, preserving the melody throughout by thelaws of motion and sound. I have thought that this is life. To asolemn bass of mystery and of the unseen, each man plays his own descantas his taste or fate suggests; but this manner of play is so governedand controlled by what seems a fatal necessity, that all melts into aspecies of harmony; and even the very discords and dissonances, the wildpassions and deeds of men, are so attempered and adjusted that withoutthem the entire piece would be incomplete. In this way I look upon lifeas a spectacle, 'in theatro ludus.' Have you sat so long that you aretired already of the play?"

  "I have read in some book,"[#] said Inglesant, "that it is not theplay--only the rehearsal. The play itself is not given till the nextlife. But for the rest your Eminence is but too right. There is nosolution within my own heart, and no help within these walls."

  [#] What this book is I do not know. The remark was made by Jean Paul,in Hesperus, some hundred years after Inglesant's day.

  There can be little doubt that had Inglesant remained much longer in themonastery, he would have sunk into a settled melancholy. The quiet andcalm, while it soothed his brain, and relieved it of the phantoms thatdistracted it, allowed the mind to dwell exclusively upon thosedepressing thoughts and ideas which were exhausting his spirit andreducing him well-nigh to despair. However undesirable at other timesthe Cardinal's philosophic paganism might be, no doubt, at this moment,his society was highly beneficial to Inglesant, to whom, indeed, hisconversation possessed a peculiar charm. It could, indeed, scarcelyfail to attract one who himself sympathized with that philosophy oftolerance of, and attraction to, the multiform aspects of life whichPaganism and the Cardinal equally followed. On the other hand,Rinuccini had from the first been personally strongly attracted towardsIngle
sant, and, as a matter of policy, attached just importance tosecuring his services, both on account of what he had learnt from hisbrother, and from the report of the Jesuits.

  After some further conversation the Cardinal returned to Padua intriumph, bringing Inglesant with him, whom he loaded with kindness andattention. A suite of apartments was placed at his disposal, certain ofthe Cardinal's servants were ordered to attend him, and the finesthorses were devoted to his use on the approaching journey. Afterwaiting in Padua some days, to make preparations which were necessary inthe neglected state of Inglesant's affairs, they set out for Rome. DonAgostino was still in Florence, the politics of his family not sufferinghim to visit the papal city at present.

  Their first day's journey took them, through the fertile andwell-cultivated Venetian States, to Rovigo, where they crossed the Po,dividing the territory of the Republic from the Ferrarese, which Statehad lately been acquired by the Pope.

  This country, which, while it possessed princes of its own, had been oneof the happiest and most beautiful parts of Italy, was now abandoned anduncultivated to such an extent that the grass was left unmown on themeadows. At Ferrara, a vast city which appeared to Inglesant like acity of the dead as he walked through streets of stately houses withoutan inhabitant, the chief concourse of people was the crowd of beggarswho thronged round the Cardinal's coach. After dinner Inglesant lefthis companion, who liked to linger over his wine, and walked out intothe quiet streets. The long, deserted vistas of this vast city,sleeping in the light and shadow of the afternoon sun, disturbed now andthen only by a solitary footstep, pleased his singular fancies as Paduahad done. He entered several of the Churches, which were mean andpoorly adorned, and spoke to several of the priests and loiterers.Everywhere he heard complaints of the poverty of the place, of themisery of the people, of the bad unwholesome air, caused by the dearthof inhabitants to cultivate the land. When he came to inquire into thecauses of this, most held their peace; but one or two idlers, bolder ormore reckless than the rest, seeing that he was a foreigner, andignorant that he was riding in the train of a Cardinal, whispered to himsomething of the severity of the Papal government, and of the heavytaxes and frequent confiscations by which the nephews of several Popeshad enriched themselves, and devoured many of the principal families ofthe city, and driven away many more. "They talk of the bad air," saidone of these men to Inglesant; "the air was the same a century ago, whenthis city was flourishing under its own princes--princes of so eminent avirtue, and of so heroical a nobleness, that they were really theFathers of their country. Nothing," he continued with a mute gesture ofthe hands, "can be imagined more changed than this is now."

  "But Bologna is under the Pope, also," said Inglesant, "and isflourishing enough."

  "Bologna," he answered, "delivered itself up to the Popedom upon acapitulation, by which there are many privileges reserved to it. Crimesthere are only punished in the persons of those who commit them. Thereare no confiscations of estates; and the good result of these privilegesis evident, for, though Bologna is neither on a navigable river nor thecentre of a sovereignty where a Court is kept, yet its happiness andwealth amaze a stranger; while we, once equally fortunate, are like acity in a dream."

  Inglesant returned to the inn to the Cardinal, and related what he hadheard; to all which dismal stories the Prelate only replied bysignificant gesture.

  The next morning, however, as he was entering his carriage followed byhis friend, he seemed to take particular notice of the crowd of beggarsthat surrounded the inn. In Inglesant's eyes they only formed part(together with the strange, quiet streets, the shaded gardens, and theever-changing scenes of their journey) in that shifting phantasm of formand colour, meaningless to him, except as it might suddenly, and in someunexpected way, become a part and scene of the fatal drama that hadseized upon and crippled his life. But to the Cardinal, who had thetraining of a politician, though he subordinated politics to enjoyment,these swarms of beggars and these decaying states had at times a deeperinterest.

  "These people," he said, as the carriage moved on, "certainly seem verymiserable, as you told me last night. To those whose tastes lay thatway it would not be a useless business to inquire into these matters,and to try to set them right. Some day, probably far distant, some ofus, or those like us who clothe in scarlet and fine linen, will have topay a reckoning for these things."

  "They are less unhappy than I am," said Inglesant. "As to the luxuriouspersons of whom you speak, it has been my fate to be of their party allmy life, and to serve them for very poor reward; and I doubt not that,when their damnation, of which your Eminence speaks, arrives, I shallshare it with them. But it might seem to one who knows little of suchthings that some such attempt might be looked for from a sworn soldierand prince of the Church."

  The Cardinal smiled. The freedom with which Inglesant's sarcastichumour showed itself at times, when the melancholy fit was upon him, wasone of the sources of attraction which attached the young Englishman tohis person.

  "Life is short," he said, "and the future very uncertain; martyrs havedied, nay, still harder fate, have lived long lives of such devotion asthat which you wish me to attempt, and we see very little result.Christianity is not of much use apparently to many of the nations of theearth. Now, on my side, as I pass my life, I certainly enjoy thisworld, and I as certainly have cultivated my mind to sustain, as far asI can foresee the probable, the demand and strain that will be put uponit, both in the exit from this life, and in the entrance upon another.Why then should I renounce these two positive goods, and embrace a lifeof restless annoyance and discomfort, of antagonism to existing systemsand order, of certain failure, disappointment, and the peevishprotestation of a prophet to whom the world will not listen?"

  "There is no reason why, certainly," said Inglesant, "for a sane manlike your Eminence. I see clearly it must only have been madmen who inall ages have been driven into the fire and upon the sword's point inpursuit of an idea which they fancied was worth the pain, but which, asthey never realized it, they could never put to the test."

  "I perceive your irony," said the Cardinal, "and I recognize your wit.What astonishes me is the interest you take in these old myths anddreary services. The charm of novelty must have worn itself out by thistime."

  "Christ is real to many men," said Inglesant, "and the world seems tomanifest within itself a remedial power such as may be supposed to beHis."

  "I do not dispute such a power," replied the Cardinal; "I only wonder atthe attachment to these old myths which profess to expound it."

  "The world has now been satisfied with them for some centuries," saidInglesant; "and for my own part, even in the blaze of a purer Mythos, Icannot help thinking that some of us will look back with longing to 'oneof the days of the Son of man.' I do not perceive either that yourEminence attempts to improve matters."

  "I can afford to wait," replied the Cardinal, with lofty indifference;"the myths of the world are slow to change."

  "This one certainly," replied Inglesant, with a smile, "has been slow tochange, perhaps because men found in it something that reminded them oftheir daily life. It speaks of suffering and of sin. The cross ofChrist is composed of many other crosses--is the centre, the type, theessence of all crosses. We must _suffer_ with Christ whether we_believe_ in Him or not. We must suffer for the sin of others as for ourown; and in this suffering we find a healing and purifying power andelement. That is what gives to Christianity, in its simplest and mostunlettered form, its force and life. Sin and suffering for sin: asacrifice, itself mysterious, offered mysteriously to the Divine Nemesisor Law of Sin,--dread, undefined, unknown, yet sure and irresistible,with the iron necessity of law. This the intellectual Christ, thePlatonic-Socrates, did not offer: hence his failure, and the success ofthe Nazarene. Vicisti Galilaee."