CHAPTER V
IL PADRE FRANCESCO
The next morning Elsie awoke, as was her custom, when the very faintesthue of dawn streaked the horizon. A hen who has seen a hawk balancinghis wings and cawing in mid-air over her downy family could nothave awakened with her feathers, metaphorically speaking, in a morebristling state of caution.
"Spirits in the gorge, quotha?" said she to herself, as she vigorouslyadjusted her dress. "I believe so,--spirits in good sound bodies,I believe; and next we shall hear, there will be rope-ladders, andclimbings, and the Lord knows what. I shall go to confession this verymorning, and tell Father Francesco the danger; and instead of takingher down to sell oranges, suppose I send her to the sisters to carrythe ring and a basket of oranges?"
"Ah, ah!" she said, pausing, after she was dressed, and addressing acoarse print of Saint Agnes pasted against the wall,--"you look verymeek there, and it was a great thing, no doubt, to die as you did; butif you'd lived to be married and bring up a family of girls, you'dhave known something greater. Please, don't take offense with a poorold woman who has got into the way of speaking her mind freely! I'mfoolish, and don't know much,--so, dear lady, pray for me!" And oldElsie bent her knee and crossed herself reverently, and then went out,leaving her young charge still sleeping.
It was yet dusky dawn when she might have been seen kneeling, with hersharp, clear-cut profile, at the grate of a confession-box in a churchin Sorrento. Within was seated a personage who will have some influenceon our story, and who must therefore be somewhat minutely introduced tothe reader.
Il Padre Francesco had only within the last year arrived in theneighborhood, having been sent as superior of a brotherhood ofCapuchins, whose convent was perched on a crag in the vicinity. Withthis situation came a pastoral care of the district; and Elsie and hergrand-daughter found in him a spiritual pastor very different fromthe fat, jolly, easy Brother Girolamo, to whose place he had beenappointed. The latter had been one of those numerous priests taken fromthe peasantry, who never rise above the average level of thought ofthe body from which they are drawn. Easy, gossipy, fond of good livingand good stories, sympathetic in troubles and in joys, he had been ageneral favorite in the neighborhood, without exerting any particularlyspiritualizing influence.
It required but a glance at Father Francesco to see that he was in allrespects the opposite of this. It was evident that he came from one ofthe higher classes, by that indefinable air of birth and breeding whichmakes itself felt under every change of costume. Who he might be, whatmight have been his past history, what rank he might have borne, whatpart played in the great warfare of life, was all of course sunk in theoblivion of his religious profession, where, as at the grave, a manlaid down name and fame and past history and worldly goods, and took upa coarse garb and a name chosen from the roll of the saints, in signthat the world that had known him should know him no more.
Imagine a man between thirty and forty, with that round, full, evenlydeveloped head, and those chiseled features, which one sees on ancientbusts and coins no less than in the streets of modern Rome. Thecheeks were sunken and sallow; the large, black, melancholy eyes hada wistful, anxious, penetrative expression, that spoke a stringent,earnest spirit, which, however deep might be the grave in which itlay buried, had not yet found repose. The long, thin, delicatelyformed hands were emaciated and bloodless; they clasped with a nervouseagerness a rosary and crucifix of ebony and silver,--the only mark ofluxury that could be discerned in a costume unusually threadbare andsqualid. The whole picture of the man, as he sat there, had it beenpainted and hung in a gallery, was such as must have stopped everyperson of a certain amount of sensibility before it with the convictionthat behind that strong, melancholy, earnest figure and face lay oneof those hidden histories of human passion in which the vivid life ofmediaeval Italy was so fertile.
He was listening to Elsie, as she kneeled, with that easy air ofsuperiority which marks a practiced man of the world, yet with a graveattention which showed that her communication had awakened the deepestinterest in his mind. Every few moments he moved slightly in his seat,and interrupted the flow of the narrative by an inquiry concisely put,in tones which, clear and low, had a solemn and severe distinctness,producing, in the still, dusky twilight of the church, an almostghostly effect.
When the communication was over, he stepped out of the confessionaland said to Elsie in parting, "My daughter, you have done well to takethis in time. The devices of Satan in our corrupt times are numerousand artful, and they who keep the Lord's sheep must not sleep. Beforemany days I will call and examine the child; meanwhile I approve yourcourse."
It was curious to see the awestruck, trembling manner in which oldElsie, generally so intrepid and commanding, stood before this manin his brown rough woolen gown with his corded waist; but she had aninstinctive perception of the presence of the man of superior birth noless than a reverence for the man of religion.
After she had departed from the church, the Capuchin stood lost inthought; and to explain his revery, we must throw some further light onhis history.
Il Padre Francesco, as his appearance and manner intimated, was intruth from one of the most distinguished families of Florence. He wasone of those whom an ancient writer characterizes as "men of longingdesire." Born with a nature of restless stringency that seemed to doomhim never to know repose, excessive in all things, he had made earlytrial of ambition, of war, and of what the gallants of his time calledlove,--plunging into all the dissipated excesses of a most dissoluteage, and outdoing in luxury and extravagance the foremost of hiscompanions.
The wave of a great religious impulse--which in our times would havebeen called a revival--swept over the city of Florence, and bore him,with multitudes of others, to listen to the fervid preaching of theDominican monk, Jerome Savonarola; and amid the crowd that trembled,wept, and beat their breasts under his awful denunciations, he, too,felt within himself a heavenly call,--the death of an old life, and theuprising of a new purpose.
The colder manners and more repressed habits of modern times can giveno idea of the wild fervor of a religious revival among a people sopassionate and susceptible to impressions as the Italians. It sweptsociety like a spring torrent from the sides of the Apennines, bearingall before it. Houses were sacked with religious fervor by penitentowners, and licentious pictures and statuary and books, and all thethousand temptations and appliances of a luxurious age, were burned inthe great public square. Artists convicted of impure and licentiousdesigns threw their palettes and brushes into the expiatory flames, andretired to convents, till called forth by the voice of the preacher,and bid to turn their art into higher channels. Since the days ofSaint Francis no such profound religious impulse had agitated theItalian community.
In our times a conversion is signalized by few outward changes, howeverdeep the inner life; but the life of the Middle Ages was profoundlysymbolical, and always required the help of material images in itsexpression.
The gay and dissolute young Lorenzo Sforza took leave of the world withrites of awful solemnity. He made his will and disposed of all hisworldly property, and assembling his friends, bade them the farewellof a dying man. Arrayed as for the grave, he was laid in his coffin,and thus carried from his stately dwelling by the brethren of theMisericordia, who, in their ghostly costume, with mournful chants andlighted candles, bore him to the tomb of his ancestors, where thecoffin was deposited in the vault, and its occupant passed the awfulhours of the night in darkness and solitude. Thence he was carried, thenext day, almost in a state of insensibility, to a neighboring conventof the severest order, where, for some weeks, he observed a penitentialretreat of silence and prayer, neither seeing nor hearing any livingbeing but his spiritual director.
The effect of all this on an ardent and sensitive temperament canscarcely be conceived; and it is not to be wondered at that the oncegay and luxurious Lorenzo Sforza, when emerging from this tremendousdiscipline, was so wholly lost in the worn and weary Padre Francescothat it seemed
as if in fact he had died and another had stepped intohis place. The face was ploughed deep with haggard furrows, and theeyes were as those of a man who has seen the fearful secrets of anotherlife. He voluntarily sought a post as far removed as possible from thescenes of his early days, so as more completely to destroy his identitywith the past; and he devoted himself with enthusiasm to the task ofawakening to a higher spiritual life the indolent, self-indulgent monksof his order, and the ignorant peasantry of the vicinity.
But he soon discovered, what every earnest soul learns who has beenbaptized into a sense of things invisible, how utterly powerless andinert any mortal man is to inspire others with his own insights andconvictions. With bitter discouragement and chagrin, he saw that thespiritual man must forever lift the dead weight of all the indolenceand indifference and animal sensuality that surround him,--that thecurse of Cassandra is upon him, forever to burn and writhe underawful visions of truths which no one around him will regard. In earlylife the associate only of the cultivated and the refined, FatherFrancesco could not but experience at times an insupportable _ennui_in listening to the confessions of people who had never learnedeither to think or to feel with any degree of distinctness, and whomhis most fervent exhortations could not lift above the most trivialinterests of a mere animal life. He was weary of the childish quarrelsand bickerings of the monks, of their puerility, of their selfishnessand self-indulgence, of their hopeless vulgarity of mind, and utterlydiscouraged with their inextricable labyrinths of deception. Amelancholy deep as the grave seized on him, and he redoubled hisausterities, in the hope that by making life painful he might make italso short.
But the first time that the clear, sweet tones of Agnes rang in hisears at the confessional, and her words, so full of unconscious poetryand repressed genius, came like a strain of sweet music through thegrate, he felt at his heart a thrill to which it had long been astranger, and which seemed to lift the weary, aching load from off hissoul, as if some invisible angel had borne it up on his wings.
In his worldly days he had known women as the gallants in Boccaccio'sromances knew them, and among them one enchantress whose sorcerieshad kindled in his heart one of those fatal passions which burn outthe whole of a man's nature, and leave it, like a sacked city, onlya smouldering heap of ashes. Deepest, therefore, among his vows ofrenunciation had been those which divided him from all womankind. Thegulf that parted him and them was in his mind deep as hell, and hethought of the sex only in the light of temptation and danger. Forthe first time in his life, an influence serene, natural, healthy,and sweet breathed over him from the mind of a woman,--an influenceso heavenly and peaceful that he did not challenge or suspect it,but rather opened his worn heart insensibly to it, as one in a fetidchamber naturally breathes freer when the fresh air is admitted.
How charming it was to find his most spiritual exhortations seized uponwith the eager comprehension of a nature innately poetic and ideal!Nay, it sometimes seemed to him as if the suggestions which he gaveher dry and leafless she brought again to him in miraculous clustersof flowers, like the barren rod of Joseph, which broke into blossomswhen he was betrothed to the spotless Mary; and yet, withal, she wasso humbly unconscious, so absolutely ignorant of the beauty of all shesaid and thought, that she impressed him less as a mortal woman than asone of those divine miracles in feminine form of which he had heard inthe legends of the saints.
Thenceforward his barren, discouraged life began to blossom withwayside flowers,--and he mistrusted not the miracle, because theflowers were all heavenly. The pious thought or holy admonition that hesaw trodden under the swinish feet of the monks he gathered up again inhope,--_she_ would understand it; and gradually all his thoughts becamelike carrier-doves, which, having once learned the way to a favoritehaunt, are ever fluttering to return thither.
Such is the wonderful power of human sympathy, that the discoveryeven of the existence of a soul capable of understanding our innerlife often operates as a perfect charm; every thought, and feeling,and aspiration carries with it a new value, from the interwovenconsciousness that attends it of the worth it would bear to that othermind; so that, while that person lives, our existence is doubled invalue, even though oceans divide us.
The cloud of hopeless melancholy which had brooded over the mind ofFather Francesco lifted and sailed away, he knew not why, he knew notwhen. A secret joyfulness and alacrity possessed his spirits; hisprayers became more fervent and his praises more frequent. Until now,his meditations had been most frequently those of fear and wrath,--theawful majesty of God, the terrible punishment of sinners, which heconceived with all that haggard, dreadful sincerity of vigor whichcharacterized the modern Etruscan phase of religion of which the"Inferno" of Dante was the exponent and the outcome. His preachingsand his exhortations had dwelt on that lurid world seen by the severeFlorentine, at whose threshold hope forever departs, and around whoseeternal circles of living torture the shivering spirit wanders dismayedand blasted by terror.
He had been shocked and discouraged to find how utterly vain had beenhis most intense efforts to stem the course of sin by presenting theseimages of terror: how hard natures had listened to them with only acoarse and cruel appetite, which seemed to increase their hardness andbrutality; and how timid ones had been withered by them, like flowersscorched by the blast of a furnace; how, in fact, as in the case ofthose cruel executions and bloody tortures then universal in thejurisprudence of Europe, these pictures of eternal torture seemed toexert a morbid demoralizing influence which hurried on the growth ofiniquity.
But since his acquaintance with Agnes, without his knowing exactlywhy, thoughts of the Divine Love had floated into his soul, filling itwith a golden cloud like that which of old rested over the mercy-seatin that sacred inner temple where the priest was admitted alone. Hebecame more affable and tender, more tolerant to the erring, more fondof little children; would stop sometimes to lay his hand on the headof a child, or to raise up one who lay overthrown in the street. Thesong of little birds and the voices of animal life became to him fullof tenderness; and his prayers by the sick and dying seemed to have amelting power, such as he had never known before. It was spring in hissoul,--soft, Italian spring,--such as brings out the musky breath ofthe cyclamen, and the faint, tender perfume of the primrose, in everymoist dell of the Apennines.
A year passed in this way, perhaps the best and happiest of histroubled life,--a year in which, insensibly to himself, the weeklyinterviews with Agnes at the confessional became the rallying pointsaround which the whole of his life was formed, and she the unsuspectedspring of his inner being.
It was his duty, he said to himself, to give more than usual time andthought to the working and polishing of this wondrous jewel which hadso unexpectedly been intrusted to him for the adorning of his Master'scrown; and so long as he conducted with the strictest circumspectionof his office, what had he to fear in the way of so delightful a duty?He had never touched her hand; never had even the folds of her passingdrapery brushed against his garments of mortification and renunciation;never, even in pastoral benediction, had he dared lay his hand on thatbeautiful head. It is true, he had not forbidden himself to raise hisglance sometimes when he saw her coming in at the church door andgliding up the aisle with downcast eyes, and thoughts evidently so farabove earth that she seemed, like one of Fra Angelico's angels, to bemoving on a cloud, so encompassed with stillness and sanctity that heheld his breath as she passed.
But in the confession of Dame Elsie that morning he had received ashock which threw his whole interior being into a passionate agitationwhich dismayed and astonished him.
The thought of Agnes, his spotless lamb, exposed to lawless andlicentious pursuit, of whose nature and probabilities his past lifegave him only too clear an idea, was of itself a very natural source ofanxiety. But Elsie had unveiled to him her plans for her marriage, andconsulted him on the propriety of placing Agnes immediately under theprotection of the husband she had chosen for her; and it was this partof her communicatio
n which had awakened the severest internal recoil,and raised a tumult of passions which the priest vainly sought eitherto assuage or understand.
As soon as his morning duties were over, he repaired to his convent,sought his cell, and, prostrate on his face before the crucifix, beganhis internal reckoning with himself. The day passed in fasting andsolitude.
It is now golden evening, and on the square, flat roof of the convent,which, high-perched on a crag, overlooks the bay, one might observe adark figure slowly pacing backward and forward. It is Father Francesco;and as he walks up and down, one could see by his large, bright,dilated eye, by the vivid red spot on either sunken cheek, and by thenervous energy of his movements, that he is in the very height of somemental crisis,--in that state of placid _extase_ in which the subjectsupposes himself perfectly calm, because every nerve is screwed to thehighest point of tension and can vibrate no more.
What oceans had that day rolled over him and swept him, as one may seea little boat rocked on the capricious surges of the Mediterranean!Were, then, all his strivings and agonies in vain? Did he love thiswoman with any earthly love? Was he jealous of the thought of a futurehusband? Was it a tempting demon that said to him, "Lorenzo Sforzamight have shielded this treasure from the profanation of lawlessviolence, from the brute grasp of an inappreciative peasant, but FatherFrancesco cannot"? There was a moment when his whole being vibratedwith a perception of what a marriage bond might have been that wasindeed a sacrament, and that bound together two pure and loyal soulswho gave life and courage to each other in all holy purposes and heroicdeeds; and he almost feared that he had cursed his vows,--those awfulvows, at whose remembrance his inmost soul shivered through every nerve.
But after hours of prayer and struggle, and wave after wave ofagonizing convulsion, he gained one of those high points in humanpossibility where souls can stand a little while at a time, and whereall things seem so transfigured and pure that they fancy themselvesthenceforward forever victorious over evil.
As he walks up and down in the gold-and-purple evening twilight, hismind seems to him calm as that glowing sea that reflects the purpleshores of Ischia, and the quaint, fantastic grottoes and cliffs ofCapri. All is golden and glowing; he sees all clear; he is deliveredfrom his spiritual enemies; he treads them under his feet.
Yes, he says to himself, he loves Agnes,--loves her all-sacredly asher guardian angel does, who ever beholdeth the face of her Father inHeaven. Why, then, does he shrink from her marriage? Is it not evident?Has that tender soul, that poetic nature, that aspiring genius,anything in common with the vulgar coarse details of a peasant's life?Will not her beauty always draw the eye of the licentious, expose herartless innocence to solicitation which will annoy her and bring uponher head the inconsiderate jealousy of her husband? Think of Agnes madesubject to the rude authority, to the stripes and correction, which menof the lower class, under the promptings of jealousy, do not scrupleto inflict on their wives! What career did society, as then organized,present to such a nature, so perilously gifted in body and mind? He hasthe answer. The Church has opened a career to woman which all the worlddenies her.
He remembers the story of the dyer's daughter of Siena, the fairSaint Catharine. In his youth he had often visited the convent whereone of the first artists of Italy has immortalized her conflicts andher victories, and knelt with his mother at the altar where she nowcommunes with the faithful. He remembered how, by her sanctity, herhumility, and her holy inspirations of soul, she had risen to thecourts of princes, whither she had been sent as ambassadress to arrangefor the interests of the Church; and then rose before his mind's eyethe gorgeous picture of Pinturicchio, where, borne in celestial reposeand purity amid all the powers and dignitaries of the Church, she iscanonized as one of those that shall reign and intercede with Christ inheaven.
Was it wrong, therefore, in him, though severed from all womankindby a gulf of irrevocable vows, that he should feel a kind of jealousproperty in this gifted and beautiful creature? and though he mightnot, even in thought, dream of possessing her himself, was there sin inthe vehement energy with which his whole nature rose up in him to saythat no other man should,--that she should be the bride of Heaven alone?
Certainly, if there were, it lurked far out of sight, and the priesthad a case that might have satisfied a conscience even more fastidious;and he felt a sort of triumph in the results of his mental scrutiny.
Yes, she should ascend from glory to glory,--but his should be the handthat should lead her upward. He would lead her within the consecratedgrate,--he would pronounce the awful words that should make itsacrilege for all other men to approach her; and yet through life heshould be the guardian and director of her soul, the one being to whomshe should render an obedience as unlimited as that which belongs toChrist alone.
Such were the thoughts of this victorious hour, which, alas! weredestined to fade as those purple skies and golden fires gradually wentout, leaving, in place of their light and glory, only the lurid glow ofVesuvius.