The Cardinal's snuff-box
He was seated under his willow-tree, by the river, smoking
cigarettes--burning superfluous time.
Marietta pointed towards Ventirose.
“Why?” said he.
“The family are away. In the absence of the family, the public are
admitted, upon presentation of their cards.”
“Oho!” he cried. “So the family are away, are they?”
“Yes, Signorino.”
“Aha!” cried he. “The family are away. That explains everything.
Have--have they been gone long?”
“Since a week, ten days, Signorino.”
“A week! Ten days!” He started up, indignant. “You secretive wretch! Why
have you never breathed a word of this to me?”
Marietta looked rather frightened.
“I did not know it myself, Signorino,” was her meek apology. “I heard
it in the village this morning, when the Signorino sent me to buy coarse
salt.”
“Oh, I see.” He sank back upon his rustic bench. “You are forgiven.” He
extended his hand in sign of absolution. “Are they ever coming back?”
“Naturally, Signorino.”
“What makes you think so?”
“But they will naturally come back.”
“I felicitate you upon your simple faith. When?”
“Oh, fra poco. They have gone to Rome.”
“To Rome? You're trifling with me. People do not go to Rome in August.”
“Pardon, Signorino. People go to Rome for the feast of the Assumption.
That is the 15th. Afterwards they come back,” said Marietta, firmly.
“I withdraw my protest,” said Peter. “They have gone to Rome for the
feast of the Assumption. Afterwards they will come back.”
“Precisely, Signorino. But you have now the right to visit the castle,
upon presentation of your card. You address yourself to the porter at
the lodge. The castle is grand, magnificent. The Court of Honour alone
is thirty metres long.”
Marietta stretched her hands to right and left as far as they would go.
“Marietta,” Peter enquired solemnly, “are you familiar with the tragedy
of 'Hamlet'?”
Marietta blinked.
“No, Signorino.”
“You have never read it,” he pursued, “in that famous edition from which
the character of the Prince of Denmark happened to be omitted?”
Marietta shook her head, wearily, patiently.
Wearily, patiently, “No, Signorino,” she replied.
“Neither have I,” said he, “and I don't desire to.”
Marietta shrugged her shoulders; then returned gallantly to her charge.
“If you would care to visit the castle, Signorino, you could see the
crypt which contains the tombs of the family of Farfalla, the former
owners. They are of black marble and alabaster, with gilding--very rich.
You could also see the wine-cellars. Many years ago a tun there burst,
and a serving man was drowned in the wine. You could also see the bed
in which Nabulione, the Emperor of Europe, slept, when he was in this
country. Also the ancient kitchen. Many years ago, in a storm, the
skeleton of a man fell down the chimney, out upon the hearth. Also
what is called the Court of Foxes. Many years ago there was a plague
of foxes; and the foxes came down from the forest like a great army,
thousands of them. And the lords of the castle, and the peasants, and
the village people, all, all, had to run away like rabbits--or the foxes
would have eaten them. It was in what they call the Court of Foxes that
the King of the foxes held his court. There is also the park. In the
park there are statues, ruins, and white peacocks.”
“What have I in common with ruins and white peacocks?” Peter demanded
tragically, when Marietta had brought her much-gesticulated exposition
to a close. “Let me impress upon you once for all that I am not a
tripper. As for your castle--you invite me to a banquet-hall deserted.
As for your park, I see quite as much of it as I wish to see, from the
seclusion of my own pleached garden. I learned long ago the folly of
investigating things too closely, the wisdom of leaving things in
the vague. At present the park of Ventirose provides me with the raw
material for day-dreams. It is a sort of looking-glass country,--I can
see just so far into it, and no farther--that lies beyond is mystery,
is potentiality--terra incognita, which I can populate with monsters or
pleasant phantoms, at my whim. Why should you attempt to deprive me of
so innocent a recreation?”
“After the return of the family,” said Marietta, “the public will no
longer be admitted. Meantime--”
“Upon presentation of my card, the porter will conduct me from
disenchantment to disenchantment. No, thank you. Now, if it were the
other way round, it would be different. If it were the castle and
the park that had gone to Rome, and if the family could be visited on
presentation of my card, I might be tempted.”
“But that would be impossible, Signorino,” said Marietta.
XV.
Beatrice walking with a priest--ay, I am not sure it would n't be
more accurate to say conspiring with a priest: but you shall judge.
They were in a room of the Palazzo Udeschini, at Rome--a reception
room, on the piano nobile. Therefore you see it: for are not all
reception-rooms in Roman palaces alike?
Vast, lofty, sombre; the walls hung with dark-green tapestry--a pattern
of vertical stripes, dark green and darker green; here and there a
great dark painting, a Crucifixion, a Holy Family, in a massive dim-gold
frame; dark-hued rugs on the tiled floor; dark pieces of furniture,
tables, cabinets, dark and heavy; and tall windows, bare of curtains
at this season, opening upon a court--a wide stone-eaved court, planted
with fantastic-leaved eucalyptus-trees, in the midst of which a brown
old fountain, indefatigable, played its sibilant monotone.
In the streets there were the smells, the noises, the heat, the glare
of August of August in Rome, “the most Roman of the months,” they say;
certainly the hottest, noisiest, noisomest, and most glaring. But here
all was shadow, coolness, stillness, fragrance-the fragrance of the
clean air coming in from among the eucalyptus-trees.
Beatrice, critical-eyed, stood before a pier-glass, between two of the
tall windows, turning her head from side to side, craning her neck a
little--examining (if I must confess it) the effect of a new hat. It
was a very stunning hat--if a man's opinion hath any pertinence; it was
beyond doubt very complicated. There was an upward-springing black brim;
there was a downward-sweeping black feather; there was a defiant white
aigrette not unlike the Shah of Persia's; there were glints of red.
The priest sat in an arm-chair--one of those stiff, upright Roman
arm-chairs, which no one would ever dream of calling easy-chairs,
high-backed, covered with hard leather, studded with steel nails--and
watched her, smiling amusement, indulgence.
He was an oldish priest--sixty, sixty-five. He was small, lightly built,
lean-faced, with delicate-strong features: a prominent, delicate nose; a
well-marked, delicate jaw-bone, ending in a prominent, delicate chin;
a large, humorous mouth, the full lips delicately chiselled; a high,
delicate, perhaps rather narrow brow, rising above humorous grey eyes,
rather deep-set. Then he had silky-soft smooth white hair, and, topping
the occiput, a tonsure that might have passed for a natural bald spot.
He was decidedly clever-looking; he was aristocratic-looking,
distinguished-looking; but he was, above all, pleasant-looking,
kindly-looking, sweet-looking.
He wore a plain black cassock, by no means in its first youth--brown
along the seams, and, at the salient angles, at the shoulders, at
the elbows, shining with the lustre of hard service. Even without his
cassock, I imagine, you would have divined him for a clergyman--he
bore the clerical impress, that odd indefinable air of clericism which
everyone recognises, though it might not be altogether easy to tell
just where or from what it takes its origin. In the garb of an
Anglican--there being nothing, at first blush, necessarily Italian,
necessarily un-English, in his face--he would have struck you, I think,
as a pleasant, shrewd old parson of the scholarly--earnest type, mildly
donnish, with a fondness for gentle mirth. What, however, you would
scarcely have divined--unless you had chanced to notice, inconspicuous
in this sober light, the red sash round his waist, or the amethyst on
the third finger of his right hand--was his rank in the Roman hierarchy.
I have the honour of presenting his Eminence Egidio Maria Cardinal
Udeschini, formerly Bishop of Cittareggio, Prefect of the Congregation
of Archives and Inscriptions.
That was his title ecclesiastical. He had two other titles. He was a
Prince of the Udeschini by accident of birth. But his third title was
perhaps his most curious. It had been conferred upon him informally by
the populace of the Roman slum in which his titular church, St. Mary of
the Lilies, was situated: the little Uncle of the Poor.
As Italians measure wealth, Cardinal Udeschini was a wealthy man. What
with his private fortune and official stipends, he commanded an income
of something like a hundred thousand lire. He allowed himself five
thousand lire a year for food, clothing, and general expenses. Lodging
and service he had for nothing in the palace of his family. The
remaining ninety-odd thousand lire of his budget... Well, we all know
that titles can be purchased in Italy; and that was no doubt the price
he paid for the title I have mentioned.
However, it was not in money only that Cardinal Udeschim paid. He paid
also in labour. I have said that his titular church was in a slum. Rome
surely contained no slum more fetid, none more perilous--a region of
cut-throat alleys, south of the Ghetto, along the Tiber bank. Night
after night, accompanied by his stout young vicar, Don Giorgio
Appolloni, the Cardinal worked there as hard as any hard-working curate:
visiting the sick, comforting the afflicted, admonishing the knavish,
persuading the drunken from their taverns, making peace between the
combative. Not infrequently, when he came home, he would add a pair
of stilettos to his already large collection of such relics. And his
homecomings were apt to be late--oftener than not, after midnight; and
sometimes, indeed, in the vague twilight of morning, at the hour when,
as he once expressed it to Don Giorgio, “the tired burglar is just
lying down to rest.” And every Saturday evening the Cardinal Prefect
of Archives and Inscriptions sat for three hours boxed up in his
confessional, like any parish priest--in his confessional at St. Mary
of the Lilies, where the penitents who breathed their secrets into his
ears, and received his fatherly counsels... I beg your pardon. One must
not, of course, remember his rags or his sores, when Lazarus approaches
that tribunal.
But I don't pretend that the Cardinal was a saint; I am sure he was not
a prig. For all his works of supererogation, his life was a life of pomp
and luxury, compared to the proper saint's life. He wore no hair shirt;
I doubt if he knew the taste of the Discipline. He had his weaknesses,
his foibles--even, if you will, his vices. I have intimated that he was
fond of a jest. “The Sacred College,” I heard him remark one day, “has
fifty centres of gravity. I sometimes fear that I am its centre of
levity.” He was also fond of music. He was also fond of snuff:
“'T is an abominable habit,” he admitted. “I can't tolerate it at
all--in others. When I was Bishop of Cittareggio, I discountenanced
it utterly among my clergy. But for myself--I need not say there are
special circumstances. Oddly enough, by the bye, at Cittareggio each
separate member of my clergy was able to plead special circumstances
for himself I have tried to give it up, and the effort has spoiled
my temper--turned me into a perfect old shrew. For my friends' sake,
therefore, I appease myself with an occasional pinch. You see, tobacco
is antiseptic. It's an excellent preservative of the milk of human
kindness.”