Front matter (continued 4)

"Which fans?"

"Them they fan You with when You're glorified?"

"Oh yes. Shew that card to the gentleman who is going to take you down stairs and tell him what you want to see."

"Will they want me to give the card up at the door?"

"No. Not if you want to keep it."

"Ah well, I'll see everything; and I'll keep the card till I'm laid out, 'oly Father. Oh what ever can I say! You'll excuse me Sir, and I'm an honest woman: but I must kiss Your 'oly Majesty's anointed 'and. Oh bless You, my dear, bless You!"

Hadrian paced through and through the apartment as soon as He was alone. "Dear good ugly righteous creature," He commented. Passing the safe in the bedroom, He let-out with His left and punched the iron door. "That's what use you are," He said; and put glycerine on His bleeding knuckles. Catching a glimpse of His face in the mirror, "Beastly hypocrite" He sneered at Himself.

Very disagreeable talk went on in Ragna's circle. The pontifical acts of Hadrian were vile enough, but His private ones were simply criminal. A Pope who asked you the hour and the date and the place of your birth, drew diagrams on paper, and then told you your secret vices and virtues, was a practisant of arts unholy. Doubtless that frightful yellow cat, which He took into the gardens every morning, was His familiar spirit. It had cursed Cacciatore in a corridor, almost articulately. Balbo, the chamberlain, was prepared to swear two things, which he had gathered from the gentlemen of the secret chamber. First, that His Holiness stood under a tap in His bedroom every morning and evening, and sometimes during the day as well. Undoubtedly that was to allay the fervence of the demon who possessed Him. Secondly, that His Holiness sat up half the night writing or reading, and yet the pontifical waste-paper basket always was empty. Not even a torn shred of paper remained. But then, the ashes in the fireplace. Ah! The disposition was to refer to lunacy, or stupidity, or knavishness, or vileness, whatsoever was novel to the understanding. The Pontiff's aggressive personality, His ostentatious inconsistency, His peculiarly ideal conception of His apostolic character, His moral earnestness, His practical and uncomfortable embodiment of His views in His conduct, caused Him to be as loathed by Ragna's set as He was loved by the nine and the six. He was accused of an anarchistical kind of enthusiasm. When He heard that, He said

"We are conservative in all Our instincts, and only contrive to become otherwise by an effort of reason or principle, as We contrive to overcome all Our other vicious propensities."

That was considered an additional indecorum. His quaintly correct and archaic diction exasperated men who had no means of expressing their thoughts except in the fluid allusive clipped verbosity of the day. Objections were made to His hendecasyllabical allocutions, by mediocrities who could not away with a man who discoursed in ithyphallics. His autocratic dogmatism, which really was due to His entire occession by His office, shocked the opportunist, irritated the worldly-prudent. Outside in the world too, He was by no means a complete success. People, who were not of His Communion, thought it rather a liberty that a Pope should have the Authorized Version at His fingers' ends. At first, a lot of fantastic instabilities prepared to hail Him as a Reformer: but He gave dire offence to them, and to all pious fat-wits, by flatly refusing His countenance to any kind of Scheme or Society. "The Church suffices for this life," He said; and His sentence "Cultivate, and help to cultivate individuality, at your own expense if possible, but never at the expense of your brother," was highly disapproved of. Where did the Rights of Man come in? But then Hadrian was quite certain that Christians actually had no worldly "rights" at all. Arraigned on the question of superstition by the stolidly common-sense Talacryn, He said "Extra-belief, superstition, that which we hope or augur or imagine, is the poetry of life;" and His utterance was regarded as almost heretical. His utter lack of personal swagger or even dignity, His habit of rolling and smoking continual cigarettes, His natural and patently unprofessional manner, offended many outsiders who only could think of the Pope as partaking of the dual character of an Immeasurably Ambitious Clergyman and a Scarlet Impossible Person. He had enemies at home and abroad. And He remained quite alone, psychically detached: to a very great extent unconscious of, certainly uninterested in, the impression which He personally was creating; and altogether uninfluenced by any other mind or any other creature.

A parcel of curial malcontents waited-on the Pope; and poured forth flocculent interrogations and sophomoric criticisms to their hearts' content. Hadrian sat perfectly motionless except for an occasional twinkle of His ears—a muscular trick which He had forced Himself to learn for the disconcerting of more than usually oxymorose fools. He was mute: He was grave. He looked, with large omniscient imperscrutable eyes, with the countenance open, with the thoughts restrained. Cavillers recited grievances—His refusal to wear the pontifical pectoral-cross of great diamonds, or any gems except His episcopal amethyst, was one;—and appended sentences beginning "Now surely——," or "And the scandal——," or "Ought we not rather——" He was mute: He was grave: He was attentive. His intelligent silence had its calculated effect of causing errancy from points which primarily had been deemed important. Anon, only one objection remained: an objection to the new form of pontifical stole. No one complained of its colour. Red was canonically correct. But the silk should have been satin. Also, the pattern of the gold embroidery was uncommon. A rich design, of conventional foliage and grotesques enclosing armorials and keys, was what custom demanded. (Hadrian had no armorials. Years before, while discussing heraldic blazons with an aged clergyman, he had burst out with "My shield is white." "Keep it so," the other replied. And Hadrian's shield was Argent.) But this narrow strip, no wider than a ribbon, severely adorned with little fylfot crosses ("a Buddhist emblem" Berstein sneered) in little rectangular panels, with no expansive ends, and a scanty fringe, was hardly at all the kind of stole to inspire either the admiration or the homage of the faithful. Still Hadrian sat immobile, great-eyed, all-absorbent; and let them furiously rage, and imagine very vain things. And at the end of three-quarters of an hour, He merely murmured "Your Eminencies have permission to retire;" and stalked into the secret chamber.

It was felt that something ought to be done. Ragna put a case to Vivole and Cacciatore. The Oecumenical Council of the Vatican stood adjourned since 1870: but, if the Sacred College should demand—— They found the notion excellent: communicated it to Berstein, and the French: plumed themselves; and went about mysteriously with their noses in the air. And there were intrigues in holes and corners.

Hadrian went up to the Church on the Celian Hill; and conferred diaconate on Percy Van Kristen. The Passionists liked that one for his stately shyness which did not wear away. It was the mark of a soul verisimilar to his patron's own, of a soul knit to no other: but, whereas the soul of Hadrian had been torn out of seclusion and bitterly buffeted by the world, the soul of Percy Van Kristen preserved its pristine tenderness. The Pope perforce went armed. His deacon remained by the altar.

The consistory was summoned for the twenty-fourth of May. That morning Hadrian woke just on these words of a dream, Oecumenical Council, Pseudopontiff, Heretic. A man with an active brain like His naturally suffers much unconscious cerebration. Very often it happened to Him vividly to dream some scrap or other of something apparently unconnected with the present. He used to wonder at it: mentally note it: generally forget it. Now and then, an event (of which it was the tip) immediately followed; and He scored. Hadrian named to the consistory the Lord Percy of New York as Cardinal-deacon of St. Kyriak-at-the-Baths-of-Diocletian. His Eminency became resplendent in vermilion, tall, refined, reticent, with dark wide dewy eyes. He was admired in silence. The Pope by some accident turned His gaze to Ragna: he had such an aspect as caused His Holiness to look more intently. Ragna's great strong jaw moved as though to munch; and his glance defiantly shifted.

"Your Eminency is free to address Us," the Supreme Pontiff said to Him.

"I wish rather to address the Sacred College," Ragna answered, rising.

Hadrian had an intuition: His face became austere, His voice deliberate.

"On the subject of an Oecumenical Council where you may denounce Us as pseudopontiff and heretic?"

Ragna hurriedly sat down twitching. Berstein and Vivole muttered of divination and necromancy.

"That generally is done," the Pope continued in the tone of one merely selecting fringe for footstools,—"That generally is done by oblique-eyed cardinals" (He meant 'envious' but He used the Latin of Horace) "who cannot accustom themselves to new pontiffs. Rovere ululated for an Oecumenical Council when he found Our predecessor Alexander antipathetic; and there be other examples. But Lord Cardinals, if such an idea should present itself or should be presented to you, be ye mindful that none but the Supreme Pontiff can convoke an Oecumenical Council, and also that the decrees of an Oecumenical Council are ineffective unless they be promulgated with the express sanction of the Supreme Pontiff. Who would sanction decrees ordaining his own deposition? Who could? If We pronounce Ourself to be a pseudopontiff, what would be the value of such pronunciation? Ye were Our electors. We did not force you to elect Us. If We be Pontiff, We will not, and, if We be pseudopontiff, We cannot, depose Ourself. We are conscious of your love and of your loathing for Our person and Our acts. We value the one; and regret the other. But ye voluntarily have sworn obedience to Us; and We claim it. 'Subordination,' so the adage runs" (He was citing the Greek to every Latin's disgust) "'is the mother of saving counsel.' Nothing must and nothing shall obstruct Us. Let that be known. And We should welcome co-operation. Wherefore, Most Eminent Lords and Venerable Fathers, let not the sheep of Christ's Flock be neglected in order that the shepherds may exchange anathemas."

Mundo and Fiamma rose by impulse: went to the throne; and renewed their allegiance. The new cardinals mixed with the others and began to talk, while the rest of the Compromissaries approached the Pontiff. Orezzo moved that way with eight Italians. Then the seven brought each a companion. When, at last, the Benedictine struggled to his feet, opposition died. Ragna toed the line.

"His Holiness has averted a schism," said Orezzo to Moccolo.

"One has to admire even where one hardly approves."

"And to hobble-after even when one cannot keep-up-with the pace."

"Saint or madman?" Mundo repeated to Fiamma.

"One-third saint, one-sixth madman, one-sixth genius, one-sixth dreamer, one-sixth diplomatist——"

"No. All George Arthur Rose plus Peter," Talacryn put in. "He said as much Himself to me once, whatever!"

Hadrian went out to take the air. Under His cloak He carried a pickle bottle, the label of which He had washed off and destroyed. As He went along, He picked up a trowel left by some gardener in a flower-bed. He found a solitary corner filled with rose-acacias and lavender-bushes behind the Leonine Villa. He looked up at the cupola of St. Peter's and saw no Americans levelling binoculars. Then He dug a little hole; and buried pickles; and hid the bottle a few yards away beneath the bee-hives by the lavender-bushes, mauve-bloomed, very sweet to smell. The solemn odour stimulated his brain; and He returned to chat with His gentlemen. They were engaged in physical exercises in a parlour. The Italian, who was one of nature's athletes, with so tremendous a power of chest-inflation that his ribs seemed unconnected with his sternum, interminably floated down and up and down to the floor on one leg, with the other leg and both arms extended rectangularly before him. The Englishman, a student, graceful and slim but not muscular, watched him and would imitate. His sinews had not the elastic force rhythmically to lower and raise him. He could get down but not up. He often lost balance, and rolled over in frantic failure. "You must have thighs made of whipcord and steel to do it," he was saying. Then they saw their visitor and attended. Hadrian asked what the exercise was and whence it came.

"Santità, from the bersaglieri," Iulo responded. "That they do, during an hour of each day for the fortification of their legs. From which they run."

"It is beautiful. And are you going to emulate the bersaglieri?"

"My comrade goes to educate my mind. I go to discipline the physic of him," the gymnast said.

"Oh, I'm going to help him rub up his classics as far as my poor knowledge lets me, Holiness: that's all:" the student added.

"Very good indeed," Hadrian pronounced. "Well now, something is going to happen to you. Go and escort the Secretary of State to the secret chamber."

Ragna and the young men appeared within the quarter-hour. The Pope was seated; and a couple of Noble Guards stood behind His chair.

"Eminency," He said, "it is Our will to give these gentlemen the rank of Cavaliere—in English 'knight'——"

"Nai-tah," Ragna repeated.

"Your Eminency will cause letters patent to be prepared——"

"But this is the act of a sovereign!"

"And We, having no temporal sovereignty, exercise Our prerogative as Father of princes and kings." He beckoned the gentlemen to kneel, took a sword from the guard on His left, and struck them on the shoulder in turn, saying "To the honour of God, of His Maiden Mother, and of St. George, We make thee knight. Be faithful. Rise, Sir John. To the honour of God, of His Maiden Mother, and of St. Maurice, We make thee knight. Rise, Sir Iulo."

The cardinal retired mumbling. In the first antechamber, Sir Iulo cut a caper. "Oh but that I should come to know such a one as this!" he chortled. Sir John went to his own room: opened an interlinear crib of Horace; and could not see one letter.

CHAPTER VIII

Hadrian knew that He was becoming confirmed in His pose of director. Not that He was inflated by His exaltation to the apostolature. He was conscious that people, except a few enthusiasts, were become indifferent to religion. He knew the danger of indifference to be so great that it was no time to strain at gnats. He could not trouble about rats in the ship's hold while the torpedo was approaching. He was thought to share the abominable heresy of Tolstoy, whose works He never would touch with tongs. He saw that most men lived in mist; and preferred it: that most men durst not see clearly, because their business and their social interest would not stand it. He was not absolutely certain that He Himself could see the remedy: but He was certain that blindness was no remedy. So He put forth the evangelic counsels for obedience. "Strip; and obey those" appeared to be sufficient for the present; and He would not fiddle-faddle with human doctrines or empirical experiments. He had the big vision, the seeing eye, the hearing ear, wit, perverseness, daring, and the lonely heart, and the contempt of the world. The effect of His entire freedom of action was to inspire Him physically and mentally with the thrilling vigour of a pentathlete. He had the violent energy of the minute electron in the enormous atom. He felt Himself strong. He knew that His forces were tensely strung; and in their melody He was very glad. Sometimes He caught Himself wondering how long He could maintain the pitch: but from that thought He turned away. It was enough that He was able. He would not spare Himself. The night cometh when no man can work.

"Let it come," he said to Cardinal Sterling: "but, while day lasts, We work."

A splendid sentence of Mommsen's bit into his brain. Cæsar ruled as King of Rome for five years and a half ...; in the intervals of seven great campaigns, which allowed him to stay not more than fifteen months altogether in the capital of the empire, he regulated the destinies of the world for the present and the future.... Precisely because the building was an endless one, the master, as long as he lived, restlessly added stone to stone, with always the same dexterity and always the same elasticity busy at his work, without ever overturning or postponing, just as though there were for him merely to-day and no to-morrow. Thus he worked and created as never did any mortal before or after him; and, as a worker and creator, he still, after two thousand years, lives in the memory of the nations—the first, and withal unique, Imperator Cæsar.—And Julius, also, had been Pontifex Maximus. Hadrian took a white umbrella for a walk as far as the black-lava fort on the Appian Way.

He considered the horrible condition of France and Russia. It was a menace to the world. Of Russia, He could learn nothing new. Thews and Thought together had abolished authority and gone mad in butchery. The information, which He had obtained from the French Cardinals, was not of a rather useful nature. Elements of emotional sentiment and archaic conventionalism rendered their opinions well nigh worthless. They were tolutiloquent in expressing horror at the impiety of mob-rule which had deprived them of the right to military salutes ordained by the Concordat. They made the blood boil by their heart-rending descriptions of holocausts of priests and nuns—earnest heroic enthusiasts absolutely incapable of doing anything really practical in the way of eradicating that demoniality of which they became the victims. Nothing would please Their Eminencies better than to hasten to their distracted native-land, to offer up themselves as martyrs to the devils of their dioceses. They were no cowards—if desire to rush on death be bravery:—but they were picturesque, and dithyrambic,—mainly picturesque, with their long hair and their rabats edged with white beads. That would not do as an essential. Out of the mellay of matter laid before Him, the Pontiff extracted certain points. France, quâ France, no longer was Christian. The Devil was in power. Christians who were able to cross frontiers, did so. Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, received them. England, America, Japan, blockaded Toulon, Brest, Cherbourg. Their liners tapped the coasts; and carried thousands into freedom. Poverty afflicted the emigrants: those left behind were butchers, or subject to butchery. Dom Jaime de Bourbon having perished, the Pope sent for the Duke of Orleans;—and dismissed him with austere disgust. He subsequently withered away. His Holiness gave audience to a score of the French nobility; and spent some days picking the brains of emigrants fortuitously collected. Then, He again convened the French cardinals, and declared the pontifical will. They all were deposed from their episcopal sees, and nominated Apostolic Missionaries. Their charge was the cure, first of the bodies, second of the souls, of Frenchmen everywhere. The Cardinal-Missionary of Paris would go to London with the Cardinal-Archbishop of Pimlico, having powers to draw one million sterling from the pontifical treasure in the Bank of England: which sum, in halves, was to be the nucleus of two funds, an English and a German, for French Christians in their need. Each cardinal-missionary also received a breve authorizing him, and persons delegated by him, to collect money in every Christian country for the said funds. It was not to be a clerical charity. The Lord Mayor of London and the German Emperor were willing to administer it, each independently. Further Their Eminencies were to use their own discretion about adventuring themselves in the diabolical dominion. If they best could serve God there, then in God's Name, and with God's Vicegerent's benediction, let them go: but they most straitly were bidden to keep one only object before them, viz. the service of God through the relief and comfort of His servants. Nothing was to prevent them in that.

The world began to concentrate the corner of its eye on Hadrian. Holland and Belgium fell into the arms of anarchical France. The vigorous bold brilliant young Sultan Ismail, having failed to win Morocco to his Pan-Islamic scheme, was intriguing for an alliance with the other great Muhammedan power, England. His Majesty's murdered predecessor, by the aid of Germany, had formed an army of a million and a half, full of fanatical valour and the wonderful natural adaptability of the Turk, the rawest recruit of which had a greater fighting-value than was possessed by the conscripts of any other nation. This force was available for active service at fifteen minutes' notice. The Turkish alliance was worth anyone's while; and was coveted. Germany had trained the Ottoman squadrons: but was not to profit thereby. Teutonic stolidity had been outwitted by the wily Oriental. Islam could only and only would mate with Islam—as might have been foreseen. The rest of the continent of Europe ringed frontiers under arms. Each nation feared the other; and all feared France and Russia.

Hadrian watched the diplomatic processes with interest. He knew that England was quite capable of taking care of Herself, with or without the Mussulman. He grasped the theory that Muhammedanism, arising six hundred years after Christ, justified the Wisdom of God in Judaism, proving that the Oriental mind could bear nothing more perfect; and He conceived a sort of sympathy with Islam. His conversations with ambassadors became known in courts, (the King of Prussia's legate wrote amazing things to the German Emperor:) from courts, descriptions of opinions, tastes, habits, descended until they were discussed in clubs and miscellaneous congeries. Hadrian's custom of walking about unattended, looking-at the excavations in the Forum, visiting the sick in hospitals, sensuously delighting Himself with the glories of sunset seen from the Pincian Hill, were the themes of common conversation. And when, one evening, He got-in a left hander (from the shoulder) on a socialist, who spat at Him in Borgo Nuovo; and then, (on the filthy beast's bursting into tears and collapsing with the effects of the blow upon semi-starvation), pressing upon him His pectoral cross and chain, His gold spectacles, and all the coins left in His pocket after a couple of hours in Rome,—then the English race began to find the Pope observable; and English newspapers started columns called Rome Day by Day. How the special correspondents spread themselves! She of the Pall Mall Gazette got the usual exclusive information of the Borgo Nuovo affair; and split nine infinitives in describing the myopic Pontiff narrowing His eyes to slits, groping His way along the colonnades with His fainting assailant; His passionate denunciation of the farce of organized charity, which had let a man become so degraded; His agitation until Cardinal Carvale came running with His spare pair of spectacles; His strangely pathetic thankfulness for the gift of sight which they afforded; His anguish at the defilement of His garment; and His tender invitation to the starving socialist to be His guest in Vatican. All this suited the English temper to a T,—being English. But there was created a profound and perdurable impression. The King of Prussia's legate wrote more amazing things to the German Emperor. Hadrian became regarded in cabinets and chancelleries as one who cared or strove neither for loss nor gain, neither for life nor death—as the one Potentate who rightly or wrongly knew his own mind—as a Power with whom a reckoning might have to be made. After all, it merely was the effect of simplicity upon complexity, of felinity upon caninity.

He was sitting alone, thinking, and carefully unravelling a woollen antimacassar. It had been crocheted in five bossy strips, three of orange hue and two of grey, alternately arranged. He had unravelled two orange and two grey strips; and had the wool neatly rolled in four balls beside Him. The next time He should go into the City, some little girl would be made happy with two nice balls of grey wool and a lira to buy knitting needles; and, the time after that, another little girl would have three balls of orange wool and a lira also; and pontifical eyes would not be scorched by ghastly antimacassars any more, nor would the kind heart of anyone be wounded. He finished the job; and went to talk to his socialist. That one turned out to be a goldsmith, with the ideals and the brains and the fingers of Cellini, but not the acquisitiveness. Hence straits, socialism, sophistries, starvation. They walked about the sculpture-galleries for coolness; and spoke of Beautiful Things. Hadrian revelled. His guest was a man of taste; and talked-on-a-trot with wonderful gestures, making and moulding ideal images which the mind's eye could see. They came to the Apoxyomenos: stood: raved; and became dumb, feasting on the lithe majesty of perfect proportion. The artificer first spoke.

"Holiness," he said, "can You see that body and those limbs crucified?"

Hadrian's mind caught the idea. The splendid forms of the marble seemed to re-arrange themselves in the new pose. His eyes came slowly round to His questioner.

"Yes," He answered: "but soaring and triumphing, 'reigning from the tree,' not drooping and dying—and not the head and bust." He took the goldsmith's arm and hurried him to the Antinous of the Belvedere; and began to speak very quickly.

"Sir," He said, "you will be pleased to stay here; and, with the materials which will be provided, you will make a new cross for Us. The cross will be of the kind called Potent, elongate: the Figure will combine the body and limbs of the Apoxyomenos with the head and bust of the Antinous, but posed as We have described. On the completion of this master-piece, you will be offered an appointment as goldsmith in the pontifical household——"

"Ah, Padrone."

Hadrian returned to the secret chamber, happy in anticipation of an emblem which would not offend His taste. True, He was glad (in a way) that a tangled life so easily could be made straight: but it was the visionary ideal of Beauty which really inspired joy.

CHAPTER IX

That aggregation of intellectually purblind and covetous dullards, who formed the socialistic sect of the King of England's subjects, presently began in their rough rude way to perpend the Pope of Rome. It had been a moot point with these discontented sentimentalists whether it would or would not be profitable to unite with French and Russian anarchy, and attain their ends that way: but one Julia, in the Salpinx screamed such excruciating tales about slaughtered French babies, that that was "off." Also, it was remembered that a certain Comrade Dymoke, the only capable fighting man ever possessed by socialism, had been spunged upon for fifteen years by socialistic cadgers, sucked dry, ruined, and cast out, a victim of socialistic jealousy and treachery. In the plans laid for a Social Revolution, towards the end of the nineteenth century, that man had been named commander-in-chief. Now he was not available; and his place was vacant: for a military expert rarely errs into the purlieus of socialism.

But one thing had been done. The Social Democratic Federation had been induced, at the National "Liberal" Club, to coalesce with the Independent "Labour" Party. The coalition called itself the "Liblab Fellowship": the Salpinx and Reynards's were its organs; and a parcel of Bobs and Bens and Bills and Bounders its prophets. It concluded that it would score by toadying the Supreme Pontiff. The brainless monster of socialism always was hunting for a brain to direct its forces. By some perverted process, it arrived at the feeling that a Pope, Who could indite the Epistle to All Christians, would be likely to lend Himself to the furtherance of its crude designs on other people's property. A week later, Cardinal Whitehead called Hadrian's attention to the current issue of the afore-named journals, which contained an Open Letter to the Pope praising the "enlightened humanitarianism" of His Holiness's recent utterance, inviting Him to have courage of His opinions, and to bring His Epistle to (what was called) "a logical conclusion" by a formal authoritative declaration of the doctrine of Equality. Popes, as a rule, do not notice Open Letters. Hadrian, however, had learned from the Pall Mall Gazette that the fashion was for copious artists in words to lecture the Roman Pontiff. He anticipated the being told by that elegant journal that He knew as much about the true inwardness of Catholicism as a cow knows of a clean shirt. But He privately was of opinion that more harm may be done by leaving some things unsaid. But, Love——! Was it possible that He could love, could like (even), hyenas who screeched such ditties as this on the same page:

"They will tax the baked potatoes, "They will tax our blessed swipes, "They will tax our blooming hot pea-soup, "The leather, and the tripes, "They will tax the coster's donkey, "They will tax the Derby 'orse "And they're going to tax the devil "When he lives at Charing Crorse."

Ouf! No. It was quite impossible. Yet——: there were people whom He could like, if not love: people in His Own environment. These He would make easy, happy. To these He could set an example. They, in turn, would do as much for the rank below them: and so on, and so on. Thus, perhaps, by Nature's own method, might Love be brought down among men. So with a stern and trenchant rebuff He rebuked presumption. On the following Sunday, a Pontifical Breve was read from every Catholic pulpit in the Kingdom of England at home and beyond the seas. It proclaimed the dogma of Equality as scientifically, historically, and obviously false and impracticable: as a diabolical delusion for the ruin of souls. Hadrian did not soar away in metaphysical intricacies, but confined His argument to the broad highway whereon the ordinary man might walk at ease. Infinite difference, He said, was the note of the Divine Creator's scheme. Not equality, but diversity, of physique, of intellect, of condition, was man's birthright. One man was not as good as another: he generally was a great deal better,—as every man well knew. The claim to equality was so indecently unjust that it only could emanate from inferiors who hoped to gain by degrading their superiors. Socialists, who claimed equality, solely were actuated by the lust of improving their own condition at the expense of their brother. That was selfishness, and unchristian, and (by consequence) damnable heresy. The servants of God were bidden to avoid it. The Vicar of Christ repeated Christ's commands "Love one another—Love your enemies." Only by Love could be attained the happiness which all desired. That the classes did care for the masses, futile and indolent though their method might be, was undeniable: but the attitude of the masses to the classes was unmitigated hatred. The accident of birth to poverty or wealth was not a fault, for it was inevitable. The principle of Aristos "The Best" was to be upheld. The strength of Aristos was incalculable because it acted through the relations of private life, which were permanent: whereas the political excitement of socialism was essentially ephemeral. Rights, inherited, meritorious, conferred by legitimate authority, were sacred. Only the holders of such rights of their own free will could depose themselves or abdicate their rights; and, as Christians, they were expected to behave themselves Christianly: but to deprive them of such rights, at the will of those who did not confer them, would be an outrage. The socialistic idea, which suggested such iniquity, was essentially selfish and venal. Hadrian severely denounced the newspapers in which the Open Letter to the Pope appeared. He said that the thoughtful reading of a newspaper was one of the most solemn and painful studies in the world, for it was little more than a category of sin and suffering, of incitements to sin, of efforts to acquire filthy lucre honestly and dishonestly. He copiously quoted the advertisements, the Cyclorama page, the Motor Notes page, the Stageland, the Woman's Letter, and the Leaders, of the one, in order to show that the socialistic outcry by no means was the bitter groan of oppressed poverty, but rather the grumbling vituperation of envious discontented mediocrity anxious to affect an appearance, which was sham and not its own, and to wallow in luxurious conditions which it had not earned. Especially He noted the Socialistic Programme, "We suggest that the nation should own ALL the ships ALL the railways ALL the factories ALL the buildings ALL the land and ALL the requisites of national life and defence," as a plain declaration that robbery of private property created by individual industry and genius—robbery, pure and unadulterated, was the basis of the socialistic scheme. He denounced the paper as being written for amateur agnostics by dilettante atheists. He pungently derided attempts made, by pseudoscientists of the obsolete school of Haeckel, to popularize among mistaken but serious secularists the science of yesterday and the destructive criticism of the day before that. As for the other paper, He likened it to a cloaca wherein filth of all kinds is committed and collected. The news of the day was reported only in so far as it was susceptible of filthy presentation. Pages were devoted to diffusing refuse from police-courts; and, (under the head of Secret History) to calumnious inventions or distortions of fact connected with any and every man or woman who was not of the dregs of humanity. As a method of earning a living by journalism, this pandering to the basest passions was disgraceful, and damnable in the full sense of the word. Not by such means were the bodies and souls of men to be improved or profited. Not by such means could happiness, here or hereafter, be attained. "Let men raise themselves if they will; and let each man help himself by helping his brother to the utmost: there shall be no limit to your resurrection, well-beloved sons, if ye rise, not on other men but, upon your own dead selves," the Pope concluded.

In accordance with instructions, the Cardinal-Prefect of the Congregation of Sacred Rites presented to the Pontiff certain completed processes and petitions for the beatification of the Venerable Servants of God, Alfred the Great, King and Confessor,—Henry VI. of Lancaster, King and Confessor,—Mary Stewart of England, France, and Scotland, Queen and Martyr. Assent was deigned to these petitions; and pictures, each with a golden nimbus, were unveiled in the Vatican Basilica. The bull of beatification decreed the addition of the following words to the Roman Martyrology, the official roll of sanctity:—

This day, in England, is kept the festival of the Blessed Alfred, King and Confessor, who by the acclamation of his own people is named Great: memorable as a father of his fatherland, a lover of his brother, a true servant of God.

This day, in England, is kept the festival of the Blessed Henry VI. of Lancaster, King and Confessor: memorable for meekness, for suffering, for purity of heart, for the gift of prayer.

This day, in Scotland, is kept the festival of the Blessed Mary Stewart, Queen and Martyr: memorable for womanly fragility, for nineteen years' atonement in prison, for choosing death rather than infidelity.

Semphill and Carvale had urged Hadrian to impose the Proper Office and Mass of the last upon England as well as Scotland. His Holiness would know why?

"Because Her Majesty was the rightful Queen of England as well as of Scotland;" Semphill responded with the air of one who has invented a new sauce.

"Display your premisses, Lord Cardinal;" said the Pope.

"They are simply historical facts, known to everyone."

"But the conclusions which may be drawn from historical facts, mainly depend upon the sequence or method of arrangement of the said facts. Display yours, Lord Cardinal."

"The Blessed Mary Stewart was heiress of James V., who was heir of Margaret Tudor wife of James IV. of Scotland and daughter of Henry VII. of England. Henry VII.'s heir was his son Henry VIII., who married Katherine of Aragona and had issue Mary Tudor. Subsequently, failing to obtain annulment of this marriage from Your Holiness's predecessor Clement VII., Henry VIII. lived in sin with Anne Bullen and Jane Seymour by whom he had issue Elizabeth and Edward. Canonically this prince and princess were illegitimate and incapable of succession. Therefore, on the death of Henry VIII. the crown of England demised to his sole legitimate issue, Mary Tudor——"

"But Parliament had passed an Act, 28 Hen. VIII. c. 7, giving the English Sovereign power to limit the crown by letters-patent or by his last will to such person or persons as he should judge expedient."

"Surely, Holiness, that ought not to count. However, on the death of Mary Tudor without issue, I argue that the crown of England demised de jure though not de facto to the next legitimate Tudor who was Mary Stewart, heiress of Margaret Tudor."

Hadrian turned to Carvale.

"Of course, Most Holy Lord, I feel with Cardinal Semphill. I think"—his beautiful blue eyes blazed with the fire of his dreams—"I think that the time has come for doing justice to the memory of 'that predestined victim of uncounted treasons, of unnumbered wrongs, wrongs which warped and maddened and bewildered her noble nature, but never quenched her courage, never deadened her gratitude to a servant, never shook her loyalty to a friend, never made her false to her faith.' O think, Holiness, of all that the Stewarts have suffered!"

Hadrian Himself had a very tender and romantic feeling of attachment towards the Stewarts: but He responded, "Our office is not to stir up strife. We Englishmen happen to have made an ideal of Elizabeth. With that delightful capability for making our own ideals and maintaining them in the teeth of realities, we have chosen to forget the fact that no sovereign of ordinary intelligence could have helped being gilded by the really abnormal galaxy of talent which illumined the age of Elizabeth. It was those gigantic geniuses who made the glory of England then. England happened to be personified by Elizabeth. Therefore, in English eyes, Elizabeth was great and glorious and all the rest. No one" (he turned to Semphill) "can quarrel with your statement of blind and naked fact; and no one, who is right-minded, will. But, We desire to reconcile, not to exasperate, though We never will refuse to exasperate upon an apt occasion. Therefore We will not assert now that which need not be asserted. Be content that We raise your lovely martyred queen to the honours of the altars of your country. Ask Almighty God to look upon your land with favour for His Son's sake, and for the sake of her who in the Strength of that Son was faithful unto death. Call upon Mary in Heaven to add her prayers to those which ye offer to God on earth. Precious in the sight of The Lord.—If it be His Will to confirm with signs and wonders these your invocations——"

Their Eminencies gazed at the Pope with ecstasy. That He, whom they had known before, not always agreeably, that He—"Oh, really," said Semphill to Carvale as they left the Presence, "I don't know whether I'm sleeping or waking." And Hadrian, alone, rolled a cigarette, saying to Another than Himself, "Is that what You wish me to do in this case?"

Simultaneously with the beatificatory bull Laudemus insignes, was issued the Epistle to the English. The Pope affirmed that the English Race naturally was fitted to give an example to humanity. In particular, He categorically distinguished its solid worth, its dignified good sense, its deliberate tenacity, its imperturbable habit, its superb impassiveness in reverses, its stoical firmness under the most cruel deceptions, its unshaken determination to conquer under any circumstances. In general, He noted its faculties of self-restraint, of construction, of administration, and (among the upper and middle classes) of altruism. He indulged no vain regrets: but dealt entirely with the present and the future. He addressed the Race, as the Race would wish to be addressed, with perfect sincerity. In spite, He said, of the scum which floats, and is called "Smart": in spite of the dregs which goes a-mafficking, and is called "Hooligan" the English people at heart were as sound as ever. Millions, rich and not rich, gentle and simple, in town and country, led clean and wholesome lives. No newspaper paragraphs proclaimed that these good souls were bringing-up their children to be ladies and gentlemen, were solicitous for the welfare of their inferiors, had respect unto themselves. No flaming headlines screeched, announcing that they were paying their way, marrying and giving in marriage, rejoicing and sorrowing, like the brave honest common-place people that they were. No Society Gossip told of Robert and William and Nicholas and James and Frederick and Herbert and Percy and Alfred, day-labourers for a too scanty wage, who never drank nor fought nor swindled nor yelled for their rights, but who led decent noble lives under circumstances often cruelly unjust and always rigorously hard. Of such as these, said Hadrian, was the English Race composed. He reminded England that she had received more from the Latin Church than any other nation: that her gains had been direct before 1534: indirect after that date, when her natural enemies were dragged down by the corruptions of Rome. (He thought they would enjoy that point.) He assumed nothing, not even a prejudice. He advised without commanding: He directed without trespassing. The latter half of the Epistle concerned those who owed Him spiritual allegiance: to these He spoke with all authority. He blamed their phrenetic anxiety to enter into worldly competition. He pointed out that the Penal Laws, which from 1534 to 1829 had deprived them of "that culture which contact with a wider world alone can give," had rendered the Catholic aborigines corporeally effete and intellectually inferior to the rest of the nation. He did not blame noluntary defects: but facts were facts, and only fools would refuse to face them. These defects would find their remedy in the influx of new and vigorous blood and unexhausted brains. He quoted the words of a great critic who said that the religious movement of our day would be almost droll if it were not, from the tempers and actions which it excited, so extremely irreligious. It had taken four centuries to produce the present position of Catholics in England; and, as no man has a right to expect miracles, it might take four centuries more to restore them to a corporeal and intellectual equality with the average of their fellow-countrymen. To this end, He bade them to welcome and to comfort accessions to their number, not (as was the present custom) with slavering sentimentality giving place to slights, snubs, slanders, and sneers: but with brotherly love, putting in practice the Faith which they professed; and letting their light shine, instead of advertising comparatively paltry efforts at illumination. He reminded them that

"God made man right, but he had sought out many abstruse reasonings and, for a society of Christians to pretend to be "the world" or "of the world" was an incongruous monstrosity. He warned them that the kind of conscience which they cultivated, the conscience which descends from its high personal plane, which consents to haggle and discuss how far resistance to temptation must be carried, which deigns to consider consequences, to weigh possibilities, and to guard against disaster, was the proximate occasion for the well-founded charges of hypocrisy and humbug brought against all religion by lewd fellows of the baser sort. As for those of the clergy, whose comportment elicited from outsiders testimonials to the effect that they were "thorough men of the world having nothing clerical about them except their collars" or "thoroughly good chaps who take their glass and enjoy a smutty story like ordinary beings,"—His Holiness assured Their Right Reverencies, Their Very Reverencies, and Their Reverencies, that they completely misconceived their sacred character.

"Our citizenship is in heaven (ἡ πολιτεια ἡμων ἑν οὑῥανωι.) If then in very truth, ye look for a city which is an heavenly, ye must esteem yourselves as being 'in the world' as strangers (ξενοι), or resident aliens (μετοικοι); and so ye ought not to be 'curiosi in aliena republica.'"

He ordained that married Anglican clergy (whose wives were alive and who possessed the grace of a Divine Vocation) on resuming allegiance to the See of Peter, should be admitted to the priesthood and serve secular churches: but faculties for hearing confessions were not to be disposed to married priests; and each such priest, having charge of a mission, must nominate and maintain at least one Regular as curate whose sole duty should be the administration of the sacrament of penance. Finally, the Supreme Pontiff commanded the sacrifice of that phantom uniformity which had been the curse of Catholicism for four centuries, and the retention and cultivation of national and local rites and uses. And He commended England to St. George, Protector of the Kingdom.

The Archsocialists were bitterly chagrined by the pontifical denunciation of their Open Letter; but the Epistle to the English made them gnash their teeth. In print, they gibbered at first, and vomited after their manner. In congress, each one suspected his neighbour of being a "traitor to the Cause" whose treachery had taken the form of urging his comrades corporately to attract the pontifical fulmination. There was a dreadful scene at West Ham and a free fight at Battersea. Comrade Pete Quillet threatened to 'ave Comrade Bill Meggin's blighted ear; and had as much of the left one as twenty-seven unclean gorgonzola-coloured fangs could tear off, before he succumbed to six boots, a bottle, and a harness-buckle. At head quarters, the demagogues did behave with outward decency: not disguising their disappointment, but casting about for a new lead. The curious thing was that not one of them now but was more than ever anxious for alliance with the Power which disdained and damned them. It was the Power which they coveted—and admired, in the first intention of the word. Their attitude to the Pope was that of those who lick the hand that lashes them. The Pope was not a Penrhyn, against whose liberty they could invoke the laws at which otherwise they girded: He was to them something immense, intangible, potent, detestable—and most desirable.

While they were debating as to the precise posture in which they next should cringe, Comrade Jerry Sant communicated startling news. He was a delegate from the north: by profession, first a haberdasher's bagman, secondly a socialist; Socialism appearing to him an easy way of self-aggrandisement. As a rule, he did not push forward, working in the background, anonymously writing for the papers, watching for a chance to snatch. He whispered a word to his neighbour at the table.

"Rot!" said the latter.

"Rot yersel'!" Jerry retorted.

The other Fellowshipper guffawed. "Here, I say, Mr. Chairman, this Comrade says he used to know that old Pope!"

Jerry Sant became observed. He had the haggard florid aspect, the red-lidded prominent eyes, the pendulous lip of a sorry sort of man. He stood up and began to speak, sometimes dragging a sandy rag of moustache or fingering shiny conical temples, but generally holding on by the lapels of a short-skirted broad-cloth frock-coat, protruding black-nailed thumbs through the button-holes in a manner acquired during a week in Paris. His style was geological, so to speak, consisting of various strata deposited at various periods. The surface stratum, representing the Kainozoic Time, consisted of the platitudinous bombast characteristic of the common or oratorical demagogue. Below that, corresponding to the Mesozoic Time, came the ridiculous obsequious slang of the bagman of commerce. Below that again, corresponding to the Paleozoic Time, appeared the gelded English which muscleless feckless unfit-for-handicraft little sciolists acquire in school-board spawning-beds. And these rested on stratum of the Azoic Time, to wit the native Pictish Presbyterian jargon of Mr. Sant's sententious pettifogging spiteful self. These different strata occurred as irregularly as natural strata. They ran one into the other like veins in a fissure, causing displacements resembling those which technically are called Faults; and the tracing and stripping of the same is a task for the ingenious geophilologist.

"It's a gospel-truth, comrades. I had used to fhat ye might call know the Pope a few years ago fhen he was just George Arthur Rose and not a pound-note in his purse. I was running the Social Standard oot o' my own pocket, and many's the bit o' work I've let him have. He was trying his hand at journalism then, and gey glad to get it. I may take this opportunity of saying that he owes his footing to me; and most ungrateful he has treated me, comrades, as is the nature of him, proud aristocrat as he is. Not that I look for gratitude in such: but I've often thought when I've heard of him getting on—I mean before as he was fhat he is now—as perhaps he might like to remember him as gave him his first leg up. But no, not a bit of it though. I advised him of as much, once; and he rounds on me and cheeks me cruel. And I'm not the only one neither: I can tell you something else about him. There's a lady-friend of mine——"

"Here stop a bit," the chairman interrupted. "You're getting on a bit too fast. What did you let him write for the Social Standard for? Was he a comrade, I.L.P., or S.D.F., or Fabian p'raps? He seems to be rather a high sort from what you say."

"A comrade! Tits, man! ma pairsonal opeenion is that he was nothing bit a ... Tory spy. I always thought he was a Jesuit in disguise and now of course I know it. Fhen I knew him first he was pals with the traitor Dymoke——"

"Dymoke!!!" Teeth gritted; and the social equivalent for the Roman "Anathema sit" was snarled.

"Comrades, it wasn't me that was to blame there you know. Wait a minute before we meaninglessly divide oursels. I have some most important developments to lay before the meeting as you'll all cordially endorse. Don't someone remember I was the one that stopped the traitor's letters and give information of his treachery? If it hadna have been for me he would have bought the bally show with his Tory gold. It was me as put my spoke in his wheel and got him expelled in time. Well, as I was remarking, fhen I knew Rose he was gey thick with Dymoke. Fhat for did I let him write for us? Wy, because he could write the verra blusterous epithets which'ld make the enemy wince. Of course I went over all that he wrote though, just to see that he was economically correct. If I hadna have done that I might just as well have shut up shop. But I was going to say, comrades, there's a lady-friend of mine he's treated shameful—made love to her while her man was alive, borrowed twenty-pound notes of her, had to be forbid the hoose, and then fhen she was left a widdy-wumman with a family he cuts her dead at a picture-gallery. That's fhat I mean by ungrateful, the swine, fit to make a man retch with his mumping cant. What I was about to observe—no, she's not a Fellowshipper yet. I met her in the way of business if you know what I mean: but I expect she'll join before long. I know she will if I can only bring off fhat I'm talking about. She's got a pension, and she takes paying guests, quite high-toned and all. That's how I got to know her. I've put up there fhen I've come down to London these five year. Well, the moment I first come ben her best parlour I spots his photo on the cheffonier. 'Hech,' says I, 'I know that chap.' 'Then you know a very mauvy soojy,' says she, for she knows the French fine, and a' thing as genteel as you can think. So we had a bit crack; and fhat with fhat she told me and fhat I knew aboot him before, I may inform you that if we want to get anything out of him now I'm the man that can secure his entire acquiescence to any proposal we like to submit to him. Here's my plan, comrades, and if anyone's got a better let him out with it or else for ever after hold his peace and stand out of the way of them that has. Comrades, the hour has struck when tyranny will be no more for I've got the tyrant between ma legs and A'm going to squeeze him off my own bat, supposing as I'm properly supported. Cautious though, very cautious we must be: for Rose fhen I knew him was fine and slippery. Artful? E-e-e-e-e-eh! Dinna ye talk about his artfulness! Aye and proud too! He was the most haughty don't care sort of chap ye can think. I mind his eyes were like lowin' coals somewhens.

You shouldn't nail him anyhow. Insolence I call it; and I'd have pulled his nose for him many times only he wasn't worth it. Starving I've known him: yet if you'll believe me he'd give himsel' a wash and a brush up and go out of an afternoon looking as smart as you please in his old clothes and with a fag always in his mouth like the masher he is. That fag! I'll let ye know it was aye the same fag. He hadna used to light it ever. He lit it once and put it out directly after; and then he used to stick it in his face every afternoon and shew himself as usual, so that no one should know he hadna had a bit fhite fish, na naething to ca' a moothfu' o' flesher's meat wi' his piece the week past. He felled it me himsel' when I got to know him. And now, comrades, there's that feller sitting on the seven hills of Rome with three gold crowns on his head, as has been put in the papers, damning us for all he's worth. Comrades, fhat I wish to call the attention of this meeting to this evening is—I'll just speir if ye think that Rose should like to have his past life gave away by me and my lady-friend? Mrs. Crowe, her name is."

Jerry paused for a reply; and realized that he had possession of the meeting's ear: He mopped the lumps on his forehead: helped himself out of the chairman's whiskey-bottle: gulped a dram; and continued. His assumption of the rhetorical manner was consciously enormous now. "Comrades, as in the east when the golden light of dawn shews that sunrise is about to come, so this poor feeble voice of mine shews that the tyrant's thrones are tottering to their overthrow. But, comrades, we maun beware. Snares beset our path. Once we have let oursel's be caught by his infernal Jesuitical machinations and he has scornfully crrrushed us to the earth. This is how Labor is treated, and thus shall Labor be treated as long as we go cap in hand and ask for our rights instead of demanding them and taking them as Comrade Matchwood says in the Salpinx. Comrades, this time we maun conquer or expire. If we want the former, we must fight our enemy with his own tools. Fhat are his tools? Comrades, his tools are Jesuitical Tory tools. His emissaries are everywhere, his spies beset our path on every hand I should say infest our road. Even in this hall to-night, a Tory eye may be upon us, a Jesuitical ear may be protruded to catch these whispers falling from this feeble tongue and pass them on to that arch-pariah in Rome who is drunk with the blood of working-men and battened on unearned increment. Comrades, we maun take a leaf out of his book: we maun hoist him up on his own Jesuitical petard. We oursels maun become Jesuitical for the sake of the Cause. Comrades, there in Rome sits the Abominable Desolation and I'll let ye know ye'll find him fhat ye may call a fikey customer. Day by day his satellites prostrate their forms before his so-called holy toe, and let him know a' things which they've found out by base and underhand sneaking means. That is whit way he is so powerful. His slaves tell him so much that he knows everything. Look fhat with an entire lack of consistency he said about the Salpinx. Could he have said that if he hadna been informed? No, I repeat, a thousand times no. Comrades we maun do the same. He knows our secrets and uses them against us most unfair. We maun worm his out too, and use them to bend his proud knee to the people's will. Comrades, I, me, know his secrets. I am the man and Mrs. Crowe is the woman fhat shall shame him before all his silken harems and cardinals and potentates—upset his apple-cart if I may use a colloquious impression. We only have got to show the despot our two faces, and I'll let ye know he'll quail as sure's death. We shan't need say a word. At the mere sight of me and my lady-friend the monster'll howl for mercy. Then we will be able to have our revenge for his recent most insulting remarks. We will dictate fhat he shall have to do to win our favour. All the starch and haughtiness shall go out of him like steam out of a toddy-jug when he sees us two; and he shall pay any price to gain our smile. And then I'll let you know what my plans are. Comrades, we're agreed aren't we that the only way in which the Cause can triumph over Capital is by having a Labor majority in the House of Commons. Fhat I mean by that is this. At that magnificent demonstration of Labor's irresistible electoral might, in the words of the Salpinx, we can make the Tories and our friends the Liberals pass our bills to pay us our proper salaries; and we will wrestle from the reluctant rich the mines and the railways and the mills and all the paying industries, and we shall even nationalize the land itself which our bloated aristocracy have robbed us of and mafficked in and wallowed in our gore. Comrades, I shall not detain you much longer for I see the hour is getting on. Fhat I mean to say is this is the point. There are, in this Great Britain and Ireland of ours the night, no less than 8,452,637 deluded papists with parliamentary votes. I obtained those figures carefully from statistics. You have to be careful about details like this if you mean to do yersel' any good at a'. Now, Comrades, all those 8,452,637 papists shall gladly drop their 8,452,637 votes into candidates' ballot boxes which will be put forward by the Liblab Fellowship. They shall do it at one word from their Pope, at one penstroke of his, such is the besotted state of slavery in which they exist. Refuse they dare not, or they should languish in the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition or light the Fires of Smithfield and the Massacres of the so-called Saint Bartholomew. Comrades, it is that one word and penstroke which the sight of me and Mrs. Crowe shall squeeze out of their haughty Pope. We'd better have a proper deputation to go to wait on him with us for safety's sake; and happen we'd better have a sort of address to present, explaining how matters stand, just to make things look pleasant and polite, as it were. That's only a matter of form though. The main thing'll be to see him fall back toes over tip on his judgment-seat like him as was struck with worms when he sees who's in the deputation. Laugh? I won't ever have laughed like I will laugh at him then! Well now, comrades, I've said my say and I say no more leaving the matter to your esteemed consideration. Comrades, think of all the insults which he and his myrmidons has made us groan under so long. Revenge is now at your disposal. This weak hand of mine has pointed out whit way. Seize it, oh seize it in the name of Freedom is all I ask. For myself I ask nothing, not a penny if you was to offer it me. Comrades, I'm fighting for the Cause. For the Cause I'd give my life as far as in me lies. That's my aim: that's my game, as the poet remarks. Comrades I shall not detain you longer I shall now sit down." And the raucous gentleman panted into the next Fellowshipper's chair.

CHAPTER X

"Dear Mrs. Crowe, Secret and Confidential. Please burn it when you have concluded reading.

Referring to our numerous enjoyable conversations on the subject of Socialism in which you have evinced entire acquiescence, I am directed by the Council of the Liblab Fellowship to call your attention to the advantages obtainable from comradeship as per enclosed. The entrance fee is two and six and the subscription five shillings per ann. payable in June and Dec. I may add that those are special terms which I have exerted my influence to obtain in your favour and I trust I shall meet with your esteemed approval. Would you decide to join, kindly notify me of the same per wire for wh. I enclose six stamps. Yes or No will answer all purposes, but personally I feel sure that it shall be yes. On receipt of your anticipated favour will at once propose and have you seconded at our evening meeting to take place on the night of the same day when you get this letter. Should your reply be in the affirmative I am to let you know that you shall at once be nominated as a member of a deputation, which I have the honour to be a member of as well, which is about to proceed to Rome for the purpose of diplomatically interviewing our mutual friend the Pope. The expenses of the trip will be borne by the Liblab funds so there is no need to worry on that score. You are aware that travel especially to such a famous town as Rome is considered advantageous in every respect. The Italian sky the numerous old ancient edifices and the Romans themselves in their native monasteries cannot fail to amuse the eye of the beholder. The excursion is entirely gratis and so that difficulty is removed. But in addition to what I have said there is also the prospect of renewing our acquaintance with his so-called 'Holiness!!!!! And I may say for certain of having private interviews with him in the innermost recesses of his haunts. More I shall not now add. The mission of the deputation is strictly diplomatic and connected with political affairs, and I am of course not at liberty to divulge the details to anyone but fellow-shippers, it would be hardly prudent. Ah would that you dear Mrs. Crowe was one. But I may without any breach of confidence inform you in the strictest confidence that Rose alias Hadrian is in our power and therefore putting politics out of the question it shall go hard if you and me cannot do a little private business with him on our own account. Hoping to hear from you soon as per enclosed blank form and thanking you in anticipation

I remain Yours truly in the Cause (I hope) Jeremiah Sant.

P.S. Now burn this without fail."

Sant's lady-friend sat at the breakfast table, pondering this letter while her kidney grew cold. The four lodgers were gone to business; and she was alone except for the presence of her son. He was one of those beautiful speechless cow-eyed youths who seem born to serve as butts. Most people exercise some influence, assert some personal note. Alaric Crowe did neither. A course of female rule had produced him with about as much individuality as a cushion. He ate his breakfast in delicate silence. His mother was wrapt in thought. She found Sant's letter delectable. The consuming passion of her whole life was for George Arthur Rose. Next to him, she desired fame, notoriety, as a leader in suburban literary and artistic "circles." By perseverance, an undeniable amount of clever organizing power, a certain stock of third or fourth class talent, and any quantity of "push," she had established a sort of salon where little lions hebdomadally roared. But she never had won the faintest regard from the man for whom she burned. The violence of her passion had caused her to make an irremediable mistake with him. She had not realized the feline temper which had caused him to repel advances as obvious as abrupt and as shameless as a dog's. He had ceased to be aware of her existence. Then she had blundered further. Still ignorant of his peculiarity, she had treated him as the female animal treats the male of her desire. Finding him unapproachable by blandishments, she had turned to persecution. She would make him come to her and beg. Here, she also failed. In vain did she defame him to her followers: in vain did she libel him to the publishers from whom he earned his scanty subsistence: in vain did she force herself upon his few friends with stories of his evil deeds. He let those who listened to her leave him. He tolerated the ill-will or stupidity of Bar-abbas. He never said a word in his own defence. And he kept her severely and entirely at a distance, giving no sign that he even knew of her manœuvres. It was galling to the last degree. Of course he was egregiously wrong. "Neither in woes nor in welcome prosperity, may I be associated with women: for, when they prevail, one cannot tolerate their audacity; and, when they are frightened, they are a still greater mischief to their house and their city." His feeling to women was that of Eteokles in the Seven against Thebes. It caused him to make the tremendous mistake of his life. A woman of this colour never can be neglected: she must be taken—or smashed. That, he knew: but he would not take her, ever; and, a certain chivalrous delicacy, mingled with a certain mercifulness of heart, and a certain fastidious shrinking from a loathsome object, prevented him from prosecuting her with the rigour of the law. "Wrong must thou do, or wrong must suffer. Then, grant, O blind dumb gods, that we, rather the sufferers than the doers be," expressed his attitude. It annoyed himself: it made her fierce and furibund: and it was absolutely futile.—And now, he had leaped at a bound from impotent lonely penury to the terrible altitude of Peter's Throne. He was famous, mighty, rich, and the idol of her adoration, despite the great gulph fixed between her insignificance and His Supremacy. Oh, what would she not give—for a curse, for a blow from Him. The emotion thrilled and dazzled her. Not one hour during twelve years had she been without the thought of Him. It was a case of complete obcession.

Her daughter flowed into the room in a pink wrapper, finishing a florid cadenza. A touch on the tea-pot and a glance under the dish-cover revealed astringent and coagulate tepidity. She rang the bell.

"Mother, why aren't you eating any breakfast?"

"I am eating it. I only just stopped a minute to read my letters."

"A pretty long minute, I should think. Everything's stone-cold. Why you've only got one letter! Who's it from?"

"Mr. Sant. He wants me to go to Rome with him."

"Oh mother, you can't you know."

"I'm sure I don't know anything of the kind. In fact I think I will go. There'll be a party of us."

"Well, if it's a party—— But what's going to become of the house?"

"I'm sure Big Ann is capable of looking after the house, Amelia. If I can't have a fortnight's holiday now and then I might just as well go and drown myself. I'm sick to death of Oriel Street. I want to go about a bit. Yes, I will go. And the house must get on the best way it can. Anybody would think you were all a pack of machines that wouldn't work if I'm not here to wind you up."

"Oh, all right, mother, go and have a fling by all means if you like. But what about the cost? I'm sure I can't help you as long as I only get these three-guinea engagements. And I simply can't wear that eau-de-nil again. The bodice is quite gone under the arms."

"You're not asked to help. Mr. Sant pays all expenses. And, Amelia, if I can do what I'm going to try to do, you shall have as many new frocks as you can wear. We're going to see the Pope."

"Going to see the Pope?"

"Yes, you silly girl—the Pope,—Rose!"

"What do you mean?"

"Just what I say."

"But you can't."

"Nonsense. Of course I can."

"Well I mean of course you can see Him the same as other people do: but you'll be in the crowd, and He—— I can't understand you at all this morning. Let's look at Sant's letter—— How vilely the man writes! Like a—— You don't mean to say you'll join these people? M-ym-ym. Yes, I see the game.—Yes.—But d'you think you really could?—Well: if you like the idea still, it's worth trying anyhow.—Silly little mother! Why I believe you're in love with Rose even now. Ah, you're blushing. Mother, you look a dear like that!"

"Amelia, don't be stupid. Mind your own business."

"Oh I'm not going to interfere. You needn't be jealous of me. I'm sure I never saw anything particular in Him myself."

They spoke as though they were alone. Alaric went quite unnoted. He folded his napkin and rose from the table.

"A—and, mother," he mooed, slowly, with a slight hesitation, in a virginal baritone voice, resonant and low; "if you go to Rome, don't be nasty to Mr. Rose?"

Both the women whirled round toward him. They hardly could have been astounded if the kidneys had commented on their complexions.

"Alaric! how dare you sir!"

"A-and I only say if you go to Rome I hope you won't be nasty to Mr. Rose."

"Did you ever hear such nonsense, Amelia? Why not, I should like to know?"

"A-and he taught me to swim."

"So he did me. At least he tried to. And what of that?" snapped the girl.

"A-and I don't think it's fair. I liked him. A-and father liked him."

"Yes indeed, he's just the sort of man your father would have liked, unfortunately. He liked that sonnet-man, too. A pretty kind of person! All I can say is, Alaric, if I were to let you see the letters I've got of his and the albums full——: but there, you don't know as much as I do about your father!"

The boy bellowed. "A-and don't you dare say anything against father! I won't stand it. Amelia knows I won't stand it from her; and I won't from anyone, not even from you, mother. I won't, I tell you! I'll go right away if I have another word. Mother, I'm sorry: but you oughtn't. A-and I don't want you to be nasty to Mr. Rose, because I liked him, a-and father liked him," concluded Alaric departing.

Mother and daughter looked at each other. "Who'd have expected Alaric to burst out like that? I'm sure it's very hard, after all I've gone through, to have my own children turning against me."

"I am not turning against you, mother. I think—well of course I can't see why you care for Rose: but if you do you'd be a fool to miss a chance like this. What does Mr. Sant mean about having him in his power?"

"I don't quite know. I suppose Georgie must have got himself entangled with these people somehow; and they think he wouldn't like it to come out. That's very possible. He's been mixed up with several shady characters in his time. However, we shall see. Amelia, do you know what I've been thinking? That mauve frock of my aunt Sarah's—now I believe I could make that up for myself for evenings and save a new one, you know. It's lovely silk. You can't get anything as good as that anywhere now-a-days."

"What the one with the fringe?"

"Well, isn't fringe coming in again now? I think I know how to use every bit of it. The only difficulty 'll be with the sleeves. I wish someone would invent a sleeve that only covers the lower part of one's arms. You see the best part of mine's about the shoulders."

"Why don't you simply carry the fringe over the shoulders like straps; and wear long gloves?"

"Yes, of course I might do that. And Amelia, I really must have a new transformation; all things considered I think I will go to Du Schob and Hamingill's for it this time. I'm afraid they're rather dear: but when you look what a chance this is and how much depends ... Then there's another reason why I should go. People are beginning to neglect our Wednesdays. Well now, if I go to Rome with these whats-his-names it's sure to be in the papers; and then when I come back all our old friends are sure to want to know."

So this precious pair of would-be blackmailers accompanied the deputation from the Liblab Fellowship to God's Vicegerent. Much of the formality prescribed for pontifical audiences had fallen into abeyance. Hadrian received ambassadors or personages with various degrees of ceremony: but, almost every day, He was to be found pacing to and fro in the portico of St. Peter's; and then He was accessible to all the world. When, however, the Socialists applied for an audience, it was intimated that the Supreme Pontiff would deign to receive them at ten o'clock on the following morning; and the Vatican officials were instructed that the reception would be carried out with full state. It was George Arthur Rose's birthday. For twenty years no one had cared to remember it. Now there were scores who cared; and none who dared. Hadrian was more remote than George Arthur Rose had been.

A nervous little group of twenty obvious plebeians, male and female, awaited Him in the Ducal Hall. Superb chamberlains shewed them the door by which the Pope would enter, and instructed them to approach the throne when He should have taken His seat. The great red curtains at the end of the Hall were drawn-back; and cardinals, prelates, guards and chamberlains, flowed-in like a wave whose white crest was Hadrian. As the procession passed, Sant growled to Mrs. Crowe,

"Does Himself well, don't He?"

"Oh isn't He just splendid!" she yapped.

Then chamberlains manœuvred the Liblabs into position at the foot of the throne steps. Jerry by common consent had been chosen spokesman; and the united intellect of the Fellowship had drawn up the address which he, with ostentatious calmness, began to read. The Pope's ringed hand lay on His knee: His left elbow rested on the crimson chair and the hand supported the keen unfathomable face. He had prepared His plans: but He alertly was listening, lest unforeseen necessity for alteration should arise. He was watching with half-shut eyes and wide-open mind for an opportunity. None came. His prevision had been singularly accurate. The Liblab Fellowship really had nothing to say to Him, beyond turgid sesquipedalian verbosity expressive of its own disinterestedness, and fulsome adulation calculated (according to the Fellowshippers' lights) to tickle the conceit of any average man. It would have been funny, if it had not been terribly tiresome: impertinent, if it had not been pitiable. Sant's tongue clacked on his drying palate. To himself, his voice sounded quite strange in that atmosphere of splendid colour and fragrant odour. Mrs. Crowe quivered; and wondered. The others were in a torpor. No one listened to the reader, except the Pope. The curia rustled and whispered, exchanging jewelled snuff-boxes. The guards resembled tinted statues tipped with steel.

"We have the honour to remain, in the cause of humanity," concluded Jerry Sant, reciting the common-place names of the signatories, "On behalf of the Liblab Fellowship." He refolded the foolscap sheets, and drew them through his fingers, looking as though he were about to hand them with a flourish to the Pope. A frilled black-velvet flunkey took them from him, gave them to a purple prelate, who passed them to a vermilion cardinal, who kneeled and presented them. The stately Cardinal Van Kristen moved from the side presenting a second manuscript. Hadrian unfolded it and began to read His reply. It was courteous and concise, distant and independent, simply an allocution on the distinction necessary to be drawn between Demagogues and Demos, the worthiness of the latter, the doubtfulness of the former. At the end there was a silence. Chamberlains discreetly made it known to the Fellowshippers that homage might be rendered by any who desired to render it; and gave instructions as to the customary manner. Twelve of the demagogues preferred a non-committal pose, having fear of the snorts of the Salpinx; and, of these, two found it convenient to glare uncompromisingly, letting it be seen that they regarded their host as the Man of Sin. But eight approached the throne. Five of them bowed, as over the counter: one kneeled on one knee and read his maker's name in his hat: Sant held his own elbows and looked along his nose; and Mrs. Crowe laid her lips on the cross gold-embroidered on the Pontiff's crimson shoe. That was all. These people were bewildered, almost inebriated by the magnificence of the scene, by the more than regal ceremonial, by the immense psychical distance which divided them from the clean white exquisitely simple figure under the lofty canopy, by the quiet fastidious voice purring unknown words from an unimagined world, by the delphic splendour of Apostolic Benediction waved from the sedia gestatoria retiring in a pageant of flabellifers. On leaving the Vatican, they were thoroughly dazed: they knew not whether their diplomacy had been successful or unsuccessful. Jerry Sant had an indistinct notion that he might expect to be summoned after night-fall; and surreptitiously introduced to some pontifical hole or corner in order to be bribed. Mrs. Crowe exulted in a new emotion. She actually had touched Him: and she thrilled: and she was sure that this was only a beginning.

When Hadrian was about to descend alone into St. Peter's to say His night prayers, He observed one of His gentlemen practising a new and curious gymnastic in the first antechamber. Sir Iulo was in solitude; and he did not hear the feline footfall which came near. He had a longish knife in his right hand, held behind his back. Then, with his teeth clenched, and his eyes firmly fixed on an imaginary pair of eyes in front of him, and every sinew of him at its tensest, he suddenly whipped hand and knife face-high to the front hilt-upward, down to arms' length and forward-up again point-upward, all with frightful force and rapidity. Hadrian watched him during five performances. Then Sir Iulo became aware of the Presence; and relaxed into upright stillness, grinning and glittering.

"What is this game?" the Pope enquired.

"Not game: but for the protection of You."

"Protection? Protection from what?"

"From those most horrible peoples who have been to-day here pursuing some vendettaccia."

"Do you mean those Liblabs?"

"But yes, those Libberlabberersser: especially a Libberlabber who has read, and a she-Libberlabber who goes with him. It is I who have seen of them both the eye. From which I vibrate a knife most commodious for the bellies of those. His Holiness can rest secure."

"Do you mean that you are going to rip them up?"

"But yes, in the manner which I have learned of the chef from Naples. Now I watch them. When I shall have seen them make a movement, behold the tripes of them sliced precipitatissimamente!"

"Iulo. No. Understand? No."

"There is not of dishonour! First like this, I demonstrate the knife—they view the mode of their deaths. There is in it nothing of sly—— Next, I give them the death which they have merit. That is not the deed of a dishonourable."

"You are commanded not to give death—not to think of giving death. It is prohibited. O Viniti, quo vadis? Understand? Bury the knife in the garden. Sotterratelo nel giardino, Vinizio mio. Capisce? Break it first. Then bury it in the garden—— If you wish to be protector of Hadrian, learn to fight with fists—pugni. Understand?

Tell John to buy a punching-bag—punching-bag—and practise on that."

"Bai a punnertchingerbagger," repeated the devout murderer-in-posse with disappointment, as the Pope left him limp.

A sign drew Cardinal Van Kristen to walk by Hadrian's side on the return from San Pietro and Vincula on Lammas Day. From time to time, his shy grand eyes turned to the Pope as they rhythmically paced along. From time to time, a blessing fluttered from the Apostle's hand to some stranger by the road-side.

"Holiness," at length he said, "do you remember the saint You used to worship on this day at Maryvale?"

Hadrian detached Himself from a reverie. "Little Saint Hugh? Fancy your remembering that!" And He again dived into silence.

"One would hardly fail to remember anything You said or did in those days, Holy Father."

The Pope said nothing. He was thinking of something else.

"I put the picture you painted of Little Saint Hugh up in our refectory at Dynam House."

No answer came. The cardinal's long eyelashes lifted a little as he looked at his companion. He was not sure that his attempt at conversation was welcome.

"Your Holiness does not care to be reminded perhaps. I did not mean to intrude. Sorry."

Hadrian put out a hand. "No, Percy, you don't intrude. We were wondering how long this King is going to be."

"Which King?"

"Italy."

"Oh. Yes?"

"Things are at a standstill."

"For example?"

"Everything—at least in Italy—as long as something better than sulky peace is lacking. We want friendship, collaboration. See whether you can follow this. The personal influence of His Majesty is enormous. Although his acts are quite constitutional, yet, such is his magnetic force of character that he actually rules. No matter which party is in power, the King's Majesty rules. Practically he is an autocrat; and he, so far, has not made a single mistake, nor done a single unjust or even ungenerous deed. Now We also have some power, some personal influence. These people seem to like Us. They're charmingly polite. They run about after Us. We do not doubt but that they would obey if We commanded—if We ordained that no woman should cover her hair with a terrible handkerchief when she goes into a church—if We substituted silver sand for those abominably insane sponges in the holy-water fonts, for example—but how many of them would obey Us if We ordered them to cease from drying their linen at their windows, or to stop spitting? Do you follow?"

"No, Holiness."

"Our influence is over particulars, is sentimental, is ideal. The influence of the King's Majesty is over universals, is practical, is real——"

"Yes, I see that."

"Well, then——"

"You mean that Your influence and the King's——"

"Could do a great deal more for this dear delightful country than——"

"Do you think that this King knows of Your desire for reconciliation?"

"Victor Emanuel is one of the four cleverest men in the world. It is impossible that he should not have understood the Regnum Meum. Besides, We addressed him by name. He owes Us the civility of a response."

"Holiness, let me have that news conveyed to him. Guido Attendolo——"

"No. We Ourself have not yet seen clearly the next move. We believe that His Majesty of his own initiative ought to have approached Us—the son to the Father—before now. We have given him a token of Our good-will. There the matter rests. He cannot have a doubt as to what Our purpose is. But—His Majesty must do as he pleases. We think that We have done Our part so far. At present, We are not moved to proceed further. When We are moved—and that is what occupies Us now. An idea seems to be forming in Our mind: but as yet,—— Percy, do ask Our friends to tea in the Garden of the Pine-Cone at half-past sixteen o'clock to-day."

The same afternoon after siesta, Hadrian sat at one end of the great white-marble arc-shaped seat. A yard away sixteen cardinals spread their vermilion along the same seat. Little tables stood before them with tea, goat's milk, triscuits and raisins. The Pope preferred to sit here where the pavement was of marble: because lizards avoided it, and their creepy-crawly jerks on grass or gravel shocked his nerves. He was sure that reptiles were diabolical and unclean; and His taste was for the angelic and the clean. He smoked a cigarette; and flung a subject to His Court, as one flings corn to chickens.

"Was not the question of requiems for Non-Catholics settled two or three years ago?" replied Courtleigh.

"Yes:" said Talacryn. "It was declared impossible, profane, inconsistent."

"Why?" Hadrian's predilection was for the inconsistent, rather than for that undevelopable fossil which goes by the name of consistency.

"It would be inconsistent, Holiness, for the Church to proclaim, by the most solemn act of Her ministry, as a child submissive to Her, one who always refused; or certainly never consented, to recognise Her as a mother—one who, while alive, would have rejected any such recognition as a grave insult and an irreparable misfortune;" Talacryn responded.

"I don't follow Your Eminency," said Whitehead: "it's eloquent—but it's only eloquence."

"Isn't Cardinal Talacryn rather begging the question, Holiness?" Leighton enquired. "Who spoke of proclaiming as a submissive child one who never was submissive?"

"Holy Mass is the public and solemn testimony of visible communion; the tessera communionis, if I may use the term; and, therefore, the Church can only offer publicly for those who have departed this life as members of that visible communion:" Talacryn persisted.

"Holy Mass is a great deal more than that!" interjected Carvale.

"Yes?"

"Holiness, it is not for me to tell Cardinal Talacryn that Holy Mass is not only a sacrament for the sanctification of souls, but a sacrifice—the Real Sacrifice of Calvary, offered by our Divine Redeemer and pleaded in His Name by us His vicars. It is not another sacrifice, but the Sacrifice of the Cross applied. It is the Clean Oblation, offered to God for all Christians quick and dead, for all for whom Christ died."

"Would not the bonafides of the Non-Catholic in question come in?" said Semphill. "Take for instance the Divine Victoria——"

"'Divine'?" queried della Volta.

"Yes, 'Divine.' You say 'Divus Julius' and 'Divus Calixtus,' meaning 'the late Julius' and 'the late Calixtus.' Very well, then I say 'the Divine Victoria' for a more thoroughly, worthy woman——"

"Well, but that would mean that on the death of such and such a Non-Catholic, we should have to institute a process of inquisition, and adjudicate on his or her life and career:" Ferraio ventured.

Hadrian threw His cigarette-end at a lizard on the gravel, and laughed shortly. "'Pippety-pew, me mammy me slew, me daddy me ate, me sister Kate gathered a' me baines——'" He quoted with deliciously feline inconsequence. "How you theological people do split straws, to be sure! Go on, though. You're intensely interesting."

The Patriarch of Lisbon slapped his knee.

"Holiness, there are several decrees which are supposed to bear on the subject," Gentilotto gently put in.

"Can Your Eminency remember them?"

"Innocent III. ruled that communion might not be held with those deceased, with whom it had not been held when they were alive."

"I concede it. But it doesn't touch the point. I distinguish. Holy Mass is more than mere communion. Besides, we don't communicate with, but on behalf of, the deceased. It's not a concession to the deceased. It's our duty to God and to our neighbour," Carvale persisted.

"Then there was the case of Gregory XVI. and Queen Caroline of Bavaria," Gentilotto continued. "The argument is the same: but perhaps it has been expanded a little. It definitely prohibits persons, who have died in the eternal and notorious profession of heresy, from being honoured with Catholic rites."

"Another point occurs to me," Talacryn went on. "Supposing that we sing requiems for Non-Catholics, we should imply that one religion is as good as another."

"I guess I deny the consequence," Grace retorted. "Of course people would infer all sorts of things which ought not to be inferred: but I can't see that that need concern us."

"One might imperil the salient and sacred aloofness which marks off God's Work from man's work, the Church's unmistakeable contrast to the whole world," said the Cardinal of St. Nicholas-in-the-Jail-of-Tully.

"And her complete discordance from the world by all the difference which separates the Divine Institution from the human, the Church of God from the churches of men," Saviolli appended.

"All the same I think I go with the Cardinal of St. Cosmas and St. Damian," said Mundo.

"There would not be any real ground," Sterling continued, "for suspecting one of disloyalty to the Church, if one were to recognize the Invincibly Ignorant as the 'other sheep' which His Holiness mentioned in His first Epistle. One is not going to take part in their worship, or frequent their services: because one knows better. And one is not going to accept the principle of a conglomerate Church of the 'common-christianity' type any more than one is going to accept an Olympos of gods for a Divinity. But one confesses that one can see no reason why one should not pray for outsiders, offer Mass for outsiders, recognize them in short, as His Holiness seems to ordain. They don't know us; and, naturally, they invent a caricature of us, as things are. Yes, on the whole, perhaps one ought to support Carvale."

"Well: if we're taking sides, I'll follow you," said Semphill.

Their Eminencies rose and surrounded Cardinal Carvale. Talacryn was left alone at the other end of the seat; and Percy moved a few inches nearer to the Pope.

"Now Percy?" said Talacryn with invitation. The youngest cardinal shook his grand head in the negative.

"And will not you yourself join the majority?" Hadrian inquired of the single minority.

"I shall follow your Holiness," Talacryn answered. The others looked their interest.

The Pope smiled. "Note please, that We are not uttering infallible dogma, but the fallible opinion of a private clergyman, weak-kneed perhaps, or worldly. We know no more than this,—that Christ died for all men." Rising He began to throw on his white cloak, for it was the hour before sunset and the air was cooler. "Eminencies," He continued, "We learn much from you. This discussion was an accident, due to Our negligence. The case which We intended to submit to you was not the case of an outsider: but, while you have been talking, We have reached the solution of Our problem by another road. We request you immediately to publish the news that to-morrow at ten o'clock the Supreme Pontiff will sing a requiem in St. Peter's for the repose of the soul of Umberto the Fearless King of Italy."

An English Catholic painter came to paint the Pope's portrait. Hadrian knew him for a vulgar and officious liar: detested him; and, at the first application, had refused to sit to him. His Holiness was not at all in love with His Own aspect. It annoyed Him because it just missed the ideal which He admired; and He did not want to be perpetuated. Also, He loathed the cad's Herkomeresque-cum-Camera esque technique and his quite earthy imagination: from that palette, the spiritual, the intellectual, the noble, could not come. But, He thought of the man's pinched asking face, of his dreadful nagging wife, of his children—of the rejection of all his pictures by the Academy this year, of the fact that he was being supplanted by younger grander minds. Ousted from livelihood! Horrible! Love your enemies! Ouf! The Pontiff would give six sittings of one hour each, on condition that He might read all the time.

The privilege alone was an inestimable advertisement. Alfred Elms looked upon himself as likely to become the fashion. Hadrian sat in the garden for six siestas; and He read in Plato's Phaidōn, which is the perfection of human language, until His lineaments were composed in an expression of keen gentle fastidious rapture. Elms's professional efforts at conversation were annulled quietly and incisively. The Pope blessed him and handfuls of rosaries at the end of every sitting. Sometimes His Holiness was so elated with the beauty of the Greek of His book, that He even was able with a little self-compulsion to utter a few kindly and intelligent criticisms of the painter's work. That was startlingly real, mirror-like. The varied whiteness of marble and flannel and vellum and the healthy pallor of flesh, gained purity from the notes of the reddish-brown hair and the translucent violet of the amethyst. The clean light of the thing was admirably rendered. The painter could delineate, and tint with his hand, that which his eyes beheld, with blameless accuracy. What his eyes did not see, the soul, the mind, the habit of his model, he as accurately omitted. Hadrian made him glad with a compliment on the perfection of the connection between his directive brain and his executive fingers. At the end of the last sitting also He gave him two hundred pounds, and the picture, and a written indulgence in the hour of death. The painter went away quite happy, and with his fortune made. He never knew how vehemently his work was detested, how profoundly he himself was scorned.

August was deliciously warm. The Pope moved the Court for a few weeks to the palace on the Nemorensian lake which the Prince of Cinthyanum lent. It was a vast barrack of a palace. Although three sides of it actually were in the little city, and a public thoroughfare pierced its central archway, yet it suited Hadrian admirably. Approached through numerous antechambers and picture-galleries, there was a huge room frescoed in simulation of a princely tent. Here they placed a throne for receptions. There was a great balcony high above the porch, facing a two-mile avenue of elms. When the faithful congregated (as they often did) the Pope could shew Himself. There were innumerable chambers of state and private suites, where the curial cardinals took up their abode. But high on the fourth side of the palace, with no access except by several little private stairs, Hadrian found an apartment of five small rooms which was quite secluded. From its windows, (the palace stood on the crest of the cliff) a stone might be dropped into the fathomless lake three hundred feet below; and, beyond the lake, the eye soared to Diana's Forest of oaks and the spurs of the Alban Mount. A private stair and passage led to the incomparable (and almost unknown) gardens, which crowned the rocks with verdure and descended by winding paths to the mirrored waters of the lake. Here the Pontiff established Himself, with the noise of the world of men and its limitations on the one side; and, on the other, quiet and illimitable space wherein the soul might spread wings and explore the empyrean.