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 Cornell University Library 
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 San Celestino, an essay in reco . n **™JJ!° n 
 
 3 1924 013 588 862 
 
The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013588862 
 
SAN CELESTINO 
 
SAN CELESTINO 
 
 AN ESSAY IN EECONSTEUCTION 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN AYSCOUGH 
 
 AUTHOR 01? " MABOTZ " 
 
 Beati pauperes spiritu ; quoniam ipsorum est regnum oaelorum. 
 
 LONDON 
 SMITH, ELDER & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE, S.W, 
 
 1909 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
"Hick irs" Va^-?€- DreWj V r an * 
 
 115 -rm 
 
 X 
 
 R.B.D. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK 1 
 Petrucoio I 
 
 BOOK II 
 
 TlIlO FOUNDER OF Til 10 CkLESTINES .... 133 
 
 BOOK III 
 Tu K Pope 195 
 
 BOOK IV 
 
 II (J KAN Ripiuto 261 
 
SAN CELESTINO 
 
 BOOK I 
 
 PETHUCCIO 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 i 
 
 ' Pbtruccio ! ' Ser Matteo's wife called out, standing in 
 the great arched doorway and looking out across the 
 cortile towards the garden. 
 
 It was not much of a courtyard, more like that of a 
 farm than that of a castle, though a strong and high wall 
 ran round it on two sides, a wall machicolated at the 
 top, with a parapet along which, if one were not very 
 fat, one could walk. On the other two sides the space 
 was inclosed by the house itself and a great stone granary. 
 All the buildings were of stone, for rocks were common 
 thereabouts and bricks were scarce. A triangular flight 
 of stone steps led down from the door, which was the only 
 one the house had. 
 
 Farm implements lay about the yard, and a long, 
 narrow cart stood in it, from which the white oxen, 
 with smoke-coloured muzzles, were being unyoked. 
 
 * Petruccio, dov'e ? ' inquired the mistress, lowering 
 her voice a little to address the carter. 
 
2 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 ' Chi lo sa ! E da-per-tutto,' answered the peasant. 
 He was not much more than forty, but looked old, with 
 a wrinkled face sunburnt nearly as black as one of the 
 benches in Ser Matteo's kitchen. 
 
 ' He is everywhere : who knows where he is ? ' 
 repeated Biagio, leading his oxen away, and beginning 
 to make a noise which he took for whistling. 
 
 ' Nowhere does he do any harm,' declared the mistress, 
 as if she were arguing with Biagio. 
 
 ' He who does nothing commits no fault,' rejoined 
 the peasant, almost without pausing in his whistling. 
 
 Biagio liked all of Petruccio's eleven brothers better 
 than he liked Petruccio : at all events he thought that 
 he did. Petruccio, he considered, could do nothing. 
 The others could all do things : the elder lads rode, and 
 followed the chase, even the younger boys fished and 
 trapped birds. Petruccio lived in the moon somewhere, 
 where nobody ever heard of there being any game or any 
 sport. And Biagio could always understand what the 
 others said to him : if they asked questions he knew the 
 answers, for they only wanted to learn such matters 
 as he could teach them. Whereas Petruccio was not 
 given to talk much, and what he said was mostly not 
 worth Biagio's attention. 
 
 Ser Matteo's wife came down the steps and walked 
 across the courtyard towards the broken gateway leading 
 to the garden. She had room in her heart for all her 
 twelve sons, but loved Petruccio with a peculiar affection. 
 Long ago, when she was herself a child, she had had a 
 brother, and Petruccio was like him. Her brother was 
 
SAN CELESTINO 3 
 
 dead, had, indeed, never lived to be older than Petruccio 
 was now. ' The best patterns are not the commonest,' 
 she told herself, as she went into the garden. ' God 
 is not obliged to make all birds sing.' 
 
 Carmela had a fine face, about which she never thought 
 anything, though Ser Matteo had thought much of it 
 when he married her. Nowadays there were other 
 things to think of : he had a dozen sons, and not so very 
 much land, nor any fine relations likely to help them to 
 a start in life. 
 
 The garden was not much of a garden either, though 
 big enough, and beautiful enough in a careless, shiftless 
 fashion. The few flowers seemed to grow there of 
 themselves, for no one had planted them, and no one 
 attended to them. But there were plenty of trees, and 
 long walks, rather tangled, and in every direction glorious 
 views of the valley and of the mountains on each side of it. 
 
 ' Petruccio ! ' his mother called out again. She had 
 reached the end of the garden farthest from the house, 
 and now her call was answered. 
 
 ' Where were you ? ' she asked, as the boy showed 
 himself. 
 
 ' Up there,' he answered, with an embarrassed air, 
 nodding his head in the direction whence he had come to 
 meet her. The garden ran steeply uphill away from 
 the house, and here there was a jut of rock, perhaps 
 twenty feet high, covered with bushes and Fichi d' India. 
 
 ' What were you doing ? . . . have you been there 
 all the time ? ' 
 
 ' Yes ; up there all the time.' 
 
 b2 
 
4 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 He had not told her what he had been doing, and she 
 did not urge him. But he took her arm, and pressed it 
 a little. She knew he was grateful because she had not 
 pushed her question. Why should a mother be in- 
 quisitive ? Why must parents always suppose their 
 children's reticences hide something suspicious ? 
 
 They walked along without talking much. Carmela 
 was not even wondering how he had been occupied. He 
 knew she was not. She felt his small, thin fingers pressing 
 her round arm. The sun had dropped behind the 
 mountain, and already the gorges of the hills were turning 
 black, though the western heaven was deep red still. 
 
 Petruccio was very hungry, but he was not thinking 
 of that ; nevertheless his face would have been pale but 
 for the sunset. He had eaten nothing since last night, 
 except a crust of bread, and a fig or two early in the 
 morning. The western glow lighted his face, and Carmela 
 noticed it. 
 
 'Madonna mia!' she said within herself. 'His face 
 seems washed in blood.' 
 
OHAPTEE II 
 
 Indoors it was already dark. The lamps of olive oil were 
 lighted, and the table was roughly spread for supper. 
 There was plenty to eat of coarse, common food : no 
 dainties ever varied their simple diet. 
 
 Ser Matteo's house was rather a big, gaunt masseria 
 than a castle, though it was perched like a castle among 
 the mountains, and was strong, and half-fortified. Ser 
 Matteo was, one would say, noble, but of the small 
 nobility, poor and undistinguished. No doubt he had 
 ancestors, but he thought rather of the future than of the 
 past, and was more concerned how his sons were to live, 
 than how his fathers had lived before him. 
 
 They all sat down to eat, and Petruccio waited his turn 
 to be served without impatience. 
 
 ' Help me first,' said his brother Euggiero. ' Chiodino 
 does not eat. He lives on wind, like the plovers.' 
 
 ' How is that ? ' asked their father, filling his big 
 mouth with pasta. 
 
 ' You are not to call him that,' said Carmela. ' There 
 are saints enough in heaven for the whole twelve of you to 
 have decent Christian names without nicknames.' 
 
 Petruccio looked shy; he, too, disliked the nickname, 
 and he wished Euggiero would not tease him before 
 
 5 
 
6 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 everybody about not eating. Ser Matteo had for- 
 gotten all about it already, but his eldest son, 
 Astorgo, asked Kuggiero why Petruccio was like the 
 plovers. 
 
 ' Oh, he eats wind ! That is all he cares for. At 
 dinner-time he came in late when everybody was done, 
 and carried his portion away with him. I saw him, and 
 had a curiosity to find out what was the matter with him. 
 He crept away with it, and I watched him. He gave 
 it all to blind Cetta, the widow who lives near the shrine 
 of Santa Barbara. . . .' 
 
 ' Ruggiero chatters,' said his mother. ' If Petruccio 
 is like the plovers, he is like the jackdaws who gabble 
 " gracchia, gracchia," all the time.' 
 
 Petruccio had grown as red as if the sunset were still 
 on his face. He gave a kick under the table, and his toes 
 knocked hard against Ruggiero's ankle : perhaps it was 
 accidental, his brother thought it was temper. 
 
 ' Poledro, the young colt, kicks like that,' he observed 
 scornfully. ' I expect he fasts, too.' 
 
 Carmela gave Petruccio his supper, and he felt her hand 
 touch his : he began to eat with a choking in his throat. 
 He was ashamed of his impatience. Ruggiero loved to 
 torment him, and had an instinctive knowledge how to go 
 about it. 
 
 ' I caught a hare to-day,' observed Carluccio, the 
 brother between Ruggiero and Petruccio. 
 
 ' And I five trout,' declared Sandro. 
 
 ' They 're out of season,' Giulio objected. 
 
 ' They 're not,' asserted Sandro, much offended. 
 
SAN CELESTINO 7 
 
 ' I killed two pigeons with a sling,' said Pippo. ' Fat 
 ones.' 
 
 ' And Petruccio,' said Euggiero, ' sat all day looking 
 out for a cherubim or a seraphim. But he is so cross one 
 sees he did not catch any.' Petruccio began to blush 
 again, and his tormentor continued — 
 
 ' He has built himself a den on the top of the rock 
 at the end of the garden. He has made it in the little 
 cave, and he has filled it with thorns and brambles. 
 There he has been all day, since he gave his dinner to 
 Cetta, the blind widow ; when he has laid an egg he 
 will sit on it, to see if he can hatch an angel out of it. 
 But Cetta is not at all grateful to him for his dinner, 
 for he put it in her hands without saying anything, 
 and stole away. Then I walked in and told her I had 
 brought it with the padrona Carmela's compliments.' 
 
 All this was mere invention about his having told 
 Cetta anything, for he had not spoken to her at all ; 
 but Petruccio did not much understand those sort of 
 lies that are called ' chaff.' 
 
 ' " Gracchia, gracchia," ' repeated Carmela, remind- 
 ing the tease that he was like a jackdaw. She had not, 
 however, paid much attention ; and now she and her 
 husband began talking to each other without listening 
 to the lads at all. 
 
 After supper the maids cleared the dishes and plates 
 away, and the boys sat about the big table working at 
 various jobs upon it. One had a crossbow to mend, 
 another a net, and so on. 
 
 Carmela went to her wheel and began to spin. Her 
 
8 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 mother, who seemed to live in her big chair under the 
 chimney, was spinning also. She was as upright as her 
 daughter, but pale and wrinkled : her grandsons con- 
 sidered her enormously old. 
 
 ' Tell us a novella, Nonna,' one of them begged her. 
 
 ' What novella, then ? ' 
 
 ' About the Guiscard and Sigilgaita,' suggested 
 Giulio. 
 
 ' That is not a novella : it is history,' remarked 
 Astorgo, who was an accurate person. 
 
 ' Never mind : there 's no harm in history when it 
 is interesting,' declared Giulio, who didn't know there 
 was any difference. 
 
 ' Tell ua about the Emperor and Pope Gregory,' 
 whispered Petruccio. 
 
 But Euggiero overheard him. 
 
 ' Don't tell us about Popes,' he objected. ' We 
 are none of us monks. Tell us about our own Emperor 
 Federigo and his Saracens. . . .' 
 
 The old lady was not so accurate as Astorgo, and did 
 not remark that that also would be history ; besides, 
 the Emperor was still alive, at Palermo, in the midst 
 of his heathenish court of Arab poets and musicians; 
 it did not occur to her, perhaps, that the doings of living 
 people could be called history. Besides, she had been 
 to Palermo and could describe la Zisa, and the Martorana, 
 and the tombs of their own Norman kings ; she had 
 seen Frederick himself, and the Empress Costanza, his 
 mother. Of all these wonders she liked to tell. 
 
 Some of her grandsons listened, and some whispered 
 
SAN OELESTINO 9 
 
 to each other over their work : her daughter listened, and 
 also thought of all sorts of other things. Ser Matteo 
 did not pretend to listen at all, but dozed and began 
 little plans for his sons and dozed again ; but Petruccio 
 drank it all in with eager ears. Nevertheless he was 
 shocked by the quarrels of the troubadour monarch with 
 one Pope after another, and scandalised by his founda- 
 tion of Saracen Nocera. He was glad to think that, 
 though the Emperor might beat the Church's vassals in 
 war, the Pope's excommunication was too much for him. 
 Kuggiero was sorry. 
 
 ' I hope he will catch the Pope yet,' he declared. 
 
 ' Euggiero chatters,' said his mother again. But her 
 husband had no reproof handy. He had not been attend- 
 ing, and then he was of the Regno : the Trovatore was 
 his monarch. So the long evening wore itself out : 
 it was October now, and cold at night up here in the 
 mountains. The fire of logs was pleasant, and rest 
 after a long hard day is grateful. Ser Matteo dozed, 
 and left the Pope and the half-pagan Emperor to them- 
 selves. So long as neither of them wanted his cattle 
 or his corn he left them to God, who, no doubt, understood 
 what they were always quarrelling about. 
 
CHAPTEE III 
 
 In the middle of the night, as it seemed to Kuggiero, 
 some one crept to his bedside and woke him. 
 
 ' What is it ? ' he grumbled sleepily. 
 
 ' Are you awake, Euggiero ? It is I, Chiodino.' 
 
 Euggiero was too sleepy to notice that his brother 
 called himself by the nickname he disliked. Had he 
 been wide awake he would not probably have understood 
 that Petruccio, in thus using the name that was unpleasant 
 to himself, was doing penance. 
 
 ' Well ? What do you want ? Do you want my 
 supper to make up for your dinner ? It has gone too 
 far down. . . .' 
 
 ' I couldn't sleep. I lay awake ashamed. I had 
 to come and beg pardon. I kicked you under the table 
 on purpose. It was not a mistake.' 
 
 ' Bello ! That is a good thing. It is stupid to do 
 things by mistake.' 
 
 Euggiero turned round and went to sleep again. 
 Petruccio stole away, back to his own little hard bed 
 stuffed with esparto grass. But it was too soft for him. 
 What business had he to lie comfortable in bis body, 
 whose soul had been wounded by an act of spiteful 
 impatience ? Was it not mere hypocrisy to fast and 
 
 10 
 
SAN CELESTINO 11 
 
 give away his dinner, and then kick his brother for making 
 game of him ? 
 
 He crept out of bed and lay on the cold nagged floor, 
 where the chill moonlight fell on his head, and showed 
 the strange mark that was the cause of his nickname. 
 High on the temple there it was, a livid scar, such as might 
 have been left could a huge square nail have been driven 
 into his forehead, and he be still alive after it had been 
 drawn out and the skin have grown together again. 
 
 No accident had caused this ugly mark : it was there 
 when he was born. It was never red, but of the dark- 
 bluish colour of a bruise : sometimes darker and plainer, 
 sometimes paler. To-night in the moonlight it looked 
 very dark. 
 
 Carmela had a shuddering superstitious feeling about 
 it, and would have forgotten the existence of the mark 
 altogether if she could; but she never could forget it. 
 It annoyed her, however, to be reminded of it, and she 
 was not pleased with Euggiero for nicknaming his brother 
 Little Nail — Chiodino. 
 
 Petruccio could perceive his mother's feeling, though 
 he did not understand it, and was himself ashamed of 
 the mark, as though it implied some reproach. He 
 shrank from allusions to it, and from the name that 
 reminded everybody of it. 
 
 Presently he began to shiver, and it came quickly 
 into his head that perhaps he would get fever from being 
 chilled : if he were to die would it not be his own fault ? 
 People had no right to injure their own health, much 
 less to die of illnesses caused by themselves. This penance 
 
12 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 of lying on the stones was his own idea : perhaps it was 
 wrong. Had he, who was an ill-tempered boy that 
 kicked his brothers, any right to imitate the penances of 
 saints ? Fra Taddeo, his confessor, told him not to go 
 beyond his grace : that would be presumption. Very 
 likely this penance was beyond his grace and, if he 
 persisted in it, God would allow the fever to lay hold of 
 him and even kill him. . . . 
 
 At last he crept back into his cold bed, and finally 
 fell asleep. But the chill was in his bones still, and he 
 dreamed of it. He thought he was still lying on the 
 flagged floor, only his room was some dungeon, and he 
 knew he was not alone in it. He could see no one in the 
 dark corners, but he felt that some one was there. . . . 
 Presently these people — for there were several of them — 
 came out stealthily from the thievish black corners 
 where they had lurked, and crept together towards 
 himself. They were rough, brutal fellows, like men- 
 at-arms, big and burly ; and now they threw themselves 
 upon him and laid fiercely hold of him. Two of them 
 held him tightly down, so that he could feel the rough 
 stones hurting his shoulders ; one of them stuffed a cloth 
 into his mouth. Where he lay it was moonlight, and he 
 could see as well as feel them : the fourth ruffian had a 
 hammer, a great hammer like a smith's, in his hand, 
 and a huge nail also. He held in his other hand the nail, 
 and Petruccio knew what he was about to do with it. 
 It was exactly like the great nail in the church, the model 
 of one of those with which Gesu Cristo had been fastened 
 to the cross — which had indeed touched one of the true 
 
SAN CELESTINO 13 
 
 Nails of the Passion, and had a little leaf of parchment 
 sealed to it, saying that this was so. It was five inches 
 long, or more, and square, with a round top like a mush- 
 room. Petruccio knew at once what they were going 
 to do with it, even before he felt the cold point of it 
 against his temple, long before the cruel-faced man with 
 the hammer had struck the mushroom-shaped head. 
 
 ' In manus tuas, Domine . . .' he muttered in his 
 sleep, and then came the crashing blow and the horrible 
 pain in his temple. 
 
 He had felt that pain already, when he was awake, 
 often. He could never bear it, and he would feel it, over 
 and over again, during his long life. But now, as he slept, 
 the sharp agony lasted but a moment, and was followed 
 by an exquisite bliss. He was no longer cold, or cramped ; 
 his body did not trouble him at all. It was no longer 
 dark, or mere moonlight, but he lay quivering in the midst 
 of a thrilling light that did not dazzle. He was no 
 longer alone with ruthless and frowning enemies, but in 
 the midst of smiling friends. 
 
 ' He is come home,' some one said ; and they called 
 him by a name that was not Petruccio. He could not 
 quite catch it ; was it his old nickname ? Its first 
 letter was the same and its last : was it ' Chiodino ' ? 
 No. But ' Celestino ' : the Little Heavenly One. 
 
CHAPTEE IV 
 
 Pea Taddeo told Carmela that Petruccio should be a 
 priest. 
 
 ' He is called,' said the friar. ' Our Lord's voice is 
 plain. Let him go. Indeed, you can never hold him 
 back. He has the rare gift — donum 'pietatis.' 
 
 Carmela would not hold him back. 
 
 ' It is a great honour,' she said. 
 
 ' The greatest. That a man should be called to be God's 
 own fellow in the saving of souls. That a man should 
 be given to sit on earth in God's seat and heal the lepers.' 
 
 ' Nay, but few can work miracles. Put no ideas 
 like that in the lad's mind.' 
 
 ' I meant the worst leprosy — sin.. Every priest has 
 the power of that miracle. And the power of the other 
 miracle, of calling Christ back to earth daily into the 
 White Disguise of the Blessed Sacrament.' 
 
 Ser Matteo made no objection. He was glad enough. 
 Were there not Canons and Bishops, ay and Cardinals and 
 — well, why not ? — even Popes ? Let everyone follow his 
 own bent. Astorgo was already gone to follow the 
 profession of arms, and Buggiero was going. Why 
 should not Petruccio be a priest, and presently a prelate, 
 with vassals and soldiers of his own ? 
 
 14 
 
SAN CELESTINO 15 
 
 But presently Ser Matteo died, and it was all in 
 Carmela's hands. She ruled in her husband's stead, and 
 ruled quite as well as he had ever done. She was a strong, 
 frugal woman, and had the capacity for government that 
 many women have ; only her sphere was always to be 
 a small one. She managed everything, and kept things 
 well together. 
 
 With twelve sons to provide for she contrived to do 
 the best for each, and for Petruccio she found the means 
 to send him to his studies. She fitted him out with 
 clothes, and a little money for his books, and for his 
 living at Salerno. He was not vain and wanted no smart 
 raiment, and she knew he was ready to fare poorly, and 
 lodge meanly. 
 
 The day before he started there was a festa down at 
 the faese, and she bade him go thither with his brothers. 
 
 ' It will be the last time,' she told him, ' and you can 
 condescend to their pleasures this once.' 
 
 So he went, though he would liever have stayed with 
 her, and wandered about the place that was never more 
 to be his home. As it was he found time in the morning, 
 before it was time to start for the festa, to go and say 
 farewell to this or that spot. 
 
 There was the rock at the end of the steep garden, 
 where he had made his first hermitage, in which he had 
 spent so many hours of so many days, learning the 
 alphabet of religious contemplation. He had abandoned 
 it for some while now, for temptations had come to him 
 there which had frightened him. By nature he was 
 timid, and apt to be discouraged. He had come to 
 
16 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 doubt if the place were blest. There were, he had begun 
 to suspect, more devils than angels there. Once a voice 
 had declared there, plainly in his ear, that he was already 
 a saint, at an age when other lads had scarce begun to 
 be sinners. Then he had fled, and for some time had not 
 ventured back. 
 
 But he had gone back at last, and had found God 
 waiting there, kindly, for him. All had gone well for a 
 space, and he had felt the place to be quite sacred : the 
 trysting-place for his first — and last — love. 
 
 Suddenly, however, another voice had assailed him, 
 coldly telling him, in his other ear, that he would never 
 be a saint at all, never even save his soul. He had better 
 go down and share in the pleasures of life, for, after death, 
 it would all be darkness and flames for him. 
 
 Again he had fled. 
 
 That also was long ago, and ultimately he had gone 
 back a second time. The place was full of memories 
 for him, not of outward events but of inward experiences. 
 Looking back it seemed to him now that he had known 
 nothing at all of God when he had first begun to go there ; 
 it did not occur to him yet how little he knew still. He 
 bade farewell to the spot and to all the garden. He felt 
 a cold sinking of the heart as he told himself that he 
 should come no more hither. He had deep, sensitive, 
 human affections, that clung to the familiar and accus- 
 tomed. The very timidity of his nature made him 
 shrink from the unknown or the distant. To him Salerno, 
 far away on the coast in Campania, seemed hopelessly 
 distant. He had lived among the mountains all his life, 
 
SAN CELESTINO 17 
 
 here in the Abruzzi, and even the idea of going to live 
 by the sea gave him a sense of passing into exile. 
 
 All these human local ties must be broken ; for his 
 notion of vocation was to rise up and follow the homeless 
 Nazarene, as homeless himself. But must not crucifixion 
 be an agony ? Without agony would it be crucifixion 
 at all ? 
 
 He passed down a rough walk of the garden that led 
 along the brink of what was, in truth, a precipice, so steep 
 that no wall was needed and none enclosed the garden on 
 that side. Halfway down it, in a thicket, was a sort of 
 grotto where, as a child, he used to play at saying Mass. 
 There was still the rough altar he had built ; and his 
 mother, though he was not aware of it, had still the 
 little vestment she had made him out of an old bit 
 of silk. 
 
 He thought, as he left the garden, that he would go 
 and find Biagio the carter, and say good-bye to him. He 
 was sure to be in the long, draughty stable. 
 
 ' Biagio ! ' he called out, peering into the shadow, for 
 it seemed almost dark there going in out of the strong 
 sunlight. 
 
 ' Who wants me ? What is to do ? ' the carter's 
 voice answered gruffly. But Biagio did not himself 
 come forward : Petruccio had to find him. He was 
 sifting grain in a corner that seemed quite dark to 
 Petruccio. 
 
 ' Only I, Petruccio.' 
 
 Biagio whistled, as much as to say, ' Only you, 
 indeed. That is nothing.' 
 
18 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 ' I thought I would come to say good-bye. I shall be at 
 the paese with my brothers all day. . . .' 
 
 Biagio laughed as well as he could without stopping 
 whistling. He could not have said more plainly — 
 
 ' One does not need to say farewell before going to the 
 village.' But he knew perfectly that Petruccio was 
 going away altogether on the morrow. 
 
 Petruccio blushed a little, and one could almost hear 
 it in his voice. 
 
 ' Well, but to-morrow,' he added, ' I am going to 
 Salerno.' 
 
 ' It is well for the rich who can afford such journeys,' 
 remarked Biagio, interrupting his whistling but making 
 as much noise as he could with his sieve. 
 
 ' I am not going because I am rich ; but to learn 
 theology, Biagio.' 
 
 ' What is that ? It is a sort of grain I never heard of.' 
 
 Petruccio laughed a little. 
 
 ' It is all about God,' he explained politely. 
 
 ' So it is at Salerno they know all about God. Well, I 
 can't go. So I must stop here and remain ignorant.' 
 
 Biagio began whistling again. He prided himself on 
 being disagreeable, and nattered himself that on the 
 present occasion he was doing pretty well. 
 
 ' You know I am going to be a priest . . .' Petruccio 
 began again. 
 
 ' That is right. You are not like your brothers. They 
 are good for other things.' 
 
 Petruccio blushed again. He did not think himself 
 cleverer than his brothers, though in truth he was cleverer 
 
SAN CELESTINO 19 
 
 than more than one of them. But he disliked hearing a 
 priest's calling spoken of disrespectfully. It could not be 
 right, and perhaps he was only causing the cross peasant 
 to commit a fault. 
 
 ' Well, I thought I would say good-bye. When I was 
 little you taught me to ride ; that was very kind of you.' 
 
 ' Yes ; but you never learned. Your legs are only 
 good for kneeling with.' 
 
 ' Good-bye, Biagio.' 
 
 But Biagio was obstinate and would not say good-bye. 
 It rather hurt Petruccio, and the carter knew it ; other- 
 wise he would have said good-bye readily. 
 
 o2 
 
CHAPTEE V 
 
 The festa did not amuse Petruecio, and the fact that it was, 
 as we would say now, picturesque, did not occur to him. 
 It was noisy, and he hated noise ; and he could not be 
 light-hearted when in truth he was already feeling the 
 first pangs of approaching home-sickness. He did not 
 care to romp and be pulled about, and he scarcely knew 
 how to take part in the games his brothers made him play. 
 Some of the maidens who shared in the sports seemed 
 to him rough and over-forward. He had no sisters and 
 had never made friends with any of these peasant-girls, 
 as his brothers appeared to have done. Besides, he felt 
 that they were all laughing at him for his awkwardness and 
 shyness, and he had always shrunk sensitively from ridi- 
 cule. He knew he was only their butt ; and though 
 he cared nothing, even now, for the knowledge of these 
 foolish games, he had a sort of shame of his ignorance too. 
 
 Presently he stole off, and thought he would seek out 
 the parish priest and say farewell to him. He could not 
 go away without doing so, and this was a good opportunity. 
 
 He found the priest in, and told him he had come for his 
 blessing before leaving. 
 
 ' So you are going to Salerno ? ' said Messer Andrea, 
 peering at him sideways. He was short-sighted, and it 
 seemed to help him to look at things on one side. 
 
 20 
 
SAN CELESTINO 21 
 
 ' Yes. To-morrow. I thought your Reverence would 
 bless me before I start.' 
 
 ' Perche no ? Certainly you will deserve a blessing 
 if you go with the right dispositions.' 
 
 He coughed a little, just as he did when he was 
 preaching. 
 
 ' So you will be a priest,' he added. ' That is good, if 
 you have the right vocation. It is bad when one tries to 
 be a priest without it.' 
 
 Petruccio looked down, and began to redden again. 
 
 ' It would be terrible,' he almost whispered. 
 
 ' It happens,' said Messer Andrea. ' That is why the 
 Church has been cursed with false shepherds who have 
 devoured the simple sheep.' 
 
 This truth he stated harshly, almost as though he 
 feared Petruccio might prove one of them. He did not 
 in reality fear any such thing ; but he did not altogether 
 approve of Petruccio. The lad was, he thought, 
 visionary, and to be visionary was, in his idea, nearly 
 the same thing as being conceited. And Petruccio 
 was, he fancied, an enthusiast, which he also considered 
 objectionable. He was an excellent parish priest himself , 
 and had never, so far as anyone remembered, been much 
 tainted with enthusiasm. 
 
 ' One cannot be quite sure of one's vocation,' the boy 
 murmured. ' One can only go and see.' 
 
 ' If it is all a false idea,' observed Messer Andrea, 
 'you will have put your mother to great expense for 
 nothing.' 
 
 Petruccio hung his head. He was ashamed of being 
 
22 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 a burden on his mother's poverty ; but what could he 
 
 do? 
 
 The priest was a little ashamed of his last speech, and 
 spoke more surlily in consequence. 
 
 ' As for your vocation, I know nothing. Let us hope 
 it is all right.' 
 
 He meant, ' I have not been consulted. It is all 
 Fra Taddeo's doing.' 
 
 Petruccio knew this very well. When the frati had 
 come, only a year or two ago, he had at once adopted 
 Fra Taddeo as his confessor, and, of course, abandoned 
 the paroco. To him Fra Taddeo had seemed like an 
 angel out of heaven. The Poor Man of Assisi was only 
 dead ten years, and his friars had not yet been founded 
 thirty years ; Fra Taddeo had been one of his best- 
 beloved companions. He seemed to carry about with 
 him the very odour of the flowers of St. Francis. Half 
 his sayings were quotations from his Master, his whole 
 lif e the mirror of that which had left the stigmata on him 
 who had fashioned it. Fra Taddeo's opinion had, for 
 Petruccio, the weight of an oracle from the third heaven 
 itself. 
 
 But Messer Andrea was not so fond of the friars. 
 They were approved by the Pope, and their founder 
 had been canonised within two years of his death by 
 Gregory IX, who in the same year excommunicated 
 Messer Andrea's sovereign for his dilatoriness in going 
 against the Saracens. So there was nothing to be said. 
 All the same, Messer Andrea thought the friars not much 
 better than interlopers. The world, in his opinion, 
 
SAN CELESTINO 23 
 
 had gone mad about them — because they were a novelty, 
 and the parish priest hated novelties. He did not see 
 what the Church wanted with them. For twelve hundred 
 years it had got on, as he thought, excellently, without 
 them and their newfangled ways. It was a pity it should 
 not be allowed to get on without them still. They were 
 fire-brands, and to the uninflammable a fire-brand is 
 specially odious. It seemed to Messer Andrea that his 
 parish had hardly been his own since Fra Taddeo, and 
 the rest of them, had invaded it. 
 
 ' Will you pray for me ? ' begged Petruccio. 
 
 ' Oh yes, I must pray for you — that the farfalle 
 build no nests in your head. Butterflies make no honey 
 — and never fly straight.' 
 
 The lad understood what was meant ; but Messer 
 Andrea preferred to make it clearer. 
 
 ' To be a priest — that is a business matter. Not 
 an affair of wandering fancies. Visions and ecstasies 
 will not help you to be of service to your people. Learn 
 your books. Barbara, celarent. It is necessary to be 
 solid. That is what is required.' 
 
 To do him justice Messer Andrea looked solidity itself 
 as he spoke : the most malignant fancy would never 
 have found in him the least resemblance to a butterfly, 
 or even to the most directly soaring bird. Perhaps he 
 had not always been so solid : in days far away now, 
 and sunk in mists of oblivion, had he also had his dreams ? 
 Had he, too, started along life's highway with self-promises 
 of uncalculating generous purpose ? If so, he might 
 have known how little need there is of preaching down 
 
24 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 a youth's enthusiasm. ' Now it is accounted a rare 
 matter if a man retain even a little of his first fervour.' 
 
 ' The common paths — stick to those,' he went on. 
 ' Avoid singularity. Shun extremes. Let prudence be 
 your guide. Oddities are objectionable in religion as 
 in — as in real life. Walk along the high road, the moun- 
 tain tops lead nowhere. There will be plenty of time in 
 heaven for ecstasies.' 
 
 Then he spoke of the Church's rights, which were, 
 above all, to be defended ; nevertheless it was of the 
 rights of parish priests he appeared chiefly to be thinking. 
 
 Petruccio listened with a sense of respectful depression. 
 Apparently it was a risky thing to attempt the priest- 
 hood ; and yet he could not forget that Fra Taddeo 
 had encouraged him to attempt it, not certainly making 
 less of it than Messer Andrea ; neither could he believe 
 that Messer Andrea was a finer specimen and example 
 of priesthood than the frate. 
 
 Messer Andrea, he knew, was by birth merely a 
 peasant, and had lost nothing, so to say, even as regards 
 this world, by becoming a churchman. On the con- 
 trary, his position was altogether better than it could 
 possibly have been had he remained a layman. Whereas 
 Fra Taddeo was a noble, a duke's son, and had flung 
 aside everything — wealth, station, the friendship of 
 his equals ; Messer Andrea was by no means stupid, 
 but Petruccio was clever enough himself to know that 
 the parish priest was no genius ; while Taddeo was one 
 who could have made his mark in any calling — but that 
 also he had thrown away, Messer Andrea could never 
 
SAN GELESTINO 25 
 
 have been anything but plain and homely in his person, 
 but Fra Taddeo was tall and beautiful. For him, surely, 
 had he chosen it, the paths of human love also would 
 have lain open. 
 
 Nevertheless the friar had never snubbed Petruccio, 
 as though he were aiming too high. ' Aim higher still,' 
 he would have said, had the lad told him the height 
 was above him. ' Of course it is above you ; above 
 anyone. But aim not only at the priesthood, but at 
 the perfection of priesthood. By yourself certainly 
 you cannot do it. But Expecta Dominum. Viriliter 
 age. Sustine Dominum. Have courage, have generosity. 
 Count nothing spent that is given to Him. . . .' 
 
 Petruccio went away from Messer Andrea damped, 
 not in ardour but in spirit. Much of the advice given 
 was good, but misapplied. He needed encouragement 
 more than warning, being in truth rather timid than 
 conceited. 
 
 In the street he met Pra Taddeo close to the church, 
 and from him, too, he asked a farewell blessing. 
 
 The friar smiled affectionately on him. 
 
 ' It is no farewell,' he said, ' seeing whither you go. 
 He who gives himself to God has begun to turn home. 
 Let us go in there together. Instead of leaving you 
 alone let me leave you with Him.' 
 
 It was very quiet in the church, all the quieter for the 
 noise and laughter outside, which seemed far off, though 
 so few yards away. Petruccio felt less stupid in there : 
 in the streets he had seemed to himself like an idiot. 
 
 The noise of the festa was like the crackling of dry 
 
26 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 thorns: it stung him. It almost seemed unclean and 
 fouling. It certainly deafened him : here in the silence 
 he could hear. 
 
 Close beside the patient divine sentinel of the Blessed 
 Sacrament the friar and the youth knelt together ; and 
 presently Fra Taddeo rose gently and prepared to leave 
 him. 
 
 The boy did not turn to him, but listened, his deep 
 eyes fixed on the door of the tabernacle ; but the friar's 
 hand was on his shoulder, and the friar's kind voice was 
 in his ears. 
 
 ' I will give you our Little Father's blessing,' he said, 
 " as he was wont to give it to us all, when he left us, or 
 when we left him. " May the Lord bless thee, and keep thee. 
 May He turn the light of His face to thee, and give thee 
 Peace." ' 
 
 The friar paused a moment, and, thinking of the Poor 
 Man of Assisi, it seemed to him that, from the humble 
 place of his world-long waiting, the Poor Man of Nazareth 
 watched and listened to him. 
 
 ' And always, always he would say the same thing to 
 us, up to the very end, which was the true beginning. 
 " Let us now begin" he would beg us, " to love Jesus 
 Christ a little" ' 
 
 Petruccio scarcely heard him go ; his bare feet made 
 no sound on the stone floor. But Petruccio never thought 
 he had been left alone. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 To Salerno Petruccio walked — all the long leagues out of 
 the netted gorges of the Abruzzi. His mother had given 
 him a horse, one of the best she had. 
 
 ' For my own ? ' he had cried, a light of surprised 
 pleasure in his usually dark and sombre eyes. 
 
 ' For thy very own, my son.' 
 
 And here let me say at once that Messer Andrea 
 and everyone used, of course, the second person singular 
 when they spoke to him, as would, in Italy, be done 
 still to a boy by his intimates or his elders; but 'thee' 
 and ' thou ' give an archaic sound to a speech, in English 
 ears, and if I used that fashion here it would produce 
 an air of ancientness, and almost of unreality. So in 
 writing English it is better to use the forms with which 
 we are familiar ; six hundred years ago men and boys 
 were made of our own flesh and blood. The times were 
 different, people were the same. 
 
 ' To do what I like with ? ' 
 
 ' Whatever you choose. Once at Salerno you had 
 better, I dare say, sell him.' 
 
 ' I never owned any horse before.' In truth Petruccio 
 had not owned much; as this little world's possessions 
 go, he never would own much. 
 
 27 
 
28 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 But the possession of the horse gave him, Carmela 
 saw, a peculiar pleasure. 
 
 ' Euggiero,' he said, half an hour afterwards. 
 
 ' Well ? I'm in a hurry.' 
 
 Euggiero had always something to do, and was 
 mostly in a hurry. 
 
 ' I want you to see me off. I 'm just going.' 
 
 Euggiero looked blank. 
 
 ' Only just a little way. Just past the turn of the 
 road. I will never keep you back from anything again.' 
 
 ' Oh well ! Are you ready ? ' 
 
 Petruccio was very nearly ready. He embraced his 
 mother, and Nonna, and those of his brothers who had 
 not forgotten he was going and were still about the place. 
 Nonna wept a little, and gave him a gold piece. Carmela 
 would not weep, and had given him all she could spare ; 
 had, above all, given him himself to do what he liked with. 
 
 ' He '11 break his knees,' muttered Biagio to himself, 
 as Petruccio mounted, but not loud enough for Carmela to 
 hear. 
 
 ' It is his own horse,' snapped Euggiero, who never 
 minded speaking roughly to his inferiors, with whom he 
 was popular. ' What is it to you if he breaks his four 
 legs and his back as well ? ' 
 
 They passed down the steep road, up which Petruccio 
 would never come again, and Euggiero walked alongside. 
 It seemed odd, for he was used to riding, though he had no 
 horse actually of his own, whereas his brother always 
 went on foot. 
 
 At the turn of the road Petruccio looked back towards 
 
SAN CELESTINO 29 
 
 the house and waved his hand, Ruggiero standing still 
 with elaborate patience. 
 
 Petruccio, however, did not keep him long. 
 
 ' Only just a little farther,' he said. And Ruggiero 
 walked on, wondering how far he would be asked to go. 
 
 1 1 am going to Rocca di Giove,' he reminded his 
 brother. 
 
 ' I know. This is my own horse.' 
 
 ' So Biagio told me just now.' 
 
 ' To do what I like with.' 
 
 ' I hope you won't like to break his knees as Biagio 
 suggested.' 
 
 Petruccio laughed. 
 
 ' I shall not have the chance,' he answered, shaking 
 his feet out of the stirrups. The horse stood still, and 
 Petruccio slipped out of the saddle. 
 
 ' Here he is,' he said, putting the bridle into Ruggiero's 
 hands, and untying his own bundle from the saddle-front. 
 
 ' What do you mean ? ' asked his brother, looking 
 almost sheepish. 
 
 ' He is my own. To do what I like with. Our mother 
 said so. Take him, I never gave you anything much before. 
 It will please Biagio ; you will never break his knees.' 
 
 He slung his bundle over his shoulder. 
 
 ' Get up,' he said, laughing. ' He will take you 
 quicker to Rocca di Giove than any of the others.' 
 
 ' What a fool you are,' said Ruggiero. But he had 
 never spoken more kindly. 
 
 ' S'intende. Everyone knows that. Good-bye; you 
 will miss me. There '11 be nobody to tease.' 
 
30 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 ' Then why do you go ? ' said Ruggiero, holding 
 the bridle irresolutely. ' It seems you think only of 
 yourself ! ' 
 
 Petruccio laughed again and turned downhill. 
 
 ' Your way lies there,' he said, nodding towards the 
 bridle-path leading up into the mountains towards Rocca 
 di Giove. ' Good-bye.' 
 
 He left Ruggiero still standing in the middle of the 
 road by the horse. 
 
 ' Good-bye, Chiodino,' the young man called out. 
 And Petruccio did not mind the nickname. 
 
 So Ruggiero had a good horse, and his brother went 
 on foot to Salerno. 
 
 It took a long time, and he had one or two adventures, 
 but they were not much. Once a party of troopers 
 overtook him, and he wondered if they would bother him. 
 Soldiers were rough folk and he was not used to them. 
 
 ' Where away ? ' one of them asked him. 
 
 ' To Salerno.' 
 
 ' Lontano ! What for then ? To learn to be a 
 doctor ? ' 
 
 ' A sort of doctor.' 
 
 ' He means a quack,' said another trooper. ' They 
 are mostly that.' 
 
 ' I have a broken heart,' cried another, who was good- 
 looking, and dandified, and put on a languishing air. 
 ' Can you mend it ? ' 
 
 ' You see, I have not learned yet. Have patience a 
 year or two.' 
 
 ' It will be broken again by then,' said a comrade 
 
SAN CELESTINO 31 
 
 of the broken-hearted one. ' It breaks once a month 
 or so.' 
 
 ' Then he must know the cure himself,' declared 
 Petruccio. 
 
 They laughed at this, and said the lad would make a 
 good doctor. 
 
 ' This is a shady spot,' one pointed out, ' and we will 
 rest here and dine. We will give the Medicino a dinner 
 for his fee.' 
 
 Petruccio was shy, and would have excused himself, 
 but they would not hear of it. And they gave him 
 plenty of bread and meat to eat. 
 
 They were a rough, good-humoured lot, and he did not 
 long feel afraid of them. 
 
 ' You thought soldiers had horns and a tail,' one of 
 them observed cheerfully. ' Is it not so ? ' 
 
 ' No one ever told me so. I suppose your horns are 
 under your helmet. They must be little ones.' 
 
 ' So you like us, little doctor ? ' 
 
 ' Very well. I am grateful for your kindness. If I 
 gave you a silver piece in memory of me . . . ? ' 
 
 ' He would get drunk,' declared another trooper. 
 
 ' Then I will keep it,' said Petruccio coolly. 
 
 ' But how if I took it by force ? ' demanded the 
 soldier, pretending to look very ferocious. ' I should 
 get drunk as much as I liked then.' 
 
 ' That would not be my fault, however.' 
 
 ' Nor mine. I can't help it — when I have any money.' 
 
 ' That is a pity,' remarked Petruccio. ' I thought you 
 were a sensible person.' 
 
32 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 The others laughed ; and the man to whom Petruccio 
 had offered the silver piece said — 
 
 * Give it me of your own accord and I will not spend it 
 at all, but keep it in memory of the lad who perceived I 
 was sensible. These other persons are foolish,' he observed. 
 
 ' They use a good many foolish expressions,' admitted 
 Petruccio. 
 
 ' He is shocked at your language,' cried the man who 
 had been accused of getting drunk. ' He has not heard 
 me swear.' 
 
 ' If he had ! ' laughed one fellow. 
 
 ' Perhaps you have been better educated,' suggested 
 Petruccio. 
 
 The others did not much like this. 
 
 ' It is natural for soldiers to swear,' one of them 
 protested. ' It is no sin in us. It is the custom.' 
 
 ' It is the custom for murderers to kill people,' 
 remarked Petruccio dryly. 
 
 ' It is the evil intention which makes swearing 
 culpable,' persisted the soldier. ' We do not swear with 
 any evil intention. It is our mode of expression.' 
 
 Petruccio nodded gravely. 
 
 ' There is a man in my -paese who uses dreadful words. 
 But a certain priest assured me that the man probably 
 committed no sin. . . .' 
 
 ' Ecco ! ' cried the soldier. 
 
 * The man is an idiot,' added Petruccio demurely. 
 The soldier leapt to his feet, and ran at Petruccio as 
 
 though to pommel him, but the lad did not budge. 
 He lay along upon the ground, resting on one arm, and 
 
SAN CELESTINO 33 
 
 munching his bread and meat. He had watched the 
 trooper's face and knew he was not angry. 
 
 The others all laughed, and the fellow who pretended 
 to hurl himself on Petruccio only shook him by the 
 shoulders, shouting pleasantly — 
 
 ' You shall come with us and be a soldier ; it 's too 
 good a lad to kill folks in cold blood ! ' 
 
 ' Thank you ! But I am not going to kill folks in 
 cold blood or hot. I am going to be a priest.' 
 
 ' A priest ! ' they all shouted. ' You 're too merry 
 to be a priest.' 
 
 What would his brothers have said had they heard 
 this — had they been there to see Petruccio making 
 game of a dozen strange troopers ? At home they 
 called him the dumb ox, as the comrades of San Tomaso of 
 Aquino called him. 
 
 ' But Salerno is the place to learn to be a doctor in,' 
 objected one of the troopers. ' It is famous for it.' 
 
 ' Yes ; but there is a faculty of theology too, and 
 my mother's uncle is professor of Canon Law there.' 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 Presently the man in command gave the signal for the 
 road, and the men got to their horses. 
 
 ' Good-hye,' said Petruccio. ' I thank you for my 
 dinner.' 
 
 ' Not good-bye at all ; our way is the same for two 
 leagues yet. You shall ride in front of me.' 
 
 But Petruccio insisted that he would walk, and 
 trudged off at once. 
 
 It was hot now, for it was about an hour past noon, 
 and the sun beat down on the white road. Petruccio 
 pulled off his doublet, and flung it across his arm ; his 
 little stock of money was stitched up in it. His knapsack 
 he carried over his shoulder. 
 
 After a quarter of a mile the troopers overtook him. 
 They were all laughing. 
 
 ' Come, get up,' called out the leader. ' It 's hot 
 walking, and it will save you two leagues.' 
 
 Petruccio thanked him again, but said he would not 
 inconvenience him. 
 
 ' Well, then I will carry your knapsack and your 
 jerkin ; then you can walk free. Come, I insist.' He 
 stooped down and laid hold of them, and Petruccio let 
 them go. The man was evidently good-natured, and it 
 would be ' uneducated ' to seem ungrateful. 
 
 34 
 
SAN CELESTINO 85 
 
 ' Avanti ! ' cried the Serjeant. And the men all 
 spurred their horses and trotted on, each of them 
 laughing as he passed Petruccio. At the next turn of 
 the road they disappeared. It was a pretty road, hut 
 Petruccio did not pay much heed to it. There were 
 high hills on every hand, and the way wound along the 
 side of one of them. A clump of olives covered the jut 
 of rock round which the soldiers had ridden out of sight. 
 Far below in the valley the river made a cool noise, and 
 a peasant was singing somewhere as he tended his goats. 
 
 Petruccio walked on, not hurrying himself. It was 
 certainly cooler without his doublet and bundle. If 
 presently his money should be all gone he would beg 
 his way on to Salerno, like one of the frati. 
 
 It took him nearly ten minutes to reach the place 
 where the soldiers had passed out of sight. As he turned 
 the corner of the rock he found them all grouped together 
 in the shade. 
 
 They were evidently impatient for his appearance. 
 
 ' Why didn't you run after your things ? ' asked the 
 Serjeant. ' You seemed to be never coming.' 
 
 ' Because I have only two legs and a little sense.' 
 
 The soldiers were quite disappointed. 
 
 ' Didn't you think your things were gone ? ' they 
 asked him. 
 
 ' If they were gone it was not my fault ; why should I 
 make myself uncomfortable as well ? That would not 
 punish you.' 
 
 ' Perhaps you are a philosopher,' said one of them. 
 
 ' I don't know what I am,' replied Petruccio simply. 
 
 d2 
 
36 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 ' Who does ? ' muttered the man who had ridden away 
 with his things, smiling, as it were ruefully. 
 
 He handed back the things. 
 
 ' And won't you get up and ride now ? ' he asked. ' I 
 have a good mind to whip you up, and carry you off as I 
 did them.' 
 
 ' I will come of my own accord.' 
 
 And the boy clambered up. It was not really very 
 comfortable ; he would as lief have walked. But the 
 men seemed pleased, and off they all trotted again. 
 Perhaps it would bring him a little quicker to Salerno. 
 
 ' Little priest,' said the Serjeant in his ear. 
 
 ' I am not a priest ; not even a cleric' 
 
 ' Will you do a thing for me ? ' 
 
 ' If I can.' 
 
 ' Will you say a prayer for me ? Only one little one. 
 My name is Rinaldo. Will you say a small wee prayer 
 for Rinaldo, once ? ' 
 
 ' Rinaldo, I will pray for you every day until I die.' 
 
 ' And when you are Pope, will you give me a plenary 
 indulgence out of Purgatory ? ' 
 
 ' When I am Pope,' said Petruccio with a low laugh. 
 
 ' Do not forget.' 
 
 ' Mai.' 
 
 Then the horse stumbled, and the soldier swore at it. 
 
 ' Niente ! ' he protested. ' It means just nothing.' 
 
 ' The little priest is swearing already,' declared the 
 man who rode next them. 
 
 ' Bad habits are quickly learned,' retorted Petruccio. 
 
 ' He didn't swear,' cried the Serjeant angrily. ' It was I.' 
 
SAN CELESTINO 37 
 
 ' I joked,' observed the other. 
 
 ' Learn to joke, then,' said the Serjeant. 
 
 They had come to the cross-roads, and Petruccio 
 got down. 
 
 ' Good-bye,' he said, smiling round at them all. 'Addio.' 
 
 They seemed sorry to leave him ; and Petruccio felt 
 lonely as he trudged on alone. He began at once to 
 pray for Einaldo. 
 
 ' He is not a bad man. If I can see that . . .' he mur- 
 mured. ' Make him good altogether. And all of them. 
 Let them see. Show Thyself.' 
 
 He felt very lonely. They had liked him, and had 
 made him feel it. So few people seemed to have liked 
 him. None of his brothers cared for him ; not even 
 Euggiero, who, he knew, liked him better than the others. 
 Ruggiero liked him in a way, but only well enough 
 to take some pleasure in worrying him. Norma cared 
 for him less than for any of them : he was not gay enough 
 for the cheerful, gossiping old lady. His mother loved 
 him, but he knew that she loved all her sons. He did not 
 know that she had loved him better than them all. She 
 had never made him a ' favourite,' and he was too diffi- 
 dent to perceive that the protecting, excusing air she had 
 held towards him covered a special affection. He merely 
 imagined that she considered him stupid, and was kindly 
 unwilling that his stupidity should be mocked at. 
 
 In reality she, too, had been shy. 
 
 ' He belongs more to God than to me,' she had told 
 herself, and had not ventured to thrust herself, as it were, 
 into the first place. 
 
38 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 But these strangers, these noisy, swearing soldiers, had 
 not thought him stupid : they had liked him at once, 
 without any necessity. He had almost scolded them, 
 as he had never dared to scold or reprove anyone at 
 home, and they had not minded, but had taken it all 
 lightly, with careless good nature. It did not occur 
 to him that if he could have behaved at home as with 
 them his brothers might have been different also. 
 
 He missed the soldiers and their laughter, almost as 
 though he had known them a long time. The great 
 mountains seemed emptier now, and the long road more 
 desolate. His little human heart, that was in truth 
 not little, had been warmed by them, and now, as the 
 quick twilight fell, it grew chill too. The world had grown 
 bigger since he had met them, and he felt himself smaller 
 in it, more solitary. The youngest of them had been 
 perhaps half a dozen years older than himself, but they 
 had treated him with a pleasant familiarity, as though 
 he were of an age with themselves. 
 
 He soon prayed again for Einaldo, and wondered 
 what he was doing, what they were all doing. And the 
 shadows crept up from the valley and began to mount the 
 hills. An hour or two ago he had been hot, but now, 
 although he had on his doublet again, he almost shivered. 
 
 A footfall sounded close beside him— the echo of his 
 own from the rocks, no doubt. 
 
 It was nearly dark now, but not so dark that anyone 
 could have walked so near and he not have seen. He 
 knew there was nobody ; nay, he knew there was some- 
 body. He was not afraid of ghosts, and never imagined 
 
SAN CELESTINO 39 
 
 that this was any such fellow-traveller. But he thought 
 of Tobias, and of Raphael who had journeyed with him, 
 and of Raphael's master who had sent him to bear the 
 youth company. 
 
 ' I cannot see him,' he said to himself, ' but he is 
 here, and his footstep echoes mine.' 
 
 He was ashamed of his lonely feeling, which he told 
 himself was a poor leaning to the human and visible, the 
 outward and tangible. 
 
 Here and there a light crept out of the quick-falling 
 darkness, a little red light of some one's home, but he did 
 not now feel homeless and solitary himself, though wander- 
 ing along strange ways, among the great and sombre hills, 
 unknowing where he should lie at night. The air of the 
 mountains was colder, but the chill at his heart was less ; 
 though the soldiers who had been pleasant to him were 
 gone his own friend would never leave him. 
 
 ' I shall always feel Him close beside me along all the 
 way,' he thought. 
 
CHAPTEE VIII 
 
 Nevertheless, when he actually came to Salerno, and 
 found himself in the streets, Petruccio was stricken 
 again by the same sensation of loneliness, and it did 
 not so quickly pass away. Salerno was a much bigger 
 place then than the traveller sees it now, and was crowded 
 with people. It had one of the most famous universities 
 in the world, and to learn medicine students came thither 
 from far and wide. The city seemed full of them, all 
 or mostly young, and careless, many of them noisy and 
 pert. They did not all pass him unheeded, but some 
 nudged each other to look at the rustic lad, country- 
 born, and country-bred, and poorly clad, who walked 
 uncertainly as not knowing whither he was going. Of 
 none of them did he feel moved to inquire his way. He 
 still carried his bundle, and one of them asked him if he 
 had brought his mother in it. This was a common- 
 looking fellow, with a coarse voice and a coarse face, 
 who had not learned to walk or speak like a gentleman, 
 however much of medicine he might have learned. His 
 two companions were vulgar like himself. 
 
 ' A smaller bundle might carry all your ancestors and 
 all your education,' Petruccio felt disposed to retort ; 
 and, perhaps, if he had spoken up for himself in that way 
 they might have liked him none the worse. 
 
 40 
 
SAN CELESTINO 41 
 
 But Petruccio was not ready to chaff with them as 
 he had been with the soldiers. The troopers had been 
 rough creatures enough, but they had no pretension and 
 were not vulgar ; these students were not rough, having, 
 indeed, some smear of what they took for fashion, which 
 gave them a sham and swaggering air ; they were, 
 however, mean and common. 
 
 Petruccio scarcely looked at them, and turned silently 
 up another street. The young men laughed, not at all 
 as the soldiers had laughed, out of a mere light-heartedness, 
 but as though they wished their jeering to confuse him. 
 
 It was the middle of the day, and the sun was 
 everywhere ; Petruccio felt himself shabby and was 
 ashamed of being ashamed of it. The students he 
 met everywhere were not all well-dressed, but they 
 had, most of them, some pretence of smartness, or so 
 it seemed to the mountain-bred lad in his coarse home- 
 spun. 
 
 Where did his mother's uncle live ? Of whom 
 should he ask ? 
 
 Presently, in a little street where there were fewer 
 people, he came up with a young woman who was saunter- 
 ing idly on, as though in no hurry about her business. 
 
 ' Scusi, signorina ! ' he said, overtaking her. ' Can you 
 tell me where Messer Gian di San Marco, the Professor of 
 Canon Law, lodges ? I am a stranger here in Salerno.' 
 
 The girl stopped and looked into his face in a fashion 
 that was new to him. She was scarcely a couple of 
 years older than himself. 
 
 ' I cannot precisely tell you now,' she replied. ' But 
 
42 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 meet me here to-night and I will take you where he 
 lives.' 
 
 She laughed as she said this, and Petruccio, 
 young lad as he was, grew red as he heard her. He 
 had doffed his cap to speak, and as he crammed it 
 on again, and hurried away, the girl laughed more than 
 ever. 
 
 He turned uphill into a wider street, though still 
 narrow enough, leading to the cathedral. Coming down 
 the steep steps of it he saw a priest, a canon perhaps, 
 portly, and with a slow, deliberate manner. He also 
 appeared to be in no haste. 
 
 To him Petruccio repeated his question. 
 
 The priest stood still, and eyed him over, not curiously, 
 but with a sort of cautiousness. 
 
 ' You know Messer Gian, the Professor, then ? ' 
 
 He inquired, not, Petruccio thought, as though he 
 cared to know, but as if he must put a question of his 
 own before ever answering one. 
 
 ' Nay, I have never seen him ; but he is my mother's 
 uncle, and I come hither to learn the theology. I bear 
 a letter to him.' 
 
 Petruccio had, in fact, himself written the letter, his 
 mother, who knew not the art of writing, having affixed 
 her mark and seal to it. 
 
 * Come then,' said the priest. ' I am going to dine 
 with him.' 
 
 They walked on together, the priest not talking much 
 to him as they went, but casting an eye now and then on 
 the lad and his bundle. 
 
SAN CELBSTINO 43 
 
 Presently they met another group of students, 
 who sniggered at them. 
 
 ' They perceive you are from the mountains,' re- 
 marked the priest complacently. He was of Salerno 
 himself. But one of the young men made a jesting 
 observation which seemed to refer to the Canon. 
 
 ' They are sons of Belial,' said Petruccio's new friend, 
 frowning heavily. 
 
 Petruccio's uncle lived pretty near, in a good sort of 
 large house. An ancient serving-woman or housekeeper 
 opened the door. She had only one eye, but she could 
 count with it. 
 
 ' Messer Professore,' she observed crossly, ' expects 
 but four to dinner. This,' with a sour glance at Petruccio, 
 ' makes five.' 
 
 Messer Gian did not seem particularly pleased to see 
 his grand-nephew either. He embraced him, as one 
 gives the Pax in High Mass, peering over Petruccio's 
 shoulder, first over the right, then over the left, but never 
 touching his cheek with his lips. He was a small dry 
 man, with a small dry manner, and a thin dry voice 
 that sounded in the lad's ears as if it had grown dusty 
 with talking of the Canon Law. He forgot to tell the 
 traveller he was welcome. 
 
 ' That will make six at table,' he squeaked out to the 
 old housekeeper. 
 
 ' There will be enough to eat for ten, I warrant,' declared 
 another priest, with a jovial face and a good-natured manner 
 that made Petruccio feel as grateful as if it were all for 
 himself, and was not merely the man's natural habit. 
 
44 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 ' It 's not that,' said Messer Gian, in a half-grumbling 
 side voice. ' But it will disarrange the table, and that 
 upsets servants, you know. Ser Matteo, your father, is 
 deceased, it appears,' he added, turning to Petruccio. 
 
 ' He is dead nearly three years,' answered the lad. 
 
 ' God rest him. He was a good man — I never heard 
 to the contrary.' 
 
 ' The dead are all good men,' observed another priest 
 pleasantly to the guest who was nearest him. But he 
 spoke in a low voice, and Petruccio neither heard or 
 was intended to hear him. 
 
 They were all priests, and Petruccio felt shy of them, 
 though he was to be a priest himself. He had never 
 sat down to table with five priests before. They did not 
 know quite what to talk about to him. 
 
 ' So you are come to Salerno to study medicine,' said 
 the one next him, swallowing the minertra rather noisily. 
 But he was a little deaf and probably did not know 
 this. 
 
 ' No, sir. I am come to learn the theology.' 
 
 The priest did not hear him, but smiled amiably. 
 
 ' To heal the sick — that is a good thing,' he remarked ; 
 ' it is one of the corporal works of mercy.' 
 
 ' He is for the Ecclesiastical State,' shouted the priest 
 opposite. 
 
 ' For the Ecclesiastical States, eh ? Only passing 
 through Salerno. I thought he had come here as a 
 student.' 
 
 ' He is as deaf as the statue of San Matteo,' observed 
 the priest opposite. 
 
SAN CELESTINO 45 
 
 ' The son of my niece aims at the priesthood,' said 
 Messer Gian, and his dry voice made itself heard better 
 than the other priests' shouting. Besides, Messer Gian 
 was nearer. 
 
 ' Ah ! That is better. To instruct the ignorant is a 
 spiritual work of mercy. Much better.' 
 
 And the deaf priest nodded more than once, with a sort 
 of shining amiability. 
 
 ' He is ignorant enough himself, I doubt,' said Petruccio's 
 uncle. ' He will have to begin there, Messer Orfeo.' 
 
 It seemed funny to Petruccio that the lumpy old 
 deaf priest should be called Orfeo ; one could not fancy 
 him with a lute. 
 
 They were all kind to the lad, his uncle, perhaps, 
 least of the five, but then he may have remembered that 
 more would be expected of his kindness. His civility 
 was on its guard, as it were, as if the professor was loath 
 to raise warm expectations. But none of the five knew 
 a bit how to treat a youth of Petruccio's age ; the boy 
 tried in vain to remind himself that they, too, must 
 have all been young in their time themselves. So far 
 as he could see they had all been born in cassocks, and 
 could never have been slimmer. 
 
 His presence, he supposed, was a restraint on them, 
 so that they were less familiar with one another than 
 they would have been had no inconvenient youth, with 
 listening eyes, dropped among them. 
 
 His uncle tried hospitably to ignore him, to make his 
 real guests more comfortable, and led the conversation to 
 important matters, such as the Emperor's quarrels with 
 
46 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 the Pope, and the scandals of all sorts that Frederick 
 was profuse of. 
 
 The jovial priest did not seem to disapprove of the 
 haughty Emperor nearly as much as Petruccio would 
 have expected. 
 
 ' No doubt he is an atheist,' he observed. ' But he 
 is a galant norno, and clever. It 's a pity if the Holiness 
 of our Lord sends him to hell ; he has a good heart, and 
 he makes first-rate verses.' 
 
 ' He has done much for this University,' said the deaf 
 priest with the shining manner, whose name it appeared 
 was Messer Sandro. He was a Professor of Moral 
 Theology. ' The School of Medicine here was founded 
 by the Saracens,' he added, turning politely to Petruccio. 
 ' Carlo Magno, the first Holy Roman Emperor, re-edified 
 it.' 
 
 ' Our Emperor loves anything that the Saracens 
 had a hand in,' remarked Petruccio's uncle ; one could 
 never tell exactly what he meant, his voice was so dry. 
 
 On the whole it did not seem to Petruccio that the 
 excommunicated Emperor was unpopular; nevertheless 
 he was condemned. They were all priests ; and a sovereign 
 in arms against the Head of the Church, a suspected 
 heretic and even atheist, a patron of infidels, could not 
 be approved by them. On the other hand they were all 
 of the Regno, and it seemed to the lad that the great 
 Conti, who sat now in St. Peter's chair, was criticised 
 nearly as freely as his adversary. 
 
 The deaf priest, Messer Sandro, did not, however, really 
 care much for these high matters. He had a vineyard 
 
SAN CELESTINO 47 
 
 up the hill towards Annunziata, and seemed more 
 interested in talking of it. He smiled more radiantly 
 than ever when his friends complimented him on the wine 
 from it. 
 
 ' It will be better than ever— this last vintage ; you 
 will see,' he declared, nodding repeatedly. 
 
 ' Our vineyards have done well, too, this last season,' 
 said the priest on Petruccio's left, a thin man with a 
 slight limp, who was Bursar of the University, but not 
 a professor in any faculty. ' The Barbary-bug injured 
 us the season before.' 
 
 He spoke even more severely of these Africans than 
 of the Saracens. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 JPetbucoio did not lodge with his uncle even the first 
 night. Messer Gian found him suitable quarters in the 
 house of a certain widow, called Felicia, whose dwelling 
 was at the end of the town, on the Marina. It was a poor 
 place, not nearly so comfortable as the professor's, hut 
 Petruccio was not displeased with it on that account. 
 He scarcely noticed the humble character of his lodging, 
 and would not have noticed it at all had Messer Gian not 
 drawn attention to it by his apologies. 
 
 ' One must begin at the bottom of the ladder,' he 
 explained. ' When I was your age I lodged as meanly. 
 Canons are not born in rochets.' 
 
 He shuffled off and left his grand-nephew to his 
 solitary meditations. 
 
 Petruccio had no objection to the bottom of the 
 ladder, but he had no desire to mount it. No doubt his 
 uncle and his uncle's friends had got a good way up. He 
 did not in the least wish to overtake them. 
 
 He would have liked his small bare room better than 
 his uncle's fully furnished house but for the smell that 
 came in by the open window : it was a strange and 
 unfriendly odour, not at all like anything he had known 
 at home in the mountains, as was natural, it being due 
 
 48 
 
SAN CELESTINO 49 
 
 to a pile of refuse fish — entrails that lay rotting in the 
 hot sun on the beach. 
 
 He was sure he did not wish to climb his uncle's ladder. 
 He would as lief listen to his brother's talk about sport, 
 or Biagio's about the horses, as to the Bursar's con- 
 versation about the college vineyards. Nor did he 
 care a bit more for their politics : it was all as far out of 
 his range as the planets whose names he did not care 
 to know, and whose good or evil influences seemed to him 
 all heathenish. The Pope was the Pope, Christ's Vicar 
 on earth, and it was all the same to him whether he were 
 called Honorius or Gregory, whether he had once been 
 a Savelli or a Conti ; he did not suppose he should ever 
 see a Pope. But the Emperor had nothing, anyway, to 
 do with him. It was terrible that he should be, as they 
 said, an atheist ; that he should, as was certain, be an 
 excommunicated rebel at war with the Head of Christen- 
 dom, his suzerain ; but Petruccio could do nothing for 
 him except pray for him, and he would rather do that 
 than talk about him. 
 
 Probably on his very first night at Salerno, Petruccio 
 had made up his mind that the secular priesthood was not 
 the goal he would ever arrive at. He did not judge all 
 the secular clergy by the few specimens he had seen that 
 day, or those, such as Messer Andrea at home, that he 
 had known already. Nor did he judge these severely : 
 he did not call them in his own mind worldly or tell 
 himself that their standard was a low one, but he felt 
 sure he could never be one of them. Still, he had come 
 here to study theology, and he must set about learning 
 
50 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 it. He had no thought at all of turning back, though 
 he might have to go further than he had perceived at 
 first. 
 
 His landlady came to call him to supper, but he had 
 eaten so well at his uncle's that he wanted none, or told 
 himself that he wanted none, and excused himself. 
 
 But Felicia did not go away. She enjoyed con- 
 versation; that is, she liked talking, even when it was 
 all left to herself. 
 
 ' I will tell no one,' she promised, ' that Messer Gian 
 di San Marco is your uncle.' 
 
 She loved keeping secrets, and, as nobody told her 
 any, she made secrets of matters that might have been 
 published on the housetops. 
 
 ' You will find me very prudent. If you eat an egg, 
 the hen that laid it shall not know.' 
 
 Petruccio thanked her. 
 
 ' That is the way,' she added. ' Were I as some . . . 
 I could tell you the names of all the students that have 
 lodged here, but I mention them no more than if they 
 had been told me in Confession.' 
 
 She was, one could see at once, a most good-natured 
 person. She would have been quite delighted had 
 Petruccio been taken seriously ill at once, that she 
 might have had the trouble of nursing him and assuring 
 him in whispers that no one on earth should hear from 
 her what was the matter with him. 
 
 ' But you had better eat your supper,' she declared. 
 ' It is well to leave no room in one's inside for a pain 
 to creep in. A student in medicine told me that : an 
 
SAN CELESTINO 51 
 
 intelligent person of a good family ; he also lodged here, 
 not in this room, however. I could show you his room, 
 it is larger than this ; but there is no necessity : though 
 even then I should not mention his name — a good name, 
 too, that noble persons bear. We will not inquire 
 whether they are barons or even greater rarities. Such 
 things are of no consequence. All cannot be born 
 in palaces or the cabins would stand empty. Neverthe- 
 less it is true that that student in medicine advised me 
 thus. He is a professor now in such a University in a 
 certain province, not the Basilicata ; no, I never said 
 so.' 
 
 Petruccio tried to attend to her, but, though he 
 listened politely, his ears would not carry her words into 
 his brain. They seemed to tumble out again on each 
 side of his head and never met in the middle. He was 
 thinking of Rinaldo and the other soldiers, and also of 
 Messer Gian and the four priests who had dined with him. 
 He compared them without intending it, and was scan- 
 dalised at himself for preferring the troopers. One 
 about to enter the ecclesiastical state should have felt 
 more at home with the clergy. He did not fully under- 
 stand that he liked the soldiers best simply because 
 they had evidently liked him, whereas the elderly priests 
 had neither liked nor disliked him. And he supposed 
 that Messer Gian had been displeased at his coming, 
 whereas his uncle had not really cared much one way or 
 the other. 
 
 In the morning Felicia brought him some bread and 
 a little milk for a breakfast, but Petruccio would only 
 
52 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 take the bread. Milk he only used once in the day — at 
 a meal. He would not even take a few common wine- 
 grapes that she came back with. 
 
 ' There is a youth lodging with me who is a saint,' 
 she whispered to a friend at Mass that morning. ' He 
 fasts perpetually on bread and water, like one of the 
 saints in the desert whose names we will not mention. 
 There is no need. God knows their names. That is 
 enough. Do not ask me how this youth is called — a 
 student in, let us say, a certain faculty ; perhaps medicine, 
 though I do not say that it is so. Prudence is well, but 
 to assert what is not the case is not necessary ; that is 
 to mistake the matter.' 
 
 Petruccio was at Mass too, and Felicia could see him 
 from where she knelt ; she stared, however, at another 
 young man, so that her friend thought that was the 
 person. 
 
 When the Mass was over Petruccio wandered about 
 the church ; he scarcely noticed the tomb of Sigilgaita, 
 Robert Guiscard's second wife, who was said to have 
 poisoned his son, Prince Bohemund, though Nonna at 
 home, on winter nights, had often told the story. He 
 did not know that all the columns had been brought 
 from the heathen temples at Paestum, nor did he perceive 
 their beauty. But he came to the tomb of St. Gregory, 
 built by the great Guiscard, and there he knelt with 
 a strange thrill of reverence and even affection. Of 
 all Nonna's stories, he had loved best to hear of St. 
 Gregory VII and his ceaseless struggle to lift God's 
 Church higher. Here, close to himself, lay all of Gregory 
 
SAN CELESTINO 53 
 
 that was not, now this moment, in Heaven. Here were 
 the tired exiled feet, here the brave hands that had 
 held so strongly the rudder of St. Peter's barque, steering 
 it through rocks and storms, undismayed ; here the 
 now quiet heart that had been never broken, though 
 so near breaking, in Christ's quarrel with the selfish, 
 haughty world. Here, ever so near, were the lips that had 
 said — 
 
 ' I have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore I 
 die an exile.' 
 
 Petruccio's own lips trembled as they framed the 
 words again, his own heart beat more eagerly, his pale 
 face glowed with an inward light outshining, as he called 
 to mind how the dying Pope's companion had cried 
 out — 
 
 ' An exile ! Thou ! Vicar of Christ, thou canst 
 not, wherever thy mortal breath leaves thee, die exiled, for 
 God hath given thee the heathen for thine inheritance, 
 and the uttermost ends of the earth for thy "possession." ' 
 
 Rome might drive him forth, and suffer an intruder 
 and usurper in his place, but God's Viceroy could never 
 die out of his kingdom. 
 
 Petruccio felt a horror of Eome, a horror that was to 
 last his life long. He crept nearer, and none being by 
 to watch, laid his lips to the feet of the cold tomb. He 
 felt his own weakness close to the great pontiff's strength ; 
 for everything that he believed himself to lack, he gloried 
 in the memory of this undaunted warrior of Christ. 
 Gregory was fearless, he himself timid ; the Pope had 
 never hesitated or wavered, he was himself for ever 
 
54 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 •wavering and hesitating. Gregory had ever been 
 certain, knowing clearly where right and justice lay, 
 and declaring it aloud, in clear, undismayed tones, that 
 had been heard above all the din of camps and courts. 
 
 ' I was wrong,' Petruccio told himself, ' to think 
 I had no friend in Salerno.' 
 
 One chooses one's friends often among the most 
 unlike to oneself. But Petruccio was not so unlike 
 Gregory as the Bursar. Gregory had a care also of a 
 vineyard, but it was that whereof his Master was the 
 true Vine, and even Petruccio himself one of the branches. 
 
CHAPTEB X 
 
 Several lads lodged in Felicia's house, all students in 
 one faculty or other of the University, but Petruccio 
 was not forward in making friends with them : he was 
 too shy, and felt himself too little fitted for the company 
 of other young men. Nor, as he was the new arrival, 
 would it, perhaps, have been becoming that the first 
 overtures should have come from him. Sooner or 
 later, however, some sort of acquaintance did spring 
 up between him and them. Neither on Sundays or 
 Feasts were there any lectures, and on one Sunday, a 
 few weeks after his arrival, Petruccio was walking, solitary, 
 on the side of the hill behind which lies Annunziata. 
 The pain in his head had troubled him for several days, and 
 he had found it impossible to study in his close room, 
 into which the southern sun poured full. So he had 
 come out to walk, though not much given to it. By the 
 sea he hardly ever went. He did not care for it or 
 admire it ; he disliked its hot glitter, and its soft moist 
 smell. The hill here was not like his own mountains 
 at home, but it was a hill, and pretty high and steep. 
 Behind lay higher and wilder mountains, drawing up 
 into the Apennines. 
 
 A quick step sounded behind him, and he was pre- 
 sently overtaken. 
 
 55 
 
56 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 ' Good-day, comrade,' said a pleasant voice, and he 
 turned to give back the friendly greeting. It was one 
 of his fellow-lodgers at Felicia's, a youth he had met 
 often enough going in and out. He was a year or so 
 older than Petruccio, and a more assured manner made 
 the difference seem more. 
 
 ' It is rare to see you out,' observed the new-comer, 
 slowing his pace now to suit Petruccio's, and showing 
 that he meant to keep him company. 
 
 ' I have few acquaintances ! ' 
 
 ' And that is mostly your fault. Who can make 
 friends with a mountain- wolf ? ' 
 
 ' Am I like a wolf ? ' asked Petruccio, smiling. 
 
 ' In some ways. Not a very savage wolf, but one 
 that seems rather wild.' 
 
 ' Yes ; perhaps I am wild.' 
 
 " Let us tame you.' And the youth laughed cheer- 
 fully. Petruccio liked the lad's voice, and his pleasant 
 air, but he was not sure about being tamed. Nor was 
 he used to talking about himself. 
 
 ' My name is Guito,' said the stranger. ' I am in 
 litterae humaniores.' 
 
 ' My name is Pietro Murrone : in philosophy — but 
 only beginning. I wish it were over ; I want to get on 
 to theology.' 
 
 ' Philosophy is dry enough, especially at the begin- 
 ning. But I think theology is worse ! I like real 
 things.' 
 
 ' Eeal things ? ' 
 
 ' Things one can see, and feel, and smell, and hear. 
 
SAN CELESTINO 57 
 
 Whoever smelt an archangel ? I like the sun up there 
 on the face of the cliff, and down there on the strand ; 
 I like the colour of the sea out yonder, where the purple 
 and blue and green weave together.' 
 
 Petruccio looked and saw that the colours were as 
 Guito said. God had arranged them so — that was, 
 it seemed to him, the only thing about it that mattered. 
 
 ' I could make a sonnet on that,' declared his com- 
 panion. ' If I were alone I would. No, no ; do not 
 look as if you would run away among the bushes, don't 
 be a wolf just at present. I want some one to talk 
 to. The sonnet can wait. . . . Well, I like also the 
 smell of the earth here after the shower, and the sound 
 that just whispers up from the shore — it is like a kiss.' 
 
 Petruccio remembered that he had once heard a 
 woman kissing her bambino loudly, as he had passed 
 her, sitting on her doorstep, but it did not seem to him 
 that the sounds were much alike. But then he could 
 not make sonnets : no doubt this youth was a poet. 
 It was, he supposed, the business of poets to see everything 
 as it would strike no one else. 
 
 ' Over there,' said Guito, standing still and pointing 
 across the gulf, ' is Paestum. I go there. I love to 
 sit among the ruins and adore them.' 
 
 ' Are they ruins of churches ? ' 
 
 ' Churches ! No ! But temples. Temples of the 
 divine Greeks.' 
 
 Petruccio remembered that the Greeks were heathens 
 and opened his big eyes wider. But he said nothing, and 
 Guito, who would just as lief talk himself, rattled on. 
 
58 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 ' The gods are there still. One feels them all about. 
 When it is moonlight, and the asphodels are shaking in 
 the breeze, one hears them worshipping as the old gods 
 — only they never have grown old — pass by. Demeter 
 comes, and Poseidon — he hasn't far to come ; and I 
 play eavesdropper, and afterwards make it into sonnets.' 
 
 ' To be a poet, then, one pretends to be a heathen ? ' 
 
 ' Pretend ! Poets pretend nothing. It is they who 
 see the truth, and are honest enough to tell it. It is they 
 who know what life is — and death, and tell no lies about 
 them. What is a heathen ? ' 
 
 Guito's question came so sharply, it hit Petruccio's 
 ear like a hot stone out of a sling. 
 
 ' He who worships a false God,' replied Petruccio. 
 
 ' Such as money, and dignities, and popularity. You 
 are to be a priest, and of course you would hate to be a 
 canon, and would on no account consent to be a bishop ! ' 
 
 Petruccio laughed. 
 
 ' You are poet enough to tell the truth sometimes, 
 even without meaning it,' he answered. 
 
 ' Come ! That is better. You can speak up for 
 yourself, it seems.' 
 
 They moved on, Guito still looking everywhere for 
 sonnets. 
 
 ' Look over there,' he cried, ' where the young hills 
 come out from the old ones to play near the sea. Look 
 at the old ones, grey and purple, and even black where 
 the clouds stoop. . . .' 
 
 Petruccio looked. 
 
 ' Even they,' he said, ' are not like ours at home in 
 
SAN CELESTINO 59 
 
 the Abruzzi. It spoils them, the sea being, after all, 
 so near.' 
 
 The young poet caught here something he did not 
 quite follow but thought worth understanding. 
 
 ' Tell me how the sea spoils them.' 
 
 But Petruccio could not. 
 
 ' It makes them less secret,' he tried to explain, 
 ' commoner, opener to the foreign world. No strangers 
 can come in ships and stare in among the valleys of our 
 hills.' 
 
 ' Bravo ! You are half a poet yourself.' 
 
 ' Absit ! ' said Petruccio. 
 
 Guito turned on him. 
 
 ' Why then ? What better could you be ? ' 
 
 Petruccio knew well what better ; but this, too, he 
 found it hard to say. 
 
 ' You must have some idea : everybody has his idea,' 
 grumbled Guito. ' Tell me yours. Mine is to drink 
 life out of the poet's golden goblet ; to taste its bitter- 
 sweet, beauty and love, and sweet sounds, and fair 
 sights, and smells that breathe from the earthly paradise ; 
 to pick the flowers that fling themselves under the 
 gods' feet, and catch the smile of the gods that pass, 
 to bask in the sun of my youth, and give back every 
 kiss of life gratefully.' 
 
 Petruccio's idea was the opposite of all this. But 
 how could he, a lad, explain without arrogance to this 
 other lad, older than himself ? A lad, he saw, honest 
 in spite of a hundred little affectations, sincere and 
 kindly. 
 
60 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 ' Come, tell me your way of it,' insisted Guito. 
 
 ' I do not like to,' Petruccio answered shyly. 
 
 Guito watched him narrowly and shrewdly. 
 
 ' Come then, I will guess. Your idea is to die at once, 
 every day while life goes on, because we must all die at 
 last. To crucify the flesh — as if God made the soul only, 
 and some rival, god or devil, made our body. To shut out 
 the sun, because clouds gather before the rain, as if the 
 rain never ceased, and no cloud ever melted in the noontide 
 light. To fly from love — as if Christ's chosen friend had 
 declared that God is hate. To eat grass because grapes 
 taste better, and drink tears because wine is full of wise 
 laughter. To be old now, because youth is not for ever. 
 To fly into the desert alone, because God has filled the 
 world with other men. To shut your ears to every 
 whisper of the breeze, that you may listen to the dull 
 monotone of your own dry thoughts. To blind your 
 eyes to every lovely spirit lest you should see something 
 finer than yourself. To plug your nostrils against the 
 fragrance of flowers, and sea, and forest, that you may 
 sniff up the stuffy odours of your own sanctity. To 
 prostrate yourself alone on the bare rock, in the mouldy 
 cavern of the hills, lest you be forced to move for- 
 ward with other men in the peopled plain. To be a 
 saint ! ' 
 
 ' I shall never be a saint,' was all that Petruccio could 
 stammer. 
 
 But for that last accusation he could not have answered 
 Guito at all. It was all so rapid, so vehement ; the hand- 
 some lad spoke with such an energy of angry protest that 
 
SAN CELESTINO 61 
 
 Petruccio, much slower-minded, could scarcely keep pace 
 with the brawling torrent of his words. 
 
 He knew it was an untrue presentment : it did not alter 
 one jot his own standard and his own intentions ; it 
 was, he felt, by an instinct that could not fail or deceive 
 him, pagan, devilish. But to answer it was as easy as 
 to talk louder than the whirlwind. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 That was the beginning of a sort of friendship between 
 the two youths : it never became a friendship altogether. 
 All his life Petruccio never made but one real friend, and 
 the rest of this acquaintance with Guito answered more 
 or less to its beginning. He interested Guito a little and 
 irritated him a good deal : Guito irritated him a little 
 and scarcely interested him at all. Petruccio had not 
 the faculty of being interested in what he disapproved, 
 and it was impossible for him to approve of the talkative 
 poet. If Guito meant what he said, he was barely a 
 Christian ; if he did not mean it, then his chatter was idle 
 talking. Petruccio did not love talking, and to talk 
 idly was to him a weariness of the flesh, nay, worse, a 
 weariness of the spirit. 
 
 He knew that Guito was good-natured, and that 
 Guito rather liked him : for that he was grateful, but he was 
 not grateful to his new acquaintance for trying to drag 
 him into the company of other young men. Their 
 manners and their talk dazed him, would often have 
 scandalised him had his real humility not saved him 
 from proneness to take scandal. Who had made him a 
 ruler or a judge ? How could he expect them to submit 
 to a standard that he knew, by the instinct of conscience, 
 
 62 
 
SAN CELESTINO 63 
 
 to be true, but which he had no glibnesa of speech to set 
 out convincingly ? Some men are born with the mis- 
 sionary teaching spirit and faculty : he felt himself 
 without it. The very acquaintance he was forced into by 
 Guito convinced him that he could not have the vocation 
 of a secular priest. A priest in the world must have 
 the power of effective protest against the world's faults, 
 the capacity for putting it in the wrong, the genius of 
 proving right all the principles that the world opposes : 
 None of these gifts were his, and lacking them, he felt 
 that his presence in the world, silent and unable to break 
 silence, was a condoning of the false maxims he heard 
 uttered and saw practised. 
 
 ' This is my friend Omero,' said Guito, one day, 
 pushing into Petruccio's ugly little room. ' He should 
 be a poet, but in spite of his name he is only a painter.' 
 
 ' " Only," indeed ! ' protested the stranger whom 
 Guito had brought with him. 
 
 He was a young man of five or six and twenty, not at 
 all smart in dress or figure, and not good-looking. 
 
 ' He is so ugly himself,' observed Guito frankly, 
 ' that he is driven to make beautiful people out of 
 paint.' 
 
 Petruccio never noticed that anyone was ugly. To 
 his mountain-bred notions, however, this easy, townish 
 criticism of a person's looks in his own presence appeared 
 very bad ' education.' 
 
 ' Perhaps,' he said, ' your friend has the good sense to 
 think less of looks than you do. He considers the inside 
 of things.' 
 
64 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 ' That is exactly what he does not. The outside of 
 things is his trade. Whoever painted anybody's soul ? ' 
 
 ' Some think I have myself done that,' the painter 
 remarked complacently. He was saying to himself that 
 Petruccio's soul might be worth painting. ' In any street,' 
 he told himself, ' one can see a dozen Guitos, but a 
 Petruccio is a rarity.' 
 
 He was engaged on certain frescoes in a monastery 
 chapel and thought Petruccio would make a fine model 
 for one of them. 
 
 Petruccio was not good at doing the honours of his 
 room. There was only one chair, and that had fewer 
 legs than an elephant. 
 
 Guito sat down on the window ledge and hospitably 
 bade Omero accommodate himself on the bed. 
 
 ' As for Petruccio,' he said, ' he never sits down. He 
 only knows how to kneel.' 
 
 ' He might teach you,' observed the painter, not sitting 
 on the bed but leaning against the arch of the window. 
 The light fell on Petruccio's face and Omero was deter- 
 mined to study it. He knew already that it would be 
 useless to ask the shy recluse from the mountains to come 
 and pose as a regular model, though it was for that that 
 Guito had brought him. 
 
 ' If one could catch him praying ! ' he said to Guito 
 afterwards. 
 
 ' That is easy. He goes every day and spends ages 
 learning to be a saint from San Gregorio Settimo in the 
 duomo. He becomes so rapt that he would never 
 know you were watching him.' 
 
SAN CELESTINO 65 
 
 Meanwhile the painter tried courteously to induce 
 Petruccio to talk, without teasing or embarrassing him- 
 
 ' You despise art, I suspect ? ' he said, with a smile 
 that was less sincere than Guito's, but more civil. 
 
 ' I do not think I know what it is.' 
 
 Guito laughed loudly. 
 
 ' Nor does Omero. They none of them do.' 
 
 Omero flushed slightly. 
 
 ' It is to adorn nature,' he said sententiously. 
 
 ' I thought God had done that,' suggested Petruccio ; 
 he spoke shyly. Such subjects were out of his range, he 
 thought. 
 
 ' Oh, but the artists adorn whatever God has forgotten,' 
 declared Guito. ' If God left a man with one leg they 
 would give him half a dozen. The artists fasten gold 
 plates behind saints' heads, a thing that God never 
 thought of.' 
 
 ' Foolish people,' said the painter, ' would not know 
 which were the saints in a picture but for the gold plates 
 as you call them.' 
 
 ' I thought you could paint the saints' souls ! ' 
 
 ' Yes, but people like you do not know a saint's soul 
 when they see it.' 
 
 ' I do not believe you would know a sonnet when you 
 heard it.' 
 
 ' You may be right. Certainly you recited one to me 
 that I should have taken for so many lines of prose.' 
 
 Guito looked vicious, and kicked his heels against the 
 wall. 
 
 ' But,' the painter went on, addressing himself in quite 
 
66 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 a different tone to Petruccio, ' you must learn not to 
 disapprove of art. Surely it must be like God to try and 
 make all things beautiful ? ' 
 
 ' I never heard that God " tried ",' interjected Guito. 
 
 ' God made all things,' said Petruccio. ' They are 
 not all what you would call beautiful.' 
 
 ' The ugly things were mostly made by men,' pleaded 
 the artist. 
 
 ' That is as much as to say that God did not make the 
 Professor of Dogma, who is like a carved spout on the 
 duomo, Manicheanism — heresy, isn't it, Petruccio ? ' 
 interrupted Guito again. 
 
 This battle of words almost made Petruccio giddy. 
 
 ' I scarcely know what is beautiful,' he said simply, 
 ' nor does it seem to me to matter much.' 
 
 ' It must be a mistake,' urged Omero, ' to admire 
 what is unlovely, just as it is error to believe what is 
 not true.' 
 
 ' I did not mean that one should admire what is ugly. 
 I meant only that I do not myself care whether a thing 
 is ugly or not, and, perhaps, do not always know. One 
 cannot know everything.' 
 
 ' Omero does,' observed Guito. 
 
 The painter tried to take no notice of him, but even 
 Petruccio saw that he was becoming out of patience. 
 Guito also perceived it and was elated by his own success. 
 Omero had been pleased with his own last observation and 
 Guito's flippancy dimmed, he thought, its lustre. 
 
 ' The function of art,' he said, ' is to adorn life ' (he 
 wished he had put it thus before), ' to ignore the Fall.' 
 
SAN CELESTINO 67 
 
 To Petruccio it seemed silly to ignore any fact, to 
 ignore that special fact profane also. 
 
 ' You mean this life,' he remarked. ' May it not be 
 adorned overmuch ? Is it not already — at its worst — 
 so attractive to us that we dislike being reminded of any 
 other ? Would it not be wiser to strip it of its gauds 
 rather than hang new ones about it ? Why should you do 
 anything to make men more besotted than ever with the 
 love of it ? ' 
 
 Guito hated this doctrine, but his malice was delighted 
 at any argument that seemed to push Omero, who was 
 his very good friend, into a corner. 
 
 ' Bravo, Petruccio ! ' he called out gleefully. ' One 
 sees you are in logic' 
 
 ' Poets,' said Omero, ' you think Petruccio will 
 approve ? They add such a horror to life as to make any 
 who know them eager to be quit of it.' 
 
 »2 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 Ombeo would not go away till he had extracted a promise 
 from Petruccio to go and see him at work on his frescoes. 
 Nor, afterwards, would Guito let him forget this promise. 
 
 At last he teased him into actually going. 
 
 ' I would rather stay at home,' declared Petruccio very 
 sincerely. 
 
 ' Bene ! It will therefore be an excellent mortification 
 for you to come.' 
 
 ' But perhaps I shall think the painting ugly, and it 
 will be impossible to say anything satisfactory if I do.' 
 
 ' I wish you would say they are ugly ! That would be 
 better for Omero than a dose of medicine.' 
 
 ' All the same, I am not his doctor and do not feel 
 disposed to give him medicine. Besides, I know nothing 
 about the matter ; they may be ever so beautiful without 
 my perceiving it.' 
 
 ' Oh, he will help you to perceive it, with all the good 
 will in life.' 
 
 In fact Petruccio did not, when confronted with them, 
 see that Omero's paintings were beautiful. Many people, 
 at the present time, would be much of his opinion. It 
 is to be remembered that even Cimabue was not born till 
 a year or so later, and Giotto remained unborn another 
 quarter of a century. Religious painting — and there was 
 
SAN CELESTINO 69 
 
 then scarcely any other— was tied fast in the stiff Byzantine 
 tradition. 
 
 ' Does he really think people look like that ? ' the 
 mountain-bred lad asked himself. He knew nothing of 
 art, and nothing of criticism, but perhaps for that very 
 reason he looked with simpler eyes and more frank 
 observation ; he had no conventional knowledge of what 
 he ought to see. 
 
 ' Petruccio doesn't know what to make of it all,' 
 remarked Guito, maliciously amused. 
 
 ' He is not used to paintings,' said Omero indulgently. 
 
 ' No, I am not,' Petruccio confessed with ready 
 humility, surveying a Madonna with narrow eyes like 
 slits, and fingers at least ten inches long. The bambino in 
 her arms, if the figure were proportionate, could not have 
 been larger than a rabbit. 
 
 ' Nevertheless,' he observed, ' the figures have a 
 dignity.' 
 
 Guito almost tittered at the first word in his sentence, 
 which the painter did not miss noticing either. 
 
 ' They are very devout,' Petruccio added hurriedly. 
 He was quite sincere in saying this. If the lank, angular 
 and flat figures expressed anything at all, it was a sort of 
 stiff devoutness. His opinion of Omero rather improved ; , 
 he would not have expected, somehow, that his work 
 would have been remarkable for that quality. Had the 
 painting been more in accordance with what he had 
 supposed to be Omero's theory he would have liked it all 
 the less. Omero's talk suggested the pride of life, his 
 work had no connexion with life at all. 
 
70 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 ' They express,' said Petruccio, ' that the blessed are 
 not of this world.' 
 
 They certainly did. No one in this world was ever 
 quite flat, or was clad in a succession of triangles. 
 
 Guito wanted to titter again, but Omero snatched at 
 the praise eagerly. 
 
 ' That is what one aims at,' he said hastily, with one 
 eye pretty severely fixed on Guito. ' The business of 
 sacred art is to raise men's minds from the real to the 
 ideal.' 
 
 This sounded so well that Omero was rather pleased 
 with Petruccio for having, as it were, occasioned it. 
 
 ' In heaven,' observed Guito demurely, ' one's nose 
 will not stick out from one's face.' 
 
 This did not please Omero nearly so well, especially 
 as even the grave Petruccio looked as if he would like to 
 laugh. But Petruccio was both courteous and kind- 
 hearted. He had not come to see Omero's work in 
 order to make fun of it. 
 
 ' In heaven,' he reminded Guito, ' you won't have any 
 nose at all till after the General Judgment.' 
 
 ' Nor any tongue either,' cried Omero savagely. ' The 
 blessed will not be tormented with sonnets.' 
 
 While they were talking, a friend of Omero's joined 
 them, a Sicilian from Palermo, who was also an artist 
 but of a different branch, as he explained himself, not 
 without a glance at Omero's frescoes that Petruccio 
 thought rather equivocal. Strictly speaking, it should 
 be observed that Omero's mural paintings were not 
 frescoes. They were painted not on wet plaister, but on 
 
SAN CELESTINO 71 
 
 the stone itself, and the whole composition was drawn 
 at once in outline, and filled in colour by colour ; neither 
 was the medium employed by Omero that sort of paint 
 which was used by the real frescoist. 
 
 The Sicilian was of very mixed origin. His father 
 was half Greek, and his mother had been a Saracen. 
 He did not much resemble the Italians whom Petruccio 
 had known. 
 
 ' I practise,' he said, without any false modesty, ' an 
 art that is even more forgotten than Omero's.' 
 
 ' He calls himself a sculptor,' explained the painter, 
 who was getting out of temper. 
 
 ' Others call me that — our Emperor among the 
 number. I call myself Eaniero da Monreale, at your 
 service,' said the new-comer airily. He was a worldly 
 looking young man, Petruccio considered, with long 
 black locks very profusely scented. His style of dress 
 was a compromise between what was fashionable a*fc the 
 court of Frederick and what Eaniero himself deemed 
 artistic. He was a good deal handsomer than any of 
 the saints in Omero's paintings, but it is probable that 
 Petruccio recognised this about as little as Omero. 
 
 Guito knew him too, and Petruccio perceived at once 
 that the poet admired the sculptor much more than he 
 admired the painter. As for Petruccio, he did not feel at 
 home with any of the three ; but he felt even less drawn 
 to the Sicilian than to either of the others. To him a 
 Palermitan was a foreigner, even more than the Tuscan 
 Guito, and this particular foreigner struck him as al- 
 together outlandish. And there was an unmistakable 
 
72 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 savour of the courtier about Eaniero, whereas Omero 
 and Guito were, comparatively, unsophisticated. And 
 yet Guito had better manners, flippant and mocking 
 as he was. The young Tuscan was of better birth than 
 either of the others, of much better birth than Eaniero, 
 and this gave all his impertinence an air of mere ease and 
 light-heartedness. Omero came from Benevento, in 
 papal territory, and was of a class just a trifle higher 
 than Petruccio's. Eaniero's father was merely a mer- 
 chant, who traded with the Levant, as his father had been 
 before him, where he had picked up his Greek wife. 
 Eaniero's mother had been the daughter of one of the 
 Saracen artists, who thronged the court of Frederick 
 at Palermo. No doubt she had been baptised before her 
 marriage, but such conversions were not held of much 
 account among serious Catholics. 
 
 ' My art,' declared Eaniero, ' had to be exhumed. 
 Omero's is merely in a catalepsy. There have been a 
 sort of painters all along, but it is a new idea to be a 
 sculptor.' 
 
 ' Some new ideas are not good for much,' said Omero 
 superciliously. 
 
 Petruccio was quite of the same opinion, but he 
 kept a listening silence. Of all these matters he knew 
 nothing, and cared to know no more. 
 
 • It would be a new idea,' suggested Guito, ' to say 
 that the earth moves round the sun. I think I shall 
 propound it.' 
 
 ' You had better,' said Omero scornfully. 
 
 ' Let us help it to move, at any rate,' said Eaniero. 
 
SAN CELESTINO 73 
 
 ' Let us begin with ourselves, and vow to be discontented 
 witb the ugliness our forefathers have bequeathed to us. 
 Suppose you all three move as far as my house ; I will 
 show Pietro di Murrone my San Sebastiano.' 
 
 (' His house ! ' whispered Guito in Petruccio's ear. 
 ' He has a room and a half up sixty stairs. But come 
 along and look at his San Sebastiano.') 
 
 If the reader has any sympathy at all he will feel for 
 poor Petruccio ! He had but a light digestion in these 
 artistic affairs, and had bargained for but one meal, 
 and was forced to swallow two. But he was modest and 
 civil ; how to excuse himself now he could not see, 
 and certainly, as Guito had said, it was all in the way 
 of mortification. He would far rather have been at 
 home, even with the chance of Felicia coming up to make 
 a mystery of the name of the fish she was giving him for 
 dinner. 
 
 This no doubt was ' the world,' and such a gulp of it 
 made Petruccio more than ever sure that he had better 
 get out of it. 
 
 Baniero's house was but a street or two off, and they 
 were all four soon climbing the steep and dirty stairs 
 that led to the two rooms that the sculptor occupied 
 in it. They only entered his workshop, or studio, as people 
 would call it nowadays. 
 
 ' His other room,' whispered Guito, ' is only furnished 
 with an onion.' 
 
 The Palermitans' love of onions is famous ; one might 
 have fancied Guito had never tasted one. 
 
 In the workshop there was no furniture at all. But 
 
74 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 off a very large block of marble Raniero pulled a veil of 
 •rough canvas. St. Sebastian was emerging from it, in 
 the costume in which his first martyrdom took place. 
 
 Petruccio gasped. Even Omero and Guito were 
 almost startled. 
 
 The statue was by no means without merit. Raniero 
 was a genius, or the making of one, and like other geniuses 
 was bold enough to rush on before his time. No one 
 could doubt that the figure he was calling out of the 
 marble was copied from life : that was why Petruccio 
 shuddered and Omero and Guito stared. 
 
 Raniero perceived this and was flattered. He was 
 pleased enough to hold his tongue. Petruccio, not 
 pleased by any means, held his. 
 
 ' For this you must have models,' said Guito. 
 
 Omero, who never thought of anything without refer- 
 ence to himself, understood this as an implication that his 
 own painted figures might have been produced by some 
 one who had never seen a living woman or man. 
 
 ' Of course,' said Raniero. ' If one copies a tree one 
 has to look at one, or else one might as well call it a 
 mattress.' 
 
 Trees ! Yes ! But naked human beings ! 
 
 ' Were there no martyrs who died in their clothes ? ' 
 thought Petruccio. Omero and Guito quite understood 
 that if San Sebastiano had been shot to death with arrows 
 in his, Raniero would not have chosen him. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 A day or two after this Petruccio was by himself in the 
 cathedral. For a long time he had been kneeling by 
 the tomb of San Gregorio Settinio, whose companion- 
 ship was far pleasanter to him than that of the three 
 artists. 
 
 Eising to his feet he walked slowly and reluctantly 
 away, for he always left this silent friend with regret. 
 Gregory had hated the world, though he had never feared 
 it, and had been ever ready to do stern battle with it. 
 Petruccio hated it too, but he feared it, and would rather 
 fly from it altogether than fight it. 
 
 He remembered very well how Gregory, as Nonna 
 had told them, had set his foot on the Emperor's neck : 
 that seemed to him an allegory rather than a personal 
 episode, though Nonna had made it all as personal as 
 possible, caring nothing for allegory. To Petruccio the 
 picture was but a modern presentment of the endless 
 struggle between the heavenly force and the lower, 
 that began with Michael and Lucifer. He no more 
 pitied Frederick prostrate under the Pope's foot than he 
 would have pitied Lucifer in the other picture. 
 
 He walked slowly away and passed through a narrow 
 door leading, by a winding stair, down into the crypt 
 
 75 
 
76 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 of St. Matthew. Here there were a few people kneeling, 
 as there always were, and always are still. In the middle 
 of the dim chamber was the altar and tomb of the Apostle. 
 It is on the level of the street outside, and one could hear 
 the people passing, some chattering, some laughing. That 
 made it seem all the more intensely still inside. Now 
 and then one heard the chink of beads from some of those 
 who were saying the rosary, the ancient devotion that 
 San Domenico had lately propagated and revived. 
 Occasionally one of those who prayed sighed, or said a 
 word or two almost aloud. There was no other sound — 
 except the indifferent laughter outside. 
 
 The walls were even then adorned with ancient 
 frescoes, not, as now, with panelled marbles. Petruccio 
 did not wonder what the folk in the street were amused by : 
 he was thinking how often the exiled successor of the 
 Apostles must have knelt here, no doubt on the very 
 spot where now he himself was kneeling close to the 
 tomb of the evangelist. It was so great a privilege 
 to be able thus to come and be quite near the sleeping 
 Apostle, it seemed strange to Petruccio that many more 
 people did not come. Then he remembered how few 
 comparatively find time to pass half an hour near the 
 Master of the Saints Himself, not dead, or sleeping, but 
 waiting, with wakeful heart, for the hearts of His children. 
 
 When he was coming out of the cathedral, in the atrium 
 he met Kaniero, who greeted him with a sort of worldly 
 friendliness. Petruccio told himself that he liked the 
 silence of the saints he had left better. 
 
 But it struck him that it would be.Qpntrary to charity 
 
SAN CELESTINO 77 
 
 to yield to such a feeling, and he gave back Baniero's 
 greeting with a smile. 
 
 ' Here we meet,' said the Sicilian. ' You, I suspect, 
 come from praying. Indeed, one sees it in your face.' 
 
 (' It would be hard,' he told himself, ' to catch such 
 an expression in marble.' ) 
 
 ' I come here often,' answered Petruccio, ' to meet 
 some one. And you ? ' 
 
 ' I come often, too, to admire these columns, and these 
 sarcophagi. The Church is wise enough to steal from the 
 temples.' 
 
 He turned, and showed that he intended to walk with 
 Petruccio. In the street they met a youth to whom 
 Baniero spoke. 
 
 ' Pietro di Murrone,' he said, ' this is my friend 
 Alfeo Sacchi. Let us go with him and hear him sing.' 
 
 ' I know no more of music than of sculpture,' said 
 Petruccio. 
 
 ' Ah, but his music will not shock you,' laughed 
 Baniero cheerfully. 
 
 Alfeo Sacchi was not worldly looking like the Palermi- 
 tan ; in fact he was quite as shabby as Petruccio, and had 
 a quiet, inward manner, as if he were listening to some 
 sound that his ears could not bring to him. Petruccio was 
 not frightened of him ; he looked poor too, and had blushed 
 when Eaniero spoke of his singing. He seemed sensitive, 
 and Petruccio fancied that it would be easy to hurt his 
 feelings. Besides, Petruccio almost always did as he was 
 asked when there was nothing wrong in doing so. Other- 
 wise he would rather have gone home. 
 
78 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 Alfeo's room was as poor as Petruccio's, nearly at the 
 top of a tall house in a steep street behind the duomo. 
 There was almost too little of anything in it for it to be 
 untidy, and it was as clean as it was bare. There were a 
 couple of wooden stools on which Petruccio and Eaniero 
 were made to sit, Alfeo seating himself on the low bed. 
 He took his instrument, a sort of lute, el oud of the 
 Saracens, having only eight strings ; it was made of one 
 and twenty pieces of maple, most delicately fitted together, 
 the face being flat, with three rosettes, the back or belly 
 rounded, as in a modern mandolin. With his left hand 
 he held the instrument and ' stopped ' the strings, striking 
 them with the right. The bare stone walls and vaulted 
 roof helped the sound. 
 
 Eaniero expected a love-song, such as the trovatori 
 about the Emperor were wont to sing, and was not much 
 pleased when Alfeo sang the following ' prose ' : — 
 
 Ubi cha-ri-tas et amor, De-us i-bi eat. Con-gre-ga-vit nos 
 in u-num Chri-sti a-mor. Ex-ul-te-mus et in i-pso ju-cun-demur. 
 Ti-me-a-mus et a-me-mua De-um vi-vum. Et ex cor-de di-li- 
 ga-mus nos since-ro. U-bi cha-ri-tas et a-mor, De-us i-bi est. 
 Si-mul [er-go cum in u-num congre-ga-mur. Ne nos men-te 
 di-vi-da-mur ca-ve-a-mus. Ces-sent jur-gi-a ma-li-gna, cessent 
 li-tes. Et in me-di-o no-stri sit Christus De-us. A-men. 
 
 He sang the melody, but played an accompaniment 
 that seemed to Petruccio's unskilled ear altogether 
 different, so that he wondered how the singer was not 
 himself carried away from the air by it. Alfeo's voice 
 was exquisite, clear and sweet, a tenor, almost as high 
 as a boy's, but fuller and more round. As he sang, the 
 
SAN CELESTINO 79 
 
 austere, almost thin simplicity of the theme seemed 
 richly plaintive. Raniero ceased to look cross, and 
 Petruccio -was glad that he had come. It seemed as if 
 Alf eo had power to catch his soul and lift it into heavenly 
 plains. Every note of the lute, every syllable of the 
 singer's words, echoed within Petruccio himself, and 
 brought into his dark face a light that Eaniero had never 
 thought to see there. As it changed, ebbing and fleeting 
 every moment, the sculptor confessed that more than 
 ever would it be impossible to reproduce such expressions 
 in marble ; he might as well have tried to reproduce in 
 marble Alfeo's music. 
 
 ' In my town,' said Alfeo when he had finished — ' I 
 am of Celano — is a friend of my family who has joined 
 the frati ; we call him Pra 'Maso ; he has written this.' 
 
 He drew out of his lute a low cry, like the wail of a 
 night wind, monotonous and cold, and sang — 
 
 ' Dies irse, dies ilia, 
 Solvet sseclum in favilla : 
 Teste David cum Sibylla.' 
 
 Then the moaning breath drew nearer, as when, on a 
 night of winter, the rain is dashed against the wall outside, 
 and the watcher within shudders. 
 
 ' Quantus tremor est futurus 
 Quando Judex est venturus 
 Cuncta, stricte, disoussurus.' 
 
 Each syllable, as he sang, each note as he charmed it out 
 of the lute, was a single separate blow, as of a tempest 
 deliberately assaulting. 
 
80 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 Before the next strophe he paused in his singing and a 
 sharp loud trumpet note burst from his fingers. 
 
 ' Tuba mirum sparqens sonum 
 Per sepulchra reqionum.' 
 
 i j To Petruccio it seemed as if he could hear the hollow 
 echo of that trumpet-call, rousing the long sleepers of the 
 shadowy realms of death. 
 
 ' Coget omnes ante thronum.' 
 
 It was astounding how Alfeo could give such an 
 effect of compulsion : one almost saw the reluctant 
 spirits driven through the dark out into the intolerable 
 radiance of the Judge's throne. 
 
 ' " Mors stupebit," ' sang Alfeo, ' " et natura," ' and it 
 sounded as though death itself, outraged and discomfited, 
 were there ; and nature, all the visible, familiar order of 
 things, reeling to meet him, terrified and fainting. 
 
 ' Mors stupebit, et natura 
 Cum resurget creatura 
 Judicanti responsura.' 
 
 It was like acting, though Alfeo used and could use 
 no gesture ; it created a visual picture of the horrified 
 creature, roused from the flattering oblivion of death to 
 memory and shame and dread : nothing really forgotten, 
 nothing past, the old lie that death ends all unmasked 
 pitilessly. 
 
 ' Liber scriptus prof eretur 
 In quo totum continetur, 
 Unde mundus judicetur.' 
 
SAN CELESTINO 81 
 
 Raniero knew that Petruccio could see the book, 
 nay, he could not help himself seeing it : the roll, 
 black and endless, of the world's untiring offence against 
 God. 
 
 ' Judex ergo cum sedebit, 
 Quidquid latet apparebit, 
 Nil inultum remanebit.' 
 
 When Alfeo sang of the Judge, inexorable, as He 
 shall take His seat, there broke from him and from his 
 lute a strain of ruthless majesty : calm, sovereign, 
 unemotional, measured, solemn, and blindingly sincere. 
 All the folly of affectation and excuse seemed expressed. 
 ' Nothing shall go unavenged.' 
 
 ' Quid sum miser tune dicturus ? ' 
 
 the young man cried ; as though the unavailingness of 
 every plea for leniency then first dawned upon him. 
 
 ' Quern patronum rogaturus 
 Cum vix Justus sit securus.' 
 
 Alfeo himself was pale, and Raniero's pretty^smartness 
 yielded to a pallor that was ghastly, almost squalid. He 
 had no eyes to spare for Petruccio. 
 
 Noah, Abraham, and Job could lend no one their 
 sanctity : it was their own, and could not be borrowed. 
 Let no one flatter himself with the holiness of the saints : 
 it would stand only in damning comparison. 
 
 Then Alfeo's voice broke into a cry of absolutely 
 childish pleading. 
 
82 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 ' Bex tremendae Majestatis ! 
 Qui salvandos salvas gratis 
 Salva me, fons pietatis ! ' 
 
 King of terrific Majesty ! What am I that thou 
 should'st have vengeance on such as me ? Art thou 
 not a King in truth, that givest, to whom the richest 
 has nothing to give ? The saved, are they not saved by 
 thine own infinite generosity and pity ? Save me, me, 
 me, fountain of all kindness. 
 
 Three times Alfeo sang ' " Salva me ! " " Salva me ! " 
 " Salva me ! " ' as though to creating Father, and 
 Redeeming Son, and Holy-making Spirit. And each cry 
 was louder, more poignant, more humble, but not more 
 abject; nay, more confident — as the view of majesty 
 became clearer, and the memory of Omnipotent Justice 
 naked, clad itself in the memory of Omnipotent 
 Compassion. 
 
 ' Recordare,' he pleaded, ' Jesu Pie, 
 Quod sum causa tuae viae, 
 Ne me perdas ilia die ! ' 
 
 His listeners scarcely heeded that the lute had ceased, 
 and lay for a moment idle in his hands clasped upon it, 
 as he called to the mind of Christ why He had come, 
 the purport of His three and thirty years, of the goal 
 of God's pilgrimage on earth. For one soul, even his 
 own, the divine exile would have abdicated His throne 
 just the same, if all the world else had been sure of safety. 
 And should it be in vain ? To what purpose then should 
 have been this waste ? 
 
SAN CELESTINO 83 
 
 ' Quaerens me sedisti lassus ; 
 Redemisti crucem passus, 
 Tantus labor non sit cassus.' 
 
 Should weary Christ have toiled in vain 
 
 ' Juste judex ultionis 
 Domim fao remissionis, 
 Ante diem rationia.' 
 
 Oh Judge, and Just Judge, he gasped, give it, that supreme 
 divine present of remission ; for what so kinglike as to 
 give? 
 
 ' Ingemisco tanquam reus, 
 
 Culpa rubet vultus meus, 
 
 Supplicanti parce, Deus ! ' 
 
 Guilty, his face reddened at the memory of things that 
 he had done, of the almost all left undone ; he shivered, 
 like a guilty thing ; and now from the lute came a 
 shudder as of torn leaves condemned to drive before 
 the chill autumn blast. 
 
 Then a sterner memory struck, and with a crackling, 
 bursting sound, as of flames among dry sticks, came 
 the almost screaming cry — 
 
 ' Confutatis maledictis, 
 Flammis acribus addictis.' 
 
 To Petruccio it seemed that the hot westerly glare 
 shining into the room was as a reflection of the licking 
 flames described in these astounding notes of Alfeo's ; 
 
 sharp, discordant, untuneful, were the horrible false 
 
 !o2 
 
84 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 chords the player struck out of his lute, and then 
 the high strained voice dropped ; 
 
 ' Voca me cum benedictis,' 
 
 came the low, nearly inaudible, sobbing cry for exemption 
 and pity. 
 
 Neither Eaniero or Petruccio knew that there should 
 have been three more strophes : Fra Tommaso da 
 Celano's hymn was new to them both. But though 
 there were three more strophes Alfeo could not sing 
 them. He could not have sung another word without 
 the passion into which he had worked himself breaking 
 in actual sobs. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 Petruccio lay long awake that night, listening to the 
 reverberation of Alfeo's music, and when he slept at 
 last, it was to dream of it. Nothing in his life, nothing 
 external or merely Iranian had ever stirred him to any- 
 thing like the same extent ; in the same manner he had 
 never been stirred at all. His nature was not what we 
 understand by the term emotional, and when an emotion 
 arrived strong enough to affect him it affected him all the 
 more powerfully. 
 
 Neither was he imaginative : he looked at external 
 things with that species of indifference that is described 
 as detachment ; not, as it were, caring for them, or 
 attaching to them much interior importance. Not to 
 care was in a sense the business of life, the life he was 
 drawn to. He had never been occupied with the imago 
 of things whose outward face had been presented to 
 him. That sort of idealising had hardly occurred to him, 
 and would, if it had occurred to him, have appeared 
 unnecessary and, perhaps, frivolous. 
 
 He who is habitually given to imagination dismisses 
 each image quickly for another, and is not permanently 
 much affected by any one. But Petruccio, once struck 
 as he now found himself by a group of images, could 
 
 85 
 
86 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 not easily rid himself of them. Alfeo had roused a 
 dormant, embryonic faculty in him ; and being fresh and 
 unsophisticated it was the more active, the more vivid. 
 What Alfeo had called into his sense was not a mere 
 series of pictures. They were much more forcible in their 
 effect than if they had been actually visible to the eye. 
 And though they came as a succession of ideas they 
 remained as one many-sided impression. Mixed with 
 the crackling of flame had been the smash of storm and 
 hiss of rain, and a wailing that was both human and 
 elemental. He could certainly see them, and saw still, 
 in spite of himself, the rush of the driven spirits, into 
 whose slumber the irresistible trumpet-call smote merci- 
 lessly. And yet they were spirits, invisible, intangible, 
 formless, and colourless. The most terrific sense of all 
 was that he had seen the Judge too ; how he could not 
 divine, for the stupendous impression was not only 
 formless too, but was even unlocalised. The throne 
 itself was so wrapped in w hirlin g mist, dark, lurid and 
 yet perceptible in the universal darkness around, that 
 no concrete image of a seat presented itself to his eyes, 
 even the eye of fancy. It was an impression purely 
 mental. Of Him who sat upon the throne still less was 
 there any mere portrait. No figure of a man, bearded 
 and old, was hidden behind the cloud. But the Judge 
 was there, not terribly human, but inexorably Divine. 
 There was no scenery, no background of grim rock and 
 black valley, as painters have since impotently striven to 
 represent it. Space was as little concerned as time, and 
 time, he felt, was shrivelled up in quenchless eternity. 
 
SAN CELESTINO 87 
 
 It was with a shrinking relief that he turned to the mere 
 human, and thought of Alf eo himself. Prom the cold vast- 
 ness of the supernatural Petruccio sought relief, for the 
 first time in his life, in the warm comfort of the natural. 
 
 He liked Alfeo : why might he not love him ? Except 
 the half-inherited affection, habitual and almost per- 
 functory that he had for his kindred, nothing of human 
 love had ever entered into his life. He liked Alfeo, who 
 was poor like himself, of the Abruzzi as he was, speaking 
 the familiar dialect that he had never till now known 
 was dear to him. Alfeo was no smart worldling, half- 
 heathenish, held fast in the net of pride of life, and lust of 
 eye, and lust of flesh. He had lifted even Eaniero, if only 
 for a moment, up into a terrible third heaven. He had 
 made the eternal more real than the terrene trivialities of 
 common life. He must himself be one who dwelt on the 
 threshold of heaven ; might he not be a guide thither ? 
 
 Why should Petruccio refuse such a friendship that 
 God had provided ? Christ, God as He was, had not 
 disdained a special, human friendship. It is enough 
 if the servant be as his master. It is not good for man 
 to be alone : two may stand together where one will fall. 
 Had Alfeo been rich and handsome, like Eaniero, 
 Petruccio would have never thought of him as of a 
 possible friend. Wealth was almost necessarily worldly, 
 and beauty itself had a snare of worldliness. But Alfeo 
 was not only poor, he was homely in face and figure ; 
 and the light which could shine in his eyes was not, 
 Petruccio thought, of this earth. 
 
 At last he slept, and the vision of judgment swam 
 
88 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 through his dreams, as intensely real as it had seemed 
 in the waking darkness. 
 
 The next day was a festa, and there were no schools. 
 Petruccio longed to go and find Alfeo, hut this he would 
 not do. He was too shy hy habit ; he had no practice in 
 making friends. But Alfeo came to him. 
 
 He had been intensely flattered by the effect his music 
 had had, and especially by its effect on Petruccio. That 
 Eaniero should be moved was natural ; he knew that the 
 Sicilian was an artist like himself ; but Pietro di Murrone 
 was altogether different, and his undisguisable emotion had 
 been a compliment of the highest worth. Alfeo knew of 
 Petruccio's reputation for austere, almost fierce sanctity ; 
 he knew that Petruccio had not wanted to hear him sing, 
 had only condescended to it out of courtesy and charity. 
 For that reason he had disarmed the ascetic's prepossession 
 by the plain simplicity of Ubi charitas et Amor, and had 
 then assailed him with the vehement onslaught of his 
 Dies Irae. Alfeo had the pleasure in his achievement 
 that almost every human genius has, though he lacked 
 Guito's and Raniero's franker vanity. From mere verbal 
 praise he would have shrunk almost as sensitively as 
 Petruccio would have shrunk from any allusion to his 
 sanctity. Petruccio was, however, really humble. Alfeo 
 was only artistically sensitive and reticent. The incense 
 of appreciation he had accepted greedily, and hungrily. 
 He wanted more of it. 
 
 ' Come with me, Pietro di Murrone,' he said, ' to Cava 
 dei Tirreni, to the Badia of the Benedictines. There are 
 no schools, and it is an easy walk.' 
 
SAN CELESTINO 89 
 
 He did not even notice that Petruccio's room was not 
 merely poor like his own, but untidy as well. Even 
 Eaniero, whose lodging was as plain, would have had a 
 sniffing air of criticism. To do Eaniero justice he might 
 have lived far more luxuriously, but his vanity was an 
 artist's and he only remembered that his father was 
 wealthy when he indulged himself in his rather expensive 
 craft. An artist, he thought, should live roughly, and if 
 he was smart in his costume it was because he thought it 
 a duty to look as well as possible. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 Along the road to Cava the two new friends walked, both 
 somewhat silent — Petruccio because it was his habit, 
 Alfeo because he could not speak without betraying how 
 much he was thinking of himself, and of the effect his 
 music had produced. 
 
 He had been intensely sincere while he sang, but it was 
 the sincerity of an artist, and of a great one ; he could not 
 have moved Raniero and Petruccio unless he had been 
 much more moved himself. All the same, it had been a 
 yielding to the inspiration of the moment, not the passion- 
 ate outburst of an inward habit. He knew Fra Tommaso 
 da Celano, and had never forgotten his face while inter- 
 preting the frate's sublime vision. He had been able to 
 translate a saint's meaning into an artistic rhapsody. 
 He knew he could play upon the lute, but he now desired 
 to prove his power to himself by playing on the human 
 heart of a living saint. 
 
 The road slopes easily up from the marina of Salerno 
 to the corner where Vietri sits looking along the golden 
 shore to Paestum and towards Amalfi : then, to him 
 who means Cava, it turns sharply inland, still a little 
 uphill. 
 
 Presently there came the noise of riders, and the 
 90 
 
SAN CELESTINO 91 
 
 youths turned to see a score of Saracens on their way 
 to the Emperor's colony of Nocera. 
 
 They drew near, walking their horses leisurely up the 
 sloping road. Soon they overtook Petruccio and his 
 friend. They might have passed them without a word 
 but that Alfeo carried his lute, wrapped in a silken 
 scarf and slung by it over his shoulder. Petruccio wanted 
 to hear it again or he might not have been delighted 
 to walk with a man who carried an instrument, like a 
 stroller to a fair. The leader of the Saracens caught sight 
 of the lute, in its silken wrapping, and knew very well 
 what it was. 
 
 ' The Nizreni borrow our arts,' he said to his com- 
 panion. They were both young, though older than 
 Petruccio and Alfeo, and were both gay and handsome. 
 Their dress was rich, and their horses fine ; they rode 
 as men who almost live in the saddle. 
 
 ' Good morning, Signori,' the Saracen called out, with 
 a very courteous salutation, and speaking in Italian. 
 
 Alfeo returned the greeting easily, Petruccio more 
 stiffly. All men are God's creatures, but he had never 
 before exchanged speech with an unbaptised infidel. 
 He cast a curious glance at the manjaniks the Arab men 
 carried, which seemed to him devilish weapons, spit- 
 fires like the devil himself ; but the two young men who 
 rode in front, the leaders, evidently of higher rank, carried 
 no manjaniks but only curved swords in richly orna- 
 mented scabbards. The Christian sword has the cross 
 for hand-piece, but the Saracen had the crescent for 
 hilt. 
 
92 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 The Saracen leader, whose name was Dragoudh, 
 drew his horse nearer to Alfeo. 
 
 ' El oud,' he said, smiling, ' you can speak the music 
 of our people.' 
 
 ' Music needs no words or any tongue,' replied Alfeo. 
 ' But I can sing in my own speech only — or the Latin.' 
 
 ' And I understand both. It would shorten our 
 journey to hear you.' 
 
 Petruccio thought the request impertinent, and 
 never supposed that Alfeo would agree to it. He 
 thought of the Dies Irae only, and could not think his 
 friend would profane it by singing Fra Maso's words to 
 infidel ears. 
 
 Alfeo had no such intention ; but he could sing other 
 things, and could play without singing at all. 
 
 ' Here is a pleasant shade under these trees,' said 
 Dragoudh. ' Let us rest, and listen.' He turned to his 
 friend, ' Eh, Yagourdh ? ' 
 
 Neither Petruccio nor Alfeo knew that this was a 
 nickname. The Arab youth was very fair in complexion, 
 though his large eyes, and his hair, were darker than their 
 own. Yagourdh is solid milk, a dish often eaten at the 
 beginning of a meal. Dragoudh gave a brief word of 
 command, and his men dismounted ; still holding their 
 horses by the long bridle, they sat down in groups upon 
 the grassy bank. Alfeo sat down too, with the two 
 Saracen gentlemen close to him. Petruccio stood up, 
 leaning stiffly against a tree. 
 
 ' I am called Alfeo da Celano,' said the musician, 
 unslinging his lute and taking off the faded scarf of thin 
 
SANCELESTINO 93 
 
 silk that wrapped it. ' My friend is Pietro di Murrone, 
 student in theology in our Master's University at 
 Salerno.' 
 
 Petruccio bowed as his name was mentioned, but he 
 thought the introduction unnecessary, and was not 
 better pleased when Dragoudh, with a quick, sharp 
 glance, said with very grave respect, ' We reverence all 
 holy men.' 
 
 It seemed monstrous to Petruccio to hear an unbaptised 
 follower of the false prophet talking of holy men, and 
 he was not holy. 
 
 There was a pleasant breeze that made a light 
 rustling in the leaves overhead, and there was a buzz 
 of innumerable insects among them. One could 
 just catch the murmur of the river far below in the 
 gorge. 
 
 Alfeo's fingers did not now seem to strike the strings 
 of his lute but to caress them, and there came just such 
 a whirr, and lisp, as the bees made, just the same toneless 
 whisper as the leaves were making, and through it the 
 cool, liquid gurgle of scarcely sounding water. But it was 
 different too. Petruccio had not known of these slight 
 sounds till Alfeo borrowed them, and now they came 
 from the lute woven together into a soft luxury that was 
 not plainly innocent and simple as they were. He made 
 them sensuous, amorous. He made them speak not 
 to the ear only but to the emotions and to the senses. 
 Petruccio in spite of himself knew that they were beauti- 
 ful, alluring, but it was a beauty of which he had known 
 nothing, and would not learn. He felt that a specious 
 
94 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 plea was embodied, the plea of the exquisite charm of 
 life, of noon, and sun, and caressing breeze, warm shadow, 
 and leafy secret. Had he been, as he was not, a classicist, 
 he would have presently heard the voice of dryad and 
 faun, their invitation to mutual play and pleasure. But 
 without recognising he could divine. 
 
 Alfeo did not yet sing ; all the same, he made the lute 
 sing for him, as he intended, to show that his art was 
 greater than any need of syllabled words. 
 
 The Saracens listened with delight, and Alfeo saw 
 their appreciation in their eyes. It inspired him, as 
 effectually, though so differently, as Petruccio's appre- 
 ciation of his Dies Irae had inspired him yesterday. 
 He was just as sincere now, pleading the sufficiency 
 of life, as then he had been ruthlessly describing its 
 inexorable end. 
 
 Out of such a theme, as wind and sun and woodland 
 smell had suggested, it would seem hard to produce 
 anything but monotony. But he made it as various as 
 Nature herself, though he deliberately abstained from 
 suggesting any mood of hers but one. Her frown and 
 storm he ignored altogether. Nor was it external 
 nature he paraphrased, but her inward pagan soul. 
 
 He knew that he was shocking Petruccio ; if he had not 
 shocked him he would have done nothing. He meant 
 to shock him, and to conquer. In the first he succeeded. 
 
 Petruccio knew as well as the eager Saracens what it 
 all meant. That life is enough, to-day our only sure 
 inheritance ; that the world has been decked fair enough 
 to satisfy every want ; that beauty is everywhere, lavished 
 
SAN CELESTINO 95 
 
 free for everyone ; a little bread, a little wine, and ears to 
 hear, eyes to see, nostrils to gather in the fragrance of the 
 world's garments ; and no need of more. The ascetics of 
 sense, wealth needless, pomp and rank a burden, youth 
 and open heart the only necessary treasure and qualifi- 
 cation. 
 
 All this Alfeo meant, and meant to teach. But 
 Petruccio heard more. In such a gospel what need 
 of any heaven ? "What need of any God ? With a sure 
 instinct Petruccio divined the poison in the sweet, sweet 
 wine that Alfeo was pouring out. Exquisite as the golden 
 cup was, there was death in it. 
 
 It was a temptation, as Alfeo in his artist's vanity 
 intended it to be. He desired to stir Petruccio's cold 
 blood, to send soft human whispers to perturb his steady 
 heart of a saint. But he glanced often at his friend's 
 face and knew that he had failed. Petruccio was 
 not himself aware how entirely the tempting had 
 failed ; long years afterwards in his lonely penance he 
 accused himself of this day as though it had in part 
 succeeded. 
 
 Not so readily does God yield his hold on hearts 
 that have been laid into His keeping. Not so lightly 
 does the Divine strength leave us to our own weakness. 
 
 Out of the far-off past another voice sounded in 
 Petruccio's inward ear : a voice as sweet as that of 
 Alfeo's heathen lute, but gentler, and more still. ' But 
 all men are vain in whom there is not the knowledge of 
 God : and who, by these good things that are seen, 
 cannot understand Him that is : neither by attending 
 
96 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 to the works have acknowledged Who was the workman 
 . . . with whose heauty if they being delighted took 
 them for gods, let them know how much the Lord of them 
 is more beautiful than they : for the first author of beauty 
 made all these things.' 
 
CHAPTEE XVI 
 
 Deagoudh, the Saracen, had been a keen watcher of 
 Alfeo and Petruccio. He was a keen watcher of life 
 in general, and here was a bit of it that appealed with 
 all the force of novelty. Musicians he had met in plenty 
 at the Emperor's half-Arab court of Palermo and else- 
 where, though he did not think he had met many of a 
 more subtle genius. Artists of almost every sort were 
 welcomed by Frederick, and Dragoudh knew almost 
 every variety of the breed. A saint was a finer rarity, 
 and he at once recognised that Petruccio was one ; he 
 had known another, intimately indeed, for it was his own 
 brother ; and different as the saint of Islam is from the 
 saint of Christianity he fancied he perceived something in 
 common. His brother, Masseudh, was an ascetic, and 
 he had become aware almost in a moment of Petruccio's 
 asceticism ; he read as on the open scroll of a book 
 Petruccio's fear and dislike of the world, his distrust 
 of art, his instinctive craving for solitude and contempla- 
 tion. And he who cared little for prayer himself was 
 able to note in Petruccio the signs of one whose life 
 was spent in praying. 
 
 Alfeo had interested him a little, and amused him 
 97 h 
 
98 SAN CELE8TIN0 
 
 more ; the young Christian mystic interested him 
 immensely without amusing him at all. 
 
 Dragoudh understood that Alfeo wished to prove to 
 his Saracen audience that on the borrowed Saracen 
 instrument he could so excel as to win their admiration ; 
 but he saw that Alfeo had a further ambition, and that 
 to himself it seemed a higher one, at all events one more 
 difficult of achievement. 
 
 Perfectly worldly himself, he was oddly pleased that 
 Alfeo had failed ; he had looked on with a sort of excite- 
 ment, something of a gambler's, for he had wagered to 
 himself for the success of the saint ; he would, he con- 
 fessed, have been disappointed had Petruccio yielded 
 to his friend's subtle temptation ; he would, indeed, 
 have ridden on to Nocera dei Pagani, pagan as he was 
 himself, depressed. Aiming at no high standard he saw a 
 standard far higher than that of his or of the common 
 Christian world, and he believed in it. Asceticism 
 seemed to his own taste as austere as a mountain top, 
 aloof, chill, forbidding even, lonely, and only laboriously 
 accessible. Nevertheless he could admire it. The valley 
 was for him, and he wished to taste its sweetness ; but he 
 had intuition enough to divine the rare, cold splendour 
 of the solitary alp, its exquisite clean air, its neighbour- 
 hood to heaven ; and he was without jealousy. He was 
 glad to believe that others could stand where he was too 
 indolent to climb. 
 
 Alfeo was receiving the compliments of his listeners ; 
 Petruccio still held apart, and Dragoudh drew near to 
 him. 
 
SAN CELESTINO 99 
 
 ' You do not like me to speak to you,' said Dragoudh. 
 ' But it is not your wont to do that which pleases you.' 
 
 They were not after all many paces from the others, 
 but something in Petruccio's attitude and air suggested 
 to the young Saracen a poignant loneliness. He saw, 
 almost as one sees in a vision, the predestined isolation of 
 this silent, sombre-eyed youth. He could not foresee 
 the final utter isolation that was laid up for him, when he 
 who knew himself the least of Christ's weakest lambs 
 should be forced to become shepherd of the whole flock ; 
 when the intolerable weight of the keys of heaven should 
 have been thrust between his reluctant, cold fingers ; when 
 he should be compelled to stand as God's vicegerent 
 in the huge world that terrified and disgusted him. 
 
 ' You are kind, though,' said Petruccio simply. His 
 own dark, quiet eyes had met the Saracen's, and he read 
 in them sympathy. To crave any human sympathy he 
 had found was dangerous, but to turn roughly from 
 courtesy was not in him. What was he that he should 
 scorn any man made in God's image, though the man 
 were as an unlighted lamp, empty of the oil of faith, 
 and lacking the flame of supernatural charity, that comes 
 only with baptism ? 
 
 ' I hope not unkind.' 
 
 Dragoudh paused ; he wanted to speak, but he was too 
 much a gentleman to find it easy to thrust in his friendli- 
 ness to a stranger's reluctant reserve. 
 
 ' Your friend,' he said, ' is a great artist.' 
 
 ' I cannot tell. Yes, he must be what you mean. 
 But I am ignorant in that matter.' 
 
 h2 
 
100 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 ' You know better things.' 
 ' I know almost nothing.' 
 
 ' You know one thing.' 
 
 Petruccio lifted his eyes again, and again met Dra- 
 goudh's : they were so grave, and so sincere that he 
 answered — in a voice so low that it was scarcely to be 
 heard — 
 
 ' I know that there is one thing.' 
 
 ' God,' whispered the Saracen. 
 
 Petruccio in his life had never heard that Name 
 uttered in a tone more reverent. From Christian lips 
 he had heard it often as an oath ; sometimes almost as a 
 jest. 
 
 ' So you hated your friend's music ? ' said Dragoudh, 
 after a pause that, to Petruccio at least, was like a gasp. 
 
 ' I feared it.' 
 
 ' For yourself you need not. You knew it was a lie.' 
 
 Petruccio's eyes were once more given to the Saracen's. 
 
 ' You also heard the lie ? ' he said, with a kind of 
 wonder. 
 
 ' I heard bis music telling us that life itself is good 
 enough.' 
 
 The rest were waiting now, and Dragoudh prepared 
 to go. 
 
 ' Farewell,' he said, ' perhaps we shall never meet 
 again. But for this once we have looked across the 
 gulf that divides us, by the bridge that spans it.' 
 
 ' There is no bridge,' said Petruccio stoutly. He felt 
 that it sounded churlish ; nevertheless he must tell the 
 truth. 
 
SAN CELESTINO 101 
 
 ' There is,' insisted Dragoudh, with a smile as grave 
 as any word he had used. 
 
 ' Conversion ? ' said Petruccio. 
 
 ' God,' answered the Saracen. 
 
 He uttered the ineffable Name with the same solemn 
 reverence as before, and with it for farewell he turned to 
 his men. 
 
 ' Mount,' he called out. 
 
 Dragoudh and ' Yagourdh ' mounted also, and turned 
 to thank Alfeo once again. 
 
 ' A Christian triumph,' laughed Yagourdh. 
 
 ' A pagan failure,' said Dragoudh to himself. 
 
CHAPTBE XVII 
 
 Alfeo did not feel sure that Petruccio would go on with 
 him. Petruccio had no idea of doing otherwise, and they 
 walked on together. At the bridge that enters Cava dei 
 Tirreni they turned steeply up to the left among the hills 
 towards the Badia. 
 
 Alfeo could not leave well alone — or ill, whichever 
 it was. 
 
 ' You are angry with me ? ' he asked uneasily. 
 
 ' Or you with me,' Petruccio replied, laughing. 
 
 Alfeo laughed too, but uncomfortably. 
 
 ' Well, it is tiresome to fail.' 
 
 ' One is ultimately glad of tiresome things sometimes. 
 " Success " makes one ashamed now and then.' 
 
 4 1 only meant,' grumbled Alfeo, ' to show you, in a 
 parable, that you are too good for this world.' 
 
 ' I saw you meant something wicked ; I did not know 
 you meant something silly.' 
 
 ' It is all very well. How would the world go on if 
 everyone acted on your theories ? ' 
 
 ' I have no theories.' 
 
 ' If everybody became monks and nuns and hermits 
 the world would come to an end.' 
 
 ' Everybody never will become monks, or nuns, or 
 
 102 
 
SAN CELESTINO 103 
 
 hermits. But even if the world did come to an end, 
 well, I think it would be better than going on badly.' 
 
 ' Is it bad of the world going on marrying and giving 
 in marriage ! ' cried Alfeo, very unfairly. Of course 
 he deserved no answer ; but Petruccio was not him- 
 self an adroit talker and was unused to dexterous 
 argument. 
 
 ' It is bad to marry without a vocation to it. Perhaps 
 that is why sometimes marriage turns out ill. But in 
 heaven, at all events, there will be neither marrying nor 
 giving in marriage, so I suppose if the world ever gets 
 heavenly it will give up both.' 
 
 ' But it never will get heavenly.' 
 
 ' There is to be a millennium, I have heard, but I 
 agree with you that one sees no sign of its being at hand 
 
 yet.' 
 
 Alfeo had talked chiefly to get Petruccio into good 
 humour again, and thought himself clever in having 
 succeeded. In reality Petruccio had never been out of 
 humour. His temper was better than Alfeo's, sober but 
 sweet ; he was no kill- joy, though his own joys could 
 never be made to flow from the same sources as Kaniero's 
 or Guito's, or Omero's, or even, as he had found, Alfeo's. 
 
 He was not now cross with Alfeo, though he was 
 certainly disappointed. 
 
 The road was very beautiful, with new and splendid 
 views of mountain and valley at every turn of it. High 
 over all was Monte Finestra, bare and austere ; but 
 the lower heights stood waist-deep in forest, and the 
 gorges running among them had hanging brackets of 
 
104 SAN CELBSTINO 
 
 pasture and terraces of cultivated land. Often the broad 
 valley, winding up from the sea towards Nocera and 
 Sant' Agata dei Goti, was lost to sight ; but then it 
 would reappear, smiling in green and gold. 
 
 Presently they came to a high bit of road whence 
 they could look across the gulf to Pesto, whose temples 
 shone out of the opal haze like three pearls. 
 
 ' See, Pietro di Murrone,' said Alfeo, pointing not to 
 Paestum, but to a tiny chapel close at hand on a slab of 
 rock, part of which ran under it, and part jutted out. 
 ' On that rock another Pietro stood and preached the 
 first crusade — a hermit — as you will be. That was a 
 hundred and forty-seven years ago.' 
 
 He looked at Petruccio's quiet face on which a still 
 light glowed, the more wonderful, as Alfeo perceived 
 readily, that it shone from within. 
 
 ' You know,' Alfeo went on, ' that when the Arabs first 
 conquered the Terra Santa they were generous to the 
 Christians. Their prophet was only lately dead and he 
 had venerated and envied Christ, and honoured His 
 Immaculate Mother too ; I have read that.' 
 
 ' One reads things that are false, however,' said 
 Petruccio, who was sure that Mahomet was altogether 
 a son of perdition. 
 
 ' I like to believe the best things. Anyway the first 
 sons of Islam did not interfere with our people. They did 
 not destroy the Santo Sepolcro, but allowed us to build 
 there a church and a hospice for pilgrims.' 
 
 ' It brought them money,' said Petruccio. 
 
 ' Certo ! Even Saracens like money. That is the 
 
SAN CELESTINO 105 
 
 only point in which they resemble us. . . . Then came the 
 Turks, Seljuks, who had only just been converted.' 
 
 ' I never heard Christians called Turks,' objected 
 Petruccio. 
 
 ' I mean to Islam,' laughed Alfeo, ' and they under- 
 stood it as little as they understood Christianity. Imme- 
 diately they began tormenting the pilgrims. That other 
 Pietro, the hermit, went on pilgrimage ; and here, on this 
 rock where we stand, he described what he had seen : 
 pilgrims beaten, and flung into dungeons, and even 
 mutilated.' 
 
 ' That, at all events, is true,' said Petruccio. 
 
 ' Here he preached, as he preached everywhere all over 
 Christendom, and then he urged the Christians to cease 
 fighting with each other, and go and fight against the 
 enemies of the Cross of Christ. Gregory, your own saint, 
 down there, had urged the same thing. But the Christian 
 kings were too busy fighting against him, and they would 
 not listen. It was easier to make war on one tired priest 
 than on hordes of warlike barbarians. Here, however, 
 Pietro l'Eremita made them ashamed, as he did every- 
 where, and they cried out loud Iddio lo Vuole, Deus Vult. 
 And they received the cross from his hands, here among 
 these trees, and went off to fight for the Holy Places.' 
 
 Alfeo was pleased with himself, for he liked a good 
 listener, and there was no more chance for the lute to-day. 
 Into his voice, however, he knew how to put the same 
 tones into talking that he could use in singing. He was 
 an artist, only that, but he could not help trying to be a 
 great one, even when raw from recent defeat. 
 
106 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 ' Soon after,' he went on, ' Urban himself camehere : 
 your Pope's successor. And with him Ruggiero, the Conte 
 Grande, and a crowd of nobles and warriors. When they 
 got here the Pope lighted down from his white mule, and 
 bade them all go afoot. " For this," he said, " is holy 
 ground " ; and Pietra Santa they call it still, and will call 
 it till the rocks melt at the last. Prom this place they 
 walked on, as we must, to the Badia down yonder.' 
 
 So the lads went forward and came to Corpo di Cava 
 lying like a cluster of nests against the side of the steep 
 mountain. 
 
 Petruccio was happier here ; there was a smell almost 
 like the smell of the gorges of the Abruzzi, fresh and clean, 
 and all about lay the odour of the sanctity of great men. 
 
 Then they came to the bit of straight road leading down 
 to the abbey, where the statue of Urban II stands 
 blessing it now. 
 
 Clapped against the precipice hangs the huge monas- 
 tery, with gaunt mountain peaks above and all around. 
 Far beneath foams the torrent, and of all other sounds 
 there is a remote silence. 
 
CHAPTEE XVIII 
 
 They were in the great church. 
 
 ' Here,' whispered Alfeo, leading Petruccio to the 
 chapel beside the high altar on the left, ' is the tomb of 
 Sant' Alferio the founder. Here he lived in this grotto as 
 a hermit. There was no marble here then ; it lay open 
 to the damp wind of the mountain. Here he died.' 
 
 ' Died ! ' expostulated Petruccio. 
 
 ' On Holy Thursday, in his hundred and twentieth 
 year. This is the tomb of his successor, the second 
 abbot, a Lucchese, another saint, Leo, who alone could 
 tame the cruel beast of Salerno, Gisolfo, the Prince. 
 And here is the third abbot, all of him that is not singing 
 in heaven, another of your namesakes, Pietro da Salerno, 
 nephew of Sant' Alferio, and himself tutor of Urban II. 
 When he died three saints came to show him the way 
 to heaven — he was so humble that otherwise he might 
 have lost his way — Saint Odo, and Saint Mayeul, and Saint 
 Odillon, all abbots of Cluny. But I like this fourth 
 saint best. This is Constabile, " puer inclytus et vener- 
 andus," who wore the mitre here one year. After he was 
 dead some of his monks — God knows what they were 
 doing there — were taken prisoners by the Mori on the 
 African coast ; he came down from heaven and looked 
 
 107 
 
108 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 at those Saracens in a way to which they were not accus- 
 tomed, and they let him go off with his monks whom 
 he steered safe to the shore down there. Then he went 
 back to heaven, and finished the tune he was playing on 
 his lute.' 
 
 ' There are no lutes in heaven,' said Petruccio very 
 decidedly. 
 
 ' On the contrary,' said Alfeo, ' the saints have one 
 apiece. But come here. You can pray when you get 
 home. Look at this tomb.' 
 
 It was a plain austere slab, with a mitre standing on 
 its head, incised upon it. 
 
 ' What saint ? ' asked Petruccio. 
 ' I never heard that he was a saint. It is where 
 Gregorio Ottavo gets what sleep he can. He died here 
 just a hundred and eighteen years ago. Callisto Secondo 
 sent him here. He was anti-pope.' 
 
 Petruccio shuddered. To be pope at all seemed to 
 him terrible ; to be false pope too horrible to imagine. 
 
 ' Some say he is not here at aU,' observed Alfeo, 
 ' but if not it is just as bad ; for then this is the grave 
 of Teodorico, another anti-pope, who tried to grab the 
 keys out of the hands of Pascale Secondo. Three anti- 
 popes have been prisoners here. For Innocent — God 
 knows his number — is trying to sleep somewhere here- 
 abouts.' 
 
 Alfeo liked doing cicerone; he had the knack of 
 telling all he knew as though it were merely part of 
 what he could say if there were time. Petruccio had 
 none of that sort of cleverness, and began to think the 
 
SAN CELESTINO 109 
 
 young musician very learned. He himself could never 
 say a quarter of what he knew and he believed himself 
 very ignorant, which is the first condition of knowledge. 
 
 Alfeo showed him many more things in the great 
 church ; they were, however, chiefly objects of art, for 
 which his friend cared far less than for the Corpi Santi ; 
 indeed, all these things seemed to him but an anticlimax. 
 How could he think of opus reticulatwm and giallo antico, 
 of the ambones and silver lamps, with his mind caught 
 in the memory that four saints lay sleeping close at hand ? 
 
 In the antique sarcophagi he took scarcely any 
 interest, and would not have taken much in the tomb of 
 Roger Bursa's second wife, Sibylla of Burgundy, Duchess 
 of Puglia and Calabria, but that it reminded him of Norma 
 and her tales by the fireside of a winter night. While 
 Alfeo was talking of Sibylla, Petruccio was thinking of 
 his home far away among those other mountains, of his 
 mother and his eleven brothers. 
 
 Presently a monk came slowly down the church, 
 clad in the black habit of St. Benedict, but with a gold 
 cross upon his breast, and a great ring on his finger. 
 He was quite young, with a face like an angel's, grave 
 and swget, and he smiled kindly at the two youths, and 
 stopped to ask if they had seen the library of the 
 monastery. 
 
 ' You are students from Salerno, eh ? I was a 
 student there too, not so very long ago,' he said, and his 
 voice was like his eyes, gentle and clear. 
 
 To Petruccio he seemed very boyish to be an abbot, 
 but he was a bishop also. 
 
110 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 ' I will show you the library myself,' he said, ' if 
 you are not pressed for time.' Then he smiled again. 
 ' You carry a lute, like a trovatore,' he added to Alfeo. 
 ' Would you like to play upon our organ ? ' 
 
 Alfeo blushed for pleasure. 
 
 ' My lord,' he answered, ' I thank you for your 
 gentilezza, but I do not play well upon the organ.' 
 
 ' We shall see. Perhaps he is not the best judge,' 
 and the abbot-ordinary turned to Petruccio. 
 
 ' On the organ I cannot tell ; on the lute he plays 
 too well.' 
 
 The monk laughed gently. ' You think it a worldly 
 instrument ? Well, our sort of organ was invented by 
 Pope Sylvester II of blessed memory.' 
 
 He was leading them into the monastery, where they 
 passed several monks pacing the cloisters in silent medi- 
 tation, but none of them thought it an interruption to 
 lift their heads and smile at the lads, and give them 
 courteous and friendly salutation. 
 
 ' Here is our Archivio, where we have many thousands 
 of donazioni, and hundreds of bullae. This one dates 
 from 840, and the signature is that of Radelchi of Bene- 
 vento ; here is the original donation of the abbey to 
 Sant' Alferio, from Waimar da Salerno, written in the 
 Lombardic script. This with the golden seal is a charter 
 from King Ruggiero, and all these are letters from 
 the holy Roman Emperor Carlo Magno ; and now I 
 will show our two treasures — a Bible of the seventh 
 century, and the " Codex Legum Longobardorum. " . . .' 
 
 The youths listened to the great names, and were 
 
SAN CELESTINO 111 
 
 duly impressed, without knowing very much about it all. 
 The sweet-faced abbot was very kind, but how little 
 he guessed that the more silent of the two lads would 
 one day hold the keys of Peter in his trembling hands, 
 and be himself a canonised saint. It would have aston- 
 ished him still more could he have foreseen that the 
 gravest of poets would represent the Pope, that this 
 unearthly visaged youth was to be — in hell. 
 
 ' And now,' he said, ' we will call Dom Mauro, who 
 has the keys of the organ, and he will help us to 
 decide if you play but ill upon it. For he is our 
 musician.' 
 
 Presently Dom Mauro appeared, a little crippled 
 monk, who limped on a crutch ; with an old withered 
 face, but very pleasant eyes. His mouth, too, had a 
 queer but friendly twist in it. 
 
 4 This is a trovatore,' said the abbot, ' who pretends 
 that he cannot play also upon the organ. But we will 
 not believe him till you have told us if he is telling the 
 truth. Some tell fibs because they are too vain, and some 
 because they are too modest.' 
 
 ' Musicians are never modest,' declared Dom Mauro, 
 twitching his bright little eyes, and giving a kind of hop 
 upon his best leg. ' That is why I am only a middling 
 musician.' 
 
 ' Or why you are such a good one,' suggested the 
 abbot cheerfully. 
 
 It was all very well for the young abbot to chaff 
 the old monk, but the lads scarcely knew if they were 
 to laugh too. 
 
112 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 ' Well, we -will go and see,' said the abbot, ' whether 
 you are both modest or both musicians.' 
 
 So they all went back into the church, the crippled 
 monk skipping up the stone stairs quickest of the four. 
 
 ' If he had two good legs he would skip up to heaven 
 before any of us could catch him,' said the abbot, ' and 
 then we should have no one to play for us in choir.' 
 
 ' Your Most Reverend Excellency will be in heaven 
 before me, though I am twenty-nine years older,' declared 
 Dom Mauro. ' He is not at all strong, that is his great 
 fault,' he added, twisting himself towards the lads. 
 
 It was quite surprising to see how the crippled monk 
 got up the narrow and steep steps leading to the organ. 
 
 ' Here he is,' he said proudly, taking out his keys, 
 ' every bit of him made here in the monastery.' 
 
 ' Monks have always been great organ-builders,' 
 explained the abbot. ' And Dom Mauro says ours is 
 the best in all the Regno. For that he will have to go to 
 Purgatory. It is his vanity. There is a much better 
 one at Monte Vergine.' 
 
 ' Monte "Vergine ! Even to-day his Most Reverend 
 Excellency does not know how many pipes ours has.' 
 
 ' I know there are about half as many as you say.' 
 
 The organ was open and Dom Mauro forced Alfeo 
 to sit down. 
 
 In vain is the snare set in the sight of any bird, and 
 Petruccio had not the least idea of being again carried 
 away. It seemed to him a hundred years since the 
 Dies Irae of yesterday. 
 
 Alfeo did not know the organ as he knew the lute. 
 
SAN CELESTINO 113 
 
 But he made friends with it, as certain men know how 
 to make friends even of a stranger, almost instantly. 
 Dom Mauro's eyes twinkled. 
 
 ' He cannot be a musician, for he was modest,' the old 
 monk whispered. ' Listen, then ! ' 
 
 ' Sing, too,' begged Petruccio, into Alfeo's ear. 
 ' He is a good fellow,' thought Alfeo, and he sang the 
 Urbs Beata Jerusalem of the Cluniac monk, Bernard of 
 Morlaix. 
 
 It was a contrast to the Dies Irae, but inevitably made 
 Petruccio think of it. Now there was nothing terrible ; 
 it was again a vision translated into sound, but a vision 
 not of judgment to come, of judgment come already on a 
 horrified, guilty world, but of assured salvation and 
 beatitude. It was as vivid as the music of yesterday, 
 but no longer lurid ; there was light ineffable, not blinding, 
 every colour but blackness ; it was in reality a far higher 
 and far more difficult achievement. Alfeo suggested a 
 peace that was void of monotony, a bliss whose sweetness 
 was never over-sweet, a rapture that was free from passion 
 or excitement, a loveliness that had nothing of sense ; in 
 variety it was miraculous, with a completeness that added 
 unity. He who so sang must remember the infinite 
 variety of holiness, and its substantial unity. 
 
 Petruccio was almost provoked with Alfeo. Why 
 was he not himself a 3aint ? How could he so interpret 
 the final goal and fruition of sanctity and be himself held 
 fast to this lower world which is the saint's obstacle and 
 snare ? 
 
 Alfeo's art now was as pictorial as that of yesterday, 
 
114 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 if less dramatic ; by sound he gave pictures which each 
 of those who listened could see : lawns of paradise, 
 flower-pied, such as Fra Angelico would paint long after ; 
 heavenly gardens and streams, heavenly glades, and even 
 heavenly city-walls. Just as Angelico was hereafter to 
 paint a city that should suggest no earthly city-stain, so 
 did Alfeo already paint those citadels of perfection in his 
 song. But most exquisite of all was the impression he 
 conveyed of light, a light that drew from out no sun or 
 star. 
 
 ' For the Lamb is the light thereof,' the abbot 
 whispered to his soul ; and the light shone already on his 
 own face. 
 
 Petruccio noticed that he never again called Alfeo 
 trovatore, as he had done with laughing good-humour 
 before. 
 
 When he had finished Alfeo begged Dom Mauro to 
 play for them, but the little monk shook his head. 
 
 ' Not unless his Most Reverend Excellency gave me 
 an obedience to do it,' he said, ' and he is too kind to do 
 that now.' 
 
 The abbot smiled, and gave Dom Mauro a little pat 
 upon his crooked shoulder, but gave him no ' obedience ' 
 to do what he did not wish. He thanked Alfeo very 
 gracefully and simply, and led the way down, not into 
 the church but into the monastery. 
 
 ' You must come and eat now,' he said to the lads. ' It 
 is a long walk from Salerno, and a long walk back. Nay, 
 you cannot refuse ; I am not your host, but St. 
 Benedict.' 
 
SAN CELESTINO 115 
 
 And he made them come to the refectory, Dom Mauro 
 still jumping himself alongside upon his crutch. The 
 little old monk made no speeches, but he did make Alfeo 
 understand very well how his music had been valued. 
 
 The abbot himself waited on the two youths, and 
 seemed determined that they should eat and drink well. 
 
 ' It is a giorno di festa,' he declared, ' and you must 
 both be honest trencher-men, or our holy patriarch, 
 San Benedetto, will be appearing to Mauro and me in a 
 vision to-night, and reproving us for giving strangers 
 untempting fare.' 
 
 Except a scrap of crust Petruccio had eaten nothing 
 all day, and he now ate heartily, knowing somehow 
 that the abbot specially meant him. The fare was simple 
 enough, though good and plentiful, but it tasted better 
 to Petruccio than any food he had ever eaten. To him 
 it seemed no pretty figure of speaking that he was guest 
 of the great prince of monachism. He was prouder to eat 
 at St. Benedict's table than he could have been to be 
 served at that of any king. 
 
 "When they had finished, the abbot and Dom Mauro 
 accompanied them up the sloping road to the corner where 
 Urban II's statue now stands. Alfeo was readier than 
 Petruccio, and when the time for farewell came he dropped 
 upon one knee to kiss the abbot's ring. Petruccio was 
 nearer to Dom Mauro, and kneeling, he lifted the monk's 
 scapular to his lips. 
 
 ' Come again, both of you,' cried the abbot ; and the 
 lads, still bareheaded, turned away. 
 
 At the turn of the road they looked back : the two 
 
 i 2 
 
116 SAN CELE8TIN0 
 
 monks were still standing to see the last of them, as if it 
 would have been inhospitable to hasten away. 
 
 ' In holy religion,' said Alfeo, ' there is ever time for 
 courtesy. They can leave God for a few minutes to be 
 civil to two poor students.' 
 
 The exaltation of his own music and of its appreciation 
 was still hanging about him. 
 
 ' They do not ever leave God,' answered Petruccio. 
 
 He never forgot the picture of the two kind monks, 
 standing in the road in their black habits, with the 
 ruddy mountain behind them, on which the afternoon 
 sun was glowing. 
 
 The road back to Salerno seemed like one that led 
 down from the gate of heaven. Alfeo read this in his face. 
 
 ' So God does not live at Salerno too,' he said sharply. 
 It was not easy to forgive Petruccio for his own noonday 
 failure. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 Not many days after this the Emperor came to Salerno. 
 In those days Salerno was almost as important as Naples ; 
 its University was more important, and Frederick often 
 landed there when coming from Palermo. He had a palace 
 in the town, and would sometimes spend a day or two 
 there on his way to his Saracen colony of Nocera, or to 
 one of his wars. 
 
 He landed there this time, and the fleet of sails 
 came in the early morning over the gulf, like great sea- 
 birds driven by a favourable breeze. The peasants 
 crowded in from the mountains and from the scattered 
 villages of the Calabrian shore. There were tapestries 
 and fine carpets hanging from the windows and balconies, 
 and everybody in the streets was smarter than usual. 
 The bells rang from the municipio, though not from the 
 churches, for the Emperor was excommunicated ; and 
 ' bombs ' were fired off from roofs and along the marina. 
 
 Some of the professors had wanted to keep the 
 schools open, for it was the festa of no saint, and they 
 reminded their brethren that Frederick was out of the 
 Church's pale, but the others shrugged their shoulders 
 and declared that the Emperor was their patron and 
 second founder. 
 
 117 
 
118 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 ' Besides, the boys will all go to see his entry whether 
 we close the schools or no,' said one burly professor 
 of medicine. 
 
 ' And we want to go and see him ourselves,' added a 
 dried-up professor of civil law. 
 
 Anyway the professor of medicine was right ; all the 
 students did go. 
 
 Petruccio would as lief have been at lecture, though 
 he disliked the lectures as much as he disliked anything 
 on earth. As a student he was not specially industrious, 
 only as industrious as conscience forced trim to be. 
 At all events he was not zealous, for how can one be 
 zealous about what seems tedious and almost futile ? 
 He lived in religion, but he did not succeed in caring 
 much to learn that hell was in the lower parts of the 
 earth prope centrum. Nevertheless he went to lecture, 
 but he found no one there except the professor, an 
 arid old Fleming with beady, shallow black eyes high 
 up in a pallid, wooden face. 
 
 The professor did not like him, and was wont to 
 pounce on him with dry questions in difficult, entangled 
 Latin. Once he had dropped on Petruccio, while the 
 Latin was still very unfamiliar to the lad, and asked 
 him something which he could have answered with a 
 little time ; but while the shy student was arranging 
 the Latin for his reply, the professor had stared round 
 and cackled. 
 
 ' Olim asinus locutus est prophetae,' he said, leering 
 at his pupils. ' Utinam nunc loqueretur ! ' 
 
 And Petruccio 's answer had dribbled out of his head. 
 
SAN CELESTINO 119 
 
 Most of the class giggled at the professor's wit, but the 
 cleverest of them did not even smile. 
 
 ' Ma, non c' e qui profeta,' he observed in the vulgar 
 tongue, quite loud enough for the professor to hear. 
 
 For that retort of the clever student the professor 
 still disliked Petruccio. He was not now at all grateful 
 to him for coming to the schools. He did not wish to 
 go and see the Emperor, but he wanted to go and finish 
 a thesis as to how many angels he could fit on to the point 
 of a needle. 
 
 ' C e l'Asino,' he said to himself in a loud aside. 
 
 But he pretended not to see Petruccio at all, and 
 collected his papers as though to go away. 
 
 A good little devil entered into the future saint — to 
 his terrible discomfiture afterwards. Petruccio coughed. 
 The professor was annoyed ; he was determined to 
 settle the question of those angels. 
 
 ' There are no schools,' he called out. ' It is giorno 
 di festa.' 
 
 ' Of what saint ? ' asked Petruccio demurely. The 
 professor was as deaf as a post when he liked, and he did 
 not hear a word. He bustled off with his papers, and 
 Petruccio was left alone to the fusty smell of desks, 
 and stale dust, and badly cured pens. So he, too, strolled 
 off and saw the entry of the Emperor. 
 
 He was only one lad in the crowd, but it happened 
 that Frederick came quite near him. Manfred was 
 beside him and Manfred's mother Bianca, who only 
 became the Emperor's wife as he lay upon his deathbed 
 more than ten years later. 
 
120 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 Enzio was also there, his elder natural son, whom he 
 had lately proclaimed King of Sardinia, earning a second 
 excommunication from Gregory IX by doing so. 
 
 Prom the ship they came in a barge to shore, landing 
 quite close to where Petruccio stood. Up the slope of 
 the marina they had all to walk to where their horses 
 stood awaiting them. 
 
 Frederick looked quite a young man, gay and beautiful : 
 and all about him hovered, as an atmosphere, the gleeful 
 pride of life. His air was gracious and free, masterful but 
 friendly ; his eyes danced merrily, and his smile was 
 that of one who is wont to hear his words, his very presence, 
 applauded. His figure and his mien alike proclaimed him 
 what he was — soldier, and sage, and poet. His eyes 
 danced merrily, but they were deep and capable of sadness ; 
 one saw that he was a man of changing humour, who 
 could be sorrowful, and even thoughtful, though his habit 
 was to laugh. His form was that of a young man, so 
 young that it seemed almost impossible he should be 
 Enzio's father. He was splendidly made, and his face 
 as handsome as any that Petruccio had ever seen : the 
 expression of it not bad, but only careless and wilful. 
 In spite of his fair skin and blue eyes he was a southern, 
 Italian born ; and yet his Teuton blood showed itself. 
 
 For a moment the Emperor and Bianca, Manfred and 
 Enzio were quite close to Petruccio ; the crowd pressed, 
 and Frederick did not mind it, but took it all good- 
 humouredly. He liked his people to wish for a sight of 
 him, and did not grudge them the opportunity. He had 
 just the qualities that a crowd admires. They saw his 
 
SAN CELESTINO 121 
 
 beauty, and knew him to be a genius, and free-handed ; 
 they knew he was a brave fighter, and were themselves 
 too careless to inquire on what side he fought. And 
 was he not a Crusader ? Had he not beaten the 
 paynim, and with his own hand crowned himself King 
 in Jerusalem — in right of his second wife, the Empress 
 Iolanthe, daughter of Guy de Lusignan ? They loved 
 a happy life, and did not all his own proclaim its 
 happiness ? The pagan must be more popular than the 
 preacher. 
 
 In a sense Petruccio understood it all, though his own 
 feeling was altogether different from that of the eager 
 crowd about him. He, too, saw a gay and comely figure, 
 a face that smiled with a genuine if shallow sweetness, 
 and he perceived what it was to be an Emperor, and a 
 man of mark, a world's favourite ; but he thought more 
 of other things. In some things this lightly laughing, 
 irresponsible prince was more unhappy than the Saracens 
 he favoured : they were born disinherited, he had wilfully 
 disinherited himself. By birth a child of Christ, whose 
 son was he now ? They called him an atheist, and 
 certainly he was a heretic ; eleven years ago he had been 
 excommunicated, and now he was excommunicated again. 
 An instinct might have told Petruccio, even had he 
 not heard a whisper, that Bianca, gorgeous as she was, 
 was not the Empress ; but she smiled, and bowed to 
 right and left, and assumed imperial airs of graciousness 
 and condescension — unashamed of the bastard son 
 walking between her and his father. 
 
 Enzio was even more condescending, but his urbanity 
 
122 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 was not so free and gracious : his new-made royalty sat on 
 him a little tightly. 
 
 Manfred was only a big boy of nine years old, and he 
 assumed no royal airs at all, but looked quickly about, 
 with an honest boyish interest. He was altogether 
 more like their father than Enzio. Petruccio knew they 
 were all bound for Nocera — Nocera dei Pagani, the 
 Emperor's monstrous Arab colony in the midst of a 
 Christian country — and he guessed that Frederick might 
 be going also to fight against the Pope. 
 
 A man behind, whose oniony breath was close in 
 Petruccio's ear, pushed him forward, as the crowd pushed 
 him, and Petruccio and the Emperor almost touched 
 each other. 
 
 The lad blushed, for he was'courteous and modest, and 
 Frederick saw that he was thrust forward involuntarily. 
 
 ' Coraggio ! ' he said pleasantly, ' in a crowd one 
 must take one's chance.' 
 
 Petruccio doffed his cap, but his eyes met the 
 Emperor's, and Frederick saw in them a very rare 
 expression. 
 
 He was most used to adulation, but he had seen 
 scowling faces too, and knew well the look of hatred and 
 animosity. 
 
 Petruccio's eyes held no adulation, no hero-worship, 
 neither did they express scorn, or hate, or enmity : 
 what they spoke of was compassion, wistful and sincere, 
 and unaffected. 
 
 Frederick was not given to blushing. Those who have 
 enough to blush for have mostly lost the habit, but his 
 
SAN CELESTINO 123 
 
 cheek reddened now. The pity in Petruccio's grave eyes 
 disconcerted him. 
 
 If he could have seen the future he would have pitied 
 the lad from the Abruzzi too. 
 
 The crowd swayed again, and the princes moved 
 forward and were passed. 
 
 The next time Petruccio saw any there were two of 
 them, two kings, leading by the bridle the beast on which 
 he himself rode, weeping. 
 
CHAPTEE XX 
 
 All this time Petruccio's grand-uncle had not quite 
 forgotten him. 
 
 In the main he left the lad to himself wisely enough, 
 but he heard of him, and took note of what he heard. 
 Some said that his niece's son was half a fool, stupid and 
 slow. But others said he was a saint. Nor would the 
 professor of Canon Law have heard much talk of Petruc- 
 cio's stupidity had it been his habit to mix with the 
 students who knew him best. 
 
 ' He is even clever,' they would have told him, ' but 
 without care for his cleverness, and without the least 
 ambition or emulation. He can think, and, if lured to it, 
 could put his thoughts into words, simple words and 
 straight, but not at all foolish. But he does not love 
 to speak. He holds his tongue until the chance for speech 
 has passed.' 
 
 Petruccio's uncle, however, did not mix with students, 
 and the professors gave a poor account of his nephew. 
 
 He was not brilliant, and he was not emulous. He 
 seemed submissive, but such sort of submission looked 
 like doggedness. The professor of dogma declared that 
 he was sullen, and as incapable of theology as a — 
 as a . . . The professor was not handy at simile, and 
 
 124 
 
SAN CELESTINO 125 
 
 could not think of anything as incapable of theology 
 as poor Petruccio. 
 
 ' The truth is,' said his uncle, who had sent for him, 
 ' you take no interest in it.' 
 
 Petruccio hardly knew if this accusation were true or 
 no. He did not feel sure enough that it was untrue to 
 venture on contradicting it. 
 
 ' That is no sign of vocation,' said his uncle. ' I am 
 afraid you lack the ecclesiastical spirit.' 
 
 Petruccio merely held his peace. 
 
 ' You met several priests here once, and you seemed 
 like one who had no interest at all in what they spoke 
 about. Yet those matters were such as concern priests.' 
 
 Petruccio could not honestly say that those matters 
 had interested him. So he said nothing. His dumbness 
 rather irritated the old gentleman. 
 
 ' Do you suppose you could ever preach ? ' he asked, 
 perhaps sharply. 
 
 ' I am sure I could not.' 
 
 ' But a priest must preach, and preach often.' 
 
 As a matter of fact the professor of Canon Law had 
 never had much preaching to do. But Petruccio did not 
 plead that in his own excuse, though no doubt he remem- 
 bered it instantly. He certainly had no wish to be 
 himself a professor of Canon Law. 
 
 ' Come now,' urged his uncle, ' what are you going 
 to do ? Do you think, like this, you will ever make a 
 priest ? ' 
 *No.' 
 The old professor fidgeted in his leather-seated chair. 
 
126 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 He picked up a pen and rubbed the plume of it against 
 the leg of the table. 
 
 ' What, then, are you to do ? You think yourself you 
 have no vocation ? ' 
 
 ' To be a secular priest ? No.' 
 
 How could he say that he knew very well that he had 
 a vocation, though not in his uncle's direction ? How 
 could a lad like him say that he felt called to be a hermit ? 
 It seemed like declaring that he desired to become one of 
 the fathers of the desert. 
 
 ' To holy religion, then ? ' 
 
 His uncle's phrase was very correct ; nevertheless 
 his tone implied that he did not care very mueh, himself, 
 about ' holy religion.' 
 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 Petruccio quite perceived that though his uncle did 
 not in the least sneer at the idea of holy religion, he did 
 somehow imply that he was annoyed, as if he had hoped 
 for better things of his nephew. 
 
 ' Perhaps that is all you are good for.' 
 
 This also the professor of Canon Law by no means 
 said aloud — all the same he expressed it. And his 
 nephew understood that the accusation was not against 
 holy religion but against him. 
 
 ' One may be a good religious without much learning,' 
 the professor observed aloud, ' though many of the 
 Church's most brilliant sons have been monks.' 
 
 Petruccio felt sure he would never be one of the 
 Church's most brilliant sons. Nor did he wish to be a 
 monk. 
 
SAN CELESTINO 127 
 
 ' Even without being brilliant one may be a friar,' 
 he said. 
 
 His uncle did not care much for the friars, bat he 
 thought he detected a note of argument in the youth's 
 remark, and said promptly — 
 
 ' Perhaps ; but St. Francis and St. Dominic are not 
 to be reckoned as otherwise than brilliant. Had they 
 chosen they might have risen to any eminence.' 
 
 So far, at all events, Petruccio resembled them, for he 
 had no desire whatever to rise to ' eminence.' If he could 
 rise to union with God it would suffice him. 
 
 The professor of Canon Law was disappointed. Little 
 as anyone might suspect it, he also had dreams of his own, 
 and latterly he had now and then woven Petruccio 
 into them. He thought much of his good house, and of the 
 big garden behind it, of his books and of his furniture ; 
 he had bought the house and garden out of his savings 
 on first coming to Salerno, and to him they were different 
 from any other house and any other garden. He had 
 never owned any property before, and now he found that 
 one necessity of possession was to arrange to whom 
 he should hand it on, when he should himself have to 
 quit the ownership of earthly properties. 
 
 ' Come and walk in the garden,' he said, and led his 
 nephew down some marble steps out into the large piece 
 of ground where his fruit trees grew, and his vegetables ; 
 it sloped up the hill, and from the terrace at the top there 
 was a beautiful view over the city to the gulf. He had, 
 perhaps, brought the youth there on purpose. 
 ' All this will I give thee. . . .' 
 
128 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 They stood still, and the old gentleman puffed a little, 
 for the hill was rather steep, and Petruccio's young legs 
 were long and active. 
 
 ' Latterly,' said the professor, ' I have had a notion 
 that if you behaved well, and did us credit, you 
 might some day live here instead of me. One bringeth 
 nothing into this world and one can carry nothing 
 out.' 
 
 He made the observation piously, but not without 
 some obvious regret that it should be so. 
 
 * I am growing old,' he added, ' and man knoweth 
 not the day of his visitation.' 
 
 This he said more cheerfully, for after all he was only 
 fifty and had an excellent constitution. 
 
 Petruccio understood quite well both his regret and 
 his cheerfulness. What he did not understand was his 
 uncle's obvious hint that he had been thinking of leaving 
 his possessions to himself. He knew that his arrival had 
 given very little pleasure to the professor, and he did not 
 suppose that before he came his uncle had ever given a 
 thought to his existence. 
 
 ' One likes land to continue in one's own family,' 
 said the professor, with a complacent glance down the 
 garden to the house. ' And I have nobody but your 
 mother and her sons.' 
 
 ' There are twelve of them,' observed Petruccio. 
 ' Wasteful fellows, I dare say,' said his uncle sus- 
 piciously. 
 
 Petruccio laughed. 
 They have never had much to waste.' 
 
SAN CELESTINO 129 
 
 ' And that is the sort who are readiest to waste as 
 soon as they have got it.' 
 
 Petruccio might have said that his mother was the 
 reverse of wasteful, but he would not say anything that 
 might sound like a plea for his family in reference to their 
 uncle's possessions. 
 
 ' In a way I like you,' observed the old priest candidly. 
 He did not say what way, and Petruccio was at a loss to 
 guess what way it might be. 
 
 ' You are very good,' he said, almost blushing. 
 
 ' Not so bad as you suppose, I dare say.' 
 
 The professor gave something like a chuckle as he 
 said this. 
 
 In reality he was not bad at all. He was well off, 
 but he might have been rich had he not possessed a 
 conscience. He gave much to the poor, though scarcely 
 anyone suspected it, not even his stingy old housekeeper. 
 And he would take no usury on his money, believing that 
 the Church condemned it. He could, and would, set a 
 good dinner before his friends, but alone he lived frugally 
 enough. He loved to know that he had a good cellar 
 of wine, and he took a solid pleasure in his guests' praises 
 of it, a pleasure that was almost artistic. He would, 
 however, have had no pleasure at all in drinking his 
 good wine alone, and never opened a bottle for himself. 
 
 Petruccio was mistaken in supposing that he had never 
 turned his thoughts towards his niece and her sons in the 
 far-away masseria among the gorges of the Abruzzi. But 
 it was true that he had been disappointed, almost annoyed, 
 when the unearthly-visaged lad, lean and gaunt, had 
 
130 SAN CELESTINO . 
 
 turned up, rather inopportunely, just as he was about to 
 entertain his clerical friends. He was shrewd, and in a 
 way sensitive, and he had made up his mind that the 
 raw ascetic would, consciously or unconsciously, set him 
 down as a selfish, self-indulgent, perhaps lazy lover of the 
 table and of the wine-flask. And yet, partly on that 
 very account, he had been grimly pleased when his guests 
 discoursed of temporalities and vineyards. Young men 
 should not be censorious and uncharitable. 
 
 But he, too, made his mistakes, for Petruccio had been 
 quite free from censure or uncharity ; he had never 
 doubted that his uncle and his uncle's friends were all 
 that secular priests should be ; he had merely felt that he 
 could never learn to care for the things that it seemed 
 they thought one ought to care for. 
 
 It was true, however, that in a way the old professor 
 liked him. He was not a stupid old professor at all, and 
 he saw more in his niece's son than any of that niece's 
 other sons had ever seen ; he was not far from judging 
 quite justly of his character and disposition — though 
 the truth disappointed him, in some fashion, he recognised 
 the truth, or very nearly recognised it. Petruccio was not 
 for this world. He was no heathen, and did not really 
 want to alter the youth's hopeless unworldliness. All 
 the same he was disappointed. What, after all, was the 
 good of his own possessions, if no one that he had ever 
 seen was to come after him and probably waste and 
 squander them as if they had not been earned slowly and 
 laboriously ? 
 
 He sighed, and Petruccio heard the sigh. Would he 
 
SAN CELESTINO 131 
 
 have sighed just the same if he could have foreseen that the 
 nephew whom he felt it almost a duty to snub a little 
 should be the head of Christendom, should reach such an 
 ' eminence ' as he, the professor, certainly never dreamed 
 of for himself ? 
 
 ' Well,' said Petruccio's uncle, ' I will not stand in 
 your way. I will send word to your mother that it is use- 
 less keeping you here, that your bent is not to the dis- 
 tinctions of the schools. But you are not to despise 
 them. Such distinctions are the worthiest any cleric 
 can attain.' 
 
 ' I do not despise them in the least, Zio. Only they 
 are not for me. I might as well despise the Emperor's 
 crown.' 
 
 ' Ah, the Emperor ! Poor young man.' (He was not 
 ten years older than Frederick.) ' God help him.' 
 
 ' I saw him,' said Petruccio. 
 
 ' Did you ? I have never seen him. What did you 
 think of him ? ' 
 
 ' I am sorry for him,' answered Petruccio, almost 
 guiltily. 
 
 ' Sorry ! ' 
 
 ' Yes. He seems to me to be in the gall of bitterness.' 
 
 The old professor knew that his nephew was not 
 stupid. 
 
 ' Very few people, scarcely any young men, I should 
 think, would dream of pitying the Emperor.' 
 
 ' I could not help it,' said Petruccio apologetically. 
 
 They were both silent for a minute or two. And they 
 both gazed out over the gulf to where Paestum lies in the 
 
 E 2 
 
132 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 opal-green, pink haze, between the Apennines and the 
 sea. 
 
 ' So your way of it,' said the owner of the garden, 
 and of the good substantial house at the bottom of it, 
 ' is to go and live in a cave, and live upon grass.' 
 
 There was no scorn in the words, and no chiding, 
 though they might have sounded sarcastic. They 
 were spoken with a little twisted smile, and the smile was 
 rather kind and rather wistful. 
 
 ' Ubi vult spiritus spirat,' he almost whispered, 
 ' and man knoweth not whence it cometh, or whither it 
 bloweth. Opus Domini est, et mirabile in oculis nostris.' 
 
 He knew that he had tried to tempt his nephew a 
 little, but, unlike Alfeo, he was thankful to God that he had 
 failed. Petruccio, this time, did not even know that he 
 had been tempted. But he found that he loved his dry 
 old uncle a little. 
 
BOOK II 
 
 THE FOUNDER OF THE 
 CELESTINES 
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 
 When Petruecio turned his back upon the schools he was 
 twenty years old, and though he had made no friends, 
 unless Alfeo and Guito, Eaniero and Omero could be 
 called so — seeing that he was as intimate with them as 
 with anybody, not being in truth intimate with anyone 
 — he had some admirers. Of this he was not at all 
 aware ; they were quieter people than the poet and the 
 artist, much quieter than the sculptor, and more reserved 
 than the musician. They had made no overt show of 
 trying to be friends with their fellow-student of the 
 divinity school, and Petruecio never suspected that they 
 thought particularly about him. This, however, they 
 did. To them he had not appeared an ordinary person; 
 indeed, the four artists had all perceived, in their way, 
 that he was not ordinary : if he had been, none of the 
 four would have cared in the least to see anything of 
 him, and they had seen as much as they could, if that 
 much was little enough after all. 
 
 133 
 
134 SAN OELESTINO 
 
 In this book only the beginning of his acquaintance 
 has been described, but enough for our purpose, and 
 the acquaintance never grew to much, certainly not to 
 friendship. Still, such as it was, Petruccio was aware 
 of it : he was not at all aware of the interest felt in him 
 by one or two of his comrades in the school of theology. 
 They were shyer than the artists, if not so shy as Pietro 
 di Murrone himself. Their advances were hardly 
 perceptible to him, and then they drew back believing 
 that he did not encourage them. Nevertheless they 
 thought of him, and among themselves spoke of 
 him. 
 
 When they heard that he was leaving the schools they 
 remarked upon it with regret, not feeling able to remon- 
 strate with himself, on account of the slightness of their 
 acquaintance with him. 
 
 ' It is a mistake,' said Giacomo Bertelli, ' the pro- 
 fessors have never encouraged him. That is a pity.' 
 
 He it was who had said ' there is no prophet here ' 
 when the Flemish professor of theology had remarked that 
 once an ass had spoken to a prophet and ' would that he 
 would speak again.' 
 
 ' They have got the notion that Pietro di Murrone is 
 stupid,' he added, ' that is because they are stupid them- 
 selves.' 
 
 ' They do not seem to consider that sanctity is a 
 mark of vocation,' observed Bastiano Serlupi, who was a 
 year younger than Giacomo and more sarcastic. 
 
 ' His sanctity is peculiar, though it is genuine,' said 
 Lippo Cardone, who was a just person, and afraid of 
 
SAN CELESTINO 135 
 
 uncharitable judgments, ' and peculiarity of any sort 
 is always suspected by professors.' 
 
 ' That Fleming is peculiar himself,' declared Bastiano. 
 ' I have a walking-stick just like him.' 
 
 ' So fine priests are lost,' said Giacomo. 
 
 ' It is partly his fault,' he added, ' for he is pusil- 
 lanimous. He ought to know that he has a vocation in 
 spite of their discouragement.' 
 
 But Petruccio went away and had not the least idea 
 that they had been discussing him. He almost stole 
 away, and there were no leave-takings. He hardly knew 
 whither he was going, and took little note of the road, 
 being buried in his own thoughts. Perhaps he scarcely 
 knew how long he had been travelling when he brought 
 his journey to an end. 
 
 It was enough that the place was lonely and seemed 
 remote, more remote probably than it really was. He 
 paid but slight attention to surroundings, and almost 
 none to such beauties of landscape as Guito would have 
 found by instinct. 
 
 The place was barren — he saw that — and not culti- 
 vated by any farmer ; he saw no dwellings near, and had 
 seen none for some time. It lay off the road, and if he 
 stayed there one would say his only neighbours would 
 be the wolves of the mountains. But of them he had 
 no fear : it was the wolves and foxes of the world he 
 avoided. 
 
 Here he found a sort of den, under a jutting rock, that 
 made some sort of shelter against rain and sun, and this 
 
136 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 den he scooped out, painfully, for he had no tools but 
 his hands and a bit of stick. He made himself a lair, 
 more like a badger's earth than it was like a monk's cell, 
 or even a hermit's cave. He could get into it and that 
 was all ; it was too short to lie down in, too low to stand 
 up in ; indeed, the roof would have fallen in had it not 
 been of rock. He could only crouch upon his knees in it, 
 and there he knelt all night and nearly all day. 
 
 Sometimes, not every day, he would get up and steal 
 forth to beg a crust of bread, sometimes from any chance 
 wayfarer, at others from the nearest hut or village. If he 
 could meet any traveller, journeying alone, and get 
 from him his bit of bread he was best pleased : such a 
 person, he supposed, would travel on and forget all about 
 him. But often he was compelled to go to the village. 
 On Sundays he had to go there to hear Mass and confess 
 himself, and receive Holy Communion; then he would 
 generally beg a little food, and what he got would last 
 him for a day or two, for he never ate more than once in the 
 day ; money he would never take, though the contadini 
 would often press some tiny coin upon him. 
 
 From the time he left Salerno he never held a coin 
 in his hands until he died fifty-five years after. When 
 he had paid Felicia there remained a very little money 
 in his hand, and that he gave to a beggar outside the 
 cathedral, after he had made his farewell to St. Gregory 
 VII and to St. Matthew. They were the only friends he 
 had ever made in Salerno. 
 
 On Sundays he had to go to the village, and having 
 to confess himself he could not help making himself, in a 
 
SAN CELESTINO 137 
 
 fashion, known to the priest. But the priest did not seem 
 inquisitive : he neither asked whence his ragged penitent 
 came, or where he lived ; and Petruccio, no doubt, 
 supposed that the priest neither knew nor cared anything 
 about him. This, of course, was far from being the case. 
 The contadini had plenty to say about their new neigh- 
 bour : a hermit who wants to be unknown should make 
 his hermitage in the midst of a populous city. The 
 peasants talked a great deal among themselves about 
 Pietro di Murrone, though none of them knew his name, 
 and they were apt to talk about him to the priest also. 
 
 Such gossip was not unpleasant to Messer Angelo 
 and he did not severely discourage them, though he 
 would permit none of them to go and tease his penitent 
 with officious visits. He was himself a humble, kindly 
 man, without a grain of envy for the sanctity of the 
 young hermit. He did not in the least suspect that he 
 was half a saint himself. Yet he lived as poorly as any 
 monk, never desiring anything but poverty, and devoted 
 himself to his poor, and their interests, just as whole- 
 heartedly as any friar. His only companion was Our 
 Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, for none of his rough 
 contadini were capable of making any real companion 
 for him. Yet he was never lonely, and never told himself 
 that his energies were buried, and his talents thrown 
 away. He had been a clever lad and had distinguished 
 himself, modestly, in the schools ; but he had never 
 pushed himself and no one had ever dreamed of pushing 
 him. At thirty years old he had become parocco of this 
 forgotten hamlet hidden among the hills ; here he would 
 
138 SAN CBLBSTINO 
 
 live contentedly, labouring hard in bis tiny, arid plot of 
 tbe great vineyard, and here be would more than con- 
 tentedly die, when the pearly gates should open to let 
 him in to see his Friend. Of him, too, his people were 
 proud, less proud than they were now becoming of their 
 hermit, though with a pride more full of unconscious 
 affection. They were used to him, that was all, whereas 
 the saint in the underground den was a novelty. Messer 
 Angelo was not a bit jealous of their keener interest in 
 Petruccio ; he only tried to make them draw lessons of 
 greater unworldliness from the lif e of the youthful hermit. 
 He knew very well that, poverty-stricken as they all 
 were, some of them could be just as worldly as if they 
 were princes. 
 
 Messer Angelo only made one mistake, if it were a 
 mistake. He felt sure that Petruccio should be a priest. 
 It did not seem to him that the hermit's sanctity was 
 wasted : he was too good a Catholic, and too intelligent 
 a man. But he longed to see such sanctity appropriated, 
 as it were, by the Church ; and surely the best way 
 would be to adorn the priesthood with it. 
 
 Every priest, he thought, who came within the range 
 of such a priest's influence and example, must become 
 a better one ; he did not assure himself that he had 
 himself become better since this marvellous penitent 
 had come to him, but he did humbly acknowledge an 
 indebtedness to him. Fire kindles fire, and he felt 
 himself warmed. He desired higher things since he had 
 been brought close to the heights of Petruccio's humility 
 and unworldliness and clear vision of God. 
 
SAN CELESTINO 139 
 
 ' There are always clouds,' he told himself, ' and this 
 lad rolls them away. Absolute purity teaches one to 
 recognise one's own spots.' 
 
 It no more occurred to him to pity Petruccio than it 
 occurred to him to envy him. 
 
 Sometimes, on a bitter night of winter, as he laid 
 himself in his own cold bed, he would think of the frozen 
 lad crouching in his damp hole of the earth, far up on 
 the mountain side ; he would listen to the scolding wind, 
 rattling the loose shingles of his own wretched roof, and 
 remember how the sleet in its teeth must drench down 
 into that inhuman den ; but he knew of a light brighter 
 than that of any lamp, of a fire warmer than that of any 
 hearth, and he never thought of Petruccio as cold and in 
 darkness. ' Domine, lux tua illuminatio nostra,' he 
 would whisper, ' ignis cordis tui ignis vitae nostrae.' 
 He never thought of Petruccio as hungry when he sat 
 down, weary after long tramping among his scattered 
 peasants of the mountains, to his own warm if frugal food. 
 
 ' Non in solo pane vivit homo,' he remembered ; 
 nevertheless he was not content that Petruccio should 
 be anything less than a priest. 
 
CHAPTEE II 
 
 For three years Messer Angelo bore his discontent, and 
 then it seemed that the time had come when he ought to 
 bear it no longer. 
 
 Certain strangers came to him, one of them himself 
 a priest, Messer Giacomo Bertelli, one a deacon called 
 Bastiano Serlupi, and the third a sub-deacon by name 
 Lippo Cardone. They had all, it seemed, known his 
 neighbour and penitent, and had all now heard creeping 
 whispers of his sanctity. 
 
 ' He was always a saint,' declared Messer Giacomo. 
 ' Some people are born saints : they can't help 
 themselves,' said Bastiano. 
 
 Messer Angelo shook his head mildly. 
 ' We are born in original sin,' he remarked, ' outcasts 
 of grace.' 
 
 ' Well, Pietro di Murrone was only disinherited till his 
 baptism,' insisted Bastiano. ' He came of age at the 
 font.' 
 
 Messer Angelo was not used to this manner of talking, 
 but he was ready enough to agree that Pietro di Murrone 
 was a saint now. Deacons, he remarked, are apt to be 
 young, and young persons have an exaggerated fashion 
 of expressing themselves. Mere exaggeration of expres- 
 
 140 
 
SAN CELESTINO 141 
 
 sion is often as truthful as under statement. That also 
 he remembered. 
 
 ' Of course he ought to be a priest,' said Messer 
 Giacomo. 
 
 ' In remaining a lajnnan he defrauds the Church,' 
 suggested Lippo, who was quite ready to endow the 
 priesthood with all that he had of personal sanctity to 
 offer it. 
 
 Messer Angelo was almost of the opinion that Lippo 
 Cardone had just expressed. 
 
 ' The stupid professors down there put it into his head 
 that he had no vocation,' said Bastiano, whose own 
 ordination had been delayed a turn because he had 
 failed in an examination. ' The only vocation they can 
 understand is to invent riddles to fit answers they have 
 devised beforehand.' 
 
 Messer Angelo listened courteously to what each of 
 his visitors had to say, and understood each of them as 
 well as so charitable a person would permit himself to 
 understand anybody who had a defect or so. The young 
 priest, he could see, was intelligent and sincere; indeed, 
 as much could be said for all three, but Messer Giacomo 
 somehow permitted the impression that he was the most 
 learned. Messer Angelo did not, even to himself, add 
 that the lately ordained priest was also a little self- 
 opinionated. Bastiano was hearty, and rather clever : 
 Lippo Cardone was serious and a person of reflexion. 
 Messer Angelo did not tell himself that the deacon 
 was a little pert, and the sub-deacon inclined to be 
 sententious. 
 
142 SAN CBLESTINO 
 
 He sympathised with all three in the object of their 
 visit, which was to move him to induce Petruccio to become 
 a priest, and he admired them for their disinterestedness 
 in taking so much trouble, on account of what seemed 
 to them a point of conscience. 
 
 Messer Angelo bade them wait till morning. This was 
 Saturday ; on the morrow his penitent would certainly 
 come to the church. Then he undertook to see that they 
 should all three have an opportunity of uniting their 
 persuasions with his own. Poor Petruccio had, of course, 
 no suspicions of what was in store for him ; he went to 
 the village as usual, and as usual confessed himself, 
 heard Mass, and went to Holy Communion. 
 
 After Mass they caught him. 
 
 Messer Angelo, not without some compunction and 
 sensation of treachery, came to him in the church, while 
 he was still making his thanksgiving, and said that he 
 wished to speak to him in his house. Petruccio, always 
 docile, did as he was bidden, and in the priest's bare 
 parlour found his three former fellow-students. He 
 was utterly ragged, and his hair hung in long, unkempt 
 locks about his neck, his feet were bare, and his appear- 
 ance was so meagre and gaunt that the three young men 
 were genuinely startled. But Petruccio never gave a 
 thought to his own appearance, and, though he was 
 taken aback to find three visitors, his dark face lightened 
 with a smile of pleasant recognition. But for that smile 
 they would have been altogether afraid of him ; as it 
 was they did not feel easy, and because their task, now 
 they were face to face with it, suddenly appeared much 
 
SAN CELESTINO 143 
 
 harder than it had seemed in the distance, they put on all 
 the more energy and obstinacy. 
 
 They smiled too, but not so naturally as Petruccio. 
 Without quite intending it they treated him at once as a 
 sort of culprit, who was to be held as on his defence. And 
 they showed plainly that no defence of his would be 
 admitted. Messer Angelo felt almost afraid of them 
 himself, for he was not a stern person, and these young 
 men were evidently prepared to be stern if necessary. 
 He could not help pitying Petruccio, though he wanted 
 them to get the upper hand of him. 
 
 ' I am now a priest,' said Messer Giacomo, after a 
 little pause during which Petruccio only looked at them 
 patiently. He could not go straight away, but he would 
 have liked to return there and then to his cell in the earth. 
 
 Petruccio knelt and kissed the young priest's hands 
 and asked his blessing. 
 
 ' May God bless you, my friend. As He will if you 
 endeavour to do what He requires of you,' said Messer 
 Giacomo with considerable solemnity, assuming an air 
 of authority that he found easier now his former fellow- 
 student was on his knees before him. Petruccio felt 
 vaguely uneasy. When people talk to us of doing what 
 God requires of us, they generally consider that that 
 is not what we are doing at present. 
 
 But the hermit of three-and-twenty was very meek, 
 and lacked the fine obstinacy of his friends. He was 
 going to be almost helpless in their hands, especially 
 when Messer Angelo, whom he trusted and reverenced, 
 took their part against him. 
 
144 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 " |J_He knelt on, and Giacomo did not bid him rise, though 
 Messer Angelo thought he should immediately have 
 done so. 
 
 Messer Giacomo's manner was not caressing, no more 
 caressing than that of the professor of Canon Law ; it 
 was even drier, and not even so human. Messer Giacomo 
 had not come all this way to caress an old friend, nor 
 was his errand a matter of human business. He was 
 terribly priestly, having been a priest about six weeks, 
 and still lacking faculties to hear confessions. 
 
 He opened out firmly, almost severely, on Petruccio, 
 and told him plainly that he was shirking the call of God, 
 turning away from the labour of the vineyard to indulge 
 a private taste. He waxed more eloquent at the sound 
 of his own well-chosen words, weighted with quotation 
 and enriched with metaphor. He found it easier to say 
 the things he had in mind than he had feared he might 
 find it. For anyone could see that the kneeling hermit 
 was humble and gentle, meek and altogether free from 
 self-will or obstinacy. 
 
 Bastiano already rather pitied Petruccio, and did not 
 listen as closely to Giacomo's arguments as that able 
 young man would have thought they deserved. Lippo 
 did not attend very sedulously either, for he was impatient 
 for his own turn, and was preparing what he had to say. 
 It rather annoyed him that Giacomo ' forestalled him 
 and took, as it were, several points out of his mouth. It 
 was not quite fair that the first speaker should say all 
 there was to be said. 
 
 But Messer Angelo listened carefully, and not being 
 
SAN CELESTINO 145 
 
 at all eager to shine himself, was much impressed by the 
 young priest's acumen and brilliancy. 
 
 Messer Giacomo for his own part was fully impressed 
 by the first-rate manner in which he had stated a case 
 which he fancied he had made pretty well unanswerable. 
 
 If Petruccio was not impressed in the same way he 
 was overborne and dazed, almost stunned. Bastiano, if 
 he had not thoroughly hated the idea of that damp 
 cell under the ground, and sincerely desired that Petruc- 
 cio's great light should not be smothered under a bushel, 
 would have had it in his heart to have veered round 
 and taken up his brief against Giacomo. 
 
 Lippo had his say at last, and said it at greater length 
 than Giacomo could perceive to be now necessary. 
 Such points as he had not himself made seemed to him 
 very immaterial. 
 
 Bastiano was not nearly so long-winded, nor nearly 
 so ponderous as the sub- deacon, but he warmed to his 
 work, and did not spare Petruccio now that he had him 
 in his own hands. 
 
 Finally Messer Angelo gave judgment, mildly and 
 sweetly, with a diffidence that neither Giacomo or Lippo 
 thought half sufficiently assured or positive, but his 
 judgment was against Petruccio, that is, it was all on 
 the side of the other three. And it had more weight with 
 him than all their vehemence. 
 
 Trembling, and pale; with scarcely restrained tears, 
 Petruccio meekly submitted. It was the forestalling and 
 premonition of a yielding, far more agonised, that was to 
 be extorted from him more than fifty years later. 
 
OHAPTEE III 
 
 It was in Eome that Pietro di Murrone received ordina- 
 tion to the priesthood ; why that place was chosen 
 does not appear, or whether he was there also ordained 
 to the lower orders. 
 
 In approaching the Eternal City he felt scarcely any 
 of that elevation of spirit which has affected so many 
 devout pilgrims. He knew that it was the seat of God's 
 earthly vicegerent, the metropolis of faith, the capital 
 of the universal kingdom of the Church. He reminded 
 himself of this, and of the priceless relics it contains ; of 
 the tomb of the Apostolic princes, St. Peter and St. Paul ; 
 of the tombs of so many other martyrs, popes, and saints. 
 
 But in spite of all these memories, he drew near 
 the place with a sinking dread and reluctance, as if 
 by some instinct of premonition he felt himself being 
 dragged to the cross on which at last he was to be crucified. 
 
 Many a youthful cleric, and many an earnest one, 
 may have seen Eome for the first time with an involuntary 
 recollection that for him, too, the future might hold 
 concealed the highest greatness. The simplest tonsured 
 youth may live to be Pope, and the memory of the 
 possibility may be rather a dream than an ambition. 
 Even if an ambition it need not be selfish or ignoble. 
 
 146 
 
SAN CELESTINO 147 
 
 Certainly no ambitious fancy cast a halo of romantic 
 hope over the great city as Petruccio first saw its ancient 
 walls. He felt safe enough from any clangers of greatness : 
 for him no prelate's purple, no cardinal's scarlet hat, 
 beckoned on to distinction. Of such things he never 
 dreamed, even with aversion. Nor did those who 
 accompanied him, more as guards than as comrades, 
 dream them for him. If they had fancies of their own, 
 they had none for him. He had nothing to recommend 
 him. He came of obscure people, and was wholly without 
 influence ; he was not merely poor but penniless ; he 
 lacked learning, knowledge of the world and of men ; 
 he had not the slightest training or experience ; he had, 
 indeed, sanctity, but it was of so rare a type, so peculiar, 
 so unpopular, almost repellent in its character, that it 
 only served to isolate him, and was unlikely to create 
 either admiration or sympathy. 
 
 He and his companions entered Rome by the Appian 
 Way and the Porta San Sebastiano. Along the Appian 
 Way they had been travelling ever since leaving Capua, 
 and now as they drew near Eome it was lined by the tombs 
 of famous heathens, some of which Messer Giacomo was 
 learned enough to point out. Petruccio glanced at them 
 indifferently. He knew little of history, and did not 
 care much for it. He had not the least idea that he 
 himself was to be enshrined in history as one of its most 
 tragic and pathetic figures. His mighty libeller, Dante, 
 was not born, and would not appear on the earth for 
 another twenty years. 
 
 Scipio was nothing to him, and the tomb of the Scipios 
 
 l2 
 
148 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 interested him no more than that of Caecilia Metella 
 a few miles back. The Oaetani Castle opposite the 
 latter had attracted a sort of wondering attention 
 from him. Popes had come of that illustrious, 
 arrogant house ; for all he knew, popes had been 
 born there, or had lived there as children with their 
 parents. 
 
 But the little meagre church of Domine Quo Vadis was 
 different. 
 
 ' Here,' the learned Messer Giacomo informed him, 
 ' St. Peter met Our Lord. Nero had begun to persecute 
 the Christians, hoping to throw on them the odium of 
 having fired the city ; for the people were outrageous 
 because of his having fiddled and sung while it was 
 burning. It was certain that on the Pope the Emperor's 
 malice would fall heaviest, and the Christians entreated 
 Peter to fly for a while from Rome. At last he yielded, 
 and he had got thus far when he met another wayworn 
 traveller, hurrying wearily towards the city. He had 
 often seen Him before, and knew His figure and His 
 face ; he had heard Him teach, and seen Him die, 
 seen Him risen from death, seen Him rise into the 
 living air as He took His homeward way to heaven. 
 " Domine, quo vadis ? " he stammered. And Christ 
 showed him His scarred hands and feet. " To Home," 
 He answered, " to be crucified again." And so He 
 vanished, but His footprints showed still in the hard 
 pavement, as though it had been of moist sand. Then 
 Peter turned back to Rome and was crucified himself.' 
 
 Petruccio hardly heard him. He heard higher voices : 
 
SAN CELESTINO 149 
 
 his namesake's, and that other to which all his life long 
 he had been listening. 
 
 Petruccio knelt where Peter had knelt, not daring 
 to kneel where Christ had stood. He did not even kiss 
 the place : what were his lips that they should press 
 the spot where God's feet had been ? Then he rose 
 and went on to Eome, which was to crucify him too, 
 and not with mere wood, though not yet. At this time 
 Petruccio never saw the Pope : he was too obscure and 
 too humble to crave any audience, and his reverence 
 was paid to the many tombs of popes who were long 
 dead. 
 
 His ordination was not an affair of any public con- 
 sequence, and he was ordained among many others, 
 none of whom were so absolutely insignificant as himself. 
 Their parents stood near, and they had congratulations 
 to receive, little family feasts afterwards to share in. 
 His three friends commended him, because he had been 
 obedient, but, now their point was gained, it may not 
 have seemed, even to them, a matter of much con- 
 sequence. He had listened to reason, that was all. No 
 doubt they ' assisted ' at his first Mass, but it is not 
 likely that they took much further interest in him. 
 They had their own affairs to attend to. So they 
 presently melted away, and the forlorn, bewildered 
 hermit was left to himself in the heartless loneliness of a 
 turbulent, scolding capital, occupied with matters of 
 world-wide importance. Like the pelican in the wilder- 
 ness, like the sparrow alone on the housetop, was he 
 solitary. Oh, if it had been a wilderness, how much 
 
150 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 more contented would he have been ! And back to 
 the real wilderness he fled at last, not one human heart 
 in Rome grieving for his going, not one human eye missing 
 him. That was in 1246, just half a century before his 
 tardy death. No one had pitied him in Rome, and no 
 one bade God speed him upon his long and hard journey 
 back homeward, into the far-off, intricate net of gorges 
 that make up the Abruzzi. 
 
 ' In exitu Israel de Egypto,' he sang to himself, as 
 he left the city behind, and came out on to the weird 
 solitude of the campagna. Its grey emptiness welcomed 
 him, its unearthly silence cheered him, its waste and 
 starving poverty enriched him ; he wanted to hear no 
 voice but One, he shrank from every society but that of 
 God, who alone bore with him ; he loathed every posses- 
 sion but that of Him who possesses all things. 
 
 Here and there a shepherd, almost as haggard and 
 silent as himself, would give him a bit of hard bread, 
 and now and then, at a peasant's dark hut, he would 
 be given a corner where he might sleep at night, on a 
 sheepskin, or on the bare mud floor. But even to them 
 he seemed a fugitive, flying they knew not from what. 
 
CHAPTEE IV 
 
 At last, after weeks of slow but not, to him, wholly tedious 
 journeying afoot, he came to the rocky heights called 
 now Monte Murrone, or Moroni, after himself, then as 
 nameless as they were desolate and empty. 
 
 Here was a hanging bit of forest, and here he found, 
 hidden among the windy trees, a horrible cave. He had 
 come home. For five years it was his home, all the home 
 on earth he needed or cared for. Such happiness as we 
 mostly strive after he never thought of ; nevertheless he 
 was happy here, happy but cruelly tired, and stricken 
 continually. Shelter the wretched cave scarcely afforded, 
 for it lay open to the howling mountain breeze, so that, 
 at his Mass, the two candles of coarsest brown beeswax 
 would often gutter and run down ; the rain would enter, 
 in the wind's mouth, and be his bedfellow, who had no 
 bed but the naked rock ; yes, and the snow, in midwinter, 
 would push in and be his blanket. 
 
 None of these things tried his soul, and his body was 
 but a harshly treated step-brother. The colder blew 
 the blast the warmer glowed his sense of love and com- 
 panionship. 
 
 ' The foxes have holes — so have I,' he would think, 
 ' the Son of Man had not where to lay His head.' 
 
 151 
 
152 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 It was not that. Starving as he often was, fasting, as 
 though all the year were a Lent, as he always was, it was 
 not that : he had meat to eat that the world knows not of. 
 
 But there came agonies of the soul, too, uncertainties 
 that dazed him for hours and days together ; and tempta- 
 tions that grew out of his incessant victories over tempta- 
 tion. Sometimes every argument of his three friends 
 would rise up in his memory loudly, and assume a power 
 they had not seemed to possess when they had been 
 urged by them to his face, that he was a coward flying 
 from the Church's conflict with the world ; a mere idler 
 afraid to bear the outward burden of the day and of the 
 heats ; a self-indulgent shirker, lying at ease in his own 
 way of perfection, instead of girding on a priest's armour 
 to toil and fight like the rest. Had Christ been a hermit ? 
 Had he not lived among men, and taught them by His 
 word and by His life ? Had He not condescended to the 
 common life of men, so that they blasphemed Him as a 
 gluttonous man and a wine-bibber ? Had He not sat at 
 the tables of the rich, and joined in the feasting of village 
 marriages ? 
 
 For hours and days together these accusations would 
 beat themselves against his brain, as the sun beat against 
 his rock at summer noon, and the shrieking winds beat 
 at winter night. Often his brain itself seemed wracked 
 with storm, till it reeled to and fro, and he was at his wits' 
 end. Then at last he could remember that Christ, who had 
 scorned the accusation that He was Himself a wine-swiller, 
 and a lover of feasts, had scorned equally the accusation 
 of his forerunner of the desert, of whom the same liars 
 
SAN CELESTINO 153 
 
 declared that he had a devil. They said he had a devil ; 
 Christ said, ' Of them that are born of women there hath 
 not risen a greater than John the Baptist.' 
 
 So the temptation would swing round and attack 
 him in a fresh place. 
 
 He would tell himself that his three friends were like 
 the three who beset holy Job : smooth and plausible, but 
 sons of Belial after all, dressing up worldly maxims in pious 
 phrases, incapable of seeing higher than their own heads, 
 accusers, like him who walked to and fro in the earth, the 
 ruined angel. And, seeing that Messer Giacomo and 
 Bastiano, and Lippo the sub-deacon, were as Eliphaz the 
 Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naama- 
 thite, swiftly came the conclusion that he was himself the 
 Job of the comparison : the holy Job whose part God 
 Himself took against the carping reproaches of the unfit, 
 incapable, insincere critics. 
 
 If he were misappreciated and miscalled, were not all 
 the saints misunderstood and misinterpreted ? And then 
 came the soft, caressing flattery of suggestion that it was 
 even so, and that he was thus attacked because he also 
 was a saint. This trial was the most intolerable. 
 
 He knew himself for the least of men, and he knew 
 that he so knew himself ; and yet there would creep 
 stealthily in this monstrous whisper that he was a saint, 
 one of God's intimates, one who had heard God talking 
 as a man talks with his friend, one who has overheard 
 Divine secrets which it is not given to man to utter. And 
 he had heard them. He saw the world naked, and truth 
 undisguised. The trappings, in which pomp and pride 
 
154 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 dress themselves, had been stripped off from them, and 
 he had been given to recognise those ugly idols as no gods ; 
 he had been able to discern the difference between the 
 unchanging voice of eternal truth, and the plausible, 
 adroit maxims that masquerade as truth expressed in 
 contemporary language, so that the modern ear may 
 comprehend it, and the modern taste savour it. 
 
 Was not his own way of Christianity Christ's way of 
 it, and his three friends' formulation of it a practical 
 abdication of its sovereign simplicity and austerity ? 
 
 Were they not hard at work reconciling God and Mam- 
 mon, gathering and scattering, doing all the impossibles 
 that Christ had forewarned His followers against ? 
 
 Was not their cry ' Peace,' and Christ's ' A sword ' ? 
 With all their theology were they not pagan ? Had they 
 not invented their own present-day Christianity, and was 
 it not wholly alien from Christ's ? Christ possessed 
 nothing ; and did not they want to possess as much as they 
 could ? What did Christ care for books — He who had 
 written only once, and then upon the dust for the next 
 breeze to scatter, what no man had ever read ? Whereas 
 books and the piling up of books was the glory of these 
 foolish-wise. 
 
 ' My Kingdom is not of this world,' He had declared 
 inexorably ; whereas Messer Giacomo and his two 
 adjutants were, above all, busied about the consolidation 
 of a kingdom that should be above all patent to the 
 world, and master it, yet be like it, and compounded 
 of elements that were such as its own. All this he 
 would hear himself pleading in his own favour, and 
 
SAN CELESTINO 155 
 
 in their condemnation ; and through it all would run the 
 subtle whisper that he was wiser, and better, and more 
 Christlike than they. 
 
 That temptation to feel himself a saint was the most 
 hateful, the most cruel of all. How could he be deaf to it ? 
 How could he stifle it down with the most passionate, 
 most piteous contradiction ? 
 
 ' A saint ! ' he would wail. ' Nay, the lowest and 
 most abject of sinners. A castaway unless God spare 
 me, and hold me in arms against myself.' He would, 
 with weary iteration, declare that it was so, and memory 
 would coolly contradict, and bid him not lie, even under 
 pretence of humility. 
 
 No one ever had a clearer or more just memory. His life 
 lay open to him as a plain book, with every fact recorded, 
 and nothing extenuated. What had he done amiss ? 
 
 If it were some one else's life, and he the judge of it, 
 must he not pronounce it blameless ? Why should he lie 
 humbly about it, because it was his own ? 
 
 A calm, relentless voice would bid him search his own 
 life, and see if he could find there any impurity, any 
 cruelty, any sordid self-seeking, any disobedience. He 
 had never once taken, or desired anything of any other 
 human being's — not their goods or their endowments, or 
 their advantages. Little as he had ever possessed, it 
 had more than sufficed him : he had only longed to cast 
 away that little. Never once had he sighed for pleasures 
 or for pleasure. He had never even desired to be praised, 
 much less courted praise at expense of any competitor. 
 Not once in his life had he been spiteful, or envious. He 
 
156 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 had belittled no one, felt no grudge against anyone ; 
 despised no one. In no living human being had he told 
 himself that he beheld an inferior. The very beasts he had 
 admired as superior, the very inanimate trees and hills, 
 in that they did, in their appointed place, that which 
 God had set them there to do. To the beasts, and the 
 soulless rocks, he might not call himself inferior in that 
 he was made in God's image, and had been given a human 
 soul like Christ's own. But he took humbly their example 
 of fulfilment. Could he help remembering that millions of 
 men were lustful and base, cheats and thieves, and malig- 
 nant, sodden with self, lower than the brutes in their 
 lives, much more cruel, imcomparably harder of heart ? 
 
 What real sense or meaning was there in calling him- 
 self the most abject of men ? In truth he had never 
 been abject, and what truth was there in crying out that 
 he was basest of all ? 
 
 Might he not have lived as the rest ! Ay, and died a 
 good death too ; as countless numbers did, so his charity 
 bade him believe, in spite of it all. Was not his body 
 made like theirs, liable to the same desires, capable of the 
 same delights ? 
 
 Softness, and sweetness ; delicate tastes and thrilling 
 pleasures — could he have learned no taste for them ? 
 Nay, was any learning needed, had not Nature taught it 
 all ? Was his tongue obtuse to pleasant flavours, his 
 ear dull to lovely sounds, his eye blind to fair images, 
 his body numb to exquisite sensations ? The same God 
 who had made Alfeo's ears had made his ; eyes like 
 Eaniero's looked out upon the world of beauty from his 
 
SAN CELESTINO 157 
 
 brow ; what had held him back ? Pear ? No ; he 
 knew well that he was not a coward, nor distrustful 
 of infinite mercy and divine patience. He did not for one 
 instant believe that Guito and Omero, Alfeo and Raniero, 
 were doomed to damnation because the light of life 
 danced in their eyes, and the pleasant zephyr of time's 
 noonday wooed their youth. 
 
 They would, he stedfastly and frankly believed, be 
 saved, by God's generosity and Christ's infinite merit. 
 Why not he, if he had been as they ? What was the 
 difference between himself and them ? Divine grace ! 
 
 They were venturing all without grace : he was living 
 wholly in it. They were gambling on God's limitless, 
 princely generosity : was not he higher ? Even Divine 
 Justice could scarcely condemn him. 
 
 This was the subtlest, the most intolerable temptation. 
 Reason herself bore a hand in it ; common-sense worked 
 in it. Fairness, equity, flung it against him. For reason 
 applies to ourselves as to others : common-sense is not 
 for everyone except oneself ; it must be a sheer affecta- 
 tion to allow every advantage of fairness and equity and 
 candour to all the world and deny that we ourselves 
 are concerned in them. 
 
 Surely, then, it must all come to this, that he was a 
 saint : one who desired to give, and would not be content 
 with mere greedy taking ; one who aimed, not at selfish, 
 indolent salvation, but at the glory of God. 
 
 He was not puzzle-headed, and the ruthless argument 
 urged itself irresistibly. If the others were good enough, 
 he must be better than mere necessity called for. 
 
CHAPTEK V 
 
 While it lasted it was intolerable. But it did not last 
 for ever. Suddenly the temptation would fall silent, as if 
 it had forgotten him. And then came that which made his 
 life, after all, blissful. It seemed like God Himself, 
 as if God had come and the abashed spirits of evil had 
 withdrawn shamefaced. 
 
 There came a happiness like a child's, who knows no 
 past and fears no future, but plays, with unquestioning 
 content, in the presence of his smiling father. 
 
 Petruccio then scarcely even felt ashamed of the 
 temptation that was over : it left no sting and no scar. 
 He could hardly remember it. The wind growled and 
 expostulated, the rain wept, the cold bit sharply ; but 
 Petruccio believed none of them. There was nothing 
 to moan about, no matter for tears, the heart within 
 him was a hearth where God sat at home with him, 
 warmly. 
 
 The sufferings of the time that had been so present 
 were not worthy to be compared with the glory that was 
 revealed in him. The very world beneath bis feet, the 
 world whereof so infinitesimal a part touched even his 
 feet, became suddenly sacred, one shrine of God, for God 
 moved in it, as of old in the garden. His hand held it, 
 
 158 
 
SAN CELESTINO 159 
 
 as the king's holds the golden orb, and it smelt of the 
 hand of God, fragrant and holy. And his cave, narrow 
 and low, dank and cheerless, lighted up with warmth and 
 sweetness : he was not alone there. Is the best home most 
 sumptuous ? Is it costly plenishing or love that makes 
 the home ? And this eagle-nest of his, hung above the 
 gorge, among the clouds and winds, was suddenly changed 
 into a home of exquisite love and intimacy. He felt the 
 presence of his Friend, the neighbourhood of his Father ; 
 sometimes he had to bend down and hide his face on the 
 stony floor lest he should see the face that even Moses, on 
 the mountain, durst not for reverence stedfastly behold. 
 With his human eyes he did not wish to see. He desired 
 only to feel, to know, to experience the actual presence 
 of God : by no sense, but by the higher faculty of appre- 
 ciation. It was not with his ears that he heard, and yet 
 he did hear consolation, encouragement, and kind, 
 unflattering, fatherlike commendation. 
 
 ' Thou canst never please every man : let it suffice 
 thee to satisfy Me. Tease not thyself with the blame of 
 men.' 
 
 The gentle, omnipotent Voice bade him be at peace, see- 
 ing that by It he was not condemned. All men, it told him, 
 need not to be alike : even the best among men are suffered 
 to differ, as the stars have not each the same glory. To 
 some, of the Spirit, is given the gift of tongues, to some 
 the gift of prophesy by the same Spirit. It is the same 
 God that worketh all in all. Every man need not be a 
 teacher, nor every messenger an Apostle ; some messengers 
 have not far to go — on a little errand ; some are called 
 
160 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 one way, some sent in another. The task of some is 
 large and visible, of others tiny and out of sight. Joshua 
 must fight, it was enough that Moses, on the hill above 
 the battle, should lift up his arms and pray. There is the 
 perfect law of liberty. 
 
 He felt himself now tortured by no accusation of 
 sanctity, but had the peace of a happy child whose 
 father smiles on him for having done his best. There are 
 children who must needs go forth and work, sons whose 
 duty it is to sally roughly out and fight, but there is a 
 child as dear, whose business it is to stay at home and 
 love. 
 
 From God he never heard one reproach of sloth ; 
 suflicit tibi gratia mea, came the gentle whisper of encour- 
 agement. ' Be content,' the inward voice said ; ' so 
 long as I ask nothing that thou hast left undone.' 
 
 And then would come the old reminder, ' I will not 
 suffer thee to be tempted above that which thou canst 
 bear.' 
 
 Of the temptations of these rare saints the world 
 has heard much, always misunderstanding. To the 
 bestial, filthy world temptation means for ever one thing, 
 the thing with which it is most familiar ; and the dirty 
 world smirks and ogles over the imagined tale of the 
 temptations. The sin it lives with is about the only 
 name of sin it knows. And it likes to think that on the 
 brink of such dungheaps the saints stumbled and groped. 
 In reality God is God, and He will not suffer His holy 
 ones to taste corruption. And Satan is Satan, not a 
 sodden, sensual fool : what a fool he would be to tempt the 
 
SAN CELESTINO 161 
 
 saints as these flesh-bound sons of his imagine ! An 
 archangel, ruined and perverted by pride, does not fool 
 himself by urging on a saint sins he never himself com- 
 mitted. His huge, poisoned intellect knows better than 
 to lay out before spiritual eyes traps that his own spiritual 
 nature despises, as he sets them for the carnal. 
 
 It is not possible to describe truly the real temptations 
 of the saints, because we who try are not saintly ; nor 
 to make intelligible their intervals of reward, side-gleams 
 of heaven, because we who would do it cannot ourselves 
 comprehend the peace of God that passeth understanding. 
 
 So the anguish of Petruccio, and his sudden revulsions 
 of bliss, must remain untold until another saint shall tell 
 of them. And that is not the saints' business. Theirs 
 it is to keep the secret of the King. 
 
CHAPTEE VI 
 
 On one wild night of winter God had been with him, and 
 Petruccio sat warm in his freezing den among the groaning, 
 naked trees. He came to the gaping mouth of his cave 
 and stood on the edge of the rock that fell sheer down 
 into the black valley. It was a night of clear darkness, 
 not cloudy, and the moon flung a desolate, cold light 
 down upon the jags of white rock. The wind came dry 
 and bitter cold, tearing out of the north with iron on its 
 teeth. The trees ground their bare arms together 
 noisily, and the leaves they had shed long ago whirled 
 about like squandered, poor coins that had bought 
 nothing. Far below lay Solmona, and Petruccio could 
 see its lights glimmering, not warm, but suggesting homes 
 and comfort. 
 
 Suddenly the temptation flew at him, like a black 
 mastiff at a man's throat in the darkness. 
 
 Why not for him too ? 
 
 Every light meant a home, a hearth, a family. He 
 alone shivered, on the topmost crag of rock, outcast from 
 humanity. They were good, frugal folk those peasants 
 down yonder : clean-living, hard-working, unspotted 
 by the world and wealth, bound together in the most 
 human, most simple bonds of mutual kinship. 
 
 162 
 
SAN CELESTINO 163 
 
 The poorest hut below, hundreds of feet beneath him, 
 ■was warmed by the fire of human charity. Husband 
 and wife, child and father, were all knit together in the 
 holy bond of family, as Jesus, Mary, and Joseph had 
 been at Nazareth. What room had they for selfishness 
 in the narrowness of their lives, so narrow and yet so 
 crowded ? Was there a father of them, or a mother, who 
 did not live in the hope of their children's life after them, 
 laying aside unconsciously all personal desire ? 
 
 He remembered, the winter after he went to Salerno, 
 how once this cry of home had suddenly made itself heard 
 in his loneliness. That day a chill fog was driven in 
 from the gulf, and the mountains behind the city were 
 cloaked in snow ; the sea-breeze, sluggish and biting, 
 filled the streets with mist. It was late afternoon, and 
 he was walking home from the schools, back to his bare 
 and friendless garret. Passing by a poorhouse on the 
 Marina he saw a fisherman enter, just as he went by ; 
 as the door opened to admit him, Petruccio saw in — a 
 common room, scantly furnished, but warm with the 
 light of glowing logs ; he saw the grandam spinning by 
 the hearth, the children run to greet their father, his 
 wife look up smiling from her frugal cooking. It had 
 given him a gasp of home-sickness, and now the same 
 clutch of home-sickness gripped him at the throat and 
 at the heart. 
 
 ' To what purpose is this waste ? ' 
 
 The valley lay beneath him, between the hills, black 
 like a deep well, and at the bottom gleamed the home- 
 lights, like stars borrowed from heaven, that shine up out 
 
 w2 
 
164 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 t 
 
 of a dark water. Every light meant a home, and in 
 every home the father of the family was breeding souls 
 for heaven as well as bodies for the rough struggle of the 
 work-a-day world. Among God's ancient chosen people 
 barrenness had been esteemed a reproach, childlessness 
 a husband's disgrace — because every child was a new 
 member of the nation God had chosen, a possible saint, or 
 a saint's forerunner and ancestor. 
 
 But he was homeless : he had set his own veto on 
 any soul that might have sprung from him : his spiritual 
 inheritance was higher and greater than the Hebrew's, 
 as the church that God had made Catholic was 
 greater than the church that Moses had made only 
 national ; but he was wilfully defrauding of their birth- 
 right whole generations, that might have owed their 
 spiritual as well as their bodily existence to him. 
 
 God had thought it not beneath His Majesty to bid 
 man increase and multiply that he might replenish the 
 earth ; and how much better worth while to make 
 citizens of the heavenly city. But he was a priest : 
 that die was cast. Only — might it not all have been a 
 mistake ? Had he not been over-persuaded to become 
 a priest, wholly against his will ? Had he perhaps dared 
 to become a priest without vocation, not at God's call, 
 but at the officious bidding of mistaken men ? 
 
 If so he was an intruder, standing profanely on holy 
 ground where he had no business. He went back into his 
 cave, and found it empty, though God had seemed to be 
 there with him an hour ago. Was it even empty ? Might 
 not its thick obscurity hold^spirits worsesthan his^own ? 
 
SAN CELBSTINO 165 
 
 The wind screamed, with hateful laughter, outside, 
 and the gnashing of the dry branches was like a cackling 
 devil's merriment. 
 
 All night long he paced up and down the brief length 
 of the cave, sometimes, as he strode too far, dashing his 
 head against the shelving roof. Terrible unfleshed hands 
 grabbed at him out of the darkness, plucking at his rags, 
 like thorns, and the hunger of his empty body burned 
 within like a cold fire. 
 
 He thought of the ruin of Judas, the false priest. Was 
 he himself any true priest, he who had submitted almost 
 sullenly to ordination, as it seemed now, for mere peace 
 and quietness, to avoid being scolded and reproached ? 
 Would his end be the same ? Outside his cave, just 
 beneath the rocky shelf, a wild fig-tree jutted out over 
 the precipice. On such a tree the false apostle had 
 hanged himself, to give the devil justice, that he might 
 go to his own place. 
 
 He saw it all, not willingly, as one who weaves an 
 arras of meditation, nor as in a picture, but as though 
 he had been there with Judas. He remembered the 
 wild March afternoon, with the portent of darkness ; the 
 narrow, slagging path under the city wall, the valley 
 beneath ; the accursed lonely spot, the dead fig-tree, 
 sprawling its dry and naked branches out over the 
 blackness. How Judas had slunk thither, desperate and 
 maddened, scorned by the very priests who had been his 
 accomplices ; with their gibe still hissing in his ears, 
 ' What is it to us ? See thou to it.' 
 
 How Iscariot had peered furtively about, unwinding 
 
166 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 the hempen girdle from his waist ; how he had crept 
 out upon the creaking tree that withered and shrieked 
 beneath its unbidden, wicked burden. He had shed 
 the innocent blood, and was accursed, though it must 
 needs be shed : by him it need not have been shed. 
 
 And he himself, Petruccio, should Christ's blood be 
 shed again in the mystery by him ? It must be offered, but 
 need it be offered by him ? If he were no called priest, 
 but an interloper, was not every offering a blasphemy and 
 an outrage, a sacrilege like Iscariot's ? 
 
CHAPTEE VII 
 
 In the morning came his server, a pious, simple lad 
 from the village ; but Petruocio sent him off. He 
 would not say Mass. He durst not. The lad crept 
 back, puzzled, and full of doubt, but held his peace. 
 
 Next day he came again, but the cave was empty, 
 for the hermit had fled. All the weary road to Rome, 
 the Rome he dreaded, he would wend, to cast himself 
 at the feet of Christ's Vicar, and ask what he should do. 
 He did not think now of the Pope as of a great man 
 of the earth, but simply as of one who stood in the world 
 in God's place. So he, even he, Petruccio, would have 
 courage to seek him and beg of him what it was that it 
 behoved him to do. 
 
 He walked fiercely, with stammering steps, bruising 
 his feet against stones, tearing himself through briars, 
 heeding nothing by the way, starving, fainting ; but 
 he never reached Rome. 
 
 He went like a dead man walking, and this death 
 lasted till the third day. Then came his resurrection. 
 It was in the breaking of a red dawn that he came to 
 a place, almost like a garden for its gentleness and 
 beauty ; and there he met one who came graciously 
 to meet him. 
 
 167 
 
168 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 No doubt he had met others on the road, but he 
 had taken no note of them, and given them no greeting. 
 
 Neither did this one greet him, except by a smile 
 that he remembered. The figure was still youthful, 
 and the face unlined by time ; nor would it have mattered, 
 for on it lay the radiance of eternity. 
 
 They were face to face, and Petruccio could not pass 
 without discourtesy. He looked up from the earth and 
 saw a face that belonged to heaven. 
 
 ' I am Placid, the monk,' said the stranger, and 
 Petruccio remembered the abbot of Cava. 
 
 Far away, in the abbey there, there was happy weeping 
 among the sons of St. Benedict. They had need of a 
 new abbot, but they had a new saint to swell the train 
 of Benedict in heaven. 
 
 ' Quo vadis ? ' the monk asked Petruccio. The young 
 abbot did not tell him that for his sake he was himself 
 delayed upon his way home. He had the old air of 
 youthful sweetness, of pleasant patience. 
 
 Petruccio did not know that the abbot was what 
 the world calls dead. He did not argue or wonder how 
 the abbot of far-off Cava should be here in the Abruzzi. 
 But he remembered his gentleness and kindness, and told 
 him of his doubts, of his misery, of his horror. 
 
 The abbot Placid never touched him, but his face 
 pointed, undoubtingly, back, whence Petruccio had fled. 
 He lifted his hand and with it showed the way thither. 
 
 ' God knows all,' he said. 
 
 He used no ponderous arguments ; he urged no patent 
 proofs. In all his calm friendliness there was no reproach. 
 
SAN CELESTINO 169 
 
 ' God is waiting there for you,' he said, and Petruccio 
 knew that he meant in the cave whence he had fled. 
 
 Then Petruccio turned back. Only once he looked 
 behind him, and the abbot was still standing, smiling, in 
 the middle of the road, as he and Dom Mauro had stood 
 at the brow of the way that leads from the abbey at 
 Cava towards Salerno, when the two students had bidden 
 them farewell. It was the same heavenly courtesy that 
 expressed itself in his attitude, free from impatience to 
 be gone. Only this time the abbot's hands were not 
 folded in his loose black sleeves as then : one pointed 
 towards Solmona, and one was lifted upwards towards 
 his present road. 
 
 Petruccio went quickly still, but without hurry ; 
 and his gait was no longer stumbling and disordered. 
 He was not now faint, and weary, or perturbed. The 
 way seemed pleasant and easy, as though it had been 
 all downhill. And so, after a fast of nearly six days, 
 he got back to his cave above the valley of Solmona, 
 and in it he found some one waiting for him. 
 
 ' Alfeo ! ' he cried out. 
 
 ' So you remember me ! It is over five years since 
 we saw each other.' 
 
 ' Eemember you, of course I remember you.' 
 
 ' I have come all this way to visit you. Are you 
 angry ? ' 
 
 ' How could I be angry ? ' 
 
 Nevertheless he wondered how Alfeo had found him 
 out. He did not know that, hidden as he was in the 
 savage depths of the Abruzzi, there were many who spoke 
 
170 SAN 0ELESTINO 
 
 of him. And he wondered, too, to find Alfeo there, 
 because the abbot had only said that he would find God. 
 
 ' Do you know why I am come, Pietro di Murrone ? ' 
 
 ' To see me, you said,' answered his host, smiling. 
 
 ' More than that. To ask if you would let me stay.' 
 
 Now Petruccio was really astounded. He had never 
 thought of any companion, never imagined that anyone 
 would wish to join him. And Alfeo ! 
 
 ' Do you mean altogether ? ' he asked, thinking that 
 he must have been mistaken. 
 
 ' Altogether, if you will allow it.' 
 
 Perhaps it was strange that Alfeo's purpose did not 
 alter at sight of Petruccio. He naturally remembered 
 him as he had been at Salerno, not more than a youth, 
 and with something of a youth's comeliness, in spite of 
 poverty and austerity. Now Pietro di Murrone was 
 six and twenty, and looked many years older, utterly 
 gaunt and wild ; his rags were such as no beggar would 
 have worn, and his hair hung about his neck in long 
 rough locks, untended and ugly. His beard was matted 
 and unkempt, and his huge melancholy eyes burned 
 like black fires out of the deathly pallor of his face. He 
 was all but a skeleton, the skull scarcely covered by 
 the dusky white skin, his naked arms mere bones held 
 together by muscles like rough strings. But no multiplica- 
 tion of mere details can give any idea of the unearthliness 
 of the hermit's appearance. 
 
 For six days he had tasted no food, and his body 
 was worn out : only the burning spirit shone out of him 
 like a lamp. 
 
SAN CELESTINO 171 
 
 Would Alfeo become like him ? He did not ask 
 himself whether he should grow to look like him, he did 
 not care ; but he wished to be like him. That was 
 what was most strange. 
 
 ' I can give you nothing to eat,' laughed Petruccio. 
 ' See what a host you have come to.' 
 
 His laugh was still pleasant as it had always been, 
 and Alfeo noted it with a sort of wonder : for it was 
 peculiar, as is the speech of a man who has not spoken 
 for years. 
 
 ' But I have something ; look ! ' And Alfeo opened 
 his wallet and took out bread and a few dried figs. 
 
 ' So you are to be host after all,' said Petruccio, and 
 he accepted frankly his guest's hospitality. 
 
 He asked no questions, not prying at all into the 
 reasons that had brought Alfeo on so strange an errand. 
 He hated questions : he had always been tormented by 
 them. 
 
 Not far off, but a little lower down, was another cave, 
 better perhaps than his own, and thither he led his 
 guest. 
 
 Alfeo surveyed it with an odd satisfaction, as one 
 might look at a lodging that struck one as convenient 
 and suitable. 
 
 When the server came again next morning, he was 
 surprised to find that there was a stranger kneeling 
 in the upper cave near Petruccio, but he showed no 
 sign of astonishment, for that would have been a lack 
 of ' education.' He made up his mind that the hermit 
 had gone away to fetch him. After a while he understood 
 
172 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 that the new-comer was going to stay : he did not think 
 it strange, but only envied him. 
 
 ' I did not know,' he observed one morning, after Mass, 
 ' that Fra Pietro would allow anyone to join him.' 
 
 ' Nor did I,' said Alfeo, ' but I came to see.' 
 
 They were walking down the narrow, very steep 
 path that led to Alfeo's own cell. 
 
 Later in the day Alfeo and Petruccio met ; they took 
 it in turns to go down to Solmona to beg : afterwards 
 they divided the poor scraps of bread between them. 
 They would accept nothing else, except the refuse outside 
 leaves of cabbage. On Fridays and fast days Petruccio 
 would eat nothing but the cabbage, insisting, however, 
 on Alfeo's always eating bread, or a sort of cold porridge 
 made of a handful of Indian meal, mixed with cold water. 
 
 ' Little brother,' said Alfeo, ' there is some one else 
 who wants to join you.' 
 
 ' Not Eaniero ! ' laughed Petruccio. ' Perhaps you 
 had a letter from him when you went down there to 
 Solmona.' 
 
 ' I did not know letters were permitted,' said Alfeo 
 cheerfully. His old occasionally moody manner was 
 gone and he had acquired an almost boyish light-hearted- 
 ness. 
 
 ' No, it is not Eaniero. It is the lad who comes to serve 
 your Mass.' 
 
 ' Maurizio ! ' 
 
 ' Yes. It surprises you ? Me, no. He always comes 
 up quickly, and goes down slowly : whereas it is downhill 
 going away.' 
 
SAN CELESTINO 173 
 
 ' You think he prefers climbing up ? ' 
 
 ' That is my idea.' 
 
 Alfeo was right : Maurizio longed to stay with them, 
 though he did not dare to say so. He perceived that 
 they were both gentlemen, whereas he was a peasant. 
 He hardly remembered that in heaven sons of goat-herds 
 and kings are all mixed up. 
 
 ' Era Alfeo thinks you want to stay up here with us,' 
 Petruccio remarked to him, after a day or two, during 
 which he watched the lad. 
 
 Maurizio blushed. 
 
 ' It may seem an indiscretion,' he said, twisting his 
 rosary in his hands. ' I do not know any Latin.' 
 
 * But God understands our talk of the Abruzzi ; 
 which is lucky, as I pray badly in Latin. What would 
 your father say ? It would not do to annoy him.' 
 
 ' There are six of us, and I am the stupid one. He 
 would not mind.' 
 
 ' I also was the stupid one,' declared Petruccio, 
 believing what he said. 
 
 But Maurizio was scandalised : he already felt the 
 esprit de corps of a religious for his founder. 
 
 ' Up here,' added Petruccio, ' it does not so much 
 matter being stupid. And God overlooks it.' 
 
 Maurizio was right. His father did not mind in the 
 least. 
 
 ' One gets to heaven that way for very little,' Netto 
 observed to his wife. 
 
 ' And it is not far off,' said she. ' If he fell ill, one 
 could send him a medicine.' 
 
174 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 ' That might help him to heaven all the quicker,' said 
 her husband. 
 
 So Maurizio came up the mountain to stay, and the 
 order of the Celestini had been founded, without its 
 founder suspecting anything about it. 
 
CHAPTEE VIII 
 
 In 1251 a misfortune happened to them. 
 
 One day they heard an unwelcome noise, mixed 
 with loud voices and laughter. 
 
 The baron who owned their mountain wanted wood, 
 and he had sent men to cut down all the trees that 
 modestly veiled their dwellings. They did not dream 
 of expostulating : it was not their wood, and they did 
 not see why the baron should not have his trees if he 
 needed them. 
 
 So they made no complaint and went off to Monte 
 Magella. There were no caves there, but as many rocks 
 as any reasonable person could wish for, and they found 
 a kind of tough bush with long branches like wattles. 
 These they cut and made into a sort of hurdle, with 
 which they built little huts against the shelving rock. 
 It was not difficult to roof them over with sods, supported 
 on long sticks, and covered with boughs of wild olive with 
 the leaves left on. 
 
 They made a fourth hut for their chapel, and it was 
 quite big enough for three people to worship God in. 
 But presently there were more than three. 
 
 One day during Mass some one came in and knelt 
 behind Alfeo. This happened now and then, and he 
 
 175 
 
176 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 was not, therefore, surprised. After Mass the stranger, 
 however, did not go away, hut knelt on until Alfeo got 
 up to return to his own hut. Then he was surprised. 
 
 ' Guito ! ' he exclaimed, just as Petruccio had cried 
 out ' Alfeo ' when he came. 
 
 Guito was as neat and prosperous-looking as he had 
 heen at his own coming, and he was now himself not 
 much less wild than Petruccio had looked. 
 
 ' Why not ? ' asked Guito, when they had gone 
 outside. ' If you could find the way, why not I ? ' 
 
 ' So you too have come to see Pietro di Murrone ! ' 
 
 ' Like you. It was easier for me to carry my baggage, 
 for I have no lute.' 
 
 Alfeo laughed : he had flung his lute into the sea near 
 Vietri, where it led to a report that he was drowned. 
 
 ' I hope you have not brought many sonnets,' he said 
 demurely. ' In our little company we mostly talk in 
 prose.' 
 
 ' That you always did, and thought in it too,' retorted 
 Guito. 
 
 When Petruccio came out he did not look much 
 astonished. Alfeo's arrival had used up all his faculty of 
 surprise. 
 
 ' I hoped to find Alfeo more improved,' said Guito ; 
 ' even here one perceives there are disappointments.' 
 
 Nevertheless one could see that his air was very 
 friendly to both his old comrades. 
 
 ' He has lacked example,' laughed Petruccio. ' It 
 will be different now.' 
 
 Guito noted instantly that they were both more 
 
SAN CELESTINO 177 
 
 cheerful than of old ; it was much more remarkable than 
 their appearance, which was saying something. Guito 
 liked his own appearance; he would have to get over 
 that. 
 
 Maurizio was introduced, who rather wished that the 
 new-comer might have looked less aristocratic; he did 
 not actually wish that he had stayed away. 
 Guito really had come to stay. 
 
 ' You wonder why,' he said to Alfeo. ' You thought 
 I had more sense than you.' 
 
 But he did not, when they were alone, talk like that to 
 Petruccio. Petruccio seemed to think it quite natural 
 that he should come, and therefore Guito explained himself 
 to him. 
 
 ' From the beginning,' he said, ' you disturbed me. 
 I could never give over considering you, and your ideas 
 worried me. I always laughed at you, and felt a grudge, 
 because you seemed to know something I did not. The 
 business of poets is to know everything, and I was 
 irritated to suspect that you understood the inside, 
 whereas it was only the outside I had perceived. Who 
 had taught you ? You were as ignorant as a professor, 
 though you had learned none of their absurdities. How 
 came you to see deeper than myself, who kept watching 
 everything ? I found out your teacher.' 
 
 He had found out Petruccio's teacher, and, what 
 was more surprising, had submitted to learn of Him. 
 He had always loved the world ; not exactly that which 
 proud people mean when they talk of it, but the visible 
 world of mountains and plains and valleys, of sapphire 
 
178 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 sea, and opal cloud, of secret-telling woods, and sedgy- 
 meadows by flat streams, of flowers and winds, and sunrise 
 and noon, sunset and sweet night. And in a way he had 
 loved God for making all these things, but not for Himself, 
 and he had prized the lesser gifts more than the greater 
 giver. 
 
 Suddenly he perceived his mistake, and the detail 
 of creation no longer contented him, if he had ever been 
 contented ; he aimed at the loftier possession, and would 
 be satisfied with nothing short of the Creator. 
 
 It happened that to Petruccio he owed the first quest 
 of God, and Petruccio's way of attaining Him seemed 
 the only obvious way, now that his own object was the 
 same. This was no more than what we call an accident ; 
 but so it fell out. 
 
 The outward beauty of God's intimations of himself 
 would never again feed his hunger for loveliness, he must 
 have the inward and infinite beauty, of which these 
 things only hinted ; he perceived that even the sense 
 can never be satisfied with that which appeals to it : 
 ' the eye is not filled with seeing, nor the ear with hearing.' 
 And the sense is a small part of awakened apprehension. 
 That which lies behind creation must be infinitely more 
 lovely than any item, or all the items, of creation. But 
 it is not patent : its loveliness is not unveiled, or appreci- 
 able by the easy channels of sense. In order to possess 
 God he must cease to possess himself ; or rather, until he 
 had finally arrived at the possession of God he would 
 never, in fact, possess himself. 
 
 Nevertheless he was, and had always been, generous, 
 
SAN OELESTINO 179 
 
 and the cost of this inheritance he did not count. The 
 just price of anything is what it is worth, and he knew, 
 without delusion, that only by giving everything could 
 he fairly hope to gain everything. He did not expect 
 God for nothing. 
 
 Guito was better able than Petruccio to state his case 
 to himself. Probably Petruccio had never stated it. 
 He was much less articulate than Guito. Nor had he 
 proceeded by judgment, but by instinct. Both were 
 called to the same thing, and by the same voice, but by 
 different steps. 
 
 Alfeo had also been called to the same point, but by 
 yet another road. 
 
 It is quite possible that Petruccio would have been 
 almost bewildered had Alfeo's process been expounded to 
 him. 
 
 Alfeo imagined that he had made this discovery — that 
 he was, and must be, unhappy, because he had desires 
 which could never be fulfilled. No desires, except the 
 poorest, seemed to be capable of fulfilment. To lay 
 aside every desire must therefore be the only sure road to 
 happiness here on earth, and above all the most hopeless 
 desire of all, the desire of happiness itself. 
 
 His lif e had been a ceaseless perturbation. There had 
 been endless and desperate clutchings at bliss ; sudden 
 and sharp delusions that it had been attained, and swift 
 discoveries that the exquisite light had faded, and left 
 a chill gloaming, threatening lonely night. If youth 
 failed of her promises, what would age do ? 
 
 Yet he knew himself the heir of happiness. The 
 
 s2 
 
180 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 conviction of his destiny for it, the certainty of his being 
 meant for it, was unalterable and ineffaceable. Nothing 
 could cheat him of the absolute, innate conviction that 
 for it he had been created. Nothing could persuade 
 him that mere pleasure would do instead. 
 
 The pleasures he had tasted were the highest, he told 
 himself, that present conditions could afford. On music 
 he had lifted himself at times into a region that was 
 almost the third heaven. But even music could be a 
 sycophant and waft him into a paradise that was after 
 all earthly, with a serpent hidden among the branches. 
 
 It could not be here : the happiness that he would 
 not give up aiming at ; or if here, it could not proceed 
 hence. 
 
 Happiness was inalienable, his birthright; but to 
 attain it he must fling courageously away the desire for 
 it. At all events, every effort to catch it in a human 
 net must be given up as childish. Being infinite, it must 
 proceed from infinity, and he abruptly recognised, as 
 anyone may who chooses, that there is nothing infinite 
 but God. 
 
 So God must be his one object, and against God there 
 is only one really redoubtable enemy — self. So self 
 must be abdicated. 
 
 There are other rivals of God, though of lesser practical 
 significance : the three old rivals, to which three old- 
 fashioned names are given. In order to achieve God, 
 therefore, the world must be utterly thrown aside, the 
 flesh must be entirely mastered, the devil must be 
 deprived of any mastery. In other words, desires of 
 
SAN CELESTINO 181 
 
 every kind must be eradicated. With ordinary world- 
 liness he was quite untainted, but much more would be 
 needful — the absolute rejection of applause. He was not 
 what is called sensual, but the flattery of sweet sounds 
 was itself another presentment of the same Promethean 
 lure : ' the devil ' is the expression of spiritual rebellion, 
 and there must be the total abdication of will, since 
 individual will is the gate leading to the pathway of 
 disobedience. 
 
 Petruccio might very easily have failed to grasp, or 
 if grasping might have refused to approve, this process. 
 He was himself a hermit for a far simpler reason. He 
 must be alone with God. He hated the world, with an 
 instinctive dread that was quite unreasoned and in- 
 voluntary. It confused and bewildered him, and its 
 selfish turmoil drowned the silence through which he 
 could listen to the only voice he loved. 
 
 Neither Alf eo or Guito hated it ; by inclination they 
 liked it. But in that friendliness towards it they had 
 come, very unusually, to recognise an enmity to them- 
 selves. And so they turned away from it as from a trap : 
 Petruccio fled from it as from a persecutor. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 Alpeo and Guito both remained, as did the simple 
 Maurizio, who knew nothing about his vocation, any 
 more than Petruccio. To Maurizio it had been merely 
 a question of following an example, the highest he 
 happened to have seen. 
 
 But there came another aspirant, who did not remain. 
 
 One day Lippo, the sub-deacon, presented himself, not 
 without circumstance, and intimated that he intended to 
 join their community. 
 
 They were, in fact, a community by then. The 
 bishop, moved in the first instance by their confessor, 
 had approved of their ' institute,' Petruccio meekly 
 expostulating against there being any institute at all. 
 
 ' We do not follow any rule,' Petruccio declared. 
 
 ' We are not monks,' said Alfeo. ' But four people 
 who find their account in living up here in the way we 
 can.' 
 
 The Bishop of Aquila, though firm, was a very kindly 
 man, and very ' supernatural.' 
 
 He was altogether touched by the simplicity and 
 absence of form that he found. He had heard much of 
 the solitaries, and perhaps had wondered if it would all 
 tend to the benefit of the Church. He was not old 
 
 182 
 
SAN CELESTINO 188 
 
 himself, and had no grudge against the incalculable 
 generosities of youth, but his office compelled him to 
 be prudent. He was very learned, and very clever, 
 and entirely devout. He feared God, but regarded 
 the person of no man. He had a rough-hewn, beautiful 
 face, not handsome, but graced by grace itself. He 
 would rumple his queer reddish hair, and his pontifical 
 vestments were often awry upon him, for he had none 
 of the trim mind of a sacristan. He would wear anything 
 the Pope bade him, and reverence it too, because it was 
 ordered by the Church, and symbolised a dignity that he 
 dissociated from himself. Nevertheless he did not care 
 a bit for trappings, and made small account of manner 
 and address. 
 
 The four solitaries received him with all due respect, 
 and readiest subjection. But he perceived that there 
 was some one for whom they cared more than for him, and 
 he cared more for Him as well. He hated being a bishop, 
 but he may have made a finer bishop on that very account. 
 Being what he was he laid aside his former tastes and 
 occupied himself with quiet government, though he would 
 far rather have been governed. 
 
 He had been, and could be still, a better poet than 
 Guito, but of that he said nothing, and did not think 
 much. He was not effusive in manner, and he listened 
 almost silently while the four solitaries answered his 
 few, direct, straightforward questions. When he went 
 away, however, he blessed them with a benediction that 
 was not merely formal and official. It was affectionate, 
 and it conveyed a simple, satisfied approval. ' Opus 
 
184 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 Domini mirabile in oculis nostris,' he said, not to them, 
 as he went away. Of course he had to go on foot : 
 there was no driving or riding to the heights of Monte 
 Magella. He had walked all the way from his bare 
 palace, half like a castle and half like a monastery, down 
 there in the hot valley. And he had come alone, not 
 caring to bring even his chaplain ; for, though he knew 
 how good-natured and friendly the chaplain was, the 
 four solitaries could not, and he wanted above all things 
 to avoid disturbing them. So he went by himself, in 
 a decent but old cassock, and no outward show of being 
 one of the Church's nobles. That he was one of God's 
 nobles, too, the four hermits soon found out for themselves. 
 
 He saw them each alone, for it was only for an hour 
 every day that they met, more than half of which was 
 taken up with Mass. Afterwards they talked together 
 for less than half an hour. 
 
 ' Tell me your rule,' he had said to Petruccio, and 
 Petruccio had answered that they had no rule. 
 
 ' Tell me, then, your way of life : your hours and how 
 each is passed.' 
 
 Even this was difficult. They were not monks, 
 but hermits, and each followed more or less his own 
 order of life. 
 
 ' I would tell you if I could,' said Petruccio, with 
 an air almost puzzled. And then he answered the bishop's 
 questions one by one. Almost the whole day was spent 
 in contemplation ; indeed all of it, for though they 
 had now some patches of ground on which they laboured 
 to grow a little maize, and some common vegetables, each 
 
SAN CELESTINO 185 
 
 patch was separate, and each worked in silence and alone, 
 not interrupting contemplation by labour. 
 
 The bishop perceived that it would be hard to reduce 
 to a written rule such a manner of life. Concerning 
 Petruccio's own vocation to it, he asked very little. It 
 seemed as superfluous and impertinent as inquiring 
 why he had been born. 
 
 The other three he questioned more closely as to their 
 reasons for following Petruccio's example. 
 
 Alfeo's did not so entirely satisfy him. 
 
 ' It is not necessary to be without desires,' he objected, 
 ' perhaps it is not possible. Only one must fix one's 
 desires in the right place.' 
 
 ' On God. It is personal desire I mean. The desire 
 of oneself. ' 
 
 Alfeo had been now for a long time a hermit, and he 
 felt it less easy than he might have done at first to state 
 his case glibly. He shrank from seeming to argue ; 
 from setting a personal opinion against that of one so 
 much his superior in religion. 
 
 ' Must one not desire heaven for oneself ? ' asked the 
 bishop. 
 
 ' Only by implication, by desiring God — one desires 
 the less in the greater.' 
 
 Nevertheless the bishop was convinced that here also 
 was a true vocation to a very rare state. A smoking 
 flax should never be quenched by him : he remembered 
 who had come to cast fire on earth, and how He had 
 been straitened till it should be kindled. 
 
 The bishop went away, and not long afterwards Lippo 
 
186 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 Cardone, the sub-deacon, came. He had been to the 
 bishop first to find out if Petruccio's ' institute ' had 
 really been approved : he had no idea of committing 
 himself. 
 
 ' Oh yes, I have approved. It would be difficult 
 not to approve of them. And you think of joining them ? 
 It is a rare vocation — and very austere.' 
 
 Lippo looked as austere as possible, and he could 
 do a good deal that way. It flattered his intention to 
 hear of the rarity of the vocation. He wanted, par- 
 ticularly, to do something out of the common. 
 
 ' So long as there is nothing the Church condemns,' 
 he said sententiously, ' I shall feel quite safe.' 
 
 There was no fear of Lippo becoming a heretic. He 
 was self-sufficient, but not audacious, and had none of 
 the itching appetite for originality and novelty that 
 makes your heretic. But he was rather cross with the 
 Church. He had intended to adorn it, and had remained 
 a sub-deacon for a number of years; his bishop had 
 refused to advance him, even to the diaconate, and he 
 believed himself to have been harshly dealt with. The 
 present bishop did not ask him why he was only a sub- 
 deacon, and he volunteered no explanation. 
 
 ' I may assume, then,' he observed, ' that I have 
 your Most Reverend Excellency's permission to join this 
 new institute ? ' 
 
 His air was very important. 
 
 ' It is Era Pietro's permission rather that you have to 
 obtain,' answered the bishop, without any importance in 
 his air at all. ' May God bless your desire for perfection.' 
 
SAN CELESTINO 187 
 
 He rose from his chair, and Lippo felt himself dis- 
 missed : he was not sure that he was not being snubbed 
 also. He was apt to imagine himself snubbed. 
 
 So he betook himself to Petruccio, and explained his 
 desire to join him, at some length. He was able to 
 explain more to him than he had found possible with 
 the bishop. Petruccio submitted patiently to all his 
 explanations, without gathering anything very definite 
 from them. He did not himself declare, as the bishop 
 had done, that the vocation was rare and the way of life 
 austere. 
 
 ' No doubt a holy man,' said Lippo to himself, ' but 
 not a born superior.' 
 
 Lippo had a frosty nose, and it chilled Petruccio 
 more than the wintry winds had ever been able to do. 
 His manner had none of the freedom and cheerfulness 
 that Alfeo and Guito had brought with them. He had 
 been, falsely of course, accused of some worldliness 
 and laxity, and it behoved him to look sourer than if 
 that had not been the case. He was not a hypocrite, 
 but he felt a necessity of appearing at least as good as 
 he was. 
 
 He knew that God is just, and if he took the very 
 unpleasant step of becoming a hermit, it would be 
 hard if God did not right him. And to turn thus in- 
 dignantly from the world was, he felt, a very spirited 
 step. 
 
 Originally he had not minded the world : the Church 
 was in it, and ought to possess a good deal of it. He had 
 altogether repudiated the notion that anyone with two 
 
188 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 legs could not have one in heaven and the other firmly, 
 though correctly, planted on earth. Indeed, to serve 
 God, Mammon must be reduced to the condition of a 
 useful domestic servant, not a despised slave. 
 
 But he had had severe disappointments, and his part 
 of the world had made itself quite unpleasant. He 
 wanted to spite it, and to annoy its comfortably smiling 
 face he would even cut off his own frosty nose. 
 
 People should see if he were worldly. That bishop, 
 who had refused him the diaconate, should hear in his 
 fine palace how he, Lippo, was living on Monte Magella. 
 That bishop, he felt sure, kept an excellent table, with 
 a dozen well-fed chaplains round it, and they should all 
 know how he, Lippo, was content to eat cabbages and 
 carrots. 
 
 He revelled in the thought of their discomfiture. 
 Of how they would have to admit that he was a saintly 
 person. Of how his name would be held in veneration, 
 and his wonderful illumination of spirit be talked of far 
 and wide. 
 
 Solitaries have not always been left alone : awakenings 
 have come to the purblind rulers, and hermits have been, 
 with vehement reluctance, called from their cells to 
 infuse new lif e into the Church by their unworldly virtue 
 — as bishops, or what not. Lippo was sure of his own 
 reluctance ; they would have to drag him away from 
 his weeping fellow-hermits almost with cart-ropes. In 
 fact he should refuse to go unless the Pope himself ordered 
 it, as the Pope very properly did on such occasions. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 But he did not remain a hermit very long. The world 
 wagged on, and the Church seemed to have forgotten 
 that he existed. Of Petruccio there was talk here and 
 there, though the world probably heard none of it. Of 
 Lippo neither world or Church talked at all. 
 
 It is very dull being heroic when no one is aware 
 that you are a hero. And the business of heroes generally 
 is quick and prompt : people are struck at once, and the 
 hero has not always to keep at boiling point. After his 
 heroism the hero goes to bed as usual, but has a good 
 supper first. 
 
 But Lippo had no bed, and there was no supper. 
 He slept more than the other four, but the damp rock 
 made him rheumatic ; and he ate more, too, of such 
 food as there was, and perhaps a voracious consumption 
 of raw cabbage or cold meal porridge is likely to try a 
 weak digestion. Lippo had never complained of his 
 digestion in the world, where he had played a good knife 
 and fork without any dread of the consequences. The 
 solidity of baked meats had never incommoded 
 him. 
 
 Now, however, he felt at once hungry and oppressed. 
 Cabbage sat heavier on his chest than beef had ever 
 
 189 
 
190 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 done, and yet he always wanted more than he could 
 eat. Though accused of certain lapses, Lippo was an 
 irritably conscientious person, and it began to strike 
 him that it could not be right to kill himself with 
 austerities. At a distance the word ' austerity ' had 
 delighted him : it affected that part of his nature where 
 his imagination ought to have been. 
 
 But though he had been quite able to imagine the 
 respectful surprise with which his terrible life as a hermit 
 would be spoken of, he had not been able to foresee 
 what such a life would practically feel like. Nor had he 
 realised that the gift of contemplation is not vouchsafed 
 to everyone. In reality he had no capacity for it. To 
 occupy yourself with thoughts about yourself is not 
 contemplation. And Lippo could scarcely think of any- 
 thing but himself. In his narrow heart there was no 
 room for God, and what there was of it was already 
 occupied with himself. 
 
 Petruccio begged him to modify his austerities, since 
 they were evidently too much for him, and he was quite 
 obedient in this matter, though it annoyed him, for he 
 had resolved to surpass them all in austerity. 
 
 But he had no spirit of obedience, for he was full of 
 criticism and self-importance. His suggestions were 
 innumerable, and it irritated him that they were mildly 
 disregarded, though patiently listened to. 
 
 ' A candle under a bushel,' he would say, ' is of no use. 
 It should be set high on a candlestick.' 
 
 ' We are set pretty high up,' Petruccio would answer 
 cheerfully. 
 
SAN CELESTINO 191 
 
 ' Ay ! But I speak of the moral plane. We should 
 have a church : the people would throng to it.' 
 
 ' Perhaps the parish priests would not care much 
 for that. There are plenty of churches in the paesi.' 
 
 ' But the people would feel here a new warmth.' 
 
 Petruccio, hermit as he was, longed to say, ' It is 
 cold you chiefly complain of.' But he did not, and 
 managed to say instead, ' It is hot enough in summer 
 during the day, certainly.' 
 
 Lippo sniffed. He had no idea of being chaffed ; 
 it seemed to him quite scandalous that a hermit, and 
 reputed saint, should be jocular. 
 
 ' I was speaking of spiritual heat,' he said severely. 
 ' Down there they are tepid enough.' 
 
 ' No,' said Petruccio quietly, ' that is not so. The 
 priests of the paese are excellent fervent men.' 
 
 ' Well, we might ourselves go forth and preach, one 
 at a time. Our light would then so shine among men 
 that they would see our good works, and glorify God 
 who is in heaven.' 
 
 ' We are none of us licensed to preach. . . .' 
 
 ' The bishop would give leave readily. I saw that 
 when I was with him. I had a good deal of talk with 
 him. He is entirely well-disposed to us. You are 
 yourself, perhaps, too modest to be aware how highly he 
 thinks of your institute.' 
 
 Petruccio looked unhappy. 
 
 ' There is no institute,' he said gently. ' And we are 
 quite unqualified to preach. Only one of us is a priest, 
 and he without any capacity for preaching.' 
 
192 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 Lippo felt an intense capacity for it, and he would 
 be rejoiced at so noble a reason for periodical and pro- 
 tracted escape from the tedium of that horrid mountain. 
 ' The friars are not priests, and they preach.' 
 ' That is their vocation. . . .' 
 
 ' I am not sure that it is not mine. At times I have 
 a scruple that I am burying my talent in a napkin.' 
 
 ' Perhaps your vocation may be to preach. It is 
 not mine, or Alfeo's, or Guito's, or Maurizio's.' 
 
 ' Maurizio's ! ' and Lippo's tone was both frosty and 
 
 supercilious as he spoke of the utterly unlettered peasant. 
 
 Petruccio flushed, for he knew that Maurizio was a 
 
 true contemplative, to whom much had been revealed 
 
 that is hidden from the wise and prudent. 
 
 ' Would you like me to consult the bishop ? ' asked 
 Lippo. 
 
 ' About your vocation to this little life of ours ? 
 Certainly, if you will.' 
 
 But Petruccio saw no reason why the bishop should 
 be troubled. They had their confessor. It seemed to 
 him fussy and presumptuous to go to the bishop. 
 ' No, but about the idea of preaching.' 
 ' You should not do that. Let me first consult the 
 others.' 
 
 ' Why ? You are our head.' 
 ' I am not,' replied Petruccio, almost angrily. 
 The others would not hear of the preaching. Maurizio 
 said little, for he felt that he was least fitted to preach. 
 Alfeo and Guito said a good deal, and Lippo's notion 
 was utterly scouted by them both. 
 
SAN CELESTINO 193 
 
 ' Let him go and preach,' said Alfeo, ' but not as one 
 of us. A hermit on a mountain can annoy nobody ; 
 but hermits tramping about, interfering with the priests, 
 would be insufferable.' 
 
 Lippo did go, first to the bishop, who received him 
 with a mild absence of surprise that was not altogether 
 agreeable. 
 
 He quite agreed that it was right for Lippo to con- 
 sider his health. 
 
 ' It would be almost suicide for me to remain there,' 
 said the meagre sub-deacon. 
 
 ' Suicide is a fearful crime,' said the bishop. 
 
 ' Under the cloak of religion it would be more impious,' 
 said his chaplain, who, to Lippo's annoyance, remained 
 in the room. He thought the bishop ought to have 
 sent him away. But the poor bishop was busy, and 
 hoped that Lippo would not stop long. 
 
 ' But other considerations besides those of health 
 have weight with me,' added Lippo. ' I endeavoured 
 to convince Pra Pietro that we should add action to 
 our contemplation.' 
 
 ' The Church does not expect activity from people 
 who live on cabbage,' observed the chaplain with a laugh. 
 He was extremely active himself, and did not pretend 
 to live on cabbage. 
 
 ' It is very unwholesome,' declared Lippo. 
 
 ' Unless taken in great moderation it must be,' 
 agreed the chaplain, who was thoroughly enjoying 
 himself. He could not help chuckling, and the bishop 
 interposed. 
 
194 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 ' What form of activity seemed suitable to you in 
 connexion with the life of a hermit ? ' 
 
 ' Preaching ' began Lippo. 
 
 ' That would not do at all,' said the chaplain. 
 ' Fra Pietro did not readily adopt your suggestion ? ' 
 surmised the bishop. 
 
 ' He did not adopt it all. Pra Pietro is not a person 
 very open to suggestions.' 
 
 ' He has adopted mine,' said the bishop, ' but I 
 have not ventured to make very many. I certainly 
 never suggested that he and his comrades should go 
 about preaching.' 
 
 Lippo had another proposal to make, and it was not 
 easy to get it out. But he did at last contrive to make 
 it understood that he would not be averse to so going about 
 himself. 
 
 ' I have no doubt you would do it very well,' said 
 the bishop. 
 
 ' I could show your Most Reverend Excellency if 
 you liked.' 
 
 ' Do you mean here ? ' 
 
 Lippo intimated that he meant there. The chaplain 
 looked terrified. The idea of being preached at there and 
 then in cold blood seemed to him quite inhuman. But the 
 bishop betrayed no alarm. A danger that one has the 
 power of averting can never be fearful. 
 
 ' Well, no,' he said. ' The better you preached, the 
 more personal it would seem to Messer Federigo and me. 
 Let us take your powers for granted. Unfortunately we 
 have preachers enough ; it is practice we are in want of.' 
 
BOOK III 
 THE POPE 
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 
 Over forty years is a long gap in a man's life, and to 
 skip two score years out of Petruccio's may seem a 
 strong measure. But it would be a stronger to expect 
 any reader to follow step by step the long silence of such 
 a life as his. 
 
 During those years nothing happened but such 
 things as have been hinted at. Profound trials, and 
 unfathomable joys ; temptations that the commonly 
 tempted can never comprehend, and consolations that 
 the commonly contented could never imagine : the 
 coming of new recruits, the departure of many, the 
 perseverance of some, changes that worked daily, hourly, 
 and so left no visible mark to those who were daily 
 and hourly at hand. 
 
 Petruccio was now an old man, seventy-four years 
 of age, who had once been in some faint measure 
 like other men, but who had almost ceased to bear 
 any resemblance to them. Alfeo was dead, and 
 
 195 o 2 
 
196 SAN CELBSTINO 
 
 Guito ; only Maurizio remained of his first three faithful 
 companions. 
 
 After many years together Petruccio, who had been 
 ready to love them at first, had grown to love them very 
 well, and their passing from his sight was a sorrow, 
 but a sorrow that had no sting in it. They did not seem 
 far off, and it was not a sad thought that part of the new 
 community was already in heaven. 
 
 Out in the troublous world there had been many 
 changes. 
 
 The year before they left Monte Murrone, in 1250, 
 Frederick had died at Castel Fiorentino, marrying, as 
 his fourth wife, on his death-bed, Manfred's mother, 
 that Madama Bianca Lancia, whom Petruccio had once 
 seen at Salerno. Manfred was proclaimed regent in the 
 absence of Conrad IV, the Emperor's son by the Empress 
 Iolanthe ; but Conrad died four years later, and Conradm 
 his son being an infant, Manfred was crowned in 1258 
 King of Calabria and Sicily. He declared that he held 
 the crown only as regent for his nephew, nevertheless 
 Urban IV excommunicated him as a usurper, and offered 
 his throne to the King of England, who refused it, and 
 afterwards to Charles of Anjou, who did not refuse, but 
 made haste to invade Southern Italy. 
 
 Above all, the sovereigns of the Church had been 
 angered by the foundation of the two Saracen colonies 
 of Nocera and Lucera. 
 
 Even to the hermits on Monte Magella came the 
 tidings of these great struggles in which the whole country 
 was involved, and Petruccio had grieved for the death 
 
SAN CELESTINO 197 
 
 of Frederick, and still more did he mourn when the news 
 came of Manfred's, after the battle at Benevento. He 
 remembered freshly the lad's pleasant face and frank 
 air, and now he, too,, had died, excommunicate, and 
 had been refused even Christian burial, so that the tomb 
 he had made ready for himself in the monks' church 
 at Monte Vergine was never occupied. Then, four 
 and twenty years later, came news of the Sicilian Vespers, 
 in which four thousand of the intruded French were 
 massacred, on that hot Easter Monday evening at 
 Palermo. Before that, ten years after Manfred's death, 
 his nephew Conradin had been murdered at Naples. 
 
 All this was terrible to hear of, and hours and years 
 of prayer did the lonely hermits devote to the souls of 
 all these victims of tragedy. 
 
 Petruccio had lived under fifteen popes, and now the 
 last of the fifteen was dead, and the cardinals sat debating, 
 at Perugia, as to who should be his successor. Petruccio 's 
 home was not now on Monte Magella : he and his followers 
 had gone back to Monte Murrone, where he occupied 
 his old cavern-cell, his monks living in a rude monastery, 
 for they had become very numerous. 
 
 In 1274 Gregory X had approved of his order, and 
 they took as the basis of their rule that of St. Benedict, 
 wearing a white habit like the religious of Monte Vergine, 
 but a black scapular like those of Cava and Subiaco. 
 There were already over thirty other monasteries of 
 Petruccio's order, and six hundred monks lived under 
 his obedience. 
 
 His own life was the same as ever ; he dwelt in the 
 
198 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 old wretched cave where his bed was the rock, and his 
 pillow a stone. Only, multitudes of people came to him for 
 guidance and consolation, except in his four tents, during 
 which he kept perpetual silence. The interior of the 
 cavern was dark, and its mouth was now filled with an 
 iron grating through which he gave his counsels. 
 
 Nicholas IV was dead more than two years, and 
 still there was no Pope. The cardinals at Perugia debated, 
 but no one was chosen to fill St. Peter's empty chair ; and 
 wolves devoured the fold that had no shepherd. Some 
 were for choosing a pontiff whom the French would 
 approve, some looked to the favour of the Emperor, but 
 no decision was arrived at. One candidate after another 
 was put up, and each in turn had been thrown out. 
 
 The cardinals were utterly weary, and the people and 
 their rulers murmured. There was danger that Emperor 
 or King would come down over the mountains with a 
 pope of his own making in his train. 
 
 Then Cardinal Malabranca had an idea, some said a 
 vision, but more probably a memory. For he, Latino, 
 Bishop of Ostia, had known Pietro di Murrone well, and 
 was fully certain that he was a saint. And the tired 
 Church needed a saint more than it needed any adroit 
 politician. 
 
 One broiling day of July, as the cardinals sat together 
 in the papal palace at Perugia, he seemed almost absent- 
 mindedly to recall the name of the man whom he revered. 
 
 The long discussion wearied him, and he leant back in 
 his throne, unheeding of the talk around. 
 
 ' Your Eminence is thoughtful,' said his neighbour. 
 
SAN CELESTINO 199 
 
 ' I was thinking of one far removed from all our 
 trouble. For my part I would change with him, and 
 esteem myself blest.' 
 
 The cardinal on his left leant forward to listen. 
 
 ' Of whom do you speak ? ' he asked, glad enough 
 to turn his thoughts away from the endless discussion 
 that never led anywhere. 
 
 ' The Cardinal of Ostia,' said the prelate beyond 
 Malabranca, ' is envying one who is free from our trouble, 
 with whom he would wish to change places if he might.' 
 
 ' I would change places with almost anyone,' declared 
 the cardinal on Latino's left. 
 
 ' Except with him whom we shall choose to be our 
 Pope,' suggested Malabranca's other neighbour. 
 
 The cardinal on Latino's left shuddered. Perhaps it 
 was a premonition. 
 
 ' With him certainly I would not change,' he said. 
 
 ' I was thinking,' said the Cardinal of Ostia, ' of 
 one who is as likely to be Pope as he is to be Emperor.' 
 
 ' Tell us about him — since you would like to be what 
 he is.' 
 
 ' That would I ; for he is a saint.' 
 
 Other cardinals, who had left their places, and were 
 walking about in groups, drew near. 
 
 ' The Cardinal of Ostia,' said Cardinal Benedetto 
 dei Caetani, ' is envying a saint.' 
 
 ' Who is he ? ' asked the others. 
 
 ' Pietro Murrone, the hermit of Solmona,' and 
 Malabranca, in a clear, not loud, voice told of him, 
 while the rest listened earnestly. He spoke of Petruccio's 
 
200 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 unworldliness and simplicity, his lack of guile, his pure 
 zeal for God, his utter abandonment of self, his heavenly 
 spirit. 
 
 ' Let us have him for our Pope,' cried out one of 
 Malabranca's listeners. 
 
 For a moment there was an astonished silence, as 
 though by sudden chance the answer to an unanswerable 
 riddle had been given aloud by some one who had not 
 even seemed to be guessing it. Nobody knew if Mala- 
 branca had intended this : he stopped speaking abruptly, 
 and rubbed his head with a nervous, withered hand. He, 
 too, was very old, and not given to extravagances. 
 
 For a moment there was silence : all the cardinals 
 in conclave were gathered near now, and all had been 
 listening to the Cardinal of Ostia while he talked of his 
 admired saint. 
 
 Then, just as a wind rises after a gasp of expectant 
 stillness, there went a murmur through them all. 
 
 ' Let us have this saint for Pope ! ' 
 
 All spoke together, not loudly, but in an earnest 
 undertone. It was easier to see their unanimous meaning 
 than to hear their individual expression of it. 
 
 ' Let us have Pietro di Murrone, the Cardinal of 
 Ostia's saint, for Pope.' 
 
 ' Not my saint, but God's,' said Malabranca. 
 
 ' Let God have his saint for Christ's Vicar.' 
 
 It was not one voice that urged this, not Malabranca's 
 certainly, but the voice of all. It was an acclamation. 
 There was no scrutiny, no writing, no voting; but a 
 weary cry. All hands went up, some trembling perhaps, 
 
SAN CELESTINO 201 
 
 but among them, as high as any, that of the eager Cardinal, 
 strong and purposeful, fearless and stout, Benedetto 
 Caetani. 
 
 The master of the scrutiny watched ; he had no 
 function, for there was nothing to scrutinise. 
 
 * Habemus Pontificem,' he said confidently. 
 
 ' Habemus Pontificem,' they all cried out. ' Dominum 
 Petrum di Murrone, qui sibi imponit nomen. . . .' 
 
CHAPTEE II 
 
 So the terrible blow had been dealt to Petruccio and he 
 had no notion of it. 
 
 Up on his rocky mountain he watched the night 
 through, alone with God and the temptations and blisses 
 God sent to him for his perfection. 
 
 It was a night of summer, close and stifling, and 
 even his cave was invaded by the terrific heat. There 
 was no cool mountain breeze, but a steam of intolerable 
 deadness. 
 
 ' The smell of Rome,' said Petruccio to himself. 
 
 It was half a century, all but two years, since he 
 had fled from the world's capital, and he shrank still 
 from the thought of it. Now and then the memory 
 came back on him, like a nightmare, of its greatness, 
 and its heartlessness, its ruthless power, and its selfish 
 splendour. 
 
 He tried to think of its sacredness ; of the tomb 
 of Peter and of Paul ; of Peter's successor, God's viceroy 
 on earth. But there was no successor of St. Peter there. 
 The fisherman's throne stood empty, and the Church had 
 no head. He could not think of Eome as of the metro- 
 polis of Christianity ; he could only remember it as 
 the centre of the world's strife, as the battleground of 
 
 202 
 
SAN CELESTINO 203 
 
 noisy interests, of quarrelsome, rebellious barons, whose 
 pastime was their quarrel with whomsoever happened 
 to be carrying there the intolerable weight of the triple 
 crown. 
 
 ' The smell of Eome,' he told himself. The walls 
 of mountain could not keep it off, the deep gorges between 
 could not hold it aloof. 
 
 He was not thinking then of the cardinals, far off 
 in Perugia, debating who should be made to carry the 
 intolerable keys ; though for seven and twenty months he 
 had been praying that God would guide their choice 
 aright. 
 
 His body was very old, and nearly worn out. For all 
 those years he had been a hard master to it. And now 
 his spirit seemed to fail also : a dark oppression lay on 
 it, as of some threatening disaster. He prayed, but his 
 prayer came back upon himself, and would not lift 
 him with it above the burden of age, and weariness, and 
 dread. Dryness of soul swallowed him, and the outward 
 sultry stifle had taken a hateful power of parching his 
 spirit too. 
 
 There seemed no cleanness in the high air of the hills, 
 and heaven was farther off than the reeking valley. 
 The morning brought no cool breath, but only a steamy 
 exhalation, and the night gave no freshness, only a 
 darkness that was thick and turgid. 
 
 All day long the air shook in the fierce heat, so that 
 the rocks, seen through it, seemed to tremble. All 
 night there was a black stillness, unrelieved by the stirring 
 of any breeze ; there was no moon, and, looking out from 
 
204 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 his cavern into the darkness, Pietro Murrone could see 
 nothing ; the mountains and the sky were muffled in 
 a smother of sables. 
 
 Petruccio had never been one much affected by the 
 influence of outward things, and the changes of season 
 and weather he had been used to ignore, and scarcely 
 notice. 
 
 The oppression that now weighed him down was 
 inward and mental, but it seemed palpable and physical. 
 It felt as though every faculty of sense was in arms 
 to avenge itself against him. In the daytime the cry 
 of the cicala became insufferable, and he never remem- 
 bered having even noticed it before. The rock on which 
 he lay burned him like a hot plate of iron. 
 
 But most insufferable of all was the smell of Rome : it 
 affected two other senses, and by an involuntary associa- 
 tion filled his sight and ears, with staring shows and a 
 confused, confounding din. Rome seemed to him like 
 a cruel mouth agape for a fresh victim. Had it not 
 martyred and driven out popes enough ? 
 
 ' The sorrows of hell have gat hold upon me,' he 
 cried out. When he scrambled to his feet he felt his 
 knees shake and his head swim. 
 
 ' I reel to and fro and stagger like a drunken man, 
 and am at my wits' end,' he moaned. 
 
 Sometimes the mountains reeled too, and, as he gazed 
 across the blazing valley, they had a strange and forbidding 
 mien, as if his old intimacy with their arid faces was 
 dissolved, and they belonged to some raw and new 
 picture that had just been painted. , 
 
SAN CELBSTINO 205 
 
 One of his monks came to the ledge outside his cave. 
 
 ' Little father, there are men coming,' he said, in an 
 odd voice. 
 
 Men often came for advice and consolation ; Petruccio 
 could not understand why the brother should appear 
 disturbed. 
 
 ' Two of them,' the monk went on, ' clad finely, 
 and stumbling up the rocks like folk that are used to 
 city ways, and to riding on beasts' backs.' 
 
 Petruccio dreaded the coming of anyone : he had 
 never felt- less able to counsel and console. But that 
 at least was nothing new. How often had he doubted 
 his power to guide, and yet had been given the grace to 
 advise and help ! How often had he poured balm into 
 troubled souls, when to himself his own had seemed all 
 dark and empty ! 
 
 ' They are close beneath now,' said the monk, peering 
 over the brink of the rock. ' Two men in scarlet robes, 
 and their folk clambering after them.' 
 
 For all their stumbling gait in climbing they had an 
 assured air, and the frate did not believe they had come 
 to seek advice. 
 
 Petruccio scarcely heard ; what did it matter to him of 
 what colour were the garments of them who came to him ? 
 
 The monk went down to guide the strangers to an 
 easier path. The August sun was beating on the face 
 of the rock, and the valley was like a stewing-pan, for 
 the air was thick and moist. It was a day of scirocco, 
 when, even had there been no sun, the heat would have 
 been insufferable. 
 
206 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 Pra Maurizio brought the strangers up, and they 
 stood, panting and sweating, on the ledge outside his 
 master's cell. Their faces were nearly as red as their 
 garments, and their knees quivered with the hard, 
 unwonted toil of climbing. 
 
 ' Let us in,' they said. 
 
 For between them and the object of their quest were 
 the rough bars of rusted iron behind which the hermit 
 crouched, staring out at them. ' Like a mad wolf 
 in a cage,' one of them said afterwards. 
 
 ' No one enters there save our little father himself,' 
 objected Era Maurizio, almost scandalised. To him 
 Petruccio was a much greater person even than a red- 
 robed prelate. There were plenty of prelates, but there 
 was only one Petruccio. 
 
 But the sun was blazing on the ledge, and Petruccio 
 himself had pity on the baked strangers. He undid 
 the fastening of his grille, and it opened at one end with 
 an opening just wide enough for the passage of such a 
 fleshless figure as his own. It was not very easy for the 
 strangers to enter, but one after the other they managed 
 to squeeze in. There was not much room inside for 
 them. They had crept in on hands and knees, and they 
 knelt still ; it did not seem as if they could very well 
 have stood upright. 
 
 Petruccio had half arisen, and was trying to stand up 
 in his own end of the den, but his tall lean figure was 
 bent nearly double, for the roof of rock shelved low 
 there. 
 
 EDs eyes gleamed black and bright out of the tangle 
 
SAN CELESTINO 207 
 
 of his hair, though they were deeply sunken beneath 
 the bony brows ; his lids were red and swollen with 
 watching and weeping ; his long grizzled beard hid his 
 mouth, but nothing could hide the ghastly meagreness 
 of his frame. 
 
CHAPTEK III 
 
 ' I am Pietro Colonna, Cardinal of the Holy Eoman 
 Church,' said one of the kneeling strangers. 
 
 Petruceio sank on to his knees, and tried to take 
 his visitor's hand, that he might kiss the blazing emerald 
 on it. But the Cardinal buried it in his robes and himself 
 laid hold of Petrucoio's lean fingers, lifting them to his 
 lips. 
 
 ' My lord, do not,' cried the hermit, striving to drag 
 his hand away, ' it is not fit.' 
 
 The old horrible thought flashed back : ' He comes 
 to kiss my hand as that of a saint.' And he shuddered 
 and groaned in his misery. 
 
 ' It is very fit,' said the Cardinal. 
 
 Fra Maurizio was not alone outside on the ledge now, 
 other monks had come thither, and those who had followed 
 the prelates were arrived there too. They squeezed up 
 to the iron bars and peered in, darkening the cavern more. 
 
 ' It is very fit,' said the Cardinal gravely. His tone 
 made Petruceio tremble. 
 
 ' I am the least of the servants of God,' he protested. 
 
 ' The servant of the servants of God. " Servus 
 servorum Dei," ' said Colonna, giving him the Pope's 
 title. 
 
 208 
 
SAN CELESTINO 2b9 
 
 The monks outside listened eagerly, and Petruccio 
 tried to hear, but a dizzy singing noise was in his ears, 
 and the strange voice sounded far off and above him, 
 as though he had been drowning. 
 
 ' I come from the Conclave at Perugia,' said the 
 Cardinal gently ; he saw well enough how cruel his 
 errand was, and he could almost wish he had not taken 
 it upon himself. It was not he whom they had deputed ; 
 but he had come on his own account, and overtaken 
 the envoys, and being higher than they in dignity had 
 let himself become their spokesman. 
 
 ' Please God we have a Pope ' murmured Petruccio. 
 
 ' We have a Pope, praise God for it. I am come to 
 tell you,' said Colonna solemnly. 
 
 Petruccio did thank God. With all his heart he was 
 glad that the headless Church should have a head again 
 at last. But why should they send to tell him ? How 
 would their telling inform him ? He knew none of them : 
 one cardinal's name or another's was all one to him. He 
 had never lived among the Church's masters, and was 
 wholly ignorant of these high matters. 
 
 Cardinal Colonna still held fast the hermit's reluctant 
 hand. For a moment he loosed it, and under his red 
 robe drew the ring from his own finger, then took hold of 
 it again. 
 
 ' We have a Pope,' he said, thrusting the great ring 
 on Petruccio's finger. ' The Conclave is dissolved 
 after choosing a Pope by acclamation, unanimously. 
 The voice of God has spoken. I come to salute your 
 Holiness.' 
 
210 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 With a loud and exceeding bitter cry the hermit 
 started back ; it was too cruel to be true. The cave 
 grew black, as in the smothering night, and a rushing 
 noise whirled through his ears ; he grew deadly sick, 
 and his heart felt like lead within him. His tongue was 
 dry and clave to his mouth, refusing to make words for 
 him. He pressed his shaking hands to his eyes to shut 
 out the darkness. Through them burning tears oozed 
 out. He swayed, and would have fallen had Colonna 
 not held him compassionately. 
 
 ' Santo Padre,' he urged, his own eyes streaming 
 with pitying tears, ' it is God's will.' 
 
 ' Oh, my lord ! Oh, my lord ! ' cried the Pope. It 
 was scarcely human, that wail of unutterable horror and 
 misery. 
 
 ' Oh, my lord, my lord ! I have lived here so long, 
 and strange voices torment me, saying hateful things ; 
 and I cannot tell what I have really heard. Just now 
 a terrible word seemed to be said. But not true, not 
 true.' 
 
 ' It is true that you have been called to rule over us 
 as God's gerent on the earth,' said Colonna with a clear 
 slowness. 
 
 ' To rule ! I that have not learned to serve ! ' 
 
 None of those who listened had ever heard so terrible 
 a voice, so agonised, so full of horror. 
 
 ' Santo Padre, it is God's will . . that He has declared 
 through us.' 
 
 ' Oh, may He forgive you ! What have you done ! 
 What have you done ! ' 
 
SAN CELESTINO 211 
 
 His hands were dropped from his face now, and lay at 
 each side of him, pressed against the rough rock. His 
 wild and horrified eyes were set in a stare of anguish. 
 
 ' It cannot be His will,' he wailed ; ' it is another 
 temptation. It is another vision. Go ! ' he cried out, 
 crouching back against the rock. ' Let me be. Oh 
 God, am I not mocked enough ? Thou hast let them 
 call me saint, and I have borne it, loathing the He, and 
 knowing it all the time, holding fast to penitence and 
 the memory of my sins. But now Thou hast let them 
 come again, with a new mockery. Oh God, remember 
 how old I am, and how weary, and worn out with answering 
 them. I cannot hold for ever : I am too weak. Suffer 
 them not to be so strong. I would not do Thee any 
 harm ; I know what I am, but hast Thou not pity for 
 the worms that crawl beneath Thy feet ? And I, even 
 I, am Thine own. . . . Go, go,' he called out, 'scarlet 
 persecutor ! I have listened in my folly, but I will not,' 
 and he crammed his lean fingers into his ears, and swayed 
 again. 
 
 Cardinal Colonna himself felt a creep of dread, but 
 he came close to the shrinking Pope, and held him. 
 
 ' There is no vision,' he said gently. ' I am no spirit, 
 bad or good, but a living man with a true message, that 
 it cuts me now to insist upon ; nevertheless I must 
 insist. It is no delusion, the word of mine, that you 
 have heard. Listen again, and believe me that God 
 has been pleased to lay this burden upon you.' 
 
 ' Evviva il Papa,' cried a voice outside. It was a 
 familiar one, and Petruccio shrank from it the more. 
 
 p2 
 
212 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 ' Even thou, mine own familiar friend in whom I 
 trusted,' he complained — the first reproach Maurizio had 
 ever heard from him. 
 
 ' God save the Holiness of Our Lord ' (' Evviva la 
 Santita di Nostra Signore '), shouted another monk. Next 
 to his being canonised, which could not be yet, it was 
 the finest thing that their founder should be called to 
 the summit of the Church. 
 
 ' I know my faults,' moaned the hermit. ' But my 
 punishment is greater than I can bear.' 
 
 ' Be strong and of a good courage and play the man,' 
 urged the Cardinal. ' Sustine Dominum et conforta 
 cor tuum.' 
 
 ' There is no comfort. I am not strong, and I have 
 no courage. And He leaves me to myself,' cried the 
 shrinking Pope, with unspeakable groanings, as Colonna 
 told afterwards. 
 
CHAPTEE IV 
 
 The Pope was dragged from his cell more like a culprit 
 than as one who was their master. Pope he would not 
 yet believe himself, though he could no longer refuse 
 to believe that he was held to be so by his relentless 
 captors. He still intended to withhold his consent to 
 what they were trying to do with him. 
 
 But they succeeded in getting him out of his cave, 
 and conveying him, somehow, to the monastery of Santo 
 Spirito at the foot of the mountain, just outside Solmona. 
 
 The arrival there was a fresh torment to him, for 
 by this time the news had spread far, and thousands of 
 people were there to see him come. They were all 
 delighted ; every one of them felt a personal pride in the 
 elevation of their neighbour to the highest dignity on 
 earth. 
 
 As they saw him pulled down the mountain-side, their 
 cries and shouts filled the valley, and the wretched Pope 
 grew sick as he heard them. 
 
 ' It is a mistake — a mistake,' he moaned, when the 
 
 crowds rushed to meet him, waving kerchiefs and 
 
 tearing down leaves and branches to scatter under his 
 
 feet. 
 
 ' It is no mistake,' said Cardinal Colonna firmly. 
 213 
 
214 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 ' Good people, behold your Pope. Ecco il nostro santo 
 Padre ! ' 
 
 ' Evviva il Papa ; il nostro Papa Santo ! ' they screamed, 
 pressing and swaying in a great block, so that the prelates 
 could scarcely get him forward. 
 
 Some of the people nearest to him fell upon their 
 knees and tried to kiss his feet. But he shrank back 
 with such horror, and looked so much as if he would sink 
 down and so cover his feet under himself, that the prelates 
 bade the folk be patient, and remember that the Sovereign 
 Pontiff was not thus to be jammed in and jostled. 
 
 ' It is all for love,' the people cried out. ' No dis- 
 respect ! ' 
 
 Nevertheless they obeyed, and held back a little. 
 
 ' Vox populi vox Dei,' said the Cardinal Pietro di 
 Colonna in the Pope's ear. 
 
 ' Vox populi crucifixit Jesum Christum,' retorted the 
 Pope bitterly. 
 
 At last they were within the monastery, where the 
 abbot and his monks received the new Pontiff with all 
 the hurried pomp available. They knelt to receive his 
 blessing, but he bade them rise. 
 
 ' May God bless us all,' he cried, ' but I am not the 
 Pope. The cardinals have made a mistake.' 
 
 Cardinal Colonna did not look as if he thought that 
 very likely ; and here was another cardinal waiting 
 to confirm the news that he had brought. This was 
 Malabranca himself. 
 
 ' There has been no mistake at all, Santissimo Padre,' 
 he said, coming forward respectfully, but with a firm air. 
 
SAN CELESTINO 215 
 
 He too knelt and kissed the Pope's hand, for the ring 
 had fallen from his lean finger, and was dropped no one 
 knew where. The election of this Pope had been, in the 
 first instance, his own idea, and he had no idea of admitting 
 any mistake. 
 
 In vain the reluctant Head of the Church appealed 
 to him. He was full of reverence, and duty, and sub- 
 mission, but he was as immovable as one of the rocks 
 above. For this once he would plainly tell the Pope his 
 duty. 
 
 ' For twenty-seven months,' he reminded him, ' the 
 Church has been without a master. The fold of Christ 
 has been without a shepherd. It has been a scandal 
 and a disaster. The wolves have eyed the sheep, and 
 longed to break in and devour them. God has pitied us, 
 and has ended our trouble at last ; many may have 
 desired to be Pope, and none of them have been found 
 worthy. No one ever imagined that you desired it, and 
 God has declared you worthy. Do not pretend to judge 
 of that yourself.' 
 
 Pietro di Murrone urged, with vehement tears, his 
 incompetence, his ignorance of men, and of the world, his 
 inexperience of business, even of that of the Church. 
 
 ' I am like an owl,' he cried piteously, ' that has lived 
 so long in the dark he cannot see things that move in the 
 day.' 
 
 ' An eagle, rather, that has lived so near the sun he 
 can stare into its light,' said the Cardinal of Ostia. 
 
 It may have been a fine metaphor, but Pietro Murrone 
 knew that he was no eagle. 
 
216 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 ' God has said that with the ignorance of the simple 
 He will confound the wise,' persisted Malabranca. ' The 
 Church does not now need one learned in kingly arts : 
 but one who will confound their dark policy with the 
 direct ray of honesty and truth. Most Holy Father, 
 forgive me for seeming to argue, and even to chide, but 
 this matter is no longer to discuss ; the thing is done, and 
 you are Pope as truly as I am Cardinal. God has thrust 
 the keys into your hands, and He will strictly demand 
 account of you if you fling them back upon the ground.' 
 
 So the weary argument went on, and at last Pietro 
 was overborne, as he had been fifty years before by the 
 three friends who had insisted that he should be a priest. 
 With heart-broken sobs he yielded, and left himself, 
 crushed but passive, in their hands. For the rest he 
 cared scarcely at all. The detail was insignificant once 
 the main point had been conceded. 
 
 His long hair was cut off, and his shaggy beard. 
 
 When the matted locks fell off they disclosed the lurid 
 
 mark of the nail upon his temple ; it throbbed and pulsed. 
 
 ' The Holy Father has had a wound ? ' said the 
 
 inquisitive wielder of the scissor. 
 
 ' Not yet,' the Pope answered, like one who scarce 
 knows what he is saying. 
 
 He suffered them to put on him the white wool woven 
 of the fleece of lambs ; but he would not take off his 
 hermit's rags, and they were fain to cover , them with 
 the papal garments. He was so lean that it did not 
 matter. 
 
 ' " Like a lamb was He led to the slaughter," ' 
 
SAN CELESTINO 217 
 
 whispered the chamberlain who dressed him in the 
 mystical white robe. 
 
 Finally the ring of the fisherman was thrust upon his 
 finger. 
 
 Thou shalt catch men," ' one murmured. 
 
 ' They have caught me,' moaned the Pope. 
 
 Then they took him to Aquila, mounted on an ass, to 
 the scandal of those who knew he should ride upon a 
 white palfrey. 
 
 ' If I must ride at all,' he said, ' there is no beast so 
 well beseems me. It was good enough for Him.' 
 
 He had never owned but one horse, and that he had 
 given to Euggiero, after owning it for an hour. 
 
 But he had two kings to walk beside him and hold his 
 bridle as he rode : the King of Naples, whose subject 
 he had been, and his son the King of Hungary. They 
 thought it a fine thing to have him for Pope, and counted 
 keenly on using him for their purposes. A greater than 
 he had been forced between two thieves. 
 
 They brought him to the new church of Santa Maria di 
 Collemaggio, scarcely seven years old, half a mile outside 
 the city gate. He had never seen it ; it had been built 
 since he and his hermits had gone back to Solmona. He 
 stared up at its beautiful facade, which was the face of no 
 familiar friend. He could not heed the loveliness of its 
 three round-headed doors, nor that of the glorious rose- 
 windows above them. Some of his own monks walked 
 near, and to them he cried in the words of Job — 
 
 ' Miseremini mei, miseremini mei, saltern vos amici 
 mei, quia manus Domini tetigit me.' (' Pity me, pity me, 
 
218 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 at least you friends of mine, for the hand of the Lord has 
 touched me.') 
 
 But they could not really pity him : they could listen 
 sharply enough, and remember very well ever afterwards 
 all that he said ; it should all be brought up in the process 
 of his canonisation — for that it was excellent ; but they 
 could not find room in their hearts for anything but 
 exulting. They were young monks, and most of them 
 were still alive when he actually was canonised nine 
 and twenty years later ; these young monks did not know 
 their founder, as his first companions had known him, 
 and they could only think of the glory of their order. 
 No founder of an order had ever been chosen Pope before. 
 
 They smiled, and tried to look compassionate, but 
 made only a poor hand of it. 
 
 The bells jangled out their jubilation from the machi- 
 colated campanile to the right ; and, from the gallery 
 over the entrance, prelates and nobles looked down as the 
 Pope came near. Some of them must have pitied him, 
 for his face expressed nothing but incurable dread and 
 misery. But they all acclaimed and waved hands and 
 kerchiefs as they squeezed up, two or three deep, against 
 the wrought-iron rails, hung with cressets ready to be 
 lighted when night should fall. 
 
 The crowds were immense, and there was not room 
 in the church even for the clergy. It was hard to make 
 a lane for the Pope and his attendant prelates to pass 
 up to the sanctuary. Other cardinals had now arrived 
 from Perugia, among them Napoleone Orsirai, so that 
 the Pope had on either side of him, not only the two kings, 
 
SAN CELESTINO 219 
 
 but two princes of the Church representing the two 
 highest rival houses of Eoman princedom. 
 
 On the gospel side of the high altar was a tall throne, 
 and on it Pietro Murrone was made to sit, the two kings 
 having lesser thrones opposite. 
 
 Cardinal Orsini brought the red mozzetta and set it on 
 the Pope's shoulders, and also the mitre, jewelled and 
 golden. And he it was who announced the election to 
 the people and told them the name chosen by the new 
 Pontiff. 
 
 ' Habemus Pontificem,' he cried in loud sonorous 
 tones. ' Dominum Petrum di Murrone qui sibi imposuit 
 nomen Celestinum Quintum.' (' We have a Pope, the Lord 
 Peter of Murrone, who has assumed to himself the name 
 of Celestine V.') 
 
 But the French cardinal anointed Celestine, and the 
 actual crowning was performed by the senior cardinal 
 present, Matteo Rossi. 
 
 Then came the obeisance. The cardinals, the kings, 
 the bishops and prelates, the nobles, drew near in order, 
 and knelt to kiss Celestine's feet. Finally he was raised 
 aloft for the homage, and the air rang with the cries of all 
 who had been able to squeeze into the church — 
 
 ' Evviva ! Evviva il Papa Nostro Celestino ! ' 
 
 One who stood at hand, close beside the Pope, drew out 
 a whisp of tow, and passed it sharply through a torch ; 
 it blazed and flared up, and died out in an instant, 
 leaving a smoke and an acrid smell. 
 
 ' Sic transit gloria mundi,' he called out. (' Thus the 
 world's glory passes.') 
 
220 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 Gloria mundi ! What was the glory of the world to 
 Celestine ? As they lifted him high upon their shoulders, 
 he thought of Him who said, ' I, when I shall be lifted up, 
 will draw all things to Myself.' And he, would he ever be 
 able to draw to Him those who stood aloof ? What power 
 of attraction had he to lure back those who had become 
 alienated ? He had, he told himself miserably, no tact, 
 no grace of attraction — nothing. Perhaps he would 
 alienate them more. That seemed far more likely ; 
 wandering sheep he might scare further afield with his 
 uncouth look and rough, untrained voice. 
 
 Gloria mundi ! He had always dreaded and disliked 
 it, and now it had gained a new power of tormenting 
 him. In truth he had almost forgotten it; it had 
 become a vague, uneasy memory ; but now it had rushed 
 back upon him, close, in arms. 
 
 He had always been lonely, seeking no friends and 
 hardly accepting the few who had offered ; of ordinary 
 human friendships he had actually had none. For 
 between him and his hermits and monkg it had not been 
 that, but merely the silent sympathy bred of a common 
 object and a common pursuit. 
 
 But now a wholly different loneliness was decreed 
 against him like a sentence: not merely personal and 
 accidental, or the result of disposition, but official and 
 implied in what he had become. 
 
 As he was raised aloft and saw every knee bent, 
 every head bowed in homage, he felt what it was to be 
 that which no one else alive could be also ; henceforward 
 he, who had wished to be beneath all, must inexorably be 
 
SAN CELESTINO 221 
 
 over all, without an equal, without a comrade, almost 
 without a fellow-creature. A creature he was, and one 
 that felt himself the weakest, but his personal existence 
 had ceased to matter, merged in his official existence. 
 Pietro Murrone was of no consequence to anyone, Celestine 
 mattered to all heaven and earth. 
 
 He looked down, with frightened eyes, upon kneeling 
 cardinal and king, bishop and baron, prince and prelate 
 and peasant, and his heart froze within him : for it meant 
 that he was viceroy of God — in place of Christ. 
 
 ' Gloria mundi ! ' 
 
CHAPTEE V 
 
 It must not be supposed that the accession of Celestine V 
 was unnoticed by his own family. For fifty-five years 
 they had forgotten him, and some of them had already 
 passed out of sight and memory themselves ; but those 
 who were left remembered him now very well. Out 
 of the twelve brothers he was by no means the sole 
 survivor, and they now declared that it seemed to 
 them but yesterday since he was among them. Still, 
 fifty-five years is a good while, and they could hardly 
 be blamed for forgetting that he had not then been made 
 much of. 
 
 Several of them hurried to Aquila, but the Pope had 
 already been carried off to Naples, and thither they 
 followed him. The Angevin King was determined to 
 keep Celestine in his own hands and use him in the 
 interests of his house both there and in Prance. Accord- 
 ingly it was in the Castello Nuovo that the Pope's 
 relations found him ; it was really new then, having been 
 begun only eleven years earlier, and being still unfinished. 
 The people outside were already murmuring that the 
 Pope was a prisoner, though Charles heeded such 
 mutterings very little if any of them were reported to him. 
 
 Celestine's family arrived in some force. Several 
 
 222 
 
SAN CELESTINO 223 
 
 of the brothers had brought their wives, and all of them 
 had brought sons or daughters. To the Pope they all 
 seemed equally strangers. He had been a lad when he 
 had seen any of them last, and some of these brothers 
 of his had been scarcely more than children then. They 
 were all old now, and he could trace nothing familiar in 
 their anxious, eager faces. One or two of his nephews 
 had a little more the look of what their fathers had been 
 in those far-away days than the fathers themselves, but 
 even the sons were past their youth, and were mostly 
 married men with children of their own. 
 
 The Pope gazed at them, peering from one to the other 
 in search of a face he could recall, and at last found one. 
 
 ' This is Euggiero,' he said, with a faint smile that 
 was sad enough. 
 
 ' His grandson,' said one of the lad's grand-uncles 
 promptly. ' Euggiero is still alive, but he would not 
 come.' 
 
 ' He did not care to intrude upon your Holiness,' 
 declared the youth's father. 
 
 And this was true enough. 
 
 ' Go, all of you, if you like,' Euggiero had told them. 
 ' I teased him as long as we were together, and he must 
 think I have forgotten him ever since. I will not hobble 
 off to fawn upon him now.' 
 
 ' I wish he had come too,' said the Pope. Of all his 
 brothers he had been fondest of Euggiero, though none 
 of them had plagued him more, and he remembered very 
 well how Euggiero used to torment him with the nick- 
 name of Chiodino. 
 
224 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 ' My grandfather is very old,' said the grandson in 
 excuse. ' It is no want of respect to your Holiness.' 
 
 This sounded very strange in the Pope's ears. He 
 could not think of Euggiero ' respecting ' him. 
 
 ' My father remembers very well,' Ruggiero's son, 
 the lad's own father, put in, ' how your Holiness gave 
 him your horse the day you went away from home.' 
 
 - If I had had it at Solmona they would have made 
 me ride upon it,' said Celestine. 
 
 ' It would be about sixty-five years old,' thought his 
 grand-nephew. 
 
 His relations had a great deal to say. At home they 
 assured him he was held in reverent remembrance. 
 
 ' I dare say Fra Taddeo remembers me,' the Pope 
 observed mildly, ' we were always friends.' He kept 
 forgetting the great intervening gulf of time, and his 
 thoughts were far back in the past as if it were still 
 present. 
 
 ' He remembers your Holiness perfectly,' declared one 
 of his nephews boldly. There was, as it happened, 
 another Fra Taddeo in their faese, and the nephew did 
 not consider that the frate was only about fifty years old. 
 
 ' It is not only Fra Taddeo ; everyone speaks of your 
 Holiness,' said another nephew. 
 
 ' And at home we talk of nothing else,' interposed a 
 niece who had sons of her own very ready to be promoted. 
 
 ' That may be,' said one of her uncles. ' It is not 
 every family that possesses the Pope. But your father 
 was not married when his Holiness left, and I never 
 heard that you were born.' 
 
SAN CELESTINO 225 
 
 Sandro bad always been sharp, and tbere was some- 
 thing in bis tone tbat really reminded Celestine of the 
 days at home. 
 
 The niece was a good-natured, plump creature, with 
 only a natural amount of ambition for her own children, 
 and the Pope scarcely noticed that she had been over- 
 reminiscent for possibility. 
 
 They all wanted something, though most of them 
 had not any very clear idea as to what it was. The 
 fathers and mothers were much inclined to discern 
 vocations in their sons which had not until lately struck 
 them very forcibly. 
 
 ' My boy, Roberto, is made for a priest,' one nephew 
 asserted. ' He hates ordinary occupations.' 
 
 ' And our Pippo is for ever at the monastery,' declared 
 Pippo's mother. ' They call him the young abbot.' 
 
 ' He is lame,' explained Sandro, ' and no good at 
 anything out of doors.' 
 
 ' It is better to limp into heaven,' protested Pippo's 
 mother, ' than to canter into perdition on all the unbroken 
 colts one can catch hold of.' 
 
 ' Our son, Arrigo, is already in minor orders,' observed 
 another nephew. ' He knew he had a vocation before we 
 any of us beard tbat our kinsman was to be Head of the 
 Church.' 
 
 ' But not before you had discovered he was the 
 dullest of your five,' Sandro remarked sourly. 
 
 ' I, at least, have"no vocation,' confessed Euggiero's 
 grandson. ' I would like to be a captain in the Pope's 
 bodyguard.' 
 
226 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 And he got his wish, for the Pope saw his own brother, 
 Ruggiero, reflected in him. 
 
 Sooner or later they nearly all of them got some- 
 thing. But at present Celestine was dazed by them. 
 They suggested and hinted, and presently grew bolder 
 and demanded plainly. No doubt he was ashamed of 
 them, but they were not in the least ashamed of 
 themselves. 
 
 He really promised nothing ; but they came back, 
 one by one, and persisted that he had promised all 
 sorts of things, and in the long run they squeezed all 
 sorts of things out of him. 
 
 He knew nothing about these matters ; and his 
 courtiers assured him that it was quite right that he should 
 do as this or that kinsman asked, and then asked some- 
 thing for themselves or for kinsmen of their own. 
 
 Apparently it was the business of the Pope to give 
 titles, promotions, offices : things of which he knew 
 nothing, and for which he cared nothing. It all seemed 
 part of the weary business of being Pope. He had no 
 desire to favour his own folk, but he had no desire in the 
 matter at all, and the courtiers impressed upon him that 
 this nephew, or grand-nephew, was peculiarly suitable 
 for such and such an office, or such and such a dignity. 
 The cardinals said nothing, perhaps because they did 
 not at once see how the helpless Pope was being twisted 
 hither and thither. All they wanted was to get him 
 away from Naples to Rome, out of the obvious clutches 
 of Charles of Anjou. These others were little matters 
 not likely to be considered by them. What concerned 
 them was of far greater moment. Their affair was 
 
SAN CELESTINO 227 
 
 with national and international interests, with the freedom 
 of the Head of Christendom, with his independence, 
 and release from the Angevin thraldom. 
 
 If the Pope made this or that nephew a baron, and 
 appointed such and such a grand-nephew to his body- 
 guard, it was all within his rights ; and some of them, 
 who had not been among the most convinced of his 
 electors, only wondered to find the hermit so accessible 
 to worldly applications from his kindred. 
 
 To get him away from Naples was, however, very 
 difficult. Celestine was ready to go wherever they 
 bade him, though his old dread of Rome was as powerful 
 as ever. But the King was resolved to keep him where 
 he was as long as possible. 
 
 And Charles was clever enough to know how to be 
 kind to the shy and unhappy Pontiff. The King of 
 Hungary, his son, was equally adroit, and between them 
 they managed to convince Celestine that he was best 
 where he was. They were most gracious to his kinsmen, 
 and showered more upon them than the Pope, with all 
 his simplicity, could be induced to do. 
 
 According to the two kings the Pope's family was 
 composed of the most excellent people they had ever met ; 
 and they warmly espoused every claim of these deserving 
 creatures, so that, at their pressing and reiterated instance, 
 he did much for them which of himself he would never 
 have agreed to. 
 
 How could a generous, simple creature, who had never 
 been suspicious, refrain from giving when it was urged 
 upon bim that to give was his first duty, and to refuse 
 would be a niggardly churlishness ? 
 
 Q2 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 Nevertheless the cardinals, who wanted the Pope in 
 Rome, got their way at last. They had all Christendom 
 to back up their insistence, and Charles did not dare 
 to refuse for ever. 
 
 Celestine himself knew that they were right. He 
 was Pope because he was Bishop of Rome, and in Rome 
 it behoved him to be. He wanted only to do right, and, 
 though he dreaded Rome, and preferred being a prisoner 
 in the Castello Nuovo at Naples to lording it in his own 
 palace in his own capital, he made the King see that he 
 must do what the Cardinal urged upon him. So to 
 Rome he went, the Kings of Naples and Hungary 
 pretending to see him go with the deepest personal 
 regret, but the liveliest sense of his correctness of 
 judgment. They took care, however, that he should 
 go accompanied by their own agents and reporters. 
 
 Celestine had never been given to think ill of people, 
 and the astute monarch had worked hard to impress 
 him favourably. He so spoke of St. Louis that the 
 Pope was continually reminded how the two kings were 
 brothers, and was more and more led to forget their 
 singular unlikeness to each other. 
 
 Charles at last freely alluded to the fate of Corradino. 
 228 
 
SAN CELESTINO 229 
 
 He bemoaned it and wept over it ; it had all been the 
 fault of Roberto di Lavena, the judge ; he, the King, had 
 had nothing to do with it. 
 
 ' They killed him,' protested the King, who was in 
 reality much more like Louis XI than Louis IX. ' I 
 only gave him a king's tomb and a king's burial.' 
 
 He did not enter into particulars and explain that 
 the ' king's tomb ' consisted of a plain stone slab marked 
 ' R.C.C (Regis Corradini Corpus) hidden behind the 
 high altar in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine, a 
 church built, not by Charles, but by Conradin's mother, 
 Margaretta di Baviera, widow of Conrad IV, with the 
 very money she had brought, too late, to ransom her 
 already murdered son. 
 
 Though he swore that Corradino's execution, as a 
 rebel and a felon, had been none of his doing, but the 
 work of a cabal among the Neapolitan party opposed to 
 the Hohenstauffen, and carried out for them by Berto 
 di Lavena, the judge, Charles of Anjou expressed intense 
 penitence for the deed, and probably more than half 
 persuaded the honest Pope of his sincerity. The King 
 entreated Celestine to offer Masses for the dead lad's 
 soul, declaring at the same time that he had already 
 caused thousands to be said, and the Pontiff very readily 
 undertook to do this. 
 
 Charles had said so much of his sorrow that he almost 
 began to feel the grief he spoke of ; and, being a man of 
 imagination, as most clever persons are, there was plenty 
 to aid him in his access of tardy compunction. He 
 knew the story very well, much more of it than he had 
 
230 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 thought necessary to repeat in detail to the Pope. How 
 Lavena's sentence had horrified everyone, how un- 
 answerable had been Guido di Suzana's pleading for the 
 kingly victim. How the brutal decree had been read 
 out to Corradino as he played at chess with his friend 
 and fellow-victim, Frederick of Austria. How the last 
 of the Hohenstauffen heard it with calm indignation, 
 saying, ' I am a mortal man, and must die, now or a little 
 later, yet ask of the kings of the earth if a king be a felon 
 for seeking to win back the heritage of his fathers. . . .' 
 How Charles of Anjou's own brother, Robert of Flanders, 
 struck dead the wicked judge. And how Corradino 
 had gone bravely to die, saying only as he waited the 
 death-stroke, ' my mother ! What will be thy sorrow ! ' 
 
 But now Celestine was gone, Charles embracing him 
 lovingly at parting, and making much show of desiring 
 to kiss his former subject's feet ; and by slow stages 
 the Pope moved forward up the broad valley towards 
 Rome. 
 
 On its height he saw Monte Cassino proudly brooding, 
 and a little further on Aquino, where St. Thomas had 
 been born when he himself was a child ; the master of 
 the Summa was already dead twenty years, and was not 
 to be canonised till ten years after Celestine himself. 
 
 But the Pope had little attention for the associations 
 and interests of the way. He thought more of his 
 former journey to Rome, under compulsion as now ; and 
 the nearer he drew to his capital the deeper was his dread 
 and foreboding. And he was continually distracted by 
 petitions, and demands for favours. Every town had 
 
SAN CELESTINO 231 
 
 a supplied to make, and he thought of Alfeo's principle 
 that the root of misery is desire; everyone seemed to 
 desire something, and to be in misery till it was obtained. 
 Some of the favours asked were spiritual, but the greater 
 number were temporal. 
 
 One abbot wanted to be made ' ordinary,' independent 
 of the bishop ; and one bishop wanted his see raised to 
 archiepiscopal rank. 
 
 ' I would you could grant me my favour,' said the 
 Pope, with his tired, wistful smile. 
 
 The prelate declared that if there were anything in 
 the world he could do for his Holiness it would be the 
 proudest privilege of his life. 
 
 ' You ask for independence of the archbishop ; ah, 
 if you could make me the least of your own subjects ! ' 
 
 Hardly any of them could understand that he really 
 loathed being what sternest providence had made him : 
 they had heard of his reluctance, but now they supposed 
 he must be accustomed to his dignity. Not to covet 
 elevation is one thing, to be actually eager to descend 
 from it, once tasted, is altogether different. They were 
 puzzled rather than edified. 
 
 So the Pope went on his tedious way, and Rome 
 loomed more and more portentous in his mind. If the 
 road thither brought all this, what would it be when 
 he should really be there ? 
 
 Scarcely any of those with him pitied him. They 
 watched him coldly, with shrewd observance, and 
 many called him, in their hearts, poor-spirited. The 
 beatitudes are not all popular, and the least popular is 
 
232 SAN OELESTINO 
 
 ' Beati pauperes spiritu ' ; to be of a poor spirit has 
 always been a reproach in the world, for the world wants 
 nothing less than to see God. 
 
 At Anagni his cortege was much increased, for Cardinal 
 Benedetto came down from his palace with a great 
 following, and joined himself to the Pope's escort. Erom 
 Anagni had sprung three popes, all of them Conti, but 
 Gelasius II had been of Cardinal Caetani's own family, 
 and Cardinal Benedetto looked much more like a pope 
 than Celestine. 
 
 Between two good men there is not always sympathy, 
 and between Celestine and Benedetto there was never 
 anything but an instinctive antipathy. The Pope lacked 
 almost every quality that the great Cardinal valued ; and 
 the hermit who had been dragged on to St. Peter's throne 
 saw in the Cardinal only a prince, with a prince's courtly 
 retinue, a prince's confident air, and a prince's instinctive 
 usage of every appurtenance of his state. Cardinal Bene- 
 detto was a born leader, sure of himself, and ambitious 
 because he felt equal to every call that the realisation of 
 his ambition could make upon him. Celestine was a 
 born follower, though it was God alone whom he had 
 followed, and to rule was for him a crucifixion, because 
 he felt convinced of his utter incapacity for ruling. 
 
 Caetani had already heard much of the new Pope, 
 but little of it had impressed him. Humility and 
 diffidence were no doubt great virtues, but they became 
 a hermit better than they suited the needs of a pope of 
 that time, with nearly every prince in Christendom pitted 
 against him. To be reluctant to accept the papacy was 
 
SAN CELESTINO 233 
 
 very well : perhaps Pietro di Murrone had been so far 
 wiser than those who had compelled him to accept it ; 
 but, now that the thing was done, Cardinal Benedetto 
 could not admire his uneasiness. The Head of the 
 Church should hold up his own head ; and, being master, 
 he should prove himself ready to maintain the mastery. 
 And Benedetto hated the French, and he had heard 
 that Celestine was altogether fallen into the hands of 
 Charles of Anjou. 
 
 The Pope felt almost all this intuitively : any very 
 sensitive person knows when he is disapproved. He 
 had never courted human approbation, but had all 
 his life long fled from it ; nevertheless the knowledge of 
 being disapproved is a cold sensation. 
 
 And, after all, he was Pope. With all his princely 
 bearing and dazzling retinue, Benedetto was only one 
 of Celestine's own cardinals, 
 
CHAPTEE VII 
 
 ' In spite of his meek looks he knows he is the Pope,' 
 said Cardinal Caetani as he rendered his obeisance. 
 ' And he is obstinate ; these meek people always are.' 
 
 Hereafter he found that he had been mistaken — 
 that Celestine was no more obstinate than he was proud. 
 
 Little as the Pope was drawn to the great Cardinal, 
 he proved pliant enough in his hands, ready enough 
 to accept his leading. 
 
 If Celestine could have looked forward nineteen 
 years, and the blue haze that lay over Anagni could 
 have been lifted, it would have been for him to pity. 
 
 In yonder cathedral Alexander III had excommuni- 
 cated Barbarossa, and Innocent III had excommunicated 
 Barbarossa's grandson ; there, too, Alexander IV had 
 decreed the ban of Manfred. That was all past. But 
 on September 7th, 1303, in that same cathedral, this 
 very Caetani, Celestine's own successor, will sit waiting 
 for the coming of his enemies the French. An old man 
 then, Boniface VIII, wearing the papal stole and the 
 papal crown, grasping in his right hand the cross, and in 
 his left the keys which Celestine laid down, the next 
 Pope shall wait upon his throne till Nogaret and the 
 Colonna come to drag him away, prisoner, bound upon a 
 
 234 
 
SAN CELESTINO 235 
 
 vicious horse, his face to its tail, to strike him on the face, 
 and to call him anti-pope. 
 
 Celestine had a good and kindly heart ; could he have 
 foreseen all this he would have wept for pity, and even 
 his gentle spirit would have been roused to indignation 
 at the insults to be heaped upon Christ's Vicar, his 
 successor. 
 
 As it was he saw Anagni, its palace, and its pride ; he 
 saw its princely cardinal, and felt that in him he had met 
 a critic, cold and self-confident, one who would only 
 despise his own weakness, and condemn his shrinking 
 distaste for nearly every function of his office. 
 
 Nevertheless the Cardinal was civil, and the silent Pope 
 recognised his talent, not enjoying it, and quite soon 
 began in a fashion to lean upon him. Benedetto was full 
 of certainty and decision, never in doubt himself and 
 unable to understand hesitation in the Head of Christen- 
 dom. Decisiveness of character is not always attractive, 
 but Celestine would take refuge — over - often, many 
 thought — in the Cardinal's obvious strength and assured 
 opinion. Of his own opinion he was ever diffident. 
 Almost in their first conversation, as they rode together, 
 Caetani perceived the Pope's foreboding dread of Rome. 
 He had no dread of it himself, to him it was familiar, 
 and in it he felt was his own proper sphere and battle- 
 around. He desired Rome to be the mistress of all other 
 capitals, its government to be the arbiter of all other 
 governments. The whole idea of governing was repugnant 
 to Celestine. He was ready enough to believe that 
 kings should obey the Pope, but he shrank from the 
 
236 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 thought that it was now himself they were to obey, and 
 that he was in fact himself a king. Such counsel as the 
 Cardinal gave would have been useful, perhaps, had he 
 to whom it was given been a different person. He 
 advised Celestine as though Celestine had been like 
 himself. As it was, the Pope could barely understand it, 
 and what he did understand he disliked. To assert 
 himself, to impress himself on the world and its rulers was 
 wholly beyond what he could undertake even to attempt. 
 
 With the Hernican hills on one side and the Sabines 
 on the other they rode on — the talking Cardinal, full of 
 eager, masterful interest in his own words, and the 
 listening Pope, not always interested, and nearly always 
 beset by an inward protest. 
 
 ' I am an old monk,' he pleaded, ' and all these 
 matters of state are beyond me.' 
 
 ' But the Pope must deal with matters of state. St. 
 Gregory VII had been a monk, like many others of your 
 Holiness's predecessors, of blessed memory, nevertheless 
 he had his foot on the neck of the Emperor.' 
 
 Celestine sighed, but would not promise to try and 
 overcome emperors. He had never overcome anybody 
 but himself, or had had any other enemy. 
 
 ' The Pope may not think only of his personal sancti- 
 fication,' said Caetani. ' In his hands are the liberties of 
 the Church ; he must fight for them. Christ warned us 
 that He came to bring not peace but a sword. The 
 millennium is not yet. The wolves and the shepherd can 
 never be friends.' 
 
 None of this cheered the Pope. No doubt the 
 
SAN CELESTINO 287 
 
 courageous, belligerent Cardinal meant to inspirit him, 
 but he only discouraged and depressed. 
 
 ' Why did they not leave me alone ? ' wondered 
 Celestine. It seemed now as if he had been altogether 
 happy in his cave on Monte Murrone. He could never 
 be happy again. 
 
 They rode on, and in due course reached Rome, 
 where the people came out, with sufficient curiosity 
 to gaze upon the new Pope, and to welcome him. The 
 welcome was, at all events, very vociferous ; everyone 
 had heard something of the wonderful election, and 
 something, too, of the wonderful Pope. It was not at 
 all a new idea to have a saint for Pope, and the Romans 
 are not fond of novelty. So far so good. But the 
 Romans like Romans, and Celestine was of the Regno. 
 They did not in the least disapprove of his sanctity, and 
 meekness in his exalted office was far from being objec- 
 tionable. But they liked dignity too, and the downcast, 
 unhappy-looking Pontiff made no show of dignity. 
 
 He blessed them, almost falteringly, and some thought 
 the Cardinal at his side looked as if he could have done 
 it with a better air. Others disliked Caetani already, and 
 liked Celestine none the less for being different from him. 
 
 ' It is a good thing to have a saint for the Vicar of 
 Christ,' said one citizen sententiously. ' That is not 
 out of place.' 
 
 Anything out of place is highly objectionable to the 
 decorous Latin mind. 
 
 ' St. Peter was a saint himself,' observed another 
 citizen. ' He began it.' 
 
238 SAN OELESTINO 
 
 ' But that was not yesterday,' said a third citizen, 
 who considered himself trenchant. ' One wants a pope 
 who is not too holy to keep the cattiva gente in order. The 
 cattiva gente is generally in a majority.' 
 
 ' He looks as if the keys hurt his fingers.' 
 
 ' He has not the air of a king entering his capital.' 
 
 ' This is no king's capital. Rome is not a kingdom. 
 ' Senatus Populus que Komanus,' it runs. We are always 
 a republic. There is no necessity for the Holy Father to 
 come smirking in as if he had inherited the Lateran 
 from his late Majesty his father.' 
 
 ' No ; it is better to have him thus. Proud Pope, 
 poor people.' 
 
 ' Certo ! But it does not do for the Pope to be too 
 kind to others ; he can be as meek as he likes to us. Rome 
 is the mistress. The kings are not to forget that. We 
 want no tyrant in the Lateran ; but he who sits there 
 should be master of kings : thus is the glory of the 
 Church, and of this republic, maintained.' 
 
 ' He looks as if he would rather have stayed in the 
 hole in the ground out of which they had to dig him up.' 
 
 ' It is a good thing. The more chance of his remem- 
 bering that he was not born our master.' 
 
 ' Humility is a rare virtue ; married to discretion it 
 becomes the mother of perfection,' said a pursy burgher, 
 with a fat air of self-complacence. 
 
 ' In some families it is rare indeed and never gets 
 married at all,' declared his neighbour. ' It remains an 
 old maid after refusing the best offers.' 
 
 ' The Cardinal Benedetto seems to manage him 
 
SAN CELESTINO 239 
 
 already. The Pope seems only peeping out of his 
 pocket.' 
 
 ' Wait till he is at the Lateran. He will know who 
 he is then.' 
 
 ' Or else he will forget who he was,' said the trenchant 
 citizen. 
 
 ' One can always remind him,' said another. 
 
 Through them all the Pope rode slowly on, his weary 
 eye unlighted by excitement. To him novelty was 
 uneasy, and the crowds that peered into his face merely 
 embarrassed him. A modest, utterly diffident old man, 
 the thought that these were his own subjects was only 
 portentous and troubling. And yet it was borne in upon 
 him at every step of the way. Banners were waving, 
 trumpets braying, tapestries hanging down from the 
 balconies of palaces, and everywhere was a watchful 
 eagerness, that was not quite the same as cordial welcome ; 
 in the finer streets were many who looked down from 
 windows of great houses, themselves great people, as 
 observant, as cool as the mob, and not all devout. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Not all princes love to have a hermit, whom they regard 
 as little better than a peasant, raised to be their 
 master. 
 
 Such as these thought more of Celestine as he was to be, 
 their temporal sovereign, than of him as Vicar of Christ, 
 their spiritual guide and head. 
 
 ' What family will he favour ? ' wondered one princely 
 observer. 
 
 ' Caetani brings him in.' 
 
 ' But Colonna went to fetch him.' 
 
 ' Ah, and Orsini put on him the mozzetta.' 
 
 ' And the French cardinal gave him unction.' 
 
 ' Chi lo sa ? Time will show. He does not look as 
 if he cared for any of them.' 
 
 ' Or for any of us either. He would rather be con- 
 quering devils in bis hermitage than seeing what he 
 can do with the Colonna and the Orsini.' 
 
 ' Much the same thing,' said a noble, who was neither 
 of the Colonna nor of the Orsini, and was trenchant like 
 the citizen. ' He will get used to the new occupation 
 as they all do.' 
 
 ' How tired he looks,' said a lady. 
 
 ' And how sad,' said her daughter. 
 240 
 
SAN OELESTINO 241 
 
 ' It is a terrible weight,' observed her brother, a 
 young ecclesiastic — ' the burden of the keys.' 
 
 ' His arms are very thin,' observed the young priest's 
 father. ' Your own are stouter. You could carry a 
 good deal if anyone asked you.' 
 
 ' Absit ! ' cried the young priest devoutly. 
 
 His father laughed. 
 
 ' There is plenty of time. Cardinal Benedetto will 
 do all the carrying as soon as he gets the chance.' 
 
 The Pope's face was seldom lifted to the fine folk 
 in the balconies ; in general it was bent on the people 
 nearest him, the sweaty crowd that pushed up close and 
 often impeded his way. They were not destined to see 
 much of him ; his whole reign lasted little over four 
 months, and some weeks of it were gone already. During 
 the time he remained in Rome he went abroad hardly 
 at all, and he was nearly as close a hermit in his palace 
 as he had been in his cave on the mountain-top. He 
 could not possibly become popular, but the people had no 
 dislike to him : his gentleness was touching, and his 
 absence of all pride and self-sufficiency too obvious to be 
 unmarked. It must not be supposed that his appearance 
 was wild and uncouth now as it had been : he wore the 
 insignia of his office, and no one could see the hermit's 
 rags under them ; his face was only wan and sad, deadly 
 pale, and with melancholy eyes, troubled, and faded with 
 long weeping. 
 
 The people liked him better than the princes. 
 
 ' If he had anything to give he would give it,' said a 
 woman with a keen, honest face, scanning the Pope's. 
 
242 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 He had given himself, all he had ever had, and there 
 was nothing left. 
 
 ' He hasn't come for what he can get,' the woman 
 added to her husband. 
 
 ' Si vede.' 
 
 The great folk looked down as he passed, and none felt 
 any enthusiasm, though none were free from conjecture. 
 What he would turn out meant so much to them ; and of 
 a pope with no political antecedents, who had never been 
 a cardinal, who had emerged out of a life-long obscurity, 
 it was impossible to know anything. There was the 
 more to guess. 
 
 ' He will be somebody's victim. Some of them will 
 get hold of him,' grumbled an old prince who had bothered 
 more than one of Celestine's predecessors in his time. 
 
 ' We must see it is the right party,' declared his son. 
 
 ' I don't know. These simple saints are not the 
 easiest to manage,' maintained the prince's brother. 
 ' He may surprise us all, and act for himself.' 
 
 ' He doesn't look as if he would care to act at all. 
 One would say he only knows how to pray.' 
 
 At the palace Celestine received their homage, weary 
 in body and much more jaded in spirit. After all he had 
 a dignity, which they, being gentlemen, could perceive 
 in a fashion ; but it was only the dignity of simplicity 
 and humility. He seemed an odd master for them. 
 Even in his audience-chamber some of them could 
 scarcely keep the peace ; even the hereditary rights, or 
 claims, that some of them had to the performance of 
 
SAN CELESTINO 243 
 
 duties about his person led to rivalries and bickerings. 
 He had not the faintest idea that one prince had the 
 privilege of standing at his right hand, and another that 
 of being on his left ; that one might have a place upon 
 the steps of his throne, and another only the right to 
 kneel at the bottom of them. 
 
 Some assumed the privilege of sitting, after their 
 obeisance, upon stools, and certain cardinals bade him 
 resist this as an encroachment. It utterly dazed him. 
 
 ' Who am I that they should wrangle as to their 
 places near me ? ' he groaned. 
 
 ' The Supreme Pontiff,' he was reminded coldly. 
 How could the weary hermit understand that if he 
 permitted this or that he was condoning the breach 
 of some one else's ancient and historic privilege ? If 
 everyone is allowed to crowd to the sovereign's right 
 then the distinction is lost, and the courtier would as 
 lief be upon his left. He had to address them, and they 
 were all strangers ; he could find nothing appropriate and 
 personal to say. When he spoke to all together it 
 was not much better ; he had never loved talking, and 
 for the largest part of every year, for half a century, 
 he had kept entire silence. His tongue was not nimble ; 
 he had no adroit prettiness of speech ; and the delicate 
 shy spirituality of his few sentences was scarcely audible. 
 
 His wan eyes had no fire in them, and the sensitive, 
 tremulous lips were not clever in framing such words 
 as please inquisitive ears. He had been able to give 
 wise and tender counsel to thousands, but they had 
 come one by one, and alone, and they had each had a 
 
244 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 special need which he understood. The princes had 
 wants enough, but they were worldly, and the wants 
 of one were at war with those of his next neighbour. 
 Spiritual counsel was very little in their way; and it 
 was all the Pope had to give, and even that must be 
 given in general. 
 
 No one thought his speech so lame as he felt it himself, 
 but most of them found it lame enough. 
 
 ' He 's a good Pope, no doubt, for the nuns and the 
 priest3,' declared a burly old baron from the Sabina, who 
 had put off burning down a village belonging to another 
 baron for the sake of coming in to Eome and making 
 his obeisance. He felt rather bored and annoyed, 
 and wished he had set fire to that village before 
 starting ; he could not now do it with quite so good a 
 conscience on his return. He considered himself a good 
 Christian in his position in life (it was God who had 
 created him a baron of the Sabina), and the mild Pope's 
 words about brotherly love were still uncomfortable in 
 his ears. 
 
 ' He is not much in our line,' said another noble, 
 from near Segni. He had a cause of complaint against 
 Segni, which was an obstreperous city and inclined to 
 cavil at certain tributes. At first he had almost thought 
 of getting the Pope to arbitrate ; he was old and rheu- 
 matic, and his only son was just dead ; provided the 
 arbitration went in his own favour it might save him 
 trouble and worry. But though he was certain of his 
 own rights he did not feel so sure of this Pope's under- 
 standing justice. Saints should be all for justice, but 
 
SAN CELESTINO 245 
 
 saints like Celestine would not, he began to fear, know 
 much about feudal prescriptions ; and even saints 
 have two ears, and the duke saw the Syndic of Segni not 
 far off. That was out of place ; why need a syndic 
 come to Rome, as if he were of the prinoipatura, to make 
 homage to the Pontiff ? 
 
 Many of the princes felt themselves too strong to be 
 dependent on the Pope's goodwill ; it would rather 
 behove him to secure theirs. And they liked to be courted 
 for it. These were among the greatest, such as had the 
 right to be very near him. But, close to him as they 
 were ranged, his sensitive, shy nature felt instinctively 
 their aloofness. 
 
 They were civil, and treated him with a courtly respect ; 
 princes as they were, with names that carried the fancy 
 back almost to the beginnings of Home, they knew how 
 to show all outward deference to the obscure hermit now 
 he sat upon the papal throne. But it was all courtiers' 
 deference, impersonal and unsympathetic ; Celestine 
 found even Cardinal Benedetto's bold criticism more 
 friendly. 
 
 These great princes watched with chill, polite eyes, 
 waiting their time and chance, each willing to be his 
 friend and partisan if they could thus turn him to then- 
 own account, and each knowing that he could not thus 
 be of use to all. Not one of them but reverenced him 
 as Head of the Church, not one but was ready to squeeze 
 and torment him if such a course should seem likely 
 to advance his own personal interest. 
 
 The Pope spoke of their souls, which was all very 
 
246 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 right, for they had souls like the peasants, but they 
 thought of their families and of their names, which the 
 Pope did not know. Of policy he did not speak, evidently 
 because he had none ; nevertheless it would be necessary 
 to provide him with one. Each of them was prepared 
 to look to that. 
 
CHAPTEE IX 
 
 In another great hall of that palace the Pope built 
 himself a little hut. 
 
 He had wandered thither alone, eluding his chamber- 
 lains, and found it desolate and empty. It was only 
 used on rare occasions : for state audiences with kings, 
 canonisations, and so forth. In a corner of it he saw 
 a pile of dusty planks, that had perhaps been used for 
 making tribunes. 
 
 An old carpenter with one red eye was hovering 
 about. 
 
 ' Let me have some of those,' said the Pope, as 
 meekly as if the wood belonged to the carpenter. 
 
 ' What for ? ' demanded the grimy old man, blinking 
 his one red eye, as suspiciously as if the planks were 
 really his. It was a pity he could not keep his eye shut 
 altogether : he would have looked less disagreeable. 
 
 The Pope hesitated. 
 
 ' It is no harm,' he said, more apologetically than 
 ever. 
 
 ' One can't do much harm with a plank,' admitted the 
 carpenter. 
 
 It was half an hour after the Ave Maria, and nearly 
 dark ; the Pope's white cassock was covered by a crimson 
 
 247 
 
248 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 cloak that looked black in the dusk. Perhaps, too, that 
 one eye could not see very clearly. Certainly the old 
 carpenter did not know who was talking to him. 
 
 ' Gome now,' he said, with some concession in his dry 
 and musty manner, ' let us hear what you want planks 
 for." 
 
 He smelt of sawdust, and perhaps of not having 
 recently washed himself, for it was late in the week and 
 no fesia ; but Celestine did not notice it. 
 
 ' I want to build a little hut, anywhere you like, 
 not so as to spoil the walls ; out here if you like, or there 
 behind the heap of wood.' 
 
 ' A little hut ! One never heard of such a thing. 
 What for ? ' he asked again, with quite a lively sense 
 of suspicion. 
 
 ' To live in,' confessed the Pope. 
 
 The one red eye could not blink, though it wanted to ; 
 the eyelid without lashes was quite paralysed with 
 astonishment. 
 
 ' Madonna ! Are we mad ! ' the carpenter squeaked 
 out. 
 
 ' Well, I only wanted it. If it cannot be — I am 
 sorry ; that is all.' 
 
 It never occurred to the gentle, timid Pope to insist. 
 He was used, now, to feeling himself disapproved of. 
 
 He turned to creep away, and lifted his hand to bless. 
 
 ' God bless you, my son,' he said, as sweetly as if the 
 old curmudgeon had at once granted his meek request. 
 
 The red eye noticed sharply the uplifted hand, and the 
 great ring upon it. The moon, indeed, inquisitive like 
 
SAN CELESTINO 249 
 
 all women, had come round the corner and was just 
 able to peer down through one of the tall windows. 
 
 ' "Who are you, though ? ' faltered the old carpenter. 
 
 ' Oh, did you not know ? I am the Pope.' 
 
 The hut in the great hall was built, though not that 
 night; and Celestine built it himself — very badly, the 
 red-eyed critic assured himself — for the Pope would 
 not let him help, though he borrowed his tools and 
 his nails, and let him choose the planks of a proper 
 size. 
 
 It was not all done in one night, and before it was 
 finished the chamberlains had tracked the Pope, and 
 stood peeping in at the door while he worked. No doubt 
 it was a peculiar sight to see him, with his red cloak 
 thrown off and his white cassock girded up, the old 
 colourless hermit-rags showing underneath. 
 
 But he was not so unhappy while he worked, and his 
 red-eyed friend did not think him at all mad now. 
 
 ' He knows all about poor people,' the carpenter 
 assured his wife, who had the usual number of eyes, and 
 ears that might have heard enough for a score of people. 
 ' He doesn't care for the princes, he never mentions 
 them, but he understands about our sort of people." 
 
 Giulia listened greedily ; her husband was not always 
 so fond of talking as she would have liked him to be. One 
 who worked in the pontifical palace ought to have more 
 to say, she considered. 
 
 ' It is well known already that he is not proud,' she 
 observed, to encourage him to go on. 
 
250 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 ' I find him a good man,' said Girolamo calmly, as 
 though his decision were of some consequence. 
 
 ' But he is a saint ! That is what everyone knows.' 
 
 ' No doubt ; but he is also, as I say, a good man. 
 As to saints, one did not remember having met any ; such 
 a thing might not turn out agreeable.' 
 
 ' He is agreeable, then ? ' 
 
 But Girolamo would not answer. He was thinking 
 of a good word ; ' agreeable ' was not the word at all. 
 
 ' And he goes on building himself a hut — to live in ! ' 
 said Giulia, who was anxious to keep up the conversation. 
 
 ' Certo, he goes on. It is nearly finished ; it is not, 
 you will understand, a palazzo with a piano-nobile and a 
 grand staircase.' 
 
 ' Only one room, eh ? ' inquired Giulia, who had 
 heard it fully described already. 
 
 ' One little room with no floor ; for he intends to He 
 on the pavement. But he has taken a short piece of 
 wood for a pillow. " I am very old now," he told me, 
 " and need such indulgences." ' 
 
 After a little pause, during which his wife managed to 
 keep quiet, the old carpenter went on. Giulia saw very 
 well he had something else to say ; that was why she 
 had been able to hold her tongue. 
 
 ' To-day Cardinal Benedetto came — and caught him.' 
 
 ' Caught the Holy Father ! What was he doing ? ' 
 
 ' Finishing the hut, of course ; I was almost as 
 frightened as the Santo Padre.' 
 
 Giulia shivered with delight. 
 
 ' Was the Cardinal angry ? ' 
 
SAN CELESTINO 251 
 
 Angry ! You will be good enough to remember that 
 my friend is the Pope,' Girolamo snapped out. ' Cardinals 
 are not to be angry with the Pope.' 
 
 ' So he liked it ! He is not to live in it himself — si 
 vede.' 
 
 ' "Who said he liked Jit ? Nobody asked him if he 
 liked it. The Santo Padre said nothing about it, but 
 just left off working to listen to the Cardinal.' 
 
 ' Did the Cardinal speak to you ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, he did. . . .' 
 
 ' Ever so proudly, I guess ; not like the Holy Father.' 
 
 ' Not proudly at all, then, though not in the least 
 like the Santo Padre.' 
 
 ' How, then ? ' 
 
 ' How ? You ask as many questions as an examina- 
 tion of conscience ! The Cardinal was gracious ; he is a 
 prince, and a prince of the Church ; such persons are 
 always gracious to poor people. It does them no harm. 
 It is to one another they are haughty . . . nevertheless 
 he was condescending. The Pope has no condescension ; 
 he treats one as if he did not know any ranks existed.' 
 
 ' And the Cardinal did not object to the Holy Father's 
 building himself a hut to live in ? ' 
 
 ' No one asked him, I tell you, whether he objected 
 or no.' 
 
 ' But could you not see ? You see most things out of 
 that eye of yours.' 
 
 ' It seems to me that in such things he will let the Pope 
 have his own way.' 
 
 ' Ah ! in such things ? ' 
 
252 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 But Girolamo did not feel disposed to explain in what 
 things the Cardinal might be likely to want the Pope to 
 do as he had determined. 
 
 Quite soon after this Celestine began to live in the 
 hut ; and, if the great Cardinal made no objection, many 
 others chattered. Some raved about the Pope's sanctity, 
 and began to look about for convenient corners for huts 
 for themselves. Others shook their heads and even 
 tapped them. Almost everyone had something to 
 say. 
 
 As far as possible Celestine seemed determined to live 
 in the palace the old life from which he had been dragged. 
 But it could not always be even in part possible, and 
 anyway it was but the shell of the old life. Bis occupa- 
 tions could not be the same. There could be no silence, 
 and in truth there could be no solitude. 
 
 Weighty matters were brought for his decision, and 
 he declared plainly that he did not understand them ; 
 could not they, who had experience, decide them without 
 him ? As to matters of policy, questions of nations 
 and kings, he utterly protested his incompetence. He 
 was not in the least obstinate, being, in fact, only too 
 diffident; but his very diffidence seemed obstinacy to 
 the self-confident and proud. 
 
 ' I told them when they came to me,' he urged, with 
 tears and trembling, ' that I was ignorant, and I am 
 still as ignorant as ever : only it is worse, for I was then 
 only ignorant of a few simple things, and now I am 
 ignorant of a thousand difficult matters. I would tell 
 you if I could, but I know not what to say. It is 
 
SAN CELESTINO 253 
 
 folly and presumption to decide in affairs of which 
 one knows nothing. . . .' 
 
 ' Let the Holy Father alone,' Cardinal Benedetto 
 would say, scornfully some thought, some said with a 
 certain real pity. 
 
 ' You, my lord, understand it. Decide it,' the Pope 
 would plead. And the Cardinal was not usually back- 
 ward in deciding. 
 
 ' He might as well be Pope at once,' grumbled the 
 politicians in the French interest. 
 
 But the Pope favoured no interest. He only stuck 
 to it that the matters were beyond his capacity. And 
 if then there came other cardinals, opposed to the course 
 Caetani was following, and urged upon him that such 
 course was wrong, Celestine would bid them decide it 
 their way, and they would go from him declaring, and 
 no doubt believing, that they had his authority that 
 he had decided it in such a way. So both opposing 
 decisions were said to be his. 
 
CHAPTEE X 
 
 All this was in matters of high policy. 
 
 In some affairs of more personal interest he also got 
 into deep trouble. 
 
 Princes would come and urge a right or a prescription, 
 and pour into his dazed ears a yard-long tale. He 
 listened patiently, but they did not always even wish 
 to be clear, and perhaps were not unwilling that he 
 should be confused ; what they wanted was an assent. 
 At all events, it was all about feudal affairs of which he 
 was absolutely ignorant. They would go away, boasting 
 of success. Then their rivals would come and confuse 
 him with a longer tale still, utterly contradictory of the 
 other, but like it in obscurity and entanglement ; and 
 they would also go away declaring that his Holiness had 
 revoked and annulled the previous decision. 
 
 His simplicity and humility made him far too easily 
 accessible, and they all knew how to take advantage of 
 it ; Cardinal Benedetto would then scold him — so his 
 enemies declared ; but if he took the Pope to task, it 
 was not unfairly. He wanted the Pope to defend himself, 
 to save himself from persecution. 
 
 ' After all, etiquette is not such a bad thing,' he would 
 urge. ' Not every squabble between these wild beasts 
 
 254 
 
SAN CELESTINO 255 
 
 of barons can be brought to your Holiness. Etiquette 
 would defend you from much of all this. If two dogs 
 want to wrangle over a bone they need not be free to 
 drag it here and growl over it. He who separates 
 snarling dogs gets bitten.' 
 
 Perhaps the Cardinal's words were rough sometimes ; 
 he was of the mountains, and his nature was rough in a 
 fashion ; but Celestine, also from the mountains, did 
 not mind that much. Many were gentler with the 
 weary, dazed Pope than was the energetic, self-assured 
 Cardinal ; but, though dreading him, because of his 
 frequent disapproval, and because of that lack of sym- 
 pathy that must always be in their natures, Celestine 
 leaned on him more and more. 
 
 One day the Pope received for visitor an old man three 
 years his senior, whom he had known, and of whom 
 he had been once nearly as much in awe as now he was 
 of Caetani. 
 
 This was Messer Giacomo, the priest who had dragged 
 him off to Rome for ordination. 
 
 Messer Giacomo was seventy-seven years old now, and 
 had been a canon for over a quarter of a century. He 
 made it very plain, even to Celestine, that he thought 
 he ought to be a bishop. Certainly it was high time, if 
 he was ever to be a bishop at all. In three years he 
 would be eighty, and he was feeble in everything but 
 speech. 
 
 In that he was as vehement as a fiumara, and his 
 vehemence utterly disconcerted the Pope. His unabashed 
 urgency made the Pope ashamed ; but the canon was 
 
256 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 too eager to be ashamed himself. One could see it was a 
 matter about which he had been brooding for years, and 
 there was now so little time to lose. 
 
 There was a particular see vacant on which Canon 
 Giacomo had set his eyes, and, before he went away, 
 he had extracted a promise from Celestine that he should 
 have it. In fact, the Pope promised hurriedly — anxious 
 to end a scene which troubled him. He was sure Giacomo 
 was a good man, and had always been good ; no doubt he 
 was fit to be a bishop — though old ; and was not he, 
 whom they had made Pope, old too ? And it seemed 
 to him unseemly that, when one who had always behaved 
 as his superior came to supplicate, he should refuse ; 
 nevertheless the memory of that supplication was 
 repulsive. 
 
 Then came Lippo, who had remained so long a sub- 
 deacon, but had now been a priest for ever so many years, 
 and for over twenty had been chancellor of the very 
 diocese whereof Messer Giacomo wanted to be bishop. 
 
 He declared that the canons of the chapter wished 
 to have him, and brought two of them with him to bear 
 up his assertion. They said it was so, and, becoming 
 keen because they had espoused his cause, urged it almost 
 with heat. 
 
 They protested that the diocese was peculiar, and not 
 easily to be governed by a stranger. It was not in the 
 regno, whence came Messer Giacomo, but in the papal 
 territories, and a foreigner would be disagreeable. It 
 would be bad if a Neapolitan were imposed on them, and 
 would cause people to murmur that the Pope acted so 
 
SAN CELESTINO 257 
 
 because he was of the regno himself and wanted to favour 
 the subjects of King Charles. The Chancellor was 
 native-born and understood the people, who were very 
 peculiar. . . . 
 
 ' I dare say you are peculiar in your diocese,' thought 
 the Pope. But his tongue was too gentle to say this aloud. 
 
 He remembered Lippo very well, and had not found 
 him pleasant as a fellow-hermit ; but he had nothing 
 against him, and would very much dread seeming to bear 
 a grudge because the man had left them. 
 
 ' Basta ! ' he said. And when Lippo went away he 
 considered that a promise had been made to him. 
 
 The Pope had made none, nevertheless he had been 
 kind in manner, and had not declared the thing impossible. 
 
 Cardinal Benedetto took Lippo's part, and persuaded 
 the Pope that it would be right to give that see to the 
 Chancellor ; and Lippo was made bishop, though a 
 promise had actually been given to Messer Giacomo, 
 who nearly died of anger. 
 
 So people said the Pope had given the same see to two 
 bishops, and all sorts of mutterings resulted. 
 
 The Pope was not spared the repetition of them, 
 for each claimant had picked up a friend or so among 
 his courtiers, and Celestine was so meek, and so accessible, 
 that people, who had no delicacy, said what they liked 
 to him. He had never known how to snub, and being 
 Pope had not taught him. 
 
 He ,was nearly distracted ; he was always ready to 
 believe he had done wrong, and it seemed to him that the 
 wrong he did was more miserable and disastrous every day. 
 
258 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 Some of these mistakes of his were really about very 
 little matters, but nothing could seem little, or unim- 
 portant, to his irritable conscientiousness. Had they 
 been other people's mistakes he would have thought 
 nothing of them, but being his own, he bore heavily 
 on them, and they bore him down to the very ground. 
 Then Advent drew on, and Celestine resolved to spend 
 the season in retreat. He shut himself up in his hut 
 altogether, and placed the government of the Church in 
 the hands of a committee of three cardinals — Caetani 
 Colonna, and Malabranca. It is very unlikely, indeed, 
 that he was allowed to remain undisturbed; probably 
 it was wholly impossible. Matters would arise con- 
 cerning which the cardinals could not take the responsi- 
 bility of acting without at least referring to him. They 
 might practically decide, but it would not have been 
 decent for them to proceed without, at least, asking the 
 Pope's approval of their decision ; and then they would 
 insist on explaining the grounds of their action, and try 
 to insist on his understanding them. 
 
 It is not even certain that all three were invariably 
 agreed in every opinion ; then, of course, recurrence must 
 be had to the sovereign pontiff. The Pope may bear the 
 weight of a triple crown, but the papacy is not a tripod. 
 
 Even if they left him alone, they could not leave him 
 undisturbed ; for he must disturb himself. He could 
 not shut himself up from himself, and from himself he had 
 to endure unceasing reproach. 
 
 After all he was Pope, and never for a moment could 
 he forget it, however he might lay aside the insignia of 
 
SAN CELESTINO 259 
 
 his spiritual sovereignty. He was Pope, and the responsi- 
 bility of everything must, in the final appeal — the only 
 appeal he cared about, the appeal to God's judgment — be 
 his. He could not make three cardinals Pope, or thirty- 
 three. 
 
 The more they really did leave him alone, the""more 
 miserably he felt the sting of this self-accusation. 
 
 It is not even to be taken for granted that when they 
 acted without him he would invariably be satisfied 
 that they had done rightly. The treatment of diplomatic 
 matters by three trained diplomatists was not necessarily 
 the treatment that would commend itself to a hermit. 
 The wisdom of the serpent might be called for, and he 
 cared only for the simplicity of the dove. 
 
 It all came to this : he was Pope, and the burden of 
 popedom could not be delegated. 
 
 All his life he had allowed himself little sleep, but 
 now he could not sleep when he tried. The night long 
 he would stare into the darkness, finding it full of accusing 
 spectres. Unfitness, incompetence, ineptitude, all made 
 themselves forms and declared they were his. 
 
 Of God he had never been afraid ; for perfect love 
 casts out fear, and he loved God, and had never loved 
 anyone else, certainly not himself, except as being some- 
 thing belonging to Him, and dear to Him. But he was 
 afraid of offending God, and was full of dread that now he 
 was continually offending Him and doing Him harm. 
 
 He was crucified on the papacy, head downwards ; St. 
 Peter on his cross had glorified God and the Church. And 
 Celestine would willingly have borne his own crucifixion, 
 
 s2 
 
260 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 had God been glorified by it. But he told himself with 
 bitter tears and shame that God was dishonoured, and 
 that he himself, God's Vicar, was giving to God's 
 enemies occasion to blaspheme. 
 
 When Christ had taught the people He drew off 
 from them in a boat, and in that boat His vicegerent had 
 sat teaching them ever since. But Celestine could not 
 hold the rudder in his powerless hands ; it wavered, and 
 the navicella was by him being driven on the rocks. 
 
BOOK IV 
 IL GRAN RIFIUTO 
 
 CHAPTEK I 
 
 One morning the three cardinals came to the Pope, and he 
 received them with a light upon his face that not one 
 of them had ever yet seen there. Perhaps no one had 
 ever seen a light so strange ; certainly no one had ever 
 yet beheld on human countenance a breaking down that 
 was caused by the advent of a day desired for such a 
 reason. 
 
 They told their business, and Celestine listened with a 
 more than common patience, with a lightening of spirit 
 that struck each of them. 
 
 Nevertheless he did not agree with them. 
 
 ' Nay,' he said, ' not thus. To such judgment as 
 God has given me, that does not seem best.' 
 
 They were astonished, but not at all displeased. If 
 only he would be more ready to act upon his own 
 judgment ! 
 
 He almost smiled as he went on, and none of them 
 had ever seen him smile, though old Girolamo had seen 
 
 261 
 
262 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 him out of his one red eye. It had only been a wan, 
 wistful smile, then, like a humble child's. 
 
 ' You think I am a poor carpenter,' the Pope had said 
 to the self-sufficient old curmudgeon, ' and yet I have 
 the Carpenter's work to do, and His place to fill.' 
 
 ' As long as I am Pope I can only agree to what I 
 think right,' said Celestine to the three cardinals. None 
 of them could have perceived the slightest glimmering 
 of his meaning. No doubt, they imagined, he meant to 
 say, ' as long as I live.' 
 
 ' That is a good resolution,' observed Caetani heartily. 
 
 The Pope said no more then of the matter they had 
 come about. He fell into a reverie less dark and 
 troubled than his reveries usually were, but thoughtful 
 and solemn. 
 
 ' My lords,' he said at last, in a low, clear voice, ' God 
 has sent me an answer to all my doubts.' 
 
 He looked them bravely in the face. And they 
 thought he had resolved to lay aside his scruples, to 
 believe in his own fitness, by God's help, and to take 
 courage. 
 
 ' That is what I urged upon your Holiness at the first,' 
 said Malabranca. ' Expecta Dominum. Viriliter age. 
 Et sustine Dominum.' 
 
 The Pope bent his head. 
 
 ' I have waited for Him. And He has answered. The 
 man who is vice-God I cannot play. . . .' 
 
 He paused, and lifted his face to theirs again. They 
 had never seen such a face, so old, so worn, so haggard, 
 and yet with such an exquisite grace of simple patience 
 
SAN CBLESTINO 268 
 
 in it. Well, they knew he was a saint ; and none of them 
 at that moment doubted that he had served God's turn. 
 His papacy, whatever it was, could never have been in 
 vain. 
 
 Perhaps they had often been impatient with him ; his 
 doubt and hesitations had perplexed and almost angered 
 them. Now they felt ashamed. 
 
 The plane on which he lived was so near to heaven 
 it was no wonder the world had been disconcerted by it, 
 they thought. 
 
 ' My lords,' he said, as simply as if he was telling them 
 he intended to go abroad next day, ' I have resolved, 
 if it may be, to lay down the office that God has given me.' 
 
 Without adverting to it, all three of them yet noticed 
 that he did not speak as one who doubts that God had 
 made him what he was. 
 
 No wonder there was silence. It seldom can happen 
 to a man to say something that has never been said before. 
 It was Caetani who broke it. 
 
 ' It is a temptation,' he cried, falling at the Pope's 
 feet, and grasping his thin hand in both of his. ' Holy 
 Father, it is a temptation. . . .' 
 
 The Cardinal's strong mouth trembled, and his large 
 frame shook with sobs. No one had ever seen him weep 
 before, and he never wept again till the brutal Colonna 
 struck him, the Pope then, in the face with his steel 
 glove. And then his heart broke. His heart was 
 whole enough now, but it was a great one, all said and 
 done, and human, and it was shaken with emotion, 
 through which a shudder of foreboding may have passed. 
 
264 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 ' Santo Padre,' he cried, still kneeling and clinging to 
 the gentle Pope. ' Put it away. Drink the chalice, 
 bitter, bitter as we know it is to you.' 
 
 ' I have drunk it,' said Celestine. And he thought 
 of Him, in whose place he stood, who said, ' I have 
 trodden the winepress alone, and of the people there was 
 none with Me.' 
 
 ' Nay,' he added gently, but with quite a new firmness. 
 ' I have thought of it all. It is not for myself. " Though 
 He slay me, yet would I trust in Him." It is for the 
 Church. St. Peter's ship is wrecking, with me at its 
 helm. God has used me ; He knows wherefore. Now 
 I abuse Him. Let me go. I came when He bade me. 
 " Nunc Dimittis." ' 
 
 The other two cardinals had long ago cast themselves 
 also at his feet, and he hardly noticed it. What were 
 postures to him ? 
 
 ' Holy Father, it cannot be,' they protested. 
 
 ' It can. It will,' he answered. They hardly knew 
 him in his new-found decision and firmness. He was 
 as strong and courageous in laying down the papacy as 
 another might have been in taking it up. 
 
 ' Once Pope, always Pope,' they urged. 
 
 ' Why ? The Pope is Bishop of Rome. Every 
 Bishop of Borne is Pope because he is Bishop of Borne, 
 and St. Peter, whom Christ made head, was Bishop of 
 Borne first ; therefore everyone who is Bishop of Borne 
 is Peter's successor, and inherits his privilege. I am 
 Pope. Do I not know it to my cost ? And Pope I 
 must be while I hold this See of Borne. But other 
 
SAN CELESTINO 265 
 
 bishops lay down their sees when they are old, or grown 
 useless, and the Church commends them, accepting 
 their resignation of an office for which they have ceased 
 to be fit. I also will lay down this Roman mitre, and 
 be Bishop of Rome no more, so shall I cease to be Pope, 
 and the see will be vacant, for a better man to fill whom 
 your most reverend lordships will choose.' 
 
 They were staggered, not at all convinced ; least 
 of all Caetani. 
 
 He was the best canonist in the Church, and in an 
 instant his mind rushed through the whole question. 
 In Canon Law, as in all other, precedent goes for much ; 
 and for this there was no precedent. Nevertheless 
 there was much in what Celestine pleaded, as an abstract 
 principle, and in all law the first precedent must arise 
 from principle alone. 
 
 Cardinal Benedetto's position was not comfortable, 
 and the other two cardinals understood this as well as 
 he did himself. The more they talked to the Pope, the 
 more plain was it that Celestine was quite resolved 
 to lay down the papal crown ; and if the thing were 
 possible they would find it hard to quarrel with his 
 decision. The present condition of affairs was almost 
 intolerable. 
 
 But it seemed now a foregone conclusion that in the 
 event of Celestine's abdication Cardinal Caetani would 
 be the new Pope, as in fact he became within a few weeks. 
 
 How could he listen to Celestine's scheme without 
 being accused by the uncharitable world of favouring it 
 for his own sake ? What a fury of opposition and obloquy 
 
266 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 would burst upon him from France and all in the French 
 interest ! To be the successor of an abdicated Pope 
 would be the most trying of all positions ; over and over 
 again before now had a pope's claims been, questioned, 
 out of policy, out of rebellious spirit, out of the ever 
 irritable itch of schism among the unworthy. And in 
 his case such question and rebellion appeared almost 
 as certain as the elevation which Celestine's action 
 would make inevitable for him. 
 
 Caetani was strong enough for any burden that 
 might be laid upon him, and of a hard, rather warlike 
 courage ; had Celestine died, and he been elected in his 
 place, he would have been ready to accept the weighty 
 task entrusted to him ; but to take the keys from the 
 hands of a still-living Pope would be a matter of alto- 
 gether different difficulty. 
 
 Nevertheless it was obvious that Celestine intended 
 to do as he had said. He would appeal to the canonists, 
 but he already seemed to feel an almost serene confidence 
 that their decision would enable him to carry out his 
 own. He was calm in comparison of his habitual nervous 
 uncertainty, and no longer seemed miserable; he was 
 not even impatient, though his eagerness was uncon- 
 trollable. 
 
 He never forgot that he was Pope, though it was 
 easy to see that he believed his tenure of the papacy 
 would now last but a week or two. 
 
 They left him with earnest pleadings that he would 
 reconsider his idea ; but all three knew that he would 
 cling to it. 
 
SAN CELESTINO 267 
 
 Caetani, in taking leave, solemnly adjured him to look 
 well to what he did. 
 
 ' It is a deeper responsibility to lay down the keys,' 
 he urged, ' than even to take them up.' 
 
 (' Were I Pope,' he might have said, ' I would not dare 
 to do this thing.' 
 
 But the timid Celestine dared.) 
 
 ' It is a novelty,' he continued, ' and the Church 
 suspects novelties. " Walk in the old paths." See that 
 your Holiness does not breed a new mischief for the 
 Church whose head you are.' 
 
 ' The greatest mischief I can do is in continuing to be 
 her head,' replied the Pope gently. ' After all, there 
 must be new things. It was a new thing when God chose 
 to leave a vicar of Himself on earth.' 
 
 They had never known him so ready to argue. His 
 only argument, hitherto, had been a weary, puzzled 
 silence. 
 
CHAPTEE II 
 
 The appeal to the canonists was made secretly ; but such 
 a secret could not be kept. Immediately it leaked out, 
 and a whirlwind of comment arose. Celestine, in his hut 
 within the palace, heeded none of it. He went on 
 praying and fasting as if no one in the world was concerned 
 about him. His prayers were happier, and his fasting 
 lifted him more and more out of the turmoil into the 
 high serene of contemplation. 
 
 The over-fed world can never understand the thoughts 
 of the ascetic. For over fifty years he had eaten no 
 flesh, and had lived on a few herbs, and now and then 
 a little bread ; water had been his drink. His spirit 
 was not bound by the fat trammels of an over-nourished 
 body. 
 
 Of course he was blamed. By some because they 
 loved him, by others because they hated Caetani and 
 dreaded his accession. 
 
 Some were so mad with apprehension and spite that 
 they flatly declared Celestine was mad himself. 
 
 ' I am not mad,' said the Pope gently ; ' God does 
 not suffer madness to destroy His Vicar. But if I were 
 mad, then indeed should I be unfit to remain where I 
 am.' 
 
 268 
 
SAN CELESTINO 269 
 
 Charles of Anjou hurried to Borne, and begged Celestine 
 to return with him to Naples. He regretted that he 
 had ever let him go. 
 
 He found the Pope in his hut in the great hall where 
 kings should be received in state, and he was received 
 with a plain simplicity that was more disconcerting than 
 any state. 
 
 For many weeks they had not met, and the King 
 perceived a vast difference in the pontiff. He was more 
 aged, and more worn, indeed very nearly worn out 
 altogether. But Celestine was more accustomed to 
 being Pope, and had now for some time been absent from 
 the dominions of his native sovereign ; he was not to be 
 so easily managed by Charles, and he was undeniably 
 less melancholy. 
 
 He was as humble as ever, as diffident, but not lacking 
 in a quiet dignity. He listened patiently to everything 
 the King said ; but he did not commit himself. 
 
 ' These saints are always obstinate,' the King 
 grumbled to himself. 
 
 No one had ever accused Charles of sanctity, never- 
 theless he was proud of his own obstinacy. It was his 
 obstinacy that had made and kept him King of Naples. 
 
 He urged the Pope to return with him to Naples, 
 and Celestine did not say he would not, though he made 
 no promise at first that he would. 
 
 ' This is my visit of ceremony,' said the King, with a 
 queer glance around. ' And now your Holiness owes 
 me a return of it.' 
 
 ' I have been the guest of your Majesty already.' 
 
270 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 ' As a traveller resting in an inn.' 
 
 (' As a captive in a fortress,' Celestine might have 
 said. But such ungentle rejoinders were never in his 
 fashion.) 
 
 ' Our people will take it ill if their own Pope refuses to 
 visit them,' urged Charles. 
 
 Celestine had been much accused of favouring those 
 who had been his fellow-subjects, and something in his 
 quiet manner reminded the King that he was no one's 
 subject now. 
 
 All the same, he did not say that he would not go 
 back to Naples, and he did go. 
 
 The sovereignty of the Church was not destined to be 
 laid down in the Church's capital. 
 
 With Charles he went again along the twice-travelled 
 road that had brought him to Eome, the people coming 
 out along the way to see him pass. 
 
 He had no illusions, and never imagined that he 
 should see Eome again. The night before he quitted it 
 he went down to pray at the tomb of his great predecessor. 
 He begged pardon for his deficiencies, not glossing them, 
 but hoping God would look gently upon them, as he 
 would have done had they been another's. He thought 
 of his old friend St. Gregory VII, so different from 
 himself, and the mighty Pope's spectre did not haunt 
 him menacingly. 
 
 ' It was all I could do,' Celestine pleaded, ' a bad best, 
 but all the best I had.' 
 
 He thought of the crucified fisherman, whose mortal 
 part lay within arm's length, and the memory of his own 
 
SAN CELESTINO 271 
 
 crucifixion grew less bitter. After all, his had been longer ; 
 a few brief hours had ended it for that first Peter, his 
 own nailing to this cross of Rome had lasted for months. 
 And near him, all around, lay sleeping many popes, 
 martyrs too, and when he arose and went away, back 
 into his palace, their voices pursued him with no reproach. 
 The reproach all came from himself. 
 
 Some of his cardinals were to go with him ; the rest 
 came to bid him farewell, sorrowing most, like those upon 
 the shore who once took leave of the other great apostolic 
 prince of Rome, that they should see his face again no 
 more. 
 
 In that last hour many knew him better, or now 
 discovered that they had known him better all along 
 than they had thought. 
 
 His patient sweetness, his humility, were all remem- 
 bered. He had never reproached anyone, or been 
 hard. He had never expected perfection except in 
 himself, and there alone had cruelly found fault with 
 its absence. 
 
 He begged their pardon, submissively, but without 
 affectation or meanness, yet as if the faults he imagined 
 in himself had been against each of them individually. 
 
 ' You are the Church's princes,' he said simply, ' and 
 the weakness of the head has been a wound to you all.' 
 
 Even his old horror and dread of Rome had softened 
 and faded into a mere consciousness that it was too 
 great for him. 
 
 ' A capital should be proud of its king ; no one could 
 be proud of me,' he declared. ' The popes have hitherto 
 
272 SAN CELE8TIN0 
 
 all been great. It is hard for this proud Rome to 
 acknowledge that there has been one little one.' All the 
 same, his old air of shame had vanished. He was no 
 more ashamed than a child is of being a child only. 
 
 ' It has been one of God's incomprehensible provi- 
 dences. If He had not meant it I should never have 
 been Pope. All He meant has been fulfilled ; one cannot 
 see it, but it must be so, because He never bungles 
 or makes mistakes. And now He has ready a different 
 providence. Do your part in it.' 
 
 Of his successor he said nothing and thought nothing. 
 That was not his affair. The papacy was not his to 
 bequeath, as an abdicating monarch may devise his 
 crown. He gave no hint ; it was not for him to give hints 
 to the Holy Ghost. 
 
 Out of his palace he went, as humbly as he had entered 
 it, though less miserably. The trappings of his office had 
 never been anything to him. Palace, or wooden hut in 
 it, was all one to him. 
 
 He went in a king's chariot, as indifferently as if it had 
 been a farmer's waggon. The King sat upon his left, 
 thinking much of it ; the Pope sat upon the right, not 
 noticing it at all. If he had noticed, it would have been 
 all the same. He was still Pope, and above every king. 
 
 The people came out and thronged about him to 
 receive his blessing, and he gave it like a dying father 
 who is pained to leave his children, but glad to go home. 
 Not every father is vain enough to flatter himself that 
 his going must be a disaster to them. A great people 
 has often a rather hard heart, but it is seldom heartless, 
 
SAN CELESTINO 273 
 
 and the Romans by this time had a fair enough notion 
 of what the Pope was. It was impossible to despise him, 
 it was not easy to fail of a certain love for him ; not the 
 noisy affection shown to a popular, smiling figure, but 
 a rarer, less earthly, impulse to tenderness and respect. 
 
 By this time they knew of what he intended, and the 
 Gran Rifiuto he was set on making gave him in their 
 eyes a distinction altogether peculiar. He who in the 
 most exalted place does something never before done 
 in it must at least be secure from appearing insignificant. 
 
 As they saw him pass away out of their midst the 
 Romans did not fall into the shallow error of supposing 
 that Celestine V was determined on ceasing to be Pope 
 per vilta. He was no coward, unless he is one who is 
 afraid of doing God an injury. That wan face, unearthly 
 as it was, was no coward's, nor was it the face of a common 
 man, or mean. 
 
 The populace of a great city is never likely to consist 
 entirely of over-supernatural persons, nevertheless this 
 crowd of Catholics was capable of perceiving a spectacle 
 that was supernatural. Celestine did not tower aloft 
 on a pinnacle of illustrious achievement, but he dwelt 
 in a region so elevated that they could realise, by the 
 instinct of faith, how high it was above them. He had 
 himself spoken of the greatness of the popes, and of the 
 Romans' pride in them ; his own mark was to be set 
 upon the papacy so as never to be forgotten, and as 
 they saw the last of him they were already conscious of it. 
 
 They crowded about him, receiving no largess but his 
 blessing, for all the time he had been Pope, as for over 
 
274 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 fifty years before, he had never possessed a penny of his 
 own, and did not now. It is easy enough to scatter coins, 
 and they had appreciation enough to feel that only a saint 
 can give a saint's benediction. As he left Borne for the 
 second time Celestine found that now he loved it ; her 
 people were his people. Of his abandoned palace and 
 empty throne he thought nothing, yet even in that 
 palace a fragrance would linger that owed itself to him. 
 One passes through a room, and the odour of it calls up 
 no vision of the roses that once bloomed, and then in 
 their death sweetened that place, yet the sweetness could 
 not have been there without them. 
 
CHAPTEB III 
 
 The time drew near the Birth of Christ. It was the 
 thirteenth of December, in the year 1294. On the 29th 
 of August Celestine had been consecrated Bishop, and 
 crowned Pope, at Aquila. 
 
 He was now at Naples, in his old quarters at the 
 Castello Nuovo. And the canonists had given their 
 answer. There appeared to be nothing in the principles 
 of Canon Law that would be contravened by the Pope's 
 laying down the sovereign dignity. 
 
 That being so, Celestine listened to no one else ; and 
 all expostulation was so plainly thrown away upon him 
 that even Charles of Anjou ceased to expostulate. The 
 King no longer regarded him as a practicable piece in his 
 game of politics. 
 
 On that bright day of winter Celestine V held his last 
 consistory in the Sola di San Luigi, named in honour of 
 the King's canonised brother, and his son the King of 
 Hungary. The King himself was present with the 
 cardinals, and they were all seated when Celestine V 
 entered, attended for the last time by his court, and clad 
 in the pontifical vestments. They rose in silence, and 
 the Pope slowly, but with an assured step, walked to 
 his throne, a prothonotary beside him carrying an 
 unwonted document. 
 
 275 t2 
 
276 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 Consistories are usually for the making of princes 
 and bishops of the Church, this one was for the unmaking 
 of the Church's supreme head. 
 
 The Pope took his seat upon the throne, and saluted the 
 cardinals and monarchs, who drew near one by one to 
 make their obeisance, which Celestine V received with 
 a quiet gladness. They were never again to render it to 
 him, and it was very different accepting it now for the 
 last time from what it had been when he submitted to it 
 on the first occasion. Those who had been present 
 at his coronation marked well the change in his 
 demeanour. 
 
 Then they returned to their places and sat down to 
 listen. The Pope turned to the prothonotary and took 
 from his hands the solemn act of his renunciation, and, 
 still seated, read it aloud in a clear though low voice 
 which everyone could hear. 
 
 No cardinals were created, no bishops preconised, 
 only the See of Rome was declared vacant, by the free 
 and voluntary resignation of him who held it. 
 
 The Act of Abdication was short and simple, and the 
 whole ceremony was as brief and plain as Celestine could 
 force it to be. 
 
 When he finished reading there was a silence broken 
 only by the words ' Placeat Deo.' 
 
 Celestine himself looked as if he had no doubt of that. 
 Then bending his head he allowed the tiara-bearer to lift 
 the pontifical crown from his head, and stood up. The 
 white skullcap was removed by himself and handed to 
 the cardinal next him. He drew the fisherman's ring 
 
SAN CELESTINO 277 
 
 from his finger, kissed it devoutly, and gave it to another 
 cardinal who immediately broke it. 
 
 The fastening of the heavy cope was undone, and he 
 seemed to stand more easily as it was borne away. The 
 broad stole, and the patriarchal cross on its heavy golden 
 chain, were taken off ; and so, one by one, the insignia 
 of the highest dignity below heaven were cast off by him. 
 Finally the white cassock of lamb's wool was removed, and 
 Celestine stood there clad in the poor rags he had worn 
 as hermit. 
 
 Before this was done he had left the throne and was 
 standing at the foot of its steps almost hidden by the 
 little crowd about him. 
 
 Then they drew away, for they were his attendants 
 no longer ; and Celestine knelt alone on the cold stone 
 of the floor. 
 
 ' My lords,' he pleaded, forgetting the two kings, ' I 
 kneel here to beg your pardons, as it was not fit I should 
 kneel at your feet while I was still Pope. You all know 
 what I have done amiss ; wherein I have failed. But 
 God's pity has healed the wound my being Pope caused, 
 or will heal it. Choose a new head of the Church, one 
 able and worthy. And let me go.' 
 
 His eyes glistened, and a few tears trickled down 
 his aged cheek, but they were very joyful, and his thin, 
 tired face was shining with gladness. No one could now 
 pity him. ,/ 
 
 His weary eyes saw little in that crowded hall, for 
 they saw God. Beati pauperes spiritu. He was of a 
 poor spirit, and, for that, a proud and great spirit set him 
 
278 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 at the mouth of hell ; but the keys of heaven and hell 
 were not lent by God to any poet, however sublime. 
 For the first time in the history of Christianity the See 
 of Peter was empty, though no pope had died since 
 the last election : he who had been Pope knelt in 
 the midst of the cardinals begging their pardon, and 
 yet with a face of shining happiness that they could 
 hardly believe was his. They all watched him in silence, 
 appreciating something too sacred for comment. Not 
 one doubted his sanctity, though many had criticised 
 his action or inaction during the four months past. They 
 were men of mark, great men of their day, but in his 
 voluntary littleness he was greater than any of them, 
 and they realised it. 
 
 In a way it made them suddenly regret his deposition 
 of himself with a new feeling. He who was able thus 
 to lay down the keys must have been able to hold them, 
 it seemed to them. 
 
 Their silence, and that of the two foreign kings, was 
 very peculiar ; it was a complete tribute of a unique 
 respect. 
 
 Charles of Anjou and his son saw in Celestine some- 
 thing they had been hitherto blind to, something even 
 now quite beyond their capacity to measure. They 
 had no balance in which to weigh him ; he eluded their 
 valuation and could not be appraised by them. But 
 they both knew that in despising Tn'm they had convicted 
 themselves of stupidity. 
 
 One by one the cardinals arose and went to the old 
 man kneeling in his rags and embraced him, earnestly 
 
SAN CELESTINO 279 
 
 begging that lie would pray for them, and, above all, 
 help them by his prayers. in the work he had now given 
 them to do. 
 
 ' Pray for me, £00,' whispered Charles, when his turn 
 came. None of them needed prayer more. 
 
 ' You are a saint's brother,' said the hermit. ' He is 
 praying for you. But pray for yourself. The fashion of 
 this world changes, and its comfort grows stale . . . 
 there was a crown made for you before any earthly 
 crown was yours, see you gain it.' 
 
 Then his gentle and forgiving heart reminded him of 
 the sort of intimacy there had been between them, and 
 he added, more gently still — 
 
 ' For your friendship I thank you.' 
 
 If Charles of Anjou did not feel ashamed he must 
 have been incapable of shame altogether. 
 
 ' Among those who wear Christ's livery,' he said, ' I 
 have met some as ambitious as any warrior fighting 
 for a throne. In you I found one who himself despised 
 that which he bade others hold of no account.' 
 
 The winter day had not darkened into night before 
 the founder of the Celestines was far from Naples, on 
 his happy homeward way to his monastery of the Holy 
 Ghost at Solmona. 
 
 ' I have lifted up mine eyes unto the hills whence 
 cometh my help,' he sang in his heart. 
 
 ' In exitu Israel de Egypto,' cried one of his com- 
 panions. 
 
 One month and two days later Cardinal Benedict 
 
280 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 Caetani was crowned Pope in Eome by the name of 
 Boniface VIII. 
 
 When he had taken his turn of bidding Celestine 
 farewell he had held him tightly in his strong arms. 
 'Pray specially for me,' he had whispered, almost 
 trembling. 
 
CHAPTEE IV 
 
 Long as was the journey, tedious as was the way, from 
 Naples to Solmona, Celestine sped upon it with happy 
 dispatch. It was in a manner a flight, for he dreaded 
 the ovations which the people were ready to accord him. 
 All he wanted was to be at home and hidden in the 
 friendly seclusion of his order. 
 
 It was under cover of night that he made his entry 
 into the monastery, but it was ablaze with light, and 
 warm with welcome. The winter cold was all left outside. 
 
 Such a smiling face as their founder brought them 
 none of his monks had ever seen. At his departure, 
 riding with two kings to hold his bridle, he had carried 
 a countenance troubled and distraught. 
 
 ' I have brought our little father back,' said Fra 
 Maurizio proudly. 
 
 When he went away Celestine V had begged Maurizio 
 to accompany him, but had been almost roughly refused. 
 
 ' I came to you,' the monk had said, ' to copy your 
 life of a hermit, not to be the courtier of a pope.' 
 
 But at the tidings of Celestine's impending deposition 
 of himself Pra Maurizio had hurried to his old master 
 at Naples. He was much prouder of the Pope's abdication 
 than he had been of his elevation. 
 
 Some of the brethren shook their heads. How 
 
 281 
 
282 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 could they help regretting that their head should no 
 longer be the head of the whole Church ? And, simple 
 as they were, they foreboded trouble from the astounding 
 act that left the fold once more without a shepherd. 
 
 But most of them were simply glad to see their 
 old master back among them. 
 
 ' It is bad for a family when the father stays abroad,' 
 they told him comfortably. 
 
 ' Only his body stayed abroad,' declared Celestine, 
 ' his spirit was always here.' 
 
 They had sung a Te Deum with a glow of elation 
 when he was chosen Pope, now he had returned to them 
 they sang another with a more homely satisfaction. 
 
 Of course they wanted him to stay in the monastery ; 
 and for a while he indulged them, pretending it was to 
 indulge himself. 
 
 ' This little brother,' he said, tapping his old body, 
 ' is very nearly worn out. One must be easier with him. 
 Little brothers are a trouble, but it does not do to be 
 over-harsh in families.' 
 
 So he remained a week or two, and then clambered up 
 the steep path, if a path it could be called, to his cavern 
 at the mountain-top. 
 
 ' Those poor lords,' he cried, stopping to take breath, 
 ' what a climb it must have been for them ! It was 
 August then, and the sun had no more pity on them than 
 if they had been Roman eagles. There are no mountains 
 in Rome ; the seven hills are little mounds with shallow 
 dips between them. There is no such a thing as going 
 really uphill in Rome.' 
 
SAN CELESTINO 283 
 
 He turned to with a will, and was soon at the top ; 
 his cell was just as he had left it. Once inside, he found 
 it hard to believe he had ever really been away, though 
 the absence had seemed so long. He stood on the 
 narrow shelf of terrace outside, and looked down into 
 the deep, bare valley. 
 
 His eyes shone, and the wintry sunlight was not 
 brighter than the gleeful radiance with which they 
 welcomed every old familiar object. 
 
 ' After all, there is nothing like mountains,' he declared. 
 ' In that palace I made a hut. It was a good hut, 
 though the old carpenter, who let me have the wood 
 to make it, said it would cause him to lose his place 
 if anyone were to suppose he had built it. He was an 
 honest creature, though cross at times. That, he would 
 say, was owing to his wife, who was a tedious person. I 
 find married people often find each other tedious. That 
 is their cross ; but God gives them grace to embrace it. 
 And if Giulia dies I fancy my old carpenter will be lonely 
 . . . but a cave is far better than a hut, especially if 
 one's hut is in a palace. You have no idea, Maurizio, 
 what a disagreeable place a palace is.' 
 
 ' I never wanted to find out,' observed Maurizio 
 calmly. 
 
 ' No, in that you were, perhaps, disobliging. It would 
 have served you right if I had given you an obedience 
 to go with me, and made you a secretary of briefs — or 
 something.' 
 
 ' What are briefs ? ' 
 
 ' They are long things on parchment. . . . But I am 
 
284 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 here again now, and they do not matter. What a good 
 cave it is. Not too large. That floor of the hall, in 
 which my hut was, was also of stone, but it did not feel 
 like this rock ; it was smooth.' 
 
 Maurizio went away, and the old hermit was left alone 
 in his happy solitude. 
 
 ' How good God is ! ' he said to himself, as the 
 cold moon shone out. ' I never thought of coming 
 home.' 
 
 Alas ! It was not for long. 
 
 The new Pope had many and bitter enemies, and his 
 unique position laid him open to their malice. Not every 
 canonist had agreed as to the possibility of a sovereign 
 pontiff deposing himself. It was not likely that the King 
 of France would fail to hear their opinion, and his hatred 
 of Boniface VIII was not to be extinguished. 
 
 Loud murmurs arose from all whom Boniface had to 
 check and oppose — and there were many such. A strict 
 and strong Pope was necessary after so long an inter- 
 regnum, followed by four months of such a rule as 
 Celestine's. And Boniface was courageous and deter- 
 mined. He cajoled none of them, and carried out 
 his drastic measures as sternly as Sixtus V did centuries 
 afterwards. 
 
 To the powerful French influence he neither bowed 
 nor truckled. ' I am Pope,' every act of his declared, 
 ' and own no master among the kings of the earth.' 
 
 ' But he is not Pope,' retorted his enemies, ' only 
 an anti-pope. The real Pope is at Solmona.' 
 
 So Celestine's troubles were not over. 
 
SAN CELESTINO 285 
 
 First there came to him these wily emissaries of the 
 party on the French King's side, who were favoured by 
 his own sovereign, another Frenchman ; and all they could 
 do they did to work upon his scruples. Pope he still was, 
 they maintained, treating him as such, and alluding to 
 his successor, carefully, as cardinal only. 
 : . . He knew very well there had been anti-popes ; but 
 he was sure Cardinal Caetani's election had been 
 valid. 
 
 ' Valid enough if your Holiness had been dead,' 
 urged the emissaries. ' But a valid election is impossible 
 when the papacy is not vacant.' 
 
 Celestine wept, and entreated them to leave him in 
 peace. It was worse than when Colonna had come 
 from Perugia. Not all of his own monks were on 
 his side. 
 
 They were not canonists, but they loved their founder, 
 and had been proud when he had been unanimously 
 chosen Pope by acclamation. Of Cardinal Caetani they 
 had known nothing at all, till rumours reached them 
 that Celestine was not well treated by him. It was not 
 difficult for them to believe that a proud princely cardinal 
 had cajoled their own simple Pope out of his crown. 
 
 ' Look well to it,' some of them urged him, ' that you 
 are not resisting the Holy Ghost — the unpardonable sin.' 
 
 Of all crimes the most damnable must be that of 
 favouring an anti-pope. What if the true Pope should 
 himself be guilty of such a fault ! 
 
 ' The seamless coat of Christ ! For Christ's Vicar 
 himself to join in rending it ! What horror ! ' 
 
286 SAN CBLESTINO 
 
 Celestine was more than ever distraught. He had 
 never doubted the validity of his own amazing act ; 
 but now others doubted it. And himself he had always 
 doubted. 
 
 He drove the emissaries away, but others came 
 in their place, and he was flatly accused of condoning a 
 theft, of favouring an anti-pope, of having made himself 
 responsible for a schism. 
 
 There on his mountain-top, far from authentic news, he 
 was assured that the Church was divided, half for him, the 
 true Vicar of Christ, and half for the haughty intruder 
 who had grabbed his keys, and thrust himself, out of 
 ambition, into his place, which never could be empty 
 while he lived. 
 
 He had meant to save all by taking his weak hands 
 off the tiller of Peter's boat, and now they told him 
 that he had ruined all by letting an impostor usurp 
 his seat. 
 
 Then came his arrest, as all the enemies of Boniface 
 declared it. He was being used as a tool ; things were 
 said, as in his name, which he had never said, and a real 
 schism threatened. Even the devout and simple did 
 not always know what to think. More than one anti-pope 
 has had innocent, ignorant partisans. To Celestine 
 there seemed only one course open, flight, and he fled 
 from his beloved home ; it was all one to him where he 
 was if only God would go with him, and he might save 
 the Church from disaster. 
 
 That he was still Pope he did not believe. But how 
 hard it was to hear himself called Pope — and to know 
 
SAN CELESTINO 287 
 
 that he had been Pope, as truly as any who ever sat in 
 Peter's seat — and to feel as certain as he wished. 
 
 No doubt his act had been hurried, beyond all custom, 
 and that haste was now blamed. 
 
 He would fly Italy altogether. Almost alone, in the 
 dark night, like an animal, he sped away towards the 
 eastern coast, hoping to get across the Adriatic into 
 Dalmatia. 
 
 He reached the sea, and was able to find a small 
 vessel, though it was not ready to set sail immediately. 
 Meanwhile he was pursued. Boniface had taken alarm, 
 and most likely the Pope was not the only one who 
 dreaded a schism with an unwilling anti-pope for its 
 head. Celestine was the subject of Charles of Naples, 
 and was living in his dominions, and Boniface sent 
 to the King begging that he would not let the hermit 
 of Solmona fall into designing hands. Apparently 
 Pope and King were for the time friends, though it 
 still seems uncertain why Charles should have seconded 
 his wishes. He dispatched messengers to secure 
 Celestine's person, but they failed to intercept him ; 
 he was already at sea. 
 
 But the ship was small and the weather proved 
 unpropitious. As the wretched vessel tossed and heaved, 
 and spars groaned and rigging creaked, Celestine could not 
 help thinking of that ' Navicella ' of Peter which he 
 believed himself to have nearly wrecked. Perhaps the 
 master of the ship also thought him unlucky. At all 
 events, he declared that the voyage was impossible, 
 and suffered himself to be driven back to the Italian 
 
288 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 shore. The governor of the little coast town was Charles 
 of Anjou's subject, and he confined Celestine in his 
 castle, handing him over presently to the King's emis- 
 saries. They led him to Anagni, where he was lodged 
 in the Pope's own palace, remaining there some time. 
 
CHAPTEE V 
 
 The first interview between Boniface and his predecessor 
 must have been remarkable. The Pontiff had been 
 assured that Celestine was not only being made a tool 
 in the hands of those who wished nothing better than 
 a rival to himself, but that they had persuaded him of 
 the nullity of his renunciation. Of all the Pope's em- 
 barrassments no doubt his predecessor was the heaviest. 
 That he had forboded this did not make it the easier. 
 
 Boniface was as good a canonist and jurist in the 
 civil law as any man alive, and he knew that Celestine's 
 act of abdication was perfectly valid, and that his own 
 election was, therefore, equally so. What pope can 
 patiently support an anti-pope ? Even the meekest man 
 who ever sat on Peter's throne could find no pity or 
 excuse for such an one. Celestine himself would have 
 regarded with horror anyone who had called himself 
 head of the Church, had any such false claimant arisen 
 before his own deposition of himself. 
 
 And, until he had seen him again, Boniface was 
 not sure that Celestine was innocent. It was certain 
 there was a turbulent party who claimed the papacy for 
 him, and not certain to Boniface that the hermit 
 disavowed and disapproved of them. 
 
 289 v 
 
290. SAN CELESTINO 
 
 Nevertheless the two men had been intimate, and, in 
 a manner, friends. The meeting was very difficult. Of 
 course, the world was saving that Celestine was a prisoner, 
 and in the hands of a new pope who could never have 
 borne the papal crown had his predecessor not voluntarily 
 laid it down ; and Boniface, necessarily, was aware of this, 
 and of the ungracious part he had to play. He was being 
 accused of ingratitude, and himself was half disposed to 
 accuse Celestine of playing unfairly by him. 
 
 Boniface received his unwilling guest coolly, with the 
 respect due to his former rank, his age, and his great 
 reputation for sanctity. But Celestine must not be 
 allowed to forget that he was Pope no longer ; and one 
 who lets himself be made into an anti-pope cannot be a 
 saint. 
 
 Boniface had a stout sincerity, and he had not the 
 least intention of beating about the bush. 
 
 ' It is a pity,' he said, ' that you are my guest for the 
 first time in a manner somewhat different from that 
 which I would have chosen. You are here, it must be 
 confessed, not wholly with your own goodwill.' 
 
 ' Where I am matters nothing to me. If it is your 
 Holiness's desire that I should be here, I have no desire 
 but to obey you.' 
 
 Boniface led him to a seat, as though he had been a 
 cardinal, and sat down near him, looking closely and 
 frankly into the familiar face. 
 
 ' I know well,' he went on, ' that you would Vatherbe 
 in your cell on Monte Murrone than in my palace of 
 Anagni.' 
 
SAN CELBSTINO 291 
 
 ' It is true that I love my cell, and that I have never 
 loved palaces.' 
 
 ' The greatest palace in the world was your own ; 
 if you left it, that was of your own free act.' 
 
 ' The most free act of my life.' 
 
 ' You do not repent of it ? ' 
 
 Celestine's gentle smile was all the answer he deigned 
 to give, at first. 
 
 ' I am glad to see it is so,' said the Pope gravely. 
 Nevertheless he may have been disconcerted. 
 
 ' I was not so happy in it that it should cause me 
 regret to know I shall see that palace no more,' said 
 Celestine quietly. 
 , ' Men do not always know when they are happy.' 
 
 ' I, at least, know when I am unhappy.' 
 
 Boniface watched hi™ attentively. 
 
 ' And now ? ' he asked, more gently ; ' it would grieve 
 me if you were unhappy.' 
 
 ' Holy Father, in this life I have never looked for 
 what most men esteem happiness. If I can be at peace, 
 to serve God in my fashion, I have all of happiness that I 
 crave.' 
 
 Boniface knew that Celestine was not now suffered to 
 serve God in the fashion that he must mean. 
 
 ' If you are not in your cell, or in your monastery of the 
 Santo Spirito, that, you will think, is my fault. It has 
 been my doing. I heard that which made it seem to me 
 necessary that you should not remain there. It was 
 by my request that the King of Naples sent to you, and 
 caused you to come to this place.' 
 
 u 2 
 
292 SAN CELBSTINO 
 
 Celestine did not say that he had known this, for he 
 had not known ; neither would he say that he had not 
 supposed it, for he did suppose it. 
 
 ' Your Holiness is not answerable to me for anything 
 which it may seem fit to you to do with this poor body of 
 mine.' 
 
 ' I am not answerable, except to God, for any act of 
 mine,' Boniface answered promptly. Nevertheless he 
 had noted every phrase. Celestine/s body was in his 
 hands ; the hermit held his soul bis own. But he had 
 not spoken stiffly. In utmost sincerity he had frankly 
 admitted the Pope's authority over him. 
 
 ' To you, however,' Boniface continued, ' I will speak 
 as I would not to any other man. . . .' 
 
 His manner, losing nothing of its authority, was 
 even more respectful to his guest than it had been at first. 
 ' To God only am I answerable, because I sit here on 
 earth in His place. In that same place you sat, and I 
 was your subject. That I cannot, and I would not, forget.' 
 
 Celestine uttered a sharp cry. 
 
 ' Do not remind me ! I know I sat there to my misery 
 and God's dishonour.' 
 
 ' That you should not say. In my presence you 
 shall not. Now I will explain to you why you are here 
 — as my prisoner — as my enemies will say, for ever.' 
 
 Celestine's eyes were old, and faded pale with weeping ; 
 but they could see clearly enough still : and he saw, 
 with a pang of compassion, that the iron had already 
 entered into the new Pope's soul. Prom henceforth he 
 pitied him. 
 
SAN CELESTINO 293 
 
 ' Holy Father, I am most willingly your guest, if my 
 being so can serve you.' 
 
 Boniface remembered him well, and saw that he had 
 not changed ; the old simplicity and goodness was 
 unclouded ; of himself Celestine could never think. 
 
 The stern and strong man was moved. It seemed 
 only yesterday that he had been this patient monk's 
 servant, only yesterday that he had seen him gladly 
 strip himself of every symbol of pre-eminence. 
 
 ' I will tell you how it serves me. This world is full 
 of wicked men. . . .' 
 
 Celestine sighed. Only when he had become Pope 
 had he begun to perceive that men were not all good. 
 Those who had thronged to him in his solitude had 
 come each with a spiritual trouble, but such a trouble 
 as only the spiritual can have ; and they had been of 
 every sort, nobles and peasants, soldiers and priests. 
 In Rome, and before that at Naples, he had been assailed 
 by a new crowd, selfish and self-seeking, blind with 
 ambition and greed, corroded with envy and mean 
 jealousies. 
 
 ' And these enemies of God and of His Church love 
 strife and divisions. They see in you an instrument for 
 their purposes, and they would seek to use it. They 
 have sought. Is it not true that they came to you, and 
 strove to make you help in their devil's work of rebellion 
 and schism ? ' 
 
 ' Men came to me,' Celestine replied simply, ' and 
 accused me.' 
 ' Of what ? ' 
 
294 SAN CBLESTINO 
 
 ' That I had looked back from the plough whereto 
 God had set my hand.' 
 
 For the first time Boniface stirred uneasily, and his 
 face grew harder. 
 
 ' That is a metaphor,' he said coldly. ' Tell me 
 plainly what they urged.' 
 
 If he thought Celestine would fence or shuffle he had, 
 for the moment, forgotten him. 
 
 ' That I am still Pope ; that the papacy cannot be 
 voided at the will of him into whose hands God has 
 given it.' 
 
 Boniface turned to him sternly. 
 
 ' And what answer did you give ? ' 
 
 ' I bade them go. . . .' 
 
 ' " Vade retro Satana," you should have said,' 
 interrupted Boniface. 
 
 Celestine remembered that even Michael brought no 
 railing accusation against Lucifer ; but he did not say so. 
 
 ' I bade them go. And I pleaded that they should 
 leave me alone. When they would not, I fled.' 
 
 ' Some temptations we must fly, others are to be faced.' 
 
 ' Holy Father, it was no temptation to me. Did I 
 ever seem so much in love with being Pope that I should 
 long, being free of that intolerable burden, to seize it up 
 again ? ' 
 
 Nevertheless Boniface was not wholly satisfied. 
 
 " That is not the point,' he said, with a cool logic. 
 ' Every man knows you renounced the papacy of your 
 own free will. . . .' 
 
 ' That did I.' 
 
SAN CELESTINO 295 
 
 ' I am not accusing you of wanting to be Pope again. 
 A man may do what he wants not, because he fancies it, 
 he believes it, his duty. Thus did you accept these keys 
 of Peter, not desiring them. Do you believe they are 
 still yours ? ' 
 
 For a moment Celestine hesitated. He had been 
 solemnly assured that his act of renunciation was invalid ; 
 if so they were still his, those terrible keys. But Boniface 
 had asked him what he thought, not what others might 
 have said. 
 
 ' God give me light ! ' he whispered in his soul. It 
 might be the terrible truth that he was still Pope. But 
 God must know the truth, and would show it. His 
 hesitation was but for an instant ; but Boniface noted it 
 sharply. 
 :.; (' An anti-pope,' he said bitterly in his heart.) 
 
 At that moment a knock was heard at the door, and a 
 cardinal entered. 
 
 ' The Pope,' said Celestine quietly, ' has put to me a 
 question. May I answer it now ? ' and he turned to 
 Boniface for permission to speak. 
 
 ' Shall I go away ? ' asked the Cardinal. 
 
 ' Nay, stay and hear his answer.' 
 
 The Cardinal saw the stern face of Boniface, and 
 wished heartily he had not been there. 
 
 ' I have told him,' said Boniface, ' that men are willing 
 to use him as an instrument of evil ; for that reason he is 
 here, that he may be free from their attempts. I asked 
 him plainly what he thought.' 
 
 ' And I answer,' said Celestine, ' I was Pope. And I 
 
296 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 made free renunciation. I acted quickly, but not 
 without opinion given. Counsel I did not seek. Had I 
 listened to it, most of all to that of his present Holiness, 
 I should have held the keys still, unworthily.' 
 
 He spoke slowly, and with a certain difficulty, for 
 he had always hated words ; and now they would not 
 come and be his willing servants. But he went on — 
 
 ' I would not listen — to Cardinal Caetani or any of 
 them ; I only asked " could I lay down the papacy," and 
 the answer was that I could. I laid it down, and the 
 Holy See was validly vacant, and another Pope was validly 
 elected.' 
 
 ' They pretend,' said the Cardinal, ' that you are now 
 persuaded that your renunciation was null and void.' 
 
 ' They tried so to persuade me.' 
 
 ' And failed ? ' 
 
 ' And failed. They tormented me. But God does 
 not tease me, and He has shown me all. It was He 
 who told me I need not go on being Pope. It is He 
 who has told me I am Pope no more.' 
 
CHAPTEE VI 
 
 Over and over again Celestine protested this, then and 
 afterwards, so that many urged upon Boniface that 
 he had better let him go. It would be better, they 
 declared, for the Pope's reputation. His keeping Celestine 
 prisoner would wear an ugly look. 
 
 But Boniface did not care for looks. Or, if he cared, 
 he cared more for other things. Of course he would be 
 evil spoken of — that had to be reckoned with. He had 
 known from the beginning that it must be so. What 
 was his reputation in comparison of the unity and peace 
 of the Church ? 
 
 Of Celestine he could not feel sure. He was too 
 gentle, too diffident, too hesitating and too persuadable. 
 
 He had himself ever been of a strong, swift judgment, 
 arriving at fixed decisions with a clear directness, and 
 abiding by them stoutly and immovably. Celestine's 
 hesitation and doubts had always provoked him ; now 
 they appeared to him to constitute a risk and menace 
 to the unity of the Church. 
 
 He probably imagined that the hermit was more 
 undecided than he was, because Celestine could not 
 readily catch the word he sought for to express the 
 meaning he had. His speech had always been more 
 uncertain than his judgment. Some^ speakers are 
 
 297 
 
298 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 continually over-expressing themselves ; he was apt 
 to under-express himself. 
 
 ' As long as he is here with me,' Boniface replied to 
 those who suggested Oelestine's release, ' I am sure of him ; 
 he is incapable of duplicity. But once accessible to 
 those vipers he may be bitten.' 
 
 So Celestine remained at Anagni, seeing the Pope 
 frequently. 
 
 Their meetings were never unfriendly : Boniface 
 was never harsh, nor even suspicious, though he was 
 probably to the end uncertain of his guest ; and his 
 guest was never reproachful. He assumed no airs 
 of an unwilling captive, and neither by word or look 
 accused the Pope of treating him hardly. 
 
 All his life long the patient saint had thought himself 
 only too well treated by everybody. 
 
 But Boniface must have been continually perturbed. 
 Beports which may never have reached Celestine reached 
 him, of the noisy activity of those who proclaimed 
 themselves partisans of a captive pope against a haughty 
 and unscrupulous usurper. 
 
 The injustice of these accusations did not sweeten 
 them, and Boniface was not a man who was patient 
 of criticism which he believed himself above. 
 
 Nor could he remain for ever at Anagni. 
 
 ' If I leave this place will you go with me ? ' he 
 abruptly inquired of Celestine one day. 
 
 ' To Rome ? ' asked the hermit, blankly. 
 
 ' I may have to go there. You would not like to 
 go there ? ' 
 
SAN CELESTINO 299 
 
 Certainly Celestine would not like it ; nor is'it likely 
 that Boniface would have liked to take him. 
 
 Celestine looked unhappy, and the Pope observed him 
 closely, but with a certain sympathy or compassion. 
 
 ' I may send you to Pumone, to my castle there ; you 
 would prefer that to accompanying me to Rome ? ' 
 
 ' Holy Father, I will go whither you send me ; but I 
 would much rather go to Pumone than to Rome.' 
 
 And to Fumone he went, escorted by a guard of 
 soldiers ; the Pope himself had his body-guard, and 
 would not have gone there without one. But, of course, 
 it appeared that the soldiers were in charge of a prisoner. 
 
 It was nine miles from Anagni to Fumone by rough 
 mountain ways, and Celestine was old and feeble, so 
 that the journey was tiring. 
 
 After this I do not know if he and Boniface ever met 
 again, nor do I know how they parted. Probably their 
 last interview was like all the others. 
 
 The citadel at Fumone was strong and gloomy — a 
 fortress, not a palace — and the rooms were all like cells. 
 Celestine made no complaint of his. 
 
 ' I always wanted a cell, and the Pope has given me 
 what I wanted,' he said. 
 
 The castle crowns a steep, conical hill, and about it 
 grow a few dismal cypress trees. The view from the cas- 
 tellated battlements is glorious and far-reaching ; but the 
 window in Celestine's cell was high up and closely grated*. 
 
 One day he thought he would like to look [out Jand 
 try if he'could see the mountains. 
 
 He was clambering up upon a stout wooden table, 
 
300 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 made of a solid block of wood on stone supports. No 
 doubt it would bear Ms meagre frame. 
 
 But one of his guards entered the cell and bade 
 him desist. 
 
 ' It is no use your trying to get out that way,' the 
 soldier told him brutally. ' You would have to take 
 your bones to pieces and poke them out one by one.' 
 
 ' And when I was all outside, I should not know 
 how to put them together again,' the old man answered 
 gently. ' Though I was a student at Salerno, where all 
 the famous scholars of medicine go, I learned no anatomy.' 
 He obeyed meekly and climbed down upon the stone 
 floor again, trembling a little. He knew he was being 
 treated as a culprit, and that he had not meant to do 
 anything wrong. 
 
 He would not make any reproaches, or say to the 
 man that he durst not let the Pope know he acted thus ; 
 and he never accused Boniface in his mind of wishing 
 him to be thus treated disrespectfully. If a soldier or 
 two said rough and rude things to him, how had they 
 spoken to One more innocent than he ! The servant 
 is not to be greater than his Master ; it is enough for him 
 if he be as his Master. And there were much ruder 
 soldiers at Fumone than that one. Once the trooper 
 who brought his daily dole of bread found the imprisoned 
 hermit in his way, and gave him a push that was almost 
 a blow. 
 
 ' There is not much of you,' the man said crossly, 
 ' but that little is always where it shouldn't be. Can't 
 you see that I want to put this rat's food down there ? ' 
 
SAN CELESTINO 301 
 
 He was going himself to a savoury hot dinner, 
 and Celestine's ration of hard, dry bread irritated him. 
 The monk who was with Celestine was angry, and said 
 indignantly — 
 
 ' How dare you strike my master ? He was your 
 master's master once.' 
 
 Celestine laid a patient hand upon his friend's sleeve. 
 
 ' Nay, you are in the wrong to speak thus, my brother. 
 It was but a push ; and if it had been a blow, how many 
 had my Master to bear ? ' 
 
 ' No one ever struck Boniface,' cried the soldier ; ' I 
 should be sorry for him who tried ! ' 
 
 The quiet hermit almost smiled at the poor rude 
 trooper's mistake. And yet it was a soldier, though no 
 common man-at-arms, who would strike Boniface, and 
 on the mouth, too. 
 
 Another trooper caught Celestine upon his knees, 
 and not for the first time. 
 
 ' You must want a tremendous lot of things,' he 
 sneered, ' and must imagine God has plenty of time to 
 listen to you.' 
 
 ' Nay, my friend,' said Celestine gently, and truly. 
 ' I was just then praying for you. You seem not to 
 have much time to pray for yourself.' 
 
 ' Well, let it alone. I do not choose to have every 
 snivelling captive whining Pater Nosters for me. Do you 
 think I am penniless, like you ? I would have you know 
 that I can afford to get Masses said for me, if I feel 
 inclined.' 
 
 ' If that is how you spend your money you lay it out 
 
302 SAN 0ELESTINO 
 
 better than every soldier does,' the hermit answered 
 cheerfully. 
 
 ' You know as much of soldiers as I know of saints/ 
 declared the man-at-arms. 
 
 ' I am assuredly very ignorant,' admitted Celestine, 
 and the other monk laughed. But it is very unlikely 
 that his master meant any sarcasm. 
 
 ' Look here, Fra Maurizio,' declared the soldier, 
 turning on him, ' if you are pert I will see that you are 
 not allowed to come here.' 
 
 ' Nay,' said Celestine, braver for others than for 
 himself, ' he but laughed, and it is bad to be always 
 glum.' 
 
 ' I did not know you had so many jokes here,' grumbled 
 the trooper. 
 
 ' Nor I,' said Fra Maurizio. 
 
 The soldier clanked away and banged the door, 
 turning the key in the lock viciously. 
 
 Fra Maurizio laughed again. 
 
 ' I never learned much manners,' he said, ' but a 
 prison seems a worse school even than a farm.' 
 
 ' You did wrong to tease him. Some are of an 
 impatient habit, and it is not right to give them occasion.' 
 
 ' I gave him an occasion to be better tempered, but 
 he missed it ; that was his fault.' 
 
 ' Not altogether,' said Celestine, pleasantly. 
 
 They both laughed a little, and were quite comfortable 
 over their musty bread and tepid water. 
 
 Fra Maurizio was rather funny to look at. But it 
 is unlikely that Celestine knew this. His friend was much 
 
SAN CELESTINO 303 
 
 younger than himself, but had grown altogether bald ; 
 his polished crown had queer knobs on it, and there was 
 an odd roundness about him. He was not fat, but he 
 was round in every direction. He had round eyes, and a 
 round short nose, a round mouth which looked as if he 
 were on the point of laughing when he was not even 
 intending to smile. He had ugly, honest hands with 
 round fingers like sausages, and he walked in a round 
 manner, and had a round back. 
 
 He had not the least objection to being in prison with 
 his beloved master, but he did not understand as well as 
 Celestine himself why the founder of his approved order 
 should be there. He had never troubled himself about 
 high policy, and what looked like harshness and injustice 
 was merely harsh and unjust to him. 
 
 Celestine often tried to explain, but without any 
 brilliant success. He was not a gifted explainer, and 
 even he understood high policy but vaguely, although 
 he had been sovereign pontiff. 
 
 Nevertheless Era Maurizio wanted to please his 
 master, and, at the end of every explanation, expressed 
 himself satisfied, though the force of the explanations 
 generally oozed away, out of his round head, in an hour 
 or two. 
 
 ' I wish the Pope knew how you are treated,' he 
 grumbled now. 
 
 ' I am glad he does not. It would trouble him. He 
 is of a high, noble nature.' 
 
 ' That is why he has such high and noble servants, I 
 suppose.' 
 
304 fSAN CELESTINO 
 
 ' Maurizio ! Be good. As if the Pope knew the things 
 his under-servants do in his name ! If a prisoner was 
 scolded while I was Pope, I suppose you think it was 
 my fault ? ' 
 
 ' No prisoners were scolded while you were Pope,' 
 declared Maurizio stoutly, merely on first principles. 
 
 * I 'm sure I don't know.' 
 
 ' Probably there were no prisoners. You would have 
 let them all go.' 
 
 ' Then I should have done wrong. And you say that 
 to tease me. Bad children must be locked up till they 
 grow good again.' 
 
 He only wanted Maurizio to stop complaining of the 
 Pope. But Maurizio darted off on another tack. 
 
 ' I wonder how long it will take us to get good again,' 
 he soliloquised. 
 
 ' We never were very good,' suggested Celestine. 
 
 ' Everyone knows how bad you were,' observed 
 Maurizio demurely. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 One day Celestine said to Pra Maurizio— 
 
 ' My time here is drawing to an end.' 
 
 ' The Pope is going to let you go ! ' 
 
 Maurizio's eyes grew rounder than ever. 
 
 ' He in whose place the Pope sits/ said Celestine. 
 
 Fra Maurizio looked at his master narrowly. Cer- 
 tainly he was frailer than ever ; and the spirit seemed 
 more than ever bursting out of that meagre, fleshless 
 frame. And Celestine was old and had lived hardly. 
 But Maurizio could not see that he was ill. Indeed, he 
 never had been ill ; or, if he had, no one had ever heard 
 of it. It is the occupation and amusement of some 
 good people to be ill, but Celestine had always been 
 otherwise engaged. 
 
 ' Nay,' he said cheerfully, ' I am well enough. But 
 I am not to be here long. He who opened Peter's prison 
 gates will presently open mine. I should not say that : it 
 sounds as if I thought myself Peter's successor still. I 
 was not thinking of that ; only I am Peter too — Petruccio 
 they always called me.' 
 
 He fell silent, and his old, tired thoughts strayed back 
 to his far-away boyhood. 
 
 Maurizio came to him, and knelt by him, on his round 
 
 305 x 
 
306 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 knees, upon the hard damp floor. His round, black eyes 
 were full of tears. 
 
 ' You will not leave me ! You must not leave us. 
 Think of the Order.' 
 
 ' Let God think of it, if it is worth His thoughts. 
 Let it serve His turn, and then, if He no longer wants 
 it, let it fade — the flower cannot bloom for ever, or there 
 would be no seed.' 
 
 The Order, though he loved it, was his own work, 
 and he could not think any work of his important. 
 
 ' Last night,' he said cheerfully, ' I lay awake, and 
 then I suppose sleep came. One does not know when 
 tired waking rests in sleep. My brother Euggiero stood 
 by me here ; he was my favourite brother (there were 
 twelve of us altogether, like Jacob's sons). He used to 
 call me Chiodino, very pleasantly. That was his name 
 for me.' 
 
 ' " Chiodino " ? ' 
 
 ' Yes. " Little Nail." Because of this mark : as 
 if a square nail had been driven into my left temple. It 
 used to pain me ; but for a long time I have never felt it.' 
 
 ' Being called " Chiodino " ? ' 
 
 ' No. I did not mean that. Though, sometimes, 
 when I was a boy, that teased me, too ; I was wayward 
 when I was young. " When thou art young thou wilt 
 gird thyself and go whither thou thyself wiliest ; when 
 thou art old another will gird thee and lead thee whither 
 thou wouldest not." ' 
 
 Pra Maurizio remembered very well who had said 
 this, and to whom. His own master had been that first 
 
SAN CELESTINO 307 
 
 Peter's successor. But his little round mouth was 
 working and he could not speak. 
 
 ' Yes, Euggiero came, here, into this pleasant cell 
 which the Holiness of Our Lord has granted me, because 
 he knows that I have ever loved one . . . Euggiero, my 
 brother, came here ; just as he used to be. And he 
 said " Petruccio," but I did not quite hear, for my ears 
 grow dull. " Chiodino," he cried, louder I suppose, 
 and I heard him very well. He told me he was going 
 home. So I knew that he was dead. " I would wait 
 for you," he told me, " but I must find the way alone." ' 
 
 Celestine paused, and smiled a little. 
 
 ' When I was Pope,' he went on, ' Euggiero would not 
 come. The others came, but he would not. " I used to 
 bother him," he told them, " and now he is Pope I will 
 let him be." That was just like him. He often teased 
 me ; but, if he saw I was bothered by the rest, he would 
 let me alone. That was his nature, lively and generous. 
 He loved our mother better than any of us, except one 
 of them ; and he was always gentle with her, though 
 full of nonsense and teasing for us.' 
 
 Out of the dim distance very old figures gathered 
 round this old and patient figure of a self-deposed pope. 
 And he loved them tenderly. 
 
 Even to Maurizio it was a revelation. The gentle, 
 sweet heart had not been fully understood even by him 
 until now. 
 
 ' My mother ! ' the feeble, happy voice went on, ' she 
 let me go, away for ever, from the little old home among 
 the mountains ; God had given her all her sons, and if 
 
 x2 
 
308 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 He asked for one she would not refuse. She is with 
 God; she always was. When they sent me word of 
 her death I felt she was come nearer. Thus it is. 
 Maurizio, if life lasted a thousand years, could one 
 learn how sweet He is ? St. Francis used to say to his 
 friars, " Little brothers, let us begin to love God a little." 
 Maurizio, I am beginning. Even I. In heaven one will 
 go on learning. Some learn slowly. I was always slow. 
 God will give me time. He is never impatient, like us ; 
 He doesn't watch us, in a hurry, but attends to other 
 things and waits till we are ready for Him. Then He 
 looks again.' 
 
 Maurizio did not try to answer. It was enough 
 for him to be there. Suddenly a ray of tenderness shot 
 out of the old, ever-young heart so near his own, into 
 his, and he felt simply grateful to the Pope who had 
 suffered him to remain near his master. For the first 
 time it occurred to him that, after all, Boniface might 
 have understood his master better than he did — and 
 what were the few things that master cared about. 
 
 ' Maurizio,' the very soft, failing voice continued 
 presently, ' are you listening ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, little father.' 
 
 ' I was talking of my mother and of Our Father. I was 
 never afraid of Him, only of hurting Him. It is stupid 
 to think one is afraid of making those we love angry when 
 we are only in dread of hurting them. When I was a 
 little ragazzimo I used to be afraid like that — of being a 
 trouble. We were poor, you know ; not great baron-folks, 
 but little, threadbare gentry. Our castle was more like a 
 
SAN CELESTINO 309 
 
 masseria ; and my father worked hard, so did our mother. 
 It was tiresome to find clothes for twelve of us, and I had 
 a new doublet, one Easter, and I tore it, scrambling through 
 a hedge of fichi-d' India. I was ashamed, because it would 
 be a nuisance to my mother : not as if I were afraid of her 
 being angry and scolding ; she never scolded, any more 
 than God. However, it must have been a mistake, for 
 when I got home I could not see the hole I had made any 
 more. . . .' 
 
 ' A miracle,' murmured Maurizio ; but his master 
 did not hear him. 
 
 ' So it was in Borne. It was only that I hated to 
 think of troubling them. I was not afraid of His being 
 angry and punishing me. He knew how ignorant I 
 was, and He knows everything. Those who do never 
 mind other people being ignorant. . . . When He came 
 here Himself, He did not swoop down like a know-all, but 
 crept in in the middle of the night, just a small bambino as 
 each of us was ; and He learned things, as if He needed to 
 — to encourage us to be patient, and not be in a hurry 
 about being wise. No doubt you have thought of that.' 
 
 ' No, never,' declared Maurizio candidly. 
 
 ' But so it was. He did not talk all at once, though 
 He was the Word Eternal. He did not walk about, 
 though He had made all our feet and taught them how 
 to stand. He did not make tables and things better 
 than St. Joseph, the minute He began, but just learned 
 of him, as if He knew nothing about it, to encourage 
 us. Could anyone but God have thought of that ? ' 
 ' Little father, you never preached ? ' asked Maurizio 
 
310 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 after a silent pause during which two little round tears, 
 one out of each his little round eyes, had trickled down, 
 one on each side of his funny round nose. He would 
 have wiped them away with his little round finger, only 
 he did not want to attract his master's attention and 
 trouble him. 
 
 ' No,' answered Celestine simply, ' I never knew how.' 
 
 One of the small tears dropped on Celestine's withered 
 hand. 
 
 ' Do not cry, little brother. It is not far I am going.' 
 
 ' Dio lo sa,' whispered Maurizio. ' God knows it. 
 From hence to heaven — the next room.' 
 
 They neither of them said any more for a while ; then 
 the hermit shifted a little in his place. 
 
 ' One should not have a lot of wishes. Alfeo used 
 to say that it was that that made our miseries. But 
 I wish some things.' 
 
 Maurizio did not cross-question him about them ; and 
 after a while he brought them out of himself. 
 
 ' Those three soldiers,' he said, ' the one who caught 
 me climbing up there to the window, the one who gave me 
 a little push, and the third who was annoyed because I 
 prayed for him, it is about them.' 
 
 ' They do not count. When asses bray the angels 
 in heaven do not stop singing.' 
 
 ' Maurizio, do not talk like that ; they are not asses. 
 They are men, like us.' 
 
 ' I do not perceive any particular resemblance.' 
 
 ' Little brother, if God is content to let them be in 
 His likeness . . .' 
 
SAN CELESTINO 311 
 
 ' God would scarcely recognise the likeness that 
 remains.' 
 
 Celestine looked troubled, and Maurizio immediately 
 repented. 
 
 ' No doubt they have souls and are immortal,' he 
 admitted handsomely. ' It is a pity they do not think 
 more of them.' 
 
 ' Yes, but it is a pity, too, when we do things that we 
 have to be sorry for afterwards. They are not bad men, 
 and I am afraid that some day they will be troubled to 
 remember that they used a helpless person unhand- 
 somely.' 
 
 'Ah! You'think so.' 
 
CHAPTBE VIII 
 
 Celestine was right. 
 
 But happily for his sweet and gentle spirit they felt 
 sorry sooner than one might have expected. 
 
 ' Look here,' said the soldier who had pushed him, 
 coming into his cell and finding him alone, ' are you 
 hungry ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, a little.' 
 
 It was nearly four and twenty hours since he had 
 eaten anything. 
 
 ' Well, here is some meat, good hot meat with 
 gravy to it. Eat it. I stole it from my own dinner.' 
 
 ' Would you kindly lock the door ? ' asked Celestine. 
 
 The soldier stared at his seeming irrelevance. 
 
 ' On the inside ? ' 
 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 ' Oh, if you like. You like to have a fellow-prisoner ? ' 
 
 He was in a mood to be gracious, softened by his own 
 softening, but graciousness was not an old habit of his. 
 
 ' If I ate meat it would give me indigestion,' said 
 Celestine gently. He would not say that for fifty 
 years he had not tasted it, and that his holy rule forbade 
 it. ' But I would be happy if you would take it back 
 from me, and be my guest and eat it here.' 
 
 312 
 
SAN CELESTINO 313 
 
 The soldier grumbled ; but he wanted to be pleasant, 
 and they really were the best pieces out of his dinner, and 
 he ate them, Celestine waiting on him. He knew all 
 about him, ignorant as he was, and used to boast after 
 that Celestine V had attended him at table. 
 
 ' If that shove of mine hurt you . . .' he began, 
 wiping his moustache. 
 
 ' It didn't.' 
 
 ' Well, only it was a beastly thing to do. I was a 
 brutta bestia. I was in a bad temper. The captain 
 had been scolding me. Otherwise I would have remem- 
 bered who you were. I come of decent people, and my 
 mother would have had an apoplexy had she known of it. 
 She is a good woman, though stout.' 
 
 ' There is no harm in being stout. It seems to make 
 people good-tempered.' 
 
 ' You are not very stout,' objected the soldier, not 
 agreeing with the logic, ' and that captain of mine is.' 
 
 ' Perhaps,' suggested Celestine shrewdly, ' his colonel 
 had been scolding him.' 
 
 ' I had not thought of that. Very likely. He often 
 deserves it. But that was no reason for his abusing me. 
 I had done nothing amiss. That which I detest is 
 injustice.' 
 
 Not many days after, the soldier came on duty again 
 who had been offended at Celestine's prayers ; and he, 
 too, found Celestine alone. 
 
 'lama married man,' he informed his prisoner. 
 
 ' It is a holy state,' observed Celestine. 
 
 ' It has its drawbacks. You were never married ? ' 
 
314 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 ' No, never.' 
 
 ' Then you can't know. We were five years without 
 any children, and my wife grumbled. She said people 
 would think it odd. Then a bambino arrived, about 
 as big as my foot — or even smaller at first.' 
 
 Celestine looked at the soldier's foot, and thought it 
 must have been a fine child. 
 
 .' Now it is dying,' whimpered its father. ' It began 
 to dwindle the day I scolded you for praying for me.' 
 
 Celestine laid his withered old hand on the soldier's 
 young and brawny one. 
 
 ' It was not for that. Perhaps God wanted it,' he 
 said tenderly. 
 
 ' Ay. But He has lota of them up there in heaven, 
 and Giannetta has only this one. Will you pray that she 
 may keep it ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, if you will also. God will listen to the two of 
 us' ; and they did it there and then. So Giannetta kept 
 her baby. 
 
 That soldier, whose name was Sangro, told the man 
 who had hauled Celestine down from the window, and 
 he listened anxiously. 
 
 He was a lover, and the contadina whom he admired 
 had looked of late askance upon him. 
 
 ' What is the matter ? ' he asked her that afternoon. 
 
 ' They say that among you all Papa Celestino is 
 ill-treated,' she answered coldly, ' and my father declares 
 he is a saint.' 
 
 ' I know more about him than your father.' 
 
 ' Perhaps you pretend he is -not a saint ? ' 
 
SAN CELESTINO 315 
 
 ' No. I know nothing about saints. Very likely 
 they are in your father's line. But your father is not 
 at all like that old signore.' 
 
 This was not a politic observation ; but the young 
 lady was inquisitive. 
 
 ' What is he like, then — Papa Celestino ? ' she asked 
 eagerly. 
 
 ' He is a very good man, and when one is cross — 
 because certain persons have been unpleasant — he 
 smiles as if one had been delightful.' 
 
 ' I hope you begged his pardon.' 
 
 ' What for ? I never said I did anything.' 
 
 ' Oh, one sees. You were intolerable. Do I not 
 know what a temper you have ! Poor saint ! Go and 
 beg his pardon. To think a man who wants to marry me 
 should have been impertinent to one who was last 
 year pope ! ' 
 
 ' Who said I was impertinent ? One must do one's 
 duty.' 
 
 ' Duty ! ' sneered the young woman, with all a civilian's 
 scorn of a soldier's notion of duty. 
 
 Presently her father appeared. 
 
 ' Come sta, Maruccio ? ' he inquired, coolly though 
 civilly. He was a ' well-educated ' person and knew 
 better than to be rude to his own guest, nevertheless he 
 was not enthusiastic about his daughter's engagement. 
 No doubt Maruccio was a handsome fellow, but that did 
 not appeal to him so much as it had done to Petronilla. 
 
 ' I was telling him,' she remarked, ' that we suspect 
 Papa Celestino is not well treated among them all.' 
 
316 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 It was true that her father had told her so, but he had 
 not meant it to be repeated to someone from the Castello. 
 
 ' Some persons say that,' he observed, cautiously. 
 ' All, however, is not true that idle people talk.' 
 
 ' No,' said Maruccio. ' Celestine has never once 
 complained of anything.' 
 
 ' Saints are not quick at complaining,' said Petronilla, 
 pulling a gilt pin out of her hair and digging the sharp 
 end of it into the table. 
 
 ' I am glad,' her father declared, ' to hear that he has 
 nothing to complain of. It is not rumoured so ; and 
 such rumours are very injurious to the credit of the 
 Holiness of Our Lord.' 
 
 Maruccio felt awkward. He had not expected his 
 proposed father-in-law to be sensitive concerning 
 Celestine's treatment ; for that respectable and prosperous 
 person was a vassal of Boniface, and held his land from 
 the Caetani. 
 
 Petronilla's father was a politician in his way ; and, 
 clearing his throat, he observed sententiously — 
 
 ' There are important reasons why his late Holiness 
 should be retained as the guest of Pope Boniface, here 
 at Eumone ; if Celestine were unprotected he would 
 fall into the hands of dangerous persons. But when 
 people believe that he is harshly dealt with it does harm 
 to our master. The evil done by underlings is laid to his 
 door, though he knows nothing of it.' 
 
 When Maruccio went back to his quarters he was 
 thoughtful. The first person he met was Annibale, the 
 fellow who had pushed Celestine. 
 
SAN CELESTINO 817 
 
 ' My fidenzata is cross,' Maruccio told him, ' because 
 we do not treat our prisoner as civilly as people approve.' 
 
 ' You had better speak for yourself. I treat him 
 excellently. Last week I took "hirn some of my dinner.' 
 
 ' Your dinner, indeed ! As if one who was pope the 
 other day would gnaw your stale bones, like the guard- 
 room dog. Do you know, my little person, that no king 
 would have been allowed to sit at table with him, there 
 in his palace at the Lateran ? ' 
 
 Maruccio had been hearing from Petronilla's father a 
 number of remarkable circumstances in connexion with 
 papal grandeur. That well-informed person by no means 
 forgot that his own lord was pope now. It tickled his 
 vanity very much to dwell on the inferiority of kings to 
 his master. 
 
 ' Well, he did not eat my meat — it wasn't bones at 
 all, but the best pieces.' It was certainly honest of 
 Annibale to admit the rejection of his offering, but it 
 was to lead up to his triumph. 
 
 ' Of course not ! ' 
 
 ' He said to eat meat would give him an indigestion.' 
 
 ' To eat your meat ! A nausea, he meant.' 
 
 Annibale looked annoyed. 
 
 ' You know nothing,' he retorted. ' Celestine 
 accepted my gift. Then he made a feast with it, and 
 invited me. He spread the table and waited on me while 
 I ate. I have been his guest — like a king, only I sat 
 down.' 
 
 Maruccio stared. 
 
 ' My little soldier, you dreamed this,' he declared 
 
318 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 scornfully. But he believed it all the same ; it was 
 exactly like what Oelestine would do. He was green with 
 jealousy. Petronula would be proud to wed a soldier 
 on whom a pope had waited at table ! Why had he not 
 thought of it ? However, he cudgelled his brains and 
 thought of something else, not so good, but the best he 
 could think of. 
 
 ' Holy Father,' he said politely, next time he was 
 on duty, ' here are some good grapes.' 
 
 Celestine flushed. 
 
 ' Do not call me that,' he said quickly. ' That is 
 your master's title.' 
 
 ' I would have called you so sooner if I had been in 
 time,' remarked Maruccio. ' A few months ago I had 
 not the honour to be in attendance on your Excellency.' 
 
 ' All good things come in time,' observed Fra Maurizio 
 demurely. ' At the Lateran, Pope Celestine was not 
 served by men-at-arms.' 
 
 He purposely spoke in a low voice and his master 
 did not hear. 
 
 ' Well, they are good grapes,' Maruccio continued, 
 ignoring Maurizio. ' And even you, Excellency, can see 
 no harm in eating a little fruit with your bread. That 
 will not cause indigestion.' 
 
 Somehow Maruccio's grapes did not please Celestine 
 as well as Annibale's meat, though there was certainly 
 nothing in his rule to forbid them. He accepted them, 
 however, with his usual mild sweetness — and afterwards 
 made Maurizio eat them. 
 
 ' They come,' said Maruccio, ' from the garden of 
 
SAN CELESTINO 319 
 
 my fidenzata's father. Devout people. Petronilla (the 
 name of my Signorina) begs the blessing of your 
 Excellency.' 
 
 This was a brilliant thought of his own. But he was 
 used to take her things, and this would be easy to carry, 
 and was not costly. 
 
 Oelestine gave a little uneasy movement every time he 
 was called ' Excellency.' It was not a title at all suited 
 to a hermit ; but, after all, he was a bishop, and he was 
 not fond of expostulating about trifles. To be addressed 
 as ' Excellency ' is a very small trifle to one who has had 
 the highest title on earth. 
 
 Maruccio went away rather pleased with his own 
 diplomacy, which he reported to Petronilla with com- 
 placency. Celestine, it appeared, had wept at his 
 gentilezza. 
 
 'Since I came here,' the prisoner was declared to 
 have said, ' your kindness is the greatest I have met 
 with.' 
 
 Her father was not present at the narration, but his 
 daughter repeated it. 
 
 ' Maruccio's tongue is as long as his left leg,' said 
 his future father-in-law. 
 
 Petronilla was rather hurt. Her soldier's legs were 
 of the same length, and he had evidently done his best 
 to make up for past lapses. 
 
 ' It is true they are good grapes,' observed Maurizio, 
 spitting out the skins. 
 
 ' It was kind of him to bring them,' said Oelestine ; 
 but he still preferred to think of Annibale's meat. 
 
CHAPTEE IX 
 
 The Governor of the citadel had never liked his prisoner ; 
 and now reports made him fancy that some of the guards 
 were over-indulgent. He would change them. 
 
 Celestine and the Governor met seldom, and they 
 exchanged little conversation. 
 
 ' He does not know his place,' the Governor declared 
 to his wife, to whom he was frequently disagreeable. 
 
 ' Perhaps he doesn't consider this his place.' 
 
 ' Psh ! You know what I mean. When I go to his 
 cell he smiles upon me. That is quite out of place.' 
 
 ' It is certainly odd that he should smile. If I were 
 he, I would scowl like a devil in a Last Judgment.' 
 
 ' It is for me to smile on him, if I choose to condescend. 
 I am Governor of Fumone.' 
 
 ' People who have been pope are not apt to think a 
 great deal of governors of small fortresses.' 
 
 This was touching a sore point. Her husband was a 
 far-away cousin of Boniface, and considered that, now 
 that his cousin was head of Christendom, his relations 
 should all be remembered ; whereas he was no more now 
 than he had been any time these five years. 
 
 ' That this man should be sent here,' he said sourly, 
 ' is a sign of the great confidence that is placed in me 
 by the Holiness of Our Lord.' 
 
 320 
 
SAN CELESTINO 321 
 
 ' Apparently he wished " this man " to be uncomfort- 
 able.' 
 
 ' Of course you take the hermit's part. All women 
 think every priest a saint.' 
 
 ' Not at all. Your brother is a priest, and he is as 
 like you as one wild olive is like another — hard inside 
 and bitter outside.' 
 
 This was unjust to the priest ; but the Governor's 
 wife, in domestic relations, did not scruple at a little 
 injustice. She was thinking less of her brother-in-law 
 than of her husband. The priest in question was a 
 far more estimable person than his brother ; their 
 resemblance was only in feature. 
 
 ' This Celestine has corrupted his guards. They are 
 all milk and honey to him, I learn.' 
 
 ' Milk and honey are allowable even to hermits,' said 
 the Governor's wife. 
 
 She was not a perfect wife ; but people are apt to get 
 the wives they deserve, and the Governor of Pumone 
 deserved only half as good a one. 
 
 ' Well, I will see his guards are changed. All soldiers 
 are not made of bread and sugar.' 
 
 And he did see. 
 
 He was a stupid, vulgar-minded fellow, who was proud 
 of his authority, which was all his relationship to the 
 Pope had given him. He could only see an inch or two 
 out of his pig-eyes, and had no idea that he could be 
 harming Boniface more than Celestine. 
 
 The captive's guards were changed, and the new ones 
 quite understood what the Governor expected of them. 
 
322 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 They were as surly aa possible, and even a captive's 
 captivity can be made harder. 
 
 Up to now Fra Maurizio had slept in a second cell, 
 opening out of Celestine's. After this he was made to 
 change his quarters and only allowed to visit Celestine 
 at certain hours. He could not be forbidden all access, 
 for Boniface had expressly authorised his attendance on 
 his master. 
 
 Celestine bore these changes uncomplainingly, as he 
 bore everything. That Boniface was responsible for 
 them never even occurred to him. 
 
 Perhaps Maurizio was less unsuspicious, for a whole 
 legend arose of Boniface's malignant persecution of his 
 prisoner ; and devoted championship is seldom coolly 
 impartial. 
 
 In spite of these new annoyances, those last weeks of 
 Celestine's life were full of peace. God's peace passes 
 understanding, and Celestine breathed in it as in an 
 atmosphere. 
 
 The release he had felt approaching did not come 
 quite so soon as he expected ; but he had never been 
 impatient. 
 
 During those days faded figures out of the past visited 
 him in gentle memories. 
 
 ' I saw the Emperor once — Pederigo,' he told 
 Maurizio. ' I pitied him. It was at Salerno, where I was 
 so idle ; I could not learn theology. That was bad ; 
 when I became Pope I was ashamed, for I had forgotten 
 the little I learned. " Barbara Celarent." How that 
 worried me. . . . When I became Pope the courtiers were 
 
SAN CELESTINO 323 
 
 shocked that I was of no great family. So one of them 
 discovered that our real name was Marone, not Murrone, 
 and that we were descendants of Virgil — Maro, you see. 
 It was a fine idea, but too fine for me. And that courtier 
 was offended when I laughed at him, and said that 
 perhaps the poet came of a younger branch, for we were 
 certainly derived from Adam — much further back.' 
 
 ' A good Catholic, anyway,' said Maurizio, ' none of 
 your heathens.' 
 
 ' Catholic enough, for that means universal ; and 
 Adam and his wife had the Church all to themselves.' 
 
 ' Women do a lot of harm in the Church,' observed 
 Maurizio, on general principles. 
 
 ' One should not, perhaps, say that. There are, for 
 instance, our nuns.' 
 
 ' More trouble than all the monks ; all the same, there 
 are good women. I had three sisters. One married a 
 blacksmith, with a hare-lip, an excellent woman with 
 five children, all in holy religion, except the eldest, who 
 died of smallpox. The other two are nuns in our order, 
 but one of them wanted to be an abbess. Thus they 
 are.' 
 
 ' Gesu Cristo had only one real parent on earth, and 
 she was a woman. It is not fit to talk thus. If God 
 had meant us all to be men He would have made it so.' 
 
 ' Scusi, little father. I am an ignorant person. Let 
 it pass.' 
 
 Celestine let it pass, with a little squeeze on Maurizio's 
 round shoulder. 
 
 ' When I was at Salerno I knew several persons,' he 
 
 Y 2 
 
824 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 went on, ' all good creatures. There was one who painted 
 Madonnas, with little eyes like slits. He was entirely 
 well conducted. And there was Alfeo, who had a lute, 
 and he joined us. He is in peace. There was also my 
 landlady, a certain Felicia, a remarkable person. She 
 would make a mystery about the day of the week. " I 
 will wash your room on such a morning," she would say, 
 but never mention that it would be Wednesday — for fear 
 of complications.' 
 
 ' Women are thus,' said Maurizio sagely. ' They love 
 mysteries, being themselves of that quality. For it is 
 a mystery why God made them.' 
 
 He liked arguing, because he imagined that it stirred 
 up his master. 
 
 ' Bees are all females,' urged Celestine, ' and see how 
 they work.' 
 
 ' And how they sting.' 
 
 The quiet days crept by, and the great Feast of 
 Pentecost drew near. 
 
 ' During that feast I shall die,' said Celestine. ' The 
 Church's birthday.' 
 
 Maurizio looked at him, and could not disbelieve. 
 The old man's life hung about him like a delicate mist 
 that breeze or sun might dissipate. 
 
 Nothing troubled him : neither the roughness of his 
 guards, nor the stifling heat. 
 
 ' Benedicite ignis et aestus Domino,' he would 
 murmur, if anyone grumbled at the burning season. 
 ' Fulfilling His word.' 
 
 It was unusually hot for the time of year, and Celestine 
 
SAN CELESTINO 325 
 
 heard much complaint about it ; when his guards came 
 into his cell they grumbled, declaring it was like an 
 oven. But he never complained, nor did Maurizio. Fra 
 Maurizio was not bred to rinding fault, and he was one 
 of those lucky people who do not much feel the variations 
 of heat and cold. Celestine did, but he accepted the 
 weather respectfully as God had made it. 
 
 ' That summer, two years ago, when the cardinals 
 were at Perugia,' he said one afternoon, ' they tell me 
 the heat was terrific ; they were all tired, worn out by 
 it ; perhaps that was why they suddenly elected me.' 
 He smiled at the notion, then grew grave and took himself 
 to task. ' One should not say that. It was not an 
 accident ; there are no accidents.' 
 
 ' That was what I used to tell our brother Luca when 
 he broke the crockery of our monastery.' 
 
 ' Poor brother Luca ! He was a very good-natured 
 lad.' 
 
 ' With a head like a water-melon.' 
 
 ' As I was saying, if the hot weather and their weari- 
 ness helped to make those porporati elect me, it was not 
 an accident, but God's providence, though no one can 
 understand it, or ever will.' 
 
CHAPTEE X 
 
 On Whit Sunday Celestine heard Mass with extraordinary 
 happiness and devotion. Immediately afterwards he 
 became very ill, suffering from a quick fever, and was 
 no more able to rise from the board that was his bed. 
 He received extreme unction, remarking that this was 
 his fifth anointing. 
 
 ' First in my baptism nearly fourscore years ago. 
 Then when I was a ragazzino, in confirmation. Next, 
 when I was made priest. Afterwards at Aquila when I 
 was consecrated bishop, on the day they crowned me. 
 And now for the last time, five anointings at once.' 
 
 He fell into silence, only stirring a little now and then 
 in the uneasiness of fever. 
 
 ' Let me bring a little straw and lay it under you,' 
 Maurizio pleaded. 
 
 ' Nay, nay ! I am well enough. They put no straw 
 between the Cross and Him. It is sufficient indulgence 
 to have this dry board instead of the hard stone. But 
 one's body claims a little sign of friendliness when the 
 soul is getting ready to bid it farewell. Pentecost is 
 come but not gone ; I knew I should go during that 
 feast. There are diversities of gifts ; I never had that 
 of tongues. Words were always too slippery for me.' 
 
 326 
 
SAN CELESTINO 327 
 
 Five days, six, crept by, and there was no sign 
 of the fever lessening ; he took the simple remedies 
 Maurizio was able to offer him, but they made no 
 difference. 
 
 ' When the old rag is worn out,' Celestine said quietly, 
 ' it is of no use trying to stitch on a new bit here or there. 
 I only joke with my little old brother — no disrespect. 
 The body is the temple of the Holy Ghost.' 
 
 When the afternoon of Saturday had come the two 
 monks said Matins and Lauds of the next day together, 
 Celestine jo inin g in, with closed eyes, by heart. 
 
 At the last psalm of Lauds he opened his eyes and 
 lifted himself up. 
 
 ' Praise the Lord in His saints,' said Maurizio. 
 (' Laudate Dominum in Sanctis Ejus.') 
 
 Celestine's thoughts ran back to Salerno, and the two 
 saints he used so often to visit there — his own mighty 
 predecessor, and the Apostle-Evangelist. 
 
 Maurizio was thinking of Celestine himself. 
 
 ' Laudate Dominum in firmamento virtutis Ejus,' 
 responded the dying man. There were no clouds for him, 
 now, on the clear firmament of God's power. 
 
 ' Laudate eum in virtutibus Ejus ; laudate eum 
 secundum multitudinem magnitudinis Ejus.' 
 
 Some men feel their own importance so much that 
 they have scarcely time to remember the ' multitude of 
 the greatness of God.' Celestine had ever been so full 
 of his own littleness that the contrast of God's infinity 
 had overpowered every sense of self. 
 
 ' Laudate eum in sono tubae,' recited Maurizio, 
 
328 SAN OELESTINO 
 
 wondering if his master already heard the notes of that 
 heavenly trumpet. 
 
 ' Laudate eum in psalterio et cithara.' Celestine 
 remembered Alfeo's lute, and how he had flung it into 
 the sea at last, to make divine music out of no other 
 instrument than his own soul. 
 
 ' Laudate eum in tympano et choro ; laudate eum in 
 chordis et organo.' 
 
 ' Laudate eum in cymbalis benesonantibus.' Celestine's 
 ears brought back out of the far past the music he had 
 heard that day at Cava, in the great church where so 
 many saints lay listening from their tombs ; and, out of 
 the future into which the present was merging, a diviner 
 music gathered. Well tuned, indeed, were those cymbals, 
 gentler than the stirred leaves of the forest when the 
 spring breeze touches them, sweeter than the song of any 
 bird, more delicate than the chime of bells of flowers that 
 only angels' ears can hear. 
 
 ' Praise Him on cymbals of jubilation . . .' cried 
 Maurizio, his eyes fastened on his master's face. 
 
 ' Omnis spiritus laudet Dominum ! ' Celestine's voice 
 grew strong in the last response of his last psalm on earth. 
 (' Let every spirit praise the Lord.') 
 
 He said the Gloria at the end too — but not there. 
 While Maurizio was saying it in the cell Celestine was 
 pouring it out with a new unfaltering voice in heaven. 
 
 ' Tres Saint Pere,' said Cardinal de Gouth, coming 
 into the Pope's cabinet, ' there is another saint in 
 heaven.' 
 
SAN CELESTINO 329 
 
 ' Would God there were more on earth,' answered 
 Boniface. 
 
 ' On earth they are not of the same account,' retorted 
 the French cardinal. ' I bring to your Holiness the 
 news that a tired head rests, and a sore heart is healed.' 
 Boniface thought how weary his own head was, how 
 sore his heart. But he was more given to act of himself 
 than to speak of himself. 
 
 ' In this troubled world there are countless heads that 
 ache,' he said, ' and every day a heart is wounded. Who 
 is it ? ' 
 
 ' Celestine.' 
 
 The Pope sat silent, staring with unheeding eyes upon 
 the papers before him. 
 
 It had never yet occurred to him to envy his pre- 
 decessor ; should he envy him now ? 
 
 No doubt Celestine had been a perplexity and a 
 trouble to him almost ever since his abdication of the 
 papacy. And now he was gone. For Celestine himself 
 it was, beyond all question, better ; was it a relief ? He 
 could not feel it so. And yet one terrible tool in the 
 hands of his enemies, the Church's enemies, was gone. 
 Schism could no longer be dreaded from that source. 
 Perhaps, clever as he was, he had never quite understood 
 Celestine ; he was able now to understand him, at all 
 events, without prejudice, not personal but official. 
 ' I knew him well,' he said at length. 
 ' You saw much of him,' said the Cardinal. 
 They were both again silent for a while, and then the 
 Pope, gently too, inquired about the particulars of 
 
330 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 Celestine's end. ' And the monk, Maurizio, was with 
 him ? ' he asked, in a voice that betrayed unmistakable 
 relief. 
 
 * Yes, Holy Father.' 
 
 ' My enemies would say anything.' 
 
 ' They will certainly declare that Celestine was a 
 saint. . . .' 
 
 ' That I will say for them.' 
 
 ' He will be raised to the altars of the Church.' 
 
 As to that Boniface would, then, say nothing. 
 
 ' That also appears to me certain,' declared Cardinal 
 de Gouth. 
 
 But Boniface himself celebrated Celestine's obsequies 
 in Borne, at the tomb of the Apostles, with all his cardinals. 
 The dead saint's body was buried at Ferentino, not far 
 from Fumone, and afterwards translated to Aquila, to 
 the church of the Celestines whom he had founded. 
 And there one may see his skull, with the square hole, 
 such as a nail might cause, over the left temple; the 
 people, and tradition, averring that his guards had 
 driven the nail into his head. 
 
 The enemies of Boniface were not, therefore, the friends 
 of Celestine ; Dante put both popes, impartially, in hell. 
 But the partisans of each were certainly his enemies. It 
 was such people as the Governor of Fumone, and Celes- 
 tine's guards, who did Boniface most mischief ; they 
 were responsible for almost the whole tradition of the 
 self-deposed Pope's persecution and murder. And it 
 was Celestine's irresponsible partisans who were the cause 
 of all his troubles after he had laid down the papacy. 
 
SAN CELESTINO 331 
 
 Against them was urged by the other side Celestine's 
 incompetence and weakness. To make their claim for 
 him more impossible the rumour of his madness was 
 nourished and encouraged. 
 
 Part, however, of the traditional notion of the four 
 months' Pope is due to the shallowness of impression of 
 such as can see nothing but externals 
 
 That the hermit of Monte Morroni was, beyond 
 measure, gaunt and wild in appearance, almost as 
 savagely inhuman-looking as his surroundings, engen- 
 dered the supposition that he was equally wild and 
 savage in character, of a gaunt and meagre spirit, 
 scarcely human. 
 
 It has been Celestine's terrible misfortune that the 
 key-note of earthly judgment should have been struck by 
 an unequalled genius who was incurably a politician ; 
 for Celestine knew nothing, and cared nothing, about 
 politics. As a politician he was, to Dante's eyes, merely 
 a failure, and Dante had no pity for failures. 
 
 To attempt to tell such a story again, after more than 
 six hundred years, must appear merely a presumption, 
 though intended as a most humble act of reparation. 
 History may be supposed to have told the world all it 
 cares to know about Celestine V, a thirteenth-century 
 hermit ; and this book is not history. And yet it is 
 not a novel ; for it contains no ' love story ' — the love 
 of God not counting. It may be called a work of 
 imagination ; and, if imagination be the faculty of 
 conceiving an image, such a description of such a book 
 would be high praise indeed. Nevertheless I believe 
 
332 SAN CELESTINO 
 
 that the picture attempted to be drawn here is a true 
 one ; that where it fails, it fails because a common writer's 
 pen cannot describe a saint. But affection and devotion 
 can supply important wants, and he who has ventured 
 to write here of Celestine writes with such reverent 
 tenderness that it may be seen how reluctantly he turns 
 away from his theme. 
 
 To have described this book upon its title-page 
 as a tragedy would have been to challenge just castigation, 
 for its author cannot handle tragedy. And it would have 
 caused a misunderstanding, for the tragedy of Celestine's 
 story does not culminate in his death, as in heroic tragedy 
 should, we are told, be the case, but in bis forced elevation 
 to the papacy. 
 
 Like other men whose life wears downwards to its 
 present end, the author lies open to the temptation of 
 praise of past time ; but he believes in his own age too, 
 which later times may praise, and he trusts that some 
 may read, even with interest, without impatience, the 
 description, here attempted, of one whose sorrows ended 
 over six centuries ago : one who made no figure in the 
 world, though constrained to sit in its highest place ; 
 one who carried thither no high gifts of genius ; one 
 whose ideals were wholly alien from our own, whose 
 notion of failure was to fail of pleasing God. 
 
 THE END 
 
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