The Saint by Antonio Fogazzaro

A >> Antonio Fogazzaro >> The Saint

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27

VI

But readers who imagine that this aspect measures the significance of
_The Saint_ have read the surface only. The probability of restoring
friendly relations between Church and State is a matter of concern to
everybody in Italy; but of even greater concern are the implications
which issue from Signor Fogazzaro's thought. He is an evolutionist; he
respects the higher criticism; he knows that religions, like states and
secular institutions, have their birth and growth and inevitable decay.
So Catholicism must take its course in the human circuit, and expect
sooner or later to pass away. This would be the natural deduction to
draw from the premise of evolution. Signor Fogazzaro, however, does not
draw it. He conceives that Catholicism contains a final deposit of truth
which can neither be superseded, wasted, nor destroyed.

"My friends," says Benedetto, "you say, 'We have reposed in the shade of
this tree but now its bark cracks and dries; the tree will die; let us
go in search of other shade.' The tree will not die. If you had ears,
you would hear the movement of the new bark forming, which will have its
period of life, will crack, will dry in its turn, because another bark
shall replace it. The tree does not die, the tree grows."

Through this parable, Signor Fogazzaro reveals his attitude, which it
appears, does not differ from that proposed by many Anglicans and other
Protestants towards their respective churches. Herein his Saint takes on
the largest significance. He is a religious man who constantly praises
Reason, and urges his hearers to trust Reason; but who, at a given
moment, falls back on Faith, cleaves to Faith, insists that Faith alone
brings its own warrant. Hence arise paradoxes, hence contradictions
which elude a reasonable solution. For instance, in one discourse
Benedetto says: "The Catholic Church, which proclaims itself the
fountain of truth, opposes to-day the search for Truth when it is
carried on on its own foundations, on the holy books, on the dogmas,
on its asserted infallibility. For us this means that it has no longer
faith in itself. The Catholic Church which proclaims itself the minister
of Life, to-day shackles and stifles whatever lives youthfully within
it, and to-day it props itself on all its decadent and antiquated
usages." Yet a little farther on he exclaims: "But what sort of faith
is yours, if you talk of leaving the Church because certain antiquated
doctrines of its heads, certain decrees of the Roman congregations,
certain ways in a pontiff's government offend you? What sort of sons are
you who talk of renouncing your mother because she wears a garment which
does not please you? Is the mother's heart changed by a garment? When,
bowed over her, weeping, you tell your infirmities to Christ and Christ
heals you, do you think about the authenticity of a passage in _St.
John_, about the real author of the Fourth Gospel or about the two
Isaiahs? When you commune with Christ in the sacrament do the decrees of
the _Index_ or the Holy Office disturb you? When, giving yourself up to
Mother Church, you enter the shadows of death, is the peace she breathes
in you less sweet because a Pope is opposed to Christian Democracy?"

So far, therefore, as Fogazzaro is the spokesman of loyal yet
intelligent Catholics, he shows that among them also the process of
theological solution has been going on. Like Protestants who still
profess creeds which they do not believe, these intelligent Catholics
have to resort to strange devices--to devices which to a looker-on
appear uncandid if not insincere,--in order to patch up a truce between
their reason and their faith. This insincerity is the blight of the
present age. It is far more serious than indifferentism, or than the
open mockery of the 18th century philosophers. So long as it lasts, no
deep, general religious regeneration will be possible. Be it remarked,
however, that Signer Fogazzaro himself is unaware of his ambiguous
position; being still many removes from Jowett, the typical Mr.
Facing-both-Ways of the epoch.

VII

In conclusion, we go back to the book as a work of art, meaning by art
not mere artifice, but that power which takes the fleeting facts of life
and endues them with permanence, with deeper purports, with order and
beauty. In this sense, Signor Fogazzaro is a great artist. He has the
gift of the masters which enables him to rise without effort to the
level of the tragic crises. He has also a vein of humour, without which
such a theme as his could hardly be successfully handled. And although
there is, by measure, much serious talk, yet so skilfully does he bring
in minor characters, with their transient sidelights, that the total
impression is that of a book in which much happens. No realist could
exceed the fidelity with which Signor Fogazzaro outlines a landscape, or
fixes a passing scene; yet being an idealist through and through, he has
produced a masterpiece in which the imagination is sovereign.

Such a book, sprung from "no vain or shallow thought," holding in
solution the hopes of many earnest souls, spreading before us the mighty
spiritual conflict between Medievalism still triumphant and the young
undaunted Powers of Light, showing us with wonderful lifelikeness the
tragedy of man's baffled endeavour to establish the Kingdom of God
on earth, and of woman's unquenchable love, is a great fact in the
world-literature of our time.

Cambridge, Massachusetts,

April 25, 1906.

THE SAINT

CHAPTER I

LAC D'AMOUR

Jeanne was seated by the window with the book which she had been reading
open upon her lap. She gazed pensively into the oval sheet of leaden
water slumbering at her feet, at the passing clouds, casting their
ever-changing shadows on the little villa, on the deserted garden, the
trees of the opposite bank, the distant fields, on the bridge to
the left, and on the quiet roads, which lost themselves behind the
Beguinage, and on the slanting roofs of Bruges, grand, mysterious, dead.
Could it be that _l'Intruse_ of whom she had just been reading, that
fatal, unseen visitor, was even now crossing the sepulchral city; could
it be that the short ripples upon the face of the dark water were her
shadow, while she herself had reached the threshold of the villa,
bringing with her the coveted gift of eternal sleep! The church bells
chimed the hour of five. High, high up, near the white clouds, magic
voices of innumerable bells sang over the houses, the squares, the
streets of Bruges that melancholy incantation which renders its rest
eternal. Jeanne felt two cool hands upon her eyes, a wave of perfume
touched her cheek, a breath stirred her hair, whispering "_encore une
intruse_," and then soft lips kissed her. She did not seem surprised;
and, raising her hand, caressed the face bending over her, saying:
"Welcome, Noemi. _Magari fossi tu l'Intruse_," (Would that you were
_l'Intruse_.)

Noemi failed to understand.

"_Magari_," she said. "Is that Italian? It sounds like Arabic. Explain
at once, please."

Jeanne rose. "You would not understand any better if I did," she said
with a smile. "Shall we have our Italian conversation lesson now?"

"Yes, with pleasure," answered Noemi.

"Where did you go with my brother?"

"To the Hospital of St. John, to call on Memling."

"That's all right; let us talk about Memling. But first tell me whether
Carlino made you a declaration?"

The girl laughed. "Yes, he made me a declaration of war, and I did
likewise _to he_."

"To him, you should say. I wish he would fall in love with you," added
Jeanne seriously. The girl frowned.

"I do not," she said.

"Why? Is he not charming, brilliant, cultured, and distinguished? He is
very wealthy too, you know. We may despise riches, but after all they
are very good in their way."

Noemi d'Arxel placed her hands on her friend's shoulders, and gazed
steadily into her eyes. The blue questioning eyes were grave and sad;
the brown eyes, thus scrutinised, bore the gaze with firmness, flashing
in turn defiance, embarrassment, and mirth.

"Well," said the girl, "I enjoy seeing Memling with Signor Carlino,
playing classical music with him, discussing a Kempis with him,
although this affection he has recently developed for a Kempis seems a
profanation, when you consider that he believes in nothing. _Je suis
catholique autant qu'on peut l'etre lorsqu'on ne l'est pas_, but when I
hear an unbeliever like your brother read a Kempis so feelingly, I very
nearly lose my faith in Christianity as well. I like him for one other
reason, dear, because he is your brother. But that is all! Oh! Jeanne
Dessalle says such strange things sometimes--such strange things! I do
not understand--I really do not understand. But _warte nur, du Raethsel_,
as my governess used to say."

"What am I to wait for?"

Noemi threw her arm round her friend's neck, "I will drag your soul with
so fine a net that it will bring beautiful great pearls to the surface,
perhaps some sea-weed as well, and a little mud from the bottom, or even
a very tiny _pioeuvre_." "You do not know me," answered Jeanne. "You are
the only one of my friends who does not know me."

"Of course. You imagine that only those who adore you really know you?
Indeed, this belief that everybody adores you is a craze of yours."

Jeanne made the little pouting grimace with which all her friends were
familiar.

"What a foolish girl," she said; but at once softened the expression
with a kiss and a half-sad, half-quizzical smile.

"Women, as I have always told you, do adore me. Do you mean to say that
you do not?"

"_Mais point du tout_," exclaimed Noemi. Jeanne's eyes sparkled with
mischief and kindness.

"In Italian we say: _Si, di tutto cuore_," she answered.

The Dessalles, brother and sister, had spent the preceding summer at
Maloja. Jeanne striving to make herself a pleasant companion, and hiding
as best she could her incurable wound; Carlino searching out traces
of Nietzsche in mystic hours round Sils Maria or in worldly moments
flitting like a butterfly from one woman to another, frequently dining
at St. Moritz, or at Pontresina, making music with a military attache
of the German Embassy at Rome, or with Noemi d'Arxel, and discussing
religious questions with Noemi's sister and brother-in-law. The two
d'Arxel sisters, orphans, were Belgian by birth, but of Dutch and
Protestant ancestry. The elder, Maria, after a peculiar and romantic
courtship, had married the old Italian philosopher Giovanni Selva, who
would be famous in his own country, did Italians take a deeper interest
in theological questions; for Selva is perhaps the truest representative
of progressive Catholicism in Italy. Maria had become a Roman Catholic
before her marriage. The Selvas spent the winter in Rome, the rest of
the year at Subiaco. Noemi, who had remained true to the faith of her
fathers, divided her time between Brussels and Italy. Only a month
before, at the end of March, at Brussels, death had claimed the old
governess, with whom she had lived. Neither Giovanni Selva nor his wife
had been able to come to Noemi at this great crisis, for Selva was
seriously ill at the time. Jeanne Dessalle, who had become much attached
to Noemi, persuaded her brother to undertake the journey to Belgium, a
country with which he was hitherto unacquainted, and then offered to
take the Selvas' place in Brussels. It thus happened that towards the
end of April Noemi was with the Dessalles at Bruges. They occupied a
small villa on the shore of the little mirror of water called "Lac
d'Amour." Carlino had fallen in love with Bruges and especially with the
Lac d'Amour, the name of which he contemplated giving to the novel he
dreamed of writing. As yet, however, the novel existed only in
his brain, while he lived in the pleasant anticipation of one day
astonishing the world with an exquisite and original work of art.

"_En tout cas_," Noemi replied--"not with all my heart."

"Why?"

"Because I am thinking of giving my heart to another person."

"To whom?"

"To a monk."

Jeanne shuddered, and Noemi, to whom her friend had confided the story
of her hopeless love for the man who had disappeared, buried in the
hidden solitude of a cloister, trembled lest she had erred in thus
lightly introducing a subject with which her mind was much occupied.

"By the way, what about Memling," she said, colouring violently, "we
were going to talk about Memling."

She spoke in French, and Jeanne answered gently:

"You know you must speak Italian."

Her eyes were so sad and despairing that Noemi took no notice of her
reproof, and continued in French, saying many endearing things, and
begging for a loving word and a kiss. Both were willingly bestowed.
Noemi did not at once succeed in restoring her friend to her usual calm;
but Jeanne, smoothing back Noemi's hair from her brow with both hands,
and following the caressing gesture with her eyes, begged her gently not
to be afraid that she had wounded her. Sad she was indeed, but that was
no new thing. True she was never gay. This Noemi admitted, but to-day
the cloud of sorrow seemed heavier than ever. Perhaps it was the fault
of _l'Intruse_. Jeanne said, "Indeed it must be so," but with a look and
an accent that implied that _l'Intruse_ who had made her so sad was not
the imaginary being in Maeterlinck's book but the terrible Reaper in
person.

"I have had a letter from Italy," she said, after gently waving aside
Noemi's pressing inquiries. "Don Giuseppe Flores is dead."

"Flores? Who is he?" Noemi did not remember him, and Jeanne chided her
sharply, as if such forgetfulness rendered her unworthy of her position
of confidante. Don Giuseppe Flores was the old Venetian priest who had
brought a last message from Piero Maironi to Villa Diedo. Jeanne had
then believed that his counsels had decided her lover to renounce the
world, and, not satisfied with giving him an icy reception, had wounded
him with ironical allusions to his supposed attitude, which she
pronounced truly worthy of a servant of the Father of infinite mercy.
The old man had answered with such clear understanding, in language so
solemn and gentle and so full of spiritual wisdom--his fine face glowing
with a radiance from above--that she had ended by begging him not only
to forgive her, but to visit her from time to time. He had, in fact,
come twice, but on neither occasion had she been at home. She had
then sought him out In his solitary villa, and of this visit, of this
conversation with the old man so lofty of soul, so humble in heart,
so ardent in spirit, so modest and reticent, she had retained an
ineffaceable memory. He was dead, they wrote. He had passed away, bowing
gently and humbly to the Divine Will. Shortly before his death he had
dreamed continually during a long night, of the words addressed to the
faithful servant in the parable of the talents: _"Ecce superlucratus sum
alia quinque,"_ and his last words had been: _"Non fiat voluntas mea sed
tua."_ Her correspondent was unaware that, in spite of many misgivings,
of certain yearning towards religion, Jeanne, stubborn as ever, still
denied God and immortality as eternal illusions, and if from time to
time she went to Mass, it was only to avoid acquiring the undesirable
reputation of being a free-thinker.

She did not relate the particulars of Don Giuseppe's death to Noemi, but
pondered them herself with a vague, deeply bitter consciousness of how
different her destiny might have been, had she been able to believe;
for at the bottom of Piero Maironi's soul there had always lurked a
hereditary tendency to religion, and to-day she was convinced that when,
on the night of the eclipse, she had confessed her unbelief, she had
written her own condemnation in the book of destiny. Then her thoughts
dwelt on another painful passage in the letter from Italy which she had
not mentioned. But, in spite of her silence, her misery was evident.
Noemi pressed her lips to Jeanne's forehead, and letting them rest there
in silence, touched by the secret sorrow which accepted her sympathy.
Then she slowly drew away from the long embrace as if fearful of
severing some delicate thread which bound their two souls together.

"Perhaps that good old man knew where--Do you think he was in
communication with ----" she murmured.

Jeanne shook her head in denial. During the September following that
sad July, Jeanne's unfortunate husband had died in Venice of delirium
tremens. She had gone to the Villa Flores in October, and there in that
same garden where the Marchesa Scremin had once laid bare her poor,
suffering old heart to Don Giuseppe, had expressed a desire that Piero
should be told of her husband's death, should realise that he might
henceforth think of her without a shadow of guilt, if indeed he still
wished to think of her at all. Don Giuseppe first gently urged her
not to abandon herself to this dream, and then avowed to her in all
sincerity that no tidings of Piero had reached him since the day of his
disappearance.

Fearing other questions, and unwilling any longer to expose her wound
to the touch of unskilled fingers, Jeanne sought to change the subject.
"Tell me about your monk," she said. But just at that moment Carlino's
voice was heard in the hall.

"Not now," replied Noemi. "To-night."

Carlino came in, a white silk muffler round his neck, grumbling at the
Lac d'Armour, which he pronounced a huge fraud, which only filled the
air with odious, poisonous, little creatures. "To be sure." said he,
"love itself is no better." Noemi would not allow him to talk of love.
Why should he discuss a subject which he did not understand? Carlino
thanked her. He had been on the point of falling in love with her; had
greatly feared such a catastrophe. Her words, coming as they did so soon
after her appearance in a certain offensive hat, with an ungraceful
feather, and after some rather bourgeois expressions of admiration for
that poor, tiresome devil Mendelssohn, had saved him _a jamais._ The
two sparred gaily for some time, and, in spite of his poisoned tonsils,
Carlino was in such high spirits that Noemi congratulated him on the
subject of his novel. "It must be making rapid progress," she said.

"Nonsense," answered the author. "It is not progressing at all." He
was making no headway, but was, in fact, floundering hopelessly in the
shallows of a desperate situation. Two personages had stuck in the
author's throat, and could move neither up nor down; one fat and
good-natured, the other thin and sarcastic, like Mademoiselle d'Arxel.
He felt like a certain unfortunate Tuscan peasant, who had lately
swallowed a fig with a bee upon it, and had died in consequence. The
"bee" understood that he really wanted to talk of his book; she stung
him again and again to such a degree that he actually did talk about it.
His story was founded on a curious case of spiritual infection. The hero
was a French priest, an octogenarian, pious, pure, and learned. French?
Why French? Simply because the character must be possessed of a certain
tinge of poetic fancy, a certain elasticity of sentiment, and according
to Carlino, not one Italian priest in a thousand was likely to possess
these exalted attributes. It happened one day that this priest received
the confession of a man of great intellect whose faith was assailed
by terrible doubts. His confession over, the penitent went his way
completely reassured, leaving the confessor shaken in his own faith.
Here would follow a long and minute analysis of the different phases
through which the old man's conscience passed. He lived in daily
expectation of death with a feeling of dismay akin to that of the
schoolboy who waits his turn for examination in the ante-room, conscious
only of his empty head. The priest comes to Bruges. At this point the
hostile critic exclaimed:

"To Bruges? Why?"

"Because," answered Carlino, "I send him wherever I wish. Because at
Bruges there is the silence of the ante-chamber of Eternity, and that
_carillon_ (which honestly is beginning to exasperate me) may pass for
the voices of summoning angels. Finally, because at Bruges there is a
dark young lady slight, tall, and whom we may also call intelligent,
although she speaks Italian badly, and does not understand music."

Noemi pursed her lips and wrinkled her nose.

"What nonsense," she said.

Carlino continued, saying he did not yet know how, but in some way or
another the brunette would become the penitent of the old priest. Noemi
protested, laughing. How? The girl could not be herself. A heretic go to
Confession? Carlino shrugged his shoulders, One Comedy of Errors more
or less, what did it matter? Protestantism and Roman Catholicisnt were,
after all, much the same thing. The priest would then regain his old
faith through contact with the simple, steadfast belief of the girl.
Here Carlino interrupted his story, avowing, in parenthesis, that he
really did not know what kind of belief Noemi held. She flushed,
and replied that she was a Protestant. Protestant, certainly; but a
Protestant pure and simple? Noemi lost her patience. "I am a Protestant,
that is enough," she exclaimed; "and you need not trouble yourself about
my faith."

Noemi was, in fact, true to her own faith, not so much from conviction
as from her reverent affection for the memory of her parents; and in her
heart she had disapproved of her sister's conversion.

Carlino continued. A mystic, sexual influence induced the old man to
seek for a union of souls with the girl. "What rubbish!" said Noemi,
with her familiar pout. Carlino went on unmoved. The most subtle, the
most exquisite part of his book was the analysis of this recondite
influence of sex operating alike on the old priest and the girl.

"Carlino," exclaimed Jeanne, "what are you thinking of? An old man of
eighty!" Carlino looked up as though he would exclaim to some superior,
invisible friend, "How dense they are!"

He had even thought of making his hero older still--say ninety; of
creating a sort of intermediary being between man and spirit, who should
have in his eyes the nebulous depths of the fast approaching things
of eternity. And the girl should have in her blood that mysterious
inclination towards old men, not unusual in her sex, which is the truest
mark of real feminine nobility, and by which the woman is differentiated
from the female. Carlino had in his mind some inspired thoughts to which
he would give utterance, concerning this mystic sense which attracts the
girl of four and twenty to the man of ninety; a priest, on the verge of
the grave, but upheld by an indomitable spirit--unconquered as often
happens by the ravages of time. But how is all this to end? Neither
Noemi nor Jeanne could imagine. Well, Carlino had said from the first
that the fig and the bee could neither get up nor down. One consolation,
however, there was--the idea that a book must have a fitting end was a
mere vulgar prejudice. What is there in the world that really has an
end? That is all very well, said the girls, but the book must certainly
have some ending. The last scene, one of ineffable beauty, should
describe a walk at night and by moonlight through the streets of Bruges,
when the souls of the priest and the maiden should be revealed to one
another, and they should commune half as lovers, half dreaming like
prophets. The two should find themselves at midnight beside the sleeping
waters of the Lac d'Amour, listening in silence to the weird notes of
the _carillon_ under the clouds, and then should come to them the vague
revelation of a sexuality of their souls, of a future of love in the
star Fomalhaut.

"But why especially in Fomalhaut?" exclaimed Noemi.

"You are really intolerable," answered Carlino. "Because the name is so
delightful, it has the ring of a word congealed by German frost and then
melted by the Eastern sun."

"Nonsense! You are talking chemistry! I prefer Algol."

"You and your pastor may go to Algol."

Noemi laughed, and Carlino appealed to Jeanne. Which star would she
prefer? Jeanne did not know; she had not been listening. Carlino was
greatly annoyed; he seemed to want to reprove her, not so much for her
inattention, as for the hidden thoughts which had caused it; and then,
fearing to say too much, he sent her away to meditate, to dream, to
write the philosophy of smoke and clouds. But when she, not in the least
annoyed, was about to leave the room, he called her back to inquire
whether she had heard how his novel was to end. Yes! she had heard; a
moonlight walk of the hero and heroine through the streets of Bruges.

"Well," said Carlino, "as there will be a moon to-night, I should like
to walk with you and Noemi from ten to twelve and take some notes."

"Shall I dress myself as a priest?" asked Jeanne as she went out. Noemi
wished to follow her, but Jeanne herself begged her to remain. She
stayed behind to tell Carlino that he was unworthy of such a sister.
Carlino went to the music portfolio to search for a small volume of
Bach, grumbling the while that she knew nothing--absolutely nothing.
They kept up their skirmish for some time, Bach himself failing to
soothe their ruffled feelings, and even while playing they continued
joking, first concerning Jeanne, and then about one another's false
notes. At last, however, the clear stream of sound, which had been
ruffled by the eddies of their angry outbursts, conquered their
ill-humour, and flowed on smoothly, reflecting the heavens and idyllic
banks. Jeanne carried _"l'Intruse"_ to her room, but did not continue her
reading. The room looked out on the Lac d'Amour. She sat down by the
window. Beyond the bridge, beyond the rolling hilltops--destitute of
trees--which loomed between intervening houses, she could see the summit
of a lofty tower, shrouded fantastically in azure mists. She heard the
continuous peaceful flow of Bach, and thought of Don Giuseppe with that
feeling of melancholy which we experience when we catch a last glimpse
of some beloved home, turning at every step to look back until at length
some bend in the road hides the last corner, the last window from sight.
There was an element of anxiety in Jeanne's grief. The letter told her
that among the papers of the dead man, a sealed packet had been found
with the following superscription In Don Giuseppe's hand: "To be
consigned by my executor to Monsignor the Bishop." The order had been
executed, and according to a rumour coming straight from the Episcopal
Palace, the packet contained a letter from Don Giuseppe to the Bishop,
and a sealed envelope bearing in another hand the words: "To be opened
after Piero Maironi's death." The Bishop was reported to have said: "Let
us hope that Piero Malroni, of whose abode we are ignorant, may reappear
to let us know of his death."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27