The Three Cities Trilogy: Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I

THE train had been greatly delayed during the night between Pisa and
Civita Vecchia, and it was close upon nine o'clock in the morning when,
after a fatiguing journey of twenty-five hours' duration, Abbe Pierre
Froment at last reached Rome. He had brought only a valise with him, and,
springing hastily out of the railway carriage amidst the scramble of the
arrival, he brushed the eager porters aside, intent on carrying his
trifling luggage himself, so anxious was he to reach his destination, to
be alone, and look around him. And almost immediately, on the Piazza dei
Cinquecento, in front of the railway station, he climbed into one of the
small open cabs ranged alongside the footwalk, and placed the valise near
him after giving the driver this address:

"Via Giulia, Palazzo Boccanera."*

* Boccanera mansion, Julia Street.

It was a Monday, the 3rd of September, a beautifully bright and mild
morning, with a clear sky overhead. The cabby, a plump little man with
sparkling eyes and white teeth, smiled on realising by Pierre's accent
that he had to deal with a French priest. Then he whipped up his lean
horse, and the vehicle started off at the rapid pace customary to the
clean and cheerful cabs of Rome. However, on reaching the Piazza delle
Terme, after skirting the greenery of a little public garden, the man
turned round, still smiling, and pointing to some ruins with his whip,

"The baths of Diocletian," said he in broken French, like an obliging
driver who is anxious to court favour with foreigners in order to secure
their custom.

Then, at a fast trot, the vehicle descended the rapid slope of the Via
Nazionale, which dips down from the summit of the Viminalis,* where the
railway station is situated. And from that moment the driver scarcely
ceased turning round and pointing at the monuments with his whip. In this
broad new thoroughfare there were only buildings of recent erection.
Still, the wave of the cabman's whip became more pronounced and his voice
rose to a higher key, with a somewhat ironical inflection, when he gave
the name of a huge and still chalky pile on his left, a gigantic erection
of stone, overladen with sculptured work-pediments and statues.

* One of the seven hills on which Rome is built. The other six
are the Capitoline, Aventine, Quirinal, Esquiline, Coelian,
and Palatine. These names will perforce frequently occur in
the present narrative.

"The National Bank!" he said.

Pierre, however, during the week which had followed his resolve to make
the journey, had spent wellnigh every day in studying Roman topography in
maps and books. Thus he could have directed his steps to any given spot
without inquiring his way, and he anticipated most of the driver's
explanations. At the same time he was disconcerted by the sudden slopes,
the perpetually recurring hills, on which certain districts rose, house
above house, in terrace fashion. On his right-hand clumps of greenery
were now climbing a height, and above them stretched a long bare yellow
building of barrack or convent-like aspect.

"The Quirinal, the King's palace," said the driver.

Lower down, as the cab turned across a triangular square, Pierre, on
raising his eyes, was delighted to perceive a sort of aerial garden high
above him--a garden which was upheld by a lofty smooth wall, and whence
the elegant and vigorous silhouette of a parasol pine, many centuries
old, rose aloft into the limpid heavens. At this sight he realised all
the pride and grace of Rome.

"The Villa Aldobrandini," the cabman called.

Then, yet lower down, there came a fleeting vision which decisively
impassioned Pierre. The street again made a sudden bend, and in one
corner, beyond a short dim alley, there was a blazing gap of light. On a
lower level appeared a white square, a well of sunshine, filled with a
blinding golden dust; and amidst all that morning glory there arose a
gigantic marble column, gilt from base to summit on the side which the
sun in rising had laved with its beams for wellnigh eighteen hundred
years. And Pierre was surprised when the cabman told him the name of the
column, for in his mind he had never pictured it soaring aloft in such a
dazzling cavity with shadows all around. It was the column of Trajan.

The Via Nazionale turned for the last time at the foot of the slope. And
then other names fell hastily from the driver's lips as his horse went on
at a fast trot. There was the Palazzo Colonna, with its garden edged by
meagre cypresses; the Palazzo Torlonia, almost ripped open by recent
"improvements"; the Palazzo di Venezia, bare and fearsome, with its
crenelated walls, its stern and tragic appearance, that of some fortress
of the middle ages, forgotten there amidst the commonplace life of
nowadays. Pierre's surprise increased at the unexpected aspect which
certain buildings and streets presented; and the keenest blow of all was
dealt him when the cabman with his whip triumphantly called his attention
to the Corso, a long narrow thoroughfare, about as broad as Fleet
Street,* white with sunshine on the left, and black with shadows on the
right, whilst at the far end the Piazza del Popolo (the Square of the
People) showed like a bright star. Was this, then, the heart of the city,
the vaunted promenade, the street brimful of life, whither flowed all the
blood of Rome?

* M. Zola likens the Corso to the Rue St. Honore in Paris, but
I have thought that an English comparison would be preferable
in the present version.--Trans.

However, the cab was already entering the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, which
follows the Via Nazionale, these being the two piercings effected right
across the olden city from the railway station to the bridge of St.
Angelo. On the left-hand the rounded apsis of the Gesu church looked
quite golden in the morning brightness. Then, between the church and the
heavy Altieri palace which the "improvers" had not dared to demolish, the
street became narrower, and one entered into cold, damp shade. But a
moment afterwards, before the facade of the Gesu, when the square was
reached, the sun again appeared, dazzling, throwing golden sheets of
light around; whilst afar off at the end of the Via di Ara Coeli, steeped
in shadow, a glimpse could be caught of some sunlit palm-trees.

"That's the Capitol yonder," said the cabman.

The priest hastily leant to the left, but only espied the patch of
greenery at the end of the dim corridor-like street. The sudden
alternations of warm light and cold shade made him shiver. In front of
the Palazzo di Venezia, and in front of the Gesu, it had seemed to him as
if all the night of ancient times were falling icily upon his shoulders;
but at each fresh square, each broadening of the new thoroughfares, there
came a return to light, to the pleasant warmth and gaiety of life. The
yellow sunflashes, in falling from the house fronts, sharply outlined the
violescent shadows. Strips of sky, very blue and very benign, could be
perceived between the roofs. And it seemed to Pierre that the air he
breathed had a particular savour, which he could not yet quite define,
but it was like that of fruit, and increased the feverishness which had
possessed him ever since his arrival.

The Corso Vittorio Emanuele is, in spite of its irregularity, a very fine
modern thoroughfare; and for a time Pierre might have fancied himself in
any great city full of huge houses let out in flats. But when he passed
before the Cancelleria,* Bramante's masterpiece, the typical monument of
the Roman Renascence, his astonishment came back to him and his mind
returned to the mansions which he had previously espied, those bare,
huge, heavy edifices, those vast cubes of stone-work resembling hospitals
or prisons. Never would he have imagined that the famous Roman "palaces"
were like that, destitute of all grace and fancy and external
magnificence. However, they were considered very fine and must be so; he
would doubtless end by understanding things, but for that he would
require reflection.**

* Formerly the residence of the Papal Vice-Chancellors.

** It is as well to point out at once that a palazzo is not a
palace as we understand the term, but rather a mansion.--Trans.

All at once the cab turned out of the populous Corso Vittorio Emanuele
into a succession of winding alleys, through which it had difficulty in
making its way. Quietude and solitude now came back again; the olden
city, cold and somniferous, followed the new city with its bright
sunshine and its crowds. Pierre remembered the maps which he had
consulted, and realised that he was drawing near to the Via Giulia, and
thereupon his curiosity, which had been steadily increasing, augmented to
such a point that he suffered from it, full of despair at not seeing more
and learning more at once. In the feverish state in which he had found
himself ever since leaving the station, his astonishment at not finding
things such as he had expected, the many shocks that his imagination had
received, aggravated his passion beyond endurance, and brought him an
acute desire to satisfy himself immediately. Nine o'clock had struck but
a few minutes previously, he had the whole morning before him to repair
to the Boccanera palace, so why should he not at once drive to the
classic spot, the summit whence one perceives the whole of Rome spread
out upon her seven hills? And when once this thought had entered into his
mind it tortured him until he was at last compelled to yield to it.

The driver no longer turned his head, so that Pierre rose up to give him
this new address: "To San Pietro in Montorio!"

On hearing him the man at first looked astonished, unable to understand.
He indicated with his whip that San Pietro was yonder, far away. However,
as the priest insisted, he again smiled complacently, with a friendly nod
of his head. All right! For his own part he was quite willing.

The horse then went on at a more rapid pace through the maze of narrow
streets. One of these was pent between high walls, and the daylight
descended into it as into a deep trench. But at the end came a sudden
return to light, and the Tiber was crossed by the antique bridge of
Sixtus IV, right and left of which stretched the new quays, amidst the
ravages and fresh plaster-work of recent erections. On the other side of
the river the Trastevere district also was ripped open, and the vehicle
ascended the slope of the Janiculum by a broad thoroughfare where large
slabs bore the name of Garibaldi. For the last time the driver made a
gesture of good-natured pride as he named this triumphal route.

"Via Garibaldi!"

The horse had been obliged to slacken its pace, and Pierre, mastered by
childish impatience, turned round to look at the city as by degrees it
spread out and revealed itself behind him. The ascent was a long one;
fresh districts were ever rising up, even to the most distant hills.
Then, in the increasing emotion which made his heart beat, the young
priest felt that he was spoiling the contentment of his desire by thus
gradually satisfying it, slowly and but partially effecting his conquest
of the horizon. He wished to receive the shock full in the face, to
behold all Rome at one glance, to gather the holy city together, and
embrace the whole of it at one grasp. And thereupon he mustered
sufficient strength of mind to refrain from turning round any more, in
spite of the impulses of his whole being.

There is a spacious terrace on the summit of the incline. The church of
San Pietro in Montorio stands there, on the spot where, as some say, St.
Peter was crucified. The square is bare and brown, baked by the hot
summer suns; but a little further away in the rear, the clear and noisy
waters of the Acqua Paola fall bubbling from the three basins of a
monumental fountain amidst sempiternal freshness. And alongside the
terrace parapet, on the very crown of the Trastevere, there are always
rows of tourists, slim Englishmen and square-built Germans, agape with
traditional admiration, or consulting their guide-books in order to
identify the monuments.

Pierre sprang lightly from the cab, leaving his valise on the seat, and
making a sign to the driver, who went to join the row of waiting cabs,
and remained philosophically seated on his box in the full sunlight, his
head drooping like that of his horse, both resigning themselves to the
customary long stoppage.

Meantime Pierre, erect against the parapet, in his tight black cassock,
and with his bare feverish hands nervously clenched, was gazing before
him with all his eyes, with all his soul. Rome! Rome! the city of the
Caesars, the city of the Popes, the Eternal City which has twice
conquered the world, the predestined city of the glowing dream in which
he had indulged for months! At last it was before him, at last his eyes
beheld it! During the previous days some rainstorms had abated the
intense August heat, and on that lovely September morning the air had
freshened under the pale blue of the spotless far-spreading heavens. And
the Rome that Pierre beheld was a Rome steeped in mildness, a visionary
Rome which seemed to evaporate in the clear sunshine. A fine bluey haze,
scarcely perceptible, as delicate as gauze, hovered over the roofs of the
low-lying districts; whilst the vast Campagna, the distant hills, died
away in a pale pink flush. At first Pierre distinguished nothing, sought
no particular edifice or spot, but gave sight and soul alike to the whole
of Rome, to the living colossus spread out below him, on a soil
compounded of the dust of generations. Each century had renewed the
city's glory as with the sap of immortal youth. And that which struck
Pierre, that which made his heart leap within him, was that he found Rome
such as he had desired to find her, fresh and youthful, with a volatile,
almost incorporeal, gaiety of aspect, smiling as at the hope of a new
life in the pure dawn of a lovely day.

And standing motionless before the sublime vista, with his hands still
clenched and burning, Pierre in a few minutes again lived the last three
years of his life. Ah! what a terrible year had the first been, spent in
his little house at Neuilly, with doors and windows ever closed,
burrowing there like some wounded animal suffering unto death. He had
come back from Lourdes with his soul desolate, his heart bleeding, with
nought but ashes within him. Silence and darkness fell upon the ruins of
his love and his faith. Days and days went by, without a pulsation of his
veins, without the faintest gleam arising to brighten the gloom of his
abandonment. His life was a mechanical one; he awaited the necessary
courage to resume the tenor of existence in the name of sovereign reason,
which had imposed upon him the sacrifice of everything. Why was he not
stronger, more resistant, why did he not quietly adapt his life to his
new opinions? As he was unwilling to cast off his cassock, through
fidelity to the love of one and disgust of backsliding, why did he not
seek occupation in some science suited to a priest, such as astronomy or
archaeology? The truth was that something, doubtless his mother's spirit,
wept within him, an infinite, distracted love which nothing had yet
satisfied and which ever despaired of attaining contentment. Therein lay
the perpetual suffering of his solitude: beneath the lofty dignity of
reason regained, the wound still lingered, raw and bleeding.

One autumn evening, however, under a dismal rainy sky, chance brought him
into relations with an old priest, Abbe Rose, who was curate at the
church of Ste. Marguerite, in the Faubourg St. Antoine. He went to see
Abbe Rose in the Rue de Charonne, where in the depths of a damp ground
floor he had transformed three rooms into an asylum for abandoned
children, whom he picked up in the neighbouring streets. And from that
moment Pierre's life changed, a fresh and all-powerful source of interest
had entered into it, and by degrees he became the old priest's passionate
helper. It was a long way from Neuilly to the Rue de Charonne, and at
first he only made the journey twice a week. But afterwards he bestirred
himself every day, leaving home in the morning and not returning until
night. As the three rooms no longer sufficed for the asylum, he rented
the first floor of the house, reserving for himself a chamber in which
ultimately he often slept. And all his modest income was expended there,
in the prompt succouring of poor children; and the old priest, delighted,
touched to tears by the young devoted help which had come to him from
heaven, would often embrace Pierre, weeping, and call him a child of God.

It was then that Pierre knew want and wretchedness--wicked, abominable
wretchedness; then that he lived amidst it for two long years. The
acquaintance began with the poor little beings whom he picked up on the
pavements, or whom kind-hearted neighbours brought to him now that the
asylum was known in the district--little boys, little girls, tiny mites
stranded on the streets whilst their fathers and mothers were toiling,
drinking, or dying. The father had often disappeared, the mother had gone
wrong, drunkenness and debauchery had followed slack times into the home;
and then the brood was swept into the gutter, and the younger ones half
perished of cold and hunger on the footways, whilst their elders betook
themselves to courses of vice and crime. One evening Pierre rescued from
the wheels of a stone-dray two little nippers, brothers, who could not
even give him an address, tell him whence they had come. On another
evening he returned to the asylum with a little girl in his arms, a
fair-haired little angel, barely three years old, whom he had found on a
bench, and who sobbed, saying that her mother had left her there. And by
a logical chain of circumstances, after dealing with the fleshless,
pitiful fledglings ousted from their nests, he came to deal with the
parents, to enter their hovels, penetrating each day further and further
into a hellish sphere, and ultimately acquiring knowledge of all its
frightful horror, his heart meantime bleeding, rent by terrified anguish
and impotent charity.

Oh! the grievous City of Misery, the bottomless abyss of human suffering
and degradation--how frightful were his journeys through it during those
two years which distracted his whole being! In that Ste. Marguerite
district of Paris, in the very heart of that Faubourg St. Antoine, so
active and so brave for work, however hard, he discovered no end of
sordid dwellings, whole lanes and alleys of hovels without light or air,
cellar-like in their dampness, and where a multitude of wretches wallowed
and suffered as from poison. All the way up the shaky staircases one's
feet slipped upon filth. On every story there was the same destitution,
dirt, and promiscuity. Many windows were paneless, and in swept the wind
howling, and the rain pouring torrentially. Many of the inmates slept on
the bare tiled floors, never unclothing themselves. There was neither
furniture nor linen, the life led there was essentially an animal life, a
commingling of either sex and of every age--humanity lapsing into
animality through lack of even indispensable things, through indigence of
so complete a character that men, women, and children fought even with
tooth and nail for the very crumbs swept from the tables of the rich. And
the worst of it all was the degradation of the human being; this was no
case of the free naked savage, hunting and devouring his prey in the
primeval forests; here civilised man was found, sunk into brutishness,
with all the stigmas of his fall, debased, disfigured, and enfeebled,
amidst the luxury and refinement of that city of Paris which is one of
the queens of the world.

In every household Pierre heard the same story. There had been youth and
gaiety at the outset, brave acceptance of the law that one must work.
Then weariness had come; what was the use of always toiling if one were
never to get rich? And so, by way of snatching a share of happiness, the
husband turned to drink; the wife neglected her home, also drinking at
times, and letting the children grow up as they might. Sordid
surroundings, ignorance, and overcrowding did the rest. In the great
majority of cases, prolonged lack of work was mostly to blame; for this
not only empties the drawers of the savings hidden away in them, but
exhausts human courage, and tends to confirmed habits of idleness. During
long weeks the workshops empty, and the arms of the toilers lose
strength. In all Paris, so feverishly inclined to action, it is
impossible to find the slightest thing to do. And then the husband comes
home in the evening with tearful eyes, having vainly offered his arms
everywhere, having failed even to get a job at street-sweeping, for that
employment is much sought after, and to secure it one needs influence and
protectors. Is it not monstrous to see a man seeking work that he may
eat, and finding no work and therefore no food in this great city
resplendent and resonant with wealth? The wife does not eat, the children
do not eat. And then comes black famine, brutishness, and finally revolt
and the snapping of all social ties under the frightful injustice meted
out to poor beings who by their weakness are condemned to death. And the
old workman, he whose limbs have been worn out by half a century of hard
toil, without possibility of saving a copper, on what pallet of agony, in
what dark hole must he not sink to die? Should he then be finished off
with a mallet, like a crippled beast of burden, on the day when ceasing
to work he also ceases to eat? Almost all pass away in the hospitals,
others disappear, unknown, swept off by the muddy flow of the streets.
One morning, on some rotten straw in a loathsome hovel, Pierre found a
poor devil who had died of hunger and had been forgotten there for a
week. The rats had devoured his face.

But it was particularly on an evening of the last winter that Pierre's
heart had overflowed with pity. Awful in winter time are the sufferings
of the poor in their fireless hovels, where the snow penetrates by every
chink. The Seine rolls blocks of ice, the soil is frost-bound, in all
sorts of callings there is an enforced cessation of work. Bands of
urchins, barefooted, scarcely clad, hungry and racked by coughing, wander
about the ragpickers' "rents" and are carried off by sudden hurricanes of
consumption. Pierre found families, women with five and six children, who
had not eaten for three days, and who huddled together in heaps to try to
keep themselves warm. And on that terrible evening, before anybody else,
he went down a dark passage and entered a room of terror, where he found
that a mother had just committed suicide with her five little
ones--driven to it by despair and hunger--a tragedy of misery which for a
few hours would make all Paris shudder! There was not an article of
furniture or linen left in the place; it had been necessary to sell
everything bit by bit to a neighbouring dealer. There was nothing but the
stove where the charcoal was still smoking and a half-emptied palliasse
on which the mother had fallen, suckling her last-born, a babe but three
months old. And a drop of blood had trickled from the nipple of her
breast, towards which the dead infant still protruded its eager lips. Two
little girls, three and five years old, two pretty little blondes, were
also lying there, sleeping the eternal sleep side by side; whilst of the
two boys, who were older, one had succumbed crouching against the wall
with his head between his hands, and the other had passed through the
last throes on the floor, struggling as though he had sought to crawl on
his knees to the window in order to open it. Some neighbours, hurrying
in, told Pierre the fearful commonplace story; slow ruin, the father
unable to find work, perchance taking to drink, the landlord weary of
waiting, threatening the family with expulsion, and the mother losing her
head, thirsting for death, and prevailing on her little ones to die with
her, while her husband, who had been out since the morning, was vainly
scouring the streets. Just as the Commissary of Police arrived to verify
what had happened, the poor devil returned, and when he had seen and
understood things, he fell to the ground like a stunned ox, and raised a
prolonged, plaintive howl, such a poignant cry of death that the whole
terrified street wept at it.

Both in his ears and in his heart Pierre carried away with him that
horrible cry, the plaint of a condemned race expiring amidst abandonment
and hunger; and that night he could neither eat nor sleep. Was it
possible that such abomination, such absolute destitution, such black
misery leading straight to death should exist in the heart of that great
city of Paris, brimful of wealth, intoxicated with enjoyment, flinging
millions out of the windows for mere pleasure? What! there should on one
side be such colossal fortunes, so many foolish fancies gratified, with
lives endowed with every happiness, whilst on the other was found
inveterate poverty, lack even of bread, absence of every hope, and
mothers killing themselves with their babes, to whom they had nought to
offer but the blood of their milkless breast! And a feeling of revolt
stirred Pierre; he was for a moment conscious of the derisive futility of
charity. What indeed was the use of doing that which he did--picking up
the little ones, succouring the parents, prolonging the sufferings of the
aged? The very foundations of the social edifice were rotten; all would
soon collapse amid mire and blood. A great act of justice alone could
sweep the old world away in order that the new world might be built. And
at that moment he realised so keenly how irreparable was the breach, how
irremediable the evil, how deathly the cancer of misery, that he
understood the actions of the violent, and was himself ready to accept
the devastating and purifying whirlwind, the regeneration of the world by
flame and steel, even as when in the dim ages Jehovah in His wrath sent
fire from heaven to cleanse the accursed cities of the plains.

However, on hearing him sob that evening, Abbe Rose came up to
remonstrate in fatherly fashion. The old priest was a saint, endowed with
infinite gentleness and infinite hope. Why despair indeed when one had
the Gospel? Did not the divine commandment, "Love one another," suffice
for the salvation of the world? He, Abbe Rose, held violence in horror
and was wont to say that, however great the evil, it would soon be
overcome if humanity would but turn backward to the age of humility,
simplicity, and purity, when Christians lived together in innocent
brotherhood. What a delightful picture he drew of evangelical society, of
whose second coming he spoke with quiet gaiety as though it were to take
place on the very morrow! And Pierre, anxious to escape from his
frightful recollections, ended by smiling, by taking pleasure in Abbe
Rose's bright consoling tale. They chatted until a late hour, and on the
following days reverted to the same subject of conversation, one which
the old priest was very fond of, ever supplying new particulars, and
speaking of the approaching reign of love and justice with the touching
confidence of a good if simple man, who is convinced that he will not die
till he shall have seen the Deity descend upon earth.

And now a fresh evolution took place in Pierre's mind. The practice of
benevolence in that poor district had developed infinite compassion in
his breast, his heart failed him, distracted, rent by contemplation of
the misery which he despaired of healing. And in this awakening of his
feelings he often thought that his reason was giving way, he seemed to be
retracing his steps towards childhood, to that need of universal love
which his mother had implanted in him, and dreamt of chimerical
solutions, awaiting help from the unknown powers. Then his fears, his
hatred of the brutality of facts at last brought him an increasing desire
to work salvation by love. No time should be lost in seeking to avert the
frightful catastrophe which seemed inevitable, the fratricidal war of
classes which would sweep the old world away beneath the accumulation of
its crimes. Convinced that injustice had attained its apogee, that but
little time remained before the vengeful hour when the poor would compel
the rich to part with their possessions, he took pleasure in dreaming of
a peaceful solution, a kiss of peace exchanged by all men, a return to
the pure morals of the Gospel as it had been preached by Jesus.

Doubts tortured him at the outset. Could olden Catholicism be
rejuvenated, brought back to the youth and candour of primitive
Christianity? He set himself to study things, reading and questioning,
and taking a more and more passionate interest in that great problem of
Catholic socialism which had made no little noise for some years past.
And quivering with pity for the wretched, ready as he was for the miracle
of fraternisation, he gradually lost such scruples as intelligence might
have prompted, and persuaded himself that once again Christ would work
the redemption of suffering humanity. At last a precise idea took
possession of him, a conviction that Catholicism purified, brought back
to its original state, would prove the one pact, the supreme law that
might save society by averting the sanguinary crisis which threatened it.

When he had quitted Lourdes two years previously, revolted by all its
gross idolatry, his faith for ever dead, but his mind worried by the
everlasting need of the divine which tortures human creatures, a cry had
arisen within him from the deepest recesses of his being: "A new
religion! a new religion!" And it was this new religion, or rather this
revived religion which he now fancied he had discovered in his desire to
work social salvation--ensuring human happiness by means of the only
moral authority that was erect, the distant outcome of the most admirable
implement ever devised for the government of nations.

During the period of slow development through which Pierre passed, two
men, apart from Abbe Rose, exercised great influence on him. A benevolent
action brought him into intercourse with Monseigneur Bergerot, a bishop
whom the Pope had recently created a cardinal, in reward for a whole life
of charity, and this in spite of the covert opposition of the papal
/curia/ which suspected the French prelate to be a man of open mind,
governing his diocese in paternal fashion. Pierre became more impassioned
by his intercourse with this apostle, this shepherd of souls, in whom he
detected one of the good simple leaders that he desired for the future
community. However, his apostolate was influenced even more decisively by
meeting Viscount Philibert de la Choue at the gatherings of certain
workingmen's Catholic associations. A handsome man, with military
manners, and a long noble-looking face, spoilt by a small and broken nose
which seemed to presage the ultimate defeat of a badly balanced mind, the
Viscount was one of the most active agitators of Catholic socialism in
France. He was the possessor of vast estates, a vast fortune, though it
was said that some unsuccessful agricultural enterprises had already
reduced his wealth by nearly one-half. In the department where his
property was situated he had been at great pains to establish model
farms, at which he had put his ideas on Christian socialism into
practice, but success did not seem to follow him. However, it had all
helped to secure his election as a deputy, and he spoke in the Chamber,
unfolding the programme of his party in long and stirring speeches.

Unwearying in his ardour, he also led pilgrimages to Rome, presided over
meetings, and delivered lectures, devoting himself particularly to the
people, the conquest of whom, so he privately remarked, could alone
ensure the triumph of the Church. And thus he exercised considerable
influence over Pierre, who in him admired qualities which himself did not
possess--an organising spirit and a militant if somewhat blundering will,
entirely applied to the revival of Christian society in France. However,
though the young priest learnt a good deal by associating with him, he
nevertheless remained a sentimental dreamer, whose imagination,
disdainful of political requirements, straightway winged its flight to
the future abode of universal happiness; whereas the Viscount aspired to
complete the downfall of the liberal ideas of 1789 by utilising the
disillusion and anger of the democracy to work a return towards the past.

Pierre spent some delightful months. Never before had neophyte lived so
entirely for the happiness of others. He was all love, consumed by the
passion of his apostolate. The sight of the poor wretches whom he
visited, the men without work, the women, the children without bread,
filled him with a keener and keener conviction that a new religion must
arise to put an end to all the injustice which otherwise would bring the
rebellious world to a violent death. And he was resolved to employ all
his strength in effecting and hastening the intervention of the divine,
the resuscitation of primitive Christianity. His Catholic faith remained
dead; he still had no belief in dogmas, mysteries, and miracles; but a
hope sufficed him, the hope that the Church might still work good, by
connecting itself with the irresistible modern democratic movement, so as
to save the nations from the social catastrophe which impended. His soul
had grown calm since he had taken on himself the mission of replanting
the Gospel in the hearts of the hungry and growling people of the
Faubourgs. He was now leading an active life, and suffered less from the
frightful void which he had brought back from Lourdes; and as he no
longer questioned himself, the anguish of uncertainty no longer tortured
him. It was with the serenity which attends the simple accomplishment of
duty that he continued to say his mass. He even finished by thinking that
the mystery which he thus celebrated--indeed, that all the mysteries and
all the dogmas were but symbols--rites requisite for humanity in its
childhood, which would be got rid of later on, when enlarged, purified,
and instructed humanity should be able to support the brightness of naked
truth.

And in his zealous desire to be useful, his passion to proclaim his
belief aloud, Pierre one morning found himself at his table writing a
book. This had come about quite naturally; the book proceeded from him
like a heart-cry, without any literary idea having crossed his mind. One
night, whilst he lay awake, its title suddenly flashed before his eyes in
the darkness: "NEW ROME." That expressed everything, for must not the new
redemption of the nations originate in eternal and holy Rome? The only
existing authority was found there; rejuvenescence could only spring from
the sacred soil where the old Catholic oak had grown. He wrote his book
in a couple of months, having unconsciously prepared himself for the work
by his studies in contemporary socialism during a year past. There was a
bubbling flow in his brain as in a poet's; it seemed to him sometimes as
if he dreamt those pages, as if an internal distant voice dictated them
to him.

When he read passages written on the previous day to Viscount Philibert
de la Choue, the latter often expressed keen approval of them from a
practical point of view, saying that one must touch the people in order
to lead them, and that it would also be a good plan to compose pious and
yet amusing songs for singing in the workshops. As for Monseigneur
Bergerot, without examining the book from the dogmatic standpoint, he was
deeply touched by the glowing breath of charity which every page exhaled,
and was even guilty of the imprudence of writing an approving letter to
the author, which letter he authorised him to insert in his work by way
of preface. And yet now the Congregation of the Index Expurgatorius was
about to place this book, issued in the previous June, under interdict;
and it was to defend it that the young priest had hastened to Rome,
inflamed by the desire to make his ideas prevail, and resolved to plead
his cause in person before the Holy Father, having, he was convinced of
it, simply given expression to the pontiff's views.

Pierre had not stirred whilst thus living his three last years afresh: he
still stood erect before the parapet, before Rome, which he had so often
dreamt of and had so keenly desired to see. There was a constant
succession of arriving and departing vehicles behind him; the slim
Englishmen and the heavy Germans passed away after bestowing on the
classic view the five minutes prescribed by their guidebooks; whilst the
driver and the horse of Pierre's cab remained waiting complacently, each
with his head drooping under the bright sun, which was heating the valise
on the seat of the vehicle. And Pierre, in his black cassock, seemed to
have grown slimmer and elongated, very slight of build, as he stood there
motionless, absorbed in the sublime spectacle. He had lost flesh after
his journey to Lourdes, his features too had become less pronounced.
Since his mother's part in his nature had regained ascendency, the broad,
straight forehead, the intellectual air which he owed to his father
seemed to have grown less conspicuous, while his kind and somewhat large
mouth, and his delicate chin, bespeaking infinite affection, dominated,
revealing his soul, which also glowed in the kindly sparkle of his eyes.

Ah! how tender and glowing were the eyes with which he gazed upon the
Rome of his book, the new Rome that he had dreamt of! If, first of all,
the /ensemble/ had claimed his attention in the soft and somewhat veiled
light of that lovely morning, at present he could distinguish details,
and let his glance rest upon particular edifices. And it was with
childish delight that he identified them, having long studied them in
maps and collections of photographs. Beneath his feet, at the bottom of
the Janiculum, stretched the Trastevere district with its chaos of old
ruddy houses, whose sunburnt tiles hid the course of the Tiber. He was
somewhat surprised by the flattish aspect of everything as seen from the
terraced summit. It was as though a bird's-eye view levelled the city,
the famous hills merely showing like bosses, swellings scarcely
perceptible amidst the spreading sea of house-fronts. Yonder, on the
right, distinct against the distant blue of the Alban mountains, was
certainly the Aventine with its three churches half-hidden by foliage;
there, too, was the discrowned Palatine, edged as with black fringe by a
line of cypresses. In the rear, the Coelian hill faded away, showing only
the trees of the Villa Mattei paling in the golden sunshine. The slender
spire and two little domes of Sta. Maria Maggiore alone indicated the
summit of the Esquiline, right in front and far away at the other end of
the city; whilst on the heights of the neighbouring Viminal, Pierre only
perceived a confused mass of whitish blocks, steeped in light and
streaked with fine brown lines--recent erections, no doubt, which at that
distance suggested an abandoned stone quarry. He long sought the Capitol
without being able to discover it; he had to take his bearings, and ended
by convincing himself that the square tower, modestly lost among
surrounding house-roofs, which he saw in front of Sta. Maria Maggiore was
its campanile. Next, on the left, came the Quirinal, recognisable by the
long facade of the royal palace, a barrack or hospital-like facade, flat,
crudely yellow in hue, and pierced by an infinite number of regularly
disposed windows. However, as Pierre was completing the circuit, a sudden
vision made him stop short. Without the city, above the trees of the
Botanical Garden, the dome of St. Peter's appeared to him. It seemed to
be poised upon the greenery, and rose up into the pure blue sky, sky-blue
itself and so ethereal that it mingled with the azure of the infinite.
The stone lantern which surmounts it, white and dazzling, looked as
though it were suspended on high.

Pierre did not weary, and his glances incessantly travelled from one end
of the horizon to the other. They lingered on the noble outlines, the
proud gracefulness of the town-sprinkled Sabine and Alban mountains,
whose girdle limited the expanse. The Roman Campagna spread out in far
stretches, bare and majestic, like a desert of death, with the glaucous
green of a stagnant sea; and he ended by distinguishing "the stern round
tower" of the tomb of Cecilia Metella, behind which a thin pale line
indicated the ancient Appian Way. Remnants of aqueducts strewed the short
herbage amidst the dust of the fallen worlds. And, bringing his glance
nearer in, the city again appeared with its jumble of edifices, on which
his eyes lighted at random. Close at hand, by its loggia turned towards
the river, he recognised the huge tawny cube of the Palazzo Farnese. The
low cupola, farther away and scarcely visible, was probably that of the
Pantheon. Then by sudden leaps came the freshly whitened walls of San
Paolo-fuori-le-Mura,* similar to those of some huge barn, and the statues
crowning San Giovanni in Laterano, delicate, scarcely as big as insects.
Next the swarming of domes, that of the Gesu, that of San Carlo, that of
St'. Andrea della Valle, that of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini; then a
number of other sites and edifices, all quivering with memories, the
castle of St'. Angelo with its glittering statue of the Destroying Angel,
the Villa Medici dominating the entire city, the terrace of the Pincio
with its marbles showing whitely among its scanty verdure; and the
thick-foliaged trees of the Villa Borghese, whose green crests bounded
the horizon. Vainly however did Pierre seek the Colosseum.

* St. Paul-beyond-the-walls.

The north wind, which was blowing very mildly, had now begun to dissipate
the morning haze. Whole districts vigorously disentangled themselves, and
showed against the vaporous distance like promontories in a sunlit sea.
Here and there, in the indistinct swarming of houses, a strip of white
wall glittered, a row of window panes flared, or a garden supplied a
black splotch, of wondrous intensity of hue. And all the rest, the medley
of streets and squares, the endless blocks of buildings, scattered about
on either hand, mingled and grew indistinct in the living glory of the
sun, whilst long coils of white smoke, which had ascended from the roofs,
slowly traversed the pure sky.

Guided by a secret influence, however, Pierre soon ceased to take
interest in all but three points of the mighty panorama. That line of
slender cypresses which set a black fringe on the height of the Palatine
yonder filled him with emotion: beyond it he saw only a void: the palaces
of the Caesars had disappeared, had fallen, had been razed by time; and
he evoked their memory, he fancied he could see them rise like vague,
trembling phantoms of gold amidst the purple of that splendid morning.
Then his glances reverted to St. Peter's, and there the dome yet soared
aloft, screening the Vatican which he knew was beside the colossus,
clinging to its flanks. And that dome, of the same colour as the heavens,
appeared so triumphant, so full of strength, so vast, that it seemed to
him like a giant king, dominating the whole city and seen from every spot
throughout eternity. Then he fixed his eyes on the height in front of
him, on the Quirinal, and there the King's palace no longer appeared
aught but a flat low barracks bedaubed with yellow paint.

And for him all the secular history of Rome, with its constant
convulsions and successive resurrections, found embodiment in that
symbolical triangle, in those three summits gazing at one another across
the Tiber. Ancient Rome blossoming forth in a piling up of palaces and
temples, the monstrous florescence of imperial power and splendour; Papal
Rome, victorious in the middle ages, mistress of the world, bringing that
colossal church, symbolical of beauty regained, to weigh upon all
Christendom; and the Rome of to-day, which he knew nothing of, which he
had neglected, and whose royal palace, so bare and so cold, brought him
disparaging ideas--the idea of some out-of-place, bureaucratic effort,
some sacrilegious attempt at modernity in an exceptional city which
should have been left entirely to the dreams of the future. However, he
shook off the almost painful feelings which the importunate present
brought to him, and would not let his eyes rest on a pale new district,
quite a little town, in course of erection, no doubt, which he could
distinctly see near St. Peter's on the margin of the river. He had dreamt
of his own new Rome, and still dreamt of it, even in front of the
Palatine whose edifices had crumbled in the dust of centuries, of the
dome of St. Peter's whose huge shadow lulled the Vatican to sleep, of the
Palace of the Quirinal repaired and repainted, reigning in homely fashion
over the new districts which swarmed on every side, while with its ruddy
roofs the olden city, ripped up by improvements, coruscated beneath the
bright morning sun.

Again did the title of his book, "NEW ROME," flare before Pierre's eyes,
and another reverie carried him off; he lived his book afresh even as he
had just lived his life. He had written it amid a flow of enthusiasm,
utilising the /data/ which he had accumulated at random; and its division
into three parts, past, present, and future, had at once forced itself
upon him.

The PAST was the extraordinary story of primitive Christianity, of the
slow evolution which had turned this Christianity into present-day
Catholicism. He showed that an economical question is invariably hidden
beneath each religious evolution, and that, upon the whole, the
everlasting evil, the everlasting struggle, has never been aught but one
between the rich and the poor. Among the Jews, when their nomadic life
was over, and they had conquered the land of Canaan, and ownership and
property came into being, a class warfare at once broke out. There were
rich, and there were poor; thence arose the social question. The
transition had been sudden, and the new state of things so rapidly went
from bad to worse that the poor suffered keenly, and protested with the
greater violence as they still remembered the golden age of the nomadic
life. Until the time of Jesus the prophets are but rebels who surge from
out the misery of the people, proclaim its sufferings, and vent their
wrath upon the rich, to whom they prophesy every evil in punishment for
their injustice and their harshness. Jesus Himself appears as the
claimant of the rights of the poor. The prophets, whether socialists or
anarchists, had preached social equality, and called for the destruction
of the world if it were unjust. Jesus likewise brings to the wretched
hatred of the rich. All His teaching threatens wealth and property; and
if by the Kingdom of Heaven which He promised one were to understand
peace and fraternity upon this earth, there would only be a question of
returning to a life of pastoral simplicity, to the dream of the Christian
community, such as after Him it would seem to have been realised by His
disciples. During the first three centuries each Church was an experiment
in communism, a real association whose members possessed all in
common--wives excepted. This is shown to us by the apologists and early
fathers of the Church. Christianity was then but the religion of the
humble and the poor, a form of democracy, of socialism struggling against
Roman society. And when the latter toppled over, rotted by money, it
succumbed far more beneath the results of frantic speculation, swindling
banks, and financial disasters, than beneath the onslaught of barbarian
hordes and the stealthy, termite-like working of the Christians.

The money question will always be found at the bottom of everything. And
a new proof of this was supplied when Christianity, at last triumphing by
virtue of historical, social, and human causes, was proclaimed a State
religion. To ensure itself complete victory it was forced to range itself
on the side of the rich and the powerful; and one should see by means of
what artfulness and sophistry the fathers of the Church succeeded in
discovering a defence of property and wealth in the Gospel of Jesus. All
this, however, was a vital political necessity for Christianity; it was
only at this price that it became Catholicism, the universal religion.
From that time forth the powerful machine, the weapon of conquest and
rule, was reared aloft: up above were the powerful and the wealthy, those
whose duty it was to share with the poor, but who did not do so; while
down below were the poor, the toilers, who were taught resignation and
obedience, and promised the kingdom of futurity, the divine and eternal
reward--an admirable monument which has lasted for ages, and which is
entirely based on the promise of life beyond life, on the
inextinguishable thirst for immortality and justice that consumes
mankind.

Pierre had completed this first part of his book, this history of the
past, by a broad sketch of Catholicism until the present time. First
appeared St. Peter, ignorant and anxious, coming to Rome by an
inspiration of genius, there to fulfil the ancient oracles which had
predicted the eternity of the Capitol. Then came the first popes, mere
heads of burial associations, the slow rise of the all-powerful papacy
ever struggling to conquer the world, unremittingly seeking to realise
its dream of universal domination. At the time of the great popes of the
middle ages it thought for a moment that it had attained its goal, that
it was the sovereign master of the nations. Would not absolute truth and
right consist in the pope being both pontiff and ruler of the world,
reigning over both the souls and the bodies of all men, even like the
Deity whose vicar he is? This, the highest and mightiest of all
ambitions, one, too, that is perfectly logical, was attained by Augustus,
emperor and pontiff, master of all the known world; and it is the
glorious figure of Augustus, ever rising anew from among the ruins of
ancient Rome, which has always haunted the popes; it is his blood which
has pulsated in their veins.

But power had become divided into two parts amidst the crumbling of the
Roman empire; it was necessary to content oneself with a share, and leave
temporal government to the emperor, retaining over him, however, the
right of coronation by divine grant. The people belonged to God, and in
God's name the pope gave the people to the emperor, and could take it
from him; an unlimited power whose most terrible weapon was
excommunication, a superior sovereignty, which carried the papacy towards
real and final possession of the empire. Looking at things broadly, the
everlasting quarrel between the pope and the emperor was a quarrel for
the people, the inert mass of humble and suffering ones, the great silent
multitude whose irremediable wretchedness was only revealed by occasional
covert growls. It was disposed of, for its good, as one might dispose of
a child. Yet the Church really contributed to civilisation, rendered
constant services to humanity, diffused abundant alms. In the convents,
at any rate, the old dream of the Christian community was ever coming
back: one-third of the wealth accumulated for the purposes of worship,
the adornment and glorification of the shrine, one-third for the priests,
and one-third for the poor. Was not this a simplification of life, a
means of rendering existence possible to the faithful who had no earthly
desires, pending the marvellous contentment of heavenly life? Give us,
then, the whole earth, and we will divide terrestrial wealth into three
such parts, and you shall see what a golden age will reign amidst the
resignation and the obedience of all!

However, Pierre went on to show how the papacy was assailed by the
greatest dangers on emerging from its all-powerfulness of the middle
ages. It was almost swept away amidst the luxury and excesses of the
Renascence, the bubbling of living sap which then gushed from eternal
nature, downtrodden and regarded as dead for ages past. More threatening
still were the stealthy awakenings of the people, of the great silent
multitude whose tongue seemed to be loosening. The Reformation burst
forth like the protest of reason and justice, like a recall to the
disregarded truths of the Gospel; and to escape total annihilation Rome
needed the stern defence of the Inquisition, the slow stubborn labour of
the Council of Trent, which strengthened the dogmas and ensured the
temporal power. And then the papacy entered into two centuries of peace
and effacement, for the strong absolute monarchies which had divided
Europe among themselves could do without it, and had ceased to tremble at
the harmless thunderbolts of excommunication or to look on the pope as
aught but a master of ceremonies, controlling certain rites. The
possession of the people was no longer subject to the same rules.
Allowing that the kings still held the people from God, it was the pope's
duty to register the donation once for all, without ever intervening,
whatever the circumstances, in the government of states. Never was Rome
farther away from the realisation of its ancient dream of universal
dominion. And when the French Revolution burst forth, it may well have
been imagined that the proclamation of the rights of man would kill that
papacy to which the exercise of divine right over the nations had been
committed. And so how great at first was the anxiety, the anger, the
desperate resistance with which the Vatican opposed the idea of freedom,
the new /credo/ of liberated reason, of humanity regaining
self-possession and control. It was the apparent /denouement/ of the long
struggle between the pope and the emperor for possession of the people:
the emperor vanished, and the people, henceforward free to dispose of
itself, claimed to escape from the pope--an unforeseen solution, in which
it seemed as though all the ancient scaffolding of the Catholic world
must fall to the very ground.

At this point Pierre concluded the first part of his book by contrasting
primitive Christianity with present-day Catholicism, which is the triumph
of the rich and the powerful. That Roman society which Jesus had come to
destroy in the name of the poor and humble, had not Catholic Rome
steadily continued rebuilding it through all the centuries, by its policy
of cupidity and pride? And what bitter irony it was to find, after
eighteen hundred years of the Gospel, that the world was again collapsing
through frantic speculation, rotten banks, financial disasters, and the
frightful injustice of a few men gorged with wealth whilst thousands of
their brothers were dying of hunger! The whole redemption of the wretched
had to be worked afresh. However, Pierre gave expression to all these
terrible things in words so softened by charity, so steeped in hope, that
they lost their revolutionary danger. Moreover, he nowhere attacked the
dogmas. His book, in its sentimental, somewhat poetic form, was but the
cry of an apostle glowing with love for his fellow-men.

Then came the second part of the work, the PRESENT, a study of Catholic
society as it now exists. Here Pierre had painted a frightful picture of
the misery of the poor, the misery of a great city, which he knew so well
and bled for, through having laid his hands upon its poisonous wounds.
The present-day injustice could no longer be tolerated, charity was
becoming powerless, and so frightful was the suffering that all hope was
dying away from the hearts of the people. And was it not the monstrous
spectacle presented by Christendom, whose abominations corrupted the
people, and maddened it with hatred and vengeance, that had largely
destroyed its faith? However, after this picture of rotting and crumbling
society, Pierre returned to history, to the period of the French
Revolution, to the mighty hope with which the idea of freedom had filled
the world. The middle classes, the great Liberal party, on attaining
power had undertaken to bring happiness to one and all. But after a
century's experience it really seemed that liberty had failed to bring
any happiness whatever to the outcasts. In the political sphere illusions
were departing. At all events, if the reigning third estate declares
itself satisfied, the fourth estate, that of the toilers,* still suffers
and continues to demand its share of fortune. The working classes have
been proclaimed free; political equality has been granted them, but the
gift has been valueless, for economically they are still bound to
servitude, and only enjoy, as they did formerly, the liberty of dying of
hunger. All the socialist revendications have come from that; between
labour and capital rests the terrifying problem, the solution of which
threatens to sweep away society. When slavery disappeared from the olden
world to be succeeded by salaried employment the revolution was immense,
and certainly the Christian principle was one of the great factors in the
destruction of slavery. Nowadays, therefore, when the question is to
replace salaried employment by something else, possibly by the
participation of the workman in the profits of his work, why should not
Christianity again seek a new principle of action? The fatal and
proximate accession of the democracy means the beginning of another phase
in human history, the creation of the society of to-morrow. And Rome
cannot keep away from the arena; the papacy must take part in the quarrel
if it does not desire to disappear from the world like a piece of
mechanism that has become altogether useless.

* In England we call the press the fourth estate, but in France
and elsewhere the term is applied to the working classes, and
in that sense must be taken here.--Trans.

Hence it followed that Catholic socialism was legitimate. On every side
the socialist sects were battling with their various solutions for the
privilege of ensuring the happiness of the people, and the Church also
must offer her solution of the problem. Here it was that New Rome
appeared, that the evolution spread into a renewal of boundless hope.
Most certainly there was nothing contrary to democracy in the principles
of the Roman Catholic Church. Indeed she had only to return to the
evangelical traditions, to become once more the Church of the humble and
the poor, to re-establish the universal Christian community. She is
undoubtedly of democratic essence, and if she sided with the rich and
the powerful when Christianity became Catholicism, she only did so
perforce, that she might live by sacrificing some portion of her
original purity; so that if to-day she should abandon the condemned
governing classes in order to make common cause with the multitude of
the wretched, she would simply be drawing nearer to Christ, thereby
securing a new lease of youth and purifying herself of all the political
compromises which she formerly was compelled to accept. Without
renouncing aught of her absolutism the Church has at all times known how
to bow to circumstances; but she reserves her perfect sovereignty,
simply tolerating that which she cannot prevent, and patiently waiting,
even through long centuries, for the time when she shall again become
the mistress of the world.

Might not that time come in the crisis which was now at hand? Once more,
all the powers are battling for possession of the people. Since the
people, thanks to liberty and education, has become strong, since it has
developed consciousness and will, and claimed its share of fortune, all
rulers have been seeking to attach it to themselves, to reign by it, and
even with it, should that be necessary. Socialism, therein lies the
future, the new instrument of government; and the kings tottering on
their thrones, the middle-class presidents of anxious republics, the
ambitious plotters who dream of power, all dabble in socialism! They all
agree that the capitalist organisation of the State is a return to pagan
times, to the olden slave-market; and they all talk of breaking for ever
the iron law by which the labour of human beings has become so much
merchandise, subject to supply and demand, with wages calculated on an
estimate of what is strictly necessary to keep a workman from dying of
hunger. And, down in the sphere below, the evil increases, the workmen
agonise with hunger and exasperation, while above them discussion still
goes on, systems are bandied about, and well-meaning persons exhaust
themselves in attempting to apply ridiculously inadequate remedies.
There is much stir without any progress, all the wild bewilderment which
precedes great catastrophes. And among the many, Catholic socialism,
quite as ardent as Revolutionary socialism, enters the lists and strives
to conquer.

After these explanations Pierre gave an account of the long efforts made
by Catholic socialism throughout the Christian world. That which
particularly struck one in this connection was that the warfare became
keener and more victorious whenever it was waged in some land of
propaganda, as yet not completely conquered by Roman Catholicism. For
instance, in the countries where Protestantism confronted the latter, the
priests fought with wondrous passion, as for dear life itself, contending
with the schismatical clergy for possession of the people by dint of
daring, by unfolding the most audacious democratic theories. In Germany,
the classic land of socialism, Mgr. Ketteler was one of the first to
speak of adequately taxing the rich; and later he fomented a wide-spread
agitation which the clergy now directs by means of numerous associations
and newspapers. In Switzerland Mgr. Mermillod pleaded the cause of the
poor so loudly that the bishops there now almost make common cause with
the democratic socialists, whom they doubtless hope to convert when the
day for sharing arrives. In England, where socialism penetrates so very
slowly, Cardinal Manning achieved considerable success, stood by the
working classes on the occasion of a famous strike, and helped on a
popular movement, which was signalised by numerous conversions. But it
was particularly in the United States of America that Catholic socialism
proved triumphant, in a sphere of democracy where the bishops, like Mgr.
Ireland, were forced to set themselves at the head of the working-class
agitation. And there across the Atlantic a new Church seems to be
germinating, still in confusion but overflowing with sap, and upheld by
intense hope, as at the aurora of the rejuvenated Christianity of
to-morrow.

Passing thence to Austria and Belgium, both Catholic countries, one found
Catholic socialism mingling in the first instance with anti-semitism,
while in the second it had no precise sense. And all movement ceased and
disappeared when one came to Spain and Italy, those old lands of faith.
The former with its intractable bishops who contented themselves with
hurling excommunication at unbelievers as in the days of the Inquisition,
seemed to be abandoned to the violent theories of revolutionaries, whilst
Italy, immobilised in the traditional courses, remained without
possibility of initiative, reduced to silence and respect by the presence
of the Holy See. In France, however, the struggle remained keen, but it
was more particularly a struggle of ideas. On the whole, the war was
there being waged against the revolution, and to some it seemed as though
it would suffice to re-establish the old organisation of monarchical
times in order to revert to the golden age. It was thus that the question
of working-class corporations had become the one problem, the panacea for
all the ills of the toilers. But people were far from agreeing; some,
those Catholics who rejected State interference and favoured purely moral
action, desired that the corporations should be free; whilst others, the
young and impatient ones, bent on action, demanded that they should be
obligatory, each with capital of its own, and recognised and protected by
the State.

Viscount Philibert de la Choue had by pen and speech carried on a
vigorous campaign in favour of the obligatory corporations; and his great
grief was that he had so far failed to prevail on the Pope to say whether
in his opinion these corporations should be closed or open. According to
the Viscount, herein lay the fate of society, a peaceful solution of the
social question or the frightful catastrophe which must sweep everything
away. In reality, though he refused to own it, the Viscount had ended by
adopting State socialism. And, despite the lack of agreement, the
agitation remained very great; attempts, scarcely happy in their results,
were made; co-operative associations, companies for erecting workmen's
dwellings, popular savings' banks were started; many more or less
disguised efforts to revert to the old Christian community organisation
were tried; while day by day, amidst the prevailing confusion, in the
mental perturbation and political difficulties through which the country
passed, the militant Catholic party felt its hopes increasing, even to
the blind conviction of soon resuming sway over the whole world.

The second part of Pierre's book concluded by a picture of the moral and
intellectual uneasiness amidst which the end of the century is
struggling. While the toiling multitude suffers from its hard lot and
demands that in any fresh division of wealth it shall be ensured at least
its daily bread, the /elite/ is no better satisfied, but complains of the
void induced by the freeing of its reason and the enlargement of its
intelligence. It is the famous bankruptcy of rationalism, of positivism,
of science itself which is in question. Minds consumed by need of the
absolute grow weary of groping, weary of the delays of science which
recognises only proven truths; doubt tortures them, they need a complete
and immediate synthesis in order to sleep in peace; and they fall on
their knees, overcome by the roadside, distracted by the thought that
science will never tell them all, and preferring the Deity, the mystery
revealed and affirmed by faith. Even to-day, it must be admitted, science
calms neither our thirst for justice, our desire for safety, nor our
everlasting idea of happiness after life in an eternity of enjoyment. To
one and all it only brings the austere duty to live, to be a mere
contributor in the universal toil; and how well one can understand that
hearts should revolt and sigh for the Christian heaven, peopled with
lovely angels, full of light and music and perfumes! Ah! to embrace one's
dead, to tell oneself that one will meet them again, that one will live
with them once more in glorious immortality! And to possess the certainty
of sovereign equity to enable one to support the abominations of
terrestrial life! And in this wise to trample on the frightful thought of
annihilation, to escape the horror of the disappearance of the /ego/, and
to tranquillise oneself with that unshakable faith which postpones until
the portal of death be crossed the solution of all the problems of
destiny! This dream will be dreamt by the nations for ages yet. And this
it is which explains why, in these last days of the century, excessive
mental labour and the deep unrest of humanity, pregnant with a new world,
have awakened religious feeling, anxious, tormented by thoughts of the
ideal and the infinite, demanding a moral law and an assurance of
superior justice. Religions may disappear, but religious feelings will
always create new ones, even with the help of science. A new religion! a
new religion! Was it not the ancient Catholicism, which in the soil of
the present day, where all seemed conducive to a miracle, was about to
spring up afresh, throw out green branches and blossom in a young yet
mighty florescence?

At last, in the third part of his book and in the glowing language of an
apostle, Pierre depicted the FUTURE: Catholicism rejuvenated, and
bringing health and peace, the forgotten golden age of primitive
Christianity, back to expiring society. He began with an emotional and
sparkling portrait of Leo XIII, the ideal Pope, the Man of Destiny
entrusted with the salvation of the nations. He had conjured up a
presentment of him and beheld him thus in his feverish longing for the
advent of a pastor who should put an end to human misery. It was perhaps
not a close likeness, but it was a portrait of the needed saviour, with
open heart and mind, and inexhaustible benevolence, such as he had
dreamed. At the same time he had certainly searched documents, studied
encyclical letters, based his sketch upon facts: first Leo's religious
education at Rome, then his brief nunciature at Brussels, and afterwards
his long episcopate at Perugia. And as soon as Leo became pope in the
difficult situation bequeathed by Pius IX, the duality of his nature
appeared: on one hand was the firm guardian of dogmas, on the other the
supple politician resolved to carry conciliation to its utmost limits. We
see him flatly severing all connection with modern philosophy, stepping
backward beyond the Renascence to the middle ages and reviving Christian
philosophy, as expounded by "the angelic doctor," St. Thomas Aquinas, in
Catholic schools. Then the dogmas being in this wise sheltered, he
adroitly maintains himself in equilibrium by giving securities to every
power, striving to utilise every opportunity. He displays extraordinary
activity, reconciles the Holy See with Germany, draws nearer to Russia,
contents Switzerland, asks the friendship of Great Britain, and writes to
the Emperor of China begging him to protect the missionaries and
Christians in his dominions. Later on, too, he intervenes in France and
acknowledges the legitimacy of the Republic.

From the very outset an idea becomes apparent in all his actions, an idea
which will place him among the great papal politicians. It is moreover
the ancient idea of the papacy--the conquest of every soul, Rome capital
and mistress of the world. Thus Leo XIII has but one desire, one object,
that of unifying the Church, of drawing all the dissident communities to
it in order that it may be invincible in the coming social struggle. He
seeks to obtain recognition of the moral authority of the Vatican in
Russia; he dreams of disarming the Anglican Church and of drawing it into
a sort of fraternal truce; and he particularly seeks to come to an
understanding with the Schismatical Churches of the East, which he
regards as sisters, simply living apart, whose return his paternal heart
entreats. Would not Rome indeed dispose of victorious strength if she
exercised uncontested sway over all the Christians of the earth?

And here the social ideas of Leo XIII come in. Whilst yet Bishop of
Perugia he wrote a pastoral letter in which a vague humanitarian
socialism appeared. As soon, however, as he had assumed the triple crown
his opinions changed and he anathematised the revolutionaries whose
audacity was terrifying Italy. But almost at once he corrected himself,
warned by events and realising the great danger of leaving socialism in
the hands of the enemies of the Church. Then he listened to the bishops
of the lands of propaganda, ceased to intervene in the Irish quarrel,
withdrew the excommunications which he had launched against the American
"knights of labour," and would not allow the bold works of Catholic
socialist writers to be placed in the Index. This evolution towards
democracy may be traced through his most famous encyclical letters:
/Immortale Dei/, on the constitution of States; /Libertas/, on human
liberty; /Sapientoe/, on the duties of Christian citizens; /Rerum
novarum/, on the condition of the working classes; and it is particularly
this last which would seem to have rejuvenated the Church. The Pope
herein chronicles the undeserved misery of the toilers, the undue length
of the hours of labour, the insufficiency of salaries. All men have the
right to live, and all contracts extorted by threats of starvation are
unjust. Elsewhere he declares that the workman must not be left
defenceless in presence of a system which converts the misery of the
majority into the wealth of a few. Compelled to deal vaguely with
questions of organisation, he contents himself with encouraging the
corporative movement, placing it under State patronage; and after thus
contributing to restore the secular power, he reinstates the Deity on the
throne of sovereignty, and discerns the path to salvation more
particularly in moral measures, in the ancient respect due to family ties
and ownership. Nevertheless, was not the helpful hand which the august
Vicar of Christ thus publicly tendered to the poor and the humble, the
certain token of a new alliance, the announcement of a new reign of Jesus
upon earth? Thenceforward the people knew that it was not abandoned. And
from that moment too how glorious became Leo XIII, whose sacerdotal
jubilee and episcopal jubilee were celebrated by all Christendom amidst
the coming of a vast multitude, of endless offerings, and of flattering
letters from every sovereign!

Pierre next dealt with the question of the temporal power, and this he
thought he might treat freely. Naturally, he was not ignorant of the fact
that the Pope in his quarrel with Italy upheld the rights of the Church
over Rome as stubbornly as his predecessor; but he imagined that this was
merely a necessary conventional attitude, imposed by political
considerations, and destined to be abandoned when the times were ripe.
For his own part he was convinced that if the Pope had never appeared
greater than he did now, it was to the loss of the temporal power that he
owed it; for thence had come the great increase of his authority, the
pure splendour of moral omnipotence which he diffused.

What a long history of blunders and conflicts had been that of the
possession of the little kingdom of Rome during fifteen centuries!
Constantine quits Rome in the fourth century, only a few forgotten
functionaries remaining on the deserted Palatine, and the Pope naturally
rises to power, and the life of the city passes to the Lateran. However,
it is only four centuries later that Charlemagne recognises accomplished
facts and formally bestows the States of the Church upon the papacy. From
that time warfare between the spiritual power and the temporal powers has
never ceased; though often latent it has at times become acute, breaking
forth with blood and fire. And to-day, in the midst of Europe in arms, is
it not unreasonable to dream of the papacy ruling a strip of territory
where it would be exposed to every vexation, and where it could only
maintain itself by the help of a foreign army? What would become of it in
the general massacre which is apprehended? Is it not far more sheltered,
far more dignified, far more lofty when disentangled from all terrestrial
cares, reigning over the world of souls?

In the early times of the Church the papacy from being merely local,
merely Roman, gradually became catholicised, universalised, slowly
acquiring dominion over all Christendom. In the same way the Sacred
College, at first a continuation of the Roman Senate, acquired an
international character, and in our time has ended by becoming the most
cosmopolitan of assemblies, in which representatives of all the nations
have seats. And is it not evident that the Pope, thus leaning on the
cardinals, has become the one great international power which exercises
the greater authority since it is free from all monarchical interests,
and can speak not merely in the name of country but in that of humanity
itself? The solution so often sought amidst such long wars surely lies in
this: Either give the Pope the temporal sovereignty of the world, or
leave him only the spiritual sovereignty. Vicar of the Deity, absolute
and infallible sovereign by divine delegation, he can but remain in the
sanctuary if, ruler already of the human soul, he is not recognised by
every nation as the one master of the body also--the king of kings.

But what a strange affair was this new incursion of the papacy into the
field sown by the French Revolution, an incursion conducting it perhaps
towards the domination, which it has striven for with a will that has
upheld it for centuries! For now it stands alone before the people. The
kings are down. And as the people is henceforth free to give itself to
whomsoever it pleases, why should it not give itself to the Church? The
depreciation which the idea of liberty has certainly undergone renders
every hope permissible. The liberal party appears to be vanquished in the
sphere of economics. The toilers, dissatisfied with 1789 complain of the
aggravation of their misery, bestir themselves, seek happiness
despairingly. On the other hand the new /regimes/ have increased the
international power of the Church; Catholic members are numerous in the
parliaments of the republics and the constitutional monarchies. All
circumstances seem therefore to favour this extraordinary return of
fortune, Catholicism reverting to the vigour of youth in its old age.
Even science, remember, is accused of bankruptcy, a charge which saves
the /Syllabus/ from ridicule, troubles the minds of men, and throws the
limitless sphere of mystery and impossibility open once more. And then a
prophecy is recalled, a prediction that the papacy shall be mistress of
the world on the day when she marches at the head of the democracy after
reuniting the Schismatical Churches of the East to the Catholic,
Apostolic, and Roman Church. And, in Pierre's opinion, assuredly the
times had come since Pope Leo XIII, dismissing the great and the wealthy
of the world, left the kings driven from their thrones in exile to place
himself like Jesus on the side of the foodless toilers and the beggars of
the high roads. Yet a few more years, perhaps, of frightful misery,
alarming confusion, fearful social danger, and the people, the great
silent multitude which others have so far disposed of, will return to the
cradle, to the unified Church of Rome, in order to escape the destruction
which threatens human society.

Pierre concluded his book with a passionate evocation of New Rome, the
spiritual Rome which would soon reign over the nations, reconciled and
fraternising as in another golden age. Herein he even saw the end of
superstitions. Without making a direct attack on dogma, he allowed
himself to dream of an enlargement of religious feeling, freed from
rites, and absorbed in the one satisfaction of human charity. And still
smarting from his journey to Lourdes, he felt the need of contenting his
heart. Was not that gross superstition of Lourdes the hateful symptom of
the excessive suffering of the times? On the day when the Gospel should
be universally diffused and practised, suffering ones would cease seeking
an illusory relief so far away, assured as they would be of finding
assistance, consolation, and cure in their homes amidst their brothers.
At Lourdes there was an iniquitous displacement of wealth, a spectacle so
frightful as to make one doubt of God, a perpetual conflict which would
disappear in the truly Christian society of to-morrow. Ah! that society,
that Christian community, all Pierre's work ended in an ardent longing
for its speedy advent: Christianity becoming once more the religion of
truth and justice which it had been before it allowed itself to be
conquered by the rich and the powerful! The little ones and the poor ones
reigning, sharing the wealth of earth, and owing obedience to nought but
the levelling law of work! The Pope alone erect at the head of the
federation of nations, prince of peace, with the simple mission of
supplying the moral rule, the link of charity and love which was to unite
all men! And would not this be the speedy realisation of the promises of
Christ? The times were near accomplishment, secular and religious society
would mingle so closely that they would form but one; and it would be the
age of triumph and happiness predicted by all the prophets, no more
struggles possible, no more antagonism between the mind and the body, but
a marvellous equilibrium which would kill evil and set the kingdom of
heaven upon earth. New Rome, the centre of the world, bestowing on the
world the new religion!

Pierre felt that tears were coming to his eyes, and with an unconscious
movement, never noticing how much he astonished the slim Englishmen and
thick-set Germans passing along the terrace, he opened his arms and
extended them towards the /real/ Rome, steeped in such lovely sunshine
and stretched out at his feet. Would she prove responsive to his dream?
Would he, as he had written, find within her the remedy for our
impatience and our alarms? Could Catholicism be renewed, could it return
to the spirit of primitive Christianity, become the religion of the
democracy, the faith which the modern world, overturned and in danger of
perishing, awaits in order to be pacified and to live?

Pierre was full of generous passion, full of faith. He again beheld good
Abbe Rose weeping with emotion as he read his book. He heard Viscount
Philibert de la Choue telling him that such a book was worth an army. And
he particularly felt strong in the approval of Cardinal Bergerot, that
apostle of inexhaustible charity. Why should the Congregation of the
Index threaten his work with interdiction? Since he had been officiously
advised to go to Rome if he desired to defend himself, he had been
turning this question over in his mind without being able to discover
which of his pages were attacked. To him indeed they all seemed to glow
with the purest Christianity. However, he had arrived quivering with
enthusiasm and courage: he was all eagerness to kneel before the Pope,
and place himself under his august protection, assuring him that he had
not written a line without taking inspiration from his ideas, without
desiring the triumph of his policy. Was it possible that condemnation
should be passed on a book in which he imagined in all sincerity that he
had exalted Leo XIII by striving to help him in his work of Christian
reunion and universal peace?

For a moment longer Pierre remained standing before the parapet. He had
been there for nearly an hour, unable to drink in enough of the grandeur
of Rome, which, given all the unknown things she hid from him, he would
have liked to possess at once. Oh! to seize hold of her, know her,
ascertain at once the true word which he had come to seek from her! This
again, like Lourdes, was an experiment, but a graver one, a decisive one,
whence he would emerge either strengthened or overcome for evermore. He
no longer sought the simple, perfect faith of the little child, but the
superior faith of the intellectual man, raising himself above rites and
symbols, working for the greatest happiness of humanity as based on its
need of certainty. His temples throbbed responsive to his heart. What
would be the answer of Rome?

The sunlight had increased and the higher districts now stood out more
vigorously against the fiery background. Far away the hills became gilded
and empurpled, whilst the nearer house-fronts grew very distinct and
bright with their thousands of windows sharply outlined. However, some
morning haze still hovered around; light veils seemed to rise from the
lower streets, blurring the summits for a moment, and then evaporating in
the ardent heavens where all was blue. For a moment Pierre fancied that
the Palatine had vanished, for he could scarcely see the dark fringe of
cypresses; it was as though the dust of its ruins concealed the hill. But
the Quirinal was even more obscured; the royal palace seemed to have
faded away in a fog, so paltry did it look with its low flat front, so
vague in the distance that he no longer distinguished it; whereas above
the trees on his left the dome of St. Peter's had grown yet larger in the
limpid gold of the sunshine, and appeared to occupy the whole sky and
dominate the whole city!

Ah! the Rome of that first meeting, the Rome of early morning, whose new
districts he had not even noticed in the burning fever of his
arrival--with what boundless hopes did she not inspirit him, this Rome
which he believed he should find alive, such indeed as he had dreamed!
And whilst he stood there in his thin black cassock, thus gazing on her
that lovely day, what a shout of coming redemption seemed to arise from
her house-roofs, what a promise of universal peace seemed to issue from
that sacred soil, twice already Queen of the world! It was the third
Rome, it was New Rome whose maternal love was travelling across the
frontiers to all the nations to console them and reunite them in a common
embrace. In the passionate candour of his dream he beheld her, he heard
her, rejuvenated, full of the gentleness of childhood, soaring, as it
were, amidst the morning freshness into the vast pure heavens.

But at last Pierre tore himself away from the sublime spectacle. The
driver and the horse, their heads drooping under the broad sunlight, had
not stirred. On the seat the valise was almost burning, hot with rays of
the sun which was already heavy. And once more Pierre got into the
vehicle and gave this address:

"Via Giulia, Palazzo Boccanera."

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