XXII

April brought to Hadrian an experience of one of those periods of psychical disturbance which are incidental to the weakness of humanity, and inevitable by a man of His particular temper. Things lost their significance to Him, persons lost their personality, events their importance; and time was not. He kept a straight face, and forced Himself to courteous demeanour: but He was living in a world in which He felt Himself to be just off the floor and floating, a world in which everything was strange and everybody was quite strange, a world where nobody and nothing mattered the least little bit. He had the sense at the beginning to include Himself in secret behind guarded doors; and also to hold His tongue when His attendants were in the Presence. He simply sat and wondered⁠—wondered who He was, how He came there, who dressed Him like that, and when;⁠—and decided that it did not matter. He nursed His cat, cooing and mewing and talking cat-language in a most enjoyable manner. When the creature went away⁠—it did not matter. He used to gaze at His cross by the hour together, planning combinations of lights and shades and backgrounds of book-backs: placing the golden symbol there, and revelling in the supple splendour of the Form, its dignity, its grace, the majestic youth of the Face, noble and grave. He would close His eyes and learn the lovely planes and contours with delicate reverent touch. It pleased Him to think that He had created a type of incarnate divinity, which neither was the Orpheys of the catacombs, nor the Tragic Mask of the Vernicle, nor the gross sexless indecencies wherewith pious Catholics in their churches insult the One among ten thousand, the Altogether Lovely. That thought brought Him back to Space and Time. Indignation at images at least eleven heads long, proportioned like female fashion-plates, visaged like emasculate noodles whom you would slap in the face on sight, simply for their tepid attenuate silliness, if you met them in the flesh⁠—this drew down Hadrian to realities and life.⁠—He felt utterly exhausted. An exposition of sleep seized Him. He was always drowsy; and would fall asleep in the daytime over the writing and reading which He put Himself to do, in His armchair by the window, in His favourite seat by the old wall in the garden where He spent the vivid afternoons of spring. Only toward nightfall, was He able to write that beautiful clear script of His, to bring any of His usual alertness to bear upon affairs: even then that alertness was extraordinarily diluted. His intellect was nebulous, uncertain. He could not select saliencies, could not concentrate his thoughts: His constructive faculty was in abeyance: His imagination was in chains. He spent a long time over His scanty meals, chewing, chewing, reading, reading, and remembering nothing which He read. In an inert perfunctory way, He blamed Himself for waste of time; and continued to waste it. No doubt it was divine nature’s will. Let it be understood that He was not slothful in the confessional sense of the word. He was merely lethargic, dulled, blunted, listless, eager for nothing, except to flee away and be at rest⁠—at rest.

From this stupor, He awoke in panic, as though nympholeptose, lymphatic, driven to frenzy by some unknown external agency. He became inspired with an appalling consciousness of the absolute necessity for instant active continuous exertion⁠—if He were to continue alive upon this earth. He felt that, if He were to permit Himself to relax for one instant, if for one instant He were to abdicate command of His physical forces, to let Himself go⁠—that instant would be His last. With this in His mind, He prepared for momentary unconscious lapses from violent activity. He posed with care, so that, if Death should seize Him unawares, He might not present a disedifying or untidy spectacle to the finders of His corpse. He carefully avoided postures from which, when He should be reft from the body, His form would fall indecorously. He did not trouble His confessor more often than twice a week as usual: but His one prayer, His incantation, always was on His lips, “Dear Jesus, be not to me a Judge, but a Saviour.” He was losing hold of the world. Continually, through every hour of the day and night, His head rang with the reverberating boom⁠—boom⁠—boom⁠—boom of His strong heart’s beating. The rhythm was maddening. He used to count the pulsations, wondering, after “fourteen,” whether He would be able to say “fifteen”: after “ninety-seven,” whether He would be in Rome to say “ninety-eight”: expecting the sudden wrench of self from body: conjecturing the nature of that unique experience. Once, He put Himself to the question “Was He afraid?” He answered, No, because He dared to hope; and, Yes, because He had not been there before. But Sokrates had said that death was our greatest possession on earth; and Seneca said that death was the best of the inventions of life; and Seneca’s friend Saint Paul said “to die is gain.” On the whole, He was not afraid, afraid, of death. But, He did not dare to go⁠—to go⁠—to sleep now. At night, He used to lie in bed, first on His right side, then at full length on His back with the pillow under His neck, and His hands crossed on the breast which had been tattoed with a cross when He was a boy, and His ankles crossed like a crusader, rigid, as He wished to lie in His coffin⁠—and His brain active, active, counting physical pulsations, meditating on the future, scheming, planning, counting each breath, and waiting for the last⁠—and death.

Sometimes He wondered whether it was all worth while: whether it was in accordance with God’s Will that He should be so will-full. He decided to risk an affirmative to that, on the ground of the existence of His will. He knew that He tried rightly to use it. He hoped for mercy on account of lapses. One point He determined. With all due respect to Sokrates and Seneca, Death came by Sin, and Sin was God’s enemy, and God’s friends must fight God’s enemies to the bitter end. To relax was suicide, and suicide was sin; and, tired with conflict as He was, eager for rest and peace as He was, it certainly was not worth while to add to His tale of sin: it was not worth while to exchange tiresome earth for untiring hell: to lose, what Petrarch calls “the splendour of the angelic smile.” He had no steel in His possession except safety-razors: knives and scissors He had abolished long ago; and now He had light strong gratings fixed to all His windows. He would not go into temptation. “I am fawned upon by hope. Ah, would that she had a voice which I could understand, a voice like that of a herald, that I might not be agitated by distracting thought,” He said to Himself in the words of Elektra at the tomb of Agamemnōn. Had He been trained in boyhood at a public-school, in adolescence at an university, had His lines been cast in service, He would not have had to put so severe restraint upon Himself. The occasion would not have arisen. A simple and perhaps a stolid character would have been formed of His temper, potent and brilliant enough to distinguish Him from the mob, but incapable of hypersensation. Instead, His frightfully self-concentrated and lonely life, denied the ordinary opportunities of action, had developed this heartrending complexity: had trained him in mental gymnastics to a degree of excellence which was inhuman, abominable, (in the first intention of the words), in its facile flexible solert dexterity. He was not restrained by any sense whatever of modesty or of decorum. He had no sense of those things. He knew it; and regretted it. He was Himself. He distrusted that self, rejoiced in it, and determined to deal well and righteously with it. Dr. Guido Cabelli, at length summoned, found Him positively furious with the pain of physical and intellectual struggles. The physician exhibited Pot. Brom., Tinct. Valerian. Am., Tinct. Zinzil., Sp. Chlorof., Aq. Menth. Pip., once every three hours. It made the Pontiff conscious that He stank like a male cat in early summer: but He heard no more boom-booming in his ears. It strung-up His nervous system for the time. He put on His pontifical mask; and addressed Himself from the ideal to the real.

He put the affairs of nations on one side. They, the nations all were tumbling over one another in their eagerness to rearrange themselves upon the pattern which He had devised for them. If He adopted the Pythagorean role of an uninterested spectator, either He would be annoyed by something ugly or something silly, or He would have a chance of glorifying Himself on account of some success. And He wished to do otherwise than that. “In this world, God and His angels only may be spectators.”

The affairs of religion, as far as He could see, amounted to the service of others and the cultivation of personal holiness, the correspondence with Divine Love. Someone had told Him that⁠—yes, Talacryn in confession, of course⁠—that the key to all His difficulties, present and to come, was Love. That was all very pretty and theological on the part of the bishop, the cardinal-archbishop: but it was the baby who had taught Him the secret of the method. He would, He really would keep His troubles to Himself. His office was the office of leader and exemplar. Nothing must interfere. He put Himself to review the first year of His pontificate: and a black enough tale it seemed to Him. Without surprise, without emotion, He noted the blurs of impatience, pride⁠—pride⁠—humanity.⁠—Retrospection was the most wearisome most fatuous banality. Onward!

Leader and exemplar! One thing was clear. He must come down among the led and following. He must be seen of men. And He was not seen. No. Peculiar personal preference kept Him apart, mysterious. He rather enjoyed (not the being misunderstood but) the not being understood; and, at the same time, He had been doing a lot of people the gross injustice of crediting them with the possession of intelligence similar to His Own, of perspicacity equal to His Own, of the ability to keep up with His rapid pace and abrupt manoeuvres. That was unrighteous. No doubt it had been all very fine and noble and so forth to sit down silent under calumny, for example. One could afford to do that when one was innocent. But, when millions of people (to give the devils their due) actually wanted to believe one innocent, and would be grieved and perhaps injured because the opportunity to believe innocence was withheld, was it righteous to refuse to condescend? No, such a pose was mere pride. The Servant of the servants of God must not fear to soil the whiteness of His robe in any kind of ordure. Also, to save others was the best way of retrieving oneself.

He sent for the nearest cardinals. Ragna, Saviolli, Semphill, Sterling, Talacryn, Carvale, Van Kristen, Gentilotto, Leighton, Whitehead, responded to the summons. Hadrian received them in the throne-room, but without formality; and contrived to give them an easy and genial greeting. They thought Him to be looking seriously ill. There was the dead whiteness of a gardenia in the hue of His face and hands: His reddish-brown hair was going grey over the left ear: His intense and rigid mask was the sign of pain. His whole aspect also was diaphanous, wasted. But His manner was vivid: He was not inaccessible. Their Eminencies gave Him their attention; and wondered what He was going to bring-out of the dispatch box by His side. He was extremely glad to see the Secretary of State: for He knew how antipathetic He was to that one; and now He was going to try to give him satisfaction. At least it should not be His fault if Ragna’s ordinary attitude of discreet and convulsive brutality remained unmitigated.

“Lord Cardinals,” the Supreme Pontiff said, “it has occurred to Us that ye have many things to say: that there be many things which ye desire to know. We, on Our part, are ready to hear; and We are willing to respond to questions.”

Questions instantly were born in each man’s brain. Ragna was the first to deliver Himself of his. “Holiness, will You answer a question about the ‘Epistle to the Princes’?”

“Yes.”

Ragna collected himself. “I am curious to know why the rights of France in Egypt were not even named. I can see that the very nature of Your Holiness’s counsels demanded that Africa as a whole should pass to England: but I cannot understand why Germany, in taking over France, should not also have taken-over the condominium of Egypt. Why did that fall to England; and why did Germany consent to its falling to England?”

Hadrian made an effort to conquer His natural incapacity for coming near a subject at the first attempt; and put Himself to be concise. “Your Eminency knows that since⁠—We forget the exact date⁠—but since a very short time ago, no international obligations have existed which could restrain Egypt from legitimate attempts at emancipation. Nothing but Ottoman firmans held her. Very well. We discovered that when the King of England and the Sultan, last October, made alliance, the latter issued a firman in which England was named Protector of Egypt. Then (the speaker slightly smiled), when the task of arbitration was submitted to Us, We found that the German colonies in Africa, not only did not pay their way but, required a yearly subsidy of £1,500,000; and therefore, taking one thing with another, We arranged to give Germany sufficient employment for a century nearer home. She promptly recognized that megli’ è fringuello in man’ che tordo in frasca. The fact is that she was only too glad to be rid of her own parasitic colonies, which had severed their connection from the parent stem, and derived their nutriment from other states: while the colonies of France which were epiphytic, having no existence apart from the source from which they sprang, were wiped out (as French colonies) when France was wiped out.”

“And no doubt Germany, in her pretty Gothic way, was in such a desperate hurry to grab France, that she forgot all about Egypt. D’ye know they say she’s going to call her conquest Gallia again?” Semphill put in with a sniff. “And now I’ll ask a question. Holy Father, may I smoke?”

“But smoke!” Hadrian assented with pleasure; and held-out His Own hand for a cigarette. Some of the others did likewise; and the gear began to run much more easily. Van Kristen expressed joy that the Germans were not to have chances of doing more monkey business on the Erechtheion and the Akropolis at Athens.

“Yes,” Ragna meditatively continued: “I suppose I ought to have understood all that. But now, Holiness, there’s another thing: why did the Sultan consent to evacuate Europe?”

“Simply because, with all the examples which he has had lately, he goes in mortal terror of assassination. He has managed to persuade himself that he only can be warranted against that, as long as he is under the aegis of England. Well: seeing England and Turkey allied, We moved England and England moved Ismail. The former had sense: the latter, sentiment. But Ismail really is not half bad: in fact he’s rather decent. If We only had another dear charming childlike naked Christian like Blessed Brother Francis⁠—”

“What?” said Carvale with animation. He happened to have noted that, when Hadrian rioted in superlatives, it meant no more than positives: but, when He negligently drawled comparatives, “not half bad” or “rather decent,” the ultimate of praise was signified. “What?” the cardinal repeated.

“We would send him to give points to Ismail’s mullahs and dervishes.”

“St. Francis has innumerable sons, Holiness,” Saviolli put in.

“And We only know one who in the slightest degree resembles his father,” the Pope responded, waving away the subject.

“One would like to know,” said Sterling, “whether Your Holiness is not really of the opinion that the ‘Epistle to the Princes’ was perhaps a trifle too sentimental and⁠—”

“Sentimental? Yes. The Ruler, who rules sentiment out of his calculations, ignores one of the most potent forces in human affairs. Too sentimental? No. And what else was Your Eminency about to say⁠—a trifle too sentimental and⁠—”

“One would have said perhaps a trifle too arbitrary.”

“Dear man⁠—” the Pope gleefully began.

But Ragna interrupted “Nothing of the kind. That particular ‘Epistle’ was replete with pontifical dignity: it was the finest thing⁠—”

Hadrian stopped him “We were about to remind Cardinal Sterling that when the Ruler of the World geographically rules the world, He is accustomed to do His ruling with a ruler. Our predecessor Alexander VI used a ruler on a celebrated occasion on the Atlantic Ocean.”

Everybody burst out laughing: laughed for a few moments; and returned to a serious demeanour. There was a question, an important question, which sat upon all tongues, wing-preened, ready to fly. But His Holiness already had refused to discuss it. Those, who had tried to persuade, so seriously had been hurt by His icy reticence or by His blunt aloofness, that no one now was temerarious enough to attempt the reopening of so unsavoury and so personal a matter, except upon explicit invitation. Knowing what he did of men, Hadrian had expected hesitation: but, seeing that His purpose was likely to fail of completion; and, being determined that it should not fail, He slowly and significantly drew-off the pontifical ring from His first finger, and put it in His pocket. “Gentlemen,” He said with quite a change of manner, “some of you would like to put George Arthur Rose to the question?”

They would indeed. They would whatever. They would like it so much that they all spoke in unison. The sum of their words amounted to a request that George Arthur Rose would give them some sort of statement concerning newspaper calumnies, some sort of statement by way of support to their contention that he had been grossly wronged and mispresented.

It was George the Digladiator who responded. He seemed to step down into the arena, naked, lithe, agile, with bright open eyes, and ready to fight for life. “Very well,” he said⁠—“I will give that statement to you: but understand that I will not defend myself in the newspapers. If I were a layman, I should have whipped in a writ for libel, and have given my damages to Nazareth House. I should have preferred to trust my reputation rather to an English judge and jury, than to the nameless editors of Erse or Radical newspapers. Fancy having one’s letters edited by the Catholic Hour, for example: fancy having one’s letters, which are one’s defence, nefariously garbled by a nameless creature who is one’s prosecutor, and one’s judge, and one’s jury, all in one! However, not being a layman, I cannot go to law; and I will not condescend to have dealings with those newspapers. Understand also, that I tell you what I am about to tell you, not because I have been provoked, abused, calumniated, traduced, assailed with insinuation, innuendo, mispresentation, lies: not because my life has been held up to ridicule, and to most inferior contempt: not because the most preposterous stories to my detriment have been invented, hawked about, believed. No. Please understand that I am not going to speak in my own defence, even to you. I personally and of predilection, can be indifferent to opinions. But officially I must correct error. So I will give you some information. You may take it, or leave it: believe it or disbelieve it. You shall have as photographic a picture as I can give you of my life, and of the majestic immobility by which you clergy tire out⁠—assassinate a man’s body⁠—perhaps his soul. You are free to use it or abuse it. When I shall have finished speaking, I never will return to this subject.”

“Of course we shall believe what you say,” Semphill rather nervously intercalated. “I’m sure we believe it unsaid. We take it as said, you know. But if you could see your way to give us details, say on half a dozen points, that would be quite enough.”

“The Daily Anagraph has not apologized for its latest slander,” Carvale put in.

“Why should it?” George inquired.

“Well, I sent an authenticated account of what happened in the last consistory. The other papers printed it; and I should have thought the least the Daily Anagraph could have done would be⁠—”

“Carvale, you’re making a mistake. The Daily Anagraph has no personal grudge against me: although the last editor had, because I once innocently asked him whether historical accuracy came within the scope of a Radical periodical. That was years ago, at the time of the second Dreyfus case. I know that he was furious; because Bertram Blighter, the novel-man, told me that that editor in revenge was going to put me on the newspaper blacklist, whatever that may be. No, it is not a personal matter, a matter in which an apology is customary. It’s simply an example of the ethics of commercial journalism. The man wanted to increase the sale of his paper. I happened by chance to be before the world just then. And he took the liberty of increasing his circulation at my expense. Actually that is all. You can’t (at least I don’t), expect an editor, who is capable of doing such a thing, to apologize for doing it. The case of the other papers is verisimilar: except of course the Catholic Hour. That simply exists on sycophanty by sycophants for sycophantophagists, as Semphill knows.”

“Yes I know,” said Semphill. “And I don’t allow the thing to enter my house.”

“But the others⁠—in their case it’s not lurid malignance, but legal malfeasance. Did you say that they apologized?”

“No. None of those, which printed the calumnies, apologized. They just kept silence. But all the respectable papers, which had not calumniated you, printed my refutation of the Daily Anagraph.”

George made a gesture of scorn, of satisfaction, of dismissal. “Then the Pope is clear;” he said. “Now I will try to tell you, as briefly as possible, what you want to know about the other person.” He produced a sheaf of newspaper-cuts. He was in such a white rage at having to do what he was about to do, that he wreaked his anger on those who listened to him, piercingly eyeing them, speaking with swift fury as one would speak to foes. “The Catholic Hour states that in 1886 I was under an under-master at Grandholme School: that I had to leave my mastership because I became Catholic. That is true in substance and absolutely false in connotation. I was an under-master: but as I also had charge of the schoolhouse, I was called the housemaster. You also perhaps may be aware that there is only one headmaster in a school; and that all the rest are under-masters. But, when slander is your object, ‘under-master’ is a nice disgraceful dab of mud to sling at your victim for a beginning. Well: I resigned my housemastership of my own free and unaided will for the reason alleged; and I have yet to learn that the becoming Catholic is an extraordinarily slimy deed. Further, note this, far from my resignation being the dishonourable affair which the Catholic Hour implies, the headmaster of Grandholme School remained my dear and intimate and honoured friend through thick and thin, for more than twenty years, and is my only dear and intimate friend at this moment.”

Semphill and Carvale looked up, and then down. Sterling looked down, down. Van Kristen looked up. The others, anywhere. Talacryn looked annoyed. The taunt was flung out; and the flying voice went-on. “The Catholic Hour thus casts its diatribe in a key of depreciation. Next, I am said to have gone to a school for outcasts, to have quarrelled with the two priest-chaplains; and presently to have been ‘again out.’ The idea being to infer evil, it is rather cleverly done in that statement of the case. But here are the facts. The school perhaps might be called a school for outcasts. But I, a young inexperienced Catholic of six months, was lured by innumerable false pretences, on the part of the eccentric party who offered me the post, to accept what he called the Headmastership of a Cathedral Choir School. He did not tell me that he was forcing the establishment on the bishop of the diocese, nor that the Headmastership had been refused by several distinguished priests simply on account of the impossible conditions. I bought my experience. That I quarrelled with the chaplains is quite true. I did not quarrel effectually though. They were a Belgian and a Frenchman. They drank themselves drunk on beer, out of decanters, chased each other round the refectory tables in a tipsy fight, defied my authority and compelled the ragamuffins of the school to do the same. I naturally resigned that post as quickly as possible. Then follows a pseudo-history of the beginning of my ecclesiastical career at Maryvale. Talacryn knows all about that; and can tell you at your leisure. Afterwards, I came across, (I am quoting), ‘came across a certain Pictish lairdie, and was maintained by him for three or four months⁠—’ ”

“And I know all about that,” Semphill interrupted: “You gave a great deal more than you got.”

“The fallacies connected with my career at and expulsion from St. Andrew’s College are known?”

“Thoroughly,” assented Semphill, Talacryn, and Carvale in a breath.

“The statement that I contracted large debts there⁠—”

“What about those debts?” Ragna asked.

Carvale told him. “They all were contracted under the personal supervision of the Vice-Rector. They were quite insignificant. Besides that, they would not have been contracted but for the promise of Archbishop Smithson and the advice of Canon Dugdale⁠—”

“And the advice of me,” Semphill added in a low tone.

“Oh, you at length acknowledge it?” George fiercely thrust at him.

“Yes, I acknowledge it.”

“Well then, we’re quits now:” George quietly and mysteriously mewed.

“One confesses that the question of the pseudonym interests one,” Sterling judicially said.

“I had half-a-dozen. You see when I was kicked out from college, without a farthing or a friend at hand, I literally became an adventurer. Thank God Who gave me the pluck to face my adventures. I was obliged to live by my wits. Thank God again Who gave me wits to live by.”

Cardinal Leighton was standing-up, blinking and blushing with indignation which distorted his honest placid features. “Holy Father, don’t say another word.” He twitched round towards his fellow-collegians. “How can you torture the man so!” he cried. “Can’t you see what you’re doing, wracking the poor soul like this, pulling him in little pieces all over again? Shame on ye!⁠—Holy Father don’t say another word.”

“Oh if I had only known!” cried Van Kristen.

“You did! I told you myself; and you didn’t believe me!” George fulminated.

The youngest cardinal wept into his handkerchief, shaking with sobs. George neither saw nor noted anyone. He was glaring like a python. Demurrers to Leighton’s remarks arose. No one wanted to wrack anybody. Questions had been invited. Of course no one believed. But it would be so much more satisfactory⁠—Ragna added. George sat violently still in his chair while they talked: let them talk; and prepared to resume.

“If Your Holiness would condescend⁠—” Carvale began.

“There is no Holiness here,” George interrupted, in that cold white candent voice which was more caustic than silver nitrate and more thrilling than a scream.

“If you would do us the favour of just noticing a few heads.”

“As you please,” George chucked at him: “agree among yourselves as to those heads; and you shall have bodies and limbs and fingernails and teeth to fit them.”

Their Eminencies began agreeing. George meanwhile went into the secret chamber for ten minutes or so: and returned with his cat on his neck, and his own tobacco-pouch. He was beginning a cigarette; and his gait was the gait of a challenged lion. Sterling presented him with a pencilled slip of paper. He read aloud “Pseudonym: begging letters: debts: luxurious living: idleness: false pretences as to means and position.”

“I think it right to say that I myself am perfectly satisfied on all those points,” said Semphill. “I’ve read the calumnies⁠—and I call them dastardly calumnies⁠—in the light of my own knowledge of the facts; and I can only say that the worst thing which they’ve alleged against you is that you’ve been used to go-about bilking landlords. All the rest is excusable, not to say harmless.”

“Gracious Heavens!” George exclaimed in a rictus of rage. “Do you suppose that a man of my description goes-about bilking landlords for the sake of the fun of the thing? It’s no such deliriously jolly work, I can tell you. However, I’ve never bilked any landlords if that’s what you want to know. Never. They saw that I worked like nineteen galley-slaves; and they offered to trust me. I voluminously explained my exact position and prospects to them. I was foolish enough to believe that you Catholics would keep your promises and pay me for the work which I did at your orders. So I accepted credit. I wish I had died. When at length I was defrauded, legally, mind!⁠—for, as my employers were Catholics and sometimes priests, I trusted to their honour, and obtained no stamped agreement:⁠—when I was defrauded of my wages, my landlords lost patience (poor things⁠—I don’t blame them,) harried me, reproached me, at length turned me out, and so prevented me from paying them. I dug myself out of the gutter with these bare hands again and again; and started anew to earn enough to pay my debts. Debts! They never were off my chest for twenty years, no matter what these vile liars say. Debts! They say that I incurred them for luxurious living, unjustifiably⁠—”

His passionate voice subsided: he became frightfully cool and tense and terse, analytical, quite merciless to himself. Their Eminencies never before had seen a surgical knife at work in a human heart and brain. They sat all vigilant and attentive, as self-dissection proceeded. “They say that I gorged myself with sumptuous banquets at grand hotels. Once, after several days’ absolute starvation, I got a long earned guinea; and I went and had an omelette and a bed at a place which called itself a grand hotel. It wasn’t particularly grand in the ordinary sense of the term; and my entertainment there cost me no more than it would have cost me elsewhere, and it was infinitely cleaner and tastier. They say that I ate daintily, and had elaborate dishes made from a cookery book of my own. The recipes, (there may have been a score of them,) were cut out of a penny weekly, current among the working classes. The dishes were lentils, carrots, anything that was cheapest, cleanest, easiest, and most filling⁠—nourishing⁠—at the price. Each dish cost something under a penny; and I sometimes had one each day. As I was living on credit, I tried to injure no one but myself. That’s the story of my luxurious living. Let me add though that I was extravagant, in proportion to my means, in one thing. Whenever I earned a little bit, I reserved some of it for apparatus conducing to personal cleanliness, soap, baths, tooth-things, and so on. I’m not a bit ashamed of that. Why did I use credit? Because it was offered: because I hoped: because⁠—That I did not abuse it you may see, actually see, by my style of living⁠—here are the receipted bills;⁠—and by the number and quantity and quality of the works of my hands. I never was idle. I worked at one thing after another. The Catholic Hour admits my skill; and mispresents that as a crime. At the same time, I myself don’t claim my indefatigability as a virtue. Nothing of the kind. It’s something lower than that. It’s comical to say it: but my indefatigability was nothing but a purely selfish pose, put-on solely to make philanthropists look unspeakably silly, to give the lie direct to all their idiotic iniquitous shibboleths. It wasn’t that I couldn’t stop working: but that I wouldn’t. The fact is that I long, I burn, I yearn, I thirst, I most earnestly desire, to do absolutely nothing. I am so tired. I have such a genius for elaborate repose. But convention always alleges idleness, or drunkenness, or lechery, or luxury, to be the causa causans of scoundrelism and of poverty. That’s a specimen of the ‘Eidola Specus,’ the systematizing spirit which damns half the world. People never stop to think that there may be other causes⁠—that men of parts become rakes, or scoundrels, or paupers, for lack of opportunity to live decently and cleanly. Look at François Villon, and Christopher Marlowe, and Sir Richard Steele, and Leo di Giovanni, and heaps of others. Well: I resolutely determined that you never righteously should allege those things of me. Simply to deprive you of that excuse for your failure to do your duty to your neighbour⁠—simply to deprive you of the chance of classifying me among the ruck which your neglect has made⁠—I courted semi-starvation and starvation, I scrupulously avoided drink, I hardly ever even spoke civilly to a woman; and I laboured like a driven slave. No: I never was idle. But I was a most abject fool. I used to think that this diligent ascetic life eventually would pay me best. I made the mistake of omitting to give its due importance to the word ‘own’ in the adage ‘Virtue is its own reward.’ I had no other reward, except my unwillingly cultivated but altogether undeniable virtue. A diabolic brute once said to me ‘If I had your brains I would be earning a thousand a year.’ I replied ‘Take them: tell me what to do: give me orders, and I implicitly will obey you. Then, take that thousand a year, and give me two hundred; and I’ll bless you all my days.’ He said nothing; and he did nothing. He was just a fatuous liar. I mocked him: caught him stealing my correspondence⁠—there is his written confession;⁠—and, he wrote these anonymous calumnies in long cherished revenge.” The dreadful lambent voice flickered for a moment;⁠—and more rapidly flashed-on. “I repeat, I never was idle. I did work after work. I designed furniture, and fire-irons. I delineated saints and seraphim, and sinners, chiefly the former: a series of rather interesting and polyonomous devils in a period of desperate revolt. I slaved as a professional photographer, making (from French prints) a set of negatives for lantern-slides of the Holy Land which were advertised as being ‘from original negatives’⁠—‘messing about’ the Catholic Hour elegantly denominates that portion of my purgatory. Well I admit it was messy, and insanitary within the meaning of the act too⁠—but then you see I was working for a Catholic. I did journalism, reported inquests for eighteen pence. I wrote for magazines. I wrote books. I invented a score of things. Experts used to tell me that there was a fortune waiting for me in these inventions: that any capitalist would help me to exploit them. They were small people themselves, these experts⁠—small, in that they were not obliged to pay income tax: they had no capital to invest: but they recommended me, and advised me, to apply to lots of people who had:⁠—gave me their names and addresses, dictated the letters of application which I wrote. I trusted them, for they were ‘business men’ and I knew that I was not of that species. I quieted my repugnance; and I laid invention after invention, scheme after scheme, work after work, before capitalist after capitalist. I was assured that it was correct to do so. I despised and detested myself for doing it. I scoured the round world for a ‘patron.’ These were my ‘begging letters.’⁠—At that time I was totally ignorant of the fact that there are thousands of people who live by inviting patronage; and that most of them really have nothing to be patronized: while the rest are cranks. I knew that I had done such and such a new thing: that I had exhausted myself and my resources in doing it: that my deed was approved by specialists who thoroughly knew the subject. I was very ashamed to ask for help to make my invention profitable: but I was quite honest⁠—generous: I always offered a share in the profits⁠—always. I did not ask for, and I did not expect, something for nothing. I had done so much; and I wanted so little: but I did want that little⁠—for my creditors⁠—for giving ease to some slaves of my acquaintance. I was a fool, a sanguine ignorant abject fool! I never learned by experience. I still kept on. A haggard shabby shy priestly-visaged individual, such as I was, could not hope to win the confidence of men who daily were approached by splendid plausible cadgers. My requests were too diffident, too modest. I made the mistake of appealing to brains rather than to bowels, to reason rather than to sentiment. I wanted hundreds, or thousands⁠—say two: others wanted and got tens and hundreds of thousands. A cotton-waste merchant could not risk fifteen-hundred on my work, although he liked me personally and said that he believed in the value of my inventions: but, at the same time, he cheerfully lost twelve-thousand in a scheme for ‘ventilated boots.’ I myself was wearing ventilated boots, then: but the ventilated-boot man wore resplendent patent leather. Cardinals’ secretaries could live at the rate of two-thousand-two-hundred-and-ninety pounds a year and borrow three-thousand-and-sixty pounds, on a salary of two-hundred pounds a year; and they could become bankrupt for four-thousand-one-hundred-and-twenty pounds with one-hundred-and-eighty pounds worth of assets. But I⁠—I could not get my due from that man, one of whose secretaries wrote his business to me on the franked notepaper of the late Queen of England’s Treasury: while the other, the bankrupt, gave me a winter of starvation, because his lord had altered his mind, quoth he, about the job on which I was working, and had determined to put his money into a cathedral. No. I never accomplished the whole art and mystery of mendicity. I perfectly could see what was required of him who would be a successful swindler. I was not that one. I was playing another kind of game⁠—unfortunately an honest one. Take that ‘unfortunately’ for irony, please. I mean⁠—but you perfectly know what I mean.⁠—I made nothing of my inventions. By degrees, I had the mortification of seeing others arrive at the discovery which I had made years before. They contrived to turn it into gold and fame. That way, one after another of my inventions became nulled to me. I think I am right in saying that there are only four remaining at the present moment. Finance them now? Engage in trade like a monk or a nun? No. No. I shall give them to⁠—that doesn’t matter. It shall be done today.⁠—Idle? Idle? When I think of all the violently fatuous frantic excellent things I’ve done in the course of my struggles for an honest living⁠—ouf! It makes me sick! Oh yes, I have been helped. God forgive me for bedaubing myself with that indelible blur. I had not the courage to sit-down and fold my hands and die. A brute once said that he supposed that I looked upon the world as mine oyster. I did not. I worked; and I wanted my wages. When they were withheld, people encouraged me to hope on; and offered me a guinea for the present. I took the filthy guinea. God forgive me for becoming so degraded. Not because I wanted to take it: but because they said that they would be so pained at my refusal. But one can’t pay all one’s debts, and lead a godly righteous sober life forever after on a guinea. I was offered help: but help in teaspoonfuls: just enough to keep me alive and chained in the mire: never enough to enable me to raise myself out of it. I asked for work, and they gave me a guinea⁠—and a tacit request to go and agonize elsewhere. My weakness, my fault was that I did not die murdered at Maryvale, at St. Andrew’s College. The normal man, treated as I was ill-treated, would have made no bones whatever about doing so. But I was abnormal. I took help, when it was offered gently. I’m thankful to say that I flung it back when it was offered charitably, as the Bishop of Claughton offered it, and Monsignor⁠—you know whom I mean, Talacryn⁠—and John Newcastle of the Weekly Tabule. I’ll tell you about the last. He said that, being anxious to do me a good turn, he had deposited ten pounds with a printer-man, who would be a kind friend to me, and would consult me as to how that sum could be expended in procuring permanent employment for me. I took seven specimens of my handicraft to that printer-man. He admired them: offered me a loan of five pounds on their security. With that, I fulfilled a temporary engagement. Then I consulted the printer-man, the ‘kind friend.’ He proposed to give me a new suit of clothes, (I was to do without shirts or socks), to accept my services at no salary, and to teach me the business of a printer’s reader for three months; and, then, to recommend me for a situation as reader to some other printer. But, I said, why waste three months in learning a new trade when I already had four trades at my fingers’ ends? But, I said, what was I to live on during those three months? But, I said, what certainty was there at the end of those three months? But, he said, that he would ‘have none of’ my ‘lip, for’ he ‘knew all’ my ‘capers’; and he bade me begone and take away my drawings. Those were ruined: he had let them lie on his dirty office floor for months. Oh I admit that I have been helped⁠—quite brutally and quite uselessly. Helped? Yes. Once, when they told me at the hospital that I was on the verge of a nervous collapse, a Jesuit offered to help me. He would procure my admission to a certain House of Rest, if I would consent to go there. By the Mercy of God I remembered that it was a licensed madhouse, where they imprisoned you by force and tortured you. Fact! There had been a fearful disclosure of their methods in the P.M.G. Well: I refused to go. Rather than add that brand to what I had incurred through being Catholic, I made an effort of will; and contrived to escape that danger: contrived to recover my nerves; and I continued my battle.⁠—Regarding my pseudonyms⁠—my numerous pseudonyms⁠—think of this: I was a tonsured clerk, intending to persist in my Divine Vocation, but forced for a time, to engage in secular pursuits both to earn my living and to pay my debts. I had a shuddering repugnance from associating my name, the name by which I certainly some day should be known in the priesthood, with these secular pursuits. I think that was rather absurd: but I am quite sure that it was not dishonourable. However, for that reason I adopted pseudonyms. I took advice about adopting them: for, in those days, I used to take advice about everything, not being man enough to act upon my own responsibility. Also, the idea of using pseudonyms was suggested to me; and the first one was selected for me. As time went on, and Catholic malfeasance drove me from one trade to another⁠—for you know⁠—Talacryn⁠—Carvale⁠—Semphill⁠—Sterling⁠—that two excellent priests declared in so many words that they would prevent me from ever earning a living⁠—legal assassination, you see definitely was contemplated⁠—I say as Catholic malfeasance drove me from one trade, I invented another, and another; and I carried on each of these under a separate pseudonym. In fact I split up my personality. As Rose I was a tonsured clerk: as King Clement, I wrote and painted and photographed: as Austin White, I designed decorations: as Francis Engle, I did journalism. There were four of me at least. I always have thought it so inexplicable that none of the authorities⁠—you, Talacryn, with your pretended confidence in me and your majestic immobility towards me⁠—that none of you ever realized the tremendous amount of energy which was being expended, misdirected, if you like. Certainly no one of you ever made a practical attempt to direct that energy. I was a like a wild colt careering round and round a large meadow. You all looked on and sneered ‘Erratic!’ Of course I was erratic, for you all did your very best, by stolidity, hints, insinuations, commands, to create obstacles over which I had to jump, through which I had to tear a way; and there was no one to bit and bridle me, to ride me, and to share his couch with me. And of course my pseudonymity has been misunderstood by the stupid, as well as mispresented by the invidious. Most people have only half developed their single personalities. That a man should split his into four and more; and should develop each separately and perfectly, was so abnormal that many normals failed to understand it. So when ‘false pretences’ and similar shibboleths were shrieked, they also took alarm and howled. But, there were no false pretences. I told my name to everyone whom it concerned. I am not the only person who has traded under pseudonyms or technikryms. Take, for example, the man whose shop I am said to have offered to buy. He himself used a trade-name. He begged for my acquaintance when I was openly living as a tonsured clerk, about a couple of years before my first pseudonym even was thought of. Take, for another example, those priests, Fr. Aleck of Beal, and the Order of Divine Love, who are alleged to have ‘charitably maintained’ me. By the way, they never did that. They always were paid for my entertainment, in hard coin, and their own price⁠—always. And the Fathers of Divine Love refused me shelter for one night in 1892 at the very time when they are said to have ‘charitably maintained’ me. They did suggest a common lodging-house at fourpence, though; and I flung back the suggestion in their faces and walked the streets all night. But all these people knew all about me and my pseudonyms. In fact, the very priest who suggested the common lodging-house, was the man on whose advice I adopted my first pseudonym. It was invented by an old lady who chose to call herself my grandmother: she was that priest’s patron and penitent. It was approved by him and adopted by me. And there you have the blind and naked truth on that point. It now is pretended that ‘King Clement’ was a Jesuitical machiavellian device of mine, implying royalty, dominions, wealth, and interminable nonsense. I think that the pretension is due to malice and imbecility. It is malignant now: but I firmly believe that it began by being imbecile. I confess that the name, taken together with my domineering manner, my pedantic diction, my austere and (shall I say) exclusive habit, was liable to misconstruction by the low coarse half-educated uncultured boors among whom I lived. It’s an example of the ‘Eidola Fori,’ the strange power of words and phrases over the mind. I think it really was believed, in some vague way, that I was an exiled sovereign or some rot of that sort. I believe that I perceived it; and laughed to myself about it. But I did my best to disabuse the fools of their foolery. That made things worse. Liars themselves, they could not conceive of a man speaking truth to his own detriment. My disclaimer was taken for a lie; and they honoured me the more for it; and chuckled at the thought of their own perspicacity:⁠—that is to say, when what I said was intelligible to them. You see I used to be a great talker. I have had many experiences; and I used freely to talk of them. It amused and instructed; and I like to amuse and to instruct. You will understand that my voice and my manner of speech did not resemble the voice and the manner of speech of the ruffians with whom I worked and lived. Live as poorly as I would, dress as shabbily as I would, the moment I opened my mouth I was discovered to be different to those people. They perceived it; and I never could disguise my speech. Also, I’m quite sure that they could not understand my speech⁠—follow my argument. I used words which were strange to them to express ideas unimagined by them, while their half-developed minds were more than half occupied, not in listening to me but, in contemplating me, and in trying to form their particular idea of me by the aid of the Vulgi sensus imperiti, the imperfection of undisciplined senses, at their disposal. I called that Imbecility. Perhaps Ignorance is the apter term. The Malice is to be found among people who ought to know better: people to whom I have told the exact truth about myself, exact at the time of telling: people, who being possessed by a desire to think evil, think evil: people who read between, instead of on, the lines: people, prone to folly, whom I have not helped to avoid their predilection. I tried to be simple and plain, to sulk (if you like) in my own corner by myself. It was no good. Anyhow, I told no tales of realms or wealth as mine. I made no false pretences. I myself was grossly deceived: barbarously man-woman-and-priest-handled. I was foolish to try to explain myself. I was foolish to try to work with, to live with, to equal myself in every respect with, verminous persons within the meaning of the act. I ought to have died. But I did not die. That is all. It is not half. Now you know. Make what you please of it.”

“Tell me,” Gentilotto instantly said: “Why did you never go to the Trappists?”

“Because I went to something worse, to something infinitely terribly more ghastly. Trappists live in beautiful silent solitude; they have clean water, beds, regular meals, and peace. I went to live in intellectual silence and solitude in an ugly obscene mob, where clean water was a difficulty, food and a bed an uncertainty, and where I had the inevitable certainty of ceaseless and furious conflict.”

He hurled the words like javelins, and drew back in his chair. The old bitter feeling of disgust with himself inspired him. He feared lest perhaps he might have seemed to be pleading for sympathy. So he angrily watched to detect any signs of a wish to insult him with sympathy. But he really had gone far, far beyond the realm of human sympathy. There was not a man on the earth who would have dared to risk rebuff, to persist against rebuff, to soar to him with that blessed salve of human sympathy⁠—for which⁠—underneath his armour⁠—and behind his warlike mien⁠—he yearned. Pity perhaps, horror perhaps, dislike perhaps, might have met him. But he only had emphasized his own fastidious aloofness. He had cleared-off the mire: but he had disclosed the cold of marble, not the warmth of human flesh.

The cardinals remained silent for a minute. Then Ragna said “ ‘An enemy hath done this!’ Who is it?”

George blazed with vigorous candid delight. “That is the first genuine word which I have had from the heart of Your Eminency!”⁠—He returned to his repellent manner. “I gave the names of my calumniators to Cardinal Leighton.”

“Jerry Sant the Liblab, aided by the woman and a clot of worms who had turned;” Leighton said to Ragna.

“Let them be smothered in the dunghill. Anathema sint.” Ragna growled.

Again there was an exposition of silence in the throne-room. George was frozen hard and white. Ragna and Leighton continued to look at each other. Carvale’s eyes had the blue brilliance of wet stars. Saviolli, Semphill, Talacryn, Whitehead, were as though they had seen the saxificous head of the Medoysa. Stirling gazed straight before him, in the manner of the sphinx carven of black basalt. George was watching them with half-shut eyes from the illimitable distance of his psychic altitude. Presently, the pure pale old face of Gentilotto and the pure pale young face of Van Kristen simultaneously were lifted; and their eyes met His. He blushed: slowly drew out the pontifical ring: and put it on His finger.

“Lord Cardinals, it is Our will to be alone:” the Supreme Pontiff said.

They came one by one and kissed His ring; and retired in silence.