Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862

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So in her quiet, silent heart she nursed this beautiful hope of finding
in Rome the earthly image of her Saviour's home above, of finding in the
head of the Church the real image of her Redeemer,--the friend to whom
the poorest and lowliest may pour out their souls with as much freedom
as the highest and noblest. The spiritual directors who had formed the
mind of Agnes in her early days had been persons in the same manner
taught to move in an ideal world of faith. The Mother Theresa had never
seen the realities of life, and supposed the Church on earth to be all
that the fondest visions of human longing could paint it. The hard,
energetic, prose experience of old Jocunda, and the downright way with
which she sometimes spoke of things as a trooper's wife must have seen
them, were repressed and hushed, down, as the imperfect faith of a
half-reclaimed worldling,--they could not be allowed to awaken her
from the sweetness of so blissful a dream. In like manner, when Lorenzo
Sforza became Father Francesco, he strove with earnest prayer to bury
his gift of individual reason in the same grave with his family name
and worldly experience. As to all that transpired in the real world, he
wrapped himself in a mantle of imperturbable silence; the intrigues of
popes and cardinals, once well known to him, sank away as a forbidden
dream; and by some metaphysical process of imaginative devotion he
enthroned God in the place of the dominant powers, and taught himself to
receive all that came from them in uninquiring submission, as proceeding
from unerring wisdom. Though he had begun his spiritual life under the
impulse of Savonarola, yet so perfect had been his isolation from all
tidings of what transpired in the external world that the conflict which
was going on between that distinguished man and the Papal hierarchy
never reached his ear. He sought and aimed as much as possible to make
his soul like the soul of one dead, which adores and worships in ideal
space, and forgets forever the scenes and relations of earth; and he
had so long contemplated Rome under the celestial aspects of his faith,
that, though the shock of his first confession there had been painful,
still it was insufficient to shake his faith. It had been God's will, he
thought, that where he looked for aid he should meet only confusion,
and he bowed to the inscrutable will, and blindly adored the mysterious
revelation. If such could be the submission and the faith of a strong
and experienced man, who can wonder at the enthusiastic illusions of an
innocent, trustful child?

Agnes and her grandmother entered the city of Rome just as the twilight
had faded into night; and though Agnes, full of faith and enthusiasm,
was longing to begin immediately the ecstatic vision of shrines and holy
places, old Elsie commanded her not to think of anything further that
night. They proceeded, therefore, with several other pilgrims who had
entered the city, to a church specially set apart for their reception,
connected with which were large dormitories and a religious order whose
business was to receive and wait upon them, and to see that all their
wants were supplied. This religious foundation is one of the oldest in
Rome; and it is esteemed a work of especial merit and sanctity among the
citizens to associate themselves temporarily in these labors in Holy
Week. Even princes and princesses come, humble and lowly, mingling with
those of common degree, and all, calling each other brother and sister,
vie in kind attentions to these guests of the Church.

When Agnes and Elsie arrived, several of these volunteer assistants were
in waiting. Agnes was remarked among all the rest of the company for her
peculiar beauty and the rapt enthusiastic expression of her face.

Almost immediately on their entrance into the reception-hall connected
with the church, they seemed to attract the attention of a tall lady
dressed in deep mourning, and accompanied by a female servant, with whom
she was conversing on those terms of intimacy which showed confidential
relations between the two.

"See!" she said, "my Mona, what a heavenly face is there!--that sweet
child has certainly the light of grace shining through her. My heart
warms to her."

"Indeed," said the old servant, looking across, "and well it
may,--dear lamb come so far! But, Holy Virgin, how my head swims! How
strange!--that child reminds me of some one. My Lady, perhaps, may think
of some one whom she looks like."

"Mona, you say true. I have the same strange impression that I have seen
a face like hers, but who or where I cannot say."

"What would my Lady say, if I said it was our dear Prince?--God rest his
soul!"

"Mona, it _is_ so,--yes," added the lady, looking more intently,--"how
singular!--the very traits of our house in a peasant-girl! She is of
Sorrento, I judge, by her costume,--what a pretty one it is! That old
woman is her mother, perhaps. I must choose her for my care,--and, Mona,
you shall wait on her mother."

So saying, the Princess Paulina crossed the hall, and, bending affably
over Agnes, took her hand and kissed her, saying,--

"Welcome, my dear little sister, to the house of our Father!"

Agnes looked up with strange, wondering eyes into the face that was bent
to hers. It was sallow and sunken, with deep lines of ill-health and
sorrow, but the features were noble, and must once have been, beautiful;
the whole action, voice, and manner were dignified and impressive.
Instinctively she felt that the lady was of superior birth and breeding
to any with whom she had been in the habit of associating.

"Come with me," said the lady; "and this--your mother"--she added.

"She is my grandmother," said Agnes.

"Well, then, your grandmother, sweet child, shall be attended by my good
sister Mona here."

The Princess Paulina drew the hand of Agnes through her arm, and, laying
her hand affectionately on it, looked down and smiled tenderly on her.

"Are you very tired, my dear?"

"Oh, no! no!" said Agnes,--"I am so happy, so blessed to be here!"

"You have travelled a long way?"

"Yes, from Sorrento; but I am used to walking,--I did not feel it to be
long,--my heart kept me up,--I wanted to come home so much."

"Home?" said the Princess.

"Yes, to my soul's home,--the house of our dear Father the Pope."

The Princess started, and looked incredulously down for a moment; then
noticing the confiding, whole-hearted air of the child, she sighed and
was silent.

"Come with me above," she said, "and let me attend a little to your
comfort."

"How good you are, dear lady!" said Agnes.

"I am not good, my child,--I am only your unworthy sister in Christ";
and as the lady spoke, she opened the door into a room where were a
number of other female pilgrims seated around the wall, each attended by
a person whose peculiar care she seemed to be.

At the feet of each was a vessel of water, and when the seats were all
full, a cardinal in robes of office entered, and began reading prayers.
Each lady present, kneeling at the feet of her chosen pilgrim, divested
them carefully of their worn and travel-soiled shoes and stockings, and
proceeded to wash them. It was not a mere rose-water ceremony, but a
good hearty washing of feet that for the most part had great need of the
ablution. While this service was going on, the cardinal read from the
Gospel how a Greater than they all had washed the feet of His disciples,
and said, "If I, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also
ought to wash one another's feet." Then all repeated in concert the
Lord's Prayer, while each humbly kissed the feet she had washed, and
proceeded to replace the worn and travel-soiled shoes and stockings with
new and strong ones, the gift of Christian love. Each lady then led her
charge into a room where tables were spread with a plain and wholesome
repast of all such articles of food as the season of Lent allowed. Each
placed her _protegee_ at table, and carefully attended to all her wants
at the supper, and afterwards dormitories were opened for their repose.

The Princess Paulina performed all these offices for Agnes with a tender
earnestness which won upon her heart. The young girl thought herself
indeed in that blessed society of which she had dreamed, where the
high-born and the rich become through Christ's love the servants of the
poor and lowly,--and through all the services she sat in a sort of dream
of rapture. How lovely this reception into the Holy City! how sweet thus
to be taken to the arms of the great Christian family, bound together in
the charity which is the bond of perfectness!

"Please tell me, dear lady," said Agnes, after supper, "who is that holy
man that prayed with us?"

"Oh, he--he is the Cardinal Capello," said the Princess.

"I should like to have spoken with him," said Agnes.

"Why, my child?"

"I wanted to ask him when and how I could get speech with our dear
Father the Pope,--for there is somewhat on my mind that I would lay
before him."

"My poor little sister," said the Princess, much perplexed, "you do not
understand things. What you speak of is impossible. The Pope is a great
king."

"I know he is," said Agnes,--"and so is our Lord Jesus,--but every soul
may come to him."

"I cannot explain to you now," said the Princess,--"there is not time
to-night. But I shall see you again. I will send for you to come to my
house, and there talk with you about many things which you need to know.
Meanwhile, promise me, dear child, not to try to do anything of the kind
you spoke of until I have talked with you."

"Well, I will not," said Agnes, with a glance of docile affection,
kissing the hand of the Princess.

The action was so pretty,--the great, soft, dark eyes looked so
fawn-like and confiding in their innocent tenderness, that the lady
seemed much moved.

"Our dear Mother bless thee, child!" she said, laying her hand on her
head, and stooping to kiss her forehead.

She left her at the door of the dormitory.

The Princess and her attendant went out of the church-door, where her
litter stood in waiting. The two took their seats in silence, and
silently pursued their way through the streets of the old dimly-lighted
city and out of one of its principal gates to the wide Campagna beyond.
The villa of the Princess was situated on an eminence at some distance
from the city, and the night-ride to it was solemn and solitary. They
passed along the old Appian Way over pavements that had rumbled under
the chariot-wheels of the emperors and nobles of a by-gone age, while
along their way, glooming up against the clear of the sky, were vast
shadowy piles,--the tombs of the dead of other days. All mouldering and
lonely, shaggy and fringed with bushes and streaming wild vines through
which the night-wind sighed and rustled, they might seem to be pervaded
by the restless spirits of the dead; and as the lady passed them, she
shivered, and, crossing herself, repeated an inward prayer against
wandering demons that walk in desolate places.

Timid and solitary, the high-born lady shrank and cowered within herself
with a distressing feeling of loneliness. A childless widow in delicate
health, whose paternal family had been for the most part cruelly robbed,
exiled, or destroyed by the reigning Pope and his family, she felt her
own situation a most unprotected and precarious one, since the least
jealousy or misunderstanding might bring upon her, too, the ill-will
of the Borgias, which had proved so fatal to the rest of her race. No
comfort in life remained to her but her religion, to whose practice she
clung as to her all; but even in this her life was embittered by facts
to which, with the best disposition in the world, she could not shut her
eyes. Her own family had been too near the seat of power not to see all
the base intrigues by which that sacred and solemn position of Head of
the Christian Church had been traded for as a marketable commodity. The
pride, the indecency, the cruelty of those who now reigned in the name
of Christ came over her mind in contrast with the picture painted by
the artless, trusting faith of the peasant-girl with whom she had just
parted. Her mind had been too thoroughly drilled in the non-reflective
practice of her faith to dare to put forth any act of reasoning upon
facts so visible and so tremendous,--she rather trembled at herself for
seeing what she saw and for knowing what she knew, and feared somehow
that this very knowledge might endanger her salvation; and so she rode
homeward cowering and praying like a frightened child.

"Does my Lady feel ill?" said the old servant, anxiously.

"No, Mona, no,--not in body."

"And what is on my Lady's mind now?"

"Oh, Mona, it is only what is always there. To-morrow is Palm Sunday,
and how can I go to see the murderers and robbers of our house in holy
places? Oh, Mona, what can Christians do, when such men handle holy
things? It was a comfort to wash the feet of those poor simple pilgrims,
who tread in the steps of the saints of old; but how I felt when that
poor child spoke of wanting to see the Pope!"

"Yes," said Mona, "it's like sending the lamb to get spiritual counsel
of the wolf."

"See what sweet belief the poor infant has! Should not the head of the
Christian Church be such as she thinks? Ah, in the old days, when the
Church here in Rome was poor and persecuted, there were popes who were
loving fathers and not haughty princes."

"My dear Lady," said the servant, "pray, consider, the very stones have
ears. We don't know what day we may be turned out, neck and heels, to
make room for some of their creatures."

"Well, Mona," said the lady, with some spirit, "I'm sure I haven't said
any more than you have."

"Holy Mother! and so you haven't, but somehow things look more dangerous
when other people say them.--A pretty child that was, as you say; but
that old thing, her grandmother, is a sharp piece. She is a Roman,
and lived here in her early days. She says the little one was born
hereabouts; but she shuts up her mouth like a vice, when one would get
more out of her."

"Mona, I shall not go out to-morrow; but you go to the services, and
find the girl and her grandmother, and bring them out to me. I want to
counsel the child."

"You may be sure," said Mona, "that her grandmother knows the ins and
outs of Rome as well as any of us, for all she has learned to screw up
her lips so tight"

"At any rate, bring her to me, because she interests me."

"Well, well, it shall be so," said Mona.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

PALM SUNDAY.

The morning after her arrival in Rome, Agnes was awakened from sleep
by a solemn dropping of bell-tones which seemed to fill the whole air,
intermingled dimly at intervals with long-drawn plaintive sounds of
chanting. She had slept profoundly, overwearied with her pilgrimage, and
soothed by that deep lulling sense of quiet which comes over one, when,
after long and weary toils, some auspicious goal is at length reached.
She had come to Rome, and been received with open arms into the
household of the saints, and seen even those of highest degree imitating
the simplicity of the Lord in serving the poor. Surely, this was indeed
the house of God and the gate of heaven; and so the bell-tones and
chants, mingling with her dreams, seemed naturally enough angel-harpings
and distant echoes of the perpetual adoration of the blessed. She rose
and dressed herself with a tremulous joy. She felt full of hope that
somehow--in what way she could not say--this auspicious beginning
would end in a full fruition of all her wishes, an answer to all her
prayers.

"Well, child," said old Elsie, "you must have slept well; you look fresh
as a lark."

"The air of this holy place revives me," said Agnes, with enthusiasm.

"I wish I could say as much," said Elsie. "My bones ache yet with the
tramp, and I suppose nothing will do but we must go out now to all the
holy places, up and down and hither and yon, to everything that goes on.
I saw enough of it all years ago when I lived here."

"Dear grandmother, if you are tired, why should you not rest? I can go
forth alone in this holy city. No harm can possibly befall me here. I
can join any of the pilgrims who are going to the holy places where I
long to worship."

"A likely story!" said Elsie. "I know more about old Rome than you do,
and I tell you, child, that you do not stir out a step without me; so if
you must go, I must go too,--and like enough it's for my soul's health.
I suppose it is," she added, after a reflective pause.

"How beautiful it was that we were welcomed so last night!" said
Agnes,--"that dear lady was so kind to me!"

"Ay, ay, and well she might be!" said Elsie, nodding her head. "But
there's no truth in the kindness of the nobles to us, child. They don't
do it because they love us, but because they expect to buy heaven by
washing our feet and giving us what little they can clip and snip off
from their abundance."

"Oh, grandmother," said Agnes, "how can you say so? Certainly, if any
one ever spoke and looked lovingly, it was that dear lady."

"Yes, and she rolls away in her carriage, well content, and leaves you
with a pair of new shoes and stockings,--you, as worthy of a carriage
and a palace as she."

"No, grandmamma; she said she should send for me to talk more with her."

"_She_ said she should send for you?" said Elsie. "Well, well, that is
strange, to be sure!--that is wonderful!" she added, reflectively. "But
come, child, we must hasten through our breakfast and prayers, and go to
see the Pope, and all the great birds with fine feathers that fly after
him."

"Yes, indeed!" said Agnes, joyfully. "Oh, grandmamma, what a blessed
sight it will be!"

"Yes, child, and a fine sight enough he makes with his great canopy and
his plumes and his servants and his trumpeters;--there isn't a king in
Christendom that goes so proudly as he."

"No other king is worthy of it," said Agnes. "The Lord reigns in him."

"Much you know about it!" said Elsie, between her teeth, as they started
out.

The streets of Rome through which they walked were damp and cellar-like,
filthy and ill-paved; but Agnes neither saw nor felt anything of
inconvenience in this: had they been floored, like those of the New
Jerusalem, with translucent gold, her faith could not have been more
fervent.

Rome is at all times a forest of quaint costumes, a pantomime of
shifting scenic effects of religious ceremonies. Nothing there, however
singular, strikes the eye as out-of-the-way or unexpected, since no
one knows precisely to what religious order it may belong, or what
individual vow or purpose it may represent. Neither Agnes nor Elsie,
therefore, was surprised, when they passed through the door-way to the
street, at the apparition of a man covered from head to foot in a long
robe of white serge, with a high-peaked cap of the same material drawn
completely down over his head and face. Two round holes cut in this
ghostly head-gear revealed simply two black glittering eyes, which shone
with that singular elfish effect which belongs to the human eye when
removed from its appropriate and natural accessories. As they passed
out, the figure rattled a box on which was painted an image of
despairing souls raising imploring hands from very red tongues of flame,
by which it was understood at once that he sought aid for souls in
Purgatory. Agnes and her grandmother each dropped therein a small coin
and went on their way; but the figure followed them at a little distance
behind, keeping carefully within sight of them.

By means of energetic pushing and striving, Elsie contrived to secure
for herself and her grandchild stations in the piazza in front of the
church, in the very front rank, where the procession was to pass. A
motley assemblage it was, this crowd, comprising every variety of
costume of rank and station and ecclesiastical profession,--cowls
and hoods of Franciscan and Dominican,--picturesque headdresses of
peasant-women of different districts,--plumes and ruffs of more
aspiring gentility,--mixed with every quaint phase of foreign costume
belonging to the strangers from different parts of the earth;--for,
like the old Jewish Passover, this celebration of Holy Week had its
assemblage of Parthians, Medes, Elamites, dwellers in Mesopotamia,
Cretes, and Arabians, all blending in one common memorial.

Amid the strange variety of persons among whom they were crowded, Elsie
remarked the stranger in the white sack, who had followed them, and who
had stationed himself behind them,--but it did not occur to her that his
presence there was other than merely accidental.

And now came sweeping up the grand procession, brilliant with scarlet
and gold, waving with plumes, sparkling with gems,--it seemed as if
earth had been ransacked and human invention taxed to express the
ultimatum of all that could dazzle and bewilder,--and, with a rustle
like that of ripe grain before a swaying wind, all the multitude went
down on their knees as the cortege passed. Agnes knelt, too, with
clasped hands, adoring the sacred vision enshrined in her soul; and as
she knelt with upraised eyes, her cheeks flushed with enthusiasm, her
beauty attracted the attention of more than one in the procession.

"There is the model which our master has been looking for," said a young
and handsome man in a rich dress of black velvet, who, by his costume,
appeared to hold the rank of first chamberlain in the Papal suite.

The young man to whom he spoke gave a bold glance at Agnes and
answered,--

"Pretty little rogue, how well she does the saint!"

"One can see, that, with judicious arrangement, she might make a nymph
as well as a saint," said the first speaker.

"A Daphne, for example," said the other, laughing.

"And she wouldn't turn into a laurel, either," said the first. "Well,
we must keep our eye on her." And as they were passing into the
church-door, he beckoned to a servant in waiting and whispered
something, indicating Agnes with a backward movement of his hand.

The servant, after this, kept cautiously within observing distance of
her, as she with the crowd pressed into the church to assist at the
devotions.

Long and dazzling were those ceremonies, when, raised on high like an
enthroned God, Pope Alexander VI. received the homage of bended knee
from the ambassadors of every Christian nation, from heads of all
ecclesiastical orders, and from generals and chiefs and princes and
nobles, who, robed and plumed and gemmed in all the brightest and
proudest that earth could give, bowed the knee humbly and kissed his
foot in return for the palm-branch which he presented. Meanwhile, voices
of invisible singers chanted the simple event which all this splendor
was commemorating,--how of old Jesus came into Jerusalem meek and lowly,
riding on an ass,--how His disciples cast their garments in the way,
and the multitude took branches of palm-trees to come forth and meet
Him,--how He was seized, tried, condemned to a cruel death,--and
the crowd, with dazzled and wondering eyes following the gorgeous
ceremonial, reflected little how great was the satire of the contrast,
how different the coming of that meek and lowly One to suffer and to
die from this triumphant display of worldly-pomp and splendor in His
professed representative.

But to the pure all things are pure, and Agnes thought only of the
enthronement of all virtues, of all celestial charities and unworldly
purities in that splendid ceremonial, and longed within herself to
approach so near as to touch the hem of those wondrous and sacred
garments. It was to her enthusiastic imagination like the unclosing of
celestial doors, where the kings and priests of an eternal and heavenly
temple move to and fro in music, with the many-colored glories of
rainbows and sunset clouds. Her whole nature was wrought upon by the
sights and sounds of that gorgeous worship,--she seemed to burn and
brighten like an altar-coal, her figure appeared to dilate, her eyes
grew deeper and shone with a starry light, and the color of her cheeks
flushed up with a vivid glow,--nor was she aware how often eyes were
turned upon her, nor how murmurs of admiration followed all her
absorbed, unconscious movements. "_Ecco! Eccola_!" was often repeated
from mouth to mouth around her, but she heard it not.

When at last the ceremony was finished, the crowd rushed again out of
the church to see the departure of various dignitaries. There was
a perfect whirl of dazzling equipages, and glittering lackeys, and
prancing horses, crusted with gold, flaming in scarlet and purple,
retinues of cardinals and princes and nobles and ambassadors all in one
splendid confused jostle of noise and brightness.

Suddenly a servant in a gorgeous scarlet livery touched Agnes on the
shoulder, and said, in a tone of authority,--

"Young maiden, your presence is commanded."

"Who commands it?" said Elsie, laying her hand on her grandchild's
shoulder fiercely.

"Are you mad?" whispered two or three women of the lower orders to Elsie
at once; "don't you know who that is? Hush, for your life!"

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