Gerald Fitzgerald, the Chevalier: A Novel. Lever Charles James
voice rose out of its tone of former gentleness and swelled into a roll of deep, sonorous meaning; then changing again, he asked – ‘By what accident was it that you came there?’
Gerald drew a long sigh, as though recalling a sorrowful dream; and then, with many a faltering word, and many an effort to recall events as they occurred, told all that he remembered of his own history.
‘A scholar of the Jesuit college; without father or mother; befriended by a great man, whose name he has never heard,’ muttered the other to himself. ‘No bad start in life for such a world as we have now before us. And your name?’
‘Gerald Fitzgerald. I am Irish by birth.’
The stranger seemed to ponder long over these words, and then said: ‘The Irish have a nationality of their own – a race – a language – traditions. Why have they suffered themselves to be ruled by England?’
‘I suppose they couldn’t help it,’ said Gerald, half smiling.
‘Which of us can say that? who has ever divined where the strength lay till the day of struggle called it forth? Chance, chance – she is the great goddess!’
‘I’d be sorry to think so,’ said Gerald resolutely.
‘Indeed, boy!’ cried the other, turning his large, full eyes upon the youth, and staring steadfastly at him; then passing his hand over his brow, he added, in a tone of much feeling: ‘And yet it is as I have said. Look at the portraits around us on these walls. There they are, great or infamous, as accident has made them. That fellow yonder, with that noble forehead and generous look, he stabbed the confessor who gave the last rites to his father, just because the priest had heard some tales to his disadvantage; a scrupulous sense of delicacy moved him – there was a woman’s name in it – and he preferred a murder to a scandal! There, too, there’s Marocchi, who poisoned his mother the day of her second marriage. Ask old Pippo if he ever saw a gentler-hearted creature: he lived here two years, and died of the Maremma fever, that he caught from a peasant whom he was nursing. And there again, that wild-looking fellow with the scarlet cap – he it was who stole the Medici jewels out of the Pitti to give his mistress, and killed himself afterwards when she deserted him. Weigh the good and evil of these men’s hearts, boy, and you have subtle weights if you can strike the balance for or against them. We are all but what good or evil fortune makes us, just as a landscape catches its tone from light; and what is glorious in sunshine is bleak and desolate and dreary beneath a leaden sky and lowering atmosphere!’
‘I’ll not believe it,’ said the boy boldly. ‘I have read of fellows that never showed the great stuff they were made of until adversity had called it forth. They were truly great!’
‘Truly great!’ repeated the other, with an intense mockery. ‘The truly great we never hear of. They die in workhouses or garrets – poor, dreary optimists, working out of their finespun fancies hopeful destinies for those who sneer at them.
The idols men call great are but the types of Force – mere Force. One day it is courage; another, it is money; another day, political craft is the object of worship. Come, boy,’ said he, in a lighter vein, ‘what have these worthy Jesuits taught you?’
‘Very different lessons from yours,’ said the youth stoutly. ‘They taught me to honour and reverence those set in authority over me.’
‘Good; and then – ’
‘They taught me the principles of my faith; the creed of the Church.’
‘What Church?’
‘What but the one Church – the Catholic!’
‘Why, there are fifty, child, and each with five hundred controversies within it. Popes denying Councils; Councils rejecting Popes; Synods against Bishops; Bishops against Presbyters. What a mockery is it all!’ cried he passionately. ‘We who, in our imperfect forms of language, have not even names for separate odours, but say, “this smells like the violet,” and “that like the rose,” presume to talk of eternity and that vast universe around us, as though our paltry vocabulary could compass such themes! But to come back: were you happy there?’
‘No; I could not bear the life, nor did I wish to be a priest.’
‘What would you be, then?’
‘I wish I knew,’ said the boy fervently.
‘I’m a bad counsellor,’ said the other, with a bitter smile; ‘I have tried several things, and failed in all.’
‘I never could have thought that you could fail,’ said Gerald slowly, as in calm composure he gazed on the massive features before him.
‘I have done with failure now,’ said the other; ‘I mean to achieve success next. It is something to have learned a great truth, and this is one, boy – our world is a huge hunting-ground, and it is better to play wolf than lamb. Don’t turn your eyes to those walls, as if the fellows depicted there could gainsay me – they were but sorry scoundrels, the bad ones; the best were but weakly good.’
‘You do but pain me when you speak thus,’ said Gerald; ‘you make me think that you are one who, having done some great crime, waits to avenge the penalty he has suffered on the world that inflicted it.’
‘What if you were partly right, boy! Not but I would protest against the word crime, or even fault, as applied to me; still you are near enough to make your guess a good one. I have a debt to pay, and I mean to pay it.’
‘I wish I had never quitted the college.’ said the boy, and the tears rolled heavily down his cheeks.
‘It is not too late to retrace your steps. The cell and the scourge – the fathers know the use of both – will soon condone your offence; and when they have sapped the last drop of manhood out of your nature, you will be all the fitter for your calling.’
With these harsh words, uttered in tones as cruel, the stranger left the room; while Gerald, covering his face with both hands, sobbed as though his heart were breaking.
‘Ah! Gabriel has been talking to him. I knew how it would be,’ muttered old Pippo, as he cast a glance within the room. ‘Poor child! better for him had he left him to die in the Maremma.’
CHAPTER IX. THE ‘COUR’ OF THE ALTIERI
A LONG autumn day was drawing to its close in Rome, and gradually here and there might be seen a few figures stealing listlessly along, or seated in melancholy mood before the shop-doors, trying to catch a momentary breath of air ere the hour of sunset should fall. All the great and noble of the capital had left a month before for the sea-side, or for Albano, or the shady valleys above Lucca. You might walk for days and never meet a carriage. It was a city in complete desolation. The grass sprang up between the stones, and troops of seared leaves, carried from the gardens, littered the empty streets. The palaces were barred up and fastened, the massive doors looking as if they had not opened for centuries. In one alone, throughout the entire city, did any signs of habitation linger, and here a single lamp threw its faint light over a wide courtyard, giving a ghost-like air to the vaulted corridors and dim distances around. All was still and silent within the walls; not a light gleamed from a window, not a sound issued. A solitary figure walked with weary footsteps up and down, stopping at times to listen, as if he heard the noise of one approaching, and then resuming his dreary round again.
As night closed in, a second stranger made his appearance, and timidly halting at the porter’s lodge, asked leave to enter; but the porter had gone to refresh himself at a neighbouring café, and the visitor passed in of his own accord. He was in a friar’s robe, and by his dusty dress and tired look showed that he had had a long journey; indeed, so overcome was he with fatigue that he sat down at once on a stone bench, depositing his heavy bag beside him. The oppressive heat, the fatigue, the silence of the lonesome spot, all combined, composed him to sleep; and poor Fra Luke, for it was he, crossed his arms before him, and snored away manfully.
Astonished by the deep-drawn breathing, the other stranger drew nigh, and, as well as the imperfect light permitted, examined him. He himself was a man of immense stature, and, though bowed and doubled by age, showed the remnant of a powerful frame: