Hadrian the Seventh. Frederick Rolfe

      Prooimion

       Table of Contents

      In mind he was tired, worn out, by years of hope deferred, of loneliness, of unrewarded toil. In body he was almost prostrate by the pain of an arm on the tenth day of vaccination. Bodily pain stung him like a personal affront. "Some one will have to be made miserable for this," he once said during the throes of a toothache. He was no stranger to mental fatigue: but, when to that was added corporeal anguish, he came near collapse. His capacity for work was constricted: the mere sight of his writing materials filled him with disgust. But, because he had a horror of being discovered in a state of inaction, after breakfast he sat down as usual and tried to write. Dazed in a torrent of ideas, he painfully halted for words: stumbling in a maze of words, he frequently lost the thread of his argument: now and then, in sheer exhaustion, his pen remained immobile. He sat in a small low armchair which was covered with shabby brocade, dull-red and green. An old drawing-board, of the large size denominated Antiquarian, rested on his knees. The lower edge frayed the brocade on the arms of the chair. His little yellow cat Flavio lay asleep on the tilted board, nestling in the bend of his left elbow. That was the only living creature to whom he ever spoke with affection as well as with politeness. His left hand steadied his ms., the sheets of which were clipped together at the top by a metal clip. At the upper edge of the board a couple of Publishers' Dummies reposed, having the outward similitude of six-shilling novels: but he had filled their pages with his archaic handwriting. The first contained thoughts— not great thoughts, nor thoughts selected on any particular principle, but phrases and opinions such as Sophokles' denunciation, ’Ω μιαρον ἠθος και γυναικος ύστερον, or Gabriele d'Annunzio's sentence

       "Old legitimate monarchies are everywhere declining, and Demos stands ready to swallow them down its miry throat."

      The second was his private dictionary which (as an artificer in verbal expression), he had compiled, taking Greek words from Liddell-and-Scott and Latin words from Andrews, enlarging his English vocabulary with such simple but pregnant formations as the adjective "hybrist" from ύβριστς, or the noun "gingilism" from gingilismus.

      He was looking askance at his ms. In two hours, he had written no more than fourteen lines; and these were deformed by erasures of words and sentences, by substitutions and additions. He struck an upward line from left to right across the sheet: laid down his pen: lifted board, cat, books, and ms., from his knees; and laid them by. He could not work.

      He poked the little fire burning in the corner of a fire-clayed grate. He was shivering: for, though March was going out like nine lions, he was very lightly clad in a blue linen suit such as is worn over all by engineers. He had an impish predilection for that garb since a cantankerous red-nosed prelate, anxious to sneer at unhaloed poverty, inanely had said that he looked like a Neapolitan. He brushed the accumulation of cigarette-ash from the front of his jacket and seized a pair of spring-dumb-bells: but at once returned them, warned by the pain of his left arm-pit. He took up the newspaper which he had brought with him after breakfast, and read again the news from Rome and the news of Russia. The former, he could see, was merely the kind of subterfuge which farthing journalists are wont to use when they are excluded from a view of facts. It said much, and signified nothing. "Our Special Correspondent" was being hoodwinked; and knew it: but did not like to confess it; and so indulged his imagination. Something was occurring in Rome: something mysterious was occurring in Rome. That could be deduced from the dispatch: but nothing more. The news of Russia was a tale of unparalleled ghastliness. It emanated from Berlin: no direct communication with Russia having taken place for a fortnight.

      "How exquisitely horrible it is," he said to Flavio; "and I believe it's perfectly true. The Tzar,— well, that was to be expected.