Hadrian the Seventh. Frederick Rolfe
Peter's. Masons were removing brickwork from a blocked window leading to a balcony on the right hand, half-way down the long gallery. The Supreme Pontiff beckoned Orezzo.
"Lord Cardinal, this balcony looks-into the church?"
"Into the church, Holiness."
"Which window looks-out over the City?"
"The window on the left."
"Let the window on the left be opened."
The Sacred College swung together as to a scrum.
Pressure never had influenced George Arthur Rose. He used to say that you might squash him to death, if you could: but you never should make him do what you were too lazy, or too proud, or too silly, to persuade him to do. He would wait a century for his own way; and, unless you actually and literally had removed him from the face of the earth by the usual methods of assassination, you would find him still implacably persistent at the end of the said century. He had learned the trick from Flavio: observing that, if he would not open the door when the cat mewed to go out, the creature remained in the room, but would not come and sit on his friend's neck, nor agree to anything except the opening of the door. And Hadrian the Seventh was quite prepared to be hustled and hullabaloed at, as Leo the Thirteenth had been hullabaloed at and hustled in 1878: but no earthly power should extort Apostolic Benediction from His hand and lips, except at a place and a time of His Own choosing. They might push this Pope on to the inner balcony; and they might lead a horse to the water: but not even the College of Cardinals arrayed in all its glory could make the one drink, the other bless.
"Holiness, that window was bricked-up in 1870; and has not been opened since."
"Let it now be opened."
Ragna snarled and burst out of the phalanx. There was a tinge of truculence about him. "Holiness, Pope Leo wished to have had it opened on the day of His Own election; but it was impossible. Impossible! Capisce? The rust of the stanchions, the solidity of the cement—"
"All that We know. The gentleness of Pope Leo was persuaded. We are not gentle; and We are not to be persuaded by violence."
Orezzo, though secretly inchanted that anyone should act differently to his one antipathy, Pope Leo, was rather shocked at the notion of blessing the City and the World while (what he held to be) the Piedmontese Usurper was occupying Peter's so-called Patrimony and Intangible Rome. It is an ingrained idea with his school that peoples should excruciate for the petty spites of potentates. But he tried urbanity. "Holy Father have pity upon us; and deliver us as soon as possible from the miseries which afflict us in this Conclave. Deign blessings to the faithful in the church today; and we will see what can be done about the other affair tomorrow."
Hadrian looked a little amused. The Bishop of Caerleon thought that he never had seen more cruelly dispassionate inflexibility. At a sign from the Pope, the master-mason came forward and fell on his knees. Hadrian stooped.
"Son, open that window."
Through and through vermilion billows the masons dived and thrust across the breadth of the gallery, conveying ladders, crowbars, hammers. Conclavial porters threw down rolls of carpet which they were about to spread, and sat upon them. Berstein squawked and expectorated. Hadrian winced: and marked the man. At the clang of hammers, masonry began to fall: a white dust hovered in the air: the vermilion college swept away with the white Pope. Some went to the end of the gallery, where loud voices became protestant: midway, the Germans halted with most of the Italians: they conversed more moderately. A few paces beyond the range of operations, the Pope remained quite still: by His side, He detained Macca with His cross: behind Him, congregated the Bishop of Caerleon and the nine Cardinal-Compromissaries.
In a break of the clang of the hammers, Hadrian intoned "Kyrie eleson." Mundo gave prompt response. The assemblage at first failed to catch the idea: but, by degrees, voice acceded to voice; and the Litanies of the Saints magniloquently reverberated through the gallery.
Outside, in the Square of St. Peter's, only a few hundreds of people were collected. Interest in the proceedings of the Conclave was nearly dead; and several special correspondents were beginning to think seriously of the superior excitements of a murder-trial at New Bailey. But many old-fashioned Romans wished to be able to tell their grand-children that they themselves had been in the square when the Pope was proclaimed in the church; and, again, on the morning of St. George's Day, no smoke had been vomited from the Xystine chimney. The affair was very mysterious! What combinations behind those white walls!
Inside the basilica, there were thousands of expectant people, officials of the Vatican, cardinalitial familiars, prelates, penitentiaries, beneficiaries, who had not been immured in the Conclave. Also there were lords and ladies of eminent quality belonging to the Black (or clerical) Party, who had been admitted with meticulous secrecy (in broad daylight and in the face of all Rome) by a privy door. Every day for weeks, they had come and waited, hoping to be among the first to salute the Pope. To go to St. Peter's in the morning before dinner, and in the evening before supper, had become the mode in a society which has few and futile dissipations of its own and to which the comity of the Quirinale and White Society is forbidden fruit. Some, who were near the great doorway, thought they heard faint tappings in the gallery overhead. Rumour protruded her tongue: certainly there were tappings, more ponderous, more insistent. Certainly the balcony was being opened. Then the crashing ceased. In the hush, surmises were born; and stifled: or nurtured. A loose Benedictine with a face of a flesher, who was leaning against one of the great piers, suddenly asseverated that the tapping had begun again: but in another place— further away, he said. An honorary decurial chamberlain-of-the-cloak-and-sword sniffed long-nosedly, picking a vandyke beardlet; and stuttered, "They're n-n-never o-opening the outer b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-balcony." That notion resembled the spark between negative and positive poles. It vibrated and glittered; and fell upon a heap of human combustibles.
"Then what are we waiting here for?" shouted Prince Clenalotti; and he made a dash at the door by which he had entered. Naturally he led a stampede.
The crowd in the Square stood obliquely to the church, with all its eyes directed to the Vatican: when, round from Via della Sagrestia poured a stream of half-wild creatures, shooting instant glances at the vacant balcony, and bringing amazing news. The two crowds flew together, thronging the wide stone steps and the open space beneath. The military rigesced to attention. The special correspondents (as one man) made for the obelisk in the centre, or the basins of the fountains, and set-up portable pairs of steps. And, of course, motor-cars and cabs, and Caio and Tizio and also Sempronio, not to mention Maria and Elena and Yolanda and also Margherita, began to issue from every Borgo avenue.
There was nothing to be seen, except the empty balcony over the porch. It was neither canopied nor decorated: but someone said that there was movement behind the window. That was concisely true. More. The window itself was moving. The sun-flashed panes of glass turned dull, as it swung on its hinges, inward. The Italian army presented arms. Rome kneeled on the stones. The special correspondents ascended their pairs of steps: directed phonographic and kinematographic machines: pressed buttons and revolved wheels.
A tiny figure splashed a web of cloth-of-gold over the balcony; and a tiny ermine and vermilion figure ascended, placing a tiny triple cross. Came in a stentorian megaphonic roar a proclamation by the Cardinal-Archdeacon,
"I announce to you great joy. We have for a Pope the Lord George of the Roses of England, Who has imposed upon Himself the name of Hadrian the Seventh."
He gave place to another tiny figure, silver and gold, irradiant in the sun. A clear thin thread of a voice sang,
"Our help is in the Name of the Lord."
Phonographs recorded the sonorous response,
"Who hath made heaven and earth."
Hadrian the Seventh raised His hand and sang again,
"May Almighty God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, bless you."
It was the Apostolic Benediction of the City and the World.
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