Hadrian the Seventh

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,