The fourth Scrutiny began to show how unpardonable a mistake is. Ragna’s ten Italians and four Germans fled to the faction of Fiamma. Ragna himself voted for Serafino-Vagellaio. The tally gave Orezzo four: Ragna, twenty-three: Serafino-Vagellaio, two: Gentilotto, three: Fiamma, twenty-five.
In the fifth Scrutiny, desertions from Ragna continued. The French nine voted for Orezzo: the three Spaniards for Gentilotto. The tally gave Orezzo thirteen: Ragna eleven: Serafino-Vagellaio, two: Gentilotto, six: Fiamma, twenty-five.
And now the French began to be flighty. In the sixth Scrutiny, they were seen to have dashed from Orezzo to Gentilotto, making the tally of Orezzo four: of Ragna, eleven: of Serafino-Vagellaio, two: of Gentilotto, fifteen: of Fiamma, twenty-five.
Little suburban boys formerly used to satiate their emotions with a phrenetic and turbulent pastime called General Post. The seventh Scrutiny indicated a conclavial propensity for a verisimilar species of energetic dissipation. The four cardinal-deacons, evidently despairing of Ragna, left him. So did the two Erse cardinal-presbyters. The diaconate went over to Gentilotto, who lost the French to Serafino-Vagellaio. The Erse voted for the Cardinal-Chamberlain. The seventh puff of smoke from the chimney in the Square of St. Peter’s was caused by the burning of fifty-seven suffrages allotted thus: Orezzo 6: Ragna 5: Serafino-Vagellaio 11: Gentilotto 10: Fiamma 25.
Confabulations, to say naught of protocols, became the order of the day and night. No new candidate was forthcoming. The five candidates flatly refused to retire, or to alter the disposition of their suffrages. Moccolo, Agnello, Anziano, Portolano, refused to desert Orezzo. Zafferano and Mantenuti refused to abandon Gentilotto. Vincenzo-Vagellaio refused to be false to his brother. The Benedictine, the Capuchin, and the Jesuit, refused to forsake Ragna. Fiamma’s stalwart twenty-five excited disgust. Ringed and middle fingers were protruded at it. Although there was not a single clean-bred Englishman in its ranks, it was said to be getting “quite English”; and that is a very bitter taunt in the Vatican when the Quirinale is notoriously Anglophile. As for the Portugal Mundo, its leader—well, everyone knows that Portugal has been in the King of England’s pocket since the Lisbon extravaganza, said Sañasca. As for the Germans—well, everybody knows that Prussians are just as bestially cynical as Jonbulls, said Coucheur. The Franco-Hispano-Erse faction was quite ready to go anywhere and vote for anybody who was not “English.” The deacons, on the contrary, remembered that England was very much the fashion; and began to have respect unto the twenty-five. But the Way of Scrutiny failed, and the Way of Access also failed, to produce a pontiff. Fiamma’s tally rose to twenty-nine by the accession of the diaconate. The Franco-Hispano-Erse alliance attached itself by fits and starts to Orezzo, to Ragna, to Serafino-Vagellaio, to Gentilotto: but the indispensable two-thirds of fifty-seven never was attained. And, after a week of errancy, Their Eminencies thought that the whole affair was rather tiresome.
Ragna’s massive prognathous jaw, the colour of porphyry, bulged in emitting a suggestion. As the College seemed unlikely to come to any agreement, why not elect an old man, who, in the course of nature, only could live a year or two, and whose demise would necessitate another Conclave at an early date? He unselfishly would designate Orezzo. There, for example, was a cardinal to whom the paparchy was by way of being owed since 1878, when he actually had lost it to Leo. Let Orezzo now be elected; and, during his brief pontificature, let the Most Eminent Lords devote their energies towards arrangements for giving him a generous glorious and enlightened successor, who, in this reactionary age, was experienced in all the devious subtleties of secular diplomacy, and who was under sixty-five years old.
The Sacred College rejected the bare idea. What! Elect a Pope who, out of sheer personal antipathy, would make it his business to annul the policy of Leo? What! elect a Pope who had spent more than a quarter of a century in composing and reciting litanies of complaints against Leo’s management of the Church? What! Elect a Pope who had proved himself to be purely barbarian by the ferocity of his ritual tapping on the forehead of the dead Leo? Di meliora!!
Ragna adroitly disclaimed a personal predilection for Orezzo. That idea was dismissed.
“Then what?” was the general question.
“The Way of Compromise,” cooed Vincenzo-Vagellaio.
There was another capitular session in the Xystine Chapel. By means of the snips of parchment, the lead balls, the huge violet burse, nine cardinals were chosen by lot and appointed as Cardinal-Compromissaries. Singularly enough they were Courtleigh, Mundo, Fiamma, Grace, Ferraio, Saviolli, Nefski, Gentilotto, and della Volta. The College executed a compromise in writing, no one contradicting or opposing it, whereby these nine were invested with absolute power and faculty to make provision of a pastor for the Holy Roman Church.
The Compromissaries conferred. To begin with, they mutually protested that they would not be understood to give their consent by all sorts of words or expressions which might fall from them in the heat of debate, unless they expressly set the same down in writing. Then, they looked whole inquisitions one at another, saying nothing. And, after half-an-hour they adjourned till the morrow: gathered up their trains; and swept each to his separate cell. Stupid conclavists tried to read their expressions. As well try to find out his thoughts from the sole of his unworn shoe as from the face of a cardinal. The cardinalitial mask is as superior (in impenetrable pachydermatosity) to that of the proverbial public-schoolboy, as is the cuticle of a crocodile to that of pulex irritans.
The task of the Compromissaries was too onerous to be begun until a chaos of ideas had been set in order. Gentilotto and Fiamma paced up and down the galleries together. Acceptance of their present office had nullified their chances of the triple crown. Either would have worn that gladly and well: neither was inclined to struggle for it.
