Hadrian the Seventh

along, He picked up a trowel left by some gardener in a flowerbed. He found a solitary corner filled with rose-acacias and lavender-bushes behind the Leonine Villa. He looked up at the cupola of St. Peter’s and saw no Americans levelling binoculars. Then He dug a little hole; and buried pickles; and hid the bottle a few yards away beneath the beehives by the lavender-bushes, mauve-bloomed, very sweet to smell. The solemn odour stimulated his brain; and He returned to chat with His gentlemen. They were engaged in physical exercises in a parlour. The Italian, who was one of nature’s athletes, with so tremendous a power of chest-inflation that his ribs seemed unconnected with his sternum, interminably floated down and up and down to the floor on one leg, with the other leg and both arms extended rectangularly before him. The Englishman, a student, graceful and slim but not muscular, watched him and would imitate. His sinews had not the elastic force rhythmically to lower and raise him. He could get down but not up. He often lost balance, and rolled over in frantic failure. “You must have thighs made of whipcord and steel to do it,” he was saying. Then they saw their visitor and attended. Hadrian asked what the exercise was and whence it came.

“Santità, from the bersaglieri,” Iulo responded. “That they do, during an hour of each day for the fortification of their legs. From which they run.”

“It is beautiful. And are you going to emulate the bersaglieri?”

“My comrade goes to educate my mind. I go to discipline the physic of him,” the gymnast said.

“Oh, I’m going to help him rub up his classics as far as my poor knowledge lets me, Holiness: that’s all:” the student added.

“Very good indeed,” Hadrian pronounced. “Well now, something is going to happen to you. Go and escort the Secretary of State to the secret chamber.”

Ragna and the young men appeared within the quarter-hour. The Pope was seated; and a couple of Noble Guards stood behind His chair.

“Eminency,” He said, “it is Our will to give these gentlemen the rank of Cavaliere⁠—in English ‘knight’⁠—”

“Nai-tah,” Ragna repeated.

“Your Eminency will cause letters patent to be prepared⁠—”

“But this is the act of a sovereign!”

“And We, having no temporal sovereignty, exercise Our prerogative as Father of princes and kings.” He beckoned the gentlemen to kneel, took a sword from the guard on His left, and struck them on the shoulder in turn, saying “To the honour of God, of His Maiden Mother, and of St. George, We make thee knight. Be faithful. Rise, Sir John. To the honour of God, of His Maiden Mother, and of St. Maurice, We make thee knight. Rise, Sir Iulo.”

The cardinal retired mumbling. In the first antechamber, Sir Iulo cut a caper. “Oh but that I should come to know such a one as this!” he chortled. Sir John went to his own room: opened an interlinear crib of Horace; and could not see one letter.

IX

Hadrian knew that He was becoming confirmed in His pose of director. Not that He was inflated by His exaltation to the apostolature. He was conscious that people, except a few enthusiasts, were become indifferent to religion. He knew the danger of indifference to be so great that it was no time to strain at gnats. He could not trouble about rats in the ship’s hold while the torpedo was approaching. He was thought to share the abominable heresy of Tolstoy, whose works He never would touch with tongs. He saw that most men lived in mist; and preferred it: that most men durst not see clearly, because their business and their social interest would not stand it. He was not absolutely certain that He Himself could see the remedy: but He was certain that blindness was no remedy. So He put forth the evangelic counsels for obedience. “Strip; and obey those” appeared to be sufficient for the present; and He would not fiddle-faddle with human doctrines or empirical experiments. He had the big vision, the seeing eye, the hearing ear, wit, perverseness, daring, and the lonely heart, and the contempt of the world. The effect of His entire freedom of action was to inspire Him physically and mentally with the thrilling vigour of a pentathlete. He had the violent energy of the minute electron in the enormous atom. He felt Himself strong. He knew that His forces were tensely strung; and in their melody He was very glad. Sometimes He caught Himself wondering how long He could maintain the pitch: but from that thought He turned away. It was enough that He was able. He would not spare Himself. The night cometh when no man can work.

“Let it come,” he said to Cardinal Sterling: “but, while day lasts, We work.”

A splendid sentence of Mommsen’s bit into his brain. Caesar ruled as King of Rome for five years and a half⁠ ⁠… ; in the intervals of seven great campaigns, which allowed him to stay not more than fifteen months altogether in the capital of the empire, he regulated the destinies of the world for the present and the future.⁠ ⁠… Precisely because the building was an endless one, the master, as long as he lived, restlessly added stone to stone, with always the same dexterity and always the same elasticity busy at his work, without ever overturning or postponing, just as though there were for him merely today and no tomorrow. Thus he worked and created as never did any mortal before or after him; and, as a worker and creator, he still, after two thousand years, lives in the memory of the nations⁠—the first, and withal unique, Imperator Caesar.⁠—And Julius, also, had been Pontifex Maximus. Hadrian took a white umbrella for a walk as far as the black-lava fort on the Appian Way.

He considered the horrible condition of France and Russia. It was a menace to the world. Of Russia, He could learn nothing new. Thews and Thought together had abolished authority and