He was sitting alone, thinking, and carefully unravelling a woollen antimacassar. It had been crocheted in five bossy strips, three of orange hue and two of grey, alternately arranged. He had unravelled two orange and two grey strips; and had the wool neatly rolled in four balls beside Him. The next time He should go into the City, some little girl would be made happy with two nice balls of grey wool and a lira to buy knitting needles; and, the time after that, another little girl would have three balls of orange wool and a lira also; and pontifical eyes would not be scorched by ghastly antimacassars any more, nor would the kind heart of anyone be wounded. He finished the job; and went to talk to his socialist. That one turned out to be a goldsmith, with the ideals and the brains and the fingers of Cellini, but not the acquisitiveness. Hence straits, socialism, sophistries, starvation. They walked about the sculpture-galleries for coolness; and spoke of Beautiful Things. Hadrian revelled. His guest was a man of taste; and talked-on-a-trot with wonderful gestures, making and moulding ideal images which the mind’s eye could see. They came to the Apoxyomenos: stood: raved; and became dumb, feasting on the lithe majesty of perfect proportion. The artificer first spoke.
“Holiness,” he said, “can You see that body and those limbs crucified?”
Hadrian’s mind caught the idea. The splendid forms of the marble seemed to rearrange themselves in the new pose. His eyes came slowly round to His questioner.
“Yes,” He answered: “but soaring and triumphing, ‘reigning from the tree,’ not drooping and dying—and not the head and bust.” He took the goldsmith’s arm and hurried him to the Antinous of the Belvedere; and began to speak very quickly.
“Sir,” He said, “you will be pleased to stay here; and, with the materials which will be provided, you will make a new cross for Us. The cross will be of the kind called Potent, elongate: the Figure will combine the body and limbs of the Apoxyomenos with the head and bust of the Antinous, but posed as We have described. On the completion of this masterpiece, you will be offered an appointment as goldsmith in the pontifical household—”
“Ah, Padrone.”
Hadrian returned to the secret chamber, happy in anticipation of an emblem which would not offend His taste. True, He was glad (in a way) that a tangled life so easily could be made straight: but it was the visionary ideal of Beauty which really inspired joy.
X
That aggregation of intellectually purblind and covetous dullards, who formed the socialistic sect of the King of England’s subjects, presently began in their rough rude way to perpend the Pope of Rome. It had been a moot point with these discontented sentimentalists whether it would or would not be profitable to unite with French and Russian anarchy, and attain their ends that way: but one Julia, in the Salpinx screamed such excruciating tales about slaughtered French babies, that that was “off.” Also, it was remembered that a certain Comrade Dymoke, the only capable fighting man ever possessed by socialism, had been sponged upon for fifteen years by socialistic cadgers, sucked dry, ruined, and cast out, a victim of socialistic jealousy and treachery. In the plans laid for a Social Revolution, towards the end of the nineteenth century, that man had been named commander-in-chief. Now he was not available; and his place was vacant: for a military expert rarely errs into the purlieus of socialism.
But one thing had been done. The Social Democratic Federation had been induced, at the National “Liberal” Club, to coalesce with the Independent “Labour” Party. The coalition called itself the “Liblab Fellowship”: the Salpinx and Reynards’s were its organs; and a parcel of Bobs and Bens and Bills and Bounders its prophets. It concluded that it would score by toadying the Supreme Pontiff. The brainless monster of socialism always was hunting for a brain to direct its forces. By some perverted process, it arrived at the feeling that a Pope, Who could indite the “Epistle to All Christians,” would be likely to lend Himself to the furtherance of its crude designs on other people’s property. A week later, Cardinal Whitehead called Hadrian’s attention to the current issue of the afore-named journals, which contained an “Open Letter to the Pope” praising the “enlightened humanitarianism” of His Holiness’s recent utterance, inviting Him to have courage of His opinions, and to bring His “Epistle” to (what was called) “a logical conclusion” by a formal authoritative declaration of the doctrine of Equality. Popes, as a rule, do not notice “Open Letters.” Hadrian, however, had learned from the Pall Mall Gazette that the fashion was for copious artists in words to lecture the Roman Pontiff. He anticipated the being told by that elegant journal that He knew as much about the true inwardness of Catholicism as a cow knows of a clean shirt. But He privately was of opinion that more harm may be done by leaving some things unsaid. But, Love—! Was it possible that He could love, could like (even), hyenas who screeched such ditties as this on the same page:
“They will tax the baked potatoes,
They will tax our blessed swipes,
They will tax our blooming hot pea-soup,
The leather, and the tripes,
They will tax the coster’s donkey,
They will tax the Derby ’orse
And they’re going to tax the devil
When he lives at Charing Crorse.”
Ouf! No. It was quite
