“And her complete discordance from the world by all the difference which separates the Divine Institution from the human, the Church of God from the churches of men,” Saviolli appended.
“All the same I think I go with the Cardinal of St. Cosmas and St. Damian,” said Mundo.
“There would not be any real ground,” Sterling continued, “for suspecting one of disloyalty to the Church, if one were to recognize the Invincibly Ignorant as the ‘other sheep’ which His Holiness mentioned in His first Epistle. One is not going to take part in their worship, or frequent their services: because one knows better. And one is not going to accept the principle of a conglomerate Church of the ‘common-christianity’ type any more than one is going to accept an Olympos of gods for a Divinity. But one confesses that one can see no reason why one should not pray for outsiders, offer Mass for outsiders, recognize them in short, as His Holiness seems to ordain. They don’t know us; and, naturally, they invent a caricature of us, as things are. Yes, on the whole, perhaps one ought to support Carvale.”
“Well: if we’re taking sides, I’ll follow you,” said Semphill.
Their Eminencies rose and surrounded Cardinal Carvale. Talacryn was left alone at the other end of the seat; and Percy moved a few inches nearer to the Pope.
“Now Percy?” said Talacryn with invitation. The youngest cardinal shook his grand head in the negative.
“And will not you yourself join the majority?” Hadrian inquired of the single minority.
“I shall follow your Holiness,” Talacryn answered. The others looked their interest.
The Pope smiled. “Note please, that We are not uttering infallible dogma, but the fallible opinion of a private clergyman, weak-kneed perhaps, or worldly. We know no more than this—that Christ died for all men.” Rising He began to throw on his white cloak, for it was the hour before sunset and the air was cooler. “Eminencies,” He continued, “We learn much from you. This discussion was an accident, due to Our negligence. The case which We intended to submit to you was not the case of an outsider: but, while you have been talking, We have reached the solution of Our problem by another road. We request you immediately to publish the news that tomorrow at ten o’clock the Supreme Pontiff will sing a requiem in St. Peter’s for the repose of the soul of Umberto the Fearless King of Italy.”
An English Catholic painter came to paint the Pope’s portrait. Hadrian knew him for a vulgar and officious liar: detested him; and, at the first application, had refused to sit to him. His Holiness was not at all in love with His Own aspect. It annoyed Him because it just missed the ideal which He admired; and He did not want to be perpetuated. Also, He loathed the cad’s Herkomeresque-cum-Camera esque technique and his quite earthy imagination: from that palette, the spiritual, the intellectual, the noble, could not come. But, He thought of the man’s pinched asking face, of his dreadful nagging wife, of his children—of the rejection of all his pictures by the Academy this year, of the fact that he was being supplanted by younger grander minds. Ousted from livelihood! Horrible! Love your enemies! Ouf! The Pontiff would give six sittings of one hour each, on condition that He might read all the time.
The privilege alone was an inestimable advertisement. Alfred Elms looked upon himself as likely to become the fashion. Hadrian sat in the garden for six siestas; and He read in Plato’s Phaidōn, which is the perfection of human language, until His lineaments were composed in an expression of keen gentle fastidious rapture. Elms’s professional efforts at conversation were annulled quietly and incisively. The Pope blessed him and handfuls of rosaries at the end of every sitting. Sometimes His Holiness was so elated with the beauty of the Greek of His book, that He even was able with a little self-compulsion to utter a few kindly and intelligent criticisms of the painter’s work. That was startlingly real, mirror-like. The varied whiteness of marble and flannel and vellum and the healthy pallor of flesh, gained purity from the notes of the reddish-brown hair and the translucent violet of the amethyst. The clean light of the thing was admirably rendered. The painter could delineate, and tint with his hand, that which his eyes beheld, with blameless accuracy. What his eyes did not see, the soul, the mind, the habit of his model, he as accurately omitted. Hadrian made him glad with a compliment on the perfection of the connection between his directive brain and his executive fingers. At the end of the last sitting also He gave him two hundred pounds, and the picture, and a written indulgence in the hour of death. The painter went away quite happy, and with his fortune made. He never knew how vehemently his work was detested, how profoundly he himself was scorned.
August was deliciously warm. The Pope moved the Court for a few weeks to the palace on the Nemorensian lake which the Prince of Cinthyanum lent. It was a vast barrack of a palace. Although three sides of it actually were in the little city, and a public thoroughfare pierced its central archway, yet it suited Hadrian admirably. Approached through numerous antechambers and picture-galleries, there was a huge room frescoed in simulation of a princely tent. Here they placed a throne for receptions. There was a great balcony high above the porch, facing a two-mile avenue of elms. When the faithful congregated (as they often did) the Pope could show Himself. There were innumerable chambers of state and private suites, where the curial cardinals took up their abode. But high on the fourth side of the palace, with no access except by several little private stairs, Hadrian found an apartment of five small rooms which was quite secluded. From its windows, (the palace stood on the crest of
