Hadrian the Seventh

agents in the goodness of the cause nor the goodness of the cause in the badness of the agents.” He was looking through His all-observant half-shut eyes straight at the bridge of the General’s fine nose. That is the most exacerbating form of regard: for, while it holds the hearer rigid and intense, it effectually prevents retaliation. Much may be done with the eye in wordy warfare. You may challenge: you may intimidate: you may quell: but you may do none of these things while your opponent refuses to lend his eye to yours. So this sleek General found. The Pontiff held him with an eye which gazed so nearly into his, that he perforce was obliged to lie in wait for the flicker when his own could seize it. Hadrian knew the dodge. He had not watched and dichotomized men and Jesuits from the observatory and in the dissecting-room of His loneliness during twenty years for nothing. At the end of His sentence, His gaze swept right away. He rose and went to the window. Looking out over the roofs of Golden and Immortal Rome, He continued in a milder tone, “We have cited Your Reverency only to hear Our paternal chiding of your naughty ways, to the end that ye may amend the same, returning of your own free will to the observance of the spirit as well as of the letter of those rules of life and conduct which your Father, St. Ignatius, made for you.”

He paused. The General, who would have preferred wheeling manure in a barrow at the behest of a novice (A.M.D.G. of course) to listening to this rodent exhortation, took it that the audience was ended; and made shift to get on to his knees.

But the Pope went on. “For, it is of the nature of all human things to deteriorate; and ye have made yourselves a scorn and hissing among men. The Nouvelle Revue states that ye are in great decadence. The statement may be one of your own devices for distracting the attention of the world from your nefarious machinations. Or it may be a fact. In both cases it is damnable and damnatory.” He paused again.

“Jube, Domine, benedicere,” the General intoned, with a determination to force the apostolic benediction, and to get back to the Via del Seminario as soon as possible. He felt that he had some very important things to say to his socii.

But the pitiless voice probed him again: “Wherefore We admonish you that ye set your house in order while ye have time.”

The General’s oval jaw took an extra lateral crease. His hands twitched and pattered down and up and down in a talpine manner. Suddenly the inflexible fathomless eyes flashed on him. Axioms like sleet tersely lashed him.

“Remember that ye only exist on sufferance. Dismiss delusions; and see yourselves as ye really are. Strip, man, strip. Search out your own weaknesses: lest, not the Father but, the Enemy discover the sores, and the diamonds, which ye are hiding. For ye do not merit the reputation, which is associated with your name, on the strength of which ye trade.”

The glossy black priest jerked to his feet: genuflected; and was backing from the white Presence. The Pontiff, whose mood had become quite pythian, stepped up to him, laying a firm hand on the bow of the ribbons of his ferraiuola. “Wince not, dear son. Three-fourths of you trade upon the reputation of your Company for cunning and learning. One-fourth of you is the Christians of the world. At least be frank with yourselves. Let us have more of the flower of your Christianity. Let us have less of your false pretences. Your erudition is showy enough. Oh yes. But it is so superficial. Your machinations are sly enough. Oh yes. But they are so silly. Ye are not geniuses. Ye are not monsters either of vice or of virtue: but only ridiculous mediocrities, always pitifully burrowing, burrowing like assiduous moles, always seeing your pains misspent, your elaborate schemes wrecked, except sometimes, when⁠—to complete the metaphor⁠—quite by accident, ye chance to kill a king. This is not to the Greater Glory of God. Then stop. Stop, here and now.”

They were by the door. The Black Pope had one hand under the blue-linen curtain, and was fumbling for the handle. The White Pope quickly clinched His admonition. “Don’t pretend to be Superior Persons. Don’t give yourselves such airs. Don’t gad about in hansom cabs quite so much. Don’t play billiards in public-houses. Don’t nurture jackals. Try to be honest. Don’t oppress the poor. Don’t adore the rich. Don’t cheat either. Tell the truth: or try to. Love all men, and learn to serve. And don’t be vulgar.”

Father St. Albans had got the door open. He looked like a flat female with chlorosis. He was green and quite speechless. But he bowed profoundly as the decurial chamberlains came forward to escort him through the antechambers.

“Benedicat te Omnipotens Deus.⁠ ⁠… Go in peace and pray for Us,” purred the Supreme Pontiff, rubbing His left hand with His pocket handkerchief and returning to the window.

XV

Hadrian was mooning about in the Treasury one morning, wondering why people will persist in using diamonds by themselves instead of as a setting for coloured gems: grieving at the excessive ugliness of most modern goldsmiths’ monstrous work: turning with disgust from huge brazenly vulgar masses of bullion shaped like bad dreams of chalices, pyxes, staves, croziers, mitres, tiaras, dishes, jugs, (not beds), and basons. He bathed in the beauty of sea-blue beryls, corundums, catseyes, and chalcedonyx. A vast rose-alexandrolith mysteriously changed from myrtle-green to purple as He turned it from sunlight to candlelight. He moved to a great round table-moonstone, transparent as water one way: brilliantly clouded with the ethereal blue of a summer-morning sky, the other. These two stones had not the blatant ostentation, the inevitable noisy obviousness of rubies, emeralds, diamonds and pearls. They