“You must not think, dear Signor Maironi,” said he in a voice both harmonious and deep, and which seemed, in a way, to correspond with the melancholy look in his eyes, “you must not think that we are here as two powerful arms of the State. We are here, at the present moment, as two individuals of a very rare species, two statesmen who know their business well, and who despise it still more. We are two great idealists, who know how to lie in a most ideal manner to those who deserve nothing better, and who also know how to adore Truth; two democrats, but nevertheless two adorers of that recondite Truth which has never been touched by the dirty hands of old Demos.”
Having spoken thus, the man of the flowing grey beard once more began to stroke it, first with one hand, then with the other, and, puckering his eyes, which sparkled with a shrewd smile, for he was pleased with his own words, watched for surprise on Benedetto’s face.
“We are, moreover, believers also,” he continued.
The other personage, without raising his head from the back of the couch, lifted his open hands, and said, almost solemnly:
“Steady!” “Let the word pass, my dear friend,” the first speaker said, without looking towards him. “We are both believers, but in different ways. I believe in God with all my might, and my might is great, and I shall have Him with me always, You believe in God, with all your weaknesses, and they are few, and you will not have Him with you until you are upon your death-bed.”
Another shrewd and self-complacent smile, another pause. The friend shook his head, raising his eyebrows as if he had heard a jest deserving only of commiseration, but not of an answer.
“I, for my part,” the deep and harmonious voice went on, “am also a Christian. Not a Catholic, but a Christian. Indeed, because I am a Christian am an anti-Catholic. My heart is Christian, and my brain is Protestant. It is with joy that I see in Catholicism signs, not of decrepitude, but of putrefaction. Charity is being dissolved in the most sincerely Catholic hearts into a dark mud, full of the worms of hatred. I see Catholicism cracking in many places, and I see the ancient idolatry upon which it has raised itself bursting forth through the cracks. What few youthful, healthy, and vital energies appear within it, all tend to separate from it. I know that you are a radical Catholic, that you are the friend of a man who is really sound and strong, and who calls himself a Catholic, but who is pronounced a heretic by true Catholics; and a heretic he certainly is. I have been told you are a pupil of this noble heretic, who labours for reforms and who, at the same time, tries to influence the Pontiff. Now, I myself am looking for a great reformer, but he must be an antipope; not antipope in the narrow, historical sense, but an antipope in the Lutheran sense of the word. Curiosity pricks us to know in what way you believe it possible to rejuvenate this poor old Papacy, of which we laymen are ahead not only in the conquest of civilisation, but also in the science of God, even in the science of Christ, this Papacy which follows us at a great distance, panting and stopping by the way every now and then, hanging back like an animal which smells the shambles, and then, when it is pulled very hard, jumping forward, only to stop again until the rope is twitched once more. Explain your idea of Catholic reform to us. Let us hear it.”
Benedetto remained silent.
“Speak,” continued the unknown deity who appeared to reign in that place. “My friend is not Herod, nor am I Pilate. We might perhaps both become apostles of your idea.”
His friend once more extended his wide-open hands, without raising his head from the sofa-back, and said again, with a stronger accent on the first syllable: