“Is Mr. Ambrose a burglar?” I enquired.
I remember my mother’s perplexity, and then, when I had alleged the reasons for my question, her exceeding mirth. I remember her calling my father; and my father, also, laughed prodigiously, and he went to the door, and cried, “Ambrose! Ambrose!” And when Mr. Ambrose came, and the incident was related to him, even he laughed a little, even his stern face relaxed.
When, by-and-by, they had all stopped laughing, and Mr. Ambrose had gone back to his own room, my father and mother, between them, explained the matter to me. “Mr. Ambrose, I must understand, (they said), was one of the greatest, and wisest, and best men in the world. He spent his whole life “doing good.” When he was at home, with us, he was working hard, all day long and late into the night, writing books H to “do good”—that was why he so often had a headache and couldn’t bear any noise in the house. And when he went away, when he was absent, it was to “do good” somewhere else. I had seen the poor people in the streets? I knew that there were thousands and thousands of people in the world, grown-up people, and children like myself, who had to wear ragged clothing, and live in dreadful houses, and eat bad food, or go hungry perhaps, all because they were so poor? Well, Mr. Ambrose spent his whole life doing good to those poor people, working hard for them, so that some day they might be rich, and clean, and happy, like us. But in Rome there was a very wicked, very cruel man, a cardinal: Cardinal Antonelli was his name. And Cardinal Antonelli hated people who did good, and was always trying to kidnap them and put them in prison. And that was what had happened to Mr. Ambrose. He had been doing good to the poor people in Rome, and Cardinal Antonelli had got wind of it, and had sent his awful sbirri to seize him and put him in prison. But the Pope was a very good man, too; very just, and kind, and merciful; as good as it was possible for any man to be. Only, generally, he was so busy with the great spiritual cares of his office, that he couldn’t pay much attention to the practical government of his City. He left that to Cardinal Antonelli, never suspecting how wicked he was, for the Cardinal constantly deceived him. But when the Pope heard that the great and good Mr. Ambrose had been put in prison, his Holiness was shocked and horrified, and very angry; and he sent for the Cardinal, and gave him a sound piece of his mind, and ordered him to let Mr. Ambrose out directly. And so Mr. Ambrose had been let out, and had come back to us.”
It was a relief, no doubt, to learn that our guest was not a burglar, but I am afraid the knowledge of his excessive goodness left me somewhat cold. Or, rather, if it influenced my feeling for him in any way, I fancy it only magnified my awe. He was one of the greatest, and wisest, and best men in the world, and he spent his entire time doing good to the poor. Bene; that was very nice for the poor. But for me? It did not make him a bit less severe, or cross, or testy; it did not make him a bit less an uncomfortable person to have in the house.
Indeed, the character, in a story such as I had heard, most likely to affect a child’s imagination, would pretty certainly have been, not the hero, but the villain. Mr. Ambrose and his virtues moved one to scant enthusiasm; but Cardinal Antonelli! In describing him as wicked, and cruel, and deceitful, my people were simply using the language, expressing the sentiment, of the country and the epoch: of Italy before 1870. In those days, if you were a Liberal, if you sympathised with the Italian party, as opposed to the Papal, and especially if you were a Catholic withal, and so could think no evil of the Pope himself—then Heaven help the reputation of Cardinal Antonelli! For my part, I saw a big man in a cassock, with a dark, wolfish face, and a bunch of great iron keys at his girdle, who prowled continually about the streets of Rome, attended by a gang of ruffian shim, seeking whom he could kidnap and put in prison. So that when, not very long after this, we went to Rome for a visit, my heart misgave me; it seemed as if we were marching headlong into the ogre’s den, wantonly courting peril. And during the month or two of our sojourn there, I believe I was never quite easy in my mind. At any moment we might all be captured, loaded with chains, and cast into prison: horrible stone dungeons, dark and wet, infested by rats and spiders, where we should have to sleep on straw, where they would give us nothing but bread and water to eat and drink.
Charlatan. Impostor.
I didn’t know what the words meant, but they stuck in my memory, and I felt that they were somehow appropriate. It was during that same visit to Rome that I had heard them. My Aunt Elizabeth, with whom we were staying, had applied them, in her vigorous way, to Mr. Ambrose (whom we had left behind us, in Florence). “Poh! An empty windbag, a canting egotist, a twopenny-halfpenny charlatan, a cheap impostor,” she had exclaimed, in the course of a discussion with my father.
Charlatan, impostor: yes, that was it. A man who never did anything but make himself disagreeable—who never petted you, or played with you, or told you stories, or gave you things—who never, in fact, took any notice of you at all, except to frown, and say hist-hist, when you were enjoying yourself—well, he might be one of the greatest, and best, and wisest men in the world, but, anyhow, he was a charlatan and an impostor. I had Aunt Elizabeth’s authority for that.
One day, after our return to Florence, my second-cousin Isabel (she was thirteen, and I was in love with her)—my second-cousin Isabel was playing the piano, alone with me, in the schoolroom, when Mr. Ambrose opened the door, and said, in his testiest manner: “Stop that noise—stop that noise!”
“He’s a horrid pig,” cried Isabel, as soon as his back was turned.