Italian Yesterdays, vol. 2

by Mrs. Hugh Fraser

Here Boniface showed all the valour of his race and place. He prepared to meet death with the dignity of a priest and the courage of a soldier. “If I am to die, I will die like a Pope,” he said. Every friend, every Cardinal and chaplain and courtier fled as the shout of “A Colonna, a Colonna!” rose from the lower streets of the mountain town. Not a soul was left in the palace but the Pope. He put on his pontifical vestments, placed the tiara on his head, and mounted his throne, where he sat like a statue, awaiting certain death. Colonna and Nogaret, with three hundred steel-clad men at their heels, clanked into the hall, and stood dumb for a moment at the sight of their great enemy, who neither spoke nor moved. Then they rushed upon him and Sciarra Colonna assailed him with a fiery torrent of abuse, his anger feeding on itself till it ran through him like a flame, and he struck the Pontiff on the face with his mailed hand. Nogaret protested—Boniface said no word. He meant to suffer for his sins in silence, because so had the Redeemer suffered for sins not His. They dragged the Pope from his throne, hustled him out into the Square, all black with the gaping, cowardly crowd of his own subjects, put him on a vicious horse with his face to the tail, and led him with outbursts of derision through the streets. Not a hand was raised to defend him, not a protest was heard. Then his conquerors brought him back to his palace and locked him up, without food or drink, for three miserable days, during which they sacked not only the palace, but every house in the town, riding away at last glutted with plunder, destroying what they could not carry off, and leaving literally nothing but bare walls behind them. Then, all danger being past, Boniface’s loving subjects bethought themselves of letting him out. They found him fainting from exhaustion, crying like a starved child for a morsel of bread and a cup of water. The women wept over him then, and ran to minister to his wants; not so much as a water-jar had been left in the palace, and they emptied their bronze concas into a wooden chest. Boniface died soon after, in Rome, broken-hearted, and the carnival of anarchy in high places, with its raging hate and its fury of bloodshed, went on for many a long year afterwards.

Truly, mediæval history makes depressing reading! How gladly the mind reverts from it to the dawn of the centuries, when men fought for their cities and their wives and children, but not for mere hatred of their kind. And what a relief it is to turn from the endless carnage of the later Middle Ages to the history that is not written in blood and that charms and dominates us still, the history of strange holy lives every pulse of which was an act of love to God and mankind. It is but a step from one to the other—from Boniface VIII and the Colonnas and the Orsinis to Benedict and Scholastica—from smitten Palestrina to cloistered Subiaco behind it in the hills.

On the way thither one stopped for a day in Olevano, to me the least Italian, the most completely “foreignised” spot in all that country. It has been for so many years the haunt of artists of every nationality that it has none left of its own. Its beauty there is no denying; it laughs in sunshine and prosperity, and for that, in these bad times, one is grateful to it. But it is no more Italian than a fine piece of staging at the Haymarket. The background is perfect, and the inhabitants are healthy and handsome, but the moment they see a traveller coming they throw themselves into paintable attitudes; all naturalness seems gone; everything and everybody is harnessed to the service of picturesque utility. The famous inn, about which Gregorovius and Mr. Hare raved so enthusiastically, resounds with Northern tongues and with that ear-splitting affliction known as German Italian. The walls are a visitors’ book, of untold price, where almost every notable artist of the last hundred years has left his signature in sketch or portrait. At every turn you are tripped up by easels, wet canvases, and artists’ umbrellas, and in the evening the beer flows freely and the jolly brotherhood talks about itself at the top of its German voice, till Italy—our shy, melancholy Italy—fades into the background, and a weary traveller trying to sleep, in one of the bedrooms which all open out of the central dining-room, is led to believe that he has taken the wrong train and been transported unawares to the scene of a “Kneipe” in Munich or Dresden.

Talking about “wrong trains” reminds me of an absurd incident that happened in England. A wayfarer who had taken a little more than was good for him wandered into Victoria Station, having quite forgotten the name of the place he wished to make for. But he could remember what it was not. Into every train that came along he climbed—and then asked the guard for what point it was bound. None of the answers satisfied him and he tumbled out on the platform again and again, wailing, “Wrong train! wrong train!” At last, however, he struck the right one, the guard’s answer to his query brought back the memory of his domicile, and, much relieved, he sank down against the cushions and began to smoke. At the first station on the road a clergyman got into the compartment, and the train steamed on. Harder and harder the reverend gentleman stared at his companion, who showed all too plainly the evidences of his spree. Pretty soon, just as they were pulling into another station, the Christian’s conscience bade him admonish his erring brother.

“My friend,” he began in solemn tones, “do you know where you are going to?” The overtaken one was all attention at once, and his monitor went on, “You are going straight to Hell!”

“Oh, Lord!” moaned the sinner on the opposite seat. “Wrong train again!” And he sprang out of the carriage and stood weeping on the platform while his one chance of getting home sped away from him into the night.

We were little troubled by railways in the Sabines in my young days; such innovations had not ever been contemplated, and all our travelling was done on horses or mules. It was rather a long ride from Olevano to Subiaco and I was very tired and stiff when our little party straggled into the road leading up to the town. But—what is youth without some impossible romance? My “romance” had marched that way the year before, with his company of Zouaves, condemned to garrison duty for three dreary months in the hills; and this (“parents, do you think you know your children?”) was the utterly idiotic motive which had made me drag my three unsuspecting men to Subiaco! I wanted to pick up a stone that had been touched by the adored one’s foot! Very gingerly I climbed down off my weary beast, selected a fine smooth pebble from the side of the road where I knew my idol must have passed, and, with much difficulty, scrambled up again. The pebble was afterwards polished, cut, and set in Etruscan gold, as a pendant, marked with a mystic inscription signifying a challenge to fate to lessen the ardour of my attachment; and when I found it among my trinkets, long years after my real fate had found and claimed me, I could have wept for the delicious rainbow-tinted sorrows of first youth!

But the treasure once secured, and the luxury of tears reserved for some future unoccupied moment, I gave myself up to the magic of the consecrated cleft in the hills, and, in spite of my own profound ignorance in those days, in spite of the sceptical attitude of my Presbyterian stepfather and the Anglican Reverendo, and my dear Marion’s bubbling fun and laughter—for he was a mere boy then, of the most irrepressible kind—the “Sacro Speco” made a profound impression on me.

It was as if a door leading out of some gay ballroom, all lights and flowers and dance music, had suddenly been opened and I had passed through it from the things of time to those of eternity. Fifteen hundred years were wiped out—I saw St. Benedict, the “beloved, called from the cleft in the rock,” praying, rejoicing, hiding from men to be alone with God. And that seems to me the most wonderful thing in the lives of the great Founders—they had not at first the smallest forethought of their mission. They only knew that they must save their souls in fear and trembling, and in blind humility they withdrew from all occasions of sin and prayed for purification. It forms a curious contrast to the life led by most of us who consider ourselves pretty decent Christians in the eyes of the world. Our question is, “How much pleasure and amusement can I get in without actually falling into mortal sin?” and many a dangerous permission we grant ourselves or wring from our unwilling directors, that refused would have prevented, or at least delayed, a hundred falls. It is so terribly easy to do what all the rest are doing—to go and see the problem play, read the interesting bad book, pay the visit at the country house where the old admirer will meet us and spread the old snares for our destruction and his own! We know all about it; it has happened so often; but we go ahead, telling our hearts the lie they know so well: “Oh, it doesn’t matter! I know just where to stop!” Steeped in affection to sin—with, at the best, ages of Purgatory awaiting us—we add every straw we can gather to our already huge burden and imagine we can lay it down with a good deathbed confession and slip into Paradise with the best!

Very different was the point of view of the great Saints. For one who was converted late in life, we read of scores to whom Perfection called in the very dawn of reason; and it is precisely these, who never committed a mortal sin in their lives, who were most severe with themselves—most nervous, as we should say—about their final salvation.