“I believe I have seen your face before,” said Alexander, “and all the more likely as I was inspector of prisons when I was Cardinal.”
“Then look yonder,” enjoined the ratcatcher, as he pointed to the frescoed wall, at the same time vehemently snapping his fingers. Phosphoric sparks hissed and crackled forth, and coalesced into a blue lambent flame, which concentrated itself upon a depicted figure, whose precise attitude the ratcatcher assumed as he dropped upon his knees. The Pope shrieked with amazement, for, although the splendid Pontifical vestments had become ragged fur, in every other respect the kneeling figure was the counterpart of the painted one, and the painted one was Pinturicchio’s portrait of Pope Alexander the Sixth kneeling as a witness of the Resurrection.
Alexander the Eighth would fain have imitated his predecessor’s attitude, but terror bound him to his chair, and the adjuration of his patron St. Mark which struggled towards his lips never arrived there. The book of exorcisms fell from his paralysed hand, and the vial of holy water lay in shivers upon the floor. Ere he could collect himself, the dead Pope had seated himself beside the Pope with one foot in the grave, and, fondling a ferret-skin, proceeded to enter into conversation.
“What fear you?” he asked. “Why should I harm you? None can say that I ever injured any one for any cause but my own advantage, and to injure your Holiness now would be to obstruct a design which I have particularly at heart.”
“I crave your Holiness’s forgiveness,” rejoined the Eighth Alexander, “but you must be aware that you left the world with a reputation which disqualifies you for the society of any Pope in the least careful of his character. It positively compromises me to have so much as the ghost of a person so universally decried as your Holiness under my roof, and you would infinitely oblige me by forthwith repairing to your own place, which I take to be about four thousand miles below where you are sitting. I could materially facilitate and accelerate your Holiness’s transit thither if you would be so kind as to hand me that little book of exorcisms.”
“How is the fine gold become dim!” exclaimed Alexander the Sixth. “Popes in bondage to moralists! Popes nervous about public opinion! Is there another judge of morals than the Pope speaking ex cathedra, as I always did? Is the Church to frame herself after the prescriptions of heathen philosophers and profane jurists? How, then, shall she be terrible as an army with banners? Did I concern myself with such pedantry when the Kings of Spain and Portugal came to me like cats suing for morsels, and I gave them the West and the East?”
“It is true,” Alexander the Eighth allowed, “that the lustre of the Church hath of late been obfuscated by the prevalence of heresy.”
“It isn’t the heretics,” Borgia insisted. “It is the degeneracy of the Popes. A shabby lot! You, Alexander, are about the best of them; but the least Cardinal about my Court would have thought himself bigger than you.”
Alexander’s spirit rose. “I would suggest,” he said, “that this haughty style is little in keeping with the sordid garb wherein your Holiness, consistent after death as in your life, masquerades to the scandal and distress of the faithful.”
“How can I other? Has your Holiness forgotten your Rabelais?”