It was dreary business waiting. Loud talking was not to be thought of, and the whispering on all sides as the company increased was oppressive. There was a group of ladies from Venice who were obviously friends of the Holy Father’s family. There were two brown monks, barefooted and with long gray beards, patriarchal types, who stationed themselves by one wall near the door. There were three nuns and a mother superior from somewhere who looked as if they were lost in prayer. This was a great occasion to them. Next to me was a very official person in a uniform of some kind who constantly adjusted his neck-band and smoothed his gloved hands. Some American ladies, quite severe and anti-papistical if I am not mistaken, looked as if they were determined not to believe anything they saw, and two Italian women of charming manners had in tow an obstreperous small boy of say five or six years of age in lovely black velvet, who was determined to be as bad and noisy as he could. He beat his feet and asked questions in a loud whisper and decided that he wished to change his place of abode every three seconds; all of which was accompanied by many “sh-sh-es” from his elders and whisperings in his ear, severe frowns from the American ladies and general indications of disapproval, with here and there a sardonic smile of amusement.
Every now and then a thrill of expectation would go over the company. The Pope was coming! Papal guards and prelates would pass through the room with speedy movements and it looked as though we would shortly be in the presence of the vicar of Christ. I was told that it was necessary to rest on one knee at least, which I did, waiting patiently the while I surveyed the curious company. The two brown monks were appropriately solemn, their heads bent. The sisters were praying. The Italian ladies were soothing their restive charge. I told my correspondent-friend of the suicide of a certain journalist, whom he and his wife knew, on the day that I left New York—a very talented but adventurous man; and he exclaimed: “My God! don’t tell that to my wife. She’ll feel it terribly.” We waited still longer and finally in sheer weariness began jesting foolishly; I said that it must be that the Pope and Merry del Val, the Pope’s secretary, were inside playing jackstones with the papal jewels. This drew a convulsive laugh from my newspaper friend—I will call him W.—who began to choke behind his handkerchief. Mrs. W. whispered to me that if we did not behave we would be put out and I pictured myself and W. being unceremoniously hustled out by the forceful guards, which produced more laughter. The official beside me, who probably did not speak English, frowned solemnly. This produced a lull, and we waited a little while longer in silence. Finally the sixth or seventh thrill of expectation produced the Holy Father, the guards and several prelates making a sort of aisle of honor before the door. All whispering ceased. There was a rustle of garments as each one settled into a final sanctimonious attitude. He came in, a very tired-looking old man in white wool cassock and white skull cap, a great necklace of white beads about his neck and red shoes on his feet. He was stout, close knit, with small shrewd eyes, a low forehead, a high crown, a small, shapely chin. He had soft, slightly wrinkled hands, the left one graced by the papal ring. As he came in he uttered something in Italian and then starting on the far side opposite the door he had entered came about to each one, proffering the hand which some merely kissed and some seized on and cried over, as if it were the solution of a great woe or the realization of a too great happiness. The mother superior did this and one of the Italian ladies from Venice. The brown monks laid their foreheads on it and the official next to me touched it as though it were an object of great value.
I was interested to see how the Supreme Pontiff—the Pontifex Maximus of all the monuments—viewed all this. He looked benignly but rather wearily down on each one, though occasionally he turned his head away, or, slightly interested, said something. To the woman whose tears fell on his hands he said nothing. With one of the women from Venice he exchanged a few words. Now and then he murmured something. I could not tell whether he was interested but very tired, or whether he was slightly bored. Beyond him lay room after room crowded with pilgrims in which this performance had to be repeated. Acquainted with my newspaper correspondent he gave no sign. At me he scarcely looked at all, realizing no doubt my critical unworthiness. At the prim, severe American woman he looked quizzically. Then he stood in the center of the room and having uttered a long, soft prayer, which my friend W. informed me was very beautiful, departed. The crowd arose. We had to wait until all the other chambers were visited by him and until he returned guarded on all sides by his soldiers and disappeared. There was much conversation, approval, and smiling satisfaction. I saw him once more, passing quickly between two long lines of inquisitive, reverential people, his head up, his glance straight ahead and then he was gone.
We made our way out and somehow I was very glad I had come. I had thought all along that it really did not make any difference whether I saw him or not and that I did not care, but after seeing the attitude of the pilgrims and his own peculiar mood I thought it worth while. Pontifex Maximus! The Vicar of Christ! What a long way from the Catacomb-worshiping Christians who had no Pope at all, who gathered together “to sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a God” and who bound themselves by a sacramental oath to commit no thefts, nor robberies, nor adulteries, nor break their word, nor deny a deposit when called upon, and who for nearly three hundred years had neither priest nor altar, nor bishop nor Pope, but just the rumored gospels of Christ.
CHAPTER XXXV
THE CITY OF ST. FRANCIS
The Italian hill-cities are such a strange novelty to the American of the Middle West—used only to the flat reaches of the prairie, and the city or town gathered primarily about the railway-station. One sees a whole series of them ranged along the eastern ridge of the Apennines as one travels northward from Rome. All the way up this valley I had been noting examples on either hand but when I got off the train at Assisi I saw what appeared to be a great fortress on a distant hill—the sheer walls of the church and monastery of St. Francis. It all came back to me, the fact that St. Francis had been born here of a well-to-do father, that he had led a gay life in his youth, had had his “vision”—his change of heart—which caused him to embrace poverty, the care of the poor and needy and to follow precisely that idealistic dictum which says: “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,... but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven,... for where your treasure is there will your heart be also.” I had found in one of the little books I had with me, “Umbrian Towns,” a copy of the prayer that he devised for his Order which reads:
Poverty was in the crib and like a faithful squire she kept herself armed in the great combat Thou didst wage for our redemption. During Thy passion she alone did not forsake Thee. Mary, Thy Mother, stopped at the foot of the cross, but poverty mounted it with Thee and clasped Thee in her embrace unto the end; and when Thou wast dying of thirst as a watchful spouse she prepared for Thee the gall. Thou didst expire in the ardor of her embraces, nor did she leave Thee when dead, O Lord Jesus, for she allowed not Thy body to rest elsewhere than in a borrowed grave. O poorest Jesus, the grace I beg of Thee is to bestow on me the treasure of the highest poverty. Grant that the distinctive mark of our Order may be never to possess anything as its own under the sun for the glory of Thy name and to have no other patrimony than begging.
I wonder if there is any one who can read this without a thrill of response. This world sets such store by wealth and comfort. We all batten on luxury so far as our means will permit,—many of us wallow in it; and the thought of a man who could write such a prayer as that, and live it, made my hair tingle to the roots. I can understand Pope Innocent III’s saying that the rule offered by St. Francis and his disciples to ordinary mortals was too severe, but I can also conceive the poetic enthusiasm of a St. Francis. I found myself on the instant in the deepest accord with him, understanding how it was that he wanted his followers not to wear a habit, and to work in the fields as day-laborers, begging only when they could not earn their way. The fact that he and his disciples had lived in reed huts on the site of Santa Maria degli Angeli, the great church which stands in the valley near the station, far down from the town, and had practised the utmost austerity, came upon me as a bit of imaginative poetry of the highest sort. Before the rumbling bus arrived, which conveyed me and several others to the little hotel, I was thrilling with enthusiasm for this religious fact, and anything that concerned him interested me.
In some ways Assisi was a disappointment because I expected something more than bare picturesqueness; it is very old and I fancy, as modern Italy goes, very poor. The walls of the houses are for the most part built of dull gray stone. The streets climbed up hill and down dale, hard, winding, narrow, stony affairs, lined right to the roadway by these bare, inhospitable-looking houses. No yards, no gardens—at least none visible from the streets, but, between walls, and down street stairways, and between odd angles of buildings the loveliest vistas of the valley below, where were spread great orchards of olive trees, occasional small groups of houses, distant churches and the mountains on the other side of the valley. Quite suited to the self-abnegating spirit of St. Francis, I thought,—and I wondered if the town had changed greatly since his day—1182!