The salutary impressions of the morning and the excessive anxiety and sadness that I afterwards experienced had somewhat counteracted the more or less unhealthy influences that result from a continued life of pleasure. I was now in that frame of mind when it is easy to collect one's thoughts; when the soul, so to speak, flies to the first place of refuge in which it is sure of repose.... Who has [pg 754] not experienced the strange, mysterious, refreshing influence of prayer, even when mute and inarticulate?... Who has not, in this way, laid down for an instant all his sorrows, all his fears, all his sufferings, and afterwards taken up the load again with a renewed strength that seemed to have lightened the burden?...
I had suffered but little at that time in comparison with what life still had in reserve for me. But after a while we learn to suffer, and in this science, as in all others, it is the beginning one always finds the most difficult. A fearful storm, it is true, had assailed the first flower of my spring-time, and spread darkness and gloom over the heavens of my sixteenth year; but spring-time and the sun returned, and at an age when others only begin life I was commencing mine the second time. But this new life of happiness was, I now felt, threatened in a thousand ways. Apprehension, a worse torture than sadness; a vague, undefined fear, more difficult to endure than the woes it anticipates; the uncertainty, doubt, and suspicion, so much more intolerable to one of my nature than any positive suffering, rendered my heart heavy and depressed, and I felt it would be a relief to weep as well as to pray.
I knelt on the only vacant chair in the church, and remained a long time motionless, my face buried in my hands, unable to give utterance to my wants, but knowing God could read my heart, as, when we meet a friend after a long separation, we are often silent merely because we have so much to communicate, and know not where to begin. In this attitude I heard Vespers sung for the first time in my life, this office of the church being, as is well known, much less frequently used in the south of Italy than in other places. I have already mentioned the public religious observances of my childhood. I had, therefore, never heard Vespers chanted in this way. The voices of the choristers were harmonious, and the responses were no less so. A large number of the congregation joined in the chant. There was something monotonous rather than musical in it, but it was more musical than reading, and it produced a strangely soothing influence on me. I laid aside all thought of myself, and attentively followed the admirable lines of the Psalmist; and when the Magnificat was intoned, I rose with the whole congregation to chant this divine hymn with a sensation of joy and hope that, for the moment, made me forget the painful impressions I felt when I entered beneath these arches now resounding with its words....
Benediction followed, recalling the earliest, dearest remembrances of my childhood, and increasing the emotion I already felt. When the monstrance containing the divine Host was placed above the altar, I lost all thought of where I was. I forgot whether it was Paris, Rome, or Messina, and whether the arches above me were those of some magnificent church, or some humble chapel, or a mere oratory like that in which I had prayed from my childhood. What difference did it make? The sun shines everywhere alike, and diffuses equal light in all places. How much more truly shines throughout the whole Catholic world the living, uncreated Light, present on all our altars! Time and place were forgotten. I was once more with my beloved mother, once more with Livia, my [pg 755] sweet, saintly sister, and the faithful Ottavia; and when, at the end of one of those hymns that are usually sung before the Blessed Sacrament, a young voice, pure and clear, uttered the word Patria,[164] it seemed at that moment to have a double meaning, and designate, not only my earthly, but my heavenly country.
To Be Continued.
Pius VI.
Those were terrible days. Even the faithful quailed, and asked each other timidly whether it was possible that God's enemies had at last prevailed, and that the Rock had been shaken and the Word passed away. Voltaire had come and done his work, and gone, leaving a new generation behind him to fight the devil's cause, to flaunt his standard over Christendom, to revile “the Galilean,” and wage war against his church—the subtle, deadly, persevering war of envious hatred, conquered impotence, malignant fury. There was a shout of hellish triumph throughout the ranks of Voltaire's disciples; it seemed as if their victory was now secure; the old man of the Vatican, who for generations had remained unconquerable as fate, was in the power of the soldier who had conquered fate, who held Europe in the hollow of his hand, who raised up kings with a nod, and overthrew dynasties with a word. He had overcome the world, why should he not overcome the pope? He had demolished a score of thrones, why should he not annihilate this fisherman's chair that for seventeen centuries had defied the combined forces of the world? Poor fools! Why not!
Jean Angelo Braschi was born at Cesena on the 27th of December, 1717, of a noble but poor family. His parents left him all the patrimony they had, a faith of the royal antique sort, and an education worthy of the name he bore. He was little more than a boy when Clement XIV. saw of what stuff the young cleric was made, and appointed him his secretary. This was Braschi's first step on the ladder which was to lead him to the perilous heights of the purple—“the dye of empire and of martyrdom.”
When Clement XIV., pursued by the entreaties and threats of European potentates, yielded a weak concession to their cabals, and spoke of “reform” to the general of the Jesuits (who answered, Loyola-like, in royal scorn of the implied calumny: Sint ut sunt, aut non sint), Braschi, then cardinal, took his stand by their side, resented every outrage offered to the sons of Ignatius, those courtiers of martyrdom in all ages, and thus vindicated his future claim to a place in the palm-bearers' ranks. He opened his house to the persecuted Jesuits; he [pg 756] braved everything in his unswerving, uncompromising fidelity to their order. What else could befall him but the crown of the confessor or the martyr?