Last Tales (3 page)

To the household and to the friends of the house the little boy remained Atanasio. Only on a marble tablet in the family mausoleum was the name of Dionysio preserved.

As to Don Lega Zambelli, whose negligence had caused the disaster, his happy days as the Prince’s adviser and comforter were over. He was dismissed from the villa, gave up his ecclesiastical career, and after many vicissitudes became accountant to an illustrious English milord. Atanasio happened to meet his father’s former chaplain on the day before he was ordained priest, and mused upon the part which this fat man had played in his young life.

It was during the years which followed the catastrophe that Princess Benedetta’s beauty, her talents and her rare gaiety of heart blossomed out. It has been said, earlier in
this story, that at one time of her life she had learned to dream. By now she had done with dreaming and stood in need of reality.

Her son, who had known her in no other quality than that of a great lady of the world, later in life tried to form for himself a picture of the young Benedetta.

“Dear Mother,” he thought, “you were ever a loyal and dauntless seeker of happiness. You willed the world to be a glorious place and life a fine and sweet undertaking. A man in your situation might have been perplexed and bewildered to the extent of losing confidence in his own judgment, giving up realities and taking refuge in illusions. But your sex possesses sources and resources of its own; it changes its blood at celestial order, and to a fair woman her beauty will be the one unfailing and indisputable reality. A very lovely woman, such as yourself, may indeed feel freest and most secure upon an edge or a pinpoint in life, with this reality as her balancing pole. You had been, till now, a small boat upon the great waters of existence, striving only, amongst its swells and breakers, to keep afloat and on an even keel, and looking to the stars for guidance. Now you set sail and stood out, gallantly making headway against tide and current, a full-rigged sailer. And O my dear Mother, in your arrogance and exuberance there was ever much deep humility!” He might even, here, with a sigh quote to himself the lines of a great poet: “Humility, and that I never had!”

So indeed daily life in the palazzo or the villa of the young Princess was gradually turned into a majestic and graceful regatta, with gay streamers flying. Its circle of friends grew to include all that the country contained of wit, splendor, elegance and romanticism, and outside the gate of the palazzo the poor of the streets would crowd to see its mistress stepping into her carriage, and cry out: “Bella! Bella!”

The Prince, at first watching the career of his wife with surprise and anxiety, before he knew of it was overpowered and laid low. In the course of years he came to accept, in
sublime glow, the role of a saintly, dethroned king. Possibly his vanity even found a kind of melancholy gratification in the renown and glory of his palazzo and in the envy of other palazzos. To the eyes of the world the princely spouses from then on remained on befitting terms of stately amicability.

Little Atanasio grew up in this house, without realizing it himself, a highly important figure in it. Prominent tutors and preceptors to the two young Princes, of all subjects of learning, came and went in the halls. Ercole, the heir to the name and its future perpetuator, was trained in all accomplishments of a nobleman and a courtier, while Atanasio was schooled in Greek and Hebrew and the Fathers of the Church, and at times sent a longing glance toward the worldlier exercises. Still, as the elder brother wished to have the younger constantly by his side and was found to make faster progress when he partook of his lessons, the quick-witted and industrious little boy managed to become a fair horseman and to acquire skill on the harpsichord and in a minuet. He was a favorite in his mother’s circle and at home in the great world; he was as happy on horseback as with the classics and, during the family’s sojourns at the villa, he took delight in lonely wanderings in the mountains.

All the same, Madame, the task of existing and growing up was not an easy one to this child. It will never be an easy task to a child who, in the relation to father and mother, finds himself placed in the line of fire between two belligerent fortresses. But it was particularly exacting to the boy of whom we are speaking inasmuch as here father and mother did view his small person in totally different lights, did in fact see him as two totally different personalities.

To his father he was from the beginning the Prince of the Church and the glory of his name. While the Prince kept his son to his Latin and Greek and allowed him little freedom and no levity, there was ever in his extremely dignified manner toward the prelate-to-be a little touch of reverence. To the mother the pretty boy—apart from being his own adorable
self—was the child-prophet of earthly beauty and delight. She spent much time in his company, was even annoyed when her love affairs took her away from him, and in her smiles and sighs made him her confidant, as if she wished to see his little figure in the classical role of Cupid loosening his mother’s girdle. The child was thus at an early age schooled in the art of equipoise.

He kept his small head by adopting and perfecting, in the innocent manner of a child, the doubleness of his elders. He saw the lovely and beloved form of his mother with the eyes of the priest, the spiritual physician and gardener, watching her with tenderness and forbearance, and at times gently remonstrating with her and imposing upon her light, graceful penances. He saw his father with the eyes of the artist, and followed the stern figure with the attention and approval with which a connoisseur follows the movements of an accomplished actor or ballet dancer. To the perception of this child-connoisseur his papa was the brilliant, finishing coal-black brush stroke within the exquisite color scheme of the palazzo. The papa himself, who had never been a picturesque figure to anyone, faintly sensed the fact; as the boy grew up he became almost indispensable to his father.

In this way the hand of a child out of the elements of an anomalous family life produced a reconciling synthesis.

It is seemly, here, to say a few words about Ercole. The heir to the name—otherwise a taciturn and sullen boy, who showed no partiality to any human being, and only distinguished himself by growing up to a most unusual height—all through their childhood together displayed a staunch and loyal friendship toward his little brother. In the life of Atanasio he was, during that time, a support and a comfort, possibly on account of the fact that he had but one eye.

At the age of twenty-one the young Prince was ordained to the priesthood, and six months later his brother and friend quite suddenly died from nothing more alarming than a cold in the head caught at a levee. Out of the three
sons born to Pompilio and Benedetta, Atanasio was now the sole heir to the great name and wealth of the family. In the course of time the old Prince completed his role on the stage of life, draped his grandeur and loneliness round him in heavy folds of black marble, and lay down to rest in the mausoleum, at Dionysio’s side. Even that fair lady the Princess Benedetta, like to a child at eventide, yawned and let go of her dolls. Her son, by then a bishop, had the happiness of administering extreme unction to her.

“I have seen your mother,” said the lady in the armchair. “She was a friend of Mama’s and, when I was a very little girl, from time to time came to the house—in the most lovely frocks and bonnets! I adored her because she could smile and weep at the same time. She made me a present of a bowl of goldfish.”

“A week ago,” said the Cardinal, “in going through the drawers of an old cabinet, I came upon a small flask of the perfume which she had made for her in Bologna—the recipe will have been lost by now. The flask was empty, but still gave out a faint fragrance. A multitude of things were in it, all in one. Smiles, as you say, and tears, dauntlessness and fear, unconquerable hope and the certainty of failure—in short: what will, I suppose, be found in the belongings of most deceased ladies.”

“And so her son,” said the lady after a pause, “early trained in the art of equipoise, was left to promenade in the high places of this world, in one single magnificently harmonious form, two incompatible personalities.”

“Oh, no, Madame,” said the Cardinal, “use not that word. Speak not of incompatibility. Verily, I tell you: you may meet one of the two, speak to him and listen to him, confide in him and be comforted by him, and at the hour of parting be unable to decide with which of them you have spent the day.

“For who,” he continued very slowly, “who, Madame, is
the man who is placed, in his life on earth, with his back to God and his face to man, because he is God’s mouthpiece, and through him the voice of God is given forth? Who is the man who has no existence of his own—because the existence of each human being is his—and who has neither home nor friends nor wife—because his hearth is the hearth of and he himself is the friend and lover of all human beings?”

“Alas!” whispered the lady.

“Pity him not, this man,” said the Cardinal. “Doomed he will be, it is true, and forever lonely, and wherever he goes his commission will be that of breaking hearts, because the sacrifice of God is a broken and contrite heart. Yet the Lord indemnifies his mouthpiece. If he is without potency, he has been given a small bit of omnipotence. Calmly, like a child in his father’s house binding and loosening his favorite dogs, he will bind the influence of Pleiades and loose the bands of Orion. Like a child in his father’s house ordering about his servants, he will send lightnings, that they may go and say to him: ‘Here we are.’ Just as the gate of the citadel is opened to the vice-regent, the gates of death have been opened to him. And as the heir apparent will have been entrusted with the regalia of the King, he knows where light dwells, and as to darkness, where is the place thereof.”

“Alas!” the lady again whispered.

The Cardinal smiled a little.

“Oh, do not sigh, dear and kind lady,” he said. “The servant was neither forced nor lured into service. Before taking him on, his Master spoke straightly and fairly to him. ‘You are aware,’ he said, ‘that I am almighty. And you have before you the world which I have created. Now give me your opinion on it. Do you take it that I have meant to create a peaceful world?’ ‘No, my Lord,’ the candidate replied. ‘Or that I have,’ the Lord asked, ‘meant to create a pretty and neat world?’ ‘No, indeed,’ answered the youth. ‘Or a world easy to live in?’ asked the Lord. ‘O good Lord, no!’ said the candidate. ‘Or do you,’ the Lord asked for the last time, ‘hold
and believe that I have resolved to create a sublime world, with all things necessary to the purpose in it, and none left out?’ ‘I do,’ said the young man. ‘Then,’ said the Master, ‘then, my servant and mouthpiece, take the oath!’

“But if indeed,” the Cardinal went on after a moment, “your kind heart yearns to melt in compassion, I may tell you, at the same time, that to this chosen officeholder of the Lord—so highly favored in many things—certain spiritual benefits, granted to other human beings, are indeed withheld.”

“Of what benefits are you speaking?” she asked in a low voice.

“I am speaking,” he answered, “of the benefit of remorse. To the man of whom we speak it is forbidden. The tears of repentance, in which the souls of nations are blissfully cleansed, are not for him. Quod fecit, fecit!”

He was silent for a second, then added thoughtfully: “In this way, because of his steadfast renunciation of repentance, and even though he be rejected as a judge and as a human being, Pontius Pilate took immortal rank amongst these elect at the moment when he proclaimed: ‘Quod scripsi, scripsi.’

“For the man of whom I speak,” he once more added, after a longer pause, “within the play and strife of this world, is the bow of the Lord.”

“…  the arrow of which,” the lady exclaimed, “each time strikes the heart!”

“An ingenious
jeu-de-mots
, Madame,” said he and laughed, “but I myself used the word in a different sense and had in mind that frail implement, mute in itself, which in the hand of the master will bring out all music that stringed instruments contain, and be at the same time medium and creator.

“Then answer me now, Madame,” he concluded, “who is this man?”

“It is the artist,” she answered slowly.

“You are right,” he said. “It is the artist. And who more?”

“The priest,” said the lady.

“Yes,” said the Cardinal.

She rose from her chair, dropping her lace mantilla over the back and arms of it, walked up to the window and looked out, first down into the street, then up into the sky. She came back, but remained standing, as in the beginning of the conversation.

“Your Eminence,” she said, “in answer to a question, has been telling me a story, in which my friend and teacher is the hero. I see the hero of the story very clearly, as if luminous even, and on a higher plane. But my teacher and adviser—and my friend—is farther away than before. He no more looks to me quite human, and alas, I am not sure that I am not afraid of him.”

The Cardinal lifted an ivory paper-knife from the table, turned it between his fingers and put it down.

“Madame,” he said, “I have been telling you a story. Stories have been told as long as speech has existed, and
sans
stories the human race would have perished, as it would have perished
sans
water. You will see the characters of the true story clearly, as if luminous and on a higher plane, and at the same time they may look not quite human, and you may well be a little afraid of them. That is all in the order of things. But I see, Madame,” he went on, “I see, today, a new art of narration, a novel literature and category of belles-lettres, dawning upon the world. It is, indeed, already with us, and it has gained great favor amongst the readers of our time. And this new art and literature—for the sake of the individual characters in the story, and in order to keep close to them and not be afraid—will be ready to sacrifice the story itself.

“The individuals of the new books and novels—one by one—are so close to the reader that he will feel a bodily warmth flowing from them, and that he will take them to his bosom and make them, in all situations of his life, his companions, friends and advisers. And while this interchange of sympathy
goes on, the story itself loses ground and weight and in the end evaporates, like the bouquet of a noble wine, the bottle of which has been left uncorked.”