The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864

Suddenly his chair, for he was professor in the medical college, was taken from him: a warning, thought his friends, that unfriendly eyes were upon him; and so, also, thought some of his patients, and called in a new physician. Still his general practice continued large; and although he found a little more time for his wife,—for a father to sit in, in darkness and silence, and recall the sunny faces and sweet prattle of his children. But he felt that unseen eyes might be watching him even there, and that a sigh, though breathed never so softly, might reach the ears of some who would rejoice in it and come all the more confidently to the work they had resolved to do upon him. So, setting down his lamp, he made two or three turns across the room, and then, drawing out his watch, as if to assure himself that it was bedtime, deliberately undressed and went to bed.

And to sleep?

You will not call him coward, if with closed eyes he lay wakeful upon his pillow, thinking over the last hour with a heart that beat quick, though it faltered not, listening vainly for some sound to break the unearthly silence, and longing for daylight, if, indeed, the light of day was permitted to visit that lonely cell. It came at last, the daylight,—though not as it was wont to come to him in his own dear home, with a fresh morning breath and a fresher song of birds, waking familiar voices and greeted with endearing accents. How would it be in that home this morning? How had it been there through the slow hours of that feverish night? How was it to be thenceforth with those precious ones, and with him too, whom they all looked to for guidance and counsel?

He got up and dressed himself a little more carefully than usual, resolved that there should be no outside telltales of the thoughts that were struggling within. He had hardly finished dressing when the door opened. Neither footsteps in the corridor nor the turning of the key had he heard, but there stood a familiar of the Inquisition, friar in dress, and with the stony face of a man accustomed to live by lamp-light and talk in whispers. He brought the prisoner's breakfast,—coffee and bread. "You have been listening," thought M–; "but I will be even with you." And to make a fair start, he refused to touch either the bread or the coffee until the familiar had tasted both.

The morning passed slowly, though he helped it along as well as he could by repeating verses and writing a sonnet on the wall with his pencil. Dinner came: a good meal, more substantial than dungeon-air could give an appetite for; but he ate it. Supper followed,—brought by the same silent familiar who had served breakfast and dinner, and who still came with the same noiseless step, set the dishes upon the table, tasted the food as the Doctor bade him, and then went silently away.

Five days passed, slowly, monotonously, wearily. Five nights of unwelcome dreams and sleep that brought no rest. The close air and narrow bounds began to tell upon his appetite and strength. He had soon gone over his poets. Fortunately, they were well chosen and would bear repeating. The fountain in his own mind, too, was still full, and he found great relief in declaiming extempore verses in a loud voice, and writing out those that pleased him best. But could he hold out? for it was evidently intended to wear him down by anxiety and solitude, and when they had broken his spirits bring him to an examination.

At last a new face appeared: not cold like that of the familiar, nor wreathed in smiles like that of a successful enemy, but wearing a decent expression of gravity tempered by compassion. And "How do you do, Doctor?" asked the visitor in a soothing voice, trained like his face to tell lies at his bidding.

"Well, Father, perfectly well."

"I am very glad to hear it. I was afraid your appetite might have suffered from the sudden change in your mode of life."

"Not in the least. I have a sound stomach, and can digest anything you send me."

"And how do you contrive to pass your time? For so active a man, the change is very great."

"Oh, that is easy enough. I am very fond of poetry, and have such a good memory that I know volumes of it by heart. There is nothing pleasanter than repeating verses that you like,—except, perhaps, making verses yourself."

"Do you ever compose?"

"I? It has always been my favorite pastime. Would you like to hear some of my verses?"

The sympathizing father was, of course, too happy; and M– recited, in his most effective manner, a sonnet, not very complimentary to eavesdroppers and spies. A shadow passed over the monk's face; but he was too well trained to let out his feelings prematurely; and resuming the conversation as if nothing had occurred to disturb his equanimity, he told M– in his softest tone that he hoped there had been nothing in his treatment to complain of. M– sprang to his feet.

"Oh, this, by Heaven, is too much, even from you! Nothing to complain of! To tear the father of a family from the arms of his wife and children, a physician from patients who are looking to him for life and health,—and nothing to complain of!"

It was just the question he wanted; and partly from design, and partly from irrepressible indignation, he poured out a torrent of invective and reproach which soon sent his visitor away, perfectly convinced that the spirit they had undertaken to break had not yet begun to bend.

Five more weary days, and then began the examination,—cautious, minute, perplexing: questions framed to entangle; charges advanced, not for discussion, but for conviction; a review of the whole course and tenor of his past life; his stories and verses; his jests among friends; sayings that he had forgotten; things that he had done years before, mixed up with things that he had never done; all adroitly commingled, and so skilfully arranged, that, while each seemed comparatively unimportant in itself, each had its place prepared for it with malignant craft and wondrous subtlety; and all taken together forming a network of harmonious evidence from which there seemed no possibility of escape. Familiar as he was with the history of the Holy Office, and aware as he had always been that his steps, like those of every man upon whom suspicion had ever fallen, were dogged by spies, he had never supposed that his daily life had been tracked with such persistence, and so carefully treasured up against him.

He saw his danger, and saw, too, that the course he had resolved upon in the first hour of his arrest was the only course that could save him. Denial would be useless. They expected it and were well prepared for it. But it remained to be seen whether they were equally well prepared for frank confession and adroit interpretation. To every question with regard to acts or words he answered, "Yes, I did so,—I said so,—but"—and then, by putting an unexpected interpretation upon it, he either stripped it of its offensive bearing, or reduced it to an idle jest of which nothing worse could be said than that it was indiscreet.

The fathers were puzzled. For denial they had proofs. Prevarication they were familiar with, and never so happy as when they saw a poor, perplexed, bewildered victim vainly struggling in the toils, driven triumphantly from subterfuge to subterfuge, and at last, with nerveless arms and faltering tongue, dropping hopeless upon his chair, as the conviction forced itself upon him that he was there, not for trial, but for condemnation.

But a bold, self-possessed, self-reliant man, looking them in the face with an eye as keen and scrutinizing as their own, answering every question promptly in a firm voice, and, just as the blow seemed ready to fall, parrying it by a movement so skilful as to compel his adversary to change his ground and gird himself up for a new attack,—this was something which, with all their experience, they had not counted upon, and knew not how to meet. Day after day he was brought to the bar. Hour after hour they laboriously plied question upon question. On their side was the written record,—nothing omitted, nothing forgotten; the words of yesterday close by the words of ten years ago; each accusation propping the others; and every explanation and answer written minutely down, to be brought out unexpectedly, and compared with each new one as it came. On his, a ready wit, perfect self-control, a thorough knowledge of the character of those whom he was dealing with, a remarkable command of language, and a courage that nothing could shake.

It was an exhausting process, and the Inquisitors, like the royal patron of their institution, well knew that time was a powerful ally. Still they resolved to call in a new one to their aid. M– was known to be very fond of his family; and long experience had taught the reverend fathers that even the manliest heart may be shaken by a sudden awakening of tender emotions. The examinations were discontinued. For three days M– was left to the solitude of his cell,—a solitude deeper and more unnerving from contrast with the mental tension of the last fortnight. Then, at the usual hour of examination, the door opened. The usual attendants were in waiting. "Now for a new trial of wits," thought he, as he rose to follow them. Then it occurred to him that it might be for sentence that he was summoned; and while he was weighing the probabilities, and calling up his strength for the occasion, he reached the door, the attendants threw it open, and he found himself in the presence, not of his judges, but of his wife and children. Pale, bewildered, looking timidly towards him, through eyes dim with tears, there they stood, utterly at a loss what to say or what to do.

He felt his heart bound. But he saw the snare, and, repressing his emotions by a powerful effort, held out his hand instead of opening his arms, and bidding them, cheer up and give themselves no uneasiness about him, and above all not to let their enemies fancy that either he or they would be cast down by anything that they could do, he calmly turned to the guards, and told them, that, if that stale trick was all they had brought him there for, they had better take him back to his cell.

Meanwhile his friends were not idle: and he had friends, as I have already hinted, even in the sacred college. With a cardinal on your side, you may do many things in Rome which it would hardly answer to venture upon without him; for who can tell but that that Cardinal may one day be Pope? The precise nature of the accusation lodged against him M– never knew; but he had gathered enough from the interrogatories to feel that he had got lightly off, when he found himself condemned to say his prayers and read books of devotion three months in a convent, with the privilege of walking in the garden and talking theology with the elder brethren.

And thus the old man whom Bunyan's English Pilgrim saw in the cave by the way-side two hundred years ago still sits there, biting his nails and grinning, not altogether impotently, at Roman Pilgrims, to this very day.

The Congregation of the Holy Office is composed of thirteen cardinals, one of whom is secretary, and an assessor, a commissary, counsellors, and several officers taken from the prelates and regular orders. The Pope himself is Prefect. The counsellors meet on Mondays in the Palace of the Inquisition; the whole body on Wednesdays in the Convent of the Minerva,—where St. Dominic still smiles upon his faithful followers,—and Thursdays before the Pope. The examination of their records and the opening of their prisons, during the brief existence of the "Roman Republic" of 1849, showed that these meetings were not always mere matters of form.

The Congregation of the Index was founded by Pius V., in order to relieve the Holy Office of that part of its duties which relates to written and printed thought: censorship of the press would be the proper term, if censorship, even in its most rigid form, did not fall short of the attributes and functions of this odious tribunal. It is composed of cardinals and ecclesiastics, many of them distinguished by their learning, some, doubtless, by their piety,—but all leagued together, and solemnly pledged to sleepless warfare against every form of intellectual freedom. Without their approbation no manuscript can be seat to the press, no new editions issued, no thought promulgated. Even the stone-carver is not permitted to use his chisel until they have decided how far love or pride may go in commemoration of the dead. They mutilate, with equal sovereignty of will, the printed pages of a classic and the manuscript of an unknown scribbler,—sit in judgment upon Botta and Laplace, as their predecessors sat in judgment upon Guicciardini and Galileo,—and, in the fervor of their undiscriminating zeal, condemn Robertson and Gibbon, Reid and Hume, the skeptic Bolingbroke and the pious Addison, to the same fiery purgation. That Italian literature was not crushed by them long ago is, perhaps, the strongest proof of the irrepressible vigor and marvellous vitality of the Italian mind. Not to be on the "Index" would call a blush to the cheek of the most unambitious of authors,—would carry a presumption of worthlessness with it from which even the penny-a-liner would shrink with dismay,—and to the poet and historian would sound like a sentence of perpetual exclusion from all those cherished hopes which irradiate with heavenly light the steep and thorny paths of intellectual renown.

Next to these in importance is the Congregation of the "Propaganda," or of that celebrated institution for the propagation of the Roman Catholic religion which, since the reign of Gregory XV., has governed, as from a common centre, the immense network of missions that Christian Rome has spread over the lands she hopes to conquer, as Pagan Rome spread her network of military roads over the lands which she had already reduced to subjection. Cardinals, with a cardinal for prefect and a prelate for secretary, compose this congregation, which holds regular meetings twice a month, and, not unfrequently, extraordinary meetings in the presence of the Pope. In these the important questions of the missionary world are discussed, reports examined, new missions proposed, new missionaries appointed, new bishoprics founded "among the heathen," and all these complicated interests taken into impartial consideration.

For here, at least, there is little room for heart-burnings and jealousies. It is of equal importance to all that the conquests of the Church should be extended to the utmost limits of the earth, the heathen converted, and heretics won back to the fold. While John Eliot was translating the Bible into a language which no one has been left to read, and his Puritan brethren were hanging and shooting the Indians whom they had neither the patience to win by their teaching nor the charity to enlighten by their example, Indians from the true Indies were preparing themselves in the halls of the Propaganda to carry the healing promises of the gospel to the fathers and mothers who had watched over their heathen infancy. In the record of the great things that Rome has done, there is nothing greater than the foundation of the Propaganda,—no conception so worthy of a steadfast faith, or more in harmony with the spirit of the Saviour of mankind. To borrow the helpless child, and restore him a helpful man,—to enlist the sympathies of birth, and secure for themselves the eloquence of natural affection,—to overleap the barriers of race and elude the sensitiveness of national pride by putting the doctrines they sought to diffuse into mouths which, untainted by repulsive accents, could enforce new truths by well-known images and familiar illustrations,—was like laying anew the foundations of the Capitol, and consecrating that spirit of worldly wisdom wherein ancient Rome was never found wanting by that spirit of Christian philanthropy which modern Rome has always claimed as her peculiar distinction.

But alas that a twenty-minutes' walk should take us from the Piazza di Spagna to the Via di Sant' Uffizio!

The other ecclesiastical functions of government are performed in a similar way: one congregation superintending the churches of Rome and its district, under the title of Visita Apostolica; one, the ceremonies of the Church; one, ecclesiastical immunities; one, sacred rites; one, indulgences and relies. Questions relative to bishops, bishoprics, and the regular orders are intrusted to four congregations, under different and appropriate names. St. Peter's has a special congregation for itself, and not the least dignified and important of them; for, besides eight cardinals and four prelates, it commands the official services of the Auditor of the Apostolic Chamber, the Treasurer, a judge of the Rota, a comptroller, an attorney-general, a secretary, and several counsellors-at-law. Not St. Peter's only, but all the churches of Rome, come in for a share of their attention; and what is more important, they form a court of probate, with exclusive jurisdiction over all wills containing charitable bequests, or bequests to heretics and strangers, fugitives, exiles, or the dead. Even a doubt as to the probability of being able to execute the bequest according to the wishes of the testator, or an apparent contradiction in the devises themselves, brings the will within the jurisdiction of this tribunal; and should the legatee, after full experience of the law's delay, succeed in obtaining a favorable decree, the income of his legacy, from the death of the testator to the publication of the decision, is sequestrated to the treasury of the church of St. Peter's. Few congregations are more assiduous in the performance of their duties.

A criminal court of appeals, with the appellation of Sacra Consulta,—how this sacred meets you at every turn!—a council called Buon Governo, for the superintendence of municipal administration,—one for roads, fountains, and water-courses, called the General Prefecture of Waters and Roads,—a Council of "Economy," a Council of Studies, a Council for the Examination of Accounts, in which four laymen sit side by side with four prelates, under the presidency of a cardinal, and the Congregation of the Census for the apportionment of taxes on real estate in the country, form the seven civil congregations by which the Pope is assisted in his labors, and the cardinals and prelates brought in to a share of the administration. Add to these sixteen tribunals, or courts, civil and ecclesiastical, two Secretaries of State, a Secretary of Briefs and one of Memorials, a Camerlengo, a Treasurer, and a Governor of Rome, and you have an outline of the Roman Government under Gregory XVI.

The Secretaries of State are always cardinals; the Camerlengo, who is the official head of government during the vacancies of the Holy See, a cardinal; the Treasurer and Governor of Rome, prelates, who, on leaving office, become cardinals by right. The only part of this complex machinery which was intrusted to laymen was the Tribunal of the Capitol and the Tribunal of Commerce: the latter an institution of Pius VII., and directly connected with the Chamber of Commerce, from whose fifteen members two of its three judges are chosen, while the third is furnished by the bar; the former, the feeble representative of all that is left of the municipal government of Rome.

Rome has sixty noble families who enjoy the title of Conscript. From these are chosen, every three months, three Conservatori and a Prior of the Wards, who form a committee for the superintendence of the walls and public monuments, and for the administration of the income of the Capitoline Chamber. If we look at them in connection with the ancient government of Rome, we shall find them employed in functions not unlike those of the Ædiles. From the same point of view, the Senator may be said to resemble the City Prefect; although, when you see him on public days, standing like a statue on the steps of the Pontifical throne, above the prelates, but a little lower than the cardinals, you can think neither of prefect nor of senate, nor of anything that recalls the days when Romans acknowledged no superior but the fellow-citizens whom they themselves had chosen as representatives of their sovereign will.

It requires no very profound examination of this system to see that it is purely and rigidly ecclesiastical. The ecclesiastical leaven penetrates it in every part. Wherever you go, either for business or for amusement, you find some representative of the Church. Whichever way you turn, you see keen eyes peering upon you from under a three-cornered hat or a cowl. And even when the path seems for a while to be leading you back to the world, through rows of shops, under the windows of bankers, within sight of sails and steam, or within sound of humming wheels, there are still shrines and oratories numberless by the way, and a church or a convent at the end.

Elective sovereign by origin, the moment the Pope ascends the throne, he becomes absolute. Authority and honors proceed from him as from their legitimate source. Money bears his image and superscription. Monuments are inscribed with his name. Laws and decrees are promulgated as voluntary emanations of his sovereign will. As head of the Church, all spiritual interests are under his protection. As chief of the State, all temporal interests are subject to his control. He reigns, not merely like other sovereigns, by the "grace of God," but by a peculiar privilege and inherent right, as Vicar of Christ. Resistance to his will is not simply rebellion, but the deeper and deadlier sin of sacrilege. His interpretation relieves the mind from the agony of doubt; his blessing frees the conscience from the burden of sin. And how, if earnest-minded and sincere, can he fail to look upon the interests of the State as subordinate to the interests of the Church, and interpret his duties and obligations as the legatee of Constantine by his feelings and convictions as the successor of St. Peter?

In the practical exercise of this authority be feels the want of other eyes to help him see and other hands to help him do. He cannot read all that is to be read, or write all that is to be written, or even hear and say all that is to be heard and said. However great his love of detail, there are details which he cannot reach. However comprehensive his glance, or unwearied his industry, there are objects that lie beyond the compass of his vision, and labor to be performed which no industry can bring within the human allotment of twenty-four hours.

Therefore, reserving to himself the final decision, he distributes the various functions of government among his official counsellors and those from whom new counsellors are to be chosen. He spreads an elaborate network over all the interests and functions of the State, holding the line in his own hand, and drawing or relaxing it at his own pleasure. He is still the lawgiver and the judge, dictating according to his own judgment, and deciding according to his own conviction. Of his laws there is no revision; from his sentence there is no appeal. The duties of the subject are defined by the rights of the sovereign; and of those rights he is the sole and absolute judge.

Hence a consciousness of power ever present and supreme, extending to all that has been left him of the common relations of life,—to the hour of business and the hour of repose, to the hall of audience and the garden-walk, and giving equally its deceptive coloring to the thoughts that stir him when borne on the shoulders of men through a prostrate crowd, and those that flit dimly through his brain as he lays a weary head upon a solitary pillow. And hence, too, he becomes for himself, as well as for others, an object of constant contemplation,—valuing things as they contribute to his pleasure, and men as they subject themselves to his will,—not always cruel in heart, even when his acts are cruel, nor unfeeling when he inflicts unmerited suffering and needless pain, but seeming both cruel and unfeeling, because education and habit have dried up within him that fount of human sympathies which Nature has set in the heart of man at his birth, that he might ever bear something about him to remind him of a mother's tenderness and a father's pride.

If that be the best government wherein all the moral and intellectual faculties of the governed receive their fullest development, and the responsibility of the sovereign is made so immediate that he can neither lose sight of it nor escape from its obligations, that surely must be the worst in which one man thinks and judges for all, and, by an unnatural union of spiritual and temporal attributes, is raised above all human responsibility,—a theocracy, with man to interpret the will of God, and to enforce his own interpretations.

CONCORD

MAY 23, 1864

How beautiful it was, that one bright day
In the long week of rain!
Though all its splendor could not chase away
The omnipresent pain.

The lovely town was white with apple-blooms,
And the great elms o'erhead
Dark shadows wove on their aërial looms,
Shot through with golden thread.

Across the meadows, by the gray old manse,
The historic river flowed:—
I was as one who wanders in a trance,
Unconscious of his road.