POTTS VILLE FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY POTTSVILLE, PA. THOMAS H. SCHOLLENBERGER COLLECTION THE BEQUEST OF HIS SISTER MRS. SARAH R. BARTHOLOMEW I. A SAINT. IHM *-—•»-§•£ ^_ ' m PISA. A SAINT TRANSLATED FROM cU PAUL BOURGET'S " PASTELS. OF MEN" BY KATHARLXE PRESCOTT WORMELEY . ILLUSTRATED BY P. CHABAS BOSTON ROBERTS BROTHERS i895 ?Q • if Copyright, 1804, By Roberts Brothers. SJnibrrsitg ^SJrrss : John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Pack Pisa Frontispiece " Vigorously washing-in a water-color presentment of the woman in the 'triumph of death '" ... 9 ■ a long dinner-table with few places laid because the winter season has not yet begun" .... ii '•The door opened to admit a couple" 19 • i found myself ten minutes later walking along the quay with this stkanger" 25 Monte Chi a ro • • 3S 'These are the quarters which I give to guests" . 44 "Many monks, some thinking only of another world" 46 " Having lighted the little wick,- he began to move the flame here and there along the wall" . . 56 "That's a very fine coin, and extremely rare" . . 65 "The Abb£ saw by my face that I had something important to say" 73 "Grasping both the young man's hands affection- ately" 78 54108 A SAINT. To Madame George S. R. T. I WAS travelling in Italy in the month of October, 188- with no other object than to get rid of a few weeks in again seeing, this time at my leisure, a number of my favorite masterpieces. The pleasure of a second impression has always been to me move vivid than that of the first ; doubtless because I have ever felt the beauty of the arts as a writer, — that is to say, as a man who requires that a picture or a statue should, in the first instance, be a text for thought. Not an aesthetic reason, and one at which all painters who are painters indeed will scoff. And yet this reason alone had brought me, in the month of Oc- tober of which I speak, to spend a few days at Tisa. I wished to live over again, at my ease, the dream of Benozzo Gozzoli and Orcagna. Here, in a parenthesis, let mu say, so as not to seem in the eyes of connoisseurs too ignorant of art, that 8 TASTELS OF MEN. I call by the name of Orcagna the painter of the " Triumph of Death " in the Campo Santo of the old town, knowing well that modern criticism questions his paternity of the work. But to me, and to all those whose memory cherishes the admirable lines of Pianto on the tragic fresco, Orcagna is, and ever will be, the sole author of it. At any rate, Benozzo has not lost, through the sceptical and fatal criticism of catalogues, his right and title to the decoration of the west wall of the cemetery. "What intense sensations have I net felt in this little corner of the world, remembering ever that Byron and Shelley lived in the ancient Tuscan town, that my dear master, M. Taine, has de- scribed the adjoining spot in the most eloquent of his eloquent pages, that the lyrical poet Pianto came here, and that Benozzo Gozzoli himself, the laborious toiler of painted poesy, lies buried at the foot of the wall on which his frescos are softly fading. In that enclosure of the Pisan Campo Santo, on the sacred earth brought thither in pious ages, I had watched the springtide calling the pale narcissi into bloom at the feet of the black cypresses ; I had seen the winters shedding light flakes of snow, melted as soon as fallen ; I had felt the torrid sky of an Italian summer weltering above that shadeless spot with crushing heat ; and yet I had not exhausted the charm of it, for I now returned there in the ' "Vigorously washing-in a water-color presentment of the woman in the 'Triumph of Death.' " — Page 9. A SAINT. 9 autumn of which I speak, — little expecting the moral drama in which this visit was to involve rue, if not as an actor at least as a deeply inter- ested spectator, though somewhat against my will. The first episode of this drama was, like that of many others, a rather commonplace incident, which I nevertheless relate with pleasure, though it has but slight connection with my tale. It evokes for me the pleasant recollection of two English old mnids. During my visits to the Campo Santo I had noticed this couple, who, by reason of their singular ugliness and the utilita- rian oddity of their clothes, seemed a living and caricatural illustration of a certain poet's tender address to the dead : — " Thou bast no longer sex or age." The browner of the two (the other might possibly pass for a ruddy blonde) was vigor- ously washing-in a water-color presentment of the woman in the " Triumph of Death ; " the one who faces you, in the cavalcade to the left, with her candid eyes and her sensitive mouth, — eyes and mouth which have never lied, and which are never forgotten when once we have loved them. The worthy Englishwoman was totally devoid of talent, but her choice of this subject and the conscientiousness of her work interested me. 10 PASTELS OF MEN. Consequently, as these spinsters lived at my hotel, I had somewhat indiscreetly yielded to my curiosity so far as to look for their names on the register. I found that one was named Miss Mary Dobson, the other Miss Clara Roberts. They were about fifty years of age, and were now making that tour "abroad," as they call it, which thousands of their courageous colleagues in celibacy (forced or voluntary) undertake annually from the island shores of Great Britain. The sisterhood start in pairs, in threes, some- times in fours. Behold them thus alone for fifteen or twenty months ; installed in myste- rious boarding-houses, the addresses of which are known and transmitted by the whole free- masonry of travelling spinsters ; learning new languages in spite of their gray hairs ; applying themselves with heroic perseverance to under- stand the arts ; passing through evil places with their purity, which is that of the angels, un- tainted ; ever in quest of an English church, an English cemetery, and an English chemist, — not to speak of the tea which they never fail to prepare after the British fashion in the depths of Calabria or far up the Nile at the precise hour they are in the habit of imbibing it in their drawing-rooms in Kent or Devonshire. I have such an admiration for the moral courage which lurks behind the absurd exteriors of these curious beings that in the course of my too frequent ?* "A long- dinner-table with few places laid because the winter season has not yet begun." — Page 11. A SAINT. 11 vagabondizing I take pains to enter into con- versation with them, — all the more, perhaps, because 1 have discovered that the passion for facts which rules their race makes them not infrequently very useful to consult. They are sure to have verified every statement in the "uide-book ; and whoever has wandered, Baedeker in hand, through a remote region of Italy, will readily admit that such verifications are precious. Therefore, on the third evening of my stay at Pisa, the departure of certain guests having brought my place at the table d'hote next to that of the two old maids, I began a conversation with them, quite sure that they would not reject so good an opportunity to " practise their French." You now see the stage-setting, do you not ? — a room in an old palace transformed into a hotel dining-room, with more or less modern furniture, the ceiling frescoed in lively colors, a long dinner-table with few places laid because the winter season has not yet begun. On the table, swaying in their brass holders, are the fiaschi, those delightful long-necked flasks, with their bellies wrapped in osier and filled with the wine of so-called Chianti. If the little mountain of that name supplies enough to fill all the bottles which are labelled thus it certainly must yield, at the least, a harvest a week. But the false Chianti is a true and good wine, the flavor of which, though rather sharp, tastes of the 12 PASTELS OF MEN. grape ; and the glow of it colors the cheeks of the seven or eight persons who chance to be stranded for the time being around the table, — a German couple, making the classic wedding journey on this side the Alps ; a Milanese mer- chant, with a face both sly and sensual ; two Genoese burghers visiting the neighborhood, and now in Pisa to meet their nephew, a cavalry officer. The latter is dining at the table d'hote in captain's uniform, dashing, jovial, and speak- ing in loud tones with the rather guttural accent of the Riviera. His talk, interspersed with laughter, gives me the odyssey of his parents, in which I should be more interested if Miss Mary Bobson had not suddenly broached a subject which roused me, passionate quattrocentist that I am, the lover of frescos and paintings on wood before the sixteenth century. Miss Mary was the darker of the two spin- sters, she whose water-color brushes had so flattened and dulled the rude design of the primitive master ; and after a long dissertation on the problem as to whether the famous " Triumph " was to be attributed to Buonamico Buffalmaco or to Nardo Daddi she suddenly addressed me as follows : — " Have you been to the convent of Monte- Chiaro?" ' " Do you mean the one between Pisa and Lucca, on the mountain the other side of Ver- A SAINT. 13 ruca ? " I replied. " Well, no ; the guide-book says it takes six hours to drive there, and for two poor Luca della Eobbias and a few pictures of the Bologna school which is all they mention — " " What is the date of your guide-book ? " asked Miss Clara, sharply. " I don't know," I said, a little embarrassed by the sarcastic manner in which that mouth with its long teeth questioned me. " The fact is I have a superstition about keeping the same copy that I used when I came to Italy for the first time, — rather long ago, I must admit." " How French that is ! " returned Miss Clara. Instantly I understood her pre-Iiaphaelitism ; it was nothing more than one form of vanity. However, I took no notice of the international sneer, as I might have done by simply repeating the remark and emphasizing the Britannic ben- evolence of it. In dealing with English folk of the aggressive species silence is the true weapon, for it wounds them to the quick of their defect. They hunger and thirst for contradiction, from the combative instinct which inheres in their blood and impels the race to every form of con- quest and proselytism. I therefore bore with the magnanimity of a sage the sharp glance of Miss Clara's blue eyes, which challenged to mortal combat the whole Gallic nation, the more easily perhaps, because Miss Mary interposed, remarking : — 14 PASTELS OF MEN". " The truth is they discovered at Monte- Chiaro about two years ago some very beautiful frescos of your beloved Benozzo, as fresh and brilliant in color as those in the Capello Iiic- cardi at Florence. He was known to have worked in the convent, and he was also known to have painted, among other things, the legend of Saint Thomas. That calumniator Vasari says so. But no trace of this work, which the master must have executed about the time of his Pisan frescos, remained. Now see how things happen. Pom Griffi, the old Benedictine abbe* who has had charge of the convent ever since it was ' nationalized,' ordered a servant to sweep down a spider's web in a corner of one of the cells now used as lodging-rooms for travellers. A bit of plaster was knocked off by the broom. The abbe* sent for a ladder and clambered up, in spite of his three-score years and ten. I ought to tell you that the convent is his idol, his passion. He has seen it peopled by two hundred of his brethren, and he accepted the post of warden after the decree in the full be- lief that he will one day see it restored to what it has been. His sole thought is of the time when the monks will return and find the ancient structure preserved from degradation. That is why he consented to the trying service of giving board and lodging to tourists. He was afraid of an inn at his gates, like that at Monte-Cassin ; A SAINT. 15 he could n't endure the idea of such an inn close beside the convent, with American girls dancing every evening to a piano — " " But he mounted the ladder, and what then ? " I said, to cut short the panegyric on Dom Griffi. I was fearful of a reactionary end in some bigoted Protestant attack ; and in fact, Miss Clara did not lose the opportunity. " I must say," she remarked, profiting by the interruption. " I should never have believed, unless I had known Dom Griffi, that a man could possibly be so intelligent or so useful in a priest's garb." "When he mounted the ladder," said Miss Mary, " he scratched off more of the plaster very carefully. First he found a forehead and eyes, then a mouth, then the whole face of a Christ. All these Italians are born artists ; it runs in their veins. The abbe saw at once that he had a fresco of great value under a layer of plaster." " Those monks," interrupted Miss Clara, " found nothing better to do than to whitewash the masterpieces of the loth century and hide the decorations of the old masters behind their stucco ornamentations and their frescos of a depraved style." " Nevertheless, it was the monks who ordered those very decorations," I said ; " which goes to prove that good or bad taste has nothing to do with religious convictions." 16 PASTELS OF MEN. " Well, naturally," replied the terrible Eng- lishwoman, " being a Parisian you are sceptical." " Let me finish my story," cried Miss Mary, by which I perceived that she was something- more than pre-Uaphaelite, she was kind ; which in these days of vagrant sestheticism is rare. She was visibly distressed by the militant incli- nations of her travelling companion as directed towards me. " Dear Miss Roberts, you shall discuss that subject later, " she said. " The good abbe" pondered how he could clear the wall of the whitewash without endangering the fresco, and this is how he managed it. He glued a cloth to the plaster and let it dry till it held firmly ; then he wrenched cloth and plaster away and scratched off what remained inch by inch. It took him months, poor old man, to un- cover, first, one panel on which Saint Thomas is represented laying his finger on the Saviour's wounds, and then another, where the apostle is seen at an audience granted to him by the King of the Indies, Gondoforus — " " But you, of course, don't know that legend," said Miss Clara, brusquely addressing me. This time I would not give her satisfaction by again exhibiting French superficiary. I had read the legend — by chance, be it said — in Voragine when I was hunting, I must admit, for the subject of a tale wanted by a boulevard newspaper. I recollected it on account of the A SAINT. 17 noble symbolism it contains, and also for its exotic character which gives it all the charm of the picturesque. Saint Thomas being at Cesarea, our Lord appeared to him and ordered him to go to Gondoforus, because that king was seeking for an architect to build him a nobler dwelling than the palace of the Eoman emperor. Thomas obeyed. Gondoforus, then on the point of starting for a distant seat of war, gave him enormous quantities of gold and silver intended for the construction of the palace. On his return he ordered the Saint to show him the work. Thomas had distributed the treasure en- trusted to him to the poor, even to the last penny, and not one stone of the promised palace had been laid. The king, furiously angry, impris- oned his strange architect and proceeded to meditate as to what were the most refined tor- tures with which he could punish the traitor. But that very night, behold, the spectre of his brother, who had been dead four days, stood at the foot of his bed and said to him: "The man thou desirest to torture is the servant of God. The angels have shown me a wondrous dwelling of gold and silver and precious stones which he has built for thee in Paradise." Over- come by the apparition and by the words which he heard, Gondoforus hastened to fling himself at the prisoner's feet. Thomas raised him and said : " Dost thou not know, King, that the 2 18 PASTELS OF MEN. only mansions which endure are those which our faith and our charity build for us in heaven." "It is quite certain," I said, after referring (not without a certain malicious complacency) to the foregoing legend, " that it must have been a very interesting subject to a painter passion- ately devoted, like Benozzo, to sumptuous robes, complicated architecture, landscapes with illim- itable flora and chimerical beasts — " " Ah ! " cried Miss Dobson, pushing aside in her enthusiasm the dish of purple and green figs which the waiter was offering to her, — a waiter, by the bye, with cheeks that were stiff with a six days' growth of beard, and a threadbare black coat opening to view amazing pink coral buttons stuck into a ragged shirt-front, — " you can't imagine the magnificence of the Gondoforus in the fresco at Monte-Chiaro, — a sort of Moor, with a sreen silk robe embroidered in relief with gold, yellow boots with spurs, also gold — such liquid coloring ! so perfectly preserved, so fresh ! Just think! these layers of whitewash must have been put on the wall about the end of the lGth century ; consequently, there 's not a blemish in the painting, no retouching ; there it still is in the cell where it was painted ; which used to be, I am told, the oratory of the bishops who visited the convent. It covers the whole of one large wall and the space above a window." "The door opened to admit a couple." —Page 19. A SAINT. 19 The conversation had reached this point and I was just asking Miss Mary for a few points as to the ways of communication between Pisa and the convent (for I was drawn there past all power of resistance by this revelation of an un- known work by my favorite master) when the door opened to admit a couple, already known, no doubt, to the English spinsters, for Miss Mary cast down her eyes with a blush, while Miss Clara remarked to her in English : — " Why, it is that Frenchman and the woman we met in Florence at the trattoria. How extraor- dinary that a respectable hotel like this should receive such persons." I looked myself, and saw a couple taking their seats at one of the small tables which sur- rounded the large one, whose questionable char- acter was too evident to allow me to accuse my formidable neighbor of slandering them. It was equally impossible to deny the nationality of the young man. He might have been twenty- five years of age, but his drawn features and pallid skin, his shrunken shoulders and the nervous condition visible in his whole being gave him a look of premature age, counteracted however by a pair of black eyes which were very keen and extremely handsome. He was dressed with a semi-elegance which had a flavor nt pretension on the one hand, and a touch (if bohemianism on the other. You ask me how ? 20 PASTELS OF MEN. I can no more put these shades into words than I can full)'' explain the general characteristics which made this stranger the type, exclusively and incontestaltly, the type of a Frenchman. It is a cut of the coat, it is a gesture, it is a way of sitting down to table and taking up the card to order dinner, which tells us instantly that we have a compatriot within two feet of us. I shall have the courage to admit, although I may wound what a humorist sarcastically calls ante- chamber patriotism, that such a meeting is more alarming than agreeable. Travelling French- men certainly bring their worst qualities to the front, — like travelling English and travelling Germans for that matter, with this difference, that while I am indifferent to those of the English, and those of the Germans simply enter- tain me, T suffer from the vulgar qualities of Frenchmen because I know how they slander our dear, good land. I have never, in an Italian cafe, heard a Frenchman on his travels talking loudly and flouting the town where he chanced to be and the one from which he came in mali- ciously depreciating speeches, without reflecting that there were twenty ears about him to absorb his jests, or rather the mere wording of them. For though five foreigners out of ten may under- stand our language, how many know its spirit — I mean the harmless spirit of its wit? One in a hundred possibly. What absurd national A SAINT. 21 misunderstandings are begun and envenomed by these thoughtless remarks made in public with as little evil intention as that with which some of us scribble articles in a newspaper oftice merely to eke out " copy." The present stranger belonged, fortunately for my nerves, to the species which, thanks be to God ! does exist, of silent Frenchmen. Moreover, his companion of the evening absorbed his atten- tion in a manner which certainly seemed to justify Miss Roberts' attack. This mysterious friend was about thirty-five years of age, and if he, under every aspect, was a Frenchman of the bourgeois class, she was as unmistakably an Italian, from her little head to her little feet, from her rather too marked features to the flounc- ings of her crown, from the end of her arm laden with bracelets to the tip of her shoe with its exag- gerated heel. Her black eyes betrayed when they rested on the young man a passion which was certainly not feigned. Neither of them appeared to be aware that they were under observation, and in spite of a vague expression of slyness and distrust which something, I hardly know what, gave to the man, this air of mutual senti- ment and absorption made me suddenly sympa- thetic with them, — so much so that I undertook their defence against Miss Roberts when she continued : — "Besides, she is twenty years older than he!" 22 PASTELS OF MEN. " Say ten," I interrupted, laughing ; " and she is very pretty." " With us, a gentleman never parades himself in that way with a creature who is not a lady." I was thankful that she made this speech in English, which my compatriot was not likely to understand, all the more because she uttered it in a high, clear voice. I could not help reply- ing in the same language, partly, I acknowledge, from the vanity of proving to her that I could speak it. " But how do you know she is not a lady ? " " How do I know ? " Ah ! my poor little vanity. I was punished for it on the spot, for she corrected my pronunciation sarcastically by repeating my own words. " Why, look at the way she eats." I must confess that these two specimens of the Latin race presented at that moment a spec- tacle which did not conform to any of the pre- cepts taught by governesses on the farther shores of the British Channel. While waiting for the soup, the gentleman had begun upon the flask of Chianti and the bread beside his plate ; he was dipping his bread in wine ; while she, on her part, was nibbling a bit of citron, taken from the dishes of the dessert. The contrast between the daughters of Albion (as they were called in the novels of 1830) and these children of nature was a little overpowering. I was A SAINT. 23 afraid I should laugh, and so, as dinner was now over, I left the table at the same time as the Germans, the Milanese, the relatives of the officer, and the officer himself. I thought my neighbors would soon follow us, as in fact they did, leaving the two lovers to their tete-a-tete, under the indulgent protection of the coral- buttoned waiter. Perhaps there was some virtue in my rather precipitate retreat, for I surmised a slight romance in the rather unintelligible con- junction of the young Frenchman and the beau- tiful Italian. But I would die sooner than remorselessly play the part of spy which modern writers are pleased to call documentary research, and of which they boast as a professional merit. The following morning I had almost forgotten this more or less morganatic pair, and was think- ing only of the frescos discovered by Dom Grifii, and of the best means of transporting my- self to the convent of Monte-Chiaro. I went to the office of the hotel to discuss the little jour- ney with the clerk, an ex-Garibaldian who was so proud of having worn the red blouse of the Milk that he still lived in a fog of ultra-revolu- tionary fancies, — all the while busy, with com- mendable activity, in providing that hot-water was duly sent to No. 6 and that Xo. 10 obtained the tea it ordered. "The government is too indulgent to these 24 PASTELS OF MEN. conspirators," he said to me, referring to the poor monks, instead of replying to my questions about the road to take, the vehicle to choose, and the price to pay. My friends the English- women had gone by the diligence as far as it went, and had done the rest of the way on foot. I succeeded, however, in extracting from the Cavaliere Dante Annibale Cornacchini (such was the name of the former companion of the Hero) a promise that a coachman selected by him should await me with a light carriage at the tocco. What a charming expression ! and how characteristic of the Italian people ; there 's a whole sensation in it. It means one blow of a hammer, and also one hour after midday, the hour when the clock-hammer sounds one blow. What was my surprise when on leaving the office of the hotel (where a bronze statuette of the General in his blouse and another of Mazzini in an overcoat surmounted the hostelry placards) I found myself face to face with the young Parisian of the previous evening, who was evidently waiting for me ; for he approached at once with a certain grace of manner, or so it seemed to me, — for what author would not have looked with favorable eyes upon the hearing of a stranger who met hiin with words like these : — " Monsieur, I have seen your name upon the register, and as I have read all your works I venture " — etc. V . ..: " " I found myself ten minutes later walking along the quay with this stranger." — Page 25. A SAINT. 2 ZO It is enough to have been before the public in any capacity whatever to know how little such compliments are worth. But the childish van- ity of the literary man is such that he is always taken in by them and does as I then did ; for (having vowed to myself that I would not spoil my sensation of that dear and mournful Pisa with frivolous talk and new acquaintances) I found ' myself ten minutes later walking along the quay with this stranger : in less than half an hour I was wandering, still in his company, beneath the vaults of the Campo Santo ; and at the end of another hour I had induced him to accompany me to the convent, and we were both getting into the carrozzela with one horse which was to take us to Monte-Chiaro. This sudden travelling intimacy sprang up without the motive on my part of a nearer view of the pretty and natural Italian who had dined with him on the preced- ing evenin<>\ He had taken care, be it under- stood, to speak of her at once. I thus learned that the possessor of those expressive features, that emotional pallor, and the gestures which were almost vulgar was an actress in a travelling troop then at Florence, and that she had left Pisa that morning to play at night, and that he had been unable to accompany her. He did not tell me why. But I guessed the reason from the rest of his history, which he related in the first half-hour we were together. Even without the 26 PASTELS OF MEN. rather romantic attraction of this little incident he would have taken my attention as a sharply- defined type of a class of young men whom I already knew, as 1 thought, sufficiently well. Still one can never see too much of the representatives of a coming generation. How can we help them (for that is the duty of those of us who wield the pen) if we do not talk with them, and talk a good deal, too ? But, alas, it was not impressions of this kind that I was seeking along the shores of the sad and glaucous Arno. Was I fated to meet, everywhere and at all times, that which I like least in Paris without beino; able to check my interest in it, as though I really liked it ? Would my insatiable curiosity about the human sou] never cease to be stronger than my lofty projects, of an ideal existence among the master- pieces of art ? The young man was known by the unaristo- cratic name of Philippe Dubois. He was the fourth son of a university professor of some standing but little means. After a brilliant course of study at his provincial lyceum he had come to Paris, first with a scholarship as licen- tiate, next on a fellowship. He passed his two examinations, and the influence of a friend of his father obtained for him a mission to Italy in quest of archaeological remains. This employ- ment had come to an end during the present month, and lie was now on his way back A SAINT. 27 to France. I had lived too keenly during my own youth among surroundings analogous to his, not to understand at once the pinched condition to which the family resources had reduced him. Probably he had barely enough money to get home. That was, no doubt, the real reason why the actress had left him without Ids being able to follow her. In recalling at this moment the various confidences he made to me I once more recognize the truth that external facts are of little account; the true motor is in the soul which receives their impression. This sudden attraction between a young student in love with the world of antiquity, where all is beauty, and an ardent and disinterested young- actress is already assuming the charm of a senti- mental idyl, is it not ? Eemark the elements, — a forced parting, the shedding of many tears, the acceptance of a path to which destiny has called us, — truly a romance of capricious fate, and all its poesy ! I had no difficulty in assuring myself that Philippe Dubois felt none of the sad and touch- ing emotions which belonged to his romance. There was not the slightest shade of tenderness in the words with which he unfolded to me his facile intrigue. They betrayed nothing but the vanity of being loved by a woman who, as I afterwards ascertained, was a good deal before the public. But then, if he had been the ingeu- 28 PASTELS OF MEN. uous lover that he ought to have been would he have captured my attention as he did when I discovered that his past existence of studious youth was but a phase, an aspect, just as this love affair was, to his mind, a mere accident ? That which constituted the actual being of this vouno- fellow was one of the most excessive literary ambitions which I have met during my intercourse with such aspirants, — an ambition that was all the more keen because his pride, joined to a certain sullen timidity, had hitherto prevented him from entering the career. During the four or five years of arid study which fol- lowed his college life he had nourished the literary incubus on his breast with all the cruel candor that malady compels. There were in him, and very distinctly, two persons : one submis- sive and duty-bound, the son of a professor sent on a mission ; the other poetic, with the soul of a romance-maker without a career, with all the acrimony of that precocious bitterness which accompanies a repressed vocation. Such duality is a proof of strong will or, better still, of a nature superior through adaptiveness and the power of self-control. But the harshness and acri- mony revealed at the same time a loveless soul, whose chief aspirations in a literary career were for the coarser satisfactions of fame and money. "You can understand," he said to me, after relating several scenes in his intercourse with A SAINT. 29 the poor actress iu which he played a sufficiently Juanesque part to take pleasure in recalling them, " you can understand that I have not lost the advantage of such emotions. I have nearly finished a little volume of verses which I will show you later — - Ah! I've had enough of Etruscan tombs and Greek inscriptions and all that pedantic drudgery which I only agreed to do lor pay. As soon as I take my lust degree I shall resign and launch out into a literary career. I have a series of articles in my head. Some I've already sent to various journals signed with a pen-name. They have not appeared — envy, I know, in the men who read them." " You should make allowance for the unhappy editors, who have not time to read everything themselves," I said. " They are pledged to take certain things ; and besides, they must admit achieved positions and well-known talent." "Well-known talent! let's talk of that," he exclaimed with a bitter laugh, which increased my perception of the smothered rage of the un- published writer, embittered by envy before he had even measured himself with his rivals ; and he proceeded to take up one by one all the best- known authors of the present day. This one was a mere relater of anecdotes without thought; that one a hawker of images for workmen ; that other a Paul de Kock modernized, the fourth was a social manoeuvre!-, clever at sugaring 30 TASTELS OF MEN. Stendhal and Balzac for the cloyed stomachs of fashionable women. To all of them he fastened the low tales tattled throughout Paris by the score in the childishly cruel little world of literary aspirants. I let him talk with a pro- found sense of sadness ; not that I attach ex- treme importance to the strictures of the new- comers upon their elders — among whom I now rank. Such attacks have been made from all time, and they have their uses ; it was the sarcasm of Mephistopheles which compelled Faust to work. But I perceived beneath these harsh criticisms (witli which perhaps he fancied he pleased me by condemning my literary fellows, foolish lacl !) a real anguish. Above all, I noticed in him the excessive and preternatural pride which belongs to our period — I mean in the world of thinkers. Formerly all ambitions were alike selfish, though that among literary men was the least perceptibly so. Nowadays when universal levelling has brought the recognized brain-worker into a more brilliant position (at least apparently) literature appears to many as a fair means of rapid fortune. They enter it therefore as others enter commerce — for precisely the same reasons. There is, how- ever, this difference. The ardent toiler in the Bourse and its by-ways knows that lie has money behind him ; the ardent toiler in litera- ture mistakes his eagerness after success for the afflatus of apostleship ; and this produces, if sue- A SAINT. 31 cess does not come to him by the time be is forty, a condition of soul tbat is truly terrible, for the most painful passions and the vilest com- bine to rend him. This was seen only too plainly among certain writers of the Commune. As I listened to the young man's talk I knew him for the goaded rebel of his circumstances. But, even so, the rebel of the period. He held himself in hand, partly from an instinct of bour- geois prudence, and also from a natural taste for the higher culture which ought to have saved him, and might still do so. Had he not had the intelligence and the patience to acquire, in spite of his envious literary fever, a science, the knowledge of a craft ? and this thought gave me the idea of a struggle which might have taken place or was now taking place within him. " You are very severe on your elders," I said, to stop his string of Parisian calumnies. " I know all those tales ; they are monotonously abject and false ! " " You '11 see what I shall say when I begin to write ! " he cried, with a fatuous self-conceit that was naive and yet villanous. " Ha ! ha ! one must treat one's predecessors as the Polynesians do old men. They put them up a tree and shake it. As long as the old fellows have strength to hold on it 's all right. When they fall they are knocked on the head and eaten." I did not reply to the youthful blood-thirsti- 32 PASTELS OF MEN. ness of this paradox. Philippe Dubois was merely " getting a rise " out of me, to use an expressive slang term now a little out of date. I continued the conversation by inquiring as to his researches in archaeology ; which put him into visible ill-humor. Then I gave him, point- blank, the advice not to enter journalism when he returned to France, but to find a situation in the provinces, where he could live a useful life and eventually come before the public as the writer of some valuable work. That, alas ! was the advice which was given to me at his age, but I had not followed it ; which goes to prove that this lottery of misery and fame called the profession of men of letters will always tempt a certain class of souls among young men. Must I own it ? I felt a sort of irony, almost an hy- pocrisy in the role of moralist which I was playing. It gave me a slight sense of remorse, and then, as I really pitied the groundwork of inward dissatisfaction on which he appeared to me to be living, I ended by proposing that he should go with me to the convent. This ex- cursion led to the brief and rapid drama to which I have alluded, — to explain which these over-long preliminaries were really necessary. Philippe's return would be delayed only two days ; he accepted the proposal and we started as the hour " struck " according to the promise of the ex-Milk, another of whose delightful say- A SAINT. 33 ings I cannot refrain from here quoting. He seized the opportunity, while we were waiting for the coachman, to communicate his ideas on the existing French parliament, "They have lost the revolutionary traditions," he said to me ; and then, after a terrorist declamation which I will not transcribe, he added, with comical melancholy, " I even think they are capitalists ! " Thanks to this speech, which Philippe enjoyed as much as I did, we started in " high spirits " as Miss Mary Dobson would have said, I much disposed, as indeed he was, to enjoy the trip. The road which leads from Pisa to Monte- Chiaro runs at first through a charming land- scape of vineyards interspersed with mulberry trees. Gigantic reeds quiver to the breeze, villas surrounded by cedars bear marble lions on their entrance gates, and always, for a back- ground, lie the gorges of that mountain which, as Dante says, prevents the Pisans from seeing Lucca : — " Cacciarulo '1 lupo e i lupicini al monte, Per che i Pisau veder Lucca non ponno." "That is what is lacking tons in France," I re- marked to my companion after quoting the lines. " We have no poet who has given a legendary fame to the remotest corners of his native land." " Do you care for that ? " he answered. " Xow, for my part, Joanne's guide-book for this region 3 q 4 PASTELS OF MEN. puts me quite out of conceit of the Divine Comedy." Keceiving this reply and noticing that his late gayety was already over, I regretted having brought him. I foresaw that if he began by fencing with paradox he would keep to the foils ; and a young man of his type once thrown into an attitude of self-conceit, stiffens himself in it more and more, though it be to his own injury. I dropped into silence therefore, and tried to lose myself in the contemplation of nature, which was now growing wilder. Our carriage, though light, was moving slowly. We were entering a region which was almost without vegetation. Bare foot-hills rose on all sides ; huge swellings, as it were, of grayish clay fissured by rain. No more brooks, no more vineyards, no olive-trees, no villas, but a positive resemblance to a desert. The coachman was off his box. He was a little man, with a square and delicately cut face, who called his gray mare Zara and softened, like other Tuscans, the hard c at the beginning of words into the aspirated h. " Huesta havalla," he said, speaking of his beast, instead of "questa cavalla," — this mare. " I bought her at Livorno, monsieur," he said to me. " I paid only two hundred francs for her because they thought she was lame. Look and see if she is ! — Hey ! Zara, courage ! She follows me about, monsieur, just like a dog, and A SAINT. 35 I love her, ah, yes, I love her ! My wife is jeal- ous, hut I tell her, ' Zara earns my bread, and you — you eat it.' There, monsieur, look at those rocks ; that 's where Lorenzo di Medici came near being murdered after the massacre of the Pazzi." " Is n't it a curious thing," I remarked to my companion, " that this man, who is only cab- driver, should talk to us in the same breath of his mare Zara and Lorenzo di Medici ? Ah, these Italians ! How they know the history of their beloved land, and how proud they are of it!" " Oh, as for that," said Philippe, shrugging his shoulders, " Alfieri has a line which suits them ' The human plant is born maturer here than elsewhere.' The fact is that they are taught from their earliest years to speculate on foreign- ers ; they are trained to the quest of fees. They are scarcely weaned before they turn into guides. Ha ! I '11 write a novel on modern Italy and its colossal humbugs ! I 've collected notes. I '11 show up this nation — " Whereupon he launched forth into a violent diatribe against that sweet country where the si resounds, while I continued, for my part, to see her as she first appeared to me in 1874, the home, the sole home of Beauty. Philippe's outburst reminded me of talks I had heard in my early years, when I frequented the symposia 36 PASTELS OF MEN'. of future poets and romance-writers. Nearly- all these embryo writers were employed in the public offices. Bitterly hating that abject life, they spent hours in filling their souls with gall, pouring out their contempt for men and things with a species of acrid eloquence which often made me, in those days, doubt everything ami myself as well. I was ignorant then of what I have since had too good reason to know by ex- perience, that such eloquence is merely a form of impotent envy which knows itself for what it is. All great talent begins and ends in love and in enthusiasm. The precocious cynics are the unfortunates who foresee their future sterility and are taking a premature revenge. Heavens ! how I wished the fellow would talk to me (with exaggerated, even ridiculous ardor if he chose) about Florence where he had worked, where he had been loved, — yes, above all, about his love. But he really seemed to have forgotten it as he plunged, apropos of the book he intended to write on Italy, into inquiries as to the salaries or the profits of our principal authors." " Is it true that Jacques Molan gets a franc and a half a volume ? They tell me Vincy is paid two francs a line — ah, the wretch ! " I now discerned behind all this bitter criti- cism and the hardening effect of disillusion an almost frantic desire for money, and by an in- consistency which was really explainable, I for- A SAINT. 37 gave him for that sentiment far more than for his irony. The iron hand of necessity presses so cruelly upon a brain in which all youthful ener- gies are seething, and which sees in a trifle of gold the emancipation of its inner self. " And to think," he concluded with infinite bitterness, " that my father will not give me even the first three thousand francs that I must have to live in Paris before I make my first appearance as an author ! Yes, that sum would be enough to keep me while I learned my ground and waged my first battle. Three thousand francs ! just what a commonplace fellow like [here the name of a writer much in vogue] gets for fifty pages of copy ! " I have omitted to say that in the meantime he had sketched his father and mother for my benefit in rather flattering likenesses. How can I explain that in spite of all this he still con- tinued to interest me ? He was giving vent to the ideas I most dislike ; he divulged sentiments which seemed to me radically opposed to those a young writer ought to feel. But with it all I felt that he suffered ; and I waited for the reac- tion, when, having produced his first effect, he might listen to my sage counsels and possibly let me rectify two or three of his absurd points of view. On this I counted all the more because his manner of expressing himself, and his refer- ences, revealed a genuine culture and a mind that 38 PASTELS OF MEN. was more than keen — that was strong and original. The scenery grew more and more savage. We had left behind us, in the far distance, the great plain on which Pisa lies. The dome and the leaning tower reappeared every now and then between two peaks, as if raised in relief upon a map. Livorno was outlined far below, with the sea in all its blueness ; while about us yawned those great holes hollowed in the friable earth which they call in those parts baize. Summits and peaks bare and menacing overhung us. The cattle, now few in number, were no longer the beautiful white beasts of the Maremma, with their long, straight horns. The horns of these were short and curved upwards, their hides were as gray as the soil. For the first time since we started Philippe Dubois said a few words which betrayed a consciousness of present sensation. " Is n't the whole landscape like a series of pit-holes ? — just the place for a convent." At that instant the coachman, now on his box, turned to me and called out : — " Monsieur, there 's Monte-Chiaro." With the end of his whip he pointed to a valley on a slope of the mountain more gullied than the rest, in the centre of which, on a little hill planted with cypress-trees, stood a long- structure built of red brick. On that cloudless blue day the color of the walls contrasted so 9* MONTE CHIARO. A SAINT. 39 vividly with the blackness of the surrounding foliage that the reason for the name, Monte- Chiaro, was obvious. Except on the Monte- Oliveto, near Sienna, I have never seen a sanc- tuary for retreat so relentlessly far removed from all approach of human life. I knew, from in- formation obtained of the Garibaldian at Pisa, which eked out that of the Englishwomen, that the abbe" had consented to the humble task of housing and feeding the visitors who came to see the convent, which was secularized in 1867. " What sort of cooking do you think we shall find in this Theba'i'd ?" I said to my companion, to whom I had previously explained the manner in which we were to pass the night and the following day. " As there 's a tariff charge of five francs a day," he replied, " the priest wouldn't belong to this country if he did n't put three in his own pocket." " Well, at any rate, a fine Benozzo Gozzoli is well worth a bad dinner," I replied, laughing. Half an hour after we had thus come in sight, from a rise in the road, of the time-worn refuge of the Benedictines, once so celebrated through- out Tuscany, now so sadly solitary, the white mare Zara was beginning to climb the hilly ap- proach, which was planted with cypress-trees. My companion and I left the carriage and walked 40 PASTELS OF MEN. up for a better view of the little shrines raised along the side of the road at a distance of some fifty feet apart, and were under the spell,, he as well as I, of the melancholy majesty of this approach to the cloister. I beheld in thought the innumerable white cowls which had filed through these sombre avenues, the Benedictines of Monte-Chiaro having been, like those of Oliveto, dedicated to the Virgin. My English friend had initiated me into this little matter of costume. I thought of the simple souls to whom this barren horizon had marked the end of the world, of the weary souls who had found rest in this lonely spot, of the violent souls gnawed here as elsewhere by envy, by ambition, by all those cravings of pride which the apostle justly classes among the lusts of the flesh. My absorp- tion in this vision was so complete that I woke with a start when the coachman, who was walk- ing up this last ascent, leading Zara by the bridle and talking to her to encourage her, suddenly turned and called back to me : — " Monsieur, here 's the Father abbe" coming to meet us. He must have heard the wheels." " Why, that 's the late Hyacinth, of the Palais Royal !" cried Philippe. It is true that, seen as he was on the threshold of the convent, at the farther end of the sombre path, the poor monk did present a beggarly appearance. He wore a ragged cassock, the color of which, originally A SAINT. 41 black, was now greenish. He told ine later that the government had placed him in charge of the confiscated convent on condition that he re- nounced the beautiful white robe of his order. His tall, thin body, slightly bowed by age, rested on a stick. The brim of his hat was thread- worn. His face, turned towards the new-comers, and perfectly smooth, did vaguely resemble that of a comic actor, while an endless nose developed therefrom, — the nose of a snuff-taker, — seeming longer still from the leanness of the cheeks and the sunken mouth, which had lost its front teeth. But the old man's glance soon corrected this first impression. Though his eyes were not large, and their color, of a muddy green, was indistinct, a flame burned within them which would soon have quenched the jesting spirit of my young companion if he had had the slightest experience in judging of the human countenance. His im- pertinent remark shocked me all the more be- cause he made it in a high tone of voice, which sounded through the deep silence of the autumn afternoon. But did Dorn Gabriele Griffi under- stand French ? and if he did, would the name of the poor comedian who played the part of Marasquiu so comically in the Mari de la debu- tante, mean anything to his mind ? The foolish jest served to flash the scenes of that amusing play before my mind. What a contrast ! The four little girls who cry so gayly under the de- 42 PASTELS OF MEN. spairing nose of the said Hyacinth, all four pointing their pretty toes in the air at the same moment, " Safemme la quitte — pour aller f aire la noce — et allez done'' were pirousttiDg before me when the hermit, whose guests we were now to be, said to us in the purest and most elegant Italian, — " You have come, gentlemen, to visit the con- vent ? Why did you not send me word ? Pas- quale," he added, addressing the coachman, "you should have told these gentlemen to send me a written notice." " I thought, of course, the gentlemen had done so, Father abbe\ when the clerk at their hotel confided them to my care." " Well, they must eat what there is," said the abbe' ; then turning to us with a kindly smile, and a gesture towards heaven, he added, " When things go wrong we must shut our eyes and com- mend ourselves up there!' I stammered, in moderately correct Italian, an excuse, which the father cut short with a wave of his hand. " Come and look at your rooms in the first place. To console you for the food you will be obliged to eat I will make you priors of the order." He laughed at his little joke, the meaning of which I did not at the moment seize. I was completely absorbed in the strange sight of the vast red edifice in the glow of the setting sun ; A SAINT. 43 measuring its great size and comprehending its solitude in the same glance. Monte-Chiaro was built at various periods, from the day in 1259 when the head of the family of the Gherardesca, uncle of Uirolino the tragic, retired to this re- mote valley with nine companions, seeking to do penance. In the last century over three hundred monks lived here at their ease ; and the abbey and its belongings, its bakery, fish-pond, wine- press, and cow-sheds, sufficed for their main- tenance. But the innumerable windows of this great farmhouse were now closed, the faded color of the shutters, once green, told of its abandonment, as did the grass on the terrace be- fore the church and the veil of dusty cobwebs on the walls of the corridors through which we passed as we followed Dom Griffi. Even the minor details of the ornamentation showed the former prosperity of the abbey, from the vast lavabo of marble, with lion's heads, placed at the entrance of the refectory, to the architecture of the three cloisters, one succeeding another, and all three decorated with frescos. A mere glance showed me that these paintings were in the pedantic Italian taste of the seven- teenth century ; possibly, therefore, their aca- demic coloring concealed some spontaneous masterpiece of a Gozzoli or an Orcagna. We mounted the steps of a staircase hung with pict- ures blackened by time, among them a charming 44 PASTELS OF MEN. cavalier of Timoteo della Vite, the real master of Raffaelle, stranded here by chance. Then we entered another corridor on the next floor, with numerous cell doors marked Visitator primus, Visitator secundus, and so on, until we stopped before the last, which was surmounted by a mitre and crozier. The abbe", who had not said a word since we left the entrance, except to point out the Timoteo, now spoke in French, with a slightly Italian turn of phrase, but very little accent, — " These are the cpuarters which I give to guests ; " then making way for us to enter, he added : " The superiors of the convent occupied these rooms for five hundred years." I glanced at Master Philippe from the corner of my eye, and perceived that he was somewhat shamefaced at the discovery that our guide was thoroughlv conversant with the French lanmiacre. He had chosen as we came along the corridors to make other remarks and jokes in very doubt- ful taste. Had the abbe" noticed them, and did he mean to give us warning that he understood what we said ? or was he merely seeking in his simple hospitality to relieve us of the effort of speaking in a foreign language ? I could not guess his meaning from the immovable features of his large face. He seemed wholly absorbed in the numerous memories which the vast room where we now stood evoked for him. It was ''These are the quarters winch I give (>> guests." — Page 44. A SAINT. 45 poorly furnished with a few wooden chairs, a square table, and a sofa. In one corner a half- open door gave to view an altar covered with a smoke-stained cloth ; it was there, no doubt, that the priors said their prayers. Another door, opposite and wide open, showed two more con- necting rooms, each with an iron bed, wooden chairs, and wash-basins standing on rickety bureaus. The red-tiled floors were not even polished ; the woodwork of the doors and the window frames was cracked and defaced, but the landscape seen from the latter was really glo- rious. On a height directly opposite was a village with houses close together, and from this village to the monastery a marvellous vegetation clothed the slope, — no longer the gloomy cy- presses of the other side, but oaks, whose green foliage was turning crimson ; while farther down, in the valley which lay to the southward, were other signs of cultivation, and olive-trees inter- spersed among the oaks. Evidently the monks st landed in this Thebaid had toiled there. Beyond this oasis solitude and desolation re- appeared, sterner than before, darkly frowned upon by the highest peak of the Pisan moun- tains, that of Verruca, where a ruined castle is still crumbling, once the stronghold of some lord of the soil, against whose attacks the square bastion which defends the convent on this side was doubtless built. This little square redoubt 46 PASTELS OF MEN. was outlined, with its crenelated bastion in red stone, before the window at which we stood, and against the blue of a sky now flecked with rosy vapor. My companion was no longer disposed to jest, being struck, as I was, to the depths of his artistic nature, by the graceful severity of that horizon on which had rested the eves, lon