Stories Toto Told Me (Valancourt Classics) (7 page)

  ‘And I, covered with confusion as with a garment, because of my many sins, replied, “O Clementissimo Signor Iddio, I have confessed my crime; and in excuse I can only say that when I was preparing my sermon, I took those words from the writings of San Gregorio.”

  ‘The Judge of all men ordered my angel to write this down, and deigned to ask whether I could say in what part of the writings of San Gregorio this heresy could be found. “O Padre Celeste Iddio,” I replied, “the heresy will be found in the 37th Homily of San Gregorio on the 14th chapter of the Gospel of San Luca.” Then I covered my face with my hands and waited for my dreadful sentence; but Beato Padre Francesco comforted me, and patted my shoulder with his hand, all shining with the sacred stigmata; and the Padre Eterno, speaking in a mild voice to the Court of Heaven, said, “My children, this little brother has been accused of preaching a heresy, and this heresy is said to have been taken from the writings of San Gregorio. In this case, you will perceive that it is not Our little brother who is a heretic, but San Gregorio, who will therefore have the goodness to place himself at the bar, for We are determined to search this matter to its remotest end.” Then San Gregorio was led by his Angel-guardian from his throne among the Doctors of the Church, and came down to the bar and stood beside me and Beato Padre Francesco, who whispered in my ear, “Cheer up, little brother, and hope for the best!” And the Padre Eterno said, “San Gregorio, this little brother has been accused before Us, that on the first Monday in Lent, in the Church of San Carlo al Corso, he preached heresy in the following words: ‘No one shall be crowned unless he has contended lawfully.’ We have examined him, and he alleges that he has taken these words from the 37th Homily, which you have written upon the 14th chapter of the Gospel of San Luca. We demand, therefore, that you should say, first, whether you acknowledge yourself to have written these words; and secondly, if you have done so, what excuse you have to offer?” And San Gregorio opened the book of his writings which, of course, he always carries with him, and turned the pages with an anxious finger. Presently he looked up with a smile into the Face of God and said, “O Dio, Padre delle misericordie, our little brother has spoken the truth, for I have found the passage, and when I have read it, You will find the answer to both questions which Your Condescension has put me.” So San Gregorio read from his writings these words, “But we cannot arrive at the great reward unless through great labours: wherefore, that most excellent preacher, San Paolo, says, ‘No one shall be crowned unless he has contended lawfully.’ The greatness of rewards, therefore, may delight the mind, but does not take away the obligation of first fighting for it.” “Hm-m-m-m,” said the Padre Eterno, “this begins to grow interesting; for it seems, my children, that our little brother here has quoted his heresy from San Gregorio, and that San Gregorio in his turn quoted it from San Paolo, upon whom, therefore, the responsibility seems to rest. Call San Paolo.”

  ‘So seven archangels blew their trumpets and summoned San Paolo, who was attending a meeting of the Apostolic College, and when he came into Court his Angel-guardian led him to the bar, where he took his place by the side of San Gregorio’ (the man who made them Christians in England, sir, and the chant, sir, and saw San Michele Arcangiolo on the top of the Mola), ‘of Beato Padre Francesco, and of my wretched self. “Now, San Paolo,” said the Padre Eterno, “We have here a little grey friar who has been accused of preaching heresy on the first Monday in Lent, in the Church of San Carlo al Corso, in these words, ‘No one shall be crowned unless he has contended lawfully.’ And he has informed Us that he quoted these words from San Gregorio’s 37th Homily on the 14th chapter of the Gospel of San Luca. We have examined San Gregorio, and he has pointed out to Us that he did indeed use these words, as Our little brother has said; but San Gregorio also alleges that they are not his own words, but yours. The Court, therefore, would like to know whether San Gregorio’s statement is true.” Then San Paolo’s Angel-guardian handed to him the book which contained all the letters he had written, and after he had refreshed his memory with this, the great apostle replied, “O Principio di ogni cosa, there is no doubt that both our little brother and San Gregorio are right, for I find in my second letter to San Timoteo, chapter ii. verse 5, the following words: ‘And if a man also strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned except he contend lawfully.’” “Well!” said the Padre Eterno, “this is a very shocking state of things that you, San Paolo, should publish heresies in this manner, and lead men of all ages into error! San Gregorio, taking the statement on your authority, preaches heresy in his time, and a thousand years after, our little brother, innocently thinking that men of such eminence as the Apostle of the Gentiles and the Apostle of England are of good authority, preaches the same heresy. You see now that it is impossible to know what the end of a lie will be when once it has been started on its course.” “But hear me,” said San Paolo, who was a very bold man, “for I venture to submit to La Sua Maestà that the second letter which I wrote to San Timoteo has been placed by Your Church on earth on the list of the Canonical Books, and this means that when I wrote that letter I was inspired by the Third Person of the Maestà Coeterna dell’Adorabile Trinità and that therefore I was divinely protected from teaching error in any shape or form!” “Of course it does,” replied the Padre Eterno. “The words that you have written, San Paolo, in your second letter to San Timoteo, are not the words of a man, but the Words of God Himself, and the matter amounts to this, that our little brother here, who took the words from San Gregorio, who took them from you, who were divinely inspired to write them, has not been guilty of heresy at all, unless God Himself can err. And who,” continued the Padre Eterno, with indignation, “We should like to know, is the ruffian who has taken up Our time with this ridiculous and baseless charge against Our little brother?” Somebody said that it was a Jesuit named Padre Tonto Pappagallo, at which the Padre Eterno sniffed and said, “A Jesuit! and what, in the name of goodness, is that?”

  ‘So the Madonna whispered that it was a son of Sant’Ignazio of Loyola. “Where is Sant’Ignazio of Loyola?” said the Padre Eterno. Now Sant’Ignazio, who had seen the way things were going, and what a contemptible spectacle his son was presenting, had hidden himself behind a bush and was pretending to say his office. But he was soon found and brought into Court, and the Padre Eterno asked him what he meant by allowing his spiritual children to act in this way. And Sant’Ignazio only groaned and said, “O Potenza Infinita, all my life long I tried to teach them to mind their own business, but in fact I have altogether failed to make them listen to me.”

  ‘That was my dream, Most Holy Father, most eminent and most reverend lords, my reverend brethren, most illustrious princes, my beloved children in Jesus Christ; and since you have been so gracious as to listen, I will no longer delay my recantation of the heresy of which I am accused of having preached on the first Monday in Lent, in the Church of San Carlo al Corso.’

  But Papa Silvio arose from his throne and the cardinals, and the bishops, and the princes, and the people, and the people, and they all cried in a loud voice, ‘Evviva, evviva, Bocca d’Oro, evviva, evviva.’”

VI

ABOUT ONE WAY IN WHICH CHRISTIANS LOVE ONE ANOTHER

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,” I said, “that’s a very good story, Toto. And now I want to know where you learnt it.”

  “Well, sir,” he replied, “it was told to me by Fra Leone of the Cappuccini. Not that I wish you to think the Cappuccini and Franciscans to be the same, not at all. But, of course, you know better than that, and it is like their impertinence of bronze to pretend that they are, as they do, for the Cappuccini were not even heard of for hundreds of years after San Francesco founded his Order of Little Brothers. And the reason why they came to be made was only because of the vain man Simon Something-or-other, who gave more thought to his clothes than was good for his soul, and found that the sleeves which were good enough for San Francesco, and the round tippet which that heavenly saint wore did not suit his style of beauty, and so he made himself a brown habit instead of a grey one, with plain sleeves to show the shape of his arms, and no pockets in them, and a tippet not round but pointed like the piece of flesh there is between my shoulders. And then, because there are always plenty of men ready to run after something new, he got together so many followers who wished to dress themselves like him, that the Santo Padre preferred to give them permission to have their own way, rather than cause them to become rebels against our Holy Mother the Church, by making it difficult for them to be obedient; because the matter had really no importance to speak of.”

  I said that I knew all about that, but that I didn’t believe that religious men, whether they were Franciscans, or sham ones like the Cappuccini, or even Jesuits, would show such jealousy and envy of each other as appeared in the story of Fra Serafico.

  “And there,” said Toto, “I can assure you that you are altogether wrong. I may tell you that in every religious order there are two kinds of men—the saints and the sinners; and of course, the saints always love each other as Francesco and Domenico did; and, by contrary, having submitted themselves to the infernal dragon who always drives all love out of the hearts of his slaves and inflames them with the undying fire of envy, the sinners hate each other with a hatred like the poison of
vipers, and occupy themselves with all kinds of schemes by which they may bring discredit upon their enemies, the sinners of other orders. Why, I will tell
you a tale which is quite true, because I have seen it, of how some Cappuccini—and you will not ask me to say where their convent is—have done a deed by which much shame will some day be brought upon a house of Jesuits who live in their neighbourhood.

  Well, then, there was a convent of Cappuccini, and outside the grounds of the convent there was a small house in which I lived with my father and my mother and my brothers and sisters, and it was a very lonely place. And about as far off as it would take you to say five Paters, and five Aves, and five Glorias, there was another house, and there were perhaps three or four cottages in sight, and that is all, so it was a very lonely place. But six miles away there was a large college of Jesuits, up in the hills, and when a Jesuit died it was the custom to bury him in the churchyard of the Cappuccini. Now there was a man who came to live in the other house, and he was not an old man nor a young man, but just between the two, and because he felt lonely he used to pay attentions to all the ladies who came in his way when visiting this celebrated convent of Cappuccini; and our difficulty was to know which one he was going to marry. And there was one in particular who appeared to these Cappuccini to be the one that he ought to marry, but her home was far away in a large town; and so one of the friars wrote to her parish priest to ask what ought to be done; and the parish priest replied: ‘Yes, you must get her married as soon as possible’; and soon after that the respectable man married her and brought her to the house in the lonely place that I am telling you about. And they lived there very quietly for a little while, and then his business called the respectable man away from his house for a few weeks. So he went, and his wife remained at home; and there was no one in the house besides her but a woman, her servant.

  And presently, in the middle of one night, there was a knocking at the door of the small house where I lived with my father and my mother and my brothers and my sisters, and I heard this knocking because that night I was going to enjoy myself in the orchard of the Cappuccini. So I came downstairs in my shirt only; and, because I wished to keep secret what I was going to do, I left my shirt rolled up in a bundle under the seat in the porch, and I will tell you why: I thought of two things; the first thing was that it was a very rainy night, and if my mother found in the morning that my shirt was wet, she would guess I had been up to mischief, and, having told my father, I should have nothing but stick for breakfast; and the second thing was that if some Cappuccino should be persuaded by an uneasy devil to look out of his window to see a naked boy running about in the orchard or in the churchyard, he would say to himself that it was just a poor soul escaping from purgatory, and then, having repeated a De Profundis, he would go back to his bed. So just as I was creeping across the yard with the warm rain pouring in torrents over my body, there came this banging on the door of my house, and I skipped behind a tree and waited. Then my father opened the window of his room upstairs, demanding what was the matter, and the voice of the servant of the respectable man, replied that la Signora Pucci had suddenly been taken very ill, and that if my mother was a Christian woman she would come to her assistance. This servant spoke with a very thick voice; and as I did not think I was going to be amused if I stayed behind my tree, I ran away and enjoyed myself enough with the peaches belonging to these Cappuccini. When I came home I dried myself with a cloth, took my shirt from under the seat in the porch, and went to bed again. And in the morning when I awoke there was no one to give us our breakfast; for my father was gone to his work, and my mother to the assistance of the wife of the respectable man; so I was thankful enough that I had made so many good meals during the night. All that day, and all the next night, and the day after, was my mother away from her home; and I need not tell you that I began to think that something very strange was happening, of which I ought to know; so I waited here, and I waited there, and I put a question of one kind to this, and a question of another kind to that, and during the night, after my father had seen me go to bed, I got up again, left my shirt in the porch as before, not because it was raining now, but because I liked it, as well as for the other reason, and I wandered about quite naked and happy and free” (here he tossed his arms and wriggled all over in an indescribable manner), “dodging behind trees and bushes, from my father’s house to the house of the respectable man, and to the churchyard of the convent of the Cappuccini; and during that night I saw many curious things; and these, with the answers which were given to the questions I had been asking, and other odds and ends, which I either knew, or had seen with my eyes, made me able to know exactly what this mystery was.

  “Now I ought to have told you this, that a week before, a priest from the Jesuit college of which I have already spoken had been buried in the convent churchyard; also he was the confessor of the wife of the respectable man, and a priest whom she held in the very greatest honour, and he was called Padre Guilhelmo Siretto. He was a saint indeed whom everybody venerated, for the Signor Iddio had made him live sixty-seven years in order that he might add to the many good deeds which in his long life he had done. I should like you to remember this, because now I must go to another part of the story.

  After the servant of the respectable man had told my father that her mistress was ill, my mother arose from her bed and went at once to the house of the sick person. Arrived there, she found la Signora Pucci fallen upon the floor in great pain; and, being a woman herself, she knew with one stroke of her eye what was the matter.

  Now the servant of the respectable man, who had accompanied my mother, was drunk, and so useless. Therefore my mother, who is the best of all women living, made la Signora Pucci as comfortable as she could at that time, went into the stable, put the horse into the cart, and, having driven for three miles to the nearest town, brought a doctor back with her as the day was breaking.

  The sick woman was put to bed, and the doctor gave my mother directions as to what was to be done during his absence: for he said he must go home now to finish his night’s rest, and in the morning he had his patients to see, but in the afternoon he would come again, and that then, perhaps, something would happen. But my mother told him that she would on no account consent to be left alone in the house with la Signora Pucci, because she perceived that something most astonishing was to happen. The doctor replied that he would not stay, because he could not; and that if my mother was not there to assist the sick woman in her trouble, she might die. But my mother would by no means be persuaded, and in the end she conquered; and the doctor stayed, and they waited all through the night, and the next morning at noon there came a new baby into that house; and la Signora Pucci was so astonished that she really nearly died, and as for the baby, he did die after a half-hour of this world.

  Then the sick woman became mad, and cried in delirium that she would not have it known to the respectable man, her husband, that a new baby had come into that house; so my mother went for the Fra Guardiano of these Cappuccini, telling him all that she knew, how she had baptized the baby herself, by the name Angelo, seeing that he was at the point of death, and that therefore he must be buried in the churchyard; and how his mother, la Signora Pucci, demanded that this should be done secretly, and that the grave should be made with Padre Guilhelmo, of whom I have told you before, who was a saint that any person might be glad to be buried with. Upon which the Fra Guardiano replied that this was as easy as eating; and he directed my mother, having put the dead baby into a box, to take the box under her cloak at midnight to the grave of Padre Guilhelmo. So she did as she was told, putting the dead baby Angelo into a wooden box in which rice had been, and cutting a cross upon the lid so that San Michele Arcangiolo should know there was a Christian inside; and at midnight she was there at the grave of Padre Guilhelmo. And, of course, I need not tell you that there was a naked boy hidden in a cedar tree, over her head, lying flat upon his face upon a thick branch which he held between his thighs and with his arms, and looking right down upon the grave. Then there came out of the convent Fra Giovannone, Fra Lorenzo, Fra Sebastiano, and Fra Guilhelmo. And if I had not remembered that a naked boy in a cedar-tree was not one of the things which you are unable to do without at a midnight funeral, I should have laughed, because these friars, coming out of their convent without candles, fell over the crosses on the graves, and said things which friars do not say in their offices. They brought two spades and a bucket of holy water, and when they came to the grave of the Jesuit Padre, Fra Sebastiano and Fra Guilhelmo dug about three feet of a hole there; then my mother gave them the box from under her cloak, and they put it in the earth; and having sprinkled it with holy water, they covered it up, made the grave look as it had looked before, as best they could in that dim light, and then returned to their convent, all the time saying no word aloud.

  Then my mother went back to the house of la Signora Pucci, and a boy without clothes followed her there. For one hour after I ran backwards and forwards secretly from the convent to the house of the respectable man, but finding that nothing else happened I went to my bed.

  About the end of the day after this my mother returned to her house, and said that the doctor had brought a nurse to la Signora Pucci, and that the respectable man her husband also was coming back, so there was nothing more for her to do. Then she swooned with weariness, for she was tired to death; but having rested some days while I and my sisters and my brothers kept the house clean and tidy, she recovered herself.

  And that is all the tale, sir.

  And I think you will see that these Cappuccini, unless indeed they are entirely fools of the most stupid, and that they may be, have been urged on by envy of the Jesuit fathers to lay the beginnings of a plot which some day will cause a great scandal. You must see that they could not help the coming of the new baby Angelo to the house of the respectable man, and it is not for that that I blame them. You must see that when the new baby Angelo had come, and died a Christian, there was nothing else for them to do but to bury him in their churchyard; and that secretly, to defend la Signora Pucci from shame; and after all you must see that there are yards and yards and yards of ground in that churchyard where this dead Christian baby Angelo could be buried by himself secretly, and that it is simply abominable to have put him into the grave of a Jesuit, which, being opened, as it may at any time—God knows when or why, but it is quite likely—will bring a great dishonour and a foul blot upon the sons of Sant’Ignazio of Loyola.”

  I said that I saw.