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One day a Cardinal, passing through the library, saw the diligent student at work, and paused to inquire into his labors. “And what do you seek, my son?” was the kindly query of the aged churchman.
“Scriptural justification for the fundamental tenets of our faith,” Josè replied quickly, carried away by his soul’s animation.
“And you find it, without doubt?”
“Nay, Father, except through what is, to me, unwarranted license and assumption.”
The Cardinal silently continued his way. But permission to translate further from the Vatican manuscripts was that day withdrawn from Josè.
Again the youth lapsed into his former habit of moody revery. Shackled and restless, driven anew into himself, he increasingly poured his turbulent thought into his journal, not for other and profane eyes to read––hardly, either, for his own reference––but simply because hemusthave some outlet for the expression of his heaving mind. He turned to it, as he had in other crises in his life, when his pent soul cried out for some form of relief. He began to revise the record of the impressions received on his travels with the Papal Legate. He recorded conversations and impressions of scenes and people which his abnormally developed reticence would not permit him to discuss verbally with his associates. He embodied his protests against the restrictions of ecclesiastical authority. And he noted, too, many a protest against the political, rather than religious, character of much of the business transacted in the office to which he was attached. In the discharge of his ordinary duties he necessarily became acquainted with much of the inner administrative polity of the Vatican, and thus at times he learned of policies which stirred his alien soul to revolt. In his inferior position he could not hope to raise his voice in protest against these measures which excited his indignation; but in the loneliness of his room, or on his frequent long walks after office hours, he was wont to brood over them until his mind became surcharged and found relief only in emptying itself into this journal. And often on summer days, when the intense heat rendered his little room in the dormitory uninhabitable, he would take his books and papers to some one of the smaller parks lining the Tiber, and there would lose himself in study and meditation and the recording of the ceaseless voicing of his lonely soul.
On this particular afternoon, however, his mind had been occupied with matters of more than ordinary import. It happened that a Bishop from the United States had arrived in64Rome the preceding day to pay his decennial visit to the Vatican and report on the spiritual condition of his diocese. While awaiting the return of the Papal Secretary, he had engaged in earnest conversation with a Cardinal-Bishop of the Administrative Congregation, in a small room adjoining the one where Josè was occupied with his clerical duties. The talk had been animated, and the heavy tapestry at the door had not prevented much of it from reaching the ears of the young priest and becoming fixed in his retentive memory.
“While I feel most keenly the persecution to which the Church must submit in the United States,” the Bishop had said, “nevertheless Your Eminence will admit that there is some ground for complaint in the conduct of certain of her clergy. It is for the purpose of removing such vantage ground from our critics that I again urge an investigation of American priests, with the view of improving their moral status.”
“You say, ‘persecution to which the Churchmustsubmit.’ Is that quite true?” returned the Cardinal-Bishop. “That is, in the face of your own gratifying reports? News from the American field is not only encouraging, but highly stimulating. The statistics which are just at hand from Monsignor, our Delegate in Washington, reveal the truly astonishing growth of our beloved cause for the restoration of all things in Christ. Has not God shown even in our beloved America that our way of worshiping Him is the way He approves?”
“But, Your Eminence, the constant defections! It was only last week that a priest and his entire congregation went over to the Episcopal faith. And––”
“What of that? ‘It must needs be that offenses come.’ Where one drops out, ten take his place.”
“True, while we recruit our depleted ranks from the Old World. But, with restricted immigration––”
“Which is not restricted, as yet,” replied the Cardinal-Bishop with a sapient smile. “Nor is there any restriction upon the inspiration, political as well as spiritual, which the American Government draws from Rome––an inspiration much more potent, I think, than our Protestant brethren would care to admit.”
“Is that inspiration such, think you, as to draw the American Government more and more into the hands of the Church?”
“Its effect in the past unquestionably has been such,” said the Cardinal-Bishop meditatively.
“And shall our dreams of an age be fulfilled––that the Holy Father will throw off the shackles which now hold him a prisoner within the Vatican, and that he will then personally direct the carrying out of those policies of world expansion which shall gather all mankind into the fold of Holy Church?”
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“There is a lessening doubt of it,” was the tentative reply.
“And––” the Bishop hesitated. “And––shall we say that those all-embracing policies ultimately will be directed by the Holy Father from Washington itself?”
A long pause ensued, during which Josè was all ears.
“Why not?” finally returned the Cardinal-Bishop slowly. “Why not, if it should better suit our purposes? It may become advisable to remove the Holy See from Rome.”
“But––impossible!”
“Not at all––quite possible, though I will not say probable. But let us see, can we not say that the time has arrived when no President of the United States can be elected without the Catholic vote? Having our vote, we have his pledges to support our policies. These statistics before us show that already seventy-five per cent of all Government employes in Washington are of our faith. We control Federal, State, County and City offices without number. I think––I think the time is not distant when we shall be able to set up a candidate of our faith for the Presidency, if we care to. And,” he mused, “we shall elect him. But, all in good time, all in good time.”
“And is that,” the Bishop interrogated eagerly, “what the Holy Father is now contemplating?”
“I cannot say that it is,” answered the noncommittal Cardinal-Bishop. “But the Holy Father loves America. He rejoices in your report of progress in your diocese. The successes attained by Catholic candidates in the recent elections are most gratifying to him. This not only testifies to the progress of Catholicism in America, but is tangible proof of the growth of tolerance and liberal-mindedness in that great nation. The fact that the Catholic Mass is now being said in the American army affords further proof.”
“Yes,” meditated the Bishop. “Our candidates who receive election are quite generally loyal to the Church.”
“And should constitute a most potent factor in the holy work of making America dominantly Catholic,” added the older man.
“True, Your Eminence. And yet, this great desideratum can never come about until the youth are brought into the true fold. And that means, as you well know, the abolishing of the public school system.”
“What think you of that?” asked the Cardinal-Bishop off-handedly.
The Bishop waxed suddenly animated. A subject had been broached which lay close to his heart. “The public schools constitute a godless sink of pollution!” he replied heatedly. “They are nurseries of vice! They are part of an immoral and66vicious system of education which is undermining the religion of American children! I have always contended that we, the Holy Catholic Church,mustcontrol education! I hold that education outside of the Church is heresy of the most damnable kind! We have heretofore weakly protested against this pernicious system, but without success, excepting”––and here he smiled cynically––“that we have very generally succeeded in forcing the discontinuance of Bible reading in the public schools. And in certain towns where our parochial schools do not instruct beyond the eighth grade, it looks as if we might force the introduction of a form of the Catholic Mass to be read each morning in the High School.”
“Excellent!” exclaimed the Cardinal-Bishop. “Your voice thrills me like a trumpet call.”
“I would it were such,” cried the Bishop excitedly, “summoning the faithful to strike a blow which shall be felt! What right have the United States, or any nation, to educate the young? None whatever! Education belongs to the Church! Our rights in this respect have been usurped! But they shall be restored––if need be, at the point of the––”
“You positively make my old heart leap to the fray,” interrupted the smiling, white-haired churchman. “But I feel assured that we shall accomplish just that without violence or bloodshed, my son. You echo my sentiments exactly on the pregnant question. And yet, by getting Catholics employed in the public schools as teachers, and by electing our candidates to public offices, we quietly accomplish our ends, do we not?”
“But when will the Holy Father recognize the time as propitious for a more decisive step in that respect?”
“Why, my son, I think you fail to see that we keep continually stepping. We are growing by leaps and bounds in America. At the close of the War of Independence the United States numbered some forty-five thousand adherents to the Catholic faith. Now the number has increased to twelve or fifteen millions. Of these, some four millions are voters. A goodly number, is it not?”
“Then,” cried the Bishop, “let the Holy Father boldly make the demand that the States appropriate money for the support of our parochial schools!”
Josè’s ears throbbed. Before his ordination he had heard the Liturgy for the conversion of America recited in the chapel of the seminary. And as often he had sought to picture the condition of the New World under the religio-political influence which has for centuries dominated the Old. But he had always dismissed the idea of such domination as wholly improbable, if not quite impossible in America. Yet, since coming into67the Papal Secretary’s office, his views were slowly undergoing revision. The Church was concentrating on America. Of that there could be no doubt. Indeed, he had come to believe its success as a future world-power to be a function of the stand which it could secure and maintain in the United States. Now, as he strained his ears, he could hear the aged Cardinal-Bishop’s low, tense words––
“There can be no real separation of Church and State. The Church isnotinferior to the civil power, nor is it in any way dependent upon it. And the Church can never be excluded from educating and training the young, from molding society, from making laws, and governing, temporally and spiritually. From this attitude we shallneverdepart! Ours is the only true religion. England and Germany have been spiritually dead. But, praise to the blessed Virgin who has heard our prayers and made intercession for us, England, after long centuries of struggle with man-made sects and indefinite dogma, its spiritually-starving people fast drifting into atheism and infidelity because of nothing to hold to, has awakened, and in these first hours of her resurrection is fast returning to the Holy Church of Rome. America, in these latter days, is rousing from the blight of Puritanism, Protestantism, and their inevitable result, free-thinking and anarchy, and is becoming the brightest jewel in the Papal crown.”
The Bishop smiled dubiously. “And yet, Your Eminence,” he replied, “we are heralded from one end of the land to the other as a menace to Republican institutions.”
“Ah, true. And you must agree that Romanism is a distinct menace to the insane license of speech and press. It is a decided menace to the insanity of Protestantism. But,” he added archly, while his eyes twinkled, “I have no doubt that when Catholic education has advanced a little further many of your American preachers, editors, and Chautauqua demagogues will find themselves behind the bars of madhouses. Fortunately, that editor of the prominent American magazine of which you were speaking switched from his heretic Episcopal faith in time to avoid this unpleasant consequence.”
The Bishop reflected for a moment. Then, deliberately, as if meditating the great import of his words, “Your Eminence, in view of our strength, and our impregnable position as God’s chosen, cannot the Holy Father insist that the United States mails be barred against the infamous publications that so basely vilify our Church?”
“And thereby precipitate a revolution?” It was the firm voice of the Papal Secretary himself, who at that moment entered the room.
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“But, Monsignor,” said the Bishop, as he rose and saluted the newcomer, “how much longer must we submit to the gross injustice and indignities practiced upon us by non-believers?”
“As long as the infallible Holy Father directs,” replied that eminent personage. “Obey him, as you would God himself,” the Secretary continued. “And teach your flock to do likewise. The ballot will do for us in America what armed resistance never could. Listen, friend, my finger is on the religious pulse of the world. Nowhere does this pulse beat as strongly as in that part which we call the United States. For years I have been watching the various contending forces in that country, diligently and earnestly studying the elements acting and reacting upon our Church there. I have come to the conclusion that the success of Holy Church throughout the world depends upon its advance in the United States during the next few years. I have become an American enthusiast! The glorious work of making America Catholic is so fraught with consequences of vastest import that my blood surges with the enthusiasm of an old Crusader! But there is much still to be done. America is a field white for the harvest, almost unobstructed.”
“Then,” queried the Bishop, “you do not reckon Protestantism an obstruction?”
“Protestantism!” the Secretary rejoined with a cynical laugh. “No, I reckon it as nothing. Protestantism in America is decadent. It has split, divided, and disintegrated, until it is scarcely recognizable. Its adherents are falling away in great numbers. Its weak tenets and senile faith hold but comparatively few and lukewarm supporters. It has degenerated into a sort of social organization, with musicals, pink teas, and church suppers as attractions. No, America isboundto be classed as a Catholic nation––and I expect to live to see it thus. Our material and spiritual progress in the United States is amazing, showing how nobly American Catholics have responded to the Holy Father’s appeal. New dioceses are springing up everywhere. Churches are multiplying with astonishing rapidity. The discouraging outlook in Europe is more, far more, than counterbalanced by our wonderful progress in the United States. We might say that the Vatican now rests upon American backs, for the United States send more Peter’s Pence to Rome than all other Catholic countries together. We practically control her polls and her press. America was discovered by Christopher Columbus, a Catholic in the service of a Catholic ruler. It is Catholic in essence, and it shall so be recognized! The Holy Catholic Church always has been and always will be the sole andonlyChristian authority. The Catholic religion by rights ought to be, and ultimately shall be, the exclusively69dominant religion of the world, and every other sort of worship shall be banished––interdicted––destroyed!”
For a while Josè heard no more. His ears burned and his brain throbbed. He had become conscious of but one all-absorbing thought, the fact of his vassalage to a world-embracing political system, working in the name of the Christ. Not a new thought, by any means––indeed an old one, often held––but now driven home to him most emphatically. He forgot his clerical duties and sank into profound revery on his inconsistent position in the office of the highest functionary of Holy Church aside from the Supreme Pontiff himself.
He was aroused at length from his meditations by the departure of the American Bishop. “It is true, as you report,” the Papal Secretary was saying earnestly. “America seems rife with modernism. Free-masonry, socialism, and countless other fads and religious superstitions are widely prevalent there. Nor do I underestimate their strength and influence. And yet, I fear them not. There are also certain freak religions, philosophical beliefs, wrung from the simple teachings of our blessed Saviour, the rapid spread of which at one time did give me some concern. The Holy Father mentioned one or two of them to-day, in reference to his contemplated encyclical on modernism. But I now see that they are cults based upon human personality; and with their leaders removed, the fabrics will of themselves crumble.”
He took leave of the Bishop, and turned again to address the Cardinal-Bishop within. “A matter of the gravest import has arisen,” he began in a low voice; “and one that may directly affect our negotiations in regard to the support which the Holy Father will need in case he issues apronunciamentothat France, Spain, and Austria shall no longer exercise the right of veto in papal elections. That rumor regarding Isabella’s daughter is again afloat. I have summoned Father Rafaél de Rincón to Rome to state what he knows. But––” He rose and looked out through the door at Josè, bending over his littered desk. Then he went back, and resumed his conversation with the Cardinal-Bishop, but in a tone so low that Josè could catch only disconnected scraps.
“What, Colombia?” he at length heard the Cardinal-Bishop exclaim.
“Yes,” was the Secretary’s reply. “And presumably at the instigation of that busybody, Wenceslas Ortiz. Though what concern he might have in theInfantais to me incomprehensible––assuming, of course, that there is such a royal daughter.”
“But––Colombia elects a President soon, is it not so?”
“On the eve of election now,” replied the Secretary. “And70if the influence of Wenceslas with the Bishop of Cartagena is what I am almost forced to admit that it is, then the election is in his hands. But, theInfanta––” The sound of his voice did not carry the rest of his words to Josè’s itching ears.
An hour later the Secretary and the Cardinal-Bishop came out of the room and left the office together. “Yes,” the Secretary was saying, “in the case of Wenceslas it was ‘pull and percuniam’ that secured him his place. The Church did not put him there.”
The Cardinal-Bishop laughed genially. “Then the Holy Ghost was not consulted, I take it,” he said.
“No,” replied the Secretary grimly. “And he has so complicated the already delicate situation in Colombia that I fear Congress will table the bill prohibiting Free-masonry. It is to be deplored. Among all the Latin Republics none has been more thoroughly Catholic than Colombia.”
“Is the Holy Father’s unpublished order regarding the sale and distribution of Bibles loyally observed there?” queried the Cardinal-Bishop.
The door closed upon them and Josè heard no more. His day’s duties ended, he went to his room to write and reflect. But the intense afternoon heat again drove him forth to seek what comfort he might near the river. With his notebook in hand he went to the little park, as was his frequent wont. An hour or so later, while he was jotting down his remembrance of the conversation just overheard, together with his own caustic and protesting opinions, his absorption was broken by the strange child’s accident. A few minutes later the notebook had disappeared.
And now the thought of all this medley of personal material and secret matters of Church polity falling into the hands of those who might make capital of it, and thereby drag the Rincón honor through the mire, cast the man prostrate in the dust.
CHAPTER 10
Days passed––days whose every dawn found the priest staring in sleepless, wide-eyed terror at the ceiling above––days crowded with torturing apprehension and sickening suggestion––days when his knees quaked and his hands shook when his superiors addressed him in the performance of his customary duties. No mental picture was too frightful or abhorrent for him to entertain as portraying a possible consequence of the loss of his journal. He cowered in agony before71these visions. He dared not seek the little park again. He feared to show himself in the streets. He dreaded the short walk from his dormitory to the Vatican. His life became a sustained torture––a consuming agony of uncertainty, interminable suspense, fearful foreboding. The cruelty of his position corroded him. His health suffered, and his cassock hung like a bag about his emaciated form.
Then the filament snapped and the sword fell. On a dismal, rainy morning, some two months after the incident in the park, Josè was summoned into the private office of the Papal Secretary of State. As the priest entered the small room the Secretary, sitting alone at his desk, turned and looked at him long and fixedly.
“So, my son,” he said in a voice that froze the priest’s blood, “you are still alive?” Then, taking up a paper-covered book of medium size which apparently he had been reading, he held it out without comment.
Josè took it mechanically. The book was crudely printed and showed evidence of having been hastily issued. It came from the press of a Viennese publisher, and bore the startling title, “Confessions of a Roman Catholic Priest.” As in a dream Josè opened it. A cry escaped him, and the book fell from his hands.It was his journal!
There are sometimes crises in human lives when the storm-spent mind, tossing on the waves of heaving emotion, tugs and strains at the ties which moor it to reason, until they snap, and it sweeps out into the unknown, where blackness and terror rage above the fathomless deep. Such a crisis had entered the life of the unhappy priest, who now held in his shaking hand the garbled publication of his life’s most sacred thoughts. Into whose hands his notes had fallen on that black day when he had sacrificed everything for an unknown child, he knew not. How they had made their way into Austria, and into the pressroom of the heretical modernist who had gleefully issued them, twisted, exaggerated, but unabridged, he might not even imagine. The terrible fact remained that there in his hands they stared up at him in hideous mockery, his soul-convictions, his heart’s deepest and most inviolable thoughts, details of his own personal history, secrets of state––all ruthlessly exposed to the world’s vulgar curiosity and the rapacity of those who would not fail to play them up to the certain advantages to which they lent themselves all too well.
And there before him, too, were the Secretary’s sharp eyes, burning into his very soul. He essayed to speak, to rise to his own defense. But his throat filled, and the words which he would utter died on his trembling lips. The room whirled about72him. Floods of memory began to sweep over him in huge billows. The conflicting forces which had culminated in placing him in the paradoxical position in which he now stood raced before him in confused review. Objects lost their definite outlines and melted into the haze which rose before his straining eyes. All things at last merged into the terrible presence of the Papal Secretary, as he slowly rose, tall and gaunt, and with arm extended and long, bony finger pointing to the yellow river in the distance, said in words whose cruel suggestion scorched the raw soul of the suffering priest:
“My son, be advised: the Tiber covers many sins.”
Then pitying oblivion opened wide her arms, and the tired priest sank gently into them.
CHAPTER 11
Rome again lay scorching beneath a merciless summer sun. But the energetic uncle of Josè was not thereby restrained from making another hurried visit to the Vatican. What his mission was does not appear in papal records; but, like the one which he found occasion to make just prior to the ordination of his nephew, this visit was not extended to include Josè, who throughout that enervating summer lay tossing in delirium in the great hospital of the Santo Spirito. We may be sure, however, that its influence upon the disposition of the priest’s case after the recentdénoûementwas not inconsiderable, and that it was largely responsible for his presence before the Holy Father himself when, after weeks of racking fever, wan and emaciated, and leaning upon the arm of the confidential valet of His Holiness, the young priest faced that august personage and heard the infallible judgment of the Holy See upon his unfortunate conduct.
On the throne of St. Peter, in the heavily tapestried private audience room of the great Vatican prison-palace, and guarded from intrusion by armed soldiery and hosts of watchful ecclesiastics of all grades, sat the Infallible Council, the Vicar-General of the humble Nazarene, the aged leader at whose beck a hundred million faithful followers bent in lowly genuflection. Near him stood the Papal Secretary of State and two Cardinal-Bishops of the Administrative Congregation.
Josè dragged himself wearily before the Supreme Pontiff and bent low.
“Benedicite, my erring son.” The soft voice of His Holiness floated not unmusically through the tense silence of the room.
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“Arise. The hand of the Lord already has been laid heavily upon you in wholesome chastening for your part in this deplorable affair. And the same omnipotent hand has been stretched forth to prevent the baneful effects of your thoughtless conduct. We do not condemn you, my son. It was the work of the Evil One, who has ever found through your weaknesses easy access to your soul.”
Josè raised his blurred eyes and gazed at the Holy Father in perplexed astonishment. But the genial countenance of the patriarch seemed to confirm his mild words. A smile, tender and patronizing, in which Josè read forgiveness––and yet with it a certain undefined something which augured conditions upon which alone penalty for his culpability would be remitted––lighted up the pale features of the Holy Father and warmed the frozen life-currents of the shrinking priest.
“My son,” the Pontiff continued tenderly, “our love for our wandering children is but stimulated by their need of our protecting care. Fear not; the guilty publisher of your notes has been awakened to his fault, and the book which he so thoughtlessly issued has been quite suppressed.”
Josè bent his head and patiently awaited the conclusion.
“You have lain for weeks at death’s door, my son. The words which you uttered in your delirium corroborated our own thought of your innocence of intentional wrong. And now that you have regained your reason, you will confess to us that your reports, and especially your account of the recent conversation between the Cardinal-Secretary of State and the Cardinal-Bishop, were written under that depression of mind which has long afflicted you, producing a form of mental derangement, and giving rise to frequent hallucination. It is this which has caused us to extend to you our sympathy and protection. Long and intense study, family sorrow, and certain inherited traits of disposition, whose rapid development have tended to lack of normal mental balance, account to us for those deeds of eccentricity on your part which have plunged us into extreme embarrassment and yourself into the illness which threatened your young life. Is it not so, my son?”
The priest stared up at the speaker in bewilderment. This unexpected turn of affairs had swept his defense from his mind.
“The Holy Father awaits your reply,” the Papal Secretary spoke with severity. His own thought had been greatly ruffled that morning, and his patience severely taxed by a threatened mutiny among the Swiss guards, whose demands in regard to the quantity of wine allowed them and whose memorial recounting other alleged grievances he had just flatly rejected. The muffled cries of “Viva Garibaldi!” as the petitioners left74his presence were still echoing in the Secretary’s ears, and his anger had scarce begun to cool.
“We are patient, my Cardinal-Nephew,” the Pontiff resumed mildly. “Our love for this erring son enfolds him.” Then, turning again to Josè, “We have correctly summarized the causes of your recent conduct, have we not?”
The priest made as if to reply, but hesitated, with the words fluttering on his lips.
“My dear son”––the Holy Father bent toward the wondering priest in an attitude of loving solicitation––“our blessed Saviour was ofttimes confronted with those possessed of demons. Did he reject them? No; and, despite the accusations against us in your writings, for which we know you were not morally responsible, we, Christ’s representative on earth, are still touched with his love and pity for one so unfortunate as you. With your help we shall stop the mouths of calumny, and set you right before the world. We shall use our great resources to save the Rincón honor which, through the working of Satan within you, is now unjustly besmirched. We shall labor to restore you to your right mind, and to the usefulness which your scholarly gifts make possible to you. We indeed rejoice that your piteous appeal has reached our ears. We rejoice to correct those erroneous views which you, in the temporary aberration of reason, were driven to commit to writing, and which so unfortunately fell into the hands of Satan’s alert emissaries. Your ravings during these weeks of delirium shed much light upon the obsessing thoughts which plunged you into mild insanity. And they have stirred the immeasurable depths of pity within us.”
The Holy Father paused after this unwontedly long speech. A dumb sense of stupefaction seemed to possess the priest, and he passed his shrunken hands before his eyes as if he would brush away a mist.
“That this unfortunate book is but the uttering of delirium, we have already announced to the world,” His Holiness gently continued. “But out of our deep love for a family which has supplied so many illustrious sons to our beloved Church we have suppressed mention of your name in connection therewith.”
The priest started, as he vaguely sensed the impending issue. What was it that His Holiness was about to demand? That he denounce his journal, over his own signature, as the ravings of a man temporarily insane? He was well aware that the Vatican’s mere denial of the allegations therein contained, and its attributing of them to a mad priest, would scarcely carry conviction to the Courts of Spain and Austria,75or to an astonished world. But, for him to declare them the garbled and unauthentic utterances of an aberrant mind, and to make public such statement in his own name, would save the situation, possibly the Rincón honor, even though it stultify his own.
His Holiness waited a few moments for the priest’s reply; but receiving none, he continued with deep significance:
“You will not make it necessary, we know, for us to announce that a mad priest, a son of the house of Rincón, now confined in an asylum, voiced these heretical and treasonable utterances.”
The voice of His Holiness flowed like cadences of softest music, charming in its tenderness, winning in its appeal, but momentous in its certain implication.
“In our solicitude for your recovery we commanded our own physicians to attend you. To them you owe your life. To them, too, we owe our gratitude for that report on your case which reveals the true nature of the malady afflicting you.”
The low voice vibrated in rhythmic waves through the dead silence of the room.
“To them also you now owe this opportunity to abjure the writings which have caused us and yourself such great sorrow; to them you owe this privilege of confessing before us, who will receive your recantation, remit your unintentional sins, and restore you to honor and service in our beloved Church.”
Josè suddenly came to himself. Recant! Confess! In God’s name, what? Abjure his writings, the convictions of a lifetime!
“These writings, my son, are not your sane and rational convictions,” the Pontiff suggested.
Josè still stood mute before him.
“You renounce them now, in the clear light of restored reason; and you swear future lealty to us and to Holy Church,” the aged Father continued.
“Make answer!” commanded one of the Cardinal-Bishops, starting toward the wavering priest. “Down on your knees before the Holy Father, who waits to forgive your venial sin!”
Josè turned swiftly to the approaching Cardinal and held up a hand. The man stopped short. The Pontiff and his associates bent forward in eager anticipation. The valet fell back, and Josè stood alone. In that tense mental atmosphere the shrinking priest seemed to be transformed into a Daniel.
“No, Holy Father, you mistake!” His voice rang through the room like a clarion. “I do not recant! My writingsdoexpress my deepest and sanest convictions!”
The Pontiff’s pallid face went dark. The eyes of the other76auditors bulged with astonishment. A dumb spell settled over the room.
“Father, my guilt lies not in having recorded my honest convictions, nor in the fact that these records fell into the hands of those who eagerly grasp every opportunity to attack their common enemy, the Church. It lies rather in my weak resistance to those influences which in early life combined to force upon me a career to which I was by temperament and instinct utterly disinclined. It lies in my having sacrificed myself to the selfish love of my mother and my own exaggerated sense of family pride. It lies in my still remaining outwardly a priest of the Catholic faith, when every fiber of my soul revolts against the hypocrisy!”
“You are a subject of the Church!” the Papal Secretary interrupted. “You have sworn to her and to the Sovereign Pontiff as loyal and unquestioning obedience as to the will of God himself!”
Josè turned upon him. “Before my ordination,” he cried, “I was a voluntary subject of the Sovereign of Spain. Did that ceremony render me an unwilling subject of the Holy Father? Does the ceremony of ordination constitute the Romanizing of Spain? No, I am not a subject of Rome, but of my conscience!”
Another dead pause followed, in which for some moments nothing disturbed the oppressive silence. Josè looked eagerly into the delicate features of the living Head of the Church. Then, with decreased ardor, and in a voice tinged with pathos, he continued:
“Father, my mistakes have been only such as are natural to one of my peculiar character. I came to know, but too late, that my life-motives, though pure, found not in me the will for their direction. I became a tool in the hands of those stronger than myself. For what ultimate purpose, I know not. Of this only am I certain, that my mother’s ambitions, though selfish, were the only pure motives among those which united to force the order of priesthood upon me.”
“Force!” burst in one of the Cardinal-Bishops. “Do you assume to make the Holy Father believe that the priesthood can beforcedupon a man? You assumed it willingly, gladly, as was your proper return for the benefits which the Mother Church had bestowed upon you!”
“In a state of utmost confusion, bordering a mental breakdown, I assumed it––outwardly,” returned the priest sadly, “but my heart never ceased to reject it. Once ordained, however, I sought in my feeble way to study the needs of the Church, and prepare myself to assist in the inauguration of reforms which I felt she must some day undertake.”
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The Pontiff’s features twitched with ill-concealed irritation at this confession; but before he could speak Josè continued:
“Oh, Father, and Cardinal-Princes of the Church, does not the need of your people for truth wring your hearts? Turn from your zealous dreams of world-conquest and see them, steeped in ignorance and superstition, wretched with poverty, war, and crime, extending their hands to you as their spiritual leaders––to you, Holy Father, who should be their Moses, to smite the rock of error, that the living, saving truth may gush out!”
He paused, as if fearful of his own rushing thought. Then: “Is not the past fraught with lessons of deepest import to us? Is not the Church being rejected by the nations of Europe because of our intolerance, our oppression, our stubborn clinging to broken idols and effete forms of faith? We are now turning from the wreckage which the Church has wrought in the Old World, and our eyes are upon America. But can we deceive ourselves that free, liberty-loving America will bow her neck to the mediaeval yoke which the Church would impose upon her? Why, oh, why cannot we see the Church’s tremendous opportunities for good in this century, and yield to that inevitable mental and moral progression which must sweep her from her foundations, unless she conform to its requirements and join in the movement toward universal emancipation! Our people are taught from childhood to be led; they are willing followers––none more willing in the world! But why lead them into the pit? Why muzzle them with fear, oppress them with threats, fetter them with outworn dogma and dead creed? Why continue to dazzle them with pagan ceremonialism and oriental glamour, and then, our exactions wrung from them, leave them to consume with disease and decay with moral contagion?”
“The man is mad with heresy!” muttered the Pontiff, turning to the Cardinal-Bishops.
“No, it is not I who is mad with heresy, but the Holy Church, of which you are the spiritual Head!” cried the priest, his loud voice trembling with indignation and his frail body swaying under his rapidly growing excitement. “She is guilty of the damnable heresy of concealing knowledge, of hiding truth, of stifling honest questionings! She is guilty of grossest intolerance, of deadliest hatred, of impurest motives––she, the self-constituted, self-endowed spiritual guide of mankind, arrogating to herself infallibility, superiority, supreme authority––yea, the very voice of God himself!”
The priest had now lost all sense of environment, and his voice waxed louder as he continued:
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“The conduct of the Church throughout the centuries has made her the laughing-stock of history, an object of ridicule to every man of education and sense! She is filled with superstition––do you not know it? She is permeated with pagan idolatry, fetishism, and carnal-mindedness! She is pitiably ignorant of the real teachings of the Christ! Her dogmas have been formed by the subtle wits of Church theologians. They are in this century as childish as her political and social schemes are mischievous! Why have we formulated our doctrine of purgatory? Why so solicitous about souls in purgatorial torment, and yet so careless of them while still on earth? Where is our justification for the doctrine of infallibility? Is liberty to think the concession of God, or of the Holy Father? Where, oh, where is the divine Christ in our system of theology? Is he to be found in materialism, intolerance, the burning of Bibles, in hatred of so-called heretics, and in worldly practices? Are we not keeping the Christ in the sepulcher, refusing to permit him to arise?”
His speech soared into the impassioned energy of thundered denunciation.
“Yes, Holy Father, and Cardinal-Bishops, Iamjustified in criticizing the Holy Catholic Church! And I am likewise justified in condemning the Protestant Church! All have fallen woefully short of the glory of God, and none obeys the simple commands of the Christ. The Church throughout the world has become secularized, and worship is but hollow consistency in the strict performance of outward acts of devotion. Our religion is but a hypocritical show of conformity. Our asylums, our hospitals, our institutions of charity? Alas! they but evidence our woeful shortcoming, and our persistent refusal to rise into the strength of the healing, saving Christ, which would render these obsolete institutions unnecessary in the world of to-day! The Holy Catholic Church is but a human institution. Its worldliness, its scheming, its political machinations, make me shudder––!”
“Stop, madman!” thundered one of the Cardinal-Bishops, rushing upon the frail Josè with such force as to fell him to the floor. The Pontiff had risen, and sunk again into his chair. The valet hurried to his assistance. The Papal Secretary, his face contorted with rage, and his throat choking with the press of words which he strove to utter, hastened to the door to summon help. “Remove this man!” he commanded, pointing out the prostrate form of Josè to the two Swiss guards who had responded to his call. “Confine him! He is violent––a raging maniac!”
A few days later, Padre Josè de Rincón, having been pronounced79by the Vatican physicians mentally deranged, as the result of acute cerebral anaemia, was quietly conveyed to a sequestered monastery at Palazzola.
Two summers came, and fled again before the chill winds which blew from the Alban hills. Then one day Josè’s uncle appeared at the monastery door with a written order from His Holiness, effecting the priest’s conditional release. Together they journeyed at once to Seville, the uncle alert and energetic as ever, showing but slight trace of time’s devastating hand; Josè, the shadow of his former self physically, and his mind clouded with the somber pall of melancholia.
Toward the close of a quiet summer, spent with his mother in his boyhood home, Josè received from his uncle’s hand another letter, bearing the papal insignia. It was evident that it was not unexpected, for it found the priest with his effects packed and ready for a considerable journey. A hurried farewell to his mother, and the life-weary Josè, combining innocence and misery in exaggerated proportions, and still a vassal of Rome, set out for the port of Cadiz. There, in company with the Apostolic Delegate and Envoy Extraordinary to the Republic of Colombia, he embarked on the West Indian trader Sarnia, bound for Cartagena, in the New World.
CHAPTER 12
There is no region in the Western Hemisphere more invested with the spirit of romance and adventure than that strip of Caribbean coast stretching from the Cape of Yucatan to the delta of the Orinoco and known as the Spanish Main. No more superb setting could have been chosen for the opening scenes of the New World drama. Skies of profoundest blue––the tropical sun flaming through massive clouds of vapor––a sea of exuberant color, foaming white over coral beaches––waving cocoa palms against a background of exotic verdure marking a tortuous shore line, which now rises sheer and precipitous from the water’s edge to dizzy, snowcapped, cloud-hung heights, now stretches away into vast reaches of oozy mangrove bog and dank cinchona grove––here flecked with stagnant lagoons that teem with slimy, crawling life––there flattened into interminable, forest-covered plains and untrodden, primeval wildernesses, impenetrable, defiant, alluring––and all perennially bathed in dazzling light, vivid color, and soft, fragrant winds––with everywhere redundant foliage––humming, chattering,80screaming life––profusion––extravagance––prodigality––riotous waste! Small wonder that when this enticing shore was first revealed to the astonishedConquistadores, where every form of Nature was wholly different from anything their past experience afforded, they were childishly receptive to every tale, however preposterous, of fountains of youth, of magical lakes, or enchanted cities with mountains of gold in the depths of the frowning jungle. They had come with their thought attuned to enchantment; their minds were fallow to the incredible; they were fresh from their conquest of the vastMare Tenebrosum, with its mysteries and terrors. At a single stroke from the arm of the intrepid Genoese the mediaeval superstitions which peopled the unknown seas had fallen like fetters from these daring and adventurous souls. The slumbering spirit of knight-errantry awoke suddenly within their breasts; and when from their frail galleons they beheld with ravished eyes this land of magic and alluring mystery which spread out before them in such gorgeous panorama, they plunged into the glittering waters with waving swords and pennants, with shouts of praise and joy upon their lips, and inaugurated that series of prodigious enterprise, extravagant deeds of hardihood, and tremendous feats of prowess which still remain unsurpassed in the annals of history for brilliancy, picturesqueness, and wealth of incident.
With almost incredible rapidity and thoroughness the Spanish arms spread over the New World, urged by the corroding lust of gold and the sharp stimulus afforded by the mythical quests which animated the simple minds of these hardy searchers for the Golden Fleece. Neither trackless forests, withering heat, miasmatic climate nor savage Indians could dampen their ardor or check their search for riches and glory. They penetrated everywhere, steel-clad and glittering, with lance and helmet and streaming banner. Every nook, every promontory of a thousand miles of coast was minutely searched; every island was bounded; every towering mountain scaled. Even those vast regions of New Granada which to-day are as unknown as the least explored parts of darkest Africa became the scenes of stirring adventure and brilliant exploit of these daring crusaders of more than three centuries ago.
The real wonders yielded by this newly discovered land of enchantment far exceeded the fabled Manoa or El Dorado of mythical lore; and the adventurous expeditions that were first incited by these chimeras soon changed into practical colonizing and developing projects of real and permanent value. Amazing discoveries were made of empires which had already developed a state of civilization, mechanical, military, and81agricultural, which rivaled those of Europe. Natural resources were revealed such as the Old World had not even guessed were possible. Great rivers, vast fertile plains, huge veins of gold and copper ore, inexhaustible timber, a wealth of every material thing desired by man, could be had almost without effort. Fortunate, indeed, was the SpanishConquistadorin the possession of such immeasurable riches; fortunate, indeed, had he possessed the wisdom to meet the supreme test of character which this sudden accession of wealth and power was to bring!
With the opening of the vast treasure house flanked by the Spanish Main came the Spaniard’s supreme opportunity to master the world. Soon in undisputed possession of the greater part of the Western Hemisphere; with immeasurable wealth flowing into his coffers; sustained by dauntless courage and an intrepid spirit of adventure; with papal support, and the learning and genius of the centuries at his command, he faced the opportunity to extend his sway over the entire world and unite all peoples into a universal empire, both temporal and spiritual. That he failed to rise to this possibility was not due to any lack of appreciation of his tremendous opportunity, nor to a dearth of leaders of real military genius, but to a misapprehension of the great truth that the conquest of the world is not to be wrought by feats of arms, but by the exercise of those moral attributes and spiritual qualities of heart and soul which he did not possess––or possessing, had prostituted to the carnal influences of lust of material riches and temporal power.
In the immediate wake of the SpanishConquerossurged the drift and flotsam of the Old World. Cities soon sprang up along the Spanish Main which reflected a curious blend of the old-time life of Seville and Madrid with the picturesque and turbulent elements of the adventurer and buccaneer. The spirit of the West has always been synonymous with a larger sense of freedom, a shaking off of prejudice and tradition and the trammels of convention. The sixteenth century towns of the New World were no exception, and their streets andplazasearly exhibited a multicolored panorama, wherein freely mingled knight and predaceous priest, swashbuckler and staidhidalgo, timid Indian and veileddoncella––a potpourri of merchant, prelate, negro, thief, the broken in fortune and the blackened in character––all poured into the melting pot of the new West, and there steaming and straining, scheming and plotting, attuned to any pitch of venturesome project, so be it that gold and fame were the promised emoluments thereof.
And gold, and fame of a certain kind, were always to be had by those whose ethical code permitted of a little straining. For the great ships which carried the vast wealth of this new land82of magic back to the perennially empty coffers of Old Spain constituted a temptation far more readily recognized than resisted. These huge, slow-moving galleons, gilded and carved, crawling lazily over the surface of the bright tropical sea, and often so heavily freighted with treasure as to be unsafe in rough weather, came to be regarded as special dispensations of Providence by the cattle thieves and driers of beef who dwelt in the pirates’ paradise of Tortuga and Hispaniola, and little was required in way of soul-alchemy to transform theboucanierinto the lawless and sanguinary, though picturesque, corsair of that romantic age. The buccaneer was but a natural evolution from the peculiar conditions then obtaining. Where human society in the process of formation has not yet arrived at the necessity of law to restrain the lust and greed of its members; and where at the same time untold wealth is to be had at the slight cost of a few lives; and, too, where even the children are taught that whosoever aids in the destruction of Spanish ships and Spanish lives renders a service to the Almighty, the buccaneer must be regarded as the logical result. He multiplied with astonishing rapidity in these warm, southern waters, and not a ship that sailed the Caribbean was safe from his sudden depredations. So extensive and thorough was his work that the bed of the Spanish Main is dotted with traditional treasure ships, and to this day remnants of doubloons or “pieces of eight” and bits of bullion and jewelry are washed up on the shining beaches of Panamá and northern Colombia as grim memorials of his lawless activities.
The expenditure of energy necessary to transport the gold, silver and precious stones from the New World to the bottomless treasury of Spain was stupendous. Yet not less stupendous was the amount of treasure transported. From the distant mines of Potosi, from the Pilcomayo, from the almost inaccessible fastnesses of what are now Bolivia and Ecuador, a precious stream poured into the leaking treasure box of Spain that totalled a value of no less than ten billion dollars. Much of the wealth which came from Peru was shipped up to the isthmus of Panamá, and thence transferred to plate-fleets. But the buccaneers became so active along the Pacific coast that water shipment was finally abandoned, and from that time transportation had to be made overland by way of the Andean plateau, sometimes a distance of two thousand miles, to the strongholds which were built to receive and protect the treasure until the plate-fleets could be made up. Of these strongholds there were two of the first importance, the old city of Panamá, on the isthmus, and the almost equally old city of Cartagena, on the northern coast of what is now the Republic of Colombia.