The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe EmigrantThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The EmigrantAuthor: L. F. DostoevskaiaTranslator: Vera MargoliesAuthor of introduction, etc.: Stephen GrahamRelease date: September 28, 2018 [eBook #57986]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by ellinora and the Online Distributed ProofreadingTeam at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced fromimages generously made available by The InternetArchive/American Libraries.)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EMIGRANT ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: The EmigrantAuthor: L. F. DostoevskaiaTranslator: Vera MargoliesAuthor of introduction, etc.: Stephen GrahamRelease date: September 28, 2018 [eBook #57986]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by ellinora and the Online Distributed ProofreadingTeam at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced fromimages generously made available by The InternetArchive/American Libraries.)
Title: The Emigrant
Author: L. F. DostoevskaiaTranslator: Vera MargoliesAuthor of introduction, etc.: Stephen Graham
Author: L. F. Dostoevskaia
Translator: Vera Margolies
Author of introduction, etc.: Stephen Graham
Release date: September 28, 2018 [eBook #57986]
Language: English
Credits: Produced by ellinora and the Online Distributed ProofreadingTeam at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced fromimages generously made available by The InternetArchive/American Libraries.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EMIGRANT ***
THE EMIGRANT
THE EMIGRANT
BYL. F. DOSTOIEFFSKAYA
TRANSLATED BYVERA MARGOLIES
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BYSTEPHEN GRAHAM
NEW YORKBRENTANO’S1916
“The Emigrant” (Emigranta), by L. F. Dostoieffskaya, a daughter of Dostoieffsky the novelist, was published in 1913, and obtained considerable success in Russia. It is a study of the life of a Russian girl (or should we say woman? for she is not young) in Italy. It is a deeply interesting study of contemporary types. In truth, only two Russians take part in the story, the hero and heroine, Prince Gzhatsky and Irene. But the long struggle which is portrayed is a Russian struggle.
These Russians, however, are not the Russians of Dostoieffsky’s time. They are clearly of to-day.
Pride in Russia, and in Russia’s might and wealth and brilliant future, was one of Irene’s greatest joys. The Russian people seemed to her to be a race of chivalrous knights, ever ready tofight for truth and Christianity, and to defend the weak and the persecuted. When the Japanese War broke out, she asked herself, with the sincerest astonishment, how such pitiful monkeys ever could have declared war on such indomitable knights. She even pitied the Japanese for having fallen victims to such madness! Her despair and suffering at the news of our first failures is therefore easy to imagine. None of Irene’s near relations were at the war, but each of our losses, nevertheless, found its echo in her heart, like a personal misfortune. Overwhelmed with grief, she attached no importance either to the Russian revolution, or to the reforms that followed. Like all passionate idealists when their ideal is shattered, Irene rushed to the other extreme—that of a profound contempt for Russia.
Pride in Russia, and in Russia’s might and wealth and brilliant future, was one of Irene’s greatest joys. The Russian people seemed to her to be a race of chivalrous knights, ever ready tofight for truth and Christianity, and to defend the weak and the persecuted. When the Japanese War broke out, she asked herself, with the sincerest astonishment, how such pitiful monkeys ever could have declared war on such indomitable knights. She even pitied the Japanese for having fallen victims to such madness! Her despair and suffering at the news of our first failures is therefore easy to imagine. None of Irene’s near relations were at the war, but each of our losses, nevertheless, found its echo in her heart, like a personal misfortune. Overwhelmed with grief, she attached no importance either to the Russian revolution, or to the reforms that followed. Like all passionate idealists when their ideal is shattered, Irene rushed to the other extreme—that of a profound contempt for Russia.
And it is in contempt of Russia that the heroine finds consolation in Italy, and is even ready to throw over the Orthodox Church to which she belongs and enter a convent ofsœurs mauves.
The chief interest in the book is the conflict between the influence of a certain Père Etienne and the influence of a compatriot of handsome looks and robust mind, Prince Gzhatsky. Irene is in apension“teeming with old maids.” She is herself forty and unmarried.She is apparently without near of kin, and is lonely beyond words, but also selfish and extremely condemnatory in her outlook. But she is vivacious, spontaneous, engaging, and always asking pertinent questions.
The high demands she made of her ideal hero, the man she might marry, give one the idea that there is a certain amount of autobiography in this volume, for no doubt ideals ranged high in the home of Dostoieffsky. It is strange, however, that the question of selfishness and unselfishness does not arise in this enthralling study of an unsatisfied soul. Dostoieffsky himself was never tired of a certain Gospel sentence, the thought of which might have given calm to Irene: “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die it abideth alone; but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit.” The whole book, however, has a haunting suggestion of Dostoieffsky—the ghost of the father is somewhere about.
This poor Russian woman has, however, lost herself in going to Rome. One seeshow much happier she would have been if she had remained at home. It is common in Russians to go into ecstasy about Italy when they see it first.
“In Italy, amidst the brilliance and magnificence of Nature, in the magnificent chaos of cities buzzing with automobiles, humming with factories, you feel at least that Man is not losing himself; you feel he is the master, the centre. But in Moscow …” wrote Gorky, another unhappy exile; and it is a characteristic expression. The exile admires the West, but he must return to Russia.
A word should be said as to the discussion of the relative merits or demerits of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches. It is not very competently handled by the authoress, but there is at least one most effective comment on ecclesiasticism as such:
“In your place I would go a little further still,” exclaimed Irene’s inner soul with malicious sarcasm. “I would destroy every New Testament in the world, except one—and that one I would put in a golden, jewel-studdedbox, and would bury it deep in the earth, forbidding its disinterment on pain of death. Over it, I would build a splendid golden shrine, and in this shrine I would celebrate night and day magnificent services with gorgeous processions. That would be entirely in accordance with the spirit of your Christianity.”
And she yearns for a Christianity freed from the prison walls of churches and forms.
Irene, however, thinks that if the Orthodox Russian Church elected a Patriarch it might recover its ancient power, and utter a “new word.” And there once more we see vaguely the ghost of Dostoieffsky. The great Russian, however, would not have spoken so kindly of the Roman Church (which he regarded as a sort of political conspiracy against Christianity).
STEPHEN GRAHAM.
London,April, 1916.
Il n’y a qu’un héroisme au monde: c’est de voir le monde tel qu’il est—et de l’aimer.—Romain Rolland.
Il n’y a qu’un héroisme au monde: c’est de voir le monde tel qu’il est—et de l’aimer.—Romain Rolland.
On the 15th of October, 19—, at four o’clock in the afternoon, in the garden of the Monte Pincio in Rome, sat a girl, no longer in the first flush of youth, Irene Mstinskaia. She held a book in her hand, having come to the park with the object of reading in the fresh air; but, as had always been the case since her arrival in Rome, she could not concentrate her thoughts on the English novel open before her. Her glance glided across the blue autumnal sky, lingered caressingly on the magnificent southern pines and palms, rested on the statues gleaming white among the verdure, and always returned to theEternal City, as it lay spread out before her, at the feet of the Pincio.
Irene had travelled much and seen much, but no town had yet produced so deep an impression on her. She tried in vain to define this power that Rome wielded over her, and, finding no explanation, she invented one of her own: “Who knows,” thought Irene dreamily, “perhaps people never really quite die, but remain for ever hovering in spirit round those places where they have most forcibly lived and suffered. It may be that Rome is full of the ghosts of ancient Romans, of early Christians, of Renaissance painters, of nineteenth-century Italians, who died nobly in the struggle for Italy’s freedom and unity. All these phantoms are unable to tear themselves away from their beloved Eternal City. They are the rulers of Rome to-day, as much as in their own time, and we, foreigners, fall under their influence and cannot dissociate our thoughts from them.”
On the whole, the influence of Rome was not only overwhelming—it was also soothing. Wandering in museums, among ruins, throughchurches and catacombs, Irene felt, day by day, stealing into her soul a profound, indescribable sense of peace, such as that which unconsciously comes over one as one enters a convent. And it was just for this holy stillness and peace that her tired soul was thirsting.
Let not the reader think, however, that my heroine had passed through the storm of some great misfortune, or the suffering of some severe illness. On the contrary, her life and circumstances were such, that many a short-sighted and superficial observer envied her exceedingly.
At the death of her parents, Irene had remained entirely free, with plenty of money, a good name, and a good position in society. She enjoyed excellent health, in spite of the fact that she had been born and had passed all her life in Petrograd; she was clever and well educated. What more, one asks oneself, could anyone desire of the Fates?
But, somehow, it is an unfortunate fact in dear Russia, that even the most precious gifts of the gods seem never to be of anybenefit to our people. How is one to explain this curious circumstance? Does it arise from some peculiarity in the Russian temperament, or from the general disorder and purposelessness of our way of living? The French, in the similar case of “La Belle au Bois Dormant,” have laid all the blame at the door of the wicked fairy who was offended at not being invited to the christening. I think I shall not go far wrong if I say that in Russia the part of the wicked fairy is played by the parents of the infant themselves. Oh, of course not intentionally, but simply as a consequence of our Russian laziness and the absence of organized and formulated ideas in the bringing up of our children.
Irene Mstinskaia lost her mother early and was brought up by her father, a scientist who spent all his life in his laboratory, disliked society, and received nobody but an occasional friend, as jealously devoted to science as himself. He adored his little Irene, petted and spoiled her; but, like most Russian parents, took very little interest in her spiritual development. The child grew up,lonely, silent, pensive. Books took, in her young life, the place of companions and childish games. She read a great deal without guidance or discrimination, and gained all her ideas on life, all her faith, all her ideals and aims and aspirations from books. Books stood between her and reality, and hid from her those deep truths that can never be learnt from even the greatest literary production, but can only be understood after long years of untiring observation and experience. It was in books also that Irene found her ideal of the man she could love. Her hero was an exceedingly complicated character. He united in himself the stoicism of an ancient Roman, the romanticism of a mediæval knight, the gallantry of a powdered marquis, and the dignified chivalry of the hero of an English novel.
Do not laugh, reader! Irene was not stupid; she was only young and inexperienced, knew little or nothing of life, and sincerely believed in her fantastic dream hero. Most pathetic of all was the fact that she set about looking for him among the relations andfriends of her late mother, who had belonged by birth to the higher government circles—i.e., the most unromantic circles of Russian society. The proximity of the court, the glitter of wealth and social position, transforms almost every young Petrograd official into a mere hunter after honours, money, decorations, caring for nothing but his career and the chance of some brilliant appointment. The distance that separates Petrograd from the rest of Russia destroys in these young people what should be the fundamental idea at the root of all conscientious government service—the good of the country. Their service becomes simply a ladder by which they can mount upwards towards the making of a career, and any means seems justifiable to attain this end. Already in childhood these young people are familiar with conversations about promotions and honours, and their souls early imbibe the poison that makes worldlings and cynics. Their wives also cannot influence them for good, since they, too, in the majority of cases grow up in the same official circles, and seenothing blameworthy in career-hunting. On the contrary, they intrigue and help and encourage their husbands in the rush for advantageous appointments.
To a fresh young soul, such as Irene’s the cynicism of “officialdom’s” conversations and ideals could not but stand out in all its true ugliness, causing her to turn away, sick with disillusionment and disgust. She regarded this whole spirit of self-advancement-at-any-price with the profoundest contempt, and considered it low and vulgar and worthy only of menials. Her father, holding his noble birth in high honour, had instilled into his daughter the assurance that her aristocratic antecedents placed her on a level with all the de Rohans and de Montmorencys in the world. She regarded decorations and titles and social honours with contempt, and could not understand how anybody could attach importance to such toys. Her means were sufficient to ensure lifelong freedom from care; luxury, however, did not attract her, for Irene was an idealist, who looked upon love, pure, sanctified love, as the greatest happiness life could offer.
Had she been English or American, this lonely girl would not have been content with her limited circle of acquaintances, and would have gone in search of her hero through the length and breadth not only of Russia, but of all Europe.
Irene, however, was Russian, and therefore placid and unenterprising! So she not only did not travel, but had not the energy, even at home in Petrograd, to look round and make sure that her hero was not concealed somewhere in the social circles of the capital. She profoundly despised the pitiful types she met in society, and though sick at heart, waited patiently and untiringly for the one man before whom she was destined some day to bow her head. Her own individual faith was largely responsible for this patient, confident expectation. Already in her early childhood, Irene had worked out for herself her own personal credo, in the place of which, without understanding it in the least, most people unthinkingly accept the religion officially adopted by the State. Her faith, of course, rested upon a Christian basis—buther Christianity was of the kind that shapes itself according to the varying idiosyncrasies of every individual believer’s soul and mind.
Irene firmly believed that in spite of the perpetual struggle between good and evil, good is incomparably the stronger of the two, and must always triumph. Therefore, people desirous of attaining happiness, must as a first step be just and honourable, and never offend nor hurt anyone. Then, and then only, can God send them peace and success in all their undertakings, and then only can they be happy without the smallest struggle or effort to attain this natural happiness. Irene believed in this so firmly and deeply, that it always amazed her to see people winning success and worldly goods by means of intrigue and dishonesty.
“The madmen!”—she thought to herself—“how can they not realize that they are building up their well-being on sand, and that each dishonest action may turn out to be the one rotten beam through which the whole edifice will fall to pieces?”
Irene often endeavoured to explain her theory to other people, and was always astonished at their lack of trust in God’s help, and their incomparably greater faith in their own “smartness” and roguery. How did these blind mules manage not to see what was, to her, clear as day? And Irene profoundly regretted that she was not endowed with oratorical gifts, by means of which she might have helped to save these people from needlessly wasting and misdirecting their energies.
The silent, dreamy girl carefully observed the lives of her acquaintances, and every time that any of them achieved some success, or suffered some misfortune, she tried to account for this circumstance by one or other of their preceding actions. I am afraid that in her eagerness to prove, even to herself, the justice of her theory, she often deceived herself, and dragged in irrelevant facts. She was sincerely happy at the sight of virtue rewarded, and, though naturally anything but cruel or revengeful, she nevertheless rejoiced triumphantly when wickednesswas laid low! It is true that occasionally, under the influence of scientific books, which, as the years passed, held an ever-increasing attraction for Irene, she said to herself that people were wicked owing to the particular construction of their skulls or spinal cords, and were as innocent of their own vice as the tiger is innocent of his carnivorous nature. In the same way, it followed that it was not only natural and easy for good people to be good, but that it would be exceedingly difficult for them to act dishonestly, or in any way contrary to their natures. There was, indeed, according to this theory, no such thing as the eternal struggle between good and evil—there were only on the one side healthy and therefore honest natures, and on the other, morally diseased and, therefore, cruel or vicious ones. But when Irene began to meditate on these ideas, there arose in her poor head such a confused chaos of tangled thoughts, that she hastily banished all scientific propositions, and returned to her old faith, in which everything was clear and simple.
Irene worked carefully and untiringly at herself and her own moral and mental development. She not only did not admit of any dishonourable action, but severely admonished and persecuted herself for every bad thought, every shade of feeling, that tended towards envy or revenge. And so, as always happens when one works long and obstinately for the achievement of a certain result, Irene really succeeded in raising her own honour and integrity to a point beyond reproach. The loftier grew her own ideal, however, the more difficult she found it to reconcile herself to the weaknesses of others. Day by day, her requirements in connection with her unknown hero increased, and day by day he became always more difficult to find. She submitted every man who crossed her path to so severe an examination that not one passed through it successfully. The young married women of her acquaintance, noticing how wistfully she looked at their children, advised her to marry, even without love, only to become a mother and thus attain the one real aim, theone true happiness that life can give to a woman. Irene listened to their advice with amazement. According to her ideas, a woman had no right to bring a new life into the world unless she had found a man who could pass on to the child only the highest and most irreproachable moral qualities. Such an idea is, of course, fundamentally good and logical—but, unfortunately, it is also somewhat difficult to carry out! Nature is so fantastic and capricious, that sometimes a child may bear no likeness whatever to its ideal parents, but may bear a striking and very unwelcome resemblance to some long-forgotten black sheep great-grandfather! On the whole, indeed, resignation, and faith in God’s mercy, are the most suitable frames of mind in this connection; but these are frames of mind that one could hardly expect from Irene! Idealists who passionately believe in their ideals, hypnotize themselves and become the slaves of their own thoughts.
At thirty, in order to avoid any future moral torment at the appearance of a grey hair or a decayed tooth, Irene decided thatshe was an old woman, and that there was no longer any occasion to think about love. She began to dress always in black, and assumed with men the air of an old maiden aunt. Her dream now was only of friendship, and she longed for the warmth of a friendly hearth.
Her women friends, however, did not believe in her sincerity, did not consider her as old as she imagined herself to be, and were afraid for their husbands. Year by year, Irene felt herself to be always increasingly lonely and isolated, and then, suddenly, came the Japanese War.
Pride in Russia, and in Russia’s might and wealth and brilliant future, was one of Irene’s greatest joys. The Russian people seemed to her to be a race of chivalrous knights, ever ready to fight for truth and Christianity, and to defend the weak and the persecuted. When the Japanese War broke out, she asked herself, with the sincerest astonishment, how such pitiful monkeys ever could have declared war on such indomitable knights. She even pitied the Japanese for having fallen victimsto such madness! Her despair and suffering at the news of our first failures is therefore easy to imagine. None of Irene’s near relations were at the war, but each of our losses, nevertheless, found its echo in her heart, like a personal misfortune. Overwhelmed with grief, she attached no importance either to the Russian revolution, or to the reforms that followed. Like all passionate idealists when their ideal is shattered, Irene rushed to the other extreme—that of a profound contempt for Russia.
Everything became cold and indifferent to her in her homeland. She no longer believed in anybody; she trusted neither the masses nor the educated classes. They were all cowards, they were all narrow, lazy, and ignorant. She began to go abroad more frequently. There, in contrast, everything pleased her immensely. She admired the German peasants for their love of work, the Swiss for their orderliness, the French for their wit. In old days, after having passed three months abroad, she had always grown homesick, and on reaching the Russian frontier, had felt inclined to embracethe very railway porters for their good-humoured Slavonic faces! Now, she returned home with regret, found fault with Russian arrangements, and looked with disgust at the endless, monotonous fields, at the dull, slumbering type of life and nature that slipped placidly along outside the windows of the sleepy train.
Her contempt for Russia was encouraged by the countless critical and scathing articles that appeared in the newspapers as a result of the newly granted freedom of the Press. According to these articles all Russia’s resources had been used up by drink and by robbery, and the whole country was in a state of ruin and primitive savagery. They did not attempt to explain why, all this being so, Russia had not, long ago, died of starvation and famine, why our government stock stood higher than before the war, and why Europe set as much value as ever on Russian opinion. But Irene, like most women, did not measure the rights and wrongs of the newspaper accusations. They were in tune with her pessimistic mood, and she no longerbelieved in Russia, just as she no longer believed in her own happiness.
The most cruel pain of all, however, was that occasioned by a gradually awakening doubt about the justice of her own beliefs. It seemed to her that, logically, it was time God rewarded her in some way for her scrupulous honesty, and she suffered at the absence of this reward. In observing the lives of others, Irene could persuade herself that if they had no outward success, they enjoyed the greater blessing of inner peace and happiness. It was difficult, however, to deceive her own self in this matter; for, indeed, poor Irene not only had no happiness, but the boon of inner peace had not even been granted to her. Her soul had been wounded, torn, immersed in darkness and despair, from which there seemed no escape. And yet there, before her very eyes, wicked and dishonourable people triumphed and rejoiced. How was this to be explained? Could her credo have been a mistake, could she have been struggling and wandering all her life along the wrong path? Such anadmission would have been, for Irene, equal to suicide—for she could never have reconciled herself to a world in which only wickedness and deceit triumph.
Life in Russia grew at last so unbearable that she decided to emigrate. Her first idea was to go and live in England, with which country she was acquainted through the medium of her beloved English novels. By chance, however, Zola’s “Rome,” with its magnificent descriptions of Roman life, fell into her hands, and she suddenly felt drawn towards Italy. It is for this reason that we find her, on this warm autumn day, sitting in the garden of the Monte Pincio.
Irene’s first impression on arriving in Rome was one of disappointment. Her imagination was impregnated with visions of the Roman Forum, of proud Romans in togas, of fighting gladiators, of the splendour of the Emperors and the dazzling luxury of the papal court. What wonder, then, if she almost resented the many-storied houses, the shops, the tramways, and the prosaic crowd in its ugly, contemporary attire?
Her disappointment, however, was only transitory, and in spite of her depressed and gloomy state of mind, the magic charm of Rome soon won the day over her low spirits. It is always, indeed, difficult for a northerner to resist the sparkling and effervescent sense of gaiety which awakens in his heart under the rays of the southern sun.
At first, only the mediæval portion of the town absorbed and attracted Irene. She spent days in wandering through labyrinths of narrow, dirty, unpaved streets, where people, horses, donkeys, tramways, and bicycles moved along, an apparently inextricable mass, in the uneven roadway. She felt sad and sick at heart at sight of the miserable dwellings—rather hovels than houses—in which, till the present day, the poor of Rome find shelter. What a contrast between these wretched abodes and the magnificence of the neighbouring Palazzos, with their splendid courtyards and marble colonnades enclosing little gardens overgrown with palms and orange-trees! Even the luxury of the Palazzos, however, depressed Irene. Her mind wandered back to the Middle Ages, and it seemed to her that she had found the key to all the cruelty and injustice of those dark, bygone days. How could kindness and honour and mercy flourish in such gloomy palaces, in such dismal narrow alleys where God’s sunlight never penetrated? No wonder, indeed, if humanity, having atlast thrown off the mediæval régime, hastened, immediately after the French Revolution, to escape from these labyrinths of dark and crooked alleys, and invented a new type of towns, whose streets were broad and flooded with sunshine.
The only bright spots that relieved, to Irene, the gloom of mediæval Rome, were the Piazzas, with their gorgeous fountains. Here was the best place for observing the Roman crowd, a crowd always interesting and characteristic, even though robbed, in these days, of its picturesque national costume.
There is a woman, hatless and coatless, in spite of the cold winter’s day, sitting by the fountain with a child in her arms, drawing water and finishing herbambino’stoilet in the open air. Opposite her, on the doorstep of someone’s house, a young carpenter is resting, having left the new table he was carrying to a customer in the middle of the road, in everyone’s way. The slight frown on his pink, dirty face distinctly says: “Gone are the good old times! Where are the bandits that used to hide among the ruins of the Campagna,and receive with open arms fellows like me, who love a gay, careless life, and have no mission for hard work?”
His brothers in spirit, healthy, happy, lazy, young scamps, are loitering about the Piazza, with boxes of cheap mosaic trinkets, smiling caressingly at passing Englishwomen, and saucily offering them their goods: “Des mosaïques, madame? Très jolies et pas chères!” There is a passingvetturino(cabman) raising his finger, and gazing fixedly at theforestiere(foreigner), implying with look and gesture an obliging readiness to drive him to the end of the earth. Leaning against a column, there stands the plague of contemporary Rome: a middle-aged guide, with the face of a benevolent old father who has had no luck in life. He is muffled up in a brightly coloured scarf, and with a massive walking-stick in his hand, he lingers beside a historical monument and awaits his victim, the next unsuspecting and simple passing tourist. He stares gloomily at a crowd of shrieking street urchins, who have just emerged from a neighbouring alley. They are supposed to be selling newspapers,but actually they are eternally fighting, rolling in the dust, throwing about and soiling the newly printed journals. They are dispersed and driven away with a stick by a tall, bent old man, picturesquely draped in an enormous grey cloth cloak with a fur collar. This garment the old man has dragged as a remembrance from the shoulders of a late faithful lodger, recently deceased at an extreme old age. The inconsolable landlord is going to afesta, one of those solemn Masses, with a Cardinal officiating, which are celebrated almost every day in one or other of Rome’s innumerable churches. Behind his indescribably dirty ear, that has never been washed since his birth, he has tucked a red carnation, as a sign of respect to the saint whose memory he is going to honour.
Suddenly, a group of wandering musicians show themselves on the Piazza. One plays the violin, another blows a trumpet, while a third, in a broken top-hat and a rusty overcoat, singscanzonettas, and dances. Immediately, a crowd collects. At all the open windows appear signoras with black eyes andraven tresses, pushing away with their hands the rags hung out to dry. They are all laughing and screaming and chattering, they are all happy. This is still the same pleasure-loving ancient-Roman crowd, living more in the street than at home, and revelling in anything in the nature of a pageant. Arrange a gladiator’s fight to-morrow in the Colosseum, and they will all rush to the spot, and applaud the victor as passionately as ever did their ancestors.
Sometimes these Piazzas are the scenes of antiquarian markets. Light wooden booths are erected for the sale of old cassocks and other priestly vestments, pieces of material, embroideries, lace, old brooches, bracelets, fans, candlesticks in the shape of antique lamps, books printed on faded yellow parchment, pictures, and statuettes. All this is bought up fast and feverishly by Englishwomen and Americans, whom the wily Romans deceive in the most ungodly manner.
On one such occasion, Irene, to her cost, asked the price of a piece of lace. The vendor, having asked a hundred lire, followedher twice round the Piazza, lowering his price at each step, and setting out in detail all the tragic circumstances that were forcing him to part with such a treasure. He had received the lace as a present from the Marquise Abrakadabra-Abrakadabrini. This highly aristocratic name was undoubtedly familiar to the signora? His “mamma” had been the wet-nurse of the young Marchesina, so that he, Beppo, was her foster-brother. He had hoped to mend his fortunes for life by selling this priceless lace, but poverty (he spoke with great pathos, tragically smiting his chest)—poverty, signora, was obliging him to act hurriedly, and to abandon his last hope. At least, he had the one consolation of knowing that this family treasure was falling into the hands of such a sympathetic signora—“Look out!” he screamed suddenly, clutching hold of the shafts of a cab that threatened to run them over. He was only too happy to have been able to render the signora two services: first, that of saving her life, since, but for his intervention, thevetturinowould undoubtedly have run over her; and second, that of sellingher, for a song, a priceless piece of lace, in which the signora would look as beautiful as a queen.
When he had dropped his price from a hundred lire to twenty, Irene, only too anxious to be rid of her irksome follower, paid him, and hurried away with her purchase, for which she had not only lost all interest, but which she by that time positively detested. On her return home, she showed it to the landlord of herpension. He shook his head pityingly, twirled his finger in front of his nose, smacked his lips, and announced that “la pauvre signorina a été volée comme dans un bois.”
Irene began to think that old, mediæval Rome had bewitched her. On many occasions, she started out with the intention of visiting some museum or picture gallery, but always it was as if some magic power was drawing her towards those dingy streets, with their stench and their dirt, and their smell of cookery, where the poor of Rome were preparing their unceremonious dinners out-of-doors. Perhaps, indeed, she may have feltthat there was something in common between those gloomy localities and her own joyless life.
She was greatly attracted by one grim-looking palace, situated at a particularly dingy, dirty spot, in the neighbourhood of the Ghetto. A terrible deed had once been perpetrated in this palace. Its owner, that famous Cenci, so noted for his depravity, had fallen in love with Beatrice, the daughter of his first marriage, and persecuted her with his shameful desires. The whole family rose against the mad old villain, and, under the influence of her brothers and her step-mother, Beatrice poisoned her father. The crime was discovered, Beatrice was imprisoned, made a full confession, and was executed.
Having heard by chance that a famous portrait of Beatrice Cenci, the work of Guido Reni, is preserved at the Palazzo Barberini, Irene went to see it. She expected to see a queenly, tragic beauty, and found, instead, a simple girl, almost a child, in the very springtime of life—an innocent young soul to whom love and passion can as yet havehad no meaning. The artist has represented her in prison, dressed in the white prisoners’ attire. Her little face is worn and drawn through sleepless nights, her beautiful eyes are red with tears, her little childish lips are swollen, just as all children’s lips are swollen when they cry. The whole touching little face seemed to say quite clearly: “Yes—I am a criminal! Everyone tells me that I must pay for my crime with my life; that I must leave the lovely world that I love so much, leave the sunshine and the birds and the flowers, and go away into a cold tomb. What can I do? I have no strength to protest! But you, who will live instead of me, do not curse poor Beatrice! Love her! Pity her!”
Irene’s eyes filled with tears as she looked at this martyred child, and she hid her face under her veil to hide her emotion. Other visitors to the Palazzo Barberini were also weeping and trying to conceal their tears.
“You are revenged, little Beatrice!” thought Irene. “Thousands are weeping at your sad fate, and are cursing your tyrants.”
Irene soon became known in herpensionas the tourist who had been living in Rome for three months and had not seen the Forum. All the Englishwomen in the house, deeply shocked at this omission, persuaded, implored, and at last forcibly dragged her there. From that moment, the charms of the mediæval city vanished for her, and she lost herself entirely in the antique world.
The weather was warm and sunny. The colossal walls of ruined ancient palaces and shrines, that must surely have been built for giants, stood out in relief against the blue sky. The silence was intense, the Roman season had not yet begun. Unknown crowds of English travellers had not yet descended from the Swiss mountains, nor sailed across the waters from Egypt. Irene felt quite at home among the ruins. She wandered for days among the ruins of the Forum and the Palatine, trying to imagine the life of the past, when the sun shone down not on the crumbling stones before her but on a world of glistening marble and pagan luxury; whenthe immense sculptured gods, sheltered at present in the galleries of the Vatican, rose on their pedestals high above the heads of the gorgeous crowd with its classic draperies and its garlands of flowers, worshipping, offering sacrifices, burning incense. What a beautiful, gay, triumphant picture! Why did it all end? What could have driven these people away from their beloved green hills, down to the unhealthy banks of the Tiber and those dirty, dark alleys? And why are people now in their turn moving away from these alleys and returning to the hills and the sunshine, and a new, healthier life?
For the first time the thought occurred to Irene that the world, like each individual human being, must gradually pass through all the different periods of life. First, the early years, with their faltering steps and their uncertain memory. Then, at about five years old, the beginning of gay, happy, early childhood, white raiment, crowns and garlands and flowers, dance and song and laughter and summer-time. Dolls are indispensable at this age—modelled of clay, hewn out of stone,carved in wood, at first very primitive and clumsy like those of the Egyptians, then always more and more lifelike, and finally perfected by the Greeks. And like a child who, having made itself a rag doll, takes it seriously and endows it with all sorts of qualities, so the Greeks and Romans place the gods they have made on pedestals, and call them Jupiter the terrible, Venus the passionate, Amor the little rogue, Minerva the wise, etc.
They dance around their gods with the careless gaiety of childhood; they love gorgeous processions, banquets, chariot-racing, and gladiators’ fights for life or death, upon which they look with laughter, since pity is to them, as to all children, a thing unknown.
But time passes, and the child grows older. New ideas and requirements awaken in him; games and gaiety lose their interest. He grows pensive, pale, and thin, and he feels the need of suffering and tears. Irene remembered how, at the age of seven, she had suddenly experienced a great desire to fast during all the seven weeks of Lent. Pale,fragile child as she had been, such privation had weakened her terribly; but incredible as it may seem, with a strength gleaned Heaven knows from where, she had actually held out to the end! She remembered also certain religious pilgrimages in the small provincial town, near which she had sometimes passed the summer with her father. Many a time in the torrid heat of a sultry July day had she walked for four or five hours through clouds of dust, along a rough, uneven road, in a procession behind an ikon, returning home half dead with fatigue, but unable to sleep, through sheer religious exaltation. Her thoughts, too, wandered back to the neighbouring convent, whither she had often gone to pray, and where, having attended vespers, she had sometimes stood through the whole night in prayer, soaring on the wings of a religious ecstasy, and feeling no fatigue. Her young soul had needed these raptures, fasts, and prayers. It had needed also the food of legends, and the more wonderful, the more supernatural these legends the dearer had they grown to herimagination. Her mind had acknowledged no logic, and had needed none.
Did not the same thing happen to the world in the Middle Ages, that period of Humanity’s later childhood? Christianity, or rather its rites and ceremonies (since its real meaning was unattainable to these children), was accepted with enthusiasm, because these rites and ceremonies exactly answered the requirements of the age: ecstasy, martyrdom, torture rapturously borne, naïve and lovely legends. Humanity would have no more of dolls and toys, and wrathfully destroyed the statues of the gods. Later on, in more recent times, those same people tenderly and lovingly collected the broken fragments of the statues and preserved them in their museums as cherished remembrances of childhood. It is thus that a grown-up man will pay a large sum for a broken doll, or for a faded coloured print that amused him in his early days.
Just as modelling is the heritage of babyhood, so painting is the delight of childhood. First come naïve little drawings, like the work of the Primitives, in which the figures ofsaints of high religious rank are made twice as large as those of their inferiors, or like the pictures of Perugino and his school, in which the infant Christ is depicted wearing a coral ornament similar to those put round the necks of Italian children to save them from the evil eye!
Day by day, art develops and grows more perfect, reaching its apotheosis almost simultaneously in all the countries of Europe. Yet in all their magnificence and perfection, something naïve and childlike remains even in the works of the great masters. They draw pictures from the life of Christ, for instance, with background and accessories of the Middle Ages. They represent some Pope in all his Catholic vestments and with his papal tiara kneeling humbly before the Virgin, with the Child in her arms. They are not in the least disturbed by the thought that if a Roman Pope exists at all, it is only because this Christ Child grew up, and because His Apostles founded the Church. Their childish mind does not occupy itself with such contradictions, and Michael Angelo gives to theworld his famous Pièta, a magnificent marble group, in which the Virgin Mother is younger than her Son.
The defenceless child, unable to revenge himself on his tyrants and tormentors, loves to console himself with dreams of how the Divine Power—God and His angels, the Archangel Michael with a sword in his hand—will descend from heaven to help him. The wicked will be burnt in hell, and he, the offended and insulted one, will receive his reward in Paradise. Had he not this dream and this consolation, life would indeed be too heavy a burden.
But the child grows up, and reaches adolescence. He stands on the threshold of life, and the school-bench is left behind him. School has taught him but little—a few facts and some elementary information. But he has learnt to reason logically, and to examine the solid foundations on which the world rests. He begins to apply his logic to everything, and when he approaches religion, doubt trembles in his soul. The absurd improbability of the legends of theMiddle Ages disgusts him, and at the same time he is obsessed by the fear of remaining without a religion, a fear which has been inculcated into his mind by his entire upbringing. Calm and cold-blooded people think it all out, and become confirmed Atheists. Not so, however, those others with fervent, burning souls! Poor Tolstoy, in the wrath of his old age, destroys and insults the very elements on which he has founded and formed his life, and, having insulted them, goes to church as before, prays humbly among beggars, throws himself into a monastery, and dies of despair on the highway.
How many such martyrs are there in our days! With tears and sobs they fall on their knees, stretch forth their hands to Heaven, and cry from the depths of their souls: “God! show me some miracle that I may again believe in Thee! It is only through Thy wonders and miracles worked in the early days of Christianity that people turned to Thee and believed. Why were these early Christians dearer to Thee than I? I love thee; it is hard for me to tear myselfaway from Thee! A miracle, a miracle, I beseech Thee! I will then believeanything, even what is against all reason and logic—only come to my help I implore Thee! Give me a sign or a miracle!”
But there are no more miracles, and death and despair enter like iron into the soul of the sufferer.
Like most Romanpensions, that in which Irene was staying was teeming with old maids of all nationalities. There must be some mysterious wind that blows them from all corners of the earth to the Eternal City. They go there in the hope of finding peace and spiritual rest, and their hope is almost always justified. What wonder indeed? For Rome is not a town; it is a picturesque cemetery, glorified by a golden sunset. On active, life-loving people it produces a gloomy impression; but to those who let life slip past them this cemetery is dear and precious. In other towns these lifeless people feel strange and out of place; the storm and stress, the feverish rush of life in a modern city shocks and angers them. In Rome one cannot think either of the present or thefuture. One’s thoughts linger in the past, and one is interested only in those who have long ago crumbled into dust in their graves.
Irene did not like old maids. She saw in these “brides of Christ” something incomplete, something eternally expectant. She avoided their society, and associated preferably with married women, calling herself jokingly an “old bachelor,” an appellation that struck her as less disagreeable than the more usual one, which she refused to admit.
However, having unavoidably come into contact with most of her fellow visitors at thepension, she discovered that the maiden ladies of Rome were unlike their sisters elsewhere. They had peculiarly bright, gay, sometimes even radiant faces. Irene also noticed that between four and five o’clock in the afternoon some of them daily began to show signs of agitation. They blushed, made attempts at personal elegance, smartened up their modest black dresses by the addition of a lace collar or a bunch of fresh violets, solicitously saw to the arrangements of their little tea-tables, and constantly threw impatientglances at the door. The anxiously expected guests always turned out to be severe and majestic Catholic priests, before whom the ladies were tremulously shy. Irene assumed that the latter were probably newly converted Catholics, and her supposition was confirmed by a charming middle-aged English lady of an impoverished but famous old family, to whom Irene felt greatly drawn. Lady Muriel related that she had, the previous year, during a stay with relations in Ireland, made the acquaintance of a Catholic priest, “a most remarkable man,” and that now she was happy to say she had been converted to the Catholic faith.
“I had thought,” she murmured, “that life was over for me, but now I see that it is only just beginning, and that happiness is before me. The Catholic faith is so warm, so tender, so consoling!”
After this, Irene observed the Fathers and their spiritual daughters with redoubled interest. She was particularly attracted to an old French Dominican, called Père Etienne. His mother had been an Italian, and he hadinherited from her the Roman type. “The face of a proud patrician,” thought Irene to herself. Like all Romans, Père Etienne was severe and forbidding, but when he laughed, which happened often, and always unexpectedly, his face became astonishingly kind and sympathetic, and almost childlike.
Lady Muriel introduced him to Irene, and from her very first conversation with him Irene felt such a sympathy for Père Etienne, that, to her own astonishment, she poured out to him the whole story of her life, with all its doubts and fears and disappointments. The priest listened attentively, but evidently with disapproval, and when, in answer, he laughed a little at her faith—not the orthodox faith, of course, but her own personal ideas—Irene felt like a silly little girl who has received a scolding.
“You have invented this faith yourself,” he said. “It has nothing in common with Christianity. You Russians are all revolutionaries. Your priests do not teach you the principal thing, the love and fear of God and of His divine wisdom and might. Your attitudetowards God is quite unceremonious. You make conditions and contracts with Him as if He were a simple mortal. You have not advanced far beyond the ideas of your fellow-countrymen the Samoyedes, who first make sacrifices to their wooden gods and then beat them if they do not grant their prayers. When you Russians think you are passing from Orthodoxy to Catholicism, you are actually passing from paganism to Christianity.”
“And where did you get the notion,” he asked on another occasion, “that Christ promised His followers happiness in this life? On the contrary, Christ said repeatedly, ‘My kingdom is not of this world.’ And, indeed, how could He reign here, among the pitiful creatures who people this earth, worms that strive only for empty, worldly pleasures, and cannot raise their eyes to the stars? Were He to appear anew among them, with His mild humility and saintliness, would the vulgar mind understand Him? No; our present-day Christians would laugh Him to scorn, and though they would not, perhaps, lead Him to Golgotha, they would certainly turn awaywith a mocking smile. The kingdom of Christ is indeed beyond the grave, in another and more perfect world, to be attained only by purified souls who, already during their lifetime, have renounced earthly joys, and, by means of meditation, fasting, and prayer, have conquered the body, and their lower natures. Great joy and happiness awaits them in Heaven, and it is thither, my daughter, that your hopes must be directed. It is in the Kingdom of the Future that you must expect justice, and not in this vain world, from which but few will succeed in saving their souls.”
The priest spoke with enthusiasm. His face shone with the light of inspiration. It was as though his eyes already saw the bliss of Christ’s kingdom and those Heavenly joys of which he was so firmly convinced.
His words made a great impression on Irene. Until that time, she had never thought much about the future life. “Why trouble oneself,” her common sense had argued, “about something that no one has ever seen? What must be, will be, and premature curiosity is useless.”
Now, however, hearing these burning words of Père Etienne, she involuntarily thought to herself: “Is it possible that he really believes what he says?” And at the same time, she felt that the inspired enthusiasm of the kind old priest was beginning to influence her. Like most people of our day, Irene was interested in hypnotism, and it had not infrequently, in moments of despair, occurred to her to apply for help to some famous hypnotist. She had been restrained only through fear of the consequences that might accrue from putting herself under the power of a perfect stranger. Supposing, having cured her of her gloomy state of mind, he should turn her into a criminal, and make her steal or murder?
Now, however, looking into the noble face of the old priest, Irene understood and felt that he could lead her along the right path. Oh! if he could succeed in giving her back her former faith! He had convinced other poor girls. And what happiness shone from their pale faces!
Irene caught at Père Etienne as a drowning man at a straw. It is thus that a mansuffering from an incurable disease flies to some quack or self-styled magician, gazes excitedly at mysterious herbs, and is already half assured that in them, and only in them, lies salvation. As for Père Etienne, the kind-hearted old man enthusiastically and zealously threw himself into the work of saving Irene’s soul, and arranging her life.
“You are deeply mistaken,” he assured her, “when you think that you have lost time uselessly, and have lived your life in vain. On the contrary, you have achieved much. You have passed through all your troubles with a pure heart. You have not made compromises with your conscience. You have looked on sadly while goodness and justice suffered, and sin was loaded with honours; but the idea has never occurred to you—as it does, alas! to many—that if sin is so successful, why not join its followers? You have resisted the temptation of such a thought. Your soul was dearer to you than the glitter of worldly success. You struggled with wicked thoughts, and emerged victoriously from the struggle. This is a great happiness, my daughter.Thank God for giving you a strong will and a pure heart. It is a sign that you are one of His chosen ones. But you must not stop half-way. Throw off that spirit of despair! Forget all earthly cares! Draw yourself apart from the world and its ways, and consecrate yourself to God. It is necessary for you, without losing more time, to enter a convent.”
“A convent?” exclaimed Irene.
“Yes, a convent. You need silence and rest. With your nature, life will always perturb and dismay you. You do not understand that the triumph of the wicked is temporary, and that they are all on the eve of their undoing. You are unable to realize this. It is necessary for you to cut yourself off once and for all from every contact with them, to withdraw yourself into silence, and to occupy yourself with prayer and the reading of sacred books. You are proud to call yourself a Christian, but do you intimately know the Holy Writ? Have you often in your life read the Gospel? Be sincere—confess!”
Irene was obliged to confess, with a blush, that she had never once read it through inits entirety, and had contented herself with what religious instruction she had received at school, and with the extracts from the Gospel that she had heard read out at church.
“There! That’s just it. I had foreseen that,” exclaimed the priest. “And yet it is only on reading and studying the Gospel that many things become clear. Read it, and a divine peace will steal into your heart. This great Holy Book will take, for you, the place of all others. Day by day, your former despair will be replaced by hope, and your soul will be filled with joy and rapture. You have suffered agonies of doubt, and you well know how unbearable they are. Now you stand on the threshold of that incomparable bliss that only true faith can give. Et Dieu viendra causer avec vous, ma fille. Vous serez une de ses élues, et Il vous honorera de Sa Parole. Remember the elect in the Bible, who were found worthy of intercourse with God, but who nevertheless remained human.”
“But how can I?” said Irene reflectively “Leave the world? Leave all human tiesand associations for ever? But that is terrible!”
“What has that world, what have those human ties given you? Can you call to mind a single hour, a single moment of real happiness, even the shadow of happiness?”
Irene had to admit the absence even of that shadow.
“There! You see it yourself. You are afraid of a convent; but, do you know? you have been a nun for a long time.”
Irene opened her eyes wide.
“Yes; it is so. Look round at your own life. You live virtuously, you hardly associate with men at all. Balls and theatres have long ceased to interest you. You dress in dark colours, and you yourself told me only recently that you eat very little meat, but prefer living mostly on vegetable diets. You have no specially near and dear relations, and feel a contempt even for your country. What, then, can attach you to the world?”
“Really—I don’t know. Liberty, independence⸺”
“Yes; but in a convent, also, you will retainthe liberty to think, to read, to enjoy and love nature—and your requirements do not go beyond this. If, for instance, you were in love, and were dreaming of someone, this would be a great obstacle to convent life, and I should, in such a case, be the first to dissuade you from it. But I believe such is not the case?”
And Père Etienne gazed scrutinizingly into her face.
“Oh! you can set your heart at rest about that,” laughed Irene. “Men never played a great part in my life, and lately I have left off paying any attention to them at all. Besides, I really don’t think I have any temperament.”
“Perhaps you may be greatly mistaken!” The exclamation fell from the lips of Père Etienne accidentally. He was evidently provoked at his own careless words, and hastened to add that he had little acquaintance with Northern natures.
“But,” he continued, “if man’s love does not attract you, that is evidently a special grace of God, and it shows His particular mercy to you. Now is the time to flee to a convent,while yet no human influence can disturb your peace. A late love would be a great misfortune for you. To be happy in the married state, one must enter it in early youth, before the character of the girl is completely formed. Only on these conditions does the young wife submit to all the requirements of married life, and grow gradually accustomed to them. She understands the character of her husband, adjusts herself to it, and so finds her happiness. You, having passed all your youth on coldly polite terms with men, have estranged yourself too much from them. You know nothing about their characters, and neither they nor you could ever give happiness, one to the other. There would only be mutual misunderstanding and great suffering. Pray that this cup may be for ever removed from you.”
“Oh! I assure you, the question does not interest me in the least. Absence of faith troubles me infinitely more. How can I enter a convent, when I do not, perhaps, believe what is most important of all?”
Père Etienne smiled indulgently.
“Faith,” he answered, “like everything else in the world, is not given to us all at once, but only after long and patient effort. Carry out your monastic duties, go to church and pray at the given times, read sacred books, and, little by little, faith will penetrate into your heart.”
“But, allow me! How is this? Do you advise me to pray at first mechanically, almost without believing?” asked Irene incredulously. “But that would be hypocrisy, a mockery of religion!”
“Do not children begin by praying mechanically? This does not prevent their praying consciously and sincerely later on. It will be so with you also. Do not let this dismay you.”
Père Etienne did not hurry her to decide; but the thought of taking the veil had sown its seed in Irene’s heart.
“Yes,” she thought. “Père Etienne is right. After a certain age, it is best for unmarried women to bury themselves in convents. In the world, everything only irritates and tortures their souls: little children, withtheir adorable little faces, happy lovers, gazing tenderly into each other’s eyes, passionate music singing of love, all this happy, earthly life, in which they have no place. In a convent, on the other hand, far from worldly books, papers, news, rumours, their nerves are gradually quieted, and a regular life and untroubled sleep cures their tortured souls.”
A little earlier, the idea of being converted to the Roman faith would have frightened Irene; but, having lived a few months in Rome, she had grown to love the Catholic church and clergy. From the first days of her arrival, she had been interested in the students of the various theological colleges and seminaries, whom, in their picturesque costumes, some scarlet, some mauve, some black with coloured belts, one meets in Rome at every step. Irene loved to observe their intelligent faces, and their attentive, scrutinizing glances.
It seemed strange to her, at first, to see these future priests on the Pincio at the fashionable hour, contemplating elegant ladies in splendid carriages, or to meet them at teas and dinners in the fashionable hotels. But,on thinking this over, she came to the conclusion that this, to her, new and unaccustomed Catholic system of educating the priesthood was perfectly rational. In order to wield an influence over the great social world, it is indispensable to know its thoughts and ideals, and to share its manners, its bringing up, and its education.
In their free time the students see Rome, visit museums and picture-galleries, learn to distinguish one school of art from another, and to decipher the inscriptions and hieroglyphics on ancient sarcophagi. The theological colleges belong to various countries, and among the students—Englishmen, Germans, Frenchmen and Poles—are many people of good society, and sons of famous aristocratic families.
Irene reflected with some bitterness that only in Russia is the guardianship of religion left in the hands of grasping peasants. The very name of a seminarist is connected, in Russia, with the idea of coarseness. The education, the mental development of the priesthood is on the lowestlevel, and social life is entirely unknown to them. A youth who has barely finished his course at the seminary, is hurriedly ordained, and rushed off to some village in the depths of the country, where the sheep of his fold, rough, wild peasants, teach their young pastor to drink. Should he have the luck to be sent to a large town, his knowledge of life and of social ways and customs is so small that he can do no good whatever to his parishioners. On the contrary, he irritates them by clumsy tactlessness when hearing confessions, by wild sermons, and an unceremonious attitude towards the holiest things. He turns his church into a shop, where he sells ikons, candles, calendars, and countless other trifles, from which he tries to make as good an income as he can. Sick at heart, Irene remembered how priests at home, while holding out the cross to be kissed by worshippers before leaving church, continued mumbling a special service they were supposed to be celebrating after Mass in honour of some saint, standing the while with theirbacks to the ikon of the said saint, and hardly troubling to give the responses to the co-officiating deacon. She remembered also a scene witnessed at a service before a miracle-working ikon, in a provincial monastery, where the drunken priest and the equally drunken deacon had quarrelled and abused each other in the intervals between the prayers. Unhappily, indeed, such and similar occasions were none too rare, and they rankled in Irene’s mind, wounding her heart and shaking the foundations of her respect for Orthodoxy. Just before her departure from Russia, she had happened to be present at a little improvised religious meeting arranged at the house of a friend for a small group of schoolgirls of the higher social circles. They all arrived looking very excited and inspired, and their little youthful faces wore serious and attentive expressions. How much holiness and goodness could at such a moment have been sown in those innocent young souls by an enlightened pastor! And how did the Russian priest, invited to speak to these children, use the occasion? Theserious, solemn old veteran mounted the platform and spoke for a whole hour about the advisability of eating during Lent, only the particular kind of butter prescribed for such periods, and the sinfulness of eating the ordinary kind!
Irene had watched the faces of the listening girls, and had seen reflected on them surprise, uncertainty, and at last flushes of indignation. They had come for a piece of bread, and had been given a stone.
Nothing of this kind was to be seen in Roman churches. The priests officiated with reverence at the altars, assisted by their little acolytes, while the rôle of the deacon and the sub-deacons and the choir was carried out by the congregation itself. Seated on chairs, with prayer-books in their hands, the people followed the service, gave the responses, and sang the prayers. Sermons were preached by gifted and eloquent preachers, usually in the evening, quite apart from any service, and these sermons always drew large and eager crowds of listeners.
In Russia, Irene had gained the impressionthat the Catholic Church was nothing so much as dry and scholastic, stifling all individual thought, and destroying all culture. In Rome, this erroneous idea was soon dissipated, and she realized that Catholicism had, on the contrary, through all the centuries of its existence, faithfully served the cause of progress. The Roman Popes had all been connoisseurs of art. They had surrounded themselves with great painters and sculptors, had given them orders, and had encouraged them in every possible way. They had collected and religiously preserved old books and manuscripts, had organized extensive excavations and researches, and had decorated the halls of the Vatican and the Lateran with the antique statues they had discovered.
Catholic schools and colleges had educated numbers of highly talented people. Even that famous negator of Christianity, Renan, was also a pupil of one of these institutions. The Catholic system of education does not stifle the intelligence—on the contrary, it gives freedom and encouragement to the youthfulimagination. Until now, in spite of every kind of persecution, monks and nuns are looked upon in Western Europe as the best and most capable educators of the young. They put their whole souls into their work, and receive in return the love and respect of their pupils.
Irene thought of her own spiritual isolation, her loneliness and despair, during the old days at home in Petrograd. She had had nowhere to go, no one to whom to apply for comfort and advice, and each and everyone of her acquaintances had been as lonely and spiritually friendless as herself. In Russia, she had considered the accepted cold relations between the faithful and their spiritual fathers as perfectly natural; now, she had seen and appreciated the value of very different conditions.
Père Etienne was an old man, and suffered severely from asthma, so that to reach Irene’s room on the second floor was no small matter, and left him out of breath for some time after his arrival there. In spite of this, however, he considered it his duty to go and see herevery day, to comfort her, to dissipate her doubts, and to renew her courage. It was her soul that was precious to him, and he exerted all his powers to save this soul, and to lead it into the right channel.
All this astonished Irene. She had seen in her father’s house how learned men, almost all, as a rule ended by being Atheists and by regarding all religions as childish sentimentalities.
How could these Catholic priests with their extensive education and intellectuality believe in naïve Christian legends? She had imagined that the Catholic Church had long ago abandoned these legends, but that having in its cleverness realized what centuries are needed for the transforming of an old religion into a new one, had allowed them to remain unrefuted, and to continue answering, as they did most satisfactorily, the spiritual necessities of millions of people. There are, of course, naturally virtuous souls who will always remain honest and true, and will always hate sin, to whatever religious opinions or negations they may adhere. But are there manysuch? The majority of the human race is still so uncultured that religion is the only means of keeping them more or less on the right path—religion, the fear of hell, and the hope of heaven! And so, thought Irene, the Catholic Church had decided, for the time being, to pretend to believe everything; and, for the happiness of the people, for the sake of law and order and culture, to resign not a single legend, nor a single dogma. And Irene, with all her heart, justified and applauded this magnificent deception!