his intimate talk with Badoer he exclaimed the Pope had caused a scaffold to be frequently, "If Henri become sincerely erected before the Spanish ambassador's converted all will be well." Sixtus V., palace. It is certain, however, that Philip too, comprehended well how impossible it and his ambassador entertained some nowas for the King of Navarre to abjure his tion of calling together a General Council Huguenot creed, while he had more than of the Church, under the Archbishop of ever need of the Huguenots, and of the Toledo, and of deposing the pontiff and support of Protestant England and Protes- electing another; so it may be imagined tant Germany. One evening, at supper, what independence the Papacy would have after a long silence, he said suddenly, as enjoyed if Philip had fulfilled his dream of though starting from a dream, "How could universal sovereignty. It was at this peNavarre now turn Catholic? He would riod that Philip adopted, as we have said, be immediately abandoned by the Queen the expedient of sending the Duke of Sessa of England and the Princes of Germany, as special ambassador to Rome. The apand the King of Spain would swallow him pearance of this envoy on the scene, who like an egg." The very walls of the Vati- came to demand expressly from the Pope can had ears at this crisis; these words the execution of the proposals for an were repeated to Olivarès and sent to armed intervention in France, did not Philip, and both monarch and ambassador change the course of affairs in the Pope's strained every ruse of diplomacy and every cabinet. Sixtus V. still eluded all atmeans of intimidation to force the Pope to tempts to force him into action against carry out his engagements - or rather Henri IV., and made use of the scruples quasi-engagements-for though they had of a Pontiff just as a woman does of her been drawn up in formal shape at the Vat- weakness, to disarm his antagonists. He ican, they had never been signed by either complained of the importunities of Olivarès party. The Pope's object was to gain time, and Sessa in public Consistory. Their to let Henri pursue his career of victory; last interview with him was on the 19th and for this purpose he withstood the as- of August, 1590. saults of Olivares in his cabinet, and the further pressure of the special ambassador, the Duke of Sessa, sent by Philip, with the aid of every ruse and every stratagem. The last months of his existence were one long and terrible struggle with the representatives of the policy of the Escu rial. The Pope was then very ill, and was living in the palace on the Quirinal. To revenge himself for the vexation they had inflicted on him, Sixtus appointed the interview to take place at mid-day, when the two ambassadors would have to mount the long incline of the Quirinal under the blazing heat of a Roman August sun. While Henri was winning the victories The two Spaniards again vehemently beof Arques and Ivry, and advancing to the set the Pope, protesting against the missiege of Paris, the Pope was waging daily sion of an ecclesiastic to the Béarnais for in his cabinet not less terrible combats on his instruction in the Catholic faith, and his behalf. Olivarès made three demands, demanding the carrying out of the propopreparatory to insisting upon the execu- sal for intervention. Sixtus replied with tion of the armed intervention- the dis- violence in a fit of passion; the ambassamissal of Luxemburg, the excommunica- dors declared that if he continued so to tion of the Catholic adherents of Henri, treat them, they would return before him and a declaration from the Pope against no more; the Pope retorted they might the Béarnais, as he was always called in leave at once. The emotions of this interthe despatches of Philip. In one inter- view increased the catarrhal fever under view Olivares went so far as to threaten which Sixtus was suffering; he passed a the Pope with a public protestation restless night. After which he grew rapagainst his conduct in the Roman Consis- idly worse, and died five days later; it was tory, to be drawn up by a Spanish theo- remarked that as the breath departed from logian whom he sent for from Naples for the body of Sixtus V. the elements the purpose. At mention of this Olivarès seemed, as in the case of Cromwell, to says the Pope began "to howl with rage participate in his final agony, and Rome (Empezò a chirriar con gran corage), and was enveloped in a thick storm of thunthreatened to excommunicate Olivares and der, and lightning, and darkness. The all his abettors-it even appears he ferocious hatred of Olivarès breaks out in threatened to have the ambassador exe- the few lines in which he announced the cuted; and the memory of this interview death of the Pontiff to Philip. He writes, was long preserved in a tradition to be "His attack was so sudden that his Holifound in the work of Gregorio Leti, that ness died without confession, and worse, worse, worse, (peor, peor, peor); may God [structive parts of his book. The city of be merciful to him!" The Venetian Contarini wrote from Madrid: the Rome to the present day bears all over its Sixtus V. thus died precisely at the outward aspect the stamp of the signhour when he had drawn forth the hatred manual of the severe and imperious Ponof Philip and his agents, and of the Span- tiff. Art was in his reign no longer in its ish faction in France, to its fullest inten- Medicean prime. No great painters and sity. Spanish priests had lately been sculptors remained at his disposal; but he holding him up from the pulpits in Madrid possessed a great architect and a great to the execration of the people as the pro-engineer, Giacomo della Porta and Dotector and favourer of heretics. Bandits menico Fontana, and to these he imparted in the pay of Spain were swarming again his own fiery energy. He had, moreover, over the frontier, to renew the ancient at command a crowd of workers in metal, plague of brigandage in as great intensity moulders, gilders and others, skilful in the as ever; and a mercenary rabble, incited ornamental arts to a degree of which they by Olivarès, rushed to overthrow the have left evidence in the Sistine and BorPope's statue which had been erected by ghese chapels in Santa Maria Maggiore. the Senate on the Capitol. The Constable It was reserved for Sixtus to have, through Colonna, however, husband of the daugh- Giacomo della Porta, the glory of raising ter of the niece of the Pope, prevented the cupola on the dome of St. Peter's, the this outrage to his memory. model of which had been made by Michael Angelo. Such was the zeal that Sixtus infused into his architect that Giacomo della Porta finished the cupola in two years, to the astonishment of the Roman people. But the most interesting account of all the undertakings of Sixtus V. is that left by Domenico Fontana of the erection of the obelisks. There are at present twelve obelisks in Rome; the first four of This architect and engineer had been disthese were erected for Sixtus by Fontana. covered by the Pope in the days of his cardinalate, and he attached him thenceforth to his fortunes. Before the time of and lying on the ground, with the excep Sixtus, the obelisks were all overthrown tion of that of the Vatican, which was still erect in the neighbourhood of the palace, with its lower part deeply sunk in the earth. This was the first obelisk which the Pope instructed Fontana to move. The operation lasted a year, and its success was celebrated with religious cereits former supposed devotion to the wor mony. The obelisk was purified from ship of demons, an altar was erected at its base, a bishop sprinkled it with holy wa ter and with a mitre on his head stretched his hand towards the stone and cried, Exorciso te. With a knife he traced the sign of a cross on all sides of the plinth, saying, In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti A cross of iron was consecrated and raised to the summit- the trumpets soundedthe Te Deum was sung. The Swiss discharged their harquebuses, and the cannon and mortars in the place of St. Peter's, and on the Castle of St. Angelo, thundered forth in celebration of the event. There are four inscriptions, one on each side of the base, of which that facing St. Peter's is the most striking. "Serenissimo Principe. The more death of the Pontiff is here considered, the more every one is pleased. Every ore speaks of it with great license and little respect. They think that no one can succeed to the pontificate more hostile to the ideas of this court and less favourable to the party of the League in France." The inscription on the base of the statue of Sixtus V. says nothing of the great part he played in the service of the Church and in the affairs of Europe, but it records in the following lines the beneficial results of his administration in the city of Rome - "Sexto V., Pont Max. For besides the suppression of brigandage which Sixtus so energetically carried out, the wonderful activity of the Pope has other claims to attention in connexion with his own dominions. He introduced changes into the Papal institutions, one of which, the limitation of the number of cardinals to seventy and their division into congregations, remains to the present day; and it is by the immense labours which he undertook in the public works and for the improvement of the Roman city that Sixtus now most attracts the notice of posterity. The chapter which Baron Hübner has devoted to description of Rome in the latter half of the sixteenth century, and to the architectural works of Sixtus V., is one of the most pleasing and in "Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat, Christus ab omni malo Plebem suam defendat," would have disposed at will of the whole enormous moral and religious prestige of the Papal authority for the purposes of its own ambition. The King of Spain would have been the virtual Pontiff. Sixtus V. The erection of the obelisk in the Lat- even sarcastically suggested to Olivarès eran was attended with greater difficulty, that Philip, as it was, had better proclaim since it was broken in three pieces; but himself Pope at once. As for France, the fragments were so ingeniously sol- whose independence, and whose brilliant dered together by Fontana that the frac- and chivalrous genius, have enabled her to tures are barely visible. Besides this play so prominent a part in European civobelisk, that in front of Santa Maria Mag-ilization, she might, had it not been for giore and that also of the Piazza del Po- Sixtus, have been condemned to many long polo owed their erection to Sixtus V. years of foreign oppression and of horrible The restoration of the columns of Trajan convulsions, in the effort to get free from and Antonine, the statues of St. Peter and the grinding, crushing, stupifying grasp of St. Paul on their summits, the aqueduct Spanish dominion. The long, painful, and of the Acqua Felice, the fountain of Moses courageous resistance of Sixtus V. to the in front of the bath of Diocletian, and sev- exigencies of Philip II. was thus really a eral others, the enlargement of the Monte battle delivered on behalf of European Cavallo, and the transportation there of freedom, and his victory has proved useful the fine colossal figures of men and horses, to the progress of humanity. Baron Hübsaid, but without grounds, to be the work ner has, in fact, succeeded in presenting of Praxiteles, the library and frescoes of the character and policy of the Pope in a the Vatican, the Scala santa, and a crowd new light; for he was not, as is commonly of other erections and improvements, were supposed, the head of the League, and, far accomplished by Sixtus during his brief from being the tool or the accomplice of pontificate, though it must be laid to his Philip II. and the Guises, he held in check charge that he showed little respect for their pretensions. Yet he was merciless, Roman antiquities, and that he destroyed vindictive, and implacable, and as his faith the Septizonium of Septimus Severus, in in the divine origin of the spiritual tyranny order to use its materials in his own con- of the Papacy was absolute he would, had it been possible, have extirpated with Impartial history must, we think, deter- fire and sword every Christian in Europe mine that Sixtus V. was a great Pope, and who refused to accept the Papal dogmas. that, on a consideration of the whole results The Inquisition under his rule dealt ruthof his pontificate, posterity owes him a lessly with every semblance of freedom of debt of gratitude. Had he allowed him- thought in Italy, and we have but to look self to become blindly the tool of the am- to Spain to imagine what Europe might bition of Philip II. it is impossible to say have become, had the Inquisition done its what European calamities might not have work as thoroughly everywhere else as it been the consequence. If Sixtus V. had performed it there. Sixtus nevertheless suffered himself to be coerced into sending possessed noble and valiant sympathies a military expedition into France at the denied to Philip II., and he confessed, in time that the Duke of Parma forced Henri speaking in the Consistory of his public IV. to raise the siege of Paris, there can works in Rome, that he was not insensible be little doubt that France would have to the charms of glory. He was the last fallen into the hands of Philip, an immense great Pope, and would have been owned step have been made in the consolidation as a worthy compeer by the greatest of of his extensive but disjointed monarchy, that strange race of men who have succesand Spain might have become the mistress sively occupied the chair of St. Peter, and of the destinies of Europe. The Papacy claimed to be the highest incarnations of in such case would have been little more the Spirit of God upon earth. than the humble handmaid of Spain, who structions. CHAPTER XIV. Warden waited quietly in his chambers all day, as he had promised: but Félix never came, nor any message from him. Then he went according to his appointment to dine with his friend Major Andrews, and discussed the whole affair. Of course he gave his own version of the For although all the actors had remained story, telling just as much - or rather just alive at the close, it was a real tragedy as little of it as he pleased: so that the that had been played. Two souls had only question left open was whether he found each other only to learn that their had acted rightly in admitting the claim mutual recognition, which should by rights of his opponent to be treated by him on have made the common life of both, hith-equal terms. The Major certainly held erto so wasted, whole and complete, meant that, considering the social position of the the final certainty that their separate lives so-called Marquis and, though he did were to be wasted without hope until the not say so, of Warden also- the last end. To natures like theirs, untrained resort of gentlemen would in such a case and undeadened by the ordinary experi- be rather a farce than a tragedy, in which ence of the world, longing for complete- he, for his own part, having regard to his ness and incomplete in themselves, this own dignity and reputation, would rather vain vision of what might have been is a not be an actor. very climax of tragedy. It may be that there are some who need no double soul; and if, as some hold, there is for each one of us a double soul created somewhere in the world, it is very certain that it is given to very few to find theirs. To these to those, that is to say, who need it not, and to those who do not know their needthe tragedy may seem to have but a tame dénouement. But those who have had the rare chance to meet with and to recognize that which has been created for them, whether in time or not in time, will not consider actual death essential to the idea of a tragic close. And yet there is something worse even than this. AND so at last the curtain had fallen. It seems time formally to turn off the lights, to dismiss the andience, and to roll up the green carpet that used to be the outward symbol of a tragedy. Things are not to be measured by the space that they fill in the world, any more than lives are to be measured by the mere flux of hours and days. Every one of us is the centre of the world to himself: and it is his own illusions and hopes and memories not outward facts-that form the real world of every one. Hugh Lester was as much the centre of the world as the greatest man who ever filled it with the greatest deeds: and his illusions were over. Nor was he one of those dreamers to whom illusion succeeds to illusion, and to whom, when one is dead, another is born. He had staked his whole happiness upon what he now suddenly waked to find the emptiest of dreams. Miss Clare had been right, after all. But life is not altogether like a stage. Even when the play is played out, its lights are never turned off, its audience never dismissed, and its curtain never let fall. Other actors remained, besides Hugh, and Félix, and Marie, who still had something left to do. But he consented to go back with Warden to his chambers to see if anything had happened in the absence of the latter; and was much disappointed to find that a gentleman had called about half an hour since, and was still waiting for Warden's return. But his brow cleared when, on accompanying Warden into the sittingroom, he saw Hugh Lester, with whom he had been slightly acquainted. If a man of his undoubted position and character was willing to act for Félix it gave the matter a different aspect, and made it possible for himself, with a good social conscience, to act for Warden. Hugh was looking wretchedly pale and ill. He was the mere ghost of the young man who had held the reins from Redchester to Earl's Dene but a few months ago. He rose when Warden entered, but did not hold out his hand. "Mr. Warden," he said, coldly, "I daresay you are surprised to see me.' 66 "I confess, Lester - but I am glad to see you, all the same. Won't you sit down again? Major Andrews - Mr. Lester." "We have met before, I think, Major.I have two matters that I have come about. In the first place "Am I de trop?" asked the Major. " Because, if so 66 Not at all. In the first place, there are stories going about about the disappearance of Miss Lefort." "With which I am connected. I know it. I presume you scarcely give credit to the crazy fancies of a mad French fiddler?” "Pardon me - I will come to that presently. There is no evidence to connect you in any serious manner with her disappearance "Thank you. I presume you mean that you do not think me a murderer. That is very kind of you.” "But, if she is not dead, you must see that it is to your interest to help in trac-a ing her out." "I would help to find the poor girl gladly. But what can I do?" "Nothing, of course, if you know nothing. I would rather not explain myself more fully. But you know that Miss Raymond is an old friend of mine: and that than my aunt she has no nearer friends." "My dear fellow, I do know nothing. And I do wish you would explain yourself." By all means, if you wish it. I hear that she-Miss Lefort, I mean says she is married to you." 66 "She said so? And to whom, pray?" "To Monsieur de Créville." of a gentleman, that I know nothing Hugh was silent for a moment. Then he said, "I beg your pardon, Major. You know me well enough, I hope, to respect my opinion in such a matter?" The Major shrugged his shoulders. "Well, you can scarcely have my expe "That madman again! I tell you, Les-rience," he replied. ter, I think it more than strange that you "But I mean as to whether any friend should take his word against mine! You seem offended with me for some unknown cause which I will not try to guess: but is that a reason for doubting the honour of one who has always tried to be your friend?" of mine ought to be treated as a gentleman or no.' "I have every reason to believe the word of Monsieur de Créville until it is disproved." "And it is disproved, I hope, by my de nial." 66 Surely," said the Major. "No one," Warden went on," can prove a negative. It is for Monsieur Créville to prove his words-not for me." "I am no match for you in logic," said Hugh. "But this I do say, that until the fate of Miss Lefort is discovered, I have quite enough reason, upon the authority of Monsieur de Créville, to do all I can to prevent Miss Raymond from making a fatal mistake." "This is insufferable! Miss Raymond is her own mistress - though what she has to do with the matter I am at a loss to conceive." "It was you who asked me for explanations not I who offered them." "And I feel honoured by them, I assure you. But as to this Créville. Has he only to say a thing to be believed?" "Such a story as his at all events requires investigation." "I tell you what, Lester-you have said enough to provoke any one who wishes you less well than I do. But I will not be provoked in this manner by you. I declare to you, on the honour "Oh, certainly - of course." "Then I so far vouch for Monsieur de Créville that a challenge from him ought to be as much considered as one from me or you." "Indeed! And who, pray, is this mysterious Monsieur Créville?" "I know, absolutely, that he is what he claims to be that in spite of his position he is of as good birth as any of us here, probably of better. You have heard of the Marquis de Créville of the French Revolution? This is his son." It was now Warden who interrupted. "The bastard son, you mean," he said, contemptuously. 66 Not, of course, that that makes any difference in this affair." The blood rushed to Lester's face at once. "Warden," he said, warmly, "heaven knows what you mean in what you are doing, or how it is that you know as much as you appear to know. But in what you say I do understand what you mean and, whatever has happened, I have a right to resent it." "You are a strange fellow. My meaning is perfectly clear "Only too clear. And "You cannot say that I speak without reason." |