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BOOK II - THE NEW LIGHT: CHAPTER 12
To relieve the tension of his thoughts he set forth to Gamba the purpose
of his visit.
"I am," said he, "much like a stranger at a masked ball, where all the
masks are acquainted with each other's disguises and concerted to
mystify the visitor. Among the persons I have met at court several have
shown themselves ready to guide me through this labyrinth; but, till
they themselves unmask and declare their true characters, I am doubtful
whither they may lead me; nor do I know of any so well fitted as
yourself to give me a clue to my surroundings. As for my own disguise,"
he added with a smile, "I believe I removed it sufficiently on our first
meeting to leave you no doubt as to the use to which your information
will be put."
Gamba, who seemed touched by this appeal, nevertheless hesitated before
replying. At length he said: "I have the fullest trust in your
excellency's honour; but I must remind you that during your stay here
you will be under the closest observation and that any opinions you
express will at once be attributed to the persons you are known to
frequent. I would not," he continued hastily, "say this for myself
alone, but I have two mouths to feed and my views are already under
suspicion."
Reassured by Odo's protestations, or rather, perhaps, by the more
convincing warrant of his look and manner, Gamba proceeded to give him a
detailed description of the little world in which chance had placed
them.
"If you have seen the Duke," said he, "I need not tell you that it is
not he who governs the duchy. We are ruled at present by a triumvirate
consisting of the Belverde, the Dominican and Trescorre. Pievepelago,
the Prime Minister, is a dummy put in place by the Jesuits and kept
there by the rivalries of the other three; but he is in his dotage and
the courtiers are already laying wagers as to his successor. Many think
Father Ignazio will replace him, but I stake my faith on Trescorre. The
Duke dislikes him, but he is popular with the middle class, who, since
they have shaken off the yoke of the Jesuits, would not willingly see an
ecclesiastic at the head of the state. The duchess's influence is also
against the Dominican, for her Highness, being, as you know, connected
with the Austrian court, is by tradition unfavourable to the Church
party. The Duchess's preferences would weigh little with the Duke were
it not that she is sole heiress to the old Duke of Monte Alloro, and
that any attempt to bring that principality under the control of the
Holy See might provoke the interference of Austria.
"In so ticklish a situation I see none but Trescorre to maintain the
political balance. He has been adroit enough to make himself necessary
to the Duchess without alienating the Duke; he has introduced one or two
trifling reforms that have given him a name for liberality in spite of
the heavy taxes with which he has loaded the peasantry; and has in short
so played his cards as to profit by the foibles of both parties. Her
Highness," he continued, in reply to a question of Odo's, "was much
taken by him when she first came to Pianura; and before her feeling had
cooled he had contrived to make himself indispensable to her. The
Duchess is always in debt; and Trescorre, as Comptroller of Finance,
holds her by her besetting weakness. Before his appointment her
extravagance was the scandal of the town. She borrowed from her ladies,
her pages, her very lacqueys; when she went on a visit to her uncle of
Monte Alloro she pocketed the money he bestowed on her servants; nay,
she was even accused of robbing the Marchioness of Pievepelago, who,
having worn one evening a diamond necklace which excited her Highness's
admiration, was waylaid on the way home and the jewels torn from her
neck by a crowd of masked ruffians among whom she is said to have
recognised one of the ducal servants. These are doubtless idle reports;
but it is certain that Trescorre's appointment engaged him still more to
the Duchess by enabling him to protect her from such calumnies; while by
increasing the land taxes he has discharged the worst of her debts and
thus made himself popular with the tradesmen she had ruined. Your
excellency must excuse my attempting to paint the private character of
her Highness. Such facts as I have reported are of public notoriety, but
to exceed them would be an unwarranted presumption. I know she has the
name of being affable to her dependents, capable of a fitful generosity,
and easily moved by distress; and it is certain that her domestic
situation has been one to excite pity and disarm criticism.
"With regard to his Highness, it is difficult either to detect his
motives or to divine his preferences. His youth was spent in pious
practices; and a curious reason is given for the origin of this habit.
He was educated, as your excellency is doubtless aware, by a French
philosopher of the school of Hobbes; and it is said that in the interval
of his tasks the poor Duke, bewildered by his governor's distinctions
between conception and cognition, and the object and the sentient, used
to spend his time praying the saints to assist him in his atheistical
studies; indeed a satire of the day ascribes him as making a novena to
the Virgin to obtain a clearer understanding of the universality of
matter. Others with more likelihood aver that he frequented the churches
to escape from the tyranny of his pedagogue; and it is certain that from
one cause or another his education threw him into the opposite extreme
of a superstitious and mechanical piety. His marriage, his differences
with the Duchess, and the evil influence of Cerveno, exposed him to new
temptations, and for a time he led a life which seemed to justify the
worst charges of the enemies of materialism. Recent events have flung
him back on the exaggerated devotion of his youth, and now, when his
health permits, he spends his time serving mass, singing in the choir at
benediction and making pilgrimages to the relics of the saints in the
different churches of the duchy.
"A few years since, at the instigation of his confessor, he destroyed
every picture in the ducal gallery that contained any naked figure or
represented any subject offensive to religion. Among them was Titian's
famous portrait of Duke Ascanio's mistress, known as the Goldsmith's
Daughter, and a Venus by the Venetian painter Giorgione, so highly
esteemed in its day that Pope Leo X. is said to have offered in exchange
for it the gift of a papal benefice, and a Cardinal's hat for Duke
Guidobaldo's younger son. His Highness, moreover, impedes the
administration of justice by resisting all attempts to restrict the
Church's right of sanctuary, and upholds the decree forbidding his
subjects to study at the University of Pavia, where, as you know, the
natural sciences are professed by the ablest scholars of Italy. He
allows no public duties to interfere with his private devotions, and
whatever the urgency of affairs, gives no audience to his ministers on
holydays; and a Cardinal a latere recently passing through the duchy on
his return to Rome was not received at the Duke's table because he
chanced to arrive on a Friday.
"His Highness's fears for Prince Ferrante's health have drawn a swarm of
quacks to Pianura, and the influence of the Church is sometimes
counteracted by that of the physicians with whom the Duke surrounds
himself. The latest of these, the famous Count Heiligenstern, who is
said to have performed some remarkable cures by means of the electrical
fluid and of animal magnetism, has gained such an ascendancy over the
Duke that some suspect him of being an agent of the Austrian court,
while others declare that he is a Jesuit en robe courte. But just at
present the people scent a Jesuit under every habit, and it is even
rumoured that the Belverde is secretly affiliated to a female branch of
the Society. With such a sovereign and such ministers, your excellency
need not be told how the state is governed. Trescorre, heaven save the
mark! represents the liberal party; but his liberalism is like the
generosity of the unarmed traveller who throws his purse to a foot-pad;
and Father Ignazio is at hand to see that the people are not bettered at
the expense of the Church.
"As to the Duke, having no settled policy, and being governed only
through his fears, he leans first to one influence and then to another;
but since the suppression of the Jesuits nothing can induce him to
attack any ecclesiastical privileges. The diocese of Pianura holds a
fief known as the Caccia del Vescovo, long noted as the most lawless
district of the duchy. Before the death of the late Pope, Trescorre had
prevailed on the Duke to annex it to the principality; but the dreadful
fate of Ganganelli has checked bolder sovereigns than his Highness in
their attempts on the immunities of the Church, and one of the fairest
regions of our unhappy state remains a barren waste, the lair of outlaws
and assassins, and a menace to the surrounding country. His Highness is
not incapable of generous impulses and his occasional acts of humanity
might endear him to his people were it not that they despise him for
being the creature of his favourites. Thus, the gift of Boscofolto to
the Belverde has excited the bitterest discontent; for the Countess is
notorious for her cruel exactions, and it is certain that at her death
this rich fief will revert to the Church. And now," Gamba ended with a
smile, "I have made known to your excellency the chief characters in the
masque, as rumour depicts them to the vulgar. As to the court, like the
government, it is divided into two parties: the Duke's, headed by the
Belverde, and containing the staider and more conservative members of
the Church and nobility; and the Duchess's, composed of every fribble
and flatterer, every gamester and rake, every intriguing woman and
vulgar parvenu that can worm a way into her favour. In such an
atmosphere you may fancy how knowledge thrives. The Duke's library
consists of a few volumes of theological casuistry, and her Highness
never opens a book unless it be to scandalise her husband by reading
some prohibited pamphlet from France. The University, since the fall of
the Jesuits, has been in charge of the Barnabite order, and, for aught I
know, the Ptolemaic system is still taught there, together with the
dialectic of Aristotle. As to science, it is anathema; and the press
being subject to the restrictions of the Holy Office, and the University
closed to modern thought, but few scholars are to be found in the duchy,
save those who occupy themselves with belles-lettres, or, like the abate
Crescenti, are engaged in historical research. Pianura, even in the late
Duke's day, had its circle of lettered noblemen who patronised the arts
and founded the local Arcadia; but such pursuits are out of fashion, the
Arcadia languishes, and the Bishop of Pianura is the only dignitary that
still plays the Mecaenas. His lordship, whose theological laxity and
coolness toward the Holy Office have put him out of favour with the
Duke, has, I am told, a fine cabinet of paintings (some of them, it is
rumoured, the very pictures that his Highness ordered to be burnt) and
the episcopal palace swarms with rhyming abatini, fashionable
playwrights and musicians, and the travelling archeologists who hawk
their antiques about from one court to another. Here you may assist at
interminable disputes as to the relative merits of Tasso and Ariosto, or
listen to a learned dissertation on the verse engraved on a carnelian
stone; but as to the questions now agitating the world, they are held of
less account than a problem in counterpoint or the construction of a
doubtful line in Ovid. As long as Truth goes naked she can scarce hope
to be received in good company; and her appearance would probably cause
as much confusion among the Bishop's literati as in the councils of the
Holy Office."
The old analogy likening the human mind to an imperfect mirror, which
modifies the images it reflects, occurred more than once to Odo during
the hunchback's lively delineation. It was impossible not to remember
that the speaker owed his education to the charity of the order he
denounced; and this fact suggested to Odo that the other lights and
shadows in the picture might be disposed with more art than accuracy.
Still, they doubtless embodied a negative truth, and Odo thought it
probable that such intellectual diversion as he could hope for must be
sought in the Bishop's circle.
It was two days later that he first beheld that prelate, heading the
ducal pilgrimage to the shrine of the mountain Virgin. The day had
opened with a confused flight of chimes from every bell-tower in
Pianura, as though a migratory flock of notes had settled for a moment
on the roofs and steeples of the city. The ducal party set forth early
from the palace, but the streets were already spanned with arches and
garlands of foliage, tapestries and religious paintings decked the
facades of the wealthier houses, and at every street-shrine a cluster of
candle-flames hovered like yellow butterflies above the freshly-gathered
flowers. The windows were packed with spectators, and the crowds who
intended to accompany the pilgrimage were already gathering, with their
painted and gilt candles, from every corner of the town. Each church and
monastery door poured forth its priests or friars to swell the line, and
the various lay confraternities, issuing in their distinctive dress from
their "lodges" or assembly-rooms, formed a link between the secular and
religious divisions of the procession. The market-place was strewn with
sand and sweet herbs; and here, on the doorsteps of the Cathedral,
between the featureless porphyry lions, the Bishop waited with his
red-robed chapter, and the deacons carrying the painted banners of the
diocese. Seen thus, with the cloth-of-gold dalmatic above his pontifical
tunic, the mitre surmounting his clear-cut impassive face, and the
crozier held aloft in his jewelled gloves, he might have stood for a
chryselephantine divinity in the porch of some pagan temple.
Odo, riding beside the Duke's litter, had leisure to note not only the
diverse features of the procession but their varying effect on the
spectators. It was plain that, as Trescorre had said, the pilgrimage was
popular with the people. That imaginative sensuousness which has
perpetually renewed the Latin Church by giving form and colour to her
dogmatic abstractions, by transforming every successive phase of her
belief into something to be seen and handled, found an irresistible
outlet in a ceremony that seemed to combine with its devotional intent a
secret element of expiation. The little prince was dimly felt to be
paying for the prodigality of his fathers, to be in some way a link of
suffering between the tongue-tied misery of the fields and the insolent
splendour of the court; and a vague faith in the vicarious efficacy of
his devotion drew the crowd into momentary sympathy with its rulers. Yet
this was but an underlying element in the instinctive delight of the
people in the outward forms of their religion. Odo's late experiences
had wakened him to the influences acting on that obscure substratum of
human life that still seemed, to most men of his rank, of no more
account than the brick lining of their marble-coated palaces. As he
watched the mounting excitement of the throng, and pictured to himself
the lives suddenly lit up by this pledge of unseen promises, he wondered
that the enemies of the Church should ascribe her predominance to any
cause but the natural needs of the heart. The people lived in unlit
hovels, for there was a tax on mental as well as on material windows;
but here was a light that could pierce the narrowest crevice and scatter
the darkness with a single ray.
Odo noted with equal interest the impression produced by the various
members of the court and the Church dignitaries. The Duke's litter was
coldly received, but a pitying murmur widened about the gilt chair in
which Prince Ferrante was seated at his governor's side, and the
approach of Trescorre, mounted on a fine horse and dressed with his
usual sober elegance, woke a shout that made him for a moment the
central figure of the procession. The Bishop was none too warmly
welcomed; but when Crescenti appeared, white-haired and erect among the
parish priests, the crowd swayed toward him like grasses in the suction
of a current; and one of the Duke's gentlemen, seeing Odo's surprise,
said with a smile: "No one does more good in Pianura than our learned
librarian."
A different and still more striking welcome awaited the Duchess, who
presently appeared on her favourite white hackney, surrounded by the
members of her household. Her reluctance to take part in the pilgrimage
had been overcome by the exhilaration of showing herself to the public,
and as she rode along in her gold-embroidered habit and plumed hat she
was just such an image of radiant and indulgent sovereignty as turns
enforced submission into a romantic allegiance. Her flushing cheek and
kindled eye showed the reaction of the effect she produced, and if her
subjects forgot her debts, her violences and follies, she was perhaps
momentarily transformed into the being their enthusiasm created. She was
at any rate keenly alive to the admiration she excited and eager to
enhance it by those showy impulses of benevolence that catch the public
eye; as when, at the city gates, she stopped her horse to intervene in
behalf of a soldier who had been put under arrest for some slight
infraction of duty, and then rode on enveloped in the passionate
shouting of the crowd.
The shrine at which the young prince was to pay his devotions stood just
beyond the city, on the summit of one of the low knolls which pass for
hills in the level landscape of Pianura. The white-columned church with
its classical dome and portico had been erected as a thank-offering
after the plague of 1630, and the nave was lined with life-sized votive
figures of Dukes and Duchesses clad in the actual wigs and robes that
had dressed their transient grandeur. As the procession wound into the
church, to the ringing of bells and the chanting of the choir, Odo was
struck by the spectacle of that line of witnesses, watching in
glassy-eyed irony the pomp and display to which their moldering robes
and tarnished insignia seemed to fix so brief a term. Once or twice
already he had felt the shows of human power as no more than vanishing
reflections on the tide of being; and now, as he knelt near the shrine,
with its central glitter of jewels and its nimbus of wavering lights,
and listened to the reiterated ancient wail:
"Mater inviolata, ora pro nobis!
Virgo veneranda, ora pro nobis!
Speculum justitiae, ora pro nobis!"
it seemed to him as though the bounds of life and death were merged, and
the sumptuous group of which he formed a part already dusted over with
oblivion.
Content of BOOK II - THE NEW LIGHT: CHAPTER 12 [Edith Wharton's novel: The Valley Of Decision]
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