The eucharist in both kinds was tasted by an official before the Pope would venture on it; and this surprised Gerard beyond measure."Who is that base man? and what doth he there?""Oh, that is 'the Preguste,' and he tastes the eucharist by way of precaution.This is the country for poison; and none fall oftener by it than the poor Popes.""Alas! so I have heard; but after the miraculous change of the bread and wine to Christ His body and blood, poison cannot remain;gone is the bread with all its properties and accidents; gone is the wine.""So says Faith; but experience tells another tale.Scores have died in Italy poisoned in the host.""And I tell you, father, that were both bread and wine charged with direst poison before his holiness had consecrated them, yet after consecration I would take them both withouten fear.""So would I, but for the fine arts."
"What mean you?"
"Marry, that I would be as ready to leave the world as thou, were it not for those arts, which beautify existence here below, and make it dear to men of sense and education.No; so long as the Nine Muses strew my path with roses of learning and art, me may Apollo inspire with wisdom and caution, that knowing the wiles of my countrymen, I may eat poison neither at God's altar nor at a friend's table, since, wherever I eat it or drink it, it will assuredly cut short my mortal thread; and I am writing a book -heart and soul in it - 'The Dream of Polifilo,' the man of many arts.So name not poison to me till that is finished and copied."And now the great bells of St.John Lateran's were rung with a clash at short intervals, and the people hurried thither to see the heads of St.Peter and St.Paul.
Gerard and the friar got a good place in the church, and there was a great curtain, and after long and breathless expectation of the people, this curtain was drawn by jerks, and at a height of about thirty feet were two human heads with bearded faces, that seemed alive.They were shown no longer than the time to say an Ave Maria, and then the curtain drawn.But they were shown in this fashion three times.St.Peter's complexion was pale, his face oval, his beard grey and forked; his head crowned with a papal mitre.St.Paul was dark skinned, with a thick, square beard; his face also and head were more square and massive, and full of resolution.
Gerard was awe-struck.The friar approved after his fashion.
"This exhibition of the 'imagines,' or waxen effigies of heroes and demigods, is a venerable custom, and inciteth the vulgar to virtue by great and invisible examples.
"Waxen images~? What, are they not the apostles themselves, embalmed, or the like?"The friar moaned.
"They did not exist in the year 800.The great old Roman families always produced at their funerals a series of these 'imagines,'
thereby tying past and present history together, and showing the populace the features of far-famed worthies.I can conceive nothing more thrilling or instructive.But then the effigies were portraits made during life or at the hour of death.These of St.
Paul and St.Peter are moulded out of pure fancy.""Ah! say not so, father."
"But the worst is, this humour of showing them up on a shelf, and half in the dark, and by snatches, and with the poor mountebank trick of a drawn curtain.
'Quodcunque ostendis mihi sic incredulus odi.'
Enough; the men of this day are not the men of old.Let us have done with these new-fangled mummeries, and go among the Pope's books; there we shall find the wisdom we shall vainly hunt in the streets of modern Rome."And this idea having once taken root, the good friar plunged and tore through the crowd, and looked neither to the right hand nor to the left, till he had escaped the glories of the holy week, which had brought fifty thousand strangers to Rome; and had got nice and quiet among the dead in the library of the Vatican.
Presently, going into Gerard's room, he found a hot dispute afoot between him and Jacques Bonaventura.That spark had come in, all steel from head to toe; doffed helmet, puffed, and railed most scornfully on a ridiculous ceremony, at which he and his soldiers had been compelled to attend the Pope; to wit the blessing of the beasts of burden.
Gerard said it was not ridiculous; nothing a Pope did could be ridiculous.
The argument grew warm, and the friar stood grimly neuter, waiting like the stork that ate the frog and the mouse at the close of their combat, to grind them both between the jaws of antiquity;when lo, the curtain was gently drawn, and there stood a venerable old man in a purple skull cap, with a beard like white floss silk, looking at them with a kind though feeble smile.
"Happy youth," said he, "that can heat itself over such matters.
They all fell on their knees.It was the Pope.
"Nay, rise, my children," said he, almost peevishly."I came not into this corner to be in state.How goes Plutarch?"Gerard brought his work, and kneeling on one knee presented it to his holiness, who had seated himself, the others standing.
His holiness inspected it with interest.
"'Tis excellently writ," said he.
Gerard's heart beat with delight.
