Chapter XXI: Fra Angelo

The Capuchin's strange outbreak caused Michel the most profound embarrassment; but, being determined to maintain his independence and sincerity, he affected a tranquillity which he did not feel.

"Why do you call me _prince_ and _excellenza_, my dear uncle?" he said, forcing himself to smile; "is it because I spoke like a patrician?"

"Precisely; every one for himself, I tell you!" replied Fra Angelo, resuming his melancholy gravity. "If that is the spirit of the age which you have been studying at Rome, if that is the new philosophy upon which the young men in other lands are fed, we have not seen the end of our misfortunes, and we can continue to tell our beads in silence. Alas! alas! here is a fine state of affairs! the children of our people will not stir for fear of saving their former masters with them, and the patricians will not dare to lift a finger for fear of being devoured by their former slaves! God save the mark! Meanwhile, the foreign tyranny laughs and grows fat upon our spoils; our mothers and sisters ask alms or prostitute themselves; our brothers and our friends die on dung-heaps or on the gallows! It is a noble spectacle, and I am amazed, Michelangelo, that you came from Rome, where you had before your eyes naught but the splendors of the Holy See and the masterpieces of art, to contemplate our poor Sicily, with her population of beggars, her ruined nobles, her lazy or brutalized monks! Why did you not take a pleasure trip to Naples? you would have seen wealthier nobles there and a more opulent government, made so by the taxes which are causing us to die of starvation; a more tranquil people, who worry but little over the fate of their neighbors. 'What do we care for Sicily? it is a conquered country and its people are not our brothers.'--That is what they say at Naples. Go to Palermo, where they will tell you that Catania is not to be pitied and can save itself unassisted, with its silk worms. Go to Messina, where they will tell you that Messina is no part of Sicily, and that they have no use for its bad counsels and its evil spirit. Go to France; the newspapers there say every day that pious, cowardly peoples like us deserve their fate. Go to Ireland; they will tell you that they want no help from the heretics of France. Go everywhere, and everywhere you will find yourself well abreast of the ideas of your time; for people will say to you everywhere what you just said: 'Everyone for himself!'"

Fra Angelo's words, his tone and his countenance made a deep impression upon Michel, and he was honest enough to confess it to himself at once. The artistic chord was struck, and what would have seemed to him in any other man mere sophistry and declamation, seemed simple and mighty in the mouth of that monk.

"My father," he said with ingenuous candor, "it may be that you are right to scold me as you do. I have no idea at all; and yet I might offer, in defence of my scepticism, many arguments which come and go in my mind as I listen to you. It does not seem to me that I am as wicked and as contemptible as you think. But with you I am much more eager to improve myself than to defend myself. Please go on."

"Yes, yes, I understand," rejoined Fra Angelo, proudly. "You are a painter, and you are studying me; that is all. This language seems strange to you in the mouth of a monk, and you are thinking of nothing but the picture you will paint of St. John preaching in the wilderness!"

"Do not laugh at me, I entreat you, uncle; you do not need to do it to show me that you have more wit and learning than I. You chose to question me; I told you my thought honestly. I hate oppression, whether it appears in the shape of the past or the present. I should not like to be the mere instrument of another man's passions and to sacrifice my future as an artist to the reconstruction of the fortunes and honors of a few great families who are naturally ungrateful and instinctively despotic. I believe that a revolution in such a country as ours would have no other result. I feel that I am man enough to take a gun to defend my father's life and my sister's honor. But, when it comes to joining some mysterious society, whose members act with their eyes closed, and see neither the hand that guides them nor the goal toward which they are proceeding--unless you can prove to me forcibly and convincingly that it is my duty--I will not do it, though you were to curse me, my dear uncle, or to make sport of me, which is much worse."

"What makes you think that I want you to join anything of that sort?" said Fra Angelo, with a shrug. "I admire your distrustful nature. I like to see that your first feeling with regard to your father's brother is the fear of being tricked by him. I wanted to know you, young man, and I am very much cast down by what I know of you."

"What do you know of me, pray?" cried Michel, testily. "Come, try me in proper form, and let me know what my crimes are."

"Your whole crime consists in not being the man you should be," replied Fra Angelo; "and that is very unfortunate for us."

"I understand no better."

"I know that you cannot understand what I am thinking at this moment! otherwise you would not have spoken so before me."

"In heaven's name, explain yourself," said Michel, unable to endure these attacks any longer. "It seems to me that we are fighting a duel in the darkness. I cannot parry your blows, and I apparently strike you when I am trying to defend myself. With what do you reproach me, or what do you ask of me? If I am a man of my time and of my class, is it my fault? I have just stepped foot for the first time on this island devoted to the worship of the past. I am not an atheist, but I am not pious. I do not believe in the superiority of certain classes, nor in the necessary inferiority of my own. I do not feel that I am the born servant of the old patricians, the old prejudices, and the old institutions of my native land. I place myself on a level with the haughtiest and most venerated heads, in order to pass judgment on them, so that I may know whether I should bend my head before true merit, or protect myself against unwarranted prestige. That is the whole of it, uncle, I give you my word. Now you know me. I admire what is noble, great and sincere before God. My heart is susceptible of affection and my mind prostrates itself before virtue. I love art, and I am ambitious of renown, I agree; but I love serious art and seek pure renown. I will not sacrifice any one of my duties to them; but I will not accept false duties, and I will spurn false principles. Am I a miserable wretch for that? and must I, in order to have the honor of being a true Sicilian, become a monk in your convent, or a brigand on the mountain?"

Michel's spirited outburst did not displease the Capuchin. He listened to it with interest, and his face softened. But the young man's last words produced the effect of an electric shock upon him. He leaped up from his bench, and seizing Michel's arm with that herculean strength of which he had given him a specimen in the morning, exclaimed: "What is that metaphor? What are you talking about?"

But, observing Michel's air of stupefaction at this new outbreak, he began to laugh: "Well, even if you do know it--even if your father has told you--what does it matter? Other people know it, and I am none the worse off. Well, my child, you have unconsciously used a very powerful illustration; it was what one might call the marrow of the truth. All men are not made to be fed upon it; there are milder and more digestible truths which suffice for the majority. But to those who desire to be absolutely logical in their opinions and their acts, what seems to you a paradox is the merest commonplace. You look at me in amazement? I tell you that you did, without knowing it, speak like an oracle when you said that, in order to have the honor of being a true Sicilian, one must be a monk in my convent, or a brigand on the mountain. I should prefer that you would be one or the other, rather than a cosmopolitan artist as you aspire to be. Listen to a story, and try to understand it:

"There was once in Sicily a poor devil, but blessed with a vivid imagination and a certain amount of courage, who, being unable to endure the disasters by which his country was overwhelmed, took his gun one fine morning and went into the mountains, resolved to lose his own life, or to destroy one by one as many of the enemy as possible, pending the day when he could fall upon them in a body with the outlaws whom he joined. They formed a large and select band. Their leader was a noble, the last descendant of one of the greatest families of the country--Prince Cæsar de Castro-Reale. Remember that name. You may never have heard it, but a time will come when it will have more interest for you.

"In the woods and mountains the prince had taken the name of _Destatore_,[1] by which name he was known, loved, and feared for ten years, nobody suspecting that he was the young and brilliant nobleman who had run through his fortune at Palermo, and led a most dissipated life with his friends and mistresses.

"Before speaking of the poor devil who turned brigand from patriotic despair, I must say a few words of the noble patrician who had become a leader of brigands for the same reason. It will assist you to a knowledge of your country and your countrymen. _Il Destatore_ was a man of thirty years, handsome, well-educated, lovable, brave and generous,--he had all the characteristics of a hero; but he was persecuted and crushed by the Neapolitan government, who detested him particularly because of the influence he exerted over the common people. He resolved to put an end to the life he was leading, to consume the balance of his fortune, which was reduced every day by taxes to the profit of the enemy; in short, to drown his sorrow in drunkenness, and to kill himself or brutalize himself in debauchery.

"He succeeded only in ruining himself. His robust health withstood all sorts of excess, his sorrow survived his dissipation, and when he found that, instead of falling asleep, he became intensely excited in his cups, that a frantic rage took possession of him, and that it would be necessary for him to run a sword through his body, or, as he said, to eat à la Neapolitan, he disappeared and became a bandit. He was supposed to have been drowned, and his inheritance never caused his nephews any great embarrassment or afforded much profit to the authorities.

"Thereafter he was a tiger, a devouring lion, who spread terror through the country districts and avenged his fatherland in the bloodiest way. The poor devil whom I mentioned at the outset of my story became passionately attached to him, and served him with fanatical loyalty. He never stopped to think whether he was _worshipping the past_, or bending the knee to a man who deemed himself superior to him, but who was only his equal before God; whether he was fighting and risking his life for the benefit of a _master_, who might prove to be _ungrateful and despotic_; whether, after destroying the foreign tyranny, as they hoped to do, they would fall again under the yoke of the _old prejudices_, the _old abuses_, the nobles, and the monks. No, all those shades of distrust were too subtle for such a straightforward and simple mind as his. To beg would have seemed a degradation to him in those days; and as for work! why he had never done anything in his life but work, and work zealously, for he loved work, and was not afraid of it. But I do not know whether you have noticed as yet that in Sicily every man does not work who wants to. Although we have the richest and most fertile soil in the world, taxation has destroyed commerce, agriculture, all the industries and all the arts. The man of whom I speak had sought the hardest, roughest, varieties of labor in the salt marshes, in the mines, even in the very bowels of the earth, which, on the surface, was devastated and neglected. Work was lacking everywhere, and all the enterprises in which he had been employed being abandoned, one after another, he was reduced to begging alms of his fellows who were as badly off as he, or to stealing. He preferred to _take_ openly.

"But in the _Destatore's_ band they took with discernment and justice. They maltreated and held to ransom none but enemies of the country or traitors. They had a secret understanding with every well-meaning or unfortunate man. They hoped to form a party large enough to attempt to seize one of the three principal cities, Palermo, Catania, or Messina.

"But Palermo, before placing confidence in us, demanded that we should be led by a noble; and as the _Destatore_ was supposed to be an adventurer of low birth, he was rejected. If he had told his true name, it would have been worse. He was execrated throughout the country for his previous conduct, and that was a difficulty for which he could blame no one but himself.

"At Messina our proposals were rejected, on the plea that the Neapolitan government had done great things for the commerce of that city, and that, all things considered, peace at any price, with flourishing trade and the hope of growing rich, was preferable to a patriotic war with confusion and anarchy. At Catania they told us that they could not do anything without the concurrence of Messina, and would not do anything without that of Palermo. In fact they definitely refused to assist us in any way; and, after putting us off from year to year, they informed us that the trade of brigand had gone out of fashion, and that it was very bad taste to persist in it when we could sell out to the government and make our fortunes in its service. They forgot to add, it is true, that, in order to resume his place in society, it would have been necessary for the Prince of Castro-Reale to become the enemy of his country and accept some military or civil post, the duties of which consisted in dispersing insurrections with cannon, and in pursuing, denouncing, and hanging his old comrades.

"The _Destatore_, seeing that his mission was at an end, and that, in order to live by his gun, he must thenceforth prey upon his fellow-countrymen, fell into a state of profound depression. Wandering among the wildest ravines on the island, and making bold forays, sometimes to the very gates of the cities, he lived for a time upon foreign travellers who were rash enough to visit the island. That trade was not worthy of him, for those foreigners were, for the most part, entirely free from blame for our ills, and so utterly incapable of defending themselves, that it was a pity to rob them. The brave fellows who followed him were disgusted with such wretched business, and every day brought its quota of desertions. To be sure those scrupulous fellows did worse when they left him; for some, being frowned upon everywhere, relapsed into idleness and poverty; others were forced to join the forces of the government, who considered them good soldiers, and made gendarmes and spies of them.

"Thus there remained with the _Destatore_ only the more determined malefactors, who robbed and murdered, without scrutiny, everyone who came in their way. A single one was still honest, and refused to take part in this highwayman's business. It was the poor devil whose story I am telling you. Nor on the other hand would he leave his unfortunate captain; he loved him, and his heart was broken at the idea of abandoning him to traitors who would murder him some fine morning when they had no one to rob, or would force him into useless crimes for their own gratification.

"The _Destatore_ did full justice to his poor friend's devotion. He had appointed him his lieutenant--an absurd title in a band which now consisted of only a handful of knaves. He still allowed him to tell him the truth sometimes, and to give him good advice; but as a general rule he drove him away angrily, for the leader's temper became more and more soured from day to day, and the savage virtues which he had acquired in the days of enthusiasm and gallant exploits gave way to the vices of the past, children of despair, ill-omened guests which resumed possession of his storm-beaten soul.

"Drunkenness and lust took possession of him, as in the early days of idleness and discouragement. He fell below himself, and one day--an accursed day, which will never be blotted from my memory--he committed a terrible crime, a dastardly, detestable crime! If I had witnessed it, I would have killed him on the spot. But the _Destatore's_ last remaining friend did not learn of it until the next day; and on that next day he left him, after bitterly upbraiding him for his infamy.

"Thereupon that poor devil, having no one to love, and being unable to do anything for his unhappy country, began to wonder what was going to become of him. His heart, still ardent and youthful, turned toward religion, and being of the opinion that an honest monk, thoroughly imbued with the ideas of the Bible, might do a good work, preach virtue to the powerful, give instruction and assistance to the poor and the ignorant, he assumed the frock of a Capuchin, received the lesser orders, and retired to this convent. He accepted the duty of mendicancy imposed upon his order, as an expiation of his sins, and found it preferable to pillage, in that he applied thereafter to the rich in behalf of the poor, without violence and without cunning. It is inferior in a certain sense; it is less sure and less expeditious. But, all things considered, a man who wants to do the greatest possible amount of good should be a brigand in his youth; and he who simply wants to do the least possible harm should be a monk in his old age: you said so yourself.

"There is my story; do you understand it?"

"Perfectly, uncle; it is very interesting indeed, and, in my eyes, the principal hero of the romance is not the Prince of Castro-Reale, but the monk who is speaking to me."

[Footnote 1: He who slumbers not.]