The Cardinal

by Henry Morton Robinson

  Stephen hastened to Glennon’s side. Solicitude for his Cardinal’s strength prompted the suggestion, “Your Eminence must be tired. Let us go to the hotel for a rest, a bath, and dinner.”

  “Rest can come later,” growled Glennon. “First I must speak to Giacobbi. See how he preens himself at the center of the stage.”

  The Cardinal Camerlengo, standing with a group of dignitaries under a magnificent chandelier, stepped forward as he saw the American approaching.

  “Welcome to Rome, Brother Cardinal,” said Giacobbi. “I trust that you are well, and that you enjoyed your voyage.”

  “I am well enough, Lord Cardinal, and I did not enpoy my voyage.” Glennon unbanked his glowing anger. “Why did you not wait for my arrival?”

  Giacobbi could afford to be courteous. Although he had lost the triple crown, he was still the most powerful member of the Roman Curia, and already had his reappointment as papal Secretary of State assured. Correct to coolness, he answered Glennon’s question.

  “I had no discretion in the matter, Your Eminence. The Apostolic Constitution explicitly states that the conclave shall begin ten days after the Pope’s decease.”

  “The bull In hac sublimi gives the Camerlengo wide discretion in interpreting the Constitution,” retorted Glennon.

  Giacobbi countered: “That bull also stresses the necessity of choosing a new Pope without delay.”

  “You interpret the Constitution to please yourself. If one of your precious Italian cardinals were delayed, you would stretch a point.” Physical exhaustion impaired Glennon’s higher centers of judgment. “But to an American, no consideration is given.”

  Provokingly bland, the Camerlengo smiled. “No consideration? You are overwrought, dear Brother. Were you not met by a special train at Naples—greeted on your arrival in Rome by a member of the papal household? All was performed in accordance with usage.” Giacobbi’s frosty politeness was more infuriating than ill-tempered language would have been. “And now, Eminence, you must excuse me. My duties oblige me to attend the Holy Father as he gives his blessing urbi et orbi.”

  Glennon was not to be fobbed off by an excess of punctilio. “I will state my case to the Holy Father himself,” he growled.

  “That is of course your privilege, dear Brother.” The Camerlengo bowed, and sailed off with his entourage in a flotilla of violet vestments.

  Stephen took Glennon by the arm. “Come.” He spoke as a wiser, older brother reminding an overtired, naughty child that it was bedtime. Fighting back angry tears, Glennon allowed himself to be led away.

  CHAPTER 8

  IN HIS SUITE at the Ritz-Reggia, Lawrence Glennon collapsed. The race to Rome, the cruel glimpse of the sfumata at the very gate of the conclave, and the frustrating interview with Giacobbi had put a terrific strain on the Cardinal’s heart. His immediate symptoms—acute precordial pain and an excruciating headache—alarmed Stephen. He got Glennon into bed, put a cold compress on his throbbing forehead, then asked the hotel manager for the name of a reliable physician.

  Signor Renato Mirfoglia, manager of the Ritz-Reggia, was a carefully conceived specimen of the genus major-domo. Long service to a wealthy clientele, chiefly English and American, had given him a nice appreciation of their helplessness in a foreign land. But before giving Stephen the name of a doctor, Signor Mirfoglia, a purist in matters of counsel, wished to know what kind of doctor was needed.

  “This malady that attacks His Eminence—is it perhaps of the tract digestive?” he asked discreetly.

  “No, it’s of the system circulatory.”

  “Ah!” Signor Mirfoglia caressed his mustache with profound understanding. “In disorders circulatory, Dr. Velletria is the physician of choice. Indeed, in all Rome, whom else could one name?”

  Dr. Velletria’s black-ribboned pince-nez and the white tuft of whisker under his lower lip gave him the appearance so prized by Italian physicians who had taken their medicine from Viennese masters. He was a diagnostician of the old tap-and-ponder school, yet modern enough to confirm his findings by scientific methods. After percussing Glennon’s rib cage front and back, he wrapped a blood-pressure cuff around the Cardinal’s arm and pumped a rubber bulb until the column of mercury registered 220. At this improbable figure, Dr. Velletria rejected innovation. He placed his ear to Glennon’s heart, listened attentively, and came up with the pronouncement: “Your Eminence suffers from a surcharge of arterial blood which finds vent in vascular symptoms.”

  The language might be dated, but the diagnosis was sound. Dr. Velletria moved on to therapy. “Absolute rest in bed, massive sedation, no excitement, visitors forbidden. I prescribe an attenuating diet of herb tea and rice wafers.” He wrote out two prescriptions—one of them an herb brew of cabalistic fame—and announced that he would send in a nun from a nursing order.

  “No nuns,” said Glennon in terror. “I don’t want any women fussing around me.”

  Dr. Velletria’s palms-up gesture hinted that vascular patients were, on occasion, eccentric. “Your Eminence will need day and night attention.”

  Stephen stepped into the breach. “I’ll take care of him, Doctor.”

  “Can I get up for the coronation next Sunday?” asked the Cardinal.

  “It is an inconceivability. Your heart is in the stage of prefibrillation. To natures such as yours, a papal coronation would bring on a vascular crisis.”

  “Stop using that word ‘vascular,’” snapped Glennon, turning his plum-purple face to the wall.

  At the door Dr. Velletria whispered to Stephen. “A marked case. You have a sick man on your hands.”

  Stephen had not only a sick man, but a querulous one. Nothing pleased Glennon; he raged at his diet, fussed at street noises, and peevishly nagged his secretary-nurse until Stephen was obliged to draw upon his last reserves of patience. Because Glennon found sedative comfort in his rosary beads, he kept Stephen kneeling at his bedside making the responses for hours at a time. These sessions of prayer were punctuated by alcohol rubs and doses of herb tea. A dull, exacting routine, but it began to bring Glennon’s blood pressure down to normal.

  On the Saturday before coronation, he was well enough to want visitors. “Where is everyone?” he asked peevishly. “Don’t they know I’m sick? Why doesn’t someone come and see me?”

  Stephen knew that the whole city was preparing for the coronation, and that the high Vatican officials had little time for visiting. Tactfully he put the case to Glennon. “Wait till the coronation’s over. Visitors will come swarming then. You’ll have to barricade yourself—like the Bishop of Bingen in his mouse tower on the Rhine.”

  Glennon groaned at the ceiling. “Will you be so kind, Father Fermoyle, as to leave off Longfellow and get me something to eat? I cannot live forever on herb tea and rice wafers. I am vascular. The Italian quack says so. Very well then, fetch me vascular food. A chop, a cutlet, a piece of steak. Is there no blood-building meat in this pontifical city?”

  For dinner that evening, Stephen fed his Cardinal a juicy sirloin. The effect was magically soothing: Glennon lay back on his pillows and beamed at his caretaker.

  “You might enjoy seeing the ceremonies in St. Peter’s tomorrow,” he suggested. “Just because I’m bedridden”—the martyrish note was still well forward in his voice—“there’s no reason you shouldn’t attend the crowning.”

  Stephen declined. “I’ve seen a coronation. Besides, I wouldn’t want to leave you alone. Who’d serve you your nice refreshing cup of herb tea?”

  A diagonal grin crossed Glennon’s face. “If the Fermoyles ever get a coat of arms, Stephen, it will show a large red heart, rampant, aflame with loving-kindness. Kneel by my bed, Son, and we’ll offer up the Five Glorious Mysteries for the Pope’s special intention.”

  On the day after the coronation of Pius XI, a stream of visitors began to pour into Glennon’s suite. Vatican officials, freed from ceremonial attendance on the Supreme Pontiff, found time to pay their respects elsewhere. The Holy Father’s pr
ivate physician—a knightly copy of Dr. Velletria—dropped in for a session of pulse feeling. After a learned question or two he confirmed the vascular diagnosis and advised the patient he was out of danger. Glennon began to sit up—first in bed, then, as his blood pressure fell to 160, he was permitted to lounge, convalescent style, in the sunny living room of his suite. Thanks to the tea-and-wafer diet, he was ten pounds lighter and could view the world with a more chipper, less bloodshot eye.

  One morning as Stephen was getting His Eminence into a dressing gown and slippers, a commotion arose in the hallway. Opening the door, Stephen saw Signor Mirfoglia and a detachment of assistants making clear the way for a personage of sublime grandeur. Down the corridor came a tall prelate, one of the handsomest men that Stephen had ever seen. With a chamberlain’s flourish, the manager presented Stephen to His Lordship, Rafael Cardinal Merry del Val.

  Stephen knelt to the sapphire of the man who twice had been a candidate for the papal tiara. At sixty-five, Merry del Val was straight and spare as a Toledo blade. On his noble forehead sat the scarlet biretta of his rank, and he wore his great broadcloth cape like an admiral of St. Peter’s fleet.

  “Is my old friend Cardinal Glennon well enough to receive me?” he asked in a liturgical baritone.

  “I’m sure he is. Will Your Eminence come in?”

  The management retired backwards. Taking the visitor’s cape, Stephen opened the door of Glennon’s room. “Cardinal Merry del Val is here, Your Eminence.”

  “Rafael?” A week in bed had put buoyancy in Glennon’s voice and step. He bounced from his chamber like the Biblical bridegroom in reverse, and moved toward his old friend with arms outstretched.

  “Lorenzo!” The scene was too tender, too intimate for a third pair of eyes. While the old comrades embraced each other, Stephen hung Merry del Val’s broadcloth cape in a closet, then discreetly vanished into his own room.

  Lying on his bed, worn out by the long week of ministrations, Stephen rejoiced for Glennon’s sake that the great Merry del Val had found time to make this visit. Viceregal in carriage, physically magnetic, and gently humorous (his amused smile at Mirfoglia’s attentions revealed that), Merry del Val was everything that an ecclesiastical prince should be. Stephen was pondering the inscrutability of God’s way with His seeming favorites when he dozed off. Glennon’s voice summoned him back to reality.

  “Cardinal Merry del Val has brought me a dono” said Glennon. “It’s in his cape. Will you be so kind, Stephen, as to search the inner pocket for the Cardinal’s gift?”

  Stephen thrust his hand into the silk-lined pocket of the broadcloth cape, and drew out a paper bag.

  “That’s it,” said Merry del Val. He took the paper bag from Stephen and held it tantalizingly before Glennon’s eyes. “Guess what I have here, Lorenzo?”

  “Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”

  “Is it likely that I would be carrying diamonds—or rabbits—in a paper bag?”

  “Cherries?” Glennon’s delight in the game stripped twenty years from his countenance.

  “You are warm. Guess again.”

  “Peaches?”

  “In February? You sybarite! Try once more.”

  “Not—mandarini?”

  Laughter filled the room as Merry del Val took some small oranges from the bag, and tossed them jugglerwise in the air. “I thought you might enjoy a bout at our old game. Do you remember the rules?”

  “I remember the rules well enough. But I’ve forgotten most of my Horace.” Mischief gleamed in Glennon’s hazel eyes. “Perhaps Stephen here could play in my stead.”

  Merry del Val took the suggestion agreeably. “Would you like to try a classical passage, Father?”

  The first baseman in Stephen told him that he could catch the oranges without difficulty. Only his rusty Horace troubled him. Still, was it such a disgrace to be downed at this classic game by a distinguished Cardinal? “If you let me pick my ode, I’m willing to try,” he said.

  “Eminently fair. And if no one objects, we’ll dispense with the orange-tossing part. To be quite truthful”—he turned to Glennon—”I haven’t kept up my old sleight of hand.”

  “Hedging, eh? Go for him, Stephen. I’ll be referee.”

  Of all Latin lyrics, Stephen liked best the poem in which Horace describes spring’s return to a frozen world, then draws the melancholy contrast between nature’s ever-cycling seasons and man’s irreversible descent to ashes and shade. The poem seemed delicately appropriate now; Roman spring was in the air; rivers were at flood with melting snows, and these two ancient comrades were renewing memories of bygone days. Stephen took up his stance facing Merry del Val some ten feet away and began:

  Diffugere nives, redeunt iam gramina campis arboribusque comae …

  Smiling approval at the text and delivery, Merry del Val tossed the next line back at his opponent:

  mutat terra vices, et decrescentia ripas flumina praetereunt …

  Glennon was on his feet, eager as a child. “I know that one,” he exclaimed. “Try me on the next verse, Rafael. Stephen will coach me if I break down.”

  Back and forth from lip to lip the golden verses flew. As the two venerable Cardinals approached the end of the poem, its significance touched them—especially the line, “Who knows if Jove, who counts our score, will toss us in a morning more?” But when, after a little bobbling, Glennon managed to cap the final verse, they rushed toward each other laughing.

  “If Giacobbi could only see us now!” Glennon cried. “How the Sicilian would writhe!”

  Tone and content told Stephen that his Cardinal was well again. He had weathered Atlantic hurricanes, survived the slings of ecclesiastic misfortune, and the darts of Curial neglect. Neither separately nor altogether had they downed him. The same surcharge of arterial blood which, in Dr. Velletria’s language, “found vent in vascular symptoms” was throbbing now with renewed vitality through Glennon’s resilient, perdurable heart.

  IT WAS shortly after the game of mandarino that Stephen got in touch with Alfeo Quarenghi. He addressed a note to the office of the papal Secretary of State, and received a reply by hand:

  Dear Stefano: Can you come to my place tomorrow evening? Enter Vatican City through the Archway of the Bells; the guard will direct you thereafter. My best to your ailing Cardinal. With lively anticipation of our reunion—hastily but affectionately yours, Alfeo.

  While Glennon and Merry del Val entertained each other after dinner, Stephen set out for Quarenghi’s lodgings in Vatican City. At the Archway of the Bells, the guard supplied directions that brought Stephen safely through a maze of courtyards and passageways to a masonry structure tucked into a western embrasure of the Leonine Wall. Here, in a kind of sentry box sat an ancient porter gazing Quasimodolike at the dome of St. Peter’s silhouetted against the cool young moon of Roman spring. When Stephen asked for Quarenghi, the porter slipped off his sentry stool, pointed to an oaken door halfway up a flight of stone steps, and said:

  “Knock. Monsignor Quarenghi is expecting you.”

  At Stephen’s knock the oaken door swung open and there stood Alfeo Quarenghi holding out both hands in an affectionate greeting that established the timeless relationship of teacher and pupil. He led Stephen into a white-walled chamber big as a tennis court and almost as bare. Except for a silver crucifix and a narrow strip of Byzantine tapestry, two sides of the chamber were unadorned. Bookshelves from floor to ceiling lined the remaining walls. In the center of the floor a glowing brazier took the chill off the air; deep in a corner lighted by an iron floor lamp stood Quarenghi’s desk and two high-backed chairs. Only the dimensions of the room saved it from being the traditional monastic cell.

  “Sit down, Stefano. Let me look at you.” Quarenghi tilted the lampshade slightly to throw a franker light on his visitor. “How long has it been? Seven years? Yes, I see that the arch-typographer Time has traced deeper serifs on your lips and forehead. That is desirable. Otherwise, what a characterless psalter one’s face wo
uld be!” He lowered the lampshade. “Do not read too curiously in my Book of Hours, Stefano.”

  Quarenghi had definitely aged. Hair that Stephen remembered as jetblack was now sprinkled with gray; an ascetic regimen had pared every ounce of extra flesh from face and body. Having passed through the diplomatic hell of a world war and harrowing nunciatures to Sofia and Belgrade, Quarenghi looked to be exactly what he was—an embodiment of the exhausting tension between the worlds of fact and idea.

  The world of fact lay spread on his desk in the form of dispatches and reports from the chancelleries of three continents; the world of idea rose behind him in shelf-crowding volumes of philosophy, literature, and law. Quarenghi pulled down a book bound in gold-tooled calf and handed it to Stephen for his inspection. “This is the special binding I gave to your translation of La Scala d’amore. How completely you disproved the Italian proverb: ‘Traduttore, traditore.’ I would not have believed that a work could be carried with such fidelity—and elegance—from one language to another.”

  Stephen opened the handsomely bound translation of The Ladder of Love, and saw on the flyleaf the inscription in his own handwriting: “To Alfeo, who labors in another part of the vineyard. Devotedly, Stephen.” Leafing through the volume, he remembered phrases and paragraphs that had cost him many a painful hour of decision. “Even a poor translator couldn’t damage your ideas, Alfeo. They’re timeless, indestructible. Sometimes when the job wasn’t going well, I’d cheer myself by quoting Chesterton’s paradox: ‘Whatever is worth doing is worth doing badly.’ Then I’d keep on.”

  Quarenghi’s brown eyes gleamed with pleasure. “That is the summa of all wisdom, Stefano. You have learned it early. Any attempt at perfection is like a chorale in two voices—the upper cymbal of spirit clashing against the despotic metal of fact. We must accept it as the sound that life makes. An echo perhaps”—Quarenghi’s eyes momentarily sought the crucifix in the shadows—“of the groan that escaped His lips at the last.”