The Cardinal

by Henry Morton Robinson

  And what, Stephen wondered, can be done about it?

  “It is the Supreme Pontiff’s desire—a desire with which I heartily concur—that vigorous representation be made to Dr. Grabowitz, the Polish envoy to the Holy See. Will you, Monsignor Guardiano, be so kind as to prepare a preliminary draft of a note to the Polish ambassador, pointing out the clauses in the Constitution of 1919 that explicitly guarantee to the Church full freedom of worship and education?”

  Wordlessly, Monsignor Guardiano made a notation. The draft was as good as written.

  “In the event that the note fails to produce the desired result, inform Dr. Grabowitz that the Holy Father is prepared to send a legate to Warsaw.”

  Another nod from Guardiano.

  “Keep L’Osservatore Romano informed of our negotiations. The full force of publicity must be employed to acquaint Europe with Soviet tactics.”

  Poland disposed of, Giacobbi turned to Quarenghi for new business. “You have the folder on land nationalization in Mexico?”

  “Here, Eminence.”

  Giacobbi flicked through the dossier like a physician examining the chart of a tiresome old patient. “Hmm … where Cortez planted the cross, Obregon uproots it. It is one thing to nationalize the soil of Mexico, but this rascal wants the subsoil, too. Must convents be pillaged because oil is discovered a thousand feet beneath their foundations?”

  “I have repeatedly put that question to the Mexican government,” said Quarenghi. “To date I have received no reply.”

  “Brigands!” roared Giacobbi. “Gregory VII would have led an expedition against them. Today we have only our moral weapons. Well, the acoustics of the Church are still excellent, Monsignor. Have you explored the full possibilities of rousing public opinion in America?”

  “Opinion is divided in the United States, Your Eminence.”

  “Divided?” Giacobbi brought his head up with the pugnacious lift of an old ram whose authority has been challenged. “How can there be any division of opinion on such a subject?”

  Quarenghi, the good subordinate, refused to lock horns with his superior. Giacobbi’s gaze traveled along the double row of chairs and settled on Stephen. “Perhaps our American member can throw some light on the peculiar thinking of his countrymen.”

  Stephen had no wish to inherit the old feud between Giacobbi and Glennon. Still, he had been asked to speak. While the whole Congregation waited, he began with modesty:

  “Your Eminence must realize that I have no special knowledge of Mexican affairs. The only contribution I can possibly make is to refresh Your Lordship’s memory on the subject of public opinion in the United States.”

  Giacobbi’s grunt gave Stephen a new access of confidence. The Cardinal Secretary of State might have the rest of the world at his finger tips, but on this American string Stephen could teach him—tactfully, of course—where and how to pluck. “As Your Eminence knows,” he went on, “the population of the United States is predominantly Protestant. Furthermore, there exists in my country a traditional and very real separation between Church and State. Catholics do not claim the special position vis-à-vis the American government that the Church enjoys in Poland or Austria.” Stephen summed up. “In view of these facts, I believe it would be impolitic—if not impossible—to arouse American public opinion in matters domestic to Mexico.”

  Giacobbi’s head was down. “It is your considered judgment, then, Monsignor Fermoyle, that the American public would view with disfavor the Holy See’s request for moral and diplomatic pressure south of the Rio Grande?”

  “That is my judgment, Your Eminence.”

  Giacobbi gave the yearling diplomat a toss with his horn. “How then do you account for the armed intervention of the United States in Mexico in 1916? Have you forgotten so soon, Monsignor, the shelling of Veracruz by American warships … the landing of your gallant Marines … the occupation of Chihuahua by General Pershing? What is your explanation of these activities?”

  Stephen felt the horn under his ribs. “That was a punitive expedition,” he stammered. “The rights of—of American nationals had been infringed by—by Mexican bandits.”

  Giacobbi gave him the other horn. “Come, Monsignor. Naivete is out of place in these councils. What are the facts? American capitalists, fearful that their oil rights were in danger, persuaded your idealistic Mr. Fourteen-Point Wilson to interfere in the domestic affairs of Mexico. I pass no judgment on the matter. I merely state it as a guiding precedent. If America could roar so mightily in behalf of oil in 1916, might it not murmur today in behalf of God?”

  Giacobbi dropped his bullying tone and became the preceptor. “One final admonition, Monsignor Fermoyle. I have no desire to tread out the patriot flame burning in your American breast. But I pray you, control this preening on the subject of democracy. It is neither the ultimate nor necessarily the best form of government.”

  Giacobbi ended his lecture, and proceeded to consider the affairs of Peru, Ireland, British Guiana, and Spain. Stephen sat with burning cheeks through the rest of the session. No one spoke to him as he left the chamber (although Quarenghi’s eyes followed him sympathetically to the door). Wretchedly, Stephen climbed to his office on the third floor and sat down at his mother-of-pearl desk. Not since Din had given him a razor-strop thrashing at the age of twelve had he taken such a beating. Snatches of the miserable argument, begun without his volition, and swept along by Giacobbi’s dislike of America, played back at him from the taunting record of memory. How puny, smug, his arguments had been! Then Giacobbi’s deeper analysis of the crux, “If America could roar in behalf of oil in 1916, might it not murmur today in behalf of God?”

  The fugue scratched on, then branched off into searching variations. Did loyalty to the Holy See mean surrendering one’s faith in democracy? Could Stephen alter his lifelong conviction that the Church and State, in America at least, ought to remain separated? Did the United States have the right to interfere in the domestic affairs of Mexico? Everything Stephen believed cried no to this last question. Yet, if intervention could be justified in terms of oil, how could it be rejected in terms of religion?

  Out of the questioning fugue, out of his personal humiliation, one truth gradually emerged. Stephen saw that he was underinformed, insufficiently educated for his duties in the Secretariat of State. He realized, as a result of his run-in with Giacobbi, that he could properly serve neither the Vatican nor his country until his knowledge of both were vastly increased. He began a systematic course of reading in history and diplomacy, with special emphasis on the concordats that had marked the relationship of Rome with foreign powers. He saw how patiently (and successfully) the Holy See had battled against the nineteenth-century idolatry of the State, expressed in Bismarck’s Kulturkampf, Vienna’s Los von Rom, and the Gallicanism of France. Stephen’s political reading buttressed his realization that the Roman See was the only internationalminded organism in the modern world. He marveled at the tenacity displayed by Rome in reminding state and peoples that man was a spiritual as well as a political creature. And seeing how stubbornly the links of Peter’s chain had held through mortal storms, Stephen found no alternative to the belief that an alloy of divine metal had entered into the forging of those links.

  Meanwhile, what of democracy?

  After months of intense and disciplined study, Stephen came to the private conclusion that the democratic idea with its emphasis on tolerance and individualism was the most hopeful manifestation of Christ’s spirit in human affairs. And despite Giacobbi’s opinion to the contrary, Stephen continued to believe that the American phenomenon of a free Church in a free State had produced a Catholicism as stanch, loyal, and vigorous as any that had preceded it.

  He buttressed his convictions on a brace of noble statements made by two great leaders of modern Catholicism. One was an Italian Pope, Leo XIII, who said in a pastoral letter to the peoples of the world: “God wills that civil power and religious power remain distinct, but He does not will them to be divi
ded.”

  The other was a statement made by the American prelate, Cardinal Gibbons:

  “The separation of Church and State in America seems to be the natural, inevitable, and best-conceivable plan—the one that would work best among us, both for the good of religion and of the State. Any change in their relation would be contemplated with dread. The Church here enjoys a larger liberty and more secure position than in any country today where Church and State are united. There is deep distrust and strong dislike of the intermeddling of the State with concerns of religion. …

  “As a citizen of the United States—and without closing my eyes to our shortcomings as a nation—I say with a deep sense of pride and gratitude that I belong to a country where the civil government holds over us the aegis of its protection without interfering in the legitimate exercise of our sublime mission as ministers of the gospel of Christ.”

  Reading and thinking, trying always to establish a realistic balance between his loyalties to Rome and America, Stephen grew in knowledge and humility. He began his day by celebrating Mass in the Chapel of St. Martha, then worked steadily at his desk until late afternoon. For exercise he took a daily walk along the Tiber or played a game of handball in the back yard of his ecclesiastical boardinghouse. Supper was followed by a cigarette and a period of conversation with Roberto Braggiotti, who, as Stephen grew to know him, was an unfailing source of personal charm and stimulation. During long Roman twilights they talked shop, sweetest of subjects. Afterwards Stephen would climb to his room for uninterrupted hours of study. Toward midnight he would read his divine Office and, kneeling beside his iron cot, pray for himself and those he loved.

  Bounded without, boundless within, regular almost to the point of monotony, Stephen’s life as a minutante seemed complete. Almost it was. And it remained so until Roberto Braggiotti invited him one evening to a social gathering at the Palazzo Lontana.

  CHAPTER 2

  BRAGGIOTTI had long been urging Stephen to go about socially. “If you wish to be of maximum service as a Vatican diplomat,” said Roberto, “you must circulate quietly in Roman society, be seen in the best houses, become acquainted with everyone, listen to everything—including rumors, many of which will be nonsensical—and say nothing.” The advice sounded not unreasonable; sponsored by Roberto, whose family connections and personal charm admitted him to the great houses of Rome, Stephen had made more than one excursion into the curious world of Black Society.

  The Blacks, or Neri, including some of the oldest families in Rome, were the Pope’s stanchest supporters. As a protest against the seizure of the Patrimony of St. Peter by the Italian government in 1870, the Blacks had severed all contacts with the royal House of Savoy. In the midst of their native city, they led an existence comparable to courtiers who had followed a deposed sovereign into exile. Politically and socially their lives were severely restricted; the men took no part in Italian affairs of state, and the women had relinquished the pleasure of attending White functions in the Quirinal Palace. To compensate for their narrow existence, the Blacks had escaped into a make-believe world of manners. They had lifted etiquette to the condition of an art—as outmoded, perhaps, as falconry—but an art, nevertheless, as Stephen discovered.

  He found the system puzzling at first; only gradually did he begin to grasp its elaborate rules. He could easily understand why, in the great strongholds of Black Society, a special throne room was kept in readiness for the day His Holiness could again leave the Vatican and pay visits of honor to those who had remained faithful during his long imprisonment. (If no special room were set aside, a tapestried armchair was kept turned to the wall.) Stephen appreciated the profound loyalty and deep religious faith that buttressed these symbols, yet some of the trivia of Black Society annoyed him. He noticed, for example, that in certain houses many of the older men wore a glove only on the left hand, leaving the right hand bare. In other houses both hands were gloved, but the thumb of the right hand was exposed.

  “What’s this off-and-on glove business?” he asked Robento.

  “Two theoretic reasons lie behind it,” explained Braggiotti. “The glove was originally a patent of nobility. You never see a peasant with gloves on, do you? Traditionally, the glove is also associated with another symbol of rank—the sword. Some believe that the right hand must be kept unencumbered, the better to draw a sword in defense of your sovereign. Another school holds that you must be ungloved in order to accept the hand of your host the moment it is offered you. Any delay might be construed as unfriendly.”

  “I see. But why the exposed right thumb?”

  Braggiotti smiled patronizingly. “In all societies, there are degrees of intimacy. A seven-hundred-year-old family such as the Odaleschi, whose ancestors supported the Hildebrandine Popes against German brigands, cannot be expected to give their entire hand to late-comers. Anyone arriving after die seventeenth century—and that includes you, Americus—is lucky to get a thumb and forefinger.”

  “Do they take themselves that seriously?”

  “Only a few of the old purists remain. The whole business of Black and White is breaking up. But it won’t disappear entirely until the Roman question, involving the Pope’s temporal sovereignty, is settled. Meanwhile, I advise you to lay aside your New World notions. ‘When in Rome …”

  Stephen followed his mentor’s advice to the letter. By the end of the post-Lenten season Braggiotti had taken him, with the consent of his ecclesiastical superiors, to several dinner parties. The doors of the ancient palaces flew open to the handsome Roberto and his American friend. A valuable education in the social life of Rome ran parallel to Stephen’s schooling in Vatican diplomacy; his ear became attuned to the buzz of political surmise and ecclesiastic forecast rising from the salons of Black Society. He heard the usual rumors: that the royalist party of France would soon be crowning a Catholic king in Paris, and that Soviet agents were shipping vast numbers of hopeless cripples to the shrine at Lourdes with a view to discrediting its miracles. To top everything, he heard that Queen Wilhelmina was being prepared for conversion by a Carthusian confessor. Stephen’s common sense discounted such rumors, but, by tactfully avoiding any expression of opinion, he maintained a diplomatic tradition by no means peculiar to ecclesiastics. He watched Braggiotti and other members of the hierarchy maintaining a similar silence, and marveled at the drawing-room technique of cardinals who by a sibylline smile could at the same time confirm and deny some bit of Vatican gossip.

  Women were of course present at these affairs. Neri hostesses, inevitably titled, mingled with wives and daughters of ambassadors to the Vatican. Invited musicians entertained the company after dinner. Because Romans “love a voice” Stephen heard a great many arias in the best bel canto manner that spring. He was surprised to discover that not all Italian women were brunettes; frequently he encountered blondes, exquisitely pink and gold in coloring. To sit beside some gorgeous woman in decolletagé while a soprano poured forth Isolde’s passion was something of a trial to Stephen. He mentioned it to Roberto, and Braggiotti’s answer was “sensible” in both the English and French meaning of the word.

  “Bothers you, does it? Well, my friend, one of the advantages of clerical life in Rome is the immunity you develop to malaria—and beautiful women.”

  Stephen found himself particularly at home in the Palazzo Lontana, a baroque seventeenth-century structure on the Corso. Its convex façade of pinkish-yellow travertine made the palazzo resemble a private Coliseum. One entered the palace by a side gate opening into a walled courtyard, then took a modern elevator to the piano nobile, and walked through a series of coldly superb chambers—each a museum of murals, marbles, and tapestries—to the warmer but equally spacious salon of the Princess Lontana. The Princess, born Loretta Kenney of Steuben-ville, Ohio, had brought to her titled husband (one of the four chamberlains a numeri to the Pope) several millions of anthracite money, a head of natural red hair that forty years had not faded, and a talent for collecting cosmopolitans.
The Princess, a true multilingual, also had an ability to carry flying translations from any side of the French-English-Italian-German quadrangle to any other, and exercised her skill simply because she wanted each of her guests to understand what the other guests were saying. In a hostess less charming, this ambition might have been fatal.

  Because Stephen particularly enjoyed the Princess, he gladly accepted her invitation to an after-dinner party at the Palazzo Lontana early in May. This would probably be the last party of the season; soon, everyone who could get away from Rome’s wretched heat would flee to the seashore or mountains. The long oval chamber with its coffered gilt ceiling and space-creating mirrors was filled with a crush of guests as Stephen and Roberto entered. Tonight the leading figures of Black Society were out in strength: ambassadors wearing the ribbony badges of their rank; prelates in purple and scarlet; Neri wives and daughters, magnificently jeweled and gowned. Princess Lontana, a circlet of diamonds glittering in her red hair, came forward to meet the young mon-signors. Ten feet away from Stephen and Roberto she extended both hands, addressed several guests with her green eyes, others with a private flutter of her fan, and still others with all the languages that she knew. Her salutation to Stephen was pure Ohio American, and her greeting to Roberto was Italian equally good.

  “You are angels to come, both of you. Now, everyone is here.” Her voice found the confidential level of a whisper. “This evening our pezzo grosso … das Prachtstück—or as we’d say in America, ‘the main event’—is Cardinal Merry del Val. Pay your respects to him, Monsignors, then feel free to do what damage you can among the ladies.” She accepted the “gnädige Prinzessin” and hand kiss of the Bavarian envoy, then turned once more to Stephen and Roberto. “Do not under any circumstance leave before supper. We have brought in langouste from Marseilles, Hochheimer 1911 from the Schloss itself, and Signora Piom-bino—mezzanine and all—from La Scala.” With these varied injunctions and enticements the Princess began dividing herself between the Austrian Ambassador, Graf von Huntzstein, and a monocled admirer, Lord Chats-combe.