Stendhal
Four Stories
Translated by John Penuel
English translation copyright 2012 by John Penuel
Published at Smashwords by John Penuel
Recollections of an Italian Gentleman
“Recollections of an Italian Gentleman” first appeared, as “Souvenirs d’un gentilhomme italien,” in 1826 in Bibliothèque Britannique. “The Jew” first appeared, as “Le Juif,” in Romans et Nouvelles (1854). “The Chest and the Ghost” (“Le Coffre et le Revenant”) was written in late 1829 and was first published in Revue de Paris (May–June 1830). “Philibert Lescale” appeared for the first time in volume two of Le Diable à Paris : Paris et les Parisiens (1846).
Recollections of an Italian Gentleman
I was born in Rome to parents of respectable standing in that city. When I was three I had the bad luck to lose my father, and my mother, still in the flower of youth and eager to contract a second marriage, entrusted my education to an uncle who had no children. He accepted willingly and even eagerly; after all, he was determined to make of his ward a devoted supporter of priests and he hoped to make the most of his role as guardian.
After the death of General Dufaon,[1] the story of which is too well known for me to go into it here, the priests, seeing that the French armies were threatening to invade the Papal States, began spreading the rumor that wooden statues of Christ and the Virgin were opening their eyes. The people, credulous, believed this white lie. Processions were held, the city was illuminated, and all of the faithful hastened to make their offerings to the Church. My uncle, curious to see for himself the miracle everybody was talking about, formed a procession of all of the people of his house and took his place at their head clad in a mourning suit and with a crucifix in hand. I, carrying a lit torch, went with him. All of us, in the firm conviction that the more humility we showed, the more the Virgin and her son would have pity on us and be willing to show us their open eyes. Lined up thus, we made our way to San Marcello al Corso, where we found a huge crowd crying without respite: Long live Maria! Long live Maria and her divine Creator! Soldiers, posted at the entrance, were barring the way to the crowd gathered around the church and letting only the processions in. We had little trouble getting in, and we soon reached the railing, where we fell to our knees before the images of the Virgin and her son. “You see,” the people were shouting, “she just opened her eyes.” Most were located in such a way that they couldn’t see anything, but they repeated their neighbors’ shouts confidently. The unbelievers, for their part, would certainly not have made a show of their incredulity, as they would have been torn to pieces. My uncle, his eyes on those holy images, and in ecstasy, burst out:
“I saw them. They opened and closed their eyes twice.”
I, a poor child, tired of standing up, and tired above all from having walked barefoot for such a long time, started crying. My uncle silenced me with a slap, adding that I should be thinking about the Virgin rather than about my feet. We were still in the church when we saw a tailor by the name of Badaschi turn up with his wife and a young child so lame he could barely use his crutches. His good parents placed their son on the predella of the altar and began crying: Grazia! Grazia! And after having repeated the same cry for half an hour, sometimes addressing Christ, sometimes the Virgin, the mother said to her son:
“Faith, my child! Faith!”
Then they walked away from the patient and abandoned him to Providence, all while crying:
“Faith, child! Throw away your crutches!”
The poor child obeyed and, thus deprived of support, fell from four steps up, hitting his head on the floor. At the sound of his fall, his mother rushed over to pick him up and took him straight to the Hospital of the Consolation to have his wound dressed, so the poor kid got himself a bruise without stopping being crippled. After this episode, we left the church, and our procession headed back home, letting out the usual cries. On our arrival I asked my uncle humbly why the Virgin had allowed that innocent creature to fall so hard.
“Do you think, my child,” he answered me, “that God and the Virgin are supposed to work miracles for everybody? Don’t believe it. To find such great favor you must have a pure and blameless conscience.”
If I were to enlarge on the subject of miracles, several volumes would not suffice. I will mention only one of them: on piazza Pollarola, in Rome, is an image people call the Madonna del Saponaro. The lamps that illuminated it were, word had it, fueled not by oil but by the milk of the Virgin herself, and so that the people would fall for this trickery a whitish substance had been put in the glass of the lamps. Priests, with their surplices and their stoles, would take the rosaries the people handed them and dip them in the sacred elixir. Having gone in procession with my uncle to pay homage to this Madonna, we took advantage of the occasion to approach the priest and ask him to take our rosaries. He agreed to after a fairly long discussion, and he gave them back us dipped not in milk but in oil so greasy we had to wait a long time before we could put them back in our pockets.
In 1797, when the French army had taken Rome to establish a republic there, a national guard was immediately organized. My uncle, whose feelings and opinions were hardly in sympathy with those of the victors, found himself, to his great regret, forced to hide his opposition and to petition for the rank of captain, which made it sadly necessary for him to take part in the celebrations commemorating the establishment of the Roman Republic[2] and to send me to the procession that came before this solemn republican ceremony, the stage for which was Vatican Square. The other children and I were dressed in an old-fashioned way. We were wearing crowns of laurel on our heads and wreaths of laurel around our necks. I got more joy out of this patriotic novelty than out of processions for the Virgin. My companions shared my joy, and the splendid dinner given on piazza San Pietro after the ceremony exhilarated us even more. But my uncle’s reprimands kept me from savoring my happiness in peace. When we got back, he lectured me to get me to feel saintly horror of these sacrilegious acts inspired, so he said, by paganism, acts whose real goal was to have debauchery and corruption rule in the capital of the Christian world. Such celebrations, he added, are days of victory for demons; all we can do is ask the heavens for forgiveness for having taken part in this ungodliness. Death seemed to him better than such infamy, and he closed by saying that he would no longer suffer our being seen among the guilty again, regardless of the violence of the means people might use to force us to appear. He kept his word bravely, and the fortunes of war, by compelling the French to leave Rome, soon put an end to his worries and brought him the sweet satisfaction of seeing papal rule restored. After this revolution, which rewarded his dearest hopes, he entrusted me to the care of a tutor who was meant to teach me the basics of Latin, because I couldn’t go to a public school—that is, to the Roman College—without knowing at least the rudiments of that language. As a result of a tedious teaching method and of the habit of stuffing the wretched schoolboy’s brain with sermons and prayers, I made very little progress. Let it not occur to the schoolboy to ask questions his masters don’t know the answers to! To think is a crime, and everything that comes out of a priest’s mouth is to be taken on faith. After two years of study, I received the first sacrament. I had had to get ready for it with three months of penitence. After this cruel ordeal, I went back home, where my uncle and his wife (who, devoted entirely to the salvation of my soul, or so they said, cared very little about how I did in my studies), kissed me with tears in their eyes, congratulating me for having ventured down the ways of religion in such saintly fashion. But—alas!—I had left the paths of knowledge, and when I went back to the college I had completely forgotten the little my solemn masters had taught me.
At the college there was a religious association known as the Brotherhood of Saint Louis. On holidays, all of the young men taking classes were forced to listen to a sermon in the morning, to confess, and to take communion. They then went to eat and came back two hours later. Later, escorted by a few priests, all of the students went to a field outside of town to play ball, and each match cost us ten Our Fathers that we said with our hands on our knees. When the hour of play was up, we went back to town, where another sermon was awaiting us. Two priests then gave each of us disciplinary blows, and we put out the lights to allow the most zealous the freedom to receive their beating from the good fathers on their bare skin. At the beginning of the psalm Miserere mei, Deus, all were flogging themselves, and the flogging went on until the song was finished. The penitents who had undressed were given the time to cover their nakedness; the lamps were lit again, and, after umpteen prayers, we were sent off, all of us filled with fear of hell and devil. This ritual undertaken for the good of our souls but to the detriment of our minds was repeated once or twice a week. Our masters had not the slightest interest in educating us; on the contrary, they did what they could to keep us ignorant and, through the unjust severity of the punishment they meted out, to quash all of our heartfelt impulses. Fortunately for me, an excess of cruelty soon put an end to my sufferings. One day, I was late to school and, unusually, I didn’t know my lesson perfectly well. Right away, my pedant summoned the examiner, a kind of constable charged by the government with enforcing the sentences handed down by schoolmasters. I got twenty blows with the ferule on my hands, which hurt terribly, and after this punishment I went back to my desk, unable to mask my pain and my indignation. It was unwise of me, because the master, seeing my disgruntlement, ordered another punishment. This supplement was not to my liking, and I refused to submit to it. But my judge threatened to resort to force if I continued to refuse. At this threat, since there was no option other than flight from danger, I grabbed pens, papers, penknife, and inkwell and hurled them all at the pedant’s head, who got away with a bit of a fright. It was thus that I bid my farewell. My classmates burst out laughing. But on the master’s orders they started running after me. Afraid I would be caught, I took shelter in a church, an inviolable sanctuary in Italy, and in front of which all further pursuit came to a halt. After this outburst, I thought about what I should do: if I appealed to my uncle, I knew he would side with my enemies. I preferred to appeal to my mother, the only person who would come to my defense. She soon arrived, terrified, convinced that I had committed some unspeakable crime. I told her the story of my misadventure, and this story reassured her somewhat. She took me to her husband, and after a lot of negotiating the injured party agreed to grant me forgiveness if I consented to ask him for it in public, on my knees, and to spend a month doing penance in the monastery of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, a kind of prison where the inmates lived at their own expense. My uncle was delighted by this compromise, hoping that the brothers at the monastery would have a salutary influence on me.
“God is awaiting you,” he said to me. “Take advantage of His overtures, and keep in mind that hell is ready to devour you.”
He commended me to the prior, to whom he gave some money to have masses said for me; then he left me. I couldn’t say all I suffered from the brothers charged with reconciling me to God. They showed me clearly that I was damned and that my crime was unpardonable. Young and credulous, I believed everything they said, and my repentance was sincere and profound. Every morning, humbly, I offered my back up to flagellation, and so that the reparation would be proportionate to the injury I had caused I wore a hair shirt armed with small iron spikes. I submitted to everything with resignation, always thinking the devil was at my heels, since I believed everything they told me. This fear was so strong that every night my sleep was troubled by dreadful visions. I was forced to make a general confession, and I admitted that several times my classmates had lent me some fairly immoral books. The priest assured me that I would be damned and that the devil would take me away body and soul if I didn’t parry the blows by dint of prayer and charity. I had no choice. I emptied my purse into the good father’s hands and, to be done with the devil, I submitted to fasts and to all of the rigors of penitence.
“See, my son,” the confessor said to me, “for these four écus[3] you have given me I will say four messes at an altar blessed by His Holiness Pope Pius V. Your soul will be better off for it, but be sure to mortify your body.”
I promised him I would, and I kept my word. Happily, my confinement was coming to an end. The day before my deliverance, I received the sacrament, and not once during the entire ceremony could I keep from breaking into tears. The next day, my uncle arrived, and hiding his surprise, caused by the leanness of my face, he said:
“Religious discipline was good for you. You’re no longer in a state of mortal sin, and your face looks sweeter and more delicate.”
We left the monastery, and he took me by carriage to the college, where, on my knees, I offered a public apology to my teacher, who took advantage of the occasion to remind the students of the respect due his dignity and his character.
After a few more formalities of the same kind, my uncle took me to his house.
“What did he do to lose so much weight?” his wife burst out.
“He did penance for his errors,” her husband answered her.
My guardian wanted to send me back to the school, but I held firm, and, on my refusal, he sent me to the lawyer Burner, in charge of drafting papal briefs for Spain. For the last two years, this man had been confined to his house by rheumatism, and his work was limited to signing a few dispatches that a couple of old men drew up for him. When I began taking tuition from him, he lived by himself, with a servant. My aunt, an older woman, often came to keep him company and, evenings, when I had finished my work, we would leave together. The unhappy lawyer, condemned by pain never to get out of bed, cursed God and the saints, saying that Providence, to be fair, should have distributed goods and ills equally. My pious aunt was alarmed by this blasphemy, and one day she criticized the patient, who took her charitable opinions quite badly. When we got back, this good woman exhorted me to stay away from our gouty fellow:
“My conscience,” she said, “does not allow me to listen to his blasphemy anymore. If I stop seeing him, you must follow my example, because you won’t gain anything taking lessons from an ungodly man.”
“I’m not afraid of the effect of it,” I answered her.
If my uncle, apprised of this incident, had forbidden me Burner’s lessons, I would have been badly distressed, because, alone together, the blasphemer taught me about certain subjects about which, as a result of the precautions taken by my schoolmasters, I knew nothing. In addition, he lent me excellent books, the reading of which delighted me and which served as the basis of our conversations. They weakened my faith, and I didn’t know how to reconcile the lessons of my religious instructors and the principles of the lawyer, whose vigorous arguments seemed to me more conclusive by the day. In the meantime, my aunt had begun paying her visits again. One day on which Burner was suffering horribly from a flare-up of gout, she begged him to put up with all of his pain out of love for God. He, a man of little faith, carried away by his sufferings, rejected this pious advice with such violent oaths that my poor aunt, not taking the time to put back on her shawl and her bonnet, left in a rush, crossing herself twenty times, and swearing never again to set foot in that abominable house. That evening, Burner, laughing, told me about that incident, and on my return my aunt didn’t say a word about what had happened. The following Sunday she went to confess, and her spiritual adviser, a Dominican working for the Inquisition, refused to absolve her if she didn’t report the blasphemer. The next day she went to make her statement at the Holy Office and returned to her confessor, who, in exchange for her obedience, gave her absolution.
Two weeks later I was called before the Inquisition. I was terrified, thinking some false friend had denounced me for having forbidden books. I made sure not to inform my uncle of the order I had received, and I spent the day and the night in excruciating fear. One must admit that I was in a difficult position and that this business had what it took to disconcert a poor young man who had no experience whatsoever of the world and its intrigues. The fateful day arrives, I report to the Holy Tribunal, they make me wait an hour in an anteroom, my heart is pounding: finally, I’m led into a room hung entirely in black. Three Dominican friars were seated at a table covered with a black cloth. This sight intensified my fear. Fortunately, the three inquisitors’ secretary, a good abbot known to me, gave me a surreptitious look of understanding that began to reassure me. I was breathing more easily, and before the interrogation began I had the time to settle in. I noticed a large crucifix hanging above the three friars’ heads, and a smaller crucifix on the table, next to an open book: it was the New Testament. The first inquisitor asked me family name and my given names and if I had ever before been called before the Holy Office. I responded in the negative to the latter question.
“Do you know the lawyer Burner?” he said to me.
“I know him.”
“Have you ever heard him blaspheme?”
I responded that he was cruelly ill and that I went to his house to work and not to listen to what he might have to say. A nasty look greeted my response, and the inquisitor threatened me with harsh punishment if I didn’t say plainly everything I knew; he ordered me, in the name of the Trinity and the Holy Scriptures, to denounce all of the blasphemous oaths the sinful man had uttered.
“Have you not had singular conversations with this man?”
“Never.”
“I recommend that you shun the company of that blasphemer. His soul is bound for the torments of hell. We will do all we can to obtain mercy for him, but without hope of success. Come on, young man, swear on this crucifix not to tell anyone that you have been called before this tribunal or why we have summoned you.”
I promised them everything they wanted and was dismissed with the usual formalities. On my way out, I noticed in the anteroom the two poor old men whose drafts my lawyer signed. These wretches were shaking all over and protesting their innocence, swearing that never in their lives had they had the slightest bone to pick with the Inquisition. I reassured them by telling them why they had been summoned. Back at home, I told the whole story to my uncle, who criticized his wife harshly for her indiscretion. She invoked her confessor’s orders, to which she had had to submit, to excuse herself.
That very evening, I paid our unbeliever my usual visit. I found him badly troubled and asked him why.
“I have nothing to laugh about,” he said to me. “I have been denounced to the Inquisition. What do they want with a gouty old man? I’ll wait for them in bed.”
Some time later, an inquisitor turned up and conducted an interrogation that lasted four hours, but all of the Dominicans’ cunning was foiled by the defendant’s composure. A month had gone by since this scene when our lawyer received a visit from the grand inquisitor, who was no more fortunate than his emissary and who withdrew threatening to drag the ailing man and his bed into prison. When he had left, Burner said to me:
“So what do they want? Not one of them is a better theologian than I am. They can throw me in jail; they can torture me, to be sure, but they’ll never make me lie to my conscience.”
And then, taking my hand, he added:
“My friend, the Inquisition is good for the common man, but it has no credibility with educated people, against whom its logic is powerless.”
Two months later, a warrant was issued for his arrest, but, as he was dying, service of the warrant was deferred and, as his illness was getting swiftly worse, Burner died a few days later, impenitent to the end.
In 1807, as soon as the French had again seized the former capital of the world, the young people of Rome, always gullible, fell for Napoleon’s fine promises. I should have been in the front ranks of the dupes, and I admit I was fairly inclined to be, but as I was still under the tutelage of my uncle, a determined Papist, as I have already said, my inclination was of no use for a time. I was kept in custody by my guardian. In the meantime, business having forced him to take a short trip, he left me in Rome with orders not to leave the house, to see only a priest he referred me to and whose mission it was to serve as my mentor, and above all to stay out of politics, an inexhaustible source of torment and disappointment. I didn’t hesitate to promise all that he asked of me: vain promises! By the time he had made it a few miles outside of Rome, I was already questioning my friends about the state of things. Some of them had joined the new regiments; others had gotten good jobs in government. They urged me, each more enthusiastically than the last, to leave my uncle’s and to pursue a career in arms, where I could easily obtain the rank of second lieutenant. I made a bit of a fuss by bringing up the Pope’s threatened excommunication of those who accepted positions with the French government. My qualms made my friends laugh.
“Your uncle,” they said to me, “has kept you steeped in ignorance, and your schoolmasters have finished the job. Join us. You’ll see soon enough what those excommunications are worth.”
My resistance gave way before the advice of my friends and my desire to find myself at the head of a company. I was convinced that my uncle would give in at the sight of my epaulettes, and, knowing that he wasn’t due back for another two days, I got on with it directly. I bought a uniform at my expense, and my friends got me an officer’s commission from General Miollis, governor of Rome. Proud of my new uniform, I made haste to show it off, with all the vanity of an upstart. But having gained my independence the day before, I didn’t give myself up to the delights of a freedom I still didn’t understand. The next day, in full uniform, I reported to General Miollis to thank him and to take an oath of loyalty to the emperor. The general received me cordially and assured me that the French government would reward the enthusiasm of those who were the first to rally to its cause. He then sent me to César Marucchi, chef de bataillon in the First Legion, who immediately had me put on active duty. My uncle, apprised of my moves, hastened to conclude his affairs and return to Rome. I couldn’t describe his surprise and his rage. When he saw that things were so far advanced, he immediately declared that I would have to leave his house, in which he would never agree to receive a rebel, an excommunicate! I tried to calm him down by bringing up the reasons that had made up my mind and protesting that it was possible to serve Napoleon all while being a good Catholic. I spoke eloquently to no avail whatsoever.
“No!” he shouted. “It’s not possible to serve two masters at the same time. Abandon your plans. Break a criminal engagement. There’s still time. Withdraw to the countryside to escape the temptations of the wicked.”
I, for my part, was unwavering. I had had a taste of the world and its pleasures, and this brief experience had strengthened my resolve. All the same, my uncle didn’t dare summon up violence out of fear of becoming suspect to the French government. He yielded and agreed to allot me four écus a month, on condition that I took my lodgings elsewhere, which I did as of the next day.
No sooner than they had arrived in Rome the French called attention to themselves with several excesses, in spite of the letters by which the Pope’s secretary of state kept protesting these abuses of power. The French governor responded evasively and went on taking the measures that would advance his goals. He began by seizing most of the convents and turning them into barracks. The papal government openly protested this violation of the people’s rights, but General Miollis paid the protests no heed. The Pope, convinced of the uselessness of his accusations, decided to excommunicate all those who sided with the French, and his bulls of excommunication were posted at night in the usual places, in Rome and throughout the territories of the Church. The general responded to these hostile demonstrations by having French troops take the place of the Swiss who were guarding the palace of Monte Cavallo,[4] to which visitors were denied access. The Holy Father, seeing his authority go unrecognized and his person imprisoned, had the gates to the palace closed and renounced all communication with the outside world. Convinced that the French were looking for a way to kidnap him, he had his pontifical vestments prepared and laid out for him to don in case some daredevil violated his sanctuary, and he was ready to pronounce a death sentence against whoever made so bold as to lay an ungodly hand on his sacred person. As soon as the people got wind of the French plan, the unrest was extreme, and despite the many soldiers at his command General Miollis deemed it prudent to go ahead with the kidnapping of the Pope in the greatest secrecy, and he didn’t overlook a single one of the precautions necessary to the carrying out of a plan that posed problems nearly insurmountable in a country where people know nothing but religion and worship the Pope not only as a sovereign but also as a God on Earth. Three days before the conclusion of this drama, all of the notables of Trastevere, Monti, Popolo, and Borgo turned up at the gates to the palace under pretense of going to offer His Holiness an outsized sturgeon weighing three hundred pounds. The order to deny entrance to the palace had not been rescinded, but the French, fearing that they would strengthen the suspicions of the people if they objected to this visit, allowed it with good grace. So the delegation, with its huge fish, was led before the Pope, who received this homage and thanked the notables for this token of attachment to their sovereign, who was being oppressed by the enemies of the Church. One of the delegates then spoke up to let the Pontiff know the real purpose of their visit:
“In these serious circumstances,” he said to him, “we resorted to cunning to trick your jailers. Twenty thousand armed men are ready to get you out of the hands of your enemies. Count on their devotion, and if they must spill the last drops of their blood for you they will be happy to die martyrs to such a beautiful cause.”
The Pope himself was mistaken about the plans of the French and had no inkling of the imminence of the danger, so he merely showed the delegation his great gratitude.
“Withdraw,” he said to them. “The time to act is not yet come. When I have need of your services, I will let you know. Keep calm, I won’t leave you. No one will ever dare violate my person.”
Then he gave them his blessing and, after having allowed them to kiss his feet, he dismissed them.
General Miollis observed the popular unrest with worry, and to thwart the plans for resistance brewing under his very eyes he decided to bring the abduction of the Pope forward; he assigned this delicate mission to General Radet, commander of the gendarmes. As the coup de main was meant to take place at night, he ordered all of the police chiefs to be at their stations and one hundred policemen to spend the night under arms with fifty gendarmes and a hundred soldiers from the national guard, who were to be at the ready with ladders at the base of the walls around the Pope’s garden. The governor had the soldiers assigned to the mission read an order of the day in which he threatened death to anyone who caused the slightest disturbance inside the palace. General Radet, accompanied by Bonom, maréchal des logis[5] of the gendarmes, both in civilian dress, arrived at midnight. The illegal entry was to be effected thus: the policemen were supposed to climb in first, then the national guardsmen, and, finally, the general and a few gendarmes. One of the national guardsmen, by the name of Mazzolini, an ardent patriot, aspired to the honor of being the first over the wall; his haste cost him dear, as he fell and broke his leg. His fall tempered slightly the zeal of his comrades, who saw the judgment of God in this accident. The policemen, ignorant men who had been brought along by force, refused to go up. So the general, turning to the gendarmes, said:
“Men, show these fellows whether it’s a judgment from God or a natural accident. Go!”
The gendarmes climbed over the wall right away; the national guardsmen and the general followed, and the policemen brought up the rear. The general took as a guide a man who was familiar with the underground passage that led from the garden to the inside of the palace. Pistols at the ready, they took this corridor, at the end of which they found an accomplice, who opened the door through which they made it into the main courtyard. Having assembled his small troop, the general ordered it to disarm the Swiss Guard; fifteen men were enough to carry out this order. After this preliminary mission, the gendarmes returned to the staging point and assured the general that the Pope’s guards would put up no resistance. The general urged his escort to keep complete silence and he ordered the guide to take him and the maréchal des logis to the door to the Pope’s chambers, which they reached without encountering the slightest obstacle. The general knocked twice. At his second knock, the Pope asked:
“Who goes there?”
“It’s General Radet, sent by the emperor Napoleon.”
At this reply, the Pope opened the door. He was dressed, and it was assumed that he hadn’t gone to bed. Some people say that he was expecting this visit and that he was waiting for the moment of his planned departure. Regardless, His Holiness had the general and the maréchal des logis come in. The general, after having paid his respects to the Pope, said to him:
“Your Holiness has five minutes to make up his mind: he must sign this treaty [it contained a pledge of allegiance to the Emperor, recognition of the Napoleonic Code, and a few less important terms] or he will leave immediately.”
The Pope read the treaty, and for the five minutes he stayed up, fiddling with his snuffbox. The maréchal des logis had the audacity to ask him for a pinch. The Pope offered him his snuffbox with a smile.
“That’s some excellent tobacco,” exclaimed the gendarme after having tried it.
The Pope, not answering him, gestured for him to take a pack that happened to be on his table. When the five minutes were up, the general asked the Holy Father what he had decided:
“To leave,” replied the Pope, “but I want to take my secretary of state and my chamberlain with me.”
The general consented, and orders were given accordingly. At the same time, the main entrance to the palace was opened to let in two traveling carriages with post-horses, escorted by six gendarmes under arms. Cardinal Consalvi arrived right away and protested this removal with great dignity, also demanding a little time to ready his departure. General Radet told him cheerfully that the time for discussion was over and that it was necessary to get going. The carriages were parked at the foot of the steps. The Pope got into the one that was meant for him and indicated that he wanted his secretary of state with him. This favor was refused him, and, for safety’s sake, the chamberlain and Cardinal Consalvi were locked in the second carriage. The maréchal des logis rode behind the cardinal’s carriage, and General Radet behind the Pope’s.
In this way the palace was left, and the whole city was crossed without rousing the slightest suspicion. Once the Pope had left, an officer ordered all of the guards posted to the palace to leave it immediately; each of them returned calmly to his quarters. As the ladders were left until morning, they were spotted, and word went around that the Pope had been abducted after a scaling of the palace walls. Priests profited from poor Mazzolini’s fall, asserting that the Pope could have struck all of his kidnappers dead, but that he had just had one of them fall, to give the others something to think about. They came up with a thousand tales of that sort, and the gullibility of the people meant that all of them were eagerly believed.
The French government took possession of the papal palace and immediately expelled all of the cardinals who refused to pledge allegiance to the Emperor.
Here I must bring up an incident that nearly jeopardized the success of the undertaking. In Monterosi, twenty-five miles from Rome, just as fresh horses, which the general had ordered in advance, were being taken on, the Pope opened one of the carriage doors, and the postillion who had driven the carriage from Baccano happened to recognize him. He immediately sank to his knees, shouting:
“Holy Father, your blessing! It’s not my fault. I didn’t know anything about all this. If I had I would have died sooner than take part in your abduction.”
The postillions who were ready to mount their horses refused to leave.
“Holy Father! Your blessing! We want to save you!” the people started shouting.
The general, seeing himself in danger of being slaughtered, ordered the gendarmes escorting the carriage to keep the postillions at bay and had two of them mount the post-horses and take off at a full gallop. Loading his pistols, he said that, for his part, he would blow the brains out of the first person who tried to stop the carriages, and in that way he got himself out of the tight spot. They raced on, without letting up, as far as Poggibonsi, in Tuscany, where they stopped for a few hours before resuming the journey. Going through Poggibonsi afterwards, I heard this story from the landlady of the inn where the Pope had stayed: Since His Holiness had lost one of the buttons from his waistcoat and she didn’t have one and his chamberlain hadn’t arrived, she called the maid to repair this damage. The maid hastened to sew on a button, but because the Pope had no money to pay for this service he turned to General Radet, who offered him a purse full of louis.[6] The Pope took four of them and gave them to the maid.
After the Holy Father’s departure, things took a sudden turn. The excommunications he had decreed were forgotten, and everyone was quick to accept jobs with the French government. All the same, a few zealots, partisans of the Pope, preferred the honor of remaining loyal to their principles to the profits of submission. My uncle was one of them, and he sacrificed a lucrative position to his fear of the wrath of the Church. As I did not share his pious scruples, I went to Foligno, a city about one hundred miles from Rome, to manage, on behalf of the French government, the national holdings located there. I gave up my rank as a second lieutenant and, before departing, went to take leave of my uncle and my mother, letting them know of my intentions. My mother’s husband had embraced my uncle’s opinions and had resigned himself to the same sacrifices. The reception I got was very cold, and I was told that, like all of Napoleon’s supporters, I would soon have reason to cry. This prediction seemed very funny to me, and after having tried in vain to bring my family around I left them and headed out. The character of my traveling companions merits a few words. There was a lawyer, past middle age, going with his young wife to Foligno, where he was supposed to do administrative work, and a Capuchin monk, who was going back to his monastery in Perugia. The monk might have been about sixty. Gout hadn’t spared him, but despite his sufferings he was in such a good mood that he kept us laughing the whole way; in addition, he was a man of talent who had been the preacher and confessor of the queen of Naples, wife of Ferdinand IV. This prince having withdrawn to Sicily, our Capuchin, bored with Palermo, was returning to his monastery. If I repeat here everything he told me I fear I would offend the easily offended. Least of all did he spare the reputation of his royal penitent. Here is one bit—one of a thousand—that greatly delighted me. The queen had a lover; for her, it was a pleasure, an indispensable pastime. The monk forbid it her, refusing even absolution if she didn’t change this behavior. The queen, undaunted, fought back. Same response. The confessor was inflexible.
“I cannot give you absolution. You refuse to mend your ways, and you are constantly lapsing back into the same sin.”
He insisted, so the queen opened her purse and took out a certain number of gold coins:
“If you want to absolve me, take this money and say a few masses to get God to chasten me.”
The argument was powerful, and the Capuchin was unable to counter it. He took the money, gave the absolution, and promised to pray for the conversion of the princess.
“It was that way,” he told us laughing, “selling lots of absolution, that I made my fortune. Both of us did well out of this business. I got rich, and the queen kept her lovers. If I hadn’t agreed to this arrangement I would have been sent away, and the next day the queen would have found a hundred confessors who would gladly have given her all the absolutions in the world.”
This conversation showed me how right poor Burner was.
In Foligno, I started work right away. One of the first measures taken was to eliminate men’s and women’s convents, and I drew up a statement of all of their revenues and properties. The sight of the interiors of these convents showed me the great extent to which they held victims sacrificed to the whims and ambitions of families, which, to marry the oldest of their children well, condemned all of the others to the pain of eternal seclusion. Even so, the old nuns found themselves grieving at having to leave the refuges where they had ruled like queens, whereas the young ones, who had been forced to renounce the world, displayed the keenest satisfaction and sometimes asked me in a whisper when I would be coming to set them free. Their innocence made me smile, but, thinking it over, I would have liked to be able mete out a harsh punishment to those degraded parents who had become their children’s torturers. It was impossible for me to estimate all of the riches I found in these convents: some could have supported several dozen families, and seven or eight monks devoured their revenues. Although I am inclined to judge some of Napoleon’s acts harshly, I couldn’t be stinting with my praise on this point. Sending back to work and to society these pious idlers who, in their voluptuous leisure, had no concern other than their own comfort was a beneficial measure. I would be willing to blame him for having giving them pensions. If I had been in power, I would surely have made a political mistake, but having been a witness to their depravity and their hypocrisy I wouldn’t have granted them a cent. The more I looked into things, the more vileness I saw. A few lay brothers showed us the secrets of the trade and told us about the affairs the monks got up to with the most prominent women in the city, who courted them to take advantage of their wealth and their credibility. After all, the houses that were protected by these monks enjoyed the favor of the papal government. The nuns, for their part, also found ways to attenuate the rigors of the cloister, but as they were condemned never to leave they encountered many an obstacle, whereas the monks, altogether free, abandoned themselves to the greatest overindulgence. When my work on the convents was done, the goods were sold at auction. Since the prices were not very high, all of the bourgeois, unconcerned by their origin, made haste to buy them. And yet the people of Foligno are far from being ecumenical. A single fact will suffice to convey an idea of the superstitious mindset of the locals. A story went around that, during carnival one year, at the time of the masked balls, devils were seen dancing in front of the church of San Feliciano. The ignorant population immediately held processions to break the spell, and from then on, every year, carnival was interrupted for a week; this interval is called the week of the Cucugnaio. We did all we could to root out this prejudice, but to no avail. The unfortunate people went on believing that if a mask showed itself that fateful week the devils would immediately resume their dances in front of the church.