me at least take a look at the police archives,’ Amandi pleaded, ‘now before they start hiding things.’ He was thinking: they may have files on us both.
The man in white was twice the size of the rather wispy youth who had been Amandi’s fellow guest at the Colonna palace a score or so years before. Damascened vistas flickered in memory as Amandi recalled draughty hangings, smoky oil lamps and the charcoal foot-warmers supplied on evenings judged unbearably cold. On others, the only resource was to persuade one of the princess’s pug dogs to sit warming one’s lap. The malicious claimed that, when her other guests had gone, Donna Clara sometimes performed the same service for Giovanni Maria.
Turning from old scandal to new, Amandi asked whether gaslight was at last to be installed in the city?
‘Yes,’ said Mastai. ‘A Jesuit adviser,’ he confided, ‘warns me that this makes me the second Lucifer or Light-bearer since it will encourage adultery and conspiracy and people’s staying up when they should be asleep. I asked if sleep was the Christian ideal. He doesn’t want us to build railways either.’
‘People should stick to their station in life.’
‘Chemin de fer, chemin d’enfer.’
The old jokes drew them together.
Mastai did not, however, want to leave his friend with the impression that the Jesuits were hostile. Quite the contrary. Why, after his election, pupils from the Collegio Romano had untackled his horses, harnessed themselves to his carriage shafts and pulled him in triumph up the Quirinal Hill.
‘Showing you their stamina perhaps?’ Amandi feared that the Jesuits must be smarting under their loss of power for, during the last reign, they had been consulted at every turn. It was said – and he saw no reason to disbelieve it – that all the cardinals resident in Rome had gone every evening to the Gesù to receive instructions. Yes, they must be smarting, for Liberals were making much of the fact that Mastai had not taken a Jesuit confessor. He should beware of them, Amandi warned. But Pius was euphoric with optimism. He was not a Liberal, he assured. He loathed Liberalism – but neither did he care for conservative fanatics.The people, he insisted, understood him. The people were his and he could rely on their support. He began to talk about a fritter-seller whose stall had been moved by the police and who had appealed to him for help. Seeing the look on Amandi’s face, he laughed and acknowledged with his old, shrewd charm that, to be sure, statecraft was not a matter of pleasing fritter-sellers. No! But, since half our troubles came from insensitivity to trifling abuses, he planned to overhaul the police, improve the penal system, dissolve the Centurioni and …
Amandi was appalled. ‘Holy Father!’ The title rang like an oath. ‘You’ll stir up a hornets’ nest! You’ll unite your enemies against you!’
‘But,’ Mastai skirmished, ‘I’m not thinking of reforms !Only improvements .’ Then, taking Amandi by the elbows, ‘You’ll help me tame the hornets, won’t you? Gently, as St Francis tamed Brother Wolf?’ Rocking slightly on the balls of his feet, he added: ‘Tell me who they are.’
‘They’re everyone!’ And Amandi tried to explain the dangers of tinkering with a crumbling edifice. ‘First the bureaucrats …’
‘Well, tame them for me then.’ Mastai kissed him on both cheeks.
*
So Amandi went forth to take the bureaucratic pulse.
He was not sure whether Pius had thought up the task so as to rid himself of an intrusive old friend’s concern. Mastai was changing in office and proving, if proof were needed, that power made men volatile to the point of femininity. Exalted and excitable in his new white gown, he was in manifest need of protection from competing suitors – mob, Jesuits, reformers – and perhaps most of all from the pride he took in seeing his election as a miracle from God.
Amandi wondered whether to tell the pontiff of his
The man in white was twice the size of the rather wispy youth who had been Amandi’s fellow guest at the Colonna palace a score or so years before. Damascened vistas flickered in memory as Amandi recalled draughty hangings, smoky oil lamps and the charcoal foot-warmers supplied on evenings judged unbearably cold. On others, the only resource was to persuade one of the princess’s pug dogs to sit warming one’s lap. The malicious claimed that, when her other guests had gone, Donna Clara sometimes performed the same service for Giovanni Maria.
Turning from old scandal to new, Amandi asked whether gaslight was at last to be installed in the city?
‘Yes,’ said Mastai. ‘A Jesuit adviser,’ he confided, ‘warns me that this makes me the second Lucifer or Light-bearer since it will encourage adultery and conspiracy and people’s staying up when they should be asleep. I asked if sleep was the Christian ideal. He doesn’t want us to build railways either.’
‘People should stick to their station in life.’
‘Chemin de fer, chemin d’enfer.’
The old jokes drew them together.
Mastai did not, however, want to leave his friend with the impression that the Jesuits were hostile. Quite the contrary. Why, after his election, pupils from the Collegio Romano had untackled his horses, harnessed themselves to his carriage shafts and pulled him in triumph up the Quirinal Hill.
‘Showing you their stamina perhaps?’ Amandi feared that the Jesuits must be smarting under their loss of power for, during the last reign, they had been consulted at every turn. It was said – and he saw no reason to disbelieve it – that all the cardinals resident in Rome had gone every evening to the Gesù to receive instructions. Yes, they must be smarting, for Liberals were making much of the fact that Mastai had not taken a Jesuit confessor. He should beware of them, Amandi warned. But Pius was euphoric with optimism. He was not a Liberal, he assured. He loathed Liberalism – but neither did he care for conservative fanatics.The people, he insisted, understood him. The people were his and he could rely on their support. He began to talk about a fritter-seller whose stall had been moved by the police and who had appealed to him for help. Seeing the look on Amandi’s face, he laughed and acknowledged with his old, shrewd charm that, to be sure, statecraft was not a matter of pleasing fritter-sellers. No! But, since half our troubles came from insensitivity to trifling abuses, he planned to overhaul the police, improve the penal system, dissolve the Centurioni and …
Amandi was appalled. ‘Holy Father!’ The title rang like an oath. ‘You’ll stir up a hornets’ nest! You’ll unite your enemies against you!’
‘But,’ Mastai skirmished, ‘I’m not thinking of reforms !Only improvements .’ Then, taking Amandi by the elbows, ‘You’ll help me tame the hornets, won’t you? Gently, as St Francis tamed Brother Wolf?’ Rocking slightly on the balls of his feet, he added: ‘Tell me who they are.’
‘They’re everyone!’ And Amandi tried to explain the dangers of tinkering with a crumbling edifice. ‘First the bureaucrats …’
‘Well, tame them for me then.’ Mastai kissed him on both cheeks.
*
So Amandi went forth to take the bureaucratic pulse.
He was not sure whether Pius had thought up the task so as to rid himself of an intrusive old friend’s concern. Mastai was changing in office and proving, if proof were needed, that power made men volatile to the point of femininity. Exalted and excitable in his new white gown, he was in manifest need of protection from competing suitors – mob, Jesuits, reformers – and perhaps most of all from the pride he took in seeing his election as a miracle from God.
Amandi wondered whether to tell the pontiff of his
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