Tantum Religio

or, .

This famous town has a renown Well worthy of a place in history, Though little known to northern readers: Forgot its struggles, feuds and leaders: Now but the haunt of cattle breeders: Of all its various worthies, I Won’t here attempt to give a list, or re- Capitulate its doughty deeds (Its chronicle’s far too long-winded, And such a pendant little needs; Nor could I if I were so minded.) Against the Austrian tyranny, Or earlier, how it drove the Gri- Gioni to their native valleys When they made buccaneering sallies For plunder and proselytizing, The latter being a sort of sizing To put upon the first, a sort of Religious gloss: all that I thought of In this concise parenthesis Was to point out the place about To be the theatre of this New and veracious epopee Was not unworthy to be chosen (As every reader, if he goes on To th’ end will, I feel sure, agree.) For such a scope; and now, I hope, The birthplace of Guicciardi and Large-hearted Beccaria being formally Presented to Italia’s warm ally, Trinacria’s chillier twin, may stand Comparison with Arva Pharphar, Troy, Islington, Jerusalem, With th’ Hiawathian Minnehaha Or Milton’s other place—ahem! Choose any other fit comparative, For now I must set forth my narrative.

Arrived (no easy task), he chartered A room,—for though the town is squalid, Scarce lighted by petroleum dips, And with a cobbled pavement trips The churl from market late returning, Till his lop-sided goitre skips Out of his baggy vest, his wallet’s Much hungrier paunch and scantier earning To make acquaintance with—Most solid Is the true faith of its inhabitants In masses, popes and heavenly hopes And suchlike gear, so that like rabid ants Dragging their eggs this way and that, If you should squash their ant-hill flat, Its starving female wens swarm altar-wards, At holy Mary’s shrine to falter words Of prayer, their neck balloons removed, May be; prayers mixed with priest-approved Promises of fat capon-boons, Or in default of these cocoons And such brave knick-knacks slid down planes Of inclined deal, from th’ iron screen Outside which Goitre writhes and strains In pious ecstacy to where within The virgin puppet, dressed in green, Star-spangled—most appropriate mordaunt— Smiles blandly on the rag-clad scene To think her dupes can be so verdant. For th’ apparatus so constructed is That whatsoever there eructed is Shot down into that Holy of Holies Is irrecoverable, as coal is Shot from the truck into the cellar, Or stars that fall from regions stellar. In vain the twice-repentant sinner Repents her of her vanished dinner. Empty she crawls in tears away, Feeling her goitres sag and play About a neck no hair’s breadth slenderer (Her throbbing prayers have made it tenderer). Curses and vows she breathes in vain, Pence Petrine don’t return again; Already, long ere set of sun, The capon and the priest are one. But to return: a cretin bartered Her services for some small pay,— But rendered punctual to the day,— Her juicy brain being just enlightened Enough to find her purse strings tightened In this world better than the burden Bound on her hump by priests, the guerdon Of their post-mortem paradise To equipoise by this world’s sighs, And for her gross, material way Of thinking, had well nigh been martyred By others of the goitrous clay, Indignant she should thus aspire An inch above the common mire; Else had th’ apostle of Geneva’s Shrill creed, by Sondrio’s pure believers Been doomed to boil his own tin kettle, And thus, with all his fire and mettle, Had little time to fan the schism ’Twixt oil and water, font and chrism. I’ve said ’twas no light task, at first, A house to find or room to preach in; For who would house a soul accurst Or hire out rooms for such to teach in? ’Twould draw down lightnings in the attic To isolate the lank schismatic; And by Christ’s blood no apostate fellow Should e’er lap must in Sondrian cellar: But when house-blessing day came round, If such as he should chance be found On the first floor, what priest were willing To asperge walls fouled by such a villain; Or Holy Church not fail to impound, Outraged, the rent to the last shilling? (For things like this occur, you know, In priest-rid towns like Sondrio.)

At last, a Judas soul, as dour As his of Jewry, did consent— Faithless to faith,—in evil hour, To let a small apart-a-ment In his own crumbling tenement Unto the Calvinistic Vandal, Indifferent to the public scandal. (For twenty jingling piastres A month he risked his lath and plaster’s Damnation in the world eternal To purgatorial flames infernal.) His godless avarice was, I think, Attributed by some to drink. The fact is, ’twas not due to toddy But the austere religious body, To whom was due his own poor rent, His savings being in masses spent. Not long, they’d threatened to distrain; For Churchmen waste not threats in vain, But misery’s last mite extract With the sleek gusto once they racked. But well he knew the legal screw Was in the fire, his fate was settled; For Father Fuchs, the Capuchin, Owed him a grudge, and that’s a sin Past shrift; so, desperate and nettled, He turned an ear to Blasio’s offer, Defied the Pope and housed the scoffer.

Great was the scandal: deputations Poured to the house, with execrations And protests ’gainst such desecrations Of Sondrian rookeries, yet unsullied; Fat priests wheezed vague vaticinations Of famine, plague, dread expiations, And bull necks Tully’s self out-tullied. Others rushed up with book and candle And boys, to exorcise the scandal. From wine-tubs some denounce the outrage, Others perambulate and spout rage; Some quote Ezekiel, some the Pandects, All thump their fists, till every hand aches; Brief, every papist heart is full, Like Phalaris roaring in his bull.

But unappalled and undismayed The bold Sir Blasius rose, arrayed In majesty, and two small bands That flapped below his stubbly chin Like Capricorn’s two dewlaps thin, And from the window his tirade Roared forth, the Bible in his hands, And orbs to ill-tiled roofs upraised, And lips that burned and nose that blazed. So moribund aquatic fowl Raise piteous eyes from reed-bound lands While levin smites and thunders growl, And mangy sheep crowd cheek by jowl.

I’m well aware that here should follow That saintly Calvinist’s phillipic, But recollect when papists holloa Their logic method’s mostly hippic, And what finds favor in the stable Or ring, they bawl while they are able; When lungs, as heads, are empty, whacks Administer, or turn their backs. On this occasion all the quarter Was seething and bubbling like a water- Spout, mud yolcano or tornado, Just as it doubles up the dado And irons out the cat and kittens As flat as granny’s new silk mittens The most intrepidest reporter Had soon been doubled up as fans are When hurricanes rage o’er Arkansa; Squashed flat among those wine-tubs burly, His shorthand deafened by the hurly. In fact, they kicked up such a shindy, That Blasio vanished from the windy.

Vanished, not vanquished: lo! intrepid Most strong in grace and just a gill Of something taken through a quill, He thunders down the stair decrepid, Close followed by a stalwart Rheatian Of six-foot-four and contours Grecian, And eighteen summers:—as from Troy Through flames Æneas bore his boy And old Anchises; on his shoulders Achates through the amazed beholders Bore, unperturbed by all their hubbub, Not infant Bacchus but a tub up: And swinging round the mighty vat Gave an involuntary scrubbing To many an umber jowl and hat That ne’er before had known a tubbing, For where by two or three the Pope is Adored, in general light nor soap is. As on they stalked, unmoved, gigantic, The mob at first lunged at them, frantic. So furious dogs at flying trains Till the swift wheels dash out their brains; Then with a howl half-disconcerted Recoiled—the well-plied vat staves hurt it, Papist with Papist ’gan to jostle And left a road for the Apostle Of Calvin to disport his bony Person along the street way stony: Rawboned, he onward strode with grace Behind, and reached the market place.

Thus by the grace of gin and vat, sir, Lo! Blasio master of the piazza: Planted the tub evangelistic, Sir Blasio-Cyclops-Calvinistic High o’er the hoops upreared tremendous, Ready to hell or heaven to send us, And pouring forth, without palaver, Doctrinal scoria, flames and lava, Gape people, pavements, walls aghast As Blasio’s rhetoric round is cast. Blasting and withering in Saharas Of eloquence popes, priests, tiaras, Tats, scarlet, tinsel, mariolatries, Indulgences, Antichrists, idolatries, Popes, pope’s toes, tonsures, nuns, worm-eaten Confessionals, with brass plates beaten Fine and pierced large for whispered sins To slip through easily from chins In lace and powder, rouge and pins; In fact, his lightnings fulminated All the frayed, tawdry properties Of Popery’s puppet-show theatrical; Laid bare its shams, exposed its lies, Its frauds to a palanca rated, Proving how Jesuits’ and priests’ fat tricks all Who, haltered ’neath its crumbling gable, Munch mouldy oats in popery’s stable. Far off, awhile, the folk in awe, Spellbound at what they heard and saw, Huddled together and, perplexed, Scarce from far corners caught the text, So loud the beat of gathering feet From rearward trampling down the street And shuffling forward till, at last, No longer proof ’gainst these attacks The foremost line of arms and backs Gave way, and all, a torrent vast, Like swirling rookeries in a storm Eddying concentric round their elms, The dusky market overwhelms, As towards the centre drift and swarm The motley hosts to form a crater Round that erupting prêtre or prater.

Silent awhile at first they listen, Till slow, but surely, access gains To water-logged, thick-witted brains, Some inkling of the preacher’s meaning. Then eyes began to gleam and glisten And hands to twitch, that overweening Blasphemous heretic to chastise: Some toward the rushing Mallero cast eyes Of longing, some for firewood hankered; Some drowned their feelings in a tankard; Those imprecate with words articulate, These hiccough oaths, and all gesticulate; And one, a lank, long-fingered fellow, With hatchet face and cheek-bones yellow, And eyes cerulean, somewhat haggard, And rabbit-mouth and accents mellow,— A sort of spider-monkey blackguard,— Mounted a stall, and shrill and fast Piped out a Popish counterblast That drew the mob; for mild as were His tones, they urged to vengeance hellish: And Popery’s groundlings always hear Of blood and fire with wondrous relish.

“Brothers!” he cried, and o’er his head Raised a long, skinny hand to heaven; “Is memory of the past so dead, And of the patriotic leaven That once in Sondrio’s vales was given To raise the theologic bread; That none recal how Aryans bled When Val Fontana’s streams ran red, And Teglio’s patriots, in a ferment, Shot down the Calvinistic vermint, Trapped in its musty pews and chapels? Oh! glorious cunning thus to trap hell’s Worst fiends, then through the casements slaughter With slugs and grape-shot—and no quarter? To see the blood rush out like water Down the broad flight of steps, a cascade Most dear to Heaven; to hear them ask aid Of God and Christ, with screams and tears And cries and groans and widows’ prayers; Then bounce against the well-barred door In vain attempts to force their shambles, Then plump down thud upon the floor, While the full tides of bubbling gore, Replenished at each volley, pour, Lapping the lintels, or run low After each surging overflow. Now, panie-struck, some lank youth scrambles Up to a lancet window, strains His tow-pate through the rainbow panes Whack! whack! a stalwart musket brains That too precocious poppy head; Its opiate seeds and milk juice scatters, The hollow capsule cleaves and shatters, Coating the walls a creamy red. Or, if some prattling infant, crying, Clung to your knees, its mother dying, Shot through the womb, the babe to seize, What joy! the dimpling legs to squeeze, Then, grasping firmly by the heels, And gloating o’er its piteous squeals, To whirl it sling-like round your shoulders And dash its brains out on the boulders! What a hushed silence then succeeds As the smashed corpselet throbs and bleeds, A carrion man, a shattered nought, Once palpitating life and thought.

Oh! Sixteen-twenty! glorious flint-age! Faith’s climacteric! human vintage! Better than thine, O famed Grumello! Of purpling vines and clusters mellow, Now mantling o’er thy rock Tarpeian And castles’ mouldering battlements, Screening its lizard-haunted rents! Then from thy crenelled fastness swung The purpling heretic, from lung Apostate tortured cries were rent And through the blood-damp air were spent Wind-wafted to the empyrean. Then all thy splintered precipice Ran crude with human sacrifice, Thou eyrey of the faith! impaled On spears, their little lives exhaled. Above thy smooth rock-platform boys Of tenderest age, and infants flung From the sheer edge, in torments hung Wedged into clefts, or bleeding clung To splintered spires or round them coiled Convulsive, or like broken toys By their own childish fingers spoiled In days of sunny infancy, Lo! broken on the ground they lie Beneath the glaring azure sky! Is memory: of that glorious past In Sondrian hearts so wholly quenched That, dubious, now we stand aghast, By yonder crackpate’s rhetoric drenched? Where is the stern will nought requires To spur it to heroic deeds, The strong, just purpose of our sires To crush, ere sown, sedition’s seeds? O glorious butchery! the names Of the great dead that fed thy flames Scarce linger in the halls they reared, Where once they rang beloved and feared. In Besta’s home the rafter falls And goitrous squalor throngs the halls, And through the desecrated court The Cretin wails his vanished thought. In Tirano, no more thy name, O Robustelli! heroes claim, That once tremendous sped the flood Of death to Adda running blood: And shall we don the modern creed Of dull indifference and greed Where once, in hosts, the grey rats fell And thousands thronged the gates to hell? Nay! let Calabria’s sturdy faith, Who burnt her heretics as late As the proud year of fifty-eight, Recal us to the stake and flame And paint our recreant cheeks with shame. On! brothers! on!” the haggard wraith Bounced from his stall, “to the attack! On! brothers! on! with fire and rack; And damned be he that first holds back.”

As thus he spake, the throng, entranced, Deployed, and like a wall advanced, Or bellying surf, all arm and leg, Such as when o’er thy virgin scrub, O Michigan or Winnipeg! The proud red Indians whoop and dance, Blood-thirstier than thy weazels, France! And all converge upon the tub To sweep it, with the man of grace Upon it, off this planet’s face, Or, if a star-were goal too far, At least, from off the market-place.

In Spagna’s happy lands, we know, Some century or more ago, A popish genius once contrived A cage for heretics, derived From his own vivid sense of hell. It was a toy to fill with joy The soul of every Jesuit shrived: In brief, a small collapsing cell, Whose iron walls, that formed a square, Enclosed a space some ten feet wide, The iron plates being so applied They could at need be made recede, And then the room they formed expanded; As they approached the space grew spare And could be made to disappear— If circumstances should demand it. Just in the middle of this cell Was sunk an awful shaft or well, To which the walls, contracting, swept As onward, inch by inch, they crept The wretch within ’em to the oubliette: Death’s natural horror’s not sufficient To punish folks, in faith deficient, So Church, a natural proficient In butchery, has not idly slept But done her utmost to quintuple it. (According to strict rules of grammar The “it” refers to faith instead of That final act we're all in dread of, And Church made thrice more awful, d—n her.) I trust the couplet thus amended Conveys the meaning here intended. Well, to return from this digression, These iron walls I’ve laid such stress on With frightful fiends were decorated, Such as your Christian’s never sated With fancying and depicting where In keeping—say, his house of prayer. This cell being destined for religious Performance of a kind prodigious, No pains, be sure; had been omitted To decorate it as befitted:— In fact, both in and out ’twas painted With the worst fiends saints e’er invented; Fiends with saw teeth and fish-hook tails, Huge, gaping jaws and serpent’s scales, Bat’s wings and claws, eyes goggling red, Tridents, nets, flames and goblins dread, Some small and vicious, others bigger, All compounds of bat, goat and nigger. In fact, religion here surpassed Herself; as in a mirror glassed And emptied out; for naught but hell Can be religion’s parallel. To use this aid to pious thought A heretic must first be caught, The cell, red-heated by a flue, And then the saints had naught to do But drop the heretic inside. At first, from walls expanded wide, The painted fiends glower at a distance, And fan with fiery breath the wretch Who crouches, powerless of resistance; Then crank and lever groan and stretch, And fiends and fiery walls rush nearer: Just staggering on the brink of death, With crackling brain and kindling breath, He ravishes each reverend hearer Who works, in turn, with pious fingering, So sensitive that to a pin It feels how much the wretch within Can bear and not lose consciousness, The torture-trap’s adjustments, lingering With fond, sweet, child-like tenderness, Upon the knobs and springs mechanic On which depend those joys Titanic; “He’s fainting! Curse! The springs reverse!” Back fly the walls: with starting eyes And lolling tongue, his agonies Prolonged, the shrivelling victim trails His blackening carcase from the pit, His smouldering raiment gashed and split. By the wild work of blistering nails; Hark! what a world of piteous wails, “Not husky, though. Oh! he can bear!,” Once more the sickening furnace flails, Fiends vomit fire and monsters glare. “Joy! what a scream!” “He’s gone:” “No, slacken The walls, and let them cool and blacken An hour. He’ll bear another bout.” Now one by one again flash out The demons, inch by inch the sheet Of flame contracts; his tabid feet Stick viscid to the flesh-strewn stones; Glued to the fiery walls that eat Into his back and singe the bones And bubbling muscles—ah! what moans As slowly thrust on toward the brink— He writhes upon the demon-claws. “He’s almost in.” “There: now, a pause That he may smell the sickening stink That steams up from th’ obscene abyss. Hark! still the sinews snap and hiss In the dread heat, and still he groans. But, curse the apostate! now how faintly, The game’s up.” Swift the fingers saintly A handle grasp. The walls clap tight.

Not otherwise the wall of noses And knees indignant scour the square, Converging furibond to where, Shorn of its eloquence and bare, Nor longer resonant, reposes The Calvinistic tub, for there No Boanerges smites the air With winged words, but like a hare Skips nimbly o’er the wine-dark cobbles, While slow behind the wine tub wobbles, Swung by his young Bregallian giant, Who stone by stone disputes defiant Each inch of ground, and dares the van. As swift, more swift, the holy man Skims like a scopperel down the wind, His broad bands fluttering far behind, And black robes bellying unconfined. Dodging and doubling left and right, Excogitating rapid flight, His twinkling feet, in swift retreat, E’en thus had scarcely gained the street Ere the gross mob the entrance blocked And past the lamp-post surged and rocked. Here Blasius, breathless, tripped and reeled, A moment more his fate had sealed; Had not, with more than human courage And worthier Macedon than our age, His peerless rearguard, young Achates, Just saved the Anabaptist vates: O’er the loud tumult sings the vat, Three roundest of the foe lie flat. The frighted crowds recoil a pace Irresolute, a moment waver. That moment’s grace, that ceded space, Have turned the scales in Blasio’s favour. Helvetia’s hero and her prophet Are half-way down the street, and off it Cut like two swallows kestrel-chivied. Flap! through an arch obscure, and, livid From throat to brow, each muscle straining, Hurl themselves at the oaken graining Of the huge cumbrous door, impassive As faith to reason; cobwebbed, massive, The scarp with grit, the hinge encumbered With scaly rust, rebellious lumbered, Dry, stiff and stark, through a small are The panelled logs—then scraping grounded Blocked by the shingle: nerves a-tingle, Like caoutchouc balls the two saints bounded Back through the gloom; then, blinded by their Own sweat, with heads breast-high rebutted ’Gainst the derisive woodwork, either To perish in the attempt or shut it. At last it yielded, slow, resentful, As if reluctant planks so orthodox Should shield such reprobates, then went full Tilt, crash! one valve ’gainst th’ other half, And like a nine-pin one, a slaughtered ox The other, Blasius and his acolyte Dropped right and left: a moment vivid Thro’ closing cleft a narrowing crack o’ light Flashed the wild spectrum of the crowd, With anger pale, with fury livid, Whose tangled swarms of heads and arms Shook menaces of vengeance, vowed With imprecations deep and loud. Then Blasius, scrambling to his feet, With one broad lurch shut out the street, Shot each thick bolt into its socket, Fixed the doors, bars, and props to block it, And clapped the huge key in his pocket. Then, stair and landing barricaded, The rescued pair, each in his chair Dropped like a billet, breathless, jaded, With scarce strength left to wipe his brow, And, simpering, breathe the mystic “Ciaǹ!”

Bards of the Epic order high The ways of Heaven to men would try Like advocates to justify: Know all of this world and the other, Primed their defects, your doubts to smother, And bring you back to faith again. Mine being the mock heroic vein, Hoisted few feet o’er pig and plain, A humbler task affronts my pen That cautious gropes from line to line To prove divine as stars that shine The works of men to one another. And here a fine occasion offers Itself, to show the sceptic scoffers Who mock humanity’s weak sides How subtly interest divides The bands of hate; what vice exacts Self-love or avarice counteracts; How passions timely yield to reason’s Mild influence or the change of seasons; How nature’s nail now this whim stopping, Now that, keeps all the cat-gut hopping, Expectant lifted high, now sinking Despairing, swearing, hoodwinking, drinking, Protesting, resting, declaiming, blaming, Now cutting short its own existence, Its neighbour’s now, with the assistance Of slugs and seconds, swords and scandals; How past and present turn the handles Of Time’s harmonious organetta, Prelude to eternity’s bright operetta; Brief, how all’s ordered for the best, And heaven this world’s hid palimpsest. But hold, rash pen, that hast invaded, By too prolific fancy aided, Epic’s untrod and sacred province! Have I not shewn me lavish of hints Thou art no goose-quill, nibbling mine, To soar, Lord bless us! high o’er Parnassus? No province thine sublime, divine, Thy sphere’s provincial, wretched quillet Of wingless brass; then sink—and fill it! Off with thee, to the land of Yankees, Lynching and long-bows, Mood’ and Sankies; All civilisation’s latest hits From Barnum to free petticoats; Where perfect freedom naught permits To pantaloons and hats with votes But blindly to adore the cow As moonbeams slant from brow to brow; For from that happy land of Cocaigne Where lords and land-leaguers go flocking, One strand of that intricate cable Cause and effect we call, when able To trace them, and mistake for links Ina long chain that has no ending; Though, to a mind that sees and thinks, A boundless net, through all things wending, Were amore apt similitude; Our narrow, lancet minds perceiving One file of meshes, and believing That to be all, as eyes conclude, Because so moulded by our sight, In rays and pencils springs the light That rolls through all things infinite,— One strand, I say, of causes and Effects was twisted in the land Of Yankee, which I place my trust on To save Sir Blasius from combustion. If other strands contributed, Forth in due order shall be set.

Thus then the Papal deficit. In strongly marked relief is set By these last lines: not less the factors, Among the scattered simian actors In Europe and the busy sphere o’ The western world, that summed, divided, Squared and the like, in th’ end provided A revenue of minus zero For Popery’s pontifex and clero. And wrinkled fingers now unclasped The huge worm-eaten cash-box hasped, And bound with iron rough and rusty, And raised the lid and trembling grasped The mouldering rim, and gazed aghast, With breaking eyes ensphered, and sighs, Into that vacuous cavern vast That yawned beneath them like the last Dark home of all, as dead and dusty With scurf and mould and all things musty Impregnated, it seemed to kill The very breath of life and will: Then to their pens and desks they wandered Unsteady, tried the nibs and pondered, Or dashed off bulls to confraternities Of whom they knew some secret scandal With covert menace to disband all The brotherhood; by all th’ eternities Conjuring them to dub up handsome Their spiritual sire to ransom: One such, enough to make you rap your chins, Had reached the leader of the Capuchins In Sondrio, the aforesaid Fulks Or Fuchs, and put him in the sulks, The which encyclical has whirled us Too once more ’mid brave Sondrio’s elders.

The Capucini form a body, Or corporation, dressed in shoddy Of coarse brown colour, and a hood, A girdle and a small calotta Or skull cap: they’ve a bowl for food The which they beg while doing good: Complexion mostly terra cotta, But sometimes ruddy, round and burnished, In which case with a paunch they’re furnished Rough as a chestnut’s trunk and bulky, But generally they’re thin and sulky, With wiry black beard—fino—fino— Manzoni’s term is mingherlino. In theory—and this is funny— They must not ask or beg for coin: But only bread, cheese, pork, sirloin, Chestnuts, fat capons, fish, fruit, wine, Chestnuts, fat capons, fish, fruit,Etcetera. In practice if you offer bread They curl their noses, and, instead, With truculence demand your money, Chestnuts, fat capons, fish, fruit,Etcetera. The rule of being paid in kind Amongst a people agricultural Was not invented by the blind, Witness the monuments of sculptural Art in the convents and certosas Where fatted these celestial boozers For heaven’s last fair, mid altars rare Ablaze with gold and costliest gems Flaming from frosted diadems And pyxes—miracles Fontana And Benvenuto wrought to garner The bread of life—and walls mosaic Bade blossom into wonders laic Imagination ne’er conceived, With wreaths of agate interleaved And flowers of lapis-lazuli, Sprinkled with dewdrops casually Of pearls and topazes and moonstones: Here, roused by clarions’ and bassoons’ tones To costliest viands, costliest vice, Beyond the dreams of avarice, They lived their earthly Paradise, Fawned on by flattery and servility— These Christian preachers of humility! Their Buddhist bowls for humble doles And scourge of knotted thongs upon vent, Being—for the outside of the convent.

Alas! in these lewd days of doubters The inner walls are like the outers; Stripped of their arras and intaglios, The convents are no more seraglios, And Fuchs by Papal spendthrifts dunned Had scarce a kreutzer to refund: No wonder, then, these “mingherlin” ants Sell up, rack-rent and milk their tenants. Sir Blasio’s landlord, we have seen, Was one of those they squeezed most tightly, Else had his lodgings never been Let out to heretics so lightly; And now, for harbouring two such tenants He’s doubly dunned and pinched for penance. Now if he’d happened to be in When that sage worthy ran to earth, He, doubtless, had condoned his sin By casting the apostate forth. ’Tis always sweet to see a blazer rent, Like Blazius, if he first prepays your rent. Besides, he thus would curry favour With those harsh landlords of the cowl. Then, when that lank, fanatic shaver Egged on the mob with voice and scowl. “Burn down the house! Smoke out the stranger:” There was his furniture in danger; But thanks to Providence or fortune, He had been barred out with the crowd. ’Twas all in vain for him to importune With threat or curse, however loud; The wily Chiavennian fox Was deaf to all his shouts and knocks: He should have been at home by rights, But—and that “but” was the salvation Of the two Calvinists—his nights And noons, with others of his station, Now oft were spent in drowning thought Of debts and duns in Trani port. This liquor was a god-send truly To those who groaned beneath the ferule Of that ecclesiastic bully, Fuchs, of the Capuchins, and their rule. A litre, costing six palancas, Wiped clean from thought those rusty cankers. Then Japhet, so the loon was christened, Astride a barrel would denounce ’em, With flaming cheeks and eyes that glistened Down at the “Bœuce” and roar: “I counts ’em No better nor a gang of fakes, The linsey-woolsey undertakers!” And much more to the same effect, The Trani wines being strong and heady; Then, when indignant and erect He rose, protesting and unsteady, It was a sight to see him peg off Like a green cricket with one leg off. It needed just that other strand of Coincidence—a vintage season Unrivalled in the fabled land of Brigands and knives and popish treason And Policastrian pirates coasting— To save Sir Blasio from his roasting. In fact, o’er far Calabria’s hovels, Where pigs and Christians share the bowl And priests parade with coal-black shovels On inch-thick skulls, and bless the whole; Where blear-eyed brats o’er muck heaps clamber, And sows lie farrowing in the chamber, Had burst a perfect vinous deluge And turned the vats and casks to sluices, In fact, in all the land no well huge Enough to hold the surplus juices Was found, they rushed down oyer-brimming Troughs—dykes—the very fields were swimming. The folk there with that want of sense, Which is the note of priest-rid regions, Had never had the providence To cooper casks for these occasions, So that a vintage to excess in These lands was more a curse than blessing. The roads were bad, the means of transit Far worse, and buyers next to nil, Folk could not all the autumn dance it And drink—the very pigs took ill: Excess of good cheer turned to loathing And then the wine went off for nothing. And thus it happened that hard drinking Became the rage in northern valleys Where heretofore cool sober thinking Had put a rein upon the chalice: When two sous sees you half-seas over, Philosophy bids reap your clover. Thus many a half-fed, half-clad blackguard Would shut this sorry world’s dim woes out And glorious home at even staggered With ill-botched boots in holes, and toes out, As Japhet now, his hose unmended, In spirals down the bare street wended, But not so drunk as not to seize The salient points of the position: His fellow townsmen, if they please, May suffocate the Calvin mission: Be all Geneva purged with fire! But not his household gods the pyre. One way alone he saw to save ’em Blocked out among the common herd:— To warn the Capuchins—and brave ’em— Dread thought!—a slender chance, he feared. Yet who can tell which scale of fate Prevail shall, avarice or hate? So sobered now, with heel to shoulder, He clattered down the cobbly causeway To where the Capucini moulder Behind their rusty bars where bore sway Huge spinners slung on hammocks clothy Of dusty felts and colours brothy, And, happily, he found it open— That convent door with huge nails studded, And ’mid the brothers, some with cope on, Some half unlaced, some girthed and hooded, He rushed in, nose and eyeballs burning, Priests, flagons, possets overturning, And stammered out his fatal message. Ah! who but Arno’s primal poet Could paint those brown saints’ rage—to presage The Calvin roast—and then forego it ’Twas maddening—to neglect the warning, Some shrieked, popes, bulls, bills, ruin, scorning, Some, rent twixt avarice and hatred, Slouched blubbering on the wine-splashed table, With epileptic eyes and pate red While others swift unloosed the cable That girthed their palpitating paunches: Some sat bolt upright on their haunches With stony eyes inanely staring: One roared out Psalms, a firebrand waving, And one, his scanty tonsure tearing, Fell flat face downward on the paving, While one drawled out, the bursar Florian, Their butchers’ bills to tunes Gregorian. But Fuchs, who knew, and knowing, grieved How thin the plank ’twixt them and ruin, With one wild yell his soul relieved, And then such storms of frenzy flew in That every monk’s hood-cowlèd ear rings And tonsures blaze like backwood clearings, Each hair erect, as through them whistled, Like slug or grape shot: “Hark! ye, dumb-heads, Swift call the fire-brigade!” or bristled As “flay their mangy hides for drum-heads!” He roared:—then down the staircase jumps In flights, ejaculating: “Pumps:” Now, “whirra! whirra! hammer! hammer!” Hose, engine, firemen headlong gallop, Cleaving the mobs that chafe and clamour Like surfs behind a racing shalop. Pouff! whizz! flies on the painted dragon, Fuchs foremost brandishing a flagon. Just, only just in time they reach it— The fated house, its portal glaring With the red bonfires piled to breach it, Where on the ground like cherubs blaring The faithful lie, their puffed cheeks beaming Like gourds a-roast or pumpkins steaming. And all along the façade, by the Ground-storey window bars deflected, From juniper and larch branch fly the Bright swarm of sparks, in spires ejected: And men, with Alpine rhododendron Flaring like tow, from end to end run. Close packed behind, like fields in fallow, The dense mob heaves in breathless rapture, When pizz! whizz! splash from bald pate sallow Off flies a hat, the hat to capture The owner with scant back hair dripping Among the crowd goes dipping, dipping. And now another splash, bang, fizzle, Two water rockets cannonading Bear off two wigs that spurt and frizzle Screwed fast upon the palisading That fronts the house, some inches higher Than the long flickering tongues of fire. And faster now those watery rockets Go spluttering all among the masses, Now sousing heads, now emptying pockets, Till all begin to bray like asses And then stampede diramifying As rays through clouds when suns are dying. This simile, I hold’s, Miltonic, And greatly dignifies the matter, Being both appropriate and euphonic, Clouds are but firemen, suns to spatter, And ’tis a rule to shun the bathos By likening limpets to Mount Athos. Howe’er this be, the crowd stampeded With better halves at home to shelter, Such and what household words succeeded This unheroic helter-skelter For fustians spoiled:—’twere as irrelevant To introduce here as an elephant. Now fizzles out the last faint sparkle From the drenched logs and firewood humid And glimmering twilight ’gins to darkle And lampless streets, in mire and gloom hid, The fire is spent: the saints are dozing Indoors, below the day is closing. Far down the mist-dank roadway dwindle Hose, firemen, engine, Fuchs and flagon, And lurid clouds to westward kindle, Or ashen grey, moor, scar and crag on, Pale in the low moon’s shuddering beam, Like the wan spectres of a dream. So Blasius won the day, at least, he Appeared to win, but soon his outlines And his Achates, too, grow misty Far down stream, and the night of doubt lines The hollow vale, and hangs its pall O’er mountain shrine, o’er echoing hall, O’er whited kirk, o’er fretted altar, O’er chanted rhymes, o’er periods rounded, O’er creeds that fail, o’er faiths that falter, All mouldering, in one white ring bounded, Dim as the shadowy streams that pen The pale, wan ghosts that once were men; But Fuchs much fame and praise acquired For charity and magnanimity. True, had he dared, he would have fired With his own hands the Calvin dimity: History, though, must not note intentions, Or fame were scarce as well-earned pensions. And this same late-won reputation Of charity towards foes heretical He used, with persons high in station, To get sealed up with seals hermetical That fount of eloquence artesian Had soused them with its periods Rhetian. Next, to expunge it from their walls, With mayor and judge he interceded: Surely the Chiavennian Pauls Their Blasio’s ministration needed; Thus came, one day, to Blasio’s wicket Some strong hints and a railway ticket; And, sick at last of screeching dogma To empty walls, he took the first And last, and left the Sondrian quagmire, First shaking off its mire accurst; And therewith learned two truths at least,— That deep of ignorance is the thirst; And that, while earth spins west to east, Rome remains Rome, and priest a priest.