Tales of the Wonder Club Volume II Part 24

"'Nor that either,' said I.

"'Well, now,' said he, 'you are one of the never-contented. I see you are determined by hook or by crook to keep the ring all to yourself.'

"'No,' I replied, 'I do not wish for anything that is not strictly fair.

What I propose is this--viz., that I should keep the ring in my possession until you have disbursed the three pauls out of your share.

Then, after the ring has been estimated by a trustworthy party and turned into money, then we will share the produce equally.'

"'Ho! ho!' laughed he, 'so that's what you are after, is it? Ha! ha! I see it all. You fancy that under the excuse of waiting for your three pauls (which I know as well as you do yourself you do not care a straw for, since you have become enriched with the half of my treasure) that I am going to allow you quietly to abscond with the ring, which may be worth as much as all the treasure put together, for what I know, never to be heard of afterwards. Well, that is a cool idea! Ha! ha! ha!'

"'I protest,' said I, 'that such a thought never entered my head.'

"'Oh, of course not,' said he, incredulously. 'Friend Antonio, it is clear that our respective mothers hatched neither of us two yesterday. I am only a poor goatherd, yet I have learnt as much of the world from watching the antics of my goats as you have in trailing and pruning your vines. We are both of us men, and we know what men are. We all have our wants, and our brains were given us to supply them.'

"'Yes,' replied I, 'in a conscientious and legitimate manner, and not to over-reach our fellow-men in the shortest and most unscrupulous way that our petty interests may dictate, to the scandal of all good saints and the blessed Madonna at their head.'

"And here I launched out into a moral strain for at least an hour, hoping to bring him round by dint of argument and persuasion to my view of the case, but finding him at the end of that time still obdurate, and in the same state of hardness of heart as before--for who can moralise with such a heathen as Peppe?--I attempted to seize the ring by force, intending to keep it until he should pay me the debt he owed me, but he was before me, and a scuffle ensued, he declaring that he would not suffer me to keep the ring in my possession, and I being equally firm in refusing to let him keep it in his without first paying me my three pauls.

"He promised faithfully to pay me the debt when he should have changed one of the pieces of money that fell to his lot; until then, however, I remained firm in my resolution. Words had by this time led to blows, and the conflict was getting desperate, when, it being now fairly morning, we were interrupted by the sacristan entering the church to light the candles on the altar.

"Starting back in wonderment and terror at what he naturally believed to be a miraculous resuscitation, it it was some time before he was sufficiently calm to hear from me the true account of the case.

"At length, recovering from his stupor, his eyes sparkled with an avaricious light at the divided treasure on the ground, and his skinny fingers opened and shut convulsively. Then gazing furtively over each shoulder, he put his finger to his lip, winked, and whispered hoa.r.s.ely, 'My friends, the secret of your newly-acquired wealth is as yet only known to us three. I think you will find it to your interest that it should not be known to more, as in that case it might come to the ears of the arch-priest, who would be sure to deprive you of every penny of it, in consideration of its being found in his church. Reflect well, my friends; there is but one way to swear me to secrecy.'

"'And that is?' asked I.

"'To let me have an equal share of the treasure,' said he, impudently.

'What other way would you buy my silence?'

"We both violently opposed this proposition, considering it no less than an act of brigandage, and however Peppe and I might differ in opinion on many subjects, we both agreed that this was a piece of extortion to which we were not bound to submit. I said that I would sooner await the decision of the arch-priest, which would perhaps, after all, not be such as he--the sacristan--represented it, and Peppe swore that he would knock his dastardly brains out in the middle of the church before he would let him touch a _baiocco_.

"'Think again, my friends,' said the sacristan, exchanging his customary look of sanct.i.ty for one of deep cunning and malignity. 'Think again, and decide quickly. In another minute the arch-priest will enter the church to perform ma.s.s. All the inhabitants of the village will be pouring in. There is no time to be lost. Either let me have a third of the treasure, or I shall swear by all the saints to the arch-priest that I caught _you_, Signor Antonio, in the act of robbing the alms-box, and that the Madonna wrought a miracle before my very eyes by raising _you_, Signor Guiseppe, from the dead in order to chastise the burglar for his sacrilege.'

"'He will not believe thee, thou imp of Satan!' roared Peppe.

"'We shall see,' rejoined the sacristan, with a malicious chuckle, and rubbing his hands.

"At this moment the arch-priest entered, attired in his robes, and all the congregation at his heels.

"'Oh, Signor Arch-priest!' began the sacristan, in a loud voice, before the a.s.sembled mult.i.tude, rolling up his eyes and crossing himself with mock devotion, 'I have witnessed this morning a miracle with these very eyes.'

"'A miracle!' exclaimed the arch-priest and all the congregation in chorus.

"'Ay,' persisted the sacristan; 'a genuine, undeniable miracle. As I entered the church this morning to light the candles on the altar, I discovered this burglar (pointing to me) in the act of robbing the alms-box. He had just succeeded in extracting all that treasure that you see on the ground before you, and which was doubtless all of it placed in the box by our blessed Lady's own hands for the use of her holy church. For who else in our little village could have ama.s.sed such a sum, or, having ama.s.sed it, would have been willing to put it all of a heap within the alms-box?

"'Well, Signor Arciprete, just as the sacrilegious knave was about to count his unhallowed gains, lo! a miracle, such as these eyes never before beheld, and may never see again before they close for ever in peace.'

"'Well, well,' said the arch-priest, impatiently.

"'Well, Signor Arciprete mio, will you believe it? Yon image of our blessed Lady suddenly raised its arm in a commanding att.i.tude, and with a voice of ineffable sweetness blended with severity cried out to yon corpse, or, rather, that man, who _was_ a corpse only last night, as all good people may recollect, "Corpse! arise and seize yon sacrilegious ruffian by the scruff of the neck!" The words were no sooner out of the blessed image's mouth, when up leapt the corpse from his bier, and seizing the burglar with an iron grasp, continued to hold him until vostra Reverenza entered the church!'

"The arch-priest remained dumbfounded for a time, not knowing what to say; but just as I was about to break silence and try to exculpate myself, my voice was immediately drowned by the mult.i.tude crying out, 'Down with him! down with him! Down with the thief, the burglar, the heathen! Let him not seek to exculpate himself with lies. Hear him not; he is guilty of sacrilege! Down with the Protestant! Blessed be the holy man who was raised from the dead and the good sacristan to whose eyes the miracle was vouchsafed! Down with the Jew, the Protestant, the heretic! _Away_ with the miscreant! away with him.'

"I saw and heard no more. Hurried away, midst the hootings and execrations of the crowd, I was flung into prison, where I have remained ever since the morning."

There was much in Antonio's story that moved me to laughter, though not a smile appeared upon the face of the narrator himself throughout the whole recital. There was an air of truth, too, about his manner that left no doubt in my mind that he had retailed the facts of the case as they had occurred without adding to or taking from them in the minutest particular.

I was then able to tell him the sequel of the story; how the arch-priest had put the greater part of the treasure into the alms-box, and, for the rest, the sum being too large to enter all of it into the box, he had taken charge of it, together with the diamond ring, and had designed the whole sum to be expended for the benefit of the church.

On hearing this he replied that he had rather that the money should be disposed of in that way than that blackleg of a sacristan should get a penny of it. He said that he was perfectly sure that the arch-priest had only so disposed of the money from a sincere belief that it had been miraculously placed in the alms-box, he himself being the dupe of his own rascally sacristan to whom he trusted implicitly.

He was of opinion that had he been allowed to explain himself to the arch-priest, his reverence would have granted him, if not his proper share of the sum, at least some portion of it. I promised him that I would lay his case before the arch-priest, and do what I could to get him liberated from prison. He thanked me, and slipping a small coin into the turnkey's hand, I quitted the cell.

It was now quite dark, so I thought I would make the best of my way home, where my supper awaited me. The following morning was rainy, and not being able to work out of doors, I resolved to call again upon the arch-priest, and finding him at home, I related to him my interview with the prisoner and the statement he gave of the case.

My reverend friend looked thoughtful for a time, shook his head, and hinted that the prisoner's veracity might not be depended on.

"However," he added, "the tale seems feasible, and I desire nothing more than that the prisoner should have justice. I will probe the matter to the bottom, and if he has spoken the truth I will get him liberated as soon as possible, and will moreover give out publicly in the church that what we had erroneously taken for a miracle was nothing more than a curious combination of circ.u.mstances perfectly natural, though strange, and that I had been imposed upon by the villainous and profane lies of my sacristan. It will require time to prove all this; meanwhile, Antonio must take his trial at Gennazzano. He left here at five o'clock this morning."

"So early!" I exclaimed. "I wanted, if possible, to prevent his going."

"You take great interest in his case," said my friend.

"I like to see mysteries cleared up as soon as possible," I replied. "I know that the love of the marvellous is so great among the ignorant in these parts, that they prefer persisting to believe in a miracle, even in the face of facts which explain it away in the most natural manner possible. This p.r.o.neness to attribute to supernatural causes everything that we are unable to account for on the first glance, and to yield ourselves up implicitly to the belief of what is irrational, absurd, improbable, without first weighing thoroughly the _pros_ and _cons_ of the case, is one of the unmistakable signs of a barbarous and uncultivated intellect, and ought to be discouraged as a trait unworthy the dignity of human nature by everyone who has the improvement and well-being of his fellow creatures at heart."

The arch-priest smiled drily, as if he had taken my last speech to himself; then, after a pause, he began:

"No Christian man will deny that miracles have been wrought, or will dare to call in question those of our blessed Lord or of His saints. If, then, he acknowledges these, why should he try to combat the existence of modern miracles, seeing that everything is possible to the Almighty?

What! Shall we limit the power of the Omnipotent, or dare to measure things infinite by our finite faculties? It would be the height of presumption for anyone to maintain that these things cannot be, or that our Heavenly Father cares less for His creatures now than he did in the days of yore."

"No wise man, Christian or otherwise," I replied, "would deny that any wonder were possible to the Divine author of the universe, the Great Source of all things wonderful. Yet science, the gift of G.o.d Himself, mind you, since He in the first place created us with intellect to see into, in some measure, however darkly, His wonderful workings, in order that we might be taught to admire them and thereby come to a more perfect knowledge of His unspeakable greatness--science, I say, reveals to us that our universal Father rules all nature by means of certain fixed laws, from which we have no reason to believe that He would turn aside for a trifle--to excite mere wonderment among an ignorant mult.i.tude by performing such a conjuring trick as a bleeding crucifix or weeping Madonna. Our Lord Himself was chary of His miracles, and when asked for a sign would often refuse; yet when He did perform miracles, they were invariably to do good, and not to excite wonderment. If many intelligent people disbelieve in modern miracles, it is because they have not come within their experience, or that many seeming miracles they have been able to explain by natural causes.

"They have been made, moreover, doubly cautious in receiving hearsay miracles for gospel from the numerous cases of imposture that have been discovered among the priesthood in all countries where the Roman Catholic religion has prevailed. Then, why should miracles only be wrought in little sequestered villages, among the ignorant and superst.i.tious, and not in large towns, in the presence of an intelligent and investigating population? Why, moreover, should they be more prevalent in mountainous districts than in any others? Why? Save that from the topographical configuration of the country, the inhabitants of mountain villages are necessarily more shut out from intercommunication with their kind than the dwellers in more accessible regions, and consequently cut off from that interchange of ideas so necessary to the development of the human intellect.

"Because their minds thus necessarily forced into one narrow channel till the intelligence borders on that of the brute, and is kept down to that pitch by a coa.r.s.e and monotonous diet, which hard labour enables them to earn but scantily, and, finally, because by intermarrying closely among their own narrow population they reproduce offspring, if anything, more stunted in intelligence than themselves--to say nothing of other natural influences which help to produce cretinism, goitre, and deformity--and thus shutting out from their poor benighted intellects their last chance of fair play.

"Ignorant by force of circ.u.mstances, superst.i.tious because they are ignorant, naturally discontented, with a life of hard labour that barely supplies that life's necessaries, what wonder that the human mind thus stunted and oppressed by all its surroundings, should seek an outlet?

That that outlet should be one that held out promises of a better time to come than they are ever likely to see in their plodding every-day life?

"What wonder that such a one should throw himself more entirely upon the comforts of the religion that his village priest holds out to him than one more contented with his earthly lot, or that, superst.i.tious as he is ignorant, he should daily hope for some miracle to be wrought for his own special benefit? Is it too much to infer that a mind in which faith reigns supreme and reason is hushed to sleep may be deluded by its senses--that it may imagine it sees or hears anything that it desires to see or hear?

"Is this an irrational solution of the stories so common of pictures of the Virgin or other saints moving their eyes or speaking? Then just consider when the average intelligence of a scanty population is at this ebb, what temptation this holds out to the priest of the parish whose office it is to rule his little flock by maintaining order and restraining crime, to strike awe into his congregation and keep alive their fanatical faith by some pious fraud in the shape of a crucifix that bleeds by an easy mechanical contrivance, an image of the Madonna that sheds tears, or a picture that rolls its eyes!

"These tricks were known to the heathen priests of antiquity long before the introduction of Christianity, and have been repeatedly carried out since by the priests of Rome. It is to the successful delusion of these poor benighted wretches that the Church of Rome owes her vaunted laurels. These are your miracle seers! To these alone do the saints vouchsafe to perform their wonders! As for the intelligent and wise, if they go to a church on purpose to see a miracle, and come away without seeing it, they are told by the priest that it is because they lack faith, that they do not go in the proper spirit, that their natures are too material, that such sights are reserved only for the faithful, and that few are sufficiently spiritualised to behold them.

"So you see there is no way of catching a priest napping. He will always find some hole to creep out of. Like an eel, he will slip through your fingers at the very moment that you may think you have got him. Should any individual be bold enough to force his way through the wonder-gazing crowd, and publicly demolish the miracle-working image or picture and reveal to the devout bystanders the paltry mechanism by which they have been deluded, people's eyes would at length be opened, all miracles be liable to suspicion, and reason at length admitted into some share of man's being.

"But there are difficulties that beset so bold an expedient. In the first place, a man must be possessed of more than an ordinary amount of courage to face the fury of a fanatical mob whom he knows to be ready to tear him in pieces should he attempt to rob them of their darling prejudices, or dare to break one chip off their sacred wood or stone.

"Secondly, the wonder-working image or picture is generally in an inaccessible place, high up on the wall or surrounded by railings, to prevent a too close scrutiny. Thirdly, the miracle often exists merely in the imaginations of devout believers, without any aid of mechanism on the part of the priest. In this case, if any man were daring enough to step forward and openly to break in pieces the supposed miraculous image or picture, and, having done so, was unable to detect in the fragments any trace of machinery or means of imposture whatever, the fame of the miracle would then gain ground, and the daring unbeliever be guilty of sacrilege."