Dreamers of the Ghetto Part 6

"Why did not the captain stop us, then?" he asked.

"Keep thy tongue between thy dog's teeth," retorted the Judge. "In any event the race must be run again, for the law ordains eight runners as a minimum."

"We are eight," replied the young Jew.

The Judge glared at the rebel; then, striking each rueful object with a stick, he counted out, "One--two--three--four--five--six--seven!"

"Eight," persisted the young man, perceiving for the first time the old Jew on the ground behind him, and stooping to raise him.

"That creature! Basta! He does not count. He is drunk."

"Thou h.e.l.l-begotten hound!" and straightening himself suddenly, the young Jew drew a crucifix from within his cloak. "Thou art right!" he cried in a voice of thunder. "There are only seven Jews, for I--I am no Jew. I am Fra Giuseppe!" And the crucifix whirled round, clearing a s.p.a.ce of awe about him.

The Judge cowered back in surprise and apprehension. The soldiers sat their horses in stony amazement, the seething crowd was stilled for a moment, struck to silent attention. The shower had ceased and a ray of watery sunlight glistened on the crucifix.

"In the name of Christ I denounce this devil's mockery of the Lord's chosen people," thundered the Dominican. "Stand back all. Will no one bring this poor old man a cup of cold water?"

"Hasn't Heaven given him enough cold water?" asked a jester in the crowd. But no one stirred.

"Then may you all burn eternally," said the Friar. He bent down again and raised the old man's head tenderly. Then his face grew sterner and whiter. "He is dead," he said. "The Christ he denied receive him into His mercy." And he let the corpse fall gently back and closed the gla.s.sy eyes. The bystanders had a momentary thrill. Death had lent dignity even to the old Jew. He lay there, felled by an apoplectic stroke, due to the forced heavy meal, the tinsel gleaming grotesquely on his white sodden cloak, his naked legs rigid and cold. From afar the rumors of revelry, the _brouhaha_ of a mad population, saluted his deaf ears, the distant music of lutes and viols. The captain of the soldiers went hot and cold. He had harried the heels of the rotund runner in special amus.e.m.e.nt, but he had not designed murder. A wave of compunction traversed the spectators. But the Judge recovered himself.

"Seize this recreant priest!" he cried. "He is a backslider. He has gone back to his people. He is become a Jew again--he shall be flayed alive."

"Back, in the name of Holy Church!" cried Fra Giuseppe, veering round to face the captain, who, however, had sat his horse without moving.

"I am no Jew. I am as good a Christian as his Holiness, who but just now sat at yon jalousie, feasting his eyes on these heathen saturnalia."

"Then why didst thou race with the Jews? It is contamination. Thou hast defiled thy cloth."

"Nay, I wore not my cloth. Am I not half naked? Is this the cloth I should respect--this gaudy frippery, which your citizens have made a target for filth and abuse?"

"Thou hast brought it on thyself," put in the captain mildly.

"Wherefore didst thou race with this pestilent people?"

The Dominican bowed his head. "It is my penance," he said in tremulous tones. "I have sinned against my brethren. I have aggravated their griefs. Therefore would I be of them at the moment of their extremest humiliation, and that I might share their martyrdom did I beg his place from one of the runners. But penance is not all my motive." And he lifted up his eyes and they blazed terribly, and his tones became again a thunder that rolled through the crowd and far down the bridge.

"Ye who know me, faithful sons and daughters of Holy Church, ye who have so often listened to my voice, ye into whose houses I have brought the comfort of the Word, join with me now in ending the long martyrdom of the Jews, your brethren. It is by love, not hate, that Christ rules the world. I deemed that it would move your hearts to see me, whom I know ye love, covered with filth, which ye had never thrown had ye known me in this strange guise. But lo, this poor old man pleadeth more eloquently than I. His dead lips shake your souls. Go home, go home from this Pagan mirth, and sit on the ground in sackcloth and ashes, and pray G.o.d He make you better Christians."

There was an uneasy stir in the crowd: the fantastic mud-stained tinsel cloak, the bare legs of the speaker, did but add to his impressiveness; he seemed some strange antique prophet, come from the far ends of the world and time.

"Be silent, blasphemer," said the Judge. "The sports have the countenance of the Holy Father. Heaven itself hath cursed these stinking heretics. Pah!" he spurned the dead Jew with his foot. The Friar's bosom swelled. His head was hot with blood.

"Not Heaven but the Pope hath cursed them," he retorted vehemently.

"Why doth he not banish them from his dominions? Nay, he knows how needful they are to the State. When he exiled them from all save the three cities of refuge, and when the Jewish merchants of the seaports of the East put our port of Ancona under a ban, so that we could not provision ourselves, did not his Holiness hastily recall the Jews, confessing their value? Which being so, it is love we should offer them, not hatred and a hundred degrading edicts."

"Thou shalt burn in the Forum for this," spluttered the Judge. "Who art thou to set thyself up against G.o.d's Vicar?"

"He G.o.d's Vicar? Nay, I am sooner G.o.d's Vicar. G.o.d speaks through me."

His wan, emaciated face had grown rapt and s.h.i.+ning; to the awed mob he loomed gigantic.

"This is treason and blasphemy. Arrest him!" cried the Judge.

The Friar faced the soldiers unflinchingly, though only the body of the old Jew divided him from their prancing horses.

"Nay," he said softly, and a sweet smile mingled with the mystery of his look. "G.o.d is with me. He hath set this bulwark of death between you and my life. Ye will not fight under the banner of the Anti-Christ."

"Death to the renegade!" cried a voice in the crowd. "He calls the Pope Anti-Christ."

"Ay, he who is not for us is against us. Is it for Christ that he rules Rome? Is it only the Jews whom he vexes? Hath not his rage for power brought the enemy to the gates of Rome? Have not his companies of foreign auxiliaries flouted our citizens? Ye know how Rome hath suffered through the machinations of his b.a.s.t.a.r.d son, with his swaggering troop of cut-throats. Is it for Christ that he hath begotten this terror of our streets?"

"Down with Baccio Valori!" cried a stentorian voice, and a dozen enthusiastic throats echoed the shout.

"Ay, down with Baccio Valori!" cried the Dominican.

"Down with Baccio Valori!" repeated the ductile crowd, its holiday humor subtly pa.s.sing into another form of recklessness. Some who loved the Friar were genuinely worked upon, others in mad, vicious mood were ready for any diversion. A few, and these the loudest, were swashbucklers and cutpurses.

"Ay, but not Baccio Valori alone!" thundered Fra Giuseppe. "Down with all those b.a.s.t.a.r.d growths that flourish in the capital of Christendom.

Down with all that h.e.l.l-sp.a.w.n, which is the denial of Christ; down with the Pardoner! G.o.d is no tradesman that he should chaffer for the forgiveness of sins. Still less--oh blasphemy!--of sins undone. Our Lady wants none of your wax candles. It is a white heart, it is the flame of a pure soul that the Virgin Mother asks for. Away with your beads and mummeries, your paternosters and genuflections! Away with your Carnivals, your G.o.dless farewells to meat! Ye are all foul. This is no city of G.o.d, it is a city of hired bravos and adulterous abominations and gluttonous feasts, and the l.u.s.t of the eye, and the pride of the flesh. Down with the foul-blooded Cardinal, who gossips at the altar, and borrows money of the despised Jews for his secret sins! Down with the monk whose missal is Boccaccio! Down with G.o.d's Vicegerent who traffics in Cardinals' hats, who dare not take the Eucharist without a Pretaster, who is all absorbed in profane Greek texts, in cunning jewel-work, in political manuvres and domestic intrigues, who comes caracoling in crimson and velvet upon his proud Neapolitan barb, with his bareheaded Cardinals and his hundred glittering hors.e.m.e.n. He the representative of the meek Christ who rode upon an a.s.s, and said, 'Sell that thou hast and give to the poor, and come follow me'! Nay," and the pa.s.sion of righteousness tore his frame and thralled his listeners, "though he inhabit the Vatican, though a hundred gorgeous bishops abase themselves to kiss his toe, yet I proclaim here that he is a lie, a snare, a whited sepulchre, no protector of the poor, no loving father to the fatherless, no spiritual Emperor, no Vicar of Christ, but Anti-Christ himself."

"Down with Anti-Christ!" yelled a pair of Corsican cut-throats.

"Down with Anti-Christ!" roared the crowd, the long-suppressed hatred of the ruling power finding vent in a great wave of hysteric emotion.

"Captain, do thy duty!" cried the Judge.

"Nay, but the Friar speaks truth. Bear the old man away, Alessandro!"

"Is Rome demented? Haste for the City Guards, Jacopo!"

Fra Giuseppe swiftly tied the _pallio_ to his crucifix, and, waving the red cloth on high, "This is the true flag of Christ!" he cried.

"This, the symbol of our brethren's martyrdom! See, 'tis the color of the blood He shed for us. Who is for Jesus, follow me!"

"For Christ, for Jesus! _Viva Gesu!_" A far-rumbling thunder broke from the swaying mob. His own fire caught extra flame from theirs.

"Follow me! This day we will bear witness to Christ, we will establish His kingdom in Rome."

There was a wild rush, the soldiers spurred their horses, people fell under their hoofs, and were trampled on. It was a moment of frenzy.

The Dominican ran on, waving the red _pallio_, his followers contagiously swollen at every by-street. Unchecked he reached the great Piazza, where a new statue of the Pope gleamed white and majestic.

"Down with Anti-Christ!" shouted a cutpurse.

"Down with Anti-Christ!" echoed the mob.

The Friar waved his hand, and there was silence. He saw the yellow gleam of a Jew's head in the crowd, and called upon him to fling him his cap. It was hurled from hand to hand. Fra Giuseppe held it up in the air. "Men of Rome, Sons of Holy Church, behold the contumelious mark we set upon our fellow-men, so that every ruffian may spit upon them. Behold the yellow--the color of shame, the stigma of women that traffic in their womanhood--with which we brand the venerable brows of rabbis and the heads of honorable merchants. Lo! I set it upon the head of this Anti-Christ, a symbol of our hate for all that is not Love." And raising himself on the captain's stirrup, he crowned the statue with the yellow badge.

A great shout of derision rent the air. There was a multifarious tumult of savage voices.

"Down with Anti-Christ! Down with the Pope! Down with Baccio Valori!

Down with the Princess Teresa!"