Part 31 (1/2)
The rapid march of events in France had necessarily produced an opposite effect on minds so differently const.i.tuted. To Fulvia the year had been a year of victory, a glorious affirmation of her political creed. Step by step she had seen, as in some old allegorical painting, error fly before the shafts of truth. Where Odo beheld a conflagration she saw a sunrise; and all that was bare and cold in her own life was warmed and transfigured by that ineffable brightness.
She listened patiently while he enlarged on the difficulties of the case. The const.i.tution was framed in all its details, but with its completion he felt more than ever doubtful of the wisdom of granting it.
He would have welcomed any postponement that did not seem an admission of fear. He dreaded the inevitable break with the clergy, not so much because of the consequent danger to his own authority, as because he was increasingly conscious of the newness and clumsiness of the instrument with which he proposed to replace their tried and complex system. He mentioned to Fulvia the rumours of popular disaffection; but she swept them aside with a smile.
”The people mistrust you,” she said. ”And what does that mean? That you have given your enemies time to work on their credulity. The longer you delay the more opposition you will encounter. Father Ign.a.z.io would rather destroy the state than let it be saved by any hand but his.”
Odo reflected. ”Of all my enemies,” he said, ”Father Ign.a.z.io is the one I most respect, because he is the most sincere.”
”He is the most dangerous, then,” she returned. ”A fanatic is always more powerful than a knave.”
He was struck with her undiminished faith in the sufficiency of such generalisations. Did she really think that to solve such a problem it was only necessary to define it? The contact with her unfaltering a.s.surance would once have given him a momentary glow; but now it left him cold.
She was speaking more urgently. ”Surely,” she said, ”the n.o.blest use a man can make of his own freedom is to set others free. My father said it was the only justification of kings.h.i.+p.”
He glanced at her half-sadly. ”Do you still fancy that kings are free? I am bound hand and foot.”
”So was my father,” she flashed back at him; ”but he had the Promethean spirit.”
She coloured at her own quickness, but Odo took the thrust tranquilly.
”Yes,” he said, ”your father had the Promethean spirit: I have not. The flesh that is daily torn from me does not grow again.”
”Your courage is as great as his,” she exclaimed, her tenderness in arms.
”No,” he answered, ”for his was hopeful.” There was a pause, and then he began to speak of the day's work.
All the afternoon he had been in consultation with Crescenti, whose vast historical knowledge was of service in determining many disputed points in the tenure of land. The librarian was in sympathy with any measures tending to relieve the condition of the peasantry; yet he was almost as strongly opposed as Trescorre to any reproduction of the Tuscan const.i.tution.
”He is afraid!” broke from Fulvia. She admired and respected Crescenti, yet she had never fully trusted him. The taint of ecclesiasticism was on him.
Odo smiled. ”He has never been afraid of facing the charge of Jansenism,” he replied. ”All his life he has stood in open opposition to the Church party.”
”It is one thing to criticise their dogmas, another to attack their privileges. At such a time he is bound to remember that he is a priest--that he is one of them.”
”Yet, as you have often pointed out, it is to the clergy that France in great measure owes her release from feudalism.”
She smiled coldly. ”France would have won her cause without the clergy!”
”This is not France, then,” he said with a sigh. After a moment he began again: ”Can you not see that any reform which aims at reducing the power of the clergy must be more easily and successfully carried out if they can be induced to take part in it? That, in short, we need them at this moment as we have never needed them before? The example of France ought at least to show you that.”
”The example of France shows me that, to gain a point in such a struggle, any means must be used! In France, as you say, the clergy were with the people--here they are against them. Where persuasion fails coercion must be used!”
Odo smiled faintly. ”You might have borrowed that from their own armoury,” he said.
She coloured at the sarcasm. ”Why not?” she retorted. ”Let them have a taste of their own methods! They know the kind of pressure that makes men yield--when they feel it they will know what to do.”
He looked at her with astonishment. ”This is Gamba's tone,” he said. ”I have never heard you speak in this way before.”
She coloured again; and now with a profound emotion. ”Yes,” she said, ”it is Gamba's tone. He and I speak for the same cause and with the same voice. We are of the people and we speak for the people. Who are your other counsellors? Priests and n.o.blemen! It is natural enough that they should wish to make their side of the question heard. Listen to them, if you will--conciliate them, if you can! We need all the allies we can win. Only do not fancy they are really speaking for the people. Do not think it is the people's voice you hear. The people do not ask you to weigh this claim against that, to look too curiously into the defects and merits of every clause in their charter. All they ask is that the charter should be given them!”