Read Online Stories Toto Told Me (Valancourt Classics) by Barón Corvo, Frederick Rolfe - Free Book Online Page A

innocently thinking that men of such eminence as the Apostle of the Gentiles and the Apostle of England are of good authority, preaches the same heresy. You see now that it is impossible to know what the end of a lie will be when once it has been started on its course.” “But hear me,” said San Paolo, who was a very bold man, “for I venture to submit to La Sua Maestà that the second letter which I wrote to San Timoteo has been placed by Your Church on earth on the list of the Canonical Books, and this means that when I wrote that letter I was inspired by the Third Person of the Maestà Coeterna dell’Adorabile Trinità and that therefore I was divinely protected from teaching error in any shape or form!” “Of course it does,” replied the Padre Eterno. “The words that you have written, San Paolo, in your second letter to San Timoteo, are not the words of a man, but the Words of God Himself, and the matter amounts to this, that our little brother here, who took the words from San Gregorio, who took them from you, who were divinely inspired to write them, has not been guilty of heresy at all, unless God Himself can err. And who,” continued the Padre Eterno, with indignation, “We should like to know, is the ruffian who has taken up Our time with this ridiculous and baseless charge against Our little brother?” Somebody said that it was a Jesuit named Padre Tonto Pappagallo, at which the Padre Eterno sniffed and said, “A Jesuit! and what, in the name of goodness, is that?”

      ‘So the Madonna whispered that it was a son of Sant’Ignazio of Loyola. “Where is Sant’Ignazio of Loyola?” said the Padre Eterno. Now Sant’Ignazio, who had seen the way things were going, and what a contemptible spectacle his son was presenting, had hidden himself behind a bush and was pretending to say his office. But he was soon found and brought into Court, and the Padre Eterno asked him what he meant by allowing his spiritual children to act in this way. And Sant’Ignazio only groaned and said, “O Potenza Infinita, all my life long I tried to teach them to mind their own business, but in fact I have altogether failed to make them listen to me.”
      ‘That was my dream, Most Holy Father, most eminent and most reverend lords, my reverend brethren, most illustrious princes, my beloved children in Jesus Christ; and since you have been so gracious as to listen, I will no longer delay my recantation of the heresy of which I am accused of having preached on the first Monday in Lent, in the Church of San Carlo al Corso.’
      But Papa Silvio arose from his throne and the cardinals, and the bishops, and the princes, and the people, and the people, and they all cried in a loud voice, ‘Evviva, evviva, Bocca d’Oro, evviva, evviva.’”

VI

    ABOUT ONE WAY IN WHICH CHRISTIANS LOVE ONE ANOTHER

    Y es ,” I said, “that’s a very good story, Toto. And now I want to know where you learnt it.”
      “Well, sir,” he replied, “it was told to me by Fra Leone of the Cappuccini. Not that I wish you to think the Cappuccini and Franciscans to be the same, not at all. But, of course, you know better than that, and it is like their impertinence of bronze to pretend that they are, as they do, for the Cappuccini were not even heard of for hundreds of years after San Francesco founded his Order of Little Brothers. And the reason why they came to be made was only because of the vain man Simon Something-or-other, who gave more thought to his clothes than was good for his soul, and found that the sleeves which were good enough for San Francesco, and the round tippet which that heavenly saint wore did not suit his style of beauty, and so he made himself a brown habit instead of a grey one, with plain sleeves to show the shape of his arms, and no pockets in them, and a tippet not round but pointed like the piece of flesh there is between my shoulders. And then, because there are always plenty of men ready to run after something