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

new, he got together so many followers who wished to dress themselves like him, that the Santo Padre preferred to give them permission to have their own way, rather than cause them to become rebels against our Holy Mother the Church, by making it difficult for them to be obedient; because the matter had really no importance to speak of.”
      I said that I knew all about that, but that I didn’t believe that religious men, whether they were Franciscans, or sham ones like the Cappuccini, or even Jesuits, would show such jealousy and envy of each other as appeared in the story of Fra Serafico.
      “And there,” said Toto, “I can assure you that you are altogether wrong. I may tell you that in every religious order there are two kinds of men—the saints and the sinners; and of course, the saints always love each other as Francesco and Domenico did; and, by contrary, having submitted themselves to the infernal dragon who always drives all love out of the hearts of his slaves and inflames them with the undying fire of envy, the sinners hate each other with a hatred like the poison of vipers, and occupy themselves with all kinds of schemes by which they may bring discredit upon their enemies, the sinners of other orders. Why, I will tell you a tale which is quite true, because I have seen it, of how some Cappuccini—and you will not ask me to say where their convent is—have done a deed by which much shame will some day be brought upon a house of Jesuits who live in their neighbourhood.
      Well, then, there was a convent of Cappuccini, and outside the grounds of the convent there was a small house in which I lived with my father and my mother and my brothers and sisters, and it was a very lonely place. And about as far off as it would take you to say five Paters, and five Aves, and five Glorias, there was another house, and there were perhaps three or four cottages in sight, and that is all, so it was a very lonely place. But six miles away there was a large college of Jesuits, up in the hills, and when a Jesuit died it was the custom to bury him in the churchyard of the Cappuccini. Now there was a man who came to live in the other house, and he was not an old man nor a young man, but just between the two, and because he felt lonely he used to pay attentions to all the ladies who came in his way when visiting this celebrated convent of Cappuccini; and our difficulty was to know which one he was going to marry. And there was one in particular who appeared to these Cappuccini to be the one that he ought to marry, but her home was far away in a large town; and so one of the friars wrote to her parish priest to ask what ought to be done; and the parish priest replied: ‘Yes, you must get her married as soon as possible’; and soon after that the respectable man married her and brought her to the house in the lonely place that I am telling you about. And they lived there very quietly for a little while, and then his business called the respectable man away from his house for a few weeks. So he went, and his wife remained at home; and there was no one in the house besides her but a woman, her servant.
      And presently, in the middle of one night, there was a knocking at the door of the small house where I lived with my father and my mother and my brothers and my sisters, and I heard this knocking because that night I was going to enjoy myself in the orchard of the Cappuccini. So I came downstairs in my shirt only; and, because I wished to keep secret what I was going to do, I left my shirt rolled up in a bundle under the seat in the porch, and I will tell you why: I thought of two things; the first thing was that it was a very rainy night, and if my mother found in the morning that my shirt was wet, she would guess I had been up to mischief, and, having told my father, I should have nothing but stick for breakfast; and the second thing was that if some Cappuccino should be persuaded by an uneasy devil to look out of his