Hadrian watched the process of disintegration from His tower in Rome,
watched the natural absorption of the more respectable socialists
by the more respectable community; and He was glad. Very soon now
the silly obscene heresy would die and disappear, with the obsolete
delusions of Gymnosophists, Anabaptists, Picards, Adamites and
Turlupins. Hadrian was glad. Then came the _Times_, announcing that
Australia, Canada, and South Africa had armed all healthy males
between the ages of 17 and 50; and that England was mobilizing
the sea-and-land-forces of her Empire. Now the whole world was in
battle array. He took out His pyx again, and prayed the prayer of
the Danaides, "O King of kings, Most Blessed of the blessed, Most
Perfect Mighty One of the perfect, be persuaded and let this come to
pass,--avert from Thy race the insolence of men who (for a reason)
hate it; and plunge the black-benched pest into the dark abyss." It
was a pagan enough prayer for a Pope to utter. It was a fierce enough
sentiment for an altruist to express. It was an entirely comprehensible
suggestion of a misanthrope and misogynist, tired by, impatient of,
armed against, the tiresome divarication of little silly people. The
thing which troubled Him most was the irreconcilability of the King
of Italy. He had tried hard to give Victor Emanuel to understand
that, not rebuff but, welcome waited for him. He knew the benefits
which co-operation of Pope and King would bring. Yet the expression
of the Persian fatalist in Herodotus,--ἑχθιστη ὁδυνη πολλα φρονεοντα
μηδενοϛ κραΤεειν--the bitterest of all griefs, to see clearly and yet
to be unable to do anything, might have stood as the motto of His
whole mind, as often before in His life, so most emphatically now. He
recalled the Cardinal of Caerleon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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