The Judas Cloth (48 page)

Viterbo’s face suffered a spasm. ‘Well,’ he said, wrenched by a shift of mood, ‘it looks as if he’ll have the last laugh because this letter will do what his bombs could not. It’s to be used to mobilise sympathy here in France for a war against Austria.’ Viterbo cocked his jaw. ‘They say Louis Napoleon is ready to help the Piedmontese take Lombardy and Venetia. After that, can it be long before they take the Pope’s state too? That’s what’s being said in Italian circles here.’

‘Rumour?’

‘Everything starts as rumour, Excellencies.’

‘So who paid for the letter to the Emperor then?’

‘My best information,’ said Viterbo, ‘is that it was written to the Emperor’s own specifications.’

That July, Napoleon and Cavour met secretly at a spa and agreed that if Austria could be provoked into declaring war, they would unite to expel her from the Italian peninsula. Piedmont would then take Lombardy and Venetia.

‘The constable, Excellency, was shitting his drawers!’

Monsignor Sacconi, the papal nuncio, was discouraged by the sight of the hot face mouthing at him. His guest was a journalist whom he had hoped to sound about a sensitive matter, but Louis Veuillot would clearly choke if he couldn’t first get his anecdote off his chest. Letting him finish, His Excellency gazed through high windows to where trees appeared to float in autumn mist. An early frost had yellowed the leaves and drained them of substance so that they glowed like monstrances and hung in ungrounded majesty, dazzling and irritating his eye. Facts were what he had been seeking since Viterbo’s disclosures nine months ago.

The summer had been trying. In June, an informer had picked up a hint that something was brewing between the Emperor and the
Piedmontese.
That was all. The informer then disappeared and His Majesty, as though to tease the nuncio, began chasing around France like a ringing fox. In July he was at a spa in the Vosges, in August in Brittany and now he and his family were in Biarritz. It was hard to know what was afoot, though Sacconi’s hopes rose when a man of his managed to suborn the personal maid of H.M.’s favourite, the Comtesse de Castiglione. That, however, came to nothing when the girl was caught spying by fellow-servants, whom one must suppose to be counter-spies. It was all likely to bode ill for the Church which was not popular. The
Mortara case was still explosive and for months the nuncio had been walking on eggs.

A remark about this had started his guest on his rigmarole. Perceiving that he was expected to sing for his supper, Veuillot had picked the wrong tune. What His Excellency wanted to know was this: would our Imperial protector let us down? So far, the connection had worked out well: shamefully so, to the minds of yesterday’s friends. Royalists, supposing God to be of their own persuasion, spoke of bishops ‘blessing a brothel’ – by which they meant Imperial France. They could neither see that our chief concern must be the maintenance of the French garrison in Rome nor that we were beholden to Louis Napoleon – ‘the new St Louis’ – for lighting a war in the Crimea to protect our interests in Palestine. How expect us to drop such an ally? The fear was that
he
might drop
us.

‘Marriages of convenience,’ mused the nuncio, ‘are prone to adulteries.’

His guest looked surprised.

‘The age of faith,’ Veuillot’s voice drummed in the nuncio’s ear, ‘is still intact in mountain provinces. Lourdes survives on agriculture and a few rundown hotels which cater to travellers on their way to the spa at Cauterets. Naturally, it yearns to be a spa itself, and the hope is that this new spring …’

‘Ah,’ said the nuncio. ‘There’s a spring, is there? A spring and a young girl. French visions are all the same.’

‘No, no, Excellency!’ Stocky and pock-marked, Veuillot had small, restless eyes which made the nuncio think of a creature about to break cover – a boar perhaps? He had strong shoulders and a bristle of fierce hair. ‘This one,’ he triumphed, ‘is different because the civil authorities are playing into our hands!’

Must I humour him? wondered Sacconi. God give me patience, I suppose I must.

The faithful, said the journalist, were forbidden to go to the grotto! The police built a fence, then prosecuted some local women for putting it about that the Emperor had countermanded the order. ‘You don’t handle people like that. It was asking for trouble.’

Triumphing! Rubbing his hands. Gulping down the nuncio’s excellent claret as though it was
pinot
,
he confided humorously, ‘This is when
I
started to plot.
Une
petite
intrigue
!’

Veuillot’s mouth was as tight as a scar. A cooper’s son, recalled Sacconi. If there were scribblers like this in Rome, nobody knew them.
Here in France, though, he was our foremost champion. His bigotry appealed to country priests, though many bishops found it embarrassing and, some years ago, forty-six of them had published a reprimand in an attempt to moderate it. Imagine their shock when a papal encyclical took Veuillot’s side – thus bolstering Rome’s power and weakening theirs! Mastai’s madness had method.

‘As I told you, the police prosecuted women for saying that the Emperor had countermanded the grotto’s closure. Well, I resolved to make their allegation come true.’

The nuncio was growing interested in spite of himself. ‘What about the local bishop? What role did he play?’

‘He was playing possum until I woke him up.’

‘So you caused a miracle?’

Veuillot tittered. ‘Excellency! I think I can claim to have performed one at Lourdes.’ His story buzzed with relish, and His Excellency, worried by the imprudence of this rogue fighter, listened.

Veuillot had first gone to Lourdes after reading of the acquittal of the women accused of spreading rumours. As a journalist, his curiosity was piqued. Pausing in the local café, he picked up what gossip he could, then set off in search of three bishops: Auch, Montpellier and Soissons. In short, he organised a conspiracy. The nuncio digested this. Impudent. Directed against the Bishop of Tarbes, the local man who, the nuncio knew, had been judiciously dragging his feet – a sound policy but unsustainable in the face of Veuillot’s manoeuvrings. The conspiracy was two-pronged, for Veuillot then inveigled Madame l’Amirale Bruat, the confidante of the pious Empress Eugenie, to join him in forcing the police to let them enter the grotto – ‘At the thought of refusing such fine folk from the court, the constable, Excellency, was shitting his drawers!’ – He then followed this up with a five-column article in his paper,
l’Univers
,
while the Archbishop of Auch went to see the Emperor at Biarritz and Madame l’Amirale Bruat spoke to the Empress. In short …

‘The grotto is to be opened?’

Veuillot grinned vengefully. ‘And some careers ruined, I hope. Those of the Mayor, the Prefect and one or two others.’

This chilled Monsignor Sacconi. ‘You know for a fact that the Emperor is disposed to override the normal procedures?’

‘Yes, Excellency.’

Why? wondered the nuncio. Had His Imperial Majesty got a bad
conscience? Was he throwing us a sop while preparing to stab us in the back? That would be like him! Or giving us rope?

Meanwhile, this fireball of a journalist was dangerous. Had he finished with the case? Veuillot said he had. But weren’t there other visionaries in Lourdes? More girls at the age of puberty?

‘Too many,’ judged Veuillot. ‘Only the first one should be promoted. The others may be hysterics. Besides, the police managed to prove that what
they
took for the Virgin was a stalactite.’

He talked on, but the nuncio had stopped listening. He pitied the Bishop of Tarbes. If the Prefect, Mayor and Inspector of Police really did suffer as a result of all this, Church–State relations would be prickly for some time in the Hautes Pyrénées.

The bargain struck between Sacconi and Viterbo brought neither man luck. Viterbo, fearing a dagger in the ribs from his old confederates, accepted the offer of a passport and returned to Bologna, where, being suspected by both factions, he could get no employment, and had to live off the brother-in-law whose son he had failed to rescue.

Things did not go well for Monsignor Sacconi either, for, by the end of 1858, he was finding it impossible to penetrate the intentions of the French Government. ‘We would,’ he wrote sorrowfully to Cardinal Antonelli, ‘need an army of spies, for lack of which I am become a haruspex and student of straws in the wind.’

Some of these were alarming. The papal state was suddenly infested with returned exiles. Droves of them, arriving from Paris on the pretext of sharing their relatives’ New Year’s Eve lentils and boiled sausage, must surely be up to something. Piedmont was mobilising and, in an address to its parliament, the King spoke of ‘the cry of pain reaching us from so many parts of Italy’. At a January reception in Paris, the Emperor greeted the Austrian Ambassador with a hint that their countries might soon be at war. Cavour was known to be in secret contact with Louis Napoleon’s mistress or physician or both and, at the Scala in Milan, when the chorus of Bellini’s
Norma
invoked war, the audience sang along under the noses of the Austrian High Command, which was attending the performance. The provocations were impossible to ignore.

Deeply apprehensive, the nuncio obtained an audience with Louis
Napoleon who assured him that there was no need for anxiety. ‘Let the Pope know,’ said he, ‘that he has nothing to fear.’

He had, though, and so had Austria, and in April the blow fell. Piedmont, by goading Austria into a declaration of war, was able to activate its defensive alliance with France, whereupon insurrections broke out all over northern Italy. Agents had been busy and a noose began to tighten around the papal state.

Battles at Magenta and Solferino went against the Austrians.

It looked as though the pope-king’s days were numbered when, confounding all expectations, the Emperor’s purpose seemed to falter. In July, he proposed an armistice, then made peace with Austria on condition that she hand over Lombardy. Nationalists were stunned and papal choirs prepared their Te Deums in gratitude for the state’s salvation.

Events, however, had taken on their own momentum. The withdrawal of Austrian garrisons from the Pope’s northern territories had left agitators free to orchestrate plebiscites which resulted in a vote for annexation by Piedmont.

Monsignor Sacconi watched with the divided eye of a man obliged, as a diplomat, to play his part, yet who found welling within him a dark pessimism over the futility of human effort. Facts, by the time he discovered them, had usually ceased to be facts, for the plan elaborated by Cavour and Louis-Napoleon was quickly superseded. Unexpected factors took over – horror of carnage, fear of the Prussians, the plots of wilder and lesser men. Was God’s finger on the chessboard? If so, He was in a punishing mood. Autonomously, it seemed, aims shifted and expanded. Tuscan moderates, fearing their own Left, requested
annexation
by Piedmont. Parma and Emilia wanted the same. Then, in May of 1860 Garibaldi sailed to Sicily with his red shirts and, later, ignoring the armistice, began marching towards Rome from the south. Under cover of heading him off, Cavour’s troops promptly invaded from the north. Rome was caught in a pincer grip and now the Emperor made only token efforts to restrain his ally. ‘Those who go with ideas whose time has come,’ he liked to say, ‘prosper. Those who resist them perish.’ Clearly the idea of a united Italy struck him as more timely than the temporal power of the Pope.

For once, the Left agreed with him. Garibaldi was an optimists’ hero, a living myth. His opponents magnetised anger and, in Paris, a live rat was thrown through Monsignor Sacconi’s drawing-room windows and he was villainously caricatured in certain sectors of the press. These,
however, were but pinpricks in comparison with the agony of mind he suffered while Rome urged him to discover whether or not its French garrison had orders to defend the Pope’s state, city or, failing all else, person. Napoleon had saved the Pope’s regime in 1849. Would he abandon it now?

For God’s sake, exhorted a stream of telegrams from Cardinal Antonelli’s office, find out! Enlighten us! Give us some idea what to expect! Where should we send our own small volunteer force? North? South? What
are
the Emperor’s intentions?

Neither by guile nor prayer could the nuncio discover these. Nobody in Paris seemed to be in control. Everywhere he met faces so blank as to seem featureless: white, hallucinative blurs. Nobody at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs knew a thing and, unbelievably, the Emperor had gone on a Mediterranean cruise and could not be reached. On a
cruise
?
Yes, Excellency. My God, thought Sacconi, Pontius Pilate never thought of this! For how long? Heads shook and faces appeared to be dissolving like damp soap. Sorry, Excellency. We have no information. Well, what about Monsieur de Thouvenel, the Foreign Minister?
Mille
regrets
, Excellence! He did not come into the office today and is not at home either. We don’t … Tomorrow perhaps? But tomorrow the news was that Monsieur de Thouvenel too had gone on holiday, nobody knew where. A free-thinker’s smirk, fleeting and perhaps hallucinatory, seemed to the nuncio to slide from face to face. ‘We are not dealing with the matter, Excellency. This office has received no instructions.’

In Rome the French Ambassador had received none either, so Cardinal Antonelli continued to bombard the harried nuncio with panicked appeals. Had Louis Napoleon a secret agreement with the Piedmontese? If so what were its terms? Had he arranged all this with Cavour? Answer. Now. Urgently.
In
nomine
Dei.

Sacconi, coming up against walls where once there had been doors, was reminded of Viterbo, the Jew, who had also been isolated and snubbed. He was reminded of him again when he received reports from men sent to listen in the exiles’ cafés where the printer had once been at home, for one of the rumours picked up was that Viterbo’s efforts on his nephew’s behalf had contributed to the shift of French policy.
Appallingly
, God, or some such ineluctable force as the dawning of an idea in the Emperor’s mind, was bent on trying men’s spirits. The Pope risked being cast down from his seat because those of low degree could now influence public opinion – a force with which, as the nuncio kept warning his masters in Rome, one must now count.

‘The two things Louis Napoleon holds against Pio Nono,’ a man in the know told him, ‘are his refusal to crown him emperor and the Mortara case. The second is more determining because it made French Catholics unpopular and allowed him to defy them.’

By the time the nuncio discovered the bargain struck between Cavour and the Emperor, it had been outflanked. Piedmont had secured
four-fifths
of the Pope’s territories and, as a broker’s fee, given Nice and Savoy to France. Plebiscites had ratified this:
vox populi vox
dei.
‘Italy’, as Piedmont was now calling itself, needed God and had pressganged Him. Pius, on the grounds that the plebiscites were rigged, excommunicated all who took part in them and ordered that a Brief proclaiming this be displayed on the doors of all basilicas. He wanted it known that, whatever about the Emperor, God did not defect.