pe

his intimate talk with Badoer he exclaimed the Pope had caused a scaffold to be frequently, "If Henri become sincerely erected before the Spanish ambassador's converted all will be well.” Sixtus V., palace. It is certain, however, that Philip too, comprehended well how impossible it and his ambassador entertained some nowas for the King of Navarre to abjure his tion of calling together a General Council Huguenot creed, while he had more than of the Church, under the Archbishop of ever need of the Huguenots, and of the Toledo, and of deposing the pontiff and support of Protestant England and Protes- electing another; so it may be imagined tant Germany. One evening, at supper, what independence the Papacy would have after a long silence, he said suddenly, as enjoyed if Philip had fulfilled his dream of though starting from a dream, "How could universal sovereignty. It was at this Navarre now turn Catholic? He would riod that Philip adopted, as we have said, be immediately abandoned by the Queen the expedient of sending the Duke of Sessa of England and the Princes of Germany, as special ambassador to Rome. The apand the King of Spain would swallow him pearance of this envoy on the scene, who like an egg." The very walls of the Vati- came to demand expressly from the Pope can had ears at this crisis; these words the execution of the proposals for an were repeated to Olivarès and sent to armed intervention in France, did not Philip, and both monarch and ambassador change the course of affairs in the Pope's strained every ruse of diplomacy and every cabinet. Sixtus V. still eluded all atmeans of intimidation to force the Pope to tempts to force him into action against carry out his engagements or rather Henri IV., and made use of the scruples quasi-engagements-for though they had of a Pontiff just as a woman does of her been drawn up in formal shape at the Vat- weakness, to disarm his antagonists. He ican, they had never been signed by either complained of the importunities of Olivarès party. The Pope's object was to gain time, and Sessa in public Consistory. Their to let Henri pursue his career of victory; last interview with him was on the 19th and for this purpose he withstood the as- of August, 1590. saults of Olivares in his cabinet, and the further pressure of the special ambassador, the Duke of Sessa, sent by Philip, with the aid of every ruse and every stratagem. The last months of his existence were one long and terrible struggle with the representatives of the policy of the Escu

rial.

The Pope was then very ill, and was living in the palace on the Quirinal. To revenge himself for the vexation they had inflicted on him, Sixtus appointed the interview to take place at mid-day, when the two ambassadors would have to mount the long incline of the Quirinal under the blazing heat of a Roman August sun. While Henri was winning the victories The two Spaniards again vehemently beof Arques and Ivry, and advancing to the set the Pope, protesting against the missiege of Paris, the Pope was waging daily sion of an ecclesiastic to the Béarnais for in his cabinet not less terrible combats on his instruction in the Catholic faith, and his behalf. Olivarès made three demands, demanding the carrying out of the propopreparatory to insisting upon the execu- sal for intervention. Sixtus replied with tion of the armed intervention- the dis- violence in a fit of passion; the ambassamissal of Luxemburg, the excommunica- dors declared that if he continued so to tion of the Catholic adherents of Henri, treat them, they would return before him and a declaration from the Pope against no more; the Pope retorted they might the Béarnais, as he was always called in leave at once. The emotions of this interthe despatches of Philip. In one inter-view increased the catarrhal fever under view Olivares went so far as to threaten which Sixtus was suffering; he passed a the Pope with a public protestation against his conduct in the Roman Consistory, to be drawn up by a Spanish theologian whom he sent for from Naples for the purpose. At mention of this Olivarès says the Pope began "to howl with rage (Empezò a chirriar con gran corage), and threatened to excommunicate Olivarès and all his abettors it even appears he threatened to have the ambassador executed; and the memory of this interview was long preserved in a tradition to be found in the work of Gregorio Leti, that

restless night. After which he grew rapidly worse, and died five days later; it was remarked that as the breath departed from the body of Sixtus V. the elements seemed, as in the case of Cromwell, to participate in his final agony, and Rome was enveloped in a thick storm of thunder, and lightning, and darkness. The ferocious hatred of Olivarès breaks out in the few lines in which he announced the death of the Pontiff to Philip. He writes, "His attack was so sudden that his Holiness died without confession, and worse,

"Christus vincit,

Christus regnat,

Christus imperat,
Christus ab omni malo

Plebem suam defendat."

would have disposed at will of the whole enormous moral and religious prestige of the Papal authority for the purposes of its own ambition. The King of Spain would have been the virtual Pontiff. Sixtus V. The erection of the obelisk in the Lat- even sarcastically suggested to Olivarès eran was attended with greater difficulty, that Philip, as it was, had better proclaim since it was broken in three pieces; but himself Pope at once. As for France, the fragments were so ingeniously sol- whose independence, and whose brilliant dered together by Fontana that the frac- and chivalrous genius, have enabled her to tures are barely visible. Besides this play so prominent a part in European civobelisk, that in front of Santa Maria Mag-ilization, she might, had it not been for giore and that also of the Piazza del Popolo owed their erection to Sixtus V. The restoration of the columns of Trajan and Antonine, the statues of St. Peter and St. Paul on their summits, the aqueduct of the Acqua Felice, the fountain of Moses in front of the bath of Diocletian, and several others, the enlargement of the Monte Cavallo, and the transportation there of the fine colossal figures of men and horses, said, but without grounds, to be the work of Praxiteles, the library and frescoes of the Vatican, the Scala santa, and a crowd of other erections and improvements, were accomplished by Sixtus during his brief pontificate, though it must be laid to his charge that he showed little respect for Roman antiquities, and that he destroyed the Septizonium of Septimus Severus, in order to use its materials in his own constructions.

Impartial history must, we think, determine that Sixtus V. was a great Pope, and that, on a consideration of the whole results of his pontificate, posterity owes him a debt of gratitude. Had he allowed himself to become blindly the tool of the ambition of Philip II. it is impossible to say what European calamities might not have been the consequence. If Sixtus V. had suffered himself to be coerced into sending a military expedition into France at the time that the Duke of Parma forced Henri IV. to raise the siege of Paris, there can be little doubt that France would have fallen into the hands of Philip, an immense step have been made in the consolidation of his extensive but disjointed monarchy, and Spain might have become the mistress of the destinies of Europe. The Papacy in such case would have been little more than the humble handmaid of Spain, who

Sixtus, have been condemned to many long years of foreign oppression and of horrible convulsions, in the effort to get free from the grinding, crushing, stupifying grasp of Spanish dominion. The long, painful, and courageous resistance of Sixtus V. to the exigencies of Philip II. was thus really a battle delivered on behalf of European freedom, and his victory has proved useful to the progress of humanity. Baron Hubner has, in fact, succeeded in presenting the character and policy of the Pope in a new light; for he was not, as is commonly supposed, the head of the League, and, far from being the tool or the accomplice of Philip II. and the Guises, he held in check their pretensions. Yet he was merciless, vindictive, and implacable, and as his faith in the divine origin of the spiritual tyranny of the Papacy was absolute - he would, had it been possible, have extirpated with fire and sword every Christian in Europe who refused to accept the Papal dogmas. The Inquisition under his rule dealt ruthlessly with every semblance of freedom of thought in Italy, and we have but to look to Spain to imagine what Europe might have become, had the Inquisition done its work as thoroughly everywhere else as it performed it there. Sixtus nevertheless possessed noble and valiant sympathies denied to Philip II., and he confessed, in speaking in the Consistory of his public works in Rome, that he was not insensible to the charms of glory. He was the last great Pope, and would have been owned as a worthy compeer by the greatest of that strange race of men who have successively occupied the chair of St. Peter, and claimed to be the highest incarnations of the Spirit of God upon earth.

CHAPTER XIV.

AND so at last the curtain had fallen. It seems time formally to turn off the lights, to dismiss the andience, and to roll up the green carpet that used to be the outward symbol of a tragedy.

For although all the actors had remained alive at the close, it was a real tragedy that had been played. Two souls had found each other only to learn that their mutual recognition, which should by rights have made the common life of both, hitherto so wasted, whole and complete, meant the final certainty that their separate lives were to be wasted without hope until the end. To natures like theirs, untrained and undeadened by the ordinary experience of the world, longing for completeness and incomplete in themselves, this vain vision of what might have been is a very climax of tragedy. It may be that there are some who need no double soul; and if, as some hold, there is for each one of us a double soul created somewhere in the world, it is very certain that it is given to very few to find theirs. To these to those, that is to say, who need it not, and to those who do not know their needthe tragedy may seem to have but a tame dénouement. But those who have had the rare chance to meet with and to recognize that which has been created for them, whether in time or not in time, will not consider actual death essential to the idea of a tragic close. And yet there is something worse even than this.

Warden waited quietly in his chambers all day, as he had promised: but Félix never came, nor any message from him. Then he went according to his appointment to dine with his friend Major Andrews, and discussed the whole affair. Of course he gave his own version of the story, telling just as much—or rather just as little-of it as he pleased: so that the only question left open was whether he had acted rightly in admitting the claim of his opponent to be treated by him on equal terms. The Major certainly held that, considering the social position of the so-called Marquis—and, though he did not say so, of Warden also- the last resort of gentlemen would in such a case be rather a farce than a tragedy, in which he, for his own part, having regard to his own dignity and reputation, would rather not be an actor.

But he consented to go back with Warden to his chambers to see if anything had happened in the absence of the latter; and was much disappointed to find that a gentleman had called about half an hour since, and was still waiting for Warden's return. But his brow cleared when, on accompanying Warden into the sittingroom, he saw Hugh Lester, with whom he had been slightly acquainted. If a man of his undoubted position and character was willing to act for Félix it gave the matter a different aspect, and made it possible for himself, with a good social conscience, to act for Warden.

Hugh was looking wretchedly pale and ill. He was the mere ghost of the young man who had held the reins from Redchester to Earl's Dene but a few months ago. He rose when Warden entered, but did not hold out his hand.

"Mr. Warden," he said, coldly, “I daresay you are surprised to see me.'

"I confess, Lester-but I am glad to see you, all the same. Won't you sit down again? Major Andrews Mr. Lester."

Things are not to be measured by the space that they fill in the world, any more than lives are to be measured by the mere flux of hours and days. Every one of us is the centre of the world to himself: and it is his own illusions and hopes and memories not outward facts- that form the real world of every one. Hugh Lester was as much the centre of the world as the greatest man who ever filled it with the greatest deeds: and his illusions were over. Nor was he one of those dreamers to whom illusion succeeds to illusion, and to whom, when one is dead, another is born. He had staked his whole happiness upon what he now suddenly waked to find the emptiest of dreams. Miss Clare had been right, after all. But life is not altogether like a stage. Even when the play is played out, its lights are never turned "With which I am connected. I know off, its audience never dismissed, and its it. I presume you scarcely give credit to curtain never let fall. Other actors the crazy fancies of a mad French fidremained, besides Hugh, and Félix, and dler?" Marie, who still had something left to do.

"We have met before, I think, Major.I have two matters that I have come about. In the first place

"Am I de trop?" asked the Major. "Because, if so

"Not at all. In the first place, there are stories going about about the disappearance of Miss Lefort."

"Pardon me I will come to that presently. There is no evidence to connect