HADRIAN THE SEVENTH
A ROMANCE
BY
FR. ROLFE
LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1904
TO MOTHER
In Obedience to the Decree of Urban P.M. VIII, I declarethat I have no Intention of attributing any other than a purely humanAuthority to the Miracles, Revelations, Favours, & particular Cases,recorded in this Book; & the same as regards the Titles of Saints &Blessed applied to Servants of God not yet canonized: exceptin those Cases which have been confirmed by the Holy Catholic ApostolicRoman See, of which I declare myself to be an obedient Son; & thereforeI submit myself & all which I have written to her Judgment.
Fr. Rolfe.
xxij Jul., 1904.
HADRIAN THE SEVENTH
PROOIMION
In mind he was tired, worn out, by years of hope deferred, ofloneliness, of unrewarded toil. In body he was almost prostrate bythe pain of an arm on the tenth day of vaccination. Bodily pain stunghim like a personal affront. "Some one will have to be made miserablefor this," he once said during the throes of a toothache. He was nostranger to mental fatigue: but, when to that was added corporealanguish, he came near collapse. His capacity for work was constricted:the mere sight of his writing materials filled him with disgust. But,because he had a horror of being discovered in a state of inaction,after breakfast he sat down as usual and tried to write. Dazed in atorrent of ideas, he painfully halted for words: stumbling in a mazeof words, he frequently lost the thread of his argument: now and then,in sheer exhaustion, his pen remained immobile. He sat in a small lowarmchair which was covered with shabby brocade, dull-red and green. Anold drawing-board, of the large size denominated Antiquarian, rested onhis knees. The lower edge frayed the brocade on the arms of the chair.His little yellow cat Flavio lay asleep on the tilted board, nestlingin the bend of his left elbow. That was the only living creature towhom he ever spoke with affection as well as with politeness. His lefthand[Pg 2] steadied his ms., the sheets of which were clipped togetherat the top by a metal clip. At the upper edge of the board a coupleof Publishers' Dummies reposed, having the outward similitude ofsix-shilling novels: but he had filled their pages with his archaichandwriting. The first contained thoughts—not great thoughts, northoughts selected on any particular principle, but phrases and opinionssuch as Sophokles' denunciation,
Ὡ μιαρον ἡθοϛ και γυναικοϛ ὑστερον,
or Gabriele d'Annunzio's sentence
"Old legitimate monarchies are everywhere declining, and Demos standsready to swallow them down its miry throat."
The second was his private dictionary which, (as an artificer in verbalexpression,) he had compiled, taking Greek words from Liddell-and-Scottand Latin words from Andrews, enlarging his English vocabulary withsuch simple but pregnant formations as the adjective "hybrist" fromὑβριστηϛ, or the noun "gingilism" from gingilismus.
He was looking askance at his ms. In two hours, he had written no morethan fourteen lines; and these were deformed by erasures of words andsentences, b