“The truth is,” he went on, addressing them all easily and quietly, as if in some senatorial or ecclesiastical assembly, “the truth is, it is a privilege that I have been allowed by the Most High, to have illuminations or revelations direct from Himself. Such an illumination I have just had, bidding me leave you tonight and bidding me to ask you for a few important favours so as to make my departure easier, and my reception — for that is where my revelation tells me I must spend this coming night — at the Fortress of Roque more friendly and gracious.
“What my revelation commands me to beg from you is simply this, that you put at my disposal a very quiet horse, preferably an old and good-tempered horse, such as I shall be able myself to ride, and, in addition to this, put me in the care of a small party of well-armed horsemen, who will hand me over in safety to the gatekeeper of Roque Fortress and then return to you at once without demanding anything for themselves, anything except”—here Bonaventura’s voice rose to something that resembled the clanging of a great cracked bell—“except what I am now going to make plain to you all.”
That the man was sincere in the emotion he displayed must at any rate have been plain to all. One undeniable manifestation of it was the fact that as he spoke he wept, and as he wept his mouth and cheeks assumed the only too familiar screwed-up grimace of a small child in a fit of crying, and there was something weirdly and grotesquely impressive about the ringing and yet broken words with which this emotional saint, who had the power of weeping without sobbing, began to make his point clear.
“As you know only too well, you people of Lost Towers, there is a conspiracy against you through this whole district, based on the absurd idea that you are — what of course we all are, for it is the unusual condition of the children of men — more evil than good.
“Now this is what I propose to do on your behalf, my dear friends, and it is extremely simple. I had thought that the conclave of cardinals intended — at least that is what I imagined my angel of revelation hinted to me — to elect me Pope; but I no longer think that this is their intention. What I believe now to be the purpose of God is that I am to watch very carefully the whole array of ecclesiastical leaders, and when I have decided which particular one would make the ablest Pope, that I should pray night and day for the welfare of that good and wise man; and then, when the present Pope dies, I can name as his successor the man I have been observing and praying for all these days.
“Yes, I can name him at the conclave of cardinals; and I think, without serious opposition, get him elected Pope. And this is what I can do for you, my friends of Lost Towers, in return for your kindness to me. When I and God — I mean of course when God and I — have appointed the next Pope, and he is firmly seated in the Chair of Saint Peter, he will naturally wish to reward his heavenly Helper who is God, as well as his earthly Helper who is I.
“It is then that I shall make it clear to the Holy Father how he can reward us both at the same time. I shall tell him how he may spend on behalf of Lost Towers a good round sum of Saint Peter’s shekels. I shall tell him that Lost Towers has been for centuries like those cities in Palestine that God told Moses to build for the runaways from justice, who wanted to cling to the horns of the altars of the Levites and there to escape being slain by the avengers of blood. I shall tell him that he had better build an Aims-House for the aged of both sexes, in the immediate vicinity of Lost Towers, with six small independent houses for women, and a larger house of two stories for the Master of the establishment. I shall tell the Pope that the inmates had better be called ‘Tower Canons’ and ‘Tower Canonesses’, and that he had better pay the Master of the place a good large income yearly, so as to render him completely independent of all influence from outside. The name of the Holy Father, whether that name be Leo or Pius or Gregory or Martin or Nicholas or Clement or Urban, shall be, I shall assure him, inscribed over the gateway to the Master’s Lodge, where it shall remain forever and forever.
“And now there remains only one thing more I must ask of you all, namely, that none of you will conceal from the world, but rather will reveal to the world in all directions, that it is purely and simply by the sudden appearance among you of me and God — I mean of course of God and me — that you have all been so absolutely and entirely turned from the error of your ways as to call upon the Pope and God — I mean of course upon God and the Pope — to raise up in your midst such a monument of your conversion as this Lost Towers Aims-House for aged runaways from the justice of the kingdoms of subsequent generations. This having been built, your remotest descendants will fall upon their knees on this spot, and tap the very ground where Lost Towers stands, in reverence and worship for evermore!
“And do you ask me, my lovely Daughter of the house — and do you ask me, my gracious Lady of the house — and do you ask me, O great Baron of Lost Towers! — what your evermore loyal and devoted pair of friends, I and God, are going to do next, when you have escorted us to the Fortress of Roque and have left us with the Gate-Keeper of Roque and have returned in peace to your own place?
“Well, I will tell you in a moment what I and God intend to do next. But, before telling you, I must let you know that the instinct in me which orders every smallest move I make, and half-creates everything I hear, see, touch, feel, or even smell, compels me to insist once again, as I always do, and always must do, wherever I go upon the surface of this earth, that the whole secret of the ultimate mystery of life is contained in those precious, holy, sweet, delectable, celestial, angelic, cherubic, seraphic, ineffable four letters composing the word Love!
“Love is simply all there is! And it is more than that. It is all there was and all there will ever be! Love is like water and air and fire; and it goes flowing, floating, flaming, round the earth, penetrating the earth, proliferating the earth, perforating the earth, and one day swallowing up the earth!
“And yet you ask what I and God are going to do next, when you, my loving friends, have left me at Roque. I will tell you in simple language. We, that is to say the All-powerful whose essence is Love, and I his humble, his negligible, his self-obliterating, self-negating, self-annihilating servant, whose essence is obedience and who has made his will my will to a degree bewildering to the whole human race, have decided that the Devil has incarnated Himself in the personality of this notorious magician, Roger Bacon, who devotes his time, his money, his leisure, his learning, wholly, entirely, and absolutely to inventing and constructing a Head of Brass that shall think as a man, and speak as a man, and even utter opinions on how the country should be ruled, like a man.
“Well, my dear friends, you who are now announcing to the entire world that you yourselves, by the mediation of his less than nothing servant, who is your do-nothing, tittle-nothing, scrap-nothing, flip-nothing, pip-nothing of a beggarly Bonaventura, are about to accept the pardon and peace of a stately Aims-House from the Holy Father, may now learn that the great God of Love and I, his disciple in Love, are about to punish, punish, punish, punish this thrice-accurst Roger Bacon, till not only his Brazen Head but his own worse than brazen skull will split into atoms.
“Yes, my beloved friends, who have today begun telling the whole world how dearly I, who am His most loving lover since the time when John of Love his very self lay in His bosom, do verily and utterly love you and how I have shown it with regard to the Holy Father, I am going to tell you now how God through me and I through God will punish this abomination of desolation who calls himself Friar Bacon!”