The Poor Mouth_ A Bad Story About the Hard Life - Flann O'Brien [21]
–They lived in another age, of course, Father Fahrt answered.
–Right and wrong don’t change with the times and you know that very well, Father. Catesby got Guy Fawkes on his side, a brave man that was fighting in Flanders. And Grant and Keyes and the two Winters, any God’s amount of sound men, Romans all. Fawkes was the kingpin and the head bottlewasher of the whole outfit. He managed to get a ton and a half of gunpowder stuffed into a cellar under the House of Lords. But there were two other men lending a good hand all the time and saying God bless the work. I mean Greenway and Garnet. Know who they were, Father?
–I think I do.
–Of course you do. They were Jesuits. Hah?
–My dear man, Jesuits also can make mistakes. They can err in judgement. They are human.
–Faith then they didn’t err in judgement when Guy Fawkes was found out. They scooted like greased lightning and Father Greenway and another priest managed to get to a healthier country. Father Garnet was not so alive to himself. He got caught and for his pains he got a length of hempen rope for himself, on the gallows high.
–A martyr for the Faith, of course, Father Fahrt said evenly.
–And Fawkes. They gave him tortures you wouldn’t see outside hell itself to make him give the names of the others. Be damn but he wouldn’t. But when he heard that Catesby and a crowd of his segocias had been chased, caught and killed, he broke down and made some class of a confession. But do you know what? When this rigmarole was put before him for signature, believe it or not but he couldn’t sign it. The torture had him banjaxed altogether. His hands were all broken be the thumbscrews. What’s your opinion of that?
–The torture Fawkes so heroically endured, Father Fahrt said, was admittedly appalling and terrifying, the worst torture that the head of man could think of. It was called per gradus ad ima. He was subjected to it by direct order of the King. He was very brave.
–I needn’t tell you he and several others got the high jump. But Lord save us, poor Fawkes couldn’t climb up the ladder to the gallows, he was so badly bet and broken up in the torture. He had to be carried up. And he was hanged outside the building he tried to blow up for the greater glory of God.
–I suppose that’s true enough, Father Fahrt said meekly.
–For the greater glory of God. How’s this you put Latin on that?
–Ad majorem Dei gloriam. It is our own Society’s watchword.
–Quite right. A.M.D.G. Many a time I’ve heard it. But if blowing up councillors is bad and sinful as you said, how do you account for two Jesuits, maybe three, being guilty of that particular transaction, waging war on the civil power? Isn’t Mrs Flaherty in the same boat as Mr Fawkes?
–I have pointed out, Collopy, that events and opinions vary drastically from one era to another. People are influenced by quite different things in dissimilar ages. It is difficult, even impossible, for the people of today to assess the stresses and atmosphere of Fawkes’s day. Cicero was a wise and honest man and yet he kept slaves. The Greeks were the most sophisticated and civilized people of antiquity, but morally a great many of them were lepers. With them sins of the flesh was a nefarious preoccupation. But that does not invalidate the wisdom and beauty of the things many of them left behind them. Art, poetry, literature, architecture, philosophy and political systems, these were formulated and developed in the midst of debauchery. I have—ah-ha—sometimes thought that a degraded social climate is essential to inspire great men to achievement in the arts.
Mr Collopy put down his glass and spoke somewhat sternly, wagging a finger.
–Now look at here, Father Fahrt, he said, I’m going to say something I’ve said in other ways before. Bedamn but I don’t know that I can trust you men at all. Ye are for ever trimming and adjudicating yourselves to the new winds that do blow. In case of doubt,