Capuchin

“ From an early date they undertook missions to the heathen in America, Asia and Africa, and at the middle of the 17th century a Capuchin missionary college was founded in Rome for the purpose of preparing their subjects for foreign missions. A large number of Capuchins have suffered martyrdom for the Gospel. This activity in Europe and elsewhere continued until the close of the 18th century, when the number of Capuchin friars was estimated at 31,000. ”

“ O mankind! everyone for himself will always be your motto!" cried the Capuchin, springing to his feet as if beside himself with indignation; then, resuming his seat with a strange and bitter laugh, he added, looking at Michel with an ironical expression: "Signor prince, excellenza, you are pleased to make sport of us, I judge!"
XXI
FRA ANGELO
The Capuchin's strange outbreak caused Michel the most profound embarrassment; but, being determined to maintain his independence and sincerity, he affected a tranquillity which he did not feel. ”

“ Our friend the Capuchin is about two feet nine, bushy tail and all, of a [311] brownish red colour, the hair of the body being long, and that on the forehead having a direction forwards. The beard, which arises below the ears, is brown, inclining to black, and covers the upper part of the breast. His large sunken eyes are overarched with well-marked brows, and his nails are bent, with the exception of those on his thumbs. He is not gregarious, and is seldom found in company with his female. ”

“ With him I have nothing to do, for I am alive and active, nay, life itself has for the first time dawned upon me, and begun to offer its varied and substantial enjoyments."
Thus, when in my involuntary waking dreams I recalled the strange and frightful adventures at the castle, I said to myself, "These things are indeed known to me, yet it is to some one else that they refer; over me they can have no influence." This other was again the Capuchin; but I was no longer a monk. ”

“ Michel saw that the Capuchin had touched the right chord at last; for when he was appealed to as the son of the Prince of Castro-Reale, a title which nobody dared or chose to give him openly, the Piccinino started, sat up and sprang to his feet as if he were ready to start at once. But suddenly he put his hand to his leg and fell back on the couch.
"It is impossible," he said, "I am in too much pain."
"What is the matter?" asked Fra Angelo. "Are you wounded? Is that spent ball of last year still troubling you? In the old days we used to march with bullets in our bodies. ”

“ Felix the Capuchin was suffering severely from colic, he was asked, by the doctor, how he felt, and answered: "The wicked ass of a body would be glad to escape the stick, but it must stand and receive the blow." ”

“ The municipal government is housed in an ancient tobacco factory converted to public uses, and a fine old Capuchin convent now serves as a public hospital. The Paseo, or public park, is distinguished for its fine trees and flowers. ”

“ Among the throng are three veritable Capuchin monks, thickly weighted with enfolding hoods and brown woolen gowns, the latter heavy and long and girdled at the waist,—a light, airy costume for a warm day. Our drivers stop here while one of them repairs a broken strap, and we contentedly watch and speculate upon the assemblage.
Three other smaller spring-establishments are passed in turn, farther up the valley. Each has its specialty and its limited but believing clientèle. Then the road becomes solitary, and ephemeral humanity is left behind. ”

“ In that age of religious slaughter the Capuchin could scarcely object to decreasing heretics, but he did object as a man and a priest to such barbarous treachery toward men with whom a compact had been made. The refined nurture of France was not recent in D'Aulnay's experience, but he came of a great and honorable house, and the friar's appeal was made to inherited instincts. [Pg 260]
"Good churchman," spoke out Jean le Prince, the lad, shaking his hair back from his face, "your capote and sandals lie there by the door of the tower, where Edelwald took thought to place them for you. ”

“ His robust countenance beamed with health, his eyes were intelligent. This was one of the personalities of which the little shown makes one desirous to know more. His refreshment consumed and paid for, he began a rambling conversation with the garçon who attended us, as well as with the proprietor of the locanda in which we were. Capuchin and Garçon mutually deplored the poverty of the poor in Naples. Capuchin showed two blue silk handkerchiefs which he had been forced to purchase, for compassion, of a poor woman. ”

“ From the other genera of that group (Cebinae) with prehensile tails capuchins are distinguished by the comparative shortness of that appendage, and the absence of a naked area on the under surface of its extremity. The hair is not woolly, the general build is rather stout, and the limbs are of moderate length and slenderness. The name capuchin is derived from the somewhat cowl-like form assumed by the thick hair on the crown of the head of the sapajous. ”

“ Are both natives of South America; they live in large troops, feeding on roots, fruits, and insects, and are much more gentle than those of the old world. Of the Capuchin there are many species, differing from each other in colour only; they are very lively, active, and amusing, and about a foot long. The Spider Monkey, like the Capuchin, has a long prehensile tail, which it uses like a fifth hand. ”

“ If we could get a medical man to remain in the castle,—"
"Why should not you? Some of the Capuchins are very clever. Father Joachim Haspinger has been an army chaplain, and is preparing for service again. He is as good, I am told, at setting a limb as at breaking a head. His reputation and influence among the peasantry are immense. What a pleasant day that was, Hildegarde, when we visited the Capuchin convent at Brixen!" ”

“ As for Pere Tranquille, he published a little volume describing the whole affair, in which, with the irresponsible frivolity of a true Capuchin, he poked fun at those who could not swallow the miracles wholesale.
"They had every reason to feel vexed," he said, "at the small courtesy or civility shown by the demons to persons of their merit and station ”

“ Female.—Paler in colour above than the male; the dark colour of the tail and of the limbs more extended.
Distribution.—Paraguay.
Habits.—This rare Capuchin lives, as Azara relates, in the forests of Paraguay, and is met with both in single couples and in small troops. They are very lively little animals, ever in motion, swinging themselves from tree to tree by means of their tails, the mothers of the company generally carrying their single young one on their back. When once tamed they become very affectionate; when angry they can give vent to excruciating screams. ”

“ The peasants of Subiaco ascend the stairs here represented on their knees, as the Scala Santa in Rome is ascended, and, occasionally, even the numerous stairs of Ara Coeli. See page 86.
In the country-places the great stand-by is the Capuchin, who has a reputation for suggesting lucky numbers. When he comes collecting alms in village or city the poor man asks him for a likely terno. He is not supposed to suggest these numbers, but he and the people understand each other, and every word, every allusion, which falls from his lips is thereupon eagerly noted. ”

“ The Capuchins, which are alike the most voluble and the cleverest of the smaller monkeys, have a sound which Professor Garner first translated as “food,” but to which he subsequently found he must attach a wider meaning. He now thinks that when modulated in one way the sound means a certain kind of food, and when modulated in another, it means “give,” or “give me that.” By repeating it to a Capuchin, he often induced it to hand over a part of its food, or some plaything. ”

“ The founder of the Capuchins was the Italian Observant Minorite Matth. de Bassi. As he reported that St. Francis had worn a cowl with long sharp peak or capouch, and soon thereafter saw the saint himself in a vision dressed in such a garb, he withdrew from his cloister, went to Rome, and obtained from Clement VII., in A.D. 1526, the right of restoring the capouch. Falling out with the Observants over this, his followers attached themselves, in A.D. 1528, to the Conventuals as an independent congregation with their own vicar-general. The unusual style of dress produced a sensation. ”

“ Michel followed his father, but they were no sooner outside the city than the old man stopped.
"My boy," he said, "I am going to the villa alone, for I must talk a moment with the princess about that infernal abbé, who disguises himself as a monk to spy upon something or somebody in her house. Do you walk about two miles to the northwest, following the path that begins here, and turning neither to right nor left. In an hour you will reach the Capuchin convent of Bel Passo, where your uncle Fra Angelo told me that he would wait for you till sunset. ”

“ It might be a malicious device on the part of the adventurer to test his strength, his agility, and his courage, or an attempt to elude him. He was almost convinced of it, when, after half an hour of this wild chase, and after thrice crossing the same winding stream, they found themselves in the bottom of a ravine which Michel thought that he recognized as one that he and the Capuchin had skirted on the higher land on their way to Nicolosi. ”

“ I answered him with the names of several fashionable perfumed abbots, who were not threatened with excommunication, who were not interfered with, although they wore four times as much powder as I did—for I only used a slight sprinkling—who perfumed their hair with a certain amber-scented pomatum which brought women to the very point of fainting, while mine, a jessamine pomade, called forth the compliment of every circle in which I was received. I added that I could not, much to my regret, obey him, and that if I had meant to live in slovenliness, I would have become a Capuchin and not an abbé. ”

“ The Preaching Friar relates how the Capuchins, at Cadiz, gave him sheets to his bed which had been quite new since ten years, and how he saw a St. Joseph dressed in the Spanish fashion, sword at side, hat under its arm, powdered hair, and spectacles on nose. In Rome he attends a mass:
"Never," he says, "have I seen so many mutilated musicians together, nor so numerous a symphony. Those who [Pg 248] were judges said that there was nothing so fine. ”

“ Not satisfied with writing, the enemies of the Capuchins’ beards have employed the most violent and most unwarrantable means. The fatal catastrophe which happened, in 1761, to the Capuchins of the town of Ascoli, in the limits of Ancona, proves how much monkish vengeance is cruel: we read as follows in the Utrecht Gazette of that time. “Our reverend fathers, the Capuchins, have no longer any beards. One of their lay brethren, a cook in the monastery, having put a good dose of opium in their meat, unbearded all of them whilst they were asleep, and then forsook the order. ”

“ In the Capuchins the incisor teeth are erect, and are always shorter than the canines. The molars are four-cusped, and have, on their crowns, two transverse ridges and the oblique ridge, already described in the Lemuroidea, from the front inner cusp to the hind outer cusp. These animals have also one milk-molar tooth more than in Man.
The outer surface of the main brain (cerebrum) is almost as much convoluted as in the Old World Apes.
The Capuchins range from Costa Rica to Paraguay, and are represented by about eighteen species. They are very gentle and docile animals. ”

“ One reverend father has his mouth wide open, as if he had died in the midst of a howl of terror and remorse, which perhaps is even now screeching through eternity. As a general thing, however, these frocked and hooded skeletons seem to take a more cheerful view of their position, and try with ghastly smiles to turn it into a jest. But the cemetery of the Capuchins is no place to nourish celestial hopes: the soul sinks forlorn and wretched under all this burden of dusty death ”

“ We were much amused also with the simple remarks of the Capucin friar, whose first visit this was to the mainland, and who was totally inexperienced in every thing. Apart from his dirt, he was really a good-tempered, simple sort of man, and quite endurable. He [Pg 34] was full of restless impatience to see the pope officiate. How various are the wishes and inclinations of men! He perhaps felt as we did the day before the concert given by the celebrated Catalani! I wish with all my heart that he may return to his convent, better satisfied then we returned home from that concert. ”

“ Pasquale Capuzzi! old amorous devil, accursed fool! We are thy companions from hell, we are the devils of ugly lovers, and we are about to transport thee to our furnace, with that little monster Pitchinaccio!"
And in the midst of these bowlings, which made the echoes tremble, the four demoniacs threw themselves upon Capuzzi and Pitichinaccio, and gave them such a frightful fall, that the unfortunate Argus of the beautiful Marianna began to bray like a beaten donkey. ”

“ But the infamous Capuzzi only replied by a still louder guffaw of laughter, and in his horrible falsetto squeaked, 'See here, my sweet Signor barber, my excellent Signor surgeon, my honoured Annibal Caracci, my beloved Guido Reni, be off to the devil, and don't ever show yourself here again, if you don't want your legs broken.' Therewith the cranky, knock-kneed old fool laid hold of me with no less an intention than to kick me out of the room, and hurl me down the stairs. ”