Explore "Hadrian the Seventh" by Frederick Rolfe on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Hadrian was mooning about in the Treasury one morning, wondering why people will persist in using diamonds by themselves instead of as a setting for coloured gems: grieving at the excessive ugliness of most modern goldsmiths' monstrous work: turning with disgust from huge brazenly vulgar masses of bullion shaped like bad dreams of chalices, pyxes, staves, croziers, mitres, tiaras, dishes, jugs, (not beds), and basons. He bathed in the beauty of sea-blue beryls, corundums, catseyes, and chalcedonyx. A vast rose-alexandrolith mysteriously changed from myrtle-green to purple as He turned it from sunlight to candlelight. He moved to a great round table-moonstone, transparent as water one way: brilliantly clouded with the ethereal blue of a summer-morning sky, the other. These two stones had not the blatant ostentation, the inevitable noisy obviousness of rubies, emeralds, diamonds and pearls. They were apart, chaste, recondite, serene, and permanent. He enjoyed them. His glance again passed over the flaring cupboards. A plan began to crawl out of one of his brain-cells. He took the alexandrolith and the moonstone in His two hands; and sat down profoundly meditating, gazing into the lovely silent mystery in the stones. So He sat for half-an-hour, while His plan unfolded its convolutions. To Him entered Cardinal Semphill, rather ruddier than a cherry, carrying the day-before-yesterday's Times. "Holiness," he said with some animation, "I hope I don't interrupt You. Thank God we've got a King of England at last! " He read from the paper, " ‘The King's Majesty has been graciously pleased to send autograph letters to all the European sovereigns and prime ministers inviting them to assemble with the President of the United States and the Japanese Emperor at Windsor Castle, in order to concert measures for terminating the present lamentable condition of affairs."
"That explains the length of the Japanese Emperor's visit to England, and Roosevelt's arrival last week. Yes, it's very king-like. Statesmanship is all very well up to a point. Then, its force seems to fade; and kingship's chance comes. Lucky England to have a real King!"