← catalogue

The Master-Christian

by Marie Corelli · English · Gutenberg #4285 · 1,284,741 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Master-Christian
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The Master-Christian

Author: Marie Corelli


        
Release date: July 1, 2003 [eBook #4285]
                Most recently updated: June 10, 2013

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4285

Credits: Produced by Karol Pietrzak, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MASTER-CHRISTIAN ***




Produced by Karol Pietrzak, Charles Franks and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team.










THE MASTER-CHRISTIAN

By MARIE CORELLI

AUTHOR OF

"Thelma," "Ardath," "Innocent," "The Treasure of Heaven," etc.




TO ALL THOSE CHURCHES WHO QUARREL IN THE NAME OF CHRIST

The Master-Christian.

I.

All the bells were ringing the Angelus. The sun was sinking;--and from
the many quaint and beautiful grey towers which crown the ancient city
of Rouen, the sacred chime pealed forth melodiously, floating with
sweet and variable tone far up into the warm autumnal air. Market women
returning to their cottage homes after a long day's chaffering disposal
of their fruit, vegetable, and flower-wares in the town, paused in
their slow trudge along the dusty road and crossed themselves
devoutly,--a bargeman, lazily gliding down the river on his flat
unwieldly craft, took his pipe from his mouth, lifted his cap
mechanically, and muttered more from habit than reflection--"Sainte
Marie, Mere de Dieu, priez pour nous!"--and some children running out
of school, came to a sudden standstill, listening and glancing at each
other, as though silently questioning whether they should say the old
church-formula among themselves or no? Whether, for example, it might
not be more foolish than wise to repeat it? Yes;--even though there was
a rumour that the Cardinal-Archbishop of a certain small,
half-forgotten, but once historically-famed Cathedral town of France
had come to visit Rouen that day,--a Cardinal-Archbishop reputed to be
so pure of heart and simple in nature, that the people of his far-off
and limited diocese regarded him almost as a saint,--would it be right
or reasonable for them, as the secularly educated children of modern
Progress, to murmur an "Angelus Domini," while the bells rang? It was a
doubtful point;--for the school they attended was a Government one, and
prayers were neither taught nor encouraged there, France having for a
time put God out of her national institutions. Nevertheless, the glory
of that banished Creator shone in the deepening glow of the splendid
heavens,--and--from the silver windings of the Seine which, turning
crimson in the light, looped and garlanded the time-honoured old city
as with festal knots of rosy ribbon, up to the trembling tops of the
tall poplar trees fringing the river banks,--the warm radiance
palpitated with a thousand ethereal hues of soft and changeful colour,
transfusing all visible things into the misty semblance of some divine
dwelling of dreams. Ding-dong--ding dong! The last echo of the last
bell died away upon the air--the last words enunciated by devout
priests in their cloistered seclusion were said--"In hora mortis
nostrae! Amen!"--the market women went on their slow way homeward,--the
children scampered off in different directions, easily forgetful of the
Old-World petition they had thought of, yet left unuttered,--the
bargeman and his barge slipped quietly away together down the windings
of the river out of sight;--the silence following the clangour of the
chimes was deep and impressive--and the great Sun had all the heaven to
himself as he went down. Through the beautiful rose-window of the
Cathedral of Notre Dame, he flashed his parting rays, weaving bright
patterns of ruby, gold and amethyst on the worn pavement of the ancient
pile which enshrines the tomb of Richard the Lion-Hearted, as also that
of Henry the Second, husband to Catherine de Medicis and lover of the
brilliant Diane de Poitiers,--and one broad beam fell purpling aslant
into the curved and fretted choir-chapel especially dedicated to the
Virgin, there lighting up with a warm glow the famous alabaster tomb
known as "Le Mourant" or "The Dying One." A strange and awesome piece
of sculpture truly, is this same "Mourant"!--showing, as it does with
deft and almost appalling exactitude, the last convulsion of a strong
man's body gripped in the death-agony. No delicate delineator of shams
and conventions was the artist of olden days whose ruthless chisel
shaped these stretched sinews, starting veins, and swollen eyelids
half-closed over the tired eyes!--he must have been a sculptor of
truth,--truth downright and relentless,--truth divested of all graceful
coverings, and nude as the "Dying One" thus realistically portrayed.
Ugly truth too,--unpleasant to the sight of the worldly and
pleasure-loving tribe who do not care to be reminded of the common fact
that they all, and we all, must die. Yet the late sunshine flowed very
softly on and over the ghastly white, semi-transparent form, outlining
it with as much tender glory as the gracious figure of Mary Virgin
herself, bending with outstretched hands from a grey niche, fine as a
cobweb of old lace on which a few dim jewels are sewn. Very beautiful,
calm and restful at this hour was "Our Lady's Chapel," with its high,
dark intertwisting arches, mutilated statues, and ancient tattered
battle-banners hanging from the black roof and swaying gently with
every little breath of wind. The air, perfumed with incense-odours,
seemed weighted with the memory of prayers and devotional
silences,--and in the midst of it all, surrounded by the defaced and
crumbling emblems of life and death, and the equally decaying symbols
of immortality, with the splendours of the sinking sun shedding roseate
haloes about him, walked one for whom eternal truths outweighed all
temporal seemings,--Cardinal Felix Bonpre, known favourably, and
sometimes alluded to jestingly at the Vatican, as "Our good Saint
Felix." Tall and severely thin, with fine worn features of ascetic and
spiritual delicacy, he had the indefinably removed air of a scholar and
thinker, whose life was not, and never could be in accordance with the
latter-day customs of the world; the mild blue eyes, clear and
steadfast, most eloquently suggested "the peace of God that passeth all
understanding";--and the sensitive intellectual lines of the mouth and
chin, which indicated strength and determined will, at the same time
declared that both strength and will were constantly employed in the
doing of good and the avoidance of evil. No dark furrows of hesitation,
cowardice, cunning, meanness or weakness marred the expressive dignity
and openness of the Cardinal's countenance,--the very poise of his
straight spare figure and the manner in which he moved, silently
asserted that inward grace of spirit without which there is no true
grace of body,--and as he paused in his slow pacing to and fro to gaze
half-wistfully, half-mournfully upon the almost ghastly artistic
achievement of "Le Mourant" he sighed, and his lips moved as if in
prayer. For the brief, pitiful history of human life is told in that
antique and richly-wrought alabaster,--its beginning, its ambition, and
its end. At the summit of the shrine, an exquisite bas-relief shows
first of all the infant clinging to its mother's breast,--a stage lower
down is seen the boy in the eager flush of youth, speeding an arrow to
its mark from the bent bow,--then, on a still larger, bolder scale of
design is depicted the proud man in the zenith of his career, a noble
knight riding forth to battle and to victory, armed cap-a-pie, his
war-steed richly caparisoned, his lance in rest,--and finally, on the
sarcophagus itself is stretched his nude and helpless form, with hands
clenched in the last gasping struggle for breath, and every muscle
strained and fighting against the pangs of dissolution.

"But," said the Cardinal half aloud, with the gentle dawning of a
tender smile brightening the fine firm curve of his lips,--"it is not
the end! The end here, no doubt;--but the beginning--THERE!"

He raised his eyes devoutly, and instinctively touched the silver
crucifix hanging by its purple ribbon at his breast. The orange-red
glow of the sun encompassed him with fiery rings, as though it would
fain consume his thin, black-garmented form after the fashion in which
flames consumed the martyrs of old,--the worn figures of mediaeval
saints in their half-broken niches stared down upon him stonily, as
though they would have said,--"So we thought,--even we!--and for our
thoughts and for our creed we suffered willingly,--yet lo, we have come
upon an age of the world in which the people know us not,--or knowing,
laugh us all to scorn."

But Cardinal Bonpre being only conscious of a perfect faith, discovered
no hints of injustice or despair in the mutilated shapes of the
Evangelists surrounding him,--they were the followers of Christ,--and
being such, they were bound to rejoice in the tortures which made their
glory. It was only the unhappy souls who suffered not for Christ at
all, whom he considered were truly to be compassionated.

"And if," he murmured as he moved on--"this knight of former days, who
is now known to us chiefly, alas! as 'Le Mourant', was a faithful
servant of our Blessed Lord, why then it is as well with him as with
any of the holy martyrs. May his soul rest in peace!"

Stopping an instant at the next sculptural wonder in his way--the
elaborately designed tomb of Cardinal Amboise, concerning the eternal
fate of which "brother in Christ" the good Felix had no scruples or
fears whatever, he stepped softly down from the choir-chapel where he
had been wandering to and fro for some time in solitary musings, and
went towards the great central nave. It was quite empty,--not even a
weary silk-weaver, escaped from one of the ever-working looms of the
city, had crept in to tell her beads. Broad, vacant, vast, and
suggestive of a sublime desolation, the grand length and width of the
Latin Cross which shapes the holy precincts, stretched into vague
distance, one or two lamps were burning dimly at little shrines set in
misty dark recesses,--a few votive candles, some lit, some smouldered
out, leaned against each other crookedly in their ricketty brass stand,
fronting a battered statue of the Virgin. The Angelus had ceased
ringing some ten minutes since,--and now one solemn bell, swinging high
up in the Cathedral towers, tolled forth the hour of six, slowly and
with a strong pulsating sound which seemed to shake the building down
to its very vaults and deep foundations. As the last stroke shivered
and thundered through the air, a strain of music, commencing softly,
then swelling into fuller melody, came floating from aloft, following
the great bell's vibration. Half way down the nave, just as he was
advancing slowly towards the door of egress, this music overtook the
Cardinal like an arresting angel, bringing him to a sudden pause.

"The organist practises late," he said aloud, as though speaking to
some invisible companion, and then was silent, listening. Round him and
above him surged the flood of rich and dulcet harmony,--the sunset
light through the blue and red stained-glass windows grew paler and
paler--the towering arches which sprang, as it were, from slender
stem-like side-columns up to full-flowering boughs of Gothic
ornamentation, crossing and re-crossing above the great High Altar,
melted into a black dimness,--and then--all at once, without any
apparent cause, a strange, vague suggestion of something supernatural
and unseen began suddenly to oppress the mind of the venerable prelate
with a curious sense of mingled awe and fear. Trembling a little, he
knew not why, he softly drew a chair from one of the shadowy corners,
where all such seats were piled away out of sight so that they might
not disfigure the broad and open beauty of the nave, and, sitting down,
he covered his eyes with one hand and strove to rouse himself from the
odd, half-fainting sensation which possessed him. How glorious now was
the music that poured like a torrent from the hidden organ-loft! How
full of searching and potential proclamation!--the proclamation of an
eternal, unguessed mystery, for which no merely human speech might ever
find fit utterance! Some divine declaration of God's absolute
omnipresence,--or of Heaven's sure nearness,--touched the heart of
Felix Bonpre, as he sat like an enchanted dreamer among the tender
interweavings of solemn and soothing sound;--carried out of himself and
beyond his own existence, he could neither pray nor think, till, all at
once, upon the peaceful and devout silence of his soul, some very old,
very familiar words struck sharply as though they were quite new,--as
though they were invested suddenly with strange and startling
significance--

"When the son of Man cometh, think ye He shall find faith on earth?"

Slowly he withdrew his hand from his eyes and gazed about him,
half-startled, half-appalled. Had anyone spoken these words?--or had
they risen of themselves as it were in letters of fire out of the sea
of music that was heaving and breaking tumultuously about him?

"WHEN THE SON OF MAN COMETH, THINK YE HE SHALL FIND FAITH ON EARTH?"

The question seemed to be whispered in his ears with a thrilling
intensity of meaning; and moved by a sudden introspective and
retrospective repentance, the gentle old man began mentally to grope
his way back over the past years of his life, and to ask himself
whether in very truth that life had been well or ill spent? Viewed by
his own inner contemplative vision, Cardinal Felix Bonpre saw in
himself nothing but wilful sin and total unworthiness;--but in the eyes
of those he had served and assisted, he was a blameless priest,--a man
beloved of God, and almost visibly encompassed by the guardianship of
angels. He had been singularly happy in his election to a diocese
which, though it had always had an Archbishop for its spiritual head,
boasted scarce as many inhabitants as a prosperous English
village,--and the result of this was that he had lived altogether away
from the modern world, passing most of his time in reading and
study,--while for relaxation, he permitted himself only the innocent
delight of growing the finest roses in his neighbourhood. But he had
pious scruples even about this rose-growing fancy of his,--he had a
lurking distrust of himself in it, as to whether it was not a purely
selfish pleasure,--and therefore, to somewhat smooth the circumstance,
he never kept any of the choice blooms for his own gratification, but
gave the best of them with a trust, as simple as it was beautiful, to
the altar of the Virgin, sending all the rest to the bedsides of the
sick and sorrowful, or to the coffins of the dead. It never once
occurred to him that the "Cardinal's roses," as they were called, were
looked upon by the poor people who received them as miraculous flowers
long after they had withered,--that special virtues were assigned to
them--and that dying lips kissed their fragrant petals with almost as
much devotion as the holy crucifix, because it was instinctively
believed that they contained a mystic blessing. He knew nothing of all
this;--he was too painfully conscious of his own shortcomings,--and of
late years, feeling himself growing old, and realising that every day
brought him nearer to that verge which all must cross in passing from
Time into Eternity, he had been sorely troubled in mind. He was wise
with the wisdom which comes of deep reading, lonely meditation, and
fervent study,--he had instructed himself in the modern schools of
thought as well as the ancient,--and though his own soul was
steadfastly set upon the faith he followed, he was compassionately
aware of a strange and growing confusion in the world,--a combination
of the elements of evil, which threatened, or seemed to threaten, some
terrible and imminent disaster. This sorrowful foreboding had for a
long time preyed upon him, physically as well as mentally; always thin,
he had grown thinner and more careworn, till at the beginning of the
year his health had threatened to break down altogether. Whereupon
those who loved him, growing alarmed, summoned a physician, who, (with
that sage experience of doctors to whom thought-trouble is an
inexplicable and incurable complication) at once pronounced change of
air to be absolutely necessary. Cardinal Bonpre must travel, he said,
and seek rest and minddistraction in the contemplation of new and
varying scenes. With smiling and resigned patience the Cardinal obeyed
not so much the command of his medical attendant, as the anxious desire
of his people,--and thereupon departed from his own Cathedral-town on a
tour of several months, during which time he inwardly resolved to try
and probe for himself the truth of how the world was going,--whether on
the downward road to destruction and death, or up the high ascents of
progress and life. He went alone and unattended,--he had arranged to
meet his niece in Paris and accompany her to her father's house in
Rome,--and he was on his way to Paris now. But he had purposely made a
long and round-about journey through France with the intention of
studying the religious condition of the people; and by the time he
reached Rouen, the old sickness at his heart had rather increased than
diminished. The confusion and the trouble of the world were not mere
hearsay,--they in very truth existed. And what seemed to the Cardinal
to be the chief cause of the general bewilderment of things, was the
growing lack of faith in God and a Hereafter. How came this lack of
faith into the Christian world? Sorrowfully he considered the
question,--and persistently the same answer always asserted
itself--that the blame rested principally with the Church itself, and
its teachers and preachers, and not only in one, but in all forms of
Creed.

"We have erred in some vital manner," mused the Cardinal, with a
feeling of strange personal contrition, as though he were more to blame
than any of his compeers--"We have failed to follow the Master's
teaching in its true perfection. We have planted in ourselves a seed of
corruption, and we have permitted--nay, some of us have encouraged--its
poisonous growth, till it now threatens to contaminate the whole field
of labour."

And he thought of the words of St. John the Divine to the Church of
Sardis--

"_I_ KNOW THY WORKS,--THAT THOU HAST A NAME THAT THOU LIVEST AND ART
DEAD.

"BE WATCHFUL, AND STRENGTHEN THE THINGS THAT REMAIN, THAT ARE READY TO
DIE,--FOR _I_ HAVE NOT FOUND THY WORKS PERFECT BEFORE GOD. REMEMBER
THEREFORE HOW THOU HAST RECEIVED AND HEARD, AND HOLD FAST AND REPENT.

"IF, THEREFORE, THOU SHALT NOT WATCH, _I_ WILL COME ON THEE AS A THIEF,
AND THOU SHALL NOT KNOW WHAT HOUR I WILL COME UPON THEE.

"THOU HAST A FEW NAMES EVEN IN SARDIS, WHICH HAVE NOT DEFILED THEIR
GARMENTS, AND THEY SHALL WALK WITH ME IN WHITE, FOR THEY ARE WORTHY.

"HE THAT OVERCOMETH, THE SAME SHALL BE CLOTHED IN WHITE RAIMENT; AND I
WILL NOT BLOT HIS NAME OUT OF THE BOOK OF LIFE, BUT I WILL CONFESS HIS
NAME BEFORE MY FATHER AND BEFORE HIS ANGELS."

Dimmer and duskier grew the long shadows now gathering in the
Cathedral,--two of the twinkling candles near the Virgin's statue
suddenly sank in their sockets with a spluttering noise and guttered
out,--the solemn music of the organ continued, growing softer and
softer as it sounded, till it crept through the vastness of the
building like a light breeze wafted from the sea, bringing with it
suggestions of far flower-islands in the tropics, golden shores kissed
by languid foam, and sweet-throated birds singing, and still the
Cardinal sat thinking of griefs and cares and inexplicable human
perplexities, which were not his own, but which seemed to burden the
greater portion of the world. He drew no comparisons,--he never
considered that, as absolutely as day is day and night is night, his
own beautiful and placid life, lived in the faith of God and Christ,
was tortured by no such storm-tossed tribulation as that which affected
the lives of many others,--and that the old trite saying, almost
despised because so commonplace, namely that "goodness makes
happiness," is as eternally true as that the sun shines in heaven, and
that it is only evil which creates misery. To think of himself in the
matter never occurred to him; had he for a moment entertained the
merest glimmering of an idea that he was better, and therefore happier
than most men, he would, in his own opinion, have been guilty of
unpardonable arrogance and presumption. What he saw, and what sincerely
and unselfishly grieved him, was that the people of this present age
were unhappy--discontented--restless,--that something of the simple joy
of existence had gone out of the world,--that even the brilliant
discoveries of science and the so-called "progress" of men only served
apparently to increase their discontent,--that when they were overcome
by sorrow, sickness, or death, they had little philosophy and less
faith to support them,--and that except in the few cases where Christ
was still believed in, they gave way altogether and broke down like
frightened children in a storm.

"Thou hast a few names, even in Sardis!" A few names! But how few!
Universal weariness of life seemed a disease of the time,--there was
nothing that seemed to satisfy--even the newest and most miraculous
results of scientific research and knowledge ceased to be interesting
after the first week of their triumphant public demonstration and
acceptance.

"The world must be growing old," said the Cardinal sadly,--"It must be
losing its vigour,--it is too tired to lift itself to the light; too
weary and worn out to pray. Perhaps the end of all present things is at
hand,--perhaps it is the beginning of the promised 'new heavens and new
earth.'"

Just then the organ-music ceased abruptly, and the Cardinal, waking
from his thoughts as from a trance, rose up slowly and stood for a
moment facing the great High Altar, which at that distance could only
just be discerned among its darkening surroundings by the little
flickering flame of the suspended lamp burning dimly before the holy
Tabernacle, wherein was locked with golden key behind snowy doors of
spotless marble, the sacred and mysterious Host.

"WHEN THE SON OF MAN COMETH, THINK YE HE SHALL FIND FAITH ON EARTH?"

Again that searching question repeated itself in his mind so distinctly
as to be echoed in his ears,--the deep silence around him seemed
waiting expectantly for some reply, and moved by a strange spirit of
exaltation within him, he answered half aloud--

"Yes! Surely He will find faith,--if only in the few! There are 'a few
names, even in Sardis!' In the sorrowful and meek,--in the poor and
patient and downtrodden martyrs of humanity, He will find faith;--in
the very people He died to save He will discover that most precious and
inspiring of all virtues! But in the so-called wise and brilliant
favourites of the world He will not find it,--in the teachers of the
people He will search for it in vain. By the writers of many books He
shall find Himself scorned and rejected,--in the cheap and spurious
philosophy of modern egotists He will see His doctrines mocked at and
denounced as futile. Few men there are in these days who would deny
themselves for His sake, or sacrifice a personal passion for the purer
honouring of His name. Inasmuch as the pride of great learning breeds
arrogance, so the more the wonder of God's work is displayed to us, the
more are we dazzled and confounded; and so in our blindness we turn
from the worship of the Creator to that of His creation, forgetting
that all the visible universe is but the outcome or expression of the
hidden Divine Intelligence behind it. What of the marvels of the
age!--the results of science!--the strange psychic prescience and
knowledge of things more miraculous yet to be!--these are but hints and
warnings of the approach of God himself--'coming in a cloud with power
and great glory'!"

As he thus spoke, he raised his hand out of old habit acquired in
preaching, and a ray from the after-glow of the sunken sun lit up the
jewel in the apostolic ring he wore, warming its pale green lustre to a
dim violet spark as of living fire. His fine features were for a moment
warm with fervour and feeling,--then,--suddenly, he thought of the
great world outside all creeds,--of the millions and millions of human
beings who neither know nor accept Christ,--of the Oriental races with
their intricate and beautiful systems of philosophy,--of savage tribes,
conquered and unconquered,--of fierce yet brave Turkish warriors who
are, with all their faults, at any rate true to the faith they
profess--and lastly--more than all--of the thousands upon thousands of
Christians in Christian lands, who no more believe in Him whose holy
name they take in vain, than in any Mumbo-Jumbo fetish of untaught
barbarians. Were these to perish utterly? Had THEY no immortal souls to
save? Had the churches been at work for eighteen hundred years and
more, to bring about no better results than this,--namely that there
were only "A FEW NAMES IN SARDIS"? If so, were not the churches
criminally to blame? Yea, even holy Mother-Church, whose foundation
rested on the memory of the Lying Apostle? Rapidly, and as if suggested
by some tormenting devil, these thoughts possessed the Cardinal's
brain, burning into it and teasing and agonising the tender fibres of
his conscience and his soul. Could God, the great loving Creator of
countless universes, be so cruel as to wantonly destroy millions of
helpless creatures in one small planet, because through ignorance or
want of proper teaching they had failed to find Christ?--was it
possible that he could only extend his mercy and forgiveness to the
"few names in Sardis"?

"Yet our world is but a pin's point in the eternal immensities," argued
the Cardinal almost wistfully--"Only a few can expect to be saved."

Nevertheless, this reasoning did not satisfy him. Again, what of these
millions? Were they to be forever lost? Then why so much waste of life?
Waste of life! There is no such thing as waste of life--this much
modern science the venerable Felix knew. Nothing can be wasted,--not a
breath, not a scene, not a sound. All is treasured up in Nature's
store-house and can be eternally reproduced at Nature's will. Then what
was to become of the myriads of human beings and immortal souls whom
the Church had failed to rescue? THE CHURCH HAD FAILED! Why had it
failed? Whose the fault?--whose the weakness?--for fault and weakness
were existent somewhere.

"WHEN THE SON OF MAN COMETH, THINK YE HE SHALL FIND FAITH ON EARTH?"

"No!" whispered the Cardinal, suddenly forced, as it were in his own
despite, to contradict his former assertion--"No!" He paused, and
mechanically making his way towards the door of the Cathedral, he
dipped his fingers into the holy water that glistened dimly in its
marble basin near the black oak portal, and made the sign of the cross
on brow and breast;--"He will not find faith where faith should be
pre-eminent. It must be openly confessed--repentingly admitted,--He
will NOT find faith even in the Church He founded,--I say it to our
shame!"

His head drooped, as though his own words had wounded him, and with an
air of deep dejection he slowly passed out. The huge iron-bound door
swung noiselessly to and fro behind him,--the grave-toned bell in the
tower struck seven. Outside, a tender twilight mellowed the atmosphere
and gave brightness to approaching evening; inside, the long shadows,
gathering heavily in the aisles and richly sculptured hollows of the
side-chapels, brought night before its time. The last votive candle at
the Virgin's shrine flickered down and disappeared like a firefly in
dense blackness,--the last echo of the bell died in a tremulous
vibration up among the high-springing roof-arches, and away into the
solemn corners where the nameless dead reposed,--the last impression of
life and feeling vanished with the retreating figure of the
Cardinal--and the great Cathedral, the Sanctuary and House of God, took
upon itself the semblance of a funeral vault,--a dark, Void, wherein
but one red star, the lamp before the Altar, burned.




II.

Lovely to a poet or an artist's eye is the unevenly-built and
picturesque square of Rouen in which the Cathedral stands,--lovely, and
suggestive of historical romance in all its remote corners, its
oddly-shaped houses, its by-ways and crooked little flights of steps
leading to nowhere, its gables and slanting roofs, and its utter
absence of all structural proportion. A shrine here, a broken statue
there,--a half-obliterated coat-of-arms over an old gateway,--a rusty
sconce fitted fast into the wall to support a lantern no longer needed
in these days of gas and electricity,--an ancient fountain overgrown
with weed, or a projecting vessel of stone for holy water, in which
small birds bathe and disport themselves after a shower of rain,--those
are but a few of the curious fragments of a past time which make the
old place interesting to the student, and more than fascinating to the
thinker and dreamer. The wonderful "Hotel Bourgtheroulde," dating from
the time of Francis the First, and bearing on its sculptured walls the
story of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, in company with the
strangely-contrasting "Allegories", from Petrarch's "Triumphs", is
enough in itself to keep the mind engrossed with fanciful musings for
an hour. How did Petrarch and the Field of the Cloth of Gold come
together in the brain of the sculptor who long ago worked at these
ancient bas-reliefs? One wonders, but the wonder is in vain,--there is
no explanation;--and the "Bourgtheroulde" remains a pleasing and
fantastic architectural mystery. Close by, through the quaint old
streets of the Epicerie and "Gross Horloge", walked no doubt in their
young days the brothers Corneille, before they evolved from their
meditative souls the sombre and heavy genius of French tragedy,--and
not very far away, up one of those little shadowy winding streets and
out at the corner, stands the restored house of Diane de Poitiers, so
sentient and alive in its very look that one almost expects to see at
the quaint windows the beautiful wicked face of the woman who swayed
the humours of a king by her smile or her frown.

Cardinal Bonpre, walking past the stately fourteenth-century Gothic
pile of the Palais de Justice, thought half-vaguely of some of these
things,--but they affected him less than they might have done had his
mind not been full of the grand music he had just heard in the
Cathedral, and of the darkness that had slowly gathered there, as
though in solemn commingling with the darkness which had at the same
time settled over his soul. A great oppression weighed upon
him;--almost he judged himself guilty of mortal sin, for had he not
said aloud and boldly, while facing the High Altar of the Lord, that
even in the Church itself faith was lacking? Yes, he, a
Cardinal-Archbishop, had said this thing; he had as it were proclaimed
it on the silence of the sacred precincts,--and had he not in this,
acted unworthily of his calling? Had he not almost uttered blasphemy?
Grieved and puzzled, the good Felix went on his way, almost unseeingly,
towards the humble inn where he had elected to remain for the brief
period of his visit to Rouen,--an inn where no one stayed save the very
poorest of travellers, this fact being its chief recommendation in the
eyes of the Cardinal. For it must be conceded, that viewed by our
latter-day ideas of personal comfort and convenience, the worthy
prelate had some very old-world and fantastic notions. One of these
notions was a devout feeling that he should, so far as it was humanly
possible, endeavour to obey the Master whose doctrine he professed to
follow. This, it will be admitted, was a curious idea. Considering the
bold and blasphemous laxity of modern Christian customs, it was surely
quite a fanatical idea. Yet he had his own Church-warrant for such a
rule of conduct; and chief among the Evangelic Counsels writ down for
his example was Voluntary Poverty. Yes!--Voluntary
Poverty,--notwithstanding the countless treasures lying idle and wasted
in the Vatican, and the fat sinecures enjoyed by bishops and
archbishops; which things exist in direct contradiction and
disobedience to the command of Christ. Christ Himself lived on the
earth in poverty,--He visited only the poorest and simplest
habitations,--and never did He set His sacred foot within a palace,
save the palace of the High Priest where He was condemned to die. Much
symbolic meaning did Cardinal Felix discover in this incident,--and
often would he muse upon it gravely.

"The Divine is condemned to die in all palaces," he would say,--"It is
only in the glorious world of Nature, under the sunlit or starlit
expanse of heaven, that the god in us can live; and it was not without
some subtle cause of intended instruction to mankind that the Saviour
always taught His followers in the open air."

There was what might be called a palace hard by, to which Bonpre had
been invited, and where he would have been welcome to stay as long as
he chose,--the house of the Archbishop of Rouen--a veritable abode of
luxury as compared with the Hotel Poitiers, which was a dingy little
tumble-down building, very old, and wearing a conscious air of
feebleness and decrepitude which was almost apologetic. Its small
windows, set well back in deeply hollowed carved arches had a
lack-lustre gleam, as of very aged eyes under shelving brows,--its
narrow door, without either bolts or bars, hung half-aslant upon
creaking rusty hinges, and was never quite shut either by day or
night,--yet from the porch a trailing mass of "creeping jenny" fell in
a gold-dotted emerald fringe over the head of any way-worn traveller
passing in,--making a brightness in a darkness, and suggesting
something not altogether uncheery in the welcome provided. They were
very humble folk who kept the Hotel Poitiers,--the host, Jean Patoux,
was a small market-gardener who owned a plot of land outside Rouen,
which he chiefly devoted to the easy growing of potatoes and
celery--his wife had her hands full with the domestic business of the
hotel and the cares of her two children, Henri and Babette, the most
incorrigible imps of mischief that ever lived in Rouen or out of it.
Madame Patoux, large of body, unwieldy in movement, but clean as a new
pin, and with a fat smile of perpetual contentment on her round visage,
professed to be utterly worn to death by the antics of these children
of hers,--but nevertheless she managed to grow stouter every day with a
persistency and fortitude which denoted the reserved forces of her
nature,--and her cooking, always excellent, never went wrong because
Babette had managed to put her doll in one of the saucepans, or Henri
had essayed to swim a paper boat in the soup. Things went on somehow;
Patoux himself was perfectly satisfied with his small earnings and
position in life--Madame Patoux felt that "le bon Dieu" was specially
engaged in looking after her,--and as long as the wicked Babette and
the wickeder Henri threw themselves wildly into her arms and clung
round her fat neck imploring pardon after any and every misdeed, and
sat for a while "en penitence" in separate corners reading the "Hours
of Mary", they might be as naughty as they chose over and over again so
far as the good-natured mother was concerned. Just now, however,
unusual calm appeared to have settled on the Patoux household,--an
atmosphere of general placidity and peace prevailed, which had the
effect of imparting almost a stately air to the tumble-down house, and
a suggestion of luxury to the poorly-furnished rooms Madame Patoux
herself was conscious of a mysterious dignity in her surroundings, and
moved about on her various household duties with less bounce and fuss
than was her ordinary custom,--and Henri and Babette sat quiet without
being told to do so, moved apparently by a sudden and inexplicable
desire to study their lessons. All this had been brought about by the
advent of Cardinal Bonpre, who with his kind face, gentle voice and
beneficent manner, had sought and found lodging at the Hotel Poitiers,
notwithstanding Madame Patoux's profuse apologies for the narrowness
and inconvenience of her best rooms.

"For look you, Monseigneur," she murmured, deferentially, "How should
we have ever expected such an honour as the visit of a holy
Cardinal-Archbishop to our poor little place! There are many new houses
on the Boulevards which could have accommodated Monseigneur with every
comfort,--and that he should condescend to bestow the blessing of his
presence upon us,--ah! it was a special dispensation of Our Lady which
was too amazing and wonderful to be at once comprehended!"

Thus Madame Patoux, with breathless pauses between her sentences, and
many profound curtseyings; but the good Cardinal waived aside her
excuses and protestations, and calling her "My daughter", signed the
cross on her brow with paternal gentleness, assuring her that he would
give her as little trouble as any other casual visitor.

"Trouble!--Ah, heaven!--could anything be a trouble for Monseigneur!"
and Madame Patoux, moved to tears by the quiet contentment with which
the Cardinal took possession of the two bare, common rooms which were
the best she could place at his disposal, hurried away, and hustling
Henri and Babette like two little roly-poly balls before her into the
kitchen, she told them with much emphasis that there was a saint in the
house,--a saint fit to be the holy companion of any of those who had
their niches up in the Cathedral near the great rose-window,--and that
if they were good children they would very likely see an angel coming
down from heaven to visit him. Babette put her finger in her mouth and
looked incredulous. She had a vague belief in angels,--but Henri, with
the cheap cynicism of the modern French lad was anything but sure about
them.

"Mother," said he, "There's a boy in our school who says there is no
God at all, and that it's no use having priests or Cardinals or
Cathedrals,--it's all rubbish and humbug!"

"Poor little miserable monster!" exclaimed Madame Patoux, as she peered
into the pot where the soup for the Cardinal's supper was
simmering--"He is arranging himself to become a thief or a murderer, be
sure of that, Henri!--and thou, who art trained in all thy holy duties
by the good Pere Laurent, who teaches thee everything which the school
is not wise enough to teach, ought never to listen to such wickedness.
If there were no God, we should not be alive at all, thou foolish
child!--for it is only our blessed Saviour and the saints that keep the
world going."

Henri was silent,--Babette looked at him and made a little grimace of
scorn.

"If the Cardinal is a saint," she said--"he should be able to perform a
miracle. The little Fabien Doucet has been lame for seven years; we
shall bring him to Monseigneur, and he will mend his leg and make him
well. Then we shall believe in saints afterwards."

Madame Patoux turned her warm red face round from the fire over which
she was bending, and stared at her precocious offspring aghast.

"What! You will dare to address yourself to the Cardinal!" she cried
vociferously--"You will dare to trouble him with such foolishness? Mon
Dieu!--is it possible to be so wicked! But listen to me well!--If you
presume to say one saucy word to Monseigneur, you shall be punished!
What have you to do with the little Fabien Doucet?--the poor child is
sickly and diseased by the will of God."

"I don't see why it should be God's will to make a boy sickly and
diseased--" began the irrepressible Henri, when his mother cut him
short with a stamp of her foot and a cry of--

"Tais-toi! Silence! Wicked boy!--thou wilt kill me with thy naughty
speeches! All this evil comes of the school,--I would thy father had
never been compelled to send thee there!"

As she said this with a vast amount of heat and energy, Henri, seized
by some occult and inexplicable emotion, burst without warning into
loud and fitful weeping, the sound whereof resembled the yelling of a
tortured savage,--and Babette, petrified at first by the appalling
noise, presently gave way likewise, and shrieked a wild accompaniment.

"What ails my children?" said a gentle voice, distinct and clear in its
calm intonation even in the midst of the uproar, and Cardinal Bonpre,
tall and stately, suddenly appeared upon the threshold--"What little
sorrows are these?"

Henri's roar ceased abruptly,--Babette's shrill wailing dropped into
awed silence. Both youngsters stared amazed at the venerable Felix,
whose face and figure expressed such composed dignity and sweetness;
and Madame Patoux, nastily and with frequent gasps for breath, related
the history of the skirmish.

"And what will become of such little devils when they grow older, the
Blessed Virgin only knows!" she groaned--"For even now they are so
suspicious in nature, that they will not believe in their dinner till
they see it!"

Something like a faint grin widened the mouths of Henri and Babette at
this statement made with so much distressed fervour by their angry
mother,--but the Cardinal did not smile. His face had grown very pale
and grave, almost stern.

"The children are quite right, my daughter," he said gently,--"I am no
saint! I have performed no miracles. I am a poor sinner,--striving to
do well, but alas!--for ever striving in vain. The days of noble living
are past,--and we are all too much fallen in the ways of error to
deserve that our Lord should bless the too often half-hearted and
grudging labour of his so-called servants. Come here, ma mignonne!" he
continued, calling Babette, who approached him with a curious air of
half-timid boldness--"Thou art but a very little girl," he said, laying
his thin white hand softly on her tumbled brown curls--"Nevertheless, I
should be a very foolish old man if I despised thee, or thy thoughts,
or thy desire to know the truth for truth's sake. Therefore to-morrow
thou shalt bring me this afflicted friend of thine, and though I have
no divine gifts, I will do even as the Master commanded,--I will lay my
hands on him in blessing and pray that he may be healed. More than this
is not in my power, my child!--if a miracle is to be worked, it is our
dear Lord only who can work it."

Gently he murmured his formal benediction,--then, turning away, he
entered his own room and shut the door. Babette, grown strangely
serious, turned to her brother and held out her hand, moved by one of
those erratic impulses which often take sudden possession of
self-willed children.

"Come into the Cathedral!" she whispered imperatively--"Come and say an
Ave."

Not a word did the usually glib Henri vouchsafe in answer,--but
clutching his sister's fingers in his own dirty, horny palm, he trotted
meekly beside her out of the house and across the Square into the
silence and darkness of Notre Dame. Their mother watched their little
plump figures disappear with a feeling of mingled amazement and
gratitude,--miracles were surely beginning, she thought, if a few words
from the Cardinal could impress Babette and Henri with an idea of the
necessity of prayer!

They were not long gone, however;--they came walking back together,
still demurely hand in hand, and settled themselves quietly in a corner
to study their tasks for the next day. Babette's doll, once attired as
a fashionable Parisienne, and now degenerated into a one-eyed laundress
with a rather soiled cap and apron, stuck out its composite arms in
vain from the bench where it sat all askew, drooping its head forlornly
over a dustpan,--and Henri's drum, wherewith he was wont to wake
alarming echoes out of the dreamy and historical streets of Rouen, lay
on its side neglected and ingloriously silent. And, as before said,
peace reigned in the Patoux household,--even the entrance of Papa
Patoux himself, fresh from his celery beds, and smelling of the earth
earthy, created no particular diversion. He was a very little, very
cheery, round man, was Papa Patoux; he had no ideas at all in his
bullet head save that he judged everything to be very well managed in
the Universe, and that he, considered simply as Patoux, was lucky in
his life and labours,--also that it was an easy thing to grow celery,
provided God's blessing was on the soil. For the rest, he took small
care; he knew that the world wagged in different ways in different
climates,--he read his half-penny journal daily, and professed to be
interested in the political situation just for the fun of the thing,
but in reality he thought the French Senate a pack of fools, and
wondered what they meant by always talking so much about nothing. He
believed in "La Patrie" to a certain extent,--but he would have very
much objected if "La Patrie" had interfered with his celery. Roughly
sneaking, he understood that France was a nation, and that he was a
Frenchman; and that if any enemies should presume to come into the
country, it would be necessary to take up a musket and fight them out
again, and defend wife, children, and celery-beds till the last breath
was out of his body. Further than this simple and primitive idea of
patriotism he did not go. He never bothered himself about dissentient
shades of opinion, or quarrels among opposing parties. When he had to
send his children to the Government school, the first thing he asked
was whether they would be taught their religion there. He was told
no,--that the Government objected to religious teaching, as it merely
created discussion and was of no assistance whatever in the material
business of life. Patoux scratched his head over this for a
considerable time and ruminated deeply,--finally he smiled, a dull fat
smile.

"Good!" said he--"I understand now why the Government makes such an ass
of itself now and then! You cannot expect mere men to do their duty
wisely without God on their side. But Pere Laurent will teach my
children their prayers and catechism,--and I dare say Heaven will
arrange the rest."

And he forthwith dismissed the matter from his mind. His children
attended the Government school daily,--and every Wednesday, Saturday,
and Sunday afternoons Pere Laurent, a kindly, simple-hearted old
priest, took them, with several other little creatures "educated by the
State", and taught them all he knew about the great France-exiled
Creator of the Universe, and of His ceaseless love to sinful and
blasphemous mankind.

So things went on;--and though Henri and Babette were being crammed by
the national system of instruction, with learning which was destined to
be of very slight use to them in their after careers, and which made
them little cynics before their time, they were still sustained within
bounds by the saving sense of something better than themselves,--that
Something Better which silently declares itself in the beauty of the
skies, the blossoming of the flowers, and the loveliness of all things
wherein man has no part,--and neither of them was yet transformed into
that most fearsome product of modern days, the child-Atheist, for whom
there is no greater God than Self.

On this particular night when Papa Patoux returned to the bosom of his
family, he, though a dull-witted man generally, did not fail to note
the dove-like spirit of calm that reigned over his entire household.
His wife's fat face was agreeably placid,--the children were in an
orderly mood, and as he sat down to the neatly spread supper-table, he
felt more convinced than ever that things were exceedingly well managed
for him in this best of all possible worlds. Pausing in the act of
conveying a large spoonful of steaming soup to his mouth he enquired--

"And Monseigneur, the Cardinal Bonpre,--has he also been served?"

Madame Patoux opened her round eyes wide at him.

"But certainly! Dost thou think, my little cabbage, thou wouldst get
thy food before Monseigneur? That would be strange indeed!"

Papa Patoux swallowed his ladleful of soup in abashed silence.

"It was a beautiful day in the fields," he presently observed--"There
was a good smell in the earth, as if violets were growing,--and late in
the autumn though it is, there was a skylark yet singing. It was a very
blue heaven, too, as blue as the robe of the Virgin, with clouds as
white as little angels clinging to it."

Madame nodded. Some people might have thought Papa Patoux inclined to
be poetical,--she did not. Henri and Babette listened.

"The robe of Our Lady is always blue," said Babette.

"And the angels' clothes are always white," added Henri.

Madame Patoux said nothing, but passed a second helping of soup all
round. Papa Patoux smiled blandly on his offspring.

"Just so," he averred--"Blue and white are the colours of the sky, my
little ones,--and Our Lady and the angels live in the sky!"

"I wonder where?" muttered Henri with his mouth half full. "The sky is
nothing but miles and miles of air, and in the air there are millions
and millions of planets turning round and round, larger than our
world,--ever so much larger,--and nobody knows which is the largest of
them all!"

"It is as thou sayest, my son," said Patoux confidently--"Nobody knows
which is the largest of them all, but whichever it may be, that largest
of them all belongs to Our Lady and the angels."

Henri looked at Babette, but Babette was munching watercress busily,
and did not return his enquiring glances. Papa Patoux, quite satisfied
with his own reasoning, continued his supper in an amiable state of
mind.

"What didst thou serve to Monseigneur, my little one?" he asked his
wife with a coaxing and caressing air, as though she were some delicate
and dainty sylph of the woodlands, instead of being the lady of massive
proportions which she undoubtedly was,--"Something of delicacy and fine
flavour, doubtless?"

Madame Patoux shook her head despondingly.

"He would have nothing of that kind," she replied--"Soup maigre, and
afterwards nothing but bread, dried figs, and apples to finish. Ah,
Heaven! What a supper for a Cardinal-Archbishop! It is enough to make
one weep!"

Patoux considered the matter solemnly.

"He is perhaps very poor?" he half queried.

"Poor, he may be," responded Madame,--"But if he is, it is surely his
own fault,--whoever heard of a poor Cardinal-Archbishop! Such men can
all be rich if they choose."

"Can they?" asked Henri with sudden vivacious eagerness. "How?"

But his question was not answered, for just at that moment a loud knock
came at the door of the inn, and a tall broadly built personage in
close canonical attire appeared in the narrow little passage of entry,
attended by another smaller and very much more insignificant-looking
individual.

Patoux hastily scrambled out of his chair.

"The Archbishop!" he whispered to his wife--"He himself! Our own
Archbishop!"

Madame Patoux jumped up, and seizing her children, held one in each
hand as she curtsied up and down.

"Benedicite!" said the new-comer, lightly signing the cross in air with
a sociable smile--"Do not disturb yourselves, my children! You have
with you in this house the eminent Cardinal Bonpre?"

"Ah, yes, Monseigneur!" replied Madame Patoux--"Only just now he has
finished his little supper. Shall I show Monseigneur to his room?"

"If you please," returned the Archbishop, still smiling
benevolently--"And permit my secretary to wait with you here till I
return."

With this, and an introductory wave of his hand in the direction of the
attenuated and sallow-faced personage who had accompanied him, he
graciously permitted Madame Patoux to humbly precede him by a few
steps, and then followed her with a soft, even tread, and a sound as of
rustling silk in his garments, from which a faint odour of some
delicate perfume seemed wafted as he moved.

Left to entertain the Archbishop's secretary, Jean Patoux was for a
minute or two somewhat embarrassed. Henri and Babette stared at the
stranger with undisguised curiosity, and were apparently not favourably
impressed by his appearance.

"He has white eyelashes!" whispered Henri.

"And yellow teeth," responded Babette.

Meanwhile Patoux, having scratched his bullet-head sufficiently over
the matter, offered his visitor a chair.

"Sit down, sir," he said curtly.

The secretary smiled pallidly and took the proffered accommodation.
Patoux again meditated. He was not skilled in the art of polite
conversation, and he found himself singularly at a loss.

"It would be an objection no doubt, and an irreverance perhaps to smoke
a pipe before you, Monsieur--Monsieur--"

"Cazeau," finished the secretary with another pallid smile--"Claude
Cazeau, a poor scribe,--at your service! And I beg of you, Monsieur
Jean Patoux, to smoke at your distinguished convenience!"

There was a faint tone of satire in his voice which struck Papa Patoux
as exceedingly disagreeable, though he could not quite imagine why he
found it so. He slowly reached for his pipe from the projecting shelf
above the chimney, and as slowly proceeded to fill it with tobacco from
a tin cannister close by.

"I do not think I have ever seen you in the town, Monsieur Cazeau," he
said--"Nor at Mass in the Cathedral either?"

"No?" responded Cazeau easily, in a half-querying tone--"I do not much
frequent the streets; and I only attend the first early mass on
Sundays. My work for Monseigneur occupies my whole time."

"Ah!" and Patoux, having stuffed his pipe sufficiently, lit it, and
proceeded to smoke peaceably--"There must be much to do. Many poor and
sick who need money, and clothes, and help in every way,--and to try
and do good, and give comfort to all the unhappy souls in Rouen is a
hard task, even for an Archbishop."

Cazeau linked his thin hands together with an action of pious fervour
and assented.

"There is a broken-hearted creature near us," pursued Patoux
leisurely--"We call her Marguerite La Folle;--I have often thought I
would ask Pere Laurent to speak to Monseigneur for her, that she might
be released from the devils that are tearing her. She was a good girl
till a year or two ago,--then some villain got the ruin of her, and she
lost her wits over it. Ah,'tis a sad sight to see her now--poor
Marguerite Valmond!"

"Ha!" cried Henri suddenly, pointing a grimy finger at Cazeau--"Why did
you jump? Did something hurt you?"

Cazeau had indeed "jumped," as Henri put it,--that is, he had sprung up
from his chair suddenly and as suddenly sat down again with an air of
impatience and discomfort. He rapidly overcame whatever emotion moved
him, however, and stretched his thin mouth in a would-be amiable grin
at the observant Henri.

"You are a sharp boy!" he observed condescendingly--"and tall for your
age, no doubt. How old are you?"

"Eleven," replied Henri--"But that has nothing to do with your jumping."

"True," and the secretary wriggled in his chair, pretending to be much
amused--"But my jumping had nothing to do with you either, my small
friend! I had a thought,--a sudden thought,--of a duty forgotten."

"Oh, it was a thought, was it?" and Henri looked incredulous. "Do
thoughts always make you jump?"

"Tais-toi! Tais-toi!" murmured Patoux gently, between two whiffs of his
pipe--"Excuse him, Monsieur Cazeau,--he is but a child."

Cazeau writhed amicably.

"A delightful child," he murmured--"And the little girl--his sister--is
also charming--Ah, what fine dark eyes!--what hair! Will she not come
and speak to me?"

He held out a hand invitingly towards Babette, but she merely made a
grimace at him and retired backwards. Patoux smiled benevolently.

"She does not like strangers," he explained.

"Good--very good! That is right! Little girls should always run away
from strangers, especially strangers of my sex," observed Cazeau with a
sniggering laugh--"And do these dear children go to school?"

Patoux took his pipe out of his mouth altogether, and stared solemnly
at the ceiling.

"Without doubt!--they are compelled to go to school," he answered
slowly; "but if I could have had my way, they should never have gone.
They learn mischief there in plenty, but no good that I can see. They
know much about geography, and the stars, and anatomy, and what they
call physical sciences;--but whether they have got it into their heads
that the good God wants them to live straight, clean, honest, wholesome
lives, is more than I am certain of. However, I trust Pere Laurent will
do what he can."

"Pere Laurent?" echoed Cazeau, with a wide smile--"You have a high
opinion of Pere Laurent? Ah, yes, a good man!--but ignorant--alas! very
ignorant!"

Papa Patoux brought his eyes down from the ceiling and fixed them
enquiringly on Cazeau.

"Ignorant?" he began, when at this juncture Madame Patoux entered, and
taking possession of Henri and Babette, informed Monsieur Cazeau that
the Archbishop would be for some time engaged in conversation with
Cardinal Bonpre, and that therefore he, Monsieur Cazeau, need not
wait,--Monseigneur would return to his house alone. Whereupon the
secretary rose, evidently glad to be set at liberty, and took his leave
of the Patoux family. On the threshold, however, he paused, looking
back somewhat frowningly at Jean Patoux himself.

"I should not, if I were you, trouble Monseigneur concerning the case
you told me of--that of--of Marguerite Valmond,"--he observed--"He has
a horror of evil women."

With that he departed, walking across the Square towards the
Archbishop's house in a stealthy sort of fashion, as though he were a
burglar meditating some particularly daring robbery.

"He is a rat--a rat!" exclaimed Henri, suddenly executing a sort of
reasonless war-dance round the kitchen--"One wants a cat to catch him!"

"Rats are nice," declared Babette, for she remembered having once had a
tame white rat which sat on her knee and took food from her
hand,--"Monsieur Cazeau is a man; and men are not nice."

Patoux burst into a loud laugh.

"Men are not nice!" he echoed--"What dost thou know about it, thou
little droll one?"

"What I see," responded Babette severely, with an elderly air, as of a
person who has suffered by bitter experience; and, undeterred by her
parents' continued laughter she went on--

"Men are ugly. They are dirty. They say 'Come here my little girl, and
I will give you something,'--then when I go to them they try and kiss
me. And I will not kiss them, because their mouths smell bad. They
stroke my hair and pull it all the wrong way. And it hurts. And when I
don't like my hair pulled the wrong way, they tell me I will be a great
coquette. A coquette is to be like Diane de Poitiers. Shall I be like
Diane de Poitiers?"

"The saints forbid!" cried Madame Patoux,--"And talk no more nonsense,
child,--it's bed-time. Come,--say good-night to thy father,
Henri;--give them thy blessing, Jean--and let me get them into their
beds before the Archbishop leaves the house, or they will be asking him
as many questions as there are in the catechism."

Thus enjoined, Papa Patoux kissed his children affectionately, signing
the cross on their brows as they came up to him in turn, after the
fashion of his own father, who had continued this custom up to his
dying day. What they thought of the benediction in itself might be
somewhat difficult to define, but it can be safely asserted that a
passion of tears on the part of Babette, and a fit of demoniacal
howling from Henri, would have been the inevitable result if Papa
Patoux had refused to bestow it on them. Whether there were virtue in
it or not, their father's mute blessing sent them to bed peaceably and
in good humour with each other, and they trotted off very contentedly
beside their mother, hushing their footsteps and lowering their voices
as they passed the door of the room occupied by Cardinal Bonpre.

"The Archbishop is not an angel, is he?" asked Babette whisperingly.

Her mother smiled broadly.

"Not exactly, my little one. Why such a foolish question?"

"You said that Cardinal Bonpre was a saint, and that perhaps we should
see an angel come down from heaven to visit him," replied Babette.

"Well, you could not have thought the Archbishop came from heaven,"
interpolated Henri, scornfully,--"He came from his own house over the
way with his own secretary behind him. Do angels keep secretaries?"

Babette laughed aloud,--the idea was grotesque. The two children were
just then ascending the wooden stairs to their bedroom, the mother
carrying a lighted candle behind them, and at that moment the rich
sonorous voice of the Archbishop, raised to a high and somewhat
indignant tone, reached them with these words--"I consider that you
altogether mistake your calling and position."

Then the voice died away into inaudible murmurings.

"They are quarrelling! The Archbishop is angry!" said Henri with a grin.

"Perhaps Archbishops do not like saints," suggested Babette.

"Tais-toi! Cardinal Bonpre is an archbishop himself, little silly,"
said Madame Patoux--"Therefore those great and distinguished
Monseigneurs are like brothers."

"That is why they are quarrelling!" declared Henri glibly,--"A boy told
me in school that Cain and Abel were the first pair of brothers, and
they quarrelled,--and all brothers have quarrelled ever since. It's in
the blood, so that boy says,--and it is his excuse always for fighting
HIS little brother. His little brother is six, and he is twelve;--and
of course he always knocks his little brother down. He cannot help it,
he says. And he gets books on physiology and heredity, and he learns in
them that whatever is IN the blood has got to come out somehow. He says
that it's because Cain killed Abel that there are wars between
nations;--if Cain and Abel had never quarrelled, there would never have
been any fighting in the world,--and now that it's in the blood of
every body--"

But further sapient discourse on the part of Henri was summarily put an
end to by his mother's ordering him to kneel down and say his prayers,
and afterwards bundling him into bed,--where, being sleepy, he speedily
forgot all that he had been trying to talk about. Babette took more
time in retiring to rest. She had very pretty, curly, brown hair, and
Madame Patoux took a pride in brushing and plaiting it neatly.

"I may be like Diane de Poitiers after all," she remarked, peering at
herself in the small mirror when her thick locks were smoothed and tied
back for the night--"Why should I not be?"

"Because Diane de Poitiers was a wicked woman," said Madame Patoux
energetically,--"and thou must learn to be a good girl."

"But if Diane de Poitiers was bad, why do they talk so much about her
even now, and put her in all the histories, and show her house, and say
she was beautiful?" went on Babette.

"Because people are foolish," said Madame, getting impatient--"Foolish
people run after bad women, and bad women run after foolish people. Now
say thy prayers."

Obediently Babette knelt down, shut her eyes close, clasped her hands
hard, and murmured the usual evening formula, heaving a small sigh
after her "act of contrition," and looking almost saintly as she
commended herself to her "angel guardian." Then her mother kissed her,
saying--

"Good-night, little daughter! Think of Our Lady and the saints, and
then ask them to keep us safe from evil. Good-night!"

"Good-night." responded Babette sleepily,--but all the same she did not
think of Our Lady and the saints half as much as of Diane de Poitiers.
There are few daughters of Eve to whom conquest does not seem a finer
thing than humility; and the sovereignty of Diane de Poitiers over a
king, seems to many a girl just conscious of her own charm, a more
emphatic testimony to the supremacy of her sex, than the Angel's
greeting of "Blessed art thou!" to the elected Virgin of the world.




III.

Meanwhile a somewhat embarrassing interview had taken place between the
Archbishop of Rouen and Cardinal Bonpre. The archbishop, seen by the
light of the one small lamp which illumined the "best room" of the
Hotel Poitiers was certainly a handsome and imposing personage,
broad-chested and muscular, with a massive head, well set on strong
square shoulders, admirably adapted for the wearing of the dark violet
soutane which fitted them as gracefully as a royal vesture draping the
figure of a king. One disproportionate point, however, about his attire
was, that the heavy gold crucifix which depended by a chain from his
neck, did not, with him, look so much a sacred symbol as a trivial
ornament,--whereas the simple silver one that gleamed against the rusty
black scarlet-edged cassock of Cardinal Bonpre, presented itself as the
plain and significant sign of holiness without the aid of jewellers'
workmanship to emphasize its meaning. This was a trifle, no
doubt;--still it was one of those slight things which often betray
character. As the most brilliant diamond will look like common glass on
the rough red hand of a cook, while common glass will simulate the
richness of the real gem on the delicate white finger of a
daintily-bred woman, so the emblem of salvation seemed a mere bauble
and toy on the breast of the Archbishop, while it assumed its most
reverent and sacred aspect as worn by Felix Bonpre. Yet judged by mere
outward appearance, there could be no doubt as to which was the
finer-looking man of the two. The Cardinal, thin and pale, with shadows
of thought and pain in his eyes, and the many delicate wrinkles of
advancing age marking his features, would never possess so much
attractiveness for worldly and superficial persons as the handsome
Archbishop, who carried his fifty-five years as though they were but
thirty, and whose fresh, plump face, unmarred by any serious
consideration, bespoke a thorough enjoyment of life, and the things
which life,--if encouraged to demand them,--most strenuously seeks,
such as good food, soft beds, rich clothing, and other countless
luxuries which are not necessities by any means, but which make the
hours move smoothly and softly, undisturbed by the clash of outside
events among those who are busy with thoughts and actions, and
who,--being absorbed in the thick of a soul-contest,--care little
whether their bodies fare ill or well. The Archbishop certainly did not
belong to this latter class,--indeed he considered too much thought as
mischievous in itself, and when thought appeared likely to break forth
into action, he denounced it as pernicious and well-nigh criminal.

"Thinkers," he said once to a young and ardent novice, studying for the
priesthood, "are generally socialists and revolutionists. They are an
offence to the Church and a danger to the community."

"Surely," murmured the novice timidly,--"Our Lord Himself was a
thinker? And a Socialist likewise?"

But at this the Archbishop rose up in wrath and flashed forth menace;--

"If you are a follower of Renan, sir, you had better admit it before
proceeding further in your studies," he said irately,--"The Church is
too much troubled in these days by the members of a useless and
degenerate apostasy!" Whereupon the young man had left his presence
abashed, puzzled, and humiliated; but scarcely penitent, inasmuch as
his New Testament taught him that he was right and that the Archbishop
was wrong.

Truth to tell, the Archbishop was very often wrong. Wrapped up in
himself and his own fixed notions as to how life should be lived, he
seldom looked out upon the larger world, and obstinately refused to
take any thoughtful notice of the general tendency of public opinion in
all countries concerning religion and morality. All that he was unable
to explain, he flatly denied,--and his prejudices were as violent as
his hatred of contradiction was keen. The saintly life and noble deeds
of Felix Bonpre had reached him from time to time through various
rumours repeated by different priests and dignitaries of the Church,
who had travelled as far as the distant little Cathedral-town embowered
among towering pines and elm trees, where the Cardinal had his abiding
seat of duty;--and he had been anxious to meet the man who in these
days of fastidious feeding and luxurious living, had managed to gain
such a holy reputation as to be almost canonized in some folks'
estimation before he was dead. Hearing that Bonpre intended to stay a
couple of nights in Rouen, he cordially invited him to spend that time
at his house,--but the invitation had been gratefully yet firmly
refused, much to the Archbishop's amazement. This amazement increased
considerably when he learned that the dingy, comfortless, little Hotel
Poitiers had been selected by the Cardinal as his temporary
lodging,--and it was not without a pious murmur concerning "the pride
which apes humility" that he betook himself to that ancient and
despised hostelry, which had nothing whatever in the way of a modern
advantage to recommend it,--neither electric light, nor electric bell,
nor telephone. But he felt it incumbent upon him to pay a fraternal
visit to the Cardinal, who had become in a manner famous without being
at all aware of his fame,--and when finally in his presence, he was
conscious not only of a singular disappointment, but an equally
singular perplexity. Felix Bonpre was not at all the sort of personage
he had expected to see. He had imagined that a Churchman who was able
to obtain a character for saintliness in days like these, must needs be
worldly-wise and crafty, with a keen perception and comprehension of
the follies of mankind, and an ability to use these follies
advantageously to further his own ends. Something of the cunning and
foresight of an ancient Egyptian sorcerer was in the composition of the
Archbishop himself, for he judged mankind alone by its general
stupidity and credulity;--stupidity and credulity which formed
excellent ground for the working of miracles, whether such miracles
were wrought in the name of Osiris or Christ. Mokanna, the "Veiled
Prophet," while corrupt to the core with unnameable vices, had managed
in his time to delude the people into thinking him a holy man;
and,--without any adequate reason for his assumption,--the Archbishop
had certainly prepared himself to meet in Felix Bonpre, a shrewd,
calculating, clever priest, absorbed in acting the part of an excessive
holiness in order to secure such honour in his diocese as should
attract the particular notice of the Vatican. "Playing for Pope," in
fact, had been the idea with which the archbishop had invested the
Cardinal's reputed sanctity, and he was astonished and in a manner
irritated to find himself completely mistaken. He had opened the
conversation by the usual cordial trivialities of ordinary greeting, to
which Bonpre had responded with the suave courtesy and refined
gentleness which always dignified his manner,--and then the Archbishop
had ventured to offer a remonstrance on the unconventional--"Shall we
call it eccentric?" he suggested, smiling amicably,--conduct of the
Cardinal in choosing to abide in such a comfortless lodging as the
Hotel Poitiers.

"It would have been a pleasure and an honour to me to welcome you at my
house"--he said--"Really, it is quite a violation of custom and usage
that you should be in this wretched place; the accommodation is not at
all fitted for a prince of the Church."

Cardinal Felix raised one hand in gentle yet pained protest.

"Pardon me!" he said, "I do not like that term, 'prince of the Church.'
There are no princes in the Church--or if there are, there should be
none."

The archbishop opened his eyes widely.

"That is a strange remark!" he ejaculated--"Princes of the Church there
have always been since Cardinals were created; and you, being a
Cardinal and an Archbishop as well, cannot be otherwise than one of
them."

Felix Bonpre sighed.

"Still, I maintain that the term is a wrong one," he answered, "and
used in the wrong place. The Church has nothing, or should have nothing
to do with differing titles or places. The ordinary priest who toils
among his congregation day and night, scarcely resting himself, working
and praying for the spiritual welfare of others, should to my thinking
be as greatly held in honour as the bishop who commands him and who
often--so it chances--is able to do less for our Lord than he. In
things temporal, owing to the constant injustice of man practised
against his brother-man, we can seldom attain to strict impartiality of
judgment,--but in things spiritual, there surely should be perfect
equality."

"Seriously speaking, are those your views?" enquired the Archbishop,
his features expressing more and more astonishment.

"Assuredly!" responded the Cardinal gently,--"Are they not yours? Did
not the Master Himself say 'Whosoever will be chief among you, let him
be your servant'? And 'Whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased'?
These statements are plain and true,--there is no mistaking them."

The Archbishop was silent for a minute or so.

"Unfortunately we cannot apply our Lord's words literally to every-day
exigencies," he murmured suavely--"If we could do so--"

"We SHOULD do so," said the Cardinal with emphasis--"The outside world
may be disinclined to do so,--but we--we who are the representatives of
a God-given faith, are solemnly bound to do so. And I fear--I very much
fear--that it is because in many cases we have not shown the example
expected of us, that heresy and atheism are so common among the people
of the present day."

"Are you a would-be reformer?" asked the Archbishop good-humouredly,
yet not without a touch of satire in his tone,--"If so, you are not
alone--there have already been many!"

"Nay, I desire no reforms," responded the Cardinal, a faint flush
warming the habitual pallor of his cheeks--"I simply wish to
maintain--not alter--the doctrine of our Lord. No reform is necessary
in that,--it is clear, concise, and simple enough for a child to
understand. His command to His disciples was,--'Feed my sheep'--and I
have of late been troubled and perplexed, because it seems to me that
the sheep are not fed;--that despite churches and teachers and
preachers, whole flocks are starving."

The Archbishop moved uneasily in his chair. His habitual violent spirit
of contradiction rose up rebelliously in him, and he longed to give a
sharp answer in confutation of the Cardinal's words, but there was a
touch of the sycophant in his nature despite his personal pride, and he
could not but reflect that Cardinals ranked above Archbishops, and that
Felix Bonpre was in very truth a "prince of the Church" however much he
himself elected to disclaim the title. And as in secular affairs lesser
men will always bow the knee to royalty, so the Archbishop felt the
necessity of temporising with one who was spiritually royal. Therefore
he considered a moment before replying.

"I think," he said at last, in soft persuasive tones, "that your
conscience may perhaps be a little tender on this subject. But I cannot
agree with you in your supposition that whole flocks are starving;--for
Christianity dominates the better and more intellectual part of the
civilized world, and through its doctrines, men are gradually learning
to be more tolerant and less unjust. When we recollect the barbarous
condition of humanity before the coming of Christ--"

"Barbarous?" interrupted the Cardinal with half a smile,--"You would
hardly apply that term to the luxury-loving peoples of Tyre and
Babylon?--or to the ancient splendours of Athens and Rome?"

"They were heathens," said the Archbishop sententiously.

"But they were men and women," replied Bonpre, "And they too had
immortal souls. They were all more or less struggling towards the
fundamental Idea of good. Of course then, as now that Idea was
overgrown by superstitious myths and observances--but the working
tendency of the whole universe being ever towards Good, not Evil, an
impulse to press on in the right direction was always in the brain of
man, no matter how dimly felt. Primitive notions of honour were strange
indeed; nevertheless honour existed in the minds of the early
barbarians in a vague sense, though distorted out of shape and noblest
meaning. No,--we dare not take upon ourselves to assert that men were
altogether barbarous before the coming of Christ. They were cruel and
unjust certainly,--and alas! they are cruel and unjust still! Eighteen
hundred years of Christian teaching have not eradicated these ingrained
sins from any one unit of the entire mass."

"You are a severe judge!" said the Archbishop.

Cardinal Bonpre lifted his mild blue eyes protestingly.

"Severe? I? God forbid that I should be severe, or presume to sit in
judgment on any poor soul that sought my sympathy! I do not judge,--I
simply feel. And my feelings have for a long time, I confess, been
poignantly sorrowful."

"Sorrowful! And why?"

"Because the impression has steadily gained upon me that if our Church
were all it was originally intended to be by its Divine Founder, we
should at this time have neither heresies or apostasies, and all the
world would be gathered into the 'one fold under one Shepherd.' But if
we, who are its ministers, persist in occupying ourselves more with
'things temporal' than 'things spiritual,' we fail to perform our
mission, or to show the example required of us, and we do not attract,
so much as we repel. The very children of the present day are beginning
to doubt our calling and election."

"Oh, of course there are, and always have been heretics and atheists,"
said the Archbishop,--"And apparently there always will be."

"And I venture to maintain that it is our fault that heretics and
atheists continue to exist," replied the Cardinal; "If our Divine faith
were lived divinely, there would be no room for heresy or atheism. The
Church itself supplies the loophole for apostasy."

The Archbishop's handsome face crimsoned.

"You amaze me by such an expression!" he said, raising his voice a
little in the indignation he could scarcely conceal--"you talk--pardon
me--as if you yourself were uncertain of the Church's ability to
withstand unbelief."

"I speak but as I think," answered the Cardinal gently. "And I admit I
AM uncertain. In the leading points of reed I am very steadfastly
convinced;--namely, that Christ was divine, and that the following of
His Gospel is the saving of the immortal soul. But if you ask me
whether I think we do truly follow that Gospel, I must own that I have
doubts upon the matter."

"An elected favourite son of the Church should surely have no doubts!"
said the Archbishop.

"Ah, there you come back to the beginning from which we started, when I
ventured to object to your term 'prince of the Church.' According to
our Master, all men should be equal before Him; therefore we err in
marking differences of rank or favoritism in questions of religion. The
very idea of rank is anti-Christian."

At this the Archbishop began to look seriously annoyed.

"I am afraid you are indulging in very unorthodox ideas," he said with
impatience--"In fact I consider you altogether mistake your calling and
position."

These were the words which had reached the attentive ears of the Patoux
children on their way up to bed, and had caused Henri to declare that
the Archbishop and the Cardinal were quarrelling. Felix Bonpre took the
somewhat violent remark, however, with perfect equanimity.

"Possibly I may do so," he responded peaceably. "We are all subject to
error. My calling, as I take it, is that of a servant of Christ, whose
instructions for work are plainly set down in His own words. It is for
me to follow these instructions as literally and exactly as I can. With
regard to my position, I am placed as the spiritual head of a very
small diocese, where the people for the most part lead very innocent
and harmless lives. But I should be selfish and narrow in spirit if I
allowed myself to limit my views to my own circle of influence. My
flock are mere rustics in intellectual capacity, and have no conception
of the manner in which the larger tide of human events is flowing. Now
and then one or two of the people grow weary of their quiet pastures
and woodlands,--and being young, hopeful, and ardent, start forth into
the great world, there to seek fairer fortunes. Sometimes they come
back to their old homes. Far more frequently they never return. But
those who do come back are changed utterly. I recognise no more the
young men and maidens whom I confirmed in their faith, and laid my
hands on in blessing ere they fared forth to other lives and scenes.
The men are grown callous and worldly; without a heart,--without a
thought,--save for the gain or loss of gold. The women are--ruined!"

He paused a moment. The Archbishop said nothing.

"I love my people," went on the Cardinal pathetically--"No child is
baptised in our old Cathedral without my praying for its future
good,--without my hope that it may grow into that exquisite mingling of
the Divine and Human which our Lord taught us was the perfection of
life, and His desire to see fulfilled in those He called His own.
Yes,--I love my people!--and when any of them go away from me, and then
return to the scenes of their childhood broken-hearted, I cannot meet
them with reproach. My own heart is half broken to see them thus cast
down. And their sorrows have compelled me naturally to meditate on the
sorrows of others,--to consider what it is in the world which thus
corrodes the pure gold of innocence and robs life of its greatest
charm. For if Christ's spirit ruled us all, then innocence should be
held more sacred. Life should engender happiness. I have studied, read,
and thought long, upon these matters, so that I not only feel, but know
the truth of what I say. Brother!--" and the Cardinal, strongly moved,
rose suddenly and confronted the Archbishop with a passionate
gesture--"My great grief is that the spirit of Christ does NOT rule the
world! Christ is being re-crucified by this generation! And the Church
is looking on, and silently permitting His second murder!"

Startled by the force of this expression, the Archbishop sprang up in
his turn, his lips parted as if to speak--then--his angry glance met
the clear, calm, steadfast look of Felix Bonpre, and he faltered. His
eyes drooped--and his massive figure seemed for a moment to shrink with
a sort of abasement. Like an inspired apostle the Cardinal stood, one
hand outstretched,--his whole frame sentient with the strong emotion
which possessed him.

"You know that what I say is true," he continued in quieter but no less
intensely passionate accents--"You know that every day sees our Master
crowned with new thorns and exposed to fresh torture! You know that we
do nothing!--We stand beside Him in His second agony as dumb as though
we were unconscious of it! You know that we MIGHT speak and will not!
You know that we fear the ephemera of temporary governments, policies,
and social conventionalities, more than the great, real, and terrible
judgment of the world to come!"

"But all these things have been said before," began the Archbishop,
recovering a little from the confusion that had momentarily seized
him,--"And as I just now observed, you should remember that there have
always been heretics from the very beginning."

"Oh, I remember!" and the Cardinal sighed, "How is it possible that any
of us should forget! Heretics, whom we have tortured with unheard-of
agonies and burned in the flames, as a proof of our love and sympathy
with the tenderness of Christ Jesus!"

"You are going too far back in time!" said the Archbishop quickly. "We
erred in the beginning through excess of zeal, but now--now--"

"Now we do exactly the same thing," returned Bonpre--"Only we do not
burn physically our heretics, but morally. We condemn all who oppose
us. Good men and brave thinkers, whom in our arrogance we consign to
eternal damnation, instead of endeavouring to draw out the heart of
their mystery, and gather up the gems of their learning as fresh proofs
of the active presence of God's working in, and through all things!
Think of the Church's invincible and overpowering obstinacy in the case
of Galileo! He declared the existence of God to us by the utterance of
a Truth,--inasmuch as every truth is a new message from God. Had he
pronounced his theories before our divine Master, that Master would
have confirmed, not denied them! Have we one single example of Christ
putting to the torture any poor soul that did not believe in Him?
Nay--He Himself submitted to be tortured; but for those who wronged
Him, His prayer was only--'Father, forgive them, for they know not what
they do.' THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO! The ministers of truth should
rather suffer themselves than let others suffer. The horrors of the
Inquisition are a blot on religious history; our Master never meant us
to burn and torture men into faith. He desired us to love and lead them
into the way of life as the shepherd leads a flock into the fold. I
repeat again, there would have been no room for atheism if we--we--the
servants of Christ, had been strictly true to our vocation."

By this time the Archbishop had recovered his equanimity. He sat down
and surveyed the up-standing figure of the Cardinal with curiosity and
a touch of pity.

"You think too much of these things," he said soothingly--"You are
evidently overwrought with study and excessive zeal. Much that you say
may be true; nevertheless the Church--OUR Church--stands firm among
overwhelming contradictions,--and we, its ministers, do what we can. I
myself am disposed to think that the multitude of the saved is greater
than the multitude of the lost."

"I envy you the consolation such a thought must give," responded the
Cardinal, as he resumed his seat opposite his visitor--"I, on the
contrary, have the pained and bitter sense that we are to blame for all
this 'multitude of the lost,' or at any rate that we could have done
more in the way of rescue than we have done." He paused a moment,
passing one hand across his forehead wearily. "In truth this is what
has for a long time weighed upon my mind, and depressed my spirits even
to the detriment of bodily health. I am nearing the grave, and must
soon give an account of my stewardship;--and the knowledge of the
increasing growth of evil in the world is almost more than I can bear."

"But you are not to blame," said the Archbishop wonderingly,--"In your
own diocese you have fulfilled your duty; more than this is not
expected of you. You have done your best for the people you serve,--and
reports of your charities and good works are not lacking--"

"Do not credit such reports," interrupted the Cardinal, almost
sternly,--"I have done nothing--absolutely nothing! My life has been
too peaceful,--too many undeserved blessings have been bestowed upon
me. I much fear that the calm and quiet of my days have rendered me
selfish. I think I should long ago have sought some means of engaging
in more active duties. I feel as if I should have gone into the thick
of the religious contest, and spoken and fought, and helped the sick
and wounded of the mental battle,--but now--now it is too late!"

"Nothing is too late for one in your position," said the
Archbishop--"You may yet sit in St. Peter's chair!"

"God forbid!" ejaculated Bonpre fervently--"I would rather die! I have
never wished to rule,--I have only sought to help and to comfort. But
sixty-eight years of life weigh heavily on the faculties,--I cannot
wear the sword and buckler of energetic manhood. I am old--old!--and to
a certain extent, incapacitated for useful labour. Hence I almost
grudge my halcyon time spent among simple folk,--time made sweet by all
the surroundings of Nature's pastoral loveliness;--the sorrow of the
wider world knocks at my heart and makes it ache! I feel that I am one
of those who stand by, idly watching the Master's second death without
one word of protest!"

The archbishop listened in silence. There was a curious shamed look
upon his face, as if some secret sin within himself had suddenly been
laid bare in all its vileness to the light of day. The golden crucifix
he wore moved restlessly with a certain agitated quickness in his
breathing, and he did not raise his eyes, when, after a little pause,
he said--

"I tell you, as I told you before, that you think too much; you are
altogether too sensitive. I admit that at the present day the world is
full of terrible heresies and open blasphemy, but this is part of what
we are always bound to expect,--we are told that we must 'suffer for
righteousness' sake--'"

"We!" said the Cardinal--"Yes, WE! that is, OURSELVES;--the Church--WE
think, when we hear of heresies and blasphemies that it is we who are
'suffering for righteousness' sake,' but in our egotism we forget that
WE are not suffering at all if we are able to retain our faith! It is
the very heretics and blasphemers whom we condemn that are
suffering--suffering absolute tortures--perchance 'for righteousness'
sake'!"

"Dare we call a heretic 'righteous'?" enquired the Archbishop--"Is he
not, in his very heresy, accursed?"

"According to our Lord, no one is accursed save traitors,--that is to
say those who are not true. If a man doubts, it is better he should
admit his doubt than make a pretence of belief. The persons whom we
call heretics may have their conception of the truth,--they may say
that they cannot accept a creed which is so ignorant of its own tenets
as to condemn all those who do not follow it,--inasmuch as the very
Founder of it distinctly says--'If any man hear my words and believe
not, I judge him not; for I came not to judge the world, but to save
the world.' Now we, His followers, judge, but do not save. The atheist
is judged by us, but not rescued from his unbelief; the thinker is
condemned,--the scientist who reveals the beauty and wisdom of God as
made manifest in the composition of the lightning, or the germinating
of a flower, is accused of destroying religion. And we continue to pass
our opinion, and thunder our vetoes and bans of excommunication against
our fellowmen, in the full front of the plain command 'Judge not, that
ye be not judged'!"

"I see it is no use arguing with you," said the Archbishop, forcing a
smile, with a vexation the smile could not altogether conceal,--"You
are determined to take these sayings absolutely,--and to fret your
spirit over the non-performance of imaginary duties which do not exist.
This Church is a system,--founded on our Lord's teaching, but applied
to the needs of modern civilization. It is not humanly possible to
literally obey all Christ's commands."

"For the outside world I grant it may be difficult,--but for the
ministers of religion, however difficult it may be, it should be done,"
replied the Cardinal firmly. "I said this before, and I deliberately
maintain it. The Church IS a system,--but whether it is as much founded
on the teaching of our Lord, who was divine, as on the teaching of St.
Paul, who was NOT divine, is a question to me of much perplexity."

"St. Paul was directly inspired by our Lord," said the Archbishop--"I
am amazed that you should even hint a doubt of his apostleship!"

"I do not decry St. Paul," answered Bonpre quietly--"He was a gifted
and clever man, but he was a Man--he was not God-in-Man. Christ's
doctrine leaves no place for differing sects; St. Paul's method of
applying that doctrine serves as authority for the establishment of any
and every quarrelsome sect ever known!"

"I cannot agree with you," said the Archbishop coldly.

"I do not expect to be agreed with"--and Bonpre smiled a little--"An
opinion which excites no opposition at all is not worth having! I am
quite honest in my scruples, such as they are;--I do not think we fit,
as you say, the Church system to the needs of modern civilization. On
the contrary, we must fail in many ways to do this, else there would
not be such a crying out for help and comfort as there is at present
among all Christian peoples. We no longer speak with a grand certainty
as we ought to do. We only offer vague hopes and dubious promises to
those who thirst for the living waters of salvation and
immortality,--it is as if we did not feel sure enough of God ourselves
to make others sure. All this is wrong--wrong! It forebodes heavy
punishment and disaster. If I were younger, I could express perhaps my
meaning more clearly,--but as it is, my soul is weighted with
unutterable thoughts,--I would almost call them warnings,--of some
threatening evil;  . . . and today--only this afternoon--when I sat for
an hour in the Cathedral yonder and listened to the music of the great
organ--"

The Archbishop started.

"What did you say?"

The Cardinal repeated his words gently,--

"I said that I sat in the Cathedral and listened to the music of the
great organ--"

"The great organ!" interrupted the Archbishop,--"You must have been
dreaming! You could not possibly have heard the great organ,--it is old
and all out of gear;--it is never used. The only one we have for
service just now is a much smaller instrument in the left-hand
choir-chapel,--but no person could have played even on that without the
key. And the key was unobtainable, as the organist is absent from the
town to-day."

The Cardinal looked completely bewildered.

"Are you quite sure of this?" he asked falteringly.

"Sure--absolutely sure!" declared the Archbishop with a smile--"No
doubt you thought you heard music; overwrought nerves often play these
tricks upon us. And it is owing to this same cause that you are weary
and dispirited, and that you take such a gloomy view of the social and
religious outlook. You are evidently out of health and unstrung;--but
after you have had sufficient rest and change, you will see things in
quite a different aspect. I will not for a moment believe that you
could possibly be as unorthodox as your conversation would imply,--it
would be a total misconception of your true character," and the
Archbishop laughed softly. "A total misconception," he repeated,--"Why,
yes, of course it would be! No Cardinal-Archbishop of Holy Mother
Church could bring such accusations against its ministry as you would
have suggested, unless he were afflicted by nervous depression, which,
as we all know, has the uncomfortable effect of creating darkness even
where all is light. Do you stay long in Rouen?"

"No," replied the Cardinal abstractedly, answering the question
mechanically though his thoughts were far away--"I leave for Paris
to-morrow."

"For Paris? And then?"

"I go to Rome with my niece, Angela Sovrani,--she is in Paris awaiting
my arrival now."

"Ah! You must be very proud of your niece!" murmured the Archbishop
softly--"She is famous everywhere,--a great artist!--a wonderful
genius!"

"Angela paints well--yes," said the Cardinal quietly,--"But she has
still a great deal to learn. And she is unfortunately much more alone
now than she used to be,--her mother's death last year was a terrible
blow to her."

"Her mother was your sister?"

"My only sister," answered the Cardinal--"A good, sweet woman!--may her
soul rest in peace! Her character was never spoilt by the social life
she was compelled to lead. My brother-in-law, Prince Sovrani, kept open
house,--and all the gay world of Rome was accustomed to flock thither;
but now--since he has lost his wife, things have changed very
much,--sadness has taken the place of mirth,--and Angela is very
solitary."

"Is she not affianced to the celebrated Florian Varillo?"

A fleeting shadow of pain darkened the Cardinal's clear eyes.

"Yes. But she sees very little of him,--you know the strictness of
Roman etiquette in such matters. She sees little--and sometimes--so I
think--knows less. However, I hope all will be well. But my niece is
over sensitive, brilliantly endowed, and ambitious,--at times I have
fears for her future."

"Depression again!" declared the Archbishop, rising and preparing to
take his leave--"Believe me, the world is full of excellence when we
look upon it with clear eyes;--things are never as bad as they seem. To
my thinking, you are the last man alive who should indulge in
melancholy forebodings. You have led a peaceful and happy life, graced
with the reputation of many good deeds, and you are generally beloved
by the people of whom you have charge. Then, though celibacy is your
appointed lot, heaven has given you a niece as dear to you as any child
of your own could be, who has won a pre-eminent place among the world's
great artists, and is moreover endowed with beauty and distinction.
What more can you desire?"

He smiled expansively as he spoke; the Cardinal looked at him
steadfastly.

"I desire nothing!" he answered--"I never have desired anything! I told
you before that I consider I have received many more blessings than I
deserve. It is not any personal grief which at present troubles me,--it
is something beyond myself. It is a sense of wrong,--an appeal for
truth,--a cry from those who are lost in the world,--the lost whom the
Church might have saved!"

"Merely fancy!" said the Archbishop cheerily--"Like the music in the
Cathedral! Do not permit your imagination to get the better of you in
such matters! When you return from Rome, I shall be glad to see you if
you happen to come through Normandy on your way back to your own
people. I trust you will so far honour me?"

"I know nothing of my future movements," answered the Cardinal
gently,--"But if I should again visit Rouen, I will certainly let you
know, and will, if you desire it, accept your friendly hospitality."

With this, the two dignitaries shook hands and the Archbishop took his
leave. As he picked his way carefully down the rough stairs and along
the dingy little passage of the Hotel Poitiers, he was met by Jean
Patoux holding a lighted candle above his head to show him the way.

"It is dark, Monseigneur," said Patoux apologetically.

"It is very dark," agreed Monseigneur, stumbling as he spoke, and
feeling rather inclined to indulge in very uncanonical language. "It is
altogether a miserable hole, mon Patoux!"

"It is for poor people only," returned Jean calmly--"And poverty is not
a crime, Monseigneur."

"No, it is not a crime," said the stately Churchman as he reached the
door at last, and paused for a moment on the threshold,--a broad smile
wrinkling up his fat cheeks and making comfortable creases round his
small eyes--"But it is an inconvenience!"

"Cardinal Bonpre does not say so," observed Patoux.

"Cardinal Bonpre is one of two things--a saint or a fool! Remember
that, mon Patoux! Bon soir! Benedicite!"

And the Archbishop, still smiling to himself, walked leisurely across
the square in the direction of his own house, where his supper awaited
him. The moon had risen, and was clambering slowly up between the two
tall towers of Notre Dame, her pure silver radiance streaming mockingly
against the candle Jean Patoux still held in the doorway of his inn,
and almost extinguishing its flame.

"One of two things--a saint or a fool," murmured Jean with a
chuckle--"Well!--it is very certain that the Archbishop is neither!"

He turned in, and shut his door as far as it would allow him to do so,
and went comfortably to bed, where Madame had gone before him. And
throughout the Hotel Poitiers deep peace and silence reigned. Every one
in the house slept, save Cardinal Bonpre, who with the Testament before
him, sat reading and meditating deeply for an hour before retiring to
rest. A fresh cause of anxiety had come upon him in the idea that
perhaps his slight indisposition was more serious than he had deemed.
If, as the Archbishop had said, there could have been no music possible
in the Cathedral that afternoon, how came it that he had heard such
solemn and entrancing harmonies? Was his mind affected? Was he in truth
imagining what did not exist? Were the griefs of the world his own
distorted view of things? Did the Church faithfully follow the
beautiful and perfect teachings of Christ after all? He tried to reason
the question out from a different and more hopeful standpoint, but
vainly;--the conviction that Christianity was by no means the supreme
regenerating force, or the vivifying Principle of Human Life which it
was originally meant to be, was borne in upon him with increasing
certainty, and the more he read the Gospels, the more he became aware
that the Church--system as it existed was utterly opposed to Christ's
own command, and moreover was drifting further and further away from
Him with every passing year.

"The music in the Cathedral may have been my fancy," he said,--"But the
discord in the world sounds clear and is NOT imagination. A casuist in
religion may say 'It was to be';--that heresies and dissensions were
prophesied by Christ, when He said 'Because iniquity shall abound, the
love of many shall grow cold';--but this does not excuse the Church
from the sin of neglect, if any neglects exists. One thing we have
never seemed to thoroughly understand, and this is that Christ's
teaching is God's teaching, and that it has not stopped with the
enunciation of the Gospel. It is going on even now--in every fresh
discovery of science,--in every new national experience,--in everything
we can do, or think, or plan, the Divine instruction steadily continues
through the Divine influence imparted to us when the Godhead became
man, to show men how they might in turn become gods. This is what we
forget and what we are always forgetting; so that instead of accepting
every truth, we quarrel with it and reject it, even as Judaea rejected
Christ Himself. It is very strange and cruel;--and the world's
religious perplexities are neither to be wondered at nor blamed,--there
is just and grave cause for their continuance and increase."

He closed the Testament, and being thoroughly fatigued in body as well
as mind, he at last retired. Lying down contentedly upon the hard and
narrow bed which was the best the inn provided, he murmured his usual
prayer,--"If this should be the sleep of death, Jesus receive my
soul!"--and remained for a little while with his eyes open, looking at
the white glory of the moonlight as it poured through his lattice
window and formed delicate traceries of silver luminance on the bare
wooden floor. He could just see the dark towers of Notre Dame from
where he lay,--a black mass in the moonbeams--a monument of
half-forgotten history--a dream of centuries, hallowed or blasphemed by
the prayers and aspirations of dead and gone multitudes who had
appealed to the incarnate God-in-Man before its altars. God-in-Man had
been made manifest!--how long would, the world have to wait before
Man-in-God was equally created and declared? For that was evidently
intended to be the final triumph of the Christian creed.

"We should have gained such a victory long ago," mused Cardinal
Bonpre--"only that we ourselves have set up stumbling-blocks, and
rejected God at every step of the way."

Closing his eyes he soon slept; the rays of the moon fell upon his pale
face and silvery hair like a visible radiant benediction,--and the
bells of the city chimed the hours loudly and softly, clanging in every
direction, without waking him from his rest. But slumbering as he was,
he had no peace,--for in his sleep he was troubled by a strange vision.




IV.

As the terrors of imagined suffering are always worse than actual pain,
so dreams are frequently more vivid than the reality of life,--that is
we are sure that life is indeed reality, and not itself a dream within
a dream. Cardinal Bonpre's sleep was not often disturbed by affrighting
visions,--his methods of daily living were too healthy and simple, and
his conscience too clear;--but on this particular night he was visited
by an impression rather than a dream,--the impression of a lonely, and
terrifying dreariness, as though the whole world were suddenly emptied
of life and left like a hollow shell on the shores of time. Gradually
this first sense of utter and unspeakable loss changed into a startled
consciousness of fear;--some awful transformation of things familiar
was about to be consummated;--and he felt the distinct approach of some
unnameable Horror which was about to convulse and overwhelm all
mankind. Then in his dream, a great mist rose up before his eyes,--a
mingling as of sea-fog and sun-flame,--and as this in turn slowly
cleared,--dispersing itself in serpentine coils of golden-grey
vapour,--he found himself standing on the edge of a vast sea,
glittering in a light that was neither of earth nor of heaven, but that
seemed to be the inward reflection of millions of flashing sword
blades. And as he stood gazing across the width of the waters, the sky
above him grew black, and a huge ring of fire rose out of the east,
instead of the beloved and familiar sun,--fire that spread itself in
belching torrents of flame upward and downward, and began to absorb in
its devouring heat the very sea. Then came a sound of many thunders,
mingled with the roar of rising waters and the turbulence of a great
whirlwind,--and out of the whirlwind came a Voice saying--"Now is the
end of all things on the earth,--and the whole world shall be burnt up
as a dead leaf in a sudden flame! And we will create from out its ashes
new heavens and a new earth, and we will call forth new beings
wherewith to people the fairness of our fresh creation,--for the
present generation of mankind hath rejected God,--and God henceforth
rejecteth His faithless and unworthy creatures! Wherefore let now this
one dim light amid the thousand million brighter lights be
quenched,--let the planet known to all angels as the Sorrowful Star
fall from its sphere forever,--let the Sun that hath given it warmth
and nourishment be now its chief Destroyer, and let everything that
hath life within it, perish utterly and revive no more!"

And Cardinal Felix heard these words of doom. Powerless to move or
speak, he stood watching the terrible circle of fire, extend and
expand, till all the visible universe seemed melting in one red furnace
of flame;--and in himself he felt no hope,--no chance of rescue;--in
himself he knew that the appalling work of destruction was being
accomplished with a deadly swiftness that left no time for
lamentation,--that the nations of the world were as flying straws swept
into the burning, without space or moment for a parting prayer or
groan. Tortured by an excruciating agony too great for tears, he
suddenly found voice, and lifting his face towards the lurid sky he
cried aloud--

"God of Eternity, stay Thy hand! For one remaining Cause be merciful!
Doom not Thy creature Man to utter destruction!--but still remember
that Thou wast born even as he! As helpless, as wronged, as tempted, as
betrayed, as suffering, as prone to pain and death! Thou hast lived his
life and endured his sorrows, though in the perfect glory of Thy
Godhead Thou hast not sinned! Have patience yet, oh Thou great
Splendour of all worlds! Have patience yet, Thou outraged and
blasphemed Creator! Break once again Thy silence as of old and speak to
us!--pity us once again ere Thou slay us utterly,--come to us even as
Thou earnest in Judaea, and surely we will receive Thee and obey Thee,
and reject Thy love no more!"

As he thus prayed he was seized with a paralysing fear,--for suddenly
the red and glowing chaos of fire above him changed into soft skies
tinged with the exquisite pearl-grey hues of twilight, and he became
conscious of the approach of a great invisible Presence, whose awful
unseen beauty overwhelmed him with its sublimity and majesty, causing
him to forget altogether that he himself existed. And Someone
spoke,--in grave sweet accents, so soft and close to him that the words
seemed almost whispered in his ears,--

"Thy prayer is heard,--and once again the silence shall be broken.
Nevertheless remember that 'the light shineth in darkness and the
darkness comprehendeth it not'."

Deep silence followed. The mysterious Presence melted as it were into
space,--and the Cardinal awoke, trembling violently and bathed in a
cold perspiration. He gazed bewilderedly around him, his mind still
confused and dazzled by the strong visionary impression of the burning
heavens and sea,--and he could not for a moment realize where he was.
Then, after a while, he recognised the humble furniture of the room he
occupied, and through the diamond-shaped panes of the little lattice
window, perceived the towers of Notre Dame, now gleaming with a kind of
rusty silver in the broader radiance of the fully uplifted moon.

"It was a dream," he murmured,--"A dream of the end of the world!" He
shuddered a little as he thought of the doom pronounced upon the
earth,--the planet "known to all angels as the Sorrowful Star"--"Let
the Sun that hath given it warmth and nourishment be now its chief
Destroyer."

According to modern scientists, such was indeed the precise way in
which the world was destined to come to an end. And could anything be
more terrifying than the thought that the glorious Orb, the maker of
day and generator of all beauty, should be destined to hurl from its
shining centre death and destruction upon the planet it had from
creation vivified and warmed! The Vision had shown the devastating ring
of fire rising from that very quarter of the heavens where the sun
should have been radiantly beaming,--and as Felix Bonpre dwelt upon the
picture in his mind, and remembered his own wild prayer to the Eternal,
a great uneasiness and dread overwhelmed him.

"God's laws can never be altered;" he said aloud--"Every evil deed
brings its own punishment; and if the world's wickedness becomes too
great an offence in the eyes of the Almighty, it follows that the world
must be destroyed. What am I that I should pray against Divine Justice!
For truly we have had our chance of rescue and salvation;--the
Way,--the Truth,--and the Life have been given to us through Christ our
Redeemer; and if we reject Him, we reject all, and we have but
ourselves to blame."

At that moment a plaintive wailing, as of some human creature in
distress broke on his ears through the deep silence of the night. He
listened attentively, and the sorrowful sound was repeated,--a desolate
yet gentle cry as of some sick and suffering child. Moved by a sudden
impulse the Cardinal rose, and going to the window looked anxiously
out, and down into the street below. Not a living creature was to be
seen. The moonlight spread itself in a vast silver glory over the whole
width of the square, and the delicate sculpture of the great
rose-window of the Cathedral, centrally suspended between the two tall
towers, looked in the fine pale radiance like a giant spider's web
sparkling with fairy dew. Again--again!--that weary sobbing cry! It
went to the Cardinal's heart, and stirred him to singular pain and pity.

"Surely it is some lost or starving creature," he said--"Some poor soul
seeking comfort in a comfortless world." Hastily throwing on his
garments he left his room, treading cautiously in order not to disturb
the sleeping household,--and feeling his way down the short, dark
staircase, he easily reached the door and passed noiselessly out into
the square. Walking a few steps hurriedly he paused, once more
listening. The night was intensely calm;--not a cloud crossed the
star-spangled violet dome of air wherein the moon soared serenely,
bathing all visible things in a crystalline brilliancy so pure and
penetrative, that the finest cuttings on the gigantic grey facade of
Notre Dame could be discerned and outlined as distinctly as though
every little portion were seen through a magnifying glass. The
Cardinal's tall attenuated figure, standing alone and almost in the
centre of the square, cast a long thin black shadow on the glistening
grey stones,--and his dream-impression of an empty world came back
forcibly upon him,--a world as empty as a hollow shell! Houses there
were around him, and streets, and a noble edifice consecrated to the
worship of God,--nevertheless there was a sense of absolute desertion
in and through all. Was not the Cathedral itself the mere husk of a
religion? The seed had dropped out and sunk into the soil,--"among
thorns" and "stony places" indeed,--and some "by the wayside" to be
devoured by birds of prey. Darker and heavier grew the cloud of
depression on the Cardinal's soul,--and more and more passionate became
the protest which had for a long time been clamouring in him for
utterance,--the protest of a Churchman against the Church he served! It
was terrible,--and to a "prince of the Roman Church" hideous and
unnatural; nevertheless the protest existed, and it had in some
unaccountable way grown to be more a part of him than he himself
realized.

"The world is empty because God is leaving it," he said, sorrowfully
raising his eyes to the tranquil heavens,--"and the joy of existence is
departing because the Divine and Holy Spirit of things is being
withdrawn!"

He moved on a few paces,--and once more through the deep stillness the
little sobbing cry of sorrow was wafted tremulously to his ears. It
came or seemed to come from the Cathedral, and quickening his steps he
went thither. The deeply hollowed portal, full of black shadows, at
first showed nothing but its own massively sculptured
outlines--then--all at once the Cardinal perceived standing within the
embrasured darkness, the slight shrinking figure of a child. A boy's
desolate little figure,--with uplifted hands clasped appealingly and
laid against the shut Cathedral door, and face hidden and pressed hard
upon those hands, as though in mute and inconsolable despair. As the
Cardinal softly drew nearer, a long shuddering sigh from the solitary
little creature moved his heart anew to pity, and speaking in accents
of the utmost gentleness he said--

"My poor child, what troubles you? Why are you here all alone, and
weeping at this late hour? Have you no home?--no parents?"

Slowly the boy turned round, still resting his small delicate hands
against the oaken door of the Cathedral, and with the tears yet wet
upon his cheeks, smiled. What a sad face he had!--worn and weary, yet
beautiful!--what eyes, heavy with the dews of sorrow, yet tender even
in pain! Startled by the mingled purity and grief of so young a
countenance, the Cardinal retreated for a moment in amaze,--then
approaching more closely he repeated his former question with increased
interest and tenderness--

"Why are you weeping here alone?"

"Because I am left alone to weep," said the boy, answering in a soft
voice of vibrating and musical melancholy--"For me, the world is empty."

An empty world! His dream-impression of universal desolation and
desertion came suddenly back upon the prelate's mind, and a sudden
trembling seized him, though he could discover in himself no cause for
fear. Anxiously he surveyed the strange and solitary little wayfarer on
the threshold of the Cathedral, and while he thus looked, the boy said
wistfully--

"I should have rested here within, but it is closed against me."

"The doors are always locked at night, my child," returned the
Cardinal, recovering from his momentary stupor and bewilderment, "But I
can give you shelter. Will you come with me?"

With a half-questioning, half-smiling look of grateful wonder, the boy
withdrew his hands from their uplifted, supplicating and almost
protesting attitude against the locked Cathedral-door, and moving out
of the porch shadows into the wide glory of the moonlight, he
confronted his interlocutor--

"Will I come with you?" he said--"Nay, but I see you are a Cardinal of
the Church, and it is I should ask 'will you receive me?' You do not
know who I am--nor where I came from, and I, alas! may not tell you! I
am alone; all--all alone,--for no one knows me in the world,--I am
quite poor and friendless, and have nothing where--with to pay you for
your kindly shelter--I can only bless you!"

Very simply, very gravely the young boy spoke these words, his delicate
head uplifted, his face shining in the moon-rays, and his slight,
childish form erect with a grace which was not born of pride so much as
of endurance, and again the Cardinal trembled, though he knew not why.
Yet in his very agitation, the desire he had to persuade the tired
child to go with him grew stronger and overmastered every other feeling.

"Come then," he said, smiling and extending his hand, "Come, and you
shall sleep in my room for the remainder of the night, and to-morrow we
will talk of the future. At present you need repose."

The boy smiled gratefully but said nothing, and the Cardinal, satisfied
with the mere look of assent walked with his foundling across the
square and into the Hotel Poitiers. Arrived at his own bed-room, he
smoothed his couch and settled the pillows carefully with active zeal
and tenderness. The boy stood silently, looking on.

"Sleep now, my child," said the Cardinal,--"and forget all your
troubles. Lie down here; no one will disturb you till the morning."

"But you, my lord Cardinal," said the boy--"Are you depriving yourself
of comfort in order to give it to me? This is not the way of the world!"

"It is MY way," said the Cardinal cheerfully,--"And if the world has
been unkind to you, my boy, still take courage,--it will not always be
unjust! Do not trouble yourself concerning me; I shall sleep well on
the sofa in the next room--indeed, I shall sleep all the better for
knowing that your tears have ceased, and that for the present at least
you are safely sheltered."

With a sudden quick movement the boy advanced and caught the Cardinal's
hands caressingly in his own.

"Oh, are you sure you understand?" he said, his voice growing
singularly sweet and almost tender as he spoke--"Are you sure that it
is well for you to shelter me?--I--a stranger,--poor, and with no one
to speak for me? How do you know what I may be? Shall I not perhaps
prove ungrateful and wrong your kindness?"

His worn little face upturned, shone in the dingy little room with a
sudden brightness such as one might imagine would illumine the features
of an angel, and Felix Bonpre looked down upon him half fascinated, in
mingled pity and wonder.

"Such results are with God, my child," he said gently--"I do not seek
your gratitude. It is certainly well for me that I should shelter
you,--it would be ill indeed if I permitted any living creature to
suffer for lack of what I could give. Rest here in peace, and remember
it is for my own pleasure as well as for your good that I desire you to
sleep well."

"And you do not even ask my name?" said the boy, half smiling and still
raising his sorrowful deep blue eyes to the Cardinal's face.

"You will tell me that when you please," said Felix, laying one hand
upon the soft curls that clustered over his foundling's forehead--"I am
in no wise curious. It is enough for me to know that you are a child
and alone in the world,--such sorrow makes me your servant."

Gently the boy loosened his clasp of the Cardinal's hands.

"Then I have found a friend!" he said,--"That is very strange!" He
paused, and the smile that had once before brightened his countenance
shone again like a veritable flash of sunlight--"You have the right to
know my name, and if you choose, to call me by it,--it is Manuel."

"Manuel!" echoed the Cardinal--"No more than that?"

"No more than that," replied the boy gravely--"I am one of the world's
waifs and strays,--one name suffices me."

There followed a brief pause, in which the old man and the child looked
at each other full and steadfastly, and once again an inexplicable
nervous trembling seized the Cardinal. Overcoming this with an effort,
he said softly,--

"Then--Manuel!--good night! Sleep--and Our Lady's blessing be upon you!"

Signing the cross in air he retired, carefully shutting the door and
leaving his new-found charge to rest. When he was once by himself in
the next room, however, he made no attempt to sleep,--he merely drew a
chair to the window and sat down, full of thoughts which utterly
absorbed him. There was nothing unusual, surely, in his finding a small
lost boy and giving him a night's lodging?--then why was he so affected
by it? He could not tell. He fully realized that the plaintive beauty
of the child had its share in the powerful attraction he felt,--but
there was something else in the nature of his emotion which he found it
impossible to define. It was as though some great blankness in his life
had been suddenly filled;--as if the boy whom he had found solitary and
weeping within the porch of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, belonged to
him in some mysterious way and was linked to his life so closely and
completely as to make parting impossible. But what a fantastic notion!
Viewed by the light of calm reason, there was nothing in the occurrence
to give rise to any such sentiment. Here was a poor little wayfarer,
evidently without parents, home, or friends,--and the Cardinal had
given him a night's lodging, and to-morrow--yes, to-morrow, he would
give him food and warm clothing and money,--and perhaps a
recommendation to the Archbishop in order that he might get a chance of
free education and employment in Rouen, while proper enquiries were
being made about him. That was the soberly prosaic and commonplace view
to take of the matter. The personality of the little fellow was
intensely winning,--but after all, that had nothing to do with the
facts of the case. He was a waif and stray, as he himself had said; his
name, so far as he seemed to know it, was Manuel,--an ordinary name
enough in France,--and his age might be about twelve,--not more.
Something could be done for him,--something SHOULD be done for him
before the Cardinal parted with him. But this idea of "parting" was
just what seemed so difficult to contemplate! Puzzled beyond measure at
the strange state of mind in which he found himself, Felix Bonpre went
over and over again all the events of the day in order,--his arrival in
Rouen,--his visit to the Cathedral, and the grand music he had heard or
fancied he heard there,--his experience with the sceptical little
Patoux children and their mother,--his conversation with the
Archbishop, in which he had felt much more excitement than he was
willing to admit,--his dream wherein he had been so painfully impressed
with a sense of the desertion, emptiness, and end of the world, and
finally his discovery of the little lonely and apparently forsaken boy,
thrown despairingly as it were against the closed Cathedral, like a
frail human wreck cast up from the gulf of the devouring sea. Each
incident, trivial in itself, yet seemed of particular importance,
though he could not explain or analyse why it should be so.
Meditatively he sat and watched the moon sink like a silver bubble
falling downward in the dark,--the stars vanished one by one,--and a
faint brown-gold line of suggestive light in the east began the slow
creation of a yet invisible dawn. Presently, yielding to a vague
impulse of inexplicable tenderness, he rose softly and went to the
threshold of the room where his foundling slept. Holding his breath, he
listened--but there was no sound. Very cautiously and noiselessly he
opened the door, and looked in,--a delicate half-light came through the
latticed window and seemed to concentrate itself on the bed where the
tired wanderer lay. His fine youthful profile was distinctly
outlined,--the soft bright hair clustered like a halo round his broad
brows,--and the two small hands were crossed upon his breast, while in
his sleep he smiled. Always touched by the beauty, innocence and
helplessness of childhood, something in the aspect of this little lad
moved the venerable prelate's heart to an unwonted emotion,--and
looking upon him, he prayed for guidance as to what he should best do
to rescue so gentle and young a creature from the cruelties of the
world.




V.

"He has trusted me," said the Cardinal,--"I have found him, and I
cannot--dare not--forsake him. For the Master says 'Whosoever shall
receive one such little child in My name receiveth Me'."

The next morning broke fair and calm, and as soon as the Patoux
household were astir, Cardinal Bonpre sought Madame Patoux in her
kitchen, and related to her the story of his night's adventure. She
listened deferentially, but could not refrain from occasional
exclamations of surprise, mingled with suggestions of warning.

"It is like your good heart, Monseigneur," she said, "to give your own
bed to a stray child out of the street,--one, too, of whom you know
nothing,--but alas! how often such goodness is repaid by ingratitude!
The more charity you show the less thanks you receive,--yes, indeed, it
is often so!--and it seems as if the Evil One were in it! For look you,
I myself have never done a kindness yet without getting a cruelty in
exchange for it."

"That is a sad experience, my daughter," returned the Cardinal
smiling,--"Nevertheless, it is our duty to go on doing kindnesses, no
matter what the results to ourselves may be. It is understood--is it
not? that we are to be misjudged in this world. If we had nothing to
suffer, what would be the use of exercising such virtues as patience
and endurance?"

"Ah, Monseigneur, for you it is different," said Madame Patoux shaking
her head and sighing--"You are like the blessed saints--safe in a niche
of Holy Church, with Our Lady for ever looking after you. But for poor
people such as we are--we see the rough side of life, Monseigneur--and
we know that there is very little goodness about in the world,--and as
for patience and endurance!--why, no one in these days has the patience
to endure even the least contradiction! Two men,--aye even
brothers,--will fight for a word like mongrels quarrelling over a
bone;--and two women will scream themselves hoarse if one should have a
lover more than the other--asking your pardon, Monseigneur, for such
wicked talk! Still, wicked as it may be, it is true--and not all the
powers of Heaven seem to care about making things better. And for this
boy,--believe me,--you had better leave him to his own way--for there
will be no chance of getting such a poor little waif into the school
unless his father and mother are known, or unless someone will adopt
him, which is not likely . . . for Rouen is full of misery, and there
are enough mouths to feed in most families--and . . . mon Dieu!--is
that the child?"

Thus abruptly she broke off her speech, utterly taken aback as she
suddenly perceived the little Manuel standing before her. Poorly clad
in the roughest garments as he was, his grace and plaintive beauty
moved her heart to quick compassion for his loneliness as he came
towards the Cardinal, who, extending one hand, drew him gently to his
side and asked if he had slept well?

"Thanks to your goodness, my lord Cardinal," the boy replied, "I slept
so well that I thought I was in Heaven! I heard the angels singing in
my dreams;--yes!--I heard all the music of a happy world, in which
there never had been known a sin or sorrow!"

He rested his fair head lightly against the Cardinal's arm and smiled.
Madame Patoux gazed at him in fascinated silence,--gazed and
gazed,--till she found her eyes suddenly full of tears. Then she turned
away to hide them,--but not before Cardinal Bonpre had observed her
emotion.

"Well, good MOTHER" he said with gentle emphasis on the word--"Would
you have me forsake this child that I have found?"

"No, Monseigneur,--no," said Madame Patoux very softly and
tremulously--"It is almost as if he were a little lost Angel sent to
comfort you."

A curious thrill went through the Cardinal. An angel to comfort him! He
looked down at Manuel who still clung caressingly to his arm, and who
met his earnest scrutiny with a sweet candid smile.

"Where did you come from, Manuel?" asked Bonpre suddenly.

"I cannot tell you," the boy answered, straightly, yet simply.

The Cardinal paused a moment, his keen penetrating eyes dwelling kindly
on the noble young face beside him.

"You do not wish to tell me,--is that so?" he pursued.

"Yes," said Manuel quietly--"I do not wish to tell you. And if, because
of this, you regret your kindness to me, my lord Cardinal, I will go
away at once and trouble you no more."

But at these words the Cardinal felt such a sharp consciousness of pain
and loss that his nerves ached with positive fear.

"Nay, nay, my child," he said anxiously--"I cannot let you go. It shall
be as you please,--I will not think that you could do yourself or me a
wrong by concealing what would be right for you to tell. It is true
that you are alone in the world?"

"Quite, quite alone!" answered Manuel, a faint shadow darkening the
serenity of his eyes--"No one was ever more alone than I!"

Madame Patoux drew nearer and listened.

"And there is no person living who has the right to claim you?"

"None!"

"And is it not strange, Monseigneur," murmured Madame Patoux at this
juncture--"The little lad does not speak as if he were ignorant! It is
as though he had been well taught and carefully nurtured."

Manuel's deep eyes dwelt upon her with a meditative sweetness.

"I have taught myself;" he said simply--"Not out of books, perhaps, but
out of nature. The trees and rivers, the flowers and birds have talked
to me and explained many things;--I have learned all I know from what
God has told me."

His voice was so gentle and tender that Madame Patoux was infinitely
touched by its soft plaintiveness.

"Poor child!" she murmured,--"He has no doubt been wandering through
the country, without a soul to help him. Alas, that troubles should
begin for one so young! Perhaps he does not even know a prayer!"

"Oh yes!" said Manuel quickly--"Prayer is like thought,--God is so good
that it is only natural to thank and praise Him. Is it not so?"

"It should be natural, my boy," answered the Cardinal slowly and with a
slight accent of melancholy,--"But for many of us in these days I fear
it is more natural still to forget than to remember. Too often we take
gifts and ignore the giver. But come now and breakfast in my room;--for
the present you shall remain with me, and I will see what can best be
done for your future welfare."

And turning to Madame Patoux he added smilingly--"You, my daughter,
with children of your own to care for, will no longer blame me for my
interest in this child, who is without protection in a somewhat rough
world. We of the Church dare not 'offend one of these little ones'."

"Ah, Monseigneur!" murmured Madame,--"If all in the Church were like
you, some poor folks would believe in God more willingly. But when
people are starving and miserable, it is easy to understand that often
they will curse the priests and even religion itself, for making such a
mock of them as to keep on telling them about the joys of heaven, when
they are tormented to the very day of their death on earth, and are
left without hope or rescue of any kind--"

But the Cardinal had disappeared with his young charge and Madame's
speech was lost upon him. She had therefore to content herself with
relating the story of "Monseigneur's foundling" to her husband, who
just then came into the kitchen to take his breakfast before starting
off to work in his market-garden. He listened with interest and
attention.

"A boy is always a trouble," he said sententiously--"And it is likely
that so Monseigneur will find it. How old would the child be?"

"About twelve, I should say," answered Madame--"But beautiful as a
little angel, Jean!"

"That's a pity!" and Patoux shook his head ominously--"Tis bad enough
when a girl is beautiful,--but a boy!--Well, well! Monseigneur is a
wise man, and a saint they say,--he knows best,--but I fear he has
taken a burden upon himself which he will very soon regret! What dost
thou think of it, petite?"

Madame hesitated a moment before replying.

"Truly, I do not know what to think," she answered--"For myself, I have
not spoken to the child. I have seen him,--yes!--and at the sight of
him a something in my throat rose up and choked me as it were,--and
stopped me from saying a rough word. Such a lonely gentle lad!--one
could not be harsh with him, and yet--"

"Yet! Oh, yes, I know!" said Patoux, finishing his coffee at a gulp and
smiling,--"Women will always be women,--and a handsome face in girl or
boy is enough to make fools of them all. Where are the children? Are
they gone to school?"

"Yes--they went before the Cardinal was up. 'Tis a Saturday, and they
will be back early,--they are going to bring little Fabien Doucet to
Monseigneur."

"What for?" enquired Patoux, his round eyes opening widely in amazement.

"Oh, for a strange fancy! That he may bless the child and pray Our Lady
to cure him of his lameness. It was Babette's whim. I told her the
Cardinal was a saint,--and she said,--well! she said she would never
believe it unless he worked a miracle! The wicked mischief that girl
is!--as bad as Henri, who puts a doubt on everything!"

"'Tis the school," said Jean gloomily--"I must speak to Pere Laurent."

"Truly that would be well," said Madame--"He may explain what we
cannot. All the same, you may be sure the children WILL bring Fabien
Doucet to Monseigneur;--they have made up their minds about it,--and if
the little miserable's lameness gets no better, we shall have work
enough in future to make the saints respected!"

Patoux muttered something inaudible, and went his way. Life was in his
opinion, a very excellent thing,--nevertheless there were a few details
about it which occasionally troubled him, and one of these details was
decidedly the "national education" question. It struck him as
altogether remarkable that the State should force him to send his
children to school whether he liked it or no; and moreover that the
system of instruction at the said school should be totally opposed to
his own ideas. He would have certainly wished his son to learn to read
and write, and then to have been trained as a thorough florist and
gardener;--while for his daughter he also desired reading and writing
as a matter of course, and then a complete education in cooking and
domestic economy, so that she might be a useful and efficient wife and
mother when the proper time for such duties came. Astronomy he felt
they could both do without, and most of the "physical sciences."
Religion he considered an absolute necessity, and this was the very
thing that was totally omitted from the national course of education.
He was well aware that there are countless numbers of unhappy people
nowadays who despise religion and mock at the very idea of a God. Every
day he saw certain works exposed for sale on the out-of-door bookstalls
which in their very titles proclaimed the hideous tone of blasphemy
which in France is gradually becoming universal,--but this did not
affect his own sense of what was right and just. He was a very plain
common man, but he held holy things in reverence, and instinctively
felt that, if the world were in truth a bad place, it was likely to
become much worse if all faith in God were taken out of it. And when he
reached his plot of ground that morning, and set to work as usual, he
was, for a non-reflective man, very much absorbed in thought. His heavy
tramping feet over the soil startled some little brown birds from their
hidden nests, and sent them flying to and fro through the clear air
uttering sharp chirrups of terror,--and, leaning on his spade, he
paused and looked at them meditatively.

"Everything is afraid," he said,--"Birds, beasts, and men,--all are
afraid of something and cannot tell what it is that frightens them. It
seems hard sometimes that there should be so much trouble and struggle
just to live--however, the good God knows best,--and if we could not
think and hope and believe He knew best, we might just as well light up
a charcoal fire, shut all the doors and windows, and say 'Bon jour! Bon
jour, Monsieur le bon Dieu!--for if YOU do not know YOUR business, it
is evident we do not know ours, and therefore 'tis best for both our
sakes to make an end of sheer Stupidity!'"

He chuckled at his own reasoning, and moistening his hands vigorously,
seized his spade and began to bank up a ridge of celery, singing "Bon
jour, Monsieur le bon Dieu!" under his breath without the slightest
idea of irreverence. And looking up at the bright sky occasionally, he
wished he had seen the stray boy rescued from the streets by Cardinal
Bonpre.

"That he will be a trouble, there is no doubt," he said as he turned
and patted the rich dark earth--"Never was there a boy born yet into
the world that was not a trouble except our Lord, and even in His case
His own people did not know what to make of Him!"

Meantime, while Jean Patoux dug in his garden, and sang and
soliloquized, his two children, Henri and Babette, their school hours
being ended, had run off to the market, and were talking vivaciously
with a big brown sturdy woman, who was selling poultry at a stall,
under a very large patched red umbrella. She was Martine Doucet,
reported to have the worst temper and most vixenish tongue in all the
town, though there were some who said her sourness of humour only arose
from the hardships of her life, and the many troubles she had been
fated to endure. Her husband, a fine handsome man, earning good weekly
wages as a stone-mason, had been killed by a fall from a ladder, while
engaged in helping to build one of the new houses on the Boulevards,
and her only child Fabien, a boy of ten had, when a baby, tumbled from
the cart in which his mother was taking her poultry to market, and
though no injury was apparent at the time, had, from the effects of the
fall, grown into a poor little twisted mite of humanity with a bent
spine, and one useless leg which hung limply from his body, while he
could scarcely hobble about on the other, even with the aid of a
crutch. He had a soft, pretty, plaintive face of his own, the little
Fabien, and very gentle ways,--but he was sensitively conscious of his
misfortune, and in his own small secret soul he was always praying that
he might die while he was yet a child, and not grow up to be a burden
to his mother. Martine, however, adored him; and it was through her
intense love for this child of hers that she had, in a strange vengeful
sort of mood abandoned God, and flung an open and atheistical defiance
in the face of her confessor, who, missing her at mass, had ventured to
call upon her and seriously reproach her for neglecting the duties of
her religion. Martine had whirled round upon him,--a veritable storm in
petticoats.

"Religion!" she cried--"Oh--he! What good has it done for ME, if you
please! When I said my prayers night and morning, went to mass and
confession, and told my rosary every Mary-Feast, what happened? Was not
my man killed and my child crippled? And then,--(not to lose faith--)
did I not give the saints every chance of behaving themselves? For my
child's sake did I not earn good money and pay it to the Church in
special masses that he might be cured of his lameness? And Novenas in
plenty, and candles in plenty to the Virgin, and fastings of my own and
penitences? And is the child not as lame as ever? Look at him!--the
dear angel!--with never an evil thought or a wicked way,--and will you
try to make me believe there is a good God, when He will not help a
poor little creature like that, to be happy, though He is prayed to
night and morning for it! No--no! Churches are kept up for priests to
make a fat living out of,--but there is never a God in them that I can
see;--and as for the Christ, who had only to be asked in order to heal
the sick, there is not so much as a ghost of Him anywhere! If what you
priests tell us were true, poor souls such as I am, would get comfort
and help in our sorrows, but it is all a lie!--the whole thing!--and
when we are in trouble, we have got to bear it as best we can, without
so much as a kind word from our neighbours, let alone any pity from the
saints. Go to mass again? Not I!--nor to confession either!--and no
more of my earnings will click into your great brass collection plate,
mon reverend! Ah no!--I have been a foolish woman indeed, to trust so
long in a God who for all my tears and prayers never gives me a sign or
a hope of an answer,--and though I suppose this wretched world of ours
was made by somebody, whoever it is that has done it is a cruel
creature at best, so _I_ say,--without as much good feeling as there is
in the heart of an ordinary man, and without the sense of the man
either! For who that thinks twice about it would make a world where
everything is only born to die?--and for no other use at all! Bah! It
is sheer folly and wickedness to talk to me of a God!--a God, if there
were one, would surely be far above torturing the creatures He has
made, all for nothing!"

And the priest who heard this blasphemous and savage tirade on the part
of Martine Doucet, retreated from her in amazement and horror, and
presently gave out that she was possessed of a devil, and was unfit to
be admitted to the Holy Sacrament. Whereat, when she heard of it,
Martine laughed loudly and ferociously.

"Look you!--what a charitable creature a priest is!" she cried--"If you
don't do the things he considers exactly right and fitting, he tells
your neighbours that the devil has got you!--and so little does he care
to pick you out of the clutches of this same devil, that he refuses you
the Sacrament, though THAT is said to drive away Satan by the mere
touch of it! But wait till I ASK to have the Sacrament given to me!--it
will be time enough then to refuse it! Many a fat chicken of my stock
has the reverend father had as a free gift to boil in his soup maigre!"
and again she laughed angrily--"But no more of them does he get to
comfort his stomach while doing penance for his soul!--the hypocrite!
He must find another silly woman to cheat with his stories of a good
God who never does anything but kill and curse us every one!--he has
had all that he will ever get out of Martine Doucet!"

It was to this redoubtable virago that Henri and Babette had betaken
themselves in the market place directly school was over. She always
held the same stall in the same position on market days,--and she sat
under her red umbrella on a rough wooden bench, knitting rapidly, now
keeping an eye on her little lame son, coiled up in a piece of matting
beside her, and anon surveying her stock-in-trade of ducks and geese
and fowls, which were heaped on her counter, their wrung necks drooping
limply from the board, and their yellow feet tied helplessly together
and shining like bits of dull gold in the warm light of the September
sun. She listened with an impassive countenance while Babette poured
out her story of the great Cardinal,--the Cardinal Felix Bonpre, whom
people said was a saint,--how he had come unexpectedly to stay two
nights at the Hotel Poitiers,--how "petite maman" had declared he was
so good that even angels might visit him,--how kind and gentle and
grand he seemed,--"Yes," said Babette somewhat eagerly, "there was no
doubt that he LOOKED good,--and we have told him all about Fabien and
he has promised to bless him and ask Our Lord to cure his lameness."

"Well, and of what use is that, mignonne?" demanded Martine, clicking
her knitting-needles violently and stooping over her work to wink away
the sudden tears that had risen in her bold brown eyes at Babette's
enthusiastic desire to benefit her afflicted child.--"Asking our Lord
is poor business,--you may ask and ask, but you never get answered!"

Babette hung her curly brown head despondingly, and looked appealingly
at her brother. Now Henri was a decided cynic;--but his sister
exercised a weird fascination over him,--a sort of power to command
which he always felt more or less constrained to obey. He stared
solemnly at Martine, and then at the little Fabien, who, half rising
from his mat, had listened with a visibly painful interest to Babette's
story.

"I think you might let us take Fabien and see if a Cardinal CAN do
anything," he said with a kind of judicial air, as of one who, though
considering the case hopeless, had no objection to try a last desperate
remedy. "This one is a very old man, and he must know a good deal. He
could not do any harm. And I am sure Babette would like to find out if
there is any use at all in a Cardinal. I should like it too. You see we
went into Notre Dame last night,--Babette and I,--and everything was
dark,--all the candles were out at Our Lady's statue--and we had only
ten centimes between us. And the candles are ten centimes each. So we
could only light one. But we lit that one, and said an Ave for Fabien.
And the candle was all by itself in the Cathedral. And now I think we
ought to take him to the Cardinal."

Martine shook her head, pursed up her lips, and knitted more violently
than ever.

"It is all no use--no use!" she muttered--"There is no God,--or if
there is, He must be deaf as well as blind!"

But here suddenly the weak plaintive voice of Fabien himself piped out--

"Oh, mother, let me go!"

Martine looked down at him.

"Let thee go? To see the Cardinal? Why he is nought but an old man,
child, as helpless as any of us. What dost thou think he can do for
thee?"

"Nothing!" and the boy clambered up on his crutch, and stood
appealingly before his mother, his fair curls blowing back in the
breeze,--"But I SHOULD like to see him. Oh, do let me go!"

Babette caught him by the hand.

"Yes, oh yes, Martine!" she exclaimed--"Let him come with us!"

Martine hesitated a moment longer, but she could never altogether
resist an imploring look in her boy's eyes, or refuse any request he
made of her,--and gradually the hard lines of her mouth relaxed into a
half smile. Babette at once perceived this, and eagerly accepted it as
a sign that she had gained her point.

"Come, Fabien!" she exclaimed delightedly--"Thy mother says yes! We
will not be long gone, Martine! And perhaps we will bring him home
quite well!"

Martine shook her head sorrowfully, and paused for a while in her
knitting to watch the three children crossing the market-place
together, Henri supporting her little son on one side, Babette on the
other, both carefully aiding his slow and halting movements over the
rough cobbles of the uneven pavement. Then as they all turned a corner
and disappeared, she sighed, and a couple of bright tears splashed down
on her knitting. But the next moment her eyes were as bold and keen and
defiant as ever while she stood up to attend to two or three customers
who just then approached her stall, and her voice was as shrill and
sharp as any woman's voice could be in the noisy business of driving a
bargain. Having disposed of three or four fat geese and fowls at a good
profit, she chinked and counted the money in her apron pockets, hummed
a tune, and looked up at the genial sky with an expression of disfavour.

"Oh, yes, 'tis a fine day!" she muttered,--"And the heavens look as if
the saints lived in them;--but by and by the clouds will come, and the
cold!--the sleet, the snow, the frost and the bitterness of
winter!--and honest folk will starve while thieves make a good
living!--that is the way the wise God arranges things in this world."

She gave a short laugh of scorn, and resumed the clicking of her
needles, not raising her eyes from her work even when her neighbour,
the old woman who sold vegetables at the next stall, ventured to
address her.

"Where is thy unfortunate boy gone to, Martine?" she enquired,--"Is it
wise to let him be with the Patoux children? They are strong and quick
and full of mischief,--they might do him fresh injury in play without
meaning it."

"I will trust them," answered Martine curtly,--"They have taken him to
see a Cardinal."

"A Cardinal!" and the old woman craned her withered neck forward in
amazement and began to laugh feebly,--"Nom de Jesus! That is strange!
What does the Cardinal want with him?"

"Nothing," said Martine gruffly--"It seems that he is an old man who is
kind to children, and the girl Babette has a fancy to get his blessing
for my Fabien,--that is all."

"And that is little enough," responded the old vegetable-vendor, still
laughing, or rather chuckling hoarsely--"A blessing is not worth much
nowadays, is it Martine? It never puts an extra ounce of meat in the
pot-au-feu,--and yet it is all one gets out of the priests for all the
prayers and the praise. Last time I went to confession I accused myself
of the sin of envy. I said 'Look here, my father, I am a widow and very
old; and I have rheumatism in all my bones, and I have only a bit of
matting to sleep on at home, and if I have a bad day with the market I
can buy no food. And there is a woman living near me who has a warm
house, with a stove in it,--and blankets to cover her, and a bit of
money put by, and I envy her her blankets and her stove and her house
and her money. Is that a sin?' And he said it was a sin; but that he
would absolve me from it if I said ten Paters and ten Aves before Our
Lady of Bon-Secours. And then he gave me his blessing,--but no blankets
and no stove and no money. And I have not said ten Paters and Aves yet,
because my bones have ached too much all the week for me to walk up the
hill to Bon-Secours. And the blessing has been no use to me at all."

"Nor is it likely to be!" scoffed Martine--"I thought you had given up
all that Church-nonsense long ago."

"Nay--nay--not altogether,"--murmured the old woman timidly--"I am very
old,--and one never knows--there may be truth in some of it. It is the
burning and the roasting in hell that I think of,--you know that is
very likely to happen, Martine!--because you see, in this life we have
nothing but trouble,--so whoever made us must like to see us
suffering;--it must be a pleasure to God, and so it is sure to go on
and on always. And I am afraid!--and if a candle now and then to St.
Joseph would help matters, I am not the one to grudge it,--it is better
to burn a candle than burn one's self!"

Martine laughed loudly, but made no answer. She could not waste her
time arguing against the ridiculous superstitions of an old creature
who was so steeped in ignorance as to think that a votive candle could
rescue her soul from a possible hell. She went on knitting in silence
till a sudden shadow came between her and the sunlight, and a girl's
voice, harsh, yet with a certain broken sweetness in it, said--

"A fine morning's killing, aye! All their necks wrung,--all dead birds!
Once they could fly--fly and swim! Fly and swim! All dead now--and sold
cheap in the open market!"

A shrill laugh finished this outburst, but Martine knew who it was that
spoke, and maintained her equanimity.

"Is that you again, Marguerite?" she said, not unkindly--"You will tire
yourself to death wandering about the streets all day."

Marguerite Valmond, "la folle" as she was called by the townsfolk,
shook her head and smiled cunningly. She was a tall girl, with black
hair disordered and falling loosely about her pale face,--her eyes were
dark and lustrous, but wild, and with a hunted expression in them,--and
her dress was composed of the strangest remnants of oddly assorted
materials and colours pinned about her without any order or symmetry,
the very idea of decent clothing being hardly considered, as her bosom
was half exposed and her legs were bare. She wore no head-covering, and
her whole aspect was that of one who had suddenly awakened from a
hideous dream and was striving to forget its horrors.

"I shall never be tired!" she said--"If I could be tired I should
sleep,--but I never sleep! I am looking for HIM, you know!--it was at
the fair I lost him--you remember the great fair? And when I find him I
shall kill him! It is quite easy to kill--you take a sharp glittering
thing, so!" and she snatched up a knife that lay on Martine's
counter--"And you plunge it--so!" and she struck it down with singular
fury through the breast of one of the "dead birds" which were Martine's
stock-in-trade. Then she threw the knife on the ground--rubbed her
hands together, tossed her head, and laughed again--"That is how I
shall do it when I meet him!"

Martine said nothing. She simply removed the one stabbed bird from
among the others, and setting it aside, picked up the knife from the
ground and went on knitting as calmly as ever.

"I am going to see the Archbishop," proceeded Marguerite, tossing back
her dishevelled locks and making one or two fantastic dance-steps as
she spoke--"The great Archbishop of this wonderful city of Rouen! I
want to ask him how it happened that God made men. It was a mistake
which He must be sorry for! The Archbishop knows everything;--he will
tell me about it. Ah!--what a beautiful mistake is the Archbishop
himself!--and how soon women find it out! Bon jour, Martine!"

"Bon jour, Marguerite!" responded Martine quietly.

Singing to herself, the crazed girl sauntered off. Several of the
market women looked after her.

"She killed her child, they say," muttered the old
vegetable-seller--"But no one knows--"

"Sh--sh--sh!" hissed Martine angrily--"What one does not know one
should not say. Mayhap there never was a child at all. Whatever the
wrong was, she has suffered for it;--and if the man who led her astray
ever comes nigh her, his life is not worth a centime."

"Rough justice!" said one of the market porters, who had just paused
close by to light his pipe.

"Aye, rough justice!" echoed Martine--"When justice is not given to the
people, the people take it for themselves! And if a man deals ill by a
woman, he has murdered her as surely as if he had put a knife through
her;--and 'tis but even payment when he gets the knife into himself.
Things in this life are too easy for men and too hard for women; men
make the laws for their own convenience, and never a thought of us at
all in the making. They are a selfish lot!"

The porter laughed carelessly, and having lit his pipe to his
satisfaction went his way.

A great many more customers now came to Martine's stall, and for
upwards of an hour there was shrill argument and driving of bargains
till she had pretty well cleared her counter of all its stock. Then she
sat down again and looked to right and left of the market-place for any
sign of the Patoux children returning with her little son, but there
was not a glimpse of them anywhere.

"I wonder what they are doing!" she thought--"And I wonder what sort of
a Cardinal it is they have taken the child to see! These great princes
of the Church care nothing for the poor,--the very Pope allows half
Italy to starve while he shuts himself up with his treasures in the
Vatican;--what should a great Cardinal care for my poor little Fabien!
If the stories of the Christ were true, and one could only take the
child to Him, then indeed there might be a chance of cure!--but it is
all a lie,--and the worst of the lie is that it would give us all so
much comfort and happiness if it were only true! It is like holding out
a rope to a drowning man and snatching it away again. And when the rope
goes, the sooner one sinks under the waves the better!"




VI.

The Cardinal was still in his room alone with the boy Manuel, when
Madame Patoux, standing at her door under the waving tendrils of the
"creeping jenny" and shading her eyes from the radiance of the sun, saw
her children approaching with Fabien Doucet between them.

"Little wretches that they are!" she murmured--"Once let them get an
idea into their heads and nothing will knock it out! Now I shall have
to tell Monseigneur that they are here,--what an impertinence it
seems!--and yet he is so gentle, and has such a good heart that perhaps
he will not mind . . ."

Here she broke off her soliloquy as the children came up, Babette
eagerly demanding to know where the Cardinal was. Madame Patoux set her
arms akimbo and surveyed the little group of three half-pityingly, half
derisively.

"The Cardinal has not left his room since breakfast," she answered--"He
is playing Providence already to a poor lad lost in the streets, and
for that matter lost in the world, without father or mother to look
after him,--he was found in Notre Dame last night,--"

"Why, mother," interrupted Henri--"how could a boy get into Notre Dame
last night? When Babette and I went there, nobody was in the church at
all,--and we left one candle burning all alone in the darkness,--and
when we came out the Suisse swore at us for having gone in, and then
locked the door."

"Well, if one must be so exact, the boy was not found actually in Notre
Dame, obstinate child," returned his mother impatiently--"It happened
at midnight,--the good Cardinal heard someone crying and went to see
who it was. And he found a poor boy outside the Cathedral weeping as if
his heart were breaking, and leaning his head against the hard door for
a pillow. And he brought him back and gave him his own bed to sleep
in;--and the lad is with him now."

Little Fabien Doucet, leaning on his crutch, looked up with interest.

"Is he lame like me?" he asked.

"No, child," replied Madame compassionately--"He is straight and
strong. In truth a very pretty boy."

Fabien sighed. Babette made a dash forward.

"I will go and see him!" she said--"And I will call Monseigneur."

"Babette! How dare you! Babette!"

But Babette had scurried defiantly past her mother, and breathless with
a sense of excitement and disobedience intermingled, had burst into the
Cardinal's room without knocking. There on the threshold she
paused,--somewhat afraid at her own boldness,--and startled too at the
sight of Manuel, who was seated near the window opposite the Cardinal,
and who turned his deep blue eyes upon her with a look of enquiry. The
Cardinal himself rose and turned to greet her, and as the wilful little
maid met his encouraging glance and noted the benign sweetness of his
expression she trembled,--and losing nerve, began to cry.

"Monseigneur . . .  Monseigneur . . ." she stammered.

"Yes, my child,--what is it?" said the Cardinal kindly--"Do not be
afraid,--I am at your service. You have brought the little friend you
spoke to me of yesterday?"

Babette peeped shyly at him through her tears, and drooping her head,
answered with a somewhat smothered "Yes."

"That is well,--I will go to him at once,"--and the Cardinal paused a
moment looking at Manuel, who as if responding to his unuttered wish,
rose and approached him--"And you, Manuel--you will also come. You see,
my child," went on the good prelate addressing Babette, the while he
laid a gently caressing hand on her hair--"Another little friend has
come to me who is also very sad,--and though he is not crippled or ill,
he is all alone in the world, which is, for one so young, a great
hardship. You must be sorry for him too, as well as for your own poor
playmate."

But Babette was seized with an extraordinary timidity, and had much ado
to keep back the tears that rose in her throat and threatened to break
out in a burst of convulsive sobbing. She did not know in the least
what was the matter with her,--she was only conscious of an immense
confusion and shyness which were quite new to her ordinarily bold and
careless nature. Manuel's face frightened yet fascinated her; he
looked, she thought, like the beautiful angel of the famous stained
glass "Annunciation" window in the crumbling old church of St. Maclou.
She dared not speak to him,--she could only steal furtive glances at
him from under the curling length of her dark tear-wet lashes,--and
when the Cardinal took her by the hand and descended the staircase with
her to the passage where the crippled Fabien waited, she could not
forbear glancing back every now and then over her shoulder at the
slight, supple, almost aerial figure of the boy, who, noiselessly, and
with a light gliding step, followed. And now Madame Patoux came
forward;--a bulky, anxious figure of gesticulation and apology.

"Alas, Monseigneur!" she began plaintively--"It is too shameful that
your quiet should be disturbed in this way, but if you could only know
the obstinacy of these children! Ah yes!--if you knew all, you would
pity their parents!--you would indeed! And this is the unhappy little
creature they have brought to you, Monseigneur,--a sad sight
truly!--and afflicted sorely by the will of God,--though one could
hardly say that God was anywhere about when he fell, poor baby, from
his mother's cart and twisted his body awry,--one would rather think
the devil was in the business, asking your pardon, Monseigneur; for
surely the turning of a human creature into a useless lump has little
of good, or divine kindness in it! Now make thy best bow to the
Cardinal," went on Madame with a gasp for breath in her voluble speech,
addressing the little cripple--"And it is a pity them hast no time to
confess thy sins and take the Sacrament before so holy a man lay hands
on thee!"

But at these words Cardinal Bonpre turned to her with a reproving
gesture.

"I pray you do not call me holy, my daughter," he said earnestly, the
old shadows of pain and prote gathering in his eyes, "Nothing can make
me more sorrowful than to hear such an epithet applied to one who is so
full of errors and sins as myself. Try to look upon me just as I
am,--merely an old man, nearing the grave, with nothing of merit in me
beyond the desire to serve our Lord and obey His commands,--a desire
which is far stronger than the practical force to obey it. Much that I
would do I cannot; and in much that I attempt I fail. Come to me, my
child."

Here, interrupting himself, he bent down, and putting his arms tenderly
round Fabien, lifted him bodily, crutch and all, and carried him into
the next room, and as he did so, the young Manuel glided in before him,
and stood beside his chair, his blue eyes shining with a soft and eager
light of interest, and a little smile lifting the delicate upper curve
of his lips as he looked on. Fabien meanwhile, perched on the
Cardinal's knee, and held close in the Cardinal's arms, was not at all
frightened,--he simply sat, contented, gazing up confidingly at the
pale venerable face above him. Henri and Babette, having as they
considered, got their way, stayed at the door half afraid to enter, and
their mother peered over their heads at the little scene in mingled awe
and curiosity.

"My poor child," then said the Cardinal gently--"I want you to
understand quite clearly how sorry I am for you, and how willingly I
would do anything in the world to make you a strong, well, and happy
boy. But you must not fancy that I can cure you. I told your little
friends yesterday that I was not a saint, such as you read about in
story-books,--and that I could not work miracles, because I am not
worthy to be so filled with the Divine Spirit as to heal with a touch
like the better servants of our Blessed Lord. Nevertheless I firmly
believe that if God saw that it was good for you to be strong and well,
He would find ways to make you so. Sometimes sickness and sorrow are
sent to us for our advantage,--sometimes even death comes to us for our
larger benefit, though we may not understand how it is so till
afterwards. But in Heaven everything will be made clear; and even our
griefs will be turned into joys,--do you understand?"

"Yes," murmured Fabien gravely, but two large tears welled up in his
plaintive eyes as the faint glimmer of hope he had encouraged as to the
possibility of his being miraculously cured by the touch of a saintly
Cardinal, expired in the lonely darkness of his little afflicted soul.

"That is well," continued the Cardinal kindly--"And now, since it is so
difficult for you to kneel, you shall stay where you are in my
arms,--so!"--and he set him on his knee in a position of even greater
comfort than before, "You shall simply shut your eyes, and clasp your
little hands together as I put them here,"--and as he spoke he crossed
the child's hands on his silver crucifix-"And I will ask our Lord to
come and make you well,--for of myself I can do nothing."

At these words Henri and Babette glanced at each other questioningly,
and then as if simultaneously moved by some inexplicable emotion,
dropped on their knees,--their mother, too stout and unwieldy to do
this with either noiselessness or satisfaction to herself, was
contented to bend her head as low as she could get it. Manuel remained
standing. Leaning against the Cardinal's chair, his eyes fixed on the
crippled Fabien, he had the aspect of a young Angel of compassion,
whose sole immortal desire was to lift the burden of sorrow and pain
from the lives of suffering humanity. And after a minute or two passed
in silent meditation, the Cardinal laid his hands tenderly on Fabien's
fair curly head and prayed aloud.

"Oh merciful Christ! Most pitying and gentle Redeemer!--to Whom in the
days of Thy sacred life on earth, the sick and suffering and lame and
blind were brought, and never sent away unhealed or uncomforted;
consider, we beseech Thee, the sufferings of this Thy little child,
deprived of all the joys which Thou hast made so sweet for those who
are strong and straight in their youth, and who have no ailment to
depress their courage or to quench the ardour of their aspiring souls.
Look compassionately upon him, oh gentle King and Master of all such
children!--and even as Thou wert a child Thyself, be pleased to heal
him of his sad infirmity. For, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make this bent
body straight and these withered muscles strong,--from death itself
Thou canst ordain life, and nothing is impossible to Thee! But above
all things, gracious Saviour, we do pray Thee so to lift and strengthen
this child's soul, that if it is destined he should still be called
upon to bear his present pain and trouble, grant to him such perfection
in his inward spirit that he may prove worthy to be counted among Thy
angels in the bright Hereafter. To Thy care, and to Thy comfort, and to
Thy healing, great Master, we commend him, trusting him entirely to Thy
mercy, with perfect resignation to Thy Divine Will. For the sake and
memory of Thy most holy childhood mercifully help and bless this child!
Amen!"

A deep silence ensued. Only the slow ticking of the big old-fashioned
clock in Madame Patoux's kitchen, which was next door to the room they
were all in, could be distinctly heard. Henri and Babette were the
first to stir. They got up from their knees, brushed the dust of the
floor from their clothes, and stared curiously at Fabien. Was a miracle
going to happen? Fabien, however--still resting against the Cardinal's
breast, with his meagre little hands clasped tight on the Cardinal's
crucifix, kept his eyes solemnly shut and gave no sign, till the
Cardinal himself gently moved him and set him down. Then he glanced
around him bewilderingly, tottered, and would have fallen had he not
been given his little crutch for support. Very pathetic was the smile
which then quivered on his pale lips,--very doleful was the shake of
his head as he prepared to hobble away.

"Thank you very much, Monseigneur," he murmured gently--"I felt almost
cured while you were praying,--but I am afraid it is no use! You see
there are so many miserable people in the world,--many cripples,
too,--I am not the only one. Our Lord must have enough to do if He is
asked to heal them all! But I am sure you have done everything you can
for me, and I am grateful to you, Monseigneur. Good-bye!"

"Good-bye, my child!" and the Cardinal, strongly moved by the sight of
the little helpless twisted figure, and painfully impressed too by the
sense of his own entire powerlessness to remove the cause of the
trouble, bent down and kissed him--"Believe me, if the giving of my own
life could make you strong, you should have that life willingly. May
God bless and heal you!"

At that moment Manuel moved from the place he had kept near the
Cardinal's chair. With a light, eager step forward, he went up to the
little cripple, and putting his arms round him kissed him on the
forehead.

"Good-bye, dear little brother!" he said smiling--"Do not be sad! Have
patience! In all the universe, among all the millions and millions of
worlds, there is never a pure and unselfish prayer that the great good
God does not answer! Be sure of that! Take courage, dear little
brother! You will soon be well!"

Fabien stared, half amazed, at the gentle young face that shone upon
him with such an expression of hope and tenderness.

"You are very kind," he said--"And you are just a boy yourself,--so you
can perhaps guess how it must feel not to be like other boys who can
run and leap and walk for miles and miles through the fields and the
green shady forests where the birds sing,--and where there is so much
to see and think about,--when one is lame one cannot go far you
know--and then there is my mother--she is very sad about me,--and it
will be hard for her if I live to be a man and still can do nothing to
help her . . ."

His weak voice broke, and two large tears filled his eyes and brimmed
over, trickling slowly down his pale cheeks. Manuel took his hand and
pressed it encouragingly.

"Do not cry!" he said gently--"Believe in what I say--that you will
soon be quite well. The Cardinal has prayed for you as only good men
CAN pray,--without one selfish thought, in faith and deep
humility,--such prayers draw angels down! Be patient--be brave! Believe
in the best and the best will come!"

His words rang out with a sweet convincing clearness, and even Cardinal
Bonpre felt a sense of comfort as he listened. The little cripple
smiled through his tears.

"Oh, yes," he murmured--"I WILL hope and I WILL believe! I am always
sure God is near us, though my mother thinks He must be very far away.
Yes,--I will be as brave as I can. You are very good to me,--I know you
understand just how I feel, and I thank you very much. I hope you will
be happy yourself some day. Good-bye!" Then, turning to Henri and
Babette he asked, "Shall we go now?"

Henri's brows were drawn together in a dark frown.

"I suppose so," he replied--"I suppose there's nothing more to be
done?" This, with a somewhat sarcastic air of inquiry directed at the
Cardinal, who met his bold bright glance, mildly and half
compassionately.

"Nothing more my child"--he answered--"Did you expect a miracle? I told
you from the first that I was no saint,--I can do no good unless our
Lord wills it."

"The Pope believes in miracles"--said Henri, flushing as he spoke with
the heat of a sudden angry emotion--"But only those that are performed
on his own behalf! HE thinks that God's chief business is to look after
HIM!"

A silence ensued,--whether of horror or embarrassment could hardly be
determined. The Cardinal said nothing,--Babette trembled a
little,--what a dreadful boy Henri really was, she thought!--Madame
Patoux shut up her eyes in horror, crossed herself devoutly as against
some evil spirit, and was about to speak, when Henri, nothing daunted,
threw himself into the breach again, and turned with a fiery vehemence
of appeal towards the young and thoughtful-looking Manuel.

"It's just as I say!" he declared hotly--"The Pope is taken as much
care of as if he were a peach wrapped in wadding! Was Christ taken care
of? No,--He suffered all sorts of hardships and at last was crucified!
The Pope shuts himself up in the Vatican with millions and millions of
money's worth, while thousands of people around him in Italy alone, are
starving and miserable. Christ would not allow such a thing. Christ
said 'Sell half that thou hast and give to the poor'--now the Pope
doesn't sell half, nor a quarter, nor a bit of a quarter! He takes all
he can get and keeps it! And yet God is supposed to work miracles for
an old man like that!--Oh I know all about it! Boys read the newspapers
as well as grown men!"

"Henri!" gasped Madame Patoux, extending her fat arm and hand with a
solemn gesture of reproach--"Henri, thou art mad . . .  wicked . . ."

But Henri went on unheedingly, still addressing Manuel.

"Now you are a boy, and I daresay you can read and think,--you are
about my age I suppose. And you are left all alone in the world, with
nobody to care for you,--well, do you think that is well-arranged?--And
do you think there is any sense in believing in a God who does such a
lot of cruel things? And when He won't help us ever so little? How can
people be good if they keep on praying and praying, and hoping and
hoping, and working and working--and yet nothing comes of it all but
trouble and pain and loss . . ." He stopped for sheer lack of breath to
go on.

Manuel looked at him quietly, full in the eyes.

"Yes, it is hard!" he said--"Very hard! But it is not God who does any
cruel thing. God is Love,--and the Spirit of Love cannot be cruel. It
is the people of the world themselves,--the people who injure each
other in thought, word and deed,--and who have no spirit of love in
them,--these invite sorrow and pain, and rush upon misfortune. Then
they blame God for it! Ah, it is easy to blame God!--so much easier
than to blame one's self! And if you ask me if it is well for those who
suffer cruel things to still believe in God, I say yes, I do think it
well,--for it is the only chance they have of finding the right way of
life after much wandering in the wrong."

His sweet voice fell on the silence like a soft chime, and Henri, for
no particular reason that he could give, felt suddenly abashed.
Cardinal Bonpre listened to the words of this strange foundling with a
singular emotion,--an emotion too deep to find any outlet in speech.
Babette raised her brown trustful eyes, and timidly ventured to put in
her opinion.

"Yes"--she said--"I am sure that is true. You see Henri"--with a wise
glance at her brother--"you see it is always the same,--when anyone
suffers something unfortunate, there is certain to be some cause for
it. Now everybody says that if poor Martine had not put Fabien in the
cart to save herself the trouble of holding him on her knee, he would
not have tumbled out and been hurt. That was the beginning of it. And
that was not God's fault. Come Fabien!--we'll take you back now."

At this, Madame Patoux started from her stricken condition of horrified
dumbness into speech and action.

"Ah yes, it is indeed time!" she exclaimed--"Enough trouble has been
given, I am sure, to Monseigneur, and if such a prayer as his does not
reach Heaven, why then there is no Heaven at all, and it is no good
bothering ourselves about it. And what things have been said by my
son!--MY son!--against the Holy Father! Ah, mon Dieu! The wickedness of
it!--The horror! And if thou learnest such blasphemy from newspapers,
Henri, thou shalt not read them--"

"Who is to prevent me?" demanded Henri, his eyes sparkling defiantly.

"Hush--hush my child!" interposed the Cardinal quietly "Nothing indeed
can prevent thee,--no one can hinder thee from walking the world
according to thine own will and direction. Thou must take good and evil
as they come, and strive thy best to discern between them--and if the
love of God cannot help thee--well!--perchance the love of thy mother
may!"

There was a pause. Henri's head drooped, and quick tears filled his
eyes. He said nothing further, but turned to assist Babette in guiding
the little Fabien's hesitating steps as he hobbled from the room. The
emotional Madame Patoux choked back a rising sob.

"God bless you Monseigneur!" she murmured--"Henri will not forget those
words--the lad has a hasty temper, but a good heart--yes, believe me--a
good heart--"

"That I am sure of"--responded the Cardinal--"He is quick and
intelligent--and seeks to know the truth. If he could feel an asserted
'truth' to be really true, I am confident he would frame his life upon
it, and be a good, brave man. Yes--he is a clever lad,--and our modern
system of education pushes the brain to a precocity exceeding bodily
years,--his impatience and anger only come from puzzling over what he
finds it difficult to understand. It is all a puzzle to him--all a
puzzle!--as it is to most of us!" He sighed--then added in a lighter
tone--"I shall want nothing more at your kindly hands, my daughter. I
have decided to leave Rouen for Paris to-day and will take an early
afternoon train. Manuel"--and he hesitated a moment--"Manuel will go
with me."

Madame was scarcely surprised at this announcement. She had indeed
expected it. She glanced at Manuel himself to see how he accepted this
sudden change in his fortunes, but he was entirely absorbed in watching
Henri and Babette lead their little crippled friend away. After all,
there was nothing to be said. The Cardinal was a free agent,--he had a
perfect right to befriend a homeless boy and give him sustenance and
protection if he chose. He would make, thought Madame, a perfect
acolyte, and would look like a young angel in his little white
surplice. And so the good woman, deciding in her own mind that such was
the simple destiny for which the Cardinal intended him, smiled,
murmured something deferential and approving, and hastened from the
room, to prepare for Monseigneur, whether he asked for it or not, a
dish of her most excellent soup, to strengthen and support him before
starting on his journey. And ere four o'clock had chimed from all the
towers of the city, the Hotel Poitiers was deprived of its honoured
guest,--the Cardinal, accompanied by his foundling, had departed, and
the black, smoky, snake-like train had rushed with them through the
smiling peace of the Normandy pasture-lands on towards the brilliant
"city enthroned in wickedness," which sparkles like a jewel on the
borders of the Seine as gloriously as ever Babylon sparkled on the
shores of Euphrates. As godless, as hollow to the very core of
rottenness, as her sister of ancient days, wanton "Lutetia"
shines,--with the ghastly and unnatural lustre of phosphorescent
luminance arising from old graves--and as divinely determined as the
destruction of the old-time city splendid, is the approaching downfall
of the modern capital. To the inhabitants of Rouen, the very name of
Paris carries with it a kind of awe,--it excites various emotions of
wonder, admiration, longing, curiosity and even fear,--for Paris is a
witches' cauldron in which Republicanism, Imperialism, Royalism,
Communism and Socialism, are all thrown by the Fates to seethe together
in a hellish broth of conflicting elements--and the smoke of it ascends
in reeking blasphemy to Heaven. Not from its church-altars does the cry
of "How long, O Lord, how long!" ascend nowadays,--for its priests are
more skilled in the use of the witty bon-mot or the polished sneer than
in the power of the prophet's appeal,--it is from the Courts of Science
that the warning note of terror sounds,--the cold vast courts where
reasoning thinkers wander, and learn, and deeply meditate, knowing that
all their researches but go to prove the fact that apart from all creed
and all forms of creed, Crime carries Punishment as surely as the seed
is born with the flower,--thinkers who are fully aware that not all the
forces of all mankind, working with herculean insistence to support a
Lie, can drive back the storm-cloud of the wrath of that "Unknown
Quantity" called God, whose thunders do most terribly declare the truth
"with power and great glory." "How long O Lord, how long!" Not long, we
think, O friends!--not long now shall we wait for the Divine
Pronouncement of the End. Hints of it are in the air,--signs and
portents of it are about us in our almost terrific discoveries of the
invisible forces of Light and Sound,--we are not given such tremendous
powers to play with in our puny fashion for the convenience of making
our brief lives easier to live and more interesting,--no, there is some
deeper reason,--one, which in our heedless way of dancing over our own
Earth-grave, we never dream of. And we go on making our little plans,
building our ships and making loud brags of our armies, and our skill,
and our prowess both by land and sea, and our amazing importance to
ourselves and to others,--which importance has reached such a height at
the present day as to make of us a veritable spectacle for Olympian
laughter,--and we draw out our little sums of life from the Eternal
exchequer, and add them up and try to obtain the highest interest for
them, always forgetting to calculate that in making up the sum total,
that mysterious "Unknown Quantity" will have to come in, and (un less
it has been taken into due counting from the first) will be a figure
likely to swamp the whole banking business. And in this particular
phase of speculation and exchange, Paris has long been playing a losing
game. So steadily has she lost, in honour, in prestige, in faith, in
morals, in justice, in honesty and in cleanly living, that it does not
seem possible she can ever retrieve herself. Her men are
dissolute,--her women shameless--her youth of both sexes depraved,--her
laws are corrupt--her arts de cadent--her religion dead. What next can
be expected of her?--or rather to what extent will Destiny permit her
to go before the bolt of destruction falls? "Thus far, and no farther"
has ever been the Principle of Nature--and Paris has almost touched the
"Thus far."

Sitting quietly in her tidy kitchen near the open window, after the
Cardinal's departure, Madame Patoux knitted busily, her thoughts flying
faster than her glittering needles. A certain vague impression of
solemnity had been left on her mind by the events of the morning,--she
could not quite reason out the why or the wherefore of it--and yet--it
was a fact that after Monseigneur had gone, she had, when entering the
rooms he had vacated, felt a singular sense of awe.

"Almost as if one were in the Cathedral at the ringing of the
'Sanctus'" she murmured under her breath, glancing about timidly at the
plain furniture and bare walls. And after putting everything in order,
she closed and locked the doors jealously, with a determination that
she would not let those rooms to the first chance-comer for a long
time,--no, though she might have to lose money by her refusal. And now,
as she sat actively employed in knitting socks for Henri, whom she
could see sitting with his sister outside on the bench under the house
porch, reading or pretending to read, she began to wonder what opinion
those two young miscreants had formed in their minds respecting the
Cardinal, and also what they thought of the boy who had been taken so
suddenly under his protection. She was almost tempted to call Henri and
ask him a few questions on the subject,--but she had learnt to value
peace and quietness when she could secure those rare blessings at the
hands of her children, and when they were employed with a book and
visibly out of mischief she thought it wisest to leave them alone. And
so she left them in the present instance, pushing her window open as
she sat and knitted, for the air was warm and balmy, and the long rays
of sunshine streaming across the square were of the hue of a ripe
nectarine just gathered, and the delicate mouldings and traceries and
statues on the porch of the Cathedral appeared like so many twinings of
grey gossamer web glistening in a haze of gold. Now and then neighbours
passed, and nodded or called a greeting which Madame Patoux answered
cheerily, still knitting vivaciously; and the long shafts of sunshine
grew longer, casting deeper shadows as the quarters chimed. All at once
there was a cry,--a woman's figure came rushing precipitately across
the square,--Madame Patoux sprang up, and her children ran out of the
porch as they recognised Martine Doucet.

"Martine! Martine! What is it!" they all cried simultaneously.

Martine, breathless, dishevelled, laughing and sobbing alternately,
tried to speak, but could only gesticulate and throw up her hands in a
kind of ecstasy, but whether of despair or joy could not be guessed.
Madame Patoux shook her by the arm.

"Martine!--speak--what is it!"

Martine made a violent effort.

"Fabien!--Fabien--" she gasped, flinging herself to and fro and still
sobbing and laughing.

"Mon Dieu!" cried Madame in horror. "Is the child dead?"

"No, no!--" and Martine again tossed her arms aloft in a kind of
frenzy. "No--but look you!--there IS a God! Yes!--we thought He was an
invention of the priests--but no--He is a real God after all!--Oh mes
enfants!" and she tried to grasp the amazed Henri and Babette in her
arms, "You are two of His angels!--you took my boy to the Cardinal--"

The children glanced at each other.

"Yes--yes!" they murmured breathlessly.

"Well! and see what has happened!--See!--Here comes Fabien--!"

And as she spoke exultantly with an excitement that seemed to inspire
every nerve of her body, a little figure came running lightly towards
them,--the light strong figure of a boy with fair curls flying in the
wind, and a face in which the large, grey, astonished eyes flashed with
an almost divine joy.

"Mother!--Mother!" he cried.

Madame Patoux felt as though the heavens had suddenly opened to let the
angels down. Was this Fabien? Fabien, who had hobbled painfully upon
crutches all his life, and had left her house in his usual condition an
hour or so ago?--This straight-limbed child, running with the graceful
and easy movement of a creature who had never known a day's pain?

"Fabien, is it thou?" almost screamed Henri, "Speak, is it thou?"

"It is I" said Fabien, and he stopped, panting for breath,--then threw
his arms round his mother's neck and faced them,--"It is I--strong and
well!--thanks to God and the prayers of the Cardinal!"

For a moment there was a dead silence,--a silence of stupefied
amazement unbroken save by the joyful weeping of Martine. Then suddenly
a deep-toned bell rang from the topmost tower of Notre Dame--and in the
flame-red of the falling sun the doves that make their homes among the
pinnacles of the great Cathedral, rose floating in cloudy circles
towards the sky. One bell--and then another--yet another!--

"The Angelus!" cried Babette dropping on her knees and folding her
hands, "The Angelus!--Mother--Martine--Henri!--Fabien!--the Angelus!"--

Down they all knelt, a devotional group, in the porch through which the
good Cardinal had so lately passed, and the bells chimed sweetly and
melodiously as Fabien reverently repeated the Angelic Salutation amid
responses made with tears and thanksgiving, and neighbours and townfolk
hearing of the miracle came hastening to the Hotel Poitiers to enquire
into its truth, and pausing as they saw the cluster of kneeling figures
in the porch instinctively and without question knelt also,--then as
the news spread, group after group came running and gathering together,
and dropping on their knees amazed and awe-struck, till the broad
Square showed but one black mass of a worshipping congregation under
the roseate sky, their voices joining in unison with the clear accents
of one little happy child; while behind them rose the towers of Notre
Dame, and over their heads the white doves flew and the bells of the
Angelus rang. And the sun dropped slowly into the west, crimson and
glorious like the shining rim of a Sacramental Cup held out and then
drawn slowly back again by angel hands within the Veil of Heaven.




VII.

Meanwhile, unconscious of the miracle his prayer had wrought, Cardinal
Bonpre and his young charge Manuel, arrived in Paris, and drove from
the station direct to a house situated near the Bois du Boulogne, where
the Cardinal's niece, Angela Sovrani, only daughter of Prince Sovrani,
and herself famous throughout Europe as a painter of the highest
promise, had a suite of rooms and studio, reserved for her occasional
visits to the French capital. Angela Sovrani was a rare type of her
sex,--unlike any other woman in the world, so those who knew her best
were wont to declare. Without being actually beautiful, according to
the accepted lines and canons of physical perfection, she created
around her an effect of beauty, which was dazzling and exciting to a
singular degree,--people who came once within the charmed circle of her
influence could never forget her, and always spoke of her afterwards as
a creature apart;--a "woman of genius,--yes!"--they said, "But
something more even than that." And this "something more," was just the
inexplicable part of her which governed her whole being, and rendered
her so indescribably attractive. And she was not without beauty--or
perhaps it should be termed loveliness rather,--of an exquisitely
suggestive kind, which provoked the beholder into questioning where and
how the glamour of it fell. In her eyes, perhaps, the secret lay,--they
were violet-grey in hue, and drowsy-lidded, with long lashes that swept
the delicate pale cheeks in a dark golden fringe of shadow, through
which the sparkle of vision gleamed,--now warningly, now tenderly,--and
anon, these same half-shut and deep fringed lids would open wide,
letting the full brilliance of the soul behind the eyes pour forth its
luminance, in flashes of such lightning-like clearness and compelling
force, that it was impossible not to recognise something higher than
mere woman in the dazzle of that spiritual glory. In figure she was
wonderfully slight,--so slight indeed that she suggested a delicate
willow-withe such as can be bent and curved with one hand--yet this
slightness stood her in good stead, for being united with extreme
suppleness, it gave her a grace of movement resembling that of some
skimming mountain bird or sea-swallow, which flies with amazing
swiftness yet seeming slowness. Angela never moved quickly,--no one had
ever seen her in what is termed a "rush," or a vulgar hurry. She did
everything she had to do without haste, without noise, without
announcement or assertion of any kind;--and all that she did was done
as perfectly as her ability could warrant. And that ability was very
great indeed, and displayed itself in small details as well as large
attempts. Whether she merely twisted her golden-brown hair into a knot,
or tied a few flowers together and fastened them on her dress with a
pearl pin, either thing was perfectly done--without a false line or a
discordant hue. Her face, form, voice and colouring were like a chord
of music, harmonious,--and hence the impression of satisfaction and
composure her presence always gave. In herself she was a creature of
remarkable temperament and character;--true womanly in every delicate
sentiment, fancy and feeling, but with something of the man-hero in her
scorn of petty aims, her delight in noble deeds, her courage, her
ambition, her devotion to duty and her unflinching sense of honour.
Full of rare perceptions and instinctive knowledge of persons and
motives, she could only be deceived and blinded where her deepest
affections were concerned, and there she could certainly be fooled and
duped as completely as the wisest of us all. Looking at her now as she
stood awaiting her uncle's arrival in the drawing-room of her "suite,"
the windows of which faced the Bois, she expressed to the air and
surroundings the personality of a thoughtful, charming young woman,--no
more. Her black silk gown, cut simply in the prevailing mode of
definitely outlining the figure from throat to hips, and then springing
out in pliant folds of trailing drapery, had nothing remarkable about
it save its Parisian perfection of fit,--the pale "Gloire de France"
rose that rested lightly amongst the old lace at her neck, pinned, yet
looking as though it had dropped there merely out of a languid desire
to escape from further growing, was her only ornament. Her hair, full
of curious lights and shades running from brown to gold and gold to
brown again, in a rippling uncertain fashion, clustered thickly over
her brow and was caught back at the sides in a loose twist after the
style of the Greek vestals,--and her fine, small white hands and taper
fingers, so skilled in the use of the artist's brush, looked too tiny
and delicate to be of any service save to receive the kisses of a
lover's lips,--or to be raised, folded pure and calm, in a child-like
appeal to Heaven. Certainly in her fragile appearance she expressed
nothing save indefinable charm--no one, studying her physiognomy, would
have accredited her with genius, power, and the large conceptions of a
Murillo or a Raphael;--yet within the small head lay a marvellous
brain--and the delicate body was possessed by a spirit of amazing
potency to conjure with. While she watched for the first glimpse of the
carriage which was to bring her uncle the Cardinal, whom she loved with
a rare and tender devotion, her thoughts were occupied with a letter
she had received that morning from Rome,--a letter "writ in choice
Italian," which though brief, contained for her some drops of the
essence of all the world's sweetness, and was worded thus--

"MY OWN LOVE!--A century seems to have passed away since you left Rome.
The hours move slowly without you--they are days,--even years!--but I
feel your spirit is always with me! Absence for those who love, is not
absence after all! To the soul, time is nothing,--space is
nothing,--and my true and passionate love for you makes an invisible
bridge, over which my thoughts run and fly to your sweet presence,
carrying their delicious burden of a thousand kisses!--a thousand
embraces and blessings to the Angela and angel of my life! From her
devoted lover,

"Florian."

Her devoted lover, Florian! Yes; Florian Varillo--her comrade in art,
was her lover,--a genius himself, who had recognised HER genius and who
bowed before it, conquered and subdued! Florian, the creator of
exquisitely delicate landscapes and seascapes, with nymphs and cupids
and nereids and sirens all daintily portrayed therein,--pictures so
ethereal and warm and bright in colour that they were called by some of
the best Italian critics, the "amoretti" of painting,--he, this
wonderful man, had caught her soul and heart by storm, in a few sudden,
quickly-whispered words one night when the moon was at the full,
hanging high over the gardens of the Pincio,--and, proud of her
security in the love she had won, Angela had risen by leaps and bounds
to a magnificence of creative effort and attainment so far beyond him,
that old and wise persons, skilled in the wicked ways of the world,
would sometimes discourse among themselves in dubious fashion thus: "Is
it possible that he is not jealous? He must surely see that her work is
superior to his own!" And others would answer, "Oh no! No man was ever
known to admit, even in thought, that a woman can do better things in
art than himself! If a masculine creature draws a picture on a
paving-stone he will assure himself in his own Ego, that it is really
much more meritorious simply as 'man's work' than the last triumph of a
Rosa Bonheur. Besides, you have to remember that in this case the man
is the woman's lover--he could soon kill her genius if he chose. He has
simply to desert her,--such an easy thing!--so often done!--and she
will paint no more. Women are all alike,--they rest on love,--when that
fails, then everything fails, and they drop into old age without a
groan." And then perhaps a stray cynic would say, "But Angela Sovrani
need not depend on one lover surely?--" and he would get for answer,
"No, she need not--but it so happens that she does,"--which to
everybody seemed extraordinary, more particularly in Italy, where
morals are so lax, that a woman has only to be seen walking alone in
the public gardens or streets with one of the opposite sex, and her
reputation is gone for ever. It is no use to explain that the man in
question is her father, her brother or her uncle,--he simply could not
be. He is THE man, the one inevitable. Few Italians (in Italy) believe
in the chastity of English women,--their reasons for doubt being simply
because they see the fair and free ones going to parties, theatres and
other places of amusement with their friends of the other sex in
perfect ease and confidence. And in the case of Angela Sovrani, though
she was affianced to Florian Varillo with her father's consent,
(reluctantly obtained,) and the knowledge of all the Roman world of
society, she saw very little of him,--and that little, never alone.
Thus it was very sweet to receive such consoling words as those she had
had from him that day--"Time is nothing,--space is nothing,--and my
true and passionate love for you makes an invisible bridge over which
my thoughts run and fly to your sweet presence!" The letter lay warm in
her bosom just under the "Gloire de France" rose; she pressed it
tenderly with her little hand now simply for the childish pleasure of
hearing the paper rustle, and she smiled dreamily.

"Florian," she murmured half aloud!--"MY Florian!" And she recalled
certain lines of verse he had written to her,--for most Italians write
verse as easily as they eat maccaroni;--and there are countless rhymes
to "amor" in the dulcet Dante-tongue, whereas our rough English can
only supply for the word "love" some three or four similar
sounds,--which is perhaps a fortunate thing. Angela spoke English and
French as easily and fluently as her native Tuscan, and had read the
most notable books in all three languages, so she was well aware that
of all kinds of human speech in the world there is none so adapted for
making love and generally telling lies in, as the "lingua Toscana in
bocca Romana." And this particular "lingua" Florian possessed in
fullest perfection of sweetness, so far as making love was
concerned;--of the telling of lies he was, according to Angela's
estimate of him, most nobly ignorant. She had not many idle moments,
however, for meditation on her love matters, or for dreamy study of the
delicate beginnings of the autumnal tints on the trees of the Bois, for
the carriage she had been awaiting soon made its appearance, and
bowling rapidly down the road drew up sharply at the door. She had just
time to perceive that her uncle had not arrived alone, when he
entered,--and with a pretty grace and reverence for his holy calling,
she dropped on one knee before him to receive his benediction, which he
gave by laying a hand on her soft hair and signing the cross on her
brow. After which he raised her and looked at her fondly.

"My dear child!"--he said, tenderly,--and again "My dear child!"

Then he turned towards Manuel, who had followed him and was now
standing quietly on the threshold of the apartment.

"Angela, this is one of our Lord's 'little ones,'" he said,--"He is
alone in the world, and I have made myself his guardian and protector
for the present. You will be kind to him--yes--as kind as if you were
his sister, will you not?--for we are all one family in the sight of
Heaven, and sorrow and loneliness and want can but strengthen the love
which should knit us all together."

Raising her candid eyes, and fixing them on Manuel, Angela smiled. The
thoughtful face and pathetic expression of the boy greatly attracted
her, and in her heart she secretly wondered where her uncle had found
so intelligent and inspired-looking a creature. But one of her
UNfeminine attributes was a certain lack of curiosity concerning other
people's affairs, and an almost fastidious dislike of asking questions
on matters which did not closely concern her. So she contented herself
with giving him that smile of hers which in itself expressed all
sweetness, and saying gently,--

"You are very welcome! You must try to feel that wherever my uncle
is,--that is 'home'."

"I have felt that from the first,"--replied Manuel in

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/4285