VII…

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 his soft musical voice, "I was all alone when my lord the Cardinal found me,--but with him the world seems full of friends."

Angela looked at him still more attentively; and the fascination of his presence became intensified. She would have liked to continue the conversation, but her uncle was fatigued by his journey, and expressed the desire for an hour's rest. She therefore summoned a servant to show him to the rooms prepared for his reception, whither he went, Manuel attending him,--and when, after a little while, Angela followed to see that all was arranged suitably for his comfort, she found that he had retired to his bed-chamber, and that just outside his door in a little ante-room adjoining, his "waif and stray" was seated, reading. There was something indescribable about the boy even in this reposeful attitude of study,--and Angela observed him for a minute or two, herself unseen. His face reminded her of one of Fra Angelico's seraphs,--the same broad brow, deep eyes and sensitive lips, which seemed to suggest the utterance of wondrous speech or melodious song,--the same golden hair swept back in rich clusters,--the same eager, inspired, yet controlled expression. A curious fluttering of her heart disturbed the girl as she looked--an indefinable dread--a kind of wonder, that almost touched on superstitious awe. Manuel himself, apparently unconscious of her observation, went on reading,--his whole attitude expressing that he was guarding the door to deter anyone from breaking in upon the Cardinal's rest, and Angela at last turned away reluctantly, questioning herself as to the cause of the strange uneasiness which thrilled her mind.

"It is foolish, of course,"--she murmured, "but I feel just as if there were a supernatural presence in the house, . . . however,--I always do have that impression with Uncle Felix, for he is so good and noble-minded,--almost a saint, as everyone says--but to-day there is something else--something quite unusual--"

She re-entered the drawing-room, moving slowly with an abstracted air, and did not at once perceive a visitor in the room,--a portly person in clerical dress, with a somewhat large head and strongly marked features,--a notable character of the time in Paris, known as the Abbe Vergniaud. He had seated himself in a low fauteuil, and was turning over the pages of the month's "Revue de Deux Mondes", humming a little tune under his breath as he did so,--but he rose when he saw Angela, and advanced smilingly to greet her as she stopped short, with a little startled exclamation of surprise at the sight of him.

"Forgive me" he said, with an expressively apologetic gesture,--"Have I come at an inopportune moment? I saw your uncle arrive, and I was extremely anxious to see him on a little confidential matter--I ventured to persuade your servant to let me enter--"

"No apologies are necessary, Monsieur l'Abbe" said Angela, quickly, "My uncle Felix is indeed here, but he is tired with his journey and is resting--"

"Yes, I understand!" And Monsieur l'Abbe, showing no intention to take his leave on account of the Cardinal's non-presence, bowed low over the extended hand of "the Sovrani" as she was sometimes called in the world of art, where her name was a bone for envious dogs-in-the-manger to fight over--"But if I might wait a little while--"

"Your business with my uncle is important?" questioned Angela with slightly knitted brows.

"My dear child, all business is important,"--declared the Abbe, with a smile which spread the light of a certain satirical benevolence all over his plump clean-shaven face, "or so we think--we who consider that we have any business,--which is of course a foolish idea,--but one that is universal to human nature. We all imagine we are busy--which is so curious of us! Will you sit here?--Permit me!" And he dexterously arranged a couple of cushions in an arm-chair and placed it near the window. Angela half-reluctantly seated herself, watching the Abbe under the shadow of her long lashes as he sat down opposite to her. "Yes,--the emmets, the flies, the worms and the men, are all of one equality in the absurd belief that they can do things--things that will last. Their persistent self-credulity is astonishing,--considering the advance the world has made in science, and the overwhelming proofs we are always getting of the fact that we are only One of an eternal procession of many mighty civilizations, all of which have been swept away with everything they have ever learnt, into silence,--so that really all we do, or try to do, amounts to doing nothing in the end!"

"That is your creed, I know," said Angela Sovrani with a faint sigh, "But it is a depressing and a wretched one."

"I do not find it so," responded the Abbe, complacently looking at a fine diamond ring that glittered on the little finger of his plump white hand, "It is a creed which impresses upon us the virtue of being happy during the present moment, no matter what the next may bring. Let each man enjoy himself according to his temperament and capabilities. Do not impose bounds upon him--give him his liberty. Let him alone. Do not try to bamboozle him with the idea that there is a God looking after him. So will he be spared much disappointment and useless blasphemy. If he makes his own affairs unpleasant in this world', he will not be able to lift up his hands to the innocent skies, which are only composed of pure ether, and blame an impossible Large Person sitting up there who can have no part in circumstances which are entirely unknown outside the earth's ridiculously small orbit."

He smiled kindly as he spoke, and looked paternally at "the Sovrani," who flushed with a sudden warmth that sent a wave of pale rose over her face, and made her cheeks the colour of the flower she wore.

"How cruel you are!" she said,--"How cold--how didactic! You would give each man his freedom according to habit and temperament,--no matter whether such habit and temperament led to crime or otherwise,--you would impose upon him no creed,--no belief in anything higher than himself,--and yet--you remain in the Church!"

The Abbe laughed softly.

"Chere Sovrani! You are angry--deliciously angry! Impulsively, enthusiastically, beautifully vexed with me! I like to see you so,--you are a woman of remarkable genius, and yet you are quite a little child in heart,--a positive child, with beliefs and hopes! I should not wonder if you even believed that love itself is eternal!--that most passing of phantoms!--yes--and you exclaim against me because I venture to think for myself? It is appalling that I should think for myself and yet remain in the Church? My dear lady, you might just as well, after unravelling the dirty entanglement of the Dreyfus case, have turned upon our late friend Faure and exclaimed 'And yet you remained President!'"

Angela's violet eyes glowed.

"He was not allowed to remain President," she said.

"No, he was not. He died. Certainly! And I know you think he would not have died if he had done his best to clear the character of an innocent man. To women of your type, it always seems as if God--the Large Person up above--stepped in exactly at the right moment. It would really appear as if it were so at times. But such things are mere coincidences."

"I do not believe in coincidences," said Angela decisively, "I do not believe in 'chance' or 'luck', or what you call 'fortuitous' haphazard arrangements of any sort. I think everything is planned by law from the beginning; even to the particular direction in which a grain of dust floats through space. It is all mathematical and exact. And the moving Spirit--the Divine Centre of things, whom I call God,--cannot dislodge or alter one particle of the majestic system without involving the whole in complete catastrophe. It is our mistake to 'chance' things--at least, so I think. And if I exclaim against you and say,--"Why do you remain in the Church?' it is because I cannot understand a man of conscience and intellect outwardly professing one thing while inwardly he means another. Because God will take him in the end at his own interior valuation, not at his outward seeming."

"Uncomfortable, if true," said the Abbe, still smiling. "When one has been at infinite pains all one's life to present a charmingly virtuous and noble aspect to the world, it would be indeed distressing if at the last moment one were obliged to lift the mask . . ."

"Sometimes one is not given the chance to lift it," interposed Angela, "It is torn off ruthlessly by a force greater than one's own. 'Call no man happy till his death,' you know."

"Yes, I know," and the Abbe settled himself in his chair more comfortably;--he loved an argument with "the Sovrani", and was wont to declare that she was the only woman in the world who had ever made him wish to be a good man,--"But that maxim can be taken in two ways. It may mean that no man is happy till his death,--which I most potently believe,--or it may mean that a man is only JUDGED after his death, in which case it cannot be said to affect his happiness, as he is past caring whether people think ill or well of him. Besides, after death it must needs be all right, as every man is so particularly fortunate in his epitaph!"

Angela smiled a little.

"That is witty of you," she said, "but the fact of every man having a kindly-worded epitaph only proves goodness of heart and feeling in his relatives and friends--"

"Or gratitude for a fortune left to them in his will," declared the Abbe gaily, "or a sense of relief that the dear creature has gone and will never come back. Either motive, would, I know, inspire me to write most pathetic verses! Now you bend your charming brows at me,--mea culpa! I have said something outrageous?"

"Not from the point of view at which YOU take life," said Angela quietly, "but I was just then thinking of a cousin of mine,--a very beautiful woman; her husband treated her with every possible sort of what I should term civil cruelty,--polite torture--refined agony. If he had struck her or shot her dead it would have been far kinder. But his conduct was worse than murder. He finally deserted her, and left her penniless to fight her own way through the world. Then he died suddenly, and she forgot all his faults, spoke of him as though he had been a model of goodness, and lives now for his memory, ever mourning his loss. In her case the feeling of regret had nothing to do with money, for he spent all her fortune and left her nothing even of her own. She has to work hard for her living now,--but she loves him and is as true to him as if he were still alive. What do you say to that?"

"I say that the lady in question must be a charming person!" replied the Abbe, "Perfectly charming! But of course she is deceiving herself; and she takes pleasure in the self-deception. She knows that the man had deserted her and was quite unworthy of her devotion;--but she pretends to herself that she does NOT know. And it is charming, of course! But women will do that kind of thing. It is extraordinary,--but they will. They all deceive themselves in matters of love. Even you deceive yourself."

Angela started.

"I?" she exclaimed.

"Yes--you--why not?" And the Abbe treated her to one of his particularly paternal smiles. "You are betrothed to Florian Varillo,--but no man ever had or ever could have all the virtues with which you endow this excellent Florian. He is a delightful creature,--a good artist--unique in his own particular line,--but you think him something much greater than even artist or man--a sort of god, (though the gods themselves were not impeccable) only fit to be idealised. Now, I am not a believer in the gods,--but of course it is delightful to me to meet those who are."

"Signor Varillo needs neither praise nor defence," said Angela with a slight touch of hauteur, "All the world knows what he is."

"Yes, precisely! That is just it,--all the world knows what he is,--" and the Abbe rubbed his forehead with an air of irritation, "And I am vexing you by my talk, I can see! Well, well!--You must forgive my garrulity;--I admit my faults--I am old--I am a cynic--I talk too much--I have a bad opinion of man, and an equally bad opinion of the Forces that evolved him. By the way, I met that terrible reformer and socialist Aubrey Leigh at the Embassy the other day--the man who is making such a sensation in England with his 'Addresses to the People.' He is quite an optimist, do you know? He believes in everything and everybody,--even in me!"

Angela laughed, and her laughter sweet and low, thrilled the air with a sense of music.

"That is wonderful!" she said gaily,--"Even in you! And how does he manage to believe in you, Monsieur l'Abbe? Do tell me!"

A little frown wrinkled the Abbe's brow.

"Well! in a strange way," he responded. "You know he is a very strange man and believes in very strange things. When I treat humanity as a jest--which is really how it should be treated--he looks at me with a grand air of tolerance, 'Oh, you will progress;' he says, 'You are passing through a phase.' 'My dear sir,' I assure him, 'I have lived in this "phase", as you call it, for forty years. I used to pray to the angels and saints and to all the different little Madonnas that live in different places, till I was twenty. Then I dropped all the pretty heaven-toys at once;--and since then I have believed in nothing--myself, least of all. Now I am sixty--and yet you tell me I am only passing through a phase.' 'Quite so,' he answered me with the utmost coolness, 'Your forty years--or your sixty years, are a Moment merely;--the Moment will pass--and you will find another Moment coming which will explain the one which has just gone. Nothing is simpler.' And when I ask him which will be the best Moment,--the one that goes, or the one that comes--he says that I am making the coming Moment for myself--'which is so satisfactory' he adds with that bright smile of his, 'because of course you will make it pleasant!' 'Il faut que tout homme trouve pour lui meme une possibilite particuliere de vie superieure dans l'humble et inevitable realite quotidienne.' I do not find the 'possibilite particuliere'--but this man assures me it is because I do not trouble to look for it. What do you think about it?" Angela's eyes were full of dreamy musing.

"I think Mr. Leigh's ideas are beautiful," she said, slowly, "I have often heard him talk on the subject of religion--and of art, and of work,--and all he says seems to be the expression of a noble and sincere mind. He is extraordinarily gifted."

"Yes,--and he is becoming rather an alarming personage in England, so I hear,--" returned the Abbe--"He writes books that are distinctly dangerous, because true. He wants to upset shams like our Socialist writer Gys Grandit. Gys Grandit, you know, will never be satisfied till, like Rousseau, he has brought about another French Revolution. He is only a peasant, they say, but he writes with the pen of a prophet. And this Englishman is of the same calibre,--only his work is directed against religious hypocrisies more than social ones. I daresay that is why I always feel so uneasy in his presence!" And Vergniaud laughed lightly. "For the rest, he is a brilliant creature enough, and thoroughly manly. The other evening at the Club that little Vicomte de Lorgne was chattering in his usual offensive manner about women, and Leigh astonished everyone by the way in which he pulled him up. There was almost a very pretty quarrel,--but a stray man happened to mention casually,--that Leigh was considered one of the finest shots in England. After that the dear Vicomte vanished, and did not return."

Angela laughed.

"Poor de Lorgne! Yes--I have heard that Mr. Leigh excels in everything that is distinctly English--riding, shooting, and all that kind of thing. He is not effeminate."

"Few Englishmen are," said the Abbe,--"And yet to my mind there is something not altogether English in this man. He has none of the heavy British mental and physical stolidity. He is strong and muscular certainly,--but also light and supple,--and with that keen, intellectual delicate face of his, he is more of the antique Greek type than like a son of Les Isles Sans-Soleil."

"Sans-Soleil," echoed Angela, "But there is plenty of sunshine in England!"

"Is there? Well, I have been unfortunate,--I have never seen any,--" and the Abbe gave a shrug of half regret, half indifference. "It is very curious the effect that this so brave England has upon me! In crossing to its shores I suffer of course from the mal de mer--then when I arrive exhausted to the white cliffs, it is generally raining--then I take train to London, where it is what is called black fog; and I find all the persons that I meet either with a cold, or going to have a cold, or just recovering from a cold! It is not lively--the very funerals are dull. And you--this is not your experience?"

"No--frankly I cannot say it is," replied Angela, "I have seen rain and fog in Rome that cannot be surpassed for wretchedness anywhere. Italy is far more miserable in cold weather than England. I passed a summer once in England, and it was to me like a glimpse of Paradise. I never saw so many flowers--I never heard so many birds--(you know in Italy we kill all the singing birds and eat them), and I never met so many kind and gentle people."

"Well!--perhaps the religious sects in England are responsible for the general feeling of depression in the English atmosphere," said the Abbe with a light laugh, "They are certainly foggy! The one round Sun of one Creed is unknown to them. I assure you it is best to have one light of faith, even though it be only a magic lantern,--a toy to amuse the children of this brief life before their everlasting bedtime comes--" He broke off abruptly as a slow step was heard approaching along the passage, and in another moment Cardinal Bonpre entered the room.

"Ah, le bien aime Felix!" cried Vergniaud, hastening to meet him and clasp his outstretched hand, bowing slightly over it as he did so, "I have taken the liberty to wait for you, cher Monseigneur, being anxious to see you--and I understand your stay in Paris will not be long?"

"A few days at most, my dear Abbe",--replied the Cardinal, gently pressing the hand of Vergniaud and smiling kindly. "You are well? But surely I need not ask--you seem to be in the best of health and spirits."

"Ah, my seeming is always excellent," returned the Abbe, "However, I do not fare badly. I have thrown away all hard thinking!"

"And you are happier so?"

"Well, I am not quite sure! There is undoubtedly a pleasure in analysing the perplexities of one's own mind. Still, on the whole, it is perhaps better to enjoy the present hour without any thought at all."

"Like the butterflies!" laughed Angela.

"Yes,--if butterflies DO enjoy their hour,--which I am not at all prepared to admit. In my opinion they are very dissatisfied creatures,--no sooner on one flower than off they go to another. Very like human beings after all! But I imagine they never worry themselves with philosophical or religious questions."

"And do you?" enquired Bonpre, smiling, as he sat down in the easy chair his niece placed for him.

"Not as a rule!--" answered Vergniaud frankly, with a light laugh--"But I confess I have done a little in that way lately. Some of the new sciences puzzle me,--I am surprised to find how closely they approach to the fulfilment of old prophecies. One is almost inclined to believe that there must be a next world and a future life."

"I think such belief is now placed beyond mere inclination," said the Cardinal--"There is surely no doubt of it."

Vergniaud gave him a quick side-glance of earnest scrutiny.

"With you, perhaps not--" he replied--"But with me,--well!--it is a different matter. However, it is really no use worrying one's self with the question of 'To be, or not to be.' It drove Hamlet mad, just as the knotty point as to whether Hamlet himself was fat or lean nearly killed our hysterical little boy, Catullus Mendes. It's best to leave eternal subjects like God and Shakespeare alone."

He laughed again, but the Cardinal did not smile.

"I do not agree with you, Vergniaud," he said--"I fear it is because we do not think sufficiently for ourselves on the One eternal subject that so much mischief threatens us at the present time. To take gifts and ignore the Giver is surely the blackest ingratitude, yet that is what the greater part of humanity is guilty of in these days. Never was there so much beholding and yet ignoring of the Divine as now. Science is searching for God, and is getting closer to Him every day;--the Church remains stationary and refuses to look out beyond her own pale of thought and conventional discipline. I know,--" and the Cardinal hesitated a moment, "I know I can speak quite plainly to you, for you are what is called a freethinker--yet I doubt whether you are really as free as you imagine!"

The Abbe shrugged his shoulders.

"I imagine nothing!" he declared airily, "Everything is imagined for me nowadays,--and imagination itself is like a flying Geni which overtakes and catches the hair of some elusive Reality and turns its face round, full-shining on an amazed world!"

"A pretty simile!" said Angela Sovrani, smiling.

"Is it not? Almost worthy of Paul Verlaine who was too 'inspired' to keep either his body or his soul clean. Why was I not a poet! Helas!--Fact so much outweighs fancy that it is no longer any use penning a sonnet to one's mistress's eyebrow. One needs to write with thunderbolts in characters of lightning, to express the wonders and discoveries of this age. When I find I can send a message from here to London across space, without wires or any visible means of communication,--and when I am told that probably one of these days I shall be able at will to SEE the person to whom I send the message, reflected in space while the message is being delivered,--I declare myself so perfectly satisfied with the fairy prodigies revealed to me, that I have really no time, and perhaps no inclination to think of any other world than this one."

"You are wrong, then," said the Cardinal, "Very wrong, Vergniaud. To me these discoveries of science, this apparent yielding of invisible forces into human hands, are signs and portents of terror. You remember the line 'the powers of heaven shall be shaken'? Those powers are being shaken now! We cannot hold them back;--they are here, with us;--but they mean much more than mere common utility to our finite selves. They are the material declarations of what is spiritual. They are the scientific proofs that Christ's words to 'THIS generation,' namely, this particular phase of creation,--are true. 'Blessed are they which have not seen and yet believed,' He said;--and many there are who have passed away from us in rapt faith and hope, believing not seeing, and with whom we may rejoice in spirit, knowing that all must be well with them. But now--now we are come upon an age of doubt in the world--doubt which corrodes and kills the divine spirit in man, and therefore we are being forced to SEE that we may believe,--but the seeing is terrible!"

"Why?"

"Because in the very beholding of things we remain blind!" answered the Cardinal, "Our intense selfishness obscures the true light of every fresh advance. We accept new marvels of knowledge, as so much practical use to us, and to the little planet we live on,--but we do not see that they are merely reflections of the Truth from which they emanate. The toy called the biograph, which reflects pictures for us in a dazzling and moving continuity, so that we can see scenes of human life in action, is merely a hint to us that every scene of every life is reflected in a ceaseless moving panorama SOMEWHERE in the Universe, for the beholding of SOMEONE,--yes!--there must be Someone who so elects to look upon everything, or such possibilities of reflected scenes would not be,--inasmuch as nothing exists without a Cause for existence. The wireless telegraphy is a stupendous warning of the truth that 'from God no secrets are hid', and also of the prophecy of Christ 'there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed'--and, 'whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be revealed in light.' The latter words are almost appalling in their absolute accord with the latest triumphant discoveries of science."

Abbe Vergniaud looked at the Cardinal, and slightly raised his eyebrows in a kind of wondering protest.

"TRES-SAINT Felix!" he murmured, "Are you turning into a mystic? One of those doubtful personages who are seeking to reconcile science with the Church?--"

"Stop!" interposed the Cardinal, raising his hand with an eloquent gesture, "Science is, or should be, the Church!--science is Truth, and Truth is God! God cannot be found anywhere in a lie; and the Church in many ways would make our Divine Redeemer Himself a lie were it not that His words are every day taking fresh meaning, and bringing new and solemn conviction to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear!"

He spoke as if carried beyond himself,--his pale cheeks glowed,--his eyes flashed fire,--and the combined effect of his words and manner was startling to the Abbe, and in a way stupefying to his niece Angela. She had never heard him give utterance to such strong sentiments and she shrank a little within herself, wondering whether as a Cardinal of the Roman Church he had not been too free of speech. She glanced apprehensively at Vergniaud, who however only smiled a little.

"If you should be disposed to express yourself in such terms at the Vatican,--" he began.

The Cardinal relapsed into his usual calm, and met the Abbe's questioning, half cynical glance composedly. "I have many things to speak of at the Vatican," he answered,--"This matter will probably be one of them."

"Then--" But whatever Vergniaud was about to say was interrupted by the entrance of the boy Manuel, who at that moment came into the room and stood beside the Cardinal's chair. The Abbe gave him an upward glance of surprise and admiration.

"Whom have we here?" he exclaimed, "One of your acolytes, Monseigneur?"

"No," replied the Cardinal, his eyes resting on the fair face of the lad with a wistful affection, "A little stray disciple of our Lord,--to whom I have ventured to offer protection. There is none to question my right to do so, for he is quite alone in the world."

And in a few words he related how he had discovered the boy on the previous night, weeping outside the Cathedral in Rouen. Angela Sovrani listened attentively, her violet eyes darkening and deepening as she heard,--now and then she raised them to look at the youthful waif who stood so quietly while the story of his troubles was told in the gentle and sympathetic way which was the Cardinal's usual manner of speech, and which endeared him so much to all. "And for the present," finished Bonpre, smiling--"he stays with me, and already I have found him skilled in the knowledge of many things,--he can read Scripture with a most musical and clear emphasis,--and he is a quick scribe, so that he will be valuable to me in more ways than one."

"Ah!" and the Abbe turned himself round in his chair to survey the boy more attentively, "You can read Scripture? But can you understand it? If you can, you are wiser than I am!"

Manuel regarded him straightly.

"Was it not once said in Judaea that "IT IS THE SPIRIT THAT QUICKENETH'?" he asked.

"True!--And from that you would infer . . . ?"

"That when one cannot understand Scripture, it is perhaps for the reason that 'THE LETTER KILLETH, BECAUSE LACKING THE SPIRIT THAT GIVETH LIFE."

The boy spoke gently and with grace and modesty,--but something in the tone of his voice had a strange effect on the cynical temperament of Abbe Vergniaud.

"Here," he mused, "is a lad in whom the principle of faith is strong and pure,--shall I drop the poison of doubt into the open flower of his mind, or leave it uncontaminated?" Aloud he said, kindly,

"You speak well,--you have evidently thought for yourself. Who taught you to recognise 'the Spirit that giveth life'?"

Manuel smiled.

"Does that need teaching?" he asked.

Radiance shone in his eyes,--the look of purity and candour on his young face was infinitely touching to the two men who beheld it,--the one worn with age and physical languors, the other equally worn in mind, if not in body. In the brief silence which followed,--a silence of unexpressed feeling,--a soft strain of organ-music came floating deliciously towards them,--a delicate thread of grave melody which wove itself in and out the airspaces, murmuring suggestions of tenderness and appeal. Angela smiled, and held up one finger, listening.

"That is Mr. Leigh!" she said, "He is in my studio improvising."

"Happy Mr. Leigh!" said the Abbe with a little malicious twinkle in his eyes, "To be allowed to improvise at all in the studio of the Sovrani!"

Angela flushed, and lifted her fair head with a touch of pride.

"Mr. Leigh is a friend," she said, "He is welcome in the studio always. His criticism of a picture is valuable,--besides--he is a celebrated Englishman!" She laughed, and her eyes flashed.

"Ah! To a celebrated Englishman all things are conceded!" said the Abbe satirically, "Even the right to enter the sanctum of the most exclusive lady in Europe! Is it not a curious thing that the good Britannia appears to stick her helmet on the head, and put her sceptre in the hand of every one of her sons who condescends to soil his boots by walking on foreign soil? With the helmet he defies the gemdarme,--with the sceptre he breaks open every door,--we prostrate ourselves before his face and curse him behind his back,--c'est drole!--yet we are all alike, French, Germans, Austrians, and Italians;--we hate the Englishman, but we black his boots all the same,--which is contemptible of us,--MAIS, QUE FAIRE! He is so overwhelming in sheer impudence! With culture and politeness we might cross swords in courtly duel,--but in the presence of absolute bluff, or what is called 'cheek', we fall flat in sheer dismay! What delicious music! I see that it charms our young friend,--he is fond of music."

"Yes," said Manuel speaking for himself before any question could be put to him, "I love it! It is like the fresh air,--full of breath and life."

"Come then with me," said Angela, "Come into the studio and we will hear it more closely. Dearest uncle," and she knelt for a moment by the Cardinal's chair, "Will you come there also when Monsieur l'Abbe has finished talking with you?"

Cardinal Bonpre's hand rested lovingly on her soft hair.

"Yes, my child, I will come." And in a lower tone he added,--"Do not speak much to Manuel,--he is a strange lad; more fond of silence and prayer than other things,--and if such is his temperament I would rather keep him so."

Angela bowed her head in acquiescence to this bidding,--then rising, left the room with a gentle gesture of invitation to the boy, who at once followed her. As the two disappeared a chill and a darkness seemed to fall upon the air, and the Cardinal sank back among the cushions of his fauteuil with a deep sigh of utter exhaustion. Abbe Vergniaud glanced at him inquisitively.

"You are very tired, I fear?" he said.

"Physically, no,--mentally, yes. Spiritually, I am certainly fatigued to the death."

The Abbe shrugged his shoulders.

"Helas! There is truly much in spiritual matters to engender weariness!" he said.

With a sudden access of energy the Cardinal gripped both arms of his chair and sat upright.

"For God's sake, do not jest," he said earnestly, "Do not jest! We have all been jesting too long, and the time is near when we shall find out the bitter cost of it! Levity--carelessness--doubt and final heresy--I do not mean heresy against the Church, for that is nothing--"

"Nothing!" exclaimed the Abbe, "YOU say this?"

"I say it!" And Bonpre's thin worn features grew transfigured with the fervour of his thought. "I am a priest of the Church--but I am also a man!--with reason, with brain, and with a love of truth;--and I can faithfully say I have an almost jealous honour for my Master--but I repeat, heresy against the Church is nothing,--it is heresy against Christ which is the crime of the age,--and in that, the very Church is heretic! Heresy against Christ!--Heresy against Christ! A whole system of heresy! 'I never knew you,--depart from me, ye workers of iniquity,' will be our Lord's words at the Last Judgment!"

The Abbe's wonderment increased. He looked down a moment, then looked up, and a quizzical, half-melancholy expression filled his eyes.

"Well, I am very much concerned in all this," he said, "I wanted to have a private talk with you on my own account, principally because I know you to be a good man, while I am a bad one. I have a trouble here,--" and he touched the region of his heart, "which the wise doctors say may end my days at any moment; two years at the utmost is the ultimatum of my life, so I want to know from you, whom I know to be intelligent and honest, whether you believe I am going to another existence,--and if so, what sort of a one you think is in prospect for such a man as I am? Now don't pity me, my dear Bonpre,--don't pity me!--" and he laughed a little huskily as the Cardinal took his hand and pressed it with a silent sympathy more eloquent than words, "We must all die,--and if I am to go somewhat sooner than I expected, that is nothing to compassionate me for. But there is just a little uncertainty in my mind,--I am not at all sure that death is the end--I wish I could be quite positive of the fact. I was once--quite positive. But science, instead of giving me this absolute comfort has in its later progress upset all my former calculations, and I am afraid I must own that there is indubitably Something Else,--which to my mind seems distinctly disagreeable!"

Though the Abbe spoke lightly, the troubled look remained in his eyes and the Cardinal saw it.

"My dear Vergniaud," he began gently, "I am grieved at what you tell me--"

"No, don't be grieved," interrupted Vergniaud, "because that is not it. Talk to me! Tell me what you truly think. That this life is only a schoolroom where we do our lessons more or less badly?--That death is but the name for another life? Now do not FORCE your faith for me. Tell me your own honest conviction. Do we end?--or do we begin again? Be frank and fair and true; according to the very latest science, remember!--not according to the latest hocus-pocus of twelfth-century mandate issued from Rome. You see how frank I am, and how entirely I go with you. But I am going further than you,--I am bound for the last voyage--so you must not offer me the wrong pass-word to the shore!"

"No, I will give you the right pass-word," said the cardinal, a fervid glow of enthusiasm lighting up his features. "It is CHRIST in all, and through all! Christ only;--Christ, the friend and brother of man;--the only Divine Teacher this world has ever had, or ever will have!"

"You believe in Him really,--truly,--then?" exclaimed the Abbe wonderingly.

"Really--truly, and with all my heart and soul!" responded the Cardinal firmly,--"Surely, you too, believe?"

"No," said the Abbe firmly, "I do not! I would as soon believe that the lad you have just rescued from the streets of Rouen is divine, as that there is any divinity in the Man of Nazareth!"

He rose up as he spoke in a kind of petulance,--then started slightly as he found himself face to face with Manuel. The boy had entered noiselessly and stood for a moment glancing from one priest of the Church to the other. A faint smile was on his face,--his blue eyes were full of light.

"Did you call me, my lord Cardinal?" he asked.

The Cardinal looked up.

"No, my child!"

"I thought I heard you. If you should need me, I am close at hand."

He went away as quietly as he had entered; and the same silence followed his departure as before,--a silence which was only disturbed by the occasional solemn and sweet vibrations of the distant music from the studio.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

VIII

"A strange lad!" said Abbe Vergniaud, abruptly.

"Strange? In what way do you find him so?" asked the Cardinal with a touch of anxiety.

The Abbe knitted his brows perplexedly, and took a short turn up and down the room. Then he laughed.

"Upon my word, I cannot tell you!" he declared, with one of those inimitable gestures common to Frenchmen, a gesture which may mean anything or nothing,--"But he speaks too well, and, surely, thinks too much for his years. Is there nothing further to tell of him save what you have already said? Nothing that you know of him, beyond the plain bare fact of having found him weeping alone outside the doors of the Cathedral?"

"Nothing indeed!" replied the Cardinal bewildered. "What else should there be?"

The Abbe hesitated a moment, and when he spoke again it was in a softer and graver tone. "Forgive me! Of course there could be nothing else with you. You are so different to all other Churchmen I have ever known. Still, the story of your foundling is exceptional;--you will own that it is somewhat out of the common course of things, for a Cardinal to suddenly constitute himself the protector and guardian of a small tramp--for this boy is nothing else. Now, if it were any other Cardinal-Archbishop than yourself, I should at once say that His Eminence knew exactly where to find the mother of his protege!"

"Vergniaud!" exclaimed the Cardinal.

"Forgive me! I said 'forgive me' as a prelude to my remarks," resumed Vergniaud, "I am talking profanely, sceptically, and cynically,--I am talking precisely as the world talks, and as it always will talk."

"The world may talk itself out of existence, before it can hinder me from doing what I conceive to be my duty," said Felix Bonpre, calmly, "The lad is alone and absolutely friendless,--it is but fitting and right that I should do what I can for him."

Abbe Vergniaud sat down, and for a moment appeared absorbed in thought.

"You are a curious man;" he at length observed, "And a more than curious priest! Here you are, assuming the guardianship of a boy concerning whom you know nothing,--when you might as well have handed him over to one of the orphanages for the poor, or have paid for his care and education with some of the monastic brethren established near Rouen,--but no!--you being eccentric, feel as if you were personally responsible to God for the child, simply because you found him lost and alone, and therefore you have him with you. It is very good of you,--we will call it great of you--but it is not usual. People will say you have a private motive;--you must remember that the world never gives you credit for doing a good action simply for the pure sake of doing it,--'There must be something behind it all,' they say. When the worst cocotte of the age begins to lose her beauty, the prospect is so alarming that she thinks there may be a possible hell, after all, and she straightway becomes charitable and renowned for good works;--precisely in the same way as our famous stage 'stars', knowing their lives to be less clean than the lives of their horses and their dogs, give subscriptions and altar-cloths and organs to the clergy. It is all very amusing!--I assure you I have often laughed at it. It is as if they took Heaven by its private ear in confidence, and said, 'See now, I want to put things straight with you if I can!--and if a few church-ornaments, and candlesticks will pacify you, why, take them and hold your tongue!'"

He paused, but the Cardinal was silent.

"I know," went on the Abbe, "that you think I am indulging in the worst kind of levity to talk in this way. It sounds horrible to you. And you perhaps think I cannot be serious. My dear Saint Felix, there never was a more serious man than I. I would give worlds--universes--to believe as you do! I have written books of religious discussion,--not because I wanted the notice of the world for them,--for that I do not care about,--but for the sake of wrestling out the subject for myself, and making my pen my confidant. I tell you I envy the woman who can say her rosary with the simple belief that the Virgin Mary hears and takes delight in all those repetitions. Nothing would have given me greater pleasure than to have composed a volume of prayers,--a 'Garland of Flowers'--such as an innocent girl could hold in her hands, and bend her sweet eyes over. It would have been a taste of the sensual-spiritual, or the spiritual-sensual,--which is the most exquisite of all human sensations."

"There is no taint of sensuality in the purely spiritual," said the Cardinal reprovingly.

"Not for your nature,--no! You have made your body like a transparent scabbard through which the glitter of the soul-sword is almost visible. But I am different. I am so much of a materialist that I like to pull down Heaven to the warm bosom of Earth and make them mingle. You would lift up Earth to Heaven! Ah, that is difficult! Even Christ came down! It is the chief thing I admire in Him, that He 'descended from Heaven and was made Man'. TRES CHER Felix, I shall bewilder you to death with my specious and frivolous reasoning,--and after all, I had much better come to the main fact of what I intended to tell you,--a sort of confession out of church. You know I have already told you I am going to die soon, and that I am a bad man confessedly and hopelessly,--but among other things is this, (and if you can give me any advice upon it I will take it,) that for the last four or five years I have been dodging about to escape being murdered,--not because I particularly mind being murdered, because I probably deserve it,--and one way of exit is as good as another,--but because I want to save the would-be murderer from committing his crime. Is not that a good motive?"

Cardinal Bonpre gazed at him in astonishment. Vergniaud appeared to him in an entirely new light. He had always known him as a careless, cynical-tempered man;--a close thinker,--a clever writer, and a brilliant talker,--and he had been inclined to consider him as a "society" priest,--one of those amiable yet hypocritical personages, who, by the most jesuitical flatteries and studied delicacies of manner, succeed in influencing weak-minded persons of wealth, (especially women) to the end of securing vast sums of money to the Church,--obtaining by these means such rank and favour for themselves as would otherwise never have been granted to them. But now the Abbe's frank admission of his own sins and failings seemed a proof of his inherent sincerity,--and sincerity, whether found in orthodoxy or heterodoxy, always commanded the Cardinal's respect.

"Are you speaking in parables or in grave earnest?" he asked. "Do you really mean that you are shadowed by some would-be assassin? An assassin, too, whom you actually wish to protect?"

"Exactly!" And Vergniaud smiled with the air of one who admits the position to be curious but by no means alarming. "I want to save him from the guillotine; and if he murders me I cannot! It is a question of natural instinct merely. The would-be assassin is my son!"

Cardinal Bonpre raised his clear blue eyes and fixed them full on the Abbe.

"This is a very serious matter," he said gently, "Surely it is best to treat it seriously?"

"Oh, I am serious enough, God knows!" returned Vergniaud, with a heavy but impatient sigh, "I suppose there is, there must be, some terribly exact Mathematician concerned in the working of things, else a man's past sins and failings being done with and over, would not turn up any more. But they DO turn up,--the unseen Mathematician counts every figure;--and of course trouble ensues. My story is simply this;--Some twenty-five years ago I was in Touraine;--I was a priest as I am now--Oh, yes!--the sin is as black as the Church can make it!--and one mid-summer evening I strolled into a certain quaint old church of a certain quaint old town,--I need not name it--and saw there a girl, as sweet as an apple blossom, kneeling in front of the altar. I watched her,--I see her now!--the late sunlight through the stained glass window fell like a glory on her pretty hair, and on the little white kerchief folded so daintily across her bosom, and on her small hands and the brown rosary that was twisted round her fingers. She was praying, so she told me afterwards, to her guardian angel,--I wonder what that personage was about just then, Bonpre! Anyhow, to her petition came no answer but a devil,--a devil personified in me,--I made her love me,--I tempted her by ever subtle and hellish persuasion I could think of,--I can never even now think of that time without wondering where all the eloquent evil of my tongue came from--and--well!--she never was able to ask the guardian angel any more favours! And I?--I think I loved her for a while,--but no, I am not sure;--I believe there is no such good thing as absolute love in my composition. Anyway, I soon left Touraine, and had almost forgotten her when she wrote to tell me of the birth of her child--a son. I gave her no reply, and then she wrote again,--such a letter!--such words! At the moment they burnt me,--stabbed me--positively hurt me,--and I was not then easily hurt. She swore she would bring the boy up to curse his father,--and, to put it quite briefly,--she did. She died when he was twenty, and it now appears the lad took an oath by her death-bed that he would never rest till he had killed the man who had dishonoured his mother, and broken her heart, and brought him into the world with a stigma on his name. No filial respect, you see!" And Vergniaud tried to force a smile. "To do the boy justice, he apparently means to keep his oath,--he has not rested; he has been at infinite pains to discover me; he has even been at the trouble to write me a warning letter, and is now in Paris watching me. I, in my turn, take care to protect myself;--I am followed by detectives, and am at enormous pains to guard my life; not for my own sake but for his. An odd complication of circumstances, is it not? I cannot have him arrested because he would at once relate his history, and my name would be ruined. And that would be quite as good a vengeance for him as the other thing. You will admit that it is a very dramatic situation!"

"It is a retribution!" said the Cardinal in a low voice, "And a terrible one!"

"Yes, I suppose it is. I imagined you would consider it in that light," and Vergniaud half closed his eyes, leaning back in his chair languidly, "But here I am, willing to set things as straight as I can, and it really seems impossible to arrange matters. I am to die soon, according to the doctors;--and so I have made my willleaving everything I possess to this ridiculous boy who wishes to kill me; and it is more than probable that he,--considering how he has been brought up and educated--will cast all the money into the dirt, and kick at my grave. But what can I do?"

"Nothing," said the Cardinal, "You can do nothing, Vergniaud! That is the worst of having inflicted a wrong upon the innocent,--you can never by any means retrieve it. You can repent,--and it is probable that your very repentance ensures your forgiveness at a higher tribunal than that of earth's judgment,--but the results of wrong cannot be wiped out or done away with in this life;--they continue to exist, and alas!--often multiply. Even the harsh or unjust word cannot be recalled, and however much we may regret having uttered it, somehow it is never forgotten. But--" here leaning forward, he laid one hand gently on Vergniaud's arm, "My dear friend--my dear brother--you have told me of your sin;--it is a great sin,--but God forbid that I should presume to judge you harshly when our Lord Himself declared that 'He came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance'. It may be that I can find a way to help you. Arrange for me to see this misguided son of yours,--and I will endeavour to find a means of restitution to him and to the memory of his mother before you pass away from us,--if indeed you are to pass away so soon. Under the levity you assume I perceive you have deep feeling on this matter;--you shall not die with a wrong on your soul, Vergniaud!--you shall not if I can prevent it! For there undoubtedly is another life; you must go into it as purely as prayer and penitence can make you."

"I thought," said the Abbe, speaking somewhat unsteadily, "that you might when you heard all, hurl some of Rome's thunderous denunciations upon me . . ."

"What am I, and what is Rome, compared with the Master's own word?" said the Cardinal gently. "If our brothers sin against us seventy times seven we are still to forgive, and they are still our brothers! Denunciations, judgments and condemnations of one another are not any part of our Lord's commands."

Vergniaud rose up and held out his hand.

"Will you take it," he said, "as a pledge that I will faithfully do whatever you may see fitting and right to retrieve the past?--and to clear my son's soul from the thirst of vengeance which is consuming it?"

Cardinal Bonpre clasped the extended hand warmly.

"There is your answer!" he said, with a smile which irradiated his fine countenance with an almost supernatural beauty and tenderness, "You have sinned against Heaven, and you have sinned against the Church and your own calling,--but the greatest sinner can do no more than repent and strive to make amends. For I see you fully know and comprehend the extent of your sin."

"Yes, I know it," and Vergniaud's eyes were clouded and his brows knitted, "I know it only too well! Greater than any fault of Church-discipline is a wrong to human life,--and I wronged and betrayed an innocent woman who loved me! Her soul was as sweet as the honey-cup of a flower,--I poisoned it. That was as bad as poisoning the Sacrament! I should have kept it sweet and pure; I should have let the Church go, and been honest! I should have seen to it that the child of my love grew up to honour his father,--not to merely live for the murder of him! Yes!--I know what I should have done--I know what I have not done--and I am afraid I shall always know! Unless I can do something to atone I have a strange feeling that I shall pass from this world to the next--and that the first thing I shall see will be her face! Her face as I saw it when the sunshine made a halo round her hair, and she prayed to her guardian angel."

He shuddered slightly, and his voice died away in a half whisper. The Cardinal pressed his hand again warmly and tenderly.

"Courage, courage!" he said. "It is true we cannot do away with our memories,--but we can try and make them sweet. And who knows how much God may help us in the task? Never forget the words that tell us how 'the angels rejoice more over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine just persons.'"

"Ah!" and the Abbe smiled, recovering somewhat of his usual manner, "And that is so faithfully enforced upon us, is it not? The Churches are all so lenient? And Society is so kind?--so gentle in its estimate of its friends? Our Church, for example, has never persecuted a sinner?--has never tortured an unbeliever? It has been so patient, and so unwearying in searching for stray sheep and bringing them back with love and tenderness and pity to the fold? And Churchmen never say anything which is slanderous or cruel? And we all follow Christ's teaching so accurately? Yes!--Ah well--I wonder! I wonder what will be the end! I wonder why we came into life at all--I wonder why we go! Fortunately for me, by and by, there will be an end of all wondering, and you can write above my tomb, 'Implora pace'! The idea of commencing a new life is to me, horrible,--I prefer 'Nirvana' or nothingness. Never have I read truer words than those of Byron,

'Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen, Count o'er thy days from anguish free, And know whatever thou hast been, 'Tis something better not to be.'"

"I cannot think that is either true or good philosophy," said the Cardinal, "It is merely the utterance of a disappointed man in a misanthropic mood. There is no 'not to be' in creation. Each morning that lights the world is an expression of 'to be'! And however much we may regret the fact, my dear Vergniaud, we find ourselves in a state of BEING and we must make the best of it,--not the worst. Is that not so?"

His look was gentle and commanding,--his voice soft yet firm,--and the worldly Abbe felt somewhat like a chidden child as he met the gaze of those clear true eyes that were undarkened by any furtive hypocrisies or specious meanings.

"I suppose it is, but unfortunately I have made the worst of it," he answered, "and having made the worst I see no best. Who is that singing?"

He lifted his hand with a gesture of attention as a rich mezzo-soprano rang out towards them,--

"Per carita Mostrami il cielo; Tulto e un velo, E non si sa Dove e il cielo. Se si sta Cosi cola, Non si sa Se non si va Ahi me lontano! Tulto e in vano! Prendimi in mano Per carita!"

"It is Angela," said the Cardinal, "She has a wonderfully sweet voice."

"Prendimi in mano, Per carita!"

murmured Abbe Vergniaud, still listening, "It is like the cry of a lost soul!"

"Or a strayed one," interposed the Cardinal gently, and rising, he took Vergniaud's arm, and leaned upon it with a kindly and familiar grace, an action which implied much more than the mere outward expression of confidence,--"Nothing is utterly lost, my dear friend. 'The very hairs of our head are numbered,'--not a drop of dew escapes to waste,--how much more precious than a drop of dew is the spirit of a man!"

"It is not so unsullied," declared Vergniaud, who loved controversy,--"Personally, I think the dew is more valuable than the soul, because so absolutely clean!"

"You must not bring every line of discussion to a pin's point," said Bonpre smiling, as he walked slowly across the room still leaning on the Abbe's arm. "We can reduce our very selves to the bodiless condition of a dream if we take sufficient pains first to advance a theory, and then to wear it threadbare. Nothing is so deceptive as human reasoning,--nothing so slippery and reversible as what we have decided to call 'logic.' The truest compass of life is spiritual instinct."

"And what of those who have no spiritual instinct?" demanded Vergniaud.

"I do not think there are any such. To us it certainly often seems as if there were masses of human beings whose sole idea of living is to gratify their bodily needs,--but I fancy it is only because we do not know them sufficiently that we judge them thus. Few, if any, are so utterly materialistic as never to have had some fleeting intuition of the Higher existence. They may lack the force to comprehend it, or to follow its teaching,--but in my opinion, the Divine is revealed to all men once at least in their lives."

They had by this time passed out of the drawing-room, and now, ascending three steps, they went through a curtained recess into Angela Sovrani's studio,--a large and lofty apartment made beautiful by the picturesque disorder and charm common to a great artist's surroundings. Here, at a grand piano sat Angela herself, her song finished, her white hands straying idly over the keys,--and near her stood the gentleman whom the Abbe Vergniaud had called "a terrible reformer and Socialist" and who was generally admitted to be something of a remarkable character in Europe. Tall and fair, with very bright flashing eyes, and a wonderfully high bred air of concentrated pride and resolution, united to a grace and courtesy which exhaled from him, so to speak, with his every movement and gesture, he was not a man to pass by without comment, even in a crowd. A peculiar distinctiveness marked him,--out of a marching regiment one would have naturally selected him as the commanding officer, and in any crisis of particular social importance or interest his very appearance would have distinguished him as the leading spirit of the whole. On perceiving the Cardinal he advanced at once to be presented, and as Angela performed the ceremony of introduction he slightly bent one knee, and bowed over the venerable prelate's extended hand with a reverence which had in it something of tenderness. His greeting of Abbe Vergniaud was, while perfectly courteous, not quite so marked by the grace of a strong man's submission.

"Ah, Mr. Leigh! So you have not left Paris as soon as you determined?" queried the Abbe with a smile, "I thought you were bound for Florence in haste?"

"I go to Florence to-morrow," answered Leigh briefly.

"So soon! I am indeed glad not to have missed you," said Cardinal Bonpre cordially. "Angela, my child, let me see what you have been doing. All your canvases are covered, or turned with their faces to the wall;--are we not permitted to look at any of them?"

Angela immediately rose from the piano, and wheeled a large oaken chair with a carved and gilded canopy, into the centre of the studio.

"Well, if you want to see my sketches--and they are only sketches," she said,--"you must come and sit here. Now," as her uncle obeyed her, "you look enthroned in state,--that canopy is just fitted for you, and you are a picture in yourself!--Yes, you are, dearest uncle! And not all the artists in the world could ever do you justice I Monsieur l'Abbe, will you sit just where you please?--And Mr. Leigh, you have seen everything, so it does not matter."

"It matters very much," said Leigh with a smile, "For I want to see everything again. If I may, I will stand here."

And he took up his position close to the Cardinal's chair.

"But where is the boy?" asked Vergniaud, "Where is the foundling of the Cathedral?"

"He left us some minutes ago," said Angela, "He went to your room, uncle."

"Was he pleased with the music?" asked the Cardinal.

"I think he enjoyed every note of it," said Leigh, "A thoughtful lad! He was very silent while I played,--but silence is often the most eloquent appreciation."

"Are we to be silent then over the work of Donna Sovrani?" enquired the Abbe gaily. "Must we not express our admiration?"

"If you have any admiration to express," said Angela carelessly, setting, as she spoke, an easel facing the Cardinal; "but I am afraid you will greatly disapprove of me and condemn all my work this year. I should explain to you first that I am composing a very large picture,--I began it in Rome some three years ago, and it is in my studio there,--but I require a few French types of countenance in order to quite complete it. The sketches I have made here are French types only. They will all be reproduced in the larger canvas--but they are roughly done just now. This is the first of them. I call it 'A Servant of Christ, at the Madeleine, Paris.'"

And she placed the canvas she held on the easel and stood aside, while all three men looked at it with very different eyes,--one with poignant regret and pain,--the other with a sense of shame,--and the third with a thrill of strong delight in the power of the work, and of triumph in the lesson it gave.

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IX

Low beetling brows,--a sensual, cruel mouth with a loosely projecting under-lip,--eyes that appeared to be furtively watching each other across the thin bridge of nose,--a receding chin and a narrow cranium, combined with an expression which was hypocritically humble, yet sly,--this was the type Angela Sovrani had chosen to delineate, sparing nothing, softening no line, and introducing no redeeming point,--a type mercilessly true to the life; the face of a priest,--"A servant of Christ," as she called him. The title, united with that wicked and repulsive countenance, was a terribly significant suggestion. For some minutes no one spoke,--and the Cardinal was the first to break the silence.

"Angela,--my dear child"--he said, in low, strained tones, "I am sorry you have done this! It is powerful--so powerful that it is painful as well. It cuts me to the heart that you should find it necessary to select such an example of the priesthood, though of course I am not in the secret of your aims--I do not understand your purpose . . ."

He broke off,--and Angela, who had stood silent, looking as though she were lost in a dream, took up his unfinished sentence.

"You do not understand my purpose?--Dearest uncle, I hardly understand it myself! Some force stronger than I am, is urging me to paint the picture I have begun,--some influence more ardent and eager than my own, burns like a fever in me, persuading me to complete the design. You blame me for choosing such an evil type of priest? But there is no question of choice! These faces are ordinary among our priests. At all the churches, Sunday after Sunday I have looked for a good, a noble face;--in vain! For an even commonly-honest face,--in vain! And my useless search has ended by impressing me with profound sorrow and disgust that so many low specimens of human intellect are selected as servants of our Lord. Do not judge me too severely! I feel that I have a work to do,--and a lesson to give in the work, when done. I may fail;--I may be told that as a woman I have no force, and no ability to make any powerful or lasting impression on this generation;--but at any rate I feel that I must try! If priests of the Church were like you, how different it would all be! But you always forget that you are an exception to the rule,--you do not realise how very exceptional you are! I told you before I showed you this sketch that you would probably disapprove of it and condemn me,--but I really cannot help it. In this matter nothing--not even the ban of the Church itself, can deter me from fulfilling what I have designed to do in my own soul!"

She spoke passionately and with ardour,--and the Cardinal looked at her with something of surprise and trouble. The fire of genius is as he knew, a consuming one,--and he had never entirely realized how completely it filled and dominated this slight feminine creature for whom he felt an almost paternal tenderness. Before he could answer her the Abbe Vergniaud spoke.

"Donna Sovrani is faithful to the truth in her sketch," he said, "therefore, as a lover of truth I do not see, my dear Bonpre, why you should object! If she has,--as she says,--some great aim in view, she must fulfil it in her own way. I quite agree with her in her estimate of the French priests,--they are for the most part despicable-looking persons,--only just a grade higher than their brothers of Italy and Spain. But what would you have? The iron hand of Rome holds them back from progress,--they are speaking and acting lies; and like the stagemimes, have to put on paint and powder to make the lies go down. But when the paint and powder come off, the religious mime is often as ill-looking as the stage one! Donna Sovrani has caught this particular example, before he has had time to put on holy airs and turn up the footlights. What do you think about it, Mr. Leigh?"

"I think, as I have always thought," said Leigh quietly, "that Donna Sovrani is an inspired artist,--and that being inspired it follows that she must carry out her own convictions whether they suit the taste of others or not. 'A Servant of Christ' is a painful truth, boldly declared."

Angela was unmoved by the compliment implied. She only glanced wistfully at the Cardinal, who still sat silent. Then without a word she withdrew the offending sketch from the easel and set another in its place.

"This," she said gently, "is the portrait of an Archbishop. I need not name his diocese. He is very wealthy, and excessively selfish. I call this, 'LORD, I THANK THEE THAT I AM NOT AS OTHER MEN'."

Vergniaud laughed as he looked,--he knew the pictured dignitary well. The smooth countenance, the little eyes comfortably sunken in small rolls of fat, the smug smiling lips, the gross neck and heavy jaw,--marks of high feeding and prosperous living,--and above all the perfectly self-satisfied and mock-pious air of the man,--these points were given with the firm touch of a master's brush, and the Abbe, after studying the picture closely, turned to Angela with a light yet deferential bow.

"Chere Sovrani, you are stronger than ever! Surely you have improved much since you were last in Paris? Your strokes are firmer, your grasp is bolder. Have your French confreres seen your work this year?"

"No," replied Angela, "I am resolved they shall see nothing till my picture is finished."

"May one ask why?"

A flash of disdain passed over the girl's face.

"For a very simple reason! They take my ideas and use them,--and then, when my work is produced they say it is I who have copied from THEM, and that women have no imagination! I have been cheated once or twice in that way,--this time no one has any idea what I am doing."

"No one? Not even Signer Varillo?"

"No," said Angela, smiling a little, "Not even Signor Varillo. I want to surprise him."

"In what way?" asked the Cardinal, rousing himself from his pensive reverie.

Angela blushed.

"By proving that perhaps, after all, a woman can do a great thing in art,--a really great thing!" she said, "Designed greatly, and greatly executed."

"Does he not admit that, knowing you?" asked Aubrey Leigh suggestively.

"Oh, he is most kind and sympathetic to me in my work," explained Angela quickly, vexed to think that she had perhaps implied some little point that was not quite in her beloved one's favour. "But he is like most men,--they have a preconceived idea of women, and of what their place should be in the world--"

"Unchanged since the early phases of civilization, when women were something less valuable than cattle?" said Leigh smiling.

"Oh, the cattle idea is not exploded, by any means!" put in Vergniaud. "In Germany and Switzerland, for example, look at the women who are ground down to toil and hardship there! The cows are infinitely prettier and more preferable, and lead much pleasanter lives. And the men for whom these poor wretched women work, lounge about in cafes all day, smoking and playing dominoes. The barbaric arrangement that a woman should be a man's drudge and chattel is quite satisfactory, I think, to the majority of our sex. It is certainly an odd condition of things that the mothers of men should suffer most from man's cruelty. But it is the work of an all-wise Providence, no doubt; and you, Mr. Leigh, will swear that it is all right!"

"It is all right," said Leigh quietly, "or rather I should say, it WILL be all right,--and it would have been all right long ago, if we had, as Emerson puts it, 'accepted the hint of each new experience.' But that is precisely what we will not do. Woman is the true helpmate of man, and takes a natural joy in being so whenever we will allow it,--whenever we will give her scope for her actions, freedom for her intelligence, and trust for her instincts. But for the present many of us still prefer to play savage,--the complete savage in low life,--the civilized savage in high. The complete savage is found in the dockyard labourer, who makes a woman bear his children and then kicks her to death,--the savage in high life is the man who equally kills the mother of his children, but in another way, namely, by neglect and infidelity, while he treats his numerous mistresses just as the Turk treats the creatures of his harem--merely as so many pretty soft animals, requiring to be fed with sweets and ornamented with jewels, and then to be cast aside when done with. All pure savagery! But we are slowly evolving from it into something better. A few of us there are, who honour womanhood,--a few of us believe in women as guiding stars in our troubled sky,--a few of us would work and climb to greatness for love of the one woman we adore,--would conquer all obstacles,--ay, would die for her if need be, of what is far more difficult, would live for her the life of a hero and martyr! Yes--such things are done,--and men can be found who will do such things--all for a woman's sake."

There was a wonderful passion in his voice,--a deep thrill of earnestness which carried conviction with sweetness. Cardinal Bonpre looked at him with a smile.

"You are perhaps one of those men, Mr. Leigh?" he said.

"I do not know,--I may be," responded Leigh, a flush rising to his cheeks;--"but,--so far, no woman has ever truly loved me, save my mother. But apart from all personalities, I am a great believer in women. The love of a good woman is a most powerful lever to raise man to greatness,--I do not mean by 'good' the goody-goody creature,--no, for that is a sort of woman who does more mischief in her so-called 'blameless' life than a very Delilah. I mean by 'good', a strong, pure, great soul in woman,--sincere, faithful, patient, full of courage and calm,--and with this I maintain she must prove a truly God-given helpmate to man. For we are rough creatures at best,--irritable creatures too!--you see," and here a slight smile lighted up his delicate features, "we really do try more or less to reach heights that are beyond us--we are always fighting for a heaven of some sort, whether we make it of gold, or politics, or art;--it is a 'heaven' or a 'happiness' that we want;--we would be as gods,--we would scale Olympus,--and sometimes Olympus refuses to be scaled! And then we tumble down, very cross, very sore, very much ruffled;--and it is only a woman who can comfort us then, and by her love and tenderness mend our broken limbs and put salve on our wounded pride."

"Well, then, surely the Church is in a very bad way," said Vergniaud smiling, "Think of the vow of perpetual celibacy!"

"Celibacy cannot do away with woman's help or influence," said Leigh, "There are always mothers and sisters, instead of sweethearts and wives. I am in favour of celibacy for the clergy. I think a minister of Christ should be free to work for and serve Christ only."

"You are quite right, Mr. Leigh;" said the Cardinal, "There is more than enough to do in every day of our lives if we desire to truly follow His commands. But in this present time, alas!--religion is becoming a question of form--not of heart."

"Dearest uncle, if you think that, you will not judge me too severely for my pictures," said Angela quickly, throwing herself on her knees beside him. "Do you not see? It is just because the ministers of Christ are so lax that I have taken to studying them in my way,--which is, I know, not your way;--still, I think we both mean one and the same thing!"

"You are a woman, Angela," said the Cardinal gently, "and as a woman you must be careful of offences--"

"Oh, a woman!" exclaimed Angela, her beautiful eyes flashing with mingled tenderness and scorn, and her whole face lighting up with animation, "Only a woman! SHE must not give a grand lesson to the world! SHE must not, by means of brush or pen, point out to a corrupt generation the way it is going! Why? Because God has created her to be the helpmate of man! Excellent reason! Man is taking a direct straight road to destruction, and she must not stop him by so much as lifting a warning finger! Again, why? Only because she is a woman! But I--were I twenty times a woman, twenty times weaker than I am, and hampered by every sort of convention and usage,--I would express my thoughts somehow, or die in the attempt!"

"BRAVISSIMA!" exclaimed Vergniaud, "Well said, chere Sovrani!--Well said! But I am the mocking demon always, as you know--and I should almost be tempted to say that you WILL die in the attempt! I do not mean that you will die physically,--no, you will probably live to a good old age; people who suffer always do!--but you will die in the allegorical sense. You will grow the stigmata of the Saviour in your hands and feet--you will bear terrible marks of the nails hammered into your flesh by your dearest friends! You will have to wear a crown of thorns, set on your brows no doubt by those whom you most love . . . and the vinegar and gall will be very quickly mixed and offered to you by the whole world of criticism without a moment's hesitation! And will probably have to endure your agony alone,--as nearly everyone runs away from a declared Truth, orif they pause at all, it is only to spit upon it and call it a Lie!"

"Do not prophesy so cruel a fate for the child!" said the Cardinal tenderly, taking Angela's hand and drawing her towards him. "She has a great gift,--I am sure she will use it greatly. And true greatness is always acknowledged in the end."

"Yes, when the author or the artist has been in the grave for a hundred years or more;" said Vergniaud incorrigibly. "I am not sure that it would not be better for Donna Sovrani's happiness to marry the amiable Florian Varillo at once rather than paint her great picture! Do you not agree with me, Mr. Leigh?"

Leigh was turning over an old volume of prints in a desultory and abstracted fashion, but on being addressed, looked up quickly.

"I would rather not presume to give an opinion," he said somewhat coldly, "It is only on the rarest occasions that a woman's life is balanced between love and fame,--and the two gifts are seldom bestowed together. She generally has to choose between them. If she accepts love she is often compelled to forego fame, because she merges herself too closely into the existence of another to stand by her own individuality. If on the other hand, she chooses fame, men are generally afraid of or jealous of her, and leave her to herself. Donna Sovrani, however, is a fortunate exception,--she has secured both fame--and love."

He hesitated a moment before saying the last words, and his brows contracted a little. But Angela did not see the slight cloud of vexation that darkened his eyes,--his words pleased her, and she smiled.

"Ah, Mr. Leigh sees how it is with me!" she said, "He knows what good cause I have to be happy and to do the best work that is in me! It is all to make Florian proud of me!--and he IS proud--and he will be prouder! You must just see this one more sketch taken from life,--it is the head of one of our most noted surgeons,--I call it for the present 'A Vivisectionist'."

It was a wonderful study,--perhaps the strongest of the three she had shown. It was the portrait of a thin, fine, intellectual face, which in its every line suggested an intense, and almost dreadful curiosity. The brows were high, yet narrow,--the eyes clear and cold, and pitiless in their straight regard,--the lips thin and compressed,--the nose delicate, with thin open nostrils, like those of a trained sleuth-hound on the scent of blood. It was a three-quarter-length picture, showing the hand of the man slightly raised, and holding a surgeon's knife,--a wonderful hand, rather small, with fingers that are generally termed "artistic"--and a firm wrist, which Angela had worked at patiently, carefully delineating the practised muscles employed and developed in the vivisectiomst's ghastly business.

Aubrey Leigh stood contemplating it intently.

"I think it is really the finest of all the types," he said presently, "One can grasp that man's character so thoroughly! There is no pity in him,--no sentiment--there is merely an insatiable avidity to break open the great treasure-house of Life by fair means or foul! It is very terrible--but very powerful."

"I know the man," said Abbe Vergniaud, "Did he sit to you willingly?"

"Very willingly indeed!" replied Angela, "He was quite amused when I told him frankly that I wanted him as a type of educated and refined cruelty."

"Oh, these fellows see nothing reprehensible in their work," said Leigh, "And such things go on among them as make the strongest man sick to think of! I know of two cases now in a hospital; the patients are incurable, but the surgeons have given them hope of recovery through an 'operation' which, however, in their cases, will be no 'operation' at all, but simply vivisection. The poor creatures have to die anyhow, it is true, but death might come to them less terribly,--the surgeons, however, will 'operate', and kill them a little more quickly, in order to grasp certain unknown technicalities of their disease."

Angela looked at him with wide-open eyes of pain and amazement.

"Horrible!" she murmured, "Absolutely horrible! Can nothing be done to interfere with, or to stop such cruelty?"

"Nothing, I fear," said Leigh, "I have been abroad some time, studying various 'phases', of its so-called intellectual and scientific life, and have found many of these phases nothing but an output of masked barbarity. The savages of Thibet are more pitiful than the French or Italian vivisectionist,--and the horrors that go on in the laboratories would not be believed if they were told. Would not be believed! They would be flatly denied, even by the men who are engaged in them! And were I to write a plain statement of what I know to be true, and send it to an English journal, it would not be put in, not even in support of the Anti-Vivisection Society, lest it might 'offend' the foreign schools of surgery, and also perhaps lest English schools might prove not altogether free from similar crimes. If, however, by chance, such a statement were published, it would be met with an indignant chorus of denial from every quarter of accusation! How, then, can justice be obtained from what I call the New Inquisition? The old-time Inquisitors tortured their kind for Religion's sake,--the modern ones do it in the name of Science,--but the inhumanity, the callousness, the inborn savage love of cruelty--are all the same in both instances."

Cardinal Bonpre shuddered as he heard.

"Lord Christ, where art thou!" he thought, "Where is Thy spirit of unfailing tenderness and care? How is Thy command of 'love one another' obeyed!" Aloud he said, "Surely such deeds, even in the cause of surgical science, ought not to be permitted in a Christian city?"

"Christian city!" and Vergniaud laughed, "You would not apply that designation to Paris, would you? Paris is hopelessly, riotously pagan;--nay, not even pagan, for the pagans had gods and Paris has none! Neither Jove--nor Jupiter--nor Jehovah! As for the Christ,--He is made the subject of many a public caricature,--yes!--you may see them in the side-streets pasted upon the walls and hoardings!--and also of many a low lampoon;--but He is not accepted as a Teacher, nor even as an Example. His reign is over, in Paris at least!"

"Stop!" said the Cardinal, rising suddenly, "I forbid you, Vergniaud, to tell me these things! If they are true, then shame upon you and upon all the clergy of this unhappy city to stand by and let such disgrace to yourselves, and blasphemy to our Master, exist without protest!"

His tall spare figure assumed a commanding grandeur and authority,--his pale face flushed and his eyes sparkled--he looked inspired--superb--a very apostle burning with righteous indignation. His words seemed to have the effect of an electric shock on the Abbe,--he started as though stung by the lash of a whip, and drew himself up haughtily . . . then meeting the Cardinal's straight glance, his head drooped, and he stood mute and rigid. Leigh, though conscious of embarrassment as the witness of a strong reproof administered by one dignitary of the Church to another, yet felt deeply interested in the scene,--Angela shrank back trembling,--and for a few moments which, though so brief, seemed painfully long, there was a dead silence. Then Verginaud spoke in low stifled accents.

"You are perfectly right, Monseigneur! It IS shame to me!--and to the priesthood of France! I am no worse than the rest of my class,--but I am certainly no better! Your reproach is grand,--and just! I accept it, and ask your pardon!"

He bent one knee, touched the Cardinal's ring with his lips, and then without another word turned and left the room. The Cardinal gazed after his retreating figure like a man in a dream, then he said gently,

"Angela, go after him!--Call him back!--"

But it was too late. Vergniaud had left the house before Angela could overtake him. She came back hurriedly to say so, with a pale face and troubled look. Her uncle patted her kindly on the shoulder.

"Well, well!--It will not hurt him to have seen me angry," he said smiling, "Anger in a just cause is permitted. I seem to have frightened you, Angela? Of a truth I have rather frightened myself! There, we will not talk any more of the evils of Paris. Mr. Leigh perhaps thinks me an intolerant Christian?"

"On the contrary I think you are one of the few 'faithful' that I have ever met," said Leigh, "Of course I am out of it in a way, because I do not belong to the Roman Church. I am supposed--I say 'supposed' advisedly--to be a Church of England man, or to put it more comprehensively, a Protestant, and I certainly am so much of the latter that I protest against all our systems altogether!"

"Is that quite just?" asked Bonpre gently.

"Perhaps not!--but what is one to do? I am not alone in my ideas! One of our English bishops has been latterly deploring the fact that out of a thousand lads in a certain parish nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine of them never go to church! Well, what can you expect? I do not blame those nine-hundred and-ninety-nine at all. I am one with them. I never go to church."

"Why?"

"Simply because I never find any touch of the true Spirit of Christ there--and the whole tone of the place makes me feel distinctly un-Christian. The nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine youths possibly would sympathise with me. A church is a building more or less beautiful or ugly as the case may be, and in the building there is generally a man who reads prayers in a sing-song tone of voice, and perhaps another man who preaches without eloquence on some text which he utterly fails to see the true symbolical meaning of. There are no Charles Kingsleys nowadays,--if there were, I should call myself a 'Kingsleyite'. But as matters stand I am not moved by the church to feel religious. I would rather sit quietly in the fields and hear the gentle leaves whispering their joys and thanksgivings above my head, than listen to a human creature who has not even the education to comprehend the simplest teachings of nature, daring to assert himself as a teacher of the Divine. My own chief object in life has been and still is to speak on this and similar subjects to the people who are groping after lost Christianity. They need helping, and I want to try in my way to help them."

"Groping after lost Christianity!" echoed the Cardinal, "Those words are a terrible indictment, Mr. Leigh!"

"Yet in your own soul your Eminence admits it to be true," returned Leigh quickly,--"I can see the admission in your eyes,--in the very expression of your face! You feel in yourself that the true spirit of Christ is lacking in all the churches of the present day,--that the sheep are straying for lack of the shepherd, and that the wolf is in the fold! You know it,--you feel it,--you see it!"

Cardinal Bonpre's head drooped.

"God help me and forgive me, I am afraid I do!" he said sorrowfully. "I see the shadow of the storm before it draws nigh,--I feel the terror of the earthquake before it shakes down the edifice! No, the world is not with Christ to-day!--and unhappily it is a fact that Christ's ministers in recent years have done more to sever Him from Humanity than any other power could ever have succeeded in doing. Not by action, but by inertia!--dumbness--lack of protest,--lack of courage! Only a few stray souls stand out firm and fair in the chaos,--only a few!"

"'I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot,--I would thou wert cold or hot! So because thou art lukewarm and neither cold nor hot I will spew thee out of my mouth!'" quoted Leigh, his eyes flashing and his voice trembling with repressed earnestness, "That is the trouble all through! Apathy,--dead, unproductive apathy and laissez-faire!--Ah, I believe there are some of us living now who are destined to see strange and terrible things in this new century!"

"For myself," said the Cardinal slowly, "I think there is not much time left us! I feel a premonition of Divine wrath threatening the world, and when I study the aspect of the times and see the pride, licentiousness, and wealth-worship of men, I cannot but think the days are drawing near when our Master will demand of us account of our service. It is just the same as in the case of the individual wrong-doer, when it seems as if punishment were again and again retarded, and mercy shown,--yet if all benefits, blessings and warnings are unheeded, then at last the bolt falls suddenly and with terrific effect. So with nations--so with churches--so with the world!"

His voice grew feeble, and his eyes were clouded with pain.

"You are fatigued," said Leigh gently, "And I ought not to have stayed so long. I will bid you farewell now. If I am in Rome when you are there, I trust you will permit me to pay my respects to you?"

"It will be a pleasure to see you, my son," answered the Cardinal, pressing his hand and courteously preventing him from making the formal genuflection, "And let me add that it will help me very much to hear from you what progress you make in your intention of working for Christ. For,--when you speak to the people as a teacher, it is in His name, is it not?"

"In His name, and I pray in His spirit," said Leigh, "But not through any church."

The Cardinal sighed, but said no more, and Leigh turned to Angela.

"Good-bye," he said, "I may come and see the picture in Rome?"

"You may indeed," and Angela gave him her hand in frank friendliness, "I shall feel the necessity of your criticism and the value of your opinion."

He looked at her intently for a moment.

"Be of good courage," he then said in a low tone, "'Work out your own salvation', it is the only way! Fulfil the expression of your whole heart and soul and mind, and never heed what opposing forces may do to hinder you. You are so clear-brained, so spiritually organised, that I cannot imagine your doing anything that shall not create a power for good. You are sometimes inclined to be afraid of the largeness of your own conceptions in the picture you are dreaming of,--I can see that,--but do not fear! The higher influences are with you and in you;--give yourself up to them with absolute confidence! Good-bye--God bless you!" He stooped and kissed her hand,--then left the room.

Angela looked after him, and a half sigh escaped her lips unconsciously. The Cardinal watched her with rather a troubled look. After a little silence he said,

"You must pardon me, my child, if I seemed over hasty in my judgment of your work . . ."

"Dearest uncle, do not speak of it!" exclaimed Angela, "You were pained and sorry to see such a 'servant of Christ' as the type I chose,--you could not help expressing your feeling--it was natural . . ."

"Yes, I was vexed,--I own it!--" went on Bonpre, "For I know many priests, poor, patient, simple men, who do their best for our Lord according to their measure and capability,--men who deserve all honour, all love, all respect, for the integrity of their lives,--still--I am aware that these are in the minority, and that men of the kind your sketch depicts, compose alas!--the majority. There is a frightful preponderance of evil influences in the world! Industry, and commerce, and science have advanced, and yet a noble and upright standard of conduct among men is sadly lacking. Men are seeking for happiness in Materialism, and find nothing but satiety and misery,--satiety and misery which become so insupportable that very often suicide presents itself as the only way out of such a tangle of wretchedness! Yes, child!--all this is true--and if you think you have a lesson to give which will be useful in these dark days, no one,--I least of all--should presume to hinder you from giving it. Still, remember that the results of work are not with the worker to determine--they rest with God."

"Truly I hope they do," said Angela fervently, "For then all bad work will pass away and only the good and necessary remain."

"That always is the rule," said the Cardinal, "No criticism can kill good work or vivify bad. So be happy, Angela mia! Paint your great picture with courage and hope--I will neither judge nor condemn, and if the world's verdict should be cruel, mine shall be kind!"

He smiled and stroked her soft hair, then taking her arm he leaned upon it affectionately as they left the studio together.

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X

The next day, and the next after that, were passed by the Cardinal in gratifying a certain eagerness shown by his young foundling, Manuel, to see the churches and great public buildings of Paris. The boy had a quiet, straightforward way of expressing his wishes and opinions, and a certain marked individuality in his manner--in fact, so simple and straight were his words, and so much to the point, that they sometimes caused confusion to his hearers. Once or twice he gave offence, as for example, on visiting a great church where there were numerous jewelled relics and priceless treasures of old lace and embroidery, when he said suddenly:

"There is a woman just outside the door, very ill and poor, with two little starving children;--would it not be well to sell some of the jewels here and give her the money?"

The custodian looked amazed, and the attendant priest who was escorting Cardinal Bonpre through the building, frowned.

"The treasures of the Church are not to be sold," he said curtly. "The beggar outside is no doubt a trained hypocrite."

"Christ would not say so," answered Manuel softly,--"He would not, even if He knew her to be a hypocrite, retain anything of value for Himself, if by giving it to her, He could ease her pain and poverty. I cannot understand why the Church should keep jewels."

"That is because you are ignorant," said the priest roughly.

Manuel raised his grave blue eyes and fixed them steadily upon him.

"That may be," he said, "Yet I think it is nowhere written in the Gospel that Christ cared for the world's wealth or the world's possessions. When they are offered to Him did he not say, 'Get thee behind me, Satan'! The only gem he prized was the 'pearl of great price,'--the pure and perfect human soul."

"The Church is the manufactory of those pearls," said the priest, with something between a grin and a sneer.

"Then the Church needs no other jewels" returned Manuel quietly, with a little gesture of his hand, "These glittering baubles you show, are out of place."

The priest glanced him over with angry contempt. Then he said to the Cardinal,

"Your Eminence will have trouble with that boy," he said. "His opinions are heretic."

The Cardinal smiled a little.

"You think so? Nay, there is something of truth in what he says, notwithstanding his simplicity of utterance, which is not perhaps in accordance with convention. I confess that I share his opinions somewhat. Certainly I esteem myself happy that in my far-off diocese there are none of the world's precious things, but only the unprized prayers of the faithful."

The priest said nothing in reply,--but he was conscious of discomfort and uneasiness, and hurried through the rest of his duties with an ill-grace, annoyed, though he knew not why, by the very presence of Manuel. The boy, however, paid no heed to his angry glances, and noted everything in his own quiet meditative way,--a way which was a singularly winning one, graced as it was by an almost scholarly thoughtfulness united to the charm of youth. Once, before a magnificent priest's garment of lace, he paused, and touched the substance lightly.

"See," he said softly, looking wistfully up in the Cardinal's face, "See all the leaves and rosebuds worked in, this by the needle,--and think how many human eyes have strained at it, and grown dull and blind over it! If one could only believe that the poor eyes were comforted at all in the following of the difficult thread!--but no,--the sunshine must have lessened and the days grown darker and darker, till death came and gently shut up the lids of the tired orbs of earthy vision, and opened those of the soul to Light indeed! This work speaks with a thousand tongues! I can hear them! Torture,--poverty,--pain,--pitilessness,--long hours,--scant reward,--tired fingers,--weary hearts!--and a priest of Christ wears this to perform Christ's service! Clad in a garment of human suffering, to preach mercy! Is it not strange?"

"You think too deeply, my child," said the Cardinal, moved by the tender pity in Manual's voice, "Nothing is accomplished without pain in this world,--our dear Lord Himself suffered pain."

"True," said Manuel, "But His pain was endured that there might be less of it for others! He asked His children in this world to love one another for His sake--not to grind each other down! Not to make unnecessary hardships for each other! But it seems as if He had asked in vain!"

He was silent after this, and refrained from remark even when, during their visit to Notre Dame, the treasury was unlocked for the Cardinal's inspection, and the relics formerly contained in the now disused "Sainte Chapelle," were shown,--including the fragments of the "crown of thorns," and a nail from the "true cross." The Cardinal was silent too. He had no remark to offer on these obvious "imaginations" of the priesthood. Then they went up together to the platform on the summit of the Cathedral, and looked at the great bell known as the "Bourdon de Notre Dame";--and here they found a little wizened old man sitting carelessly on the edge of a balustrade, in a seemingly very dangerous position, who nodded and smiled familiarly as they appeared. He acted as cicerone of the summit of the North Tower, and was soon at their side explaining volubly all that was of interest.

"Tired,--oh yes, one gets tired!" he admitted, in response to a query from the Cardinal as to whether he did not find his duties fatiguing at his age, "But after all, I like the griffins and dragons and devils' faces up here, better than the griffins and dragons and devils down there,--below on the Boulevards! I call this Heaven, and down there in the streets, Hell. Yes, truly! It is wholesome up here,--the sky seems very near, and the sculptured beasts do no harm. But down in the streets one feels and smells the dirt and danger directly. I sit here all by myself for hours thinking, when no one comes to visit the tower,--for sometimes a whole day passes and no one wishes to ascend. And there is a moral in that, Monseigneur, if one has eyes to see it;--days pass, years, in the world,--and no one wishes to ascend!--to Heaven, I mean!--to go down to Hell is delightful, and everyone is ready for it! It is at night that the platform here is most beautiful,--oh yes, at night it is very fine, Monseigneur!--but it is only madmen and dreamers who call me up in the night hours, yet when they do I never refuse to go with them, for look you, I am a light sleeper and have no wife to bid me keep my bed. Yes,--if the authorities knew that I took anybody up to the tower at night they would probably dismiss me," and he chuckled like an old schoolboy with a sense of his own innate mischief and disobedience, "But you see they do not know! And I learn a great deal from the strange persons who come at night,--much more than from the strange persons who come by day. Now, the last so strange person that came here by night--you would not perhaps believe it, Monseigneur, but it was a priest! Yes," and the old fellow laughed, "a priest who had suddenly found out that the Church was not following its Master! Yes, yes! . . . just fancy killing himself for that!"

"Killing himself!" cried the Cardinal, "What do you mean?"

"You would like to hear the story?--ah, take care, mon ange!" he cried, as he perceived Manuel standing lightly near the brink of the platform, and stretching out his arms towards the city, "Thou art not a bird to fly from that edge in the air! What dost thou see?"

"Paris!" replied the boy in strangely sorrowful accents, turning his young, wistful face towards the Cardinal, his hair blown back in the light wind, "All Paris!"

"Ah!--'tis a fine sight, all Paris!" said the old guide--"one of the finest in the world, to judge by the outside of it. But the inside is a very different matter; and if Paris is not a doomed city, then there is no God, and I know nothing of the Bible. It has got all the old sins in a new shape, and revels in them. And of the story of the priest, if you would hear it;--ah!--that is well!" he said, as Manuel left the giddy verge of the platform where he had been standing, and drew near. "It is safer to be away from that edge, my child! And for the poor priest, it happened in this way,--it was a fair night, and the moon was high--I was dozing off in a chair in my room below, when the bell rang quickly, yet softly. I got up with pleasure, for I said to myself, 'here is an artist or a poet,--one of those persons who are unlike anyone else'--just as I am myself unlike anyone else--'and so we two shall have a pleasant evening.' But when I opened the door there was no one but a priest, and poor-looking even at that; and he was young and pale, and very uneasy in his manner, and he said to me, 'Jean Lapui'--(that is my name)--'let me pass up to the platform.' 'Willingly,' said I, 'if I may go with you.' 'Nay, I would rather be alone,' he answered. 'That may not be,' I told him, 'I am as pleased to see the moonbeams shining on the beasts and devils as any man,--and I shall do you no harm by my company.' Well, he agreed to have me then, and up we went the three hundred and seventy-eight steps,--(it is a long way, Monseigneur;--)and he mounted quickly, I slowly,--but always keeping my eye upon him. At last we reached this platform, and the moonlight was beautiful, and clear as day. Then my little priest sat down and began to laugh. 'Ha, my Lapui!' he said, 'Is it not droll that this should be all a lie! All this fine building, and all the other fine buildings of the kind in Paris! Strange, my Lapui, is it not, that this Cathedral should be raised to the worship of a God whom no one obeys, or even thinks of obeying! All show, my good Lapui! All to feed priests like me, and keep them going--but God has nothing to do with it--nothing at all, I swear to you!'--'You may be right, mon reverend,' I said, (for I saw he was not in a mood to be argued with)--"Yet truly the Cathedral has not always been a place of holiness. In seventeen ninety-three there was not much of our Lord or the blessed Saints in it.' 'No, you are right, Lapui!' he cried, 'Down came the statue of the Virgin, and up went the statue of Liberty! There was the crimson flare of the Torch of Truth!--and the effigies of the ape Voltaire and the sensualist Rousseau, took the places of St. Peter and St. Paul! Ha!--And they worshipped the goddess of Reason--Reason, impersonated by Maillard the ballet-dancer! True to the life, my Lapui!--that kind of worship has lasted in Paris until now!--it goes on still--Reason,--man's idea of Reason,--impersonated by a ballet dancer! Yes,--the shops are full of that goddess and her portraits, Jean Lapui! And the jewellers can hardly turn out sufficient baubles to adorn her shrine!' He laughed again, and I took hold of him by the arm. 'See here, petit pere,' I said, 'I fancy all is not well with you.' 'You are right,' he answered, 'all is very ill!' 'Then will you not go home and to bed?' I asked him. 'Presently--presently;' he said, 'if I may tell you something first!' 'Do so by all means, reverend pere,' said I, and I sat down near him. 'It is just this, Lapui,' and he drew out a crucifix from his breast and looked at it very earnestly, 'I am a priest, as you see; and this symbol represents my faith. My mother told me that to be a priest and to serve God was the highest happiness that could befall a man. I believed it,--and when I look at the stars up there crowding around us in such vast circles,--when I look at all this moonlight and the majesty of creation around me, I believe it still! Up here, it seems there MAY be a God; down there,' and he pointed towards the streets, 'I know there is a devil! But I have discovered that it is no use telling the people about God, because they do not believe in Him. They think I am telling them a lie because it is my metier to tell lies. And also because they think I have neither the sense nor the ability to do anything else. They know they are telling lies themselves all day and every day. Some of them pretend to believe, because they think it best to be on the safe side even by feigning,--and they are the worst hypocrites. It drives me mad, Lapui, to perform Mass for liars! If it were only unbelievers! but liars!--liars! Liars who lie on their death-beds, telling me with mock sighs of penitence that they believe in God when they do not! I had a dream last night--you shall tell me if I was mistaken in it,--it was a dream of this very tower of Notre Dame. I was up here as I am now--and the moonlight was around me as it is now--and I thought that just behind the wing of that third angel's head carved yonder--do you see?' and he got up and made me get up too, and turned me round with his hand on my shoulder--'a white dove had made its resting-place. Is there a white dove there, Lapui? If there is I shall be a happy man and all my griefs will be at an end! Will you go and look--and tell me if there is a white dove nestling there? Then I will say good-night to you and go home.' God forgive me!--I thought to humor him in his fancy, and so I left him to walk those five steps--only five at the utmost--and see if perhaps among the many doves that fly about the towers, it might not be that a white one, as he said, should have chosen to settle in the place he pointed out to me, 'for,' thought I, 'he will be quiet then and satisfied.' And like a blind fool I went--and when I came back the platform was empty!--Ah, Monseigneur!--he had said good-night indeed, and gone home!"

"You mean that he flung himself from this parapet?" said Bonpre, in a low, horrified tone.

"That was the way of it, Monseigneur," said Lapui commiseratingly,--"His body was found next day crushed to bits on the pavement below; but somehow no one troubled much about it, or thought he had thrown himself from the tower of Notre Dame. It was said that he had been murdered and thrown out of a window, but nobody knew how or when. Of course I could have spoken, but then I should have got into trouble. And I avoid trouble whenever I can. A very strange thing it is that no one has ever been suspected of leaping from Notre Dame into the next world since Victor Hugo's great story was written. 'It is against the rules,' say the authorities, 'to mount the towers at night.' True, but rules are not always kept. Victor Hugo's 'Quasimodo,' who never lived, is the only person the wiseacres associate with such a deed. And I,--I could tell many a strange story; only it is better to be silent! Life is hard living,--and when a priest of the Church feels there is no God in this world, why what is there left for him except to try and find out if there is in the next?"

"Suicide is not the way to find Heaven," said the Cardinal gravely.

"Maybe not,--maybe not," and the old custodian turned to lead the way down the steps of the tower, "But when the brain is gone all through grief at losing God, it may chance that God sees the conditions of things, and has mercy. Events happen in this world of such a kind as to make anyone who is not a saint, doubt the sense as well as the goodness of the Creator,--of course that is a wicked thing to say, for we make our own evils, no doubt--"

"That is very certain," said the Cardinal, "The unhappy man you have told me of should have trusted God to the end, whether those whom he preached to, believed his message or not. Their conduct was not his business,--his task was to declare, and not to judge."

"Now that is very well put!" and the old man paused on the stairway and looked round approvingly. "Of course that is said as only a wise man could say it, for after all, Christ Himself did not judge any one in any case. He came to save us all, not to punish us."

"Then why does not everyone remember that, and try to save one another rather than to condemn?" asked Manuel suddenly.

They had reached the bottom of the tower stairway, and old Jean Lapui, shading his eyes from the glare of the daylight with one wrinkled hand, looked at the boy with a smile of compassionate interest.

"Why does not everyone remember? Why does not everyone do as He did? Ah, that is a question! You are young, and you will find out many answers to it before you are much older. One fact is sure,--that if everybody did remember Him and lived exactly as He wished, we should have a new Heaven and a new Earth; and I will tell you something else," and the old fellow looked sly and mischievous, "No offence meant--no offence!--but there would be no churches and no priests! Believe me, I speak the truth! But this would be a great happiness; and is not to be our portion yet! Good-day, Monseigneur!--A thousand pardons for my wicked speech! Good-day!"

"Good-day!" responded the Cardinal gently, "Be careful of your night visitors, my friend! Do not for the future leave them alone to plunge into the Infinite without a warning!"

The old man smiled deprecatingly.

"Truly, Monseigneur, I am generally careful. I do not know when I have spoken so freely to anyone as I have to you; for I am generally in a bad humour with all Church dignitaries,--and of course I know you for a Cardinal by your dress, while you might truly be a saint from your manner;--so I should have held my tongue about the flight into the air of the little priest. But you will say nothing, for you are discreet; and even if you did, and I were asked about it, I should know nothing. Oh, yes, I can tell lies as fast as anybody else!--Yes, truly! I do not suppose anyone, not even an Archbishop himself, could surpass me in lying!"

"And are you not ashamed to lie?" asked Bonpre, with an intense vibration of pain in his voice as he put the question.

"Heaven bless you, no, Monseigneur!" replied Lapui cheerfully, "For is not the whole world kept going by lies? Dear me, if we all told the truth there would be an end of everything! I am a philosopher in my way, Monseigneur,--and I assure you that a real serious truth told in Paris without any gloss upon it, would be like an earthquake in the city,--great houses would come down and numbers of people would be killed by it! Good-day, Monseigneur!--Good-day."

And still smiling and chuckling, the custodian of the North tower retired into his den there to await fresh visitors. The Cardinal walked slowly to the corner of the street where his carriage awaited him,--his head bent and his eyes downcast; Manuel stepped lightly along beside him, glancing at his pale face from time to time with a grave and tender compassion. When they were seated in the vehicle and driving homewards the boy spoke gently--

"You grieve too much for others, dear friend! You are now distressed because you have heard the story of one unhappy man who sought to find God by self-destruction, and you are pained also lest another man should lose God altogether by the deliberate telling of lies. All such mistakes and follies of the world weigh heavily on your heart, but they should not do so,--for did not Christ suffer all this for you when He was crucified?"

The Cardinal sighed deeply.

"Yes, my child, but He told us plainly WHY He suffered. It was that we might learn to follow Him, and that there should be less suffering for the future. And surely we have not obeyed Him, or there could not be so much pain and difficulty in the world as there is now."

"If He come again, you think He would be grieved and disappointed in His followers?" queried Manuel softly.

"If He came again, I fear He would not find much of His teaching in any of the creeds founded on His name! If He came again, then indeed might the churches tremble, totter and fall!"

"If He came again," pursued Manuel, still in the same soft, even voice, "how do you think He would come?"

"'Watch ye therefore for ye know not when He cometh,'" murmured the Cardinal,--"My dear child, I think if He came again it would be perhaps in the disguise of one who is poor and friendless 'despised and rejected of men,' as when He first glorified the earth by His presence; and I fear that in such plight He would find Himself, as before, unwelcome."

Manuel made no reply just then, as they had arrived at home. The servant who admitted them told them that Donna Sovrani had a visitor in her studio,--so that the Cardinal and his young attendant went straight to their own apartments.

"Read to me, Manuel," then said Bonpre, seating himself near the window, and looking out dreamily on the rich foliage of the woods and grassy slopes that stretched before him, "Find something in the Gospels that will fit what we have seen to-day. I am tired of all these temples and churches!--these gorgeous tombs and reliquaries; they represent penances and thank-offerings no doubt, but to me they seem useless. A church should not be a shrine for worldly stuff, unless indeed such things are used again for the relief of poverty and suffering; but they are not used; they are simply kept under lock and key and allowed to accumulate,--while human creatures dwelling perhaps quite close to these shrines, are allowed to die of starvation. Did you think this when you spoke to the priest who was offended with you to-day?"

"Yes, I thought it," replied Manuel gently, "But then he said I was a heretic. When one loves God better than the Church is one called a heretic?"

Cardinal Bonpre looked earnestly at the boy's inspired face,--the face of a dreaming angel in its deep earnestness.

"If so, then I am heretic," he answered slowly, "I love the Creator as made manifest to me in His works,--I love Him in every flower which I am privileged to look upon,--I find Him in every art and science,--I worship Him in a temple not made with hands,--His own majestic Universe! Above all churches,--above all formulated creeds and systems I love Him! And as declared in the divine humanity of Christ I believe in, and adore Him! If this makes me unworthy to be His priest and servant then I confess my unworthiness!"

He had spoken these words more to himself than Manuel, and in his fervour had closed his eyes and clasped his hands,--and he almost fancied that a soft touch, light as a falling rose-leaf, had for a second rested on his brow. He looked up quickly, wondering whether it was Manuel who had so touched him,--the boy was certainly near him,--but was already seated with the Testament open ready to read as requested. The Cardinal raised himself in his chair,--a sense of lightness, and freedom, and ease, possessed him,--the hopeless and tired feeling which had a few minutes since weighed him down with an undefinable languor was gone,--and his voice had gained new strength and energy when he once more spoke.

"You have found words of our Lord which will express what we have seen to-day?" he asked.

"Yes," replied Manuel, and he read in a clear vibrating tone, "Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because ye build the tombs of the prophets and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous." Here he paused and said, while the Cardinal gazed at him wonderingly, "Is not that true of Paris? There is their great Pantheon where most of their prophets lie,--their poets and their teachers whom they wronged and slandered in their lifetime--"

"My child," interrupted Bonpre gently, "Poets and so-called teachers are not always good men. One named Voltaire, who scoffed at God, and enunciated the doctrine of materialism in France, is buried there."

"Nevertheless he also was a prophet," persisted Manuel, in his quiet, half-childlike, half-scholarly way, "A prophet of evil. He was the incarnation of the future spirit of Paris. He lived as a warning of what was to come,--a warning of the wolves that were ready to descend upon the Master's fold. But Paris was then perhaps in the care of those 'hirelings' who are mentioned here as caring not for the sheep."

He turned a few pages and continued reading.

"'Well hath Esais prophesied of you, hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips but their heart is far from me. Howbeit in vain do they worship me, TEACHING FOR DOCTRINE THE COMMANDMENTS OF MAN.'"

He emphasised the last few words and looked up at the Cardinal, then he went on.

"'Whosoever will come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake the same shall save it.'"

"Yes," said Cardinal Bonpre fervently, "It is all there!--'Whosoever will come after me let him deny himself,' LET HIM DENY HIMSELF! That is the secret of it. Self-denial! And this age is one of self-indulgence. We are on the wrong road, all of us, both Church and laity,--and if the Master should come He will not find us watching, but sleeping."

He broke off, as at that moment a knock came at the door and a servant entered the room bringing him a letter. It was from the Abbe Vergniaud, and ran as follows:--

"TRES CHER MONSIGNEUR! I preach the day after tomorrow at Notre Dame de Lorette, and if you wish to do a favour to a dying man you will come and hear me. I am moved to say things I have never said before, and it is possible I may astonish and perchance scandalise Paris. What inspires me I do not know,--perhaps your well-deserved reproach of the other day--perhaps the beautiful smile of the angel that dwells in Donna Sovrani's eyes,--perhaps the chance meeting with your Rouen foundling on the stairs as I was flying away from your just wrath. He had been gathering roses in the garden, and gave me one with a grace in the giving which made the flower valuable. It still lives and blooms in a glass on my writing-table at which I have been jotting down the notes of what I mean to say. WHAT I MEAN TO SAY! There is more in those words than there seems, if you could but guess all! I shall trust to the day itself for the necessary eloquence. The congregation that assembles at the Lorette is a curious and a mixed one. 'Artistes' of the stage and the cafe chantant are among the worshippers;--dames of rank and fashion who worship the male 'artistes,' and the golden youth of Paris who adore the very points of the shoes of the female ones,--are generally there also. It is altogether what 'perfide Albion,' or Dame Grundee would call a 'fast' audience. And the fact that I have arranged to preach there will draw a still greater mixture and 'faster' quality, as I am, alas!--a fashion in preachers. I pray you to come, or I shall think you have not forgiven me!

"VERGNIAUD."

Cardinal Bonpre folded the letter and put it aside with a curious feeling of compassion for the writer.

"Yes, I will go," he thought, "I have never heard him preach, though I know by report that he is popular. I was told once that he seems to be possessed by a very demon of mockery, and that it is this spirit which makes his attraction for the people; but I hope it is something more than that--I hope--" Here interrupting his meditations he turned to Manuel.

"So you gave the Abbe Vergniaud a rose the other day, my child?"

"Yes," replied Manuel, "He looked sad when I met him,--and sometimes a flower gives pleasure to a person in sorrow."

The Cardinal thought of his own roses far away, and sighed with a sensation of longing and homesickness.

"Flowers are like visible messages from God," he said, "Messages written in all the brightest and loveliest colours! I never gather one without finding out that it has something to say to me."

"There is a legend," said Manuel, "which tells how a poor girl who has lost every human creature she loved on earth, had a rose-tree she was fond of, and every day she found upon it just one bloom. And though she longed to gather the flower for herself she would not do so, but always placed it before the picture of the Christ. And God saw her do this, as He sees everything. At last, quite suddenly she died, and when she found herself in Heaven, there were such crowds and crowds of angels about her that she was bewildered, and could not find her way. All at once she saw a pathway edged with roses before her, and one of the angels said, 'These are all the roses you gave to our Lord on earth, and He has made them into a pathway for you which will lead you straight to those you love!' And so with great joy she followed the windings of the path, seeing her roses blossoming all the way, and she found all those whom she had loved and lost on earth waiting to welcome her at the end!"

"A pretty fancy," said the Cardinal smiling, "And, as not even a thought is wasted, who knows if it might not prove true?"

"Surely the beautiful must be the true always!" said Manuel.

"Not so, my child,--a fair face may hide an evil soul."

"But only for a little while," answered the boy, "The evil soul must leave its impress on the face in time, if life lasts long enough."

"That is quite possible," said Bonpre, "In fact, I think it often happens,--only there are some people who simulate the outward show of goodness and purity perfectly, while inwardly 'they are as ravening wolves,' and they never seem to drop the mask. Others again--" Here he paused and looked anxiously at his young companion, "I wonder what you will be like when you grow up, Manuel!"

"But if I never grow up, what then?" asked Manuel with a smile.

"Never grow up? You mean--"

"I mean if I die," said Manuel, "or pass through what is called dying before I grow up?"

"God forbid!" said the Cardinal gently, "I would have you live--"

"But why," persisted Manuel, "since death is a better life?"

Bonpre looked at him wistfully.

"But if you grow up and are good and great, you may be wanted in the world," he said.

An expression of deep pain swept like a shadow across the boy's fair open brow.

"Oh no!" he said quietly, "the world does not want me! And yet I love the world--not because it is a world, for there are millions upon millions of worlds,--they are as numerous as flowers in a garden--but because it is a sorrowful world,--a mistaken world,--and because all the creatures in it have something of God in them. Yes, I love the world!--but the world does not love me."

He spoke in a tone of gentle pathos, with the resigned and patient air of one who feels the burden of solitude and the sense of miscomprehension. And closing the Testament he held he rested his clasped hands upon it, and for a moment seemed lost in sorrowful reverie.

"I love you," said the Cardinal tenderly, "And I will take care of you as well as I can."

Manuel looked up at him.

"And that will be well indeed, my lord Cardinal!" he said softly, "And you serve a Master who will hereafter say to you, remembering your goodness,--'Verily, in asmuch as ye have done it unto the least of my brethren ye have done it unto Me.'"

He smiled; and the Cardinal meeting his glance wondered whether it was the strong level light of the sinking sun through the window-pane that made such a glory shine upon his face, and gave such a brilliancy to his deep and steadfast eyes.

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XI

Meanwhile, Angela Sovrani was detained in her studio by the fascinating company and bewildering chatter of a charming and very well-known personage in Europe,--a dainty, exquisitely dressed piece of femininity with the figure of a sylph and the complexion of a Romney "Lady Hamilton,"--the Comtesse Sylvie Hermenstein, an Austro-Hungarian of the prettiest and most bewitching type, who being a thorough bohemienne in spirit, and having a large fortune at her disposal, travelled everywhere, saw everything, and spent great sums of money not only in amusing herself, but in doing good wherever she went. By society in general, she was voted "thoroughly heartless,"--when as a matter of fact she had too much heart, and gave her "largesse" of sympathy somewhat too indiscriminately. Poor people worshipped her,--the majority of the rich envied her because most of them had ties and she had none. She might have married scores of times, but she took a perverse pleasure in "drawing on" her admirers till they were just on the giddy brink of matrimony,--then darting off altogether she left them bewildered, confused, and not a little angry.

"They tell me I cannot love, cara mia," she was saying now to Angela who sat in pleased silence, studying her form, her colouring, and her animated expression; with all the ardour of an artist who knows how difficult it is to catch the swift and variable flashes of beauty on the face of a pretty woman, who is intelligent as well as personally charming. "They tell me I have no heart at all. Me--Sylvie!--no heart! Helas!--I am all heart! But to love one of those stupid heavy men, who think that just to pull a moustache and smile is sufficient to make a conquest--ah, no!--not for me! Yet I am now in love!--truly!--ah, you laugh!--" and she laughed herself, shaking her pretty head, adorned with its delicate "creation" in gossamer and feathers, which was supposed to be a hat--"Yes, I am in love with the Marquis Fontenelle! Ah!--le beau Marquis! He is so extraordinary!--so beautiful!--so wicked! It must be that I love him, or why should I trouble myself about him?"

She spread out her tiny gloved hands appealingly, with a delightful little shrug of her shoulders, and again Angela laughed.

"He is good-looking, certainly," she said, "He is very like Miraudin. They might almost be brothers."

"Miraudin, ce cher Miraudin!" exclaimed the Comtesse gaily, "The greatest actor in Europe! Yes, truly!--I go to the theatre to look at him and I almost fancy I am in love with him instead of Fontenelle, till I remember he stage-manages;--ah!--then I shudder!--and my shudder kills my love! After all it is only his resemblance to the Marquis that causes the love,--and perhaps the shudder!"

"Sylvie, Sylvie!" laughed Angela, "Can you not be serious? What do you mean?"

"I mean what I say," declared Sylvie, "Miraudin used to be the darling of all the sentimental old maids and little school-girls who did not know him off the stage. In Paris, in Rome, in Vienna, in Buda-Pesth--always a conqueror of ignorant women who saw him in his beautiful 'make-up'! Yes, he was perfectly delightful,--this big Miraudin, till he became his own manager and his own leading actor as well! Helas! What it is to be a manager! Do you know? It is to keep a harem like a grand Turk;--and woe betide the woman who joins the company without understanding that she is to be one of the many! The sultana is the 'leading lady'. Poor Miraudin!--he must have many little faggots to feed his flame! Oh, you look so shocked! But the Marquis is just like him,--he also stage-manages."

"In what way?"

"Ah, he has an enormous theatre,--the world! A big stage,--society! The harem is always being replenished! And he plays his part so well! He has what the wise-acrescall 'perverted morals',--they are so charming!--and he will not marry. He says, 'Why give myself to one when I can make so many happy!' And why will not I, Sylvie Hermenstein, be one of those many? Why will I not yield to the embraces of Monsieur le beau Marquis? Not to marry him,--oh, no! so free a bird could not have his wings clipped! And why will I not see the force of this?--"

She stopped, for Angela sprang towards her exclaiming,

"Sylvie! Do you mean to tell me that the Marquis Fontenelle is such a villain?--"

"Tais-toi! Dear little flame of genius, how you blaze!" cried Sylvie, catching her friend by the hand and kissing it, "Do not call Fontenelle a villain--he is too charming!--and he is only like a great many other men. He is a bold and passionate person; I rather like such characters,--and I really am afraid--afraid--" here she hesitated, then resumed, "He loves me for the moment, Angela, and I--I very much fear I love him for a little longer than that! C'est terrible! He is by no means worthy of it,--no, but what does that matter! We women never count the cost of loving--we simply love! If I see much of him I shall probably sink into the Quartier Latin of love--for there is a Quartier Latin as well as a high class Faubourg in the passion,--I prefer the Faubourg I confess, because it is so high, and respectable, and clean, and grand--but--"

"Sylvie," said Angela determinedly, "You must come away from Paris,--you must not see this man--"

"That is what I have arranged to do," said Sylvie, her beautiful violet eyes flashing with mirth and malice intermingled, "I am flying from Paris . . . I shall perhaps go to Rome in order to be near you. You are a living safety in a storm,--you are so serene and calm. And then you have a lover who believes in the ideal and perfect sympathy."

Angela smiled,--and Sylvie Hermenstein noted the warm and tender flush of pleasure that spread over her fair face.

"Yes, Florian is an idealist," she said, "There is nothing of the brute in him."

"And you think Fontenelle a brute?" queried Sylvie, "Yes, I suppose he is; but I have sometimes thought that all men are very much alike,--except Florian!" She paused, looking rather dubiously, and with a touch of compassion at Angela, "Well!--you deserve to be happy, child, and I hope you will be! For myself, I am going to run away from Monsieur le Marquis with as much speed as if I had stolen his watch!"

"It is the best thing you can do," said Angela with a little sigh of relief, "I am glad you are resolved."

Comtesse Sylvie rose from her chair and moved about the studio with a pretty air of impatience.

"If his love for me could last," she said, "I might stay! I would love him with truth and passion, and I would so influence him that he should become one of the most brilliant leading men of his time. For he has all the capabilities of genius,--but they are dormant,--and the joys of self-indulgence appeal to him more strongly than high ambition and attainment. And he could not love any women for more than a week or a month at most,--in which temperament he exactly resembles the celebrated Miraudin. Now I do not care to be loved for a week or a month--I wish to be loved for always,--for always!" she said with emphasis, "Just as your Florian loves you."

Angela's eyes grew soft and pensive.

"Few men are like Florian," she said. Again Sylvie looked at her doubtfully, and there was a moment's silence. Then Sylvie resumed.

"Will you help me to give a little lesson to Monsieur le Marquis, Angela?"

"Willingly, if I can. But how?"

"In this way. It is a little drama! To-morrow is Saturday and you 'receive.' 'Tout Paris', artistic Paris, at any rate, flocks to your studio. Your uncle, the Cardinal Bonpre, is known to be with you, and your visitors will be still more numerous. I have promised Fontenelle to meet him here. I am to give him his answer--"

"To what?" enquired Angela.

"To his proposal."

"Of marriage?"

"Dear me, no!" And Sylvie smiled, but there was a look of pain in her eyes, "He has an idyllic house buried in the Foret St. Germain, and he wants me to take possession . . . you know the rest! He is a villain? Yes--he is like Miraudin, who has a luxurious flat in Paris and sends each lady of his harem there in turn. How angry you look! But, my dear, I am not going to the house in the Foret, and I shall not meet him here. He will come--looking charming as usual, and he will wait for me; but I shall not arrive. All I want you to do for me is to receive him very kindly, talk to him very sweetly, and tell him quite suddenly that I have left Paris."

"What good will that do?" enquired Angela, "Could you not write it to him?"

"Of course I could write it to him but--" Here Sylvie paused and turned away her head. Angela, moved by quick instinct, went to her and put her arm around her waist.

"Now there are tears in your eyes, Sylvie," she said, "You are suffering for this man's heartlessness and cruelty. For it IS heartless,--it is insulting, and selfish, and cruel to offer you nothing but dishonour if he knows you love him."

Sylvie took out a tiny cobweb of a lace handkerchief and dried her tears.

"No, I will not have him called heartless, or cruel," she said, "He is merely one of his class. There are hundreds like him in Paris. Never mind my tears!--they are nothing. There are hundreds of women who would accept his proposals,--and he thinks I must be like them,--ready to fall into his arms like a ripe peach at a touch! He thinks all I say to him is an assumed affectation of virtue, and that he can easily break down that slight barricade. He tells me I am a charming preacher, but that he could never learn anything from sermons!" She laughed, "Oh, he is incorrigible! But I want you to let him know that for once he is mistaken. Will you? And you shall not have to say even the smallest figment of an untruth,--your news will be quite correct--for I leave Paris to-morrow morning."

She was very quiet now as she spoke--her brilliant eyes were dark with thought, and her delicate face wore a serious, almost melancholy expression.

"Dear Sylvie!" said Angela, kissing her soft cheek, "You really care for this wretched man?"

"I am not sure," she answered with a touch of hesitation in her voice, "I think I do--and yet despise myself for it!--but--who knows what wonders change of air and scene may work! You see, if I go away he will forget at once, and will trouble himself about me no more."

"Are you sure of that?"

Sylvie hesitated.

"Well, no, I cannot be quite certain,--you see no woman has ever avoided him,--it will be quite a new experience for him, and a strange one!" Her laughter rippled out musically on the air. "Positively I do not think he will ever get over it!"

"I begin to understand," said Angela, "You wish to make this callous man of the world realise that a woman may be beautiful, and brilliant, and independent, and yet live a pure, good life amid numerous temptations?"

"Yes,--I wish him to feel that all women are not to be led away by flattery, or even by the desire to be loved, which is the hardest temptation of all to resist! Nothing so hard as that, Angela! Nothing so hard! I have often thought what a contemptible creature Goethe's Gretchen was to allow herself to be tempted to ruin with a box of jewels! Jewels! Worthless baubles! I would not cross the road to look at the biggest diamond in the world! But to be loved! To feel that you are all in all to one man out of the whole world! That would be glorious! That I have never felt--that I shall never know!"

Angela looked at her sympathetically,--what a strange thing it was, she thought, that this pretty creature, with her winsome, bright, bewitching ways, should be craving for love, while she, Angela Sovrani, was elected to the happiness of having the absolute devotion of such an ideal lover as Florian Varillo!

"But I am becoming quite tragic in my remarks," went on Sylvie, resuming her usual gaiety, "Melodramatic, as they say! If I go on in this manner I shall qualify to be the next 'leading lady' to Miraudin! Quelle honneur! Good-bye Angela;--I will not tell you where I am going lest Fontenelle should ask you,--and then you would have to commit yourself to a falsehood,--it is enough to say I have left Paris."

"Shall I see you again soon?" said Angela, holding her by both hands and looking at her anxiously.

"Yes, very soon, before the winter is over at any rate. You sweet, calm, happy Angela! I wonder if anything could ever whip you in a storm!"

"Would you like to see me in a stormy humour?" asked Angela, smiling.

"No, not exactly;--but,--you are TOO quiet,--too secure--too satisfied in your art and your surroundings; and you do not enter at all into the passions and griefs of other people. You are absorbed in your love and your work,--a beautiful existence! Only I hope the gods will not wake you up some day!"

"I am not asleep," said Angela, "nor dreaming."

"Yes you are! You dream of beautiful things,--and the world is full of ugly ones; you dream of love and constancy, and purity,--and the world is full of spite, and hate, and bribery, and wickedness; you have a world of your own,--but Angela, it is a glass world!--in which only the exquisite colours of your own soul are reflected, take care that the pretty globe does not break!--for if it does you will never be able to put it together again! Adieu!"

"Adieu!" and Angela returned her loving embrace with equal affection, "I will announce your departure to the Marquis Fontenelle to-morrow."

"You will? Sweet Angela! And when you hear from me, and know where I am, you will write me a long, long letter and tell me how he looked, and what he said, and whether he seemed sorry or indifferent, or angry, or ashamed--or--"

Before she could finish the sentence the studio door was thrown open, and the servant announced, "Monsieur le Marquis Fontenelle!"

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XII

A moment's flashing glance of half-amused dismay at Angela, and the Comtesse Sylvie had vanished. Passing quickly behind one of the several tall tapestry screens that adorned the studio, she slipped away through a little private door at which Angela's "models" presented themselves, a door which led into the garden and then into the Bois, and making straight for her carriage which was in waiting round the corner, she sprang into it and was rapidly driven away. Meanwhile, Angela Sovrani, rather bewildered by her friend's swift departure, was left alone to face the Marquis, who entered almost on the heels of the servant who announced him, and in one swift survey of the studio saw that the object of his search was not there. Concealing his disappointment, however, under an admirable show of elegant indifference, he advanced towards Angela and saluted her with a courtly old-world grace that very well became his handsome face and figure.

"I must apologise for this intrusion," he said, speaking in deep, soft accents which gave a singular charm to his simplest words, "But--to be quite frank with you--I thought I should find the Comtesse Hermenstein here."

Angela smiled. In her heart she considered the man a social reprobate, but it was impossible to hear him speak, and equally impossible to look at him without a vague sense of pleasure in his company.

"Sylvie was here a moment ago," she answered, still smiling.

The Marquis took one or two quick impulsive steps forward--then checking himself, stopped short, and selecting a chair deliberately sat down.

"I understand!" he said, "She wished to avoid me, and she has done so. Well!--I would not run after her for the world. She must be perfectly free."

Angela looked at him with a somewhat puzzled air. She felt herself in a delicate and awkward position. To be of any use in this affair now seemed quite impossible. Her commission was to have told the Marquis that Sylvie had left Paris, but she could not say that now as Sylvie was still in the city. Was she supposed to know anything about the Marquis's dishonourable proposals to her friend? Surely not! Then what was she to do? She stood hesitating, glancing at the fine, clear-cut, clean-shaven face of Fontenelle, the broad intellectual brows, and the brilliant hazel eyes with their languid, half-satirical expression, and her perplexity increased. Certainly he was a man with a grand manner,--the manner of one of those never-to-be-forgotten haughty and careless aristocrats of the "Reign of Terror" who half redeemed their vicious lives by the bravery with which they faced the guillotine. Attracted, yet repelled by him, Angela had always been,--even when she had known no more of him than is known of a casual acquaintance met at different parties and reunions, but now that she was aware of Sylvie's infatuation, the mingled attraction and revulsion became stronger, and she caught herself wishing fervently that the Marquis would rouse himself from his lethargy of pleasure, and do justice to the capabilities which Nature had evidently endowed him with, if a fine head and noble features are to be taken as exponents of character. Fontenelle himself, meanwhile, leaning carelessly back in the chair he had taken, looked at her with a little quizzical lifting of his eyebrows.

"You are very silent, mademoiselle," he broke out at last, "Have you nothing to say to me?"

At this straight question Angela recovered her equanimity.

"I HAD something to say to you, Marquis," she answered quietly, "but it was to have been said to-morrow."

"To-morrow? Ah, yes! You receive your world of art to-morrow," he said, "and I was to come and meet la Comtesse,--and of course she would not have been here! I felt that by a natural instinct! Something psychological--something occult! I saw her carriage pass my windows up the Champs Elysees,--and I followed in a common fiacre. I seldom ride in a common fiacre, but this time I did so. It was an excitement--la chasse! I saw the little beauty arrive at your door,--I gave her time to pour out all her confidences,--and then I arranged with myself and le bon Dieu to escort her home."

"You arranged well," said Angela, inclined to laugh at his easy audacity, "but le bon Dieu was evidently not of your opinion,--and you must remember that the most excellent arrangements are not always carried out."

"True!" and Fontenelle smiled, "In the case of the fascinating Sylvie, I do not know when I have had so much trouble about a woman. It is interesting, but vexatious. Sometimes I think I shall have to give up and gallop off the hunting-field altogether--"

"Excuse me, Marquis," said Angela coldly, "Sylvie Hermenstein is my friend--pray understand that I cannot allow her to be spoken of in the tone of badinage you are pleased to assume."

He looked up with a curious air of surprise and mock penitence.

"Pardon! But there is no badinage at all about the very serious position in which I find myself," he said, "You, mademoiselle, as a woman, have not the slightest idea of the anxiety and trouble your charming sex gives to ours. That is, of course, when you are charming--which is not always. Now Sylvie, your friend Sylvie--is so distinctly charming that she becomes provoking and irritating. I am sure she has told you I am a terrible villain . . ."

"She has never said so,--never spoken one word against you!" interposed Angela.

"No? That is curious--very curious! But then Sylvie is curious. You see the position is this;--I wish to give her all I am worth in the world, but she will not have it,--I wish to love her, but she will not be loved--"

"Perhaps," said Angela, gaining courage to speak plainly, "Perhaps your love is not linked with honour?"

"Honour?" echoed the Marquis, lifting his finely arched eyebrows, "You mean marriage? No--I confess I am not guilty of so much impudence. For why should the brilliant Sylvie become the Marquise Fontenelle? It would be a most unhappy fate for her, because if there WERE a Marquise Fontenelle, my principles would oblige me to detest her!"

"You would detest your own wife!" said Angela surprised.

"Naturally! It is the fashion. To love one's wife would be petite bourgoisie--nothing more absurd! It is the height of good form to neglect one's wife and adore one's mistress,--the arrangement works perfectly and keeps a man well balanced,--perpetual complaint on one side, perpetual delight on the other."

He laughed, and his eyes twinkled satirically.

"Are you serious?" asked Angela.

"I never was more serious in my life," declared the Marquis emphatically, "With all my heart I wish to make the delicious pink and white Sylvie happy,--I am sure I could succeed in my way. If I should ever allow myself to do such a dull thing as to marry,--imagine it!--such a dull and altogether prosy thing!--my gardener did it yesterday;--I should of course choose a person with a knowledge of housekeeping and small details,--her happiness it would be quite unnecessary to consider. The maintenance of the establishment, the servants, and the ever increasing train of milliners and dressmakers would be enough to satisfy Madame la Marquise's ambitions. But for Sylvie,--half-fairy, half-angel as she is,--there must be poetry and moonlight, flowers, and romance, and music, and tender nothings,--marriage does not consort with these delights. If you were a little school-girl, dear Donna Sovrani, I should not talk to you in this way,--it would not be proper,--it would savour of Lord Byron, and Maeterlinck, and Heinrich Heine, and various other wicked persons. It would give you what the dear governesses would call 'les idees folles', but being an artist, a great artist, you will understand me. Now, you yourself--you will not marry?"

"I am to be married next year if all is well, to Florian Varillo," said Angela, "Surely you know that?"

"I have heard it, but I will not believe it," said the Marquis airily, "No, no, you will never marry this Florian! Do not tell me of it! You yourself will regret it. It is impossible! You could not submit to matrimonial bondage. If you were plain and awkward I should say to you, marry, and marry quickly, it is the only thing for you!--but being what you are, charming and gifted, why should you be married? For protection? Every man who has once had the honour of meeting you will constitute himself your defender by natural instinct. For respectability? Ah, but marriage is no longer respectable,--the whole estate of matrimony is as full of bribery and corruption as the French War Office."

He threw himself back in his chair and laughed, running one hand through his hair with a provoking manner of indifferent ease and incorrigible lightheartedness.

"I cannot argue with you on the matter," said Angela, rather vexedly, "Your ideas of life never will be mine,--women look at these things differently . . ."

"Poor dear women! Yes!--they do," said the Marquis, "And that is such a pity,--they spoil all the pleasure of their lives. Now, just think for a moment what your friend Sylvie is losing! A devoted, ardent and passionate lover who would spare no pains to make her happy,--who would cherish her tenderly, and make her days a dream of romance! I had planned in my mind such a charming boudoir for Sylvie, all ivory and white satin,--flowers, and a soft warm light falling through the windows,--imagine Sylvie, with that delicate face of hers and white rose skin, a sylph clad in floating lace and drapery, seen in a faint pink hue as of a late sunset! You are an artist, mademoiselle, and you can picture the fairy-like effect! I certainly am not ashamed to say that this exquisite vision occupies my thoughts,--it is a suggestion of beauty and deliciousness in a particularly ugly and irksome world,--but to ask such a dainty creature as Sylvie to be my housekeeeper, and make up the tradesmen's books, I could not,--it would be sheer insolence on my part,--it would be like asking an angel just out of heaven to cut off her wings and go downstairs and cook my dinner!"

"You please yourself and your own fanciful temperament by those arguments," said Angela,--"but they are totally without principle. Oh, why," and raising her eyes, she fixed them on him with an earnest look, "Why will you not understand? Sylvie is good and pure,--why would you persuade her to be otherwise?"

Fontenelle rose and took one or two turns up and down the room before replying.

"I expect you will never comprehend me," he said at last, stopping before Angela, "In fact, I confess sometimes I do not comprehend myself. Of course Sylvie is good and pure--I know that;--I should not be so violently in love with her if she were not--but I do not see that her acceptance of me as a lover would make her anything else than good and pure. Because I know that she would be faithful to me."

"Faithful to you--yes!--while you were faithless to her!" said Angela, with a generous indignation in her voice, "You would expect her to be true while you amused yourself with other women. A one-sided arrangement truly!"

The Marquis seemed unmoved.

"Every relation between the sexes is one-sided," he declared, "It is not my fault! The woman gives all to one,--the man gives a little to many. I really am not to blame for falling in with this general course of things. You look very angry with me, Donna Sovrani, and your eyes positively abash me;--you are very loyal to your friend and I admire you for it; but after all, why should you be so hard upon me? I am no worse than Varillo."

Angela started, and her cheeks crimsoned.

"Than Varillo? What do you mean?"

"Well, Varillo has Pon-Pon,--of course she is useful--what he would do without her I am sure I cannot imagine,--still she IS Pon-Pon."

He paused, checked by Angela's expression.

"Please explain yourself, Marquis," she said in cold, calm accents, "I am at a loss to understand you."

Fontenelle glanced at her and saw that her face had grown as pale as it was recently flushed, and that her lips were tightly set; and in a vague way he was sorry to have spoken. But he was secretly chafing at everything,--he was angry that Sylvie had escaped him,--and angrier still that Donna Sovrani should imply by her manner, if not by her words, that she considered him an exceptional villain, when he himself was aware that nearly all the men of his "Cercle" resembled him.

"Pon-Pon is Signor Varillo's model," he said curtly, "I thought you were aware of it. She appears in nearly all his pictures."

Angela breathed again.

"Oh, is that all!" she murmured, and laughed.

Fontenelle opened his eyes a little, amazed at her indifference. What a confiding, unsuspecting creature was this "woman of genius"! This time, however, he was discreet, and kept his thoughts to himself.

"That is all," he said, "But . . . artists have been known to admire their models in more ways than one."

"Yes," said Angela tranquilly, "But Florian is entirely different to most men."

The Marquis was moved to smile, but did not. He merely bowed with a deep and reverential courtesy.

"You have reason to know him best," he said, "and no doubt he deserves your entire confidence. For me--I willingly confess myself a vaurien--but I assure you I am not as bad as I seem. Your friend Sylvie is safe from me."

Angela's eyes lightened,--her mind was greatly relieved.

"You will leave her to herself--" she began.

"Certainly I will leave her to herself. She will not like it, but I will do it! She is going away to-morrow,--I found that out from her maid. Why will you beautiful ladies keep maids? They are always ready to tell a man everything for twenty or forty francs. So simple!--so cheap!--Sylvie's maid is my devoted adherent,--and why?--not only on account of the francs, but because I have been careful to secure her sweetheart as my valet, and he depends upon me to set him up in business. So you see how easy it is for me to be kept aware of all my fair lady's movements. This is how I learned that she is going away to-morrow--and this is why I came here to-day. She has given me the slip--she has avoided me and now I will avoid her. We shall see the result. I think it will end in a victory for me."

"Never!" said Angela, "You will never win Sylvie to your way of thinking, but it is quite possible she may win you!"

"That would be strange indeed," said the Marquis lightly, "The world is full of wonders, but that would be the most wonderful thing that ever happened in it! Commend me to the fair Comtesse, Mademoiselle, and tell her it is I who am about to leave Paris."

"Where are you going?" asked Angela impulsively.

"Ah, feminine curiosity!" said the Marquis laughing, "How it leaps out like a lightning flash, even through the most rigid virtue! Chere Mademoiselle, where I am going is my own secret, and not even your appealing looks will drag it out of me! But I am in no hurry to go away; I shall not fly off by the midnight train, or the very early one in the morning, as your romantic friend the Comtesse Sylvie will probably do,--I have promised the Abbe Vergniaud to hear him preach on Sunday. I shall listen to a farewell sermon and try to benefit by it,--after that I take a long adieu of France;--be good enough to say to the Countesse with my humblest salutations!"

He bowed low over Angela's hand, and with a few more light parting words took his graceful presence out of the room, and went down the stairs humming a tune as he departed.

After he had gone Angela sat for some minutes in silence thinking. Then she went to her desk and wrote a brief note to the Comtesse as follows:--

"Dear Sylvie: Dismiss your maid. She is in the employ of Fontenelle and details to him all your movements. He has been here for half an hour and tells me that he takes a long adieu of France after Sunday, and he has promised me to LEAVE YOU TO YOURSELF. I am sure you are glad of this. My uncle and I go to Rome next week.

"ANGELA."

She sealed and marked the envelope "private", and ringing the bell for her man-servant requested him to deliver it himself into the hands of the Comtesse Hermenstein. This matter dismissed from her mind she went to a portfolio full of sketches, and turned them over and over till she came to one dainty, small picture entitled, "Phillida et les Roses". It was a study of a woman's nude figure set among branching roses, and was signed "Florian Varillo". Angela looked at it long and earnestly,--all the delicate flesh tints contrasting with the exquisite hues of red and white roses were delineated with wonderful delicacy and precision of touch, and there was a nymph-like grace and modesty about the woman's form and the drooping poise of her head, which was effective yet subtle in suggestion. Was it a portrait of Pon-Pon? Angry with herself Angela tried to put the hateful but insinuating thought away from her,--it was the first slight shadow on the fairness of her love-dream,--and it was like one of those sudden clouds crossing a bright sky which throws a chill and depression over the erstwhile smiling landscape. To doubt Florian seemed like doubting her own existence. She put the "Phillida" picture back in the portfolio and paced slowly to and fro in her studio, considering deeply. Love and Fame--Fame and Love! She had both,--and yet Aubrey Leigh had said such fortune seldom fell to the lot of a woman as to possess the two things together. Might it not be her destiny to lose one of them? If so, which would she prefer to keep? Her whole heart, her whole impulses cried out, "Love"! Her intellect and her ambitious inward soul said, "Fame"! And something higher and greater than either heart, intellect, or soul whispered to her inmost self, "Work!--God bids you do what is in you as completely as you can without asking for a reward of either Love or Fame." "But," she argued with herself, "for a woman Love is so necessary to the completion of life." And the inward monitor replied, "What kind of Love? Ephemeral or immortal? Art is sexless;--good work is eternal, no matter whether it is man or woman who has accomplished it." And then a great sigh broke from Angela's lips as she thought, "Ah, but the world will never own woman's work to be great even if it be so, because men give the verdict, and man's praise is for himself and his own achievements always." "Man's praise," went on the interior voice, "And what of God's final justice? Have you not patience to wait for that, and faith to work for it?" Again Angela sighed; then happening to look up; in the direction of the music-gallery which occupied one end of her studio where the organ was fitted, she saw a fair young face peering down at her over the carved oak railing, and recognised Manuel. She smiled;--her two or three days' knowledge of him had been more than sufficient to win her affection and interest.

"So you are up there!" she said, "Is my uncle sleeping?"

"No," replied Manuel, "he is writing many letters to Rome. Will you come and play to me?"

"Willingly!" and Angela went lightly up the winding steps of the gallery, "But you have been out all day,--are you not tired?"

"No, not now. I WAS weary,--very weary of seeing and hearing so many false things . . ."

"False things?" echoed Angela thoughtfully, as she seated herself at the organ, "What were they?"

"Churches principally," said Manuel quietly; "How sad it is that people should come into those grand buildings looking for Christ and never finding Him!"

"But they are all built for the worship of Christ," said Angela, pressing her small white fingers on the organ keys, and drawing out one or two deep and solemn sounds by way of prelude, "Why should you think He is not in them?"

"He cannot be," answered Manuel, "They are all unlike Him! Remember how poor he was!--He told His followers to despise all riches and worldly praise!--and now see how the very preachers try to obtain notice and reward for declaring His simple word! The churches seem quite empty of Him,--and how empty too must be the hearts and souls of all the poor people who go to such places to be comforted!"

Angela did not reply,--her hands had unconsciously wandered into the mazes of a rich Beethoven voluntary, and the notes, firm, grand, and harmonious, rolled out in the silence with a warm deep tenderness that thrilled the air as with a rhythmic beat of angels' wings. Lost in thought, she scarcely knew what she played, nor how she was playing,--but she was conscious of a sudden and singular exaltation of spirit,--a rush of inward energy that was almost protest,--a force which refused to be checked, and which seemed to fill her to the very finger tips with ardours not her own,--martyrs going to the destroying flames might have felt as she felt then. There was a grave sense of impending sorrow hanging over her, mingled with a strong and prayerful resolve to overcome whatever threatened her soul's peace,--and she played on and on, listening to the rushing waves of sound which she herself evoked, and almost losing herself in a trance of thought and vision. And in this dreamy, supersensitive condition, she imagined that even Manuel's face fair and innocent as it was, grew still more beautiful,--a light, not of the sun's making, seemed to dwell like an aureole in his clustering hair and in his earnest eyes,--and a smile sweeter than any she had ever seen, seemed to tremble on his lips as she looked at him.

"You are thinking beautiful things," he said gently, "And they are all in the music. Shall I tell you about them?"

She nodded assent, while her fingers, softly pressing out the last chord of Beethoven's music, wandered of their own will into the melancholy pathos of a Schubert "Reverie."

"You are thinking of the wonderful plan of the world," he said,--"Of all the fair and glorious things God has made for those who love Him! Of the splendour of Faith and Hope and Courage,--of the soul's divine origin and responsibility,--and all the joy of being able to say to the Creator of the whole universe, 'Our Father!' You are thinking--because you know--that not a note of the music you are playing now fails to reach the eternal spheres,--echoing away from your touch, it goes straight to its mark,--sent with the soul's expression of love and gratitude, it flies to the centre of the soul's worship. Not a pulsation of true harmony is lost! You are thinking how grand it is to live a sweet and unsullied life, full of prayer and endeavour, keeping a spirit white and clean as the light itself, a spirit dwelling on the verge of earth but always ready to fly heavenward!--You are thinking that no earthly reward, no earthly love, no earthly happiness, though good in itself, can ever give you such perfect peace and joy as is found in loving, serving, and obeying God, and suffering His will to be entirely worked in you!"

Angela listened, deeply moved--her heart throbbed quickly,--how wonderfully the boy expressed himself!--with what sweetness, gentleness, and persuasion! She would have ceased playing, but that something imperative urged her to go on,--and Manuel's soft voice thrilled her strangely when he spoke again, saying--

"You know now--because your wise men are beginning to prove it--that you can in very truth send a message to heaven."

"To heaven!" murmured Angela, "That is a long way! We know we can send messages in a flash of lightfrom one part of the world to another--but then there must be people to receive them--"

"And heaven is composed of millions of worlds," said Manuel, "'In my Father's house are many mansions!" And from all worlds to all worlds--from mansion to mansion, the messages flash! And there are those who receive them, with such directness as can admit of no error! And your wise men might have known this long ago if they had believed their Master's word, 'Whatsoever is whispered in secret shall be proclaimed on the housetops.' But you will all find out soon that it is true, and that everything you say, and that every prayer you utter God hears."

"My mother is in heaven," said Angela wistfully, "I wish I could send her a message!"

"Your very wish has reached her now!" said Manuel, "How is it possible that you in the spirit could ardently wish to communicate with one so beloved and she not know it! Love would be no use then, and there would be a grave flaw in God's perfect creation."

Angela ceased playing, and turned round to face the young speaker.

"Then you think we never lose those we love? And that they see us and hear us always?"

"They must do so," said Manuel, "otherwise there would be cruelty in creating the grace of love at all. But God Himself is Love. Those who love truly can never be parted,--death has no power over their souls. If one is on earth and one in heaven, what does it matter? If they were in separate countries of the world they could hear news of each other from time to time,--and so they can when apparent death has divided them."

"How?" asked Angela with quick interest.

"Your wise men must tell you," said Manuel, with a grave little smile, "I know no more than what Christ has said,--and He told us plainly that not even a sparrow shall fall to the ground without our Father. 'Fear not,' He said, 'Ye are more than many sparrows.' So, as there is nothing which is useless, and nothing which is wasted, it is very certain that love, which is the greatest of all things, cannot lose what it loves."

Angela's eyes filled with tears, she knew not why, "Love which is the greatest of all things cannot lose what it loves!"--How wonderfully tender was Manuel's voice as he spoke these words!

"You have very sweet thoughts, Manuel," she said, "You would be a great comfort to anyone in sorrow."

"That is what I have always wished to be," he answered, "But you are not in sorrow yet,--that is to come!"

She looked up quickly.

"You think I shall have some great trouble?" she asked, with a little tremour in her accents.

"Yes, most surely you will!" replied Manuel, "No one in the world ever tried to be good and great at the same time without suffering miscomprehension and bitter pain. Did not Christ say, 'In the world ye shall have tribulation'?"

"Yes,--and I have often wondered why," said Angela musingly.

"Only that you might learn to love God best," answered Manuel with a delicate inflexion of compassion in his voice, "And that you might know for certain and beyond all doubt that this life is not all. There is something better--greater--higher!--a glory that is worth winning because immortal. 'In the world ye shall have tribulation'--yes, that is true!--but the rest of the saying is true also--'Be of good cheer,--I have overcome the world'!"

Moved by an impulse she could not understand, Angela suddenly turned and extended her hands with an instinctive grace that implied reverence as well as humility. The boy clasped them lightly then let them go,--and without more words went softly away and left her.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XIII

The Church of Notre Dame de Lorette in Paris with its yellow stucco columns, and its hideous excess of paint and gilding, might be a ball-room designed after the newest ideas of a vulgar nouveau riche rather than a place of sanctity. The florid-minded Blondel, pupil of the equally florid-minded Regnault, hastily sketched in some of the theatrical frescoes in the "Chapel of the Eucharist," and a misguided personage named Orsel, splashed out the gaudy decorations of the "Chapel of the Virgin." The whole edifice glares at the spectator like a badly-managed limelight, and the tricky, glittering, tawdry effect blisters one's very soul. But here may be seen many little select groups out of the hell of Paris,--fresh from the burning as it were, and smelling of the brimstone,--demons who enjoy their demonism,--satyrs, concerning whom, one feels that their polished boots are cleverly designed to cover their animal hoofs, and that skilful clothiers have arranged their garments so that their tails are not perceived. But that hoofs and tails are existent would seem to be a certainty. Here sometimes will sing a celebrated tenor, bulky and brazen,--pouring out from his bull-throat such liquid devotional notes as might lift the mind of the listener to Heaven ifone were not so positive that a moral fiend sang them;--here sometimes may be seen the stout chanteuse who is the glory of open-air cafes in the Champs Elysees, kneeling with difficulty on a velvet hassock and actually saying prayers. And one must own that it is an exhilarating and moving sight to behold such a woman pretending to confess her sins, with the full delight of them written on her face, and the avowed intention of committing them all over again manifesting itself in every turn of her head, every grin of her rouged lips, and every flash of her painted eyes! For these sections out of the French "Inferno," Notre Dame de Lorette is a good place to play penitence and feign prayer;--the Madeleine is too classic and serene and sombre in its interior to suggest anything but a museum, from which the proper custodian is absent,--Notre Dame de Paris reeks too much with the blood of slain Archbishops to be altogether comfortable,--St. Roch in its "fashionable" congregation, numbers too many little girls who innocently go to hear the music, and who have not yet begun to paint their faces, to suit those whose lives are all paint and masquerade,--and the "Lorette" is just the happy medium of a church where, Sham being written on its walls, one is scarcely surprised to see Sham in the general aspect of its worshippers. Among the ugly columns, and against the heavy ceiling divided into huge raised lumps of paint and gilding, Abbe Vergniaud's voice had often resounded,--and his sermons were looked forward to as a kind of witty entertainment. In the middle or the afterwards of a noisy Mass,--Mass which had been "performed" with perhaps the bulky tenor giving the "Agnus Dei," with as sensually dramatic an utterance as though it were a love-song in an opera, and the "basso," shouting through the "Credo," with the deep musical fury of the tenor's jealous rival,--with a violin "interlude," and a 'cello "solo,"--and a blare of trumpets at the "Elevation," as if it were a cheap spectacle at a circus fair,--after all this melodramatic and hysterical excitement it was a relief to see the Abbe mount the pulpit stairs, portly but lightfooted, his black clerical surtout buttoned closely up to his chin, his round cleanshaven face wearing a pious but suggestive smile, his eyes twinkling with latent satire, and his whole aspect expressing, "Welcome excellent humbugs! I, a humbug myself, will proceed to expound Humbug!" His sermons were generally satires on religion,--satires delicately veiled, and full of the double-entendres so dear to the hearts of Parisians,--and their delight in him arose chiefly from never quite knowing what he meant to imply, or to enforce. Not that his hearers would have followed any counsel even if he had been so misguided as to offer it; they did not come to hear him "preach" in the full sense of the word,--they came to hear him "say things,"--witty observations on the particular fad of the hour--sharp polemics on the political situation--or what was still more charming, neat remarks in the style of Rochefoucauld or Montaigne, which covered and found excuses for vice while seemingly condemning viciousness. There is nothing perhaps so satisfactory to persons who pride themselves on their intellectuality, as a certain kind of spurious philosophy which balances virtue and vice as it were on the point of a finger, and argues prettily on the way the two can be easily merged into each other, almost without perception. "If without perception, then without sin," says the sophist; "it is merely a question of balance." Certainly if generosity drifts into extravagance you have a virtue turned into a vice;--but there is one thing these spurious debaters cannot do, and that is to turn a vice into a virtue. That cannot be done, and has never been done. A vice is a vice, and its inherent quality is to "wax fat and gross," and to generally enlarge itself;--whereas, a virtue being a part of the Spiritual quality and acquired with difficulty, it must be continually practised, and guarded in the practice, lest it lapse into vice. We are always forgetting that we have been, and still are in a state of Evolution,--out of the Beast God has made Man,--but now He expects us, with all the wisdom, learning and experience He has given us, to evolve for ourselves from Man the Angel,--the supreme height of His divine intention. Weak as yet on our spiritual wings, we hark back to the Beast period only too willingly, and sometimes not all the persuasion in the world can lift us out of the mire wherein we elect to wallow. Nevertheless, there must be and will be a serious day of reckoning for any professing priest of the Church, or so-called "servant of the Gospel", who by the least word or covert innuendo, gives us a push back into prehistoric slime and loathliness,--and that there are numbers who do so, no one can deny. Abbe Vergniaud had flung many a pebble of sarcasm at the half-sinking faith of some of his hearers with the result that he had sunk it altogether. In his way he had done as much harm as the intolerant bigot, who when he finds persons believing devoutly in Christ, but refusing to accept Church-authority, considers such persons atheists and does not hesitate to call them so. The "Pharisees" in Christian doctrine are as haughty, hypocritical and narrow as the Pharisees whom Jesus calls "ravening wolves," and towhom He said, "Ye shut up the Kingdom of Heaven against men; for ye neither go in yourselves, NEITHER SUFFER YE THEM THAT ARE ENTERING TO GO IN," and "Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity." The last words, it may be said, will apply fittingly to more than one-half of the preachers of the Gospel at the present day!

It was a brilliant, soft autumnal Sunday morning when Cardinal Bonpre, mindful of Abbe Vergniaud's request that he should be present to hear him preach, took his slow and thoughtful way to the church of the Lorette, accompanied by his niece Angela and Manuel. The building was crammed, and had not the Abbe been previously careful to reserve seats, and to mention the Cardinal's name to the custodian, he would have scarcely obtained admission. As it was, however, he passed slowly up the centre aisle without hindrance, followed by Manuel and Angela, and watched by a good many inquisitive persons, who wondered as they looked, who the boy was that walked after His Eminence with such easy self-possession,--with such a noble and modest bearing, and with such a strangely thoughtful face. A few whispered and nudged each other as "the Sovrani" passed them, dressed in her usual quiet black, her head slightly bent and her eyes downcast. The Marquis Fontenelle, seated in an attitude which suggested a languid indifference to all persons and events, lifted his bright hazel eyes as she passed,--and a sudden wave of consciousness swept over him,--uneasy consciousness that perhaps this small slight woman despised him. This was not quite a pleasant reflection for a man and a Marquis to boot,--one who could boast of an ancient and honourable family pedigree dating back to the fighting days of Coeur-de-Lion and whose coat-of-arms was distinguished by three white lilies of France on one of its quarterings. The lilies of France!--emblems of honour, loyalty, truth, and chivalry!--what smudged and trampled blossoms they seem to day! He frowned as this fancy crossed his mind, and turned his eyes away from the following of Angela's slight form up the aisle; and his glance fell instead on a face he detested, because it was almost the counterpart of his own,--the face of the great French actor Miraudin. The same clean-shaven classic face and clustering hair,--the same glittering, amorous hazel eyes;--the same charming and kindly smile,--all these attributes were in Miraudin's face, indefinably coarsened, while in Fontenelle's they remained refined and inicative of the highest breeding. The Marquis moved uneasily in his seat,--he saw himself in the famous actor,--himself as he would be, if he continued his career of self-indulgence,--for Miraudin though gifted with a genius that could move all Paris to the wildest excesses of admiration, was in private life known as a man of detestable reputation, whose liaisons with women were endless, but who, in his extreme egotism and callousness had never been known to yield to the saving grace of a "grande passion,"--one of those faithful passions which sometimes make the greatness of both man and woman concerned, and adorn the pages of dull history with the brilliancy of deathless romance. Was he, Guy Beausire de Fontenelle no better, no nobler, no higher, in his desires and ambitions than Miraudin? What was he doing with the three lilies emblazoned on his escutcheon? He thought with a certain fretful impatience of Sylvie, of her captivating grace, her tender eyes, her sweet laughter, and sweeter smile. She had seemed to him a mere slight creation of the air and the moonbeams,--something dainty that would have melted at a touch, and dropped into his mouth, as it were, like a French bon-bon. So he, man-like, had judged, and now lo!--the little ethereal creature had suddenly displayed a soul of adamant--hard and pure, and glittering as a diamond,--which no persuasion could break or bend. She had actually kept her word!--she had most certainly left Paris. The Marquis knew that, by the lamentable story of her dismissed maid who had come to him with hysterical tears, declaring that "Madame" had suddenly developed a "humeur incroyable"--and had gone away alone,--alone, save for a little dusky-skinned Arab boy whom she had once brought away from Biskra and had trained as an attendant,--her "gouvernante" and companion, Madame Bozier, and her old butler who had known her from childhood. Fontenelle felt that the dismissal of the maid who had been such a convenient spy for him, was due to Angela Sovrani's interference, and though angry, he was conscious of feeling at the same time mean in himself, and miserable. To employ a servant to play the spy on her mistress, and report to him her actions and movements, might be worthy of a Miraudin, but was it quite the thing for a Marquis Fontenelle? Thinking over these things his handsome face grew flushed and anon pale again, as from time to time he stole a vexed side glance at the easy Miraudin,--so like him in features and--unfortunately so equally like him in morals! Meanwhile, the music of the Mass surged round him, in thunders of the organ, wailings of violins, groaning of 'cellos, and flutings of boys' and men's voices,--and as the cloudy incense rose upon the air he began to weave strange fancies in his mind, and to see in the beams of sunlight falling through the stained glass windows a vision of the bright face of Sylvie looking down upon him with a half-tender, half-reproving smile,--a smile that seemed to say, "If thou lovest me, set the grace of honour on thy love!" These were strange thoughts for him to entertain, and he was almost ashamed of them,--but as long as the melodies of the Mass kept rolling on and reverberating around him he could not help thinking of them; so that he was relieved when a pause came,--the interval for the sermon,--and Abbe Vergniaud, leisurely mounting the steps of the pulpit, stood surveying the congregation with the composed yet quizzical air for which he was celebrated, and waiting till the rustling, fidgeting, coughing, snuffing, toe-scraping noises of the congregation had settled down into comparative silence. His attitude during this interval was suggestive. It implied contempt, wearied patience, resignation, and a curious touch of defiance. Holding himself very erect he rested his left hand on the elaborate sculptured edge of the pulpit,--it was the hand on which he usually wore his ring, a diamond of purest lustre,--but on this occasion the jewel had been removed and the white, firm fingers, outlined against the pulpit edge, looked as though they had just relaxed their grasp of something that had been more or less of a trouble to retain. Nothing perhaps is so expressive as a hand,--the face can disguise itself,--even the eyes can lie,--but the hand never. Its shape, its movements, its attitude in repose, give a more certain clue to character and disposition than almost any other human feature. Thus, with the Abbe, while his left hand suggested a "letting go," his right hand, which held a small black-bound Testament implied defiance, grip, resolve and courage. And when the people seated immediately around the pulpit lifted their eyes expectantly to the popular preacher's face, several of the more observant noticed something in his look and manner which was unfamiliar and curiously disconcerting. If it be true, as there is every reason to believe it is, that each human being unconsciously gives out an "aura" of his interior personality which is made more or less powerful to attract or repel by the nature of his intentions, and which affects the "aura" of those with whom he is brought in contact, then Abbe Vergniaud was this morning creating all unawares to himself a very singular impression of uneasiness. Some of the persons thus uncomfortably influenced coughed violently in an instinctive attempt to divert or frustrate the preacher's mood, but even the most persistent cougher must cease coughing at some time or another--and the Abbe was evidently determined to wait for an absolute silence before he spoke. At last silence came, and he opened the Testament. Holding it up to the view of the congregation, he began with all that easy eloquence which the French tongue gives to a cultured speaker,--his voice full and sonorous, reaching distinctly to every part of the crowded church.

"This," he said, "is a small book which you all pretend to know. It is so small a book that it can easily be read through in an hour. It is the Testament;--or the Last Will and Command to the world of one Jesus Christ, who was crucified on account of His Divinity more than eighteen hundred years ago. I mention the fact, in case any of you have forgotten it! It is generally understood that this book is the message of God and the key of Faith;--upon it our churches and religious systems are founded;--by its teaching we are supposed to order our conduct of life--and yet,--though as I have said, it is a very small book, and would not take you an hour to read it--none of you know any thing about it! That is a strange thing, is it not?"

Here he leaned over the pulpit edge, and his bright eyes, coldly satiric, flashed a comprehensive glance over the whole congregation.

"Yes, it is a strange thing, but I affirm it true,--that none of you know anything whatever about the contents of this small volume which is the foundation of the Christian Faith! You never read it yourselves,--and if we priests read it to you, you never remember it! It is a locked Mystery,--perhaps, for all we know, the greatest mystery in the world,--and the one most worth probing! For the days seem to be coming, if they have not already come, which were prophesied by St. John the Divine, whom certain 'clever' men of the time have set down as mad;--days which were described as 'shaking the powers of heaven and creating confusion on the earth.' St. John said some strange things; one thing in particular, concerning this very book, which reads thus;--'I saw in the right hand of Him that sat upon the throne a book sealed with seven seals. And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice; Who is worthy to open and to loose the seals thereof? And no man in heaven or in earth was able to open the book neither to look thereon. And I wept much because no man was found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to look thereon.' But St. John the Divine was mad, we are told,--madness and inspiration being judged as one and the same thing. Well, if in these statements he is supposed to prove his madness, I consider a doubt must be set upon everyone's sanity. For his words are an exact description of the present period of the world's existence and its attitude towards the Gospel of Christ,--'NO MAN IS FOUND WORTHY TO LOOSE THE SEALS OF THE BOOK OR TO LOOK THEREON.' But I am not going to talk to you about the seven seals. They adequately represent our favourite 'seven deadly sins,' which have kept the book closed since the days of the early martyrs;--and are likely to keep it closed still. Nor shall I speak of our unworthiness to read what we have never taken the trouble to rightly understand,--for all this would be waste of time. It is part of our social sham to pretend we know the Gospel,--and it is a still greater sham to assume that we have ever tried in the smallest degree to follow its teaching. What we know of these teachings has influenced us unconsciously, but the sayings in the Gospel of Christ are in very truth as enveloped in mystery to each separate individual reader as the oracles of the ancient Egyptians were to the outside multitude. And why? Merely because, to comprehend the teaching of Jesus we should have to think,--and we all hate thinking. It is too much exertion,--and exertion itself is unpleasant. A quarter of an hour's hard thinking will convince each one of us that he or she is a very worthless and ridiculous person, and we strongly object to any process which will, in itself, bring us to that conclusion. I say 'we' object,--that is, I and you; particularly I. I admit at once that to appear worthless and ridiculous to the world has always seemed to me a distressing position, and one to be avoided. Worthless and ridiculous in my own eyes I have always been,--but that is not your affair. It is strictly mine! And though I feel I am not worthy 'to loose the seals of the book or look thereon,' there is one passage in it which strikes me as particularly applicable to the present day, and from it I will endeavour to draw a lesson for your instruction, though perhaps not for your entertainment."

Here he paused and glanced at his hearers with an indefinable expression of mingled scorn and humour.

"What an absurdity it is to talk of giving a 'lesson' to you!--you who will barely listen to a friend's advice,--you who will never take a hint for your mental education or improvement, you who are apt to fly into a passion, or take to the sulks when you are ever so slightly contradicted. Tiens, tiens! c'est drole! Now the words I am about to preach from, are supposed to have been uttered by Divine lips; and if you thoroughly believed this, you would of your own accord kneel down and pray that you might receive them with full comprehension and ready obedience. But you do not believe;--so I will not ask you to kneel down in mockery, or feign to pray when you are ignorant of the very spirit of prayer! So take the words,--without preparation, without thought, without gratitude, as you take everything God gives you, and see what you can make of them. 'The light of the body is the eye,--if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!'"

Here he closed the Testament, and rested it edgewise on the pulpit cushion, keeping one hand firmly clasped upon it as he turned himself about and surveyed the whole congregation.

"What is the exact meaning of the words, 'IF THINE EYE BE SINGLE'? It is an expressive term; and in its curt simplicity covers a profound truth. 'If thine eye,' namely,--the ability to see,--'be single,' that is straight and clear, without dimness or obliquity,--'thy whole body shall be full of light.' Christ evidently did not apply this expression to the merely physical capability of sight,--but to the moral and mental, or psychic vision. It matters nothing really to the infinite forces around us, whether physically speaking, we are able to see, or whether we are born blind; but spiritually, it is the chief necessity of our lives that we should be able to see straight morally. Yet that is what we can seldom or never do. Modern education, particularly education in France, provides us at once with a double psychic lens, and a side-squint into the bargain! Seeing straight would be too primitive and simple for us. But Christ says, 'If thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness.' Now this word 'evil,' as set in juxtaposition to the former term 'single,' evidently implies a double sight or perverted vision. With this 'evil,' or double sight, our whole body 'shall be full of darkness.' Very well, my friends, if this be true,--(and you surely must believe it true, otherwise you would not support churches for the exposition of the truth as spoken by the Founder of our Faith;--) then we are children of the dark indeed! I doubt if one amongst us,--for I include myself with you,--can be said to see clearly with a straight psychic vision. The straight psychic vision teaches us that God is the Creator of all things,--God is Light and Love,--God desires good from us, and from every particle of his creation;--but the double or perverted line of sight offers a different view and declares, 'This life is short and offers many pleasures. I cannot be sure of God because I have never seen Him;--the Universe is certainly very majestic, and somewhat startling to me in its exact mathematical proportions; but I have no more to do with it than has a grain of sand;--my lot is no more important than that of the midge in the sunbeam;--I live,--I breed--I die;--and it matters to no one but myself how I do these three things, provided I satisfy my nature.' This is the Philosophy of the Beast, and it is just now very fashionable. It is 'la haute mode' both in France, and England, Italy, and Spain. Only young America seem to be struggling for a Faith,--a Christian Faith;--it has almost, albeit faintly and with a touching indecision, asked for such a Faith from the Pope,--who has however declared it to be impossible in these words addressed to Cardinal Gibbons, 'Discussion of the principles of the Church cannot be tolerated even in the United States. There can only be one interpreter, the Pope. In the matter of discipline, concessions may be allowed, but in doctrine none.' Mark the words, 'cannot be tolerated'! Consider what stability a Faith can have whose principles may not be discussed! Yet the authority of the Church is, we are told the authority of God Himself. How is this? We can discuss God and His principles. He 'tolerates' us while we search for His laws, and stand amazed and confounded before His marvellous creation. The more we look for Him the more He gives Himself gloriously to us; and Christ declares 'Seek and ye shall find,'--the Church says 'Seek and ye shall not be tolerated'! How are we to reconcile these two assertions? We do not reconcile them; we cannot; it is a case of double sight,--oblique and perverted psychic vision. Christ spoke plainly;--the Church speaks obscurely. Christ gave straight commands,--we fly in the face of them and openly disobey them. Truth can always be 'discussed,' and Truth MUST be 'tolerated' were a thousand Holy Fathers to say it nay! But note again the further words to America, 'There can only be one interpreter,--the Pope. In the matter of discipline, concessions may be allowed, but in doctrine none.' Let us examine into this doctrine. It is the doctrine of Christ, plain and straightforward; enunciated in such simple words that even a child can understand them. But the Church announces with a strident voice that there can only be one interpreter,--the Pope. Nevertheless Truth has a more resonant voice than even that of the Church. Truth cries out at this present day, 'Unless you will listen to Me who am the absolute utterance of God, who spake by the prophets, who spake through Christ,--who speaks through Christ and all things still,--your little systems, your uncertain churches, your inefficient creeds, your quarrelsome sects, shall crumble away into dust and ruins! For humanity is waiting for the true Church of Christ; the one pure House of Praise from which all sophistry, all superstition and vanity shall have fled, and only God in the Christ-Miracle and the perfection of His Creation shall remain!' And there is no more sure foundation for this much-needed House of Praise than the Catholic Church,--the word 'catholic' being applied in its widest sense, meaning a 'Universal' answering to the needs of all;--and I am willing to maintain that the ROMAN Catholic Church has within it the vital germ of a sprouting perfection. If it would utterly discard pomp and riches, if it would set its dignity at too high an estimate for any wish to meddle in temporal or political affairs, if it would firmly trample down all superstition, idolatry and bigotry, and 'use no vain repetition as the heathen do'--to quote Christ's own words,--if in place of ancient dogma and incredible legendary lore, it would open its doors to the marvels of science, the miracles and magnificence daily displayed to us in the wonderful work of God's Universe, then indeed it might obtain a lasting hold on mankind. It might conquer Buddhism, and Christianize the whole earth. But--'If thine eye be evil thy whole body shall be full of darkness,'--and while the Church remains double-sighted we are bound also to see double. And so we listen with a complete and cynical atheism to the conventional statement that 'one man alone' shall interpret Christ's teaching to us of the Roman following,--and this man an old frail teacher, whose bodily and intellectual powers are, in the course of nature, steadily on the decline. Why we ask, must an aged man be always elected to decide on the teaching of the ever-young and deathless Christ?--to whom the burden of years was unknown, and whose immortal spirit, cased for a while in clay, saw ever the rapt vision of 'old things being made new'? In all other work but this of religious faith, men in the prime of life are selected to lead,--men of energy, thought, action, and endeavour,--but for the sublime and difficult task of lifting the struggling human soul out of low things to lofty, an old man, weak, and tottering on the verge of the grave, is set before us as our 'infallible' teacher! There is something appalling in the fact, that look where we may, no profession holds out much chance of power or authority to any man past sixty, but the Head of the Church may be so old that he can hardly move one foot before the other, yet he is permitted to be declared the representative of the ever-working, ever-helping, ever-comforting Christ, who never knew what it was to be old! Enough, however of this strange superstition which is only one of many in the Church, and which are all the result of double or perverted sight,--I come to the last part of the text which runs, 'If therefore the light in thee be darkness how great is that darkness.' IF THEREFORE THE LIGHT IN THEE BE DARKNESS! My friends, that is exactly my condition, and has been my condition ever since I was twenty. The light in me has been darkness. The intellectual quality of my brain which has helped me to attain my present false position among you . . ."

Here he paused, for there was a distinct movement of surprise among his audience, which till now, had remained to a man so still that the buzz of a fly on the window-pane sounded almost as loud as the drone of a bag-pipe,--then with a faint smile on his lips he resumed,--

"I hope you all heard my words distinctly! I said, the false position I have attained among you. I repeat it lest there should be any mistake. It IS a false position and always has been. I have never for an instant believed half what I have asked you to believe! And I have preached to you what I have never dreamed of practising! Yet I venture to say that I am not worse than most of my brethren. The intellectual men of France, whether clergy or laity, are in a difficult situation. Their brains are keen and clear; and, intellectually speaking, they are totally unable to accept the Church superstitions of the tenth and twelfth centuries. But in rejecting superstition it would have been quite possible to have held them fast to a sublime faith in God and an Immortal Future, had the Church caught them when slipping, and risen to the mental demand made upon her resources. But the old worn-out thunder of the Vatican, which lately made a feeble noise in America, has rolled through France with the same assertion, 'Discussion cannot be tolerated'; and what has been the result? Simply this,--that all the intellectual force of the country is arrayed against priestcraft;--and the spirit of an insolent, witty, domineering atheism and materialism rules us all. Even young children can be found by the score who laugh at the very idea of a God, and who fling a jeer at the story of the Crucifixion of Christ,--while vice and crime are tolerated and often excused. Moral restraint is being less and less enforced, and the clamouring for sensual indulgence has become so incessant that the desire of the whole country, if put into one line, might be summed up in the impotent cry of the Persian voluptuary Omar Khayyam to his god, 'Reconcile the law to my desires'. This is as though a gnat should seek to build a cathedral, and ask for the laws of architecture to be altered in order to suit his gnat-like capacity. The Law is the Law; and if broken, brings punishment. The Law makes for good,--and if we pull back for evil, destroys us in its outward course. Vice breeds corruption in body and in soul; and history furnishes us with more than sufficient examples of that festering disease. It is plainly demanded of us that we should assist God's universe in its way towards perfection; if we refuse, and set a drag on the majestic Wheel, we are ourselves crushed in its progress. Here is where our Church errs in the present generation. It is setting itself as a drag on the Wheel. Meanwhile, Truth advances every day, and with no uncertain voice proclaims the majesty of God. Heaven's gates are thrown open;--the secrets of the stars are declared,--the mysteries of light and sound are discovered; and we are approaching possibly to the time when the very graves shall give up their dead, and the secrets of all men's hearts shall be made manifest. Yet we go on lying, deceiving, cajoling, humbugging each other and ourselves;--living a daily life of fraud and hypocrisy, with a sort of smug conviction in our souls that we shall never be found out. We make a virtue of animalism, and declare the Beast-Philosophy to be in strict keeping with the order of nature. We gloat over our secret sins, and face the world with a brazen front of assumed honour. Oh, we are excellent liars all! But somehow we never seem to think we are fools as well! We never remember that all we do and all we say, is merely the adding of figures to a sum which in the end must be made up to the grand total, and paid! Every figure tells;--the figure 'nought' especially, puts an extra thousand on the whole quantity! But the light in us being darkness, how great is that darkness! So great that we refuse to look an inch before us! We will not see, we will not understand,--we utterly decline to accept any teaching or advice which might inflict some slight inconvenience on our own Ego. And so we go on day after day, till all at once a reckoning is called and death stares us in the face. What! So soon finished? All over? Must we go at once, and no delay? Must we really and truly drop all our ridiculous lies and conventions and be sent away naked-souled into the Living Unknown? Not the Dead Unknown remember!--for nothing is actually dead! The whole universe palpitates and burns with ever re-created life. What have we done with the past life?--and what shall we do with this other life? Oh, but there is no time to ask questions now,--we should have asked them before; the hour of departure is come, and there is not a moment's breathing time! Our dear friends (if we have any), and our paid doctors and servants stand around us awe-struck,--they watch out last convulsive shudder--and weep--not so much for sorrow sometimes as terror,--and then when all is over, they say we are 'gone'. Yes,--we are gone--but where? Well, we shall each of us find that out, my friends, when we pass away from Popes, Churches, Creeds, and Conventions to the majesty of the actual Glory! Shall we pray then? Shall we weep? Shall we talk of rituals? Shall we say this or that form of prayer was the true one?--this or that creed was the 'only' one? Shall we complain of our neighbours?--or shall we not suddenly realise that there never was but one way of life and progress through creation,--the good and pure, the truthful and courageous, as taught with infinite patience by the God-Man, and that wheresoever we have followed our own inclinations rather than His counsel, then our OWN action, not God's punishment, condemns us,--our OWN words, not God's, re-echo back our sins upon ourselves!"

He paused, looking everywhere around him,--all his hearers were listening with an almost breathless attention.

"Oh, yes! I know the charm of sin!" he continued with mingled mockery and passion vibrating in his voice;--"The singular fascination of pure devilry! All of you know it too,--those of you who court the world's applause on the stage, or in the salons of art and literature, and who pretend that by your work you are elevating and assisting humanity, while in your own private lives you revel in such vice as the very dogs you keep might be ashamed of! There is no beast so bestial as man at his worst! And some of you whom I know, glory in being seen at your worst always. There are many among you here to-day whose sole excuse for a life of animalism is, that it is your nature, 'I live according to my temperament,--my disposition,--I do not wish to change myself--you cannot change me; I am as I am made'! So might the thief argue as he steals his neighbour's money,--so may the murderer console himself as he stabs his victim! 'It is my nature to stab and to steal--it is my nature to live as a beast--I do not wish to change; you cannot change me'. Now if these arguments were true, and hold good, man would be still where he begun,--in the woods and caves,--an uncouth savage with nothing save an animal instinct to lead him where he could find food. But even this earliest instinct, savage though it was, taught him that something higher than himself had made him, and so he began to creep on by slow degrees towards that higher at once; hence instinct led to reason, and reason to culture and civilization. And now having touched as high a point of experience and knowledge as the ancient Assyrians and Egyptians attained before their decline, he is beginning even as they did, to be weary and somewhat afraid of what lies beyond in the as yet unfathomed realms of knowledge; and he half wishes to creep back again on all-fours to the days when he was beast merely. The close contemplation of the Angel terrifies him,--he dare not grow his wings! Further than life, as life appears to him on its material side, he is afraid to soar,--what lies in the far distance he dare not consider! This is where the Pause comes in all progress,--the hesitation, the doubt, the fear;--the moment when the Creature draws so near to his Creator that he is dazzled and confounded. And it is a strange fact that he is always left alone,--alone with his own Will, in every such grand crisis. He has been helped so much by divine influences, that he is evidently considered strong enough to decide his own fate. He is strong enough,--he has sufficient reason and knowledge to decide it for the Highest, if he would. But, with national culture goes national luxury,--the more civilised a community, the greater its bodily ease,--the more numerous the temptations against which we are told we must fight. Spirit flies forward--Body pulls back. But Spirit is one day bound to win! We have attained in this generation a certain knowledge of Soul-forces--and we are on a verge, where, if we hesitate, we are lost, and must recoil upon our own Ego as the centre of all desire. But if we go on boldly and leave our own Ego behind, we shall see the gates of Heaven opening indeed, and all the Mysteries unveiled! How often we pause on the verge of better things, doubting whether to rise or grovel! The light in us is darkness, and how great is that darkness! Such is the state of mind in which I, your preacher, have found myself for many years! I do not know whether to rise or grovel,--to sink or soar! To be absolutely candid with you, I am quite sure that I should not sink in your opinion for confessing myself to be as outrageous in my conceptions of mortality as many of you are. You would possibly pretend to be ashamed of me, but in your hearts you would like me all the better. The sinking or the soaring of my nature has therefore nothing whatever to do with you. It is a strictly personal question. But what I specially wish to advise you of this morning,--taking myself as an example,--is that none of you, whether inclined to virtue or to vice, should remain such arrant fools as to imagine that your sins will not find you out. They will,--the instant they are committed, their sole mission is to start on your track, and hunt you down! I cannot absolutely vouch to you that there is a God,--but I am positive there is a hidden process of mathematics going on in the universe which sums up our slightest human affairs with an exactitude which at the least is amazing. Twenty-five years ago I did a great wrong to a human creature who was innocent, and who absolutely trusted me. There is no crime worse than this, yet it seemed to me quite a trifling affair,--an amusement--a nothing! I was perfectly aware that by some excessively straightlaced people it might be termed a sin; but my ideas of sin were as easy and condoning as yours are. I never repented it,--I can hardly say I ever thought of it,--if I did I excused myself quickly, and assured my own conscience in the usual way, that the fault was merely the result of circumstances over which I had no control. Oh, those uncontrollable circumstances! How convenient they are! And what a weak creature they make of man, who at other times than those of temptation, is wont to assert himself master of this planet! Master of a planet and cannot control a vice! Excellent! Well,--I never, as I say, thought of the wrong I had done,--but if I forgot it, some One or some Thing remembered it! Yes--remembered it!--put it down--chronicled it with precision as to time and place,--and set it, a breathing fact, before me in my old age,--a living witness of my own treachery."

He paused, the congregation stirred,--the actor Miraudin looked up at him with a surprised half-smile. Angela Sovrani lifted her beautiful violet eyes towards him in amazed compassion,--Cardinal Bonpre, recalling the Abbe previous confession to him, bent his head, deeply moved.

"Treachery," resumed Vergniaud determinedly, "Is always a covert thing. We betray each other in the dark, with silent foot-steps and sibilant voices. We whisper our lies. We concoct our intrigues with carefully closed doors. I did so. I was a priest of the Roman Church as I am now; it would never have done for a priest to be a social sinner! I therefore took every precaution to hide my fault;--but out of my lie springs a living condemnation; from my carefully concealed hypocrisy comes a blazonry of truth, and from my secret sin comes an open vengeance . . ."

At the last words the loud report of a pistol sounded through the building . . . there was a puff of smoke, a gleam of flame, and a bullet whizzed straight at the head of the preacher! The congregation rose, en masse, uttering exclamations of terror,--but before anyone could know exactly what had happened the smoke cleared, and the Abbe Vergniaud was seen leaning against the steps of the pulpit, pale but uninjured, and in front of him stood the boy Manuel with arms outstretched, and a smile on his face. The bullet had split the pulpit immediately above him. An excited group assembled round them immediately, and the Abbe was the first to speak.

"I am not hurt!--" he said quickly--"See to the boy! He sprang in front of me and saved my life."

But Manuel was equally unhurt, and waived aside all enquiries and compliments. And while eager questions were poured out and answered, a couple of gendarmes were seen struggling in the centre of the church with a man who seemed to have the power of a demon, so fierce and frantic were his efforts to escape.

"Ah, voila! The assassin!" cried Miraudin, hastening to give assistance.

"The assassin!" echoed a dozen other persons pressing in the same direction.

Vergniaud heard, and gave one swift glance at Cardinal Bonpre who, though startled by the rapidity and excitement of the scene that had occurred, was equal to the occasion, and understood his friend's appeal at once, even before he said hurriedly,

"Monseigneur! Tell them to let him go!--or--bring him face to face with me!"

The Cardinal endeavoured to pass through the crowd, but though some made way for him on account of his ecclesiastical dignity, others closed in, and he found it impossible to move more than a few steps. Then Vergniaud, moved by a sudden resolve, raised himself a little, and resting one hand on the shoulder of Manuel, who still remained on the steps of the pulpit in front of him, he called,

"Let Monsieur the assassin come here to me! I have a word to say to him!"

Through the swaying, tumultuous, murmuring throng came a sudden stillness, and everyone drew back as the gendarmes responding to Abbe Vergniaud's command, pushed their way along, dragging and hustling their prisoner between them,--a young black-browed, black-eyed peasant with a handsome face and proud bearing, whose defiant manner implied that having made one fierce struggle for liberty and finding it in vain, he was now disdainfully resigned to the inevitable. When brought face to face with the Abbe he lifted his head, and flashed his dark eyes upon him with a look of withering contempt. His lips parted,--he seemed about to speak when his glance accidentally fell upon Manuel,--then something caused him to hesitate,--he checked himself on the very verge of speech and remained silent. The Abbe surveyed him with something of a quizzical half-admiring smile, then addressing the gendarmes he said,

"Let him go!"

The men looked up astonished, doubting whether they had heard aright.

"Let him go!" repeated the Abbe firmly, "I have no accusation to make against him. Had he killed me he would have been perfectly justified! Let him go!"

"Cher Abbe!" remonstrated the Marquis Fontenelle, who had made himself one of the group immediately around the pulpit, "Is not this a mistake on your part? Let me advise you not to be so merciful . . ."

"'Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy'"! quoted the Abbe with a strange smile, while his breath came and went quickly, and his face grew paler as he spoke. "Set him free, messieurs, if you please! I decline to prosecute my own flesh and blood! I will be answerable for his future conduct,--I am entirely answerable for his past! He is my son!"

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