XIV…

XIV

No one ever afterwards quite knew how the crowd in the church broke up and dispersed itself after this denouement. For a few minutes the crush of people round the pulpit was terrific; all eyes were fixed on the young black-browed peasant who had so nearly been a parricide,--and on the father who publicly exonerated him,--and then there came a pressing towards the doors which was excessively dangerous to life and limb. Cardinal Bonpre, greatly moved by the whole unprecedented scene, placed himself in front of Angela as a shield and defence from the crowd; but before he had time to consider how he should best pilot her through the pushing and scrambling throng, a way was made for him by Manuel, who,--with a quiet step and unruffled bearing,--walked through the thickest centre of the crowd, which parted easily on either side of him, as though commanded to do so by some unheard but absolute authority. Admiring and wondering glances were turned upon the boy, whose face shone with such a grave peace and sweetness;--he had saved the Abbe's life, the people whispered, by springing up the steps of the pulpit, and throwing himself between the intended victim and the bullet of his assailant. Who was he? Where did he come from? No one knew;--he was merely the attendant of that tall ascetic-looking Cardinal, the uncle of the famous Sovrani. So the words ran from mouth to mouth, as Felix Bonpre and his niece moved slowly through the throng, following Manuel;--then, when they had passed, there came a general hubbub and confusion once more, and the people hustled and elbowed each other through the church regardless of consequences, eager to escape and discuss among themselves the sensation of the morning.

"C'est un drame! Un veritable drame!" said Miraudin, pausing, as he found himself face to face with the Marquis Fontenelle.

Fontenelle stared haughtily.

"Did you speak to me, Monsieur?" he enquired, glancing the actor up and down with an air of supreme disdain.

Miraudin laughed carelessly.

"Yes, I spoke to you, Marquis!" he replied, "I said that the public confession of our dear priest Vergniaud was a veritable drame!"

"An unfortunate scandal in the Church!" said Fontenelle curtly.

"Yes!" went on the unabashed Miraudin, "If it were on the stage it would be taken as a matter of course. An actor's follies help to populate the world. But a priest's petite faute would seem to suggest the crushing down of a universe!"

"Custom and usage make the rule in these things," said Fontenelle turning away, "I have the honour to wish you good-day, Monsieur!"

"One moment!" said the actor smiling, "There is a curious personal resemblance between you and me, Monsieur le Marquis! Have you ever noticed it? We might almost be brothers by our looks--and also I believe by our temperaments!"

Fontenelle's hazel eyes flashed angrily.

"I think not!" he said coldly, "A certain resemblance between totally unrelated persons is quite common. For the rest, we are absolutely different--absolutely!"

Again Miraudin laughed.

"As you will, Marquis!" and he raised his hat with a light, half-mocking air, "Au revoir!"

Fontenelle scarcely acknowledged the salutation,--he was too much annoyed. He considered it a piece of insolence on Miraudin's part to have addressed him at all without previous introduction. It was true that the famous actor was permitted a license not granted to the ordinary individual,--as indeed most actors are. Even princes, who hedge themselves round with impassable barriers to certain of their subjects who are in all ways great and worthy of notice, unbend to the Mime who today takes the place of the Court-jester, and allow him to enter the royal presence, often bringing his newest wanton with him. And there was not the slightest reason for the Marquis Fontenelle to be at all particular in his choice of acquaintances. Yet somehow or other, he was. The fine and sensitive instincts of a gentleman were in him, and though in the very depths of his own conscience he knew himself to be as much of a social actor as Miraudin was a professional one,--though he was aware that his passions were as sensual, and therefore as vulgar, (for sensuality is vulgarity), there was a latent pride in him which forbade him to set himself altogether on the same level. And now as he walked away haughtily, his fine aristocratic head lifted a little higher in air than usual, he was excessively irritated--with everything and everybody, but with himself in particular. Abbe Vergniaud's sermon had stung him in several ways, and the startling FINALE had vexed him still more.

"What folly!" he thought, as he entered his luxuriously appointed flat, and threw himself into a chair with a kind of angry weariness, "How utterly stupid of Vergniaud to blazon the fact that he is no better than other men, in the full face of his congregation! He must be mad! A priest of the Roman Church publicly acknowledging a natural son! [Footnote: ROME, August 19, 1899--A grave scandal has just burst upon the world here. The Gazetta di Venezia having attacked the bishops attending the recent conclave of "Latin America," that is, Spanish-speaking America, as men of loose morality, the Osservatore Cattolico, the Vatican organ, replied declaring that the life of the bishops present at the conclave was above suspicion. The Gazetta di Venezia responds, affirming that the majority of the bishops brought with them to Rome their mistresses, and in some instances their children. The Gazetta offers to disclose the names of these bishops, and demands that the Pope shall satisfy the Catholic world by taking measures against them.--Central News.] Has ever such a thing been heard of! And the result is merely to create scandal and invite his own disgrace! A quoi bon!"

He lit a cigarette and puffed at it impatiently. His particular "code" of morality had been completely upset;--things seemed to have taken a turn for general offence, and the simplest thoughts became like bristles in his brain, pricking him uncomfortably in various sore and sensitive places. Then, added to his general sense of spleen was the unpleasant idea that he was really in love, where he had never meant to be in love. "In love", is a wide term nowadays, and covers a multitude of poor and petty passing emotions,--and it is often necessary to add the word "really" to it, in order to emphasise the fact that the passion has perhaps,--and even then it is only a perhaps,--taken a somewhat lasting form. Why could not Sylvie Hermenstein have allowed things to run their natural course?--this natural course being according to Fontenelle, to drop into his arms when asked, and leave those arms again with equal alacrity also when asked! It would have been quite pleasant and satisfactory to him, the Marquis;--and for Sylvie--well!--for Sylvie, she would soon have got over it! Now there was all this fuss and pother about virtue! Virtue, quotha! In a woman, and in Paris! At this time of day! Could anything be more preposterous and ridiculous!

"One would imagine I had stumbled into a convent for young ladies," he grumbled to himself, "What with Sylvie actually gone, and that pretty pattern of chastity, Angela Sovrani, preaching at me with her big violet eyes,--and now Vergniaud who used to be 'bon camarade et bon vivant', branding himself a social sinner--really one would imagine that some invisible Schoolmaster was trying to whip me into order . . ."

"Peut-on entrer?" called a clear voice outside at this juncture, and without waiting for permission the speaker entered, a very pretty woman in an admirably fitting riding habit, which she held daintily up with one gloved hand, extending the other as she came to the Marquis who gracefully bent over it and kissed it.

"Charme de vous voir Princesse!" he murmured.

"Not at all! Spare me your falsehoods!" was the gay reply, accompanied by a dazzling smile, "You are not in the least charmed, nothing,--nobody charms you,--I least of all! Did you not see me in church? No! Where were your eyes? On the courageous Vergniaud, who so nearly gave us the melancholy task of arranging a 'Chapelle ardente' for him this afternoon?" She laughed, and her eyes twinkled maliciously,--then she went on, "Do you know he is quite a delightful boy,--the peasant son and assassin? I think of taking him to my Chateau and making something of him. I waited to see the whole play out, and bring you the news. Papa Vergniaud has gone home with his good-looking offspring--then Cardinal Bonpre--do you know the Cardinal Bonpre?"

"By reputation merely," replied the Marquis, setting a chair for his fair visitor, "And as the uncle of Donna Sovrani."

"Oh, reputation is nothing," laughed the lady, known as the Princesse D'Agramont, an independent beauty of great wealth and brilliant attainments, "Your butler can give you a reputation, or take it away from you! But the Cardinal's reputation is truly singular. It is goodness, merely! He is so good that he has become actually famous for it! Now I once thought that to become famous for goodness must surely imply that the person so celebrated had a very hypocritical nature,--the worst of natures indeed;--that of pretending to be what he was not,--but I was mistaken. Cardinal Bonpre IS good. Absolutely sincere and noble--therefore a living marvel in this age!"

"You are pleased to be severe, Princesse," said the Marquis, "Is sincerity so difficult to find?"

"The most difficult of virtues!" answered the Princesse, lightly tapping out a little tune with the jewelled handle of her riding whip on the arm of her chair, "That is why I like horses and dogs so much--they are always honest. And for that reason I am now inclined to like Abbe Vergniaud whom I never liked before. He has turned honest! To-day indeed he has been as straightforward as if he were not a man at all!--and I admire him for it. He and his son will be my guests at the Chateau D'Agramont."

"What a very strange woman you are!" said Fontenelle, with a certain languid admiration beginning to glimmer in his eyes, "You always do things that nobody else would dare do--and yet . . . no lovers!"

She turned herself swiftly round and surveyed him with a bright scorn that swept him as with a lightning flash from head to heel.

"Lovers! Who would be bored by them! Such delightful company! So unselfish in their demands--so tender and careful of a woman's feelings! Pouf! Cher ami!--you forget! I was the wife of the late Prince D'Agramont!"

"That explains a great many of your moods certainly," said the Marquis smiling.

"Does it not? Le beau Louis!--romantic Louis!--poet Louis!--musician Louis!--Louis, who talked pretty philosophies by the hour,--Louis who looked so beautiful by moonlight,--who seemed fastidious and refined to a degree that was almost ethereal!--Louis who swore, with passion flashing in his eyes, that I was the centre of the universe to him, and that no other woman had ever occupied, would ever occupy, or SHOULD ever occupy his thoughts!--yes, he was an ideal lover and husband indeed!" said the Princesse smiling coldly, "I gave him all my life and love, till one day, when I found I was sharing his caresses with my plumpest dairymaid, who called him "HER Louis"! Then I thought it was time to put an end to romance. TIENS!" and she gave a little shrug and sigh, "It is sad to think he died of over-eating."

The Marquis laughed.

"You are incorrigible, belle Loyse!" he said, "You should write these things, not speak them."

"Really! And do I not write them? Yes, you know I do, and that you envy me my skill. The Figaro is indebted to me for many admirable essays. At the same time I do not give you permission to call me Loyse."

"Forgive me!" and the Marquis folded his hands with an air of mock penitence.

"Perhaps I will, presently," and she laughed, "But meanwhile I want you to do something for me."

"Toujours a votre service, madame!" and Fontenelle bowed profoundly.

"How theatrical you look! You are alarmingly like Miraudin;--and one MUST draw the line at Miraudin! This is a day of truth according to the Abbe Vergniaud; how dare you say you are at my service when you do not mean it?"

"Princesse, I protest . . ."

"Oh, protest as much as you like,--on the way to Rome!"

The Marquis started.

"To Rome?"

"Yes, to Rome. I am going, and I want someone to look after me. Will you come? All Paris will say we have eloped together." She laughed merrily.

The Marquis stood perplexed and silent.

"Well, what is it?" went on the Princesse gaily, "Is there some faint sense of impropriety stealing over you? Not possible! Dear me, your very muscles are growing rigid! You will not go?"

"Madame, if you will permit me to be frank with you,--I would rather not!"

"A la bonheur!--then I have you!" And the Princesse rose, a dazzling smile irradiating her features, "You have thrown open your heart! You have begun to reform! You love Sylvie Hermenstein--yes!--you positively LOVE her!"

"Princesse--" began the Marquis, "I assure you--"

"Assure me nothing!" and she looked him straight in the eyes, "I know all about it! You will not journey with me because you think the Comtesse Sylvie will hear of it, and put a wrong construction on your courtesy. You wish to try for once, to give her no cause for doubting you to be sans peur et sans reproche. You wish to make her think you something better than a sort of Miraudin whose amorous inclinations are not awakened by one woman, but by women! And so you will not do anything which, though harmless in itself, may seem equivocal. For this you refuse the friendly invitation of one of the best known 'society leaders' in Europe! CHER Marquis!--it is a step in the right direction! Adieu!"

"You are not going so soon," he said hurriedly, "Wait till I explain . . ."

"There is nothing to explain!" and the pretty Princesse gave him her hand with a beneficent air, "I am very pleased with you. You are what the English call 'good boy'! Now I am going to see the Abbe and place the Chateau D'Agramont at his disposal while he is waiting to be excommunicated,--for of course he will be excommunicated--"

"What does it matter!--Who cares?" said the Marquis recklessly.

"It does not matter, and nobody cares--not in actual Paris. But very very nice people in the suburbs, who are morally much worse than the Abbe, will perhaps refuse to receive him. That is why my doors are open to him, and also to his son."

"Original, as usual!"

"Perfectly! I am going to write a column for the Figaro on the amazing little scene of this morning. Au revoir! My poor horse has been waiting too long already,--I must finish my ride in the Bois, and then go to Angela Sovrani; for all the dramatis personae of to-day's melodrama are at her studio, I believe."

"Who is that boy with the Cardinal?" asked the Marquis suddenly.

"You have noticed him? I also. A wonderful face! A little acolyte, no doubt. And so you will not go to Rome with me?"

"I think not," and Fontenelle smiled.

"Comme il vous plaira! I will tell Sylvie."

"The Comtesse Hermenstein is not in Paris."

"No!" and the Princesse laughed mischievously, "She is in Rome! She must have arrived there this morning. Au revoir, Marquis!" Another dazzling smile, and she was gone.

Fontenelle stood staring after her in amazement. Sylvie was in Rome then? And he had just refused to accompany the Princesse D'Agramont thither! A sudden access of irritation came over him, and he paced the room angrily. Should he also go to Rome? Never! It would seem too close a pursuit of a woman who had by her actions distinctly shown that she wished to avoid him. Now he would prove to her that he also had a will of his own. HE would leave Paris;--he would go--yes, he would go to Africa! Everybody went to Africa. It was becoming a fashionable pasture-land for disappointed lives. He would lose himself in the desert,--and then--then Sylvie would be sorry when she did not know where he was or what he was doing! But also,--he in his turn would not know where Sylvie was, or what she was doing! This was annoying. It was certain that she would not remain in Rome a day longer than she chose to,--well!--then where would she go? In Africa he would find some difficulty in tracing her movements. On second thoughts he resolved that he would lose himself in another fashion--and would go to Rome to do it!

"She shall not know I am there!" he said to himself, with a kind of triumph in his own decision, "I shall amuse myself--I shall see her--but she shall not see me."

Satisfied with this as yet vague plan of entertainment, he began at once making his arrangements for departure;--meanwhile, the Princesse D'Agramont riding gracefully through the Bois on her beautiful Arab, was amusing herself with her thoughts, and weighing the PROS and CONS of the different lives of her friends, without giving the slightest consideration to her own. Here was a strange nature,--as a girl she had been intensely loving, generous and warm-hearted, and she had adored her husband with exceptional faith and devotion. But the handsome Prince's amours were legion, though he had been fairly successful in concealing them from his wife, till the unlucky day when she had found him making desperate love to a common servant,--and after that her confidence, naturally, was at an end. One discovery led to another,--and the husband around whom she had woven her life's romance, sank degraded in her sight, never to rise again. She was of far too dignified and proud a nature to allow her sense of outrage and wrong to be made public, and though she never again lived with D'Agramont as his wife, she carried herself through all her duties as mistress of the household and hostess of his guests, with a brave bright gaiety, which deceived even the closest observer,--and the gossips of Paris used to declare that she did not know the extent of her husband's follies. But she did know,--and while filled with utter disgust and loathing for his conduct she nevertheless gave him no cause of complaint against herself. And when he died of a fever brought on through over-indulgence in vice, she conformed to all the strictest usages of society,--wore her solemn widow's black for more than the accustomed period,--and then cast it off,--not to dash into her fashionable "circle" again with a splurge of colour, but rather to glide into it gracefully, a vision of refinement, arrayed in such soft hues as may be seen in some rare picture; and she took complete possession of it by her own unaided charm. No one could really tell whether she grieved for D'Agramont's death or not; no one but herself knew how she had loved him,--no one guessed what agonies of pain and shame she had endured for his sake, nor how she had wept herself half blind with despair when he died. All this she shut up in her own heart, but the working of the secret bitterness within her had made a great change in her disposition. Her nature, once as loving and confiding as that of a little child, had been so wronged in its tenderest fibres that now she could not love at all.

"Why is it," she would ask herself, "that I am totally unable to care for any living creature? That it is indifferent to me whether I see any person once, or often, or never? Why are all men like phantoms, drifting past my soul's immovability?"

The answer to her query would be, that having loved greatly once and been deceived, it was impossible to love again. Some women,--the best, and therefore the unhappiest--are born with this difficult temperament.

Now, as she rode quietly along, sometimes allowing her horse to prance upon the turf for the delight of its dewy freshness, she was weaving quite a brilliant essay on modern morals out of the scene she had witnessed at the Church of the Lorette that morning. She well knew how to use that dangerous weapon, the pen,--she could wield it like a wand to waken tears or laughter with equal ease, and since her husband's death she had devoted a great deal of time to authorship. Two witty novels, published under a nom-de-plume had already startled the world of Paris, and she was busy with a third. Such work amused her, and distracted her from dwelling too much on the destroyed illusions of the past. The Figaro snatched eagerly at everything she wrote; and it was for the Figaro that she busied her brain now, considering what she should say of the Abbe Vergniaud's confession.

"It is wisest to be a liar and remain in the Church? or tell the truth and go out of the Church?" she mused, "Unfortunately, if all priests told the truth as absolutely as the Abbe did this morning we should have hardly any of them left."

She laughed a little, and stroked her horse's neck caressingly.

"Good Rex! You and your kind never tell lies; and yet you are said to have no souls. Now I wonder why we, who are mean and cunning and treacherous and hypocritical should have immortal souls, while horses and dogs who are faithful and kind and honest should be supposed to have none."

Rex gave a gay little prance forward as one who should say, "Yes, but it is only you silly human beings who suppose such nonsense. We know what WE know;--we have our own secrets!"

"Now the Church," went on Loyse D'Agramont, pursuing the tenor of her thoughts, "is in a bad way all over the world. It is possible that God is offended with it. It is possible, that after nearly two thousand years of patience He is tired of having come down to us to teach us the path of Heaven in vain. Something out of the common has surely moved the Abbe Vergniaud to speak as he spoke to-day. He was quite unlike himself and beyond himself; if all our preachers were seized by the spirit of frankness in like manner--"

Here she broke off for she had arrived at Angela Sovrani's door, and a servant coming out, assisted her to alight, and led her horse into the courtyard there to await her leisure. She was an old friend of Angela's and was accustomed to enter the house without announcement, but on this occasion she hesitated, and after ascending the first few steps leading to the studio paused and rang the bell. Angela herself answered the summons.

"Loyse! Is it you! Oh, I am so glad!" and Angela caught her by both hands,--"You cannot imagine the confusion and trouble we have been in this morning!"

"Oh yes, I can!" answered the Princesse smiling, as she put an arm round her friend's waist and entered the studio, "You have certainly had an excitement! What of the courageous Abbe? Where is he?"

"Here!" And Angela's eyes expressed volumes,--"Here, with my uncle. They are talking together--and that young man--Cyrillon--the son, you know--"

"Is that his name?--Cyrillon?" queried the Princesse.

"Yes,--he has been brought up as a peasant. But he is not ignorant. He has written books and music, so it appears--yet he still keeps to his labour in the fields. He seems to be a kind of genius; another sort of Maeterlinck--"

"Oh, capricious Destiny!" exclaimed the Princesse, "The dear Abbe scandalises the Church by acknowledging his son to all men,--and lo!--the son he was ashamed of all these years, turns out a prodigy! The fault once confessed, brings a blessing! Angela, there is something more than chance in this, if we could only fathom it!"

"This Cyrillon is all softness and penitence now,' Angela went on, "He is overcome with grief at his murderous attempt,--and has asked his father's pardon. And they are going away together out of Paris till--"

"Till excommunication is pronounced," said the Princesse, "Yes, I thought so! I came here to place my Chateau at the Abbe's disposal. I am myself going to Rome; so he and his son can be perfectly at home there. I admire the man's courage, and above all I admire his truthfulness. But I cannot understand why he was at such pains to keep silence all these years, and THEN to declare his fault? He must have decided on his confession very suddenly?"

Angela's eyes grew dark and wistful.

"Yes," she answered slowly,--then with a sudden eagerness in her manner she added, "Do you know, Loyse, I feel as if some very strange influence had crept in among us! Pray do not think me foolish, but I assure you I have had the most curious sensations since my uncle, Cardinal Bonpre arrived from Rouen--bringing Manuel--"

"Manuel? Is that the boy I saw in the church this morning? The boy who threw himself as a shield between Verginaud and the flying shot? Yes? And do you not know who he is?"

"No," and Angela repeated the story of the way in which Manuel had been found and rescued by the Cardinal; "You see," she continued, "it is not possible to ask him any questions since he has declined to tell us more than we already know."

"Strange!" And the Princesse D'Agramont knitted her delicate brows perplexedly. "And you have had curious feelings since he came, you say? What sort of feelings?"

"Well, you will only laugh at me," replied Angela, her cheeks paling a little as she spoke, "but it really is as if some supernatural being were present who could see all my inward thoughts,--and not only mine, but the thoughts of everyone else. Someone too who impels us to do what we have never thought of doing before--"

The Princesse opened her eyes in amazement.

"My dear girl! You must have been over-working to get such strange fancies into your head! There is nothing supernatural left to us nowadays except the vague idea of a God,--and even that we are rather tired of!"

Angela trembled and grew paler than usual.

"Do not speak in that way," she urged, "The Abbe talked in just such a light fashion until the other day here,--yet this morning I think--nay, I am sure he believes in something better than himself at last."

The Princesse was silent for a minute.

"Well, what is to happen next?" she queried, "Excommunication of course! All brave thinkers of every time have been excommunicated, and many of our greatest and most valuable scientific works are on the Index Expurgatorius. It is my ambition to get into that Index,--I shall never rest till I win the honour of being beside Darwin's 'Origin of Species'!"

Angela smiled, but her thoughts were elsewhere.

"I hope the Abbe will go away at once," she said meditatively, "But you have no idea how happy and at ease he is! He seems to be ready for anything."

"What does Cardinal Bonpre think?" asked the Princesse.

"My uncle never thinks in any way except the way of Christ," replied Angela. "He says, 'Thy sins be forgiven thee; arise and walk', to every soul stricken with the palsy of pain and repentance. He helps the fallen; he does not strike them down more heavily."

"Ah, so! And is he fit to be a Cardinal?" queried the Princesse D'Agramont dubiously.

Angela gave her a quick look, but had no time to reply as at that moment a servant entered and announced, "Monsignor Moretti!"

Angela started nervously.

"Moretti!" she said in a low tone, "I thought he had left Paris!"

Before she had time to say any more the visitor himself entered, a tall spare priest with a dark narrow countenance of the true Tuscan type,--a face in which the small furtive eyes twinkled with a peculiarly hard brilliancy as though they were luminous pebbles. He walked into the room with a kind of aggressive dignity common to many Italians, and made a slight sign of the cross in air as the two ladies saluted him.

"Pardon me, Mesdames, for this intrusion," he said in a harsh metallic voice, "But I hear that the Abbe Vergniaud is in this house,--and that Cardinal Felix Bonpre has received him here SINCE" (and he emphasised the word "since") "the shameful scene of this morning. My business in Paris is ended for the moment; and I am returning to Italy to-night,--but I wish to know if the Abbe has anything to say through me to His Holiness the Pope in extenuation of his conduct before I perform the painful duty of narrating this distressing affair at the Vatican."

"Will you see him for yourself, Monsignor?" said Angela quietly, offering to lead the way out of the studio, "You will no doubt obtain a more direct and explicit answer from the Abbe personally."

For a moment Moretti hesitated. Princesse D'Agramont saw his indecision, and her smile had a touch of malice in it as she said,

"It is a little difficult to know how to address the Abbe to-day, is it not, Monsignor? For of course he is no longer an Abbe--no longer a priest of Holy Church! Helas! When anybody takes to telling the truth in public the results are almost sure to be calamitous!"

Moretti turned upon her with swift asperity.

"Madame, you are no true daughter of the Church," he said, "and my calling forbids me to enter into any discussion with you!"

The Princesse gave him a charming upward glance of her bright eyes, and curtsied demurely, but he paid no heed to her obeisance, and moving away, went at once with Angela towards the Cardinal's apartments. In the antechamber he paused, hearing voices.

"Is there anyone with His Eminence, besides Vergniaud?" he asked.

"The Abbe's son Cyrillon," replied Angela timidly.

Moretti frowned.

"I will go in alone," he said, "You need not announce me. The Abbe knows me well, and--" he added with a slight sneer, "he is likely to know me better!"

Without further words he signed to Angela to retire, and passing through the antechamber, he opened the door of the Cardinal's room and entered abruptly.

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

XV

The Cardinal was seated,--he rose as Moretti appeared.

"I beg your Eminence to spare yourself!" said Moretti suavely, with a deep salutation, "And to pardon me for thus coming unannounced into the presence of one so highly esteemed by the Holy Father as Cardinal Bonpre!"

The Cardinal gave a gesture of courteous deprecation; and Monsignor Moretti, lifting his, till then, partially lowered eyelids, flashed an angry regard upon the Abbe Vergniaud, who resting his back against the book-case behind him, met his glance with the most perfect composure. Close to him stood his son and would-be murderer Cyrillon,--his dark handsome face rendered even handsomer by the wistful and softened expression of his eyes, which ever and anon rested upon his father with a look of mingled wonder and respect. There was a brief silence--of a few seconds at most,--and then Moretti spoke again in a voice which thrilled with pent-up indignation, but which he endeavoured to render calm and clear as he addressed the Cardinal.

"Your Eminence is without doubt aware of the cause of my visit to you. If, as I understand, your Eminence was present at Notre Dame de Lorette this morning, and witnessed the regrettable conduct of the faithless son of the Church here present--"

"Pardon! This is my affair." interposed Vergniaud, stepping forward, "His Eminence, Cardinal Bonpre, is not at all concerned in the matter of the difficult dispute which has arisen between me and my own conscience. You call me faithless, Monsignor,--will you explain what you mean by 'faithless' under these present conditions of argument?"

"It shows the extent and hopelessness of your retrogression from all good that you should presume to ask such a question," answered Moretti, growing white under the natural darkness of his skin with an impotency of rage he could scarcely suppress, "Your sermon this morning was an open attack on the Church, and the amazing scene at its conclusion is a scandal to Christianity!"

"The attack on the Church I admit," said the Abbe quietly, "I am not the only preacher in the world who has so attacked it. Christ Himself would attack it if He were to visit this earth again!"

Moretti turned angrily towards the Cardinal.

"Your Eminence permits this blasphemy to be uttered in your presence?" he demanded.

"Nay, wherever and whenever I perceive blasphemy, my son, I shall reprove it," said the Cardinal, fixing his mild eyes steadily on Moretti's livid countenance, "I cannot at present admit that our unhappy and repentant brother here has blasphemed. In his address to his congregation to-day he denounced social hypocrisy, and also pointed out certain failings in the Church which may possibly need consideration and reform; but against the Gospel of Christ, or against the Founder of our Faith I heard no word that could be judged ill-fitting. As for the conclusion which so very nearly ended in disaster and crime, there is nothing to be said beyond the fact that both the persons concerned are profoundly sorry for their sins."

"No sorrow can wipe out such infamy--" began Moretti hotly.

"Patience! Patience, my son!" and the Cardinal raised his hand with a slight gesture of authority, "Surely we must believe the words of our Blessed Lord, 'There is more joy in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine just persons which have no need of repentance'!"

"And on this old and well-worn phrase you excuse a confessed heretic?" said Moretti, with a sneer.

"This old and well-worn phrase is the saying of our Master," answered the Cardinal firmly, "And it is as true as the truth of the sunshine which, in its old and well-worn way, lights up this world gloriously every morning! I would stake my very life on the depth and the truth of Vergniaud's penitence! Who, seeing and knowing the brand of disgrace he has voluntarily burnt into his own social name and honour, could doubt his sincerity, or refuse to raise him up, even as our Lord would have done, saying, 'Thy sins be forgiven thee! Go, and sin no more!'?"

Moretti's furtive eyes disappeared for a moment under his discoloured eyelids, which quivered rapidly like the throbbings in the throat of an angry snake. Before he could speak again however, Vergniaud interposed.

"Why trouble His Eminence with my crimes or heresies?" he said quietly, "I am grateful to him from my soul for his gentleness and charity of judgment--but I need no defence--not even from him. I am answerable to God alone!--neither to Church nor Creed! It was needful that I should speak as I spoke to-day--"

"Needful to scandalize the Church?" demanded Moretti sharply.

"The Church is not scandalized by a man who confesses himself an unworthy member of it!" returned Vergniaud, "It is better to tell the truth and go out of the Church than to remain in it as a liar and a hypocrite."

"According to your own admission you have been a liar and a hypocrite for twenty-five years!" said Moretti bitterly, "You should have made your confession before, and have made it privately. There is something unnatural and reprehensible in the sudden blazon you have made to the public of your gross immorality."

"'A sudden blazon' you call it,--" said the Abbe, "Well, perhaps it is! But murder will out, no matter how long it is kept in. You are not entirely aware of my position, Monseigneur. Have you the patience to hear a full explanation?"

"I have the patience to hear because it is my duty to hear," replied Moretti frigidly, "I am bound to convey the whole of this matter to His Holiness."

"True! That is your duty, and who shall say it is not also your pleasure!" and Vergniaud smiled a little. "Well!--Convey to His Holiness the news that I, Denis Vergniaud, am a dying man, and that knowing myself to be in that condition, and that two years at the utmost, is my extent of life on this planet, I have taken it seriously into my head to consider as to whether I am fit to meet death with a clean conscience. Death, Monsignor, admits of no lying, no politeness, no elegant sophistries! Now, the more I have considered, the more I am aware of my total unfitness to confront whatever may be waiting for me in the Afterwards of death--(for without doubt there is an afterwards,)--and being conscious of having done at least one grave injury to an innocent person, I have taken the best and quickest way to make full amends. I wronged a woman--this boy's mother--" and he indicated with a slight gesture Cyrillon, who had remained a silent witness of the scene,--"and the boy himself from early years set his mind and his will to avenge his mother's dishonour. I--the chief actor in the drama,--am thus responsible for a woman's misery and shame; and am equally responsible for the murderous spirit which has animated one, who without this feeling, would have been a promising fellow enough. The woman I wronged, alas!--is dead, and I cannot reinstate her name, save in an open acknowledgment of her child, my son. I do acknowledge him,--I acknowledge him in your presence, and therefore virtually in the presence of His Holiness. I thus help to remove the stigma I myself set on his name. Plainly speaking, Monsignor, we men have no right whatever to launch human beings into the world with the 'bar sinister' branded upon them. We have no right, if we follow Christ, to do anything that may injure or cause trouble to any other creature. We have no right to be hasty in our judgment, even of sin."

"Sin is sin,--and demands punishment--" interrupted Moretti.

"You quote the law of Moses, Monsignor! I speak with the premise 'if'. IF we follow Christ;--if we do not, the matter is of course different. We can then twist Scripture to suit our own purpose. We can organise systems which are agreeable to our own convenience or profit, but which have nothing whatever of Christ's Divine Spirit of universal love and compassion in them. My action this morning was unusual and quixotic no doubt. Yet, it seemed to me the only way to comport myself under those particular circumstances. I did a wrong--I seek to make amends. I believe this is what God would have me do. I believe that the Supernal Forces judge our sins against each other to be of a far worse nature than sins against Church or Creed. I also believe that if we try to amend our injustices and set crooked things straight, death will be an easier business, and Heaven will come a little nearer to our souls. As for my attack on the Church--"

"Ah truly! What of your attack on the Church?" said Moretti, his small eyes glistening, and his breath going and coming quickly.

"I would say every word of it again with absolute conviction," declared Vergniaud, "for I have said nothing but the truth! There is a movement in the world, Monsignor, that all the powers of Rome are unable to cope with!--the movement of an advancing resistless force called Truth,--the Voice of God,--the Voice of Christ! Truth cannot be choked, murdered and killed nowadays as in the early Inquisition! Rather than that the Voice of Truth should be silenced or murdered now at this period of time, God will shake down Rome!"

"Not so!" exclaimed Moretti hotly--"Every nation in the world shall perish before Rome shall lose her sacred power! She is the 'headstone of the corner'--and 'upon whomsoever that stone shall fall, it shall grind him to powder!'"

"You think so?" and Verginaud shrugged his shoulders ever so slightly--"Well! For me, I believe that material as well as spiritual forces combine to fight against long-concealed sin and practised old hypocrisies. It would not surprise me if the volcanic agencies which are for ever at work beneath the blood-stained soil of Italy, were to meet under the Eternal City, and in one fell burst of flame and thunder prove its temporary and ephemeral worth! The other day an earthquake shook the walls of Rome and sent a warning shock through St. Peter's. St. Peter's, with its vast treasures, its gilded shrines, its locked-up wealth, its magnificence,--a strange contrast to Italy itself!--Italy with its people ground down under the heel of a frightful taxation, starving, and in the iron bonds of poverty! 'The Pope is a prisoner and can do nothing'? Monsignor, the Pope is a prisoner by his own choice! If he elected to walk abroad among the people and scatter Peter's Pence among the sick and needy, he would then perhaps be BEGINNING to do the duties our Lord enjoined on all His disciples!"

Moretti had stood immovable during this speech, his dark face rigid, his eyes downcast, listening to every word, but now he raised his hand with an authoritative gesture.

"Enough!" he said, "I will hear no more! You know the consequences of this at the Vatican?"

"I do."

"You are prepared to accept them?"

"As prepared as any of the truth-tellers who were burned for the love of Christ by the Inquisition," replied Vergniaud deliberately. "The world is wide,--there is room for me in it outside the Church."

"One would imagine you were bitten by the new 'Christian Democratic' craze," said Moretti with a cold smile, "And that you were a reader and follower of the Socialist, Gys Grandit!"

At this name, Vergniaud's son Cyrillon stirred, and lifting his dark handsome head turned his flashing eyes full on the speaker.

"Did you address me, Monsignor?" he queried, in a voice rich with the musical inflexions of Southern France, "I am Gys Grandit!"

Had he fired another pistol shot in the quiet room as he had fired it in the church, it could hardly have created a more profound sensation.

"You--you--" stammered Moretti, retreating from him as from some loathsome abomination, "You--Gys Grandit!"

"You, Cyrillon!--you!--you, my son!"--and the Abbe almost lost breath in the extremity of his amazement, while Cardinal Bonpre half rose from his chair doubting whether he had heard aright. Gys Grandit!--the writer of fierce political polemics and powerful essays that were the life and soul, meat and drink of all the members of the Christian Democratic party!

"Gys Grandit is my nom-de-plume," pursued the young man, composedly, "I never had any hope of being acknowledged as Cyrillon Vergniaud, son of my father,--I had truly no name and resolved to create one. That is the sole explanation. My history has made me--not myself."

There was a dead pause. At last Moretti spoke.

"I have no place here!" he said, biting his lips hard to keep them from trembling with rage, "This house which I thought was the abode of a true daughter of the Church, Donna Sovrani, is apparently for the moment a refuge for heretics. And I find these heretics kept in countenance by Cardinal Felix Bonpre, whose reputation for justice and holiness should surely move him to denounce them were he not held in check by some malignant spirit of evil, which seems to possess this atmosphere--"

"Monsignor Moretti," interposed the Cardinal with dignity, "it is no part of justice or holiness to denounce anything or anybody till the full rights of the case have been heard. I was as unaware as yourself that this young man, Cyrillon Vergniaud, was the daring writer who has sent his assumed name of 'Gys Grandit' like a flame through Europe. I have read his books, and cannot justly denounce them, because they are expressed in the language of one who is ardently and passionately seeking for Truth. Equally, I cannot denounce the Abbe, because he has confessed his sin, declared himself as he is, to the public, saved his son from being a parricide, and has to some extent we trust, made his peace with God. If you can find any point on which, as a servant of Christ, I can denounce these two human beings who share with me the strange and awful privileges of life and death, and the promise of an immortal hereafter, I give you leave to do so. The works of Gys Grandit do not blaspheme Christ,--they call, they clamour, they appeal for Christ through all and in all--"

"And with all this clamour and appeal their writer is willing to become a murderer!" said Moretti satirically.

Young Vergniaud sprang forward.

"Monsignor, in the name of the Master you profess to serve I would advise you to set a watch upon your tongue!" he said, "Granted that I was willing to murder the man who had made my mother's life a misery, I was also willing to answer to God for it! I saw my mother die--" here he gave a quick glance towards the Abbe who instinctively shrank at his words, "I shall pain you, my father, by what I say, but the pain is perhaps good for us both! I repeat--I saw my mother die. She passed away uncomforted after a long life of patient loneliness and sorrow--for she was faithful to the last, ever faithful! I have seen her weep in the silence of the night!--I have heard her ever since I was able to understand the sound of weeping! Oh, those tears!--Do you not think God has seen them! She worked and toiled, and starved herself to educate me,--she had no friends, for she had 'fallen', they said, and sometimes she could get no employment, and often we starved together; and when I thought of the man who had done this thing, even as a young boy I said to myself, 'I will kill him!' She did not mean, poor mother, to curse her lover to me--but unconsciously she did,--her sorrow was so great--her loneliness so bitter!"

Moretti gave a gesture of impatience and contempt. Cyrillon noted it, and his dark eyes flashed, but he went on steadily,--

"And then I saw her die--she stretched her poor thin hard-working hands out to God, and over and over again she muttered and moaned in her fever the refrain of an old peasant song we have in Touraine, 'Oh, la tristesse d'avoir aime!' If you had heard her--if you had seen her--if you had, or have a heart to feel, nerves to wrench, a brain to rack, blood to be stung to frenzy, you would,--seeing your mother perish thus,--have thought, that to kill the man who had made such a wreck of a sweet pure life, would be a just, aye even a virtuous deed! I thought so. But my intended vengeance was frustrated--whether by the act of God, who can say? But the conduct of the man whom I am now proud to call my father--"

"You have great cause for pride!" said Moretti sarcastically.

"I think I have"--said the young man, "In the close extremity of death at my hands, he won my respect. He shall keep it. It will be my glory now to show him what a son's love and pardon may be. If it be true as I understand, that he is attacked by a disease which needs must be fatal, his last hours will not be desolate! It may be that I shall give him more comfort than Churches,--more confidence than Creeds! It may be that the clasp of my hand in his may be a better preparation for his meeting with God,--and my mother,--than the touch of the Holy Oils in Extreme Unction!"

"Like all your accursed sect, you blaspheme the Sacraments"--interrupted Moretti indignantly--"And in the very presence of one of her chiefest Cardinals, you scorn the Church!"

Cyrillon gave a quick gesture of emphatic denial.

"Monsignor, I do not scorn the Church,--but I think that honesty and fair dealing with one another is better than any Church! Christ had no Church. He built no temples, He amassed no wealth,--He preached simply to those who would hear Him under the arching sky,--in the open air! He prophesied the fall of temples; 'In this place,' He said, 'is One greater than the temple.' [Footnote: Matt. xii. v. 6.] He sought to destroy long built-up hypocrisies. 'My house is called the house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves.' Thieves, not only of gold, but of honour!--thieves of the very Gospel, which has been tampered with and twisted to suit the times, the conditions and opinions of varying phases of priestcraft. Who that has read, and thought, and travelled and studied the manuscripts hidden away in the old monasteries of Armenia and Syria, believes that the Saviour of the world ever condescended to 'pun' on the word Petrus, and say, 'On this Rock (or stone) I will build my Church,' when He already knew that He had to deal with a coward who would soon deny Him?"

"Enough! I will hear no further!" cried Moretti, turning livid with fury--"Cardinal Bonpre, I appeal to you . . ."

But Cyrillon went on unheedingly,--

"Beware of that symbol of your Church, Monsignor! It is a very strange one! It seems about to be expanded into a reality of dreadful earnest! 'I know not the man,' said Peter. Does not the glittering of the world's wealth piled into the Vatican,--useless wealth lying idle in the midst of hideous beggary and starvation,--proclaim with no uncertain voice, 'I KNOW NOT THE MAN'? The Man of sorrows,--the Man of tender and pitying heart,--the Man who could not send the multitude away without bread, and compassed a miracle to give it to them,--the Man who wept for a friend's death,--who took little children in His arms and blessed them,--who pardoned the unhappy outcast and said, 'Sin no more,'--who was so selfless, so pure, so strong, so great, that even sceptics, while denying His Divinity, are compelled to own that His life and His actions were more Divine than those of any other creature in human shape that has ever walked the earth! Monsignor, there is no true representative of Christ in this world!"

"Not for heretics possibly," said Moretti disdainfully.

"For no one!" said Cyrillon passionately--"For no poor sinking, seeking soul is there any such visible comforter! But there is a grand tendency in Mankind to absorb His Spirit and His teaching;--to turn from forms and shadows of faith to the Faith itself,--from descriptions of a possible heaven to the REAL Heaven, which is being disclosed to us in transcendent glimpses through the jewel-gates of science! There were twelve gates in the visioned heaven of St. John,--and each gate was composed of one pearl! Truly do the scoffers say that never did any planetary sea provide such pearls as these! No,--for they were but prophetic emblems of the then undiscovered Sciences. Ah, Monsignor!--and what of the psychic senses and forces?--forces which we are just beginning to discover and to use,--forces which enable me to read your mind at this present moment and to see how willingly you would send me to the burning, Christian as you call yourself, for my thoughts and opinions!--as your long-ago predecessors did with all men who dared to reason for themselves! But that time has passed, Monsignor; the Spirit of Christ in the world has conquered the Church THERE!"

The words rushed from his lips with a fervid eloquence that was absolutely startling,--his eyes were aglow with feeling--his face so animated and inspired, that it seemed as though a flame behind it illumined every feature. Abbe Vergniaud, astonished and overcome, laid a trembling hand on the arm of the passionate speaker with a gesture more of appeal than restraint, and the young man caught that hand within his own and held it fast. Moretti for a moment fixed his eyes upon father and son with an expression of intense hatred that darkened his face with a deep shadow as of a black mask,--and then without a word deliberately turned his back upon both.

"Your Eminence has heard all this," he said coldly, addressing the Cardinal who sat rigidly in his chair, silent and very pale.

"I have," replied Bonpre in a low strained tone.

"And I presume your Eminence permits--?"

"Why talk of permission?" interrupted the Cardinal, raising his eyes with a sorrowful look, "Who is to permit or deny freedom of speech in these days? Have I--have you--the right to declare that a man shall not express his thoughts? In what way are we to act? Deny a hearing? We cannot--we dare not--not if we obey our Lord, who says, 'Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them.' If we ask for ourselves to be heard, we must also hear."

"We may hear--but in such a case as the present one must we not also condemn?" demanded Moretti, watching the venerable prelate narrowly.

"We can only condemn in the case of a great sin," replied Bonpre gently, "and even then our condemnation must be passed with fear and trembling, and with full knowledge of all the facts pertaining to the error. 'Judge not that ye be not judged.' We are told plainly that our brother may sin against us not only seven times but seventy times seven, and still we are bound to forgive, to sustain, to help, and not to trample down the already fallen."

"These are your Eminence's opinions?" said Moretti.

"Most assuredly! Are they not yours?"

Moretti smiled coldly.

"No. I confess they are not! I am a faithful servant of the Church; and the Church is a system of moral government in which, if the slightest laxity be permitted, the whole fabric is in danger--"

"A house of cards then, which a breath may blow down!" interposed "Gys Grandit," otherwise Cyrillon Vergniaud, "Surely an unstable foundation for the everlasting ethics of Christ!"

"I did not speak to you, sir," said Moretti, turning upon him angrily.

"I know you did not. I spoke to you," answered the young man coolly, "I have as much right to speak to you, as you have to speak to me, or to be silent--if you choose. You say the Church is a system of moral government. Well, look back on the past, and see what it has done in the way of governing. In the very earliest days of Christianity, when men were simple and sincere, when their faith in the power of the Divine things was strong and pure, the Church was indeed a safeguard, and a powerful restraint on man's uneducated licentiousness and inherent love of strife. But when the lust of gain began to creep like a fever into the blood of those with whom worldly riches should be as nothing compared to the riches of the mind, the heart, and the spirit, then the dryrot of hypocrisy set in--then came craftiness, cruelty, injustice, and pitilessness, and such grossness of personal conduct as revolts even the soul of an admitted sinner. Moral government? Where is it to day? Look at France--Italy--Spain! Count up the lies told by the priests in these countries to feed the follies of the ignorant! Did Christ ever tell lies? No. Then why, if you are His follower, do you tell them?"

"I repeat, I did not speak to you," said Moretti, his eyes sparkling with fury,--"To me you are a heretic, accursed, and excommunicate!--thrust out of salvation, and beyond my province to deal with!"

"Oh, that a man should be thrust out of salvation in these Christian days!" exclaimed Cyrillon with a flashing look of scorn, "And that he should find a servant of Christ to tell him so! Accursed and excommunicate! Then I am a kind of leper in the social community! And you, as a disciple of your Master, should heal me of my infirmity--and cleanse me of my Leprosy! Loathsome as leprosy is whether of mind or body, Christ never thrust it out of salvation!"

"The leper must wish to be cleansed!" said Moretti fiercely, "If he does not himself seek to be healed of his evil, no miracle can help him."

"Oh but I do seek!" And young Vergniaud threw back his handsome head with a splendid gesture of appeal, "With all my soul, if I am diseased, I wish to be cleansed! Will YOU cleanse me? CAN you? I wish to stand up whole and pure, face to face with the Divine in this world, and praise Him for His goodness to me. But surely if He is to be found anywhere it is in the Spirit of Truth! Not in any sort of a lie! Now, according to His own words the Holy Ghost is the Spirit of Truth. 'When the Spirit of Truth is come He will guide you into all Truth.' And what then? Monsignor, it is somewhat dangerous to oppose the Spirit of Truth, whether that Force speak through the innocent lips of a child or the diseased ones of a leper! 'For whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of Man it shall be forgiven him, BUT WHOSOEVER SPEAKETH AGAINST THE HOLY GHOST'--or the Spirit of Truth, known sometimes as Inspiration . . . "IT SHALL NOT BE FORGIVEN HIM in this world, neither in the world to come.' That is a terrible curse, which an ocean of Holy Water could scarcely wash away!"

"Your argument is wide of the mark," said Moretti, impatiently, yet forced in spite of himself to defend his position, "the Church is not opposed to Truth but to Atheism."

"Atheism! There is no such thing as a real atheist in the world!" declared Cyrillon passionately, "No reasoning human being alive, that has not felt the impress of the Divine Image in himself and in all the universe around him! He may, through apathy and the falsehoods of priestcraft, have descended into callousness, indifference and egotism, but he knows well that that impress cannot be stamped out--that he will have to account for his part, however small it be, in the magnificent pageant of life and work, for he has not been sent into it 'on chance.' Inasmuch as if there is chance in one thing there must be chance in another, and the solar system is too mathematically designed to be a haphazard arrangement. With all our cleverness, our logic, our geometrical skill, we can do nothing so exact! As part of the solar system, you and I have our trifling business to enact, Monsignor,--and to enact it properly, and with satisfaction to our Supreme Employer, it seems to me that if we are honest with the world and with each other, we shall be on the right road."

"For my part, I am perfectly honest with you," said Moretti smiling darkly, "I told you, and I tell you again, that to me you are a heretic, accursed and excommunicate. You will, as the democrat 'Gys Grandit,' no doubt feel a peculiar pleasure when your father is also declared accursed and excommunicate. I have said, and I say again, that the Church is a system of moral government, and that no laxity can be permitted. It is a system founded on the Gospel of our Lord, but to obey the commands of our Lord to the letter we should have to find another world to live in--"

"Pardon me--I ask for information," interposed Cyrillon, "You of course maintain that Christ was God in Man?"

"Most absolutely!"

"And yet you say that to obey His commands to the letter we should have to find another world to live in! Strange! Since He made the world and knows all our capabilities of progress! But have you never fancied it possible that we may be forced to obey His commands to the letter, or perish for refusing to do so?"

Moretti made as though he would have sprung forward,--his face was drawn and rigid, his lips tightly compressed, but he had no answer to this unanswerable logic. He therefore took refuge in turning brusquely away as before and was about to address himself to Bonpre, but stopped short, as he perceived Manuel, who had entered while the conversation was going on, and who now stood quietly by the Cardinal's chair in an attitude of composed attention. Moretti glanced at him with a vexed sense of irritation and reluctant wonder;--then moistening his dry lips he began,

"I am bound to regret deeply that your Eminence has allowed this painful discussion to take place in your presence without reproof. But I presume you are aware of the responsibility incurred?"

The Cardinal slowly inclined his head in grave assent.

"In relating the scene of to-day to His Holiness, I shall be compelled to mention the attitude you have maintained throughout the conversation."

"You are at perfect liberty to do so, my son," said Bonpre with unruffled gentleness.

Moretti hesitated. His eyes again rested on Manuel.

"Pardon me," he said suddenly and irrelevantly, "This boy . . ."

"Is a foundling," said the Cardinal, "He stays with me till I can place him well in the world. He has no friends."

"He took some part in the affair of this morning, I believe?" queried Moretti, with a doubtful air.

"He saved my life," said Abbe Vergniaud advancing, "It was not particularly worth saving--but he did it. And I owe him much--for in saving me, he also saved Cyrillon from something worse than death."

"Naturally you must be very gratefu," retorted Moretti satirically, "The affection of a son you have denied for twenty-five years must be exceedingly gratifying to you!" He paused--then said, "Does this boy belong to the Church?"

"No," said Manuel, answering for himself, "I have no Church."

"No Church!" exclaimed Moretti, "His Eminence must educate you, boy. You must be received."

"Yes," said Manuel, raising his eyes, and fixing them full on Moretti, "I must be received! I need education to understand the Church. And so,--for me to be received might be difficult!"

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

XVI

As he thus spoke, slowly and with an exquisite softness, something in his voice, manner, or words aroused a sudden and violent antipathy in Moretti's mind. He became curiously annoyed, without any possible cause, and out of his annoyance answered roughly.

"Ignorance is always difficult to deal with," he said, "But if it is not accompanied by self-will or obstinacy--(and boys of your age are apt to be self-willed and obstinate)--then much can be done. The Church has infinite patience even with refractory sinners."

"Has it?" asked Manuel simply, and his clear eyes, turning slowly towards Vergniaud and his son, rested there a moment, and then came back to fix the same steady look upon Moretti's face. Not another word did he say,--but Moretti flushed darkly, and anon grew very pale. Restraining his emotions however by an effort, he addressed himself with cold formality once more to the Abbe.

"You have no explanation then to offer to His Holiness, beyond what you have already said?"

"None!" replied Vergniaud steadily. "The reasons for my conduct I think are sufficiently vital and earnest to be easily understood."

"And your Eminence has nothing more to say on this matter?" pursued Moretti, turning to the Cardinal.

"Nothing, my son! But I would urge that the Holy Father should extend his pardon to the offenders, the more so as one of them is on the verge of that land where we 'go hence and are no more seen.'"

Moretti's eyelids quivered, and his lips drew together in a hard and cruel line.

"I will assuredly represent your wishes to His Holiness," he replied, "But I doubt whether they will meet with so much approval as surprise and regret. I have the honour to wish your Eminence farewell!"

"Farewell, my son!" said the Cardinal mildly, "Benedicite!"

Moretti bent down, as custom forced him to do, under the gently uttered blessing, and the extended thin white hand that signed the cross above him. Then with a furtive under-glance at Manuel, whose quiet and contemplative observation of him greatly vexed and disturbed his composure, he left the room.

There was a short silence. Then Abbe Vergniaud, somewhat hesitatingly, approached Bonpre.

"I much fear, my dear friend, that all this means unpleasantness for you at the Vatican," he said, "And I sincerely grieve to be the means of bringing you into any trouble."

"Nay, there should be no trouble," said Bonpre quietly, "Nothing has happened which should really cause me any perplexity--on the contrary, events have arranged themselves so that there shall be no obstacle in the way of speaking my mind. I have journeyed far from my diocese to study and to discover for myself the various phases of opinion on religious matters in these days, and I am steadily learning much as I go. I regret nothing, and would have nothing altered,--for I am perfectly confident that in all the things I meet, or may have to consider, my Master is my Guide. All is well wherever we hear His Voice;--all things work for the best when we are able to perceive His command clearly, and have strength and resolution enough to forsake our sins and follow Him."

As he spoke, a tranquil smile brightened his venerable features, and seeing the fine small hand of Manuel resting on his chair, he laid his own wrinkled palm over it and clasped it tenderly. Cyrillon Vergniaud, moved by a quick impulse, suddenly advanced towards him.

"Monseigneur," he said, with unaffected deference, "You are much more than a Cardinal,--you are a good and honest man! And that you serve Christ purely is plainly evidenced in your look and bearing. Do me one favour! Extend your pardon to me for my almost committed crime of to-day,--and give me your blessing! I will try to be worthy of it!"

The Cardinal was silent for a few minutes looking at him earnestly.

"My blessing is of small value," he said, "And yet I do not think you would ask it for mere mockery of an old man's faith. I should like,--" here he paused--then slowly went on again, "I should like to say a few words to you if I might--to ask you one or two questions concerning yourself--"

"Ask anything you please, Monseigneur," replied Cyrillon, "I will answer you frankly and fully. I have never had any mysteries in my life save one,--that of my birth, which up till to day was a stigma and a drawback;--but now, I feel I may be proud of my father. A man who sacrifices his entire social reputation and position to make amends for a wrong done to the innocent is worthy of honour."

"I grant it!" said the Cardinal, "But you yourself--why have you made a name which is like a firebrand to start a conflagration of discord in Europe?--why do you use your gifts of language and expression to awaken a national danger which even the strongest Government may find itself unable to stand against? I do not blame you till I hear,--till I know;--but your writings,--your appeals for truth in all things,--are like loud clarion blasts which may awaken more evil than good."

"Monseigneur, the evil is not of my making,--it exists!" replied Cyrillon, "My name, my writings,--are only as a spark from the huge smouldering fire of religious discontent in the world. If it were not MY name it would be another's. If I did not write or speak, someone else would write and speak--perhaps better--perhaps not so well. At any rate I am sincere in my convictions, and write from the fulness of the heart. I do not care for money--I make none at all by literature,--but I earn enough by my labour in the fields to keep me in food and lodging. I have no desire for fame,--except in so far as my name may serve as an encouragement and help to others. If you care to hear my story--"

"I should appreciate your confidence greatly," said the Cardinal earnestly, "The Fates have made you a leading spirit of the time,--it would interest me to know your thoughts and theories. But if you would prefer not to speak--"

"I generally prefer not to speak," replied Cyrillon, "But to-day is one of open confession,--and I think too that it is sometimes advisable for men of the Church to understand and enter into the minds of those who are outside the Church,--who will have no Church,--not from disobedience or insubordination, but simply because they do not find God or Christ in that institution as it at present exists. And nowadays we are seeking for God strenuously and passionately! We have found Him too in places where the Church assured us He was not and could not be."

"Is there any portion of life where God is not?" asked Manuel gently.

Cyrillon's dark eyes softened as he met the boy's glance.

"No, dear child!--truly there is not,--but the priests do nothing to maintain or to prove that," he replied; "and the more the world lifts itself higher and higher into the light, the more we shall perceive God, and the less we will permit anything to intervene between ourselves and Him. But you are too young to understand--"

"No, not at all too young to understand!" answered Manuel, "Not at all too young to understand that God is love, and pardon, and patience;--and that wheresoever men are intolerant, uncharitable, and bigoted, there they straightway depart from God and know Him not at all."

"Truly that is how I understand Christianity," said Cyrillon, "But for so simple and plain a perception of duty one is called atheist and socialist, and one's opinions are branded as dangerous to the community. Truth is dangerous, I know--but why?"

"Would that not take a century to explain?" said the silvery voice of the Princesse D'Agramont, who entered with Angela at that moment, and made her deep obeisance before the Cardinal, glancing inquisitively as she did so at Manuel who still stood resting against the prelate's chair, "Pardon our abrupt appearance, Monseigneur, but Angela and I are moved by the spirit of curiosity!--and if we are swept out of the Church like straws before the wind for our impertinence, we care not! Monsignor Moretti has just left the house, wrapt up in his wrath like a bird of prey in a thunder-cloud, muttering menaces against 'Gys Grandit' the Socialist writer. Now what in the world has Gys Grandit to do with him or with us? Salut, cher Abbe!"--and she gave Vergniaud her hand with charming friendliness; "I came here really to see you, and place the Chateau D'Agramont at your disposal, while I am away passing the winter in Italy. Pray make yourself at home there--and your son also . . ."

"Madame," said the Abbe, profoundly touched by the sincerity of her manner, and by the evident cordiality of her intention, "I thank you from my heart for your friendship at this moment when friendship is most needed! But I feel I ought not to cast the shadow of my presence on your house under such circumstances--and as for my son--it would certainly be unwise for you to extend your gracious hospitality to him . . . he is my son--yes truly!--and I acknowledge him as such; but he is also another person of his own making--Gys Grandit!"

Angela Sovrani gave a slight cry, and a wave of colour flushed her face,--the Princesse stood amazed.

"Gys Grandit!" she echoed in a low tone, "And Vergniaud's son! Grand Dieu! Is it possible!" Then advancing, she extended both her hands to Cyrillon, "Monsieur, accept my homage! You have a supreme genius,--and with it you command more than one-half of the thoughts of France!"

Cyrillon took her hands,--lightly pressed, and released them.

"Madame, you are too generous!"

But even while he exchanged these courtesies with her, his eyes were fixed on Angela Sovrani, who, moving close to her uncle's chair, had folded her hands upon its sculptured edge and now stood beside it, a graceful nymph-like figure of statuesque repose. But her breath came and went quickly, and her face was very pale.

"No wonder Monsignor Moretti was so exceedingly angry," resumed the Princesse D'Agramont with a smile, "I understand the position now. It is a truly remarkable one. Monseigneur," this with a profound reverence to the Cardinal, "you have found it difficult to be umpire in the discussion."

"The discussion was not mine," said the Cardinal slowly, "But the cause of the trouble is a point which affects many,--and I am one of those who desire to hear all before I presume to judge one. I have asked the son of my old friend Vergniaud to tell me what led him to make his assumed name one of such terror and confusion in the world; he is but six-and-twenty, and yet . . ."

"And yet people talk much of me you would say, Monseigneur," said Cyrillon, a touch of scorn lighting up his fine eyes, "True, and it is easy to be talked of. That is nothing, I do not wish for that, except in so far as it helps me to attain my ambition."

"And that ambition is?" queried the Princesse.

"To lead!" answered Cyrillon with a passionate gesture, "To gather the straying thoughts of men into one burning focus--and turn THAT fire on the world!"

They were all silent for a minute--then the Princesse D'Agramont spoke again--

"But--Pardon me! Then you were about to destroy all your own chances of the future in your wild impulse of this morning?"

"Oh, Madame, it was no wild impulse! When a man takes an oath by the side of a dead woman, and that woman his mother, he generally means to keep it! And I most resolutely meant to kill my father and make of myself a parricide. But I considered my mother had been murdered too--socially and morally--and I judged my vengeance just. If it had not been for the boy there--" and he glanced at Manuel, "I should certainly have fulfilled my intention."

"And then there would have been no Abbe Vergniaud, and no 'Gys Grandit,'" said the Princesse lightly, endeavouring to change the sombre tone of the conversation,--"and the 'Christian Democratic' party would have been in sackcloth and ashes!"

"The Christian Democratic party!" echoed the Cardinal, "What do they mean? What do they want?"

"Christianity, Monseigneur! That is all!" replied Cyrillon, "All--but so much! You asked me for my history--will you hear it now?"

There was an immediate murmur of assent, and the group around Cardinal Bonpre were soon seated--all save Manuel, who remained standing. Angela sat on a cushion at her uncle's feet, and her deep violet eyes were full of an eager, almost feverish interest which she could scarcely conceal; and the Abbe Vergniaud, vitally and painfully concerned as he was in the narrative about to be told, could not help looking at her, and wondering at the extraordinary light and beauty of her face thus transfigured by an excitation of thought. Was she a secret follower of his son's theories, he wondered? Composing himself in his chair, he sat with bent head, marvelling as he heard the story of the bold and fearless and philosophic life that had sprung into the world all out of his summer's romance with a little innocent girl, whom he had found praying to her guardian angel.

"It is not always ourselves," began Cyrillon in his slow, emphatic, yet musical voice, "who are responsible for the good or the evil we may do in our lives. Much of our character is formed by the earliest impressions of childhood--and my earliest impressions were those of sorrow. I started life with the pulse of my mother's broken heart beating in me,--hence my thoughts were sombre, and of an altogether unnatural character to a child of tender years. We lived--my mother and I--in a small cottage on the edge of a meadow outside the quaint old city of Tours--a meadow, full at all seasons, of the loveliest wild flowers, but sweetest in the springtime when the narcissi bloomed, lifting their thousand cups of sweet perfume like incense to the sky. I used to sit among their cool green stems,--thinking many thoughts, chief among which was a wonder why God had made my little mother so unhappy. I heard afterwards that God was not to blame,--only man, breaking God's laws of equity. She was a good brave woman, for despite her loneliness and tears, she worked hard;--worked to send me to school, and to teach me all she herself knew--which was little enough, poor soul,--but she studied in order to instruct me,--and often when I slept the unconscious sleep of healthy childhood, she was up through half the night spelling out abstruse books, difficult enough for an educated woman to master, but for a peasant--(she was nothing more)--presenting almost superhuman obstacles. I was very quick to learn, and her loving patience was not wasted upon me;--but when I was about eleven years old I resolved that I could no longer burden her with the expenses of my life--so without asking her consent, I hired myself out to a farmer, to clear weeds from his fields, and so began to earn my bread, which is the best and noblest form of knowledge existing in the world for all of us. With the earning of my body's keep came spiritual independence, and young as I was I began to read and consider for myself--till when I was about fifteen chance brought me across the path of a man whose example inspired me and decided my fate, named Aubrey Leigh."

Angela gave a slight exclamation of surprise, and Cyrillon turned his dark eyes upon her.

"Yes, mademoiselle!--I am aware that he has been in Paris lately. No doubt you know him. Certainly he is born to be a leader of men, and if a noble life and unsullied character, together with eloquence, determination, and steadfastness of purpose can help him to fulfil his mission, he will assuredly succeed. He is from America, though born of British parents, and the first thing I gathered from him was an overwhelming desire to study and to master the English language--not because it was English, but because it was the universal language spoken by America. I felt from what he said then,--and I feel still from what I have learnt and know now,--that America has all the future in the hollow of her hand. My intention, had I succeeded in my revengeful attempt this morning, was to escape to America immediately, and from there write under the nom de plume which I have already made known. I can write as easily in English as in French,--for my friend Aubrey Leigh was very kind and took a great liking to me, and stayed in Touraine for a year and a half, simply for the pleasure of instructing me and grafting his theories upon my young and aspiring mind. And now we are as one in our hopes and endeavours, and the years make little disparity between us. He was twenty-two when I was but fifteen,--but now that I am twenty-six and he thirty-three we are far better matched associates. From him I learnt much of the discontents,--ethical and religious,--of the world; from him I learnt how to speak in public. He was then an actor, a sort of wandering 'Bohemian,'--but he soon tired of the sordidness of the stage and aspired to higher platforms of work, and he had already begun to lead the people by his powers of oratory, as he leads them now. I heard him speak in French as fluently as in English; and I resolved on my part to speak likewise in English as easily as he did in French. And when we parted it was with a mutual resolve TO LEAD!--to lead--and ever still to lead!--we would starve on our theories, we said, but we would speak out if it cost us our very lives. To earn daily bread I managed to obtain steady employment as a labourer in the fields,--and I soon gained sufficient to keep my mother and myself. My friend Aubrey had imbued me thoroughly with the love of incessant hard work; there was no disgrace, he said, in digging the soil, if the brain were kept working as well as the hands. And I did keep my brain working; I allowed it also to lie fallow, and to absorb everything of nature that was complex, grand and beautiful,--and from such studies I learnt the goodness and the majesty of the Creator as they are never found in human expositions of Him made by the preachers of creeds. At eighteen I made my first public address,--and the next year published my first book in Tours. But though I won an instant success my soul was hampered and heavy with the burning thought of vengeance; and this thought greatly hindered the true conceptions of life that I desired to entertain. When my mother died, and her failing voice crooned for the last time, 'Ah, la tristesse d'avoir aime!' the spark of hatred I had cherished all the years of my life for my father burst into a flame, and leapt up to its final height this morning as you saw. Now it has gone out into dust and ashes--the way of all such flames! I have been spared for better things I hope. What I have written and done, France knows,--but my thoughts are not limited to France, they seek a wider horizon. France is a decaying nation--her doom is sealed. I work and write for the To-Be, not the Has-Been. Such as my life is, it has never been darkened or brightened by love of any sort, save that which my mother gave me. Your Eminence," and he turned towards the Cardinal, "asks me why I inculcate theories which suggest change, terror and confusion;--Monseigneur, terror and confusion can never be caused save among the ranks of those who have secret reason to be terrorised! There is nothing terrifying in Truth to those who are true! If I distract and alarm unworthy societies, revolting hypocrism, established shams and miserable conventions, I am only the wielder of the broom that sweeps out the cobwebs and the dust from a dirty house. My one desire is to make the habitation of Christian souls clean! Terror and confusion there will be,--there must be;--the time is ripe for it--none of us can escape it--it is the prophesied period of 'men's hearts failing them for fear, and looking after those things which are coming on the earth.' I have not made the time. I am born OF it--one WITH it;--God arranges these things. I am not working for self or for money,--I can live on bread and herbs and water. I want no luxurious surroundings,--no softnesses--no delicacies--no tendernesses--no sympathies! I set my face forward in the teeth of a thousand winds of opposition, forward still forward! I seek nothing for my own personal needs! I know that nothing can hinder me or keep me back! Nothing! Monseigneur, I voice the cry of multitudes!--they have, as it were, been wandering in the wilderness listening to the Gospel for many days,--days which have accumulated to more than eighteen hundred years; just as they did of old,--only the Master did not send them away hungry--He fed them lest they should 'faint by the way.' He thought of that possibility!--we seldom care how many faint by the way, or die in the effort to live! Monseigneur, I must--I will speak for the dumb mouths of the nations! And every unit that can so speak, or can so write, should hasten to turn itself into a Pentecostal flame of fire to blaze and burn a warning upon the verge of this new century,--causing men to prophesy with divers tongues, of the Truth of God,--not of the lies that have been made to represent Him!"

Felix Bonpre raised one hand with a slight gesture enjoining silence, and seemed wrapped for a moment in painful meditation. Angela looking anxiously up at him caught, not his glance, but that of Manuel, who smiled at her encouragingly. Presently the Cardinal spoke,--gently and with a kind of austere patience.

"Am I to understand from your speech, my son, and the work of your life, that you consider the Church a lie? I put the question plainly; but I do not ask it either to reproach or intimidate you. I am well aware I can do neither. Thought is free to the individual as well as to the nations; and whereas, in past time we had one man who could think and speak, we have now a thousand! We are unfortunately apt to forget the spread of education;--but a man who thinks as you do, and dares all things for the right to act upon his thought, should surely be able to clearly explain his reasons for arming himself against any outwardly expressed form of faith, which has received the acceptance and submission of the world?"

"Monseigneur, I do not attack any faith! Faith is necessary,--faith is superb! I honour this uplifting virtue,--whether I find it in the followers of the Talmud or the Koran, or the New Testament, and, personally speaking, I would die for my belief in the great name and ethical teaching of Christ. I attack the Church--yes,--and why? Because it has departed from the Faith! Because it is a mere system now,--corrupt in many parts, as all systems must naturally become when worn out by long usage. In many ways it favours stupid idolatries, and in others it remains deaf and blind and impervious to the approach of great spiritual and religious facts, which are being made splendidly manifest by Science. Why, there is not a miracle in the Testament that science will not make possible!--there is not a word Christ ever spoke that shall not be proved true! And may I not be called a Christian? I may,--I must,--I will be,--for I am! But hypocrisy, false measures, perverted aims, and low pandering to ignorance and brutality, vile superstition and intimidation--these things must be destroyed if the Church is to last with honour to itself and with usefulness to others. To-day, over in England, they are quarrelling with bitter acrimony concerning forms and outward symbols of religion, thus fulfilling the words of the Lord, 'Ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter but within ye are full of extortion and excess.' Now, if the Spirit of Christ were at all in these men who thus argue, there would be no trouble about forms or symbols of faith,--there would be too much of the faith itself for any such petty disputation. Monseigneur, I swear to you, I say nothing, teach nothing but what is the straight and true command of Christ! . . . no more, but also no less!"

Moved by the young man's eloquence, the Cardinal looked at him straightly in the eyes.

"You speak well," he said, "Some people would tell you that you have that fluency of tongue which is judged dangerous. But danger is after all only for those who have something to fear. If we of the Church are pure in our intent nothing should disturb our peace,--nothing should move us from our anchorage. Your ideas, you say, are founded on the Master's Word?"

"Entirely," replied Cyrillon, "I am working,--Aubrey Leigh is working,--we are all working for a House of Praise more than a Place of Prayer. We want to give thanks for what we are, and what, if we follow the sane and healthy laws of life, we may be,--rather than continue the clamour for more benefits when we have already received, and are receiving so much."

"Would you not pray at all then?" asked Bonpre.

"Yes--for others, not for ourselves! And then not as the Church prays. Her form of service is direct disobedience!"

"In what way?"

"Monseigneur, I always preface my remarks on these subjects with the words 'IF we believe in Christ.' I say IF we believe, we must accept His commands; and they are plain enough. 'WHEN YE PRAY, USE NOT VAIN REPETITIONS AS THE HEATHEN DO, FOR THEY THINK THEY SHALL BE HEARD FOR THEIR MUCH SPEAKING. BE NOT YE THEREFORE LIKE UNTO THEM, FOR YOUR FATHER KNOWETH WHAT THINGS YE HAVE NEED OF BEFORE YE ASK HIM.' Now if this is to be understood as the command of Christ, the Messenger of God, do we not deliberately act against it in all directions? Vain repetitions! The Church is full of them,--choked with them! The priests who order us to say ten or twenty 'Paternosters' by way of penance, are telling us to do exactly what Christ commanded us not to do! The terrible Litany of the Protestant Church, with its everlasting 'Good Lord deliver us,' is another example of vain repetition. Again--think of these words--'When thou prayest, thou shalt NOT BE AS THE HYPOCRITES ARE, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues, and at the corners of the streets THAT THEY MAY BE SEEN OF MEN.' Is not all our churchgoing that we may be seen of men?"

"Then, my son, it seems that you would do away with the Church altogether in the extremity of your zeal!" said the Cardinal gently, "There must surely be some outward seeming--some city set on a hill whose light cannot be hid--some visible sign of Christ among us--"

"True, Monseigneur, but such a sign must be of so brilliant and pure a nature,--so grand an uplifted Cross of unsullied light that it shall be as the sun rising out of darkness! Oh, I would have churches built gloriously, with every possible line of beauty and curve of perfect architecture in their fabrication;--but I would have no idolatrous emblems,--no superstitious ceremonies within them,--no tawdry reliquaries of gems--no boast of the world's wealth at all; but great Art,--the result of man's great Thought rendered and given with pure simplicity! I would have great music,--and more than all I would have thanksgiving always! And if valuables were brought to the altar for gifts, the gifts should be given out again to those in need-not kept,--not left untouched like a miser's useless hoard, while one poor soul was starving!"

"My son, such a scheme of purification as yours will take centuries to accomplish," murmured Bonpre slowly, "Almost it would need Christ to come again!"

"And who shall say He will not come!" exclaimed Cyrillon fervently, "Who shall swear He is not even now among us! Has he not told us all to 'watch,' because we know not the hour at which He cometh? No, Monseigneur!--centuries are not needed for Truth to make itself manifest nowadays! We hold Science by the hand,--she is becoming our familiar friend and companion, and through her guidance we have learned that the Laws of the Universe are Truth,--Truth which cannot be contradicted; and that only the things which move and work in harmony with those laws can last. All else must perish! 'WHOSOEVER IS NOT WITH ME IS AGAINST ME'--or in other words, whosoever opposes himself to Eternal Laws must be against the whole system of the Universe. and is therefore a discord which is bound to be silenced. Monseigneur, Christ was a Divine Preacher of Truth;--and I, in my humble man's way endeavour to follow Truth. And if I ever fail now, after to-day's attempted crime, to honour the commands of Christ, and obey them as closely as I can, then pass your condemnation upon me, but not till then! Meanwhile, give me a good man's blessing!"

Deeply interested as he was, the Cardinal nevertheless still hesitated. To him, though the sayings and opinions of the famous "Gys Grandit" were not exactly new, there was something terrible in hearing him utter them with such bold and trenchant meaning. He sighed, and appeared lost in thought; till Manuel touched him gently on the arm.

"Dear friend, are you afraid to bless this man who loves our Father?"

"Afraid? My child, I am afraid of nothing--but there is grave trouble in my heart--"

"Nay, trouble should never enter there!" said Manuel softly, "Stretch out your hand!--let no human soul wait for a benediction!"

Profoundly moved, the Cardinal obeyed, and laid his white trembling hand on Cyrillon's bent head.

"May God forgive thee the intention of thy sin today!" he said, in a low and solemn tone--"May Christ guide thee out of all evil, and lead thee through the wildness of the world to Heaven's own peace, which passeth understanding!"

So gentle, so brave, so sweet and tender were the accents in which he spoke these few simple works, that the tears filled Angela's eyes, and Abbe Vergniaud, resting his head on one hand, felt a strange contraction in his throat, and began to think of possible happy days yet to be passed perchance in seclusion with this long-denied son of his, who had sprung out of the secret ways of love, first to slay and then to redeem him. Could there be a more plain and exact measuring out of law? If he had not confessed his sin he would have probably died in it suddenly without a chance of amendment or repentance--but lo!--on confession, his life had been saved as if by a miracle, and the very result of evil had been transformed into consolation! So he sat absorbed, wondering--musing--and while the Cardinal spoke his blessing with closed eyes, all heads were bent, and faces hidden. And in the reverent silence that followed, the gentle prelate gave a sign of kind dismissal and farewell to all, which they, understanding, accepted, and at once made their brief adieuxthe Abbe Vergniaud only lingering a moment longer than the rest, to bend humbly down and kiss his Apostolic ring. Then they left him, alone with Manual.

On their way out of the house, through Angela's studio, the Princesse D'Agramont paused for a few minutes to say further kind words to the Abbe respecting the invitation she had given him to her Chateau--, and while she was thus engaged, Angela turned hurriedly to Cyrillon.

"As 'Gys Grandit' you receive many letters from strangers, do you not?"

The young man regarded her earnestly, with unconcealed admiration glowing in his fine eyes.

"Assuredly, Mademoiselle! And some of these letters are very dear to me, because they make me aware of friends I might otherwise never have known."

"You have one correspondent who is deeply interested in your theories, and who sympathises keenly in all your religious views--" she went on, lowering her eyes--"a certain Madame Angele--"

He uttered a quick exclamation of pleasure.

"You know her?"

She looked up,--her eyes sparkled--and she laid a finger on her lips.

"Keep my secret!" she said--"I am so glad to meet you personally at last!"

He stared, bewildered.

"You--you . . . !"

"Yes. I!" and she smiled--"The mysterious and Christian-Democratic 'Angele' is Angela Sovrani. So you see we have been unconscious friends for some time!"

His face grew radiant, and he made a quick movement towards her.

"Then I owe you a great debt of gratitude!" he said--"For encouragement--for sympathy--for help in dark hours!--and how unworthy I have proved of your goodness . . . what must you think of me--you--so beautiful--so good--"

She moved back a little with a warning gesture--and his words were interrupted by the Abbe, who glancing from one to the other in a little surprise, said, as he bent reverently over her hand and kissed it,--

"We must be going, Cyrillon!"

Another few moments and Angela was left alone to think over, and try to realise the strange and rapidly-occurring events of the day. Whatever her thoughts were they seemed for a long time to be of a somewhat April-like character, for her eyes brimmed over with tears even while she smiled.

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

XVII

In one of the few remaining streets of Rome which the vandal hand of the modern builder and restorer has not meddled with, stands the "Casa D'Angeli", a sixteenth-century building fronted with wonderfully carved and widely projecting balconies--each balcony more or less different in design, yet forming altogether in their entirety the effect of complete sculptural harmony. The central one looks more like a cathedral shrine than the embrasure of a window, for above it angels' heads look out from the enfolding curves of their own tall wings, and a huge shield which might serve as a copy of that which Elaine kept bright for Lancelot, is poised between, bearing a lily, a cross, and a heart engraven in its quarterings. Here, leaning far forward to watch the intense gold of the Roman moon strike brightness and shadow out of the dark uplifted pinions of her winged stone guardians, stood Sylvie Hermenstein, who, in her delicate white attire, with the moonbeams resting like a halo on her soft hair, might have easily passed for some favoured saint whom the sculptured angels were protecting. And yet she was only one whom the world called "a frivolous woman of society, who lived on the admiration of men". So little did they know her,--so little indeed does the world know about any of us. It was true that Sylvie, rich, lovely, independent, and therefore indifferent to opinions, lived her own life very much according to her own ideas,--but then those ideas were far more simple and unworldly than anybody gave her credit for. She to whom all the courts of Europe were open, preferred to wander in the woods alone, reading some favourite book, to almost any other pleasure,--and as for the admiration which she won by a look or turn of her head wherever she went, nothing in all the world so utterly bored her as this influence of her own charm. For she had tried men and found them wanting. With all the pent-up passion of her woman's soul she longed to be loved,--but what she understood by love was a much purer and more exalted emotion than is common among men and women. She was suffering just now from an intense and overpowering ennui. Rome was beautiful, she averred, but dull. Stretching her fair white arms out over the impervious stone-angels she said this, and more than this, to someone within the room, who answered her in one of the most delightfully toned voices in the world--a voice that charmed the ear by its first cadences, and left the listener fascinated into believing that its music was the expression of a perfectly harmonious mind.

"You seem very discontented," said the voice, speaking in English, "But really your pathway is one of roses!"

"You think so?" and Sylvie turned her head quickly round and looked at her companion, a handsome little man of some thirty-five years of age, who stretching himself lazily full length in an arm-chair was toying with the silky ears of an exceedingly minute Japanese spaniel, Sylvie's great pet and constant companion. "Oh, mon Dieu! You, artist and idealist though you are--or shall I say as you are supposed to be," and she laughed a little, "you are like all the rest of your sex! Just because you see a woman able to smile and make herself agreeable to her friends, and wear pretty clothes, and exchange all the bon mots of badinage and every-day flirtation, you imagine it impossible for her to have any sorrow!"

"There is only one sorrow possible to a woman," replied the gentleman, who was no other than Florian Varillo, the ideal of Angela Sovrani's life, smiling as he spoke with a look in his eyes which conveyed an almost amorous meaning.

Sylvie left the balcony abruptly, and swept back into the room, looking a charming figure of sylph-like slenderness and elegance in her clinging gown of soft white satin showered over with lace and pearls.

"Only one sorrow!" she echoed, "And that is--?"

"Inability to win love, or to awaken desire!" replied Varillo, still smiling.

The pretty Comtesse raised her golden head a little more proudly, with the air of a lily lifting itself to the light on its stem--her deep blue eyes flashed.

"I certainly cannot complain on that score!" she said, with a touch of malice as well as coldness--"But the fact that men lose their heads about me does not make me in the least happy."

"It should do so!" and Varillo set the little Japanese dog carefully down on the floor, whereupon it ran straight to its mistress, uttering tiny cries of joy, "There is no sweeter triumph for a woman than to see men subjugated by her smile, and intimidated by her frown;--to watch them burning themselves like moths in her clear flame, and dying at her feet for love of her! The woman who can do these things is gifted with the charm which makes or ruins life,--few can resist her,--she draws sensitive souls as a magnet draws the needle,--and the odd part of it all is that she need not have any heart herself--she need not feel one pulse of the passion with which she inspires others--indeed it is better that she should not. The less she is moved herself, the greater is her fascination. Love clamours far more incessantly and passionately at a closed gate than an open one!"

Sylvie was silent for a minute or two looking at him with something of doubt and disdain. The room they were in was one of those wide and lofty apartments which in old days might have been used for a prince's audience chamber, or a dining hall for the revelry of the golden youth of Imperial Rome. The ceiling, supported by eight slender marble columns, was richly frescoed with scenes from Ariosto's poems, some of the figures being still warm with colour and instinct with life--and on the walls were the fading remains of other pictures, the freshest among them being a laughing Cupid poised on a knot of honeysuckle, and shooting his arrow at random into the sky. Ordinarily speaking, the huge room was bare and comfortless to a degree,--but the Comtesse Sylvie's wealth, combined with her good taste, had filled it with things that made it homelike as well as beautiful. The thickest velvet pile carpets laid over the thickest of folded mattings, covered the marble floors, and deprived them of their usual chill,--great logs of wood burned cheerfully in the wide chimney, and flowers, in every sort of quaint vase or bowl, made bright with colour and blossom all dark and gloomy corners, and softened every touch of melancholy away. A grand piano stood open,--a mandoline tied with bright ribbons, lay on a little table near a cluster of roses and violets,--books, music, drawings, bits of old drapery and lace were so disposed as to hide all sharp corners and forbidding angles,--and where the frescoes on the wall were too damaged to be worth showing even in outline, some fine old Flemish tapestry covered the defect. Sylvie herself, in the exquisite clothing which she always made it her business to wear, was the brilliant completion of the general picturesqueness,--and Florian Varillo seemed to think so as he looked at her with the practised underglance of admiration which is a trick common to Italians, and which some women accept as a compliment and others resent as an insult.

"Do you not agree with me?" he said persuasively, with a smile which showed his fine and even teeth to perfection, "When the chase is over the hunters go home tired! What a man cannot have, that very thing is what he tries most to obtain!"

"You speak from experience, I suppose," said Sylvie, moving slowly across the room towards the fire, and caressing her little dog which she held nestled under her rounded chin like a ball of silk, "And yet you, more than most men, have everything you can want in this world--but I suppose you are not satisfied--not even with Angela!"

"Angela is a dear little woman!" said Florian, with an air of emotional condescension, "The dearest little woman in the world! And she is really clever."

"Clever!" echoed Sylvie, "Is that all?"

"Cara Contessa, is not that enough?"

"Angela is a genius," averred Sylvie, with warmth and energy, "a true genius!--a great,--a sublime artist!"

"Che Che!" and Varillo smiled, "How delightful it is to hear one woman praise another! Women are so often like cats spitting and hissing at each other, tearing at each other's clothes and reputations,--clothes even more than reputations,--that it is really quite beautiful to me to hear you admire my Angela! It is very generous of you!"

"Generous of me!" and the Comtesse Hermenstein looked him full in the eyes, "Why I think it an honour to know her--a privilege to touch her hand! All Europe admires her--she is one of the world's greatest artists."

"She paints wonderfully well,--for a woman," said Varillo lazily, "But there is so much in that phrase, cara Contessa, 'for a woman'. Your charming sex often succeeds in doing very clever and pretty things; but in a man they would not be considered surprising. You fairy creatures are not made for fame--but for love!"

The Comtesse glanced him up and down for a moment, then laughed musically.

"And for desertion, and neglect as well!" she said, "And sometimes for bestowing upon YOUR charming sex every fortune and every good blessing, and getting kicked for our pains! And sometimes it happens that we are permitted the amazing honour of toiling to keep you in food and clothing, while you jest at your clubs about the uselessness of woman's work in the world! Yes, I know! Have you seen Angela's great picture?"

Again Florian smiled.

"Great? No! I know that the dear little girl has fixed an enormous canvas up in her studio, and that she actually gets on a ladder to paint something upon it;--but it is always covered,--she does not wish me to see it till it is finished. She is like a child in some things, and I always humour her. I have not the least desire to look at her work till she herself is willing to show it to me. But in myself I am convinced she is trying to do too much--it is altogether too large an attempt."

"What are YOU doing?" asked Sylvie abruptly.

"Merely delicate trifles,--little mosaics of art!" said Varillo with languid satisfaction, "They may possibly please a connoisseur,--but they are quite small studies."

"You have the same model you had last year?" queried Sylvie.

Their eyes met, and Varillo shifted uneasily in his chair.

"The same," he replied curtly.

Again Sylvie laughed.

"Immaculate creature!" she murmured, "The noblest of her sex, of course! Men always call the women who pander to their vices 'noble'."

Varillo flushed an angry red.

"You are pleased to be sarcastic, fair lady." he said carelessly, "I do not understand--"

"No? You are not usually so dense with me, though to those who do not know you as well as I do, you sometimes appear to be the very stupidest of men! Now be frank!--tell me, is not Pon-Pon one of the 'noble' women?"

"She is a very good creature," averred Varillo gently, and with an air that was almost pious,--"She supports her family entirely on her earnings."

"How charming of her!" laughed Sylvie, "And so exceptional a thing to do, is it not? My dressmaker does the same thing,--she 'supports' her family; but respectably! And just think!--if ever your right hand loses its cunning as a painter, Angela will be able to 'support' YOU!"

"Always Angela!" muttered Varillo, beginning to sulk, "Cannot you talk of something else?"

"No,--not for the moment! She is an interesting subject,--to ME! She will arrive in Rome to-morrow night, and her uncle Cardinal Bonpre, will be with her, and they will all stay at the Sovrani Palace, which seems to me like a bit of the Vatican and an old torture-chamber rolled into one! And, talking of this same excellent Cardinal, they have almost canonized him at the Vatican,--almost, but not quite."

"For what reason?"

"Oh, have you not heard? It appears he performed a miracle in Rouen, curing a child who had been a cripple ever since babyhood, and making him run about as well and strong as possible. One prayer did it, so it is said,--the news reached the Vatican some days ago; our charming Monsignor Gherardi told me of it. The secretary of the Archbishop of Rouen brought the news personally to the Holy Father."

"I do not believe it," said Varillo indifferently, "The days of miracles are past. And from what I know, and from what Angela has told me of her uncle, Cardinal Bonpre, he would never lend himself to such nonsense."

"Well, I only tell you what is just now the talk at the Vatican," said Sylvie, "Your worthy uncle-in-law that is to be, may be Pope yet! Have you heard from Angela?"

"Every day. But she has said nothing about this miracle."

"Perhaps she does not know,"--and Sylvie began to yawn, and stretch her white arms above her head lazily, "Oh, DIO MIO! How terribly dull is Rome!"

"How long have you been here, Contessa?"

"Nearly a week! If I am not more amused I shall go away home to Budapest."

"But how is one to amuse you?" asked Varillo, sitting down beside her and endeavouring to take her hand. She drew it quickly from him.

"Not in that way!" she said scornfully, "Is it possible that you can be so conceited! A woman says she is dull and bored, and straightway the nearest man imagines his uncouth caresses will amuse her! TIENS TIENS! When will you understand that all women are not like Pon-Pon?"

Varillo drew back, chafed and sullen. His AMOUR PROPRE was wounded, and he began to feel exceedingly cross. The pretty laugh of Sylvie rang out like a little peal of bells.

"Suppose Angela knew that you wished to 'amuse' me in that particularly unamusing way?" she went on, "You--who, to her, are CHEVALIER SANS PEUR ET SANS REPROCHE!"

"Angela is different to all other women," said Varillo quickly, with a kind of nervous irritation in his manner as he spoke, "and she has to be humoured accordingly. She is extremely fantastic--full of strange ideas and unnatural conceptions of life. Her temperament is studious and dreamy--self-absorbed too at times--and she is absolutely passionless. That is why she will make a model wife."

The Comtesse drew her breath quickly,--her blood began to tingle and her heart to beat--but she repressed these feelings and said,

"You mean that her passionless nature will be her safety in all temptation?"

"Exactly!" and Varillo, smiling, became good natured again--"For Angela to be untrue would be a grotesque impossibility! She has no idea of the stronger sentiment of love which strikes the heart like a lightning flash and consumes it. Her powers of affection are intellectually and evenly balanced,--and she could not be otherwise than faithful because her whole nature is opposed to infidelity. But it is not a nature which, being tempted, overcomes--inasmuch as there is no temptation which is attractive to her!"

"You think so?" and a sparkle of satire danced in Sylvie's bright eyes, "Really? And because she is self-respecting and proud, you would almost make her out to be sexless?--not a woman at all,--without heart?--without passion? Then you do not love her!"

"She is the dearest creature to me in all the world!" declared Florian, with emotional ardour, "There is no one at all like her! Even her beauty, which comes and goes with her mood, is to an artist's eye like mine, exquisite,--and more dazzling to the senses than the stereotyped calm of admitted perfection in form and feature. But, CARA CONTESSA, I am something of an analyst in character--and I know that the delicacy of Angela's charm lies in that extraordinary tranquillity of soul, which, (YOU suggested the word!) may indeed be almost termed sexless. She is purer than snow--and very much colder."

"You are fortunate to be the only man selected to melt that coldness," said Sylvie with a touch of disdain, "Myself, I think you make a great mistake in calling Angela passionless. She is all passion--and ardour--but it is kept down,--held firmly within bounds, and devoutly consecrated to you. Pardon me, if I say that you should be more grateful for the love and trust she gives you. You are not without rivals in the field."

Florian Varillo raised his eyebrows smilingly.

"Rivals? VERAMENTE! I am not aware of them!"

"No, I should say you had too good an opinion of yourself to imagine any rival possible!" said the Comtesse, "But such a person may exist!"

Varillo yawned, and flicked a grain of dust off his waistcoat with a fastidious thumb and finger.

"Impossible! No one could possibly fall in love with Angela now! She is an icicle,--no man save myself has the ghost of a chance with her!"

"Of course not," said Sylvie impatiently, "Because she is betrothed to you. But if things were not as they are--"

"It would make no difference, I assure you," laughed Varillo gaily, "Angela does not like men as a rule. She is fondest of romance--of dreams--of visions, out of which come the ideas for her pictures--"

"And she is quite passionless with all this, you think?" said Sylvie, "The 'stronger sentiment which strikes the heart like a flash of lightning, and consumes it', as you so poetically describe it--could never possibly disturb her peace?"

"I think not," replied Varillo, with a meditative air, "Angela and I glided into love like two children wandering by chance into a meadow full of flowers,--no storm struck us--no sudden danger signal flashed from our eyes--no trembling hurry of the blood bade us rush into each other's arms and cling!--nothing of this marvel touched us!--we loved with all the calm--but without the glory!"

His voice,--the most fascinating quality attached to his personality,--rose and fell in this little speech with an exquisite cadence, half sad, half sweet,--and Sylvie, impressionable creature as she was, with her innate love of romance and poetry, was unconsciously moved by it to a faint sigh. There was nothing to sigh for, really,--it was just a mere melodious noise of words, in the making of which Florian Varillo was an adept. He had not an atom of serious thought in his remark, any more than in the dainty verses he was wont to append to his pictures--verses which he turned out with the lightest and swiftest ease, and which read like his spoken sentences, as if there were a meaning in them, when truly there was none. But Sylvie was just then in a curious state of mind, and slight things easily impressed her. She was in love--and yet she was not in love. The handsome face and figure of the Marquis Fontenelle, together with many of his undoubted good and even fine qualities, attracted her and held her in thrall, much more than the consciousness of his admiration and pursuit of her,--but--and this was a very interfering "but" indeed,--she was reluctantly compelled to admit to herself that there was no glozing over the fact that he was an incorrigibly "fast", otherwise bad man. His life was a long record of LIAISONS with women,--an exact counterpart of the life of the famous actor Miraudin. And though there is a saying that a reformed rake makes the best husband, Sylvie was scarcely sure of being willing to try this test,--besides, the Marquis had not offered himself in that capacity, but only as a lover. In Paris,--within reach of him, surrounded by his gracious and graceful courtesies everywhere, the pretty and sensitive Comtesse had sometimes felt her courage oozing out at her finger's ends,--and the longing to be loved became so strong and overwhelming in her soul that she had felt she must perforce one day yield to her persistent admirer's amorous solicitations, come what would of it in the end. Her safety had been in flight; and here in Rome, she had found herself, like a long-tossed little ship, suddenly brought up to firm anchorage. The vast peace and melancholy grandeur of the slowly dying "Mother of Nations", enveloped her as with a sheltering cloak from the tempest of her own heart and senses, and being of an exquisitely refined and dainty nature in herself, she had, while employing her time in beautifying, furnishing and arranging her apartments in the casa D'Angeli, righted her mind, so to speak, and cleared it from the mists of illusion which had begun to envelop it, so that she could now think of Fontenelle quietly and with something of a tender compassion,--she could pray for him and wish him all things good,--but she could not be quite sure that she loved him. And this was well. For we should all be very sure indeed that we do love, before we crucify ourselves to the cross of sacrifice. Inasmuch as if the love in us be truly Love, we shall not feel the nails, we shall be unconscious of the blood that flows, and the thorns that prick and sting,--we shall but see the great light of Resurrection springing glorious out of death! But if we only THINK we love,--when our feeling is the mere attraction of the senses and the lighter impulses--then our crucifixion is in vain, and our death is death indeed. Some such thoughts as these had given Sylvie a new charm of manner since her arrival in Rome--she was less mirthful, but more sympathetic--less RIANTE, but infinitely prettier and more fascinating. Florian Varillo studied her appreciatively in this regard after he had uttered his little meaningless melody of sentiment, and thought within himself--"A week or two and I could completely conquer that woman!" He was mistaken--men who think these sort of things often are. But the thought satisfied him, and gave bold lustre to his eyes and brightness to his smile when he rose to take his leave. He had been one of the guests at a small and early dinner-party given by the Comtesse that evening,--and with the privilege of an old acquaintance, he had lingered thus long after all the others had gone to their respective homes.

"I will bid you now the felicissima notte, cara e bella contessa!" he said caressingly, raising her small white hand to his lips, and kissing it with a lingering pressure of what he considered a peculiarly becoming moustache--"When Angela arrives to-morrow night I shall be often at the Palazzo Sovrani--shall I see you there?"

"Of course you will see me there," replied Sylvie, a little impatiently, "Am I not one of Angela's closest friends?"

"True! And for the sake of la mia dolcezza, you will also be a friend to me?"

"'la mia dolcezza'", repeated Sylvie, "Is that what you call her?"

"Yes--but I fear it is not original!" said Varillo smiling, "One Ariosto called his lady thus."

"Yes?" and Sylvie's eyes darkened and grew humid with a sudden tenderness of thought, "It is a pretty phrase!"

"It should be used to YOU always, by every man who has my present privilege!" said Varillo, gallantly, kissing her hand once more, "You will be my friend?"

Sylvie disengaged her hand from his.

"You must not depend upon me, Signor," she said with sudden coldness, "To be perfectly frank with you I am not sure that I like you. You are very charming and very clever--but I doubt your sincerity."

"Ah, che sono infelice!" murmured varillo softly, "you are right, bellissima madama! I am not myself with many people--but with you--you are one of the few who understand me . . . I am the very soul of candour!"

He fixed his eyes full upon her with an open and straight regard, adding, "Can you doubt me?" in a touching tone of wounded feeling.

The Comtesse laughed, and her face flushed.

"Well, I do not know!" she said, with a light gesture of her hands as though she threw something unpleasant away from her, "I shall fudge of you by the happiness--or sorrow--of Angela!"

A slight frown contracted his brows--but it passed quickly, and the candid smile illumined his mobile face once more.

"Ebben! Buona notte, bela capricciosa!" and bowing low he turned towards the door, "Thank you a thousand times for a very happy evening! Even when you are unkind to me you are still charming! Addio!"

She murmured an "addio" in response, and when he had gone, and the echo of his footfall down the great marble stairs had completely died away, she went out once more to the balcony and leaned among the sculptured angels, a dainty, slender, white figure, with her soft flower-like face turned up to the solemn sky, where the large moon marched like an Amazon through space, attended by her legions and battalions of stars. So slight, so fragile and sweet a woman!--with a precious world of love pent up in her heart . . . yet alone--quite alone on this night of splendid luminousness and majestic suggestions of infinity,--an infinity so monstrous and solitary to the one delicate creature, whose whole soul craved for a perfect love. Alas, for this "perfect love," of which all the dearest women dream! Where shall they find it?--and how shall they win it? Too often it comes when they may not have it; the cup of nectar is offered to lips that are forbidden to drink of it, because the world's convention stands between and turns the honey to gall. One of the many vague problems of a future life, offered for our consideration, is the one concerning the righteous satisfaction of love. Will not those who have been bound fast as prisoners in the bonds of matrimony without love, find those whose spirits are naturally one with theirs, but whom they have somehow missed in this life? For Byron's fine lines are eternally true,--

"Few--none--find what they love or could have loved,-- Though accident, blind contact, and the strong Necessity of loving, have removed Antipathies--but to recur ere long Envenom'd with irrevocable wrong."

And the "blind contact" is the worst of all influences brought to bear upon the mind and heart,--the most pernicious, and the most deeply weighted with responsibility. In this regard, Sylvie Hermenstein had acted wisely by removing herself from association, or "blind contact" with her would-be lover,--and yet, though she was aware that her doing so had caused a certain dispersal of the atmosphere which almost veered towards complete disillusion, she found nevertheless, that Rome as she had said, was "dull"; her heart was empty, and longing for she knew not what. And that deep longing she felt could not have been completely gratified by the brief ardours of Fontenelle. And so she sat thinking wearily,--wondering what was to become of her life. She had riches in plenty, a fine estate and castle in Hungary,--servants at her beck and call--and yet with all her wealth and beauty and brilliancy, she felt that she was only loved by two persons in the world, her old butler, and Madame Bozier, who had been her first governess, and who now lived with her, as a sort of dame d'honneur surrounded with every comfort and luxury, and who certainly served her former pupil with a faithful worship that would not have changed, even if the direst poverty instead of riches had been the portion of her beloved patroness. This elderly lady it was who entered now with a soft and hesitating step, and raising her glasses to her eyes, peered anxiously through the lighted room towards the dark balcony where Sylvie stood, like a fairy fallen out of the moon, and who presently ventured to advance and call softly,

"Sylvie!"

The pretty Comtesse turned and smiled.

"Is it you, Katrine? Will you come out here? It is not cold, and there is a lace wrap on the chair,--put it round your dear old head and come and be romantic with me!" and she laughed as the worthy Bozier obeyed her, and came cautiously out among the angels' sculptured wings. "Ah, dear Katrine! The happy days are gone when a dark-eyed Roman lover would come strolling down a street like this to strike the chords of his mandoline, and sing the dear old song,

"'Ti voglio bene assai, E tu non pensi a me!'"

Without thinking about it, she sang this refrain suddenly in her sweet mezzo-soprano, every note ringing clear on the silence of the night, and as she did so a man of slim figure and medium height, stepped out of the dark shadows and looked up. His half laughing eyes, piercing in their regard, met the dreamy soft ones of the pretty woman sitting among the angels' heads above him--and pausing a moment he hesitated--then lifted his hat. His face was excessively delicate in outline and very pale, but a half mischievous smile softened and sweetened the firm lines of his mouth and chin, and as the moonbeams played caressingly on his close curling crop of fair hair, he looked different enough to most of the men in Rome to be considered singular as well as handsome. Sylvie, hidden as she was among the shadows, blushed and drew back, a little vexed with herself,--the worthy Madame Bozier was very properly scandalised.

"My dear child!" she murmured, "Remember--we are in Rome. People judge things so strangely! What an unfortunate error!--"

But Sylvie became suddenly unmanageable. Her love of coquetry and mischief got the better of her, and she thrust out her pretty head over the balcony once more.

"Be quiet, Katrine!" she whispered, "I was longing for a romance, and here is one!" And detaching a rose from her dress she tossed it lightly to the stranger below. He caught it--then looked up once more.

"Till we meet," he said softly in English,--and moving on among the shadows, disappeared.

"Now, who do you suppose HE was?" enquired Sylvie, leaning back against the edge of the balcony, with an arch glance at her gouvernante, "It was someone unlike anyone else here, I am sure! It was somebody with very bright eyes,--laughing eyes,--audacious eyes, because they laughed at me! They sparkled at me like stars on a frosty night! Katrine, have you ever been for a sleigh-ride in America? No, I did not take you there,--I forgot! You would have had the rheumatism, poor dear! Well, when you are in America during the winter, you go for rides over the snow in a big sleigh, with tinkling bells fastened to the horses, and you see the stars flash as you pass--like the eyes of that interesting gentleman just now. His face was like a cameo--I wonder who he is! I shall find out! I must do something desperate for Rome is so terribly dull! But I feel better now! I like that man's eyes. They are SUCH a contrast to the sleepy tiger eyes of the Marquis Fontenelle!"

"My dear Sylvie!" remonstrated Madame Bozier, "How can you run on in this way? Do you want to break any more hearts? You are like a lamp for unfortunate moths to burn themselves in!"

"Oh no, not I," said Sylvie, shaking her head with a touch of half melancholy scorn, "I am not a 'professional' beauty! The Prince of Wales does not select me for his admiration,--hence it follows that I cannot possibly be an attraction in Europe. I have not the large frame, the large hands, and the still larger feet of the beautiful English ladies, who rule royal hearts and millionaires' pockets! Men scarcely notice me till they come to know me--and then, pouf!--away go their brains!--and they grovel at my small feet instead of the large ones of the English ladies!" She laughed. "Now how is that, Katrine?"

"C'est du charme--toujurs du charme!" murmured Madame Bozier, studying with a wistful affection the dainty lines of Sylvie's slight figure, "And that is an even more fatal gift than beauty, chere petite!"

"Du charme! You think that is it? Yes?--and so the men grow stupid and wild!--some want me, and some want my fortune--and some do not know what they want!--but one thing is certain, that they all quarrel together about me, and bore me to extinction!--Even the stranger with the bright stars of an American winter for eyes, might possibly bore me if I knew him!"

She gave a short sigh of complete dissatisfaction.

"To be loved, Katrine--really loved! What a delicious thing that would be! Have you ever felt it?"

The poor lady trembled a little, and gave a somewhat mournful smile.

"No, you dear romantic child! I cannot say with truth that I have! I married when I was very young, and my husband was many years older than myself. He was afflicted with chronic rheumatism and gout, and to be quite honest, I could never flatter myself that he thought of me more than the gout. There! I knew that would amuse you!"--this, as Sylvie's pretty tender laugh rippled out again on the air, "And though it sounds as if it were a jest, it is perfectly true. Poor Monsieur Bozier! He was the drawing master at the school where I was assistant governess,--and he was very lonely; he wanted someone to attend to him when the gouty paroxysms came on, and he thought I should do as well, perhaps better than anyone else. And I--I had no time to think about myself at all, or to fall in love--I was very glad to be free of the school, and to have a home of my own. So I married him, and did my best to be a good nurse to him,--but he did not live long, poor man--you see he always would eat things that did not agree with him, and if he could not get them at home he went out and bought them on the sly. There was no romance there, my dear! And of course he died. And he left me nothing at all,--even our little home was sold up to pay our debts. Then I had to work again for my living,--and it was by answering an advertisement in the Times, which applied for an English governess to go to a family in Budapest, that I first came to know you."

"And that is all your history!" said Sylvie, "Poor dear Bozier! How uneventful!"

"Yes, it is," and the worthy lady sighed also, but hers, was a sigh of placid arid philosophical comfort. "Still, my dear, I am not at all sorry to be uninteresting! I have rather a terror of lives that arrange themselves into grand dramas, with terrible love affairs as the central motives."

"Have you? I have not!" said Sylvie thoughtfully,--"With all my heart I admire a 'grande passion.' Sometimes I think it is the only thing that makes history. One does not hear nearly so much of the feuds in which Dante was concerned, as of his love for Beatrice. It is always so, only few people are capable of the strength and patience and devotion needed for this great consummation of life. Now I--"

Madame Bozier smiled, and with tender fingers arranged one of the stray knots of pearls with which Sylvie's white gown was adorned.

"You dear child! You were made for sweetness and caresses,--not suffering . . ."

"You mistake!" said Sylvie, with sudden decision, "You, in your fondness for me, and because you have seen me grow up from childhood, sometimes still view me as a child, and think that I am best amused with frivolities, and have not the soul in me that would endure disaster. But for love's sake I would do anything--yes! . . . anything!"

"My child!"

"Yes," repeated Sylvie, her eyes darkening and lightening quickly in their own fascinating way, "I would consent to shock the stupid old world!--though one can scarcely ever shock it nowadays, because it has itself become so shocking! But then the man for whom I would sacrifice myself, must love ME as ardently as I would love HIM! That is the difficulty, Katrine. For men do not love--they only desire."

She raised her face to the sky, and the moonbeams shed a golden halo round her.

"That," she said slowly, "is the reason why I have come here to avoid the Marquis Fontenelle. He does not love me!"

"He is a villain!" said Madame Bozier with asperity.

"Helas! There are so many villains!" sighed Sylvie, still looking up at the brilliant heavens, "And sometimes if a villain really loves anybody he half redeems his villainy. But the Marquis loves himself best of anyone in the world . . . and I--I do not intend to be second in anyone's affections! So . . ." she paused, "Do you see that star, Katrine? It is as bright as if it were shining on a frosty night in America. And do you not notice the resemblance to the eyes of the stranger who has my rose? I daresay he will put it under his pillow to-night, and dream!" She laughed,--"Let us go in!"

Madame Bozier followed her as she stepped back into the lighted salon, where she was suddenly met by her little Arab page, carrying a large cluster of exquisite red and white roses. A card was attached to the flowers, bearing the words, "These many unworthy blossoms in return for one beyond all worth."

The Comtesse read and passed it in silence to Madame Bozier. A smile was on her face, and a light in her eyes.

"I think Rome is not so dull after all!" she said, as she set the flowers carefully in a tall vase of Etruscan ware, "Do you know, I am beginning to find it interesting!"

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

XVIII

Aubrey Leigh was a man who had chosen his own way of life, and, as a natural consequence of this, had made for himself an independent and original career. Born in the New World of America he had been very highly educated,--not only under the care of a strict father, and an idolising mother, but also with all the advantages one of the finest colleges in the States could give him. Always a brilliant scholar, and attaining his successes by leaps and bounds rather than by close and painstaking study, the day came,--as it comes to all finely-tempered spirits,--when an overpowering weariness or body and soul took possession of him,--when the very attainment of knowledge seemed absurd,--and all things, both in nature and art, took on a sombre colouring, and the majestic pageant of the world's progress appeared no more than a shadow too vain and futile to be worth while watching as it passed. Into a Slough of Despond, such as Solomon experienced when he wrote his famous "Ecclesiastes," Aubrey sank unconsciously, and,--to do him justice,--most unwillingly. His was naturally a bright, vivacious, healthy nature--but he was over-sensitively organised,--his nerves did not resemble iron so much as finely-tempered steel, which could not but suffer from the damp and rust in the world's conventionalities. And some "little rift within the lute" chanced to him, as it often chances to many, so that the subtle music of his soul jarred into discord with the things of life, making harsh sounds in place of melody. There was no adequate cause for this,--neither disappointed love nor balked ambition shadowed his days;--it was something altogether indefinable--a delicate, vague discontent which, had he known it, was merely the first stirring of an embryo genius destined one day to move the world. He did not know what ailed him,--but he grew tired--tired of books--tired of music--tired of sifting the perplexing yet enchanting riddles of science--tired of even his home and his mother's anxious eyes of love that watched his moods too closely for his peace,--and one day, out of the merest boyish impulse, he joined a company of travelling actors and left America. Why he did this he could never tell, save that he was a student and lover of Shakespeare. Much to his own surprise, and somewhat to his disgust, he distinguished himself with exceptional brilliancy on the stage,--his voice, his manner, his physique and his bearing were all exceptional, and told highly in his favour,--but unfortunately his scholarly acumen and knowledge of literature went against him with his manager. This personage, who was densely ignorant, and who yet had all the ineffable conceit of ignorance, took him severely to task for knowing Shakespeare's meanings better than he did,--and high words resulted in mutual severance. Aubrey was hardly sorry when his theatrical career came thus untimely to an end. At first he had imagined it possible to become supreme in histrionic art,--one who should sway the emotions of thousands by a word, a look or a gesture,--he had meant to be the greatest Shakespearean actor of his day; and with his knowledge of French, which was as perfect as his knowledge of English, he had even foreseen the possibility of taking the French stage as well as the English by storm. But when he gradually came to discover the mean tricks and miserable treacheries used by his fellow-actors to keep a rising comrade down,--when he felt to the core of his soul the sordidness and uncleanness of his surroundings,--when he shudderingly repulsed the would-be attentions of the painted drabs called "ladies of the stage",--and above all, when he thought of the peace and refinement of the home he had, for a mere freak, forsaken,--the high tone of thought and feeling maintained there, the exquisite gracefulness and charm of womanhood, of which his mother had been, and was still a perfect embodiment, some new and far stronger spirit rose up within him, crying--"What is this folly? Am I to sink to the level of those whom I know and see are beneath me? With what I have of brain and heart and feeling, are these unworthy souls to drag me down? Shall I not try to feel my wings, and make one bold dash for higher liberty? And if I do so, whither shall I fly?"

He had come to England at this period,--and in the small provincial town where his final rupture with the illiterate theatrical manager had taken place, there was a curious, silent contest going on between the inhabitants and their vicar. The vicar was an extremely unpopular person,--and the people were striving against him, and fighting him at every possible point of discussion. For so small a community the struggle was grim,--and Aubrey for some time could not understand it, till one day an explanation was offered him by a man engaged in stitching leather, in a dirty evil-smelling little hole of a shop under a dark archway.

"You see, sir, it's this way," he said, "Bessie Morton,--she wor as good a girl as ever stepped--bright and buxom and kind hearted--yes, that was Bessie, till some black scoundrel got her love at a soft moment, and took the better of her. Well!--I suppose some good Christian folk would say she wor a bad 'un--but I'll warrant she worn't bad at heart, but only just soft-like--and she an orphan, with no one to look after her, or say she done ill or well. And there was a little child born--the prettiest little creature ye ever saw--Bessie's own copy--all blue eyes and chestnut hair--and it just lived a matter of fower year, and then it took sick and died. Bessie went nigh raving mad; that she did. And now, what do you think, sir? The passon refused to bury that there little child in consecrated ground, cos'twas born out of wedlock! What d'ye think of that for a follower of Jesus with the loving heart? What d'ye think of that?"

"Think!" said Aubrey indignantly, with an involuntary clenching of his hand, "Why, that it is abominable--disgraceful! I should like to thrash the brute!"

"So would a many," said his informant with an approving chuckle, "So would a many! But that's not all--there's more behind--and worse too--"

"Why, what can be worse?"

"Well, sir, we thinks--we ain't got proofs to go on--for Bessie keeps her own counsel--but we thinks the passon hisself is the father of that there little thing he winnot lay in a holy grave!"

"Good God!" cried Aubrey.

"Ay, ay--you may say 'Good God!' with a meaning, sir," said the leather-seller--"And that's why, as we ain't got no facts and no power with bishops, and we ain't able to get at the passon anyhow, we're just making it as unpleasant for him in our way as we can. That's all the people can do, sir, but what they does, they means!"

This incident deeply impressed Aubrey Leigh, and proved to be the turning point in his career. Like a flash of light illumining some divinely written scroll of duty, he suddenly perceived a way in which to shape his own life and make it of assistance to others. He began his plan of campaign by going about among the poorer classes, working as they worked, living as they lived, and enduring what they endured. Disguised as a tramp, he wandered with tramps. He became for a time one of the "hands" in a huge Birmingham factory. After that he worked for several months at the coal pits among the lowest of the men employed there. Then he got a "job" in a dock-yard and studied the ways of shipping and humanity together. During this time of self-imposed probation, he never failed to write letters home to Canada, saying he was "doing well" in England, but how this "doing well" was brought about he never explained. And the actual motive and end of all his experiences was as yet a secret locked within his own heart. Yet when it was put into words it sounded simple enough,--it was merely to find out how much or how little the clergy, or so-called "servants of Christ", obeyed their Master. Did they comfort the comfortless? Were they "wise as serpents, and harmless as doves"? Were they long-suffering, slow to wrath, and forbearing one to the other? Did they truly "feed the sheep"? Did they sacrifice themselves, their feelings, and their ambitions to rescue what was lost? All these and sundry other questions Aubrey Leigh set himself to answer,--and by and by he found himself on an endless path of discovery, where at every step some new truth confronted him;--some amazing hypocrisy burned itself in letters of flame against the splendour of church altars;--some deed of darkness and bigotry and cruelty smirched the white robes of the "ordained to preach the Gospel". Gradually he became so intently and vitally interested in his investigations, and his sympathy for the uncomforted people who had somehow lost Christ instead of finding Him, grew so keen that he resolved to give up his entire life to the work of beginning to try and remedy the evil. He had no independent means,--he lived from hand to mouth earning just what he could by hard labour,--till one day, when the forces in his own soul said "Ready!" he betook himself to one small room which he hired in a fisherman's cottage on the coast of Cornwall, and there sat down to write a book. Half the day he wrote, and half the day he earned his bread as a common fisherman, going out with the others in storm and shine, sailing through sleet and hail and snow, battling with the waves, and playing with Death at every turn of the rocks, which, like the teeth of great monsters, jagged the stormy shore. And he grew strong, and lithe, and muscular--his outward life of hard and changeful labour, accompanied by the inward life of intelligent and creative thought, gradually worked off all depression of soul and effeminacy of body,--his experience of the stage passed away, leaving no trace on his mind but the art, the colour and the method,--particularly the method of speech. With art, colour, and method he used the pen;--with the same art, colour, and method he used his voice, and practised the powers of oratory. He would walk for miles to any lonely place where he could be sure of no interruption,--and there he would speak aloud to the roaring waves and wide stretches of desolate land, and tell them the trenchant things he meant one day to thunder into human ears. Always of a fine figure, his bearing grew more dauntless and graceful,--the dangers of the sea taught him self-control,--the swift changes of the sky gave him the far-off rapt expression and keen flash of his eyes,--the pitiful sorrows of the poor, in which, as he had elected to be one of them, he was bound to share, had deepened the sympathetic lines round his delicate mouth, and had bestowed upon his whole countenance that look which is seldom seen save in the classic marbles--the look of being one with, and yet above mankind. All the different classes of people with whom he had managed to associate had called him "gentleman", a name he had gently but firmly repudiated. "Call me a Man, and let me deserve the title!" he would say smilingly, and his "mates" hearing this would eye each other askance, and whisper among themselves "that he WAS a gentleman for all that, though no doubt he had come down in the world and had to work for his living. And no shame to him as he gave himself no airs, and could turn a hand to anything." And so the time moved on, and he remained in the Cornish fishing village till his book was finished. Then he suddenly went up to London;--and after a few days' absence came back again, and went contentedly on with the fishing once more.

A month or so later, one night when the blackness of the skies was so dense that it could almost be felt, it chanced that he and his companions were far out at sea in their little smack, which lay becalmed between two darknesses--the darkness of the rolling water, and the darkness of the still heaven. Little waves lapped heavily against the boat's side, and the only glimpse of light at all was the yellow flicker of the lamp that hung from the mast of the vessel, casting a tremulous flicker on the sombrous tide, when all at once a great noise like the crash of thunder, or the roll of cannon, echoed through the air, and a meteor more brilliant than an imperial crown of diamonds, flared through the sky from height to depth, and with a blazing coruscation of flying stars and flame, dropped hissingly down into the sea. The fishermen startled, all looked up--the heavy black nets dropped from their brown arms just as they were about to pull in.

"A sign of strife!" said one.

"Ay, ay! We shall hev a war maybe!"

Aubrey leaned far over the boat's side, and looked out into the dense blackness, made blacker than ever by the sudden coming and going of the flaming sky-phenomenon,--and half unconsciously he murmured, "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth,--I come not to send peace, but a sword!" And he lost himself in dreams of the past, present, and future,--till he was roused to give a hand in the dragging up of the nets, now full of glistening fish with silvery bodies and ruby eyes,--and then his thoughts took a different turn and wandered off as far back as the Sea of Galilee when the disciples, fishing thus, were called by the Divine Voice, saying "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men!" And in silence he helped to row the laden boat homewards, for there was no wind to fill the sail,--and the morning gradually broke like a great rose blooming out of the east, and the sun came peering through the rose like the calyx of the flower,--and still in a dream, Aubrey walked through all that splendour of the early day home to his lodging,--there to find himself,--like Byron,--famous. His book was in everyone's hand--his name on everyone's tongue. Letters from the publisher whom his visit to London had made his friend, accompanied by a bundle of the chief newspapers of the day, informed him that he had in one bound taken his place at the very head and front of opinion,--and, finest proof of power, the critics were out like the hounds in full cry, and were already baying the noble quarry. The Church papers were up in arms--indignant articles were being added to the "weeklies" by highly respectable clergymen with a large feminine "following", and in the midst of all these written things, which in their silent print seemed literally to make a loud clamour in the quiet of his room, Aubrey, in his sea-stained fisherman's garb, with the sparkle of the salt spray still glittering on his closely curling bright hair, looked out at the clear horizon from which the sun had risen up in all its majesty, and devoutly thanked God!

"I have written part of my message," he said to himself, "And now by-and-by I shall speak!"

But he lived on yet for a time in the remote fishing village, waiting,--without knowing quite what he waited for,--while the great Gargantuan mouth of London roared his name in every imaginable key, high and low, and gradually swept it across the seas to America and Australia, and all the vast New World that is so swiftly rising up, with the eternal balance of things, to overwhelm the Old. And presently the rumour of his fame reached those whom he had left behind in the quiet little town of his birth and boyhood,--and his mother, reading the frantic eulogies, and still more frantic attacks of the different sections of press opinion, wept with excitement and tenderness and yearning; and his father, startled at the strange power and authority with which this new Apostle of Truth appeared to be invested, trembled as he read, but nevertheless held himself more erect with a pride in his own old age that he had never felt before, as he said a hundred times a day in response to eager questioners--"Yes,--Aubrey Leigh is my son!" Then mother and father both wrote to Aubrey, and poured out their affectionate hearts to him and blessed him, which blessing he received with that strange heaving of the heart and contraction of the throat, which in a strong man means tears. And still he waited on, earning his bread in the humble village which knew nothing of him, save as one of themselves,--for the inhabitants of the place were deaf and blind to the ways of the world, and read little save old and belated newspapers, so that they were ignorant of his newly celebrated personality,--till one day the Fates gave him that chance for which, though he was unconscious of it, he had been holding himself back, and counting the slow strokes of time;--time which seems to beat with such a laggard pulse when one sees some great thing needing to be done, and while feeling all the force to do it, yet has to control and keep back that force till the appointed hour strikes for action.

There had been a terrific storm at sea, and a herring smack had gone down within sight of land, sinking eight strong men with it, all husbands and fathers. One after the other, the eight bodies were thrown back from the surging deep in the sullen grey morning on the day after the catastrophe,--one after the other they were borne reverently up from the shore to the village, there to be claimed by shrieking women and sobbing children,--women, who from more or less contented, simple-hearted, hard-working souls, were transformed into the grandly infuriated forms of Greek tragedy--their arms tossing, their hair streaming, their faces haggard with pain, and their eyes blind with tears. Throughout the heart-rending scene, Aubrey Leigh worked silently with the rest--composing the stiff limbs of the dead, and reverently closing the glared and staring eyes; gently he had lifted fainting women from the corpses to which they clung,--tenderly he had carried crying children home to their beds,--and with sorrowful eyes fixed on the still heaving and angry billows, he had inwardly prayed for ways and means to comfort these afflicted ones, and raised their thoughts from the gloom of the grave to some higher consummation of life. For they were inconsolable,--they could neither see nor understand any adequate cause for such grief being inflicted on them,--and the entire little population of the village wore a resentful attitude towards God, and God's inexorable law of death. When the funeral day came, and the bodies of the eight unfortunate victims were committed to the earth, it happened, as fate would have it, that the rector of the parish, a kindly, sympathetic, very simple old man, who really did his best for his parishoners according to the faint perception of holy things that indistinctly illumined his brain, happened to be away, and his place was taken by the assistant curate, a man of irritable and hasty temper, who had a horror of "scenes," and who always put away all suggestions of death from him whenever it was possible. It was very disagreeable to him to have to look at eight coffins,--and still more disagreeable to see eight weeping widows surrounded by forlorn and fatherless children--and he gabbled over the funeral service as quickly as he could, keeping his eyes well on the book lest he should see some sobbing child looking at him, or some woman dropping in a dead faint before he had time to finish. He was afraid of unpleasant incidents--and yet with all his brusque and nervous hurry to avoid anything of the kind, an unpleasant incident insisted on manifesting itself. Just as the fourth coffin was being lowered into the ground, a wild-haired girl rushed forward and threw herself upon it.

"Oh, my man, my man!" she wailed, "My own sweetheart!"

There was a moment's silence. Then one of the widows stepped out, and approaching the girl, laid her hand on her arm.

"Are ye making a mock of me, Mary Bell?" she said, "Or is it God's truth ye're speaking to my husband lying there?"

The distraught creature called Mary Bell looked up with a sudden passion glowing in her tear-wet eyes.

"It's God's truth!" she cried, "And ye needn't look scorn on me!--for both our hearts are broken, and no one can ever mend them. Yes! It's God's truth! He was your husband, but my sweetheart! And we'll neither of us see a finer man again!"

The curate listened, amazed and aghast. Was nothing going to be done to stop this scandalous scene? He looked protestingly from right to left, but in all the group of fisher-folk not a man moved. Were these two women going to fight over the dead? He hummed and hawed--and began in a thin piercing voice--"My friends--" when he was again interrupted by the passionate speech of Mary Bell.

"I'm sorry for ye," she said, lifting herself from the coffin to which she clung, and turning upon the widow of the drowned man, "and ye can be just as sorry for me! He loved us both, and why should we quarrel! A man is ever like that--just chancy and changeful--but he tried his honest hardest not to love me--yes, he tried hard!--it was my fault! for I never tried!--I loved him!--and I'll love him, till I go where he is gone! And we'll see who God'll give his soul to!"

This was too much for the curate.

"Woman!" he thundered, "Be silent! How dare you boast of your sin at such a time, and in such a place! Take her away from that coffin, some of you!"

So he commanded, but still not a man moved. The curate began to lose temper in earnest.

"Take her away, I tell you," and he advanced a step or two, "I cannot permit such a scandalous interruption of this service!"

"Patience, patience, measter," said one of the men standing by, "When a woman's heart's broke in two ways it ain't no use worrying her. She'll come right of herself in a minute."

But the curate, never famous for forbearance at any time, was not to be tampered with. Turning to his verger he said,

"I refuse to go on! The woman is drunk!"

But now the widow of the dead man suddenly took up the argument in a shrill voice which almost tore the air to shreds.

"She's no more drunk than you are!" she cried passionately, "Leave her alone! You're a nice sort of God's serving man to comfort we, when we're all nigh on losing our wits over this mornin' o' misery, shame on ye! Mary Bell, come here! If so be as my husband was your sweetheart, God forgive him, ye shall come home wi' me!--and we'll never have a word agin the man who is lying dead there. Come wi' me, Mary!"

With a wild cry of anguish, the girl rushed into her arms, and the two women clung together like sisters united in the same passionate grief. The curate turned a livid white.

"I cannot countenance such immorality," he said, addressing the verger, though his words were heard by all present, "Enough of the service has been said! Lower the coffins into the earth!" and turning on his heel he prepared to walk away. But Aubrey Leigh stopped him.

"You will not finish the service, sir?" he asked civilly, but with something of a warning in the flash of his eyes.

"No! The principal part of it is over. I cannot go on. These women are drunk!"

"They are not drunk, save with their own tears!" said Aubrey, his rich voice trembling with indignation. "They are not mad, except with grief! Is it not your place to be patient with them?"

"My place! My place!" echoed the curate indignantly, "Man, do you know to whom you are talking?"

"I think I do," answered Aubrey steadily, "I am talking to a professed servant of Christ,--Christ who had patience and pardon for all men! I am talking to one whose calling and vocation it is to love, to forgive, and to forbear--whose absolute protestation has been made at the altar of God that he will faithfully obey his Master. Even if these unhappy women were drunk, which they are not, their fault in conduct would not release you from the performance of your duty,--or the reverence you are bound to show towards the dead!"

Trembling with rage, the curate eyed him up and down scornfully.

"How dare you speak to me about my duty! You common lout! Mind your own business!"

"I will," said Aubrey, fixing his eyes full upon him, "And it shall be my business to see that you mind yours! Both your rector and bishop shall hear of this!"

He strode off, leaving the curate speechless with fury; and joining the little crowd of mourners who had been startled and interrupted by this unexpected scene, drew a prayer book from his pocket, and without asking anyone's permission read with exquisite gravity and pathos the concluding words of the funeral service,--and then with his own hands assisted the grave-diggers to lay the coffined dead tenderly to rest. Awestruck, and deeply impressed by his manner the fisher-folk mechanically obeyed his instructions, and followed his movements till all the sad business was over, and then they lingered about the churchyard wistfully watching him, while he in turn, standing erect and bare-headed near the open graves, looked at them with a strange pity, love and yearning.

"It'll be all right when our owld passon comes back," said one of the men addressing him, "It's just this half eddicated wastrel of a chap as doesn't know, and doesn't care for the troubles of common folk like we."

Aubrey was silent for a space. "Common folk like we!" The words were full of pathetic humility, and the man who spoke them was a hero of no mean type, who had often buffeted the winds and waves to save a human life at the risk of his own. "Common folk like we!" Aubrey laid his hand gently on his "mate's" shoulder.

"Ben, old boy, there are no common folk in God's sight," he said, "Look there!" and he pointed to the graves that were just beginning to be filled in, "Every creature lying there had as much of God in him as many a king, and perhaps more. In this majestic universe there is nothing common!"

Ben shuffled one foot before the other uneasily.

"Ay, ay, but there's few as argify the way o' life in they lines!" he said, "There's a many that think--but there's a main few that speak."

"That is true," said Aubrey, still keeping his hand on Ben's shoulder, "there's a main few that speak! Now, I want to speak, Ben,--I want to have a talk to you and the rest of our mates about--well!--about the dangers of the sea and other things. Will you meet me on the shore this evening near the quay and listen to a word or two?"

Ben looked surprised but interested, and a puzzled smile came into his eyes.

"Be ye a goin' to preach to us like the passon?" he said, "Or like the fellers in the porter's caps as calls themselves Salvationists?"

Aubrey smiled.

"No! I only want to say a few parting words to you all."

"Parting words!" echoed Ben with a stupefied air.

"Yes--I am going away to-morrow--going for good. I have got some other work to do. But I shall not forget you all . . . and you will hear of me often,--yes, you will hear of me!--and some day I will come back. But to-night . . . I should just like to say good-bye."

Ben was secretly much distressed. "Gentleman Leigh" as he was sometimes called, had greatly endeared himself to their little community, and that he should leave them was not at all a desirable thing, and would, as Ben well knew, cause universal regret. But there was no time just now for either argument or protestation, so Ben accepted the blow as he accepted all buffetings of fate, and merely said,

"All right! We'll be there to-night for sure!" And then Aubrey, gravely content, walked slowly out of the little churchyard still bare-headed, his eyes dark with thought,--and the reluctant sun came out of the gray sky and shone on his pale face and bright hair--and one or two of the widowed women timidly touched his arm as he passed, and murmured, "God bless you!" And Mary Bell, the sorrowful and sinning, clinging to the waist of the woman she had wronged, looked up at him appealingly with the strained and hunted gaze of a lost and desperate creature, and as he met her eyes, turned shudderingly away and wept. And he, knowing that words were useless, and that even the kindliest looks must wound in such a case, passed on in silence, and when he reached his own lodging took some of the newspapers which spoke of himself and his book, and after marking certain passages, tied them up in a packet and sent them to the curate with whom he had crossed swords that morning, accompanied by a note which briefly ran thus:--

"You asked me how I 'dared' to speak to you about your duty. I reply--By the force of truth and the power of the pen I dare!--and I shall be ready to answer to God for it, as you must answer to him for leaving any part of YOUR duty undone.

"AUBREY LEIGH."

And the day passed on, half in drifting clouds, half in glimpses of sunshine, till late afternoon, when the sky cleared altogether, and the waves sank to a dead calm;--and with the night a shield-like moon, all glistening pearl and silver, rose up out of the east with a royal air of white and wondering innocence, as though she proclaimed her entire blamelessness for any havoc wrought by storm. And in the full radiance of that silvery splendour Aubrey Leigh, leaning against the sea-weed covered capstan of the quay, round which coils of wet rope glistened like the body of a sleeping serpent, told to an audience of human hearers for the first time the story of his life, and adventures, and the varied experiences he had gone through in order to arrive at some straight and clear comprehension of "the Way, the Truth, and the Life" of the Gospel of Love and Mutual Labour. His practised voice, perfect in all modulation, inflexion, and expression, carried each simple, well-chosen word home to the hearts of his hearers,--not one so ignorant as not to understand him--not one so blind as not to see the beauty of work and creative effort as he depicted them,--not one so insensate as not to feel the calm, the grandeur, and repose of the strong soul of a man in complete sympathy with his fellow-men. They listened to him almost breathlessly--their bronzed weather-beaten faces all turned towards his; forgetting to smoke, they let their pipes die out and drop from their hands--and no interruption broke the even flow and cadence of his earnest language, save the slow ripple of the water beating against the quay, and the faint, occasional sigh of a stirring wind. Silhouetted black against the radiant sky were the masts of the fishing fleet, and the roofs of the fishermen's cottages--dwellings so often made desolate by death--and as Aubrey noted the fascinated attention with which these rough men heard him, his heart grew strong. "If a few listen, so will many," he said to himself, "The Master of our creed first taught His divine ethics to a few fishermen,--to them the message was first given . . . and by them again delivered,--and it is through our having departed from the original simplicity of utterance that all the evil has crept in. So let me be content with this night's work and await the future with patience." Then lifting up his voice once more he said,--

"You think your lot a hard one--you, friends and brothers, who set the brown sails out to sea on a night of threatening storm, and bid farewell to your homes built safe upon the shore. You must meet all the horror of white foam and cloud-blackness, to drag from the sea its living spoil, and earn the bread to keep yourselves and those who are dependent upon you,--you MUST do this, or the Forces of Life will not have you,--they will cast you out and refuse to nourish you. For so is your fate in life, and work ordained. Then where is God?--you cry, as the merciless billows rise to engulf your frail craft,--why should the Maker of man so deliberately destroy him? Why should one human unit, doing nothing, and often thinking nothing, enjoy hundreds of pounds a day, while you face death to win as many pence? Is there a God of Love who permits this injustice? Ah, stop there, friends! There is no such thing as injustice! Strange as it sounds to this world of many contradictions and perplexities, I repeat there is no such thing as injustice. There is what SEEMS injustice--because we are all apt to consider the material side of things only. That is where we make our great mistake in life and conduct. We should all remember that this world, and the things of this world, are but the outward expression of an inward soul--the Matter evolved from Mind--and that unless we are ourselves in harmony with the Mind, we shall never understand the Matter. Your millionaire is surrounded with luxuries,--your fishermen has dry bread and herring,--your millionaire dies, with a famous doctor counting his pulse-beats, and a respectable clergyman promising him heaven on account of the money he has left to the church in his will; your fisherman goes down in a swirl of black water, without a prayer--for he has no time to pray--without leaving a penny behind him, inasmuch as he has no pence to leave; and for both these different creatures we judge the end is come? No,--the end is NOT come! It is the beginning only! If the millionaire has died with a thousand selfish sores in his mind,--if his life's privileges have been wasted in high feeding and self-indulgence,--if he has thought only of himself, his riches, his pride, his position, or his particular form of respectability, he will get the full result of that mental attitude! If the fisherman has been content with his earnings, and thanked God for them,--if he has been honest, brave, true, and unselfish, and has shared with others their joys and sorrows, and if at the last he goes down in the waves trying to save some other life while losing his own,--depend upon it he will rise to the full splendour of THAT mental attitude! For both millionaire and fisherman are but men, made on the same lines, of the same clay, and are each one, personally and separately responsible to God for the soul in them,--and when both of them pass from this phase of being to the next, they will behold all things with spiritual eyes, not material ones. And then it may be that the dark will be discovered to be the bright, and the fortunate prove to be the deplorable, for at present we 'see through a glass darkly, but then, face to face.' The friends whom we have buried to-day are not dead,--for death is not Death, but Life. And for those who are left behind it is merely a time of waiting, for as the Master said, 'There shall not a hair of your head perish. In your patience possess ye your souls.'"

He paused a moment,--the moon rays illumined his delicate features, and a half sorrowful smile rested on his lips.

"I am no clergyman, my friends! I have not been 'ordained'. I am not preaching to you. I will not ask you to be good men, for there is something effeminate in the sound of such a request made to brawny, strong fellows such as you are, with an oath ready to leap from your lips, and a blow prepared to fly from your fists on provocation. I will merely say to you that it is a great thing to be a Man!--a Man as God meant him to be, brave, truthful, and self-reliant, with a firm faith in the Divine Ordainment of Life as Life should be lived. There is no disgrace in work;--no commonness,--no meanness. Disgrace, commonness, and meanness are with those who pretend to work and never do anything useful for the world they live in. The king who amuses himself at the expense and ruin of his subjects is the contemptible person,--not the labourer who digs the soil for the planting of corn which shall help to feed his fellows. And the most despicable creature of our time and century, is not the man who doubts Christ, or questions God--for Christ was patient with the doubter, and God answers, through the medium of science, every honest question--it is the man who pretends to believe and lives on the pretence, while his conduct gives the lie to his profession! That is why you--and why thousands of others like you, are beginning to look upon many of the clergy with contempt, and to treat their admonitions with indifference. That is why thousands of the rising generation of men and women will not go to church. 'The parson does not do anything for me,' is a common every-day statement. And that the parson SHOULD do something is a necessary part of his business. His 'doing' should not consist in talking platitudes from the pulpit, or in sending round a collection plate. And if he has no money, and will not 'sell half that he has and give to the poor' as commanded, he can at any rate give sympathy. But this is precisely what he chiefly lacks. The parson's general attitude is one of either superiority or servility,--a 'looking down' upon his poor parishoners--a 'looking up' to his rich ones. A disinterested, loving observation of the troubles and difficulties of others never occurs to him as necessary. But this was precisely the example Christ gave us--an unselfish example of devotion to others--a supreme descent of the Divine into man to rescue and bless humanity. Now I know all your difficulties and sorrows,--I have worked among you, and lived among you--and I feel the pulse of your existence beating in my own heart. I know that when a great calamity overwhelms you all as it has done this week, you have no one to comfort you,--no one to assure you that no matter how strange and impossible it seems, you have been deprived of your associates for some GOOD cause which will be made manifest in due season,--that they have probably been taken to save them from a worse fate than the loss of earth-consciousness in the sea. For that, scientifically speaking, is all that death means--the loss of earth-consciousness,--but the gain of another consciousness, whether of another earth or a heaven none can say. But there is no real death--inasmuch as even a grain of dust in the air will generate life. We must hold fast to the Soul of things--the Soul which is immortal, not the body which is mortal. 'What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul!' That is what each man of us must find, and hold, and keep,--his own soul! Apart from all creeds, and clergy, forms and rituals--that is the vital matter. Stand clear of all things,--all alone if need be, surrounded by the stupendous forces of this great universe,--let us find,--each man of us--his own soul; find and keep it brave, truthful, upright, and bound straight on for the highest,--the highest always! And the very stars in their courses will help us--storms will but strengthen us--difficulties but encourage us--and death itself shall but give us larger liberty."

He ceased, and one by one the men drew closer to him, and thanked him, in voices that were tremulous with the emotion he had raised in them. The instinct which had led them to call him "Gentleman Leigh" had proved correct,--and there was not a man among them all who did not feel a thrill of almost fraternal pride in the knowledge that the dauntless, hard-working "mate" who had fronted tempests with them, and worked with them in all weathers, had without any boast or loquacious preparation, made his name famous and fit for discussion in the great world of London far away, a world to which none of them had ever journeyed. And they pressed round him and shook his hand, and gave him simple yet hearty words of cheer and goodwill, together with unaffected expressions of regret that he was leaving them,--"though for that matter," said one of them, "we allus felt you was a scholard-like, for all that you was so handy at the nets. For never did a bit of shell or weed come up from the sea but ye was a lookin' at it as if God had throwed it to yer for particular notice. And when a man takes to obsarvin' common things as if they were special birthday presents from the Almighty, ye may be pretty sure there's something out of the ordinary in him!"

Aubrey smiled, and pressed the hand of this roughly eloquent speaker,--and then they all walked with him up from the shore to the little cottage where he had lived for so many months, and at the gate of which he bade them farewell.

"But only for a time," he said, "I shall see you all again. And you will hear of me!"

"Ay, ay, we'll hear of ye--for we'll take the papers in just for news of yer!" said Ben, with a rough laugh which covered his deeper feelings, "And mebbe ye'll come back afore we's all drownded!"

And so with a few more kindly words they left him, and he stood at the gate watching their stalwart figures disappear down the different windings of the crooked and picturesque little street.

"God bless them all!" he murmured, "They have taught me many a grand lesson!"

The next day he took his quiet departure in the early morning before the village folks were up and stirring,--and a month later he addressed a large meeting in one of the poorest and most densely populated districts of London on "The Ethics of Christ versus the Clergy", which attracted universal attention and created an enormous sensation. His book began to sell in thousands where it had previously sold in hundreds, and he earned sufficient from the profits of the sale to keep him going in the simple fashion of clothes and food to which he had strictly disciplined himself, so that he felt free to plunge into the thick of the fight. And he straightway did so. His name became a terror to liars, and a clarion sound of alarm in the ears of social hypocrites. He wrote another book which obtained even a larger hearing than the first--and he spoke to the people on an average once a week, wherever he could assemble them together. All his addresses were made gratuitously, and he soon resembled a sort of blazing torch in the darkness, to which the crowds rushed for light and leading. In the midst of the sensation his writings and orations were creating, a noble lord, with several Church livings in his gift, asked him to stand for Parliament, and offered to pay the expenses of his election. At first Aubrey was sufficiently tempted by the offer to pause hesitatingly on the verge of acceptance, but twenty-four hours' hard thinking promptly pulled him together. "No," he said--"I see what you mean! You and your party wish to tie my hands--to gag my mouth, and make me as one of yourselves--no, I will not consent to it. I will serve the people with all my life and soul!--but not in YOUR way!"

And to avoid further discussion he went straight out of England for a time, and travelled through Europe, making friends everywhere, and learning new phases of the "Christian Dispensation" at every turn in his road. Paris had held him fascinated for a long while, not only because he saw her doom written like that of Babylon in letters of fire, and Ruin, like a giant bird of prey hovering over her with beak and claw prepared to pick the very flesh from her bones,--but also because he had met Angela Sovrani, one of the most rarely-gifted types of womanhood he had ever seen. He recognised her genius at once, and marvelled at it. And still more did he marvel at her engagement of marriage with Florian Varillo. That such a fair, proud creature so splendidly endowed, could consent to unite herself to a man so vastly inferior, was an interesting puzzle to him. He had met Varillo by chance in Naples one winter before he ever saw Angela, and knew that half his claim to the notice of the social world there was the fact of his betrothal to the famous "Sovrani." And moved by a strange desire to follow out this romance, and also because he was completing his studies of the Roman Church viewed as a "moral support to the education and elevation of man," he, after leaving Paris, and paying a brief visit to Florence on a matter of business which could not be attended to otherwise than personally, went on as though drawn by some invisible magnet to Rome. He had only been twenty-four hours in the city, when chance had led him under the balcony where the sculptured angels fronted the moon, and from whence the sweet voice of Sylvie Hermenstein had floated towards him with the words,--

"Ti voglio ben assai, E tu non pensi a me."

And he who had faced crowds without a tremor, and had flung thunderbolts of splendid defiance at shams, with the manner of a young Ajax defying the lightning, now found himself strangely put out and disturbed in his usual composure by the innocent aspect, and harmless perfume of a rose,--a mere little pink petalled thing, with not even a thorn on its polished green stalk! He had placed it in a glass of water on his writing table, and his eyes rested upon it the morning after he had received it with almost a reproachful air. What was its golden-hearted secret? Why, when he studied it, did he see the soft hue of a fair cheek, the flash of a bright eye, the drooping wave of a golden web of hair, the dainty curve of a white arm on which the sparkle of diamonds gleamed? How was it that he managed to perceive all this in the leaves of a rose? He could not tell; and he was angry with himself for his inability to explain the puzzle. He reminded himself that he had business in Rome--"business," he repeated sternly to his own conscience,--the chief part of which was to ascertain from some one of the leading spirits at the Vatican the view taken by the Papacy of the Ritualistic movement in England.

"If you can gauge correctly the real feeling, and render it in plain terms, apart from all conventional or social considerations," wrote his publisher in a letter which had just reached him--"that is, if you dare to do so much--and I think you will scarcely hesitate--you will undoubtedly give great and lasting help to Christian England." As he read this over for the second or third time he remembered that he had an appointment with a certain powerful personage, known as Monsignor Gherardi, that morning at eleven.

"And you," he said, apostrophising the rose with a protesting shake of his head, "were nearly making me forget it!" He lifted the flower out of the water and touched it with his lips. "She was a fair creature,--the woman who wore you last night!"--he said with a smile as he put it carefully back again in its glass, "In fact, she was very much like you! But though I notice you have no thorns, I dare say she has!" He paused a moment, lost in thought, the smile still giving warmth and light to his features; then with a quick movement of impatience at his own delaying, threw on his coat and hat and left the room, saying, "Now for Gherardi!"

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

XIX

Set square and dark against the pale blue of the Italian sky the Palazzo Sovrani, seen for the first time, suggests a prison rather than a dwelling house,--a forbidding structure, which though of unsentient marble, seems visibly to frown into the light, and exhale from itself a cloud on the clearest day. Its lowest windows, raised several feet from the ground, and barred across with huge iron clamps, altogether deprive the would-be inquisitive stranger from the possibility of peering within,--the monstrous iron gate, richly wrought with fantastic scroll-work and heraldic emblems raised in brass, presents so cold and forbidding a front that some of the youthful ladies who were Angela's friends, were wont to declare that it gave them a palpitation of the heart to summon up the necessary courage required to ring the great bell. Within the house there was much of a similar gloom, save in Angela's own studio, which she had herself made beautiful with a brightness and lightness found in no other corner of the vast and stately abode. Her father, Prince Pietro Sovrani, was of a reserved and taciturn nature,--poor but intensely proud--and he would suffer no interference by so much as a word or a suggestion respecting the manner in which he chose to arrange or to order his household. His wife Gita Bonpre, the only sister of the good Cardinal, had been the one love of his life,--and when she died all his happiness had died with her,--his heart was broken, but he showed nothing of his grief to the outside world, save that in manner he was more silent and reserved than ever,--more difficult to deal with,--more dangerous to approach. People knew well enough that he was poor, but they never dared to mention it,--though once an English acquaintance, moved by the best intentions in the world, had suggested that he could make a good deal of money by having a portion of the Palazzo Sovrani redecorated, and modernized, to suit the comfort and convenience of travelling millionaires who might probably be disposed to pay a high rent for it during the Roman "season." But the proposal was disastrous in its results. Sovrani had turned upon his adviser like an embodied thunder-cloud.

"When a prince of the House of Sovrani lets out apartments," he said, "you may ask your English Queen to take in washing!"

And a saturnine smile, accompanied by the frowning bend of his white fuzzy eyebrows over his flashing black eyes, had produced such a withering, blistering effect on the soul of the unfortunate Englishman, whose practical ideas of utility had exceeded his prudence, that he had scarcely ever dared to look the irate Italian noble in the face again.

Just now, the Prince was in his library, seated in dignified uprightness like a king enthroned to give audience, in a huge high-backed chair, shadowed over by an ancient gilded baldacchino, listening with a certain amount of grim patience to his daughter's softly murmured narrative of her stay in Paris. He had received the Cardinal an hour ago on his arrival, with first, a humble genuflexion as became a son of the Church, and secondly with a kiss on both cheeks as became a brother-in-law. The Cardinal's youthful companion Manual, he had scarcely remarked, even while giving him welcome. These two had gone to the suite of rooms prepared for the reception of His Eminence,--but Angela, after hastily changing her travelling dress, had come down to her father, anxious not only to give, but to hear news--especially news of Florian Varillo. Prince Sovrani, however, was not a man given to much social observation,--nor did he ever break through his half cynical, half gloomy humour, to detail the gossip of Rome, and he therefore sat more or less unmoved, while Angela told him all she could think of that would interest him. At last with a little delicate hesitation, she related the strange story of Abbe Vergniaud, and added,

"And by this time, I suppose, the Holy Father has been told all!"

"Naturally," said the Prince, with a stern smile moving the hard muscles of his mouth, "Moretti's love of scandal is as deep as that of any old woman!--and the joy of excommunicating a soul from the salvation of the Church must be too exquisite to admit of any delay! I am sorry for Vergniaud, but I do not think he will suffer much. These things are scarcely ever noticed in the press nowadays, and it will only be a very limited circle that even learns of his excommunication. Nevertheless, I am sorry--one is always sorry for brave men, even if they are reckless. And the son is Gys Grandit! Corpo di Bacco! What a denouement!"

He considered it a moment, looking straight before him at the rows of ancient and musty books that adorned his walls,--then he gave a sudden exclamation.

"Pesta! I had nearly forgotten! I knew there was a curious thing I had to tell you, Angela,--but in the hurry of your arrival it had for the moment escaped my mind . . ."

"About Florian?" asked Angela anxiously.

The Prince bent his brows upon her quizzically.

"Florian! What should I know about Florian? He has not been near me since you left Rome. I fancy he will not be too attentive a son-in-law! No, it is not about Florian. It is about your uncle Felix. Have you heard of this miracle he has performed?"

Angela's eyes opened wide.

"A miracle! What do you mean by a miracle?"

"Santissima Madonna! A miracle is always a miracle," retorted her father testily, "A something out of the common, and an upsetting of the ordinary laws of nature. Did your uncle tell you nothing of his visit to Rouen?"

"Nothing," replied Angela, "Nothing but the story of Manuel."

"Manuel? Who is he?"

"The boy he has with him now. Uncle Felix found him lost at night near the Cathedral of Rouen, and has taken him under his protection ever since."

"Altro! That is nothing!" said her father, "That is only one of Felix's quixotic ideas. There is no miracle in that. But when a child is a cripple from babyhood, and our Felix cures him by one simple prayer, and makes him strong and well again--Gran Dio!--it is not remarkable that such news creates a stir at the Vatican."

"But it cannot be true!" said Angela surprised, "Uncle Felix never said a word about it. I am sure he knows nothing whatever of such a report!"

"Ebben! We will ask him presently,"--and the Prince raised himself stiffly and slowly out of his throne-like chair, "Personally I have considered Felix above any sort of priestly trickery; but after all, if he has an ambition for the Papacy, I do not see why he should not play for it. Others do!"

"Oh, father!" cried Angela, "How can you think such a thing of Uncle Felix! He is as nearly a saint as any mortal man can be!"

"So I always thought, child--so I always thought!" replied the Prince, with a vexed air, "But to perform such a miracle of healing as to cure a child with a twisted spine and bent legs, by the mere utterance of a prayer!--that is impossible!--impossible! It sounds like charlatanism--not like Felix!"

As he spoke he straightened himself and stood upright, a tall, spare, elegant figure of a man,--his dark complexioned face very much resembling a fine bronze cast of the Emperor Aurelius. Angela rose too and stood beside him, and his always more or less defiant eyes slowly softened as he looked at her.

"You grow very like your mother," he said, with just the faintest tremor in his voice--"Ah, la mia Gita!"

A sigh that was like a groan broke from his lips, and Angela laid her head caressingly against his breast in silence. He touched her soft hair tenderly.

"Very like your mother," he repeated, "Very like! But you will leave me soon, as she has left me,--not for Heaven, no!--but for that doubtful new life called marriage. It is not doubtful when there is love--love in both hearts;--and if there is any difference at all, the love should be greater on the man's side than on the woman's! Remember that, Angela mia, remember that! The true lover is always spiritually on his knees before the woman he loves; not only in passion, but in worship--in reverence!"

"And is not Florian so?" murmured Angela timidly.

"I do not know, child; he may be! Sometimes I think that he loves himself too much to love YOU as well as you deserve. But we shall see."

As he spoke a servant entered, carrying an exquisite basket of flowers, and brought it to Angela who blushed and smiled divinely as she took it and opened the envelope fastened to its handle and addressed to her, which contained merely these words,--

"A la mia dolcezza! Con voto d'eterno amore! "FLORIAN."

"Are they not lovely?" she said, bending over the blossoms tenderly as though she would have taken them all into her embrace, "Such a sweet welcome home!"

Her father nodded, but gave no verbal response to her enthusiasm. Presently he said,

"How about your picture? When will it be finished?"

"A month's work will be enough now," she replied, looking up quickly--"And then--"

"Then it will remain in one of the galleries unsold!" said Sovrani, with a touch of bitterness in his tone which he could not quell, "You have chosen too large a canvas. From mere size it is unsaleable,--for unless it were a marvel of the world no nation would ever purchase a woman's picture."

Angela's delicate head drooped,--she turned away to hide the tears that rushed to her eyes. Her father's words were harsh, yet eminently practical; she knew he did not mean them unkindly, but that the continual pinch of poverty was sometimes greater than he could endure with patience. Angela had earned considerable sums of money by the smaller pictures which had established her name; and the Prince had bitterly grudged the time she had given to the enormous canvas which had now remained so long in her studio covered up, even from his eyes--for he had made up his mind that it was one of those fantastic dreams of genius, which when they become realised into the substance of a book or a picture, terrify the timid conventions of the world so completely as to cause general avoidance.

"If Raffaelle were alive he would not paint a 'Transfiguration' now," he was wont to say, "The Church no longer employs great artists. It keeps its money for speculation purposes. If a Michael Angelo were in Rome he would find nothing to do."

Which statement was true enough. For the modern Italian loves money next to his own precious skin, and everything beautiful or sacred is sacrificed to this insatiable craze. There is no love, no honour, no patriotism in Italy without careful calculation as to the cost of indulging in these sentiments,--and what wreck of religion is left merely panders to the low melodramatic temper of an ignorant populace. Art is at its lowest ebb, it cannot live without encouragement and support--and it is difficult for even the most enthusiastic creator in marble or colour to carry out glorious conceptions for an inglorious country. But Angela Sovrani--ambitious Angela,--was not painting for Italy. She was painting for the whole world. She had dreams of seeing her great picture borne away out of Rome to Paris, and London, to be gazed upon by thousands who would take its lesson home to their hearts and lives. Italy was merely a village in the area of her aspiring mind; but she built her "castles in the air" alone; and never by so much as the smallest hint allowed anyone to guess the far reaching scope of her intentions. Truth to tell, she had obtained very little encouragement during her long days and months of work, though in the sweetness of her nature she pleased herself by imagining that Florian Varillo gave her a complete and perfect sympathy. Yet even with Florian, one or two casual remarks he had let fall lightly and unthinkingly, had vaguely startled her, and set her wondering, "Perhaps he does not think much of my abilities after all"--and had caused her for once to be closely reserved upon the subject and treatment of her work, and to refuse a glimpse of it even to him who was her elect Beloved. She had thought he would perhaps have been pained at this inviolate secrecy on her part,--she had feared he might take offence at finding the doors of her studio always locked,--but on the contrary he appeared quite amused at her uncommunicative humour, and jested about it as if she were a little child playing in a dark corner at some forbidden game. She was somewhat surprised at this,--the more so as he frequently spoke of the importance of his own pictures for the Roman "Art Season,"--pictures to which he really gave the attentive discussion and consideration a man always bestows on matters of his personal business--but often when Angela's work was spoken of, he smiled with a kindly tolerance, as one who should say, "Dear girl! How sweetly she embroiders her simple sampler!" And yet again, he never failed, when asked about it in Angela's presence, to say that he was "sure Donna Sovrani would astonish the world by what she was doing!" So that one never quite knew where to have him, his nature being that curious compound of obsequious servility and intense self-love which so often distinguishes the Italian temperament. Angela however put every shadow of either wonder or doubt as to his views, entirely aside,--and worked on with an earnest hand and trusting heart, faithfully and with a grand patience and self-control seldom found either in masculine or feminine heroes. Sometimes her spirit sank a little, as now, when her father told her that her picture would remain unsold in one of the galleries--but all the same, some force within her urged her to go on with her intention steadily, and leave all results to God. And the tears that had sprung to her eyes at the smart of old Sovrani's rough speech, soon returned to their source; and she was quite her composed sweet self again when her uncle the Cardinal, accompanied by Manuel, entered the room, holding an open letter in his hand, and looking strangely agitated.

"Brother, here is a matter which I cannot possibly understand," he said, "Monsignor Gherardi writes here to congratulate me upon a miracle I have worked in Rouen!--and summons me at once to the presence of His Holiness! What can it mean? I have performed no miracle! Surely some jest is being played with me,--and one most unbecoming to a man of Gherardi's position and influence!"

Prince Sovrani took the letter from Bonpre's hand and read it in silence.

"Yes--I have heard about it already," he said, "And if you indeed know nothing, it is strange! But can you not remember--is there no clue to such a report? Were there no sick children brought to you . . . ?"

"Oh, for that," answered the Cardinal quickly, "a little boy named Fabien Doucet, was brought to me by the children of an inn-keeper of the Hotel Poitiers where I stayed two nights, and to grant their wishes, (and also because it is my duty to do what I can for the suffering and the afflicted), I laid my hands upon him and prayed to our Lord that he might be healed."

"Ebbene! Our Lord has then healed him," said Sovrani drily, "It is remarkable!--but if the cure is truly accomplished, we shall have to admit that the Deity does sometimes pay attention to our many prayers, though for the most part they appear to fall upon a deaf, dumb, and irresponsive Silence."

The Cardinal sat down, wearily resting his head on his hand.

"I do not like it!" he said, "It is altogether amazing to me; it seems like a snare set to catch my soul! For I have no power to perform miracles . . . I can only pray."

"And why should not your prayer be answered?" asked Manuel suddenly.

They had all forgotten the boy's presence in the room, and his voice startled them. His young face was pale, yet tranquil--and the deep tenderness that always dwelt in his eyes seemed deeper and softer at this moment than ever.

"Truly I do not see why," said Prince Sovrani, bending his fierce regard full on the lad as he spoke, and beginning to wonder like the rest at his fairness and beauty, "Only as a rule, fanciuollo mio--prayer is mere waste of breath--a demand without supply."

"Is that not perhaps the fault of the person who prays?" said Manuel, "May that person not lack faith and pure intention? May he not even be too self-absorbed to lift his soul high enough for an approach to God? When the disciples were vexed that they could not cure a child that was afflicted, and saw that their Master healed that child at once, they asked why they were unable to do what He did. And He told them plainly, 'Because of your unbelief. For verily I say unto you, if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed ye shall say unto this mountain, remove from yonder place, and it shall remove, and nothing shall be impossible to you.' And I am sure that my lord the Cardinal's faith is greater than a grain of mustard seed!"

They were all silent. Cardinal Bonpre turned his eyes thoughtfully on the young speaker

"You were with me, child, when the little cripple sat on my knee and held my crucifix," he said in a low tone, "You saw--you heard all. What did I do?--what did I say?"

"You held him in your arms, even as Christ took little children in His arms and blessed them," replied Manuel, "And you prayed--and in your prayer you said--'King and Master of all such children, even as Thou wert a child Thyself, be pleased to heal him of his sad infirmity. For if Thou wilt, Thou canst make this bent body straight, and these withered muscles strong,--from death itself Thou canst ordain life, and nothing is impossible unto Thee!'"

There was a pause. Then Manuel added,--

"That is what you said, my lord Cardinal;--and when the child went away, you told him that if the giving of your own life could make him strong, he should have that life willingly. Some people might say that without meaning it,--but you meant what you said,--every word came straight from your heart. And should it then surprise you that God has granted your prayer?"

Prince Sovrani listened to the dulcet young voice with a strange emotion. Something holy and convincing seemed to emanate from the boy's very presence, and though he, as became a modern Italian, was thoroughly sceptical and atheistical, and would have willingly argued against the very words of Christ as written in the Gospel, some curious hesitation that was almost shamefacedness held him silent. But the Cardinal was even more strongly moved. The earnest spirit of truth with which Manuel appeared always to be environed,--his simple and straight enunciation of the old, oft-quoted phrases used by the Divine Saviour of the world,--and then his unfaltering memory of the simple prayer that had been said for the comfort of the unfortunate little Fabien Doucet, together with this strange and unexpected announcement of the child's miraculous cure,--these things rushed over the mind of the good Bonpre like an overwhelming flood, and confused his brain--strange half-formed thoughts occurred to him that he dared not express, chief among which was a vague, a terrifying idea that the young boy beside him who spoke so sweetly, and almost so commandingly, must surely be an Angel! Strange legends of the Church began to recur to him;--legends of old-time when angels had descended to walk with priests in their monastic seclusion, and instruct them as to the value of time, as in the "Legend Beautiful," when the monk Felix, being perplexed by the phrase "a day with God is as a thousand years," went to sleep in a garden, soothed by the singing of the birds at sunset, and woke up to find that in his slumber a century had rolled away! All manner of fantastic notions swept in upon him, and he grew suddenly blind and dizzy--rising from his chair totteringly he extended his hands--then suddenly sank back again in a dead faint. Sovrani caught him as he fell--and Angela ran for water, and tenderly bathed his forehead while Manuel took his hand and held it fast.

"Too long a journey, and too much excitement!" said the Prince,--"Our Felix is growing old,--he cannot stand fatigue. He is failing fast!"

"Oh, no," said Manuel brightly, "He is not failing! He is younger by far than he seems! He is too strong to fail!"

And as he spoke the Cardinal opened his eyes and smiled with an expression of perfect rapture.

"Why, what has ailed me?" he enquired, looking at Angela's anxious face, "I had but gone for a moment into the presence of my Lord!" Here he paused, and then gradually recovering himself entirely, sat upright.

"All is well with me!" he said, pressing the hand of Manuel in his own, and releasing it again, "Do not fret, Angela,--it was the merest passing faintness. Forgive me, brother, for alarming you thus foolishly! As for the letter from the Vatican concerning this miracle, I must needs present myself before His Holiness and assure him that I know nothing of it,--that I did no more than pray--that I left the crippled child still crippled--and that if indeed it be true he is healed, it is by the merciful act of God and--the intervention of our Lord and Saviour Christ, to Whom be all the praise and glory!"

He rose up again from his chair and stood full height,--a grand and beautiful figure of noble old age, transfigured by the light of some never-aging thought, some glorious inspiration. And Angela, who had been startled and alarmed by his sudden fainting fit, was even more overcome by the sight of him thus radiant and selfpossessed, and dropping on her knees she caught his hand and kissed it, her tears falling fast. He stooped and raised her.

"Child, why are you weeping?" he said tenderly, "Nay, I am not so ill as you think me! I am well--strong!--ready for the doing of many things in my Master's service! Pietro, take this dear girl and comfort her!" and he put her gently into her father's arms,--"For myself, I have work to do--work to do!--" he repeated musingly,--"I see trouble ahead!--but I shall face it--and if God please--overcome it!" His, eyes flashed, and after a moment he resumed, "I will write to Gherardi now--and to-morrow--to-morrow I will speak!"

"Can I help you, brother?" asked the Prince, taken out of himself by the air of splendour and sovereignty which seemed to surround the Cardinal as with a divine halo, "You are fatigued with your journey,--let me write for you!"

"No, Pietro! I must do this myself, and think well of all I should say." He paused, then added, "They tell me Claude Cazeau, secretary to the Archbishop of Rouen brought the news of this so-called miracle to Rome. I should have liked to have seen that man to-night."

"You will see him at the Vatican," said Sovrani. with a touch of irony, "That will be time enough! Oh, innocent Felix! Do you not see you will be confronted with Cazeau? And that Gherardi and his set will be there to note your every look and gesture, and privately judge as to whether you and the Archbishop of Rouen concocted the miracle between you! And that if you were to see this Cazeau to-night, that very meeting would be taken as a sign of conspiracy!"

Over the pale features of the Cardinal rushed a warm glow of indignation, but it died away as rapidly as it had come.

"True!" he said simply, "I forgot! If a good deed is done in the world by the force of the undefined Spirit of Christ, it is judged as trickery,--and we must never forget that even the Resurrection of our Blessed Lord from the dead is believed by some to be a mere matter of conspiracy among His disciples. True--I forgot the blindness,--the melancholy blindness of the world! But we must always say, 'Father forgive them, for they know not what they do!' I will write to Gherardi,--and,--if you will permit me, I will remain in my own rooms tonight for I must think and pray,--I must be alone . . ."

"Without me, my lord Cardinal?" asked Manuel softly.

"No, not without you!" and Bonpre looked at him with a smile, "Not without you! I have no wish to be so much alone as your absence would make me. Come!"

And lifting the heavy velvet portiere at the door, he held it back for his "foundling" to pass,--and then slowly followed.

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

XX

On the first floor of an ancient mansion, in a street which slopes down towards the Tiber, there is a suite of dreary old rooms which must evidently have once belonged to some great "Prince of the Church", (to use the term which Cardinal Bonpre held so much in aversion,) if one may form any opinion from the ecclesiastical designs on the faded green hangings, which cling like moss to the damp walls, and give an additional melancholy to the general gloom The "salon" or audience-chamber is perhaps the best in repair, and possesses a gorgeous, painted ceiling, bordered by a frieze of red and gold, together with one or two large pictures, which perhaps if cleaned might show the touch of some great Master, but which in their sad condition of long neglect, present nothing to the view but a dark blur of indistinct outlines. The rooms in their entirety composed the business, or town dwelling of Monsignor Gherardi, one of the cleverest, most astute, and most unscrupulous of men, to whom Religion was nothing more than a means of making money and gaining power. There was scarcely a Roman Catholic "community" in the world, in which Gherardi had not a share,--and he was particularly concerned in "miraculous shrines", which were to him exactly in the same category as "companies" are to the speculator on the Stock Exchange. He had been cautious, prudent, and calculating from his earliest years,--from the time when, as the last male scion of the house of Gherardi he had been educated for the Ecclesiastical career at the "College of Nobles". He had read widely, and no religious or social movement took place anywhere without his knowing of it and admitting it into his calculations as a sort of new figure in his barking sum. He was an extensive shareholder in the "Lourdes" business; and a careful speculator in all the religious frenzies of the uneducated and superstitious. His career had been very successful so far. He had amassed a considerable fortune; and away out towards Frascati he had a superb Villa, furnished with every modern luxury and convenience, (not rented in his own name, but in that of a man whom he paid heavily to serve him as his tool and menial,)--where a beautiful Neapolitan danseuse condescended to live as his mistress;--he was a diplomat for himself if not for his country, and kept his finger on the pulse of European politics as well as on the fluctuating fevers of new creeds. But he never troubled himself seriously as to the possible growth of any "movement", or "society", or "crusade"; as experience had taught him that no matter how ardently thinkers may propound theories, and enthusiasts support them, there is always a dense and steady wave of opposition surging against everything new,--and that few can be found whose patience will hold out sufficiently long to enable them to meet and ride over that wet wall of dull resistance.

Monsignor Gherardi was a most useful man at the Vatican, as he never failed to comfort the Pope whenever that Holy Personage was cast down or afraid of brooding disasters. When the Representative of the ever-merciful Christ ventured to give it out as his Christian opinion that the unhappy and maltreated Dreyfus would be found guilty Monsignor Gherardi smilingly agreed with him. When His Holiness denounced Freemasonry as a wicked association, formed for atheistical and revolutionary purposes, Gherardi, though he knew well enough that it was a fraternity formed for the mutual help and sustainment of its members, denounced it too;--in the gardens of the Vatican, but not elsewhere. There was nothing really either in the way of Freemasonry or other sort of "society", that he was afraid of;--no anxiety whatever troubled his mind, except the possibility of losing money by some incautious speculation. In appearance he was an exceedingly handsome man,--tall, with a fine figure and commanding features,--physical advantages which greatly helped him to enforce his spiritual authority. As he sat in his high-backed, gilded chair, turning over papers on his desk, docketing this and marking that for reference, his dark eyes sparkling with avidity as he counted up certain dividends obtained from mysterious shares in "miracle" health resorts, and a smile of satisfaction playing on the firm, well-shaped curve of his intellectual but hard mouth, he looked an imposing personage enough, of the very type to awe the weak and timorous. He was much entertained on this particular morning,--one might almost say he was greatly amused. Quite a humorous little comedy was being played at the Vatican,--a mock-solemn farce, which had the possibility of ending in serious disaster to the innocent,--and he, as a student of the wily and treacherous side of human nature, was rather interested in its development. Cardinal Felix Bonpre, a man living far away in an obscure cathedral-town of France, where he had become renowned for good works and saintly living, had now, after many years, come out of his long voluntary retirement, and had performed a miracle!

"And very well done too!" murmured Monsignor Gherardi, smiling to himself, "Well prepared, well thought out, and successfully accomplished! Our good Felix is much cleverer than I gave him credit for. First, he wins a renown for good works,--then he starts travelling toward Rome, the Mother of our Faith,--and on his way to the sacred city performs a miraculous cure! An excellent move! I see a possibility of making the Cathedral of Rouen a popular shrine for healing. Yes, much can be done there! Only I am sorry that Felix has made a little mistake in Paris--just a little mistake!--in that matter of Vergniaud. And it is exceedingly unfortunate that the son should turn out to be Gys Grandit. No wonder the Holy Father is troubled;--no wonder! It is a little drama of the age, and will no doubt prove complex in its movement, and worth watching." Here his smile broadened,--and his eyes glittered more keenly than ever "Yes!--it will be an excitement; and one wants a little excitement now and then in the general monotony. Since Agostino preached,--" here he paused, and a dark contraction knitted his brows,--"Let me see!--this morning, yes!--this morning I receive the English socialist Aubrey Leigh."

He turned in his chair, and glanced at the dial of a huge ticking clock behind him, and saw that the hands were close on the appointed hour of eleven. His smile slowly disappeared, and vanished altogether in a heavy frown. "A dangerous man! I do not like his book--it is written in melodramatic style, with heat and with enthusiasm, and will attract the vulgar. He must be suppressed--but how?"

He rose and paced the room slowly, his long white hands clasped behind his back, and the frown on his brows deepened;--how suppress a man who had announced himself as free of every Church and Creed, and who was resolved to stand by the moral ethics of Christ only? A man who desired nothing for himself, not even money;--"But stop!" thought Gherardi,--"that is absurd! Every man wants money! Every man must have it, and the more he has, the more he seeks. There is no one in the world who cannot be bought or bribed!"

At that moment the green hangings of the door were lifted, and the Italian man-servant announced,--

"Il Signor Aubri Lee!"

Gherardi, who in his pacing to and fro had reached the window, wheeled round abruptly and faced his entering visitor. The light fell aslant upon his stately figure as he drew himself up to his full height, and greeted Leigh with a suavely condescending bow and smile, while Aubrey in turn glanced him up and down with a pleasurable consciousness of his intellectual appearance, and evident combative temperament.

"You are welcome, Mr. Leigh," said Gherardi, speaking English with a fluency of which he was pardonably proud, "Your letter from Florence received my instant attention, and as you see, I have made it a point to receive you at once--in spite of pressing business. Yes,--in spite of pressing business! I confess I have been curious to see the writer who has made himself so obnoxious to our dear friends and brothers, the English clergy!"

A smile that was brilliant, but which conveyed no meaning whatever, illumined his features; but for all reply to these words Aubrey simply bowed and remained silent. Gherardi glanced at him sharply. Was he intimidated already?--overawed at being in the presence of one who was known to be a friend and confidant of the Pope? No--there was nothing of fear or embarrassment in the composed attitude, proud manner, and reserved expression of this slim, muscular man, with the bright hair and keen eyes,--and Gherardi dropped his tone of patronage for one of courtesy.

"Pray sit down!" he said, "I understand that you wish to obtain a private audience of the Holy Father. That of course is impossible!"

Aubrey drew a chair slowly towards the desk where Gherardi had resumed his own usual seat, and raised his eyes with a curious look of half satirical questioning.

"Impossible!" he said, "And why?"

Gherardi almost laughed.

"Why? My dear sir, is it necessary to ask? Your name is sufficiently well-known! and--I am sorry to tell you so,--but it is quite as unpleasant at the Vatican as that of Gys Grandit!"

"Gys Grandit is a friend of mine," responded Aubrey composedly, "In fact, I may almost say he is my disciple. I found him working in the fields as a little peasant lad,--the love child, or 'bastard,' to put it roughly, of some priest whose name he never told me. He was helping to earn daily bread for his deserted mother whose maiden name he then bore; and I helped to train his evident genius in the way it has since developed."

"I cannot congratulate you on your pupil!" said Gherardi, smiling coldly, "The offspring of a priest's sin is not likely to do the world any credit. The son of the renegade Abbe Vergniaud may become notorious, but never famous!"

Aubrey Leigh started up from his chair doubting whether he had heard aright.

"The son of Abbe Vergniaud!" he exclaimed, "Is it possible! No, you must surely be mistaken!--I know the Abbe,--I saw him in Paris but a fortnight ago!"

"Indeed! Well, since that time strange things have happened," said Gherardi, still preserving his calm inscrutability of demeanour, "We have had our news from Monsignor Moretti, an envoy of ours in Paris, on secret service. To put it briefly,--Vergniaud, for no particular cause whatever, save perhaps the idea--(which may be only an idea)--that he is going to die soon, has made a public confession of his twenty-five-year-old crime and hypocrisy, in a blasphemous address preached from the pulpit of Notre Dame de Lorette. The son, known to the world as Gys Grandit, was present in the church, and fired a pistol shot at his father, hoping to murder him,--then came the theatrical denouement of the whole scene;--the Abbe ordered the gendarmes to release the assassin, pronouncing him to be his son. And finally--the saddest incident of all--there took place the mutual pardon and reconciliation of both parties in the presence of one of our most respected and beloved Princes of the Church, Cardinal Felix Bonpre, whose grave error in this matter is causing poignant and loving sorrow to the Holy Father!"

A curious expression began to appear in the delicate lines of Aubrey's face--an expression which some of his London audiences knew so well, and which generally meant war.

"You surprise me, Monsignor," he said in quiet accents,--"Events move quickly, I know, in a quickly moving age,--still your news is entirely unexpected. I never knew till now who the father of my friend Gys Grandit was;--but now that I do know I think the public confession you tell me of, was the only fitting reparation such a man as the Abbe could make to the dead woman who was his wife in the sight of God, as well as to his living son, and the public generally. I never quite liked or trusted the Abbe; but if all this be true, he has risen a hundred per cent, in my opinion! As for Cardinal Bonpre, one of the noblest and purest of men, you surely cannot be in earnest when you speak of his having committed a grave error!"

"You know the Cardinal?" asked Gherardi evading the question.

"I was presented to him in Paris the day before I left for Florence," replied Aubrey, "at the studio of his niece, Donna Angela Sovrani."

"Ah!" and Gherardi balanced a paper-knife lightly on the point of his long forefinger, "An unpleasant woman that! One of the female 'geniuses' who presume nowadays to compete with men in art and literature."

"In Donna Sovrani's case there can be no question of competition," answered Leigh quietly, "She is by far and away the best artist of her time."

"You think so? Very good, very good!" and Gherardi laughed a little, "You are very chivalrous! You have a touch of the American in you, have you not?--there is a tendency in the men of the New World to be always on their knees before women. Strange, very strange!"

"We begin our lives in that way," replied Leigh, "We kneel to our mothers!"

A slight flush reddened Gherardi's yellow paleness, but he kept his smile well in evidence.

"Charmingly expressed--very charmingly!" he said suavely, "And so you have met our dear St. Felix! Well, well! And did he tell you all about the wonderful miracle he performed at Rouen?"

A cloud of surprise intermingled with contempt darkened Leigh's intellectual brows.

"Never!" he said emphatically, "I should not have thought so much of him if he had laid any claim to such a pretence!"

Gherardi laughed again softly.

"What a pity," he observed, "What a pity you clever heretics are so violent! You think the power of the Church is a decaying one, and that our Lord has ceased to supply its ministers with the Spirit of Grace and the powers of healing? But this is where you are mistaken! The Church--the Roman Church--remains as it always was and always will be; impregnable!--the source of inspiration, the seat of miracle, the only clue and road to everlasting life! And as for its power--" here he closed his hand and dropped it on the table with a silent force which was strangely expressive, "its power is immeasurable! It reaches out in every direction--it grasps--it holds,--it keeps! Why will you and your co-workers 'kick' like St. Paul 'against the pricks'? It is quite useless! The Church is too strong for any one of you--aye, and for any army of you! Do you not hear the divine Voice from heaven calling daily in your ears, 'Why persecutest thou Me?'"

"Yes," answered Aubrey deliberately, "I hear that every time I enter a church! I hear it every time I see an ordained priest or minister of the Gospel misusing his time in construing to his own purposes the classic simplicity of Christ's doctrine. In some places of worship, such as the tawdry church of the 'Annunziata' in Florence that protest seems to reach its climax. When one sees the unwashen priests expectorating every five minutes or so [Footnote: A fact] on the very altars where they perform Mass;--when one notes the dirt, the neglect, the gim-crackery;--the sickening and barbarous superstition everywhere offered as being representative of sublime Deity,--the Force which has raised the heaven above us with its endless star-patterns of living universe,--then the cry of 'Why persecutest thou Me?' seems to roll through the arches like the thunder which sometimes precedes a general earthquake!"

Leigh's clear penetrating voice, artistically modulated to the perfectly musical expression of thought, was not without its usual effect, even on a mind so callous as that of Gherardi. He moved uneasily in his chair,--he was inwardly fuming with indignation, and for one moment was inclined to assume the melodramatic pose of the irate Churchman, and to make himself into the figure of an approved "stage" dignitary of religion, with out stretched arm, menacing eyes, and words that were as darts to wound and sting. But looking under his eye lids at the cold, half satirical tranquillity of Aubrey's pale clear-cut features, he felt that any attempt at "acting" his part would be seen through in a second by a man who was so terribly in earnest. So with a benevolent and regretful air, he said,

"Yes!--no doubt things appear to you as they do not appear to us. The spirit of faith enables us to see through all unsatisfactory outward forms and ceremonies, to the actual divine mysteries which they symbolise;--and heretics perceive incongruities, where we, by the grace of God, see nothing but harmony! And though you, Mr. Leigh, receive the information with incredulity and a somewhat blameable indifference, it is a matter of rejoicing to us that Cardinal Bonpre has performed this miracle of healing at Rouen. It would have raised him to a very high place indeed in the Holy Father's estimation, had it not been for the strange mistake he has unfortunately made with respect to the Abbe Vergniaud."

"One may cure a sick person then, but one must not pardon a sinner?" suggested Aubrey, "'For whether is it easier to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee;' or 'Arise and walk?' The one is considered a miracle;--the other a mistake!"

Gherardi's cold eyes glittered.

"We will not go into the technicalities of the question," he said frigidly, "We will return to the point from whence we diverged. Your wish expressed in this letter," and he drew one from a packet on the table and glanced it over in a business-like way, "was to obtain a private audience from the Pope. I repeat that to a mere civilian and socialistic writer like yourself, that is impossible!"

Aubrey sat unmoved.

"I suppose if I were a prince of the blood-royal I should not be refused an audience?" he said.

Gherardi's thick dark eyebrows went up with a movement of surprise at such an irrational remark.

"That would make a difference certainly," he answered smiling, "The claims of diplomacy have to be considered!"

"If a prince of the blood-royal whose private life was a scandal to the world"--went on Aubrey, "who was guilty of every vice known in the calendar,--who was neither intelligent nor sympathetic,--whose whole career was one of self and self-indulgence,--I say if he were to seek a private audience of the man who is declared to be the representative of Christ in Christendom, he would obtain it! On the other hand, if a man who had denied himself every personal gratification, and had sacrificed his whole life in working for his fellow men, and to the following of the teachings of the Gospel as far as it was possible,--but who yet had got no further in world's wealth than to be earning from his writings a few hundreds a year, he could NOT be received! Monsignor, this may be diplomacy, but it is not Christianity!"

"I cannot enter into these matters with you--" began Gherardi impatiently.

"No, you cannot, because you dare not!" said Aubrey boldly. "Man, you are not a Christian! Why pretend to be one? Is it not time you left off feigning what you do not feel? Is it not preposterous that you, at your years, should consent to make your life a lie in the face of Omnipresent Deity?"

Gherardi rose up pale and trembling.

"Mr. Leigh, if you have come here to insult me--"

"Insult you!" echoed Aubrey, "Not I! I would make a man of you if I could,--but that is too late! You are a witness of imposture and a supporter of it,--and we are none of us worthy to be called men if we do either of these two things. You know as well as I do, that there is no representative of the blameless Christ at the Vatican,--you know there is only a poor weak old man, whose mind is swayed by the crafty counsels of the self-seeking flatterers around him, and who passes his leisure hours in counting up money, and inventing new means of gaining it through forms of things that should be spiritual and divine. If you BELIEVE Christ was God Incarnate, how dare you tamper with such a Supernal Mystery?"

Gherardi turned his head slowly and looked round at Aubrey,--then recovering his composure, sat down and pretended to turn over some documents on the table, but Aubrey went on undeterred by his aspect of frigidity, "How dare you, I say? The God in Man! Do you realize the stupendous meaning of such a phrase? Do you not see that it means A DIVINE LIFE PALPITATING THROUGH EVERY ATOM OF CREATION? A Force so great, so pure and majestic, so absolute in Its working for good, and yet so deliberate in Its movements that It will give Its creature Man whole centuries of chance to find and save his own soul before utterly destroying him? What has this sublime Power in common with the Pope, who shuts himself up in his palace, a voluntary prisoner, all forsooth because he is denied temporal power! Temporal power! What is temporal power compared to spiritual power! If he were the true representative of Christ he would move the world by deeds of benevolence, goodness, and sanctity! In such a case as that of the unhappy Dreyfus for instance, he would have issued a solemn warning and earnest reproach to the French nation for their misguided cruelty;--he would have travelled himself to Rennes to use his personal influence in obtaining an innocent man's release with honour! That would have been Christian! That would have been a magnificent example to the world! But what did he do? Shut comfortably up in his luxurious palace where no harm could touch him, where no crucifixion of the heart or soul could torture him, he announced to his myrmidons his opinion that the wretched martyr would be found guilty! And who can tell but that his utterance thus unchristianly proclaimed did not help to sway the minds of the Rennes Court-martial? Again, why are there so many poor in Italy? If the Pope were the father indeed of those who are immediately around him, the land should be like the fabled Paradise, flowing with milk and honey. The Vatican is full of money and jewels. 'Sell half that thou hast and give to the poor,' was the command of Christ.--Does the Pope do that? Why does he not go out among the people and work in active sympathy with them? Christ did so! Christ was never borne with solemn flourish of trumpets like a mummy in a chair, under canopies of cloth of gold, to give a blessing to a crowd who had got admission to see him by paid ticket! Man, man! The theatrical jugglery of Rome is a blasphemy in the sight of heaven;--and most truly did St. John declare this city, throned on its seven hills, to be, 'MYSTERY, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.' And most clearly does God say at this period of our time, 'Come out of her My people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities!' The days of evil are drawing to an end; Rome must fall!"

Gherardi's breath came and went quickly,--but he kept up the outward appearance of cold composure.

"You rant very well, Mr. Leigh!" he said, "You would make an excellent Hyde Park orator! You have all the qualities which attract the vulgar; but we--we of the Church know quite well how to deal with men of your class,--their denunciations do not affect us at all. They amuse us occasionally; and sometimes they pain us, for naturally we grieve for the backslidings of refractory brethren. We regret the clamourings of ignorance which arise from a strong personal desire for notoriety. That passage in the Revelation of St. John, has been quoted scores of times as being applicable to Rome, though as a matter of fact it distinctly mentions Babylon." Here he smiled suavely. "And thanks to the workings of an All-wise Influence, Rome was never more powerful than she is at the present moment. Her ramifications are everywhere; and in England she has obtained a firm footing. Your good English Queen has never uttered one word of reproach against the spread of our Holy Religion among her subjects! Our prayers for the conversion of England will yet be granted!"

"Not while I live!" said Aubrey firmly, "Not while I can hold back but a handful from such a disaster, and that handful shall hold back yet another handful! The hand of Roman priestcraft shall never weigh on England while there are any honest men left in it! The conversion of England! The retrogression of England! Do you think such a thing is likely to happen because a few misguided clerics choose to appeal to the silly sentimentality of hysterical women with such church tricks and rags of paganism as incense and candles! Bah! Do not judge the English inward heart by its small outward follies, Monsignor! There are more honest, brave, and sensible folk in the British Islands than you think. And though our foreign foes desire our fall, the seed of THEIR decay is not yet in us!"

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