The Master-Christian. Marie Corelli
of Flowers'—such as an innocent girl could hold in her hands, and bend her sweet eyes over. It would have been a taste of the sensual-spiritual, or the spiritual-sensual,—which is the most exquisite of all human sensations."
"There is no taint of sensuality in the purely spiritual," said the
Cardinal reprovingly.
"Not for your nature,—no! You have made your body like a transparent scabbard through which the glitter of the soul-sword is almost visible. But I am different. I am so much of a materialist that I like to pull down Heaven to the warm bosom of Earth and make them mingle. You would lift up Earth to Heaven! Ah, that is difficult! Even Christ came down! It is the chief thing I admire in Him, that He 'descended from Heaven and was made Man'. TRES CHER Felix, I shall bewilder you to death with my specious and frivolous reasoning,—and after all, I had much better come to the main fact of what I intended to tell you,—a sort of confession out of church. You know I have already told you I am going to die soon, and that I am a bad man confessedly and hopelessly,—but among other things is this, (and if you can give me any advice upon it I will take it,) that for the last four or five years I have been dodging about to escape being murdered,—not because I particularly mind being murdered, because I probably deserve it,—and one way of exit is as good as another,—but because I want to save the would-be murderer from committing his crime. Is not that a good motive?"
Cardinal Bonpre gazed at him in astonishment. Vergniaud appeared to him in an entirely new light. He had always known him as a careless, cynical-tempered man;—a close thinker,—a clever writer, and a brilliant talker,—and he had been inclined to consider him as a "society" priest,—one of those amiable yet hypocritical personages, who, by the most jesuitical flatteries and studied delicacies of manner, succeed in influencing weak-minded persons of wealth, (especially women) to the end of securing vast sums of money to the Church,—obtaining by these means such rank and favour for themselves as would otherwise never have been granted to them. But now the Abbe's frank admission of his own sins and failings seemed a proof of his inherent sincerity,—and sincerity, whether found in orthodoxy or heterodoxy, always commanded the Cardinal's respect.
"Are you speaking in parables or in grave earnest?" he asked. "Do you really mean that you are shadowed by some would-be assassin? An assassin, too, whom you actually wish to protect?"
"Exactly!" And Vergniaud smiled with the air of one who admits the position to be curious but by no means alarming. "I want to save him from the guillotine; and if he murders me I cannot! It is a question of natural instinct merely. The would-be assassin is my son!"
Cardinal Bonpre raised his clear blue eyes and fixed them full on the
Abbe.
"This is a very serious matter," he said gently, "Surely it is best to treat it seriously?"
"Oh, I am serious enough, God knows!" returned Vergniaud, with a heavy but impatient sigh, "I suppose there is, there must be, some terribly exact Mathematician concerned in the working of things, else a man's past sins and failings being done with and over, would not turn up any more. But they DO turn up,—the unseen Mathematician counts every figure;—and of course trouble ensues. My story is simply this;—Some twenty-five years ago I was in Touraine;—I was a priest as I am now—Oh, yes!—the sin is as black as the Church can make it!—and one mid-summer evening I strolled into a certain quaint old church of a certain quaint old town,—I need not name it—and saw there a girl, as sweet as an apple blossom, kneeling in front of the altar. I watched her,—I see her now!—the late sunlight through the stained glass window fell like a glory on her pretty hair, and on the little white kerchief folded so daintily across her bosom, and on her small hands and the brown rosary that was twisted round her fingers. She was praying, so she told me afterwards, to her guardian angel,—I wonder what that personage was about just then, Bonpre! Anyhow, to her petition came no answer but a devil,—a devil personified in me,—I made her love me,—I tempted her by ever subtle and hellish persuasion I could think of,—I can never even now think of that time without wondering where all the eloquent evil of my tongue came from—and—well!—she never was able to ask the guardian angel any more favours! And I?—I think I loved her for a while,—but no, I am not sure;—I believe there is no such good thing as absolute love in my composition. Anyway, I soon left Touraine, and had almost forgotten her when she wrote to tell me of the birth of her child—a son. I gave her no reply, and then she wrote again,—such a letter!—such words! At the moment they burnt me,—stabbed me—positively hurt me,—and I was not then easily hurt. She swore she would bring the boy up to curse his father,—and, to put it quite briefly,—she did. She died when he was twenty, and it now appears the lad took an oath by her death-bed that he would never rest till he had killed the man who had dishonoured his mother, and broken her heart, and brought him into the world with a stigma on his name. No filial respect, you see!" And Vergniaud tried to force a smile. "To do the boy justice, he apparently means to keep his oath,—he has not rested; he has been at infinite pains to discover me; he has even been at the trouble to write me a warning letter, and is now in Paris watching me. I, in my turn, take care to protect myself;—I am followed by detectives, and am at enormous pains to guard my life; not for my own sake but for his. An odd complication of circumstances, is it not? I cannot have him arrested because he would at once relate his history, and my name would be ruined. And that would be quite as good a vengeance for him as the other thing. You will admit that it is a very dramatic situation!"
"It is a retribution!" said the Cardinal in a low voice, "And a terrible one!"
"Yes, I suppose it is. I imagined you would consider it in that light," and Vergniaud half closed his eyes, leaning back in his chair languidly, "But here I am, willing to set things as straight as I can, and it really seems impossible to arrange matters. I am to die soon, according to the doctors;—and so I have made my willleaving everything I possess to this ridiculous boy who wishes to kill me; and it is more than probable that he,—considering how he has been brought up and educated—will cast all the money into the dirt, and kick at my grave. But what can I do?"
"Nothing," said the Cardinal, "You can do nothing, Vergniaud! That is the worst of having inflicted a wrong upon the innocent,—you can never by any means retrieve it. You can repent,—and it is probable that your very repentance ensures your forgiveness at a higher tribunal than that of earth's judgment,—but the results of wrong cannot be wiped out or done away with in this life;—they continue to exist, and alas!—often multiply. Even the harsh or unjust word cannot be recalled, and however much we may regret having uttered it, somehow it is never forgotten. But—" here leaning forward, he laid one hand gently on Vergniaud's arm, "My dear friend—my dear brother—you have told me of your sin;—it is a great sin,—but God forbid that I should presume to judge you harshly when our Lord Himself declared that 'He came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance'. It may be that I can find a way to help you. Arrange for me to see this misguided son of yours,—and I will endeavour to find a means of restitution to him and to the memory of his mother before you pass away from us,—if indeed you are to pass away so soon. Under the levity you assume I perceive you have deep feeling on this matter;—you shall not die with a wrong on your soul, Vergniaud!—you shall not if I can prevent it! For there undoubtedly is another life; you must go into it as purely as prayer and penitence can make you."
"I thought," said the Abbe, speaking somewhat unsteadily, "that you might when you heard all, hurl some of Rome's thunderous denunciations upon me . . ."
"What am I, and what is Rome, compared with the Master's own word?" said the Cardinal gently. "If our brothers sin against us seventy times seven we are still to forgive, and they are still our brothers! Denunciations, judgments and condemnations of one another are not any part of our Lord's commands."
Vergniaud rose up and held out his hand.
"Will you take it," he said, "as a pledge that I will faithfully do whatever you may see fitting and right to retrieve the past?—and to clear my son's soul from the thirst of vengeance which is consuming it?"
Cardinal Bonpre clasped the extended hand warmly.
"There is your answer!" he said, with a smile which irradiated his fine countenance