The Master-Christian. Marie Corelli
against Heaven, and you have sinned against the Church and your own calling,—but the greatest sinner can do no more than repent and strive to make amends. For I see you fully know and comprehend the extent of your sin."
"Yes, I know it," and Vergniaud's eyes were clouded and his brows knitted, "I know it only too well! Greater than any fault of Church-discipline is a wrong to human life,—and I wronged and betrayed an innocent woman who loved me! Her soul was as sweet as the honey-cup of a flower,—I poisoned it. That was as bad as poisoning the Sacrament! I should have kept it sweet and pure; I should have let the Church go, and been honest! I should have seen to it that the child of my love grew up to honour his father,—not to merely live for the murder of him! Yes!—I know what I should have done—I know what I have not done—and I am afraid I shall always know! Unless I can do something to atone I have a strange feeling that I shall pass from this world to the next—and that the first thing I shall see will be her face! Her face as I saw it when the sunshine made a halo round her hair, and she prayed to her guardian angel."
He shuddered slightly, and his voice died away in a half whisper. The
Cardinal pressed his hand again warmly and tenderly.
"Courage, courage!" he said. "It is true we cannot do away with our memories,—but we can try and make them sweet. And who knows how much God may help us in the task? Never forget the words that tell us how 'the angels rejoice more over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine just persons.'"
"Ah!" and the Abbe smiled, recovering somewhat of his usual manner, "And that is so faithfully enforced upon us, is it not? The Churches are all so lenient? And Society is so kind?—so gentle in its estimate of its friends? Our Church, for example, has never persecuted a sinner?—has never tortured an unbeliever? It has been so patient, and so unwearying in searching for stray sheep and bringing them back with love and tenderness and pity to the fold? And Churchmen never say anything which is slanderous or cruel? And we all follow Christ's teaching so accurately? Yes!—Ah well—I wonder! I wonder what will be the end! I wonder why we came into life at all—I wonder why we go! Fortunately for me, by and by, there will be an end of all wondering, and you can write above my tomb, 'Implora pace'! The idea of commencing a new life is to me, horrible,—I prefer 'Nirvana' or nothingness. Never have I read truer words than those of Byron,
'Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen,
Count o'er thy days from anguish free,
And know whatever thou hast been,
'Tis something better not to be.'"
"I cannot think that is either true or good philosophy," said the Cardinal, "It is merely the utterance of a disappointed man in a misanthropic mood. There is no 'not to be' in creation. Each morning that lights the world is an expression of 'to be'! And however much we may regret the fact, my dear Vergniaud, we find ourselves in a state of BEING and we must make the best of it,—not the worst. Is that not so?"
His look was gentle and commanding,—his voice soft yet firm,—and the worldly Abbe felt somewhat like a chidden child as he met the gaze of those clear true eyes that were undarkened by any furtive hypocrisies or specious meanings.
"I suppose it is, but unfortunately I have made the worst of it," he answered, "and having made the worst I see no best. Who is that singing?"
He lifted his hand with a gesture of attention as a rich mezzo-soprano rang out towards them,—
"Per carita
Mostrami il cielo;
Tulto e un velo,
E non si sa
Dove e il cielo.
Se si sta
Cosi cola,
Non si sa
Se non si va
Ahi me lontano!
Tulto e in vano!
Prendimi in mano
Per carita!"
"It is Angela," said the Cardinal, "She has a wonderfully sweet voice."
"Prendimi in mano,
Per carita!"
murmured Abbe Vergniaud, still listening, "It is like the cry of a lost soul!"
"Or a strayed one," interposed the Cardinal gently, and rising, he took Vergniaud's arm, and leaned upon it with a kindly and familiar grace, an action which implied much more than the mere outward expression of confidence,—"Nothing is utterly lost, my dear friend. 'The very hairs of our head are numbered,'—not a drop of dew escapes to waste,—how much more precious than a drop of dew is the spirit of a man!"
"It is not so unsullied," declared Vergniaud, who loved controversy,—"Personally, I think the dew is more valuable than the soul, because so absolutely clean!"
"You must not bring every line of discussion to a pin's point," said Bonpre smiling, as he walked slowly across the room still leaning on the Abbe's arm. "We can reduce our very selves to the bodiless condition of a dream if we take sufficient pains first to advance a theory, and then to wear it threadbare. Nothing is so deceptive as human reasoning,—nothing so slippery and reversible as what we have decided to call 'logic.' The truest compass of life is spiritual instinct."
"And what of those who have no spiritual instinct?" demanded Vergniaud.
"I do not think there are any such. To us it certainly often seems as if there were masses of human beings whose sole idea of living is to gratify their bodily needs,—but I fancy it is only because we do not know them sufficiently that we judge them thus. Few, if any, are so utterly materialistic as never to have had some fleeting intuition of the Higher existence. They may lack the force to comprehend it, or to follow its teaching,—but in my opinion, the Divine is revealed to all men once at least in their lives."
They had by this time passed out of the drawing-room, and now, ascending three steps, they went through a curtained recess into Angela Sovrani's studio,—a large and lofty apartment made beautiful by the picturesque disorder and charm common to a great artist's surroundings. Here, at a grand piano sat Angela herself, her song finished, her white hands straying idly over the keys,—and near her stood the gentleman whom the Abbe Vergniaud had called "a terrible reformer and Socialist" and who was generally admitted to be something of a remarkable character in Europe. Tall and fair, with very bright flashing eyes, and a wonderfully high bred air of concentrated pride and resolution, united to a grace and courtesy which exhaled from him, so to speak, with his every movement and gesture, he was not a man to pass by without comment, even in a crowd. A peculiar distinctiveness marked him,—out of a marching regiment one would have naturally selected him as the commanding officer, and in any crisis of particular social importance or interest his very appearance would have distinguished him as the leading spirit of the whole. On perceiving the Cardinal he advanced at once to be presented, and as Angela performed the ceremony of introduction he slightly bent one knee, and bowed over the venerable prelate's extended hand with a reverence which had in it something of tenderness. His greeting of Abbe Vergniaud was, while perfectly courteous, not quite so marked by the grace of a strong man's submission.
"Ah, Mr. Leigh! So you have not left Paris as soon as you determined?" queried the Abbe with a smile, "I thought you were bound for Florence in haste?"
"I go to Florence to-morrow," answered Leigh briefly.
"So soon! I am indeed glad not to have missed you," said Cardinal Bonpre cordially. "Angela, my child, let me see what you have been doing. All your canvases are covered, or turned with their faces to the wall;—are we not permitted to look at any of them?"
Angela immediately rose from the piano, and wheeled a large oaken chair with a carved and gilded canopy, into the centre of the studio.
"Well, if you want to see my sketches—and they are only sketches," she said,—"you must come and sit here. Now," as her uncle obeyed her, "you look enthroned in state,—that canopy is just fitted for you, and you are a picture in yourself!—Yes, you are, dearest uncle! And not all the artists