The Master-Christian Part 5

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

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

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

"Her mother was your sister?"

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

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

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

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

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

What more can you desire?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He turned in, and shut his door as far as it would allow him to do so, and went comfortably to bed, where Madame had gone before him. And throughout the Hotel Poitiers deep peace and silence reigned. Every one in the house slept, save Cardinal Bonpre, who with the Testament before him, sat reading and meditating deeply for an hour before retiring to rest. A fresh cause of anxiety had come upon him in the idea that perhaps his slight indisposition was more serious than he had deemed.

If, as the Archbishop had said, there could have been no music possible in the Cathedral that afternoon, how came it that he had heard such solemn and entrancing harmonies? Was his mind affected? Was he in truth imagining what did not exist? Were the griefs of the world his own distorted view of things? Did the Church faithfully follow the beautiful and perfect teachings of Christ after all? He tried to reason the question out from a different and more hopeful standpoint, but vainly;--the conviction that Christianity was by no means the supreme regenerating force, or the vivifying Principle of Human Life which it was originally meant to be, was borne in upon him with increasing certainty, and the more he read the Gospels, the more he became aware that the Church--system as it existed was utterly opposed to Christ's own command, and moreover was drifting further and further away from Him with every pa.s.sing year.

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

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

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

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

IV.

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

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

"G.o.d of Eternity, stay Thy hand! For one remaining Cause be merciful!

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

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

"Thy prayer is heard,--and once again the silence shall be broken.

Nevertheless remember that 'the light s.h.i.+neth in darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not'."

Deep silence followed. The mysterious Presence melted as it were into s.p.a.ce,--and the Cardinal awoke, trembling violently and bathed in a cold perspiration. He gazed bewilderedly around him, his mind still confused and dazzled by the strong visionary impression of the burning heavens and sea,--and he could not for a moment realize where he was.

Then, after a while, he recognised the humble furniture of the room he occupied, and through the diamond-shaped panes of the little lattice window, perceived the towers of Notre Dame, now gleaming with a kind of rusty silver in the broader radiance of the fully uplifted moon.

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

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

"G.o.d's laws can never be altered;" he said aloud--"Every evil deed brings its own punishment; and if the world's wickedness becomes too great an offence in the eyes of the Almighty, it follows that the world must be destroyed. What am I that I should pray against Divine Justice!

For truly we have had our chance of rescue and salvation;--the Way,--the Truth,--and the Life have been given to us through Christ our Redeemer; and if we reject Him, we reject all, and we have but ourselves to blame."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Why are you weeping here alone?"

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