There was a vague understanding among the members of the Cabala that I
was engaged upon the composition of play about Saint Augustine. None of
my friends had ever seen the manuscript (even I was surprised to come
upon it every now and then at the bottom of my trunk), but it was
treated with enormous respect. Mlle de Morfontaine especially kept
asking about it, kept walking about on tiptoes and glancing at it
sideways. It was to this that she was alluding in the note I received
soon after Blair's frightened departure: Try and arrange to come up to
the Villa for a few weeks. It is perfectly quiet until five o'clock
every afternoon. You can work on your poem.
It was my turn for a little peace. I had so recently passed through the
desperations of Marcantonio and Alix. I sat holding the note for a long
while, my wary nervous system begging me to be cautious, begging me to
make sure that no hysterical evenings could possibly lie behind it. Here
was a place where it was perfectly quiet until five o'clock every
afternoon. It was five o'clock every morning that I wanted to be
reassured about. You can work on your poem. Surely the only vexation
that could proceed from that wonderful lady lay exactly there,--she
would be asking me every morning about the progress on the Third Act. It
would be good for me to be hectored about my play. And what wonderful
wines she stored. To be sure the lady was mad, indubitably mad. But mad
in a nice way, with perfect dignity; decently mad on a million a year.
I wrote her I would come.
What could have been more reassuring than the first days? Mornings of
sunlight when the dust settled thicker on the olive-leaves; when the
terraced hillside seemed to be powdering away; when no sound reached the
garden but the cry of a carter in the road, the cooing of doves,
stepping high along the eaves of the gardener's shed, and the sound of
the waterfall with its mysterious retardations, a sound of bronze. I ate
luncheon alone under a grape arbor. The rest of the day was spent in
roaming over the hills or among the high chairs of Astrée-Luce's rich
and curious library.
From the middle of the afternoon one sensed the approach of dinner. One
felt the gradual tightening of the chord of formality until, like the
bursting of some pyrotechnical bomb, full of dazzling lights and
fascinating detail, the ceremony began. For hours there had come a hum
as of bees from the wing of the house that contained the kitchen; there
followed the flights of maids and hairdressers through the corridors,
the candle-lighter, the flower-bearers. The crushing of gravel under the
window announces the arrival of the first guests. The majordomo clasps
on his golden chain and takes his place with the footmen at the door.
Mlle de Morfontaine descends from her tower kicking her train about to
teach it its flexibility. A string quartet on the balcony begins a waltz
by Glazounov as subdued as a surreptitious rehearsal. The evening takes
on the air of a pageant by Reinhardt. One passes to the saloon. At the
head of the table behind peaks of fruits and ferns, or cascades of
crystal and flowers, sits the hostess, generally in yellow satin, her
high ugly face lit with its half-mad surprise. She generally supports a
headdress of branching feathers and looks like nothing so much as a bird
of the Andes blown to that bleakness by the coldest Pacific breezes.
I have described how Miss Grier brooded over her table and placed
herself to hear every word whispered by her remotest guest. Astrée-Luce
followed a contrary procedure and heard so little of what was said that
her very guest of honor was often obliged to resign all hope of engaging
her attention. She would seem to have been caught up into a trance; her
eyes would be fixed on some corner of the ceiling as though she were
trying to catch the distant slamming of a door. Generally some Cabalist
held the opposite end of the table: Mme. Bernstein, huddled up in her
rich fur cape, looking like an ailing chimpanzee and turning from side
to side the encouraging amiability of her grimace; or the Duchess
d'Aquilanera, a portrait by Moroni, her dress a little spotty, her face
a little smudged, but somehow evoking all the passionate dishonest
splendid barons of her line; or Alix d'Espoli making passes with her
exquisite hands and transforming the guests into witty and lovable and
enthusiastic souls. Miss Grier seldom came, having festivals of her own
to direct. Nor was it often possible to invite the Cardinal, since any
company to meet him must be chosen with infinite discretion.
Almost every evening after the last guest had left the hill or retired
to bed, and the last servant had finished finding little things to
adjust, Astrée-Luce and I would descend into the library and have long
talks over a drop of _fine_. It was then that I began to understand the
woman and to see where my first judgments had been wrong. This was not
a silly spinster of vast wealth nourishing a Royalist chimæra; nor the
sentimental half-wit of the philanthropic committees; but a Second
Century Christian. A shy religious girl so little attached to the things
about her that she might awake any day and discover that she had
forgotten her name and address.
Astrée-Luce has always illustrated for me the futility of goodness
without intelligence. The dear creature lived in a mist of real piety;
her mind never drifted long from the contemplation of her creator; her
every impulse was goodness itself: but she had no brains. Her charities
were immense but undigested; she was the prey of anyone who wrote her a
letter. Fortunately her donations were small, for she lacked the
awareness to be either avaricious or prodigal. I think she would have
been very happy as a servant; she would have understood the role, have
seen beauty in it, and if her position had been full of humiliation and
trials it would have deeply nourished her. Sainthood is impossible
without obstacles and she never could find any. She had heard over and
over again of the sins of pride and doubt and anger, but never having
felt even the faintest twinge she had passed through the earlier stages
of the spiritual life in utter bewilderment. She felt sure that she was
a wicked sinful woman, but did not know how to go about her own reform.
Sloth? She had been on her knees an hour every morning before her maid
appeared. So difficult, so difficult is the process of making oneself
good. Pride? At last after intense self-examination she thought she had
isolated in herself some vestiges of pride. She attacked them with fury.
She forced herself to do appalling things in public in order to uproot
the propensity. Pride of appearance or of wealth? She soiled her sleeves
and bodice intentionally and suffered the silent consternation of her
friends.
She read the lessons so literally that I have seen her give away her
coat time after time. I have seen her walk miles with a friend who asked
her to go as far as the road. Now I was to learn that her fits of
abstraction were withdrawals into herself for prayer and adoration, and
often caused by almost ludicrous incidents. I was no longer left to
wonder why all references to fish and fishing sent her off into the
clouds; I realized that the Greek word for fish was the monogram of her
Lord and acted upon her much as a muezzin's call acts upon a Mohammedan.
A traveller spoke flippantly of the pelican; at once Mlle de Morfontaine
repaired to her mental altar and besought its guest not to grieve at the
disrespect paid to one of His most vivid symbols. Strangest illustration
of all was shown me a little later. One day she chanced to notice on my
hall table an envelope which I had addressed to Miss Irene H. Spencer, a
teacher of Latin in the High Schools at Grand Rapids, who had come over
to put her hand on the Forum. At once Astrée-Luce insisted on meeting
her. I never told Miss Spencer why she had been tendered so amazing a
luncheon, why her hostess had listened so breathlessly to her trivial
travelogues, nor why on the following day a golden chain hung with
sapphires had been left at the pension for her. In fact Miss Spencer was
a devout Methodist and would have been shocked to learn that IHS meant
anything.
Strange though Mlle de Morfontaine was, she was never ridiculous. Such
utter refusal of self can by sheer excess become a substitute for
intelligence. Certainly she was able to let fall remarkably penetrating
judgments, judgments that proceded from the intuition without passing
through the confused corridors of our reason. Though she was
exasperating at times, at others she would abound in almost miraculous
perceptions of one's needs. People as diverse as Donna Leda and myself
had to love her, one moment almost with condescension as to an
unreasonable child, and the next with awe, with fear in the presence of
something of infinite possibility. Whom were we entertaining unawares?
Might this, oh literally! be an...?
This then was the being whom I came to know during those late
conversations in the library over a drop of _fine_. The talk was
leisurely, full of pauses and to no point, but my bruised instinct could
no longer escape the conviction that there was some deeply important
matter that she wished to submit to me. I soon foresaw that I was not to
rest. My dread of the revelation however was heightened by the obvious
difficulty Astrée-Luce found in coming to the point. Finally instead of
trying to avoid the discussion I tried to provoke it; I thought I could
help here and there by opening veins of conversation that might surprise
her problem. But no. The happy moment hung off.
One evening, she asked me abruptly whether it would greatly interfere
with my work if we were to move to Anzio for a few days. I replied that
I should like nothing better. All I knew of Anzio was that it was one of
the resorts on the sea, a few hours from Rome, the site of one of
Cicero's villas, and near Nettuno. She added a little anxiously that we
should have to go to a hotel, a very poor hotel at that, but that it was
out of season and there were ways in which she could supply some of the
deficiencies of the service. A little foresight could prevent my being
too uncomfortable.
So one morning we climbed into the large plain car she reserved for
travelling and drove westward. The back seat served as a warehouse. One
glimpsed a maid, a prie-dieu, a cat, a real panel by Fra Angelico, a box
of wines, fifty books and some window curtains. I found out later that
there had been a lavish assortment of caviare, paté, truffles and
ingredients for rare sauces by which, with a discouraging failure to
understand me, she intended to supplement the resources of a tourists'
hotel. She drove, herself, and in nothing did Heaven's interest in her
reveal itself more clearly. First we stopped at Ostia so that I might
see the veritable spot where the last scene of my wretched play took
place. We read aloud the page of Augustine and I silently vowed to
renounce forever any notion of rephrasing it.
On our first evening at Anzio a cold wind blew in from the sea. The
vines and shrubs whipped the houses; the lamps of the cafés about die
square swung cheerlessly over wet tables; one could not escape the
desolate slip-slap of the waves against the sea-wall. But we both had a
taste for such weather. We decided at about six o'clock to walk to
Nettuno returning for dinner at half-past nine. We wrapped ourselves in
rubber and started off, leaning against the wind and spray and feeling
strangely exhilarated. For a time we walked in silence, but entering at
last that portion of the road that lies between the high walls of the
villas, Astrée-Luce began to talk:
I have told you before, Samuele, (the whole Cabala had followed the
Princess in calling me Samuele) that the hope of my life is to see a
king reigning in France. How impossible such a thing seems now! No one
knows it better than I. But everything I love most is improbable. And it
is the fact that it seems so untimely that will help us most when we
come to prepare the Divine Right of Kings as a dogma of the Church. What
anger there will be, what sneers! Even important Churchmen will rush
down to Rome and beg us not to upset the progress of Catholicism by such
a move. There will be controversies. All the newspapers and the reviews
will be shouting and weeping and laughing and the whole basis of
democratic government, the folly of republics, will be aired. Europe
will be cleansed of the poison in its side. We have nothing to fear from
debates. The people will turn to God and ask to be ruled by those houses
of His choosing.--However, I am not trying to convince you of it now,
Samuele; I am only stating it so as to lead up to something else. You
are a Protestant; does this make you impatient? Are you tired of me?
No, no, please. I am very interested, I replied.
At that moment our road brought us again to the water's edge. We stood
for a moment on a parapet looking down on the loud sea that plunged
about on the washing stones of a village. It began to rain. Astrée-Luce
was gripping the iron railing watching the steam that rose from the
waves; she was crying silently.
Perhaps, she continued, as we returned to our journey, you can imagine
the tenth part of my disappointment as I watch the Cardinal getting
older, and myself, and the nations falling deeper and deeper into error,
and so little done. He can help us. He seems to me to have been
especially created to help us. I do not forget his work in China. It was
heroic. But what a greater work remains for him in Europe. Year follows
year and still he sits up there on the Janiculum, reading and walking in
the garden. Europe is dying. He will not stir.
At the time I was deeply moved. The rain and her tears and the puddles
and the slapping noises of the water against the sea-wall had begun to
affect me. All the voices of nature kept repeating: Europe is Dying. I
would have liked to stop and have a good meaningless cry myself, but I
had to listen to the voice beside me:
I cannot understand why he does not write. Perhaps I am not meant to
understand. I know he believes that the universality of the Church is
imminent. I know that he believes that a Catholic Crown is the only
possible rule. But he does not stir to help us. All we ask from him is a
book on the Church and the States. Think, Samuele, his learning, his
logic, his style--but you have never heard him preach? His irony in
controversy and his amazing perorations! What would be left of
Bosanquet? The constitutions of the republics of the world would be
tossed about--you will forgive me if I seem disrespectful to your great
country--tossed about like eggshells. His book would not be just a book
fallen from the press: it would be a force of nature; it would be the
simultaneous birth of an idea in a thousand minds. It would be placed at
once on the canon and bound up with the Bible. And yet he spends his day
among rose bushes and rabbits and reading histories of this and that. I
want to do this in my life time; I want to arouse this great man to his
task. And you can help me.
I was excited. The air was full of a divine absurdity. Here was someone
who was not afraid of using superlatives. This was being mad on a great
scale. It would be hard to come down to ordinary living after these
intoxicating threats against the presidents of this world and the
binderies of the British Bible Society. I tried to think of something to
say. I mumbled something about willingness.
She did not notice my inadequacy. It seems to me, she continued, that I
have at last discovered one of the causes of his reluctance to join us.
But first, tell me how he is regarded by the various Romans whom you
have met. What is his legend among people who do not know him?
Here I was frightened. Could _she_ have heard? How could any of those
strange rumors have reached her?
But she would learn nothing from me. I took leave of good faith and told
her all the favorable reports I had heard. Simple souls were captivated
by the thought that apart from a few major obligations he lived on
sixty-five lire a week; that he spoke twelve languages; that he enjoyed
polenta; that he visited in certain Roman homes (her own, in particular)
without ceremony; that he was translating the Confessions and the
Imitation into exquisite Chinese. I knew Romans who so loved the very
thought of him that they took walks to the Janiculan Hill solely to peer
between his garden gates and lurked about the house in the hope of
giving their children an opportunity to kiss his ring.
Astrée-Luce waited in silence. At last she said with only a trace of
reproach:
You are trying to spare me, Samuele. But I know. There are other stories
about him. His enemies have been at work systematically poisoning his
prestige. We know that there is no one in Rome who is kinder, more
humble, higher-minded; but among the common people he has almost the
reputation of a monster. Some people have been at work spreading such
rumors deliberately. And the Cardinal has heard of them: through the
whispering of servants or by cries in the road, or by anonymous letters,
in all sorts of ways. He exaggerates this attitude. He feels that he is
in a hostile world. It has made his old age tragic. And that is why he
will not write. Yet it is within our power to save him still.--But look!
There is a francobollo shop. Let us get some cigarettes and find some
place to sit down. It makes me so happy to talk of this!
Provided with cigarettes we looked about for a wine shop. Our wish
evoked one at the next curve in the road, a smoky uncordial tunnel, but
we sat down before the glasses of sour inky wine and continued our
conspiracy. Astrée-Luce confessed that if the ill-odor had become
attached to the Cardinal's name through any real delinquencies on his
part, we could not have hoped to dissipate it. Truth in such subtle
regions as rumor would be unalterable. But she knew that the aspersions
in this case were the result of a clever campaign and she felt sure that
a countercampaign could still sweeten his reputation. In the first place
our enemies had taken advantage of the Italians' prejudice against the
Orient. An Italian enjoys the same delicious shudder at the sight of a
Chinaman that an American boy does at the mention of a trapdoor over a
river. The Cardinal had returned from the East yellow, unwrinkled. His
walk troubled them. It was easy to build upon this, to pass the whisper
along the Trasteverine underworld that he kept strange images, that
animals (his gardenful of rabbits and ducks and guinea fowl) could be
heard shrieking late at night, that his faithful Chinese servant had
been seen in all sorts of terrifying attitudes. Next, his frugal life
stirred their imaginations. Every one knew he was fabulously wealthy.
Rubies as big as your fist and sapphires like doorknobs, where were
they? Did you ever go up to the gate of the Villino Wei Ho? Come with me
Sunday. If you sniff hard enough you can get the strangest odor, one
that will leave you drowsy for days and give you dreams.
We were to change all this. We sat there choosing a committee of
rehabilitation. We were to have magazine articles, newspaper paragraphs.
His eightieth birthday was approaching. There would be presentations.
Mlle de Morfontaine was donating a Raphael altar piece to his titular
church. But most of all we would send out agents among the people,
telling them of his goodness, his simplicity, his donations to their
hospitals, and ever so faintly his sympathy with socialistic ideas; he
was to be the People's Cardinal. We had anecdotes of his snubbing the
arrogant members of the College, of his defending a poor man who had
stolen a chalice from his church. China was to be recreated for the
Trasteverines. And so on. We were to prop up the Cardinal so that the
Cardinal could prop up Europe.
When we returned to the hotel that night Astrée-Luce seemed to have
grown ten years younger. Apparently I was the first person to whom she
had outlined her vision. She was so eager to be at work that she
suddenly asked me if I minded packing up again and going back to Tivoli
that night. We could the better start work in the morning. What she
really wanted was the exhilaration and fatigue of driving (her terrible
driving) before she went to bed. So we put back into the car the maid,
the Fra Angelico, the ingredients for sauces and the cat, and returned
to the Villa Horace at about two in the morning.
The Cardinal was not to know that we were putting up a scaffolding about
his good name and freshening the colors; but we were to persuade him not
to do some of the things that particularly antagonized the public. The
very next morning Astrée-Luce shyly begged me to go and see him. She
did not know why, but she had a vague idea that now I knew her hopes my
eyes would be open to significant details.
I found him as one could find him every sunny day the year round, seated
in the garden, a book on his knee, a reading glass in his left hand, a
pen in his right, a head of cabbage and a Belgian hare at his feet. A
pile of volumes lay on the table beside him: "Appearance and Reality,"
Spengler, "The Golden Bough," "Ulysses," Proust, Freud. Already their
margins had begun to exhibit the spidery notations in green ink that
indicated a closeness of attention that would embarrass all but the
greatest authors.
He laid aside his magnifying glass as I came up the path of shells.
_Eccolo, questo figliolo di Vitman, di Poe, di Vilson, di Guglielmo
James,--di Emerson, che dico_! What do you want?
Mlle de Morfontaine wants you to come to dinner Friday night, just the
three of us.
Very good. Very nice. What else?
What do you want, Father, for your birthday? Mlle de Morfontaine wants
me to sound you tactfully ...
Tactfully!--Samuelino, walk to the back of the house and tell my sister
you will stay to lunch. I am to have a little Chinese vegetable dish.
Will you have that or a little risotto and chestnut-paste? You can buy
yourself something solid on the way down hill. How is Astrée-Luce?
Very well.
A little illness would be good for her. I am uncomfortable when I am
with her. There are certain doctors, Samuele, who are not happy when
they are talking to people in good health. They are so used to the
supplicating eyes of patients that say: Shall I live? In the same way I
am ill at ease in the company of persons who have never suffered.
Astrée-Luce has eyes of blue porcelain. She has a fair pure heart. It
is sweet to be in the company of a fair pure heart, but what can one say
to it?
There was St. Francis, Father...?
But he had been libertine in his youth, or thought he had.--Senta! Who
can understand religion unless he has sinned? who can understand
literature unless he has suffered? who can understand love unless he has
loved without response? _Eco_! The first sign of Astrée-Luce's being in
trouble was last month. There is a certain Monsignore who wants her
millions for his churches in Bavaria. Every few days he climbs the hill
to Tivoli and breathes into her ear: _And rich He hath sent empty away_.
The poor child trembles and pretty soon Bavaria will have some enormous
churches, too ugly for words. Oh, you know, there is for every human
being one text in the Bible that can shake him, just as every building
has a musical note that can overthrow it. I will not tell you mine, but
do you want to know Leda d'Aquilanera's? She is a great hater, and they
say that during the Pater Noster she closes her teeth tight upon: _Sicut
et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris_.
At this he laughed for a long time, his body shaking in silence.
But was not Astrée-Luce devoted to her mother? I asked.
No, she has had no losses. That was when she was ten. She has poetized
her, that is all.
Father, why did not that literal faith of hers carry her to a convent?
She promised her dying mother she would stay alive to put a Bourbon on
the throne of France.
How can you laugh, Father, at her devotion to ...
We old men are allowed to laugh at things that you little students may
not even smile about. Oh, oh, the house of Bourbon. Would you be
surprised if I gave up my life to reviving the royal brother-and-sister
marriages of Egypt? Well! It is not more impossible.
Dear Father, won't you write one more book? Look, you have about you all
the greatest books of the first quarter of my century ...
And very stupid they are, too.
Won't you make us one. Such a great book, Father Vaini. About yourself,
essays like Montaigne,--about China and about your animals and
Augustine ...
Stop! No! Stop at once. You frighten me. Do not you see that the first
sign of childhood in me will be the crazy notion that I should write a
book? Yes, I could write a book better than this ordure that your age
has offered us (and with a sharp blow he pushed over the tower of books;
the Belgian hare gave a squeal as he barely escaped being pinned under
Schweitzer's Skizze). But a Montaigne, a Machiavelli ... a ... a ...
Swift, I will never be. How horrible, how horrible it would be if you
should come here some day and find me writing. God preserve me from the
last folly. Oh, Samuele, Samuelino, how bad of you to come here this
morning, and awaken all the vulgar prides in an old peasant. No, don't
pick them up. Let the animals soil them. What is the matter with this
Twentieth Century of yours...? You want me to compliment you because
you have broken the atom and bent light? Well, I do, I do.--You may tell
our rich friends, tactfully, that I want for my birthday a small Chinese
rug now reposing in the window of a shop on the Corso. It would be
unbecoming for me to say more than that it is on the left as you
approach the Popolo.--The floor of my bedroom is getting colder every
morning, and I always promised myself that when I became eighty I might
have a rug in my bedroom.
What went wrong?
The first hour was delightful. The Cardinal always ate very little
(never meat) and that with preposterous slowness. If his soup took him
ten minutes his rice required half an hour. To be sure the elements of
trouble were present merely in these friends' characters. They were so
different that just to hear them talking together had an air of high
comedy. First, Astrée-Luce made the mistake of referring to the
Bavarian Monsignore. She suspected that the Cardinal was out of sympathy
with any plans she might have of helping the Church in that direction;
she longed to talk over with him the problem of her wealth and its
disposition, but he refused to give her the least advice. He had endless
resources of ingenuity in evading the subject. As Rome was arranged at
that time it was most important that he should exercise no influence on
that aspect of his friend's life. Yet he allowed it to be seen that he
knew she would handle the matter foolishly. It ailed him to see such an
enormous instrument for progress drift down the wind of ecclesiastical
administration.
Now we must remember that it was the eve of his eightieth birthday. We
have already seen that the event had precipitated a flood of amused
bitterness. As he said later, he should have died at the moment of
leaving his work in China. The eight years that had elapsed since then
had been a dream of increasing confusion. Living is fighting and away
from the field the most frightening changes were taking place in his
mind. Faith is fighting, and now that he was no longer fighting he
couldn't find his faith anywhere. This vast reading was doing something
to him.... But most of all we must remember his terror at the thought
that the people of Rome hated him. He would leave in dying a memory
without affection and without dignity. An anonymous letter had told him
that even in Naples children were kept in good behavior with threats
that the Yellow Cardinal would skin them. If one were young one would
laugh at such a rumor, but being old one grew cold. He was leaving a
world where he was shuddered at for a world that was no longer as
distinct as it had been, but which might yet have this consolation that
he would not be able to look down from it and see the people
surreptitiously spitting on the endings in _issimus_ that would compose
his epitaph.
Before I knew it we were in the middle of a wrangle about prayer.
Astrée-Luce had always longed to hear the Cardinal discourse upon
abstract matters. She had often tried to draw him into arguments on the
frequent communion and on the invocation of the saints. He had once
whispered to me that she was trying to extract from him the materials
for a calendar, such sweet manuals as she could buy in the Place Saint
Sulpice. Every word of his was sacred. She would not have hesitated to
put him in a Church window with St. Paul. It was only after a few
moments that she became aware that he was saying some rather strange
things. Could that be Doctrine? If anything he said was difficult all
she had to do was to try hard to grasp it. Truth, new truth. So she
listened, first with surprise, then with mounting terror.
He was launched upon the paradox that in prayer one should never ask for
anything. His dialectic was doing an incredible work. He had decided to
be Socratic and was asking Astrée-Luce questions. He wrecked her on
several orthodox assumptions. Twice she fell into heresy and was
condemned by the councils. She seized hold of St. Paul but the epistle
broke in her hand. She came to the surface for the third time but was
struck by a Thomist fragment. The previous week the Cardinal had been
called to the deathbed of a certain Donna Matilda della Vigna, and it
was poor Donna Matilda who was now dragged forth to point the argument.
Exactly what had the survivors been praying for? Astrée-Luce was easily
routed from the more obvious positions. She became frightened. Presently
she rose:
I don't understand. I don't understand. You are joking, Father. Aren't
you ashamed of saying such things to bewilder me, when you know how I
value everything you say.
Look, then, continued the Cardinal. I shall ask Samuele about this. As
he is only a Protestant it will be very easy to entangle him. Samuele,
may I assume that God may have intended Donna Matilda to die before long
anyway?
Yes, Father, for she died that very night.
But we thought that if we prayed very sincerely we might change His
mind.
Why ... there is authority for our Hoping that in extremities our prayer
may....
But she died. Then we were not sincere enough! Or persevering enough!
Good! Sometimes He grants and sometimes He doesn't, and Christians are
expected to pray hard on the chance that this is one of the times He
might relent. What a notion! Astrée-Luce, what a thought!
Father, I can't stay and hear you talk this way.
What a view of these things. Listen. It is inincredible that He should
change His mind. Because we frightened mortals are on the carpet? Oh!
You are a slave, to the idea of bargain. The money changers are still in
the temple!
Here Astrée-Luce, gone quite white, returned to the arena with one more
brave venture: But, Father, you know He answers the requests of a good
Catholic. Then she added in a lower voice with tears in her eyes. But
you were there, dear Father. If you had deeply wished it you could have
altered the ...
Here he half rose from his chair crying with terrible eyes: Insane
child! What are you saying? I? _Have I no losses_?
Now she flung herself upon the floor before him. You have been saying
these things to prove me. What is the answer? I will not let you go
until you tell me. Dear Father, you know that prayer is answered. But
your clever questions have upset all my old ... old ... What is the
answer?
Come, sit down, my daughter, and tell me yourself. Think!
This went on for another half-hour. I grew more and more astonished.
Mere prayer as a problem was soon left far behind. It was the idea of a
benignant power behind the world that was being questioned now. For the
Cardinal it was an exercise in rhetoric, sharpened by his temperamental
scepticism on the one hand and by his latent resentment against
Astrée-Luce on the other. It was a kind of questioning that would have
had no effect on sound intellectual believers. It was disastrous for
Astrée-Luce because she was a woman without a reason who just this once
was trying to reason. She would so have liked to have been a deep
thinker, and when she fell it was through her desire to be a different
person.
It went on and on. At every fresh proposal he would now cry Bargain! A
Bargain! and point out that her prayers sprang from fear or the greed
for comfort. Astrée-Luce was going to pieces. I moved over behind her
chair and pleaded with the Cardinal by gesture. Was he tormenting her
out of caprice? Did he realize her devotion to himself?
At last she seemed to have a light:
My head is in a whirl. But I know now what you mean me to answer. We may
not ask for things, or people, or relief from sickness, but we may ask
for spiritual qualities; for instance for the advancement of the
Church...?
Vanity! Vanity! How many years have we been praying for a certain good
thing? What have statistics shown us?--I refer to the conversion of
France.
With a cry Astrée-Luce rose and left the room. I took upon myself to
protest to him.
She is foolish, Samuelino. You cannot call those convictions deep that
were overturned with straws. No, trust me. This is for her good. I have
been a confessor too long to go astray here. She has the spiritual
notions of a school-girl. She must be fed on some harsher bread.
Understand that she has never suffered. She is good. She is devout. But
as I told you the other day, just by accident she has never known
trouble.
Just the same, Eminence, I know her well enough to know that this very
moment she is in her chapel, clinging to the altar-rails. She will be
depressed for weeks.
But just at that moment Astrée-Luce returned. Her manner was agitated
and artificially gracious. Will you excuse me if I go to bed now? she
asked. (She never called him Father again.) Please stay and talk with
Samuele.
No, no. I must be going. But before I go let me tell you one thing. The
real truths are difficult. At first they are forbidding. But they are
worth all the others.
I shall be thinking over what we have said.--I ... I ... Excuse me, if I
ask you something?
Yes, my child, what is it?
Promise me you weren't joking.