"I said that I sat in the Cathedral and listened to the music of the
great organ--"
"The great organ!" interrupted the Archbishop,--"You must have been
dreaming! You could not possibly have heard the great organ,--it is old
and all out of gear;--it is never used. The only one we have for
service just now is a much smaller instrument in the left-hand
choir-chapel,--but no person could have played even on that without the
key. And the key was unobtainable, as the organist is absent from the
town to-day."
The Cardinal looked completely bewildered.
"Are you quite sure of this?" he asked falteringly.
"Sure--absolutely sure!" declared the Archbishop with a smile--"No
doubt you thought you heard music; overwrought nerves often play these
tricks upon us. And it is owing to this same cause that you are weary
and dispirited, and that you take such a gloomy view of the social and
religious outlook. You are evidently out of health and unstrung;--but
after you have had sufficient rest and change, you will see things in
quite a different aspect. I will not for a moment believe that you
could possibly be as unorthodox as your conversation would imply,--it
would be a total misconception of your true character," and the
Archbishop laughed softly. "A total misconception," he repeated,--"Why,
yes, of course it would be! No Cardinal-Archbishop of Holy Mother
Church could bring such accusations against its ministry as you would
have suggested, unless he were afflicted by nervous depression, which,
as we all know, has the uncomfortable effect of creating darkness even
where all is light. Do you stay long in Rouen?"
"No," replied the Cardinal abstractedly, answering the question
mechanically though his thoughts were far away--"I leave for Paris
to-morrow."
"For Paris? And then?"
"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 passage 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 extinguishing 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 passing 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 God'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 Godhead became
man, to show men how they might in turn become gods. 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 mass 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 multitudes who had
appealed to the incarnate God-in-Man before its altars. God-in-Man had
been made manifest!--how long would, the world have to wait before
Man-in-God 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 God 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.