Away in Paris, a vast concourse of people were assembled round an open
grave in Pere-la-Chaise, wherein the plain coffin of the Abbe Vergniaud
had just been lowered. The day was misty and cold, and the sun shone
fitfully through the wreaths of thin vapour that hung over the city,
occasionally gleaming on the pale fine face of the famous "Gys
Grandit", who, standing at the edge of the grave spoke his oration over
the dead.
"To this, to this," he cried, "oh people of Paris, we all must come!
Our ambitions, our hopes, our dreams, our grand reforms, our loves and
joys end here, so far as this world is concerned! He whom we have just
laid in the earth was skilled in many devious ways of learning,--gifted
with eloquence, great in scholarship, quick with the tongue as with the
pen, he was a man whom perchance all France would have called famous
had it not been for me! I am the blot on my father's name! I am the sin
for which he has made the last expiation! People of Paris, for years he
lived and worked among you,--outwardly smiling, witty of speech and
popular with you all,--but inwardly a misery to himself in his own
conscience, because he knew his life was not what he professed it to
be. He knew that he did not believe what he asked YOU to accept as
true. He knew that he had guilt upon his soul,--he knew that all the
sins which none of you could guess at, God saw. For there is a God! Not
the God of the priests, but the God of the Universe and of man's
natural and spiritual instinct. He from whom nothing escapes,--He who
ordains where every drop of dew shall fall,--He whose omnipresent
vision perceives the flight of every small bird in the air and
predetermines the building of its nest, and the manner of its end,--He
is the God whom none can deceive. Those who dream they can play false
with Him are mistaken. This dead man, my father, living among you for
years, was contented for years to seem like you,--yes!--for you all
have something which you think you can cover up from the searching eye
of Fate; and many of you pretend to be what you are not,--while many
more wear the aspect of men over the souls of beasts. My father who
rests here to-day at our feet, was a priest of the Roman Church. In
that capacity he should have been clothed with sanctity. Human, yet
removed from common frailty. Yet reckless of his order, heedless of his
vows, he, priest as he was, turned libertine, and betrayed an innocent
woman. He destroyed her name--killed her honour--broke her heart!
Libertines of all classes from kings to commoners, do this kind of
thing every day, and deem it but a small fault of character.
Nevertheless it is a crime!--and for a crime there is always
punishment! For everything that is false,--for everything that is
mean,--for everything that is contemptible and cowardly, punishment
comes,--if not soon, then late. In this case vengeance was
forestalled,--for the sinner, repenting in time, took his vengeance on
himself. He confessed his sin before you all! That was brave! How many
of you here to-day would have such courage! How many of you would throw
off your cloaks of virtue and admit your vices?--or having admitted
them, try to amend them? But this is what my father did. And for this
he should be honoured! He told you all fully and frankly that his
professions of faith were false and vain and conventional; and that he
had seemed to you what he was not. Now the committal of a sin is one
thing,--but the frankly repentant confession of that sin is another.
Some of you will say--Who am I that I should judge my father? Why truly
I am nothing!--and should have been nothing but the avenger of my
mother's life and broken-hearted misery. For that I lived,--for that I
was ready to die! What a trivial object of existence it must seem to
you Parisians nowadays!--to avenge a mother's name! Much better to
fight a duel for some paltry dancer! Yes!--but I am not so constituted.
From my childhood I worked for two things--vengeance and ambition; I
put ambition second, for I would have sacrificed it all to the fiercer
passion. But when I sought to fulfil my vengeance, the man on whom I
would have taken it, himself changed it into respect, pity, admiration,
affection,--and I loved what I had so long hated! So even I, bent on
cruelty, learned to be kind. But not so the Church! The Church of Rome
cannot forgive the dead priest whom we have laid in all-forgiving
Mother Earth to-day! Had he lived, the sentence of excommunication
would have been pronounced against him,--now that he is dead, it is
quite possible it may still be pronounced against his memory. But what
of that? We who know, who feel, who think,--we are not led by the
Church of Rome, but by the Church of Christ! The two things are as
different as this grave differs from high Heaven! For we believe that
when Magdalen breaks a precious box of perfume at the feet of Christ
'she hath wrought a good work'. We also believe that when a man stands
'afar off', saying 'Lord, be merciful to me a sinner!' he goes back to
his house again justified more than he who says 'Lord, I thank Thee I
am not as other men!' We believe that Right is right, and that nothing
can make it wrong! And simply speaking, we know it is right to tell the
truth, and wrong to tell a lie. For a lie is opposed to the working
forces of Nature, and those forces sooner or later will attack it and
overcome it. They are beginning now in our swiftly advancing day, to
attack the Church of Rome. And why? Because its doctrine is no longer
that of Christ, but of Mammon! This is what my father felt and knew,
when he addressed his congregation for the last time in Notre Dame de
Lorette. He knew that he was doomed by disease to a speedy
death,--though he little guessed how soon that death would be. But
feeling the premonition of his end, he resolved to speak out,--not to
condone or excuse himself for having preached what he could not believe
all those years,--but merely to tell you how things were with him, and
to trust his memory to you to be dealt with as you choose. He has left
a book behind him,--a book full of great and noble thoughts expressed
with most pathetic humility; hence I doubt not that when you see the
better soul of him unveiled in his expressed mind, you will yet give
him the fame he merits. His Church judges him a heretic and castaway
for having confessed his sin at last to the people whom he so long
deceived,--but I for this, judge him as an honest man! And I have some
little right to my opinion, for as Gys Grandit I have sought to
proclaim the thoughts of many--"
He paused till the murmur of enthusiasm at mention of the name by which
he was known through France should have ceased. It rose on the air in a
sort of bee-like humming monotone, and then died away, while many
people stood on tip-toe and craned their necks eagerly over each
other's shoulders to catch a glimpse of the daring writer whose works
threatened to upset a greater power than any throne, the Roman Church.
"I have tried," he resumed quietly, "as I say, to proclaim the thoughts
of many! The people of France, like the peoples of many other nations,
are losing God in a cloud of priest-craft. Look up to this broad canopy
of heaven,--look up to yonder driving clouds heavy with rain, through
which the great sun gleams like a golden shield,--that is the temple of
the real God! That sparkling roof of air through which the planets roll
in their tremendous orbits, bends over the wise and the foolish, the
just and the unjust; the sun shines as kindly on the face of the street
outcast as on that of the great lady who is often more soiled in soul
than her miserable sister. The rich man can provide for himself no
finer quality of light than is vouchsafed to the poor. The flowers in
the field spring up as graciously under the feet of the beggar as the
king. The Church of the true God is Equality!--the altar, the
sacrament, the final resting-place of the dead, Equality! Your
revolutionary cry was and is still,--Liberty, Equality, and
Fraternity!--but when you shout those words, you know not what you are
calling for. Your demand is instinctive,--the cry of a child for its
parents. It is not for temporal things that you clamouras the foolish
imagine,--it is for eternal things! Liberty of thought,--Equality in
work--Fraternity in faith! But your political leaders, ever at work for
themselves, misread these words for you, even as your priests misread
Christ's Gospel. They make out for you that you want Liberty of
action--Equality of riches, Fraternity in position. These things are by
Nature's law, impossible. They are not wanted,--and reasonable
consideration will prove to you that you do not want them,--otherwise
you would be asking for a disordered universe, a chaos instead of a
world! The strong must always prevail,--but by strong, I do not mean
the strong liar or the strong evil-doer. No! For a lie contains in
itself the germ of rottenness which shall kill--and the evil-doer is
not strong but weak, because cowardly. There is no strength in fear; no
power in disease! Hence I repeat again, the strong must prevail--and by
the strong, I mean the Good! Evil is always weak,--it flourishes for a
day, a month, a year, or if you will, a thousand years, for a thousand
years are but a moment in the sight of Heaven; but for ever and ever
justice is done,--for ever and ever Right comes uppermost, and the
Strong which is God, than whom is none stronger, and who is all
Goodness--prevails! Liberty of thought should be the privilege of every
human creature, but we must never mistake it for Liberty of action.
Liberty of action is restrained by law in the world of nature, and must
be equally restrained in the world of men. But insist on Equality in
work! What do I mean by Equality in work? I mean this,--that every
man's work is entitled to consideration and respect, in every phase of
life. The road-mender works well and makes a smooth way for men and
horses;--he deserves my honour for his skill,--he has it,--he shall
have it,--for I know he can teach me many things of which I am
ignorant. The chief of the State works well,--organizes;--puts grave
matters in order and establishes necessary government--he also shall
have my respect,--he has it,--he deserves his carriage and pair as
fully as the road-mender deserves his dinner. We should not grudge or
envy either man the reward due to their separate positions. The
nightingale has a sweet voice,--the peacock screams--the one is plain
in colour, the other gorgeous,--and there is no actual equality; yet
the one bird does not grudge the other its position, inasmuch as though
there is no Equality there is Compensation. So it is with men. There is
always Compensation in every lot. So it should be; so it must be.
Equality in work means simply, respect for every kind of work done, and
contempt for none except for him who does no work at all! And lastly
the word 'Fraternity.' Glorious word, meaning so much!--holding
suggestions of peace, joy and purity in its mere utterance! Not a
Fraternity of possession--for then should we become lower than the
beasts, who have their own separate holes, their separate mates, their
separate young--but Fraternity of Faith!--the one Faith that teaches us
to cry 'Abba Father,'--that makes us understand Christ as our
Brother--and all of us the children of one family,--one creation moving
on in process of evolvement to greater things! Let any priest tell me
that I am not a child of God, and I will retort that he, by such an
utterance, has proved himself a child of the devil. Ignorant, sinful,
full of miserable imperfections as I am, I am of God as the ant is, the
worm, the fly!--and if I have no more of God in me than such insects,
still I am thankful to have so much! What priest shall dare to say how
much or how little of God there was in the composition of this man
lying in the grave at our feet, who was my father? Excommunication! Who
can excommunicate the soul from its Creator? Who can part the sunbeam
from the sun? Excommunication! The human being who, on what he calls
Church authority, shall thrust his brother away from any form of
communion which he himself judges and accepts as valuable, is one of
those whom Christ declared to be 'in danger of hell-fire.' For there is
no man who can, if he be true to himself, condemn his brother man, or
say to him, 'Stand back! I am holier than thou!' Therefore, for him
whom we lay down to rest to-day, let there be pardon and peace! Let us
remember that for all his sins he atoned, by full confession;--by
publicly branding himself in the sight of that society in whose
estimation he had till then seemed something superior,--by voluntarily
resigning himself to the wrath of the Church of which he was a
professed servant. Cursed by his Creed, he may now perchance be blessed
by his Creator! For he died, clean-souled and true--washed of
hypocrisy,--with no secret vice left unhidden for others to rake up and
expose to criticism. Whatsoever wrong he did, he openly
admitted--whatever false things he said, he retracted. I believe--and I
am sure we all believe, that his spirit thus purified, is acceptable to
God. He has left no lies behind him--no debts--no wrongs to be avenged.
He told you all, people of Paris, what he was before he left you,--and,
looking down into this dark grave, we know what he is. A senseless,
sightless, stiffening form of clay, from which the soul that animated
it into action has fled. Let the Church excommunicate this poor corpse
of my father,--let it muster its forces against his memory as it will,
I swear before you all, that memory shall live! Yes--for I, his son,
will guard it; I whom he so late acknowledged as his own flesh and
blood, will be a shield of defence for his name till I die! If priests
would attack him, they must attack him through me!--and I, despite a
thousand Churches, a thousand Creeds, a thousand Sacraments, will
firmly maintain that a man who frankly repents his sins and is openly
honest with the world before he leaves it, is a better Christian than
he, who for the sake of mere appearances and conventionality, juggles
with death and passes to his Maker's presence in a black cloud of lies!
Better to be crucified with Christ, than live with the High Priests and
Pharisees of the modern Jerusalem of our social conditions! Truth may
seem to perish on the Cross of injustice--it may be buried in a sealed
sepulchre, the entrance to which may be closed up by a great stone of
Mammon-bulk and heaviness--but the moment must come when the Angel
descends from Heaven--when the stone is rolled away--and the eternal,
living God rises again and walks the world in the glory of a new dawn!"
He ended--and for a moment there was a deep silence. There had been no
funeral service, for no priest would attend the burial of the heretic
Abbe. So, after a brief pause, Cyrillon knelt down by the grave,--and
carried away by the solemnity of the scene, as well as by their own
emotional excitement, more than half the crowd knelt with him, as,
bending his head reverently over his clasped hands, he prayed aloud--
"Oh God of Love, whose tenderness and care for Thy creation is
everywhere disclosed to us, from the smallest atom of dust, to the
stupendous majesty of Thy million worlds in the air,--give we beseech
Thee, to this perished clay which once was man, the beauty which
transforms vile things to virtuous, and endows our seeming death with
life! Let Thy eternal Law of Resurrection so work upon this senseless
body that it may pass through Earth to Heaven, and there find finer
grades of being, higher forms of development, greater opportunities of
perfection. And for the Soul, which is Thine own breath of fire, O God,
receive it, purified from sin, and make it worthy of the final purpose
for which Thou hast destined it from the beginning! And grant unto us,
left here to still work out our own salvation on this the planet Thou
hast chosen for our trial, the power to comprehend Thy laws, and
faithfully to obey them,--to forgive as we would be forgiven,--to love
as we would be loved,--and to lift our thoughts from the appearance of
this grave to the Reality of Thy beneficence, which hath ordained Light
out of Darkness, and out of Death, Life, as proved most gloriously to
us by Christ our Brother, our Teacher and our Master! Amen!"
His prayer finished, the young man rose, and taking a wreath of ivy,
which he had travelled to Touraine himself to bring from the walls of
the simple cottage where his mother had lived and worked and died, he
dropped it gently on the coffin and signed to the grave-diggers to fill
in the earth. Then turning to the crowd, he said,
"My friends, I thank you all for the sympathy which has brought you
here to-day. 'It is finished.' The dead man is at rest! And now as you
go,--as you return to your own homes,--homes happy or unhappy as the
case may be, I will only ask you to remember that there is no
permanence or virtue in falsehood whether it be falsehood religious or
falsehood political,--and he who dies truthfully dealing with his
fellow-men, lives again with God, and is not, as Scripture says 'dead
in his sins,' but born again to a new and more hopeful existence!"
With the last words he gave the sign of dismissal. The people began to
disperse slowly and somewhat reluctantly, every member of the crowd
being curious to obtain a nearer view of the young orator who not only
spoke his thoughts fearlessly, but whose pen was as a scythe mowing
down a harvest of shams and hypocrisies, and whose frank utterance from
the heart was so honest as to be absolutely convincing to the public.
But he, after giving a few further instructions to the men who were
beginning to close in his father's grave, walked away with one or two
friends, and was soon lost to sight in one of the many winding paths
that led from the cemetery out into the road, so that many who
anxiously sought to study his features more nearly, were disappointed.
One person there was, who had listened to his oration in wonder and
open-mouthed admiration,--this was Jean Patoux. He had taken the
opportunity offered him in a "cheap excursion" from Rouen to Paris, to
visit a cousin of his who was a small florist owning a shop in the Rue
St. Honore,--and by chance, he and this same cousin, while quietly
walking together down one of the boulevards, had got entangled in the
press of people who were pouring into Pere-la-Chaise on this occasion,
and had followed them out of curiosity, not at all knowing what they
were going to see. But the florist, known as Pierre Midon, soon
realised the situation and explained it all to his provincial relative.
"It is the Abbe Vergniaud they are burying," he said,--"He was a
wonderful preacher! All fashionable Paris used to go and hear him till
he made that pretty scandal of himself a month or so ago. He was a
popular and a social favourite; but one fine morning he preached a
sermon to his congregation all against the Church, and for that matter
against himself too, for he then and there confessed before everybody
that he was no true priest. And as he preached,--what think you?--a
young man fired a pistol shot at him for his rascality, as everyone
supposed, and when the gendarmes would have taken the assassin, this
same Abbe stopped them, and refused to punish HIS OWN SON! What do you
think of that for a marvel? And something still more marvellous
followed, for that very son who tried to kill him was no other than Gys
Grandit, the man we have just heard speaking, though nobody knew it
till a week afterwards. Such a scene you never saw in a church!--Paris
was wild with excitement for a dozen hours, which is about as long as
its fevers last,--and the two of them, father and son, went straight
away to a famous Cardinal then staying in Paris,--and he, by the way,
was in the church when the Abbe publicly confessed himself--Cardinal
Bonpre--"
"Ah!" interrupted Patoux excitedly, "This interests me! For that most
eminent Cardinal stayed at my inn in Rouen before coming on here!"
"So!" And Cousin Pierre looked rather surprised. "Without offence to
thee, Jean, it was a poor place for a Cardinal, was it not?"
"Poor, truly,--but sufficient for a man of his mind!" replied Patoux
tranquilly,--"For look you, he is trying to live as Christ lived,--and
Christ cared naught for luxury."
Pierre Midon laughed.
"By my faith! If priests were to live as Christ lived, Paris might
learn to respect them!" he said,--"But we know that they will not,--and
that few of them are better than the worst of us! But to finish my
story--this Abbe and the son whom he so suddenly and strangely
acknowledged, went to this Cardinal Bonpre for some reason--most
probably for pardon, though truly I cannot tell you what happened--for
almost immediately, the Abbe went out of Paris to the Chateau
D'Agramont some miles away, and his son went with him, and there the
two stayed together till the old man died. And as for Cardinal Bonpre,
he went at once to Rome with his niece, the famous painter, Angela
Sovrani,--I imagine he may have interceded with the Pope, or tried to
do so for the Abbe, but whatever happened, there they are now, for all
I know to the contrary. And we heard that the Church was about to
excommunicate, or had already excommunicated Vergniaud, though I
suppose Cardinal Bonpre had nothing to do with that?"
"Not he!" said Patoux firmly, "He would never excommunicate or do any
unkind thing to a living soul--that I am pretty sure of. He is the very
Cardinal who performed the miracle in my house that has caused us no
end of trouble,--and he is under the displeasure of the Pope for it
now, if all I hear be true."
"That is strange!" said Pierre with a laugh,--"To be under the
displeasure of the Pope for doing a good deed!"
"Truly, it seems so," agreed Patoux,--"But you must remember there was
no paying shrine concerned in it! Mark you that, my Pierre! Even our
Lady of Bon Secours, near to Rouen as she is, was not applied to. The
miracle took place in the poor habitation of an unknown little
inn-keeper,--that is myself,--and there was no solemnity at all about
it--no swinging of incense--no droning of prayers--no lighting of
candles--no anything, but just a good old man with a crippled child on
his knee, praying to the Christ whom he believed was able to help him.
And--and--"
He broke off suddenly and crossed himself. Pierre Midon stared at the
action.
"What ails thee, Jean?" he asked brusquely,--"Hast thou remembered a
dead sin, or a passing soul?"
"Neither," replied Patoux slowly, "But only just the thought of another
child--a waif and stray whom the good Cardinal found in the streets of
Rouen, outside our great Cathedral door. A gentle lad!--my wife was
greatly taken with him;--and he was present in my house too, when the
miracle of healing was performed."
"And for that, is there any need to cross thyself like a mumbling old
woman afraid of the devil?" enquired his cousin.
Patoux smiled a slow smile.
"Gently, Pierre--gently!" he said. "Thou art of Paris,--I of the
provinces. That makes all the difference in the way we look at life.
There are very few holy things in great cities,--but there are many in
the country. Every day when I am at home I go out of the town to work
in my field,--and I feel the clean breath of the wind, the scent of the
earth and the colours of the sky and the flowers,--and I know quite
well there is a God, or these blessings could not be. For if there were
only Chance and a Man to manage the universe, a pretty muddle we should
have of it! And when I see or think of a holy thing, I sign the cross
out of old childhood's habit,--so just now, when I remembered the boy
whom the Cardinal rescued from the streets, I knew I was thinking of a
holy thing; and that explains my action."
"How dost thou prove a waif of the streets a holy thing?" enquired
Pierre curiously.
Patoux shrugged his shoulders, and gave a wide deprecatory wave of both
hands.
"Ah, that is more than I can tell you!" he said,--"It is a matter
beyond my skill. But the boy was a fair-faced boy,--I never saw him
myself--"
Midon laughed outright.
"Never saw him thyself!" he cried,--"And yet thou dost make the sign of
the cross at the thought of him! Diantre! Patoux, thou art crazy!"
"Maybe--maybe," said Patoux mildly,--they were walking together out of
the cemetery by this time in the wake of the rapidly dispersing
crowd,--"But I have always taken my wife's word,--and I take it now.
And she has said over and over again to me that the boy had a rare
sweet nature. And then--the child whom the Cardinal healed,--Fabien
Doucet,--will always insist upon it that it was the touch of that same
boy which truly cured him and not the Cardinal at all!"
"Mere fancy!" said Pierre carelessly,--"And truly if it were not for
knowing thee to be honest, I should doubt the miracle altogether!"
"And thou wouldst be of the majority!" said Patoux equably--"For our
house has been a very bee-hive of buzz and trouble ever since a bit of
good was done in it--and Martine Doucet, the mother of the cured child,
has led the life of the damned, thanks to the kindness of her
neighbours and friends! And will you believe me, the Archbishop of
Rouen himself took the trouble to walk into the market-place and assure
her she was a wicked woman,--that she had taught her boy to play the
cripple in order to excite pity,--and I believe he thinks she is
concerned in the strange disappearance of his clerk, Claude Cazeau. For
this same Cazeau came to our house one night when Martine was there,
and told her he had instructions to take her to Rome to see the Pope,
and her child with her, for the purpose of explaining the miracle in
her own words, and giving the full life-history of herself and the
little one. And she was angry,--ah, she can be very angry, poor
Martine!--she has a shrill tongue and a wild eye, and she said out
flatly that she would not go, and furthermore that she would not be
caught in a priest's trap, or words to that effect. And this clerk,
Cazeau,--a miserable little white-livered rascal, crawled away from my
door in a rage with us all, and was never seen again. The police have
hunted high and low for trace of him, but can find none. But I have my
suspicions--"
"What are they?" enquired Midon,--"That he went out like Judas, and
hanged himself?"
"Truly he might have done that without loss or trouble to anyone!" said
Patoux tranquilly,--"But he thought too well of himself to be quite so
ready for a meeting with le bon Dieu! No!--I will tell you what I
think. There was a poor girl who used to roam about the streets of our
town, called Marguerite, she was once a sensible, bright creature
enough, the only daughter of old Valmond the saddler, who died from a
kick from his favourite horse one day, and left his child all alone in
the world. She was a worker in a great silk-factory, and was happy and
contented, so it seemed, till--well! It is the old story--a man with a
woman, and the man is most often the devil in it. Anyway, this
Marguerite went mad on her love-affair,--and we called her 'La
Folle,'--not harshly--for all the town was kind to her. I mentioned her
name once in the presence of this man Cazeau, and he started as if an
adder had bitten him. And now--he has disappeared--and strange to say,
so has she!"
"So has she!" echoed Midon, opening his eyes a little wider--"Then what
do you suppose?--"
"Just this," said Patoux, emphasizing his words by marking them out
with a fat thumb on the palm of the other hand--"That Cazeau was the
villain of the piece as they say in the theatres, and that she has
punished him for his villainy. She used to swear in her mad speech that
if ever she met the man who had spoilt her life for her, she would kill
him; and that is just what I believe she has done!"
"But would she kill herself also?" demanded Pierre--"And what has
become of one or both bodies?"
"Ah! There thou dost ask more than I can answer!" said Patoux. "But
what is very certain is, that both bodies, living or dead, have
disappeared. And as I said to my wife when she put these things into my
head,--for look you, my head is but a dull one, and if my wife did not
put things into it, it would be but an emptiness altogether,--I said to
my wife that if she were right in her suspicions--and she generally is
right--this Marguerite had taken but a just vengeance. For you will not
prove to me that there is any man living who has the right to take the
joy out of a woman's soul and destroy it."
"It is done every day!" said Midon with a careless shrug,--"Women give
themselves too easily!"
"And men take too greedily!" said Patoux obstinately--"What virtue
there is in the matter is on the woman's side. For she mostly gives
herself for love's sake,--but the man cares naught save for his own
selfish pleasure. As a man myself, I am on the side of the woman who
revenges herself on her betrayer."
"For that matter so am I!" said Midon. "Women have a hard time of it in
this world, even under the best of circumstances,--and whatever man
makes it harder for them, should be horse-whipped within an inch of his
life, if I had my way. I have a wife--and a young daughter--and my old
mother sits at home with us, as cheery and bright a body as you would
find in all France,--and so I know the worth of women. If any rascal
were to insult my girl by so much as a look, he would find himself in
the ditch with a sore back before he had time to cry 'Dieu merci!'"