foreign land, separated from all her friends and family,--not knowing
indeed where they were; of the suffering and hardships she had passed
through since they had left Gidding--hardships which had caused the
fever of which she lay dying as she spoke. She had come to Paris after
parting from her uncle in Brittany, where they had suffered much
deprivation with the Lady Blount, and had been received into this
convent, where she had meant to take the veil; but the fever grew upon
her, and the physicians at last gave her no hope of recovery. There she
had lain day after day, tended by the kind nuns with every care, yet
growing weaker and more weary--longing for some voice or face of her own
country or of former days. While she had been well enough to listen,
the nuns had told her all the little scraps of news relating to her own
countrymen and to the Queen which had reached them; but Inglesant's
arrival was not likely to be among these, and Mary had heard nothing of
his being in Paris till the night before, when the kindly old nun,
finding her a little better than usual, had thought to amuse her by
speaking of the pleasant young Englishman who spoke French so well, and
whose half foreign name she could easily remember, and who, Lord Cheney
had told her, had been one of the most faithful servants of the poor
murdered King.
The start of the dying girl before her, her flushed face as she raised
herself in bed and threw herself into her friend's arms, entreating her
that this old friend, the dearest friend she had ever known--ah! dearer
now than ever--might be sent for at once while she had life and strength
to speak to him, showed the nun that this was yet again a reacting of
that old story that never tires a woman's heart. The nuns were not
strict--far from it--and, even had Mary already taken the veil, the
sisters would have thought little blame of her even for remembering that
once she dreamt of another bridegroom than the heavenly Spouse. The nun
had promised to send early in the morning to Lord Cheney, who, no doubt,
knew the abode of his friend; and Mary, as she finished telling all this
in her low and weak speech, lay still and quiet, looking upon her friend
almost with as calm and peaceful a glance of her absorbing eyes as when
she had looked at him in the garden parlour at Gidding years ago. He
himself said little; it was not his words she wanted, could he have
spoken them. That he was there by her, looking up in her face, holding
her hand, was quite enough. At last she said,--
"And that mission to the Papist murderers, Johnny, you did not wish to
bring them into England of your own accord or only as a plot of the
Jesuits? Surely you were but the servant of one whom you could not
discover."
"I had the King's own commission for all I did, for every word I said,"
said Inglesant eagerly--"a commission written by himself, and signed in
my presence, which he gave me himself. That was the paper the Lord
Biron would not burn."
"I knew it must be so, Johnny; my uncle told me it must be so. It seems
to me you have served a hard master, though you do not complain. We
heard about the scaffold at Charing Cross. Will you serve your heavenly
Master as well as you have served your King?"
"I desire to serve Him, am seeking to serve Him even now, but I do not
find the way. Tell me how I can serve Him, Mary, and I swear to you I
will do whatever you shall say."
"He must teach you, Johnny, not I. I doubt not that you follow Him now,
will serve Him hereafter much better than I could ever show you--could
ever do myself. Whatever men may think of the path you have already
chosen, no one can say you have not walked in it steadily to the end.
Only walk in this way as steadily, Johnny,--only follow your heart as
unflinchingly, when it points you to Him. I will do nothing night and
day while I live, Johnny, but pray to Jesus that He may lead you to
Himself."
The old familiar glamour that shed such a holy radiance on the woods and
fields of Gidding, now, to Inglesant's senses, filled the little convent
room. The light of heaven that entered the open window with the perfume
of the hawthorn, was lost in the diviner radiance that shone from this
girl's face into the depths of his being, and bathed the place where she
was in light. His heart ceased to beat, and he lay, as in a trance, to
behold the glory of God.
*CHAPTER XIX.*
Inglesant was present at the funeral in the cemetery of the convent, and
caused a white marble cross to be set over the grave. He remained in
his lodgings several days, melancholy and alone. His whole nature was
shaken to the foundation, and life was made more holy and solemn to him
than ever before. The burden of worldly matters became intolerable, and
the coil that had been about his life so long grew more oppressive till
it seemed to stifle his soul. He desired to listen to the Divine Voice,
but the voice seemed silent, or to speak only the language of worldly
plans and schemes. He desired to live a life of holiness, but the only
life that seemed possible to him was one of business and intrigue. What
was this life of holiness that men ought to lead? Could it be followed
in the world? Or must he retire to some monastic solitude to cultivate
it; and was it certain that it would flourish even there? It seemed
more and more impossible for him to find it; he was repulsed and turned
back upon his worldly life at every attempt he made. He almost resolved
to give up the Jesuit, and to seek some more spiritual guide. He
remembered Cressy, who had become a Romanist, and a Benedictine monk of
the Monastery at Douay, and was at that moment in Paris.
When Inglesant had been last in Oxford, the secession of Hugh Paulin
Cressy, as he had been named at the font in Wakefield Church,--Serenus
de Cressy, as he called himself in religion,--had created a painful and
disturbed impression. A Fellow of Merton, the chaplain and friend of
Lord Strafford, and afterwards of Lord Falkland, a quick and accurate
disputant, a fine and persuasive preacher, a man of sweet and attractive
nature, and of natural and acquired refinement,--he was one of the
leaders of the highest thought and culture of the University. When it
was known, therefore, that this man, so admired and beloved, had seceded
to Popery, the interest and excitement were very great, and one of
Archbishop Usher's friends writes to him in pathetic words of the loss
of this bright ornament of the Church, and of the danger to others which
his example might cause.
He was at present in Paris, where the conjuncture of religious affairs
was very exciting. There was much in the discussions which were going
on, singularly fitted to Inglesant's state of mind, and in some degree
conducive to it. The Jesuits, both in Rome and Paris, were occupied, as
they had been for several years, in that great controversy with the
followers of Jansenius, which, a few years afterwards, culminated in
those discussions and that condemnation in the Sorbonne so graphically
described by Pascal. We have only to do with it as it affected
Inglesant, and it is therefore not necessary to inquire what were the
real reasons which caused the Jesuits to oppose the Jansenists. The
point at which the controversy had arrived, when Inglesant was in Paris,
was one which touched closely upon the topics most interesting to his
heart. This was the doctrine of sufficient grace. The Jesuits, on this
as in all other matters, had taken that side which is undoubtedly most
pleasing to the frailty of the human heart,--an invariable policy, to
which they owed their supremacy over the popular mind.
When the faithful came to the theologians to inquire what was the true
state of human nature since its corruption, they received St.
Augustine's answer, confirmed by St. Bernard and St. Thomas Aquinas, and
finally adopted by the Jansenists,--"That human nature has no more
sufficient grace than God is pleased to bestow upon it, and that fresh
efficacious grace must constantly be given by God, which grace God does
not give to all, and without which no man can be saved." In opposition
to this, the Jesuits, about the time of the Reformation, came forward
with what was called a new doctrine,--that sufficient grace is given to
all men, as men, but so far compliant with free-will that this latter
makes the former efficacious or inefficacious at its choice, without any
new supply from God. The Jansenists retorted that this doctrine rendered
unnecessary the efficacious grace of Jesus Christ; but that this does
not follow is plain, for this efficacious grace of God that is given to
all men once for all, may be owing to the sacrifice of Christ. To many
natures this universal gracious beneficent doctrine of all-pervading
grace, which includes all mankind, was much more pleasing than the
doctrine of the necessity of special grace, involving spiritual
assumption in those who possess it or say they do, and bitter
uncertainty and depression in humble, self-doubting, and thoughtful
minds. It resembled also the doctrines of the Laudian School, in which
Inglesant had been brought up. So attractive indeed was it, that the
Benedictines were compelled to profess it, and to pretend to side with
the Jesuits, while in reality hating their doctrine.
When Inglesant remembered Cressy, and remembered also that he belonged
to the Benedictines, the polished and learned cultivators of the useful
arts, and was told that Cressy had chosen this order that he might have
leisure and books to prosecute his studies and his writings, he
conceived great hope that from him he should learn the happy mean he was
in search of, between the worldliness of the Jesuits on the one hand,
and the narrow repulsiveness of the Mendicant orders and the Calvinists
on the other. In this frame of mind he sought an interview with Cressy.
The directions of the Jesuits and of the Laudian School seemed to
Inglesant to have failed; to have associated himself with the Jansenists
or Calvinists would have been distasteful to him, and almost impossible.
He sought in the Benedictine monk that compromise which the heart of man
is perpetually seeking between the things of this world and the things
of God. But though for the time the influence of the training of his
life was somewhat shaken, it was far from removed, and an event occurred
which, even before he saw Cressy, reforged the chains upon him to some
extent. One Sunday evening, the day before he was to meet Cressy,
walking along the Rue St Martin from the Boulevard where he had
lodgings, he turned into the Jesuits' Church just as the sermon had
begun. The dim light found its way into the vast Church from the
stained windows; a lamp burning before some shrine shone partially on
the preacher, as he stood in the stone pulpit by a great pillar, in his
white surplice and rich embroidered stole. He was a young man, thin and
sad-looking, and spoke slowly, and with long pauses and intervals, but
with an intense eagerness and pathos that went to every heart. The
first words that Inglesant heard, as he reached the nearest unoccupied
place, were these:--
"Ah! if you adored a God crowned with roses and with pearls, it were a
matter nothing strange; but to prostrate yourselves daily before a
crucifix, charged with nails and thorns,--you living in such excess and
superfluity in the flesh, dissolved in softness,--how can that be but
cruel? Ah, think of that crucifix as you lie warm in silken curtains,
perfumed with eau de naffe, as you sit at dainty feasts, as you ride
forth in the sunshine in gallantry. He is cold and naked; He is alone;
behind Him the sky is dreary and streaked with darkening clouds, for the
night cometh--the night of God. His locks are wet with the driving
rain; His hair is frozen with the sleet; His beauty is departed from
Him; all men have left him--all men, and God also, and the holy angels
hide their faces. He is crowned with thorns, but you with garlands; He
wears nothing in His hands but piercing nails; you have rubies and
diamonds on yours. Ah! will you tell me you can still be faithful
though in brave array? I give that answer which Tertullian gave,--'I
fear this neck snared with wreaths and ropes of pearls and emeralds. I
fear the sword of persecution can find no entrance there.' No! hear you
not the voice of the crucifix? Follow me. We are engaged to suffer by
His sufferings as we look on Him. Suffering is our vow and profession.
Love which cannot suffer is unworthy of the name of love."
* * * * *
The next day, at the appointed hour, he went to the Benedictine
Monastery, in the Rue de Varrennes, and sent in his name to Father de
Cressy. He was shown, not into the visitors' room, but into a private
parlour, where Cressy came to him immediately. Dressed in the habit of
his order, with a lofty and refined expression, he was a striking and
attractive man; differing from the Jesuit in that, though both were
equally persuasive, the latter united more power of controlling others
than the appearance of Cressy implied. He had known Inglesant slightly
at Oxford, and greeted him with great cordiality.
"I am not surprised that you are come to me, Mr. Inglesant," he said,
with a most winning gesture and smile; "De Guevera, who was himself both
a courtier and a recluse, says that the penance of religious men was
sweeter than the pleasures of courtiers. Has your experience brought
you to the same conclusion?"
Inglesant thanked him for granting him an interview; and sitting down,
he told him shortly the story of his life, and his early partiality for
the mystical theology; of his wishes and attempts; of his desire to
follow the Divine Master; and of his failures and discouragements, his
studies, his Pagan sympathies; and how life and reality of every kind,
and inquiry, and the truth of history, and philosophy, even while it
sided with or supported religion, still seemed to hinder and oppose the
heavenly walk.
"I do not know, Mr. Inglesant," said De Cressy, "whether your case is
easier or more difficult than that of those who usually come to me; I
have many come to me; and they usually, one and all, come with the exact
words of the blessed gospel on their lips, 'Sir, we would see Jesus.'
And I look them in the face often, and wonder, and often find no words
to speak. See Jesus, I often think, I do not doubt it! who would not
wish to see Him who is the fulness of all perfection that the heart and
intellect ever conceived, in whom all creation has its centre, all the
troubles and sorrows of life have their cure, all the longings of carnal
men their fruition? But why come to me? Is He not walking to and fro
on the earth continually, in every act of charity and self-sacrifice
that is done among men? Is He not offered daily on every altar,
preached continually from every pulpit? Why come to me? Old men of
sixty and seventy come to me with these very words, 'Sir, we would see
Jesus.' If the course of sixty years, if the troubles and confusions of
a long life, if He Himself has not revealed this Beatific Vision to
them,--how can I? But with you it is very different. By your own story
I know that you have seen Jesus; that you know Him as you know your
dearest friend. This makes our discourse at first much the easier, for
I need waste no words upon a matter to enlarge upon which to you would
be an insult to your heart. But it makes it more difficult afterwards,
when we come to ask how it is that, with this transcendental knowledge,
you are still dissatisfied, and find life so difficult a path to tread.
I make no apology for speaking plainly; such would be as much an insult
to you as the other. You remind me of the rich oratories I have seen of
some of our Court ladies, where everything is beautiful and costly, but
where a classic statue of Apollo stands by the side of a crucifix, a
Venus with Our Lady, a Cupid near St. Michael, and a pair of beads on
Mercury's Caduceus.
"You are like the young man who came to Jesus, and whom Jesus loved, for
you have great possessions. You have been taught all that men desire to
know, and are accomplished in all that makes life delightful. You have
the knowledge of the past, and know the reality of men's power, and
wisdom, and beauty, which they possess of themselves, and did possess in
the old classic times. You have culled of the tree of knowledge, and
know good and evil; yea, the good that belongs to this world, and is
part of it, and the strength and wisdom and beauty of the children of
this world; yea, and the evil and ignorance and folly of the children of
light. Let us grant--I am willing to grant--that Plato has a purer
spiritual instinct than St. Paul. I will grant that Lucretius has the
wisdom of this world with him; ay, and its alluring tongue. Paul did not
desire spiritual insight; he wanted Jesus. You stand as a god free to
choose. On the one hand, you have the delights of reason and of
intellect, the beauty of that wonderful creation which God made, yet did
not keep; the charms of Divine philosophy, and the enticements of the
poet's art: on the other side, Jesus. You know Him, and have seen Him.
I need say no more of His perfections.
"I do not speak to you, as I might speak to others, of penalties and
sufferings hereafter, in which, probably, you do not believe. Nor do I
speak to you, as I might to others, of evidences that our faith is true,
of proofs that hereafter we shall walk with Christ and the saints in
glory. I am willing to grant you that it may be that we are mistaken;
that in the life to come we may find we have been deceived; nay, that
Jesus Himself is in a different station and position to what we preach.
This is nothing to your purpose. To those who know Him as you know Him,
and have seen Him as you have, better Jesus, beaten and defeated, than
all the universe besides, triumphing and crowned. I offer to you
nothing but the alternative which every man sooner or later must place
before himself. Shall he turn a deaf ear to the voice of reason, and
lay himself open only to the light of faith? or shall he let human
wisdom and human philosophy break up this light, as through a glass, and
please himself with the varied colours upon the path of life? Every man
must choose; and having chosen, it is futile to lament and regret; he
must abide by his choice, and by the different fruit it brings. You
wish this life's wisdom, and to walk with Christ as well; and you are
your own witness that it cannot be. The two cannot walk together, as
you have found. To you, especially, this is the great test and trial
that Christ expects of you to the very full. We of this religious order
have given ourselves to learning, as you know; nay, in former years, to
that Pagan learning which is so attractive to you, though of late years
we devote ourselves to producing editions of the Fathers of the Church.
But even this you must keep yourself from. To most men this study is no
temptation; to you it is fatal. I put before you your life, with no
false colouring, no tampering with the truth. Come with me to Douay;
you shall enter our house according to the strictest rule; you shall
engage in no study that is any delight or effort to the intellect: but
you shall teach the smallest children in the schools, and visit the
poorest people, and perform the duties of the household--and all for
Christ. I promise you on the faith of a gentleman and a priest--I
promise you, for I have no shade of doubt--that in this path you shall
find the satisfaction of the heavenly walk; you shall walk with Jesus
day by day, growing ever more and more like to Him; and your path,
without the least fall or deviation, shall lead more and more into the
light, until you come unto the perfect day; and on your death-bed--the
deathbed of a saint--the vision of the smile of God shall sustain you,
and Jesus Himself shall meet you at the gates of eternal life."
Every word that Cressy spoke went straight to Inglesant's conviction,
and no single word jarred upon his taste. He implicitly believed that
what the Benedictine offered him he should find. There was no
doubt--could be no doubt--that it was by such choice as this that such
men as Cressy gained for themselves a power in the heavenly warfare, and
not only attained to the heavenly walk themselves, but moved the earth
to its foundations, and drew thousands into the ranks of Christ. He saw
the choice before him fairly, as Cressy had said, and indeed it was not
for the first time. Then his mind went back to his old master, and to
that school where no such thing as this was required of him, and yet the
heavenly light offered to him as freely as by this man. The sermon of
the night before came into his mind again; surely, where such doctrine
as that was preached, might he not find rest? It was true that his
coming there, and his confession, closed his lips before Cressy; but
might he not have been too hasty? Life was not yet over with him;
perchance he might yet find what he sought in some other way. He saw
the path of perfect self-denial open before him,--renunciation, not of
pleasure, nor even of the world, but of himself, of his intellect, of
his very life,--and distinctly of his free choice he refused it. This
only may be said for him: he was convinced that every word the
Benedictine had said to him was true,--that in the life he offered him
he should follow and find the Lord; but he was not equally convinced
that it was the will of Christ that he should accept this life, and
should follow and find Him in this way, and in no other. Had he been as
clear of this as of the truth of Cressy's words, then indeed would his
turning away have been a clear denial of Jesus Christ; but it was the
voice of Cressy that spoke to him, and not the voice of Christ; it came
to him with a conviction and a power all but irresistible, but it failed
to carry with it the absolute conviction of the heavenly call. How
could it? The heavenly call itself must speak very loud before it
silences and convinces the unwilling heart.
He rose from his seat before the monk, and looking sadly down upon him,
he said,--
"I believe all that you say and all that you promise, and that the
heavenly walk lies before me in the road that you have pointed out; but
I cannot follow it--it is too strait. I return your kindness and your
plainness with words equally plain; and while you think of me as lost
and unworthy, it may be some well-earned satisfaction to you to remember
that none ever spoke truer, or nobler, or kinder words to any man than
you have spoken to me."
"I do not look on you as lost, Mr. Inglesant,--far from it," said
Cressy, rising as he spoke; "I expect you will yet witness a good
confession for Christ in the world and in the Court; but I believe you
have had to-day a more excellent way shown you, which, but for the
trammels of your birth and training, you might have had grace to walk
in, for your own exceeding blessedness and the greater glory of the Lord
Christ. I wish you every benediction of this life and of the next; and
I shall remember you at the altar as a young man who came to Jesus, and
whom Jesus loves."
Inglesant took his leave of him, and left the monastery. He came away
very sorrowful from Serenus de Cressy. Whether he also, at the same
time, was turning away from Jesus Christ, who can tell?
The next day the Jesuit arrived in Paris.
*CHAPTER XX.*
Inglesant was much struck with the change in the Jesuit's appearance.
He was worn and thin, and looked discouraged and depressed. He was
evidently extremely pleased to see his pupil again, and his manner was
affectionate and even respectful. He appeared shaken and nervous, and
Inglesant fancied that he was rather shy of meeting him; but if so, it
soon passed off under the influence of the cordial greeting with which
he was received.
To Inglesant's inquiry as to where he had been, the Jesuit answered that
it did not matter; he had succeeded very imperfectly in his mission,
whatever it had been. He asked Inglesant whether he had met with Sir
Kenelm Digby, or heard anything of him. In reply to which Inglesant
told him the reports which he had heard concerning him.