“No more of this casuistry. You are, I see, the same, whatever changes time may have made in me; but I have outlived these trickeries. Tell me, frankly, what do you want with me?”
“Must there needs be some motive of self-interest in renewing an old but interrupted friendship, Lola? You remember what we once were to each other?”
“Oh that I could forget it!——oh that I could wash out the thought, or even think it but a dream! But how can you recall these memories? If the sorrow be mine, is not the shame all yours?”
“The shame and the sorrow are alike mine,” said D'Es-monde, in a voice of deep dejection, “You alone, of all the world, were ever able to shake within me the great resolves that in prayer and devotion I had formed. For you, Lola, I was, for a space, willing to resign the greatest cause that ever man engaged in. Ay, for love of you, I was ready to peril everything—even to my soul! Is not this enough for shame and sorrow too? Is not this humiliation for one who wears the robe that I do?”
“You were a student in those days,” said Nina, with a sneering smile; “and I never heard you speak of all those dreadful sacrifices. You used to talk of leaving the college with a light heart. You spoke of the world as if you were impatient to mingle with it. You planned I know not how many roads to fortune and advancement. Among other careers, I remember”—and here she burst into a scornful laugh, that made the priest's cheek grow crimson with passion——“I remember how you hit upon one which speaks rather for your ardor than your prudence. Do you forget that you would be a Toridor,—you whose cheek grew pale and whose heart sickened as my father's horse lay embowelled in the ring, and who fainted outright when the bull's horns were driven into the barricade near you. You a Toridor! A Toridor should have courage!” And as she spoke, her eyes flashed with the fire of passion.
“Courage!” said the priest, in a voice almost guttural from emotion; “and is there no other courage than the vulgar defiance of personal danger,—the quality of the veriest savage and the merest brute in creation? Is there nothing more exalted in courage than to face bodily peril? Are all its instincts selfishness? What think you of the courage of him who, in all the conscious strength of intellect, with powers to win an upward way amongst the greatest and the highest, can stoop to a life of poverty and neglect, can give up all that men strive for,—home, affection, family, citizenship,——content to toil apart and alone, ——to watch, to fast, and pray, and think,——ay, think till the very brain reels with labor,—and all this for a cause in which he is but a unit! Courage! Tell me not of courage beside that of him who dares to shake the strongest thrones, and convulses empires with his word, whose counsels brave the might of armies, and dare even kings to controvert; and, greatest of all, the courage that for a cause can risk salvation! Yes, Lola, he who to save others hazards his own eternity! Have I not done it?” cried he, carried away by an impetuous rush of feeling. “Have I not overborne the truth and sustained the falsehood? Have I not warped the judgments, and clouded the faculties, and misdirected the aspirations of many who came to me for counsel, knowing that if there might be evil now there would be good hereafter, and that for present and passing sorrow there would be a glorious day of rejoicing? To this end have I spoke Peace to the guilty man and Hope to the hardened! Not for him, nor for me, but for the countless millions of the Church,—for the mighty hosts who look to her for succor and consolation! This I call courage!”
And he drew himself proudly up, and folded his arms on his breast with an air of haughty composure; while the girl, awed by his manner, and subdued by the impetuosity of his speech, gazed at him in half fear and wonderment.
“Tell me of your father, Lola,” said D'Esmonde, in a low, soft voice, as he drew her low seat to his side.
“He was killed at Madrid; he died before the Queen!” said she, proudly.
“The death of a Toridor!” muttered the priest, mournfully.