“So he went on, shutting out the voices of warning. But God is merciful. He has many weapons. And He struck at him twice . . . Louis, I cannot tell you how . . . it was through a very dear friend, the one man whom he esteemed and admired above all others. The first time the priest would not heed; but the second time . . . he was not disobedient. Then the bandage fell from his eyes; he saw what he had been pursuing, and that all which had been the very breath of life to him was thinner and more vanishing than smoke. And in the enthusiasm of his conversion it became the dearest wish of his heart to give up everything for the glory of God and to enter the religious life.
“He was already in the Benedictine monastery of Valfleury when the news came that the Pope was about to make him a cardinal. That news was nothing to him now; he had something very different to trouble him, for, during the six months in which he tried his vocation, with all the earnestness of which he was capable, he found no peace. And at the end of that time the Abbot, an old man of the greatest sanctity and experience, sent for him and told him the hardest thing of all, that he was not called to be a son of Saint Benedict. He implored the Abbot not to send him away, back to the success which would dog him, which he was not strong enough to bear. But the Abbot was convinced that God’s will for the priest was that he should go back to the world, but only to serve Him from the lowest rank. The religious life was not for him, the diplomatic too great a temptation; his place, the safest, but not the easiest, lay between. He said one thing that I have never forgotten: ‘With some a great sacrifice is made once; with others it is made many times.’”
To the young man gazing in speechless attention from his pillow, it was plain from the little pause that his companion had forgotten him, and was withdrawn into some region of the memory. But it was only for a moment.
“So I went back to the world, to the lowest rank. I had implored His Holiness not to create me cardinal, and at last the Holy Father yielded, but only on one condition. He reserved me a cardinal in petto—you know what that is, Louis; it means a cardinal created, but not announced, whose cardinalate, when it is announced, ranks from the date of the original creation. Then I became the vicaire of a little cure in the Angoumois, dropping my name of De Vergy, and using that of Des Graves, which had long been in my family; and in a year or two after the Pope died. One day there came to me a man who had been my friend since childhood, though not a Catholic, saying, ‘If you are resolved to persist in this folly, at least let me be assured that you have enough to live upon. My benefice at home is vacant; come to it, and you shall educate my boy as well.’ . . . No, wait till I have finished! . . . I accepted. I went to my friend’s living; I was there, as you know, many years . . . many years. Clement XIII. was dead; Clement XIV. knew nothing of me; all the past was forgotten. Suddenly—it was in the autumn of ’92—Pius VI. came on the records of the negotiation which I had carried through twenty-five years before, and the honour reserved for me by Clement XIII. He discovered my whereabouts, and, thinking that he might need a representative in Vendée—Monseigneur de Mercy being dispossessed—sent a special messenger——”
“Monsignor Cantagalli, of course,” ejaculated his listener.
“Yes . . . Lie down, Louis! . . . Out of regard for my personal safety he did not proclaim me cardinal at that dangerous juncture, but he referred to Clement’s action, left me with discretionary powers, and charged me to repair to Rome when I could no longer be of use in Vendée. And since God has seen fit to bless the means employed by His Holiness to get me out of Nantes, I suppose He has some work for an old man to do, in Rome or elsewhere. . . . At any rate, it is my duty to go there. That is why I cannot accompany you to Suffolk.”
There was a long silence, while Louis gazed at the priest, thunderstruck, out of his great hollow eyes. Then he said, in an awed tone: “Did Gilbert ever know all this?”
“I told him,” answered the Cardinal, “the night before he died.”
CHAPTER XLIX
VIOLETS ONCE MORE
“. . . Cy j’en mourrai;