As old Jerome had anticipated, on entering the salle à manger at the hour of supper, I found the Duke standing with the Confessor, to whom he instantly introduced me, saying,--"Father Ferdinand, this is the young Englishman I mentioned, whom I look upon--if not as my own son, since such a feeling is, perhaps, impossible--at least as the son of a dear brother, and treat accordingly."
The Confessor took my hand, and looked at me with a smile full of benignity, saying,--"We must be friends, my son; I hear a high character of you from all quarters."
I expressed, as well as I could, my willingness to meet his kindness; and as the Duchess was not well enough to appear that evening, we sat down to supper alone. I remarked that Monsieur de Villardin was more calm, though not less grave than he had seemed of late; but it was the person and demeanour of the priest that principally engaged my attention.
He was a man considerably past the prime of life; and though his frame was neither bent nor broken by the weight of years, yet his age was to be traced in his thin white hair, and in many a long deep furrow on his brow and cheek. His eye, however, was bright and clear; and his teeth of as white an ivory as ever appeared between the lips of youthful beauty. He was thin and pale, but his complexion was clear, and, probably, had never been red; and his form, which was tall, was also upright and graceful, and in no degree stiff. His robes, too, sat well upon him; which is always a sign of a lofty education or of a fine mind; for no one can feel himself perfectly at his ease in all his movements, without possessing the one, or having received the other. With Monsieur de Villardin the Confessor spoke as equal to equal; and though, from his demeanour, I might, perhaps, as a first impression, have inferred that he was one of those priests who so frequently govern, with absolute sway, the little kingdom of a private family, yet he was evidently not one of those who would truckle to the prejudices, or give indulgence to the errors, of any one in whose dwelling he was established. There was in his whole conversation a tone of bold independence, mingling with the tenderness of his manner, which took away from it the slightest appearance of subserviency, and made me feel that, in giving him the title of Father, one only addressed him by a name which he believed himself to deserve.
After supper I again retired, and, as I had promised, took my way to the apartments of the good major-domo, where the priest soon after made his appearance, and spoke with me for some time, kindly and frankly, upon a variety of indifferent subjects. He was evidently delighted to hear that my mother had been a Catholic, and that I had been originally brought up in that faith; but he pressed the subject no farther upon me, and I saw that he skilfully avoided saying one word that might make me suspicious of any design on his part, either to force himself into my own confidence, or to wring from me the secrets of others. Gradually, however, he brought the conversation round to the subject of Monsieur de Villardin, and spoke with deep, and, certainly, sincere regret, of the state to which the Duke appeared to have brought himself. He asked me no questions, however; but on my expressing equal pain at the fact, he only replied, by exhorting me to strive, by every means in my power, to remove the poison from my friend's mind. I willingly promised to continue all my efforts, and our conference thus ended.
After what I have just said, it may seem extraordinary that my first impression of Father Ferdinand was not favourable. On retiring to my own chamber, I sat down to meditate over the character of the Confessor, and, as usual, formed my judgment very rapidly. I was wrong, however--entirely wrong; for as yet I had only allowed myself to remark the worst--I may say, the sole bad trait in Father Ferdinand's nature. On it, with the keenness which had been taught me from my youth, I pounced like a tiger, and resolved to be as wary as possible to guard myself against its effects. This evil spot, which I short-sightedly conceived to overspread the whole surface of his heart, though, indeed, it was but a small blemish therein, was a slight touch of that subtlety for which our priests are rather famous; but I must pause for a moment, to define exactly its real limits, lest those who may read this writing fall into a like error with myself.
It was certainly a part of Father Ferdinand's doctrine, that, in churchmen, the end justified the means, provided that the means were not absolutely immoral. Thus things that, under any other circumstances, he himself would have considered meannesses, lost that character in his eyes when they were employed to effect some good purpose; and art, duplicity, and cunning, used either in extracting the truth from others, or in guiding them, even against their will, upon the path he thought it right for them to follow, seemed to him not only admissible, but praiseworthy, in a priest. He stopped there, however, saying that no clergyman had a right to go farther; and that if, upon the pretence of guiding others, he did one act that was really sinful, the sin rested on himself, aggravated rather than palliated by the motive, inasmuch as it was insulting God to suppose that he could be served by sin.
On these principles, he made the character of all those with whom he was brought in contact his most minute study; employed every method of obtaining information concerning them, even to questioning their servants and their friends; and having done so, proceeded, step by step, to establish his own influence over their minds, which it was only owing to the goodness of his own heart, and the natural rectitude of his judgment, that he employed to their advantage and their peace. At first, however, he proceeded cautiously; suffered the traits of their hearts to develop themselves before his eyes; shocked none of their prejudices; rudely assailed none of their opinions, till such time as he found himself secure of his power over their minds; but then, certainly, with an eloquence which I have never heard excelled, and a fervour rarely equalled, he would combat their errors, oppose their vices; and, once having begun the strife, would throw himself before their passions, in full career, and show them that they trampled on everything sacred, if they pursued their onward course.
The consciousness of this ultimate purpose, too, gave a dignity even to acts that I cannot but imagine to be reprehensible; and even, in the endeavour itself to elicit from dependants the secrets and character of their lord--an occupation which surely is mean, if there be anything mean on earth--there was an air of authority in his whole bearing, which made it seem more as if he were examining witnesses with the power and right of a judge, than inquiring into the private history of others for objects of his own.
It is with regret that I have stated this blemish in a man I esteem and love, though no one will see these lines till both our eyes are closed, and his virtues will live remembered long after we both are dust. He himself, however, saw it not as a blemish; and were he now to behold the lines in which I have endeavoured to portray it in its true features, he would very probably say, that I had softened down one of the best traits in his character to suit my own prejudices; for he himself has always contended, that the noblest victory he ever acquired over human weakness, was that in which he conquered his natural repugnance to employ means which the world condemns and scorns, for the sake of effecting the best of purposes.