Irene followed everything with great attention. A strange, new feeling of contempt seemed to tremble in her soul. At home, in her own country, she had always come away from the Passion Week services deeply touched, and in great emotion. And now, all these unaccustomed ceremonies and costumes and rites, the strange language, the extraordinary pagan ritual, suddenly shocked her. Maybe she was overtired from three hours’ standing in the crowd, and, therefore, more than usually critical—but true it is that she contemplated almost with loathing the whole scene before her, even the marble columns and the colossal statues of the great Roman Cathedral.
“And they call this Christianity!” she thought bitterly. “What an irony! This is sheer paganism, and these are the same ancient Romans, still worshipping the same old gods as before. They have never understood Christ’s teaching, and they have buried it under marble shrines and pagan ceremonies.
“In your place I would go a little further still,” exclaimed Irene’s inner soul with malicious sarcasm. “I would destroy every New Testament in the world, except one—and that one I would put in a golden, jewel-studded box, and would bury it deep in the earth, forbidding its disinterment on pain of death. Over it, I would build a splendid golden shrine, and in this shrine I would celebrate night and day magnificent services with gorgeous processions. That would be entirely in accordance with the spirit of your Christianity.
“But you have not the temerity to go so far. You vaguely feel that some day the world will arise in fury against you, will destroy your temples, tear into shreds your splendid robes, and leave, alone and triumphant, only the Gospel, the one Christian teaching humanity needs. And then, there will come together ‘two or three in His Name,’ to read His Book and to pray—and ‘He will be among them.’”
Thus, angrily, yet dreaming, Irene’s thoughts flew. Just in front of her stood an Italian middle-class couple. The young husband held a three-year-old girl by the hand while the pretty mother pressed to her heart a white bundle, evidently a sleeping infant. The noise of the rattles must have disturbed its slumbers, for suddenly the bundle stirred, a tiny hand stretched itself forth in search of the mother’s breast, and a low wail made itself heard. The mother immediately sat down at the foot of a marble column, and began to feed the child. For some reason, the idea occurred to Irene that in all that pagan crowd in a pagan temple the only representatives of Christianity were that simple mother and child.
“There is the great miracle!” she thought rapturously. “New life, coming no one knows from where! Why are you all quarrelling about whether certain miracles were or were not performed nineteen centuries ago in Palestine? Why must you be certain of those particular miracles, before you can believe in God? To-day, at this very moment, you are surrounded by miracles. Birth, death, sunrise, springtime, winter—are not all these miracles? You have forgotten them because you see them every day. In your silly self-conceit, you assure yourselves that all this is perfectly natural, and that science has long ago explained it all—but you forget that your science has only noted the existence of these miracles, and that their secret belongs as much as ever to the Almighty Ruler of the Universe in whom you find it so difficult to believe.”
Irene left the Cathedral in great moral perturbation. So great was her excitement that she forgot to take a cab, and walked all the long way home, in the face of a cutting east wind that she did not even notice. Large tears ran down her face, she talked to herself, gesticulated, and drew the attention of all passers-by. The pagan soul that had passed Christianity by was sobbing and storming within her. For one moment, under the influence of the very ceremonies she was execrating, she had understood how priceless was the treasure she had lost. Life might have been beautiful and full of harmony, whereas, on the path she had chosen, there was nothing but constant, needless, helpless suffering. Someone should have taught her Christianity! Her soul had been confided to someone’s care, and that someone had not fulfilled his sacred duty!
And Irene, in her despair, cursed all lazy and idle slaves, for a voice in her soul told her that her fate was sealed, and that it was too late to try and change it.