“When the King—when any king—does anything useful in the world, then you may hang me with your own hands, Zegota! When did you ever hear, except in myths of the past, of a monarch who cared for his people more than his crown? Tell me that! Tell me of any king who so truly loved the people he was called upon to govern, that he sacrificed his own money, as well as his own time, to remedy their wrongs?—to save them from unjust government, to defend them from cruel taxation?—to see that their bread was not taken from their mouths by foreign competition?—and to make it possible for them to live in the country of their birth in peace and prosperity? Bah! There never was such a king! And that this man,—who has for three years left us to the mercy of the most accursed cheat and scoundrel minister that ever was in power,—has now declared his opposition to the Jesuits’, is more than I will or can believe.”
“If it were true?”—suggested Zegota, with a more than usually vicious tug at his beard.
“If it were true, it would not alter my opinion, or set aside my intention,” replied Thord,—“I would admit that the King had done one good deed before going to hell! Look! Here come the future traitresses of men—girls trained by priests to deceive their nearest and dearest! Poor children! They know nothing as yet of the uses to which their lives are destined! If they could but die now, in their innocent faith and stupidity, how much better for all the world!”
As he spoke, the wind, swooping into the square, and accompanied by a pattering gust of rain, fell like a fury upon the leaders of the religious procession and tore one of the great banners out of the hands of the priest who held it, beating it against his head and face with so much force that he fell backward to the ground under its weight, while from a black cloud above, a flash of lightning gleamed, followed almost instantaneously by a loud clap of thunder, which shook the square with a mighty reverberation like that of a bursting bomb. The children screamed,—and ran towards the Cathedral pellmell; and for a few moments there ensued indescribable confusion, the priests, the people, and the white-veiled girls getting mixed together in a wild hurly-burly. Sergius Thord suddenly left his companion’s side, and springing on a small handcart that stood empty near the centre of the square, his tall figure rose up all at once like a dark apparition above the heads of the assembled crowd, and his voice, strong, clear, and vibrating with passion, rang out like a deep alarm bell, through all the noise of the storm.
“Whither are you going, O foolish people? To pray to God? Pray to Him here, then, under the flash of His lightning!—in the roll of His thunder!—beneath His cathedral-canopy of clouds! Pray to Him with all your hearts, your brains, your reason, your intelligence, and leave mere lip-service and mockery to priests; and to these poor children, who, as yet, know no better than to obey tyrants! Would you find out God? He is here—with me,—with you!—in the earth, in the sky, in the sun and storm! Whenever Truth declares a living fact, God speaks,—whenever we respond to that Truth, God hears! No church, no cathedral contains His presence more than we shall find it here—with us—where we stand!”
The people heard, and a great silence fell upon them. All faces were turned toward the speaker, and none appeared to heed the great drops of fast-falling rain. One of the priests who was trying to marshal the scattered children into their former order, so that they might enter the Cathedral in the manner arranged for the religious service, looked up to see the cause of the sudden stillness, and muttered a curse under his breath. But even while the oath escaped his lips, he gave the signal for the sacred chanting to be resumed, and in another moment the ‘Litany of the Virgin’ was started in stentorian tones by the leaders of the procession. Intimidated by the looks, as well as by the commands of the priests, the girls and children joined in the chanting with tremulous voices, as they began to file through the Cathedral doors and enter the great nave. But a magnetic spell, stronger than any invocation of the Church, had fallen upon the crowd, and they all stood as though caught in the invisible web of some enchanter, their faces turned upwards to where Thord’s tall figure towered above them. His eyes glittered as he noted the sudden hush of attention which prevailed, and lifting his rough cap from his head, he waved it towards the open door of the Cathedral, through which the grand strains of the organ rolling out from within gave forth solemn invitation:—
“Sancta Dei Genitrix, Ora pro nobis!”
sang the children, as they passed in line under the ancient porch, carved with the figures of forgotten saints and bishops, whose stone countenances had stared at similar scenes through the course of long centuries.
“Sancta Dei Genitrix, ora pro nobis!” echoed Sergius Thord—“Do you hear it, O men? Do you hear it, O women? What does it teach you? ‘Holy Mother of God!’ Who was she? Was she not merely a woman to whom God descended? And what is the lesson she gives you? Plainly this—that men should be as gods, and women as the mothers of gods! For every true and brave man born into the world has God within him,—is made of God, and must return to God! And every woman who gives birth to one such, true, brave man, has given a God-incarnated being to the world! ‘Sancta Dei Genitrix!’ Be all as mothers of gods, O women! Be as gods, O men! Be as gods in courage, in truth, in wisdom, in freedom! Suffer not devils to have command of you! For devils there are, as there are gods;—evil there is, as there is good. Fiends are born of women as gods are—and yet evil itself is of God, inasmuch as without God there can be neither evil nor good. Let us help God, we His children, to conquer evil by conquering it in ourselves—and by refusing to give it power over us! So shall God show us all goodness,—all pity! So shall He cease to afflict His children; so will He cease to torture us with undeserved sorrows and devilish agonies, for which we are not to blame!”
He paused. The singing had ceased; the children’s procession had entered the Cathedral, and the doors still stood wide open. But the people remained outside, crowded in the square, and gathering momentarily in greater numbers.