Moretti's angry eyes rolled in his head with an excess of wrath and amazement.
"Surely some evil spirit possesses this boy!" he exclaimed irately, "Retro me Sathanas! He is a rank heretic—a heathen! And yet he lives in the companionship of Cardinal Felix Bonpre!"
Both priests looked at the Cardinal in angry astonishment, but he stood silent, one wrinkled hand holding up the trailing folds of his scarlet robe,—his head slightly bent, and his whole attitude expressive of profound patience and resignation. Manuel turned his eyes upon him and smiled tenderly.
"It is not the fault of Cardinal Bonpre that I think my own thoughts," he said, "or that I speak as I have spoken from the beginning. He found me lost and alone in the world,—and he sheltered me, knowing not whom he sheltered! Let what blame there is in me therefore be mine alone, and not his or another's!"
His young voice, so full of sweetness, seemed to melt the cold and heavy silence into vibrations of warm feeling, and a sudden sense of confusion and shame swept over the callous and calculating minds of the two men, miscalled priests, as they listened. But before they could determine or contrive an answer, the door was thrown open, and the lean man in black entered, and pausing on the threshold bowed slightly,—then raising his hand with a gesture which invited all to follow him, turned again and walked on in front,—then crossing a small antechamber, he drew aside a long curtain of purple damask heavily fringed with gold, and opened a farther door. Here he stood back, and allowed Cardinal Bonpre to pass in first, attended by Manuel,—Monsignori Gherardi and Moretti followed. And then the valet, closing the door behind them, and pulling the rich curtain across, sat down himself close outside it to be within call when the Holy Father should summon his attendance by means of a bell which hung immediately over his head. And to while away the time he pulled from his pocket that day's issue of a well-known Republican paper,—one of the most anti-Papal tendency, thereby showing that his constant humble attendance upon the Head of the Church had not made him otherwise than purely human, or eradicated from his nature that peculiar quality with which most of us are endowed, namely, the perversity of spirit which leads us often to say and do things which are least expected of us. The Pope's confidential valet was not exempt from this failing. He like the Monsignori, enjoyed the exciting rush and secret risk of money speculation,—he also had his little schemes of self-advancement; and, as is natural to all who are engaged in a certain kind of service, he took care to read everything that could be said by outsiders against the person or persons whom he served. Thus, despite the important capacity he filled, he was not a grade higher than the ordinary butler, who makes it his business to know all the peccadilloes and failings of his master. "No man is a hero to his valet" is a very true axiom,—and even the Head of the Church, the Manifestation of the Divine, the "Infallible in Council," was a mere Nothing to the little man in black who had the power to insist on His Holiness changing a soiled cassock for a clean one.
XXVIII.
There are certain moments in life which seem weighted with the history of ages—when all the past, present and future merge into the one omnipresent Now,—moments, which if we are able to live through them with courage, may decide a very eternity of after-glory—but which, if we fail to comprehend their mission, pass, taking with them the last opportunity of all good that shall ever be granted to us in this life. Such a moment appeared, to the reflective mind of Cardinal Bonpre, to have presented itself to him, as for the second time in ten days, he found himself face to face with the Sovereign Pontiff, the pale and aged man with the deep dark eyes set in such cavernous sockets, that as they looked out on the world through that depth of shadow, seemed more like great jewels in the head of a galvanised skeleton than the eyes of a living human being. On this occasion the Pope was enthroned in a kind of semi-state, on a gilded chair covered with crimson velvet; and a rich canopy of the same material, embroidered and fringed with gold, drooped in heavy folds above him. Attired in the usual white,—white cassock, white skull cap, and white sash ornamented with the emblematic keys of St. Peter, embroidered in gold thread at the ends,—his unhandsome features, pallid as marble, and seemingly as cold,—bloodless everywhere, even to the lips,—suggested with dreadful exactitude a corpse in burial clothes just lifted from its coffin and placed stiffly upright in a sitting position. Involuntarily Cardinal Bonpre, as he made the usual necessary genuflections, thought, with a shrinking interior sense of horror at the profanity of his own idea, that the Holy Father as he then appeared, might have posed to a painter of allegories, as the frail ghost of a dead Faith. For he looked so white and slender and fragile and transparent,—he sat so rigidly, so coldly, without a movement or a gesture, that it seemed as if the touch of a hand might break him into atoms, so brittle and delicate a figure of clay was he. When he spoke, his harsh voice, issuing from the long thin lips which scarcely moved, even in utterance, was startling in its unmelodious loudness, the more so when its intonation was querulous, as now.
"It is regrettable, my lord Cardinal," he said slowly, keeping his dark eyes immovably fixed on the venerable Felix,—"that I should be compelled to send for you so soon again on the same matters which, since your arrival in Rome, have caused me so much anxiety. This miracle,—of which you are declared to be the worker,—though for some inscrutable reason, you persist in denying your own act,—is not yet properly authenticated. And, to make the case worse, it seems that the unfortunate man, Claude Cazeau, whom we entrusted with our instructions to the Archbishop of Rouen, has suddenly disappeared, leaving no trace. Naturally there are strong suspicions that he has met with a violent death,—perhaps at the hands of the Freemasons, who are ever at work conspiring against the Faith,—or else through the intrigues of the so-called 'Christian Democrats,' of whom 'Gys Grandit' is a leader. In any case, it is most reprehensible that you, a Cardinal-prince of the Church, should have permitted yourself to become involved in such a doubtful business. The miracle may have taken place,—but if so, you should have no cause to deny your share in it; and however much you may be gifted with the power of healing, I cannot reconcile your duty to us with the Vergniaud scandal! Since you were here last, I have investigated that matter thoroughly,—I have read a full report of the blasphemous address the Abbe preached from his pulpit in Paris, and I cannot, no I cannot"—here the Pope raised his thin white hand with a gesture of menace that was curiously powerful for one so seemingly frail—"I cannot forgive or forget the part you have taken in this deplorable affair!"
The Cardinal looked up with a touch of pain and protest.
"Holy Father, I strove to obey the command of Christ—'Forgive that ye may be forgiven'!—I cannot be sorry that I did so obey it;—for now the offender is beyond the reach of either punishment or absolution. He must answer for his deeds to God alone!"