"It is dark, Monseigneur," said Patoux apologetically.
"It is very dark," agreed Monseigneur, stumbling as he spoke, and feeling rather inclined to indulge in very uncanonical language. "It is altogether a miserable hole, mon Patoux!"
"It is for poor people only," returned Jean calmly—"And poverty is not a crime, Monseigneur."
"No, it is not a crime," said the stately Churchman as he reached the door at last, and paused for a moment on the threshold,—a broad smile wrinkling up his fat cheeks and making comfortable creases round his small eyes—"But it is an inconvenience!"
"Cardinal Bonpre does not say so," observed Patoux.
"Cardinal Bonpre is one of two things—a saint or a fool! Remember that, mon Patoux! Bon soir! Benedicite!"
And the Archbishop, still smiling to himself, walked leisurely across the square in the direction of his own house, where his supper awaited him. The moon had risen, and was clambering slowly up between the two tall towers of Notre Dame, her pure silver radiance streaming mockingly against the candle Jean Patoux still held in the doorway of his inn, and almost extinguishing its flame.
"One of two things—a saint or a fool," murmured Jean with a chuckle—"Well!—it is very certain that the Archbishop is neither!"
He turned in, and shut his door as far as it would allow him to do so, and went comfortably to bed, where Madame had gone before him. And throughout the Hotel Poitiers deep peace and silence reigned. Every one in the house slept, save Cardinal Bonpre, who with the Testament before him, sat reading and meditating deeply for an hour before retiring to rest. A fresh cause of anxiety had come upon him in the idea that perhaps his slight indisposition was more serious than he had deemed. If, as the Archbishop had said, there could have been no music possible in the Cathedral that afternoon, how came it that he had heard such solemn and entrancing harmonies? Was his mind affected? Was he in truth imagining what did not exist? Were the griefs of the world his own distorted view of things? Did the Church faithfully follow the beautiful and perfect teachings of Christ after all? He tried to reason the question out from a different and more hopeful standpoint, but vainly;—the conviction that Christianity was by no means the supreme regenerating force, or the vivifying Principle of Human Life which it was originally meant to be, was borne in upon him with increasing certainty, and the more he read the Gospels, the more he became aware that the Church—system as it existed was utterly opposed to Christ's own command, and moreover was drifting further and further away from Him with every passing year.
"The music in the Cathedral may have been my fancy," he said,—"But the discord in the world sounds clear and is NOT imagination. A casuist in religion may say 'It was to be';—that heresies and dissensions were prophesied by Christ, when He said 'Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall grow cold';—but this does not excuse the Church from the sin of neglect, if any neglects exists. One thing we have never seemed to thoroughly understand, and this is that Christ's teaching is God's teaching, and that it has not stopped with the enunciation of the Gospel. It is going on even now—in every fresh discovery of science,—in every new national experience,—in everything we can do, or think, or plan, the Divine instruction steadily continues through the Divine influence imparted to us when the Godhead became man, to show men how they might in turn become gods. This is what we forget and what we are always forgetting; so that instead of accepting every truth, we quarrel with it and reject it, even as Judaea rejected Christ Himself. It is very strange and cruel;—and the world's religious perplexities are neither to be wondered at nor blamed,—there is just and grave cause for their continuance and increase."