"Yes"—she said—"I am sure that is true. You see Henri"—with a wise glance at her brother—"you see it is always the same,—when anyone suffers something unfortunate, there is certain to be some cause for it. Now everybody says that if poor Martine had not put Fabien in the cart to save herself the trouble of holding him on her knee, he would not have tumbled out and been hurt. That was the beginning of it. And that was not God's fault. Come Fabien!—we'll take you back now."
At this, Madame Patoux started from her stricken condition of horrified dumbness into speech and action.
"Ah yes, it is indeed time!" she exclaimed—"Enough trouble has been given, I am sure, to Monseigneur, and if such a prayer as his does not reach Heaven, why then there is no Heaven at all, and it is no good bothering ourselves about it. And what things have been said by my son!—MY son!—against the Holy Father! Ah, mon Dieu! The wickedness of it!—The horror! And if thou learnest such blasphemy from newspapers, Henri, thou shalt not read them—"
"Who is to prevent me?" demanded Henri, his eyes sparkling defiantly.
"Hush—hush my child!" interposed the Cardinal quietly "Nothing indeed can prevent thee,—no one can hinder thee from walking the world according to thine own will and direction. Thou must take good and evil as they come, and strive thy best to discern between them—and if the love of God cannot help thee—well!—perchance the love of thy mother may!"
There was a pause. Henri's head drooped, and quick tears filled his eyes. He said nothing further, but turned to assist Babette in guiding the little Fabien's hesitating steps as he hobbled from the room. The emotional Madame Patoux choked back a rising sob.
"God bless you Monseigneur!" she murmured—"Henri will not forget those words—the lad has a hasty temper, but a good heart—yes, believe me—a good heart—"
"That I am sure of"—responded the Cardinal—"He is quick and intelligent—and seeks to know the truth. If he could feel an asserted 'truth' to be really true, I am confident he would frame his life upon it, and be a good, brave man. Yes—he is a clever lad,—and our modern system of education pushes the brain to a precocity exceeding bodily years,—his impatience and anger only come from puzzling over what he finds it difficult to understand. It is all a puzzle to him—all a puzzle!—as it is to most of us!" He sighed—then added in a lighter tone—"I shall want nothing more at your kindly hands, my daughter. I have decided to leave Rouen for Paris to-day and will take an early afternoon train. Manuel"—and he hesitated a moment—"Manuel will go with me."
Madame was scarcely surprised at this announcement. She had indeed expected it. She glanced at Manuel himself to see how he accepted this sudden change in his fortunes, but he was entirely absorbed in watching Henri and Babette lead their little crippled friend away. After all, there was nothing to be said. The Cardinal was a free agent,—he had a perfect right to befriend a homeless boy and give him sustenance and protection if he chose. He would make, thought Madame, a perfect acolyte, and would look like a young angel in his little white surplice. And so the good woman, deciding in her own mind that such was the simple destiny for which the Cardinal intended him, smiled, murmured something deferential and approving, and hastened from the room, to prepare for Monseigneur, whether he asked for it or not, a dish of her most excellent soup, to strengthen and support him before starting on his journey. And ere four o'clock had chimed from all the towers of the city, the Hotel Poitiers was deprived of its honoured guest,—the Cardinal, accompanied by his foundling, had departed, and the black, smoky, snake-like train had rushed with them through the smiling peace of the Normandy pasture-lands on towards the brilliant "city enthroned in wickedness," which sparkles like a jewel on the borders of the Seine as gloriously as ever Babylon sparkled on the shores of Euphrates. As godless, as hollow to the very core of rottenness, as her sister of ancient days, wanton "Lutetia" shines,—with the ghastly and unnatural lustre of phosphorescent luminance arising from old graves—and as divinely determined as the destruction of the old-time city splendid, is the approaching downfall of the modern capital. To the inhabitants of Rouen, the very name of Paris carries with it a kind of awe,—it excites various emotions of wonder, admiration, longing, curiosity and even fear,—for Paris is a witches' cauldron in which Republicanism, Imperialism, Royalism, Communism and Socialism, are all thrown by the Fates to seethe together in a hellish broth of conflicting elements—and the smoke of it ascends in reeking blasphemy to Heaven. Not from its church-altars does the cry of "How long, O Lord, how long!" ascend nowadays,—for its priests are more skilled in the use of the witty bon-mot or the polished sneer than in the power of the prophet's appeal,—it is from the Courts of Science that the warning note of terror sounds,—the cold vast courts where reasoning thinkers wander, and learn, and deeply meditate, knowing that all their researches but go to prove the fact that apart from all creed and all forms of creed, Crime carries Punishment as surely as the seed is born with the flower,—thinkers who are fully aware that not all the forces of all mankind, working with herculean insistence to support a Lie, can drive back the storm-cloud of the wrath of that "Unknown Quantity" called God, whose thunders do most terribly declare the truth "with power and great glory." "How long O Lord, how long!" Not long, we think, O friends!—not long now shall we wait for the Divine Pronouncement of the End. Hints of it are in the air,—signs and portents of it are about us in our almost terrific discoveries of the invisible forces of Light and Sound,—we are not given such tremendous powers to play with in our puny fashion for the convenience of making our brief lives easier to live and more interesting,—no, there is some deeper reason,—one, which in our heedless way of dancing over our own Earth-grave, we never dream of. And we go on making our little plans, building our ships and making loud brags of our armies, and our skill, and our prowess both by land and sea, and our amazing importance to ourselves and to others,—which importance has reached such a height at the present day as to make of us a veritable spectacle for Olympian laughter,—and we draw out our little sums of life from the Eternal exchequer, and add them up and try to obtain the highest interest for them, always forgetting to calculate that in making up the sum total, that mysterious "Unknown Quantity" will have to come in, and (un less it has been taken into due counting from the first) will be a figure likely to swamp the whole banking business. And in this particular phase of speculation and exchange, Paris has long been playing a losing game. So steadily has she lost, in honour, in prestige, in faith, in morals, in justice, in honesty and in cleanly living, that it does not seem possible she can ever retrieve herself. Her men are dissolute,—her women shameless—her youth of both sexes depraved,—her laws are corrupt—her arts de cadent—her religion dead. What next can be expected of her?—or rather to what extent will Destiny permit her to go before the bolt of destruction falls? "Thus far, and no farther" has ever been the Principle of Nature—and Paris has almost touched the "Thus far."
Sitting quietly in her tidy kitchen near the open window, after the Cardinal's departure, Madame Patoux knitted busily, her thoughts flying faster than her glittering needles. A certain vague impression of solemnity had been left on her mind by the events of the morning,—she could not quite reason out the why or the wherefore of it—and yet—it was a fact that after Monseigneur had gone, she had, when entering the rooms he had vacated, felt a singular sense of awe.