"Like the butterflies!" laughed Angela.
"Yes,—if butterflies DO enjoy their hour,—which I am not at all prepared to admit. In my opinion they are very dissatisfied creatures,—no sooner on one flower than off they go to another. Very like human beings after all! But I imagine they never worry themselves with philosophical or religious questions."
"And do you?" enquired Bonpre, smiling, as he sat down in the easy chair his niece placed for him.
"Not as a rule!—" answered Vergniaud frankly, with a light laugh—"But I confess I have done a little in that way lately. Some of the new sciences puzzle me,—I am surprised to find how closely they approach to the fulfilment of old prophecies. One is almost inclined to believe that there must be a next world and a future life."
"I think such belief is now placed beyond mere inclination," said the
Cardinal—"There is surely no doubt of it."
Vergniaud gave him a quick side-glance of earnest scrutiny.
"With you, perhaps not—" he replied—"But with me,—well!—it is a different matter. However, it is really no use worrying one's self with the question of 'To be, or not to be.' It drove Hamlet mad, just as the knotty point as to whether Hamlet himself was fat or lean nearly killed our hysterical little boy, Catullus Mendes. It's best to leave eternal subjects like God and Shakespeare alone."
He laughed again, but the Cardinal did not smile.
"I do not agree with you, Vergniaud," he said—"I fear it is because we do not think sufficiently for ourselves on the One eternal subject that so much mischief threatens us at the present time. To take gifts and ignore the Giver is surely the blackest ingratitude, yet that is what the greater part of humanity is guilty of in these days. Never was there so much beholding and yet ignoring of the Divine as now. Science is searching for God, and is getting closer to Him every day;—the Church remains stationary and refuses to look out beyond her own pale of thought and conventional discipline. I know,—" and the Cardinal hesitated a moment, "I know I can speak quite plainly to you, for you are what is called a freethinker—yet I doubt whether you are really as free as you imagine!"
The Abbe shrugged his shoulders.