Abbe Vergniaud sat down, and for a moment appeared absorbed in thought.
"You are a curious man;" he at length observed, "And a more than curious priest! Here you are, assuming the guardianship of a boy concerning whom you know nothing,—when you might as well have handed him over to one of the orphanages for the poor, or have paid for his care and education with some of the monastic brethren established near Rouen,—but no!—you being eccentric, feel as if you were personally responsible to God for the child, simply because you found him lost and alone, and therefore you have him with you. It is very good of you,—we will call it great of you—but it is not usual. People will say you have a private motive;—you must remember that the world never gives you credit for doing a good action simply for the pure sake of doing it,—'There must be something behind it all,' they say. When the worst cocotte of the age begins to lose her beauty, the prospect is so alarming that she thinks there may be a possible hell, after all, and she straightway becomes charitable and renowned for good works;—precisely in the same way as our famous stage 'stars', knowing their lives to be less clean than the lives of their horses and their dogs, give subscriptions and altar-cloths and organs to the clergy. It is all very amusing!—I assure you I have often laughed at it. It is as if they took Heaven by its private ear in confidence, and said, 'See now, I want to put things straight with you if I can!—and if a few church-ornaments, and candlesticks will pacify you, why, take them and hold your tongue!'"
He paused, but the Cardinal was silent.
"I know," went on the Abbe, "that you think I am indulging in the worst kind of levity to talk in this way. It sounds horrible to you. And you perhaps think I cannot be serious. My dear Saint Felix, there never was a more serious man than I. I would give worlds—universes—to believe as you do! I have written books of religious discussion,—not because I wanted the notice of the world for them,—for that I do not care about,—but for the sake of wrestling out the subject for myself, and making my pen my confidant. I tell you I envy the woman who can say her rosary with the simple belief that the Virgin Mary hears and takes delight in all those repetitions. Nothing would have given me greater pleasure than to have composed a volume of prayers,—a 'Garland of Flowers'—such as an innocent girl could hold in her hands, and bend her sweet eyes over. It would have been a taste of the sensual-spiritual, or the spiritual-sensual,—which is the most exquisite of all human sensations."
"There is no taint of sensuality in the purely spiritual," said the
Cardinal reprovingly.
"Not for your nature,—no! You have made your body like a transparent scabbard through which the glitter of the soul-sword is almost visible. But I am different. I am so much of a materialist that I like to pull down Heaven to the warm bosom of Earth and make them mingle. You would lift up Earth to Heaven! Ah, that is difficult! Even Christ came down! It is the chief thing I admire in Him, that He 'descended from Heaven and was made Man'. TRES CHER Felix, I shall bewilder you to death with my specious and frivolous reasoning,—and after all, I had much better come to the main fact of what I intended to tell you,—a sort of confession out of church. You know I have already told you I am going to die soon, and that I am a bad man confessedly and hopelessly,—but among other things is this, (and if you can give me any advice upon it I will take it,) that for the last four or five years I have been dodging about to escape being murdered,—not because I particularly mind being murdered, because I probably deserve it,—and one way of exit is as good as another,—but because I want to save the would-be murderer from committing his crime. Is not that a good motive?"
Cardinal Bonpre gazed at him in astonishment. Vergniaud appeared to him in an entirely new light. He had always known him as a careless, cynical-tempered man;—a close thinker,—a clever writer, and a brilliant talker,—and he had been inclined to consider him as a "society" priest,—one of those amiable yet hypocritical personages, who, by the most jesuitical flatteries and studied delicacies of manner, succeed in influencing weak-minded persons of wealth, (especially women) to the end of securing vast sums of money to the Church,—obtaining by these means such rank and favour for themselves as would otherwise never have been granted to them. But now the Abbe's frank admission of his own sins and failings seemed a proof of his inherent sincerity,—and sincerity, whether found in orthodoxy or heterodoxy, always commanded the Cardinal's respect.
"Are you speaking in parables or in grave earnest?" he asked. "Do you really mean that you are shadowed by some would-be assassin? An assassin, too, whom you actually wish to protect?"
"Exactly!" And Vergniaud smiled with the air of one who admits the position to be curious but by no means alarming. "I want to save him from the guillotine; and if he murders me I cannot! It is a question of natural instinct merely. The would-be assassin is my son!"
Cardinal Bonpre raised his clear blue eyes and fixed them full on the
Abbe.