"Per carita
Mostrami il cielo;
Tulto e un velo,
E non si sa
Dove e il cielo.
Se si sta
Cosi cola,
Non si sa
Se non si va
Ahi me lontano!
Tulto e in vano!
Prendimi in mano
Per carita!"
"It is Angela," said the Cardinal, "She has a wonderfully sweet voice."
"Prendimi in mano,
Per carita!"
murmured Abbe Vergniaud, still listening, "It is like the cry of a lost soul!"
"Or a strayed one," interposed the Cardinal gently, and rising, he took Vergniaud's arm, and leaned upon it with a kindly and familiar grace, an action which implied much more than the mere outward expression of confidence,—"Nothing is utterly lost, my dear friend. 'The very hairs of our head are numbered,'—not a drop of dew escapes to waste,—how much more precious than a drop of dew is the spirit of a man!"
"It is not so unsullied," declared Vergniaud, who loved controversy,—"Personally, I think the dew is more valuable than the soul, because so absolutely clean!"
"You must not bring every line of discussion to a pin's point," said Bonpre smiling, as he walked slowly across the room still leaning on the Abbe's arm. "We can reduce our very selves to the bodiless condition of a dream if we take sufficient pains first to advance a theory, and then to wear it threadbare. Nothing is so deceptive as human reasoning,—nothing so slippery and reversible as what we have decided to call 'logic.' The truest compass of life is spiritual instinct."
"And what of those who have no spiritual instinct?" demanded Vergniaud.
"I do not think there are any such. To us it certainly often seems as if there were masses of human beings whose sole idea of living is to gratify their bodily needs,—but I fancy it is only because we do not know them sufficiently that we judge them thus. Few, if any, are so utterly materialistic as never to have had some fleeting intuition of the Higher existence. They may lack the force to comprehend it, or to follow its teaching,—but in my opinion, the Divine is revealed to all men once at least in their lives."
They had by this time passed out of the drawing-room, and now, ascending three steps, they went through a curtained recess into Angela Sovrani's studio,—a large and lofty apartment made beautiful by the picturesque disorder and charm common to a great artist's surroundings. Here, at a grand piano sat Angela herself, her song finished, her white hands straying idly over the keys,—and near her stood the gentleman whom the Abbe Vergniaud had called "a terrible reformer and Socialist" and who was generally admitted to be something of a remarkable character in Europe. Tall and fair, with very bright flashing eyes, and a wonderfully high bred air of concentrated pride and resolution, united to a grace and courtesy which exhaled from him, so to speak, with his every movement and gesture, he was not a man to pass by without comment, even in a crowd. A peculiar distinctiveness marked him,—out of a marching regiment one would have naturally selected him as the commanding officer, and in any crisis of particular social importance or interest his very appearance would have distinguished him as the leading spirit of the whole. On perceiving the Cardinal he advanced at once to be presented, and as Angela performed the ceremony of introduction he slightly bent one knee, and bowed over the venerable prelate's extended hand with a reverence which had in it something of tenderness. His greeting of Abbe Vergniaud was, while perfectly courteous, not quite so marked by the grace of a strong man's submission.