Marie Corelli: The Writer and the Woman

by Thomas F. G. Coates; R. S. Warren Bell

“I was a priest of the Romish Church as I am now; it would never have done for a priest to be a social sinner! I therefore took every precaution to hide my fault;—but out of my lie springs a living condemnation; from my carefully concealed hypocrisy comes a blazonry of truth, and from my secret sin comes an open vengeance....”

The report of a pistol shot sounds through the church as the last words are uttered. A young man has fired at the preacher. It is the son seeking his vengeance at last. Manuel prevents the bullet from reaching Vergniaud, who immediately announces to the astonished congregation that he will not make a charge: “I decline to prosecute my own flesh and blood. I will be answerable for his future conduct,—I am entirely answerable for his past! He is my son!”

It is upon the persecution of Cardinal Bonpré in consequence of the attitude he adopts towards the Abbé Vergniaud after this sensational incident that Marie Corelli builds her chief indictment of the Vatican executive. An agent of the Vatican, then in Paris, is Monsignor Moretti. He calls at the Sovrani Palace. There he has an interview with the Cardinal, the Abbé, and the latter’s son Cyrillon. Moretti upbraids Vergniaud for his conduct, correctly describing him as a faithless son of the church, and meets with the retort, “The attack on the Church I admit. I am not the only preacher in the world who has so attacked it. Christ Himself would attack it if He were to visit this earth again!” The remark is characterized as blasphemy, but, on the Cardinal being appealed to, the good Bonpré states his failure to perceive the alleged blasphemy of “our unhappy and repentant brother.”

“In his address to his congregation to-day he denounced social hypocrisy, and also pointed out certain failings in the Church which may possibly need consideration and reform; but against the Gospel of Christ or against the Founder of our Faith I heard no word that could be judged ill-fitting. As for the conclusion which so very nearly ended in disaster and crime, there is nothing to be said beyond the fact that both the persons concerned are profoundly sorry for their sins.... Surely we must believe the words of our Blessed Lord, ‘There is more joy in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth, than over ninety-and-nine just persons which have no need of repentance.’”

This forgiveness of sin which Christ preached and which Marie Corelli claims that the Romish Church does not practice, is the basis of the differences of Cardinal Bonpré with Moretti, and afterwards with the Pope. Vergniaud, still unrebuked by Cardinal Bonpré, declares to Moretti that there is a movement in the world which all the powers of Rome are unable to cope with, the movement of an ever-advancing and resistless force called Truth, and that God will shake down Rome rather than that the voice of Truth should be silenced.

The Abbé’s declarations, as the Vatican emissary points out, mean his expulsion from the Church. Before the interview closes there comes the declaration by Cyrillon Vergniaud, the son of the Abbé, that he is “Gys Grandit,” a powerful writer of essays that are the creed of a “Christian Democratic” party—that advocate of Truth to which the Abbé had referred. The announcement is startling to all three clerics, the more so as the young man proceeds to utter his views, a stern denunciation of the Church’s practices, with such rebukes as: “Does not the glittering of the world’s wealth piled into the Vatican,—useless wealth lying idle in the midst of hideous beggary and starvation,—proclaim with no uncertain voice, ‘I know not the Man’?” with the added declaration that there is no true representative of Christ in this world—either within or without the Romish Church—though even sceptics, while denying Christ’s Divinity, are forced to own that His life and His actions were more Divine than those of any other creature in human shape that has ever walked the earth!

In the further argumentative passes between Moretti and Gys Grandit, the former holds that the Church of Rome is a system of moral government, and that it is proper to thrust out of salvation heretics who are excommunicate, and that if our Lord’s commands were to be obeyed to the letter it would be necessary to find another world to live in. These propositions the Christian Democrat absolutely denies, and urges, on the other hand, that it may be possible that we may be forced to obey Christ’s commands to the letter or perish for refusing to do so. For permitting such remarks to go unreproved, Moretti, as the interview closes, intimates that, in reporting the matter to the Pope, the attitude of Cardinal Bonpré will be explained. Further offense is given by the appearance of Manuel upon the scene, and by some remarks the lad makes upon the subject under discussion.

Clouds are gathering heavily over the horizon of the saintly Bonpré, who, accompanied by Manuel, proceeds to Rome after this most unpropitious preliminary to an audience at the Vatican. He is further troubled, immediately after his arrival at the palace of his brother-in-law, Prince Sovrani, by being informed of the “miracle” of Rouen—the recovery of Fabien Doucet, of which he now hears for the first time, though all Rome has been talking loudly of it. Bonpré is decidedly in bad repute at the Vatican, and it is determined that he shall be made to suffer for his defense of Vergniaud. He adds to his offenses by denying all knowledge of the Rouen lad’s cure.

Manuel and Bonpré visit St. Peter’s, which does not please them, and at last they are received by the Pope. Here all Marie Corelli’s criticism of the Romish Church is concentrated in the appeal which is made by the child-Christ to His Holiness. He asks him why he stops at the Vatican all alone.

“You must be very unhappy!... To be here all alone, and a whole world outside waiting to be comforted! To have vast wealth lying about you unused, with millions and millions of poor, starving, struggling dying creatures, near at hand, cursing the God whom they have never been taught to know or to bless!...