Gradually, as the four actors in this solemn scene still fervently prayed together, their souls began to sympathize the one with the other, blending in one common feeling of religious awe. Awful, in truth, was the service in which they were now secretly engaged! Beneath that mouldering roof, those four Christians were then interceding with Heaven for the soul of a martyred King of France; performing, at the peril of their lives, in those days of anarchy and terror, a funeral service for that hapless Louis the Sixteenth, who died on the scaffold, who was buried without a coffin or a shroud! It was, in them, the purest of all acts of devotion—the purest, from its disinterestedness, from its courageous fidelity. The last relics of the loyalty of France were collected in that poor room, enshrined in the prayers of a priest and two aged women. Perhaps, too, the dark spirit of the Revolution was present there as well, impersonated by the stranger, whose face, while he knelt before the altar, betrayed an expression of the most poignant remorse.
The most gorgeous mass ever celebrated in the gorgeous Cathedral of St. Peter, at Rome, could not have expressed the sincere feeling of prayer so nobly as it was now expressed, by those four persons, under that lowly roof!
There was one moment, during the progress of the service, at which the nuns detected that tears were trickling fast over the stranger's cheeks. It was when the Pater Noster was said.
On the termination of the midnight mass, the priest made a sign to the two nuns, who immediately left the room. As soon as they were alone, he thus addressed the stranger:
"My son, if you have imbrued your hands in the blood of the martyred king, confide in me, and in my sacred office. Repentance so deep and sincere as yours appears to be, may efface even the crime of regicide in the eyes of God."
"Holy father," replied the other, in trembling accents, "no man is less guilty than I am of shedding the king's blood."
"I would fain believe you," answered the priest. He paused for a moment as he said this, looked steadfastly on the penitent man before him, and then continued:
"But remember, my son, you can not be absolved of the crime of regicide, because you have not co-operated in it. Those who had the power of defending their king, and who, having that power, still left the sword in the scabbard, will be called to render a heavy account at the day of judgment, before the King of kings; yes, a heavy and an awful account indeed! for, in remaining passive, they became the involuntary accomplices of the worst of murders."
"Do you think then, father," murmured the stranger, deeply abashed, "that all indirect participations are visited with punishment? Is the soldier guilty of the death of Louis who obeyed the order to guard the scaffold?"
The priest hesitated.