GRAPES AND THORNS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE HOUSE OF YORKE."
CHAPTER IX.
THE VERDICT.
The arrest was made in September; in November the trial came on. It would have been earlier, but that witnesses were to be summoned from England. It was understood in Crichton that everything was very soon to be in readiness, and that the trial would be a short one; one side announcing confidently a speedy acquittal, the other intimating, by a grave but equally confident silence, their belief in a speedy conviction.
"Dear Mother Chevreuse!" sighed Honora Pembroke, who trembled with terror and apprehension as the day drew near, "how far from your heart is all this bitterness! How far from your wish it would have been to see a man hunted like a beast of prey, even if he had done you a wrong! How far from your peace is all this excitement!"
Far, indeed, would such an inquisition, however necessary to the ends of justice and the good of society, have been from that sweet and overflowing heart, where love, when it could not make the wandering steps seem to be searching for the right path, uprose like a flood, and washed out those traces of error from remembrance. Far enough, too, was all this trouble from the changing form that had once held so much goodness. One might guess how Nature had taken back to her motherly bosom the clay she had lent for mortal uses, and was slowly fitting it, by her wondrous alchemy, for immortality; purifying the dross from it, brightening the fine gold. While this tumult went on overhead, the crumbling dust of that temple whose ruin had brought such sorrow and disaster was slowly and sweetly going on its several paths to perfection; stealing into violets, into roses, into humble grass-blades, into mists that gathered again in drops to refresh its own blossoms and foliage!
Who can say what countless shapes of constantly aspiring loveliness the dust of the saint may assume before uniting once more and for ever to form that glorified body which is to hold, without imprisoning, the beatified spirit, and transmit without stain the sunshine of the Divine Presence?
Yes; far enough from such a progress was the feverish trouble resulting from this sudden and violent dissolution. Friends went to cover anew with flowers and green that grave over which the snows of coming winter had let fall a pure and shining mantle; but the tears they shed were bitter, and their flowers withered in the frost. Voices of those she loved recalled her virtues, and repeated her wise and tender sayings; but they, like all the world, found it easier to admire than to imitate. At humble firesides, where families gathered at night, shivering half with cold and half with fear, they blessed and mourned the hand that had helped them and the voice that had sympathized with and encouraged; but their blessing was so encumbered with human selfishness that it cast the shadow of a malediction. Pure indeed must be that love in whose footprints hatred never lurks!