That name, the name of his boyhood, when he and O'Donovan were at school together; when he was so overflowing with happiness that he could never be still, but had to be for ever at work or at play; when he knew no more of care than what the getting of his lessons involved, no more of sin than the little faults he recounted at his confessor's knees and forgot the next moment, and no more of sorrow than the changing of one beloved professor for another who speedily became as dear. O'Donovan, the beautiful boy, the youngest at school, had been his pride and idol in those days. He turned to him now, and, in the old way the English boys used to mock at him for, kissed his friend and school-fellow on both cheeks; at which the Irishman laughed a little and blushed a good deal.
"You're not much changed from the boy you were," said F. Chevreuse. "You had always a way of seeming to coax, while you were really commanding. Well, you're almost always right. How the wind whistles!"
It was a cutting north wind that broke multitudinously against the church, and seemed to splinter there into separate sharp voices. They went up from the narrow passage between the church and the house, they rang from the chimneys, and sighed and whimpered about the feet of the stone Christ, as if some wounded creature, invisible to man, had crawled there to seek for pity.
"What a day!" repeated F. Chevreuse, looking out. "December is certainly an ugly month, and January is a worse one. February would be worst of all, but that it is so near spring you can snap your fingers in its face."
He seated himself at the table, drew the books towards him, and glanced round at the fire, as if to assure himself that there was something shining in his vicinity, then took up a pen, and laid it down again, shivering, not because he was cold, but because he knew there was so much cold about.
F. O'Donovan, seated near the window, with his finger between the leaves of his Breviary, to keep the place, had observed his every movement. He dropped the book on his knee, and spoke in a gentle, dreamy way that was the very essence of soothing.
"Yes, this is now for a while one of the cold spots on the earth; but we have only to climb a little, in spirit or in memory, to have a different idea of December and everything else. How many years ago to-day is it that you and I saw oranges ripening in the sun in December, and roses blooming, and people pushing back their cloaks for the heat? It is an anniversary, for I have some little reason to remember the date. We were in Rome. I had been shivering in a bare, sunless room at the Propaganda, when I looked up and caught a glimpse through the window of a bit of miraculous blue sky over the roof of San Andrea's. It was four o'clock in the afternoon, and time for a walk. I called you, and we started on a little exploring expedition; for we had neither of us seen much of Rome at that time. We muffled ourselves well, and went out into the Piazza di Spagna. I recollect you saying, as we came to those great stairs, that they must have been modelled by some one who had Jacob's dream-ladder in his mind. You said, too, that one reason why Rome is so much more beautiful than any other city is not because it is more artistic, but more natural. Each part grew for itself, instead of being cramped by some dominating idea that spoilt all in trying to direct all. You were delighted with the perfectly cool way in which a whole street would go up-stairs or down-stairs. Well, there was the whole side of a piazza going up-stairs. We went up, past the group of models, you know, who stand there to be stared at; the bearded old man who stands for S. Peter or Moses, the brigand and the brigand's wife, and the little brown gypsies. The calendar said it was December; yet in the piazza below the air said it was April. When we paused at the first landing, and began to wish we had left our cloaks at home, it was May, and up in front of the Trinita de' Monti it was mid-June. The fruit-sellers left their large baskets of oranges in the sun while they sat in the shade and waited for customers; there were baskets of flowers, with heaps of half-open roses on the stone rail of the balustrade, and streams of rich verdure flowed wide or trickled brightly between the gray sweeps of stone. In the east was that unimaginable blue that can only be compared to a gem; in the west, a dazzle of unclouded sunshine; and between the two, Rome floated in a silvery mist. You leaned on the balustrade, and—wretch that you were!—your first thought was a pagan one. You said that the goddess of beauty had sunk into the midst of the city, and left her drapery of cloud clinging all about it, and that, when she should withdraw, there would be a vision in the sky, but Rome would be nothing but ashes. That was the best image that Raphael Chevreuse could find, with the city before him all a-bubble with the domes of Christian churches. You may recollect that I gave you a very pretty lecture on the subject. Then you pointed out to me a pillar of smoke wreathing slowly up into the sky, showing between the bold front of the Pincian Hill and the twin cupolas in the Piazza del Popolo, with the distant forest and mountain for a background, and you said that we were nothing but cloud-people living in a cloud, and that the only realities were Moses and the Israelites out there offering up sacrifice in the wilds between Egypt and Chanaan. Well, December being too hot for us then, we walked off toward Santa Maria Maggiore. Do you remember the great orange-tree, as large as an apple-tree, that showed over the convent walls, and how thickly the golden oranges were set among its green foliage; and the symbol over the convent door of two lions trying to get at a bird that was safe in the top of a palm-tree;[274] and the vane that you said could have been thought of nowhere but in Italy—a rod with a cross at the top and a bird's wing swinging round as the wind changed? And when we walked on among the ruins, what superstitious young man gathered dandelions, because gold-colored flowers always brought him some happy chance, he said; and then, in the next breath, looking at those mountains before us, swimming, it seemed, in a sea of rosy-purple vapors, broke out with a psalm, "Montes exultaverunt ut arietes; et colles, sicut agni ovium"? You declared vehemently that the mountains were dancing, and I had to hold you to keep you from dancing too. A pretty sight it would have been to see a young Christian priest twirling pirouettes among the ruins of the temple of Minerva! Doubtless, while we are in the midst of the snows and frost of a northern morning, the sun is just going down over that same warm and glowing scene. And, doubtless, too," said F. O'Donovan slowly, coming to the point he had started to reach, "outside this pain and confusion there is peace and happiness waiting to come in and give us our soul's summer in this world even. The storms are short, but the peace is long, and for ever waiting overhead."
"But life is not long," concluded F. Chevreuse, "and it behooves me to be about my work."
He drew the books toward him, and began to work in earnest. He had been comforted in one regard that morning: he would not himself be called into court, the only points on which he could give evidence being better known to others. Jane and Andrew had both seen the condition of his little study, with its bolted window and locked-up desk, after he left the house that fatal night, and both F. O'Donovan and Mr. Macon saw it in the morning before he came home. The other point, relating to the sort of bank-bills he had lost, was of no consequence, as the bankers could not say what sort of money Mr. Schöninger had paid them. Every disposition was shown to spare him unnecessary pain, and they even strained a point for that purpose.
He was not needed, indeed, and the case was being brought rapidly to a conclusion, as his first despatch showed him.