He said nothing, therefore, but waited for his companion to speak again, not observing him, but looking up at the illuminated dome above.
“When one is free, and has the use of one's limbs, and is happy, then one believes in a good God, who is a father to his creatures,” Mr. Schöninger resumed in a voice as gentle as he might have used when a child at his mother's knee. He had been holding his hat in his hand; but in speaking, he covered his head. At the same instant, F. Chevreuse uncovered his, and the Jew and the Christian, each after his manner, acknowledged the presence of God in that thought, which was almost like a visible presence.
“To me,” said the priest, “the acknowledgment comes more surely when I am in trouble. It seems to me that if I were in chains and torments, he would be nearer to me than ever before.”
“That is because you have been taught to believe in a suffering God,” was the calm reply. “I have been taught to see in God a being infinitely glorious and strong, a mighty, shoreless ocean of deep joy. That he could suffer pain, that his puny creatures could torment and kill him, has always been to me a thought at once absurd and blasphemous. It is probably for this reason that you see him best in sorrow, and I in joy.”
He stood a little while thinking, then added quietly, as if speaking to himself: “Yet it is a sweet and comforting thought.”
F. Chevreuse blushed red with a sudden gladness, but said nothing. It was no time for controversy; and, besides, he had the wisdom to leave souls to God sometimes. That people are to be converted by a constant pelting of argument and attack he did not believe. His experience had been that converts of any great worth were not made in that way, and that the soul that studied out its own way helped by God, and teased as little as possible by man, was by far the most steadfast in the faith.
They went slowly down the hill [pg 490] together in the direction of the priest's house, and stopped a moment to lean on Mrs. Ferrier's gate in passing. That lady had just entered her house, having been all the day and evening at Mrs. Gerald's. She would gladly have stayed all night had Honora allowed it.
The two men had, unseen or unrecognized, been near enough to hear the long sigh the good creature gave as she mounted the steps to her door, and the exclamation she made to the servant who followed her: “Little did I think last night at this time what horrible things were going to happen within twenty-four hours.” Some persons have that way of dating backward from startling events, and renewing thus the vividness of their sensations.
She did not know what kind thoughts were following her in at the door, or she might have been comforted.
They went on, and soon came in sight of what had been Mrs. Gerald's home. The blinds were all closed, and not a ray of light was visible. Under the vines and large, over-hanging trees the cottage appeared to shrink and hide itself.