"There was an article this evening in one of Jost"s off-shoot journals,"
went on Zouche, "which must have been paid for at a considerable cost.
It chanted the praises of one Monsignor Del Fortis,--who, it appears, preached a sermon on "National Education" the other day, and told all the sleepy, yawning people how necessary it was to have Roman Catholic schools in every town and village, in order that souls might be saved.
The article ended by saying--"We hear on good authority that his Majesty the King has been pleased to grant a considerable portion of certain Crown lands to the Jesuit Order, for the necessary building of a monastery and schools"----"
"That is a lie!" broke in Pasquin Leroy, with sudden vehemence. "The King is in many respects a scoundrel, but he does not go back on his word!"
Axel Regor looked fixedly across at him, with a warning flash in the light of his cold languid eyes.
"But how do you know that the King has given his word?"
"It was in the paper," said Leroy, more guardedly; "I was reading about it, as you know, on the very night I encountered Thord."
"Ah! But you must recollect, my friend, that a statement in the papers is never true nowadays!" said Max Graub, with a laugh; "Whenever I read anything in the newspaper, unless it is an official telegram, I know it is a lie; and even official telegrams have been known to emanate from unofficial sources!"
By this time supper was nearly over, and the landlord, clearing the remains of the heavier fare, set fruit and wine on the board. Sergius Thord filled his gla.s.s, and made a sign to his companions to do the same. Then he stood up.
"To Lotys!" he said, his fine eyes darkening with the pa.s.sion of his thought. "To Lotys, who inspires our best work, and helps us to retain our n.o.blest ideals!"
All present sprang to their feet.
"To Lotys!"
Pasquin Leroy fixed a straight glance on the subject of the toast, sitting quietly at the head of the table.
"To Lotys!" he repeated; "And may she always be as merciful as she is strong!"
She lifted her dark-blue slumbrous eyes, and met his keen scrutinizing look. A very slight tremulous smile flickered across her lips. She inclined her head gently, and in the same mute fashion thanked them all.
"Play to us, Valdor!" she then said; "And so make answer for me to our friends" good wishes!"
Valdor dived under the table, and brought up his violin case, which he unlocked with jealous tenderness, lifting his instrument as carefully as though it were a sleeping child whom he feared to wake. Drawing the bow across the strings, he invoked a sweet plaintive sound, like the first sigh of the wind among the trees; then, without further preliminary wandered off into a strange labyrinth of melody, wherein it seemed that the voices of women and angels clamoured one against the other,--the appeals of earth with the refusals of Heaven,--the loneliness of life with the fulness of immortality,--so, rising, falling, sobbing, praying, alternately, the music expostulated with humanity in its throbbing chords, till it seemed as if some Divine interposition could alone end the heart-searching argument. Every man sat motionless and mute, listening; Paul Zouche, with his head thrown back and eyes closed as in a dream,--Johan Zegota"s hard, plain and careworn face growing softer and quieter in its expression,--while Sergius Thord, leaning on one elbow, covered his brow with one hand to shade the lines of sorrow there.
When Valdor ceased playing, there was a burst of applause.
"You play before kings,--kings should be proud to hear you!" said Leroy.
"Ah! So they should," responded Valdor promptly; "Only it happens that they are not! They treat me merely as a _laquais de place_,--just as they would treat Zouche, had he accepted his Sovereign"s offer. But this I will admit,--that mediocre musicians always get on very well with Royal persons! I have heard a very great Majesty indeed praise a common little American woman"s abominable singing, as though she were a prima-donna, and saw him give a jewelled cigar-case to an amateur pianist, whose fingers rattled on the keyboard like bones on a tom-tom.
But then the common little American woman invited his Majesty"s "cheres amies" to her house; and the amateur pianist was content to lose money to him at cards! Wheels within wheels, my friend! In a lesser degree the stock-jobber who sets a little extra cash rolling on the Exchange is called an "Empire Builder." It is a curious world! But kings were never known to be "proud" of any really "great" men in either art or literature; on the contrary, they were always afraid of them, and always will be! Among musicians, the only one who ever got decently honoured by a monarch was Richard Wagner,--and the world swears that _his_ Royal patron was mad!"
Paul Zouche opened his eyes, filled his gla.s.s afresh, and tossed down the liquor it contained at a gulp.
"Before we have any more music," he said, "and before the little Pequita gives us the dance which she has promised,--not to us, but to Lotys--we ought to have prayers!"
A loud laugh answered this strange proposition.
"I say we ought to have prayers!" repeated Zouche with semi-solemn earnestness,--"You talk of news,--news in telegram,--news in brief,--official scratchings for the day and hour,--and do you take no thought for the fact that his Holiness the Pope is ill--perhaps dying?"
He stared wildly round upon them all; and a tolerant smile pa.s.sed over the face of the company.
"Well, if that be so, Paul," said a man next to him, "it is not to be wondered at. The Pope has arrived at a great age!"
"No age at all!--no age at all!" declared Zouche. "A saint of G.o.d should live longer than a pauper! What of the good old lady admitted to hospital the other day whose birth certificate proved her beyond doubt to be one hundred and twenty-one years old? The dear creature had not married;--nor has his Holiness the Pope,--the real cause of death is in neither of them! Why should he not live as long as his aged sister, possessing, as he does the keys of Heaven? He need not unlock the little golden door, even for himself, unless he likes. That is true orthodoxy!
Pasquin Leroy, you bold imitation of a king, more wine!"
Leroy filled the gla.s.s he held out to him. The glances of the company told him Zouche was "on," and that it was no good trying to stem the flow of his ideas, or check the inconsequential nature of his speech.
Lotys had moved her chair a little back from the table, and with both arms encircling the child, Pequita, was talking to her in low and tender tones.
"Brethren, let us pray!" cried Zouche; "For all we know, while we sit here carousing and drinking to the health of our incomparable Lotys, the soul of St. Peter"s successor may be careering through Sphere-Forests, and over Planet-Oceans, up to its own specially built and particularly furnished Heaven! There is only one Heaven, as we all know,--and the s.p.a.ce is limited, as it only holds the followers of St. Peter, the good disciple who denied Christ!"
"That is an exploded creed, Zouche," said Thord quietly; "No man of any sense or reason believes such childish nonsense nowadays! The most casual student of astronomy knows better."
"Astronomy! Fie, for shame!" And Zouche gave a mock-solemn shake of the head; "A wicked science! A great heresy! What are G.o.d"s Facts to the Church Fallacies? Science proves that there are millions and millions of solar systems,--millions and millions of worlds, no doubt inhabited;--yet the Church teaches that there is only one Heaven, specially reserved for good Roman Catholics; and that St. Peter and his successors keep the keys of it. G.o.d,--the Deity--the Creator,--the Supreme Being, has evidently nothing at all to do with it. In fact, He is probably outside it! And of a surety Christ, with His ideas of honesty and equality, could never possibly get into it!"
"There you are right!" said Valdor; "Your words remind me of a conversation I overheard once between a great writer of books and a certain Prince of the blood Royal. "Life is a difficult problem!" said the Prince, smoking a fat cigar. "To the student, it is, Sir," replied the author; "But to the sensualist, it is no more than the mud-stye of the swine,--he noses the refuse and is happy! He has no need of the Higher life, and plainly the Higher life has no need of him. Of course,"
he added with covert satire, "your Highness believes in a Higher life?"
"Of course, of course!" responded the Royal creature, unconscious of any veiled sarcasm; "We must be Christians before anything!" And that same evening this hypocritical Highness "rooked" a foolish young fellow of over one thousand English pounds!"
"Perfectly natural!" said Zouche. "The fashionable estimate of Christianity is to go to church o" Sundays, and say "I believe in G.o.d,"
and to cheat at cards on all the other days of the week, as active testimony to a stronger faith in the devil!"
"And with it all, Zouche," said Lotys suddenly; "There is more good in humanity than is apparent."
"And more bad, beloved Lotys," returned Paul. "Tout le deux se disent!
But let us think of the Holy Father!--he who, after long years of patient and sublime credulity, is now, for all we know, bracing himself to take the inevitable plunge into the dark waters of Eternity! Poor frail old man! Who would not pity him! His earthly home has been so small and cosy and restricted,--he has been taken such tender care of--the faithful have fallen at his feet in such adoring thousands,--and now--away from all this warmth and light and incense, and colour of pictures and stained-gla.s.s windows, and white statuary and purple velvets, and golden-fringed palanquins,--now--out into the cold he must go!--out into the darkness and mystery and silence!--where all the former generations of the world, immense and endless, and all the old religions, are huddled away in the mist of the mouldered past!--out into the thick blackness, where maybe the fiery heads of Bel and the Dragon may lift themselves upward and leer at him!--or he may meet the frightful menace of some monstrous Mexican deity, once worshipped with the rites of blood!--out--out into the unknown, unimaginable Amazement must the poor naked Soul go shuddering on the blast of death, to face he truly knows not what!--but possibly he has such a pitiful blind trust in good, that he may be re-transformed into some pleasant living consciousness that shall be more agreeable even than that of Pope of Rome! "Mourir c"est rien,--mais souffrir!" That is the hard part of it!
Let us all pray for the Pope, my friends!--he is an old man!"
"When you are silent, Zouche," said Thord with a half smile; "We may perhaps meditate upon him in our thoughts,--but not while you talk thus volubly! You take up time--and Pequita is getting tired."
"Yes," said Lotys; "Pequita and I will go home, and there will be no dancing to-night."
"No, Lotys! You will not be so cruel!" said Zouche, pushing his grey hair back from his brows, while his wild eyes glittered under the tangle, like the eyes of a beast in its lair; "Think for a moment! I do not come here and bore you with my poems, though I might very well do so! Some of them are worth hearing, I a.s.sure you;--even the King--curse him!--has condescended to think so, or else why should he offer me pay for them? Kings are not so ready to part with money, even when it is Government money! In England once a Premier named Gladstone, gave two hundred and fifty pounds a year pension to the French Prince, Lucien Buonaparte, "for his researches into Celtic literature"! Bah! There were many worthier native-born men who had worked harder on the same subject, to choose from,--without giving good English money to a Frenchman! There is a case of your Order and Justice, Lotys! You spoke to-night of these two impossible things. Why will you touch on such subjects? You know there is no Order and no Justice anywhere! The Universe is a chance whirl of gas and atoms; though where the two mischiefs come from n.o.body knows! And why the devil we should be made the prey of gas and atoms is a mystery which no Church can solve!"
As he said this, there was a slight movement of every head towards Lotys, and enquiring eyes looked suggestively at her. She saw the look, and responded to it.
"You are wrong, Zouche!--I have always told you you are wrong," she said emphatically, "It is in your own disordered thoughts that you see no justice and no order,--but Order there is, and Justice there is,--and Compensation for all that seems to go wrong. There is an Intelligence at the core of Creation! It is not for us to measure that Intelligence, or to set any limits to it. Our duty is to recognize it, and to set ourselves as much as possible in harmony with it. Do you never, in sane moments, study the progress of humanity? Do you not see that while the brute creation remains stationary, (some specimens of it even becoming extinct), man goes step by step to higher results? This is, or should be, sufficient proof that death is not the end for us. This world is only one link in our chain of intended experience. I think it depends on ourselves as to what we make of it. Thought is a great power by which we mould ourselves and others; and we have no right to subvert that power to base uses, or to poison it by distrust of good, or disbelief in the Supreme Guidance. You would be a thousand times better as a man, Zouche, and far greater as a poet, if you could believe in G.o.d!"
She spoke with eloquence and affectionate earnestness, and among all the men there was a moment"s silence.
"Well, _you_ believe in Him;" said Zouche at last, "and I will catch hold of your angel"s robe as you pa.s.s into His Presence and say to Him;--" Here comes poor Zouche, who wrote of beautiful things among ugly surroundings, and who, in order to be true to his friends, chose poverty rather than the gold of a king!""
Lotys smiled, very sweetly and indulgently.
"Such a plea would stand you in good stead, Zouche! To be always true to one"s friends, and to persistently believe in beauty, is a very long step towards Heaven!"
"I did not say I _believed_ in beauty," said Zouche suddenly and obstinately;--"I dream it--I think it--but I do not see it! To me the world is one Horror--nothing but a Grave into which we all must fall!
The fairest face has a hideous skull behind it,--the dazzling blue of the sea covers devouring monsters in its depths--the green fields, the lovely woodlands, are full of vile worms and noxious beetles,--and s.p.a.ce itself swarms with thick-strewn worlds,--flaming comets,--blazing nebulae,--among which our earth is but a gnat"s wing in a huge flame!
Horrible!--horrible!" And he spoke with a kind of vehement fury. "Let us not think of it! Why should we insist on Truth? Let us have lies!--dear, sweet lies and fond delusions! Let us believe that men are all honest, and women all loving!--that there are virgins and saints and angels, as well as bishops and curates, looking after us in this wild world of terror,--oh, yes!--let us believe!--better the Pope"s little private snuggery of a Heaven, than the crushing truth which says "Our G.o.d is a consuming fire"! Knowledge deepens sorrow,--truth kills!--we must--we must have a little love, and a few lies to lean upon!"
His voice faltered,--and a sudden ashy paleness overspread his features,--his head fell back helplessly, and he seemed transfixed and insensible. Leroy and one or two of the others rose in alarm, thinking he had swooned, but Sergius Thord warned them back by a sign. The little Pequita, slipping from the arms of Lotys, went softly up to him.