His look was gentle and commanding,--his voice soft yet firm,--and the worldly Abbe felt somewhat like a chidden child as he met the gaze of those clear true eyes that were undarkened by any furtive hypocrisies or specious meanings.
"I suppose it is, but unfortunately I have made the worst of it," he answered, "and having made the worst I see no best. Who is that singing?"
He lifted his hand with a gesture of attention as a rich mezzo-soprano rang out towards them,--
"Per carita Mostrami il cielo; Tulto e un velo, E non si sa Dove e il cielo.
Se si sta Cosi cola, Non si sa Se non si va Ahi me lontano!
Tulto e in vano!
Prendimi in mano Per carita!"
"It is Angela," said the Cardinal, "She has a wonderfully sweet voice."
"Prendimi in mano, Per carita!"
murmured Abbe Vergniaud, still listening, "It is like the cry of a lost soul!"
"Or a strayed one," interposed the Cardinal gently, and rising, he took Vergniaud"s arm, and leaned upon it with a kindly and familiar grace, an action which implied much more than the mere outward expression of confidence,--"Nothing is utterly lost, my dear friend. "The very hairs of our head are numbered,"--not a drop of dew escapes to waste,--how much more precious than a drop of dew is the spirit of a man!"
"It is not so unsullied," declared Vergniaud, who loved controversy,--"Personally, I think the dew is more valuable than the soul, because so absolutely clean!"
"You must not bring every line of discussion to a pin"s point," said Bonpre smiling, as he walked slowly across the room still leaning on the Abbe"s arm. "We can reduce our very selves to the bodiless condition of a dream if we take sufficient pains first to advance a theory, and then to wear it threadbare. Nothing is so deceptive as human reasoning,--nothing so slippery and reversible as what we have decided to call "logic." The truest compa.s.s of life is spiritual instinct."
"And what of those who have no spiritual instinct?" demanded Vergniaud.
"I do not think there are any such. To us it certainly often seems as if there were ma.s.ses of human beings whose sole idea of living is to gratify their bodily needs,--but I fancy it is only because we do not know them sufficiently that we judge them thus. Few, if any, are so utterly materialistic as never to have had some fleeting intuition of the Higher existence. They may lack the force to comprehend it, or to follow its teaching,--but in my opinion, the Divine is revealed to all men once at least in their lives."
They had by this time pa.s.sed out of the drawing-room, and now, ascending three steps, they went through a curtained recess into Angela Sovrani"s studio,--a large and lofty apartment made beautiful by the picturesque disorder and charm common to a great artist"s surroundings.
Here, at a grand piano sat Angela herself, her song finished, her white hands straying idly over the keys,--and near her stood the gentleman whom the Abbe Vergniaud had called "a terrible reformer and Socialist"
and who was generally admitted to be something of a remarkable character in Europe. Tall and fair, with very bright flashing eyes, and a wonderfully high bred air of concentrated pride and resolution, united to a grace and courtesy which exhaled from him, so to speak, with his every movement and gesture, he was not a man to pa.s.s by without comment, even in a crowd. A peculiar distinctiveness marked him,--out of a marching regiment one would have naturally selected him as the commanding officer, and in any crisis of particular social importance or interest his very appearance would have distinguished him as the leading spirit of the whole. On perceiving the Cardinal he advanced at once to be presented, and as Angela performed the ceremony of introduction he slightly bent one knee, and bowed over the venerable prelate"s extended hand with a reverence which had in it something of tenderness. His greeting of Abbe Vergniaud was, while perfectly courteous, not quite so marked by the grace of a strong man"s submission.
"Ah, Mr. Leigh! So you have not left Paris as soon as you determined?"
queried the Abbe with a smile, "I thought you were bound for Florence in haste?"
"I go to Florence to-morrow," answered Leigh briefly.
"So soon! I am indeed glad not to have missed you," said Cardinal Bonpre cordially. "Angela, my child, let me see what you have been doing. All your canvases are covered, or turned with their faces to the wall;--are we not permitted to look at any of them?"
Angela immediately rose from the piano, and wheeled a large oaken chair with a carved and gilded canopy, into the centre of the studio.
"Well, if you want to see my sketches--and they are only sketches," she said,--"you must come and sit here. Now," as her uncle obeyed her, "you look enthroned in state,--that canopy is just fitted for you, and you are a picture in yourself!--Yes, you are, dearest uncle! And not all the artists in the world could ever do you justice I Monsieur l"Abbe, will you sit just where you please?--And Mr. Leigh, you have seen everything, so it does not matter."
"It matters very much," said Leigh with a smile, "For I want to see everything again. If I may, I will stand here."
And he took up his position close to the Cardinal"s chair.
"But where is the boy?" asked Vergniaud, "Where is the foundling of the Cathedral?"
"He left us some minutes ago," said Angela, "He went to your room, uncle."
"Was he pleased with the music?" asked the Cardinal.
"I think he enjoyed every note of it," said Leigh, "A thoughtful lad!
He was very silent while I played,--but silence is often the most eloquent appreciation."
"Are we to be silent then over the work of Donna Sovrani?" enquired the Abbe gaily. "Must we not express our admiration?"
"If you have any admiration to express," said Angela carelessly, setting, as she spoke, an easel facing the Cardinal; "but I am afraid you will greatly disapprove of me and condemn all my work this year. I should explain to you first that I am composing a very large picture,--I began it in Rome some three years ago, and it is in my studio there,--but I require a few French types of countenance in order to quite complete it. The sketches I have made here are French types only. They will all be reproduced in the larger canvas--but they are roughly done just now. This is the first of them. I call it "A Servant of Christ, at the Madeleine, Paris.""
And she placed the canvas she held on the easel and stood aside, while all three men looked at it with very different eyes,--one with poignant regret and pain,--the other with a sense of shame,--and the third with a thrill of strong delight in the power of the work, and of triumph in the lesson it gave.
IX.
Low beetling brows,--a sensual, cruel mouth with a loosely projecting under-lip,--eyes that appeared to be furtively watching each other across the thin bridge of nose,--a receding chin and a narrow cranium, combined with an expression which was hypocritically humble, yet sly,--this was the type Angela Sovrani had chosen to delineate, sparing nothing, softening no line, and introducing no redeeming point,--a type mercilessly true to the life; the face of a priest,--"A servant of Christ," as she called him. The t.i.tle, united with that wicked and repulsive countenance, was a terribly significant suggestion. For some minutes no one spoke,--and the Cardinal was the first to break the silence.
"Angela,--my dear child"--he said, in low, strained tones, "I am sorry you have done this! It is powerful--so powerful that it is painful as well. It cuts me to the heart that you should find it necessary to select such an example of the priesthood, though of course I am not in the secret of your aims--I do not understand your purpose . . ."
He broke off,--and Angela, who had stood silent, looking as though she were lost in a dream, took up his unfinished sentence.
"You do not understand my purpose?--Dearest uncle, I hardly understand it myself! Some force stronger than I am, is urging me to paint the picture I have begun,--some influence more ardent and eager than my own, burns like a fever in me, persuading me to complete the design.
You blame me for choosing such an evil type of priest? But there is no question of choice! These faces are ordinary among our priests. At all the churches, Sunday after Sunday I have looked for a good, a n.o.ble face;--in vain! For an even commonly-honest face,--in vain! And my useless search has ended by impressing me with profound sorrow and disgust that so many low specimens of human intellect are selected as servants of our Lord. Do not judge me too severely! I feel that I have a work to do,--and a lesson to give in the work, when done. I may fail;--I may be told that as a woman I have no force, and no ability to make any powerful or lasting impression on this generation;--but at any rate I feel that I must try! If priests of the Church were like you, how different it would all be! But you always forget that you are an exception to the rule,--you do not realise how very exceptional you are! I told you before I showed you this sketch that you would probably disapprove of it and condemn me,--but I really cannot help it. In this matter nothing--not even the ban of the Church itself, can deter me from fulfilling what I have designed to do in my own soul!"
She spoke pa.s.sionately and with ardour,--and the Cardinal looked at her with something of surprise and trouble. The fire of genius is as he knew, a consuming one,--and he had never entirely realized how completely it filled and dominated this slight feminine creature for whom he felt an almost paternal tenderness. Before he could answer her the Abbe Vergniaud spoke.
"Donna Sovrani is faithful to the truth in her sketch," he said, "therefore, as a lover of truth I do not see, my dear Bonpre, why you should object! If she has,--as she says,--some great aim in view, she must fulfil it in her own way. I quite agree with her in her estimate of the French priests,--they are for the most part despicable-looking persons,--only just a grade higher than their brothers of Italy and Spain. But what would you have? The iron hand of Rome holds them back from progress,--they are speaking and acting lies; and like the stagemimes, have to put on paint and powder to make the lies go down.
But when the paint and powder come off, the religious mime is often as ill-looking as the stage one! Donna Sovrani has caught this particular example, before he has had time to put on holy airs and turn up the footlights. What do you think about it, Mr. Leigh?"
"I think, as I have always thought," said Leigh quietly, "that Donna Sovrani is an inspired artist,--and that being inspired it follows that she must carry out her own convictions whether they suit the taste of others or not. "A Servant of Christ" is a painful truth, boldly declared."
Angela was unmoved by the compliment implied. She only glanced wistfully at the Cardinal, who still sat silent. Then without a word she withdrew the offending sketch from the easel and set another in its place.
"This," she said gently, "is the portrait of an Archbishop. I need not name his diocese. He is very wealthy, and excessively selfish. I call this, "LORD, _I_ THANK THEE THAT I AM NOT AS OTHER MEN"."
Vergniaud laughed as he looked,--he knew the pictured dignitary well.
The smooth countenance, the little eyes comfortably sunken in small rolls of fat, the smug smiling lips, the gross neck and heavy jaw,--marks of high feeding and prosperous living,--and above all the perfectly self-satisfied and mock-pious air of the man,--these points were given with the firm touch of a master"s brush, and the Abbe, after studying the picture closely, turned to Angela with a light yet deferential bow.
"Chere Sovrani, you are stronger than ever! Surely you have improved much since you were last in Paris? Your strokes are firmer, your grasp is bolder. Have your French confreres seen your work this year?"
"No," replied Angela, "I am resolved they shall see nothing till my picture is finished."
"May one ask why?"
A flash of disdain pa.s.sed over the girl"s face.
"For a very simple reason! They take my ideas and use them,--and then, when my work is produced they say it is _I_ who have copied from THEM, and that women have no imagination! I have been cheated once or twice in that way,--this time no one has any idea what I am doing."
"No one? Not even Signer Varillo?"