The Cardinal gave a gesture of courteous deprecation; and Monsignor Moretti, lifting his, till then, partially lowered eyelids, flashed an angry regard upon the Abbe Vergniaud, who resting his back against the book-case behind him, met his glance with the most perfect composure.
Close to him stood his son and would-be murderer Cyrillon,--his dark handsome face rendered even handsomer by the wistful and softened expression of his eyes, which ever and anon rested upon his father with a look of mingled wonder and respect. There was a brief silence--of a few seconds at most,--and then Moretti spoke again in a voice which thrilled with pent-up indignation, but which he endeavoured to render calm and clear as he addressed the Cardinal.
"Your Eminence is without doubt aware of the cause of my visit to you.
If, as I understand, your Eminence was present at Notre Dame de Lorette this morning, and witnessed the regrettable conduct of the faithless son of the Church here present--"
"Pardon! This is my affair." interposed Vergniaud, stepping forward, "His Eminence, Cardinal Bonpre, is not at all concerned in the matter of the difficult dispute which has arisen between me and my own conscience. You call me faithless, Monsignor,--will you explain what you mean by "faithless" under these present conditions of argument?"
"It shows the extent and hopelessness of your retrogression from all good that you should presume to ask such a question," answered Moretti, growing white under the natural darkness of his skin with an impotency of rage he could scarcely suppress, "Your sermon this morning was an open attack on the Church, and the amazing scene at its conclusion is a scandal to Christianity!"
"The attack on the Church I admit," said the Abbe quietly, "I am not the only preacher in the world who has so attacked it. Christ Himself would attack it if He were to visit this earth again!"
Moretti turned angrily towards the Cardinal.
"Your Eminence permits this blasphemy to be uttered in your presence?"
he demanded.
"Nay, wherever and whenever I perceive blasphemy, my son, I shall reprove it," said the Cardinal, fixing his mild eyes steadily on Moretti"s livid countenance, "I cannot at present admit that our unhappy and repentant brother here has blasphemed. In his address to his congregation to-day he denounced social hypocrisy, and also pointed out certain failings in the Church which may possibly need consideration and reform; but against the Gospel of Christ, or against the Founder of our Faith I heard no word that could be judged ill-fitting. As for the conclusion which so very nearly ended in disaster and crime, there is nothing to be said beyond the fact that both the persons concerned are profoundly sorry for their sins."
"No sorrow can wipe out such infamy--" began Moretti hotly.
"Patience! Patience, my son!" and the Cardinal raised his hand with a slight gesture of authority, "Surely we must believe the words of our Blessed Lord, "There is more joy in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine just persons which have no need of repentance"!"
"And on this old and well-worn phrase you excuse a confessed heretic?"
said Moretti, with a sneer.
"This old and well-worn phrase is the saying of our Master," answered the Cardinal firmly, "And it is as true as the truth of the sunshine which, in its old and well-worn way, lights up this world gloriously every morning! I would stake my very life on the depth and the truth of Vergniaud"s penitence! Who, seeing and knowing the brand of disgrace he has voluntarily burnt into his own social name and honour, could doubt his sincerity, or refuse to raise him up, even as our Lord would have done, saying, "Thy sins be forgiven thee! Go, and sin no more!"?"
Moretti"s furtive eyes disappeared for a moment under his discoloured eyelids, which quivered rapidly like the throbbings in the throat of an angry snake. Before he could speak again however, Vergniaud interposed.
"Why trouble His Eminence with my crimes or heresies?" he said quietly, "I am grateful to him from my soul for his gentleness and charity of judgment--but I need no defence--not even from him. I am answerable to G.o.d alone!--neither to Church nor Creed! It was needful that I should speak as I spoke to-day--"
"Needful to scandalize the Church?" demanded Moretti sharply.
"The Church is not scandalized by a man who confesses himself an unworthy member of it!" returned Vergniaud, "It is better to tell the truth and go out of the Church than to remain in it as a liar and a hypocrite."
"According to your own admission you have been a liar and a hypocrite for twenty-five years!" said Moretti bitterly, "You should have made your confession before, and have made it privately. There is something unnatural and reprehensible in the sudden blazon you have made to the public of your gross immorality."
""A sudden blazon" you call it,--" said the Abbe, "Well, perhaps it is!
But murder will out, no matter how long it is kept in. You are not entirely aware of my position, Monseigneur. Have you the patience to hear a full explanation?"
"I have the patience to hear because it is my duty to hear," replied Moretti frigidly, "I am bound to convey the whole of this matter to His Holiness."
"True! That is your duty, and who shall say it is not also your pleasure!" and Vergniaud smiled a little. "Well!--Convey to His Holiness the news that I, Denis Vergniaud, am a dying man, and that knowing myself to be in that condition, and that two years at the utmost, is my extent of life on this planet, I have taken it seriously into my head to consider as to whether I am fit to meet death with a clean conscience. Death, Monsignor, admits of no lying, no politeness, no elegant sophistries! Now, the more I have considered, the more I am aware of my total unfitness to confront whatever may be waiting for me in the Afterwards of death--(for without doubt there is an afterwards,)--and being conscious of having done at least one grave injury to an innocent person, I have taken the best and quickest way to make full amends. I wronged a woman--this boy"s mother--" and he indicated with a slight gesture Cyrillon, who had remained a silent witness of the scene,--"and the boy himself from early years set his mind and his will to avenge his mother"s dishonour. I--the chief actor in the drama,--am thus responsible for a woman"s misery and shame; and am equally responsible for the murderous spirit which has animated one, who without this feeling, would have been a promising fellow enough.
The woman I wronged, alas!--is dead, and I cannot reinstate her name, save in an open acknowledgment of her child, my son. I do acknowledge him,--I acknowledge him in your presence, and therefore virtually in the presence of His Holiness. I thus help to remove the stigma I myself set on his name. Plainly speaking, Monsignor, we men have no right whatever to launch human beings into the world with the "bar sinister"
branded upon them. We have no right, if we follow Christ, to do anything that may injure or cause trouble to any other creature. We have no right to be hasty in our judgment, even of sin."
"Sin is sin,--and demands punishment--" interrupted Moretti.
"You quote the law of Moses, Monsignor! I speak with the premise "if".
IF we follow Christ;--if we do not, the matter is of course different.
We can then twist Scripture to suit our own purpose. We can organise systems which are agreeable to our own convenience or profit, but which have nothing whatever of Christ"s Divine Spirit of universal love and compa.s.sion in them. My action this morning was unusual and quixotic no doubt. Yet, it seemed to me the only way to comport myself under those particular circ.u.mstances. I did a wrong--I seek to make amends. I believe this is what G.o.d would have me do. I believe that the Supernal Forces judge our sins against each other to be of a far worse nature than sins against Church or Creed. I also believe that if we try to amend our injustices and set crooked things straight, death will be an easier business, and Heaven will come a little nearer to our souls. As for my attack on the Church--"
"Ah truly! What of your attack on the Church?" said Moretti, his small eyes glistening, and his breath going and coming quickly.
"I would say every word of it again with absolute conviction," declared Vergniaud, "for I have said nothing but the truth! There is a movement in the world, Monsignor, that all the powers of Rome are unable to cope with!--the movement of an advancing resistless force called Truth,--the Voice of G.o.d,--the Voice of Christ! Truth cannot be choked, murdered and killed nowadays as in the early Inquisition! Rather than that the Voice of Truth should be silenced or murdered now at this period of time, G.o.d will shake down Rome!"
"Not so!" exclaimed Moretti hotly--"Every nation in the world shall perish before Rome shall lose her sacred power! She is the "headstone of the corner"--and "upon whomsoever that stone shall fall, it shall grind him to powder!""
"You think so?" and Verginaud shrugged his shoulders ever so slightly--"Well! For me, I believe that material as well as spiritual forces combine to fight against long-concealed sin and practised old hypocrisies. It would not surprise me if the volcanic agencies which are for ever at work beneath the blood-stained soil of Italy, were to meet under the Eternal City, and in one fell burst of flame and thunder prove its temporary and ephemeral worth! The other day an earthquake shook the walls of Rome and sent a warning shock through St. Peter"s.
St. Peter"s, with its vast treasures, its gilded shrines, its locked-up wealth, its magnificence,--a strange contrast to Italy itself!--Italy with its people ground down under the heel of a frightful taxation, starving, and in the iron bonds of poverty! "The Pope is a prisoner and can do nothing"? Monsignor, the Pope is a prisoner by his own choice!
If he elected to walk abroad among the people and scatter Peter"s Pence among the sick and needy, he would then perhaps be BEGINNING to do the duties our Lord enjoined on all His disciples!"
Moretti had stood immovable during this speech, his dark face rigid, his eyes downcast, listening to every word, but now he raised his hand with an authoritative gesture.
"Enough!" he said, "I will hear no more! You know the consequences of this at the Vatican?"
"I do."
"You are prepared to accept them?"
"As prepared as any of the truth-tellers who were burned for the love of Christ by the Inquisition," replied Vergniaud deliberately. "The world is wide,--there is room for me in it outside the Church."
"One would imagine you were bitten by the new "Christian Democratic"
craze," said Moretti with a cold smile, "And that you were a reader and follower of the Socialist, Gys Grandit!"
At this name, Vergniaud"s son Cyrillon stirred, and lifting his dark handsome head turned his flashing eyes full on the speaker.
"Did you address me, Monsignor?" he queried, in a voice rich with the musical inflexions of Southern France, "I am Gys Grandit!"
Had he fired another pistol shot in the quiet room as he had fired it in the church, it could hardly have created a more profound sensation.
"You--you--" stammered Moretti, retreating from him as from some loathsome abomination, "You--Gys Grandit!"
"You, Cyrillon!--you!--you, my son!"--and the Abbe almost lost breath in the extremity of his amazement, while Cardinal Bonpre half rose from his chair doubting whether he had heard aright. Gys Grandit!--the writer of fierce political polemics and powerful essays that were the life and soul, meat and drink of all the members of the Christian Democratic party!
"Gys Grandit is my nom-de-plume," pursued the young man, composedly, "I never had any hope of being acknowledged as Cyrillon Vergniaud, son of my father,--I had truly no name and resolved to create one. That is the sole explanation. My history has made me--not myself."
There was a dead pause. At last Moretti spoke.
"I have no place here!" he said, biting his lips hard to keep them from trembling with rage, "This house which I thought was the abode of a true daughter of the Church, Donna Sovrani, is apparently for the moment a refuge for heretics. And I find these heretics kept in countenance by Cardinal Felix Bonpre, whose reputation for justice and holiness should surely move him to denounce them were he not held in check by some malignant spirit of evil, which seems to possess this atmosphere--"
"Monsignor Moretti," interposed the Cardinal with dignity, "it is no part of justice or holiness to denounce anything or anybody till the full rights of the case have been heard. I was as unaware as yourself that this young man, Cyrillon Vergniaud, was the daring writer who has sent his a.s.sumed name of "Gys Grandit" like a flame through Europe. I have read his books, and cannot justly denounce them, because they are expressed in the language of one who is ardently and pa.s.sionately seeking for Truth. Equally, I cannot denounce the Abbe, because he has confessed his sin, declared himself as he is, to the public, saved his son from being a parricide, and has to some extent we trust, made his peace with G.o.d. If you can find any point on which, as a servant of Christ, I can denounce these two human beings who share with me the strange and awful privileges of life and death, and the promise of an immortal hereafter, I give you leave to do so. The works of Gys Grandit do not blaspheme Christ,--they call, they clamour, they appeal for Christ through all and in all--"
"And with all this clamour and appeal their writer is willing to become a murderer!" said Moretti satirically.
Young Vergniaud sprang forward.
"Monsignor, in the name of the Master you profess to serve I would advise you to set a watch upon your tongue!" he said, "Granted that I was willing to murder the man who had made my mother"s life a misery, I was also willing to answer to G.o.d for it! I saw my mother die--" here he gave a quick glance towards the Abbe who instinctively shrank at his words, "I shall pain you, my father, by what I say, but the pain is perhaps good for us both! I repeat--I saw my mother die. She pa.s.sed away uncomforted after a long life of patient loneliness and sorrow--for she was faithful to the last, ever faithful! I have seen her weep in the silence of the night!--I have heard her ever since I was able to understand the sound of weeping! Oh, those tears!--Do you not think G.o.d has seen them! She worked and toiled, and starved herself to educate me,--she had no friends, for she had "fallen", they said, and sometimes she could get no employment, and often we starved together; and when I thought of the man who had done this thing, even as a young boy I said to myself, "I will kill him!" She did not mean, poor mother, to curse her lover to me--but unconsciously she did,--her sorrow was so great--her loneliness so bitter!"