Books: The Master Christian

M >> Marie Corelli >> The Master Christian

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"'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 compassion 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 circumstances. I did a wrong--
I seek to make amends. I believe this is what God 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 God,--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, God 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 assumed 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 passionately 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 God.
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 God 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 passed 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 God 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!"

Moretti gave a gesture of impatience and contempt. Cyrillon noted
it, and his dark eyes flashed, but he went on steadily,--

"And then I saw her die--she stretched her poor thin hard-working
hands out to God, and over and over again she muttered and moaned in
her fever the refrain of an old peasant song we have in Touraine,
'Oh, la tristesse d'avoir aime!' If you had heard her--if you had
seen her--if you had, or have a heart to feel, nerves to wrench, a
brain to rack, blood to be stung to frenzy, you would,--seeing your
mother perish thus,--have thought, that to kill the man who had made
such a wreck of a sweet pure life, would be a just, aye even a
virtuous deed! I thought so. But my intended vengeance was
frustrated--whether by the act of God, who can say? But the conduct
of the man whom I am now proud to call my father--"

"You have great cause for pride!" said Moretti sarcastically.

"I think I have"--said the young man, "In the close extremity of
death at my hands, he won my respect. He shall keep it. It will be
my glory now to show him what a son's love and pardon may be. If it
be true as I understand, that he is attacked by a disease which
needs must be fatal, his last hours will not be desolate! It may be
that I shall give him more comfort than Churches,--more confidence
than Creeds! It may be that the clasp of my hand in his may be a
better preparation for his meeting with God,--and my mother,--than
the touch of the Holy Oils in Extreme Unction!"

"Like all your accursed sect, you blaspheme the Sacraments"--
interrupted Moretti indignantly--"And in the very presence of one of
her chiefest Cardinals, you scorn the Church!"

Cyrillon gave a quick gesture of emphatic denial.

"Monsignor, I do not scorn the Church,--but I think that honesty and
fair dealing with one another is better than any Church! Christ had
no Church. He built no temples, He amassed no wealth,--He preached
simply to those who would hear Him under the arching sky,--in the
open air! He prophesied the fall of temples; 'In this place,' He
said, 'is One greater than the temple.' [Footnote: Matt. xii. v. 6.]
He sought to destroy long built-up hypocrisies. 'My house is called
the house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves.' Thieves,
not only of gold, but of honour!--thieves of the very Gospel, which
has been tampered with and twisted to suit the times, the conditions
and opinions of varying phases of priestcraft. Who that has read,
and thought, and travelled and studied the manuscripts hidden away
in the old monasteries of Armenia and Syria, believes that the
Saviour of the world ever condescended to 'pun' on the word Petrus,
and say, 'On this Rock (or stone) I will build my Church,' when He
already knew that He had to deal with a coward who would soon deny
Him?"

"Enough! I will hear no further!" cried Moretti, turning livid with
fury--"Cardinal Bonpre, I appeal to you . . ."

But Cyrillon went on unheedingly,--

"Beware of that symbol of your Church, Monsignor! It is a very
strange one! It seems about to be expanded into a reality of
dreadful earnest! 'I know not the man,' said Peter. Does not the
glittering of the world's wealth piled into the Vatican,--useless
wealth lying idle in the midst of hideous beggary and starvation,--
proclaim with no uncertain voice, 'I KNOW NOT THE MAN'? The Man of
sorrows,--the Man of tender and pitying heart,--the Man who could
not send the multitude away without bread, and compassed a miracle
to give it to them,--the Man who wept for a friend's death,--who
took little children in His arms and blessed them,--who pardoned the
unhappy outcast and said, 'Sin no more,'--who was so selfless, so
pure, so strong, so great, that even sceptics, while denying His
Divinity, are compelled to own that His life and His actions were
more Divine than those of any other creature in human shape that has
ever walked the earth! Monsignor, there is no true representative of
Christ in this world!"

"Not for heretics possibly," said Moretti disdainfully.

"For no one!" said Cyrillon passionately--"For no poor sinking,
seeking soul is there any such visible comforter! But there is a
grand tendency in Mankind to absorb His Spirit and His teaching;--to
turn from forms and shadows of faith to the Faith itself,--from
descriptions of a possible heaven to the REAL Heaven, which is being
disclosed to us in transcendent glimpses through the jewel-gates of
science! There were twelve gates in the visioned heaven of St.
John,--and each gate was composed of one pearl! Truly do the
scoffers say that never did any planetary sea provide such pearls as
these! No,--for they were but prophetic emblems of the then
undiscovered Sciences. Ah, Monsignor!--and what of the psychic
senses and forces?--forces which we are just beginning to discover
and to use,--forces which enable me to read your mind at this
present moment and to see how willingly you would send me to the
burning, Christian as you call yourself, for my thoughts and
opinions!--as your long-ago predecessors did with all men who dared
to reason for themselves! But that time has passed, Monsignor; the
Spirit of Christ in the world has conquered the Church THERE!"

The words rushed from his lips with a fervid eloquence that was
absolutely startling,--his eyes were aglow with feeling--his face so
animated and inspired, that it seemed as though a flame behind it
illumined every feature. Abbe Vergniaud, astonished and overcome,
laid a trembling hand on the arm of the passionate speaker with a
gesture more of appeal than restraint, and the young man caught that
hand within his own and held it fast. Moretti for a moment fixed his
eyes upon father and son with an expression of intense hatred that
darkened his face with a deep shadow as of a black mask,--and then
without a word deliberately turned his back upon both.

"Your Eminence has heard all this," he said coldly, addressing the
Cardinal who sat rigidly in his chair, silent and very pale.

"I have," replied Bonpre in a low strained tone.

"And I presume your Eminence permits--?"

"Why talk of permission?" interrupted the Cardinal, raising his eyes
with a sorrowful look, "Who is to permit or deny freedom of speech
in these days? Have I--have you--the right to declare that a man
shall not express his thoughts? In what way are we to act? Deny a
hearing? We cannot--we dare not--not if we obey our Lord, who says,
'Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to
them.' If we ask for ourselves to be heard, we must also hear."

"We may hear--but in such a case as the present one must we not also
condemn?" demanded Moretti, watching the venerable prelate narrowly.

"We can only condemn in the case of a great sin," replied Bonpre
gently, "and even then our condemnation must be passed with fear and
trembling, and with full knowledge of all the facts pertaining to
the error. 'Judge not that ye be not judged.' We are told plainly
that our brother may sin against us not only seven times but seventy
times seven, and still we are bound to forgive, to sustain, to help,
and not to trample down the already fallen."

"These are your Eminence's opinions?" said Moretti.

"Most assuredly! Are they not yours?"

Moretti smiled coldly.

"No. I confess they are not! I am a faithful servant of the Church;
and the Church is a system of moral government in which, if the
slightest laxity be permitted, the whole fabric is in danger--"

"A house of cards then, which a breath may blow down!" interposed
"Gys Grandit," otherwise Cyrillon Vergniaud, "Surely an unstable
foundation for the everlasting ethics of Christ!"

"I did not speak to you, sir," said Moretti, turning upon him
angrily.

"I know you did not. I spoke to you," answered the young man coolly,
"I have as much right to speak to you, as you have to speak to me,
or to be silent--if you choose. You say the Church is a system of
moral government. Well, look back on the past, and see what it has
done in the way of governing. In the very earliest days of
Christianity, when men were simple and sincere, when their faith in
the power of the Divine things was strong and pure, the Church was
indeed a safeguard, and a powerful restraint on man's uneducated
licentiousness and inherent love of strife. But when the lust of
gain began to creep like a fever into the blood of those with whom
worldly riches should be as nothing compared to the riches of the
mind, the heart, and the spirit, then the dryrot of hypocrisy set
in--then came craftiness, cruelty, injustice, and pitilessness, and
such grossness of personal conduct as revolts even the soul of an
admitted sinner. Moral government? Where is it to day? Look at
France--Italy--Spain! Count up the lies told by the priests in these
countries to feed the follies of the ignorant! Did Christ ever tell
lies? No. Then why, if you are His follower, do you tell them?"

"I repeat, I did not speak to you," said Moretti, his eyes sparkling
with fury,--"To me you are a heretic, accursed, and excommunicate!--
thrust out of salvation, and beyond my province to deal with!"

"Oh, that a man should be thrust out of salvation in these Christian
days!" exclaimed Cyrillon with a flashing look of scorn, "And that
he should find a servant of Christ to tell him so! Accursed and
excommunicate! Then I am a kind of leper in the social community!
And you, as a disciple of your Master, should heal me of my
infirmity--and cleanse me of my Leprosy! Loathsome as leprosy is
whether of mind or body, Christ never thrust it out of salvation!"

"The leper must wish to be cleansed!" said Moretti fiercely, "If he
does not himself seek to be healed of his evil, no miracle can help
him."

"Oh but I do seek!" And young Vergniaud threw back his handsome head
with a splendid gesture of appeal, "With all my soul, if I am
diseased, I wish to be cleansed! Will YOU cleanse me? CAN you? I
wish to stand up whole and pure, face to face with the Divine in
this world, and praise Him for His goodness to me. But surely if He
is to be found anywhere it is in the Spirit of Truth! Not in any
sort of a lie! Now, according to His own words the Holy Ghost is the
Spirit of Truth. 'When the Spirit of Truth is come He will guide you
into all Truth.' And what then? Monsignor, it is somewhat dangerous
to oppose the Spirit of Truth, whether that Force speak through the
innocent lips of a child or the diseased ones of a leper! 'For
whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of Man it shall be
forgiven him, BUT WHOSOEVER SPEAKETH AGAINST THE HOLY GHOST'--or the
Spirit of Truth, known sometimes as Inspiration . . . "IT SHALL NOT BE
FORGIVEN HIM in this world, neither in the world to come.' That is a
terrible curse, which an ocean of Holy Water could scarcely wash
away!"

"Your argument is wide of the mark," said Moretti, impatiently, yet
forced in spite of himself to defend his position, "the Church is
not opposed to Truth but to Atheism."

"Atheism! There is no such thing as a real atheist in the world!"
declared Cyrillon passionately, "No reasoning human being alive,
that has not felt the impress of the Divine Image in himself and in
all the universe around him! He may, through apathy and the
falsehoods of priestcraft, have descended into callousness,
indifference and egotism, but he knows well that that impress cannot
be stamped out--that he will have to account for his part, however
small it be, in the magnificent pageant of life and work, for he has
not been sent into it 'on chance.' Inasmuch as if there is chance in
one thing there must be chance in another, and the solar system is
too mathematically designed to be a haphazard arrangement. With all
our cleverness, our logic, our geometrical skill, we can do nothing
so exact! As part of the solar system, you and I have our trifling
business to enact, Monsignor,--and to enact it properly, and with
satisfaction to our Supreme Employer, it seems to me that if we are
honest with the world and with each other, we shall be on the right
road."

"For my part, I am perfectly honest with you," said Moretti smiling
darkly, "I told you, and I tell you again, that to me you are a
heretic, accursed and excommunicate. You will, as the democrat 'Gys
Grandit,' no doubt feel a peculiar pleasure when your father is also
declared accursed and excommunicate. I have said, and I say again,
that the Church is a system of moral government, and that no laxity
can be permitted. It is a system founded on the Gospel of our Lord,
but to obey the commands of our Lord to the letter we should have to
find another world to live in--"

"Pardon me--I ask for information," interposed Cyrillon, "You of
course maintain that Christ was God in Man?"

"Most absolutely!"

"And yet you say that to obey His commands to the letter we should
have to find another world to live in! Strange! Since He made the
world and knows all our capabilities of progress! But have you never
fancied it possible that we may be forced to obey His commands to
the letter, or perish for refusing to do so?"

Moretti made as though he would have sprung forward,--his face was
drawn and rigid, his lips tightly compressed, but he had no answer
to this unanswerable logic. He therefore took refuge in turning
brusquely away as before and was about to address himself to Bonpre,
but stopped short, as he perceived Manuel, who had entered while the
conversation was going on, and who now stood quietly by the
Cardinal's chair in an attitude of composed attention. Moretti
glanced at him with a vexed sense of irritation and reluctant
wonder;--then moistening his dry lips he began,

"I am bound to regret deeply that your Eminence has allowed this
painful discussion to take place in your presence without reproof.
But I presume you are aware of the responsibility incurred?"

The Cardinal slowly inclined his head in grave assent.

"In relating the scene of to-day to His Holiness, I shall be
compelled to mention the attitude you have maintained throughout the
conversation."

"You are at perfect liberty to do so, my son," said Bonpre with
unruffled gentleness.

Moretti hesitated. His eyes again rested on Manuel.

"Pardon me," he said suddenly and irrelevantly, "This boy . . ."

"Is a foundling," said the Cardinal, "He stays with me till I can
place him well in the world. He has no friends."

"He took some part in the affair of this morning, I believe?"
queried Moretti, with a doubtful air.

"He saved my life," said Abbe Vergniaud advancing, "It was not
particularly worth saving--but he did it. And I owe him much--for in
saving me, he also saved Cyrillon from something worse than death."

"Naturally you must be very gratefu," retorted Moretti satirically,
"The affection of a son you have denied for twenty-five years must
be exceedingly gratifying to you!" He paused--then said, "Does this
boy belong to the Church?"

"No," said Manuel, answering for himself, "I have no Church."