Books: The Master Christian

M >> Marie Corelli >> The Master Christian

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"Yet our world is but a pin's point in the eternal immensities,"
argued the Cardinal almost wistfully--"Only a few can expect to be
saved."

Nevertheless, this reasoning did not satisfy him. Again, what of
these millions? Were they to be forever lost? Then why so much waste
of life? Waste of life! There is no such thing as waste of life--
this much modern science the venerable Felix knew. Nothing can be
wasted,--not a breath, not a scene, not a sound. All is treasured up
in Nature's store-house and can be eternally reproduced at Nature's
will. Then what was to become of the myriads of human beings and
immortal souls whom the Church had failed to rescue? THE CHURCH HAD
FAILED! Why had it failed? Whose the fault?--whose the weakness?--
for fault and weakness were existent somewhere.

"WHEN THE SON OF MAN COMETH, THINK YE HE SHALL FIND FAITH ON EARTH?"

"No!" whispered the Cardinal, suddenly forced, as it were in his own
despite, to contradict his former assertion--"No!" He paused, and
mechanically making his way towards the door of the Cathedral, he
dipped his fingers into the holy water that glistened dimly in its
marble basin near the black oak portal, and made the sign of the
cross on brow and breast;--"He will not find faith where faith
should be pre-eminent. It must be openly confessed--repentingly
admitted,--He will NOT find faith even in the Church He founded,--I
say it to our shame!"

His head drooped, as though his own words had wounded him, and with
an air of deep dejection he slowly passed out. The huge iron-bound
door swung noiselessly to and fro behind him,--the grave-toned bell
in the tower struck seven. Outside, a tender twilight mellowed the
atmosphere and gave brightness to approaching evening; inside, the
long shadows, gathering heavily in the aisles and richly sculptured
hollows of the side-chapels, brought night before its time. The last
votive candle at the Virgin's shrine flickered down and disappeared
like a firefly in dense blackness,--the last echo of the bell died
in a tremulous vibration up among the high-springing roof-arches,
and away into the solemn corners where the nameless dead reposed,--
the last impression of life and feeling vanished with the retreating
figure of the Cardinal--and the great Cathedral, the Sanctuary and
House of God, took upon itself the semblance of a funeral vault,--a
dark, Void, wherein but one red star, the lamp before the Altar,
burned.

II.

Lovely to a poet or an artist's eye is the unevenly-built and
picturesque square of Rouen in which the Cathedral stands,--lovely,
and suggestive of historical romance in all its remote corners, its
oddly-shaped houses, its by-ways and crooked little flights of steps
leading to nowhere, its gables and slanting roofs, and its utter
absence of all structural proportion. A shrine here, a broken statue
there,--a half-obliterated coat-of-arms over an old gateway,--a
rusty sconce fitted fast into the wall to support a lantern no
longer needed in these days of gas and electricity,--an ancient
fountain overgrown with weed, or a projecting vessel of stone for
holy water, in which small birds bathe and disport themselves after
a shower of rain,--those are but a few of the curious fragments of a
past time which make the old place interesting to the student, and
more than fascinating to the thinker and dreamer. The wonderful
"Hotel Bourgtheroulde," dating from the time of Francis the First,
and bearing on its sculptured walls the story of the Field of the
Cloth of Gold, in company with the strangely-contrasting
"Allegories", from Petrarch's "Triumphs", is enough in itself to
keep the mind engrossed with fanciful musings for an hour. How did
Petrarch and the Field of the Cloth of Gold come together in the
brain of the sculptor who long ago worked at these ancient bas-
reliefs? One wonders, but the wonder is in vain,--there is no
explanation;--and the "Bourgtheroulde" remains a pleasing and
fantastic architectural mystery. Close by, through the quaint old
streets of the Epicerie and "Gross Horloge", walked no doubt in
their young days the brothers Corneille, before they evolved from
their meditative souls the sombre and heavy genius of French
tragedy,--and not very far away, up one of those little shadowy
winding streets and out at the corner, stands the restored house of
Diane de Poitiers, so sentient and alive in its very look that one
almost expects to see at the quaint windows the beautiful wicked
face of the woman who swayed the humours of a king by her smile or
her frown.

Cardinal Bonpre, walking past the stately fourteenth-century Gothic
pile of the Palais de Justice, thought half-vaguely of some of these
things,--but they affected him less than they might have done had
his mind not been full of the grand music he had just heard in the
Cathedral, and of the darkness that had slowly gathered there, as
though in solemn commingling with the darkness which had at the same
time settled over his soul. A great oppression weighed upon him;--
almost he judged himself guilty of mortal sin, for had he not said
aloud and boldly, while facing the High Altar of the Lord, that even
in the Church itself faith was lacking? Yes, he, a Cardinal-
Archbishop, had said this thing; he had as it were proclaimed it on
the silence of the sacred precincts,--and had he not in this, acted
unworthily of his calling? Had he not almost uttered blasphemy?
Grieved and puzzled, the good Felix went on his way, almost
unseeingly, towards the humble inn where he had elected to remain
for the brief period of his visit to Rouen,--an inn where no one
stayed save the very poorest of travellers, this fact being its
chief recommendation in the eyes of the Cardinal. For it must be
conceded, that viewed by our latter-day ideas of personal comfort
and convenience, the worthy prelate had some very old-world and
fantastic notions. One of these notions was a devout feeling that he
should, so far as it was humanly possible, endeavour to obey the
Master whose doctrine he professed to follow. This, it will be
admitted, was a curious idea. Considering the bold and blasphemous
laxity of modern Christian customs, it was surely quite a fanatical
idea. Yet he had his own Church-warrant for such a rule of conduct;
and chief among the Evangelic Counsels writ down for his example was
Voluntary Poverty. Yes!--Voluntary Poverty,--notwithstanding the
countless treasures lying idle and wasted in the Vatican, and the
fat sinecures enjoyed by bishops and archbishops; which things exist
in direct contradiction and disobedience to the command of Christ.
Christ Himself lived on the earth in poverty,--He visited only the
poorest and simplest habitations,--and never did He set His sacred
foot within a palace, save the palace of the High Priest where He
was condemned to die. Much symbolic meaning did Cardinal Felix
discover in this incident,--and often would he muse upon it gravely.

"The Divine is condemned to die in all palaces," he would say,--"It
is only in the glorious world of Nature, under the sunlit or starlit
expanse of heaven, that the god in us can live; and it was not
without some subtle cause of intended instruction to mankind that
the Saviour always taught His followers in the open air."

There was what might be called a palace hard by, to which Bonpre had
been invited, and where he would have been welcome to stay as long
as he chose,--the house of the Archbishop of Rouen--a veritable
abode of luxury as compared with the Hotel Poitiers, which was a
dingy little tumble-down building, very old, and wearing a conscious
air of feebleness and decrepitude which was almost apologetic. Its
small windows, set well back in deeply hollowed carved arches had a
lack-lustre gleam, as of very aged eyes under shelving brows,--its
narrow door, without either bolts or bars, hung half-aslant upon
creaking rusty hinges, and was never quite shut either by day or
night,--yet from the porch a trailing mass of "creeping jenny" fell
in a gold-dotted emerald fringe over the head of any way-worn
traveller passing in,--making a brightness in a darkness, and
suggesting something not altogether uncheery in the welcome
provided. They were very humble folk who kept the Hotel Poitiers,--
the host, Jean Patoux, was a small market-gardener who owned a plot
of land outside Rouen, which he chiefly devoted to the easy growing
of potatoes and celery--his wife had her hands full with the
domestic business of the hotel and the cares of her two children,
Henri and Babette, the most incorrigible imps of mischief that ever
lived in Rouen or out of it. Madame Patoux, large of body, unwieldy
in movement, but clean as a new pin, and with a fat smile of
perpetual contentment on her round visage, professed to be utterly
worn to death by the antics of these children of hers,--but
nevertheless she managed to grow stouter every day with a
persistency and fortitude which denoted the reserved forces of her
nature,--and her cooking, always excellent, never went wrong because
Babette had managed to put her doll in one of the saucepans, or
Henri had essayed to swim a paper boat in the soup. Things went on
somehow; Patoux himself was perfectly satisfied with his small
earnings and position in life--Madame Patoux felt that "le bon Dieu"
was specially engaged in looking after her,--and as long as the
wicked Babette and the wickeder Henri threw themselves wildly into
her arms and clung round her fat neck imploring pardon after any and
every misdeed, and sat for a while "en penitence" in separate
corners reading the "Hours of Mary", they might be as naughty as
they chose over and over again so far as the good-natured mother was
concerned. Just now, however, unusual calm appeared to have settled
on the Patoux household,--an atmosphere of general placidity and
peace prevailed, which had the effect of imparting almost a stately
air to the tumble-down house, and a suggestion of luxury to the
poorly-furnished rooms Madame Patoux herself was conscious of a
mysterious dignity in her surroundings, and moved about on her
various household duties with less bounce and fuss than was her
ordinary custom,--and Henri and Babette sat quiet without being told
to do so, moved apparently by a sudden and inexplicable desire to
study their lessons. All this had been brought about by the advent
of Cardinal Bonpre, who with his kind face, gentle voice and
beneficent manner, had sought and found lodging at the Hotel
Poitiers, notwithstanding Madame Patoux's profuse apologies for the
narrowness and inconvenience of her best rooms.

"For look you, Monseigneur," she murmured, deferentially, "How
should we have ever expected such an honour as the visit of a holy
Cardinal-Archbishop to our poor little place! There are many new
houses on the Boulevards which could have accommodated Monseigneur
with every comfort,--and that he should condescend to bestow the
blessing of his presence upon us,--ah! it was a special dispensation
of Our Lady which was too amazing and wonderful to be at once
comprehended!"

Thus Madame Patoux, with breathless pauses between her sentences,
and many profound curtseyings; but the good Cardinal waived aside
her excuses and protestations, and calling her "My daughter", signed
the cross on her brow with paternal gentleness, assuring her that he
would give her as little trouble as any other casual visitor.

"Trouble!--Ah, heaven!--could anything be a trouble for
Monseigneur!" and Madame Patoux, moved to tears by the quiet
contentment with which the Cardinal took possession of the two bare,
common rooms which were the best she could place at his disposal,
hurried away, and hustling Henri and Babette like two little roly-
poly balls before her into the kitchen, she told them with much
emphasis that there was a saint in the house,--a saint fit to be the
holy companion of any of those who had their niches up in the
Cathedral near the great rose-window,--and that if they were good
children they would very likely see an angel coming down from heaven
to visit him. Babette put her finger in her mouth and looked
incredulous. She had a vague belief in angels,--but Henri, with the
cheap cynicism of the modern French lad was anything but sure about
them.

"Mother," said he, "There's a boy in our school who says there is no
God at all, and that it's no use having priests or Cardinals or
Cathedrals,--it's all rubbish and humbug!"

"Poor little miserable monster!" exclaimed Madame Patoux, as she
peered into the pot where the soup for the Cardinal's supper was
simmering--"He is arranging himself to become a thief or a murderer,
be sure of that, Henri!--and thou, who art trained in all thy holy
duties by the good Pere Laurent, who teaches thee everything which
the school is not wise enough to teach, ought never to listen to
such wickedness. If there were no God, we should not be alive at
all, thou foolish child!--for it is only our blessed Saviour and the
saints that keep the world going."

Henri was silent,--Babette looked at him and made a little grimace
of scorn.

"If the Cardinal is a saint," she said--"he should be able to
perform a miracle. The little Fabien Doucet has been lame for seven
years; we shall bring him to Monseigneur, and he will mend his leg
and make him well. Then we shall believe in saints afterwards."

Madame Patoux turned her warm red face round from the fire over
which she was bending, and stared at her precocious offspring
aghast.

"What! You will dare to address yourself to the Cardinal!" she cried
vociferously--"You will dare to trouble him with such foolishness?
Mon Dieu!--is it possible to be so wicked! But listen to me well!--
If you presume to say one saucy word to Monseigneur, you shall be
punished! What have you to do with the little Fabien Doucet?--the
poor child is sickly and diseased by the will of God."

"I don't see why it should be God's will to make a boy sickly and
diseased--" began the irrepressible Henri, when his mother cut him
short with a stamp of her foot and a cry of--

"Tais-toi! Silence! Wicked boy!--thou wilt kill me with thy naughty
speeches! All this evil comes of the school,--I would thy father had
never been compelled to send thee there!"

As she said this with a vast amount of heat and energy, Henri,
seized by some occult and inexplicable emotion, burst without
warning into loud and fitful weeping, the sound whereof resembled
the yelling of a tortured savage,--and Babette, petrified at first
by the appalling noise, presently gave way likewise, and shrieked a
wild accompaniment.

"What ails my children?" said a gentle voice, distinct and clear in
its calm intonation even in the midst of the uproar, and Cardinal
Bonpre, tall and stately, suddenly appeared upon the threshold--
"What little sorrows are these?"

Henri's roar ceased abruptly,--Babette's shrill wailing dropped into
awed silence. Both youngsters stared amazed at the venerable Felix,
whose face and figure expressed such composed dignity and sweetness;
and Madame Patoux, nastily and with frequent gasps for breath,
related the history of the skirmish.

"And what will become of such little devils when they grow older,
the Blessed Virgin only knows!" she groaned--"For even now they are
so suspicious in nature, that they will not believe in their dinner
till they see it!"

Something like a faint grin widened the mouths of Henri and Babette
at this statement made with so much distressed fervour by their
angry mother,--but the Cardinal did not smile. His face had grown
very pale and grave, almost stern.

"The children are quite right, my daughter," he said gently,--"I am
no saint! I have performed no miracles. I am a poor sinner,--
striving to do well, but alas!--for ever striving in vain. The days
of noble living are past,--and we are all too much fallen in the
ways of error to deserve that our Lord should bless the too often
half-hearted and grudging labour of his so-called servants. Come
here, ma mignonne!" he continued, calling Babette, who approached
him with a curious air of half-timid boldness--"Thou art but a very
little girl," he said, laying his thin white hand softly on her
tumbled brown curls--"Nevertheless, I should be a very foolish old
man if I despised thee, or thy thoughts, or thy desire to know the
truth for truth's sake. Therefore to-morrow thou shalt bring me this
afflicted friend of thine, and though I have no divine gifts, I will
do even as the Master commanded,--I will lay my hands on him in
blessing and pray that he may be healed. More than this is not in my
power, my child!--if a miracle is to be worked, it is our dear Lord
only who can work it."

Gently he murmured his formal benediction,--then, turning away, he
entered his own room and shut the door. Babette, grown strangely
serious, turned to her brother and held out her hand, moved by one
of those erratic impulses which often take sudden possession of
self-willed children.

"Come into the Cathedral!" she whispered imperatively--"Come and say
an Ave."

Not a word did the usually glib Henri vouchsafe in answer,--but
clutching his sister's fingers in his own dirty, horny palm, he
trotted meekly beside her out of the house and across the Square
into the silence and darkness of Notre Dame. Their mother watched
their little plump figures disappear with a feeling of mingled
amazement and gratitude,--miracles were surely beginning, she
thought, if a few words from the Cardinal could impress Babette and
Henri with an idea of the necessity of prayer!

They were not long gone, however;--they came walking back together,
still demurely hand in hand, and settled themselves quietly in a
corner to study their tasks for the next day. Babette's doll, once
attired as a fashionable Parisienne, and now degenerated into a one-
eyed laundress with a rather soiled cap and apron, stuck out its
composite arms in vain from the bench where it sat all askew,
drooping its head forlornly over a dustpan,--and Henri's drum,
wherewith he was wont to wake alarming echoes out of the dreamy and
historical streets of Rouen, lay on its side neglected and
ingloriously silent. And, as before said, peace reigned in the
Patoux household,--even the entrance of Papa Patoux himself, fresh
from his celery beds, and smelling of the earth earthy, created no
particular diversion. He was a very little, very cheery, round man,
was Papa Patoux; he had no ideas at all in his bullet head save that
he judged everything to be very well managed in the Universe, and
that he, considered simply as Patoux, was lucky in his life and
labours,--also that it was an easy thing to grow celery, provided
God's blessing was on the soil. For the rest, he took small care; he
knew that the world wagged in different ways in different climates,-
-he read his half-penny journal daily, and professed to be
interested in the political situation just for the fun of the thing,
but in reality he thought the French Senate a pack of fools, and
wondered what they meant by always talking so much about nothing. He
believed in "La Patrie" to a certain extent,--but he would have very
much objected if "La Patrie" had interfered with his celery. Roughly
sneaking, he understood that France was a nation, and that he was a
Frenchman; and that if any enemies should presume to come into the
country, it would be necessary to take up a musket and fight them
out again, and defend wife, children, and celery-beds till the last
breath was out of his body. Further than this simple and primitive
idea of patriotism he did not go. He never bothered himself about
dissentient shades of opinion, or quarrels among opposing parties.
When he had to send his children to the Government school, the first
thing he asked was whether they would be taught their religion
there. He was told no,--that the Government objected to religious
teaching, as it merely created discussion and was of no assistance
whatever in the material business of life. Patoux scratched his head
over this for a considerable time and ruminated deeply,--finally he
smiled, a dull fat smile.

"Good!" said he--"I understand now why the Government makes such an
ass of itself now and then! You cannot expect mere men to do their
duty wisely without God on their side. But Pere Laurent will teach
my children their prayers and catechism,--and I dare say Heaven will
arrange the rest."

And he forthwith dismissed the matter from his mind. His children
attended the Government school daily,--and every Wednesday,
Saturday, and Sunday afternoons Pere Laurent, a kindly, simple-
hearted old priest, took them, with several other little creatures
"educated by the State", and taught them all he knew about the great
France-exiled Creator of the Universe, and of His ceaseless love to
sinful and blasphemous mankind.

So things went on;--and though Henri and Babette were being crammed
by the national system of instruction, with learning which was
destined to be of very slight use to them in their after careers,
and which made them little cynics before their time, they were still
sustained within bounds by the saving sense of something better than
themselves,--that Something Better which silently declares itself in
the beauty of the skies, the blossoming of the flowers, and the
loveliness of all things wherein man has no part,--and neither of
them was yet transformed into that most fearsome product of modern
days, the child-Atheist, for whom there is no greater God than Self.

On this particular night when Papa Patoux returned to the bosom of
his family, he, though a dull-witted man generally, did not fail to
note the dove-like spirit of calm that reigned over his entire
household. His wife's fat face was agreeably placid,--the children
were in an orderly mood, and as he sat down to the neatly spread
supper-table, he felt more convinced than ever that things were
exceedingly well managed for him in this best of all possible
worlds. Pausing in the act of conveying a large spoonful of steaming
soup to his mouth he enquired--

"And Monseigneur, the Cardinal Bonpre,--has he also been served?"

Madame Patoux opened her round eyes wide at him.

"But certainly! Dost thou think, my little cabbage, thou wouldst get
thy food before Monseigneur? That would be strange indeed!"

Papa Patoux swallowed his ladleful of soup in abashed silence.

"It was a beautiful day in the fields," he presently observed--
"There was a good smell in the earth, as if violets were growing,--
and late in the autumn though it is, there was a skylark yet
singing. It was a very blue heaven, too, as blue as the robe of the
Virgin, with clouds as white as little angels clinging to it."

Madame nodded. Some people might have thought Papa Patoux inclined
to be poetical,--she did not. Henri and Babette listened.

"The robe of Our Lady is always blue," said Babette.

"And the angels' clothes are always white," added Henri.

Madame Patoux said nothing, but passed a second helping of soup all
round. Papa Patoux smiled blandly on his offspring.

"Just so," he averred--"Blue and white are the colours of the sky,
my little ones,--and Our Lady and the angels live in the sky!"

"I wonder where?" muttered Henri with his mouth half full. "The sky
is nothing but miles and miles of air, and in the air there are
millions and millions of planets turning round and round, larger
than our world,--ever so much larger,--and nobody knows which is the
largest of them all!"

"It is as thou sayest, my son," said Patoux confidently--"Nobody
knows which is the largest of them all, but whichever it may be,
that largest of them all belongs to Our Lady and the angels."

Henri looked at Babette, but Babette was munching watercress busily,
and did not return his enquiring glances. Papa Patoux, quite
satisfied with his own reasoning, continued his supper in an amiable
state of mind.

"What didst thou serve to Monseigneur, my little one?" he asked his
wife with a coaxing and caressing air, as though she were some
delicate and dainty sylph of the woodlands, instead of being the
lady of massive proportions which she undoubtedly was,--"Something
of delicacy and fine flavour, doubtless?"

Madame Patoux shook her head despondingly.

"He would have nothing of that kind," she replied--"Soup maigre, and
afterwards nothing but bread, dried figs, and apples to finish. Ah,
Heaven! What a supper for a Cardinal-Archbishop! It is enough to
make one weep!"

Patoux considered the matter solemnly.

"He is perhaps very poor?" he half queried.

"Poor, he may be," responded Madame,--"But if he is, it is surely
his own fault,--whoever heard of a poor Cardinal-Archbishop! Such
men can all be rich if they choose."

"Can they?" asked Henri with sudden vivacious eagerness. "How?"

But his question was not answered, for just at that moment a loud
knock came at the door of the inn, and a tall broadly built
personage in close canonical attire appeared in the narrow little
passage of entry, attended by another smaller and very much more
insignificant-looking individual.