CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE APPLE OF DISCORD.
Besides Fifine Beck's mother, another power had a word to say to M.Paul and me, before that covenant of friendship could be ratified. Wewere under the surveillance of a sleepless eye: Rome watched jealouslyher son through that mystic lattice at which I had knelt once, and towhich M. Emanuel drew nigh month by month--the sliding panel of theconfessional.
Why were you so glad to be friends with M. Paul? asks the reader.Had he not long been a friend to you? Had he not given proof on proofof a certain partiality in his feelings?
Yes, he had; but still I liked to hear him say so earnestly--that hewas my close, true friend; I liked his modest doubts, his tenderdeference--that trust which longed to rest, and was grateful whentaught how. He had called me sister. It was well. Yes; he might callme what he pleased, so long as he confided in me. I was willing to behis sister, on condition that he did not invite me to fill thatrelation to some future wife of his; and tacitly vowed as he was tocelibacy, of this dilemma there seemed little danger.
Through most of the succeeding night I pondered that evening'sinterview. I wanted much the morning to break, and then listened forthe bell to ring; and, after rising and dressing, I deemed prayers andbreakfast slow, and all the hours lingering, till that arrived at lastwhich brought me the lesson of literature. My wish was to get a morethorough comprehension of this fraternal alliance: to note with howmuch of the brother he would demean himself when we met again; to provehow much of the sister was in my own feelings; to discover whether Icould summon a sister's courage, and he a brother's frankness.
He came. Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, willnot, match the expectation. That whole day he never accosted me. Hislesson was given rather more quietly than usual, more mildly, and alsomore gravely. He was fatherly to his pupils, but he was not brotherlyto me. Ere he left the classe, I expected a smile, if not a word; I gotneither: to my portion fell one nod--hurried, shy.
This distance, I argued, is accidental--it is involuntary; patience,and it will vanish. It vanished not; it continued for days; itincreased. I suppressed my surprise, and swallowed whatever otherfeelings began to surge.
Well might I ask when he offered fraternity--Dare I rely on you? Wellmight he, doubtless knowing himself, withhold all pledge. True, he hadbid me make my own experiments--tease and try him. Vain injunction!Privilege nominal and unavailable! Some women might use it! Nothing inmy powers or instinct placed me amongst this brave band. Left alone, Iwas passive; repulsed, I withdrew; forgotten--my lips would not utter,nor my eyes dart a reminder. It seemed there had been an errorsomewhere in my calculations, and I wanted for time to disclose it.
But the day came when, as usual, he was to give me a lesson. Oneevening in seven he had long generously bestowed on me, devoting it tothe examination of what had been done in various studies during thepast week, and to the preparation of work for the week in prospect. Onthese occasions my schoolroom was anywhere, wherever the pupils and theother teachers happened to be, or in their close vicinage, very oftenin the large second division, where it was easy to choose a quiet nookwhen the crowding day pupils were absent, and the few boarders gatheredin a knot about the surveillante's estrade.
On the customary evening, hearing the customary hour strike, Icollected my books and papers, my pen and ink, and sought the largedivision.
In classe there was no one, and it lay all in cool deep shadow; butthrough the open double doors was seen the carre, filled with pupilsand with light; over hall and figures blushed the westering sun. Itblushed so ruddily and vividly, that the hues of the walls and thevariegated tints of the dresses seemed all fused in one warm glow. Thegirls were seated, working or studying; in the midst of their circlestood M. Emanuel, speaking good-humouredly to a teacher. His darkpaletot, his jetty hair, were tinged with many a reflex of crimson; hisSpanish face, when he turned it momentarily, answered the sun'sanimated kiss with an animated smile. I took my place at a desk.
The orange-trees, and several plants, full and bright with bloom,basked also in the sun's laughing bounty; they had partaken it thewhole day, and now asked water. M. Emanuel had a taste for gardening;he liked to tend and foster plants. I used to think that workingamongst shrubs with a spade or a watering-pot soothed his nerves; itwas a recreation to which he often had recourse; and now he looked tothe orange-trees, the geraniums, the gorgeous cactuses, and revivedthem all with the refreshment their drought needed. His lips meantimesustained his precious cigar, that (for him) first necessary and primeluxury of life; its blue wreaths curled prettily enough amongst theflowers, and in the evening light. He spoke no more to the pupils, norto the mistresses, but gave many an endearing word to a smallspanieless (if one may coin a word), that nominally belonged to thehouse, but virtually owned him as master, being fonder of him than anyinmate. A delicate, silky, loving, and lovable little doggie she was,trotting at his side, looking with expressive, attached eyes into hisface; and whenever he dropped his bonnet-grec or his handkerchief,which he occasionally did in play, crouching beside it with the air ofa miniature lion guarding a kingdom's flag.
There were many plants, and as the amateur gardener fetched all thewater from the well in the court, with his own active hands, his workspun on to some length. The great school-clock ticked on. Another hourstruck. The carre and the youthful group lost the illusion of sunset.Day was drooping. My lesson, I perceived, must to-night be very short;but the orange-trees, the cacti, the camelias were all served now. Wasit my turn?
Alas! in the garden were more plants to be looked after,--favouriterose-bushes, certain choice flowers; little Sylvie's glad bark andwhine followed the receding paletot down the alleys. I put up some ofmy books; I should not want them all; I sat and thought; and waited,involuntarily deprecating the creeping invasion of twilight.
Sylvie, gaily frisking, emerged into view once more, heralding thereturning paletot; the watering-pot was deposited beside the well; ithad fulfilled its office; how glad I was! Monsieur washed his hands ina little stone bowl. There was no longer time for a lesson now; erelong the prayer-bell must ring; but still we should meet; he wouldspeak; a chance would be offered of reading in his eyes the riddle ofhis shyness. His ablutions over, he stood, slowly re-arranging hiscuffs, looking at the horn of a young moon, set pale in the opal sky,and glimmering faint on the oriel of Jean Baptiste. Sylvie watched themood contemplative; its stillness irked her; she whined and jumped tobreak it. He looked down.
Petite exigeante, said he; you must not be forgotten one moment, itseems.
He stopped, lifted her in his arms, sauntered across the court, withina yard of the line of windows near one of which I sat: he saunteredlingeringly, fondling the spaniel in his bosom, calling her tendernames in a tender voice. On the front-door steps he turned; once againhe looked at the moon, at the grey cathedral, over the remoter spiresand house-roofs fading into a blue sea of night-mist; he tasted thesweet breath of dusk, and noted the folded bloom of the garden; hesuddenly looked round; a keen beam out of his eye rased the whitefacade of the classes, swept the long line of croisees. I think hebowed; if he did, I had no time to return the courtesy. In a moment hewas gone; the moonlit threshold lay pale and shadowless before theclosed front door.
Gathering in my arms all that was spread on the desk before me, Icarried back the unused heap to its place in the third classe. Theprayer-bell rang; I obeyed its summons.
The morrow would not restore him to the Rue Fossette, that day beingdevoted entirely to his college. I got through my teaching; I got overthe intermediate hours; I saw evening approaching, and armed myself forits heavy ennuis. Whether it was worse to stay with my co-inmates, orto sit alone, I had not considered; I naturally took up the latteralternative; if there was a hope of comfort for any moment, the heartor head of no human being in this house could yield it; only under thelid of my desk could it harbour, nestling between the leaves of somebook, gilding a pencil-point, the nib of a pen, or tinging the blackfluid in that ink-glass. With a heavy heart I opened my desk-lid; witha weary hand I turned up its contents.
One by one, well-accustomed books, volumes sewn in familiar covers,were taken out and put back hopeless: they had no charm; they could notcomfort. Is this something new, this pamphlet in lilac? I had not seenit before, and I re-arranged my desk this very day--this veryafternoon; the tract must have been introduced within the last hour,while we were at dinner.
I opened it. What was it? What would it say to me?
It was neither tale nor poem, neither essay nor history; it neithersung, nor related, not discussed. It was a theological work; itpreached and it persuaded.
I lent to it my ear very willingly, for, small as it was, it possessedits own spell, and bound my attention at once. It preached Romanism; itpersuaded to conversion. The voice of that sly little book was ahoneyed voice; its accents were all unction and balm. Here roared noutterance of Rome's thunders, no blasting of the breath of herdispleasure. The Protestant was to turn Papist, not so much in fear ofthe heretic's hell, as on account of the comfort, the indulgence, thetenderness Holy Church offered: far be it from her to threaten or tocoerce; her wish was to guide and win. _She_ persecute? Oh dear no! noton any account!
This meek volume was not addressed to the hardened and worldly; it wasnot even strong meat for the strong: it was milk for babes: the mildeffluence of a mother's love towards her tenderest and her youngest;intended wholly and solely for those whose head is to be reachedthrough the heart. Its appeal was not to intellect; it sought to winthe affectionate through their affections, the sympathizing throughtheir sympathies: St. Vincent de Paul, gathering his orphans about him,never spoke more sweetly.
I remember one capital inducement to apostacy was held out in the factthat the Catholic who had lost dear friends by death could enjoy theunspeakable solace of praying them out of purgatory. The writer did nottouch on the firmer peace of those whose belief dispenses withpurgatory altogether: but I thought of this; and, on the whole,preferred the latter doctrine as the most consolatory. The little bookamused, and did not painfully displease me. It was a canting,sentimental, shallow little book, yet something about it cheered mygloom and made me smile; I was amused with the gambols of this unlickedwolf-cub muffled in the fleece, and mimicking the bleat of a guilelesslamb. Portions of it reminded me of certain Wesleyan Methodist tracts Ihad once read when a child; they were flavoured with about the sameseasoning of excitation to fanaticism. He that had written it was nobad man, and while perpetually betraying the trained cunning--thecloven hoof of his system--I should pause before accusing himself ofinsincerity. His judgment, however, wanted surgical props; it wasrickety.
I smiled then over this dose of maternal tenderness, coming from theruddy old lady of the Seven Hills; smiled, too, at my owndisinclination, not to say disability, to meet these melting favours.Glancing at the title-page, I found the name of Pere Silas. Afly-leaf bore in small, but clear and well-known pencil characters:From P. C. D. E. to L--y. And when I saw this I laughed: but not inmy former spirit. I was revived.
A mortal bewilderment cleared suddenly from my head and vision; thesolution of the Sphinx-riddle was won; the conjunction of those twonames, Pere Silas and Paul Emanuel, gave the key to all. The penitenthad been with his director; permitted to withhold nothing; suffered tokeep no corner of his heart sacred to God and to himself; the wholenarrative of our late interview had been drawn from him; he had avowedthe covenant of fraternity, and spoken of his adopted sister. How couldsuch a covenant, such adoption, be sanctioned by the Church? Fraternalcommunion with a heretic! I seemed to hear Pere Silas annulling theunholy pact; warning his penitent of its perils; entreating, enjoiningreserve, nay, by the authority of his office, and in the name, and bythe memory of all M. Emanuel held most dear and sacred, commanding theenforcement of that new system whose frost had pierced to the marrow ofmy bones.
These may not seem pleasant hypotheses; yet, by comparison, they werewelcome. The vision of a ghostly troubler hovering in the background,was as nothing, matched with the fear of spontaneous change arising inM. Paul himself.
At this distance of time, I cannot be sure how far the aboveconjectures were self-suggested: or in what measure they owed theirorigin and confirmation to another quarter. Help was not wanting.
This evening there was no bright sunset: west and east were one cloud;no summer night-mist, blue, yet rose-tinged, softened the distance; aclammy fog from the marshes crept grey round Villette. To-night thewatering-pot might rest in its niche by the well: a small rain had beendrizzling all the afternoon, and still it fell fast and quietly. Thiswas no weather for rambling in the wet alleys, under the drippingtrees; and I started to hear Sylvie's sudden bark in the garden--herbark of welcome. Surely she was not accompanied and yet this glad,quick bark was never uttered, save in homage to one presence.
Through the glass door and the arching berceau, I commanded the deepvista of the allee defendue: thither rushed Sylvie, glistening throughits gloom like a white guelder-rose. She ran to and fro, whining,springing, harassing little birds amongst the bushes. I watched fiveminutes; no fulfilment followed the omen. I returned to my books;Sylvie's sharp bark suddenly ceased. Again I looked up. She wasstanding not many yards distant, wagging her white feathery tail asfast as the muscle would work, and intently watching the operations ofa spade, plied fast by an indefatigable hand. There was M. Emanuel,bent over the soil, digging in the wet mould amongst the rain-laden andstreaming shrubs, working as hard as if his day's pittance were yet toearn by the literal sweat of his brow.
In this sign I read a ruffled mood. He would dig thus in frozen snow onthe coldest winter day, when urged inwardly by painful emotion, whetherof nervous excitation, or, sad thoughts of self-reproach. He would digby the hour, with knit brow and set teeth, nor once lift his head, oropen his lips.
Sylvie watched till she was tired. Again scampering devious, boundinghere, rushing there, snuffing and sniffing everywhere; she at lastdiscovered me in classe. Instantly she flew barking at the panes, as ifto urge me forth to share her pleasure or her master's toil; she hadseen me occasionally walking in that alley with M. Paul; and I doubtnot, considered it my duty to join him now, wet as it was.
She made such a bustle that M. Paul at last looked up, and of courseperceived why, and at whom she barked. He whistled to call her off; sheonly barked the louder. She seemed quite bent upon having the glassdoor opened. Tired, I suppose, with her importunity, he threw down hisspade, approached, and pushed the door ajar. Sylvie burst in allimpetuous, sprang to my lap, and with her paws at my neck, and herlittle nose and tongue somewhat overpoweringly busy about my face,mouth, and eyes, flourished her bushy tail over the desk, and scatteredbooks and papers far and wide.
M. Emanuel advanced to still the clamour and repair the disarrangement.Having gathered up the books, he captured Sylvie, and stowed her awayunder his paletot, where she nestled as quiet as a mouse, her head justpeeping forth. She was very tiny, and had the prettiest little innocentface, the silkiest long ears, the finest dark eyes in the world. Inever saw her, but I thought of Paulina de Bassompierre: forgive theassociation, reader, it _would_ occur.
M. Paul petted and patted her; the endearments she received were not tobe wondered at; she invited affection by her beauty and her vivaciouslife.
While caressing the spaniel, his eye roved over the papers and booksjust replaced; it settled on the religious tract. His lips moved; hehalf checked the impulse to speak. What! had he promised never toaddress me more? If so, his better nature pronounced the vow morehonoured in the breach than in the observance, for with a secondeffort, he spoke.--You have not yet read the brochure, I presume? Itis not sufficiently inviting?
I replied that I had read it.
He waited, as if wishing me to give an opinion upon it unasked.Unasked, however, I was in no mood to do or say anything. If anyconcessions were to be made--if any advances were demanded--that wasthe affair of the very docile pupil of Pere Silas, not mine. His eyesettled upon me gently: there was mildness at the moment in its blueray--there was solicitude--a shade of pathos; there were meaningscomposite and contrasted--reproach melting into remorse. At the momentprobably, he would have been glad to see something emotional in me. Icould not show it. In another minute, however, I should have betrayedconfusion, had I not bethought myself to take some quill-pens from mydesk, and begin soberly to mend them.
I knew that action would give a turn to his mood. He never liked to seeme mend pens; my knife was always dull-edged--my hand, too, wasunskilful; I hacked and chipped. On this occasion I cut my ownfinger--half on purpose. I wanted to restore him to his natural state,to set him at his ease, to get him to chide.
Maladroit! he cried at last, she will make mincemeat of her hands.
He put Sylvie down, making her lie quiet beside his bonnet-grec, and,depriving me of the pens and penknife, proceeded to slice, nib, andpoint with the accuracy and celerity of a machine.
Did I like the little book? he now inquired.
Suppressing a yawn, I said I hardly knew.
Had it moved me?
I thought it had made me a little sleepy.
(After a pause:) Allons donc! It was of no use taking that tone withhim. Bad as I was--and he should be sorry to have to name all my faultsat a breath--God and nature had given me 'trop de sensibilite et desympathie' not to be profoundly affected by an appeal so touching.
Indeed! I responded, rousing myself quickly, I was not affected atall--not a whit.
And in proof, I drew from my pocket a perfectly dry handkerchief, stillclean and in its folds.
Hereupon I was made the object of a string of strictures rather piquantthan polite. I listened with zest. After those two days of unnaturalsilence, it was better than music to hear M. Paul haranguing again justin his old fashion. I listened, and meantime solaced myself and Sylviewith the contents of a bonbonniere, which M. Emanuel's gifts kept wellsupplied with chocolate comfits: It pleased him to see even a smallmatter from his hand duly appreciated. He looked at me and the spanielwhile we shared the spoil; he put up his penknife. Touching my handwith the bundle of new-cut quills, he said:--Dites donc, petitesoeur--speak frankly--what have you thought of me during the last twodays?
But of this question I would take no manner of notice; its purport mademy eyes fill. I caressed Sylvie assiduously. M. Paul, leaning--over thedesk, bent towards me:--I called myself your brother, he said: Ihardly know what I am--brother--friend--I cannot tell. I know I thinkof you--I feel I wish, you well--but I must check myself; you are to befeared. My best friends point out danger, and whisper caution.
You do right to listen to your friends. By all means be cautious.
It is your religion--your strange, self-reliant, invulnerable creed,whose influence seems to clothe you in, I know not what, unblessedpanoply. You are good--Pere Silas calls you good, and loves you--butyour terrible, proud, earnest Protestantism, there is the danger. Itexpresses itself by your eye at times; and again, it gives you certaintones and certain gestures that make my flesh creep. You are notdemonstrative, and yet, just now--when you handled that tract--my God!I thought Lucifer smiled.
Certainly I don't respect that tract--what then?
Not respect that tract? But it is the pure essence of faith, love,charity! I thought it would touch you: in its gentleness, I trustedthat it could not fail. I laid it in your desk with a prayer: I mustindeed be a sinner: Heaven will not hear the petitions that comewarmest from my heart. You scorn my little offering. Oh, cela me faitmal!
Monsieur, I don't scorn it--at least, not as your gift. Monsieur, sitdown; listen to me. I am not a heathen, I am not hard-hearted, I am notunchristian, I am not dangerous, as they tell you; I would not troubleyour faith; you believe in God and Christ and the Bible, and so do I.
But _do_ you believe in the Bible? Do you receive Revelation? Whatlimits are there to the wild, careless daring of your country and sect.Pere Silas dropped dark hints.
By dint of persuasion, I made him half-define these hints; theyamounted to crafty Jesuit-slanders. That night M. Paul and I talkedseriously and closely. He pleaded, he argued. _I_ could not argue--afortunate incapacity; it needed but triumphant, logical opposition toeffect all the director wished to be effected; but I could talk in myown way--the way M. Paul was used to--and of which he could follow themeanderings and fill the hiatus, and pardon the strange stammerings,strange to him no longer. At ease with him, I could defend my creed andfaith in my own fashion; in some degree I could lull his prejudices. Hewas not satisfied when he went away, hardly was he appeased; but he wasmade thoroughly to feel that Protestants were not necessarily theirreverent Pagans his director had insinuated; he was made tocomprehend something of their mode of honouring the Light, the Life,the Word; he was enabled partly to perceive that, while theirveneration for things venerable was not quite like that cultivated inhis Church, it had its own, perhaps, deeper power--its own more solemnawe.
I found that Pere Silas (himself, I must repeat, not a bad man, thoughthe advocate of a bad cause) had darkly stigmatized Protestants ingeneral, and myself by inference, with strange names, had ascribed tous strange isms; Monsieur Emanuel revealed all this in his frankfashion, which knew not secretiveness, looking at me as he spoke with akind, earnest fear, almost trembling lest there should be truth in thecharges. Pere Silas, it seems, had closely watched me, had ascertainedthat I went by turns, and indiscriminately, to the three ProtestantChapels of Villette--the French, German, and English--_id est_, thePresbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopalian. Such liberality argued in thefather's eyes profound indifference--who tolerates all, he reasoned,can be attached to none. Now, it happened that I had often secretlywondered at the minute and unimportant character of the differencesbetween these three sects--at the unity and identity of their vitaldoctrines: I saw nothing to hinder them from being one day fused intoone grand Holy Alliance, and I respected them all, though I thoughtthat in each there were faults of form, incumbrances, and trivialities.Just what I thought, that did I tell M. Emanuel, and explained to himthat my own last appeal, the guide to which I looked, and the teacherwhich I owned, must always be the Bible itself, rather than any sect,of whatever name or nation.
He left me soothed, yet full of solicitude, breathing a wish, as strongas a prayer, that if I were wrong, Heaven would lead me right. I heard,poured forth on the threshold, some fervid murmurings to Marie, Reinedu Ciel, some deep aspiration that _his_ hope might yet be _mine_.
Strange! I had no such feverish wish to turn him from the faith of hisfathers. I thought Romanism wrong, a great mixed image of gold andclay; but it seemed to me that _this_ Romanist held the purer elementsof his creed with an innocency of heart which God must love.
The preceding conversation passed between eight and nine o'clock of theevening, in a schoolroom of the quiet Rue Fossette, opening on asequestered garden. Probably about the same, or a somewhat later hourof the succeeding evening, its echoes, collected by holy obedience,were breathed verbatim in an attent ear, at the panel of aconfessional, in the hoary church of the Magi. It ensued that PereSilas paid a visit to Madame Beck, and stirred by I know not whatmixture of motives, persuaded her to let him undertake for a time theEnglishwoman's spiritual direction.
Hereupon I was put through a course of reading--that is, I just glancedat the books lent me; they were too little in my way to be thoroughlyread, marked, learned, or inwardly digested. And besides, I had a bookup-stairs, under my pillow, whereof certain chapters satisfied my needsin the article of spiritual lore, furnishing such precept and exampleas, to my heart's core, I was convinced could not be improved on.
Then Pere Silas showed me the fair side of Rome, her good works; andbade me judge the tree by its fruits.
In answer, I felt and I avowed that these works were _not_ the fruitsof Rome; they were but her abundant blossoming, but the fair promiseshe showed the world, That bloom, when set, savoured not of charity;the apple full formed was ignorance, abasement, and bigotry. Out ofmen's afflictions and affections were forged the rivets of theirservitude. Poverty was fed and clothed, and sheltered, to bind it byobligation to the Church; orphanage was reared and educated that itmight grow up in the fold of the Church; sickness was tended that itmight die after the formula and in the ordinance of the Church; andmen were overwrought, and women most murderously sacrificed, and alllaid down a world God made pleasant for his creatures' good, and tookup a cross, monstrous in its galling weight, that they might serveRome, prove her sanctity, confirm her power, and spread the reign ofher tyrant Church.
For man's good was little done; for God's glory, less. A thousand wayswere opened with pain, with blood-sweats, with lavishing of life;mountains were cloven through their breasts, and rocks were split totheir base; and all for what? That a Priesthood might march straight onand straight upward to an all-dominating eminence, whence they might atlast stretch the sceptre of their Moloch Church.
It will not be. God is not with Rome, and, were human sorrows still forthe Son of God, would he not mourn over her cruelties and ambitions, asonce he mourned over the crimes and woes of doomed Jerusalem!
Oh, lovers of power! Oh, mitred aspirants for this world's kingdoms! anhour will come, even to you, when it will be well for yourhearts--pausing faint at each broken beat--that there is a Mercy beyondhuman compassions, a Love, stronger than this strong death which evenyou must face, and before it, fall; a Charity more potent than any sin,even yours; a Pity which redeems worlds--nay, absolves Priests.
* * * * *
My third temptation was held out in the pomp of Rome--the glory of herkingdom. I was taken to the churches on solemn occasions--days of feteand state; I was shown the Papal ritual and ceremonial. I looked at it.
Many people--men and women--no doubt far my superiors in a thousandways, have felt this display impressive, have declared that thoughtheir Reason protested, their Imagination was subjugated. I cannot saythe same. Neither full procession, nor high mass, nor swarming tapers,nor swinging censers, nor ecclesiastical millinery, nor celestialjewellery, touched my imagination a whit. What I saw struck me astawdry, not grand; as grossly material, not poetically spiritual.
This I did not tell Pere Silas; he was old, he looked venerable:through every abortive experiment, under every repeated disappointment,he remained personally kind to me, and I felt tender of hurting hisfeelings. But on the evening of a certain day when, from the balcony ofa great house, I had been made to witness a huge mingled procession ofthe church and the army--priests with relics, and soldiers withweapons, an obese and aged archbishop, habited in cambric and lace,looking strangely like a grey daw in bird-of-paradise plumage, and aband of young girls fantastically robed and garlanded--_then_ I spokemy mind to M. Paul.
I did not like it, I told him; I did not respect such ceremonies; Iwished to see no more.
And having relieved my conscience by this declaration, I was able to goon, and, speaking more currently and clearly than my wont, to show himthat I had a mind to keep to my reformed creed; the more I saw ofPopery the closer I clung to Protestantism; doubtless there were errorsin every church, but I now perceived by contrast how severely pure wasmy own, compared with her whose painted and meretricious face had beenunveiled for my admiration. I told him how we kept fewer forms betweenus and God; retaining, indeed, no more than, perhaps, the nature ofmankind in the mass rendered necessary for due observance. I told him Icould not look on flowers and tinsel, on wax-lights and embroidery, atsuch times and under such circumstances as should be devoted to liftingthe secret vision to Him whose home is Infinity, and Hisbeing--Eternity. That when I thought of sin and sorrow, of earthlycorruption, mortal depravity, weighty temporal woe--I could not carefor chanting priests or mumming officials; that when the pains ofexistence and the terrors of dissolution pressed before me--when themighty hope and measureless doubt of the future arose in view--_then_,even the scientific strain, or the prayer in a language learned anddead, harassed: with hindrance a heart which only longed to cry--Godbe merciful to me, a sinner!
When I had so spoken, so declared my faith, and so widely severedmyself, from him I addressed--then, at last, came a tone accordant, anecho responsive, one sweet chord of harmony in two conflicting spirits.
Whatever say priests or controversialists, murmured M. Emanuel, Godis good, and loves all the sincere. Believe, then, what you can;believe it as you can; one prayer, at least, we have in common; I alsocry--'O Dieu, sois appaise envers moi qui suis pecheur!'
He leaned on the back of my chair. After some thought he again spoke:
How seem in the eyes of that God who made all firmaments, from whosenostrils issued whatever of life is here, or in the stars shiningyonder--how seem the differences of man? But as Time is not for God,nor Space, so neither is Measure, nor Comparison. We abase ourselves inour littleness, and we do right; yet it may be that the constancy ofone heart, the truth and faith of one mind according to the light Hehas appointed, import as much to Him as the just motion of satellitesabout their planets, of planets about their suns, of suns around thatmighty unseen centre incomprehensible, irrealizable, with strangemental effort only divined.
God guide us all! God bless you, Lucy!