“Why will you not let France live? Is there not in any of you a love for the land which gave you birth, no devotion to her? Must you be men first, and Frenchmen last? Is there no light in your souls, no dedication, no solemn determination that no enemy, internal or external, shall destroy our country? Who are any of you who is greater, more important, more significant, than France?”
He stood up, and because he was trembling so violently, he caught at the back of his chair. The luminous window behind him threw his long lean figure into heroic silhouette. No one stirred in the room. All stared at him fixedly.
He moistened his dry and shaking lips. “A few days ago, in examining my father’s books, I came upon an old dusty prophecy.
“‘When Frenchmen are by Frenchmen foul betrayed,
And hating brothers on invaders smiled.
When Frenchmen’s hands in Frenchmen’s blood are laid,
Then France is lost forever, and her fame defiled.’”
He paused again. The slow solemn words had rung like the sound of doom in the great, sun-filled chamber, and every man had listened, his heart beating rapidly. De Tremblant lifted his hand, and so stern, so warning, so terrible, was his aspect, that they could only gaze at him, fascinated.
“Reflect!” he cried. “I feel in my soul that this prophecy is true, that the day Frenchmen smile upon the invader, when they conspire with the invader and the enemy, when they defer to the invader, accept his proclamations out of hatred for their own brothers or their own ambition, when their love for France is less than their detestation of their brothers, when all courage, all honor, all dignity and pride have left France, when she is filled with venal and plotting little men who love their putrid small souls more than they love their country, then France will fall, crumbling in obscene fragments in the dust, never to rise again, never again to aspire, never again to light the torch of culture and faith in her temples. And never again shall peace come to her, save the peace of the grave!”
He flung his hands over his face, as if seized by intolerable anguish.
The Cardinal tried to smile, touching his mouth with his hand. A gleam of derision appeared on the cold bearded lips of de Bouillon. De Rohan’s florid face thickened, and his red eyes flickered uneasily. Père Joseph leaned forward on his chair and gazed at de Tremblant as one gazes at a sibyl. But Louis smiled scornfully, thinking of the Habsburgs and the Spaniards, who, if they indeed wished to be “invaders” could yet save France from worse enemies: the French Protestants. The integrity of France was less, to Louis, than the integrity of Christendom.
The Cardinal indeed smiled, for a smile, to him, was a defense. But his subtle soul, always intrinsically mystic despite his cold reason, was disturbed and filled with dark clouds. He would have spoken, but de Tremblant, with a sudden wild gesture of despair, flung out his hands, glanced distractedly about him, and left the chamber, hurrying as from pestilence with his long awkward gait.
When the massive door had closed behind him, de Rohan burst into a long raucous laugh. His full belly shook; he threw back his red bearded head, and his teeth glittered in the clear golden light. His big thick hands, overgrown with red curling hairs, slapped his huge thighs. De Bouillon sat in calm immobility, his classic and aristocratic countenance inscrutable. The Cardinal, though mechanically smiling, was yet absorbed in the chaotic visions in his own soul. But Père Joseph plucked at his russet beard, and his protruding blue eyes sparkled with vehement fire.
Then de Bouillon spoke in his monotonous and unmoved voice: “It is unfortunate that our dear de Tremblant is so passionate. I confess I never suspected such violence in him, and trusted him because I believed in its absence. Violent men, however, can never be trusted.”
But the Cardinal, continuing his smile, regarded de Bouillon with the utmost candor.
“I believe only in violent men. Only these are no hypocrites, no plotters, no schemers, no liars.”
De Bouillon returned his look with his frozen and formidable eyes. De Rohan, who had heard nothing of this exchange, laughed with increasing enjoyment.
Then de Bouillon raised his pale eyebrows. “It is said that his Eminence is never violent,” he remarked, softly.
When de Rohan and de Bouillon had departed, and the Cardinal had completed his friendly reassurances, which de Rohan had received with truculence, and de Bouillon in polite silence, the Cardinal turned to Père Joseph.
“Well, my dear friend,” he said, with a languid wave of his hand, “what do you think of these three?”
The Capuchin slowly approached the bed, and looked down at the Cardinal long and piercingly.
Then he spoke, with heavy significance:
“The Duc de Bouillon is a dangerous and unremittingly virulent man.
Because he is ambitious, and has sacrificed himself for his ambition. The Duc de Rohan is dangerous, also, for he hates your Eminence, Catholicism, and the King. But he is not so menacing as de Bouillon, for he is not so ambitious.”
He paused, then resumed solemnly: “But the Duc de Tremblant is the most dangerous of all. He is not ambitious. He does not hate. However, he has convictions, heretical though they are. And a man with convictions beyond his own welfare, his own ambition, is dangerous beyond imagining. Nothing will halt him. Nothing deter him. He is inspired by his own private truth. And a man inspired by what he considers truth can not be silenced, not be turned aside.”
He continued, after a moment: “De Bouillon can be bought. De Rohan can be made to pause, out of prudence. But you cannot buy de Tremblant. You cannot make him pause. He is of the stuff of the original Protestants; he is of the stuff of Luther. For him Rome has only one verdict—”
“Death,” said the Cardinal.
The two friends looked intently at each other. It was the Cardinal, finally, who had to turn aside his eyes, and over whose face melancholy and sadness passed like a cloud.
CHAPTER XVII
The Palais-Cardinal lay in a pool of silence, as it slept under the moon. But in the Cardinal’s chamber a light burned near the great red bed. His Eminence was one who loved the silent night, when petty minds and little souls had returned to that blank darkness from which they briefly emerge during the day, like worms creeping to the surface of the ground in the early morning. But at night he could forget his knowledge, of mankind, could even forget his hatred, which was like a virus in his spiritual body, and which was so powerful that it infected his flesh. During the day, in his forced associations with his fellows, he was afflicted with a chronic inner trembling; he was nauseated with his loathing. At night, the tortured cramps left his body and his soul, and he would collapse among his pillows and breathe without that smothering constriction in his lungs. He would have all lights extinguished save that by his bed, and, lying there, he would read, meditate, drowse and muse, health precariously restored for a few blessed hours before the dawn. He would listen to the silence, and imagine, with deep consolation, that all but he were dead in the world, that the afflicting presence of man, by some divine and compassionate dispensation of God, had been forever removed from the miserable earth. No one dared enter his chamber. A new lackey had ventured to do so on one night, and was received with such desperate violence, such ravings, such cursings and hysteria, that the poor wretch had fled, not only from the Palais-Cardinal, but from Paris itself. For days, thereafter, the Cardinal could see no one, by orders of his physician, for he had become truly ill.
A profound stillness like velvet darkness would steal over the Cardinal. The cramps and rigors would leave his spirit. Slowly, throughout his body, would flow a blessedness of peace. Forgetting everything, even Anne of Austria, he would stare at the ceiling, at the shrouded windows, a book in his hand, a gentle smile on his lips. Sometimes he would glance at his bolted doors, and the expression of calm would deepen on his pale and haggard countenance. Now all craft and malice left his eyes, all bitterness his frail small mouth, all pain his tall sloping brow. Sometimes he thought it might be like this in
the grave, a peaceful sleeping in a stone and narrow chamber, safe forever from the intrusions of a species he hated with justification and complete knowledge.
He could understand the God, then, that he had forsaken, or from whom the wall of human flesh had shut him. Had he ever truly believed, with simplicity, ardor and orison? If he had, he had forgotten. Now he was wafted towards the dark mystery of God, gently, as a shingle of wood is wafted on great flowing tides, unquestioningly, unresistingly. But he could not understand Jesus. Never, at any time in his life, had he understood the Christ. How was it possible for One who understood mankind to love it, to desire to die for it, to suffer for it? Once he had a faint, swift glimmering, a comprehension that it was mankind’s very viciousness, stupidity, virulence, cruelty and madness which had inspired the pity of Jesus. But it was a comprehension mixed with wonder and contempt. He, the Cardinal, had a much better cure: a new flood, a new universal fire, a fiery comet out of space. He thought that much more sensible: to destroy the obscenity, rather than to pity it.
He thought that he alone was awake in the Palais-Cardinal. But Louis de Richepin was also awake. Where the Cardinal sought sleeplessness, for the healing of his body, Louis could not escape it. He suffered constantly from insomnia. In the night, all the devils of loneliness, sadness, bitterness and hopelessness, assailed him then, in the cold austerity of his chamber at the end of the long corridor. He would listen to the monotonous tramping of the guards, their dull challenges, until almost dawn. He would sit at his table, which was filled with books, his head in his hands, his dim slightless eyes fixed on the burning candelabrum before him. On the empty stone wall opposite him hung a huge wooden crucifix, crudely executed. Under it was the prie dieu, the low candle flickering as if about to die. Behind him was his hard severe cot. The high narrow window was open, admitting the cool night air. The floor was of stone, completely uncovered, and the two benches were innocent of cushions. It was a monk’s room, an ascetic’s room, a lonely and empty room, filled with vague candlelight and chill and dank smell of stone. Even on the coldest day there was no brazier here, no cheerful fire. It was a chamber under the earth. The Cardinal, seeing it once, had shuddered and smiled, and raised his brows. But offers of luxurious furniture, of carpets, were politely refused by the young priest.
During the day, his constant duties enforced a suspension of thought in the mind of Louis. But at night, he had no defense against his melancholy and loneliness. If he meditated, it was a meditation filled with hopelessness and frigid despair. If he prayed, it was as if his lips were covered with choking ice. A great motionless emptiness filled him; all the outlines of a living world were dissolved into nothingness. Sometimes he thought: My body, which was once a cauldron, is now an ancient cracked vessel stained with dried tears whose origin I have forgotten.
So long had he been forced to crush hope, desire and passion in his heart that they had become like unborn children dead in their mother’s womb—a memory of life, a murdered promise of fulfilment and joy, a weight of heaviness and stillness in his soul.
Once, when the dawn could not release him from the nameless agonies of the night before, he had broken down and incoherently confessed to the Cardinal, crying out like a man whose last defenses had gone. And the Cardinal had listened, hearing echoes in himself. But the echoes did not inspire him to compassion, though he understood. For some strange reason the understanding filled him only with anger. But he had said, gently enough:
“Louis, sharp pain and the capacity for suffering are the signs that the spirit is still fiery and eager. But when the ability to feel grief, rage, fear, agony and tumult is gone, the fool says: I have at last attained peace,’ and the wise soul cries: ‘I am dying!’ Be thankful, therefore, that you still live. You suffer, therefore, you are alive.”
But now, the night brought only deadness and emptiness to Louis, and the pain in his heart was muted though monstrous. He could not think; he could only endure. He could desire nothing, not even the death which would release him.
I have wanted love, he would say to himself. But the words were now only echoes, and mechanical. He was on fire, but the burning was like flames of ice, freezing his heart rather than imbuing it with incandescence.
The furies from the frozen pits of hell had him in unusual force tonight. They had a voice, a new voice, but he would not listen. He sat for hours, without moving, his eyes, from being fixed on the candles, having become dazed and almost blind. Therefore, when he heard a quiet knocking on his door, it was some long moments before the sound reached his consciousness. Then he was astonished.
He heard the tolling of the midnight bells of Notre Dame as he forced his cramped cold body to rise from the hard bench. He crept across the flickering floor like an old man, his shoulders stooped, his head thrust forward. He shot the bolt, and the door opened with a loud creaking. Père Joseph stood on the threshold, and the candlelight in the chamber struck on his russet beard and sprang back from his great hysterical blue eyes.
Louis, overcome with astonishment, fell back, and Père Joseph entered swiftly, closing the door behind him. The Capuchin glanced rapidly about the dismal room, then approaching a bench, he sat down upon it. Louis, without speaking, sat on the bench on the other side of the table, and the two regarded each other in a profound and speechless silence.
Uneasiness, awe, fear and suspicion filled Louis’ cold spirit. He waited, while Père Joseph’s rapid eye inspected every article in the chamber, then returned, strange and inscrutable, to the young priest. Evidently his inspection had pleased the Capuchin, for he smiled slightly.
“There is no luxury here, no corruption, no foolishness,” he said, in his low resonant voice. “I was not mistaken in you, Louis.”
Louis inclined his head. His egotism, never far below the surface, caused a warmer flush to infuse his glacial countenance. His weary heart lightened with an inexplicable thrill of conceit.
The bells of Notre Dame were still shaking the midnight air. Père Joseph briefly examined the volumes on the table. What he saw evidently satisfied him, for his great saturnine countenance softened. He laid his hand upon the cover of a book, tenderly. Then his expression changed again, became stern, fierce and inexorable. His eyes were pits of fiery blue, hypnotic and terrible.
He began to speak, so rapidly, and in so low a tone, that Louis had to listen with the greatest intensity in order to understand. The Capuchin’s eyes held him immobile, like a charmer’s eyes, so that he could not look away for an instant.
“When I saw you today, Monseigneur, I knew immediately that God had brought us together. Never have I been mistaken in these flashes of divine intuition. I knew you were the instrument God had placed in my hand. When the call comes, I do not delay. That is why I have come to you tonight. All slept in the palace, but I knew you were awake.”
He paused. He leaned across the table towards Louis, and the young priest saw nothing but those pits of blue flame which were the Capuchin’s eyes.
“I knew, also, that God would put understanding in your heart, and that I had only to speak.
“I need not recount to you the frightful forces which are abroad in the world today, and the ominous threat hanging like a falling wall over the Church. You know these things. You know that only the devotion of the dedicated and the faithful will save the Church. And I know you are one of these.
“The Church, at all costs, must regain spiritual omnipotence in the world as a prelude to the restored temporal omnipotence which must always be her dream, her aim, the purpose of God. Only when the Church has control over the political affairs of men, when she can command kings and emperors and princes and the machinery of all governments and be obeyed implicitly, can the plans of God be fulfilled. It is the duty of all of us to dedicate our lives, our thoughts, our prayers and our desires to the triumph of Christendom, to the extirpation of heretics and infidels by sword and by fire, by ruthlessness and strength. The forces of heresy must be destroyed. While one heretic re
mains alive in this world, the Church is threatened. While one independent government remains, defying the Church, the Church is unsafe. While one ruler retains power without the authority and the blessing of Rome, his presence is a menace to Catholicism. Wherever men make laws without consulting Rome, and deferring to her commands, there the forces of dissension, heresy and blasphemy are triumphant. The Church, as God intended, must rule all the world, must make all laws, must appoint all rulers, must have the first and the final word, if the divine purposes of God are to be accomplished.
“The Holy Father knows this. All the Popes, from the instant of receiving the Crown and the Keys of Saint Peter, are dedicated to this. In the hearts of all true servants of the Church is the vow that Protestant, Jewish, Mohammedan and Buddhist heresy must die, and their supporters with it. This is the command of God. We can only obey, with joy, pain, service, devotion and martyrdom.”
Slowly, as the Capuchin spoke in a low but vehement voice, filled with passion and fanaticism, a fire had been rising in Louis. The dullness vanished from his eyes. Winds of exaltation, of fury, madness, hysteria and transport flung themselves up in his soul, like flaming coronas. They lifted themselves, roaring, out of the black and fathomless caverns of the hatred that dwelt eternally in him.
The Capuchin saw the sudden leaping of these fiery winds behind the young priest’s face, which became whitely hot. Those glacial eyes glittered like mountain ice struck by wild moonlight. And Père Joseph said to himself: I have not been mistaken in the quality of this savage virgin soul, remorseless and dedicated.
His voice was like urgent hands seizing Louis. The young priest sprang to his feet in a transport, trembling, quivering like a tree struck by lightning. He cried out: “What shall I do? For there is something I must do!”
The Capuchin was too astute and intuitive a man to be deceived that Louis’ transports rose from religious rapture and devotion. The true devotee was as one divinely inspired, glowing and radiant, caught up in ecstasy, almost angelic in aspect. But Father Joseph saw that something evil, something dangerous and uncontrolled flamed behind the face, the words and the gestures of the young priest, something which made his flesh incandescent with an infernal blaze.