Bab Bab 36 · The Apple Of Discord

ISCORD.

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. We

were under the surveillance of a sleepless eye: Rome watched jealously

her son through that mystic lattice at which I had knelt once, and to

which M. Emanuel drew nigh month by month—the sliding panel of the

confessional.

“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 proof

of a certain partiality in his feelings?”

Yes, he had; but still I liked to hear him say so earnestly—that he was

my close, true friend; I liked his modest doubts, his tender

deference—that trust which longed to rest, and was grateful when taught

how. He had called me “sister.” It was well. Yes; he might call me what

he pleased, so long as he confided in me. I was willing to be his

sister, on condition that he did not invite me to fill that relation to

some future wife of his; and tacitly vowed as he was to celibacy, of

this dilemma there seemed little danger.

Through most of the succeeding night I pondered that evening’s

interview. I wanted much the morning to break, and then listened for

the bell to ring; and, after rising and dressing, I deemed prayers and

breakfast slow, and all the hours lingering, till that arrived at last

which brought me the lesson of literature. My wish was to get a more

thorough comprehension of this fraternal alliance: to note with how

much of the brother he would demean himself when we met again; to prove

how much of the sister was in my own feelings; to discover whether I

could summon a sister’s courage, and he a brother’s frankness.

He came. Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will

not, match the expectation. That whole day he never accosted me. His

lesson was given rather more quietly than usual, more mildly, and also

more gravely. He was fatherly to his pupils, but he was not brotherly

to me. Ere he left the classe, I expected a smile, if not a word; I got

neither: 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; it increased. I

suppressed my surprise, and swallowed whatever other feelings began to

surge.

Well might I ask when he offered fraternity—“Dare I rely on you?” Well

might he, doubtless knowing himself, withhold all pledge. True, he had

bid me make my own experiments—tease and try him. Vain injunction!

Privilege nominal and unavailable! Some women might use it! Nothing in

my powers or instinct placed me amongst this brave band. Left alone, I

was passive; repulsed, I withdrew; forgotten—my lips would not utter,

nor my eyes dart a reminder. It seemed there had been an error

somewhere 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. One

evening in seven he had long generously bestowed on me, devoting it to

the examination of what had been done in various studies during the

past week, and to the preparation of work for the week in prospect. On

these occasions my schoolroom was anywhere, wherever the pupils and the

other teachers happened to be, or in their close vicinage, very often

in the large second division, where it was easy to choose a quiet nook

when the crowding day pupils were absent, and the few boarders gathered

in a knot about the surveillante’s estrade.

On the customary evening, hearing the customary hour strike, I

collected my books and papers, my pen and ink, and sought the large

division.

In classe there was no one, and it lay all in cool deep shadow; but

through the open double doors was seen the carré, filled with pupils

and with light; over hall and figures blushed the westering sun. It

blushed so ruddily and vividly, that the hues of the walls and the

variegated tints of the dresses seemed all fused in one warm glow. The

girls were seated, working or studying; in the midst of their circle

stood M. Emanuel, speaking good-humouredly to a teacher. His dark

paletôt, his jetty hair, were tinged with many a reflex of crimson; his

Spanish face, when he turned it momentarily, answered the sun’s

animated 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 the

whole day, and now asked water. M. Emanuel had a taste for gardening;

he liked to tend and foster plants. I used to think that working

amongst shrubs with a spade or a watering-pot soothed his nerves; it

was a recreation to which he often had recourse; and now he looked to

the orange-trees, the geraniums, the gorgeous cactuses, and revived

them all with the refreshment their drought needed. His lips meantime

sustained his precious cigar, that (for him) first necessary and prime

luxury of life; its blue wreaths curled prettily enough amongst the

flowers, and in the evening light. He spoke no more to the pupils, nor

to the mistresses, but gave many an endearing word to a small

spanieless (if one may coin a word), that nominally belonged to the

house, but virtually owned him as master, being fonder of him than any

inmate. A delicate, silky, loving, and lovable little doggie she was,

trotting at his side, looking with expressive, attached eyes into his

face; and whenever he dropped his bonnet-grec or his handkerchief,

which he occasionally did in play, crouching beside it with the air of

a miniature lion guarding a kingdom’s flag.

There were many plants, and as the amateur gardener fetched all the

water from the well in the court, with his own active hands, his work

spun on to some length. The great school-clock ticked on. Another hour

struck. The carré 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. Was

it my turn?

Alas! in the garden were more plants to be looked after,—favourite

rose-bushes, certain choice flowers; little Sylvie’s glad bark and

whine followed the receding paletôt down the alleys. I put up some of

my 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 the

returning paletôt; the watering-pot was deposited beside the well; it

had fulfilled its office; how glad I was! Monsieur washed his hands in

a little stone bowl. There was no longer time for a lesson now; ere

long the prayer-bell must ring; but still we should meet; he would

speak; a chance would be offered of reading in his eyes the riddle of

his shyness. His ablutions over, he stood, slowly re-arranging his

cuffs, 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 the

mood contemplative; its stillness irked her; she whined and jumped to

break it. He looked down.

“Petite exigeante,” said he; “you must not be forgotten one moment, it

seems.”

He stopped, lifted her in his arms, sauntered across the court, within

a yard of the line of windows near one of which I sat: he sauntered

lingeringly, fondling the spaniel in his bosom, calling her tender

names in a tender voice. On the front-door steps he turned; once again

he looked at the moon, at the grey cathedral, over the remoter spires

and house-roofs fading into a blue sea of night-mist; he tasted the

sweet breath of dusk, and noted the folded bloom of the garden; he

suddenly looked round; a keen beam out of his eye rased the white

façade of the classes, swept the long line of croisées. I think he

bowed; if he did, I had no time to return the courtesy. In a moment he

was gone; the moonlit threshold lay pale and shadowless before the

closed front door.

Gathering in my arms all that was spread on the desk before me, I

carried back the unused heap to its place in the third classe. The

prayer-bell rang; I obeyed its summons.

The morrow would not restore him to the Rue Fossette, that day being

devoted entirely to his college. I got through my teaching; I got over

the intermediate hours; I saw evening approaching, and armed myself for

its heavy ennuis. Whether it was worse to stay with my co-inmates, or

to sit alone, I had not considered; I naturally took up the latter

alternative; if there was a hope of comfort for any moment, the heart

or head of no human being in this house could yield it; only under the

lid of my desk could it harbour, nestling between the leaves of some

book, gilding a pencil-point, the nib of a pen, or tinging the black

fluid in that ink-glass. With a heavy heart I opened my desk-lid; with

a 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 not

comfort. Is this something new, this pamphlet in lilac? I had not seen

it before, and I re-arranged my desk this very day—this very afternoon;

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 neither

sung, nor related, not discussed. It was a theological work; it

preached and it persuaded.

I lent to it my ear very willingly, for, small as it was, it possessed

its own spell, and bound my attention at once. It preached Romanism; it

persuaded to conversion. The voice of that sly little book was a

honeyed voice; its accents were all unction and balm. Here roared no

utterance of Rome’s thunders, no blasting of the breath of her

displeasure. The Protestant was to turn Papist, not so much in fear of

the heretic’s hell, as on account of the comfort, the indulgence, the

tenderness Holy Church offered: far be it from her to threaten or to

coerce; her wish was to guide and win. _She_ persecute? Oh dear no! not

on any account!

This meek volume was not addressed to the hardened and worldly; it was

not even strong meat for the strong: it was milk for babes: the mild

effluence of a mother’s love towards her tenderest and her youngest;

intended wholly and solely for those whose head is to be reached

through the heart. Its appeal was not to intellect; it sought to win

the affectionate through their affections, the sympathizing through

their 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 fact

that the Catholic who had lost dear friends by death could enjoy the

unspeakable solace of praying them out of purgatory. The writer did not

touch on the firmer peace of those whose belief dispenses with

purgatory altogether: but I thought of this; and, on the whole,

preferred the latter doctrine as the most consolatory. The little book

amused, and did not painfully displease me. It was a canting,

sentimental, shallow little book, yet something about it cheered my

gloom and made me smile; I was amused with the gambols of this unlicked

wolf-cub muffled in the fleece, and mimicking the bleat of a guileless

lamb. Portions of it reminded me of certain Wesleyan Methodist tracts I

had once read when a child; they were flavoured with about the same

seasoning of excitation to fanaticism. He that had written it was no

bad man, and while perpetually betraying the trained cunning—the cloven

hoof of his system—I should pause before accusing himself of

insincerity. His judgment, however, wanted surgical props; it was

rickety.

I smiled then over this dose of maternal tenderness, coming from the

ruddy old lady of the Seven Hills; smiled, too, at my own

disinclination, not to say disability, to meet these melting favours.

Glancing at the title-page, I found the name of “Père Silas.” A

fly-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 in my

former spirit. I was revived.

A mortal bewilderment cleared suddenly from my head and vision; the

solution of the Sphinx-riddle was won; the conjunction of those two

names, Père Silas and Paul Emanuel, gave the key to all. The penitent

had been with his director; permitted to withhold nothing; suffered to

keep no corner of his heart sacred to God and to himself; the whole

narrative of our late interview had been drawn from him; he had avowed

the covenant of fraternity, and spoken of his adopted sister. How could

such a covenant, such adoption, be sanctioned by the Church? Fraternal

communion with a heretic! I seemed to hear Père Silas annulling the

unholy pact; warning his penitent of its perils; entreating, enjoining

reserve, nay, by the authority of his office, and in the name, and by

the memory of all M. Emanuel held most dear and sacred, commanding the

enforcement of that new system whose frost had pierced to the marrow of

my bones.

These may not seem pleasant hypotheses; yet, by comparison, they were

welcome. The vision of a ghostly troubler hovering in the background,

was as nothing, matched with the fear of spontaneous change arising in

M. Paul himself.

At this distance of time, I cannot be sure how far the above

conjectures were self-suggested: or in what measure they owed their

origin 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; a

clammy fog from the marshes crept grey round Villette. To-night the

watering-pot might rest in its niche by the well: a small rain had been

drizzling all the afternoon, and still it fell fast and quietly. This

was no weather for rambling in the wet alleys, under the dripping

trees; and I started to hear Sylvie’s sudden bark in the garden—her

bark 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 deep

vista of the allée défendue: thither rushed Sylvie, glistening through

its gloom like a white guelder-rose. She ran to and fro, whining,

springing, harassing little birds amongst the bushes. I watched five

minutes; no fulfilment followed the omen. I returned to my books;

Sylvie’s sharp bark suddenly ceased. Again I looked up. She was

standing not many yards distant, wagging her white feathery tail as

fast as the muscle would work, and intently watching the operations of

a spade, plied fast by an indefatigable hand. There was M. Emanuel,

bent over the soil, digging in the wet mould amongst the rain-laden and

streaming shrubs, working as hard as if his day’s pittance were yet to

earn by the literal sweat of his brow.

In this sign I read a ruffled mood. He would dig thus in frozen snow on

the coldest winter day, when urged inwardly by painful emotion, whether

of nervous excitation, or, sad thoughts of self-reproach. He would dig

by the hour, with knit brow and set teeth, nor once lift his head, or

open his lips.

Sylvie watched till she was tired. Again scampering devious, bounding

here, rushing there, snuffing and sniffing everywhere; she at last

discovered me in classe. Instantly she flew barking at the panes, as if

to urge me forth to share her pleasure or her master’s toil; she had

seen me occasionally walking in that alley with M. Paul; and I doubt

not, 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 course

perceived why, and at whom she barked. He whistled to call her off; she

only barked the louder. She seemed quite bent upon having the glass

door opened. Tired, I suppose, with her importunity, he threw down his

spade, approached, and pushed the door ajar. Sylvie burst in all

impetuous, sprang to my lap, and with her paws at my neck, and her

little nose and tongue somewhat overpoweringly busy about my face,

mouth, and eyes, flourished her bushy tail over the desk, and scattered

books 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 away

under his paletôt, where she nestled as quiet as a mouse, her head just

peeping forth. She was very tiny, and had the prettiest little innocent

face, the silkiest long ears, the finest dark eyes in the world. I

never saw her, but I thought of Paulina de Bassompierre: forgive the

association, reader, it _would_ occur.

M. Paul petted and patted her; the endearments she received were not to

be wondered at; she invited affection by her beauty and her vivacious

life.

While caressing the spaniel, his eye roved over the papers and books

just replaced; it settled on the religious tract. His lips moved; he

half checked the impulse to speak. What! had he promised never to

address me more? If so, his better nature pronounced the vow “more

honoured in the breach than in the observance,” for with a second

effort, he spoke.—“You have not yet read the brochure, I presume? It is

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 any

concessions were to be made—if any advances were demanded—that was the

affair of the very docile pupil of Père Silas, not mine. His eye

settled upon me gently: there was mildness at the moment in its blue

ray—there was solicitude—a shade of pathos; there were meanings

composite and contrasted—reproach melting into remorse. At the moment

probably, he would have been glad to see something emotional in me. I

could not show it. In another minute, however, I should have betrayed

confusion, had I not bethought myself to take some quill-pens from my

desk, and begin soberly to mend them.

I knew that action would give a turn to his mood. He never liked to see

me mend pens; my knife was always dull-edged—my hand, too, was

unskilful; I hacked and chipped. On this occasion I cut my own

finger—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, and

point 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 with

him. Bad as I was—and he should be sorry to have to name all my faults

at a breath—God and nature had given me ‘trop de sensibilité et de

sympathie’ not to be profoundly affected by an appeal so touching.”

“Indeed!” I responded, rousing myself quickly, “I was not affected at

all—not a whit.”

And in proof, I drew from my pocket a perfectly dry handkerchief, still

clean and in its folds.

Hereupon I was made the object of a string of strictures rather piquant

than polite. I listened with zest. After those two days of unnatural

silence, it was better than music to hear M. Paul haranguing again just

in his old fashion. I listened, and meantime solaced myself and Sylvie

with the contents of a bonbonnière, which M. Emanuel’s gifts kept well

supplied with chocolate comfits: It pleased him to see even a small

matter from his hand duly appreciated. He looked at me and the spaniel

while we shared the spoil; he put up his penknife. Touching my hand

with the bundle of new-cut quills, he said:—“Dites donc, petite

sœur—speak frankly—what have you thought of me during the last two

days?”

But of this question I would take no manner of notice; its purport made

my eyes fill. I caressed Sylvie assiduously. M. Paul, leaning—over the

desk, bent towards me:—“I called myself your brother,” he said: “I

hardly know what I am—brother—friend—I cannot tell. I know I think of

you—I feel I wish, you well—but I must check myself; you are to be

feared. 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, unblessed

panoply. You are good—Père Silas calls you good, and loves you—but your

terrible, proud, earnest Protestantism, there is the danger. It

expresses itself by your eye at times; and again, it gives you certain

tones and certain gestures that make my flesh creep. You are not

demonstrative, 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 trusted

that it could not fail. I laid it in your desk with a prayer: I must

indeed be a sinner: Heaven will not hear the petitions that come

warmest from my heart. You scorn my little offering. Oh, cela me fait

mal!”

“Monsieur, I don’t scorn it—at least, not as your gift. Monsieur, sit

down; listen to me. I am not a heathen, I am not hard-hearted, I am not

unchristian, I am not dangerous, as they tell you; I would not trouble

your 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? What

limits are there to the wild, careless daring of your country and sect.

Père Silas dropped dark hints.”

By dint of persuasion, I made him half-define these hints; they

amounted to crafty Jesuit-slanders. That night M. Paul and I talked

seriously and closely. He pleaded, he argued. _I_ could not argue—a

fortunate incapacity; it needed but triumphant, logical opposition to

effect all the director wished to be effected; but I could talk in my

own way—the way M. Paul was used to—and of which he could follow the

meanderings and fill the hiatus, and pardon the strange stammerings,

strange to him no longer. At ease with him, I could defend my creed and

faith in my own fashion; in some degree I could lull his prejudices. He

was not satisfied when he went away, hardly was he appeased; but he was

made thoroughly to feel that Protestants were not necessarily the

irreverent Pagans his director had insinuated; he was made to

comprehend something of their mode of honouring the Light, the Life,

the Word; he was enabled partly to perceive that, while their

veneration for things venerable was not quite like that cultivated in

his Church, it had its own, perhaps, deeper power—its own more solemn

awe.

I found that Père Silas (himself, I must repeat, not a bad man, though

the advocate of a bad cause) had darkly stigmatized Protestants in

general, and myself by inference, with strange names, had ascribed to

us strange “isms;” Monsieur Emanuel revealed all this in his frank

fashion, which knew not secretiveness, looking at me as he spoke with a

kind, earnest fear, almost trembling lest there should be truth in the

charges. Père Silas, it seems, had closely watched me, had ascertained

that I went by turns, and indiscriminately, to the three Protestant

Chapels of Villette—the French, German, and English—_id est_, the

Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopalian. Such liberality argued in the

father’s eyes profound indifference—who tolerates all, he reasoned, can

be attached to none. Now, it happened that I had often secretly

wondered at the minute and unimportant character of the differences

between these three sects—at the unity and identity of their vital

doctrines: I saw nothing to hinder them from being one day fused into

one grand Holy Alliance, and I respected them all, though I thought

that in each there were faults of form, incumbrances, and trivialities.

Just what I thought, that did I tell M. Emanuel, and explained to him

that my own last appeal, the guide to which I looked, and the teacher

which 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 strong

as a prayer, that if I were wrong, Heaven would lead me right. I heard,

poured forth on the threshold, some fervid murmurings to “Marie, Reine

du 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 his

fathers. I thought Romanism wrong, a great mixed image of gold and

clay; but it seemed to me that _this_ Romanist held the purer elements

of his creed with an innocency of heart which God must love.

The preceding conversation passed between eight and nine o’clock of the

evening, in a schoolroom of the quiet Rue Fossette, opening on a

sequestered garden. Probably about the same, or a somewhat later hour

of the succeeding evening, its echoes, collected by holy obedience,

were breathed verbatim in an attent ear, at the panel of a

confessional, in the hoary church of the Magi. It ensued that Père

Silas paid a visit to Madame Beck, and stirred by I know not what

mixture of motives, persuaded her to let him undertake for a time the

Englishwoman’s spiritual direction.

Hereupon I was put through a course of reading—that is, I just glanced

at the books lent me; they were too little in my way to be thoroughly

read, marked, learned, or inwardly digested. And besides, I had a book

up-stairs, under my pillow, whereof certain chapters satisfied my needs

in the article of spiritual lore, furnishing such precept and example

as, to my heart’s core, I was convinced could not be improved on.

Then Père Silas showed me the fair side of Rome, her good works; and

bade me judge the tree by its fruits.

In answer, I felt and I avowed that these works were _not_ the fruits

of Rome; they were but her abundant blossoming, but the fair promise

she showed the world, that bloom when set, savoured not of charity; the

apple full formed was ignorance, abasement, and bigotry. Out of men’s

afflictions and affections were forged the rivets of their servitude.

Poverty was fed and clothed, and sheltered, to bind it by obligation to

“the Church;” orphanage was reared and educated that it might grow up

in the fold of “the Church;” sickness was tended that it might die

after the formula and in the ordinance of “the Church;” and men were

overwrought, and women most murderously sacrificed, and all laid down a

world God made pleasant for his creatures’ good, and took up a cross,

monstrous in its galling weight, that they might serve Rome, prove her

sanctity, confirm her power, and spread the reign of her tyrant

“Church.”

For man’s good was little done; for God’s glory, less. A thousand ways

were opened with pain, with blood-sweats, with lavishing of life;

mountains were cloven through their breasts, and rocks were split to

their base; and all for what? That a Priesthood might march straight on

and straight upward to an all-dominating eminence, whence they might at

last stretch the sceptre of their Moloch “Church.”

It will not be. God is not with Rome, and, were human sorrows still for

the Son of God, would he not mourn over her cruelties and ambitions, as

once he mourned over the crimes and woes of doomed Jerusalem!

Oh, lovers of power! Oh, mitred aspirants for this world’s kingdoms! an

hour will come, even to you, when it will be well for your

hearts—pausing faint at each broken beat—that there is a Mercy beyond

human compassions, a Love, stronger than this strong death which even

you 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 her

kingdom. I was taken to the churches on solemn occasions—days of fête

and 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 thousand ways,

have felt this display impressive, have declared that though their

Reason protested, their Imagination was subjugated. I cannot say the

same. Neither full procession, nor high mass, nor swarming tapers, nor

swinging censers, nor ecclesiastical millinery, nor celestial

jewellery, touched my imagination a whit. What I saw struck me as

tawdry, not grand; as grossly material, not poetically spiritual.

This I did not tell Père 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 his

feelings. But on the evening of a certain day when, from the balcony of

a great house, I had been made to witness a huge mingled procession of

the church and the army—priests with relics, and soldiers with weapons,

an obese and aged archbishop, habited in cambric and lace, looking

strangely like a grey daw in bird-of-paradise plumage, and a band of

young girls fantastically robed and garlanded—_then_ I spoke my mind to

M. Paul.

“I did not like it,” I told him; “I did not respect such ceremonies; I

wished to see no more.”

And having relieved my conscience by this declaration, I was able to go

on, and, speaking more currently and clearly than my wont, to show him

that I had a mind to keep to my reformed creed; the more I saw of

Popery the closer I clung to Protestantism; doubtless there were errors

in every church, but I now perceived by contrast how severely pure was

my own, compared with her whose painted and meretricious face had been

unveiled for my admiration. I told him how we kept fewer forms between

us and God; retaining, indeed, no more than, perhaps, the nature of

mankind in the mass rendered necessary for due observance. I told him I

could not look on flowers and tinsel, on wax-lights and embroidery, at

such times and under such circumstances as should be devoted to lifting

the secret vision to Him whose home is Infinity, and His

being—Eternity. That when I thought of sin and sorrow, of earthly

corruption, mortal depravity, weighty temporal woe—I could not care for

chanting priests or mumming officials; that when the pains of existence

and the terrors of dissolution pressed before me—when the mighty hope

and measureless doubt of the future arose in view—_then_, even the

scientific strain, or the prayer in a language learned and dead,

harassed: with hindrance a heart which only longed to cry—“God be

merciful to me, a sinner!”

When I had so spoken, so declared my faith, and so widely severed

myself, from him I addressed—then, at last, came a tone accordant, an

echo responsive, one sweet chord of harmony in two conflicting spirits.

“Whatever say priests or controversialists,” murmured M. Emanuel, “God

is 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 also

cry—‘O Dieu, sois appaisé envers moi qui suis pécheur!’”

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 whose

nostrils issued whatever of life is here, or in the stars shining

yonder—how seem the differences of man? But as Time is not for God, nor

Space, so neither is Measure, nor Comparison. We abase ourselves in our

littleness, and we do right; yet it may be that the constancy of one

heart, the truth and faith of one mind according to the light He has

appointed, import as much to Him as the just motion of satellites about

their planets, of planets about their suns, of suns around that mighty

unseen centre incomprehensible, irrealizable, with strange mental

effort only divined.

“God guide us all! God bless you, Lucy!”

CHAPTER 37. Sunshine

SUNSHINE.

It