Part 35 (1/2)

”Pray sit down!” he said, ”I understand that you wish to obtain a private audience of the Holy Father. That of course is impossible!”

Aubrey drew a chair slowly towards the desk where Gherardi had resumed his own usual seat, and raised his eyes with a curious look of half satirical questioning.

”Impossible!” he said, ”And why?”

Gherardi almost laughed.

”Why? My dear sir, is it necessary to ask? Your name is sufficiently well-known! and--I am sorry to tell you so,--but it is quite as unpleasant at the Vatican as that of Gys Grandit!”

”Gys Grandit is a friend of mine,” responded Aubrey composedly, ”In fact, I may almost say he is my disciple. I found him working in the fields as a little peasant lad,--the love child, or 'b.a.s.t.a.r.d,' to put it roughly, of some priest whose name he never told me. He was helping to earn daily bread for his deserted mother whose maiden name he then bore; and I helped to train his evident genius in the way it has since developed.”

”I cannot congratulate you on your pupil!” said Gherardi, smiling coldly, ”The offspring of a priest's sin is not likely to do the world any credit. The son of the renegade Abbe Vergniaud may become notorious, but never famous!”

Aubrey Leigh started up from his chair doubting whether he had heard aright.

”The son of Abbe Vergniaud!” he exclaimed, ”Is it possible! No, you must surely be mistaken!--I know the Abbe,--I saw him in Paris but a fortnight ago!”

”Indeed! Well, since that time strange things have happened,” said Gherardi, still preserving his calm inscrutability of demeanour, ”We have had our news from Monsignor Moretti, an envoy of ours in Paris, on secret service. To put it briefly,--Vergniaud, for no particular cause whatever, save perhaps the idea--(which may be only an idea)--that he is going to die soon, has made a public confession of his twenty-five-year-old crime and hypocrisy, in a blasphemous address preached from the pulpit of Notre Dame de Lorette. The son, known to the world as Gys Grandit, was present in the church, and fired a pistol shot at his father, hoping to murder him,--then came the theatrical denouement of the whole scene;--the Abbe ordered the gendarmes to release the a.s.sa.s.sin, p.r.o.nouncing him to be his son. And finally--the saddest incident of all--there took place the mutual pardon and reconciliation of both parties in the presence of one of our most respected and beloved Princes of the Church, Cardinal Felix Bonpre, whose grave error in this matter is causing poignant and loving sorrow to the Holy Father!”

A curious expression began to appear in the delicate lines of Aubrey's face--an expression which some of his London audiences knew so well, and which generally meant war.

”You surprise me, Monsignor,” he said in quiet accents,--”Events move quickly, I know, in a quickly moving age,--still your news is entirely unexpected. I never knew till now who the father of my friend Gys Grandit was;--but now that I do know I think the public confession you tell me of, was the only fitting reparation such a man as the Abbe could make to the dead woman who was his wife in the sight of G.o.d, as well as to his living son, and the public generally. I never quite liked or trusted the Abbe; but if all this be true, he has risen a hundred per cent, in my opinion! As for Cardinal Bonpre, one of the n.o.blest and purest of men, you surely cannot be in earnest when you speak of his having committed a grave error!”

”You know the Cardinal?” asked Gherardi evading the question.

”I was presented to him in Paris the day before I left for Florence,”

replied Aubrey, ”at the studio of his niece, Donna Angela Sovrani.”

”Ah!” and Gherardi balanced a paper-knife lightly on the point of his long forefinger, ”An unpleasant woman that! One of the female 'geniuses' who presume nowadays to compete with men in art and literature.”

”In Donna Sovrani's case there can be no question of compet.i.tion,”

answered Leigh quietly, ”She is by far and away the best artist of her time.”

”You think so? Very good, very good!” and Gherardi laughed a little, ”You are very chivalrous! You have a touch of the American in you, have you not?--there is a tendency in the men of the New World to be always on their knees before women. Strange, very strange!”

”We begin our lives in that way,” replied Leigh, ”We kneel to our mothers!”

A slight flush reddened Gherardi's yellow paleness, but he kept his smile well in evidence.

”Charmingly expressed--very charmingly!” he said suavely, ”And so you have met our dear St. Felix! Well, well! And did he tell you all about the wonderful miracle he performed at Rouen?”

A cloud of surprise intermingled with contempt darkened Leigh's intellectual brows.

”Never!” he said emphatically, ”I should not have thought so much of him if he had laid any claim to such a pretence!”

Gherardi laughed again softly.

”What a pity,” he observed, ”What a pity you clever heretics are so violent! You think the power of the Church is a decaying one, and that our Lord has ceased to supply its ministers with the Spirit of Grace and the powers of healing? But this is where you are mistaken! The Church--the Roman Church--remains as it always was and always will be; impregnable!--the source of inspiration, the seat of miracle, the only clue and road to everlasting life! And as for its power--” here he closed his hand and dropped it on the table with a silent force which was strangely expressive, ”its power is immeasurable! It reaches out in every direction--it grasps--it holds,--it keeps! Why will you and your co-workers 'kick' like St. Paul 'against the p.r.i.c.ks'? It is quite useless! The Church is too strong for any one of you--aye, and for any army of you! Do you not hear the divine Voice from heaven calling daily in your ears, 'Why persecutest thou Me?'”

”Yes,” answered Aubrey deliberately, ”I hear that every time I enter a church! I hear it every time I see an ordained priest or minister of the Gospel misusing his time in construing to his own purposes the cla.s.sic simplicity of Christ's doctrine. In some places of wors.h.i.+p, such as the tawdry church of the 'Annunziata' in Florence that protest seems to reach its climax. When one sees the unwashen priests expectorating every five minutes or so [Footnote: A fact] on the very altars where they perform Ma.s.s;--when one notes the dirt, the neglect, the gim-crackery;--the sickening and barbarous superst.i.tion everywhere offered as being representative of sublime Deity,--the Force which has raised the heaven above us with its endless star-patterns of living universe,--then the cry of 'Why persecutest thou Me?' seems to roll through the arches like the thunder which sometimes precedes a general earthquake!”