CHAPTER XLII

THE DESIRE OF THE MOTH

In the year 1540, five Spaniards and a Savoyard, styling themselves “Clerks of the Company of Jesus,” left Paris under the leadership of the famous Ignatius Loyola, to found an establishment at Rome.

Here Pope Paul III. presented them with a church, and in return these half-dozen of energetic priests gave in an unqualified adhesion to the Sovereign Pontiff. Their avowed intention in thus forming themselves into a separate and independent body (except in so far as they owed allegiance to its supreme head), was the propagation of the Roman Catholic faith, the conversion of heathens, the suppression of heresy, and the education of the young. For these purposes a system was at once organised which should combine the widest sphere of action with the closest surveillance over its agents, the broadest views with the most minute attention to details, an absolute unquestioned authority with a stanch and implicit obedience. To attain universal rule (possibly for a good motive, but at any sacrifice to attain it) over the opinions of humanity, however different in age, sex, character, and nationalities, was the object proposed; and almost the first maxim laid down, and never departed from in the Order, established that all means were justifiable to such an end. It was obvious that to win universal dominion over the moral as over the physical world, every effort must not only be vigorous, but combined and simultaneous, such waste of power must never be contemplated as the possibility of two forces acting in opposite directions, and therefore a code of discipline must be established, minute, stringent, and comprehensive, like that of an army before an enemy, but with this difference, that its penalties must never be modified by circumstances, nor its bonds relaxed by conquest or defeat. In the Order of Jesus must be no speaking, no questioning, no individuality, and—no forgiveness!

Their constitution was as follows: A “General,” as he was styled, resided in perpetuity at Rome, and from that central spot sent forth his directions over the whole civilised world, enjoying absolute authority and exacting unqualified obedience. Even to the supreme head, however, was attached an officer entitled his “Admonisher.” It was his duty to observe the conduct of his chief, and report on it to the five “Assistants,” who constituted that chief’s council. These, again, were instructed to watch each other carefully, and thus, not even at the very head and fountain of supreme authority, could any single individual consider himself a free agent, even in the most trifling matters of dress, deportment, or daily conversation.

In every country where the Jesuits obtained a footing (and while there are few in which they have not been notoriously powerful, even in those which betray no traces of their presence, who shall say that their influence has not been at work below the surface?) a “Provincial,” as he was called, assumed the direction of affairs within a certain district, and on his administration every one of his subordinates, temporal and spiritual, was instructed to report. There were three degrees in the Order, according to the experience and utility of its votaries—these were “Professors,” “Coadjutors,” both priests and laymen, for their ramifications extended from the highest to the lowest, through all classes of society, and “Novices.”

To enter the Order, many severe examinations had to be passed, and while it numbered among its votaries men of superlative abilities in a thousand different callings, every member was employed according to his capacity of useful service.

With such an organisation it may be imagined that the society has been a powerful engine for good and for evil. It has planted Christianity in the most remote corners of the earth, and has sent missionaries of skill, eloquence, piety, and dauntless courage, amongst savages who otherwise might never have heard the faintest echo of the Glad Tidings, in which all men claim interest alike; but, on the other hand, it has done incalculable mischief in the households of Christian Europe, has wormed itself into the confidence of women, has destroyed the concord of families, has afforded the assailants of religion innumerable weapons of offence, and in its dealings with those whom it was especially bound to succour and protect, has brought on them desolation rather than comfort, remorse where there should be hope, and war instead of peace.

It is necessary to remember the effect of a constant and reciprocal supervision, not only on the outward actions and conduct, but on the very thoughts and characters of men unavoidably fettered by its influence, to understand the position of two priests walking side by side along one of the narrow level banks that intersect the marshy country lying near the town of St. Omer.

These old friends, if, indeed, under such conditions as theirs men can ever be termed friends, had not met since they sat together, many years before, beneath the limes at Versailles, when the younger had not yet taken orders, and the elder, although he accepted the title of Abbé, neither led the life of an ecclesiastic, nor admitted openly that he was in any way amenable to the discipline observed by the Jesuits. Now, both were ostensibly votaries of the Order. Its impress might be seen in their measured steps, their thoughtful faces, and their downward looks, taking no heed of the peaceful scene around: the level marshes, the ripening orchards, the lazy cattle knee-deep in rich wet herbage, the peasant’s punt pushed drowsily and sluggishly along the glistening ditches that divided his fields, the mellow warmth of the autumnal sun, and the swarms of insects wheeling in his slanting, reddening rays.

They saw, or at least they heeded, none of this—deep in conversation, their subject seemed of engrossing interest; yet each looked only by stealth in the other’s face, withdrawing his glance and bending it on the path at his feet the instant it met his friend’s.

At times neither spoke for several paces, and it was during such periods of silence that the expression of habitual mistrust and constraint became painfully apparent. In the elder man it was softened and smoothed over, partly by effort, partly by the acquired polish of society, but the younger seemed to chafe with repressed ardour, like a rash horse, impatient but generous, fretting under the unaccustomed curb.

After a longer pause than usual, this one spoke with more energy than he had yet displayed.

“I only wish to do _right_. What is it to me, Malletort, that the world should misjudge me, or that I should sink in the esteem of those whose good opinion I value? I only wish to do right, I say, always in compliance with the orders of my superiors.”

The other smiled. “In the first place,” said he, “you must not call me Malletort, at least not within so short a distance of those college chimneys; but we will let that pass; for though a novice, still you are worthy of speedy promotion, and it is only for ‘novices’ in the first period of probation that our rules are so exacting. You wish to do right. So be it. You have done very wrong hitherto, or you might have been a ‘provincial’ by this time. Well, my son, confession is the first step to amendment, and then―”

He paused, and bit his lip. It was difficult to keep down the old sarcastic smile, but he did it, and looked gravely in the other’s face.

“Penance!” replied the younger. “I know it too well. Ah! _mea culpa! mea culpa!_ I have been a great sinner. I have repented in sackcloth and ashes. I have confessed freely. I wish, yes, I repeat I _wish_ to atone humbly, and yet, oh! for mercy’s sake, tell me, is there no way but this?”

His agony of mind was too apparent on his face. Even Malletort felt a momentary compunction when he remembered the hopeful enthusiastic youth who had sat with him under the limes at Versailles all those years ago; when he remembered the desperate career on which he had embarked, his insubordination, his apostasy, and those paroxysms of remorse that drove him back into the bosom of the church. Could this depressed and miserable penitent be the once bright and happy Florian de St. Croix? and had he been brought to this pass simply because he possessed such inconvenient superfluities as a heart and a conscience? Malletort, I say, felt a twinge of compunction, but of pity very little, of indecision, not one bit.

“Would you go to a doctor,” said he, gravely, “and teach him how to cure you of a deadly malady? Would you choose your own medicine, my son, and refuse the only healing draught prescribed, because it was bitter to the taste? There is but one way of retracing your steps. You must go back along the very path that led you into evil. That the effort will be trying, I admit. All uphill work is trying to the utmost, but how else can men attain the summit? That the task is painful I allow, but were it pleasant, where would be the penance? Besides, you know our rules, my son, the time is not far off when I shall be permitted to say, my brother. We have got you. Will you dare to hesitate ere you obey?”

An expression of intense fear came over Florian’s face, but it seemed less the physical fear of danger from without than an absorbing dread of the moral enemy within.

“I _must_ obey,” he answered in a low voice, shuddering while he spoke. “I _must_ obey, I know, readily, willingly. Alas! Malletort, there is my unforgiven sin, my mortal peril. _Too_ willingly do I undertake the task. It is my dearest wish to find myself addressed to it—that is why I entreat not to be sent—that is why I implore them to spare me. It is my soul that is in danger. Heart, hope, happiness, home, liberty, identity, are all gone from me, and now I shall lose my soul.”

“Your soul!” repeated the other, again repressing a sneer. “Do not distress yourself, my son, about your soul. It is in very safe keeping, and your superiors are, doubtless, the best judges of its value and eventual destination. In the meantime, do not give way to a far-fetched casuistry, or a morbid delicacy of sentiment. If your heart is in your task, and you go to it willingly, it will be the more easily and the more effectually accomplished. Congratulate yourself, therefore, that your penance is not distasteful as well as dangerous, a torture of bodily weakness, rather than a trial of spiritual strength. Remember, there is no sin of action where there is none of intention. There can be none of intention where a deed is done simply in compliance with the superior’s will. If that deed be pleasurable, it is but so much gained on the chances of the service. Enjoy it as you would enjoy the sun’s rays if you were standing sentry on a winter’s day at the Louvre. It is not for _you_, a simple soldier of the Order, to speculate on your own merits or your own failures, those above you will take care that neither are overlooked. Eat your rations and be thankful. Your duty, first and last, is but to obey!”

It will be seen by these phrases, so carefully worded according to the rules of the Order, yet bearing the while a covert sarcasm for his own private gratification, that the real character of Malletort was but little changed, since he intrigued at the council table or drank at the suppers of the Regent.

He was a Jesuit priest now in garb and outward semblance; he was still the clever, unscrupulous, unbelieving, pleasure-loving Abbé at the core. So necessary had he become to the Regent as the confidant of his secret schemes, whether their object were the acquisition of a province or the dismissal of a mistress, that he would have found little difficulty in making his peace with his Prince, even after the untoward failure of the Montmirail Gardens, had he chosen to do so. The Regent, maddened with disappointment, and especially sore because of the ridicule created by the whole business, turned at first fiercely enough on his trusty adviser, but found, to his surprise, that the Abbé was beforehand with him. The latter assumed an air of high-minded indignation, talked of the honour of an ancient house, of the respect due, at least in outward courtesy, to a kinswoman of his own, hinted at his fidelity and his services, protested against the ingratitude with which they had been requited, and ended by tendering his resignation, with a request for leave to absent himself from Paris. The result, as usual with the Duke of Orleans, was a compromise. His outraged servant should quit him for a time, but would remain at least faithful in heart to the master who now entreated his pardon. In a few weeks the matter, he thought, would be forgotten, and for those few weeks he must manage his own affairs without the Abbé’s assistance.

Malletort had several good reasons for thus detaching himself from the Court. The first, and most important, was the state of the Duke’s health. The Abbé had not failed to mark the evil effects produced even by so slight an excitement as the affair at the Hôtel Montmirail. He perceived the Regent’s tendency to apoplexy growing stronger day by day; he observed that the slightest emotion now caused him to flush a dark red even in the morning, and he knew that at supper his fulness of habit was so obvious as to alarm the very _roués_, lest every draught should be his last. If sudden death were to carry off the Regent, Malletort felt all his labour would have been thrown away, and he must begin at the lowest round of the ladder again.

His connection with the Jesuits, for he had long ago enlisted himself as a secret member of that powerful Order, was now of service to him. They had influence with the advisers of the young king, they were ardent promoters of the claims to the British crown, laid by that James Stuart, whom history has called the Old Pretender. It was quite possible that under a new state of things they might hold some of the richest rewards in France and England to bestow on their adherents. Above all, the very keystone of their system, the power that set all their machinery in motion, was a spirit of busy and unremitting intrigue. Abbé Malletort never breathed so freely as in an atmosphere of plots and counterplots. With all the energy of his nature, he devoted himself to the interests of the Order, keeping up his connection with the Court, chiefly on its behalf. He was as ready now to betray the Regent to his new allies, as he had been a few months before to sacrifice honour and probity for the acquisition of that prince’s good-will.

There are few men, however, who can thoroughly divest themselves of all personal feelings in pursuit of their own interest. Even Malletort possessed the weaknesses of pride, pique, and certain injudicious partialities which he could not quite overcome. He hated his late patron for many reasons of his own, for none more than that his persecution had compelled Madame de Montmirail and her daughter to leave France and seek a refuge beyond the sea. If he cared for anything on earth, besides his own aggrandisement, it was his kinswoman; and when he thought of the Marquise, a smile would overspread his features that denoted anything but Christian charity or good-will to her royal admirer.

He spent much of his time at St. Omer now, where several provincials and other influential members of the Order were assembled, organising a movement in favour of the so-called James III.; these were in constant correspondence with the English Jacobites, and according to their established principle, were enlisting every auxiliary, legitimate or otherwise, for the furtherance of their schemes. They possessed lists of surprising accuracy, in which were noted down the names, resources, habits, and political tendencies of many private gentlemen in remote countries, who little dreamed they were of such importance.

An honest squire, whose ideas scarcely soared beyond his harriers, his claret, and his fat cattle, would have been surprised to learn that his character, his income, his pursuits, his domestic affections, and his habitual vices were daily canvassed by a society of priests, numbering amongst them the keenest intellects in Europe, who had travelled many hundred leagues expressly to meet in a quiet town in Artoise, of which he had never heard the name, and give their opinions on himself. Perhaps his insular love of isolation would have been disgusted, and he might have been less ready to peril life and fortune, had he known the truth.

But every landholder of importance was the object of considerable discussion. It was Abbé Malletort’s familiarity with previous occurrences, and the characters of all concerned, that led him now to put the pressure on the renegade who had lost his rank with his desertion, and returned in the lowest grade as a novice, to make his peace with the Order.

“My friend,” resumed the Abbé, after another long silence, during which the sun had reached the horizon, and was now shedding a broad red glare on his companion’s face, giving him an excuse to shade it with his hand; “your penance has been well begun, and needs but this one culminating effort to be fully accomplished. I have been at Rome very lately, and the General himself spoke approvingly of your repentance and your return. The provincial at Maria-Galante had reported favourably on your conduct during the disturbances in the island, and your unfeigned penitence, when you gave yourself up as a deserter from the Order. We have no secrets, you know, amongst ourselves; or rather, I should say nothing is so secret but that it has its witnesses. Here, at Paris, in Rome, will be known all that you do in England; more, all that you leave undone. I need scarcely charge you to be diligent, trustworthy, secret; but I must warn you not to be over-scrupulous. Remember, the intention justifies the deed. It is not only expedient, but meritorious to do evil that good may come.”

They were now approaching the town, and the sentry was being relieved at its fortified gate. The clash of arms, the measured tramp, the martial bearing of the soldiers, called up in Florian’s mind such associations as for the moment drowned the sentiments of religious penitence and self-accusation that had lately taken possession of his heart. He longed to throw off the priest’s robe, the grave deportment, the hateful trammels of an enforced and professional hypocrisy, and to feel a man once more—a man, adventurous, free, desperate, relying for very life on the plank beneath his foot or the steel in his hand, but at least able to carry his head high amongst his fellows, and to know that were it but for five minutes, the future was his own. It was sin even to dream of such things.

“_Mea culpa, mea culpa!_” he muttered in a desponding tone, and beat his breast, and bent his eyes once more upon the ground.

“When am I to go?” said he meekly, reverting to their previous conversation, and abandoning, as though after deep reflection, the unwillingness he had shown from the first.

“This evening, after vespers,” answered the Abbé, with a scarce perceptible inflection of contempt in his voice that denoted he had read him through like a book. “You will attend as usual. Everything is prepared, even to a garb less grave than that you wear, and a good horse (ah! you cannot help smiling now) will be waiting for you at the little gate. You ought to be half way to Calais before the moon is up.”

His face brightened now, though he strove hard to conceal his satisfaction. Here was change, freedom, excitement, liberty, at least for a time, and an adventurous journey, to terminate in _her_ presence, who was still to his eyes the ideal of womankind. All, too, in the fulfilment of a penance, the execution of a duty. His heart leaped beneath his cassock, and warned him of the danger he incurred. Danger, indeed! It did but add to the intoxication of the draught. With difficulty he restrained the bounding impatience of his step, and kept his face averted from his friend.

The precaution was useless. Malletort knew his thoughts as well as if he had been his penitent in the confessional, and laughed within himself. The tool at least was sharp and ready, quivering, highly-tempered, and flexible; it needed but a steady hand to drive it home.

“You will come to the provincial for final instructions half an hour before you mount,” said he gravely, and added, without altering his tone or moving a muscle of his countenance, “Your especial duty is to gain over Sir George. For this object it is essential to obtain the good-will of Lady Hamilton.”