Part 22

"I do not speak to you, as I might speak to others, of penalties and sufferings hereafter, in which, probably, you do not believe. Nor do I speak to you, as I might to others, of evidences that our faith is true, of proofs that hereafter we shall walk with Christ and the saints in glory. I am willing to grant you that it may be that we are mistaken; that in the life to come we may find we have been deceived; nay, that Jesus Himself is in a different station and position to what we preach. This is nothing to your purpose. To those who know Him as you know Him, and have seen Him as you have, better Jesus, beaten and defeated, than all the universe besides, triumphing and crowned. I offer to you nothing but the alternative which every man sooner or later must place before himself. Shall he turn a deaf ear to the voice of reason, and lay himself open only to the light of faith? or shall he let human wisdom and human philosophy break up this light, as through a glass, and please himself with the varied colours upon the path of life? Every man must choose; and having chosen, it is futile to lament and regret; he must abide by his choice, and by the different fruit it brings. You wish this life's wisdom, and to walk with Christ as well; and you are your own witness that it cannot be. The two cannot walk together, as you have found. To you, especially, this is the great test and trial that Christ expects of you to the very full. We of this religious order have given ourselves to learning, as you know; nay, in former years, to that Pagan learning which is so attractive to you, though of late years we devote ourselves to producing editions of the Fathers of the Church. But even this you must keep yourself from. To most men this study is no temptation; to you it is fatal. I put before you your life, with no false colouring, no tampering with the truth. Come with me to Douay; you shall enter our house according to the strictest rule; you shall engage in no study that is any delight or effort to the intellect: but you shall teach the smallest children in the schools, and visit the poorest people, and perform the duties of the household--and all for Christ. I promise you on the faith of a gentleman and a priest--I promise you, for I have no shade of doubt--that in this path you shall find the satisfaction of the heavenly walk; you shall walk with Jesus day by day, growing ever more and more like to Him; and your path, without the least fall or deviation, shall lead more and more into the light, until you come unto the perfect day; and on your death-bed--the deathbed of a saint--the vision of the smile of God shall sustain you, and Jesus Himself shall meet you at the gates of eternal life."

Every word that Cressy spoke went straight to Inglesant's conviction, and no single word jarred upon his taste. He implicitly believed that what the Benedictine offered him he should find. There was no doubt--could be no doubt--that it was by such choice as this that such men as Cressy gained for themselves a power in the heavenly warfare, and not only attained to the heavenly walk themselves, but moved the earth to its foundations, and drew thousands into the ranks of Christ. He saw the choice before him fairly, as Cressy had said, and indeed it was not for the first time. Then his mind went back to his old master, and to that school where no such thing as this was required of him, and yet the heavenly light offered to him as freely as by this man. The sermon of the night before came into his mind again; surely, where such doctrine as that was preached, might he not find rest? It was true that his coming there, and his confession, closed his lips before Cressy; but might he not have been too hasty? Life was not yet over with him; perchance he might yet find what he sought in some other way. He saw the path of perfect self-denial open before him,--renunciation, not of pleasure, nor even of the world, but of himself, of his intellect, of his very life,--and distinctly of his free choice he refused it. This only may be said for him: he was convinced that every word the Benedictine had said to him was true,--that in the life he offered him he should follow and find the Lord; but he was not equally convinced that it was the will of Christ that he should accept this life, and should follow and find Him in this way, and in no other. Had he been as clear of this as of the truth of Cressy's words, then indeed would his turning away have been a clear denial of Jesus Christ; but it was the voice of Cressy that spoke to him, and not the voice of Christ; it came to him with a conviction and a power all but irresistible, but it failed to carry with it the absolute conviction of the heavenly call. How could it? The heavenly call itself must speak very loud before it silences and convinces the unwilling heart.

He rose from his seat before the monk, and looking sadly down upon him, he said,--

"I believe all that you say and all that you promise, and that the heavenly walk lies before me in the road that you have pointed out; but I cannot follow it--it is too strait. I return your kindness and your plainness with words equally plain; and while you think of me as lost and unworthy, it may be some well-earned satisfaction to you to remember that none ever spoke truer, or nobler, or kinder words to any man than you have spoken to me."

"I do not look on you as lost, Mr. Inglesant,--far from it," said Cressy, rising as he spoke; "I expect you will yet witness a good confession for Christ in the world and in the Court; but I believe you have had to-day a more excellent way shown you, which, but for the trammels of your birth and training, you might have had grace to walk in, for your own exceeding blessedness and the greater glory of the Lord Christ. I wish you every benediction of this life and of the next; and I shall remember you at the altar as a young man who came to Jesus, and whom Jesus loves."

Inglesant took his leave of him, and left the monastery. He came away very sorrowful from Serenus de Cressy. Whether he also, at the same time, was turning away from Jesus Christ, who can tell?

The next day the Jesuit arrived in Paris.

*CHAPTER XX.*

Inglesant was much struck with the change in the Jesuit's appearance. He was worn and thin, and looked discouraged and depressed. He was evidently extremely pleased to see his pupil again, and his manner was affectionate and even respectful. He appeared shaken and nervous, and Inglesant fancied that he was rather shy of meeting him; but if so, it soon passed off under the influence of the cordial greeting with which he was received.

To Inglesant's inquiry as to where he had been, the Jesuit answered that it did not matter; he had succeeded very imperfectly in his mission, whatever it had been. He asked Inglesant whether he had met with Sir Kenelm Digby, or heard anything of him. In reply to which Inglesant told him the reports which he had heard concerning him.

"He is mad," said the Jesuit, "and he is not the less dangerous. He was sent to Rome by the Queen, where he made great mischief, and offended the Pope by his insolence. He has sided with the Parliament in England, and is engaged on a scheme to persuade Cromwell to recall the King, and seat him on the throne as an elective monarch. The Queen does not wish to break with him altogether, both because he has great influence with some powerful Catholics, and because, if nothing better can be done, she would perforce accept the elective monarchy for her son. But the scheme is chimerical, and will come to nothing. Cromwell intends the crown for himself. You see, Johnny," continued St. Clare with a smile, "all our plans have failed. The English Church is destroyed, and those Catholics who always opposed it are thought much of at Rome now, and carry all before them. I have not altered my opinion, however, and I shall die in the same. But we must wait. I do not wish to influence you any more, nor to involve you any longer in any schemes of mine, but the Queen wants you to go as an agent to Rome on her behalf; and it would be of great service to me, and to any plans which I may in future have, if I had such a friend and correspondent as yourself in that city. If you have no other plans, I do not see that you could do much better than go. You shall have such introductions to my friends there--cardinals and great men--that you may live during your stay in the best company and luxury, and without expense. One of my friends is the Cardinal Renuccinni, brother of the Legate the Bishop of Fermo, whom you met in Ireland, and who, by the by, was much impressed with you. You cannot fail to make friends with many who will have it in their power to be of great use to you; and you may establish yourself in some lucrative post, either as a layman, or, if you choose to take orders, as a priest. You will believe me, also, when I say,--what I say to very few,--that I am under obligations to you which I can never repay, and nothing will give me greater pleasure than to see you rich and prosperous, and admired and powerful in the Roman Court. You have the qualities and the experience to command success. You will be backed by the whole power of my friends, with whom to make your fortune will be the work of an after-dinner's talk. You will see Italy, and delight yourself in the sight of all those places and antiquities of which we have so often talked; and with your cultivated and religious tastes you will enter, with the most perfect advantage, into that magic world of sight and sound which the churches and sacred services in Rome present to the devout. I cannot see that you can do better than go."

Inglesant sat looking at the Jesuit with a singular expression in his eyes, which the latter did not understand. Yes, surely it was a very different offer from that of Serenus de Cressy, yet Inglesant did not delay to answer from any indecision; from the moment the Jesuit began to speak he knew that he should go. But he took a kind of melancholy pleasure in contrasting the two paths, the two men, the different choice they offered him, and in reading a half sad, half sarcastic commentary on himself.

After a minute or two, he said,--

"I thank you much for your good-will and quite undeserved patronage. It is by far too good an offer to be refused, and I gladly accept it. You know, doubtless, what has happened to me, especially within these last few days, and that I have no friend left on earth save yourself; such a journey as that which you propose to me will, at the least, distract my thoughts from such a melancholy fate as mine."

"I knew of your brother's murder," said the Jesuit; "I have heard of the man before--one of those utterly lost and villanous natures which no country but Italy ever produced. Do you wish to seek him?"

Inglesant told him that one of his principal objects in staying in Paris was to seek his assistance for that purpose; and that he felt it a sacred duty, which he owed to his brother, that his murderer should not escape unpunished.

"I have no doubt I can learn where he is," said the other; "but I do not well see what you can do when you have found him, unless it happens to be in a place where you have powerful friends. It is true that he is so generally known and hated in Italy, that you might easily get help in punishing him should you meet him there; but he is hardly likely to return to his native country, except for some powerful reason."

"If I can do nothing else," said Inglesant bitterly, "I can tell him who I am and shoot him dead, or run him through the body. He murdered my brother, just as he had come back to me--to me in prison and alone, and was a loving friend and brother to me, and would have been through life. Do you suppose that I should spare him, or that any moment will be so delightful to me as the one in which I see him bleed to death at my feet, as I saw my poor brother, struck by his hand, as he shall be by mine?"

The Jesuit looked at Inglesant with surprise. The terrible earnestness of his manner, and the unrelenting and grim pleasure he seemed to take at the prospect of revenge, seemed so inconsistent with the refined and religious tone of his ordinary character, approaching almost to weakness; but the next moment he thought, "Why should I wonder at it? The man who has gone through what he did without flinching must have a strength of purpose about him far other than some might think."

He said aloud,--

"Well, I doubt not I can find him; he is well known in France, in Spain, and in Italy, and if he goes to Germany he can be traced. But what was the other sad misfortune you spoke of?--something within the last few days, you said."

Inglesant had been looking fixedly before him since he had last spoken, with a steady blank expression, which, since his imprisonment, his face sometimes wore,--part of a certain wildness in his look which bespoke a mind ill at ease and a confused brain. He was following up his prey to the death.

He started at the Jesuit's question, and seemed to recollect with an effort; then he said,--

"Mary Collet died at the convent of the Nuns of the ---- last week. I only found her out the night before;" and as he spoke, the contrast arose in his mind of the deathbed of the saint-like girl, and the Italian's bleeding body struck down by his revenge. The footsteps of the Saviour he had promised his friend to follow, surely could not lead him to such a scene as that. If this were the first-fruits of his refusal to follow Serenus de Cressy, surely he must also have turned his back on Christ Himself.

He covered his face with his hands, and the Jesuit saw that he wept. He supposed it was simply from grief at the death of his friend, and he was surprised at the strength of his attachment. Like others, he had thought Inglesant's love a rather cool and Platonic passion.

"I always thought him one of those nice and coy lovers," he said to himself, "who always observe some defect in the thing they love, which weakens their passion, and shows them that the reality is so much inferior to their idea, that they easily desist from their enterprize, and vanish as if they had not so much intention to love as to vanish, and had more shame to have begun their courtship than purpose to continue it. He must be much shaken by his suffering and by his brother's death."

He waited a few moments, and then spoke to Inglesant about his health, of his brother's death, and of his imprisonment. He spoke to him of the late King, and of his distress at the necessity under which he lay of denying Inglesant's commission; and he said many other things calculated to cheer his friend and please his self-regard.

Inglesant listened to him not without pleasure, but he said little. An idea had taken possession of his mind, which he carried with him into Italy and for long afterwards. He was more than half convinced that, in rejecting Cressy's advice, he had turned his back on Christ; and he was the more confirmed in this belief because never had the image of the Italian, nor the desire of revenge, taken so strong a hold upon his imagination as now. It occurred to his excited imagination that Christ had deserted him, and the Fiend taken possession, and that the course and intention of the latter would be to lure him on, by such images, to some terrible and lonely place, where the Italian and he together should be involved in one common ghastly deed of crime, one common and eternal ruin. The sense of having had a great act of self-denial placed before him and having refused it, no doubt weighed down and blunted his conscience; and once placed, as he half thought, upon the downward path, nothing seemed before him but the gradual descent, adorned at first by some poor show of gaudy flowers, but ending speedily--for there was no self-delusion to such a nature as his, which had tasted of the heavenly food--in miserable and filthy mire, where, loathing himself and despised by others, nothing awaited him but eternal death. He answered the Jesuit almost mechanically, and on parting from him at night promised indifferently to accompany him on the morrow to an audience with the Queen.

END OF VOL. I.

_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_.