“that winter, which with its wild winds, its sparkling frost and snow, its holly trees bright with scarlet berries, its merry hunters galloping over field and moor during daylight hours, and its great log fires roaring up the chimneys at evening, was sufficiently good for their forefathers to thrive upon and live through contentedly up to a hale and hearty old age in the times when the fever of traveling from place to place was an unknown disease, and home was indeed ‘sweet home.’ Infected by strange maladies of the blood and nerves, to which even scientific physicians find it hard to give suitable names, they shudder at the first whiff of cold, and, filling huge trunks with a thousand foolish
things which have, through luxurious habit, become necessities to their pallid existences, they hastily depart to the Land of the Sun, carrying with them their nameless languors, discontents, and incurable illnesses, for which Heaven itself, much less Egypt, could provide no remedy.”
Be that as it may, the tourists assembled at the Gezireh Palace Hotel one winter were treated to a vision of loveliness which for a time made them momentarily forget their nameless languors in spells of admiration and envy, according to the sex which claimed them, the vision in question taking an apparently human shape in the person of the Princess Ziska.
Reputedly a Russian lady, Ziska was in reality the flesh-clad ghost of Ziska-Charmazel, the favorite of the harem of a great Egyptian warrior, described in forgotten histories as “The Mighty Araxes.” Visiting Egypt at the same time as the Princess was Armand Gervase, a French painter of great renown, and the interest of the story may be imagined when it is explained that Armand was the nineteenth-century incarnation of Araxes, who, it must be understood, had, in the dim long-ago, slain Ziska-Charmazel because she stood in the way of his ambition.
The modern Araxes is quickly enslaved by Ziska’s loveliness, but the passion that consumes him is a decidedly uncanny one, as the following passage will show. Armand is speaking to Helen Murray, the sister of his great friend, Denzil Murray. In Scotland during the previous summer Armand had paid Helen some attentions, and Helen does not fail to note that the charms of Ziska have dissipated any tender feeling which Armand might have once entertained for the Scottish girl. “How was I to know,” cries Armand, “that this horrible thing would happen?” “What horrible thing?” enquires Helen.
“This,” he answers: “the close and pernicious enthralment of a woman I never met till the night before last; a woman whose face haunts me; a woman who drags me to her side with the force of a magnet, there to grovel like a brain-sick fool and plead with her for a love which I already know is poison to my soul! Helen, Helen! You do not understand—you will never understand! Here, in the very air I breathe, I fancy I can trace the perfume she shakes from her garments as she moves; something indescribably fascinating yet terrible attracts me to her; it is an evil attraction, I know, but I cannot resist it. There is something wicked in every man’s nature; I am conscious enough that there is something detestably wicked in mine, and I have not sufficient goodness to overbalance it. And this woman,—this silent, gliding, glittering-eyed creature that has suddenly taken possession of my fancy—she overcomes me in spite of myself; she makes havoc of all the good intentions of my life. I admit—I confess it!”
Unfortunately, the painter’s very good friend, Denzil Murray, also becomes inspired with a passion for Ziska, and the lad’s temper is roused when Armand openly admits that his intentions with regard to the Princess are strictly dishonorable. Murray suggests that it were well Ziska should know this, but Armand laughs at the other’s idea that the bringing of such tidings to Ziska’s ears would lower him one jot in that lovely lady’s estimation:
“My good boy, do you not know that there is something very marvelous in the attraction we call love? It is a preordained destiny,—and if one soul is so constituted that it must meet and mix with another, nothing can hinder the operation. So that, believe me, I am quite indifferent as to what you say of me to Madame la Princesse or to any one else. It will not be for either my looks or my character that she will love me, if, indeed, she ever does love me; it will be for something indistinct, indefinable, but resistless in us both, which no one on earth can explain.”
The hot-headed young Highlander, however, will not be put off with any such reasoning, and the rivalry might have resulted awkwardly at an early date of its upspringing had not Armand steadfastly refused to quarrel.
There is one person at the hotel who makes a shrewd guess at the spiritual identity of both Ziska and Armand—an old savant named Dr. Dean, who is visiting Egypt for the purpose of studying its hieroglyphs and other matters possessing interest for an antiquarian. A knowing fellow is this Doctor, and a fine little character, whose good-humored personality and quiet, shrewd observations present a soothing contrast to the passionate utterances of Murray and Armand, and the dramatic outbursts of Ziska when she scornfully taunts the painter with his vileness.
In conversation with the Doctor, Gervase Armand admits that there is something about Ziska which has struck him as being familiar. “The tone of her voice and the peculiar cadence of her laughter” affect him peculiarly. When he wonders whether he has ever come across her before as a model either in Paris or Rome, the Doctor shakes his head. “Think again,” he says. “You are now a man in the prime of life, Monsieur Gervase, but look back to your early youth,—the period when young men do wild, reckless, and often wicked things,—did you ever in that thoughtless time break a woman’s heart?”
Armand admits that he may have done so, and the Doctor propounds his theory:
“Suppose that you, in your boyhood, had wronged some woman, and suppose that woman had died. You might imagine that you had got rid of that woman. But if her love was very strong and her sense of outrage very bitter, I must tell you that you have not got rid of her by any means; moreover, you never will get rid of her. And why? Because her Soul, like all Souls, is imperishable. Now, putting it as a mere supposition, and for the sake of the argument, that you feel a certain admiration for the Princess Ziska, an admiration which might possibly deepen into something more than platonic, ...”—here Denzil Murray looked up, his eyes glowing with an angry pain as he fixed them on Gervase,—“why, then the Soul of the other woman you once wronged might come between you and the face of the new attraction and cause you to unconsciously paint the tortured look of the injured and unforgiving Spirit on the countenance of the lovely fascinator whose charms are just beginning to ensnare you. I repeat, I have known such cases.”
For it should be explained that, when Ziska gave the celebrated painter a sitting, he could produce nothing on his canvas, in spite of his genius, but a strange and awful face distorted with passion and pain, agony in every line of the features—“agony in which the traces of a divine beauty lingered only to render the whole countenance more repellent and terrific.”
Dr. Dean quickly comes to the conclusion, and very reasonably, that this is the most interesting problem he has ever had a chance of studying. It could be only one case out of thousands, he decides.
“Great heavens! Among what terrific unseen forces we live! And in exact proportion to every man’s arrogant denial of the ‘Divinity that shapes our ends,’ so will be measured out to him the revelation of the invisible. Strange that the human race has never entirely realized as yet the depth of the meaning in the words describing hell: ‘Where the worm dieth not, and where the flame is never quenched.’ The ‘worm’ is Retribution, the ‘flame’ is the immortal Spirit,—and the two are forever striving to escape from the other. Horrible! And yet there are men who believe in neither one thing nor the other, and reject the Redemption that does away with both! God forgive us all our sins—and especially the sins of pride and presumption!”
Other of the Doctor’s thoughtful utterances are well worth quoting. “To the wise student of things there is no time and no distance. All history from the very beginning is like a wonderful chain in which no link is ever really broken, and in which every part fits closely to the other part,—though why the chain should exist at all is a mystery we cannot solve. Yet, I am quite certain that even our late friend Araxes has his connection with the present, if only for the reason that he lived in the past.”
Armand asks him how he argues out that theory, and the Doctor replies:
“The question is, how can you argue at all about anything that is so plain and demonstrated a fact? The doctrine of evolution proves it. Everything that we were once has its part in us now. Suppose, if you like, that we were originally no more than shells on the shore,—some remnant of the nature of the shell must be in us at this moment. Nothing is lost,—nothing is wasted,—not even a thought. I carry my theories very far indeed, especially in regard to matters of love. I maintain that if it is decreed that the soul of a man and the soul of a woman must meet,—must rush together,—not all the forces of the universe can hinder them; aye, even if they were, for some conventional cause or circumstance, themselves reluctant to consummate their destiny, it would, nevertheless, despite them, be consummated. For mark you,—in some form or other they have rushed together before! Whether as flames in the air, or twining leaves on a tree, or flowers in a field, they have felt the sweetness and fitness of each other’s being in former lives,—and the craving sense of that sweetness and fitness can never be done away with,—never! Not as long as this present universe lasts! It is a terrible thing,” continued the Doctor in a lower tone, “a terrible fatality,—the desire of love. In some cases it is a curse; in others, a divine and priceless blessing. The results depend entirely on the temperaments of the human creatures possessed by its fever. When it kindles, rises, and burns towards Heaven in a steady flame of ever-brightening purity and faith, then it makes marriage the most perfect union on earth,—the sweetest and most blessed companionship; but when it is a mere gust of fire, bright and fierce as the sudden leaping light of a volcano, then it withers everything at a touch,—faith, honor, truth,—and dies into dull ashes in which no spark remains to warm or inspire man’s higher nature. Better death than such a love,—for it works misery on earth; but who can tell what horrors it may not create Hereafter!”
When the Princess Ziska betakes herself to the Mena House Hotel, near the Pyramids, Dr. Dean, Gervase Armand, and Denzil Murray follow her. She entertains them at dinner, and after dinner, while the Doctor and Armand are strolling without, Murray puts his fate to the touch, with results as might have been expected, for the Princess has displayed little emotion in respect to anybody save Armand, and in his case it is clear that her interest has a malignant foundation.
Armand comes after him, and, in a passionate scene, audaciously proposes to “play the part of Araxes over again.” Ziska promises to give him her answer on the morrow, and on the morrow Armand receives it.
The last scene of this “Problem of a Wicked Soul” takes place beneath the Great Pyramid. Why and how the modern Araxes and the modern Ziska-Charmazel come together in the end in this strangest of meeting-places, we will leave the reader to discover for him or herself.
But we may at least record our admiration for the feat of imagination of which “Ziska” is the result, and indicate the lesson that is to be learned from its pages. “Ziska” teaches that sin shall not escape punishment, that a man shall not play fast and loose with women’s hearts and yet go scotfree. “Ziska” shows how the mutilated soul of the beautiful dancer arises after many centuries and exacts vengeance from its enemy; and again “Ziska” shows how, when Araxes, in his modern painter guise, cries for pardon, the eyes of his one-time victim soften and flash with love and tenderness.
Truly a fragrant passage is this, wherein the old story is once again told of man’s repentance and woman’s sweet forgiveness.
There had been a considerable pause in the writings of Miss Corelli, for reasons which have already been discussed, when, in August, 1900, “The Master Christian” appeared.
Miss Corelli commenced “The Master Christian” at Brighton on All Saints’ Day, 1897, in the hope that she would get through it before the terrible illness she had been suffering from for seven years reached an acute stage. The novelist, however, was almost dying on Christmas Eve of the same year, and on December 29th the surgeons took her in hand. She was dangerously ill during January, February, and March, 1898. In April and May Miss Corelli was just beginning to recover when the shock occasioned by her stepbrother’s death on June 2d produced a relapse, and she very nearly died from grief and weakness combined. She was ill all the rest of the year, and, a long period of convalescence following, she did not resume “The Master Christian” till the spring of 1899.
“The Master Christian” is Marie Corelli’s longest work, containing, as it does, over six hundred and thirty-four closely printed pages. While occupied upon it, the novelist had also to fulfil a long-standing engagement with Messrs. Hutchinson & Co. “Boy” and “The Master Christian” were, therefore, claiming her attention practically at the same time.
The writing of the two books under the circumstances was a stupendous undertaking. The effort required was so great that she often had to lay down her pen and lean back in her chair almost fainting from nervous exhaustion caused by the severity of the work and its effect upon her in her still weak condition.
It is a painfully interesting proceeding to read “The Master Christian” and then a large number of the reviews of the book which appeared. The conclusion is forced upon one that many of the critics had not taken the trouble to perform the obvious duty of reading a book that was to be “slated,” but had merely glanced at a page here, and quoted a passage, without the context, there. Either this was what happened or there was misconception of the book through ignorance or deliberate misrepresentation. It is really astounding to realize the manner in which Miss Corelli has been “criticised,” and one notable incident of many within our experience will serve to indicate what is a too frequent sin.
It was at the dinner of a well-known literary club, and ladies had been invited. One lady sat beside a gentleman who, years ago, was editor of a great daily newspaper, whose name is familiar to all as a notable and experienced journalist and critic, and who has arrived at an age when discretion, if not fairness, should be practiced. The lady was a friend of Marie Corelli’s, and upon the works of the novelist, who was also at the dinner, the conversation turned. The critic expressed the utmost contempt for her books, and used language so bitterly sarcastic and so grossly unfair that the lady gently asked: “Have you really ever read any of her works?” The question was natural. The answer was astonishing: it was the bald admission, “No.” Surely comment is unnecessary.
A somewhat similar incident may be quoted in connection with “Boy.” Sir Francis (then Mr.) Burnand, as the “Baron de Bookworms,” in Punch, said that he considered “Boy” “a work of genius.” Several critics took his article up, and declared that he had never done anything better in the way of satire. Miss Corelli thereupon wrote to Burnand and asked him if he had really meant his apparently generous praise.
He wrote back:
“I said it; I wrote it; I meant it, every word of it. ‘Press cuttings’ be blowed!
“Yours, F. C. Burnand.”
One writer in the Sunday Sun observed that as Burnand had fallen so low as to praise a work of Marie Corelli’s, he had “no other remedy but to take a bag of stones and break Mr. Punch’s windows!” He added that “he had not read ‘Boy’ and didn’t intend to.” Again, comment would be superfluous. The facts speak for themselves and show our contention to be correct, i.e., that condemnatory criticisms of Marie Corelli’s books are written at times by those who do not even read them.
One of the critics who does read what he comments upon in the way of books, but who, though a deep thinker, is sometimes trivial, superficial, and even frivolous in his treatment of a subject, is Mr. W. T. Stead. He is as amazing to others as others very often are to him. He must, we think, have been smiling pretty broadly when he wrote: “If any one wants to know what ‘The Master Christian’ is like, without reading its six hundred and thirty pages, he will not have much difficulty if he takes Sheldon’s ‘In His Steps,’ Zola’s ‘Rome,’ and any of Marie Corelli’s previous novels in equal proportion.” A strange suggestion, that! “In His Steps,” Zola’s “Rome,” and an equal proportion of, say, either “Vendetta” or “The Sorrows of Satan!” Reading the book itself seems to be so much more simple—and just.
Again, Mr. Stead referred to “The Master Christian” and to Mrs. Humphrey Ward’s “Robert Elsmere,” and speaking of their great success, he wrote: “The phenomenal sale of such works is perhaps much more worthy of consideration than anything that is to be found within the covers of the books themselves.” Now the matter for consideration raised in “The Master Christian” is whether Christians, and more especially the Pope of Rome and the priests of the Romish Church, obey the commands and attempt to fulfil the behests of Jesus Christ. We should have thought Mr. Stead would have regarded that question, at any rate, as more important than the mere numerical sale of a book. Mr. Stead also said that as a book the chief fault of “The Master Christian” was its lack of sympathy. Yet the whole teaching of the work is a Divine charity. “If any man hear my words and believe not, I judge him not; for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.” The chief figure in the book is Manuel, Christ once more in the world in the form of a child, and if his utterances show a “lack of sympathy,”—with lies and superstitious idolatry,—yet he speaks largely from the words of Christ and the Apostles. Well may it be doubted, with the author, whether, if Christ came once more to earth, He would be welcome.
It is said again that “The Master Christian” is a bitter attack upon the Roman Catholic Faith. It is nothing of the kind. After Manuel, the child-Christ, the chief character is that of Cardinal Bonpré, who is devoted to the Church of Rome but who also believes in Christ, and the two things, unhappily, are not always akin. If the man-made portion of the Roman Catholic dogma has hidden the teachings of Christ on which that Church was founded, that is the fault and the misfortune of the Church of Rome, and not of Marie Corelli, who is bold enough to speak the truth about the matter. That faith in God which is her standby is what she would wish to see in the ministry of the Roman Catholic Church, instead of, as she fears, a mere degenerate, priest-built, superstitious reliance upon symbolic shams.
Marie Corelli’s personal views may be taken to be those to which one of her characters, Aubrey Leigh, gives expression: “I never denied the beauty, romance, or mysticism of the Roman Catholic Faith. If it were purified from the accumulated superstition of ages, and freed from intolerance and bigotry, it would perhaps be the grandest form of Christianity in the world. But the rats are in the house, and the rooms want cleaning.” She attacks neither the Roman Catholic Faith nor even the Church. She makes a terrible onslaught upon the rats.
“The Master Christian” is both a novel and a sermon. The story of the book is intensely interesting, in “plot” clever and original. It is one of the refreshing features of Miss Corelli’s books that the plots always are original. She does not go to the British Museum or to the productions of Continental novelists to find her themes. Wherever, in “The Master Christian,” the mission of the book can best be emphasized, even though what critics call the “art of the story”—as to which we should like something in the nature of a clear definition—gives way to it, she pursues the mission. After all, we have an idea that if literature possesses merit, it is rather because it is followed as a means of influencing men’s minds than as an attempt to write a story, the lines of which fall together as harmoniously as do the notes of a perfect string band. Such a book if produced
would, we fancy, be so harmonious that it would have no influence to raise men and women to think.
With “The Master Christian” the reader has to think all the time. It is a sermon of great power, and the text of it is supplied, as it should be, by the fair preacher. It will be remembered that in the year 1900 the late Dr. St. George Mivart, a priest of the Church of Rome, was inhibited by His Eminence Cardinal Vaughan, on account of certain scientific works which were displeasing to the Church. Shortly afterwards Dr. Mivart died and the Romish Church even denied him religious rites of burial. In an “In Memoriam” note appended to her “Open letter to Cardinal Vaughan” on this subject, Marie Corelli wrote: “In the name of the all-loving and merciful Christ, whose teachings we, as Christians, profess to follow, it is necessary to enter a strong protest against this barbarous act in a civilized age, and to set it down beside the blind stupidity which arraigned glorious Galileo, and the fiendish cruelty which supported Torquemada. For the words of the Divine Master are a command to Churches as well as to individuals: ‘If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive you your trespasses!’”
We wonder if that saying of Christ’s was remembered when the ban of excommunication was pronounced by the Greek Church against Count Leo Tolstoy! We wonder if that saying of Christ’s is remembered at Rome when any ban of excommunication is passed, when religious rites of burial are denied to any man! And if the reply be that the words do not apply because the Pope and his priests commit no trespasses, we can only wonder what Christ would say if He came to Rome; and, further, we believe that He would say much that the child-Christ Manuel utters in “The Master Christian.”
The text of the book is that charity and forgiveness—the carrying out of Christ’s commands in the spirit of the Saviour—should guide mankind to-day, that they apply to-day as they did in the days of Christ’s sojourn on earth, and that the conditions of the world to-day are such as render it possible for Christians to walk in His steps. In the “open letter” to Cardinal Vaughan, already referred to, we find in some of the passages a true insight into the spirit of and the aims with which “The Master Christian” was written.
“My Lord Cardinal,” she says, “there are certain of us in the world who, overwhelmed by the desperate difficulties of life and the confusion arising from numerous doctrines, forms, and ceremonies instituted by divers Churches and Sects, are fain to fall back from the general hurly-burly, and turn for help and refuge to the original Founder of the Christian Faith. He, with that grand simplicity which expresses Divinity, expounded ‘the Way, the Truth, and the Life,’ in words of such plain and uninvolved meaning, that the poorest and least educated of us all cannot but understand Him. Gracious, tender, and always patient and pardoning, was every utterance of the God amongst us; and among all His wise and consoling sayings, none are, perhaps, more widely tolerant than this: ‘If any man hear My words and believe not, I judge him not; for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.’ My Lord Cardinal, there are many at this time of day who have so gained in a reasonable conception of faith, that when they hear the words of Christ delivered to them simply as first uttered, they are willing to believe, but hearing the edicts of the Church contrasted with those words, they ‘believe not.’ The teachings of Christ—Christ only—are so true that they cannot be denied; so beautiful that they command our reverence; and the Creed of Christ, if honestly followed, would make a fair and happy world for us all.”
And again,
“We are somewhat bewildered when we discover, by reference to the Gospel, that the Church commands us frequently to do precisely what the founder of our Faith commanded us not to do. And what, we may ask, is the Will of this great Father which is in Heaven? Is it to swear to what our own conscience and reason declare to be false? Is it to look in the face of Science, the great Heaven-sent Teacher of our time, and say, ‘You who have taught me, mere pigmy man, to press the lightning into my service, to take the weight and measurement of stars, to send my trifling messages of weal or woe on the eternal currents of electric force—You, who daily unfold for me the mysteries of God’s glorious creation—You who teach me that the soul of man, immortal and progressive, is capable of infinite enlightenment and increasing power—You, who expound the majesty, the beneficence, the care, the love, the supporting influence of the Creator, and bring me to my knees in devout adoration—am I to say to You who teach me all this that You are a Lie? Am I rather to believe that a statue made by hands, and set in a grotto at Lourdes or elsewhere, is a worthier object for my prayer and my praise? Am I doing God’s will by believing that my base coin, paid for sundry masses in churches, will sway the Creator of the Universe to give peace to the departed spirits of my dead?’”
Marie Corelli, by the words of Manuel, as we think it is recognized, gives a truer interpretation of the Divine Will. Even the title page contains a quotation from St. Luke that is a protest against many of the practices of the Romish and other Churches: “Why call ye Me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?”
The story of “The Master Christian” opens in Rouen, where a Roman Catholic prelate, Cardinal Felix Bonpré, is seen in the Cathedral of Notre Dame. This Cardinal is a pious and true man who has for many years contented himself with the administration of his diocese and the performance of good work. His Rouen visit is a portion of a tour of several months taken for purposes of health, and with the object of judging for himself how the great world, of which he has seen little, is faring, “whether on the downward road to destruction and death, or up to the high ascents of progress and life.” The farther he travels the more depressed he becomes by the results of his observations. Within Rouen Cathedral Cardinal Bonpré hears singularly soothing music, though whence it comes he is unable to perceive. He is impressed with a peculiar sense of some divine declaration of God’s absolute omniscience, and a question seems to be whispered in his ears:
“When the Son of Man cometh, think ye He shall find faith on earth?”
With his growing experience of the confusion and trouble of the world, the Cardinal is forced to the conclusion that there is an increasing lack of faith in God and a Hereafter; and of the reason for it he thinks: “We have failed to follow the Master’s teaching in its true perfection. We have planted in ourselves a seed of corruption, and we have permitted—nay, some of us have encouraged—its poisonous growth till it now threatens to contaminate the whole field of labor.”
Cast down by these reflections, the good Cardinal proceeds to the Hotel Poitiers, a modest hostelry preferred by him to the Palace of the Archbishop of Rouen, another “Prince of the Church,” a term which Cardinal Bonpré—like Miss Corelli—finds particularly detestable, especially when used in connection with a Christian Church wherein she thinks distinctive ranks are a mistake and even Anti-Christian.
At the inn a striking picture is drawn by the novelist of the evil effect upon the children of France brought about by the removal of religious instruction from the schools. The two charmingly precocious children of Jean and Madame Patoux are quite old in agnostic views and doubts. There also Bonpré has his first serious religious argument with the Archbishop of Rouen, whom he astonishes by declaring that the Church herself is responsible for the increase of ungodliness.
“If our Divine faith were lived Divinely there would be no room for heresy or atheism. The Church itself supplies the loophole for apostasy.... In the leading points of creed I am very steadfastly convinced;—namely, that Christ was Divine, and that the following of His Gospel is the saving of the immortal soul. But if you ask me whether I think that we (the Church of Rome) do truly follow that Gospel, I must own that I have doubts upon the matter.”
We are informed here, also, through Cardinal Bonpré, of what Marie Corelli means by Paulism. Ministers of religion, he declares, should literally obey all Christ’s commands:
“The Church is a system,—but whether it is as much founded on the teaching of our Lord, who was Divine, as on the teaching of St. Paul, who was not divine, is a question to me of much perplexity.... I do not decry St. Paul. He was a gifted and clever man, but he was a Man—he was not God-in-Man. Christ’s doctrine leaves no place for differing sects; St. Paul’s method of applying that doctrine serves as authority for the establishment of any and every quarrelsome sect ever known.... I do not think we fit the Church system to the needs of modern civilization ... we only offer vague hopes and dubious promises to those who thirst for the living waters of salvation and immortality.”
Cardinal Bonpré that night has a vision of the end of the world, and in his agony at the spectacle he cries: “Have patience yet, Thou outraged and blasphemed Creator! Break once again Thy silence as of old, and speak to us! Pity us once again, ere Thou slay us utterly! Come to us even as Thou camest in Judea, and surely we will receive Thee and obey Thee, and reject Thy love no more.” And a divine voice replies: “Thy prayer is heard, and once again the silence shall be broken. Nevertheless, remember that the light shineth in Darkness, and the Darkness comprehendeth it not.” At this juncture a plaintive cry falls on his ears, and he goes out into the night to discover the cause. He proceeds to the Cathedral, and there, in the deeply hollowed portal, discovers the slight shrinking figure of a child—
“A boy’s desolate little figure,—with uplifted hands clasped appealingly and laid against the shut cathedral door, and face hidden and pressed hard upon those hands, as though in mute and inconsolable despair....
‘My poor child, what troubles you? Why are you here all alone, and weeping at this late hour? Have you no home?—no parents?’
“Slowly the boy turned round, still resting his small delicate hands against the oaken door of the Cathedral, and with the tears yet wet upon his cheeks, smiled. What a sad face he had!—worn and weary, yet beautiful!—what eyes, heavy with the dews of sorrow, yet tender even in pain! Startled by the mingled purity and grief on so young a countenance, the Cardinal retreated for a moment in amaze,—then, approaching more closely, he repeated his former question with increased interest and tenderness—
‘Why are you weeping here alone?’
‘Because I am left alone to weep!’ said the boy, answering in a soft voice of vibrating and musical melancholy. ‘For me, the world is empty!... I should have rested here within,—but it is closed against me!’
‘The doors are always locked at night, my child,’ returned the Cardinal, ‘but I can give you shelter. Will you come with me?’
‘Will I come with you? Nay, but I see you are a Cardinal of the Church, and it is I should ask ‘will you receive me?’ You do not know who I am—nor where I came from, and I, alas! may not tell you! I am alone; all—all alone,—for no one knows me in the world;—I am quite poor and friendless, and have nothing wherewith to pay you for your kindly shelter—I can only bless you!’”
Thus the second coming of Christ, according to Marie Corelli.
Manuel is then taken entirely under the protection of Cardinal Bonpré, and the two become inseparable. At all times the lad talks with wonderful eloquence and power—as Marie Corelli thinks Christ would talk if He were a child amongst us, and as He did talk when astonishing the learned doctors of law in Jerusalem. Before he and the Cardinal leave the Hotel Poitiers a miracle is performed. In Rouen there is a lad, Fabien Doucet, who has a bent spine and a useless leg. The unbelieving Patoux youngsters bring little Fabien to the Cardinal, and ask him to cure the lad. Beside the Cardinal stands Manuel. The incident is introduced by Marie Corelli in order to emphasize her own belief in the power of prayer—prayer that is sincere, the expression of faith that is true. The story of the miracle is very beautiful, especially for the spirit in which the good Cardinal performs the duty that the children ask of him. He addresses Fabien:
“My poor child, I want you to understand quite clearly how sorry I am for you, and how willingly I would do anything in the world to make you a strong, well, and happy boy. But you must not fancy that I can cure you. I told your little friends yesterday that I was not a saint, such as you read about in story-books,—and that I could not work miracles, because I am not worthy to be so filled with the Divine Spirit as to heal with a touch like the better servants of our Blessed Lord. Nevertheless I firmly believe that if God saw that it was good for you to be strong and well, He would find ways to make you so. Sometimes sickness and sorrow are sent to us for our advantage,—sometimes even death comes to us for our larger benefit, though we may not understand how it is so till afterwards. But in heaven everything will be made clear; and even our griefs will be turned into joys,—do you understand?”
“Yes,” murmured Fabien gravely, but two large tears welled up in his plaintive eyes as the faint glimmer of hope he had encouraged as to the possibility of his being miraculously cured by the touch of a saintly Cardinal, expired in the lonely darkness of his little afflicted soul.
“That is well,” continued the Cardinal kindly—“And now, since it is so difficult for you to kneel, you shall stay where you are in my arms,—so!—” and he set him on his knee in a position of even greater comfort than before. “You shall simply shut your eyes, and clasp your little hands together, as I put them here,”—and as he spoke he crossed the child’s hands on his silver crucifix—“And I will ask our Lord to come and make you well,—for of myself I can do nothing.”
At these words Henri and Babette glanced at each other questioningly, and then, as if simultaneously moved by some inexplicable emotion, dropped on their knees,—their mother, too stout and unwieldy to do this with either noiselessness or satisfaction to herself, was contented to bend her head as low as she could get it. Manuel remained standing. Leaning against the Cardinal’s chair, his eyes fixed on the crippled Fabien, he had the aspect of a young angel of compassion, whose sole immortal desire was to lift the burden of sorrow and pain from the lives of suffering humanity. And after a minute or two passed in silent meditation, the Cardinal laid his hands tenderly on Fabien’s fair curly head and prayed aloud.
“Oh merciful Christ! Most pitying and gentle Redeemer!—to Whom in the days of Thy sacred life on earth, the sick and suffering and lame and blind were brought, and never sent away unhealed or uncomforted; consider, we beseech Thee, the sufferings of this Thy little child, deprived of all the joys which Thou hast made so sweet for those who are strong and straight in their youth, and who have no ailment to depress their courage or to quench the ardor of their aspiring souls. Look compassionately upon him, oh gentle King and Master of all such children!—and even as Thou wert a child Thyself, be pleased to heal him of his sad infirmity. For, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make this bent body straight and these withered muscles strong,—from death itself Thou canst ordain life, and nothing is impossible to Thee! But above all things, gracious Saviour, we do pray Thee so to lift and strengthen this child’s soul, that if it is destined he should still be called upon to bear his present pain and trouble, grant to him such perfection in his inward spirit that he may prove worthy to be counted among Thy angels in the bright Hereafter. To Thy care, and to Thy comfort, and to Thy healing, great Master, we commend him, trusting him entirely to Thy mercy, with perfect resignation to Thy Divine Will. For the sake and memory of Thy most holy childhood, mercifully help and bless this child! Amen!”
As Fabien Doucet hobbles away at the conclusion of this prayer, the Cardinal, speaking from his heart, declares that if the giving of his own life could make the lad strong he would willingly sacrifice it. Then Manuel moves from his place near the Cardinal’s chair, approaches the little cripple, and, putting his arms round him, kisses him on the forehead.
“Good-bye, dear little brother!” he said, smiling—“Do not be sad! Have patience! In all the universe, among all the millions and millions of worlds, there is never a pure and unselfish prayer that the great good God does not answer! Be sure of that! Take courage, dear little brother! You will soon be well!”
Sweet assurance, truly, for the afflicted one. Shortly afterwards the Cardinal and Manuel depart from Rouen. They have not been long gone when there comes the startling announcement from Fabien Doucet’s mother that the boy is cured, and, to prove it, little Fabien, the former cripple, speeds gaily to the home of the Patoux family, strong and well.
Unconscious of the remarkable cure that has awed and amazed the townsfolk of Rouen, the Cardinal, accompanied by Manuel, proceeds to Paris and to the residence of his niece, Angela Sovrani, an artist famous throughout Europe. In Paris many interesting persons are brought together, mainly in Angela Sovrani’s studio. One remarkable character is the Abbé Vergniaud, a brilliant preacher, witty, eloquent, and sarcastic, but an atheist for all that. In his conversations with Angela he endeavors to justify his position, but the girl insists upon the depressing and wretched nature of his soulless creed. Vergniaud frankly admits his unbelief to Cardinal Bonpré. He also makes a confession and a declaration. In his early days, twenty-five years before, he had betrayed and deserted a woman, long since dead. Her son, however, has grown to manhood with the determination to avenge the mother’s wrong, and the Abbé goes in daily fear of assassination at his hands. Yet the Abbé Vergniaud shows that he is far from being a wholly evil man. He declares his determination to retrieve the past so far as he can and to clear his son’s soul from the thirst for vengeance that is consuming it.
On one occasion Vergniaud declares that Paris is hopelessly pagan, that Christ is there made the subject of public caricature, that His reign is over—in Paris at least.
“If these things be true,” Cardinal Bonpré indignantly cries, “then shame upon you and upon all the clergy of this unhappy city to stand by and let such disgrace to yourselves, and blasphemy to our Master, exist without protest.”
The Abbé is inclined to resent the rebuke, but only for a moment. The next, abashed, he admits its justice, and craves pardon. The incident is the turning point in Vergniaud’s life. He shortly afterwards writes to the Cardinal that he is moved to say things that he has never said before, and that it is possible he may astonish and perchance scandalize Paris.
“What inspires me I do not know,—perhaps your well-deserved reproach of the other day,—perhaps the beautiful smile of the angel that dwells in Donna Sovrani’s eyes,—perhaps the chance meeting with your Rouen foundling on the stairs as I was flying away from your just wrath.”
He concludes by requesting the Cardinal to come two days later to hear him preach at Notre Dame de Lorette.
In his letter to the Cardinal, the Abbé Vergniaud mentions that Manuel has given him a rose, and the mention of this to the child-Christ gives us a charming fancy as to the floral beauties of Heaven.
“Flowers,” said the Cardinal, commenting on the gift, “are like visible messages from God. Messages written in all the brightest and loveliest colors! I never gather one without finding out that it has something to say to me.”
“There is a legend,” said Manuel, “that tells how a poor girl who has lost every human creature she loved on earth, had a rose-tree she was fond of, and every day she found upon it just one bloom. And though she longed to gather the flower for herself she would not do so, but always placed it before the picture of the Christ. And God saw her do this, as He sees everything. At last, quite suddenly, she died, and when she found herself in heaven, there were such crowds and crowds of angels about her that she was bewildered, and could not find her way. All at once she saw a pathway edged with roses before her, and one of the angels said, ‘there are all the roses you gave to our Lord on earth, and He has made them into a pathway for you which will lead you straight to those you love!’ And so with great joy she followed the windings of the path, seeing her roses blossoming all the way, and she found all those whom she had loved and lost on earth waiting to welcome her at the end!”
Here is another sweet thought which Marie Corelli gives us in the words of Manuel: