In front of him an ancient silver crucifix
gleamed in the flicker of the small wood fire which had been kindled
in the wide cavernous chimney--and a black-bound copy of the Gospels
lay open as if but lately consulted. The faded splendour of certain
gold embroidered hangings on the walls added to the solemn and
melancholy aspect of the apartment, and the figure of the venerable
prelate seen in such darkening gloom and solitude, was the crowning
completion of an expressive and pathetic picture of patient
desolation. So might a martyr of the Inquisition have looked while
the flames were getting ready to burn him for the love of the gentle
Saviour; and something of the temper of such a possible predecessor
was in the physically frail old man, who just now was concentrating
all the energies of his mind on the consideration of a difficult
question which is often asked by many hearts in secret, but is
seldom voiced to the public ear;--"Christ or the Church? Which must
I follow to be an honest man?"
Never had the good Cardinal been in such a strange predicament.
Living away from the great centres of thought and action, he had
followed a gentle and placid course of existence, almost unruffled,
save by the outside murmurs of a growing public discontent which had
reached him through the medium of current literature, and had given
him cause to think uneasily of possible disaster for the religious
world in the near future,--but he had never gone so far as to
imagine that the Head of the Church would, while being perfectly
conscious of existing threatening evils, deliberately turn his back
to appeals for help,--shut his ears to the cry of the "lost sheep of
the House of Israel", and even endeavour, with an impotence of
indignation which was as pitiable as useless, to shake a rod of
Twelfth-century menace over the advancement of the Twentieth!
"For the onward movement of Humanity is God's work," said the
Cardinal, "And what are we--what is even the Church--when it does
not move side by side in perfect and pure harmony with the order of
Divine Law?"
And he was bitterly troubled in spirit.
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