The Master-Christian | Page 9

countless universes, be so cruel as to wantonly destroy millions of helpless creatures in one small planet, because through ignorance or want of proper teaching they had failed to find Christ?--was it possible that he could only extend his mercy and forgiveness to the "few names in Sardis"?
"Yet our world is but a pin's point in the eternal immensities," argued the Cardinal almost wistfully--"Only a few can expect to be saved."
Nevertheless, this reasoning did not satisfy him. Again, what of these millions? Were they to be forever lost? Then why so much waste of life? Waste of life! There is no such thing as waste of life-- this much modern science the venerable Felix knew. Nothing can be wasted,--not a breath, not a scene, not a sound. All is treasured up in Nature's store-house and can be eternally reproduced at Nature's will. Then what was to become of the myriads of human beings and immortal souls whom the Church had failed to rescue? THE CHURCH HAD FAILED! Why had it failed? Whose the fault?--whose the weakness?-- for fault and weakness were existent somewhere.
"WHEN THE SON OF MAN COMETH, THINK YE HE SHALL FIND FAITH ON EARTH?"
"No!" whispered the Cardinal, suddenly forced, as it were in his own despite, to contradict his former assertion--"No!" He paused, and mechanically making his way towards the door of the Cathedral, he dipped his fingers into the holy water that glistened dimly in its marble basin near the black oak portal, and made the sign of the cross on brow and breast;--"He will not find faith where faith should be pre-eminent. It must be openly confessed--repentingly admitted,--He will NOT find faith even in the Church He founded,--I say it to our shame!"
His head drooped, as though his own words had wounded him, and with an air of deep dejection he slowly passed out. The huge iron-bound door swung noiselessly to and fro behind him,--the grave-toned bell in the tower struck seven. Outside, a tender twilight mellowed the atmosphere and gave brightness to approaching evening; inside, the long shadows, gathering heavily in the aisles and richly sculptured hollows of the side-chapels, brought night before its time. The last votive candle at the Virgin's shrine flickered down and disappeared like a firefly in dense blackness,--the last echo of the bell died in a tremulous vibration up among the high-springing roof-arches, and away into the solemn corners where the nameless dead reposed,-- the last impression of life and feeling vanished with the retreating figure of the Cardinal--and the great Cathedral, the Sanctuary and House of God, took upon itself the semblance of a funeral vault,--a dark, Void, wherein but one red star, the lamp before the Altar, burned.

II.
Lovely to a poet or an artist's eye is the unevenly-built and picturesque square of Rouen in which the Cathedral stands,--lovely, and suggestive of historical romance in all its remote corners, its oddly-shaped houses, its by-ways and crooked little flights of steps leading to nowhere, its gables and slanting roofs, and its utter absence of all structural proportion. A shrine here, a broken statue there,--a half-obliterated coat-of-arms over an old gateway,--a rusty sconce fitted fast into the wall to support a lantern no longer needed in these days of gas and electricity,--an ancient fountain overgrown with weed, or a projecting vessel of stone for holy water, in which small birds bathe and disport themselves after a shower of rain,--those are but a few of the curious fragments of a past time which make the old place interesting to the student, and more than fascinating to the thinker and dreamer. The wonderful "Hotel Bourgtheroulde," dating from the time of Francis the First, and bearing on its sculptured walls the story of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, in company with the strangely-contrasting "Allegories", from Petrarch's "Triumphs", is enough in itself to keep the mind engrossed with fanciful musings for an hour. How did Petrarch and the Field of the Cloth of Gold come together in the brain of the sculptor who long ago worked at these ancient bas- reliefs? One wonders, but the wonder is in vain,--there is no explanation;--and the "Bourgtheroulde" remains a pleasing and fantastic architectural mystery. Close by, through the quaint old streets of the Epicerie and "Gross Horloge", walked no doubt in their young days the brothers Corneille, before they evolved from their meditative souls the sombre and heavy genius of French tragedy,--and not very far away, up one of those little shadowy winding streets and out at the corner, stands the restored house of Diane de Poitiers, so sentient and alive in its very look that one almost expects to see at the quaint windows the beautiful wicked face of the woman who swayed the humours of a king by her smile or her frown.
Cardinal Bonpre,