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you back again to more wholesome ideas of good and evil. From your point of view, so far from your action being wrongful, it must have seemed meritorious to you. Why not admit it? Is it shame that restrains you, my poor boy? Fear not. The secret will remain with your father and me." And embracing the lad with maternal warmth, Bridget added: "Do not the principles in which we brought you up make us feel sure that, despite your temporary blindness, you will know better in the future? Could you possibly become confirmed in dishonesty, you, my son? You who until now gave us so much cause for happiness? Come, Hervé, make a manly effort – tell us the truth – you will thereby change our sorrow into joy; your confession will prove your frankness and your confidence in our indulgence and tenderness. You still are silent? – not a word – you have not a word for me?" cried the wretched woman, seeing her son remaining imperturbable. "What! we who should complain, are imploring you! You should be in tears, and yet it is I alone who weep! You should be at our feet, and I am at yours! And yet you remain like a piece of icy marble! Oh, unhappy child!"
"Mother," repeated Hervé with inflexible voice without raising his eyes, "I have not touched your money."
In despair at such insensibility, Bridget rose and threw herself convulsively sobbing into the arms of her husband: "I am a mother to be pitied."
"My son," now said Christian in a severe tone, "if you are guilty – and I regret but too deeply that I fear you are – learn this: Even if you should have employed the money that has been purloined from my room in what you term 'pious works,' you would not therefore be less guilty of a theft, do you understand? – a theft in all the disgraceful sense of the word! I was not mistaken! It has turned out so! By means of unworthy sophisms, your friend Fra Girard has perverted your one-time sense of right and wrong! Oh, whatever insane or impostor monks may say to the contrary, human and divine morality will always condemn theft, whatever the disguises or hypocritical pretexts may be under which it is committed. To believe that such a disgraceful action deserves no punishment – worse yet, that it is meritorious – by reason of the fruits thereof being consecrated to charitable works, is about the most monstrous mental aberration that can ever insult the conscience of an honest man!" Christian thereupon supported and led Bridget in tears back towards the staircase, took up the lamp, and walked upstairs with these parting words to his son: "May heaven open your eyes, my son and inspire you with repentance!"
Imperturbable as ever, Hervé did not seem to hear his father's last words. When the latter re-entered his own room with his wife and closed the door, the young man, who had remained in the dark, threw himself down upon his knees, picked up his instrument of discipline and began flagellating himself with savage fury. The lad smothered the cries that the pain involuntarily forced from him, and, a prey to delirious paroxysms, only murmured from time to time, with bated breath, the name of his sister Hena.
CHAPTER III.
THE SALE OF INDULGENCES
The morning after the trying night experienced by Christian and his wife, a large crowd filled the church of the Dominican Convent. It was a bizarre crowd. It consisted of people of all conditions. Thieves and mendicants, artisans, bourgeois and seigneurs, lost women and devout old dames, ladies of distinction and plebeian women and children of all ages, elbowed one another. They were all attracted by that day's religious celebration; they crowded especially near the choir. This space was shut off by an iron railing four feet in height; it was to be the theater of the most important incidents in the ceremony. Among the spectators nearest to the choir stood Hervé Lebrenn together with his friend Fra Girard. The Franciscan monk was about twenty-five years of age, and of a cadaverous, austere countenance. The mask of asceticism concealed an infernal knave gifted with superior intelligence. The monk enveloped his young companion, so to speak, with a fascinating gaze; the latter, apparently a prey to profound preoccupation, bent his head and crossed his arms over his breast.
"Hervé," said Fra Girard in a low voice, "do you remember the day when in a fit of despair and terror you came to me to confession – and confessed a thing that you hardly dared admit to yourself?"
"Yes," answered Hervé with a shudder and dropping his eyes still lower; "yes, I remember the day."
"I then told you," the Franciscan proceeded to say, "that the Catholic Church, from which you were separated from childhood by an impious education, afforded consolation to troubled hearts – even better, held out hope – still better than that, gave positive assurance even to the worst of sinners, provided they had faith. By little and little our long and frequent conversations succeeded in causing the divine light to penetrate your mind, and the scales dropped from your eyes. The faith that I then preached to you, has since filled and now overflows your soul. Fasting, maceration and ardent prayer have smoothed the way for your salvation. The hour of your reward has arrived. Blessed be the Lord!"
Fra Girard had hardly uttered these words when the deep notes of the organ filled with a melancholic harmony the lugubrious church into which the light of day broke only through narrow windows of colored glass. A procession that issued from the interior of the Dominican cloister entered the church and marched around the aisles. The cortege was headed by four footmen clad in red, the papal livery, who held aloft four standards upon which the pontifical coat-of-arms was emblazoned; they were followed by priests in surplices surrounding a cross and chanting psalms of penitence; behind these came another platoon of papal footmen, bearing a stretcher covered with gold cloth, and in the center of which, on a cushion of crimson velvet, lay a red box containing the bull of Leo X empowering the Order of St. Dominic to dispense indulgences. Several censer-bearers walked backward before the stretcher, and stopped from time to time in order to swing their copper and silver censers from which clouds of perfumed vapor issued and circled upward. A Dominican prior walked behind the stretcher clasping a large cross of red wood in his arms; this dignitary – a man in the full vigor of age, tall of stature and so corpulent that his paunch threatened to burst his frock – was the Apostolic Commissioner entrusted with the sale of indulgences; a heavy black beard framed in his high-colored face; the monk's triumphant gait and the haughty looks that he cast around him pointed him out as the hero of the approaching ceremony. He was followed by a long line of penitentiaries and sub-Apostolic Commissioners with white wands in their hands. A last squad of papal footmen, holding by leather straps a huge coffer also covered with crimson velvet and locked with three gilded clasps, closed the procession. A slit, similar to that of the poor-boxes in churches, was cut into the lid of the coffer. Through it the moneys were to be dropped by the purchasers of indulgences, or by the faithful, anxious to redeem the souls in purgatory.
When the procession, at the passage of which the crowd prostrated itself religiously, completed the circuit of the church, the papal footmen who bore the banners grouped them as trophies upon the main altar, before which the stretcher, covered with gold cloth, the bull, and the big coffer were processionally borne. The Apostolic Commissioner with the cross of red wood in his hand placed himself near the coffer; the penitentiaries ranked themselves in front of several confessionals that were set up for the occasion near the choir, and all of which bore the pontifical arms.
The excitement and curiosity awakened by the procession together with the peals of the organ and the chant of the priests excited a considerable agitation in the church. By degrees quiet was restored, the kneeling faithful rose again to their feet, and all eyes turned impatiently towards the choir. Hervé, who had been one of the first to prostrate himself, was among the last to rise; the lad was a prey to profound agony; perspiration bathed his now livid face; he was hardly able to breathe. Turning his wandering eyes towards Fra Girard, he said to the monk in broken accents:
"Oh, if I only can rely upon your promises! The moment has arrived when I must believe. I tremble!"
"Oh, man of little faith!" answered the Franciscan with severity and pointing to the papal commissioner, who was preparing to speak; "listen – and repent that you doubted. Ask God to pardon you."
The silence became profound; the dealer in indulgences deftly rolled up the sleeves of his robe, just as a juggler in the market would have done in order not to be hindered in the tumultuous motions of his performance, and pointing to the red cross which he placed beside him, he cried in a stentorian voice fit to make the glass windows of the building rattle:
"In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, Amen!