The Master-Christian. Marie Corelli

just. He was a very plain common man, but he held holy things in reverence, and instinctively felt that, if the world were in truth a bad place, it was likely to become much worse if all faith in God were taken out of it. And when he reached his plot of ground that morning, and set to work as usual, he was, for a non-reflective man, very much absorbed in thought. His heavy tramping feet over the soil startled some little brown birds from their hidden nests, and sent them flying to and fro through the clear air uttering sharp chirrups of terror,—and, leaning on his spade, he paused and looked at them meditatively.

      "Everything is afraid," he said,—"Birds, beasts, and men,—all are afraid of something and cannot tell what it is that frightens them. It seems hard sometimes that there should be so much trouble and struggle just to live—however, the good God knows best,—and if we could not think and hope and believe He knew best, we might just as well light up a charcoal fire, shut all the doors and windows, and say 'Bon jour! Bon jour, Monsieur le bon Dieu!—for if YOU do not know YOUR business, it is evident we do not know ours, and therefore 'tis best for both our sakes to make an end of sheer Stupidity!'"

      He chuckled at his own reasoning, and moistening his hands vigorously, seized his spade and began to bank up a ridge of celery, singing "Bon jour, Monsieur le bon Dieu!" under his breath without the slightest idea of irreverence. And looking up at the bright sky occasionally, he wished he had seen the stray boy rescued from the streets by Cardinal Bonpre.

      "That he will be a trouble, there is no doubt," he said as he turned and patted the rich dark earth—"Never was there a boy born yet into the world that was not a trouble except our Lord, and even in His case His own people did not know what to make of Him!"

      Meantime, while Jean Patoux dug in his garden, and sang and soliloquized, his two children, Henri and Babette, their school hours being ended, had run off to the market, and were talking vivaciously with a big brown sturdy woman, who was selling poultry at a stall, under a very large patched red umbrella. She was Martine Doucet, reported to have the worst temper and most vixenish tongue in all the town, though there were some who said her sourness of humour only arose from the hardships of her life, and the many troubles she had been fated to endure. Her husband, a fine handsome man, earning good weekly wages as a stone-mason, had been killed by a fall from a ladder, while engaged in helping to build one of the new houses on the Boulevards, and her only child Fabien, a boy of ten had, when a baby, tumbled from the cart in which his mother was taking her poultry to market, and though no injury was apparent at the time, had, from the effects of the fall, grown into a poor little twisted mite of humanity with a bent spine, and one useless leg which hung limply from his body, while he could scarcely hobble about on the other, even with the aid of a crutch. He had a soft, pretty, plaintive face of his own, the little Fabien, and very gentle ways,—but he was sensitively conscious of his misfortune, and in his own small secret soul he was always praying that he might die while he was yet a child, and not grow up to be a burden to his mother. Martine, however, adored him; and it was through her intense love for this child of hers that she had, in a strange vengeful sort of mood abandoned God, and flung an open and atheistical defiance in the face of her confessor, who, missing her at mass, had ventured to call upon her and seriously reproach her for neglecting the duties of her religion. Martine had whirled round upon him,—a veritable storm in petticoats.

      "Religion!" she cried—"Oh—he! What good has it done for ME, if you please! When I said my prayers night and morning, went to mass and confession, and told my rosary every Mary-Feast, what happened? Was not my man killed and my child crippled? And then,—(not to lose faith—) did I not give the saints every chance of behaving themselves? For my child's sake did I not earn good money and pay it to the Church in special masses that he might be cured of his lameness? And Novenas in plenty, and candles in plenty to the Virgin, and fastings of my own and penitences? And is the child not as lame as ever? Look at him!—the dear angel!—with never an evil thought or a wicked way,—and will you try to make me believe there is a good God, when He will not help a poor little creature like that, to be happy, though He is prayed to night and morning for it! No—no! Churches are kept up for priests to make a fat living out of,—but there is never a God in them that I can see;—and as for the Christ, who had only to be asked in order to heal the sick, there is not so much as a ghost of Him anywhere! If what you priests tell us were true, poor souls such as I am, would get comfort and help in our sorrows, but it is all a lie!—the whole thing!—and when we are in trouble, we have got to bear it as best we can, without so much as a kind word from our neighbours, let alone any pity from the saints. Go to mass again? Not I!—nor to confession either!—and no more of my earnings will click into your great brass collection plate, mon reverend! Ah no!—I have been a foolish woman indeed, to trust so long in a God who for all my tears and prayers never gives me a sign or a hope of an answer,—and though I suppose this wretched world of ours was made by somebody, whoever it is that has done it is a cruel creature at best, so I say,—without as much good feeling as there is in the heart of an ordinary man, and without the sense of the man either! For who that thinks twice about it would make a world where everything is only born to die?—and for no other use at all! Bah! It is sheer folly and wickedness to talk to me of a God!—a God, if there were one, would surely be far above torturing the creatures He has made, all for nothing!"

      And the priest who heard this blasphemous and savage tirade on the part of Martine Doucet, retreated from her in amazement and horror, and presently gave out that she was possessed of a devil, and was unfit to be admitted to the Holy Sacrament. Whereat, when she heard of it, Martine laughed loudly and ferociously.

      "Look you!—what a charitable creature a priest is!" she cried—"If you don't do the things he considers exactly right and fitting, he tells your neighbours that the devil has got you!—and so little does he care to pick you out of the clutches of this same devil, that he refuses you the Sacrament, though THAT is said to drive away Satan by the mere touch of it! But wait till I ASK to have the Sacrament given to me!—it will be time enough then to refuse it! Many a fat chicken of my stock has the reverend father had as a free gift to boil in his soup maigre!" and again she laughed angrily—"But no more of them does he get to comfort his stomach while doing penance for his soul!—the hypocrite! He must find another silly woman to cheat with his stories of a good God who never does anything but kill and curse us every one!—he has had all that he will ever get out of Martine Doucet!"

      It was to this redoubtable virago that Henri and Babette had betaken themselves in the market place directly school was over. She always held the same stall in the same position on market days,—and she sat under her red umbrella on a rough wooden bench, knitting rapidly, now keeping an eye on her little lame son, coiled up in a piece of matting beside her, and anon surveying her stock-in-trade of ducks and geese and fowls, which were heaped on her counter, their wrung necks drooping limply from the board, and their yellow feet tied helplessly together and shining like bits of dull gold in the warm light of the September sun. She listened with an impassive countenance while Babette poured out her story of the great Cardinal,—the Cardinal Felix Bonpre, whom people said was a saint,—how he had come unexpectedly to stay two nights at the Hotel Poitiers,—how "petite maman" had declared he was so good that even angels might visit him,—how kind and gentle and grand he seemed,—"Yes," said Babette somewhat eagerly, "there was no doubt that he LOOKED good,—and we have told him all about Fabien and he has promised to bless him and ask Our Lord to cure his lameness."

      "Well, and of what use is that, mignonne?" demanded Martine, clicking her knitting-needles violently and stooping over her work to wink away the sudden tears that had risen in her bold brown eyes at Babette's enthusiastic desire to benefit her afflicted child.—"Asking our Lord is poor business,—you may ask and ask, but you never get answered!"

      Babette hung her curly brown head despondingly, and looked appealingly at her brother. Now Henri was a decided cynic;—but his sister exercised a weird fascination over him,—a sort of power to command which he always felt more or less constrained to obey. He stared solemnly at Martine, and then at the little Fabien, who, half rising from his mat, had listened with a visibly painful interest to Babette's story.

      "I think you might let us take Fabien and see if a Cardinal CAN do anything," he said with a kind of judicial air, as of one who, though considering the case hopeless, had no objection