The Master-Christian. Marie Corelli

Patoux brought his eyes down from the ceiling and fixed them enquiringly on Cazeau.

      "Ignorant?" he began, when at this juncture Madame Patoux entered, and taking possession of Henri and Babette, informed Monsieur Cazeau that the Archbishop would be for some time engaged in conversation with Cardinal Bonpre, and that therefore he, Monsieur Cazeau, need not wait,—Monseigneur would return to his house alone. Whereupon the secretary rose, evidently glad to be set at liberty, and took his leave of the Patoux family. On the threshold, however, he paused, looking back somewhat frowningly at Jean Patoux himself.

      "I should not, if I were you, trouble Monseigneur concerning the case you told me of—that of—of Marguerite Valmond,"—he observed—"He has a horror of evil women."

      With that he departed, walking across the Square towards the Archbishop's house in a stealthy sort of fashion, as though he were a burglar meditating some particularly daring robbery.

      "He is a rat—a rat!" exclaimed Henri, suddenly executing a sort of reasonless war-dance round the kitchen—"One wants a cat to catch him!"

      "Rats are nice," declared Babette, for she remembered having once had a tame white rat which sat on her knee and took food from her hand,—"Monsieur Cazeau is a man; and men are not nice."

      Patoux burst into a loud laugh.

      "Men are not nice!" he echoed—"What dost thou know about it, thou little droll one?"

      "What I see," responded Babette severely, with an elderly air, as of a person who has suffered by bitter experience; and, undeterred by her parents' continued laughter she went on—

      "Men are ugly. They are dirty. They say 'Come here my little girl, and I will give you something,'—then when I go to them they try and kiss me. And I will not kiss them, because their mouths smell bad. They stroke my hair and pull it all the wrong way. And it hurts. And when I don't like my hair pulled the wrong way, they tell me I will be a great coquette. A coquette is to be like Diane de Poitiers. Shall I be like Diane de Poitiers?"

      "The saints forbid!" cried Madame Patoux,—"And talk no more nonsense, child,—it's bed-time. Come,—say good-night to thy father, Henri;—give them thy blessing, Jean—and let me get them into their beds before the Archbishop leaves the house, or they will be asking him as many questions as there are in the catechism."

      Thus enjoined, Papa Patoux kissed his children affectionately, signing the cross on their brows as they came up to him in turn, after the fashion of his own father, who had continued this custom up to his dying day. What they thought of the benediction in itself might be somewhat difficult to define, but it can be safely asserted that a passion of tears on the part of Babette, and a fit of demoniacal howling from Henri, would have been the inevitable result if Papa Patoux had refused to bestow it on them. Whether there were virtue in it or not, their father's mute blessing sent them to bed peaceably and in good humour with each other, and they trotted off very contentedly beside their mother, hushing their footsteps and lowering their voices as they passed the door of the room occupied by Cardinal Bonpre.

      "The Archbishop is not an angel, is he?" asked Babette whisperingly.

      Her mother smiled broadly.

      "Not exactly, my little one. Why such a foolish question?"

      "You said that Cardinal Bonpre was a saint, and that perhaps we should see an angel come down from heaven to visit him," replied Babette.

      "Well, you could not have thought the Archbishop came from heaven," interpolated Henri, scornfully,—"He came from his own house over the way with his own secretary behind him. Do angels keep secretaries?"

      Babette laughed aloud,—the idea was grotesque. The two children were just then ascending the wooden stairs to their bedroom, the mother carrying a lighted candle behind them, and at that moment the rich sonorous voice of the Archbishop, raised to a high and somewhat indignant tone, reached them with these words—"I consider that you altogether mistake your calling and position."

      Then the voice died away into inaudible murmurings.

      "They are quarrelling! The Archbishop is angry!" said Henri with a grin.

      "Perhaps Archbishops do not like saints," suggested Babette.

      "Tais-toi! Cardinal Bonpre is an archbishop himself, little silly," said Madame Patoux—"Therefore those great and distinguished Monseigneurs are like brothers."

      "That is why they are quarrelling!" declared Henri glibly,—"A boy told me in school that Cain and Abel were the first pair of brothers, and they quarrelled,—and all brothers have quarrelled ever since. It's in the blood, so that boy says,—and it is his excuse always for fighting HIS little brother. His little brother is six, and he is twelve;—and of course he always knocks his little brother down. He cannot help it, he says. And he gets books on physiology and heredity, and he learns in them that whatever is IN the blood has got to come out somehow. He says that it's because Cain killed Abel that there are wars between nations;—if Cain and Abel had never quarrelled, there would never have been any fighting in the world,—and now that it's in the blood of every body—"

      But further sapient discourse on the part of Henri was summarily put an end to by his mother's ordering him to kneel down and say his prayers, and afterwards bundling him into bed,—where, being sleepy, he speedily forgot all that he had been trying to talk about. Babette took more time in retiring to rest. She had very pretty, curly, brown hair, and Madame Patoux took a pride in brushing and plaiting it neatly.

      "I may be like Diane de Poitiers after all," she remarked, peering at herself in the small mirror when her thick locks were smoothed and tied back for the night—"Why should I not be?"

      "Because Diane de Poitiers was a wicked woman," said Madame Patoux energetically,—"and thou must learn to be a good girl."

      "But if Diane de Poitiers was bad, why do they talk so much about her even now, and put her in all the histories, and show her house, and say she was beautiful?" went on Babette.

      "Because people are foolish," said Madame, getting impatient—"Foolish people run after bad women, and bad women run after foolish people. Now say thy prayers."

      Obediently Babette knelt down, shut her eyes close, clasped her hands hard, and murmured the usual evening formula, heaving a small sigh after her "act of contrition," and looking almost saintly as she commended herself to her "angel guardian." Then her mother kissed her, saying—

      "Good-night, little daughter! Think of Our Lady and the saints, and then ask them to keep us safe from evil. Good-night!"

      "Good-night." responded Babette sleepily,—but all the same she did not think of Our Lady and the saints half as much as of Diane de Poitiers. There are few daughters of Eve to whom conquest does not seem a finer thing than humility; and the sovereignty of Diane de Poitiers over a king, seems to many a girl just conscious of her own charm, a more emphatic testimony to the supremacy of her sex, than the Angel's greeting of "Blessed art thou!" to the elected Virgin of the world.

III.

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      Meanwhile a somewhat embarrassing interview had taken place between the Archbishop of Rouen and Cardinal Bonpre. The archbishop, seen by the light of the one small lamp which illumined the "best room" of the Hotel Poitiers was certainly a handsome and imposing personage, broad-chested and muscular, with a massive head, well set on strong square shoulders, admirably adapted for the wearing of the dark violet soutane which fitted them as gracefully as a royal vesture draping the figure of a king. One disproportionate point, however, about his attire was, that the heavy gold crucifix which depended by a chain from his neck, did not, with him, look so much a sacred symbol as a trivial ornament,—whereas the simple silver one that gleamed against the rusty black scarlet-edged cassock of Cardinal Bonpre, presented itself as the plain and significant sign of holiness without the aid of jewellers'