“It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.”
MONTHS passed on. Gerard’s commercial speculation prospered, but at the expense of his true vocation. There have been poets, artists, musicians, who could so entirely separate the ideal and the actual in their lives, that the ideal could shine forth arrayed in “purple and gold and crimson, like the curtains of God’s tabernacle,” whilst the actual lay beneath their feet unlovely and unclean. Gerard, from temperament, was unable to do this. Moreover, his art was the only outlet and exponent left by his cold creed for his deeper and truer nature. It was really his religion. All those high and tender thoughts, all those hints and vague foreshadowings of
“God’s holy mysteries
Just on the outside of man’s dream,”
which make the soul that believes in God look up to Him and pray, could only make Gerard “discourse sweet music” ―no less sweet because it never wholly lost the undertone of sadness that confessed life an enigma without an answer. Therefore, when discord invaded Gerard’s life, it forced its way into his art. No true inspiration could visit the spirit immersed in the current prices of grain, and continually occupied with the problem (little as he himself understood it then) of how much money hunger could extort in exchange for bread. Perhaps there was also an unacknowledged fear of breathing the breath of life into his creation, lest, like that of Frankenstein, it should turn upon its maker and rend him. Moses, the prophet of God, the deliverer of his people, too vividly felt and realized, might have blasted Gerard’s commercial speculations with a breath, and driven him into the Desert, where his brethren dwelt, “to look upon their burdens.” And with poet or artist, reserve is ruin. At his hands who will not give all, the Muse will accept nothing.
Gerard’s oratorio, begun in December, received its double death blow in March, from the plot of Arboissère and from the tragedy of Calas―from the false “merchant nobility” who were making him their tool, and from the true, who, with every other career jealously closed against them, yet maintained, in shop and counting house, “a temper that shone with honor in the tumult or on the scaffold.” His work, then drawing prosperously near its completion, began from that time to droop and languish; the delicate finishing touches, without which all must remain imperfect, could not be given.
“What is the matter with our nightingale, that he sings so seldom now?” asked his kind-hearted host; for he was still a not-unwilling prisoner in the splendid cage of Pelletier.
“Moses will not come to me any more,” Gerard answered sadly; then catching helplessly at the thought of the moment, and giving at the same time a sure indication of waning inspiration, “One sense might assist another. If now I could but see how Moses and Pharaoh looked!”
“A modest wish, M. Gerard! Yet it is possible I may help you. I cannot indeed have the honor of presenting you at the court of Pharaoh; but I might introduce you to a celebrated antiquary, who has made the ancient Egyptians one of his numerous studies―M. Gebelin de Court.”
“Really? I have often heard of M. Gebelin. He it was of whom Mirabeau asked, half in irony, half in admiration, ‘Will anyone find us twenty men to carry out all the projects of Gebelin de Court?’”
“You will scarce think him a likely acquaintance for me. But the truth is, that some of these projects are practical, for the relief of the poor and oppressed, and in such I have, occasionally, been able to assist. So I can give you a note of introduction.”
“I thank you, monsieur. I will go to Paris tomorrow and see him.”
He silently resolved that, at the same time, he would see others also, for tidings of whom his heart was yearning, and all the more because he had loyally obeyed M. Bairdon, and forborne any attempt at correspondence.
In the afternoon of the next day, he reached the modest dwelling of the savant, and presented the note of introduction with which he had been furnished.
He was admitted; told that M. Gebelin would be disengaged shortly; and ushered into a kind of waiting room, which, as he noticed with surprise, looked far more like the office of a secretary of state than the study of a philosopher. Papers, writing materials, and formidable legal books, gave it an unmistakable air of business; and two men―plainly dressed, like countrymen of the better class, but with a look of intelligence and education―stood near the window, talking. They glanced doubtfully at Gerard, and lowered their voices as he entered. But he had heard enough to know that the “affaire Calas” was under discussion; and his mode of life tended to set him at ease in society of any kind. He addressed a courteous observation on the subject to the strangers, safely assuming that their sympathies were on the same side as his own.
They replied with equal courtesy, and one of them remarked, “Is it not strange, monsieur, to what an extent fanaticism can harden the heart of even a right-thinking and honorable man? Father Bourges, the Dominican who attended Calas to the end, and avowed his conviction of his innocence with a truly noble courage, has now become the jailor and persecutor of the poor lad Pierre Calas, and is trying to induce him by threats and promises to abjure the Faith.”
The expression “the Faith” struck Gerard as rather singular. But he answered, “What would you expect? He is a son of St. Dominic. In my opinion France could spare these black-coated ravens quite as well as their more audacious brethren of the Society of Jesus. And their hour will come. The world will not endure much longer the follies and abominations of priestcraft.”
He stopped, surprised at the effect of his words. For both the strangers drew back, and stood looking at him with evident doubt and disapproval.
“I imagined I was speaking to philosophers,” thought Gerard. “Who can these men be, and how can I possibly have offended them?”
They did not leave him in ignorance. “Young sir,” the elder of the two said gravely, “allow an old man to remind you that ‘the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God;’ and that the cause of ‘the Evangel’ cannot be promoted, and may be seriously injured, by such unseemly violence of language.”
“The cause of the Evangel?” Gerard repeated in surprise. The term had been familiar once, but for fourteen long years had been unheard by him. “I have then the honor of addressing members of the Protestant communion?” he said. His companions were equally surprised. “If you are not one of us, monsieur,” the younger observed, “your presence here must be a mistake.”
“And yet no mistake,” Gerard answered, laughing to hide his embarrassment. “Knowing M. Gebelin de Court by reputation as a very learned antiquarian, I ventured to hope he would lend me his valuable assistance upon a subject connected with his favorite studies.”
“You should also know, monsieur, that M. Gebelin de Court is not only antiquarian, savant, philosopher; but also agent and protector of the oppressed Protestant Church―as his heroic father, the venerable Antoine Court, was her champion and the restorer of her worship.”
Antoine Court! Again vague memories haunted Gerard, awakened by that name. He felt them vexatious, and was provoked with himself for the inadvertence which had aroused them. Had he not determined sedulously to avoid all that could recall his past? And now, like one walking in a dream, he had stepped unconsciously into the very midst of old associations. He ought to have known, at least, that Gebelin de Court was a Protestant. No doubt he had heard the circumstance mentioned; but on account of the slight importance attached in his circle to religious distinctions, it had escaped his memory.
“In the society to which I belong,” he said, “a man’s creed is little regarded. We men of the world consider his character, and that alone.”
“Does monsieur then imagine that a man’s creed in no way influences his character?” asked the younger man―who yet was not young―fixing dark, intelligent eyes on Gerard’s face.
“That I dare not affirm,” Gerard answered. “But even if it does, toleration and benevolence will do more to commend a man’s creed to his neighbors than proselytizing fanaticism. Not,” he added frankly, “that I have any creed to propagate; being, like most men of the world, what you would call an unbeliever.”
“A sad confession, from lips so young,” said the elder stranger.
“I am speaking to Protestants,” Gerard returned, courteously. “Accustomed as you are, messieurs, to bow before the verdict of reason, I marvel that you have not brought to the bar of that judge a larger proportion of your traditional creed. Methinks other mysteries would share the fate of transubstantiation, if submitted to an equally searching and impartial scrutiny.”
“The same reason which bids us reject the traditions of men, bids us receive, in all humility, the revelation of God,” said the younger stranger steadily.
“The voice that says ‘Reject’ is audible enough,” Gerard answered. “That which says ‘Receive’ needs keener ears than mine. But I should like to hear in what manner you think faith can vindicate herself at the bar of reason.”
“By direct historical proofs; which all must acknowledge are at least so strong that if the facts on which Christianity is based had been indifferent to mankind they would never have been seriously questioned. By the manner in which those facts are related―true to each other in all their intricate relations, true to history, true to human nature and human life. By their many undesigned and undesignable coincidences. By the way in which those spiritual facts which we call doctrines arise out of them, are bound up with them, and are taught and confirmed by them. Most of all, by the words and the works, the life and the character, of Him who is at once the Revealer and the Revelation. By his words, which even His enemies are forced to call ‘divine.’ By His works, which stand out from the multitude of false and fabled miracles in their simple majesty, and in their divine restraint and economy of force. By His life and His character, which could as little have been the spontaneous growth of His age and circumstances, as the rough stone of the quarry could take the grace of the finished statue without the sculptor’s hand, as little the creation of human genius as the sun in yonder sky. Lastly, by the lives and characters of those who in oil ages have acted and suffered through Him, and for Him. And by the love wherewith they have loved Him, which if He be not indeed ‘alive for evermore,’ and in constant living communion with their spirits, is an unexplained and unexplainable mystery.”
“These words are significant,” Gerard answered, after a long pause. “I will remember them.”
He did remember them, all his life long; as a man struck blind by lightning remembers the last scene on which his eyes have looked ere their light is extinguished forever.