“My dim sight aching,
Gently thou’rt making
Meet for awaking
Where all is bright.”
M L’ABBÉ VERGITÔT, Curé d’ Escouey, responded promptly to the call of his dying brother. He came in his carriage, duly attended by an acolyte, bearing all that was necessary for the administration of the last sacraments. He was a tan dark man, with much dignity of manner and bearing; and the farmer and his wife received him with an awe and reverence which ran no risk of being destroyed by familiarity, since, on account of their distance from the town, they did not often see him.
Griselle led him to the chamber of the penitent, and leaving them alone together, went in search of Gustave.
She found him, as she expected, in the only quiet spot the busy crowded farmhouse afforded, the loft where the apples were stored.
“His confession cannot take long,” she said mournfully. “Let us be ready. I know he would wish us to assist at what follows.”
Gustave hesitated. A boy’s skepticism is usually more combative and self-asserting than a man’s. “Such mummery!” he muttered.
“Hush! brother. Would you grieve him now?”
“No,” said Gustave, while large tears stood in his eyes. “Besides―I don’t know―there may be some truth in the story of that life which he says was given for me.”
But the abbé’s interview with Goudin did not prove by any means a brief one. Gustave and Griselle waited long, at first perplexed and anxious, at length alarmed.
Meanwhile, in the chamber of death a scene was passing, five or six years before far from unusual, but at that date rather extraordinary.
M. l’Abbé Vergitôt had been a bitter enemy of the Jansenists, a zealous partisan of the Jesuits, and an intimate friend of the fanatical Archbishop of Paris, Christophe de Beaumont. That prelate, most reluctantly obliged to sacrifice him upon the altar of peace and send him into banishment, had prevailed upon his brother of Rouen to provide him with a good benefice at a distance from the capital. But banishment could not change the character or cool the zeal of Vergitôt. If, in these degenerate days, his brethren had grown so careless or so venal as to administer the sacraments to manifest Jansenists and heretics, he at least would be “amongst the faithless faithful only found.” No unworthy compromise, no base truckling to the powers of this world, should stain his honor as champion of the Church, guardian of the ark of God. What could decrees of Parliament, or concessions wrung from a weak and dissolute king master to him? The Pope had anathematized all who dared to maintain that the propositions he condemned as heretical were not to be found in the works of Jansenius. And in France the Bull Unigenitus had become the law of the land. This he knew, and knowing this, his duty was plain.
If anyone had asked him to consider that the Parliament of Paris, and the provincial parliaments also, had made it a criminal offense to demand a “billet of confession” or similar test of orthodoxy from a penitent in danger of death, he would have answered that nothing could please him better than to suffer in a cause so holy, and he would have been quite sincere. He might have added that this was just the moment for some such striking demonstration of zeal and fidelity. The affairs of his party were well-nigh desperate; the triumph of the Parliaments and the Jansenists almost complete.
M. l’Abbé Vergitôt was behind the times. Between 1757 and 1761 the world had changed; was it his merit or his misfortune that he had not changed with it? How could there be change in truth and falsehood, in right and wrong?
After what seemed an almost interminable delay, the anxious watchers heard him descend the creaking stairs, and with a quick and hasty step. Griselle came to meet him, but he passed her by with a cold and stately salutation, and without speaking a word entered his carriage and drove away.
Griselle, followed by Gustave, went at once to the chamber of the dying priest.
He looked so pale and weak that Griselle was alarmed. But his voice was calm and firm, though sorrowful exceedingly, as he said―
“M. l’Abbé declines to administer.”
Griselle, inexpressibly shocked, was silent. But Gustave, though he could not see the injury, felt the insult keenly, and broke out in passionate exclamation. “The fool, the wretch, the villain! Shame on him He shall learn―”
A look from Goudin silenced him effectually. “Let him alone, for the Lord hath bidden him,” he said. Then, gently as ever, to Griselle, who offered him wine, “I do not need it; I am strong. Now go, my children; for this wrestling I must be left alone.”
Gustave obeyed; but Griselle, fearing his evident weakness, remained, concealed by the curtains of the bed.
Frangois Goudin was cut to the heart. Had he been but a servant, who had toiled from infancy to gray hairs for his master―had he been but a soldier, who had fought and bled and endured hardness for his king―and had the servant been dismissed with scorn and ignominy, the soldier stripped of his uniform and branded as a traitor, the pang would have been agonizing. But this was infinitely worse. For the servant worshipped his Master, the soldier adored his King. And what was now denied him was not the testimony of his Master’s approval only, but, as he had been taught to think, the passport to His presence.
And yet there were many precedents to guide him. Such cases as his had occurred not unfrequently, some even within his own knowledge. A priest’s verdict upon his fellow priest, a man’s upon his fellow-man, was assuredly not infallible. All men were liable to err. All men, he reflected―then he himself as well as his judge. Ought he to have withheld or softened the expression of his opinions, or at least to have yielded somewhat? A few concessions, to the uninitiated almost absurdly trifling, would have contented the abbé, and saved all this agony. What! is God mocked? should he dare to enter His presence with a He in his right hand?
He remembered the dying mm of Port Royal, who, when refused the sacraments by Jesuit fanaticism, raised her eyes in calm assurance to heaven, repeating the words of St. Augustine, “Crede et manducasti.” And did not he also believe, and with all his heart, and mind, and soul, and strength? And the love of God―was it not infinite? Yes, but sin was infinite too. His sins were more than he could number, and greater than he could bear. The remembrance of them was grievous unto him, the burden of them was intolerable.
But then, there was the Cross. Beyond all shadow of doubt, his only hope was there. The question was not from whom peace and pardon were to come―that was settled long ago―but through what channel. How should he touch the Cross? How should the Cross touch him with healing efficacy?
Christ’s faithful soldier and servant had he truly been, well-nigh all his life. But the servant had held communion with his Master only through the appointed officers of the household, the soldier had caught the word of command as it passed along the ranks, content to see the King himself afar off, at review or festival, and to cherish a trembling hope that when the strife was over and the victory won, one look from the Face, one word from the lips he loved might be vouchsafed, even to him. And now those set in authority disallowed his claim, and did all that in them lay to bar his access.
In this sore strait and agony what was left to soldier and servant? Only to go himself―alone―into the King’s presence-chamber, through the way opened long ago by a bleeding hand, and which since then “no man can shut.” Alone he must enter there, unaided he must plead his cause with the Father of spirits, “the King immortal, invisible.” What plea should he bring with him there? That of God’s servant in the days of old, who “wept sore, and turned his face towards the wall” and prayed, saying, “Remember now, O Lord, I beseech thee, how I have walked before thee in truth, and with a perfect heart?” He might have pleaded this as truly as Hezekiah―but the thought was abhorrent. He flung it from him with a shudder. In the pure light of that Presence where he stood now he could only veil his face, bow his head, and cry “Unclean.”
Yet one word he could say, in spite of all―not, “Lord, I have walked before thee in truth and sincerity,” but, “Lord, thou knowest all things―thou knowest that I love thee.” And the cry came up from the very depths of his heart.
But with it came a strange sense of its inadequacy, its futility. “I have loved thee” seemed as poor a plea as “I have served thee.” What, after all, was that cry, “Thou knowest that I love thee,” save the echo of another voice, “I have loved thee with an everlasting love?” “We love Him because” ―and only because― “He first loved us.” “And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us.”
The little lamp which had been kindled to cheer and illumine his darkness―his love to God―was no more regarded now, for the casement was flung open wide, and the glorious sunshine of God’s love to him streamed around him.
And thus the King looked upon him, with “those deep pathetic eyes that closed in death to save him.” That look transformed the faithful soldier and servant into the happy child―the kneeling suppliant into the friend and brother, who trusted and was at rest. This was Frangois Goudin’s last lesson.
Then there was a great calm, a silence like that the mystic seer of Patmos felt, for half an hour, in the Heaven of heavens. Whether he was conscious or unconscious, in the body or out of the body, Frangois Goudin scarcely knew. He only knew that Christ was with him.
But the peace that filled his soul like a river, or rather like “a place of broad rivers and streams,” was so clear in its tranquil depth, that the cares and interests of others could, even yet, be reflected there.
By-and-by he stirred and murmured softly, “Griselle.” She was at his side in a moment. “I have a word for thee, my child,” he said.
She put wine and water to his lips, with an entreaty that he would wait to speak to her till he was stronger.
“I am strong now,” he answered. “My daughter, commend me to your honored father; assure him of my gratitude for many kindnesses, and entreat him to add to them yet one more, pardon for my dear godson. Gustave will do well, Griselle, if God give him the child’s heart, which till now he never had. That is my prayer for him. For thee, dear child―” For a moment his voice faltered. Then he resumed, laying his hand tenderly on her bowed head, “God give thee rest, Griselle, in the house of thine husband.”
A thrill passed through the girl’s slender frame, but her face was hidden. “Tell M. Gerard this from the border of the grave,” the dying priest continued― “where I stand now, all is real. With me, what seems has passed away forever, only what is remains. I stand alone, face to face with death. Yet not alone. God is, and Christ. His life is real, as the death He came to conquer―His redemption sure, as the decay of this mortal frame. ‘As it is appointed unto men once to die, so Christ―’” His voice grew faint, and Griselle only caught the words, “‘Unto them that look’ ― ‘appear’ ― ‘unto salvation.’”
She rose and once more administered a cordial. But one doubt so troubled her loving heart that she could not resist the yearning wish to have it set at rest. “Dear father,” she asked, with faltering lips, “will you assure me there is no shadow left now, by what took place today?”
“There is none,” he answered calmly. “I do not think of the after― I cannot, and I need not. His hand shall lead, His right hand guide. He has the keys of hell and of death. But one word more, Griselle. Gentle and loving hast thou been to me; not now alone, but always. For those kind words and looks in the bygone days, cared for and noted far more than thou couldst know, I thank thee now, my child. But most of all for the tenderness that has made these hours of pain and weakness a Sabbath and a festival to me. I never thought to be tended thus. I thought to die alone, in my lodging, with only the concierge to give me a cup of water in my need. What have I done that God should provide such pleasant things for me at last? Perhaps it was well they came not sooner, else it might have been hard to leave them. Yet no―not hard. How could I but rejoice and be glad to go ‘unto God, my exceeding joy?’”
Another day wore slowly by. Then Griselle and Gustave sat together, keeping watch beside the dead. And Griselle said softly, “Brother, do not weep thus. He has only gone whither he wished to go―unto God his exceeding joy.”