The Master-Christian | Page 5

at the Vatican, as "Our good Saint
Felix." Tall and severely thin, with fine worn features of ascetic and
spiritual delicacy, he had the indefinably removed air of a scholar and
thinker, whose life was not, and never could be in accordance with the
latter-day customs of the world; the mild blue eyes, clear and steadfast,
most eloquently suggested "the peace of God that passeth all
understanding";--and the sensitive intellectual lines of the mouth and
chin, which indicated strength and determined will, at the same time
declared that both strength and will were constantly employed in the
doing of good and the avoidance of evil. No dark furrows of hesitation,
cowardice, cunning, meanness or weakness marred the expressive
dignity and openness of the Cardinal's countenance,--the very poise of
his straight spare figure and the manner in which he moved, silently
asserted that inward grace of spirit without which there is no true grace
of body,--and as he paused in his slow pacing to and fro to gaze
half-wistfully, half-mournfully upon the almost ghastly artistic
achievement of "Le Mourant" he sighed, and his lips moved as if in
prayer. For the brief, pitiful history of human life is told in that antique

and richly-wrought alabaster,--its beginning, its ambition, and its end.
At the summit of the shrine, an exquisite bas-relief shows first of all the
infant clinging to its mother's breast,--a stage lower down is seen the
boy in the eager flush of youth, speeding an arrow to its mark from the
bent bow,--then, on a still larger, bolder scale of design is depicted the
proud man in the zenith of his career, a noble knight riding forth to
battle and to victory, armed cap-a-pie, his war-steed richly caparisoned,
his lance in rest,--and finally, on the sarcophagus itself is stretched his
nude and helpless form, with hands clenched in the last gasping
struggle for breath, and every muscle strained and fighting against the
pangs of dissolution.
"But," said the Cardinal half aloud, with the gentle dawning of a tender
smile brightening the fine firm curve of his lips,--"it is not the end! The
end here, no doubt;--but the beginning--THERE!"
He raised his eyes devoutly, and instinctively touched the silver
crucifix hanging by its purple ribbon at his breast. The orange-red glow
of the sun encompassed him with fiery rings, as though it would fain
consume his thin, black-garmented form after the fashion in which
flames consumed the martyrs of old,--the worn figures of mediaeval
saints in their half-broken niches stared down upon him stonily, as
though they would have said,--"So we thought,--even we!- -and for our
thoughts and for our creed we suffered willingly,--yet lo, we have come
upon an age of the world in which the people know us not,--or knowing,
laugh us all to scorn."
But Cardinal Bonpre being only conscious of a perfect faith, discovered
no hints of injustice or despair in the mutilated shapes of the
Evangelists surrounding him,--they were the followers of Christ,--and
being such, they were bound to rejoice in the tortures which made their
glory. It was only the unhappy souls who suffered not for Christ at all,
whom he considered were truly to be compassionated.
"And if," he murmured as he moved on--"this knight of former days,
who is now known to us chiefly, alas! as 'Le Mourant', was a faithful
servant of our Blessed Lord, why then it is as well with him as with any
of the holy martyrs. May his soul rest in peace!"

Stopping an instant at the next sculptural wonder in his way--the
elaborately designed tomb of Cardinal Amboise, concerning the eternal
fate of which "brother in Christ" the good Felix had no scruples or fears
whatever, he stepped softly down from the choir- chapel where he had
been wandering to and fro for some time in solitary musings, and went
towards the great central nave. It was quite empty,--not even a weary
silk-weaver, escaped from one of the ever-working looms of the city,
had crept in to tell her beads. Broad, vacant, vast, and suggestive of a
sublime desolation, the grand length and width of the Latin Cross
which shapes the holy precincts, stretched into vague distance, one or
two lamps were burning dimly at little shrines set in misty dark
recesses,--a few votive candles, some lit, some smouldered out, leaned
against each other crookedly in their ricketty brass stand, fronting a
battered statue of the Virgin. The Angelus had ceased ringing some ten
minutes since,--and now one solemn bell, swinging high up in the
Cathedral towers, tolled forth the hour of six, slowly and with a strong
pulsating sound which seemed to shake the building down to its very
vaults and deep foundations. As the last stroke shivered and thundered
through the air, a strain of music, commencing