“Yes, I know it,” and Vergniaud’s eyes were clouded and his brows knitted, “I know it only too well!  Greater than any fault of Church-discipline is a wrong to human life,—­and I wronged and betrayed an innocent woman who loved me!  Her soul was as sweet as the honey-cup of a flower,—­I poisoned it.  That was as bad as poisoning the Sacrament!  I should have kept it sweet and pure; I should have let the Church go, and been honest!  I should have seen to it that the child of my love grew up to honour his father,—­not to merely live for the murder of him!  Yes!—­I know what I should have done—­I know what I have not done—­and I am afraid I shall always know!  Unless I can do something to atone I have a strange feeling that I shall pass from this world to the next—­and that the first thing I shall see will be her face!  Her face as I saw it when the sunshine made a halo round her hair, and she prayed to her guardian angel.”

He shuddered slightly, and his voice died away in a half whisper.  The Cardinal pressed his hand again warmly and tenderly.

“Courage, courage!” he said.  “It is true we cannot do away with our memories,—­but we can try and make them sweet.  And who knows how much God may help us in the task?  Never forget the words that tell us how ’the angels rejoice more over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine just persons.’”

“Ah!” and the Abbe smiled, recovering somewhat of his usual manner, “And that is so faithfully enforced upon us, is it not?  The Churches are all so lenient?  And Society is so kind?—­so gentle in its estimate of its friends?  Our Church, for example, has never persecuted a sinner?—­has never tortured an unbeliever?  It has been so patient, and so unwearying in searching for stray sheep and bringing them back with love and tenderness and pity to the fold?  And Churchmen never say anything which is slanderous or cruel?  And we all follow Christ’s teaching so accurately?  Yes!—­Ah well—­I wonder!  I wonder what will be the end!  I wonder why we came into life at all—­I wonder why we go!  Fortunately for me, by and by, there will be an end of all wondering, and you can write above my tomb, ‘Implora pace’!  The idea of commencing a new life is to me, horrible,—­I prefer ‘Nirvana’ or nothingness.  Never have I read truer words than those of Byron,

    ’Count o’er the joys thine hours have seen,
     Count o’er thy days from anguish free,
     And know whatever thou hast been,
    ‘Tis something better not to be.’”

“I cannot think that is either true or good philosophy,” said the Cardinal, “It is merely the utterance of a disappointed man in a misanthropic mood.  There is no ‘not to be’ in creation.  Each morning that lights the world is an expression of ‘to be’!  And however much we may regret the fact, my dear Vergniaud, we find ourselves in a state of being and we must make the best of it,—­not the worst.  Is that not so?”