eligion at
Rome!" We become aware of a general lassitude and ennervation in the
firm texture of Madame Gervaisais's nature before the first approach is
made to her convictions. And how are those approaches made? Can any one
point to the first step? Has it ever been positively ascertained whether
a certain meeting, a borrowed book, a striking coincidence, a
conversation which has insensibly glided into a particular channel, was
the result of chance or long premeditation? In the present case it is
impossible to detect the earliest shadow of design falling across
circumstance. Was Madame Gervaisais's landlady sent to offer prayers for
the recovery of the sick child at the Sant' Agostino? Did the
man-servant read her journal and report its contents? Had the Russian
countess come on purpose to make her acquaintance when she found her
sitting under the oak tree at Castel Gandolfo reading Lammenais's essay
on religious indifference? The mystery which surrounds these questions
corresponds entirely to similar unexplained occurrences in Madame
Craven's seductive pages, where the finger of the sacred-supernatural is
tacitly supposed to play a decisive part. But, chance or calculation, it
leads in the same direction; and after a year and a half in Rome, Madame
Gervaisais, who has given up Lammenais for a book of her Russian
friend's, and has fallen into a state of languid dejection, takes to
attending the regular sermon at the Jesuits' church, where the music,
the paintings, the architecture, corrupt in style as they are, gradually
induce a sort of somnolent ecstasy. Before many Sundays pass a
celebrated preacher ascends the pulpit. "He was known as a man of talent
in the order--an actor, a pantomimist, a comedian, a tragedian, whose
gesticulatory and perambulatery eloquence swept the platform, and whose
dramatic fire was enough to kindle the wood of the desk. He declaimed,
wept, sobbed, raised his voice, let it break, whimpered, thundered, and
his discourse gave the congregation all the emotions and illusions of a
theatrical recitation." Madame Gervaisais at first hardly listens, but a
few words suddenly arrest her attention, and she hears the preacher
say, "Rash and audacious woman--and not only rash and audacious, but
wretched and unhappy--who dares to disdain the manifestations of the
divine will, and declares that her own reason is the only light she
needs!" proceeding to describe her habitual attitude of mind, and
winding up w