'Alas!' she cried; 'the king! my husband! does he know it?' 'Ay!
Madam,' they answered; 'the king himself has ordained it.' 'God!'
she cried; 'how is this? and what counsellors be they who have given
him this advice? O God, be pitiful! for unless Thou art pitiful I
fear this offence will never be pardoned unto him;' and asking for
her 'Hours,' suddenly betook herself to prayer, weeping."
Like the shrinking, childish Elisabeth, the Pope also wept at that
dubious service to his Church from one who was, after all, a Huguenot
in belief; and Huguenots themselves pitied his end.--"Ah! ces
pauvres morts! que j'ai eu un meschant conseil! Ah! ma nourrice! ma
mie, ma nourrice! que de sang, et que de meurtres!"
It was a peculiarity of the naturally devout [134] Gaston that,
habituated to yield himself to the poetic guidance of the Catholic
Church in her wonderful, year-long, dramatic version of the story of
redemption, he had ever found its greatest day least evocative of
proportionate sympathy. The sudden gaieties of Easter morning, the
congratulations to the Divine Mother, the sharpness of the recoil
from one extreme of feeling to the other, for him never cleared away
the Lenten pre-occupation with Christ's death and passion: the empty
tomb, with the white clothes lying, was still a tomb: there was no
human warmth in the "spiritual body": the white flowers, after all,
were those of a funeral, with a mortal coldness, amid the loud
Alleluias, which refused to melt at the startling summons, any more
than the earth will do in the March morning because we call it
Spring.
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