France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799 -- Fiction; Historical fiction
He paused, holding the crowd breathless; then in a lower tone he
continued: "Yet how do the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain
thing? They trample on God! They say this exists, I see it. That
exists, I hear it. The other exists, I touch it. And that is all--that
is all. But does it come of what we see and hear and feel that a man
will die for his brother? Does it come of what we see and hear
and feel that a man will die for a thought? That he will die for a
creed? That he will die for honour? That, withal, he will die for
anything--for anything, while he may live? I trow not. It comes of
God! Of God only.
"And they trample on Him. In the streets, in the senate, in high
places. And He says, 'Who is on My side?' My children, my brethren, we
have lived long in a time of ease and safety; we have been long
untried by aught but the ordinary troubles of life, untrained by the
imminent issues of life and death. Now, in these late years of the
world, it has pleased the Almighty to try us; and who is on His side?
Who is prepared to put the unseen before the seen, honour before life,
God before man, chivalry before baseness, the Church before the world?
Who is on His side? Spurned in this little corner of His creation,
bruised and bleeding and trampled under foot, yet ruler of earth and
heaven, life and death, judgment and eternity, ruler of all the
countless worlds of space, He comes! He comes! He comes, God Almighty,
which was, and is, and is to be! And who is on His side?"
As the last word fell from his lips, and the light above his head went
suddenly out, and darkness fell on the breathless hush, the listening
hundreds, an indescribable wave of emotion passed through the crowd.
Men stirred their feet with a strange, stern sound, that spreading,
passed in muttered thunder to the vaults; while women sobbed, and here
and there shrieked and prayed aloud. From the altar a priest in a
voice that shook with feeling blessed the congregation; then, even as
I awoke from a trance of attention, Madame touched my arm, and signed
to me to follow her, and gliding quickly from her place, led the way
down the aisle. Before the preacher's last words had ceased to ring in
my ears or my heart had forgotten to be moved, we were walking under
the stars with the night air cooling our faces; a moment, and we were
in the house and stood again in the lighted salon where I had first
found Madame Catinot.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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