Such was this Mr. Palsgrave, who now sat at Mrs. Glendinning's breakfast table, a corner of one of that lady's generous napkins so inserted into his snowy bosom, that its folds almost invested him as far down as the table's edge; and he seemed a sacred priest, indeed, breakfasting in his surplice.
"Pray, Mr. Palsgrave," said Mrs. Glendinning, "break me off a bit of that roll."
Whether or not his sacerdotal experiences had strangely refined and spiritualized so simple a process as breaking bread or whether it was from the spotless aspect of his hands: certain it is that Mr. Palsgrave acquitted himself on this little, occasion, in a manner that beheld of old by Leonardo, might have given that artist no despicable hint touching his celestial painting. As Pierre regarded him, sitting there so mild and meek; such an image of white-browed and white-handed, and napkined immaculateness; and as he felt the gentle humane radiations which came from the clergyman's manly and rounded beautifulness; and as he remembered all the good that he knew of this man, and all the good that he had heard of him, and could recall no blemish in his character; and as in his own concealed misery and forlornness, he contemplated the open benevolence, and beaming excellent-hearted-ness of Mr. Palsgrave, the thought darted through his mind, that if any living being was capable of giving him worthy counsel in his strait; and if to anyone he could go with Christian propriety and some small hopefulness, that person was the one before him.
"Pray, Mr. Glendinning," said the clergyman, pleasantly, as Pierre was silently offering to help him to some tongue- "don't let me rob you of it-pardon me, but you seem to have very little yourself this morning, I think. An execrable pun, I know: but"-turning toward Mrs. Glendinning-"when one is made to feel very happy, one is somehow apt to say very silly things. Happiness and silliness-ah, it's a suspicious coincidence."
"Mr. Palsgrave," said the hostess-"Your cup is empty. Dates! — We were talking yesterday, Mr. Palsgrave, concerning that vile fellow, Ned."
"Well, Madam," responded the gentleman, a very little uneasily.
"He shall not stay on any ground of mine; my mind is made up, sir. Infamous man! — did he not have a wife as virtuous and beautiful now, as when I first gave her away at your altar? — It was the sheerest and most gratuitous profligacy."
The clergyman mournfully and assentingly moved his head.
"Such men," continued the lady, flushing with the sincerest indignation-"are to my way of thinking more detestable than murderers."
"That is being a little hard upon them, my dear Madam," said Mr. Palsgrave, mildly.
"Do you not think so, Pierre?" — now, said the lady, turning earnestly upon her son-"is not the man, who has sinned like that Ned, worse than a murderer? Has he not sacrificed one woman completely, and given infamy to another-to both of them-for their portion. If his own legitimate boy should now hate him, I could hardly blame him."
"My dear Madam," said the clergyman, whose eyes having followed Mrs. Glendinning's to her son's countenance, and marking a strange trepidation there, had thus far been earnestly scrutinizing Pierre's not wholly repressible emotion; — "My dear Madam," he said, slightly bending over his stately episcopal-looking person-"Virtue has, perhaps, an over-ardent Champion in you; you grow too warm; but Mr. Glendinning, here, he seems to grow too cold. Pray, favor us with your views, Mr. Glendinning."
"I will not think now of the man," said Pierre, slowly, and looking away from both his auditors-"let us speak of Delly and her infant-she has, or had one, I have loosely heard;- their case is miserable indeed."
"The mother deserves it," said the lady, inflexibly-"and the child-reverend sir, what are the words of the Bible?"
" The sins of the father shall be visited upon the children to the third generation,'" said Mr. Palsgrave, with some slight reluctance in his tones. "But Madam, that does not mean, that the community is in any way to take the infamy of the children into their own voluntary hands, as the conscious delegated stewards of God's inscrutable dispensations. Because it is declared that the infamous consequences of sin shall be hereditary, it does not follow that our personal and active loathing of sin, should descend from the sinful sinner to his sinless child."
"I understand you, sir," said Mrs. Glendinning, coloring slightly, "you think me too censorious. But if we entirely forget the parentage of the child, and every way receive the child as we would any other, feel for it in all respects the same, and attach no sign of ignominy to it-how then is the Bible dispensation to be fulfilled? Do we not then put ourselves in the way of its fulfilment, and is that wholly free from impiety?"
Here it was the clergyman's turn to color a little, and there was a just perceptible tremor of the under lip.
"Pardon me," continued the lady, courteously, "but if there is any one blemish in the character of the Reverend Mr. Palsgrave, it is that the benevolence of his heart, too much warps in him the holy rigor of our Church's doctrines. For my part, as I loathe the man, I loathe the woman, and never desire to behold the child."
A pause ensued, during which it was fortunate for Pierre, that by the social sorcery of such occasions as the present, the eyes of all three were intent upon the cloth; all three for the moment, giving loose to their own distressful meditations upon the subject in debate, and Mr. Palsgrave vexedly thinking that the scene was becoming a little embarrassing.
Pierre was the first who spoke; as before, he steadfastly kept his eyes away from both his auditors; but though he did not designate his mother, something in the tone of his voice showed that what he said was addressed more particularly to her.
"Since we seem to have been strangely drawn into the ethical aspect of this melancholy matter," said he, "suppose we go further in it; and let me ask, how it should be between the legitimate and the illegitimate child-children of one father-when they shall have passed their childhood?"