Long Way Home [Nicephore]

[FRÈRE NICÉPHORE]

Nicephore saw Paul pause as he regarded the corpses that were still lying where he had struck them down, and he wondered for a moment, if his brother in Christ really had forgotten as well that he had been their murderer. Could a blow to the head really make you forgot even such heinous crimes? Paul seemed conflicted enough, by the words that had left his mouth earlier, and therefore Nicephore did not want to bring the subject up yet again, even though their deaths still were heavy on his mind. It went against all he stood for to leave them here without their last rites, without even so much as the decency to close their unseeing eyes. But Paul needed his figure to stabilize himself, and speaking in a slight variation of Christ’s Own words: ‘It is not the dead that need the physician, but the living’.

“And every drop of blood spilt on earth is a tear spilt by God in Heaven”, he added with a solemn and slightly wistful tone, casting one last glance towards the men lying on the ground. Someone would find them and call the police soon, or they would not even bother and push their poor remains into the Seine where they would float face down and be transported wherever the river wanted them to be, fish would eat away at them, and soon they would be beyond recognition. It made Nicephore very sad. Why did people have to die this way? Why would they carry on hurting each other when God’s own commandment was to love and care for one another?

To Paul’s statement of the Grand Terreur, he gave a thoughtful nod. “I have not witnessed this terrible year, non, but my father has told me much about it. How unbelievable, that people would force each other to the slaughter in masses! And then two years ago, they call it the Glorious Days, but how can something be glorious that caused pain and violence?” He felt a cold shower down his spine as he heard Paul predicting another revolution and he shook his head. “I pray to God you are wrong, Brother Paul!” he exclaimed fervently. “I pray to God you are not a Cassandra but a misguided prophet this time. Revolution can never be the way, it only brings death! How dare we mere humans assume divine power to bring change? Only God will bring change in his own good time, and by his means. We are all brothers and sisters, and as such we should communicate, not kill!”

[PAUL CHAUVELIN]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, width: 400px; background-image: url(http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc172/damijoandamija/sbg.jpg); padding-left: 50px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-top: 10px;] damaged I am merely the product…..of the life that I've lived An amalgam of sorrows.....and the wisdom they give But the weight has grown heavy [style= text-align: center]and it's dragging me down It's so hard not to sink now but I don't want to drown

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chauvelin

tags || Nicephore

God, Chauvelin thought irreverently, must go through a great many handkerchiefs. Still, he was careful not to voice that sentiment aloud. He didn't share the younger man's faith, in fact was generally prone to giving his acid wit free rein when the topic was religion, but he wasn't churlish by nature. However much he viewed the good brother as somewhat foolish and naive, Nicephore had shown him nothing but kindness, being polite in return wasn't too much to manage.

The young frere's mention of his father plucked again at Chauvelin's memory. There was something about that that he should recall, but whatever it was kept dancing just at the edge of his mind, like a shadow glimpsed out of the corner of one's eye that disappeared whenever you tried to look straight at it. It was frustrating, but he was too tired and his head hurt too much to try to chase it down just at the moment. There was no feeling of urgency about it, so not remembering probably wouldn't get him killed. And past experience said it would come to him eventually, if he quit trying to force it into the open, so he left it alone and replied to Nicephore's words.

"Not really so unbelievable," Paul said, "when you've lived as long as I have. Parents feel obliged to fight for their children." He might be trying to be polite, but the knock on the head he'd taken had brought his inner republican perilously close to the surface, and there were some things he simply couldn't let pass without comment. "I believe the general theory," he added thoughtfully, "is Deus facientes adiuvat.*"

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[/b] * God helps those who help themselves.[/div][/center][/td][/tr][/td][/tr][/table]

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[FRÈRE NICÉPHORE]

The man called Paul obviously felt well enough to argue and discuss with him as they were walking the dark and now empty streets of Paris towards the Franciscan convent. It would take them at least a good thirty minutes at this pace, but that was alright. Paul didn’t look like he was about to drop again the next second, there was hope that his memory loss was only temporal, as well as the dizziness and the other side effects of that hard blow. But he would leave that to the Brother Infirmarius to decide. What he would NOT leave to decide however was his opinion about violence. He had seen before that it differed very much from what Paul thought, but that did not mean he would back down. His insistence had gotten him expelled from the fighting accademy and nearly put on trial for desertation, so he knew that while he detested violence, making a point was not foreign to him.

“I don’t think it has anything to do with age, Brother Paul”, he disagreed, shaking his head with a lenient smile. “I would not be able to understand it if I was a hundred years old. God may help those who help themselves instead of complaining, but never if they go against his eternal laws.” And one of those laws, the most prominent even was that you should not kill. For Nicephore himself, he would have liked to add an eleventh commandment that no violence altogether should be used on any living soul, no force, no evil restraint, but he guessed that was somehow included in all the other commandments. If those were observed, no reason for even considering violence would stand a chance.

“If others break those laws”, he continued, anticipating that this argument might be used against him as it had been oft times before, “then there is no reason to retaliate with violence. How can we ever believe to succesfully change the world, if we don’t start with ourselves? The kingdom of God starts first within our own hearts, and only there it can blossom into something greater. But violence, whether in word or in deed, strangles this tiny seed and doesn’t allow it to breathe and grow. So violence will only create more violence, never peace!”

[PAUL CHAUVELIN]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, width: 400px; background-image: url(http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc172/damijoandamija/sbg.jpg); padding-left: 50px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-top: 10px;] damaged I am merely the product…..of the life that I've lived An amalgam of sorrows.....and the wisdom they give But the weight has grown heavy [style= text-align: center]and it's dragging me down It's so hard not to sink now but I don't want to drown

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chauvelin

tags || Nicephore

Chauvelin smiled at the frere's insistence that his opinion would never change, no matter how old he grew. The young always believed they had somehow already figured out everything there was to know, despite only having spent a fraction of the time in life's classroom that their elders had. If they survived, they usually learned better as they grew up -- just in time to be sneered at by the next generation of know-it-all children. There was a time (when he was younger, of course) when it had annoyed him, but now he just regarded with amusement their inevitable consignment with him on the dark side of thirty.

And then there were the people of faith, who to Paul's mind never grew up. Cocooned by religion, they didn't have to -- in fact, they were actively discouraged from doing so -- and they remained irritating throughout their lives. Nicephore was no exception to that, but Chauvelin still felt an odd, gentle affection for him. For all his unworldliness and devotion to dogma, the young man had a good heart, and lacked the hypocrisy and sophistry that marked so many religious.

Still, despite the compassion -- however rusty -- in the old spymaster's heart, he couldn't help but dispute the point, to at least try to wake the boy up a bit. It almost felt like a moral duty, he would just have to refrain from indulging his fondness for biting sarcasm.

It was hard, though. Very, very hard.

"And yet," Chauvelin said, "the argument could be made that God hasn't always been ... consistent ... about that injunction against violence. Joshua didn't exactly treat Jericho peacefully. Nor did Jehu with the House of Ahab. Unregenerate sinner though I am, at least I've never tossed a woman to a pack of hungry dogs."

notes ||

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TEMPLATE BY ANYA OF CAUTION 2.0

LYRICS BY ASSEMBLAGE 23[/center]

[FRÈRE NICÉPHORE]

Oh, they were starting on a theological debate now?! One could certainly argue that the man’s head would have to be on the mend if he could indulge in such pastime while walking again. Or, of course, this was also an effect of the blow to the head, which would result in him talking random and crazy things. Though his arguments weren’t really crazy, Nicephore had to admit they were rather thought out. Paul did seem to know his Old Testament, indeed! So he must have spent considerable time studying it, or else he would not be able to recall the studies in detail. That was something,that was nice even.There was nothing worse than a debate with someone who would make his radical points from hearsay and clichée, without knowing what he really was talking about.

Maybe there was not a lost soul in Paul, but a soul that begged to be proven wrong in his anti-deistic ideas. That was a challenge Nicephore would love to accept! Maybe God had put him in this man’s path so he could be set right again? It was not only about being saved from hell, it also was about a man’s personal peace of mind! It was an act of caritas to help out a man like Paul, who might be desperately searching for answers no one could give him but a true instrument of God.
“God’s ways only seem inconsistent in a way that the human mind can’t grasp it, you know”, he pointed out softly, then quoted Isaiah “’For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.’ And it is interesting that you only quote the Old Testament. The God stays the same, just the human interpretation of him changed with the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. God wanted to remind us that he is not the inapproachable God, the Judge and the Avenger. He wants to see us as his children.”

Nicephore could feel that his arguments were deviating from the point, in his ardent will to get his message across, so he inwardly put a little restraint on his passion, and continued with a lenient smile. “It is God’s son who has taught us that turning the other cheek is what we should do, for the humans have forgotten the true meaning of ‘an eye for an eye’. Instead of seeing it as a means of ‘do only retaliate with what has been done to you’, they call for a new eye to be taken every time it happens. If we follow the profoundest law, that we should love our neighbour like we love ourselves, then there will be no violence. For who willingly wants to harm himself?”

[PAUL CHAUVELIN]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, width: 400px; background-image: url(http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc172/damijoandamija/sbg.jpg); padding-left: 50px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-top: 10px;] damaged I am merely the product…..of the life that I've lived An amalgam of sorrows.....and the wisdom they give But the weight has grown heavy [style= text-align: center]and it's dragging me down It's so hard not to sink now but I don't want to drown

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chauvelin

tags || Nicephore

"Ah, yes," Chauvelin said with a laugh. It was softer than his usual sharp bark of derision, and he told himself that was in order to avoid jarring his aching head. Still, the sarcasm was there in his voice, if a bit muted. "'God moves in mysterious ways.'" He felt his wildly oscillating mood swing back toward irritation and tried to catch it, with only limited success. "Otherwise known as the 'don't worry your pretty little head about it' argument."

An irregularity in the cobbles caught at one of his feet and he lurched off balance for a moment, grip tightening briefly on Nicephore's shoulder to steady himself. His stomach lurched in sympathy with the sudden motion and he took several deep breaths, fist bunching against his leg as he fought for control. Still, he caught most of what the young monk was saying, and the talk of fathers and sons tugged at the sleeve of his raveled memory.

"Speaking of the Old Testament," the old spymaster said in answer to Nicephore's impassioned speech. He smiled, enjoying the debate, though part of his mind was still trying to pull whatever he wasn't recalling into the light. "A lovely dream, as long as everyone is beating his sword into a plowshare." He sighed. "Many of the National Assembly thought similarly. It didn't save them from the Guards' bayonets and bullets."

The Guard. An image of one of those soldiers firing at the Assembly President flashed into Chauvelin's head, and the pieces fell into place with an almost-audible click. General Lamarque hadn't been involved in that infamy -- had in fact been appalled by it -- but the uniform had finally brought it into focus.

"Nicephore," he said. "You're Jean's boy."

notes ||

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TEMPLATE BY ANYA OF CAUTION 2.0

LYRICS BY ASSEMBLAGE 23[/center]