| By Author | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Title | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Language |
|
Download this book: [ ASCII | HTML | PDF ] Look for this book on Amazon Tweet |
Title: The Catholic World, Vol. 16, October 1872-March 1873
Author: Various
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.
*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Catholic World, Vol. 16, October 1872-March 1873" ***
The Catholic World
A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science
Vol. XVI.
October 1872 to March 1873
The Catholic Publication House.
New York
1873
CONTENTS
Contents.
The Catholic World. Vol. XVI., No. 91.—October, 1872.
Bismarck And The Jesuits.
Choice In No Choice.
Fleurange.
Review of Vaughan’s Life Of S. Thomas.
The Progressionists.
Gavazzi Versus The See Of S. Peter.
Number Thirteen. An Episode Of The Commune.
On A Picture Of S. Mary Bearing Doves To Sacrifice.
Centres Of Thought In The Past. First Article. The Monasteries.
Versailles.
Father Isaac Jogues, S.J.
Doña Ramona.
The Distaff.
A Martyr’s Journey.
Odd Stories: III. Peter The Powerful.
New Publications.
The Catholic World. Vol. XVI., No. 92.—November, 1872.
Centres Of Thought In The Past. Second Article. The Universities.
Fleurange.
The Poor Ploughman.
A Dark Chapter In English History.
The Progressionists.
The Virgin.
The Homeless Poor Of New York City.
The House That Jack Built.
Where Are You Going?
Number Thirteen. An Episode Of The Commune. Concluded.
Use And Abuse Of The Novel.
Review Of Vaughan’s Life Of S. Thomas: Concluded.
To S. Mary Magdalen.
God’s Acre.
Personal Recollections Of The Late President Juarez Of Mexico.
New Publications.
The Catholic World. Vol. XVI., No. 93.—December, 1872.
The Spirit Of Protestantism.
Fleurange.
Sayings Of John Climacus.
Dante’s Purgatorio. Canto Fifth.
Sanskrit And The Vedas.
The House That Jack Built.
S. Peter’s Roman Pontificate.
Sayings.
The Progressionists.
Christian Art Of The Catacombs.
Beating The Air.
A Retrospect.
The Russian Clergy.
The Cross Through Love, And Love Through The Cross.
Odd Stories. IV. The White Shah.
Signs Of The Times.
New Publications.
The Catholic World. Vol. XVI., No. 94.—January, 1873.
A Son Of The Crusaders.
At The Shrine.
A Christmas Recognition.
Fleurange.
Sayings.
Prince Von Bismarck And The Interview Of The Three Emperors.
A Christmas Memory.
The House That Jack Built.
A Retrospect.
The Cross Through Love, And Love Through The Cross.
Europe’s Angels.
The Nativity Of Christe.
The Progressionists.
ὙΠΝΟΣ
A Legend Of Saint Ottilia.
The Year Of Our Lord 1872.
New Publications.
The Catholic World. Vol. XVI., No. 95.—February, 1873.
Who Made Our Laws?
Dante’s Purgatorio. Canto Sixth.
The Church The Champion Of Marriage.
Fleurange.
Cologne.
John.
The International Congress Of Prehistoric Anthropology And Archaeology.
The See Of Peter.
Atlantic Drift—Gathered In The Steerage.
A Daughter Of S. Dominic.
The Progressionists.
F. James Marquette, S.J.
Prayer Of Custance, The Persecuted Queen Of Alla Of Northumberland.
Acoma.
New Publications.
The Catholic World. Vol. XVI., No. 96.—March, 1873.
The Relation Of The Rights Of Conscience To The Authority Of The State
Under The Laws Of Our Republic.
The Widow Of Nain.
Fleurange.
American Catholics And Partisan Newspapers.
Brussels.
Sayings Of S. John Climacus.
Marriage In The Nineteenth Century.
A Pearl Ashore.
The Benefits Of Italian Unity.
Sonnet.
Recollections Of Père Hermann.
A Daughter Of S. Dominic.
The International Congress Of Prehistoric Anthropology And Archæology.
Atlantic Drift—Gathered In The Steerage.
Martyrs And Confessors In Christ.
The Roman Empire And The Mission Of The Barbarians.
New Publications.
Footnotes
[Cover Page]
CONTENTS.
Acoma, 703
Atlantic Drift—Gathered in the Steerage, 648, 837
American Catholics and Partisan Newspapers, 756
Beating the Air, 783
Benefits of Italian Unity, The, 792
Bismarck and the Jesuits, 1
Bismarck and the Three Emperors, 474
Bolanden’s The Progressionists, 40, 192, 358, 541, 674
Brussels, 766
Centres of Thought in the Past: The Monasteries, 79;
The Same: The Universities, 145
Christian Art of the Catacombs, 372
Christmas Memory, A, 502
Christmas Recognition, A, 448
Church the Champion of Marriage, The, 585
Climacus, S. John, Sayings of, 318, 775
Cologne, 615
Craven’s Fleurange, 18, 158, 303, 459, 600, 737
Cross through Love, and Love through the Cross, 412, 523
Crusaders, A Son of the, 433
Cyprian, S., Martyrs and Confessors in Christ, 844
Dark Chapter in English History, A, 176
Daughter of S. Dominic, A, 658, 813
Deschamp’s Bismarck and the Emperors, 474
Distaff, The, 133
Doña Ramona, 122
English History, A Dark Chapter in, 176
Episode of the Commune, An, 61, 227
Europe’s Angels, 533
Father Isaac Jogues, S.J., 105
Father James Marquette, S.J., 688
Fleurange, 18, 158, 303, 459, 600, 737
Gavazzi _versus_ the See of S. Peter, 55
God’s Acre, 264
Hermann, Père, 808
Homeless Poor of New York City, The, 206
House that Jack Built, The, 212, 336, 507
International Congress of Prehistoric Anthropology and Archæology, 639,
829
Italian Unity, The Benefits of, 792
Jogues, Father Isaac, S.J., 105
John, 622
Juarez, Personal Recollections of, 280
Legends of Saint Ottilia, 557
Marquette, Father James, S.J., 688
Marriage in the XIXth Century, 776
Marriage, the Church the Champion of, 585
Martyr’s Journey, A, 137
Martyrs and Confessors in Christ, 844
Monasteries, The, 79
Mission of the Barbarians, The, 845
Nativity of Christe, The, 540
New York City, The Homeless Poor of, 206
Novel, Use and Abuse of the, 240
Number Thirteen, 61, 227
Odd Stories, 138, 420
Ottilia, Saint, A Legend of, 557
Partisan Newspapers, American Catholics and, 756
Pearl Ashore, 788
Père Hermann, 808
Personal Recollections of Pres. Juarez, 280
Peter the Powerful, 138
Prince von Bismarck and the Three Emperors, 474
Progressionists, The, 40, 192, 358, 541, 674
Protestantism, The Spirit of, 289
Relation of the Rights of Conscience to the Authority of the State under
the Laws of our Republic, 721
Retrospect, A, 395, 516
Review of Vaughan’s Life of S. Thomas, 31, 254
Roman Empire and the Mission of the Barbarians, 845
Russian Clergy, The, 403
S. Peter’s Roman Pontificate, 345
Sanskrit and the Vedas, 322
Sayings, 357, 473
Sayings of S. John Climacus, 318, 775
See of S. Peter, Gavazzi _versus_ the, 55
Signs of the Times, 422
Son of the Crusaders, A, 433
Spirit of Protestantism, The, 289
Universities, The, 145
Use and Abuse of the Novel, The, 240
Vaughan’s Life of S. Thomas, Review of, 31, 254
Versailles, 92
Where are You Going? 221
White Shah, The, 420
Who Made our Laws? 578
Year of Our Lord 1872, The, 558
Poetry.
Anselm’s The Poor Ploughman, 175
At the Shrine, 447
Chaucer’s Prayer of Custance, 702
Choice in no Choice, 17
Dante’s Purgatorio, 319, 581
On a Picture of S. Mary bearing Doves to Sacrifice, 77
Poor Ploughman, The, 175
Purgatorio, Dante’s, 319, 581
Prayer of Custance, 702
S. Mary Bearing Doves to Sacrifice, 77
See of Peter, The, 647
Sonnet from Zappi, 807
To S. Mary Magdalen, 265
Ὕπνος, 556
Virgin, The, 205
Widow of Nain, The, 735
Zappi, Sonnet from, 807
New Publications.
Adams’ Young America Abroad, 859
Agnew’s Geraldine, 573
All Hallow Eve, etc., 428
Ambition’s Contest, 144
Arundell’s Tradition, 430
Athenæum, The, 859
Beloved Disciple, The, 143
Bibliographia Catholica Americana, 713
Bolanden’s New God, 573
Book of the Holy Rosary, The, 140
Brownson’s Life of Gallitzin, 712
Burke’s Ireland’s Case Stated, 857
Caswall’s Hymns and Poems, 858
Catholic Class Book, 288
Catholic Family Almanac, 429
Catholic Worship, 571
College Journal, 576
Commentary of the Fathers on S. Peter, 286
Conversion of the Teutonic Race, 567
The Same, Sequel, 567
Coppée’s Elements of Logic, 285
Craven’s Fleurange, 570
Cusack’s Life of F. Mathew, 572
Daily Steps to Heaven, 572
De Mille’s Treasury of the Seas, 859
De Vere’s Legends of S. Patrick, 570
Ellis’ Two Ysondes, 719
England and Rome, 286
English in Ireland, The, 716
Finotti’s Bibliographia Catholica Americana, 713
Fleurange, 570
Formby’s The Book of the Holy Rosary, 140
Froude’s English in Ireland, 716
Gardening by Myself, 144
God and Man, 430
Gratry’s Henry Perreyve, 141
Great Problem, The, 575
Guillemin’s Wonders of the Moon, 574
Hart’s Manual of American Literature, 431, 860
Heart of Myrrha Lake, The, 569
Henry Perreyve, 141
History of the Sacred Passion, 427
History of the Blessed Virgin Mary, The, 573
Holland’s Marble Prophecy, 431
Holley’s Niagara, 432
Holmes’ The Poet at the Breakfast‐Table, 858
Hope’s Teutonic Race, 567
The Same, Sequel, 567
Hübner’s Life of Sixtus V., 567
Hymnary, with Tunes, 431
Hymns and Poems, 858
Illustrated Catholic Family Almanac, 429
Index Circular, 860
Ireland’s Case Stated, 857
Issues of American Politics, The, 431
Jenna’s Elevations Poetiques et Religieuses, 717
Keel and Saddle, 857
Kroeger’s The Minnesinger of Germany, 575
Lacordaire’s God and Man, 430
Lasar’s Hymnary, 431
Lectures on the Connection of Science and Religion, 573
Legends of S. Patrick, 570
Leifchild’s The Great Problem, 575
Liberalisme, Le, 714
Life and Times of Sixtus V., 567
Life of Demetrius Augustin Gallitzin, 712
Life of S. Augustine, 714
Liza, 573
Macdonald’s Hidden Life, 432
Macdonald’s The Vicar’s Daughter, 143
Manual of American Literature, 431, 860
Memoirs of Mme. Desbordes‐Valmore, 715
Minnesinger of Germany, The, 575
Moriarty’s Life of S. Augustine, 714
Morris’ Troubles of Our Catholic Forefathers, 287
My Clerical Friends, 567
New God, The, 573
Oakeley’s Catholic Worship, 571
Orsini’s History of the B. Virgin Mary, 573
Paquet’s Le Liberalisme, 714
Palma’s History of the Passion, 427
Parsons’ Biographical Dictionary, 572
Parsons’ Shadow of the Obelisk, 572
Peters’ Catholic Class Book, 288
Polytechnic, The, 859
Photographic Views, 714
Poet at the Breakfast‐Table, The, 858
Pocket Prayer Book, 286
Potter’s The Spoken Word, 142
Rawes’ The Beloved Disciple, 143
Revere’s Keel and Saddle, 857
Roundabout Rambles, 432
Sainte‐Beuve’s Memoirs of Mme. Desbordes‐Valmore, 715
Shadow of the Obelisk, The, 572
Skinner’s Issues of American Politics, 431
Spoken Word, The, 142
Stockton’s Roundabout Rambles, 432
Tradition, 430
Treasure of the Seas, The, 859
Troubles of Our Catholic Forefathers, 287
Truth, The, 571
Turgeneiff’s Liza, 573
Two Ysondes, and other Verses, 719
Unawares, 143
Vicar’s Daughter, The, 143
Warner’s Gardening by Myself, 144
Waterworth’s Commentary of the Fathers on S. Peter, 286
Waterworth’s England and Rome, 286
Weninger’s Photographic Views, 714
Wiseman’s Lectures on Science and Religion, 573
Wiseman’s Works, 714
Young America Abroad, 859
THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XVI., NO. 91.—OCTOBER, 1872.
Bismarck And The Jesuits.
“1. The Order of the Company of Jesus, orders akin to it, and
congregations of a similar character, are excluded from the German
territory. The establishment of residences for these orders is
prohibited. The establishments actually in existence must be
suppressed within a period to be determined by the Federal
Council, but which shall not exceed six months.
“2. The members of the Company of Jesus, of orders akin to it, and
of congregations of a similar character, may be expelled from the
Federal territory if they are foreigners. If natives, residence
within fixed limits may be forbidden them, or imposed upon them.
“The measures necessary for the execution of this law, and for the
certainty of this execution, shall be adopted by the Federal
Council.”
Such is the amendment on the original motion for the recent legislation
with regard to the Jesuits which was proposed to the Reichstag by Dr.
Friedberg. The original motion was identical in aim and almost in
substance. The amendment is more exact and well‐defined, leaving not the
slightest loophole for possible evasion or escape. It was framed and
pressed on by the kindly spirit and generous hand of Prince Clovis of
Hohenlohe, the brother of the cardinal whose rejection by the Pope as
ambassador from Germany to his court gave such high umbrage to the
exquisitely sensitive Prince Bismarck.
Such is the law: plain, clear, and well‐defined. There is no mistaking it:
it is “goodly writ.” Paraphrased, it runs thus:
There is a body of men—and women even; for though we attach ourselves to
the chief point at issue, the phrase, “Those congregations of a similar
character,” may cover a very extensive ground, and seems ingeniously
framed for abuse—in Germany, possessed of certain property, colleges,
churches, seminaries, schools; possessed of certain rights as free
citizens of a free land: liberty of action and of thought. Most of them
are natives of the soil; many of them members of the highest families in
the empire. They have been doing their work all these years without let or
hindrance, or rumor of such. The state found no fault with them, or at
least never expressed it. Consequently, they went on without changing one
iota of their principles or mode of action, teaching in the universities,
colleges, and schools: preaching in the churches; gathering together
communities; giving themselves free voice in a free press, that all might
hear and tell openly what they were doing, and what they purposed doing.
Without a moment’s warning, without a trial or even a mockery of a trial,
the state swoops down on them, seizes their property, breaks up their
communities, turns them out of their homes adrift upon the world,
proclaims them outlaws, banishes them the empire, save such as were born
in it—one of whom happens to be a cousin to the emperor himself; and these
latter they proscribe to fixed limits under the surveillance of the
police.
And such is law! The law of the new German Empire: the first great step in
its reconstruction!
Short of death, the state could not do more utterly to destroy a body of
men. Condensed into a word, these measures are—demolition. As death alone
can make their penalty supreme, the crimes of these outlaws ought to be
proportionately great. What, then, are these crimes that in a moment
produced such a sentence?
Here we must confess to as great an inability to answer the question as
Prince Bismarck or his followers found themselves; for the very simple
fact that there are no crimes to answer for. This may account in part for
the extra severity of the sentence. Only make the penalty big enough, and
the popular mind needs to hear nothing of the crime. Prince Bismarck knows
the value of the old adage, “Give a dog a bad name, and hang him.”
When the Communists seized upon Paris, we all knew what to expect: scant
justice and speedy sentence; none of your careful balancing of right and
wrong. They took what they could and gave no reason. This model German
government, this new power which we all tremble at, though it promises to
regenerate us, follows _la Commune_ pretty closely in this its first essay
of power.
In the even balance of the law, it is useless to _talk_ of conspiracies,
parties, plots, and this, that, and the other. Show us those conspiracies;
point them out in black and white; let the law lay its inexorable finger
upon them, and say, such and such actions have been committed by such and
such persons; here are the proofs of guilt—and we are satisfied. Though
the condemned may have been our dearest friends, we have only to
acknowledge the justice of the sentence, to deplore that we have been
deceived in them, and to range ourselves as honest men and true citizens
on the side of the law. But in the present case, we have not had one
single fact produced nor attempted to be produced; not a crime in the
varied category of crimes has been laid at the door of the accused. We
have had instead from such men as Bismarck and his tools vague
generalities of “conspiracy,” “enemies at home as well as abroad,”
intermingled with fears for the safety of the new empire—“the new
creation”—padded in with bluster and empty bombast, “full of sound and
fury, signifying nothing.”
And in the face of this advanced nineteenth century, this era of facts,
figures, and freedom, on the strength of evidence that would not suffice
to condemn the veriest scoundrel that ever stood face to face with justice
in the dock, a body of intellectual gentlemen, beloved in the country from
which they are banished, are proclaimed outlaws, enemies of their own
nation, faithless to their country and their emperor, unfit to live in the
land that is proud of them, and driven without scrip or staff into the
world.
Let us bear it in mind, before quitting this point, that the feeling of
their countrymen as well as of the whole Catholic world is with them. We
all know how a government, and particularly a strong government, can
influence the public voice and manipulate votes. Well, petitions rolled in
for the suppression of the Jesuits; but, strange to say, roll in as they
might, a still vaster number came to retain them; and on the strength of
the former, the measure was put before parliament and passed. This fact of
the popular voice proclaiming itself boldly in favor of the Order is very
significant when we take into account the forces arrayed against each
other, though, in truth, the battle was all on the side of the government.
On the one hand we have the Prince‐Chancellor working the engine of the
state—his own creation—with every nerve that is in him, joining himself in
the debates with speeches of the bitterest and most inflammatory
character; on the other, we have a body of 708 men! Such was their number
in Germany according to the statistics of last year; the total number
throughout the world being 8,809.
To this, then, the contest reduces itself apparently. These are the
ostensible foes. The new and powerful German government, in the first
flush of an unprecedented success, headed by the “terrible Chancellor,”
pitted might and main against 708 individuals, staking its very life on
the contest. What evenly matched foes! For the Jesuits are the sole object
of this attack, mind. Listen to Minister Delbrück in his speech on the
third reading of the bill: “It is my duty, in the name of the confederate
government, to repudiate anew that view of the question which identifies
the Society of Jesus with the Catholic Church.... In such an allegation
they can discover nothing more than an arbitrary perversion of notorious
facts: a falsification which is the more to be deplored, as it might serve
to deprive the measure in circles outside of this assembly of its true
character, and impress on it another which it does not possess.”
This minister was the mouthpiece of Bismarck—“the hands indeed are Esau’s,
but the voice is that of Jacob.” Was there ever such a picture of injured
innocence and righteous indignation?
Seven hundred and eight men who spend their lives, as all the world may
see, in teaching, preaching, studying, visiting the sick, performing their
daily household duties, are such terrible plotters, dangerous political
leaders, that they cause the great Chancellor actually to tremble in his
shoes. It is a strange fact that he did not find this conspiracy out
sooner. Bismarck and the Jesuits are old neighbors, not to say friends.
They have lived very happily together up to yesterday. They accompanied
him to his wars, and took the place that is always theirs in the battle
front, among the wounded and the dying, when no succor was nigh, in the
endeavor to give rest and peace to the last moments of those whom Bismarck
summoned from their quiet homesteads to die for him under the empty name
of glory and patriotism. Some of them were rewarded by the Emperor with
the Iron Cross—the proudest decoration which he can bestow on a man; as
some others of them on the other side brought their science to bear on the
dismal walls of the beleaguered city, spreading out light far and near to
discover the crouching foe, and they were rewarded with death. Why, then,
after living in harmony so long together, does the Chancellor turn round
in a moment and make such a sweeping attack upon them, only _them_? The
body, numerically, is absolutely too insignificant for all this uproar.
Why, we could pack them all into some of our hotels, and they would
scarcely make an appreciable difference in the number of visitors. Had
there existed a conspiracy on their part against the empire, as is
alleged, is it possible that with Bismarck’s unlimited power and
resources, aided by those wonderful spies of his, who so infested France
that his generals knew the country better than the French themselves
did—is it possible that he who esteems so highly the value of the opinion
of “circles outside the empire,” could not produce _one_ sorry fact to
bring forward against them? Their most determined opponents must confess
that he has utterly failed to do so; and failing to do so, he has
exercised, and the majority of the German Parliament has sanctioned, a
barefaced abuse of power, such as we thought had died out with the good
old days of Henry VIII. and Queen Bess, or lived only with the Sultan of
Turkey or the barbarous monarchs of the East. May it not recoil on their
own heads!
The quarrel is scarcely confined to these limits, then, terrible as the
power of the Jesuits may be. We do not intend to insult the intelligence
of our readers by going into a needless defence, for the millionth time,
of the Jesuit Order. Their defence is written on the world with the blood
of their martyred children. Their defence rests on the fact of their very
existence under such persistent and terrible persecutions as their mother,
the church, only has surpassed. It rests in the record of every land upon
which the sun has shone. And as for the time‐worn themes, ever welcome and
ever new, of secresy, unscrupulous agents, blood, poison, daggers, and all
the mysterious paraphernalia which the Jesuit of the popular imagination
still bears about with him under that famous black gown, which the
intellect of the age, in the persons of the London _Times’_ correspondents
and those of the _Saturday Review_, are never weary of harping on, we
leave them to the enlightened vision of these gentlemen, and their rivals
in this respect—the concocters of the villains of fifth‐rate novels. But
they object: Well, we are ready to admire your Jesuits. They live among us
and we know them, and really, on the whole, they are not half such bad
fellows; in fact, we may go so far as to say they are very peaceable,
intelligent, respectable gentlemen. When we wish to hear a good sermon we
always go to listen to them. They are very fine writers, and very clever
men. They have done much, or tried to do much, for America, Africa, Japan,
and every out‐of‐the‐way place; they have done something in Europe, even.
But after all you must acknowledge that they are very dangerous fellows.
Why, your own Pope, Sixtus V., could scarcely be prevailed upon to permit
the foundation of the Order at the beginning; and another of your Popes,
Clement XIV., actually condemned them. Come, now; what do you say to that?
Must we soberly sit down to answer this absurdity once more? Our readers
will pardon us for merely glancing at it, and passing on to the more
immediate subject of our article.
First of all, granting, which we by no means intend to do, that all that
they allege is true, that it was with the greatest difficulty they even
crept into existence, and that a Pope found it necessary to suppress them;
there stands out in the face of such opposition the telling fact of their
existence in the broad light of these open days, when no sham can pass
muster, when the keen, eminently honest eye of these folk pick out the
false in a twinkling, expose it, hoot it down, away with it, and there is
an end. Such a fact opposed to such never‐failing opposition is a very
stubborn thing, and bears with it something very like reality and truth.
As for the difficulty of their beginning, that is the history of all
orders in the church, so careful is she of new‐fangled notions. In fact,
if our recollection serves us, that, we believe, is the history of the
church herself. So much for the alleged opposition of Sixtus V. And now
for the quelcher: the suppression by Clement XIV.
Here we give in: our opponents are right. Clement XIV. actually did issue
a _brief_ suppressing the Jesuits. Of course it is perfectly unnecessary
to inform these theological and mediæval scholars that a brief is a very
different thing from a bull; that a brief is in no wise binding on the
successor of the Pontiff who issues it; that a brief has no more to do
with infallibility than these gentlemen themselves have. And now we would
beg them to listen a moment to the very few Jesuitical words in which we
explain this whole thing away.
Clement XIV. issued this brief in exactly the same way that King John
signed the Magna Charta; Charles I. the death‐warrant of Strafford; or
George IV. the act for Catholic emancipation. We believe none of our
readers would blame King Charles for the death of Strafford, or thank King
John for Magna Charta, or George IV. for Catholic emancipation; as little
do we, can we, or any one who has read the history of the time, blame
Clement XIV. for the brief which suppressed the Jesuits. The timid old
monk—he was consecrated Pope at what the Bourbons considered the very safe
age of sixty‐four—was strong enough to resist this wicked demand of their
suppression to the utmost. We must bear in mind that the demand was made
by no body in the church; but only by the ambassadors of France, Spain,
and Naples. “I know what you want,” he said, “you want to create a heresy
and destroy the church.” Another time he writes, “I can neither censure
nor abolish an institute which has been commended by nineteen of my
predecessors.” In the meantime, we have a disinterested witness, happily
enough from Prussia, a man whom we have no doubt even Prince Bismarck has
some respect for. It is no less a person than Frederick the Great, who
writes to _Voltaire_:
“That good Franciscan of the Vatican leaves me my dear Jesuits,
who are persecuted everywhere else. _I will preserve the precious
seed, so as to be able one day to apply it to such as may desire
again to cultivate this rare plant._”
At last, notwithstanding his entreaties and prayers, they wrung the brief
from the heart of the tottering old man. They gained their point while he
lost his peace of mind, and was ever after murmuring, _Compulsus feci,
compulsus feci_. We should be more correct in saying that they only half‐
gained it; for they were wild with rage at its being only a brief. What
they wanted was a bull: destruction, not suspension. And such is the
history of the famous suppression of the Jesuits.
To make the story complete, we may as well add that, as soon as the brief
became known, Switzerland, knowing that it was the production of the
Bourbon faction and not of the Pope, refused to submit to it and deprive
the Jesuits of their colleges. Catherine of Russia interceded in their
favor, and gave the poor Pope a crumb of comfort in the few days that were
left him. Well did he say, “This suppression will be the death of me.”
While Frederick the Great—but he shall speak for himself, and we commend
his utterance to Prince Bismarck. He writes to his agent at Rome:
“Abbé Columbini, you will inform all who desire to know the fact,
but without ostentation and affectation, and you will moreover
seek an opportunity of signifying soon to the Pope and his chief
minister, that, with regard to the Jesuits, _I am determined to
retain them in my states_. In the treaty of Breslau, I guaranteed
the _status quo_ of the Catholic religion, and I have never found
better priests in every respect. You will further add that, as I
belong to the class of heretics, the Pope cannot relieve me from
the obligation of keeping my word, nor from the duty of a king and
an honest man.”
These words would be weakened by comment. We pass with relief from this
worn‐out subject, and wish our adversaries joy of their mare’s nest. Men
who have won the praise of their bitterest foes need small defence from
their friends. We leave them in the hands of such men as Voltaire, Lord
Macaulay, Sir James Stephens, Bancroft, Prescott, Parkman, and a host of
other eminent men of all nations and all creeds save our own. When those
who carp at the Jesuits have studied and refuted these writers to their
own satisfaction, they may be in a fair way to meet us.
Now we are met with the further objection: if the Jesuits are such an
excellent body as we make them; as Protestant historians and infidel
writers make them; as Catherine of Russia, as Frederick the Great, the
founder of the Prussian empire, and in this respect the proto‐Bismarck,
make them—why should Prince Bismarck pick such a deadly quarrel with them?
Have we possibly been mistaken in him all this time? Have we had another
Luther lurking beneath the person of the burly Chancellor? Has his aim
been all along not merely to create a German empire, but a German religion
and a German popedom? Has his zeal been inspired by religion? In his
speech the other day he protested against the pretensions of the Pope “as
a Protestant and an evangelical Christian.” We congratulate the
evangelical Christians, whoever they may be, on their new apostle. For
ourselves, we could not help laughing, and thinking that the height of
solemn farce had at length been reached. The words reminded us of one
Oliver Cromwell, who, in common with a well‐known kinsman of his, had a
knack of “citing Scripture for his purpose.”
No; we confess it, notwithstanding this solemn affirmation from his own
mouth, and before the German parliament too—(we think the printer must
have omitted the “laughter” at the end)—we cannot bring ourselves to look
upon the Chancellor as a “vessel of election,” though he may be a “vessel
of wrath.” We consider that his worst enemy could scarcely say a harder
thing of him than that he was a religious man. His is “Ercles’ vein: a
tyrant’s vein.” The Emperor “is more condoling.” Now he presents the
picture of a religious man _par excellence_. Why, his nostrils discerned a
sanctified odor rising up from those reeking fields of France; and he
could pray—how well!—after he had won the victory. But his Chancellor is a
man of another complexion. He found a rich humor in it all. We have not
forgotten that grim joke of his yet about the starving and doomed city. Is
he not the prince of jesters? No, however bad may be our opinion of him,
we will not accuse him of religiousness.
Where, then, lies the difficulty between them? The answer to this
necessitates a review of the whole present question of Bismarck with the
Papacy; and we must beg our readers’ indulgence in carrying them over such
beaten ground in order to get at the root of it all, fix it in our minds,
and keep it there, so that no specious reasoning may blind us to the
reality of it, to the true point at issue.
We recollect the position of the Papacy prior to the Franco‐German war.
The Pope was supported in his dominions by the arm of France—we say France
advisedly; not by Napoleon. The war came and smote this right arm. Victor
Emanuel stepped in; took possession: coolly told the Pope he would _allow_
him to live in the Vatican. The world shrieked with delight at seeing a
powerless old man reft of the little that was left him. The world was
astonished at the generosity of Victor Emanuel in _allowing_ the Pope a
fraction of what happened to be his own property. The world looked for the
regeneration of Italy, and it has had it. The _New York Herald_ furnished
us with the increase of crime since Victor Emanuel’s possession: if we
recollect rightly, it is about fourfold. So the Pope rested, as he still
rests, a virtual, in plain truth an actual, prisoner in the Vatican,
without a helping hand stretched forth to him. Came his jubilee, and with
it kindly and solemn gratulations from a quarter least expected—the new
emperor. Our eyes began to turn wistfully to the new power, and people
whispered, Who knows? perhaps our Holy Father has at last found a
defender. Here was Bismarck’s opportunity of winning the hearts of the
Catholic world, of binding us to him with the strongest chain that can
link man to man. Time wore on, and the gloss wore off. Home questions
arose, the Chancellor began to feel his way, to insinuate little measures
such as the secularization of schools, which the Catholics, strange to
say, found reason to object to. Prince Bismarck grew a little impatient;
he was anxious to conciliate the Catholics as far as he possibly could;
but really “his patience was nearly exhausted.” Our golden hopes began to
grow dim. We have heard this sort of thing before; we hear it every day,
from some whose opinions we respect; and we know what it means. It is the
old cry, “We have piped to you and you will not dance; we have played to
you, and you do not sing.” You are irreconcilable; there is no meeting you
on debatable ground. And that is just the point. Our religion has no
debatable ground, for it is founded on faith, and not on what goes by the
name of free investigation. So that whether it be Bismarck or nearer
friends of ours who would force or woo us in turn from our position, we
must meet them in matters that touch our faith with the inevitable “Non
possumus.”
Prince Bismarck began to grow weary of us; and he soon showed signs of his
peculiar form of weariness. He scarcely agrees with “what can’t be cured
must be endured”; his motto is rather, “What can’t be cured must be
killed.” The secularization of schools was carried in the face of the
protest of the Prussian Catholic bishops, assembled at Fulda. The
solemnization of the sacrament of marriage is handed over to the civil
jurisdiction, the same as any other contract. Still not a whisper against
the Jesuits, though, as we have already quoted, his quarrel is purely and
entirely with them. We pass on to the crowning act in his list of
grievances: the embassy to the Court of the Vatican.
What a noble thing it looked in the all powerful Chancellor to despatch an
ambassador from the high and mighty German empire, the mightiest in the
world, to the old man pent up in the Vatican! What a condescension to
acknowledge that such a person existed!
Of course the Pope would receive such marks of favor with tears of
gratitude and open arms. What! is it possible? He actually rejects the
ambassador, and sends him back on Bismarck’s hands. Well, well! wonders
will never cease.
Now there never was such a tempest in a tea‐pot as the explosion this
carefully laid train created. The very fact of sending an ambassador at
all to a monarch acknowledges the perfect right of that monarch to receive
or reject him as he pleases; and to common sense there is an end of the
question. The Pope did not choose to receive this ambassador; he had every
right to exercise his freedom of action; he exercised his right, but
Prince Bismarck’s sensibilities were hurt. It was not so much the fact of
rejection as the Pope’s want of politeness that afflicted him. In his
speech before the Reichstag he declared that such a thing was without a
parallel in the history of diplomacy. What martinets these Germans are for
punctilio! We remember Mr. Disraeli actually refusing to accept as
sufficient reason for the late war the “breach of etiquette at a German
watering‐place.” Now, with all due respect, Prince Bismarck knew, as those
he addressed knew, as all the world knows, that this statement was
anything but correct. Ambassadors have been rejected before now, and
probably will be again. In fact, had certain individuals of this class to
and from ourselves been rejected at the outset, it would have saved
national difficulties, or at least wounded feelings and displays of
school‐boy recriminations scarcely creditable to such high and mighty folk
as gentlemen of the diplomatic body. But there is more in the question
than this. The Cardinal‐Prince Hohenlohe is a prince of the church. He is
in addition attached to the Pope’s household. He gave himself freely and
voluntarily to the service of the church. He is not a mere ordinary member
of the Catholic body. He stands in relation to the Pope as Von Moltke, the
Dane, stands in relation to the Emperor William; as those who were once
fellow‐citizens of ours stand in relation to the Khedive, whose service
they have entered; as Carl Schurz and millions of our fellow‐citizens
stand in relation to the government of the United States. When the
Italians entered Rome, Cardinal Hohenlohe left it; and the next the Pope
heard of him was that his own servant had been appointed ambassador to his
court from Berlin! Just as though tomorrow we received intimation that a
new ambassador had been appointed to us from England, and that ambassador
was no less a person than—Minister Schenck. We can imagine the _New York
Herald’s_ comments on such a proceeding. And yet Prince Bismarck is sore
aggrieved at a breach of political etiquette.
We think we need trouble our readers with no further reasons for Cardinal
Hohenlohe’s rejection. What share the cardinal had in the whole proceeding
we do not know. Probably Prince Bismarck would eventually have found
himself sadly disappointed in his ambassador had he been accepted. S.
Thomas of Canterbury made an excellent chancellor till the king, against
his wishes, compelled him to enter new service. But it is very clear that
if Bismarck, as we do not believe, ever contemplated the possibility of
the cardinal’s acceptance at Rome, what he wanted was a tool, one who, to
use his own very remarkable words, “would have had rare opportunities of
conveying _our own version of events and things_ to his [the Pope’s] ear.
This was our sole object in the nomination rejected, I am sorry to say, by
Pio Nono.”
We have no doubt of it: it was his sole object; and the acceptance or
rejection of his ambassador was one to him; for Prince Bismarck is
generally provided with two strings to his bow. Had the cardinal been
accepted, he believed he had a churchman devoted to his interests, another
Richelieu; his rejection suited him still better; for he could now declare
open war, and throw the onus of it on his adversaries. Through the whole
proceeding we detect the fine hand of the man who forced on the Danish,
Austrian, and French wars. Prince Bismarck must not be surprised if, in
the face of such speaking examples, we come at last to have a faint
conception of his strategy. His policy always is, and always has been, to
egg his adversary on; to goad him into striking first, taking care all the
while that he himself is well prepared. They strike, and he crushes
them—all in self‐defence. He is exonerated in the eyes of the world. He
can tell the others they provoked him to the contest; he can say to them,
“Your blood be on your own heads.”
And so this carefully prepared train exploded. It looked such a noble,
generous, friendly action to send an ambassador to the Pontiff’s court in
the present position of the Pontiff, that, when the ambassador was calmly
rejected, the world could not believe its ears; and Prince Bismarck
entertains a very high respect for those ears notwithstanding their
length. What could we say but that it was too much? There was no
conciliating these Romanists and Ultramontanes, do what you would. It was
clear that the Pope was altogether out of place in these days; and his
obstinacy only served to keep very respectable bodies of men from agreeing
and living neighborly together, and so on _ad nauseam_. Thus Bismarck
could afford to froth and fume about insult, unprecedented actions,
etiquette, and so on; urge upon the German nation that they had been
insulted in the person of their august emperor, who seems as touchy on
points of etiquette as a French dancing‐master; and ring the changes up
and down till he closed with the loud‐sounding twang, “Neither the emperor
nor myself are going to Canossa!”
Could anything be more theatrically effective? Could anything be more
transparently shallow?
Well, in the face of this awful outrage and unprecedented provocation,
what does the wrathful Chancellor do? March on Rome; declare war against
the Catholics; utterly exterminate them; smite them hip and thigh? Nothing
of the kind. He not only lets the Pope alone from whom he received the
outrage, _but he actually looks about for another ambassador, __“__in the
event of unlooked‐for eventualities.__”_ He entertains the greatest
possible respect for Catholics. Indeed, he seems to be aware that the
small fraction of 14,000,000 of them go to swell his empire; the most
Catholic of whom, by the way, bore the brunt of the battle in France. He
accepts his rebuff more in sorrow than in wrath. He lets the whole
question slip; he has no quarrel with the 14,000,000; but there are 708 of
them whom he pounces upon as the policeman on the small boy; and nobody
can quarrel with him for letting the steam of his wrath off on this small
body, which is at the bottom of every mischief that turns up.
Is not this excellent fooling? He says to the Catholics: I will not touch
you; you and I are very excellent friends; I will not touch your
mother—the church; I will content myself with murdering her eldest son,
who is the cause of all the trouble between us.
Now, we may fairly ask the question: Is the quarrel confined to these
limits? Why does Bismarck turn aside from the church, from the Pope who so
angered him, from the bishops who protested against his laws and refused
to submit to them, from the Centre in the Reichstag who so boldly, calmly,
and logically oppose him?—why does he turn from all these legitimate foes,
and fall on the small body of 708 men who compose the Jesuit Order in
Prussia?
The answer is not difficult. The Jesuits as a body represent the intellect
of the church. They represent indeed more, much more, than this; for
intellect, great as it is, is not the highest thing in the eye of God or
of his church; but our present point deals with their intellectual power.
The _Pall Mall Gazette_ said the other day, writing on this question:
“One of the most remarkable traits of the Society of Jesus has
always been its literary productiveness. Wherever its members
went, no sooner had they founded a home, a college, a mission,
than they began to write books. [We beg to call the attention of
those who would fain make the church the mother of ignorance, to
testimony of this kind from such a source.] The result has been a
vast literature, not theological alone, though chiefly that, but
embracing almost every branch of knowledge.”
The Jesuits in Germany, as in all countries where they have freedom,
possessed the best schools and colleges. They made themselves heard and
felt in the press. “In Italy, Germany, Holland, and Belgium,” says the
journal above quoted, “the most trustworthy critics are of opinion that
there are no better written newspapers than those under Jesuit control.”
It says further, and nobody will accuse the _Pall Mall Gazette_ of being a
Jesuit organ:
“Why indeed is their Order so dangerous, if it be not on account
of the ardent, disinterested conviction of its members, their
indomitable courage and energy, their spirit of self sacrifice, to
say nothing of their intelligence and their learning? The effect
of all this can but be heightened by persecution. On the other
side [Austria, if we recollect rightly], the danger which the
existence of the Order in the country really offers is much less
than it is supposed to be. In Germany, it does not really exist.”
These extracts from various numbers of one of the leading rationalistic
organs in England, which it were easy to supplement by many others of the
same import, notably from the _Saturday Review_ and the _Spectator_, we
merely present here to such of our non‐Catholic readers as might receive
our own testimony of whatever value with a certain suspicion. They embody
very sound reasons for Bismarck’s unprovoked and unlawful attack. We
purpose going a little deeper into the question.
The Jesuits now, as always, small as their number is, were the leading
Catholic teachers in Germany among high and low. Their access to the
chairs of the universities made them to a great extent the moulders of
thought, the teachers of the teachers, the great intellectual bulwark
against the spread of rationalism and every form of false doctrine which
strives to creep in to the hearth of the commonwealth and endanger its
existence. As they were the strenuous upholders of Bismarck in all that
was right; as their influence against the maxims of the International,
though not so immediate and showy as his, was infinitely deeper and more
lasting, so when he would intrench upon rights that are inalienable to
every man of whatever complexion and creed, they turned and boldly faced
the Chancellor himself. Were the character which their opponents would fix
upon them true, they had their opportunity of showing it—of going with him
at least at the outset. He would not have disdained the assistance of such
able lieutenants. But instead, the wily Jesuits, the men of the world, the
plotters, the schemers, the Order that is untrue to everything and
everybody save itself, throws itself with undiminished ardor, with a
devotion worthy of the fatalist, with all their heart and soul, into a
losing cause; into a cause which they have ever supported; which has been
losing these eighteen hundred and seventy‐two years, but which has never
lost.
These considerations bring us to the root of the question.
This marvellous German empire, this more than a nine days’ wonder, has
been convulsed into life; and sudden convulsions are liable to as sudden
relapses. Bismarck’s heart is in it; he is the corner‐stone; it is built
upon him; and he of all men knows on what a rocking foundation it is
built. Listen to his mouthpiece once more, Minister Delbrück, in his
speech on the third reading of the bill against the Jesuits:
“We live under a very new system of government, called into
existence by mighty political convulsions: and I hold that we
should commit a great error in abandoning ourselves to the
delusion that everything is accomplished and perfected because the
Imperial German constitution has been published in the official
organ of the empire. For a long time to come we shall have to keep
carefully in mind that the constitution—the new creation—has
enemies not only abroad but at home; and if the representatives of
the empire arrive at the conviction that among these internal
enemies an organ is to be reckoned which, while furnished with
great intellectual and material means, and endowed with a rare
organization, steadily pursues a fixed inimical aim, it has a
perfect right to meet and frustrate the anticipated attack.”
We have shown how nobly they met and frustrated the anticipated attack—a
rather summary mode, we submit, of dealing with those who _may_ be
enemies, for it has grown into only an “anticipated attack” now. Worse and
worse for the wielders of law. It may be as well to note also that the
Chancellor lets nothing slip. He allows the “great intellectual means” to
go; but the “great material means” is a far more important thing. He
sticks to that. There must be something of the Israelite nature in him. He
out‐Shylocks Shylock. As in France, so here; he is not content with the
“pound of flesh,” he will have in addition the “monies.” After all, what
is there to surprise us in this? The great Chancellor, who coldly wrung
such griping terms from bleeding France, could scarcely be expected to
leave to the church the great material possessions, that is to say, the
schools, seminaries, and churches, which belonged to her children.
But to resume: The first sentence of this quotation strikes the key‐note
of the whole movement. And, we avow it, Prince Bismarck is right. This
empire has enemies at home as well as abroad, and the Jesuits are in the
van. All Catholics are its enemies; and we make bold to say that all free
men, and particularly all Americans, are its enemies. For it is not a
German but a Bismarck empire; a Bismarck creation, that started into life
men scarce knew how; a momentary thing for mutual defence, but never to be
made, as he has made it, as powerful an instrument of tyranny as ever was
forged to bind and grind a free‐born people in fetters of iron for ever
down. Never, in the vexed history of nations, has power, and such awful
power, fallen into the hands of any one man at such an opportune moment
for good; and never, at the very outset, has it been so basely and so
openly abused. The state of Europe, at this moment, is deplorable;
revolution in Spain, revolution in Italy, revolution in France. The
government, the supreme control of the whole continent, shifting from hand
to hand; yesterday it was Napoleon, to‐day ’tis Bismarck: Europe cannot
stand these successive shocks, from empire to anarchy, from anarchy to
empire, without warning and without ceasing. Under all smoulders the
burning lava, breaking out from time to time in fitful eruptions—here the
Carbonari, there _la Commune_, in other places as trades‐unions—which
threatens to overwhelm and engulf the whole in one red ruin. It is simply
the evil effect of evil spirits working upon dissatisfied and ill‐governed
bodies of men. While over all, in the dim treacherous background, looms
the vast giant power of Russia, that seems to slumber, but is only biding
the event, and shows itself in dangerous signs from time to time. Europe
yearns for something fixed, permanent, and strong. Napoleon held
it—failed; and the reins fell into the hands of Bismarck. He commences his
reign by declaring war against the only element that can humanize these
conflicting masses, and cause this wild chaos of passion to adhere,
coalesce, and become one again as its Creator made it: religion. Religion
alone can make them bow to law; for religion alone can teach them that
there is a law that is above, and gives a reason for that law which _they_
themselves make for themselves. And what has Bismarck done with this power
that was given him?
To begin with, he has banished religion from the schools, where it has
flourished to the mutual satisfaction of Catholics and Protestants ever
since its establishment. He has profaned the sacrament of marriage and
handed it over to the civil courts. We will omit the expulsion of the
Jesuits now. His empire is the most autocratic and aristocratic in Europe.
Almost as a consequence, it is the most military. To make assurance doubly
sure, he is making it more military still; not a nation of peaceful men,
but a nation of warriors. Instead of allowing the weary nation a rest
after a strife where centuries were condensed into a few months, and
fabulous armies shattered in days, the military laws are made more
stringent than ever. The Prussian system of service is to prevail
throughout the empire, notwithstanding Bavaria’s remonstrance. Von
Moltke’s declarations in his late speech are very clear and concise.
Summed up, they mean discipline, discipline, discipline; and this is
Bismarck’s word also. To produce this perfection of discipline, the power
of the state must be supreme in every point. Nothing must escape it;
nothing must evade it. The state must be religion, the state must be God,
and Herr von Bismarck is the state. This sounds like exaggerated language;
but Bismarck shall speak for himself:
“I may tell the preceding speaker [Herr Windhorst] that, as far as
Prussia is concerned, the Prussian cabinet are determined to take
measures which shall henceforth render it impossible for Prussians
who are priests of the Roman Catholic Church to assert with
impunity that they will be guided by canon law rather than
Prussian law.”
This referred immediately to the case of the Bishop of Ermeland and
others, for excommunicating disobedient priests.
The Bishop of Ermeland was ordered to withdraw his excommunication,
because it might affect those who came under it in their civil capacity,
under pain of suspension by the government. The answer of the Bishop,
Monsignor Krementz, was admirable in every way, and we regret that our
limited space compels us to exclude it. It is enough to say that the
bishop shows, beyond the possibility of doubt, that he is actually within
the law, by a special provision of the Prussian Constitution, which
declares in Article XII. “that the enjoyment of civil and political rights
is independent of religious professions,” while he declares at the same
time that in such matters he is not bound by the civil law. Those opposed
to him in faith must support him in this. Recent decisions in the English
courts on behalf of the Established Church support him. And we need hardly
waste the time of our readers by entering into such a question. If a
government acknowledges a church at all, it must allow that church to work
in its own way so long as it does not intrench upon the civic rights of
the subject. The men in question, who were condemned, received their
orders and powers of teaching, preaching, and saying Mass from the church,
to which they made the most solemn oaths of entire obedience in matters of
doctrine. If afterwards they grew discontented, they possessed the civil
right to leave it. But as honest men, how could they remain in it,
receiving emolument from it, using its property, and all the while
persisting in preaching doctrines contrary to it, and endeavoring to
destroy it? Those who defend the decision of the German government must
allow that when, as not unfrequently happens, a Protestant clergyman
becomes a convert to our faith, he may still abide in the Protestant
church, preaching the Catholic faith to his congregation.
Our battle, then, and in this we are all Jesuits, is with the Bismarck
empire, with the supreme power of the state. These ideas of Prince
Bismarck are not new; they are as old as old Rome. The Roman was taught
from his infancy that he belonged body and soul to the state; and no doubt
Rome owed much of her vast power and boundless acquisitions to the steady
inculcation of this materialistic doctrine from childhood upwards. “The
divinity of the emperor” is not far removed from the divinity of the
Chancellor. It is a very simple doctrine, and no doubt very convenient for
those whom it benefits. But unfortunately for it and its defenders, One
came into this world to tell us that we were “to render unto Cæsar the
things that are Cæsar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” This is
the Catholic golden rule of politics, as we believe it to be of all
orthodox Protestants. Prince Bismarck will excuse our obeying Jesus Christ
in preference to him.
And here is the reason for the expulsion of the Jesuits: They are the
ablest exponents of these doctrines, not necessarily the most earnest—all
Catholics are alike in that; but their education has made them as a body
the ablest, and therefore they are driven out from the schools, colleges,
universities, and churches; from the land utterly. And by whom are they
replaced?
By the tools of Bismarck, by men who are ready to preach his doctrines
“for a consideration.” We had a sample of them the other day at the
opening of one of the universities in Alsace. The correspondent of the
London _Daily News_, among others, described them to us: how they fought
like wild beasts to get something to eat, and attacked it with their
fingers; how, at the end of the day, they, the German professors, reclined
in the gutters, or reeled drunk through the public streets.
And now, to complete our glance at this very large subject, a word on the
ambassador to Rome that is to be. While Bismarck is still determined to
send one there, he leaves us no room to doubt of his intentions in the
significant words—“unlooked‐for eventualities.” That is to say, he looks
to the speedy prospect of the present Pontiff’s death, and intends to
affect the election of his successor. While refraining from remarking on
the outspoken indelicacy of this, we do not at all doubt his intention, as
little as we doubt concerning the prospect of its success. It is perfectly
true that when the church had some influence over the state—and how that
influence was exercised, let the spread of education, the abolition of
serfdom, the persistent defense of liberty, and prevention of so many wars
speak—the three great Catholic powers, France, Spain, and Germany, had a
veto on the election of the Sovereign Pontiff, which they duly exercised
in the persons of their respective representatives. These representatives
were heard and felt in the councils of the church, and the measures they
brought forward taken into due consideration. But we were under the
impression that the relations between church and state had been altered to
some purpose in our days. Lot has parted from Abram. The state said to the
church: Our compact is at an end; you have nothing more to do with us; you
may fulminate your thunderbolts as you please, and let them flash abroad
through the world. We laugh. Their day is passed. Papistical pyrotechnics
may frighten women and children, but we are too old for that. We know the
secret of it all; that at bottom the thunderbolt is only a squib, and must
fall flat. The church accepted the situation. The state had proclaimed the
separation final and eternal. It could scarcely be surprised at the church
taking it at its word. It could scarcely be surprised to find the doors of
the Vatican Council closed against it. It can scarcely be surprised to
know that the veto no longer has force—no longer exists in fact; least of
all could it be expected to have force in the hands of a Protestant and
heretical power, even when held in the safe keeping of the pious Emperor
William and the “Christian and Evangelical” Prince Bismarck.
One effect, and we think a very important one, has grown out of all this
which we surmise Prince Bismarck scarcely counted upon. We believe the
mass of thinking men, whatever their sympathies might have been prior to
and during the late war in France, once they beheld the great German
empire an accomplished fact, wished it a hearty Godspeed; for it held in
its hands the intellectual, the moral, and that very important thing in
these days, the physical force sufficient to regenerate Europe. We looked
to it with anxiety to see whither it would tend; we looked to it with
hope. Our anxieties have been realized, our hopes dashed to the ground.
Prince Bismarck has alienated all Catholics and all lovers of freedom. And
our eyes turn once more, all the chivalry in our natures turns, to the
rising form of his late prostrate foe. We are amazed at the intense
vitality of the French nation. Bismarck but “scotched the snake, not
killed it; ’twill close and be itself.” All our hearts run out to it in
the noble, the marvellous efforts it is making for self‐regeneration. And
if France, as we now believe, will, and at no very distant date, regain
the throne from which she has been hurled, the hand that hurled her thence
will, by a strange fatality, have the greatest share in reinstating her.
“The moral columns of the new German empire have begun to tremble as
though shaken by an earthquake,” says the _Lutheran Ecclesiastical
Gazette_, after deploring, as we have done, all the recent measures that
have passed.
As for the manner in which the Catholic Church will come out of this
trial, we will let the Protestant press itself speak. We have already
heard it in a half‐hearted way in England and among ourselves. The _Kreuz‐
zeitung_, the organ of the orthodox Protestants, speaks more plainly:
“An eminent Catholic, a member of parliament, said lately that the
outlook of the Roman Church in Germany was never more favorable
than it is to‐day. It seems that this judgment is not without
foundation. The defections produced by the old Catholics are
without signification: we have to state a fact of altogether
another importance. Formerly, the greater part of the German
bishops, the greater part of the lower clergy, and almost all the
laics, were adversaries of the new dogma [we give those words of
the _Kreuz‐zeitung_, with our own reservations as to faith in
them], but now that the council has spoken, we only find thirty‐
two apostate priests; that is an immeasurable victory won by the
Roman Church.... Though the Roman Church thus appears day by day
more and more in the ascendant, the Evangelical Church sees itself
with deliberate purpose pushed down the inclined plane, or, what
is still worse, the government does not seem to be aware of its
existence. We have been able to remark this recently in the
discussion on the paragraph relating to the clergy in the
Reichstag; and lately again on the occasion of the law on the
inspection of schools. In the debates, at least those which
concern the manifestations of the government, the question has
been altogether with reference to the Roman Church. There has been
no mention made, or scarcely any, of the Evangelical Church. The
impression produced on every impartial observer must be this: the
Roman Church is a power, a factor which must be taken into
account; the Evangelical Church is not. This disdain is, for the
latter, the most telling blow which can be inflicted upon it, and
which must aid in strengthening the cause of Rome in a manner that
must become of the deepest significance for the future. After all
that, it is not strange to see the adherents of the Roman cause
conceive the loftiest hopes.”
The _Volksblatt von Halle_ states that “the Catholic Church has become
neither more timid nor weaker, but more prudent, bolder, of greater
consideration, and in every respect more powerful than ever.” We might go
on multiplying such extracts, but our space forbids us.
The result then to us, to Catholics, is not doubtful, as the result of
persecution never is. It is strange that such a keen‐sighted, eminently
practical man as Prince Bismarck should become so suddenly blind to all
the teachings of history. The meanest religion that exists among men
thrives on persecution even when it has nothing better to support it. As
for us, as for the Jesuits particularly, “suff’rance is the badge of all
our tribe.” Their great Founder left it to them as his last legacy. And
indeed, the measure he meted out to them has been filled to overflowing.
While we are thus strong in faith, while we know that Prince Bismarck is
only beating the air in his vain and impious efforts to extinguish that
fire which God kindled and bade to burn, while we are calmly confident
that he will shatter his mightiest forces against the Rock of Ages, and
come back from the conflict battered and bruised—finding out too late that
he made the one grand mistake of his life, which greater than he have made
before him—still we cannot shut our eyes to the fact of the great injuries
he is inflicting upon us, and the many fresh trials imposed upon the
church and our Holy Father in his declining years.
What, then, are we to do?
We have power, and we must use it. We have voices, and we must make them
heard. We have the silent, if not the outspoken sympathy of powerful
bodies opposed to us in creed. We have the heart, when we show ourselves,
of every free man and hater of oppression in any form. We have the genius
of our own constitution on our side. We must speak out plainly and boldly
as Catholic Americans. We must do what has already been done in London at
the meeting in S. James’ Hall, presided over by the Duke of Norfolk; where
peer and ploughman, gentle and simple, priest and layman, were one in
protesting against this slavish policy of Prince Bismarck. Let us do the
like. Let our eminent men, and they are not few, call us together here in
New York, in every city throughout the nation—in behalf not only of our
suffering brethren, but of those rights which are inalienable to every man
that is born into this world—in protestation against a principle and a
policy which, if they found favor here, would sap the life of our nation,
and throw us back into the old slavery that we drowned in our best blood.
Our standpoint is this: as there are rights which the state does not and
cannot give us, those rights are inviolable, and the state cannot touch
them. To God alone we owe them; to God alone we give them back, and are
answerable for them. The state is not supreme in all things, and never
shall be. These are the principles we defend, and are happy in being their
persecuted champions.
It is not merely a question of creed; Bismarck does not attack a creed. It
is a broad question of right and wrong, of justice and injustice, of
_absolutism_ and freedom. Power was never given into the hands of the
German Chancellor to be abused at the very outset, to oppress his
subjects, Catholic and Protestant. It is not and it must not be supreme;
and we very much mistake the genius of the great German people if they
long allow it to continue so. It is not for him to deprive 14,000,000 of
his people of their natural rights; the right to educate their children as
they think proper, _and as the law allowed them_; the right to consider
marriage a sacrament sanctified by God, and not a civil contract, to be
loosed or unloosed at will by a magistrate; the right of listening to
their most eminent teachers; the right of holding the seminaries and
churches, built by their own money, for the use of their own priests; the
right, above all, of believing that there is a God beyond all governments,
from whom all government, which people make for themselves, springs; that
God has set a law in the conscience which they must obey, even though
princes and kings rage against it, and that it is not in the nature of
things for this first and final law of conscience to clash with any other
unless that other be wrong. When Prince Bismarck succeeds in eradicating
these inborn notions from the minds of the German people, he will then
have attained his supremacy; but that then is—never.
Choice In No Choice.
I know not which to love the more:
The morning, with its liquid light;
Or evening, with its tender lore
Of silver lake and purple height.
To morn I say, “The fairer thou:
For when thy beauties melt away,
’Tis but to breathe on heart and brow
The gladness of the perfect day.”
And o’er the water falls a hue
That cannot sate a poet’s eye:
As though Our Lady’s mantle threw
Its shadow there—and not the sky.
But when has glared the torrid‐noon,
And afternoon is gasping low,
The sunset brings a sweeter boon
Than ever graced the orient’s glow.
And I: “As old wine unto new,
Art thou to morn, belovèd eve!
And what if dies thy every hue
In blankest night? We may not grieve.
“Thy fading lulls us as we dote.
Nor always blank the genial night:
For when the moon is well afloat,
Thou mellowest into amber light.”
Is each, then, fairer in its turn?
’Tis hence the music. Not for me
To wish a dayless morn, or yearn
For nightless eve—if these could be.
But give me both—the new, the old:
And let my spirit sip the wine
From silver now, and now from gold:
’Tis wine alike—alike divine!
LAKE GEORGE, July, 1872.
Fleurange.
By Mrs. Craven, Author of “A Sister’s Story.”
Translated From The French, With Permission.
Part Third. The Banks Of The Neckar.
“Brama assai—poco spera—nulla chiede.”—Tasso.
XXXIV.
“Return, Gabrielle! if possible, return at once; at all events, come
soon.” These simple words from Clement to his cousin give no idea of the
agitation with which they were written. Fleurange herself would never have
suspected it, and less than ever at the arrival of a letter at once so
affecting and so opportune. She even paid very little attention to her
cousin’s assurances as to the inutility of any further sacrifices for the
sake of his family. Clement, however, had written her the exact truth. The
situation of Professor Dornthal’s family was of course very different from
what it once was, but the change was far from being as great as they had
all anticipated and prepared for a year before, when ruin overwhelmed and
scattered them.
To leave the house in which they had lived twenty‐five years; to see all
the objects that adorned it offered for sale; to give up the place where
the happiest moments of their lives had been spent; all this at first
excluded the possibility of anticipating anything but privation and
sadness without alleviation. Madame Dornthal herself did not look forward
to the future in any other light, and the courage with which she left her
native city was the same she would have shown had her husband been
condemned to suffer exile; she would have shared it with him, endeavoring
to soften it as much as possible, but without anticipating the least
possibility of joy in their changed lives.
Joy, however, returned. It not unfrequently happens that reverses endured
without murmuring receive unexpected compensations.
In the first place, their new home, though simple, and even rustic
compared with their old one, was neither gloomy nor inconvenient. Two
spacious rooms on the ground floor allowed the whole family to assemble
not only for their meals, but the evening reunions—their greatest pleasure
when all the absent ones returned. A small garden surrounded the house,
and a grass‐plot extended down to the river with a covered alley on each
side. This place, called Rosenheim, merited its name by the abundance of
flowers, and especially of roses, which on every side cheered the eye and
embalmed the air. Their very first impressions, therefore, were quite
different from what they had apprehended. Besides, Clement had reserved
two or three of his father’s favorite paintings, several engravings, as
well as a number of other familiar and precious objects, which preceded
them, and were there, like old friends, to welcome them.
In the next place, the professor’s rare collections, and the works of art
he had selected with so correct a taste and such profound knowledge,
proved far more valuable than they had anticipated, so that, if no longer
rich, an independence more than sufficient was assured them. Moreover,
Clement’s prospects were exceedingly promising. His extraordinary ability
was soon recognized to a degree that justified Wilhelm Müller’s foresight.
To tell the truth, fortune is not so blind and capricious as she is often
represented, and if she sometimes bestows her favors on those who are
unworthy of them, there are some she reserves exclusively for persevering
industry, perfect integrity, shrewd calculation, strict economy, and
undeviating exactness. These virtues—and not chance—lay the foundations of
durable and honorably acquired fortunes, and where they are lacking the
greatest skill does not prevent them from being frequently lost in a day.
It was one of these legitimate fortunes Clement was worthy of and capable
of acquiring. His success was already sufficient to dispense his father
from the share of labor he had taken upon himself, but he could not turn
him from his purpose, and soon perceived he ought not to attempt it. He
derived the poetry of his nature from his father, and was indebted to his
mother for his force and energy. Of these the professor, with all the rare
and exquisite gifts of his mind and heart, was entirely destitute. A
profound dejection mingled with his apparent resignation to misfortune,
which sprang from the humiliating conviction—felt too late—of having
brought it on himself by a want of foresight, and thus being responsible
for the ruin of his family.
He needed something to divert him from this rooted idea, and therefore the
necessity of exerting himself to fulfil the duties of the position he had
accepted, and of pursuing his favorite studies, was too beneficial to make
it desirable he should renounce it. His new life, no longer burdened by
any material anxiety, gradually became both active and serene, and when
the family assembled together, everything would have had nearly the same
aspect as before, had it not been for the vacancies around the hearth. But
after the arrival of Hilda and her husband, and subsequently of Dr.
Leblanc, the evenings at Rosenheim became once more cheerful and almost
lively. Ludwig and Hansfelt resumed their favorite topics of conversation;
Hilda’s beauty and happiness delighted her father; the merry voices of the
children resounded anew; and Clement often favored them as of yore with a
lively air on his violin, but more frequently, at his father’s request,
with some graver melody, which he would play with such skill and so
pathetic an expression as to surprise Hilda, who asked him one day how he
had found time in his busy life to develop his talent to such a degree.
Clement did not at first hear, he was so absorbed in some strain of
Beethoven’s, which gave forth a heart‐rending accent under his bow. She
repeated her question.
“I often play in the evening at Frankfort,” he then replied. “Müller and
his wife accompany me. Music refreshes me after the tedious labors of the
day, and this prevents me from losing what you are so kind as to call my
talent.”
Such was the state of things Fleurange would have found at her new home
had she arrived a month sooner. In that case, her involuntary sadness
might have excited more attention. But the serenity of the household, so
recently regained, had been violently disturbed again. It was not
surprising therefore that tears should mingle with her joy at seeing once
more those she loved, especially as among them she found Dr. Leblanc’s
sister in mourning for him, and she had to be informed of another
misfortune, scarcely hinted at in Clement’s letter.
Professor Dornthal’s life was indeed no longer in danger, but his memory
was greatly impaired, and his noble mind, if not extinct, only gave out a
feeble and vacillating light. This was hoped to be merely a transient
state, which time and absolute cessation from labor would soon remedy. But
it was a severe affliction to them all, and Clement for the first time saw
his mother’s courage waver. It was with truly a sad smile Madame Dornthal
saw her husband recognize and embrace Fleurange without manifesting the
slightest surprise at her presence, or realizing the time and distance
that had separated them. It was the same with Clara; but when she placed
her infant in his arms, there was a momentary reawakening of the invalid’s
torpid memory. Tears came into his eyes; he embraced the child, murmured
“God bless him!” and then gave him back to his mother, looking at him with
an expression that filled them for a moment with hope. Then the gleam
vanished, and he fell back into his former state.
In consequence of all these circumstances, when the family assembled in
the evening in the large salon on the ground floor, every brow was
clouded, all the young smiling faces were grave and anxious, and the same
cause for sadness weighed on every heart. Perhaps this was best for
Fleurange, who, ever ready to forget herself, seemed to feel, and indeed
only felt the sorrows of the rest.
Ah! how her sadness, which seemed only sympathy, touched one person that
night as he gazed at her in silent admiration. She was sitting between his
sisters, the lamp suspended from the ceiling threw a halo around her
charming face, and the voice, so dear and so long unheard, resounded for
the first time in this place where everything seemed transformed by her
presence!
The evening, so sad for all the rest, was not so for Clement. Even his
anxiety for his father was suspended: he felt a renewed hope for him as
well as for everything else—yes, _every_ thing. He no longer took a dark
view of things: he was, as it were, intoxicated with hope. With what a
sweet confiding look she had pressed his hand! In what a tone she cried:
“Dear Clement, how happy I am to see you again”! Could the future, then,
be as doubtful as he had so recently feared? As to the smiles of fortune,
he no longer doubted: he was sure of winning them henceforth. He once
thought himself inefficient, but he was mistaken. Might he not also be
mistaken in thinking himself incapable of ever pleasing?—To this question
he heard no other reply but the quickened pulsations of his heart, and the
rippling of the water flowing past the seat to which he had betaken
himself on the banks of the river.
Meanwhile, Fleurange and her cousins went up‐stairs. Clement soon saw them
all talking together in low tones on the large wooden gallery that
extended around the house, and on which all the windows opened. Then they
retired; but the light that shone for the first time that night was a long
time visible, and Clement did not quit his post till he saw it was
extinguished.
XXXV.
Fleurange gradually resumed the habits of domestic life—once the
realization of all her dreams—and then, only then, she realized the extent
and depth of the change she had undergone while separated from her
friends.
She was no longer the same. No effort of her will could conceal this fact.
Her heart, her thoughts, her regrets, her desires, and her hopes, were all
elsewhere. Italy in all its brilliancy did not differ more from the
peaceful landscape before her, charming as it was, with the little garden
of roses and the river winding around it, the ruins beyond, and the dark
forest in the background, than the vanished scenes—still so vividly
remembered—of which that land was the enchanting theatre, differed from
those now occurring beneath the more misty sky of Germany. At Florence,
her struggles and efforts, and the necessity of action, stimulated her
courage. The peace she found at Santa Maria revived her strength. But
there, as we have said, the past and the future seemed suspended, as it
were. Now the struggle was over as well as the pause that succeeded it,
and she must again set forth on the way—act, live in the present, and
courageously take up life again as she found it, with its actual duties
and new combats. Fleurange had never felt more difficulty and repugnance
in overcoming herself.
After the long restraint she had been obliged to make, it would have been
some relief to be dispensed from all effort, especially at concealment,
and freely give herself up to a profound melancholy, to pass away the
hours in dreamy inaction, to weep when her heart was swelling with tears,
and, if not to speak to every one of her sadness, at least take no trouble
to conceal it.
This would have been her natural inclination, and it was only by an effort
she refrained from yielding to it. But this would have shown the strength
gained in her retreat to have been only factitious, and her intercourse
with Madre Maddalena to have left, this time, no permanent influence. We
have, however, no such act of cowardice to record respecting our heroine.
On the contrary, whoever saw her up at the first gleam of light in the
east to relieve her aunt from all the cares of the _ménage_; whoever
followed her first to the store‐rooms to dispense the provisions for the
day, accompanied by little Frida, whom she initiated into the mysteries of
housekeeping, and then to the kitchen to give directions and sometimes
even lend assistance to the old and not over‐skilful cook; whoever saw her
even going sometimes to market with a firm step, basket in hand, and
returning with her cloak covered with dew, would not have imagined from
the freshness she brought back from these matutinal walks, and the
brilliancy which youth and health imparted to her complexion, that, more
than once, the night had passed without sleep, and while hearing her early
Mass, never neglected, she had shed so many scalding tears.
Other cares, more congenial and better calculated to absorb her mind,
occupied the remainder of the day. Her special talent for waiting on the
sick, and the beneficent influence she exercised over them, were again
brought into requisition around her uncle, and Madame Dornthal blessed the
day of her return as she witnessed the evident progress of so prolonged
and painful a convalescence—a progress that gave them reason to hope in
the complete restoration of the professor’s faculties, if not in the
possibility of his ever resuming constant or arduous labor. The young girl
found these cares delightful, and her new duties towards her dear old
friend Mademoiselle Josephine no less so.
Josephine Leblanc’s affections had all been centred in her brother. She
lived exclusively for him, and had never once thought of the possibility
of surviving him. A person left alone in a house standing in a district
devastated by war or fire, would not have felt more suddenly and strangely
left alone than our poor old mademoiselle after the fatal blow that
deprived her of her brother, so dear, so admired, and so venerated—the
brother younger than herself, and in whose arms she had felt so sure of
dying!
She remained calm, however, and self‐possessed. But the mute despair
imprinted on her face as she went to and fro in the house, troubling no
one with her grief, affected every beholder. She only begged to remain
there that she might not have to return alone to the place where she had
lived with him. From the first, Madame Dornthal had invited her to take up
her residence near them, and Fleurange’s return brought her old friend to
a final decision, which proved so consoling that she firmly believed it to
have been in the designs of Providence. The doctor left considerable
property, which now belonged entirely to his sister. All their relatives
were wealthier than they, and lived in the provinces. There was nothing
therefore to induce Mademoiselle Josephine to return to Paris, and she
resolved to settle near her new friends, that she might be near her whom
long before she had adopted in her heart. It was a formidable undertaking
for a person who for forty years had led a uniform life, always in the
same place, and who was no less ignorant of the world at sixty than she
was at twenty years of age. But it seemed no longer difficult as soon as
she again had some one to live for. As to Fleurange, she found it pleasant
and beneficial to devote herself to her old friend in return, and, in
acquitting herself of this new debt of gratitude, her heart gained
strength for the interior struggle which had become the constant effort of
her life.
Notwithstanding the marriage of her two cousins, everything now resumed
the aspect of the past. Clara and Julian, established in the neighborhood
where the pursuits of the latter would retain him a year, did not suffer a
day to pass without visiting Rosenheim. Hansfelt no longer thought of
leaving his old friend, and Hilda’s calm and radiant happiness seemed to
lack nothing between her husband and her father, whose case now appeared
so hopeful.
Clement alone was not, as formerly, a part of the regular family circle.
He only came once a week—on Saturday evening—and returned to Frankfort on
Monday morning as soon as it was light.
Business for which one feels a special aptitude is not generally
repugnant. But Clement had such a variety of talents, and among all the
things he was capable of, the duties of the office where he passed his
days were certainly not what he had the greatest taste or inclination for.
Nothing would have retained him there but the conviction of thereby
serving the best interests of those dear to him. He must accept the most
remunerative employment, and, this once resolved upon, nothing could
exhaust the courageous endurance so peculiar to him. His courage was not
in the least increased by the desire of surprising others or exciting
their admiration, and nothing under any circumstances could daunt or turn
him from his purpose. And he knew how to brave _ennui_ as well as
disaster. But this _ennui_, which he generally overcame by severe
application, became from time to time overwhelming, and he would have had
violent fits of discouragement had it not been for the cheering evenings
he passed in the modest household of which he was a member.
Wilhelm Müller perceived that Clement’s varied acquirements were useful to
him, and his devotedness to him was mingled with an admiration bordering
on enthusiasm. On his side, he procured Clement the opportunity and
pleasure of talking of something besides their commercial affairs, and
with the aid of music their evenings passed agreeably away.
But the kind and simple Bertha, with the instinct that often enables a
woman to put her finger on the wound the most penetrating of men would
never have discovered, had found a sure means of diverting him. The
children had never forgotten the great event of their lives—the journey
and the beautiful young lady they met on the way. Clement never seemed
weary of listening to this account, to which Bertha would add many a
comment; and this had been the commencement of a kind of confidential
intimacy, which she discreetly took advantage of, and which was of more
comfort to him than he realized. In short, this was the bright spot in his
weary life. He would need it more than ever when, after a leave of absence
on account of his father’s terrible accident, which had been prolonged
from day to day, he would have to return to his bondage, and this time
with an effort that added another degree of heroism to the task he had
imposed on himself.
It was now the eve of his departure. Fleurange and Hilda were sitting at
twilight on a little bench by the river‐side conversing together, and
Clement, leaning against a tree opposite, was looking at the current of
the water, listening silently, but attentively, to the conversation that
was going on before him. They were discussing all that had occurred during
their separation, and Hilda began to question Fleurange about her
journey—about Italy, and the life she led at Florence away from them all.
Fleurange replied, but briefly and with the kind of apprehension we feel
when a conversation is leading to a point we would like to avoid. She
foresaw the impossibility of succeeding in this, and was endeavoring, but
without success, to overcome her embarrassment, when Count George’s name
at last was introduced. After some questions, to which Fleurange only
replied by monosyllables, Hilda continued:
“Count George!—A friend of Karl’s, who met him, was pretending the other
day in my hearing that no one could see him without loving him. As you
know him, Fleurange, what is your opinion?”
The question was a decided one, and Fleurange, as we are aware, had no
turn for evasion. She blushed and remained silent—so long silent that
Clement abruptly turned around and looked at her. Did she turn pale at
this? or was it the light of the moon through the foliage that blanched
her face, and its silver rays that gave her an expression he had never
seen till now? He remained looking at her with attention mingled with
anguish, when at length, in a troubled tone and with a fruitless effort at
a smile, she replied:
“I think, Hilda, Karl’s friend was right.”
These words were very simple after all, but the darkest hour of Clement’s
life never effaced from his memory the spot or the moment in which they
were uttered, the silence that preceded, or the tone and look that
accompanied them.
XXXVI.
The blindness of love is proverbial. His clairvoyance would be equally so,
were it not for the illusion that unceasingly aids the heart in avoiding
the discoveries it dreads. The very instinct that gives keenness to the
eye is as prompt to close it, and when the truth threatens one’s happiness
or pride, there are but few who are bold enough to face it regardless of
consequences.
To this number, however, Clement belonged. There was in his nature no
liability to illusions which had the power of obscuring his penetration.
Therefore the truth was suddenly revealed to him without mercy, and his
newly budding hopes were at once blasted for ever.—That moment of silence
was as tragical as if all his heart’s blood had been shed on the spot, and
left him lifeless at the feet of her who had unwittingly given him so
deadly a blow!
Within a year—since the day he thought himself separated from her for
ever, not only by his own inferiority, but by the sad necessity of his new
position—two unexpected changes had occurred: First, in his exterior
life—then he was apparently ruined: now, he felt capable of repairing his
fortunes. Secondly, in the opinion he had of himself.
Not that a sudden fatuity had seized the modest and unpretending Clement.
By no means; but the great reverses of his family had certainly effaced in
a day every trace of his youthful timidity, and a kind of barrier had all
at once melted away before him. Hitherto his worth had not been recognized
beyond the narrow circle of his family, and even there he was loved
without being fully appreciated. Necessity threw him in contact with the
world; all his faculties were brought into action and developed by
exercise. His features, his attitude, his manners, and his general
appearance all participated in this transformation. The silent awkwardness
that once left him unnoticed was overcome by the necessity of asserting
himself, and also by that increased confidence in himself produced by a
widening influence over others. This influence, at which he himself was
astonished, was not solely the consequence of the superior ability he
manifested in the dull and prosaic life he had embraced. But in this
career, as everywhere else, he brought his highest faculties into
exercise; and while observing and seizing all these details of his
material life, he understood how to impart a soul to them by his dignity,
trustworthiness, unselfishness, and generous ardor—which are the sweet
flowers of labor and the noble result of a well‐regulated nature.
He also reserved a prominent part of his evenings for the favorite studies
in which he had not ceased to interest himself, as well as a thousand
subjects foreign to his daily occupation, but exceedingly useful in the
development of his mind. Thence sprang a simple and persuasive eloquence,
which gave him an ascendency over every one, and caused him to be
especially sought after on a thousand occasions that had no immediate
connection with his actual position. Once or twice he had even been
invited to speak at some public assembly which had for its object either a
question of public interest, or one relating to literature and the arts,
and he acquitted himself so well as to attract the notice not only of
those to whom the name of Dornthal was already familiar, but of a great
number of strangers. Numerous advances to acquaintance were made him on
all sides, and Clement might easily have passed his evenings elsewhere
than in the unpretending home of the Müllers. But he had no such
inclination. Their company satisfied his present tastes. Music, which he
would not willingly have been deprived of, was the delight of his hosts;
and as is frequently the case in Germany, they were able to join him in
duets or trios which many a professional singer would not have disdained
to listen to.
Over his whole life, with its varied and absorbing interests, reigned one
dear and ever‐present form. It seemed at first like some celestial vision,
far‐off and inaccessible, but for some time, under the influence of all we
have referred to, it appeared to have drawn nearer to him.
On this account, he began to appreciate the increased consideration with
which he was regarded, but which he valued so little on his own. He
ventured at last to ask himself if the good‐will that seemed to beam on
him on all sides did not authorize him to hope sooner or later for
something more, and if his favorite poet was wholly wrong in promising
that he who loved should win something in return.
Such thoughts and dreams, if allowed entrance in the heart, are apt to end
by taking entire possession of it; and, as we have said, Clement was
intoxicated with hope when Fleurange reappeared in their midst. But his
dreams, fancies, and hopes were now all crushed by one word from her—one
word, the fatal meaning of which was clearly revealed by the expression of
her eyes, which Clement caught a glimpse of by the pale light of the moon!
The grief that pierced his soul enabled him to realize the full extent of
his illusions, and he was astonished he had ever before considered himself
unhappy. For some time after his return to Frankfort, he was overpowered
by a dejection such as he had never experienced. He felt as incapable of
any further effort as he was indifferent to all success. His daily task
became insupportable, and study in the evening impossible. Instead of
returning to the Müller’s at the usual hour, he would leave the city afoot
or on horseback, and roam around the country for hours, as if to wear out
his grief by exhausting his strength.
Now he clearly saw he had only lived, planned, and exerted himself for her
the two years past; he had given her not only his heart, but his entire
life, and that life had had but one aim—the hope of some day winning in
return the heart which would never belong to him now—because it was given
to another! And while repeating Count George’s name with rage, he
sharpened his anguish by recalling him, as he had once seen him, clothed
with irresistible attractions. His noble features, his look of
intelligence, his taste for the arts, the charm of his manners, his voice,
and his language, all came back unpityingly to the memory of his humble
rival. He remembered him in the gallery of the Old Mansion, through which
he accompanied him at a time when he was a mere student, and absolutely
wanting in everything that was, not only attractive, but capable of
exciting the least attention. His imagination mercilessly dwelt on the
contrast between them. Was it surprising (and he blushed at so ridiculous
a comparison) such a man should be more successful than he? And should he,
inferior as he was, be astonished that this man, living so near Fleurange,
under the same roof—At this thought a bitter anguish, a furious jealousy,
took possession of him, and excited a tempest in his heart which neither
duty, nor his sense of honor, nor the energy of his will, could succeed in
calming. There are times when passion rises superior to every other
impulse, and they who have not learned to seek their strength from a
divine source are always vanquished. But Clement had been accustomed to
the powerful restraints of religion; his strength consisted in never
throwing them off. Therefore, he was not to fail in this severe struggle:
he would soon turn his eyes heavenward for the aid he needed in again
becoming master of himself.
XXXVII.
Disinterestedness, energy, and the power of self‐control were, as may have
been perceived, qualities common both to Clement and Fleurange. There was,
in fact, a great resemblance in their natures, which, on his part, was the
secret of the attraction so suddenly ripened into a more lively sentiment;
and, on hers, of an unchanging confidence, in spite of the transformation
of another kind she likewise experienced. And now they were both engaged
in a like struggle: they were united by similarity of suffering, which
separated them, nevertheless, as by an abyss.
Ah! if Clement could have hoped, as he once did, that a more tender
sentiment would spring out of this sympathy and confidence, with what joy,
what sweet pride, he would have regarded this conformity so constantly
manifest between them! But the aspect of everything was now changed: there
was no longer any possibility of happiness for him, he could now only
suffer; and by the light of what was passing in his own heart he was
enabled to read hers—at once open to him and yet closed against him for
ever!
With all Clement’s self‐control, he would have been utterly unable to
conceal the state of his mind from his cousin had he remained at
Frankfort. But, after the days of overpowering anguish we have already
referred to, after yielding without restraint to a despair bordering on
madness, Clement at length succeeded in regaining his clearness of
judgment.
One morning he rose before day, and left the city on foot. His walk was
prolonged to such an extent that it might be called a pilgrimage, and the
more correctly as its goal was a church, but so unpretending a church that
it only differed from the neighboring houses by a stone cross to be seen
when passing the door which it surmounted. The door was opened by the very
person Clement came to see—a pious and simple young priest who was
formerly his schoolmate. He was inferior to Clement intellectually, but
his guide and master in those regions the soul alone attains. What Clement
now sought was—not merely to pour out his heart by way of confidence—not
even the consolation of discreet and Christian sympathy—but to recover his
firmness by a courageous avowal of all his weakness, and afterwards make
an unchangeable resolution in the presence of God and his representative
at the holy tribunal. He had made a similar one while yet a youth, but now
in his manhood he wished to renew it in a more solemn manner. It would of
course require greater effort after the gleam of hope he had just lost,
and the devotedness he pledged himself to would be more difficult after
the revelation that she whom he loved, and must ever love, had given her
affections to another. His voice faltered as he declared that no word,
look, or act of his should ever trouble her, or reveal the sentiments she
had inspired in the heart of one who would live near her, without her, and
yet for her!
It was, in fact, his old _devise_: “Garder l’amour et briser l’espoir!”
which he now solemnly assumed with the grave and pious feeling that
accompanies all self‐sacrifice.
Such piety may be regarded by some as rather _exaltée_. They are right,
but it is the kind of exaltation which accords with the real signification
of the word, which elevates the soul it inflames, and which, though
powerless in itself, can effect much when the divine assistance is invoked
to co‐operate in aiding, increasing, in a word, exalting human strength!
That evening Clement quietly resumed his old seat at the Müllers’
fireside. In reply to Wilhelm’s questions, he said that during his long
visit at Rosenheim he had neglected affairs that required his attention.
“And then I confess,” continued he, “that I have been in a bad humor, and
thought it wiser to relieve you from my society.” But to Bertha, who also
questioned him, in a less vague way, however, he acknowledged more
frankly, but no less briefly, that he had met with a great affliction, but
requested her never to mention the subject to him. Then he took his violin
and began to play a strain from Bach.
Bertha seated herself at the piano, and played an accompaniment to this
and several other pieces. Her husband, who was beating time beside her,
remarked that their young friend’s bad humor had a singularly favorable
effect on his talent.
“I assure you, Dornthal, you never played so well as you have this
evening.”
“Perhaps so,” replied Clement with a thoughtful air. “Yes, I think you are
right.”
It was really the truth. Music was the veiled, but eloquent, language of
his soul. The very feelings he so successfully repressed, the words that
no temptation or impulse could induce his lips to betray, made the chords
vibrate beneath his bow, and gave their tones an inexpressible accent it
was impossible to hear without emotion and surprise.
When, at the end of a fortnight, Clement reappeared at Rosenheim, all
exterior traces of the excessive agitation he had given himself up to had
disappeared. He resumed his usual manner towards Fleurange. No one would
have dreamed—and she less than any one else—that between the past and
present he found the difference of life and death. She little imagined
that the new and strange sympathy that existed between them revealed to
him the secret of all her thoughts and struggles. She also, apparently,
had become the same as before. Her time was actively employed, the care
she had of little Frida and that she lavished on her uncle, the _ménage_,
sewing, exercise, and study filled up the days so completely that it was
very seldom she could have been found inactive or pensive.
Hilda, her favorite cousin, though likewise struck for a moment by the
hesitation with which she replied to her questions about Count George,
almost ceased attaching any importance to this slight incident when she
observed the apparent calmness with which Fleurange fulfilled the duties
of her active life. Only one clearly read her heart and understood the
passing expression of weariness and sorrow that now and then overshadowed
her brow for an instant, and saddened her eye. Only one noticed her
absence when the family assembled in the evening, and followed her in
thought to the little bench on the bank of the river, where he imagined
she had gone to weep awhile, alone and unrestrained. All she suffered he
had to endure himself, and he lived thus united to her, and yet every day
still more widely separated from her.
The weeks flew rapidly away, however, and the tranquility and happiness of
the family were continually increasing. The professor’s mental and
physical strength gradually returned. Work alone was forbidden him, but
reading and conversation were allowable and salutary diversions. His
conversations with Hansfelt were sometimes as interesting as of old, and
he might have been supposed to have regained the complete use of his
faculties had not a partial decay of memory sometimes warned his friends
he had not entirely recovered from his illness. For example, he often
imagined himself in the Old Mansion, and this illusion became stronger
after all his children, including Gabrielle, gathered around him. But in
other respects his memory was good. Hansfelt found him as correct and
clear as ever on all points of history or literary and religious subjects.
It seemed as if the higher faculties of his nature recovered their tone
first, and were invigorated by contact with the noble mind of his friend.
Thus the evenings passed away without _ennui_, even for the youngest,
while listening to their conversation.
These evenings frequently ended with music, which the professor craved and
indeed required as a part of his treatment. Clement would take his violin,
and not at all unwillingly, for he saw his cousin always listened to it
attentively. In this way he dared address her in a mysterious language,
which he alone understood, but which sometimes gave her a thrill as if she
were listening to the echo of her own cry of pain.
One evening, when he had excelled, she said: “You call that a song without
words, Clement, but the music was certainly composed for a song, which
perhaps you know, do you not?”
“No,” replied he, “but like you I imagine I can hear the words, and feel
they must exist somewhere.”
Hansfelt had also been listening attentively to the music.
“Yes,” said he smiling, “they exist in the hearts of all who
love—especially in the hearts of all who love without hope. Here I will
express in common language, but not in rhyme, the meaning of what Clement
has just played.”
He took a pencil and hastily wrote four lines nearly synonymous with those
of a French poet:
“Du mal qu’une amour ignorée
Nous fait souffrir
Je porte l’âme déchirée
Jusqu’à mourir!”(1)
The pang of unrequited love
I feel;
’Tis death the bleeding heart I bear
Must heal!
Clement made no reply, but abruptly changed the subject. The children rose
and clapped their hands as he struck up their favorite tarantella, and
became noisy as well as gay.
Fleurange left the room, unperceived as she supposed, but Hilda, who had
been carefully observing her all the evening, followed her, determined to
obtain a complete avowal of all that was passing in her heart. She softly
entered her cousin’s chamber. Fleurange was not expecting her. She had
thrown herself on a chair, with her face buried in her hands, in an
attitude expressive at once of dejection and grief.
Hilda approached and threw her arms around her. Fleurange sprang up, her
eyes full of tears.
“Do you remember,” said Hilda in a soft, caressing tone—“do you remember,
Gabrielle, the day when I also wept in the library at our dear Old
Mansion? You asked me the reason of my tears, and I answered by opening my
heart to you. You have not forgotten it, have you? Will you not answer me
in a like way now?”
Fleurange shook her head without uttering a word.
“It has always seemed to me,” continued Hilda, “that the happiness which
has crowned my life dates from my confidence in you that day. Why will you
not trust me in a like manner, and hope as I did?”
“Happiness was within your reach,” replied Fleurange; “an imaginary
obstacle alone prevented you from grasping it.”
“But how many obstacles that seem insurmountable vanish with time or even
beneath a firm will!” She continued slowly and in a lower tone: “Why
should not the Count George, then—”
“Stop, Hilda, I conjure you,” cried Fleurange in an agitated manner.
Her cousin stopped confounded.
“Listen to me,” resumed Fleurange, at length, in a calmer tone. “As it is
your wish, let us speak of him. I consent. Let us speak of him this time,
but never again. Tell me,” she continued with a sad smile, “can you make
me his equal in wealth and rank? Or deprive him of his nobility and make
him as poor as I? In either case, especially in the latter,” she cried,
with a tenderness in her tone, and a look she could not repress—“ah!
nothing, certainly nothing but his will, could separate me from him! But
it is reasonable to suppose the sun will rise upon us to‐morrow and find
us the same as to‐day: we no longer live in the time of fairies, when
extraordinary metamorphoses took place to smooth away difficulties and
second the wishes of poor mortals. Help me then, Hilda, I beseech you, to
forget him, to live, and even recover from the wound, by never speaking to
me either of him, or myself!—”
Hilda silently pressed her in her arms for a long time, and then said: “I
will obey you, Gabrielle, and never mention his name till you speak of him
first.”
XXXVIII.
The summer and autumn both passed away without anything new, except some
variations in the professor’s slow recovery, and an occasional gleam of
happiness for Clement—the revival of a spark of his buried hopes—but such
moments were rare, and succeeded by a sad reaction; nevertheless, they
were sweet and lived long in his memory.
One day in particular was thus graven on his heart—a fine day in October,
when he had the pleasure of rowing Hilda and his cousin to a shady point
further up on the river, which gracefully winds nearly around it. There
they spent several hours, conversing together with the delightful
familiarity of intimacy, and now and then reading some favorite passage in
the books they brought with them. As he sat listening to the silvery tones
of Fleurange’s voice, and met her expressive, sympathetic glance when he
took the book in his turn and read nearly as well as herself; as he sat
thus near her in that lovely, solitary spot, with no other witness but her
whose affection for both seemed only an additional tie, hope once more
entered his heart, as one breaks into a dwelling fastened against him,
but, alas! to be promptly thrust out, leaving him as desolate as before.
While he was rowing them back in the evening, with his eyes fastened on
Fleurange, he saw her delightful but evanescent emotions of the day fading
away with the light, and another remembrance arise, sadder and more tender
than ever, which gave to her eyes, sometimes fastened on the dark and
rapid current, sometimes fixed on the shore, the expression he had learned
to read so well—an expression that made his heart ache with pity and
sympathy, but at the same time quiver and shrink with anguish, as if a
lancet or caustic had been applied to his wound and caused it to bleed!
Two months later the festival of Christmas again brought him one of these
fleeting moments of happiness. On the eve—the never‐forgotten anniversary
of Fleurange’s arrival in their midst—the whole family were reunited, and
felt as if they were living over again the delightful past. The Christmas
tree was as brilliant as of yore; Mademoiselle Josephine, as ready to
participate in the joy of her friends as she was to avoid saddening them
with her sorrows, aided in adorning it, and every one found on its
branches some offering from her generous hand. Then, as in bygone days,
they wove garlands of holly, which Fleurange, as well as her cousins, wore
at dinner, and this time without any entreaty. At a later hour they had
music and dancing, which, ever ready as she was to catch the joy of
others, gave her a feeling of unusual gaiety, to which she unresistingly
abandoned herself—the gaiety of youth, which at times triumphs over
everything, and sometimes breaks out with an excess in proportion to its
previous restraint. Fleurange’s laughter rang like music, and her joyous
voice mingled with the children’s, to the great joy of him who was looking
on with ecstasy and surprise. Her radiant eyes, her glowing complexion,
the brilliancy happiness adds to beauty, and had so long been wanting to
hers, gave him, who could not behold it revive without transport, a
feeling of intoxication which once more made him forget all and hope
everything! But he was speedily and sadly recalled to himself.
Madame Dornthal was seated beside her husband’s arm‐chair, which she
seldom left. A pleasant smile reappeared on her lips as she looked at her
children moving around her. From time to time she leaned towards the
professor, and was glad to see him entering into all that was going on
with his usual pleasure and with perfect comprehension of mind. All at
once she thought he turned pale. She looked at Clement, and made a gesture
which he understood. The noise disturbed his father. In an instant
profound silence was restored, and they all gathered around the
professor’s chair. He appeared suddenly fatigued: his eyes closed, and he
leaned his head on his wife’s shoulder. They all anxiously awaited his
first words after this sudden fit of somnolency. Presently he opened his
eyes and gave a vague, uneasy glance around. Then, turning to Madame
Dornthal, he said in a sad tone, passing his hand over his forehead:
“Tell me why Felix is not here: I knew, but cannot remember.”
This new failure of his memory, the name associated with so many painful
recollections and uttered in so distressing a manner, put an end to all
the gaiety of the evening. The effect of so much agitation and fatigue on
the professor was not regarded as very serious, but it left a painful
impression, especially on Fleurange, who had fresh reasons for feeling his
words.
Clement, who had been informed by Steinberg of what had occurred at
Florence, silently entered into her feelings, and once more the flash of
joy that lit up his heart vanished in a night darker than ever.
But he could not foresee that a public event of serious import was at that
very hour transpiring far away, in a different sphere from his, which
would have an important and painful influence on his humble destiny.
To be continued.
Review of Vaughan’s Life Of S. Thomas.(2)
It is but too seldom that the reviewer has to welcome a work like that
which we have already had the pleasure of introducing to our readers, and
to which we now desire to render more fitting honors. An original life of
a saint, and of an epoch‐making saint like Thomas of Aquin, treated on a
scale adequate to its importance, in the English tongue, by an English
Benedictine monk, is a refreshing novelty to those who, like ourselves,
have so much to say to what is slight, or frivolous, or common, or
hostile. The contemplative reviewer, looking at the two thick volumes of
the English edition, feels inclined, like a man who guesses before he
opens a letter, to conjure up fancies as to what he will find in this new
life of S. Thomas of Aquin. Two volumes, each consisting of more than 800
pages, are a great deal, in these days, for one saint. They are a great
deal to write, and what is perhaps of more importance, they are a great
deal to read. But no one can suppose that they are too much for such a
saint as Thomas of Aquin. Considering that his own works, as printed in
the splendid Parma edition lately completed, would make up some forty
volumes of the size of these two goodly ones, it is not much. Considering
that Thomas of Aquin has been more written about by commentators for four
or five centuries than any other man, except perhaps Aristotle, who ever
lived—considering that every student of theology is always coming across
his authority, and that he has been the great builder‐up of the vast
building of Catholic philosophical and theological terminology, it is not
much that he should have two volumes. Indeed, when we look into the book,
we expect to find Prior Vaughan not seldom complaining of being obliged,
through want of space, to leave out a great deal that he would have wished
to say. And this leads us to notice the author’s name. Father Bede
Vaughan, though fairly known by reputation in England, is perhaps a
stranger to the greater number of American Catholics. It is sufficient to
say at present that he is a brother of the Very Rev. Dr. Herbert Vaughan,
whose presence in this country lately, in connection with the mission to
the negroes, will have made his name familiar to many even of those who
had not the pleasure of personally meeting him. Father Bede Vaughan is
Prior of the Benedictine Cathedral Chapter of Newport and Menevia. A
cathedral‐prior is a novelty, not only in literature, but absolutely.
There were a great many cathedral‐priors in England once upon a time—men
of power and substance—wearing their mitres (some of them) and sitting in
the House of Lords. Whatever be the lands and the revenues of the only
cathedral‐priory in English‐speaking hierarchies of the present day, it is
pleasant to meet with the old name, and to meet it on the cover of a book.
That a Benedictine should have written a sterling book will not surprise
the world of letters. It is perhaps a little new to find the great
Dominican, the Angel of the Schools, taken up by a member of an order
which S. Thomas is popularly supposed to have in set purpose turned his
back upon. But this is a point on which the work itself will enlighten us.
Meanwhile, on opening the first volume we catch sight of a portrait of the
Saint. It is a reproduction, by photography, of a painting by the Roman
artist Szoldatics, which was painted expressly for the present work. It
represents the well‐known scene in which the crucified Master, for whom
the great doctor has written and taught his life long, asks him what
reward he would desire. Portraits of S. Thomas of Aquin are not uncommon.
We are all familiar with the large and portly figure and the full and mild
countenance, the sun upon his breast, the black and the white, and the
shaven crown of the Order of St. Dominic, the open book and the immortal
pen. Some of the representations of the saint exaggerate his traditional
portliness into a corpulence that almost obliterates the light of genius
in his face. On the other hand, there exist many which give at once the
large open features and the look of inspiration and of refinement. Those
who have turned to the title‐pages of the best Roman or Flemish editions
of his life or works will remember these. The new portrait, photographed
in the first volume, is very successful. Thomas of Aquin had Norman blood
in his veins, and the fairness of his skin and the contour of his head are
not those of the typical Italian. The artist has managed to convey very
well that massive head, in which every lobe of the brain seems to have
been perfectly developed and roomily lodged, thus furnishing the
intelligence with an imaginative instrument whose power was only equalled
by its delicacy. In the corresponding place in the second volume there is
a photograph of a meritorious engraving, from a picture or engraving
unknown to us, in which, however, the head of the Saint is not so noble or
refined.
Passing, however, to consider the substance of the work itself, it is not
too much to say that, as a life of S. Thomas of Aquin, it is perfectly
original. We do not mean, of course, that the writer has found out new
facts, or made any considerable alteration in the aspect of old ones. But
his plan of working is new. He has had the idea of giving, not merely S.
Thomas, but his surroundings. Some saints, even of those who have spent
themselves in external labors for their fellow‐men, require but little in
the way of background to make their portraits significant. Ven. Bede’s
biography would not gain much light from discussions upon Mohammedanism,
or upon the state of England or of Europe during his life. To understand
and love S. Francis of Sales, it is not necessary to study the growth of
Calvinism, to follow the steps of the _De Auxiliis_ controversy, or to
become minutely acquainted with the character of Henri IV. But it is very
different with S. Thomas of Aquin. Opening his mouth, like a true doctor
of the church, “in medio ecclesiæ,” he had words to speak which all
Christendom listened to, and acted upon, too, in one way or another. He
was a power at Paris, at Cologne, at Naples. Every great influence of the
thirteenth century felt the impulse of his thought: S. Louis the Crusader,
Urban IV., Gregory X., the Greek schismatics, the Arabian philosophers,
the opponents of monasticism, the mighty power of the universities. Prior
Vaughan thus speaks in the preface to the first volume:
“The author has found it difficult to comprehend how the life of
S. Thomas of Aquin could be written so as to content the mind of
an educated man—of one who seeks to measure the reach of principle
and the influence of saintly genius—without embracing a
considerably wider field of thought than has been deemed necessary
by those who have aimed more at composing a book of edifying
reading, than at displaying the genesis and development of truth
and the impress of a master‐mind upon the age in which he lived.
It has always appeared to him that one of the most telling
influences exerted by the doctor‐saints of God, has been that of
rare intellectual power in confronting and controlling the
passions and mental aberrations of epochs, as well as of blinded
and swerving men....
“The object which the author of these pages has proposed to
himself is this: to unfold before the reader’s mind the far‐
reaching and many‐sided influence of heroic sanctity, when
manifested by a man of massive mind, of sovereign genius, and of
sagacious judgment, and then to remind him that, as the fruit
hangs from the branches, so genius of command and steadiness of
view and unswervingness of purpose, are naturally conditioned by a
certain moral habit of heart and head; that purity, reverence,
adoration, love, are the four solid corner‐stones on which that
Pharos reposes which, when all about it, and far beyond it, is
darkness and confusion, stands up in the midst as the
representative of order, and as the minister of light, and as the
token of salvation.
“Now, the Angel of the Schools was emphatically a great and
shining light. To write his life is not so much to deal with the
subject of his personal history, as to display the stretch of his
power and the character of his influence. Indeed, few of the great
cardinal thinkers of the world have left much private history to
record. Self was hidden in the splendor of the light which bursts
out from it—just as the more brilliant the flame, so much the more
unseen is the lamp in which it burns. It stands to reason that the
more widespread the influence which such men as these exert, so
much the wider must be the range taken by the writer over the
field of history and theology and philosophy if he wishes
adequately to delineate the action of their lives. The private
history of S. Thomas of Aquin could be conveniently written in
fifty pages, whilst his full biography would certainly occupy many
thousand pages.” (Pp. iii., iv.)
The view which is thus sketched out is a large one. We have said that the
author presents not merely his hero, but his hero’s surroundings. But, in
studying his mind and his work, he does not content himself with making a
vivid background of the thirteenth century. One century is the child of
another, and mind is educated by mind. The past is the seed of the future,
and no time can be understood without understanding the times that gave it
birth. This is especially true of the times when history accumulates most
rapidly, and of minds to whom it is given to fashion history as it is
made. Prior Vaughan finds the story of S. Thomas’ intellectual work
commencing far back in the work of those men whom he calls the “columnal
fathers” of the church. He therefore takes his reader back to primitive
ages—to the desert, the laura, the early conflicts of God’s servants with
paganism, with heresy, and with worldliness. He sets before him S.
Anthony, in the majesty of his single‐hearted union with Christ; S.
Athanasius, worthy disciple of such a master, unsurpassed in the great
opportunities of his life and the strength with which he rose to meet
them; S. Basil, the monk that fought the world, and overcame it; S.
Gregory Theologus, the _vates sacer_ of the fourth century, who sang in
verse and in rhythmical prose the song of the consubstantial Son of God.
He introduces us to S. Augustine, to S. Ambrose, to S. Gregory the Great,
and points out how essential a feature, in the greatness of S. Thomas, is
the way in which he has reproduced all that was eternal and “catholic” in
the thoughts of the men whom God has set up to be the pillars of the
doctrine of his church. With other saints, it would, perhaps, be
superfluous to trace their connection with the fathers; with the author of
the _Summa_, it is indispensable.
“The Columnal Fathers and the Angelical were in completest
harmony; they were knit together by the monastic principle. The
intellectual hinges of the Universal Church (speaking humanly)
have been monastic‐men—that is to say, men who, through an intense
cross‐worship and a keen perception of the beautiful, threw up all
for Christ; and through
‘The ingrained instinct of old reverence,
The holy habit of obedience,’
loved, labored, suffered for him, and died into his arms.
“For the one thread which pierces through all, and maintains a
real communication between the Angelical and the heroes of the
classic age—which creates a brotherhood between S. Thomas of the
thirteenth century and the great athletes in the second and the
third—which makes the ‘Sun of the Church’ illuminate the ‘Pillar
of the World,’ and so reciprocally—that is to say, which renders
S. Thomas and S. Anthony one in spirit and in principle—was this,
that their beings were transformed into a supernatural activity,
through an intense and personal love of their Redeemer.
“This was the one special lesson which the Angelical drew from the
wilderness and the fathers, which came to him through S. Benedict,
indeed, but rather as a principle of _quies_ than of exertion. In
the desert athletes, and those who followed them, he found that
principle operative, and almost military in its chivalrous
readiness to combat and spill blood in defence of truth. It lent
to him what it exhibits in them also—breadth of view, largeness,
moral freedom, stubborn courage, generosity of heart, expansion of
mind, and an electric light of intellect, which bear about them a
touch of the Eastern world. How could the Angelical read Anthony’s
life, or follow Athanasius in his exiles, or see Basil so
heroically rigid in his defence of right, or hear, in imagination,
Gregory Theologus pouring out a stream of polished eloquence,
without being impressed by truth’s grace and music; how could he
watch S. Chrysostom, all on fire with his love of God and with his
discriminating sympathy for men, or think of the ascetic Jerome,
battling single‐handed in the wilderness, or perusing his
Scripture in the cave; how could he dwell in spirit with S.
Ambrose or S. Gregory the Great, or follow the career of the
passionate, emotional, splendid S. Augustine, without expanding in
heart and mind towards all that is best and greatest—all that is
most noble and most fair in the majestic character of God’s
tenderly‐cherished saints?
“Had he not known them so intimately, great as he was, his mind
would have been comparatively cramped, his character most probably
would have been less imperial in its mould, and there would have
been less of that oriental mightiness about his intellectual
creations, which now reminds one of those vast monuments of other
days, which still are the marvel of travellers in the East, and
the despair of modern engineers.” (II., pp. 523‐5.)
A great portion of the second volume is taken up with the exposition in
detail of these thoughts and ideas. We do not think that any one who has
thoroughly seized the author’s point of view will be sorry that so much
space is given to the lives and characters of men who are not the
immediate subject of the book. The truth is, that the full _significance_
of S. Thomas of Aquin has been very much overlooked in modern times. The
non‐Catholic theory has always been that he was a voluminous “scholastic,”
more acute than most of his sort, perhaps, but mediæval, hair‐splitting,
and unprofitable. The Catholic theory has done him greater justice; but
even the Catholic schools have too much forgotten S. Thomas. There is an
interesting passage in one of Lacordaire’s letters, in which he tells the
Abbé Drioux, who has done so much for S. Thomas in France, how he read the
Angelical every day, and yet how long it had been before he had come to
know him! And then he speaks with some depreciation of that “Positive”
theology which has pretended to take the place of the scholastic form and
discipline. The great preacher was familiar with the spiritual wants of
the world in their widest aspect, and he no sooner came to know S. Thomas
of Aquin than he saw that he was face to face with the mind that has said
more truth about God and man, and said it better, than any one man who has
ever lived; and he has said it so well, because he has not said it out of
his own consciousness, but first saturated himself with the living truth
of the immortal fathers, and then reproduced in his own way what God had
thus himself imparted to the world.
The influence which S. Thomas owed to the study and meditation of the
great fathers was surpassed—or rather, we ought to say, most powerfully
shown—by the impressions made upon his heart, even more than his mind, by
his early bringing up. Every one knows that the Angel of the Schools, who
was of the noblest blood of Italy, spent his early years in the great
arch‐monastery of Monte Casino. Prior Vaughan has no hesitation in making
the assertion that Thomas of Aquin never lost what he acquired from the
monks of S. Benedict during those seven childish years that he spent with
them in the cloisters of the great abbey. He was never a professed
Benedictine, although he would, in the natural course, have become one
without making any explicit profession, had not the troubles of the times
forced the monks to flee from the abbey. But the Benedictine or monastic
spirit, the principle of _quies_, as our author calls it, with the vivid
appreciation of the kingship of Christ, Thomas took away with him when he
went forth and carried with him to the work he had to do. The new
mendicant orders that had recently been founded were schools of activity,
aggressive, moving hither and thither, pitching their tents in great
towns, and lifting their voices in universities. Their saints were to be
fitted for the regeneration of a new phase of the world. But in the saints
themselves it was only an outward change. The essential spirit remained
the same. That spirit had been the heirloom of the old monastic orders,
and it could never be out of date. In the men who were to do the greatest
things in the new life of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the old
spirit of the cloister must be found strong and deep. In the man who above
all was to stand forth as the sum and crown of the middle age, that
contemplative, immovable, far‐seeing realization of “the person of Christ”
must exist as heroically as in Anthony of the Desert or Benedict of the
Mountain. And it was S. Thomas’ Benedictine training that contributed much
to make him such a man.
“The monks thought much, but talked little; thus the monastic
system encouraged meditation, rather than intellectual
tournaments; reserve rather than display, deep humility rather
than dialectical skill. The Benedictines did not aim so much at
unrestrained companionship of free discussion as at self control;
not so much at secular‐minded fantasy as at much prayer and sharp
penance, till self was conquered, and the grace of God reigned,
and giants walked the earth. Self‐mastery, springing from the
basis of a supernatural life, moulded the heart to sanctity, and
imparted to the intellect an accuracy of vision which is an act of
nature directed and purified by grace. Theodore, Aldhelm, Bede,
Boniface, Alcuin, Dunstan, Wilfrid, Stephen, Bernard, Anselm,
these names are suggestive of this influence of the monastic
system.” (I., p. 26.)
It is one of the aims of the book to bring out the view that the prince of
scholastics and the king of dialecticians was a man of the purest and
deepest “monasticism.” But he was not destined to be as an Anselm, a
Bernard, or a Hugh of S. Victor.
The Saint was sent to Naples for the prosecution of his studies, and
whilst there he asked for and received the habit of S. Dominic. The author
gives a brilliant sketch of Naples as it was under the sway of Frederick
II. He then devotes a whole chapter to a “study” of the new orders of S.
Francis and S. Dominic, for the purpose of bringing out vividly before the
reader the new world that was springing up and the new race of men that
the church was calling forth to deal with it. We have no space to quote
from this chapter, but, even taken apart from its connection with S.
Thomas, it is full of interest and life.
Thus was Thomas of Aquin prepared and equipped; prepared by the great
fathers and by S. Benedict, equipped in the armor of the Order of
intellectual chivalry. And what was the work before him? Who were his
enemies, his friends, his neighbors, his assistants? In answer to these
questions we have the chapters on “Abelard, or Rationalism and
Irreverence”; on “S. Bernard, or Authority and Reverence”; on the “Schools
of S. Victor”; on the “Arabian and the Jewish Influence in Europe”; on
“William of S. Amour”; on “Paris and its University”; and on “Albert the
Great.” Some of these chapters relate, as will be seen, to men who were
not contemporaries of S. Thomas. But if Abelard, and S. Bernard, and
William of Champeaux had passed away in the flesh, their influence or
their views still lived on when Thomas wrote. And we see the full
significance of these chapters on the great schools of thought, orthodox
and heterodox, when we arrive at the second volume, and find the author
showing in detail how the Angel of the Schools, in some part or other of
his voluminous writings, met and refuted every form of prevalent error,
and, whilst majestically laying down principles for all ages, never forgot
to clear up the difficulties of his own time. The rationalism of Abelard,
the emanation doctrines that Arabian subtlety had elaborated out of the
reminiscences of the old Gnosticism, the errors of the Greek schismatics,
the perversity of the Jews, are all encountered by his never‐resting pen,
either in some one of his numerous _Opuscula_, varying in length from an
essay to an octavo volume, or else in one or other of his two great
_Sums_, or perhaps in more places than one, the refutation being the more
complete as the writing becomes more mature. As for the two greatest and
most prominent of his enterprises—the Christianizing of Aristotle and the
formation of a complete _Sum_ of theology—it was to be expected that Prior
Vaughan should fully enlarge upon them. The chapters on “S. Thomas and
Aristotle,” and “S. Thomas and Reason,” in the second volume, form a good
introduction to the study of the Angelic Doctor, and at the same time give
the enquiring mind some notion of how S. Thomas has performed one of the
greatest feats that genius ever accomplished—the successful and consistent
“conversion” of the greatest, the most original, and the most precise of
heathen philosophers into a hewer of wood and carrier of water for the
faith.
We would gladly dwell on the three chapters at the end of Vol. I., in
which the writer, in reviewing the writings of the Saint in defence and
exaltation of monasticism, gives a useful and spirited history of the
whole of that exciting contest which took its beginning in William of S.
Amour’s book called _Perils of the Last Times_. It seems really impossible
to say how much the religious state, humanly speaking, owes to the man who
wrote the book _Against Those who attack the Service of God and Religion_,
and that _On the Perfection of the Spiritual Life_.
Passing now from the more remote surroundings of the hero of the story to
the immediate scene of the greatest portion of his labors, we venture to
believe that one of the most popular parts of this work of Prior Vaughan’s
will be his animated description of the university system of the
thirteenth century, and of the University of Paris in particular. He has
spared no pains in getting at correct details and putting them
artistically together. M. Franklin’s splendid and comparatively unknown
labors on mediæval Paris have supplied him with matter that will be found
nowhere else. Paris is the natural type of the great mediæval university.
More central and accessible than Oxford, safer than Bologna, freer than
Naples, and founded on a wide and grand basis, the University of Paris
soon grew into a formidable assemblage of men who, whilst ostensibly
votaries of science, were not unprovided with excitable spirits and rough
hands. Students gathered, rich and poor, great doctors taught, munificent
founders, like Robert of Sorbon, bestowed their money or their influence,
the monks of all orders gathered round silently, and to some extent
distrustfully, from Citeaux, from Cluny, even from the Grande Chartreuse,
with the Benedictines of S. Germain, the Premonstratensians—their church
was where now stands the _Café de la Rotonde_—and the Augustinians. As for
the Dominicans and Franciscans, they, as may be supposed, were early on
the spot, to teach quite as much as to learn. The following is a sketch of
the men who flocked to the great university—at least of one considerable
class:
“There were starving, friendless lads, with their unkempt heads
and their tattered suits, who walked the streets, hungering for
bread, and famishing for knowledge, and hankering after a sight of
some of those great doctors, of whom they had heard so much when
far away in the woods of Germany or the fields of France. Some
were so poor that they could not afford to follow a course of
theology. We read of one poor fellow on his death‐bed, having
nothing else, giving his shoes and stockings to a companion to
procure a Mass for his soul. Some were only too glad to carry holy
water to private houses, _selon la coutume Gallicane_, with the
hope of receiving some small remuneration. Some were destitute of
necessary clothing. One tunic sometimes served for three, who took
it in turns—two went to bed, whilst the third dressed himself and
hurried off to school. Some spent all their scanty means in buying
parchments, and wasted their strength, through half the night,
poring over crabbed manuscript, or in puzzling out that jargon
which contained the wisdom of the wisest of the Greeks. Whole
nights some would remain awake on their hard pallets, in those
unhealthy cells, trying to work out some problem proposed by the
professor in the schools. But there were rich as well as poor at
Paris. There was Langton, like others, famous for his opulence,
who taught, and then became Canon of Notre Dame; and Thomas à
Becket, who, as a youth, came here to seek the charm of gay
society.” (I., p. 354.)
Amid all the noise, turmoil, and disputes of the huge colony of students,
numbering more thousands than Oxford or Cambridge at this day can show
hundreds, the great Dominican convent of S. James was a grand and famous
centre of light and work. S. Dominic was not long before he settled in
Paris. At first the friars lived in a mean hired lodging, apparently on
the Island of Notre Dame. But soon their reputation for poverty and
learning attracted the notice of influential benefactors, and they had a
house of their own. It was dedicated to S. James the Apostle, and quickly
became not only a great monastery but a famous school. The Dominican
Order, divinely founded for a want of the time, soon began to show in
front of the progress of the age, and to lead instead of following. It was
here, in S. James, that Alanus de Insulis and Vincent of Beauvois wrote
histories and commentaries; it was here that Albert the Great and Thomas
Aquinas lectured and wrote; and the crowd of lesser names that are
mentioned on its rolls about this time, less distinguished but still
distinguished, would take long to enumerate. It was for S. James that S.
Dominic himself had framed a body of rules. These rules are most striking,
as given in the pages of Prior Vaughan. They show how a saint and monastic
legislator feels the “form and pressure” of the times, and how he provides
for a new feature in monasticism. To read these rules, one feels tempted
to say that the Dominicans sacrificed everything to give their men a
first‐rate course of studies. But we must remember the midnight vigil and
the perpetual absence and the long silence. Still, the cloisters of S.
James were different enough from those of Monte Casino. There was a great
hall at S. James’, where professors taught and whither students thronged
to hear—how different from the remote cloister of Jarrow, where Venerable
Bede taught his younger brethren for so many years on the quiet flats
between the Wear and the Tyne! The cells knew the light of the midnight
lamp, the cloisters resounded with disputation, the young students of the
Order were men of few books—a Bible, a copy of the _Historia_ of Petrus
Comestor and of the _Sentences_ of Peter Lombard, was all their private
library. But half the day was spent face to face with a professor and with
each other, and the want of books was not much felt. And what an education
it must have been to listen to and take down the _Summa contra Gentiles_
of the Angel of the Schools! As we have said, the whole of these two
chapters is instinct with the liveliest description, and we cannot do
better than recommend readers to go to it and judge for themselves.
We must reserve what we have not yet touched upon, viz., the personal life
of the Saint himself, for another notice. It must not be supposed that
Prior Vaughan passes over the person of S. Thomas in his anxiety to show
us what sort of a world he lived in. It will soon be seen, on making some
slight acquaintance with the book, that the strictly biographical portion
is in reality most successful; the story is well told, and, like all
stories of sanctity and supernatural heroism, goes straight to the heart.
Without saying that Prior Vaughan’s two volumes partake of the nature of
the perfect, we frankly say we do not intend to find faults in it. We
welcome it, and it deserves to be welcomed by every Catholic that can read
it. There are, of course, defects and a few errors here and there; but the
book lays down no false principles, takes no dangerous views, and
patronizes no pernicious mistakes. On the other hand, it deals with a wide
theme in a large way. In language which, if at times too copious, is
nevertheless frequently eloquent and always easy and fluent, the writer
raises the life of a saint into a picture of a world‐epoch. He has labored
very hard at his authorities and sources, and when the book gets into use
many students, we are sure, will thank him for his copious references and
notes. His imagination is of a high order, and his picture‐loving power is
seen in the way in which he sketches with an epithet, puts together the
elements that he finds up and down the old authors, and shakes the dust
and the mildew from valuable bits of ancient chronicle, so that they look
bright again. The Hon. John L. Motley is in the front rank of modern
historians, and to compare any writer with him is to give praise that one
must think much before giving; but if we wished to indicate the _genre_ of
Prior Vaughan’s style—its pictorial power, its realism, and its tone of
earnest conviction—we should mention the name of the historian of the
Netherlands. The two writers are very unlike in their convictions; and Mr.
Motley has, no doubt, a perfection and finish of art which few writers can
approach. But still Prior Vaughan is quite fit to be named in the same
sentence. And a book which has cost so many hours of thought and labor,
which aims so high, which is so really the work of a man with views and
with a power to express himself, and which deals with a subject that can
never lose its interest, but one which, if we do not mistake, is as yet
only at the beginning of a grand revival, is a book to be welcomed, to be
read, and to be thankful for.
The Progressionists.
From The German Of Conrad Von Bolanden.
Chapter V.
Gerlach whispered something to the banker. Holt pressed his pocket‐
handkerchief to the wound.
“Please yourself!” said the banker loudly in a business tone. Seraphin
again approached the beaten man.
“Will you please, my good man, to accompany us?”
“What for, sir?”
“Because I would like to do something towards healing up your wound; I
mean the wound in there.”
Holt stood motionless before the stranger and looked at him.
“I thank you, sir; there is no remedy for me; I am doomed!”
“Still, I will assist you. Follow me.”
“Who are you, sir, if I may ask the question?”
“I am a man whom Providence seems to have chosen to rescue the prey from
the jaws of a usurer. Come along with us, and fear nothing.”
“Very well, I will go in the name of God! I do not precisely know your
object, and you are a stranger to me. But your countenance looks innocent
and kind, therefore I will go with you.”
They passed through alleys and streets.
“Do you often visit that tavern?” inquired Seraphin.
“Not six times in a year,” answered Holt. “Sometimes of a Sunday I drink
half a glass of wine, that’s all. I am poor, and have to be saving. I
would not have gone to the tavern to‐day but that I wanted to get rid of
my feelings of misery.”
“I overheard your story,” rejoined Seraphin. “Shund’s treatment of you was
inhuman. He behaved towards you like a trickish devil.”
“That he did! And I am ruined together with my family,” replied the poor
man dejectedly.
“Take my advice, and never abuse Shund. You know how respectable he has
suddenly got to be, how many influential friends he has. You can easily
perceive that one cannot say anything unfavorable of such a man without
great risk, no matter were it true ten times over.”
“I am not given to disputing,” replied Holt. “But it stirred the bile
within me to hear him extolled, and it broke out. Oh! I have learned to
suffer in silence. I haven’t time to think of other matters. After God, my
business and my family were my only care. I attended to my occupation
faithfully and quietly as long as I had any to attend to, but now I
haven’t any to take care of. O God! it is hard. It will bring me to the
grave.”
“You are a land cultivator?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Shund intends to have you sold out?”
“Yes; immediately after the election he intends to complete my ruin.”
“How much money would you need in order with industry to get along?”
“A great deal of money, a great deal—at least a thousand florins. I have
given him a mortgage for a thousand florins on my house and what was left
to me. A thousand florins would suffice to help me out of trouble. I might
save my little cottage, my two cows, and a field. I might then plough and
sow for other people. I could get along and subsist honestly. But as I
told you, nothing less than a thousand florins would do; and where am I to
get so much money? You see there is no hope for me, no help for me. I am
doomed!”
“The mortgaged property is considerable,” said Gerlach. “A house, even
though a small one, moreover, a field, a barn, a garden, all these
together are surely worth a much higher price. Could you not borrow a
thousand florins on it and pay off the usurer?”
“No, sir. Nobody would be willing to lend me that amount of money upon
property mortgaged to a man like Shund. Besides, my little property is out
of town, and who wants to go there? I, for my part, of course, like no
spot as much, for it is the house my father built, and I was born and
brought up there.”
The man lapsed into silence, and walked at Seraphin’s side like one
weighed down by a heavy load. The delicate sympathy of the young man
enabled him to guess what was passing in the breast of the man under the
load. He knew that Holt was recalling his childhood passed under the
paternal roof; that little spot of home was hallowed for him by events
connected with his mother, his father, his brothers and sisters, or with
other objects more trifling, which, however, remained fresh and bright in
memory, like balmy days of spring.
From this consecrated spot he was to be exiled, driven out with wife and
children, through the inhumanity and despicable cunning of an usurer. The
man heaved a deep sigh, and Gerlach, watching him sidewise, noticed his
lips were compressed, and that large tears rolled down his weather‐browned
cheeks. The tender heart of the young man was deeply affected at this
sight, and the millionaire for once rejoiced in the consciousness of
possessing the might of money.
They halted before the Palais Greifmann. Holt noticed with surprise how
the man in blouse drew from his waistcoat pocket a small instrument
resembling a toothpick, and with it opened a door near the carriage gate.
Had not every shadow of suspicion been driven from Holt’s mind by
Seraphin’s appearance, he would surely have believed that he had fallen
into the company of burglars, who entrapped him to aid in breaking into
this palace.
Reluctantly, after repeated encouragement from Gerlach, he crossed the
threshold of the stately mansion. He had not quite passed the door when he
took off his cap, stared at the costly furniture of the hall through which
they were passing, and was reminded of St. Peter’s thought as the angel
was rescuing him from the clutches of Herod. Holt imagined he saw a
vision. The man who had unlocked the door disappeared. Seraphin entered an
apartment followed by Shund’s victim.
“Do you know where you are?” inquired the millionaire.
“Yes, sir, in the house of Mr. Greifmann the banker.”
“And you are somewhat surprised, are you not?”
“I am so much astonished, sir, that I have several times pinched my arms
and legs, for it all seems to me like a dream.”
Seraphin smiled and laid aside his cap. Holt scanned the noble features of
the young man more minutely, his handsome face, his stately bearing, and
concluded the man in the blouse must be some distinguished gentleman.
“Take courage,” said the noble‐looking young man in a kindly tone. “You
shall be assisted. I am convinced that you are an honest, industrious man,
brought to the verge of ruin through no fault of your own. Nor do I blame
you for inadvertently falling into the nets of the usurer, for I believe
your honest nature never suspected that there could exist so fiendish a
monster as the one that lives in the soul of an usurer.”
“You may rely upon it, sir. If I had had the slightest suspicion of such a
thing, Shund never would have got me into his clutches.”
“I am convinced of it. You are partially the victim of your own good
nature, and partially the prey of the wild beast Shund. Now listen to me:
Suppose somebody were to give you a thousand florins, and to say: ‘Holt,
take this money, ’tis yours. Be industrious, get along, be a prudent
housekeeper, serve God to the end of your days, and in future beware of
usurers’—suppose somebody were to address you in this way, what would you
do?”
“Supposing the case, sir, although it is not possible, but supposing the
case, what would I do? I would do precisely what that person would have
told me, and a great deal more. I would work day and night. Every day, at
evening prayer, I would get on my knees with my wife and children, and
invoke God’s protection on that person. I would do that, sir; but, as I
said, the case is impossible.”
“Nevertheless, suppose it did happen,” explained Seraphin in a preliminary
way. “Give me your hand that you will fulfil the promise you have just
given.”
For a moment Seraphin’s hand lay in a callous, iron palm, which pressed
his soft fingers in an uncomfortable but well‐meant grasp.
“Well, now follow me,” said Gerlach.
He led the way; Holt followed with an unsteady step like a drunken man.
They presented themselves before the banker’s counter. The latter was
standing behind the trellis of his desk, and on a table lay ten rolls of
money.
“You have just now by word and hand confirmed a promise,” said Gerlach,
turning to the countryman, “which cannot be appreciated in money, for that
promise comprises almost all the duties of the father of a family. But to
make the fulfilment of the promise possible, a thousand florins are
needed. Here lies the money. Accept it from me as a gift, and be happy.”
Holt did not stir. He looked from the money at Gerlach, was motionless and
rigid, until, at last, the paralyzing surprise began to resolve itself
into a spasmodic quivering of the lips, and then into a mighty flood of
tears. Seizing Seraphin’s hands, he kissed them with an emotion that
convulsed his whole being.
“That will do now,” said the millionaire, “take the money, and go home.”
“My God! I cannot find utterance,” said Holt, stammering forth the words
with difficulty. “Good heaven! is it possible? Is it true? I am still
thinking ’tis only a dream.”
“Downright reality, my man!” said the banker. “Stop crying; save your
tears for a more fitting occasion. Put the rolls in your pocket, and go
home.”
Greifmann’s coldness was effective in sobering down the man intoxicated
with joy.
“May I ask, sir, what your name is, that I may at least know to whom I owe
my rescue?”
“Seraphin is my name.”
“Your name sounds like an angel’s, and you are an angel to me. I am not
acquainted with you, but God knows you, and he will requite you according
to your deeds.”
Gerlach nodded gravely. The banker was impatient and murmured
discontentedly. Holt carefully pocketed the rolls of money, made an
inclination of gratitude to Gerlach, and went out. He passed slowly
through the hall. The porter opened the door. Holt stood still before him.
“I ask your pardon, but do you know Mr. Seraphin?” asked he.
“Why shouldn’t I know a gentleman that has been our guest for the last two
weeks?”
“You must pardon my presumption, Mr. Porter. Will Mr. Seraphin remain here
much longer?”
“He will remain another week for certain.”
“I am very much obliged to you,” said Holt, passing into the street and
hurrying away.
“Your intended has a queer way of applying his money,” said the banker to
his sister the next morning. And he reported to her the story of
Seraphin’s munificence. “I do not exactly like this sort of kindness, for
it oversteps all bounds, and undoubtedly results from religious
enthusiasm.”
“That, too, can be cured,” replied Louise confidently. “I will make him
understand that eternity restores nothing, that consequently it is safer
and more prudent to exact interest from the present.”
“’Tis true, the situation of that fellow Holt was a pitiable one, and Hans
Shund’s treatment of him was a masterpiece of speculation. He had stripped
the fellow completely. The stupid Holt had for years been laboring for the
cunning Shund, who continued drawing his meshes more and more tightly
about him. Like a huge spider, he leisurely sucked out the life of the fly
he had entrapped.”
“Your hostler says there was light in Seraphin’s room long after midnight.
I wonder what hindered him from sleeping?”
“That is not hard to divine. In all probability he was composing a
sentimental ditty to his much adored,” answered Carl teasingly. “Midnight
is said to be a propitious time for occupations of that sort.”
“Do be quiet, you tease! But I too was thinking that he must have been
engaged in writing. May be he was making a memorandum of yesterday’s
experience in his journal.”
“May be he was. At all events, the impressions made on him were very
strong.”
“But I do not like your venture; it may turn out disastrous.”
“How can it, my most learned sister?”
“You know Seraphin’s position,” explained she. “He has been reared in the
rigor of sectarian credulity. The spirit of modern civilization being thus
abruptly placed before his one‐sided judgment without previous preparation
may alarm, nay, may even disgust him. And when once he will have perceived
that the brother is a partisan of the horrible monster, is it probable
that he will feel favorably disposed towards the sister whose views
harmonize with those of her brother?”
“I have done nothing to justify him in setting me down for a partisan. I
maintain strict neutrality. My purpose is to accustom the weakling to the
atmosphere of enlightenment which is fatal to all religious phantasms.
Have no fear of his growing cold towards you,” proceeded he in his
customary tone of irony. “Your ever victorious power holds him spell‐bound
in the magic circle of your enchantment. Besides, Louise,” continued he,
frowning, “I do not think I could tolerate a brother‐in‐law steeped over
head and ears in prejudices. You yourself might find it highly
uncomfortable to live with a husband of this kind.”
“Uncomfortable! No, I would not. I would find it exciting, for it would
become my task to train and cultivate an abnormal specimen of the male
gender.”
“Very praiseworthy, sister! And if I now endeavor by means of living
illustrations to familiarize your intended with the nature of modern
intellectual enlightenment, I am merely preparing the way for your future
labors.”
Chapter VI. Masters and Slaves.
Under the much despised discipline of religious requirements, the child
Seraphin had grown up to boyhood spotless in morals, and then had
developed himself into a young man of great firmness of character, whose
faith was as unshaken as the correctness of his behavior was constant.
The bloom of his cheeks, the innocent brightness of his eye, the suavity
of his disposition, were the natural results of the training which his
heart had received. No foul passion had ever disturbed the serenity of his
soul. When under the smiling sky of a spring morning he took his ride over
the extensive possessions of his father, his interior accorded perfectly
with the peace and loveliness of the sights and sounds of blooming nature
around him. On earth, however, no spring, be it ever so beautiful, is
entirely safe from storms. Evil spirits lie in waiting in the air, dark
powers threaten destruction to all blossoms and all incipient life. And
the more inevitable is the dread might of those lurking spirits, that in
every blossom of living plant lies concealed a germ of ruin, sleeps a
treacherous passion—even in the heart of the innocent Seraphin.
The strategic arts of the beautiful young lady received no small degree of
additional power from the genuine effort made by her to please the stately
double millionaire. In a short time she was to such an extent successful
that one day Carl rallied her in the following humorous strain: “Your
intended is sitting in the arbor singing a most dismal song! You will have
to allow him a little more line, Louise, else you run the risk of
unsettling his brain. Moreover, I cannot be expected to instruct a man in
the mysteries of progress, if he sees, feels, and thinks nothing but
Louise.”
The banker had not uttered an exaggeration. It sometimes happens that a
first love bursts forth with an impetuosity so uncontrollable, that, for a
time, every other domain of the intellectual and moral nature of a young
man is, as it were, submerged under a mighty flood. This temporary
inundation of passion cannot, of course, maintain its high tide in
presence of calm experience, and the sunshine of more ripened knowledge
soon dries up its waters. But Seraphin possessed only the scanty
experience of a young man, and his knowledge of the world was also very
limited. Hence, in his case, the stream rose alarmingly high, but it did
not reach an overflow, for the hand of a pious mother had thrown up in the
heart of the child a living dike strong enough to resist the greatest
violence of the swell. The height and solidity of the dike increased with
the growth of the child; it was a bulwark of defence for the man, who
stood secure against humiliating defeats behind the adamantine wall of
religious principles—yet only so long as he sought protection behind this
bulwark. Faith uttered a serious warning against an unconditional
surrender of himself to the object of his attachment. For he could not put
to rest some misgivings raised in his mind by the strange and, to him,
inexplicable attitude which Louise assumed upon the highest questions of
human existence. The uninitiated youth had no suspicion of the existence
of that most disgusting product of modern enlightenment, the _emancipated_
female. Had he discovered in Louise the emancipated woman in all the
ugliness of her real nature, he would have conceived unutterable loathing
for such a monstrosity. And yet he could not but feel that between himself
and Louise there yawned an abyss, there existed an essential repulsion,
which, at times, gave rise within him to considerable uneasiness.
To obtain a solution of the enigma of this antipathy, the young gentleman
concluded to trust entirely to the results of his observations, which,
however, were far from being definitive; for his reason was imposed upon
by his feelings, and, from day to day, the charms of the beautiful woman
were steadily progressing in throwing a seductive spell over his judgment.
The banker’s daughter possessed a high degree of culture; she was a
perfect mistress of the tactics employed on the field of coquetry; her
tact was exquisite; and she understood thoroughly how to take advantage of
a kindly disposition and of the tenderness inspired by passion. How was
the eye of Seraphin, strengthened neither by knowledge nor by experience,
to detect the true worth of what lay hidden beneath this fascinating
delusion?
Here again his religious training came to the rescue of the inexperienced
youth, by furnishing him with standards safe and unfalsified, by which to
weigh and come to a conclusion.
Louise’s indifference to practices of piety annoyed him. She never
attended divine service, not even on Sundays. He never saw her with a
prayer‐book, nor was a single picture illustrative of a moral subject to
be found hung up in her apartment. Her conversation, at all times, ran
upon commonplaces of everyday concern, such as the toilet, theatre,
society. He noticed that whenever he ventured to launch matter of a more
serious import upon the current of conversation, it immediately became
constrained and soon ceased to flow. Louise appeared to his heart at the
same time so fascinating and yet so peculiar, so seductive and yet so
repulsive, that the contradictions of her being caused him to feel quite
unhappy.
He was again sitting in his room thinking about her. In the interview he
had just had with her, the young lady had exerted such admirable powers of
womanly charms that the poor young man had had a great deal of trouble to
maintain his self‐possession. Her ringing, mischievous laugh was still
sounding in his ears, and the brightness of her sparkling eyes was still
lighting up his memory. And the unsuspecting youth had no Solomon at his
side to repeat to him: “My son, can a man hide fire in his bosom, and his
garments not burn? Or can he walk upon hot coals, and his feet not be
burnt?... She entangleth him with many words, and she draweth him away
with the flattery of her lips. Immediately he followeth her as an ox led
to be a victim, and as a lamb playing the wanton, and not knowing that he
is drawn like a fool to bonds, till the arrow pierce his liver. As if a
bird should make haste to the snare, and knoweth not that his life is in
danger. Now, therefore, my son, hear me, and attend to the words of my
mouth. Let not thy mind be drawn away in her ways: neither be thou
deceived with her paths. For she hath cast down many wounded, and the
strongest have been slain by her. Her house is the way to hell, reaching
even to the inner chambers of death.”(3)
For Seraphin, however, no Solomon was at hand who might give him counsel.
Sustained by his virtue and by his faith alone, he struggled against the
temptress, not precisely of the kind referred to by Solomon, but still a
dangerous one from the ranks of progress.
Greifmann had notified him that the general assembly election was to be
held that day, that Mayor Hans Shund would certainly be returned as a
delegate, and that he intended to call for Gerlach, and go out to watch
the progress of the election.
Seraphin felt rather indifferent respecting the election; but he would
have considered himself under weighty obligation to the brother for an
explanation of the peculiar behavior of the sister at which he was so
greatly perplexed.
Carl himself he had for a while regarded as an enigma. Now, however, he
believed that he had reached a correct conclusion concerning the brother.
It appeared to him that the principal characteristic of Carl’s disposition
was to treat every subject, except what strictly pertained to business, in
a spirit of levity. To the faults of others Carl was always ready to
accord a praiseworthy degree of indulgence, he never uttered harsh words
in a tone of bitterness, and when he pronounced censure, his reproof was
invariably clothed in some form of pleasantry. In general, he behaved like
a man not having time to occupy himself seriously with any subject that
did not lie within the particular sphere of his occupation. Even their
wager he managed like a matter of business, although the landowner could
not but take umbrage at the banker’s ready and natural way of dealing with
men whose want of principle he himself abominated. Greifmann seemed good‐
natured, minute, and cautious in business, and in all other things
exceedingly liberal and full of levity. Such was the judgment arrived at
by Seraphin, inexperienced and little inclined to fault‐finding as he was,
respecting a gentleman who stood at the summit of modern culture, who had
skill in elegantly cloaking great faults and foibles, and whose sole
religion consisted in the accumulation of papers and coins of arbitrary
value.
Gerlach’s servant entered, and disturbed his meditation.
“There is a man here with a family who begs hard to be allowed to speak
with you.”
“A man with a family!” repeated the millionaire, astonished. “I know
nobody round here, and have no desire to form acquaintances.”
“The man will not be denied. He says his name is Holt, and that he has
something to say to you.”
“Ah, yes!” exclaimed Seraphin, with a smile that revealed a pleasant
surprise. “Send the man and those who are with him in to me.”
Closing a diary, in which he was recording circumstantially the
experiences of his present visit, he awaited the visitors. A loud knock
from a weighty fist reminded him of a pair of callous hands, then Holt,
followed by his wife and children, presented himself before his
benefactor. They all made a small courtesy, even the flaxen‐headed little
children, and the bright, healthy babe in the arms of the mother met his
gaze with the smile of an angel. The dark spirits that were hovering
around him, torturing and tempting, instantly vanished, and he became
serene and unconstrained whilst conversing with these simple people.
“You must excuse us, Mr. Seraphin,” began Holt. “This is my wife, and
these are seven of my children. There is one more; her name is Mechtild.
She had to stay at home and mind the house. She will pay you an extra
visit, and present her thanks. We have called that you might become
acquainted with the family whom you have rescued, and that we might thank
you with all our hearts.”
After this speech, the father gave a signal, whereupon the little ones
gathered around the amiable young man, made their courtesies, and kissed
his hands.
“May God bless you, Mr. Seraphin!” first spoke a half‐grown girl.
“We greet you, dear Seraphin!” said another, five years old.
“We pray for you every day, Mr. Seraphin,” said the next in succession.
“We are thankful to you from our hearts, Mr. Seraphin,” spoke a small lad,
in a tone of deep earnestness.
And thus did every child deliver its little address. It was touching to
witness the noble dignity of the children, which may, at times, be found
beautifully investing their innocence. Gerlach was moved. He looked down
upon the little ones around him with an expression of affectionate
thankfulness. Holt’s lips also quivered, and bright tears of happiness
streamed from the eyes of the mother.
“I am obliged to you, my little friends, for your greetings and for your
prayers,” spoke the millionaire. “You are well brought up. Continue always
to be good children, such as you now are; have the fear of God, and honor
your parents.”
“Mr. Seraphin,” said Holt, drawing a paper from his pocket, “here is the
note that I have redeemed with the money you gave me. I wanted to show it
to you, so that you might know for certain that the money had been applied
to the proper purpose.”
Gerlach affected to take an interest in the paper, and read over the
receipt.
“But there is one thing, Mr. Seraphin,” continued Holt, “that grieves me.
And that is, that there is not anything better than mere words with which
I can testify my gratitude to you. I would like ever so much to do
something for you—to do something for you worth speaking of. Do you know,
Mr. Seraphin, I would be willing to shed the last drop of my blood for
you?”
“Never mind that, Holt! It is ample recompense for me to know that I have
helped a worthy man out of trouble. You can now, Mrs. Holt, set to work
with renewed courage. But,” added he archly, “you will have to watch your
husband that he may not again fall into the clutches of beasts of prey
like Shund.”
“He has had to pay dearly for his experience, Mr. Seraphin. I used often
to say to him: ‘Michael, don’t trust Shund. Shund talks too much, he is
too sweet altogether, he has some wicked design upon us—don’t trust him.’
But, you see, Mr. Seraphin, my husband thinks that all people are as
upright as he is himself, and he believed that Shund really meant to deal
fairly as he pretended. But Michael’s wits are sharpened now, and he will
not in future be so ready to believe every man upon his word. Nor will he,
hereafter, borrow one single penny, and he will never again undertake to
buy anything unless he has the money in hand to pay for it.”
“In what street do you live?” inquired Gerlach.
“Near the turnpike road, Mr. Seraphin. Do you see that knoll?” He pointed
through the window in a direction unobstructed by the trees of the garden.
“Do you see that dense shade‐tree, and yon white‐washed wall behind the
tree? That is our walnut‐tree—my grandfather planted it. And the white
wall is the wall of our house.”
“I have passed there twice—the road leads to the beech grove,” said the
millionaire. “I remarked the little cottage, and was much pleased with its
air of neatness. It struck me, too, that the barn is larger than the
dwelling, which is a creditable sign for a farmer. Near the front entrance
there is a carefully cultivated flower garden, in which I particularly
admired the roses, and further off from the road lies an apple orchard.”
“All that belongs to us. That is what you have rescued and made a present
of to us,” replied the land cultivator joyfully. “Everybody stops to view
the roses; they belong to our daughter Mechtild.”
“The soil is good and deep, and must bring splendid crops of wheat. I,
too, am a farmer, and understand something about such matters. But it
appeared to me as though the soil were of a cold nature. You should use
lime upon it pretty freely.”
In this manner he spent some time conversing with these good and simple
people. Before dismissing them, he made a present to every one of the
children of a shining dollar, having previously overcome Holt’s protest
against this new instance of generosity.
Old and young then courtesied once more, and Gerlach was left to himself
in a mood differing greatly from that in which the visitors had found him.
He had been conversing with good and happy people, and his soul revelled
in the consciousness of having been the originator of their happiness.
Suddenly Greifmann’s appearance in the room put to flight the bright
spirits that hovered about him, and the sunshine that had been lighting up
the apartment was obscured by dark shadows as of a heavy mass of clouds.
“What sort of a horde was that?” asked he.
“They were Holt and his family. The gratitude of these simple people was
touching. The innocent little ones gave me an ovation of which a prince
might be envious, for the courts of princes are never graced by a
naturalness at once so sincere and so beautiful. It is an intense
happiness for me to have assured the livelihood of ten human beings with
so paltry a gift.”
“A mere matter of taste, my most sympathetic friend!” rejoined the banker
with indifference. “You are not made of the proper stuff to be a business
man. Your feelings would easily tempt you into very unbusinesslike
transactions. But you must come with me! The hubbub of the election is
astir through all the streets and thoroughfares. I am going out to
discharge my duties as a citizen, and I want you to accompany me.”
“I have no inclination to see any more of this disgusting turmoil,”
replied Gerlach.
“Inclination or disinclination is out of the question when interest
demands it,” insisted the banker. “You must profit by the opportunity
which you now have of enriching your knowledge of men and things, or
rather of correcting it; for heretofore your manner of viewing things has
been mere ideal enthusiasm. Come with me, my good fellow!”
Seraphin followed with interior reluctance. Greifmann went on to impart to
him the following information:
“During the past night, there have sprung up, as if out of the earth, a
most formidable host, ready to do battle against the uniformly victorious
army of progress—men thoroughly armed and accoutred, real crusaders. A
bloody struggle is imminent. Try and make of your heart a sort of monitor
covered with plates of iron, so that you may not be overpowered by the
horrifying spectacle of the election affray. I am not joking at all! True
as gospel, what I tell you! If you do not want to be stifled by
indignation at sight of the fiercest kind of terrorism, of the most
revolting tyranny, you will have to lay aside, at least for to‐day, every
feeling of humanity.”
Gerlach perceived a degree of seriousness in the bubbling current of
Greifmann’s levity.
“Who is the enemy that presumes to stand in the way of progress?” enquired
he.
“The ultramontanes! Listen to what I have to tell you. This morning
Schwefel came in to get a check cashed. With surprise I observed that the
manufacturer’s soul was not in business. ‘How are things going?’ asked I
when we had got through.
“ ‘I feel like a man,’ exclaimed he, ‘that has just seen a horrible
monster! Would you believe it, those accursed ultramontanes have been
secretly meddling in the election. They have mustered a number of votes,
and have even gone so far as to have a yellow ticket printed. Their yellow
placards were to be seen this morning stuck up at every street corner—of
course they were immediately torn down.’
“ ‘And are you provoked at that, Mr. Schwefel! You certainly are not going
to deny the poor ultramontanes the liberty of existing, or, at least, the
liberty of voting for whom they please?’
“ ‘Yes, I am, I am! That must not be tolerated,’ cried he wildly. ‘The
black brood are hatching dark schemes, they are conspiring against
civilization, and would fain wrest from us the trophies won by progress.
It is high time to apply the axe to the root of the upas‐tree. Our duty is
to disinfect thoroughly, to banish the absurdities of religious dogma from
our schools. The black spawn will have to be rendered harmless: we must
kill them politically.’
“ ‘Very well,’ said I. ‘Just make negroes of them. Now that in America the
slaves are emancipated, Europe would perhaps do well to take her turn at
the slave‐trade.’ But the fellow would not take my joke. He made
threatening gesticulations, his eyes gleamed like hot coals, and he
muttered words of a belligerent import.
“ ‘The ultramontane rabble are to hold a meeting at the “Key of Heaven,” ’
reported he. ‘There the stupid victims of credulity are to be harangued by
several of their best talkers. The black tide is afterwards to diffuse
itself through the various wards where the voting is to take place. But
let the priest‐ridden slaves come, they will have other memoranda to carry
home with them beside their yellow rags of tickets.’
“You perceive, friend Seraphin, that the progress men mean mischief. We
may expect to witness scenes of violence.”
“That is unjustifiable brutality on the part of the progressionists,”
declared Gerlach indignantly. “Are not the ultramontanes entitled to vote
and to receive votes? Are they not free citizens? Do they not enjoy the
same privileges as others? It is a disgrace and an outrage thus to
tyrannize over men who are their brothers, sons of Germania, their common
mother.”
“Granted! Violence is disgraceful. The intention of progress, however, is
not quite as bad as you think it. Being convinced of its own
infallibility, it cannot help feeling indignant at the unbelief of
ultramontanism, which continues deaf to the saving truths of the
progressionist gospel. Hence a holy zeal for making converts urges
progress so irresistibly that it would fain force wanderers into the path
of salvation by violence. This is simply human, and should not be regarded
as unpardonable. In the self‐same spirit did my namesake Charles the Great
butcher the Saxons because the besotted heathens presumed to entertain
convictions differing from his own. And those who were not butchered had
to see their sacred groves cut down, their altars demolished, their time‐
honored laws changed, and had to resign themselves to following the ways
which he thought fit to have opened through the land of the Saxons. You
cannot fail to perceive that Charles the Great was a member of the school
of progress.”
“But your comparison is defective,” opposed the millionaire. “Charles
subdued a wild and blood‐thirsty horde who made it a practice to set upon
and butcher peaceful neighbors. Charles was the protector of the realm,
and the Saxons were forced to bend under the weight of his powerful arm.
If Charles, however, did violence to the consciences of his vanquished
enemies, and converted them to Christianity with the sword and mace, then
Charles himself is not to be excused, for moral freedom is expressly
proclaimed by the spirit of Christianity.”
“There is no doubt but that the Saxons were blundering fools for rousing
the lion by making inroads into Charles’ domain. The ultramontanes, are,
however, in a similar situation. They have attacked the giant Progress,
and have themselves to blame for the consequences.”
“The ultramontanes have attacked nobody,” maintained Gerlach. “They are
merely asserting their own rights, and are not putting restrictions on the
rights of other people. But progress will concede neither rights nor
freedom to others. It is a disgusting egotist, an unscrupulous tyrant,
that tries to build up his own brutal authority on the ruins of the rights
of others.”
“Still, it would have been far more prudent on the part of the
ultramontanes to keep quiet, seeing that their inferiority of numbers
cannot alter the situation. The indisputable rights of the ascendency are
in our days with the sceptre and crown of progress.”
“A brave man never counts the foe,” cried Gerlach. “He stands to his
convictions, and behaves manfully in the struggle.”
“Well said!” applauded the banker. “And since progress also is forced by
the opposition of principles to man itself for the contest, it will
naturally beat up all its forces in defence of its conviction. Here we are
at the ‘Key of Heaven,’ where the ultramontanes are holding their meeting.
Let us go in, for the proverb says, _Audiatur et altera pars_—the other
side should also get a hearing.”
They drew near to a lengthy old building. Over the doorway was a pair of
crossed keys hewn out of stone, and gilt, informing the stranger that it
was the hostelry of the “Key of Heaven,” where, since the days of hoar
antiquity, hospitality was dispensed to pilgrims and travellers. The
principal hall of the house contained a gathering of about three hundred
men. They were attentively listening to the words of a speaker who was
warmly advocating the principles of his party. The speaker stood behind a
desk which was placed upon a platform at the far end of the hall.
Seraphin cast a glance over the assembly. He received the painful
impression of a hopeless minority. Barely forty votes would the
ultramontanes be able to send to each of the wards. To compensate for
numbers, intelligence and faith were represented in the meeting. Elegant
gentlemen with intellectual countenances sat or stood in the company of
respectable tradesmen, and the long black coats of the clergy were not few
in number. On a table lay two packages of yellow tickets to be distributed
among the members of the assembly. At the same table sat the chairman, a
commissary of police named Parteiling, whose business it was to watch the
proceedings, and several other gentlemen.
“Compared with the colossal preponderance of progress, our influence is
insignificant, and, compared with the masses of our opponents our
numerical strength is still less encouraging,” said the speaker. “If in
connection with this disheartening fact you take into consideration the
pressure which progress has it in its power to exert on the various
relations of life through numerous auxiliary means, if you remember that
our opponents can dismiss from employment all such as dare uphold views
differing from their own, it becomes clear that no ordinary amount of
courage is required to entertain and proclaim convictions hostile to
progress.”
Seraphin thought of Spitzkopf’s mode of electioneering, and of the
terrible threats made to the “wild men,” and concluded the incredible
statement was lamentably correct.
“Viewing things in this light,” proceeded the orator, “I congratulate the
present assembly upon its unusual degree of pluck, for courage is required
to go into battle with a clear knowledge of the overwhelming strength of
the enemy. We have rallied round the banner of our convictions
notwithstanding that the numbers of the enemy make victory hopeless. We
are determined to cast our votes in support of religion and morality in
defiance of the scorn, blasphemy, and violence which the well‐known
terrorism of progress will not fail to employ in order to frighten us from
the exercise of our privilege as citizens. We must be prepared, gentlemen,
to hear a multitude of sarcastic remarks and coarse witticisms, both in
the streets and at the polls. I adjure you to maintain the deportment
alone worthy of our cause. A gentleman never replies to the aggressions of
rudeness, and should you wish to take the conduct of our opponents in gay
good‐humor, just try, gentlemen, to fancy that you are being treated to
some elegant exhibition of the refinement and liberal culture of the
times.”
Loud bursts of hilarity now and then relieved the seriousness of the
meeting. Even Greifmann would clap applause and cry, “Bravo!”
“Let us stand united to a man, prepared against all the wiles of
intimidation and corruption, undismayed by the onset of the enemy. The
struggle is grave beyond expression. For you are acquainted with the aims
and purposes of the liberals. Progress would like to sweep away all the
religious heritages that our fathers held sacred. Education is to be
violently wrested from under the influence of the church; the church
herself is to be enslaved and strangled in the thrall of the liberal
state. I am aware that our opponents pretend to respect religion—but the
religion of would‐be progress is infidelity. Divine revelation, of which
the church is the faithful guardian, is rejected with scorn by liberalism.
Look at the tone of the press and the style of the literature of the day.
You have only to notice the derision and fierceness with which the press
daily assails the mysteries and dogmas of religion, the Sovereign Pontiff,
the clergy, religious orders, the ultramontanes, and you cannot long
remain in the dark concerning the aim and object of progress. Christ or
Antichrist is the watchword of the day, gentlemen! Hence the imperative
duty for us to be active at the elections; for the legislature has the
presumption to wish to dictate in matters belonging exclusively to the
jurisdiction of the church. We are threatened with school laws the purpose
of which is to unchristianize our children, to estrange them from the
spirit of religion. No man having the sentiment of religion can remain
indifferent in presence of this danger, for it means nothing less than the
defection from Christianity of the masses of the coming generation.
“Gentlemen, there is a reproach being uttered just now by the
progressionist press, which, far from repelling, I would feel proud to
deserve. A priest should have said, so goes the report, that it is a
mortal sin to elect a progressionist to the chamber of deputies. Some of
the writers of our press have met this reproach by simply denying that a
priest ever expressed himself in those terms. But, gentlemen, let us take
for granted that a priest did actually say that it is a mortal sin to
elect a progressionist to the chamber of deputies, is there anything
opposed to morality in such a declaration?
“By no means, if you remember that it is to be presumed the progressionist
will use his vote in the assembly to oppose religion. Mortal sin,
gentlemen, is any wilful transgression of God’s law in grave matters. Now
I put it to you: Does he gravely transgress the law of God who controverts
what God has revealed, who would exclude God and all holy subjects from
the schools, who would rob the church of her independence, and make of her
a mere state machine unfit for the fulfilment of her high mission? There
is not one of you but is ready to declare: ‘Yes, such an one transgresses
grievously the law of God.’ This answer at the same time solves the other
question, whether it is a mortal sin to put arms in the hands of an enemy
of religion that he may use them against faith and morality. Would that
all men of Christian sentiment seriously adverted to this connection of
things and acted accordingly, the baneful sway of the pernicious spirit
that governs the age would soon be at an end; for I have confidence in the
sound sense and moral rectitude of the German people. Heathenism is
repugnant to the deeply religious nature of our nation; the German people
do not wish to dethrone God, nor are they ready to bow the knee before the
empty idol of a soulless enlightenment.”
Here the speaker was interrupted by a tumult. A band of factorymen,
yelling and laughing, rushed into the hall to disturb the meeting. All
eyes were immediately turned upon the rioters. In every countenance
indignation could be seen kindling at this outrage of the liberals. The
commissary of police alone sat motionless as a statue. The progressionist
rioters elbowed their way into the crowd, and, when the excitement caused
by this strategic movement had subsided, the speaker resumed his
discourse.
“For a number of years back our conduct has been misrepresented and
calumniated. They call us men of no nationality, and pretend that we get
our orders from Rome. This reproach does honor neither to the intelligence
nor to the judgment of our opponents. Whence dates the division of Germany
into discordant factions? When began the present faint and languishing
condition of our fatherland? From the moment when it separated from Rome.
So long as Germany continued united in the bond of the same holy faith,
and the voice of the head of the church was hearkened to by every member
of her population, her sovereigns held the golden apple, the symbol of
universal empire. Our nation was then the mightiest, the proudest, the
most glorious upon earth. The church who speaks through the Sovereign
Pontiff had civilized the fierce sons of Germany, had conjured the hatred
and feuds of hostile tribes, had united the interests and energies of our
people in one holy faith, and had ennobled and enriched German genius
through the spirit of religion. The church had formed out of the chaos of
barbarism the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation—that gigantic and
wonderful organization the like of which the world will never see again.
But the church has long since been deprived of the leadership in German
affairs, and what in consequence is now the condition of our fatherland?
It is divided into discordant factions, it is an ailing trunk, with many
members, but without a head.
“It is rather amusing that the ultramontanes should be charged with
receiving orders from Rome, for the voice of the Father of Christianity
has not been heard for many years back in the council of state.”
“Hurrah for the Syllabus!” cried Spitzkopf, who was at the head of the
rioters. “Hurrah for the Syllabus!” echoed his gang, yelling and stamping
wildly.
The ultramontanes were aroused, eyes glared fiercely, and fists were
clenched ready to make a summary clearing of the hall. But no scuffle
ensued; the ultramontanes maintained a dignified bearing. The speaker
calmly remained in his place, and when the tumult had ceased he again went
on with his discourse.
“Such only,” said he, “take offence at the Syllabus as know nothing about
it. There is not a word in the Syllabus opposed to political liberty or
the most untrammelled self‐government of the German people. But it is
opposed to the fiendish terrorism of infidelity. The Syllabus condemns the
diabolical principles by which the foundations of the Christian state are
sapped and a most disastrous tyranny over conscience is proclaimed.”
“Hallo! listen to that,” cried one of the liberals, and the yelling was
renewed, louder, longer, and more furious than before.
The chairman rang his bell. The revellers relapsed into silence.
“Ours is not a public meeting, but a mere private gathering,” explained
the chairman. “None but men of Christian principles have been invited. If
others have intruded violently, I request them to leave the room, or, at
least, to refrain from conduct unbecoming men of good‐breeding.”
Spitzkopf laughed aloud, his comrades yelled and stamped.
“Let us go!” said Greifmann to Gerlach in an angry tone.
“Let us stay!” rejoined the latter with excitement. “The affair is
becoming interesting. I want to see how this will end.”
The banker noticed Gerlach’s suppressed indignation; he observed it in the
fire of his eyes and the expression of unutterable contempt that had
spread over his features, and he began to consider the situation as
alarming. He had not expected this exhibition of brutal impertinence. In
his estimation an infringement of propriety like the one he had just
witnessed was a far more heinous transgression than the grossest
violations in the sphere of morals. He judged of Gerlach’s impressions by
this standard of appreciation, and feared the behavior of the
progressionist mob would produce an effect in the young man’s mind far
from favorable to the cause which they represented. He execrated the
disturbance of the liberals, and took Seraphin’s arm to lead him away.
“Come away, I beg of you! I cannot imagine what interest the rudeness of
that uncultivated horde can have for you.”
“Do not scorn them, for they are honestly earning their pay,” rejoined
Gerlach.
“What do you mean?”
“Those fellows are whistling, bawling, stamping, and yelling in the employ
of progress. You are trying to give me an insight into the nature of
modern civilization: could there be a better opportunity than this?”
“There you make a mistake, my dear fellow! Enlightened progress is never
rude.”
To Be Continued.
Gavazzi Versus The See Of S. Peter.
By a Protestant Doctor of Philosophy.
Introductory Note.
The topic of this article has already been fully and satisfactorily
treated in THE CATHOLIC WORLD. It is well, however, to adopt, in handling
the truth, Voltaire’s maxim in regard to falsehood, and to keep
continually repeating those truths which are frequently denied. Not only
the mountebank Gavazzi, but others more respectable than he is, keep on
reasserting the denial of S. Peter’s Roman Episcopate, notwithstanding the
evidence which has been over and over again presented in proof of it by
Protestant as well as Catholic writers. We, therefore, willingly give
admission to the present article, which, we may as well state, has been
printed from the author’s MS. copy, without any alteration.—ED. C. W.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
At our examination in the diocese of the Protestant Episcopal Church in
which we took holy orders, the question of S. Peter’s being at Rome was
debated with some warmth by the clerical examiners and the bishop. We had
at that time just passed our majority, and, while our reading had been
pretty full, we had not touched the subject of this article, for it was
indeed comparatively new to us. We remember well the remark of our bishop,
whose opinion on theological questions we held in veneration. He was
prominent on the bench of bishops as one of the most learned of our
prelates, and he had wielded his pen in defence of Anglican Church
principles with great reputation to himself among Episcopalians,
particularly the High Church school of religious thought. At the period to
which we refer, he gave it as his opinion that it was extremely doubtful
that S. Peter ever visited Rome, and that he was the first bishop of its
See was beyond the province of historical proof. Previous to this date in
our studies, we would as lief have questioned the fact of the existence of
Rome itself as that of S. Peter’s residence there, and his occupancy of
that metropolitan see. We had reached this conclusion by no investigation:
it was, rather, one of those traditional questions which fix themselves in
the mind without much thought in either direction. The fact, as we
supposed, had never been doubted. To hear for the first time a denial of
its truth, and that, too, from our ecclesiastical superior, made an
impression upon our mind which led us to investigate the subject as soon
as time and opportunity were afforded us. From that day to this, we have
heard the same theory advanced by Protestant clergymen of every shade of
denominational opinion, and in the minds of many it has lodged itself as
one of those mooted questions which baffle historical proof.
About twenty years ago, an Italian known as “Father Gavazzi” visited the
United States. His crusade against the Church of Rome during that visit is
familiar to all. Of its merits or the motives which prompted it we do not
propose to speak, as it is foreign to the subject to which the interest of
the reader is invited. Again the same Alessandro Gavazzi, as
“Commissioner” of what he denominates the “Free Christian Church of
Italy,” is lecturing to audiences in our principal cities, for the purpose
of securing subscriptions for “evangelization” and for the “Biblical
College in Rome.” What these terms may mean we do not know, and of them we
have no disposition to speak. In the month of June last, “Father Gavazzi”
was advertised to lecture under the auspices of the Young Men’s Christian
Association in the city in which we reside. Among others, who had no
interest perhaps in the especial work in which he is engaged, we attended
his lecture. From a report of the lecture in the issue of a daily paper of
the following morning we make the quotation which forms the text, upon
which we propose to place before the reader some historical proofs for the
belief that S. Peter was at Rome.
“Father Gavazzi” said: “A discussion was proposed in Rome as to whether S.
Peter was ever there or not. The Pope favored, insisted upon it, and in
two days his chosen champions retired defeated from the contest. That is
something. The Bible is entirely silent on this subject. But the priests
say that is merely negative proof. The silence of S. Luke is, however,
positive proof that S. Peter was never there. The discussion of this
subject, once prohibited in Rome, is now talked of freely in all public
places. It was his delight to fight the Pope. Pius IX. was no more the
successor of S. Peter than he was the successor of the emperor of China.
_S. Peter was never in Rome to be succeeded by anybody._”
Modern investigation at best has done little to clear up the difficulties
connected with the geographical history of the Apostle Peter. That he was
at Rome, and suffered martyrdom in that city, is the general belief of the
fathers. And it was not until the dawn of the Reformation that the
apostle’s journey to that city, and his martyrdom there, became even a
subject of doubt. So great was the anxiety of some to disprove the Primacy
of the Roman See that scholarly men lent themselves to the repetition of
myths and traditions which had no foundation in fact, and later writers,
biased by early education and ecclesiastical connection, have even
introduced into historical literature mythical stories, the germs of which
run through the popular mythology of ancient and modern times. If, they
argue, it can be proved that S. Peter was never at Rome, then we at once
overturn the pretensions of the Papacy; or, again, if we can demonstrate
that there is a break in the chain of succession of its bishops from S.
Peter, the belief in the doctrine of an apostolic succession is clearly
disproved, and the idea of a line of bishops reaching back through the
long period of the _Mores Catholici_, or _Ages of Faith_, only a senseless
forgery which originated with some monk the abbot of whose monastery was
perhaps the first to give it form after he had ascended the chair of
Peter. Mosheim, a respectable writer in the Protestant world, blinded by a
singular prejudice which led him at times to forget the critical duties of
the historian, is one among the few German scholars who has tarnished the
pages of his _Ecclesiastical History_ by giving credence to the fabulous
story of Pope Joan. “Between Leo IV., who died 855, and Benedict III.,”
says he, “a woman who concealed her sex and assumed the name of John, it
is said, opened her way to the pontifical throne by her learning and
genius, and governed the church for a time. She is commonly called the
Papess Joan. During five subsequent centuries the witnesses to this
extraordinary event are without number; _nor did any one prior to the
Reformation by Luther regard the thing as either incredible or disgraceful
to the church_.” The earliest writer from whom any information relating to
the fable of Pope Joan is derived is Marianus Scotus, a monk of S. Martin
of Cologne, who died A.D. 1086. He left a chronicle which has received
many additions by later writers, and among those interpolations the
students of mythical lore regard the passage which refers to this story.
Platina, who wrote the _Lives of the Popes_ anterior to the time of Martin
Luther, relates the legend, and, with more of the critical acumen than
Mosheim, adds: “These things which I relate are popular reports, but
derived from uncertain and obscure authors, which I have therefore
inserted briefly and baldly, lest I should seem to omit obstinately and
pertinaciously what most people assert.” The legend of Pope Joan has been
so thoroughly exposed that no controversialist of discrimination thinks of
reviving it as an argument against the succession of the Bishops of Rome.
Now and then it may be related to an ignorant crowd by an anti‐popery
mountebank of our cities during times of religious excitement, but it is
never heard from the lips of an educated Protestant. We are inclined to
think, however, that the class of minds that seeks to throw doubt upon S.
Peter’s residence at Rome in order to subvert the Primacy of the Apostolic
See would not hesitate, in view of the evidence from early ecclesiastical
writers, to introduce again this Papess Joan to their unlearned readers.
Turning, then, to the proofs of the subject of our paper, we take as the
motto for our investigation of this and all kindred ecclesiastical
questions the golden words of Tertullian: “Id esse verum, quodcunque
primum; id esse adulterum quodcunque posterius.”(4) Or that petition of a
great Anglican divine: “Grant, O Lord! that, in reading thy Holy Word, I
may never prefer my private sentiments before those of the church in the
purely ancient times of Christianity.”(5)
The earliest testimony is borne by S. Ignatius. He was closely connected
with the apostles, both as a hearer of their teachings and sharer of the
extraordinary mysteries of their faith.(6) S. John was his Christian
Gamaliel, at whose feet he was taught the doctrines of Christianity, which
prepared him not only to wear the mitre of Antioch, the most cultivated
metropolis of the East, but also to receive the brighter crown of a
martyr’s agonizing death. Full of years, the follower of the beloved
disciple was hurried to Rome, to seal with his blood the truth of the
religion of Christ. On his journey to the pagan capital, he was permitted
to tarry for a season at Smyrna, to visit, for the last time, S. Polycarp,
the aged bishop of that city. Here, in view of the dreadful death that
awaited him in the Roman amphitheatre, and in communion with the revered
fellow‐laborer of his life, he wrote his four epistles. From the one to
the Romans we quote the following evidence: “I do not command you as S.
Peter and S. Paul did; they were apostles of Jesus Christ, and I am a mere
nothing” (the least).(7) “What can be more clear,” says the Anglican
expositor of the Creed, Bishop Pearson, “from these words than that this
most holy martyr was of opinion that Peter, no less than Paul, preached
and suffered at Rome?”
Eusebius relates, upon the authority of Papias and S. Clement of
Alexandria, that “S. Mark wrote his gospel at the request of S. Peter’s
hearers in Rome,” and he further adds that “S. Peter mentions S. Mark in
his first epistle, written from Rome, which he figuratively calls
Babylon.”(8)
S. Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth, in his epistle addressed to the Romans,
affirms that S. Peter and S. Paul preached the Gospel in Corinth and in
Rome, and suffered martyrdom about the same time in the latter city.(9)
S. Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons, who was born at Smyrna, though of Greek
extraction, had been the disciple of S. Polycarp, Pothinus, and Papias,
from whose lips he had heard many anecdotes of the apostles and their
immediate followers. He was alike eminent both as a scholar in the
learning of the times and as a controversialist of no mean repute. The
part he bore against the Gnostic and other heresies rendered his name
illustrious, not only within the limits of his episcopal jurisdiction, but
wherever the claims of Christianity had been presented. The wonderful
aptness with which he interwove Scripture and scriptural phraseology into
his style, not altogether unpolished, is perhaps unequalled in patristic
theology. Residing in a city whose language and intellectual
characteristics differed from those of his native country, his writings
are essentially foreign, and, with few exceptions, were lost at an early
period. In the fragments which remain we find an unequivocal testimony in
behalf of the subject under discussion. His language is: “S. Peter and S.
Paul preached the Gospel in Rome, and laid the foundation of the
church.”(10)
Caius, a learned Roman presbyter, and, as some suppose, bishop, arguing
against Proclus, the chief champion of Montanism at Rome, says that he can
“show the trophies of the apostles.” “For if you will go,” he continues,
“to the Vatican, or to the Ostian Road, you will find the trophies of
those who have laid the foundation of this church.”(11)
Origen, a man of encyclopædic learning, who had been carefully nurtured by
Christian parents, and who was imbued with the hardy, stern culture of the
Greek literature, at the early age of eighteen became the leader of the
Alexandrine school of Christian philosophy. He proved no unworthy
successor of the logical Clement. Certainly no name stands higher in the
catechetical school than that of the iron‐souled Origen (ἀδαμάντινος). The
eloquent teachings of this youthful master nerved many a Christian soul to
endure with fortitude the fiery trials of martyrdom, and even comforted
the bleeding heart of Leonides, his father, who became a victim of the
unrelenting persecutions of Severus. From Origen we learn “that S. Peter,
after having preached through Pontus, Galatia, Bithynia, Cappadocia, and
Asia, to the Jews that were scattered abroad, went at last to Rome, where
he was crucified.” “These things,” says Eusebius, “are related by Origen
in the third book of his Τῶν εἰς τὴν Γένεσιν ἐξηγητικῶν.”(12)
Tertullian by birth was a heathen and Carthaginian. He was the son of a
centurion, and had been educated in all the varied learning of Greece and
Rome. Skilled as a rhetorician and advocate in Rome, he brought, on his
conversion to Christianity, the accomplishments of a highly cultivated
intellect, but a sombre and irritable temper. The natural lawlessness of a
mind guided by a passionate and stubborn disposition led him gradually to
renounce the truths which the light of a higher intelligence had revealed,
until at last he was anathematized for his Montanistic teachings. His
writings are an invaluable addition to the Punic‐Latin theology, and a
repository from which we receive great information concerning the polemic
questions which at that period harassed the Christian church. Upon the
subject of our article he writes as follows: “Let them, then, give us the
origin of their churches; let them unfold the series of their bishops,
coming down in succession from the beginning, so that the first bishop was
appointed and preceded by any of the apostles, or apostolic men, who,
nevertheless, preserved in communion with the apostles, had an ordainer
and predecessor. For in this way the apostolic churches exhibit their
origin; thus the Church of Smyrna relates that Polycarp was placed there
by John, as the Church of Rome also relates that Clement was ordained by
Peter.”(13)
Again: “If thou be adjacent to Italy, there thou hast Rome, whose
authority is near at hand to us. How happy is this church, to which the
apostles poured forth their whole doctrine with their blood! where Peter
is assimilated to our Lord; where Paul is crowned with a death like that
of John.”(14)
And again: “Let us see with what milk the Corinthians were fed by Paul;
according to what rule the Galatians were reformed; what laws were to the
Philippians, Thessalonians, Ephesians; what also the Romans sound in our
ears, to whom Peter and Paul left the Gospel sealed with their blood.”(15)
To this list of witnesses we might add the testimony of the fathers and
ecclesiastical writers who have flourished in different ages of the
church, but we now propose to briefly survey the opinions of some of the
most noted Protestant commentators.
The First Epistle of S. Peter is said by the apostle to have been written
from Babylon, but whether it be Babylon in Chaldea, Babylon in Egypt,
Jerusalem, or Rome, has given rise to much speculation.(16) Our Lord
foretold the manner of St. Peter’s death,(17) and an event of such
importance would naturally have awakened more than ordinary interest.
Seven cities claimed the honor of Homer’s birth,(18) but no other place
than Rome ever assumed to itself the glory of the apostle’s martyrdom.
Controversies arose concerning the time of celebrating Easter, the baptism
of heretics, and questions of a like nature, yet none disputed the place
in which S. Peter was martyred. It is highly improbable that S. Peter ever
visited either Babylon in Egypt or Babylon in Chaldea. Certainly no fact
of history nor even possibility of conjecture furnishes the least
warrantable presumption of either opinion. The great burden of proof
points toward Rome. Like Babylon, pagan Rome was idolatrous. Like Babylon,
it persecuted the church of God. Like Babylon, the glory of its pagan
temple and fane had departed. In many manuscripts this epistle is dated
from Rome.
Calvin, who little regarded the authority of the fathers, when, in the
presumption of his self‐opinionated orthodoxy, he said: “All the ancients
were driven into error,”(19) yet from evidence the most patent he believed
that S. Peter suffered martyrdom at Rome. His language is: “Propter
scriptorum consensum non pugno quin illic mortuus fuerit.”(20)
“On the meaning of the word Babylon,” says Grotius, one of the most
celebrated of the Calvinistic school, “ancient and modern interpreters
disagree. The ancients understand it of Rome, and that Peter was there no
true Christian ever doubted; the moderns understand it of Babylon in
Chaldea. I adhere to the ancients.”(21)
Rosenmüller, of whom an able American critic has said, “He is almost
everywhere a local investigator,”(22) has left his testimony in the same
language as Grotius: “Veteres Romam interpretantur.”
Dr. Campbell very reluctantly yielded, by the force of evidence, to the
same opinion when he wrote: “I am inclined to think that S. Peter’s
martyrdom must have been at Rome, both because it is agreeable to the
unanimous voice of antiquity, and because the sufferings of so great an
apostle could not fail to be of such notoriety in the church as to
preclude the possibility of an imposition in regard to the place.”(23)
“From a careful examination of the evidence adduced,” says the learned
Horne, “for the literal meaning of the word Babylon, and of the evidence
for its figurative or mystical application to Rome, we think that the
_latter_ was intended.”(24)
We commend to “Father Gavazzi,” and to the Rev. Doctors Sunderland and
Newman of Washington, who are ever ready to throw down the gauntlet when
an argument is made to prove that S. Peter was at Rome, the language of
the logical and laborious Macknight, who clearly expresses our own view,
and whose diligence, learning, and moderation were so fully appreciated by
Bishop Tomline: “It is not for our honor nor for our interest, either as
Christians or Protestants, to deny the truth of events ascertained by
early and well‐attested tradition. If any make an ill use of such facts,
we are not accountable for it. We are not, from a dread of such abuses, to
overthrow the credit of all history, the consequences of which would be
fatal.”(25)
Number Thirteen. An Episode Of The Commune.
Mlle. de Lemaque and her sister Mme. de Chanoir lived at No. 13 Rue
Royale. They were the daughters of a military man whose fortune when he
married consisted in his sword, nothing else; and of a noble Demoiselle de
Cambatte, whose wedding portion, according to the good old French fashion,
was precisely the same as her husband’s, minus the sword. But over and
above this joint capital the young people had a good stock of hope and
courage, and an inexhaustible fund of love; they had therefore as good a
chance of getting on as other young folk who start in life under the same
pecuniary disadvantages. M. de Lemaque, moreover, had friends in high
place who looked kindly on him, and promised him countenance and
protection, and there was no reason, as far as he and his wife could see,
why he should not in due time clutch that legendary baton which Napoleon
declared every French soldier carries in his knapsack. Nor, indeed,
looking at things from a retrospective point of view, was there any
reason, that we can see, why he should not have died a marshal of France,
except that he died too soon. The young soldier was in a fair way of
climbing to the topmost rung of the military ladder; but just as he had
got his foot on the third rung, Death stepped down and met him, and he
climbed no further. His wife followed him into the grave three years
later. They left two daughters, Félicité and Aline, the only fruits of
their short and happy union. The orphans were educated at the Legion of
Honor, and then sent adrift on the wide, wide world, to battle with its
winds and waves, to sink or swim as best they could. They swam. Perhaps I
ought rather say they floated. The eldest, Félicité, was married from S.
Denis to an old general, who, after a reasonably short time, had the
delicacy to betake himself to a better world, leaving his gay wife a widow
at the head of an income of £40 a year. Aline might have married under
similar circumstances, but, after turning it over in her mind, she came to
the conclusion that, all things considered, since it was a choice of
evils, and that she must earn her bread in some way, she preferred earning
it and eating it independently as a single woman. This gave rise to the
only quarrel the sisters had had in their lives. Félicité resented the
disgrace that Aline was going to put on the family name by degenerating
into a giver of private lessons, when she might have secured forty pounds
a year for ever by a few years’ dutiful attendance on a brave man who had
fought his country’s battles.
“Well, if you can find me a warrior of ninety,” said the younger sister, a
month before she left S. Denis, “I’m not sure that he might not persuade
me; but I never will capitulate under ninety; I couldn’t trust a man under
that; they live for ever when they marry between sixty and eighty, and
there are no tyrants like them; now, I would do my duty as a kind wife for
a year or so, but I’ve no notion of taking a situation as nurse for
fifteen or twenty years, and that’s what one gets by marrying a young man
of seventy or thereabouts.”
Félicité urged her own case as a proof to the contrary. Général de Chanoir
was only sixty‐eight when she married him, and he retired at seventy.
Aline maintained, however, that this was the one exception necessary to
prove the rule to the present generation, and as no eligible _parti_ of
fourscore and ten presented itself before she left school, she held to her
resolve, and started at once as a teacher.
The sisters took an apartment together, if two rooms, a cabinet de
toilette, and a cooking‐range in a dark passage, dignified by the name of
kitchen, can be called an apartment, and for six years they lived very
happily.
Mme. de Chanoir was small and fair, and very distinguished‐looking. She
had never known a day’s illness in her life, but she was a hypochondriac.
She believed herself afflicted with a spine disease, which necessitated
reclining all day long on the sofa in a Louis Quinze dressing‐gown and a
Dubarry cap.
Aline was tall and dark, not exactly pretty, but indescribably piquant.
Without being delicate, her health was far less robust than her sister’s;
but she was blessed with indomitable spirits and a fund of energy that
carried her through a variety of aches and pains, and often bore her
successfully through her round of daily work when another would have given
in.
The domestic establishment of the sisters consisted in a charwoman, who
rejoiced in the name of Mme. Cléry. She was a type of a class almost
extinct in Paris now; a dainty little cook, clean as a sixpence, honest as
the sun, orderly as a clock, a capital servant in every way. She came
twice a day to No. 13, two hours in the morning and three hours in the
afternoon, and the sisters paid her twenty francs a month. She might have
struck for more wages, and rather than let her go they would have managed
to raise them; but Mme. Cléry was born before strikes came into fashion,
it was quite impossible to say how long before; her age was incalculable;
her youth belonged to that class of facts spoken of as beyond the memory
of the oldest man in the district. Aline used to look at her sometimes,
and wonder if she really could have been born, and if she meant to die
like other people; the crisp, wiry old woman looked the sort of person
never to have either a beginning or an end; they had had her now for eight
years—at least Mme. de Chanoir had—and there was not the shadow of a
change in her. Her gowns were like herself, they never wore out, neither
did her caps—high Normandy caps, with flaps extended like a wind‐mill in
repose, stiff, white, and uncompromising. Everything about her was
antiquated. She had a religious regard for antiquity in every shape, and a
proportionate contempt for modernism; but, of all earthly things, what her
soul loved most was an old name, and what it most despised a new one. She
used to say that if she chose to cook the _rotis_ of a parvenu she might
make double the money, and it was true; but she could not bend her spirit
to it; she liked her dry bread and herbs better from a good family than a
stalled ox from upstarts. She was as faithful as a dog to her two
mistresses, and consequently lorded over them like a step‐mother,
perpetually bullying and scolding, and bewailing her own infatuation in
staying with them while she might be turning a fatter pullet on her own
spit at home than the miserable _coquille_ at No. 13 ever held a fire to.
Why had she not the sense to take the situation that M. X——, the _agent de
change_, across the street, had offered her again and again? The _femme de
ménage_ was, in fact, as odious and exasperating as the most devoted old
servant who ever nursed a family from the cradle to the grave. But let any
one else dare so much as cast a disrespectful glance at either of her
victims! She shook her fist at the _concierge’s_ wife one day for
venturing to call Mme. de Chanoir Mme. de Chanoir _tout court_, instead of
Mme. la Générale de Chanoir, to a flunky who came with a note, and she
boxed the _concierge’s_ ears for speaking of Aline as “l’Institutrice.” As
Mme. la Générale’s sofa was drawn across the window that looked into the
court, she happened to be an eye‐witness to the two incidents, and heard
every word that was said. This accidental disclosure of Mme. Cléry’s
regard for the family dignity before outsiders covered a multitude of sins
in the eyes of both the sisters. Indeed, Mme. de Chanoir came at last, by
force of habit, almost to enjoy being bullied by the old soul. “_Cela nous
pose, ma chère_,” she would remark complacently, when the wind from the
kitchen blew due north, and Aline threatened to mutiny.
Aline never could have endured it if she had been as constantly tried as
her easy‐going sister was; but, lucky for all parties, she went out
immediately after breakfast, and seldom came in till late in the
afternoon, when the old beldame was busy getting ready the dinner.
It was a momentous life they led, the two young women, but, on the whole,
it was a happy one. Mme. de Chanoir, seeing how bravely her sister carried
the burden she had taken up, grew reconciled to it in time. They had a
pleasant little society, too; friends who had known them from their
childhood, some rich and in good positions, others struggling like
themselves in a narrow cage and under difficult circumstances; but one and
all liked the sisters, and brought a little contingent of sunshine to
their lives. As to Aline, she had sunshine enough in herself to light up
the whole Rue Royale. Every lesson she gave, every incident of the day, no
matter how trivial, fell across her path like a sunbeam; she had a knack
of looking at things from a sunny focus that shot out rays on every object
that came within its radius, and of extracting amusement or interest from
the most commonplace things and people; even her own vexations she had
turned into ridicule. Her position of governess was a fountain of fun to
her. When another would have drawn gall from a snub, and smarted and been
miserable under a slight, Aline de Lemaque saw a comic side to the
circumstance, and would dress it up in a fashion that diverted herself and
her friends for a week. Moreover, the young lady was something of a
philosopher.
“You never find out human nature till you come to earn your own bread—I
mean, women don’t,” she used to say to Mme. de Chanoir. “If I were the
mother of a family of daughters, and wanted to teach them life, I’d make
every one of them, no matter how big their _dots_ were, begin by running
after the _cachet_. Nobody who hasn’t tried it would believe what a castle
of truth it is to one—a mirror that shows up character to the life, a sort
of moral photography. It is often as good as a play to me to watch the
change that comes over people when, after talking to them, and making
myself pass for a very agreeable person, I suddenly announce the fact that
I give lessons. Their whole countenance changes, not that they look on me
straightway with contempt. Oh! dear no. Many good Christians, people of
the ’help yourself and God will help you’ sect, conceive, on the contrary,
a great respect for me; but I become metamorphosed on the spot. I am not
what they took me for, they took me for a lady, and all the time I was a
governess! They did not think the less of me, but they can’t help feeling
that they have been taken in; that, in fact, I’m an altogether different
variety from themselves, and it is very odd they did not recognize it at
first sight. But these are the least exciting experiences. The great fun
is when I get hold of an out‐and‐out worldly individual, man or woman, but
a woman is best, and let them go on till they have thoroughly committed
themselves, made themselves gushingly agreeable to me, perhaps gone the
length of asking, in a significant manner, if I live in their
neighborhood; then comes the crisis. I smile my gladdest, and say,
‘Monsieur, or Madame, I give lessons!’ _Changement de décoration à vue
d’œil, ma chère._ It’s just as if I _lancéd_ an _obus_ into the middle of
the company, only it rebounds on me and hits nobody else; the eyebrows of
the company go up, the corners of its mouth go down, and it bows to me as
I sit on the ruins of my respectability, shattered to pieces by my own
_obus_.”
“I can’t understand how you can laugh at it. If I were in your place, I
should have died of vexation and wounded pride long ago,” said Mme. de
Chanoir, one day, as Aline related in high glee an obus episode that she
had had that morning; “but I really believe you have no feeling.”
“Well, whatever I have, I keep out of the reach of vulgar impertinence. I
should be very sorry to make my feelings a target for insolence and bad
breeding,” replied Aline pertly. This was the simple truth. Her feelings
were out of the reach of such petty shafts; they were cased in
cheerfulness and common sense, and a nobler sort of pride than that in
which Mme. de Chanoir considered her sister wanting. If, however, the obus
was frequently fatal to Mlle. de Lemaque’s social standing, on the other
hand it occasionally did her good service; but of this later. Its present
character was that of an explosive bomb which she carried in her pocket,
and _lancéd_ with infinite gusto on every available opportunity.
On Saturday evening the sisters were “at home.” These little soirées were
the great event of their quiet lives. All the episodes and anecdotes of
the week were treasured up for that evening, when the intimes came to see
them and converse and sip a glass of cold _eau sucrée_ in summer, and a
cup of hot ditto in winter (but then it was called tea) by the light of a
small lamp with a green shade. There was no attempt at entertainment or
finery of any kind, except that Mme. Cléry, instead of going home as soon
as the dinner things were washed up, stayed to open the door. It was a
remnant of the sort of society that used to exist in French families some
thirty years ago, when conversation was cultivated as the primary
accomplishment of men and women, and when they met regularly to exercise
themselves in the difficult and delightful art. It was not reserved to the
well‐born exclusively to talk well and brilliantly in those days, when the
most coveted encomium that could be passed on any one was, “He talks
well.” All classes vied for it; every circle had its centre of
conversation. The _fauteuil de l’aïeule_ and the salon of the _femme
d’esprit_, each had its audience, attended as assiduously, and perhaps
enjoyed quite as much, as the vaudevilles and ambigus that have since
drawn away the bourgeois from the one and the man of fashion from the
other. Besides its usual habitués for conversation, every circle had one
habitué who was looked upon as the friend of the family, and tacitly took
precedence of all the others. The friend of the family at No. 13 was a
certain professor of the Sorbonne named M. Dalibouze. He was somewhere on
the sunny side of fifty, a bald, pompous little man who wore spectacles,
took snuff, and laid down the law; very prosy and very estimable, a model
professor. He had never married, but it was the dream of his life to
marry. He had meditated on marriage for the last thirty years, and of
course knew more about it than any man who had been married double that
time. He was never so eloquent or so emphatic as when dilating on the joys
and duties of domestic life; no matter how tired he was with study and
scientific researches, how disappointed in the result of some cherished
literary scheme, he brightened up the moment marriage came on the tapis.
This hobby of the professor’s was a great amusement to Mme. de Chanoir,
who delighted to see him jump into the saddle and ride off at a canter
while she lay languidly working at her tapestry, patting him on the back
every now and then, by a word of encouragement, or signifying her assent
merely by a smile or a nod. Sometimes she would take him to task seriously
about putting his theories into practice and getting himself a wife,
assuring him that it was quite wicked of him not to marry when he was so
richly endowed with all the qualities necessary to make a model husband.
“Ah! madame, if I thought I were capable of making a young woman happy!”
M. Dalibouze would exclaim with a sigh; “but at my age! No, I have let my
chance go by.”
“How, sir, at your age!” the générale would protest. “Why, it is the very
flower of manhood, the moment of all others for a man to marry. You have
outlived the delusions of youth and none of its vigor; you have crossed
the Rubicon that separates folly from wisdom, and you have left nothing on
the other side of the bridge but the silly chimera of boyhood. Believe me,
the woman whom you would select would never wish to see you a day
younger.”
And M. Dalibouze would caress his chin, and observe thoughtfully: “Do you
think so, madame?” Upon which Mme. de Chanoir would pour another vial of
oil and honey on the learned head of the professor, till the wonder was
that it did not turn on his shoulders.
Aline had no sympathy with his rhapsodies or his jeremiads; they bored her
to extinction, and sometimes it was all she could do not to tell him so;
but she disapproved of his being made a joke of, and testified against it
very decidedly when Félicité, in a spirit of mischief, led him up to a
more than usually ridiculous culmination. It was not fair, she said, to
make a greater fool of the good little man than he made of himself, and
instead of encouraging him to talk such nonsense one ought to laugh him
out of it, and try and cure him of his silly conceit.
“I don’t see it at all in that light,” Mme. de Chanoir would answer. “In
the first place, if I laughed at him, or rather if I let him see that I
did, he would never forgive me, and, as I have a great regard for him, I
should be sorry to lose his friendship; and in the next place, it’s a
great amusement to me to see him swallow my little doses of flattery so
complacently, and I have no scruple in dosing him, because nothing that I
or any one else could say could possibly add one grain to his self‐
conceit, so one may as well turn it to account for a little
entertainment.”
It was partly this system of flattery, which Aline resented on principle,
that induced her occasionally to snub the professor, and partly the fact
that she had reason to suspect his dreams of married bliss centred upon
herself. In fact, she knew it. He had never told her so outright, for the
simple reason that, whenever he drew near that crisis, Aline cut him short
in such a peremptory manner that it cowed him for weeks, but nevertheless
she knew in her heart of hearts that she reigned supreme over M.
Dalibouze’s. She would not have married him, no, not if he could have
crowned her queen of the Sorbonne and the Collége de France, but the fact
of his being her slave and aspiring to be her master constituted a claim
on her regard which a true‐hearted woman seldom disowns.
Félicité would have favored his suit if there had been the ghost of a
chance for him, but she knew there was not.
Mme. Cléry looked coldly on it. Needless to say, neither M. Dalibouze nor
his cruel‐hearted lady‐love had ever made a confidante of the _femme de
ménage_; but she often remarked to her mistresses when they ventured an
opinion on anything connected with her special department, “Je ne suis pas
née d’hier,” an assertion which, strange to say, even the rebellious Aline
had never attempted to gainsay. Mme. Cléry was not, indeed, born
yesterday, moreover she was a Frenchwoman, and a particularly wide‐awake
one, and from the first evening that she saw Aline sugaring M. Dalibouze’s
tea, dropping in lump after lump in that reckless way, while the little
man held his cup and beamed at her through his spectacles as if he meant
to stand there for ever simpering, “Merci encore!”—it occurred to Mme.
Cléry when she saw this that there was more in it than tea‐making. Of
course it was natural and proper that a young woman, especially an orphan,
should think of getting married, but it was right and proper that her
friends should think of it too, and see that she married the proper
person. Now, on the face of it, M. Dalibouze could not be the proper
person. Nevertheless, Mme. Cléry waited till the suspicion that M.
Dalibouze had settled it in his own mind that he was that man took the
shape of a conviction before she considered it her duty to interfere.
By interfering Mme. Cléry meant going _aux renseignements_. Nobody ever
got true _renseignements_, especially when there was a marriage in
question, except people like her; ladies and gentlemen never get behind
the scenes with each other, or, if they do, they never tell what they see
there. They are very sweet and smiling when they meet in the salon, and
nobody guesses that madame has rated her _femme de chambre_ for not
putting the flowers in her hair exactly to her fancy, or that monsieur has
flung a boot at his valet for giving him his shaving‐water too hot or too
cold. If you want the truth, you must get it by the back‐stairs. This was
Mme. Cléry’s belief, and, acting upon it, she went to M. Dalibouze’s
_concierge_ in the Rue Jean Beauvais to consult him confidentially about
his _locataire_.
The first thing to be ascertained before entering on such secondary
details as character, conduct, etc., was whether or not the professor was
of a good enough family to be entertained at all as a husband for Mlle. de
Lemaque. On this _sine qua non_ question the _concierge_ could
unfortunately throw no light. The professor had a multitude of friends,
all respectable people, many of them _décorés_, who drove to the door in
spruce _coupés_, but of his family Pipelet knew nothing; of his personal
respectability there was no doubt whatever; he was the kindest of men, a
very pearl of tenants, always in before midnight, and gave forty francs to
Pipelet on New Year’s day, not to count sundry other little bonuses on
minor _fêtes_ during the year. But so long as her mind was in darkness on
the main point, all this was no better than sounding brass in the ears of
Mme. Cléry.
“Has he, or has he not, the _particule_?” she demanded, cutting Pipelet
short in the middle of his panegyric.
“The _particule_?” repeated Pipelet. “What’s that?”
“The _particule nobiliaire_,” explained Mme. Cléry, with a touch of
contempt. “There is some question of a marriage between him and one of my
ladies; but, if M. Dalibouze hasn’t got the _particule_, it’s no use
thinking of it.”
“Madame,” said Pipelet, assuming a meditative air—he was completely at sea
as to what this essential piece of property might be, but did not like to
own his ignorance—“I’m not a man to set up for knowing more of my tenant’s
business than I do, and M. Dalibouze has never opened himself to me about
how or where his money was placed; but I could give you the name of his
agent, if I thought it would not compromise me.”
“I’m not a woman to compromise any one that showed me confidence,” said
Mme. Cléry, tightening her lips, and bobbing her flaps at Pipelet; “but
you need not give me the name of his agent. What sort of a figure should I
make at his agent’s! Give me his own name. How does he spell it?”
“Spell it!” echoed Pipelet.
“A big _D_ or a little _d_?” said Mme. Cléry.
“Why, a big _D_, of course! Who ever spelt their name with a little one?”
retorted Pipelet.
“Ah!...” Mme. Cléry smiled a smile of serene pity on the benighted
ignoramus, and then observed coolly: “I suspected it! I’m not easy to
deceive in that sort of things. I was not born yesterday. Good‐morning, M.
le Concierge.” She moved towards the door.
“Stop!” cried Pipelet, seizing his berette as if a ray of light had shot
through his skull—“stop! Now that I think of it, it’s a little _d_. I have
not a doubt but it’s a little _d_. I noticed it only yesterday on a letter
that came for monsieur, and I said to myself: ‘Let us see!’ I said. ‘What
a queer fancy for a man of distinction like M. le Professeur to spell his
name with a little _d_!’ Là! if I didn’t say those words to myself no
later than yesterday!”
Mme. Cléry was dubious. Unluckily there was no letter in M. Dalibouze’s
box at that moment, which would have settled the point at issue, so she
had nothing for it but to go home, and turn it in her mind what was to be
done next. After all, it was a great responsibility on her. The old soul
considered herself in the light of a protector to the two young women, one
a cripple on the broad of her back, and the other a light‐hearted creature
who believed everything and everybody. It was her place to look after them
as far as she could. That afternoon, when Mme. Cléry went to No. 13, after
her fruitless expedition to the Rue Jean Beauvais, she took a letter in to
Mme. de Chanoir. She had never seen, or, at any rate, never noticed, the
writing before, but as she handed the envelope to her mistress it flashed
upon her that it was from M. Dalibouze, and that it bore on the subject of
her morning’s peregrination.
She seized a feather‐broom that hung by the fireplace, and began
vigorously threatening the clock and the candlesticks, as an excuse for
staying in the room, and watching Mme. de Chanoir in the looking‐glass
while she read the letter. The old woman was an irascible enemy to dust;
they were used to see her at the most inopportune times pounce on the
feather‐broom and begin whipping about her to the right and left, so Mme.
de Chanoir took no notice of this sudden castigation of the chimney‐piece
at four o’clock in the afternoon. She read her note, and then, tossing it
into the basket beside her, resumed her tapestry as if nothing had
occurred to divert her thoughts from roses and Berlin wool.
“Mme. la Générale, pardon and excuse,” said Mme. Cléry, deliberately
hanging the feather‐broom on its nail, and going up to the foot of the
générale’s sofa. “I have it on my mind to ask something of madame.”
“Ask it, my good Mme. Cléry.”
“Does Mme. la Générale think of marrying Mlle. Aline?”
Mme. de Chanoir opened her eyes, and stared for a moment in mild surprise
at her charwoman, then a smile broke over her face, and she said:
“You are thinking that you would not like to come to me if I were alone?”
“I was not thinking of that, madame,” replied Mme. Cléry, in a tone of
ceremony that was not habitual, and which would have boded no good (Mme.
Cléry was never so respectful as when she was going to be particularly
disagreeable), except that she looked very meek, and, Félicité thought,
rather affectionately at her as their eyes met.
“Well,” said Mme. de Chanoir, “I suppose we must marry her some day; I
ought, perhaps, to occupy myself about it more actively than I do; but
there’s time enough to think about it yet; mademoiselle is in no hurry.”
“Dame!” said Mme. Cléry testily, “when a demoiselle has become an old
maid, there is not so much time to lose! Pardon and excuse, Mme. la
Générale, but I thought, I don’t know why, that that letter had something
to do with it?”
“This letter! What could have put that into your head?”
Mme. de Chanoir took up the note to see if the envelope had anything about
it which warranted this romantic suspicion, but it was an ordinary
envelope, with no trace of anything more peculiar than the post‐mark.
“As I have told Mme. la Générale before,” said Mme. Cléry, shaking her
head significantly, “I was not born yesterday”—she emphasized the _not_ as
if Mme. de Chanoir had denied that fact and challenged her to swear to it
on the Bible—“and I don’t carry my eyes in my pocket; and when a
demoiselle heaps lumps of sugar into a gentleman’s cup till it’s as thick
as honey for a spoon to stand in, and a shame to see the substance of the
family wasted in such a way, and she never grudging it a bit, but looking
as if it would be fun to her to turn the sugar‐bowl upside down over it—I
say, when I see that sort of thing, I’m not femme Cléry if there isn’t
something in it.”
Félicité felt inclined to laugh, but she restrained herself, and observed
interrogatively:
“Well, Mme. Cléry, suppose there is?”
This extravagance of sugar on M. Dalibouze was an old grievance of Mme.
Cléry’s. In fact, it had been her only one against the professor, till she
grew to look upon him as the possible husband of Mlle. Aline, and then the
question of his having or not having the _particule_ assumed such alarming
importance in her mind that it magnified all minor defects, and she
believed him capable of every misdemeanor under the sun.
“Mme. la Générale,” she replied, “one does not marry every day; one ought
to think seriously about it; Mlle. Aline has not experience; she is _vive_
and light‐hearted; she is a person to be taken in by outward appearances;
such things as learning, good principles, and _esprit_ would blind her to
serious shortcomings; it is the duty of Mme. la Générale to prevent such a
mistake in time.”
“What sort of shortcomings are you afraid of in M. Dalibouze, Mme. Cléry?”
inquired Mme. de Chanoir, dropping her tapestry, and looking with awakened
curiosity at the old woman.
“Let us begin with a first principle, Mme. la Générale,” observed Mme.
Cléry, demurely slapping the palm of her left hand. “Mlle. Aline is _née_;
the father and mother of mamzelle were both of an excellent family; it is
consequently of the first necessity that her husband should be so, too;
the first thing, therefore, to be considered in a suitor is his name. Now,
has M. Dalibouze the _particule_, or has he not?”
It was a very great effort for Mme. de Chanoir to keep her countenance
under this charge and deliver with which the old woman solemnly closed her
speech, and then stood awaiting the effect on her listener; still, such is
the weakness of human nature, the générale in her inmost heart was
flattered by it; it was pleasant to be looked up to as belonging to a race
above the common herd, to be recognized in spite of her poverty, even by a
_femme de ménage_, as superior to the wealthy parvenus whose fathers and
mothers were not of a good family.
“My good Mme. Cléry,” she said after a moment’s reflection, “you, like
ourselves, were brought up with very different ideas from those that
people hold nowadays. Nobody cares a straw to‐day who a man’s father was,
or whether he had the _particule_ or not; all that they care about is that
he should be well educated, and well conducted, and well off; and, my
dear, one must go with the times, one must give in to the force of public
opinion around one. Customs change with the times. I would, of course,
much rather have a brother‐in‐law of our own rank than one cleverer and
richer who was not; but what would you have? One cannot have everything.
It is not pleasant for me to see Mlle. de Lemaque earning her own bread,
running about the streets like a milliner’s apprentice at all hours of the
day. I would overlook something to see her married to a kind, honorable
man who would keep her in comfort and independence.”
“_Bonté divine!_” exclaimed Mme. Cléry, with a look of deep distress and
consternation, “madame would then actually marry mamzelle to a _bourgeois
sans particule_? For madame admits that M. Dalibouze has not the
_particule_, that he spells his name with a big _D_?”
“Alas! he does,” confessed the générale; “but he comes, nevertheless, of a
good old Normandy stock, Mme. Cléry; his great‐grandfather was _procureur
du roi_ under—”
“Tut! tut!” interrupted Mme. Cléry; “his great‐grandfather may have been
what he liked; if he wasn’t a gentleman, he has no business marrying his
great grandson to a de Lemaque. No, madame; I am a poor woman, but I know
better than that. Mamzelle’s father would turn in his grave if he saw her
married to a man who spelt his name with a big _D_.”
The conversation was interrupted by a ring at the door. It was Aline. She
came back earlier than usual, because one of her pupils was ill and had
not been able to take her lesson. The young girl was flushed and excited,
and flung herself into an arm‐chair the moment she entered, and burst into
tears. Mme. de Chanoir sat up in alarm, fearing she was ill, and suggested
a cup of _tisane_.
“Oh! ’tis nothing. I’m an idiot to mind it or let such impertinence vex
me,” she said, when the first outburst had passed off and relieved her.
“_Mon Dieu!_ but what vexes mamzelle?” inquired Mme. Cléry anxiously.
“A horrid man that followed me the length of the street, and made some
impudent speech, and asked me where I lived,” sobbed Aline.
“Is it possible!” exclaimed the old woman, aghast, and clasping her hands.
“Well, mamzelle does astonish me! I thought young men knew better nowadays
than to go on with that sort of tricks; fifty years ago they used to. I
remember how I was followed and spoken to every time I went to church or
to market; it was a persecution; but now I come and go and nobody minds
me. To think of their daring to speak to mamzelle!”
“That’s what one must expect when one walks about alone at your age, _ma
pauvre_ Aline,” said the générale, rather sharply, with a significant look
at Mme. Cléry which that good lady understood, and resented by compressing
her lips and bobbing her flaps, as much as to say, “One has a principle or
one has not”—principle being in this instance synonymous with _particule_.
Things remained _in statu quo_ after this for some years. Mme. de Chanoir
did not enlighten her sister on the subject of the conference with Mme.
Cléry, but she worked as far as she could in favor of the luckless suitor
who spelt his name with a capital _D_. It was of no use, however. Aline
continued to snub him so pertinaciously and persistently that Mme. de
Chanoir at last gave up his cause as hopeless, and the professor himself,
when he saw this, his solitary stronghold, surrender, thought it best to
raise the siege with a good grace, and make a friendly truce with the
victor. He frankly withdrew from the field of suitors, and took up his
position as a friend of the family. This once done, he accepted its
responsibilities and prerogatives, and held himself on the _qui vive_ to
render any service in his power to Mme. de Chanoir; he kept her
_concierge_ in order, and brought bonbons and flowers to No. 13 on every
possible occasion. He knew Aline was passionately fond of the latter, and
he was careful to keep the flower stand that stood in the pier of the
little salon freshly supplied with her favorite plants, and the vases
filled with her favorite flowers. He never dared to offer her a present,
but under cover of offering them to the générale he kept her informed
about every new book which was likely to interest her. Finally, Frenchman‐
like, having abandoned the hope of marrying her himself, he set to work to
find some more fortunate suitor. This was _par excellence_ the duty of a
friend of the family, and M. Dalibouze was fully alive to its importance.
The disinterested zeal he displayed in the discharge of it would have been
comical if the spirit of genuine self‐sacrifice which animated him had not
touched it with pathos. One by one every eligible _parti_ in the range of
his acquaintance was led up for inspection to No. 13. Mme. de Chanoir
entered complacently into the presentations; they amused her, and she
tried to persuade herself that, sooner or later, something would come of
them; but she knew Aline too well ever to let her into the secret of the
professor’s matrimonial manœuvres. The result would have been to furnish
Mlle. de Lemaque with an _obus_ opportunity and nothing more.
But do what she would, the générale could never cheat Mme. Cléry. The old
woman detected a _prétendant_ as a cat does a mouse. It was an instinct
with her. There was no putting her off the scent. She never said a word to
Mme. de Chanoir, but she had a most aggravating way of making her
understand tacitly that she knew all about it—that, in fact, she was not
born yesterday. This was her system, whenever M. Dalibouze brought a
_parti_ to tea in the evening. Mme. Cléry was seized next day with a
furious dusting fit, and when the générale testified against the feathers
that kept flying out of the broom, Mme. Cléry would observe, in a
significant way:
“Mme. la Générale, that makes an impression when one sees a salon well
dusted; that proves that the servant is capable—that she attends to her
work. Madame does not think of those things, but strangers do.”
It became at length a sort of cabalistic ceremony with the old woman;
intelligible only to Mme. de Chanoir. If Aline came in when the fit was on
her, and ventured to expostulate, and ask what she was doing with the
duster at that time of day, Mme. Cléry would remark stiffly: “Mamzelle
Aline, I am dusting.” Aline came at last to believe that it was a modified
phase of S. Vitus’ dance, and that for want of anything better the old
beldame vented her nerves on imaginary dust which she pursued in holes and
corners with her feathery weapon.
This went on till Mlle. de Lemaque was six‐and‐twenty. She was still a
bright, brave creature, working hard, accepting the privations and toil of
her life in a spirit of sunshiny courage. But the sun was no longer always
shining. There were days now when he drew behind a cloud—when toil pressed
like a burden, and she beat her wings against it, and hated the cage that
cooped her in; and she longed not so much for rest or happiness as for
freedom—for a larger scope and higher aims, and wider, fuller sympathies.
When these cloudy days came around, Aline felt the void of her life with
an intensity that amounted at times to anguish; she felt it all the more
keenly because she could not speak of it. Mme. de Chanoir would not have
understood it. The sisters were sincerely attached to each other, but
there was little sympathy of character between them, and on many points
they were as little acquainted with each other as the neighbors on the
next street. They knew this, and agreed sensibly to keep clear of certain
subjects on which they could never meet except to disagree. The younger
sister, therefore, when the sky was overcast, and when her spirits
flagged, never tried to lean upon the older, but worked against the enemy
in silence, denying herself the luxury of complaint. If her looks betrayed
her, as was sometimes the case, and prompted Mme. de Chanoir to inquire if
there was anything the matter beyond the never‐ending annoyance of life in
general, Aline’s assurance that there was not was invariably followed by
the remark: “_Ma sœur_, I wish you were married.” To which Aline as
invariably replied: “I am happier as I am, Félicité.” It was true, or at
any rate Mlle. de Lemaque thought it was. Under all her surface
indifference she carried a true woman’s heart. She had dreamt her dreams
of happiness, of tender fireside joys, and the dream was so fair and
beautiful that for years it filled her life like a reality, and when she
discovered, or fancied she did, that it was all too beautiful to be
anything but a dream, that the hero of her young imagination would never
cross her path in the form of a mortal husband, Aline accepted the
discovery with a sigh, but without repining, and laid aside all thought of
marriage as a guest that was not for her. As to the marriages that she saw
every day around her, she would no more have bound herself in one of them
than she would have sold herself to an Eastern pasha. Marriage was a very
different thing in her eyes from what it was in Mme. de Chanoir’s. There
was no point on which the sisters were more asunder than on this, and
Aline understood it so well that she avoided touching on it except in
jest. Whenever the subject was introduced, she drew a mask of frivolity
over her real feelings to avoid bringing down the générale’s ridicule on
what she would stigmatize as preposterous sentimentality.
M. Dalibouze alone guessed something of this under‐current of deep feeling
in the young girl’s character. With the subtle instinct of affection he
penetrated the disguise in which she wrapped herself, but, with a delicacy
that she scarcely gave him credit for, he never let her see that he did.
Sometimes, indeed, when one of those fits of _tristesse_ was upon her, and
she was striving to dissemble it by increased cheerfulness towards
everybody, and sauciness towards him, the professor would adapt the
conversation to the tone of her thoughts with a skill and apropos that
surprised her. Once in particular Aline was startled by the way in which
he betrayed either a singularly close observation of her character, or a
still more singular sympathy with its moods and sufferings. It was on a
Saturday evening, the little circle was gathered round the fire, and the
conversation fell upon poetry and the mission of poets amongst common men.
Aline declared that it was the grandest of all missions; that, after the
prophet and priest, the poet did more for the moral well‐being, the
spiritual redemption of his fellows than any other missionary, whether
philosopher, artist, or patriot; he combined them all, in fact, if he
wished it. If he was a patriot, he could serve his country better than a
soldier, by singing her wrongs and her glories, and firing the souls of
her sons, and making all mankind vibrate to the touch of pain, or joy, or
passionate revenge, while he sat quietly by his own hearth; she quoted
Moore and Krazinski, and other patriot bards who living had ruled their
people, and sent down their name a legacy of glory to unborn generations,
till warmed by her subject she grew almost eloquent, and broke off in an
impulsive cry of admiration and envy: “Oh! what a glorious privilege to be
a poet, to be even a man with the power of doing something, of living a
noble life, instead of being a weak, good‐for‐nothing woman!”
The little ring of listeners heard her with pleasure, and thought she must
have a very keen appreciation of the beauties of the poets to speak of
them so well and so fervently. But M. Dalibouze saw more in it than this.
He saw an under‐tone of impatience, of disappointment, of longing to go
and do likewise, to spread her wings and fly, to wield a wand that had
power to make others spread their wings; there was a spirit’s war‐cry in
it, a rebel’s impotent cry against the narrow, inexorable bondage of her
life.
“Yes,” said the professor, “it is a grand mission, I grant you, but it is
not such a rare one as you make it out, Mlle. Aline. There are more poets
in the world than those who write poetry; few of us have the gift of being
poets in language, but we may all be poets in action if we will; we may
live out our lives in poems.”
“If we had the fashioning of our lives, no doubt we might,” asserted Aline
ironically; “but they are most of them so shabby that I defy Homer himself
to manufacture an epic or an idyl out of them.”
“You are mistaken. There is no life too shabby to be a poem,” said M.
Dalibouze; “it is true, we can’t fashion our lives as you say, but we can
color them, we can harmonize them; but we must begin by believing this,
and by getting our elements under command; we must sort them and arrange
them, just as Mme. la Générale is doing with the shreds and silks for the
tapestry, and then go on patiently working out the pattern leaf by leaf;
by‐and‐by when the web gets tangled as it is sure to do with the best
workers, instead of pulling angrily at it, or cutting it with the sharp
scissors of revolt, we must call up a soft breeze from the land of souls
where the spirit of the true poet dwells, and bid it blow over it, and
then let us listen, and we shall hear the spirit‐wind draw tones of music
out of our tangled web, like the breeze sweeping the strings of an Æolian
harp. It is our own fault, or perhaps oftener our own misfortune, if our
lives look shabby to us; we consider them piecemeal instead of looking at
them as a whole.”
“But how can we look at them as a whole?” said Aline. “We don’t even know
that they ever will develop into a whole. How many of us remain on the
easel a sort of washed‐in sketch to the end? It seems to me we are pretty
much like apples in an orchard; some drop off in the flower, some when
they are grown to little green balls, hard and sour and good for nothing;
it is only a little of the tree that comes to maturity.”
“And is there not abundance of poetry in every phase of the apple’s life,
no matter when it falls?” said M. Dalibouze. “How many poems has the
blight of the starry blossom given birth to? And the little green ball,
who will count the odes that the school‐boy has sung to it, not in good
hexameters perhaps, but in sound, heart poetry, full of zest and the gusto
of youth, when all bitters are sweet? O mon Dieu! when I think of the days
when a bright‐green apple was like honey in my mouth, I could be a poet
myself! No _paté de foie gras_ ever tasted half so sweet as that forbidden
fruit of my school‐days!”
“Good for the forbidden fruit!” said Aline, amused at the professor’s
sentiment over the reminiscence; “but that is only one view of the
question: if the apples could speak, they would give us another.”
“Would they?” said M. Dalibouze. “I’m not sure of that. If the apples
discuss the point at all, believe me, they are agreed that whatever
befalls them is the very best thing that could. We have no evidence of any
created thing, vegetable, mineral, or animal, grumbling at its lot; that
is reserved to man, discontent is man’s prerogative, he quarrels with
himself, with his destiny, his neighbors, everything by turns. If we could
but do like the apples, blossom, and grow, and fall, early or late, just
as the wind and the gardener wished, we should be happy. Fancy an apple
quarrelling with the sun in spring for not warming him as he does in
August! It would be no more preposterous than it is for men to quarrel
with their circumstances. The fruit of our lives have their seasons like
the fruit of our gardens; the winter and snows and the sharp winds are
just as necessary to both as the fire of the summer heat; all growth is
gradual, and we must accept the process through which we are brought to
maturity, just as the apples do. It is not the same for all of us; some
are ripened under the warm vibrating sun, others resist it, and, like
certain winter fruit, require the cold twilight days to mellow them. But
it matters little what the process is, it is sure to be the right one if
we wait for it and accept it.”
“I wonder what stage of it I am in at the present moment,” said Aline. “I
can’t say the sun has had much to do with it; the winds and the rain have
been the busiest agents in my garden so far.”
“Patience, mademoiselle!” said M. Dalibouze. “The sun will come in his own
good time.”
“You answer for that?”
“I do.”
Aline looked him straight in the face as she put the question like a
challenge, and M. Dalibouze met the saucy bright eyes with a grave glance
that had more of tenderness in it than she had ever seen there before. It
flashed upon her for a moment that the sun might come to her through a
less worthy medium than this kind, faithful, honorable man, and that she
had been mayhap a fool to her own happiness in shutting the gate on him so
contemptuously.
Perhaps the professor read the thought on her face, for he said in a
penetrated tone, and fixing his eyes upon her:
“The true sun of life is marriage.”
It was an unfortunate remark. Aline tossed back her head, and burst out
laughing. The spell that had held her for an instant was broken.
“A day will come when some one will tell you so, and you will not laugh,
Mlle. Aline,” said M. Dalibouze humbly, and hiding his discomfiture under
a smile.
This was the only time within the last two years that he had betrayed
himself into any expression of latent hope with regard to Mlle. de
Lemaque, and it had no sooner escaped him than he regretted it. The
following Saturday, by way of atonement, he brought up a most desirable
_parti_ for inspection, and next day Mme. Cléry was seized with the
inevitable dusting fit. Nothing, however, came of it.
Things went on without any noticeable change at No. 13 till September,
1870, when Paris was declared in a state of siege. The sisters were not
among those lucky ones who wavered for a time between going and staying,
between the desire to put themselves in safe‐keeping, and the temptation
of living through the _blocus_ and boasting of it for the rest of their
days. There was no choice for them but to stay. Aline, as usual, made the
best of it; she must stay, so she settled it in her mind that she liked to
stay; that it would be a wonderful experience to live through the most
exciting episode that could have broken up the stagnant monotony of their
lives, and that, in fact, it was rather an enjoyable prospect than the
reverse.
Mme. Cléry was commissioned to lay in as ample a store of provisions as
their purse would allow. The good woman did the best she could with her
means, and the little group encouraged each other to face the coming
events like patriotic citizens, cheerfully and bravely. Of the magnitude
of those events, or their own probable share in their national calamities,
they had a very vague notion.
“The situation,” M. Dalibouze assured them, “was critical, but by no means
desperate. On the contrary, France, instead of being at the mercy of her
enemies, was now on the eve of crushing them, of obtaining one of those
astonishing victories which make ordinary history pale. It was the
incommensurable superiority of the French arms that had brought her to
this pass; that had driven Prussia mad with rage and envy, and roused her
to defiance. Infatuated Prussia! she would mourn over her folly once and
for ever. She would find that Paris was not alone the Greece of
civilization and the arts and sciences, but that she was the most
impregnable fortress that ever defied the batteries of a foe. Europe had
deserted Paris, after betraying France to her enemies; now the day of
reckoning was at hand; Europe would reap the fruits of her base jealousy,
and witness the triumph of the capital of the world!”
This was M. Dalibouze’s firm opinion, and he gave it in public and private
to any one who cared to hear it. When Mme. de Chanoir asked if he meant to
remain in Paris through the siege, the professor was so shocked by the
implied affront to his patriotism that he had to control himself before he
could trust himself to answer her.
“_Comment_, Mme. la Générale! You think so meanly of me as to suppose I
would abandon my country at such a crisis! Is it a time to fly when the
enemy is at our gates, and when the nation expects every man to stand
forth and defend her, and scatter those miserable eaters of sauerkraut to
the winds!”
And straightway acting up to this noble patriotic credo, M. Dalibouze had
himself measured for a National Guard uniform. No sooner had he endorsed
it than he rushed off to Nadar’s and had himself photographed. He counted
the hours till the proofs came home, and then, bursting with satisfaction,
he set out to No. 13.
“It is unbecoming,” he said, shrugging his shoulders as he presented his
carte de visite to the générale, “_mais que voulez‐vous?_ A man must
sacrifice everything to his country; what is personal appearance that it
could weigh in the balance against duty! Bah! I could get myself up as a
punchinello, and perch all day on the top of Mont Valérien, if it could
scare away one of those despicable brigands from the walls of the
capital!”
“You are wrong in saying it is unbecoming, M. Dalibouze,” protested the
générale, attentively scanning the portrait, where the military costume
was set off by a semi‐heroic military _pose_, “I think the dress suits you
admirably.”
“You are too indulgent, madame,” said the professor. “You see your friends
through the eyes of friendship; but, in truth, it was purely from an
historical point of view that I made the little sacrifice of personal
feeling; the portrait will be interesting as a souvenir some day when we,
the actors in this great drama, have passed away.”
But time went on, and the prophetic triumphs of M. Dalibouze were not
realized; the eaters of sauerkraut held their ground, and provisions began
to grow scarce at No. 13. The purse of the sisters, never a large one, was
now seriously diminished, Aline’s contribution to the common fund having
ceased altogether with the beginning of the siege. Her old pupils had
left, and there was no chance of finding any new ones at such a time as
this. No one had money to spend on lessons, or leisure to learn; the study
that absorbed everybody was how to realize food or fuel out of impossible
elements. Every one was suffering, in a more or less degree, from the
miseries imposed by the state of _blocus_; but one would have fancied the
presence of death in so many shapes, by fire without, by cold and famine
within, would have detached them generally from life, and made them
forgetful of the wants of the body and absorbed them in sublimer cares.
But it was not so. After the first shock of hearing the cannon at the
gates close to them, they got used to it. Later, when the bombardment
came, there was another momentary panic, but it calmed down, and they got
used to that too. Shells could apparently fall all round without killing
them. So they turned all their thoughts to the cherishing and comfort of
their poor afflicted bodies. It must have been sad, and sometimes grimly
comical, to watch the singular phases of human nature developed by the
_blocus_. One of the oddest and most frequent was the change it wrought in
people with regard to their food. People who had been ascetically
indifferent to it before, and never thought of their meals till they sat
down to table, grew monomaniac on the point, and could think and speak of
nothing else. Meals were talked of, in fact, from what we can gather, more
than politics, the Prussians, or the probable issue of the siege, or any
of the gigantic problems that were being worked out both inside and
outside the besieged city. Intelligent men and women discussed by the
hour, with gravity and gusto, the best way of preparing cats and dogs,
rats and mice, and all the abominations that necessity had substituted for
food. Poor human nature was fermenting under the process like wine in the
vat, and all its dregs came uppermost: selfishness, callousness to the
sufferings of others, ingratitude, all the pitiable meanness of a man,
boiled up to the surface and showed him a sorry figure to behold. But
other nobler things came to the surface too. There were innumerable silent
dramas, soul‐poems going on in unlikely places, making no noise beyond
their quiet sphere, but travelling high and sounding loud behind the
curtain of gray sky that shrouded the winter sun of Paris. The cannon
shook her ramparts, and the shells flashed like lurid furies through the
midnight darkness; but far above the din and the darkness and the death‐
cries rose the low sweet music of many a brave heart’s sacrifice; the
stronger giving up his share to the weaker, the son hoarding his scanty
rations against the day of still scantier supplies, when there would be
scarcely food enough to support the weakened frame of an aged father or
mother, talking big about the impossibility of surrender, and lightly
about the price of resistance. There were mothers in Paris, too, and
wherever mothers are there is sure to be found self‐sacrifice in its
loveliest, divinest form. How many of them toiled and sweated, aye, and
begged, subduing all pride to love for the little ones, who ate their fill
and knew nothing of the cruel tooth that was gnawing the bread‐winner’s
vitals!
We who heard the thunder of the artillery and the blasting shout of the
mitrailleuse, we did not hear these things, but other ears did, and not a
note of the sweet music was lost, angels were hearkening for them, and as
they rose above the dark discord, like crystal bells tolling in the storm
wind, the white‐winged messengers caught them on golden lyres and wafted
them on to paradise.
To Be Continued.
On A Picture Of S. Mary Bearing Doves To Sacrifice.
My eyes climb slowly up, as by a stair,
To seek a picture on my chamber wall—
A picture of the Mother of our Lord,
Hung where the latest twilight shadows fall.
My lifted eyes behold a childlike face,
Under a veil of woman’s holiest thought,
O’ershadowed by the mystery of grace,
And mystery of mercy—God hath wrought.
Down through the dim old temple, moving slow,
Her drooping lids scarce lifted from the ground,
As if she faintly heard the distant flow
Of far‐off seas of grief she could not sound.
I think archangels would not count it sin
If, underneath the veil that hides her eyes,
They, seeing all things, saw the soul within
Held more of mother‐love than sacrifice.
She walks erect, the virgin undefiled,
Back from her throat the loose robe falls apart,
And e’en as she would clasp her royal Child,
She holds the dovelets to her tender heart.
No white wing trembles ’neath her pitying palm,
No feather flutters in this last warm nest,
And thus she bears them on—while solemn psalm
Wakes dim, prophetic stirrings in her breast.
Sweet Hebrew mother! many a woman shares,
Thy crucifixion of her hopes and loves,
And in her arms to death unshrinking bears
Her precious things—even her turtle‐doves.
But often, ere the temple’s marble floor
Has ceased the echo of her parting feet,
Her gifts prove worthless—thine is ever more
The gift of gifts—transcendent and complete.
We mothers, too, have treasures all our own,
And, one by one, oft see them sacrificed:
Thou, Blessed among women—thou alone
Hast held within thine arms the dear Child‐Christ.
Therefore, mine eyes mount up, as by a stair,
To seek the picture on my chamber wall;
Therefore my soul climbs oft the steeps of prayer,
To rest where shadows of thy Son’s cross fall.
Centres Of Thought In The Past. First Article. The Monasteries.
It seems very ambitious to try and present to the reader a sketch of
anything so vast as the field of research pointed out by the above title,
and, indeed, far from aiming at this, we will set forth by saying, once
for all, that our attempts will be nothing more than passing views,
isolated specimens of that immense whole which, under the names of
education, progress, development, scholasticism, and _renaissance_, forms
the intellectual “stock in trade” of every modern system of knowledge.
The “past” is divided into two distinct eras—the monastic and the
scholastic. In the earlier era, the centres of thought were the
Benedictine and the Columbanian monasteries; in the second era,
intellectual life gathered its strength in the universities, under the
guidance of the church, typified by the Mendicant Orders. The first era
may be said to have lasted from the fifth century to the eleventh, and to
have reached its apogee in the seventh and eighth. The second reached from
the eleventh century to the sixteenth, and attained its highest glory in
the prolific and gifted thirteenth century. Each had its representative
centre _par excellence_, its representative men, philosophy, and religious
development. Prior Vaughan, in his recent masterpiece, the _Life of S.
Thomas of Aquin_, expresses this idea in many ways. “From the sixth to the
thirteenth century,” he says, “the education of Europe was Benedictine.
Monks in their cells ... were planting the mustard‐seed of future European
intellectual growth.” Further on he says: “Plato represents rest;
Aristotle, inquisitiveness. The former is synthetical; the latter,
analytical. _Quies_ is monastic, inquisitiveness is dialectical.” Thus,
Plato is the representative master of the earlier era; S. Benedict and his
incomparable rule, its representative religious outgrowth; the study of
the Scriptures, the Fathers, and the liberal arts, its representative
system of education. We do not hear of many “commentaries” in those days,
nor of curious schedules of questions, such as, “Did the little hands of
the Boy Jesus create the stars?”(26) On the other hand, elegant Latinity
was taught, and the Scriptures were multiplied by thousands of costly and
laborious transcriptions. The first era was eminently conservative. Its
very schools were physically representative; “the solitary abbey, hidden
away amongst the hills, with its psalmody, and manual work, and unexciting
study.”(27) In the scholastic era, things were reversed. “Latinity grew
barbarous, and many far graver disorders arose out of the daring and undue
exercise of reason. Yet intellectual progress was being made in spite of
the decay of letters.... In the extraordinary intellectual revolution
which marked the opening of the thirteenth century, the study of
_thoughts_ was substituted for the study of _words_.”(28) Here the
representative exponent was Aristotle; the religious developments, the
Crusades and the Mendicant Orders; and the personal outgrowth of the
clashes of the two systems—that of the old immovable dogmatic church, and
that of irreverence and rationalism—S. Bernard, S. Dominic, S. Thomas of
Aquin, on the one hand, and Peter Abelard and William de Saint Amour, on
the other. Here, again, we find the _locale_ analogous to the spirit of
the age. Cities were now the centres of knowledge; noisy streets, with
ominous names, such as the “Rue Coupegueule,”(29) in Paris, so named from
the frequent murders committed there during university brawls, take the
place of the silent cloister and long stone corridors of the abbey;
physical disorder typifies the moral confusion of the day; and Paris the
chaotic stands in the room of Monte Casino, S. Gall, or English Jarrow.
Then followed the “Renaissance,” that “revival of practical paganism.”(30)
“The saints and fathers of the church gradually disappeared from the
schools, and society, instead of being permeated, as in former times, with
an atmosphere of faith, was now redolent of heathenism.”(31) Petrarch and
Boccaccio were the representatives of this refined (if we must use the
word in its ordinary sensual meaning) infidelity; Plato was the god of the
new Olympus, but unrecognizable from the Plato embodied in the Fathers and
Benedictine _littérateurs_, for, practically speaking, polite life had now
become Epicurean; while as for the religious development of the times,
since it could no longer be representative, it became apostolic.
Savonarola and S. Francis Xavier are names that stand out in the moral
darkness of that era, and the latter suggests the only new creation in the
church from that day to our own. Christian education had been Benedictine,
then Dominican; it now became Jesuit. The world knew its old enemy in the
new dress, and ever since has warred against it with diabolical foresight
and unwearied venom. Of this last phase of the past, which is so like the
present that we have classed it apart, we do not purpose to speak, but
will confine ourselves to those older and grander, though hardly less
troublous times known as the middle ages.
The first two centres of Christianity and patristic learning outside Rome
were Alexandria and Constantinople. The latter soon fell away into schism,
and thence into that barbarism which the vigorous Western races were at
that very same time casting off through the influence of the church that
Byzantium had rejected. From Alexandria we may date the beginnings of our
own systems of learning. The end of the second century already found the
Christian schools of that city famous, and the converted Stoic Pantænus
spoken of as one of “transcendent powers.” Clement of Alexandria, Origen,
Hippolytus, Bishop of Porto, were teachers in those schools, and the _Acts
of the Martyrs_ tell us that Catharine, the learned virgin‐martyr, was an
Alexandrian. Hippolytus was a famous astronomer and arithmetician. Clement
used poetry, philosophy, science, eloquence, and even satire, in the
interests of religion. Origen became the master of S. Gregory Thaumaturgus
and his brother Athenodorus. “It was now recognized that Christians were
men who could think and reason with other men, ... and of whom a
university city need not be ashamed. Christians were expected to teach and
study the liberal arts, profane literature, philosophy, and the Biblical
languages, ... and all the time the business of the school went on,
_persecution_ raged with _small intermission_.”(32) Prior Vaughan says
that “Faith took her seat with her Greek profile and simple majesty in
Alexandria, and withstood, as one gifted with a divine power, two subtle
and dangerous enemies—heathen philosophy and heretical theology—and, by
means of Clement and of Origen, proved to passion and misbelief that a new
and strange _intellectual_ influence had been brought into the world.”(33)
Antioch and Constantinople claimed the world’s attention later on, and the
Thebaid teemed with equal treasures of learning and of holiness. S. John
Chrysostom exhorts Christian parents, in 376, “to entrust the education of
their sons to the solitaries, to those _men of the mountain_ whose lessons
he himself had received.”(34)
When the glories of the patristic age were waning, and the East seemed to
fail the church, through whose influence alone she had become famous,
there arose in the West, among the half‐barbarous races of Goths, Franks,
Celts, and Teutons, other champions of monasticism and pioneers of
learning. The raw material of Christian Europe was being moulded into the
heroic form it bore during mediæval times by poet, philosopher, and
legislator‐monks.
Of these monastic centres, Lerins is perhaps the oldest. Founded in 410,
on an island of the Mediterranean near the coast of France, it became
“another Thebaid, a celebrated school of theology and Christian
philosophy, a citadel inaccessible to the works of barbarism, and an
asylum for literature and science which had fled from Italy on the
invasion of the Goths.”(35) All France sought its bishops from this holy
and learned isle. Among its great scholars was Vincent of Lerins, the
first controversialist of his time, and the originator of the celebrated
formula: _Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus creditum est_. We may
be pardoned for extending our notice of him, since the words he uses on
the progress of the church are so singularly appropriate to our own times
and problems. Having established the unchangeableness of Catholic
doctrine, he goes on to say: “Shall there, then, be no progress in the
church of Christ? There shall be progress, and even great progress, ...
but it will be _progress_ and _not change_. With the growth of ages there
must necessarily be a growth of intelligence, of wisdom, and of knowledge,
for each man as for all the church. But the religion of souls must imitate
the progress of the human form, which, in developing and growing in years,
never ceases to be the same in the maturity of age as in the flower of
youth.”(36) Had the monk of Lerins foreknown the aberrations of the doctor
of Munich, he could not have better refuted the latest heresy of our own
day. S. Lupus of Troyes, who arrested Attila at the gates of his episcopal
city, and successfully combated the Pelagian heresy in England; S.
Cesarius of Arles, who was successively persecuted and finally reinstated
by two barbarian kings, and who gave his sister Cesaria a rule for her
nuns which was adopted by Queen Radegundes for her immense monastery of
Poictiers; Salvian, whose eloquence was likened to that of S. Augustine,
were all monks of Lerins. S. Cesarius has well epitomized the training of
this great and holy school when he says: “It is she who nourishes those
illustrious monks who are sent into all provinces of Gaul as bishops. When
they arrive, they are children; when they go out, they are fathers. She
receives them as recruits, she sends them forth kings.”(37) As late as
1537, we find on the list of the commission appointed by Pope Paul III. to
draw up the preliminaries of the Council of Trent, and especially to point
out and correct the abuses of secular training and paganized art, the name
of Gregory Cortese, Abbot of Lerins.(38) But we must hasten on to other
foundations of a reputation and influence as world‐wide as that of the
Mediterranean Abbey.
In 580, there was a famous school at Seville, where all the arts and
sciences were taught by learned masters, presided over by S. Leander, the
bishop of the diocese. Then S. Ildefonso, of Toledo, a scholar of Seville,
founded a great school at Toledo itself (where the famous councils took
place later on), which, together with Seville, made “Spain the
intellectual light of the Christian world in the seventh century.”(39)
From the South let us turn to the fruitful land where monks supplied the
place of martyrs, and where the faith, planted by Patrick, grew so
marvellously into absolute power within the short space of a century.
Armagh, Bangor, Clonard, are names that at once recall the palmy days of
sacred learning. “Within a century after the death of S. Patrick,” says
Bishop Nicholson, “the Irish seminaries had so increased that most parts
of Europe sent their children to be educated there, and drew thence their
bishops and teachers.”(40) “By the ninth century, Armagh could boast of
7,000 students.”(41) “Clonard,” says Usher, “issued forth a stream of
saints and doctors like the Greek warriors from the wooden horse.”(42) The
Irish communities, Montalembert tells us in his brilliant language,
“entered into rivalry with the great monastic schools of Gaul. They
explained Ovid there; they copied Virgil; they devoted themselves
especially to Greek literature; they drew back from no inquiry, from no
discussion; they gloried in placing boldness on a level with faith.” The
young Luan answered the Abbot of Bangor, who warned him against the
dangers of too engrossing a study of the liberal arts: “If I have the
knowledge of God, I shall never offend God, for they who disobey him are
they who know him not.”
The Irish were as adventurous as they were learned, and Montalembert bears
witness to the national propensity in the following graceful language:
“This monastic nation became the missionary nation _par excellence_. The
Irish missionaries covered the land and seas of the West. Unwearied
navigators, they landed on the most desert islands; they overflowed the
continent with their successive immigrations. They saw in incessant
visions a world known and unknown to be conquered for Christ.” And the
author of _Christian Schools and Scholars_ reminds us of the beautiful
legend of S. Brendan, the founder of the great school of Clonfert in
Connaught, the school‐fellow of Columba, and the pupil of Finian at
Clonard, who is declared to have set sail in search of the Land of
Promise, and during his seven years’ journey to have “discovered a vast
tract of land, lying far to the west of Ireland, where he beheld wonderful
birds and trees of unknown foliage, which gave forth perfumes of
extraordinary sweetness.” Whatever fiction is mingled with this marvellous
narrative, it is difficult not to admit that it must have had some
foundation of truth, and the poetic legend which was perfectly familiar to
Columbus is said to have furnished him with one motive for believing in
the existence of a western continent. Later on we shall find Albertus
Magnus foreshadowing the same belief in his writings. Two of the Irish
missionaries deserve especial notice—Columba, the Apostle of Caledonia,
and Columbanus, the founder of Luxeuil in Burgundy. The former, with his
stronghold of Iona, which “came to be looked upon as the chief seat of
learning, not only in Britain, but in the whole Western world,”(43) is
familiar to all readers of Montalembert’s great monastic poem, and to that
other public who have had access to the Duke of Argyll’s recent work on
the rock‐bound metropolis of Christian Britain. We are told that the most
scrupulous exactitude was required in the Scriptorium of Iona, and that
Columba himself, a skilful penman, wrote out the famous _Book of Kells_
with his own hand. It is now preserved in the library of Trinity College,
Dublin. The monks of Iona studied and taught the classics, the mechanical
arts, law, history, and physic. They transferred to their new home all the
learning of Armagh and Clonard. Painful journeys in search of books or of
the oral teaching of some renowned master were nothing in their eyes; they
listened to lectures on the Greek and Latin fathers, hung entranced over
Homer and Virgil, and were skilled in calculating eclipses and other
natural phenomena. They astonished the world with their arithmetical
knowledge and linguistic erudition, and their keen logic and love of
syllogism are spoken of by S. Benedict of Anian in the ninth century.(44)
Art was equally cultivated, but this, strictly speaking, is outside our
present subject. As an example of Columba’s liberal spirit and devotion to
the best interests of literature, we may remark his defence of the bards
at the Assembly of Drumceitt. Poets, historians, law‐givers, and
genealogists, the bards represented all the learning of a past age and
system; and if their arrogance now and then overstepped the bounds of
courtesy, and even sometimes the restraints of law, in the main their
institute was heroic and praiseworthy. Columba argued against their
opponent, a prince of the Nialls of the South, Aedh, that “care must be
taken not to pull up the good corn with the tares, and that the general
exile of the poets would be the death of a venerable antiquity, and that
of a poetry which was dear to the country and useful to those who knew how
to employ it.” His eloquence saved the bardic institute, and the poets in
their gratitude composed a famous song in his praise, which became
celebrated in Irish literature under the name of _Ambhra_, or _Praise of
S. Columbkill_.(45)
Columbanus, a monk of Bangor, was destined to found an Irish colony of
even greater fame and longer duration than Iona. Luxeuil, founded in 590,
at the foot of the Vosges in Burgundy, soon counted among its sons many
hundred votaries of learning. Montalembert says of it that “no monastery
of the West had yet shone with so much lustre or attracted so many
disciples”. It became another Lerins, a nursery of bishops for the
Frankish and Burgundian cities, a notable seat of secular knowledge, and,
above all, a school of saints. Indeed, among the meagre, skeleton‐like
details that come down to us of these giant abodes of a supernatural race
of men, we find ourselves perforce repeating over and over the same
formula of commendation. What more could one say but that each of these
monastic centres was a school of saints? And yet how much variety in that
sameness! How much that even we can see, and distinguish, and mentally
dissect! We see some soaring spirit, whose burning love is never content
with renunciation, but ever seeks, with holy restlessness, some deeper
solitude in which to pray and meditate, like the Bavarian monk Sturm, the
pupil and companion of S. Boniface, and the founder of the world‐renowned
Abbey of Fulda; or, again, some great thinker like Alcuin of York, whose
touching love for his own land and city makes us feel with pardonable
pride how near akin is our own weak human nature to that of even the giant
men of old; or spirits like the gentle Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, the
traditions of whose unwearied moderation and “inestimable gift of kindness
and light‐heartedness,” as well as his “intense and active sympathy for
those human sorrows which in all ages are the same,” are all the more
precious to us that they are also mingled with tales of his wondrous
horsemanship, athletic frame, and simple enjoyment of legitimate sports.
The same author we have just quoted, Montalembert, says that the
description of his childhood reads like that of a little Anglo‐Saxon of
our own day, a scholar of Eton or Harrow. So that, when one after another
we read of Gaulish, Celtic, and Teutonic abbeys that were intellectual
capitals and centres of far‐reaching and all‐embracing knowledge, we must
always remember that these words, grown trite at last from frequent use,
have as varied a meaning as the collective name of Milky Way, which stands
for countless worlds of unknown stars.
As Christianity spread in the early part of the middle ages, these
monastic centres were multiplied like the posterity of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob. Lindisfarne, the Iona of the eastern coast of England, soon
rivalled her Scottish predecessor, and retained much the same impress of
Celtic learning, while Melrose served as a supplementary school and
novitiate. The Teutonic element now began to make itself felt. Caedmon,
the Saxon cowherd, transformed into a poet and a monk by a direct call
from God, sang the creation in strains “which,” says Montalembert, “may
still be admired even beside the immortal poem of the author of _Paradise
Lost_.” Wilfrid, the S. Thomas à Becket of the seventh century, vigorously
planted Roman traditions and customs in the Saxon monastery of Ripon, and
perpetuated the name of S. Peter in his other magnificent foundation of
Peterborough, the poetic “Home among the Meadows,” or Medehamstede.(46)
Theodore, the Greek metropolitan of England, in 673 introduced into the
Anglo‐Saxon schools “an intellectual and literary development as worthy of
the admiration as of the gratitude of posterity; the study of the two
classic tongues (Greek and Latin) chiefly flourished under his care....
Monasteries, thus transformed into homes of scientific study, could not
but spread a taste and respect for intellectual life, not only among the
clergy, but also among their lay‐protectors, the friends and neighbors of
each community.”(47)
Benedict Biscop, the contemporary of the chivalrous Wilfrid of York, is
eminently a representative of Anglo‐Saxon cultivation. Montalembert puts
his name in the “monastic constellation of the seventh century” for
intelligence, art, and science. He it was who undertook a journey to Rome
(which place he had visited many times before on other errands) solely to
procure books; and it must be borne in mind that this journey was then
twice as long and a hundred times more dangerous than a journey from
London to Australia is now. After having founded the Abbey of Wearmouth,
at the mouth of the Wear, Benedict set forth again, bringing masons and
glass‐makers from Gaul to teach the Anglo‐Saxons some notions of solid and
ornamental architecture. He was a passionate book‐collector, and wished
each of his monasteries to have a great library, which he considered
indispensable to the discipline, instruction, and good organization of the
community. Originally a monk at Lerins, whither he had gone after giving
up a knightly and seignorial career in his own country, he naturally drank
in that thirst for learning which, in the earlier middle ages, seems to
have been almost inseparable from holiness. Jarrow, the sister monastery
to Wearmouth, situated near it by the mouth of the Tyne, was even yet more
famous as a school of hallowed knowledge, and has become endeared to the
hearts of all Englishmen as the home of the Venerable Bede. His is a
figure which, even in the foreign annals of the church, stands pre‐eminent
among ecclesiastical writers, and one in whom the Anglo‐Saxon character is
thoroughly and beautifully revealed. Calm and steadfast self‐possession,
that beautiful attribute of the followers of the “Prince of Peace,” is the
key‐note to the writings of the historian‐monk of Jarrow. The first
glimpse we have of him is as the solitary companion of the new‐made abbot,
Ceolfrid, chanting the divine office at the age of seven; his voice choked
with sobs as he thought of the elder brethren, all of whom a grievous
pestilence had carried off. But though the choir had gone to join in the
hymns of the New Jerusalem, the canonical hours were nevertheless kept up
by the sorrowing abbot and the child‐chorister until new brethren came to
take the place of the old ones. Bede was never idle; he says himself that
“he was always his own secretary, and dictated, composed, and copied all
himself.” His great history was the means of bringing him into contact
with the best men of his day. “The details he gives on this subject show
that a constant communication was kept up between the principal centres of
religious life, and that an amount of intellectual activity as surprising
as it is admirable—when the difficulty of communication and the internal
wars which ravaged England are taken into account—existed among their
inhabitants.”(48) Bede’s political foresight seems to have been of no mean
order, and the grave advice he administers to bishops on ecclesiastical
abuses shows at once his practical common sense and fearlessness of
character. He also condemns the too sweeping grants of land, exemptions
from taxes, and privileges offered to monastic houses, and gives the
wisest reasons for his strictures. “The nations of Catholic Europe envied
England the possession of so great a doctor, the first among the offspring
of barbarous races who had won a place among the doctors of the church,
... and his illustrious successor Alcuin, speaking to the community of
Jarrow which Bede had made famous, bears witness to his celebrity in these
words: ‘Stir up, then, the minds of your sleepers by his example; study
his works, and you will be able to draw from them the secret of eternal
beauty.’ ”(49)
Malmesbury was another Anglo‐Saxon centre of thought, and the memory of S.
Aldhelm long gave it that “powerful and popular existence which lasted far
into the middle ages.”(50) The cathedral school of York, “which rose into
celebrity just as Bede was withdrawn from the scene of his useful
labors,”(51) produced one of the greatest of English scholars, and one
instrumental in carrying knowledge acquired among monks to the warrior
court of a foreign prince. Charlemagne and his Palatine schools of Aix‐la‐
Chapelle would have been shorn of half their glory had it not been for the
Englishman Alcuin. But it was not without a pang that the home‐loving
master left the school he had almost formed, and which he cherished as the
product of his first efforts, and undertook to foster the same
institutions in a strange land. These schools, in which enthusiastic
French writers love to trace the germ of the mighty University of Paris,
seem to have possessed a system of equality very creditable both to their
master and their imperial patron. Later on, when the wearied _magister_ at
last wrested from Charlemagne the permission to retire into some
monastery, since he had failed in obtaining leave to return and die at
York, it was only to found another school that he occupied his leisure. S.
Martin’s at Tours now became as famous as the Palatine at Aix‐la‐Chapelle.
“He applied himself to his new duties with unabated energy, and by his own
teaching raised the school of Tours to a renown which was shared by none
of its contemporaries. In the hall of studies, a distinct place was set
apart for the copyists, who were exhorted by certain verses of their
master, set up in a conspicuous place, _to mind their stops and not to
leave out letters_.”(52) Here, then, is another of those pleasant little
details which creates a fellow‐feeling between the human nature of to‐day
and that of past ages. The description of his life from which we have
drawn this sketch closes thus: “In short, his active mind, thoroughly
Anglo‐Saxon in its temper, worked on to the end; laboring at a sublime end
by homely practical details. One sees he is of the same race with Bede,
who wrote and dictated to the last hour of his life, and, when his work
was finished, calmly closed his book and died.”(53)
We have already named Fulda, the glorious monastic centre where the monk
Sturm established the Benedictine rule in 744, and where, before his
death, 400 monks sang daily the praises of God, and good scholars were
trained to intellectual warfare in the name of faith. In 802, “mindful of
its great origin, it was one of the first to enter heartily into the
revival of letters instituted by Charlemagne,” and sent the monks Hatto
and Rabanus to study under Alcuin. We find a most graphic description of
the daily routine of this great school in _Christian Schools and
Scholars_. It so well illustrates the common life of the middle ages that
we do not hesitate to give it at some length: “The German nobles gladly
entrusted their sons to Rabanus’ care, and he taught them with wonderful
gentleness and patience. At his lectures every one was trained to write
equally well in prose or verse on any subject placed before him, and was
afterwards taken through a course of rhetoric, logic, and natural
philosophy.... The school of Fulda had inherited the fullest share of the
Anglo‐Saxon spirit, and exhibited the same spectacle of intellectual
activity which we have already seen working in the foundations of S.
Benedict Biscop. Every variety of useful occupation was embraced by the
monks.... Within doors the visitor might have beheld a huge range of
workshops, in which cunning hands were kept constantly busy on every
description of useful and ornamental work in wood, stone, and metal....
Passing on to the interior of the building, the stranger would have been
introduced to the scriptorium, over the door of which was an inscription
warning the copyists to abstain from idle words, to be diligent in copying
good books, _and to take care not to alter the text by careless mistakes_.
Not far from the scriptorium was the interior school ... where our
visitor, were he from the more civilized South, might well have stood in
mute surprise in the midst of these fancied barbarians, whom he would have
found engaged in pursuits not unworthy of the schools of Rome. The monk
Probus is perhaps lecturing on Virgil or Cicero, and that with such hearty
enthusiasm that his brother‐professors accuse him in good‐natured jesting
of ranking them with the saints. Elsewhere disputations are being carried
on over the _Categories_ of Aristotle, and an attentive ear will discover
that the controversy which made such a noise in the twelfth century, and
divided the philosophers of Europe into the rival sects of Nominalists and
Realists, is perfectly well understood at Fulda, though it does not seem
to have disturbed the peace of the school. To your delight, if you be not
altogether wedded to the study of the dead languages, you may find some
engaged on the uncouth language of their fatherland, and, looking over
their shoulders, you may smile to see the barbarous words which they are
cataloguing in their glossaries, _words, nevertheless, destined to
reappear centuries hence in the most philosophic literature of Europe_....
It may be added that the school of Fulda would have been found ordered
with admirable discipline. Twelve of the best professors were chosen, and
formed a council of elders or doctors, presided over by one who bore the
title of principal, and who assigned to each one the lectures he was to
deliver to the pupils. In the midst of this world of intellectual life and
labor, Rabanus continued for some years to train the first minds of
Germany, and reckoned among his pupils the most celebrated men of the
age.... For the rest, he was an enemy to anything like narrowness of
intellectual training. His own works in prose and verse embraced a large
variety of subjects, ... and he is commonly reputed the author of the
_Veni Creator_.”(54)
One of his pupils, the monk Otfried of Weissembourg, entered with singular
ardor into the study of the Tudesque or native dialect. Inspired by
Rabanus, who himself devoted much attention to this subject, and
encouraged by a “certain noble lady named Judith,” Otfried undertook to
translate into his native tongue the most remarkable Gospel passages
relating to Our Lord’s life. His verses speedily became familiar to the
people, and by degrees took the place of those pagan songs of their
forefathers, by which much of the leaven of heathenism yet remained in the
minds of the peasantry, associated as it was with all the touching
prestige of nationalism and the honest pride they felt in their ancestors’
prowess.
Rabanus, while master of the Fulda school, had much to suffer from the
eccentricities of his abbot, Ratgar, who, afflicted with the _building
mania_, actually forced his monks to interrupt their studies, and even
shorten their prayers, to take up the trowel and the hod and hasten on his
new erections. Here we have the other side of the daily life of the middle
ages, and a more ludicrous scene can hardly be imagined than the enforced
labor of the scholar‐monks, their rueful countenances showing their
despair at the unpleasant task, yet their unflinching principle of
obedience towering above their disgust, and compelling them to work in
silence till relieved by the Emperor Louis himself. The new abbot,
installed in Ratgar’s place by a commission empowered to look into the
latter’s unheard‐of abuse of his authority, was a saint as well as a
scholar, and “healed the wounds which a long course of ill‐treatment had
opened in the community.” Rabanus himself succeeded him, and resigned the
mastership of the school to his favorite assistant, Candidus.
Passing over many abbeys whose merits it were too long a story to
enumerate, we come to S. Gall, the great Helvetian centre of thought.
Originally it was founded by Gall, the disciple of Columbanus, and in the
reign of King Pepin changed the Columbanian for the Benedictine rule.
Already, in its early beginnings, it was a home of art, and Tutilo’s works
in gold, copper, and brass were famous throughout the Germanic world. The
mills, the forge, the workshops of all sorts, the cloisters for the monks,
the buildings for the students, the immense tracts of arable land, the
reclaimed forests, the fleet of busy little boats on the great Lake of
Constance, all told of a stirring centre of human life. And while art,
science, philosophy, agriculture, and mechanical industry were all at work
in the townlike abbey, “you will hear these fine classical scholars
preaching plain truths, in barbarous idioms, to the rude race of the
mountains, who, before the monks came among them, sacrificed to the evil
one, and worshipped stocks and stones.”(55) “S. Gall was almost as much a
place of resort as Rome or Athens, at least to the learned world of the
ninth century. Her schools were a kind of _university_, frequented by men
of all nations, who came hither to fit themselves for _all professions_.
S. Gall was larger and freer, and made more of the arts and sciences;
indeed, so far as regards its studies, it had a better claim to the title
of _university_ than any single institution which can be named as existing
before the time of Philip Augustus.(56) You would have found here not
monks alone, but courtiers, soldiers, and the sons of kings. All
diligently applied themselves to the cultivation of the Tudesque dialect,
and to its grammatical formation, so as to render it capable of producing
a literature of its own.”(57) The monks were in correspondence with all
the learned monastic houses of France and Italy, and the transfer of a
codex, a Livy, or a Virgil from one to the other occasioned as much
diplomacy, interest, and excitement as a commercial treaty or the
discovery of new gold fields would in our day. S. Gall had its Greek
scholars, too, and seems to have fostered among its copyists a love for
“fine editions,” such as would do honor to an English or Russian
bibliomaniac of to‐day. They made their own parchment from the hides of
the wild animals of their mountains, and employed many hands on each
precious manuscript. The costly binding was likewise all home‐made, and
many a jewelled missal must have come from the hand of the artist‐monk
Tutilo. Music was a specialty of S. Gall, if one may say so in an age when
music was so much a part of education that alone of all the arts it was
included in the _quadrivium_, or higher instruction of the mediæval
schools. Romanus of S. Gall it was who first named the musical notes by
the letters of the alphabet, a system which is universal in Germany, and
very commonly followed in England to this day.
We should multiply names _ad infinitum_ were we to allow ourselves to roam
further over that field of history so falsely called the dark ages.
Einsiedeln, Paderborn, Magdeburg, Utrecht, are but a few of the many
equally deserving of notice, the latter being, we are told, “a
_fashionable_ place of education for the sons of German princes” in the
tenth century. Before we go on to the second stage of the learning of the
past—the era of the universities—we cannot help looking back to the little
Saxon island where, in 882, Alfred devoted one‐fourth of his revenue to
the restoration of the Oxford schools and obtained from Pope Martin II. a
brief constituting them what may be fairly called a university. This was
at a time when learning was at a low ebb, and the invasions of the Danes
were endangering the cause of letters—a cause so intimately wrapped up in
that of the great monasteries. Glastonbury, the ruined home of so much
wisdom, science, and philosophy, was destined under S. Dunstan to retake
her place among the schools. A great revival was initiated by him, a
reform among the clergy vigorously enforced, episcopal seminaries
reopened, and monastic schools once more brought to their ancient place in
the vanguard of civilization. Ethelwold, Dunstan’s disciple, was zealous
for the study of sacred learning, and “loved teaching for its own sake. A
new race of scholars sprang up in the restored cloisters, some of whom
were not unworthy to be ranked with the disciples of Bede and Alcuin.”(58)
At Glastonbury, like as at Fulda, the native tongue was cultivated,
harmonized, and rendered capable of being ranked no longer as a dialect,
but as the characteristic language of an eminently masterful people.
Croyland, also, a ruined centre of intellectual life, rose again from its
ashes; new monks and scholars reared its walls and filled its schools, and
the Danish horrors were soon forgotten in the thoughtful kindness of the
new abbot, Turketul, the nephew of Alfred, who, as we read, from a warrior
and a courtier, a minister of state, and a royal prince, became a gentle
monk and the rewarder of his little pupils. “Turketul took the greatest
interest in the success of the school, visiting it daily, inspecting the
tasks of each child, and taking with him a servant who carried raisins,
figs, and nuts, or more often apples and pears, and such like little
gifts, that the boys might be encouraged to be diligent, not with words
only or blows, but rather by the hope of reward.” Such is the sweet,
homely picture given us by the historian Ingulph of one of the greatest of
schools in its early monastic beginnings. We have left ourselves so little
space that even the metropolis of the Benedictines, the glorious and
world‐renowned Monte Casino, can find but a scant notice in these pages.
If Subiaco was the spiritual birthplace of _the_ order _par excellence_,
Monte Casino was its intellectual cradle. There the rule was written
which, by some mysterious fate, was destined to absorb and supersede that
of the widespread Columbanians; there were the missionary principles first
established which led to the conversion of the Anglo‐Saxon race; there the
school of _quies_ and reverence first planted which made this wonderful
monastery “the most powerful and celebrated in the Catholic universe.”(59)
It was likened to Sinai by Pope Victor III., the successor of Hildebrand,
in bold and simple verses, full of divine exultation and Christian pride:
it has been defended and protected by an English and Protestant
scholar,(60) the minister of a nation whose civilization once flowed from
its bosom, and whose learning was fostered in its early “scriptoria.” It
has outlasted many of its own offspring, and still stands undecayed in its
moral sublimity, fruitful yet in saints and scholars, the mother‐house of
an order whose origin stretches beyond Benedict far into the desert of
Paul and Anthony, Jerome and Hilarion.
And now that we are forced, reluctantly enough, to let fall the veil over
that teeming life of the mediæval cloister, the fruitful nursery of every
later intellectual development, shall we tell the reader what has most
struck us throughout the short sketch we have been able to give of these
centres of thought? Does not their history sound like some “monkish
chronicle”? How is it that all the most “celebrated men of their time”
(the phrase so often repeated in these annals) are monks, and so many not
only monks, but saints? How is it that we come upon so many instances of
these great scholars taking their turn at the mill, the forge, and the
bake‐house, and that these details sound neither sordid nor vulgar, as
they might of modern and secular _littérateurs_? It was the monastic
principle, the Christ‐principle, as Prior Vaughan calls it in his _Life of
S. Thomas of Aquin_—the principle of faith, obedience, purity, adoration,
and reverence. “The monks had a world of their own.... Whilst the
barbarians were laying all things in ruins, they, heedless alike of fame
or profit, were patiently laying the foundations of European civilization.
They were forming the languages of Schiller, of Bacon, and of Bossuet;
they were creating arts which modern skill in vain endeavors to imitate;
they were preserving the codices of ancient learning, and embalming the
world ‘lying in wickedness’ with the sweet odor of their manifold
virtues.”(61) Not only were they men who “wrote and spoke much, and, by
their _masculine genius_ and _young and fresh inspiration_, prevented the
new Christian world from falling back from its first advances, either by
literature or politics, under the yoke of exhausted paganism”;(62) not
only were they men of progress even while essentially conservative, men of
the future even while their studies were all of the past, but, “in
opposing poverty, chastity, and obedience, the three great bases of
monastic life, to the orgies of wealth, debauchery, and pride, they
created at once a contrast and a remedy.”(63) Prior Vaughan, in his
brilliant lifelike picture of mediævalism, _S. Thomas of Aquin_,
perpetually refers to the ruling principle of monasticism: “To omit
mention of the Benedictine principle would be to manifest great ignorance
of the action of the highest form of truth upon mankind. The mastership of
authority and reverence, springing out of the school of _quies_, did not
cease to exert a considerable influence even after the dominant power of
the monastic body had nearly disappeared.”(64) Elsewhere we read: “There
was nothing of the sophist or logician in those sweet and venerable
countenances, the unruffled beauty of which is so often dwelt upon by
their biographers.... One of the marks of the age is the absence of the
disputatious spirit, which, if it diminishes their rank (that of the
monastic thinkers) in the world of letters, forms the charm of their
characters as men. The real spirit of the age was one of reverence for
tradition.”(65)
The foresight of the monk‐teachers of the earlier middle ages is no less
remarkable than their holiness. Everywhere they fostered the native idiom,
and labored to reduce it to an intelligible grammar. The national and
patriotic feeling thus awakened in the centres of learning must needs have
endeared them to, and more closely linked them with, the intellectual
progress of the people they instructed. A modern author observes that
“Bede’s words are evidence that the establishment of the Teutonic nations
on the ruins of the Roman Empire did not _barbarize_ knowledge. He
collected and taught more natural truths than any Roman writer had yet
accomplished, and his works display an advance, not a retrogression, in
science.” Indeed, natural science seems to have been from the first a
peculiarly monastic pursuit. The great names of Bede, Gerbert, Albertus
Magnus, and Roger Bacon are as a mighty chain from century to century,
leading up to the discoveries of Galileo, Newton, Arago, and Humboldt;
while in S. Brendan we have a bold precursor of Columbus.
The monasteries were so entirely the sole centres of civilization that
numberless towns owe their origin to them. Scholars came for instruction,
and remained for edification; grateful patients settled near the heaven‐
taught physicians who had cured them; peasants clustered round the abbeys
for protection, and thus grew towns and villages without number in
Germany, Switzerland, France, England, and Italy. Even America bears to‐
day, in the name of one of her oldest English settlements, and a
hereditary representative of intellect—Boston—a memento of the old
intellectual supremacy of monasticism. S. Botolph, an Anglo‐Saxon hermit,
left his monastery, and settled in a hut on one of the plains of
Lincolnshire. Scholars gathered around him, and, despite his
remonstrances, set up other huts around his, and the Benedictine monastery
of Icanhoe was founded. As time went on, a village sprang up and became a
town, and was called Botolphstown. The name was afterwards corrupted and
cut down into Boston, and from Boston it was that the founders of New
England set sail on their journey to Holland, their first stage on their
way to the New World.
In old times, then, monasteries created towns; now, alas, it is towns that
necessitate monasteries. We have now to plant the monastic school in the
midst of the teeming emporiums of trade and vice, where thousands toil
harder for a bare crust and a hard board than the monks of old toiled for
the kingdom of heaven. It is not to listen to a learned or holy man that
settlements are made nowadays, but to dig oil‐wells or work coal and iron
mines. Modern towns are made by traders, eager to be beforehand with their
competitors, and the journalist and the liquor‐seller are the first
_citizens_ of the new town. _Quies_ is relegated to the region of romance;
it is unpractical, it “does not pay”; learning itself, if it succeeds in
getting a footing in the centres of commerce, partakes of the commercial
spirit, and is rather to be called “cramming” than knowledge, and, as to
the moral result of the contrast between the Benedictine principle of the
early ages and the principle of hurry, of contention, of money‐worship
current in our days, let the annals of modern crime be called upon to
witness.
Versailles.
What an apotheosis of royalty the name evokes! Versailles and Louis
Quatorze. As if by the stroke of the enchanter’s wand, there starts up
before us a long procession of heroes and poets and statesmen and wits and
fair women, a galaxy of glory and beauty revolving around one central
figure as satellites round their sun. We lose sight of all the dark spots
upon the disc in contemplating the blaze of brightness that emanates from
it. We forget the iniquitous follies of the Grand Monarque, and remember
nothing but the splendors of his reign, its unparalleled monarchical
triumph; we see him through a mist of proud achievements in war and peace,
excellence in every branch of science and industry, fine arts and letters,
all that dazzled his contemporaries still dazzles us, and even at this
distance his faults and follies are, if not quite eclipsed, softened and
modified in the daze of a fictitious light. The group of illustrious men
who surround his throne magnify rather than diminish the individuality of
the man, lending a false halo to him, as if their genius were a thing of
his creation, an effect rather than a cause of his ascendency. How far, in
truth, Louis may have tended to create by his personal influence, his
kindly patronage and keen discrimination, that wonderful assemblage of
talent in every grade which will remain for ever associated with his name,
it would be difficult to determine, but, judging from the extraordinary
influx of genius which signalized his reign, and the corresponding dearth
of it in the succeeding ones, we are tempted to believe that he at least
possessed in an almost supernatural degree the gift, so precious to a
king, of divining genius wherever it did exist, and of calling it forth
from its hiding‐places, however dismal or remote, to the light of success
and fame. But for the discriminating admiration of Louis, which fanned the
poetic fire of the timid and sensitive Racine and stimulated the wit of
the obscure and humble Molière, we should assuredly have missed some of
the noblest efforts of both those poets. Louis was prodigal of his smiles
to rising talent, for he knew that to it the sunshine of encouragement is
as beneficent as the sun’s warmth to the earth in spring‐time.
But we are beginning at the end. Versailles is identified to us chiefly if
not solely with Louis Quatorze and his age; but it was not so from the
beginning. Once upon a time it was a marshy swamp, unhealthy and
uncultivated; and, if we deny Louis the faculty of creating men of genius,
we cannot refuse him that of having evolved an Eden from a wilderness.
There is little indeed in the history of this early period to compensate
the reader for keeping him waiting while we review it, still it is better
to cast our glance back a little, not very far, a century or so, to see
what were the antecedents of the site of one of the grandest historic
monuments of France.
In the year 1561, Martial de Loménie was seigneur of Versailles, and was
frequently honored by the visits of Henri de Navarre, who went out to hunt
the stag in his subject’s swampy wilderness. De Loménie sold it to Albert
de Gondy, Maréchal de Retz, who in his turn was honored by the presence of
his sovereign, Louis XIII., there. Louis was in the habit of indulging his
favorite pastime at Versailles, but, beyond placing his land and his game
at the disposal of the king, the maréchal seems to have shown scant
hospitality to the royal hunter. Saint‐Simon tells us that during these
excursions Louis usually slept in a windmill or in a dingy inn, whose only
customers were the wagoners who journeyed across that out‐of‐the‐way
place. Of the two lodgings he inclines to think the windmill was the most
comfortable. Louis probably found neither quarters very luxurious, for in
1627 he purchased a piece of ground which had been in the Soisy family
since the fourteenth century, and built himself a hunting‐lodge on the
ruins of an old manor‐house there, to the great discomfiture of a large
colony of owls who had made themselves at home in the moss‐grown ruin.
Bassompierre deplores the vandalism which swept away the venerable shelter
of the owls, and declares that after all the lodge was but a sorry
improvement on the windmill, being “too shabby a dwelling for even a plain
_gentilhomme_ to take conceit in.” Such as it was, it satisfied the king,
and remained untouched till it was swallowed up in the great palace which
was to embody all the glories of the ensuing reign. When Louis Quatorze
conceived the design of building Versailles, he confided the execution of
his vast idea to Mansard, laying down, however, as a primary condition
that the shabby little hunting‐lodge of the late king should be preserved,
and comprised in the new structure. Mansard declared that this was
impossible, to which Louis, with true kingly logic, replied coolly:
_Raison de plus_.(66) No argument of artistic beauty or common sense could
move him from his resolution, or induce him to sanction the demolition of
the quaint little building that his father had raised. Rather than be
guilty of such an unfilial act, he said he would give up the notion of his
new palace altogether. Mansard had nothing for it but to give way, and
pledge himself that the ugly red‐brick lodge should stand somehow and
somewhere in the magnificent pile that was already reared in his
imagination. The only concession he obtained was that it should be
concealed, if this were possible. Mansard swore he would make it possible,
and he kept his word. The lodge of Louis XIII. was swallowed up in the
elaborate stone‐work of that part of the palace facing the Avenue de
Paris, and remains to this day an enduring if not a very sensible proof of
the filial respect of Louis XIV. This was the one solitary impediment that
Louis threw in the architect’s way; in everything else he gave him _carte
blanche_, power unlimited, and all but unlimited wealth to work out his
fantastic and superb conception. Simultaneously with this mighty fabric
another work of almost equal magnitude had to be undertaken; this was the
planting of the park and the gardens. The country for miles around the
site of the palace was a swamp abounding with reptiles, and reeking with
vapors of so deadly a character that the men employed in draining it died
like flies of a malaria that raged like a pestilence for months together.
They refused after a time to continue the work, though enormous wages were
offered, and it was found necessary at last, under pain of abandoning it,
to press men into the service as for the army in time of war. No accurate
statistics are extant as to the number of victims who perished in the
execution of this royal freak; but the most authentic opinions of the time
put it at the astounding figure of _twenty thousand_. So much for the good
old times of the _ancien régime_, that we are apt to invest with a sort of
pathetic prestige. What were the lives of so many _vilains_(67) and the
tears and hunger of innumerable _vilaines_, widows and orphans of the dead
men, in comparison to the supreme pleasure of the king and the
accomplishment of his omnipotent will? The death‐sweat of these human
cattle rained upon the swamp, and in due time it was’ made wholesome,
purified as so many foul spots upon the earth are by the sweat of toil and
sorrow, and fitted to grow flowers and green trees that would diffuse
their fragrance and spread pleasant shade where corruption and barrenness
had dwelt.
Le Notre, that prince of gardeners, may be truly said to have created the
pleasure‐grounds of Versailles; nature had thrown many obstacles in his
way, she thwarted him at every step, but her obstinate resistance only
stimulated his genius to loftier flights and his indomitable energy to
stronger efforts. He conquered in the end. Never was conquest more fully
appreciated than Le Notre’s by his royal master. Louis not only rewarded
him with more than princely liberality, but admitted him to his personal
intimacy, treating the plebeian artist with an affectionate familiarity
that he never extended to the high and mighty courtiers who looked on in
envy and admiration. Le Notre was too little of a courtier himself to
value adequately the honor of the king’s condescension, but he loved the
man, and took no pains to conceal it; there was an expansive _bonhomie_, a
native simplicity in his character, that, contrasting as it did with the
artificial atmosphere of the court, charmed Louis, and he would listen
with delight to the honest fellow’s garrulity while he related, with naïve
satisfaction, the tale of his early struggles and the difficult and hardy
triumphs of his talent and perseverance. Versailles was, of course, to be
the crowning achievement of his life, and nothing could exceed the
diligence and ardor that he brought to bear on it. He besought the king
not to inspect the works while they were in the progressive stage, but to
wait, once he had seen the disposition of the ground, till they were
advanced to a certain point. Louis humored him by consenting, though
greatly against his inclination. He kept his word faithfully in spite of
all temptations of curiosity and impatience; contenting himself with
questioning Le Notre, at stated times, as to how things were getting on,
but never once, in his frequent and regular visits of inspection to the
palace, did he set foot within the forbidden precincts. The day came at
last when his forbearance was to be rewarded. Le Notre invited him to
enter the closed doors. Louis came, and found that the reality far
outstripped his most sanguine expectations; he was in raptures with all he
beheld, and declared himself abundantly rewarded for his patience. Le
Notre, no less enchanted than the king, walked on beside his chair, doing
the honors of the gardens and the park, and listening with a swelling
heart to the exclamations of delight that greeted every fresh view that
opened in the landscape. It seemed, indeed, as if a whole army of fairies
had been at work to bring such a paradise out of chaos; long rows of
stately full‐grown trees, brought from a distance and transplanted into
the arid soil, had taken root and were flourishing as in their native
earth; winding paths intersected majestic avenues, and led the visitor,
unexpectedly, to richly planted groves, where marble fauns hid coyly, as
if frightened to be caught by the sunlight in their unveiled beauty; all
the elves in fairyland, all the gods in Olympia, were here congregated,
now astray in the green tangle of the wood, now standing in majestic
groups, or peeping singly through an opening in the foliage as if they
were playing hide‐and‐seek; water‐nymphs, dashing the soft spray round
their naked limbs, started unexpectedly from nooks and corners, cooling
the air that was heavy with the scent of flowers; the rush of the cascade
answered the laughing ripple of the fountain; from bower to bower there
came a concert of water‐music, such as no mortal ear had ever heard
before; it was, indeed, a sight to set before a king, and the gardener
might well rejoice who had worked these wonders in the desert.
Le Notre had been all this time trotting briskly by the king’s rolling‐
chair. When they had gone over the enchanted region, Louis said: “You are
tired, my friend; get up here beside me, and let us go over it all once
more.”
And Le Notre, without more ado, jumped up beside the king, and they began
it all over again, as the children say of their favorite stories. He
explained to Louis how he nearly despaired of ever getting that birch‐
grove right, owing to a bed of rock that would not be dislodged to make
room for it; now and then he would catch the king by the sleeve, and bid
him shut his eyes and not open them till they came to a certain point,
when he would cry _Voilà!_—demeaning himself altogether like a true child
of nature, and enjoying thoroughly the sympathy of the companion who, for
the time being, a common delight made kindred with him. Suddenly, however,
it seems to have dawned upon him that he was riding side by side with the
king of France. He rubbed his hands, and exclaimed with childlike glee:
“What a proud day this is in my life!” And then, as the tears came
unchecked into his honest eyes, he added: “And if my good old father could
but see me, what a happy one it would be!”
Louis, entering into the son’s emotion, made him talk on about his old
father, and listened with profound interest to the story of their humble
life in common. He wanted to give Le Notre letters‐patent of nobility, and
so raise all his family to the rank of _gentilshommes_, but the offer was
gratefully declined; it would have been a temptation to most men, but it
was not to Le Notre; he had no ambitions of a worldly cast; his sole
aspirations were those of a man of genius, and he preferred retaining the
name of his father and ennobling it by a higher title than it was in the
power of kings to bestow.
As soon as the palace and the grounds were finished, Louis came and took
up his abode at Versailles. Then began that series of fêtes and pageants
that makes the annals of that time read like the description of a long
carnival. One of the most gorgeous of these fêtes was a sort of
_carrousel_, given in 1664, when no less than five hundred guests were
conveyed to Versailles in the king’s suite and at his expense—no small
matter in the days when railways were unknown, and carriages drawn by six
or eight horses were the only mode of travelling for persons of rank. The
king played the part of “Roger” in the _carrousel_, and came riding on a
white charger, magnificently caparisoned, all the court diamonds being
given up to the adornment of rider and steed; he advanced at the head of a
cavalcade of two hundred knights, after which came a golden chariot,
called the “Chariot of the Sun,” and filled with shepherds and many
mythological personages; the three queens, namely, the queen‐dowager Anne
d’Autriche, the reigning queen, and the Queen of England, widow of Charles
I., surrounded by three hundred ladies of the rank and beauty of France,
assisted at the entrance of the tournament, while a vast concourse of
enthusiastic spectators added by their presence to the enlivenment of the
scene. At night “four thousand huge torches” illuminated the gardens; the
supper was spread by nymphs and fauns, while Pan and Diana, “advancing on
a moving mountain,” came down to preside over the festive board. Not the
least noteworthy episode of the entertainment, which lasted seven days,
was the representation of Molière’s _Princesse d’Elide_ and the first
three acts of _Tartuffe_, played now for the first time. The earlier fêtes
at Versailles were marked by the presence of the greatest and fairest
names that illustrated the reign of Louis Quatorze, so fertile throughout
in celebrities.
Foremost in the gay and brilliant throng stands the figure of the one
woman whom Louis ever really loved, the pale and pensive Louise de la
Vallière, she who was in reality the goddess of this gorgeous temple, but
who, in the words of Mme. de Sévigné, “hid herself in the grass like a
violet,” and whose modesty and humility in the midst of her erring
triumphs drew from all hearts the pardon she never wrung from her own
uncompromising conscience.
All the glories of France flocked to Versailles as to a shrine where they
did homage and were glorified in turn. At every step we meet the majestic
figure of the Grand Monarque. See him at the top of the great stair,
calling out to the Grand Condé, who toils painfully up the marble steps,
bending under the weight of years and the fatigues of war: “Take your
time, cousin; you are too heavily laden with laurels to walk fast; we can
wait for you.” Not a room, or a terrace, or a gallery but has a witness to
bring forth of the king’s courtesy or the king’s magnificence. There is
the _cabinet du roi_, where he used to work at the affairs of state with
his ministers, not one of whom worked as hard as the king himself. His
ministers were not his tools nevertheless; despotic as he was, Louis let
them hold their own against him, and when they had justice on their side
he could yield gracefully to the opposition and respect the courage that
prompted it. Witness the scene between him and his Chancellor Voisin,
which took place in this same _cabinet du roi_. One of the most
disreputable men of that not very reputable court, by dint of intrigue,
obtained from Louis a promise of _lettres de grâce_. Next day, when the
chancellor came in to his usual work, the king desired him to affix the
great seals to the document, which was ready prepared. Voisin looked over
it first conscientiously as was his custom, and then flatly refused to
obey the king’s command, denouncing the grant of the _lettres de grâce_ to
such a man as an abuse of the royal privilege. Louis replied that his word
was pledged, and it was too late now to discuss the unworthiness of the
subject; he put forward his hand, and, seeing that Voisin did not move, he
took the seals himself and affixed them to the deed. The chancellor looked
on in silence, but, when Louis handed him back the badge of office, he
drew away his hand, and said haughtily: “They are polluted; I will never
take them back.”
“What a man!” exclaimed Louis, with a glance of frank admiration at his
sturdy minister, and he flung the deed into the fire.
Voisin quietly took up the seals, and went on with his work as if nothing
had occurred to interrupt it.
It was in the _cabinet du roi_ that Louis took leave of the Duc d’Anjou,
on the eve of his departure for Spain, with those memorable words:
“Partez, mon fils, il n’y a plus de Pyrénées!”(68)
But it is in the _Salle du Trône_ that the Grand Monarque appears to us in
his most congenial attitude; here we see him in his true element, playing
the king as the world never saw it played before, and assuredly never will
again; here all the potentates of the earth came and greeted him
spontaneously as _le roi_, as if he were the only real king, and they his
vassals, or, at least, his humble imitators. One day we see the ambassador
of the Dey of Algiers presenting in his name “a little present of twelve
Arab steeds, and humbly praying that the mighty majesty of France would
deign to accept them, seeing that King Solomon himself had accepted the
leg of the grasshopper tendered to him by the ant.”
On another occasion, we see the stately Doge of Genoa advancing to pay his
court; Louis questions him concerning the behavior of the courtiers to
him, and the doge replies: “Truly, if the King of France steals away the
liberty of our hearts, his courtiers take care to restore it.” The king
suspects the reply to be provoked by some discourtesy on the part of his
_entourage_, and, having investigated the matter and found that Louvois
and De Croissy had demeaned themselves with unseemly hauteur to the
sensitive stranger, he severely rebuked them in the presence of the whole
court.
It was here, no doubt, seated on his golden throne, that Louis received
the chief of Châteaubriand’s tale, and astonished him by the splendor of
his state, and sent the noble savage back to his home in the far West to
relate to the awe‐stricken children of the forest the wonders of the great
French chief “whose superb wigwam he had beheld.”
The _Salle du Sacre_ is less exclusive in its associations, the presence
of the _grand roi_ being thrown into the shade by the subsequent military
glory of the _grande armée_. David has covered the walls with the chief
events of Napoleon’s career, beginning with the first consulship, and
continuing through the triumphal march of the Empire. When the first
series of these immense pictures was shown to Napoleon, he, startled by
their magnitude, of which he was probably a better judge than of their
talent, turned to the painter, and exclaimed: “Now I must build a palace
to lodge them!”
The _Salle des Amiraux_, which, as its name indicates, is consecrated to
the memory of the naval heroes of France, was formerly the room of the
Dauphin, son of Louis XIV. So little is known of this prince beyond the
fact that he was the direct antithesis of his father in habits and
character, that the following anecdote may be found interesting as
connected with him:
The dauphin, like most princes of his time, was passionately fond of the
chase. On one occasion he set out on a hunting expedition accompanied by a
large party, and towards nightfall he and one of his equerries got
separated from the rest, and found themselves astray in a dense wood,
where they wandered for some hours without meeting any signs of human
habitation. They came at last upon a small cottage, which, from its
isolated position and shabby appearance, he set down as most likely a
rendezvous of robbers, that part of the country being much frequented by
these worthies. They were well armed, however, and determined to risk the
barbarous hospitality of the thieves rather than pass the night amidst the
snakes and other uncomfortable inmates of the woods. They knocked at the
door, first meekly, then more peremptorily, and at last furiously; getting
no answer, they resolved to break open the house, and began hammering away
vigorously with the but‐end of their guns at the shaky old door. At this
crisis a window opened somewhere, and a voice, that quavered with fright,
besought the burglars to go away, as they would find nothing in so poor a
lodging to repay their trouble. Summoned to say whom it belonged to, the
voice replied that it was that of the _curé_ of the neighboring hamlet,
whereupon the huntsmen begged him to come down and spare them further
trouble by opening the door himself. After much expostulation the host
obeyed, and then his guests desired him to serve the best he had for their
supper; there was no use protesting with visitors who had such formidable
arguments on their shoulders and glistening in their belts, so the curé
obeyed with the best grace he could. There was nothing substantial in the
larder, he declared, but a leg of mutton, which the gentlemen were welcome
to if they would undertake to cook it and let him go back to his bed. This
they agreed to, with great good‐humor and many courteous thanks, and the
old priest, after showing them where to find food and shelter for their
horses, wished them a good appetite and betook himself to his couch,
marvelling much at the sudden gentleness and courtesy of these singular
burglars who had made their entry in so boisterous and uncivil a manner.
The burglars, meantime, did full justice to his hospitality and their own
cooking, and, having supped heartily, flung themselves at full length on
the floor, and were soon sound asleep—sounder, no doubt, than their host,
whose slumbers, if he slept at all, were most likely disturbed by visions
of highwaymen arresting and murdering the king’s subjects or throttling
honest folk in their beds, and such like unrefreshing dreams. The good man
was up betimes, and while the hunters were still fast asleep he slipt out
to seek some breakfast for them. Meantime the hunt, which had been in
pursuit of the prince all night, perceived the little wreath of smoke that
curled up from the curé’s chimney on the clear morning air, and at once
made for the point whence it proceeded, sounding the horn as it
approached. The prince and his companions started to their feet at the
first note of the welcome signal, rushed to their horses, and were in the
saddle and far out of sight before their host returned from his foraging
expedition. Great was his surprise to find the birds had flown, but he was
glad to be rid of them, and on such easy terms, for they had carried off
nothing—the house was just as he had left it. It was not a thing to boast
of, having harbored a couple of highwaymen for a night, though they had
behaved so considerately to him—the curé, therefore, kept the adventure to
himself. But he had not heard the last of it. The next day a messenger
came in hot haste from Versailles with a summons for him to appear without
further delay before the king. Terrified out of his five wits, and knowing
full well what had brought this judgment upon him, the worthy old priest
took up his stick and asked no questions, but forthwith made his way to
the palace. He was conducted at once to the Salle du Trône, where Louis,
surrounded by the rank and blood of France, was seated as for some solemn
ceremonial on his chair of state. He bent a stern gaze on the curé, and in
accents that made the culprit’s soul shake within him, demanded how it
came to pass that a man of his holy calling made his house a rendezvous
for midnight robbers who prowled about the country, disturbing honest
subjects and breaking the king’s laws. The curé fell upon his knees, and
humbly confessing cowardly concealment of a fact that he was in conscience
bound to have denounced at once to the nearest magistrate, pleaded,
nevertheless, that the bearing of those malefactors was so noble and their
manners so courteous that he had doubts as to whether they were indeed
such and not rather two knights of his majesty’s court; whereupon Louis
bade the malefactors come forward, and, introducing them by name to the
bewildered curé, enjoined him to be less cautious another time in opening
his doors to benighted gentlemen.
“And in payment of the leg of mutton which my son was so unmannerly as to
confiscate on you,” continued the king, “I name you Grand Prieur, with the
revenues and privileges attached to the office.” This was assuredly the
highest price that ever a leg of mutton fetched.
The _chambre â coucher de la reine_(69) plays a distinct part of its own
in the annals of Versailles. We forget its first occupant, the gentle,
long‐suffering Marie Thérèse, of whom, on hearing of her death, Louis
Quatorze exclaimed: “This is the first sorrow she ever caused me!” we
forget the longer‐suffering wife of Louis Quinze, the charitable Marie
Leczinska, surnamed by the people “the good queen”; we lose sight of all
the august figures who pass before us in the retrospect of this royal
chamber, and see only Marie Antoinette, the haughty sovereign, the heroic
mother and devoted wife, who has made it all her own. We see her, woke out
of her sleep, and the cries of the mob menacing the palace in the dead of
the night, and flying hardly dressed from the _chambre de la reine_ to
take refuge in the dauphin’s apartment, while the faithful guards dispute
with their lives the entrance of her own to the mad multitude that have
now broken in like a destroying torrent and are close upon the threshold.
The walls seem still to echo the cry of those two brave guards as they
fell: “Save the queen! Save the queen!” The great tragedy that was to
change the whole destinies of France may be said to have begun on this
terrible night of the 6th of October.
The _chambre à coucher du roi_(70) is, on the other hand, filled with
Louis Quatorze to the exclusion of all other memories. Here was performed
that solemn comedy in which the warriors and statesmen of the day took
their part so gravely: the _lever_ and _coucher de roi_. When we read the
minute details given in the chronicles of the time of the ceremonial gone
through by his courtiers every time the king got in and out of bed, it is
a severe tax on our credulity to believe that the _dramatis personæ_ who
played the farce so seriously were not fools or grinning idiots, but sane
and sober men whose lineage was second only in blue‐blooded antiquity to
that of Cæsar himself, men of talent, men of genius, heroes who fought
their country’s battles and deemed it no derogation to come from the field
of glory and fight for the honor of handing the king his stockings or his
pantaloons. This proud _noblesse_ whom Richelieu could not conquer by the
sword or subdue by tortures and imprisonment, lay down at the feet of
Louis, and, it is hardly a figure of speech to say, licked them. They
appear to have looked upon him, not as a mortal like themselves, however
elevated above them in rank and power, but as a god, a being altogether
apart from them in species. One is tempted to believe that both they and
he must occasionally have been possessed with some vague notion that it
was so; there is no other way of accounting for the servile worship which
they tendered as a duty, and which he accepted as a due. Truly that famous
“_L’état c’est moi!_”(71) sounds more of a god than a man; and that other
utterance of Louis, _Messieurs, j’ai failli attendre!_(72) addressed to
the proudest nobility in Europe, who were barely in their places when the
flourish of trumpets announced the king’s entrance, is scarcely less
grotesque in its superhuman pride.
This great and little _coucher_ which was surrounded by so much prestige
in the court of France was somewhat ridiculed by contemporary sovereigns,
for the honor of humanity be it said; their admiration for Louis did not
go the length of viewing the august ceremonial otherwise than in the light
of a bore or a joke. When Frederick the Great heard from his ambassador an
account of the first _grand lever_ at which he assisted at Versailles, he
burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter, and exclaimed: “Well, if I
were king of France, I would certainly hire some small king to go through
all that for me!”
Considering how eagerly his courtiers contended for the honor of dressing
the king’s person, one would have fancied the privilege of making his bed
would have been proportionately coveted, and held second only to the honor
of holding his majesty’s boots; but, such is the inconsistency of human
beings, this was not the case. The courtiers probably felt that a line
should be drawn somewhere, so they drew it here; they would not perform
this menial office for the Grand Monarque, and the distinction of turning
his mattresses and spreading his quilt devolved on valets of a lower
grade. Among this inferior herd was one named Molière, a youth whom his
comrades laughed at and treated as a sort of crazy creature who was always
in the moon. One day when it happened to be his turn to spread the royal
sheets, the poet Belloc overheard them chaffing him and refusing to help
him in his work. He went up to Molière, and said: “Monsieur de Molière,
will you do me the honor of allowing me to help you to make the king’s
bed?” and Molière granted the request. The incident came to the king’s ear
and led to his noticing the eccentric valet. A little later, and we see
him standing behind the valet’s chair in this same room, where his
majesty’s dinner was sometimes served, and waiting upon him, while the
courtiers who had refused to sit at table with Molière stood round,
looking on in “mute consternation at the strange spectacle,” Saint‐Simon
tells us, who owns naïvely to sharing their consternation.
“Since none of my courtiers will admit Monsieur de Molière to their
table,” said Louis, “I must needs set him down at mine, and show them that
I count it an honor for the King of France to wait upon so great a man.”
Here, in this bed that Belloc and Molière had made together, Louis
Quatorze died. From under the crimson and gold canopy which had witnessed
the eternal _levers_ and _couchers_, Louis rebuked the violent grief of
two young pages who stood within the balustrade, that sanctum sanctorum
which none under a prince of the blood or a high chancellor dare pass at
any other time; they were weeping bitterly. “What!” exclaimed the king,
“did ye, then, think I was immortal?” There was a time when he himself
seemed to have thought so; but viewed by that vivid light that breaks
through the mists of death, things wore a different aspect in his eyes;
and the adulation which would fain have treated him as immortal, and which
was during life as the breath of his nostrils to Louis, showed now as the
empty bubble that it was.
No one ever again slept in the bed which had been honored by the last sigh
of the Grand Monarque; the room remained henceforth unoccupied, and, with
the exception of the pictures which have been removed, is still just as he
left it. Louis carried his favorite pictures about with him wherever he
went. “David,” by Domenichino, his best beloved of them all, is now to be
seen at the Louvre; otherwise little has been altered in the _chambre du
roi_; the bed and the _ruelle_ are in their old place, also the table, on
which a cold collation was laid every night in case of the king’s awaking
and feeling hungry; this precautionary little meal was called the _en
cas_; and the name with the habit, which had given rise to it, is still
perpetuated in many old‐fashioned French families. Louis Quinze, from some
superstitious feeling, could never bring himself to sleep in the death‐
chamber of his illustrious great‐grandfather; he took possession of what
was then the _salle de billiard_, a noble room opening into the _œil‐de‐
bœuf_ (bull’s eye), so called from its having an _œil‐de‐bœuf_ over the
large window at the north end. In an alcove in this billiard hall, Louis
XV. died. The adjoining _œil‐de‐bœuf_ was filled with the courtiers, who
dare not venture within the polluted atmosphere of the royal chamber, but
stood outside it, consulting together in “guilty whispers” as to what they
ought to do; dreading on one hand the reward of their cowardice if the
king should recover, and fearing on the other to fly too soon with their
servile congratulations to his successor. In the great court below another
crowd was assembled, watching in breathless silence for the signal which
was to proclaim the king’s death. What a spectacle it was!—what a lesson
for a king! The flatterers who yesterday had been his slaves, pandering to
his vices, and helping to make him the abject creature that he was,
abandoned him now that he was struggling with grim Death, and, all
absorbed in selfish cares for their own interest, in speculations of the
favor of the new king, they had no pity in their hearts for the master who
could pay them no more. It came at last, the signal; the small flame of a
candle was seen flickering through the darkness, and then held up at the
window of the _œil‐de‐bœuf_. “Suddenly there was a noise,” says the
historian of that ghastly scene, “like a roll of thunder, it was the
courtiers rushing from the antechamber of the dead king to greet his
successor.” Only his daughters had been brave enough to stand by the
bedside of the dying man, and, now that he was gone, there was not one in
all that multitude who could be induced to perform the last office of
mercy towards his poor remains. It was imperative, nevertheless, that the
body should be embalmed, and this appalling task devolved upon Andouillé,
the late king’s surgeon. The Duc de Villequier went up to him and reminded
him of it; he knew that the operation must insure certain death to the
operator, but that was not his concern.
“It is your duty, monsieur,” said the duke; and he was coolly turning away
when Andouillé stopped him. “Yes,” he replied, “it is my duty, and it is
yours to hold the head.” De Villequier had forgotten this; he made no
answer, but left the room, and nothing more was said about the embalmment.
The body was hustled into a coffin, and smuggled rather than conveyed in
the dead of the night to S. Denis, a few menials accompanying the King of
France to his last resting‐place. The spirit of French loyalty may be said
to have been buried with Louis Quinze; “the divinity that doth hedge a
king” was that night laid low in France, wrapped in the shroud that
covered the unutterable mass of corruption consigned like a dog to the
ready‐made grave in S. Denis. _Le roi_ could never again be to the nation
what he had been heretofore. _Le roi est mort, vive le roi!_(73) ceased to
be the watchword of its fealty; _le roi_, that being invested not merely
with supreme authority, but with a sort of vague personal sacredness that
has no parallel in modern loyalty, died with Louis Quinze, never to be
resuscitated. The miserable death of the libertine prince, fit ending to
an ignoble life, came upon his people in the light of a divine judgment,
swift and awful, and dealt the last blow at that prestige which had for
generations been the bulwark of king‐worship and shaded with its
mysterious reverence the iniquities of the throne. No man suffers alone
for his sins, but how much more truly may this be said of kings! Who could
measure the depth of the gulf that Louis XV. had dug through his long
reign for those who were to come after him, and realize the consequences
of his evil deeds to future generations of Frenchmen? There is no greater
fallacy than to attribute to an age the responsibility of its own
destinies; none probably ever saw the beginning and end of its own
history, for good or evil, but less than any other can the period of the
Revolution be said to have witnessed this unity. We must look much further
back to trace the rising of the red flood that inundated France in ’93. It
was the insane extravagance of Louis XIV.’s reign and the official
depravity of the succeeding one that sowed the harvest that was to be
reaped in fire by the innocent victims of a corruption which for a whole
century had been seething as in the caldron of the Prophet’s vision, till
it boiled over in the mad frenzy of the Revolution, and swallowed up not
only the monarch, but the soul and reason of France, in a deluge of
exasperated hate and suicidal revenge. Louis Seize, the martyred king who
was to expiate the follies and crimes of his predecessors, next passes
before us along the galleries of Versailles. There is an interval of
peace, a short halcyon time of pastorals and idyls, we see Marie
Antoinette playing at shepherdess in Arcadia, we hear Trianon ringing with
the music of her light‐hearted laughter, we see her choosing a friend,(74)
and braving the jealous anger that makes a crime of her friendship though
it be wise, and rebukes her mirth though it be innocent; but the queen
turns a deaf ear to all warning sounds and shuts her eyes to the gathering
clouds. Imprudent Marie Antoinette! Ill‐adapted wife of timid, hesitating,
magnanimous Louis Seize, the Bourbon of whom it was written with truth:
“Louis ne sut qu’aimer et pardonner,
S’il avait su punir, il aurait su regner.”(75)
He loved and forgave to the end, but he never learned to punish. Warnings
were not wanting, but he would not heed them. See him standing in the
embrasure of the window of that _cabinet du roi_ whence Louis Quatorze
ruled the kings and peoples of Europe; a new power has arisen; it is the
people’s turn to rule the king, his brow is clouded, his lip trembles, not
with fear—that base emotion never stirred the soul of Louis Seize—but with
anguish, perplexity, doubts in himself that amounted to despair. He
listens to the murmurs of the crowd down below; and to De Brézé, who
repeats, in tremulous accents, Mirabeau’s message of tremendous import:
“Go tell the king that the will of the people has brought us here, and
nothing but the force of bayonets shall drive us hence!” That force he
knew full well would never be appealed to; it was not the people who
should be driven hence, it was they who would drive the king. Presently we
see the ponderous state coach jolting slowly down the Avenue de Paris, the
first stage of the royal martyrs towards the guillotine; the mob, in a
frenzy of drunken triumph, jostled it from side to side, pressing rudely
through the windows to stare at their victims, and insulting them by
thrusting the red cap into their faces, and shouting as they go: “The
baker and the bakeress! now we have caught them, and the people shall have
bread!” This journey dates a new era in the annals of Versailles, it is
the death‐knell of the pleasant days of royalty; there are to be no more
_fêtes pastorales_ at Trianon, no more merry children of France careering
over the flowery terraces, making the sombre alleys bright and the gay
flowers brighter with the sweet melody of child laughter; all this is
gone, and passed like a dream. “The old order of things has vanished,
making place for the new.” Soon we shall see the palace of Louis Quatorze
stripped of its costly furniture, invaded by the rabble, and pillaged from
garret to cellar. The Convention will deem it right to utilize the
“foregoing abode of the tyrants” by turning it into a hospital; they will
transport the invalids to Versailles, but the rheumatic old heroes will
find the apartments of the Grand Monarque too grand to be comfortable,
they will complain of their pains and aches being aggravated by the
draughts, and beg to be taken back to their homely quarters, and the
Convention, in its benevolence, will accede to the request.
Louis XVIII. was anxious to fix his residence at Versailles, and went the
length of spending six millions of francs on repairing the façade, which
had been sadly battered by the Revolution, but he found that the expense
of refurnishing the palace would have been too much for the exhausted
finances of France; so he gave up the idea.
Louis Philippe restored it to its ancient splendor, but not for his own
use; he made it over to the nation as a museum, where they might go and
enjoy themselves, and see all the glories of their country commemorated.
Many of the victories of the _grande armée_ were painted to his order to
complete the series already decorating the walls. Versailles has retained
ever since this national character. Under the Second Empire it was used
occasionally for fêtes given to foreign princes; the most magnificent of
these was the one prepared for the Queen of England when she visited
Napoleon III. after his marriage.
France has undergone many strange vicissitudes, and her palaces have
harbored many unlikely guests; but among the strangest on record none can
assuredly compete with the recent experiences of Versailles. If the spirit
of Louis XIV. be permitted sometimes to haunt the scene of his earthly
pride, what must his feelings have been during the last two years! What
did he feel on beholding the halls which had echoed to his conquering step
held by the victorious soldiers of Germany, and vacated by them to make
way for the President of the French Republic? But this crowning enormity
stopped short at the threat. The _chambre du roi_ was indeed placed at the
disposal of the President, but whether it was that he shrank from the
profanation, or feared the vast proportions of the great king’s palace, as
likely to prove too large a frame for the representative of a republic, he
declined taking up his abode there. Versailles continues still to be the
resort of the people and of travellers from all parts of the world.
Father Isaac Jogues, S.J.
Father Isaac Jogues, the first of the missionaries to bear the cross into
the interior of our country, and the first to shed his blood on its soil
for the faith of Christ, was a native of Orleans, France. He was born on
the 10th of January, 1607, of a family distinguished alike for their
virtues and their worth. In the bosom of this pious family the young Isaac
was reared up, surrounded by all the profound and pleasing practices of
Catholic devotion. Lessons of religion and letters were imparted together,
and the scholar from his earliest youth proved himself remarkably apt at
both. As soon as he was old enough, he was sent, to his own great joy, to
the college at Orleans, then recently established by the Jesuit Fathers,
under whose instruction he made rapid progress in his studies. The virtues
of his character so ingratiated him with his companions at college, that
no thought of jealousy ever entered their hearts at the eminence he
enjoyed as a student.
As the close of his collegiate course drew near, he began, more seriously
than ever, to meditate on the greatest act of one’s life—the selection of
a vocation. It was his extraordinary devotion to the Passion of Our Lord
that settled this question for him. The cathedral church of his native
city was dedicated to the Holy Cross, and there from his tenderest years
he gazed daily upon that sacred symbol of the Passion and Redemption
glittering from the spires of the temple, and it became the object of his
warmest affection.
“O lovely tree whose branches wore
The royal purple of his gore!
Oh! may aloft thy branches shoot,
And fill all nations with thy fruit!”
Impelled by this devotion, he retired into himself in order to discover
his vocation, and heard within his soul the voice of Heaven calling him to
the Society of Jesus. Having applied for admission into the Society, and
being received with alacrity by the superior, he entered upon his
novitiate in October, 1624. To complete his studies he next went to the
celebrated college of La Flèche, where he passed his examination in
philosophy at the end of three years with great distinction. Then, in
obedience to the discipline of his order, the young Jesuit went to teach
in the college at Rouen, and for four years instructed the youth of that
city in the elements of the Latin language, in the principles of religion
and the practice of piety. So fruitful were his labors in this regard that
his scholars were ever distinguished for the solidity and constancy of
their virtues, and many of them became companions of their saintly
preceptor in the Society of Jesus.
We now find him winning laurels in the flowery path of literature. It was,
at the period of which we speak, the custom at the Jesuit colleges to test
the qualifications of the teachers, by requiring them, at the opening of
the year, to deliver an oration or poem, or read a lecture of their own
production, in public. Simply in obedience to this rule, and without any
desire of his own to gain distinction, the gifted Jogues participated in
these exercises, and on one occasion produced a poem of rare excellence.
But his heart was too thoroughly pre‐engaged to covet the laurels of
literary fame. He was intent on winning another crown—the glorious crown
of martyrdom. Yet so obedient was the young scholastic to the will of his
superior and to the spirit of his institute, that he, who only desired for
himself the wigwam and council fires of the roving tribes of the Western
wilds, went out with as much labor and zeal to acquire all the
accomplishments of learning as though a professor’s chair in Europe was to
be the field of his ambition. He was next sent to Paris, where he began
his course of divinity at the college of Clermont.
He applied himself to these studies with the greatest zeal, since they
constituted the last probation and delay preceding his elevation to the
sacred ministry, and the realization of his fondest hope—a foreign
mission. He seems not to have discovered his future plans to his family,
to whom he was, however, most tenderly attached. Writing to them in April,
1635, on receiving their complaint at his not having joined them in one of
their family festivals, he says: “The prayers which I offer up, as well
afar off as near you, are the most affectionate marks I can give of my
interest in you all.”
When the time for the reception of holy orders drew near, he prepared
himself by a spiritual retreat, and was ordained in February, 1636. His
family, who were extremely devoted to him, were not present at his
ordination; but his fond mother obtained from his superior a promise that
he might say his first Mass in his native city. He accordingly went to
Orleans, and offered up the holy sacrifice for the first time in the
church of the Holy Cross. Then, tearing himself away from his mother and
sisters, never to see them again, he went to Rouen, and entered upon what
is called the second novitiate in the Society of Jesus. But a fleet was
soon ready to sail from Dieppe for Canada, and the young missionary must
hasten to his chosen field of labor and love.
He was accompanied on the voyage by the Jesuit Fathers Garnier and
Chatelain, and by M. de Chanflour, afterwards governor at Three Rivers.
The vessel in which they sailed being leaky, the pumps were kept in
constant motion, and the labor thus imposed upon the crew gave rise to a
mutiny, which Father Jogues alone was able to quell. M. de Chanflour ever
afterwards, in speaking of the voyage, attributed his safety to the
influence of Father Jogues’ prayers with God, and of his persuasion with
the men.
After words of pious affection and encouragement which this exemplary son
knew well how to address to that excellent mother, he proceeds in one of
his letters addressed to her:
“I write this more than three thousand miles away from you, and I may
perhaps this year be sent to a nation called the Huron, distant nearly a
thousand miles more from here. It shows great dispositions for embracing
the faith. It matters not where we are, provided we are ever in the arms
of Providence and in his holy grace. This I beg for you and all our family
daily at the altar.”
By his short stay at Miscou he missed the Indian flotilla, and Fathers
Garnier and Chatelain embarked without him; but, some canoes having come
in later, the Indians, when about to return, asked, as if reproachfully,
why there was no black‐gown to be carried by them. Father Jogues, being
then at Three Rivers, was summoned to embark, and at once joyfully entered
the canoes.
We would gladly reproduce, did our space allow, a letter addressed to his
mother, under date June 5, 1637, giving an account of this voyage. Suffice
it to say that in nineteen days he accomplished what usually took twenty‐
five or thirty; joining Fathers Garnier and Chatelain, who had preceded
him but a month, and three other missionaries who had been five or six
years in the country.
Supported by his zeal, he accomplished his arduous and laborious passage,
but no sooner arrived at Ihonitiria than his exhausted nature sank under a
dreadful malady, which for more than a month threatened to terminate his
existence. With four others he lay during all this time in a cabin,
without medicines or food, except such food as was an aggravation to the
disease. By the middle of October Father Jogues was so far recovered as to
be able to take the ordinary food of the country, the sagamity.
In November he set out from Ihonitiria to join Father Brebeuf at the great
town of Ossossané, where for a time they were companions on earth who were
destined to be companions in heaven, in the enjoyment of the glorious
crown of martyrdom. Sickness was raging over the land, and the
missionaries hastened from town to town, and from cabin to cabin,
baptizing the dying infants, and such of the adults as were willing to
receive the words of eternal life. They even extended their visits to the
neighboring Nipissings, who had been terribly afflicted with the
prevailing maladies. The poor Indians, in most cases, would not listen to
the voice of the fathers, because they could not promise, as their own
sorcerers pretended, to cure their bodily afflictions. The horrid orgies
of the medicine‐men were consequently in great requisition, and one of
them, a little deformed creature, offered his services to one of the
fathers in his sickness.
There was another medicine‐man, Tehoronhaegnon, who filled the land with
dances and orgies of the most wicked and revolting character. The
missionaries labored to banish these abominations from the country, and to
introduce in their place the pure and holy rites of the Christian
religion. Unacquainted with their language, Father Jogues labored under
the greatest disadvantages, but by zealous and persevering application he
was soon able to make himself well understood; and in a few years he was
master of the Huron, the key‐tongue to so many others. Remaining at
Ossossané as his place of residence, he was incessant in his visits and
ministrations in the cabins of the people, preaching the faith to all, and
at the same time rapidly acquiring their language. Late in 1637 he
returned to labor in the same way at Ihonitiria. On the ruin of this town
and its mission, he went again to join his superior, Father Brebeuf, at
Teananstayae.
In 1639, Father Jogues accompanied Father Garnier in his expedition to
plant the cross among the mountains of the Petuns, or Tobacco Indians.
They twice visited the Petun village of Ehwae, which they dedicated to SS.
Peter and Paul. But their noble efforts were in vain; every door was
closed against them, and menaces assailed them on every side; even the
women reproached their husbands for not killing them, and the children
pursued them through the streets. The sachems gave a feast to the young
warriors in order to induce them to destroy the missionaries; but the
providence of God saved his servants from the impending blow.
In the next year, Father Jogues was stationed with Father Francis Duperon
at the new residence at S. Mary’s. Four towns partook of their care, and
these they piously dedicated to S. Ann, S. John, S. Denis, and S. Louis.
Obliged to select the worst season of the year for their labor, because
then only were the neophytes drawn together, their time was incessantly
occupied in conveying to the untaught natives the faith and its
consolations. Next year Father Jogues was stationed permanently at St.
Mary’s. Here the fathers established a hospice, where the wayfarer was
ever sure to find refreshment and relief for the body as well as the soul.
To this sacred spot in the wilderness came Indians from distant villages
to receive instruction in the faith, some to be baptized, some to prepare
for the reception of Holy Communion, some to be trained in the duties of
catechists, and others, like Joseph Chihatenhwa, to make a spiritual
retreat.
But now a new enterprise for the Gospel drew Father Jogues away from St.
Mary’s. This was to plant the cross in the region now comprising the state
of Michigan. The missionaries knew that beyond the Huron Lake another vast
expanse of water lay which never yet had been visited by them. The strait
which connected the two lakes had formerly been known by the name of
Gaston, and was supposed to have been once visited by Nicholet, but no
intercourse ever subsisted between the French and the tribes of those
regions. In the summer of 1641, numerous delegations from all the nations
and tribes, scattered over a great expanse of country, were attracted to
the “Feast of the Dead,” now to be given by the Algonquins.
Thus, on the present occasion, the numerous branches of the vast Algonquin
family were brought in contact with the Jesuit missionaries and the
Christian Hurons, and the latter spread far and near in this vast assembly
the fame of the black‐gown chiefs. In the general interchange of presents,
the missionaries presented to the strangers “the wampum of the faith.” The
Panoitigoueieuhak, or Sauteux, as the French called them, a tribe
inhabiting the small strip near the Falls of St. Mary, were particularly
friendly and earnest, and invited the black‐gowns to come and bring the
faith to their cabins as they had done for the Hurons. Father Raymbault
and Father Jogues were named by the superior to visit this new and distant
vineyard. Launching their canoes in the latter part of September at St.
Mary’s, they glided over the little river Wye, and were soon on the broad,
clear bosom of the great “Fresh‐Water Sea.” For seventeen days their frail
canoes glided through the multitude of little islands that stud the water
from the Huron promontory. They reached without accident the strait where
Superior empties its waters into the lower lakes, and then they
encountered Indians assembled to the number of two thousand. From these
they learned of innumerable wild and warlike tribes stretching far to the
west and south. Here, too, their eager ears were feasted with tidings of a
mighty river rolling towards the south till it met the sea, whose shores
were lined with numberless tribes and nations. Planting the cross at Sault
St. Mary’s, the two fathers turned it hopefully and prophetically towards
this great mysterious river, whose vast and teeming valley they thus took
possession of in the name of the Prince of Peace. Having opened the way to
this immense mission‐field by their visit, the two missionaries encouraged
the Sauteux with the prospect of a future permanent mission, and, amidst
the regrets of their new friends, again launched their canoes and returned
to their mission‐house at St. Mary’s. “Thus,” says Bancroft, “did the
religious zeal of the French bear the cross to the banks of the St. Mary
and the confines of Lake Superior, and look wistfully towards the homes of
the Sioux in the Valley of the Mississippi, five years before the New
England Eliot had addressed the tribes of Indians that dwelt within six
miles of Boston Harbor.”
At St. Mary’s, Father Jogues remained constantly employed at the hospice
with Father Duperon in instructing and preparing the Indians for the
reception of the faith. One hundred and twenty were baptized during the
winter, and among these was the famous warrior, Ahasistari, a chief of the
town of St. Joseph’s.
This brave and chivalrous chief had been for some time receiving
instruction in the faith, and he now came forward to ask for baptism. The
fathers at first put him off, in order that he might become still better
instructed; but his entreaties were so earnest, and his appreciation of
the Christian truths so intelligent, that it was deemed no longer
necessary or proper to postpone the boon. He accordingly received the
sacrament on Holy Saturday, 1642.
It has been seen how, at Orleans, the ardent novice of the Society of
Jesus was passionately devoted to the cross, the memento of our Saviour’s
Passion. Like S. Peter, his heart was still for ever enamored with the
sacred humanity of his divine Master. Thus his devotion to the Blessed
Sacrament was intense, and the Real Presence, the greatest of blessings,
made the wilderness of America a paradise to Father Jogues. Father Buteux
says of him that he was “a soul glued to the Blessed Sacrament.” His
prayers, meditations, office, examens of conscience—in fine, all his
devotions—were performed in the little chapel before the Holy Eucharist.
Neither heat, nor cold, nor the swarms of mosquitoes, with which the
chapel was infested, could induce him to forego the society of his
Saviour. No wonder he was attracted thither; for it was in the little
chapel that he was not unfrequently favored with heavenly visitations. It
was there, too, that he breathed that heroic prayer, whose only petition
was that he might be allowed to bear a portion of his Saviour’s cross. His
prayer was heard—a warning voice fortified his soul for the approaching
conflict.
The necessities of the Huron missionaries had now arrived at the point of
extreme distress. They were reduced to procure the wine for the altar from
the wild grape; at last, flour to make the sacred host was wanting for the
holy sacrifice, and the missionaries themselves were in want of clothes
and other necessaries of life. The perilous passage through various
intervening hostile tribes to procure relief from Quebec for the pressing
demands of the mission must now be undertaken by some one, and Father
Jerome Lalemant, the superior, selected Father Jogues for the task, which,
however, at the same time, he permitted him to accept or decline. His
immediate preparation to depart showed that he did not hesitate about
accepting. To his great joy, the faithful and noble chief, Eustace
Ahasistari, came forward, and offered to become his escort and guide. A
flotilla of four canoes, bearing the missionary, the Christian chief, four
Frenchmen, and eighteen Hurons, started from St. Mary’s on the 13th of
June. The voyagers had to endure the usual portages at the rapids, and
other hardships of such trips; but, by the exercise of great care and
vigilance, they reached Quebec without harm from the savages. The faithful
messenger, besides procuring books, vestments, and sacred vessels, had all
things in readiness by the last day in July, the feast of S. Ignatius. He
stopped to celebrate the feast of the great founder of his order, in which
his companions united by approaching the sacraments in solemn preparation
for their perilous return. The flotilla, now increased to twelve canoes,
started from Three Rivers on the 1st day of August, and at first made slow
progress against the impetuous current of the St. Lawrence. They spent the
night on a small island in Lake St. Peter, twelve leagues from Three
Rivers, and on the second morning they had not proceeded far when they
discovered suspicious footprints on the adjacent shore. Nerved by the
dauntless courage of Ahasistari, they pushed on, and had not advanced a
league when suddenly a volley from a Mohawk ambush riddled their bark
canoes. Panic‐struck, the Hurons, whose canoes were near the shore, fled
in all directions. Only fourteen rallied round the gallant Ahasistari, who
had now to oppose a force of twice his numbers. The Mohawks, armed with
fire‐arms, and reinforced from the other shore, overpowered the Hurons,
who broke and fled. Father Jogues, ever mindful of his sacred calling, in
the heat of the attack calmly stopped to take up water for the baptism of
his pilot, who was the only unbaptized Indian in his canoe. Seeing himself
almost alone, he made to the shore; but he did not attempt to escape,
which he might easily have done. “Could I,” he says, “a minister of
Christ, forsake the dying, the wounded, the captive?” Advancing to the
guard of the prisoners, he asked to be made a captive with them, and their
companion in danger and in death. Well might the Mohawk guard, at the
sight of such heroism, have been scarcely able to believe his senses! Well
might the historian exclaim, “When did a Jesuit missionary seek to save
his own life, at what he believed to be the risk of a soul?”(76) Father
Jogues at once began his offices of mercy among his fellow‐captives. He
encouraged and confessed his faithful companion, the good René Goupil; he
instructed and baptized the Hurons, and as, one after another, they were
brought in prisoners, the priest of God rushed to meet and embrace them,
and to unite them to the fold of Christ.
In the meantime, Ahasistari, having got beyond the reach of his pursuers,
looked round for Ondessonk. Finding that the black‐gown was not there, the
noble chief relinquished his freedom that he might share in the captivity
of the father, whom he had promised never to abandon. While Father Jogues
was engaged in ministering to the prisoners, the voice of Ahasistari
struck upon his astonished ears. “I made a vow to thee that I would share
thy fortunes, whether death or life. Brother, here I am to keep my vow.”
Also a young Frenchman, one of those _donnés_ who accompanied and aided
the missionaries, returned to join the prisoners with the same exalted
motive; and, as Father Jogues tenderly embraced him, all bleeding and
mangled as he was, the savages could not restrain their fury. Rushing upon
the father, they beat him with their fists and clubs till he fell
senseless to the ground. Then, seizing his hands, they tore out most of
his nails with their teeth, and inflicted upon him the exquisite torture
of crunching his fingers, especially the two forefingers. But these
tortures were only the first outbursts of savage rage and cruelty, the
forerunners of more cruel ones in reserve.
The time consumed in collecting the prisoners, dividing the booty, and
preparing for retreat enabled Father Jogues to complete the instruction
and baptism of the remaining prisoners.
On Lake Champlain, another Mohawk war‐fleet met the flotilla, and, drawing
up on an island, the newcomers prepared to receive their countrymen and
the prisoners. They erected a scaffold on the highest point of land for
the prisoners; then offering thanks to the sun as the genius of war, they
lined the shore, and welcomed the conquering fleet with a salute of
firearms. The number of savages on the new flotilla was about two hundred,
and, as their native superstition taught them that their success in war
would be proportioned to their cruelty to the prisoners, sad indeed was
the fate of the latter. Father Jogues closed the line of prisoners as they
marched up to the scaffold, and so terrific was the shower of blows that
assailed him that he fell exhausted to the ground: “God alone,” he
exclaims—“God alone, for whose love and glory it is sweet to suffer, can
tell what cruelties they wreaked upon me then.” Unable to proceed, he was
dragged to the scaffold, when, on reviving, he suffered the ordeal of fire
and steel. His closing wounds were reopened, his remaining nails were torn
from their sockets, and the bones forced through the crushed fingers.
Twice one of his tormentors rushed to cut off his nose—a certain prelude
of death to follow—and was twice restrained by some invisible, some
providential power. Falling repeatedly to the ground, the blazing brands
and burning calumets forced him to rise. Thus tortured and fainting, the
paternal eyes of Jogues still possessed tears of tenderest sympathy to
shed for the sufferings of his fellow‐captive, Ahasistari, who, amidst his
own sufferings, cried aloud in praise of the father’s courage and love of
his children. The night was spent without food, and in the morning the
voyage was resumed. While passing over the lake, again they met a Mohawk
fleet, and again the victorious Mohawks must honor their countrymen by
fresh tortures of the prisoners. On the next day, the ninth of the
captivity, the flotilla reached the extremity of the lake, where the
entire party landed. The prisoners, weakened and suffering with wounds and
hunger, were now loaded with all the luggage, and, in this plight, forced
to commence a four days’ journey by land. Some berries, gathered on the
wayside, constituted their only food, and the exhausted father narrowly
escaped being drowned in crossing the first river. On the eve of the
Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, they reached the river near the Mohawk
village. Here again the captives became the objects of cruel tortures for
the amusement of the crowds swarming from the settlement to see them. “And
as he ran the gauntlet, Jogues comforted himself with a vision of the
glory of the Queen of Heaven,”(77) for it was the eve of her glorious
Assumption into Heaven. Some Hurons, who met them at the river, exclaimed
in compassion, “Frenchmen, you are dead!” Before going up to the village,
Father Jogues was again cruelly beaten with clubs and sticks, especially
on the head, which by its baldness excited the derision of the savages.
Two remaining finger‐nails, which had escaped their impatient cruelty
before, were now torn out with the roots. “Conscious that, if we withdrew
ourselves from the number of the scourged, we withdrew from that of the
children of God, we cheerfully presented ourselves,” were the words of the
martyr himself, relating how he advanced to receive new tortures.
The line of march was formed for the village, Father Jogues closing as
before the procession. Again the scaffold was erected, again the heroic
band ran the gauntlet in marching to the scaffold hill, and the signal for
the tortures to begin was given by a chief, who struck each captive three
times on the back with a club. An old man approached Father Jogues, and
compelled an aged captive woman to sever his left thumb from his hand with
a dull knife. Long and various were the tortures which Father Jogues and
his companions now endured, and though exhausted from the loss of blood,
he consoled them in their sufferings. As night approached, the prisoners
were tied to stakes driven in the ground, and thus exposed to the
maltreatment of the children, who threw burning coals upon them, “which
hissed and burned in the writhing flesh, till they were extinguished
there.”(78)
On the following day the prisoners were led forth half naked through the
broiling sun, to be exhibited and tortured in all the Mohawk towns. At the
second village the same tortures were endured as at the first. On entering
the last town the heart of Father Jogues was melted at the sight of a
fresh band of Huron prisoners just brought in. Forgetting his own
captivity and sufferings, he approached the captives with every expression
of sympathy and kindness: he could not release their bodies from bondage;
but he offered to their immortal souls the freedom of the Gospel. There
was no water at hand with which to baptize these devoted captives; when,
lo! the dews of heaven were supplied. An Indian at that anxious moment
passed by with Indian corn, and threw a stalk at the father’s feet. As the
freshly cut plant passed through the sunlight, dew‐drops upon the blades
were revealed to the eager eyes of the missionary, who, gathering the
precious drops into his hands, baptized two Hurons on the spot. A little
brook they afterwards crossed supplied the saving water for the others.
In this town, also, the tortures were repeated with many horrid additions.
Father Jogues, ever tender and sympathetic for the sufferings of his
converts, was compelled to look on, and see the fingers of one of his
Hurons nearly sawed off with a rough shell, and then violently torn off
with the sinews uncut. Father Jogues and his companion René Goupil were
led to a cabin and ordered to sing. Availing themselves of the command,
they devoutly chanted the Psalms of David. They were burned in several
parts of their bodies. Then two poles were erected in the air, in the form
of a cross, and Father Jogues was tied to it by cords of twisted bark,
thus throwing the whole weight of his body upon his wounded and lacerated
arms. He asked to be released in mercy, in order that he might prepare for
death, which he thought would result from his tortures, but this was
refused him. Begging pardon of God for having made such a request, he had
already resigned himself to the mercies of heaven, when suddenly an Indian
in the crowd, touched with compassion, rushed forward and cut the cords
that bound him to the cross. During the night he was again tied to a stake
driven in the ground, and his sufferings were prolonged without relief
till morning. On the following day the prisoners were carried back to the
second town they had entered. Here the council decided to spare the lives
of the French for the present, and to put the Hurons to death.
Father Jogues and René Goupil lingered in suffering, and almost at the
point of death, for three weeks, at Gandawagué, now Caughnawaga, in New
York. The Mohawks had concluded to send them back when convenient to Three
Rivers. In the meantime, the Dutch settlers in New Netherland, who were
allies of the Mohawks, heard that their Iroquois neighbors and friends had
taken some European prisoners. These generous Dutch, headed by their
minister, the worthy Dominie Megapolensis, took the matter in hand, and
raised six hundred guilders for the ransom of the French prisoners.
Accordingly Arendt Curler set out with this sum, accompanied by two
burghers from Rensselaerswyck, now Albany, for the Mohawk castles. The
treaty between the Dutch and the Mohawks was renewed, but neither money
nor diplomacy could move the chiefs to deliver up the prisoners, whose
importance they began now to perceive from the effort made for their
release. All that the Dutch could obtain was a promise to send them back
to Three Rivers.
Afterwards, divisions arose among the savages as to what disposition
should be made of Father Jogues and René. In the meantime their lives were
suspended upon the capricious humors and passions of the cruel Mohawks.
The master of the cabin on seeing this ordered a young brave to put René
to death; that order was afterwards obeyed.
After the death of René, Father Jogues remained among the Mohawks, the
sole object of their barbarous cruelty and superstitious hatred. Amidst
the countless sufferings he endured, his consolation consisted in prayer
and visits of religion to the Huron prisoners. In his poverty he was rich
in the possession of a volume containing one of the Epistles of S. Paul,
and an indulgenced picture of S. Bruno. These, his only possessions, he
carried always about his person.
In the fall, he was obliged to accompany the tribe as a slave on a grand
hunt, and then for two months inconceivable hardships and labors were his
constant lot. When the chase was unproductive, he was accused as the demon
of their ill success. When sacrifice was offered to the god Aireskoi, he
refused to eat any of the food of the idolatrous sacrifice, and was
thereupon repulsed and avoided as polluted and polluting; and every door
was closed against him, food was denied him, and a shelter refused. After
performing the menial and oppressive labors which they imposed upon him,
he retired at night to his little oratory, with its roof of bark and floor
of snow, to commune with his Heavenly Father, his only friend; even to
that sacred spot, the arrows, clubs, and once the tomahawk, of his
persecutors followed him. He was finally sent back to the village, loaded
with venison, over a frozen country, thirty leagues in extent, and almost
perished of cold on the way. But even such a journey possessed its
consolations; for on the way, by an act of heroism, he saved an Indian
woman and her infant from drowning, and, as the infant was on the point of
expiring from its exposure and injuries, he poured the waters of
regeneration on its head, and saved another soul for heaven.
On arriving at the village, he was ordered to return over the same road to
the hunting‐ground, but his repeated falls on the ice compelled him to
abandon the journey and return to the village, to endure equal torments
there. Obliged to become the nurse of one of the most inveterate of his
enemies, who was lying devoured by a loathsome disease, the good Samaritan
entered upon his task as a work of love, and for an entire month bestowed
the most tender care and sympathetic attention upon his patient. In the
spring of 1643, he was compelled to accompany a fishing party to a lake
four days’ journey off, when he suffered over again the cruelties of the
recent hunt. On the lake shore, as on the hunting‐grounds, his cross and
little oratory of fir branches were his only consolations. His mode of
life in these wildernesses is thus described by Bancroft: “On a hill apart
he carved a long cross on a tree, and there, in the solitude, meditated
the imitation of Christ, and soothed his grief by reflecting that he
alone, in that vast region, adored the true God of earth and heaven.
Roaming through the stately forests of the Mohawk Valley, he wrote the
name of Jesus on the bark of trees, graved the cross, and entered into
possession of these countries in the name of God—often lifting up his
voice in a solitary chant.”
Repeatedly during this period was the murderous tomahawk suspended over
his head; and twice was he selected to be sacrificed to the manes of some
Indian warrior who had gone on the hunt and had not returned. But his life
was in the hands of an invisible Protector. A generous Indian matron
adopted him as her son, in the place of her own son she had just lost; and
now, when he mingled with the Mohawks as their brother, he spoke to them
of God, heaven, eternity, and hell. Though he convinced them that his
words were true, they were too much wedded to their idols to yield to the
grace of conversion. On one occasion he was led out to be sacrificed to
the manes of the braves who had gone on a war party, and, not having
returned, were supposed to be lost; but before the ceremony proceeded too
far, the warriors returned just in time to save his life. They brought
with them some Abnaki prisoners whom they destined for the stake. Father
Jogues secured the services of an interpreter, instructed them in the
faith, and succeeded in converting several of them, whom he baptized at
Easter.
It was shortly after this that Father Jogues was compelled to witness the
horrid spectacle of human sacrifice offered to the demon Aireskoi. How
wonderful are the ways of divine Providence! for it was in the midst of
this act, the lowest point in the scale of human degradation and of insult
to God, that a human soul is regenerated by one of the Christian
sacraments, and that soul is the victim itself of the superstitious rite.
A woman was chosen for the victim, and was tied to the stake. The savages
formed a line, and as they approached the stake each one did his share in
burning, cutting, or otherwise torturing the unhappy victim. Father Jogues
had previously instructed the woman. He took no part, of course, in this
awful and wicked sacrifice, but he availed himself of an opportunity to
press forward in the crowd, and as the victim bowed to receive the
sacrament from his hands, the missionary poured the baptismal waters on
her head, in the midst of the raging flames of the heathen sacrifice.
An effort was now made by his friends in Canada to secure the release of
Father Jogues. Some braves of the Sokoki tribe, living on the Connecticut,
had been captured by the Algonquins, and were now led forth for torture.
The French governor procured their liberation, committed them to the care
of the hospital nuns, and, after their wounds were healed, sent them back
to their own country, with a request that they would induce their tribe to
send an embassy to their allies the Mohawks to intercede for the relief of
Father Jogues. The embassy was accordingly sent, the Mohawks lit their
council fires, the Sokoki presents were accepted, but the main question
was parried, and finally the old promise to send him back to Three Rivers
was the only result. Perceiving now more than ever the dignity and
importance of their prisoner, the Mohawks led him forth in triumph to show
their allies that even the powerful French nation was tributary to the
Iroquois. This cruel journey, two hundred and fifty miles long, was over a
rugged and barren country, and many were the sufferings our missionary had
to endure. Yet this journey was not without its peculiar consolations to
Father Jogues. On one occasion he baptized five dying infants; and as he
passed through the cabins in search of souls, he heard the voice of a
former benefactor, the Indian who had so generously cut loose the cords
that bound him to the cross of logs hoisted in the air in the village of
Tinniontiogen, crying to him from his bed of misery and death. Father
Jogues embraced his benefactor with a burst of gratitude and sympathy.
Unable to reward him with worldly goods or temporal relief, the father
instructed him in the truths of eternal life, bestowed upon the willing
convert the treasure of the faith, and shortly before his death sealed all
with the sacrament of baptism.
After his return to the village he was rushed upon one day by an
infuriated savage, whose club laid him almost lifeless on the ground.
Every day he was thus exposed to some imminent peril. His life was
suspended upon the merest chance or savage caprice or passion. The good
old woman who had adopted him, and whom he called his aunt, was his only
friend in that vast region. She advised him to make his escape, but he
believed it to be the will of God that he should remain there.
In August, 1643, he had to accompany a portion of the tribe on a hunting
and fishing party, during which he visited for the second time the Dutch
at Rensselaerswyck, the present city of Albany. The inhabitants again made
a generous effort to secure the liberation of Father Jogues, but their
appeal to the savage Mohawk was in vain. It was here, too, amid the
dangers and distractions that encompassed him at Rensselaerswyck, that he
produced that beautiful monument of taste and learning, as well as of
apostolic zeal and love, the relation of his captivity and sufferings to
his superior, which has been so greatly admired for its pure and classic
Latin. In this letter, he says: “I have baptized seventy since my
captivity, children, and youth, and old men of five different tongues and
nations, that men of every tribe, and tongue, and nation, might stand in
the presence of the Lamb.”
While engaged in helping the Iroquois to stretch their nets for fish, he
heard of more Huron prisoners brought to the village, two of whom had
already expired at the stake unbaptized. Obtaining the permission of his
good aunt who had adopted him, he at once dropped the fish‐nets, and
returned to the village in order that he might set his net for human
souls. On his way to the village he passed through Rensselaerswyck. Van
Curler insisted on his making his escape by flight, since certain death
awaited him at the village, and offered a shelter and a passage on board
of a ship destined first for Virginia and then for Bordeaux or Rochelle.
It has already been related that Father Jogues had resolved to regard the
Mohawk as his mission, he therefore hesitated to accept the generous offer
of the Dutch, though inevitable death would soon remove him from that
chosen field. But Van Curler and the minister of the settlement, John
Megapolensis, pressed their appeal with such powerful arguments that the
missionary promised to consider it, and asked one night for prayer and
consultation with his soul and with God. After fervent supplication for
the aid of heaven in deciding the matter with impartiality, and after much
reflection, Father Jogues, knowing that if he returned to the village
death would soon remove him from it, and convinced that his return to
France or Canada would prove the only means of founding a regular mission
in the Mohawk, resolved to attempt his escape, and went in the morning to
announce his resolution to Van Curler and Megapolensis. They then arranged
together the plan of escape. Returning to the custody of his guards, he
accompanied them to their quarters. When they all retired at night to
their barn to rest, the Iroquois slept around the father, in order to
secure him closely within, while without the premises were guarded by
ferocious watch‐dogs. In his first attempt early in the night, the dogs
rushed upon him and tore his leg dreadfully with their teeth, and he was
obliged to return into the barn. Towards daybreak a second attempt was
more successful; the dogs were silenced; the prisoner quietly escaped over
the fence, and ran limping and suffering with his lacerated limb fully a
mile to the river where the ship lay. But here he found the bark sent by
Van Curler for his escape lying high and dry and immovable on the beach,
and the vessel was not within hailing distance. In these straitened
circumstances, he had recourse to prayer. In making another effort to move
the bark he seemed to be gifted with renewed strength, and soon the boat
was afloat, and thus he succeeded alone in reaching the vessel. He was
immediately concealed in the bottom of the hold, and a heavy box was
placed over the hatch. In the filth of this narrow and unventilated place
he remained two days and nights, suffering extremely from his wound, from
hunger and the noisome air.
Father Jogues was then carried into the settlement to remain until all was
quiet and it was time to embark. He was confided to the care of a man who
permitted him to be thrust into a miserable loft, where he remained six
weeks crouched behind a hogshead as his only shelter, with scarcely food
sufficient to keep him alive, enduring every discomfort, and exposed to
detection and recapture by the Iroquois or Mohawks, who incessantly
haunted the house.
After six weeks thus spent, Father Jogues, accompanied by the minister,
Dominie Megapolensis, took the first boat for New Amsterdam, as the city
of New York was then called. The voyage lasted six weeks, during which
Father Jogues became a great favorite with all on board. As they passed a
little island in their route, the crew named it in honor of Father Jogues
amid the discharge of cannon, and the Calvinist minister honored the
Jesuit by contributing a bottle of wine to the festivities of the
occasion. After an agreeable voyage, they arrived at New Amsterdam. The
germ of the present monster city consisted then of a little fort
garrisoned with sixty men, a governor’s house, a church, and the houses of
four or five hundred men scattered over and around the entire Island of
Manhattan. There were many different sects and nations represented there.
The director‐general told Father Jogues that there were eighteen different
languages spoken on the island. The Jesuit was enthusiastically received
at New Amsterdam, for the people turned out in crowds to greet him. One of
them, a Polish Lutheran, when he saw the mangled hands of Father Jogues,
ran and threw himself at his feet to kiss his wounded hands, exclaiming,
“O martyr of Christ! O martyr!” So practical, however, were the notions of
the old Dutch inhabitants of the city about such matters, that they asked
the missionary how much the company of New France would pay him for all he
had suffered! Father Jogues made a vigilant search in New Amsterdam for
Catholics. He found two: one, a Portuguese woman, with whom he could not
converse, showed that she still clung to her faith by the pious pictures
which were hanging round her room; the other, an Irishman, trading from
Virginia, who availed himself of the father’s presence to go to his
confession. It was from the latter that he learned that the English
Jesuits had been driven from Maryland by the Puritan rulers of that
colony, and had taken refuge in Virginia.
He remained there three months altogether in the old Dutch colony.
Receiving commendatory letters from William Kieft, the governor of New
Netherland, he sailed from the majestic harbor of New Amsterdam on the 5th
of November, 1643. The little vessel possessed no comforts or
accommodations. The father’s only bed was a coil of rope on deck, where he
received severe drenchings from the waves breaking over him. A furious
storm drove the vessel in on the English coast, near Falmouth, which was
then in possession of the king’s party: two parliamentary cruisers pursued
the Dutch vessel, but she escaped and anchored at the wharf. The storm‐
beaten crew went ashore to enjoy themselves, leaving only Father Jogues
and another person on board, when the vessel was boarded by robbers, who
pointed a pistol at the missionary’s throat and robbed him of his hat and
coat. He appealed to a Frenchman, the master of a collier at the wharf,
for relief, who took him on board his boat, gave him a sailor’s hat and
coat, all his own poverty could spare, and a passage to France. In this
plight, this celebrated missionary, whose fame filled all France, landed
on his native shore on Christmas morning, at a point between Brest and St.
Pol de Leon.
He borrowed a more decent hat and cloak from a peasant near the shore, and
hastened to the nearest chapel, to make his thanksgiving and unite in the
glorious solemnity of Christmas. As it was early he had the consolation of
approaching the tribunal of penance, and of receiving the Holy Eucharist,
for the first time in sixteen months. The touching story of his captivity
and sufferings among the savages subdued their hearts and drew floods of
sympathizing tears from the peasants whose hospitality he shared. They
offered him all they had to forward him on his journey. A good merchant of
Rennes, then passing on his way, heard the thrilling incidents he related,
and saw his mangled hands: touched with compassion, he took the missionary
under his care, and paid his expenses to Rennes, where he arrived on the
eve of the Epiphany. He went to the college of his order in that city, and
as soon as it was known that he was from Canada, all the members of the
community gathered round him to ask him if he knew Father Jogues, and
whether he was yet alive and in captivity. He then disclosed his name, and
showed the marks of his sufferings; all then pressed forward to embrace
their saintly brother, and kiss his glorious wounds.
He reposed for a few days at the college at Rennes, and then pushed on
towards Paris, to place himself again at the disposal of his superior,
humbly and modestly intimating a desire, however, to be sent back to his
mission in America. His fame had long preceded him, and, when he arrived
at the capital, the faithful pressed forward in crowds to venerate him and
kiss his wounds. The pious queen‐mother coveted the same happiness, and
he, whom we saw so recently the captive and slave of brutal savages, is
now honored at the court of the first capital of Christendom. But the
humility of Father Jogues took alarm at the honors paid to him. Throwing
himself at his superior’s feet, he entreated that he might be sent back to
the wilderness from which he had just escaped. The superior consented; but
an obstacle here presented itself. So great were the injuries inflicted
upon his hands by the Mohawks that he was canonically disqualified from
offering up the holy sacrifice of the Mass. Application for the proper
dispensation was made to the Sovereign Pontiff, upon a statement of the
facts. Innocent XI. was moved by the recital, and, with an inspired
energy, exclaimed, “_Indignum esse Christi martyrem, Christi non bibere
sanguinem_”—“It were unjust that a martyr of Christ should not drink the
blood of Christ!” Pronounced by the Vicar of Christ on earth to be a
martyr, though living, he now goes to seek a double martyrdom in death. In
the spring he started for Rochelle, and F. Ducreux, the historian of
Canada, sought the honor of accompanying him thither.
He embarked from Rochelle for Canada, where he arrived on the 16th May,
1644. He found the Iroquois war still raging with unabated fury, and the
colony of New France reduced to the verge of ruin. When his brethren in
Canada heard and saw how cruelly Father Jogues had been treated in the
Mohawk, and that his timely flight alone had saved his life, they felt the
saddest apprehensions about the fate of Father Bressani, who had also
fallen into the hands of the Iroquois. Finding it impossible to return to
Lake Huron, Father Jogues joined Father Buteux in the duties of the holy
ministry at the new town of Montreal, to which its founders gave the name
of the City of Mary, in consecrating it to the Mother of God. It was
during their sojourn together that the superior endeavored to draw from
Father Jogues, by entreaty, and even by command, the circumstances of his
sufferings in captivity; but his humility and modesty were so great that
it was with the greatest difficulty that anything concerning himself could
be drawn from him. In this spirit he avoided all the honors that were
pressed upon him. After his return to Canada, he was so desirous of being
unknown and unhonored that he ceased signing his name, and even his
letters which he addressed to his superior after his return to Canada are
without signatures.
Some Mohawk prisoners, kindly treated by the Governor of Canada and
released, returned to their country, and disposed the Mohawks to make
peace. A solemn deputation of their chiefs came to Three Rivers, and were
received on the 12th of July, 1645, with great ceremony and pomp. Father
Jogues was present, though unseen by the deputies; so was Father Bressani,
who, having passed the ordeal of a most cruel captivity among the Mohawks,
had been ransomed by the Dutch of New York, sent to France, and had now,
like Father Jogues, returned to New France to suffer again. When all was
silent, the orator of the deputies arose, and opened the session with the
usual march and chants. He explained, as he proceeded to deliver the
presents, the meaning of each. Belt after belt of wampum was thrown at the
governor’s feet, until at last he held forth one in his hand, beautifully
decorated with the shell‐work of the Mohawk Valley. “This,” he exclaimed,
“is for the two black‐gowns. We wished to bring them both back; but we
have not been able to accomplish our design. One escaped from our hands in
spite of us, and the other absolutely desired to be given up to the Dutch.
We yielded to his desire. We regret not their being free, but our
ignorance of their fate. Perhaps even now that I name them they are
victims of cruel enemies or swallowed up in the waves. The Mohawk never
intended to put them to death.”
The French had little faith in the sincerity of the Mohawk, yet they
wanted peace. The past was forgiven, the missionaries buried the
remembrance of their wrongs with the hatchet of the Mohawk, and peace was
concluded. The deputies returned to their castles to get the sachems to
ratify the peace, and Father Jogues to Montreal to prepare himself for the
terrible ordeal which he foresaw a Mohawk mission would open to him. His
preparation consisted in prayer, meditations, and other spiritual
exercises. The peace was ratified; the Indians asked for missionaries; the
French resolved to open a mission among them, and Father Jogues was
selected for the perilous enterprise. When he received the letter of his
superior informing him of his selection, Father Jogues joyfully accepted
the appointment, and prepared at once to depart. His letter in reply to
the superior contains these heroic words: “Yes, father, I will all that
God wills, and I will it at the peril of a thousand lives. Oh! how I
should regret the loss of so glorious an occasion, when it depends but
upon me that some souls may be saved. I hope that his goodness, which did
not forsake me in the hour of need, will aid me yet. He and I are able yet
to overcome all the difficulties which can oppose our project.”
On arriving at Three Rivers, he ascertained that he and the Sieur Bourdon
were to go to the Mohawk castle, in the first instance, merely as
ambassadors, to make sure of the peace. They departed on this dangerous
embassy on the 16th of May, 1646, and during their absence public prayers,
offered for their return, testified the fears felt for their safety. As
they were about to start, an Algonquin thus addressed Father Jogues:
“There is nothing more repulsive at first than this doctrine, that seems
to annihilate all that man holds dearest, and as your long gown preaches
it as much as your lips, you would do better to go at first in a short
one.” Thereupon the prudent ambassador parted for the time with the habit
of his order, and substituted a more diplomatic costume.
They were accompanied by four Mohawks and two Algonquins. After ascending
the Sorel, and gliding through the beautiful islands of Lake Champlain,
they arrived at the portage leading to the Lake Andiatarocté on the 29th
of May, which was the eve of Corpus Christi. Here Father Jogues paused,
and named the lake Saint Sacrament; but by a less Christian taste that
beautiful name, given in honor of the King of kings, has since yielded to
one given in honor of one of the kings of earth.(79) They suffered greatly
for food on the way, but obtained a supply of provisions at Ossarane, a
fishing station on the Hudson, supposed to be Saratoga. Then, gliding down
the Hudson, they came to Fort Orange, where Father Jogues again, in the
most earnest and sincere terms, expressed his deep gratitude to his
liberators, the Dutch, whose outlay in his behalf he had already
reimbursed to them from Europe. Not satisfied with expressing his thanks,
Father Jogues endeavored to bestow upon his friend, Dominie Megapolensis,
the greatest of possible returns—the true faith. He wrote from this place
a letter to the minister, in which he used every argument that his well‐
stored mind or the unbounded charity of his heart could suggest to reclaim
him to the bosom of that ancient church which his fathers had so
unfortunately left.
After a short repose at Albany, they proceeded to the Mohawk, and arrived
at the nearest town on the 7th of June. A general assembly of the chiefs
was called to ratify the peace, and crowds came from all sides; some
through curiosity to see, and others with a desire to honor, the untiring
and self‐sacrificing Ondessonk. Father Jogues made a speech appropriate to
the occasion and the purposes of his visits, which the assembled chiefs
heard with great enthusiasm; presents were exchanged, and peace was
finally and absolutely ratified. The Wolf family in particular, being that
in which Father Jogues had been adopted, exclaimed, “The French shall
always find among us friendly hearts and an open cabin, and thou,
Ondessonk, shalt always have a mat to lie on and fire to keep thee warm.”
Father Jogues endeavored to impress favorably the representatives of other
tribes who were there by presents and friendly words. Then remembering his
sacred character as a minister of God, he visited and consoled the Huron
captives, especially the sick and dying; he heard the confessions of some,
and baptized several expiring infants. Before departing Father Jogues
desired to leave behind his box containing articles most necessary for the
mission, which he was soon to return and commence among them; the Mohawks,
however, dreading some evil from the box, objected at first, but the
father opened it, and showed them all it contained, and finally, as he
supposed, overcame their superstitious fears, and the box was left behind
among them.
The ambassadors and their suite set out on their return, on the 16th of
June, bearing their baggage on their backs. They also constructed their
own canoes at Lake Superior, and, having crossed the lake in safety,
arrived at Three Rivers, after a passage of thirteen days, on the feast of
SS. Peter and Paul, to the infinite joy and relief of all their friends.
On the 28th day of September, Father Jogues was on his way to the Mohawk,
accompanied by Lalande, a young Frenchman from Dieppe, an Iroquois of
Huron birth, and some other Hurons. As they advanced, tidings of war on
the part of the Mohawks became more frequent, and the Indian escorts began
to desert. They passed Lake Champlain in safety, and had advanced within
two days’ journey of the Mohawk when a war‐party, marching on Fort
Richelieu, came upon them. The savages rushed upon them, stripped Father
Jogues and Lalande of their effects, bound them as prisoners, and turning
back led them to the village of Gandawagué,(80) the scene of Father
Jogues’ first captivity and sufferings. Here they were received with a
shower of blows, amid loud cries for their heads, that they might be set
up on the palisades.
Towards evening, on the 18th of October, some of the savages of the Bear
family came and invited Father Jogues to sup in their cabin. Scarcely had
the shadow of the black‐gown darkened the entrance of their lodge, when a
concealed arm struck a well‐aimed blow with the murderous tomahawk, and
the Christian martyr fell lifeless to the ground. The generous Kiotsaeton,
who had just arrived as a deputy of a council called to decide on his
case, rushed to save him, but the blade had done its work, and now spent
its remaining force by inflicting a deep wound in the arm of that noble
chief. The head of Father Jogues was severed from his body, and raised
upon the palisade. The next day the faithful Lalande, and a no less
faithful Huron, shared the same fate.
Father Jogues was in his fortieth year when he received the fatal stroke.
When the tidings of his death arrived, every tongue in Canada and in
France was zealous in the recital of his many virtues, and in praise of
his glorious death. His zeal for the faith, his courage in danger, his
humility, his love of prayer and suffering, his devotion to the cross,
were conspicuous among the many exalted virtues that adorned his life and
death. While his brethren lamented the loss the missions had sustained,
they envied him the crown he had won. “We could not,” says Father
Ragueneau, “bring ourselves to offer for Father Jogues the prayers for the
dead. We offered up the adorable sacrifice, indeed, but it was in
thanksgiving for the favors which he had received from God. The laity and
the religious houses here partook our sentiments as to this happy death,
and more are found to invoke his memory than there are to pray for his
repose.”
Doña Ramona.
From The Spanish.
In an empire whose name history has failed to record, there lived in a
miserable stable a poor laborer and his wife. Juan and Ramona were their
names, though Juan was better known by the nickname “Under present
circumstances,” which they gave him because in season or out of season
that phrase was continually dropping from his lips. Juan and Ramona were
so wretchedly poor that they would have had no roof to cover them unless a
laborer of the province of Micomican had taken pity upon them, and given
them a hut to live in, which in other days had served as a stable, and was
now his property.
“We are badly enough off in a stable,” said Juan: “but we ought to conform
ourselves with our lot, since under present circumstances God, though he
was God, lived in a stable when he made himself man.”
“You are right,” replied Ramona.
So both worked away, if not happy, at least resigned—Juan in going out day
after day to gain his daily reward of a couple of small pieces of money,
and Ramona in taking care of the house, if house be a proper term to apply
to a stable.
The emperor was very fond of living in the country, and had many palaces
of different kinds in the province of Micomican. One day Juan was working
in a kitchen garden near the road, when far away he saw the carriage of
the emperor coming at a rate almost equal to that of a soul that the devil
was trying to carry off.
“I’ll bet you,” said Juan, “that the horses have escaped from his majesty,
and some misfortune is going to happen! It would be a great pity, for
under present circumstances an emperor is worth an empire.”
Juan was not mistaken. The emperor’s horses had escaped, and the emperor
was yelling:
“God take pity on me! I’m going to break my neck over one of those
precipices! Isn’t there a son of a gun to save me? To whoever throws
himself at the head of these confounded horses, I’ll give whatever he
asks, though it be the very shirt on my back.”
But no one dared throw himself at the horses’ heads; for they tore along
at such a furious rate that to rush at them was to rush into eternity.
Juan, enraged at the cowardice of the other workmen, and moved by his love
for the emperor as well as his natural propensity to do good without
looking at the person to whom he did it, threw himself at the horses’
heads, and succeeded in stopping the coach, to the admiration of the
emperor himself, who at that moment would not have given a brass farthing
for his life.
“Ask whatever you like,” said the emperor to him, “for everything appears
to me small as a recompense to the man who has rendered me so signal a
service.”
“Sire!” said Juan to him, “I, under present circumstances, am a poor day
laborer, and the day that I don’t gain a couple of _pesetas_ my wife and I
have to fast. So, if your majesty will only assure me my day’s labor
whether it rains or whether it is fine weather, my wife and I will sing
our lives away in happiness, for we are people content with very little.”
“That’s pretty clear. Well, go along, it’s granted. The day that you have
nothing to do anywhere else, go to one of my palaces, whichever you like,
and occupy yourself there in whatever way you please.”
“Thank you, sire!”
“What! No; no reason for thanks, man. That is a mere nothing.”
The emperor went on his road happy enough, and Juan went on his, thinking
of the great joy he was about to give his wife when he returned home at
night, and told her that he had his day’s work secured for the rest of his
life whether it rained or was fine weather.
In fact, his wife was greatly rejoiced when he carried her the good news.
They supped, and went to bed in peace and in the grace of God, and Juan
slept like one of the blessed; but Ramona passed the whole night turning
about in the bed like one who has some trouble or desire that will not let
him sleep.
“Do you know what I have been thinking the whole night long, Juan?” said
Ramona, the following morning.
“What?”
“That yesterday you were a fool to ask so little from the emperor.”
“Indeed! What more had I to ask?”
“That he would give us a little house to live in, something more suitable
and decent than this wretched stable.”
“You are right, woman; but now there is no help for it.”
“Perhaps there may be.”
“How?”
“Look here; go and see the emperor, and ask him.”
“Yes; now is the time to go on such an errand!”
“Go you shall, and quickly, too!”
“But, woman, don’t get angry. My goodness! what a temper you have! Well,
well; I will go, and God grant his majesty does not send me off with a
flea in my ear, although, under present circumstances, he is a very open‐
hearted, outspoken gentleman.”
Well, Juan set out for the palace of the emperor; and the emperor granted
him an audience immediately on his arrival.
“Hallo, Juan!” said his majesty. “What brings you this way, man?”
“Sire!” replied Juan, twirling and twirling the hat which he held in his
hand, “my wife, under present circumstances, is as good as gold; but, you
see, the stable that we live in is gone to rack and ruin, and we wish to
get it out of our sight. So she said to me this morning: ‘If your majesty,
who is so kind, would only give us a little house, something better than
the one we have, who dare sneeze at us then?’ ”
“Does your wife want nothing more than that? Well, it’s granted. This very
moment I will give orders that they place the little white house at her
disposal. Go into the dining‐room, and take a mouthful and a drop of
something; and, instead of going afterwards to the stable, go to the
little white house, and there you will find your wife already installed.”
Juan returned thanks to the emperor for his latest kindness, and, passing
on to the dining‐room, filled himself with ham and wine.
Our friend commenced his journey home, and, when he arrived at the white
house, his wife rushed out to receive him with tears of joy.
And indeed it was very natural for poor Ramona to find herself so merry,
for the little white house was a perfect jewel. It occupied the summit of
a gentle acclivity, whence the whole beauty of the plain was spread out
before it. A large Muscatel vine covered the whole of the porch, and
beneath it there were seats and little plots of pinks and roses. The
apartments of the house were a little drawing‐room, very white, and clean,
and pretty, with its chairs, its cupboard, and its looking‐glass; an
alcove with its bed, so soft and clean and beautiful that the emperor
himself might have slept in it; a little kitchen with all its
requirements, among which were included the utensils, which shone like
gold; and a little bewitching dining‐room, with four chairs, a table, and
a sideboard. To the dining‐room there was a fairy entrance, adorned
without by an arc of flowers, and through this entrance you passed into a
garden, where there were fruits, and flowers, and vegetables, and a small
army of chickens clucked; and every egg they laid was as big as Juan’s
fist.
When night came on, Juan and Ramona took their supper like a couple of
princes in their little dining‐room, and soon after laid them down in
their beautiful bed. They both slept well, particularly Juan, who stirred
neither hand nor foot the whole night through.
Ramona began to find fault the very next day, and Juan noticed that every
night her sleep was more disturbed.
“Woman, what the devil is the matter with you, that all night long you are
twisting like a reel?” asked Juan, one morning. “Why, there are no fleas
here as there were in the stable.”
“Fleas hinder my sleep very little.”
“Well, then, what hinders it, woman?”
“What hinders it? Your stupidity in asking the emperor so little hinders
it.”
“In the name of the Father, and of the Son!... And you still think it
little that I have asked, and he granted us?”
“Yes, indeed I do. This little house is so small that one can scarcely
turn in it; and if to‐morrow or some other day we have children, what
shall we do with them in a hut like this?”
“Say what you like about it, there is no help for it now.”
“Perhaps there may be.”
“And how, I should like to know?”
“Going back and seeing his majesty, and telling him to give us a larger
house, of course.”
“Go to Jericho, woman. You don’t catch me going on an errand of that
kind!”
“Well, go you shall, then; or we’ll see who is master here.”
“But, wife, don’t you see that my very face would drop from me with
shame?”
“Now, that’s enough of talk on the matter. All you have to do is, run
along to the palace as fast as you can, if you care to have a quiet time
of it.”
“Well, well; since you wish it, I’ll go.”
Juan, who did not possess an ounce of will of his own—a thing which is the
greatest misfortune that can befall a husband who is not blessed with such
a wife as God ordained for him—set out once more on his road towards the
palace of the emperor.
“Indeed,” said he to himself, with more fear than shame, “it is very
possible he will send me down‐stairs head foremost, because it is only
natural that this abuse of his good‐nature will prove too much, even for
him. And it will serve me right for my unfortunate weakness of character.”
Juan’s fears were not realized. So soon as he sought an audience with his
majesty it was granted, and the emperor asked him, with a smiling face:
“How goes it at the little white house?”
“Not badly, sire!”
“And your wife, how does she find herself there?”
“Not badly, sire, but your majesty knows what the women are. Give ’em an
inch, they’ll take an ell. My wife, under present circumstances, hasn’t a
flaw in her; but she says that, if to‐morrow or the day after we have
youngsters, we shall all be crowded there like bees in a bottle.”
“You are right. So she wants, of course, a house a little larger?”
“You’ve just hit it, sire!”
“Well, turn into the dining‐room till they give you a snack of something;
and, instead of returning to the white house, go to the Azure Palace,
where you will find your wife installed with the attendance befitting
those who live in a palace.”
Juan returned the emperor thanks for his great goodness, and, after
stuffing himself till he looked like a ball in the dining‐room, off he
set, as happy as could be, to the Azure Palace, which was one of those
that the emperor had in that district.
The Azure Palace was neither very large nor furnished with great wealth;
but it was very beautiful and adorned with becoming elegance. A servant in
livery received Juan at the door and conducted him to the apartment of the
lady. The lady was Ramona, whom her maid had just finished dressing in one
of the beautiful robes which she found in her new dwelling. Juan could do
nothing but open his mouth and stare in amazement at seeing his wife in
such majestic attire.
Juan and Ramona feared they would go mad when they found themselves lords
of a palace, well fitted, elegant, and waited on by four servants: namely,
a coachman, a footman, a maid, and a cook.
“Take off that clown’s dress,” said Ramona to Juan. “Aren’t you ashamed to
show yourself in such a trim before our own servants?”
“This is a new start,” said Juan, astonished at the sally of his wife. “So
I, who, under present circumstances, have passed all my life in digging
the earth, and things even worse than that, must feel ashamed of the
clothes I have worn all my life long!”
“But, you stupid head,” replied Ramona, “if you have costume corresponding
to your rank, why didn’t you put it on?”
“My rank!... Come, this woman’s head is turned.”
“Juan, go to your apartment and change your things, and don’t try my
patience so much, for you know already that my temper will not stand too
great a trial.”
“Well, there’s no need to put yourself out, woman. Here I’m going now,”
said Juan, turning to the room from which he saw Ramona come out.
“Blockhead!” said she, catching hold of him and showing him another room,
“this apartment is mine, and that is yours.”
“Hallo! this is another surprise. So my wife’s room is not mine also?”
“No; that is only among common folk; but in people of our rank no.”
Juan gave up the dispute, and, entering the room which she had pointed out
as his, found therein a wardrobe with a quantity of fine changes befitting
a gentleman, and came out again transformed into a milord.
There passed fifteen days since Juan and Ramona came to live in the Azure
Palace, and Ramona grew day by day more captious, and slept less and less
every night.
“What the deuce ails you? One would think the ants were at you,” said Juan
to her, one morning.
“What ails me is that I have the biggest fool for a husband that ever ate
bread.”
“Hey for the sweet tempers! So you are not yet content with the sweet
little fig that your husband gathered for you?”
“No, sir, I am not. One must be a dolt like you to content herself with
what we have, when we might have much more only for the asking.”
“But, woman alive, have you lost your senses? Can the emperor grant us
more than he has granted us, or do we need more to make us happy?”
“Yes, he can give us more, and we need it.”
“Explain yourself, and the devil take the explanation, for you’re going to
drive me mad with your ambition.”
“Explain myself! I’ll explain myself, and very clearly, too; for, thank
God, there are no hairs on my tongue to prevent me speaking to anybody,
even to the emperor himself. To make you happy, all that is wanting is
what common folk want—a good table where you may stuff yourself with
turkey all the day long; but for us who have higher aims, we want
something more than chunks of meat and wine that would make an ox dance a
hornpipe. You can swell yourself out and look big when you walk out here,
and hear them calling you Don Juan; but as for me, I could eat myself with
rage when they call me Doña Ramona.”
“Well, and isn’t it better for them to call us that than Juan and Ramona,
as they used to call us before? What more do you want, woman?”
“I want them to call me lady marchioness.”
“Have you lost your ears, Ramona? Now I tell you, and tell you again, that
that wicked ambition of yours has deprived you of your senses.”
“Look here, Juan, you and I are not going into disputes and obstinacy. You
know me well enough already, or if you don’t you ought to, to be certain
that it doesn’t take long for my nose to itch. I want to be no less than
the Marchioness of Radishe and the Countess of Cabbidge, who at every turn
fill their mouths with their grand titles, and, when they meet one, don’t
seem to have time to say with their drawling affectation, ‘Adios, Doña
Ramona.’ Now, since the emperor has told you, when you saved his life,
that you might ask him even for the shirt that he had on his back, go and
see him, and ask him to make us Marquises.”
“Go and ask him if he has a head on his shoulders, why don’t you say? But
there’s enough about it. Even in fun I don’t like to hear such nonsense.”
“Juan, don’t provoke me; take care that I don’t send you with a flea in
your ear.”
“But, woman alive, however much of your husband’s breeches you may wear,
could you even imagine that I was going to agree to this new start of
yours?”
“I bet you, you will agree.”
“I tell you I am not going again to see the emperor.”
“Go you shall, though you have to go on your head.”
“But, wife, don’t be a fool—”
“Come, come; less talk, and run along.”
“Well, I’m going, then, since you are so anxious about it. The saints
protect me, if I don’t deserve to be shot for this chicken‐hearted
weakness of character!”
Juan took the road to the court, and solicited a new audience with the
emperor. Though he took it for certain that his majesty would send him to
Old Nick if he did not throw him to him over the balcony, he found that
his majesty was very ready to grant him an audience.
“Sire, your majesty will pardon so many impertinences—” he stammered out,
full of shame, when he drew near the emperor.
“Why, man, don’t be ashamed and a fool,” interrupted his majesty kindly.
“Well, how goes it in the Azure Palace?”
“Beautifully, sire.”
“And how is that little rib of yours, eh?”
“Who—she? Oh! very well, under present circumstances.”
“And content with her lot? Is it not so?”
“Well, as for that, sire! Well, your majesty knows what the women are.
Their mouths are like a certain place I wouldn’t mention before your
majesty, always open, and there’s no getting at the bottom of it.”
“Well, and what does the good Doña Ramona ask now?”
“What, sire? But there—one is ashamed to say it.”
“Go on, man; out with it, and don’t be bashful. To the man that saved my
life I’d give anything, even the crown I wear.”
“Well, then, sire! She wants to be a marchioness.”
“A marchioness! Is that all? Then from this instant she is the Marchioness
of Marville.”
“Thank you, sire.”
“Keep the thanks for your wife; and look into the dining‐room to see if
there is anything to lay hands on. And when you go back you will find your
wife already installed in the palace belonging to her title, for the Azure
Palace is not good enough for marquises.”
Juan passed into the dining‐room, and, after running the danger of
bursting, he made his way for the palace of Marville. The palace of
Marville was not such a very great wonder as its name might lead one to
believe; but, for all that, one might very well pass his life in it!
A crowd of footmen and porters received Juan at the gates of the palace,
addressing him as my lord marquis; and Juan, for all his modesty, could
not but feel a little inflated with such a reception and such a title.
But there was nothing to hold the pride of his wife (though one might be
as big as the bell of Toledo, under which one day there sat down seven
tailors and a shoemaker) at hearing herself called by her maids lady
marchioness here, and lady marchioness there.
“Well, so you are at last content, wife?” said Juan to her.
“Yes, of course, I am. And indeed it was very provoking to hear one’s self
called Doña Ramona, short like, as though one were only the wife of the
apothecary or the surgeon. You see the truth of what I have said; if one
has only to open her mouth in order to be a marchioness, why shouldn’t
she? Now you see that his majesty did not eat you for asking such a
reasonable thing.”
“Well, do you know, now, that it cost me something to ask it of him?”
“Ah! get out of that; men are good for nothing.”
“But it gave me more courage when his majesty said to me: ‘Don’t be
bashful, man; for to the man that saved my life I’d give even the crown I
wear.’ ”
“Whew! so he said that to you?”
“As sure as I’m here.”
“Then why didn’t you ask him more?”
“There we are again! What more had I to ask?”
“You are right; for, as somebody said, ‘there are more days than long
sausages,’ and
‘A horse and a friend
No work can spend.’ ”
On the following day the Marquis and Marchioness of Marville took a turn
in their grandest coach, and it was a sight to see how they rolled along,
at every hour in the day, all around those parts, the very wheels seeming
to say envy! envy! to the Marchioness of Radishe and the Countess of
Cabbidge. Some little trouble took place on account of the actions and
complaints of the country folk, who prevented them from passing in their
coach over this and that road, or by this and that property. But the
marchioness quite forgot all these annoyances when, for example, at
meeting the wife of the apothecary or surgeon, she said to them from her
coach wherein she reclined in all her glory, “Adios, Doña Fulana,” and the
other answered her, trotting along on foot, “Good‐by, my lady
marchioness.”
After some time the marquis thought he noticed that his wife was not
perfectly happy, because he found her every day more capricious, and she
never slept quietly.
One morning, when the day was already advanced, the marquis slept away
like a dormouse, and the marchioness, who had passed a more restless and
sleepless night than ever, lay awake at his side impatiently waiting for
him to awake.
“S. Swithin! what a sleeper!” exclaimed the marchioness; and, no longer
able to restrain her impatience, she gave her husband a tremendous pinch,
and said, “Wake up, brute.”
“Oh! ten thousand d——!” yelled the marquis.
“Are you not ashamed to sleep so much?”
“Ashamed! of something so natural? More ashamed should the one be who does
not sleep, for sleeplessness bespeaks an unquiet conscience. What the
devil is the matter with you that you have not ceased the whole night from
turning and twisting about?”
“Yes, indeed, if one only had a soul as broad‐shouldered as you.”
“I don’t understand you, woman.”
“Well, then, you shall understand me, blockhead though you are. Now, tell
me, Juan, an emperor is greater than a king?”
“Why shouldn’t he be?”
“That is to say, that emperors can make kings?”
“I think so. For instance, suppose his majesty the emperor wished to say
to us, ‘Ha, my good friends the Marquis and Marchioness of Marville, I
convert the province of Micomican, which belongs to me, into a kingdom,
and I make you the monarchs of my new kingdom,’ I believe nobody could
hinder it.”
“Very well, then; I wish his majesty to say and do this at your petition.”
The very house seemed to fall atop of Juan at hearing this from his wife;
but this latest caprice of Ramona was so absurd that he had courage to
hope in its all being a joke.
“Don’t you think his majesty would give the person a nice slap in the face
who was so impudent and barefaced as to go to him with such a petition as
this?” he said.
“If you go, he will not; since he has said that he cannot deny even his
crown to the man who saved his life. So go along, ducky, hurry and see his
majesty.”
“But you mean this?”
“Why shouldn’t I mean it? I have a nice temper for jokes! I want to be
queen, in order to let those little folks know their proper places, who
pass their lives in digging the earth and eating potatoes, and have the
impudence to dare face gentlefolk who condescend to pass wherever they
please.”
“Well, well, now it’s clear that you have lost your wits altogether!”
“What you are going to lose, since you have no wits, is your teeth, with a
slap in the face, if you don’t make haste and hurry off to the court.”
“I’d lose my head before I’d commit such an absurdity. There. I’ve given
way enough already.”
“Indeed! Then from this day forward know that you have no longer a wife.
This is my room, and you shall never set foot in it again, nor I in
yours.”
“But, woman!”
“No, no; remember we are strangers to each other.”
“Come, don’t be obstinate, my own Ramonita.”
“Don’t I tell you, sir, that all is over between us?”
“Now, look here, pigeon.”
“Stop your prate!”
“The dev—! Well, come, you shall be satisfied; I will go and see his
majesty, and tell him that you want to be queen, though I know he will
shoot me on the spot.”
Ramona bestowed a caress on her husband in reward for his consent, and our
good Juan made his way to the court cursing his own foolish weakness of
character.
Contrary to his expectations, the emperor hastened to grant him an
audience, and received him with the accustomed smile.
“Well, marquis, what is it?” he asked.
“What ought it to be, sire? A fresh impertinence.”
“Come, out with it man, and don’t be bashful. Something concerning the
marchioness, eh?”
“You’ve hit it again, sire. These foolish women are never content.”
“Well, what does yours want?”
“Nothing, sire. She says, would it please your majesty to make her queen?”
“Queen! nothing more than that? Well, she is queen already, then. Now, go
into the dining‐room, and see if there is anything there you can destroy;
and, instead of returning to the palace of Marville, go to the palace of
the Crown, where you will find your wife installed as becomes the Queen of
Micomican.”
Juan outdid himself in thanks and courtesies, and, after treating himself
in the dining‐rooms right royally, made his way home. On his arrival at
the palace of the Crown, a salvo of artillery announced his coming. The
troops were drawn up around the palace, where he entered to the sound of
the Royal March, and amid the _vivas_ of the people, who became mad in the
presence of the husband of their new sovereign.
Her Majesty, the Queen Doña Ramona the First, was holding a levée at the
moment when her august spouse arrived at the palace, and he, seating
himself by her side, gave also his royal hand to kiss; but it was so dirty
that as many as kissed it hurried out of the chamber spitting. To be king,
it is necessary to keep the hands very clean.
The King and Queen of Micomican amused themselves mightily during the
first weeks of their reign: so that all was feasting and rejoicing in
celebration of their happy coming to the throne. But so soon as the
festival passed, the Queen Doña Ramona began to grow sad and weary.
The king summoned the chief physician of the court, and held a deep
consultation with him.
“Man alive,” said he to him, “I have summoned you in order to see what the
devil you have to say to me touching the sorrow and evil state in which I
have noticed my august spouse to be for some time past. She is always
turning and twisting about in her bed, so that she neither sleeps herself
nor lets me sleep, and the worst part of it is, that every day she is
sadder, and everything irritates and exasperates her.”
“Well, sire, in the first place, we must please her in everything and by
everything.”
“I agree with you there, man; but there are things beyond human power. If
it rains, she is put out because it rains; if it blows, she is put out
because it blows; if we are in the winter, she is put out because the
spring has not come, and her mind is so turned that she cries out: ‘I
command it not to rain,’ ‘I command it not to blow,’ ‘I command the spring
to come at once.’ Now, you see that it is only by being God one can secure
obedience of orders like these. Well, then, to what the deuce do you
attribute these whims of my august spouse?”
“Sire, it is very possible that they may presage a happy event.”
“Ah, ah! I take you. Well, to be sure, and I never thought of such a
thing. And wouldn’t it be a joy to me and to my august spouse to find
ourselves with a direct successor? For, if not, there is no use in
deluding ourselves: the day that we close our eyes, in comes civil war,
and the kingdom is gone to Old Nick.”
So the Queen Doña Ramona remained watching to see what would happen. But
months and months passed, and the queen grew every day sadder and more
capricious.
One day the king decided on interrogating very seriously the queen
herself, to see if he might draw from her the secret of her sadness and
capriciousness.
“Well, let us know, now, what the deuce is the matter with you,” he said,
“that you neither sleep nor let me sleep, and remain for ever like the
thorn of S. Lucy.”
“I am very unhappy,” answered the queen, beginning to weep like a
Magdalen.
“You unhappy?—you who lived in a stable as empty and bare as that which
Our Lord lived in when he became man, and under present circumstances you
find yourself the somebody of somebodies, a queen clean and complete? What
the deuce do you want?”
“It is true, I am a queen. But I die of sadness when from the throne I
look back and see nothing of what other queens see.”
“Well, and what do other queens see?”
“For instance, the Queen of Spain sees a series of great and glorious
kings, named Recaredo, Pelayo, San Fernando, Alonso the Wise, Isabel the
Catholic, Ferdinand the Catholic, Charles V., Philip II., Charles III.—and
those kings had blood of hers, and seated themselves on the throne, and
loved and made great the people that she loves and makes great.”
“You are right, wife. But you wish to do what is impossible, and that God
alone can do.”
“Well, then, those impossibilities are the very things that tease and
exasperate me. What is the use of being a queen, if even in the most just
desires one sees herself constrained, and unable to realize them? It is a
fine afternoon, for instance, and I begin to get ready to go out for a
walk in the palace gardens, but a wretched little cloud appears in the
sky, as though to say to one, ‘Don’t get ready!’ And when one wishes to go
out, that insolent cloud begins to pour down water, and one is obliged to
remain at home, disgusted and fretting. What I want is to have power
enough to prevent a miserable little cloud from laughing at me.”
“But, woman, don’t I tell you that this power God alone can have?”
“Then I want to be God.”
Juan made the sign of the cross on himself, filled with shame and horror
at hearing his wife give utterance to such a thing, whose head was
undoubtedly turned by the demon of ambition. But he did not wish to
exasperate the poor crazed being with lessons which, had she been in her
right senses, she would have deserved.
“But don’t you know, child,” he said to her with sweetness, “that the
fulfilment of that desire is as impossible as it is foolish? The emperor
has granted us whatever we have asked, but what you want now he cannot
grant.”
“Still, I want you to go and see him, and say so to him; for perhaps
between him and the Pope they will be able to manage it.”
“But if there is and never can be more than one God, how can you be made
God?”
“I have always heard say that God can do everything. If the emperor
consults with the Pope, and the Pope has recourse to God, then you’ll see
if God, who can do everything, will disappoint them both.”
“But if God cannot?”
“Hold your tongue, Jew, and don’t say such awful things. God can do
everything.”
Juan thought it would be more prudent to abstain from contradicting his
wife any further. So he retired and summoned the chief physician of the
court, in order to lay before him the new and extraordinary phase which
the moral malady of the queen displayed. The physician said that in his
long professional career he had met with cases of mental aberration even
more extraordinary than that of the queen; and insisted that, far from
contradicting the august invalid, they should comply with her every wish
as far as it was humanly possible.
The king returned soon after to the chamber of his august spouse, who the
moment she saw him became a perfect wasp.
“How, sire?” she exclaimed. “So you are the first to disobey my orders?”
“How disobey?”
“Yes, sire! Did I not tell you that I want you to go and see the emperor,
and implore him to place himself in communication with the Pope in order
to see whether between them they could so manage that I might be God?”
“Yes, you told me so, but—”
“There are no buts for me. How is it that you are not already on the road
to comply with my orders? Now, none of your nice little jokes with me, if
you please—you, who are no more than the husband of the queen—and, if you
ruffle my feathers, I’ll send you off to be hanged as soon as look at
you.”
“Come, child, don’t be angry, you shall be obeyed instantly.”
“Remember, none of your pranks, now! And listen: go and tell that health‐
killer whom you seem to have made one of your council, that if you don’t
go to see the emperor, and perform in every point the commission which I
charge you with, he shall serve you as partner in your dance in the air.”
The king withdrew; and when he reported to the chief physician what his
wife had just said to him, the physician insisted more than ever on the
necessity of pleasing the august invalid in everything.
So the king set out on his journey to the imperial court. The extravagant
and impious nature of his mission disturbed him greatly; but the
consideration gave him comfort that he was no longer a Juan nobody, as on
other occasions when he had made the same journey, but a monarch about to
consult with another monarch. The only thing that weighed at all on his
mind was the question of etiquette.
“I don’t know,” said he, “for the life of me what shoes to tread in when I
address the emperor. I have heard it said that all we sovereigns call each
other cousins, though not a bit of cousinship exists between us: but how
do I know, if I call the emperor cousin, that he may not give me a blow
that would send all the teeth down my throat?” Occupied with such
thoughts, he arrived at the imperial court, and the emperor hastened to
receive him when he had scarcely set foot in the palace.
“How is her majesty, Queen Doña Ramona?” asked the emperor kindly.
“Bad enough, under present circumstances.”
“Man, that is the worst news yet! And what ails her?”
“What the devil do I know? The evil one alone understands these women. If
your majesty could only guess the commission she has given me—”
“Hallo, hallo! Well, let us hear it.”
“She says—but pshaw! One is ashamed to say it. She says to see if your
majesty could consult with the Pope, and between you manage to make her
God.”
“Eh! That is a greater request. Make her God, eh!”
“Your majesty sees already that it is a piece of madness; for a woman
can’t complain of the small advance in her career who to‐day is a queen,
and not a year ago lived in a stable. A stable is a disgrace to nobody,
sure enough; for, after all, Our Lord, though he was God, lived in one
when he made himself man.”
“So the good Doña Ramona wishes to be God, eh!”
“You’ve hit it, your majesty.”
“Well, we will please her as far as we are able. Let your majesty step
into the dining‐room and drive the wolf from the door, and on returning
you will find your wife, if not changed into God, changed into something
which is like to him.”
The royal consort turned into the dining‐room, but, do what he would, he
could scarcely swallow a mouthful. Everything seemed to disagree with him,
and the cause of it lay in his feeling within him a restlessness which
seemed to forebode some misfortune. He made his way homewards, and on
arriving at the palace of the crown he saw, with as great sorrow as
dismay, that the palace was closed and deserted.
“What has happened here?” he inquired of a passer‐by.
“The emperor has put an end to the kingdom of Micomican, re‐establishing
the ancient province, and re‐incorporating it with the empire.”
Juan had neither courage nor strength to ask more. He wandered about for
hours and hours like one demented without knowing whither, when suddenly
he found himself at the door of the stable where he had lived with his
wife, and on pushing open the door, which revolved on its hinges, he found
his wife installed there once more. The only thing Godlike which the woman
who had entertained the criminal ambition of becoming like to him,
consisted in the similarity of her dwelling to the stable which God
occupied when he became man.
The Distaff.
“In der guten alten Zeit wo die Königen Bertha spann.”
“In the good old times when Queen Bertha span” is a thrifty proverb still
current in France and some parts of Germany where the distaff is yet seen
beneath the arm of the shepherdess, looking, as she tends her flock,
precisely like S. Genevieve just stept out from her canvas, or that more
modern saint of the hidden life, Germaine of Pibrac, who is always
represented with her spindle and distaff. In the very same fields where S.
Germaine watched her flocks and twirled her spindle in the old scriptural
way, keeping her innocent heart all the while united to God, have we seen
the young shepherdess clad in the picturesque scarlet or white capuchon of
the country, which covers their heads and half veils their forms—guarding
their sheep and spinning at the same time.
And the same womanly implement is sometimes found in the hands of those of
gentle birth in those old lands where so many still cling to the
traditions of the past. We read of the now world‐famous Eugénie de Guérin
that the same hand that wrote such charmingly naïve letters and journals
did not disdain the spindle and the distaff. She writes thus in her
journal: “I have begun my day by fitting myself up a distaff, very round,
very firm, and very smart with its bow of ribbon. There, I am going to
spin with a small spindle. One must vary work and amusements: tired of a
stocking, I take up my needle and then my distaff. So time passes, and
carries us away on its wings.” And again a day or two after: “I took my
distaff by way of diversion, but all the while I was spinning, my mind
spun and wound and turned its spindle at a fine rate. I was not at my
distaff. The soul just sets that kind of mechanical work going and then
leaves it.”
This reminds us of Uhland’s verse:
“Long, long didactic poems
I spin with busy wheel,
The lengthened yarns of epic
Keep running off my reel:
“My wheel itself has a lyrical whirr,
My cat has a tragic mew,
While my spindle plays the comic parts
And does the dancing too.”
Eugénie’s charming Arcadian life, passed in the primitive occupations of
spinning, sewing, superintending the kitchen—even going, like Homer’s
Nausicaa, to the margin of the stream to wash the linen in the running
waters, and afterwards taking pleasure in spreading it all white on the
green grass, or seeing it wave on the lines: all this, we say, without
detracting from the poetry and grace of her nature, is enough to make us
recall with a sigh the good old days when Queen Bertha span.
And this queen was _Berthe au grand pied_, the mother of Charlemagne, who
had one foot larger than the other, and hence her name:
“You are the beautiful Bertha, the spinner, queen of Helvetia,
She whose story I read at a stall in the streets of Southampton,
Who, as she rode on her palfrey o’er valley and meadow and
mountain,
Ever was spinning her thread from a distaff fixed to her saddle.
She was so thrifty and good, that her name passed into a proverb.”
Whether this Queen of Helvetia is our Bertha with the great foot we know
not. The name is found in many curious old legends like the German one of
Frau Bertha, a kind of tutelar genius of spinners, with an immense foot
and a long iron nose, which doubtless served as a spindle. And an old
manuscript, long hidden in some obscure corner of a German monastery,
tells how King Pepin, wishing to wed the fair Bertha of Brittany, sent his
chief officers to bring her to his court. The steward, who had charge of
the escort, was not without ambitious views respecting his own daughter.
He ordered his servants to put Bertha to death on the way. But they,
instead of killing her, left her in a forest. Not long after—O happy
chance!—King Pepin, overtaken by night while hunting, awaited the dawn in
a house where he was served by the most beautiful maid his eyes had ever
beheld. Of course it was Bertha with her great foot, which, we may be
sure, she gracefully concealed beneath her flowing garments. And so they
were married. Old poems sing of her industry, and tell us she knew how to
spin like the princesses of scriptural and Homeric days. She is
represented, too, on old coins seated on a throne with a distaff in her
hands. All writers speak of her as _Berthe au grand pied_, but as
otherwise beautiful and skilful in wielding the earliest implement of
feminine industry. We may safely imagine her as tapping the mighty
Charlemagne, leader of peerless knights, while yet a boy, with her
convenient distaff; for her ascendency over him was such that he always
regarded her with great reverence, even after his elevation to power!
And Bertha was not the only princess that laid her hand hold of the
spindle. When the tomb of Jeanne de Bourbon, wife of Charles V. of France,
was opened at St. Denis, among other things was found a distaff of gilded
wood, but greatly decayed. And there is another in the Hôtel de Cluny,
once used by some queen of France, we forget whom, on which is carven all
the notable women of the Old Testament.
So too the daughters of Edward the Elder of England, though carefully
educated, were so celebrated for their achievements in spinning and
weaving that the term spinster is said to be derived from them.
And S. Walburga, the daughter of S. Richard, King of the Saxons, used to
spin and weave among the royal and saintly maidens of Wimburn Minster. It
was a common custom in those days. The distaff and the spindle were
considered “the arms of every virtuous woman.”
The ancients held the use of them as such an accomplishment that Minerva
is said to have come down to earth to teach the Greek women how to spin.
Venus herself did not disdain to take upon herself the semblance of a
spinner of fair wool when she appeared to Helen.
And spinning was as universal an acquirement among the Jewish as the
Grecian women. They used to spin by moonlight on the housetops and, true
to the instinct of their sex, kept so faithful an eye on their neighbors
in the meanwhile that the ancient spinsters’ tongues were potent in the
world of gossip. There is a tradition that S. Ann spun the virginal robes
of her immaculate child in the pure beams of the chaste Dian.
Of the valiant woman in the Book of Proverbs it is said: “Her fingers have
taken hold of the spindle.” And in Exodus we read that “the skilful women
gave such things as they spun, violet, purple, and scarlet, and fine linen
and goats’ hair, all of their own accord,” for the tabernacle.
We are told that the Jewish maidens who devoted themselves to the service
of the temple were employed, among other things, in spinning the fine
linen on their spindles of cedar, or ithel, a species of the oriental
acacia, black as ebony and probably the same as the setim, or shittim
wood, of the Holy Scriptures. According to tradition, the Blessed Virgin
Mary, who passed her early days in the temple, participated and excelled
in all the pursuits then carried on. The _Protevangelion_ of S. James the
Less relates that, when a new veil was to be made for the temple of our
Lord, the priests confided the work to seven virgins of the tribe of
David. They cast lots to see “who should spin the gold thread, who the
blue, who the scarlet, and who the true scarlet.” It fell to Mary’s lot to
spin the purple. Leaving her work, one day, to draw water in her jar, the
angel drew near with his _Ave Maria_.
A distaff lies at Mary’s feet in Raphael’s “Annunciation,” and in many
other celebrated paintings she is represented with one. In a “Riposa” by
Albert Dürer she is depicted spinning from her distaff beside the Divine
Babe who is sleeping in its cradle:
“Inter fila cantans orat
Blanda, veni somnuli.”
S. Bonaventura tells us that several of the early sacred writers speak of
our Blessed Lady’s industry in spinning and sewing for the support of her
Son and S. Joseph in the land of Egypt. So reduced to poverty were they
that, according to him, she went from house to house to obtain work,
probably flax to spin as she sat watching the Holy Infant in the grove of
sycamores of traditional renown. Her unrivalled skill in spinning the fine
flax of Pelusium became a matter of tradition, and the name of _Virgin’s
Thread_ has been given to that network of dazzling whiteness and almost
vaporous texture that floats over the deep valleys in the damp mornings of
autumn, says the Abbé Orsini.
It is said the Church at Jerusalem preserved some of Mary’s spindles among
its treasures, which were afterwards sent to the Empress Pulcheria, who
placed them in one of the churches of Constantinople.
Other nations, too, had their famous spinsters. Dante’s ancestor in
Paradise, looking back to earth, tells him of a Florentine dame of an
opulent family who,
“With her maidens drawing off
The tresses from the distaff, lectured them
Old tales of Troy, and Fiesole, and Rome.”
And a Spanish writer of past times says, speaking of the model woman:
“Behold this wife who purchases flax that she may spin with her maids. See
her thus seated in the midst of her women.” Thus did Andromache spin among
her attendants.
So have we seen old nuns spinning in the cloisters of the remote provinces
of France: the white wool on their distaffs diminishing slowly and calmly
as their own even lives. They looked as if spinning out their own serene
destinies. Such a happy destiny is not reserved for all whose thread is
drawn out by Lachesis.
“Twist ye, twine ye! even so
Mingle shades of joy and woe,
Hope and fear, and peace and strife,
In the thread of human life.”
At Rome there are two white lambs blessed on S. Agnes’ day (“S. Agnes and
her lambs unshorn,” says Keats) in her church on the Nomentan road, and
then they are placed in a convent till they are shorn, when their wool is
spun by the sacred hands of the nuns. Of this the pallium is made—the
distinctive mark of a metropolitan.
I have called the distaff the earliest implement of feminine industry.
Such is the old tradition. There is a pathetic miniature of the twelfth
century depicting an angel giving Adam a spade and Eve a distaff previous
to their expulsion from Paradise: and on the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus
of the fourth century, Adam is represented with a sheaf of grain, for he
was to till the earth, and Eve with a lamb whose fleece she was to spin.
And we have our old English rhyme:
“When Adam delved and Eve span,
Where was then the gentleman?”
And so faithfully was the tradition handed down that the distaff has
always been regarded as a symbol of womanhood, which woman scorned to see
even in the hands of a Hercules.
In these days, when even our rustic belles are overloaded with
accomplishments, the piano takes the place of “Hygeia’s harp” on which the
fair maidens of the olden time loved to discourse fair music, like the
gentle Evangeline of Acadie, seated at her father’s side,
“Spinning flax for the loom that stood in the corner behind her,”
who, I fear, would be regarded in these days of improvement, at least in
our country, with nearly as much horror as those other indefatigable
spinners are by the good housewife:
“Weaving spiders, come not here;
Hence, you long‐legged spinners, hence!”
What charming pictures some of us retain in our memories of our gray‐
haired grandmothers of New England country life—delicately nurtured,
too—sitting down in the afternoon by the huge fire‐place to spin flax on a
little carved wheel! How many of us carefully preserve such a wheel in
memory of those by‐gone days, when we loved to linger and watch the
mysterious process, and look at the face that always was so kindly, and
listen to the whirr whose music is now hushed for ever!
But though spinning by hand will soon become one of the lost arts, there
is one who will spin on till time shall be no more—one from whose distaff
is drawn out the web of our lives—the star‐crowned Clotho:
“Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!
Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever!
Life is short and beset by sin,
’Tis only God endures for ever!”
A Martyr’s Journey.
From The French.
In the Beaujolais, the country _par excellence_ of beautiful women and
beautiful vines, a little village lies hidden among luxuriant arbors. Each
house is clothed in green leaves, and the wine, though rare, is not so
wonderful as the immense tuns that hold it. Yet Coigny, with its nectar,
its beautiful sky, its coquettish habitations its robust sons and
attractive daughters, had not a habitable church. Still it dreamed of one,
and four worthy priests worked hard and hopefully for the realization of
the dream. One of them climbed well his ladder of orders, and has since
become Bishop of Coutances; and if, as it is said, the zeal, piety, and
legitimate influence of four ecclesiastics will finish the Cathedral of
Cologne, notwithstanding the devil’s theft of the plan, what might not be
hoped for Coigny?
So nothing more need be told than that, from amidst the lovely, smiling
verdure of the little town, there sprang an exquisite white marble church,
a temptation to pray in as well as to see, and the admiration of the
entire province.
Madame la Marquise de —— gave all her inimitable guipures to ornament the
high altar, and Monsieur le Comte de ——, a great amateur in pictures,
placed a true Mignard—a Madonna with a lovely smile—upon the walls, even
before they dried.
So each and all offered homage in the new house of God.
Still the beautiful little church lacked a patron, a saint under whose
invocation it might be placed, and the blessed one must be represented by
his own venerable ashes, a relic of the past, a protection for the future.
The village of Coigny, therefore, spared neither pains nor expense to be
satisfied in this regard, and the Holy Father was applied to to select the
patron. The dear old man replied favorably to the little town he could
scarcely find on the map, and which was more noted for bearing the cross
than ringing the bell; and a curious and grave ceremony took place.
They opened the Roman Catacombs, and they descended into the vaults of the
cemetery of S. Cyriac, and there they chose the mortal remains of a
Christian martyr buried for many centuries.
The stone that closed the cell bore a palm branch and the inscription,
Hilary At Rest,
and indicated he had died for the faith in the early ages of Christianity.
His bones and the size of his head denoted only the adolescent, scarcely
more than a child; while the whole expressed the courage of the man united
to the grace of the angel.
The account from which this is taken adds, this young soldier of Christ
was found sleeping peacefully at his post, extended on his granite bier,
with his forehead cleft asunder, his neck cut open, of which the little
bottle by his side held the precious blood. The figure of the young martyr
had been covered with virgin wax, carefully enclosing the sacred bones,
and, attired in silk and embroidery, he is holding the palm branch in his
hand. The wounded head inclines as if bending to his murderers, his throat
lies open in its deep sword‐wound, his hands and feet have bled, and the
purple tide gushes from his wounds and trickles over his limbs; but his
lips are shut with love, and his eyes are fixed, regarding with S. Stephen
the heavens opening to receive him.
So this child of eighteen hundred years ago, this soldier of the faith,
taken from the Roman Catacombs, was sent by the Pope to Coigny.
Can we not imagine his reception? Did not the village ring out its festal
bells, and scatter flowers on his path, and with thousands of candles in
the nave, and incense mounting far above the high altar, did not the
little church welcome this contemporary of Nero, who had travelled
surrounded by glorious palms in his own carriage over the line from Italy?
He has come, and twenty priests bear him on their shoulders, and his final
resting‐place is under the high altar.
Coigny, the coquette, crowned by its green vine branches, bacchante‐like,
the pious Coigny, has its martyr in the vaults of its own dear church, no
more nor less than if it were a basilica.
True, he was an almost forgotten saint, and anonymously canonized, but the
Scriptures told us long ago, “God knows how to recompense his own.”
Odd Stories: III. Peter The Powerful.
Long and loud was the flourish of trumpets that greeted the day on which
Philip the Mighty was born to his father’s dukedom; so rare was the
promise of a babe. Need it be said that, nurtured under the eye of his
stern sire, he grew in the strength of justice? To such a degree had he
inherited the zeal of his ancestors, that while yet in his cradle he
strangled a wretched nurse for stealing his spoon; whereat there was
another flourish of trumpets. Subsequent reflections upon the loss of so
useful a servant taught him to restrain the exercise of his just powers;
and hence, when his tutors failed to instruct him within a given time in
the arts, sciences, languages, and literatures, he merely broke their
heads. We live to learn; and so it proved even to a prince as well endowed
as Philip the Mighty. In these early acts we can see the foundations of
that character which was afterwards so great a monument among men.
During the famous period in which our prince served his sire in the
administration of justice, the dungeons were never empty of thieves and
wranglers, nor the axe long idle for want of miscreant heads. To a peasant
who once stole an apple, he said, “How now, varlet, dost confess?”
Answered the trembling churl: “Nay, most puissant lord, I stole not the
fruit.” Then spoke Philip: “By my halidom, I’ll mend thine honesty”;
whereupon the fellow was put on the rack till he broke a blood‐vessel,
still not confessing, for it was death to steal an apple out of the duke’s
garden. At night the peasant died in his bed of a hemorrhage, piously
acknowledging in his last moments that he had committed the theft; whereat
was another flourish of trumpets. Life is a great lesson, however, and it
must not be supposed that our powerful hero could content himself with a
few exploits at court when he felt that he had a mission to reform the
world.
Therefore it was that Philip the Mighty set out upon a knight’s errand to
slay all the witches, devils, malefactors, giants, goblins, and monsters
that came in his path. But one squire rode with him, bearing a golden
trumpet, which, when Peter had done to death a sour‐faced hag who shrieked
at him on the mountain‐side, he blew right merrily. Now, the old witch had
asked the valiant knight for justice against her lord at court. Life is a
science not to be mastered without blows; and Philip learned to slay and
fear not in such stout earnest that soon he won the renown of being, as in
fact he was called, the Champion Wrong‐killer of the age.
When a foul, black‐hearted necromancer was tracked to his hiding‐place,
what else should our good knight do but put him to the sword? When a five‐
eyed dwarf was accused of deviltry, who else should carve him for the
crows but our duke’s son? When a grim ogre, breathing death and fury,
beset him whose arm was so mighty, when malefactors pestered the land,
when monsters of all kind raged on every hand, who dealt them such
lightning doom as the champion wrong‐killer? On every occasion did his
trusty squire blow the trumpet of gold right lustily, to the wonder of
lords and people. Now, it was whispered that the slain sorcerers had
helped husbandmen and artisans with their strange inventions; that the
malefactors were slaughtered outright for the crimes of their fellows;
that the giants were amiable men, sometimes, but provoked beyond
endurance; that dwarfs and witches were poor old people, seldom as bad as
they seemed to be. Nevertheless, the real monsters of the land increased
day by day, in spite of the champion killer’s sword and his squire’s
golden trumpet.
Weary with much slaughter of false knights and caitiff wretches and
monsters, the paladin Philip resolved to undertake the deliverance of the
poor from the oppressions of the rich. Filled with this noble idea, he
slew a yeoman who was chastising his servant without mercy. Seeing a
number of slaves at work, he set them all free by killing their master. He
divided the estates of the rich among the poor. He distributed largesses
among multitudes of the needy. He rescued honest damsels who were being
carried away by villain lords. Alas! for an ingrate world. ’Twas rumored
that the yeoman had left a widow and seven children to mourn him. The
slaves became marauders; the poor quarrelled among themselves; the beggars
got drunk; and some of the honest damsels lamented their fallen lords.
Howbeit, the faithful squire blew his trumpet louder than ever.
Meanwhile had our good knight grown religious, and burned men at the
stake; but the more the fuel, the greater the flame. The more lances he
shattered for honor’s sake, the more swords he blunted for justice’s sake;
the more money he spent to give feasts to beggars, and the more land he
parcelled among the poor, all the more honor, justice, bounty, estate,
remained to be won and adjusted. His sharp judgments had, after all, won
him nothing but the sound of his trumpet. He had killed the innocent and
robbed the poor, when he intended to do otherwise, and, if he executed
Heaven’s judgments, it was by a kind of mistake. One thing he had not
slain—himself.
All the while, he who had killed so many monsters was growing in bulk and
stature out of all proportion. As his legs and arms increased their
strength of muscle, his ears grew longer, and his eyes grew blinder. He
scorned, nay, devoured the weak he once defended, and, at last, a monster
himself, was killed by a conspiracy of those whose champion he once was.
For Philip, though a champion wrong‐killer, was blind to his own wrong‐
doing; and, though a reformer, never allowed people to reform themselves;
so he destroyed the wheat with the chaff and killed the good with the bad.
New Publications.
THE BOOK OF THE HOLY ROSARY. A Popular Doctrinal Exposition of its
Fifteen Mysteries, mainly Conveyed in Select Extracts from the
Fathers and Doctors of the Church. By the Rev. Henry Formby, of
the Third Order of St. Dominic. Embellished with thirty‐six full‐
page illustrations. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.
1872.
The devotion of the Holy Rosary is one of the most beautiful which the
Catholic Church proposes to her children, and is also probably the one
which has been received by them everywhere, without distinction of
nationality or class, with the most sincere delight. Catholics, it is
true, are for the most part familiar with the general history and
significance of this devotional practice, which in itself forms a
compendium of popular theology. Most of the books, however, on this
subject, with which we are acquainted, are intended to excite Christians
to the frequent and devout use of this form of prayer, rather than to give
them a full and clear understanding of its natural connection with the
great and fundamental truths which form the basis of Christianity. The
book of F. Formby is both doctrinal and devotional; all the more
devotional because the piety which it inculcates is enlightened by true
Christian science.
The work is divided into three parts corresponding with the three groups
of mysteries of which the Rosary is composed. The author prefaces each of
these groups with an introduction, in which he carefully compares its
mysteries with their corresponding types in the Old Testament. This
comparison is again instituted in a more particular manner as each mystery
in turn presents itself for elucidation.
In treating of the different mysteries, he first quotes from Scripture
those passages upon which they are formed, and then adduces the
corresponding types from the Old Testament, still further illustrating the
subject by apposite quotations and allusions taken from the classics of
pagan literature. These are followed by extracts from the writings of the
great Fathers and Doctors of the church, many of which will be new to the
English reader. Thus each chapter of the book forms a comprehensive
treatise, both doctrinal and devotional, of the particular mystery in the
life of our divine Saviour or that of his Blessed Mother to which it is
devoted.
Without going out of his way, F. Formby by the simple exposition of the
doctrine and practice of the church shows in the most conclusive manner
how utterly groundless are the objections of Protestants to Catholic
devotion to the Mother of Christ. We have not for a long time read a book
with which we are so perfectly pleased as with this of F. Formby. The
clergy especially will find in it a rich mine from which to draw
instruction for the people. It may be read with profit, however, by all
classes of persons, as the plain and simple style in which it is written
does not raise it above the comprehension of even uneducated minds. The
book is ornamented with thirty‐six full‐page woodcuts, unusually excellent
both in design and execution; which, added to the attractions of clear
typography and tasteful binding, make it a work of art as well as of
religion.
HENRY PERREYVE. By A. Gratry, Prêtre de l’Oratoire, etc.
Translated by special permission. London: Rivingtons. 1872. (New
York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
After a life of singular purity and great activity in the cause of truth,
F. Gratry entered upon his rest on the 6th of February, 1872. His
impulsive and ardent nature hurried him for a moment, towards the close of
his life, into a controversy which, for a time, caused the greatest
anxiety to his friends, and threatened to throw a cloud over an existence
otherwise so brilliant and precious. His heart, however, always remained
loyal to the church and to truth, and, when he was made aware of his
error, he himself was the first to acknowledge it, and to do all in his
power to atone for it. The writings of F. Gratry have always possessed for
us a singular charm. He has in a high degree the gift of making his
thoughts contagious. He throws the warmth and life of his whole heart into
his writings; his words breathe and palpitate and affect one like the
presence of a noble and high‐wrought nature. In Henry Perreyve he found a
subject peculiarly fitted to call forth these qualities of his style. The
history of the outer life of Henry Perreyve was uneventful and short.
Designed by his parents for the bar, disposed by his own vigorous and
impetuous nature to the military life, he was called of God to the
priesthood. When he had once recognized the voice of God, he devoted to
this high vocation all the energies of a most gifted and courageous
nature. At an early age he developed remarkable talents both for writing
and speaking. He possessed the divine gift of eloquence, and Lacordaire,
who loved him more than any other man in the world, looked forward to the
day when his own voice, having grown feeble by age, would be born again
with redoubled strength and warmth on the lips of Henry Perreyve. Alas,
that such hope should be delusive! He to whom Lacordaire wrote, “You live
in my heart eternally as my son and my friend,” was destined soon to
follow his great preceptor to the grave. He died in 1865, when but thirty‐
four years old. The story of his life, as told by F. Gratry, is a poem
full of the most exalted sentiment, and impressed with the highest form of
beauty. “All who knew him,” says his biographer, “agree on this point,
that the one characteristic which stamps his outward life and his inward
soul is only to be expressed by that word Beauty. All the inward beauty
wherewith courage, intelligence, devotion, and goodness can invest a soul,
and all the outward expression of beauty with which such a soul can stamp
the living man, were combined in him. Nature and grace had alike done
their very best for him; he overflowed with their choicest gifts.” Whoever
will read F. Gratry’s sketch will be persuaded that these words are not
too strong. The life of Henry Perreyve is another confirmation of the
truth that the ideal type of perfect manhood can be developed only in the
Catholic Church. We especially recommend this book to the young men of our
country. Even though it should not inspire them with the exalted ambition
of consecrating their lives to God, it will at least teach them the
transcendent beauty of Christian courage, of self‐devotion, of nobility of
purpose.
Henry Perreyve was most ardent in urging his friends to aspire to the
priesthood. In this connection F. Gratry remarks: “Truly, I know no wiser
enthusiasm than that which stimulates men to become laborers for God. We
have too few priests; we have far too many soldiers. No man becomes a
priest whether he will or no; but on all sides the strong hand of the
powers that be constrains men to be soldiers whether they will or no. Why
is the priest’s lot to be counted worse than the soldier’s? He who chooses
the sacred toil of God’s harvest‐field for his life’s labor, chooses the
better part. Surely his ambition is beyond all comparison the greatest,
best and noblest: his work the most fruitful, the most necessary. That is
but a sorry delusion by which the world would set the priesthood before
men as in the shadow of death, and other careers as in a glow of light and
glory.”
THE SPOKEN WORD; or, The Art of Extemporary Preaching: Its
Utility, its Danger, and its True Idea. With an easy and practical
Method for its Attainment. By Rev. Thomas J. Potter, Professor of
Sacred Eloquence in the Missionary College of All Hallows, Author
of “Sacred Eloquence,” etc., etc. Boston: P. Donahoe. 1872.
One of the most favorable omens attending the great Catholic revival in
the English‐speaking world is the appearance of works bearing upon the
various duties of the sacred ministry. In the earlier days of struggle in
England and America, the missionary priest entered upon a life of toil
which gave but scant opportunity for adding to the fund of learning that
served as its outfit. Hence, while the greatness of the Catholic
champions, who entered the arena armed _cap‐a‐pie_ by a long and thorough
training, was brought into striking relief, the depression of minds less
trained and of less capacity among the clergy was marked by the absence of
a native literature suited to their class.
When a priest rarely had a day free from harassing labors, and was barely
able to run into debt for the brick, beams, and shingles of a nondescript
building wherein to assemble his flock, he certainly did well if, after
reading his breviary and peeping into his moral theology, he kept himself
informed of current events. Such circumstances of poverty were not
favorable to literature or eloquence. Ecclesiastical art, with its
intricate ceremonial and its peculiar music, was in a fair way to be lost;
and the refinements of clerical education were rather sources of
discouragement in the present than of bright anticipation for the future.
But this phase, having in some measure passed away in England, has lost
much of its gloom for us in America. Pastors have more time to prepare
instructions for their people. Congregations by their magnitude and
intelligence call forth the highest efforts of eloquence. The instincts of
Catholic devotion require that God’s house should be made a house of
prayer, and demand, for their satisfaction and increase, the sacristy and
choir, which shall be “for a glory and a beauty.” Meanwhile, increasing
wealth furnishes means for fulfilling the requirements of the Roman
Ritual.
The work which we notice is one of many signs of the times, and also one
of a series of similar efforts by its earnest and experienced author. It
is written in a clear and flowing style, slightly marred, however, by the
frequent repetition of the adjective “expedite,” as qualifying the noun
“knowledge,” and the perpetual recurrence of “a man who,” or “the man
who.” The general effect is nevertheless pleasing, and the book itself
ought to be read. The title contains a fair analysis of the work. It
remains for us to say that the author is thorough in the treatment of his
subject. His hints and warnings are useful to those accustomed to preach
extempore; while his suggestions for the composition of sermons are
entirely applicable to those who perfect their oratorical preparations
before ascending the pulpit.
The appearance of the book is also quite in its favor, and we might adduce
it as a sign of the times in a department to which we have not yet
alluded.
THE BELOVED DISCIPLE. By the Rev. Father Rawes, O.S.C. London:
Burns, Oates & Co. 1872. New York: Sold by The Catholic
Publication Society.
This is a beautiful sketch of the life of “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”
Father Rawes, in common with S. Jerome, S. Augustine, and S. Bernard, has
a great and special devotion to the Evangelist S. John. This little book
is well written and is eminently devotional and instructive.
UNAWARES. By the Author of “The Rose Garden.” Boston: Roberts
Bros. 1872.
One experiences a sense of rest and refreshment in reading this
unpretending volume. It is a narrative of French life, not at all after
the sensational order, but beautifully wrought out, with enough of romance
to sustain the interest and chain the attention of the reader, but not a
line or word that one could wish unwritten. With a slight plot and few
incidents, this pleasing story charms us with a delightfully artistic
description of a quaint old town in France, where the grand cathedral
stands, the central object of attraction—solemn, steadfast, ever
varying—severe or tender, as the case may be—but always inconceivably
peaceful.
The characters, drawn with a skilful hand and admirably sustained, the
chaste beauty of the language and style, with the gems of thought worthy
of life‐long remembrance scattered throughout the volume, lead us to
desire an acquaintance with other books this attractive author may have
written.
THE VICAR’S DAUGHTER. By George MacDonald. Boston: Roberts Bros.
1872.
If not to be sensational is a merit, this book certainly has that merit.
The Introduction, which in most books is apt to be dull, and often is
skipped by the reader who wishes to plunge _in medias res_, is here the
spiciest part, the sugar‐coating of the pill—if it be not ill‐natured to
call this work a pill. A very mild one it is, and the patient, if none the
better, will certainly be none the worse for taking it. Its object seems
to be to promulgate some Presbyterian ideas concerning the means to be
used for elevating the spiritual condition of the poor. The London poor is
the class considered, but the general rules laid down may be supposed good
for all poor. Some very queer ideas are broached; among others, that it is
better to give a workman a gold watch than a leg of mutton, because by so
doing you will pay him a compliment for which he will be grateful, but
that he should have nothing given him “which he ought to provide for
himself—such as food, or clothing, or shelter.” There is a Miss Clare who
is possessed by such a missionary spirit and love for the poor, that we
cannot help wishing she might find her proper sphere by becoming a
Catholic “Little Sister of the Poor,” or some other equally useful sister
of charity. The church utilizes such women much more wisely than they
manage to find the best way alone. There is a chapter of Miss Clare’s
reading and discussing of the Gospel with some workmen, which, if not
positively irreverent itself, will be very likely to make the reader, who
has any sense of humor, feel so in spite of his better instincts.
The Vicar’s daughter, Mrs. Percivale, is a very sprightly and well‐drawn
character, whom we cannot help liking very much. She is the teller of the
story, and in this Dr. MacDonald has shown much skill. It is in some parts
so like a woman’s way of thinking and writing, that we can hardly believe
it to be the work of a man, especially in Mrs. Percivale’s thoughts after
the birth of her child. And in this the author approaches very nearly the
Catholic ideal:
“I had read somewhere—and it clung to me although I did not
understand it—that it was in laying hold of the heart of his
Mother that Jesus laid his first hold of the world to redeem it;
and now at length I began to understand it. What a divine way of
saving us it was—to let her bear him, carry him in her bosom, wash
him and dress him and nurse him and sing him to sleep! ... Such a
love might well save a world in which were mothers enough.”
But alas! he makes the vicar himself save his faith from shipwreck by
marrying the woman he wants—a queer and new argument for the marriage of
the clergy, to be able to _believe_ through such means. Not that this is
intended by the author for any such argument; he being a Presbyterian,
makes no question of the propriety and wisdom of the clergy marrying, but
that a clergyman should be taught _belief_ by getting the woman of his
choice _is_ “passing strange.” He also prefers giving his daughter to a
sceptic rather than to a “thoroughly religious man,” for fear the latter
might “_confirm her in doubt_.” To a Catholic, this seems a wonderful
conclusion.
The chapter called “Child Nonsense” is nonsense indeed, and much below
“Mother Goose” in literary merit. We wonder it found a place in the
volume, which contains much genuine wit and good writing.
The illustrations to the book are clever, and the type and binding
attractive.
AMBITION’S CONTEST; or, Faith and Intellect. By “Christine.”
Boston: P. Donahoe. 1872.
We cannot, perhaps, give a better idea of the style and scope of this
modest volume than by a quotation from the Preface: “It would be
presumptuous to say that I have attempted this little work in order to aid
in preventing these numerous wrecks of the soul; for where other and
gifted pens, essaying so much and so well in this direction, still find it
difficult to do all _they_ would, it would be folly to suppose that my
crude effort could accomplish anything. Still it is an effort made for the
purpose of accomplishing _some_ good, and written under the auspices of
her who has never yet failed to assist the weak, the ever‐glorious and
Blessed Virgin‐Mother of God, it may perhaps add a mite to that which is
now being done for the proper training of our Catholic youth.”
GARDENING BY MYSELF. By Anna Warner. New York: A. D. F. Randolph.
1872.
We cannot imagine a pleasanter way of studying horticulture than by
adopting Miss Warner’s volume as a text‐book. We can overlook the little
attempts at moralizing, after the evangelical fashion, as she goes along,
in view of the dismal theological efforts made by her sister (if we
mistake not) a few years since. We advise our lady readers who have space
for cultivating flowers to consult this little manual, assured that the
occupation of which it discourses, and its results, will bring them a
large store of unalloyed enjoyment.
THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY has in press, and will publish early in
November, _The Life and Times of Sixtus the Fifth_, by Baron Hubner.
Translated from the original French by James F. Meline.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XVI., NO. 92.—NOVEMBER, 1872.
Centres Of Thought In The Past. Second Article. The Universities.
The change from the monastic to the scholastic era was one of which we can
hardly form an idea. As radical as that brought about in politics by the
tempest of 1793, it was less sudden, and, though to the full as dangerous
as the unhappy “Reformation,” it was fortunately shorn of its heretical
perils by the vigorous and successful hand laid upon it by the church.
Instead of producing an organized system of antagonism to revealed truth,
which it seemed at one time on the very verge of doing, it became so
thoroughly absorbed into the church’s system that to many minds
“scholasticism” is synonymous with “bigotry.” Yet how opposite was the
reality to the idea which it conveys to the modern mind! The real temper
of the church, the temper which will be hers eternally in heaven, is the
temper of Mary; the contemplative, monastic ideal of perfect peace. In the
XIIIth century (we say the XIIIth typically, for the change was gradually
working some time before, and only grew to its maturity in that age), a
giant intellectual convulsion took place, and the church was rudely
wakened out of her placid ecstasy, to find herself assailed by brilliant
and popular fallacies, urged by men of dazzling talent and fearless powers
of questioning. It was as if some holy monk, who from childhood to ripe
old age had spent his life on his knees before the silent tabernacle of a
huge and perfect abbey‐church, were suddenly to be startled into action by
the rude attack of a sacrilegious band on the very altar at whose steps he
had worshipped so long. See him spring to his feet, and with unexpected
strength throw himself before the priceless treasure, quell by his eagle
glance the bewildered assailers of his peace, and convert by his heaven‐
dictated eloquence those very men into saints, those enemies into friends,
those proud opponents into fellow‐watchers at the same hallowed shrine. So
sprang the church to the defence of those doctrines which hitherto it had
been mainly her duty to _guard_, and the struggle, distasteful as it must
have been at first, nevertheless ended by producing a new harvest of
saints, and increasing the human prestige as well as the spiritual armory
of the church. The reader will no doubt be pleased to see what the writers
already quoted have to say of this mighty intellectual revolution, and we
gladly yield to them the field of description. “It will suffice to
reconcile us to the temporary necessity of the change,” says the author of
_Christian Schools and Scholars_, “that it was accepted by the church, and
that she set her seal to the due and legitimate use of those studies which
were to develop the human intellect to its full‐grown strength. Nay, more,
she absorbed into herself an intellectual movement which, had she opposed
it, would have been directed against her authority, and so to a great
extent she neutralized its powers of mischief. The scholastic philosophy
which, without her direction, would have expanded into an infidel
rationalism, was woven into her theology itself, and made to do duty in
her defence, and that wondrous spectacle was exhibited, so common in the
history of the church, when the dark and threatening thunder‐cloud, which
seemed about to send out its lightning‐bolts, only distils in fertilizing
rain.” Speaking of S. Dominic, Prior Vaughan, in his _Life of S. Thomas of
Aquin_, says: “He felt that a single man was but a drop in the ocean in
the midst of such a vast and organized corruption. Man may be met by man,
but a system only can oppose a system. A religious institution, combining
the poverty of the first disciples of Christ with eloquence and learning,
would alone stand a chance of success in working a regeneration.” He tells
us further on that Albertus Magnus, the master of S. Thomas, saw that
“Aristotle must be christianized, and that faith itself must be thrown
into the form of a vast _scientific_ organism, through the application of
christianized philosophy to the _dogmata_ of revealed religion.” The state
of men’s minds is thus pithily described by the same author: “For,
especially at this period, theory speedily resolved itself into practice;
what to‐day was a speculation of the schools, to‐morrow became a fact; men
lived quickly, thought quickly, and acted quickly in the days of William
of Champeaux and Abelard.” Still, in summing up the character of those
strange, contradictory times, so eminently “ages of faith” when contrasted
with our day, yet ages of jarring contention when compared with the
previous centuries, Prior Vaughan gives us the brighter side of the
picture also: “Men were not startled in those days by the unusual deeds
and privileges of chosen men. They took God’s word for granted. They
believed what they saw; they did not pry and test and examine their souls.
They got nearer the truth than we do. Their minds were not corroded by
false science.” And in a footnote he adds, speaking of the great
difference between heresy in the middle ages and heresy now: “In this (the
reverence for authority) is seated the great distinction between the
darkness of those days and the darkness of the present. Then, men fell
away in detail, they denied this or that truth, or fanatically set up as
teachers of novel doctrines, or were cruel, or superstitious, or fond of
dress, or of excitement, or self‐display. But they held to the master‐
principle of order and of salvation, they did not reject the authority of
the teaching church, or presume to call in question the directive power
and controlling office of the sovereign pontiff.”
Now, let us at the outset anticipate one question our readers may very
naturally ask themselves: Have we undertaken a sketch of the history of
the church, or that of human thought and progress? The latter,
undoubtedly. Then, how is it that “the church” runs through the whole,
like the ground melody of the system? How is it that, even in the
emancipating times on which we have now come, the doctors and masters of
the schools are all monks and clerics, the theses chosen from Scripture
texts, the disputes all turning on points of doctrine, and those, too,
uncompromisingly of _Catholic_ doctrine? We can only answer that such are
the facts; secular learning hardly existed, and what there was of it was
so tinged with religion that it was hardly distinguishable from that of
theologians. Take Dante, for instance, an accomplished scholar, a patriot,
a politician, and a keen philosopher. Who would not think him a priest and
a theologian, from the way he has cast his grand and unrivalled poem? It
is a summary of Catholic doctrine and tradition, a poetical version of S.
Thomas’ _Summa_, without some knowledge of which it is absolutely
impossible to read the third part, the _Paradiso_, and _understand_ it. We
cannot help it if we seem to be sketching ecclesiastical, while we are
engaged on intellectual, history. Never before the “Reformation” were they
divorced, and no better proof than this could be adduced of the
essentially teaching mission of the church.
The proximate cause of the greatness of the University of Paris may be
traced through four or five generations of scholars up to our Saxon master
Alcuin. His pupil Rabanus, the great Abbot of Fulda, formed Lupus of
Ferrières in his own mould; he in turn instructed Henry of Auxerre, the
_scholasticus_ or master of the Auxerre school, where he found Remigius,
destined to become the re‐establisher of sacred studies at Rheims, the
Canterbury of France. From Rheims this Remigius removed to Paris (in the
Xth century), and from his time the schools of that city continued to
increase in reputation and importance till they developed into the great
university. He it was “who opened the first public school which we know
with any certainty to have been established in Paris.”(81) The first
rudiments of the laws governing the greatest corporate institution of
scholastic times seem to have sprung from the very disorders occasioned by
the immense numbers and pugnacious national characteristics of the rival
students of all nations who flocked to Paris. In 1195, we find a certain
John, Abbot of S. Alban’s, associated with the _body of elect
masters_,(82) and the year previous Pope Celestine III. ruled that the
students should be subject to ecclesiastical tribunals only, and should be
exempt from all civic interference in their affairs on the part of the
town authorities.(83) In 1200, the university is acknowledged by Philip
Augustus as a corporate body, governed by a head who shall not be
responsible for his acts to any civil tribunal whatsoever. And now begins
in good earnest a system the like of which was never seen, and for
brilliancy as for license will never be surpassed. It is like plunging
into the seething cauldron of a “witches’ Sabbath” to read of the
marvellous and feverish state of things in the Paris of the XIIIth
century, and even of that of earlier days. For a vivid description of the
turbulent city we can refer our readers to the recent work of the
Benedictine, Prior Vaughan, and to the no less graphic pen of Victor Hugo
in his _Notre Dame de Paris_. A grotesqueness wholly French pervades the
latter work, but gives perhaps a truer picture of the reality than any
less fastidious language could convey. In the Paris of old, as in our own
day, things seem to have been inextricably mingled: the sage and the
buffoon are elbowing each other in the streets; students who have come for
fashion’s sake flaunt their vulgar splendor and their disgusting
shamelessness in vice in the face of the poor scholar who sits attentive
and eager on the _straw_‐covered floor of the lecture‐room; midnight
orgies that seldom end in less than murder take place within a few feet of
the oases of monastic life, where the canonical hours are still faithfully
repeated and _the rule_ still silently kept up. Vanity and frivolity are
there, and the arrogance of wealthy dunces. Witness the young man whose
father sent him to Paris with an annual allowance of a hundred _livres_.
“What does he do?” asks a chronicler of that time, Odofied. “Why, he has
his books bound and ornamented with gold initials and strange monsters,
and has a new pair of boots every Saturday.” This was at the time that
pointed shoes were the “rage,” and the university even passed a decree
against them as follies unbecoming a scholar.(84) “We read of starving,
friendless lads with their unkempt heads and tattered suits, who walked
the streets, hungering for bread and famishing for knowledge, and
hankering after a sight of some of those famous doctors of whom they had
heard so much when far away in the woods of Germany or the fields of
France.”(85) Many had to share their miserable garments with their
companions, and take it by turns to wear their _one_ tunic so as to make a
decent appearance in the lecture‐hall, while the rest stayed at home.
Others spent all they had on parchment, and were in need of oil for their
lamps to study at nights. Long before the collegiate system became
general, the lay‐students were huddled together in unhealthy tenements,
over the shops of the burghers, with whom they had many an affray on the
score of extortion and injustice. While the rich students employed their
many servants and the tradesmen they patronized as instruments in their
shameful intrigues, the poor scholars struggled on, some selling books at
ruinously low prices, others absolutely begging their food in the streets
or at the doors of the rich shopkeepers, while others again, more
miserable because less determined, took refuge in the taverns, and drank
away the little remains of vitality left in them, or as often were
despatched in the unseemly brawls which tavern‐life was sure to foster.
Then, as the brighter side of the picture, there were the monasteries,
especially that of the Dominicans of S. James, where eager scholars
studied in peace and order; the cloisters of Notre Dame, where venerable
orthodoxy was long entrenched; the Sorbonne, destined to be for ages the
most celebrated school of theology in Europe, and to hold its own long
after the mediæval university had decayed. Disputed cases were sent to the
Sorbonne for decision, popes took the advice of its doctors on important
ecclesiastical matters, and its students possessed even greater personal
immunities than their fellows of other colleges. Then, if we are to take
the personal representatives of this wonderful university into account,
what a forest of illustrious names starts up before our bewildered vision!
In the XIth century, quite at the latter end, we are introduced to the
gifted Abelard, who during the first half of the XIIth century gathered
together all the stormy elements of the age, and centred upon himself the
attention of the intellectual world. “He appears to have possessed,” says
Prior Vaughan, “the special gift of rendering articulate the cravings of
the age in which he lived.... One day he took into his hands Ezechiel the
Prophet, and boasted that next morning he would deliver a lecture on the
Prophecy. With bitter irony some of his companions implored him to take a
_little_ longer time to prepare; he replied with disdain, ‘My road is not
the road of custom, but the road of genius.’ He was true to his word, and
mockery was speedily turned to amazement when his companions, overcome
with his eloquence, followed him verse after verse as he unfolded the
hidden sense of the obscurest of prophecies, with a facility of diction
and clearness of exposition and a readiness of resource which subdued the
mind and captivated the imagination.” Success was his idol, pride his
natural temper. He thought no question above his understanding, no truth
beyond his apprehension; he threw down the glove in the face of a system
more for the sake of routing its exponent than of impugning its truth, and
when all eyes were upon him, and the populace of Paris rushed madly out on
its door‐steps and house‐tops to cheer him as he passed, his end was won
and his dearest wish fulfilled. One by one all his opponents were
silenced; from school to school he rose, till at last the chair of Notre
Dame was his; his name eclipsed that of all the masters of Paris, and
drove from men’s minds even the fame of the doctors of the church.... And
then what was the climax? It is told in three words—Héloïse, Soissons, and
Sens. True, there was a long interval between the two misfortunes
represented by the first two names, and that galling one which at last
proved his salvation at Sens, and during the interval his fame revived,
and again at Paris, though at S. Geneviève and no longer at Notre Dame,
his _prestige_ broke down all prejudice and his victorious career began
afresh. Then see the last drama of his stormy, eventful life. He meets S.
Bernard at Sens before a court of bishops, monks, and princes, his own
disciples crowding triumphantly around him, a huge concourse of people
heaving before him, he “the spokesman of thousands, from whose midst he
would, as it were, advance and proclaim the creed of human reason.”(86)
Opposed to him stands one whose cheeks are furrowed with tears, and who
has made no preparation to meet the irrefragable dialectician, the prince
of debate, but who, “though in appearance but an emaciated mystic from the
solitude of his cell, would represent as many thousands more who saw
beyond the range of human vision, and judged the highest natural gifts of
God from the elevation of a life of faith.”(87) History gives us the
thrilling _denouement_ in startlingly simple form. When summoned to
defend, deny, or explain the heretical propositions drawn from his
brilliant works, Abelard turns in sudden contempt from the august
assembly, and answers thus: “I appeal to the Sovereign Pontiff.” But all
felt that this was defeat, the blow had been struck, the heresy was dead.
And the heretic? Let many who have tried to‐day to walk in the dizzy path
his footsteps have marked out, strive rather to imitate the end of his
life; let them follow him to the solitary Benedictine Abbey where his
gentle friend Peter the Venerable led him like a little child, and where
his earnest, passionate nature, that could do nothing by halves, soon
transformed him into a saint. And let the world which knows him chiefly
through his sin and early shame fix its eyes upon him as one who, having
abdicated honors greater than those of the greatest throne, having
sorrowed with more than David’s sorrow, and taught with more than
Solomon’s wisdom, at last found peace and justification in a narrow cell
and in his daily avocations of instructing a small and obscure community
on “divine humility and the nothingness of human things.”(88) Among the
other great names that stand out in the tumult of Paris as stars of
learning and holiness are William of Champeaux, Abelard’s chief adversary,
and the founder of that saintly school of S. Victor which gathered in one
the spirit of the old cloisters with that of the new scholastic teachers,
and led the way through its famous doctor‐saints, Hugh and Richard, to the
final welding together of the new form of theology, the incomparable
_Summa_ of S. Thomas. Then, too, we have the preacher Fulk of Neuilly, who
became a scholar at a ripe age, and soon surpassed the young students
whose aim was display rather than knowledge—the man who preached the fifth
crusade at the tournament of Count Thibault de Champagne,(89) and was
followed by such crowds that, to rid himself of them and their
inconvenient homage (shown by cutting pieces out of his habit), he called
out, “My habit is not blessed, but I will bless the cloak of yonder man,
and you can take what you please.”(90) John of St. Quentin, also, a famous
doctor, who, preaching on holy poverty and the vanity of all learning, all
riches, and all honors, suddenly stops, descends the pulpit‐stairs, kneels
at the feet of the astonished prior of the Dominicans, and will not rise
before the latter has thrown around him his own black cloak and enrolled
him in the army of that holy poverty he had just praised with so much
zeal. Then Albert the Great, whose followers were so numerous that he had
to leave the schools and speak in the open air, so that the square where
he delivered his lectures was called _Place du maître Albert_, which name
later on became corrupted into the form it still bears, Place Maubert.
Albert brings before us the school of Cologne, inferior of course to the
mighty university, but yet a centre, at least for Germany. There S. Thomas
of Aquin first studied, and now and then astonished his undiscerning
companions by the “bellowings of the great dumb Sicilian ox,” until he was
finally sent to Paris, the scene of his matchless and altogether spiritual
triumph. In him, the heir of the old Benedictine school of _quies_,
sanctity worked that marvellous union of the old spirit and the new which
ended by harmonizing the truths of the church with the clamoring
aspirations of a new and venturesome age. But, inseparably connected
though he be with the crisis of the XIIIth century, when passion was at
its hottest, and the intoxication of world‐wide success made Paris reel
like a drunken man, we feel nothing but peace in the life of the Angel of
the Schools, the greatest scholar of the European university. A divine
calm seems to curtain off his soul from the contentions in which his mind
and body are engaged; his lessons seem rather to be given from a holy of
holies than from a professor’s chair, and, while we see in him the
greatest thinker of the age, we feel that above all he was its greatest
saint. One might say of him, with all due reverence, that he was the only
man of that turbulent and questioning day who had looked upon the face of
God and lived. Beside him was his gentle friend, Bonaventure, of whom,
though a professor also, we hear but little intellectually, but whom the
highest authority on earth has sealed as a doctor of the church, a burning
seraph of love.
And here we must leave that greatest of centres, Paris, whose prosperity
at that time seemed so unalterable, and take a glance, necessarily a
cursory one, at the other continental universities. Bologna undoubtedly
claims the first place. It was called the “Mater Studiorum” of Italy, and
vied more successfully with Paris than any other of the universities. The
great Countess Mathilda of Tuscany, the liberal patroness of learning and
protectress of the Holy See, was connected with its foundation, and by the
end of the XIth century it was celebrated as the first law school in
Europe.(91) This characteristic it always retained, while in the XIIth
century canon law began to be equally studied there. Connected with
Bologna was the publication of the _Decretals of Gratian_, a summary of
the decrees of the popes, of a hundred and fifty councils, of selections
from various royal codes, and of extracts from the fathers and other
ecclesiastical writers.(92) The few errors in this gigantic work have
often served as a peg whereon to hang many calumnies against the church;
but the whole scope of the undertaking, so bold in its conception, so
lucid in its exposition—has it ever been sufficiently examined outside the
church? And will the world be astonished to know who was its compiler and
who spent twenty‐five years of his hidden life upon it? A simple
Benedictine monk of Chiusi, of whom nothing is known but his immortal
work.
M. de Maistre has cleverly said, “_Grattez le Russe et vous trouverez le
Tartare_,” and we might adapt the pithy saying thus: Raise but the
thinnest crust of what we call civilization, and you will find beneath the
solid structure, the immovable foundation of monasticism.
In 1138, Frederic Barbarossa consulted the Bolognese doctors as to the
framing of a code of laws for his Germano‐Italian Empire, and in return
for their help gave them the _Habita_, or series of protective ordinances
which raised the Italian university almost to the level of that of Paris.
Alexander III., formerly a theologian in its schools, also favored
Bologna, and a tide of scholars from all parts of Europe began to flow
towards the Apennines. Among these we find S. Thomas of Canterbury, who,
as we know, made such brave use of the legal science he acquired there.
Bologna was the second centre of the Dominican Order, the teaching order
of the church—the instrument raised up in the warm‐hearted but intemperate
middle ages to guide aright those lava‐streams of misdirected enthusiasm
which at one time threatened to rationalize or fanaticize the intellectual
world. It is at Bologna that we read of the miracles of the gentle and
bright S. Dominic, and of the angels that constantly followed him to do
the bidding of him who through opposition and misunderstanding was always
doing God’s bidding. Here, too, S. Thomas of Aquin came once, and, being
unknown to the procurator of the convent, was required to carry the basket
while his companion collected the friars’ daily pittance through the
streets. A true monk, he gladly obeyed, and was pained and confused when
some of the passers‐by told the procurator of the mistake he had made.
Italy was fruitful in universities, for, to mention only prominent names,
there were Padua, Pavia, Salerno, and Naples, besides Rome, where the
tradition of learning, especially sacred learning, was never quite broken.
Padua was an offshoot from Bologna, and became famous in the XIIIth
century for its devotion to classic literature and the liberal arts. At
the time of the “Renaissance” it had become, however, a notorious focus of
atheism.(93) Salerno was a school of medicine, and Pavia a brilliant and
wicked resort of every intellectual aberration. We remember reading an
excellent description of its vices, its dangers, and its attractions, in
the life of a Venetian, a poet and child of genius, the friend and
librettist of Mozart, whose name we cannot, however, recall. Even in those
days of moral decadence the picture seemed appalling, and at Pavia as at
Paris, as at Oxford in old times and our own day, there appears to have
been no lack of brainless young profligates whose college career was a
disgrace to their early education, and must have been a remorse prepared
for their more sober conscience in later life.
The University of Naples, as we learn from Prior Vaughan, was the creation
of Frederick II., the Sybarite emperor whose splendid barbaric physique
knew how to make all Eastern luxury of body and Greek luxury of mind
minister to his sovereign pleasure. The description of his harem, his
kiosks, his palaces, his gardens at Naples, reads like a page from the
_Arabian Nights_, and rival the impossible tales that are told of Bagdad’s
lavish magnificence under the caliphs. Utterly pagan the university seems
to have avowedly been. It had no being of its own, but was a royal
appurtenance, as the other institutions of Frederick II. Learning was a
luxury, and it behooved the emperor to have all luxuries at his feet.
Students from all parts of his kingdom of Naples were compelled by
arbitrary enactments to study nowhere else but in the exotic university;
the professors were all paid from the public treasury, and among them,
with characteristic pride and contemptuous eclecticism, the imperial
patron had canonists, theologians, and monks. Astrology and the wildest
theories were broached, Michael Scott, the pretended seer and alchemist,
was conspicuous for his brilliant talents and pagan tendencies, the
existence of the soul was freely questioned, materialism openly professed,
and many _literati_ ostentatiously paraded their preference of the
philosophy of Epicurus or Pythagoras over the religion of Jesus Christ. A
secret society is also alluded to in a popular poem of the day, its
express purpose being the _expunging of Christianity and the introducing
of the exploded obscenities of paganism in its place_.(94) This reminds us
of Disraeli’s _Lothair_, in which such prominence is given to a secret
society called _Madre Natura_, framed for the identical purpose we have
just mentioned. It is said to have existed ever since the time of Julian
the Apostate, and always with the same intent. The materialistic theories
of the artist Phœbus concerning the absolute necessity of “beauty worship”
and the superiority of the Aryan over the Semitic races (or principles)
are only modern echoes of this pestilential teaching of the deification of
materialism. Whether Disraeli, descended from that high race whose history
and laws are a standing protest, and have been for ages a bulwark, against
the “concupiscence of the flesh,” believes in these theories, is more than
we can tell; he has at any rate clothed them with suspiciously gratuitous
beauty in his recent work, and has, moreover, tried to fix upon the Anglo‐
Saxon race the stigma of practically adopting them as her own. The
monastic history of the countrymen of Bede and Wilfrid tells a very
different tale, and nevertheless does not omit to mention the love of
sport and athletic exercises peculiar to Englishmen. How far, however, is
the character of the young race‐riders(95) and fox‐hunters(96) of monastic
England from that of the voluptuous Oriental and sensuous Greek!
Germany, Poland, Bohemia, Spain, and Flanders likewise had their own
centres, more local, however, than those of Italy, all of them under the
new form of universities, and all more or less emancipated from the
strictly monastic spirit of the older centres of learning. Vienna, Erfurt,
Heidelberg, and Wittenberg were the foremost in Germany; Cracow was
founded by a saint, the holy Hedwige of Poland; and Prague, which gave so
much trouble and anxiety to the church in former times and hardly less in
our own day, owes much of its glory to the holy women of the middle ages.
Thus Dombrowka, a princess of Bohemia, married to a Polish chief, and
Hedwige, the great queen and patron saint of Poland, established colleges
there and endowed them liberally. Salamanca had a wider reputation, and
fell heir to all the brilliant learning of the Arabian and Jewish schools,
whose influence on Christian thought in the days of S. Thomas of Aquin had
been so dangerous. All the scientific knowledge of the East thus became
its natural property, while the intensely Catholic mind of the Spaniards
held them aloof from what was poisonous in Eastern philosophy. And here
let us stop to remark that Spain, ranked as it has always been among the
Latin nations, nevertheless owes its first Christian traditions, and, no
doubt, also its imperial notions of universal sway, to the vigorous Gothic
races, mingled with the Frankish and Burgundian blood brought in by
intermarriage with the Merovingian princes of France. There is something
in Spanish history, in Spanish perseverance, we might almost say in
Spanish toughness, that reveals the Visigoth, the man of the northern
forests, with his indomitable energy and insatiable thirst for the sole
rule of land and sea. Alcala, the creation of Cardinal Ximenes, and
Coimbra, besides twenty‐four colleges dignified by the name of
universities, make up the quota contributed by Spain to the intellectual
progress of Europe. We wish we had more space and time to devote to them.
Flanders, the home of art in the middle ages, and the model of dignified
and successful civic government, was not fated to be behind‐hand in the
world of letters. As early as 1360, a gay scholar of the University of
Paris, and a native of Deventer, returned to his birthplace with the halo
of success and worldly fame about him. After a few years of vain display,
Gerard of Deventer suddenly, through the agency of a holy companion,
became an altered and converted man. Having fitted himself for a spiritual
career by a three years’ seclusion among the Carthusians, he returned to
his native city and instituted a congregation of Canons Regular, whom he
entrusted to a disciple of his, a former canon of Utrecht. He himself died
soon after, but under his successor, Florentius, the school grew in
importance and renown till, in 1393, a scholar entered its cloisters, by
name Thomas Hammerlein, now known to the Christian world as Thomas à
Kempis, the reputed author of _The Following of Christ_. His life is too
entirely spiritual to be mentioned here, but of the institute in which he
was reared the same rule will not apply. Although the aim of the Deventer
school was to revive the old monastic ideal, and although its spirit seems
forcibly to remind us of Bede and Rabanus of Fulda, still it gave forth
scholars like the “Illustrious Nicholas of Cusa, the son of a poor
fisherman, who won his doctor’s cap at Padua, and became renowned for his
Greek, Hebrew, and mathematical learning.”(97) It is also told of the
Deventer brethren that they “displayed extraordinary zeal in promoting the
new art of printing, and that one of the earliest Flemish presses was set
up in their college.”(98) The famous Erasmus passed his first years of
study at Deventer in the latter end of the XVth century, and drew from his
masters the prediction that he would “one day be the light of his age.”
The later Flemish University of Louvain, founded in 1425, by Duke John of
Brabant, was eminently an orthodox institution, and became, in the XVIth
century, “one of the soundest nurseries of the faith,” as well as the
chief seat of learning in Flanders. Even Erasmus owned in his letters that
the schools of Louvain were considered second only to those of Paris.
Here, as usual, the Dominicans were foremost in the breach, and enjoyed
great privileges, while their influence made itself powerfully felt
throughout the university. S. Thomas of Aquin was, of course, the
recognized authority followed by the whole university in matters of
theology.
Ireland was not so fortunate during the scholastic as during the monastic
era of intellectual development, but what benefits she had she owed them
again to the same institution which had educated her sons in olden days.
The first University of Dublin was founded in 1320, and had for its first
master a Dominican friar. It soon decayed for want of funds and in
consequence of the troubles of the times, but the Dominicans would not let
learning perish, if they could help it. In 1428, a century later, they
opened a free “high school” on Usher’s Island, where they taught
_gratuitously_ all branches of knowledge, from grammar to theology, and
admitted all students, lay and ecclesiastical. Between this college and
their convent in the city they built a stone bridge, the only erection of
such solid material known in Dublin for two centuries afterwards, and,
says Mr. Wyse in a speech on Education delivered at Cork in 1844, “it is
an interesting fact in the history of education in Ireland that the only
stone bridge in the capital of the kingdom was built by one of the
monastic orders as a communication between a convent and its college, a
thoroughfare thrown across a dangerous river for teachers and scholars to
frequent halls of learning where the whole range of the sciences of the
day was taught gratuitously.”(99) A few years later, the four Mendicant
orders, headed by the Dominicans, obtained from Pope Sixtus IV. a brief
constituting their Dublin schools one university, with the same
ecclesiastical rights and privileges enjoyed by the great University of
Oxford, and this body corporate is mentioned as in active exercise of its
powers just before the “Reformation.” It showed the general destruction
brought by the apostasy of England on all monastic bodies, but such as it
was it was the church’s creation, and a fitting successor to those centres
of rare learning, the Columbanian monasteries of the VIIth and VIIIth
centuries.
The Scotch universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen have been
purposely left out, as we have no records of them at hand; of the latter,
the remains of which we happened to visit some years ago, it will suffice
to say that it possesses a library, the germs of which are due to Catholic
collectors, and still has some very fine specimens of illuminated
manuscripts. The wood carvings of the choir stalls and screen, of Flemish
workmanship, are very beautiful, and the collegiate chapel, still
existing, bears marks of the harmony and symmetry natural to the grand
worship it once typified.
We have left Oxford to the last, since its history is perhaps almost
unique. No university of its day can match it; its vitality has outlasted
the “Reformation” itself, and its spirit and statutes remain to this
moment as obstinately Catholic as in the days of Bacon and Duns Scotus.
True, infidelity has not respected it, but no more did it respect the
University of Paris in the XIIIth century, and far more vigorous than its
great mediæval rival, Oxford still epitomizes the genius of a nation,
while Paris has lost every vestige of its former academical sway. Its
beginnings are lost in the ages of fable, for tradition asserts that long
before Alfred there were schools and disputations there. The schools of
Osney Abbey, and the Benedictine school in connection with Winchcomb
Abbey, are among the earliest foundations, but as yet (in 1175) there were
no buildings of any architectural pretensions. About that time a great
fire destroyed the greater part of the city, and for a long while very
little order prevailed among its motley inhabitants. Robert Pulleyn, an
English scholar from Paris, who had set up a school in 1133 and in 1142,
went to Rome, was made cardinal there, and obtained many ecclesiastical
privileges for the Oxford scholars. Law already began to be studied in
this century, but a historian of the time complains bitterly that “purity
of speech had decayed, philosophy was neglected, and nothing but Parisian
quirks prevailed. Had the monastic schools retained their ascendency,” he
says, “polite letters would never have fallen into such neglect.”(100) In
the XIIIth century there were 30,000 students at Oxford, though many among
them were “a set of varlets who pretended to be scholars,” and passed
their time in thieving and villany. The brawls of these said “varlets”
were to the full as violent as those of the Rue Coupegueule, and much of
the same kind of license disgraced Oxford as it did Paris. Nationality
seems to have been a common pretext for fights, and S. George’s, S.
Patrick’s, and S. David’s days were, instead of peaceful festivals, days
of bloodshed and plunder. At last every demonstration on these days had to
be forbidden under pain of excommunication. “Town and gown” fights too
were frequent, and even _internecine_ battles took place among the
scholars themselves over a false quantity in pronunciation or a disputed
axiom in philosophy. The fare in those days seems to have been scanty;
here for instance is a collegiate _menu_: “At ten of the clock they go to
dinner, whereat they be content with a penny piece of beef among four,
having a few pottage made of the broth of the said beef, with salt and
oatmeal and nothing else.” When they went to bed, “they were fain to run
up and down half an hour to get a heat on their feet,” and what the _beds_
were may be surmised from the fact of the students lodging where they
could, generally in lofts over the burghers’ shops, as at Paris.
In the earlier part of the XIIIth century Cambridge was founded, and Peter
of Blois, the continuator of Ingulphus, tells us that from this “little
fountain (the first lectures given successively in the same barn, on
various subjects, by three or four monks of Croyland) of Cottenham, the
abbot’s manor near Cambridge, which has swelled to a great river, we now
behold the whole city of God made glad, and teachers issuing from
Cambridge, after the likeness of the Holy Paradise.” Cambridge seems to
have cultivated the Anglo‐Saxon tongue, as Tavistock also did, a monastic
school where the language was regularly taught “to assist the monks in
deciphering their own ancient charters.”
“Old Oxford” was not the imposing pile of ecclesiastical buildings its
later representative is now. Osney and S. Frideswide stood like castles in
its surrounding meadows, but the main body of the university consisted in
straw‐thatched houses and timber schools. There were pilgrimage wells
where, on Rogation Days, various blessings were invoked on the fruits of
the earth, and these were called by our forefathers “Gospel places.” It
was a sort of religious “Maying,” the students carrying poles adorned with
flowers and singing the _Benedicite_. The streets bore singular
names—“School Street,” “Logic Lane,” “Street of the Seven Deadly Sins.”
Here is the “Schedesyerde,” where abode the sellers of parchment, the
_schedes_ or sheets of which gave their name to the locality. The schools
can be distinguished by pithy inscriptions over dingy‐looking doors—_Ama
scientiam_, _Impostu ras fuge_, _Litteras disce_—but you will look in vain
for public schools or collegiate piles. In these humble schools many great
scholars were reared: S. Edmund of Canterbury, who, for instance, unless
he chanced to spend it in relieving the distress of some poor scholar or
little orphan child, left the money his pupils paid him lying loose on the
window‐sill, where he would strew it with ashes, saying, “Ashes to ashes,
dust to dust”; or, again, S. Richard, Edmund’s friend, and afterwards his
chancellor at Canterbury, who while at Oxford was so poor that he could
seldom allow himself the luxury of _mutton_, then reckoned as ordinary
scholar’s fare, and who lodged with two companions, of whom we hear the
Parisian tale of the single gown worn alternately at lecture by each,
while the others remained at home; Robert Grossetêle, the Franciscan, a
universal genius and a most holy man, a zealous lover of natural science,
and so well versed in the Scriptures that one of his modern biographers
has candidly admitted that his “wonderful knowledge of them might probably
be worth remark in our day, though in its own _not more than was possessed
by all theological students_”; Roger Bacon, the greatest natural
philosopher who appeared in England before the time of Newton; and
Alexander of Hales, “the Irrefragable Doctor,” who also taught in the
Franciscan schools of Paris—were among prominent Oxford scholars of the
middle ages. Then the marvellous Duns Scotus a scholar of Merton and
afterwards a Franciscan monk, an Abelard in brilliancy, versatility, and
keenness of argument, who, disputing one day before the doctors of the
Sorbonne (to whom he was personally unknown), was interrupted by one of
them with this exclamation, “This must be either an angel from heaven, a
demon from hell, or Duns Scotus from Oxford!” A similar legend is told of
Alanus de Insulis, a Paris doctor, who, having left the schools and become
a lay‐brother at Citeaux, accompanied the abbot to Rome to take charge of
his horses. Being allowed to sit at the abbot’s feet during the council
against the Albigenses, and finding the scales inclining in favor of the
heretics, he rose, and, begging the abbot’s blessing, suddenly poured
forth his irresistible arguments and defeated the sophistry of the
Albigenses, who, baffled and furious, exclaimed, “This must be either the
devil himself or Alanus.”
Thomas of Cantilupe, the son of the Earl of Pembroke, was another
representative Oxford scholar. Of noble birth and great intellectual
powers, he rose to the highest dignities of the realm, and, though Oxford
was still a scene of violent disorders, he preserved his purity and
calmness through all its dangers. The collegiate system soon came to put
an end to this state of things, and Merton was the first college, properly
so‐called, where moral order and architectural proportions received some
attention. The aspect of the university now rapidly changed. Lollardism
seriously affected the great seat of learning, and at first its doctrines
were much upheld by the jealous secular teachers, who saw in his calumnies
a weapon to be used against the saintly and successful friars; the tone of
the university declined, and literature was wofully neglected for a time.
However, as Lollardism faded from men’s minds, a revival of letters took
place, and in the XVIth century Erasmus, who was very kindly entertained
and welcomed at Oxford, pays the following tribute to its literary
proficiency: “I have found here classic erudition, and that not trite and
shallow, but profound and accurate, both Latin and Greek, so that I no
longer sigh for Italy.”(101) And again: “I think, from my very soul, there
is no country where abound so many men skilled in every kind of learning
as there are here”(102) (in England). His own Greek learning was chiefly
acquired at Oxford, for, previous to his coming hither, his knowledge of
that language was very superficial.
We have lingered over the history of mediæval Oxford longer than our
readers may be inclined to think reasonable, and we must confess that our
interest in the only institution of the middle ages which stands yet
unimpaired in glory, influence, and renown, has led us beyond the limits
we had honestly proposed to ourselves.
Little now remains to be said. We have come upon the uninviting times when
reason broke away from faith and carried desolation in its headlong course
through the field of the human intellect. A literary and philosophical
madness settled on men’s minds, and Babel seemed to have come again,
except where the calm round of old studies was pursued with the old spirit
of _quies_ within the sphere of the ancient faith. All beyond was
confusion and hurry; every one set up as a teacher before having been a
disciple; each man dictated and no one listened; each would be the
originator of a system which his first follower was sure to alter, with
the perspective of having _his_ alterations remodelled again by his first
pupil, and so on _ad libitum_, till systems came to be called by men’s
names, and to vary in meaning according to the particular temper of each
one that undertook to explain them.
With all its turbulence and occasional excesses contrasted with the
cynical refinement and polite indifferentism of to‐day, was not the older
system the better one?
Fleurange.
By Mrs. Craven, Author Of “A Sister’s Story.”
Translated From The French, With Permission.
Part Third.
The Banks Of The Neckar.
XXXIX.
About a fortnight after Christmas, Clement was returning to his lodgings a
little sooner than usual, when he met Wilhelm Müller at the door.
“Ah! you have come at the right moment,” said he. “Let me tell you why. A
courier from St. Petersburg arrived this morning with important news,
which will have a serious effect on our business.”
“Are you referring to the death of the Emperor Alexander? I knew that
yesterday. What else is there?”
“Quite another affair, indeed. Constantine has been set aside, and the
Grand Duke Nicholas is to succeed his brother.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. But that is not all; we knew that yesterday. The news the courier
brought this morning is more serious. It seems a conspiracy has broken
out—”
“A conspiracy! Where?”
“At St. Petersburg. The courier left the twenty‐fourth of December. They
were then fighting on the square before the palace, and the emperor was in
the midst of the fight.”
“Constantine?”
“No, indeed; his brother.”
“The Grand Duke Nicholas? Is he at the head of the plot?”
“No; on the contrary, it seems to be Constantine, and yet it is not he
either.—In fact, no one knows anything about it, the report is so very
confused. But come and help me, if you will. We have despatches to send in
every direction. We shall certainly have further news this evening. I dare
say Waltheim (the chief member of the firm of which they were the
principal clerks) is this very moment beside himself.”
The two friends set off together. They had hardly gone two steps before
they came upon quite a group standing around the doorway of a fine house
almost opposite Müller’s. It was the residence of the Russian legation.
They were told in reply to their questions that a courier had just arrived
on horseback, covered with dust and half‐dead with fatigue. He left St.
Petersburg on the twenty‐sixth, and had been ten days on the way.
“Does anybody know what news he has brought?” asked Müller of the man who
gave him this information.
“Nothing definite, of course. And we shall learn nothing there,” pointing
to the diplomatic residence, “except what they please to tell us.”
Müller and Clement stopped no longer.
“The twenty‐sixth!” said Müller. “I should like to know the contents of
the despatch.”
“The other legations must soon have news of as late a date, to say nothing
of our own correspondent, who will give us the earliest information
possible. But, now I think of it, one of the attachés of the French
legation is somewhat of a friend of mine; what if I go and ask him for the
details?”
Müller thought this a capital idea, and Clement left him at once to go to
the residence of the French legation. Müller kept on to his office at
Waltheim’s, where he would wait for him.
The young attaché referred to was the Vicomte de Noisy. He had been
present at one of the public assemblies in which Clement distinguished
himself as a speaker, and conceived a fancy for him from that time. They
frequently made excursions together on foot or horseback, and the vicomte
sought every opportunity of meeting Clement with an eagerness the latter
sometimes reproached himself for not responding to with more warmth. He
relied, therefore, on a cordial reception, and, in fact, as soon as he was
announced, he was taken into a small room next the _chancellerie_, where
M. de Noisy passed the greater part of his time. He found him seated at a
table covered with papers. Before Clement had time to utter a word, the
young attaché exclaimed, without leaving his place:
“Have you come with news? or to get some?”
“What a question! You know well our commercial agents are never able to
rival the speed of the bearers of political despatches.”
“And yet it happens sometimes.”
“But not this time, unfortunately. The Russian legation has just received
a despatch from St. Petersburg dated the twenty‐sixth.”
“So we have just heard. It came in an incredibly short time. I fear ours
will not do as well. And yet the French embassy at St. Petersburg is not
often caught napping.”
Some one rang furiously. A hussar opened the door and made a sign to the
vicomte, who sprang forward.
“The courier!” he exclaimed. “Bravo! Vive l’ambassadeur! To be only one
hour behind the Russian courier is wonderful! Here, _mon cher_, are some
cigars. Take the arm‐chair and wait till I return. I shall soon be back,
and will bring you the news.”
Clement threw himself into the arm‐chair, lit a cigar, took up a
newspaper, and patiently awaited the young attaché’s return beside a good
fire, which, without prejudice to the large stove at one end of the room,
did not give out too much heat at this rigorous season. At the end of an
hour, however, he was beginning to feel he was losing his time, when the
Vicomte de Noisy reappeared with his hands full of letters, which he threw
on the table.
“There,” he said. “To decipher and read these is not all: they are to be
answered, and I do not know when I shall be able to leave the
_chancellerie_.”
“Would it be indiscreet for you to tell me the nature of your despatches?”
“By no means. We have good news. It is all over. The struggle was severe,
but short. The new emperor conducted admirably. The regiments in revolt
have returned to their duty, all the leaders of the insurrection have been
taken. The only serious thing is that among the latter are several
belonging to the _noblesse_, and a great many gentlemen of social standing
are compromised. This interests me more than anything else, because I was
connected with the embassy at St. Petersburg before I came here, and know
them all.”
“Have they given any of the leader’s names?”
“Oh! yes: Troubetzkoï, Rilieff, Mouravieff, Wolkonsky, and a host of
others. But among all these names there is one I am amazed at finding. Who
would ever have thought Walden would be drawn into such a row?”
Clement’s heart gave a leap. “Walden, did you say? What, the Count George
de Walden?”
“The very person. Do you happen to know him?”
“Yes, I know him.”
“Well, can you conceive of a man of his ability and distinction being
mixed up in such a plot? It was an atrocious conspiracy to assassinate the
emperor, and a foolish attempt to establish a republic. Constantine’s name
was only made use of as a pretext.”
“And is Count George seriously compromised?” asked Clement.
“He could not be more so. He is classed among those who have no other
alternative but Siberia or death.—But excuse me, Dornthal, I am forced to
leave you. I dare say we shall have to work all night. Here,” said he,
searching in his pocket, “here is a letter I have received from St.
Petersburg by the courier. You may find in it some additional details that
will interest you.”
The attaché hurried off through the door of the _chancellerie_, and
Clement left the house. It was not till he found himself in the street
that he began to recover from the stupefaction caused by the news he had
just heard. He turned mechanically towards the office, where Müller was
waiting for him, and gave him an account of what he had just learned, with
the exception of the one fact of this political event of infinitely more
importance to him than all the rest. He remained some time at his post,
making an almost superhuman effort to control his bewildered mind and keep
it on the work he had to do. At last he took leave of Müller and went back
to his lodgings. Without stopping, as he usually did, to see the family,
he went directly up‐stairs, and shut himself up in his room. He wished to
be alone, that he might decide at leisure upon the course to pursue in
consequence of so unforeseen and serious an event.
Gabrielle!—He thought of her—and her alone. How would she support such a
blow? How was she to be informed of it?
He remained a long time buried in these reflections without thinking of
the letter in his pocket. At length he bethought himself of it, and with
the hope of getting some light began to read it attentively. After some
preamble, which he ran over hastily, he came to what follows:
“This conspiracy, which broke out with the suddenness of a thunderbolt,
and appeared to be only the spontaneous result of the prevailing doubt at
the beginning of the present reign as to which of the two brothers was the
real emperor, was really arranged a long time before, it seems. It is said
to have had deep and extensive ramifications, and they who fomented and
directed the plot only availed themselves of the circumstances that
followed Alexander’s death as a pretext. It is said their plans were to
have been executed in the spring, if the deceased emperor’s life had been
prolonged till that time. But what seems equally certain is that a great
number of those who are now seriously compromised had only a very
imperfect idea of what was going on. Among these, I cannot doubt, is our
poor friend George de Walden. You know he has always been dreaming of
possible or impossible reforms. As evil would have it, he met in Italy
during the past year a certain man named Lasko—very intelligent and
capable, but an intriguer ready for anything, and mixed up with all the
plots that have agitated Italy and Germany the past ten years. Imprisoned,
then released, Heaven knows how, assuming a thousand names, in a word, one
of those evil‐minded persons who are docile instruments in the hands of
the real leaders of the great plots of the day, George was accidentally
brought in contact with him, and once, only once, was persuaded to attend
one of their meetings through mere curiosity. There by a still more
unfortunate accident he happened to meet one of the leaders just referred
to. The latter at once saw the influence to be derived from George’s name,
position, enthusiasm, and even his ignorance of the extent of their
schemes. He persuaded him to repair to St. Petersburg at a given time, and
hold himself in readiness to second a combined movement, secretly
arranged, but too extensive to be suppressed. This movement, he said, was
to bring about the realization of some of George’s theories. I had these
details from the Marquis Adelardi, the genial Milanais who spent a winter
here three years ago, and is, you know, George’s intimate friend. The
marquis, uneasy about the count’s sudden departure from Florence, and
still more so when three months passed away without his return, came here
to join him. He arrived only three days before the fatal twenty‐fourth. It
appears George was certainly on the square that day and in the foremost
ranks of the insurgents. Adelardi declares he went there sincerely
convinced, by the representations of those who were desirous of leading
him on, that Constantine’s renunciation was a pretence, and his rights
ought to be maintained in the interests of their projects, which that
prince, they declared, was ready to second. However that may be, it is
only too certain that close beside him on the square was this same Lasko,
who was killed at the very moment of firing at the Grand Duke Michael. One
witness—and but one, for it requires some courage to testify in favor of a
man in his situation—has stated it was George who turned his deadly weapon
aside (thus saving the grand duke’s life) before the aide‐de‐camp of the
latter shot the assassin. But there is so strong a feeling against him,
both at court and in the city, that no one dares insist how much this
circumstance is in his favor. He himself obstinately refuses to take
advantage of it, and his haughty attitude since his arrest is by no means
favorable to his interests. What makes his case more complicated, his
secretary was an Italian most intimately connected with Lasko. This man,
Fabiano Dini by name, was also on the square the day of the insurrection,
and was severely wounded.”
Here Clement stopped. These last lines increased his agitation to the
highest pitch. All their vague fears were thus confirmed—his cousin’s
fatal destiny pursued him to the end! Unfortunate himself and a source of
misfortune to others! Yes, that was Felix: capable of realizing his
disgrace, but not of repairing it; seeking the post of danger and the
opportunity of displaying his courage, reluctant to leave the obscurity in
which he had hidden his life, he became one of those secret agitators who
were then, perhaps even more than now, silently undermining Europe. He
soon became their agent, and his talents, contempt of danger and death,
made him a useful one. In this way he speedily came to an end that was
inevitable.
Clement paced up and down his chamber a long time unable to calm his
confused mind, but, after much reflection, came to the conclusion George’s
trial would probably be prolonged, and might terminate less tragically
than was to be feared from this letter. At all events, he ought to spare
Fleurange all the anguish of this uncertainty as long as possible. This
would not be difficult at Rosenheim, for the professor was not allowed to
read the newspapers, and therefore none were left about the rooms occupied
by the family. Hansfelt alone read them and communicated the news. Clement
hastened to write his sister Hilda a few lines, confiding to her all he
had just learned, and recommending her, as well as Hansfelt, to withhold
from Gabrielle all information on the subject. “I shall be at Rosenheim in
a week,” said he at the close, “and we will consult together, dear sister,
about what will then be advisable. Meanwhile, I rely on your prudence and
affection for her.”
Clement and his sister had never discussed the subject now referred to,
but they had long read one another’s thoughts. They were now of the same
mind, and Fleurange would have remained a long time ignorant of what they
wished to conceal from her, had not an unforeseen circumstance overthrown,
a few days after, all the plans laid by their prudence and affection.
XL.
The poor you always have with you. This is our Saviour’s declaration, and
it accords with human experience. We find the poor everywhere, unless we
wilfully turn away our eyes with culpable indifference. Mademoiselle
Josephine, we are well aware, was not of the number of these blind or
insensible persons. She therefore found quite as much work on her hands at
Heidelberg as at Paris, with this difference, which was a keen
mortification—she was unable to hold any communication with the objects of
her bounty, except by gestures rarely expressive enough on either side to
be understood. This forced her to dispense with what had always been the
most pleasant feature of charity—kind words, and sometimes long chats with
the poor on whom she bestowed alms.
“I only wish they understood a little French,” she said. “It seems as if
it might be easy enough for them, whereas it is utterly impossible for me
to learn German.” In a word, not to know French and to understand German
seemed to Mademoiselle Josephine among the mysteries of nature.
Nevertheless, as the poor people persisted in using only their own
language, and resentment must not be carried so far as to refuse aiding
them, mademoiselle was very glad to accept Fleurange as her interpreter
and the agent of her charity. The young girl came every day at the same
hour, either to accompany her or receive her orders and make the daily
round in her stead.
She generally found mademoiselle in her laboratory, that is, in a room on
the ground‐floor, in which the principal piece of furniture was an immense
_armoire_, containing all kinds of things to be distributed among her
actual or anticipated _protégés_. She liked to have a good supply on hand,
and it was seldom a poor person found her without the means of aiding them
at once.
“Here, Gabrielle,” said she one morning, when Fleurange appeared as usual,
basket in hand, to get the charitable supplies for the day. “See,
everything is ready.” And she pointed towards the things on the table,
which, with the large _armoire_ and two chairs, comprised all the
furniture in the room. Everything was indeed arranged in fine order: on
one side were two pairs of stockings and a woollen skirt; on the other, a
covered tureen of broth, a small quantity of sugar, a bottle of wine, some
tobacco, and two or three newspapers. To all these things she added a
small vial, the contents of which required some explanation.
“The stockings and skirt,” said mademoiselle, “are for the mother of the
little girl to whom you carried clothes yesterday. The broth and sugar are
for our poor old woman, as well as this little vial of _eau de mélisse_ of
my own preparation, and not the worse for that. And the wine and tobacco
are for the invalid soldier, the old carpenter whom you visited last week.
His daughter succeeded in making me understand yesterday that nothing
would give this poor man more pleasure than to lend him a newspaper
occasionally. You can give him these which I procured for him this
morning. Ah!—apropos, your cousin Clement left two nice cigars for him
which I forgot. While I am gone for them, you can put all these things in
your basket.”
The kind woman left the room to get the cigars. They were up‐stairs, but
she never thought of counting her steps when it was a question of doing a
kind act, however insignificant, for another. Only, she did not ascend the
stairs quite as nimbly as she once did, and on this occasion it took her
about fifteen minutes to go and return.
During this time Fleurange, standing at the table, proceeded to stow away
all the things in her basket, and last of all was about to put in the
newspapers when her eye fell on a paragraph in one of them that gave her a
start. She seized the paper, opened it, and began to read with ardent
curiosity. All at once she uttered a feeble cry, the journal dropped from
her trembling hands, a mist came over her eyes, and, when her old friend
returned, she found her lying on the floor, pale, cold, and senseless.
Fortunately, Mademoiselle Josephine did not lack presence of mind or
experience. She flew to Fleurange, knelt beside her, raised her head, and
supported her in her arms. Then she drew a smelling‐bottle from her pocket
to revive her, and while showing her these attentions she racked her
brains to guess what could have caused one so robust and generally so calm
to faint in this mysterious way. All at once she noticed the newspaper,
which had fallen at the young girl’s feet. “Ah!” she said, “she read
something in that medley, perhaps some bad news; but, merciful heavens!
what could it have been to produce such an effect?—Dear child,” she
continued, looking tenderly at the pale and lovely face resting on her
shoulders, “she said yesterday she never fainted but once in her life, and
that was at our house in Paris two years ago when she was overcome by
weakness and hunger.”
Poor Mademoiselle Josephine! compassion, and the remembrances thus
awakened, doubly affected her, and her eyes were still filled with tears
when Fleurange opened hers with an expression of surprise soon followed by
an indistinct recollection. She rose slowly up, but, before mademoiselle
could aid her, she threw her arms around her old friend’s neck.
“O dear mademoiselle!” she murmured, “did you know it?—did you know it?”
Poor Josephine had never been so embarrassed. To say she was totally
ignorant of the point was to invite a confidence quite unsuitable at such
a moment, and a contrary reply would also have its inconveniences. She
therefore took refuge in an innocent subterfuge.
“Well, well, my poor child, what use is there in speaking of it now? Be
calm, and do not say anything at present. We will talk about it another
time. Be easy,” she added at a venture, “everything will be arranged if
you take what I am going to give you.”
Then aiding Fleurange to rise, and placing her in a chair, she ran for a
glass of water, into which she poured a few drops of _eau de mélisse_—a
genuine panacea in her estimation—which she held to the young girl’s lips.
Fleurange drank it all, and then gave a long sigh.
“What happened to me?” she said.
“Nothing. You were only faint. That is all.”
“That is strange, for I never faint.” And she passed her hand over her
forehead.
“O my God! I remember it all now,” she suddenly exclaimed. “But is it
true? May not this be false—a mere idle tale?”
“Who can tell?” replied mademoiselle vaguely. “That is quite possible.
They say so many things.”
“But tell me all you know.”
“No, no, not now, Gabrielle, not now. You are not able to hear it. Do as I
say, and we will talk about it at another time.”
Fleurange made no reply. A moment after, she rose. “I am well now,” she
said; “I feel revived.”
She gathered up her long hair, which had fallen around her shoulders, took
the journal and put it in her pocket, then put on the little velvet hat
trimmed with fur which she generally wore in winter, and said: “Thanks,
dear mademoiselle, and pardon me. I have quite recovered, but do not feel
equal, however, to the visits you expected me to make to‐day.”
“No, indeed, of course not.”
“I must go home at once.”
“Yes, certainly, I am going with you. You must go to bed. You are
generally pale, but now your cheeks are as red as those curtains,”
pointing to the bright cotton curtains at the window.
“No, no, I am not ill,” said Fleurange, her eyes aflame. “The air will do
me good. Do not feel uneasy. You see my faintness has entirely passed
off.”
As mademoiselle had not the least idea of the cause of this sudden
indisposition, and the young girl really seemed quite recovered, she did
not oppose her wish to go home alone and on foot. The distance was not
far. Fleurange came every day without any escort, she allowed her
therefore to go, merely accompanying her as far as the gate of her little
yard, where they separated, bidding each other good‐by till evening.
XLI.
The thermometer was down to five or six degrees. The little hat Fleurange
wore protected her forehead, but showed the tresses of her thick hair
behind. She drew up her hood when she wished to guard more effectually
against the severity of the weather. But now she did not take this
precaution. She only drew the folds of her thick cloak around her form,
and set off with rapid steps. The keen, frosty air was refreshing to her
burning cheeks and revived her strength, and, with the exception of an
unusual glow in her complexion and in her eyes, there was no trace of her
recent faintness when she reached home. As soon as she entered, without
stopping an instant, she went directly upstairs, and, giving a slight
knock at the door, entered the chamber between her own and Hilda’s, which
Hansfelt had used as a study since his arrival at Rosenheim. When
Fleurange entered, she found him and his young wife together. They started
with surprise at seeing her, and stopped talking, with a certain
embarrassment which did not escape Fleurange.
“I can guess the subject of your conversation,” she said with emotion, but
without hesitation, “and it is what I wish to speak to you about.”
Her cousin looked at her, uncertain what reply she ought to make.
“Hilda,” said Fleurange, “you agreed never to mention Count George’s name
to me till I should speak of him first. Well, I have now come to speak of
him, and beg you both to tell me all you know about him. Here,” continued
she, throwing the newspaper she had brought on the table, “read that, and
then tell me all I am still ignorant of.”
What could they say? She stood before them so calm, resolute, and decided,
that any reticence seemed useless. Hansfelt ran over the journal. He saw
the article Fleurange referred to did not contain any details, but only a
list of the accused, followed by some very clear comments on the fate
which awaited them. Count George’s name figured among the first on the
list.
“What is he accused of? What is the crime in question?” asked she in a
decided tone.
Hansfelt still hesitated. But his wife knew better than he the character
of her who was questioning them. “Karl,” said she, “you can tell her, and
ought to do so. We must conceal nothing more from Gabrielle.”
“And why have you done so hitherto?” said Fleurange. “Ah! yes, I
understand”—and a slight blush mounted to her forehead—“the secret I
thought so well hidden has been discovered by you all!”
“No, no,” cried Hilda, “only by me—and you know I can conceal nothing from
Karl—by me and Clement.”
“Clement also?” said Fleurange, with a start of surprise and a confusion
which deepened her blush. “But, after all, what difference does it make?”
she continued. “I shall conceal nothing more from any one, and I wish
nothing to be kept from me either. Come, Karl, I assure you earnestly I do
not lack fortitude, and hereafter you must not try to spare me. Surprise
alone overpowered me for an instant. Now I am prepared for the worst, and
ready to hear what you have to tell.”
But in spite of these words, when Hansfelt at last decided, after some
further hesitation, to satisfy her, while he was giving her a
circumstantial account of all Count George had done to forfeit his life,
the color produced by the keen air, her walking so fast, and her
agitation, vanished completely from the young girl’s face, and she became
as pale as death.
“Siberia or death!” she repeated two or three times in a low tone, as if
it were as difficult to understand as to utter such terrible words.
“As to the worst of these two sentences, it is to be hoped he will
escape,” said Hansfelt.
Fleurange shuddered. Was it really of him—_him!_—they were talking in this
way? “But tell me, Karl, is there no other alternative? May he not be
condemned to prison or expatriation? They are also great and fearful
punishments. Why speak only of two sentences, one almost as horrible as
the other?”
Hansfelt shook his head. “His name, his rank, the benefits the government
had conferred on his family, the favors so many times offered him, will
all aggravate his crime in the eyes of his judges. His life, I trust, will
be spared, but—”
“But—the mines, fetters, and fearful rigors of Siberia—do you think he
will be condemned to suffer all these penalties without any alleviation?”
Hansfelt was silent. Hilda pressed Fleurange’s hands and tenderly kissed
her colorless cheeks.
“I have said enough, and too much,” said Hansfelt. “Why will you ask me
such questions, Gabrielle? And why do you tell me to answer her, Hilda?”
“Because I wish to know everything,” said Fleurange, raising her head,
which she had rested a moment on her cousin’s shoulder, and recovering her
firmness of voice. After a moment’s hesitation she continued: “Then
nothing can save him?”
“You wished for the truth without any disguise, Gabrielle, and I have not
concealed it from you. According to all human probability, nothing can
save Count George from the fate that awaits him: that is beyond doubt. But
it sometimes happens in Russia that sudden caprice on the part of the
sovereign arrests the hand of justice. Nevertheless, it would be deceiving
you if I did not add that there is nothing to lead us to hope he will be
such an object of clemency. On the contrary, all the reports agree in
stating that the irritation against him is extreme, and surpasses that
against all the other conspirators.”
Fleurange remained a long time absorbed in thought. “Thank you, Karl,”
said she at length. “You will hereafter tell me all you learn, will you
not?”
After receiving the promise asked for, she turned to leave the chamber.
“One more question,” said she. “My head must be very much confused, or I
should have asked you before in what way his poor mother learned the news,
and how she bears it.”
“Clement heard she was at Florence, as usual at this season, but on
learning the news started at once for St. Petersburg.”
“St. Petersburg! at this time of year! The poor woman will die on the
way.”
“I can tell you nothing more. Clement will be here this evening. He may
have additional news.”
But when Clement arrived that night, Fleurange, prostrated by the anxiety
and excitement of the day, was unable to leave her chamber. Her aunt, who
remained with her, declared she should see no one else till the next day,
and the interview she hoped to have with Clement was deferred. Meanwhile
the latter was steeling himself for the new phase in the trial before him
by listening to all the details of what had occurred. Mademoiselle
Josephine informed them of what had happened to Fleurange at her house,
and in return learned with interest mingled with profound astonishment the
real cause of her fainting. Of all the sufferings in the world, those
caused by love were the most unintelligible to her. If she had been
suddenly informed that her dear Gabrielle had lost her mind, or was going
into a consumption, she would not have been more surprised and disturbed.
Perhaps less so, for the terror mystery lends to distress, and a complete
ignorance of the suitable remedies for such a case, added powerlessness to
anxiety. She, who had so many remedies of all kinds for every occasion,
could absolutely think of nothing suitable for this. How this unknown
person, whose name she had never heard until to‐day, could all at once
become so essential to the happiness of this dear child, who was
surrounded by so much affection from others and had always seemed so
happy, was in her eyes a still greater phenomenon than knowing German. As
for that language, she now resolved to study it, thinking the day might
again arrive when there would be something within her comprehension and
power to do for her. “I will endeavor to acquire it, that I may not lose
an opportunity of profiting by it,” said she. This vague hope consoled her
for her present incompetency, and satisfied, for the time, the devotedness
of her kind heart, now quite out of its latitude.
XLII.
The following morning Fleurange, quite recovered from the physical effects
of her agitation, was up at her usual hour, that is, at daybreak. She put
on her thick cloak, her little fur‐trimmed hat, and started off to church
for the first Mass, which she daily attended at this season. At her
arrival she threw back her hood, and knelt as near the altar as possible.
The church was so dark that each one brought a lantern, a bit of candle,
or some other portable light to read by. These lamps and tapers,
increasing with the number of worshippers, at last diffused sufficient
light throughout the church to enable one to distinguish the people and
objects in it. Fleurange did not bring a candle and needed none, for she
had no prayer‐book, but she was not the less profoundly recollected. Pale
and motionless, her hands clasped, her head raised, her eyes fastened on
the altar, the delicate and regular outline of her face distinctly visible
by a neighboring taper, she resembled a statue of white marble wrapped in
sombre drapery. She prayed with fervor, but without agitation, without
tears, and even without moving her lips. Her whole soul seemed centred in
her eyes. Her look at once expressed the faith that implores and hopes,
submission to God’s will, and courage to fulfil it. It was a prayer that
must prevail, or leave the heart submissive and strengthened.
The Mass ended, all the lights were extinguished one after the other, but
the faint glimmering in the east soon increased to such a degree that,
when Fleurange rose after the church was nearly empty, she recognized
Clement only a few steps off. He followed her to the door, she took the
holy water from his hand, and they went out together.
It was now broad daylight, but the sky was veiled with gray clouds, a
violent wind swept before it the snow that covered the ground, and when
they issued into the street they were met by a perfect whirlwind of
driving snow which Fleurange was scarcely able to withstand. Clement
supported her, then retained her arm, and they walked on for some time
without speaking. He had dreaded this interview in spite of himself, and
now rallied all his strength to listen calmly to what she was about to
say. But, at last, as she remained silent, he spoke first:
“You were ill last evening, Gabrielle. I was far from expecting to find
you at church so early in such severe weather.”
“Ill?” replied Fleurange. “No; I was not ill, but suffering from a great
shock, as you know, do you not, Clement?”
“Yes, Gabrielle, I know it.”
These few words broke down the barrier. What had haunted Clement’s
thoughts now proved to be an actual reality; but energetic natures prefer
the most terrible realities to vague apprehensions, and even to vague
hopes, and he felt his courage rise in proportion as self‐abnegation
became more completely rooted in his soul. After a moment’s silence, he
said:
“Gabrielle, why have you not treated me of late with the same confidence
you once showed me?”
She replied without any hesitation: “Because I made a resolution never to
mention _him_—I made it,” she continued, without noticing the slight start
Clement was unable to repress, “because I wished to forget him. It was
therefore better for me to be reserved even with Hilda—even with you,
Clement. But now,” continued she, with a kind of exaltation in which grief
and joy were confounded, “now I think of that no longer. It seems as if a
new life had commenced for him and for me. And yet we are separated, as it
were, by death. But death breaks down barriers, and reunites, too. What
shall I say, Clement? I seem nearer to him to‐day than yesterday, and in
spite of myself (for I am well aware it is an illusion) I feel I shall be
able to serve him in some way or other. At all events, I no longer have
any motive for concealing my feelings, and to throw off this restraint is
in itself a comfort.”
Clement listened without interrupting her. Each word gave him a sharp
pang, but he steeled himself, somewhat as one does to the clash of arms
and the firing of cannon till there is not even a movement of the eyelids
to betray the fear of death or the possibility of being wounded. As to the
illusion she spoke of, it was the last dream of sorrow and love. He would
not try to dispel it.
“Let us hope, my dear cousin,” said he in a calm tone. “So many unforeseen
circumstances may occur during a trial like that about to commence! There
is no reason to despair.—Whatever may happen,” added he, as they
approached the house, “promise me, Gabrielle, from this time forth, to
show the same confidence in me you once did—a confidence which will induce
you to tell me everything, and rely on me under all circumstances. You
once made me such a promise: have you forgotten it?”
“No, Clement, and I now renew it. You are my best friend, as I once told
you. My opinion has not changed.”
Yes, she had said so. He had forgotten neither the day nor the spot, and
his heart throbbed at the remembrance! Though he was but little more than
twenty years of age, and the honeysuckle he still preserved in memory of
that hour was scarcely withered, a long life seemed to have intervened
since they exchanged nearly the same words.
But when they separated with a pressure of the hand at the end of the
conversation, on that gloomy winter morning, Clement was left with a less
painful impression than that which came over him on the banks of the
Neckar, when, in the pale light of the moon, he had so sudden and fatal a
revelation from the expression of her eyes and the tone of her voice. She
had told him nothing to‐day he did not know before. Instead of happiness,
a vague perspective of devotedness opened before him. But even this was
something to live for.
The following days passed without any new incident. The necessity of
concealing their preoccupation from the professor obliged them all to make
an effort which was beneficial especially to Fleurange, who remained
faithful to her ordinary duties, passing as much time as usual beside her
uncle’s arm‐chair, and with Mademoiselle Josephine and her poor
_protégées_. But a feverish anxiety was sometimes apparent in her
movements and in the troubled expression of her eyes when she went daily
at the regular hour to ask Hansfelt what was in the newspapers. For more
than a week, however, there was nothing new either to comfort her or to
increase her sorrow. Clement had returned to Frankfort, and the days
dragged along with deep and silent anguish. One morning, when least looked
for, he suddenly appeared with unexpected news: the Princess Catherine was
at Frankfort, and would be at Heidelberg the following day!
Fleurange trembled.—The Princess Catherine!—All the remembrances connected
with that name revived with an intensity that for a moment overpowered
her. She felt incapable of uttering a word.—“Coming here?” she said at
length. “To Heidelberg? What for? What can bring her here? How do you
know? Who told you? Oh! tell me everything, and at once, Clement!”
Clement implored her to be calm, and she became so by degrees while he
related what he had learned the night before from the Princess Catherine
herself. At her arrival at Frankfort, she was informed by M. Waldheim, her
banker, that young Dornthal was in the city, and she begged him to call on
her. Clement complied, but not without emotion, with the wish of Count
George’s mother, and found her fearfully prostrated with grief and
illness. He had, however, a long conversation with her, the substance of
which was that, leaving Florence as soon as she learned the fatal news,
she travelled night and day till she reached Paris, where she fell ill.
After four days, however, she resumed her journey, but when she arrived at
Frankfort the physician declared her utterly incapable of continuing it,
and especially of enduring the increasing severity of the weather in
proportion as she approached St. Petersburg. Able to go no further, she
resolved at least to keep on as far as Heidelberg, hoping the care of a
young physician of that city, since and even then very celebrated, would
speedily enable her to resume her sad journey.
“I shall make the effort,” said the princess, “for I wish to live. I wish
to go to him, if possible. I long to behold him once more! I hope much
from Dr. Ch——’s attendance, as well as your cousin Gabrielle’s. I depend
on her, tell her so. Tell her,” added she, weeping, “that I long to see
her again, and beg her to come to me as soon as I arrive at Heidelberg.”
“And she will be here to‐morrow?” said Fleurange, much affected.
“Yes, towards night. I am going to notify the physician, and have the best
apartments in the city prepared for her. Though she did not say so, I am
sure, Gabrielle, she expects to meet you at her arrival.”
Fleurange merely replied she would be there, but her heart beat with a joy
she thought she could never feel again. To behold George’s mother once
more, and at such a time! Was it not like catching a glimpse of him? She
would be sure of constantly hearing his name—of constant and direct news
respecting him—in a word, this was the realization of a secret wish she
had not dared utter.
The next day, a long time before the appointed hour, Fleurange was in the
room prepared for the princess, arranging the furniture in the way she
knew would suit her, trying to give everything a cheerful aspect, to
lessen the sadness of the poor traveller, who, towards the close of this
long day, at length arrived exhausted with fatigue, and fell sobbing into
the young girl’s arms.
The time when she feared no other danger for her son than Gabrielle’s
presence was forgotten. The impressions of the moment always overruled all
others, and her present troubles were, besides, well calculated to absorb
every thought. Therefore, in meeting her young _protégée_ she only thought
of the pleasure of seeing her again, of the comfort to be derived from her
care and presence at a time when they were most needed, and everything
except her first fancy for Fleurange seemed to be effaced from her memory.
XLIII.
A subdued light veiled every object. A bright fire sparkled in the small
fireplace, only intended to be ornamental, as the room was otherwise
heated by a stove. The princess was, as we have already seen her,
reclining on a _canapé_ sheltered by a large screen. Her elbow rested on a
small table loaded with the various objects she always carried with her;
her feet were covered with a large shawl, and near her sat Fleurange on a
stool in the old familiar attitude.
There was a great change, however. They no longer resorted to reading as
they once did, or followed the lead of the princess’ thoughts, generally
more or less frivolous. One subject alone absorbed every faculty—a subject
which she who listened with such ardent interest was still less weary of
than herself.
To this the afflicted mother continually came back, sometimes with
agitation, sometimes with a dull despair, but always with profound grief,
heart‐rending to her whose sorrow equalled her own.
It was the first time the Princess Catherine had ever been subdued by
misfortune. Subdued, but not changed, she not only instinctively retained
all her elegant habits, but her passionate nature was unchanged, and burst
forth into recriminations against all whom she thought implicated in her
son’s misfortunes. This enabled her to pity, without blaming, him. It was
one of these occasions Fleurange heard her exclaim that “Fabiano Dini was
his evil genius!” and she shuddered in recalling her presentiment, so soon
and so fatally justified.
“Yes,” said the princess during one of their conversations, “it was he—it
was that Fabiano Dini who brought him in contact with that reprobate of a
Lasko!”
And then she told the young girl about that person whose tragical end did
not seem to have sufficiently expiated all the evil he had done her
son—about his arrival at Florence, the ascendency he acquired over George,
and the skill and promptness with which he took advantage of all his weak
points. She had been incredulous at first, notwithstanding Adelardi’s
warnings—alas! too long, too foolishly incredulous! But her fears once
roused, how much had she not suffered! What efforts had she not made!
Alas! but in vain!
“He was always so—that dear, unfortunate child! No prudence, no fear of
danger, ever stopped him on the very brink where his inclinations led him.
Oh! those wretches! they soon discovered his imprudence, his generosity,
and his courage! And now,” she exclaimed, rising from her pillow, while
her thick but somewhat gray hair fell over her shoulders in unusual
disorder, “can he possibly be confounded with them? Oh! if I could only
get well, only strong enough to start, to make the journey, to see the
young empress even but once, I should obtain his pardon, I am sure!”
Then she fell back exhausted, murmuring as she wrung her hands: “And
Vera!—Vera absent from St. Petersburg at such a time! She was expected
there, but who knows if she may not arrive too late? And above all, who
knows but she will be his worst enemy, and if he has not foolishly
poisoned the very source whence he might now derive safety?”
These words, which perhaps might have caused fresh trouble, were not heard
by her to whom they were addressed. Fleurange had softly left the
princess’ side as she laid her weary head on her pillow, and was at the
other end of the room preparing a soothing draught which the poor invalid
mechanically took from her hand from hour to hour without obtaining the
relief of a moment’s sleep. This overpowering excitement, which resisted
every remedy, was somewhat soothed at the arrival of one of the Marquis
Adelardi’s frequent letters. He was still at St. Petersburg, and kept her
accurately informed of all that happened, sometimes reviving her hopes,
and again confirming her fears. But hitherto he had not succeeded in
learning anything certain as to the fate reserved for his friend.
Sometimes, therefore, after eagerly reading these letters, she threw them
into the fire with despair.
So much agitation at length brought on a high fever, and the princess had
been confined to her bed several days, when one morning another letter
arrived from St. Petersburg. Fleurange softly approached the bedside, and
perceived the invalid was fast asleep. It was important this brief moment
of repose should not be disturbed, and, besides, the physician had
requested, some days previous, that no letter should be given her till it
had been read, for fear she might learn some distressing news before she
was prepared—as it was easy to foresee might happen. Fleurange promised to
read the letters first, and with the less scruple that for more than a
week she had been obliged to read them to the princess, who was too worn
out to do so herself.
She now left her to the care of the faithful Barbara, and went into the
salon, where, carefully closing the door, she broke the seal of the letter
in her hands, which was also from the Marquis Adelardi. “At last,” he
wrote, “I think I can certainly reassure you as to the most terrible of
the events that seemed possible. The extreme rigor of the law will only be
enforced against the acknowledged leaders of the conspiracy—four or five
in number. All the others, among whom is George, will incur, alas! a
terrible penalty, but we must be thankful not to look forward to one more
frightful—I say we, my dear unfortunate friend, for, as to him, I fear
this sentence will produce a contrary effect. I am persuaded he will
consider it a thousand times more dreadful than the other.
“Since I last wrote you, through the intervention of one of the
ambassadors, I have been allowed the privilege of entering the fortress
where George is confined, and having a private interview with him. Pardon
has been offered him if he will reveal the names of some of his
accomplices. You will not be surprised at his refusing. But the numerous
proofs of their criminal projects, which have been set before him in order
to wrest some acknowledgment from him, have convinced him of the nature of
the enterprise in which he risked his honor and life. The effect of this
discovery has been to plunge him in the deepest dejection, and his only
fear now is that his life may be spared.
“ ‘I merit death for my folly, Adelardi,’ said he: ‘you were right in
warning me there would be no consolation in such a reflection at the
extremity I am now in. But I shall submit to my fate without weakness, as
you do me the honor to believe, I hope. I do not wish, however, to appear
more courageous than I am, and if, instead of death, I am sentenced to
drag out the life of a criminal in Siberia, I do not know what my despair
might lead me to do.’
“As much precaution therefore must be taken in informing him of the
mitigation of his punishment, as in announcing to others the severity of
theirs. Before that time, I hope to obtain entrance again.
“Meanwhile I have learned with as much admiration as surprise that several
who are doomed to the same punishment as he are to have an unexpected and
unparalleled consolation. Their wives—their admirable and heroic
wives—have begged to be allowed to share their fate, and at this very
moment several ladies whom you know, young, beautiful, and accomplished,
are preparing to follow their husbands to Siberia by inuring themselves to
the rigor of the season. These unfortunate men, degraded from the
nobility, deprived of their wealth, and stripped of everything in the
world, cannot be deprived of the affection of these self‐sacrificing
creatures whose noble devotedness nothing daunts. I confess this amazes
and confuses me, for I never before realized, or even suspected, how much
heroism and generosity there is in the heart of a woman!”—
Fleurange’s own heart throbbed so violently she was unable to continue the
letter. With overflowing eyes she was still dwelling on the page she had
just finished—reading it over and over—when she was told the princess was
awake, and wished to know if there was a letter for her. For some days her
mind had been so full of terrible anticipations about the final result as
sometimes to produce fits of delirium. When, therefore, the contents of
this letter were communicated to her, she felt an unexpected—an unhoped‐
for relief. His life—George’s life!—would be spared! There was yet time
for her to effect something. She began to hope everything from the future,
and became calmer than she had been for a long time. She was even to get
up in the evening. She conversed, she spoke eagerly of her plans, her
hopes, all she would do to soften her son’s exile, and the efforts she
would make to abridge it; but what was extraordinary, Fleurange seemed
absent‐minded and made scarcely any reply.
About nine o’clock Julian or Clement always came to accompany her back to
Rosenheim—a half‐hour’s walk from the princess’ house, which was at the
other end of the city. On this occasion, when she was sent for, she was so
absorbed in her own thoughts that she did not notice which of the two was
with her. It was starlight, but very cold, and her hair was blown about by
the wind from beneath her little velvet hat.
“Draw your hood up, Gabrielle; it has not been so cold this winter.”
It was Clement’s voice which suddenly roused her from her reverie.
“Is it you, Clement?—Excuse me, I did not know whether I was with you or
Julian.”
He gently attempted to raise her hood.
“No, no!” she said earnestly. “Let me breathe the air. Though it is
scarcely more than two years since I saw snow for the first time in my
life, I am not afraid of the cold. I could if necessary endure far more
severe weather than this.—There!” And she took off her hat and walked some
steps with her head completely exposed to the frosty night air. “You
know,” she continued, with an animation that singularly contrasted with
her previous silence—“you know, during the Russian campaign, those who
endured the cold best were the Neapolitan soldiers. Well, like them, I
have brought a supply of sunshine from the South which much harder frosts
than this could not exhaust!”
Nevertheless, at Clement’s renewed entreaties, she laughingly put on her
hat, and they walked quickly along, leaving scarcely a trace of their
steps on the hard snow, deep as it was.
Her liveliness that evening was strange! Clement noticed it without
comprehending the cause. Her cheerful tone and charming smile, instead of
delighting him as usual, now made him inexpressibly uneasy, and sadder
than ever!
XLIV.
As is often the case with people of violent and impressionable natures,
the Princess Catherine seldom saw things long in the same light. Though
her thoughts were sorrowfully fastened on one subject in consequence of
the tragical events that so suddenly threw a dark, ominous veil over a
life hitherto so smiling, she found means of giving a thousand different
shades to her misfortune, and it was not always easy to follow her in the
fitful turns of her grief. What consoled her one day was a source of
irritation the next: what she affirmed in the morning, she vehemently
denied in the evening. Sometimes she expressed her fears on purpose that
they might be opposed; at other times, she burst into tears at the
slightest contradiction, and, if they endeavored to reassure her, she
accused them of cruelty and indifference to her troubles.
In consequence of one of these sudden fluctuations, the day following the
arrival of the Marquis Adelardi’s letter which had seemed so consoling,
Fleurange, at the hour of her usual visit, found her abandoned to the
deepest dejection. Everything had assumed a new aspect, or perhaps it
would be more just to say that everything now wore the terrible aspect of
truth. And was it really enough that her idolized son was delivered from
death? Was not the prospect she now dwelt on almost as fearful to bear?
He—George!—her son!—in her eyes the perfect model of manly beauty,
elegance, and nobleness of character, clad in the frightful garb of a
criminal!—and going alone amid that wretched crowd to that dreary region,
where the hardest and most humiliating labor awaited him, without even the
consoling voice of a friend to encourage him, to take him by the hand, to
love him, and to tell him so!
“Oh!” she exclaimed, in that accent which is as different from every
other, as the grief of a mother differs from every other grief—“oh!
feeble, ill, and exhausted as I am, why cannot I accompany him? It really
seems to me, Gabrielle, if I were allowed, I should find strength, I
should have the courage to go. I would start, I would go and share his
wretched existence, I would participate in all the severities of so
frightful a life, and by dint of affection I would make it endurable for
him!”
This energetic cry of disinterested affection—its evident sincerity—was so
rare a thing with the princess that it was the more affecting. Pale,
silent, and motionless before her, Fleurange listened with an emotion that
prevented her uttering the words that hung on her trembling lips. The poor
princess was sobbing aloud, with both hands to her face, apparently
exhausted by her own vehemence, when Fleurange, suddenly kneeling beside
her, said in a low tone:
“Do you remember, princess, the promise you exacted from your son, one
evening?”
The princess raised her head with surprise and a shade of resentment:
“What do you mean? Do you wish to reproach me at such a time? The moment
is well chosen, but such a thing from you, Gabrielle, surprises me!”
“Reproach you!” cried Fleurange. “No, I did not think of such a thing. It
was a request, a petition, or, rather, it was a question I wished to ask
you.”
“A question!” The princess looked at Fleurange. She was struck by the
expression of her countenance, and interest, mingled with surprise, roused
her from her dejection. What request was she going to make in so
extraordinary a manner? And why did she look so determined, and speak in
so supplicating a tone?
“Go on, speak, ask whatever you wish, Gabrielle.”
“Well, first let me tell you this: The eve of my departure from Florence,
while descending from San Miniato with him—with Count George, he asked if
I would be his wife, adding he was sure of obtaining your consent.”
“Why recall all these remembrances, Gabrielle? I thought you generous, but
you are without mercy!”
Fleurange went on as if she did not hear: “I replied that I would never
listen to him, unless, by some unforeseen circumstance impossible to
conceive, his mother—you, princess—would gladly consent to receive me as a
daughter.” She stopped a moment, as if too agitated to continue.
“What are you aiming at?” said the princess.
“I beg you to listen to me, princess. Here is my question: When this
terrible sentence is pronounced, when Count George de Walden is degraded
from his rank, deprived of his wealth, and even of his name (you shudder,
alas! and I also at the thought)—but to return—when that day comes, if he
asks the consent he promised you to wait for, will you grant it?”
The princess looked at her with astonishment, without appearing to
comprehend her.
“Will you allow me to tell him you have consented? Will you on that day
tell me you are willing I should become your daughter?”
The princess began to catch at her meaning, but she was too stupefied to
reply.
“Ah! say the word, princess,” continued Fleurange, her face expressing
both angelic tenderness and a more than feminine courage, “say it, and I
will start. I will be at St. Petersburg before his sentence is pronounced,
and when he comes out of his dungeon I will be there, and before he
departs for the place of his exile a tie shall unite us that will permit
me to accompany him and share all its severity!”—She continued in
faltering tones: “And if ever the tenderness of a mother, the care of a
sister, or the love of a wife, were able to alleviate misfortune, my heart
shall have the combined power of these various affections.”
We are aware that, when certain chords were touched in the princess’
heart, they vibrated strongly, and made her for a moment forget herself.
But never, under any circumstances of her life, had she felt an emotion
equal to that now caused by Fleurange’s words and accents. She looked at
her a moment in silence while great tears rolled down her cheeks, then,
opening her arms and pressing the young girl passionately to her heart,
she covered her forehead and eyes with kisses, repeating at intervals with
a voice broken by sobs: “Yes, yes, Gabrielle, be my daughter: I consent
with joy—with gratitude. I give you now my consent and a mother’s
blessing!”—
To Be Continued.
The Poor Ploughman.
A true worker and a good was he,
Living in peace and perfect charity;
God loved he, best, and that with alle his herte,
At alle times, were it gain or smart;
And then his neighbour right as himselve.
He wolde thresh, and thereto dyke and delve
For Christe’s sake, for every poor wight
Withouten hire, if it lay in his might.
His tithes paid he full fair and well,
Both of his proper work, and his cattel.—_S. Anselm._
A Dark Chapter In English History.(103)
One of the most gratifying features of the literature of the present, and
one that in some measure compensates us for the evils produced by the many
worthless books that are still allowed to issue from the press, is its
tendency by close investigation and collation to vindicate the truth of
modern history, and especially of that portion of it directly or
indirectly relating to the XVIth century. Gradually, but most effectually,
the inventions and gross calumnies of the post‐Reformation writers are
being dissipated, and the meretricious grandeur with which the characters
and acts of the anti‐Catholic sovereigns, statesmen, and generals of that
eventful period were designedly clothed, has been stripped off, revealing
to their descendants the deformity and impiety of the heroes of the
Reformation. Whether we turn to England or Germany, Edinburgh or Geneva,
we find the men and women who in our own school‐boy days we were urged to
regard as patterns of patriotism and morality, become under the scrutiny
of living historiographers the veriest counterfeits—the prey of passion
and the untiring enemies of every principle of government and religion
which we are bound to respect. Yet this is what, logically, we might have
anticipated. A bad cause needs to be sustained by vicious instruments; but
so closely and consistently has the web of falsehood been woven around the
true designs and actions of the reformers that it required the labor of
many skilful and patient hands to undo the meshes and reduce the fabric,
so dexterously spun, to its original elements. This is peculiarly
difficult with the works of English historians and biographers of the past
three centuries, whose unanimity in magnifying the virtues and screening
the crimes of their public men is so remarkable as to utterly destroy the
value of their works as authorities among people of other nations. The
beastly vices of the eighth Henry were, of course, so glaring that they
could neither be denied nor extenuated; but who would expect to find that
his worthy daughter Elizabeth, the “virgin queen” and _Gloriana_, before
whose benign altar even Shakespeare offered the incense of his flattery,
should at this remote period be discovered to be: as a woman ugly, ill‐
tempered, and unchaste, and as a ruler fickle, cruel, cold‐blooded, and
thoroughly despotic. James I., the head of a long line of gallant princes,
to whom his pliant prelates attributed “divine illumination,” and
subsequent historians praised for his learning and wit, we at length know
to have been a miser and a charlatan, as deformed in mind as he was
uncouth in person. “His cowardice,” says his compatriot and co‐religionist
Macaulay, “his childishness, his pedantry, his ungainly person and
manners, his provincial accent, made him an object of derision” to his
English subjects. The unscrupulous Northampton and the subtle Cecil, the
trusted ministers of both sovereigns, who had long been regarded as the
unswerving champions of English independence and the bulwark of Protestant
ascendency, are now proved to have been all along the paid tools of
Catholic Spain, with whose ill‐gotten gold their lofty palaces were built
and their luxurious wants regularly supplied.(104) The chivalrous and
romantic Raleigh of other days, examined by the inexorable scrutiny of the
XIXth century, turns out a spy in the pay of a foreign and by no means
friendly power; the philosophic Bacon, a common peculator; and Coke, the
father of English common law, a falsifier of sworn evidence and a
concocter of legal conspiracies against the liberties of his countrymen.
Yet these were the leading personages, who, with many others equally
corrupt, in their day and generation swayed the destinies of England,
desolated the church of God, originated or abetted plots and schemes, at
home and abroad, for the spoliation and extermination of the professors of
the ancient faith.
This tardy measure of historical justice is partly due to the appearance
in different parts of Europe of important public and private documents and
correspondence, which have shamed British Protestant authors into
something like truthfulness, but principally to the revival of Catholicity
in England, which has been the means of drawing out a mass of original and
reliable information, that had long been allowed to slumber in the dark
closets of a few noble families or in inaccessible libraries during the
gloomy era of persecution and proscription. Our readers are already
familiar with the articles which formerly appeared in these columns on the
long‐unsettled and vexed question of the character of Mary, Queen of
Scots, and the justice or injustice of her treatment by
Elizabeth—contributions to current literature which in their collective
form have found their way among the _literati_ of all nations, and, from
their admirable cogency of argument and conscientious appeals to
contemporary authorities, have at length cleared away from the character
of that ill‐starred lady the foul aspersions and unexampled obloquy heaped
on it by the minions of the English sovereign.
Some more recent publications have thrown additional light on the tragic
incidents of her reign and of that of her successor James, which, as far
as they relate to the Catholics of Great Britain, are full of freshness
and interest. Chief among them is the _Life of Father John Gerard_, for
many years a Jesuit missionary in England under both rulers, with his
account of the celebrated Gunpowder Plot, written soon after the failure
of that conspiracy. Many of the participants in the plot were personally
known to him, and he himself was accused of having taken an active part in
its formation; but, though his name has been frequently mentioned in
connection with it and his manuscript narrative more or less correctly
quoted, it remained for a member of his Order, the Rev. John Morris, the
able editor of the book before us, to present to the world for the first
time the only complete and accurate history of an event which has been the
fruitful subject of misrepresentation and comment by every writer on
English history for the last two hundred years.
Few incidents of modern times can be said to have provoked more hostility
to the church and the Jesuit Order than the Gunpowder Plot, few have been
so dexterously used by the enemies of Catholicity to poison the public
mind against the priesthood, and none the details of which are so little
understood even at the present day by friends and foes. The 5th of
November, the anniversary of its discovery, has long been a gala‐day with
the more ignorant of the British populace; Protestant writers, divines,
and politicians of the lower sort are not yet tired of alluding to the
time when, as they are wont to allege, the Catholics by one fell swoop
attempted to destroy king, lords, and commons; and even Lingard and
Tiernay, with the very best intentions and after considerable examination
of authorities, give a partial assent to the old popular conviction that,
in some way or another, the Jesuits were at the bottom of the diabolical
scheme, which in reality was the creation of a handful of desperate
laymen. In fact, the former, with a penetration totally at variance with
his general character, alludes to the taking of the oath of secrecy by
Catesby and his companions in terms that would lead any superficial reader
to adopt this absurd hypothesis. “All five,” he says, “having previously
sworn each other to secrecy, received in confirmation of their oath the
sacrament at the hands of the Jesuit missionary Father Gerard.”(105) It is
true that in a subsequent edition of his _History_ he endeavored to
explain away, but in a very unsatisfactory manner, the implication of
guilty knowledge on the part of Gerard; but, whether from an imperfect
acquaintance with the writings of that priest, then unpublished, or from
that spirit of timidity which too often characterized the conduct of the
English Catholics of the last generation, his refutation is not of that
full and hearty nature which might be expected from so clear and critical
a scholar.
What Dr. Lingard was unwilling or unable to undertake may now, in view of
more complete evidence, be accomplished by persons of lesser erudition,
who, untrammelled by national partiality, are not alarmed at popular
clamor or unwilling to disturb time‐honored but unfounded historical
fallacies. We design, therefore, in this article to prove:
1. That the Gunpowder Plot was formed and carried out to its disastrous
end by not more than a dozen desperate men, the victims of unrelenting
persecution for conscience’ sake.
2. That the Catholic body in England, lay and clerical, till its
discovery, neither were aware of its existence, approved of its aims, nor
rendered any assistance to its projectors.
3. That no priest, Jesuit or other, was concerned in its formation, or
afforded it any encouragement at any time; and that of all the seculars
and regulars in the kingdom but two were ever aware of its existence, and
that to them the knowledge came under the seal of confession and could not
be revealed.
4. That those two used every possible effort to dissuade the conspirators
from their design, and denounced on every occasion all violent attempts to
redress the wrongs under which the Catholics suffered.
The state of England at the beginning of the XVIIth century, when James of
Scotland was called upon to ascend the throne of his mother’s murderer,
was deplorable in the extreme. Less than half a century had sufficed to
change entirely the whole face of the country socially and morally, and
the once “merrie” people were divided into two hostile camps, one the army
of plunder and persecution, the other the cowering, dissatisfied, and
impoverished masses. Many were yet alive who recollected with sorrow the
time when the cross gleamed on the spires of a thousand churches, when the
solemn sacrifice was offered up on myriads of altars, when the poor and
afflicted easily found food and shelter at the numerous convents and
abbeys that dotted the land of S. Augustine, and the young and the aged,
the weak woman and the strong man, together bowed their knees in reverence
before the statues of the “blessed among women” and other saints. Now all
was reformed away—changed not with the consent of the people nor by the
argument or eloquence of the preacher, but by the brute force and cunning
fraud of a corrupt sovereign, a dissolute and avaricious court, and,
partially at least, by a venal and cowardly episcopate. The churches no
longer resounded from morning till night with the solemn sacred chants,
the monasteries were in ruins or the scenes of impious revelry, the
festivals of the church were abolished, and the peasantry, formerly
accustomed to look forward to them as days of rest from hard toil and
occasions of innocent enjoyment, were sullen and discontented. Those who
had shared in the ecclesiastical plunder spent their time in the
metropolis in wild extravagance, while the gentry, most of whom still
adhered secretly to the faith, remained at home, the prey of anxiety and
the tax‐gatherer. The masses were fast degenerating into that state of
stolid ignorance and unbelief from which all subsequent legislation has
failed to raise them. The laws of Elizabeth aimed at the suppression of
all outward manifestation of Catholicity and the ultimate protestantizing
of the nation; those of James, at the utter extirpation of the Catholics
themselves.
As early as A.D. 1559, the first year of Elizabeth’s reign, a law was
passed compelling every person holding office, either temporal or
spiritual, under the crown, to take an oath of allegiance declaring the
queen the supreme head of the church. The penalty for refusing this oath
was forfeiture of goods and imprisonment, and a persistence in such
refusal, _death_. Whoever affirmed the spiritual supremacy of the pope was
declared guilty of treason; penalty, confiscation and _death_. Attendance
at Mass was to be punished by perpetual imprisonment, and non‐attendance
at Protestant service by a weekly fine. In the fifth year of her reign,
any aider or abettor of such offenders was for the first offence to be
fined and imprisoned for life, for the second to suffer _death_. Any
clergyman celebrating Mass or refusing to observe the regulations of the
_Book of Common Prayer_ forfeited offices, goods, and liberty. In the
thirteenth year, introducing into the kingdom a bull or other instrument
of the pope was treason, penalty _death_; abetting the same, _death_;
acting under such authority, _death_; introducing, wearing, or having in
his or her possession an _Agnus Dei_, cross, etc., confiscation and
perpetual imprisonment; and for leaving the kingdom without permission,
forfeiture of lands and personal estate. In the twenty‐third year, any
person granting absolution from sin in the name of the “Roman Church,” or
receiving the same, their aiders, etc., was declared guilty of treason,
penalty _death_; and for not disclosing knowledge of such offenders,
confiscation and imprisonment. In the twenty‐ninth year, the tax for non‐
attendance at Protestant service was increased to £20 per lunar month, or
forfeiture of two‐thirds of all lands and goods; and for keeping a
schoolmaster or tutor, other than a Protestant, a fine of £10 per month
was imposed, together with imprisonment at pleasure. By the statutes of
the 21st, 27th, and 28th Elizabeth, every priest, Jesuit, or other
ecclesiastic ordained out of the realm was obliged forthwith to leave the
kingdom, and in case of his return he was to suffer _death_; those who
received or harbored him were subject to a like punishment. Those being
educated abroad were required to return home, and after neglect to do so,
upon their being found in the kingdom, were to be put to _death_. For
contributing money for colleges abroad and for sending students there,
fine and imprisonment for life were considered adequate punishments; but
by the 25th chapter of Elizabeth, all who persisted in refusing attendance
on Protestant worship were liable to be transported for life, and if they
evaded the statute they were liable to suffer _death_.(106)
We see, therefore, by this comprehensive penal code that every office
under the crown was reserved as a bribe to recreant Catholics; that
private tutors were commanded to teach nothing but the new heresy in
Catholic families, while those who objected to such method of instruction
could neither send their children abroad nor contribute to the support of
those already there. All priests were obliged to take the oath of
supremacy and observe the _Book of Common Prayer_; such as did not were to
be banished, and if they returned were to be executed forthwith. No priest
could, of course, be ordained at home, and if ordained abroad he was to be
hanged whenever caught, without delay. If one of the laity attended Mass
or wore the image of his crucified Redeemer, he was to be imprisoned for
life; if he did not attend Protestant service, he was to be fined
enormously; if he had no money to pay the fine, he might be banished for
ever from his home and country, and if he endeavored to conceal himself at
home his career was to be ended by the hangman.
Nor must it to be supposed that these sanguinary statutes, affecting the
rights and liberties of at least one‐half of the population, were nothing
but the splenetic fits of a jealous and tyrannical bigot or mere idle
threats to frighten a half‐civilized horde. On the contrary, we have
abundant facts to prove that they were thoroughly and cruelly enforced,
and that the sufferers were principally the better class of the community.
In 1573, the Rev. Thomas Woodhouse was drawn, half‐hanged, and then
quartered alive in the usual way at Tyburn, for having denied the queen’s
supremacy. Two years later, Father Cuthbert Mayne was executed with
similar barbarity in Cornwall for having in his possession a copy of a
Jubilee and for saying Mass in the house of a Mr. Teagian; the latter,
with fifteen others, for being present on the occasion, was imprisoned for
life. In 1577, Mr. Jenks was tried and convicted at Oxford for exposing
some Catholic books for sale, and about this time we are informed the
prisons were so full of “recusants” that a pestilence broke out and large
numbers of the inmates perished. Among the sufferers in 1578 we find the
names of Father Nelson and a Mr. Sherwood, who were hanged and quartered
solely for being recusants. In 1582, Fathers Campion (the celebrated
Jesuit missionary), Sherwin, and Briant, after the mockery of a trial,
were executed in London, and in May of the year following no less than
seven other priests suffered death at Tyburn. Thus nearly every year
supplied its quota to the martyrology of the church in England, not to
speak of the nameless thousands who died in confinement by the quick but
silent process of torture and pestilence, or abroad, broken‐hearted and
neglected. During the fourteen years succeeding the dispersion of the
Spanish Armada, when fanaticism was rampant and bigotry held full sway in
the councils of Elizabeth, sixty‐one clergymen, forty‐seven laymen, and
two gentlewomen expiated their offence of being Catholics by a horrible
and ignominious public death; while, according to the records still
extant, the total number of the “good Queen Bess’” ecclesiastical victims
amounted to the handsome number of one hundred and twenty‐three, including
one hundred and thirteen seculars, eight Jesuits, one friar, and one monk,
besides innumerable laymen in whose veins flowed the best blood of the
land.
The rack and the thumb‐screw almost invariably preceded the half‐hanging
and disembowelling, so that many looked upon the gallows as a welcome
relief from worse sufferings. Priests were tortured to compel them to
disclose the names of their penitents, and laymen to force them into the
betrayal of their pastors. Father Campion was four times racked, and then
secretly brought before the queen to discuss theology with that model
Supreme Head of the Church; while others like Nichols found it more
convenient to swear to all their tormentors required, for, as that
recreant shepherd naïvely says in his _Apology_, “it is not, I assure you,
a pleasant thing to be stretched on the rack till the body becomes almost
two feet longer than nature made it.” Father Gerard, who speaks from
personal experience, has left us in his Memoirs the following account of
this most effectual method of extorting confessions in the glorious reign
of that queen to which so many of our modern writers refer with pride and
congratulation:
“Then they led me to a great upright beam, or pillar of wood,
which was one of the supports of this vast crypt. At the summit of
this column were fixed certain iron staples for supporting
weights. Here they placed on my wrists manacles of iron, and
ordered me to mount upon two or three wicker steps; then raising
my arms they inserted an iron bar through the rings of the
manacles, and then through the staples in the pillar, putting a
pin through the bar so that it could not slip. My arms being thus
fixed above my head, they withdrew those wicker steps I spoke of,
one by one, from my feet, so that I hung by my hands and arms. The
tips of my toes, however, still touched the ground; so they dug
away the ground beneath, as they could not raise me higher, for
they had suspended me from the topmost staples in the pillar. Thus
hanging by my wrists I began to pray, while those gentlemen
standing around me asked again if I was willing to confess. I
replied, ‘I neither can nor will.’ But so terrible a pain began to
oppress me that I was scarcely able to speak the words. The worst
pain was in my breast and belly, my arms and hands. It seemed to
me that all the blood in my body rushed up my arms into my hands,
and I was under the impression at the time that the blood actually
burst forth from my fingers and the back of my hands. This was,
however, a mistake, the sensation was caused by the swelling of
the flesh over the iron that bound it.... I had hung this way till
after one of the clock, as I think, when I fainted.”(107)
It must not be supposed, however, that the zeal of the queen’s ministers
was satisfied with these harsh measures against the clergy and the more
prominent delinquents. All Catholics were put beyond the pale of the law.
The country swarmed with spies and informers. Lists were accurately made
out and carefully preserved of the recusants who owned property of any
sort, and every possible method of espionage was adopted to detect them in
the slightest infraction of the bloody code. Domiciliary visits became the
order of the day, or rather of the night, for that was the time usually
chosen by the pursuivants. Doors were broken open, closets ransacked,
bedrooms of women and invalids invaded without ceremony; and frequently,
the previous movements having been properly concerted, whole families were
simultaneously borne off to prison, there to be detained without the least
warrant of law for months and years. The tax of £260 annually, equal to at
least five thousand dollars at the present day, was not only vigorously
enforced, but upon the faintest rumor of a foreign invasion or domestic
broil, special imposts were laid on the remaining property of the
Catholics, and the owners were carried to the nearest dungeon till the
affair blew over, when they were as unceremoniously dismissed until the
next occasion arose for plunder and personal revenge.
Thus was the work of reformation and evangelization urged briskly forward
in free England, and she was fast becoming converted and enlightened.
Torture, death, and confiscation dogged the steps of the unhappy recusant
who dare to profess, even in the privacy of his house, the faith of his
fathers for ten centuries—that religion which had raised his ancestors
from barbarism, freed him from the thraldom of feudalism, and given him
_Magna Charta_, trial by jury, and representative government. The crown
lawyers, like Coke, Stanhope, and Bacon, laid the plans, pious bishops
like those of London, Ely, and Winchester, leaving their flocks to the
devouring Puritan wolves, constituted themselves a sort of episcopal
sheriffalty, and vied with each other in their ardor for the spread of the
Gospel and their love for the spoils of the Papists. Their leader in all
this was a vulgar wretch named Topcliffe, whose audacity, profanity, and
lewdness made him the terror of men and the abhorrence of women, but whose
usefulness was so apparent that he was constantly the object of government
favors and clerical eulogy.
But human hate and diabolical ingenuity, it was thought, could not last
for ever. On the 24th of March, A.D. 1603, Elizabeth died, to the last the
prey of vain desires and unsatisfied ambition. For weeks before her
decease she was haunted by the phantoms of her innumerable crimes, and so
terrified at the approach of death that she refused to lie in her bed or
to receive any sustenance from her usual attendants. The courts of Europe,
to which she had ever been an object of dislike and fear, could ill
conceal their pleasure at the event, but millions of her subjects, the
impoverished, the widowed, and the orphaned, made desolate by her despotic
cruelty, in silence execrated her memory.
The Catholics generally found consolation in the thought of her successor,
and, with that unqualified confidence in the house of Stuart, which now
seems like fatality, they began to hope for better days under his sway.
Was he not, they asked each other, the son of Elizabeth’s royal victim,
and could he be unmindful of the affection with which the Catholics of the
three kingdoms ever regarded his mother? Had he not before he ever put
foot in England authorized Father Watson to promise in his name justice
and protection, and did not Percy, the agent and kinsman of the great Duke
of Northumberland, assure his friends, on the strength of the royal word
solemnly pledged, that the days of persecution were at an end? Poor
deluded people, they little knew how much deceit lay in the heart of him
whom the Protestant lord primate rather blasphemously averred “the like
had not been since the time of Christ.” He had scarcely put on the crown
when the Catholics discovered that they had neither mercy nor justice to
expect from him. Once secure in the support of the Protestant party, he
turned a deaf ear to their complaints, and even had the mendacity to deny
his own word of honor, giving as a reason “that, since Protestants had so
generally received and proclaimed him king, he had now no need of
Papists.” Being by nature intolerant, he oppressed the Puritans, by whom
he had been trained, to please the Episcopalians, and to gratify both he
ground the Catholics into dust; arrests for recusancy multiplied, illegal
visitations became more frequent, and if possible more annoying, the
arrears of the monthly tax which he at first pretended to remit were
demanded, and the amount, already enormous, was even increased so as to
satisfy the ever‐increasing rapacity of his pauper courtiers who had
followed him into England. In place and out of it, he made the most
violent attacks on the faith of his dead mother and of at least one‐half
of his English subjects, and his remarks were taken up and repeated from
every Protestant pulpit and in every conventicle throughout the length and
breadth of the land, till the hopes of the Catholics grew fainter and
fainter, and finally expired. Unlike Elizabeth, he was not only expected
to live a long life, but his progeny would succeed him, the heirs of his
authority and cruelty; and being constitutionally a coward and an
intriguer, he was bent on making peace with foreign powers, and thus
cutting off all sympathy which the Catholic sovereigns might have felt it
their interest to express for their suffering co‐religionists in Great
Britain.
Though the principles of reciprocal protection and allegiance were not as
well defined at that period as, they have since been, the Catholics of
England would have been more or less than human if they could have
regarded James’ government with any feeling other than detestation, and
the wonder is not that a plot was laid to destroy it, but that so very few
of the persecuted multitude could be found to embark in it,
notwithstanding the manifold reasons afforded by the king and parliament
for their destruction. It was an age of conspiracies and counterplots,
when the highest and most trusted in every land endeavored by force or
fraud to accomplish political and personal ends, success being the only
criterion of merit. The history of Europe from the middle of the preceding
century is full of dark schemes and secret contrivances, in which nobles
and princes figure alternately as the bribers or the bribed, the patrons
or the victims of the assassin, now devoted patriots and anon double‐dyed
traitors. The long civil wars, the vicious legacy of the Lutheran attempt
to unsettle the faith of Christendom, had nearly ceased from sheer
exhaustion, and unemployed soldiers of desperate fortunes but undoubted
courage were to be easily had for any enterprise, no matter how dangerous.
Of this character was Guy or Guido Fawkes, whose name, though not himself
the originator of the Gunpowder Plot, is most intimately associated with
it in popular tradition. The real authors were Robert Catesby, Thomas
Percy, Thomas Winter, and John Wright; all of whom were country gentlemen
of good family and education, but, except Catesby, very much reduced in
circumstances owing to the unjust and repeated exactions of the penal
laws, which had not only robbed them of their property and shut them out
from all public employment, but had branded them with the stigma of
traitors to their country and enemies to their sovereign; for, having in
the early part of their lives conformed to Protestantism, they had
subsequently returned to the church into which they had been baptized—an
offence in the eyes of the rulers of that day of the deepest dye.
In the early part of 1604, the five conspirators met in London, and,
having taken a solemn oath of secrecy, determined on their future schemes
for the total destruction of the government. Wishing, however, it seems,
to exhaust all milder remedies, they sent agents to Spain and other
foreign powers friendly to the Catholic cause, to induce them to use their
good offices in mitigating the sufferings of the English recusants. The
answers were generally favorable, but non‐committal, and the practical
result nothing. They then determined to depend on themselves alone, and in
the autumn rented a building adjoining the Palace of Westminster, the old
House of Parliament, and commenced to undermine the dividing wall. This,
some three yards thick of solid masonry, they found a work of difficulty,
and from the paucity of their numbers and their inexperience in manual
labor, advanced slowly. A circumstance soon occurred to modify their
plans. A portion of the cellar immediately under the prince’s chamber,
which had been used by a coal dealer, was vacated by the tenant, and Percy
rented it, ostensibly for storage purposes. The mine was abandoned, and
thirty‐two barrels of powder, which had been stored previously at Lambeth,
were introduced in the night‐time, and covered from observation by wood,
furniture, etc. All that was now required to complete the conspiracy was a
proper moment for the application of the match. This work had brought them
into the spring of 1605, and, as parliament was not to assemble for some
months, they resolved to separate, some going into the country to see
their relatives, and others to the Continent to enlist the assistance of
such adventurers as could be found willing to take service under the
anticipated new _régime_. Meanwhile eight more persons were admitted into
the plot, the principal of whom were Rokewood, Grant, Tresham, and Sir
Everard Digby, all young men of family and fortune, whose proud spirits
chafed continually under the social and political ostracism to which all
recusants of the period were doomed.
The opening of parliament, expected in September, was, however, postponed
till the 5th of November, but, to the secret satisfaction of Catesby and
his fellows, the penal laws continued to be rigidly enforced, and
additional measures of persecution were devised by the king’s council for
the adoption by the legislature when it should meet. As that time
approached and everything augured success, the parts of the leading actors
in the bloody drama were distributed. Fawkes was to fire the powder which
was to blow the king, his oldest son Henry, and the lords and commons into
eternity; Prince Charles, the next in succession, having been seized by
Percy, was to be proclaimed king at Charing Cross by Catesby; while
Tresham, Grant, and Digby were to gain possession of the person of the
infant princess Elizabeth, at Lord Harrington’s country‐seat. After the
explosion, Fawkes was to sail for Flanders to bring over reinforcements,
and the others, a protector for the royal children having been appointed,
were to rendezvous at Digby’s residence and raise the country in favor of
the new government. There was a method in the madness of these men, and
the first part of their programme would undoubtedly have been carried out
but for one important fact upon which it seems they did not reckon: Cecil
was fully cognizant of all their movements, and for his own good reasons,
as we shall hereafter see, allowed them to proceed unchecked to the very
last moment.
That moment expired soon after midnight on the night of the 4th‐5th of
November, only a few hours before the expected catastrophe. As Fawkes was
entering the cellar to assure himself that all was in readiness, he was
seized by a body of soldiers under the command of Sir Thomas Knevett. His
dress denoted that he was prepared for a journey, arms and matches were
found upon his person, a dark‐lantern was discovered in a corner, and the
removal of the _débris_ that was piled in the vault revealed the powder
arranged ready for explosion.
The scene that ensued was highly dramatic, and did great credit to the
histrionic genius of the secretary. The lords of the council were hastily
summoned to the king’s bed‐chamber, the prisoner was brought up for
examination by torch‐light, and the royal pedant sat on the side of his
couch in his night‐clothes for several hours, questioning and cross‐
questioning the would‐be murderer. But Guy was made of stern stuff, and,
while he freely admitted that his intention had been “to blow the Scotch
beggars back to their native mountains,” he obstinately refused to
disclose the names of his associates. The news spread with rapidity, and
London at daylight was in the wildest commotion. The other conspirators in
the city, with the exception of Tresham, fled to Digby’s house near
Dunchurch, where a hunting party had assembled, but upon the disclosure of
the treason and its failure the guests rapidly dispersed, two or three
only, from friendship or other causes, resolving to remain with the
conspirators and share the fate which now seemed certain to overtake them.
One of these was Stephen Littleton, who resided at Holbeach in
Staffordshire, a strongly Catholic county, and thither the whole party,
numbering between forty and fifty, including grooms and other servants,
proceeded through Warwick and Worcester, vainly endeavoring on their road
to excite the people to join them. At Holbeach they resolved to make a
stand, but an accident destroyed whatever little chance might have
remained of a successful resistance. Their ammunition, which had been wet
during their hurried journey, exploded while being dried, and not only
seriously injured Catesby and three others, but afforded an excuse for
their handful of followers to forsake them. In this condition they were
soon surrounded by the forces of Sir Richard Walsh, who, after summoning
them to surrender and receiving a defiant negative, ordered his men to
fire. The brothers Wright, Percy, and Catesby, fell mortally wounded;
Rokewood, Winter, Morgan, and Grant were wounded and taken prisoners, and
Digby and the two others were soon after captured. They were immediately
taken to London, tried, and with Fawkes executed on the 30th of the
following January.
Under ordinary circumstances, this insane conspiracy of a dozen desperate
men would have ended here, and the plot itself have become lost in the
thousand‐and‐one concerted crimes against authority which disfigure the
annals of European monarchy in the middle ages; but the Puritan party in
England, the more insatiable enemies of the Catholics, who saw in it an
excellent opportunity for wholesale spoliation of what yet remained to the
persecuted, endeavored to involve the millions in the treasonable guilt of
the few, and Cecil, who had so long nursed the designs of the traitors,
had his own deep schemes to subserve by endorsing this foul calumny. But
James, bigot as he was, could not, in the face of such palpable facts to
the contrary, go to this extreme length. “For though it cannot be denied,”
he said in his speech to parliament recounting the discovery and origin of
the plot, “that it was only the blind superstition of their errors in
religion that led them to this desperate device, yet doth it not follow
that all professing that Romish religion were guilty of the same.” Yet the
Puritan party, who hungered for the spoils, by constant repetition
succeeded in fastening the imputation of guilt on the entire Catholic body
in England, and for a long time it was partially believed abroad, and re‐
echoed without hesitation by subsequent historians. The author of _Her
Majesty’s Tower_, to whom Catholicity owes little else, has, we are happy
to say, had the manhood to set the matter in its true light in his recent
publication. He says:
“The news of this plot was heard by the old English Catholics with
more astonishment than rage, though the expression of their anger
was both loud and deep. The priests were still more prompt to
denounce it than their flocks. The venerable Archpriest, George
Blackwell, took up his pen before a single man had yet been killed
or captured in the shires, and in a brief address to the Catholic
clergy stigmatized the plot as a detestable contrivance in which
no true Catholic could have a share—as an abominable thing,
contrary to Holy Writ, to the councils, and to the instructions of
the spiritual guides. Blackwell told his clergy to exhort their
flocks to peace and obedience, and to avoid falling into snares.”
But it was necessary for the purpose of affording a decent pretext for
further penal legislation, long since agreed upon in the council, as well
as to destroy the sympathy still felt at foreign courts for the persecuted
English, that the blame of the foul conspiracy should be laid not on the
inhuman laws which had driven gallant and loyal men into deadly conflict
with the government, but on the church. As it was impossible to implicate
any considerable number of the laity or the secular clergy, it was
resolved to single out the few Jesuits then in the country, and through
them the entire Order, as fitting objects of national hatred and universal
obloquy. The trick was not new even then, though since much practised and
refined. Its execution was consonant also with the parliamentary design of
exterminating Catholicity in the three kingdoms. The old clergy, or, as
they were called, “Queen Mary’s priests,” were few, aged, and sure soon to
die out in the course of nature, while the authorities had taken good care
that they should leave no successors of native education. The Jesuits, on
the contrary, were young men, generally scions of noble houses, gentle in
breeding, and, from their continental training, thorough linguists, acute
reasoners, and polished gentlemen. Their erudition made them feared by the
half‐taught sophists of the reformed prelacy, their refined manners
secured their admission into the best families, and their noble enthusiasm
defied the utmost severity of the Puritan and Episcopal magistrates. Their
knowledge of the country was accurate, and, though they were accused by
such hired defamers as Coke of using many _aliases_, the odium was not
theirs, but the law’s, that made their very presence in their native land
treason. No religious community, it is well known, is the church, nor is
she responsible for the conduct of each particular member, but the orders
may be regarded as the _vedettes_ of her grand army, and before it can be
successfully attacked they must be driven in or captured.
Accordingly, one of the first steps taken by the king’s advisers after the
trial of the conspirators was to issue a proclamation for the arrest of
Fathers Gerard, Greenway, and Garnett, three of the four Jesuit
missionaries then known to be in England. In this official document it was
alleged “to be plain and evident from the examinations that all three had
been peculiarly practisers in the plot.” Now, let us examine for a moment
upon what those grave accusations were based. Simply on confessions of the
prisoners, for it has never been alleged that the slightest proof,
documentary or oral, other than those and the admission of Father Garnett,
the provincial, were ever produced to connect the priests with the
conspiracy. The examinations were conducted with the most exquisite
tortures, taken down by the creatures of the government, and afterwards
mutilated and altered by the attorney‐general to suit his own views.
Fawkes, by special command of his majesty, was so frequently racked that
he could not use a pen to sign his name, much less could he read what had
been written for him, and Nicholas Owen, a lay‐brother, was so stretched
that his bowels protruded and he expired in the hands of his tormentors.
Of Father Gerard, mention was made by two of the original plotters, Fawkes
and Winter, in allusion to the oath of secrecy. The latter said that “the
five administered the oath to each other in a chamber _in which no other
body was_,” which the latter confirms more in detail.
“The five,” he says, “did meet at a house in the field, beyond S.
Clement’s Inn, where they did confer and agree upon the plot, and
there they took a solemn oath and vows by all their force and
power to execute the same, and of secrecy not to reveal it to any
of their fellows, but to such as should be thought fit persons to
enter into that action; and in the same house they did receive the
sacrament of Gerard the Jesuit, to perform their vow and oath of
secrecy aforesaid. _But that Gerard was not acquainted with their
purpose._”(108)
This last sentence was by order of Coke underlined with red, notated
_hucusque_, and was carefully suppressed in the reading of the examination
on the trial! The original document is still preserved in the Public
Record Office, and how such an indefatigable student as Mr. Dixon could
have overlooked this part of it is, to say the least, very suspicious. His
version of the affair is as follows:
“An upper room of Widow Herbert’s house was turned into a chapel;
and when the priest was ready for his part, Catesby, Percy, Tom
Winter, Jack Wright, and Fawkes assembled in the house—a quaint
old Tudor pile at the corner of Clement’s Lane—first in the lower
room, where they swore each other upon the Primer, and then in the
upper room, where they heard Father Gerard say Mass, and took from
his hand the sacrament on that oath. Each of the five conspirators
was sworn upon his knees, with his hand on the Primer, that he
would keep the secret, that he would be true to his fellows, that
he would be constant in the plot.”
Is this perversion of the facts of history accidental, or a piece of
downright dishonesty? At first, overlooking the writer’s known hostility
to the Jesuits, and his insinuation about the priest being “ready for his
part,” we concluded that the sentence describing how the conspirators were
sworn was intended to commence after the word “Primer,” to preserve the
unity of the action, but by inadvertence was put after the mention of the
taking of the sacrament, thus conveying the false idea that the
conspirators swore also _after_ or during Mass; but, having had occasion
to refer to the index, we find that we had done Mr. Dixon’s dexterity
injustice at the expense of his veracity. In seeking for the page of his
book upon which this opaque statement appears, we find the following words
in the index under the head “Gerard”—“administers the oath of secrecy to
the Powder Plot conspirators in a house in Butcher’s Row, p. 95.” Thus the
author of _Her Majesty’s Tower_, who, we presume, occupies a decent
position among men of letters in his own country, not only cannot discover
after the “occasional labor of twenty years” a most essential point of
testimony bearing on the very subject to which his book is mainly devoted,
but to make out a case against the much‐hated Jesuits actually falsifies
and perverts facts already known and admitted; doing in the year of grace
1869 gratuitously, what Coke in 1606 did for hire. Can the force of malice
go further? Digby, who, it will be remembered, was subsequently admitted
into the plot, on his trial went even further than the originators of it;
and, in exculpating the Jesuit Order, was most emphatic in denying any
knowledge of the conspiracy on the part of Gerard, either in its progress
or, as far as he knew, at its inception. So much for Father Gerard’s
innocence as proved by others; the following is his own statement, made
years after the occurrence when he was beyond the reach of English law,
and subsequently affirmed in substance on his solemn oath:
“I have stated in the other treatise of which I spoke, that a
proclamation was issued against those Jesuit fathers, of whom I am
one; and, though the most unworthy, I was named first in the
proclamation, whereas I was the subject of one and far inferior in
all respects to the other. All this, however, I solemnly protest
was utterly groundless; for I knew absolutely nothing of the plot
from any one whatsoever, not even under the seal of confession, as
the other two did; nor had I the slightest notion that any such
scheme was entertained by any Catholic gentleman, until by public
rumor news was brought us of its discovery, as it was to all
others dwelling in that part of the country.”(109)
The treatise referred to in this extract is his _Narrative_, and in it
Gerard takes frequent occasion to reiterate in the most positive manner,
speaking in the third person, all knowledge of the conspiracy, even to
saying Mass on the occasion alluded to by Fawkes. The house in Clement’s
Inn, he fully acknowledges, was used by him and his friends, among whom
there were at least two priests during his absence; and we can well
believe that the two prisoners were mistaken in his identity, as we have
no evidence that they were familiar with his appearance or personally
acquainted with him. However, this does not signify. Some priest
undoubtedly celebrated Mass, and the question is, Did he administer the
oath, or knowingly administer the sacrament in confirmation of it? Winter
and Fawkes declare he did not; Digby, who was most intimate with Father
Gerard, denied in open court that that Jesuit knew anything about the
plot; and Gerard himself repeatedly, under the strictest forms known in
his Order, asserts his entire innocence, and it has never even been hinted
that any other priest was concerned in the early stages of the conspiracy.
This matter may therefore be considered closed.
Now, it is equally certain that Fathers Garnett and Tesimond, _alias_
Greenway, did become acquainted with the plot during its progress; but the
information came to them under the seal of confession, and _could not be
revealed_. It is unnecessary to support this proposition by argument, as
its wisdom is now generally recognized by the civil law even in Protestant
countries. Confidential communications to priest, doctor, or lawyer are at
last held sacred. What was the extent of their knowledge, and what was
their conduct on receiving the same? In Thomas Winter’s public dying
declaration, communicated by an eye‐witness to the author of the
_Narrative_, he said: “That whereas divers of the fathers of the society
were accused of counselling and furthering them in this treason, he could
clear them all, and particularly Father Tesimond, from all fault and
participation therein.” “And indeed Mr. Thomas Winter might best clear
that good father, with whom he was best acquainted,” adds Father Gerard,
“and knew very well how far he was from counselling or plotting that
business. For himself, having first told the father of it (as I have
heard) long after the thing was ready, and that in such secret as he might
not utter it, but with his leave, unto his superior only, the father, both
then and after, did so earnestly persuade him, and by him the rest, to
leave off that course (as his duty was), that Mr. Winter might well find
himself in conscience to clear this father from his wrongful accusation of
being a counsellor and furtherer of the plot.”(110)
This statement was also repeatedly confirmed by Father Tesimond, both in
his writings and in his account of the matter soon after his escape,
published by Joannes in his _Apologia_.
Gerard and Tesimond having fled the country to avoid the popular tumult,
“which,” says Mr. Dixon, “took no note of the difference between the
children of S. Edward and the pupils of S. Ignatius,” the only remaining
victim was the provincial Father Garnett. Him the government spies soon
hunted down, and in company with Father Ouldcorne arrested at Hendlip
House and lodged in the tower. This capture occurred on the 28th of
February, and his trial took place on the 28th of March; the intervening
month having been spent by the officers of the crown in procuring evidence
of his guilt, but with so little success that an attempt was made to
procure his condemnation by parliament, without the intervention of a
jury, by inserting surreptitiously a clause in the bill of attainder
introduced against the families of Digby and others. Cajolery was first
resorted to, next torture, then the subterfuge of allowing him speech with
his fellow‐prisoner Ouldcorne, overheard unknown to them by persons
secretly hidden for the purpose, and again torture, but all to no effect.
He at first refused to admit any knowledge of the conspiracy, but finally
confessed that he had heard of it from Father Tesimond (Greenway) under
the seal of confession, and that he had reprimanded that priest for ever
so communicating it to him, and had admonished him to use all efforts to
dissuade the conspirators from their rash designs. This was all that could
be proved against him at his trial, but he was of course condemned, not
however for treason, but for misprision of treason, and two months after
executed, declaring his entire innocence most solemnly. Father Ouldcorne,
who was also found guilty of knowledge after the fact, on no better
evidence, suffered with him.
The provincial was examined no less than twenty‐three times before his
trial, and much stress was laid during its progress and long afterwards on
his equivocations in answer to the various searching queries touching the
guilt of himself and others. The question of the morality of such evasion
of the truth under the peculiar circumstances has, however, no practical
value for us, as now by the well‐recognized policy of law in all civilized
countries no person is bound to criminate himself either as a principal or
a witness, and every individual is allowed to be the judge of his own case
in this respect. No one has a right to entrap a prisoner into a confession
of guilt, much less compel disclosures by foul means or torture.
Let us inquire for a moment how far Father Garnett’s statements in prison
were borne out by his previous conduct. Several letters of his are still
extant addressed to Father Persons, the English superior at Rome, on the
state of the Catholics in England previous to the explosion of the plot,
in which he intimates his suspicions that something desperate was about to
be attempted against the government, and begs the superior to influence
the Holy Father to interfere. On the 29th of August, 1604, he wrote: “If
the affair of toleration go not well, Catholics will no more be quiet.
What shall we do? Jesuits cannot hinder it. Let Pope forbid all Catholics
to stir.” In May following he says: “All are desperate, divers Catholics
are offended with Jesuits; they say that Jesuits do impugn and hinder all
forcible enterprises.” On the 24th of July, after reviewing the
threatening state of affairs in the kingdom, he repeats his request for
pontifical assistance in keeping the people quiet. He then wrote:
“Wherefore, in my judgment, two things are necessary; first, that
his holiness should prescribe what in any case is to be done; and
then that he should forbid any force of arms to the Catholics
under censures, and by brief publicly promulgated, an occasion for
which can be taken from the disturbance lately raised in Wales,
which has at length come to nothing.”(111)
His public acts were consistent with his views thus confidentially
expressed. It is acknowledged that he was mainly instrumental in defeating
the Grey conspiracy, in which Father Watson and many Catholics were
involved, and, when Catesby and the other conspirators approached him on
the subject of forcible resistance to James’ government, he denounced all
such attempts in the most positive manner. “It is to you and such as you,”
said that desperate plotter to the provincial, “that we owe our present
calamities. This doctrine of non‐resistance makes us slaves. No authority
of priest or pontiff can deprive a man of his right to repel injustice.”
When it became apparent that such men as Catesby could not be stayed by
ordinary means, he recommended that before any forcible measures were
adopted an agent should be sent to Rome, and in the meantime took steps to
procure the co‐operation of the sovereign pontiff himself to suppress all
attempts at insurrection. In fact, his whole life was divided between his
duty to God and his efforts to teach peace and longanimity to his
persecuted countrymen, but the very fact that he was a Jesuit and a
Catholic missionary was enough to condemn him in the eyes of the judges of
that day. Let us hope that posterity will do him fuller justice.
The general accusation against the Order was grounded on the fact that
many of the conspirators were converts and pupils of the Jesuits, and
_therefore_ they were their agents and instruments. This is plausible, and
might be worthy of attention if true, but it lacks the essential element
of reliability. Some were Catholics from their birth, others had only for
the time being or during their minority outwardly conformed to
Protestantism, and were simply reclaimed from their vicious habits by the
Jesuits. But even if they had all been converts it would not strengthen
their opponents’ position. So were many hundreds, nay, thousands of
Englishmen who took no act or part in the conspiracy. Besides the Jesuits
that had suffered in the preceding reign, the four fathers we have just
mentioned had spent each over eighteen years in the country, laboring with
a zeal and success seldom equalled, and it was this very success in
gaining souls to Christ that furnished the greatest incentive for their
destruction. Their intimacy with the conspirators was simply that of
pastors with their penitents; the assertions of Bates, the servant of
Catesby, to the contrary notwithstanding. That poor wretch was tortured
and tampered with to induce him to make some accusation against the
missionaries, and then hanged, but not before he retracted on the scaffold
every sentence uttered by him when a hope of pardon had been held out as
the reward of his perjury. Further, Mr. Dixon’s wild attempts to throw
discredit on the English Jesuits abroad rest on no foundation whatever,
nor has he a single impartial authority to support him in his broad
assertions and elaborate reports of what are said to have been strictly
private interviews and confidential correspondence between the plotters in
England and the Jesuit colleges abroad. Owen and Baldwin, the alleged
foreign correspondents, the parties most sought to be implicated, were
never tried, but the latter was examined in England ten years after and
discharged, nothing having been proved against him. So much for the
bugbear of Catholics justifying wholesale assassination as a remedy for
persecution, that has been such a sweet morsel under the tongues of
Protestant divines and zealots for so many centuries.
The Progressionists.
From The German Of Conrad Von Bolanden.
Chapter VI.—Continued.
The tumult continued. As soon as the orator attempted to speak, his voice
was drowned by cries and stamping.
“Commissary!” cried the chairman to that officer, “I demand that you
extend to our assembly the protection of the law.”
“I am here simply to watch the proceedings of your meeting,” replied
Parteiling with cool indifference. “Everybody is at liberty in meetings to
signify his approval or disapproval by signs. No act forbidden by the law
has been committed by your opponents, in my opinion.”
“Bravo! bravo! Three cheers for the commissary!”
All at once the noise was subdued to a whisper of astonishment. A miracle
was taking place under the very eyes of progress. Banker Greifmann, the
moneyed prince and liberal, made his appearance upon the platform. The
rioters saw with amazement how the mighty man before whom the necks of all
such as were in want of money bowed—even the necks of the puissant
leaders—stepped before the president of the assembly, how he politely
bowed and spoke a few words in an undertone. They observed how the
chairman nodded assent, and then how the banker, as if to excite their
wonder to the highest pitch, mounted to the speaker’s desk.
“Gentlemen,” began Carl Greifmann, “although I have not the honor of
sharing your political views, I feel myself nevertheless urged to address
a few words to you. In the name of true progress, I ask this honorable
assembly’s pardon for the disturbance occasioned a moment ago by a band of
uncultivated rioters, who dare to pretend that they are acting in the
cause and with the sanction of progress. I solemnly protest against the
assumption that their disgraceful and outrageous conduct is in accordance
with the spirit of the party which they dishonor. Progress holds firmly to
its principles, and defends them manfully in the struggle with its
opposers, but it is far from making itself odious by rudely overstepping
the bounds of decency set by humanity and civilization. In political
contests, it may be perfectly lawful to employ earnest persuasion and even
influences that partake of the rigor of compulsion, but rudeness,
impertinence, is never justifiable in an age of civilization. Commissary
Parteiling discovers no legally prohibited offence in the expression of
vulgarity and lowness—may be. Nevertheless, a high misdemeanor has been
perpetrated against decorum and against the deference which man owes to
man. Should the slightest disturbance be again attempted, I shall use the
whole weight of my influence in prosecuting the guilty parties, and
convince them that even in the spirit of progress they are offenders and
can be reached by punishment.”
He spoke, and retired to the other end of the hall, followed by loud
applause from the ultramontanes. Nor were the threats of the mighty man
uttered in vain. Spitzkopf hung his head abashed. The other revellers were
tamed, they listened demurely to the speakers, ceased their contemptuous
hootings, and stood on their good behavior. Greifmann’s proceeding had
taken Seraphin also by surprise, and the power which the banker possessed
over the rioters set him to speculating deeply. He saw plainly that
Louise’s brother commanded an extraordinary degree of respect in the camp
of the enemies of religion, and the only cause that could sufficiently
account for the fact was a community of principles of which they were well
aware. Hence the opinion he had formed of Greifmann was utterly erroneous,
concluded Gerlach. The banker was not a mere secluded business man—he was
not indifferent about the great questions of the age. Then there was
another circumstance that perplexed the ruddy‐cheeked millionaire to no
inconsiderable degree—Greifmann’s unaccountable way of taking things. The
tyrannical mode of electioneering which they had witnessed at the sign of
the “Green Hat” had not at all disgusted Greifmann. Spitzkopf’s threats
had not excited his indignation. He had with a smiling countenance looked
on whilst the most brutal species of terrorism was being enacted before
him, he had not expressed a word of contempt at the constraint which they
who held the power inhumanly placed on the political liberty of their
dependents. On the other hand, his indignation was aroused by a mere
breach of good behavior, an offence which in Gerlach’s estimation was as
nothing compared with the other instances of progressionist violence. The
banker seemed to him to have strained out a gnat after having swallowed a
whole drove of camels. The youth’s suspicions being excited, he began to
study the strainer of gnats and swallower of camels more closely, and soon
the banker turned out in his estimation a hollow stickler for mere outward
decency, devoid of all deeper merit. He now recollected also Greifmann’s
dealings with the leaders of progress, and those transactions only
confirmed his present views. What he had considered as an extraordinary
degree of shrewdness in the man of business, which enabled him to take
advantage of the peculiar convictions and manner of thinking of other men,
was now to his mind a real affinity with their principles, and he could
not help being shocked at the discovery.
He hung his head in a melancholy mood, and his heart protested earnestly
against the inference which was irresistibly forcing itself upon his mind,
that the sister shared her brother’s sentiments.
“This doubt must be cleared up, cost what it may,” thought he. “My God,
what if Louise also turned out to be a progressionist, a woman without any
faith, an infidel! No, that cannot be! Yet suppose it really were the
case—suppose she actually held principles in common with such vile beings
as Schwefel, Sand, Erdblatt, and Shund? Suppose her moral nature did not
harmonize with the beauty of her person—what then?” He experienced a
spasmodic contraction in his heart at the question, he hesitated with the
answer, but, his better self finally getting the victory, he said: “Then
all is over. The impressions of a dream, however delightful, must not
influence a waking man. My father’s calculation was wrong, and I have
wasted my kindness on an undeserving object.”
So completely wrapt up was he in his meditations that he heard not a word
of the speeches, not even the concluding remarks of the president.
Greifmann’s approach roused him, and they left the hall together.
“That was ruffianly conduct, of which progress would have for ever to be
ashamed,” said the banker indignantly. “They bayed and yelped like a pack
of hounds. At their first volley I was as embarrassed and confused as a
modest girl would be at the impertinence of some young scapegrace. Fierce
rage then hurried me to the platform, and my words have never done better
service, for they vindicated civilization.”
“I cannot conceive how a trifle could thus exasperate you.”
Greifmann stood still and looked at his companion in astonishment.
“A trifle!” echoed he reproachfully. “Do you call a piece of wanton
impudence, a ruffianly outrage against several hundreds of men entitled to
respect, a trifle?”
“I do, compared with other crimes that you have suffered to pass unheeded
and uncensured,” answered Gerlach. “You had not an indignant word for the
unutterable meanness of those three leaders, who were immoral and
unprincipled enough to invest a notorious villain with office and honors.
Nor did you show any exasperation at the brutal terrorism practised by men
of power in this town over their weak and unfortunate dependents.”
“Take my advice, and be on your guard against erroneous and narrow‐minded
judgments. The leaders merely had a view to their own ends, but they in no
manner sinned against propriety. The raising a man of Shund’s abilities to
the office of mayor is an act of prudence—by no means an offence against
humanity.”
“Yet it was an outrage to moral sentiment,” opposed Seraphin.
“See here, Gerlach, moral sentiment is a very elastic sort of thing.
Sentiment goes for nothing in practical life, and such is the character of
life in our century.”
“Well, then, the mere sense of propriety is not worth a whit more.”
“I ask your pardon! Propriety belongs to the realm of actualities or of
practical experiences, and not to the shadowland of sentiment. Propriety
is the rule that regulates the intercourse of men, it is therefore a
necessity, nothing else will serve as a substitute for it, and it must
continue to be so regarded as long as a difference is recognized between
rational man and the irrational brute.”
“The same may be said with much more reason of morality, for it also is a
rule, it regulates our actions, it determines the ethic worth or
worthlessness of a man. Mere outward decorum does not necessarily argue
any interior excellence. The most abandoned wretch may be distinguished
for easy manners and elegant deportment, yet he is none the less a
criminal. A dog may be trained to many little arts, but for all that it
continues to be a dog.
“It is delightful to see you breaking through that uniform patience of
yours for once and showing a little of the fire of indignation,” said the
banker pleasantly. “I shall tell Louise of it, I know she will be glad to
learn that Seraphin too is susceptible of a human passion. But this by the
way. Now watch how I shall meet your arguments. That very moral sentiment
of which you speak has caused and is still causing the most enormous
crimes against humanity, and the laws of morality are as changeable as the
wind. When an Indian who has not been raised from barbarism by
civilization dies, the religious custom of the country requires that his
wife should permit herself to be burned alive on the funeral pyre of her
husband. Moral sentiment teaches the uncivilized woman that it is a
horrible crime to refuse to devote herself to this cruel death. The pious
Jews used to stone every woman to death who was taken in adultery—in our
day, such a deed of blood would be revolting to moral sentiment, and would
claim tears from the eyes of cultivated people. I could mention many other
horrors that were practised more or less remotely in the past, and were
sanctioned by the prevailing moral sentiment. Here is my last instance:
according to laws of morality, the usurer was at one time a monster, an
arch‐villain—at present, he is merely a man of great enterprise.
Propriety, on the other hand, enlightenment, and polish are absolute and
unalterable. Whilst rudeness and impertinence will ever be looked upon as
disgusting, good manners and politeness will be considered as commendable
and beautiful.”
Seraphin could not but admire the skill with which Greifmann jumbled
together subjects of the most heterogeneous nature. But he could not, at
the same time, divest himself of some alarm at the banker’s declarations,
for they betrayed a soul‐life of little or absolutely no moral worth.
Money, interest, and respectability constituted the only trinity in which
the banker believed. Morality, binding the conscience of man, a true and
only God, and divine revelation, were in his opinion so many worn‐out and
useless notions, which the progress of mankind had successfully got
beyond.
“When those who hold power take advantage of it at elections, they in no
manner offend against propriety,” proceeded Carl. “Progress has
convictions as well as ultramontanism. If the latter is active, why should
not the former be so too? If, on the side of progress, the weak and
dependent permit themselves to be cowed and driven, it is merely an
advantage for the powerful, and for the others it is a weakness or
cowardice. For this reason, the mode of electioneering pursued by
Spitzkopf and his comrades amused but nowise shocked me, for they were not
acting against propriety.”
Seraphin saw it plainly: for Carl Greifmann there existed no distinction
between good and evil; he recognized only a cold and empty system of
formalities.
The two young men issued from a narrow street upon the market‐place. This
was occupied by a large public building. In the open space stood a group
of men, among whom Flachsen appeared conspicuous. He was telling the
others about Greifmann’s speech at the meeting of the ultramontanes. They
all manifested great astonishment that the influential moneyed prince
should have appeared in such company, and, above all, should have made a
speech in their behalf.
“He declared it was vulgar, impudent, ruffianly, to disturb a respectable
assembly,” reported Flachsen. “He said he knew some of us, and that he
would have us put where the dogs would not bite us if we attempted to
disturb them again. That’s what he said; and I actually rubbed my eyes to
be quite sure it was banker Greifmann that was speaking, and really it was
he, the banker Greifmann himself, bodily, and not a mere apparition.”
“I must say the banker was right, for it isn’t exactly good manners to
howl, stamp, and whistle to annoy one’s neighbors,” owned another.
“But we were paid for doing it, and we only carried out the orders given
by certain gentlemen.”
“To be sure! Men like us don’t know what good breeding is—it’s for
gentlemen to understand that,” maintained a third. “We do what men of good
breeding hire us to do, and if it isn’t proper, it matters nothing to
us—let the gentlemen answer for it.” “Bravo, Stoffel, bravo!” applauded
Flachsen. “Yours is the right sort of servility, Stoffel! You are a real
human, servile, and genuine reactive kind of a fellow—so you are. I agree
with you entirely. The gentlemen do the paying, and it is for them to
answer for what happens. We are merely servants, we are hirelings, and
what need a hireling care whether that which his master commands is right
or not? The master is responsible, not the hireling. What I am telling you
belongs to the exact sciences, and the exact sciences are at the pinnacle
of modern acquisitions. Hence a hireling who without scruple carries out
the orders of his master is up to the highest point of the age—such a
fellow has taken his stand on servility. Hallo! the election has
commenced. Be off, every man of you, to his post. But mind you don’t look
too deep into the beer‐pots before the election is over. Keep your heads
level, be cautious, do your best for the success of the green ticket. Once
the election is carried, you may swill beer till you can no longer stand.
The gentlemen will foot the bill, and assume all responsibilities.”
They dispersed themselves through the various drinking‐shops of the
neighborhood.
Near the door of the building in which the voting was to take place stood
a number of progressionist gentlemen. They all wore heavy beards, smoked
cigars, and peered about restlessly. To those of their party who chanced
to pass they nodded and smiled knowingly, upon doubtful voters they smiled
still more blandly, added some pleasant words, and pressed the acceptance
of the green ticket, but for ultramontane voters they had only jeers and
coarse witticisms. As Greifmann approached they respectfully raised their
hats. The banker drew Gerlach to one side, and stood to make observations.
“What swarms there are around the drinking‐shops,” remarked Greifmann. “It
is there that the tickets are filled under the persuasive influence of
beer. The committee provide the tickets which the voters have filled with
the names of the candidates by clerks who sit round the tables at the
beer‐shops. It is quite an ingenious arrangement, for beer will reconcile
a voter to the most objectionable kind of a candidate.”
A crowd of drunken citizens coming out of the nearest tavern approached.
Linked arm‐in‐arm, they swayed about and staggered along with an unsteady
pace. Green tickets bearing the names of the candidates whom progress had
chosen to watch over the common weal could be seen protruding from the
pockets of their waistcoats. Gerlach, seeing the drunken mob and
recollecting the solemn and important nature of the occasion, was seized
with loathing and horror at the corruption of social life revealed in the
low means to which the party of progress had recourse to secure for its
ends the votes of these besotted and ignorant men.
Presently Schwefel stepped up and saluted the young men.
“Do you not belong to the committee in charge of the ballot‐box?” inquired
Greifmann.
“No, sir, I wished to remain entirely untrammelled this morning,” answered
the leader with a sly look and tone. “This is going to be an exciting
election, the ultramontanes are astir, and it will be necessary for me to
step in authoritatively now and then to decide a vote. Moreover, the
committee is composed exclusively of men of our party. Not a single
ultramontane holds a seat at the polls.”
“In that case there can be no question of failure,” said the banker. “Your
office is closed to‐day, no doubt?”
“Of course!” assented the manufacturer of straw hats. “This day is
celebrated as a free day by the offices of all respectable houses. Our
clerks are dispersed through the taverns and election districts to use
their pens in filling up tickets.”
“I am forced to return to my old assertion: an election is mere folly,
useless jugglery,” said the banker, turning to Seraphin. “Holding
elections is no longer a rational way of doing, it is no longer a business
way of proceeding, it is yielding to stupid timidity. Mr. Schwefel, don’t
you think elections are mere folly?”
“I confess I have never considered the subject from that point of view,”
answered the leader cautiously. “But meanwhile—what do you understand by
that?”
“Be good enough to attend to my reasoning for a moment. Progress is in a
state of complete organization. What progress wills, must be. Another
party having authority and power cannot subsist side by side with
progress. Just see those men staggering and blundering over the square
with green tickets in their hands! To speak without circumlocution, look
at the slaves doing the behests of their masters. What need of this silly
masquerade of an election? Why squander all this money, waste all this
beer and time? Why does not progress settle this business summarily? Why
not simply nominate candidates fit for the office, and then send them
directly to the legislature? This mode would do away with all this
nonsensical ado, and would give the matter a prompt and business cast,
conformable to the spirit of the age.”
“This idea is a good one, but we have an election law that would stand in
the way of carrying it out.”
“Bosh—election law!” sneered the banker. “Your election law is a mere
scarecrow, an antiquated, meaningless instrument. Do away with the
election law, and follow my suggestion.”
“That would occasion a charming row on the part of the ultramontanes,”
observed the leader laughing.
“Was the lion ever known to heed the bleating of a sheep? When did
progress ever pay any attention to a row gotten up by the ultramontanes?”
rejoined Greifmann. “Was not the fuss made in Bavaria against the
progressionist school‐law quite a prodigious one? Did not our own last
legislature make heavy assaults on the church? Did not the entire
episcopate protest against permitting Jews, Neo‐pagans, and Freemasons to
legislate on matters of religion? But did progress suffer itself to be
disconcerted by episcopal protests and the agonizing screams of the
ultramontanes? Not at all. It calmly pursued the even tenor of its way. Be
logical, Mr. Schwefel: progress reigns supreme and decrees with absolute
authority—why should it not summarily relegate this election law among the
things that were, but are no more?”
“You are right, Greifmann!” exclaimed Gerlach, in a feeling of utter
disgust. “What need has the knout of Russian despotism of the sanction of
constitutional forms? Progress is lord, the rest are slaves!”
“You have again misunderstood me, my good fellow. I am considering the
actual state of things. Should ultramontanism at any time gain the
ascendency, then it also will be justified in behaving in the same
manner.”
Upon more mature consideration, Gerlach found himself forced to admit that
Greifmann’s view, from the standpoint of modern culture, was entirely
correct. Progress independently of God and of all positive religion could
not logically be expected to recognize any moral obligations, for it had
not a moral basis. Everything was determined by the force of
circumstances; the autocracy of party rule made anything lawful. Laws
proceeded not from the divine source of unalterable justice, but from the
whim of a majority—fashioned and framed to suit peculiar interests and
passions.
“We have yet considerable work to do to bring all to thinking as clearly
and rationally as you, Mr. Greifmann,” said the leader with a winning
smile.
Schwefel accompanied the millionaires into a lengthy hall, across the
lower end of which stood a table. There sat the commissary of elections
surrounded by the committee, animated gentlemen with great beards, who
were occupied in distributing tickets to voters or receiving tickets
filled up. The extraordinary good‐humor prevailing among these gentlemen
was owing to the satisfactory course of the election, for rarely was any
ultramontane paper seen mingling in the flood that poured in from the
ranks of progress. The sides of the hall were hung with portraits of the
sovereigns of the land, quite a goodly row. The last one of the series was
youthful in appearance, and some audacious hand had scrawled on the broad
gilt frame the following ominous words: “May he be the last in the
succession of expensive bread‐eaters.” Down the middle of the hall ran a
baize‐covered table, on which were numerous inkstands. Scattered over the
table lay a profusion of green bills; the yellow color of the ultramontane
bills was nowhere to be seen. The table was lined by gentlemen who were
writing. They were not writing for themselves, but for others, who merely
signed their names and then handed the tickets to the commissary. Several
corpulent gentlemen also occupied seats at the table, but they were not
engaged in writing. These gentlemen, apparently unoccupied, wore massive
gold watch‐chains and sparkling rings, and they had a commanding and stern
expression of countenance. They were observing all who entered, to see
whether any man would be bold enough to vote the yellow ticket. People of
the humbler sort, mechanics and laborers, were constantly coming in and
going out. Bowing reverently to the portly gentlemen, they seated
themselves and filled out green tickets with the names of the liberal
candidates. Most of them did not even trouble themselves to this degree,
but simply laid their tickets before the penman appointed for this special
service. All went off in the best order. The process of the election
resembled the smooth working of an ingenious piece of machinery. And there
was no tongue there to denounce the infamous terrorism that had crushed
the freedom of the election or had bought the votes of vile and venal men
with beer.
Seraphin stood with Greifmann in the recess of a window looking on.
“Who are the fat men at the table?” inquired he.
“The one with the very black beard is house‐builder Sand, the second is
Eisenhart, machine‐builder, the third is Erdfloh, a landowner, the fourth
and fifth are tobacco merchants. All those gentlemen are chieftains of the
party of progress.”
“They show it,” observed Gerlach. “Their looks, in a manner, command every
man that comes in to take the green ticket, and I imagine I can read on
their brows: ‘Woe to him who dares vote against us. He shall be under a
ban, and shall have neither employment nor bread.’ It is unmitigated
tyranny! I imagine I see in those fat fellows so many cotton‐planters
voting their slaves.”
“That is a one‐sided conclusion, my most esteemed,” rejoined the banker.
“In country villages, the position here assumed by the magnates of
progress is filled by the lords of ultramontanism, clerical gentlemen in
cassocks, who keep a sharp eye on the fingers of their parishioners. This,
too, is influencing.”
“But not constraining,” opposed the millionaire promptly. “The clergy
exert a legitimate influence by convincing, by advancing solid grounds for
their political creed. They never have recourse to compulsory measures,
nor dare they do so, because it would be opposed to the Gospel which they
preach. The autocrats of progress, on the contrary, do not hesitate about
using threats and violence. Should a man refuse to bow to their dictates,
they cruelly deprive him of the means of subsistence. This is not only
inhuman, but it is also an accursed scheme for making slaves of the people
and robbing them of principle.”
“Ah! look yonder—there is Holt.”
The land cultivator had walked into the hall head erect. He looked along
the table and stood undecided. One of the ministering spirits of progress
soon fluttered about him, offering him a green ticket. Holt glanced at it,
and a contemptuous smile spread over his face. He next tore it to pieces,
which he threw on the floor.
“What are you about?” asked the angel of progress reproachfully.
“I have reduced Shund and his colleagues to fragments,” answered Holt
dryly, then approaching the commissary he demanded a yellow ticket.
“Glorious!” applauded Gerlach. “I have half a mind to present this true
German _man_ with another thousand as a reward for his spirit.”
The fat men had observed with astonishment the action of the land
cultivator. Their astonishment turned to rage when Holt, leisurely seating
himself at the table, took a pen in his mighty fist and began filling out
the ticket with the names of the ultramontane candidates. Whilst he wrote,
whisperings could be heard all through the hall, and every eye was
directed upon him. After no inconsiderable exertion, the task of filling
out the ticket was successfully accomplished, and Holt arose, leaving the
ticket lying upon the table. In the twinkling of an eye a hand reached
forward to take it up.
“What do you mean, sir?” asked Holt sternly.
“That yellow paper defiles the table,” hissed the fellow viciously.
“Hand back that ticket,” commanded Holt roughly. “I want it to be here.
The yellow ticket has as good a right on this table as the green one—do
you hear me?”
“Slave of the priests!” sputtered his antagonist.
“If I am a slave of the priests, then you are a slave of that villain
Shund,” retorted Holt. “I am not to be browbeaten—by such a fellow as you
particularly—least of all by a vile slave of Shund’s.” He spoke, and then
reached his ticket to the commissary.
“That is an impudent dog,” growled leader Sand. “Who is he?”
“He is a countryman of the name of Holt,” answered he to whom the query
was addressed.
“We must spot the boor,” said Erdfloh. “His swaggering shall not avail him
anything.”
Holt was not the only voter that proved refractory. Mr. Schwefel, also,
had a disagreeable surprise. He was standing near the entrance, observing
with great self‐complacency how the workmen in his employ submissively
cast their votes for Shund and his associates. Schwefel regarded himself
as of signal importance in the commonwealth, for he controlled not less
than four hundred votes, and the side which it was his pleasure to favor
could not fail of victory. The head of the great leader seemed in a manner
encircled with the halo of progress: whilst his retainers passed and
saluted him, he experienced something akin to the pride of a field‐marshal
reviewing a column of his victorious army.
Just then a spare little man appeared in the door. His yellowish, sickly
complexion gave evidence that he was employed in the sulphurating of
straw. At sight of the commander the sulphur‐hued little man shrank back,
but his startled look did not escape the restless eye of Mr. Schwefel. He
beckoned to the laborer.
“Have you selected your ticket, Leicht?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Let me see the ticket.”
The man obeyed reluctantly. Scarcely had Schwefel got a glimpse of the
paper when his brows gathered darkly.
“What means this? Have you selected the yellow ticket and not the green
one?”
Leicht hung his head. He thought of the consequences of this detection, of
his four small children, of want of employment, of hunger and bitter
need—he was almost beside himself.
“If you vote for the priests, you may get your bread from the priests,”
said Schwefel. “The moment you hand that ticket to the commissary, you may
consider yourself discharged from my employ.” With this he angrily turned
his back upon the man. Leicht did not reach in his ticket to the
commissary. Staggering out of the hall, he stood bewildered near the
railing of the steps, and stared vaguely upon the men who were coming and
going. Spitzkopf slipped up to him.
“What were you thinking about, man?” asked he reproachfully. “Mr. Schwefel
is furious—you are ruined. Sheer stupidity, nothing but stupidity in you
to wish to vote in opposition to the pleasure of the man from whom you get
your bread and meat! Not only that, but you have insulted the whole
community, for you have chosen to vote against progress when all the town
is in favor of progress. You will be put on the spotted list, and the
upshot will be that you will not get employment in any factory in town. Do
you want to die of hunger, man—do you want your children to die of
hunger?”
“You are right—I am ruined,” said the laborer listlessly. “I couldn’t
bring myself to write Shund’s name because he reduced my brother‐in‐law to
beggary—this is what made me select the yellow ticket.”
“You are a fool. Were Mr. Schwefel to recommend the devil, your duty would
be to vote for the devil. What need you care who is on the ticket? You
have only to write the names on the ticket—nothing more than that. Do you
think progress would nominate men that are unfit—men who would not promote
the interests of the state, who would not further the cause of humanity,
civilization, and liberty? You are a fool for not voting for what is best
for yourself.”
“I am sorry now, but it’s too late.” sighed Leicht. “I wouldn’t have
thought, either, that Mr. Schwefel would get angry because a man wanted to
vote to the best of his judgment.”
“There you are prating sillily again. Best of your judgment!—you mustn’t
have any judgment. Leave it to others to judge; they have more brains,
more sense, more knowledge than you. Progress does the thinking: our place
is to blindly follow its directions.”
“But, Mr. Spitzkopf, mine is only the vote of a poor man; and what matters
such a vote?”
“There is your want of sense again. We are living in a state that enjoys
liberty. We are living in an age of intelligence, of moral advancement, of
civilization and knowledge, in a word, we are living in an age of
progress; and in an age of this sort the vote of a poor man is worth as
much as that of a rich man.”
“If only I had it to do over! I would give my right hand to have it to do
over!”
“You can repair the mischief if you want.”
“Instruct me how, Mr. Spitzkopf; please tell me how!”
“Very well, I will do my best. As you acted from thoughtlessness and no
bad intention, doubtless Mr. Schwefel will suffer himself to be
propitiated. Go down into the court, and wait till I come. I shall get you
another ticket; you will then vote for progress, and all will be
satisfactory.”
“I am a thousand times obliged to you, Mr. Spitzkopf—a thousand times
obliged!”
The agent went back to the hall. Leicht descended to the courtyard, where
he found a ring of timid operators like himself surrounding the sturdy
Holt. They were talking in an undertone. As often as a progressionist drew
near, their conversation was hushed altogether. Holt’s voice alone
resounded loudly through the court, and his huge strong hands were cutting
the air in animated gesticulations.
“This is not a free election; it is one of compulsion and violence,” cried
he. “Every factoryman is compelled to vote as his employer dictates, and
should he refuse the employer discharges him from the work. Is not this
most despicable tyranny! And these very tyrants of progress are
perpetually prating about liberty, independence, civilization! That’s a
precious sort of liberty indeed!”
“A man belonging to the ultramontane party cannot walk the streets to‐day
without being hooted and insulted,” said another. “Even up yonder in the
hall, those gentlemen who are considered so cultivated stick their heads
together and laugh scornfully when one of us draws near.”
“That’s so—that’s so, I have myself seen it,” cried Holt. “Those well‐bred
gentlemen show their teeth like ferocious dogs whenever they see a yellow
ticket or an ultramontane. I say, Leicht, has anything happened you? You
look wretched!” Leicht drew near and related what had occurred. The honest
Holt’s eyes gleamed like coals of fire.
“There’s another piece of tyranny for you,” cried he. “Leicht, my poor
fellow, I fancy I see in you a slave of Schwefel’s. From dawn till late
you are compelled to toil for the curmudgeon, Sundays not excepted. Your
church is the factory, your religion working in straw, and your God is
your sovereign master Schwefel. You are ruining your health amid the
stench of brimstone, and not so much as the liberty of voting as you think
fit is allowed you. It’s just as I tell you—you factorymen are slaves. How
strangely things go on in the world! In America slavery has been
abolished; but lo! here in Europe it is blooming as freshly as trees in
the month of May. But mark my word, friends, the fruit is deadly; and when
once it will have ripened, the great God of heaven will shake it from the
trees, and the generation that planted the trees will have to eat the
bitter fruit.”
Leicht shunned the society of the ultramontanes and stole away. Presently
Spitzkopf appeared with the ticket.
“Your ticket is filled out. Come and sign your name to it.” Schwefel was
again standing near the entrance, and he again beckoned the laborer to
approach. “I am pacified. You may now continue working for me.”
Carl and Seraphin returned to the Palais Greifmann. Louise received them
with numerous questions. The banker related what had passed; Gerlach
strode restlessly through the apartment.
“The most curious spectacle must have been yourself,” said the young lady.
“Just fancy you on the rostrum at the ‘Key of Heaven’! And very likely the
ungrateful ultramontanes would not so much as applaud.”
“Beg pardon, they did, miss!” assured Seraphin. “They applauded and cried
bravo.”
“Really? Then I am proud of a brother whose maiden speech produced such
marvellous effects. May be we shall read of it in the daily paper.
Everybody will be surprised to hear of the banker Greifmann making a
speech at the ‘Key of Heaven.’ ” Carl perceived the irony and stroked his
forehead.
“But what can you be pondering over, Mr. Seraphin?” cried she to him.
“Since returning from the turmoil of the election, you seem unable to keep
quiet.” He seated himself at her side, and was soon under the spell of her
magical attractions.
“My head is dizzy and my brain confused,” said he. “On every hand I see
nothing but revolt against moral obligation, sacrilegious disregard of the
most sacred rights of man. The hubbub still resounds in my ears, and my
imagination still sees those fat men at the table with their slaveholder
look—the white slaves doing their masters’ bidding—the completest
subjugation in an age of enlightenment—all this presents itself to me in
the most repulsive and lamentable guise.”
“You must drive those horrible phantoms from your mind,” replied Louise.
“They are not phantoms, but the most fearful reality.”
“They are phantoms, Mr. Seraphin, so far as your feelings exaggerate the
evils. Those factory serfs have no reason to complain. There is nothing to
be done but to put up with a situation that has spontaneously developed
itself. It is useless to grow impatient because difference of rank between
masters and servants is an unavoidable evil upon earth.” A servant entered
to call them to dinner.
At her side he gradually became more cheerful. The brightness of her eyes
dispelled his depression, and her delicate arts put a spell upon his
young, inexperienced heart. And when, at the end of the meal, they were
sipping delicious wine, and her beautiful lips lisped the customary
health, the subdued tenderness he had been feeling suddenly expanded into
a strong passion.
“After you will have done justice to your diary,” said she at parting, “we
shall take a drive, and then go to the opera.”
Instead of going to his room, Seraphin went into the garden. He almost
forgot the occurrences of the day in musing on the inexplicable behavior
of Louise. Again she had not uttered a word of condemnation of the
execrable doings of progress, and it grieved him deeply. A suspicion
flitted across his mind that perhaps Louise was infected with the
frivolous and pernicious spirit of the age, but he immediately stifled the
terrible suggestion as he would have hastened to crush a viper that he
might have seen on the path of the beautiful lady. He preferred to believe
that she suppressed her feelings of disgust out of regard for his
presence, that she wisely avoided pouring oil upon the flames of his own
indignation. Had she not exerted herself to dispel his sombre reflections?
He was thus espousing the side of passion against the appalling truth that
was beginning faintly to dawn upon his anxious mind.
But soon the spell was to be broken, and duty was to confront him with the
alternative of either giving up Louise, or defying the stern demands of
his conscience.
The brother and sister, thinking their guest engaged with his diary,
walked into the garden. They directed their steps towards the arbor where
Gerlach had seated himself.
He was only roused to consciousness of their proximity by the unusually
loud and excited tone in which Louise spoke. He could not be mistaken; it
was the young lady’s voice—but oh! the import of her words. He looked
through an opening in the foliage, and sat thunderstruck.
“You have been attempting to guide Gerlach’s overexalted spirit into a
more rational way of thinking, but the very opposite seems to be the
result. Intercourse with the son of a strait‐laced mother is infecting you
with sympathy for ultramontanism. Your speech to‐day,” continued she
caustically, “in yon obscure meeting is the subject of the talk of the
town. I am afraid you have made yourself ridiculous in the minds of all
cultivated people. The respectability of our family has suffered.”
“Of our family?” echoed he, perplexed.
“We are compromitted,” continued she with excitement. “You have given our
enemies occasion to set us down for members of a party who stupidly oppose
the onward march of civilization.”
“Cease your philippic,” broke in the brother angrily. “Bitterness is an
unmerited return for my efforts to serve you.”
“To serve me?”
“Yes, to serve you. The disturbing of that meeting made a very unfavorable
impression on your intended. He scorned the noisy mob, and was roused by
what, from his point of view, could not pass for anything better than
unpardonable impudence. To me it might have been a matter of indifference
whether your intended was pleased or displeased with the fearless conduct
of progress. But as I knew both you and the family felt disposed to base
the happiness of your life on his couple of millions, as moreover I feared
my silence might be interpreted by the shortsighted young gentleman for
complicity in progressionist ideas, I was forced to disown the disorderly
proceeding. In so doing I have not derogated one iota from the spirit of
the times; on the contrary, I have bound a heavy wreath about the brow of
glorious humanity.”
“But you have pardoned yourself too easily,” proceeded she, unappeased.
“The very first word uttered by a Greifmann in that benighted assembly was
a stain on the fair fame of our family. We shall be an object of contempt
in every circle. ‘The Greifmanns have turned ultramontanes because Gerlach
would have refused the young lady’s hand had they not changed their
creed,’ is what will be prated in society. A flood of derision and sarcasm
will be let loose upon us. I an ultramontane?” cried she, growing more
fierce; “I caught in the meshes of religious fanaticism? I accept the
Syllabus—believe in the Prophet of Nazareth? Oh! I could sink into the
earth on account of this disgrace! Did I for an instant doubt that
Seraphin may be redeemed from superstition and fanaticism, I would
renounce my union with him—I would spurn the tempting enjoyments of
wealth, so much do I hate silly credulity.”
Seraphin glanced at her through the gap in the foliage. Not six paces from
him, with her face turned in his direction, stood the infuriate beauty.
How changed her countenance! The features, habitually so delicate and
bright, now looked absolutely hideous, the brows were fiercely knit, and
hatred poured like streams of fire from her eyes. Sentiments hitherto
skilfully concealed had taken visible shape, ugly and repulsive to the
view of the innocent youth. His noble spirit revolted at so much hypocrisy
and falsehood. What occurred before him was at once so monstrous and so
overwhelming that he did not for an instant consider that in case they
entered the arbor he would be discovered. He was not discovered, however.
Louise and Carl retraced their steps. For a short while the voice of
Louise was still audible, then silence reigned in the garden.
Seraphin rose from his seat. There was a sad earnestness in his face, and
the vanishing traces of deep pain, which however were soon superseded by a
noble indignation.
“I have beheld the genuine Louise, and I thank God for it. It is as I
feared, Louise is a progressionist, an infidel that considers it
disgraceful to believe in the Redeemer. Out upon such degeneracy! She
hates light, and how hideous this hatred makes her. Not a feature was left
of the charming, smiling, winning Louise. Good God! how horrible had her
real character remained unknown until after we were married! Chained for
life to the bitter enemy of everything that I hold dear and venerate as
holy—think of it! With eyes bandaged, I was but two paces from an abyss
that resembles hell—thank God! the bandage has fallen—I see the abyss, and
shudder.
“ ‘The ultramontane Seraphin’—‘the fanatical Gerlach’—‘the shortsighted
Gerlach,’ whose fortune the young lady covets that she may pass her life
in enjoyment—a heartless girl, in whom there is not a spark of love for
her intended husband—how base!
“ ‘Ultramontane’?—‘fanatical’?—yes! ‘Shortsighted?’ by no means. One would
need the suspicious eyes of progress to see through the hypocrisy of this
lady and her brother—a simple, trusting spirit like mine cannot penetrate
such darkness. At any rate, they shall not find me weak. The little flame
that was beginning to burn within my heart has been for ever extinguished
by her unhallowed lips. She might now present herself in the garb of an
angel, and muster up every seductive art of womanhood, ’twould not avail;
I have had an insight into her real character, and giving her up costs me
not a pang. It is not hollow appearances that determine the worth of
woman, but moral excellence, beautiful virtues springing from a heart
vivified by faith. No, giving her up shall not cost me one regretful
throb.”
He hastened from the garden to his room and rang the bell.
“Pack my trunks this very day, John,” said he to his servant. “Tomorrow we
shall be off.”
He then entered in his diary a circumstantial account of the unmasked
beauty. He also dwelt at length upon the painful shock his heart
experienced when the bright and beautiful creature he had considered
Louise to be suddenly vanished before his soul. As he was finishing the
last line, John reappeared with a telegraphic despatch. He read it, and
was stunned.
“Meet your father at the train this evening.” He looked at the concise
despatch, and fancied he saw his father’s stern and threatening
countenance.
The contemplated match had for several years been regarded by the families
of Gerlach and Greifmann as a fixed fact. Seraphin was aware how
stubbornly his father adhered to a project that he had once set his mind
upon. Here now, just as the union had became impossible and as the youth
was about to free himself for ever from an engagement that was destructive
of his happiness, the uncompromising sire had to appear to enforce
unconditional obedience to his will. A fearful contest awaited Seraphin,
unequal and painful; for a son, accustomed from childhood to revere and
obey his parents, was to maintain this contest against his own father.
Seraphin paced the room and wrung his hands in anguish.
To Be Continued.
The Virgin.
Mother! whose virgin bosom was uncrost
With the least shade of thought to sin allied:
Woman! above all women glorified,
Our tainted nature’s solitary boast;
Purer than foam on central ocean tost,
Brighter than eastern skies at daybreak strewn
With fancied roses, than the unblemished moon
Before her vane begins on heaven’s blue coast,
Thy image falls to earth. Yet some, I ween,
Not unforgiven, the suppliant knee might bend,
As to a visible power, in which did blend
All that was mixed and reconciled in thee
Of mother’s love with maiden purity,
Of high and low, celestial with terrene.—_Wordsworth._
The Homeless Poor Of New York City.
In this class, the homeless poor, we embrace all those who have no fixed
habitation—who have no idea in the morning where they will obtain shelter
for their weary bodies during the coming night. We find here every age
represented—from the infant in the mother’s arms, through the rapid stages
of development (as it is well known that pain and hunger have a wonderful
effect in maturing infant humanity), to the aged, tottering towards the
grave, only waiting for their summons to cross over the river of time;
looking with yearning eyes towards the Home prepared for them on the shore
of eternity.
It is impossible to estimate the number of this class, as we have no
statistics to guide us, but it is supposed that there are about forty
thousand vagrant children alone in this metropolis. From this frightful
number of infant waifs we may judge of the amount of misery and
destitution in our midst—hidden from view behind our imposing marble
warehouses and stately brownstone mansions.
We have been informed by a reliable police official that there are a large
number of poor widows, whose husbands died in the service of our country
during the late war, in a most destitute condition in this city, and that
they frequently bring their children with them and apply for shelter at
the station‐houses. They attempt to eke out a miserable livelihood by
sewing, and when this fails them they are obliged to go (in this Christian
city) to the abodes of crime, to avoid the inclemency of the winter
nights. Few persons can form an idea of the struggles, the privations, and
the daily sufferings of lone women who earn their daily bread by the use
of the needle. If the fine ladies who adorn themselves in costly robes
could go behind the scenes after they have left their orders at the
elegant shops of the dressmakers; could they see their delicate fabrics
taken home by the poor sewing‐women; see the weary forms bent over their
work in the cheerless tenement‐houses, each stitch accompanied by a
painful throb of heart and brain as the night wears on and the solitary
candle burns low; the famishing child as he tosses and turns on his bundle
of rags, murmuring, “Bread, mother, bread!”—ay! if the beaming eyes of the
votaries of fashion could by some magic power see on their rustling silks,
their costly linen, their beautiful lace, the imprint of the gaunt, lean
fingers of the poor sewing‐women; could the tears that trickled down the
worn cheeks crystallize where they have fallen; could the sighs which
welled up from the overburdened heart strike with their low wailing sound
on the ears of these worldlings—they would be filled with a larger sense
of duty to their fellow‐creatures, a greater desire to follow the golden
motto, “Do unto others as ye would that others should do unto you.”
There is an official apathy to the condition of the extreme poor which,
with the ballot placed in the hands of every man, has already produced
baneful results to the well‐being of the Republic, and must eventually, if
not remedied, act detrimentally to its safety. If an unfortunate wretch,
clad in tattered garments, pass through our streets or loiter near our
homes, he is at once eyed suspiciously—to wear the habiliments of poverty
is evidence sufficient that the black heart of a criminal is enclosed
within. It is true that promiscuous charity may do great harm, but it is
surely the correct policy for a government, while it judiciously supplies
the immediate wants of its poor classes with one hand, to open the avenues
to employment with the other; thus teaching them the lesson impressed upon
our first parents as they were banished from the Garden of Eden—that man
must earn his daily bread by the sweat of his brow.
We have already said that it is computed by well‐informed persons that we
have in our midst some forty thousand vagrant children. Let us glance for
a moment at their condition, and what is being done for them. It is
difficult for any one to conceive the deplorable condition of these
homeless children without personal observation. They tread the paths
leading to moral destruction with such rapidity that hundreds of them are
confirmed thieves and drunkards before they reach the age of twelve years.
The day is passed in pilfering, and at night they sleep in some out‐of‐
the‐way place—under door‐steps, in wagons, or wherever they can store
their diminutive forms. Some time since, a regularly organized band of
boys were discovered to have constructed a shelter under one of the piers;
and here they congregated at night, each bringing in his booty stolen
during the day. A few days since, during a visit to one of the mission‐
houses of this city, the lady in charge pointed out to us a little girl,
not more than nine years old, telling us that she never came to the house
without being more or less under the influence of liquor, and a glance at
the bloated features and nervous, trembling hands showed conclusively that
it was her habitual condition. We understand that there are fiends in the
shape of men and women in this city who will sell such children a penny’s
worth of rum. Some persons have argued that these children are from bad
parents, and under any circumstances, no matter how favorable, would be
corrupt. Such an opinion is a libel on God and human nature. A certain
proclivity to vice may be transmitted in the blood, but free‐will remains
in the most degenerate, and is sufficient, with the aid of a good
education and the grace of God, to overcome this obstacle to virtue. We
know well the plastic nature of childhood, and, if educated from the first
to honesty, morality, and sobriety, it will indeed be found a rare
exception in which the developed man will not possess these virtues, and
prove an honor to himself and society. But if the first lisp of the infant
repeats an oath which is used more frequently than any other word by the
debased mother, or if, as is the case with many, as soon as the babe can
walk alone it is taught the art of begging and stealing, what can we look
for in the same child simply developed to manhood? Are you surprised that
he makes a thief? He has never been taught anything else, and he naturally
looks upon the law as something that interferes with the right to take
anything he desires, if he can only do so without being detected. Would
you look for pure water from a stream whose bed is covered with filthy
slime, and whose banks are the receptacle of disgusting, decomposed offal?
Surely you would not drink of such, no matter how pure you knew the
gurgling springs to be high up on the mountain‐side from whence it
received its supply. Look at a babe as it is blessed with the first gleam
of reason—its ability to notice things about it. Is there anything in the
bright black eye to indicate the future cunning of the burglar? Do the
rosy lips, wreathed in angel smiles, look as if they were fashioned to
utter foul oaths and blasphemies? And the little chubby hands clasped in
baby glee around the mother’s neck, could they, by a natural instinct,
ever be turned in brutal wrath against that self‐same mother? Reason
answers No to all these questions; and we argue that such vices are
developed principally by education and example. Take this for granted,
and, if we do nothing to save the child from such education, what right
have we to imprison the developed man for acting upon the only doctrine he
has ever been taught? Or a better view of the subject is: Would it not be
the dictate of a sound political economy to take these children from the
streets, and teach them some useful trade or pursuit, giving them, at the
same time, the fundamental principles of Christianity, without which
society is a tottering fabric, minus its very foundation? Do this, and we
make producers out of the very men and women who will otherwise become
consumers upon the state in the common prisons.
In several parishes of this city benevolent efforts are being made to
rescue these children, but, so far as we can learn, the only institutions
established where they are regularly taken care of and kept permanently
are the following: “The Five Points House of Industry,” “The Five Points
Mission‐House,” “The Howard Mission”; and last, but we hope soon to be
first in its wide‐spread influence over these little creatures, is the one
established some two years ago, and now located in East Thirteenth Street.
This is managed by certain charitable Catholic ladies, and called “An
Association for Befriending Children.” As most of the poor children on the
Island are, or should be, Catholics, it is but just that the last‐
mentioned should receive support and countenance from every Catholic in
the city able to assist it, and thus enable the lady managers in a short
time to erect branch homes in every parish on the Island.
But come with us, dear reader, and let us look for ourselves at the
condition of those who take advantage of the hospitality of the station‐
houses. Think for a moment that in 1862 there were seventy thousand nine
hundred and thirty‐eight lodgers, while 1871 presents the fearfully
increased number of one hundred and forty‐one thousand seven hundred and
eighty who sought this shelter. Oh! that this number (equal nearly to one‐
sixth of the population of this vast metropolis), with its fearful weight
of destitution and misery, suffering and despair, could be placed in
burning letters upon the minds of those able, even without discommoding
themselves, to relieve it!
Let us go back to midwinter. A blinding snow‐storm is wrapping the earth
in a white mantle, and it is after midnight, but these are only better
reasons for our undertaking, as they secure us increased opportunity to
see the phase of suffering we seek; for surely in a night like this the
shelter of any roof is a luxury compared to the exposure of the street.
Let us stop first at the Fifteenth Precinct: we ask the sergeant at the
desk for the presiding officer, and we are at once shown to the captain’s
room. He reads the note from headquarters giving us the _entrée_, and
informs us that he will give us any information we desire. We request him
to show us the quarters of the night lodgers. He leads us through a rear
door into the yard, and here we find a second building, two stories high,
built of brick and stone. The lower story is cut up into cells, with iron
cross‐barred doors, for prisoners; and the upper is divided into two
rooms—one devoted to the female, and the other to male, lodgers. The heavy
granite stone forming a roof to the cells is also the floor of the upper
rooms. As we make an inspection of the prison, we ask the captain what he
thinks of this connection of homeless vagrants with prisoners? He promptly
replies that it is most unfortunate, and should not be allowed, and with
great kindness of heart says he would be willing to take care of a house
in his precinct for any number of lodgers, if allowed to do so. He tells
us that he does everything to alleviate the condition of these paupers he
can; that, if a particularly distressing case presents itself, he allows
the doorman to give the party a cell in the prison, that this is far more
comfortable than the rooms above.
Think of this, you who at night rest your heads on pillows of down and
wrap your bodies in fine rose blankets; think of beings so unfortunate
that a prisoner’s cell, with the clanking iron‐barred door, is looked upon
as a special favor! But let us ascend to the upper story. The door to the
male apartment is opened, and the picture is before us. The ceiling is
lofty, and a large ventilator opens to the roof from its centre, but where
is the stone floor? It cannot be seen, so densely is it packed with
outcast humanity. We can think of no other comparison but the way we have
seen sardines packed in little tin boxes. Glance at this first row: here
is an old German, next what looks to be a countryman, then three negroes,
so black that they might have just arrived from the burning climate of
Africa, then three Arabs, and in the distant corner more white men. The
other rows are but copies of this, differing only in color or nationality,
and such a heterogeneous mass of humanity, made common bed‐fellows by
want, it would be impossible to find. Around the wall are placed iron
frames, about one foot high, and in these fit plain boards, painted black;
but here, again, none of this can be seen, the human flooring covers all.
Think of this apartment, with seventy‐four men, of every description, from
the octogenarian leaning over the brink of the grave, to the young boy
seventeen or eighteen years old. Every clime has a representative; and in
the vast group every variety of shade and color possessed by the human
family can be seen. Opening the door to the female apartment, we find it
occupied by a much smaller number; and we can see better the arrangement
of the floor. The iron frames with their board covering extend from each
wall towards the centre about six feet, leaving a space in the middle of
the room as a passway. The same variety in color, age, and nationality is
visible. Look at the different expressions of countenance—how replete with
sadness, misfortune, degradation, and misery! These lodgers are divided
into three classes: the first are officially known as bummers; they are
generally inebriates and worthless idlers, the drones of the hive, who
make the station‐houses their permanent lodging‐places, going night after
night to different ones, thus distributing their patronage to a large
number; but in spite of this the wary eye of the policeman soon recognizes
them as belonging to this class. The second are those who by misfortune
are obliged to seek this temporary shelter. Here are poor women, with
their young children, forced out of their homes at night by drunken
husbands; single persons, temporarily unable to obtain employment; here
also you find those whose lives have been failures, whose every effort to
succeed has proved abortive, who have been held down to the world’s hard
grindstone by the iron grasp of poverty. The third class embraces those
who have homes in the rural districts, and other poor strangers, who are
by accident left in the city for the night.
Having completed our survey here, let us look in for a few moments at the
Eighth Precinct. We find the captain obliging in his politeness, and we
ask at once to be permitted to see the night lodgers. About the centre of
the building a door opens, leading by a common stairway to the basement
below. A fearful and sickening odor greets us as we pass down, and this,
the captain informs us, permeates every part of the building, to the great
detriment of his officers. He also tells us that his accommodations for
wayfarers are very poor; that he is obliged to put them in two small rooms
in the basement, which are close and unhealthy. We find this statement
correct, the floor upon which the lodgers rest being about four feet below
the street level; the ceiling is also very low, and the ventilation
extremely imperfect. The only light in the apartment is from a small oil‐
lamp, and its sickly flame seems to add intensity to the aspect of the
miserable surroundings. Look at that old man with long white beard and
tattered garments, the first in the row near the entrance. There lingers
still a look of dignity about his fine face, but his whole appearance
denotes the victim of intemperance. See that young boy with his chest
exposed, the third from the old man. He has never known his parents.
Picked up in the streets when a babe by an old crone, he has been tossed
about ever since with the vilest scum of metropolitan society. He is
sixteen, but can count for you the number of dinners he has had in all
those years, the number of times he has slept in a comfortable bed, ay,
even the number of kind words that have been spoken to him! What can be
expected from the future of such children, cradled in a den for the
punishment of crime while yet the snowy innocence of babyhood is
untarnished, the only lullaby the coarse jest, rude repartee, and foul
oaths of the outcasts who surround them? The curses and impotent railings
against a fate for which generally each is individually to blame, and the
bitter invective against their more fortunate fellow‐beings, form a sad
school in which to nurture pliable minds. But enough; the foul air of this
basement oppresses us, and we gladly make our way to the outer world.
In the large cities of Europe, there are refuges established for this
class on the following simple plan: An airy, comfortable, and well‐
ventilated room is procured, and fitted up with plain bedsteads and
bedding, the latter of such materials as are easily washed. The next thing
of importance is to provide means for bathing, and to require every person
admitted to make use of these means before retiring to rest. It is also
the custom to give the lodgers when they come in, and again in the morning
when they leave, a large basin of gruel and a half‐pound of bread. The
cost of such hospitality here would not exceed fifteen cents per night,
and not as much as this if these houses were under the care of a religious
community, saving by this the salaries of matrons and other employees, and
at the same time ensuring the order always produced by the presence of
disciplined authority. There should be separate houses for males and
females, and each could be cared for by persons of their own sex; but all
such institutions would require supervision by the police, as some unruly
characters must be expected in a promiscuous crowd of vagrants. The night
refuges of London for women and children, established by Catholics, are
under the care of the Sisters of Mercy, and are most admirably conducted.
The order and docility of the lodgers is said to be remarkable under the
gentle sway of these ladies. Those in Montreal and Quebec are in charge of
the Gray Nuns. It would not require a large number of these lodging‐houses
for the relief of our city, but they should be located with regard to the
density of population in given districts. Four or five for each sex, with
proper accommodations, would be amply sufficient, as the total number of
lodgers in the most inclement nights would hardly reach one thousand.
It is difficult to estimate the advantage to society as well as to the
poor these homes would prove. In erecting them we should strike at the
very foundation of the great social evil, and save hundreds of young
women—strangers and unfortunates out of employment—from the snares set for
their ruin in their lonely wanderings at night in search of shelter.
“There is near another river flowing,
Black with guilt, and deep as hell and sin;
On its brink even sinners stand and shudder,
Cold and hunger goad the homeless in.”
—_Procter._
As the station lodgings now are, they form an incentive to the class known
as bummers to avoid work. These people know there are thirty station‐
houses, and by frequent changes they manage to pass the year through
without drawing marked attention at any one place. This class is composed
of low thieves, drunkards, and beggars. If but few lodging‐places existed,
they would soon become well known, and could then be committed to the
workhouse. A sojourn for them on the “island of penance” in the East River
would result in a marked decrease in the thieving constantly carried on
about our wharves and private dwellings.
In erecting these night homes, either by charity or legislative
enactments, we should save our city from a burning disgrace, and give
hopes of respectability to many a weary soul beaten down to the dust by
the undeserved humiliations which link misfortune with crime.
As a charitable investment, these homes would prove a wise economy, as
they would permit the truly unfortunate to be properly cared for, which is
impossible at present. They would throw a safeguard around the morals of
homeless young women by giving them shelter with persons of their own sex,
who could protect, sympathize with, and advise them. They would assist in
detecting those who live by swindling their hardworking neighbors. Lastly
and most important, they would separate the children of poverty from the
abodes of crime.
[NOTE.—The foregoing article is the substance of a lecture
delivered by Dr. Raborg before the Catholic Institute connected
with the parish of S. Paul the Apostle in this city. Its
suggestions are so apropos to the present season that we have
deemed them worthy of reproduction in this permanent form. We
desire also to state that the lecture had the effect of inducing
several philanthropic ladies and gentlemen to visit the station‐
houses and make a personal examination themselves, the result of
which was a rather extended article in _Frank Leslie’s Newspaper_
of March 2, 1872, embracing some passages from the lecture, and
accompanied by a clever illustration.
The sectarian institutions for vagrant children having been
alluded to, and certain former allusions to the same in this
magazine having been misunderstood, we think it necessary to make
a remark here in explanation. We must admit and praise the
philanthropic motive which sustains these institutions. At the
same time, we regard them as really nuisances of the worst kind,
so far as Catholic children are concerned, on account of their
proselytizing character. Moreover, in their actual working they
violate the rights both of parents and children, and we have
evidence that these poor children are actually sold at the West,
both by private sale and by auction. The horrible abuses existing
in some state institutions are partly known to the public, and we
have the means of disclosing even worse things than those which
have recently been exposed in the daily papers. We trust,
therefore, that the eloquent appeal of the author of the article
will produce its effect upon all our Catholic readers, and
stimulate them to greater efforts in behalf of these poor
children.—ED. C. W.]
The House That Jack Built.
By The Author Of “The House Of Yorke.”
In Two Parts.
Part I.
It stood in one of the wildest spots in New England, surrounded by woods,
a “frame house” in a region of log‐houses, and, as such, in spite of
defects, a touch beyond the most complete edifice that could be shaped of
logs.
The defects were not few. The walls were slightly out of the
perpendicular, there were strips of board instead of clapboards and
shingles, the immense stone chimney in the centre gave the house the
appearance of being an afterthought, and the two windows that looked down
toward the road squinted.
Yes, a most absurd little house, with all sorts of blunders in the making
of it, but, for all that, a house with a worth of its own. For Jack
Maynard had put the frame together with his own unassisted hands, had
raised it with but two men to help him, and had finished it off alone. And
round about the work, and through and over it, while his hands built
visibly, his fancy also built airy habitations, fair and plumb, and
changed all the landscape. Before this fairy wand, the forest sank, broad
roads unwound, there was a sprinkle of white houses through the green
country, like a sprinkle of snow in June; and in place of this rustic nest
rose a fair mansion‐house, with a comely matron standing in the door, and
rosy children playing about.
At this climax of his castle‐building Jack Maynard caught breath, and,
coming back to the present, found himself halfway up a ladder, with a
hammer suspended in his hand, the wild forest swarming with game all about
him, and the matron of his vision still Miss Bessie Ware, spinster.
Jack laughed. “So much the better!” he exclaimed, and brought his hammer
down with such force, laughing as he struck, that the nail under it bent
up double and broke in two, the head half falling to the ground, the point
half flattened lengthwise into the board, making a fragment of rustic
buhl‐work.
“There’s a nail driven into the future,” said the builder, and selected
another, and struck with better aim this time, so that the little spike
went straight through the board, and pierced an oaken timber, and held the
two firmly together, and thus did its work in the present.
“Well done!” said Jack; “you have gone through fifty summers in less than
a minute.”
The startled woods rang to every blow, the fox and the deer fled at that
tocsin of civilization, and the snake _slid_ away, and set the green grass
_crawling_ with its hidden windings. Only one living creature, besides the
builder, seemed happy and unafraid, and that was a brown‐and‐white spaniel
that dozed in the shadow of the rising walls, stirring only when his
master whistled or spoke to him.
“Wake up, Bruno, and tell me how this suits your eyes,” Jack would call
out. Whereat Bruno would lift his lids lazily, show a narrow line of his
bright brown eyes, give his tail a slow, laborious wag, and subside to his
dreams again, and Jack would go on with his work. It seemed to be his
heart, rather than the hammer, that drove the nails in; and every timber,
board, latch, and hinge caught a momentary life from his hands, and
learned his story from some telegraphing pulse. The very stones of the
chimney knew that John Maynard and Bessie Ware were to be married as soon
as the house should be ready for them.
There was not a dwelling in sight; but half a mile further down the road
toward the nearest town, there was an odd, double log‐house, wherein lived
Dennis Moran and his Norah, three little girls, and Bessie Ware, Dennis
Moran’s sister’s child.
Jack paused in his work, took off his straw hat to wipe away the
perspiration from his face and toss his hair back, first hanging on a
round of the ladder just above him the hammer that had driven a nail
through fifty summers. As he put his hat on again, he glanced downward,
and there, at the foot of the ladder, stood twenty summers, looking up at
him out of a face as fair as summers ever formed. The apple‐blooms had
given it their pink and white, the June heavens were not bluer than those
eyes, so oddly full of laughter and languor. The deepest nook under a low‐
growing spruce, nor shadow in vine‐draped cave, nor hollow in a thunder‐
cloud, ever held richer darkness than that hidden in the loose curls and
waves of hair that fell about Bessie Ware’s shoulders. No part of the
charm of her presence was due to her dress, save an air of fresh neatness.
A large apron, gathered up by the corners, was full of fragrant arbor‐vitæ
boughs, gathered to make a broom of. The large parasol, tilted back that
she might look upward, allowed a sunbeam to fall on her forehead.
“Oh! what a tall pink has grown up since I came here!” exclaimed the
builder, as he saw her.
“And what a great bear has climbed on to my ladder,” retorted the girl.
He came down from the ladder and began to tell her his plans.
“Bessie, I mean this shall be yet one of the best farms in the state. On
that hill I will have corn and clover; there shall be an orchard in the
hollow next to it, with peach‐trees on the south side of the little rise;
and I will plant cranberries in the swamp beyond. In ten years from now,
if a man should leave here to‐day, he wouldn’t know the place.”
Bessie smiled at the magician who was to work such wonders—never doubting
but he would—then glanced about at the scene of his exploits. Sombre,
blue‐green pines brooded over the hill that was one day to be pink with
clover, or rustling with corn; oaks, elms, maples, birches, and a great
tangle of undergrowth, with rocks and moss, cumbered the ground where
peaches were to ripen their dusky cheeks, when Jack should bid them grow,
and large, green, and red‐streaked and yellow apples were to drop through
the still, bright, autumn air; and she knew that the future cranberry‐
swamp now stood thick and dark with beautiful arborvitæ trees, whose high‐
piled, flaky boughs, tapering to a point far up in the sunshine, kept cool
and dim the little pools of water below, and the black mould in which
their strong roots stretched out and interwove. But Jack could do anything
when he set out, and her faith in him was so great that she could shut her
eyes now and see the open swamp matted over with cranberry‐vines, and hear
the corn‐stalks clash their green swords in the fretting breeze, and the
muffled bump of the ripe apple as it fell on the grass.
After a while, Bessie started to go, but came back again.
“I forgot,” she said, and gave her lover a book that had been hidden under
the boughs in her apron. “A book‐pedlar stopped at our house last night,
and he left this. Uncle Dennis doesn’t want it, and I do not. Perhaps you
can make some sense out of it.”
It was a second‐hand copy of Comstock’s _Natural Philosophy_, for schools,
and was scribbled through and through by the student who had used it,
years before.
Jack took the book.
“And that reminds me of your white‐faced boarder,” he said, with a slight
laugh. “Is he up yet?”
“Oh! he gets up earlier than any of us,” she answered lightly. “He doesn’t
act cityfied at all. And you know, Jack, the reason why he is white is
because he has been sick. Good‐bye! Aunt Norah will want her broom before
she gets it.”
Bessie struck into the woods instead of going down to the road, and was
soon lost to view. Standing beside her little house, she had looked a
tall, fairly‐formed lassie; but with the great trunks of primeval forest‐
trees standing about her, and lifting their green pyramids and cones far
into the air, she appeared slim and small enough for a fairy. Even the
birds, chippering about full of business, seemed to flout her, as if she
were of small consequence—not worth flying from.
She laughed at them, and whispered what she did not dare to say aloud:
“Other people besides you can build nests!” then looked quickly around to
see if any listener were in sight.
There was a slight, rustling sound, and an eavesdropping squirrel
scampered up a tree and peered down with twinkling eyes from a safe
height. She was just throwing one of the green twigs in her apron at him,
when she heard her name spoken, and turned quickly to meet a pleasant‐
faced young man, who approached from an opposite direction. This was the
white‐faced boarder who had left the city to find health in this wild
place.
The two walked on together, Bessie as shy as any creature of the woods,
and her companion both pleased and amused at her shyness, and trying to
draw her out. To his questioning, she told her little story. Her mother
was Dennis Moran’s youngest sister, her father had been a color‐sergeant
in the English army. There had been other children, all younger than she,
but all had died, some in one country, some in another. For Sergeant
Ware’s family had followed the army, and seen many lands.
“I am an East Indian,” Bessie said naïvely. “I was born at Calcutta. The
others were born in Malta, in England, and in Ireland. It didn’t agree
with them travelling about from hot to cold. My father died at Gibraltar,
and my mother died while she was bringing me to Uncle Dennis Moran’s. May
God be merciful to them all!”
Mr. James Keene had heard this pious ejaculation many a time before from
the lips of humble Catholics, and had found nothing in it to admire. But
now, the thought struck him that this constant prayer for mercy on the
dead, whenever their names were mentioned, was a beautiful superstition.
Of course he thought it a superstition, for he was a New England
Protestant of the most liberal sort—that is, he protested against being
obliged to believe anything.
They reached the house, near which Dennis Moran and his wife stood
watching complacently a brood of new chickens taking their first airing.
The young gentleman joined them, and listened with interest to the farm
talk of his host.
What had set Dennis Moran, one of the most rigid of Catholics, in a
solitude where he saw none of his own country nor faith, and where no
priest ever came, he professed himself unable to explain.
“I’m like a fly caught in a spider’s web, sir,” he said. “When Norah and I
came over, and I didn’t just know what to do, except that I wanted to have
a farm of my own some day, I hired out to do haying for John Smith’s
wife—John had died the very week he began to cut his grass, and Norah she
helped Mrs. Smith make butter. Then they wanted me to get in the crops,
and after that I had a chance to go into the woods logging. When I came
out of the woods, Mrs. Smith wanted me to plough and plant for her. And
one thing led to another, and there was always something to keep me. Norah
had a young one, and Bessie came—a young witch, ten years old,” said
Dennis, pulling his niece’s hair, as she stood beside him. “So I had to
take a house. And the long and short of the matter is, that I’ve been here
going on ten years, when I didn’t mean to stay ten weeks. But I shall pull
up stakes pretty soon, sir,” says Dennis, straightening up. “I don’t mean
to stay where I have to go twenty miles to attend to my Easter duties, and
where my children are growing up little better than Protestants (he called
it Prodestant). I’m pretty sure to move next fall, sir.”
At this announcement, Mrs. Norah tossed up her head and uttered an
unspellable, guttural “Oh!” brought from the old land, and preserved
unadulterated among the nasal‐speaking Yankees. “We hear ducks!”
Whatever might be the meaning and derivation of this remark, the drift of
it was evidently depreciatory, and it had the effect of putting an end to
her husband’s eloquence. Doubtless, Mrs. Moran had heard such
announcements made before.
Bessie stole a little hand under her uncle’s arm, and smiled into his
face, and told him that she had given Jack the book, and soon made him
forget his mortification. She knew that he was sometimes boastful, and
that the great things he was constantly prophesying of himself never came
to pass; but she knew also that he had a kind heart, and it hurt her to
see him hurt.
That same book, which the girl mentioned merely to divert attention, was
to be a matter of more consequence to her than she dreamed. It was more
important than the wedding‐dress and the wedding‐cake, which occupied so
much of her thoughts—more important than the jealous interference of
Jack’s mother, who did not like Bessie’s foreign blood and religion,
though she did like Bessie—more important than even her Uncle Dennis’
actual flitting, when fall came—all which we pass by. Only one thing in
her life then was of more consequence than that old school‐book, which the
pedler left because no one would buy it, and that was the earnest and
sorrowing advice of good old Father Conners when, against his will, he
united her to a Protestant.
John Maynard said later, that before he read that book he was like a beet
before it is pulled out of the ground, when it doesn’t know but it is a
turnip, and firmly believes that it is growing upward instead of downward,
and that those waving leaves of its own, which it feels, but sees not,
exist in some outer void where nothing is, and that angle‐worms are the
largest of locomotive creatures.
It is doubtful if the artistic faculty is any more a special gift in the
fine than in the useful arts, or if he who creates ideal forms, in order
to breathe into them the breath of such life as is in him, is more
enthusiastic in his work, or more fascinated by it, than he who, taking
captive the powers of nature, binds them to do his will.
This enthusiastic recognition of the work to which nature had appointed
him, John Maynard felt from the moment when he first knew that a crowbar
is a lever. He read that book that Bessie gave him with interest, then
with avidity, and, having read, all the power latent in that wide brow of
his waked up, and demanded knowledge. He got other and more complete works
on mechanics and studied them in his leisure hours, he made experiments,
he examined every piece of mechanism that came in his way.
Coming home one Sunday from a meeting which she had walked six miles to
attend, Mrs. Maynard, senior, was horrified to find that her son had paid
her a visit during her absence for the sole purpose of picking in pieces
her precious Connecticut clock. There lay its speechless fragments spread
out on the table, while the yawning frame leaned against the wall. Bessie
sat near, looking rather frightened, and Jack, in his shirt‐sleeves, sat
before the table, an open book at his elbow. He was studying the page
intently, his earnest, sunburnt face showing an utter unconsciousness of
guilt.
“Land sakes, Jack!” screamed his mother. “You’ve been and ruined my
clock!”
A clock was of value in that region, where half the inhabitants told the
hour by sun‐marks, by the stars, or by instinct.
He put his hand out to keep her back, but did not look up. “Don’t worry,
mother,” he said, “and don’t touch anything. I’ll put the machine together
in a few minutes.”
Mrs. Maynard sank into a chair, and gazed distressfully at the ruins. That
the pendulum, now lying prone and dismembered, would ever tick again, that
those two little hands would ever again tell the time of day, that the
weights would run down and have to be wound up every Saturday night, or
that she should ever again on any June day hear the faithful little gong
strike four o’clock in the morning—her signal for jumping out of bed with
the unvarying ejaculation: “Land sakes! it’s four o’clock!”—seemed to her
impossible.
“And to think that you should do such work on the Sabbath‐day!” she
groaned out, casting an accusing glance on her daughter‐in‐law. “You seem
to have lost all the religion you ever had since you got married.”
Bessie’s blue eyes lighted up: “I think it just as pious for Jack to
study, and find out how useful things are made, as to wear out a pair of
shoes going to hear Parson Bates talk through his nose, or sit at home and
spoil his eyes reading over and over about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
“Come, come!” interposed Jack; “if you two women quarrel, and bother me, I
shall spoil the clock.”
This procured silence.
Had he been a little more thoughtful and tender, he would have told his
mother that Bessie had tried to dissuade him from touching the clock, and
had urged the impropriety of his doing such work on Sunday; but he did not
think. She shielded him, and he allowed her to, scarcely aware that she
had, indeed.
The young man’s prediction was fulfilled. Before sunset, the clock was
ticking soberly on the mantelpiece, the minute‐hand hitching round its
circle, and showing the reluctant hour‐hand the way, and Jack was marching
homeward through the woods, with his rifle on one arm and his wife on the
other.
They were both so silent—that dark‐browed man and bright faced woman—that
they might almost be taken as kindred of the long shadows and sunstreaks
over which they walked. He was building up a visionary entanglement of
pulleys in the air, through which power should run with ever‐increasing
force, and studying how he should dispense with an idle‐wheel that
belonged in that maze; and she was thinking of him. He was thinking that
this forest, that once had bounded his hopes and aspirations, now pressed
on his very breathing, and hemmed his steps in, and wishing that he had
wings, like that bird flitting before him; and she was watching his eyes
till she, too, saw the bird.
Jack stopped, raised his rifle, took a hasty aim, and fired. Bessie ran to
pick up the robin:
“How could you, Jack!” she exclaimed reproachfully, as she felt the
fluttering heart stop in her hand.
He looked at it without the slightest compunction. “I wanted to see, as it
stood on that twig, which way the centre of gravity would fall,” he said.
“Don’t fret, Bessie! There are birds enough in the world.”
The young wife looked earnestly into her husband’s face, as they walked on
together. “Jack,” she said, “you might kill me, and then say that there
are women enough in the world.”
He laughed, but looked at her kindly, as he made answer: “What would all
the women in the world be to me, Bessie, if my woman were out of it?”
Could she ask more?
“Jack, where do you suppose the song has gone to?” she asked, presently.
“Bessie, where does a candle go when it goes out?” was the counter‐
question.
There had been a season in this man’s life, during the brief bud and
blossom of his love for Bessie Ware, when his mind had been as full of
fancies as a spring maple of blossoms. But he was not by nature fanciful,
and, that brief season past, he settled down to facts. Questions which
could not be answered he cared not to ask nor ponder on and all
speculations, save those which built toward an assured though unseen
result, he scouted. The sole impression the bird had made on him was that
it was a nice little flying‐machine, which he would like to improve on
some day. Meantime, he had much to learn.
The extent of his ignorance did not discourage John Maynard, perhaps
because it opened out gradually before him, over a new, unknown path
starting from the known one. He was strong, fresh, and healthy, and the
very novelty of his work, and his coming to it so late, was an assistance
to him. “I have a head for all I want to get into it,” he said to his
wife. “When my brain gets hold of an idea, it doesn’t let go.”
It seemed so, indeed; and sometimes when he sat studying, or thinking,
utterly unconscious of all about him, his eyes fixed, yet glimmering, his
mouth close shut, his breathing half lost, his whole frame, while the
brain worked, so still that his hands and feet grew cold, Bessie became
almost afraid of him, and was ready to fancy that some strange and perhaps
malign spirit had entered into and taken possession of her husband’s soul.
And thus it happened that, after two years, the house that Jack built was
abandoned to one of his relatives, and the young couple, with their baby
boy, left the forest for the city.
Of course, no one is to suppose that John Maynard failed.
It was summer again, and lavish rains had kept to July the fresh
luxuriance of June. The frame house stood nearly as it was when its
builder finished it. The walls had changed their bright yellow tint for
gray, and a few stones had fallen from the top of the chimney—that was
all. The forest still gathered close about, and only a few patches of
cultivated land had displaced the stumps and stones. A hop‐vine draped the
porch at the back of the house, and a group of tall sunflowers grew near
one of the open curtainless windows.
Civilization had passed by on the other side, and, though not really so
remote, was still invisible. Twice a day, with a low rumble, as of distant
thunder, a train of cars passed by through the valley beyond the woods.
There was no sound of childish voices, no glimpse of a child anywhere
about. The air bore no more intelligent burden than the low colloquial
dropping of a brook over its pebbly bed, the buzzing of bees about a hive,
and a rustling of leaves in the faint stir of air that was more a
respiration than a breath. The only sign of human life to be seen without
was a frail thread of blue smoke that rose from the chimney, and
disappeared in the sky.
Inside, on the white floor of the kitchen, the shadows of the sunflowers
lay as if painted there, only now and then stirring slightly, as the air
breathed on the wide, golden‐rayed shields outside. In the chimney‐corner,
almost as silent as a shadow, an old woman sat in a rocking‐chair,
knitting, and thinking. The two small windows, with crossing light, made
one corner of the room bright; but where this woman sat, her face could be
seen plainly only by firelight.
It was a rudely‐featured face—one seldom sees finely moulded features in
the backwoods—but it showed fortitude, good sense, and that unconscious
integrity which is so far nobler than the conscious. The gray hair was
drawn tightly back, and fastened high on the head with a yellow horn comb;
the tall, spare figure was clad in a gown of dark‐blue calico covered with
little white dots, and a checked blue‐and‐white apron tied on with white
tape strings, and the hands that held the knitting were bony, large‐
jointed, and large‐veined.
The stick of wood that had been smouldering on the andirons bent in the
middle, where a little flickering flame had been gnawing industriously for
some time. The flame brightened, and made a dive into this break, where it
found a splinter. The stick bent yet more, then suddenly snapped in two,
one end dropping into the coals, the other end standing upright in the
corner.
“Bless me!” muttered the old woman, dropping her work with a start.
“There’s a stranger! I wonder who it is.”
She sat gazing dreamily at the brand a moment, and, as her face half
settled again, it became evident that the expression was one of profound
melancholy as well as thoughtfulness. The lifted eyelids, and the start
that roused without brightening, showed that.
After a moment’s reverie, she drew a long sigh, and, before resuming her
work, took the long iron tongs that leaned in the corner, and most
inhospitably tossed the figurative stranger into the coals.
“I wonder why my thoughts run so on Jack and Bessie to‐day,” she
soliloquized, fixing the end of the knitting‐needle into the leather
sheath at her side. “I wish I knew how they are. It’s my opinion they’d
have done as well to stay here. I don’t think much of that machinery
business.”
The coming event which had thus cast its shadow before, was already at the
gate, or, more literally, at the bars. Bessie Maynard had walked alone up
the road she had not trodden for years, and now stood leaning there, and
looking about with eyes that were at once eager and shrinking. Her face
was pale, her mouth tightly closed; she had grown taller, and her
appearance disclosed in some indefinable way a capacity for sternness
which would scarcely have been suspected, or even credited, in the girl of
twenty we left her. A glance would show that she had suffered deeply.
Presently, as she gazed, tears began to dim her eyes. She brushed them
away, let down the slim cedar pole that barred her passage, stepped
through, replaced the bar, and walked up the path to the house.
The knitter in the chimney‐corner heard the sound of advancing steps, and
sat still, with her face turned over her shoulder, to watch the door. The
steps reached the threshold and paused there, and for a moment the two
women gazed at each other—the one silent from astonishment, the other
struggling to repress some emotion that rose again to the surface.
The visitor was the first to recover her self‐possession. She came in
smiling, and held out her hands.
“Haven’t you a word of welcome for me, Aunt Nancy?” she asked.
Her voice broke the spell, and the old woman started up with a true
country welcome, hearty, and rather rough. It was many a year since Bessie
Maynard’s hands had felt such a grasp, or her arms such a shake.
“But where is Jack?” asked his aunt, looking toward the door over Bessie’s
shoulder.
“Oh! he’s at home,” was the reply, rather negligently given. “But how are
you, Aunt Nancy? Have you room for me to stay awhile? I took a fancy to be
quiet a little while this summer. The city is so hot and noisy.”
The old lady repeated her welcomes, mingled with many apologies for the
kind of accommodations she had to offer, all the while helping to remove
her visitor’s bonnet and shawl, drawing up the rocking‐chair for her, and
pressing her into it.
“Do sit down and rest,” she said. “But where is the baby? Why on earth
didn’t you bring her?”
Bessie clasped her hands tightly in her lap, and looked steadily at the
questioner before answering. “The baby is at home!” she said then, in a
low voice.
Aunt Nancy was just turning away for some hospitable purpose, but the look
and tone arrested her.
“You don’t mean—” she began, but went no further.
“Yes,” replied Bessie quietly; “there is only James left.”
James was the eldest child.
Mrs. Nancy Maynard was not much given to expressions of tenderness—New
England people of the old sort seldom were—but she laid her hand softly on
her niece’s shoulder, and said unsteadily:
“You poor dear, how tried you have been!”
“We have all our trials,” responded the other, with a sort of coldness.
The old woman knew not what to say. She turned away, mending the fire. If
Bessie had wept, she would have known how to comfort her; but this strange
calmness was embarrassing. Scarcely less embarrassing was the light,
indifferent talk that followed, the questions concerning crops, and
weather, and little household affairs, evidently put to set aside more
serious topics.
This baby was the fourth child that Bessie Maynard had lost. After the
first, no child of hers had lived to reach its third year. Each one had
been carried away by a sudden distemper. The first death had been
announced to John Maynard’s aunt in a long letter from Bessie, full of a
healthy sorrow, every line stained with tears. John had written the next
time, his wife being too much worn out with watching and grief to write.
At the third death, there came a line from Bessie: “My little boy is gone,
Aunt Nancy. What do you suppose God means?”
Aunt Nancy had wondered somewhat over this strange missive, but had
decided that, whatever God meant, Bessie meant resignation.
But now, as she marked her niece’s changed face and manner, and
recollected that laconic note, she was forced to give up the comforting
thought. There might be endurance, but there was no resignation in that
face.
The sense of distance and strangeness grew on her, though Bessie began to
help her get supper ready, drawing out and laying the table as though she
had done it every day of her life, and even remembering the cup that had
been hers, and the little iron rack on which she used to set the teapot.
“Jack found the brass‐headed nail this hangs on miles back in the woods,”
she said. “It’s a wonder how it got there.”
“Why didn’t Jack come with you?” asked Aunt Nancy, catching at the
opportunity to say something personal.
A deep blush ran up Bessie’s face at being so caught, but her hesitation
was only momentary.
“He is too busy,” she answered briefly.
“But I should think he might take a rest now and then,” persisted her
aunt.
Bessie gave a short laugh that was not without bitterness.
“What rest can a man take when he has a steam‐engine spouting carbonic
acid in one side of his brain, a flying‐machine in the other side, and a
wheel in perpetual motion between them? John is given over to metals and
motions. I might as well have a locomotive for a husband. Shall I take up
the applesauce in this bowl?”
“Yes. I should think that James might have come.” Aunt Nancy held
desperately to the thread she had caught.
“James is a little John,” replied Bessie, pouring the hot, green
applesauce into a straight, white bowl with a band of narrow blue stripes
around the middle of it. “Never mind my coming alone, Aunt Nancy. I got
along very well, and they will do very well without me.”
They sat down to the table, and Bessie made a great pretence of eating,
but ate nothing. Then they went out and looked at the garden, talking all
the while about nothing, and soon, to the relief of both, it was bed‐time.
To Be Continued.
Where Are You Going?
We happened, the other day, to notice in the columns of a ribald infidel
newspaper an advertisement in which a young lady gave notice of her desire
to find “board in an infidel or atheist family.” There are many persons
nowadays who are looking for a lodging‐place and for food which will give
rest and refreshment to their minds and hearts, in the bosom of the
infidel and atheistic family circle. They may not, in most cases,
distinctly perceive and expressly avow that they are going over to dwell
in the tents of atheism, but they have turned their faces and steps in
that direction, and into the path leading thitherward, and those who keep
on their way must arrive, sooner or later, at that destination. It is to
these that we address the question: Where are you going? We would like to
have them reflect a little on the kind of entertainment which they may
reasonably expect to find in the private family of the household, and in
the larger family of human society, when these are constituted on
atheistic principles.
Before going any further, we will designate more precisely what class of
persons we intend by the above description. In general, all who do not
believe in a law made known to the mind and conscience by Almighty God,
and, in particular, those who, having been brought up in the Catholic
faith, no longer believe in that law as made known by the authority of the
church. We class these last individuals, for whose benefit chiefly though
not exclusively we are writing, with those first mentioned advisedly and
for a reason; and warn them that they are included in the number of those
whose faces are set toward atheism. Nevertheless, we do not say this on
the ground that every one who is not a Catholic is either incapable of
knowing God and his law, or logically bound to deny their existence. A
Theist, a Jew, or a Protestant has a rational ground for holding against
the atheist or infidel all that portion of Catholic truth which his
religion includes. Therefore, we have not included any of these in the
number of the atheistical.
Those only who do not believe in any law of God over the conscience we
have charged with this tendency to positive atheism. Against such, the
justice of the charge is manifest. For they are practically atheists
already, and by denying an essential attribute of the Creator, and a
relation which the creature must have toward him on account of this
attribute, the way is opened to a denial of his existence. As for those
who have been instructed in the Catholic faith and have thrown off its
authority over their conscience, we say that they have turned towards
atheism, because we are convinced that, as a matter of fact, the motives
and reasonings which have induced them to this fatal apostasy are
practically and theoretically atheistical, even if they themselves are not
distinctly aware of their ultimate tendency. We do not deny that a
Catholic may lapse into some imperfect form of Christianity or natural
religion. The first Protestants had been originally Catholics, and so have
been some of the so‐called philosophers professing natural religion. But
the present tendency of unbelief is toward atheism, and those believers in
positive, revealed religion, whether Catholics, Protestants, or Jews, who
are swept by this current, are carried toward the abyss whither it is
rushing. Those who reject the law of God which is proclaimed and enjoined
by the authority of the church, do so because its moral or intellectual
restraints are irksome, and they wish to be at liberty. In plain words,
they wish to be free to sin, to follow the proclivity of our fallen nature
to indulge in pride and concupiscence, without any fear of God before
their eyes to disturb their peace. Therefore, they deny the authority of
the church to bind their conscience to believe the doctrines and obey the
moral precepts which she promulgates in the name of God. Their revolt is
against the law itself and the sovereign authority of God. They sin
against faith and against reason also; against the natural as well as the
revealed law. They sin with the understanding as well as with the will,
and their sin is one which goes to the root of all moral obligation and
responsibility in the creature toward the Creator. It is an assertion of
perfect individual liberty of thought and action, of independence and
self‐sovereignty; and as such an independence is completely incompatible
with the existence of God, it is but a step to deny that he exists, or at
least that we have any knowledge of his existence. Moreover, modern
unbelief proceeds by the way of objections, difficulties, and doubts. It
is sceptical in its principle; and one who rejects the authority of the
church and of divine revelation on the principle of scepticism, easily
rejects all philosophy and natural religion on the same principle, and
runs down into pure materialism and atheism.
There are many persons in Europe, and some in this country, who have sunk
into a state of avowed impiety and violent hostility to all religion which
places them beyond the reach of every appeal to reason, conscience, or
right feeling. We do not attempt to argue with such as these; but we
suppose in those whom we address a condition of the mind and heart much
less degenerate and hopeless. We suppose them to recognize the excellence
and necessity of the private and social virtues, and to retain some
intellectual and moral ideal in their minds which they cherish and
venerate. They believe in truthfulness, honor, fidelity, honesty, true
love, friendship, in the cultivation of knowledge and the fine arts, in
all that can give decorum, refinement, and charm to domestic and social
life, power, dignity, and splendor to political society. But all this is
looked on as a spontaneous, natural growth, which finds its perfection and
its end from and on this earth, and in this life, without any direct
relation to God and an immortal life in another sphere of existence. Now,
that such persons are intellectually and morally on a height which
elevates them far above those who are wholly degraded in mind and
character, we readily admit. But they are on the verge of a precipice. It
is the black and awful abyss of atheism which yawns beneath them. And we
invite them to look over the brink, and down into those dark depths, that
they may consider deliberately whither their steps are leading them,
before it is too late to retreat to a safer position.
In what consists the reality of truth, let us ask of one who professes to
love truth, or the obligation of respecting it, if Christianity is a
falsehood, and its Founder a deceiver of mankind? One who knows the
evidence on which Christianity rests, and rejects it as a delusion, has
adopted a principle of scepticism which destroys all the evidence on which
any truth can rest. The principles of reason are denied or called in
question, unbelief or doubt extends to everything. The existence of God is
doubted, the distinct and immortal existence of the soul is questioned,
nothing remains but the senses and the phenomena which are called sensible
facts. Take away God, the Essential Truth, who can neither be deceived nor
deceive us, and who has manifested to us the truth by the lights of reason
and revelation, and there is no such thing as truth. The descendants of
apes, whose whole existence is merely one of sensation, who have sprung
from material forces and are resolved into them by dissolution, can have
no more obligation of speaking the truth than their cousins the monkeys.
If lying, calumny, or perjury will increase the means of your sensible
enjoyment, why not employ them against your brother‐apes, as well as
entrap a monkey and cage him for your amusement? Whence comes the
excellence and obligation of honor, that principle which impels a man
rather to die than to betray a trust or abandon the post of duty? On what
is based honesty? Why should one choose to pass his life, and to make his
family pass their lives, in poverty and privation, rather than take the
gold of another, when he can steal it with impunity? Where lies the
detestable baseness of bribery and swindling? Why does the heart revolt
against the conduct of the man or woman who is faithless to conjugal,
parental, or filial love, who is a false friend, ungrateful for kindness,
a traitor to his country? It is all very well to say that our natural
instincts impel us to love certain qualities and detest others, as we
spontaneously admire beauty and are displeased with ugliness. This is
certainly true. And it is very well to say that happiness and well‐being
are, on the whole, promoted by virtuous sentiments and actions, and
hindered by those which are vicious. But if mere selfish, sensitive
enjoyment of the good of this life be the end of life itself, all virtue
is resolved at last into the quest of this enjoyment by the most sure and
suitable means. When virtue requires the sacrifice of this enjoyment, it
is no longer virtue. Why should a wife sacrifice her happiness to a cruel,
sickly, or disagreeable husband, a husband preserve fidelity to a wife who
is hopelessly deranged or who has violated her marriage vows? Why should a
soldier expose his life in obedience to the order of a stupid or reckless
commander, or shed his blood in an unnecessary war brought on by the folly
or ambition of incompetent or unscrupulous rulers? Why should a seaman die
for the sake of saving passengers who are nothing to him, and many of whom
are perhaps worthless persons, leaving his widow and children without a
protector? Why trouble ourselves about taking care of the poor, ruined
wrecks of humanity, who can never more be capable of enjoying life or
contributing to the enjoyment of others? If we are not the offspring of
God, but of the earth, mere sensitive and mortal animals, existing for the
pleasure of a day, all the virtues which demand self‐sacrifice are absurd;
and the sentiments which we feel about these virtues are illusions. It is
very well to appeal to these sentiments; but those who do so must admit
that these sentiments must be capable of being justified by reason. An
atheist or a sceptic cannot do this. If a man is essentially the same with
a pig, there cannot be any reason for treating him otherwise than as a
pig. Our natural sentiments, which revolt against the practical
consequences of the degrading doctrine of atheism, prove that it is
contrary to nature, and therefore false. It is because our nature is
rational and immortal that we owe to ourselves and our fellows those
obligations and charities which are not due to the brutes; that life,
chastity, property, honor, love and friendship, promises and engagements,
political, social, and personal rights of all kinds, are to be respected
and held sacred. Our rational and immortal nature cannot exist except by
participation from God, and its constitutive principle is the capacity to
know God and recognize his law as our supreme rule. The obligation of
doing that which is just and honorable is derived from that law. Our own
rights and the rights of our neighbor are inviolable, because God has
given them. They are the rights of God, as that great philosopher Dr.
Brownson has so frequently and conclusively proved. God, as our lawgiver,
must necessarily give us a law which is plain and certain. It can be no
other than the Christian law. And every one who has been instructed in the
Catholic faith must see that Christianity and the Christian law are
guaranteed, defined, proclaimed, and enforced on the conscience by the
authority of the church.
Let him reject that authority, and he has disowned God; and by so doing
has taken away the basis of virtue. Self‐interest, sentiment, and human
instincts are no sufficient support for it. For, although our temporal
interests coincide in great part with the claims of virtue, and natural
sentiments and instincts are radically good, we are subject to inordinate
and even violent passions. Take away the fear of God, and the passions
will sweep away all slighter barriers. Pride and concupiscence will assert
their sway, make a wreck of virtue, and eventually destroy even our
earthly and temporal happiness.
Even with all the power and influence which religion can exercise over men
under the most favorable circumstances, there is enough of sin and misery
in the world; but what are we to expect if atheism should prevail? The
practical atheism, or, to speak Saxon, the ungodliness of the age, has
produced enough of bitter and deadly fruit to give us a taste of the
entertainment which is awaiting us if the time ever comes when the power
which religion still retains is altogether taken away. We do not need to
refer to the pages of professed moralists, or to quote sermons on this
topic. It is enough to take what we find in the works of those masterly
novelists who describe and satirize the crimes and follies of modern
society and depict its tragic miseries, and what we read every day in the
newspapers. The intrigues, villanies, swindlings, divorces, murders, and
suicides which blacken the record of each passing month, and the hidden,
untold tragedies going on perpetually in private life, give us proof
enough of the ravages which the passions of fallen, weak human nature will
make when all fear of God is removed, and they are left uncontrolled by
anything stronger than self‐interest, and physical coercion in the hands
of the civil power. No one who casts off all faith in God, allegiance to
his authority, and fear of his just retribution, can foresee what he
himself may become, or what he may do before his life is ended. The
natural virtues, the intellectual gifts, the education, refinement,
elevated sentiments, and pure affections which such a person may possess
in youth, whether it be a young man or a young woman, are no sure
guarantee or safeguard, even in a religious and moral community. Much less
are they in one which is wholly irreligious. No one knows, therefore, how
wicked he may become, or how miserable he may make himself. Still less can
any one foresee what treachery, cruelty, and ingratitude, what bitter
sufferings, and what ruin, may await him at the hands of others, if he is
to be a member of a great infidel or atheist family which he has helped to
form. He will be like the unhappy Alpine tourist who fell down from the
Matterhorn, dragging with him and dragged by his companions from his
dangerous foothold, and all dashed in pieces in the abyss beneath.
Let any one who has been brought up in the enjoyment of those advantages
which give decorum, charm, and refined pleasure to life—and who wishes and
expects to possess the same in the future which he looks forward to in
this world, with a zest and freedom increased by the riddance of all fear
of God—think for a moment about one very important question. To what is he
indebted for the blessings he has already enjoyed, and to what can he look
for those he is expecting? In order that he should have a happy home, his
parents must fulfil all the obligations of the conjugal and parental
relations. If he is born to wealth, his father has had to work for him, or
at least to take care of his property. If he has had a good mother, it is
needless to expatiate on all that a woman must be, must do, and must
suffer, to give a child such a blessing as that which is expressed by the
tender and holy name of mother. For his education, how many noble and
disinterested men have toiled, how many generous sacrifices of time, and
labor, and money have been required! To create the nation which gives him
the advantages of political order, the civilization which gives him a
society to live in, the arts which minister to his higher tastes and
personal comforts, how many causes have concurred together, what a
multitude of the most noble, self‐sacrificing, heroic exertions of genius,
philanthropy, patriotism, fructified by a plentiful besprinkling of the
blood of just and faithful men, have been necessary through long ages of
time! In his ideal of a happy life, which he hopes for in this world, what
a multitude of things he requires which presuppose the fidelity of
thousands of persons to those obligations and relations of life on which
he is dependent as an individual. His bride must bring to the nuptial
feast her virgin purity, and keep her wedding‐ring unbroken and undimmed.
His children must be such as a father’s heart can regard with pride and
joy. Those with whom he has relations of business must act with honesty
and integrity. He must have good servants to work for him, and hundreds of
skilful and industrious hands must minister to his wants or caprices.
Society must be kept in order, the machinery of the world must be kept
going, the law must protect his life and property, and the majority of his
fellow‐men must remain content with a lot of hard work and poverty, that
he may enjoy his dignity, leisure, splendor, and comfort in peace and
security.
Now it is a simple fact, that the principles and laws which have wrought
out whatever is high and excellent in modern civilization, have been
derived from the Christian religion. The public, social, and private
virtues which alone preserve society from corruption and extinction, are
the fruit either of religious conscientiousness, or of the influence of
religion on the natural conscience of those who live in the atmosphere
which it has purified and irradiated. There has never been such a thing as
human society founded on atheism; and when atheism, practical or
theoretical, has begun to prevail in any community, it has begun to
perish. Whoever tampers with that poison is preparing suicide for himself,
and death for all around him that is living. A large dose will kill at
once all that is capable of death in a soul which is, in spite of itself,
immortal. The slow sipping of small doses will gradually produce the same
effect. The general distribution of the poison will destroy more or less
rapidly the vital principle of the family, of society, of the state, of
human civilization. Human beings cannot live together in peace and order,
in love and friendship, in mutual truth and fidelity, in happiness and
prosperity, if they believe that they are mere animals, whose only good is
the brief pleasure which can be snatched from the present life. Even the
imperfect amity and good‐fellowship, the lower grade of society, the
inferior well‐being and enjoyment, the faint dim similitude of the
rational order which exists among the irrational animals, cannot be
attained by the human race when it strives to degenerate itself to the
level of the brute creation. The irrepressible, inextinguishable, violent
appetite for a satisfying good, when it is defrauded of its true object
and turned away from its legitimate end, becomes a devastating tornado of
passion. There is too much suffering, and too small a supply of sensible
enjoyment in human life, to allow mankind to be quiet, and to agree
together amicably in the relations of civilized society, in the common
pursuit of temporal happiness. Pride and concupiscence are as insatiable
as the grave and as cruel as death. The fear of God can alone restrain
them. Take that away from the individual, and he will be faithless to the
duties of life, friendship, honesty, patriotism, philanthropy, to his
nobler instincts, his higher sentiments, his ideal standard of good, in
proportion as his passions gain power over him. Take it away from the
family and the social order, and mutual faithlessness, breeding mutual
hatred and warfare, will be the result. Take it away from the masses of
men, and the commune will come, the maddened rabble will rush for the
coveted possessions of the smaller number who appear to have exclusive
possession of the real good, and at last all will be resolved into a state
of barbarism in which the race will become extinct.
This will never take place; for the church and religion of Jesus Christ
are imperishable, and God will bring the world to a sudden end before the
human race has had time to destroy itself. But such is the tendency of the
infidelity and atheism of the age. Whoever turns his back on Christianity
is a partaker in this tendency, and a companion of that band of
conspirators against religion and society whose end is more infernal and
whose means are more cruel than those of the Thugs of India.
Number Thirteen. An Episode Of The Commune. Concluded.
There was music enough chiming at No. 13 to keep a choir of angels busy.
Mme. de Chanoir, with the petulance of weakness, grumbled unceasingly,
lamenting the miseries of her own position, altogether ignoring the fact
that it was no worse, but in some ways better, than that of those around
her, whinging and whining from morning till night, pouring out futile
invectives against the Prussians, the Emperor, the Republic, General
Trochu, and everybody and everything remotely conducive to her sufferings.
She threatened to let herself die of hunger rather than touch horse‐flesh,
and for some days she so perseveringly held to her determination that
Aline was terrified, and believed she would hold it to the end. The only
thing that remained to the younger sister of any value was her mother’s
watch, a costly little gem, with the cipher set in brilliants; it had been
her grandfather’s wedding present to his daughter‐in‐law. Aline took it to
the jeweller who had made it, and sold it for one hundred and fifty
francs. With this she bought a ham and a few other delicacies that tempted
Mme. de Chanoir out of her suicidal abstinence; she ate heartily, neither
asking nor guessing at what price the dainties had been bought; and Aline,
only too glad to have had the sacrifice to make, said nothing of what it
had cost her. Gradually everything went that could be sold or exchanged
for food. Aline would have lived on the siege bread, and never repined,
had she been alone, but it went to her heart to hear the never‐ending
complaints of Mme. de Chanoir, to see her childish indignation at the
great public disasters which her egotism contracted into direct personal
grievances. Fortunately for herself, Mlle. de Lemaque was not a constant
witness of the irritating scene. From nine in the morning till late in the
evening she was away at the Ambulance, active and helpful, and cheering
many a heavy heart and aching head by her bright and gentle ministry, and
forgetting her own sufferings in the effort to alleviate greater ones.
“If you only could come with me, Félicité, and see something of the
miseries our poor soldiers are enduring, it would make your own seem
light,” she often said to Mme. de Chanoir, when, on coming home from her
labor of love, she was met by the unreasonable grumbling of the invalid;
“it is such a delight to feel one’s self a comfort and a help to them. I
don’t know how I am ever to settle down to the make‐believe work of
teaching after this long spell of real work.”
She enjoyed the work so much, in fact, that, if it had not been for the
sufferings, real and imaginary, of her sister, this would have been the
happiest time she had known since her school days. The make‐believe work,
as Aline called it, which had hitherto filled her time had never filled
her heart. It was a means of living that kept her brains and her hands at
work, nothing more; and it had often been a source of wonder to her in her
busiest days to feel herself sometimes seized with _ennui_. That trivial,
hackneyed word hardly, perhaps, expresses the void, the sort of hunger‐
pang, that more and more frequently of late years had made her soul ache
and yearn, but now the light seemed to break upon her, and she understood
why it had been so. The work itself was too superficial, too external. It
had overrun her life without satisfying it; it had not penetrated the
surface, and brought out the best and deepest resources of her mind and
heart—it had only broken the crust, and left the soil below untilled. She
had flitted like a butterfly from one study to another; history, and
literature, and music had attracted her by turns; she had gone into them
enthusiastically, mastered their difficulties, and appropriated their
beauties; but after a time the spell waned, and she glided imperceptibly
into the dry mechanism of the thing, and went on giving her lesson because
it brought her so much a _cachet_. But this work of a Sister of Mercy was
a different sort of life altogether. The enthusiasm, instead of waning,
grew as she went on. At first, the prosaic details, the foul air, the
physical fatigue and moral strain of the sick‐nurse’s life were
unspeakably repugnant to her; her natural fastidiousness turned from them
in disgust, and she would have thrown it all up after the first week but
for sheer human respect; she persevered, however, and at the end of a
fortnight she had grown interested in her patients; by degrees she got
reconciled to the obnoxious duties their state demanded of her; and before
a month had passed it had become a ministry of love, and her whole soul
had thrown itself into the perfect performance of her duties. She was
often tired and faint on leaving the Ambulance, but she always left it
with regret, and the evident zest and gladness of heart with which she set
out each morning became at last a grievance in the eyes of her sister.
Mme. de Chanoir vented her discontent by harping all the time of breakfast
on the hard‐heartedness of some people who could look at wounds and all
sorts of horrors without flinching; whereas the very sight of a drop of
blood made her almost faint; but then she was so constituted as to feel
other people’s wounds as if they were her own; it was a great misfortune;
she envied people who had hard hearts; it certainly enabled them to do
more, while she could only weep and pity. Aline bore the querulous
reproaches as cheerfully as if she had been blessed with one of those
hearts of stone that Mme. de Chanoir so envied. She had the indulgence of
a happy heart, and she had found the secret of making her life a poem. But
the nurse’s courage was greater than her strength. After the first three
months, material privations, added to arduous attendance on the sick and
wounded, began to tell; her health showed signs of rebellion.
M. Dalibouze was the first to notice it. He came regularly on the Saturday
evenings as of old; his age exempted him from the terrible outpost work on
the ramparts; and he profited by the circumstance to keep up, as far as
possible, his ordinary habits and enjoyments, “_afin de soutenir le
morale_,” as he said. When he noticed this change in Aline, he immediately
used his privilege of friend of the family to interfere; he begged her to
modify her zeal for the poor sufferers at the Ambulance, and to consider
how precious her life was to her sister and her friends.
Aline took the advice very kindly, but assured him that, far from wearing
out her strength as he supposed, her work was the only thing that
sustained it. The tone in which she said this convinced him it was the
truth. It then occurred to him that her pallor and languid step must be
caused by the unhealthy diet of the siege. Everybody suffered in a more or
less degree; but, as it always happens, those who suffered most said least
about it. The _gros rentier_, who fared sumptuously on kangaroo, and
Chinese puppies, and elephant at a hundred francs a pound, talked loud
about the miseries of starvation which he underwent for the sake of his
country; but the _petit rentier_, whose modest meal had long since been
replaced by a scanty ration of horse‐flesh, and that only to be had by
“making tail,” as they call it, for hours at the butchers shop—the _petit
rentier_ said very little. He was perishing slowly off the face of the
earth; but, with the pride of poverty strong in death, he gathered his
rags around him, and made ready to die in silence.
It was on such people as Mme. de Chanoir and her sister that the siege
pressed hardest; their _concierge_ was far better off than they; she could
claim her _bons_, and fight for her rations; and she had fifteen sous a
day as the wife of a National Guard.
As to Mme. Cléry, she proved herself equal to the occasion. She had no
National Guard to fall back upon, but she was sustained by the thought
that she was suffering for her country; she, too, was a good patriot.
Patriotism, however, has its limits of endurance, and hay bread was the
border line that Mme. Cléry’s patriotism refused to pass. When the good
bread was rationed, she showed signs of mutiny; but when it degenerated
into that hideous compound, of which we have all seen specimens, her
indignation declared itself in open rage. “What is this?” she cried, when
the first loaf was handed to her after three hours’ waiting. “Are we
cattle, to eat hay?” And, breaking the tawny, spongy lumps in two, she
pulled out a long bit of the offensive weed, and held it up to the scorn
of the _queue_.
As to Mme. de Chanoir, when she saw it she went into hysterics for the
rest of the day. But Providence was mindful of No. 13. Just at this
crisis, when Aline’s altered looks aroused her sister from the selfish
contemplation of her own ailments and wants, M. Dalibouze arrived early
one morning soon after Mme. de Lemaque had started for the Ambulance, and
announced that he had received the opportune present of a number of hams,
tins of preserved meat, condensed milk, and an indefinite number of pots
of jam. It was three times as much as he could consume before the siege
was raised—for raised it infallibly would be, and, if he were not greatly
mistaken, within forty‐eight hours—so he begged Mme. la Générale to do him
the favor of accepting the surplus.
Mme. de Chanoir, with infantine simplicity, believed this credible story,
and did M. Dalibouze the favor he requested. So, thanks to his generous
friend, the professor in turn became the benefactor of the two sisters,
and had the delight of seeing Aline revive on the substantial fare that
arrived so apropos. Well, it came at last, the end of the _blocus_; not,
indeed, as M. Dalibouze had prognosticated. But that was not his fault. He
had not reckoned with treachery. He could not suspect what a brood of
traitors the glorious capital of civilization was nourishing in her
patriotic bosom. But wait a little! It would be made square yet. Europe
would see France rise by‐and‐by, like the Phœnix from her ashes, and
spread her wings, and take a flight that would astonish the world. As to
the Prussians, those vile vandals, whose greasy moustaches were not fit to
brush the boots of Paris, let them bide a while, and they shall see what
they should see!
Thus did M. Dalibouze _resumer la situation_, while Paris on her knees
waited humbly the terms that Prussia might dictate as the price of a loaf
of bread for her starving patriots.
But the worst was to come yet. Hardly had the little _ménage_ at No. 13
drawn a long breath of relief after the prolonged miseries and terrors of
the siege, than that saturnalia, the like of which assuredly the world
never saw before, and let us hope never will again, the Commune, began.
Like a fiery flood it rose in Paris, and rose and rose till the red wave
swept from end to end of the city, spreading desolation and terror
everywhere, and making the respectable party of order long to call back
the Prussians, and help them out of the mess. How it began, and grew, and
ended we have heard till we know the miserable story by heart. I am not
going to tell it here. The Commune is only the last episode in the history
of No. 13.
There was work to do and plenty in binding the wounds and smoothing the
pillows of dying men, and words to be spoken that dying ears are open to
when spoken in Christian love. Aline de Lemaque’s courage did not fail her
in this last and fearful ordeal. She resumed her duties as Sister of
Mercy, asked no questions as to the politics of the wounded men, but did
the best she could for them. Mme. de Chanoir could not understand how her
sister spent her time and service on Red Republicans; the sooner the race
died out, the better, and it was not the work of a Christian to preserve
the lives of such snakes and fiends.
“There are dupes and victims as well as fiends among them,” Aline assured
her; “and those who are guilty are the most to be pitied.” After a time,
however, the dangers attendant on going into the streets became so great
that Aline was forced to remain indoors. Barricades were thrown up in
every direction, and made the circulation a dangerous and almost
impracticable feat to members of the party of order. The Rue Royale, which
had been safe during the first siege, was now a threatened centre of
accumulated danger. It was armed to the teeth. The Faubourg end of it was
barred by a stone barricade that might have passed for a fortress—a wall
of heavy masonry weighted with cannon, two black giants that lay couched
like monster slugs peeping through a hedge. But after those terrible weeks
there came at last the final tug, the troops came in, and Greek met Greek.
Shell and shot rained on the city like hailstones. The great black slugs
gave tongue, bellowing with unintermitting fury; all round them came
responsive roars from barricades and batteries; it was the discord of hell
broke upward through the earth, and echoing through the streets of Paris.
Aline de Lemaque and her sister sat in the little saloon at No. 13,
listening to the war‐dogs without, and straining their ears to catch every
sound that shot up with any significant distinctness from the chaos of
noise. Mme. Cléry was with them; she stayed altogether at No. 13 now,
sleeping on the sofa at night. It would have been impossible for her to
come and go twice a day while the city was in this state of commotion. To‐
day the old woman could not keep quiet; she was constantly up and down to
the _concierge’s_ lodge to pick up any stray report that came through the
chinks of the _porte‐cochère_. Once she went down and remained so long
that the sisters were uneasy. An explosion had reverberated through the
street, shaking the house from cellar to garret, and, like an electric
shock, flinging both the sisters on their knees simultaneously. Mme. de
Chanoir’s spine had recovered itself within the last week as if by magic.
She had abandoned her usual recumbent position, and came and went about
the house like the rest of them. If the Commune did nothing else, it did
this. We must give the devil his due.
“Félicité, I must go and see what it is. I hear groans close under the
window; perhaps a shell has fallen in the court and killed her,” said
Aline. And, rising, she turned to go.
“Don’t leave me! For the love of heaven, don’t leave me alone, Aline!”
implored her sister. “I’ll die with terror if that comes again while I’m
here by myself.”
“Come with me, then,” said Aline. And, taking her sister’s hand, they went
down together.
Mme. Cléry was not killed. This fact was made clear to them at once by the
spectacle of the old woman standing in the _porte‐cochère_, and shaking
her fist vehemently at somebody or something at the further end of it.
“Stay here,” said Aline to Mme. de Chanoir, motioning her back into the
house. “I will see what it is; and if you can do anything I’ll call you.”
It was the _concierge_ that Mme. Cléry was apostrophizing. And this was
why: a shell had burst, not in the yard, as the sisters fancied, but in
the street just outside, and the explosion was followed by a shriek and a
loud blow at the door, while something like a body fell heavily against
it.
“_Cordon!_” cried Mme. Cléry; “it is some unfortunate hit by the shell.”
“More likely a communist coming to pillage and burn. I’ll _cordon_ to none
of ’em!” declared the _concierge_. “The door is locked; if they want to
get in, they may blow it open.” But Mme. Cléry flew at her throat, and
swore, if she didn’t give up the key, she, Mme. Cléry, would know the
reason why. The _concierge_ groaned, and felt, in bitterness of spirit,
what a difficult task the _cordon_ was. But she opened the door; under it
lay two wounded men, both of them young; one was evidently dying; he had
been mortally struck by a fragment of the shell that had burst over the
thick oaken door and dealt death around and in front of it. The other was
wounded, too, but much less seriously; he had been flung down by his
companion, and the shock of the fall, more than his wound, had stunned
him. Mme. Cléry dragged them in under the shelter of the _porte‐cochère_,
and proposed laying them on the floor of the lodge. But the _concierge_
had no mind to take in a dead and a dying man, and vowed she would not
have her lodge turned into a coffin. The dispute was waxing warm, Mme.
Cléry threatening muscular argument, when Aline made her appearance. Her
training in the Ambulance stood her in good stead now.
“Poor fellow! He will give no more trouble to any one,” she said, after
feeling the pulse of the first, and laying her hand for a moment on his
heart; “bring a cloth, and cover his face; he must lie here till he can be
removed.”
The _concierge_ obeyed her. They composed the features, and laid the body
under cover of the gateway.
Aline then examined the other. His arm was badly wounded. While she was
still probing the wound, the man opened his eyes, stared round him for a
moment with a speculative gaze of returning consciousness, made a
spasmodic effort to rise, but fell back at once. “You are wounded—not
severely, I hope,” said Aline; “but you must not attempt to move till we
have dressed your arm.”
She despatched Mme. Cléry for the box containing her ambulance appliances,
lint, bandages, etc., and then, with an expertness that would have done
credit to a medical student, she washed and dressed the shattered limb,
while Mme. de Chanoir watched the operation in shuddering excitement
through the glass door at the foot of the stairs. What to do next was the
puzzle. The _concierge_ resolutely refused to let him into her lodge;
there was no knowing who or what he was, and she was a lone woman, and had
no mind to compromise herself by taking in bad characters. The poor fellow
was so much exhausted from loss of blood that he certainly could not help
himself, and it would have been cruel to leave him down in the courtyard,
where his unfortunate comrade was lying dead within sight of him. Aline
saw there was nothing for it but to take him up to their own apartment.
How to get him there was the difficulty. He looked about six feet long,
and might have weighed any number of stone. She and Mme. Cléry could never
succeed in carrying him. He had not spoken while she was dressing his arm,
but lay so still with his eyes closed that they thought he had fainted.
“We must carry him,” said Aline in a determined voice, and beckoned the
_concierge_ to come and help.
But before proceeding to the gigantic enterprise, Mme. Cléry poured out a
tumbler of wine, which she had had the wit to bring down with the lint‐
box, and held it to the sufferer’s lips, while Aline supported his head
against her knee. He drank it with avidity, and the draught seemed to
revive him instantaneously; he sat up leaning on his right arm.
“We are going to carry you up‐stairs, _mon petit_,” said Mme. Cléry,
patting him on the shoulder with the patronizing manner an amazon might
have assumed towards a dwarf.
“_You_ carry me!” said the young man, measuring the short, trim figure of
the charwoman with a sceptical twinkle in his eyes: they were dark‐gray
eyes, particularly clear, and piercing.
“Me and Mlle. Aline,” said Mme. Cléry, in a tone that testified against
the supercilious way in which her measure was being taken.
Aline was behind him. He turned to look at her with a jest on his lips,
but, changing his mind apparently, he bowed; then, with a resolute effort,
he bent forward, and, before either she or Mme. Cléry could interfere, he
was on his feet. It was well, however, they were both within reach of him,
for he staggered, and must have fallen but for their prompt assistance.
“La!” said Mme. Cléry, “what it is to be proud! Lean on Mlle. Aline and
me, and try and get up‐stairs without breaking your neck.”
“It is the fortune of war,” said the gentleman laughing, and accepting the
shoulder that Aline turned towards him.
They accomplished the ascent in safety, and then, in spite of his
assertion that he was all right now, Mme. de Chanoir insisted on their
guest lying down on her sofa while the charwoman prepared some food for
him. But safety, in truth, was nowhere. The fighting grew brisker from
minute to minute. The troops were in possession of the neighboring
streets; they had taken the Federals in the rear, and were mowing them
down like corn. The struggle could not last much longer, but it was
desperate, and the loss of life, already appalling, must be still greater
before it ended. The stranger who had introduced himself so unexpectedly
to No. 13 had formed one of the party of order, he told his good
Samaritans, who had gone unarmed, with a flag of truce, to the Federals in
the Rue de la Paix; he had seen the ghastly butchery that followed, and
only escaped as if by miracle himself; he had fought as a _mobile_ against
the Prussians, and received a sabre‐cut in the head, which had kept him in
the hospital for weeks; he had, of course, refused to join the Federals,
and it was at the risk of his life that he showed himself abroad in Paris;
just now he had been making an attempt to join the troops, when that shell
burst, and stopped him in his venturesome career. All day and all night
the four inmates of the little _entresol_ waited and watched in breathless
anxiety for the close of the battle that was raging around them. It never
flagged for an instant, and as it went on the noise grew louder and more
bewildering, the tocsin rang from every belfry in the city, the drum beat
to arms in every direction, the chassepots hissed, the cannon boomed, and
yells and shrieks of fratricidal murder filled the air, mingling with the
smell and smoke of blood and powder. It was a night that drove hundreds
mad who lived through it. Yet the worst was still to come. Late the next
afternoon, Aline, who was constantly at the window, peeping from behind
the mattress stuffed into it to protect them from the shells, thought she
discovered something in the atmosphere indicative of a change of some
sort. She said nothing, but slipped out of the room, and ran up to a
bull’s‐eye at the top of the house that served as a sort of observatory to
those who had the courage of their curiosity, as the French put it, and
ventured their heads for a moment to the mercy of the missiles flying
amongst the chimney‐pots. It was an awful sight that met her. A fire was
raging close to the house. Where it began and ended it was impossible to
say, but clearly it was of immense magnitude, and blazed with a fury that
threatened to spread the flames far and wide. She stood rooted to the
spot, literally paralyzed with horror. Were they to be burnt to death,
after living through such miseries, and escaping death in so many shapes?
Yet how could they escape it? There were barricades on every side of them;
if they were not shot down like dogs, which was the most likely event,
they would never be allowed to pass. All this rushed through her mind as
she gazed in blank despair out of the little bull’s‐eye, that embraced the
whole area of the Rue Royale and the adjacent streets. As yet, there was a
space between the fire and No. 13. Mercifully, there was no wind, and she
saw by the swaying of the flames that they drew rather towards the
Madeleine than in the direction of the Rue de Rivoli. Flight was a forlorn
hope, but still they must try it. She turned abruptly from the window, and
was crossing the room, when a loud crash made her heart leap. She looked
back. The roof of another house, one nearer to No. 13, had fallen in, and
the flames, leaping through like rattlesnakes out of a bag, sprang at the
sky, writhing and hissing as they licked it with their long red tongues.
“O God, have pity on us!”
Aline fell on her knees for one moment, and then hurried down to the
_salon_.
“We must leave this at once,” she said, speaking calmly, but with white
lips; “the street is on fire.”
M. Varlay, _citoyen_ Varlay, as he gave his name, started to his feet,
and, pulling the mattress from the window, looked out. He saw the flames
above the house‐top.
“Let us go, with the help of God!” he exclaimed. “We must make for the Rue
de Rivoli!”
Mme. de Chanoir and the charwoman, as soon as they caught sight of the
fire, shrieked in chorus, and made a headlong rush at the stairs.
“You must be quiet, madame!” cried M. Varlay in a tone that arrested both
the women; “if we lose our presence of mind, we had better stay where we
are. Have you any valuables, papers or money, that you can take in your
pocket?” he said, turning to Aline. She alone had not lost her head.
Yes; there were a few letters of her parents, and some trinkets, valuable
only as souvenirs, which she had had the forethought to put together. She
took them quickly, and the four went down the stairs. There was no one in
the lodge. The _concierge_ had taken refuge in her cellar, and her husband
was supposed to be saving France somewhere else. Mme. Cléry pulled the
string, and the little band sallied forth into the street. The air was so
thick they could hardly see their way, except for the fiery forks of flame
that shot up successively through the fog, illuminating dark spots with a
momentary lurid brightness, while now and then the crash of a roof or a
heavy beam was followed by a pillar of sparks that went rattling up into
the sky like a fountain of rockets. The Babel of drums, and bells, and
artillery added to the confusion of the scene as the fugitives hurried on
singly under the shadow of the houses. They fared safely out of the Rue
Royale and turned to the left. The Tuileries was enveloped in smoke, but
the flames were nearly spent, only here and there a tongue of fire crept
out of a crevice, licked the wall, twisted and twirled, and drew in again.
A crowd was gathered under the portico of the Rue de Rivoli, watching the
last throes of the conflagration, and discussing many questions in excited
tones. Our travellers pushed on, and came unmolested to the corner of the
Rue St. Florentine, where a sentry levelled his bayonet before them, and
cried “Halt!” Mme. de Chanoir, who walked first, answered by a scream.
_Citoyen_ Varlay, laying his hand on her shoulder, drew her quickly behind
him. “Stand here while I speak to him,” he said, and he advanced to parley
with the Federal, at the same time putting his hand into his pocket. They
had not exchanged half a dozen words when the sentinel shouldered his
chassepot, and said:
“Quick, then, pass along!”
Varlay stood for the women to pass first. Mme. de Chanoir and the
charwoman rushed on, but no sooner had they stepped into the street than,
clasping their hands, they fell upon their knees with a cry of agonized
terror. The sight that met them was indeed enough to make a brave heart
quail. To the left, extending right across the street, rose a barricade, a
fortress rather, surmounted at either end by two warriors of the Commune,
bending over a cannon as if in the very act of firing; in the centre two
amazon _pétroleuses_ stood with chassepots slung _en baudelière_ and red
rags in their hands that they waved aloft proudly like women who felt that
the eyes of Europe were upon them; the intermediate space on either side
of them was filled up with soldiers planted singly or in groups, and
_poséd_ in the attitudes of men whom forty centuries look down upon. Just
as Mme. de Chanoir and her _bonne_ came in front of the terrible _mise‐en‐
scêne_, and before they could go backward or forward, the word _Fire!_
rang out from the fortress, two matches flashed in the hands of the
gunners, and the women dropped to the ground with a shriek that would have
waked the dead.
“What’s the matter now?” cried the sentinel.
“They are going to fire!”
“Imbeciles! No, they are going to be photographed!”(112)
And so they were. A photographic battery was set up against the railings
opposite. Aline and _citoyen_ Varlay seized the two half‐fainting women by
the arm, and dragged them across and out of the range of the formidable
_tableau vivant_. Meanwhile, the fire was gaining on No. 13. The house
three doors down from it was _flambée_. It had been deserted the day
before by all its occupants, save one family composed of a husband and
wife, who had obstinately refused to believe in the danger till it was too
late to evade it. They were friends of M. Dalibouze’s and the professor
turned in to see them this morning on his way to No. 13. “The situation
was a difficult one,” he said; “it were foolhardy to defy it, and the time
was come when good citizens should save themselves.” He convinced M. and
Mme. X—— that this was the only reasonable thing to do. So casting a last
look at their belongings, they sallied forth from their home accompanied
by their servant, an _ex‐sapeur_, too old for military service, but as
hale and hearty as a youth of twenty. The professor had got in by a
backway from the Faubourg St. Honoré, and thither he led his friends now;
but, though less than fifteen minutes had elapsed since he had entered,
the passage was already blocked: part of the wall had fallen and stopped
it up. There was nothing for it but to go boldly out by the front door,
and trust to Providence. But they reckoned without the _pétroleuses_.
Those zealous daughters of the Commune, braving the shot, and the shell,
and the vengeful flames of their own creation, sped from door to door,
pouring the terrible fluid into holes and corners, through the gratings of
cellars, under the doors, through the chinks of the windows, everywhere,
dancing, and singing, and laughing all the time like tigers in human
shape—tigers gone mad with fire and blood. When the _sapeur_ opened the
door, he beheld a group of them on the _trottoir_; one was rolling a
barrel of petroleum on to the next house, another was steeping rags in a
barrel already half empty, and handing them as fast as she could to
others, who stuffed them into appropriate places, and set a light to them;
every flame that rose was hailed by a shout of demoniacal exultation. The
_sapeur_ banged the door in their faces.
“We must set to work, and cut a hole through the wall,” he said; “it’s the
last chance left us.”
No sooner said than done. He knew where to lay his hands on a couple of
crowbars and a pickaxe; the professor fired the contents of his chassepot
at the wall, and then the three men went at it, and worked as men do when
death is behind them and life before. It was an old house, built chiefly
of stone and mortar, very little iron, and it yielded quickly to the
hammering blows of the workmen. A breach was made—a small one, but big
enough to let a man crawl through. M. X—— passed out first, and then
helped out his wife. M. Dalibouze and the _sapeur_ followed. They hurried
through the next apartment. M. Dalibouze reloaded his gun; whiz! whiz!
went the bullets; bang! bang! went the crowbars; down rattled the stones;
another breach was made, and again they were saved. Three times they
fought their way through the walls, while the fire like a lava torrent
rolled after them, and then they found themselves at No. 13. M.
Dalibouze’s first thought was for the little apartment on the _entresol_
at the other side. They made for it; but as they were crossing the court a
blow, or rather a succession of blows, struck the great oak door; it
opened like a nut, and fell in with a crash like thunder. The burglars
beheld M. Dalibouze in his National Guard costume scudding across the
yard, and greeted him with howls like a troop of jackals. Whiz! went the
grape‐shot. M. Dalibouze fell.
Mme. X—— and her husband had fallen back before the door gave way, and
thus escaped observation. No one was left but the old _sapeur_.
“What sort of work is this?” he said, walking defiantly up to the
men—there were five of them—“what do you mean by breaking into the houses
of honest citizens?”
“You had better break out of this one if you don’t want to grill,”
answered one of the ruffians; “we are going to fire it, _par ordre de le
Commune_.”
The women had disappeared, and left their implements in the hands of the
men.
“Oh! _par ordre de le Commune!_” echoed the _sapeur_; “then I’ve nothing
to say; I hope they pay you well for the work?”
“Not over and above for such work as it is,” said one of the incendiaries,
rolling a barrel into the concierge’s lodge.
“How much?”
“Ten francs apiece.”
“Ten francs for burning a house down! Pshaw! you’re fools for your pains!”
The _sapeur_ shrugged his shoulders, and, turning on his heels, walked
off. Suddenly, as if a bright thought struck him, he turned back, and
faced them with his hands in his pockets.
“Suppose you got twenty for leaving it alone?”
“Twenty apiece?”
“Twenty apiece, every man of you!”
They stopped their work, and looked from one to another.
“_Ma foi_, I’d take it, and leave it alone!” said one.
“_Pardie!_ we’ve had enough of it, and, as the _citoyen_ says, it’s
beggarly pay for the work,” said another.
“Done!” said the _sapeur_.(113)
He pulled out a leathern purse from his breast‐pocket, and counted out one
hundred francs in five gold pieces to the five communists.
“_Une poignée de main, citoyen!_” said the first spokesmen. The others
followed suit, and the _sapeur_, after heartily wringing the five rascally
hands, sent them on their way rejoicing to the cabaret round the corner.
This is how No. 13 was saved. No. 11 was burnt to the ground, and then the
fire stopped.
But to return to Aline and her friends. They got on well till they came to
the Rue d’Alger, where they were caught in a panic, men, and women, and
children struggling to get out of reach of the flames, and threatening to
crush each other to death in their terror. Our friends got clear of it,
but, on coming out of the _mélée_ at separate points, the sisters found
they had lost each other. Mme. de Chanoir had held fast by Mme. Cléry, and
was satisfied that Aline was safe under the wing of _citoyen_ Varlay. But
she was mistaken. He had indeed lifted her off the ground, holding her
like a child above the heads of the crowd, and so saved her from being
trampled under foot, most likely; but when he set her down, and Aline
turned to speak to him, he was gone. It would have been madness to attempt
to look for him in the _mélée_, so she determined to wait at the nearest
point of shelter, and then when the crowd dispersed they would be sure to
meet. She made for the door‐way of a mourning house at the corner of the
Rue St. Honoré. But she had not been many minutes there when she heard a
hue and cry from the Tuileries end of the street, and a troop of men and
women came flying along, driving some people before them, and firing at
random as they went. The sensible thing for Aline to do was, of course, to
flatten herself against the wall, and stay where she was, and of course
she did not do it. She saw a flock of people running, and she started from
her hiding‐place, and turned and ran with them. They tore along the Rue
St. Honoré till they came to the Rue Rohan; here the band broke up, and
many disappeared at opposite points; but one little group unluckily kept
together, and, though diminished to a third its size at the starting
point, it still held in view, and gave chase to the pursuers. Mlle. de
Lemaque kept with this. On they flew like hares before the hounds, till,
turning the corner of the Place du Palais Royal, they were stopped by two
Federals, who levelled their chassepots and bade them stand. The fugitives
turned, not like hares at bay to face the hunters and die, but to rush
into an open shop, and fall on their knees, and cry, “Mercy!”
The Federals were after them in a second. Instead of shooting them right
off, however, they set to discussing the propriety of taking them out and
standing them in regulation order, with their backs to the wall, and doing
the thing in a proper business‐like manner. While this parley was going
on, Aline de Lemaque cast a glance round her, and saw that her fellow‐
victims were two young lads and half a dozen women, all of them of the
lower class apparently; most of them wore caps. The men who were making
ready to shoot them without rhyme or reason, as if they were so many rats,
were evidently of the very dregs of the Commune, and looked half‐drunk
with blood or wine, or both—it was hard to say—but there was no trace of
manhood left upon the faces that gave a hope that mercy had still a
lurking‐place in their hearts. One of the women suddenly started to her
feet. “What!” she cried, “you call yourselves men, and you are going in
cold blood to shoot unarmed women and boys? Shame on you for cowards!
There is not a man amongst you!”
She snapped her fingers right into their faces with an impudence that was
positively sublime. The cowards were taken aback. They looked at each
other, and burst out laughing.
“_Sapristi!_ She’s right,” exclaimed one of them; “they’re not worth
wasting our powder on!”
Like lightning, the women were on their feet, fraternizing with the men,
embracing, shaking hands, and swearing fraternity in true communistic
fashion. Mlle. de Lemaque alone stood aloof, a silent, terror‐stricken
spectator of the scene.
“What have we here? _Une canaille d’aristocrate_, I’ll be bound! It’s
written on her face,” said one of the ruffians, seizing her by the arm;
“let us make away with her, comrades! It will be a good job for the
Republic to rid it of one more of the lazy aristos that live by the
_ouvrier’s_ meat.” There was a lull in the kissing and hand‐shaking, and
they turned to stare at Aline. Her life hung by a thread. A timid word, a
guilty look, and she was lost. But the soldier’s blood rose up in her; she
bethought her of her _abus_, and _lancéd_ it.
“Lazy!” she cried; “I am a soldier’s daughter; my father fought for
France, and left his children nothing but his sword; I work for my bread
as hard as any of you!”
The effect was galvanic; they gathered around her, shouting, “Bravo! Give
us your hand, citoyenne!”
And Aline gave it, and, like the statesman who thanked God he had a
country to sell, she blessed him that she had a hand to give.
—Blood ran like water in the sewers of Paris for a few days, and then the
troops were masters of the field, and order was restored—restored so far
as to enable honest men to sleep in their beds at night.
Mme. de Chanoir was back again in the little saloon at No. 13, and
diligently reading the newspaper aloud to a gentleman who was lying on the
sofa near her; the _générale’s_ spine complaint had been radically cured
by the Commune, and she sat erect in a chair now like other people. The
invalid’s face and head were so elaborately bandaged that it was
impossible to see what either were like, while his bodily proportions
disappeared altogether under a voluminous travelling‐rug. He listened for
some time without comment to the political tirade which Mme. de Chanoir
was reading to him, an invective against France, and her soldiers, and her
generals, and the nation at large—a sweeping anathema, in fact, of
everything and everybody, till he could bear it no longer, and, sitting
bolt upright, he exclaimed:
“Madame, the man who wrote that article is a traitor. France is greater
to‐day in her unmerited misfortunes than she was in the apotheosis of her
glory; she is more sublime in her widowed grief than her ignoble foe in
his barbarous successes! She is, in fact, still France. The situation is
compromised for a moment, but—”
“_Lâ, lâ, voyons!_” broke in Mme. Cléry, putting her head in at the door,
and shaking the lid of a sauce‐pan at the invalid. “How is the _tisane_ to
take effect if you will talk politics and put yourself into a rage about
_la situation_! Mme. _la Générale_, make ’um keep still!”
The _générale_ thus adjured laid down the newspaper, and gently insisted
on M. Dalibouze’s resuming his horizontal position on the couch. Aline was
not there; she was off at her old work at the Ambulance again. The
hospitals had been replenished to overflowing by the street‐fighting of
the last week of the Commune, _la dénouement de la situation_, as M.
Dalibouze called it, and nurses were in great demand. _Citoyen_ Varlay had
not turned up since the night they had lost him in the crowd. The
excitement and confusion which had reigned in the city ever since had made
it difficult to set effective inquiries on foot, even if the sisters had
been accurately informed regarding their quondam guest’s identity and
circumstances, which they were not. All they knew of him was his
appearance, his name, and his wound. This was too vague to assist much in
the search. Mme. de Chanoir was sincerely sorry for it; she had been
attracted at once by the frank bearing and courteous manners of the young
_citoyen_; but his cool courage, his forgetfulness of himself for others,
and the stoical contempt for bodily pain which he had displayed on the
occasion of their flight, had kindled sympathy into admiration, and she
spoke of him now as a hero. She spoke of him constantly at first, loudly
lamenting his loss; for lost she believed him. He had, no doubt, been
overpowered by the crowd; his disabled arm deprived him of half his
strength, and, exhausted as he was by previous pain, and the violent
effort to protect Aline in the struggle, he had probably fainted and been
suffocated or crushed to death. This was the conclusion Mme. de Chanoir
arrived at; but when she mentioned it to Aline, the deadly paleness that
suddenly overspread the young girl’s features made her wish to recall her
words, and from that out the name of the young soldier was never
pronounced between the sisters.
Mme. Cléry had formed on her side an enthusiastic affection for him, and
sincerely regretted his fate, but with a woman’s instinct she guessed that
the one who regretted it most said least about it. She never mentioned
_citoyen_ Varlay to Aline, but made up for the self‐denial by pouring out
his praises and her own grief into the sympathizing ear of the _générale_.
“What a pretty couple they would have made!” said the old woman one
morning, wiping her eyes with the corner of her apron; “he was such a fine
fellow, and so merry; he only wanted the _particule_ to make him perfect;
but, after all, who knows? He may not have been as good as he looked. One
can never trust those _parvenus_.”
A month passed. Mme. de Chanoir was alone one afternoon, when Mme. Cléry
rushed into the room in a state of breathless excitement, her eyes
literally dancing out of her head.
“Madame! madame! I guessed it! I was sure of it! I’m not that woman not to
know a gentleman when I see him. I told madame he was! Let madame never
say but I did!”
And having explained herself thus coherently between laughing and crying,
she held out a card to her mistress.
Mme. de Chanoir read aloud:
LE BARON DE VARLAY,
_Avocat à la Cour de Cassation_.
Another month elapsed, and the great door of the Madeleine was opened for
a double marriage. The first bridegroom was a tall, slight man, on whose
face and figure the word _distingué_ was unmistakably stamped. The second
was a plump, dapper little man, who, as he walked up the carpeted aisle of
the church, seemed hardly to touch the ground, so elastic was his step;
his countenance beamed, he was radiant, and it is hardly a figure of
speech to say that he was buoyant with satisfaction. If he could have
given utterance to his feelings, he would have said that “the situation
was perfect, and absolutely nothing more could be desired.”
Mme. Cléry was present in her monumental cap, trimmed with Valenciennes
lace brand‐new for the occasion, and a chintz gown with a peacock pattern
on a pea‐green ground that would have lighted up a room without candles.
She, too, looked the very personification of content. The first couple was
all her heart could wish, and more than her wildest ambition had ever
dreamed of for her favorite Aline. The second she had grown
philosophically reconciled to. The marriage had one drawback, a grievous
one, but the charwoman consoled herself with the reflection that Mme. de
Chanoir might condone the _bourgeoisie_ of her new name, by signing
herself:
FELICITE DALIBOUZE,
_Née_ de Lemaque.
Use And Abuse Of The Novel.
If the question were put to us—What class of books, viewed merely as
reading, without tutelage or commentary of any kind, had the greatest
influence in moulding and training the thoughts, aspirations, mode of
life, of the mass of readers in these days?—we should, notwithstanding the
slur and sneer which it is fashionable for clever writers to cast upon
them, answer unhesitatingly—Novels.
This answer, we have no doubt, might shock the sensibilities of some of
our readers, as it might very cordially agree with those of a not
insignificant body of others. Without going into a dry analytical
discussion of the _pros_ and _cons_ of the question, we will adopt the
easier course of taking at the outset everything we want for granted, and
allowing the truth of it to emanate from the body of our article; merely
premising that, if it be true, Catholics have too much neglected, are far
too weak in, this very important collateral branch of modern education.
Every age, every cycle, every period in the history of the world has its
distinctive features, its proper individualities, its representative men,
systems, or facts, strongly and clearly marked. Ours is the iron age. Our
province is matter. Our tastes are material. The world seems, strangely
enough, to be working backwards. We began with intellect: we finish with
matter. The signs of the past are stamped with intellect or the
intellectual. The development of the present is steam and electricity. If
we ask the ages, What have you given us? the answer comes rolling down out
of the dim mountain of the past: Homer, Phidias, Apelles; the alphabet,
the geometrical figure, the science of numbers; Plato and Aristotle;
Virgil and the historians; the practical greatness of Rome; the great
faith of the new‐born middle ages; the Crusades, the Gothic order, the
great masters, Dante, Shakespeare, and Milton. We have our distinctive
mark; the one indicated: the mastery over the material world. In the
intellectual order, if we look for one, we must set it in the daily
newspaper and the novel. These are the peculiar intellectual development
of the XIXth century. Against the names of Homer, Plato, Æschylus, Virgil,
Horace, Dante, Shakespeare, we pit those of Scott, Thackeray, Dickens,
Eugene Sue, George Sand, Victor Hugo, Dumas, Bulwer, Wilkie Collins, Miss
Braddon, and her kin.
Surely this is rank heresy. Is not this the age of the rationalists, the
free‐thinkers, “the swallowers of formula,” of Hegel, Cousin, Comte, Mill,
Herbert Spencer, Huxley, Thomas Carlyle? All these are nothing to the
purpose. Thinkers, dreamers, idealists, doubters, belong to all ages. The
novelists belong to ours alone, as surely as do the steamboat, the
railway, the electric telegraph, the daily press, the penny post.
In saying this, we are not blind to the fact that novels and romances were
written long before our century dawned. Cervantes and Le Sage are old
enough; the Romaunts are older still. De Foe, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne,
Richardson, are names of a bygone century. But novelism, to use the word
in a new sense, considered as a science—for such it has practically
become—as the most popular branch of literature known in these days, with
men and women of genius devoted to its pursuit, with an ever‐increasing
progeny spreading and growing, and stifling each other out of life, is an
intellectual phase proper of to‐day.
Philosophic historians trace the decline of peoples and periods in the
decline of their literature; in its tone, its style, its subjects, and
manner of treatment. If this test be applied to us, what a show should we
make! But happily the test, though in the main a true one, is not an
infallible one. The facility opened up by the invention of printing for
writers of every shade of opinion to express their thoughts upon any given
subject at any length and in any quantity, provided only they pay the
printer, must weaken to some extent the theory that writers are the exact
reflex of the times and peoples for and among whom they write. Still there
rests the significant fact that to‐day the novel, and particularly the
worst form of it, is the _book of the period_; the most popular, widely
read, best paid class of literature that we possess—a fact which tells its
own tale of our intellectual and moral advance.
The ancients seem not to have conceived such a thing. And, despite the
danger of such an admission in the face of what the novel has come to be
among ourselves, we can only regret its loss among them. Had the Greeks
and Romans caught the idea, and turned their brilliant, clear‐sighted,
manly, and truth‐loving intellects to the portrayal of everyday life; to
the picture of how the world wagged behind the scenes long ago, what a
flood of light would have been let in on their history, its meaning, its
philosophy, so as to render almost superfluous the works of such men as
Niebuhr, Gibbon, Grote. We should have had plenty of evil undoubtedly,
plenty to sicken us; but, after all, would the foulness of the pagans have
been much worse than the spicy dishes cooked and served up to us every day
by our own novelists; by gray‐haired men; by ladies, at whose age we will
not venture to guess; by smart young girls who have just bounced out of
their teens? The glimpse we have had of Socrates’ spouse makes us wish for
a closer acquaintance with that dame. We are anxious to know how she
received the news of his draught of hemlock, for she evidently entertained
the utmost contempt for all his doctrine and philosophy, and must have
been rather surprised at the state bothering itself so much about _her_
husband. What an irreparable loss we have sustained in Diogenes, his
sayings and doings, his snarls and life in that tub of his! What living
pictures would have been left us of the life in the groves, the
disputations, the clash of intellect with intellect where all was
intellect; the great games, who betted, who lost, who won, who contended;
of the mysteries and the sacrifices; of Greece at the invasions; of the
party strifes; how Alcibiades pranked and ruled in turn; how Balbus built
that famous wall of his that he is always building in the _Delectus_; how
Agricola ploughed his field; how the _Symposia_ passed off with Cicero and
his friends; how Cæsar spent his youth, and how the conspiracy worked that
destroyed him; what sort of companions brought Catiline’s conspiracy
about; the effect of the _quousque tandem_ speech related by an eye‐
witness; the coming of the great Apostles; the dawn of Christianity; how
the gay Greeks listened to that first strange sermon given from the altar
to the Unknown God.
These things have been told us in a way. We can pick and sort them out of
the brilliant works of the writers of the time. But had they been told us
by a Greek or Roman novelist, a Thackeray, Dickens, or Bulwer, with the
actors set living and real and palpable on the scenes, speaking the
language, using all the little peculiarities, of everyday life, with all
their natural surroundings and coincidents, what a lost world would have
been opened up to us!
Abandoning, however, such vain and useless regrets, let us turn to the
immediate subject of our own article. The title, Novel, we here use in the
popular signification of the word, as comprising all works of fiction,
distinct from those that are purely satirical, and history as written by
such men as Mr. James Anthony Froude and Mr. John S. C. Abbott. Novelists,
we know, are apt to be nice on the question of titles. No lady of third‐
rate society, who with time on her hands to do good devoted it to the
study of the court balls and the pages of Debrett, was ever more so. Here
is your romance, which looks down upon your mere story; your novelette
which shrinks with awe from your psychological romance; your story of real
life, a republican sort of fellow often, who hustles and bustles and
shoulders them all and stands on his own legs; and a variety of others as
numerous as they are, to the public at large—which is, as it should be, a
poor respecter of titles—unnecessary. We purpose, in the name of the
public, dealing very summarily with these titled folk, throwing them, high
and low, in the same category, and designating one and all as novels pure
and simple, with the single distinction, which shall appear in due time,
of the sensational novel.
As we have arrived at this point, it may not be amiss to ask, What purpose
do novels serve; with what object are they written?
A hard question truly. We reply to the second part of the query first. It
may not be unnatural, nor dealing unfairly with their authors, to suppose
that novels are written, in the first place, with the very laudable desire
of earning one’s bread: so that “the root of all evil” lies at the bottom
of the “psychological romance,” as of far humbler things in this world. As
to what purpose, earthly or unearthly, they serve, the answer to that
depends, first of all, on the author’s secondary motive in writing them;
secondly, on the effect they produce on the reader—which are two very
different things. We have not the slightest doubt that the French
novelists, as popularly known, entertained the very loftiest ideas with
regard to morality, Christianity, the laws of God and man, the
conventional relations between husband and wife, and so on, before
ushering into the world the representatives of their—to put it
mildly—somewhat peculiar views on these questions. Well, if the world read
them wrongly, mistook faith for infidelity, a deep lesson in purity for
adultery, loyalty and obedience to the sovereign for rank outspoken
disturbance and rebellion, who was to blame? The world was simply stupid.
M. Dumas _fils_, for instance, has lately been good enough to enlighten us
with his ideas on the vexed questions of matrimony and women in general.
M. Dumas _fils_ is undoubtedly an excellent guide on such subjects. He is
an advanced man, a man of the age, of society, of the world. His
testimonies on such subjects ought, therefore, to be of value. He has
disposed of the whole question in, for a Dumas, a few words—a single
volume. The moral of his doctrine comes to this: if your wife is
faithless, kill her. We have not yet heard of any practical results
arising from this new gospel, as preached by M. Dumas _fils_; from which,
we have no doubt, he will draw the very agreeable inference that his
remedy for the regeneration of society, and the nice adjustment of the
marriage‐knot once for all, was altogether unnecessary. If his doctrine
should spread to any alarming extent, no doubt M. Dumas _fils_ will be
satisfied that at last the world is beginning a new era of advancement,
that there is still hope for it; and he will hold himself answerable for
all the consequences. By the bye, we believe he has omitted one little
thing: the course to be adopted by the wife in the event of the husband’s
infidelity. But probably such a high‐minded, virtuous man as M. Dumas
never contemplated the possibility of such a contingency arising.
Mr. Collins, Mr. Reade, Miss Braddon, and the rest hold, doubtless, the
same ideas with regard to the relative value of their productions. Whether
their praiseworthy efforts have been duly appreciated; whether they have
ever made man, woman, or child a whit better or sounder by the perusal of
any of their works, we do not know. We are inclined to think not. If any
reader would kindly come forward and show that we are wrong in this from
his or her own experience, we shall only be too happy to stand corrected.
At all events, the advantage derived must be in very small proportion to
the quantity of literary medicine and advice administered by those social
physicians to the craving multitude.
Laying aside, then, the invariably pure and lofty motives of the authors;
laying aside the cloak which novels serve for at times, as in the hands of
a Disraeli, to attack a policy or a system; and taking them as they affect
ourselves, the readers, one may safely say that they serve mainly to
amuse; to fill up those spare moments that nothing else can fill up. They
constitute the play‐ground of literature—a recreation and relief for the
mind. We gulp them down as we are whirled along in the railway train. We
take them with us on long voyages, as the Scotch patient took his weekly
sermon at the kirk, as an opiate—thus fulfilling to the letter the
traditional notion of the “Sabbath” being a day of rest. When the brain is
heavy and the body worn, when to talk is labor and to think is pain, then
we can seize the novel, loll on the sofa, or recline under the leafy shade
by the brink of the musical river, and float away, half asleep, half
awake, into dreamland. In a moment a new world, as real and living to the
mind’s eye as that in which we move, is conjured up before us. We are on
intimate terms with a villain whose dagger is as air‐drawn as Macbeth’s.
We can commit cold‐blooded murders that will never bring us to the dock;
or shocking improprieties that even the far‐reaching nose of Mrs. Grundy
will fail to catch scent of. Or we go over “the old, old story,” and are
bumped, jerked, and jolted along the delicious course that never _will_
run smooth; mapping it out if we have not yet had the fortune (or
misfortune) to traverse it; filling it in with many a well‐known form, if
we have. And if the never‐running‐smooth theory be true of love, this much
we ungrudgingly grant the novelists—they certainly hold to their tether.
The labyrinth of Dædalus was nothing to it; the twistings, the windings,
the sudden and unexpected meetings, the separations, the jiltings, the
halts by the way, the joy, the sorrow, the ecstasy, the despair, the
losings, the seekings, the findings, the torturing uncertainty, the
wanderings through hopeless mazes, to end, as we knew at the outset it
would and must end, according to “the eternal fitness of things,” in some
man marrying some woman—the most extraordinary phenomenon that the world
ever witnessed!
The novel invites us, as the noonday devil is supposed to do, at dangerous
moments—those moments that come to all of us when matter holds the mastery
over mind. Place in the hands of the reader at such a time a book which,
while it interests, while it soothes, lulls, and gently enwraps in its
kindly meshes the abstracted brain, never palls; containing at least what
is harmless; and good, not very great certainly, but at least of a kind,
is effected.
But let the novel be like the favorites of its class, a thing to fire the
imagination with impure thoughts clothed in the thinnest veil of mock
morality, at the very moment when the imagination of the reader is ready
to run riot; and evil, great, sometimes irreparable, is produced.
“All the wrong that I have ever done or sung has come from that confounded
book of yours,” writes Byron to Moore in a moment of bitterness. If the
accusation be well founded, what an intellectual wreck has Moore to answer
for; what a multitude of lesser disasters following in the train of a
great genius, so early led astray!
The novelist beats every other writer from the field. We all read him,
from the crop‐haired schoolboy to the octogenarian who has quite grown
through his hair; from the nearest approach to Mr. Darwin’s ideal man to
the philosopher “who would circumvent God”; from the artless maiden who
fondly dotes over those wicked but excessively handsome villains, those
athletic but ridiculously stupid lovers, those consumptive heroines with
the luminous eyes and rippling glories of golden hair; those lady
poisoners with the floating locks and sea‐green orbs—to the dyspeptic lady
who makes novel‐reading a science, who dawdles out her languid existence
in elegant nothingness, who looks to the production of a new story as men
look to a change in the constitution, or as astronomers lately looked to
the comet that would not come; who is, in a word, utterly useless for all
the purposes of life, of wifehood, of womanhood—novel‐struck, novel‐bred,
only fit to “resolve and thaw into a dew” of weak sentimentality and
essence of inanity. From this category of readers we must not omit the
typical old maid, who is continually telling us that she renounced such
things as love and other rubbish long ago; yet daily treats herself to her
spruce, strong, highly flavored dish of the purest, spiciest scandal, and
takes her diurnal dose of immorality as regularly as her “drops” or her
tea.
All the world lies open to the novelist. From no place is he excluded,
save from a few high and dry quarterlies; and even they are stirred from
their abstract regions into sledgehammer activity or solemn admiration by
him from time to time. Of monthlies, fortnightlies, weeklies, dailies, he
forms the chief ingredient. Even editors of metaphysical fortnightlies
find they must flavor their own romance with a spice, of the more regular
and orthodox in order to make it “go down with the public.”
What a field, then, is the novelist’s!—what ground for a high, pureminded
man or woman to sow seeds in that may sprout, and spread, and fill the
world with truth, with purity, with noble aspirations, with right
teachings set in the goodliest garb! The youth of the generations is their
own.
Who has forgotten those earlier days when we stood, fair‐haired, open‐
hearted children, on the threshold of life, steeped in the morning sun of
a future that looked all golden? A warm mist hung about us, shrouding all
in beautiful, mystical dimness. There was no storm, no darkness, no night.
Whisperings of soft voices stole out of the magic mist, and called us on
to do great things; to rift the mist and open up the glorious world of
God, as we saw it in our imaginings. The morning of life, like the morning
of the world, is all Eden. We walk with God, for we are innocent. But the
doom is on us; we must pluck the fruit of the tree of knowledge. The
moment we taste of it, the golden dream is no more; the mist is reft
asunder; and slowly the world opens on our saddened eyes in all its hard
reality, to be subjected by the labor of our hands and the sweat of our
brow. As we merge from that innocence, so we go on. Some great event may
change us; may make this one a saint, that a fiend. But, as a rule, the
sapling grows into the tree, weakly or strong, straight and tall and
looking heavenwards, or stunted, useless, and unsightly as it grew from
the grafting.
The grafting is the mother’s voice, the father’s example, the companions
around us, the guidance of our thoughts. And the great mass of our
thoughts, at a time when we are all imagination, springs from the books we
read. Here steps in the crying need of a series of story‐books for
Catholic children; for all children up to the age when study becomes a
more serious work.
One other glance back at the days of our childhood, and the manner in
which they were spent; for it is not the least important part of our
subject. What a round of acquaintance we had, necessitating a
corresponding round of visits! One day we dropped in on our best of
friends, _Robinson Crusoe_, on that lonely island of his, wishing that all
the world were islands and we were all Crusoes. All we wanted to live
happily was a boat, six or seven guns and pistols, a goat‐skin cap, a
parrot, a Man Friday, an umbrella, and an occasional savage to kill. After
taking a sail with him in his boat, helping him to build his castle,
tending the goats, running down to see if we could find that second
footprint on the sand, giving Friday a lesson in English, we bade him
good‐bye with the promise of calling again soon, and hurried off on that
expedition to the other end of the world with our old acquaintance Captain
Marryat, to search for our father, play our practical jokes, and fight our
triangular duels. Then we had to hunt up that Indian trail for Cooper, and
no redskin ever followed the track half so keenly as we, marking the way,
notching the giant trunks with our six‐bladed penknife, shooting the
buffalo with our pop‐guns, sleeping round the campfires in those limitless
prairies and thickest jungles of our imagination. Ha! by’r Lady! Here we
are at the gentle trial of spears at Ashby de la Zouch. How brave it was!
The glinting of the lances, and the clash of steel on helm and hauberk;
the gay plumes shorn and floating on the wind like thistledown. And out we
rushed, and called the friend of our bosom a caitiff knight and a false
knave, and plighted our troth to that imprisoned maiden—no matter who, and
no matter where—to do her right, and do our devoir as leal and belted
knight. That caitiff deals in leather now, and does a thriving business;
his knightly limbs are cased in the best of cloth, cut by the cleverest of
artists; his knightly stomach is naught the worse for wear, but quite
beyond the girth of steel armor; and he has a son who, at this moment, is
assisting at the joust as we did, spurring into the _mêlée_ and bearing
all down before us, to spur out again victor, and meet Charlie O’Malley
waiting for us outside; to ride with him for dear life into to‐day. What a
race it is; how the world spins past us; how our heart throbs, and our
eyes grow dim, and our hopes sink as we fall and dislocate our shoulder at
that last fence. By heaven! up again—on, and in a winner! And we sink to
the ground with the shouts of thousands ringing in our ears, to wake in a
darkened chamber with low voices breaking on us—the voices of our dear
Irish girls, who make “smithereens” of our hearts only to heal them the
next minute, and sit there wooing us back into life and love.
Such was the favorite mental food of our earlier days, our literary candy.
If the reading of youth were restricted to authors such as these, on the
whole we might consider them in safe hands. But books multiply and cheapen
day by day, and as usual “the cheap and nasty” carries everything before
it. The favorite stories of the mass of boys that we see consist of what
is known as the _Dime Novel_ and those blood‐and‐thunder weeklies with the
terrific titles and startling pictures. By some strange freak of nature,
boys are fond of blood; the warlike element prevails; the peaceful is
nowhere. We feel certain that, if Mr. Barnum possessed a real live
murderer among his collection of curiosities—though we fear he could
scarcely ticket such an animal “a curiosity” in these days—and caged him
up among the other wild beasts, he would prove a greater attraction to the
juvenile visitor than anything else in the famous exhibition. It were easy
enough to satisfy this morbid craving for muscular Christianity in a safe
and sound manner, if our writers of fiction took up systematically the
incidents of history; the great wars; the crusades, the parts played by
great Christian heroes, by the saints of God; the scenes of martyrdom, the
labors of the missionaries, and a thousand other subjects as entertaining
as they are instructive and strictly true. We know that there are many
such; but we want to be overloaded with them, as we are with those others
to which we referred. We can scarcely at the moment call to mind one
Catholic story to compete at all with a crowd of children’s books written
by Protestants. The production of children’s stories has grown into a
science among them. We frequently see pages of stately reviews and the
columns of the London _Times_ devoted to as critical an examination of
this class of books as to the works of the greatest writers. They
recognize the necessity and the advantage of giving their children
something to save them from the evil effects that must ensue from a
continual history of daring and impossible feats by young burglars,
detectives, spies, and the like. The best writers of this kind are, as
they should be, women, who know best how to interest children, who watch
them with an eye to their every want, that a man cannot attain. Here,
then, is a field for Catholic ladies—a field wide open, which cries to be
filled up.
But our article deals not alone with children and children’s books. We
purpose looking higher and looking deeper, at the mental recreation of the
day, of the age; at the literature that loads our tables, our shelves, our
public libraries, our bookstalls: the book “of the period”—the sensational
novel.
What is a sensational novel? Who has defined it? Who dare define it? It is
a pity the author of _Rasselas_ had not some faint conception of it. The
idea of calling _Rasselas_ a novel in these days! We might imagine him to
have dealt with it somewhat in the following style:
Sensational Novel: A complexity of improbabilities woven around a crowd of
nonentities, interspersed with fashionable filth, and relieved by sleek‐
coated beastliness; meaning nothing, and good for less.
What is this word that possesses us! Sensation!—as though we had not
enough of it. The age is so dreadfully prosaic, so workaday, so dull. We
must run off the track, out of the common groove, or we are ill at ease.
Where is the sensation in steam and electricity? We are whirled through a
continent in a week: but that is a thing done every day. It almost equals
the mantle of the genii in the _Arabian Nights_; we had only to step upon
it, and find ourselves at whatever point of the compass we wished. We
cross thousands of miles of ocean in a similar period, mastering the
elements with a clockwork regularity, fair weather or foul. We knit sea to
sea. We rise from foe‐encircled cities, and sail safe away into the air.
The whisper of what has been done in one quarter of the world has not had
time to pass abroad before it is discussed in the others. We have linked
the disjointed world by an electric flame that flashes knowledge
throughout its circle instantaneously. We build up vast empires and topple
down thrones every day, as though they were ninepins, and yet we want
sensation! We sigh for the cap and bells; the jousts and games and
junketings of old. Even the feast of horrors, crimes, and incidents, the
births, deaths, and marriages, and the scandals of the “fashionable
world,” served up to us at breakfast daily, with all the inventive genius
of the newspaper correspondent, pall upon our surfeited appetites. “We
have supped full of horrors. Time was when our fell of hair would have
uplifted to hear a night‐shriek. But now, how weary, stale, flat, and
unprofitable seem to us all the uses of this world of ours. Life is as
dreary as a twice‐told tale.” We are not satisfied; we feel a craving
after something. Our want, our craving, springs not from the desire for a
higher spirit in it all, not from an absence of faith and noble purpose,
of something greater than utility, not from a horror of a daily widening
infidelity and impurity that mocks the pagan; but simply and purely from a
lack of sensation! In the face of the dull routine of this age of marvels
that old Friar Bacon dimly saw in his dreams, and was deemed a madman for
his foresight; in the face of wars like our own rebellion and the
devastation of France; in the midst of fallen thrones and falling
peoples—we ask for sensation! as the philosopher, though perhaps with more
reason, took a lantern to look for a man. We find it not in these things;
we pass them by, and bury ourselves in the pages of Wilkie Collins, Miss
Braddon, and their kind. They are the wonder‐workers of the age.
Here we find what we are seeking; here is a response to our ravenous
craving, in those delicious, torturing plots that take our breath away.
Here we sit hob and nob with what the fourth‐rate newspaper is fond of
calling “the scions of nobility.” We get an animated description and
category of their articles of clothing, from their boots and who made
them, to their linen and where it was bought. What a pleasure it is to
know a count and a lord, and a lady and a duchess; to know how they eat
and drink, and the chronicle of all the fearful scandal that goes on in
what the newspaper man again knows as “certain circles”! What peeps we
have into the green‐room! Pages are devoted to the eyes of an opera‐
singer, the ankles of a _danseuse_, the charming slang of an actress. The
scene is varied by dips into the purlieus of society; into the bagnio and
the gin‐mill; the prize‐ring and the barracks; the dancing saloon and the
gaming‐table; the betting ring; into every place, every person, everything
the lowest, the meanest, the worst.
Is this exaggeration? Is it a false, outrageous libel on this age, so full
of great things, and still greater capabilities? Is it particularly false
of ourselves, the simple‐hearted, simple‐mannered republicans, who have
set our faces as sternly against the ungodly and the ways of sin as our
old crop‐haired, steeple‐crowned Puritans professed to do? We shall only
be too happy if somebody convinces us that such is the fact. In the
meanwhile; incidentally to our purpose appeared a few statistics the other
day from public libraries, bearing on this very question, showing that in
libraries, which, as a rule, a class of intelligent and sensible readers
are supposed to frequent, the books most in demand were of the style we
deplore, and complaints were laid at their doors because they failed
adequately to supply this demand.
There must be something very delicious in vice. Nothing else will satisfy
us. The novelists have sounded the depths of depravity; and in their
efforts to find a lower depth still, are driven to walking the hospitals,
diving into blue‐books, frequenting the asylums for the diseased, the
depraved, the insane. The repertory of evil seems almost used up. They
have so beaten the drawing‐room carpet, so sifted and shaken out for the
public gaze the smallest speck of fashionable filth that the most
delicately organized imagination of the refined lady could discern, that
there is nothing left on it. Titles even are growing common, and we want
some new type of a coroneted brow to bind our scandal on. Dickens and
Collins and Yates have overrun us with burglars and detectives. They did
good service in their day; but even they are growing unromantic. The
Krupp, the mitrailleuse, the needle‐gun, have killed off the slashing
cavalry heroes, who rode at everything, neck or nothing, in perfect
safety, and were as irresistible in love as in war. We must abandon these
higher regions with a sigh, and go down to the dirtiest columns of the
dirtiest newspapers in our efforts to find “something rich and strange.”
And to this men and women of “genius,” as it is called, bend their every
effort. The gifts that God has given them to ennoble man they devote to
stirring the puddle of filth which they take as the mirror of human
nature, and, holding before the admiring gaze of humanity whatever they
have fished up, say—Behold yourselves!
Are these the lessons society must look for in its gifted children? Is the
great book of nature narrowed down to these limits? Is there nothing in
human life, human thought, human activity, more worthy our attention, more
deeply interesting to man, than the chronicle of his vices? Is the
attractive in human nature confined to third or fourth hand glimpses of
“the scions of nobility,” the bywords of the barracks, the slang of the
gutter, the echoes of the footlights? Is vice alone captivating, and
morality such an everyday, humdrum affair that we are sick of excess of
it? Is love the thing they present to us?—love, the great passion, the
pure divine flame that God has set in our hearts to link together and
perpetuate the generations, and finally lead us up to him? Is this maudlin
rubbish that the writers of the day surfeit us with, love?—this weak,
puny, consumptive thing; inane, jejune, sickly, fleshly, sensual, impure,
inhuman? Love is a divine‐inspired passion of the soul, planted there by
God, to grow and flourish in its great, pure, single strength. They have
cut it, and hacked and torn it to shreds, and left nothing of divinity in
it. They set it in the flesh, and convert a heaven‐born gift into the
lowest of animal passions.
It requires no very powerful stretch of the imagination to draw from the
foul pens of these writers the germ of the question which to‐day threaten
to turn the world topsy‐turvy—the so‐called theory of _Woman’s
Rights_—which has for champions philosophers of the stamp of Stuart Mill
and Professor Fawcett, and for first‐born, _Free Love_.
We will suppose Mr. Stanley, of the _New York Herald_, to have brought
back with him a native of the countries he visited in his marvellously
successful search for Dr. Livingstone. The native has learned the English
language on his journey. He is suddenly thrown among a people whom he can
only look upon as gods, as the Indians first looked upon the Spaniards. He
is surrounded by the results of all the ages. He wishes to learn something
about these gods: how they live and move and have their being. A novel “of
the period”—any one by any of the thousand authors of the species—is put
into his hands as the faithful reflex of this society. What can we imagine
would be his feelings at the end of its perusal? A comparison rather in
favor of his own countrymen would be the most natural inference.
But it may be objected that we are pessimists. We attack a class whom no
decent person would defend. There are more schools of novelists than the
sensational school. There are Scott, Thackeray, Dickens, Bulwer. Are these
all that we would wish, or do they also fall under our sweeping
condemnation?
As for Scott, we are still proud to acknowledge him by his old title—“The
Wizard of the North.” He was a man who, taking into account the times in
which he lived, the prejudices still rife, the people for whom he wrote,
the purpose of his writings, turned every faculty of his marvellously
gifted, richly stored mind to its best account. Even Livy’s “pictured
page” almost dims in our eyes before the range and variety of his. His
works are the illumination of history; his characters almost as true, as
rounded, as full as Shakespeare’s, and partaking of the great master’s
“infinite variety.” His plots are deeply interesting, his fidelity to
nature in character and scene sustained and equal, whether the subject be
Queen Bess or Queen Mary of Scotland, Louis XI. or King Jamie, a moss‐
trooper or a crusader, a free‐lance or a pirate, a bailie or a Poundtext;
whether the scene lie in Palestine or in the Trosachs, in mediæval France
or mediæval England, in the camp or the court, the prisons of Edinburgh or
the purlieus of Alsatia. He has laughed at us Catholics good‐naturedly
sometimes, but despite that, his novels did us a vast service at a time
when our road was very dark, and we were looked upon at best as something
utterly inhuman—something, in fact, like what the sailor conceived who,
when stranded somewhere with his mess‐mate in the neighborhood of the
North Pole, beheld for the first time a white bear squatted on its
haunches before them, and taking a contented survey.
“What’s that ’ere beggar, Jack?”
“Oh!” said the other, taking a solemn glance at the animal, between the
whiffs of his pipe, “I can’t say exactly, but I expect it’s one o’ them
there what they call Roman Cawtholics too.”
Scott first made us known to the mass of English readers in a fair way.
The barriers of anti‐Catholic prejudice, centuries old, which had resisted
stoutly and stubbornly every effort which reason, right, and common
humanity made against it, crumbled at once beneath the fairy wand of the
magician, and English Protestants came to know something of us and
recognize us, though still in a cautious manner, as fellow‐men.
From Scott all readers may undoubtedly derive much good. And now we turn
to the others, the leaders of modern fiction: the standard, though, as we
showed, not the most widely read authors of the day.
They are Thackeray, Dickens, Bulwer; and though the men themselves, so far
as their lives are known to us, had little or no faith in any particular
church or any particular creed, and must therefore be wanting in a firm,
steadfast groundwork, absolutely necessary to impart a pure, high‐minded
spirit to their writings, we lay this aside, and look at them only through
their works. In Thackeray and Bulwer we have two eminently clever, highly
cultivated men—writers who cannot fail to grace everything that they
touch, who cannot fail to interest deeply and always. They were men of
much learning, of great insight into character, whose mode of life and
circle of acquaintances threw them into the heart of the world, their
world, and gave them every facility of knowing it thoroughly. They came
and saw. And what is the result of their investigation? They found it all
a great sham. The genius of both consists in thoroughly exposing this
great sham, in tearing off the gilded mask, and showing the hollow, empty,
grim death’s‐head beneath it; in leaving not a rag to cover its nakedness.
After reading Thackeray, there springs up in us an utter contempt for
ourselves and for the world in general. All human nature is false, rotten,
and utterly worthless. There is no religion in it, no faith, and as a
consequence no honesty and no law save the law of expediency. If there are
any characters to admire at all, they are certainly not his good men; for
they, and those of Dickens also—Tom Pinch, for instance—are the most
insipid numskulls that ever crossed our vision; the most wretched
caricatures of goodness that could possibly be conceived. Very truly might
he say that, “when he started a story, he was very dubious as to the
morality of his characters.” We respect his good men infinitely less than
his rogues. Among them he is at home: in his Lord Steynes, his Becky
Sharpes, his drunken parsons, his wicked gray‐hairs, his asses or black‐
legs among the young, his solemn humbugs, his tuft‐hunters, his silly,
useless, vain, untruthful women, his worldly mammas who hold up their
charming daughters at auction; those charming daughters who submit to it
with such good grace, who simper so chittishly under their pink bonnets
and look for soft places on the sofa to faint; his designing and
unprincipled adventuresses, to whom the world is as a market, a betting
ring, or a faro‐table, and the thing to be sold, the stake to be played
for, is the virtue they never possessed. Such is Thackeray’s world; and he
has done well to show it up so openly and unsparingly in all its
nakedness. But is it altogether a true portrait; could he do no more than
this? Is this the true world, after all—so utterly depraved and given over
to evil? Are there no such things as truth, honesty, morality, religion,
among us? Are there no men and women, no bodies, endowed with sense
enough, power enough, and wit enough to give the lie to this, and bring
this false world with shame to their feet? If there be, it is not to be
found in the pages of Thackeray.
In Bulwer, it is the same story told in Bulwer’s way, with less of heart
and more of licentiousness. Thackeray was, we believe, a virtuous man, as
the phrase goes; that is, he was contented with one wife, paid his bills,
kept his word, and very rarely woke with a headache. But Bulwer rather
glories, or was wont to do, in the opposite character. He used to be fond
of telling us that he knew the world; had mixed in, shared, felt its vices
and its follies. He comes out of this world of his, sits down, and tells
us all about it; what sort of men and women he found in it; what motives
actuate them; what they live for, what code of morality they follow. Taken
as a whole, their code of morality is fashion; their temple is the world;
their religion, worldliness; their god, themselves. Crime is only crime in
the humble; in the wealthy it is elevated into vice. Such is the doctrine
of the Bulwer world; the doctrine that our children imbibe unconsciously,
while only diverted momentarily by the interest of the story. So far,
then, notwithstanding grace of style, elegance of diction, happiness of
conception—all which may be found in a hundred writers infinitely
superior, essayists and historians—we have nothing but a very doubtful
negative gain.
And Dickens—who has made us weep over fireside virtues, the hardness and
quiet nobleness of humble struggle, and the greatness of spirit that beats
as strong in the cottage as on the throne—must we cast him into the same
category? Hard as it is to say, we find him wanting, though in a less
degree than the two above‐mentioned. He has fought sham, and fought it, as
few others have done, successfully. He did not take up the whole world and
fight it as one gigantic falsehood. This is useless. The world is large
enough and strong enough to withstand the mightiest single‐handed and hold
its own. It will not be put down in this way, and it only laughs at the
tooting tin whistles that are continually blowing such shrill but tiny
blasts of regeneration at it, till they crack and are silenced for ever.
Dickens fought it as the first Napoleon fought the combinations arrayed
against him; he cut them off in detachments. So with the world; you must
take it by pieces. Show it one sham, and all the other shams will cry
shame. The silks, and the satins, and the perfumed licentiousness of the
drawing‐room, Dickens left to other hands. But he opened up to the eyes of
these fine folk, who sinned so elegantly in their carriages and palaces, a
black, yawning, startling gulf right under their feet; with its hot
elements seething in corruption and danger beneath them, because they
would not look at it; because they would not recognize this other nation,
as Disraeli called it in _Sybil_; because that world was to them as far
off and unknown as Timbuctoo. He showed them the thieves’ and harlots’
dens, and how they were fed; by the innocent and pure, brutalized by the
system of the jail, school, and workhouse, presided over by such men as
have lately stood unabashed in the broad light of day before us, and
openly confessed to cruelties that Squeers would have blushed at; who
passed unharmed and triumphant from the court of justice, and found
lawyers and excellent “ministers of God’s Word” to uphold them, and
proclaimed in the press and elsewhere that they were honest, humane men
and maligned saints. Dickens showed us what these Squeerses and Stigginses
were made of. He showed us what the jails were made of, the asylums, the
workhouses, the schools; and undoubtedly aided in effecting many a reform.
He warmed our hearts towards each other, and towards the unfortunates to
whom all life was a bitter trial from birth to the grave. He undoubtedly
did great good; and many a book of his is a never‐ending, never‐wearying
sermon, preached to a broad humanity. As Catholics we owe him a deep debt
for never having systematically or seriously abused his talents by abusing
us, where abuse is ever welcome and well rewarded. But he has given us so
much that we look for more from him; for some great, broad, sound
principles to guide us through the hard battle of life; since his problem
was life, human nature, its difficulties and its dangers. While confessing
our debt to him for what he has done, we find a good deal in Dickens that
we do not like. His code of ethics is a very easy one, and a very
dangerous one, running into that indifferentism so prevalent and
demoralizing to‐day. We find, after reading him, that there is a great
amount of evil in the world counterbalanced by a tolerably fair amount of
good, and that it is useless to hope for anything more. That, so far as
religion goes, mankind may be divided into two classes—the humbugs and the
humbugged: the humbugs—the Chadbands, the Stigginses—getting decidedly the
better of the bargain. That, provided a man is not intolerably bad, he is
as good as the generality of his neighbors, and has a fair chance of
arriving safe at the end of life’s journey, wherever or whatever that end
may be, without being extraordinarily particular about it. That
drunkenness is not a vice unworthy of man, it is rather an amiable
weakness, a good joke, something funny, something to be laughed at;
something that you and ourselves might fall into now and again without
doing much harm. Nowhere in Dickens, as far as we recollect, does
drunkenness appear as what it is, a vice lower than the appetite of the
brute. As for our quarrel with him as Americans, though a grievous and a
just one, we will let that pass now. He endeavored to atone for it at the
end, so let it rest with him in his grave. In considering his works as a
whole, his almost unrivalled power of moving us to laughter or to tears,
we cannot help contrasting what he has done, great as it is, with what he
might have done had he been endowed with a clear religious belief, and not
a heart open only to mere human goodness.
To conclude, then: the point of our article is this. The novel is a power
among us to‐day: a new weapon thrown into the midst of the strife of good
and evil, to be taken up by either party. Those who would uproot all
morality, all law, all faith, the basis of humanity, have been quick to
see its efficacy, seize upon it, and turn it to a terrible account. It is
not so much the open direct teachings of heathen, pagan,
rationalistic—call it what you will, it means the same in the long
run—philosophy that we are to fear. The intellects that breathe in that
atmosphere are few and far between. But when this heathenism comes
filtered down to us through sources that meet us at every turn, and
impregnates and poisons the innocent streams that ought to beautify and
fertilize the intellect of the mass—when it comes to us half disguised in
the literature that we place in the hands of our sons and daughters, it is
time for us to purge this poison out.
Stop novels we cannot. Let preachers thunder as they may, they will be
written, and they will be read. It is for us to seize upon that weapon,
and turn it to our own purpose. We have already done so to a degree. Our
great thinkers, Wiseman, Newman, have recognized the necessity of this,
and themselves set us the example. But not to such men as these are we to
look for a Catholic school of novelists: their duties are higher, their
work more laborious, though not, and we may say it advisedly, from the
necessities of the day more important. We want a crowd of such writers as
Gerald Griffin, Bernard McCabe, Lady Fullerton, the authoress of _The
House of Yorke_. In France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Spain, we have
been more successful. The Countess of Hahn Hahn, Bolanden, Mrs. Craven,
Conscience, Manzoni, Fernan Caballero, show us that Catholic writers who
give themselves to this necessary and noble work can make the novel their
own, and compete successfully even in the matter of sale with the Dumases,
the Eugene Sues, George Sands, Wilkie Collinses, Charles Reades, Miss
Braddons. Their works are received with heartfelt approval by the critics
of the Protestant press. And we cannot refrain from thanking these
gentlemen for the very fair, honest and manly, and conscientious use they
make of their pens in this particular at least. Critics are heartily weary
of the mass of rubbish they are compelled to wade through week after week,
month after month. If anything, they are too mild. We lack something of
that hearty knock‐down criticism which prevailed in the palmy days of the
quarterlies; which killed or cured; which lashed Byron into savagery and
brought out his true genius; which crushed the weakly and the worthless.
Catholic novelists, and Protestant also, have a noble field before them
wherein to sow and reap. It is for them to show that vice and unchastity
are not the only subjects which can interest us; that godliness and _true_
love are not such dull, insipid, everyday things; that suffering and self‐
denial and sacrifice for a noble purpose, the soul‐conflict of human
passion against the eternal decrees, and its mastery after much struggle
and weary strife, are full of the profoundest interest for man; that
history is but the chronicle of this conflict, and when rightly read shows
it forth in every page; that our souls can be fired, our flagging senses
stimulated, our admiration aroused, by the well‐told story of the struggle
of right when we see a God moving and acting in it all, far more than by
the adoration of indecency deified.
Review Of Vaughan’s Life Of S. Thomas: Concluded.(114)
In our last number, we endeavored to give our readers some idea of Prior
Vaughan’s _Life of S. Thomas of Aquin_. We purposely omitted, however, to
say anything of his treatment of the personal history of the saint
himself. The name of Thomas of Aquin belongs to church history, to
theology and philosophy; but it also belongs to what is known by the
somewhat uncouth name of hagiography; and the story of the _saint_ is more
engaging to the greater number of readers, than the history of the
theologian or the philosopher. We have already hinted that some of Prior
Vaughan’s best pages are to be found in the narrative of the saint’s
personal story.
Biography is as old as the days of Confucius, or at least as the times of
his early disciples; and whilst its object has been, on the whole, the
same in all ages, its forms have undergone infinite variety. Men have
written Lives in order to cheat Death of his victims. They have tried to
keep heroes alive by embalming them in incorruptible and imperishable
speech, that all time might know them, and their influence might reach
from age to age. Biography has always had a moral purpose: to make men
patriotic, or brave, or virtuous—to make them better in heart, rather than
more subtle in intellect. Example being the great motive power in the
world, the images of men in books have done much to shape the world’s
course. But the books that have preserved the memory of heroic men have
been of many different sorts. In old times, they used to be books of
anecdote—books which were a threaded series of pithy sayings and generous
deeds, each with a point of its own, and altogether tending to form the
citizen, the soldier, or the virtuous man. And the style of Plutarch and
of Diogenes Laertius was continued by Ven. Bede, by William of Malmesbury,
by Froissart, and by the innumerable chroniclers of the middle ages. The
biographer speaks in his own person now and then, but his words are very
brief, and are often not so much an assistance to the tale, as a break in
it or a sort of private _aside_ with the reader. The personal features of
the hero, his mind or his body, are not made much of by the old
biographers. You hear about his height, his complexion, the color of his
hair, or the length of his chin; but you are never told when his eye
flashes or his lip curls. Dates are not matters of importance. You have
his birth and his death, but there is none of that curious comparative
chronology which modern readers know of. And as for any sense of the
picturesque, any idea of scene‐painting or putting in backgrounds, it need
not be said that the old biographies are as plain as the background of a
Greek theatre. They now and then give particulars of time, place, and
circumstance which their modern transcribers seize upon as a miner seizes
on the rare and welcome nugget; but these are entirely beyond their own
intention. The historical and the moral are the only two elements to be
found in lives from Xenophon down to Dr. Johnson. The latter biographer
suggests that, in his days, the _moralizing_ element had developed out of
the merely moral. But the life of Prior and the life of Alcibiades are not
very distantly related. The time was coming when lives began to be
picturesque. The growth of the propensity to the picturesque is a curious
problem. Why is it that Homer never describes Troy, that Herodotus never
gives us a picture of Marathon, that Cæsar has no eye for the Rhine, and
that Froissart does not paint St. Denis on the day of the Oriflamme,
whilst, on the other hand, Montalembert stops his story to describe the
Western Isles, De Broglie lets us see the Council of Nicea as it sat,
Stanley consecrates pages to paint Judæa and Carmel, and every writer of a
saint’s life at the present hour provides for a picture or two in every
chapter? Who began this? We do not mean who began the picturesque in
literature, for that question, though a curious one is not so difficult to
answer; but who began the picturesque in biography? It is Chateaubriand
who usually gets the credit of having initiated all the romance and
sentimentality that has crept into serious literature during the last
half‐century. Chateaubriand has only left, if we remember rightly, one
attempt at biography, and the _Vie de Rancé_ contains certainly sentiment
and romance enough, but it is not graphic in the way that modern
biographies are. The author dashes off brilliant sketches of society, he
recites imaginary scenes, or rather episodes, in which nature plays her
part, he makes incisive remarks, and utters beautiful poetry; but when he
comes face to face with De Rancé, the penitent and the monk, his hand
seems to falter, and he grows feeble and disappointing, just where a
modern writer would have seized the opportunity of powerful painting and
strong situation. For ourselves, whatever influence Chateaubriand had—and
he had much—in directing men’s thoughts to analogies that lie beneath the
surface of nature, of history, and of the human heart, we are inclined to
attribute the modern craving for the picturesque to the development of a
quality in which Chateaubriand did not especially excel; we mean,
earnestness and reality. Many causes, and most of all, perhaps, that
series of political and religious phenomena which is summed up in the word
_revolution_, have combined, during the present century, to take
literature out of the hands of merely professional writers, or to make
those only choose it as a profession who have something earnest to say.
Style and thought have come to be considered one thing. As De Quincey
observes, style is not the mere alien apparelling of a thought, but rather
its very incarnation.
It is easy to see how earnestness leads to the picturesque in biography.
In proportion as the writer is able to fix his mind upon his hero, in the
same proportion he comes to realize him, as the phrase is. Not only are
all the facts and circumstances collected with the care of a lawyer
getting up a brief, but words and names that look dead and speechless are
analyzed as with magnifying power, till they take significance and life.
Every name, as Aristotle saw, is itself a picture; but it is a picture
that only requires a more powerful imaginative lens to grow greater,
fuller, and more living. And therefore the earnest writer, because he
looks more intently at his subject, sees more in it to put upon his
canvas; and the reader, struck by the significance that he cannot gainsay,
and moved by the pictures, as pictures always move the human fancy, is
held in bonds by the writer, and remembers long and vividly what impressed
his thought so strongly at the first. He is like one who has seen the site
of a great battle, and has once for all fixed for himself, as he gazed,
the relative positions and movements of the fight; he will not easily
forget it. Something must, no doubt, be added to this; something must be
allowed to modern culture, to modern appreciation of art as art, to modern
love of landscape, and to the general _romanesque_ tendency begun by
Chateaubriand. But so far from the tendency to picturesque biography being
wholly attributable to sentiment, we hold that it is precisely our modern
earnestness that makes us demand to see things nearer and more real.
Doubtless the picturesque biographer is exposed to many dangers, and his
readers to many trials. He may “realize” what does not exist; he may
“analyze” out of his inner consciousness alone; he may usurp what is the
privilege of the poet and the romancer, and give names and habitations not
only to airy nothings, but, what is much more serious, to unsubstantial
mistakes. And therefore we do not wonder that many well‐meaning people,
with the results of romantic biography or history before their eyes, and
youthful remembrances of Lingard and Butler, have come to distrust every
account of a personage or of a fact which contains the smallest mixture of
imagination.
The length of these prefatory remarks may lead the reader to suppose that
Prior Vaughan has written picturesquely and sensationally about S. Thomas
of Aquin. Yet this, stated absolutely, would by no means be true. We shall
presently give one or two passages, in which a fine imaginative and
descriptive power, we think, is displayed. But the book bears no sign of a
straining after pictorial effect. Yet its whole idea is pre‐eminently
picturesque. Prior Vaughan has written with the idea of not merely giving
the history of his chosen saint, but of localizing it in time and in
space. It is with this view that he enters into descriptions of Aquino, of
Monte Cassino, of Paris and its University; it is for this that he brings
S. Dominic and S. Francis on the canvas, and sketches the figures of
Frederick II., of Abelard, of S. Bernard, of William of Paris. Each of
these names has some connection with Thomas of Aquin, and each throws
fresh light on the central object, when it is analyzed with care.
Here is the description, taken from the opening pages of the first volume,
of the town of Aquino, which was, if not the birthplace of the saint, at
least the principal seat of his family:
“The little town of Aquino occupies the centre of a vast and
fertile plain, commonly called Campagna Felice, in the ancient
Terra di Lavoro. This plain is nearly surrounded by bare and
rugged mountains, one of which pushes further than the rest into
the plain; and on its spur, which juts boldly out, and which was
called significantly Rocca Sicca, was situated the ancient
stronghold of the Aquinos. The remnants of this fortress, as seen
at this day, seem so bound up with the living rock, that they
appear more like the abrupt finish of the mountain than the ruins
of a mediæval fortress. Yet they are sufficient to attest the
ancient splendor and importance of the place; and the torrent of
Melfi, which, tumbling out of the gorges of the Alps, runs round
the castellated rock, marks it out as a fit habitation for the
chivalrous and adventurous lords of Aquino, Loreto, and
Belcastro.”—i. 3, 4.
Prior Vaughan, as a Benedictine, is naturally drawn to dwell upon the fact
of S. Thomas having lived as a boy for five or six years in the Abbey of
Monte Cassino. It certainly seems true that the child was placed by his
parents in the abbey with a view to his continuing there after he came to
years of discretion; just as so many children had been from the days of S.
Benedict downwards. “To all intents and purposes,” says the author, “S.
Thomas of Aquin was a Benedictine monk. Had he continued in the habit till
his death—without any further solemnity beyond the offering of his
parents—he would have been reckoned as much a Benedictine as S. Gregory,
S. Augustine, S. Anselm, or S. Bede” (i. 20). We do not think that this
can be denied. It was affirmed on oath, in the process of canonization, by
an exceedingly trustworthy witness, that the saint’s father “made him a
monk” at Monte Cassino. And a monk he was, no doubt, as much as a boy of
twelve can be a monk—and the Council of Trent, be it remembered, had not
then fixed the age of religious vows at sixteen. But the frightful
confusion of the times brought his Benedictine days to a premature close.
Monte Cassino was pillaged and nearly destroyed, the community was
scattered, and Thomas of Aquin went to Naples to study—and to find the
habit of S. Dominic.
The personal character which is drawn in this work is that of a large‐
minded, serene man, of powerful natural genius and winning character, who
steps forth from the ranks of mediæval nobility, and, turning his back on
sword and lance, and giving no heed to the tumult of war and rapine,
deliberately consecrated himself wholly to God, and, grace being added to
natural gifts, illuminates the world as a doctor and as a saint. It would
be interesting to dwell, if we had space, upon the circumstances of S.
Thomas joining the Order of S. Dominic. The opposition of his family, the
utter unscrupulousness with which they carried out their opposition, the
quiet yet fervent persistence of the saint—feudal violence, maternal
desperation, and ecclesiastical interference—all this makes up a scene of
wonderful reality and deep suggestiveness. But we must pass it over. S.
Thomas became a Dominican, and we follow him from Naples to Cologne, from
Cologne to Paris. We follow the course of his academical life, his
writings, his teaching, his promotion to the grade of bachelor, of
licentiate, of doctor. The first chapter of the second volume is entitled
“S. Thomas made doctor.” It contains a lively picture of the great
University of Paris and its life from day to day; and with it, moreover,
the author gives an eloquent summary of the character of his hero, part of
which we extract, because it is in some sort a key to the whole story of
his life.
“A man with the power possessed by the Angelical could afford to
be serene and tranquil. He lived, as it were, behind the veil; he
saw through, and valued at its intrinsic worth, this earth’s
stage, and took the measure of all the actors on it. Like Moses,
he came down from the mountain, into the turmoil of the chafing
world below, and, enlarged by the greatness of the vision in which
he habitually lived, it shrank into insignificance before his eye;
and those events or influences which excited the minds of others,
and disturbed their peace, were looked upon by him somewhat in the
same way as we may imagine some majestic, solitary eagle surveys
from his high crag, with half‐unconscious eye, the world of woods
below him. The Angelical himself had drawn his first lessons from
a mountain eyrie. His elastic mind, even as a boy, had expanded,
as he looked down from the mighty abbey, on teeming plain and
rugged mountain, with the far‐distant ranges of the snowy
Apennines standing up delicate and crisp against the sky. God, who
made all this, had drawn him to himself, and the fingers of a
heavenly hand, striking on his large, solitary heart, had sealed
him imperially, for all his life to come, as the great master of
the heavenly science, and as the gentle prince of peace....
Immense weight of character, surpassing grasp of mind, and
keenness of logical discernment, added to a sovereign benignity
and patience, and to a gentleness and grace which spoke from his
eyes and thrilled in the accents of his voice, made men conscious,
when in contact with him, that they were in presence of a man of
untold gifts, and yet of one so exquisitely noble as never to
display them, save for the benefit of others. Men knew that he had
the power to crush them; but since he was so great, they knew also
that he never would misuse it; they found him ever self‐forgetting
and self‐restrained. A character with such a capability of
asserting itself, and yet ever manifesting such gentle self‐
repression, must have acted with a singular fascination on any
generous mind that came into relation with it.... He was a vast
system in himself, and appears to have been specially created for
achieving such an end. He was one single, simple man—doubtless.
But he was a ‘system,’ or the representation of a system—the
highest type of what heroism can do in human heart and mind.
Christ, in choosing him, had chosen the most majestic of human
creations, converting it into a powerful exponent of the light,
peace, and splendor which strike out from the cross. He, if any
man, had rested on the bosom of his Lord. He, the great Angelical,
with the golden sun flashing from his breast, and the fire of
heaven scintillating round his massive brow—he, if any man, had
broken the bread of the strong, and had refreshed his lips with
the blood of the grape, and had been transfigured by the draught.
There is a largeness about him which, whilst it expands the heart,
seems almost to take away the breath. We look up at him, and say:
‘How great art thou! how gently courteous, and how tenderly true!
Sweet was the power of God, and the grace of Christ, which made
thee all thou art. O gentle mighty sun, shine on in thy sweet
radiance, spread thy pure invigorating rays amidst the deep sad
shadows of the earth!’... Such was his character. And, prescinding
from his natural gifts, how did he become so mighty? The cause has
been touched on and partially developed already. The reader,
adequately to realize it, would do well to study and master, with
his heart as well as with his head, the monastic theology of S.
Victor’s—the Benedictine science of the saints. Grasp the spirit
of S. Anselm, S. Bernard, and the Victorines, weigh it as a whole,
follow its drift, mark its salient points, learn to recognize the
aroma of that sweet mystic life of tough yet tender service and
self‐forgetfulness, and you will have discovered that spring of
living waters which ran into the heart and mind of the great
Angelical, and lent to all his faculties—aye, and even to his very
person and expression—a warmth and glow which seemed to have come
direct from heaven. From the rock, which was Christ, flowed
straight and swift into the paradise of his soul four crystal
waters: Love—fixing the entire being on the sovereign good, and
doing all for him alone; Reverence—that is, self‐distrust and
self‐forgetfulness, produced by the vision of God’s high majesty
awfully gazed on with the eye of faith; Purity—treading all
created things, and self first, under the feet, and, with entire
freedom of spirit, basking and feeding in the unseen world;
Adoration—love, reverence, and purity, combined in one act of
supreme worship, as the creature, with all he has and all he is,
bends prone to the earth, and with a feeling of dust and ashes
whispers to his soul: ‘The Lord he is God, he made us, and not we
ourselves!’ ” (ii. 31‐48.)
The mind and heart are both fond of dwelling on the heroic; and the heroic
is met with at every step in the life of S. Thomas. We are reminded, as we
read, of that Achilles on whose prowess hangs the fate of Troy and of the
Greeks,
“Full in the midst, high‐towering o’er the rest,”
his limbs encased in an armor that is more divine than that which the
father of fire forged for the son of Peleus, the gold upon his breast, the
sword of the Spirit by his side, the “broad refulgent shield” of heavenly
faith upon his arm, and in his hand the great paternal spear that none but
he can wield—not a “whole ash” felled upon Pelion by old Chiron; but the
seven gifts of the Christian doctorate wielded by the force of seraphic
love. His appearance in the lists of argument, in the contest of the
schools, in the field of intellectual strife, has all the _quelling_ power
that is ascribed to the greatest heroes of the battle‐field; and his place
in the records of mental and theological history is that of a discoverer,
a conqueror, and a king. Here is a scene which is perhaps more or less
familiar, but it is a type of many scenes in this wonderful life. It
occurred whilst Thomas was under Albertus Magnus, at Cologne:
“Master Albert had selected a very difficult question from the
writings of Denis the Areopagite, and had given it to some of his
scholars for solution. Whether in joke or in earnest, they passed
on the difficulty to Thomas, and begged him to write his opinion
upon it. Thomas took the paper to his cell, and, taking his pen,
first stated, with great lucidity, all the objections that could
be brought against the question; and then gave their solutions. As
he was going out of his cell, this paper accidentally fell near
the door. One of the brothers passing picked it up, and carried it
at once to Master Albert. Albert was excessively astonished at the
splendid talent which now, for the first time, by mere accident,
he discovered in that big, silent student. He determined to bring
out, in the most public manner, abilities which had been for so
long a time so modestly concealed. He desired Thomas to defend a
thesis before the assembled school, on the following day. The hour
arrived. The hall was filled. There sat Master Albert. Doubtless
the majority of those who were to witness the display imagined
that they were about to assist at an egregious failure. How could
that heavy, silent lad—who could not speak a word in
private—defend in public school, against the keenest of opponents,
the difficult niceties of theology? But they were soon undeceived,
for Thomas spoke with such clearness, established his thesis with
such remarkable dialectical skill, saw so far into the coming
difficulties of the case, and handled the whole subject in so
masterly a manner, that Albert himself was constrained to cry
aloud, ‘_Tu non videris tenere locum respondentis sed
determinantis_!’ ‘Master,’ replied Thomas with humility, ‘I know
not how to treat the question otherwise.’ Albert then thought to
puzzle him, and show him that he was still a disciple. So, one
after another, he started objections, created a hundred
labyrinths, weaving and interweaving all manner of subtle
arguments, but in vain. Thomas, with his calm spirit and keen
vision, saw through every complication, had the key to every
fallacy, the solution for every enigma, and the art to unravel the
most tangled skein—till, finally, Albert, no longer able to
withhold the expression of his admiration, cried out to his
disciples, who were almost stupefied with astonishment: ‘We call
this young man a dumb ox, but so loud will be his bellowing in
doctrine that it will resound throughout the whole world’ ” (i.
321, 322).
How exactly this prophecy was fulfilled need not be said. S. Thomas was
soon employed in speaking to the world what God had given him to say. He
spoke in the class‐hall and in the church; he wrote for young and for old;
and wherever his voice was heard men wondered as at a portent. The
students of Paris, the professors of France and of Italy, his fellow‐
religious, the intimate friend of his privacy, the rough people round his
pulpit, the pope himself as he sat and heard him preach, every one said
over again the wondering words that Albert the Great had used in the hall
at Cologne. And if we had no record of what men thought, we should still
be secure in saying that they were astonished; for we are astonished
ourselves. Many men who have made a great noise in their lifetime have
left posterity to wonder, not at themselves, but at their reputation. But
the writer of the _Summa_ _must_ have been great even in his lifetime.
That breadth of view, that keenness of analysis, that comprehensive reach
of thought, that enormous memory—we can see it for ourselves, and every
story of his prowess we can readily credit from what the imperishable
record of his written works attests to our own eye. Prior Vaughan relates
interesting anecdotes of his power of discussion, and of his influence
over the irreverent world of his scholastic compeers, filling up the
outlines of the annalist with no greater exercise of imagination than is
fairly permitted to the serious biographer.
But the heroic in the life of the Angel of the Schools would not be
perfect unless the giant strength had been joined to the gentleness of the
servant of Christ. There is nothing, perhaps, that will so strike a reader
of this Life as his mild, equal, and gentle spirit. It does not seem that
S. Thomas was naturally of a quick and impetuous nature, like S. Ignatius
or S. Francis of Sales. From his youth he had been a contemplative in the
cloisters of Monte Cassino; when but a child he had charmed his teachers
by asking with childish meditative face, “_What was God?_” His quiet
determination had conquered his mother when she opposed him being a
Dominican; his calm courage had converted his sisters and shamed his
brothers. And in the schools, his silence and his humility, virtues never
more difficult to be practised than in the field of intellectual combat,
had soon become the marvel of all who knew him. A great natural gift—the
gift of a changeless serenity of heart and temper—was perfected in him by
grace, until it became heroic. The contest he once had in the Paris
schools with Brother John of Pisa, a Franciscan friar who afterwards
became Archbishop of Canterbury, is typical of what always happened when
the Angelical discussed:
“John of Pisa, though a keen and a learned man, had no chance with
the Angelical. It would have been folly for any one, however
skilled—yes, for Bonaventure, or Rochelle, or even Albert the
Great himself—to attempt to cross rapiers with Br. Thomas. He was
to the manner born. Br. John did all that was in him, used his
utmost skill—but it was useless: the Angelical simply upset him
time after time. The Minorite grew warm; the Angelical, bent
simply on the truth, went on completing, with unmoved serenity,
the full discomfiture of the poor Franciscan. John of Pisa at
length could stand it no longer. In his heat he forgot his middle
term and forgot himself, and turned upon the saint with sarcasm
and invective. The Angelical in his own gentle, overpowering way,
giving not the slightest heed to these impertinences, went on
replying to him with inimitable tenderness and patience; and
whilst teaching a lesson which, after so many hundred years, men
can still learn, drew on himself, unconsciously, the surprise and
admiration of that vast assembly. Such was the way in which the
Angelical brought the influence of Benedictine _quies_ and
_benignitas_ into the boisterous litigations of the Paris schools.
And what is more, Frigerio tells us that the saint taught the
great lesson of self‐control, not only by the undeviating practice
of his life, but also by his writings; that he looked upon it as
an ‘ignominy’ (ignominia) to soil the mouth with angry words; and
contended that ‘quarrels,’ immoderate contentions, vain
ostentation of knowledge, and the trick of puzzling an adversary
with sophistical arguments—such as is often the practice of
dialecticians—should be banished from the schools” (ii. 57‐59).
The appearance of such a man as S. Thomas, in the midst of the scholastic
agitation of the XIIIth century, partakes of that providential character
which the eye of faith sees in the lives of all the great saints. We have
already, in a former notice, touched upon the marvellous way in which he
turned the current of thought against rationalism, heresy, and impiety.
But his personal influence was no less than what we may term his official.
At the moment when theology was beginning, with philosophy as her
handmaid, to enter on that course of development in which system, on the
one hand, advanced in equal steps with discovery on the other, it was the
will of God that a saint should show the world in his own person a perfect
model of the Catholic scholastic theologian. His powers were undeniable,
his genius imperial, his rights undoubted; and he used his privileges and
his grand position to enforce upon the noisy spirits of the time, and upon
all generations of students yet to be, that the true type of theological
discussion was “_humilis collatio, pacifica disputatio_.”
The theologian was to be no proud dogmatist, laying down the law as if he
had discovered all truth, but one who, taking the faith for his standing‐
point, humbly put forth and peacefully discussed the views that he thought
to be true. This was his great lesson; he taught it in the tone of his own
lectures and discussions, in the turn of his phrase when he wrote, in the
meekness of his answers, and in the moderation of his conclusions. And we
may thank the Providence that sent S. Thomas for that calm and judicial
serenity which has ever been the prevailing character of Catholic
theology. The great Dominican school that he founded carried on the
traditions of their master; and (to take an example not far from our own
days) the weighty and admirably clear pages of a Billuart are not
unworthy, in their broad, searching, yet tranquil argument, of the master
whom they follow. A troubled reach of time separates Paris in the XIIIth
century from Douay in the XVIIth; yet the spirit of S. Thomas had been
living over it all. Not only in his own religious family was his influence
strong. The Franciscan Order has its own tradition; but it is a tradition
that sprung up side by side with the Dominican. It was the seraphic
Bonaventure that sat beside Thomas of Aquin in the hall of the University
of Paris on the day when each of them received the insignia of the
doctorate. They were friends—more than friends, for each knew the other to
be a saint. Each heard the other speak, and the spirit of one was the
spirit of both. And in spite of divergences and varieties, such as our
Lord permits in order to draw unity from diversity or good from evil, the
two Orders have taught in harmonious spirit during all the long centuries
they have been before the world. S. Thomas, who reverenced S. Bonaventure,
has had the reverence of all S. Bonaventure’s children; and we have before
us as we write the _Cursus Theologiæ_ of a venerable bearded Capuchin,
considerably esteemed in the theological classes of the present day, who
stops in his enumeration of fathers and of doctors to add his emphatic
tribute of veneration to the Angelic Doctor, who, he reminds us, is, with
S. Augustine, “_præcipuus theologorum omnium temporum magister_”—the great
master of theologians of all ages. And what we say of the Franciscan Order
we may say of that great school which dates its traditions from that
Cardinal Toletus who was the pupil of the Dominican Soto. It is not that
the Jesuit theologians, even the many‐sided Suarez, have looked up to S.
Thomas as to their prince and teacher: this they have done; but even if
they had left his teaching, or where they have left his teaching, they
have followed his spirit. That spirit we might name the spirit of
_conciliation_. We do not mean the spirit of compromise, or of going only
half‐way in matters of truth. S. Thomas was as downright as Euclid. But
what we refer to is that readiness to admit all the good or the true in an
opposite view, the shrinking from forcing a vague word upon an adversary,
the impartial dissection of words and phrases which issues from the
scholastic and Thomistic method of _distinction_. The _distinguo_ of the
tyro or the sophist is a trick that is easily learned and easily laughed
at; but we claim for the scholastic method that its _distinguo_ is the
touchstone of truth and of falsehood; it requires acuteness and stored‐up
learning to make it and sustain it; but it requires, above all, that
perfect fairness of mind, that judicial impartiality of view, which calms
the promptings of ambitious originality; it requires that patience which
seeks only the truth and cares nothing for the victory, and that honesty
which is afraid of declamation, and sets its matter out in unadorned and
colorless simplicity. This is the true scholastic spirit, and it is pre‐
eminently the spirit of S. Thomas. If we might personify that grand
science which has been so high in this world, and seems now to have sunk
so low (yet, with the signs around us, we dare hardly say so now), it
would be under the figure of him who is its prince and lawgiver.
“See him, then, our great Angelical, as with calm and princely
bearing he advances, a mighty‐looking man, built on a larger scale
than those who stand around him, and takes the seat just vacated
by Bonaventure. His portrait as a boy has been sketched already.
Now he has grown into the maturity of a man, and his grand
physique has expanded into its perfect symmetry and manly
strength, manifesting, even in his frame, as Tocco says, that
exquisite combination of force with true proportion which gave so
majestic a balance to his mind. His countenance is pale with
suffering, and his head is bald from intense and sustained mental
application. Still, the placid serenity of his broad, lofty brow,
the deep gray light in his meditative eyes, his firm, well‐
chiselled lips, and fully defined jaw, the whole pose of that
large, splendid head—combining the manliness of the Roman with the
refinement and delicacy of the Greek—impress the imagination with
an indescribable sense of giant energy of intellect, of royal
gentleness of heart, and untold tenacity of purpose. That sweet
face reflects so exquisite a purity, that noble bust is cast in so
imperial a mould, that the sculptor or the painter would be struck
and arrested by it in a moment; the one would yearn to throw so
classical a type into imperishable marble, and the other to
transfer so much grandeur of contour, and such delicacy of
expression, so harmonious a fusion of spotlessness with majesty,
of southern loveliness with intellectual strength, to the enduring
canvas” (ii. 108, 109).
The angelic quality of the Angel of the Schools—his calmness and his power
over men—was not bought without a price. Like all the saints, he too had
to bear the cross, and like all the saints he was not content with
suffering the cross, but he sought it and courted it. We cannot quote much
more of Prior Vaughan’s narrative, or else we would fain draw attention to
the account he gives from authentic sources of Thomas’ holy distress of
mind, and his midnight prayer the night before he received the doctorate.
But the following paragraph must be transcribed:
“Let the carnal man, after looking on the sweet Angelical
fascinating the crowded schools, take the trouble to follow him,
as silently, after the day’s work, he retires to his cell,
seemingly to rest; let him watch him bent in prayer; see him take
from its hiding‐place, when all have gone to sleep, that hard iron
chain; see him—as he looks up to heaven and humbles himself to
earth—without mercy to his flesh, scourge himself with it,
striking blow upon blow, lacerating his body through the greater
portion of the sleepless night: let the carnal man look upon this
touching sight; let him shrink back in horror if he will—still let
him look on it, and he will learn how the saints labored to secure
a chaste and spotless life, and how a man can so far annihilate
self‐seeking as to be gentle with all the world, severe with
himself alone. If in human life there is anything mysteriously
adorable, it is a man of heroic mould and surpassing gifts showing
himself great enough to smite his own body, and to humble his
entire being in pretence of his Judge” (ii. 60, 61).
S. Thomas died in the prime of life—when scarcely forty‐eight years old.
He was called away a little before his great work, the _Summa_, was
completed, as if his Master wished to show the lamenting world that his
own claims were paramount to every other thing. But it was that divine
Master himself who had rendered it necessary to take away his servant when
he did; for S. Thomas could write no more. After that vision and ecstasy
which rapt his soul in the chapel of S. Nicholas at Naples, he ceased to
write, he ceased to dictate; his pen lay idle, and the _Summa_ stood still
in the middle of the questions on penance. It was, as he said to his
companion Reginald, _Non possum!_ “I cannot! Everything that I have
written appears to me as simply rubbish.” From that day of S. Nicholas he
lived in a continual trance: he wrote no more. As the new year (1274) came
in, he set out, at the pope’s call, to attend the general council at
Lyons: but he was never to get so far. He had not journeyed beyond
Campania—he was still travelling along the shores of that sunny region
which had given him birth, when mortal illness arrested him, and he was
taken to the Abbey of Fossa Nuova to die.
“The abbot conducts him through the church into the silent
cloister. Then the whole past seems to break in upon him like a
burst of overflowing sunlight; the calm and quiet abbey, the
meditative corridor, the gentle Benedictine monks; he seems as if
he were at Cassino once again, amidst the glorious visions of his
boyish days—amidst the tender friendships of his early youth,
close on the bones of ancient kings, near the solemn tomb of
Blessed Benedict, in the hallowed home of great traditions, and at
the very shrine of all that is fair and noble in monastic life. He
seemed completely overcome by the memories of the past, and,
turning to the monks who surrounded him, exclaimed ‘_This_ is the
place where I shall find repose!’ and then ecstatically to
Reginald in presence of them all: ‘_Hæc est requies mea in sæculum
sæculi, hic habitabo quoniam elegi eam_—This is my rest for ever
and ever; here will I dwell, for I have chosen it’ ” (ii. 921).
The whole of this last scene of the great saint’s pilgrimage is admirably
and most touchingly brought out by the author, and our readers must go to
it themselves. As we conclude the story, we are forced to agree with Prior
Vaughan when he exclaims, “It is but natural, it is but beautiful, that he
who in early boyhood had been stamped with the signet of S. Benedict,
should return to S. Benedict to die!”
We are sure that this life of S. Thomas of Aquin will do good. It is a
large book, but it deals with a large and a grand life. It is the work of
one who evidently has an interest in his subject far beyond that of the
mere compiler. The earnestness, the warmth, the very redundancy and
fulness of the author’s style, leave the impression of one whose heart is
strongly impressed by the glorious career which he has been following so
minutely, and there is little doubt that his readers will sympathize with
him. And there can be just as little doubt of the benefits which a
practical study of the life of the great doctor will confer upon students,
upon priests, and upon all serious men at the present day. Sanctity taught
by example is always an important lesson; but the saintliness of learning
and genius is still more important and still more rare. We live in an age
when there are numbers of men who are profoundly scientific and splendidly
accomplished in the different branches of knowledge which they profess;
and there is no one who is more sure of the world’s attention and
reverence than the man who can show that he knows something which other
men do not. The present time, therefore, is one at which we are to look
for and to hope for men who in theology and Catholic philosophy shall be
as able and as learned as are the leaders of profane science. Hard work
and unwearying devotedness are essential to this; and the example of S.
Thomas shows us what these things mean. But there is something which is
more necessary still; something which is especially necessary in sacred
science. “_In malevolam animam non intrabit Sapientia, nec habitabit in
corpore subdito peccatis._” There is no such thing as the highest wisdom
without the highest purity of heart. The perfection of the Christian
doctorate is the consequence of the perfect possession and exercise of the
Seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost. And the holy fathers who have written on
Christian wisdom tell us repeatedly, using almost identical words, that a
man might as well try to study the sun with purblind eyes as to be perfect
in theology with a heart defiled. There has been no greater example in the
range of sanctity of what S. Augustine calls the “_mens purgatissima_”
than that of him who on account of his purity has been called the
Angelical. Leaving the world as a child, his heart hardly knew what
earthly concupiscence was. With his loins girded by angels’ hands, with
his body subdued by hard living, with his thought always ranging among
high and elevating things, the soul of S. Thomas lived in a region that
did not belong to the world. He learnt his wisdom of the crucifix, he
found his inspirations at the foot of the altar; and the same lips that
dictated the _Commentaries on Aristotle_ were ready to break forth with
the _Lauda Sion_ and the _Pange Lingua_. If he taught in the daytime, he
chastised his body during the watches of the night. Born to a gentle life,
with powerful friends, with the world and its attractions within his
reach, he lived in his narrow cell, cleaving to his desk and to his
breviary, walking the streets with a quick step and downcast eye, letting
the world go on its way. He wanted only one thing—not as a reward for his
labor, because his labor was only a means to a great end—he wanted only
that one object which he asked for when the figure spoke to him from the
Cross, “Thee, O Lord! and thee alone!”
Prior Vaughan has accomplished a task for which he will receive the thanks
of all English‐speaking Catholics. His book will be read, and will be
treasured; for it is a book with a large purpose, carried out with
unwearying labor, presenting the results of wide reading, and offering the
student and the general reader a large variety of solid information and of
suggestive thought. If the book were less honestly wrought out than it is,
we could excuse the author, in consideration of the heart and soul he has
thrown into it. S. Thomas of Aquin is evidently a very real, living being
with him. His hero is no abstraction of the past, no quintessence of a
scholastic that must be looked at as one looks at an Egyptian papyrus in a
museum. He is a man to _know_, not merely to know about; a man who taught
in Paris and who reigns in heaven; a man who led an angel’s life here
below, and who can help us to lead a life more or less angelic from his
place above. To have worked with such a spirit is to have worked in the
true spirit of the Catholic faith. The saints are our teachers and
masters; and, what is more, they are the trumpets that rouse us to battle,
the living voices that make our hearts burn to follow them. And therefore
a true life of a saint will live, and will do its work. Our wish is that
Prior Vaughan’s _S. Thomas_ may make its way into the hearts of earnest
men, and it is our conviction that it _will_ make its way, and that men
will be the better for it.
To S. Mary Magdalen.
’Mid the white spouses of the Sacred Heart,
After its Queen, the nearest, dearest, thou.
Yet the auréola around thy brow
Is not the virgins’. Thine a throne apart.
Nor yet, my Saint, does faith‐illumined art
Thy hand with palm of martyrdom endow:
And when thy hair is all it will allow
Of glory to thy head, we do not start.
O more than virgin in thy penitent love!
And more than martyr in thy passionate woe!
How should thy sisters equal thee above,
Who knelt not with thee on the gory sod?
Or where the crown our worship could bestow
Like that long gold which wiped the feet of God?
God’s Acre.
In all countries and in all creeds, the dead have claimed the affectionate
notice of the living. The idea of housing them, deifying them,
propitiating them, of remembering them in _some_ way, however diverse, has
always been a prominent one. The belief in the soul’s immortality seems to
have been even more clear to the ordinary mind of the natural man than
that of a Supreme and Almighty Being. When Christianity appeared, the
departed had a place assigned them among the members of the church, and
were commemorated as absent brethren gone before their fellows one stage
further on the last great journey; when the Reformation disfranchised
human nature in the XVIth century, and levelled all its hallowed
aspirations with the brute instincts of the animal kingdom, the dead,
though divorced from communion with the living, were yet remembered, and
placed in two categories—the elect, or the precondemned. Another life was
even then believed in, and later branches of the reforming sects all
condescended at least to theorize on the future state of disembodied
spirits. It remained for our times to foster the cruel _un_belief that
dooms our loved ones, not even to everlasting perdition, but to absolute
annihilation. It was hard enough in Puritan days for a pious though
mistaken mind to bring itself to the belief that possibly the loved
companion of childhood, the chosen mate of youth, the venerable parent,
the upright teacher, was one of those predestined to eternal torments, one
of the holocausts to the greater glory of God; but how far harder now for
a fond heart, a clinging nature, to see in those it loves so many
perishable puppets, without future and without hope! But happily there is
a haven to which these storm‐tossed souls may come with the precious
freight of their love and their unerring Catholic instincts. Their
companions and brethren are not gone into trackless chaos, they are not
absorbed into that monstrous “nothing” of which a false philosophy has
made a bewildering bugbear. Every year the church protests against such
revolting doctrines on the day which she publicly consecrates to prayers
for and remembrance of the departed. This festival is like a spiritual
harvest‐home; coming as it does just at the close of the ecclesiastical
year, it marks an epoch in the life of the church suffering; and various
“revelations” made to saints, as well as the collective belief of the
faithful, agree in considering it a day of liberation and rejoicing among
the souls in Purgatory. “God’s Acre” (according to the touching and
suggestive German idiom) is reaped on that auspicious day, though, like
Boaz, the Divine Reaper leaves yet a few ears of corn to be gleaned into
heavenly rest by the prayers of the faithful on earth.
Before we go further into our own beautiful view of the future life, let
us stop to see how other races and religions have treated the dead.
Of the Egyptians, it is difficult to speak except at too great a length,
and, not having at hand sufficient authority, we can only set down what
our recollection will supply. The readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD will no
doubt remember some interesting articles published a few months since
regarding the ancient civilization of Egypt, in which copious reference
was made to the esteem and respect paid to the dead in that country. The
singular custom of pledging the embalmed body of a father or ancestor, on
the receipt of a loan, was noticed; also the dishonor attaching to the
non‐redemption of such a pledge. A learned English author, speaking
incidentally of Egyptian embalming, mentions that the word mummy is
derived from “mum,” which, he says, is Egyptian for _wax_. Representations
of the embalming process have been found on tombs and sarcophagi, in which
the men engaged in it are seen wearing masks with eagles’ beaks, probably
iron masks, thereby denoting of what a poisonous and dangerous nature this
absolutely incorruptible embalmment must have been. The Pyramids are
perhaps the most imposing funeral monuments ever raised to the memory of
mortals, and even the famous Mausoleum of Artemisia can have had no more
massive or _eternal_ an aspect.
To pass from the cradle of older civilization to the land whose original
peopling has sometimes been attributed, though we believe inaccurately, to
Egyptian enterprise, the America of the Aztec and the Red Indian, we find
in Parkman’s _Jesuits in America_ some lengthy details on the funereal
customs of the Huron tribe, now extinct. He says that “the primitive
Indian believed in the immortality of the soul, but not always in a state
of future punishment or reward. Nor was the good or evil to be rewarded or
punished (when such a belief _did_ exist) of a moral nature. Skilful
hunters, brave warriors, men of influence, went to the happy hunting‐
grounds, while the slothful, the weak, the cowardly, were doomed to eat
serpents and ashes in dreary regions of mist and darkness.... The spirits,
in form and feature, as they had been in life, wended their way through
dark forests to the villages of the dead, subsisting on bark and rotten
wood. On arriving, they sat all day in the crouching posture of the sick,
and when night came hunted the shades of animals, with the shades of bows
and arrows, among the shades of trees and rocks; for all things, animate
and inanimate, were alike immortal, and all passed together to the gloomy
country of the dead.” The public ceremony of exhuming the dead, of which
some interesting details are given further on, was supposed to be the
occasion of the beginning of the other life. The souls “took wing, as some
affirmed, in the shape of pigeons; while the greater number believed that
they journeyed on foot ... to the land of shades, ... but, as the spirits
of the old and of children are too feeble for the march, they are forced
to stay behind, lingering near their earthly homes, where the living often
hear the shutting of their invisible cabin doors, and the weak voices of
the disembodied children driving birds from their corn‐fields.... The
Indian land of souls is not always a region of shadows and gloom. The
Hurons sometimes represented the souls of their dead as dancing
joyously.... According to some Algonquin traditions, heaven was a scene of
endless festivity, ghosts dancing to the sound of the rattle and the
drum.... Most of the traditions agree, however, that the spirits were
beset with difficulties and perils. There was a swift river which must be
crossed on a log that shook beneath their feet, while a ferocious dog
opposed their passage, and drove many into the abyss. This river was full
of sturgeon and other fish, which the ghosts speared for their
subsistence. Beyond was a narrow path between moving rocks which each
instant crashed together, grinding to atoms the less nimble of the
pilgrims who endeavored to pass. The Hurons believed that a personage
named Oscotarach, or the Head‐Piercer, dwelt in a bark house beside the
path, and that it was his office to remove the brains from the heads of
all who went by, as a necessary preparation for immortality. This singular
idea is found also in some Algonquin traditions, according to which,
however, the brain is afterwards restored to its owner.”
Le Clerc, in his _Nouvelle Relation de la Gaspésie_, tells a curious
story, which is mentioned in a foot‐note by Parkman. It was current in his
(Le Clerc’s) time among the Algonquins of Gaspé and Northern New
Brunswick, and bears a remarkable likeness to the old myth of Orpheus and
Eurydice. “The favorite son of an old Indian died, whereupon the father,
with a party of friends, set out for the land of souls to recover him. It
was only necessary to wade through a shallow lake, several days’ journey
in extent. This they did, sleeping at night on platforms of poles which
supported them above the water. At length, they arrived and were met by
Papkootparout, the Indian Pluto, who rushed on them in a rage, with his
war‐club upraised, but, presently relenting, changed his mind and
challenged them to a game of ball. They proved the victors, and won the
stakes, consisting of corn, tobacco, and certain fruits, which thus became
known to mankind. The bereaved father now begged hard for his son’s soul,
and Papkootparout at last gave it to him in the form and size of a nut,
which, by pressing it hard between his hands, he forced into a small
leather bag. The delighted parent carried it back to earth, with
instructions to insert it into the body of his son, who would thereupon
return to life. When the adventurers reached home, and reported the happy
issue, of their journey, there was a dance of rejoicing; and the father,
wishing to take part in it, gave his son’s soul to the keeping of a squaw
who stood by. Being curious to see it, she opened the bag, upon which it
escaped at once, and took flight for the realms of Papkootparout,
preferring them to the abodes of the living.”
These superstitions, although they may make us smile, yet attest, through
their rude simplicity, the _natural_ and deep‐rooted existence in all
races of a belief not only in the immortality of the soul, but in the
possibility of communication with the departed. The Buddhist doctrine of
transmigration is but a distorted version of the truth we call purgatory,
that is, a state of temporary expiation and gradual cleansing. The
Egyptian practice of embalming the dead and often of preserving the bodies
of several generations of one’s forefathers in the family house, is
another consequence of the primeval belief in the soul’s immortality.
Everywhere reverence for the dead implied this belief and symbolized it,
and even the custom of placing in the mouth of the Roman dead the piece of
money, _denarius_, with which to pay their passage over the Styx, is
referable to the true doctrine of good works being laid up in heaven and
helping those who have performed them to gain the desired entrance into
eternal repose.
The following minute description of the Indian feast of the dead, of which
mention has already been made, is interesting, and is condensed from the
account given by Father Brebœuf: “The corpses were lowered from their
scaffolds and lifted from their graves. Each family claimed its own, and
forthwith addressed itself to the task of removing what remained of flesh
from the bones. These, after being tenderly caressed with tears and
lamentations, were wrapped in skins and pendent robes of beaver. These
relics, as also the recent corpses, which remained entire, but were
likewise carefully wrapped in furs, were carried to one of the largest
houses, and hung to the numerous cross poles which, rafterlike, supported
the roof. The concourse of mourners seated themselves at a funeral feast,
the squaws of the household distributed the food, and a chief harangued
the assembly, lamenting the loss of the deceased and praising their
virtues. This over, the mourners began their march for Ossonané, the scene
of the final rite. The bodies remaining entire were borne on litters,
while the bundles of bones were slung at the shoulders of the relatives,
like fagots. The procession thus defiled slowly through the forest
pathways, and as they passed beneath the shadow of the pines, the mourners
uttered at intervals and in unison a wailing cry, meant to imitate the
voices of disembodied souls, ... and believed to have a peculiarly
soothing effect on the conscious relics that each man carried. The place
prepared for the last rite was a cleared area in the forest, many acres in
extent. Around it was a high and strong scaffolding of upright poles, with
cross‐poles extended between, for hanging the funeral gifts and the
remains of the dead. The fathers lodged in a house where over a hundred of
these bundles of mortality hung from the rafters. Some were mere shapeless
rolls, others were made up into clumsy effigies, adorned with feathers,
beads, etc. In the morning (the procession having arrived over night at
Ossonané) the relics were taken down, opened again, and the bones fondled
anew by the women, amid paroxysms of grief. When the procession bearing
the dead reached the ground prepared for the last solemnity, the bundles
were laid on the ground, and the funeral gifts outspread for the
admiration of the beholders. Among them were many robes of beaver and
other rich furs, collected and preserved for years with a view to this
festival. Fires were lighted and kettles slung, and the scene became like
a fair or _caravanserai_. This continued till three o’clock in the
afternoon, when the gifts were repacked, and the bones shouldered afresh.
Suddenly, at a signal from the chiefs, the crowd ran forward from every
side towards the scaffolding, like soldiers to the assault of a town,
scaled it by the rude ladders with which it was furnished, and hung their
relics and their gifts to the forest of poles which surmounted it. The
chiefs then again harangued the people in praise of the departed, while
other functionaries lined the grave throughout with rich robes of beaver
skin. Three large copper kettles were next placed in the middle, and then
ensued a scene of hideous confusion. The bodies which had been left entire
were brought to the edge of the grave, flung in, and arranged in order at
the bottom by ten or twelve Indians, stationed there for the purpose, amid
the wildest excitement and the uproar of many hundred mingled voices.
Night was now fast closing in, and the concourse bivouacked around the
clearing.... One of the bundles of bones, tied to a pole on the scaffold,
chanced to fall into the grave. This accident precipitated the closing
act, and perhaps increased its frenzy. All around blazed countless fires,
and the air resounded with discordant cries. The naked multitude, on,
under, and around the scaffolding, were flinging the remains of their
dead, relieved from their wrappings of skins, pell‐mell into the pit,
where were discovered men who, as the ghastly shower fell around them,
arranged the bones in their places with long poles. All was soon over;
earth, logs, and stones were cast upon the grave, and the clamor subsided
into a funereal chant, so dreary and lugubrious that it seemed like the
wail of despairing souls from the abyss of perdition.”
These processions and ceremonies relating to the bones of the dead remind
us of the singular custom observed at the Capuchin Convent of the Piazza
Barberini in Rome. The skeletons of the dead monks are robed in the habit
of the order and seated in choir‐stalls round the crypt, until they fall
to pieces, or are displaced by a silent new‐comer to their ghostly
brotherhood. The bones which are thus yearly accumulating are formed into
patterns of stars and crosses on the walls of the crypt and surrounding
corridors, while the skulls are often heaped up in small mounds against
the partitions. The convent is strictly enclosed, and is only accessible
to men during the rest of the year, but on All Souls’ day and during the
octave, the public, men and women alike, are allowed to visit this strange
place of entombment. Crowds flock to see it, especially foreigners.
Hawthorne, in his _Marble Faun_, has described it in terms that make one
feel as if _his_ impression were vivid enough to supply the place of a
personal one on the part of each of his readers.
The ancient Roman customs and beliefs concerning the dead are well worth
noticing, as embodying the essence of the utmost civilization a heathen
land could boast. It is said that the Romans chose the cypress as
emblematic of death because that tree, when once cut, never grows again.
The facts of natural history are sometimes disregarded by the ancient
poets, but it is not with that that we now have to deal, but with the
false idea symbolized by this choice. The Romans, nevertheless, fully
believed in an after‐life, though one modelled much on the same principle
as their life on earth. The unburied and those whose bodies could not be
found were supposed to wander about, unable to cross the river Styx, and
their friends therefore generally built them an empty tomb, which they
believed served as a retreat to their restless spirits. Pliny ascribes the
Roman custom of burning the dead to the belief that was current amongst
the people, that their enemies dug up and insulted the bodies of their
soldiers killed in distant wars. During the earlier part of the Republic,
the dead were mostly buried in the natural way, in graves or vaults. Some
very strange ceremonies are recorded in Adams’ _Roman Antiquities_
concerning the funeral processions, which usually took place at night by
torch‐light. (This was chiefly done to avoid any chance of meeting a
priest or magistrate, who was supposed to be polluted by the sight of a
corpse, as in the Jewish dispensation.) After the musicians, who sang the
praises of the deceased to the accompaniment of flutes, came “players and
buffoons, one of whom, called _archimimus_ (the chief mimic), sustained
the character of the deceased, imitating his words or actions while alive.
These players sometimes introduced apt sayings from dramatic writers.”
Actors were also employed to personate the individual ancestors, and
Adams’ commentator adds in a foot‐note: “A Roman funeral must therefore
have presented a singular appearance, with a long line of ancestors
stalking gravely through the streets of the capital.” Pliny, Plautus,
Polybius, Suetonius, and others are the authorities quoted on this curious
point. It is said by some authors that, in very ancient times, the dead
were buried in their own houses; hence the origin of idolatry, the worship
of household gods, the fear of goblins, etc. Relations also consecrated
temples to the dead, which Pliny calls a very ancient custom, which had
its share in contributing to the establishment of idol‐worship. In the
Book of Wisdom(115) we find a reference to this in these words: “For a
father, being afflicted with bitter grief, made to himself the image of
his son, who was quickly taken away, and him who then had died as a man,
he began now to worship as a god, and appointed him rites and sacrifices
among his servants. Then in process of time, wicked custom prevailing,
this error was kept as a law.” Adams tells us that “the private places of
burial of the Romans were in fields or gardens, usually near the highway
(such as the Via Appia near Rome, the Via Campana near Pozzuoli, the
Street of Tombs at Pompeii), to be conspicuous and remind those who passed
of mortality. Hence the frequent inscriptions—_Siste, viator_,(116)
_Aspice, viator_.”(117) Games of gladiators were frequently held both on
the day and the anniversaries of great funerals; and on the pyre slaves
and clients were sometimes burnt with the body of their deceased master,
as also all manner of clothes and ornaments, and, “in short, whatever was
supposed to have been agreeable to him when alive.” As the funeral cortége
left the place where the body had been burnt, they “used to take a last
farewell, repeating several times _Vale_, or _Salve æternum_,”(118) also
wishing that the earth might lie light on the person buried, as Juvenal
relates, and which was found marked on several ancient monuments in these
letters, S.T.T.L.(119) “This is a very remarkable instance of the dead
being considered, in one sense, as conscious, sentient beings, and
evidently has an origin which can hardly be disconnected from some remote
or indistinct recollection of the true religion.”
Adams goes on to say that “oblations or sacrifices to the dead were
afterwards made at various times, both occasionally and at stated periods,
consisting of liquors, victims, and garlands, as Virgil, Tacitus, and
Suetonius tell us, and sometimes to appease their _manes_, or atone for
some injury offered them in life. The sepulchre was bespread with flowers,
and covered with crowns and fillets. Before it there was a little altar,
on which libations were made and incense burnt. A keeper was appointed to
watch the tomb, which was frequently illuminated with lamps. A feast was
generally added, both for the dead and the living. Certain things were
laid on the tomb, commonly beans, lettuce, bread, and eggs, or the like,
which it was supposed the ghosts would come and eat. What remained was
burnt. After the funeral of great men,... a distribution of raw meat was
made to the people.”
“Immoderate grief was thought to be offensive to the manes, according to
Tibullus, but during the shortened mourning that was customary, the
relations of the deceased abstained from entertainments or feasts of any
sort, wore no badge of rank or nobility, were not shaved, and dressed in
black, a custom borrowed (as was supposed) from the Egyptians. ‘No fire
was ever lighted, as it was considered an ornament to the house.’ ”
The common places of burial were called _columbaria_, from the likeness of
their arrangement to that of a pigeon‐house, each little niche scooped out
in the walls holding the small urn in which the ashes of the dead were
deposited. These _columbaria_, Adams tells us, were often below ground,
like a vault, but private tombs belonging to wealthy citizens were in
groves and gardens; as, for instance, that of Augustus, mentioned by
Strabo, who calls it a hanging garden supported on marble arches, with
shrubs planted round the base, and the Egyptian obelisks at the entrance.
The tomb of Adrian, now the Castel S. Angelo, was a perfect palace of
wealth and art, and supplied many a later building with ready‐made
adornment before it became what it now is, a fortress. The tomb of Cecilia
Metella, on the Via Appia, was also used as a mediæval stronghold, and
looks more fit for such a use than for its former funereal distinction.
From ancient and imperial, we now pass to modern and Christian Rome, so
undistinguishable in the chronology of their first blending, so widely
apart in the moral order of their succession.
The subject of the catacombs and the early inscriptions on Christian
graves is one so widely known and so copiously illustrated by many learned
works, both English and foreign, that it would be superfluous to say much
about it. Yet Cardinal Wiseman is so popular an author, and _Fabiola_ so
standard a novel, that we may be forgiven for drawing a little on
treasures so temptingly ready to our hand. There is in the first chapter
of the second part of _Fabiola_ an interesting reference to the old
established craft of the _fossores_, or excavators of the Christian
cemeteries. Cardinal Wiseman says that some modern antiquarians have based
upon the assertion of an anonymous writer, contemporary with S. Jerome, an
erroneous theory of the _fossores_ having formed a lesser ecclesiastical
order in the primitive church, like a _lector_ or reader. “But,” he adds,
“although this opinion is untenable, it is extremely probable that the
duties of this office were in the hands of persons appointed and
recognized by ecclesiastical authority.... It was not a cemetery or
necropolis company which made a speculation of burying the dead, but
rather a pious and recognized confraternity, which was associated for the
purpose.” Father Marchi, the great Jesuit authority on ancient
subterranean Rome, says that a series of interesting inscriptions, found
in the cemetery of S. Agnes, proves that this occupation was continued in
particular families, grandfather, father, and sons having carried it on in
the same place. The _fossores_ also transacted such rare bargains as were
known in those days of simplicity and brotherly love, when wealthy
Christians willingly made compensation for the privilege of being buried
near a martyr’s tomb. Such an arrangement is commemorated in an early
Christian inscription preserved in the Capitol. The translation runs thus:
“This is the grave for two bodies, bought by Artemisius, and the price was
given to the _fossor_ Hilarus—that is ... (the number, being in cipher, is
unintelligible.) In the presence of Severus the _fossor_, and Laurentius.”
Cardinal Wiseman, jealous of Christian traditions, particularly notes that
the theory of the subterranean crypts, now called catacombs, ever having
been heathen excavations for the extraction of sand, has been disproved by
Marchi’s careful and scientific examination. He then describes the manner
of entombment used in these underground cemeteries: “Their walls as well
as the sides of the staircases are honeycombed with graves, that is, rows
of excavations, large and small, of sufficient length to admit a human
body, from a child to a full‐grown man.... They are evidently made to
measure, and it is probable that the body was lying by the side of the
grave while this was being dug. When the corpse was laid in its narrow
cell, the front was hermetically closed either by a marble‐slab, or more
frequently by several broad tiles put edgeways in a groove or mortise, cut
for them in the rock, and cemented all round. The inscription was cut upon
the marble, or scratched in the wet mortar.... Two principles, as old as
Christianity, regulate this mode of burial. The first is the manner of
Christ’s entombment; he was laid in a grave in a cavern, wrapped up in
linen, embalmed with spices, and a stone, sealed up, closed his sepulchre.
As S. Paul so often proposes him for the model of our resurrection, and
speaks of our being buried with him in baptism, it was natural for his
disciples to wish to be buried after his example, so as to be ready to
rise with him. This lying in wait for the resurrection was the second
thought that regulated the formation of these cemeteries. Every expression
connected with them alluded to the rising again. The word to _bury_ is
unknown in Christian inscriptions: ‘_deposited_ in peace,’ ‘the
_deposition_ of ...’ are the expressions used; that is, the dead are left
there for a time, till called for again, as a pledge or precious thing,
entrusted to faithful but temporary keeping. The very name of cemetery
suggests that it is only a place where many lie, as in a dormitory,
slumbering for a while, till dawn come and the trumpet’s sound awake them.
Hence the grave is only called the ‘place,’ or more technically ‘the small
home,’(120) of the dead in Christ.”
The old Teutonic _Gottes‐Acker_, the acre or field of God, denotes the
same eminently Christian idea; the dead are thus likened to the seed
hidden in the ground for a while, to ripen into a glorious spiritual
harvest when the last call shall be heard. We have read somewhere, in an
English novel whose name has escaped our memory, the same beautiful idea
most poetically expressed. It was something to this effect: “We put up a
stone at the head of a grave, just as we write labels in the spring‐time
for the seeds we put into the earth, that we may remember what glorious
flower is to spring from the little gray, hidden handful that seems so
insignificant just now”—a Catholic thought found astray in a book that had
nothing Catholic about it save its beauty and poetry; for beauty is a ray
of truth, and truth is one and Catholic. One other remark is worth
remembering about the early Christian inscriptions on the tombs of the
departed. There is generally some anxiety to preserve a record of the
exact date of a person’s death, and, in modern days, if it happened that
there was no room for both the day and the year, no doubt the _day_, would
be left unnoticed, and the year carefully chronicled. “Yet,” says Cardinal
Wiseman, “while so few ancient Christian inscriptions supply the year of
people’s deaths, thousands give us the very day of it on which they died,
whether in the hopefulness of believers or in the assurance of martyrs. Of
both classes annual commemoration had to be made on the very day of their
departure, and accurate knowledge of this was necessary. Therefore it
alone was recorded.”
O ages of faith! when it was the ambition of Christians to be inscribed in
the Book of Life, instead of leaving names blazoned in gold in the annals
of an earthly empire!
Prayers for the dead were in use among the primitive Christians, and in
one of the inscriptions mentioned by Cardinal Wiseman the following
reference to these prayers is found: “Christ God Almighty refresh thy
spirit in Christ.” That this hallowed custom is akin to the natural
feelings of a loving heart is self‐evident; the coldness of an “age of
philosophy” alone could doubt it. Well might it be called the age of
disorganization and not of philosophy (which is “love of wisdom”), for the
wisdom that seeks to pull down instead of building up is but questionable.
The disorganization of political society which we see at work through the
International and the Commune; the disorganization of moral society which
we behold every day increasing through the ease with which the marriage‐
tie is dissolved, and the hold the state is claiming on children and even
infants; the disorganization of religious society which we find in the
ever‐multiplying feuds of sects, like gangrene gradually eating away an
unsound body; these are all fitting companions to that most ruthless
severing of this world from the next which pretends to isolate the dead
from the spiritual help and sympathy of the living, and to dwarf in the
souls of men what even human laws commanded, or at least protected,
concerning their bodies. The want of our age is a want of heart;
heartlessness and callousness to the most sacred, the most _natural_
feelings, is shown to a fearful extent among our modern mind‐emancipators
and reformers. On the one hand, nature is held up as a god to which all
moral laws are to be subject, or, rather, before whose _fiat_ they are to
cease to exist, while, on the other, nature (in everything lawful,
touching, noble, generous) is told that she is a fool, and must learn to
subdue “childish” aspirations and outgrow “childish” beliefs!
But the belief of a communication between the living and the departed is
not only a _natural_ one; it is also Biblical. S. Matthew speaks of the
middle state of souls when he mentions the strict account that will have
to be rendered of “every idle word.”(121) S. Paul says that “every man’s
work ... shall be tried in _fire_: and the fire shall try every man’s work
_of what sort it is_. If any man’s work burn, he shall suffer loss, but he
himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.”(122) S. Peter makes mention of
“the spirits in prison,”(123) and S. John, in the Apocalypse, implies a
state of probation when he says that “there shall not enter into it [the
New Jerusalem] anything defiled or that worketh abomination, or maketh a
lie.”(124) In the Second Book of Machabees, one of the most national of
the Jewish records, and the most favorite and consolatory of the religious
books held by the Jews as infallible oracles, the whole doctrine of
purgatory and prayers for the departed is most plainly adverted to.
After a great battle and victory, Judas Machabeus searches the bodies of
his slain warriors, and finds that some of them had appropriated heathen
votive offerings made to the idols whose temples they had burnt at Jamnia
a short time before. Upon this discovery, according to the sacred text,
which is here too precious a testimony to be condensed, he, “making a
gathering, sent twelve thousand drachms of silver to Jerusalem for
sacrifice to be offered for the sins of the dead, thinking well and
religiously concerning the resurrection. (For if he had not hoped that
they that were slain should rise again, it would have seemed superfluous
and vain to pray for the dead.) And because he considered that they who
had fallen asleep with godliness, had great grace laid up for them. It is
therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may
be loosed from their sins.”(125)
It may not perhaps be generally known that, among the Jews, the custom of
praying for the dead exists, and has always existed uninterruptedly. Some
of the supplications are very beautiful, and we do not hesitate to give
them here, as an interesting corroboration of the assertions we have made
throughout.
The chief prayers for the dead are contained in the “Kaddisch” for
mourners, which forms part of the evening as well as the morning service
for the Jewish Sabbath. Although the dead are not mentioned by name, it is
to them alone that the prayers apply, as we understand from persons of
that persuasion. The text is the following:
“May our prayers be accepted with mercy and kindness; may the prayers and
supplications of the whole house of Israel be accepted in the presence of
their Father who is in heaven, and say ye Amen. [The congregation here
answer Amen.] May the fulness of peace from heaven with life be granted
unto us and to all Israel, and say ye Amen.” “My help is from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth. May he who maketh peace in his high heavens
bestow peace on us and on all Israel. And say ye Amen.”
During these prayers, the mourners stand up and answer. Other invocations
mention “the soul of my father” or “mother,” etc., as the case may be. In
the service for the dead read over the corpse, these words occur: “O Lord
our God, cause us to lie down in peace, and raise us up, O our King, to a
happy life. I laid me down fearless and slept; I awoke, for the Lord
sustained me.” All through the Old Testament we constantly find “sleep”
used as a synonym for death. Scattered through the morning and evening
services of the Hebrew liturgy there are invocations, frequently repeated,
referring to the dead, such as these: “Thou, O Lord, art for ever
powerful; thou restorest life to the dead, and art mighty to save. Thou
art also faithful to revive the dead: blessed art thou, O Lord, who
revivest the dead.” God is also said “to hold in his hands the souls of
the living and the dead,” thus giving at least equal prominence to the
departed and those they have left in their place. The Jews believe and
hope that their prayers on earth benefit and refresh their lost brethren,
and pray daily for them. The bodies of the departed are plainly dressed in
a linen shroud without superfluous ornamentation, but many of the old
ceremonies and purifications enjoined in the old law are now dispensed
with. The old manner of burial was in a cave or spacious sepulchre in a
field or garden, and the body was wrapped in spices, which were often
burnt around it. The double cave of Mambre, bought for Sarah by Abraham,
stood at the end of a field, and the sepulchres of the kings were also in
a field. The garden where Our Lord was laid is another instance of the
universality of this custom. In the Second Book of Chronicles(126) we read
of King Asa that “they buried him in his own sepulchre which he had made
for himself in the city of David: and they laid him on his bed full of
spices and odoriferous ointments, which were made by the art of the
perfumers, and they burnt them over him with great pomp.” This burning (of
spices) is often mentioned throughout Holy Writ. Rachel, says the Book of
Genesis,(127) was buried “in the highway” that led to Bethlehem, and Jacob
erected a pillar over her sepulchre; Samuel, “in his own house at
Ramatha”; and Saul, beneath an oak near the city of Jabes Galaad, the
inhabitants of which place provided for his burial, and fasted seven days
in sign of mourning for their sovereign. Joram, king of Juda, was punished
for his misdeeds by exclusion from the sepulchre of his fathers, “and the
people did not make a funeral for him according to the manner of burning
[spices], as they had done for his ancestors.”(128) Ozias, being a leper,
a disease which came upon him in punishment for having usurped sacerdotal
functions, was buried “in the field” only “of the royal sepulchre.” Thus
we see the immense importance attached to the place of burial under the
old Jewish dispensation, and how it was an eternal disgrace to be expelled
in death from the neighborhood of one’s family and their hereditary place
of entombment. This feeling has continued very strong in most civilized
and in all savage races; the graves of their forefathers are even more
symbolical of home and fatherland to the wandering desert tribes of
different nations, than what we should call their hearths and firesides.
In later times, how often have we not seen gorgeous and imposing
buildings, especially cathedrals and abbeys, built over the shrine of a
dead king or bishop, canonized by that popular veneration whose last
expression was the public honor decreed them by the Roman Pontiff? In
places where these monuments are not dedicated to the sainted dead whose
shrines they guard, we often find them burdened with the condition of
Masses being perpetually offered within their walls for the soul of the
dead founder; others are memorial churches to friends or relations of the
founder. Public charities, doles of bread and money, annual distributions
of clothing, hospitals, schools, or municipal institutions, etc., spring
chiefly from the desire of the survivors to have their loved ones
remembered to all future ages, while sometimes a generous testator himself
will take this simple and practical means of recommending himself to the
prayers of unborn generations. Family names are perpetuated in remembrance
of the departed; family records are valuable only in proportion as they
embody a proof of longer or shorter descent from the distinguished dead.
There is no test of success or popularity so sure as that of death, and no
one can tell which of our living friends will be known to and loved by
future nations, and which other will be passed by in obscurity and
silence, until long after our exit and their own from this present life‐
scene. _Real_ life is centred in the dead, it revolves around them, it
depends on them. They are the root of which we are the leaves and flowers.
The life of fame is theirs, while only the life of struggle is ours; they
are victors calmly bearing their palms, umpires gently encouraging their
successors, but we are only striving competitors, who know not and never
will know our fate till we have gone with them beyond the veil.
Germany is, above all, the home of these beautiful traditions of an
unbroken communion between the souls who have left earth and those who
remain behind. _There_ are the churchyards most loved, and the
anniversaries of deaths most remembered, even among Protestants. It is a
custom in Germany to wear black and to keep the day holy every recurring
anniversary, were it twenty, forty, fifty years after the death of a
relative or beloved friend. The cemeteries are always blooming with every
flower of the season, the crosses or headstones always hung with wreaths
of immortelles. In Catholic German countries, such as Bavaria, the
festival of All Souls’ is one of the most interesting, because the most
individual of the ecclesiastical year. We happened to be in Munich on one
of these occasions, and had been there for a week previous, visiting the
galleries and inspecting the art‐manufactures for which that city is
world‐famous. But rich as it is in such treasures, the hand of its old
King Louis—the grandfather of the present sovereign, and whom in his
retirement we have met at Nice some few years before his death—has effaced
much of its mediæval stamp, and attempted to varnish it over with a
Renaissance coating very uncongenial to the northern character of its
people and the northern mistiness of its atmosphere. Here we have again
the wretched imitation in plaster of the marble Parthenon and Acropolis;
the cold stuccoed pillars looming like huge bleached skeletons through a
November fog, and yet supposed to represent the sun‐tinted columns of
exquisite workmanship that rear themselves against the purple sky of
Greece; the vast desert‐looking streets which, bordered by “Haussmann”
palaces, seem intended for _future_ rather than present habitation, and
each of which, if cut into a dozen equal parts, would furnish any capital
with twelve good‐sized public squares; above all, a stuccoed church,
dazzlingly, painfully white, the _Theatiner‐Kirche_, a sort of S. Paul’s
(London) without the smoky coat thrown over it by the chimneys of the busy
city. Then, turning with relief to the little that is left of the old
town, we find a few quaint streets leading to the cathedral, a plain but
grand building, very fairly “restored” and adorned with the distinctive
Munich statues of angels and saints, which are now sold all over the
world, as the worthy substitutes of plaster‐of‐Paris images of the Bernini
type of sculpture. A very interesting old triptych stands over the altar,
with its strange medley of figures forming a striking and novel reredos. A
procession was slowing winding its way down the aisles as we entered the
cathedral one afternoon, and though the congregation was not numerous it
was very devout. A few comfortable‐looking old houses and quiet streets
surround the cathedral, and form quite an oasis in the midst of the
modernized city. Indeed, the monotonous stretch of apparently uninhabited
mansions was really wearying to look at, and we began to think that King
Louis had built his town as if he expected its population to increase at a
_Chicagoan_ rate! It is true the season of fêtes had not come, and,
according to the recognized phrase, “all the world” had left Munich for
the country villas and hunting‐boxes in its neighborhood, but on the day
of All Saints, the vigil of All Souls, how magically the scene changed!
After Mass in the Royal Chapel, which, by the way, is beautifully
decorated with frescoes of mediæval saints on a gilt background, we
started for the great “Gottes‐Acker” (churchyard.) We had been told that
this was worth seeing, and so it proved. The desert seemed to have
blossomed like the rose. The road leading to the cemetery was crowded with
carriages, carts, horsemen, and foot passengers. Every one, especially
those on foot, carried wreaths of immortelles and small lanterns. The
carriages were mostly laden with wreaths. Every one looked cheerful, but
great quiet prevailed throughout the crowd. It seemed to us that until the
dead called for a visit, the living in Munich must have been well hidden,
so great were now the numbers that incumbered the hitherto lonely road.
All were going in the same direction, and once there the scene was almost
festive. Military bands (the best, we believe, next to the Austrian) were
stationed near the cemetery gates. The “Gottes‐Acker” itself is an immense
square, the length being about twice the breadth of the inclosure. Round
the four sides runs a covered cloister, under which are all the graves,
monuments, and vaults of the more wealthy part of the Munich population.
Each of these was a perfect forest of evergreens and hot‐house plants,
artistically heaped up around a vessel of holy water, from which any pious
passer‐by was free to sprinkle the grave while repeating a prayer for its
occupant. The large square in the centre was crossed and recrossed by
narrow paths between the serried files of graves. Nearly all were
distinguished by a cross, of stone, marble, wood, or metal. To these the
wreaths and lamps were hung, and here and there a kneeling figure might be
seen. Within the covered cloister a dense crowd promenaded slowly, while
the bands played unceasingly, not always, however, appropriately. It was a
striking scene, the like of which we do not remember to have ever
witnessed elsewhere. At Innsbruck, in the Tyrol, the cemetery is similar
to this in construction and arrangement, though it is, of course, smaller
in size. Night fell gradually as we were admiring this peculiar expression
of national idiosyncrasy, but the crowd did not seem to grow less dense.
It was a remembrance worth carrying away from that old Munich whose
spirit, though outwardly imprisoned in a pseudo‐classic shape, lives yet
in the simple Christian instincts of its laboring classes. At this time,
when it threatens to become another Wittenberg, have we not also seen the
unconscious and magnificent protest of its inveterately Catholic feelings
in the unique Passion Play, that worthily kept relic of the heroic ages of
faith and chivalry? Kings and philosophers cannot change the world as long
as peasants like those of Ammergau, and artisans such as work in the
Munich manufactories—that should not be degraded to comparison with the
materialistic establishments of Manchester or Sheffield—are yet to be
found bearing through the present times the banner of their forefathers’
undying traditions. There is more simple faith among the German people,
including also the Slavic and Hungarian races, than among some other
modern Christian nations, and no doubt there must be a hidden law of
gracious compensation in this fact, since the same country has been the
cradle and the teacher of almost every modern heresy and philosophical
(_sic_) aberration. No doubt the faith of the masses is intimately
connected with their wonderful love of home and fatherland, their domestic
instincts, their love of quiet family gatherings. All this easily leads to
great love and tenderness for the departed, and it reads almost more like
a German than a French saying, that “the dead are not the forgotten, but
only the absent.”(129) Love for the dead and a reverent, prayerful
remembrance of them are as much bulwarks to the morality of the living, as
they are spiritual boons to the departed themselves. We would not speak
ill of an absent friend, or break our word with one who had gone on a long
journey; even a short earthly distance seems to make a pledge more sacred.
How much more when the distance is the immeasurable breadth of the valley
of the shadow of death! We all of us remember promises once made to those
who have fallen asleep in Christ: those promises will be guardian angels
to us, if we keep them; they will be so many drops of refreshing dew to
those who are perhaps suffering at this moment for the unfulfilled
promises once made by them in life. Shall we whose faith includes the
communion of saints as a vital dogma, and whose humble hope it must ever
be to become one of the church suffering after having done our weak share
in the cause of the church militant—shall we be no better for this belief
than are those who have it not? Let the dead be guides to us, while we are
helps to them; let us each remember that besides the angel we have at our
side, there is another spirit who rejoices or grieves for and with us—a
company of spirits perhaps, but seldom less than one.
Mother or father, sister, brother, husband, wife, or child, that spirit
from its prison looks sadly and lovingly earthward, marking our every step
from its own patient haven of suffering sinlessness. No longer racked by
the personal fear of falling away, no longer haunted by the possibility of
temptation, it concentrates its loving anxiety on the soul whom it will
perchance precede to heaven, but on whom it is yet dependent; let us not
grieve it, let us not willingly or knowingly wound it, but rather let us
take heed that we fit ourselves to go and bear it company in the new and
glorious God’s‐Acre to which we hope to be called when that “which was
sown in mortality shall be raised in immortality, and that which was sown
in dishonor and weakness shall be raised in glory and in power.”
Personal Recollections Of The Late President Juarez Of Mexico.
I. The President In The Reception‐Room.
We saw President Juarez for the first time in the fall of 1865. He was
then temporarily established with his government in the town of El Paso,
on the northern frontier of Chihuahua, and within almost a stone’s throw
of American soil. Fort Bliss, Texas, then recently reoccupied by the Union
troops, was not more than ten minutes’ distance from the Plaza of El Paso.
The prospects of the Mexican Republic were not then very bright; the
treasury was almost exhausted, the government was barely on Mexican soil,
and on the American side of the Rio Grande it was generally looked upon as
a question of time when President Juarez would have to seek safety on our
own side of the boundary. It is needless to say that he would have been
received by the Americans of that region with right royal hospitality.
American sympathy and material aid were looked for, and Americans were
very popular with all the followers of the Mexican president.
Shortly after the arrival of President Juarez and his cabinet in El Paso,
we joined a party of American gentlemen who paid him a visit. The party
comprised, we think, nearly all the Americans of any standing about El
Paso. There were the American consul, the collector of customs, three or
four army officers from Fort Bliss, some local civil officials, and one or
two leading business men.
President Juarez and his cabinet occupied a house on the Plaza—a large
building constructed in the usual Mexican fashion. On announcing ourselves
as a party of American citizens desirous of paying their respects to the
chief of a sister republic, we were immediately ushered into a room where
we found President Juarez with most of the members of his cabinet—notably
his successor Señor Lerdo de Tejada, then Secretary of State, and Señor
Yglésias, Secretary of the Treasury—now also named for the
presidency—rather a sinecure office at the time.
We were presented in turn to the president by Señor Yglésias, the only
person present attached to the president who spoke English. President
Juarez spoke neither English nor French. He shook hands cordially with
each of us, and expressed through Señor Yglésias the very great pleasure
it gave him to receive our visit. We were sufficiently familiar with the
Pueblo type to recognize Juarez immediately on entering.
President Juarez was low in stature, rather stout, but dignified, and at
the same time easy in his manners. The Pueblo Indian was marked in every
lineament of his face—the aquiline nose, the small bright black eyes, the
straight cut mouth showing no trace of redness in the lips, the coal‐black
hair, the swarthy complexion. Yet he was, as it were, an Indian idealized;
his forehead was high, capacious, and the light of intellectual
cultivation illuminated his face. He was dressed in plain black.
The secretary of state, Señor Lerdo de Tejada, is evidently, judged merely
from externals, a man of great intellectual ability. His skin is as white
as that of the fairest daughter of the Anglo‐Saxon. A forehead, so high as
to seem almost a monstrosity, and of a marble whiteness, towered above a
face that gleamed with the glance of the eagle.
Señor Yglésias was of a darker complexion than his colleague in the
cabinet. He seemed to be in rather indifferent health. The expression of
his face was remarkably gentle and pleasing. We have already said that he
acted as interpreter. He spoke English with a very marked accent, but with
great care and correctness. We happened to be seated next him on a sofa,
President Juarez being on his right. He told us that he learned to speak
English in the city of Chihuahua, and that he had never been a day in an
English‐speaking country.
Notwithstanding that President Juarez did not speak English, and the
necessity of an interpreter naturally causes some embarrassment, yet his
manners were so pleasant and affable that he placed us at our ease at
once. He spoke about our war, and asked with much interest about our great
military leaders, Generals Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan. He seemed to feel
some sympathy with Gen. McClellan. A very pleasant half‐hour was spent in
conversation on these and kindred subjects. It was at length interrupted
by the entrance of a _péon_ bearing a tray with quite a generous number of
bottles of champagne on it.
We were invited to partake of the Green Seal. We stood around the table,
President Juarez standing at the head. Toasts were drunk to the lasting
friendship of the two North American republics, to the independence of
Mexico, etc. The péon, who was not a very bright specimen of his tribe,
exerted himself to his utmost to open the bottles sufficiently fast. In
his tremulous hurry he got within point‐blank range of the president, and
a peculiarly excited bottle going off prematurely, discharged about half
its contents into the president’s shirt‐bosom. Juarez looked at the poor
_péon_—whose swarthy face grew sickly pale, and who seemed about to sink
to the ground with terror and confusion—neither in sorrow nor in anger. He
took no notice whatever of the incident, but went on talking cheerfully as
before. Such an accident happening to most men would have been laughable
in the extreme. It did not seem to us to place Juarez in a ludicrous
position at all, his self‐command was so perfect, his dignity so
thoroughly preserved.
After all the patriotic toasts proper to the occasion had been drunk, we
took our leave. The president again shook hands with us, again expressed,
through Señor Yglésias, his gratification at meeting American citizens and
officers, and hoped that he should receive further visits from us.
We departed very greatly prepossessed in favor of the Mexican president.
We agreed in thinking that there was a simplicity and honesty of purpose
about him which made him the best man for the difficult position of chief
magistrate of the struggling republic in her great hour of trial.
II. The President In The Ball‐Room.
Some time after the visit just described, President Juarez gave a ball in
honor of the anniversary of Mexican independence. We had the honor, in
common with some other Americans, of receiving an invitation to the ball,
which, of course, we accepted.
There were four American ladies in our party—two the wives of infantry
officers stationed at Fort Bliss, the post surgeon’s wife, and the wife of
one of the leading citizens of Franklin. We were all invited to pass the
night—or such portion of it as would remain after the close of the ball—at
the mansion of a lady, a native of El Paso, of American descent.
We were bestowed in three or four vehicles, and forded the Rio Grande
successfully a little before dark. We found El Paso in festal array. The
cathedral was covered with shining lamps from foundation to steeple. The
Plaza was brilliantly illuminated, and crowds of both sexes were already
assembling for the grand open‐air _baile_ of the _profanum vulgus_. Class
lines of demarcation are very sharply drawn in El Paso, and the _gente
fina_ alone were admissible to the president’s ball.
We dined at the Señora L——’s, where we had the pleasure of meeting several
Mexican officers of high rank. Among them were General Ruiz, the
Postmaster‐General (another sinecurist just then), and other staff
officers, whose names we have forgotten. A little son of one of the
officers at Fort Bliss—a child of five or six, who spoke Spanish very
well, having passed nearly all his little life in New Mexico, only
remaining sufficiently long in New York to set all doubts at rest as to
his being born in the Empire State—became a very great favorite with the
Mexican officers.
Between ten and eleven P.M. our vehicles were again in requisition, and
away we went to the ball. It was given in the spacious house of a wealthy
citizen, the front of which was brilliantly illuminated. A guard of
Mexican soldiers was posted in front of the house, and lined the long hall
leading to the ball‐room. Their pieces were at order, and they saluted the
chief officers by striking the butt of their muskets against the ground.
They were dressed in gray jackets, like the undress of the New York
National Guard, white cross belts, white trousers, and a leather cap,
somewhat Hussar shape.
We had the honor of giving an arm to one of the four American ladies on
entering. Arrived at the door of the ball‐room, four white‐vested and kid‐
gloved Mexican gentlemen offered an arm each to the four American ladies,
bowing at and smiling most sweetly on us the while. At first, we were
disposed to resist “the deep damnation of this taking off.” The ladies
hesitated and drew back. The situation would have become remarkably comic;
but Don Juan Z——, well‐known to all Americans who visit El Paso, seeing
the critical state of affairs, came to us and whispered that it was the
_costumbre del pais_—the custom of the country. We submitted, but, we
fear, not with a good grace. By the way, we only saw our American ladies
at a distance for the rest of the evening. The Mexican gentlemen took
entire charge of them. Don Juan informed us that we were expected to take
our revenge among the señoras and señoritas.
The ball‐room was very tastefully arranged. The _placeta_, or open square
in the centre of all Mexican houses, on which all the rooms in the
building open, was roofed and floored for the ball‐room. The window‐
curtains were hung outside the window of the house; mirrors, paintings,
etc., were hung on the outer walls, making the illusion that you were
inside the house instead of outside of it, complete. American and Mexican
flags were festooned around the walls. The music, softly and sweetly
played, was placed in a side room, entirely out of sight. No braying
cornet flayed your ears, and no howling fiddler, calling out the figures
from a position dominating everything and everybody, gave you an _attaque
de nerfs_. The fiddlers would be heard, not seen. The waltz, the national
dance of Mexico, was, of course, the terpsichorean _pièce de résistance_;
but a fair number of quadrilles were sprinkled through the programme, in
compliment to the Americans.
We have seen many balls in the Empire City—some given under “most
fashionable auspices”—but we must in justice declare that we have seen
none which surpassed the Mexican President’s ball. There may have been
more glare, more glitter, more diamonds, if you will, but there certainly
was not more good taste, more elegance and refinement, more genuine good‐
breeding and gentlemanly and ladylike good‐humor. There was no rushing,
steam‐engine fashion, the length of the ball‐room; knocking couples to the
right and left, and tearing dresses, without even an apology. The ladies
were richly but not gaudily dressed, and made no barbaric display of
golden ornaments, as their New Mexican sisters are wont to do on _bailé_
occasions. The gentlemen—except the army officers—wore the traditional
black dress‐coat and pantaloons, with white vest and gloves, clothes and
gloves fitting admirably, for the _gente fina_ of El Paso got both from
Paris. The army officers were, of course, in full uniform, the American
uniform looking rather sombre compared with the red‐leg top trousers, with
broad gold or silver stripes, and the magnificent gold‐embroidered sashes
of the Mexican general and field officers. By the way, the lowest officer
in rank of the Mexicans in the ball‐room was a colonel. The only captains
and lieutenants admitted were the Americans. Juarez’ son—“the image of his
father”—though somewhat shorter in stature, in the undress uniform of a
second lieutenant of artillery was in the vestibule with the guard.
The president, with his cabinet and staff, was already in the ball‐room
when we arrived. After being dispossessed of our fair companions, we were
ushered to the portion of the room in which the president sat. We paid our
respects in turn, and were kindly and cordially welcomed. Juarez was
dressed in plain black, except his gloves, which, of course, were white.
The male portion of the American party then broke ranks, and spread
themselves through the ball‐room, enjoying themselves each after his
fashion; some in the fascinating “see‐saw” of the Spanish dance, others in
the apartments off the ball‐room where exhilaration of a different kind
was provided.
We passed a very agreeable hour with Signor Prieto, a Mexican poet and
orator of distinction. Signor Prieto was then known as the “Henry Clay” of
Mexico. He spoke French very well. He told us with just pride that he
considered the highest recognition his efforts had received was the
translation of one of his poetical pieces by our American patriarch‐poet,
William Cullen Bryant.
Just before supper‐time, an official came with President Juarez’
compliments, to say that President Juarez and the members of his cabinet
would take the American ladies in to supper, and requesting the American
gentlemen to take in Mexican ladies. We immediately sought our friend Don
Juan T——, and begged him to find us some Mexican lady who could talk
either English or French. He found compliance with our request impossible,
but gave into our charge the Señora S——, a magnificent beauty of the
Spanish type, with coal‐black hair and large lustrous black Juno‐like
eyes—_fendus en amande_. The other gentlemen of the American party were
soon provided with supper partners, and we began our march for the supper‐
table, President Juarez taking in Mrs. Capt. O——; the secretary of state,
Señor Lerdo de Tejada, Mrs. Capt. B——; the secretary of the treasury, Mrs.
Dr. S——; and the secretary of war, Mrs. W——, of Texas. The first table was
for the president and cabinet, with the American party. The supper was
rather a solemn affair. It consisted of nine courses, though the courses
seemed as like each other as railway stations on the plains. All seemed to
be desiccated, and reminded us somewhat of what we had read about Chinese
feasts. When a course was served to every guest, the President looked down
the table to his right and bowed; he then looked to his left and bowed.
Then, and not before, knives and forks were observed, and the guests
attacked the viands. This repeated nine times was not calculated to impart
gaiety to the repast. It was slow, but ended at last, and we retired in
the same order in which we entered, making way for the ladies and
gentlemen of the second table.
After the supper, President Juarez sat for over an hour with the American
ladies, chatting pleasantly with them in the simplest Spanish phrases he
could devise. Seeing him chatting away and laughing gaily, no one could
have imagined that he had the cares of a tottering government with an
empty treasury upon his shoulders.
Capt. O—— asked us to go out with him and have a look at the great
_bronco_, the public fandango, on the Plaza. As we passed out through the
hall, the Mexican guard—now lying on their arms—jumped up and brought
their muskets to the ground with a crash to salute our companion, much to
his discomposure, as he wished to go out without attracting attention.
The great fandango was a sight worth seeing. A leviathan Spanish dance
wound its way around and through the Plaza, filling to overflowing the
market‐place, the sidewalks, and the arcades. Swarthy Mexicans with
immense sombreros, with cigarettes of corn‐husks in their mouths,
abandoned themselves to the swaying movements of the slow waltz, their
dark‐eyed partners—often partners in the cigarette as well as the
dance—now moving with a graceful languor, now dashing out with wild and
unrepressed vigor to the clattering of a thousand castanets.
Unusual gambling facilities were to be found everywhere, of course. Cake
merchants, fried hot cakes in the open air, lemonade, _vino del pais_,
fresh _queso_, fruits, _puros_, were to be had for the paying.
Having seen sufficient of the great unwashed fandango, we returned to the
ball‐room. Our companion was again the object of another demonstration of
respect on the part of the guard. “I wish,” said he, “those fellows would
go to sleep; this begins to be unpleasant.”
A waltz was in full gyration when we returned to the ball‐room. We took
chairs and sat near the door chatting. Suddenly we became aware that some
one stood behind us, placing a hand on either chair. Looking round, we saw
that it was President Juarez. We immediately arose, but he insisted on our
being seated, and resumed his former attitude. He talked with us for half
an hour, in Spanish well adapted to our limited knowledge of the language,
and which we had no difficulty in understanding.
During the evening, from time to time, we had received invitations from
the president to drink wine with him—invitations which, of course, we did
not refuse. Many patriotic toasts and sentiments were offered on both
sides. It must have been in one of those festive moments that an
enthusiastic gentleman of our party slapped the president on the back,
called him “Ben” (Juarez’ Christian name was Benito), said he was “a
brick,” and bade him “never say die” till he was dead! We were not a
witness to this scene. It was described to us by members of our party.
Between two and three P.M. the president’s party left the ball‐room.
Shortly after, the American clans were gathered, we got our fair ones back
again, and set out for the hospitable dwelling of the Señora L——.
There was plenty of bustle and activity there. It seemed to us that half
the people at the ball must have been guests of this house. All the rooms
opening on the large _placeta_ were turned into lodging‐rooms. There was
hurrying to and fro with lights in hand, putting every one in his place.
Some people put themselves in other people’s places. Notably our
enthusiastic friend, who had taken up his quarters in a room intended for
F—— and his new Spanish bride. He was found by the happy pair, just as
happy as they were, sleeping the sleep of the just. In the meantime, the
partner of his joys and sorrows sat solitary and alone in the room
intended for her and her spouse, on the other side of the _placeta_,
wondering at his absence and anxiously awaiting his return. This
complication, however, was settled by transferring the lady to the room in
which lay her sleeping lord, and bestowing the F——s in the room she had
occupied.
After a good breakfast, we set out on our return to the Land of the Free,
forded the Rio Grande at about noon, under a September sun—no contemptible
luminary about latitude 32°, let us assure the reader. We sought our
_casas_, darkened up our respective rooms, and shut the venetian blinds to
keep out the flies, and having turned night into day, proceeded to turn
day into night.
New Publications.
ELEMENTS OF LOGIC. Designed as a Manual of Instruction. By Henry
Coppée, LL.D., President of the Lehigh University. Revised
edition. Philadelphia: E. H. Butler & Co. 1872.
President Coppée has carefully excluded from this edition of his Logic
everything which could give offence to a Catholic. The main part of the
work, treating of formal logic, is of course substantially the same with
other treatises of this kind, and is written in a clear, simple style,
well adapted to an elementary text‐book. But here our approbation must
cease. The history of logic is altogether defective. The author advocates
the doctrine derived by Hamilton from Kant, that our rational knowledge is
merely “conditioned,” which is pure scepticism, and confounds Christian
philosophy with theology, which is effectually to subvert both sciences.
Teachers may find some useful assistance from this book in explaining the
laws of thought; but it is altogether unfit to be placed in the hands of
Catholic pupils. We reiterate the desire we have so often expressed, that
some competent person would translate one of our standard Latin text‐books
of logic, for the use of pupils and teachers who cannot read them in the
original language.
THE POCKET PRAYER‐BOOK. Compiled from approved sources. New York:
The Catholic Publication Society. 1872.
This is certainly the most complete little manual we have seen, and,
although it contains 650 pages, is small enough for the pocket; and gives,
among other things, the three indulgenced litanies, the entire Mass in
Latin and English, Vespers, and the Epistles and Gospels for the Sundays
throughout the year. The type, moreover, is singularly large and good.
Thus the book supplies a long‐felt want; and ought to become very popular
amongst Catholic men, for whose especial benefit it was compiled. There is
another edition without the Epistles and Gospels, which fits the vest
pocket, and can therefore be made emphatically a daily companion.
ENGLAND AND ROME. By the Rev. W. Waterworth, S.J. London: Burns &
Lambert. 1854. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication
Society.)
A COMMENTARY BY WRITERS OF THE FIRST FIVE CENTURIES ON THE PLACE
OF S. PETER IN THE NEW TESTAMENT, AND THAT OF S. PETER’S
SUCCESSORS IN THE CHURCH. By the Very Rev. J. Waterworth, D.D.,
Provost of Nottingham. London: Richardson. 1871. (New York: Sold
by The Catholic Publication Society.)
The reader will perceive, if he takes notice of the titles of these two
books, that they are by two different authors, both bearing the name of
Waterworth. They are brothers, and one of the two is a Jesuit, the other
being a dignitary of the Catholic Church in England. The work whose title
stands first in order at the head of this notice, is not a recent
publication, having been issued as long ago as 1854. We think it, however,
not unsuitable to recall attention to it as a work specially useful at the
present time. About one‐third of the volume is taken up with a very solid
and scholarly disquisition on the general topic of the Papal supremacy.
Its principal and special topic is, however, the relation of the church in
England to the Holy See from the year 179 to the epoch of the schism of
Henry VIII. It is handled with great learning and ability, and the
sophisms and perversions of those disingenuous or ill‐informed
controversialists who pretend to establish the original independence of
the British Church are scattered to the winds.
The work of Dr. Waterworth, the Provost of Nottingham, was published last
year. This learned divine is the author of the celebrated treatise
entitled _The Faith of Catholics_, and is well known as a most profound
and accurate patristic scholar. The present volume was prepared by him for
the press before the publication of the Decrees of the Vatican Council;
but its issue having been delayed by an accident, the author took the
opportunity of making a re‐examination of its contents, with special
reference to the objections raised by Dr. Döllinger, and of adding some
new prefatory remarks. The result of his revision did not suggest to him
the necessity of any alteration whatever, or show anything in the cavils
of the petulant old gentleman, who has so completely stultified himself by
retracting the deliberate convictions of his better days, worthy of any
special refutation.
As for Dr. Waterworth’s work itself, it is quite unique in English
Catholic literature, and different from the other works on the Papal
supremacy, able and learned as these are, which we have hitherto
possessed. It is literally an exhaustive collection of all the sayings of
fathers and councils on the two topics discussed, during the first five
centuries of the Christian era, by one who has mastered the whole of this
vast body of literature. One hundred and seven fathers and councils are
quoted, and copious tables at the end of the volume place the whole array
of authorities in a convenient order for reference under the eye of the
reader. It is needless for us to expatiate on the value of such a work, or
to say anything more to recommend it to the attention of all who wish to
study this great subject of the Papal supremacy.
THE TROUBLES OF OUR CATHOLIC FOREFATHERS, RELATED BY THEMSELVES.
First Series. Edited by John Morris, Priest of the Society of
Jesus. London: Burns & Oates. 1872. (New York: Sold by The
Catholic Publication Society.)
One of the outward and by no means the least significant signs of the
revival of religion in England is the appearance in rapid succession of a
most useful class of books, having for their main object the vindication
of the character and constancy of the Catholics of that country during and
subsequent to the so‐called Reformation. We have had occasion elsewhere to
refer to Father Morris’ work on the _Condition of Catholics under James
I._ The book before us may be considered a continuation of that
exceedingly interesting contribution to history, and, as it is the first
of a series, we may expect at an early day others equally valuable from
the same painstaking and indefatigable student.
Until lately, with very few exceptions, historical works relating to Great
Britain have been the composition of prejudiced, anti‐Catholic writers,
each in his turn guilty of the same omissions while servilely copying the
misrepresentations of his predecessors; so that the public mind has at
length become impressed with the conviction that, when the tocsin of
rebellion against God’s law was sounded by Henry Tudor, the people of the
whole of his dominions arose in hostile opposition to the authority of the
church. None but a critical few, familiar with foreign contemporary
authorities, were aware that, while the nobles who hungered for the spoils
of convents and monasteries, and the suppliant courtiers, lay and
ecclesiastical, whose fortunes depended upon the smiles of the sovereign,
basely bowed down before the brutal passions of Henry and Elizabeth, the
mass of the people, particularly the educated and moral middle class, held
firmly to the faith, braving persecution, poverty, imprisonment, and even
death, in defence of Catholicity. England, in fact, can count her
thousands of uncanonized martyrs, priests and laity, men and women, who,
in common with their co‐religionists of the Continent, fell victims to the
lust, cupidity, and inhumanity of the “Reformers.” Some of their most
glorious achievements will probably never be recorded in this world, but
there is every hope that, through the exertions of such conscientious
searchers as this learned Jesuit, a flood of light will be thrown ere long
on the darkest, but not least edifying, days of the Christian Church in
England. Heretofore this noble work has been delayed for various reasons.
Contemporary documents were either in the hands of the Government, or were
scattered among many convents and private libraries, and from long neglect
had become almost forgotten; and it required so much industry as well as
knowledge to search for and utilize them, that until lately no one was
found equal to the task. Besides, the English Catholics of the last
generation were so few and so lukewarm that it was difficult to find a
publisher willing to risk his money and his reputation in bringing out
books that were considered neither profitable nor politic. A change has
come over the spirit of their dream, as the appearance of late of so many
Catholic works, well printed and handsomely bound, from some of the first
publishing houses in Europe, amply testifies; and the ancient faith is
fast regaining its power in what, for three centuries, has been considered
the stronghold of dissent. While of primary interest to English readers,
works of this character will also have peculiar attractions for Americans,
many of whom by blood and affinity are as much heirs to the virtues and
courage of the British Catholics of the XVIth and XVIIth centuries as
those born on that soil. No historical library in our language would be
complete without such works as those of F. Morris, containing as they do
original, authentic documents which hitherto have never appeared in print,
in whole or in part. Such documents, carefully annotated, and modernized
only as regards their obsolete orthography, are the true materials of
history, worth an infinity of commentaries and second and third hand
statements filtrated through the minds of ignorant or partial writers.
The present volume contains the memoirs of Mother Margaret Clement; a
sketch of the history of the Monasteries of SS. Ursula and Monica at
Louvain; an account of the dissolution of the Carthusian Monastery of the
Charter House, London, and the execution of several of its monks, in the
reign of Henry VIII.; a detailed narrative of the imprisonment of Francis
Tregian for sixteen years; some additional particulars relating to the
missions of Fathers Tesimond and Blount; the trial of the Rev. Cuthbert
Clapton, chaplain to the Venetian ambassador, as related by himself, and
the correspondence of that official with his government from A.D. 1638 to
1643; with several interesting details of the sufferings and persecution
of some noble Catholic families. These documents were procured in various
places—in the Public Record Office; S. Mary’s College, Ascott; Stonyhurst;
the Archives de l’Etat, Brussels; S. Augustine’s Priory, Abbotsleigh;
Archives of the Archbishop of Westminster, and in numerous private MS.
collections; each original being preceded by a short but comprehensive
introduction from the pen of the learned editor.
PETERS’ CATHOLIC CLASS BOOK: A Collection of copyright Songs,
Duets, Trios, and Choruses, etc., etc. Compiled and arranged by
William Dressler. New York: J. L. Peters.
The first half of this work is a reproduction of ballads of sentiment of
no special merit, issued, as the foot‐notes ingeniously advertise to the
purchaser, “in sheet‐music form, with lithograph title‐page,” by the
publisher. The latter half is chiefly a reprint of so‐called religious
songs which persistently return to us under one or another guise in
publications of this class, like poor relations, and with as hearty a
welcome as such visitors proverbially receive.
THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY has fixed upon the 5th of November as the
publication day of _The Illustrated Catholic Family Almanac_ for 1873:
over 35,000 copies have already been ordered by the different booksellers.
The Society has just published an edition of _The Little Manual of
Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and Spiritual Bouquet_, formerly
published by John P. Walsh, of Cincinnati; and will soon issue in book‐
form _Fleurange_, by Mrs. Craven; Col. Meline’s translation of _Hubner’s
Life of Sixtus V.; Myrrha Lake, or Into the Light of Catholicity. All‐
Hallow Eve and Unconvicted_ will appear early in November. Canon Oakeley’s
work on _Catholic Worship_ is in press, and will be published uniform with
his excellent treatise on _The Mass_.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XVI., NO. 93.—DECEMBER, 1872.
The Spirit Of Protestantism.
Recent events in Europe, particularly in Prussia and Italy, have done much
to awaken the attention of thinking men in this country to the true spirit
of what is known as Protestantism. While they have once more presented to
our view humiliating spectacles of human weakness, injustice and downright
tyranny under the guise and in the sacred names of religion and liberty,
they have confirmed with remarkable force all that has been alleged
against the spirit that actuates and has always governed the enemies of
the Catholic Church.
When the revolt against Catholic doctrine and the spiritual authority of
the See of Rome was first inaugurated in the XVIth century under the
banner of liberty of conscience and freedom of thought, it was asserted by
those who then upheld the ancient faith that these were specious pretexts
invented to cover ulterior designs, which, by giving full scope to the
worst passions of our nature, would inevitably fix in the minds and in the
hearts of mankind a moral slavery more debasing, and a servitude more
irradicable, than even the most astute pagans of ancient times ever
dreamed of; that dissent from the dogmas and discipline of the universal
church did not in itself constitute a creed, but simply the negation of
all Christian truth, and that the right of private judgment in matters of
faith meant in reality the right, when seconded by the power, to pull down
and destroy, to persecute and proscribe, to desecrate and desolate the
Christian temples and charitable institutions which pious hands had reared
and richly endowed throughout Europe. How sadly prophetic were the
sagacious champions of true liberty and divine authority, the history of
the last three centuries fully attests.
Whoever has studied the career of modern civilization, either in the
detached records of nations and dynasties, or by following the course of
the church herself from her foundation to the present day, cannot fail to
discover that the advance of Europe from the epoch of the disruption of
the Roman Empire until the commencement of the XVIth century was a steady,
constant, and rapid march towards true civil polity and enlightenment;
frequently checked, it is true, by wars and local schisms, but ever
flowing onward in an irresistible and majestic flood.
From the barbarism and chaos incident to the disappearance of the central
authority of the empire, Europe emerged into the preparatory condition of
feudalism, at that time another name for order; and, through this state of
order, the first necessity of freedom, she was fast acquiring that second
essential element of political excellence—liberty. Already the humble
peasants of Helvetia were as free as the air of their romantic mountains;
Italy was dotted with republics; the Spanish peninsula was ruled more by
its cortes than by its sovereigns; France had her several “estates”;
Poland her elective monarchy; and Germany and the North were fast becoming
imbued with liberal and constitutional ideas; England, the last to adopt
the feudal system, had by degrees abrogated its slavish restraints and
commercial restrictions, and, with justice, boasted of her great charters
and independent parliaments; while over all a species of international law
was established, the chief executive of which sat in the chair of S.
Peter, before whose moral power warriors sheathed their swords and crowned
kings bowed their heads in submission. Municipalities, the germs of which
had first clustered around the monasteries, had become numerous and
powerful enough to defy and, on occasion, to curb the power of the feudal
nobles, and, under the protection of the guilds, the mechanical arts had
acquired a degree of perfection fully equal if not superior to that of our
own time. Those workers in wool, cotton, and silk, stone, metal, and wood,
have left us lasting monuments of their skill not only in the productions
of the looms of Flanders and Italy, and the forges of Spain and England,
but, better still, in the multiplicity of magnificent cathedrals and
basilicas, in the contemplation of which the artisan of this generation,
with all his supposed advantages, is lost in silent admiration. Poetry,
painting, architecture, and sculpture, the four highest developments of
creative genius, may be said to have reached, at the period immediately
anterior to the Reformation, the acme of glory and greatness, never before
nor since excelled or even equalled by man; while the discovery of the art
of printing had given a new impetus to literature, and commerce spread her
white wings in the Indian Ocean and along the shores of the New World.
Now, all these beneficent results were directly and indirectly the work of
the Catholic Church. From the details of ordinary life to the more
profound schemes of state policy, her animating presence was felt, and her
influence cheerfully recognized and obeyed, for it was always exercised
for the benefit of humanity and the greater glory of God. From the forging
of the Toledo blade that flashed in the dazzled eyes of the Saracen, to
the rearing aloft of that wonder of the Christian and pagan world, S.
Peter’s; from the humble Mechlin girl meshing a robe for a statue of the
Virgin, to Columbus exploring unknown seas in search of treasure to ransom
the holy shrines; from the poor friar teaching the child of the degraded
_villein_, to Archbishop Langdon framing _Magna Charta_; from the
enfranchisement of a serf, to the organization of the crusades, there was
no step in human progress that was not inspired and directed by the church
for the wisest and most exalted purposes. Guided by the spirit of
religion, the amount of solid happiness, simple virtue, and rational
liberty enjoyed by the people of Europe at the opening of the XVIth
century was greater, far greater, than their descendants possess at the
present time, after nearly four hundred years’ experience, and countless
attempts at religious, social, and political revolutions.
Yet, under the name of Reformation and greater liberty, this grand march
towards human perfection and eternal bliss was to be stayed, and even for
a time turned backwards, so that morally and politically Christendom has
not yet, nor is it likely for a long time, to recover from the shock which
it experienced at the hands of the Protestant reformers, their aiders and
abettors. The motives which actuated these reactionists were neither new
nor doubtful. Under various names and pretences, bodies of fanatics or
knaves swayed by the same inducements had appeared from time to time in
different parts of the world, generally causing much local disturbance,
but always suppressed by the authority of the church or the strong arm of
the state. They were simply detached efforts on the part of the worst
portion of the population to throw off all spiritual restraint as well as
temporal authority, and, by being thus freed both from moral and civil
law, to give full scope to their passions, undeterred by either religious
or social considerations. The history of fanaticism, of the Albigenses,
the Fratricelli, and the Lollards, proves that the leaders in such
movements were invariably the enemies of existing civil authority, and
that profligacy and plunder were the lures by which they drew around them
their deluded followers. The “Reformation,” as the last and greatest
rebellion is called, forms no exception to the rule.
In the early part of the XVIth century it broke out in Germany under the
auspices of three or four Saxon ecclesiastics, principal among whom were
Luther and Melanchthon. The former schismatic, who was a preacher of some
eminence, commenced by inveighing against the abuse of indulgences, and by
rapid transitions ended by totally denying the authority of the church in
every point of doctrine and discipline. He bases man’s salvation on faith
alone regardless of works, proclaimed the right of every individual to
make his own religion according as it seemed best to himself, and boldly
advocated the massacre of priests and bishops and the pillage of churches
and religious homes—the existence of all of which he declared to be
contrary to Holy Writ. “Now is the time,” he wrote, at the commencement of
his crusade, “to destroy convents, abbeys, priories, and monasteries”; to
which advice he added a little later, “These priests, these Mass‐mumblers,
deserve death as truly as a blasphemer who should curse God and his saints
in the public streets.” A system of belief at once so convenient and so
conformable with the greatest license, so free from all moral
responsibility and so suggestive of rapine and spoliation, could not but
attract followers, and Luther became so popular with the more debased of
his countrymen and with the rapacious among the nobles, that rivals soon
sprang up, who, accepting his premises, quickly outstripped him in the
race of fanaticism. The Anabaptists under Münzer, thinking that they also
had a right to private judgment, declared against infant baptism, demanded
a reorganization of society on what would now be called a socialistic
basis, and proceeded to put the heresiarch’s theory into practice by
overrunning the fairest provinces of Germany with fire and sword,
destroying alike feudal castles and Catholic churches, and slaughtering
with unheard‐of barbarity every one who opposed them, whether layman or
cleric.
This practical commentary on the new doctrine affrighted even its founder,
so he hastened to implore the interposition of his friends among the
German nobility. Accordingly, Philip of Hesse, in 1625, marched an army
against them, and, meeting their main body under Münzer, a quondam friend
and pupil of Luther, at Mülhausen, cut them to pieces and subsequently
hanged their leader. About thirty thousand peasants are stated to have
been slaughtered on this occasion, when the new Reformation may be said to
have been baptized, and the right of private judgment according to Luther
fully vindicated. Nearly at the same time another scene of even greater
barbarity was enacted at the other extremity of the Continent. Attracted
by reports of rich spoil to be obtained in Italy during the wars of the
emperor and the French king for the possession of that lovely but
unfortunate country, sixteen thousand German Lutheran mercenaries crossed
the Alps and joined the forces of Constable de Bourbon, himself a traitor
in arms against his country. Under the command of that gifted apostate,
they marched on Rome, and, though their leader fell in the attack, the
city was captured. Had he survived, the fate of the Eternal City might
have been sad enough, but, unrestrained by superior authority, the conduct
of the victors was simply diabolical. For weeks and months the city was
given over to plunder, and the inhabitants to every species of outrage by
those wretches, who, true to their master and his teachings, even went to
the extent, in mockery of the church, to formally suspend Clement VII.,
and elect in his stead their new apostle. How Luther must have chuckled at
the news!
“Never perhaps, in the history of the world,” says a distinguished
historian, “had a greater capital been given up to a more
atrocious abuse of victory; never had a powerful army been made up
of more barbarous elements; never had the restraints of discipline
been more fearfully cast aside. It was not enough for these
rapacious plunderers to seize upon the rich stores of sacred and
profane wealth which the piety or industry of the people had
gathered into the capital of the Christian world; the wretched
inhabitants themselves became the victims of the fierce and brutal
soldiery; those who were suspected of having hidden their wealth
were put to the torture. Some were forced by these tortures to
sign promissory notes, and to drain the purses of their friends in
other countries. A great number of prelates fell under these
sufferings. Many others, having paid their ransom, and while
rejoicing to think themselves free from further attacks, were
obliged to redeem themselves again and died from grief or terror
caused by these acts of violence. The German troops were seen,
drunk at once with wine and blood, leading about bishops in full
pontifical attire, seated upon mules, or dragging cardinals
through the streets, loading them with blows and outrages. In
their eagerness for plunder, they broke in the doors of the
tabernacles and destroyed masterpieces of art. The Vatican library
was sacked; the public squares and churches of Rome were converted
into market‐places, where the conquerors sold, as promiscuous
booty, the Roman ladies and horses; and these brutal excesses were
committed even in the basilicas of S. Peter and S. Paul, held by
Alaric as sacred asylums; the pillage which, under Genseric, had
lasted fourteen days, lasted now two months without
interruption.”(130)
Having disposed of his rivals the Anabaptists and set afloat his anathemas
against the church, Luther proceeded systematically to disorganize society
and obstruct the efforts of the sovereign pontiff and the Catholic princes
to save Europe from the horrors of a Mahometan invasion, at that time most
imminent. He formed a league among the semi‐independent German princes
favorable to his views, particularly on the matter of confiscation, and
the power he had denied to the pope and bishops of the church he assumed
to himself by forthwith creating a number of evangelical ministers to
preach the new gospel. In 1529, the members of this league, with other
nobles of the empire, were summoned by the Emperor Charles V. to a diet at
Spires to concert means for the general defence of Christendom against the
Turks, then threatening it by the way of Hungary. The Lutherans, taking
advantage of the critical condition of affairs, and not being particularly
adverse to the success of any movement that would destroy Christianity,
demanded the most unreasonable terms as the price of their active co‐
operation. On the part of the emperor, it was proposed that all questions
of a religious nature should remain _in statu quo_ pending the struggle
against the infidels, and be submitted as soon as practicable thereafter
to a general or œcumenical council of the church, at which all parties
were to be represented. “The edict of Worms,” they proposed, “shall be
observed in the states in which it has already been received. The others
shall be free to continue in the new doctrines until the meeting of the
next general council. However, to prevent all domestic troubles, no one
shall preach against the sacrament of the altar; the Mass shall not be
abolished; and no one shall be hindered from celebrating or hearing it.”
But these concessions to heresy for the general good, this weak
recognition of an unlawful assumption of ecclesiastical and political
authority, were not what the reformers desired. Not even toleration or
equality would satisfy them. They wanted the right to persecute, to
eradicate by forcible means and as far as their power extended, every
vestige of Catholicity. They declared that in their opinion “the Mass is
an act of idolatry, condemned by a thousand passages of Sacred Scripture.
It is our duty and our right to overthrow the altars of Baal.” Thus
_protesting_ their duty and right to persecute, they retired from the
diet, left the Mahometans, as far as they were concerned, free scope to
destroy Christianity wherever they pleased, and Lutheranism, or rebellion,
was henceforth known by the generic title of Protestantism.
So far from Protestantism being, as popularly represented, the assertion
of liberty of conscience in religion, it originated in the denial of that
liberty, by asserting the right to persecute those who differed from them
in religion.
From this time the Reformation under its new and more comprehensive name
made vast strides on the Continent, its path being everywhere marked by
the same spirit of fanaticism, sacrilege, and destruction of property
devoted to religion, learning, and charity; the insane dissensions of the
Catholic rulers granting it immunity, if not positive encouragement.
Geneva and part of Switzerland first embraced the gloomy doctrines of
Calvin, and made active war on the church; spreading into France, the
Netherlands, and the northern countries, their adoption by the ignorant
and venal was invariably followed by the greatest atrocities and the
wildest anarchy. Europe was shaken to its centre, and wars, the worst of
wars, because waged in the name of religion, desolated the entire
Continent for over a century with but pause enough to enable the
combatants to rest and recruit their strength. The destruction of life
during this period must have been immense, morals degenerated, industry
languished, and the principles of rational freedom, which had been
steadily gaining ground, were lost sight of in the clash of arms and the
angry conflict of contending systems. From this epoch we may date the rise
of modern Cæsarism and revolutionary ferocity which at the present moment
are contending for supremacy in the Old World.
But it was not continental nations alone that suffered from the blight of
this stupendous curse. Great Britain and Ireland soon experienced its
baleful influence. Henry VIII., in order to be able to divorce his lawful
wife and marry a mistress, cut himself loose from the See of Rome, and
became, by act of parliament, head of the church in his own dominions.
Henry was no mean reformer, as the record of his life testifies. He
married in succession six wives, two of whom he repudiated, two beheaded,
and his sudden demise alone prevented the execution of his surviving
consort, whose death‐warrant had been signed by his royal and loving hand.
“For the glory of Almighty God and the honor of the realm,” he seized upon
all the churches in England, as well as nearly four hundred religious
houses, and confiscated their property “for the benefit of the crown”—that
is, for his own use and that of his facile courtiers and parliament. With
the same pious purpose, we suppose, he ordered for execution, at different
times, besides his wives, a cardinal, two archbishops, eighteen bishops,
thirteen abbots, five hundred priors and monks, thirty‐eight doctors,
twelve dukes and counts, one hundred and sixty‐four noblemen of various
ranks, one hundred and twenty‐four private citizens, and one hundred and
ten females. If all of those did not suffer the fate of the Charter‐house
monks, Sir Thomas More, Bishop Fisher, and the Countess of Salisbury, it
was not his fault, but theirs who were ungrateful enough to fly their
country and perish in poverty and exile, thus robbing the Reformation in
England of half its glory.
Under his daughter Elizabeth, nearly two hundred ecclesiastics are known
to have suffered for their faith on the scaffold, besides laymen, and the
multitude who died in prison: and if her successor, James I., does not
present as striking a record of his zeal, it was because there were very
few priests left to be hunted down, and very little Catholic property to
be confiscated. To do that light of the Reformation justice, wherever he
could catch a priest he hanged him, and, with a keenness eminently
national, wherever a penny could be squeezed out of a recusant Papist he
or his friends were sure to have it. Still he was only a gleaner in the
field so cleanly reaped by his predecessors; for even in unhappy Ireland
Elizabeth’s captains had done their work so thoroughly that he had nothing
to seize upon or give away but the uninhabited and desolated lands.
However, lest the traditions of the early fathers of his church—Luther,
Calvin, and the royal Henry—should be forgotten, and having no longer any
Catholics to persecute, he turned his attention to the Presbyterians,
Covenanters, and Puritans with some effect. The humanizing custom of
cropping the ears and slitting the noses of those dissenters became
greatly the fashion in this reign; for, though James acknowledged the
right of private judgment in the abstract, the exercise of the right was
found by his subjects to be a very dangerous pastime. The Puritans, who
also based their religion on the same right, improved on the lessons thus
taught; for, when in the next reign it became their turn to persecute and
punish, instead of cutting off the ears or the nose of his son and
successor, they took off the entire head, and gave to the English Church
its first and only martyr. Oliver Cromwell and the Long Parliament
interpreted “King James’ Version” too literally, and of course, believing
in freedom of conscience, swept away episcopacy, kings, bishops, and all.
After the Restoration, the English Church was again in the ascendant. Then
they dug up the bones of the Puritan regicides, scattered them to the
winds, and ever since the followers of John Knox and the believers in the
_Westminster Catechism_ have held a very subordinate place under the feet
of “the church as by law established.”
If the fell spirit of Protestantism, which, as we have seen, was bloody
and cruel in its inception and growth, had been confined to the eastern
hemisphere, we, as Americans, feeling grateful to Providence for the
exemption, might have less cause of complaint against it. But
unfortunately it was not so. The virgin soil of the New World, from the
first consecrated to freedom, we are often told, was destined to be
polluted by the evil genius evoked by the apostate monk of Wittenberg.
Every breeze from the east that wafted hither an immigrant‐ship bore on
its wings the deadly moral pestilence of intolerance and persecution. It
accompanied the Huguenots to the Carolinas, landed at Jamestown with the
royalists, went up the Delaware with the Swedes and Quakers, up the Hudson
with the Hollanders, and pervaded the hold of the _Mayflower_ from stem to
stern. Whatever physical, mental, and moral qualities those early
adventurers, of many lands and divers creeds, may have possessed,
Christian charity was certainly not of the number, and though they each
and all proclaimed the right of every one to be his own judge in matters
of religion—and most of them claimed to have suffered for conscience’s
sake—not one had the consistency or the courage to tolerate, much less
protect, the expression of an opinion or the observance of a form of
worship differing from his own. So completely had the rancor of the
founders of Protestantism eaten up whatever of Christianity it retained of
the church’s teaching, that each of the sects, having no common enemy to
prey upon, turned round, and, like hungry wolves, were ready to tear and
rend each other. With the exception of one small settlement, there were no
Catholics in the early colonies; but still, the Puritan found it as unsafe
to live in Virginia as the Episcopalian did in New England, while the non‐
combatant Friend dared not risk his life in either locality. There was one
little bright spot in the darkened firmament that hung over the infant
settlements, and that was near the mouth of the St. Mary’s, on the
Potomac. Here Lord Baltimore had planted a colony of Catholics which soon
showed signs of life and vigor, worshipping according to the old faith,
and proclaiming the doctrine of charity and religious toleration to all
Christians. But it was not long allowed to enjoy its honors in peace. Its
very existence was a reproach to its bigoted neighbors. Taking advantage
of its humane and equitable laws, Protestants of the various
denominations, persecuted in the other colonies, flocked to it as to a
city of refuge, abused its hospitality, when strong enough in numbers
changed its statutes, and actually commenced to persecute the very people
who had sheltered them.
As the colonies grew in population and extent, we do not find that they
increased in equity or liberality. Many of them were even at the pains of
passing laws prohibiting the settlement of Catholics within their limits;
and now and then we hear of some solitary priest being executed or a group
of humble Catholics driven into further exile. The dawn of our Revolution
created some change in religious sentiment, but it was more on the surface
than in the heart. England, the oppressor, was the champion of
Protestantism; France, the ally, was as essentially Catholic; so it was
not considered politic to manifest too openly that bigotry of soul which
pervaded all classes of society in those days, though even in the
continental congress there were found some candid enough to object to
asking the assistance of Catholic Frenchmen to help them to wrest their
liberties from their Protestant enemy. These patriots preferred the
Hessians and their Lutheranism to Lafayette and Rochambaud.
Our independence once gained by the efficient aid of the troops of the
eldest son of the church, a pause appears to have occurred in the
persecuting progress of the sects. Common decency required as much, but
commercial interest demanded it. Our finances were in a ruinous condition,
and it was only among the Catholic nations of Europe that we could look
for sympathy and support. Then the new states very generally repealed the
colonial penal laws, and finally the amended constitution prohibited the
interference of the general government in matters of religion. Still,
though we owe much to French sympathy and influence in placing us, as
Catholics, free and equal before the law, we owe more to those of our own
countrymen who actually had no religion at all. We would rather, for the
honor of human nature, that the benefits thus received had been derived
from another source; but it is an historical fact that the minds of many
of the leaders of the Revolution, before and during that struggle, had
become deeply imbued with the false philosophy then prevalent among the
intellectual classes in Europe, and, believing in no particular
revelation, dogma, or religion, they could see no reason why one party
calling itself Christian should ostracise another claiming the same
distinction. To their credit, be it said, our countrymen never carried
their theories to the same extent as their fellow‐philosophers across the
Atlantic, and their impartiality, which we would fain hope to have been
sincere, took a direction in accord with the spirit of justice and
impartial legislation.
If, then, our young Republic has not been disgraced by such penal
enactments against Catholics as have long disfigured the statute‐books of
England, and which are yet in force in Holland, Denmark, Sweden, and
Norway, the Protestant sects, as such, deserve neither credit nor
gratitude. The active Protestants of that day—the ministers, deacons, and
politicians—were just as narrow‐minded and as bigoted as were their
ancestors, and as would be their descendants if it were not for certain
good reasons best known to themselves. Witness the periodical outbursts of
Nativism or Know‐Nothingism which have from time to time disgraced our
national character. These have been directed invariably against
Catholics—not against foreigners as such, for with a Protestant or even
infidel foreigner their promoters have never professed to find fault. The
occasional destruction of a convent, the burning of a church—and we have
had many so dealt with—or the mobbing of a priest may only show that
depravity exists in certain sections of the country, but the news of such
atrocities has been received with such ill‐concealed
satisfaction—certainly with nothing like hearty condemnation—by the
clerical demagogues and the so‐called religious press, that we are forced
into the conviction that to the absence of opportunity and power on their
part we alone owe our exemption from such villanies on a larger and better
organized system.
We are told, in a tone of patronage, if not menace, that we ought to be
content as long as the Catholics of America are free and enjoy equality
under the law. We grant the freedom and equality, but only so far as the
letter, not the spirit, of the law is concerned. Let any one look at the
way our Catholic missions in the far West have been defrauded for the
benefit of Methodist and Baptist preachers of the Word and cheaters of the
Indians, and tell us are they free and equal? How many Catholic chaplains
are there in the army and navy, the bone and sinew of which are mainly
Catholics? For how many foreign consuls are we paying merely to act as
agents for the Board of Foreign Missions, Bible Societies, and Book
Concerns? How are our numerous state institutions—penitentiary,
reformatory, and eleemosynary—attended to in the interests of their
Catholic inmates? When these questions are satisfactorily answered, we
will be able to estimate the extent of the legal equality we possess. For
so much of freedom and equality as we actually enjoy, we are thankful.
Grateful not, however, to the Protestant sects, but to a benevolent
Providence who has vouchsafed it to us; and, under him, to our Catholic
predecessors who helped to found, and our co‐religionists who have bravely
defended, our institutions, and who now stand ready to oppose with might
and main any attempt to infringe upon our liberties.
But even as to the letter of the law we are not without just cause of
complaint. For instance, we object most emphatically to the present school
law of this state as unjust and inequitable in its provisions and method
of administration. The state has no right to prescribe how or what our
children shall be taught, and then make us pay for its so doing. We
Catholics are unanimously in favor of educating our own offspring
according to our conception of the demands of religion and morality, and,
as the artificial body called the state is a judge of neither, it is
manifestly incompetent to direct the training of our children. We are also
willing to pay, and are actually expending, large sums of money in this
good work; and while we are doing so, we hold it not just to tax us for
the support of schools we do not require. Our duty to the state and
society is performed when we teach our children to obey the laws of one
and respect the usages of the other, and, if parents and the ministers of
religion are unable to do this, mere officials and strangers certainly
cannot. However, if the state will insist on levying a school‐tax, let it
in justice give us a pro rata share of the money, and let the Evangelical
Alliance of the sects take theirs and bring up their children in their own
way. We ask nothing for ourselves that we would not willingly see granted
to others, but, until one or other of these measures be adopted, we
maintain that a large class of the citizens of the United States is
deprived of one of its most vital and dearest religious rights.
Then, again, look at the treatment meted out by the legislative
authorities to Catholic institutions, to our hospitals, foundling‐asylums,
reformatories, and orphanages, which save annually to the state hundreds
of thousands of dollars, and are daily conferring on society incalculable
advantages. What begging, petitioning, and beseeching must we not resort
to, to get the least legislative favor for them, even to a bare act of
incorporation! For a quarter of a century or more, irresponsible bodies
under the names of the sects, or even in no names but their own, have been
fattening on the public money, our money, and no word of remonstrance has
been uttered; but, as soon as anything is asked for our institutions, the
cry of “sectarian appropriations” and “Romish designs” is immediately
raised and repeated along the line. Every petty bigot who misuses a pen
gets up a howl about the “Papists,” and “Romanism the Rock Ahead,” etc.;
the pigeon‐holes of the _religious_ newspaper offices, and of newspapers
the contrary of religious, are ransacked for stale calumnies against the
church, and slanders over and over refuted are launched at the most gifted
and reputable of our citizens. This must all be changed before we can
consider that, as Catholics, we stand on an equality with non‐Catholic
Americans, and before we are prepared to admit that Protestantism,
mollified by time and distance, has lost any of its pristine love of
persecution and proscription. We would prefer to live at peace with every
shade of Christians, but, if they will not let us, they must take the
responsibility.
In stating our grievance in this manner, we do not address ourselves
specially to the sense of justice or fair play of the leaders of
Protestant opinion, but rather to the manhood and intelligence of our co‐
religionists who, by a more determined effort, might easily remove the
evils of which we complain. We are more confirmed in this view by a recent
event which happened at the national capital. The force of well‐regulated
public opinion will always be very powerful in this Republic, and we are
satisfied that the opposition very generally expressed by the Catholics of
the country to the scheme of compulsory education by the general
government, some time ago introduced into Congress by some distinguished
members, had a powerful effect in defeating, for a time at least, a
measure fraught with the greatest danger to our rights, and to the general
liberties of all the states.(131)
We expect little from the Protestant press or pulpits. The manner in which
the revival of religious persecutions in Europe has been looked upon by
them precludes the faintest hope that they will listen to the appeals of
humanity or justice where their passions, prejudices, or interests are
concerned. Not very long since, the schismatic king of Sardinia wantonly
levied war on the most defenceless and venerable sovereign in the world,
and despoiled him of the larger half of his small dominions; yet there was
not a single Protestant voice heard among us in reprobation of the foul
act. Two years ago the same royal _filibustero_, with, if possible, less
pretence, and without any warning, stealthily advanced his army on the
Eternal City, took possession of its churches and their sacred furniture;
its convents, and turned them into barracks and stables; its treasures of
art and literature, and sold them to the highest bidder; its colleges and
schools, and drove out the students and poor children to wander on the
face of the earth. Then the Protestant churches and meeting‐houses rang
with acclamations; and public assemblies were held by freedom‐loving
American citizens to congratulate the modern vandal on his “victory”
over—justice, religion, and civilization.
Rome has again been sacked, this time not by the rude Lutheran
_Landsknechte_, but by a more ruthless and more insidious foe, the
Garibaldini, the enemies of all forms of revealed religion, the men who
swear on the dagger and the bowl because they have no God to swear by. The
sovereign pontiff is virtually a prisoner in his Vatican; monks and
priests, passing along the streets to comfort the afflicted or administer
the sacraments to the dying, are set upon and slain at noon‐day; weak and
delicately nurtured ladies are turned out of their peaceful retreats into
the highways, to be insulted and derided by a crowd of vagabonds gathered
from every quarter of Europe; the libraries, statuary, paintings,
castings, and all the treasures which made Rome the centre of Christian
art, and the depository of the world’s store of classic literature, lie at
the mercy of a horde of ruffians, the very offscourings of Italian
society, called together to that devoted city by the hope of plunder and
the certainty of immunity for their crimes. All this and more is matter of
public notoriety, yet no word of execration, no wail of sorrow, at this
worse than vandalism rises up from a country that boasts its love of
civilization, its chivalry to women, its respect for sacred things, and
its patronage of the arts and letters. Why? They are only priests that are
assassinated, only helpless nuns that are jeered at, only Catholic
treasures that are stolen, shattered, or destroyed; right, justice,
liberty, and even ordinary humanity, can afford to suffer and be
forgotten, so that Catholicity be thereby weakened and checked in its
onward course. The force of bigotry can go no further.
Late European mails bring us an account of a general election throughout
“United Italy” on the universal suffrage plan—that supposed panacea for
all political ills. The Catholics in certain portions of the country, it
seems, who had hitherto abstained from voting, resolved this time to take
part in the contest. As soon as this became known to the ministry, a
circular was sent to even the local government officials, mayors of
cities, magistrates, police captains, poll‐clerks, returning officers,
etc., warning them of the danger, and threatening the severest penalties
if steps were not immediately taken to prevent the Catholics from electing
their candidates. The result was what might have been expected. The
officials have done their duty to the government, and now feel secure in
their places. The Catholics of one city, and that the largest, Naples,
did, however, despite of all official precautions to the contrary, carry
their election by an overwhelming majority; but, being only Catholic
voters, the election has been set aside without even the mockery of an
investigation or the least show of reason. Now, if such a thing had
occurred in France, or any other country governed under Catholic auspices,
we would be treated by nine‐tenths of the press of this country to a
dissertation on the inability of the Latin nations to understand free
institutions, and the folly of expecting an ignorant and slavish multitude
to be able to appreciate the right of suffrage; but, as this gigantic
fraud was perpetrated by a government in direct hostility to the head of
the church, it is passed over in dignified silence. Not a syllable of
remonstrance is uttered by our freedom‐shrieking friends—our Beechers,
Fultons, and Bellowses—who are so fond of interlarding their sermons with
political appeals against ballot‐stuffing and intimidation at the polls.
Let us turn for a moment to the present sad condition of Germany, the
cradle and the victim of religious dissent and doubt. Prussia emerged from
the late war not only the victor of France, but the conqueror of the
several independent states and cities of the late Germanic Confederation.
Her capacious maw has engulfed them all. Prince Bismarck, whose absolutist
tendencies have long been recognized, not content with his success in
creating an empire one and indivisible, desires to found a German church,
to be conducted on strictly military and autocratic principles. Having
disposed of a good many of the bodies, and taken possession of a large
share of the property of the subjects of the new empire, he is now anxious
to take care of their souls, and, whether they will or not, guide them in
the way of salvation and the Gospel—according to Bismarck. Obedience to
the central civil head in Berlin is to be the leading feature in his new
religious system, and the emperor, like his brother of Russia and the
Grand Lama, is to unite in himself absolute political and spiritual power,
tempered by Bismarck.
A large portion of the Germans, having great doubts as to whether or not
they have such things as souls to be saved, feel philosophically
indifferent; the sects, being weak and without popular support, can make
little resistance to the encroachments of the state; but the Catholic
body, powerful not less from its intelligence and independence than from
its numbers, utterly refuses to recognize the right or the authority of
the chancellor to interfere in their spiritual affairs. That astute
statesman first tried to frighten them by abolishing the denominational
schools, then by patronizing a few dissatisfied professors who call
themselves “Old Catholics,” but without avail; and now, like a genuine
follower of the teachings of Luther, he is resorting to expatriation and
persecution. He has already attacked the religious orders, and, as is
generally known, has procured a law to be passed expelling the Jesuits and
all religious in affiliation with them from the empire. It is not
pretended that the members of that illustrious body, individually or
collectively, have committed any offence against the state, nor is it even
proposed that a semblance of a trial should be granted them before
condemnation; but they have been guilty of opposing the designs of a
confirmed despot, and their removal from home, country, and the sphere of
their duties is forthwith decreed, and effected with all that mean
malignity which subordinates who hope for future favor so well know how to
exercise towards the victims of official oppression. The summary expulsion
of so many learned and studious men from their schools and colleges has
filled Europe with disgust and amazement; and even the more enlightened
class of German non‐Catholics, who at least know the value of their
acquirements and wonderful skill in training youth, have denounced, in the
most forcible terms, an act so detrimental to the true interests of their
country.
In England, a meeting of prominent Catholics was lately held, to protest,
in the name of religion and learning, against this exhibition of high‐
handed authority; but Protestantism, true to its instincts, took the
alarm, and, lest the Prussian Government might in the slightest degree be
influenced, hastened to send an address to Berlin to assure Bismarck of
English sympathy and support. This precious document was signed by fifty‐
seven persons, including the Marquis of Cholmondeley, the Bishops of
Worcester and Ripon, Lord Lawrence, Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Arthur Kinnaird,
the Archbishop of Armagh, the Moderators of the Established Church of
Scotland, of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland, of the English
and Irish Presbyterian Churches, and the President and Secretary of the
Wesleyan Conference. The reply of Bismarck, who is not remarkable for his
“religiosity,” is full of sanctimonious cant and what, under the
circumstances, seems to us very like grim irony:
“Most warmly do I thank you and the gentlemen who were co‐
signatories of the address you were good enough to present to me
for this encouraging mark of approval. Your communication, sir,
possesses a greater value, coming as it does from a _country which
Europe has learnt for centuries to regard as the bulwark of civil
and religious liberty_. Rightly does the address estimate the
difficulties of the struggle which has been forced upon us
contrary both to the desire and expectation of the German
governments. It would be no light task for the state to preserve
religious peace and freedom of conscience, even were it not made
more difficult by the misuse of legitimate authority and by the
artificial disturbance of the minds of believers. I rejoice that I
agree with you on the fundamental principle that in a well‐ordered
community every person and every creed should enjoy that measure
of liberty which is compatible both with the freedom of the
remainder, and also with the independence and safety of the
country. God will protect the German Empire in the struggle for
this principle, even against those enemies who falsely use his
holy name as a pretext for their hostility against our internal
peace; but it will be a source of rejoicing to every one of my
countrymen that in this contest Germany has met with the approval
of so numerous and influential a body of Englishmen.”
Now, all this simply means that the man who controls the affairs of
Germany for the present is determined to destroy or to subject the
spiritual order to the state; to enforce compulsory education, and
prescribe forms of faith according to his ideas of what the “independence
and safety of the country” demand; the penalty of resistance, as in the
case of the Jesuits, being banishment, persecution, and perhaps worse,
should the necessities of the case, in his individual judgment, require
it. In this as in every other respect his word is all‐powerful in the
empire. Still, we have yet to learn that one advocate of the higher law in
America, one enemy of the union of church and state, one stickler for the
rights of conscience, one believer in private judgment and religious
freedom, has raised his voice against this violation of every right said
to be so dear to the Protestants of the United States. Not one Protestant
has _protested_ against this assumption of absolute power over the minds
and consciences of forty millions of people. Why? The answer is simple:
the blow, in this instance, is aimed at Catholicity. Yes, the Republic is
silent when even monarchical England feels herself constrained to speak.
In a late number of the _Manchester Examiner_, a paper, we believe,
anything but favorable to Catholics on general grounds, we noticed a very
pertinent article on the address alluded to, of which the following is an
extract, and we recommend it to the serious consideration of the
conductors of the sectarian newspapers:
“We cannot understand why bishops and deans of the English Church
should go into ecstasies over a united Germany, or why it should
furnish a theme for the pious applause of Wesleyan presidents and
Presbyterian moderators. Political changes concern politicians and
political societies. When the kingdoms of this world adopt a
different principle of grouping, all who take an interest in the
political concerns of mankind may find in the altered arrangements
abundant reason for gratulation or for dismay, but theological
creeds and spiritual interests have no direct concern in the
matter. If the unity of Germany were likely to give a great
impetus to Roman Catholic doctrine, and aid the extension of Papal
authority, Mr. Kinnaird would hardly have found in it a subject of
thanksgiving, though, as a political change, it might have been
equally desirable. Is it Prince Bismarck’s assumed hostility to
the dogma of papal infallibility, and the trenchant steps he has
taken with the Jesuits, that constitute the real merit of his
policy in Protestant eyes? Well, then, to begin with, it is not at
all clear that Prince Bismarck has any absolute aversion either to
papal infallibility or to the Jesuits. If the pope had only thrown
his influence into the scale of German unity, and employed it to
further the new political policy in Fatherland, he might have made
himself as infallible as he pleased without provoking any
hostility from Prince Bismarck. If the Jesuits, instead of
fighting against him, had fought for him, he would have made them
welcome to as much power as they liked to grasp. At present, he
finds them in his way, and he sends them off about their business;
but our Protestant friends must not make too sure of him. He has
fourteen millions of Catholics to govern, and he has no wish
whatever to be at variance with the Pope. Besides, the necessity
for getting rid of the Jesuits by depriving them of their civil
rights is a thing to be deplored; since, so far as it does not
spring from political considerations, the acts to which it leads
are acts of persecution, and entitled to our regret, if not to our
reprehension. We like the Jesuits just as little as the Germans
do, but we allow them to settle amongst us, feeling sure that the
law is strong enough to keep them in order. The thing really to be
deplored is that Germany cannot afford to do the same, and it is a
proper subject for commiseration rather than for eulogy.”
We have said more than enough to convince the most supine Catholic that
Protestantism in this country has lost little if any of its anti‐Christian
renown, and, if it cannot persecute here, it is in full sympathy with
those in Europe who can; that, while it has lost much of its capacity, it
has given up none of its desire for proscription. Split, as it is, into so
many antagonistic sects, and constantly losing large numbers who are
following out its teachings logically and gliding into indifferentism and
infidelity, it is comparatively powerless to work us new injuries; but it
is for us, by continued harmony, labor, and self‐sacrifice, to put beyond
peradventure the question of our right to full and unqualified religious
liberty and perfect impartiality in the administration of the laws.
Fleurange.
By Mrs. Craven, Author Of “A Sister’s Story.”
Translated From The French, With Permission.
Part Third. The Banks Of The Neckar.
XLV.
Fleurange, as we have said, generally returned to Rosenheim in the
evening, but that day she left the princess several hours earlier than
usual, and it was not yet night when Clement, who was alone in a room on
the ground floor, absorbed in a large volume open before him, saw her
suddenly appear at an hour when he expected her the least. Perhaps,
instead of reading, he had really been dreaming over his cousin’s gayety
which made him so sad the night before. At all events, when she appeared
so suddenly before him at this unusual hour, the same sensation contracted
his heart. There was, however, nothing in her appearance to justify his
presentiment. He feared in seeing Fleurange again he might behold traces
of the tears on her face which had probably succeeded her feverish and
causeless gayety. But now, if not smiling and gay as the evening before,
if, on the contrary, she looked serious and grave, her brow nevertheless
was radiant, and in her brilliant eyes it was easy to read an expression
of almost triumphant joy. All this by no means resembled the dejection
that usually follows a fit of factitious gayety.
“You are alone!” said she immediately. “So much the better, Clement. I
have something to tell you—you first, before any one else. You will see,”
she continued, throwing off her cloak, “that I am faithful to my promise.
I come to you now as to my brother and my best friend.”
As Clement looked at her and listened to this preamble, his heart
instinctively warned him more and more strongly a great trial was at hand
and he must prepare to suffer. But when, without much circumlocution, she
came to the point; when she clearly laid before him her design; when, with
a simplicity fearful from the strength of affection and devotedness it
revealed, she unfolded the plan of her projected immolation—an immolation
longed for, embraced, and decided upon—Clement literally felt his hair
stand on end and it seemed to him as if his reason was deserting him.
What! lose one so dear, so precious, so adored!—lose her forever!—and in
what way?—To see her voluntarily embrace a destiny too horrible for the
imagination to contemplate. And wherefore?—wherefore?—Ah! the cry of
Othello now resounded in Clement’s soul: “The cause—the cause!” Yes, the
cause of this sacrifice was what added so much bitterness to his pain—and
stung him so sharply, so cruelly, so intolerably, that, overpowered by the
unexpected disclosure, overcome by an emotion impossible to master,
Clement for a moment lost all control over himself. A smothered cry
escaped him, and, leaning his head on his clasped hands, the tears he
could not repress fell on the floor at his feet.
Clement’s firmness was so habitual that Fleurange was surprised at its
failing him now, and perhaps at the moment the hidden cause of this fit of
despair came over her like a momentary flash! But it was no time to dwell
on such a thought, and, besides, Clement did not give her the opportunity.
He rose and walked around the room in silence. His manly and courageous
heart sought to regain self‐control, by an interior appeal to Him who
alone could save it from bursting and renew its failing strength. He soon
approached her, having triumphed over his emotion, and his first words
gave an explanation quiet natural.
“Pardon me, Gabrielle,” said he, “I beg you, for my inconceivable
weakness. But I could not indeed have any—any friendship whatever for you,
to consider calmly the frightful perspective you so abruptly unfolded to
me! You understand that, I imagine?”
“Yes, I expected to see all the rest greatly terrified. But you, Clement—I
thought you capable of listening coolly to anything?”
“Well, my dear cousin, you had, you see, too high an opinion of my
courage. However, I will endeavor to behave better in the future. Do not
deprive me of your confidence, that is all I ask.”
“Oh! no, far from that, for it is on you I rely to inform the rest of the
family of my resolution, and especially, and before any one else, your
mother. You may imagine, Clement, that I must have her consent, and her
blessing likewise. And you will plead my cause with her.”
Clement was silent for some moments. He was trying to command his voice,
but it still trembled as he said: “And when do you think of starting?”
“In a week, if I can.”
“In a week!—That will be before the end of January! And have you thought
of the means of making such a journey at this season?”
Fleurange hesitated. “I am quite well aware,” said she, “that it will be
difficult for me to go alone.”
Clement hastily interrupted her in a terrified tone: “Alone!—I declare,
Gabrielle, it is impossible to listen to you coolly, though I know your
rash words must be taken seriously.”
“You must, however, take them so,” said she, in the same tone of energetic
tenderness which had struck the Princess Catherine. “You must resign
yourself to see me set out alone, if there is no other means of joining
him.”
Oh! how willingly Clement would that moment have changed places with the
prisoner! He was looking at Fleurange with sorrowful admiration when she
resumed: “I thought it would not be difficult to find some one travelling
to Russia with whom I could make the journey.”
“Go with strangers on so long and tedious a journey! That is impossible,
Gabrielle, more impossible than the rest.”
“Ah!” cried Fleurange then, “with what confidence I would have had
recourse to the kind friend Heaven once sent me. I feel his loss more now
than ever.”
“You mean Doctor Leblanc?—Yes, I render justice to his memory. I am sure
his devotedness would not have failed you under these circumstances. But
you try my patience indeed, Gabrielle; you are too cruel.”
“Clement!—”
“What! you need a friend who has the unpretending merit of being faithful,
devoted, capable of protecting you in so difficult a journey, and ready to
remain with you till—till he can follow you no longer! And at such a time
you do not deign even to remember you have a brother! And do you not see
that, in thinking of others, you overlook what is at once his privilege
and his duty?”
“Clement! my dear Clement!” said Fleurange, with tearful surprise, “what
do you say? and what answer can I make? Assuredly I relied, and do rely,
on you as a brother, and yet I confess I should not have ventured to ask
you to make such a journey with me.”
Clement smiled bitterly. He could not help comparing what she was ready to
do for another with what she thought him incapable of doing for her.
“Well, my cousin,” said he coldly, “you were wrong; it seems to me it was
the very time to remember the promise you made me. As to me, I am merely
faithful to the engagement I made the same day, that is all.”
“God bless you, Clement!—bless and reward you!” said she, much affected.
“Yes, I acknowledge I was wrong. I should have known there was no kindness
on earth equal to yours.”
She held out her hand. He pressed it in his without saying a word, and
without looking at her; then they separated. Fleurange longed to be alone.
Clement went to fulfil her commission to his mother.
XLVI.
It was the professor’s regular hour of repose in the latter part of the
morning. Everything was quiet around him. His wife was seated at her wheel
in the next room ready to answer the slightest call; for Madame Dornthal
knew how to handle the spindle, and, in accordance with a custom kept up
longer in Germany than anywhere else, had spun with her own hands the two
finest pieces of linen for her daughter’s trousseau. She looked up as her
son entered, and saw by his face that something agitated him. She gave him
an inquiring look.
“I wish to speak to you, mother,” said he, in a low tone. “Let us go where
we can talk freely.”
Madame Dornthal stopped spinning, immediately rose, and, ordering a young
servant to take her place and call her if needed, she followed her son,
softly closing the door behind her.
The opposite door, on the same corridor, opened into Clement’s chamber.
They went there. Clement began to relate the conversation he had just had.
His first words were met by an exclamation of surprise, after which Madame
Dornthal listened without interrupting him. Her face by turns expressed
interest, pity, and admiration, as he spoke; and it was with tearful eyes
and a faltering voice she finally replied:
“My consent and blessing, do you say? You ask them for her? Poor child!
how can I refuse my blessing to such devotedness! But my consent,” she
continued gravely—“I cannot give that unconditionally.”
“What! mother,” said Clement earnestly, “can you think of refusing to let
her go?”
“No, dear Clement; but I can refuse to let you accompany her.”
Clement started. “Mother!” cried he with surprise.
Madame Dornthal brushed back Clement’s hair with her hand, and looked him
in the face, as we know she loved to do when moved to unusual tenderness
towards him, then slowly said:
“Alone to St. Petersburg with Gabrielle! Have you reflected on this,
Clement?”
Clement’s face slightly flushed, but his eyes met his mother’s with a
beautiful expression of candor and purity. “Mother,” said he, “Gabrielle
looks upon me as a brother. As for me”—he hesitated a moment and turned
pale, but continued in a firm tone—“as for me, I regard her now as the
wife of another. I hope you do not think it possible I can ever forget
it!”
Madame Dornthal’s eyes filled with tears, and for a moment she looked at
her son silently. Never had she loved him so much! Never had she so fully
comprehended how worthy of affection he was! But the hour had come—perhaps
the only period in life when the most passionate maternal love is
powerless, and can do nothing, absolutely nothing, to comfort her
suffering child!
She realized this; she felt she must respect her son’s secret sorrow, and
repress the impulse of her own affection. Neither compassion nor sympathy
could be of any avail at such a time. She therefore refrained with the
sure instinct of a responsive heart, and Clement’s agitation soon
subsided. He resumed in a calm tone:
“If you think it indispensable on her account, or on account of others,
that a third person should go with us, then, mother, we will try to find
some one.”
“Ah!” said Madame Dornthal, “if a cherished and paramount obligation did
not retain me here, you would not have far to go for some one.”
Clement took his mother’s hand and kissed it. “I thought so,” said he,
smiling. Then he continued: “We shall find some one, you may be sure, if
necessary. For the moment we will leave it; we have something else to do.”
And so to one after another the astonishing news was announced by him and
his mother: first to the professor, and then to all the other members of
the family. We will not describe their feelings individually, we will not
tell how many tears were shed, what a succession of emotions poor
Fleurange had to pass through that day. We will only say that, on the
whole, they were all much more affected than surprised. So pure an
atmosphere pervaded this unpretending household that everything beautiful
and noble was at once perceived and comprehended without difficulty. To
lose this charming sister, who had grown dearer and dearer, was too
painful to be concealed, but Madame Dornthal’s daughters, like her, were
ready for any sacrifice. Therefore the young girl felt that they entered
into her feelings, and would regret, without blaming her. This sympathy
not only increased her affection for those she was to leave, but gave
great support to her courage.
The only person who did not at first participate in this general heroism
was Mademoiselle Josephine. The knowledge of Fleurange’s resolution threw
her into a state of stupefaction that would have been comical under any
other circumstances. Her eyes wandered from one to another with a
perplexed expression of consternation, as if imploring an explanation
which would enable her to comprehend so extraordinary a fact. When, at her
usual time, she joined the family circle in the evening, she was still
speechless. She took her place among them, knitting‐work in hand, without
saying a word or looking at any one.
The professor, cautiously informed of this new separation, heard it with
resignation—a feeling that had grown upon him with respect to everything,
in consequence of the increasing conviction that he had a long time to
suffer and should never be well. Fleurange was now sitting near him.
Madame Dornthal and her daughters were at work beside the table where sat
the silent Josephine. Clement alone sat apart, talking in a low tone with
his little sister on his knee. She was in her turn asking an explanation
which no one had thought of giving her. While he was replying in a
whisper, Frida’s large eyes opened to their utmost extent, her little
mouth contracted, and a flood of tears inundated her face; then she threw
both her arms around her brother’s neck, and said in broken accents:
“O Clement! how can I do without her?—I love her so much!—I love her so
much!—”
Clement hid his face in the child’s long curls, pressed her in his arms,
and kissed her affectionately, but he could not succeed in calming her
till he promised that Gabrielle should return, and that he would bring her
back. At this assurance, the child’s tears ceased to flow, she became
quiet, and remained serious and thoughtful in her brother’s arms.
All at once Mademoiselle Josephine broke her long silence: “Siberia is a
great way off, is it not?” said she.
A general smile accompanied the reply to this question, which was the
first‐fruit of the elderly maiden’s prolonged deliberations.
“And is Clement going to Siberia, also?”
“No; he is going to St. Petersburg.”
“And how far is to St. Petersburg?”
They replied by giving her a full account of the way Fleurange would take
to reach the end of her first journey. Being enlightened on this point,
mademoiselle relapsed into her former silence, but not for a long time. A
new idea suddenly occurred to her. She snatched off her glasses hastily.
“But those two children cannot travel all alone!” she exclaimed.
Madame Dornthal and Fleurange looked up, and Clement gave a start which
disturbed the sleep into which Frida had fallen: every one became
attentive.
“No, certainly not,” said the old lady earnestly. “How would that look, I
beg to know?—Excuse me, Clement, you know how I esteem and love you; but
then, my good friend, how old are you, pray? And as to Gabrielle, besides
her age (which is equally objectionable), she has, as I have told her a
thousand times, a dangerous face—a face which will not allow her to do a
great many things permissible to others not older than she—I tell you the
truth, and defy any one to deny it.”
No one attempted it, for the thought just expressed so characteristically
was the opinion of all.
“Therefore,” continued mademoiselle, “Gabrielle must be accompanied by
some respectable person. Once more pardon, Clement; this does not imply
you can be dispensed with (you are a protector not to be easily replaced);
but, my dear friend, _les convenances_ require she should have at the same
time an elderly and reliable companion. Now, I propose that this reliable
and elderly person be—myself!—”
There was a general exclamation at these unexpected words. Every one spoke
at once, and for some moments no one could be heard. The good Mademoiselle
Josephine, however, comprehended at once that her proposition was
generally approved. But before any one uttered a word, before Clement even
had time to go and grasp her hand, Fleurange sprang forward, and, throwing
her arms around her old friend’s neck, exclaimed: “Oh! how shall I thank
you?—May God reward you for all it is his will I should owe you!”
This signified that she accepted her generous offer without any formality.
A few hours previous, her aunt, we know, had attached a condition to her
consent, and this was preoccupying Fleurange when her excellent old friend
suddenly decided the matter in so unexpected a way.
From this moment, everything was plain to Mademoiselle Josephine. The
opportunity she so greatly desired had not been long delayed. In this
extraordinary phase of Gabrielle’s life she found an opportunity of
manifesting the greatest devotedness, and of retarding still longer the
hour of separation from her beloved _protégée_. She felt comforted, and
was at once restored to her usual placid good humor. There remained,
however, more than one misconception about the whole arrangement which she
could not seem to clear up.
“Why,” said she an hour after, when, following her servant, who had come
for her with a lantern, she took Clement’s arm to go home—“why cannot we
also go to Siberia with her, if not disagreeable to this M. le Comte,
whose name I can never pronounce?”
Clement could not repress a smile at this, but there was too much
bitterness in it for him to wish to reply. She did not perceive it. She
was only thinking aloud without regard to him, and, following the course
of her reflections, she soon made another, which, far from exciting the
least temptation to smile, made Clement shudder from head to foot.
“If,” she said, after a few moments’ silence—“if this Monsieur George is
only worthy of the sacrifice she is going to make for him!—If after
leaving us all—us who love her so much—she does not hereafter discover he
does not love her as much as we!”
XLVII.
Clement left Mademoiselle Josephine at her door, and hastened back,
struggling against the new tempest excited in his breast by the words he
had just heard. Hitherto, in consequence of the impressions left by his
meeting with Count George, and the prestige he had acquired in his eyes
from the very attachment of his cousin, Clement had always regarded him as
a superior being, to whom it merely seemed right, in the unpretending
simplicity of his heart, that his humble affection should be sacrificed.
To doubt him worthy of her—to fear that, beloved by her, he could cease to
love in return, had never occurred to him, and mademoiselle had quite
unwittingly thrust a warm blade into his bleeding heart. To admit such a
thought would absolutely shake the foundations of his devotion and add
despair to abnegation. He therefore repelled the thought with a kind of
terror, and by way of reassuring himself he began to recall all the
remembrances that once were so torturing. He took pleasure in dreaming of
the devotion of which his rival was the object, the better to persuade
himself it was absolutely contrary to the nature of things he could ever
be ungrateful.
Fleurange’s reflections at the same hour were of a different nature.
Somewhat recovered from the successive emotions of the day, she could now
freely indulge in the secret joy with which her heart overflowed. She was
at last free!—free to think of George—at liberty to love him and to
confess it! The feeling so long repressed, fought against, and concealed,
could now be indulged in without restraint! A few weeks more, and she
would be with him!—She would be his!—All horror of the fate she was going
to participate in was lost in the thought of bestowing on him, in the hour
of abandonment and misfortune, all the treasures of her devotion and love,
and this appeared a sweeter realization of her dreams than if united to
him in the midst of all the _éclat_ that rank and fortune surrounded him
with!—
Ah! Madre Maddalena was right in thinking hers was not a heart called to
the supreme honor of loving God alone, of bestowing on him that ineffable
love which does not suffer the contact of any other affection, that unique
love which, if it has not always been supreme, blots out, as soon as it
springs up, all other love, as the sun causes the darkness to flee away
and return no more to its presence!... “Whosoever loveth, knoweth the cry
of this voice.”(132)
It was this voice which spoke directly to Madre Maddalena’s heart.
Fleurange did not hear it so distinctly, even while silently listening to
it apart from the noise of the world, though by no means deaf to the
divine inspirations. She was pure: she was pious and steadfast: she had a
fervent and courageous heart—a heart shut against evil, which preferred
nothing to God, but which was ardently susceptible to affection when she
could yield to it without remorse. This is doubtless the appointed way for
nearly all, even among the best, and it is the ordinary path of virtue.
But we would observe here that it is not the path of exquisite and
inexpressible happiness already referred to, and we moreover add that,
when a soul is inclined to make an idol of the object of its love, and
place it on too frail a foundation, it is not rare that
suffering—suffering whose severity is in proportion to the beauty and
purity of the soul—leads it back sooner or later to that point where it
sees the true centre to which, even unknown to ourselves, we all aspire,
and which all human passion, even the most noble and most legitimate in
the world, makes us lose sight of.
Fleurange perhaps had a confused intuition of this, and it made her look
upon the frightful conditions on which happiness was vouchsafed her as a
kind of expiation, which she accepted with joy, hoping thereby to assure
the permanence of the love that overruled all other sentiments.
After Gabrielle’s conversation with Princess Catherine, the state of the
latter underwent a salutary change. Her physical sufferings, and her grief
itself, seemed suspended. A fresh activity was aroused as soon as she
perceived a way of exerting herself for her son, and entering into almost
direct communication with him. Let us add to these motives the princess’
natural taste for the extraordinary, and we shall comprehend that
Fleurange’s heroic resolution afforded her an interesting distraction,
and, at the same time, a source of activity which was useful and
beneficial.
She made every arrangement herself. They were forced to allow her to
direct all the preparations for the long journey the young girl was going
to undertake. She and her elderly companion were to go as far as St.
Petersburg in one of the princess’ best carriages, and everything that
would enable Fleurange to bear the severe cold on the way was anxiously
prepared. At St. Petersburg, it was decided she should take up her
residence in the princess’ house until the day—the terrible day of the
departure that must follow.
All this was transmitted by the princess to the Marquis Adelardi, whom she
charged to receive and protect Gabrielle. Moreover, he must find means of
announcing to George the unexpected alleviation Heaven granted to his
misfortunes.
As to the steps to be taken in order to obtain the necessary permission
for the accomplishment of this strange lugubrious marriage, and for the
newly‐made wife to accompany her condemned husband, the princess thought
the most successful course would be to obtain for Gabrielle an audience of
the empress.
“Either I am very much deceived,” wrote the princess, “or her heart will
be touched by such heroic devotion, by Gabrielle’s appearance, and the
charm there is about her, and perhaps even by a remnant of pity for my
poor George. Something tells me this pity still survives the favor he
showed himself unworthy of, and that the day will perchance come when I
can appeal to her with success. Obtain my son’s pardon!—behold him
again!—Yes, in spite of everything, I hope, I believe, I may say I feel
sure, that sooner or later this happiness will be granted me, unless so
much sorrow shortens my life. Nevertheless, the effect of this terrible
sentence, should he incur its penalty only for a day, will never be
effaced. I feel it. My hopes for him have all vanished, never to return.
How, then, could I hesitate to accept Gabrielle’s generous sacrifice—to
accept it at first with a transport of enthusiasm which, I confess, I was
seized with when, with indescribable words and accents, she so
unexpectedly begged my consent on her knees, but afterwards deliberately,
and, in consideration of the strange and painful circumstances in which we
are situated, with sincere gratitude?”
“No doubt,” she added, with an instinctive and natural feeling, never
wholly or for a long time dormant—“no doubt, when the time comes which I
look forward to with hope—the time when he will be restored to me, other
regrets will revive. But then, his condemnation, only too certain, puts an
end to all hope in that direction. The conspirator acquitted, or even
pardoned, might win a heart in which love perhaps still pleads his cause;
but the haughty Vera will never bestow a thought on the returned exile
from Siberia. I resign myself, therefore—and, after all, Gabrielle is
charming, and, as far as I know, he never loved any one else as well. You
will perhaps say that a quick fire is soon extinguished in George’s heart.
I know that well, but it is very certain that this young girl’s devotion
is calculated to foster the love she has inspired, and even to revive it
if deadened by the revolutionary tempest he has passed through. As for me,
I know, if anything can make me endure this fearful separation, it is the
thought that this beautiful and noble creature, who is better fitted than
any one else to preserve him from despair, will be with him in his exile.”
In the princess’ eyes, Gabrielle was, in spite of the pure generosity of
her love, only a _pis‐aller_, or rather she was only something relatively
to herself. She overwhelmed her to‐day with attentions and caresses as
before she abruptly dismissed her, and as she would be quite ready to do
again if a sudden turn of fortune brought about chances more favorable to
her wishes. But, even if all these sentiments were evident, they could not
change Gabrielle’s determination or diminish her courage. Her fate was
already united in heart to George’s. Everything but this thought, and the
anticipated joys and sacrifices connected with it, became indifferent to
her. Calm and serene, she made all the preparations for her departure
without haste or anxiety, and was equally mindful of her dear old friend,
for whom she reserved the rich furs and all the other things which the
princess had been careful to provide for herself as a protection against
the cold.
The days, however, passed rapidly away, and as the time of separation
approached, more courage was required for those she was to leave behind
than for herself.
And when the farewell hour at length arrived, and she knelt in church with
Clement, to utter a last prayer, the All‐Seeing Eye saw to which of the
two belonged at that moment the palm of devotedness and sacrifice.
Part Fourth. The Immolation.
L’amour vrai, c’est l’oubli de soi.
XLVIII.
Our travellers were already far away, having pursued their journey for
more than twelve days without stopping. In spite of the increasing
severity of the weather, Fleurange and her companion went as far as
Berlin, and even beyond, without suffering from the cold—thanks to the
numerous precautions taken by the princess to protect them from it. But at
Königsberg they were obliged to leave the comfortable carriage in which
they had travelled thus far, for they wished, above all things, to travel
fast, and they had the Strand to cross (the only way to St. Petersburgh at
that season), that is to say, the narrow tongue of sandy soil that extends
along the Baltic as far as the arm of the sea which separates Prussia from
Courland like a wide canal, and then forms the basin or inland lake of
Kurishe Haff. This bounds the Strand at the right, whereas at the left its
dreary coast is shut in between the sea and the high dunes of sand which
ward off the winds from the scattered habitations of this desolate region,
all situated so as to face the lake and turn their backs on the sea.
The princess’ carriage remained, therefore, at Königsberg, to await the
return of Fleurange’s travelling companions. She took with her, however,
the rich furs, so warm and light, with which she had been provided, to
wrap around Mademoiselle Josephine, in spite of her resistance. As for
herself, she reserved a cloak of sufficiently thick material to protect
her from the cold, not wishing to accustom herself to comforts she must
afterwards be deprived of.
The change from one carriage to another was promptly effected, and the
small calèche in which they were closely seated was soon on its way over
the Strand towards Memel, which they hoped to reach the same evening.
Clement, in front, gazed with secret horror on the desolate aspect of
nature. Everything around him seemed a fitting prelude to that Inferno of
ice towards which he was escorting her whom he would gladly have sheltered
from too rude a summer breeze.
The weather was not as cold as on the previous day. The gray clouds
charged with rain seemed to indicate a sudden thaw, and through them the
sun, veiled as before a coming storm, cast a pale light over the dark
waves and the sandy shore. The postilion, to favor his horses, rode so
close to the water that the waves broke over their pathway. To the right
rose the dismal sand‐hills, and on that side, as well as before them,
nothing was to be seen but sand as far as the eye could reach; to the
left, nothing but the tumultuous and threatening waves. Not a house far or
near, not a tree, not a blade of grass, not a living creature, save now
and then some sea‐birds skimming wildly over the waves, adding another
melancholy feature to the dreariness of the scene, which with the storm
was a sufficiently exact image of the mental condition of him who was
regarding it.
As to Fleurange, instead of looking around, she closed her eyes, the
better to wander in imagination among the cherished scenes of the past and
those she looked forward to. She beheld again the blue waters of the
Mediterranean, and the radiant sky whose azure they reflect, and the
graceful undulations of the mountains veiled in a pearly mist; then
Florence, sparkling and poetical in the golden rays of departing light,
and beside her she heard a voice murmuring words once dangerous to hear,
but now delicious to recall and repeat to herself. How much she then
suffered in struggling against her own impulses! Recalling those
sufferings, how could she fear those she was about to brave?—sufferings
repaid by the immense happiness of loving!—of loving without fear!—loving
without remorse!—Besides, they were both young.—His mother’s hopes might
be realized.—Yes, perhaps some day they would again behold, and together,
that charming region, and then in the restored brilliancy of his former
position, with her beside him, he would be convinced, convinced beyond
doubt, that that was not the attraction which had won her, but really
himself, and only him, whom she loved!
Yes, she was now happy; no fears troubled her; she was full of hope; and,
as it is said of the only great and true love that it “believes it may and
can do all things,”(133) so earthly love which is its pale but faithful
reflection, made every earthly happiness appear possible and certain to
Fleurange, inasmuch as the greatest of all was in store for her.
Clement was still absorbed in silent contemplation, and Fleurange in her
sweet dreams, when Mademoiselle Josephine awoke from the drowsiness
favored by the ample furs in which she was wrapped, which not only
excluded the air but the sight of outward objects. She looked up and
around for the first time that morning, and gave a sudden start of
surprise.
“Ah! mon Dieu! mon Dieu!—” she cried with alarm. “Gabrielle, what is
that?”
Fleurange, suddenly recalled from the land of dreams to what was passing
around her, replied: “It is the sea. Did you not notice it before?”
“The sea!—the sea!—” repeated Mademoiselle Josephine, as if stupefied.
“No, I had not seen it, and never imagined we should go on the sea in a
carriage.—What a country! What a journey!” murmured she to herself,
endeavoring to conceal the terror she had not ceased to feel as they
proceeded on their way and found everything so different from France, and
consequently the more alarming. But in her way she made an act of heroism
in trying to overcome the surprise and fear caused by so many strange
sights. She was especially desirous of not being troublesome to her
companions. “Besides,” thought she, “if these two children are not afraid,
I must at least appear as brave as they.” Nevertheless, she could not help
repeating with astonishment: “Going on the sea in a carriage—it is really
very singular!”
Fleurange laughed. “Here, dear mademoiselle, look on this side, and you
will see we are not on the sea, but only on the shore.”
“Very near it, however, for we are riding through the water.”
“It is only the waves that break on the shore and then recede. There, you
see the land, now.”
Mademoiselle felt somewhat reassured. She looked to the right, she looked
to the left, she looked before her, then turned her eyes towards the
gloomy immensity of the sea beside which they were riding.
“Oh! how dismal, how repulsive it is,” she exclaimed, at last.
Fleurange now gazed around. Her thoughts were no longer wandering. “The
scene is indeed singularly gloomy,” said she. “The leaden sky—that mock
sun—the dark waters of that melancholy sea, and the interminable sand.
Yes, the whole region is frightful!” And she slightly shuddered.
“I have always been told,” said mademoiselle, “that the sea was glorious;
but it seems it was a traveller’s tale for the benefit of those who never
go from home.”
“No, no,” cried Fleurange, “do not say so. The sea is really beautiful
where it is as blue as the heavens above, and where its shores are
luxuriant with trees, plants, and flowers; but not here, I acknowledge.”
And, in spite of herself, the sweet impression of her recent dreams,
caused by the contrast, entirely vanished. Her heart sank. She became
silent, and for a long time none of the three travellers spoke.
The Strand, about twelve or fourteen leagues in length, was divided into
several stages by post‐stations on the other side of the sand‐hills,
whence were brought fresh horses. A carriage could not approach the
stations on account of the deep sand, and when they paused a few moments
to exchange horses, the travellers were only made aware of a neighboring
habitation by a peal of the horn which responded afar off to that of the
postilion as he announced his approach. While they were thus halting at
the last stage, Fleurange noticed Clement’s anxious look towards the sea
and the threatening sky. The wind grew stronger and stronger, and the
waves mounted higher. A violent storm was evidently at hand. She beckoned
to him, and said in a tone inaudible to her companion: “We are going to
have bad weather, are we not?”
“Yes,” replied he, in the same tone. “It will be dark in about an hour,
and I fear we may find the crossing rough and difficult. I do not say this
on your account,” added he, with a somewhat forced smile. “I know well I
am not allowed to tremble for you, however great the danger, but I fear
you may find it difficult by‐and‐by to reassure your poor friend.”
He mounted to his seat again, ordered the postilion to hurry, and the
little calèche set off as speedily as possible to avoid the enormous waves
which threatened to upset them. In spite of their haste, night came on,
and the storm set in before they arrived at the ferry across the arm of
the sea which connects the Kurische Haff with the Baltic. The passage was
short but dangerous. They could not stop an instant, for, though well
sheltered here, the sea rose higher and higher, and the large boat that
was to take the carriage across was difficult to manage in bad weather.
They therefore rapidly descended the bank to the boat, and Mademoiselle
Josephine was roused from the drowsiness produced by the motion of the
carriage, by a sudden and violent shock, accompanied by cries and
vociferations mingled with the roar of the sea and the frightful howling
of the wind.
“O Jesus, my Saviour!” prayed the poor demoiselle, clasping her hands with
terror: “the time, then, has come for us to die!”
The rain fell in torrents. The waves broke over the boat. Darkness added
its horrors to the danger, which, to her inexperienced eyes, appeared to
be extreme. The sweet voice of her young companion vainly sought to
encourage her. By the light of the lanterns carried from side to side to
light the boatman, she soon distinguished Clement standing beside the
carriage, holding up a sail with a firm hand to screen them on the side
most exposed to the waves.
“Poor Clement,” she exclaimed, “it is all over with us, then.”
“No, not quite, unfortunately,” replied Clement. “It will be at least half
an hour before we reach the shore.”
“The shore!—the shore!—He imagines, then, we shall reach it alive?” said
mademoiselle, hiding her face on Fleurange’s shoulder.
“Yes, yes,” replied the latter, pressing her in her arms. “Dear friend,
there is no danger, I assure you. Believe me, I am only alarmed to see you
so terrified.”
“Pardon me, child,” said the other, raising her head. “I resolved you
should know nothing about it. But this time, Gabrielle, you cannot say we
are not crossing the sea in a carriage,” continued she, with renewed alarm
as she felt the increased motion of the waves.
Fleurange embraced her, repeating the same reassuring words. The poor old
lady made no reply, she was trying to overcome her terror by a genuine act
of heroism. “Danger or not, it is like what I have always imagined a
terrible tempest, destructive of human life. But then,” murmured she still
lower, “God overrules all, and nothing happens without his consent.”
Her physical nature was weak, but her soul was strong, and piety, a
support in every trial, served now to calm her. She began to pray
mentally, and did not utter another word till they reached the shore.
XLIX.
But a far greater danger awaited our travellers beyond Memel, whence they
continued their journey the following day in sledges. The first,
containing their baggage, preceded them several hours in advance to
announce their arrival at the post‐stations; the second somewhat resembled
a clumsy boat on runners, surmounted by a hood, and protected by a boot of
thick fur. It was in this sledge Fleurange and her companion were stowed
away. They were obliged to lie nearly down to avoid the piercing wind. The
third vehicle, entirely uncovered, was very light, and so small that it
barely contained Clement, in front of whom sat a young fellow wrapped in a
caftan, strong and vigorous, but with a slender form quite adapted to the
seat he occupied and the sledge he drove. With this light equipage Clement
went like the wind, sometimes preceding the other sledge as a guide, and
then returning to accompany it and watch over its safety.
The cold had become as intense as ever within a few hours. The pouring
rain of the previous night after several days of thawing weather, alarming
at that season, caused great gullies in the road, and endangered the
passage over the rivers, at that time of the year, on the ice. Though
scarcely four o’clock, the short day was nearly ended, and daylight was
declining when our travellers came to the river they were obliged to cross
in order to reach the small town of Y——. It was a deep, rapid stream,
which at the beginning of every winter was encumbered with thick cakes of
floating ice before the surface of its waters was congealed, and which, at
the approach of spring, was also the first to resume its course and break
the icy fetters that confined its current. This river was therefore almost
always difficult to pass over, and very often dangerous, and, when the
travellers came to the only place where it could be crossed, they felt
they had reason to be anxious about the thaw. As soon as Clement cast his
eyes on the river, he thought there were really some alarming indications.
He at once saw there was no time to be lost, and drove directly on to the
ice. Then he stopped, and hurriedly said to the young guide: “I think we
should let the heaviest sledge go first: we will follow, if we can.”
“Yes, if we can,” said the other.
The order was instantly given, and the sledge that contained Fleurange and
her companion passed rapidly on. But it had scarcely gone ten or twelve
feet from the shore before an ominous cracking was heard. The frightened
driver stopped. Clement imperiously ordered him to proceed without a
second’s delay. But, instead of obeying, the driver, seized with fear,
jumped out on the ice and sprang back to the shore he had just left. This
jar increased the breaking of the ice which had already commenced. That
next the shore gave way and began to move with the current, leaving an
open gulf between the land and the still solid ice where our travellers
remained. Great promptness of decision was necessary at a moment of such
sudden and extreme danger, and orders as prompt as the judgment.
“Descend, Gabrielle,” said Clement, with authority.
The young girl instantly sprang from the sledge. Clement took Mademoiselle
Josephine in his arms and placed her beside Fleurange.
“Get into my sledge, Gabrielle,” said he calmly, but very quickly. “As
soon as you are safe, the sledge shall return for your friend. There is
time, but you must not hesitate.”
“I do not hesitate,” said Fleurange. “I shall remain myself: she shall be
saved first.”
Clement shuddered. But there was not time to contest the point. Besides,
he knew from the tone of Fleurange’s voice that her decision was
irrevocable, and he yielded without another word. He placed poor
mademoiselle, who was incapable of comprehending what was transpiring, in
the light sledge, gave the order—obeyed at once—and it darted off. The
sound of the bells on the horses’ necks was heard for a few moments, and
then died away.
Fleurange and Clement were left alone. Night was gathering around them.
Not far off could be heard the slow cracking of the ice beneath the heavy
weight of the sledge at the edge of the first opening. The noise
increased, and the ice broke away the second time. The huge mass, thus
detached, quivered, then, like the first, slowly descended the river,
carrying the sledge with it. The opening became frightfully large. Clement
looked before him to see if he could venture, by taking Fleurange in his
arms, to cross on foot the long interval that separated them from the
opposite shore. But it was too dark to distinguish the path, and, if they
left that, death was inevitable. They might lose the only chance of being
saved—by awaiting the return of the sledge. And yet they could not remain
long where they were. The ice was already loosening around them. In a few
moments there was another cracking, and it gave way before them. The
fragment on which they stood became a kind of floating island. Clement saw
at a glance the only course to be taken. He did not hesitate. He seized
Fleurange in his arms, and, by the uncertain light of the snow, sprang
boldly across the opening before them. They were once more on the solid
ice, but who could tell how long it would be so? Who knew whether the
sledge would succeed in reaching them again? Perhaps it was swallowed up
in the impenetrable darkness, or left on the ice broken up around it.
Otherwise it should have returned.
These thoughts crowded into Clement’s mind faster than they can be
written. Fleurange, silent but courageous, was equally sensible of their
danger. She bent down her head and silently prayed. Leaning thus against
Clement, her hair brushing his very face, she might have heard the rapid
pulsations of his heart and felt the trembling of the arm that supported
her, and the hand that pressed her own. But he did not utter a word. His
sensations were strange. A desire to save her doubled his strength and
courage, and quickened all his faculties. At the same time, he was
conscious of a transport he could not control—that she was there alone
with him, that they were to die together, and she would never be able to
fulfil the odious design of her journey!
But this moment of selfish love and despair was short. His thoughts
returned to her—her alone. He must save her—save her at whatever cost. But
how? It seemed as if an hour had passed away. It was useless to hope for
the return of the sledge.—He thought he felt the ice quiver anew beneath
his feet.—He looked at the dark current behind. Should he jump into the
water, and endeavor to regain the shore they had left, but now no longer
visible?—He hesitated a moment—no, that would expose her to certain death,
and a more speedy one than now threatened them. It would be better to
remain where they were, and endure the fearful suspense to the end.
They therefore remained motionless for some minutes more of silent agony.
Notwithstanding her courage, the young girl’s strength began to fail. Her
sight grew dim. There was a strange hum in her ears. Then her head fell on
her cousin’s shoulder.
“Oh! I am dying,” murmured she. “May God restore you to your mother,
Clement!”
At this moment of supreme anguish, Clement raised his eyes to heaven, and
the cry of love and despair that rose from his heart was a prayer as
ardent and pure as was ever uttered by childlike faith. He felt he was
heard. Yes, almost at the same instant.—Was he mistaken? Afar off, so far
he could hardly catch the sound, he thought he heard the jingle of bells.
He listened without breathing.—O Divine Goodness! is it true?—Yes, yes,
there is no longer any doubt. The sound becomes more distinct. It
approaches.—It is really the sledge.—It is coming rapidly; it reaches
them; it stops; it is really there!
“Blessed be God! she is saved!” was Clement’s cry. But Fleurange, overcome
by weakness and terror, was already senseless in his arms.
He bore her to the sledge, and as he placed her within, but half conscious
of what was occurring, he pressed her once more to his heart with
unrestrained tenderness, and said: “Adieu, dear Gabrielle. Regret not that
I die here. God is good. He spares me the sorrow of living without you.”
And he added, in a lower tone: “Gabrielle, I have loved you more than
anything else in the world. I can acknowledge it now, for death is at
hand.” Then he stepped back, and ordered the young guide to hurry away.
His first words had only been indistinctly heard by Fleurange, as in a
dream; but she clearly understood this precise order. It brought her at
once to herself.
“Away!” she exclaimed. “Away without you! What do you mean?”
“It must be so,” said Clement. “The sledge can only hold you and the
guide. Any additional weight would be dangerous. Go, without an instant’s
delay.”
“Never!” said Fleurange resolutely. “Clement, we will all three die here,
rather than leave you!”
“You must go!” repeated Clement energetically. “Go, I tell you! The sledge
will return for me.”
“It will be impossible to cross a third time,” said the young conductor.
Clement knew it. He only replied by imperiously ordering him to start.
Fleurange, no less firm than Clement, rose and checked the hand that held
the reins. The driver at once jumped down from his seat. “Do you know how
to drive?” said he.
“Yes.”
“Well, I know how to swim. Here, get in quick.—Keep that for me,”
continued he, hastily taking off his caftan and throwing it into the
sledge. “Do not be uneasy. I shall get it again to‐morrow. I know the way
and am familiar with the river.”
And without hesitating he plunged into the dark current, while Clement
sprang to his seat in the sledge.
With a boldness that is the only chance of safety in such a case, he
forced the horses into a gallop. They thus traversed with giddy rapidity
the considerable distance that separated them from the other shore. The
ice, jarred by the two former trips, cracked beneath the horse’s feet. To
slacken their course an instant would have submerged them in the river,
but the sledge flew rather than ran on the ice, and the hand that guided
it was firm. They arrived at the goal in less than half an hour, and
Fleurange, pale, exhausted, and chilled, fell into the arms of her dear
old friend.
The latter was quietly awaiting them in a warm, well‐lighted room at the
post‐station, and supper had been ordered, but Fleurange was neither able
to talk nor eat. Mademoiselle saw that instant repose was absolutely
necessary. She only persuaded her to take some hot mulled wine before
going to sleep, and then went to join Clement in another room, where she
learned, for the first time, all the danger she, as well as the rest, had
escaped.
After the experience of the past day, Mademoiselle Josephine resolved
never to manifest any astonishment at whatever might occur in this strange
journey. She would go in a balloon without wincing, as readily as in a
sledge, at Clement’s slightest injunction, for he seemed more and more to
merit boundless confidence.
Perhaps, at the end of this terrible day, Clement did not give himself so
much credit. He recalled what he had dared say to Fleurange in the height
of their danger, and anxiously wondered if she heard and understood the
words that rose from his heart at the moment death seemed so inevitable.
Was she conscious when he uttered that last farewell? He did not know, and
it was natural he should await the following day with anxiety.
But he was then reassured by finding his cousin as calm and frank as ever.
She evidently had not understood, and probably not heard his words, or
thought them sufficiently explained by the intensity of emotion naturally
irrepressible at such a moment of extreme danger. The young girl was
forced to rest a whole day to recover from her exhaustion. But it was
their last halting‐place, and, when they resumed their journey, it was not
to stop again till they arrived at its end.
To Be Continued.
Sayings Of John Climacus.
If any one has conceived a real hatred of the world, he is emancipated by
this very hatred from all sadness. But if he shall cherish an attachment
to things that are visible, he carries about with him a source of sadness
and melancholy.
It is impossible that they who apply their whole mind to the science of
salvation, should not make advancement. Some are permitted to perceive
their progress, whilst from others, by a particular dispensation of
Providence, it is altogether concealed.
He who strenuously labors to conquer his passions, and to draw nearer and
nearer to God, believes that every day in which he has to suffer no
humiliation is to him a grievous loss.
Repentance is the daughter of hope, and the enemy of despair.
Before the commission of sin, the devil represents God as infinitely
merciful; but after its perpetration, as inexorable and without pity.
A mother will sometimes hide herself from her child, to watch its
eagerness in seeking her, and she is exceedingly pleased to observe it
seeking for her with sorrow and anxiety. By this means she wins its love,
and binds it inseparably to her heart, that it may never be alienated from
her in affection. “He that hath ears to hear,” saith our Lord, “let him
hear.”
Meekness is an immutability of soul, which ever continues the same,
whether amidst the injuries or the applaudits of men.
Dante’s Purgatorio. Canto Fifth.
[NOTE.—In this Canto, Dante introduces three other spirits, who
relate the manner of their departure from the body, and recommend
themselves to his prayers, that their penal sufferings may be
alleviated.
The first of these penitents is Jacopo del Cassero, a townsman of
Fano in Romagna, who, flying towards Padua from the vengeance of
one of the tyrannous Este family, was waylaid and murdered in the
marshes near Oriago.
The second is Buonconte, son of Guido di Montefeltro. He was a
fellow‐soldier with Dante in the battle of Campaldino, and there
slain; but what became of his body was never known until this
imaginary narration.
The third is the noble lady of Sienna, Pia de’ Tolommei, whose
story, told by Dante in three lines, has formed the subject of a
five‐act tragedy, recently illustrated in this country by the
genius of Ristori.—TRANS.]
Already parted from those shades, I went
Following the footsteps of my Guide, when one
Behind me towards my form his finger bent,
Exclaiming—“See! no ray falls from the sun
To the left hand of him that walks below!
And sure! he moveth like a living man.”
Mine eyes I turned, at hearing him say so,
And saw them with a gaze all wonder scan
Now me, still me, and now the broken light
My body caused. The Master then to me:
“Why let thy wonder keep thee from the height
To drag so slowly? what concerns it thee
What here is whispered? only follow thou
After my steps, and let the crowd talk on:
Stand like a tower, firm‐based, that will not bow
Its head to breath of winds that soon are gone.
The man o’er whose thought second thought hath sway,
Wide of his mark, is ever sure to miss,
Because one force the other wears away.”
What could I answer but—“I come”—to this?
I said it something sprinkled with the hue
Which, in less faults, excuseth one from blame;
Meanwhile across the mountain‐side there drew,
Just in our front, a train that as they came
Sang _Miserere_, verse by verse. When they
Observed my form, and noticed that I gave
No passage through me to the solar ray,
Into a long, hoarse “O!” they changed their stave.
And two, as envoys, ran up with demand,
“In what condition is it that ye go?”
And my Lord said—“Return ye to the band
Who sent you towards us, and give them to know
This body is true flesh. If they delayed
At sight,—I deem so, of the shadow here
Thereby sufficient answer shall be made:
Him let them reverence,—it may prove dear.”
I never saw a meteor dart so quick
Through the serene at midnight, or a gleam
Of lightning flash at sunset, through a thick
Piled August cloud, but these would faster seem
As they retreated; having joined the rest,
Back like an unreined troop towards us they sped.
“This throng is large by whom we thus are pressed,
And come to implore of thee,” the Poet said—
“Therefore keep on, and as thou mov’st attend.”
“O soul who travellest, with the very frame
Which thou wert born with, to thy blessed end,
Stay thy step somewhat!”—crying thus they came.
“Look if among us any thou dost know,
That thou of him to earth mayst tidings bear.
Stay—wilt thou not? ah! wherefore must thou go?
We to our dying hour were sinners there:
And all were slain: but at the murderous blow,
Warned us an instant light that flashed from heaven,
And all from life did peacefully depart,
Contrite, forgiving, and by Him forgiven
To look on Whom such longing yearns our heart.”
“None do I recognize,” I answered, “even
Scanning your faces with mine utmost art;
But whatsoe’er, ye blessed souls! I may
To give you comfort, speak, and I will do;
Yea, by that peace which leads me on my way
From world to world such guidance to pursue.”
JACOPO DI FANO.
“Without such protestation,” one replied,
“Unless thy will a want of power defeat,
In thy kind offices we all confide;
Whence I, sole speaking before these, entreat
If thou mayst e’er the territory see
That lies betwixt Romagna and the seat(134)
Where Charles hath sway, that thou so courteous be
As to implore the men in Fano’s town
To put up prayers there earnestly for me
That I may purge the sins that weigh me down.
There I was born; but those deep wounds of mine
Through which my life‐blood issued, I received
Among the children of Antenor’s line,(135)
Where most secure my person I believed:
’Twas through that lord of Este I was sped
Who past all justice had me in his hate.
O’ertook at Oriaco, had I fled
Towards Mira, still where breath is I might wait.
But to the marsh I made my way instead,
And there, entangled in the cany brake
And mire, I fell, and on the ground saw spread,
From mine own veins outpoured, a living lake.”
BUONCONTE DI MONTEFELTRO.
Here spake another: “O may that desire
So be fulfilled which to the lofty Mount
Conducts thy feet as thou shalt bring me nigher
To mine by thy good prayers. I am the Count
Buonconte: Montefeltro’s lord was I.
Giovanna cares not, no one cares for me;
Therefore with these I go dejectedly.”
And I to him: “What violence took thee,
Or chance of war, from Campaldino then
So far that none e’er knew thy burial‐place?”
“O,” answered he, “above the hermit’s glen(136)
A stream whose course is Casentino’s base,
Springs in the Apennine, Archiano called.
There, where that name is lost in Arno’s flood,
Exhausted I arrived, footsore and galled,
Pierced in my throat, painting the plain with blood.
Here my sight failed me and I fell: the last
Word that I spake was Mary’s name, and then
From my deserted flesh the spirit passed.
The truth I tell now, tell to living men;
God’s Angel took me, but that fiend of Hell
Screamed out: ’Ha! thou from heaven, why robb’st thou me?
His soul thou get’st for one small tear that fell,
But of this offal other work I’ll see.’
Thou know’st how vapors gathering in the air
Mount to the cold and there condensed distil
Back into water. That Bad Will which ne’er
Seeks aught but evil joined his evil will,
With intellect, and, from the great force given
By his fell nature, moved the mist and wind
And o’er the valley drew the darkened heaven,
Covering it with clouds as day declined
From Pratomagno far as the great chain,(137)
So that the o’erburdened air to water turned:
Then the floods fell, and every rivulet’s vein
Swelled with the superflux the soaked earth spurned.
When to large streams the mingling torrents grew
Down to the royal river with such force
They rushed that no restraint their fury knew.
Here fierce Archiano found my frozen corse
Stretched at its mouth, and into Arno’s wave
Dashed it and loosened from my breast the sign,
Which when mine anguish mastered me I gave,
Of holy cross with my crossed arms: in fine,
O’er bed and bank my form the streamlet drave
Whirling, and with its own clay covered mine.”
PIA DE’ TOLOMEI.
“O stay! when thou shalt walk the world once more,
And have repose from that long way of thine,”—
Said the third spirit, following those before,
“Remember Pia! for that name was mine:
Sienna gave me birth: Maremma’s fen
Was my undoing: he knows that full well
Who ringed my finger with his gem and then,
After espousal,—_took me there to dwell_.”
Sanskrit And The Vedas.(138)
“But in justice, I am bound to say that Rome has the merit of
having first seriously attended to the study of Indian
literature.”—CARDINAL WISEMAN: _Connection between Science and
Revealed Religion_.
“The first missionaries who succeeded in rousing the attention of
European scholars to the extraordinary discovery (Sanskrit
literature) that had been made were the French Jesuit
missionaries.”—MAX MÜLLER: _Lectures on the Science of Language_.
What manner of language is the Sanskrit?
By what people or nation was it spoken?
When? and where?
What are its literary monuments?
Whence comes it—granting it to be as ancient a tongue as is
represented—that neither in Greek, Roman, nor, indeed, in any ancient
literature, is it ever mentioned, and that we only read of it in modern
works, scarce a century old?
Such questions as these are frequently asked, even at the present day.
Forty years ago, it is doubtful if there were ten persons in this country
able to reply to them satisfactorily, and more than doubtful if a single
scholar could have been found capable of translating the simplest Sanskrit
sentence. Within that period, however, philological science in general,
and Sanskrit in particular, have made long and rapid strides among us, and
we now have scores of scholars fully awake to the importance of
cultivating the resources of this wonderful tongue, as the origin or
common source of the European family of languages, in which our own
English is included.
At the head of these scholars stands, without dispute, Prof. William
Dwight Whitney, whose, linguistic acquirements and philosophical treatment
of difficult philological problems have earned for him a very high and
well‐merited reputation. Nor is this opinion a merely patriotic and
partial estimate. Prof. Whitney’s merits as a Sanskrit scholar and
comparative philologist are fully acknowledged, not only in this country,
but by the eminent Orientalists of Europe. The first periodical of Germany
and of the world for the comparative study of languages (_Zeitschrift für
vergleichende Sprachforschung auf dem Gebiete des Deutschen, Griechischen
und Lateinischen_, Berlin, 1872), in a late number recognizes, in the most
flattering manner, Prof. Whitney’s high rank in the philological republic
of letters, and refers in complimentary terms to the fact that he is well
known in Germany as the editor of the Sanskrit text of the _Atharva Veda_.
We may here incidentally note, in the same number of the _Zeitschrift_,
another gratifying recognition of advanced American scholarship. We refer
to a review of Prof. March’s _Comparative Grammar of the Anglo‐Saxon_,
from the pen of Moritz Heyne, the well‐known author of the _Brief
Comparative Grammar of the Old German Dialects_, and editor of the
celebrated editions of the Mœso‐Gothic Bible of Ulphilas, and of the
Anglo‐Saxon poem of Beowulf. The German reviewer credits Prof. March’s
work with extensive and original investigation, great erudition in the
Anglo‐Saxon texts, and valuable contributions to the grammar of the
language. He adds, that the study of Anglo‐Saxon is pursued with more zeal
and success in the United States than in England. Solid commendation like
this, from such a source, speaks well for American progress in the field
of philological science.
During the past twenty years, Prof. Whitney has published numerous essays
on Sanskrit literature which, limited to the special circulation of
scientific or literary periodicals, have not fallen under the notice of
the general reading public. Many of these articles he has now collected
and published in a volume,(139) edited by himself. Four of the essays are
on the Vedas and Vedic literature, one on the Avesta (commonly called the
Zend‐Avesta), and seven upon various philological topics, including two
reviews of Max Müller’s _Lectures on Language_, which are admirable
specimens of temperate and careful criticism, guided by sound scholarship.
Prof. Whitney’s first paper on the Vedas (originally published in the
_Journal of the American Oriental Society_, vol. iii., 1853) opens thus:
“It is a truth now well established, that the Vedas furnish the
only sure foundation on which a knowledge of ancient and modern
India can be built up. They are therefore at present engrossing
the larger share of the attention of those who pursue this branch
of Oriental study. Only recently, however, has their paramount
importance been fully recognized: it was by slow degrees that they
made their way up to the consideration in which they are now held.
Once it was questioned whether any such books as the Vedas really
existed, or whether, if they did exist, the jealous care of the
Brahmans would ever allow them to be laid open to European eyes.
This doubt dispelled, they were first introduced to the near
acquaintance of scholars in the West by Colebrooke.”
Not stopping to raise a question as to just reclamation in favor of Sir
William Jones for a portion at least of the credit of the introduction of
the Vedas to the “acquaintance of scholars in the West,” which, perhaps
Professor Whitney means to solve in advance by a distinction between
acquaintance and “near acquaintance,” we would observe that this
comprehensive statement as to the introduction of the Vedas to European
scholars takes for granted the previous interesting history of the modern
discovery of the existence of the Sanskrit and of Vedic literature. We use
the expression “takes for granted” in no invidious sense.
The author was writing for scholars who, he had a right to assume, were
already acquainted with the objective history of his subject‐matter, and
were probably informed as to the details of the gradual steps by which the
certainty of the existence of a great language and a rich literature long
buried in darkness was at length brought to light. His concern was with
the internal, not the external, history of Sanskrit. Now, it is upon this
external history that we propose to say something, returning to Prof.
Whitney’s work when we reach the subject of the Vedas.
It is not necessary that our readers should, to any extent, be linguists
or philologists in order to become deeply interested in the relation of
the modern discovery of a language so old that it had ceased to be spoken
and was a dead language hundreds of years before the Christian era—a
language to which cannot with any certainty be assigned the name of the
nation or people who spoke it, and which is at once the most ancient of
all known tongues, living or dead, and, despite all modern research, still
prehistoric.
To our Catholic readers, the narration of this discovery is full of
interest; for in it they will recognize an additional version of the
familiar story of the enlightened intelligence, piety, and self‐sacrifice
of our devoted missionaries who, combining active zeal for knowledge with
apostolic zeal for souls, amid privation and suffering, even in distant
and savage lands, with one hand built up the walls of Zion, while with the
other they erected temples to science.
In order fully to appreciate the bearing and importance of the revelation
of Sanskrit to Europe, it is essential that we should first look a moment
upon the condition of European comparative philology at the end of the
XVIth and commencement of the XVIIth centuries. A short digression will
suffice for this.
The Hebrew language was, from the earliest period of Christianity, settled
upon by almost common consent of the learned as the primitive tongue. It
was generally admitted by scholars that the sole great and essential
linguistic problem to be solved was this:
“As Hebrew is undoubtedly the mother of all languages, how are we
to explain the process by which Hebrew became split into so many
dialects, and how can these numerous dialects, such as Greek and
Latin, Coptic, Persian, Turkish, be traced back to their common
source, the Hebrew?”
Upon this hopelessly insoluble problem an amazing amount of remarkable
ingenuity and solid erudition were, for hundreds of years, hopelessly
wasted, for, at this day, instead of Hebrew, Sanskrit is recognized as
being the oldest of all known languages. How came this about? Reply to
this inquiry will at the same time answer the questions proposed at the
outset of this article.
The result of labor on the problem, “How could all languages be traced
back to the Hebrew?” was of course unsatisfactory. No solution could be
obtained. None indeed was possible.
At last it was suggested, why _should_ all languages be derived from the
Hebrew? and with investigation thus taken off its false route, the
question was in a fair way to be successfully treated. Leibnitz vigorously
denied the claims set up for Hebrew, and said: “There is as much reason
for supposing Hebrew to have been the primitive language of mankind, as
there is for adopting the view of Goropius, who published a work at
Antwerp in 1580 to prove that Dutch was the language spoken in Paradise.”
More than this, he indicated the necessity of applying to language as well
as to any other science the principle of a sound inductive process, and in
this he was greatly aided by the Jesuit missionaries in China.
“It stands to reason,” he said, “that we ought to begin with
studying the modern languages which are within our reach, in order
to compare them with one another, to discover their differences
and affinities, and then to proceed to those which have preceded
them in former ages, in order to show their filiation and their
origin, and then to ascend step by step to the most ancient
tongues, the analysis of which must lead to the only trustworthy
conclusions.”
But Leibnitz, while properly disputing the justice of the claims of Hebrew
as the mother‐tongue, knew of none other for which a similar claim might
be advanced. It is doubtful if he ever heard of Sanskrit, although he
lived until 1716, a full century after one, at least, of our missionaries
had mastered Sanskrit and all the Vedas.
Sanskrit
is the ancient language of the Hindus, and had ceased to be a spoken
language three centuries before the Christian era. The sacred Vedas, the
oldest literary productions of the Hindus, and even the laws of Manu and
the Purânas, later works, are written in a dialect still older than the
Sanskrit, of which it is the parent, and are assigned by different
scholars to periods varying from twelve hundred to two thousand years B.C.
Thus, the dialects of Sanskrit spoken by the people of India three hundred
years B.C. may be said to have been to the Vedic Sanskrit what Italian now
is to the Latin. These dialects, modified by admixture with the languages
of the various conquerors of India, the Arabic, Persian, Mongolic, and
Turkish, and changed also by grammatical corruption, yet survive in the
modern Hindí, Hindustání, Mahratta, and Bengálée.
Specimens of the dialects spoken by the people of the northern, eastern,
and southwestern regions of India have come down to us in the inscriptions
of the Buddhist King Piyadasi (third century B.C.), and in the account of
the victory over Antiochus which King Asoka (206 B.C.) had graven on the
rocks of Dhauli, Girnar, and Kapurdigiri. These inscriptions have been
deciphered by Burnouf, Norris, Wilson, and others, and are found to be in
the Prakrit (common), not the Sanskrit (perfect) or exclusive dialect.
From these facts the best Oriental scholars draw the conclusion that, at
the periods of Piyadasi and Asoka, the Sanskrit, if spoken at all, was
then already confined to the educated caste of Brahmans, having been a
living language at some remote previous period (most probably between the
VIIIth and IVth centuries B.C.), spoken by all classes of that race which
emigrated from Central India into Asia, and the language so spoken is that
to which modern Orientalists give the name of Aryan. For it will be borne
in mind that the term Sanskrit is no indication of the people or race who
originally spoke the language so called: it merely indicates the
estimation in which it is held by their successors, and signifies “the
perfect language.”
Meantime, during all these centuries, Sanskrit continued to be preserved
as the classic tongue and literary vehicle of Brahmanic thought and study,
and we are told on good authority that, “even at the present day, an
educated Brahman would write with greater fluency in Sanskrit than in
Bengálée.” It is now well established that Sanskrit is certainly not the
parent, but the eldest brother or _chef de famille_ of the large groups of
Greek, Latin, Celtic, Slavonic, Teutonic, and Scandinavian families from
which all the modern European tongues (Basque excepted) are derived (we
omit mention of the Oriental branches). When we write the Sanskrit words
_mader_, _pader_, _dokhter_, _sunu_, _bruder_, _mand_, _lib_, _nasa_,
_vidhuva_, _stara_, we very nearly write the corresponding English terms,
and see in them their English descendants through Mœso‐Gothic and German.
The Sanskrit and Greek equivalents of _I am_, _thou art_, _he is_, are
almost identical:
_Sanskrit_: asmi, asi, asti.
_Greek_: esmi, eis, esti.
We find the Sanskrit _dinâra_ in the Latin _denarius_; _ayas_ in
Sanskrit—passing through the Gothic _ais_ to English _iron_; and _plava_,
in Sanskrit, a ship appearing in the Greek _ploion_ (ship), Slavonic
_ploug_, and English _plough_; for the Aryans said the ship ploughed the
sea, and the plough sailed across the field. In like manner, similar
illustrations might be multiplied indefinitely to the extent of volumes,
showing not hazardous and doubtful etymological similarities, but clear,
distinct, and sharp‐cut affinities by clearly traceable descent.
“Who was the first European that knew of Sanskrit, or that acquired a
knowledge of Sanskrit, is difficult to say,” remarks Prof. Max Müller.
Very true. But it is not at all difficult to reach the certainty that that
European, whatever might have been his name, was a Catholic missionary.
Soon after S. Francis Xavier began to preach the Gospel in India (1542),
we hear of our missionaries acquiring not only the current dialects of the
country, but also the classical Sanskrit language; of their successfully
studying the theological and philosophical literature of the exclusive
priestly class; and of their challenging the Brahmans to public
disputations. If the example of their labors, humility, sufferings, and
piety were not sufficient to win souls, they always, where it was needed,
had science at their command, and were at once scholars, linguists,
mathematicians, and astronomers as well as lowly messengers of the glad
tidings of salvation.
Prominent among the most remarkable of these men stands
Robert De’ Nobili.
A nephew of Cardinal de’ Nobili and a relative of Pope Julius the Third
and of the great Bellarmine, he was nobly born and tenderly reared. He
went a missionary to the Indies in 1603, and began his public labors at
Madura in 1606. Being a man of superior education, cultivation, and
refinement, he soon perceived the reasons which kept all the natives of
high caste—especially the Brahmans—from joining the communities of
Christian converts formed by the common people of the country. He saw that
the Brahmans could be successfully met and argued with only by a Brahman,
and he at once resolved on the heroic project of fitting himself by long
study and almost incredible labor to become a Brahman in outward
appearance, language, and accomplishments, and thus obtain access to the
noblest, most learned, and most accomplished men in India. The task was
full of difficulty. For years he devoted himself to his silent work,
acquiring in secret the dialects of Tamil and Telugu, and the language and
literature of Sanskrit and the Vedas. When in time he felt himself strong
enough in Brahmanic learning and accomplishments to meet them in argument
and debate, he publicly appeared arrayed in their costume, wearing the
cord, bearing the exclusive frontal mark, and submitting to the rigid
observance of their diet (eating nothing but rice and vegetables) and
their complicated requirements of caste. So exhaustive had been his
studies, so thorough was his preparation, and so admirable his talent,
that his success was perfect. The Brahmans whom he met found in him their
master even in their own exclusive field of literature, philosophy, and
religion. Müllbauer (_Geschichte der katholischen Missionen Ostindiens_)
says they were afraid of him. As a devoted and successful missionary, his
life is full of interest; but we have to do with him here only as the
first known European Sanskrit scholar. After forty‐two years of missionary
labor in that exhausting climate, worn out, infirm, and blind, Robert de’
Nobili died, aged eighty years, at Melapour, on the coast of Coromandel.
The distinguished Professor of Sanskrit at the English university of
Oxford, Max Müller, pays the following earnest tribute to the acquirements
of this admirable missionary and scholar:
“A man who could quote from Manu, from the Purânas, and even from
such works as the Apastamba‐sûtras, which are known even at
present to only those few Sanskrit scholars who can read Sanskrit
MSS., must have been far advanced in a knowledge of the sacred
language and literature of the Brahmans; and the very idea that he
came, as he said, to preach a new or a fourth Veda, which had been
lost, shows how well he knew the strong and weak points of the
theological system which he came to conquer.”
Religious bigotry has sought to fix upon de’ Nobili the forgery of the
Ezour‐Veda; but the examination of the charge by distinguished English
(Protestant) Orientalists has only resulted in bringing out into brighter
relief that devoted missionary’s remarkable acquirements and admirable
virtues. Francis Ellis, Esq., a distinguished Orientalist, discovered the
Sanskrit original of the Ezour at Pondicherry, and made an elaborate
report upon it, which was published at the time, in the _Asiatick_ (_sic_)
_Researches_ (vol. xiv., Calcutta, 1822), from which we cite the following
short extract:
“Robertus de Nobilibus is well known both to Hindus and
Christians, under the Sanskrit title of Tatwa‐Bodha Swami, as the
author of many excellent works in Tamil, on polemical theology. In
one of these, the _Atma‐Nirnaya‐vivecam_, he contrasts the
opinions of the various Indian sects on the nature of the soul,
and exposes the fables with which the Purânas abound relative to
the state of future existence, and in another, _Punergeuma
Acshepa_, he confutes the doctrine of the metempsychosis. Both
these works, in style and substance, greatly resemble the
controversial part of the Pseudo Vedas; but these are open attacks
on what the author considered false doctrines and superstitions,
and no attempt is made to veil their manifest tendency, or to
insinuate the tenets they maintain under a borrowed name or in an
ambiguous form. The style adopted by Robertus de Nobilibus is
remarkable for a profuse admixture of Sanskrit terms; those to
express doctrinal notions and abstract ideas he compounds and
recompounds with a facility of invention that indicates an
intimate knowledge of the language whence they are derived; and
there can be no doubt, therefore, that he was fully qualified to
be the author of those writings. If this should be the fact,
considering the high character he bears among all acquainted with
his name and the nature of his known works, I am inclined to
attribute to him the composition only, not the forgery, of the
Pseudo Vedas.”
But the result of further examination has decided that the Ezour‐Veda was
not even written by de’ Nobili, but by one of his native converts. It is
plain, from the testimony of Mr. Ellis, that he was not a man to seek the
cover of the anonymous or the ambiguous, in order to attack the
superstitions of Buddhism. This he did openly and boldly. Max Müller
decides that “there is no evidence for ascribing the work to Robert.”
The example of Robert de’ Nobili was sedulously followed up by other
members of his Order.
Roth, another Jesuit, appeared in 1664, master of Sanskrit, and
successfully disputed with the Brahmans. Yet another, Hanxleder, who went
to India in 1669, labored for more than thirty years in the Malabar
mission, composed works of instruction, compiled dictionaries, and wrote
works in prose and verse. Many of his writings are preserved at Rome.
Among the most prominent of the Jesuit missionaries in the field of modern
Oriental and Sanskrit literature was Father Constant Beschi, who went out
to India in 1700. He made himself master of Sanskrit, Tamil, and Telugu,
and wrote moral works in Sanskrit which are still preserved and highly
prized by the Brahmans. The natives called him the great Viramamouni.
Scores of other missionaries might be named, equally devoted, equally
learned. But they acquired science, Sanskrit, and Oriental erudition as a
means, not an end. They sought no worldly distinction, no literary
reputation. They had but one engrossing object and thought here
below—their mission of charity and of love.
Nevertheless, the day of
Sanskrit For Europe,
long delayed, was now fast approaching. Its revelation to the West is
generally ascribed to Sir William Jones. This assumption may be stated to
be incorrect without in the slightest degree detracting from the merits of
that distinguished English scholar. For more than a century before Sir
William Jones went to India, the published letters of the Jesuit
missionaries had established the existence and general characteristics of
that remarkable tongue, the Sanskrit; and in 1740 (November 23), Father
Pons, then at Karikal [Madura], addressed a letter to Father Duhalde,
giving what Professor Max Müller describes as “a most interesting and, in
general, a very accurate description of the various branches of Sanskrit
literature; of the four Vedas, the grammatical treatises, the six systems
of philosophy, and the astronomy of the Hindus. _He anticipated, on
several points, the researches of Sir William Jones._”
The letter in question was, in fact, an essay; and Father Pons so speaks
of it. It fills sixteen closely printed octavo pages, and refers to the
fact, not mentioned by Prof. Müller, that it is one of a succession of
communications upon the same subject, inasmuch as he mentions a treatise
written by himself on Sanskrit versification, transmitted to Europe the
previous year, and specifies a Sanskrit grammar (_Kramadisvar_) which he
sent two years before. Although Adelung, in his _Mithridates_, mildly
censures both Father Pons and Sir W. Jones for exaggerating the value of
Sanskrit, the exposition made by the former of the wealth of the Sanskrit
language and literature is, to this day, held by distinguished scholars to
be “very accurate.”
The Pons‐Duhalde letter is often referred to, but seldom quoted. We will
therefore here cite a few short passages from it, which may give the
reader some idea of the nature of the communication and an early estimate
of the value of Sanskrit. We translate: “The Brahmans have always been,
and still are, the only class who devote themselves to the cultivation of
the sciences as a matter of hereditary descent. They originally descend
from seven illustrious penitents, whose progeny, in course of time, was
multiplied infinitely, etc. They are exclusively consecrated to learning,
and a Brahman who strictly adheres to the rule of his order should devote
himself solely to religion and study; but, in course of time, many have
fallen into a very lax life.
“These sciences are inaccessible to all the other castes of people, to
whom it is permitted to communicate certain compositions, grammar, poetry,
and moral sayings.”
“The grammar of the Brahmans may fairly be classed in the rank of works of
science. Never were analysis and synthesis more happily employed than in
their grammatical works on the Sanskrit language. I am satisfied that this
language, so admirable in its harmony, its wealth, and its energy, was at
some remote period the spoken tongue of the country inhabited by the first
Brahmans.”
Parenthetically, and also by way of comparison, let us look for a moment
at the impression made by Sanskrit upon two other distinguished scholars
from among those who were earliest in the field—Sir William Jones and
Frederick von Schlegel.
At the outset of his researches, the first declared that, whatever its
antiquity, it was a language of most wonderful structure, more perfect
than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined
than either, yet bearing to both of them a strong affinity. “No
philologer,” he adds, “could examine the Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin,
without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which,
perhaps, no longer exists. There is a similar reason, though not quite so
forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and Celtic had the same
origin with the Sanskrit. The old Persian may be added to the same
family.” And Frederick von Schlegel (_Essay on the Language and Philosophy
of the Indians_) says: “The similarity between Sanskrit, on the one hand,
and Latin and Greek, Teutonic and Persian, on the other, is found not only
in a great number of roots possessed by them in common, but it also
extends to the inner structure and grammar. The remarkable coincidence is
not merely such an accidental one as may be explained by an admixture of
language, but an essential one which points distinctly to a common
descent. Comparison further shows that the Indian (Sanskrit) tongue is the
more ancient, the others younger and derived from it.”
But to return to our missionaries. The interest excited in Europe by the
remarkable letter of Father Pons was purely one of surprise and
speculation, inasmuch as Western scholars were without the means of
testing the value of the great linguistic discovery. Sanskrit grammars,
dictionaries, and even vocabularies were then unknown in any European
tongue. This want, however, was soon supplied by another missionary, John
Philip Wesdin, more widely known as Father Paulinus a Santo‐Bartolomeo. He
spent thirteen years in India, and subsequently published (1790) at Rome,
under the auspices of the Propaganda, several works on Sanskrit grammar
and upon the history, theology, and religion of the Hindus.
Referring to his numerous publications (_vielen Schriften_), no less an
authority than Adelung qualifies them as indispensable to a knowledge of
Sanskrit as also to the other languages of India (welche zur Kentniss
sowohl dieser Sprache als auch Indiens überhaupt unentbehrlich sind); and
he adds (writing in 1806): “Peradventure has no European up to this time
so deeply penetrated into this language as he.”(140) Of his first Sanskrit
grammar, published at Rome in 1790,(141) Prof. Max Müller says: “Although
this grammar has been severely criticised, and is now hardly ever
consulted, it is but fair to bear in mind that the first grammar of any
language is a work of infinitely greater difficulty than any later
grammar.”
In this connection we must not omit some mention of that prodigy of
linguistic industry and erudition, the Spanish Jesuit, Don Lorenzo Hervas
y Pandura, who, in the midst of his missionary labors, collected specimens
of more than three hundred languages.(142) This of itself was a gigantic
work, and its rich results furnished to Adelung an important portion of
the material of his _Mithridates_. Hervas, moreover, prepared grammars for
more than forty languages, and is the founder of the true method of
ascertaining lingual affinity by grammatical analysis, rather than by
etymology, always more or less deceptive. Klaproth’s enunciation of this
principle established by Hervas is so felicitous that we cannot refrain
from citing it here: “Words are the stuff or matter of language, and
grammar its fashioning or form.”
Concerning Hervas we need say no more than to add the noble tribute to his
memory and his merits to be found in the pages of Max Müller’s _Lectures
on the Science of Language_, p. 140:
“He proved by a comparative list of declensions and conjugations
that Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Arabic, Ethiopic, and Amharic are
all but dialects of one original language, and constitute one
family of speech, the Semitic. He scouted the idea of deriving all
the languages of mankind from Hebrew. He had perceived clear
traces of affinity in Hungarian, Lapponian, and Finnish—three
dialects now classed as members of the Turanian family. He had
proved that Basque was not, as was commonly supposed, a Celtic
dialect, but an independent language, spoken by the earliest
inhabitants of Spain, as proved by the names of the Spanish
mountains and rivers. Nay, one of the most brilliant discoveries
in the history of the science of language, the establishment of
the Malay and Polynesian family of speech, extending from the
Island of Madagascar east of Africa, over 208° of longitude, to
the Easter Islands west of America, _was made __ by Hervas long
before it was announced to the world by Humboldt_.”
English literature has made us familiar with the name of Sir William Jones
as the European originator of the cultivation of Sanskrit. The merits of
Sir William Jones are not a subject of doubt or contest. Full justice has
been done them. But when we come to settle the question of priority of
successful and distinguished labor in the field of Sanskrit, the names and
transcendent services of the humble and self‐sacrificing missionaries,
Robert de’ Nobili, Roth, Hanxleder, Beschi, Pons, Paulinus a Santo‐
Bartolomeo, Hervas, and scores of others, their predecessors and
companions, must ever be gratefully remembered.
The Triumph Of Sanskrit.
Through the publications of the Asiatic Society at Calcutta, European
scholars were now furnished with facilities for the study of Sanskrit, and
it would be difficult to say which of the two, the language or the
literature, excited the deeper or more lasting interest.
The absolute identity of grammatical forms of Greek and Latin with
Sanskrit was at once recognized, and it was evident that these three
languages sprang from one common source. The revelation created one of the
greatest literary sensations ever known in Europe. The theory that upheld
Hebrew as the mother tongue—already seriously damaged—now received its
death‐blow. Classical scholars shook their heads sceptically. Theologians
were troubled. Ethnographers were all at sea. Etymologists and
lexicographers were dumfounded. The philosophers of the day, each one of
whom had his own little system of the universe to take care of, saw their
theories ruthlessly upset; and Lord Monboddo, who had just finished his
great work in which he derives mankind from a couple of apes, and all the
dialects of the world from the language of the Egyptian gods, was
petrified with astonishment. His Egyptian theory, his men with tails, and
his monkeys without tails, were all equally doomed to destruction. To his
credit, though, it must be said that he soon afterward accepted the
situation with commendable intelligence and alacrity.
Other pet theories and other deeply ingrained prejudices of many scholars
of the best education were shocked and scandalized at the claims set up
for Sanskrit. The idea that the classical languages of Greece and Rome
could be intimately related to a jargon of mere savages—as they supposed
the natives of India to be—was to the last degree repugnant to these
gentlemen, and they went great lengths in assertion, absurd argument,
irony, and ridicule, to escape the, alas! too inevitable and horribly
unpleasant conclusion that Greek and Latin were of the same linguistic
kith and kin as the language of the black inhabitants of India. The
distinguished Scotch philosopher, Dugald Stewart, by way of protest
against the claims set up for Sanskrit, even went so far as to deny that
any such language existed or ever had existed, and wrote his famous essay
to prove that those arch forgers and liars, the Brahmans, had manufactured
the dialect on the model of the Greek and the Latin, and that the whole
thing, language, literature, and all, was a piece of daring invention and
bold imposture.
How deeply rooted were the prejudices, and how stubborn the ignorance,
even among scholars and men of literary pursuits, in favor of the Hebrew
and against the reception of Sanskrit in its place, may be judged from the
representative fact, that so late as the ninth day of August, 1832, we
find no less a man than Coleridge making this entry in his note‐book: “The
claims of the Sanskrit for priority to the Hebrew as a language are
ridiculous.”
The first European scholar of distinction who dared boldly accept the
facts and conclusions of Sanskrit scholarship was Frederick von Schlegel.
He began his study of the language with verbal tuition from Sir Alexander
Hamilton, continued it at Paris with the aid of M. Langles, custodian of
Oriental MSS. in the Imperial Library at Paris, and subsequently had the
advantage of the rich collection in the British Museum. The result was his
_Language and Wisdom of the Indians_, published in 1808. It embraced in
one glance the languages of India, Persia, Greece, Italy, and Germany,
riveted them together by the name of Indo‐Germanic (by common consent of
scholars since changed to Indo‐European), and became the foundation of the
science of language. Appearing only two years after the publication of the
first volume of Adelung’s _Mithridates_, “it is separated from that work,”
says Prof. Müller, “by the same distance which separates the Copernican
from the Ptolemæan system,” and this work of Schlegel, he adds, “has truly
been called the discovery of a new world.”
Omitting mention of the labors of many distinguished French and German
laborers in the same field, we may close our record of the services
rendered by Catholic scholars to the cause of Sanskrit literature by
reference to the remarkable course of lectures on “Science and Revealed
Religion,” delivered by the Reverend (afterwards Cardinal) Wiseman, at
Rome, in 1835,(143) only two years and six months after the memorable
entry of Coleridge in his note‐book.
Sanskrit Literature And The Vedas.
It was perfectly natural that the fresh enthusiasm of the earliest
Sanskrit scholars should have carried them into what is now looked upon as
an undue estimate and hyperbolic praise of their new discovery and
acquisition. And this early enthusiasm was neither short in duration nor
limited in extent.
A tidal wave of admiration swept over European scholarship with the
appearance of _Sacontala, or The Fatal Ring_ (Calcutta, 1789), certainly a
beautiful specimen of dramatic art and admirable poetry by Kalidasa, the
Indian Shakespeare, who is assigned to the period of Vikrama the Great
(B.C. 56). Sir William Jones very judiciously selected this masterpiece of
Indian literature for translation as a first specimen, and, although in
prose, it so delighted a French scholar, Chézy, that it induced him first
to learn Sanskrit and then to publish a French version of it. This was
followed by no less than four German translations, prose and verse, a
Danish translation, and an additional English translation (the best) in a
mingling of verse and prose (following the original) by Monier Williams.
Goethe was enraptured with the _Sacontala_, and it drew from him the
celebrated verse:
“Willt Du die Blüthe des Frühen, die Früchte des Späteren Jahres,
Willt Du, was reizt und entzückt, willt Du was sättigt und
nährt,
Willt Du den Himmel, die Erde mit einem Namen begreifen,
Nenn ich, Sacontala, Dich, und so ist Alles gesagt.”(144)
A. W. von Schlegel finds in it so striking a resemblance to our romantic
drama that we might, he says, be inclined to suspect we owe this
resemblance to the predilection for Shakespeare entertained by Sir William
Jones, if the fidelity of his translation were not confirmed by other
learned Orientalists. And Alex. von Humboldt says of Kalidasa that
“tenderness in the expression of feeling, and richness of creative fancy,
have assigned to him his lofty place amongst the poets of all nations.”
Voltaire went into ecstasies over a French translation of the Ezour‐Veda,
a Sanskrit poem in the style of the Purânas, quite an inferior production,
written in the XVIIth century by a native convert of Robert de’ Nobili.
This French translation was published by Voltaire under the title,
“L’Ezour‐Vedam, traduit du Sanscritam par un Brame,” and he stated his
belief that the original was four centuries older than Alexander, and that
it was the most precious gift for which the West had been indebted to the
East.
Adelung, as we have seen, found fault with Sir William Jones and Father
Pons for overrating the claims of Sanskrit, and subsequent critics have
gone so far as to assert that its literary and scientific value is very
slight. Among the latest of these are M. Jules Oppert(145) and Prof. Key
of University College, London. Their objections and arguments are met and
discussed by Prof. Whitney in the seventh essay of his volume, in a tone
so moderate and a treatment so thorough as to present a more than
satisfactory vindication of the claims of Indo‐European philology and
ethnology to the serious attention and close study of every scholar. We
are not aware that either Prof. Key or M. Oppert has cited the fact that,
when the Indian rajah Rammohun Roy found the distinguished Sanskrit
scholar Rosen at work in the British Museum upon an edition of the hymns
of the Veda, he expressed his surprise at so useless an undertaking. It
was not that the Indian philosopher looked upon all Vedic literature as
worthless. On the contrary, he was of the opinion that the Upanishads were
worthy of becoming the foundation of a new religion. The rajah most
probably did not also consider the fact that, whatever might be the
intrinsic literary merit of the Vedic hymns, they were none the less
valuable to the comparative grammarian and philologist. For the purposes
of grammatical construction, it is perfectly immaterial whether or not a
text has the fire of genius or the inspiration of poetry.
And here it may be mentioned that Rammohun Roy, the descendant on both the
paternal and maternal side of the highest caste Brahmans, and familiar
with the whole body of Vedic and Sanskrit literature, indirectly bears
high testimony to one of the grandest results obtained by European study
of Sanskrit literature. _That result is the exposure of Brahmanism as a
gross imposture._ Against any attack on its social and religious errors,
the Brahmans formerly entrenched themselves in the pretended warrant of
high antiquity and the authority of the sacred works. “Thus say the Vedas”
was a sufficient justification for any claim, and “That is not in the
Vedas” an unanswerable argument against any objection. Although they threw
every possible obstacle in the way of Europeans who strove to obtain a
knowledge of Sanskrit and access to the Vedas, by refusing to teach them
and by withholding the sacred books, these difficulties were finally
overcome, and when the Vedas were read and understood it became apparent
that fully one‐half of the social and religious institutions of
Brahmanism, as it existed down to the commencement of the present century,
were not only without a shadow of authority in the Vedas, but absolutely
opposed to the spirit and letter of its law. Thus, it is certain that
nothing of the great characteristic feature of Brahmanism—the system of
castes—can be found in the Vedas. The belief in the transmigration of
souls and in the doctrines flowing from it has no existence there. And the
Suttee, or system of widow immolation, the singular mingling of
pantheistic philosophy with gross superstition, and the worship of the
triad Brahma, Vishnu, and Civa, are all equally without Vedic foundation.
Robert de’ Nobili discovered all this at an early period, and it was only
when he first fought the Brahmans with their own weapons—the Vedas—that
they were, for the first time, silenced. Rammohun Roy had his eyes opened
at an early age to the idolatrous system of the Hindus, came out from
among them, and openly attacked its pretensions. “I endeavored to show,”
he says, “that the idolatry of the Brahmans was contrary to the practice
of their ancestors, and to the principles of the ancient works and
authorities which they profess to revere and obey.”
Prof. Whitney, referring to the same subject, says: “Each new phase of
belief has sought in them (the sacred texts) its authority, has claimed to
found itself upon them, and to be consistent with their teachings; and the
result is that the sum of doctrine accepted and regarded as orthodox in
modern India is incongruous beyond measure, a mass of inconsistencies”: a
summing up that might, we regret to say, be truthfully made of a Christian
country of far higher civilization than that of India.
Not stopping to discuss what has been called the “standing reproach”
against Indian literature, that it is barren of historical and
geographical results, nor to point out much that is of high value and
interest to every scholar, we will close by an inquiring comment as to the
following statement made by Prof. Whitney at p. 22. He is speaking of the
Vedic texts, and says: “So thorough and religious was the care bestowed
upon their preservation that, notwithstanding their mass and the thousands
of years which have elapsed since their collection, _hardly a single
various reading, so far as yet known, has been suffered to make its way
into them after their definite and final settlement_.”
We have italicized the passage which we wish to make the subject of our
inquiry, for, unless we are mistaken, two instances may be pointed out in
which the texts in question have been garbled or seriously tampered with.
We find the first instance in the developments growing out of the
discussion as to whether there are three Vedas or four Vedas (Goverdhan
Caul on the “Literature of the Hindus,” _Asiatic Researches_, Calcutta,
1788, vol. i., p. 340, and Sir William Jones’ _Works_, vol. iv. p. 93
(edition of 1807)). Even down to the present day, Indian scholars
sometimes speak of three Vedas, sometimes of four. According to Indian
tradition, Brahma has four mouths, each of which uttered a Veda. Yet most
ancient writers speak of but three Vedas, Rig, Yajush, and Sama, from
which it is inferred that the Atharva was written after the three first.
The Atharva is spoken of and called the Veda of Vedas in the eleventh book
of Manu, and the designation affirms the assertion of Dara Shecuh, in the
preface to his Upanishad, that the first three Vedas are named separately,
because the Atharvan is a corollary from them all, and contains the
quintessence of them all. But this verse of Manu, which occurs in a modern
copy of the work brought from Benares, is entirely omitted in the best
copies, so that, as Manu himself in other places names only three Vedas,
_we must believe this line to be an interpolation_ by some admirer of the
Atharva.
The second instance to be specified is furnished by Prof. Whitney himself,
at pages 53, 54, and 55, where he gives a translation of a hymn from the
concluding book of the Rig‐Veda (x. 18), describing the early Vedic
funeral services. When the attendants leave the bier, the men go first,
while the director of the ceremony says:
“Ascend to life, old age your portion making, each after each,
advancing in due order;
May Twashtar, skilful fashioner, propitious, cause that you here
enjoy a long existence.”
The women next follow, the wives at their head:
“These women here, not widows, blessed with husbands,
May deck themselves with ointment and perfume;
Unstained by tears, adorned, untouched with sorrow,
The wives may first ascend unto the altar.”
The wife of the deceased is then summoned away the last:
“Go up unto the world of life, O woman!
Thou liest by one whose soul is fled; come hither!
To him who grasps thy hand, a second husband,
Thou art as wife to spouse become related.”
In commenting upon this hymn, Prof. Whitney notes its “discordance with
the modern Hindu practice of immolating the widow at the grave of her
husband,” and adds: “Nothing could be more explicit than the testimony of
this hymn against the antiquity of the practice. It finds, indeed, no
support anywhere in the Vedic scriptures.” And now we come to the “various
reading,” for Prof. Whitney concludes the passage with this statement:
“Authority has been sought, however, for the practice, in a fragment of
this very hymn, rent from its natural connection, and a little altered; by
the change of a single letter, the line which is translated above, ‘The
wives may first ascend unto the altar,’ has been made to read, ‘The wives
shall go up into the place of the fire.’ ”
We heartily welcome this work of Prof. Whitney, and thank him for it as a
solid contribution to literature and to philological science, honorable to
himself, and reflecting credit on American scholarship.
The House That Jack Built.
By The Author Of “The House Of Yorke.”
In Two Parts.
Part II.
It was late before Aunt Nancy felt the approach of sleep that night. She
turned restlessly from side to side, thinking over Bessie’s strange
behavior, and trying to find a solution for it. The appearance of a
mystery disturbed all calculations based upon her plain and outspoken
experience.
But the habits of years are not easily broken, and sleep, that for more
than six decades had been wont to settle over this woman’s head as
regularly as darkness settled on the earth, began now to dim her senses.
She was about losing consciousness, when the vague sense of pain and
perplexity which still clung to her mind strengthened and took a new form.
It was no longer a woman who laughed bitterly when she should have wept,
but a woman sobbing violently, she knew not why.
The sound continued, and before its dreary persistence Aunt Nancy’s
hovering sleep took flight. She started up and listened, not yet quite
recalled to recollection. It was indeed a woman’s voice sobbing
uncontrollably. For one moment, the listener’s blood chilled with a
superstitious fear; the next, she recollected that she was not alone in
the house. It was Bessie who mourned. “_Rachel weeping for her children,
because they were not_,” the old woman thought pityingly.
Poor Bessie had forgotten how thin the walls were in her old home, and,
when the door opened and a tall figure clad in white entered her room, she
uttered a cry of affright.
“You poor child! I couldn’t stand it to hear you cry so,” Aunt Nancy said,
going to her bedside and bending down to put a caressing arm around her.
“Don’t cry! Try to remember that you have not lost everything.”
“I’m sorry I disturbed you, Aunt Nancy,” Bessie said faintly, sinking back
on the pillow. “You had better leave me to have it out alone. I don’t
often get a chance to have a good cry, and you have no idea what a relief
it is.”
“I know all about it!” Aunt Nancy replied, and her voice, low and deep,
had a sound like a tolling bell. “I have seen ’em all go and leave me, one
after another, father and mother, brothers and sisters, husband and
children, till every earthly hope was covered over with dust, and it
seemed as though there was dust on the very bread I ate. Yes, I know what
it is better than you, for you have your husband and one child left yet,
and I have nothing on earth!”
“I have not!” Bessie cried out passionately, with the jealousy of one
whose grief is underestimated. “John and the boy are further away from me
than my dead children are!”
The barrier was down. She had betrayed herself, and must tell the whole,
though she might be sorry afterward for having spoken. Concealment and
self‐control were no longer possible.
It was a tale too often true, though not so often told. The husband,
engrossed in business, and missing no home care which the love and duty of
his wife could bestow, had forgotten, or did not care, or did not believe,
that any return was due from him save a pecuniary support, or that he
could be guilty of any sin of omission toward his wife, save the omission
to provide her with food and shelter.
Perhaps no woman ever saw the heart she had once possessed slipping away
from her, without making a mistake in her efforts to retain it.
Indifference is her surest means of success, but indifference the loving
heart can never affect. As well might flame hope to hide itself, living,
in ashes.
The reserve and gravity of wounded feeling, when at length the husband
noticed them, he named sulkiness, and the meanness of the causes to which
he ascribed that were felt as an insult. The few timid reproaches and
petitions the wife had brought herself to utter he listened to with
surprise and annoyance, or with ridicule. Why, what in the world did she
want?—to begin their courting days over again? In order to do that, they
must first be divorced. What had he done? Had he beaten, or scolded, or
starved her? Had he gone gallivanting about with other women? Nonsense! He
had his business to attend to. Of course he loved her, but she mustn’t
bother him.
What reply is possible to such arguments? How small seem all our sweetest
human needs when they are put into words, simply because words can never
express them! In such a controversy, hard natures have always the
advantage over sensitive ones, and seem to triumph by their very
inferiority.
Bessie was silent, and her husband thought that she was convinced, and
dismissed the subject from his mind. If he observed that she grew pale, he
supposed that city air did not agree with her. He missed no home comfort,
heard no complaint, and therefore took for granted that all was right. He
frequently absented himself from home on business, never asking his wife
to accompany him, women being in the way on such occasions, and she seemed
satisfied to see nothing beyond her own fireside. He brought home his
plans and studies at evening, and, when the children’s play and caresses
disturbed him, their mother took them away and amused them elsewhere.
When, later, her little ones asleep, as she sat by her husband silently
working, he found that the snip of her scissors and the rattle of her
spools fretted him, Bessie said not a word, but went off to bed, and wet
her pillow with bitter and unavailing tears, finding no comfort.
The thought of seeking comfort and help in her religion had not once
entered her mind. She was dead to its obligations. They had never been
impressed on her, and her heart had been engrossed by other interests. Her
children had been baptized, and she usually went to an early Mass on
Sunday, but never heard a sermon, and never read a religious book. She
prayed often, but it was the outcry of pain, the petition for an earthly
good, not the prayer for resignation and wisdom.
Of his wife’s real life John Maynard knew no more than he did of life at
the antipodes. His profession engrossed his heart. His happiness was to
work and study over polished metals, to fit cylinder, crank, and valve
with nicety into their places; and at last, when that exquisite but
irresistible power of steam, so delicate in its fineness, yet so terrible
in its strength, began to steal into his work, to see the creature of
brass and iron grow alive, and become more mighty than an army of giants,
how tenderly could he handle, how carefully arrange, how patiently study
out, the parts of his work! For the problem of that infinitely more
exquisite mechanism—his wife’s heart—he had no time.
The boy, as boys will, followed in the footsteps of his father. He
emulated the slighting of which the father was himself unconscious, and
treated his mother with that intolerable mixture of patronizing kindness
and impatient superiority so often witnessed in the presumptuous children
of our time.
When Bessie Maynard had poured out her complaint, with many an
illustration of which a woman could well understand the bitterness, Aunt
Nancy was silent a moment.
“It’s pretty hard, dear,” she said then, embarrassed what to say. “Some
men have that way of not caring anything about their wives, as soon as
they have got them; but I never thought John would act so. And you know,
Bessie, that, if it is hard, still he is your husband, and you can’t leave
him for that. Try to be patient, and don’t lose courage. I’m sure he loves
you, though he doesn’t show it; and he’ll come round by‐and‐by.”
The reply almost broke in on this trite advice: “I did not mean to leave
him. I came down here to think. I can’t think there. I wanted to see again
this place where I was a child, and where I was so happy. I thought that
perhaps some of the old feelings might come back. I have been afraid of
some things. Aunt Nancy, I was afraid I should grow to hate John!”
“Oh! no, Bessie,” the old woman exclaimed. “Never let yourself hate your
own husband! It would be a dreadful sin; and, besides, it wouldn’t mend
matters. It is better for a woman to love one who cares nothing for her
than not to love anybody. I don’t believe but John is fond of you still,
if he’d only stop to think of it.”
There was no reply.
“What else were you afraid of?” Aunt Nancy asked presently. “You said you
were afraid of some things?”
Bessie did not answer.
That other fear that, shunned at first, then glanced upon, then brooded
over silently till it had grown almost a probability, flashed out again on
her in all its original hatefulness when she found herself about to
explain it to a listener like this.
“If you don’t want to tell, I won’t ask you,” Aunt Nancy said, with almost
childlike timidity. “But, may be, since you have begun, you would feel
better not to keep anything back. You know, Bessie, I am on your side,
though I am John’s own aunt.”
The younger woman crept nearer into the arm that half held her, and said,
in a hurried whisper, “Every one is not so indifferent to me as John is!”
“I’m glad of it, child,” was the calm reply. “I don’t like to praise
people to their faces, but you always had a sweet, winning way. I am glad
that other people are good to you.” She waited again for the explanation,
not dreaming that it had been given.
Bessie Maynard drew a breath, like one who plunges into water. “There’s
some one who thinks me worth watching and sympathizing with, if John
doesn’t,” she said.
“You don’t mean a man!” exclaimed Aunt Nancy.
“Of course I do,” answered Bessie almost pettishly.
The words were scarcely out of her mouth, before she was flung back on to
the pillow by the arms that had held her so tenderly, and Aunt Nancy stood
erect by the bedside. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, Bessie Maynard?”
she cried out indignantly.
“No, I am not!” was the dogged answer. “I have nothing to be ashamed of.”
The flash of the old woman’s eyes could be seen in the dim light. “What!
you, a married woman, not ashamed to let a man who is not your husband
talk love to you!”
“He never spoke a word of love to me,” said Bessie, still sulky.
Aunt Nancy was utterly puzzled. “How do you know, then?” she asked.
Neither by nature nor education was this woman fitted to understand that
subtile manner by which impressions and assurances are conveyed without a
word having been spoken. A man would have been obliged to use plain
language indeed, if he would have had her, a wife, understand that he
loved her.
While Bessie described some of the delicate kindnesses of this dangerous
friend of hers, Aunt Nancy listened attentively, and presently resumed her
seat by the bed. She really could not see that the child had done, or
meant, or wished any real harm.
“But, still, you must look out for the fellow, dear,” she said. “He
wouldn’t hang round you so if he was what he ought to be. You never know
what these city gentlemen are.”
“He isn’t a bad man!” Bessie exclaimed. “I won’t have him called so. I’m
afraid; but, for all that, I respect him. I wish John were half as good.”
The story was ended; but with the feeling of relief which followed the
disburdening of her heart came also the uneasiness and half regret we
always experience when we have been led unawares to confide a secret to
one whom we have not deliberately chosen as a confidant. Conscious of this
new uneasiness, Bessie wished to close the conversation.
“Don’t let me keep you any longer,” she said. “Go to bed now, and forget
all the nonsense I have been talking. I am sorry I disturbed you.”
Aunt Nancy paid no attention to this request. She sat a few moments in
deep thought, then spoke abruptly: “Bessie, did you ever go to any of your
priests about this business?”
“To a priest!” repeated Bessie, astonished at such a question from a rigid
Puritan like her aunt, and doubtful in what spirit it was asked. “What
made you think of that?”
“I am not a Catholic,” the old woman said, “but you are. And I like to see
people live up to their religion, whatever it is. A religion that won’t
help you in a strait like this isn’t worth having.”
Bessie was silent, knowing not what to say. Her faith was sleeping. That
religion would help as really as the trials of earth can hurt she had not
thought. Like many others, she invoked the aid of the church on the great
events, the births, the marriages, and the deaths, but let the rest of
life fight its own battles.
“Now, you listen to me,” Aunt Nancy said earnestly. “I’m not very wise,
but I’m going to give you the best advice that you can get anywhere. Just
you write to old Father Conners, the priest that married you and John, and
tell him what a trouble you are in. I’ve seen him, and I believe he’s a
good Christian, if he is a priest, and a sensible man, too. He comes three
or four times a year up to a Mr. Blake’s, over on the railroad, and says
Mass in his house. There are a good many Catholics round there now. It’s
about time for him to come again. You write to him, and you won’t be sorry
for it. There’s nothing else for you to do. Will you write, Bessie? I want
you to promise.”
The promise was given hesitatingly, doubtingly, more to get rid of the
subject than from any conviction of its wisdom.
But a promise is a promise, and next morning Bessie wrote the letter, not
because she wished to, but because she must; and a very dry, cold letter
it was. She was a little helped to the writing of it by the pleasant
prospect of carrying it to mail. That would give her a long, solitary walk
and a whole afternoon quite to herself; for the post‐office was in a desk,
in a corner of the sitting‐room of a farm‐house four miles distant. This
house was at the end of postal and stage accommodations in that direction.
Three times a week a double‐seated open wagon was driven there from a
seaport town thirty miles to the southward, passing through several small
villages on its way. This stage had brought Bessie up, and was to return
the next morning.
She set out on her walk soon after their early dinner, and reached the
post‐office just at the high tide of that country afternoon leisure, when,
their noon dinner quite cleared away, the women of the house are
ordinarily free from everything that they would call labor. At this time
the housewife smooths her hair and ties on a clean apron. One hears the
snap of knitting‐needles through the silence, or the drowsy hum of the
spinning‐wheel, or the sound of the loom where the deep‐blue woollen web
grows, thread by thread, while the weaver tosses her shuttle to and fro.
Bessie had dreaded the gossip which she must expect to encounter; but, as
she approached, the sight of blue and pink sun‐bonnets out in the field,
where the women were raking, hay, relieved her fear. Not a soul was in the
house. The watch‐dog, recollecting her, gave no alarm, only walked gravely
by her side, and looked on while she slipped her letter into the bag left
to receive the mail. All the doors and windows stood open, and the
sunshine lay bright and clear on the white bare floors. Large, stupid
flies bumped their heads against the panes of glass, and a bumble‐bee flew
in at the front door, wandered noisily about the rooms, and out again by
the back door. The painted wooden chairs stood straightly against the
yellow‐washed walls, and a large rocking‐chair, with a chintz cushion,
occupied one corner. A braided cloth mat covered the hearth, and the
fireplace was filled with cedar boughs, through which glittered the brass
andirons. On the high mantel‐piece stood a pair of brass candlesticks, and
a tumbler filled with wild roses.
Bessie glanced hurriedly about, then stole out, trembling lest she should
be discovered and pounced upon by some loud‐voiced man or woman from whom
escape would be impossible. But no one appeared, and in a few minutes she
was out of sight of the house.
Loud would be their exclamations of wonder and regret when they should
discover that letter, knowing who must have brought it. How curiously
would they handle it over, and examine it, and try to peep into it while
they speculated and guessed concerning its contents!
“One comfort,” said Bessie to herself, as she glanced over her shoulder,
and saw the last sun‐bonnet disappear, “I sealed it so that not even a
particle of air could get in; and they can’t see a word without committing
felony.”
The June day was passing away in a soft glory. All the world was green,
all the sky was blue, and all the air was golden. But the green was so
various, from a verdant blackness, through many tints, to a vivid green
that was almost yellow, it seemed many‐colored as it was many‐shaped.
There was every shape and size, from the graceful plume of ferns to the
square‐topped oak with its sturdy, horizontal branches. Through it all
wound the narrow brown road, with a line of grass in the middle between
the wagon‐wheels where the horses feet spared it. The birds were singing
their evening song, and a brook at the roadside lisped faintly here and
there, then lay still and shone, then suddenly laughed outright.
On such an evening one does long to be happy; and, if happy, then one
feels that it is not enough. Bessie walked on slowly, taking long breaths
of the clear, perfumed air that had now an evening coolness. She would
fain have stayed out till night fell. The house was near, so she stepped
aside, sat down on a mossy rock, and looked at the sunset. The last, thin,
shining cloud there melted in the fervid light, grew faint, and
disappeared. Bessie’s eyes, so tearful that all this universe of green and
gold swam before them, were fixed on the sky, and she thought over, with a
clearer mind now, the last feverish, miserable years of her life.
It seemed to her that, if she had been less exclusively devoted to her
husband, and had interested herself in other people and in the events of
the day, she would have been wiser and happier. She had made herself as a
slave, and had received a slave’s portion. It would be better to stand on
a more equal footing, and, since works of supererogation, instead of
winning his gratitude and affection, only fostered his selfishness and
lowered her, to confine herself to the duties she was bound to perform.
“But it is my nature to love something with my whole strength, so that all
else seems small in comparison,” she said, sighing. “How can I help it?”
While she gazed fixedly at the sky, at first without seeing, she presently
became aware of a red‐gold crescent moon that had grown visible under her
eyes, curved like a bow when the arrow is just singing from the string,
like the new moon whereon Our Lady stands, a tower of ivory.
The tears in Bessie’s eyes made the shining curve tremble in the sky as
though a hand held it; and, as though it were a bent bow, an arrowy
thought flew from it, and struck quivering into her heart:
“Love God, and all will be well!”
She sat a minute longer, then rose and went quietly homeward. Aunt Nancy
would be anxious about her; and the desire for solitude was gone. She was
glad now that she had written to Father Conners, though the letter might
have shown a gentler spirit. It was a comfort to have done something that
was right, though it was not much.
One does not ordinarily become pious in a moment. We may recognize the
voice of God, and be startled at the clearness and suddenness of the
summons, but our sluggish faith has ever an excuse for a little more
folding of the hands to sleep. But though not obedient at once, Bessie
Maynard felt, rather than saw, that there was a refuge which made it no
longer possible for her to despair.
Within a few days she received an answer to her letter. The priest was
coming to that neighborhood by the last of the week, and would see her.
The letter was brief and to the point, and contained not one word of
sympathy or exhortation; but the tremulous characters, that told of age or
infirmity touched the heart of the reader. This old man gave her no soft
words, but he was hastening to her relief. For the first time, she
anxiously asked herself if it had not been possible for her to avoid all
her trouble, and if there was any element in her story which could
reasonably be expected to call forth anything but reproof for herself from
a man whose whole life had been one of charity and self‐denial. She wished
to see him indeed, but she awaited his coming with a feeling little short
of terror.
Bessie had not written to her husband. She could not bring herself to do
that, for she did not wish to write coldly to him, and she would not use
expressions of affection which had no echo in her heart. But she wrote to
her son a gentle and tender letter, of which he was neither old nor
sensitive enough to feel the pathos. Only one reproach found a place
there: “I thought you might like to hear from me, though you cared more
for your play than you did to say good‐by to me when I came here, and left
me to go to the depot alone.” She did not intimate, though she thought,
that the business which had called her husband away at the same time might
as easily have been postponed.
Father Conners came. His open buggy was driven to the door one morning,
and the boy who sat with him held the horse while the priest slowly
alighted. He was a large, powerful‐looking man, still vigorous, though
slightly bent and stiff with age. Snow‐white hair framed his expressive
face, in which sternness and benevolence were strangely mingled. His color
was fresh, perfect teeth gave a brilliancy to his infrequent smile, and
his pale‐blue eyes were almost too penetrating to be met with ease. He
walked with his head slightly bent down and his gaze fixed upon the ground
till he reached the door, then looked up to see Bessie standing on the
threshold.
She was a pretty creature still, in spite of troubled years, and her
manner and expression would have propitiated a sterner judge. Blushes
overspread her face, and she trembled; yet an impulse of joyful welcome
broke through and brightened her, as a sunbeam brightens the cloud.
The priest stopped short, with no ceremony of greeting, and regarded her a
moment, while she waited for him to speak.
The scrutiny satisfied him apparently.
“You did well to come back here,” he said then, and made a motion to
enter. She stood aside for him to pass, and followed him into the little
parlor which she had spent all the morning in preparing for him. An arm‐
chair had been improvised out of a barrel, some pillows, and a shawl, the
rude fireplace was filled with green, and there were dishes of flowers
about.
Her visitor did not appear to notice these simple efforts to do him honor.
Almost before seating himself, he began to speak of what had brought him
there.
“Now, my child, though I have time enough to say and hear all that is
necessary, though it should take a week, I have no time to waste. Tell me
the meaning of your letter?”
No time for gradual approach, for timid intimations, or delicate reserves
till, warming with the subject, she could show plainly all that was in her
heart. She must make the “epic plunge” without delay. Stimulated by the
necessity, Bessie called up her wits and her courage, and, without being
aware of it, told everything in a few words.
When she paused and expected him to question her, to her surprise he
seemed already to know the whole. And, to her still greater pleasure,
those points on which she had touched lightly, fearing that they might
seem trivial in his eyes, he spoke of with sympathy.
“It is those little attentions and kindnesses which sweeten human life, my
child, and help to sustain us under its heavier trials,” he said.
Bessie lifted her grateful, tearful eyes, and thanked him with a sad
smile.
“And now,” he continued, “I want you to go to confession.”
Her eyes dilated with astonishment. She was confused and distressed, and a
painful blush rose to her face.
“I have not confessed for years,” she stammered. “I am not prepared. When
I have time to think, I will go to confession in a church. It seems
strange to confess here.”
The priest was by nature and habits peremptory, and he knew that this was
the proper time to exercise that quality. “Any place is proper for
confession, if a better one is not to be had,” he said. “As to being
prepared, let us see. You tell me that you have been thinking this all
over this week, to see wherein you may have done wrong. There, then, is an
examen of your conscience as to your duties toward your husband and,
indirectly, toward God. You say that you have not practised your religion,
but mean to do so in future. There is attrition, at least, and a purpose
of amendment. You say that you know all you have committed of serious
wrong in these years, don’t you?”
“Yes,” was the answer.
“You know humanly, as far as you can know, without the illumination of the
Holy Spirit?” the priest corrected.
“Yes,” said Bessie again. “But I want to think it over, and make sure of
my sorrow and good resolutions.”
“In short, you wish to reform and convert yourself, then go to God,” said
Father Conners. “That is not the way. It is God who is to convert you. You
need not stay to try to conquer your feelings, and hesitate for fear you
may not be able to. Your reason is convinced. It is enough. Go to God, and
ask him to help you to do the rest. While you are thinking the subject
over in the woods here, you may die, or the devil may come and tempt you
in the shape of this friend of yours. I will give you half an hour. While
I have gone out to read my office under the trees, you kneel down here,
and first ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten you, and reveal all your sins.
Then say, and mean, that you are sorry, and plan how you may do better
with God’s help in the future.”
He had risen while speaking, and was going toward the door. Refusal was
impossible. Bessie carried her shawl‐covered arm‐chair out, and set it
under a thick old pine‐tree on the slippery brown pine‐needles, through
which tiny ants were running in every direction, very busy about some
buildings of their own, carrying sticks larger than themselves.
Father Conners seated himself, set his hat on the ground by his side,
spread a red silk handkerchief over his head, and took out his Breviary.
He had but little time to attend to the beauties of nature, but the
situation brought an expression of pleasure to his face. He gave one
glance up into the overshadowing branches that spread their fragrant
screen between him and the sun, then a kindlier glance to the young woman
who stood looking wistfully at him.
“Come here for your confession when you are ready, child,” he said, “and
don’t be afraid. See how peaceful the skies are. Is God less gentle? And
here! take my watch, and come back in twenty‐five minutes. You have lost
five minutes already.”
Bessie took the large silver watch on its black ribbon, and hastened to
shut herself in her room, and Father Conners became absorbed in his
office. So much absorbed was he, he did not observe that the silk
handkerchief slipped slowly from his head, and that a large spider let
itself down by a thread from the tree above, stopped within a few inches
of that silvery hair, which it contemplated curiously, then ran up its
silken ladder again as a young woman came out of the house, walked with
faltering steps across the sward, and sank on her knees by the priest’s
side.
An hour later, Father Conners climbed laboriously into his carriage, and
drove away, and Bessie leaned on the bars, and watched him as long as he
was in sight. She felt strong and peaceful. She counted over the promises
she had made him, and resolved anew that they should be kept.
She stood there so long that Aunt Nancy, after having kept her dinner
waiting out of all reason, came down to speak to her. She came with
anxiety and hesitation, not knowing whether her niece was better or worse
for this visit.
“You gave me good advice, Aunt Nancy,” Bessie said, turning at the sound
of her step.
The old lady was delighted. “So you’re all right?” she said.
“I have got into the right track, at least,” Bessie answered, as they
walked up toward the house. “I have been to confession.”
Aunt Nancy’s face clouded again on hearing this avowal. That was all the
priest’s visit had amounted to, then—that John’s wife had been induced to
go to confession! How could people be so superstitious, so subjected, to
their priests? She had hoped that Bessie might have received some good
sound advice and instruction.
This she thought, but said nothing.
How was she to know that in that one word confession was included advice,
instruction, good resolution, and sorrow for sin, as well as the mystical
rite which she abhorred?
To Be Continued.
S. Peter’s Roman Pontificate.
The history of mankind presents us innumerable facts that strike the
reader with astonishment, and tax his ingenuity to its utmost to explain.
The sudden fall of nations from the height of prosperity to misery and
subjection, the invasion of hordes of barbarians to substitute their
uncouthness and ferocity for the polish and civilization of centuries, the
apparent vocation of some one nation, at different epochs, to assume a
preponderance over all others in the government of the world, the
appearance of some one great mind that shone like a sun amid the galaxy of
intellect, revolutionizing his time, and then setting, without leaving any
one to continue his work; all these facts confuse the mind, and, when man
has lost the light that was sent into this world to guide him, seem to him
but the bitter irony of destiny. Not so, however, are they viewed by him
to whom revelation has imparted its illumining rays. He sees Providence
everywhere, and, knowing some wise end has been intended by the Creator
whose power conserves and directs the evolutions of the planets and the
vicissitudes of human life, he is encouraged to inquire into the end for
which such wonderful events have been brought about. ’Twas by this light
the great Bishop of Hippo saw the providential disposition of the changes
that took place in the world; looked on all history but as the preparation
and continuation of the master‐work of God—his church. ’Twas by this light
that, following in the footsteps of S. Augustine, Bossuet understood the
relations of such different facts, and showed their connection in his
_Universal History_. These men, and those who, like them, have studied the
history of the nations of the earth, had no difficulty in realizing the
relation of all these facts, and in looking on them as so many
confirmations of the truth of Christianity; but those who are without
faith stand aghast at the inexplicable phenomena they see before them, and
of all none so sets at naught their judgment and defies their explanation
as the greatest, the most persistent, the most important of all historical
facts—the existence of the Catholic Church. They see it everywhere;
modifying everything; setting at defiance all calculation; and when,
according to human judgment, it should cease to exist, coming forth from
the ordeal purer, stronger, more brilliant and powerful than before. Yet,
they are not willing to learn by experience, but look forward to a future
day when an expedient or a means will be discovered to destroy in its turn
this gigantic fabric that appears to scorn the ravages of time and the
fury of tempest, just as the Jews look forward to the Messiah who is to
deliver them from captivity among the nations. In their useless hope, they
leave nothing untried, and often scruple not at what in their private
capacity they might scorn—distortion of history and downright calumny. No
human institution could ever have withstood the array of powerful enemies
the church of Christ has had since she first went forth from Mount Sion.
No age has ever seen her without them; sometimes fierce persecutors,
sometimes insidious plotters, sometimes open impugners of her dogmas; at
other times dangerous foes, cloaking their hostility under the garb of
devotion that they might better strike deep into her bosom the poison with
which, in their foolish hate, they fancied they were to deprive her of
life. But the spouse of Christ has always cast them from her, and walked
majestically over the ruins they themselves had brought about, and this
she will ever do. And why? Because she does not lean on a broken reed nor
put her trust in an arm of flesh. She bears about her a charm that defies
all attack—the protection of the Most High—and presents to all the proof
of her holy character, those motives of credibility, that as they were
intended for all time, so now as on the day of Pentecost, accompany her
wherever she goes, invincibly proving to the mind of man her own divine
origin and her claim to his obedience. As she was one, in the union of all
her children in one faith and in one baptism; as she was holy in the lives
of those that obeyed her; as she was catholic and universal, embracing
peoples of _all_ climes and of _all_ ages; as she was apostolic in her
origin and in the succession of her ministry, so is she now, one, holy,
catholic, and apostolic in the succession of her priesthood and in the
infallibility of her head. As she was able to point to the wonders wrought
by the apostle in the name of her divine founder, so now can she point to
the miracles of her chosen servants: an Alphonsus de Liguori, a Paul of
the Cross, a Ven. Pallotta, a Maria Taigi, a Maria Moerl, and a host of
others, down to the martyred victims of communistic fury. She can show in
the XIXth century, as she did in the first, a host of martyrs; old men and
youths, matrons and tender virgins, who, when arraigned for their faith
before the Chinese mandarin, fulfilled the promise of Christ, and gave
inspired answers, as did the glorious children of the early church, and
sealed, too, with their blood the belief they held dearer than life.
We can understand, then, how the church can look fearlessly at the storms
that ever and anon burst upon her, because, built on the solidity of her
belief, she knows the waves can but break harmless at her feet. She has no
need of human means to secure her existence, for that has a promise of
perennial duration. The condition, too, of her being is one of struggle
and warfare, and, when it comes upon her, her only act is to oppose the
shield of faith and the sword of the word of God—her only arms the truth.
And as it is written that truth will prevail, so in every battle in which
she has been engaged she has come forth at last with victory inscribed on
her banner—victory through the truth.
We have said that the condition of her being is struggle and warfare.
This, therefore, is never wanting; as all the world knows, she is called
on to defend herself just now against the fiercest attacks she has perhaps
ever suffered—perhaps even beyond what she underwent in that fearful
persecution, in which her enemies directed against her every engine of
destruction, and in their mad rejoicing recorded the inscription,
_Christiano nomine deleto_. To‐day the openly declared foes of her faith
are seated in triumph in her stronghold, and strain every nerve to uproot
from the mind and heart of her children the faith of their fathers. Not
content with attacking the dogmas she teaches, they assail every fact
which in any way may favor her, no matter how clearly the history of past
ages may proclaim its truth. An instance of this we have had but recently,
but a few months ago, when an attempt was made to prove that the fact upon
which the whole jurisdiction of the church is grounded never occurred—that
S. Peter forsooth never came to Rome, and never founded the church there!
With what success the champions of this assertion advocated their cause is
known; and it may still further be judged of from the fact that a person
who came to the discussion, doubting of the fact of S. Peter’s having been
in Rome, left the hall after hearing the Catholic speakers, convinced that
such an historical personage as S. Peter had lived and been in Rome, and
he recorded his belief in one of the leading journals of Italy not
favorable to the Catholic cause.
It may be said to be a strange phenomenon that a fact of history so
notorious, and for which so great an amount of proof exists, which has at
its command every fount of human certitude, as that of the coming of S.
Peter to Rome, ever should have been called in question. But what will not
party spirit attempt? It is not the first time nor will it be the last
that partisans will seek to rid themselves of troublesome facts by
downright denial of them. This spirit, however, is a dangerous one, and
especially unbecoming the sincere student of history. We know what Bacon
has said about the _idola_, and it is incumbent on every one who is
searching after historic truth to lay aside prejudice or even the desire
that facts may favor him. He must look at them merely as they are, take
them on their proof, without, striving to lessen them or give them other
proportions than are inherent in them. If the scope of all research is to
find out the truth, it is our duty to seek it only, and not mar its beauty
by adding to or detracting from it. In the present case the remark is
highly applicable. Catholics have nothing to fear in examining the
historic proofs on which the coming of S. Peter to Rome rests; while those
who differ from them, in so far as they love truth, should be equally glad
to look well into the claims to truth which this same fact puts forward.
We propose to go briefly over the ground. We say briefly because it seems
almost presumptuous, since so many able pens have dedicated themselves to
this task, that we should undertake it anew. There seems to us, however, a
want to be supplied, on this subject, something succinct and not too
learned or too lengthy for the ordinary reader, engrossed in pursuits that
do not allow time for more extended studies. This must be our excuse as
well as our reason for the present undertaking.
In the discussion that took place in Rome on the 9th and 10th February,
1872, the chief speaker on the negative side ended his discourse by saying
that, no matter what weight of testimony could be brought to sustain S.
Peter’s coming to Rome, the silence of Scripture was for him an
unanswerable argument; the Scripture should have spoken of the fact had it
existed; it said nothing about it, therefore it had never existed. Were it
not that the subject is too serious for such quotations, we should say
with Gratiano, “We thank thee for teaching us that word!” This was the
feeling that came over us as we heard the expression from the lips of the
speaker, and now, after so much has been written, we have it still. It is
needless to say that such an expression betrays anxiety with regard to
positive argument, if not a suspicion of weakness in one’s own cause. We
shall endeavor to show that there was reason both for this suspicion and
this anxiety.
And, first, the opinion which is least probable concerning the death of S.
Peter satisfactorily accounts for the silence of the Acts and of the
Epistle to the Romans, the portions of Scripture on which our adversaries
lay most stress in this matter. According to this opinion, S. Peter was
martyred in Rome, _Nerone et Vetere Consulibus_, _i.e._, according to the
Bucherian Catalogue, in the second year of Nero, the year 54 of the
Christian era, this leaving S. Peter twenty‐five years of pontificate,
from the year 29 to the year 54. S. Linus succeeded him, and ruled the
church twelve years, dying after S. Paul, who was put to death before Nero
went into Greece. S. Peter was therefore, according to this chronology,
dead before S. Paul reached Rome. It is not strange, then, the Acts does
not speak of his being there. As for the Epistle to the Romans, if it was
written in the year 53, or two years before S. Paul came to Rome according
to Eusebius, the reasons we adduce further on will explain the silence
with regard to S. Peter. If, as the ordinary opinion has it, the Epistle
was written from Corinth, in the year 58, S. Peter being already four
years dead, the omission of his name is easily accounted for.
We say, secondly, that, in the belief that S. Peter and S. Paul died at
the same time in Rome, sufficient reason can be found for the silence both
of the Acts and of the Epistle to the Romans.
We beg particular attention to what we are going to say. Those portions of
Scripture do not prove by their silence that S. Peter _never_ came to
Rome, first, because the Acts and the Epistle to the Romans are not
adequate witnesses in the case; secondly, because neither the Acts nor the
Epistle to the Romans was called on by circumstances to allude to S.
Peter’s being in Rome.
And, first, the Acts and Epistle to the Romans are not adequate witnesses
that S. Peter _never_ came to Rome. We call attention to the fact that the
Epistle to the Romans was written two years before S. Paul came to Rome.
What therefore we are going to say under this first head regarding the
Acts applies with greater force to the Epistle to the Romans. We shall
then confine our remarks wholly to the Acts in this connection. We say,
then, that, in order that the Acts should be received as an adequate
witness, it should cover the whole period from the time S. Peter first
left Judæa to that of his death as fixed by received historical data, for
we cannot arbitrarily determine the period of his death. Now, it is well
known that history indicates the date of S. Peter’s death as that of S.
Paul’s. They are represented as dying on the same day and in the same
year, one by the sword, the other on the cross; such are the words of the
Roman Martyrology. This being so, we call attention to the fact that the
chief disputant on the negative side of the question fixed on the year 61,
from the _Fasti Consulares—atti consolari_, as that in which S. Paul came
to Rome, this being the year in which Portius Festus went to take
possession of his province.(146) The Acts tells us that after S. Paul came
to Rome he dwelt for two years in his own hired house. Here the narration
ceases, leaving Paul alive and in the year 63 of the Christian era. From
that time to his death, according to historical data, occurs a period,
according to different computations, of from two to four years. About this
period of time no mention is made in the Acts for the simple reason that
it is not embraced there; the narrative breaks off just as it begins. What
was to prevent S. Peter’s coming to Rome during this period of from two to
four years? If he had, the Acts could have said nothing about it, nor
could it if he had not. The conclusion is simple, the Acts, and, _a
fortiori_, the Epistle to the Romans, written prior to it, are no
competent or adequate witnesses to prove S. Peter _never_ came to Rome,
nor died there.
We come to the second head: neither the Acts nor the Epistle to the Romans
was called on to mention the fact of S. Peter’s being in Rome. With regard
to the Acts, any one who will carefully read it will see that S. Luke
narrates the acts of S. Paul. It was necessary to begin with some account
of the commencement of the church to show S. Paul’s connection with it.
This S. Luke does, speaking of the descent of the Holy Ghost, of the
instantaneous and marvellous results of the preaching of S. Peter, of his
admission of the Gentiles after the vision of the cloth containing all
manner of animals, and then passes on to speak of S. Paul, of his
persecution of the church, of the martyrdom of S. Stephen, of the
wonderful conversion of S. Paul. Here S. Paul is brought into contact with
S. Peter; but after the Council of Jerusalem, when S. Paul sets out to
evangelize the heathen, S. Peter is no more heard of, not even when S.
Paul returns to Jerusalem, as narrated in chapter xxi. Was he dead? Had
this been so ere S. Paul left Judæa, from his intimate contact with S.
Peter, it is probable S. Luke would have mentioned a fact so important as
the death of the first of the apostles. He was not dead. He and the other
apostles no longer appear in the narration of S. Luke, if we except S.
James, Bishop of Jerusalem, whom S. Paul saw (chapter xxi.), because S.
Luke did not propose to give a complete history of the church at that
time, or of the apostles, but only of S. Paul and his acts. The Acts are
contained in twenty‐eight chapters. In chapter vii., v. 57, Saul the
persecutor is spoken of for the first time; in the next four chapters he
is frequently mentioned. In the xv., S. Peter is mentioned for the last
time; and from this to the xxviii. S. Paul is the theme of the inspired
writer. In the 15th verse of chapter xxviii. the Christians go out to meet
Paul at Forum Appii, and in verse 16 he is in Rome a prisoner; verse 7
shows him to us calling together not the Christians, but the chief men of
the Jews, to explain that he has not appealed to Cæsar because he had
anything against his people. After these words, at verse 21, the Jews
reply to him, and he instructs or upbraids them as far as verse 29, which
represents the Jews going away incredulous. Verse 30 says: “He remained
two years in his own hired house, and received all who came unto him; 31,
Preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching with all confidence, and
without prohibition, the things that are of the Lord Jesus Christ.” Here
the Acts ends. Does there seem to the reader any place in these two verses
for a mention of Peter? Ought the inspired writer to have added more to
his account? It seems to us not, for the end he had in view was gained. He
had been a companion of S. Paul, he had told those who knew it not what
had happened in their travels, and now S. Paul was in Rome, and dwelling
there, in the centre of the world, he did not deem it needful to say any
more, otherwise he would have told us some of the actions of S. Paul, for
wonders and conversions he certainly wrought in those two years. But as S.
Luke says nothing about these, nor about the flourishing Church of Rome to
which S. Paul two years before had addressed his Epistle from Corinth, it
is not strange he says nothing about S. Peter.
The silence of S. Paul in regard to S. Peter, in his Epistle to the
Romans, is not only of no avail to our adversaries, but the Epistle itself
contains matter for strong argument that S. Peter was permanently in Rome,
and in fact founded the church there.
First, with respect to the silence of S. Paul in regard to S. Peter. It is
a received canon of criticism that the silence of authors does not affect
the existence of a fact, when that fact is proven from documents of
weight; and this all the more when no valid reason can be put forward to
show the author or authors should have mentioned the fact in question.
Now, this is precisely the case with regard to S. Paul’s silence about S.
Peter. We have documentary and monumental evidence, as we shall see
hereafter, that S. Peter did come to Rome, while there was no practical
reason why S. Paul should mention S. Peter:—not for the sake of commending
him, for that was neither becoming, as S. Peter was head of the apostolic
college, nor necessary, as S. Peter’s works bore the stamp of divine
sanction; not for the purpose of asking permission to labor in Rome, as
the apostles were equal in the ministry, and united in a bond of perfect
harmony and mutual understanding, though with subjection to the centre of
unity, S. Peter, without, however, the distinctions of the various rights
and duties afterwards introduced by ecclesiastical custom; not for the
purpose of salutation, for he could not address S. Peter as head of the
church in a tone of authoritative teaching; and salutations, if, contrary
to what is generally held, Peter were in Rome at the time the letter was
written, could be made privately by the messenger who carried the letter,
and thus the duty of urbanity or charity, the only one that could require
express notice of S. Peter, may have been fulfilled. In fact, propriety
itself required this latter mode of salutation, lest it should be said
that S. Paul, instead of having directly addressed S. Peter, had saluted
him publicly through those to whom he wrote—the Christians of Rome, the
spiritual subjects of S. Peter. The silence, then, of S. Paul is of no
weight to prove S. Peter never was in Rome.
The argument of silence, therefore, falls to the ground.
We said the Epistle to the Romans contains matter to show S. Peter was in
Rome, and founded the church there.
Let us bear in mind who S. Peter was—the Apostle of the Gentiles. Why was
it he did not go at once to the centre of the Gentile world? Could any
more potent means have been adopted to spread Christianity? There centred
the civilization of the known world; there the Ethiopian met the Scythian,
the swarthy men from the banks of the Ganges were face to face with those
who first saw light by the waters of the Tagus, and the Numidian horseman
and the German warrior strolled through the Forum, admiring the temples of
the gods of Rome. Nowhere was there more certainty of success in spreading
abroad novelty of any kind than in this Babylon, receiving into its vast
enclosure men of all the nations over which it ruled, and sending them
forth again filled with wonder at what they saw, and eager to impart to
their less fortunate countrymen what they had learned in their sojourn in
the great city. Thither, however, S. Paul did not go, and why? Because
some one was there already—some one of power and authority; some one whose
labors had been crowned with success, and who had built up a church, the
faith of which at the time this epistle was written was known throughout
the whole world. S. Peter tells us himself he desired to go to the Romans
to impart to them something of spiritual grace to strengthen them, that
is, to be comforted in them “by that which is mutual—your faith and mine.”
The mode of expression of S. Paul in this place, vv. 11 and 12, is worthy
of notice. He says to the Romans he longs to see them to _strengthen
them_, and, as if he might be misunderstood, he adds immediately, “_that
is to say_, that I may be comforted together in you.” Evidently he speaks
here as one who is careful lest he seem to usurp the place of another, or
assume a right of teaching with authority which belonged to another. He
would not have the Romans think he considers that the one who rules them
is inferior to himself or stands in need of his support. In verse 18 he
says: “I do not wish you to be ignorant, brethren, that I have often
proposed to come unto you (and I have been prevented hitherto) that I may
have some fruit among you as among other peoples.” It is manifest here
that S. Paul’s duties with the Greeks kept him from going to Rome, and
this, as we said before, because, the Romans being already provided with
one who could teach them, there was not the pressing need of him that
would make him leave those who had none to preach to them.
What we have said with regard to the tone of the first chapter of the
Epistle is confirmed by the words of the apostle in chapter xv. 19‐26.
Here S. Paul says why he had not gone to Rome—because he was preaching to
those _who had no one to preach to them_. Had the Romans had no apostle
preaching to them, this would not have been a reason to put forward,
because the superiority of an apostle over any other preacher of the word
was such as to do away with the necessity of any comparison, and to make
all desirous in an eminent degree of seeing and hearing the chosen men the
sound of whose voice was to be heard throughout the whole world. S. Paul
then continues: “When I shall begin to take my journey into Spain, I hope
_that as I pass_, I shall see you, and be brought on my way thither by
you, if first, in part, I shall have enjoyed you.” From this it results,
first, that S. Paul had no intention of remaining in Rome; and, secondly,
that what he desired was to enjoy, in meeting the Romans, the consolation
of seeing their faith, and of sharing with them the spiritual gifts he
himself had received, which should serve to make them yet more steadfast
in their fidelity to the Gospel, precisely as, to use an example, the
preaching of the same doctrine they have heard from their own bishop, by a
bishop who is his guest, strengthens the faithful in their religious
belief.
The fact, then, stands that a flourishing church existed in Rome at the
time S. Paul wrote his Epistle, and this is still further shown by the
salutations in the last chapter. Who founded it? History is silent
regarding any one but S. Peter. As Alexandria claims S. Peter and S. Mark;
as Ephesus, S. John; as innumerable other cities and countries their
respective apostles, so does Rome claim S. Peter as its first evangelizer.
It would be absurd to say that all these other cities and nations could
retain the memory of him who first preached to them the word of God, and
Rome—the greatest of all, where so notorious a fact as the preaching of
Jesus Christ could not pass by unnoticed, especially when its effects were
so luminously conspicuous as S. Paul tells us they were—this Rome should
alone be ungratefully forgetful of her best benefactor. The thing is
absurd on the face of it. But history is silent about any other founder
except S. Peter; therefore we are justified in concluding that S. Peter,
and S. Peter alone, was the original founder of the Church of Rome, and
that Rome is right in holding her tradition that such was the fact.
This tradition of S. Peter’s having been in Rome, having founded the
church there, and having died there, gives strength to the conclusion
which Scripture has aided us to form. To any one who is at all conversant
with Rome, it must always have appeared a very remarkable fact that the
discoveries made by the zeal of her archæologists have, as a rule,
confirmed the traditions existing among the people both with regard to
localities and facts. It would seem as if Providence, in these days of
widespread scepticism, were unearthing the long‐hid monuments of the past
to put to confusion those who would fain treat the history of early ages
as a myth. The monuments stare them in the face, while their value is
understood by men of sound practical sense. This is the reason of the
reaction that is taking place against the sceptical style of writing
history which Niebühr and Dr. Arnold adopted, and made to a certain extent
fashionable. The words of a well‐informed writer, whose works have been
deservedly well received—Mr. Dyer—are an excellent reply to authors of
that stamp, based, as they are, on sound sense and the experience of
mankind—the safest guides we can possibly follow; for it is folly to think
that those who have gone before us blindly received everything that was
told them. Whatever may have happened with regard to individuals, such
certainly never was the case with regard to all. As well might we say
that, because some writers of to‐day speak in a spirit of scepticism, all
writers adopt the same style. Men in general never were sceptical, and
never will be; they will use their senses and their intellect, and judge
of things on their merits, and not according to the extravagant ideas of
any one, however brilliant he be. Mr. Dyer, though speaking of ancient
Roman history, makes remarks that are applicable in our case. He says, in
the Introduction to the _History of the City of Rome_, p. xvi.: “It would,
of course, be impossible to discuss in the compass of this Introduction
the general question of the credibility of early Roman history. We can
only state the reasons which have led us to doubt a few of the conclusions
of modern critics about some of the more prominent facts of that history,
and about the existence or the value of the sources on which it professes
to be founded. If it can be shown that the attempts to eliminate or to
depreciate some of these sources can hardly be regarded as successful, and
that the general spirit of modern criticism has been unreasonably
sceptical and unduly captious with respect to the principal Roman
historian, then the author will at least have established what, at all
events, may serve as an apology for the course he has pursued.” And at
page lxii.: “There is little motive to falsify the origin and dates of
public buildings; and, indeed, their falsification would be much more
difficult than that of events transmitted by oral tradition, or even
recorded in writing. In fact, we consider the remains of some of the
monuments of the Regal and Republican periods to be the best proofs of the
fundamental truth of early Roman history.” If this author could justly
speak in this manner of a period regarding which there is certainly not a
little obscurity, what are we to say when we are speaking of so well‐known
an epoch as that of the Roman Empire under Claudius and Nero, and of a
fact so luminous as that of the foundation of Christianity in the capital
of the world? The certainty of the traditions concerning this fact
undoubtedly acquires a strength proportionally greater, and this all the
more because we have the monuments around which these traditions centre,
and the existence of these monuments in the IId century is attested by the
Roman priest Caius writing against Proclus, apud Eusebium, _Hist. Eccl._,
c. xxv.: “I can,” he writes, “show you the trophies (tropæa) of the
apostles. For, whether you go to the Vatican or to the Ostian Way, the
trophies of those who founded the church will present themselves to your
view.” These monuments are the place of imprisonment of S. Peter, the
place of his crucifixion, that of the martyrdom of S. Paul, the place of
their burial, that in which their remains were deposited for a time, and
their final resting‐place, over which the grandest temple of the earth
rises in its majesty—a witness of the belief of all ages.
The tradition of S. Peter having founded the church in Rome receives
additional force from the fact that but a short period elapsed before
writers whose genuine works have come down to us recorded them, and thus
transmitted them to us. Not to speak of S. Clement of Rome, of S. Ignatius
of Antioch, of Papias, we take the words of S. Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons,
who was martyred in the year 202 of the Christian era. We omit speaking of
the other Fathers, not because we consider their testimony without great
value, for it is impossible, in our judgment, for any one who takes up
their works with an unprejudiced mind, and reads them in connection with
later and more precise writers on this subject, not to feel that they
refer to a matter so universally and thoroughly known as not to need any
further dwelling on than would a fact well known to a correspondent,
demand details from the person who writes him the letter. S. Irenæus, we
said, died in the year 202. He had been for a long time Bishop of Lyons,
whence he wrote to S. Victor, Pope, on the subject of the controversy
regarding the celebration of Easter, dissuading him from harsh measures
with respect to the Christians of the East. S. Victor was Pope from the
year 193 to 202, and succeeded Eleutherius, who became pope in the year
177. To this latter Irenæus was sent by the clergy of Lyons in the case of
the Montanist heresy, he having been received and ordained priest of the
diocese of Lyons by the Bishop Photinus, and it was during the pontificate
of the same pope that he wrote his celebrated work against heresies. He
was at this time not a young man, and we shall not be wide of the mark if
we put his birth some years before the middle of the second century, and
this all the more because he himself in the above‐mentioned book speaks of
his early studies as gone by. According to the best authorities, S. John
the Apostle was ninety years old when he was thrown into the caldron of
boiling oil, under Domitian, in Rome. He lived several years longer at
Patmos, and at Ephesus, where he died in the year 101, during the reign of
Trajan. We have thus a period of from thirty to forty years between the
death of S. John—the witness of what SS. Peter and Paul did, and who was
fully acquainted with all that had occurred at Rome—and Irenæus.
Independent of the means of information this proximity to the apostles
gave him, both because in his youth he must have known many who had in
their own youth seen and heard S. Peter, and because he had himself
visited Rome, the interval between him and S. John is filled up by the
link that unites them in an unbroken tradition, by the celebrated martyr
and Bishop of Smyrna, S. Polycarp, the disciple of S. John and the master
of S. Irenæus. We ask the reader to say, in all candor, whether this link
be not all that can be desired to secure belief in the testimony handed
down through it, from the apostles, especially with regard to such a thing
as the chief theatre of the life, labors, and death of the head of the
apostolic college. Anticipating a favorable answer, we proceed to give the
words of S. Irenæus—of undoubted authenticity. In his work, _Contra
Hæreses_, l. iii. c. i., he writes: “Matthew among the Hebrews composed
his Gospel in their tongue, while Peter and Paul were evangelizing at Rome
and founding the church. After their decease, Mark, the disciple and
interpreter of Peter, committed to writing what had been preached by
Peter.” In the same book, c. iii. § 3, S. Irenæus says: “But since it is
too long to enumerate in a volume of this kind the successions of all the
churches, pointing to the tradition of the greatest, most ancient and
universally known, founded and constituted at Rome, by the two most
glorious Apostles Peter and Paul, to that which it has from the apostles,
and to the faith announced to men, through the succession of bishops
coming down to our time, we put to confusion all who in any manner, by
their own self‐will, or through empty glory, or through blindness, or from
malice, gather otherwise than they should. For to this church, by reason
of its more powerful headship (principalitatem), it behooves every church
to come, that is, those who are faithful everywhere, in which (in qua) has
always been preserved by men of every region the tradition which is from
the apostles.” He goes on to say: “The holy apostles, founding and
building up the church, gave to Linus the episcopate of administration of
the church. Paul makes mention of this Linus in his letters to Timothy. To
him succeeded Anacletus; after him, in the third place from the apostles,
Clement (who also saw the apostles, and conferred with them) obtained the
episcopate, while he yet had the preaching of the apostles sounding in his
ears and tradition before his eyes; not he alone, for there were many then
living who had been taught by the apostles. Under this Clement, therefore,
a not trifling dissension having arisen among the brethren who were at
Corinth, the church which is at Rome wrote a very strong letter etc.... To
this Clement succeeded Evaristus, and to Evaristus Alexander, and
afterwards the sixth from the apostles was Sixtus, and after him
Telesphorus, who also gloriously suffered martyrdom; and then Hyginus,
next Pius, after whom Anicetus. When Soter had succeeded Anicetus, now
Eleutherius has the episcopate in the twelfth place from the apostles. By
this order and succession, that tradition which is from the apostles in
the church, and the heralding of the truth, have come down to us. And this
is a most full showing that one and the same is the life‐giving faith
which from the time of the apostles down to the present has been preserved
and delivered in truth. And Polycarp, not only taught by the apostles, and
conversing with many of those who saw our Lord, but also constituted by
the apostles bishop in Asia, in the church which is at Smyrna, _whom we
also saw in our early youth_, taught always the things he had learned from
the apostles, which also he delivered to the church, and which are alone
true. To these things all the churches, which are in Asia, and those who
up to to‐day have succeeded to Polycarp, bear witness.” And in his letter
to Florinus, S. Irenæus says more explicitly that he was a disciple of
Polycarp, that he had a most vivid recollection of his master, of his ways
and words, which he cherished more in his heart even than in his
memory.(147) Eusebius, in the _Chronicon_, says that Polycarp was martyred
in the year 169, the seventh of Lucius Verus.
Nothing clearer, more explicit, or of greater value than a tradition with
such links as S. John the Evangelist, S. Polycarp, and S. Irenæus could be
desired to establish beyond a doubt that S. Peter came to Rome and founded
the church there.
This fact having been shown to rest on a solid basis, we have now to say a
word with regard to the time at which S. Peter came to Rome. On this point
there is a difference of opinion; but this very difference of opinion as
regards the epoch is a new proof of the fact. The most probable opinion,
that which seems to have found most favor, fixes it at the year 42 of the
Christian era, the second year of Claudius. This is what S. Jerome,
following Eusebius, records. The learned Jesuit Zaccaria puts it at the
year 41, in the month of April, the 25th of which was kept as a holyday,
in the time of S. Leo the Great, in honor of S. Peter. This writer bears
witness to the very remarkable unanimity among the Fathers with respect to
the twenty‐five years’ duration of the pontificate of S. Peter in Rome,
which according to S. Jerome would fix the date of his death as the
fourteenth year of Nero, the 67th of the present era. The words of S.
Jerome are: “Simon Peter went to Rome to overthrow Simon Magus, and had
there his sacerdotal chair for twenty‐five years, up to the last year of
Nero, that is, the fourteenth; by whom also he was crowned with martyrdom
by being affixed to the cross.”(148) S. Jerome, we know, was well versed
in the history of the church, had dwelt for a long time at Rome, and may
consequently be presumed to have been excellently well informed with
regard to the general belief and tradition of the people of Rome. The
manner of the death of both apostles is mentioned by Tertullian, in his
book _De Præscriptionibus_, c. 126, where, after bidding those he
addresses have recourse to the apostolic churches, he says: “If you be
near to Italy, you have Rome, whence also we have authority. How happy is
this church, for which the apostles poured forth all their doctrine with
their blood, where Peter equals his Lord’s Passion, where Paul is crowned
with the end of John (the Baptist), where the Apostle John, after
suffering no harm from his immersion in the fiery oil, is banished to an
island.” Origen, too, says: “Peter is thought to have preached to the Jews
throughout Pontus, Galatia, Bythinia, Cappadocia, and Asia; who, when he
came to Rome, was finally affixed to the cross with his head down.”(149)
Before concluding what we have undertaken to say on the subject of S.
Peter’s coming to Rome, we wish to notice the objection against this fact,
and the duration of his pontificate, which must naturally appear to those
not well acquainted with antiquity one of not a little strength. How could
S. Peter hold the primacy at Rome, when the Acts represents him
continually as in Judæa, among those of his nation to whom he had, as S.
Paul says, a peculiar mission, the apostleship of circumcision? We reply,
first: that the apostleship of S. Peter to the Jews did not exclude his
labors with the Gentiles; in fact, we know from the Acts that S. Peter had
a vision which led him to work for the latter, and that vision was
immediately followed by the admission, by S. Peter himself, of the
centurion Cornelius. Moreover, it is well known that there were Jews
dispersed throughout the world, to whom S. Peter is said to have gone, as
we have shown—in Pontus and the other countries of Asia Minor; and also in
Rome they were numerous. Duty therefore, both to the Jew and Gentile,
could and did lead S. Peter to Rome.
We say, secondly: there is no difficulty in the fact of S. Peter having
been often in Judæa. The apostles, from their very charge, were obliged to
travel much; and the sound of their voice was heard in every land. As is
narrated of them, they divided the nations among them; and, burning with
the fire of zeal sent down upon them on the day of Pentecost, they went
about, everywhere kindling in others the flame that burned within
themselves. As for the difficulties or facilities of travel, especially in
the case of S. Peter, we cannot do better than to cite the words of the
learned Canon Fabiani in his _Discussion_ with those who impugned the
coming of S. Peter to Rome. In the authentic report of this discussion,
page 52, he says: “How many days were required for a journey from Cæsarea
to Rome? Little more than fifteen days.... Lately very learned men among
Protestants, and at the same time men thoroughly skilled in what regards
the seafaring art, Smith and Penrose, have calculated from the very voyage
of S. Paul, and from the narrations in the Acts, the time that vessels
took to come from Cæsarea to Rome. They went at the rate of seven knots an
hour, so that it took one hundred and seventy‐seven hours, or seven days
and a third, to came from Cæsarea to Pozzuoli; and Pliny himself assures
us that vessels came from Alexandria to Pozzuoli in nine days, from
Alexandria in Egypt in nine days, and from Alexandria to Messina in seven
days. Cæsarea and Jerusalem, you know, differ but little in distance to
Rome, from Alexandria in Egypt. The journey from Messina and Pozzuoli to
Rome was made in about two or three days, so that the whole time required
to go from Rome to Jerusalem was not more than half a month.” It is easy,
then, to understand how S. Peter could be often in Judæa, though he had
fixed his permanent residence in Rome.
To sum up what we have been saying, no argument can be had from the
silence of Scripture to prove S. Peter never came to Rome, because the
Acts and Epistle to the Romans do not cover the whole epoch of S. Peter’s
apostleship. Moreover, the silence of Scripture does not prove that S.
Peter did not rule the Church of Rome twenty‐five years, because, as we
have shown, there was no reason why either the Acts or the Epistle to the
Romans should speak of S. Peter’s going to Rome and being there. What we
have here asserted is all the more true because we have positive testimony
not only with regard to S. Peter’s coming to Rome, but also respecting the
date of his coming, the period of his ruling the church there, the time
and the manner of his death there, and because we have the monuments
recording the memory of the Apostles Peter and Paul, the trophies of the
apostles, as Caius calls them, _tropæa apostolorum_, which exist to this
day, surrounded by the marks of veneration and the pious traditions of the
people of Rome. Against all these proofs difficulties of history and
chronology are of no avail; for, in the first place, the very difficulties
and discussions only serve to confirm the fact, especially since these
difficulties and discussions have lasted for fifteen centuries without
bringing about the rejection of the main fact; in the next place, we know
there are many well‐established facts regarding which there exist
difficulties to clear up, and this nowhere more than in past history. When
we have proved by one solid, unanswerable argument a fact, we should not
trouble ourselves much regarding what may be brought against it. The
elucidation of knotty points may delight us and reward the labors of the
erudite; for common practical use the matter is settled; and any one who
rises up against it must not wonder if he be looked on as either not well
informed, or, to say the least, eccentric.
Sayings.
“Rejoice not in riches or other transient gifts, for thou shalt be
deprived of them like the actor, who, after finishing his part, lays aside
his costume,”—_S. Chrysostom._
“God has implanted in us conscience, and by this he acts in a manner more
loving than our natural father; for this latter, after he has warned his
son ten and a hundred times, expels him from his home; but God ceases not
to warn us by conscience even to the latest breath.”—_Ibid._
“To restrain anger assimilates man to his Creator.”—_Ibid._
“The man who forgives his enemy is like God.”—_S. Augustine._
“He is a true Christian who carries with him the whole belief of Christ,
who acts virtuously through the spirit of Christ, and who dies to sin
through the following of Christ.”—_S. Thomas._
“No one is lost without knowing it; and no one is deceived without wishing
to be deceived.”—_S. Thomas._
The Progressionists.
From The German Of Conrad Von Bolanden.
Chapter VII. An Ultramontane Son.
Greifmann and Gerlach had driven to the railway station. The express train
thundered along. As the doors of the carriages flew open, Seraphin peered
through them with eyes full of eager joy. He thought no more of the fate
that threatened him as the sequel of his father’s arrival; his youthful
heart exulted solely in the anticipation of the meeting. A tall, broad‐
shouldered gentleman, with severe features and tanned complexion, alighted
from a _coupé_. It was Mr. Conrad Gerlach. Seraphin threw his arms around
his father’s neck and kissed him. The banker made a polite bow to the
wealthiest landed proprietor of the country, in return for which Mr.
Conrad bestowed on him a cordial shake of the hand.
“Has your father returned?”
“He cannot possibly reach home before September,” answered the banker. The
traveller stepped for a moment into the luggage‐room. The gentlemen then
drove away to the Palais Greifmann. During the ride, the conversation was
not very animated. Conrad’s curt, grave manner and keen look, indicative
of a mind always hard at work, imposed reserve, and rapidly dampened his
son’s ingenuous burst of joy. Seraphin cast a searching glance upon that
severe countenance, saw no change from its stern look of authority, and
his heart sank before the appalling alternative of either sacrificing the
happiness of his life to his father’s favorite project, or of opposing his
will and braving the consequences of such daring. Yet he wavered but an
instant in the resolution to which he had been driven by necessity, and
which, it was plain from the lines of his countenance, he had manhood
enough to abide by.
Mr. Conrad maintained his reserve, and asked but few questions. Even Carl,
habitually profuse, studied brevity in his answers, as he knew from
experience that Gerlach, Senior, was singularly averse to the use of many
words.
“How is business?”
“Very dull, sir; the times are hard.”
“Did you sustain any losses through the failures that have recently taken
place in town?”
“Not a farthing. We had several thousands with Wendel, but fortunately
drew them out before he failed.”
“Very prudent. Has your father entered into any new connections in the
course of his travels?”
“Several, that promise fairly.”
“Is Louise well?”
“Her health is as good as could be wished.”
“General prosperity, then, I see, for you both look cheerful, and Seraphin
is as blooming as a clover field.”
“How is dear mother?”
“Quite well. She misses her only child. She sends much love.”
The carriage drew up at the gate. The young lady was awaiting the
millionaire at the bottom of the steps. While greetings were exchanged
between them, a faint tinge of warmth could be noticed on the cold
features of the land‐owner. A smile formed about his mouth, his piercing
eyes glanced for an instant at Seraphin, and instantly the smile was
eclipsed under the cloud of an unwelcome discovery.
“I am on my way to the industrial exhibition,” said he, “and I thought I
would pay you a visit in passing. I wish you not to put yourself to any
inconvenience, my dear Louise. You will have the goodness to make me a
little tea, this evening, which we shall sip together.”
“I am overjoyed at your visit, and yet I am sorry, too.”
“Sorry! Why so?”
“Because you are in such a hurry.”
“It cannot be helped, my child. I am overwhelmed with work. Harvest has
commenced; no less than six hundred hands are in the fields, and I am
obliged to go to the exhibition. I must see and test some new machinery
which is said to be of wonderful power.”
“Well, then, you will at least spare us a few days on your return?”
“A few days! You city people place no value on time. We of the country
economize seconds. Without a thought you squander in idleness what cannot
be recalled.”
“You are a greater rigorist than ever,” chided she, smiling.
“Because, my child, I am getting older. Seraphin, I wish to speak a word
with you before tea.”
The two retired to the apartments which for years Mr. Conrad was
accustomed to occupy whenever he visited the Palais Greifmann.
“The old man still maintains his characteristic vigor,” said Louise. “His
face is at all times like a problem in arithmetic, and in place of a heart
he carries an accurate estimate of the yield of his farms. His is a cold,
repelling nature.”
“But strictly honest, and alive to gain,” added Carl. “In ten years more
he will have completed his third million. I am glad he came; the marriage
project is progressing towards a final arrangement. He is now having a
talk with Seraphin; tomorrow, as you will see, the bashful young
gentleman, in obedience to the command of his father, will present himself
to offer you his heart, and ask yours in return.”
“A free heart for an enslaved one,” said she jestingly. “Were there no
hope of ennobling that heart, of freeing it from the absurdities with
which it is encrusted, I declare solemnly I would not accept it for three
millions. But Seraphin is capable of being improved. His eye will not
close itself against modern enlightenment. Servility of conscience and a
baneful fear of God cannot have entirely extinguished his sense of
liberty.”
“I have never set a very high estimate on the pluck and moral force of
religious people,” declared Greifmann. “They are a craven set, who are
pious merely because they are afraid of hell. When a passion gets
possession of them, the impotence of their religious frenzy at once
becomes manifest. They fall an easy prey to the impulses of nature, and
the supernatural fails to come to the rescue. It would be vain for
Seraphin to try to give up the unbelieving Louise, whom his strait‐laced
faith makes it his duty to avoid. He has fallen a victim to your
fascinations; all the Gospel of the Jew of Nazareth, together with all the
sacraments and unctions of the church, could not loose the coils with
which you have encircled him.”
In this scornful tone did Carl Greifmann speak of the heroism of virtue
and of the energy of faith, like a blind man discoursing about colors. He
little suspected that it is just the power of religion that produces
characters, and that, on this very account, in an irreligious age,
characters of a noble type are so rarely met with; the warmth of faith is
not in them.
“Mr. Schwefel desires to speak a word with you,” said a servant who
appeared at the door.
The banker nodded assent.
“I ask your pardon for troubling you at so unseasonable an hour,” began
the leader, after bowing lowly several times. “The subject is urgent, and
must be settled without delay. But, by the way, I must first give you the
good news: Mr. Shund is elected by an overwhelming majority, and Progress
is victorious in every ward.”
“That is what I looked for,” answered the banker, with an air of
satisfaction. “I told you whatever Cæsar, Antony, and Lepidus command,
must be done.”
“I am just from a meeting at which some important resolutions have been
offered and adopted,” continued the leader. “The strongest prop of
ultramontanism is the present system of educating youth. Education must,
therefore, be taken out of the hands of the priests. But the change will
have to be brought about gradually and with caution. We have decided to
make a beginning by introducing common schools. A vote of the people is to
be taken on the measure, and, on the last day of voting, a grand barbecue
is to be given to celebrate our triumph over the accursed slavery of
religious symbols. The ground chosen by the chief‐magistrate for the
celebration is the common near the Red Tower, but the space is not large
enough, and we will need your meadow adjoining it to accommodate the
crowd. I am commissioned by the magistrate to request you to throw open
the meadow for the occasion.”
The banker, believing the request prejudicial to his private interests,
looked rather unenthusiastic. Louise, who had been busy with the teapot,
had heard every word of the conversation, and the new educational scheme
had won her cordial approval. Seeing her brother hesitated, she flew to
the rescue:
“We are ready and happy to make any sacrifice in the interest of education
and progress.”
“I am not sure that it is competent for me in the present instance to
grant the desired permission,” replied Greifmann. “The grass would be
destroyed, and perhaps the sod ruined for years. My father is away from
home, and I would not like to take the responsibility of complying with
his honor’s wish.”
“The city will hold itself liable for all damages,” said Schwefel.
“Not at all!” interposed the young lady hastily. “Make use of the meadow
without paying damages. If my brother refuses to assume the
responsibility, I will take it upon my self. By wresting education from
the clergy, who only cripple the intellect of youth, progress aims a
death‐blow at mental degradation. It is a glorious work, and one full of
inestimable results that you gentlemen are beginning in the cause of
humanity against ignorance and superstition. My father so heartily concurs
in every undertaking that responds to the wants of the times, that I not
only feel encouraged to make myself responsible for this concession, but
am even sure that he would be angry if we refused. Do not hesitate to make
use of the meadow, and from its flowers bind garlands about the temples of
the goddess of liberty!”
The leader bowed reverently to the beautiful advocate of progress.
“In this case, there remains nothing else for me to do than to confirm my
sister’s decision,” said Greifmann. “When is the celebration to take
place?”
“On the 10th of August, the day of the deputy elections. It has been
intentionally set for that day to impress on the delegates how genuine and
right is the sentiment of our people.”
“Very good,” approved Greifmann.
“In the name of the chief‐magistrate, I thank you for the offering you
have so generously laid upon the shrine of humanity, and I shall hasten to
inform the gentlemen before they adjourn that you have granted our
request.” And Schwefel withdrew from the gorgeously furnished apartment.
Meanwhile a fiery struggle was going on between Seraphin and his father.
He had briefly related his experience at the Palais Greifmann; had even
confessed his preference for Louise, and had, for the first time in his
life, incurred his father’s displeasure by mentioning the wager. And when
he concluded by protesting that he could not marry Louise, Conrad’s
suppressed anger burst forth.
“Have you lost your senses, foolish boy? This marriage has been in
contemplation for years; it has been coolly weighed and calculated. In all
the country around, it is the only equal match possible. Louise’s dower
amounts to one million florins, the exact value of the noble estate of
Hatzfurth, adjoining our possessions. You young people can occupy the
chateau, I shall add another hundred acres to the land, together with a
complete outfit of farming implements, and then you will have such a start
as no ten proprietors in Germany can boast of.”
Seraphin knew his father. All the old gentleman’s thought and effort was
concentrated on the management of his extensive possessions. For other
subjects there was no room in the head and heart of the landholder. He
barely complied with his religious duties. It is true, on Sundays Mr.
Conrad attended church, but surrounded invariably by a motley swarm of
worldly cares and speculations connected with farming. At Easter, he went
to the sacraments, but usually among the last, and after being repeatedly
reminded by his wife. He took no interest in progress, humanity,
ultramontanism, and such other questions as vex the age, because to
trouble himself about them would have interfered with his main purpose. He
knew only his fields and woodlands—and God, in so far as his providence
blessed him with bountiful harvests.
“What is the good of millions, father, if the very fundamental conditions
of matrimonial peace are wanting?”
“What fundamental conditions?”
“Louise believes neither in God nor in revelation. She is an infidel.”
“And you are a fanatic—a fanatic because of your one‐sided education. Your
mother has trained you as priests and monks are trained. During your
childhood piety was very useful; it served as the prop to the young tree,
causing it to grow up straight and develop itself into a vigorous stem.
But you are now full‐grown, and life makes other demands on the man than
on the boy; away, therefore, with your fanaticism.”
“To my dying hour I shall thank my mother for the care she has bestowed on
the child, the boy, and the young man. If her pious spirit has given a
right direction to my career, and watched faithfully over my steps, the
untarnished record of the son cannot but rejoice the heart of the father—a
record which is the undoubted product of religious training.”
“You are a good son, and I am proud of you,” accorded Mr. Conrad with
candor. “Your mother, too, is a woman whose equal is not to be found. All
this is very well. But, if Louise’s city manners and free way of thinking
scandalize you, you are sheerly narrow‐minded. I have been noticing her
for years, and have learned to value her industry and domestic virtues.
She has not a particle of extravagance; on the contrary, she has a decided
leaning towards economy and thrift. She will make an unexceptionable wife.
Do you imagine, my son, my choice could be a blind one when I fixed upon
Louise to share the property which, through years of toil, I have amassed
by untiring energy?”
“I do not deny the lady has the qualities you mention, my dear father.”
“Moreover, she is a millionaire, and handsome, very handsome, and you are
in love with her—what more do you want?”
“The most important thing of all, father. The very soul of conjugal
felicity is wanting, which is oneness of faith in supernatural truth. What
I adore, Louise denies; what I revere, she hates; what I practise, she
scorns. Louise never prays, never goes to church, never receives the
sacraments, in a word, she has not a spark of religion.”
“That will all come right,” returned Mr. Conrad. “Louise will learn to
pray. You must not, simpleton, expect a banker’s daughter to be for ever
counting her beads like a nun. Take my word for it, the weight of a wife’s
responsibilities will make her serious enough.”
“Serious perhaps, but not religious, for she is totally devoid of faith.”
“Enough; you shall marry her nevertheless,” broke in the father. “It is my
wish that you shall marry her. I will not suffer opposition.”
For a moment the young man sat silent, struggling painfully with the
violence of his own feelings.
“Father,” said he, then, “you command what I cannot fulfil, because it
goes against my conscience. I beg you not to do violence to my conscience;
violence is opposed to your own and my Christian principles. An atheist or
a progressionist who does not recognize a higher moral order, might insist
upon his son’s marrying an infidel for the sake of a million. But you
cannot do so, for it is not millions of money that you and I look upon as
the highest good. Do not, therefore, dear father, interfere with my moral
freedom; do not force me into a union which my religion prohibits.”
“What does this mean?” And a dark frown gathered on the old gentleman’s
forehead. “Defiance disguised in religious twaddle? Open rebellion? Is
this the manner in which my son fulfils the duty of filial obedience?”
“Pardon me, father,” said the youth with deferential firmness, “there is
no divine law making it obligatory upon a father to select a wife for his
son. Consequently, also, the duty of obedience on this point does not rest
upon the son. Did I, beguiled by passion or driven by recklessness, wish
to marry a creature whose depravity would imperil my temporal and eternal
welfare, your duty, as a father, would be to oppose my rashness, and my
duty, as a son, would be to obey you. Louise is just such a creature; she
is artfully plotting against my religious principles, against my loyalty
to God and the church. She has put upon herself as a task to lead me from
the darkness of superstition into the light of modern advancement. I
overheard her when she said to her brother, ‘Did I for an instant doubt
that Seraphin may be reclaimed from superstition, I would renounce my
union with him, I would forego all the gratifications of wealth, so much
do I detest stupid credulity.’ Hence I should have to look forward to
being constantly annoyed by my wife’s fanatical hostility to my religion.
There never would be an end of discord and wrangling. And what kind of
children would such a mother rear? She would corrupt the little ones,
instil into their innocent souls the poison of her own godlessness, and
make me the most wretched of fathers. For these reasons Miss Greifmann
shall not become my wife—no, never! I implore you, dear father, do not
require from me what my conscience will not permit, and what I shall on no
condition consent to,” concluded the young man with a tone of decision.
Mr. Conrad had observed a solemn silence, like a man who suddenly beholds
an unsuspected phenomenon exhibited before him. Seraphin’s words produced,
as it were, a burst of vivid light upon his mind, dispelling the
multitudinous schemes and speculations that nestled in every nook and
depth. The effect of this sudden illumination became perceptible at once,
for Mr. Gerlach lost the points of view which had invariably brought
before his vision the million of the Greifmanns, and he began to feel a
growing esteem for the stand taken by his son.
“Your language sounds fabulous,” said he.
“Here, father, is my diary. In it you will find a detailed account of what
I have briefly stated.”
Gerlach took the book and shoved it into the breast‐pocket of his coat. In
an instant, however, his imagination conjured up to him a picture of the
Count of Hatzfurth’s splendid estate, and he went on coldly and
deliberately: “Hear me, Seraphin! Your marriage with Louise is a favorite
project upon which I have based not a few expectations. The observations
you have made shall not induce me to renounce this project
unconditionally, for you may have been mistaken. I shall take notes myself
and test this matter. If your view is confirmed, our project will have
been an air castle. You shall be left entirely unmolested in your
convictions.”
Seraphin embraced his father.
“Let us have no scene; hear me out. Should it turn out, on the other hand,
that your judgment is erroneous, should Louise not belong to yon crazy
progressionist mob who aim to dethrone God and subvert the order of
society, should her hatred against religion be merely a silly conforming
to the fashionable impiety of the age, which good influences may
correct—then I shall insist upon your marrying her. Meanwhile I want you
to maintain a strict neutrality—not a step backward nor a step in advance.
Now to tea, and let your countenance betray nothing of what has passed.”
He drew his son to his bosom and imprinted a kiss on his forehead.
The millionaires were seated around the tea‐table. Mr. Conrad playfully
commended Louise’s talent for cooking. Apparently without design he turned
the conversation upon the elections, and, to Seraphin’s utter
astonishment, eulogized the beneficent power of liberal doctrines.
“Our age,” said he, “can no longer bear the hampering notions of the past.
In the material world, steam and machinery have brought about changes
which call for corresponding changes in the world of intellect. Great
revolutions have already commenced. In France, Renan has written a _Life
of Christ_, and in our own country Protestant convocations are proclaiming
an historical Christ who was not God, but only an extraordinary man. You
hardly need to be assured that I too take a deep interest in the
intellectual struggles of my countrymen, but an excess of business does
not permit me to watch them closely. I am obliged to content myself with
such reports as the newspapers furnish. I should like to read Renan’s
work, which seems to have created a great sensation. They say it suits our
times admirably.”
The brother and sister were not a little astonished at the old gentleman’s
unusual communicativeness.
“It is a splendid book,” exclaimed Louise—“charming as to style, and
remarkably liberal and considerate towards the worshippers of Christ.”
“So I have everywhere been told,” said Mr. Conrad.
“Have you read the book, Louise?”
“Not less than four times, three times in French and once in German.”
“Do you think a farmer whose moments are precious as gold could forgive
himself the reading of Renan’s book in view of the multitude of his urgent
occupations?” asked he, smiling.
“The reading of a book that originates a new intellectual era is also a
serious occupation,” maintained the beautiful lady.
“Very true; yet I apprehend Renan’s attempt to disprove to me the divinity
of Christ would remain unsuccessful, and it would only cause me the loss
of some hours of valuable time.”
“Read it, Mr. Gerlach, do read it. Renan’s arguments are unanswerable.”
“So you have been convinced, Louise?”
“Yes, indeed, quite.”
“Well, now, Renan is a living author, he is the lion of the day, and
nothing could be more natural than that the fair sex should grow
enthusiastic over him. But, of course, at your next confession you will
sorrowfully declare and retract your belief in Renan.”
The young lady cast a quick glance at Seraphin, and the brim of her teacup
concealed a proud, triumphant smile.
“Our city is about taking a bold step,” said Carl, breaking the silence.
“We are to have common schools, in order to take education from the
control of the clergy.” And he went on to relate what Schwefel had
reported.
“When is the barbecue to come off?” inquired Mr. Conrad.
“On the 10th of August.”
“Perhaps I shall have time to attend this demonstration,” said Gerlach.
“Hearts reveal themselves at such festivities. One gets a clear insight
into the mind of the multitude. You, Louise, have put progress under
obligations by so cheerfully advancing to meet it.”
After these words the landholder rose and went to his room. The next
morning he proceeded on his journey, taking with him Seraphin’s diary. The
author himself he left at the Palais Greifmann in anxious uncertainty
about future events.
Chapter VIII. Faith And Science Of Progress.
Seraphin usually took an early ride with Carl. The banker was overjoyed at
the wager, about the winning of which he now felt absolute certainty. He
expressed himself confident that before long he would have the pleasure of
going over the road on the back of the best racer in the country. “The
noble animals,” said he, “shall not be brought by the railway; it might
injure them. I shall send my groom for them to Chateau Hallberg. He can
ride the distance in two days.”
Seraphin could not help smiling at his friend’s solicitude for the horses.
“Do not sell the bear’s skin before killing the bear,” answered he. “I may
not lose the horses, but may, on the contrary, acquire a pleasant claim to
twenty thousand florins.”
“That is beyond all possibility,” returned the banker. “Hans Shund is now
chief‐magistrate, has been nominated to the legislature, and in a few days
will be elected. Mr. Hans will appear as a shining light to‐morrow, when
he is to state his political creed in a speech to his constituents. Of
course, you and I shall go to hear him. Next will follow his election,
then my groom will hasten to Chateau Hallberg to fetch the horses. Are you
sorry you made the bet?”
“Not at all! I should regret very much to lose my span of bays. Still, the
bet will be of incalculable benefit to me. I will have learned concerning
men and manners what otherwise I could never have dreamed of. In any
event, the experience gained will be of vast service to me during life.”
“I am exceedingly glad to know it, my dear fellow,” assured Greifmann.
“Your acquaintance with the present has been very superficial. You have
learned a great deal in a few days, and it is gratifying to hear you
acknowledge the fact.”
The banker had not, however, caught Gerlach’s meaning.
But for the wager, Seraphin would not have become acquainted with Louise’s
intellectual standpoint. He would probably have married her for the sake
of her beauty, would have discovered his mistake when it could not be
corrected, and would have found himself condemned to spend his life with a
woman whose principles and character could only annoy and give him pain.
As it was, he was tormented by the fear that his father might not coincide
in his opinion of the young lady. What if the old gentleman considered her
hostility to religion as a mere fashionable mania unsupported by inner
conviction, a girlish whim changeable like the wind, which with little
effort might be made to veer round to the point of the most unimpeachable
orthodoxy? He had not uttered a word condemning Louise’s infatuation about
Renan. On taking leave he had parted with her in a friendly, almost
hearty, manner, proof sufficient that the young lady’s doubtful utterances
at tea had not deceived him.
Upon reaching home, Gerlach sat in his room with his eyes thoughtfully
fixed upon a luminous square cast by the sun upon the floor. Quite
naturally his thoughts ran upon the marriage, and to the prospect of
having to maintain his liberty by a hard contest with his inflexible
parent. He was unshaken in his resolution not to accede to the projected
alliance, and, when a will morally severe conceives resolutions of this
sort, they usually stand the hardest tests. So absorbing were his
reflections that he did not hear John announcing a visitor. He nodded
mechanically in reply to the words that seemed to come out of the
distance, and the servant disappeared.
Soon after a country girl appeared in the entrance of the room. In both
hands she was carrying a small basket made of peeled willows, quite new. A
snow‐white napkin was spread over the basket. The girl’s dress was neat,
her figure was slender and graceful. Her hair, which was wound about the
head in heavy plaits, was golden and encircled her forehead as with a
_nimbus_. Her features were delicate and beautiful, and she looked upon
the young gentleman with a pair of deep‐blue eyes. Thus stood she for an
instant in the door of the apartment. There was a smile about her mouth
and a faint flush upon her cheeks.
“Good‐morning, Mr. Seraphin!” said a sweet voice.
The youth started at this salutation and looked at the stranger with
surprise. She was just then standing on the sunlit square, her hair
gleamed like purest gold, and a flood of light streamed upon her youthful
form. He did not return the greeting. He looked at her as if frightened,
rose slowly, and bowed in silence.
“My father sends some early grapes which he begs you to have the goodness
to accept.”
She drew nearer, and he received the basket from her hands.
“I am very thankful!” said he. And, raising the napkin, the delicious
fruit smiled in his face. “These are a rarity at this season. To whom am I
indebted for this friendly attention?”
“The obligation is all on our side, Mr. Seraphin,” she replied trustfully
to the generous benefactor of her family. “Father is sorry that he cannot
offer you something better.”
“Ah! you are Holt’s daughter?”
“Yes, Mr. Seraphin.”
“Your name is Johanna, is it not?”
“Mechtild, Mr. Seraphin.”
“Will you be so good as to sit down?” And he pointed her to a sofa.
Mechtild, however, drew a chair and seated herself.
He had noted her deportment, and could not but marvel at the graceful
action, the confiding simplicity, and well‐bred self‐possession of the
extraordinary country girl. As she sat opposite to him, she looked so
pure, so trusting and sincere, that his astonishment went on increasing.
He acknowledged to himself never to have beheld eyes whose expression came
so directly from the heart—a heart whose interior must be equally as sunny
and pure.
“How are your good parents?”
“They are very well, Mr. Seraphin. Father has gone to work with renewed
confidence. The sad—ah! the terrible period is past. You cannot imagine,
Mr. Seraphin, how many tears you have dried, how much misery you have
relieved!”
The recollection of the ruin that had been hanging over her home affected
her painfully; her eyes glistened, and tears began to roll down her
cheeks. But she instantly repressed the emotion, and exhibited a beautiful
smile on her face. Seraphin’s quick eye had observed both the momentary
feeling, and that she had resolutely checked it in order not to annoy him
by touching sorrowful chords. This trait of delicacy also excited the
admiration of the gentleman.
“Your father is not in want of employment?” he inquired with interest.
“No, sir! Father is much sought on account of his knowledge of farming.
Persons who have ground, but no team of their own, employ him to put in
crops for them.”
“No doubt the good man has to toil hard?”
“That is true, sir; but father seems to like working, and we children
strive to help him as much as we can.”
“And do you like working?”
“I do, indeed, Mr. Seraphin. Life would be worthless if one did not labor.
Man’s life on earth is so ordered as to show him that he must labor. Doing
nothing is abominable, and idleness is the parent of many vices.”
Another cause of astonishment for the millionaire. She did not converse
like an uneducated girl from the country. Her accurate, almost choice use
of words indicated some culture, and her concise observations revealed
both mind and reflection. He felt a strong desire to fathom the mystery—to
cast a glance into Mechtild’s past history.
“Have you always lived at home, or have you ever been away at school?”
She must have detected something ludicrous in the question, for suddenly a
degree of archness might be observed in her amiable smile.
“You mean, whether I have received a city education? No, sir! Father used
to speak highly of the clearness of my mind, and thought I might even be
made a teacher. But he had not the means to give me the necessary amount
of schooling. Until I was fourteen years old, I went to school to the nuns
here in town. I used to come in of mornings and go back in the evening. I
studied hard, and father and mother always had the satisfaction of seeing
me rewarded with a prize at the examinations. I am very fond of books, and
make good use of the convent library. On Sundays, after vespers, I wait
till the door of the book‐room is opened. I still spend my leisure time in
reading, and on Sundays and holidays I know no greater pleasure than to
read nice instructive books. At my work I think over what I have read, and
I continue practising composition according to the directions of the good
ladies of the convent.”
“And were you always head at school?”
“Yes,” she admitted, with a blush.
“You have profited immensely by your opportunities,” he said approvingly.
“And the desire for learning has not yet left you?”
“This inordinate craving still continues to torment me,” she acknowledged
frankly.
“Inordinate—why inordinate?”
“Because, my station and calling do not require a high degree of culture.
But it is so nice to know, and it is so nice to have refined intercourse
with each others. For seven years I admired the elegant manners of the
convent ladies, and I learned many a lesson from them.”
“How old are you now?”
“Seventeen, Mr. Seraphin.”
“What a pity you did not enter some higher educational institution!” said
he.
A pause followed. He looked with reverence upon the artless girl whom God
had so richly endowed, both in body and mind. Mechtild rose.
“Please accept, also, my most heartfelt thanks for your generous aid,” she
said, with emotion. “All my life long I shall remember you before God, Mr.
Seraphin. The Almighty will surely repay you what alas! we cannot.”
She made a courtesy, and he accompanied her through all the apartments as
far as the front door. Here the girl, turning, bowed to him once more and
went away.
Returning to his room, Seraphin stood and contemplated the grapes.
Strongly did the delicious fruit tempt him, but he touched not one. He
then pulled out a drawer, and hid the gifts as though it were a costly
treasure. For the rest of the day, Mechtild’s bright form hovered near
him, and the sweet charm of her eyes, so full of soul, continually worked
on his imagination. When he again went into Louise’s company, the grace
and innocence of the country girl gained ground in his esteem. Compared
with Mechtild’s charming naturalness, Louise’s manner appeared affected,
spoiled; through evil influences. The difference in the expression of
their eyes struck him especially. In Louise’s eyes there burned a fierce
glow at times, which roused passion and stirred the senses. Mechtild’s
neither glowed nor flashed; but from their limpid depths beamed goodness
so genuine and serenity so unclouded, that Seraphin could compare them to
nothing but two heralds of peace and innocence. Louise’s eyes, thought he,
flash like two meteors of the night; Mechtild’s beam like two mild suns in
a cloudless sky of spring. As often as he entered the room where the
grapes lay concealed, he would unlock the drawer, examine the fragrant
fruit, and handle the basket which had been carried by her hands. He could
not himself help smiling at this childish action, and yet both great
delicacy and deep earnestness are manifested in honoring objects that have
been touched by pure hands, and in revering places hallowed by the
presence of the good.
Next morning the banker asked his guest to accompany him to the church of
S. Peter, where Hans Shund was to address a large gathering.
“In a church?” Gerlach exclaimed, with amazement.
“Don’t get frightened, my good fellow. The church is no longer in the
service of religion. It has been _secularized_ by the state, and is
customarily used as a hall for dancing. There will be quite a crowd, for
several able speakers are to discuss the question of common schools. The
church has been chosen for the meeting on account of the crowd.”
The millionaires drove to the desecrated church. A tumultuous mass swarmed
about the portal. “Let us permit them to push us; we shall get in most
easily by letting them do so,” said the banker merrily. Two officious
progressionists, recognizing the banker, opened a passage for them through
the throng. They reached the interior of the church, which was now an
empty space, stripped of every ornament proper to a house of God. In the
sanctuary could yet be seen, as if in mournful abandonment, a large
quadrangular slab, that had been the altar, and attached to one of the
side walls was an exquisite Gothic pulpit, which on occasions like the
present was used for a rostrum. Everywhere else reigned silence and
desolation.
The nave was filled by a motley mass. The chieftains of progress, some
elegantly dressed, others exhibiting frivolous miens and huge beards,
crowded upon the elevation of the chancel. All the candidates for the
legislature were present, not for the purpose of proving their
qualifications for the office—progress never troubled itself about
those—but to air their views on the subject of education. There were
speakers on hand of acknowledged ability in the discussion of the
doctrines of progress, who were to lay the result of their investigations
before the people.
Seraphin also noted some anxious faces in the crowd. They were citizens,
whose sons were alarmed at the thought of yielding up the training of
their children into the hands of infidelity. And near the pulpit stood two
priests, irreverently crowded against the wall, targets for the scornful
pleasantries of the wits of the mob. Leader Schwefel was voted into the
chair by acclamation. He thanked the assembly in a short speech for the
honor conferred, and then announced that Mr. Till, member of the former
assembly, would address the meeting. Amid murmurs of expectation a short,
fat gentleman climbed into the pulpit. First a red face with a copper‐
tipped nose bobbed above the ledge of the pulpit, next came a pair of
broad shoulders, upon which a huge head rested without the intermediary of
a neck, two puffy hands were laid upon the desk, and the commencement of a
well‐rounded paunch could just be detected by the eye. Mr. Till, taking
two handfuls of his shaggy beard, drew them slowly through his fingers,
looked composedly upon the audience, and breathed hotly through mouth and
nostrils.
“Gentlemen,” he began, with a voice that struggled out from a mass of
flesh and fat, “I am not given to many words, you know. What need is there
of many words and long speeches? We know what we want, and what we want we
will have in spite of the machinations of Jesuits and the whinings of an
ultramontane horde. You all know how I acquitted myself at the last
legislature, and if you will again favor me with your suffrages, I will
endeavor once more to give satisfaction. You know my record, and I shall
remain staunch to the last.”
Cries of “Good!” from various directions.
“Gentlemen! if you know my record, you must also be aware that I am
passionately fond of the chase. I even follow this amusement in the
legislative hall. Our country abounds in a sort of black game, and for me
it is rare sport to pursue this, species of game in the assembly.”
A wild tumult of applause burst forth. Jeers and coarse witticisms were
bandied about on every side of the two clergymen, who looked meekly upon
these orgies of progress.
“Gentlemen!” Till continued, “the _blacks_ are a dangerous kind of wild
beast. They have heretofore been ranging in a preserve, feeding on the fat
of the land. That is an abuse that challenges the wrath of heaven. It must
be done away with. The beasts of prey that in the dark ages dwelt in
castles have long since been exterminated, and their rocky lairs have been
reduced to ruins. Well, now, let us keep up the chase in both houses of
the legislature until the last of these _black_ beasts is destroyed.
Should you entrust to me again your interests, I shall return to the seat
of government to aid with renewed energy in ridding the land of these
creatures that are enemies both of education and liberty.”
Amid prolonged applause the fat man descended. The chieftains shook him
warmly by the hand, assuring him that the cause absolutely demanded his
being reelected.
Gerlach was aghast at Till’s speech. He hardly knew which deserved most
scorn, the vulgarity of the speaker or the abjectness of those who had
applauded him. Their wild enthusiasm was still surging through the
building, when Hans Shund mounted the pulpit. The chairman rang for order;
the tumult ceased. In mute suspense the multitude awaited the great speech
of the notorious usurer, thief, and debauchee. And indeed, progress might
well entertain great expectations, for Hans Shund had read a pile of
progressionist pamphlets, had extracted the strong passages, and out of
them had concocted a right racy speech. His speech might with propriety
have been designated the Gospel of Progress, for Hans Shund had made
capital of whatever freethinkers had lucubrated in behalf of so‐called
enlightenment, and in opposition to Christianity. The very appearance of
the speaker gave great promise. His were not coarse features and goggle
eyes like Till’s; his piercing feline eyes looked intellectual. His face
was rather pale, the result, no doubt, of unusual application, and he had
skilfully dyed his sandy hair. His position as mayor of the city seemed
also to entitle him to special attention, and these several claims were
enhanced by a white necktie, white vest, and black cloth swallow‐tail
coat.
“Gentlemen,” began the mayor with solemnity, “my honorable predecessor in
this place has told you with admirable sagacity that the kernel of every
political question is of a religious character. Indeed, religion is linked
with every important question of the day, it is the _ratio ultima_ of the
intellectual movement of our times. Men of thought and of learning are all
agreed as to the condition to which our social life should be and must be
brought. The friends of the people are actively and earnestly at work
trying to further a healthy development of our social and political
status. Nor have their efforts been utterly fruitless. Progress has made
great conquests; yet, gentlemen, these conquests are far from being
complete. What is it that is most hostile to liberalism in morals, to
enlightenment, and to humanity? It is the antiquated faith of departed
days. Have we not heard the language of the Holy Father in the Syllabus?
But the Holy Father at Rome, gentlemen, is no father of ours—happily he is
the father only of stupid and credulous men.”
“Bravo! Well said!” resounded from the audience. Flaschen nudged
Spitzkopf, who sat next to him. “Shund is no mean speaker. Even that
fellow Voelk, of Bavaria, cannot compete with Shund.”
“Gentlemen, our good sense teaches us to smile with pity at the infallible
declarations of yon Holy Father. We are firmly convinced that papal
decrees can no more stop the onward march of civilization than they can
arrest the heavenly bodies in their journeys about the sun. ’Tis true, an
œcumenical council is lowering like a black storm‐cloud. But let the
council meet; let it declare the Syllabus an article of faith; it will
never succeed in destroying the treasures of independent thought which
creative intellects have been hoarding up for centuries among every
people. Since men of culture have ceased to yield unquestioning
submission, like dumb sheep, to the church, they have begun to discover
that nowhere are so many falsehoods uttered as in pulpits.”
Tremendous applause, clapping, and swinging of hats, followed this
eloquent period. A distinguished gentleman, laying his hand upon Till’s
shoulder, asked: “What calibre of ammunition do you use in hunting _black_
game?”
“Conical balls of two centimetres,” replied Till, with no great wit.
“Yon fellow in the pulpit fires shells of a hundredweight, I should say.
And if in the legislative assembly his shells all explode, not a man of
them will be left alive.”
Till thought this witticism so good that he set up a loud roar of
laughter, that could be heard above the general uproar.
Stimulated by these marks of appreciation, Shund waxed still more
eloquent. “Gentlemen,” cried he, “no body of men is more savagely opposed
to science and culture than a conventicle of so‐called servants of God.
Were you to repeat the multiplication table several times over, there
would be as much prayer and sense in it as in what is designated the
Apostles’ Creed.”
More cheering and boundless enthusiasm. “Gentlemen!” exclaimed the
speaker, with thundering emphasis and a hideous expression of hatred on
his face, “the significance of religious dogmas is simply a sort of
homœopathic concoction to which every succeeding age contributes some
drops of fanaticism. Subjected to the microscope of science, the whole
basis of the Christian church evaporates into thin mist. We must shield
our children against religious fables. Away with dogmas and saws from the
Bible; away with the Trinity; the divinity and humanity of Jesus, and
other such stuff! Away with apothegms such as this: _Christ is my life, my
death, and my gain_. Such things are opposed to nature. Children’s minds
are thereby warped to untruthfulness and hypocrisy. In this manner the
child is deprived of the power of thinking; loses all interest in
intellectual pursuits, and ceases to feel the need of further culture. The
times are favorable for a reformation. Our imperial and royal rulers have
at length realized that minds must be set free. For this end it was as
unavoidable for them to break with the church and priesthood as it is
necessary for us. If we cherish our fatherland and the people, we must
take the initiative. We are not striving to effect a revolution; we want
intellectual development, profounder knowledge, and healthier morality.
“Shall peace be seen beneath our skies,
The spirit’s freedom first must rise,”
concluded the orator poetically, and he came down amidst a very hurricane
of applause.
There followed a lull. In the audience, heads protruded and necks were
stretched that their possessors might obtain a glimpse of the great Shund.
In the chancel, the chiefs and leaders crowded around him, smiling,
bowing, and shaking his hand in admiration.
“You have won the laurels,” smirked a fellow from amidst a wilderness of
beard.
“Your election to the Assembly is a certainty,” declared another.
“You carry deadly weapons against Christ,” said a professor.
Mr. Hans smiled, and nodded so often that he was seized with a pain in the
muscles of the face and neck. At length, the chairman’s bell came to the
rescue.
“The Rev. Mr. Morgenroth will now address the meeting.”
The clergyman mounted the rostrum, but scarcely had he appeared there,
when the crowd became possessed by a legion of hissing demons.
“Gentlemen,” began the fearless priest, “the duty of my calling as well as
personal conviction demands that I should enter a solemn protest against
the sundering of school and church.”
Further the priest was not allowed to proceed. Loud howling, hissing, and
whistling drowned his voice. The president called for order.
“In the name of good‐breeding, I beg this most honorable assembly to hear
the speaker out in patience,” cried Mr. Schwefel.
The mob relaxed into unwilling silence like a growling beast.
“Not all the citizens of this town are infected with infidelity,” the
reverend gentleman went on to say. “Many honorable gentlemen believe in
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and in his church. These citizens wish their
children to receive a religious education; it would, therefore, be
unmitigated terrorism, tyrannical constraint of conscience, to force
Christian parents to bring up their children in the spirit of unbelief.”
This palpable truth progress could not bear to listen to. A mad yell was
set up. Clenched fists were shaken at the clergyman, and fierce threats
thundered from all sides of the church. “Down with the priest!” “Down with
the accursed black‐coat!” “Down with the dog of a Jesuit!” and similar
exclamations, resounded from all sides. The chairman rang his bell in
vain. The mob grew still more furious and noisy. The clergyman was
compelled to come down.
“Such is the liberty, the education, the tolerance, the humanity of
progress,” said he sadly to his colleague.
To Be Continued.
Christian Art Of The Catacombs.
By An Anglican.
“I do love those ancient ruins:
We never tread upon them but we set
Our foot upon some reverend history.”—_Webster_ (1620).
“Quamlibet ancipites texant hinc inde recessus,
Arcta sub umbrosis atria porticibus;
Attamen excisi subter cava viscera montis
Crebra terebrato fornice lux penetrat;
Sic datur absentis per subterranea solis
Cernere fulgorem luminibusque frui.”
—_Prudentius, Peristephanon_, Hymn iv.
The Catacombs of Rome were the birthplace of Christian art as well as the
sepulchre of the children of the early church. It is only within a few
years that the modern traveller has been induced, through the careful
study which the Catacombs have received, to visit these subterranean homes
of the persecuted Christian, so filled with the symbolism of his faith.
From 1567, the year in which Father Bosio began his investigations in the
Catacombs, till the present century, some minds of kindred interest in
these burial‐places of the martyrs have been fascinated with their
Christian archæology, and from time to time have appeared works upon
subjects connected with the Catacombs. F. Bosio spent thirty years in
making explorations, and left for posthumous publication his _Roma __
Sotterranea_, which F. Severano issued from the press in Rome in 1632.
Seventy years later came _Inscriptionum antiquarum explicatio_ by the
learned Fabretti, and eighteen years later still, F. Boldetti, who had
devoted the greater part of his life to the examination of the monuments,
inscriptions, and paintings of the Catacombs, embodied the results of his
patience and industry in the great work _Osservazioni sopra i Cimiterii
dei Santi Martiri, etc., di Roma_. Then came Bottari’s wonderful studies
on the Christian art of the Catacombs entitled _Sculture e pitture sagre,
estratte dai Cimiteri di Roma_. Following in the paths opened by these
zealous Italian students, M. D’Agincourt, M. Raoul Rochette, Abbé Gaume,
and the eminent artist M. Perret, have contributed to the archæological
literature of France several important works on the Roman Catacombs.
To the pontificate of Pius IX. belongs the honor of producing the two
greatest antiquarian scholars of our age. The one, the Cavaliere Canina,
has treated with remarkable acuteness and judgment of the Appian Way from
the Capenian Gate to Bovillæ;(150) the other, the Cavaliere de Rossi, of
the Catacombs,(151) and it is of the latter that we propose to speak. It
is impossible, in the brief space that is allotted to us, to do more than
select one of the interesting subjects with which his works on the
Catacombs abound, and as an Anglican student of the Catholic Church, its
doctrines, its discipline, and its literature, there is none which so
enkindles our enthusiasm as the Christian art of the early ages, and the
symbolism with which it is clothed. We approach these pictures in the dark
crypts and amid the countless tombs of the first martyrs of the faith with
no little reverence. We lay aside our shoes, for the ground consecrated to
the early dead is sacred, and the earnest wish of our heart is to put away
the prejudice of ecclesiastical education and association. With this view
before us, we make the noble words of Montesquieu our own: “Ceux qui nous
avertissent sont les compagnons de nos travaux. Si le critique et l’auteur
cherchent la vérité, ils out le même intérêt; car la vérité est le bien de
tous les hommes: ils seront des confédérés, et non pas des ennemis.”(152)
From the early ages of the church till the close of the Vth century, the
Christians of Rome were driven by the sword of persecution to seek a
hiding‐place wherein to exercise the holy mysteries of their religion, and
to inter the remains of their dead. The vast subterranean caverns, now
known as Catacombs, but more anciently called _Areæ_, _Cryptæ_, and
_Cœmeteria_, afforded a shelter for the living and sepulture for the
faithful departed. These Catacombs doubtless had their origin in the sand‐
pits, or _arenariæ_, _arenifodinæ_, which the pagans had excavated to
procure materials for building purposes.(153) Suetonius(154) describes how
Phaon exhorted Nero to enter one of these caverns made by excavations of
sand, and Cicero alludes to the _arenariæ_, outside of the Porta
Esquilina.(155) In the admirable essay by Michele Stefano de Rossi,
entitled _Analisi Geologica ed Architettonica_, and annexed to the work of
his brother, it is stated that the Catacombs, with perhaps the exception
of two that are Jewish, are the work of the early Christians.(156)
By singular perseverance and careful discrimination in the study of
documents running far back into the centuries, the Cavaliere de Rossi
transferred the situation of the Catacombs of S. Callistus from the church
of S. Sebastian, where they had erroneously been located, to a place a
half mile nearer Rome, between the Via Appia and the Via Ardeatina; on the
left of the road was the cemetery of S. Prætextatus, and on the right that
of S. Callistus. The discovery of these hallowed crypts and sarcophagi of
the early saints and popes, is of inestimable value in elucidating
intricate questions of doctrine and practice, of history and tradition,
which have vexed the theological world for centuries. We can scarcely
resist the temptation to follow M. de Rossi through these dim cathedrals
of our Christian ancestors, and reproduce a part, at least, of his
masterly elucidation of their general topography, together with the
history of heroic suffering and Christlike courage which the sites and
names of those dark ages of danger suggest. But we must forbear, and
proceed to the pictures and emblems in order to draw from them some
lessons of that early fortitude, which the child of the church of the
first centuries learned, as he knelt by the tomb of his companion in the
faith, and looked up to the ceilings of crypts and semicircular
compartments to catch by the glimmering light of smoking lamps the
lineaments of some design of the religion which he professed.
The paintings of the Catacombs represent the cardinal truths of
Christianity, and their types are taken from both the Old and New
Testament Scriptures, as also, in rare instances, from heathen mythology.
The picture, perhaps most common to the eye of the worshipper at those
shrines of the martyred dead, was the representation of the Saviour in
that character which exhibits the tenderest attributes of his sacred
humanity, and appeals to the sympathetic element in man. Christ as the
Good Shepherd conveys in its fulness of meaning what perhaps no other type
of our Lord does. It is variously represented, and under different forms
may refer to the foreshadowing of the Messiah’s coming in the Old
Testament and its fulfilment in the New. King David had been a shepherd,
and understood the needs and labors of the shepherd life, and it may be
that in the days of his pastoral innocence, when the lion and the bear
were the destroyers of his flock, he wrote that psalm whose tone is one of
quiet and trustfulness: “The Lord is my shepherd; therefore can I lack
nothing. He shall feed me in a green pasture, and lead me forth beside the
waters of comfort. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of
death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff
comfort me.”(157) Thus, in the days of persecution, the Christian of the
Catacombs might read the sacred legend of our Lord under the figure of a
shepherd—bearing the sheep upon his shoulders. The Good Shepherd was
pictured again as bearing a goat, and in the Catacombs of S. Callistus he
stands between a goat and a sheep; the former occupies the more honorable
place, the right hand, and the latter the left. Often the Good Shepherd
leans on his pastoral crook, and bears in his hand a pipe. All these
typical allusions refer to his character as exhibited in the Gospels. They
teach the merciful watchfulness of our Lord, and the readiness with which
he takes back into his fold, the church, yea, to the more honorable place
by his side, the wayward and the erring. “I am the good shepherd, and know
my sheep, and am known of mine. And other sheep I have which are not of
this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there
shall be one fold and one shepherd.”(158) Protestant critics have not been
wanting in an attempt to trace the symbolism of this figure of the Good
Shepherd to a heathen origin, and adduce as an argument in behalf of their
theory that its prototype is in the Tombs of the Nasones. Even in
questions of Christian archæology is exhibited the same polemical spirit
which animated the accomplished English scholar, Conyers Middleton, who
lent all the resources of his vast learning in classical history to prove
the resemblance and identity of pagan and Catholic rites. But a more
learned and reverent critic in the field of antiquities is the
incomparable Marangoni, whose splendid work, _Cose Gentilesche trasportate
ad Uso delle Chiese_, sets at rest for ever many problems which Mr.
Poynder, a shallow pretender to scholarship, revived in the _Alliance of
Popery and Heathenism_.
While the ancient heathen lived in the atmosphere of a religion which
incited to cheerfulness and pleasure in the present life, it portrayed but
faintly any idea of immortality. The world around him was peopled with
unseen spirits. They inhabited woods and streams, and he was ever watchful
to interpret the slightest signs or omens which might yield him some token
to enlighten the spiritual darkness of his soul. The mythological system
of the pagan was a vital reality. It accompanied him not only to the
solemn festival in the temple, but on the march, in the camp, and in the
market‐place. It was with him in hours of joy and of sorrow; but it
penetrated not beyond the boundaries of this world. It offered no _cross_
here, and knew nothing of the _crown_ hereafter. There were no bright
pictures of the rewards of eternity. This life was the narrow limit of his
hope and his labor. Hades or the grave was dreaded because of its
sunlessness. Iphigenia entreats her father for life in an impassioned
appeal, which sums up the heathen’s belief:
“To view the light of life,
To mortals most sweet; in death there is
Nor light nor joys; and crazed is he who seeks
To die; for life, though full of ills, has more
Of good than death.”
Occasionally the ancient philosophers and poets give intimation of a
belief in immortality, but not in resurrection, as Cicero in that eloquent
longing for the day when he shall meet his illustrious friend Cato.(159)
But, as we have said, of the great doctrine of the resurrection, which
solved the dark enigmas of humanity, they were ignorant. The hold which
classical mythology had upon the human mind was relaxed before this august
mystery of the Catholic faith. Pagan temples were deserted, and the
sacrificial fires on their altars extinguished.
“The intelligible forms of ancient poets,
The fair humanities of old religion,
The power, the beauty, and the majesty,
That had her haunts in dale, or piny mountain,
Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring,
Or chasms and wat’ry depths; all these have vanished.
They live no longer in the faith of reason!”(160)
It is not remarkable, therefore, that delineations of the doctrine of the
resurrection should not have been unusual in the church of the Catacombs.
Two such representations, one from the Old Testament, and the other from
the New, will exhibit the forms under which it was presented. Jonas as a
type of the resurrection of our Lord has its authority from S.
Matthew.(161) “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s
belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart
of the earth.” Four scenes from the history of Jonas are found in the
chapels and on the tombs of the Catacombs, sometimes represented singly,
sometimes all compressed under one type. The first is the prophet being
thrown into the deep, the second as swallowed by the great fish which “the
Lord had prepared,” the third as “vomited out upon dry land,” the fourth
as lying under the shadow of a gourd. As we have seen, according to the
Gospel of S. Matthew, the swallowing of Jonas by the whale, and being cast
forth in safety after three days, was typical of the burial and the
resurrection of our Lord himself; and may not the pictures of the fourth
series denote not only the sufferings of the individual Christian, and the
care which his risen Master bestows upon him, but also the vicissitudes of
the Church Catholic in every age of the world? “Sometimes she gains,
sometimes she loses; and more often she is at once gaining and losing in
different parts of her history.... Scarcely are we singing Te Deums, when
we have to turn to our Misereres; scarcely are we in peace, when we are in
persecution; scarcely have we gained a triumph, when we are visited by a
scandal. Nay, we make progress by means of reverses; our griefs are our
consolations; we lose Stephen to gain Paul, and Matthias replaced the
traitor Judas.”(162) When the eye of the early Christian rested upon this
fourth representation from the prophet’s life, it caught another and a
more subtle signification, which is read perhaps oftener in the night of
affliction and persecution than in the day of joy and prosperity. Our
century, Catholic and Protestant alike, needs to study its outlines as
much as the first century and the worshippers in the Catacombs. “Should
not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore
thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their
left?”(163) Here is a beautiful symbolism of the tender mercy of our God
for all who are in error and in sin. It opposes the spiritual Pharisaism
of our day, and exacts meekness and charity from all men. It is the
destroyer of malevolence and anger and strife.(164)
Another picture, taken from the New Testament, and of frequent
representation, is the “man sick of the palsy.” It is generally regarded
by Protestant writers as belonging to that series of symbolical
illustrations which embody the doctrine of the resurrection; and, to give
greater force to their interpretation of the painting, they place much
stress upon the words of the sacred text: “Arise, take up thy bed, and go
unto thine house.” So far as we have examined copies of this picture, we
are inclined to believe that it is connected with these which refer to the
resurrection, except in one remarkable instance, in which it clearly
symbolizes the sacrament of penance as it is taught in the Roman
communion. In the Catacombs of S. Hermes is a representation of a
Christian kneeling before another, which seems from its close proximity to
the series of pictures of the Paralytic to point more directly to that
other passage of the Gospel narrative: “Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be
forgiven thee.” If our Lord delegated “such power unto men”—and the only
logical and intelligent interpretation of the words of S. John(165)
conveys this doctrine or it conveys nothing—here is a clear illustration
of the power of the priesthood, which admits of no evasive contradiction,
of no complicated and artificial hypothesis for the sake of escaping the
recognition of the belief of the early Christians in the doctrine of
sacerdotal absolution.
As resurrection is the portal of the church triumphant, so is baptism to
the church militant. The former is but the complement and fulfilment of
the latter. “Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus
Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by
baptism into death.”(166) The blessedness of the final consummation of the
faithful departed was pictured in the symbols of the resurrection, and, as
baptism is the foreshadowing of that glorious change which shall come over
our vile bodies, it became a common subject of Christian art in the
Catacombs. Its types are somewhat complex, and often susceptible of a
twofold explanation. From the four scenes in the life of Moses, which are
constantly repeated in the different Catacombs, we select _that_ which
prefigures Christian baptism—the miraculous supply of water in Kadesh. Art
critics who have bestowed any attention upon the sacred pictures of the
early ages place the representation of this miracle of Moses in the
Catacombs of S. Agnes among the finest specimens of primitive delineation.
Moses is pictured as bearing a rod, the emblem of power, with which “he
smote the rock twice, and the water came out abundantly.” It is worthy of
remark in passing that on vases found in the Catacombs, and on the
sarcophagi as early, perhaps, as the IVth century, this same scene is
depicted, and the rod, instead of being in the hand of Moses, is in that
of S. Peter, and, in a few instances, the two are represented together,
but the person who smites with the rod has inscribed over his head the
name of S. Peter. Catholic writers on subterranean symbolism draw from it
an artistic argument, which, coupled with the historical, seems an
unanswerable statement of the question of the primacy of S. Peter. _Quando
Christus ad unum loquitur, unitas commendatur; et Petro primitus, quia in
Apostolis Petrus est primus._(167) S. Peter bears the same relation to the
Christian church that Moses did to the Israelitish. The one received from
God the decalogue, which was to govern the actions of the Jews; the other,
the keys, which were to open the kingdom of heaven. _Nam et si adhuc
clausum putas cœlum, memento claves ejus hic Dominum Petro, et per eum
Ecclesiæ reliquisse._(168) Another type of baptism taken from the Old
Testament, and capable of two expositions, is Noah in the ark. Here again,
on the authority of an apostle, the church in the early ages read the
history of Noah by the light of the new revelation made through the
institutions founded by Christ. S. Peter, speaking of the small number
saved by water at the deluge, adds: “The like figure whereunto, even
baptism, doth now also save us,... by the resurrection of Jesus
Christ,”(169) The ark is generally represented by a small box in which
Noah sits or stands, receiving from the dove the olive branch of peace.
Some writers on Christian archæology find in it a secondary meaning,
regarding it as typical of the church, and the danger of those who are
without the ark of safety.
Among favorite Old Testament subjects familiar to art students of the
Catacombs are—Daniel in the lions’ den, and the three children of Israel
in the fiery furnace at Babylon. Both are types of persecution, and of
final deliverance through the miraculous interposition of God. In the
cemetery of S. Priscilla, each of these pictures is to be seen, varying
but slightly in the details of the portraiture. The three children appear
clothed, and standing on the furnace. In a compartment beneath, the figure
of a man is represented as feeding the fire with fresh fuel. Daniel, in
the same cemetery, stands with outstretched arms between lions. The
attitude in both these scenes from Jewish history appears to exhibit the
ancient posture of the suppliant when in the act of prayer. A late writer
on the Roman catacombs, the Rev. J. Spencer Northcote, D.D., formerly of
Corpus Christi College, Oxford, spent much time, in company with the
Cavaliere de Rossi and M. Perret, the French artist, in collecting
materials for his small work on the burial‐places of the early Christians
in Rome. He is so trustworthy a guide in everything that appertains to
their archæology, that we gladly accept the explanation which he suggests
of the position of Daniel and the three children of Israel. Speaking of
the ancient attitude of Christian prayer—the hands extended in the form of
a cross—he says:(170) “This form, which, as we learn from the Fathers, was
universal among the early Christians, is still retained in some measure by
the priests of the present day in the celebration of Mass, by Capuchins
and others in serving Mass, and by numbers among the poor everywhere; it
is worth noticing that S. Gregory Nazianzen expressly speaks of Daniel
overcoming the wild beasts by stretching out his hands, meaning, of course
by the power of prayer; but the explanation might almost seem to show that
S. Gregory himself was familiar with this usual way of representing him.”
The publication of the Cavaliere de Rossi, which has so greatly alarmed
the Protestant controversialist, is _Immagine Scelte della B. Vergine
Maria, tratte dalle Catacombe Romane_. It is most beautifully illustrated
with chromo‐lithographic engravings, and reflects great honor on the
present state of art in Rome. The purpose of the work is to exhibit the
veneration with which the Christians of the Catacombs esteem the Mother of
our Lord. At a period of time in the history of the church, almost
apostolic, that purest of human feelings, maternal love, subdued the soul
of the artist, and kindled his imagination to trace with the brush or
carve with the chisel the Blessed Virgin and her Divine Son.
The Virgin Mother,
“Who so above
All mothers shone,
The Mother of
The Blessed One,”
is depicted by the artist with a tender and devout affection. The scenes
are taken from the sacred narrative of the Evangelists, and an examination
of them, simply from an æsthetical point of view, will more than repay the
connoisseur of art. But to the conscientious archæologist and the sober
inquirer, they occupy a grave relation. They throw additional light on the
writings of S. Justin, S. Irenæus, S. Cyril, S. Jerome, and Tertullian, in
regard to that dogma which, of all others, has perplexed the minds of
earnest men outside the Roman communion. The honor paid to the Blessed
Virgin is to‐day the especial “crux” of Dr. Pusey,(171) as it is, perhaps,
of many not so learned as he, but as thoroughly dispassionate in the
temper of their souls toward the attainment of divine truth. The poet of
_The Christian Year_ reached a lofty strain in behalf of a long‐forgotten
doctrine in the Anglican Church when he gave in his verses for the
Annunciation:
“Ave Maria! blessed Maid!
Lily of Eden’s fragrant shade,
Who can express the love
That nurtured thee so pure and sweet,
Making thy heart a shelter meet
For Jesus’ holy dove?
“Ave Maria! Mother blest!
To whom, caressing and caress’d,
Clings the Eternal Child;
Favor’d beyond Archangel’s dream,
When first on thee with tenderest gleam
Thy new‐born Saviour smil’d.”(172)
But Keble caught from an excursion to Ben Nevis, as his biographer
conjectures, the hints of that beautiful poem, “Mother out of Sight,”
which was intended for the _Lyra Innocentium_, but through the influence
of two friends, Dyson and Sir John Coleridge, was withheld by the author,
and only saw the light as one of his posthumous pieces. It has a clearer
doctrinal ring than the stanzas for the Feast of the Annunciation, which
foreshadow something of the intercessory power of the Mother of God. It
merits the high praise which Keble’s ever‐faithful friend and, for years,
his gifted ally bestows upon him. We more than regret that space forbids
us giving the entire poem. It loses much of its beauty and continuity by
fragmentary quotation, yet, from the fourteen stanzas, we are only able to
reproduce four:
“Yearly since then with bitterer cry
Man hath assailed the throne on high,
And sin and hate more fiercely striven
To mar the league ’twixt earth and heaven.
But the dread tie that pardoning hour,
Made fast in Mary’s awful bower,
Hath mightier prov’d to bind than we to break;
None may that work undo, that Flesh unmake.
“Thenceforth, whom thousand worlds adore,
He calls thee Mother evermore;
Angel nor saint his face may see
Apart from what he took of thee;
How may we choose but name thy name,
Echoing below their high acclaim
In holy creeds? since earthly song and prayer
Must keep faint time to the dread Anthems there.
“Therefore, as kneeling day by day,
We to our Father duteous pray,
So unforbidden we may speak
An Ave to Christ’s Mother meek
(As children with ‘good morrow’ come
To elders, in some happy home),
Inviting so the saintly host above
With our unworthiness to pray in love.
“To pray with us, and gently bear
Our falterings in the pure, bright air.
But strive we pure and bright to be
In spirit. Else how vain of thee
Our earnest dreamings, awful Bride!
Feel we the sword that pierced thy side;
Thy spotless lily‐flower, so clear of hue,
Shrinks from the breath impure, the tongue untrue.”(173)
Another poet, once an Anglican, then a Catholic priest, and now passed
into the land where the mists of controversy are cleared away, attained a
higher plane of truth in regard to the Mother of our Lord:
“But scornful men have boldly said
Thy love was leading me from God;
And yet in this I did but tread
The very path my Saviour trod.
“They know but little of thy worth
Who speak these heartless words to me;
For what did Jesus love on earth
One‐half so tenderly as thee?
“Get me the grace to love thee more;
Jesus will give, if thou wilt plead;
And, Mother, when life’s cares are o’er,
Oh! I shall love thee then indeed.
“Jesus, when his three hours were run,
Bequeathed thee from the cross to me;
And oh! how can I love thy Son,
Sweet Mother, if I love not thee?”
We return to these pictures of the Catacombs, and we will content
ourselves with an allusion only, preferring that the reader who is
interested in them should examine them through his own, rather than
through another’s eyes. From a lunette in an _arcosolio_ in the cemetery
of S. Agnes is a picture which of late years has been frequently copied.
It represents the Blessed Virgin with uplifted hands, seemingly in the act
of intercession, with the Infant Jesus in her lap. In the cemetery of
Domitilla is a picture of the Mother and Son, and four Magi offering their
oblations. It may be well to remark that the Gospel history of the
Adoration of the Wise Men from the East does not limit their number. We
have somewhere seen it suggested that the restriction to three had its
rise from the offerings presented—gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Another
scene of the Adoration of the Magi is given with some difference of
detail. The Virgin Mother is seated holding the Divine Son in her lap,
above her head appears the star which guided the wise men to where the
Infant lay. To the left is a somewhat youthful person, supposed to be S.
Joseph. He holds in his hand a book, which the Cavaliere de Rossi very
wisely and ingeniously interprets to be the writings of the evangelical
prophet Isaiah, whose prophecies concerning the Messiah had now their
fulfilment in the Infant Jesus.
Such are some of the many beautiful pictures which Roman art, through the
indefatigable industry of de Rossi, has given us of the Blessed Virgin as
represented in early ages. To other than jaundiced eyes, calmly and
candidly studying them, they reveal the light in which they were so often
viewed by the suffering children of the church amid the persecutions which
attended the conflict between paganism and Christianity. In teaching us to
honor the Mother of our Lord—Θεότοκος—they impress us with more distinct
and more tangible thoughts of the incarnation of her Son.(174) With his
usual discrimination and mastery of style, Dr. John Henry Newman has well
said: “The Virgin and Child is _not_ a mere modern idea; on the contrary,
it is represented again and again, as every visitor to Rome is aware, in
the paintings of the Catacombs. Mary is there drawn with the Divine Infant
in her lap, she with hands extended in prayer, he with his hand in the
attitude of blessing. No representation can more forcibly convey the
doctrine of the high dignity of the Mother, and, I will add, of her power
over her Son. Why should the memory of his time of subjection be so dear
to Christians and so carefully preserved? The only question to be
determined is the precise date of these remarkable monuments of the first
age of Christianity. That they belong to the centuries of what Anglicans
call the ‘undivided church’ is certain, but lately investigations have
been pursued which place some of them at an earlier date than any one
anticipated as possible.”(175)
One other topic remains to be considered before we pass on to some general
reflections which early Christian art suggests. It was not uncommon for
the artist in the first ages of the church to take subjects of heathen
mythology, and invest them by his art with a Christian symbolism. The
genius of Michael Angelo, so truly Catholic in taste and devout in
expression, transplanted pagan forms from the broken temples of the elder
civilization to the Christian churches of the new. He retouched them under
the aureate light shed upon them by the reverent imagination of the
Fathers. On the magnificent ceiling of the Sistine Chapel are painted by
this master‐hand the Sibyls, who in early times were regarded as the
unconscious prophets of divine truth, uttering in their blindness crude
intimations of the glory of him who was to be the fulfilment and
completion of all shadows and of all types.(176) In the Catacombs may be
seen a representation of Orpheus playing upon his lyre, and subduing by
his melodious strains the ferocity of man and beast, and drawing even from
inanimate creation by the power of music the subjects of his sway. Rocks
and trees yielded to his lyric sweetness, the region of Plato opened to
the sound of his “golden shell,” the wheel of Ixion ceased its
revolutions, and Tityus forgot for the nonce the vulture that preyed on
his vitals. The Thracian bard was the representative of the civilizer of
savage men.
“Silvestres homines sacer interpresque Deorum
Cædibus et victu fœdo deterruit Orpheus;
Dictus ob hoc lenire tigres, rabidosque leones.”(177)
The symbolism of the picture seems to be this, that as Orpheus drew the
whole creation to him by the music of his lyre, and called from the realms
of Hades his beloved Eurydice to the regions of light, so Christ by his
compassion commanded the love of all men, as well by his divine power the
hidden forces of nature. Hades, or the grave, opened to him on that first
Easter morning, as it will open to us on the last.
“Prisoner of Hope thou art—look up and sing
In hope of promised spring.
As in the pit his father’s darling lay
Beside the desert way,
And knew not how, but knew his God would save
Even from that living grave;
So, buried with our Lord, we’ll close our eyes
To the decaying world, till angels bid us rise.”(178)
The late Dean of S. Paul’s, Dr. Milman, remarks, with an air of triumph,
in his _Ecclesiastical History_,(179) that “the Catacombs of Rome,
faithful to their general character, offer no instance of a crucifixion.”
For the absence of the crucifix in the Catacombs, we as a Protestant can
conceive of two causes, either of which would to our mind be sufficient to
account for it. First, in the early ages it was highly important for the
growth of the church, especially in the Roman Empire, to guard against the
introduction of any symbol which would suggest pain or repugnance to
Jewish converts; secondly, it was essential to clothe truth under a type
which would not inspire mockery on the part of pagans, and so assist in
keeping alive the persecuting spirit of the times. This in a measure no
doubt led the early artists to use the heathen symbol of Orpheus as
typical of Christ. A beautiful passage in the work of D’Agincourt affords
still another general cause: “Entirely occupied with the celestial
recompense which awaited them after the trials of their troubled life, and
often of so dreadful a death, the Christians saw in death, and even in
execution, only a way by which they arrived at this everlasting happiness;
and, so far from associating with this image that of the tortures or
privations which opened heaven before them, they took pleasure in
enlivening it with smiling colors, or presenting it under agreeable
symbols, adorning it with flowers and vine‐leaves; for it is thus that the
asylum of death appears to us in the Christian Catacombs. There is no sign
of mourning, no token of resentment, no expression of vengeance; all
breathes softness, benevolence, charity.”(180)
Many emblems denoting the cardinal virtues are sculptured on the walls of
the chapels and on the tombs of the Catacombs. Flowers, garlands, and
grapes intertwine each other and embellish these ancient crypts. The
laurel speaks of victory, the olive of peace and reconciliation, and the
palm of final triumph. The lyre is significant of the æsthetical element
of religion, and the anchor of hope for the heavenly port. The dove
represents the Holy Spirit, the lamb the adorable Saviour—the Agnus
Dei—the stag the thirsting of the soul for the paradise of God, and the
peacock the belief in immortality. Among these general symbols so familiar
to the saints of old, none is more prominent than the fish. Its history is
ingenious, and, therefore, we will tarry for a moment ere we conclude. It
naturally calls to mind the solemn parting of our Lord with the apostles
by the Sea of Tiberias, when their nets were filled with fish, and Jesus
“taketh bread and giveth them, and fish likewise.” In the church of the
Catacombs this tender scene from the Evangelic record is always associated
with the Holy Eucharist. As ΙΧΘΥΣ, the Greek word for a fish, contains the
initial letters of the name and title of Christ—Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς Θεοῦ Υἱὸς
Σωπὴρ—Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour—the figure was constantly
used as a symbol of the divinity of Christ. In his _Iconographie
Chrêtienne_, M. Didron assumes that this emblem on the sarcophagi of the
Catacombs is simply indicative of the fact that the person buried beneath
was by trade a fisherman. Certainly the numberless instances proving the
falsity of this position render the opinion utterly worthless.
We must take leave of the Cavaliere de Rossi and the Christian art of the
Roman Catacombs. Feeble as may be the execution of these pictures, crude
in conception, and often colorless through the lapse of time, yet they
speak of the ardor of the early Christian artists, and of the devotion and
doctrine of the children of that church which is the mother of us all. In
parting with the Cavaliere de Rossi, we say with all sincerity, that we
have found nothing in his volumes unworthy of the reverential regard of
honest and candid minds. Passages there are, which the timidity of
Anglican churchmen would regard as dealing too freely with the symbolism
of the Catacombs. Without accepting his conclusions in detail, we
gratefully acknowledge that the Cavaliere de Rossi has shown English
writers in what spirit all the grave questions of theology connected with
subterranean art should be treated. His has been a great subject, and he
has written with humility and ripeness of learning and clearness of
apprehension, which well become the Christian scholar and the sacred
theme. In closing his masterly work, we seem again bidding adieu to Rome,
the reflection of whose classic greatness and Christian glory mellows hill
and plain, pagan ruin and Catholic shrine.
“Gran Latinà
Città di cui quanto il sol aureo gira
Ne altera più, nè più onorata mira.”
And because of the house of the Lord our God, we utter from the depths of
our heart the wish of the Psalmist of old: “_Fiat pax in virtute tua: et
abundantia in turribus tuis. Propter fratres meos, et proximos meos,
loquebar pacem de te_.”
Beating The Air.
“I can call spirits from the vasty deep,” says Owen Glendower, the great
magician.
“So can I,” replies the sturdy, incredulous Hotspur. “But will they come?”
We are living in a sterner age than that in which Hotspur is supposed to
have put this poser to the Welshman. Great declamations and fine promises
will not do for any length of time, at least. We are hard, and prosy, and
practical. We must have facts, and figures, and something clear before we
are asked to choose a policy, or a system, or take a stand on a platform.
Love of country, homes and altars, and all the old watchwords, serve no
longer; they come down to a vulgar question of taxes, of custom‐house
duties, of imports and exports, of pauperism, and the increase of crime.
This hard, practical spirit has been carried with all the keenness of, if
not an intellectual, at least a very intelligent age, into the sanctuary
of religion, and men and women are no longer content to follow a sect or a
creed because they happened to be born in it, or because their friends
belong to it, or because as Giles has it, “Payrson says so, and Payrson’s
daughter be married to Squoire.” They will have the why and wherefore: why
they must take this creed and reject that; why they must take a part and
not the whole; why it is necessary to be bothered with any form of belief
at all, when, as they say, and many of them truthfully, they can get on
well enough without it, and live happily, and play their part, and die out
of the world without having committed any special faults against society,
leaving behind them children whose rule in life shall be the truth and
honor which they have bequeathed them as a last legacy. They have saved
themselves infinite trouble by not mingling in the clashing of the sects,
where each one claims to be _the_ one, the only one, the church of Christ.
One would imagine that Christ came only to set the world on fire and all
good people by the ears; that, in fact, it would be better had he not come
at all if this is to be the result, this wrangling and jangling and
eternal jargon about what one must do to be saved, as though good people,
who do no earthly harm must join one or other of these conflicting
parties, who can never agree among themselves, and use the name of the God
of peace as a firebrand to stir up dissension and the worst of strife.
Influenced by thoughts such as these, we find so many of the most
intelligent people, what we might call Nothingarians, believing in nothing
but the law of the land, that is, of expediency—a class that is growing
wider every day in proportion as the sects are loosening and parting
asunder; which embraces the ablest writers on the ablest secular journals;
which sees only one religious body in the world endowed with a
consistency, and a uniqueness, and years, and a glorious history, and a
strange unity that will not be broken; a church which takes to‐day, as it
has always taken, the bold stand before the world—we are the one church
founded by Jesus Christ, in this church and in this church alone is
salvation, not because we say it, but because he has said it: a stand in
their eyes outrageous, so utterly opposed, as it is, to the dictates of
human reason, with its doctrines of infallibility and what not; yet, after
all, logical and strangely consistent throughout; so bold, so logical, so
strangely consistent and united, that if there were a church at all it
would be this, for all else is uncertainty. And as the _Nation_ said the
other day in an article on the Old Catholics, written evidently by one of
the class we have been describing: “The great strength of the Church of
Rome lies now in the fact that he who quits her knows not whither he is
going, and can find no man to tell him.” Schism and heresy and persecution
have tried her in turn, and exhausted their efforts in vain; she stands
today as she stood on the morning of the Christian era, full and fair in
the light of God, not a dint in the rock, not a loosening in the edifice,
though the ages have washed over her, and washed all other landmarks away;
and the dove that leaves the ark finds no resting‐place over the barren
waters; and the olive branch of peace is not yet found to tell us that the
waters have subsided, and the earth is again as God made it.
Religious unity has been the dream of earnest seekers ever since Jesus
Christ gave the final mandate to the apostle to go forth and convert the
world; and it would seem that the dream is as far from fulfilment to‐day
as it ever was; that it is likely to be so till the end of time. The
Catholic Church is denounced as the great stumbling‐block in the way of
the much‐desired unity. The sects say to her each in turn: You will not
come to us; you will not join us. We are ready to make some sacrifices,
but you will not budge an inch. You are false; you are absurd; you are
mysterious; you are superstitious; you are everything that is bad—but only
give up infallibility, says one, and we are with you; surrender the
doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God, says another,
and we will join you; only let your priests marry, says a third; give up
the sacraments, says a fourth. To these, and all and many more, the church
replies now as always: “_Non possumus_.” We cannot; God gave the laws to
his church. They are his laws; they are irrevocable; more fixed than those
of nature; it is not for us to change them. There again, say her
adversaries: the old cry. You will not change; you will not concede; you
are perverse and implacable. How can we ever have unity? They forget that
they ask the church to dismember herself; to destroy her own identity; to
break up, and come down to their level. Suppose she were to do so, what
would the result be? She would be lost and absorbed in the sea of
sectarianism. The one object to which all eyes look, whether faithfully or
maliciously, as at least fixed and united to‐day as to‐morrow, as
yesterday, would be blotted out of the sight of man. Even humanly
speaking, much would be lost; nothing would be gained; and union would be
farther off than ever.
The best example of the truth of this is given in the history of the last
great departure from the Catholic Church—the Protestant Reformation.
Though this movement never reached to the proportions of Arianism, yet it
was a movement that captivated nations, and was eminently adapted to favor
the revolutionary spirit then breaking out among men, to throw off all
constraint of whatever nature, and stand upon the false notion of
unbridled liberty of thought and action. The new doctrine of private
interpretation spread rapidly, because it pandered to the age. Nations
broke away from the church; a new faith, a new creed, grander, larger,
fuller, purer than the old, was to be built up. And what was the result?
What is the result? A multiplication of sect upon sect; a fresh departure;
a new interpretation of the Gospel of God day after day; a breaking out
into the wildest and most erratic courses of belief and conduct,
oftentimes so utterly subversive to all government that it was obliged to
be forcibly repressed by the law of the lands which at first favored it
for its own purposes. This tower of faith that men would build from earth
to heaven, like the old tower of pride, ended in nothing—crumbled away and
caused a Babel—a confusion of beliefs. Such is the inevitable end of all
religions that men make for themselves; vain efforts; uncertainty; good
perverted or rendered useless; disagreement and religious anarchy.
No wonder that men cry out for something fixed. No wonder that so many
turn infidel. Protestantism has proved an utter failure as a guidance and
a religion to men. So much so that, if one asked for a definition of the
Protestant _religion_ today, it could not be given him; and the only right
answer would be not a faith or a system, but the opposition of non‐
Catholic Christians to the Roman Catholic Church. Perhaps the most
striking proof of this is exemplified in the late meeting at Cologne.
There were assembled delegates from several rival sects and churches, in
the endeavor to bring order out of chaos, to plant a new church and a new
faith which all men might accept. If the Protestant bishops who attended
there were satisfied that their religion or form of religion was true and
all‐sufficient, why not stay at home? Why did they go at all? While
Döllinger and the rest, satisfied of the failure of Protestantism, cling
fast to the torn shred of the Roman Catholic faith, and proclaim loudly
and absurdly that they are Catholic still, it is a deep and bitter lesson
to Protestants of the hopelessness of their efforts to create a unity such
as they see alone in the Catholic Church.
In the midst of this general and growing dissatisfaction, a pamphlet has
been put into our hands which promises to settle the vexed question once
for all. It is written by a Baptist minister, the Rev. James W. Wilmarth,
pastor at Pemberton, N. J. Who he is, beyond the fact stated on the cover,
we do not know. His pamphlet has no claim to our attention beyond the
thousand‐and‐one such thrust upon our notice day after day. But as it is
somewhat pretentious, and has received the sanction of no less
distinguished a body than the West New Jersey Baptist Association, which
body, by vote, requested its publication (the substance of it having been
delivered in the “doctrinal sermon” preached September 13, 1871), it may
be taken to represent the orthodox Baptist doctrine, and may, therefore,
be glanced at just to see what that doctrine is, or is supposed to be, for
we have no doubt many Baptists would disagree with it. The author takes a
bold line, “The True Idea of the Church: Baptist _vs._ Catholic,” for he
recognizes(181) no logical middle position between Baptist and Catholic
ground, and, therefore, salvation lies in one of the two bodies, as it
cannot lie in both. What Methodists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, and the
rest may think of this high‐handed mode of dealing with their several
pretensions to truth, we may imagine. But they can scarcely complain, as
all in turn adopt precisely the same line of argument: the haven of
salvation resting not between Presbyterian and Baptist or Methodist and
Episcopalian, but between each of these sects and Rome. They slide by each
other, and confront us. The only similar example we can call to mind at
present of such union out of disunion, is that of the fallen spirits.
It is unnecessary to observe that, in a contest of this nature between an
individual Baptist minister and the whole Catholic Church, the church,
notwithstanding her rather formidable array of theologians and
philosophers, gets decidedly the worst of the battle. And, though the
author, as he tells us in his preface, “has endeavored to ‘speak the truth
in love,’ ” perhaps it was only natural to find, particularly towards the
end, his temper proving a little too much for his “love,” so that we must
not be astonished, though “in no partisan spirit has he discussed his
theme,” at meeting little phrases scattered here and there of a decidedly
unlovable nature. Thus, the Holy Father is mentioned as “the bigoted Pope
of Rome” who “sits cursing modern civilization and freedom, and sighing
for the return of the dark ages and the inquisition”; the whole Catholic
system “a diabolical imposture,” italicized; “Catholics appeal chiefly to
sentiment,” “undervalue the importance of Scriptures,” “may be good
Catholics, and yet profane, immoral, untruthful, and regardless of the
will of God, and that millions notoriously are so.” If this be our
author’s mode of asking for his views “the candid consideration of every
reader of whatever religious persuasion,” we should strongly recommend him
for the future to alter his tone; if it be “speaking the truth in love,”
we wonder what his notions of speaking the truth in wrath would be.
Catholic writers are habitually accused of intolerance in tone and
controversy: we humbly submit that, when we have to encounter—as we are
compelled to do every day—adversaries of this stamp, we may be reasonably
pardoned for not using studious phrases with men on whom politeness is
thrown away.
A year has now flown by since this “discourse was prepared and delivered
under a profound conviction of the importance and timeliness of the vital
truths therein set forth, and it is now given to the public with the same
conviction.” As to its timeliness, we have nothing to object, it was
probably meant for Baptists rather than Catholics, and with an eye to the
dissensions that seem racking and threatening to rend that body at
present. In fact, from its whole tone and the round rating he gives
members of his community who “would give up their vantage‐ground by
concealment or compromise of truth,” and his insisting on their
“maintaining their Baptist attitude” (whatever that may be precisely he
fails to explain), the pamphlet sounds very much like a warning‐note—like
the weak cry of “No surrender!” when surrender follows immediately, like
Mr. Winkle’s “all right” when Mr. Winkle felt satisfied that it was all
wrong. With regard to its “importance,” notwithstanding the writer’s
“conviction” on the point, we may be permitted to entertain some slight
doubt. Authors are sometimes apt to overrate the importance of their
productions. At all events, after a year of trial, we have heard of no
very wonderful result following the launching of this pamphlet on the
troubled waters of controversy. Catholics are Catholics still. The church
stands precisely at its first starting‐point of some nineteen centuries
ago, while the Baptists stand at theirs—a point involved still in a region
of mist, and apparently rapidly dissolving into it. So that, with regard
to this closing of the controversy generally, we are compelled to arrive
at the painful conclusion that it has either been very greatly undervalued
by the public at large, or is absolutely good for nothing.
The author proposed to himself to place the only two ideas of the church,
Baptist and Catholic, which he acknowledges, in such juxtaposition, in so
clear a light, that all who read must be compelled to adopt either the one
or the other. In other words, be purposed ending forever all the
controversies that have ever raged between church and church, in a
pamphlet of forty‐two pages. And his mode of setting about it is at least
original.
“I do not propose to discuss this question of ‘true church’ after the
common method. I shall not raise questions of apostolic or of historic
succession, of ‘legality’ or ‘validity’ or ‘regularity.’ I propose to go
deeper than that into the heart of the subject.”
Now, with all due respect to the reverend author, these little items,
which he finds it so convenient to throw overboard in such an arbitrary
fashion, constitute, for his readers at least, the heart of the subject.
He tells us that “all the Christian ages with one consent acknowledge the
church to be a divine society”—human‐divine, Catholics would say—“governed
by divine law, established by Jesus Christ.”
Here we have, then, according to the author’s own words, a society,
established by a person, at a certain date, which has come down from that
person to to‐day. Men say that it has altered from its original. Two
societies claim to be the original, the Baptist and the Catholic. It lies
in one or the other, not between. We want to find out which it is. In this
inquiry, history is nothing, legality is nothing, succession is nothing,
validity is nothing. That is not the true method of going to work to find
out what this society is; whether it has ever been broken, whether it
contains and carries out what Christ its founder gave it, whether its
members practise to‐day what they practised at the beginning—all that is
nothing. The question is “the idea which underlies it all. What then is
the true idea of the church? This is the great question.”
If the author proposed to argue in this style, he should have stated at
starting his definition of the true idea of the church. He should have
defined the term in order to explain clearly what he was seeking. But he
does nothing of the kind. In fact, he soon loses the very word “idea,” and
substitutes for it in one place “view,” in another “theories.” So that
after all it comes down in plain English to what is your opinion on the
subject, or what is your notion about it, despite his trite “challenges of
the Catholic idea of the church at the bar of reason,” and so forth.
In fact, there is just that show of shallow learning sprinkled throughout
the whole pamphlet which a preacher endowed with more words than weight
generally uses to a thick‐headed congregation, who take his words for
wisdom from the very fact that they cannot understand them. There are the
divisions and subdivisions: the 1, 2, 3, in large and small figures, and
occasionally in Roman characters; the appeals to this, that, and the
other; the citing of “well‐known facts” and “notorious things” without
substantiating them by any references, as in p. 17. “Witness the Baptist
originators of the British and Foreign Bible Society; Carey, Judson, and
their successors” in support of the view that with Baptists originated the
desire for the revision of the Bible. Again, speaking of Catholic
doctrine: “If men leave the church, they part from grace and are lost.”
_Apropos_ of which telling fact he informs us in the next sentence that
“the history of Augustinianism is an instructive illustration. Augustine,
Bishop of Hippo, was, in many respects, what would now be termed a high
Calvinist. His fervid eloquence and mental power made a deep impression
upon the theology of the Catholic (not then _Roman_ Catholic) Church of
the Latin world.” And that is all he says about him. As far as any
evidence he furnishes to support it goes, he might just as well have
substituted the name of S. Thomas Aquinas for S. Augustine, or Pius IX.,
or, as far as the majority of his readers know to the contrary, Tippoo
Sahib. And in the very opening of the pamphlet the same shallowness is
strikingly exemplified. He chooses the text, Acts ii. 47, “And the Lord
added to the church daily those who are saved,” which, as he observes,
reads in the version of King James, “Such as should be saved.” This
text—his own rendering—“is one of those passages in which an incidental
statement, as by a flash of lightning, reveals a whole body of doctrine.”
In what it involves we find the true idea of the church, that is, the
Baptist doctrine that we are regenerated in Christ by his death, and that
baptism is, as it were, only a symbol, a sort of mark, by which we are
known as belonging to the church, but not necessary for salvation,
inasmuch as we are _saved_ before we receive it. He alleges, with
reference to the Greek version, that “should be saved” is wrong and “are
saved” is right. And there the matter rests. Now, while on this very
important point, whereon indeed rests his theory, he might as well have
been a little more exact and explicit. A Greek reference is such a vague
thing to build on. We agree with him that “should be saved” is a wrong
rendering; as “are saved” happens also to be. The verse runs: Ο δε κυριος
προσετιθει τους σωζομενους καθ᾽ ημεραν τη Εκκλησια. The present participle
σωζομενους means being saved; but a present participle following a verb in
the imperfect or aorist tense must be rendered imperfect, and therefore
the passage should run, “And the Lord added daily to the church such as
_were being_ saved,” that is, such as were in the act or state of coming
into the church through the merit of the death of Christ and the movements
of his divine grace; a fact which throws altogether another light on the
author’s fixed starting point. These things we mention to show how little
trust can be placed on men who talk so loudly and pretentiously in this
loose style. It shows also how very weak and treacherous is this absolute
dependence on the private interpretation of the word of the Bible, whereon
the Baptists stake their doctrine and salvation; and how insufficient the
absolute creed which hangs for life or death on the possibly dubious
rendering of a passage in a dead language.
But let us examine this doctrine, which all, whether Catholic or Anglican,
Methodist or Jew, are bound to accept if they would be saved. We Catholics
are asked to surrender for it the faith which we have held through the
centuries of the Christian era, in defence of which we have poured out our
blood so lavishly, tracing the martyr stream down through the long vista
of ages, from the death on the cross to the stoning of Stephen, to the
massacre of the nuns in China but yesterday. We are told to‐day that all
our history, our sacraments, our doctrine, the faith on which we are
built, our succession of pontiffs, the sacred orders of our priests, the
church itself, which we define as the union of all the faithful under one
head, which head is Jesus Christ, whose successor is the pope, are one and
all “a diabolical imposture,” and that if we hope for salvation we must
surrender them for the true doctrine as explained by this author.
“The Baptist holds that men receive salvation directly from Christ, and by
virtue of an independent transaction with him; that a believer’s salvation
is secured by a personal union with Christ; and that he is divinely
commanded, after being thus saved, to unite with the church for the sake
of personal profit and of usefulness; and that the church so constituted
is to be governed by the law of Christ. He makes doctrine and conversion
come first. Out of doctrine and out of conversion proceeds the church. And
the saved man, already saved, comes into the church for training, for
work,” etc.
Now, this passage is the author’s exposition of the true idea of a church,
and on this everything else hangs. We may be obtuse, but we confess the
exposition is somewhat misty to us; at all events, it does not captivate
our intellect so completely as we would wish in a matter all‐
important—eternal salvation. We are told here that salvation is a personal
matter between the individual and Christ; that there is no person or
nothing intermediate. In plain English, that a man’s own conscience is his
rule and guidance; that it instructs and satisfies him on all points of
doctrine and conduct as a Christian. Now, it is Catholic doctrine that
salvation is an entirely personal affair between the individual soul and
Jesus Christ. The individual is not saved or condemned on the merits or
demerits of the society, the church of which he is a member: in exactly
the same way that a prisoner at the bar is held answerable to the law of
the land for his wrong actions, and judged on them, and it avails him
nothing to speak of the respectability of his relations, or of their evil
behavior which may have partly led him into crime; such evidence may
constitute to an extent extenuating circumstances, but a man is condemned
finally on his own act. If the prisoner, on the verdict being given
against him, pleads: But you condemn me; you do not take into
consideration my relations; you tell me that all that has nothing to do
with it; that I knew myself what was right and what was wrong; that, in
fact, I was the best and only judge in the matter; well, I acknowledge it,
I am the only judge, and if I am the only judge, and I make a mistake, you
cannot punish me, there is nothing between you and my conscience. The
court would respond: There is the law written plain for all men to read.
The government made the law, you are judged by that. And this is precisely
the Catholic doctrine of salvation. Though it be a final question between
the individual soul and Jesus Christ, the law of Christ comes between
them, as the law of Moses came between God and his people, and that law
being made for the whole world, for the universal society of human beings,
rests in the hands of the government duly constituted and appointed from
that society by Jesus Christ himself, who no longer abides among us
visibly, and is only known to us by faith.
Well, then, faith is enough; faith saves us, say the Baptists. If this be
true, then, are the devils saved since they must have a far more vivid
faith—belief in God—than the generality of human beings? If faith is
enough to save a man, why not stop there? Why be baptized? Why join a
church at all? “For the sake of personal profit” (a phrase apt to be
misunderstood), “and of usefulness,” replies our author. After all, this
idea of the church reduces itself to that of Mr. Beecher, which the author
stigmatizes—a church of “expediency.” Later, on page 22, in “challenging
the Catholic idea of a church at the bar of reason,” he says: “Now, in the
case before us, what is the effect? Salvation.” Well, here we have it; the
effect; the thing that the whole world is looking for—salvation. Why, that
is everything; that is all we want, no matter how it comes. You are saved
before entering the church. Then, what more is necessary? There is no need
to go beyond that. Stay outside; live and let live; our safety is
attained; let people wrangle as they may, there is no further fear. There
is no need of a _church_ at all, of communion, and the rest, if we are
saved before entering it. That is all God asks of us, to save ourselves.
It is already accomplished by regeneration and faith in him. There we
stop, happy and contented, without any more quarrelling with our
neighbors.
Then comes the further and final question: After all, who is Christ? How
do we know him? Where do we find him? When and how does he speak to us? Of
course, to “regenerate persons,” it is unnecessary to put these questions:
But our author proposed going deeper into the matter than the common
method, and, if the world is to become Baptist, it must know why. The
regenerate enjoy “a personal union” with him, says the Baptist, and know
when he speaks; when the Spirit impels them. This will never do for human
nature. We must have something stronger than assertion, however strong.
Christians can believe and understand S. Paul, when he tells them that he
was caught up into paradise, and heard secret words which it is not
granted to men to utter. The great apostle excuses himself for bringing
this to the knowledge of the faithful, and only mentions it as a single
act in his life, and one that affected his salvation in no wise. If the
Baptists hold that they are continually in the third heavens, well and
good. That at least has the merit of a clear, defined ground to stand on;
but they will scarcely win many converts. Who is Christ, then, with whom
you have this personal union? He is the founder of the Baptist Church, our
author would respond; of what is known as Christianity? That is to say, of
the system or systems of religion held by all people of the present day
who call themselves Christians, but among whom the Baptists only hold the
true church. Then we will work backwards to the foundation of your society
and the others, and see which reaches to Jesus Christ. Oh! no, says our
author; that is one of the common methods; they are poor. “Read the New
Testament. You will find the Baptist doctrine of salvation, and the
resulting Baptist idea of the church, taught or implied on every
page,(182) and you will not find a trace of the Catholic doctrine of
salvation, or of the Catholic idea of the church. If you doubt, search for
yourselves the Scriptures, like the noble Bereans, and see whether these
things are so.”
In support of this loose, sweeping assertion, this author contorts his
text into a puny quibble, which any well‐instructed child might see
through at once. He says: “We do not read the priests or the apostles
added sinners to the church in order to save them,” but we do read: “The
_Lord_ added to the church daily those who are saved.” _Ergo_, “salvation
was dealt with as a personal matter.”
If the Baptist Church rests on no better foundation than this, and if its
teachers can only support its truth and doctrine on distorted meanings and
texts of this description, we fear it will not hold together much longer,
and we feel half inclined to apply to it a few of the “truths spoken in
love” of which our author is so lavish in dealing with the Catholics. This
very use of the word “Lord” is eminently Catholic. When we speak of a
conversion, of a mercy gained, or a favor bestowed from heaven, though all
these things happen through the hands and sometimes ministry of
individuals, we always say, “The Lord did it; God Almighty wrought it; No
man converted me, but the grace of God; No medicine saved my sick child,
but the favor of God which accompanied its workings,” as the child answers
to the first question of the catechism, Who made you? God. But for all
this God works through human instruments. His priests are an ordination of
his own for the government of his church, and by a worthy probation and
preparation receive certain graces of God necessary for their state
involved in the reception of what the church calls the sacrament of Holy
Orders: a certain form to be gone through which Christ ordained for the
reception of the special powers and graces conferred on that particular
office, as in human governments a judge receives his insignia, a minister
his portfolio, a doctor his diploma, in order to prevent everybody taking
the administration of the law into his own hands, or every quack
practising as he pleases. And so with the other sacraments.
But apart from appeals to texts, which we are almost weary of producing in
favor of Catholic doctrine, and of the church who watched over and
preserved those texts from destruction, the mutilation of which was
wrought, as our author himself complains, not by us, but by the
Protestants in the version of King James, and because we know that version
to be mutilated, we appeal against its use in the schools which our
children frequent: let us look at the broad Christian system, how it would
stand as built up by this writer.
People who believe in Christ at all, and indeed all who acknowledge, as
they must, Christianity to be a fact, a vast social system, existing under
our eyes, looking back, see a time when it did not exist. A man came into
the world at the point of time in its history which we fix upon as the
beginning of the Christian era. At that time religion, speaking largely,
consisted of the Hebrew and the pagan. The Hebrews were the chosen of God,
and preserved the only true system which corresponds to the rational idea
of the foundation and aim of humanity. This it kept to itself and did not
seek to spread. Christ came, the man‐God, and founded a new order,
enlarging upon the old, which was to embrace in its bosom the universe,
and lead all nations back and up to God. The change contemplated was the
vastest that could possibly be conceived, the union of the discordant
elements of human nature in a system entirely above the capabilities of
that nature. Men were to be chaste, to be humble, to love poverty, to
speak no evil, to obey, to mortify themselves always, to pray always, to
acknowledge the nothingness of their nature. This man, Jesus Christ, came,
and, before he had converted people enough to form a single city even, was
crucified, rose from his grave, and ascended into heaven, leaving twelve
poor ignorant, timid men, and a few others to spread this new doctrine,
this new and all‐absorbing social system, throughout the world and through
all time. What did he leave to guide them in this tremendous work; a
system, an order perfect in all its details, and capable of spreading with
the contemplated growth of the church? or did he leave each to follow his
own will and do what he could, by means of what is called personal union
with himself, a being who no longer was present, visibly and palpably,
before the eyes of men? As he chose men to do his work, to build up
Christianity, he let them accomplish it after a human fashion, assisted by
the saving fact that he would allow them never to err in the doctrines
which he bade them preach: and to this end he gave them an order which was
to be handed down forever: the apostleship. That was his government, and
at this government was a head, Peter. And Peter, like all other human
governors, at his departure handed his authority down to the next chosen
to fill his place, the promise of the abiding Spirit passing to all, or
the system must have broken down; and so to‐day Catholics recognize in
infallibility nothing more than the apostles recognized in the decisions
of Peter at Antioch. And so this author is correct in saying that the
church with Catholics comes first, and not the Bible; for the church
embraces the Bible, which is only the written document of the laws and
ordinances of God to man, the letter of the law resting in the hands of
the government which has charge of it, but that government itself subject
to the law. The government existed among the Hebrews before the law was
ever written. This system which we have endeavored faintly to sketch here
is denied by the Baptist. He says: Christianity comes this wise: Christ
came, died, and thus regenerated us. All who believed in him were saved.
“The apostles preached the Gospel. Men were pierced to the heart and asked
what they must do.” They must be immersed, not as a necessity, for they
were saved by the fact of believing; but this act of immersion gave them
the entry to the church of Christ. Then the New Testament was written, not
by Christ, though inspired by him, and left in the hands of everybody to
interpret the law as he pleased.
Now, we ask, can this system commend itself to the human reason as rounded
and complete enough to fulfil the Christian idea of a church, which should
receive and embrace the whole world in one union of religious harmony? A
book thrown into the world—for so it must look to human eyes who knew
nothing of its divinity—which each one was to take up and interpret as he
pleased; a book subject to more or less of change in transmission from
language to language, and in the absolute loss of the living tongue in
which it was originally written, and the verdict of its genuineness, the
verdict for or against the teachings of a living God, resting upon the
dictum of a grammarian.
If Christianity hangs on this, for we have not misrepresented the
writer—then we refuse to be Christian at all; for such a system does not
and cannot, as he alleges, “sustain the test of sound reason, of stern
experience, and of infallible Scripture, which ordeal the Baptist idea of
the church endures.”
We need trouble ourselves with this writer no further. There is a great
deal more in the pamphlet that might be touched on as showing the either
absolute or wilful ignorance under which writers of this stamp labor when
speaking of Catholics. He speaks of the Catholic doctrine with regard to
sacraments in this loose way: “They are useful to infants and the dying.
Men come to them for grace apart from the state of their own hearts.” Now,
Catholics will perceive the utter absurdity of such a statement at once.
The sacrament of baptism is necessary to infants, who of course are
unconscious recipients of it, as they are unconscious of the sin in which
they are born. This stain which they inherit, but do not incur by any act
of their own, is washed away by the sacrament ordained by Christ, which
admits them into the society of the church at the same time that their
birth admits them to human society, its privileges as well as its trials.
Extreme unction is administered to the dying person, even though he be
unconscious, and is the most touching token of the love of the universal
Mother for her children, who at the last moment will, although the dying
man cannot ask it, administer the sacrament which God has ordained for
that occasion, because she _knows_ that his heart desires such aid at its
passage from the world. But all sacraments given to adults give grace only
in proportion as the recipient receives them worthily.
“If the priest refuses to come, then the sufferer, infant or adult, must
die unbaptized and unsaved.”
If this gentleman had only taken the trouble to consult a Catholic
catechism, he would have been spared the trouble of putting this further
absurdity into print. He would have found little children taught at school
that “in a case of necessity, when a priest cannot be had, any one may
baptize,” and the instructions for administering the sacrament; and
furthermore, that, if a person were placed in such a position that even
this means could not reach him, the very desire is sufficient, as
sometimes happens in the case of sudden conversions and martyrdoms.
As for Catholicity necessitating a ritual, all religions must more or
less. Do men object to the old law because of its glorious ritual? Is not
the very Baptist‐act of immersion a ritual, and their singing in common?
So much so that, for neglect of this observance, Baptists cut off the
whole Christian body from community with them. Which is harder to
believe—the Catholic doctrine which teaches that we must obey the church
which we believe to be the only church of Christ, and in support of which
teaching we bring forward some very substantial proofs, or this? You may
interpret God’s Word as you please; that alone is sufficient; but you are
not in communion with his church unless you are immersed; a fact which it
is very difficult to twist out of the Scriptures.
Again, he shows his weakness in saying that “Francis Xavier, working on
the Catholic idea, baptized millions of Asiatics, and believed that in so
doing he had saved their souls. But the heathen remained heathen still.
There is no evidence, so far as I am aware, that under his labors one
solitary soul was transformed into the image of Jesus Christ.” Not one,
but millions, so that Sir James Stephens, a Protestant lecturer on history
in a Protestant university, calls him a saint, not only of the Catholic
Church, but of the world. Colleges were founded by him, and thousands of
Christians suffered martyrdom for the faith. But “Judson” is the apostle
after our author’s heart. Judson “lived to see thousands of civilized and
christianized disciples in that dark Burman land; and the work still goes
on, self‐sustained by the power of a true hidden life.” This latter is a
very saving clause; so truly hidden is the work that our author can point
to no fruit resulting from it. And as for those “thousands of civilized
and christianized disciples,” we took the trouble to look for them, and we
regret to say, for our author’s veracity, found them all “wanting.” Judson
did not succeed in converting one either in Burmah or anywhere else; and
his own sufferings seem to have been reduced to the martyrdom of marrying
successively three wives.
If then, as our author says, “Logically there is no middle position
between the high rock ground of Baptist truth and the low marsh ground of
Catholic error; all things follow their tendencies, and it is easier to go
down an inclined plane than to go up,” we fear that, for all he can do to
prevent them, people will follow their natural tendencies. As a last word,
we would strongly recommend him, before undertaking to set a church in its
true colors before the eyes of men, to consider a little whether he knows
anything of the subject he is writing about, and not stultify himself by
an ignorance which looks like malice, though he calls it truth spoken in
love.
A Retrospect.
And it fell out, says the chronicle, that Childebert, hunting one day in
the forest of Compiègne in company with his wife Ultragade, was suddenly
accosted by S. Marcoul, a holy man who stood in great repute of sanctity
even during his lifetime; he seized the king’s bridle, and boldly
petitioned alms for his poor and his church of Nanteuil, which was in a
state of shameful unrepair. While he was yet speaking, a hare, pursued by
the hounds, flew to the spot and took refuge under his mantle. S. Marcoul,
letting go the bridle to place his hand protectingly on the trembling
refugee, the king’s horse broke away, seeing which his piqueur rushed
forward, and in tone of arrogance exclaimed:
“Miserable cleric! how durst thou interrupt the king’s chase? Give back
that hare, or I will strike thee for thine insolence!”
The saint, humbly unfolding his cloak, set free the hare; it bounded away,
and the dogs dashed after it. But lo! they had not made three strides,
when they were struck motionless, rooted to the ground as if turned to
stone. The piqueur, infuriated, flew after the hare, but he had not taken
many strides, when he fell fearfully wounded by a large stone that had
been hurled at him, no one saw whence, and laid his head open. The
huntsmen, seized with terror, fell upon their knees, and implored the holy
man to forgive them and intercede for the life of their companion. S.
Marcoul forgave them, and then, going towards the prostrate body of the
piqueur, he touched it and prayed over it, and presently the stricken man
rose up healed. Childebert, being quickly informed of the two miracles,
hastened after the man of God and knelt for his blessing, and took him
home that night to the shelter of the castle, and dismissed him the
following day loaded with presents for his church and rich alms for his
poor. So stands the legend.
A witty Frenchman once said to a sceptic who sneered at the story of
Mucius Scævola: “My friend, I would not put my hand in the fire that
Mucius Scævola ever put his in it, but I should be desolated not to
believe it.” How much wiser was that Frenchman than the dull criticism of
our XIXth century, that goes about with a broomstick sweeping away all the
lovely fabrics that less prosaic ages have raised to mark their passage on
the road of history—a vicious old fairy, demolishing with her Haussmann
wand the storied, moss‐grown monuments of the past, giving us naught in
their stead but ugly, rectangular blocks built with those stubborn bricks
called facts, statistics, and such like! Why try to prove to us that
François I.’s heroic _Tout est perdu fors l’honneur!_ was only the
poetized essence of a rigmarole letter written not even from the field of
Pavia, but from Pissighittone? Why insist that Philip Augustus never said
to his barons, gathered with him round the altar, before the battle of
Bouvines, “If there be one among you who feels that he is worthier than I
to wear the crown of France, let him stand forth and take it”? True,
Guillaume le Breton, who wrote the history of the campaign and never left
Philip throughout, makes no mention of it, but what of that? The story is
far too beautiful not to be true. Let us turn a deaf ear, then, to this
old hag called Criticism, or deal with her and her bricks and mortar as
the Senate of Berne did with a man who wrote a book to prove that William
Tell never shot the apple, and, in fact, that it was doubtful whether he
and the apple were not both a myth. The Senate burnt the book by the hand
of the hangman publicly in the market‐place. We will deal in like manner
with any profane mortal who questions the authenticity of the legend of S.
Marcoul’s hare, which furnishes the first mention we find in history of
the château of Compiègne.
The forest was its chief attraction to the kings of old Gaul, as it has
been in later days to their successors. Clotaire I. met with an accident
while hunting there in 561, and died of it; he was interred at Soissons,
whither his fourteen sons accompanied him, bearing torches and singing
psalms all the way. Fredegonda made the merry hunting‐lodge the scene of
atrocities never surpassed even by her, fertile as she was in inventive
cruelties. Her infant son fell ill of a fever at Compiègne and died, while
the son of the prefect, Mumondle, who was taken ill with the same illness
at the same time, recovered. The courtiers, thinking to allay the despair
of the terrible mother by giving it an outlet in revenge, whispered to her
certain stories that were current in the village about a witch who had
sacrificed the royal infant to secure the potency of her charms in favor
of the life of the other. Fredegonda caught at the bait like a tiger at
the taste of blood. She scoured the country for decrepit old women, and,
afraid of missing the right one, caused the entire lot to be seized and
put to death before her eyes. The details of the tortures inflicted on
them by the ruthless mother are too terrible to be described.
Clotaire II. lived many years at Compiègne, much beloved for his gentle
and benevolent disposition, but nothing particular marks that period. King
Dagobert made it likewise his principal residence, and enriched the
surrounding country with many fine churches and noble monasteries. The
most celebrated of these was the Abbey of S. Ouen’s Cross. The king was
out hunting, one hot summer’s day in the year of grace 631, and emerging
from the forest to the open road, he suddenly saw before him a gigantic
cross of snow. Marvelling much at the unseasonable apparition, he sent for
S. Ouen, who dwelt in the wood hard by, and bade him interpret its meaning
to him. The saint replied that he saw in the sign a command to the king to
build a church on the site of the miraculous cross. No sooner had he said
this, than the cross began to melt, and presently vanished like a shadow.
Dagobert at once set about obeying the mandate uttered in the peaceful
symbol, and raised on the road from Compiègne to Verberie the stately pile
called the Abbaye de la Croix de S. Ouen.
Many other foundations followed, but no event of note took place at
Compiègne till Louis le Debonnaire appeared on the scene in 757—unless,
indeed, we may record as such the arrival there of the first organ ever
seen in France. It was sent as a present to Pepin by the Emperor
Constantine, and the first time it was played a woman is said to have
swooned, and awoke only to die. Louis le Debonnaire lived chiefly at
Verberie, the magnificent palace of Charlemagne, a right royal abode,
befitting the greatest monarch of France. Bronze, and marble, and precious
stones, and stained glass, and all costly and beautiful materials were
lavished with oriental prodigality on this wonderful Verberie, whose
colossal towers and frowning battlements and elaborately wrought gates and
gables were the marvel of the age and the theme of many a troubadour’s
song. But what monument built by the hand of man can withstand the ravages
of man’s ruthless passions? The palace of the Gallic Cæsar was not proof
against the successive wars and sieges that battered its massive walls,
till not even a vestige of the wonderful pile remains to mark where it
stood.
The sons of Louis le Debonnaire, Louis, Pepin, and Lothair, rebelled
against their father; Lothair got possession of his person, stripped him
of all the ornaments of royalty, clothed him in sackcloth, and in this
unseemly plight exhibited the old king to the insults and mockeries of the
people. After this he compelled him to lay his sword upon the altar, and
sign his abdication in favor of the unnatural son, who presided in cold‐
blooded triumph at the impious ceremony. As soon as this was done he sent
his father, bound hand and foot, to Compiègne, where he was kept a close
prisoner. Lothair’s brothers, however, hearing of this, were moved to
indignation, and, stimulated perhaps not a little by jealousy of the
successful rival who had started with them, but secured all the winnings
for himself, they set out for Compiègne, stormed the fortress, and set
free the king. But the unhappy father was not to enjoy long the freedom he
owed to these filial deliverers. Louis again rose up in arms against him,
and the king was forced to take the field once more in defence of his
crown; he fell fighting against his three sons on the frontiers of the
Rhine, and expired with words of mercy and forgiveness on his lips.
In 866, Charles the Bald held a splendid court at Compiègne to receive the
ambassadors whom he had sent on a mission to Mahomet at Cordova, and who
returned laden with costly presents from the Turkish prince to their
master. Charles did a great deal to improve Compiègne; the old château of
Clovis, which was no better than a hunting‐lodge grown into a fortress, he
threw down and rebuilt, not on its old site, in the centre of the town,
but on the banks of the Oise. Louis III. and Charles the Simple spent the
greater part of their respective reigns at Compiègne, and added to the
number of its institutions—primitive enough some of them—for the
instruction of the people. “Good King Robert” comes next in the progress
of royal tenants (1017): his name was long a household word among the
people to whom his goodness and liberality had endeared him. One day at a
banquet, where he was dispensing food to a multitude of poor and rich, a
robber stole unobserved close up to him, and, under pretence of doing
homage to the king, clung to his knees, and began diligently cutting away
the gold fringe of his cloak. Robert let him go on till he was about
halfway round, and then, stooping down, he whispered discreetly: “Go, now,
my friend, and leave the rest for some other poor fellow.” Like many
another wise and good man, Robert was harassed by his wife; she was a hard
and haughty woman, who, while professing great love for him, made his home
wretched to him by her quarrels and her domineering temper. The people
knew it, and hated Constance; but, like the king, they bore it rather than
quarrel with the shrew. “Let us have peace, though it cost a little high!”
the henpecked husband was for ever repeating; and his people seemed to
have been of one mind with him, for Constance ruled both him and them with
her rod of nettles to the end, and had her own way in everything.
Philip II.’s occupation of Compiègne, which in those days of simple faith,
when religious fervor ran high, had a significance that can hardly be
appreciated in our own chill twilight days, so slow to see beyond the
material world, so reluctant to recognize the supernatural as an aim or a
motive power in the great movements that enlist men’s energies and direct
them, changing the face of nations. This was the translation of the holy
winding‐sheet from the casket of carved ivory—in which it had been given
to Charlemagne, along with many other relics of the same date,(183) by
Constantine II. and the King of Persia, as a reward for his services in
expelling the Saracens from the Holy Land—into a reliquary of pure gold,
inlaid with jewels. The holy shroud, when it was taken by Charles the Bald
to the Abbey of S. Corneille at Compiègne, is thus described in the
_procès‐verbal_ of the translation, given at full length in the _Grandes
Chroniques_: “It was a cloth so ancient that one could with difficulty
discern the original quality of the stuff, being two yards (_aunes_) in
length and a little more than one yard in width.... The liquors and
aromatic ointments used in the embalmment had rendered it thicker than
ordinary linen, and prevent one from discerning the color of the stuff,
esteemed by the greater number of the spectators to be of pure flax, woven
after the manner of the cloth of Damascus.” There are old pictures still
extant, representing Charles amidst a vast concourse of prelates and
nobles, accompanying the relic with prayer and solemn ceremonial.
In 1093, Matilda of England, on rising from an illness which had been
considered mortal, sent as a thank‐offering for her recovery a costly
shrine of gold and precious stones to Philip II., with a request that the
holy shroud might be placed in it. Philip, in a charter drawn up and
signed by himself, thus testifies to the gift and the translation: “It has
pleased us to place in a shrine (_chasse_) of gold, enriched with precious
stones, and given to this church by the Queen of England, the relics of
our Saviour; we have beheld this cloth (_linge_), in which the body of our
Lord reposed, and which we call shroud (_suaire_), according to the holy
evangelist, and which has been withdrawn from the ivory vase.” We cannot
realize, we say, how an event like this would stir the hearts of men in
those days. Peter the Hermit was preaching the first crusade; his burning
eloquence, like a lever, uplifting the arm of Christendom, and compelling
every man who could draw a sword to shoulder the cross and go forth to
fight and die for the deliverance of the tomb, where for three days their
Lord had lain wrapped in this winding‐sheet. The union of mystical
devotion and enthusiastic service which characterized the crusaders was
fed by every circumstance that tended to embody to their senses those
mysteries which had their birth in that remote eastern land towards which
they were hastening, and the transfer of this sacred memento of the
Passion from its simple ivory casket to a sumptuous one of gold and gems,
the offering of a powerful sovereign, occurring at such a moment, was
calculated to arouse a more than ordinary interest. They hailed the honors
so apportioned paid to the holy shroud as a symbol and a promise; their
faith, already quickened by the renunciation of all that made life dear,
home, kindred, nay, life itself, for the deliverance of the Sepulchre, was
stimulated to more heroic sacrifice; their hope was intensified to
prophecy, by what appeared like a typical coincidence, a manifestation of
divine approval that must ensure beyond all doubt the success of their
enterprise. We should not be astonished, then, at the paramount importance
assigned by the historians of that time to this event, but recognize
therein the sign of our own condemnation, and of a spirit that is no
longer of our day, but belongs, like those glorious relics, to a bright
and glowing past.(184)
Philip’s son, Louis le Gros, like his father, lived principally at
Compiègne; while he was away carrying on the second crusade, his
incomparable minister, Suger, took up his abode there, and, dividing his
time between prayer and the business of the state, governed wisely during
the king’s absence.
When another crusading hero, Philip Augustus, offered his hand and his
crown to the fair Agnes de Méranie, destined to expiate in tears and exile
the ill‐fated love of the king and her own short‐lived happiness, it was
at Compiègne that he presented her to the court and the people; it was
here that amidst pomp and popular rejoicing the marriage was celebrated.
But the most curious episode in the whole range of the annals of Compiègne
is perhaps that of a claimant whose story opens at this date. Baldwin IX.,
Count of Flanders and Hainaut, usually called Baldwin of Constantinople,
before starting for the Holy Land came to Compiègne to swear fealty to the
King of France, who invested him with knighthood on the same day that
Agnes, like a softly shining star of peace and love, rose upon the
troubled horizon of the kingdom. At Constantinople Baldwin was proclaimed
emperor, and solemnly crowned by the pope’s legate at S. Sophia (1204). He
immediately sent off his crown of gold to his beloved young wife, Marie de
Champagne, desiring her to hasten to rejoin him, and share his new‐found
honors. The countess obeyed the command and set sail for Constantinople,
but, overcome by the unexpected news of her husband’s election to the
throne, she died upon the journey. Baldwin’s grief was inconsolable; he
laid her to rest in S. Sophia, the scene of his recent honors, and swore
upon her tomb never to marry again, but to devote himself henceforth to
the sole business of war: he kept his vow, and began that series of
brilliant feats which culminated in his triumphant entry to Adrianople.
Such was the fame of his prowess that powerful chiefs trembled at his very
name: Joanice, the formidable king of the Bulgarians, sent a message to
“the great French warrior,” humbly praying for his friendship. But the
warrior mistrusted these overtures, and haughtily repulsed them. Whereupon
Joanice, full of wrath, vowed vengeance, and in due time kept his vow. He
raised an army, made war on Baldwin, whom he took prisoner after a fearful
slaughter of his army at the battle of Adrianople. When the news of the
disaster reached Flanders, Henri of Hainaut, brother of Baldwin, was at
once proclaimed regent; he continued the war against Joanice, but without
success, nor could he by bribes, concessions, or threats obtain the
emperor’s release; Joanice would not even vouchsafe to reply to any of his
overtures on the subject. All else failing, the pope interfered, and
besought the conqueror not to sully his triumph by revenge, worthy only of
a savage, but to treat magnanimously, or at least according to the rules
of civilized warfare, for the ransom of his captive. To this appeal
Joanice condescended to reply that, alas! it was no longer in his power,
or any man’s, to comply with the desires of his holiness. The answer was
taken for an announcement of Baldwin’s death, and universally accepted as
such. Stories soon began to eke out concerning the horrible tortures
practised on the unfortunate prince by his cruel captor; some accredited
eye‐witness declared that he had been barbarously mutilated, his hands and
arms cut off, and in this state thrown to the wild beasts, his skull being
afterwards made into a drinking‐cup for the brutal Joanice, who had stood
by gloating over the spectacle of his victim’s agony. Years went by and
nothing transpired to throw the least doubt on the fact of Baldwin’s
death, though the accounts as to the manner of it were somewhat
conflicting. Henri of Hainaut was proclaimed sovereign of Flanders; after
reigning ten years he died, and was succeeded by Jeanne, eldest daughter
of Baldwin. She was not long in possession of the throne when the report
was bruited about that her father was alive; he had been seen by some
pilgrims journeying through Servia, who having lost their way in the
forest of Glaucon came upon the grotto of a hermit, and were taken in and
restored by him and sheltered for the night. This hermit, they recognized
as their former prince, Baldwin; he was much altered by suffering, and his
long white beard and uncouth garb were calculated to disguise him from any
eyes but such as had known him well, but the pilgrims recognized him at
once; they, however, discreetly forebore announcing the fact till they
brought other witnesses to corroborate their own assurance. They returned
soon with several trustworthy persons who had known Baldwin too well to
mistake his identity after any lapse of years, and these declared
unhesitatingly that the hermit was no other than the hero of Adrianople.
Baldwin, finding his secret discovered, fled to a distant and more
inaccessible part of the forest; he was tracked thither, and again fled;
but the pursuers finally got possession of him, and dragged him by main
force into the neighboring town; the people flocked eagerly to see him,
and with one voice they proclaimed him their long‐lost Baldwin, welcoming
him with joyful acclamations as a father returned from the dead. Whether
this popular welcome merely emboldened the real Baldwin to confess his
identity and, as a necessary consequence, claim his rights, or whether it
suggested to the false one the idea of simulating the person whom he
resembled and was taken for, it is impossible to say, but at any rate from
this period we no longer see him dragged, but marching forth, of his own
free‐will, from town to town, and surrounded by all the paraphernalia of
an injured claimant. His march was not, however, one of unbroken triumph;
the town of Flanders refused to believe in him, and indignantly scouted
himself and his followers as a band of impostors. The daughters of the
dead man, Jeanne and Marguerite, refused to believe in him, and denounced
him as a malefactor whose aim was to stir up disorder in the state for his
own ambitious purposes. But Jeanne’s government was odious to the people;
to escape from her harsh and cruel rule they would have willingly adopted
any claimant who came with a fair show of right to enlist their credulity.
Jeanne knew this, and at once took strong measures to put down the
movement. It proved more difficult than she anticipated. Before many
months the country was in a blaze, divided into two camps, one of
believers, the other disbelievers, but both ready to devour each other to
prove and disprove their special theories. A witness whose testimony went
hard against the claimant was that of the old bailiff of Quesnoy; he had
known Baldwin from a child, and mourned over him like a father, and, when
he now appeared at the castle gates and demanded admittance, the old man
refused to open to him, and vowed solemnly that he was not his master, but
a base impostor. The conduct of this stubborn sceptic drew forth a
pathetic appeal from the claimant. “I find,” he says, “more cruel enemies
in my own house than in the land of strangers. Flanders, my mother, dost
thou repulse thy son whom Greece and Macedonia received with open arms! I
escaped from Adrianople through the carelessness of my guards; I fell into
the hands of barbarians, who dragged me to the distant plains of Asia;
there, like a vile slave, I, who had wielded the sceptre, was condemned to
dig the earth; I dug until some German merchants, to whom I confided my
story, ransomed me, and sent me back to my country, and lo! I arrive and
show myself, and you repulse me! My daughter Jeanne refuses to own me in
order not to resign her rank and subside into the subject of a court!”
Unmoved by this touching denunciation, Jeanne persisted in disowning him,
but, failing to prove her case, she referred it to Louis VII. of France.
Louis, much interested in the extraordinary story, willingly undertook the
arbitration. The claimant, on his side, testified great satisfaction on
hearing that his fate was placed in the hands of a wise and powerful
monarch, who was sure to prove a just and discerning judge; he set out in
high spirits to Compiègne, where the king was then residing. Attired in
the violet robes of a hermit, and bearing a white wand in his hand, he
entered the august assembly with a countenance full of unblushing
assurance, saluted the King of France with an air of proud equality, and
noticed the barons and knights by a courtly inclination of the head.
Louis, who had carefully studied the case, conducted the examination
himself; he put many subtle and perplexing questions to the supposed
Baldwin concerning events which had passed in his youth, and which it was
thought impossible he could have learned from any one he had seen since
his return, and the claimant answered accurately with an assurance that
carried conviction with it. The examination lasted several hours, and, the
closer it pressed him, the more triumphantly it established his identity.
The witnesses who boasted of being able to confound the imposture in the
twinkling of an eye were themselves confounded; they withdrew covered with
confusion, and vowing inwardly that “this man was sold to the devil,” as
only the father of lies could have told him so many hidden things, and
borne him to success through such a quagmire of difficulties. There was,
indeed, much conflicting evidence forthcoming. Henri, his brother, was
dead, but the Dukes of Brabant and Limbourg, cousins and contemporaries of
Baldwin’s, swore that the claimant was the real man; on the other hand,
sixteen knights of unimpeachable honor swore to having seen the real man
dead on the field of Adrianople. The king, after hearing with great
patience, and weighing most impartially what was said on both sides,
declared in favor of the claimant. The excitement was indescribable when
he rose to pronounce the verdict; but at this point the Bishop of Beauvais
stepped from his seat, and, holding up his right hand, adjured Louis to
suspend for one moment the final words while he put a few short questions
to the hermit. The king consented; a deathlike silence fell upon the
assembly, and the bishop, going close up to the hermit, who was seated on
a chair in the centre of the great hall, addressed him thus in a loud
voice:
“Answer me three questions: 1st, In what place did you render homage to
King Philip Augustus? 2d, By whom were you invested with the order of
knighthood? 3d, Where did you marry Marie de Champagne?”
The claimant stammered, grew pale, and, after a vain attempt to fence with
the questions, broke down. Extraordinary as it may seem, he had never
given a thought to these prominent events in the life of Baldwin of
Constantinople, or foreseen that he would be questioned concerning them.
The enthusiastic sympathy of the court was changed in an instant to rage
and scorn. Sentence of death was pronounced on the hermit of Glaucon on a
charge of high treason, conspiring, fraud, perjury, and the long list of
iniquities that make up the sum of a claimant’s budget. But having thus
far acquitted himself of his office, the king handed over the criminal to
Jeanne to be dealt with as she thought fit. In those rough and ready days
there were no back‐stairs for a plucky claimant to escape by, no counsel
to save him with a nonsuit, or such like modern convenience; the make‐
believe Baldwin was without more ado hung up between two dogs on the
market‐place of Flanders. Some chroniclers throw uncomfortable doubts on
the justice of the execution; a few maintain that this was the true man,
and anathematize Jeanne as a parricide who sacrificed her own father to
the love of power. Père Cahour, who is certainly a conscientious writer,
speaks of her, on the other hand, as a just and upright woman, utterly
incapable of so diabolical a crime, and stoutly vindicates the evidence of
the sixteen knights, though how he adapts it to the belief in Baldwin’s
capture by Joanice, which appears to have been general after the battle of
Adrianople, it is difficult to see. The _Chronique de Meyer_, again,
denounces Jeanne as an execrable monster, and declares that the man who
was hanged was the real Baldwin. Clearly claimants have been always a
troublesome race to deal with; even hanging does not seem to make an end
of them, for their claims outlive them, and leave to historians a legacy
of doubt and discord that is exceedingly difficult to settle.
The passage of S. Louis at Compiègne is marked by an event characteristic
of him and of his time. He had ransomed from the Venetians at at an
enormous price the crown of thorns of our Saviour. To do it public honor
he carried it bare‐headed and bare‐footed from the wood of Vincennes to
the Cathedral of Notre Dame, and thence to the Sainte Chapelle, that
gemlike little shrine which had been raised expressly to receive the
priceless relic, and whose beauty is invested with a fresh interest since
it escaped the fire of the Communists; the Conciergerie and the Palais de
Justice were burning so close to it that the flames might have licked its
walls, yet not even one of its wonderful stained‐glass windows was
injured.
Other monuments S. Louis left behind him, not built of stone or precious
metals, but which have nevertheless endured and come down to us unimpaired
by the lapse of ages, while houses and castles of stony granite have
crumbled away, leaving no record on the hearts of men. Compiègne in the
days of the saintly king was the refuge of God’s poor, of the sick and the
sorrowing; S. Louis gave up to them all the rooms he could spare from his
household, and devoted to tending and serving them with his own hands what
time he could steal from the affairs of state.
To Be Continued.
The Russian Clergy.
We have heard nothing new of late about the project of certain zealous
Anglicans and members of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United
States to establish communion between their churches and the schismatic
Oriental Christians in the empire of Russia. It seemed fitting enough at
first glance that the special variety of Christianity introduced by Henry
VIII. should agree with the methods of ecclesiastical discipline
prescribed by an equally autocratic sovereign at the opposite extremity of
Europe; and there were, of course, abundant reasons why the Anglicans and
their American descendants should covet a recognition from a branch of the
church which, whatever its corruptions and irregularities, can at least
make good its connection with the parent stem. Our readers have not
forgotten, however, how coldly the overtures of these ambitious
Protestants were received. The Russian clergy ridiculed the hierarchical
pretensions of their English and American friends. They denied their
apostolical succession. They questioned their right to call themselves
churchmen at all; and, in short, looked upon them as no better than
heretics, and not very consistent heretics either. The movement for union
was a foolish one, begun in utter misconception of the radical differences
between the two parties, and sure from the first to end in discomfiture
and irritation.
Indeed, it was even more foolish than most of us still suppose. Not only
was it impossible for the Russian Church to make the concessions required
of it, but there is no reason to believe that the Episcopalians would have
been very well satisfied with their new brethren had the alliance been
effected. The Russian Church is an organization which stands far apart
from every other in the world, presenting some monstrous features which
even Protestantism cannot parallel. The Jesuit Father Gagarin has
published a very curious work on the condition and prospects of the
Russian clergy,(185) which would perhaps have modified the zeal of the
English and American petitioners for union and recognition if they could
have read it before making their recent overtures. We see here the
rottenness and uselessness into which a national church falls when it is
cut off from the centre of Christian unity and the source of Christian
life.
The Russian priests are divided into two classes, the white and the black
clergy, or seculars and monks. The great difference between them is, the
white clergy are married, and the black are celibates. Whatever learning
there is in the ecclesiastical order is found among the monks. The bishops
are always chosen from the monastic class; and the two classes hate each
other with remarkable heartiness. The marriage of priests is an old custom
in the East, which antedates the organization of the Russian schism. It
prevails in some of the united Oriental churches to this day. But in
Russia it exists in a peculiarly aggravated form. Peter I. and his
successors, by a multitude of despotic ukases, succeeded in erecting the
white clergy into a strict caste, making the clerical profession
practically hereditary, and marriage a necessary condition of the secular
clerical state. The candidate for orders has his choice between matrimony
and the monastery; one of the two he must embrace before he can be
ordained.
The rule seems to have originated in an attempt to improve the education
of the white clergy. The deplorable ignorance of the order led the
government to establish ecclesiastical schools. But the schools remained
deserted. The clergy were then _ordered_ to send their children to them,
and sometimes the pupils were arrested by the police and taken to school
in chains. The Czar Alexander I. ordered, in 1808 and 1814, that all
clerks’ children between six and eight years of age should be at the
disposal of the ecclesiastical schools; and, that there might be no lack
of children, the candidate for the priesthood was compelled to take a wife
before he could take orders. Once in the seminary, the scholar has no
prospect before him except an ecclesiastical life. He cannot embrace any
other career without special permission, which is almost invariably
refused. At the same time, the seminaries are closed against all except
the sons of the clergy. The son of a nobleman, a merchant, a citizen, a
peasant, who wanted to enter, would meet with insurmountable obstacles,
unless he chose to become a monk.
Thus the paternal government of the czar secures first an unfailing supply
of pastors for the Russian Church, which otherwise might be insufficiently
served; and, secondly, a career for the children of the clergy, free from
the competition of outside candidates. And, indeed, the priests might very
well say: Since you compel us to marry, you are bound, at least, to
furnish a support for our offspring. But the system does not stop here.
What shall be done with the priests’ daughters? In the degraded condition
of the Russian Church, where the white clergy or popes are popularly
ranked lower in the social scale than petty shopkeepers or noblemen’s
servants, these young women could not expect to find husbands except among
the peasantry, and they might not readily find them there. The obvious
course is to make them marry in their own order. The seminarian,
therefore, by a further regulation of the paternal government, is not only
obliged to marry, whether he will or no, but he must marry a priest’s
daughter, and some bishops are so careful of the welfare of their subjects
that they will not suffer a clerk to marry out of his own diocese. Special
schools are established for these daughters of the church; and we could
imagine a curious course of instruction at such institutions, if the
Russian ecclesiastical schools really attempted to fit their pupils for
the life before them; but, as we shall see further on, they do nothing of
the kind.
Sometimes it happens that a priest has built a house on land belonging to
the church. He dies, leaving a son or a daughter. His successor in the
parish has a right to the use of the land, but what shall be done with the
house? The law solves this difficulty by providing that the living shall
either be saved for the son (who may be a babe in arms), or given to any
young Levite who will marry the daughter. Thus the clerical caste is made
in every way as compact and comfortable as possible, and, for a man of
mean extraction, moderate ambition, and small learning, becomes a
tolerable, if not a brilliant career.
The clergy of a fully supplied parish consists of a priest, a deacon, and
two clerics, who perform the duties of lector, sacristan, beadle, bell‐
ringer, etc. The deacon has little to do, except to share on Sunday in the
recitation of the liturgy, which, being inordinately long, is sometimes
divided into sections and read or chanted by several persons concurrently,
each going at the top of his speed. The clerks of the lower ranks,
however, may pursue a trade, but they are all enrolled in the same caste,
out of which they must not marry. The number of parish priests in Russia
is about 36,000; of deacons, 12,444; of inferior clerics, 63,421. One‐half
the revenue of the parish belongs to the priest, one‐quarter to the
deacon, and one‐eighth to each of the two clerics. The prizes of the
profession are the chaplaincies to schools, colleges, prisons, hospitals,
in the army, in the navy, about the court, etc., most of which are
liberally paid. The parochial clergy are supported by: 1. Property
belonging to the parish, chiefly in the towns, yielding about $500,000 per
annum; 2. A government allowance of $3,000,000 per annum; 3. About
$20,000,000 per annum contributed by parishioners; 4. Perpetual
foundations, with obligation to pray for the departed, invested in
government funds at four per cent., say $1,075,000. The average income of
a priest is thus about $341. In addition to this, however, each parish has
a glebe, of which the usufruct belongs to the clergy. The minimum extent
of this church domain is about eighty acres, and it is divided after the
same rule as the revenues, namely, one‐half to the priest, one‐quarter to
the deacon, and the remainder to the inferior clerks. When there is no
deacon, the priest’s share is, of course, proportionately larger. In many
parishes, the glebe is much more extensive than eighty acres. In Central
Russia, it amounts sometimes to 250, 500, even 2,500 acres; and, in those
fertile provinces known as the Black Lands, the share of the priest alone
is sometimes as much as 150 acres. At St. Petersburg, the church provides
the parish priest a comfortable and elegant home. “The furniture is from
the first shops in Petersburg. Rich carpets cover the floors of the
drawing‐room, study, and chamber; the windows display fine hangings; the
walls, valuable pictures. Footmen in livery are not rarely seen in the
anteroom. The dinners given by these curés are highly appreciated by the
most delicate epicures. Occasionally their salons are open for a soirée or
a ball; ordinarily it is on the occasion of a wedding, or the birthday of
the curé, or on the patron saint’s day. The apartments are then
magnificently lighted up; the toilettes of the ladies dazzling; the
dancing is to the music of an orchestra of from seven to ten musicians. At
supper the table is spread with delicacies, and champagne flows in
streams. A Petersburg curé, recently deceased, loved to relate that at his
daughter’s nuptials champagne was drunk to the value of 300 roubles
(£48).”
Considering the education and social standing of a Russian priest, this is
not bad. In the rural districts there is much less clerical luxury; there
is even a great deal of poverty and hardship. But we must not forget that
the rustic clergy is but a little higher in culture than the rudest of the
peasantry, and a life which would seem intolerable to an American laborer
is elysium to a Russian hind. Most, even of country priests, have
comfortable houses, well furnished with mahogany and walnut; and, though
they do not eat meat every day that the church allows it, they have their
balls and dancing parties, at which their daughters dance with the young
men from the neighboring theological seminaries. The wives and daughters
of the reverend gentlemen, to be sure, have to labor sometimes in the
fields; but “they are dressed by the milliner of the place; you will
always see them attired with elegance; they do not discard crinoline, and
never go out without a parasol”—except, of course, when they are going to
hoe corn and dig potatoes.
The voluntary contributions of the parishioners are collected, or
enforced, in a variety of ways, and paid in a variety of forms. Towards
the feast of S. Peter each house gives from three to five eggs and a
little milk. After the harvest, each house gives a certain quantity of
wheat. When a child is born, the priest is called in to say a few prayers
over the mother, and give a name to the baby; the fee for this is a loaf
and from 4 to 8 cents. Baptism brings from 8 to 24 cents more. For a
second visitation and prayers at the end of six weeks there is a fee of a
dozen eggs. At betrothals the priest gets a loaf, some brandy, and
sometimes a goose or a sucking‐pig. For a marriage he is paid from $1 60
to $3 20; for a burial, from 80 cents to $1 60; for a Mass for the dead,
from 28 to 64 cents; for prayers for the dead, which are often repeated, 4
or 8 cents each time; for prayers read at the cemetery on certain days
every year, some rice, a cake, or some pastry. The peasants often have a
Te Deum chanted either on birthday or name‐day, or to obtain some special
favor; the fee for that is from 8 to 16 cents. The penitent always pays
something when he receives absolution; but as confession is not frequent
in the Russian Church, the income from this source must be small. In the
towns the fee is often as high as $1, $2, $4, and even more. Among the
peasantry it sometimes does not exceed a kopec (one cent); but if the
penitent wishes to receive communion, he must renew his offering several
times. At Easter, Christmas, the Epiphany, the beginning and end of Lent,
and on the patron saint’s day, which sometimes occurs two or three times a
year, it is customary to have prayers chanted in every house in the
parish, for which the charge varies in the rural districts from 4 cents to
60 cents each visit, according to the importance of the occasion. In the
large cities the fees are much more considerable. Father Gagarin cites the
case of a parishioner in St. Petersburg to whom the clergy presented
themselves in this manner twenty‐seven times in a single year, and at each
call he had to give them something. This, however, was an exception.
Generally the visits are only fifteen a year. “Sometimes it happens,”
continues our author, “that the peasant cannot or will not give what the
priest asks. Hence arise angry disputes. One priest—so runs the
story—unable to overcome the obstinacy of a peasant refusing to pay for
the prayers read in his house, declared that he would reverse them. He had
just before chanted, ‘_Benedictus Deus noster_’; he now intoned, ‘NON
_Benedictus_, NON _Deus_, NON _noster_’ thus intercalating a _non_ before
each word. The affrighted peasant, the chronicle says, instantly complied.
Often enough, too, in spite of all the prohibitions of the synod, the
wives and children of the priests, deacons, and clerks accompany their
husbands and fathers, and stretch out _their_ hands also. The worst of all
this is that the Russian peasant, while long disputing merely about a few
centimes, will think himself insulted unless the priest accept a glass of
brandy. And when the circuit of all the houses in the village has to be
made, though he stay only a few minutes in each, this last gift is not
without its inconveniences.” It must be an edifying round certainly. But
then the reverend gentleman has a wife to help him home.
The black clergy is not in a much better condition than the white. All the
monasteries are supposed to be under the rule of S. Basil; but they are
not united in congregations, each establishment being independent of all
the rest. Most of them do not observe the great religious rule of poverty
and community of goods, but each monk has own purse, and the superiors are
often wealthy. One hundred years ago, the number of convents, not
reckoning those in Little and White Russia, was 954. The ukase of
Catharine II., which confiscated the property of the clergy, suppressed
all but 400. Since then the number has increased.
The great increase in the number of monks between 1836 and 1838 is
accounted for by the forcible incorporation of the United Greeks. This was
not formally effected until 1839, but the United Greeks were reckoned as
part of the Russian Church in 1838, and many of their monks were
transferred from their own to the non‐united monasteries earlier than
that. It will be seen, however, that the increase thus obtained was not
permanent.
The curious discrepancy between the number of monks and the number of nuns
has an equally curious explanation. Women are forbidden, by a decree of
Peter the Great, to take the vows under forty years of age. Hence the
convents are crowded with postulants who must wait sometimes twenty years
before they can take the veil. Some persevere, some return to the world,
and many continue to live in the convent without becoming professed. If we
reckon the whole population of the convents—monks, nuns, novices, and
aspirants—we shall find the number of the two sexes more nearly agree.
It is interesting to see from which classes of society these monks and
nuns are drawn. F. Gagarin distinguishes five classes: I. The clergy,
including priests, deacons, and clerks, with their wives and children; II.
The nobility, embracing not only the titled nobility, but government
functionaries and members of the learned professions; III. The urban
population, comprising merchants, artisans, citizens, etc.; IV. The rural
population, consisting of peasants of all conditions; V. The military. The
monks are recruited from these five classes in the following ratio:
Clergy: 54.3 per cent.
Urban population: 22.3 "
Rural population: 16.3 "
Military: 3.4 "
Nobility: 3 "
The immense preponderance of the clerical element is owing primarily, of
course, to the regulation of caste, which virtually compels the children
of the clergy to follow the profession of their fathers. For the
ambitious, the monastery alone offers an alluring prospect, since it is
from the black clergy that the bishops are taken. The religious calling,
therefore, in Russia is not so much a vocation as a career. If there were
really an unselfish devout tendency towards the monastic life among the
children of the clergy, we should expect to find it stronger with the
daughters than with the sons. But the case is far otherwise. There are no
bishoprics for the women; their career is to marry priests, go with them
from house to house collecting alms, and help them home when they have
taken too much brandy. Hence we find the following ratio among the
population of the nunneries:
Urban population: 38.8 per cent.
Rural population: 31 "
Clergy: 13 "
Nobility: 12 "
Military: 4 "
The number of recruits supplied to monasteries by the clerical profession
averages 140 a year. These comprise a curious variety of persons. First,
there are priests or deacons who have committed grave crimes; they are
sentenced to the convent, as lay convicts are sentenced to the galleys.
Next there are seminarists who have failed in their studies; if they quit
the ranks of the clergy altogether, they are forced into the army; if they
remain among the white clergy, they have no prospect of becoming anything
better than sacristans or beadles; by entering a convent they will at
least live more comfortably and may aspire to become deacons or priests.
Then there are deacons and priests who have lost their wives; they cannot
marry again; the Russian government hesitates to entrust a parish to a
wifeless priest; the wife indeed, as we have just seen, has some very
important functions to perform in the administration of parochial rites;
so the unfortunate widower is not only advised but sometimes compelled to
go to a convent. Again, there are seminarists who after completing their
studies act as professors for some time before they are ordained. Suppose
such a man has been married and his wife dies. He cannot be ordained if he
marry again. He cannot be ordained a secular priest without a wife. He
must either go to the convent or seek some career outside the clerical
profession, and that, as we have seen, it is almost impossible to find.
Ambition draws many to the monastery. A student of any one of the four
great academies of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kasan, and Kieff, who embraces
the monastic life during his academical course, is morally certain on
quitting the academy of being named inspector or prefect of studies in a
seminary; at the end of a few years he becomes rector; and if he do not
impede his own advancement he can hardly fail to be a bishop after a
while. Still there is difficulty in obtaining from the academies a
sufficient number of educated monks, and according to F. Gagarin some
extraordinary devices are resorted to in order to supply the demand. When
persuasion has failed, the student whom the convent wishes to capture is
invited to pass the evening with one of the monks. Brandy is produced and
it is not difficult to make the young man drunk. While he is insensible
the ceremony of taking the habit and receiving the tonsure is performed on
him, and he is then put to bed. When he awakes, he finds by his side,
instead of the lay garments he wore the night before, a monastic gown. All
resistance is useless. He is told that what is done cannot be undone, and
after a while he submits angrily to his fate. This at any rate was the
method of impressment into the religious state adopted fifty years ago.
Now, says our author, it is unnecessary, inasmuch as a shorter way has
been found of reaching the same result. The students of the academies
(these are students of theology, be it remembered—equivalent to our
seminarians) are in the habit of frequenting public‐houses and getting
drunk. They are carried home on hand‐barrows, and this proceeding is known
as the “Translation of the Relics.” When a young man has been fixed upon
as a desirable recruit for the monastery, the superior has only to watch
until he is brought home on a barrow; the next morning, while his head and
his stomach are rebuking him, he is informed that he has been expelled for
his disgraceful conduct; but, if he will give a proof of his sincere
repentance by making a written request to be received as a monk, he may be
forgiven.
There is no novitiate in the Russian convents. The neophyte makes his vows
at once—provided he has reached the age prescribed by the law—and
instances are not wanting of monks who have even attained the episcopate
without ever having lived in a convent. According to the Russian law,
academy pupils may make the religious profession at 25; other men at 30.
It often happens that a youth has finished his studies before reaching 25;
in that case, instead of applying for a dispensation, he makes a false
statement of his age. Others who fail at their books wait for their
thirtieth year, and are placed meanwhile each one under the care of some
monk, who is supposed to form him for the monastic state. But he receives
no religious training. He does not learn to pray, to meditate, to examine
his conscience. He waits upon his master; he joins in the long service in
the church; and the rest of the time he spends in amusement within or
without the convent. His pleasures are not always of the most edifying
character, and his excursions are not confined to the day.
What sort of monks can be formed by such training? The asceticism
prescribed by S. Basil is rarely observed. Meat is forbidden, but it is a
common dish on the convent tables. Drunkenness is so prevalent that it
hardly causes surprise. “After that,” says our author, “one can imagine
what becomes of the vow of chastity.” There is, as we have already said,
no pretence of observing holy poverty. Every monk has a certain share of
the convent revenues, proportioned to his rank, and this share is
sometimes large. The average income of the black clergy is not easily
ascertained. There are two sorts of convents—those which receive aid from
the state, as compensation for confiscated estates, and those which depend
entirely upon private resources. Those of the first kind are divided into
monasteries of the first, second, and third classes, receiving from the
government respectively 2,000, 1,600, and 670 roubles a year ($1,680,
$1,344, $563). There are 278 of these convents, receiving 259,200 roubles,
or about $217,728 from this source. In former years, each convent was
entitled to the compulsory services of a certain number of peasants. Since
the emancipation of the serfs the government has commuted this privilege
by paying an annual sum of 307,850 silver roubles, or $258,594. Endowments
with an obligation to pray for the departed yield in addition $2,150,400
to white and black clergy together. Let us suppose that the monks get one‐
half; that would be $1,075,200 per annum. Then the convents possess large
properties in arable lands, woodlands, meadows, fisheries, mills, etc. One
convent is mentioned which has derived an income of $10,000 merely from
the resin collected in its forests. The greater part of the revenues,
however, are derived from the voluntary contributions of the people. These
seem to be enormous. Russians prefer to be buried within the precincts of
the monasteries, and the monks not only ask an exorbitant price for the
grave, but make the deceased a permanent source of profit by charging for
prayers over his remains. Images famous for miracles, churches enriched
with the relics of saints, have multitudes of visitors who never come
empty‐handed. How much can be made from this concourse of the faithful may
be imagined when it is remembered that a single laura, that of S. Sergius
at Moscow, is visited every year by a million pilgrims. Begging brothers
traverse all Russia, gathering alms. A very pretty trade is driven in wax
tapers. The various arts resorted to by the white clergy to collect money
are well known to the monks also. The Laura of S. Sergius is said to have
a revenue all told of at least 2,000,000 roubles ($1,680,000), and a
single chapel in Moscow yields to the convent to which it is attached an
annual income of about $80,000. These princely revenues are not devoted to
learning, education, charity, religion. A large part is misappropriated by
the persons appointed to gather them. A third is the property of the
superiors. The rest is divided among the monks. The annual income of the
superior of one of the great lauras is from $33,600 to $50,400; of the
superior of a monastery of the first class, from $8,400 to $25,200; second
class, $4,200 to $8,400; third class, $840 to $4,200. All this is for
their personal use; the monastery gives them lodging, food, and fuel, and
they have to buy nothing but their clothing.
The seminaries, governed by the state, teach successfully neither piety
nor learning. The tendency of the courses of instruction is to become
secular rather than ecclesiastical. A proposal has recently been made that
each bishop shall choose for his diocesan seminary a learned and pious
priest to hear the confessions of the pupils, and excite them to devout
practices; but it is objected that no secular priest can be found who is
fit to discharge such important functions, while those monks who are fit
are already employed in more important duties; besides, if one could
discover among the white clergy the right sort of man, so much virtue
would come very expensive, and the bishops could not or would not pay the
salary he would be in a condition to demand. The seminarians are required
to confess twice a year, namely, during the first week of Lent and during
Holy Week. In reality, most of them omit the second confession; they go
home to their families at Holy Week, and rarely approach the sacraments,
though they always bring back a certificate from the parish priest that
they have done so. A new regulation prescribes two additional confessions
and communions, namely, at Christmas and the Assumption, and attempts
another reform by ordaining that seminarians shall say their prayers
morning and evening, and grace before and after meat.
The bishops are appointed by the czar, and transferred, promoted,
degraded, imprisoned, knouted, or put to death at the imperial pleasure.
Until very recently, no bishop could leave his diocese without the
permission of the synod, so that consultations among the episcopacy were,
of course, impossible. Now, however, a bishop may absent himself for eight
days, on giving notice to the synod. It is the synod at St. Petersburg
that exercises, under the czar, the whole ecclesiastical authority of the
empire. The bishop has no power, and nothing to do but to sign reports.
All the business of his diocese is really transacted by a lay secretary,
appointed not by the bishop, but by the synod. Under the secretary is a
chancery of six or seven chief clerks, with assistant clerks and writers.
This office superintends all the affairs of the clergy, and transacts no
business without drink‐money. It is the most venal and rapacious of all
Russian bureaus, and such a mine of wealth to the officials that recently,
when the chancery of a certain town was abolished on account of the
destruction of its buildings by fire, the employees petitioned to be
allowed to restore them at their own expense. The secretary is the one
all‐powerful person of the diocese. From 12,000 to 15,000 files of
documents are referred to the chancery every year for decision, and it is
he who passes upon them, asking nothing of the bishop except his
signature. He is almost invariably corrupt, and as he possesses, through
his relations with the synod, the power to ruin the bishop if he chooses,
there is no one to interfere with him.
The synod consists of the metropolitan of St. Petersburg and a number of
other bishops chosen by the czar and changed every now and then, and of
two or three secular priests, one of whom is the czar’s chaplain, and
another the chief chaplain of the army and navy. But in reality, the whole
power of the synod is held by an imperial procurator, who sits in the
assembly, watches all its proceedings, stops deliberations whenever he
sees fit, is the intermediary between the church and the state, and
formulates decisions for the signature of the synod. Most of these
decisions are signed without reading, and sometimes they are made to
express the direct contrary of the sense of the assembly. The procurator,
in a word, is to the synod what the secretary is to the bishop—the
representative of the civil power ruling the enslaved and submissive
church. The czar speaks through the procurator, the procurator speaks
through the lay secretaries of the bishop, and so the church is governed
practically without troubling the clergy at all.
The “Old Catholics” of Germany, and the new and improved Catholics who are
(perhaps) going to be made under the patent of Father Hyacinthe and wife,
are understood to be looking eagerly for connections in various parts of
the world. Let them by all means go to Russia. They will see there how
much liberty a church gains when it cuts itself off from its obedience to
the See of Peter, and what kind of a clergy is constructed when men try to
improve upon the models of Almighty God.
The Cross Through Love, And Love Through The Cross.
Maheleth Cristalar was the daughter of a Spanish Jew. Her father had once
been very wealthy, and indeed until the age of sixteen she had lived in
princely splendor. The beauties of her Spanish home were very dear to her;
she had many friends, and as much time as she chose to spend in study.
But one day, her mother, a stately, handsome matron, came into her little
sitting‐room, looking pale and worn.
“Maheleth, my child,” she began, in faltering tones, “we have had some bad
news this morning. I am afraid we are in danger of being totally ruined.”
The young girl looked up; she was very beautiful, and the spiritual
expression on her face intensified and heightened her beauty in a singular
degree.
“Ruined, dear mother? Is my father very unhappy about it?”
“He is more angry than unhappy; it has happened through the dishonesty of
persons he trusted.”
“Shall we have to leave home?” asked Maheleth.
“I fear we shall; it is a heavy trial.”
“It will be for our good in the end, mother darling. I am so sorry for you
and my father, because you have always been used to riches.”
“So have you, my poor child.”
“But not for so long a time; and it is easier to root up a sapling than a
full‐grown tree.”
“Ah! you hardly know what may be before you, Maheleth; your sisters are
mere children; we have but few relations; with fortune, so also friends
will forsake us; the shock will be very sudden, and we shall have to bear
it alone.”
“You forget our God,” said the girl gently.
A shade of impatience passed over the elder woman’s face.
“We do not hope for miracles now, child,” she answered; “your father has
worked hard for his wealth, but God will not treat him as he treated Job.”
“Depend upon it, if he does not, mother mine, it is because he knows what
is best for us. You would not have us lose our hopes of the hereafter for
the sake of more or less comfort in the earthly present?”
“My child, you should have been a boy; such sayings would tell well in a
sermon, but in practical business matters they are but cold comfort.”
“Oh! they _are_ comfort sufficient, believe me; besides, they do not debar
us from prudent measures and precautions in a temporal point of view.”
“Well, child, you are a visionary, I always knew that; it remains to be
seen if you can be a stoic.”
“What need of that, dear mother? Stoicism is not obedience nor
resignation.”
Here a light step was heard, and the half‐open door was pushed quickly
back. A little girl, about nine years old, ran in with flushed face, and,
holding in her hands a velvet casket, cried out in gleeful voice:
“O mother! sister! see! I got leave to bring this in myself. It has just
come from the jeweller’s, just as my father ordered it!”
And she opened the casket, displaying a wonderful _parure_ of opals and
diamonds, exquisitely and artistically wrought. Señora Cristalar turned
away impatiently, saying to the child:
“Thamar, I am engaged; don’t come fooling here about these jewels; put
them down, and go into the next room.”
The child, hurt and astonished, looked blankly at her sister. Maheleth
reached out her hand for the casket, and half rose from her seat.
“I will come to you presently, little sister, if you wait in there; never
mind the pretty gems just now.”
And so saying, she kissed the little eyes that were ready to overflow with
childish tears, and, setting the jewels on a table out of sight of her
mother, resumed her seat.
“There are the first‐fruits of our circumstances,” said the mother
bitterly. “The man expects to be paid for those to‐day, and I shall have
to tell him to take them back!”
“Come! if there were nothing worse than that! Now, mother, we will both go
to my father, and pray together, and then consult among ourselves.”
Maheleth’s father was very fond and very proud of his eldest daughter, and
this indeed was his best trait. Shrewd and clever in worldly affairs, yet
strictly honest in his dealings, he was not devoid of that hardness that
too often accompanies mercantile success, and as often turns to weakness
when that success disappears.
One thing seemed to sustain him, but it was only a hollow prop after
all—his pride of race. For generations his family had been well known and
honored: he could trace his ancestry back in an unbroken line of descent
from one of the exiles from devastated Jerusalem. Rabbis and learned men
had borne his name, and though in later times no opening save that of
trade and banking had been available to those of his race, yet his blood
yielded it in nothing to that of the proverbially haughty nobles of Spain.
It mattered little that by some he was shunned as of an inferior
extraction or lower social status; his own wealth, his wife’s beauty, his
lavish hospitality, his daughter’s charms, were strong enough, he knew, to
break the barriers of prejudice, at least as far as appearances went. As
to marriages, he did not covet for his children the alliance of a poor
foreigner, and poor most of the proud families were whom he daily
entertained at his splendid house—poor in brains, poor in beauty, poor in
energy and strong will.
And yet, though he almost despised his neighbors, this shock was very
galling to him. _They_ now would turn from him, would forget his open‐
handedness, and remember only his race and creed; would pity him perhaps,
but with the pity that is almost contempt. And this seemed to paralyze
him, for all his fiercely expressed consciousness of superiority to his
friends.
Maheleth tried to persuade him to take the trial calmly; for even in a
temporal aspect calmness would sooner show him how to retrieve his
fortunes.
“For,” she said, “you know that, with your abilities, you can, if you
will, gain enough for my little sisters’ dowry by the time they will be
grown up; and that is the first thing to be considered, and after that we
shall even have enough to live in comfort.”
“And what is to become of you, Maheleth?” asked her father fondly.
“Oh! you and I will be co‐workers. I will look after those two until you
can marry them well, and so we will both have a definite object in life.
We can keep my mother in some degree of comfort from the very beginning,
if we only look things in the face.”
The opals and diamonds had to be returned to the jeweller’s; the pleasant
home was broken up, and what with the sale of his property, and various
other legal arrangements, Ephraim Cristaler was able to pay all his
creditors, with a few trifling exceptions, for which he bound himself by
solemn promise to provide shortly.
Then the banker and merchant disappeared, and the nine days’ wonder was
forgotten by his former circle of acquaintances.
One day, a young Englishman, travelling or rather sauntering about Europe
in a way unlike the usual useless rush of tourists from one point to
another of Murray’s _Guide‐Book_, arrived at Frankfort and settled
there—for how long, he, least of all, could have told.
At the hotel, nothing was known of him but his name, Henry Holcombe, and
that he had come with a black portmanteau containing a number of books. He
went slowly to see the sights, one by one, as if he had plenty of leisure
and wanted to enjoy it; and, when he _did_ go, he never measured the
length and breadth of saloons, the height of towers, the number of statues
in the cathedral‐niches; nor did he ever disgrace his name by carving it
side by side with the ambitious Joneses or the heaven‐soaring Smiths on
the pinnacle of a temple, or the bark supports of a summer‐house; when he
went out with a book in his hand, it was neither the obtrusive _Murray_
nor the ostentatious _Byron_; and, in fact, he departed altogether from
the standard of the regulation British tourist.
He was walking one day down the _Juden‐Strasse_, the picturesqueness of
whose mediæval‐looking houses had a special attraction for him, when it
came on to rain very suddenly, and the sky seemed to threaten a storm in
good earnest; the street was soon deserted, and the narrow roadway became
a miniature stream. Presently he heard a step behind him, and a slight
figure, half‐hidden by a large umbrella, pressed quickly past him. It was
a woman, and, he thought, a very young one, but more than that he could
not tell, because she was veiled and muffled, and held the dripping
umbrella very close down upon her head. She had not gone a dozen paces
beyond him before she dropped something white like a roll of music, and
stooped slowly to pick it up. The cloak and long skirt she was holding
fast to keep them from the mud embarrassed her, and the young Englishman
had time to spring forward and restore the white roll of paper to her hand
before she had grasped it.
“Oh! thank you, _mein Herr_!” said a low, rich voice, in very soft German.
And, as Henry took off his hat in silence, the girl made a pretty sweeping
inclination, and left him, walking as quickly as before.
But he had seen more this time, and he knew she was beautiful, and had a
dainty, graceful hand. Curious and interested, he watched the dark‐clad
figure down the street, quickened his own steps as it hastened on,
slackened them as it paused to clear a crossing without splashing the long
and rather inconvenient garments. He saw it stop at last, and ring a bell
at an old forlorn‐looking door, where he might have expected to see the
face of a gnome appear, as guardian of unsuspected treasures within.
He was dreadfully romantic, this young Englishman, but in a subdued, quiet
way that seldom showed itself in words, and was specially repelled by the
_gushing_ style too much followed just then by some of his fair
countrywomen.
The door was opened and shut, and, except through his notice of the number
over it, 25, his relation with the beautiful stranger was cut off.
He thought of it day after day, got a directory, and found out that in the
house No. 25 there lived three families of the names of Zimmermann,
Krummacher, and Löwenberg. The occupations of the heads of the families
were given thus: “money‐lender,” “banking‐clerk,” and “lace‐merchant,”
respectively; no clue whatsoever, of course; and, unless in a regular and
received manner, Mr. Holcombe could not think of entering the house.
Still, the face he had seen veiled under the prosaic tent of a wet
umbrella kept between him and his thoughts, and would not be driven away.
Then, too, what business was it of his to go and throw himself in the way
of a girl who most likely was a Jewess? Yet, reason as he might, the
mysterious face _would_ visit him, and it seemed to him as the face of an
angel. Very often he passed the house, and once or twice even made a
pretence of sketching it; but he never saw the figure again. Once a young
face looked out over the flowers in the window of the ground‐floor room, a
merry face full of health and mischief—not _his_ dream. The blinds were
always drawn on the first floor, even when the windows were open, and he
began to fancy _she_ must be hidden behind those discreet shrouders of
privacy. A friend of his met him at his hotel one day when he came home
from the _Juden‐Strasse_, and surprised him by telling him he was going
home in a fortnight to get married.
“I’ve been half over the world, my dear fellow,” he said, “and enjoyed
myself immensely. And I’ve got such a pile of things going home to my
_fiancée_, for our house. She _will_ be delighted, she is so fond of
queer, foreign things, not like what other people have, you know. I’ll
show you some, but most are gone in packing cases through agents from the
different parts of the world I’ve been in.”
And the two young men went upstairs to examine the bridal gifts.
“Look here,” said Ellice to his quieter friend, “it was a pasha’s wife
sent me these,” dragging out a handful of Eastern jewelry, golden fillets,
and embroidered jackets and slippers. “A cousin of mine is the wife of the
consul at Smyrna, and she got them for me, for of course I was not allowed
to go near the Eastern lady! And look here, these are carved shells, and
mother‐of‐pearl crucifixes from Jerusalem, and boxes made from Olivet
trees and cedars of Lebanon; you should value those.”
“I hope your future wife will,” gravely said young Holcombe; “the wood of
the olives of Gethsemani is almost a relic in itself.”
“Oh! Miss Kenneth will appreciate them just as much as you do, Holcombe,
she is very reverential. See, here is some alabaster, Naples coral, and
Byzantine manuscripts, and marble ornaments from the Parthenon. Ah! here
is the filigree silver of Genoa; that is one of my last purchases, except
these pictures on china from Geneva; see the frames, too, they are Swiss.”
Then he turned out a huge tiger‐skin, and said: “All my Indian things
except this were sent from Bombay, and a year ago I sent home all kinds of
jolly things from North America—furs and skins, antlers, and other
curiosities. By the bye, I have some old _point_ from Venice, but some
people had been there before me and cleaned the shop out pretty nearly, so
I shall have to get some more. Belgium is a good place, isn’t it?”
Holcombe looked thoughtful; his truant mind was at No. 25 again, and he
did not answer. His friend went on:
“I’ll just ask the landlady, she’ll be likely to know if there is any
place here, just for a souvenir of Frankfort.”
“Yes,” said Holcombe, “I suppose she knows.” And, as he spoke, the phantom
face was directly in his mind’s eye, and he could not drive the vision
away.
“And now, old fellow, suppose you show me the lions here,” said Ellice;
“you have been here longer than I have.”
So they walked out, and of course in due time came to the high, irregular
houses bordering the curious _Juden‐Strasse_. It was Friday evening, and
the street was full of people hurrying to one spot; the air was balmy, and
told of summer; the scene was very striking. The stream of people
disappeared under the archway of a splendid Moorish‐looking building, with
Hebrew characters carved above the portal. It was the new synagogue. The
two friends followed the men; the women were lost to view in the stair‐
cases leading to the galleries. A gorgeous lattice‐work defended these
galleries, and the assemblage in the main part of the temple were men with
their hats on and light veils or shawls across their shoulders.
The service began; low, plaintive chants resounded through the building;
sometimes the congregation joined. It was very solemn, and Henry Holcombe
seemed fascinated. Some one passed him a book and found the place for him.
And now came the prayer for the mourners, the mourner’s _Kaddisch_, as he
saw it printed before his eyes. There was a stir among the people, and he
could hear the women’s clothes rustling in the gallery. Those who had
recently lost friends and relations stood up during the intercession, and
then another prayer was offered up in German. Holcombe thought the sound
of the old Hebrew was like the passing of water through a narrow rocky
channel; it was soothing and flowing, sad and majestic, and he wondered if
the girl he had seen once thought and felt about it as he did.
When the crowd dispersed, he tried to linger at the entrance, watching the
women as they passed out. His friend was hardly so patient, and reminded
him of the _table d’hôte_ they had most likely already missed.
“I am afraid,” he said, “your people would scarcely approve your
admiration of the pretty Jewesses.”
Holcombe blushed and moved away, and, just as he came out on the sidewalk,
a girl in black passed him slowly, with an anxious, absent look.
“By jove! that _is_ a pretty face!” exclaimed Ellice; but the other said
nothing. For the second time, he had seen the face he was always dreaming
of, “She looks like an angel,” he thought, “and yet she is not even a
Christian.”
“I never saw a German Jewess like that,” his friend went on to say. “She
looks like a Spaniard.”
The next day, Ellice had got an address written down, and said to
Holcombe:
“If you care to go with me, we will go and look after this lace‐merchant
this morning.”
Holcombe’s heart gave a great throb as he asked carelessly to see the
address: “Jacob Zimmermann, 25 _Juden‐Strasse_.”
“I don’t know much about laces,” he answered, “but I will go with
pleasure.”
“It feels like going on an adventure, like something you read of in a
book,” said Ellice, “this penetrating into the privacy of those tumble‐
down dens of the _Juden‐Strasse_.”
“Well,” returned Holcombe quietly, “it does give one the idea.”
They rang at the door No. 25, and the merry, mischievous face he had seen
once at the window greeted Henry as he entered. They inquired for Herr
Zimmermann.
“Oh!” said the girl, laughing and looking astonished, “he is up on the
third floor. Shall I show you the way? But he is ill, and, as he lives all
alone, he has got into very queer ways.”
They went up, guided by the laughing girl, who rattled on as she preceded
them.
“Gentlemen like you most often inquire for _us_, for my father, I mean,
and no one ever comes to see old Zimmermann except some wrinkled old
ladies, and heaven knows how they find him out; and as to Herr Löwenberg,
he is a stranger and has no friends.”
The two young men then knew that she was the money‐lender’s daughter, and
Holcombe thought his dream companion must bear the name of Löwenberg.
“But is not Zimmermann a rich old merchant, and is he not well‐known in
the town?” asked Ellice. “My landlady named him at once when I asked for
laces.”
“Oh! yes; _rich_ he is; so rich he won’t sell generally; but then an
Englishman is another thing! He lives like a rat in a hole, and starves
himself.”
By this time, they had reached the door of the miser’s room; a low,
subdued voice was heard within reading.
Their knock was answered by a noise of light footsteps, and the door was
drawn ajar by some one inside.
“Rachel, what is it? You know Herr Zimmermann is ill.”
Holcombe knew that voice _must_ belong to the girl he had never forgotten.
Just then the light from the door fell upon the men in the darkened,
narrow passage, and the slight figure drew back a little.
“They are English gentlemen,” said Rachel. “They want to buy.”
“_To‐day_, Rachel? It is the Sabbath.”
Rachel shrugged her shoulders, and Ellice stepped forward.
“I beg your pardon. I forgot that. But since we are here, perhaps you will
let us _see_ the laces, and we can come back and choose on Monday.”
The girl looked uneasily back into the room, and then said, in a very low
voice:
“No; please do not ask to come in to‐day; he is hardly conscious, and he
might forget it was the Sabbath in his excitement.”
“Very well,” said Ellice politely, and Holcombe whispered to him: “Come
away; don’t you understand?”
The door was closed gently, and Henry said:
“She was afraid he could not resist the temptation of a good offer, if it
were made to him, and she wanted to prevent his doing anything wrong.”
“How stupid I am!” said Ellice. “Of course that’s it. But, I say, is she
not pretty?”
“Beautiful!” answered Holcombe very quietly.
“Is that Fraulein Zimmermann?” asked Ellice of Rachel.
“No; Fraulein Löwenberg,” said the girl. “She is very kind to the old man.
Her own father is ill and can’t work, and she is very good to him. She
reads to old Zimmermann, and looks after him, too, when he is ill. She has
two little sisters also.”
“And how do they live?” asked Ellice.
“_She_ keeps them, I think. The father used to be clerk in Hauptmann’s
bank; but he has been laid up six months now, and the mother died two
months after they came here.”
“Are they Germans?” said Ellice, really interested.
“Their name is, but I fancy they are foreigners. Maheleth speaks like a
foreigner.”
“Maheleth! A curious name.”
“Yes, an unusual one; so is her sister’s—Thamar.”
They were at the street‐door now, and Ellice bade the girl good‐morning,
saying they would come again on Monday.
“What a curious chance!” he went on. “It is the same girl we saw coming
out of the synagogue last night. Did you notice?”
“Yes,” said Holcombe.
“You don’t seem very much interested, anyhow.”
“My dear fellow, I never could get up an ecstasy!”
“Still waters run deep, Holcombe. I suspect that is the case with you, you
sly fellow.”
Monday came, and the two friends were again at No. 25. Rachel admitted
them as before, and showed them into the old lace‐merchant’s den. He was
alone, and looked very eager; but his wasted, wrinkled hands and dried‐up
face spoke his miserly character, and froze the sympathy he so little
cared to receive. He laid out his precious wares with trembling fingers,
and it was curious to see these cobweb treasures drawn from common drawers
and boxes, and heaped on a rickety deal table near the stove that was just
lighted, because he was still so ill. Everything about the room looked
cold and hungry; the floor was bare; the paint on the walls dirty and
discolored; and an untidy assortment of tin pans and cheap crockery
littered the neighborhood of the stove. The window looked into a back‐
yard, and what panes were not broken were obscured by dirt. In strange
contrast to all this was a bouquet of fresh flowers on a chair.
While Ellice and the old man were bargaining, Holcombe fastened his eye on
the flowers, conjecturing well whose present they were.
The old Jew asked enormous prices for his laces, and gave marvellous
accounts of the difficulties he had sustained in procuring them as an
excuse for his exorbitant demands. So the time seemed long to Henry, who
knew little or nothing about such things, when suddenly Rachel appeared at
the door with a basin of soup. “Fraulein Löwenberg sent you this,” she
said to the old man, and then to the strangers: “You must excuse us; he is
too weak to do without this at the accustomed time, and the fraulein is
gone out.”
“Gone out!” querulously said the miser. “Gone out without coming to see
me!”
“She knew you were engaged,” retorted Rachel. “You will see her again to‐
night.” She spoke as to a spoiled child.
“Well, well, business must be first, and she has business as well as I
have.” And he went on with his flourishing declamations over his lovely
laces.
Holcombe understood why she had omitted her morning’s visit to her old
_protégé_, and, indeed, it would have been unlike his ideal of her had she
acted otherwise.
“Have you nearly done, Ellice?” he said, coming up to the table.
“Yes; all right. See, I have chosen the nicest things I could find, as far
as I know; but the fellow asks such confounded prices.”
“Well, you had only that to expect,” was the smiling answer, and then the
young man turned to the lace‐merchant.
“Have you been ill long?”
“Only a month, and I should be dead if it were not for Maheleth. I cannot
do without her.”
“But she is poor herself; she cannot bring you what you want, can she?”
“No, she cannot; she is poor, and her father is poor, and so am I. I sell
nothing now; I have no customers.”
Holcombe smiled slightly, but he went on:
“Are you fond of flowers?”
“Yes, but I cannot afford them.”
“Then it would be cruel of me to ask a violet hearts‐ease of you; but, if
you would give me that, I will send you more flowers, and bring you
something you will like to‐morrow.”
“Yes, you may take one; but, if you want flowers, Maheleth can give you
some; she has some growing in her room.”
“No, this one is enough. Good‐by, and I will try and see you again.”
As they left the house, Ellice said to his friend:
“Well, Holcombe, you _are_ green! You don’t mean to say you believe he is
poor?”
“No, I don’t believe it; but he will be none the worse off for a few
flowers and some good food, if he won’t get them for himself.”
“I suppose you remember that there is another invalid in the house, and
the same person nurses both?”
“I know what you mean, Ellice, and I wish you wouldn’t joke; it is not
fair.”
“Very well, old fellow; but, if you were anybody but yourself, I should
say ‘take care.’ You always were the steadiest old chap going.”
A day or two afterwards, Holcombe was left alone again; he had sent things
to Zimmermann as he had promised; but as yet he had not revisited the
_Juden‐Strasse_. On Friday, there was a special service at the Catholic
cathedral, at eight o’clock, and the young man, hardly knowing why,
determined to go.
The church was only partially lighted, except the chancel, which was
dazzling. The music was good, the congregation devout, and the German
sermon as interesting as could be expected. The whole effect was very
beautiful, and seemed to Henry a peace‐giving and heart‐soothing one. A
rush of voices came breaking in upon his reverie at the _Tantum Ergo_, and
the surging sound was like a mighty utterance of his own feelings. As the
priest raised the Host, he bowed his head low, and prayed for peace and
guidance; and when he lifted it again the first object his eye fixed on
was a slight, dark‐robed figure, standing aside in the aisle, drooping her
head against one of the columns. He knew the figure well; but, with a
strange thrill, he asked himself why was she here? For the music? For the
beauty of the sight? For love of a creed she was half ashamed to embrace?
Or from the curiosity of a chance passer‐by?
He watched her as she moved behind the shadow of the pillar, and waited
till she was enticed from her hiding‐place by the quick desertion of the
once crowded church. Now the light from a lamp streamed down on her; the
face was anxious and troubled, as if weary with thought.
“Friday, too!” he said to himself. “And she has come here on the very
Sabbath. Perhaps she has been to her own service first. But what can it
mean, if she only were what this would point to?”
To Be Continued.
Odd Stories. IV. The White Shah.
If thou wouldst hear a choice history of princes, go into the garden of
the shah’s pleasure‐house, and hearken to what the humming‐birds tell thee
in sleep. How else could thy servant have learned the memory of Shah
Mizfiz, the forgotten? Was it not he who built the palace of a hundred
towers in the valley of groves? Beautiful beyond compare was that valley’s
lake which presented itself like a mirror before the pavilion of the shah;
and magnificent as a house in the sky were the hundred delicate towers
that rose one above the other, amid gardens and fountains, and half lost
in groves of venerable height and shade. High hills whose sides were
covered with woods and flowers, and watered with streams and fountains,
shut out the valley from the world save where it was entered through a
great gate crowned with towers; and a long colonnade of loftiest trees
pranked with beds of tulips, hyacinths, and roses, and intertwined with
flowering vines that here and there made curious arbors. From the windows,
or from the balconies, or from the pavilions of his palace, the shah could
see the lords and ladies who, dressed in gold‐broidered silks of all
colors, shook their plumes as they rode up to his gate, or, listening to
the song of minstrels, sailed upon the bosom of the lake.
Naught now could the shah do but dream. Surrounded by hills that fenced
him from mankind, by waters that mirrored the skies or leaped into the
sunlight, by flowers whose odors inspired the sense, by trees which
everywhere made repose for him, and by towers, the intricacies and
ingenuities of which rendered his palace ever new to him, he forgot all
common things. The cares of state he left to his ministers at the gate of
the valley; while in one or other of the innumerable courts of his palace,
or among its unknown and invisible gardens, he retired from the intrusion
of mortals. “I went to seek the rose‐king,” said or sang a poet of the
court; “so I stripped a great rose of all its leaves, one by one, and in
its heart of hearts I found the Shah Mizfiz.” Now, having captured the
tenth of a number of white elephants, the like of which was never seen,
except in the woods and by the lake of the imperial valley, where they
roamed in romantic innocence and tameness, the Shah Mizfiz betook himself
to his dreams as others do to their books.
At times, seated high on his favorite white elephant, the old shah rode in
state through his grounds. Thence it came to pass that, seeing his beard
like almond‐blossoms, and the milky color of his throne‐bearer, they who
visited the gardens of the lake remembered him as the White Shah. Leaning
on the cushions of his vine‐encircled pavilion, his silken beard and
silvery locks floating in the breath of the zephyr, how often have the
minstrels passed by beneath him over the mirror of the lake, singing under
their gorgeous sails or to the time‐beat of their oars those songs which,
with a tinkling and rippling melody, lingered in his ear. Less was it
known how looked and fared the shah when he retired to the inmost bowers
of the interior gardens of the hundred towers. But what wonder if in one
of those fine day‐dreams so celebrated by the poet Bulghasel the flower‐
fairies themselves did him veritable honor, and, circling gardens of
roses, tulips, and lilies, danced at his feet and round about him, an
illusion of humor and beauty?
Ah! the deep‐eyed, far‐gazing White Shah! What dreams he dreamed of green
ages in the youth of the world, of far‐off golden centuries to come, of
ships navigating the air of sunset, of adventures in the stars, and of
nights with the great moon‐shah! They were not to be told or counted; the
number and wonder of them would have tasked a hundred scribes, and put as
many dreamers to sleep. Howbeit, the shah’s visions persuaded him to
become an oracle for all his empire. Statesmen consulted his dreams, and
poets made themes of them, and doubtless the humane spirit of his visions
found its way into the laws. Thanks to them, the people had abundant
feast‐days, and, if a mine of precious stones were discovered, or the
caravans were richer than usual, or the lords were moved to more than
wonted bounty, or new fountains were built on the dry roads, or new
temples set up here and there, the shah’s dreams were praised. When he had
completed the thousandth of a line of dreams, the smallest of which would
have made a paradise on earth again, he dreamed that his people were
prosperous like none other under the sun; for his prime minister had
artfully omitted to report that his eastern provinces were suffering the
horrors of a famine, and those of the west were threatened by war. But on
neither of these facts did the White Shah lay the blame for that final
eclipse which ruined his dreams. In a fatal hour, having too long slept
among the poppies, and drunk too much wine and coffee, he dreamt that the
demon Sakreh had caught him up in a storm on the desert of Lop, out of
which he let him drop into the Lake of Limbo, whence, fishing him up by
the hair of his head, he banged him against the Caucasus and set him down
to cool on the Himalaya, ere, taking him to the topmost height of the
palace of the hundred towers, he allowed him to fall through the many‐
colored glasses of the dome of delights. His displeasure with the effects
of this dream was heightened and consummated when the poet Bulghasel, in a
moment of malediction, trod on his particular corn. From that moment,
peace forsook the couch of the White Shah, and dreams of glory visited not
his slumbers.
Henceforward what had been dreamland to the too happy shah became the
saddest reality. In a white age he had lost his visions as old men lose
their teeth. He wandered about the valley—no longer seated high on the
pride of his white elephant, but crownless and on foot—murmuring from hour
to hour: “I have lost my dream—I have lost my dream.” One day, leaving
palace and throne, he passed out of his gate liked one crazed, to seek, as
he said, his dream. Far away among the Parsees the poet Bulghasel found
him after many pilgrimages: “And O my white‐haired sire,” cried the
affectionate poet, “hast thou found the object of thy search?” “Yea, son,”
rejoiced the White Shah, “I have found that which I never lost, but would
that I had possessed; for then my dream was a fiction, and now truth is a
sufficient dream for me. If the new shah would sleep well, let him have
this dream.”
Signs Of The Times.
In Europe, of late, meetings have been the order of the day. There have
been meetings of emperors and Internationalists; of “Old Catholics” and
Catholics; of church congresses and congresses to disestablish the church;
of “Home‐Rulers” and Dilkites. The voluntary expatriation of the Alsace‐
Lorraine population has followed close on the heels of the violent
expulsion of the Jesuits, both influenced by the same motive power;
trades‐unions have called together a society of German professors, who, by
dint of powerful speeches of an explosive nature, succeeded finally in
showing, in a very conclusive manner, that they knew little or nothing of
what they were talking about. Gambetta has found his voice again; Russia
has mildly but decidedly objected to its inflammable utterances, and in
the midst of all the hubbub the eyes of the world have been attracted to
the strange spectacle in these days of a nation, by a sudden and
spontaneous movement, turning its steps to an humble shrine of the Blessed
Virgin.
As for the meeting of the emperors, we were _not_ present at the council,
and had no secret emissary concealed in the cup‐board. What was effected,
or what was intended to be effected, is an utter mystery to us. We very
much doubt if anything were effected at all; that is, anything real,
lasting, and permanent. The composing elements were in themselves as
incapable of mingling as oil and water. If people looked to permanent
peace or peace for any length of time from it, we fear they will be sadly
mistaken in view of what we have since seen. The effective forces of
Austria are fixed at 800,000 men. The government, actuated doubtless by
peaceful motives; finds it necessary to keep on hand a peace effective of
250,000; and, that this force may be in fighting order at any moment, the
recruits must be kept for three years under colors. To supply this
contingency, 30,000 more men are required, which draws a sum of $1,850,000
out of the national chest, a chest neither very deep nor very safe. The
measure was objected to, whereupon Count Andrássy spurred them up by
informing the astonished members that, notwithstanding the imperial
exhibition of brotherly love at Berlin, the speeches, manœuvrings,
fireworks, and the rest, he would not venture to answer for the
continuance of peace even to the end of the present year. As an echo of
the truth of this, Prussia has just given an order for 3,000,000 rifles of
a new pattern, on the strength, doubtless, of the discharge of the French
debt. Russia is increasing her already vast army steadily and surely,
while France hopes by her new scheme of raising forces to show at the end
of five years an active army of 715,000, and a territorial force of
720,000 men. So much for the effects of the imperial conference as regards
peace.
The _Internationale_, true to the discordant elements of which it was
composed, adjourned without effecting anything or coming to any
conclusion. This was only to be expected; but we should not judge from
this that it is dead, as has been too hastily done by many journals. Its
life is disorder, and, if it can catch the trades‐unions, its influence
would be paramount.
As for the meeting of the “Old Catholics”—we presume they call themselves
“Old” Catholics as the Greeks called the furies _Eumenides_—it will soon
have passed out of memory. We rejoice that it did occur, in order to show
the “movement” in its true light. Luther himself had not half the chance
which Döllinger and the rest enjoyed. The strongest of governments at
their back, the whole anti‐Catholic world looking with eager eyes on this
mountain in travail—_parturiet_; and not even the _ridiculus mus_ is born
in recompense for all this labor, storm, fuss, and anxiety. We forget;
there issued a long string of resolutions, which one or two newspapers
published, the generality very sensibly finding them of too great length
and of too little importance to burden their leaders with them. The whole
affair was utterly ridiculous even to the _ménu_, which, as became a solid
dinner, composed for the most part of German professors with a few
Episcopal waifs and strays from England and America, was in Latin, and
commenced thus:
Symposium. _Gustatio_: Pisciculi oleo perfusi et salmones fumo siccati ad
cibi appetentiam excitandam. Mensa prima, etc.
And this is the way in which the “Old Catholics” meet to found or reform a
church! The effect of it all is shown in the comments of the secular
press. The cleverest journals in England and America, those who expected
much from it, generally express themselves to the effect that, though far
from saying that the meeting was without significance, it did not succeed
in erecting a platform whereon a body could stand. The fact is this: We
are far from denying to the majority of the men there assembled abundance
of intellect and that sort of talent that can make a fine speech or
perhaps compose a readable book, but the world, if it must be changed,
wants something more solid than this.
Prince Bismarck’s measures are what Strafford would call “thorough”; and
he is carrying out this “thorough” policy with far greater effect than the
vacillating Stuart. The latter lost his head for too much heart; the
German chancellor is not likely to imitate him in that. The Jesuits had
small respite. We presume they are all out of Germany by this time. How
much the country at large will gain in peace, solidity, and security by
their expulsion it is impossible for us to say. Oddly enough, in Prince
Bismarck’s stronghold, Prussia itself, we find that the new order is not
destined to run quite smoothly. The diet is dissolved because the Upper
House refused to pass the country reform bill in the face of the emperor
and an official intimation from the minister of the interior that if the
measure were defeated the government would dissolve the diet and convoke a
new one. Whether the members of the Upper House will continue the fight,
and come into direct collision with the power which they so helped to make
supreme, we do not know yet, but we expect not.
Meanwhile, the Jesuits have not gone out of their fatherland alone. The
sympathy of the whole Catholic world has gone out with them, and its
expression is gaining volume daily. Addresses of condolence and
protestations against the legal violence which expelled them are rising up
day after day from the hearth‐stones of the land they have quitted, as
well as from lands and multitudes to whom they as individuals are utterly
unknown. Perhaps the most noticeable of the many which are continually
appearing in their own land is that of the society of German Catholics
recently assembled at Cologne, which passed a series of resolutions
protesting strongly:
1. Against the assertion that the Catholic population is indifferent to
the interests of fatherland, and hostile to the empire. 2. Against the
laic laws which would control the affairs of the churches. 3. Against the
state direction of the schools. 4. Against the expulsion of the Jesuits.
5. Against the encroachment of the state on the jurisdiction of the
bishops. 6. Against the suppression of the temporal power of the Pope.
Such is the Catholic voice all the world over. If rulers can respect this
voice, they will have no more faithful, earnest, or devoted children than
the children of the Catholic Church. If they cannot respect it, they have
only to expect an unfailing legal opposition until they are compelled to
respect it, as Ireland, speaking in O’Connell, compelled England to do; as
Germany, by lawful agitation and peaceful though unceasing and determined
protest, will compel Prince Bismarck to do, until we see again restored to
the country which they love and which loves them the sons who, by peaceful
counsel and wise guidance, and religious instruction, will bring more
glory, solid prosperity, enlightenment, and peace to the nation than a
cycle of Bismarcks.
The Bishop of Ermeland still survives the terrible threats of the
chancellor which have been gathering over his head in deepening thunder
this long while for excommunicating heretic priests; the bolt has not yet
fallen. Perhaps Jove finds himself a little puzzled how to fulminate it to
a nicety. To show the justice of the Bismarck government, and how equally
it deals with all classes, the Consistory of Magdeburg has quite recently
decreed the excommunication of all Protestants who by mixed marriages
shall educate their children as Catholics; the decree has been carried
into execution at Lippspring; the case brought before the civil courts,
and of course the pastor, one Schneider, who wrought the excommunication
publicly and openly in the church, was supported by the just weight of the
law. Now, excommunication is excommunication whether you call it Catholic
or Protestant. Why, then, threaten with impeachment? Why stop the salary
which the government for the country bestows in the one case, and let the
other go entirely free? And yet this is all according to law!
Another anomaly according to law is displayed in the seizing of the
schools by the government. We have not space here to go into the whole
question, instructive though it would be, as showing the determination of
this government to uproot the Catholic faith by every means in its power.
But we will mention one instance. A ministerial circular accompanied the
notice of the new arrangements, informing the teachers that it was
desirable that their scholars should belong to no religious
confraternities—of the Rosary, Blessed Virgin, and such like—and that if
they persisted in belonging to them they should be dismissed. We find it
necessary to endorse this statement by informing our readers that it is
plain, unvarnished fact. Civil marriage is now in full sway; that is to
say, it is no longer a sacrament according to law. What wonder that the
German bishops assembled at Fulda gave utterance to their solemn protest,
an extract of which we cull? It reads as though it had been penned in the
days of Diocletian, or Julian the Apostate, or Henry VIII. But in these
days, when mere human society has come to know its power, and dream that
it possesses freedom, the protest jars on our ears as something out of
tune, out of time, out of date altogether:
“We demand, as a right which no one can dispute to us, that the bishops,
the parish priests of the cathedral churches, and the directors of souls,
be only appointed in accordance with the laws of the church and the
agreement existing between the church and state.
“In accordance with these laws and agreements, the Catholic people and
ourselves cannot consider as legal a director of souls or a teacher of
religion one who has not been so named by his bishop; and we, the Catholic
people and ourselves, cannot consider as legally recognized a bishop who
has not been named by the Pope.
“We claim equally for ourselves and for all Catholics the right of
professing throughout Germany our holy Catholic faith in all its
integrity, at all times and in all freedom, and to rest upon the principle
that we are in no wise constrained to suffer within the bosom of our
religious community those who do not profess the Catholic faith, and who
do not submit entirely to the authority of the church.
“We consider as a violation of our church and of the rights which are
guaranteed to it every attack made against the liberty of religious
orders. We regard and vindicate, also, as an essential and inalienable
right of the Catholic Church, the full and entire liberty which it
possesses of elevating its servants in accordance with ecclesiastical
laws, and we demand not only that the church exercise over the Catholic
schools (primary, secondary, and higher) the influence which alone can
guarantee to the Catholic people that its children shall receive in the
schools a Catholic education and instruction, but we claim also for the
church the freedom to found and direct in an independent manner, certain
private establishments ordained for the teaching of the sciences in
accordance with Catholic principles. In fine, we maintain and defend the
sacred character of Christian marriage as that of a sacrament of the
Catholic Church, as well as the right which the divine will has given to
the church in connection with this sacrament.”
The signatures of the bishops are affixed to this document, which is
addressed to all the German governments, and produced a commotion and
irritation among all the national liberal journals which were unexampled.
We have given this extract here in order to bring home to the minds of our
readers how hard the church is driven in Germany. When the bishops and the
laity combined feel themselves called upon to protest in this style, the
government which for no reason whatever can give rise to such a
protest—signed by the saintly chiefs of a body of 14,000,000, and endorsed
in meeting after meeting by those 14,000,000 and the countless numbers of
their co‐religionists outside of Germany scattered through the broad
world—must be one which does not govern, but tyrannizes.
The same “thorough” policy prevailed in Alsace and Lorraine. On the very
day, October 1, when the option of declaring for France or Germany
arrived, all the men who remained in the countries named were enrolled in
the Prussian service from that date. This, beyond what Mr. Disraeli would
call a “sentimental grievance,” drove them from the country, as it must
have been intended to do. Service under the power that annexed them, which
they but yesterday fought against, and a service the most rigorous and
exacting that exists, as it must be in order to retain its supremacy, was
something that seems to have been ingeniously invented in order to drive
the people out. The provinces are more than decimated; the Prussian army,
if increased at all, is increased in the event of a renewed war by
untrustworthy men, and a new drop of gall is thrown into the already
overbitter cup which France is compelled to swallow. And yet the
_Provinzial Correspondenz_ (official) of Berlin, in view of October 1,
said: “The government has not hesitated an instant in calling without
delay on the inhabitants of Alsace and Lorraine to serve in the German
army, as the best and surest means to evoke and develop speedily among the
population newly reunited to Germany the sentiment of an intimate
community with the German people.”
This smacks of excess of credibility. If Bismarck wanted really to annex
the provinces in heart and soul, he adopted the very surest means of
emptying them in the speediest manner, and letting in the Germans, who
now, sick of war and of the rumors of war, wish to emigrate in such
formidable numbers. Probably the chancellor proposes using the deserted
provinces as a safety‐valve for these recreant spirits. One of the most
significant signs of the instability of the new empire is the desire of so
many earnest workers to leave it just when it has been established in all
its glory and power. But glory and power do not last long in the eyes of
men who look to a peaceful life and to which side, in a popular phrase,
their bread is buttered. Instead of peace, they find the service more
rigorous than ever; the money which was won by the blood of their kin and
countrymen going to the pockets of the generals, to carry out emperors’
fêtes, and purchase millions of rifles of a new pattern. Evidently _the_
business of the German Empire wears a very martial look. But the artisan
and clerk have fought well, and find no returns. Your German is of a
logical bent, so he determines on going elsewhere, where he may live at
peace, and let Bismarck look after his own empire.
In France, we have had and are having the pilgrimages to Lourdes. Not
alone to Lourdes, and not alone in France, but in Belgium and Germany also
there have been numerous pilgrimages to various shrines. Of course the
wits of the secular journals, with a few honorable exceptions, have had a
fine time of it, and have twisted the stories of the miracles of Lourdes
and La Salette into every possible shape in which they might squeeze a
laugh out of it. They are at great pains to show what we were long ago
convinced of—that they do not know what faith means.
Mgr. Mermillod, after a residence of seven years in full enjoyment and
exercise of his ecclesiastical functions, has suddenly come to be non‐
recognized by the Swiss government, or, more properly, by the Grand
Council of Geneva, and his pension stopped. The Grand Council of Geneva
had already expelled the Sisters of Charity and the Christian Brothers. It
essays the rôle of Bismarck, and where it purposes stopping we do not yet
see. But as the population of Geneva is composed of 47,000 Catholics
against 43,000 Protestants, we may presume that the Grand Council of
Geneva will very speedily be brought to its senses. Its miserable pension
of 10,000 francs was raised to 23,000 in two days by a voluntary
contribution set on foot by M. Veuillot of the _Univers_. The Grand
Council has incurred the contempt of all rational minds, while Mgr.
Mermillod is supported in his action by all his fellow‐bishops, by his
Holiness, and by the Catholic world. It may be as well to remember that
the Protestant party in the Swiss cantons voted, but were happily
outvoted, for union with Prussia. It is not difficult to see whence the
persecution of Mgr. Mermillod starts.
Gentlemen who have visited the Alhambra in London, or any one almost of
the Parisian theatres, or Niblo’s in New York, are not apt to be squeamish
on the score of the decent and moral in theatrical representations. Things
must therefore be at a very bad pass when we find the correspondents of
the London _Times_ and the other English newspapers, in common with those
of our own and the Parisian press, uniting in condemning in the most
unsparing terms the pieces which are now in vogue on the boards of the
Roman theatres. Cardinal Patrizi addressed an official letter to Minister
Lanza on the subject. That gentleman, who is extremely active in
suppressing a Catholic paper which dares to caricature his majesty’s
government, sends back an answer which, divested of its diplomatic wool,
is cowardly, stupid, and insulting. We have been astonished to find
“religious” newspapers in this city gleeful over these representations
which the good sense, if nothing more, of the secular correspondents of
all journals in all countries condemns as odious, detestable, and utterly
unfit to be presented in any civilized, or for that matter uncivilized,
community. These journals which are religious see in them “a new means of
evangelizing Italy.” Another feature in “united Italy” is the utter
insecurity of life and property in Rome, Naples, and Ravenna principally,
though, in fact, through the length and breadth of the land. Victor
Emanuel has held the country long enough now to give some account of his
stewardship. The government of the Pope and of the Bourbons, we were told,
favored brigandage and every other atrocity; yet the correspondents of the
London _Times_, the London _Spectator_, and by this time most of the other
anti‐Catholic journals, are furnishing articles which must rather astonish
the upholders of the blessings which were to flow from “Italy united.”
They picture scenes of rapine and blood before which the graphic Arkansas
letters of the _Herald_ pale, while the doers of these deeds, the thieves
and murderers, are “well known to the police,” in fact, on excellent terms
with them, and walk about in the open day with any man’s life in their
hands who dares frown on them. The government is simply afraid of them,
afraid to use the only remedy now in its hands by proclaiming martial law,
a proceeding which the English journals strongly advise. If such a state
of things continues much longer, we fear the inevitable verdict must come
to Victor Emanuel, “Now thou shalt be steward no longer.” Of his ill‐
gotten power, indeed, it may be said, “blood hath bought blood, and blows
have answered blows.” People are apt to be logical; if a government robs
and kills and calls it law, why should not they do the same? Italy will
continue in a state of chronic anarchy until religion is restored to it;
then order will follow as it is following in France to‐day.
In England, though Parliament has not been sitting, questions of moment
have been rife. Mr. Miall has again raised the war‐cry against the
Established Church, ably seconded by Mr. Jacob Bright. The _Times_ and
_Saturday Review_ and other journals affect to laugh at Mr. Miall, as they
and such as they laughed at the Reform Bill, the Act of Catholic
Emancipation, and the disestablishment of the Irish Church. We believe Mr.
Miall’s measure to be the logical sequence of the last of these measures,
a fact which Mr. Disraeli in opposing it foretold. It is an anomaly—a
church supported by a majority which does not believe in it. Mr. Miall’s
measure is only a growth of time; in fact, it only requires the conversion
of such organs as the _Times_ and _Saturday Review_ to bring it to pass
to‐day.
As a corollary to Mr. Miall’s movement comes the annual Church Congress
held this year at Leeds under the presidency of the Bishop of Ripon. This
annual congress is a curious thing; it is a meeting of everybody, high and
low, church and lay, to compare notes and see how the church is getting
on—a very useful proceeding, no doubt, if there were only something
faintly approaching unanimity among its members. As it happened, unanimity
was the one thing wanting, and certain stages of the proceedings were as
warm as those of the “Old Catholics” at Cologne. In fact, the account of
the whole proceedings reads like an extract from _The Comedy of
Convocation_.
New Publications.
THE HISTORY OF THE SACRED PASSION. From the Spanish of Father Luis
de la Palma, of the Society of Jesus. The Translation revised and
edited by Henry James Coleridge, of the same Society. London:
Burns & Oates. 1872. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication
Society.)
This is the third volume of the Quarterly Series which the Jesuit Fathers
are bringing out in London. The series is beautifully got up, and we wish
it every success.
The present work on the Passion has a prologue by the author, in which he
sets forth the end he has had in view. The prologue is followed by a brief
treatise on the method of meditation on the Passion, together with four
sections suggestive of aids to the memory, the understanding, the will,
and the colloquy. The whole is prefaced by the editor, from whose remarks
we transcribe the following: “That he (the author) was a man of sound and
deep theological learning is sufficiently proved by the work which is now
presented to the English reader.... Everything he has written is of the
most sterling value, and has always been very highly esteemed, especially
by those who have labored in illustrating and explaining the _Spiritual
Exercises of S. Ignatius_.... He tells us (in the prologue) that the book
is designed both for simple reading and also for the purpose of furnishing
matter to those who are in the habit of practising meditation and of
preparing their meditation for themselves. Those who use the book for the
first‐named purpose will hardly discover that it is intended also to serve
the other; while those who practise meditation, and refer to these pages
for matter pregnant with such considerations and suggestive of copious
affections and practical resolutions, will not find it easy to exhaust the
stores which are here so unostentatiously collected. It may be worth while
to point out that the design of the author, that his book should thus
serve the purpose of a storehouse for meditation on the Passion, accounts
for the only kind of amplification which he has allowed himself. This is
the paraphrastic commentary which he generally substitutes for or subjoins
to the words of our blessed Lord in the various scenes of the Passion. The
meaning of these sacred words is often very fully and lovingly brought
out, although the narrative form in which the whole work is cast might
less naturally suggest this method of treatment, so valuable to those who
desire to feed on the sayings of our blessed Saviour in all their rich
fertility and meaning.”
The editor expresses a fear “that the translation will be found to be, at
least in parts, rugged and unpolished”; but says he has “tried, on the
other hand, to make it as faithful as possible; and to that object has
been well content to sacrifice smoothness of style, though the original
deserves the most careful rendering in matter and in form.” “Palma
belongs,” he adds, “to what I believe is the best age of Spanish religious
literature—the age of Louis of Grenada, John of Avila, Louis of Leon, S.
Teresa; S. John of the Cross, Louis da Ponte, and other famous writers. In
point of style he is, perhaps, not equal to them; but he shares with many
of these writers the characteristic of masculine common sense, theological
culture alike exquisite and solid, and the tenderest and simplest piety.
Happily, these are qualities which do not easily evaporate in a
translation.”
He then goes on to say that he has “thought it better not to attempt in
any way to edit Father Palma as to points on which he would perhaps write
differently were he living in the present century.” We quite agree with
his decision; and shall here close our notice of the book, since, after
what we have borrowed from the preface, any comments of our own would be
superfluous.
ALL‐HALLOW EVE; OR, THE TEST OF FUTURITY, AND OTHER STORIES. New
York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1872.
This book, containing three tales, _All‐Hallow Eve_, _Unconvicted_, and
_Jenifer’s Prayer_, while it will doubtless afford much amusement to many
readers during the long winter evenings, will, we trust, have other and
more decided effects. By contrast, it shows that fiction of the very
highest order may be successfully written without the extraneous aid of
bad taste and more than doubtful morality, and by example it will
encourage our aspiring writers who, now overawed by the shadow of departed
genius, are unwilling or afraid to risk their reputations in endeavoring
to rival the efforts of those who formerly delighted and instructed us by
their compositions. When the Star of the North, Scott, set, it was feared
that this species of literature had suffered an irreparable loss; but soon
a host of writers sprang up in England, Ireland, and, we may say, America,
who not only compensated for the loss, but more than repaid us for the
decadence of the historico‐romantic school. When those in turn
disappeared, it was confidently predicted that the present generation,
barren of imagination and powers of observation and description, could not
produce anything equal to what adorned the pages of men like Griffin,
Dickens, and Hawthorne. Daily experience teaches us that this was a
fallacy. New buds of promise are constantly springing up around us which
need but the encouraging voice of the press and the smiles of a
discriminating public patronage to warm into full‐blown vigor and
loveliness.
The three tales before us are an earnest of this. The story entitled _All‐
Hallow Eve_, the first in this collection, as it is, we think, the first
in merit, is a tale of singular beauty, power and truthfulness. In
construction artistic without the appearance of art, in verisimilitude it
is all that would be required by the most orthodox French dramatist. The
characters are few and clearly defined, the plot simple, the scene
scarcely changes, the time from beginning to end is short, and the
_dénoûment_, though tragic, offends neither our sensibilities nor our
sense of justice. Ned Cavana and Michael Murdock are two aged well‐to‐do
Ulster farmers whose lands lie contiguous. The former has a daughter
Winifred or Winny, and the latter a son Thomas; and the natural desire of
the fond parents is to form a matrimonial alliance between their children,
and thus unite the families and the farms. Tom Murdock is handsome,
attractive, cunning, mercenary, and unscrupulous, while Winny, who is
limned with more than a painter’s art, adds to her natural graces a noble
heart and keen perception. Edmond Lennon, a young peasant rich in
everything but money, falls in love with her, and, besides encountering
the secret or open hostility of the Murdocks, he finds an almost
insurmountable barrier in the caste pride of the father of his lady‐love.
Aided, however, by the gentle and astute Winny, he partially succeeds in
overcoming this difficulty, when the machinations of his rival are
employed against him, and the result is—but we will not destroy the
pleasure of our fair and necessarily curious readers by unfolding the
catastrophe. The contrasts of character of the two old men, each in his
way aiming at the best, and also between the suitors, are excellently
drawn; the interludes, such as the All‐Hallow Eve festival and the
“hurling” match, are accurate and lifelike, and the bits of pathos which
here and there dot the course of the story are so touching in their very
simplicity that we venture to say many an eye unused to the melting mood
will be none the less moistened on their perusal. The style adopted by the
author is easy and familiar, a little too much so, we imagine, to suit the
tastes of the more exacting reader; and herein lies the only defect, if it
can be called one, that we can perceive in this story.
_Unconvicted; or, Old Thorneley’s Heirs_, is a tale of an altogether
different character, illustrating what may be called a more advanced state
of civilization. The scene is laid in London, and the principal personages
occupy a high social position. It is a story of suffering and affection,
of deep, dark, and unruly passion, and undying love and friendship. It
would be vain to attempt to epitomize the plot, which is woven so closely
and so dexterously that our interest in the actors is kept constantly on
the _qui vive_, and it is only at the very last chapter that we are
relieved from all anxiety on their account. The tale opens with the death
of old Gilbert Thorneley, it is supposed by poison, and the discovery of
his murderer forms the principal theme of the entire narrative. This
involves a great deal of legal discussion and analysis, and, for the first
time in the history of fiction, as far as our knowledge goes, we have a
clear and accurate description of the niceties, quibbles, and profundity
of English law. Though more curious and instructive than amusing, this
does not, however detract from the interest of the novel as such, but
rather acts as an offset to the numerous scenes of connubial and filial
affection with which it is replete. The moral is of course unexceptionable
and easily drawn.
_Jennifer’s Prayer_, a shorter but no less meritorious story of English
life, completes the volume, which, appearing at this season when good
books become more a necessity than a luxury in the household, will no
doubt be warmly welcomed by those who, from taste or inclination, prefer
the attractions of the novel to the more serious study of science and
history.
THE ILLUSTRATED CATHOLIC FAMILY ALMANAC FOR THE UNITED STATES, FOR
THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1873, calculated for different parallels of
latitude, and adapted for use throughout the country. New York:
The Catholic Publication Society.
There are something over five million Catholics in the United States,
representing over five hundred thousand families. This little Catholic
Family Almanac, then, should have a circulation of five hundred thousand.
If it has not, the fault is not with the Publication Society, but in the
Catholics themselves neglecting to diffuse it each in his own circle. A
few years ago such a little annual would have been regarded as an
impossibility. Beautiful in typography, with woodcut illustrations which
in design and execution rival those of any work issued in the country, it
is something that a Catholic can view with pride, and can never blush to
open before any one. This is merely taking it at its mechanical value. Its
scope is to give the yearly calendar of the church with what is locally
interesting to us as Catholics in America, or associated with the trials
and triumphs of the church in that Old World to which by some degrees more
or less we must all trace our origin.
In this year’s little volume, we find portraits of various ages, with
original sketches, telling us of great prelates among ourselves,
Archbishop Spalding and Bishop McGill, representative men who knew the
necessity of diffusing information among our people; bishops of the last
generation like Milner, whose works are familiar to all, yet whose
counterfeit presentment few have ever met; or Bishop Doyle, J.K.L., whom
Ireland can never forget; or like De Haro, who extended his kindness to
American Catholics in their early struggles; or like the illustrious
Hughes, whose large mind gave us a national life and position. The
Venerable Gregory Lopez will be new to many, great as was his fame in
Mexico. Crespel represents the French pioneer clergy at the frontiers in
colonial times—a man who saw rough life by sea and land in his missionary
career. Father Mathew needs no comment. The likeness is speaking and fine.
What part Catholics bore in the days of the Revolution we see in the
sketch of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, illustrated with a portrait and a
view of the old mansion. With his cousin, a priest, he was laboring to
make our cause continental before the Declaration of Independence was
debated in Congress.
Mrs. Seton, as the lady of wealth and influence in New York society, while
Washington as President resided there, shows the wonderful hand of
Providence. Who that saw that young wife then could have said that she
would be the foundress of a Catholic sisterhood, and not be deemed insane?
Mother Julia, foundress of the Sisters of Notre Dame, whom some people may
have heard of, and whose schools in this country alone contain sixty
thousand pupils.
Next comes the Venerable de la Salle, founder of the Christian Brothers,
whose pupils in our land, one might say, “no man can number for
multitude.” The portrait and sketch of this servant of God will be read in
thousands of American families which owe the Christian training of their
boys to his devoted community of Brothers; and, happily in the same work,
we have a portrait and sketch of the brilliant Gerald Griffin, who closed
his days as a Christian Brother.
The view of old S. Mary’s, the cradle of Maryland, the Catholic settlement
founded by the Ark and Dove, is alone worth all the _Almanac_ costs. And
this is but a portion of its contents. We have a stirring incident of the
early missions, the Rock of Cashel, the Church of Icolmkill, the
Cathedrals of Sienna and Chartres.
Every Catholic of means should feel it a bounden duty to order a number of
copies of this _Almanac_, and distribute them among the families less
likely to hear of its merits. In this way much is yet to be done in the
diffusion of popular Catholic literature. Our laity have to feel that
there is an apostolate incumbent upon them. _Fas est et ab hoste doceri._
TRADITION. Principally with reference to Mythology and the Law of
Nations. By Lord Arundell of Wardour. London: Burns, Oates & Co.
(New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
This is a work in which the chronologies, mythologies, and fragmentary
traditions of many nations are gathered together and made to do service in
the cause of Revelation.
The opponents of revealed truth not unfrequently assume this department of
knowledge to be their exclusive possession—they have been foremost in
working this mine, all it contains is theirs, and must be made to sustain
their theories. Lord Arundell’s book shows how utterly groundless is this
assumption. Here we have facts and figures, arguments and inferences,
taken from their own writings, which go to establish the truthfulness of
the sacred Scriptures from the very standpoint whence it has been sought
to convict them of falsehood. The first chapter in Genesis is a key to
every cosmogony. The rudest code of barbaric laws bears some impress of
the Almighty Finger of Sinai. Traditions, however distant and vague, point
in one general direction. These facts have long since been established.
Lord Arundell proves them anew, and brings forth much new matter in his
proofs. Indeed, while in many books we often have occasion to note the
absence of data and ideas, this, we may say, is crowded with both.
We doubt not that this book will forward greatly the interests of truth,
and thus the zeal and devotion of its noble author will be fully requited.
GOD AND MAN. Conferences delivered at Notre Dame in Paris. By the
Rev. Père Lacordaire, of the Order of Friar‐Preachers. Translated
from the French by a Tertiary of the same Order. London:
Rivingtons. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
The translator has already given us two volumes of the great Dominican’s
Conferences, and promises more in the same readable form. Persons as yet
unacquainted with Lacordaire will find his papers kindle their enthusiasm
beyond, perhaps, those of any other author—that is, if they can at all
appreciate the originality of his argument, together with his giant grasp
of thought and diction. And especially do we commend these conferences to
earnest thinkers outside the church, with whom the supernatural is the
question of questions.
Indebted as we are to the translator, he must not think us hypercritical
if we complain of bad punctuation, a comma being sometimes found where a
colon or even a full stop ought to be; or if we take leave to remind him
that, to render French idiomatically, it will not do to preserve the
sudden changes of tense which are forcible in that language, as in Latin,
but sound very strangely in English.
THE HYMNARY, WITH TUNES: A Collection of Music for Sunday‐Schools.
By S. Lasar. New York and Chicago: Biglow & Main.
We could recommend this hymn‐book to Catholic schools, and, on account of
its intrinsic worth, would have been glad to do so, if the compiler had
excluded the few hymns, of no special merit in themselves or in the tunes
adapted to them, which are anti‐Catholic in doctrine. Poison is dangerous,
and we cannot offer it even in the smallest quantities to our children.
THE ISSUES OF AMERICAN POLITICS. By Orrin Skinner, Philadelphia:
J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1873.
Attracted by the title of this book, the fact of its dedication to a
distinguished citizen of New York, and by its comprehensive table of
contents, we took it up and read it from cover to cover. In all candor, we
must say a more confused, ungrammatical, and shallower book it has seldom
fallen to our lot to peruse; and why any respectable publishing house
should have been induced to bring it out in such good style, or in any
form at all, passes our comprehension. To grapple with the great issues of
our American politics, to state each leading question clearly and fairly,
and to draw deductions therefrom that will stand the test of justice and
reason is a task requiring infinitely more experience, judicial ability,
and knowledge of our language than the author displays or evidently ever
will possess. Judging from this production, Mr. Skinner has not the
faintest conception of the principles upon which rests the framework of
our government. Though a lawyer, he is sadly ignorant of law as a science;
and, though ambitious of authorship, he seems unable to write a paragraph
intelligibly. For instance, take the following, snatched at random:
“The deduction from this criticism constitutes, of course, an advocacy of
intelligent suffrage. The plea is here urged that an unrestricted suffrage
is its own incentive to the education of those who exercise it. The
assertion betrays an unpardonable ignorance of one of the most prominent
characteristics of human nature. Frail humanity is so constituted that,
when it has presented to it two ways of effecting its purposes, one with
effort and the other without, it invariably chooses the latter. Equality
as a fundamental element of republican institutions is also urged, Let
such a sciolist read his conviction in the quotations from Burke already
cited.”
It were, however, useless to further attempt to criticise this most
pretentious and least readable of books, and the best wish we can afford
the author, and one that we have no doubt will be gratified, is that it
will be read by few and soon forgotten.
A MANUAL OF AMERICAN LITERATURE: A Text‐Book for Schools and
Colleges. By John S. Hart, LL.D. Philadelphia: Eldridge & Bro.
1873.
Mr. Hart has gathered considerable fresh material on American literature
in this volume. There is still much which he has omitted. With the same
industry and care which he has already bestowed on this manual, he may
render it complete. There is a personality in some of his remarks which is
uncalled for. In spite of these defects, this is the best work of the kind
with which we are acquainted.
THE MARBLE PROPHECY, AND OTHER POEMS. By J. G. Holland. New York:
Scribner, Armstrong & Co.
When our holy church, with its venerated head, its divine sacraments and
sacred ceremonies, is chosen by a writer of merit as the object upon which
he feels himself moved to pour forth his scathing abuse or stinging
ridicule, we bear his ponderous strokes or parry his keen thrusts as best
we may, confessing to the pardonable weakness of feeling complimented at
being called to the lists by an adversary of some strength of arm or
sharpness of weapon; but, when one from the common crowd of chance‐
assembled knights, like our quondam _Timothy Titcomb_, presumes
unchallenged to invite the attention of that respectable audience—the
American public—to _his_ little tilt against the giant of centuries, and,
in his overeagerness to take a share in the fray, disports himself upon
such a sorry steed as the “Marble Prophecy,” laden with “other poems” as a
makeweight, we at once look about us to see if we have not a serviceable
cane at hand for the use of the same discriminating public, _et voila!_
ROUNDABOUT RAMBLES IN LANDS OF FACT AND FANCY. By Frank R.
Stockton. 1 vol. small 4to. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co.
This is an instructive work, compiled with much judgment and good taste
from various authors, and is beautifully illustrated, making it a very
desirable holiday present for the young folk.
NIAGARA: Its History and Geology, Incidents and Poetry. With
illustrations. By George W. Holley. New York: Sheldon & Co. 1872.
This is something more than a mere _Murray_, or guide‐book, at the same
time that it serves as a valuable reference to the intelligent tourist.
Besides some historical and topographical descriptions, for which he draws
on the works of Shea, Parkman, Marshall, the Relations of the Early Jesuit
Missionaries, and State Documents, in addition to his own observations, he
indulges in some geological speculations which will attract the attention
of scientific readers. The whole is interspersed with anecdotes,
incidents, and poetical scraps which will serve to relieve the tedium of
travel, and hotel life.
A HIDDEN LIFE, AND OTHER POEMS. By George Macdonald, LL.D., Author
of “Within and Without,” “Wilfred Cumbermede,” etc. New York:
Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1872.
There is true poetry in this volume. The author possesses, in our
judgment, powers of a high order. His mind, too, is of a deeply religious
cast; and we wonder how he can remain a Protestant after his struggles
with doubt on the one hand, as shown in the poem of “The Disciple,” and
his attractions to Catholicity on the other, as evinced especially in his
poem on “The Gospel Woman,” and most in the opening one, “The Mother
Mary.” But then he has a laudatory sonnet “To Garibaldi.”
The “Catholic Publication Society” has in press, and will publish
simultaneously with its appearance in England, from advance sheets
furnished by the author, a new work, entitled, _My Clerical Friends_, by
the author of _The Comedy of Convocation_. This will be the only
authorized edition published in this country.
Books and Pamphlets Received.
From KREUZER BROTHERS, Baltimore: The Catholic Priest. By Michael Müller,
C.SS.R. 18mo, pp. 163.—The “Our Father.” By the same. 18mo, pp. 221.
From J. A. MCGEE, New York: Sister Mary Francis’ (the Nun of Kenmare)
Advice to Irish Girls in America. 12mo, pp. 201.
From BURNS, OATES & CO., London: Reflections and Prayers for Holy
Communion. From the French. With a preface by Archbishop Manning. (New
York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.) 18mo, pp. xii., 498.
From R. WASHBURNE, London: A Dogmatic Catechism. From the Italian of
Frassinetti. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.) 18mo,
pp. xix., 244.
From JAMES DUFFY, Dublin: Sermons on Ecclesiastical Subjects. By Henry
Edward Manning, D.D. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
pp. viii., 456.
From GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, New York: The Moral of Accidents, and other
Discourses. By the late Thomas T. Lynch. 12mo, pp. xviii., 415.
From T. & T. CLARK, Edinburgh, and SCRIBNER, WELFORD & ARMSTRONG, New
York: Biblical Commentary on the Books of the Kings. By C. F. Keil. 8vo,
pp. viii., 523—Sermons from 1828 to 1860. By the late Wm. Cunningham, D.D.
8vo, pp. xxxvi, 416.—The Old Catholic Church. By W. D. Killen, D.D. 8vo,
pp. xx., 411.—Biblical Commentary on the Book of Psalms. By F. Deleutzsch,
D.D. Vol. III. 8vo, pp. 420.
From HOLT & WILLIAMS, New York: Fly Leaves by C. S. C. 12mo, pp. vi., 233.
From the AUTHOR: Key to the Massoretic Notes, Titles, and Index generally
found in the margin of the Hebrew Bible. Translated from the Latin of A.
Hahn. With many additions and corrections. By Alex. Merowitz, A.M.,
Professor of the Hebrew language and literature in the University of New
York. New York: J. Wiley & Son. 8vo, paper, pp. 22.
From ELDREDGE & BROTHER, Philadelphia: A French Verb Book. By E. Lagarde,
A.M. 12mo, pp. 130.
From P. O’SHEA, New York: Month of the Holy Rosary. By Rev. P. M. Chery,
O.P. 18mo, pp. iv., 200—The Scapular of Mount Carmel. By Rev. P. Tissot,
S.J. 24mo, pp. 105.
From the AUTHOR: The Irish Republic. A Historical Memoir of Ireland and
her Oppressors. By P. Cudmore, Counsellor‐at‐Law. St. Paul: Pioneer
Printing Company, 1871.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XVI., NO. 94.—JANUARY, 1873.
A Son Of The Crusaders.
... “On his breast a bloodie crosse he bore,
The deare remembrance of his dying Lord,
For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore,
And dead, as living, ever him ador’d:
Upon his shield the like was also scor’d.
For soveraine hope which in his helpe he had,
Right faithful true he was in deede and word.”—SPENSER.
One day in the month of November, 1833, a stranger descended from the
lumbering _Schnellpost_ at the little town of Marburg (Electoral Hesse),
on the pleasant banks of the Lahn. Looking around him, he discovered but a
single object of interest—the old cathedral of the place, a noble Gothic
edifice, which, although stripped and cold in its modern dedication to the
Lutheran service, still preserved the salient features of its inalienable
beauty and majesty of form.
The traveller, a young man of twenty‐three, a Catholic, and an enthusiast
in his intelligent and cultivated admiration of the grand architecture of
his church, recognized in the building a monument celebrated at once for
its pure and perfect beauty, and the first in Germany in which the pointed
arch prevailed over the round in the great renovation of art in the XIIIth
century.
Contrary to Lutheran observance, the church happened on that day to be
open, in compliance with a traditional custom, for the cathedral bore the
name of S. Elizabeth, and this was S. Elizabeth’s Day. The stranger
entered. There was no religious service. There were no worshippers, and
children were at play among the old tombs. He wandered through the vast
and desolate aisles, which not even the devastation and neglect of
centuries had robbed of their marvellous elegance. Naked altars from which
no ministering hand now wiped the dust, pillars, defaced statues, nearly
obliterated paintings, broken and defaced wood carvings, successively
struck his eye and attracted his attention. All these remains of Christian
art, even in their ruin telling the story of their origin in days of fresh
and fervent faith, appeared also to picture in a certain sequence the
events of some devout life. Here was the statue of a young woman in the
dress of a widow; further on, in painting, a frightened girl showing to a
crowned warrior her robe filled with roses; yet further, these two, the
young woman and the warrior, tearing themselves in anguish from a parting
embrace. Again, the lady is seen stretched on her bed of death amidst
weeping attendants, and, later, an emperor lays his crown on her freshly
exhumed coffin.
It was explained to the traveller that these pictured incidents were
events in the life of S. Elizabeth, queen of that country, who, that very
day six hundred years ago, had died in Marburg and lay buried in the
church. A silver shrine, richly sculptured, was shown to him. It had once
enclosed the relics of the saint, but one of her descendants, turned
Protestant, had torn them from it, and scattered them to the winds. The
stone steps approaching the shrine were deeply hollowed by the countless
pilgrims who, more than three centuries agone, had come here to kneel in
prayer. “Alas!” thought the stranger, “the faith which left its impress on
the cold stone has left none upon human hearts!”
He desired to know more of the saintly patroness of Marburg’s cathedral,
and leaving the church sought out a bookseller, and asked for a life of S.
Elizabeth. The man stared at him, bethought himself a moment, and then
went up into a garret, from which he presently emerged with a dust‐covered
pamphlet. “Here it is,” he said, “the only copy I have: no one ever asked
for it before.”
The traveller resumed his journey, reading his pamphlet to beguile the
tedium of his way. Although written by a Protestant in a cold,
unsympathizing, matter‐of‐fact way, the essential charm of its mere record
of youthful self‐devotion laid a powerful spell upon him. His artistic
enthusiasm, his heart, his piety, were all touched and aroused. Just
emerging in sorrow from one of the most trying ordeals of the battle of
life, with repelled longings and disappointed hopes, his pent‐up youthful
energies were now seeking some outlet for escape, some fresh field of
action. Uncertain what this field, this outlet, might be, he had vowed
that, with the choice before him of several different objects to pursue,
he would decide for that which was the most Catholic. He had found it. “To
S. Elizabeth he would,” in his own words, “sacrifice his fatigue and his
hopes.” He would write her life, and strive to place on record its
touching story—at once a tender love‐legend, a page of mediæval romance,
and the hallowed tradition of a saintly career. At the first stopping‐
place he left the diligence, and, taking a return carriage, went
immediately back to Marburg.
This traveller, this young stranger, was Charles, Count de Montalembert,
peer of France. His sudden impulse, his enthusiastic vow, were not as
words written in water. To what would at this day seem to many an
inconsiderate, quixotic rashness, succeeded the deliberate realization of
an undertaking full of labor and difficulty. He ransacked libraries,
sought out chronicles, legends, and popular traditions, read old books and
long‐forgotten manuscripts, and travelled far and wide throughout Germany,
wherever a locality offered the attraction of the slightest association
with the name of S. Elizabeth. The charm and fascination of his theme grew
upon him with every additional fact he learned regarding her. Beginning at
the famous old castle of Wartburg, where Elizabeth came a child, the
daughter of a race of kings, from distant Hungary, he made a veritable
pilgrimage, taking for his route the itinerary of his heroine’s life—to
Kreuzburg; to Reinhartsbrünn, where, a young wife and mother of twenty,
she parted in anguish from her husband, a crusader setting out for
Palestine; to Bamberg, where she was driven by persecution; to Andechs, to
Erfurth, and finally to Marburg, “whither,” as he says, “he returned to
pray by her desecrated tomb, and to gather with pain and difficulty some
remembrance of her from the mouths of a people who have renounced with the
faith of their fathers the regard due to their benefactress.”
Bow down your heads, O generation of stockbrokers and speculators in
provisions and railway shares, to the memory of this Montalembert, who, in
the flower of his youthful manhood, for years went up and down the world
with an idea in his head and heart!
But this book, this life of S. Elizabeth. you object, was, after all, a
mere pious legend of dubious trustworthiness? On the contrary, it was a
work of the highest value, even judged by the severest canons of
historical criticism. Its introduction alone is sufficient to make the
work classic. Sainte‐Beuve, high academic and critical authority, calls it
majestic,(186) and reviewers of all nations have contributed their
verdicts of approval.
This was Montalembert’s first literary production—a success, as it
deserved to be, worthy forerunner of his yet greater work, _The Monks of
the West_, and the first‐fruit of a splendid literary and oratorical
career, whose main inspiration was always drawn from the sources of
Catholic truth and Catholic faith.
Montalembert died in March, 1870, leaving a name and a reputation which
for all time to come will remain one of the proudest illustrations of
France.
We are fortunate in already having an admirable memoir of his life,(187)
written by one of the most distinguished women of England. It cannot but
be gratifying to all who cherish the memory of Montalembert that the task
should have fallen into the hands of one so eminently capable as Mrs.
Oliphant. Personally intimate with his family and on terms of friendship
with his wife (_née_ Comtesse de Merode), thoroughly familiar with the
language, modern history, and politics of France, and the successful
translator of _The Monks of the West_, it would have been difficult to
find a writer better fitted, in knowledge and in sympathy, to record the
life of Charles de Montalembert. Let us add here that, for reasons which
the intelligent reader may easily divine, we are glad that the biography
has been written by a Protestant. Although to a Catholic reader it would
be more pleasant to read a life in which nothing could be found which is
not in perfect harmony with the spirit of faith and loyalty toward the
church, yet, for the public generally, the testimony of a fair and candid
Protestant in respect to certain very important events in the career of
Montalembert will be more free from the suspicion of bias, and therefore
of more value in establishing the fact of his essential devotion to the
Holy See to the end of his life.
We trust that the ladies of Sorosis and of the various wings and vanguards
of the grand army of “The Rights of Women” will not take offence if we
endeavor to compliment Mrs. Oliphant by saying that we especially admire
the style in which her memoir is written, for a tone and quality
which—turn whither we may—we cannot otherwise describe than as “manly.”
Making due allowance for the almost inevitable partiality of the
biographer for his hero, there is a directness, a solidity, a sound
common‐sense view of practical questions, and an absence of mere
sentimentality, all eminently to her credit and in admirable keeping with
the dignity of her subject. Mrs. Oliphant’s modesty, too, equals her
ability. Referring to her translation of _The Monks of the West_, she
tells us: “We are sorry to add, to our personal humiliation, that
Montalembert was by no means so much satisfied with at least the first
part of the translation. He acknowledged that the meaning was faithfully
rendered; ‘but,’ he wrote, ‘I cannot admire the constant use of French or
Latin words instead of your own vernacular. My Anglo‐Saxon feelings are
wounded to the quick by the useless admission of the article _the_ or _a_;
and by such words as _chagrin_ instead of _grief_, _malediction_ instead
of _curse_, etc.’ The proofs of the translation came back from him laden
with corrections in red ink—a circumstance which communicated to them a
certain additional sharpness, at least to the troubled imagination of the
translator; and the present writer may be perhaps allowed here to avow in
her own person that up to this present moment, when she happens to have
the smallest French phrase to translate, she pauses with instinctive
alarm, hastily substituting _freedom_ for _liberty_ when the word occurs;
and will cast about in her mind, with a certain sensation of fright, how
to find words for _authority_, _corruption_, _intelligence_, etc., in
other than the French form.”
Charles Forbes René de Montalembert was born in London on the 15th of May,
1810. His father was a noble French _emigré_; his mother, the daughter of
James Forbes, an Englishman of distinction. The first nine years of his
life were spent principally in England under the immediate care and in the
personal companionship of his maternal grandfather, and, dating from this
period, the English language was always to him a second mother tongue. At
the age of fourteen we find him at the college of S. Barbe in Paris. The
fact may be discouraging to many young gentlemen of the present day now at
school and in sad possession of a class of ideas too generally accepted,
to the effect that men become useful and distinguished by reason of the
possession of some unaided special gift rather than by study and the
laborious acquisition of knowledge—we say the fact may be discouraging to
them, but nevertheless it remains a fact that the young Montalembert laid
the foundation of his future distinction as a man of letters, an
archæologist, a great orator, a great writer, an eminent political leader,
and the ornament of the Chamber of Peers, in close, unremitting, laborious
application to his studies while at school. After he had completed his
college course and entered society, we find him writing to a friend: “It
is usual to say that youth is the time for the pleasures of society. I
look upon this opinion as a complete paradox. It seems to me, on the
contrary, that youth should be given up with ardor to study, or to
preparation for a profession. When a young man has paid his tribute to his
country; when he can appear in society crowned with the laurels of debate
or of the battle‐field, or at least of universal esteem; when he feels
entitled to command respect, if not admiration—then is the time to enter
society with satisfaction.”
Soon there came for him the period of _illusions perdues_, which,
commencing with the entrance into life of every intelligent and ambitious
young man, accompanies him with more or less persistence to the edge of
the grave. Young Montalembert spent some time in Sweden, at whose court
his father was the ambassador of Charles X. On his return to France, he
wrote an article upon that country which M. Guizot, the editor of the
_Revue Française_, advised him to cut down to half its length. He
complied, sent in his abbreviated article, and the editor suppressed the
best portion of what remained!
About this time he met Lamartine, became intimate with Victor Hugo, “then
the poet of all sweet and virtuous things,” and numbered among his friends
Sainte‐Beuve, who then shared Montalembert’s religious enthusiasm and his
belief that Europe was to be regenerated by the church. Ireland, too, came
in for a full share of his sympathy. He wrote an article on that country
which Guizot allowed to go in entire. A friend tells him that his article
on Sweden is dull, and that on Ireland commonplace. “Disappointing,”
writes the young author in his diary, “but better than if my friend had
praised me insincerely.” O’Connell, then in the fulness of his powers and
his popularity, greatly attracted him. He would go all the way to Ireland
to see him. And he did. Crossing the two channels, and traversing England,
he made the journey over the mountains of Kerry on horseback, with a
little Irish boy for his guide. He visited O’Connell at Derrynane,
prepared and anxious to discuss with him the great subjects which filled
his mind. The Liberator received him kindly, and after dinner—looking at
the ingenuous face of twenty before him—did what he thought precisely the
proper thing to do—ushered him at once into the drawing‐room, where the
young count was thrown on the tender mercies of a crowd of pretty and gay
young Irish women. _Encore une illusion perdue!_ He had crossed seas and
mountains to discuss freedom, the church, English rule and Irish
emancipation, with Ireland’s greatest man, who, without listening to a
word from him, thrust him into another room amid a bevy of laughing girls!
After Montalembert’s return from Ireland came his intimacy with Lacordaire
and Lamennais, and the joint literary enterprise of the three in the
establishment of the _Avenir_, whose motto was “God and Liberty.” Its
first number was issued Oct. 15, 1830. We will not dwell on its history,
so familiar to all Catholics, except to refer to the holy war waged by it
and its friends against the monopoly of education by the government. Under
the law, every private school, every educational institution not licensed
and regulated by the University of Paris, was absolutely forbidden. Utter
irreligiousness then pervaded the colleges and schools of France. The
generation which passed through those schools bears witness to their evil
influences, and confirms Lacordaire’s own record, who says that he left
college “with religion destroyed in his soul,” and that he, like almost
all the youths of his period, “lost his faith at school.”
Montalembert’s picture of these evil influences was everywhere recognized
as truthful. “Is there a single establishment of the university where a
Christian child can live in the exercise of faith? Does not a contagious
doubt, a cold and tenacious impiety, reign over all these young souls whom
she pretends to instruct? Are they not too often either polluted, or
petrified, or frozen? Is not the most flagrant, the most monstrous, the
most unnatural immorality inscribed in the records of every college, and
in the recollections of every child who has passed as much as eight days
there?”
To test the law forbidding freedom in education, Lacordaire and
Montalembert opened a free school for poor children at Paris in the Rue
des Arts. They were indicted for the offence, and tried at the bar of the
Chamber of Peers. The audience, as may well be imagined, was made up from
the nobility and intelligence of the land. The prisoners defended their
cause in person. Lacordaire, who spoke first, referred to the fact that
the government had lately impeached the previous ministers by virtue of
power in the charter not reduced to a special law. “If they could do it,
so could I,” said the brave priest, “with this difference, that they asked
blood, while I desired to give a free education to the children of the
poor.” He ended by recalling to his judges the example of Socrates “in the
first struggle for freedom to preach.” “In that _cause célèbre_ by which
Socrates fell,” said Lacordaire, “he was evidently culpable against the
gods, and in consequence against the laws of his country. Nevertheless,
posterity, both pagan and Christian, has stigmatized his judges and
accusers; and of all concerned have absolved only the culprit and the
executioner—the culprit, because he had failed to keep the laws of Athens
only in obedience to a higher law; and the executioner, because he
presented the cup to the victim with tears.”
With this proud and plain warning ringing in their ears, the judges next
heard Montalembert. He was just twenty‐one, and by the recent death of his
father but a few weeks in his place as a peer of France. Sainte‐Beuve saw
that his youth, his ease and grace, the elegant precision of his style and
diction, veiled the fact that it was a prisoner—not a peer—who spoke, and
his judges were the first to forget it.
“The entire chamber listened with a surprise which was not without
pleasure to the young man’s bold self‐justification. From that day M. de
Montalembert, though formally condemned, was borne in the very heart of
the peerage—he was its Benjamin.” The sentence was a gentle reprimand and
a mild fine of a hundred francs.
The _Avenir_, it will be remembered, had incurred no censure from Rome.
Nevertheless, it had not prospered, and it was resolved by its founders
that they would appeal to the head of the church for his explicit
approval. Accordingly, the publication of the paper was suspended, and its
last number announced “with pomp,” as Lacordaire says, that “the purpose
of its editors was to suspend it until they had gone to Rome to seek
sanction and authority for its continuation.” The biographer well remarks
that “neither from primitive Ireland nor romantic Poland had such an
expedition set forth.” They asked the head of the church “to commit
himself, to sanction a new and revolutionary movement, to bless the very
banners of revolt, and acknowledge as pioneers of his army the
ecclesiastical Ishmaels who had carried fire and flame everywhere during
their brief career.” There could, of course, be but one result—failure.
The _Avenir_ was condemned. Lacordaire and Montalembert at once submitted
to the decision. Poor de Lamennais did not, and unhappily persisted in his
sad mistake. In connection with this subject, we cannot here refrain from
repeating at length some reflections which, coming as they do from an
intelligent Protestant, have a peculiar force and value.
They are from the pen of Montalembert’s biographer, and present so
admirable, so eloquent a _résumé_ of the question of apostasy, that we
have not the heart to curtail the passage containing them by so much as
the omission of a single word:
“Except at the Reformation, when the great overflow of spiritual
rebellion was favored by such a combination of circumstances as
has never occurred since, no man or group of men have succeeded in
rebelling against Rome, and yet continued to keep up a religious
character and influence. No man has been able to do it, whatever
the excellence of his beginning might be, or the purity of the
motives with which he started. Even in the Church of England the
career of a man who separates himself from her communion is
generally a painful one. He makes a commotion and excitement in
the world for a time before he has fully made up his mind; and at
the moment of his withdrawal he is sure of remark and notice, at
all events, from certain classes. But after that brief moment he
sinks flat as the spirits do in the _Inferno_, and the dark wave
pours over him, and he is heard of no more. All that sustained and
strengthened and gave him a fictitious importance as the member of
a great corporation has fallen away from him. He has dropped like
a stone into the water—like a foundered ship into the sea. In
England, however, after all has been done, there is a sea of
dissent to drop into, and though his new surroundings may please
him little, yet he will come out of the giddiness of his downfall
to take some comfort in them—will accustom himself by degrees to
the lower social level, the different spiritual atmosphere. But he
who dissents from the Church of Rome has no such refuge. The
moment he steps outside her fold he finds himself in outer
darkness, through which awful salutations are shrieked to him by
the enemies of religion, by those whom he has avoided and
condemned all his life, and with whom he can agree only on the one
sole article of rebellion. If he ventures to hold up his head at
all after what all his friends will call his apostasy, the best
that he can hope for is to be courted by heretics, professed
enemies of the church which he has been born in, and which
probably he loves most dearly still, notwithstanding his
disobedience. To quarrel with your home is one thing—to find its
domestic laws hard, and its prejudices insupportable; but to
plunge into the midst of the enemies of that home, and to hear it
assailed with the virulence of ignorance—to join in gibes against
your mother, and mockery of her life and motives—is a totally
different matter. Yet this is almost all that a contumacious
priest has to look forward to. A recent and striking example, to
which we need not refer more plainly, will occur to every one who
has watched the contemporary history of the Roman Catholic Church.
In this case a brilliant and remarkable preacher—a man supposed
the other day to be one of the most eminent and promising sons of
Rome—after wavering and falling away in some points from
ecclesiastical obedience, suddenly appeared in an admiring circle
of gentle Anglicanism, surrounded by a fair crowd of worshipping
Protestants, ready to extend to him all that broad and universal
sympathy which he had no doubt been trained to regard as vilest
latitudinarianism, or the readiness of Pilate to make friends with
Herod. This prospect must chill the very soul of a man who has
received the true priestly training, and who has been educated in
that love of his church which is of itself a noble and generous
sentiment. The best thing that can happen to him is to fall among
heretics; the other alternative, and the only one, so far as
events have yet made it apparent, to fall among infidels: and as
his education has taught him to make but small distinction between
them, and the infidels are nearer at hand, and his own countrymen,
what wonder if it is into their hands that the miserable man, torn
from all his ancient foundations, ejected from his natural place,
heart‐weary with the madness which is wrought by anger against
those we love, should fall—what wonder if he should rush to the
furthest extremity, hiding what he feels to be his shame, and
endeavoring to take some dismal comfort in utter negation of that
past from which he has been torn! Whether there are new
developments in the future for the new Protesters whom a recent
decision has raised up, we cannot tell. But such has been the case
in the past. Life is over for the rebellious priest who breaks
with his church; his possibility of service in his vocation has
come to an end; even the most careless peasant in his parish will
turn from him. He is a deserter from his regiment in the face of
the enemy, false to his colors, a man no longer of any human use.”
It was during Montalembert’s sojourn in Italy, on his remarkable _Avenir_
pilgrimage, that he became the intimate friend of Albert de la Ferronays,
the hero of Mrs. Craven’s beautiful _Récit d’une Sœur_. He appears in the
book designated under the name of Montal. From the same period, also,
dates his intimacy with Rio, the future historian of Christian art. The
young peer’s taste for art, always strong, and his enthusiastic admiration
of the glorious remains of mediæval architecture, were both developed and
strengthened under the teaching and influence of Rio. In March, 1833, he
published an article in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, in which he
energetically denounced the desecration and ruin of the grand old
architectural monuments of France. It was addressed in the form of a
letter to Victor Hugo, then leader of the Romantic school, who strongly
sympathized with him on this subject, and whose _Notre Dame de Paris_ had
been reviewed in the _Avenir_ by Montalembert with enthusiastic praise for
the grand historical framework of the story. During the autumn of that
year, Montalembert went to Germany, and, as we have seen, accidentally
stopped at Marburg. Travel, research, and the collection of materials for
the life of Elizabeth now engrossed all his time, until, attaining the
legal age, twenty‐five, he took his seat in the Chamber of Peers. His
first appearance at the bar of this chamber had been in defence of the
liberty of teaching, and his first speech was in defence of the liberty of
the press. These two discourses prefigured his parliamentary career. He
was always the ardent advocate of liberty; rarely heard on the side of the
government; and generally the leader of a conscientious and loyal
opposition: which, well considered, would have been found the most prudent
adviser of the administration in power.
Strongly imbued with English ideas, he fully appreciated the conservative
power of an energetic opposition, ever ready to criticise, to question, to
challenge, or to expose whatever might seem arbitrary or unconstitutional
in the acts of the government. But this idea of an opposition at once
loyal and law‐loving, was unfamiliar to his countrymen. To them, as a
general thing, opposition meant revolution, and to many the spectacle of a
peer of France, a Catholic, and a _proprietaire_, who was at once the
friend of the proletaire, the dissenter, the oppressor, and the slave, was
a paradox. And yet paradox there was none, for his declaration of
principles was always clear and bold. Thus, in striving to cull from the
Chamber of Peers a public expression of sympathy for the Poles, he
insisted that it was their right and their duty to make an avowal of
national sentiments, an expression of national opinion, that it was an
obligation imposed by humanity and required by wise policy. “What is it,”
he asked, “that has raised the British parliament to so high a degree of
popularity and moral influence in Europe? Is it not because for more than
a century no grave event has happened in any country without finding an
echo there? Is it not because no right has been oppressed, no treaty
broken anywhere, without a discussion on both sides of the question before
the peers and commons of England, whose assemblies have thus become, in
the silence of the world, a sort of tribunal where all the great causes of
humanity are pleaded, and where opinion pronounces those formidable
judgments which, sooner or later, are always executed?”
And his independence was that of the man as well as of the orator. He was
committed to no policy, sought no party ends, but always, and at all cost,
maintained the good, the just, the honorable. A lost or desperate cause,
if equitable, was always sure of his support. The three oppressed nations
of the earth, Poland under Russia, Ireland under England, and Greece under
Turkey, were his most cherished clients. The weaker side ever strongly
attracted him. “Penetrated by the conviction that just causes are
everlasting,” says M. Cochin, “and that every protest against injustice
ends by moving heaven and convincing men, he sought out, so to speak,
every oppressed cause when at its last breath, to take its burden upon
himself, and to become its champion. There is a suffering race, a race
lost in distant isles, the race of black slaves, which has been oppressed
for centuries. He took its cause in hand, and from the year 1837 labored
for its emancipation. There are in all manufacturing places a crowd of
hollow‐cheeked children, with pale faces and worn eyes, and the sight of
them made a profound impression upon him; he took their cause also in
hand. If you run over the mere index of his speeches, you will find all
generous efforts contained in it.”
The year 1836 brought two notable events in the life of Montalembert—the
publication of his first work, his _Life of S. Elizabeth_, and his
marriage to a daughter of the noble house of de Merode in Belgium.
Meantime, he continued his attacks on vandalism in art and his
parliamentary labors, and was mainly instrumental in the creation of the
committee of historical art and the commission on historical monuments,
from both of which he was excluded under the Empire, which no more
sympathized with his pure conceptions of Christian art than it did with
his conception of Christian morals.
Rio has recorded the result of the impression made by Montalembert upon
the English poet Rogers, which admirably illustrates the fact that
Montalembert’s religion was not a sort of moral “Sunday suit” to be put
off and on as occasion might require, and at the same time reveals to us
the old poet in an entirely new aspect. The Montalemberts had spent the
evening with Rogers, “and after their departure,” Rio relates, “when I
found myself alone with Rogers, the expression of his countenance, which
up to that moment had been smiling and animated, changed so suddenly that
I feared I had offended him by some word of doubtful meaning which I might
not altogether have understood. He paced about the room without saying
anything, and I did not know whether I might venture to break this
incomprehensible silence. At last he broke it himself, and said to me
that, if he had the power of putting himself in the place of another, he
would choose that of Montalembert, not on account of his youth and his
beautiful wife, but because he possessed that immovable and cloudless
faith that seemed to himself the most enviable of all gifts.”
Mr. Neale advised Montalembert that he had been elected an honorary member
of the Cambridge Camden Society. On receipt of the news of this
“unsolicited and unmerited honor,” Montalembert replied in a letter
protesting against the usurpation of the title “Catholic” by the Camden
Society. Here are some of its trenchant passages:
“The attempt to steal away from us, and appropriate to the use of
a fraction of the Church of England, the glorious title of
Catholic, is proved to be an usurpation by every monument of the
past and present, by the coronation oath of your sovereigns, by
all the laws that have _established_ your church. The name itself
is spurned with indignation by the greater half at least of those
who belong to the Church of England, just as the Church of England
itself is rejected with scorn and detestation by the greater half
of the inhabitants of the United Kingdom. The judgment of the
whole indifferent world, the common sense of humanity, agrees with
the judgment of the Church of Rome, and with the sense of her 150
millions of children, to dispossess you of this name. The Church
of England, who has denied her mother, is rightly without a
sister. She has chosen to break the bonds of unity and obedience.
Let her therefore stand alone before the judgment‐seat of God and
man. Even the debased Russian Church—that church where lay‐
despotism has closed the church’s mouth and turned her into a
slave—disdains to recognize the Anglicans as Catholics. Even the
Eastern heretics, although so sweetly courted by Puseyite
missionaries, sneer at this new and fictitious Catholicism. That
the so‐called Anglo‐Catholics, whose very name betrays their
usurpation and their contradiction, whose doctrinal articles,
whose liturgy, whose whole history, are such as to disconnect them
from all mankind except those who are born English and speak
English—that they should pretend on the strength of their private
judgment alone to be what the rest of mankind deny them to be,
will assuredly be ranked among the first follies of the XIXth
century.... You may turn aside for three hundred years to come, as
you have done for three hundred years past, from the fountain of
living waters; but to dig out a small channel of your own, for
your own private insular use, wherein the living truth will run
apart from its own docile and ever obedient children—_that_ will
no more be granted to you than it has been to the Arians, the
Nestorians, the Donatists, or any other triumphant heresy. I
protest, therefore, against the usurpation of a sacred name by the
Camden Society as iniquitous; and I next protest against the
object of this society, and all such efforts in the Anglican
Church, as absurd.”
We now have before us a period of seven years in the life of Montalembert,
the record of which may be said to be the history of the great public
questions which then agitated France; so intimately was his entire
parliamentary career bound up with their development. The first and most
important of these questions was that of education. Then, as now, the
examination for the degree of A.B. (_baccalaureat_) was the key to all
public occupations.
But at that time, from 1830 to 1848, no one had a right to present himself
for this examination unless he had been educated in one of the public
_lycées_, or some school licensed by the university, into whose hands the
government had placed the monopoly of education. A wealthy parent might
educate a boy under his own supervision in the best universities of
England or Germany, or by private tutors, yet the youth would not be
permitted to present himself for examination, although able to pass it
with ease. And the degree resulting from this examination was the
essential condition upon which the possibility of a public career was
opened to every young Frenchman. Without it he could by no possibility be
admitted to any public employment, the bench or the bar. Ability,
accomplishments, acquirements, had nothing to do with the question. The
young man must pass through a state school, or he was for ever debarred
from a public career in his own country. But to pass through a state
school, as all Christian parents, both Catholic and Protestant, then well
knew in France, was to leave it with the loss of his religious principles.
The biographer may well find it “equally incredible that such restrictions
should have been borne by any people, and that a government founded upon
liberal principles and erected by revolution should have dared to maintain
them; but so it was.”
The parliamentary campaign on the educational question opened in 1844.
Discussion soon reached a point of warmth. “There is one result given
under the auspices of the university,” said Montalembert, “which governs
every other, and which is as clear as daylight. It is that children who
leave their family with the seed of faith in them, to enter the
university, come out of it infidels.” The contradictions and _mouvement_
incited by this statement pushed the orator to more emphatic statement. “I
appeal,” he said, “to the testimony of all fathers and mothers. Let us
take any ten children out of the schools regulated by the university, at
the end of their studies, and find one Christian among them if you can.
One in ten! and that would be a prodigy. I address myself not to such or
such a religious belief, but to all. Catholics, Protestants, Jews, all who
believe humbly and sincerely in the religion which they possess, it is to
them I appeal, whom I recognize as my brethren. And all those who have a
sincere belief, and practise it, will confirm what I have said of the
religious results of the education of the university. Let us hear the
testimony of the young and eloquent defender of French Protestantism, the
son of our colleague M. Agenor de Gasparin.... ‘Religious education,’ he
says, ‘has no existence in the colleges.... I bethink myself with terror
what I was when I issued forth from this national education. I recollect
what all my companions were. Were we very good citizens? I know not, but
certainly we were not Christians; we did not possess even the weakest
beginnings of evangelical faith.’ ”
The results of the French compulsory anti‐Christian education may be read
in current history. “The men it has brought up are the men who allowed
France to be bound for eighteen years in the humiliating bondage of the
Second Empire; who have furnished excuses to all the world for calling her
the most socially depraved of nations; who have filled her light
literature with abominations, and her graver works with blasphemy; and who
have finally procured for her national downfall and humiliation.”
Montalembert planted his little band in battle array against the compact
and overwhelming forces of the government, under the inspiration and
trumpet‐tongued tones of his admirable _fils des croisés_ speech in the
Chamber of Peers. Here, with its memorable termination, are a few passages
from it. We regret we cannot give it entire. “Allow me to tell you,
gentlemen, a generation has arisen among you of men whom you know not. Let
them call us Neo‐Catholics, sacristans, ultramontanes, as you will; the
name is nothing; the thing exists. We take for our motto that with which
the generous Poles in the last century headed their manifesto of
resistance to the Empress Catherine: ‘We, who love freedom more than all
the world, and the Catholic religion more than freedom,’ ... are we to
acknowledge ourselves so degenerated from the condition of our fathers,
that we must give up our reason to rationalism, deliver our conscience to
the university, our dignity and our freedom into the hands of law‐makers
whose hatred for the freedom of the church is equalled only by their
profound ignorance of her rights and her doctrines?... You are told to be
_implacable_. Be so; do all that you will and can against us. The church
will answer you by the mouth of Tertullian and the gentle Fénelon. ‘You
have nothing to fear from us; but we do not fear you.’ And I add in the
name of Catholic laymen like myself, Catholics of the XIXth century: We
will not be helots in the midst of a free people. WE ARE THE SUCCESSORS OF
THE MARTYRS, AND WE DO NOT TREMBLE BEFORE THE SUCCESSORS OF JULIAN THE
APOSTATE. WE ARE THE SONS OF THE CRUSADERS, AND WE WILL NEVER YIELD TO THE
PROGENY OF VOLTAIRE!”
“_Mouvements divers_” might well—according to the reported proceedings of
the day—follow this burst of indignant eloquence. The words made the very
air of France tingle; they defined at once the two sides with one of those
happy strokes which make the fortune of a party, and which are doubly dear
to all who speak the language of epigram—the most brilliantly clear,
incisive, and distinct of tongues. Henceforward the _fils des croisés_
were a recognized power, but they were only known and heard by and through
Montalembert, and, so far as the public struggle was concerned, might be
said to exist in him alone. Montalembert fought almost single‐handed. “The
attitude of this one man between that phalanx of resolute opponents and
the shifty mass of irresolute followers, is as curious and interesting as
any political position ever was. He stands before us turning from one to
the other, never wearied, never flagging, maintaining an endless brilliant
debate, now with one set of objectors, now with another, prompt with his
answers to every man’s argument, rapid as lightning in his sweep upon
every man’s fallacy: now proclaiming himself the representative of the
Catholics in France, and pouring forth his claim for them as warm, as
urgent, as vehement as though a million of men were at his back: and now
turning upon these very Catholics with keen reproaches, with fiery
ridicule, with stinging darts of contempt for their weakness. Thus he
fought single‐handed, confronting the entire world. Nothing daunted him,
neither failure nor abuse, neither the resentment of his enemies, nor the
languor of his friends, ... not always parliamentary in his language, bold
enough to say everything, as his adversaries reproached him, yet never
making a false accusation or imputing a mean motive. No one hotter in
assault, none more tremendous in the onslaught; but he did not know what
it was to strike a stealthy or back‐handed blow.”
Time has strange revenges. In April, 1849, came up the important question
of the _inamovibilité de la magistrature_—the appointment for life of
magistrates. His old enemies were delighted to find that Montalembert
declared himself unreservedly in the affirmative, and none more than M.
Dupin, the very man who uttered the memorable “_Soyez implacables_.” Again
he had the government to contend with, for under the law magistrates were
no longer irremovable. Montalembert proposed, as an amendment, that all
magistrates in office should be reappointed, and that all new appointments
should be made for life. He pointed out the evils of a system which made
judgeships tenable only from one revolution to another, and made a noble
office the object of a “hunt” for promotion dishonoring to all parties. He
spoke of the magistracy as the priesthood (_sacerdoce_) of justice, and
added: “Allow me to pause a moment upon the word priesthood, which I have
just employed. Of all the weaknesses and follies of the times in which we
live, there is none more hateful to me than the conjunction of expressions
and images borrowed from religion with the most profane facts and ideas.
But I acknowledge that our old and beautiful French language, the immortal
and intelligent interpreter of the national good sense, has, by a
marvellous instinct, assimilated religion and justice. It has always said:
_The temples of the law, the sanctuary of justice, the priesthood of the
magistracy_.” The cause was won by his eloquence, and thus the first
political success he ever gained was not for himself or his friends, but
for his enemies. Truly a fitting triumph for a son of the crusaders.
The peerage now being abolished, Montalembert was returned as deputy to
the National Assembly by the Department of Doubs. Here his career was, if
possible, yet more brilliant than in the Chamber of Peers. It would
require a volume fitly to record them. Soon came the presidency of Louis
Bonaparte. Himself the soul of honor, with an eye single to the welfare of
France, deceived by solemn assurances which he unfortunately credited,
unsuspicious of a depth of treachery which he could not conceive, and
alarmed by the horrible spectre of socialism, just arising from its native
blood and mire, Montalembert became the dupe and the victim of Louis
Napoleon. When power had been fully secured, the new president offered him
the position of senator, along with the _dotation_ of 30,000 francs, which
was refused without hesitation. A second and a third time the offer was
renewed, the last offer being urged by De Morny in person. The only
position he held under the government of Louis Napoleon was the nominal
one of a member of the Consultative Commission, which he resigned on the
publication of the decree for the confiscation of the property of the
House of Orleans. He had already begun to suffer from the attacks of the
disease to which he finally succumbed; and it was from his sick‐bed that
he went to receive at the hands of the French Academy the highest and most
dearly prized reward of French talent and genius. Montalembert was elected
to the seat in the Academy vacated by the death of M. Droz, and his
reception was an event. Being now freed from the absorbing engagements of
life, he made several journeys to England, and travelled into Hungary,
Poland, and Spain. His work entitled _L’Avenir Politique de l’Angleterre_
was the fruit of his English visits; and was well received both in France
and England. In October, 1858, the Paris _Correspondant_ published a
remarkable letter from Montalembert, describing a debate in the English
Parliament. Its every paragraph was so full of a subtle and powerful
contrast between political liberty in England and the absence of it in
France that the Imperial government and its adherents were stung to the
quick. He speaks of leaving “an atmosphere foul with servile and
corrupting miasma (_chargée de miasmes serviles et corrupteurs_) to
breathe a purer air and to take a bath of free life in England.” Referring
to a former French colony, he says: “In Canada, a noble race of Frenchmen
and Catholics, unhappily torn from our country, but remaining French in
heart and habits, owes to England the privilege of having retained or
acquired, along with perfect religious freedom, all the political and
municipal liberties which France herself has repudiated.” A criminal
prosecution was immediately begun against the count for this letter. Four
separate accusations were brought. Among them were “exciting the people to
hate and despise the government of the emperor, and of attempting to
disturb the public peace.” The legal penalties were imprisonment from
three months to five years, fine from 500 to 6,000 francs, and expulsion
from France. According to French custom, the prisoner on trial was
interrogated concerning the obnoxious passages, and, when Montalembert
answered, it was discovered that the emperor and his government, not the
prisoner at the bar, was on trial. With calm gravity he acknowledged each
damning implication as an historical fact not to be denied, “enjoying,
there can be no doubt,” says his biographer, “to the bottom of his heart,
this unlooked‐for chance of adding a double point to every arrow he had
launched, and planting his darts deliberately and effectually in the
joints of his adversaries’ armor.”
The foundation of Montalembert’s great work, _The Monks of the West_, was
laid in his studies for the life of S. Elizabeth, and the remainder of his
active life was now devoted to its completion. It is sufficient to refer
to it. We need not dwell upon this greatest production of his literary
genius. Besides this, two other remarkable productions came from his pen
toward the close of his career. These were the long and eloquent
addresses, _L’Eglise libre dans l’Etat libre_, delivered before the
Congress of Malines, and his _Victoire du Nord aux Etats‐Unis_, which,
says his biographer, “is little else than a hymn of triumph in honor of
that success which to him was a pure success of right over wrong, of
freedom over slavery.”
It is well known that Montalembert was one of those who opposed the
proclamation of the dogma of infallibility. On this point, his biographer
gives us this interesting information.
One of his visitors said to him, while lying on what proved to be his
death‐bed: “If the Infallibility is proclaimed, what will you do?” “I will
struggle against it as long as I can,” he said; but when the question was
repeated, the sufferer raised himself quickly, with something of his old
animation, and turned to his questioner. “What should I do?” he said. “We
are always told that the pope is a father. _Eh bien!_—there are many
fathers who demand our adherence to things very far from our inclination,
and contrary to our ideas. In such a case, the son struggles while he can;
he tries hard to persuade his father; discusses and talks the matter over
with him; but when all is done, when he sees no possibility of succeeding,
but receives a distinct refusal, he submits. I shall do the same.”
“You will submit so far as form goes,” said the visitor. “You will submit
externally. But how will you reconcile that submission with your ideas and
convictions?”
Still more distinctly and clearly he replied: “I will make no attempt to
reconcile them. I will submit my will, as has to be done in respect to all
the other questions of faith. I am not a theologian; it is not my part to
decide on such matters. And God does not ask me to understand. He asks me
to submit my will and intelligence, and I will do so.” “After having made
this solemn though abrupt confession of faith,” says the witness whom we
have quoted, “he added, with a smile, ‘It is simple enough; there is
nothing extraordinary in it.’ ”
The last years of the life of this distinguished man were one long
protracted agony of physical suffering. The symptoms of disease that first
manifested themselves in 1852 had gone on increasing in severity until in
1869, more than a year before his death, he speaks of himself as _vivens
sepulcrum_. “I am fully warranted in saying that the death of M. de
Montalembert was part of his glory,” writes M. Cochin, in describing his
constancy and resignation. He died on the 13th of March, 1870.
At The Shrine.
I.
The sunset’s dying radiance falls
On chancel‐gloom and sculptured shrine,
A splendor wraps the pictured walls,
Where painted saints in glory shine!
And blent with sweet‐tongued vesper‐bells,
Through echoing aisles and arches dim
The organ’s solemn music swells,
The sweetly chanted evening hymn.
II.
Low at Our Lady’s spotless feet
A white‐robed woman kneels in prayer:
The _Deus Meus_ murmurs sweet,
While _Glorias_ throb on perfumed air;
Before the circling altar‐rail
She breathes her _Aves_ soft and low—
The golden hair beneath her veil
Wreathed like a glory on her brow.
III.
The sunset’s purple splendors fade,
The dark’ning shades of twilight fall,
The moonbeam’s silver touch is laid
On sculptur’d saint and pictur’d wall;
And while the weeping watcher kneels,
And silence weaves her magic spells,
The gray dawn thro’ the oriel steals,
And morning wakes the matin‐bells.
ADVENT, 1872.
A Christmas Recognition.
We were old‐fashioned people at Aldred, and Christmas was our special
holiday. The house was always filled with guests, not such as many of our
grander neighbors asked to their houses, but such as cared for good old‐
fashioned cheer and antiquated habits. Not all were relations, for we
never asked relations merely on account of their kinship, according to the
regulation mixing of a conventional Christmas party, but among our own
people were many whose presence at our Christmas gatherings was as certain
as the recurrence of the festival itself. Among them was a great‐aunt, a
soft, mild old lady, always dressed in widow’s weeds, but with a face as
fresh as a girl’s, and hair white as the snowy cap she wore to conceal it.
She had not come alone, for her adopted son was with her, the promised
husband of her only child, dead years ago. He had left his own home and
people, like Ruth, for the lonely, childless woman whom he was to have
called mother, and remained her inseparable companion through her
beautiful and resigned old age. There were, besides these, a young girl
whose aspect was peculiar and attractive, and whose manner had in its
mixture of modesty and self‐reliance a piquancy that added to the
fascination of her person. She had come with a distant cousin of hers, a
widow of a different type from our dear old relative, and whose object in
chaperoning Miss Houghton must have been mixed. She was small, blonde,
coquettish, and thirty‐two, though no one would have taken her for more
than twenty‐five. She looked soft, pliable, irresolute, and tender, and
men often found in her a repose which was a soothing contrast to her
cousin’s energetic, peculiar, somewhat eccentric ways; only it was the
repose yielded by a downy cushion, and people wearied of it after a while.
The secret of the apparent partnership between these two opposite natures
was perhaps this: the widow had a rich jointure, and was an excellent
_parti_, while her cousin was portionless. Miss Houghton was thus doubly a
foil to Mrs. Burtleigh.
I shall not speak of the other guests in detail, with the exception of one
whom it would be impossible to overlook. He was a man nearer forty than
thirty‐five, good‐humored and careless to all appearance, a hard worker in
the battle of life, a cosmopolitan philosopher, and one of those handy,
useful men who can sew on a button, cook an omelet, and kiss a bride as
easily and unconcernedly as they gallop across country or horsewhip a
villain. He had been in Mexico, surveying and engineering for an English
railroad company, and he had spent some years in the East as the land‐
agent of a progress‐loving pacha. Europe he knew as well as we knew
Aldred, while the year he had been absent from us had been filled by new
and stirring experiences in Upper Egypt. But I forget; we have yet to
speak of many little details of Christmas‐tide which preceded the
gathering in of the whole party.
The kitchen department was, of course, conspicuous on this occasion. This
included the village poor, who were regularly assembled every day for soup
until Christmas eve, when each household received a joint of beef and a
fine plum‐pudding. Some of us went round the village in a sleigh, and
distributed tea and sugar as supplementary items. It was a traditional
Yule‐tide, for the snow lay soft, even, and thick over the roads, as it
but seldom does in England; then, the school was visited and solidly
provisioned, the children were invited to a monster tea with accompaniment
of a magic‐lantern show, after which the prizes were to be distributed, as
well as warm clothing for the winter season. Nothing was said of the
Christmas‐tree, as that was kept as a surprise.
The decoration of house and chapel was a wonderful and prolonged business,
and afforded great amusement. Holly grew in profusion at Aldred, and a
cart‐load of the bright‐berried evergreen was brought to the house the day
preceding Christmas eve. The people we have made acquaintance with were
already with us, and vigorously helped us on with the preparations. Such
fun as there was when Miss Houghton insisted upon crowning the marble bust
of the Indian grandee, Rammohun Roy, with a holly wreath, and when Mrs.
Burtleigh gave a pretty, ladylike little cry as she pricked her fingers
with the glossy leaves! The children of the house and those of another
house in the neighborhood (orphan children whose gloomy home made them a
perpetual source of pity to us) were helping as unhelpfully as ever, but
what of that? It was a joyous, animated scene, and, still more, a romantic
one; for the traveller, who had claimed a former acquaintance with Miss
Houghton, now seemed to become her very shadow—or knight, let us say; it
is more appropriate to the spirit of a festival so highly honored in
mediæval times. The chapel, a beautiful Gothic building, small but
perfect, was decorated with mottoes wrought in leaves, such as “Unto us a
Son is born, unto us a Child is given,” and _Gloria in excelsis Deo_,
etc., while festoons of evergreens hung from pillar to pillar, and draped
the stone‐carved tribune at the western end with a living tapestry. Round
the altar were heaped in rows, placed one higher than another, evergreens
of every size and kind, mingled with islands of bright camellias, the
pride of the renowned hothouses of Aldred. White, red, and streaked, the
flowers seemed like stars among dark masses of clouds; and, when we lit a
few of the tall candles to see the effect, it was so solemn that we longed
for the time to pass quickly, till the midnight Mass should call forth all
the beauty of which we had seen but a part.
These decorations had been mainly the work of the traveller (whom, in our
traditional familiarity, we called “Cousin Jim”) and of our other friend,
the adopted son of our old aunt; but, though their brains had conceived,
it was Miss Houghton’s deft fingers that executed the work best. The last
touch had just been put to an immense cross of holly which was to be swung
from the ceiling, to supply the place of the rood that in old times
guarded the choir‐screen. A star of snow‐white camellias was to be poised
just above it, and a tall ladder had been put in readiness to facilitate
the delicate task. Miss Houghton stood at the foot, one arm leaning on the
ladder, the other holding aloft the white star. Her friend was halfway up,
bearing the great cross, when he suddenly heard a low voice, swelling
gradually, intoning the words of the Christmas hymn:
Adeste fideles,
Læti triumphantes;
Venite, venite in Bethlehem:
Natum videte
Regem angelorum:
Venite adoremus,
Venite adoremus,
Venite adoremus Dominum.
Startled and touched, he began the repeating words of the chorus, pausing
with his green cross held high in his arms. The others who, scattered
about the chapel, heard his deep tones, answering, took up the chorus, and
chanted it slowly to the end, Miss Houghton looking round with tears in
her eyes, at this unexpected response to the suppressed and undefinable
feelings of her heart. It was an impressive scene, the guests, servants,
gardeners, and a few of the choir‐boys, all mingling in the impromptu
worship so well befitting the beautiful work they had in hand. At the end
of the verse, the traveller hastily gained the top of the ladder, and,
having fastened the holly cross in its place, intoned a second verse, in
which Miss Houghton immediately joined, and the harmonious blending of
their voices had, if possible, a still more beautiful effect than the
unaccompanied chant of the first verse. Again the chorus chimed in,
Venite adoremus,
Venite adoremus,
Venite adoremus Dominum.
in full, solemn tones, and all sang from their places, their festoons in
their hands, so that at the end of the hymn the traveller said
thoughtfully to his companion: “_Laborare est orare_ should be our motto
henceforth. I wish all our work were as holy as this.”
“And why not?” she answered quickly; “only _will_ it so, and so it shall
be. We are our own creators.”
“What a rash saying!” he exclaimed, with a smile; “but I know what you
mean. God gives us the tools and the marble; it is ours to carve it _into_
an angel or a fiend.”
At last the chapel decoration was over, and a few of the more venturesome
among us went out in the snow for a walk.
Meanwhile, in the corridor (so we called our favorite sitting‐room), the
Yule‐logs were crackling cheerfully on the wide hearth, and the fitful
tongues of flame shot a red glimmer over the old‐fashioned furniture. One
of the chairs was said to have belonged to Cardinal Wolsey, and there was
another, a circular arm‐chair, that looked as if it also should have had a
history connected with the great and learned. Full‐length portraits of the
old possessors of Aldred covered the walls, and on the stained‐glass upper
compartments of the deep bay‐window at one end were depicted the arms and
quarterings of the family. The Yule‐logs were oak, cut from our own trees,
and perforated all over with large holes through which the flames shot up
like fire‐sprites.
The Christmas‐tree and magic‐lantern also had to be put in order to save
time and trouble, and a stage for tableaux occupied the rapt attention of
the amateur mechanician (our great‐aunt’s son) and of “Jim,” the traveller
and practised factotum. Miss Houghton was never very far from the scene of
these proceedings, and, when she was not quite so near, “Cousin Jim” was
not quite so eager. Almost all our guests had brought contributions for
the Christmas‐tree, of which our children had the nominal charge, and with
these gifts and our own it turned out quite a royal success. Presents of
useful garments, flannels, boots, mittens, woollen shirts, petticoats, and
comforters, were stowed away beneath the lower branches, while all visible
parts were hung with the toys and fruits, lights and ribbons, that so
delight children. Gilt walnut‐shells were a prominent decoration, and
right at the apex of the tree was fixed a “Christ‐child,” that thoroughly
German development, an image of the Infant Saviour, holding a starred
globe in one hand and a standard in the other. A _crèche_ had also been
prepared in the Lady‐chapel, a lifelike representation of those beautiful
Christmas pictures seen to such perfection in the large churches of Italy.
Munich figures supplied the place of wax models, however, and were a
decided improvement.
Many people from the village had asked leave to come in and look at these
peculiar decorations; but, as few of them were Catholics, it had been
thought better to wait till the third Mass on Christmas day to open the
chapel to the public. Christmas eve was a very busy day, and towards five
o’clock began the great task of welcoming the rest of the expected guests.
This was done in no modern and languid fashion; the servants, clad in fur
caps and frieze greatcoats, stood near the door with resinous torches
flaring in the still night air—it was quite dark at that early hour—and
the host and hostess welcomed them at the very threshold. The children
helped them to take off their wraps, and held mistletoe sprigs over their
bended heads as they reached up to kiss them. Indeed, mistletoe was so
plentifully strewn about the house that it was impossible to avoid it, but
we had so far eschewed the freedom of the past as to consider this custom
more honored in the breach than in the observance. The children and the
servants, however, made up for our carelessness.
Very little toilet was expected for a seven o’clock dinner (we were not
fashionable people), but we found that our well‐meant injunctions had
hardly been obeyed. For the sake of the picturesque, so much the better, I
thought. One of our friends had actually donned a claret‐colored velvet
suit, with slippers to match, embroidered with gold; and, when we looked
at each other in silent amusement, the wearer himself smiled round the
circle, saying pleasantly:
“Oh! I do not mind being noticed. In fact, I rather like it—this was a
lady’s fancy, you see.”
“How, how?” we asked eagerly.
“Well,” answered the Londoner, a regular drawing‐room pet, and a very
clever society jester, “I was challenged to a game of billiards by a fair
lady, the Duchess of ——. She said to me, ‘And pray _do_ wear something
picturesque.’ I bowed and said, ‘Your grace shall be obeyed.’ I happened
to have some loose cash about me. I could not wear uniform, because I did
not belong even to the most insignificant of volunteer regiments, and I
went to my tailor. His genius was equal to the occasion, and this was the
result. I played with the duchess, and she won,”—the hero of the velvet
coat was an invincible billiard champion.—“As I have the dress by me, I
take the liberty of wearing it occasionally in the country. It is too good
to be hidden, isn’t it?”
So he rattled on till dinner was announced. It was a merry but frugal
meal. The mince‐pies and plum‐pudding crowned with blue flame, the holly‐
wreathed boar’s head of romance, were not there; they were reserved for
to‐morrow. So with the “wassail‐bowl,” the fragrant, spirituous beverage
of which each one was to partake, his two neighbors standing up on each
side of him, according to the old custom intended as a defence against
treachery; for once it had happened that a guest whose hands were engaged
holding the two‐handled bowl to his lips was stabbed from behind by a
lurking enemy, and ever after it became _de rigueur_ that protection
should be afforded to the drinker by his neighbor on either side.
The fare to‐night was still Advent fare, but, after dinner, Christmas
insisted upon beginning. We were told that the “mummers” from the village
were come, and waited for leave to begin their play. They were brought
into the hall, and the whole company stood on the steps leading up to the
drawing‐rooms. The scenery was not characteristic—a broad oaken staircase,
a Chinese gong, the polished oak flooring, the massive hall‐door. The
actors themselves, seven or eight in number, dressed in the most fantastic
and extemporized costume, now began the performance; and but for the
venerable antiquity of the farce, it was absurd and obscure enough to
excite laughter rather than interest. The children were wild with delight,
and were with difficulty restrained from leaping the “pit” and mingling
with the actors on the “stage.” Indeed, for many days after nothing was
heard among them but imitations of the “mummers.” There was a grave
dialogue about “King George,” then a scuffle ensued, and one man fell down
either wounded or in a fit. The doctor is called; the people believe the
man dead, the doctor denies this, and says, “I will give him a cordial,
mark the effect.” The resuscitated man afterwards has a tooth drawn by the
same quack, who then holds up the tooth (a huge, unshapely equine one
provided for the occasion), and exclaims: “Why, this is more like a
horse’s tooth than a man’s!” I never could make out the full meaning of
the “mummers’” play; but, whether it was a corruption of some older and
more complete dramatic form, or the crude beginning of an undeveloped one,
it certainly was the characteristic feature of our Christmas at Aldred. It
took place regularly every year, without the slightest deviation in
detail, and always ended in a mournful chorus, “The Old Folks at Home.”
After the actors had been heartily cheered, and the host had addressed to
them a few kind words of thanks and recognition, they were dismissed to
the kitchen, to their much coveted entertainment of unlimited beer. There
they enacted their performance once more for the servants, who then
fraternized with them on the most amiable terms.
Meanwhile, our party were gradually collecting round the wood‐fire in the
corridor. It was a bitter cold night, the snow was falling noiselessly and
fast, and the wind howled weirdly through the bare branches of the distant
trees. Our old aunt remarked, in her gentle way:
“One almost feels as if those poor owls were human beings crying with
cold.”
“We look like a picture, mother,” somewhat irrelevantly answered her son
after a slight pause; “the antique dresses of many of us are quite worth
an artist’s study.”
Mrs. Burtleigh, whose blonde beauty was coquettishly set off by a slight
touch of powder on the hair, and a becoming Marie Antoinette style of
_négligé_, here pointedly addressed the traveller.
“Sir Pilgrim,” she said, “did you ever think of home when you had to spend
a Christmas in outlandish countries?”
“Sometimes,” answered “Jim” absently, his eyes wandering towards Miss
Houghton, who stood resting her head against a carved griffin on the tall
mantel‐piece.
She caught his glance, and said half saucily:
“Now, if it was not too commonplace, I should claim a story—Christmas eve
is not complete without a story, at least so the books say.”
“If it were required, I know one that is not quite so hackneyed as the
grandmothers’ ghosts and wicked ancestors we are often surfeited with at
Christmas,” replied her friend quickly. The whole circle drew closer
around the fire, and imperiously demanded an explanation.
“But that will be descending to commonplace,” pleaded the traveller.
“Who knows? It may turn out the reverse, when you have done,” heedlessly
said Mrs. Burtleigh.
“Well, if you will have it, here it is. Mind, now, I am not going to give
you a three‐volume novel, full of padding, but just tell you one incident,
plain and unadorned. So do not look forward to anything thrilling or
sensational.
“Some years ago, I was in Belgium, hastening home for Christmas, and spent
three or four days in Bruges. I will spare you a description of the grand
old city, and come to facts. I was just on the point of leaving, and had
got to the railway station in order to catch the tidal train for Ostend,
when a man suddenly and hurriedly came up to me, an old servant in faded
livery, who, without breathing a word, placed a note in my hand, and was
immediately lost to sight in the crowd. The waiting‐room was dimly
lighted, but I could make out my own name, initials and all, on the
envelope. In my confusion, I hurried out of the station, and, stepping
into a small _hôtellerie_, I opened the mysterious note. It was very
short: ‘Come at once to No. 20 Rue Neuve.’ The signature was in initials
only. The handwriting was small and undecided. I could hardly tell if it
were a man’s or a woman’s. I knew my way to the Rue Neuve, not a really
new street, but one of Bruges’ most interesting old thoroughfares. No gas,
a narrow street, great gaunt _portes‐cochères_, and projecting windows on
both sides, the pavement uneven, and a young moon just showing her
crescent over the crazy‐looking houses—such was the scene. I soon got to
No. 20. It was a large, dilapidated house, with every sign about it of
decayed grandeur and diminished wealth. Two large doors, heavily barred,
occupied the lower part of the wall; above were oriels and dormers whose
stone frames were tortured into weird half‐human faces and impossible
foliage. No light anywhere, and for bell a long, hanging, ponderous weight
of iron. I pulled it, and a sepulchral sound answered the motion. I
waited, no one came; I thought I must have mistaken the number. Taking out
the letter, however, I made sure I was right. I pulled the bell again a
little louder, and heard footsteps slowly echoing on the stone flags of
the court within. _Sabots_ evidently; they made a rattle like dead men’s
bones, I thought. A little _grille_, or tiny wicket, was opened, and an
old dame, shading her candle with one brown hand, peered suspiciously out.
Apparently dissatisfied, she closed the opening with a bang, muttering to
herself in Flemish. It was cold standing in the street, and, as the
portress of this mysterious No. 20 made no sign of opening the door for
me, I was very nearly getting angry, and going away in no amiable mood at
the unknown who had played me this too practical joke. Suddenly I heard
the _grille_ open again, very briskly this time, and a voice said in
tolerably good French:
“ ‘Monsieur’s name is—?’
“ ‘Yes,’ I replied rather impatiently.
“ ‘Then will monsieur wait an instant, till I undo the bars?’ A great
drawing of chains and bolts on the inside followed her speech, and a
little gate, three‐quarters of a man’s height, was opened in the massive
and immovable _porte‐cochère_. I stepped quickly in, nearly overturning
the old dame’s candlestick. She wore a full short petticoat of bright yet
not gaudy blue, and over it a large black circular cloak which covered all
but her clumsy sabots. Her cap was a miracle of neatness, and her brown
face, wrinkled but cheery, reminded me of S. Elizabeth in Raphael’s
pictures. She said glibly and politely:
“ ‘Will monsieur give himself the trouble to wait a moment?’
“She disappeared with her candle, leaving me to peer round the courtyard,
where the moon’s feeble rays were playing at hide‐and‐seek behind the many
projections. Almost as soon as she had left, she was with me again,
bidding me follow her up‐stairs. ‘My master is bed‐ridden,’ she explained.
‘Since he got a wound in the war of independence against Holland, he has
not been able to move. Monsieur will take care, I hope, not to excite him;
he is nervous and irritable since his illness,’ she added apologetically.
“I confess I was rather disappointed. I had expected that everything would
happen as it does in a play—it had looked so like one hitherto. I thought
I was going to meet a woman—young, beautiful, in distress, perhaps in want
of a champion—but it was only a bed‐ridden old man after all! Well, it
might lead to an act of charity, that true chivalry of the soul, higher
far than mere personal homage to accidental beauty. I entered a darkened
room, scantily and shabbily furnished, and the old woman laid the
candlestick on the table. The bed was in a corner near the fire; the
uneven _parquet_ floor was covered here and there with faded rugs, and
books and papers lay on a desk on the old man’s bed. At first I could
hardly distinguish his features, but, as my eyes grew accustomed to the
gloom, I saw that he was a martial‐looking man, with eyes so keen that
sickness could hardly dull them, and a bearing that indicated the stern
will, the clear intellect, and the lofty _bonhomie_ of an old Flemish
_gentilhomme_. He looked at me with curious and prolonged interest, then
said, in a voice full of bygone courtesy:
“ ‘Will monsieur be seated? I have made no mistake in the name?’
“ ‘No,’ I answered, wondering what the question meant.
“ ‘Then, monsieur, I have important news for you. The daughter of your
brother—’
“I was already bewildered, and looked up. He continued, taking my surprise
for interest: ‘The daughter of your poor brother is now a great heiress,
and I hold her fortune in trust for her—do not interrupt me,’ he said,
eagerly preventing me from speaking, ‘it tires me, and I must say all this
at once. I do not know if you knew of her being taken from her parents
when a child; of course you recollect that, after her mother’s marriage
with your brother, there was a great fracas, and poor Marie’s father
disinherited her at once. When the child was born—I was her god‐father, by
the bye—her parents being in great poverty, I begged of the grandfather to
help and forgive them, the more so as your brother was making his poor
wife very unhappy. He refused, and, though he generally took my advice (he
was an an old college friend of mine), he was obstinate on this point. The
child grew, and the parents were on worse terms every year. Marie’s father
held out against every inducement; your poor brother—forgive me,
monsieur!—fell into bad company, and made his home a perfect hell; his
wife was broken‐hearted, but would not hear of a separation, and her only
anxiety was for her child. I proposed to her to take the responsibility
myself of putting the little one out of reach of this dreadful example of
a divided household, and she consented. The father stormed and raved when
he found the child was gone, but for once his wife opposed him, and
refused to let him know her whereabouts. Every year I interceded with the
grandfather, who consented to support the little girl, but would never
promise to leave her a competency at his death. One day, suddenly, your
poor brother died.’
“I could not help starting; he saw my surprise.
“ ‘Oh!’ he resumed, ‘did you not know how he died? Pardon me, monsieur, I
remember now that none of his English kin followed him to the grave, but I
had heard your name before.’
“ ‘Monsieur,’ I began, fearing that he might be led on to talk of family
secrets such as he might not wish to share with a stranger, ‘you have told
me a strange tale; but allow me to undeceive you—’
“ ‘How did you deceive me?’ he asked impatiently, and I, remembering the
old dame’s warning not to excite him, was puzzled how to act. In the
meanwhile, he went on.
“ ‘_Eh bien!_ The mother then went to England, to the school where her
child was, and saw her, but she did not long survive the wear and tear of
her wretched life, and the grief her husband’s death caused her—for, poor
woman, she loved him, you see.’
“ ‘Just like a woman, God bless her!’ I murmured involuntarily. The old
man bent his head in cordial assent, but immediately resumed: ‘Her father
blessed her before she died, and promised to care for the little girl. He
then drew up this will’—here he laid his hand on a thick packet on the
desk—‘and entrusted it me. The child was nine years old then, and that was
fifteen years ago. She was to be told nothing till her twenty‐first
birthday, and to be brought up in England, unconscious of anything save
that she was the child of honest parents. This went on for some years, and
then my old friend died. I continued to send regular remittances to the
little girl’s temporary guardians; the bulk of the fortune I kept in the
house—there in that chest; perhaps it was a foolish fancy, but I did not
care to have it in a common bank. The war came and passed over the flower
of our land, and you see, monsieur, what it has left of my former self.
Well, after a time, five or six years ago, I ceased hearing from my little
ward; I was unable to get up and search for her; all that advertisements
and correspondence could do I did, and my chief endeavor was to find you.
I thought, if anything were likely, this was; she would go to you, her
father’s step‐brother, a different man, as I always heard her mother say,
from what her own unhappy parent had been.’
“ ‘But,’ I said, ‘allow me to correct a mistake, monsieur; I never had a
step‐brother, or a brother either.’
“ ‘What!’ the old man exclaimed nervously—‘what do you mean? Do not joke
about such things. Your name is ——. Your hair is fair and wavy, your
figure tall and stalwart—that was the portrait of my poor little ward’s
uncle, a different man, of different blood, as well as different name,
from her father.’
“ ‘Do not tell me any names, monsieur,’ I here insisted, ‘until I have
told you who I am.’
“He looked at me, still agitated, his brows knitted, and his lips
quivered. I told him my name, birth, country, profession, and assured him
that I, an only son, had never heard of any story like his. He seemed
thunderstruck, and could hardly take in the idea; but, recollecting
himself, said: ‘Pardon me, monsieur, but I have, then, caused you great
inconvenience.’
“His politeness now seemed overwhelming; he was in despair; he was
_désolé_. What could he do? How could he apologize? I quieted him as best
I could by professing the utmost indifference about the delay, and begged
him, though I would solicit no further confidence, to consider my lips as
sealed, and, if he wished it, my services as entirely at his disposal.
“He smiled curiously, then said: ‘The best apology I can make is to tell
you the whole. Your name and initials misled me. Having heard that you
were in Bruges, I sent my messenger, who, it seems, only reached you as
you were on the point of starting for Ostend. I thought it was my ward’s
uncle I had found, and, never having seen him, I could not tell if you
were the wrong man. I must continue to try and find him; if I fail—never
mind, I want to tell you her name. She is Philippa Duncombe, and, when I
saw her last, she was a dark child, quick, peculiar, and resolute. It is
so long ago that I could give you no idea of her exterior as she is now. I
think she must have suspected her dependence upon a supposed charity, and
have left school without the knowledge of any one. Anyhow, I must still
try to find your namesake; as for you, monsieur, I cannot thank you enough
for your forbearance.’
“I left Bruges the next day, but, as you may suppose, the story of the
Baron Van Muyden never ceased to haunt me, and a few months after I was
glad and flattered to receive a letter from the old veteran saying that he
had now ascertained that my namesake, the child’s half‐uncle, had been
dead some years, and that he felt that to none other but myself would he
now wish to transfer the task of searching for the lost heiress. Of course
I accepted.”
Our friend paused here, and looked thoughtfully at the fire. The Yule‐logs
were burning so merrily that a ruin seemed imminent, and while the silence
was yet unbroken a sound of distant singing came towards the house. It was
the gay company of Christmas carollers, singing their old, old ditties
through the frosty night, in commemoration of the Angel‐songs heard by the
watching shepherds so many long centuries ago on the hills of Judæa. But
the company was too much absorbed in the traveller’s tale to heed the
faint echo. Miss Houghton sat with her dark eyes fixed on the speaker, and
every vestige of color gone in the intensity of her excitement; Mrs.
Burtleigh, tapping the fender with her tiny gray satin slipper, seemed
strangely excited, and glanced uneasily at her cousin; the rest of us were
clasping our hands in our unrestrainable curiosity, and the provoking
narrator actually had the coolness to hold his peace!
At last some one spoke, unable to control his goaded curiosity.
“Well?”
“Well?” repeated the artful “Jim.”
“Did you find her?” was the question that now broke from all lips, in a
gamut of increasing impatience.
“I told you a story, as we agreed,” he answered; “but, if I tell you the
_dénoûment_, we shall fall into what we wish to avoid—the commonplace.”
“Never mind, go on,” was shouted on all sides. Miss Houghton was silent,
but she seemed to hang on his words. He had calculated on this emotion,
the wretch, and was making the most of his points!
At last he resumed in a slow, absent way:
“Yes, I accepted the search; I made it; I did all I could think of—but I
failed.”
The bomb had burst, but we all felt disappointed. This was _not_
commonplace, not even enough to our minds. “He had cheated us,” we cried.
“I can only tell you the truth; remember this was all real, no got‐up
Christmas tale, to end in a wedding, bell‐ringing, and carol‐singing.
Hark! do you hear the carollers outside?”
No one spoke, and he went on, still meditatively: “I do not mean to give
it up, though.”
Miss Houghton, who, till now, had said nothing, opened a small locket
attached to one of her bracelets, and, keeping her eyes fixed on “Cousin
Jim,” passed it to him, saying:
“Did you ever see this face before?”
He took it up, and looked puzzled. “No,” he said; “why do you ask?”
We all looked at her as if she had been a young lunatic, her interest in
the story being apparently of no very lasting nature. She then unfastened
a companion bracelet, the hanging locket of which she opened and handed to
her friend again.
“This face you have seen?” she asked confidently.
He started, and a rush of color came over his bronzed cheeks.
“Yes, yes, that is the Baron Van Muyden—younger, but the same. And here is
his writing, ‘To Marie Duncombe, her sincere and faithful friend.’ Miss
Houghton?”
“Yes,” she answered calmly, as if he had asked her a question.
“Then what I have been looking for for three years I have found tonight?”
he said, looking up at her, while we were all stupefied and silent.
“And what I have never dreamt of,” she answered in a low voice, “I have
suddenly learned to‐night.”
The carollers were now close under the windows, and the words of a simple
chorus came clearly to our hearing—
The snow lay on the ground,
The stars shone bright,
When Christ our Lord was born
On Christmas night.
After a few moments’ silence, our curiosity, like water that has broken
through thin ice, flowed into words again. Many questions and a storm of
exclamations rang through the room, and the concussion was such that the
Yule‐logs crashed in two, and broke into a race across the wide hearth,
splinters flying to the side, and sparks flying up the chimney. Then Miss
Houghton spoke with the marvellous self‐possession of her nature.
“I knew my own name and my mother’s from the beginning,” she said, “and
Monsieur Van Muyden, and the old house, and the Flemish _bonne_ in the Rue
Neuve. I remember them all when a child. I used often to sleep there, and
the night before I left Bruges I still remember playing with the baron’s
old sword. I remember my mother coming to see me at school in England, a
convent‐school, where I was very happy, and giving me these bracelets. She
told me never to part with them; she said she would not be with me long.
They told me of her death some months afterwards. The other portrait is
that of my grandfather, given by him to my mother on her _fête_ day, just
before her marriage, with a lock of his hair hidden behind. She always
wore it. M. Van Muyden’s was done for her when I was born, and was meant
to be mine some day, as he was my god‐father. The remittances he spoke of
used to come regularly; but, when I grew older, my pride rebelled (just as
he guessed, you say), and I hated to be dependent on those who, kind as
they were, were not my blood‐relations. I ran away from school, and lived
by myself for a long time in poverty, yet not in absolute need, for I
worked for my bread, and worked hard. I had a great deal to go through
because I dared not refer any one to the school where I had lived. Mrs.
Burtleigh was very kind to me; I told her my story, as far as I knew it,
and somehow she found out that we were cousins through my father; so she
made me take her maiden name, Houghton, instead of the one I had adopted
before. She, of course, thought as I did, that the child of the
disinherited Marie Duncombe and the unhappy Englishman, my poor father,
could be naught but a beggar. She was kindness itself to me, and, though I
was too proud to accept all she offered me, I _did_ accept her
companionship and her home. Many little industries of my own, pleasant now
because no longer imperatively necessary, help me to support myself, as
far as pecuniary support can be called such; my _home_ has been a generous
gift—the gift I prize most.”
She stopped, and Mrs. Burtleigh looked up in impatient confusion, perhaps
conscious that her feelings and motives had been too mixed to warrant such
frank, unbounded gratitude. “Jim” said nothing, and Miss Houghton seemed
so calm that it was almost difficult to congratulate her. She was asked if
she had recognized herself from the first in the story.
“Yes,” she said; “I knew it must be me.”
“You took it coolly,” some one ventured to observe.
“I have seen too much of the _revers de la médaille_ to be much excited
about this,” she said; but, if she was outwardly calm, her feelings were
certainly aroused, for her strange eyes had a far‐away look, and the color
came and went in her cheek.
Our friend seemed almost crestfallen; we thought he would have been
elated. Presently she said to him, giving him the bracelets:
“You must take these to Bruges, and I think you had better take me, too.”
He stared silently at her. Just then the bell began to ring for the
midnight Mass. What followed Miss Houghton told us herself.
The guests hurried to the chapel, rather glad to get rid of their
involuntary embarrassment. Those two remained behind alone. She was the
first to speak.
“I think you are sorry you have found me.”
“Yes,” he answered slowly, “sorry to find it is you: Miss Houghton was
poor, and Miss Duncombe is an heiress.”
“What matter! If you like, Miss Duncombe will give up the fortune, or, if
you want it, she will give it to you.”
He looked offended and puzzled.
“You do not understand me,” she said, half laughing: “Miss Duncombe will
let you settle everything for her, and say anything you like to Miss
Houghton.”
“You do not mean—” he began excitedly.
“I do,” she answered composedly.
And they were engaged then and there. He wanted to be married before they
left England, but she refused, saying their wedding must be in a Flemish
cathedral, and their wedding breakfast in a Flemish house. And so it was;
and No. 20 Rue Neuve is now their headquarters, while the household of the
Belgian heiress is under the control of the old Flemish woman who once
shut that door in the face of the heiress’ husband.
M. Van Muyden is happy and contented, and a merrier Christmas day was
never spent at Aldred than the day of this unexpected recognition.
Midnight Mass, Christmas‐tree, school‐feast, and all succeeded each other
to our perfect satisfaction; the health of the heroine of “Cousin Jim’s”
tale was drunk in the “wassail‐bowl” on Christmas night, and, as the
happy, excited, and tired Christmas party separated on the day following
New Year’s day, every one agreed that it was a pity such things so very
seldom happened in real life.
Fleurange.
By Mrs. Craven, Author Of “A Sister’s Story.”
Translated From The French, With Permission.
Part IV.—The Immolation.
L.
While our travellers are completing the last stage of their journey, we
will precede them to St. Petersburg, and transport our readers for a short
time among scenes very different from those in which the incidents of our
story have hitherto occurred.
The sentence of condemnation has been pronounced, and for some days the
names of the five persons who were to suffer death have been known and
privately circulated; privately, for the trials which excited universal
interest were seldom discussed in society. At that epoch (different in
this respect from a subsequent one, when liberty to say anything was
allowed in Russia before anywhere else), whether through prudence,
servility, or a fear resulting from the reign of the Emperor Paul, rather
than the one just ended, every one refrained with common accord from any
public expression of opinion whatever respecting the acts of the
government. Flattery itself was cautious not to excite discussions that
might give rise to criticism. The sovereign authority did not require
approval, but only to be obeyed, not judged. This was generally
understood, and the consequence was a general silence respecting forbidden
topics; whereas, on every other subject, as if by way of indemnification,
Russian wit was unrestrained, and so keen that the nation which prides
itself on being the most _spirituelle_ in the world found a rival, and
only consoled itself by saying Russian wit was borrowed. It is
incontestably certain that, though there were still some survivors of the
time of Catherine’s reign, the French language was now so universally used
in society at St. Petersburg, that people of the highest rank, of both
sexes, spoke it to the exclusion of their own tongue, and wrote it with
such uncommon perfection as to enrich French literature; whereas they
would have been very much embarrassed if required to write the most
insignificant note, or even a mere business letter, in the Russian
language.
There is no intention of discussing here the causes that led to this
engrafting of foreign habits, or of examining whether the Russians at that
period, in imitating the French, were always mindful that when others are
copied it should be from their best side. Still less would it be suitable
to consider whether the people who possess the faculty of assimilation to
such a degree are the most noble, the most energetic, and the most
sincere. This would lead us far beyond our modest limits, to which we
return by observing that, in spite of a splendor and magnificence almost
beyond conception, in spite of a tone of good taste and a courtesy now
almost extinct in France, in spite of hospitality on a grand scale,
characteristic of Slavonic countries, an indefinable restraint, felt by
all, prevailed in this attractive and brilliant circle, insinuating itself
everywhere like an invisible spectre, modifying and directing the current
of conversation—even the most trifling—and affecting not only the
intercourse of fashionable life, but the freedom of friendly converse and
the very outpourings of affectionate confidence.
The Marquis Adelardi had had several opportunities of mingling in this
society, and found it congenial. It was a society in which he was
specially adapted to shine, for he, too, as we are aware, had passed his
life in a school of enforced silence; and, if he was formerly numbered
among those who revolt under such restrictions, he had now renounced all
efforts to break through them, and learned to turn his attention
elsewhere. He understood, better than any other foreigner at St.
Petersburg, how to navigate amid the shoals of conversation; to be
entertaining, agreeable, interesting, and even apparently bold without
ever causing embarrassment by an inadvertent remark; and if, in the ardor
of discourse, he approached a dangerous limit, the promptness with which
he read an unexpressed thought sufficed to make him change, with easy
nonchalance, the direction of a conversation in which he seemed to be the
most interested.
He was not, however, disposed to talk with any one the day, or rather the
evening, we meet him again—this time at the Countess de G——’s, a woman of
superior intellect, already advanced in years, whose salon was one of the
most brilliant and most justly popular in St. Petersburg. Everything,
indeed, was calculated to facilitate social intercourse of every degree,
and, if there was a place where the bounds we have just referred to were
invisible, though never forgotten, it was here. What could not be said
aloud here, more than elsewhere, had a thousand facilities for private
utterance. On the other hand, for the benefit of prudent people who
preferred to say nothing at all, there were tables where they could play
whist or a game of chess. A piano at one end of the spacious salon was
always open to attract amateur performers, then more numerous than now,
when no one ventures, even in the family circle, to play without unusual
ability.
In this friendly atmosphere, our marquis, generally so social, was silent
and preoccupied. Seated in a corner on a sofa where no one else was
sitting, he took no part in the general conversation. And yet, as the room
filled, and various groups were formed, here and there foreigners, and
especially the members of the diplomatic corps who frequented the house,
broached the great topic, and by degrees were heard on various sides the
names of Mouravieff, Ryleieff, Pestel, and two others likewise condemned
to death, as well as the names of those who were to be exiled—a punishment
almost as terrible.
A young German attaché, perceiving Adelardi, approached, and took a seat
beside him. “And Walden,” said he in a low voice, “have you not had
permission to see him twice?”
“Yes.”
“Have you seen him since he was informed of his fate?”
“No; but I have reason to hope I shall obtain that favor.”
“He is not sorry, I imagine, to escape the gibbet.”
“Not the gibbet; but as to death, I am sure he thinks it preferable to the
fate that awaits him.”
“Poor fellow! but then, _qu’allait‐il faire_?”—
“_Dans cette galère?_” interrupted the marquis with displeasure. “The
question is certainly apropos, and I would ask him if I could obtain a
reply that would avail him anything.”
“By the way,” said the other, “I suppose you know who has just arrived at
St. Petersburg?”
The marquis questioned him with a look of uncertainty, for he was
expecting more than one arrival that day.
“Why, the fair Vera, who has returned to her post.”
“Really!” exclaimed Adelardi eagerly. “In that case perhaps we shall see
her here, for I am told she comes every evening when in the city.”
“Yes, but not till the empress dispenses with her services. It is nearly
ten o’clock. She will probably be here soon. Our agreeable hostess is one
of her relatives.”
“I was not aware of it. I know the Countess Vera but little. She was not
at court when I was here three years ago. I only saw her two or three
times at the Princess Lamianoff’s, who was then here, but was not
presented to her.”
“At the Princess Catherine’s? I believe you. It is said she wished Vera to
marry her son, who was indeed very assiduous in his attentions. The young
countess did not appear wholly insensible to them at that time. Do you
suppose she is still attached to him?”
“I do not know.”
“Poor girl! I pity her, in that case, but it is not very probable she will
long be infatuated about a convict. Besides, she will find others to
console her, if she makes the effort.”
At that moment the piano was heard. The young diplomatist was requested to
take a part in a trio, and the music put an end to the conversation that
was becoming too ardent on every side, through the interest caused, not by
the offence, but by the misfortunes of the criminals. Every one knew them,
and several of them belonged to the same coterie which now scarcely dared
utter their names aloud.
Adelardi remained in the same place, his head resting on his hand, more
absorbed than ever. He pretended to be listening to the music, and was
mechanically beating time. But he was thinking of something very
different, and only started from his reverie whenever the bell announced a
new arrival. Then he eagerly raised his head and looked towards the door,
but only to resume his former position at the entrance of each new
visitor—as if not the one whom he desired to see.
LI.
At the beginning of the same evening a different scene was occurring, not
far distant, in a salon still more elegant and magnificent than the one we
have just visited. It was not, however, intended, like that, for the
reception of visitors, but solely for the pleasure and comfort of her who
occupied it—a lady, as was evident, though there was no profusion of
useless trifles or superfluous ornaments. But it seemed as if her hands
could only touch what was rare and costly. Gold, silver, and precious
stones gleamed from every object destined to her constant use, from the
open _cassette_ that contained her work to the sumptuous bindings of the
books scattered over the embroidered covering of the table, or lying on a
small _étagère_ of malachite near a large arm‐chair. This chair, intended
for reading, was also adapted to repose by the soft cushion covered with
the finest lace for the head of the reader to rest upon in an attitude at
once convenient and graceful. On all sides were flowers of every season in
as great abundance as if they grew in the open air at the usual time. They
gave out an exquisite odor, which, with perfumes more artificial but not
less sweet, embalmed the apartment.
If, as some think, and we have already remarked, places resemble those who
inhabit them, the reader may be eager to know the owner of this. We will
endeavor to describe her as she appeared to those who knew her at the time
of our story: a woman of that age when beauty is in all its freshness; who
was truly said to have the dignity of a goddess and the form of a nymph; a
face sweet and pale, but with noble, delicate features; a complexion of
charming purity; a look and smile that were captivating; and the whole
picture was framed by hair floating in long curls over graceful white
shoulders.
Such was the person who, at the sound of a manly and sonorous voice,
entered the salon just described, and threw herself into the arms of him
who had called her by name. Their first words were expressive of joy at
seeing each other again after a long separation of some hours, and for a
time they seemed only to think of each other. Their glances, their smiles
met, and it might have been supposed they had nothing in the world to do
but love each other and tell each other so.
But the tone of conversation gradually changed. She grew earnest and he
became uneasy. He made an effort to reply to the questions she addressed
him and sometimes persistently repeated, but he appeared to do so
unwillingly, as if he yielded out of condescension, and with difficulty
resisted a desire of imposing silence on her. Once he rose and left her,
but she followed him, softly placed her arm within his, and, drawing
herself up to her utmost height (for, though she was quite tall, he was a
whole head taller) whispered in his ear. He bent down to listen, but while
she was talking a frightful change suddenly came over his face. She
perceived it, and looked at him with surprise and an anxiety she had never
felt before, as he leaned against the mantel‐piece and remained there
grave and silent with folded arms.
He was then twenty‐nine years old, and in the brilliancy of that manly
beauty which suffering, care, the violent passions of a later age, and
time itself, scarcely altered. Besides his lofty, noble stature, and
features so regular that no sculptor could idealize them, there was a
charm in the expression of his face and the tone of his voice which
inspired attachment as well as admiration. Hitherto resentment or anger
had seldom been known to flash from his eyes or cause his voice to
tremble, and perhaps this was the first time she had ever seen his blue
eyes light up with so threatening a gleam. She did not dare persist in her
request, but waited for him to break the silence. By degrees his ominous
aspect gave place to profound and bitter melancholy. “Ah!” said he at
length, “this is a sad beginning!” Then after a short silence, he looked
around as he continued: “Cherished home! we shall perhaps often regret the
happy days passed here!”—
“We will not leave it,” replied she with a quickness that betrayed how
unused she was to contradiction. “We will keep it as it is, and always
come back to it. Our _grand_ days shall be passed, if need be, in the
gloomy Winter Palace, but our _happiest_ days shall be spent here, and
they shall be in the future what they have been in the past.”
He shook his head: “The past was ours: the future does not belong to us.
We must henceforth devote ourselves to our great country, and sacrifice
all—all! God requires it of us.”
“All!” repeated she with alarm. “What! even happiness and mutual
confidence? Oh! no, that portion of the past nothing shall infringe upon!
And there is still another right I shall never renounce—that of imploring
favor and pardon for the guilty.” She hesitated, and then went on,
clasping her hands and fixing her eyes on him with a supplicating
expression: “Will you no longer listen to me?”
“Always in favor of the unfortunate, but never for the ungrateful!”
He frowned as he said these words, and turned towards the door, but she
stopped him.
She felt it would not do to persist, and with the _adresse_ which is the
lawful diplomacy of love, she at once changed the subject, and obliged him
to listen while she discussed projects she knew he had at heart. She spoke
of herself, of him, of the happy past, their brilliant future, of a
thousand things, and indeed of everything except her whispered petition
which she now wished him to forget.
The reader has already discovered himself to be in the presence of the
young emperor and empress, whose unexpected accession took place in the
midst of a storm. They were in the habit of meeting thus in the palace
where they lived during the happy days of their early married life, when
no thought of the throne disturbed their youthful love!(188) Both
hesitated a long time about leaving this charming palace for the sovereign
residence, and, when constrained to do so by the necessity of their
position, they kept it as it was, without allowing anything to be changed,
as a witness of the days that, in spite of the imperial purple, they
continued to call the happiest of their life.
After the empress was left alone, she remained thoughtful a moment, then,
approaching the malachite _étagère_, hastily rang a small gold bell. A
door concealed beneath the hangings instantly opened, and a young girl
appeared. She stopped without speaking, awaiting an order or some
observation. But there was nothing in her attitude to indicate the
timidity that might have been expected in a maid of honor answering the
bell of her sovereign. On the contrary, there was a majestic beauty and an
air about her which might have seemed haughty had it not been modified
when she spoke. Then, there was a caressing glance in her eyes, though
they sometimes sparkled as if betraying more passion than tenderness; but
her fine form, her black eyes, her thick fair hair, and the delicacy of
her complexion, rendered her at once striking and imposing. She waited
some moments in silence—then, seeing her mistress did not address her, she
advanced and spoke first: “Did your majesty venture to plead his cause?”
said she.
The empress started from her reverie and sadly shook her head. “My poor
Vera,” she replied, “you must renounce all hope.”
The young girl turned pale. “Renounce all hope!” exclaimed she. “O madame!
can that be your advice? Can it be there is no hope?”
The empress, without replying, seated herself in her arm‐chair, took a
book from the _étagère_, and began turning over the leaves as if she
wished to put an end to the conversation. Vera’s eyes flashed for an
instant, and it was with difficulty she repressed an explosion of grief or
irritation. She remained silent, however, and stood beside the table
absently plucking the petals from the flowers in a crystal vase before
her.
The empress meanwhile kept her eyes fastened on her book, but presently
she raised them and looked at the clock. “I do not need you any longer,
Vera. It is ten o’clock. You are going to the Countess G——’s this evening,
I think.”
“Yes, madame, if your majesty has no further orders to give me.”
“No, I have nothing more.—Ah! I forgot. Open that drawer,” pointing to the
other end of the apartment. “You will find a letter there.”
Vera obeyed, and brought the letter to her mistress.
“Be sure to forward it to the address,” said the latter. “It is the
permission for the Princess —— to accompany her husband to Siberia. I am
happy to be able to render that heroic woman this sad service. But she is
not the only one.”
“What a fate those women are bringing on themselves!” said Vera,
shuddering with horror.
“Yes, it is indeed fearful,” said the empress; “but I admire them, and
will serve them every way in my power.”
Vera was silent, and after a moment, seeing the empress had nothing more
to say, she gravely approached to take leave of her. As she bent down to
kiss her hand, the empress pressed her lips to her forehead.
“Come, Vera,” said she, “look a little more cheerful, I beg you. To
satisfy you, I promise to make one more effort. But I think, my dear, you
are very generous to express so much anxiety about him, for it is not the
emperor alone who has reason to call him ungrateful!”
At this, Vera’s face crimsoned, and she drew herself up at once. “Your
majesty has a right to say anything to me,” said she in a trembling voice,
“but this right has generally been used with kindness.”
“Whereas you now find me cruel. Well, be it so; we will let the subject
drop. Good‐night, and without any ill‐feeling, my dear.”
She dismissed her maid of honor with a motion of the head. Vera bowed, and
without another word left the room.
LII.
“The Countess Vera de Liningen!”
At this name the Marquis Adelardi looked up, but this time he did not
resume his former attitude, for the person he had so impatiently awaited
at last appeared. It was she! The cause of this impatience, if we would
know it, was a resolution to make an effort that evening in behalf of his
friend through the Countess Vera, but it was first indispensable to be
sure of her feelings towards him. He wondered if he should discover any
traces of the ill‐concealed passion she once manifested for George, or if
time and indignation, aided by the influence of the court, had done their
work? Or had his inconstancy inspired an indifference which had not been
disarmed by his misfortunes? All this Adelardi flattered himself he should
discover in a single conversation, provided she consented to an interview.
As to any fear of her eluding his penetration, he had too good an opinion
of himself in that respect.
As soon as she appeared, he looked at her with lively interest, and an
attention which he indulged in without scruple. Having seen her only twice
some years before, without speaking to her, he thought she would not
recognize him till he was formally presented.
Vera crossed the salon without embarrassment, and with the ease and grace
of a person accustomed to high life and the sensation she produced. She
was dressed in black, the court, and even the citizens, still wearing
mourning for the Emperor Alexander. This made the dazzling whiteness of
her complexion and her golden hair the more striking, and suited her form
of perfect symmetry, though noble rather than slender. The only ornament
she wore was a knot of blue ribbon on her left shoulder, to which was
attached the _chiffre_ of diamonds (her badge as maid of honor), in which
were woven together the initials of the three empresses: Alexandrine, then
reigning; Mary, the empress‐mother; and Elizabeth, Alexander’s
inconsolable widow, who was so soon to follow him to the tomb.
Recent emotion still flushed the young girl’s cheeks, and the tears of
wounded pride, hastily wiped away, gave her a mingled expression of
melancholy and haughtiness which at once inspired a desire to pity and a
fear of offending her.
She first approached the table where the lady of the house was playing
whist. The latter raised her eyes, and merely smiled as she gave her a
friendly nod of the head. Vera, without offering her hand, bowed, and made
a salutation at once graceful and respectful, which was customary in that
country when one lady is much younger than the other; she pressed her lips
to the edge of the black lace shawl which the elderly lady wore; then she
remained standing a moment near the card‐table, looking around the room.
There was in this look neither eagerness, nor curiosity, nor coquetry: it
was a mere survey of the room and its occupants, and it was easy to see
she was seeking no one and expecting no one. She only replied to the
salutations addressed her by a slight inclination of the head, sometimes
by a smile.
Presently, seeing a vacant seat, she went to take possession of it, and
thus found herself near the _canapé_ occupied by the Marquis Adelardi. She
was scarcely seated when the young diplomatist who had so recently spoken
of her approached with lively eagerness, to which she only responded by a
look of indifference and giving him two fingers of her gloved hand.
The Marquis Adelardi took advantage of this favorable opportunity to
approach the young German and beg to be presented to the Countess Vera.
Adelardi’s name was no sooner pronounced than it awoke a remembrance, at
first vague, then distinct enough to make her blush. This lively
embarrassment was quite evident for a moment. She bowed without speaking
as he was presented, and, turning her face immediately away, continued for
some moments to converse with the other, but only long enough to recover
from her confusion. She speedily put an end to this trifling conversation,
and, suddenly turning towards Adelardi, she said, without any trace of her
recent embarrassment: “I remember very well, Monsieur le Marquis, your
visit at St. Petersburg three years ago, but I was so young then you had
probably forgotten me.”
Adelardi replied, as he would have done in any case, but in this instance
with truth, that such a supposition was inadmissible.
“And as for me,” he continued, “never having had the honor of a personal
acquaintance, I necessarily thought myself wholly unknown to you.”
“Your friends have so often spoken of you that your name was familiar, but
your features, I acknowledge, were somewhat effaced from my memory.”
“Yours naturally clung to mine. Besides, I also heard you constantly
spoken of.”
There was a moment’s silence.
“Have you seen the Princess Catherine lately?” said she.
“No, I left Florence at the beginning of December.”
“For St. Petersburg?”
“Yes.”
“And have you been here ever since?”
“Yes. You were absent at my arrival, otherwise I should not have waited
till the present time to solicit the favor I have just obtained.”
There was another momentary pause. The young girl looked around, and
continued, in a lower tone: “You were here, then, the twenty‐fourth of
December?”
“I was.”
She hesitated an instant, then, lowering her voice still more, said: “And
have you seen your friend since that fatal day?”
“Yes, and I hope to see him once more—alas! for the last time.”
Vera bit her lips, quivering with agitation, but soon resumed, with a
coolness that surprised and, for a moment, disconcerted the marquis:
“I formerly knew Count George de Walden, but for some time had lost sight
of him. Nevertheless, his sentence fills me with horror, and I would do
anything in the world to deliver him from it—him and the rest.”
“Him and the rest? One as soon as the other?”
“One as soon as the other; they all excite my pity. I wish the emperor
would pardon them all.” Her voice by no means accorded with her words; but
Adelardi continued as if he did not perceive it:
“Pardon them all! That would be chimerical. But there are some who are
deserving of clemency.”
“The emperor is more lenient towards inferior criminals than to those who,
after being loaded with favors, forget his kindness.”
“And yet there may be extenuating circumstances even in some cases of that
number.”
“Do you know of any that would be of any avail to Count George?” said she
eagerly.
“Not quite so loud; we may be overheard.”
“Yes; you are right,” she said, resuming her former tone. “Let us change
our seats; we look as if we were plotting something here, and should avoid
attracting attention. Let us examine the albums on yonder table. There we
can continue our conversation with less restraint.”
“Well,” continued she, as soon as they had effected the change proposed,
and were seated before the albums, which they pretended to be examining
carefully.
“Well,” replied Adelardi, “what I mean is that many things of no avail in
the eye of the law might not be without influence over him who is head of
the law.”
And while she was listening with interest, unintentionally betrayed by her
eager, agitated expression, her glowing cheeks, and parted lips, Adelardi
pleaded his friend’s cause, relating what we have already learned
respecting his apparent, rather than real, complicity, his ignorance of
the actual designs of the conspirators, and the circumstances that led to
his presence among the insurgents on the twenty‐fourth of December. In
short, he gave her all the details of which she had been totally ignorant,
having only heard, during her absence, of George’s offence and the
sentence he had incurred.
“And the emperor,” said she eagerly, “does he know it was he who saved his
brother’s life that dreadful day?”
“I doubt it; there were only two witnesses who could attest it. One of
these did not come forward, for fear of compromising himself; the other
was exceptionable.”
“Who was the other?”
“A man named Fabiano Dini, George’s secretary; but a great culprit, not
considered worthy of credit. He told the truth, however, ardently hoping
his testimony might save his master.”
“He is doubtless condemned to the same fate?”
“Yes, but to a more severe one; his sentence is for life, whereas George’s
is only for twenty‐five years.”
“Only twenty‐five years!” repeated she, with a shudder.
“Yes, it is horrible; it is worse than death! And George will envy the
wretch who was the prime cause of his misfortune, for Dini, seriously
wounded on the twenty‐fourth of December, will probably die before the sad
day fixed for their departure.”
They were now interrupted by something not foreign to the subject of their
discourse. A lady, unpretendingly clad, who till now had remained aloof,
approached the young maid of honor, and, with a faltering, respectful
tone, asked if the petition addressed his imperial majesty had been
granted.
“Yes,” said Vera eagerly. “Permission has been accorded. The Princess ——
received it this very hour. I left it myself at her door, on my way here.”
She kindly extended her hand to the person who addressed her. The latter
bent down as if to kiss it, but Vera prevented it by cordially embracing
her.
“Behold a true, faithful friend in misfortune,” said she, as the other
left them. “She herself is capable of going to Siberia with her whose
_dame de compagnie_ she was in happier days. But then, the Princess —— has
in her misfortunes the happiness of feeling herself beloved and respected
by all.”
“Assuredly,” said Adelardi. “She is really an admirable woman.”
“So admirable that she is beyond my comprehension.”
“How so?”
“I do not understand how a person can resolve on the course she wishes to
pursue—she and the others.”
“What!” said Adelardi, looking at her with surprise. “You do not
understand how a woman can thus wholly devote herself to the man—the
husband whom she loves.”
Vera shook her head. “No,” said she. “I do not wish to appear better than
I am. If I were in such a position, if I had the misfortune of loving one
of those convicts, he might rely on my exertions to obtain his pardon, and
to use every means in my power to that end. But, as to sharing his lot and
following him to Siberia, no, my dear marquis, I frankly acknowledge that
is a proof of devoted affection I feel wholly incapable of.”
Another form at this moment passed before the marquis’ mental vision,
beside which the beauty actually before him paled, and slightly modified
the lively admiration with which he regarded her.
“Well,” said he, after a moment’s reflection, “I know one of these
convicts for whom a woman—a young lady of about your age—is ready to give
a still greater proof of devotion than the Princess ——, for she is not his
wife. She is only—his betrothed, and wishes to marry him on purpose to
share his fate.”
“That is something entirely original,” said Vera.
“To do that,” pursued Adelardi, “she has a double favor to obtain, and is
coming to St. Petersburg for that purpose. She will be here to‐morrow, or,
at the latest, in a few days. I have been commissioned to solicit for her
an audience of the empress. Can I do so through your instrumentality?”
“Certainly. All these requests pass through my hands, and none have been
rejected. But this is really the most singular case that has occurred.”
She drew her tablets and a pencil from her pocket. “The name of your
_protégée_?” said she.
Adelardi hesitated an instant, then, noting a little anxiously the effect
produced, said:
“Her name is—Fleurange d’Yves.” He was relieved to hear the maid of honor
say, after carefully writing down the name:
“Fleurange! that is a very singular name, and one I never heard before.
To‐morrow,” continued she, rising, and returning the tablets to her
pocket, “before noon you shall have a reply. _Au revoir_, Monsieur le
Marquis.”
As she gave him her hand, she added in a low tone: “I thank you for all
your information, and will endeavor to avail myself of it. If you see
Count George, tell him—but no, tell him nothing. If by the merest chance I
succeed, it will be time enough then to tell him what he owes to my
efforts. If I do not—it will be better for him to remain ignorant of my
failure.”
The Marquis Adelardi returned home greatly preoccupied, and absently took
up two letters lying on the table. But after opening them, he successively
read them with equal interest. First, he looked at one of the signatures:
“Clement Dornthal? He is the cousin who accompanies the fair traveller.
They have arrived, then.—Well, the end of the drama is approaching: we
must all endeavor to play our parts with prudence. Mine is not the
easiest!”
He opened the other note, and hastily ran over it. “Thursday! I shall see
him on Thursday at two o’clock. Poor George! it will be a sad meeting, in
spite of the news I have to surprise and console him.”
He had the satisfaction of learning by this note that, thanks to the
powerful influence brought to bear on the occasion, he would be permitted
to pass an hour with the prisoner every day during the week that yet
remained before the sad train of exiles would set forth.
“Poor George!” he again repeated. “Can it be he has really come to
this?—But who knows what may yet take place? If the proverb, ‘What woman
wills, God wills,’ is true, all hope is not lost, for here are two women
evidently with the will to aid him, and energetic enough to overrule the
most adverse destiny. Two—doubtless one too many, and I have been rather
bold to risk a fearful collision. But things have come to such a point
that they can hardly be worse. If the fair Vera succeeds, it is George’s
affair to get out of the complication of gratitude to her who has saved
him, and the one ready to follow him. But if she fails, as seems only too
probable, then the case will be very simple: our charming heroine will
have no rival to fear.”
LIV.
After the succession of disagreeable surprises Mademoiselle Josephine had
experienced during her painful journey, another of a different nature, but
the greatest of all, awaited her at the end. Her imagination, we are
aware, never furnished her with anything beyond the strictest necessity.
It was only with difficulty she succeeded in comprehending that her dear
Gabrielle had decided to marry a stranger condemned to the galleys, and
this inconceivable idea seemed to have penetrated her mind to the
exclusion of all others. She was going to join a prisoner, and from the
day of her departure from Heidelberg she looked upon herself as on the way
to a dungeon. When therefore she heard the words, “We have arrived!” and
their sledge passed under the arch of an immense _porte cochêre_, she
shivered with fear. It was, consequently, with a sort of stupefaction she
found herself in a brilliantly lighted vestibule, whence a broad staircase
led to a fine long gallery opening into one salon after another, at the
end of which our travellers were ushered into a dining‐room, where supper
was awaiting them of a quality to which mademoiselle was quite as
unaccustomed as to the splendor with which it was served. She looked
around with mute surprise, hardly daring touch the dishes before her, and
looking at her two companions with an interrogative expression of the
greatest perplexity. But they both seemed affected and preoccupied to such
a degree as not to notice what was passing around them, and mademoiselle,
faithful to her habits, forbore questioning them for the moment.
The repast was made in silence; after which Clement wrote a note which she
heard him ask a valet to send to _M. le Marquis_. Then the two ladies were
conducted to the apartments prepared for them. Fleurange embraced her
companion and wished her good‐night, and Mademoiselle Josephine was left
alone in a chamber surpassing any she had ever seen, with large mirrors
around her, in which for the first time in her life she saw herself from
head to foot. There was also a bed _à baldaquin_, which she scarcely dared
think destined for her modest person, but in which at length she extended
herself with a respect that for a long time troubled her repose. Never had
the excellent Josephine found herself so completely out of her element.
She wondered if it was really herself beneath those curtains of silk, and,
when at last she fell asleep, it was to dream that Gabrielle, splendidly
apparelled, was mounting a throne, and she, Mademoiselle Josephine,
arrayed in a similar manner, was at her side. Her disturbed slumbers were
not of long duration. Before day she was up, and impatiently waiting for
the hour when she could leave her fine chamber and sally forth to explore
this strange dwelling which the night before seemed so much like a fairy
palace.
This impression was not lessened by the light of day. The rooms were
really splendid, and furnished with the taste the Princess Catherine
everywhere displayed, and which was as carefully consulted in the house
where she only spent three months of the year, as in her palace at
Florence, which she made her home. Mademoiselle went from one room to
another in a state of continually increasing admiration, and, while thus
walking about, she found everywhere the same mild temperature, which
seemed something marvellous, for all the doors were open, and not only
were there no fires to be seen, but no glass or even sashes in the
windows. Apparently there was nothing to screen her from the frosty air
without—freezing indeed, for on their arrival at St. Petersburg the
thermometer was down to fifteen or sixteen degrees, and yet—what was the
secret of this wonderful fact? She was not cold in the least, though the
sight of the large windows made her shiver, and she only ventured to stand
at a distance and look at the view without.
She beheld a vast plain covered with snow, with carriage‐ways in every
direction, bordered with branches of fir. Vehicles of all kinds were
crossing to and fro. Yonder was a succession of vast buildings, and
farther off were the gloomy walls of a fortress flanked by a church whose
gilded spire glittered in the winter sun—a sun radiant, but without
warmth; which imparted a dazzling brilliancy to the snow, but whose
deceptive light, far from alleviating the severity of the season, was, on
the contrary, the surest sign of its merciless rigor.
While thus admiring and wondering at everything, Mademoiselle came to the
last salon of the _enfilade_, where, before one of the large windows, she
perceived Fleurange motionless and absorbed in such profound reverie that
she did not notice her approach.
“Ah! Gabrielle, here you are! God be praised! I was lost, but no longer
feel so, now I have found you. But, for pity’s sake! what are you doing at
that open window?”
At this, Fleurange turned around with a smile. “Open! my dear
mademoiselle? We should not be alive long, clad as we are.”
“I really do not understand why I do not feel the cold, and yet—”
Fleurange motioned for her to approach (for the old lady still kept at a
respectful distance from the dangerous openings), and made her touch the
thick glass, one pane of which composed the window—a luxury at that time
peculiar to St. Petersburg, and which often deceived eyes more experienced
than those of the simple Josephine. Reassured, but more and more amazed,
she remained beside Fleurange at the window, profiting by the occasion to
ask all the questions hitherto repressed. Everything was gradually
explained to her, and she comprehended that this magnificent house
belonged to Count George’s mother.
“And he?” she ventured to say when Fleurange had answered all the
questions,—“he, Gabrielle, where is he?”
“He!” repeated Fleurange, as a flush rose to her cheeks and her eyes
filled with tears—“he is there: there, mademoiselle, within the walls of
the fortress before us!”
Poor Josephine started with surprise. “Pardon me!” said she. “If I had
known that, I should not have mentioned him.”
“Why, mademoiselle?—The sight of those walls does not make me afraid! On
the contrary, I long to enter them. I long to leave all this splendor
which separates me from him as it did before! O my dear friend! you must
not pity me the day I am united to him!”
The language of passion always had a strange effect on this elderly
maiden, but she only allowed herself to reply meekly:
“Well, my dear child, we will not pity you! It is Clement and I who will
need pity when that day comes, and you must not be vexed if—” And in spite
of herself, great tears filled her eyes, which she promptly wiped away.
She remained silent for some moments, then spoke of something else,
feeling if she resumed the subject it would speedily lead to an explosion
of grief which she resolved to restrain that she might not afflict her
young friend.
“What wide plain is that between the quay and the fortress?” she soon
continued.
“That is the Neva,” replied Fleurange, smiling.
“The Neva?”
“Yes, the river that runs through the city.”
“The river?” repeated Mademoiselle Josephine. “Come, Gabrielle, I know I
am very ignorant of everything relating to foreign countries, but still,
not to such a degree as to believe that. A river!—when I see with my own
eyes hundreds of carriages on it, sledges and chariots of all kinds, going
in every direction, and houses and sheds!—And what are those two great
mountains I see yonder?”
“They are ice‐hills, such as they have in Russia, mademoiselle, and which
were imitated in wood three years ago at Paris. Do you remember? I am told
these are only erected temporarily during the carnival.”
“Very well; but what you have said does not prove that to be the river,
and that you are right.”
“It seems incredible, I know, but everything we see there now will
disappear in the spring, leaving only a broad stream between that fine
granite quay and the fortress. But I confess I can scarcely realize it
myself, never having seen it.”
Clement now appeared. He looked pale and disposed to be silent, and gave
every indication of having passed a no less restless night than
Mademoiselle Josephine, though for a different reason. After exchanging
some words with his companions, his eyes glanced over the broad river,
and, like those of Fleurange, fastened on the gloomy walls of the
fortress. It was a strange chance that led them all there precisely
opposite. Clement gazed at the place with despair, jealousy, and horror,
but still was unable to turn his eyes away.
“There, then, is the end,” thought he; “for her, the end desired: for me,
the grave of my youth! Yes, when she once enters those walls, all will be
at an end for me, were I to live beyond the usual period. My life will be
ended at twenty years of age!”—
These reflections and others of the same nature were not calculated to
make Clement very agreeable that morning. He was not only serious, which
often happened, but, contrary to his habit, he was gloomy and taciturn.
Their breakfast was despatched in silence, after which it was only by a
great effort he gradually succeeded in regaining his usual manner.
“Cousin Gabrielle,” said he then, “I appear morose this morning, I am
aware, and I beg your pardon. But I am only sad, I assure you—sad in view
of what is approaching. This is pardonable, I hope,” continued he, taking
Mademoiselle Josephine’s hand; “you will not require us, will you, to
leave you without regret?”
“That is what I said to her a moment ago,” said poor Josephine, wiping
away her tears. “She says she is happy; that she longs to be there,”
casting a glance across the river. “We only desire her happiness, I am
sure; but then for us—”
“Yes,” said Clement, with a sad smile of bitterness, “for us the few days
to come will not be very happy, and we really have reason to be sad. As
for me, Gabrielle, I also regret those just ended; for in this new sphere
my _rôle_ is at an end. I am now to be for ever deprived of the pleasure
of being useful to you in any way.”
He was still speaking when the Marquis Adelardi was announced; and he
hastily rose.
“Stay, Clement,” said Fleurange eagerly—“stay. I wish this excellent
friend to become acquainted with you.”
“I also wish to make his acquaintance, but not now. Tell him that to‐
morrow, yes, to‐morrow morning—or even this evening, if he will receive
me, I will call at his residence. Do not detain me now.”
And before the marquis appeared he was gone. He felt he should be _de
trop_ at this interview of such deep import to Fleurange, for such it was.
To see George’s friend once more, his confidential friend—him who at this
solemn period had become the intermediary authorized by his mother!—There
was great reason to be agitated at such a thought. Besides, Adelardi had
always inspired her with sympathy and confidence, and in this new sphere
she realized how beneficial his experience would be, for Clement was right
in saying he could no longer be of any use. He was as ignorant as she of
the habits and usages of the court. And yet, to obey the Princess
Catherine’s instructions, her first object must be to obtain an audience
of the empress—a formidable prospect, which frightened her a thousand
times more than all that afterwards awaited her. She therefore received
the marquis with such childlike confidence as to redouble the regard he
had always felt for her. There was the same beauty, the same simplicity
about her, and, above all, the charm most attractive to eyes as _blasés_
as his—of resembling no one else in the world! The extraordinary courage
she showed herself capable of made him appreciate the more that which she
manifested in separating from George, and revealed to him the whole extent
of the sacrifice then made with so much firmness.
The mission confided to Adelardi assumed, therefore, a graver aspect in
his eyes than before, and he was for an instant tempted to reproach
himself for having, the night previous, invoked the aid of a rival in
George’s behalf, who might prove an enemy to the charming girl before him.
On all accounts, however, he could not regret this last effort for his
friend’s welfare. In case Vera failed, and by chance was afterwards
tempted to display any ill‐will at another’s performing an act of
devotedness she declared herself incapable of, he had taken some
precautions to defeat her, and flattered himself the favor would be
obtained before she discovered by whom it was implored.
Meanwhile, the maid of honor was punctual. The marquis had already
received her reply, and now placed it in his young friend’s hands.
“Your request is granted: Mademoiselle Fleurange d’Yves will be received
by her majesty on Thursday, at two o’clock.
V. L.”
“The day after to‐morrow!” said Fleurange with emotion. Then, blushing as
she continued: “But how happens it that the name which I have not borne
for so long occurs in this note?”
“It is yours, is it not?” replied the marquis evasively.
“Yes, it is mine, but—” she stopped. A particular remembrance was now
associated with the name of Fleurange. No one had called her so but George
for more than three years. And the day for ever graven on her memory, he
told her he should keep that name for himself—himself alone. She regretted
to find it here written by a strange hand, and felt an involuntary
contraction of the heart.
“I should have preferred the request made in the name I generally bear.”
“Pardon me. I am to blame in this,” said Adelardi. “I supposed it a matter
of indifference. I thought the name of Fleurange would particularly
attract the attention of her whose favor you seek, and remain more surely
in her memory.”
This was merely an excuse which occurred to him in reply to a question he
had not anticipated. His real motive was to conceal from the maid of honor
another name perhaps more familiar, and which might be connected in her
mind with some prejudice injurious to the success of the petition of which
she was the intermediary.
To Be Continued.
Sayings.
“We serve God by climbing up to heaven from virtue to virtue; we serve
Satan by descending into hell from vice to vice.”—_S. Bonaventura._
He who reflects upon death has already cut short the evil habit of
talkativeness; and he who has received the gift of inward and spiritual
tears, shuns it as he would fire.—_S. John Climacus._
Spiritual blessings attained by much prayer and labor are solid and
durable.—_Ibid._
The first degree of interior peace is to banish from us all the noise and
commotion created by the passions, which disturb the profound tranquillity
of the heart. The last and most excellent degree is to stand in no fear of
this disturbance, and to be perfectly insensible to its
excitement.—_Ibid._
The heart of the meek is the throne on which the Lord reposes.—_Ibid._
The day will belong to him who is first in possession.—_Ibid._
Prince Von Bismarck And The Interview Of The Three Emperors.
By M. Adolphe Dechamps, Min. D’état
From La Revue Générale De Bruxelles.
MY DEAR FRIEND: You question me about the events which during the past two
years have been subverting Europe, and you in particular ask me what I
think of the meeting of the three emperors at Berlin, and of the policy of
von Bismarck.
Your first inquiry is too general for me to take up in a letter which I
wish to avoid making too long, but in a work which I am writing at present
I will endeavor to do so to the extent of my ability. About the year 1849,
I went to work on an _Étude sur la France_, out of which, during the
second Empire, I put forth three separate publications.(189) In these I
followed the course of Napoleon III., both in the successes and in the
blunders which brought about his fall; and now in the midst of the
obscurity of general politics which thickens more and more from day to
day, and wherein the attentive observer perceives more sinister flashes
than gleams of sunshine, I am about to complete the main work which I
began more than twenty years ago.
In 1859, I sent my first publication on the _Second Empire_ to the aged
Prince von Metternich, who honored me with his friendship, and asked him
for his views about the condition of Europe, which was then on the eve of
being profoundly changed by the war in Italy.
The following is an extract from the interesting reply which I received
from him only a short time before his death: “After having been a witness
and spectator of the catastrophes which burst forth between the years 1789
and 1795, in the latter one I made my first entry into the higher walks of
the political world, and 1801 was the first year of my diplomatic career.
I consequently cannot be in ignorance of anything that has taken place
since the two remote epochs above mentioned. Now, am I thereby in advance
of other living men? Can I consider myself capable of drawing up a
prognostication of what will happen even so far only as regards the most
immediate future? Certainly not! But, nevertheless, one thing I know I can
do, I can venture to affirm that not during the course of the last seven
decades has there been a single moment when the elements which make up
_social existence_ have found themselves plunged in so general a struggle
as they are now.”
Since the prince thus wrote me, we have had the campaign of Italy against
Austria in 1859; the war in Germany which ended in Sadowa; the civil war
in the United States of N. A.; the colossal war of 1870; the astounding
fall of the second French Empire; the rule of the Commune, and the
conflagration in Paris; a Republican government in France; the setting up
of the Empire of Germany; the Italian Revolution in Rome, which keeps the
Pope a captive in the Vatican and all the church in mourning; we have had
Spain contended for by three dynasties and a prey to anarchy and civil
war; and we have a socialistic revolution stirring up everywhere the
laboring masses and unsettling the deepest foundations of the society of
our day!
What would old Prince von Metternich say if, having before him the immense
upheaving of which we are witnesses, he could be now called upon to reply
to the general inquiry which you have put to me? He would decline giving
an opinion; he would refuse to make any predictions; he would confine
himself to the expression of deeper fears, because of the general and
formidable struggle now raging between all the elements which make up the
very life of society. I will do just as he would, and for a hundredfold
more reasons than he could have. I feel, as do all those who have any
political instinct, that decisive and dreadful events are drawing nigh;
though I cannot yet distinctly perceive them, I feel them, as one does the
approach of a storm, from the heaviness of the air before seeing the
lightning flash or hearing the thunder roll.
I lay aside, then, your general inquiry, and take up the second one, which
is more precise, and which relates to the meeting at Berlin and to the
policy of von Bismarck.
It is almost needless for me to mention that, retired as I have been for a
long time from politics, any opinions which I may express are merely
individual ones, that I alone am responsible for them, and that nobody can
claim a right to extend that responsibility to my friends, and still less
to the political party which I have had the honor of serving. I make this
express reservation.
What is, then, the meaning, the character, and the bearing of the meeting
of the three emperors? Is it a congress? Is it an alliance?
It is neither one nor the other, and this has been carefully proclaimed.
It is not an _European_ congress, since England and France were not
present at it, the one having been left aside, and the other naturally
excluded. It is not a _congress_, since no treaty will sanction its views
and results. But, besides, Prince von Bismarck wants neither congress nor
treaty. He attached great importance to signing the treaty of Prague alone
with Austria and the treaty of Frankfort alone with France; he refused,
with a certain _hauteur_, to allow any interference of the other European
powers in those treaties, although they brought about a fundamental change
in the status and equilibrium of Europe.
In times past, after a great war, Europe has always intervened through a
solemn congress in which it dictated the terms of a general peace, thereby
securing for it solidity and duration. Thus the treaty of Westphalia
brought with it its consequent peace, the treaty of Vienna the peace of
1815, and more recently the treaty of the Congress of Paris in 1856
followed upon the war in the Crimea. Heretofore Europe has been subject to
a system of equilibrium: Bismarck has done away with the latter, and
broken up the former.
But he perceived the danger of this attitude and this situation. Germany
had vanquished Austria, crushed France, and had won European supremacy,
but she stood alone. Austria, forced out first from Italy, afterwards from
Germany, could not, without feeling a deep and natural jealousy, see the
German Empire rise to the first rank while she sank to the second. Russia
cannot see the German Empire extend from the Danube to the Baltic, and
overtop the Slavic Empire, without becoming also jealous. England cannot
look upon this state of things, which leaves her nothing to do but to keep
quiet and silent, without feeling somewhat as Austria and Russia do. There
is felt, then, at St. Petersburg, as at Vienna, and perhaps at London, an
invincible distrust of the predominance of Germany and of the rupture, for
her benefit, of the equilibrium of Europe. There are deep and opposing
interests which are incompatible with a true alliance between the three
emperors, and, albeit they have at Berlin shaken hands, toasted, and
fraternally embraced one another and exchanged certain general ideas, they
have not allied themselves on settled political views.
M. von Bismarck has himself pretty accurately defined the meeting at
Berlin: “It is of importance that no one should suppose that the meeting
of the three emperors has for its object any special political projects.
Beyond a doubt, this meeting amounts to a signal recognition of the new
German Empire, but no political design has directed it.”
It amounts to this or very nearly this: M. von Bismarck wanted neither a
congress nor a treaty, nor did he seek an alliance which was impossible of
attainment just now; but he was determined to put an end to his present
isolation, and he sought in particular to cut short the dream of
retaliation in which France might indulge from a hoped‐for alliance with
Russia or with Austria.
The government of Berlin has in the meeting of the three emperors sought
two and perhaps three ends: I. To bring about the recognition of the
German Empire by the two great military powers of the North, and in that
way deprive France of all hope of finding an ally, with a view to war,
either at St. Petersburg or at Vienna. II. To discourage at the same time
the _particularism_(190) of Bavaria and of South Germany, which has always
looked for a support in the direction of Vienna. The third end may be to
disarm the resistance of Catholics to the absurd and odious persecutions
organized against them, by intimating to them that their cause has been
abandoned by the Apostolic Emperor, the head of the House of Hapsburg.
The remarkable letter published in _Der Wanderer_ of Vienna, under the
heading of “The Order of Battle,” sets forth very cleverly each of these
two hopes aforesaid of the Berlin diplomats.
“Those diplomats,” says _Der Wanderer_, “are rather barefacedly making
game of Austria’s good‐nature. They calculate that this good‐nature will
have the effect of paralyzing two (as M. von Bismarck considers them)
implacable enemies of the empire, but heretofore friends of the Hapsburg
dynasty; I mean the particularism of the minor states and the Catholic
opposition. ‘Thanks to the house of Austria,’ say they, ‘we are going to
disarm those reptiles, and pull out their venomous fangs.’ At the same
time, those diplomats do not conceal their joy (premature, I hope) at what
they call the _Canossa_(191) of Berlin and the retaliation of Olmutz. ‘We
will get the old seal of the empire’ (I quote their words textually)
‘affixed to our heritage by the House of Austria.’ ”
It would seem, then, that the Emperor of Austria, by appearing at Berlin,
meant to say to particularism and perhaps to the Catholic body: You need
no longer count on me. And the Emperor of Russia went there to offer a
toast to the German army and to signify to France: Do not count on any
alliance with me for a war hereafter.
This would indeed be the crowning of M. von Bismarck’s policy. Since the
two great wars against Austria and against France which by their
prodigious results assuredly far surpassed his hopes and previsions, he
has but one solicitude and one thought—to isolate France, to secure her
military and political impotence, to file down the old lion’s teeth and to
muzzle him.
To this end, he needed strong and impenetrable frontiers, which he got by
the acquisition of Alsace and Lorraine. Prince von Bismarck cannot fail to
perceive that the annexation of these two provinces to Germany constitutes
for it, in a political point of view, a source of weakness rather than of
strength; that it is an additional embarrassment to the difficulties
following the organization of German unity; that Alsace and Lorraine will
be, for a long time to come, another bleeding Poland on the flanks of the
new empire; nevertheless, the conquest of these two provinces seemed to
him, in a military point of view, indispensable as a first material
guarantee against the possibility of retaliation on the part of France. By
the possession of those provinces, he turns against France the formidable
triple line of defence of the Meuse, the Moselle, and the Vosges; at
Strasbourg and at Metz he holds the strategical keys of France; these two
strongholds are, so to speak, iron gates of which the bolts are kept at
Berlin. The other Rhenish frontiers are defended by the armed neutrality
of Holland, Belgium, Luxemburg, and Switzerland. Seated behind its
impassable frontiers, and relying upon its powerful military organization
and the remembrance of its recent triumphs, the German Empire appears
perfectly secure from attack.
But even all this was not enough for Prince von Bismarck. He has just been
repeating the policy which turned out so well for him in the war of 1866
against Austria. Then, through the guilty and senseless connivance of
Napoleon III., he allied himself to Italy; he compelled Austria to divide
her forces, to have two armies, one at Verona, the other in Bohemia—which
was making sure beforehand of the defeat of Austria. M. von Bismarck has
just begun a second time this skilful manœuvre. He has formed an offensive
and defensive alliance with Italy which owes its political life to France,
and repays the boon by treachery. By means of this alliance he would
compel France, in the event of a war, to have an army of the Alps and an
army of the Rhine, which would be equivalent to certain defeat.
Any war of retaliation is consequently for a long time to come rendered
impossible.
There would be left to France only one resource, and that a distant one,
viz., an alliance with a great military power, such as Austria, or, in
particular, Russia, whose secret jealousies she would turn to her account.
But such an alliance presupposes France raised up, in a political,
military, and moral sense, from her present ruin, and in possession of a
settled government, stable within and influential without. Can a republic,
even a conservative one, and even if it always had at its head as capable
a statesman as M. Thiers, so raise France? Can a republic which is a good
enough raft to take refuge on for a while, a so to speak narrow bed, which
will do for France, wounded and ailing, to lie on during the period of
convalescence—can it, in a country which lacks manly habits and historical
institutions, unite enough solidity, security, wise liberty, strength, and
grandeur to become the ally of so great an empire as Russia? To my mind,
the idea of an alliance between a French republic and one of the two
empires of the North against the German Empire is one of those
impossibilities which need but to be asserted, not to be argued. If France
could succeed in reuniting the separated links of her history, in
reconciling her present with her past, if she were to again become a
traditional, representative, and free monarchy, one holding itself
equidistant from the abuses of the old _régime_ and the errors of the
Revolution—oh! then her situation would indeed be changed, and great
alliances at present impossible might become possible soon thereafter. But
such alliances would not have for their object never‐ending retaliations
and new wars; they would bear their fruits through social peace, through
the restoration of authority and order, and through that true, prudent,
and measured liberty which, now that they have it not, they talk so much
about. The greatness of France depends less on the extent of her frontiers
than on her political, social, and religious renovation.
It is because M. von Bismarck understands perfectly that an alliance
between one of the great military empires of the North and republican
France is a chimerical project, that he encourages the adherents of the
republic at Versailles to sustain their work.
Anyhow, M. von Bismarck, having in view the nature of contingencies, has
sought to shut France out from hopes or temptations in this direction;
after, having in her folly dreamt of getting a frontier on the Rhine, she
has wretchedly lost, through the folly of her emperor, her eastern
frontier; after, having sworn to tear in pieces the treaty of 1815, to
which she had submitted with detestation, she has had to sign at Frankfort
the treaty in virtue of which she was invaded and dismembered.
The new Empire of Germany, resting on its formidable army, protected by
impenetrable frontiers, certain of an alliance with Italy which renders
the undertaking of war against it almost impossible for France, sustained
by the official friendship of Austria and of Russia, compels France to be
resigned and peaceful; condemns her to political and military impotence,
or, what may sound better, to walk in the ways of prudence. M. Thiers, in
words which the French press has published, has recently made a resolute
profession of this policy of prudence, by proclaiming that he desires
peace—peace to build up and fructify; and that France, at all events, will
not seek to break it.
When, from the balcony of the Imperial Palace at Berlin, it is proclaimed
that the object and result of the meeting of three emperors is to sanction
the _statu quo_ of Europe, and to consolidate a general peace, we believe
that they mean what they proclaim; but what is the signification of the
proclamation? Why, that they have thereby accepted the actual state of
things which has grown out of the recent wars; that is to say, the
European supremacy of the German Empire, founded on the powerlessness or
the cautious prudence of France; and that they think to have extinguished
the centre of combustion from which the firebrand of war might be again
hurled over Europe.
This is assuredly a clever policy, one in which Prince von Bismarck might
allow himself to take a certain pride.
But in this serene sky there is one dark cloud, and we may well suppose
that this cloud has disturbed the optimism of the diplomats assembled at
Berlin. This cloud is that dreaded unknown future when France will be no
longer governed by M. Thiers.
Salvation is not to come to France from the republic; in France there is
neither a republic nor a monarchy; the forces which tend to a monarchy are
disunited, and consequently powerless, and those which tend to a republic
are still more divided; the nation is living under an administration _ad
interim_; there is an absence of settled government and settled
institutions, and an impossibility of establishing either, because of the
wide divisions of irreconcilable parties, of anarchy in principles and
ideas. The salvation of France for the time being is one man, a leader
whose hand is pliable, firm, and commanding enough to hold political
parties in submission and keep down the rivalries which would give France
over to another civil war. M. Thiers believes that any present attempt to
set up a monarchy would light up a civil war; while the conviction of the
majority of the Assembly at Versailles is just as strong that, if the
republic lasts, this civil war will break out on the morrow of the day
when France will have lost M. Thiers. Probably both are right; it is
rather to the condition itself of France than to the men that lead her
that this lamentable state of affairs is to be attributed which finds its
expression in the government of a provisional republic having nothing to
look forward to in the future but unfathomable darkness and mystery.
M. Thiers is the embodiment of the conservative republic, which will last
just so long as he lives, and I desire that his needed dictatorship be
prolonged for a long while yet; but can we reasonably entertain such a
hope? He has undertaken the admirable work of saving France; he has in
Paris fought and won the great battle against anarchy; he has carried the
loans through, reorganized the army and finances of France; he is pushing
forward the evacuation of her territory; he maintains order. All this is
very fine and grand; he is indeed acting the part of the saviour of his
country; but let him not seek to do more; let him not be ambitious to
become the founder of a government; let him rather be content with merely
playing the first part at the head of affairs.
I thoroughly appreciate the work M. Thiers is engaged in; he directs his
policy by the light of present events, the only ones he can control; he is
going through the reparative period, _but what is he preparing_? What is
he founding for the future? What heritage will he leave after him, and who
will be his heir? Such are the questions which must come up to every
reflecting mind, and in particular to his, so remarkably clear,
perspicacious, and penetrating.
The weak side of his policy is that it leaves France on a political _terra
incognita_. The creation of a few additional institutions will not suffice
to raise France out of the provisional status in which she lies since her
fall; I mean such as a vice‐presidency, the establishing of a lower house,
all which would be adding shadows to shadows. It would never amount to
anything more than an administration _ad interim_, and a period of
expectation of a definite, stable, regular government having influence
abroad, such an one as France feels that she does not but should possess.
The question for M. Thiers, as well as for France and for Europe, remains
the same: What is being prepared, what will the future bring?
As we know the tree by its fruits, so do we judge a policy by its results,
and so will M. Thiers be judged.
If he leaves after him the heritage of a traditional and representative
monarchy, or if, like a second Washington, he leaves as his successor to
France a second John Adams or Thomas Jefferson who will enter upon the
work of consolidating a republic really conservative, free, Christian, and
powerful, he will indeed be a great man; but, if he is to be followed in
power by a Gambetta who will be the predecessor of the socialist _commune_
of Paris, he will, notwithstanding the immense services he has rendered,
be severely judged by history. No one assuredly ought to understand this
better than he.
Is the second President of the fourth or fifth French Republic to be a now
unforeseen Jefferson or a Gambetta?
Such is the dreaded question now before us. These threatening
eventualities have doubtless been attentively considered at the conference
in Berlin. M. von Bismarck may have developed thereat the political plan
which I have endeavored to analyze, and which has for its object the
founding of the peace of Europe on France’s inability to undertake another
war; but revolutionary and demagogical France, bearing incendiarism from
Paris to Madrid, to Rome, and perhaps elsewhere, must be opposed in some
other way than by the establishment of impenetrable frontiers and the
formation of alliances; and on these other means of opposition the three
emperors must have seriously conferred at Berlin, and I doubt much whether
waging war against the Catholic Church has seemed to them the best way to
avert the danger aforesaid.
II.
I have sought in this letter to set forth the character and import of the
meeting at Berlin, and to show the policy which Prince von Bismarck has
endeavored to inaugurate there. I have not been eaves‐dropping at the
doors of the chambers in which the three emperors and their chancellors
held their deliberations; but there is no difficulty in conjecturing what
was talked about, and, I may add, what was thought therein.
We must not overestimate the importance of these conversations; the
meeting at Berlin will no more bring about positive results for the
solution of pending questions in Europe than did the numerous interviews
which Napoleon III. had with the Emperor of Austria, the ministers of
Great Britain, and the czar. As we have stated before, it is not a
congress; it forms no alliances, and no treaty determining the new
European equilibrium will come out of it. What M. von Bismarck wished
particularly to bring about was the presence of the two emperors with
their counsellors in the capital of the new empire. Their mere presence
signified, in the eyes of the prince chancellor:
The recognition of the German Empire; the sanction of the treaties of
Prague and Frankfort, which were to form the basis of the new equilibrium
of Europe.
The impossibility for France to find a powerful ally that would enable her
to attempt a war of retaliation.
On the part of Austria, the abandonment of all idea of returning to her
old German policy, and the repudiation of all connivance with the
_particularistic_ resistance of the lesser states of Germany.
I will presently examine whether the presence at Berlin of the head of the
dynasty of Hapsburg signifies also the repudiation of the Catholic
movement which the persecutions directed against the church have stirred
up throughout entire Germany.
Assuredly this policy of M. von Bismarck shows, I will not say grandeur,
but skill and audacity; and it has been crowned by wonderful success. When
I saw Prince von Bismarck raise Prussia, that a few years ago could hardly
rank among the great powers, to the height of the Empire of Germany
through the victories of 1866 and 1871—when I contemplated these
astounding results, I was for a moment tempted to consider him as a great
minister, as one of the rare successors of Richelieu or of Stein.
I was the more inclined to this judgment because, as a Belgian, I was
grateful for the honest and upright policy which he had followed as
regards Napoleon III. before the last war. There is no longer any room for
doubt, now that the diplomatic documents are known, that Napoleon III., in
order to redeem the unpardonable blunder which he had committed by
favoring the war of 1861 between Prussia and Austria, endeavored to obtain
in Luxemburg and in Belgium the compensations which he considered needful
for him in view of the aggrandizement of Prussia. We know about the rough
draft of the Benedetti treaty, which no amount of equivocation and timid
denial can do away with.
I had, in my work published in 1865, clearly denounced the plot; and from
the Belgian tribune, because I had pointed out these perils to its
government, I have been called a political visionary and almost a traitor
to my country. Subsequent events have justified my allegations, and now
every one knows that the dangers which we ran for a time were more real,
nearer at hand, and greater than even I imagined them to be.
The war of 1870 was the consequence of the refusal of the government of
Berlin to yield to the guilty covetousness of Napoleon III. I ascribe the
honor of the former to M. von Bismarck and to the integrity of William IV.
I had proclaimed the existence of two eminent perils: a diplomatic peril,
viz., an alliance of France with Prussia, of which Belgium would have been
the stakes and the victim; the chance of a war between those two nations,
in which France might have been victorious. We have, almost by a miracle,
escaped those two perils; through the war of 1870, Belgium has been
preserved from diplomatic conspiracies, and as a Belgian I can never
forget it.(192)
Belgium, since the late war, finds herself in a new position which has not
attracted the attention it deserves.
Belgium, for a long time back coveted by France, particularly by France
under the Empire and under the Republic, had, above all, to fear an
alliance between France and Prussia, which latter might sacrifice her to
the political combinations growing out of such an alliance. That is what
Napoleon III. attempted in the Benedetti negotiation, and it was this
peril which before the recent war alarmed my patriotism.
Now this peril has vanished. An alliance between the German Empire and
France is now put off for a long time. But there is another motive still
more powerful, and which constitutes our complete security, which is this:
that the existence of a _neutral_ and _strong_ Belgium has become
henceforward for the German Empire a necessity of the highest order. Since
the government of Berlin has thought it indispensable for strategic
purposes to hold Metz and the lines of the Meuse and of the Vosges, it
cannot allow, under any consideration, independent Belgium to disappear
and France to occupy that territory of Belgium which is watered by the
Meuse and the Scheldt. Our neutrality protects the Rhine on the side of
the gap between the Sambre and the Meuse, but can afford this protection
only provided our neutrality is politically and militarily strong to such
an extent as our financial resources will warrant.
Our neutrality, in order to be one of the supports of the peace of Europe,
must be ever an honest one; it must stand as a barrier against aggression
whether from the east or from the south; it must be hostile to no power.
On the other hand, it is plain that, in order to fill this position of
barrier and guarantee, Belgium must remain always armed and able to repel
an attack at the outset; otherwise, she would become politically useless,
and, in the event of a war, the occupation of her territory would follow
as the fatal result of such omission.
This was true before the late war, and on this point my views have not
changed; but, since the new European situation created by the war, this
truth is twice as plain, and our duties to Europe have increased twofold.
It is important that all our political men, without distinction of party,
and that the entire nation, understand well the position to which we have
been brought by recent events.
Far from being hostile to the German Empire, I find in it a new guarantee
for the independence of my country. Our neutrality now rests on all the
powers and on all the treaties that have been made: it had become a habit,
after the advent of the Napoleonic Empire, to consider England as the
special protector of our national independence, but now that Germany has a
particular and powerful interest in that independence, instead of one
special support only, we now have two.
It is proper that I should make this statement, as I am about to submit M.
von Bismarck’s policy to a severe criticism. In this page of history which
I have been rapidly writing, I have not been wanting in praise; and, if
these lines are ever read by M. von Bismarck, he cannot complain of the
appreciation which I have so far expressed of his policy. In the pages
that follow, I shall not spare criticism. Much as I have admired the
policy which prepared the war, in equal degree does my mind fail to
comprehend the policy followed at Berlin since the peace, and which
appears to me to be a perfect antithesis of the former one.
This latter policy appears to me so incomprehensible that I ask myself
whether Prince von Bismarck, instead of being a political genius like
Stein, is not entering upon the path of error in which Napoleon III. came
to his ruin.
Napoleon III. has also been the ruler of Europe; the second Empire for
many years enjoyed preponderance in Europe, and might have retained it
much longer but for the accumulated blunders of imperial policy. Napoleon
III., who had begun his reign isolated from other monarchs, and to whom
the appellation of _my cousin_ had been disdainfully denied, found
himself, immediately after the war in the Crimea and after the Congress of
Paris, at the head of a great Western alliance formed with England and
Austria and by isolating Russia and annulling Prussia. He had reached the
zenith of power in Europe; he had a star in which he and every one besides
believed; kings and emperors came to Fontainebleau and to the Tuileries to
pay their court to the _parvenu_ sovereign who had been transformed into a
Louis XIV., just as has happened at Berlin.
When I saw Napoleon III., at the summit of such a situation, break with
his own hands, like a hot‐brained child, this magnificent Western alliance
to which he was indebted for his high fortune; conspire at the Congress of
Paris with M. de Cavour to bring about that fatal war in Italy against
Austria which was the first cause of his disasters; turn out of the
straight path of conservative principles which he had sworn to follow, and
then lose himself in the tortuous and obscure ways of revolution, my
judgment of him was definitively made. A man who could commit such a folly
was neither a statesman nor a political genius; he was merely a lucky
adventurer who had been helped on and spoiled by events, but who did not
know enough to turn them to account.
It was just then, in 1859, on the eve of the war in Italy, that I wrote my
first work on _Le Second Empire_, in which I did not hesitate to predict
that this war, no matter how much glory it might make for the emperor,
would nevertheless amount to a political defeat which would lead to the
fall of the Empire. “The heads of even the wisest men,” I said, “are
liable to turn when they have reached such an elevation as he has arrived
at.” And I selected as the epigraph of my work, the words which old Prince
von Metternich had uttered when speaking of the extreme good‐fortune of
the Emperor of the French: “He is successful,” said the prince to me; “he
has excellent cards in his hands, and he plays his game well, but he will
be lost as a revolutionary emperor on the Italian reef.” This remarkable
prediction, made long before the war in Italy, has been verified to the
letter, and my book, written in 1859, was merely a commentary upon it
which subsequent events have confirmed.
M. von Bismarck is also at the acme of his triumph; he is presiding at his
Congress of Paris. Behold Prussia, which but a few years ago had hardly
any voice in the councils of Europe, now become the German Empire, and
behold the Emperor of Germany getting the czar and the Emperor Francis
Joseph to sanction at Berlin his victories, his conquests, and his
political supremacy, by leaving France isolated, and making of no account
England, which had kept herself aloof in her policy of forbearance.
Well, I do not hesitate to select this hour of triumph, when M. von
Bismarck’s policy has been crowned at Berlin, in the midst of festivities
the splendor of which is talked of far and wide, to predict its failure in
the end if he does not change it. My reason for asserting this in presence
of a state of things so contrary to my prediction is that M. von Bismarck
is committing one of those blunders, I dare not say one of those political
follies, which astonish reason, and which form the premises of a syllogism
having for its conclusion an inevitable failure. The blunder is precisely
similar to that perpetrated by Napoleon III., who, in consequence of
having allied himself with revolutionary Italy, was led from Mexico to
Sadowa, and from Sedan to Chiselhurst. This blunder on the part of M. von
Bismarck, and of which he will yet repent, is his alliance with
revolutionary Italy, which drags him into a war against the Catholic
Church, which has always proved fatal to those who have attempted it, and
which destroys the work of German unity which he had associated with his
name. The epigraph of my work on _Le Second Empire_, borrowed from Prince
von Metternich, might serve for this letter as well, if applied to the
Emperor of Germany and his chancellor; if the head of the dynasty of the
Hohenzollerns continues in the path of revolution in which M. von Bismarck
has led him, “he will also perish, like the revolutionary emperor on the
Italian reef.”
Is it rashness on my part to point out to Prince von Bismarck and to the
German Emperor the Tarpeian rock so nigh to the capitol to which they have
ascended? Am I unjust towards the prince chancellor?
No one had a higher opinion of his political merit than I, and in
appreciating, as I have done in this letter, his astounding successes, I
have not been sparing of praise nor indeed of admiration. If, then, I am
compelled to draw a comparison between Napoleon III. and him, and to
measure by the blunder committed by the Emperor of the French in 1859 that
which he is now committing, I must ask his pardon, for I make a great
difference between those two contemporary personages. In the same degree
that Napoleon III. was irresolute, beset by somnolent indolence and
continual hesitation, so does, on the other hand, Prince von Bismarck know
how to show a tenacious persistence and audacity in the carrying out of
his designs; but this very tenacity may be a source of additional danger,
if he enters upon a road which leads to an abyss; he will go forward in it
quicker and more irremediably than another would, because he knows neither
how to stop nor to draw back.
Let us, then, study the policy of M. von Bismarck.
And, in the first place, without wishing in the least to belittle the
share which evidently belongs to him in the triumphs of Prussia, we must,
nevertheless, admit that another important share falls to Count von
Moltke, the greatest warrior of our day; and an equally considerable part
is due to the blunders of his adversaries, Austria and Imperial France.
If, for example, Napoleon III. had not betrayed Austria in 1866 by
allowing and favoring the alliance between Prussia and Italy, a war
against Austria would have been impossible, and the victory of Sadowa
would not have taken place; the senseless war of 1870, which grew out of
the victory of Sadowa, would have been without either cause or pretext;
France would be now erect, Austria would have maintained its influential
position in Germany, and the German Empire would not have been established
for the profit of Prussian _unitarisme_.
With the foundation of German unity, of the German Empire, Napoleon has
had almost as much to do as M. von Bismarck. The great chancellor has
found ready for him two instruments which he did not invent: the military
genius of von Moltke, and the folly of Napoleon. To complete the
expression of my thought, I will add that the German Emperor has only
been, as he himself proclaimed after his victories, a mere instrument in
the hands of Divine Providence for the chastisement of France. France has
been unfaithful to her past history, from which she has severed herself;
she has been unfaithful to the monarchical form of government which has
rendered her glorious, and to the church which has made her great; she has
lost, by a twofold apostasy, her political faith and her Catholic faith;
she no longer possesses her institutions, which have been, one after the
other, destroyed either by the old _régime_ or by the Revolution; she no
longer knows how to restore the monarchy, the elements of which have been
scattered in the tempests of revolution; she knows not how to keep up a
republic of which she has neither the habits, the historical conditions,
nor the conditions social and political; she is in that state through
which nations, condemned to perish, fall and decay, and out of which those
nations which God wishes to save can get, only through punishment by fire
or by the sword. M. von Bismarck has been, and may become again, that fire
and that sword; which may perhaps be an honor, but does not justify pride.
The political work, then, which has produced the German Empire undoubtedly
deserves praise, and assuredly does honor to the political merits of
Prince von Bismarck, but does not facilitate the forming of a definitive
judgment in his regard. It is in the work of peace that the statesman
shows himself, and I must say it, that in this respect I do not find M.
von Bismarck as great as events seemed to have made him out to be; just as
he has been seen to be intelligent, fortunate, almost great during the
period of warfare, so in like degree do I incline to consider him, in the
period of present organization, improvident and blind.
This work of organization is a difficult one; it requires wisdom and time.
M. von Bismarck has recourse to precipitation, to force, and to wrath.
German unity, inuring to the benefit of Prussia, could not, before the war
of 1866, have been foreseen. When, in 1863, the Emperor of Austria made
his triumphal entry into Frankfort, bearing in his hand federal reform, he
was surrounded by all the princes of Germany. Prussia stood alone,
abandoned by all Germany; and, if Napoleon had not foolishly thwarted the
plans of the Emperor Francis Joseph, the Emperor of Germany would have
been crowned, not at Berlin, but at Vienna.
After the war of 1866, Prusso‐Germanic unitarism had not yet been
accomplished. Saxony and the states of the South which had fought by the
side of Austria were defeated; they submitted to, rather than accepted,
the terms which Prussia forced on them as the consequence of their defeat.
Northern Germany was bounded by the Main, and the minor states ever felt
themselves drawn towards Vienna, their old centre of attraction.
It was the war of 1870, declared by Napoleon against the whole of Germany,
notwithstanding the patriotic protest of M. Thiers, which all at once
created this unity; this unity, which brought all the Germans together
under one flag, received thus the baptism of glory and of blood.
But the Prusso‐German unitarism, extemporized and rough‐cast by the war,
was not consolidated; many difficulties remained to be overcome.
M. von Bismarck saw before him two formidable adversaries: the
particularism of the middle states, and socialist democracy, which claims
to abolish unity for its own gain, by substituting the German Republic for
the German Empire.
Several symptoms go to show that the particularist movement, which had
been stopped by the war, is reviving, and certainly the hostile action
directed against the Catholics assists powerfully towards giving it new
life. The symptoms of the awakening of this movement are numerous; it is
needless that I should enumerate them; they are perfectly known at Berlin,
and have assuredly become aggravated since the religious war undertaken by
M. von Bismarck.
The particularism of the states, then, is not dead, and red democracy is
full of life. These are the two great difficulties which M. von Bismarck’s
policy finds in its way. To these must be added a third one: the
assimilation of the two conquered provinces, Alsace and Lorraine, so
thoroughly French by the ties of history, of religion, of habits, and of
interests.
To overcome these obstacles, to organize unity, the basis of the new
empire, to accomplish his great work, M. von Bismarck needs prudence,
time, and the hand of a true statesman.
Now, what does the Prince von Bismarck do? To the three considerable
existing obstacles he adds another one, greater and more dangerous than
the former, a difficulty which did not exist, which he of his own accord
created, which he wantonly got up, and which will crush him; I mean the
religious difficulty, the brutal war, the veritable persecution which he
is organizing against the Catholics. He had to fight against particularist
opposition and radical opposition; he himself, with deliberate purpose,
needlessly and without reason, raises up a third one—the opposition of
sixteen millions of Catholics united with their bishops; that is to say,
almost half of the new empire which he thus unsettles and, so to speak,
dissolves with his own hand.
Can anything be imagined more incomprehensible or more thoroughly
preposterous?
What end is M. von Bismarck pursuing? By what thought and what views is he
guided? The prince chancellor is neither mad nor blind; he has given
abundant evidence of this; and yet, is it not folly, is it not blindness,
to thus throw, without any appreciable motive, and with a heart as light
as that of M. Emile Ollivier, sixteen millions of Catholics, including all
their clergy and all their bishops, into a resistance which will be all
the more obstinate and formidable because it will derive its strength from
the oppression of conscience, from the suppression of liberty, the rending
of the constitution, from the violation of justice and of rights? I have
put these questions to eminent Germans of all parties, but have never got
clear and satisfactory answers.
The Catholic Germans behaved admirably during the war; the Bavarian,
Westphalian, and Rhenish troops were everywhere foremost under fire and in
earning honor and glory. The priests and religious, both men and women,
have shown a heroic devotedness on the battlefields, in the ambulances,
and in the hospitals, so that M. Windthorst was enabled to say in the
parliament at Berlin that many of those religious would go into exile
wearing on their breasts the iron cross which they had earned during the
last campaign.(193) The old antipathies against Prussia which prevailed
along the Rhine and beyond the Main among Catholic populations were dying
out; the establishment of religious liberty in Prussia on a more generous
basis than in the lesser states had won the Catholics over to unity under
Prussian hegemony; and the illustrious Bishop of Mayence, Mgr. de
Ketteler, in an address which made a great noise in Germany and throughout
Europe, raised the standard of rallying and unity.
The German Empire was consequently very near being established. M. von
Bismarck stirs up a religious war which divides it in two and breaks it
asunder. The war had brought together under the same flag Germans of all
nationalities and all religious beliefs. Should not, then, all manner of
pains have been taken to keep them united in the mutual work of the
organization of the empire? Should not the first thought of a politician,
after having achieved such wonderful success, and having before him the
obstacles which still remained to be overcome, have been to begin by
establishing peace in religious matters?
But I must repeat the question, What did M. von Bismarck do? He repulses
the Westphalians and people of the Rhine who had become reconciled; he
revives in Bavaria and in the South that particularism which was dying
out; and on the political grievance he grafts a religious one; he doubles
the obstacles of all kinds which lie in the way of his plans for
Germanizing Alsace and Lorraine, so thoroughly French and Catholic; into
their bleeding wounds he, as it were, introduces gangrene, by entering
upon an unheard‐of religious persecution, and without any pretext that he
dare avow; he compromises in the most serious manner the work of unity,
towards the founding of which he had aided so much; he acts as would the
greatest adversary of that unity who could not contrive any better means
for its destruction than to do just what Prince von Bismarck is doing—he
drives into the ranks of opposition nearly half of the soundest population
of the empire; he sets against himself the two hundred million Catholics
spread throughout the world, and who are everywhere protesting against his
oppression; he will also turn against him the old conservatives, who have
been deeply hurt by the enactment of the law in regard to schools, as well
as all sincere friends of religious and political liberty, so audaciously
ignored by him. These friends of liberty are becoming scarce; they
maintain, in the face of this odious violation of their principles, a
shameful silence which they will have to break, if they wish to avoid
making liberalism synonymous with hypocrisy.
Have I erred in comparing the policy of M. von Bismarck with that of
Napoleon III., and his present blunder with that committed by the ex‐
emperor when, after the Congress of Paris, he broke up the splendid
Western alliance?
When I endeavor to interpret M. von Bismarck’s conduct, I can find but one
motive which can serve for its explanation, and that is his alliance with
Italy. That alliance, which he conceived necessary in order to keep the
forces of France divided, and to render a war of retaliation impossible,
has drawn him into a fatal hostility against the Catholic Church.
His ally, Victor Emanuel, has conquered the Roman States by stratagem and
by violence; he has usurped in Rome the throne of the pontiff king, who
among the monarchs of Europe possesses assuredly the most ancient and most
venerated titles to sovereignty; he holds the Pope captive in the Vatican,
until such time as he can compel him to set out on the road to exile; he
deprives the Sovereign Pontiff of the church of that sovereignty on which
his independence rests, and thus throws the universal church into alarm
and mourning.
This outrage against the church, perpetrated at Rome by the Italian
government, has had its counterpart in Berlin. No doubt the condition
which Victor Emanuel set upon alliance with him has been to make the
German Empire enter into the vast plot got up against the independence and
liberty of Catholicity.
Well! without being a prophet, it is not difficult to predict that the
Italian alliance will prove as fatal to the German Empire as it has been
to the second Napoleonic Empire, and that on the Italian rock M. von
Bismarck’s work will be dashed to pieces, if he allows it to remain in the
evil path in which it is now so deeply sunk.
III.
Prince Bismarck considers himself to be the successor of Stein, to whom he
has caused a statue to be erected, and whose great policy he claims that
he is continuing. In this respect, he is profoundly mistaken; and, very
far from following that policy, he abandons and betrays it.
Stein and all his school have, like Burke and Pitt, combated the
principles of the French Revolution. French ideas had, at the close of the
last century, invaded Germany, and the armies of the first Republic had no
difficulty in conquering by their arms a country which they had before
overrun with their ideas.
Baron von Stein, that restorer of the German _Vaterland_ and liberty, was
a mortal foe of the French Revolution. His mission and his work were to
withdraw Germany from the fatal path into which, following France, she had
strayed, and to bring her back into the path laid out for her by her
history.
He could not save Prussia from the defeat at Jena, but he trained her, by
his thorough and excellent reforms, for revenge at Waterloo and Sedan. He
it was who formed Scharnhorst, the organizer of military Prussia, and
whose system Count von Moltke perfected; he, probably, who became the soul
of the patriotic movement in 1813; he it was who, together with
Scharnhorst, Stadion, and Gagern, gave to Germany that powerful impulse
out of which came the great present situation; he it was who stood the
distinguished protector of the German historical school, that real
antithesis of the French revolutionary school, which former had as its
influential organs Niebuhr, Eichhorn, Schlegel, Görres, the two Grimms, de
Savigny, etc., and which M. de Sybel represents still in our day.
Stein was a conservative, a patriot, and a Christian. What he fought
against in the French Revolution was that philosophic and abstract method
that France had adopted, destructive of all national tradition; that
spirit of exclusive and narrow equality which influenced her course, and
in the pursuit of which, according to M. de Tocqueville, she has lost
liberty; that absolutism, whether in democracy or in Cæsarism, that
obliteration of the individual, that indifference to rights, that worship
of brute force, that extinguishment of all local, provincial, and
autonomous life, that exaggerated idea of the state, that oppression of
religious liberty, of Christian teaching, and of the Catholic Church, all
of which characterized the French Revolution.
Stein wanted a Germany united, but federal, Christian, liberal,
traditional, and historical; he wanted her, as Burke did England, to be
the reverse of revolutionary France.
Now, is it not Stein’s work, that Germany born of his reforming genius,
that M. von Bismarck is destroying? The _liberal national_ party, on which
he leans, is merely a _doctrinaire_ French party, anti‐historic,
ideological, and anti‐religious, the harbinger of levelling and radical
democracy; a party which inclines to absolutism and Cæsarism, adores
centralization, unconditional unification, and the omnipotence of the
state, and which is the adversary of all proud and free consciences, and
of any independent church. It is not the Protestant idea, but the Masonic
and Hegelian one which this party represents.
Stein was a Christian, a conservative, and a German; the Prince von
Bismarck is sceptical, revolutionary, and belongs to the French school.
Stein sought to found German unity on federal liberties, in the alliance
of the church with the school, and on peace between religious
denominations; M. von Bismarck overturns that basis, substitutes in its
place absolutist and Prussian unification, secularized teaching, and
religious discord.
It is surprising that, when in France the ideas which inspired the French
Revolution have been abandoned even by the most intelligent part of the
school of liberalism; by such men as Tocqueville, Thierry, and Guizot, who
are discouraged, and talk more openly of their disappointments than of
their hopes; when M. Renan asserts that the French Revolution “is an
experimental failure”; when the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, through the pen
of M. Montégut, proclaims “that the Revolution is politically bankrupt”;
on the very morrow of the final miscarriage of that Revolution under its
two forms of government, the Empire fallen at Sedan, and the social
Republic fallen under the ruins of the Paris Commune—it is at that very
time that Prince von Bismarck thinks it skilful and profound to import
that French revolutionary system into Germany! M. Renan has cause for
rejoicing; he has given utterance to a wish which M. von Bismarck has set
about to fulfil. “France,” he said, “need not be considered lost if we can
believe that Germany will be in her turn drawn into that witches’ dance in
which all our virtue has been lost.”
To sum up: German unity, the great German Empire, which such an
extraordinary concurrence of circumstances had created, is being dissolved
and ruined by Prince von Bismarck through the most inconceivable of
political blunders. He throws sixteen millions of Catholics, once friendly
to the Empire, into opposition to it; he gives a new food and new strength
to the particularism of the Southern States, and to the Polonism of Posen;
he makes twofold the difficulties of accomplishing the assimilation of
Alsace and Lorraine; to political grievances he superadds religious
grievances, far more to be dreaded than the former; he enkindles an
implacable religious war upon the ruins of that denominational peace which
King Frederic William III. had happily established, and by aid of which
the present emperor and the empress Augusta had, in the opening period of
their reign, won the hearts of the Catholics of the Rhine. To cover this
blunder, M. von Bismarck enters into the Italian alliance which destroyed
the second Napoleonic Empire, and will destroy the German Empire; and he
abandons the historic German policy restored by Stein, to rush into the
retinue of the _national liberal_ party, into the paths of the French
Revolution, into that _witches’ dance_ to which M. Renan refers; and he
inoculates his own country with the poison which has killed France!
IV.
But there is one final consequence of the policy of Prince von Bismarck to
which I wish to call attention, and which is not least in gravity.
Austria, after having lost Italy, had, by the treaty of Prague, been
excluded from Germany. Nevertheless, the German Empire, under the hegemony
of Prussia, had not been set up; there existed only a Northern Germany,
having the Main as its boundary; the Southern States, and even Saxony,
preserved a certain autonomy; and Austria might hope by a wise policy to
draw little by little into the sphere of her influence and attraction
those countries which had been accustomed to look upon Vienna as their
political pole.
The war of 1871 against France, which had united all the Germans under one
flag, established German unity and the German Empire. The boundaries of
the Empire were moved from the Main to the Danube, and all hope for
Austria to regain her old German position was gone.
Austria accepted this situation; the Emperor Francis Joseph and his two
counsellors, Count von Beust and Count Andràssy, worked together to bring
about a sincere reconciliation between Austria and the German Empire.
They gave up the idea of bringing back the Southern States into the circle
of Austrian influence; they feared, on the contrary, lest the German
provinces of Austria, detaching themselves little by little from the
weakened rule of the Hapsburgs, might be irresistibly drawn towards
Berlin, the powerful and glorious centre of the German _Vaterland_.
Those fears may at present be entirely set at rest. There has been a
complete reversal in the position of things. The people, for the most part
so Catholic, of the Tyrol, of Lower Austria, and of Bohemia, will lose all
inclination to draw nearer to the German Empire, where a bitter
persecution is being waged against their religious faith. The bonds which
unite them to Austria will be drawn the tighter. On the other hand, will
not the Catholics of the Rhine, of Westphalia, of Poland, of Suabia, of
Franconia, of Würtemberg, of Bavaria, of Alsace, and of Lorraine, driven
from the bosom of the German Empire, in which they are no longer citizens,
but pariahs, be tempted to look again in the direction of Austria, the
centre of their older sympathies? All Austria has to do is not to
interfere; M. von Bismarck is working for her.
The prince chancellor, notwithstanding the elated confidence which he has
in his strength, has understood the danger of the situation.
In order to change it, he had but one easy thing to do, and that was to
modify his policy, to give up persecuting the Catholics, to admit that he
had gone astray, and to return to a calmer and wiser policy; but this he
would not do; he has preferred to keep on, and to try to drag Austria into
the same road.
Last year, at Gastein, he tried to induce Count von Beust to join in the
campaign which he wished to begin against the _internationale rouge_ and
the _internationale noire_, but the Emperor Francis Joseph baffled the
attempt. The prince chancellor renewed it the same year with the emperor
himself at Salzburg, but he failed a second time.
Has he met with more success at Berlin, upon the occasion of the meeting
of the three emperors? Has he tried to get Russia and Austria to recognize
not only the German Empire, but to sanction by their adhesion to it his
home policy against “Romanism,” that is to say, against the Catholic
Church, or has he at least succeeded in inducing the belief that he had
not tried in vain? Has he sought to drag them into the war which he is
carrying on against the Jesuits, against the religious orders, against
denominational liberty, against Catholic teaching, against the clergy and
the bishops, until such time as he can make it break forth at Rome, by
laying, in the next conclave, an audacious and sacrilegious hand on the
pontifical tiara?
We shall find this out before long. If Austria follows the policy of the
centralist party of the German professors at Vienna and at Prague, to
which Count von Beust has already yielded too much, and which is identical
with the policy of the _national liberal_ party of Berlin, she will have
advanced the interests of Prince von Bismarck, and not her own; she will
have labored for him and against herself; she will have turned aside the
danger imminent to the German Empire through M. von Bismarck’s blunders,
and of which the Austro‐Hungarian Empire should have profited; she will
have, with her _historical good‐nature_, served the views of Prussia to
the detriment of her own; and Francis Joseph, the Apostolic Emperor,
unfaithful to his traditions and to the arms of his house, will have made
his policy subordinate to that of a Lutheran emperor!
I positively refuse to believe that any such result can come out of the
interview at Berlin, albeit that our generation is accustomed to the
realization of political impossibilities. I would fain persuade myself
that, if the Prince von Bismarck has endeavored to draw Austria into his
war against the Catholics and against Rome, he will have failed at Berlin
as he did at Salzburg through the good sense of the Emperor Francis
Joseph.
V.
The more I study M. von Bismarck’s policy, the less I understand it. If he
were a sectarian pietist, I could account to myself for the idea of
perfecting the political and military unity of Germany by a religious
unity, of creating a _Protestant state_: it would indeed be a sorry
Utopia, and to attempt it would be to make the mistake of being three
centuries behind his time.
But M. von Bismarck is neither a sectarian nor a fanatic; he is rather, I
believe, a sceptic who has little care for religious controversies, and
who probably understands very little about the question of the Papal
Infallibility which he is wielding as a warlike weapon against the church.
M. von Bismarck is a politician; politics he aims at and should be busied
in; his mission is to help found an empire and not a schism or a sect.
Now, it is the Empire, the political work, which he gravely compromises by
disturbing so profoundly through a denominational conflict the religious
quiet which that work needed for its consolidation. Instead of the _German
state_ founded on unity and general assent, it is the _Protestant state_
founded on the deepest and most incurable divisions that he seems to aim
at creating. There is no difficulty in predicting that he will lose the
political unity in the pursuit of a religious unity which is but a
chimerical and impossible anachronism.
This political course which the prince chancellor has inspired the Emperor
William to follow, whose past one makes such a striking contrast with it,
is to me an insoluble enigma, and raises doubts in my mind of M. von
Bismarck’s transcendent ability.
I will nevertheless try to make out this political enigma, by studying the
pretexts on which the government of Berlin relies to justify itself, the
circumstances by which it has been enticed, and the temptation to which it
has yielded.
The _pretext_ which it puts forward is the decision of the Vatican Council
in regard to the authority of the Sovereign Pontiff in matters of
doctrine.
The _circumstances_ by which it was carried away are the Italian alliance
abroad and the alliance with the _national liberal_ party at home.
The _temptation_ that misleads it is the hope, fortunately disappointed,
which the stand of the _inopportunist_ bishops of Germany and of Austria
caused it to form, which stand the Berlin government had mistaken for a
real dissent from doctrine, and destined to become the foundation of a
national church separated from Rome by that dissent.
I call the question of Papal Infallibility a pretext, and, in fact, it is
a groundless quarrel without any importance or earnest meaning.
I am not called upon to enter here into a theological dissertation upon
the dogma of the infallibility of the church and of its sovereign
magistracy, etc. I refer my readers to the excellent works which have been
published on the subject, and I trust to be excused for mentioning in
particular those written by my brother the Archbishop of Mechlin.
I will say but one word _en passant_ on the question. For every Catholic,
there is no longer any open question. Before the council, discussion was
allowable; since the definition proclaimed by an œcumenical council united
to the Pope, all discussion is closed.
Every one knows of the conversation between a very intelligent lady of
great faith and the Count de Montalembert, shortly before the death of
that illustrious friend, in which she asked him what he would do if the
council together with the Pope should define infallibility. “Well, I will
quietly believe it,” replied the great orator, with the firm accent of the
Christian who knows his catechism, and who recites his act of faith.
In fact, no father nor doctor of the church, from Origen and S. Cyprian
down to S. Thomas and Bossuet, no council, no theologian, no Catholic, has
ever doubted the doctrinal infallibility of the church. The controversy
lay with the Gallicans, who claimed that the words of the Pope addressed
to the church _ex cathedrâ_ needed the assent of a council or of the
church throughout the world to acquire the character of infallibility.
All the old Catholics of all the schools, Gallican even included, were
agreed to accord to the definitions of a council united with the Pope,
that is to say, the church, the divine privilege of infallibility set
forth in Holy Scriptures and in all tradition. On this point Bossuet holds
the same doctrine as Fénelon and Count de Maistre.
Now, in the present instance we have a council united to the Pope, and no
council, from that of Trent back to that of Nicæa, has been more
numerously attended, more solemn, freer, or more œcumenical, than that of
the Vatican. To deny this is downright nonsense, in which those take
refuge who seek to hide their apostasy from their own eyes. If the Council
of the Vatican has not been œcumenical and free, then manifestly no
council in the past has ever been.
To reject the doctrinal definition of the Council of the Vatican, in which
the Sovereign Pontiff and the bishops of all the world, whether
opportunist or inopportunist, have agreed, would undoubtedly be to abandon
the church of Christ, and to renounce the Catholic faith; it would be
going beyond Gallicanism, which never thought of calling in question the
decisions of a council united to a pope; even beyond the Jansenism of Port
Royal, which would perhaps have accepted the Bull of Innocent X. if
sanctioned by a council; it would be going beyond 1682, back to Luther;
that is to say, to open heresy, and to the entire abandonment of the
church, our mother.
How can M. Döllinger not see this? He who in 1832, at Munich, where the
encyclical of Gregory XVI. reached M. de Lamennais, insisted with the
latter, with all his force as a theologian, that he should submit to the
pontifical encyclical, which, in the doctor’s eyes, was binding on
conscience, although no council had adhered to it—how can he now, in his
own case, resist the decisions of Pius IX. and the Council of the Vatican?
He who has written so many works of grave learning, and in particular that
one on _The Church and the Churches_, how comes it that he does not see
that he is no longer in the church, and that he is seeking a shelter for
his revolt in the smallest, the poorest, and the most dilapidated of those
churches of a day which, in the name of history, he has so severely
condemned? How can he find himself at ease and his soul tranquil in those
ridiculous conventicles of Munich and of Cologne, by the side of Michelis,
of Reinkens, Friedrich, Schulte, the ex‐abbé Michaud, the ex‐father
Hyacinthe, and surrounded by Jansenist and Anglican bishops, by Protestant
and schismatic ministers, by rationalists of all colors? How comes it that
his faith and his learning are not shocked when brought into the midst of
that confusion of doctrines and of tongues, and of ignorance of all kinds,
which rendered the Congress of Cologne so notorious; that congress whereat
the question was discussed “of the reunion of the old Catholics with the
other churches having affinity of faith,” which means with all the sects
separated from Rome, to the exclusion of the great universal church of S.
Augustine, S. Thomas, Pascal, Descartes, Bossuet, Fénelon, de Maistre,
Lacordaire, of the eight hundred bishops of the council, and of the
sainted Pontiff Pius IX.? How can he, a man of learning, a priest,
advanced in years, on the brink of eternity, prefer to put himself under
the pastoral crook and the jurisdiction of the Jansenist Archbishop of
Utrecht, or of a schismatic Armenian bishop, and fraternize with the
Anglican bishops of Lincoln, Ely, and Maryland, rather than remain an
humble priest, but proud of that Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church whose
admirable unity bursts forth in the midst of the vast persecution which is
being begun and prepared for her, and of which the Provost of Munich
consents to be the guilty instrument?
This closes my parenthetical remarks on Dr. Döllinger and the Old
Catholics, who are in reality merely old Jansenists and very old
Protestants, and I come back to M. von Bismarck and to his policy.
Prince von Bismarck and the governments of Germany have no occasion to
trouble themselves about the question of settling whether infallibility
attaches to the Pope speaking _ex cathedrâ_, or to the Pope united to the
council; these are all dogmatic theses with which they have no concern.
The pretext got up by politics for trespassing on the domain of religious
faith is the following: The politicians allege that the declaration of the
council has conferred upon the Pope a _new authority_, that this authority
is _absolute_ and _unlimited_, and that this state of things affects the
relations between the church and the state, which is thereby thrown upon
its defence against possible usurpation. The Emperor of Germany, in a
conversation which he recently had at Ems with M. Contzen, the courageous
Burgomaster of Aix‐la‐Chapelle, brought out this singular idea of the
politicians when he alleged “that the church, by proclaiming the dogma of
infallibility, had declared war to the state.”
How can this be? In what respect does the question of the infallibility of
the church touch the relations between the church and the state?
The declaration of the Vatican Council is not new; it belongs almost
textually to the Council of Florence when it proclaimed the faith which
had existed for centuries; it is ancient; all, or nearly all, the bishops
at the late council were agreed, and are now all agreed, as to the ground
of the doctrine; they were only divided on the question of opportuneness,
and Mgr. the Bishop of Orléans, in his pastoral letter of assent, declared
that he has always professed the doctrine which had been proclaimed.
Nothing, then, has been changed, and church and state remain in precisely
the same situation of reciprocal independence in their distinct spheres,
and of harmony in their relations, in which they were before the council.
Some either imagine, through most admirable ignorance, or hypocritically
make show of believing, that the pontifical infallibility is a _personal_
privilege, in this sense, that it is conferred _on a person who cannot err
in anything_, that the Pope is infallible in all that he says and in
everything; that he could lay upon the faithful the obligation of
believing any decision that he might proclaim whether in the exclusive
domain of science or in the exclusive domain of politics, where faith is
not at all involved.
The object of infallibility is the doctrine of the faith and of the
revealed law. The church has the deposit of revelation, of the Holy
Scriptures, and of tradition; the Pope is its supreme guardian; the
evangelical promise of infallibility is nothing else than the promise of
_fidelity_ in the custody of this sacred deposit! When the Pope or the
council united to the Pope declares that a truth is contained in the
deposit of revelation, they do not invent matter, they repeat and discern;
they do not create a new truth, they confirm an old one, and cause new
light to beam from it.
Infallibility is, then, not personal in the absurd sense in which the word
is used; neither is it absolute and without limits; its domain, which is
that of faith and morals, is clearly marked out by the constitution of the
Vatican Council. “According to the perfectly clear text of the decree,”
say the Prussian bishops who met at Fulda in 1871, “all allusion to the
domain of politics is completely excluded from the definition of this
dogma.” His Eminence Cardinal Antonelli, in his despatch of the 19th of
March, 1870, to the Nuncio at Paris, is even more precise. “Political
affairs belong,” he says, “according to the order of God and the teachings
of the church, to the province of the secular authority, _without any
dependence whatever_ on any other.”
But, as between the secular power and the church, relations are necessary,
these are settled by the two authorities through arrangements or
concordats.
I allow myself to call Prince von Bismarck’s attention to this point.
Positive relations between the church and states have been settled by
concordats only; always, at all periods of history, the popes alone have
negotiated concordats with the states; pontifical infallibility has
absolutely no connection with concordats, and the Pope when he signs them
does not speak _ex cathedrâ_ and as supreme doctor of the church. How,
then, can the declaration of the council have changed the relations
between the church and governments, and how can the church, by proclaiming
the dogma of infallibility, be said to have declared war to the state?
It is, then, a mere matter of pretext. In point of fact, it is the German
Empire which is laying claim to absolute and unlimited power in the domain
of religion as well as in the domain of politics; it examines and judges
dogmas, intrudes itself into ecclesiastical discipline; it closes the
priest’s mouth in his pulpit—by the lex Lutziana; it closes Catholic
colleges and schools; it forbids religious to preach, to hear confessions,
and even to celebrate Mass; it forbids the bishops to canonically exclude
from the bosom of the church those who openly separate themselves
therefrom; it banishes, for no crime, without trial and in bodies, the
religious orders, in the same way that Louis XIV. (though he could give
better reasons) drove the Huguenots from the soil of France; it favors
schism, and aims at establishing a national church. It is, then, the
German state _which is declaring war to the church_, and which is raising
claim to political and religious infallibility by founding a veritable
civil theocracy.
Let us put aside the pretext, which can in no wise serve either for the
justification or for the explanation of the conduct of the government of
Berlin. Let us examine the real motives which governed that conduct, the
circumstances by which the emperor was carried away, and the fatal
temptations which deluded him.
VI.
Foremost among these reasons and temptations has been, as I have said
before, the alliance with Italy. It was the first cause, and was the
signal for the sudden change which took place in the interior policy of
the German Empire. This is evident from the fact that the political storm
burst forth during the last session of Parliament precisely upon the
occasion of a paragraph in the draft of the address got up by the national
liberal party, and which was a stone hurled at the papacy. This was taking
place at Berlin at the very hour when the Italo‐German alliance had been
concluded at Rome; the coincidence is striking, and proves that war
against the Catholic Church and her head has been made a condition of this
alliance.
The next temptation, the second blunder of Prince von Bismarck, has been
his exclusive alliance with the national liberal party, whose character I
have defined above. This alliance with pseudo‐liberalism is the corollary
of his alliance with Italy; both rest within and without on the
revolutionary and anti‐Christian principle. War on Rome and the papacy has
been the condition of the alliance with Italy; war on the Catholics in
Germany has been the condition of the alliance with the national liberal
party.
Prince von Bismarck had, for several years, met a keen resistance to his
plans from the national liberal party, while during the same period he
found a support in the conservative section of the Prussian chambers, with
whom were joined the few Catholics of note who happened to be members of
them.
To‐day he turns away from this weakened but still powerful conservative
section, and he wages the bitterest war against the centre section, which
is made up of Catholics. These two sections watch over the deposit of old
German traditions; they wish to preserve the federal and constitutional
character of the Empire, to maintain the Christian and denominational
character of the schools, and throughout the nation, religious peace.
Latterly the conservative section has become weak; it has yielded to M.
von Bismarck’s policy; but sooner or later its traditions will bring it to
the side of the section of the centre, in order that both may unite in
sustaining the historic principles of the Germanic race against the
centralizing anti‐religious policy of the national liberal party, which
represents above all else the idea of the French Revolution.
The section of the centre, which, in 1870, in point of numbers amounted in
the parliament to but very little, has seen its power increase
proportionately with the development of the pseudo‐liberal party of
centralization, of omnipotence of the state, of political levelling, and
of anti‐Christian reaction. The outrage committed on the papacy by the
Italian government gave increased energy to the Catholic movement, and the
section of the centre, which, at the time it was first organized,
consisted of fifty members only, saw its numbers increase after the
elections to more than sixty, all united together by strong convictions;
it can count to‐day nearly eighty, and it is safe to predict that, unless
the government sends into the interior, or into exile, or puts in prison
the leaders of the Catholic movement, the party of the centre will, after
the next elections, thanks to the war begun against the church, have
gained a force of more than one hundred votes, which will thus
counterbalance those of the national liberal party.
It is this growing power of the party of the centre, the fruit of M. von
Bismarck’s policy, which has impelled him to his policy of violence and
anger against the Catholic Church; he means to make the clergy, the
Jesuits, the religious orders, and the bishops pay for the political loss
of rest occasioned to him by this phalanx which is growing into a legion,
and at whose head stand such powerful leaders as Reichensperger,
Mallinckrodt, and Windthorst. The eloquent words of these orators, as in
former times those of O’Connell in England, and Montalembert in France,
spread beyond the boundaries of Germany, to arouse and stir up everywhere
all lovers of right, justice, true liberty, and the church of Jesus
Christ.
The third temptation of the German government has been the stand taken in
the Vatican Council by nearly all the bishops of Germany and of Austria.
These pious and learned prelates were all agreed, along with those of the
entire world, as to the mere ground of the doctrine; all or nearly all
were infallibilists; Josephism, Fébronianism, had been for a long time
dying, if not dead; but these same bishops were nearly all inopportunists.
This M. von Bismarck misapprehended, he believed that there was, among the
bishops in council, a real dissent as to doctrine; he imagined that the
majority of the German and Austrian bishops would separate from Rome to
follow M. Döllinger in the path of defection or of schism, through which
he is moving to his ruin. The Italian alliance and the alliance with the
national liberal party carried M. von Bismarck into hostile action against
Rome; the difference of opinion among the bishops on the question of the
opportuneness of the decision by the council led him to hope that he would
find therein the elements for a _Janist_(194) and national church.
In this he has been entirely mistaken. “He had left the Holy Spirit out of
his reckoning,” said recently to me a learned ecclesiastic of Berlin, and
I add that he had also not reckoned on the faith and virtue of the
episcopate.
Observe what is going on and how the Catholic tide is rising and
resisting. M. von Bismarck met at Sedan a splendid, courageous French
army, which, badly led and crushed by the fire of the German artillery,
was forced to capitulate; he will henceforth find in opposition to him the
Catholic populations, with their clergy and their bishops at their head,
who will rise, in the name of God and of the liberty of the church, who
will resist and never surrender.
M. von Bismarck is about to have experience of what the Catholic bishops
are and of what they can do. They will not conspire; they will not sow
rebellion and revolution; they will not join themselves to the red
international party, but they will resist and will not yield. “In this
present sad condition of things,” said the bishops met together at Fulda
in April, 1872, “we will fulfil our duty by not disturbing the peace
between the church and the state.” “As Christians,” said the learned
Bishop of Paderborn, in his touching address to the exiled Jesuits—“as
Christians, we can oppose neither force nor overt resistance to the
measures of governmental authority. Albeit such measures seem to us
iniquitous and unjustifiable, we may only meet them by that passive
resistance which our divine Master Jesus Christ has taught us by his words
and example; that silence, calm and full of dignity; that patience,
tranquil and resigned, but abounding in hope; that loving prayer which
heaps burning coals on the heads of our persecutors.”
Such is the admirable language of the German bishops, as it fell from the
lips of the Archbishop of Cologne, Mgr. von Droste‐Vischering, on the very
day preceding that on which he was led captive by a guard of soldiers to
the fortress of Minden. The calm and intrepid Bishop of Ermeland is
deprived of his salary and injured in his authority; he is marked out for
punishment, and he awaits the coming of the soldiers with the fetters to
bind him.
I cannot recall the venerated name of Mgr. Krementz without adding to it
the illustrious one of Mgr. Mermillod, whom all Europe will continue to
address as Bishop of Hebron and Geneva, despite that decision of the
council of state which forbids him to exercise any function whatever,
whether as bishop or as curate, and which cuts him off from all salary.
Here, then, we have this _republican_ and _liberal_ Switzerland
suppressing the Jesuits and all cognate religious orders, the brothers of
the schools, the sisters of charity; closing seminaries, as at Soleure,
because the moral theology of S. Liguori was taught there; unseating
bishops, as at Geneva; and the people that do these things are yet
shameless enough to talk of liberty, while all the speech‐makers of
liberalism, whose hair stands erect at the mention of the revocation of
the Edict of Nantes, and who dinned the world with their clamors in the
young Mortara case, cannot find a single word of liberality, not a single
protest, not a single expression of indignation, to stigmatize these
unheard‐of outrages against all liberties at once, and against all the
rights of human conscience.
I have just been adverting to the passive resistance of the bishops in
Germany; but the lay movement, which is kept strictly within the law, is
less passive, less resigned, and is somewhat inflamed by politics. The
reaction against the unwarranted persecution set on foot a year ago is
breaking out everywhere. A committee of direction has been formed at
Mainz, whose business is to centralize the legal resistance of German
Catholics for the defence of religious liberty thus threatened and
assailed. This committee, in their address dated in July last, call upon
the Catholics of Germany to a crusade in opposition to the aggressions of
the government. “We claim,” says this address, “for our creed that liberty
and independence guaranteed to it by the constitution; and under the
device, _For God and our Country_, we will fight to the last for the
maintenance of our rights.” This address is signed by some of the most
illustrious names of Germany, foremost among which I may mention those of
Count Felix de Löe, of Baron de Frankenberg, of Count C. de Stolberg, and
of the Prince of Isenburg.
A numerous meeting of Catholics voted to send the Archbishop of Munich an
address praising him for his firmness and encouraging him in the contest
which he is maintaining. At Breslau, a Catholic Congress has just
assembled with great _éclat_. All the Catholic men of note in Germany were
present at it. Vent was therein given to the most energetic complaints and
the most indignant protests, resolutions of great firmness were adopted, a
new impulse was given to all those associations which, like that of S.
Boniface, of S. Charles Borromeo, and of Pius IX., have multiplied on
German soil works of teaching and of charity; powerful preparations were
in this congress made for resistance, while confiding in their rights and
in God.
While the Catholic laity were thus meeting and organizing at Breslau and
at Mainz, the bishops were quietly deliberating at Fulda, presided over by
the Archbishop of Cologne, who is mindful of his illustrious predecessor,
Clement Augustus. There, as the apostles of old in the _cenaculum_, they
tarry in prayer, and they will come forth with a confidence and a courage
such as have overcome adversaries far more powerful than the Prince von
Bismarck.
VII.
The old _régime_, before it died out, made trial of rebellion against the
church. Frederick the Great was certainly as able as M. von Bismarck; he
had the world at his feet, and the church in Germany, infected with the
doctrines of Fébronius, was apparently in the pangs of death. The last act
recorded in history of the then three ecclesiastical electors of Mayence,
Cologne, and Trèves had been to meet with the Archbishop of Salzburg,
Primate of Germany, for the purpose of drawing up the _Punctuations of
Ems_ (1786), which were a code of rebellion against the Holy See. What a
contrast with the present assembling of the German bishops at Fulda! These
servile _Punctuations of Ems_ were beginning to be carried out, when the
armies of the French Republic came down and inflicted upon the authors of
them the punishment they deserved.
Every one knows about Pombal, Choiseul, and Charles III., who confined the
Jesuits within certain territorial limits, drove them away, cast them into
prison, or sent them into exile, pretty much in the same way as M. von
Bismarck is doing.
The power which did all this was swallowed up by the French Revolution.
This revolution, _satanic_, to use M. de Maistre’s term, _out and out
anti‐Christian_, as M. de Tocqueville calls it, in its turn drove out,
exiled, put to death, whether in the massacre of September, the drownings
of the Loire, by the axe of the guillotine or the dagger of ruffians, the
priests, Jesuits, and religious whom the old régime had spared.
But this sanguinary revolution went down in the slough of the Directory,
and Napoleon put an end to it.
That extraordinary man perceived that persecution wounds the hand which
uses it; he sought to make peace with the church; he reopened the
churches, recalled the priests and the bishops, and signed the concordat.
This was the great epoch of his reign: Ulm, Austerlitz, and Jena.
But the potent emperor, intoxicated by glory and by pride, having become
master of the world, thought he would be master of the church as well; his
rule was over bodies, he sought to extend it over souls; which is the
dream of all founders of empire. He stretched out his hand to the States
of the Church, and annexed them to the French Empire; for which he was
excommunicated by that gentle Pope Pius VII. He seized the pope, bore him
away from Rome into exile at Savona and at Fontainebleau, and he found
that under the lamb‐like exterior of his victim there beat the heart of a
lion. He summoned together the council of 1811, thinking that it would be
an easy matter to form a national church of which he would be Supreme
Pontiff.
This took place in 1811. The next year brought the campaign of 1812, to be
followed by the events of 1813 and 1814; Leipsic, Elba, Waterloo, and the
rock of St. Helena last of all.
There is another example nearer to our times, upon which I have looked as
a witness, and which I submit for the meditations of the Emperor of
Germany.
King William I. of Orange fell into precisely the same blunder which
William IV. is now repeating. He ruled over the beautiful kingdom of the
Netherlands, so easy for him to maintain, and which through his mistakes
was broken up. He, too, sought to constitute national unity through unity
of language and of religion. So he suppressed, in 1825, the Catholic
schools and colleges in Belgium, drove out the Jesuits and the brothers of
the Christian schools, founded at Louvain the Philosophic College in which
the clergy of the future national church were to be trained, violated the
right to teach and of association, prosecuted the Bishop of Ghent, Mgr. de
Broglie, got him condemned, and he was pilloried, in effigy, on a public
square of Ghent, between two felons. This reckless and blind policy
excited in Belgium a movement of resistance similar to that which we
remark at the present moment in Germany. Five years later, in 1830, the
Catholic liberal union was brought about, and every one knows the events
to which it gave birth.
This much is matter of history. The German persecution is a trial for the
church and for Catholics, but it will also bear with it the salvation
which a trial properly borne always brings. Two results will come out of
this trial: the Catholic Church, which they mean to weaken or prostrate,
will, as always heretofore, come out of the contest more united and more
powerful; Protestantism, in whose name the persecution is set on foot,
will be mortally wounded by it, and will see its dissolution hastened;
pseudo‐liberalism, which will have played the part of intolerance and
persecution, will be unmasked, and all the friends of a prudent and
sincere liberty will make their reconciliation with the persecuted, one
with that great Catholic Church, ever militant, ever attacked, sometimes a
martyr, but which ever in the end comes out triumphant over these trials
which temper her anew, purify her, and add to her greatness. The world
will understand that in trials such as she is now going through in Germany
she is fighting for the liberty of the conscience of the human race.
Governments, and in particular great empires founded on force, look upon
the independence of the universal church with feelings of jealousy and
impatience; the idea of a national church has always been a favorite and a
pleasing one with despotisms, because it promises them a servile
instrument to carry out their designs. But when the church is subject to
the state, there can be no church. The high level of the consciences of
the people sinks as freedom disappears. The true and divine church can be
contained within no boundaries and in no nationality; it is the spiritual
kingdom of consciences and of souls; from the independence of the church,
the independence of consciences and souls derives its life. If the church
is under the yoke of the state, all consciences must suffer like
subjection. The world will at last comprehend that national churches, that
is, churches in subjection, can have only enslaved souls as followers, and
that there can be no freedom for the conscience of man, except upon the
sole condition of the independence of a church, accountable, not to any
human power, but to God.
Will the persecution which has been begun be kept up with the same
tenacity and violence which the Prince von Bismarck now displays? I fear
less from it for the church than for himself and the German emperor, whose
good sense, uprightness, and religious conscience must feel out of place
in the midst of a policy so _outrée_, revolutionary, anti‐Christian, and
anti‐constitutional, so contrary to his instincts, his natural
disposition, and his antecedents. “It cannot be,” said M. A.
Reichensperger, “that a monarch, crowned with the laurels of victory,
after having achieved external peace through the courage and the fidelity
of the _entire_ German nation, will authorize the persecution of millions
of Germans on account of their faith, and consent to destroy internal
peace—that peace which in particular is the work of his royal brother,
whose memory is still blessed by all Catholics.”
I add my prayer and my hope to the prayer and the hope of the great German
patriot and orator, but I confess that his fears, which are greater than
his hopes, are felt by me also, and to like extent. The times are gloomy.
“The deluge is drawing nigh; but on the waters I see the ark of the
church,” said Count de Montalembert. “She will ride it out, she will live,
and will preside at the funeral of the very powers that thought to have
prepared her own.”
Let Prince Bismarck not forget the words recently uttered by Pius IX. at
one of those allocutions so sublimely eloquent and touchingly holy in
spirit, which, from his prison in the Vatican he addresses to the world.
He was addressing German Catholics, and he told them: “Be confident, be
united; for a stone will fall from the mountain, and will shatter the feet
of the Colossus. If God wills that other persecutions arise, the church
does not fear them; on the contrary, she becomes stronger thereby, and she
purifies herself, because even in the church there are things that need to
be purified, and nothing contributes more thereto than the persecutions
exercised on her by the great ones of the earth.”
Prince von Bismarck may perhaps have smiled on reading these words fallen
from the lips of the Pontiff Pius IX.; if so, he is sadly mistaken; those
old popes who are imprisoned and exiled, but who, to use the profound
expression of the Count de Maistre, _always come back_, are also gifted
with the command of words which are “as burning coals heaped upon the
heads of their persecutors.” The Emperor Napoleon I., too, smiled at the
excommunication hurled at him by Pope Pius VII., then weak and disarmed,
and his complete ruin followed shortly after. I advise the prince
chancellor to bear in mind the stone falling from the mountain and
breaking the feet of the Colossus. I had myself, in my book published in
1860, ventured to refer to that same passage of Scripture: “That splendid
figure,” I said, “which Daniel sets before us of kingdoms WITH FEET PART
OF IRON AND PART OF CLAY, and of the church, _that stone, cut out of a
mountain, without hands, which broke in pieces the kingdoms_, and _became
a great mountain_, and filled _the whole earth_—that figure has its
application in every age, and should stand for all Christians as a hope
amid trials and a teaching to all the proud.”
A Christmas Memory.
God did anoint thee with his odorous oil
To wrestle, not to reign; and he assigns
All thy tears over like pure crystallines
For younger fellow‐workers of the soil
To wear for amulets.
E. B. BROWNING.
No more brilliant party ever assembled for Christmas festivities in
Northern Vermont than that which met on such an occasion, very early in
this century, at the home of a young lawyer in the beautiful little
village of Sheldon, since widely renowned for the efficacy of its healing
waters.
The host and hostess were from families who came among the first settlers
to Vermont. The company was gathered from all parts of the new and
sparsely settled state, with a sprinkling of students who were completing
their legal course at the famous law‐school of Judge Reeves, in
Litchfield, Conn.—of which their host was a graduate—and of young ladies
and gentlemen from different places in Massachusetts and Connecticut.
Several of these young ladies were passing the winter with acquaintances
in Sheldon, and the whole country from the “Province Line” (and even
beyond it) to St. Alban’s was made merry with a succession of gay parties,
sleigh‐rides, dinners, suppers, and dances given in their honor. Even the
sequestered hamlets of Richford and Montgomery, nestled among their own
green hills, did not escape the general hilarity, but were startled from
their quiet decorum, and resounded with a merriment which awakened
unwonted echoes in their peaceful valleys.
Among the guests at this Christmas festival was a young lady of Vermont,
Miss Fanny A——, whose fair form rises before us as we write from the dim
mists of childhood’s earliest memories—a vision of gentle dignity and
youthful loveliness which time has no power to efface.
Though some years younger than the lady of the house, she was her very
dear and intimate friend, and was now passing a few weeks with her. Her
queenly manners, the silver ripple of her low, sweet voice in the flow of
a conversation which held her listeners spell‐bound, as it were, by its
clear and impressive utterances, bore witness to her familiarity with the
most refined circles of city and country society, and the high culture of
her splendid intellect.
Other circumstances, as will be seen, combined with her personal charms at
this time to make her the centre of interest and attraction wherever she
appeared.
She was the youngest daughter of a Green Mountain hero whom Vermont most
delights to honor. Her father died when she was too young to realize her
loss. Some years later, her mother—from whom she inherited her remarkable
beauty and graceful dignity—married a most amiable man, who was capable of
appreciating the rich treasure she committed to his charge in the person
of her young daughter. Every advantage the country offered was secured to
develop and polish the gem of which he was inexpressibly proud, and over
which he watched with a solicitude as tender as her own father could have
exercised.
At that time, the gay society in New England was strongly tinctured with
the species of infidelity introduced and fostered by the writings of
Thomas Paine and his disciples, among whom Fanny’s father had been
conspicuous. Her step‐father was not of that school, but he detested the
cant and Puritanism of the only religious people he had ever
known—regarding them as pretensions of which even those who adopted them
were often the unconscious dupes. He had never been drawn within reach of
better influences, then exercised only by the Protestant Episcopal Church
in Vermont, to rescue intelligent thinkers from the grasp of infidelity.
He conducted the education of his gifted daughter, therefore, with the
most scrupulous care to avoid entirely all considerations of religion in
any form. When her active and earnest mind would peer beyond the veil he
had so carefully drawn between its pursuits and the interests of eternity,
and send her to startle him with some question touching those interests
which he could only answer by evasive ridicule, or an emphatic request
that she would refrain from troubling her head about such matters, she
would retire to ponder within herself, even while striving to obey her
earthly father, the higher obligations imposed by One in heaven. Light and
wisdom from above soon illuminated the soul that surrendered itself a
willing victim before the altar of eternal truth. She was led by a divine
hand, through paths she knew not, to a temple of which she had scarcely
heard, and, while still living among those to whom the Catholic religion
was entirely unknown, entered its portals to find herself—scarcely less to
her own astonishment than to the amazement and horror of her devoted
parents—a Catholic, as firmly established and steadfastly resolved as if
she had been born and educated in the faith!
The grief and indignation of her parents knew no bounds. They looked upon
it as a most disgraceful infatuation. Peremptorily imposing silence upon
her in relation to the subject, they determined to suppress it, if
possible, until every means had been used to divert her mind from the
fatal delusion.
All the wiles and artifices of the gayest and most fashionable circles in
various American cities to which she was taken, were exhausted in vain to
captivate her youthful fancy and deliver her soul from its mysterious
thraldom. In vain the ardent addresses of devoted admirers—who were
destined in the near future to be the brightest ornaments the bench and
bar of their state could boast—were laid at her feet. In vain were all
those worldly allurements, generally so irresistible to the young, spread
before her. Her soul turned steadfastly away from each bewitching
enticement, to solace itself with thoughts of the humble sanctuary in
Montreal, where the weary bird had found a place in which she might build
her nest, even within the tabernacle of thy house, O Lord of hosts!
In the autumn preceding the Christmas festival of which I write, the
ramblers had returned from their fruitless wanderings. Fanny’s parents,
discouraged and discomfited, resolved at this crisis to enlist the zeal of
a few very intimate friends in their cause, by disclosing to them the
great and unaccountable calamity which had befallen their child.
Among those whom they earnestly entreated to aid them in efforts to
extricate her from the grasp of the great deceiver, was the lady with whom
she was now passing the weeks of the early winter. A Connecticut
Episcopalian of the High‐Church stamp, she occupied what they playfully
called a “half‐way house,” at which they hoped she would be able to
persuade Fanny to stop. She invited several gay young ladies to meet and
enliven Fanny’s visit, but took the greatest pains to conceal from them
the religious tendencies of her beautiful guest. She entered with great
zeal upon every scheme for winter pastimes, in the hope of diverting the
mind of her young friend from its absorbing theme. In their private
conversations, she exhausted every argument to convince Fanny that the
Episcopal Church offered all the consolations for which her soul was
yearning. In vain, in vain! She who had been called to drink from the
fountain‐head could not slake her thirst with draughts from scattered
pools, which brought no refreshment to her fainting spirit. Vain also were
the precautions used for concealment. Suspicions soon arose among her
young companions that there was something wrong with Fanny. A rosary had
been partially revealed as she drew her kerchief from her pocket. Worse
still, a crucifix had been discovered under her pillow! Here were proofs
of superstition indeed, of rank idolatry in unmistakable form, and no one
knows to what unimaginable extent! Then it began to be whispered around
the admiring and compassionate circle that she had not only taken the
first step on the downward road, but was even now contemplating the still
more fatal and final one of religious immolation!
It was their apprehension of this direful result which imparted a new and
melancholy interest in their eyes to all her words and actions. Though she
maintained a modest reserve upon the subjects dearest to her heart, they
thought they could discover some mysterious connection with these in every
expression she uttered.
On several occasions, the most adventurous of her companions endeavored to
penetrate the silence that sealed her lips in regard to her religious
convictions, by direct questions, and, when these failed, by ridicule of
such “absurd superstitions”; but to no purpose. Her nearest approach to
any satisfactory remark was in reply to one of these questions: “It is
impossible to convey any clear idea to your mind, in its present state,
concerning these matters. Your opinions are founded upon prejudice, and
your prejudices are the result of your entire ignorance in relation to
them. If you really desire to be better informed, you need, first of all,
to pray with humility for light and guidance, and then seek for knowledge.
If you do this with sincerity, you will surely be instructed, and ‘know of
the doctrine’; but, if you refuse to take this first step, all the
teaching in the world will be of no avail. ‘They have Moses and the
prophets; let them hear them. If they believe not Moses and the prophets,
neither would they believe though one should come to them from the
dead.’ ”
She rebuked ridicule with such calm dignity that it was soon abandoned,
one of her assailants, a very lively young lady, remarking one day: “It is
astonishing to see how terribly in earnest Fanny is! She certainly
believes in the Catholic religion with all her heart, though how a person
with her extensive information and splendid talents can receive such
absurdities is a puzzle to common sense!”
But her severe trials were in her home. Her parents were unutterably
grieved when she persisted in accepting the Catholic faith. This further
determination to forsake those who had so fondly loved and tenderly
cherished her, and who were so justly proud of the use she had made of the
opportunities for improvement which their solicitude had secured for her,
was beyond all human endurance.
If she had been the victim of adversity or of disappointed hopes, there
might have been some excuse; but that the idol of doting parents should
abandon her elegant home to the desolation in which her departure would
enshroud it, and turn from all the advantages that wealth, position, and
the homage of society could offer—dashing to the ground on the very
threshold of life the brilliant prospects which were opening before
her—was worse than madness! They complained bitterly to her of her
ingratitude and heartless disregard of their feelings and wishes; poured
unmeasured and contemptuous reproaches upon her for stifling the modest
womanly instincts of her refined and delicate nature, to strike out boldly
upon a new road hitherto untrodden by any woman of New England.
Remonstrances, pleading, reproaches, and contempt were alike unavailing.
Listening only to the persuasions of that “invisible Lover” whose voice
had called her to relinquish the seductive charms which surrounded her
worldly course, she turned away from them steadfastly to follow him and
carry his cross up the steep and thorny paths of penance and self‐
abnegation, offering herself entirely to him on the Calvary made glorious
to her by his precious blood.
Not “immediately,” however, like those whom he called of old, did she
“leave the ship and her father, to follow him.” Weary years of waiting and
yearning, far from the tabernacles where her soul had chosen its home, did
she accord in tender regard for the feelings of those, so truly and deeply
beloved, who could not give her up, and who had no clue by which to trace
the course her spirit was taking, or power even to conjecture the motives
that actuated her.
When at length the time arrived to which they had consented to limit her
stay with them, who shall describe the pangs that rent her heart in a
parting so full of grief; in severing these nearest and dearest ties, and
in witnessing the anguish which overwhelmed those around whom her
tenderest earthly affections were entwined?
Alone, but full of peace, “leaning on the arm of her Beloved,” did she
tread the painful path. Her parents could not accompany her to witness the
sacrifice which prostrated their fondest hopes, nor could they ever bring
themselves to visit her in the sanctuary she had chosen.
Her Sheldon friend did so repeatedly, and was amazed to find her radiant
with a joy which her countenance had never before revealed—happy in the
peaceful home that offered only poverty and an unceasing round of labors
in the service of the sick and suffering, with a happiness which the
splendors of her worldly one could never impart.
Multitudes of New England people visiting Montreal flocked to the convent,
begging to see the lovely young nun of the Hôtel Dieu, who was the first
daughter New England had given to the sacred enclosure, and whom they
claimed as belonging especially to them through her connection with their
favorite Revolutionary hero.
So continual were these interruptions that she was driven at length to
obtain the permission of the mother‐superior absolutely to decline
appearing in answer to such calls, except when they were made by the
friends of former days, for whom she still preserved and cherished the
liveliest affection.
By a singular coincidence—or rather, let us say, through tender memories
of the gentle nun long since departed from the Hôtel Dieu, and the
prevailing efficacy of her prayers—a large proportion of those who were
present at the Christmas party at Sheldon, including the mistress of the
feast and many of her family, were, from time to time as years flew by,
received into the bosom of the Holy Catholic Church.
And so does our gracious and mighty Mother, “ever ancient, ever new,” win
her triumphs, one by one, perpetually through all the ages—wins them often
in the face, nay, even perforce, of circumstances apparently the most
directly opposed to her influence; accomplishes them by means so weak and
simple as would seem, according to all human reasoning, utterly
inadequate. In countries far remote from her gentle influence, one is
called—we hardly know how or why—in this place, another in that, as if the
words of our divine Lord found their fulfilment even in this: “Two shall
be in the field: one shall be taken, and one shall be left. Two women
shall be grinding at the mill: one shall be taken, and one shall be left.”
And every soul thus called to launch its eternal interests upon the ocean
of infinite truth must encounter much the same appalling trials, be
haunted by the same startling doubts and dark forebodings. Over the sunken
rocks of heresy and unbelief along this coast the billows break with a
force that affrights the stoutest heart, and many a would‐be voyager
shrinks back dismayed before their power; but once pluck up heart of grace
to pass the foaming barrier, in the mid‐ocean all is “peace, and joy
unspeakable, and full of glory.”
We cannot more fitly conclude this little sketch of a real event than by a
quotation from Montalembert’s closing chapter on the “Anglo‐Saxon Nuns”:
“Is this a dream, the page of a romance? Is it only history—the history of
a past for ever ended? No; once more it is what we behold and what happens
amongst us every day.... Who, then, is this invisible Lover, dead upon a
cross eighteen hundred years ago, who thus attracts to him youth, beauty,
and love?—who appears to them clothed with a glory and a charm which they
cannot withstand?—who seizes on the living flesh of our flesh, and drains
the purest blood of our blood? Is it a man? No; it is God. There lies the
secret, there the key of this sublime and sad mystery. God alone could win
such victories and deserve such sacrifices. Jesus, whose godhead is
amongst us daily insulted or denied, proves it daily, with a thousand
other proofs, by those miracles of self‐denial and self‐devotion which are
called vocations. Young and innocent hearts give themselves to him, to
reward him for the gift he has given us of himself; and this sacrifice by
which we are crucified is but the answer of human love to the love of that
God who was crucified for us.”
The House That Jack Built.
By The Author Of “The House Of Yorke.”
In Two Parts.
PART II.
Concluded.
Late in the afternoon, Bessie went down and leaned on the bars again,
looking up and down the road, looking at the tracks left by Father
Conners’ carriage‐wheels—the smooth curve of their turning; looking to see
the shadows creep across the road as the sun went down. The sadness of a
lonely evening was upon her, and, though she had not lost her morning
resolution, she had lost the joyous hopefulness with which those
resolutions were made.
At her left, and quite near, a fringe of young cedars made a screen
between the ground that belonged to her house and the farmer next to it,
where her uncle Dennis had lived when John Maynard had wooed and won her.
Pain came with that recollection, and almost the old bitterness. “I must
go home again, and put my resolutions in practice right away, or I shall
lose them,” she said to herself. “It won’t do for me to stay here and
brood over my troubles. I cannot bear loneliness; and how terribly lonely
it is here! I wish I had some one to speak to besides poor Aunt Nancy.”
She started, hearing a soft, clear whistling not far away. The strain was
familiar, not to this region, but to her city life. While she listened,
the sound ceased, or rather broke off suddenly.
Bessie’s eyes were wide open, her face flushed. Was there more than one
person who could whistle so marvellously clearly and sweetly?
Some one began to sing then more sweetly still, and coming nearer while he
sang words written by the most melodious of poets:
“Hark! a lover, binding sheaves,
To his maiden sings;
Flutter, flutter go the leaves,
Larks drop their wings.
Little brooks, for all their mirth,
Are not blithe as he!
‘Tell me what the love is worth
That I give thee.’
“Speech that cannot be forborne
Tells the story through:
‘I sowed my love in with the corn,
And they both grew.
Count the world full wide of girth,
And hived honey sweet;
But count the love of more worth
Laid at thy feet.
“ ‘Money’s worth is house and land,
Velvet coat and vest!
Work’s worth is bread in hand,
Ay, and sweet rest.
Wilt thou learn what love is worth?
Ah! she sits above,
Sighing, ’Weigh me not with earth.
Love’s worth is love!’ ”
The singer had come yet more near, and would have been visible to her had
not Bessie Maynard’s looks been downcast and her head drooping low. When
the song ended, and the step paused, she lifted her eyes, and saw James
Keene standing before her smiling and waiting for the greeting she was so
slow to give.
Surprise, and perhaps fear, deprived Bessie for a moment of her self‐
possession. “What! you here!” she exclaimed, without the least sign of
courtesy; and with that exclamation broke down the barrier of silence that
had existed between them.
“Why should I not be here?” he asked quietly. “May not I also have
memories connected with this place? It was here I recovered health, after
an illness that nearly cost me my life. It was here I shot my first bear.
And it was here I first saw you.”
Bessie perceived at once that, if the old reserve was to be maintained,
she must immediately assume an air of decisive politeness. For an instant
she wavered. Silence may be best for those who are doubtful of themselves,
and, not willing to commit any flagrant wrong, are still not resolved to
be absolutely honest. But when we are strong in the determination to be
sincere, and to let the light of day shine not only on our actions, but on
our inmost thoughts, then, perhaps, by speech we may most nobly and
effectually establish our position.
Bessie Maynard, therefore, waited for the words which would give her an
opportunity to put an end to the tacit and vague understanding existing
between them.
He read her silence rightly; it was a command for him to speak; and he
obeyed it, though the pale face and large, downcast lids gave little hope
of any such answer as he might wish to receive.
“In those old days, so long ago, when I came here to try what a half‐
savage life would do for me, and was astonished to find a delicate human
flower in the wilderness, I was a prophet.”
He leaned on the cedar bar that separated them, and looked dreamily off
toward the woods. He would not surprise in her face any involuntary
expression she might wish to conceal from him; he would take advantage of
no impulse. If she came to him, she must come deliberately. For, setting
aside Christianity—and he did not pretend to believe in it—James Keene had
an exceptionally honorable nature. He would gladly have taken this woman
away from a husband who, he believed, knew not how to value her, and who
made her miserable by his neglect, but he held that it would be no wrong
for him to do so.
“Yes, I was a prophet,” he continued; “for I believed then, what I am sure
of now, that your marriage was a most unwise one. Give me credit, Bessie,
for having been sincerely pained to see that, as years passed away, you
had reason to come to the same conclusion. Whatever selfish wishes I may
have had, I would at any time have renounced them could I have seen you
happy with the man you chose to marry, knowing no other.”
Bessie lifted her eyes, and looked at him with a steady, tearful gaze.
“People might say that you are wicked to speak so to me,” she said; “but I
think that, according to your belief, you are very good; only you have no
faith in religion. I esteem you so highly that I am going to make a
confession which, perhaps, you may think I ought not to make. There have
been times during these last few years when, if I had not had some little
lingering faith, I would have welcomed from you an affection which I have
no right to receive. There have been times when you might have spoken as
lovingly as you could, and I should not have been angry. I tell you this
partly because you must have at least suspected that it was so. And more
than this. If I had seen you here a few days ago, my impulse would have
been to welcome you more ardently than I ever yet welcomed any friend. You
can understand how it all has been, without my explaining. I was so
lonely, so neglected! I was so lonely!”
She had spoken with a sad earnestness, and there was something touchingly
humble yet dignified in her manner; but, at the last words, her voice
trembled and failed.
He was looking at her now. Excitement and suspense showed in the sparkling
of his clear blue eyes, in the slight flush that colored his usually pale
face, in the lips firmly compressed.
“All is changed now,” she went on. “I have been recalled to my religion,
to my duty. I do not think that you should any more show me that sympathy
which you have shown, and I do not think that you should see me
frequently. I thank you for your kindness toward me. It has often been a
comfort. But I am a wife”—she lifted herself with a stately gesture, and
for the first time a wave of proud color swept over her face—“and the
sadness which my husband may cause me no other man may ever again soothe.”
There was silence for a moment. The gentleman’s face had grown pale. There
was a boundless tenderness in his heart for this fair and sorrowful woman,
and he was about to lose the power to offer her even the slightest
comfort, while at the same time he must still retain the knowledge of her
suffering.
“I shall respect your wish and your decision,” he said, with emotion.
“Forgive me if I have trespassed too much in the past. It seemed to me
very little; for, Bessie, if I had not known that you had a religious
feeling which would have held you back, or would have made you miserable
in yielding, I should long ago have held out my hand to you, and asked you
to come to me. If I had felt sure of being able to convince you beyond the
possibility of subsequent regret, I should not have kept silence so long.
But I respect your conscience. I should esteem myself a criminal if I
could ask you to do what you believe to be wrong.”
Bessie Maynard’s face was covered with a blush of shame. Her thought had
never gone consciously beyond the length of tender, brotherly kindness,
and it was cruelly humiliating to see in its true light the position in
which she had really stood. At that moment, too, she first perceived what
a gulf lay between her soul and that of the man who had seemed always so
dangerously harmonious with her. In principle, in all that firmly
underlies the changeful tide of feeling, they were antagonistic; for he
could speak calmly and with dignity of a possibility from which she shrank
with a protesting tremor in every fibre of her being.
“I am going back to my husband,” she said, “and I shall never again forget
that his honor and dignity are mine. I have been weak and childish, and
more wicked than I knew or meant, and it all came because I loved my
husband too much and God too little. But I trust”—she clasped her hands,
and lifted her eyes—“I trust that I shall have strength to begin now a new
life, and correct the mistakes of the past.”
She forgot for a moment that she was not alone, and stood looking away, as
if there stretched before her gaze the new and loftier pathway in which
she was to tread. Her companion gazed at her unchecked, with searching,
melancholy eyes, not more because she was dearer to him in her impregnable
fortress of Christian will than she ever had been in her human weakness,
than because there rose from the depths of his restless soul a cry of
longing for that firm foundation and trust which can hold a man in the
place where conscience sets him, no matter how the tempests of passion may
beat upon his trembling heart.
“There is, then, nothing left me but to say farewell.”
The poignant regret his voice betrayed recalled her attention.
“It has come to that,” she said gently. “But if you could know all I mean
in saying farewell to you, it would not seem an idle word; for I hope and
pray that you may fare so well as to come before long into the church. It
is a refuge from every danger and every trouble, and I have only just
found it out! Good‐by.”
She gave him her hand, and they separated without another word. But Bessie
did not stop to look after this visitor. Whatever regret she might
otherwise have felt was swallowed up in the one thought—it had seemed to
him possible that she might leave, not only her husband, but her sacred,
sainted babes, and go to him! To what a depth had she fallen!
When she had disappeared in the house, he strolled slowly down the road.
Unless you had looked in his face, you would have taken him for a man who
was calmly enjoying the contemplation of nature in that forest solitude.
But from his face looked forth a spirit weary and hopeless that hastened
not, because it beheld nowhere a place worth making haste to reach. Once
only the gloom of his countenance lifted, and then it was with no cheering
brightness, but as the cloud is momentarily illuminated by angry
lightning.
A man was coming up the road, not such a man as one usually sees in these
wild places, but one who bore the marks of city training and habits. The
uniform gray clothing, the wide Panama hat, even the unobtrusive necktie,
belonged to the city. This man was taller and broader‐shouldered than he
whose eyes flashed out so scornfully at sight of him. His face was dark,
vivid, and clean‐shaven, the forehead was wide, the dark‐brown hair
closely cut, the gray eyes clear and penetrating. It was a face fitter to
carve in stone than to paint, for its color and expression were less
noticeable than its fine, strong outlines.
Yet now there shone a soft and eager light over that granite strength.
There was a look of glad surprise, mingled with a certain amused self‐
chiding, as though of one who comes back from a long and gloomy
abstraction, and finds a half‐forgotten delight still waiting at his side.
At sight of this man, James Keene’s first emotion had been one of anger,
his first impulse to meet him boldly and with scorn. But scarcely had he
taken one quickened step before he stopped, with a revulsion of feeling as
unsuspected as it was confounding. Reason as he might, emancipate himself
as he might from what he considered the superstitions of religion, he
found himself now overwhelmed with confusion. He strove to call up to his
mind all those arguments on which he had founded himself, but they fell
dead. Whether it was the instinct of a noble heart that would not betray
even an enemy, or an irradicable root of that religious faith which had
been implanted in his childhood, or the strangeness of one who for the
first time acts on principles long maintained in theory, or only a
sensitive perception of the esteem in which the faithful world would hold
his action, he could not have told. He only knew that, instead of
standing, lofty and serene, in the dawn of this new light before which
superstition and oppression were to pass away, he felt as if he were
surrounded by a baleful glare from the nether fires. Sudden and scathing,
it caught him, and burned his courage out like chaff.
In his eagerness and preoccupation, John Maynard had scarcely observed the
person who approached; and, when the stranger turned aside into a wood‐
path, he gave him no further thought.
There was the little crooked house squinting at him out of its two
windows, with the boards he had nailed, the chimney he had built, the door
he had hung; there was the whole wild, rude place, with everything askew,
that had once seemed a paradise—that had been a paradise—to him. With his
hands and eyes educated, as they were now, to the utmost precision of
outline and balance, the sight made him laugh out; and yet the laugh
expressed as much pleasure as mockery.
He was taking his first holiday since he had left this house, and
everything was delightfully fresh and novel yet familiar to him. He did
not see the beauty that a poet or a painter would have found in that
unpruned rusticity, for he was an artist of the exact; but the wabbly
frame‐house, the reeling fences, the road that wound irregularly, the
straggling trees that leaned away from the northwest, made a good
background against which to contemplate the trim and shining creatures of
his hands, regular to a hair’s breadth, unvarying and direct.
Coming to the bars, he threw himself over instead of letting them down,
and found that he had grown heavier and less lithe than he was when last
he performed that feat. He walked up the rocky path, his heart beating
fast as he thought of the old time, and of the slim, bright‐faced girl he
had brought there as a bride. If she could stand in the doorway now, as
she was then, and smile at him coming home, he felt that he could be the
old lover again. He had a vague idea that Bessie had grown older, and
sober, and pale. Come to think of it, he hadn’t known much of her lately,
and she had been dissatisfied about something. Why had she allowed him to
get his eyes and ears so full of machinery? Surely he had lost and
overlooked much. He had a mind to complain of her, only that he felt so
good‐natured.
At sound of a step, Aunt Nancy went to the door; but at that sound Bessie
took her sewing, and bent over it. Had James Keene repented their hasty
parting?
“Does Miss Bessie Ware live here?” asked the gentleman, with immense
dignity.
“Bessie Ware?” repeated Aunt Nancy, in bewilderment; then, as the
recollection of Bessie’s confessions flashed into her mind, she stiffened
herself up, and answered severely: “No, sir, she does not!”
“The idea of his refusing to give her her husband’s name!” she thought
indignantly.
“Why, John!” exclaimed Bessie, over the old lady’s shoulder.
Aunt Nancy gave a cry of delight. She would at any time have welcomed John
rapturously; but his coming now made her twice glad. Of course he and
Bessie would make it all up.
The exuberance of her welcome covered, at first, the wife’s deficiency.
But when the excitement was over, and they had gone into the house,
Bessie’s coldness and embarrassment became evident.
“I am very much surprised to see you here,” she said, when her husband
looked at her. She did not pretend to be glad.
“Are you sorry?” he asked, with a laugh.
“I am too much astonished to be anything else,” she replied quietly. “What
made you come?”
John Maynard was disappointed and mortified. That for years he had met his
wife’s affectionate advances as coldly he did not seem aware. Other things
had occupied his thoughts. He did not recollect, as he had not noticed at
the time, that her manner was now just what it had long been.
Supper was over, eaten in an absent way by the husband, who glanced every
moment at his wife. He found her very lovely, though different enough from
the glad, girlish bride who had once brightened this humble room for him.
He could not understand her. Had she no recollection of those days?
She did not seem to have, indeed, for she made no reference to them by
look nor speech, but talked rapidly, and with an air of constraint, of
things nearer in time, and listened with affected interest while he told
the latest city news, and the latest news of his own work; how high the
engine spouted; of the tiny model locomotive he had built, all silver, and
gold, and fine steel; of the money he expected to make by his new patent;
of an accident that had happened in his shop—a German organist, with two
or three others, had come to look at his machinery, and got his hand
crushed in it, which would put a stop to his playing.
Bessie looked up with an expression of pain. “Poor man!” she murmured.
“How miserable he must be!”
“Yes; I was sorry for him,” the husband replied. “They say he cared for
nothing but music. His name is Verheyden.”
“Poor man!” Bessie sighed again, looking down. “Those machines are always
hurting some one.”
“It was his own fault,” the machinist said hastily. “Did he suppose that
the engine was going to stop when he put his forefinger on it? Why, that
machine would grind up an elephant, and never mismake its face. But it is
the first time any one was ever hurt by a machine of mine.”
He did not understand the glance she gave him. It was not pleasant, but
what it meant he knew not. She was thinking: “It is not the first time one
has been hurt so.”
Aunt Nancy found business elsewhere, and left the couple to themselves.
“I forgot you were coming away that day, Bessie,” her husband said
hastily, the moment they were alone. “I never thought of it till I was
five miles off, and then I concluded that you must have changed your mind,
or you would have told me not to go.”
“You know I never tell you not to go anywhere,” she replied coldly.
He colored. “But you know that I didn’t mean to have you go to the depot
alone. When I read what you wrote to Jamie, I felt sorry enough.”
In all the long years that were past, how generously would she have met an
apology like this! How quickly would she have disclaimed all sense of
injury, and even have tried to find some fault in herself! But now her
heart, with all its impulses, seemed frozen. She only gave him a glance of
surprise, and a quiet word. “There was no need of company, I knew the
way.”
There was silence. Gradually, through the deep unconsciousness and
abstraction of the man, came out incident after incident of their late
life, slight, but significant. Each had seemed a detached trifle at the
time, but now as he sat there, abashed and ill at ease, they began to show
a connection and to grow in importance. It was as when, in a thick fog,
the sailor sees dimly a black speck that may be only a floating stick, and
another, and another, till, looking sharply, as the mist grows thinner, he
finds himself caught among rocks at low tide.
John Maynard tried to throw off with a laugh the weight that oppressed
him. “Come, Bessie, let the late past go, and remember only the life we
lived here. Let’s be young people again.”
He went to her side, bent down, and would have kissed her, had she not
evaded his touch, not shyly, but with a crimson blush and a quick flash of
the eyes.
“Don’t talk nonsense, John!” she said, in a low voice that did not hide a
haughty aversion. “Let us speak of something sensible. I have been
thinking that some of our ways should be changed at home. I shall begin
with myself, and attend strictly to my religion. Besides, I am not doing
rightly in allowing James to grow up without any discipline, and I think
he should be placed in a Catholic school, where he will be taught his
duty. He is quite beyond my control.”
Her morbid humility and diffidence were gone. The feeling that had made
her give up all rights rather than ask for them did not outlive the moment
of her reconciliation with the church.
“I am willing he should go to any school you choose,” her husband replied
gravely, impressed by the change. “I suppose the boy is going on rather
too much as he likes. Do whatever you think best about it, and I will see
that he obeys.”
She thanked him gently, and continued: “I shall go to High Mass after
this, and I should be glad to have you go with me, if you are willing. It
would be a better example for James than to see you go to the shop on
Sundays. He is becoming quite lawless. We have no right to give our
children a bad example. I would be glad to have you go with me, if you
will.”
John Maynard’s face was glowing red. He felt, gently as she spoke, as if
he were having the law read to him. “I am willing to go with you, Bessie,”
he said. “I am not a Catholic, but I am not anything else.”
She thanked him again, earnestly this time, for it was a favor he had
granted her, and she knew that he would keep his word. “You are good to
promise that,” she said.
He laughed uneasily. “Have you anything else to ask?”
“I do not think of anything,” she replied, and there was silence.
The husband got up, and went to the door. The sun was sinking down the
west. He looked at the glow it made, and remembered how he had seen it
there in the days that were past, how quiet and peaceful his life had
been, how much happier, had he but known it, than in the turmoil of later
years. Then the days had been full of healthful employment, the nights of
rest and refreshment, untroubled by the feverish dreams that now swarmed
in his sleeping hours. And what was it that had made his life so happy?
What had been the motive, the delight of everything? Nothing but Bessie,
always Bessie, his help and his reward.
He turned his face, and saw her still sitting there, her head drooping,
her hands folded in her lap. Those hands caught his glance. They were pale
and thin. They looked as though she had suffered.
He went to her impulsively as his heart stirred, and put his arm about her
shoulder. “Bessie, forget the last years, and let’s be as we were in the
happy old time.”
She did not look angry; but she withdrew herself gently from him.
“John,” she said, “that is too much to expect at once. Years of pain
cannot be forgotten in a moment. When you came to‐day, you asked if Bessie
Ware lived here. She does not. The Bessie Ware you married is dead. I
scarcely know yet who or what I am. I only know that I shall try to do my
duty by you, and repair some of the faults and mistakes of the past. But,
John, I must warn you that it is harder to reconcile an estranged wife
than to win a bride.”
One piercing glance, angry and disappointed, shot from his eyes; then he
went to the outer door. He stood a moment on the threshold, then stepped
on to the greensward. Another pause, and he walked slowly back through the
garden, seeming not to know whither he went.
Aunt Nancy, anxiously awaiting signs of reconciliation, saw him wander
about aimlessly, then go and lean on a fence next the woods, his back to
the house.
She went into the front room at once. She was on John’s side now.
“Bessie,” she said decidedly, “you mustn’t stand too much on your dignity
with John. Men are stupid creatures, and do a good many hard things
without meaning or knowing; and, if they come round, it isn’t wise to keep
them waiting too long for a kind word.”
Bessie Maynard laid down the work she was pretending to do, and her hands
trembled. “I am not acting a part, Aunt Nancy,” she said, “and I cannot be
a hypocrite. I feel cold toward John. And I feel displeased when he comes
and kisses me, as if he were conferring a favor, and expects me to be
happy for that. I could not give up if I would, I ought not if I could.
There is something more required than a little sweet talk.”
A half hour passed, and still John Maynard stood motionless, with his
elbows leaning on the fence, and his head bowed. If Bessie had seen his
face, it would have reminded her of the time when he first studied
mechanics, and became so absorbed in the one subject as to be dead to all
else. But there was the difference that he studied then with a vivid
interest, and now with gloomy intentness.
An hour passed, and still he stood there; and the sun was down, and the
moon beginning to show its pearly light through the fading richness of the
gloaming. The birds had ceased singing, and there was no voice of wild
creatures in the woods. It was the hour for prayer and peace‐making.
John Maynard started from his abstraction, hearing his name spoken by some
one. “John!” said Bessie. She had been watching him for some time from the
door, and had approached slowly, step by step, unheard by him.
He turned toward her a pale, unsmiling face. “How late it is!” he said. “I
must make haste.”
She spoke hesitatingly, something doubtful and wistful in her face. “I
have been thinking that I might have received you better, when you came on
this long journey. Won’t you come in now and rest? I didn’t mean to turn
you out of the house that you made—for me.”
He turned his eyes away. “And I’ve been thinking, Bessie, that I’d better
go right back again; I can go down to the post‐office to‐night, and take
the stage to‐morrow morning.”
“You will not go!” she said.
“I should only spoil your visit,” he went on. “I don’t want you to begin
to ‘do your duty’ by me just now. I know, Bessie, that you had a good deal
to complain of; but I swear to you that I did not mean to be hard. You
know I had twenty‐five years to make up; and I was always looking for
better times. I was so blind that I was fool enough to think you would be
glad to see me here, and that we could begin over again where we began
first.”
She did not answer a word. There is something confounding in the sudden
humiliation of a man who has always been almost contemptuously dominant.
He looked at his watch. “I must make haste, or they will be in bed,” he
said. “Make some sort of an excuse to Aunt Nancy for me. And when you want
to come back, let me know, and I will meet you at the depot or come after
you.”
He started, and she walked beside him down the path to the road. He seemed
hardly able to hold his head up.
She walked nearer, and slipped her hand in his arm, speaking softly: “I
said a little while ago that the pain of years cannot be forgotten in a
moment. But I was wrong. I think it may.”
He looked at her quickly, but said nothing, and they reached the bars.
Neither made any motion to let down the pole. They leaned on it a minute
in silence.
“The fact is, Bessie,” the husband burst forth, “I’ve been like a man
possessed by an evil spirit. I’m sorry, and that is all I can say.”
“No matter, Jack! Let it all go!” his wife exclaimed, clasping her hands
on his arm, and holding it close to him. “You weren’t to blame!” (Oh!
wonderful feminine consistency!) “Let’s forget everything unpleasant, and
remember only the good. How you have had to work and study, poor, dear
Jack! You must rest now, and never get into the old drudging way again.”
Aunt Nancy raked up the fire, and put down the window, looking out now and
then at the couple who leaned on the bar below. Each time she looked,
their forms were less distinct in the twilight. “That’s just the way they
used to do fifteen years ago,” she muttered contentedly.
She sat a few minutes waiting, but they did not come in. Aunt Nancy sighed
and laughed too. “It beats all how women do change their minds,” she said.
“I did think that Bessie would hold out longer. Well, I may as well go to
bed.”
By‐and‐by she heard them come into the kitchen.
“Now, I shut the doors and windows, and you rake up the fire,” Bessie
said. “Do you remember it was always so, Jack?”
“Of course I do, little one,” was the answer. “But Aunt Nancy has got the
start of us to‐night.”
“Aunt Nancy!” repeated Bessie, in a lower voice. “I declare, Jack, I
forgot all about her.”
“I’ll warrant you did!” says Aunt Nancy to herself, rather grimly,
perhaps.
“We will be sure to keep all our good resolutions, won’t we?” Bessie said.
“All right!” says John.
The door shut softly behind them, and there were silence, and peace, and
hope in the house that Jack built.
A Retrospect.
Concluded.
Nothing of interest presented itself during the reign of Philip the Bold,
except the council held there in 1278. In 1383, the unfortunate Charles
VI., wearied with state troubles that he was so ill fitted to cope with,
fled in despair from the Louvre to Compiègne. But he was not to find peace
here more than in the busy turmoil of the city. Soon after his arrival he
was attacked with insanity; at first it was considered of no moment, the
natural consequence of a violent reaction or a weak and nervous
temperament; great pains were taken to conceal the fact from the public,
but after a time the symptoms became alarming, and it was impossible to
keep the secret. After the festivities which followed his ill‐starred
marriage with Isabeau de Bavière, the disease broke through all bounds;
everything seemed to conspire to exasperate it: the assassination of
Clisson by the Baron de Craon, the apparition of the phantom in the forest
that seized the king’s bridle and uttered the mysterious message as it
disappeared, the bal masqué when the Duke of Orleans inadvertently set
fire to the king’s Indian costume—a skin smeared with a tarry substance
and stuck all over with feathers—all these shocks, coming at short
intervals, irritated the disordered imagination to fury, and the attacks
became frequent and ungovernable. The king’s illness was imputed by
popular superstition to the malefices of Valentina of Milan, Duchess of
Orleans, who, if she lacked the power, no doubt had strong motives for
evoking the powers of darkness to destroy the king’s reason, and thereby
his authority. The demon which had taken possession of Charles’ brain does
not seem to have invaded his heart or changed the natural goodness of his
disposition. He was removed from Compiègne in one of his fits of madness,
and when some years later he re‐entered it, it was by force of arms; the
Bourguignons held the place. Charles laid siege to it; after a desperate
resistance it surrendered, and he entered in triumph; nothing however
could induce him to punish the rebels, he said there was blood enough upon
the ground, and he would take no vengeance on his subjects except by
forgiving them. Compiègne was soon to be the theatre of a more momentous
struggle than these rough skirmishes between Charles and his people.
Shortly after the mock peace signed there by Bedford, it was attacked by
the Duc de Bourgogne and the English with Montgomery at their head. Jeanne
d’Arc on hearing of it evinced great sorrow and alarm, but she flew at
once to the rescue, and appeared suddenly in the midst of the king’s
troops, with the oriflamme of S. Denis in one hand, and her “good sword of
liege” in the other. The sight of her whom they looked upon as the angel
of victory raised the drooping spirits of the soldiers and filled them
with new ardor; they raised a cry of victory the moment they beheld
Jeanne. Enguerrand de Monstrelet, who was an eye‐witness of the siege,
describes her attitude and the conduct of the troops throughout as
“passing all heroism ever before seen in battle.” But, alas! the star of
the maid of Orleans was destined to set in darkness at the hour of its
greatest splendor; her own prediction, so often repeated to Charles and
those around him, “Un homme me vendra” (A man will betray me), was about
to be fulfilled. On the 24th of May, 1429, there was a formidable
engagement between the two armies. Jeanne, at the head of hers, performed
prodigies of valor; after a brilliant sortie in which the enemy were
repulsed, she was re‐entering the town by the Boulevard du Pont, and had
almost reached the barrier through which hundreds of her own victorious
soldiers had already passed, when, lo! the gates swing forward on their
hinges, and are closed against her! The maiden’s cry of despair as she
raised her sword and stretched both arms towards the gates was echoed by a
yell of fiendish joy from the enemy; in an instant she was surrounded,
disarmed, and taken captive by Montgomery. Guillaume de Flavy, governor of
Compiègne, was accused of having committed this act of treachery, bribed
by Jean de Luxembourg. If the accusation be true, and it has never been
seriously challenged, the traitor’s punishment was as fitting as it was
merited; he was immediately destituted of his office and revenues by the
Connétable de Richemont, and driven to hide his base head in private life,
where the Nemesis who was to avenge Jeanne d’Arc awaited him in the shape
of his wife; she was jealous of her husband, who, it would seem, fully
justified the fact; after leading him a miserable life and failing to
convert him by slow torture from his evil ways, she bribed the barber to
cut his throat one morning while shaving him, and finished the operation
herself by smothering him under a pillow. For many years de Flavy’s effigy
was burnt regularly at Compiègne on the 24th of May.
Louis XI. was liberated from the English, and came to Compiègne time
enough to embitter the last days of his father, Charles VIII., who let
himself die of hunger there from terror of being poisoned by his son.
Comines says that his dutiful son and most amiable of men was so irritated
by his courtiers for mocking “his boorish manners, his uncouth dress, and
his taste for low folk,” that to spite them he published an edict
forbidding them to hunt or touch the game in the forest of Compiègne, a
prohibition against all precedent, nor did he ever invite them to join him
there in the chase. But the pretty palace open to the four winds of heaven
soon grew distasteful to him, and he forsook it for the more congenial
retreat of Plessis‐les‐Tours, where, surrounded by spies and quacks and a
moat filled with vipers and venomous snakes, he ended in terror and
suffering a life which presents a strange mixture of shrewdness and
credulity, bonhomie and ferocity, impiety and the grossest superstition.
Francis I. took kindly to Compiègne, which had been deserted by his two
predecessors. His first act on coming there, as king, was to do public
homage to the Holy Shroud. Louis, Cardinal de Bourbon, grand‐uncle to the
king, and abbot of S. Corneille, exposed it to the veneration of the king
and the people amidst great ceremony and prayer of thanksgiving. “He took
the holy relic, and laid it on the grand altar with sentiments of great
devotion and tenderness, which he expressed by abundant tears.” Francis
added to the shrine “twenty‐two rose‐buds of pure gold, enriched with
precious stones and pearls, and attached to twenty _fleurs‐de‐lys_ of
gold,” says Cambry, in his _Déscription de l’Oise_. There is also a letter
of Francis’ giving a naïve account of the ceremony, quoted at length in
the _Histoire du Saint Suaire de Compiègne_. Francis passes from the
scene, and we see “the noble burgesses of Compiègne,” as he was fond
himself of calling them, making great stir to receive his successor, Henri
II., on his return from Rheims. Two years more, and there is the same
merry hubbub, and the town is in gala dress to welcome Catherine de
Medicis on her marriage. This abnormal type of a woman fell ill not long
after her arrival, and vowed that if she recovered she would send a
pilgrim to Jerusalem to give thanks for her; he was to start from
Compiègne, and perform the journey all the way on foot, making for every
three steps forward one step backward. Cambry says the vicarious
pilgrimage was “faithfully executed according to the queen’s vow.”
Charles IX. was only a flying visitor at Compiègne. An odd story is told
by D. Carlier and others as occurring there during his time. A man was
discovered in the forest who had been brought up by the wolves, and taken
so completely to their way of life that he had nearly turned into a wolf
himself. “He was hairy like a wolf, howled, outran the hounds at the hunt,
walked on all fours, strangled dogs, tore and devoured them.” For a time
he made sport for the people, who hunted him like other game, but having
shown a propensity to deal with men as he did with dogs, they laid a trap
for him, chained him, and took him before the king. Charles, more humane
than the noble burgesses, refused to have him killed, but ordered him to
be shorn and confined in a monastery. “What reflections,” naïvely exclaims
D. Carlier, “does not this incident suggest on the danger of bad example,
and the pernicious effects of evil society!” It would be interesting to
hear how the novice behaved himself in his new position, whether he
developed any latent dispositions for the mystic life, and quite left
behind him the habits of his early education which had corrupted his good
manners; but of this D. Carlier says nothing.
Henri III., who lived at St. Cloud making omelets, expressed a wish to be
buried near the Holy Shroud at Compiègne, in the church of S. Corneille;
and as soon as Henri IV. became master of his “good town of Paris” he
faithfully carried out this wish. Owing, however, to the dilapidated state
of the finances, he could not do so with the proper ceremonial. “It was
pitiful,” says Cheverny, in his _Memoirs_, “to see the greatest king of
the earth in a _chapelle ardente_ with only one lamp, one chaplain
belonging to the late king, named La Cesnaye, and a few shabby _écus_ to
keep up a shabby service.” Instead of being removed to S. Denis after a
temporary rest near the Holy Shroud, the body remained on in the vaults of
S. Corneille, on account of a prophecy which said that Henri IV. would be
buried eight days after Henri III.; a prediction which was actually
accomplished, “though not,” says Bajin, “in a manner apprehended by the
king”. When Henri IV. fell by the hand of Ravaillac, the Due d’Epernon
advised Marie de Medicis to have the obsequies of the late king performed
before those of her husband. Henri IV. was therefore kept waiting till his
predecessor’s grave was filled. The first ceremony was performed quietly,
almost in secret; and then the “good Béarnias” was taken to S. Denis, all
France weeping and refusing to be comforted.
Louis XIII. was attracted to Compiègne solely by the pleasures of the
chase. We see him watching the meet from a window giving on the Cour
d’honneur, and whispering to the Maréchal de Praslin, “You see that man
down there? He wants to be one of my council, but I cannot make up my mind
to name him.” “That man” was Richelieu. The words were repeated to Marie
de Medicis, as all her son’s words seem to have been, and she, counting on
the prelate’s influence in supporting her against the king and her other
enemies, vowed that he should be named, and so he was. A few days later we
see Louis, equipped in his hunting costume, stride into the room of the
queen‐mother, and proclaim in a boistering manner, meant to vindicate the
independence of his choice, that he “had named the Bishop of Luçon member
of his council as secretary of state.” Marie de Medicis looks coolly
surprised, and bows her approval. By‐and‐by we have the Earl of Carlisle
and Lord Holland presenting themselves at Compiègne to solicit the hand of
Henriette of France for the Prince of Wales. They are received with every
mark of cordial good‐will on the part of Louis and entertained with great
splendor; but Richelieu looked askance on their mission; it was his way to
begin always by mistrusting an offer, whether it came from friend or foe;
in this case his piety was alarmed for Henriette’s faith, and he suspected
England of some sinister design in seeking alliance with France. Louis,
however, overruled his fears and scruples, and the minister contented
himself with taking extraordinary precautions to ensure to the princess by
contract the free exercise of her religion, stipulating that she should
have in all her chateaux a chapel “large enough to hold as many people as
she pleased.” The marriage was celebrated by proxy at Notre Dame,
Buckingham representing the Prince of Wales, and from thence the court
escorted the bridal party on their way as far as Compiègne. Louis XIII.,
though he made but short sojourns at the palace, kept up close and
friendly intercourse with the inhabitants, writing to them himself when
any important event took place. He announced to them, for instance, the
siege of Rochelle, the war with the Spaniards, the peace with England, and
many other events in which the honor and safety of the state were
interested.
Louis XIV. was only eight years old when he paid his first visit to
Compiègne, accompanied by his little brother the Duc d’Anjou and the Queen
Regent; they were obliged to seek hospitality from the monks of S.
Corneille, because the Carmelite nuns were at the palace, which had been
lent to them while their monastery was being repaired, and Anne of Austria
would neither intrude upon them nor suffer them to be disturbed. What a
checkered space intervenes between this first appearance of the _grand
monarque_ at Compiègne and his last, when we see him passing the troops in
review for the amusement of Madame de Maintenon! He stands uncovered
beside her _chaise à porteurs_ and stoops down to explain the various
evolutions, while she raises three fingers of the glass to catch the
explanation without letting in the cold; the Duchesse de Bourgogne and the
Princesse de Conti, and all the train of princes and princesses, are
grouped round the poles of the Widow Scarron’s chair, listening
respectfully while the king speaks; but he addresses none of them.
Louis XV. made his entry into Compiègne preceded by a troop of falconers
with birds on their wrists, and accompanied by cannon and music of fife
and drum, and every demonstration of popular joy. He was just eighteen
then; his life was like the beginning of a stream, bright and clear to its
depths; soon it was to grow troubled, darkening and darkening as it
reached its middle course, till at last the waters ceased to flow and
there was nothing but a loathsome swamp. Compiègne was associated with the
brightest and happiest incidents of his life. In 1744, after he had
commanded the army with the Maréchal de Saxe, taken Ypres, Furnes, and
Menin, and performed that series of brilliant feats of arms that raised
him to the rank of a demi‐god in the eyes of the people, Louis was
marching to Alsace when he was suddenly stricken down with a malignant
fever and obliged to lay up at Metz. The news of his illness was received
as a personal calamity all over France. Never before nor since was such a
spectacle given to the world of a nation wrestling with its agony beside
the death‐bed of a king. The churches were filled day and night, the
people weeping as if every man were trembling for a wife, every woman for
a son; unable to control their grief they wept aloud, “filling the streets
with lamentations”; public prayers were everywhere offered up; processions
were formed in every town and village, and a universal concert of
supplication was going up to the divine mercy for the life of the king.
When it was known that their prayers were heard, and that he was restored
to them from the jaws of death, the reaction was like a national frenzy.
“The nation,” says Bajin, “thrilled with joy from one end to another.”
They christened their new‐found prince _le bienaimé_ and henceforth he was
called by no other name; he entered Paris like a conqueror bringing home
the spoils of half of the world; at every step his progress was impeded by
the people falling at his horses’ feet and struggling to clasp the hand of
their beloved; mothers held up their babes to kiss him, and strong men
clung to his hands and covered them with kisses and tears. Louis, overcome
by this great tide of love that was sweeping round him from his people’s
heart, was heard to repeat constantly while the tears streamed down his
cheeks, “O mon Dieu, qu’il est doux d’être aimé ainsi!” (O my God! how
sweet it is to be thus loved!) It was a manifestation the like of which
history has never chronicled. Another not less ardent, though on a smaller
scale, awaited the king at Compiègne. The town, deeming itself entitled to
make a special family rejoicing, invited him to a _Te Deum_ to be sung in
the time‐honored abbey of S. Corneille. The king went and joined with deep
emotion in the solemn hymn of thanksgiving. A monster bonfire was lighted
on a hill above the town, a rainbow of colored lamps, stretching over an
enormous space, symbolized the fair promise of delight which had risen
upon France, fountains of red and white wine flowed copiously on the great
Place, and a ball was given at night to which every inhabitant of the town
was invited, and came; gentle and simple, rich and poor, old and young,
all welded by a common joy without distinction of class into one kindred.
The victor of Fontenoy responded nobly to this magnificent testimony of
his people’s trust. Alas! that he should have outlived this glorious
morrow, and turned from his brave career into a slough of selfishness and
vice to become a byword to the tongues that blessed him, and accursed of
the nation that had lavished such a wealth of love upon him! The title of
Bienaimé, which had been spontaneously bestowed on him by the people, and
been regularly prefixed to his name in the almanac and elsewhere, became a
butt for squibmongers, and was applied to the king only in mockery and
scorn. The following is a specimen:
“Le Bien‐aimé de l’Almanach,
N’est plus le Bien‐aimé de France,
Il fait tout _ob Loc et ab Lac_.
Le Bien‐aimé de l’Almanach:
Il met tout dans le même sac,
La justice et la finance,
Le bien‐aimé de l’Almanach
N’est plus le bien‐aimé de France,” etc.(195)
When Marie Antoinette came to France as the bride of the Dauphin, it was
at Compiègne that their first meeting took place. Louis Quinze greeted her
with the most paternal affection; but his great, his sole preoccupation
was, not how the Dauphin would like his fair young bride, or how she would
take to the timid and rather awkward youth who blushed to the roots of his
hair when the king, after raising her from her knees and embracing her,
desired him to do the same, but how this pure young creature, who was
entrusted to his fatherly care, would receive the Marquise du Barry. He
presented her after all the other ladies of the court, and with a
trepidation of manner that he was not able to conceal; but the incident
had been foreseen and discussed at Vienna as well as at Compiègne. Marie
Antoinette, sustained by her proud but polite mother, proved equal to the
occasion; “she showed neither _hauteur_ nor _empressement_,” but met the
difficulty in a manner which put the king at ease, and impressed the court
with a high sense of her tact and discretion. Nor was this first
impression belied by her subsequent conduct; the Dauphine proved, on many
trying occasions, that her good sense and judgment were a match for the
nobility of her spirit and the goodness of her heart; the busybodies who
worked so diligently to embroil her in a quarrel with Madame du Barry were
foiled by her straightforward simplicity and the dignified reserve which
she maintained alike towards them and towards the favorite. An instance of
this occurred a few weeks after her marriage. The son of one of her women
of the bedchamber, a Madame Thibault, killed an officer of the king’s
guard in a duel; Madame Thibault threw herself at Marie Antoinette’s feet,
and besought her to implore the king for her son’s pardon; the Dauphine
promised, and after a whole hour’s supplication she obtained it. Full of
gratitude and delight the young princess told everybody how good the king
had been, and how graciously he had granted her request; but one of the
ladies of the court, thinking to spoil her pleasure and excite her
jealousy, informed her that Madame Thibault had also gone on her knees to
Madame du Barry to intercede for her, and that the marquise had done so.
Marie Antoinette, without betraying the slightest vexation, replied very
sweetly: “That confirms the opinion I always had of Madame Thibault, she
is a noble woman, and a brave mother who would stop at nothing to save her
child’s life; in her place I would have knelt to Zamore(196) if he could
have helped me.”
Charles V.’s old chateau, which had been patched, and mended, and added to
till there was hardly a stone of the original building left, was thrown
down by Louis Quinze, and rebuilt as we now see it. It was just finished
in time to receive Louis Seize on his accession to the throne. The new
king came here often to hunt, but he seldom stayed at Compiègne, though it
was dear to him as the place where he first beheld Marie Antoinette. When
the Revolution broke out, Compiègne suffered like other towns; some of its
churches were destroyed, others pillaged; the Carmelites, whose convent
had been the prayerful retreat of so many queens of France, were
imprisoned in the Conciergerie, after appearing before Fouquier Tinville
on a charge of having had arms concealed in their cellars. To this
preposterous accusation, Mère Térèse de S. Augustin, their superioress,
drawing a crucifix from her breast, answered calmly: “Behold our only
arms! They have never inspired fear but to the wicked.” But what did
innocence avail against such judges? The Carmelites were condemned to
death, and executed at the Barrière du Trône. They ascended the scaffold
singing the _Veni Creator_, and had just reached the last verse as the
last victim laid her head on the guillotine. While awaiting in prison the
day of their deliverance, those valiant daughters of S. Teresa amused
themselves composing a parody on the Marseillaise, of which the following
is a couplet:
“Livrons nos cœurs à l’allégresse!
Le jour de gloire est arrivé;
Le glaive sanglant est lévé,
Préparons nous à la victoire;
Sous les drapeaux d’un Dieu mourant
Que chacun marche en conquérant;
Courans et volons à la gloire!
Ranimons notre ardeur,
Nos cœurs sont au Seigneur:
Montons, Montons,
A l’échafaud, et Dieu sera vainqueur!”(197)
Napoleon I. furnished Compiègne for his young Austrian bride, Marie
Louise; she was on her way thither when he met the carriage in the forest,
and, jumping in, scared her considerably by the abrupt introduction.
At Compiègne took place Alexander of Russia’s famous interview with Louis
XVIII.; the king entered the dining‐room first, and unceremoniously seated
himself; his courtiers, scared at the royal discourtesy, began to murmur
amongst themselves, which, the czar noticing, he observed with a smile:
“What will you? The grandson of Catherine has not quarterings enough to
ride in the king’s coach!”
Charles X. received at Compiègne Francis and Isabella of Naples, and gave
for their entertainment a hunting _fête_, at which 11 wild boars, 9 young
boars, 7 stags, 56 hind, 10 fawns, 11 bucks, 114 deer, and 20 hares fell
victims to the will of the royal sportsmen. Charles, who was on the eve of
losing a more serious and brilliant royalty (1830), was, by common
consent, proclaimed king of the hunt.
The last circumstance of note connected with Compiègne is the camps held
there by Louis Philippe in 1847, and commanded by the Duc de Nemours.
Under the Empire the chateau was inhabited for a short time by the court
every autumn, and was the centre of brilliant _fêtes_ and hospitalities.
The Cross Through Love, And Love Through The Cross.
Concluded.
The next morning he went to the _Juden‐Strasse_ before the hour of the
synagogue service, and walked up unannounced into old Zimmermann’s room.
As he had hoped, so it proved—_she_ was there, reading the Psalms to the
old man. He wondered if she remembered him, if she had noticed him when he
had stood upon the landing last Sabbath morning. Zimmermann greeted him
with a nod that had not much recognition in it, but said:
“Maheleth, give the stranger a chair. _Mein Herr_, this is my good little
nurse.”
Holcombe bowed, and the girl looked at him in silence for a few seconds.
“I remember,” she then said, “you picked up my music for me in a storm,
nearly a month ago.”
“I thought you would not have known me again,” Holcombe stammered.
“Oh! yes, I am not forgetful. You have been very good to my patient, and I
am very grateful, for he has eaten more this week than he has for a whole
month.”
“I think I heard your father was ill, fräulein?”
“Oh! he has been so for many months. Is your English friend gone?”
“Yes; he has gone home to be married. I wish, fräulein, if you could
suggest anything, I could be of some use, besides bringing fruit and
flowers to this house. Do you know, since I have been in Frankfort, I have
never found anything to do?”
“Do you mean,” she asked very gravely, “you wish to be of use to _us_?”
“I mean, if I could come and sit with Herr Löwenberg, and read or write
for him, while you are away; for they tell me you are out all day, and it
must be lonely for him.”
“That is very kind of you,” she answered, looking at him in calm wonder;
“it is true he has no society, for the little girls hardly count.”
“Has he any books?” asked Holcombe. “Because _I_ have plenty, and they
might amuse him; and I have English newspapers, too, coming in regularly.
Does he speak English?”
“He understands and reads it; but you are a stranger, and why should we
place our burdens on your shoulders?”
“Oh! you must not mind my way; this sort of thing is a mania with me, you
know.”
“It is a mania seldom found,” croaked out the old man.
“I think,” put in Maheleth, “it is time for me to leave you. How can I
thank you, Mr. Holcombe? Perhaps, when you leave my friend here, you will
stop at the next landing, and go in and see my father?”
“I will, and you must not think I am in a hurry.”
The ice thus broken, many visits followed, and at night, when Maheleth was
at home, Henry read to the family in the little plain room that was so
beautiful in his sight. More than once had he again seen the girl in the
cathedral, always standing, and separated from the worshippers, always
with that same sad, anxious look. One night, he noticed a certain
constraint in the father’s and daughter’s manner, and Löwenberg was less
cordial to him than usual. After that, Maheleth seemed yet more troubled,
and grew paler and thinner. He asked old Zimmermann if he knew of any
fresh trouble in the family, but he could learn nothing from him. Rachel,
who always answered the bell, detained him one evening, and said:
“I would not go in to‐night, if I were you. Don’t be offended, _mein
Herr_.”
“Why, Rachel, what is the matter?”
“Fräulein Löwenberg went to the Catholic Church last night, and her father
found it out, and he said it was your fault.”
“Well, I _will_ go in all the same; I had nothing to do with it, and my
friend must not be angry with his daughter.”
Löwenberg was alone, and the room had a tossed look about it, very
different from the cosy aspect it usually wore. The invalid lay on a
couch, with a discontented expression on his dark, thin face.
“Are you worse to‐night?” gently asked Holcombe.
“Ay, worse indeed, and _you_ must add to my troubles after I had treated
you as a son!”
“_I!_ My friend, do you think that of me? Don’t you know me better?”
“Ah!” said the invalid irritably, “don’t try to deceive me. You know I
have nothing left to care for but my daughter, and you have been trying to
convert her. I know _why_, too, but you shall not see her any more.”
“You wrong me, Herr Löwenberg. I have never spoken to your daughter about
religion, because I did not know whether it might be agreeable to her or
not, and she never started the subject.”
“You know she goes to your church?”
“Yes, I have seen her there several times; she never saw me, however, and
I never hinted to her that I had seen her.”
“You speak very fairly about it; but I know how unscrupulous you
Christians can be in this matter. You would think it a grand thing to
convert her.”
“Undoubtedly, if I could do it by sheer conviction. But you should know me
too well to believe I would do it by any undue or secret influence.”
“You do not know how dear she is to me; you do not know how her defection
from our ancient faith would break my heart; how I should have to renounce
her for my other children’s sake!”
“And how you would stain your soul with the blackest ingratitude, Herr
Löwenberg, if you did!” interrupted Henry excitedly.
“So you think _that_, do you? You don’t know who she is, and how such a
thing would be so unpardonable in her that no consideration could
influence me. I never told you before, but she is of another blood than
you are—she is the descendant of martyred rabbis, and her race is as pure
as that of the old Machabees. We are not Germans. We are Spaniards, and,
though ruined, our family pride is as great as it ever was—as great, too,
as our love for our faith.”
“How long ago was it you were ruined?”
“Only a year and two months, and I fell ill six months ago; my wife died
almost as soon as we came here, and my Maheleth has earned our daily
bread, and taught her sisters, and managed the housekeeping, all alone. It
is enough to make one curse God!”
“Hush, hush!” said Holcombe. “You do not mean that—you know you have too
many blessings to thank him for.”
“And the best and only one you are seeking to take from me.”
“I swear to you that much as I should wish and pray for it—for that I will
not conceal from you—yet I have never influenced your child in any way.”
“You have, because you love her.”
Henry was staggered at the suddenness of his words.
“You cannot deny it,” continued the invalid.
“No,” answered the young man; “I have no desire to deny it, but your
daughter never heard it from my lips, and never would.”
“Never would!” echoed Löwenberg, firing up. “And do you, too, despise her
for her race—she that is as far above you as you are above your lowest
peasant!”
“God forbid!” said Henry solemnly; “for I think of her as of one of whom I
am not worthy. But _my_ faith forbids our union, and, love her though I
shall to my dying day, my love should never cross my lips to stir and
wound her heart.”
“You shall see her no more; you have seen her too much already; if you
love her, as you say, desist at least now.”
“Do you mean that she knows—perhaps returns—my love?”
“I have said enough, and shall not gratify your vanity. But promise me you
will not see her again, and I will even believe that you did not try to
proselytize her.”
“No; I cannot promise that. Circumstances might arise under which it would
be death to keep that promise, and yet I should have no hope of inducing
you to give it me back.”
“You mean she might become a Christian?”
“Even so, as I pray she may.”
“And you will marry her then, and she feels it, and yet you pretend you
use no influence!”
“I would marry her if she would not think me unworthy.”
“I need say no more. You have been my friend, and I thank you for your
kindness; but henceforth our paths are separate. If I lose my child, I
shall know you robbed me of her. I only ask you now to consider what I
told you of our family and fortunes as a sacred confidence.”
“My friend,” said Henry sadly, as he rose, “I will obey you, and you may
consider your secret as sacred as if it were my own. But remember this is
your own act, and, if ever you wish to call on my friendship again, my
services will be as willingly yours as though this breach had never been.
God bless you and your daughter Maheleth!”
He left the room as in a dream; Rachel scanned his face curiously as she
let him out at the crazy door.
“So,” he thought, “thus ends my connection with that house; and yet God
knows how true my intentions were. I dare not seek her, still I know she
may need me. God grant it be true that Maheleth is a Christian at heart!”
Unconsciously he bent his steps towards the cathedral; a few people were
collected about the confessionals. The stained windows were dark and
blurred in the uncertain light; only a lamp here and there hung from the
pillars.
Perhaps his prayers were more fervent in intention than full in form, and
mechanically he watched the shrouded confessionals. Suddenly from behind
the green curtain of one of them issued the figure of the Jewish girl, a
calm look lighting up her features, and her deportment altogether unlike
that which he had so often and so painfully noticed.
Her eye fell upon him instantly, and, far from shunning him, gave him a
long glance of recognition and sympathy. She knelt for some time, then
rose and walked down the nave. He followed her, and at the entrance door
she paused as if to wait for him.
“I have seen your father, Fräulein,” Holcombe said, “and he told me a
great many things.”
“I hardly think he quite knows how far things have gone,” she answered
gently. “I could give up anything for him except my soul, and for some
months I have known that only by becoming a Christian could I save it.”
“I have often seen you in church.”
“Have you, indeed?”
“Your father accuses _me_ of converting you.”
She blushed, and was silent for a few minutes.
“You have helped me by your prayers, I am sure,” she said at last.
“Tell me,” he asked, “are you a Catholic yet?”
“No; I only went into the confessional to speak to the priest; in a few
days I shall be baptized.”
“I have a favor to ask you—will you let me be present?”
“Certainly, it will make me very happy, believe me.”
“Do you know that, when your father hears of it, he will turn you out of
your home?”
“He said so—did he tell you so?”
“He did, but he could not have meant it.”
“Oh! yes,” she said sadly, “he would do it; he would think it a duty, a
matter of principle.”
“It would be very ungrateful.”
“Ungrateful! Was I not bound to work for him who gave me life? He worked
hard for us, and in the time of trouble we owed it to him.”
“But if he throws you off, what will become of _him_?”
“That is the saddest part; but I know God will take care of him.”
“Remember, Maheleth, that either for yourself or for him (for your sake)
you must never hesitate to call upon me. Promise me that.”
It was the first time he had called her Maheleth. She blushed and looked
down, saying:
“You have been very generous and very kind to my father; but surely now
you have parted friendship with him?”
“No, I have not, as I told even him; but, were it not so, for _your_ sake
it should be.”
“I have God to look after me, Herr Holcombe.”
“But I want to be his instrument.”
“His Raphael, as you have been to us through this desert of want and
poverty.”
“And will you not be my Sarah?” he asked suddenly, but in a soft, low
voice.
Her whole frame shook; then she looked up in his face, silent.
“I have loved you since I knew you,” he went on to say; “I mean since I
_saw_ you first; but I never meant to tell my secret, for you know I could
not wed a Jewess. But now, thank God! the bar is gone, and I can be happy
without sin.”
She did not answer yet.
“Have I deceived myself, then?” asked the young man sadly. “And do you not
love me, as I hoped?”
“I do,” she answered, quickly looking up. “God knows I do, but I cannot
marry you.”
“Why, why, Maheleth? You torture me.”
“Because it would break my father’s heart, and because it would give him
reason to say I had changed my faith for you.”
“But how could he?”
“I could not leave him in misery, and my little sisters alone, and go and
live in peace and earthly comfort which they could not share.”
“They are most welcome to share it, Maheleth.”
“You are too good, too noble,” she said; “but it cannot be.”
“And you love me, you say?”
“Must we not love God better, dear, dear friend? Henry, do not be angry
with me. You will be my dear brother in the faith always.”
Holcombe was too overcome to speak. She stopped and entreated him to leave
her.
“I am paining you beyond necessity,” she said; “you will be happier and
calmer if you do not see me till the day of my baptism. All things are
God’s will, and, bitter as the trial may be, he gives us strength to bear
it, if we look to him. Farewell, Henry.”
He wrung her hand in silence, and saw the drooping figure pass quickly out
of sight. He felt how much harder her trial was, and how selfish his own
words had been, yet he did not try to see her again until the day of her
baptism.
The ceremony was to take place at the cathedral, at four in the morning.
The sun had just risen, and the quiet streets were golden with his light.
Holcombe was watching at the door. She came very soon, wrapped in a long
black cloak, looking radiant and calm, as if nothing more could be of any
consequence to her, nor stir her heart confusedly. She held out her hand
to her friend with a “God bless you!” that left him dumb. Her cloak was
laid on a carved bench, and her white robe gleamed under the rainbow from
the great stained‐glass window above her. More beautiful than ever she
seemed, and more angel‐like. The priest poured the saving waters upon her
head, and performed all the holy mystic ceremonies of the sacrament, and
she, as if in a heavenly trance, followed him throughout with her eyes and
her lips. Mass was said directly after, and she and Henry knelt together
at the altar‐rails to receive the Bread of Angels. A long time passed
after Mass, and when at length Maheleth, now Mary, rose from her knees, it
was only to go to the distant Lady‐chapel, and there offer up a golden
brooch of Spanish workmanship, one of the few treasures saved from the
wreck of her father’s fortune.
As she left the church, Henry followed her.
“Are you going _home_?” he asked timidly.
She turned her dark eyes upon him very softly, but with no sadness in
them.
“I have no home now,” she said slowly. “Last night I bade my father
farewell; I am going to the convent.”
A look of terror came into Henry’s face.
“To stay there always?” he asked.
“As God wills—I do not know,” she replied.
“But are you not sorry about your father and sisters?”
“It was a hard trial,” she answered, with radiant calmness in her eyes,
“but God has taken the sorrow out of it now.”
“And shall I not see you again, now your faith is mine? I saw you often
when there was a gulf between us!”
“It is better you should forget me. But that shall be as God wills; I
leave it to him, and will make no arrangements.”
“Thank you for that, anyhow; remember all I told you, dear Maheleth; so
far, at least, you can make me happy.”
“I will _remember_ it always, and bless you for it, but I do not promise
to act up to it.”
“Never mind, you cannot help God protecting you, no matter through what
instrument.”
And with these words he left her.
For some weeks they did not meet, but Henry was busy at correspondence
with his English agents and bankers. In the meanwhile, regular remittances
arrived at Herr Löwenberg’s house, which he at first refused to accept,
not knowing whether they came from his daughter whom he had thrown off, or
his friend whom he had insulted, and not wishing to be beholden to either
for his daily pittance. But starvation was the alternative, and, had not
Rachel kindly shared her meals with his children, and sent him little
inexpensive dishes now and then, hunger would have made him yield long
ago. As it was, he missed his daily sustenance sorely, and at last, under
protest, and promising himself prompt repayment of these _loans_ as soon
as he should be well again, he began to use the money sent to him. Many a
time Holcombe came to the door to inquire after him from the good‐natured
Rachel; and every day, in the dusk of the evening, came his daughter,
almost always bearing a basket that held some little delicacy.
One night it happened that Henry and Maheleth met at the door. She was the
first to speak.
“You see I am not yet immured in my convent!” she said gayly. “I have to
thank you so much for coming here to look after my dear father. I shall be
leaving Frankfort soon, and then there will be no one to be so good to him
as you.”
“But _I_ shall not leave. Do you really mean you are going?”
“Yes; the good nuns have got me a governess’ situation somewhere in
Bohemia with Catholics. I shall go next week.”
“May I come and bid you good‐by?”
“Oh, yes! come on a visiting day, Thursday. Have you seen my sisters? How
are they looking?”
“I saw them a week ago; they looked tired, I thought.”
“Oh! they don’t know how to nurse him, and he tires them, I am afraid. But
God will see to them and him too.”
“Will you be able to come back here for a vacation?”
“Perhaps in a year—not before.”
“Your father may be well again by that time.”
“God grant it! But I must not stay any longer now.”
And having made some inquiries of Rachel, she left the house.
Henry Holcombe longed for Thursday. He wanted to ask leave to write to
Maheleth, to give her news of her father, he would say. When the time
arrived, the parlor at the convent was full, and he hardly relished making
his adieus in a crowd. He was relieved to find a nun come and beckon him
away, and show him into a quiet little room, with a polished floor, a
Munich Madonna, and a few plain chairs round a dark table.
In a few minutes, a pleasant‐looking old religious came in, followed by
Maheleth.
The girl reached her hand to Henry, saying:
“Sister Mary Ambrose knows you by name very well.”
The talk was general for a short time, then the old nun got up and walked
to the window.
“I wanted to ask you if I might write to you, Maheleth,” said the young
man, much relieved by the prospect of a comparative _tête‐à‐tête_.
“If you wish to do so, by all means.”
“And you don’t wish it?” he said, in disappointment.
“I meant it might be painful to you after all. What I wish is of no
moment.”
“Maheleth, how can you say so, when you know I shall always feel for you
the same love I do now?”
“Well, my friend, let that pass. Write to me, then; you know your letters
will be welcome.”
“I will always let you know about your father.”
“You will not always stay in Frankfort?”
“Not quite, but I shall be here again this time next year.”
She smiled and said:
“I might not be here myself.”
“Then I shall see you wherever you are, and I shall ask you the same
question you have answered once.”
“Ah! Henry, do not trust to accidents! It may never be; forget me, as I
already told you.”
“We’ll not argue about it; we will wait and see. Look, I have brought you
something,” he added, taking a tiny velvet case from his breast‐pocket.
“It is not an engagement‐ring, do not be afraid,” he said, as she seemed
troubled; “it is only a souvenir, and I want you to promise me to wear it
for one year, till I see you again. After that, you shall do as you like
about keeping it. You know what a rosary‐ring is?” he asked, as he showed
her the broad yellow band notched by tiny bubbles of gold. “And here is
the cross laid upon it, and the cross is of pearls, the emblem of
innocence. You read what is inside now.”
She took it and read the device on the interior rim: “Crux per amore; Amor
per cruce.”
“The cross through love; Love through the cross,” he explained.
She replied by kissing the ring and handing it to him, as she said:
“Put it on my finger, Henry, and only you or God himself shall ever draw
it off.”
“You do not mean—”
“Hush! how can you question him? But I fear he will not call me in that
way. Who knows, perhaps we shall meet next year? I leave my father to God
and you.”
The old nun came back from the window.
“My child, I am afraid I cannot stay any longer,” she said.
The girl rose, and took Henry’s hand in both her own.
“God bless and reward you, my dear, dear friend. You know all I would say
and yet cannot.”
He kissed her hand, and, with an ineffable look of holy calm, the Jewish
convert left the room, still glancing back at him.
Two months passed, and Löwenberg grew better. One morning, a large letter
was brought to him, with the Madrid post‐mark. He opened it hastily, and
scanned its contents. The letter fell from his hands as he read, and a
dizziness came over him; he lay back on his couch, deadly pale.
“Is it anything bad about Maheleth?” timidly asked little Thamar.
“No,” he said, momentarily roused to anger. He took up the letter again
and muttered, “A million dollars!” The children thought he was worse, and
looked on with scared faces.
The letter was from a banker at Madrid, saying that he was authorized by a
person deeply in Señor Cristalar’s debt, but who wished to remain
nameless, to apprise him of a certain sum, a million dollars, lying in
ready money at his command in Hauptmann’s bank at Frankfort. The person
had long been wishing to make this restitution, but had not till now been
able to ascertain his hiding‐place. The invalid was in a fever; he could
not help thinking of the young Christian he had spurned, yet he tried to
persuade himself it was not he, but the man to whose knavery he had owed
his total ruin.
Several days passed, and at last he wrote to Holcombe at the hotel he had
been staying at. In ambiguous terms, he spoke of a generous service
undeserved by him, and of his desire to see him, if only once. But the
Englishman was gone and had left no address. He then wrote to his Madrid
correspondent, urging him to try and discover the person from whom the
money had been sent; but the banker wrote word that the whole transaction
had been kept very secret, and that, before it had become known to him, it
had passed through so many hands that it was impossible to find out the
first person concerned. There was a hint of some American bank connected
with it, and the money had been originally paid down in American gold; but
beyond this there was no clue. Cristalar thought the Spanish banker had
been probably bribed to keep silence, and a few more weeks sped by without
his taking any active measures about his newly‐found wealth. He received
and acknowledged a letter of advice from Hauptmann’s bank, telling him of
the sum at his disposal, and Hauptmann himself came to call upon him and
offer him his congratulations. The Spaniard, who still called himself by
his German name, received the visit of his former employer as a mere
conventional act of courtesy, and seemed in no wise elated by the sudden
good‐fortune he was being congratulated upon. He did not change his
lodgings, but he hired a servant, and sent his daughters to the best
Jewish school in the town. As soon as he got well, which was by rapid
degrees, after he had received the letter that once more made him a
millionaire, he left his children in charge of Rachel, and proceeded to
London, where he advertised daily for information of Henry Holcombe. The
weekly supplies in small sums had never discontinued, but he felt assured
that, notwithstanding all these blinds, he could not be mistaken as to the
name of his benefactor.
Meanwhile, Maheleth in her Bohemian home heard from Rachel of her father’s
fortune, his restoration to health, and his journey to England. She, too,
wrote to Henry, and asked him to tell her if it were he that had thus
returned good for evil. He simply said in reply that he was free to do as
he liked with his money, and that he thought Señor Cristalar knew better
how to use it than he did.
Summer came again, and with it Henry Holcombe; the old _Juden‐Strasse_ was
once more before him, and then he learnt that Herr Löwenberg had gone
three months ago to Madrid. He had been travelling in Italy and Greece,
and had never gone home to his old English country‐house, which now was
let to good and steady tenants. He went to the convent; _she_ was not
there, but they expected her. So there was nothing for it but to go and
chat with Rachel and old Zimmermann about old times and old friends.
A week later he called again at the convent, and the portress told him to
wait. In the same little parlor, unchanged and clean, he waited for a
quarter of an hour, hoping and dreading to see Maheleth. She came in this
time alone. He took her hand in his, and looked a hungry look into her
eyes. She said to him, smiling:
“Do you see I have kept my promise? I have the dear ring on my finger, and
every day I have said the rosary with it for you. And now, you know, I
_must_ thank you.”
“I cannot bear it; don’t, for my sake, Maheleth! Have you heard from your
father?”
“No; he never _will_ write, I knew that; but I have heard _of_ him; he is
in Spain. He will begin again as a banker, I feel sure, and never rest
till he has repaid you.”
“I don’t want to be repaid, except _with interest_, and you know it is not
from _him_ I can ask that. Do you remember that I was to ask you the same
question I asked once already?”
“Yes, Henry, but think what you are doing.”
“I shall ask it first, and then think.”
“Well, Henry, if I should say that, I will answer it as you wish, provided
you can gain my father’s consent?”
The young man looked blank.
“I believe that is what God would wish me to do, Henry. My father has no
further need of me, and he or I owe you a debt of gratitude we can never
pay; yet I should like his distinct permission, if I could have it, and
you can obtain it more easily than I can.”
“I shall not rest till it be done,” said Holcombe excitedly. “Shall I
write to him? Maheleth, you have had ‘Crux per amore’; now God will give
us ‘Amor per cruce.’ ”
He wrote that very day to Madrid, asking the hand of his daughter from the
wealthy Jewish banker, and pleading as hard as though he were some poor
outcast, with never a roof to his head, begging for the favor of a royal
maiden’s love. Cristalar was overjoyed at knowing at last where to find
the man he owed health and fortune to, and, instead of a letter, he sent a
telegram to say he would be in Frankfort in a week.
Henry took the telegram to the convent; Maheleth turned very pale as she
read it.
“It is all right, surely, darling, is it not?” asked Holcombe.
“I have never seen him since the eve of my baptism.”
“And,” interrupted the young man, “please God, you will see him again the
eve of our marriage.”
She hid her face in her hands. “God grant it!” she murmured, under her
breath.
Ephraim Cristalar, for he called himself by his own name now, went to the
hotel where Holcombe used to live, and inquired for the young Englishman.
He had not long to wait.
“Mr. Holcombe!” he exclaimed, as he caught him in his arms, “I cannot
speak to you—you are master of all I am and have; can you but forgive me,
say?”
“My friend and father!” replied Holcombe, “you must not give way like
this! I only asked you a simple question, a great favor, it is true, but
that is all we have to speak of.”
“Oh! I know better than that, Henry. What have you to _ask_ of me, when
all I have is yours?”
“There is one thing I want, you know what; and my only other request is
that you will see your daughter.”
Cristalar drew back. “She is yours, Henry Holcombe,” he said solemnly, “as
far as she is mine to give; but she is an alien to my faith, and to my
home.”
“No, no, it must not, shall not be. Remember how she fed you, worked for
you, brought up your little ones, and sent you the little she earned, even
though you had cast her off.”
“It is cruel, Holcombe, to remind me of that,” said Cristalar
reproachfully. “Perhaps as your _wife_ I may see her—as the wife of my
benefactor, not as my daughter.”
“I want to take her from _your_ hands. And think how she has wearied for
you all this time!”
“I know—and do you think I have not missed _her_? I have only _half_ lived
since she left me; and I love her beyond description even yet, but that is
an unhallowed love.”
“Say, rather, an unnatural delusion; I mean your refusal to see her. You
will, for my sake, for your son‐in‐law’s sake?”
“Leave me now, Henry, I must think.”
Need we tell the end? How his better nature triumphed; how prosperity had
softened his heart, and gratitude had bent his pride; how at last his
father’s love could stand no longer the knowledge of his child’s great
sorrow; and how Henry’s prophecy that Maheleth should see her father on
the eve of her marriage was anticipated by many weeks? Her sisters and
Señor Cristalar accompanied her to the cathedral, and, after the ceremony,
the banker put into the hands of the officiating priest a check for
$10,000 for the Catholic poor of Frankfort.
Holcombe House was made ready soon after for the bride’s reception, and
Señor Cristalar established a branch bank in London, of which his son‐in‐
law was partner and responsible head. In a very few years, the Holcombe
income was the same it had been before the appalling drain the agents had
spoken of, when the young possessor had drawn the £100,000 of ready money
left him by his father, and added to it an equal sum raised on the estate.
The old Spaniard could never be induced to abandon the faith that was as
much a part of his family pride as of the tradition of his race; but
Thamar and Agar, Maheleth’s two sisters, were baptized two years after the
marriage, under the names of Elizabeth and Magdalen, and, when they in
their turn married into noble English houses, their father certainly
showed no sign of disapproval of their change of religion, in the princely
fortunes he allotted to each.
Europe’s Angels.
It was night, and the old year was passing away. The angels had sung their
anniversary strains of gladness, and had announced anew the coming of the
Prince of Peace, only a week ago, yet there was a solemn silence now in
their serried ranks, as they pressed around a group of their
representatives.
I can hardly tell you _where_ this was, or whether it was “in the body or
out of the body” that I fancied I saw the glorious vision; I only know
that it seemed as if infinite space were around them, and an amphitheatre
of angelic faces, like living stones, were making a barrier between them
and space, as the rainbow does between clouds.
There were many of those whom I have called representatives, and each bore
some strange emblem, which I understood to be the badge of the nation over
which he was set. Around each stood a host similarly distinguished, the
guardian angels of each individual soul composing the nation. There was an
awful stillness on this the last night of the year, as the conclave of
angels sat brooding over the events of the immediate past. A few, more
prominent among their brethren, presently stood forward, while a figure of
marvellous beauty, but calm austerity of aspect, presented a book to them,
which it supported as a deacon against its head. The book was closely
written on one side, while the opposite page was blank.
An angel, crowned with an iron crown, and robed in a wonderful garment of
deep azure,(198) curiously wrought in gold with stars and signs of lore
and art, such as only one land in Europe can boast of being able to
interpret, taking a pen in his hand, spoke to the assembled multitude.
“Brethren,” he said, in a deep, musical voice whose tones indicated both
gravity and conscious strength, “before I write my brief record of the
year we have now added to our experience, let me speak to you, as fellow‐
watchers over our God’s earthly treasures. My trust has been a bitter and
a heavy one, yet withal a glorious vindication of faith and truth. We have
risen among nations like a comet that for a moment eclipses the steadier
and more lasting glory of the older planets, but in our course there were
obstacles which have now become almost the monument of martyrs. Unmindful
of the lion‐hearted men to whom Wilfrid, and Boniface, and Lioba preached,
and of whom the strongest bulwark of intellectual faith was built by their
later and more national saints, our new rulers have sought to renew the
persecutions of the XVIth century, and the absolutism of a State Church.
But our God, the ‘dear God’(199) of our people, knew how to raise up
defenders for himself in the fearless pastors of his flock; knew how to
inspire them with a bravery that scorned imprisonment and laughed at
death, that made them raise their voices against presumptuous and
intrusive authority on the one hand, and barefaced heresy on the other. We
have triumphed in persecution; we have re‐echoed the _non possumus_ of our
earthly father and Pontiff; we have shown to our God the will of martyrs
after having displayed before our sovereign the deeds of patriots. He
thought to weld a mighty nation into one empire; he has riven it in twain
in his unblest attempt, and has called up against his puny military power
the anger of that God who, on the shores of the Red Sea, did punish
Pharaoh and his host. ‘Who is like to thee, among the strong, O Lord? Who
is like to thee, glorious in holiness, terrible and worthy of praise,
doing wonders?’ ”(200)
Those that wore robes like that of the mighty angel who had spoken took up
his last triumphant words, and chanted them forth in two alternate choirs,
and the voice that came from this host of choristers seemed like the voice
of the sea thundering amid caves and rocks. It surged up and died away in
long reverberating echoes, a hymn of strength and defiance, a prophecy of
a magnificent and almost endless future.
Then the angel who had spoken wrote a few words in the book, and, turning,
presented the pen to one who stood close beside him, tall, stately, and
calm, in white raiment, with the historical _fleur‐de‐lis_ broidered
thickly over his robe. On his brows shone the same emblem, wrought in gold
and pearls, while in his left hand he held a flame‐colored standard, the
oriflamme of the Crusades.
“My brethren,” he began, “this year has been a silent one compared with
its last two predecessors; but none the less a year of sacrifice, of
heroic expiation, of patient humility of spirit. We have lived amid perils
as deep as religious persecutions; amid the perils of a civilization that
is unchristian, and of refinements worse than heathen. The worship of the
false gods has come back, and we are surrounded with a corruption as
terrible as that of imperial Rome or effeminate Byzantium. Our name is no
longer supreme, our escutcheon no longer unstained, our sword is broken in
the hands of others, our missions are unprotected, and our influence no
longer paramount among barbarians and plunderers, and still our corruption
flourishes as unblushingly and undauntedly as ever, and our rivals, nay,
our very captors, come to learn it at our feet. This is now our shameful
supremacy; but, in the midst of these Capuan revels, is there still a hope
for the nation? Yes, my brethren, the same hope that our glorious iron‐
crowned compeer has told us was his hope—the church, the faith, the truth.
If our rulers, like those of our whilom foes, forget the Christian heroes
whom we call our forefathers, the men who at the field of Tolbiac vowed
our nation to the God of armies, and in a thousand fields in Palestine,
Syria, and Egypt redeemed that holy vow, _we_ do not and cannot forget it.
Sons and daughters of the Crusaders, heirs and heiresses of the Kings of
Jerusalem and the Knights of Rhodes and Malta, many of our nation are now
in the holier army, the holier knighthood of religion; their habit is
their coat of mail, their swift prayers and their swifter sacrifices are
their battle‐axes, their spears, their maces; in every land they are
fighting the battle of their own, in every breach defending the honor of
their fallen country. All eyes are still upon their acts; their land, like
a magnet, compels the glance of Europe and the world. The saviours who are
working hiddenly at the regeneration of ‘the eldest daughter of the
church’ are of no party, own no secret master, work for no wages, and seek
no reward; they are soldiers of the cross, children of God, who, in the
hospitals, the prisons, the galleys, the schools, the Chinese stations,
the Canadian missions, the cloistered monasteries, under the names of
Sisters of Charity, Order of Preachers, _Missions Etrangères_, Christian
Brothers, Benedictines of Solesmes, Jesuits, and _Sulpiciens_, work for
God, in God, with God. ‘Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and
his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you.’ ”(201)
The choir of white‐robed angels that clustered round the one who had
ceased speaking took up the grave refrain, and chanted it as their
brethren had done before, and the song swelled majestically as it seemed
to reach the uttermost bounds of the living barrier of angel faces round
the central groups. Ere yet it had subsided, the last of the heavenly
speakers wrote his record in the book, and gave the pen into the hand of a
third angel who stood in grave expectancy by his side.
This one was tall and stalwart‐looking, a warrior‐angel, one would
involuntarily be sure to think, yet his long trailing robe of crimson was
woven not with dragons or golden leopards, but with miniature cathedrals,
abbeys, and priories. The heaviness of this golden embroidery seemed to
drag the garment into yet more statuesque folds, as the mighty wearer drew
himself slowly up and took the pen, letting go, as he did so, his hold
upon a silver shield bearing a blood‐red cross. His fair waving locks were
uncrowned, and he bent his head towards the two who had spoken before.
“My brethren,” he began, and his voice sounded clear and clarionlike, “you
have each of you sought in the continuation of the traditions of the past
a pledge of the regeneration and safety of the future. I, too, looked to
the early past for the golden age I would fain see revived among us, but,
unlike you, it is neither persecution nor bloodshed that I have to record.
Our nation is not eclipsed in power or in influence; and although our
rulers are hardly worthy of their chivalric forerunners, yet there are yet
among them some who are heirs to their fathers’ greatness of soul, though
not to the integrity of their faith. Still, our race has kept more
unblemished than others that reverence for authority without which no
faith is sure, no empire stable. Our life flows more calmly on in our
island‐home than does the troubled stream of our brethren’s days beyond
the sea. Still, amid benefits without number, amid the march of science
and the progress of art, things that in exchange for the ancient gift of
faith our second fatherland every day gives us in return, we have one
fruitful source of dread and danger—the sordid love of gain which makes
our people restless during life, and leaves them hopeless in death. To
strive against this demon of the air—for we seem to breathe his spirit in
the very atmosphere—is the constant endeavor of my being. To knit art to
God as it was joined to him in the olden days, to put honor before wealth,
and conscience before success, to raise principle triumphant over
interest, is my daily, necessary, but most wearisome task. Many voices
erstwhile charmed our nation—that of the warrior, the bard, the monk; the
voice of glory, the voice of learning, the voice of holy love. Now one cry
alone harshly calls our children together—the cry of gain. Our country has
forgotten its ancient fanes of learning, its island monasteries, its
townlike abbeys, its glorious cathedrals, colleges, libraries, and halls,
it has forgotten its tournaments of science, its chants, its liturgies,
even its earthly pageants, and has run after the abject golden calf of
these latter days. Not the poor alone, but the noble and great have with
less excuse come down into the new arena, and lowered themselves to the
level of money‐seekers, till the chivalry of our race has become a
forgotten dream, a talisman that has lost its charm, a thing as out of
date as a crowded abbey with its holy pomps of daily service would be
among the darkened, busy streets of a modern gold‐coining city. And yet in
many a nook, in many an obscure street of a little town, in many a shady,
peaceful country home, are rising the fair progeny of our statelier fanes
of old, and beneath groined roofs and before carved altars rise prayers as
beautiful and as divers as the trefoils and roses on capital and pillar.
In prayer, whether petrified into fair churches standing for ever, or
moulded into golden altar‐plate rich with chasing and with gems, or flying
straight to God’s feet in ardent, winged words of love, we place our last
hope, the hope of the only true conversion our land can ever know; for
‘there is a success in evil things to a man without discipline, and there
is a finding that turneth to loss.’ ”(202)
Here a countless host of angels, as gravely radiant, yet with the same
solemn shade of sadness in their aspect, as the last speaker, took up his
parting words, and chanted them slowly. I thought they caught
unconsciously the ring of the holy words chanted so often through the ages
of faith, in that land of cathedrals and cloisters. Indeed, the angel
choir and their stately leader seemed none other than monastic champions
turned into bright heavenly spirits, so akin is everything in that isle to
the claustral ideal from which sprang its life—civil, collegiate,
ecclesiastical, feudal, and social.
As the chanted dirge grew less and less distinct, another angel advanced
to take the pen his predecessor had just laid in the folds of the book,
after having written his year’s record within. This one had stood so far
in the background as to have escaped my awed notice until now. He wore a
long, loosely‐falling robe of black, and bowed his head as if in grief;
his hands were clasped, and a golden and a silver key were held between
his fingers; in his step there was no elasticity, and in his eye no
gladness. All those who followed him seemed equally sorrowful, but soon I
heard why it was, and no longer marvelled at it.
“Brethren,” he said, in mournful tones, “brethren of all climes, who once
envied me my proud position of warden over the land which holds the father
of all Christians, envy me no longer the sad honors I must yet bear. When
I look at my nation, I can see nothing through my tears. Once I saw
treasures of art and beauty; I can take pride in them no longer. I saw
fair landscapes, the envy of the world, the garden of Europe, the
beautiful God’s‐acre of a past of heroic deeds, buried in honorable
oblivion as the seedlings of a more glorious crop of Christian heroism—I
can take pleasure in these no more. I saw a people mild, inoffensive,
believing, loving; now I see them corrupted, deluded, led away, and turned
into furies. I saw churches gorgeous with the many gifts of fervent piety
and grateful wealth; I see ruins now, sacrilegiously used for godless
purposes, in derision and contempt of their lofty dedication. I saw one
city, the jewel of the universe, the city of sanctuary and refuge, where
faith reigned, and grief was comforted, and weakness was made strength; a
‘city of the soul,’ where God held court mid thousands of earthly angels,
and where he found again the mingled worship of the mysterious Hebrew
temple and of the holy, silent house of Nazareth. But now, brethren, rude
men have scattered our treasures, profaned our churches, seized our
cloisters, driven away learning and charity to put lewdness and brutality
in their place, and have renewed, with far more blasphemous intention, the
horrors of the barbaric invasions. I see the father of the faithful with
the crown of martyrdom surmounting his tiara, waiting, like the _Ecce
Homo_ eighteen hundred years ago, the final verdict of an infuriate mob,
while other nations, Pilate‐like, wash their hands of the sacred, helpless
charge it were their first duty to defend. My brethren, weep with me, weep
for me, and yet rejoice; ‘for the Lord will not cast off for ever.’(203)
‘And in that day the deaf shall hear the words of the book, and out of
darkness and obscurity the eyes of the blind shall see.’ ”(204)
Many were the eager voices that took up the words of hope and sang them
with a fervor which only guardian spirits can know. As the strain swelled
and spread, then fell into a gentle murmur, as if the singers were loth to
leave off the prayer of faith and hope, the angel had written his short
record for the passing year, and looked around to welcome his next
successor. There was a pause, and among the angelic conclave a swaying to
and fro denoted that some suppressed feeling was at work. Those who had
spoken stood apart in a conspicuous group, conferring among themselves;
but I looked with awe and interest at those who had hitherto been silent.
The old year’s span was very short now. On earth the snow was falling,
preparing a fitting shroud for the departing guest, and a fitting cradle
for the coming stranger; there were revellers in many houses, heedless
sleepers in more, and watchers in only a few; there were monastic choirs
filing into silent churches for the coming office of matins; and there
were also miserable outcasts, some voluntary slaves of the world, others
unwilling watchers, poverty‐stricken, hunger‐smitten, desperately tempted
creatures who might murmur at and even curse their fate, yet would not
begin the year by breaking God’s commandments; there were many sinners
doing penance, many happy death‐beds, many freed souls rushing on the
wings of long‐repressed desire towards the goal that weary years of
purgatory had hardly hidden from their longing gaze; and well might the
angelic host thrill with holy delight as all these sights and sounds
struck upon their consciousness. The good surely outweighed the bad!
Just then an angel stepped from among the hitherto silent throng—an angel
with a face full of suffering, sweetness, and patience, yet withal a look
of something deeper and stronger than mere patience; and his black robe
was sown with silver stars, while a star glittered also on his forehead.
In quick accents, full of strength, he addressed his companions, holding
the pen in his hand.
“Brethren!” he said, “the march of events, as the world calls it, has
passed over and by our nation, but in God’s eyes we are not so soon
forgotten. The civilizer of Eastern Europe, the bulwark of Christianity
against the Moslem faith, we have nevertheless suffered by the hands of
Christian princess and been annihilated in the name of civilization. A
martyr‐nation, a victim to false diplomacy, we stand in Europe with the
chains still about our feet, while empires change hands and dynasties come
and go; exiled and dispersed like the Hebrews of old, we are known, like
them, by our indomitable faith and ever hopeful patriotism. Within this
year, a gigantic empire has manacled us more cruelly, gagged us more
closely, than before, but we are steadfast yet, for ‘blessed are they that
suffer persecution for justice’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven.’ ”(205)
The words were caught up and re‐echoed by the angel throng around their
star‐crowned leader, while he wrote the brief record of another year’s
bitter wrongs still so heroically and silently borne. He passed the pen to
another clothed in purple, who looked at him with angelic sympathy before
he spoke. His voice was still and low, but clear as a silver bell.
“My brethren,” he said, “my task is hard and dreary; a mist of prejudice
hangs over those vast steppes which form my dominions; a false
civilization educates our nobles to a pitch of unnatural and seeming
polish in which all truth is killed, and all natural kindness crushed;
like the apples of the Dead Sea, our country is fair to the eye of the
world, but ashes to the taste of God. We have all to hope, it is true, but
much to fear; and, while the desolate semblance of the true faith spreads
its outward and deceptive gorgeousness before the barren and fettered
nation, the souls of our brethren perish of thirst, as it were, within
sight of the Fountain of Life. Brethren, pray for my unhappy charge, and
thou, O God! enlighten my people! ‘How incomprehensible are thy judgments,
and how unsearchable thy ways!’ ”(206)
The purple‐robed choir around him took up the angel’s last words, and
slowly chanted them, as if in awe and expectation, while their leader
wrote a few brief words in the book.
Another came forward, gathering his golden robe together, the hem of which
was broidered with figures of ships and charts, somewhat faded now, but
this was redeemed by the effulgent brightness of the scroll he held on his
outstretched hand a scroll bearing the divine motto, _Ad majorem Dei
gloriam_. Looking swiftly around, he began thus:
“My brethren, my provinces are narrowed and my nation lessened since her
ships explored the ocean, her fleet sent forth armadas, and her leaders
conquered new continents, but the spirit of the missionary and the martyr
has not followed that of the less successful and less lasting
investigator. Chivalry still lives in the land of the Cid, and fires the
hearts in whose veins flows the blood of the Crusaders of Granada. Saints
took up the warrior’s shield, and won their spurs in distant, dangerous
services, till the names of Xavier, Loyola, Gaudia, and Teresa became the
household words of a whole universe. Unbelief has poisoned our present
position, and for our sins we have suffered dire misfortune and perennial
disturbance. Still, our people are unchanged; faithfully the sons of the
Visigoth martyrs keep the trust of their fathers, and, secure amid their
mountain fastnesses, within the last year have raised the standard of the
cross wreathed with the golden lilies of a national and well‐beloved
dynasty. We have had triumphs of the soul and heroic deeds of patriotic
daring mingled together in the annals of our peasant soldiers; the spirit
of another Vendée has spoken to our nation; and God has rejoiced to find
at last a human bulwark against human unbelief. ‘Judge me, O God, and
distinguish my cause from the nation that is not holy; deliver me from the
unjust and deceitful man.’ ”(207)
And while the angel wrote his record in the book, his followers echoed his
last words in tones of mingled triumph and supplication, chanting them, as
all the others had done before them, in two alternate choirs. And now
there was again a pause, while the first groups of angels who had spoken
drew closer to the book, and gazed at the last records written in it. One
more representative came forward, an angel robed in softest green, and
bearing a harp in his hand. Turning to the west, he spoke in a voice full
of deep emotion: “My brethren, I look towards the sea, and gaze at the
land of the setting sun. I see my people spreading over the earth, so that
I have more children in far‐away lands than on my own soil. I see them,
the pioneer nation of whom Brendan was the first leader, planting the
cross and the shamrock in unfailing union, wherever they go. Long ages of
suffering have not reft them of the gift of faith, the treasure of art, or
the strength of enterprise; their arm hath upreared every throne and
stayed every altar; their women make a Nazareth of every home and a
tabernacle of every hovel; their race links two worlds, that of the past
and that of the future, that of culture and civilization, to that of
enterprise and freedom. I look with pride on the ocean darkened by the
barks of my people, and forget, as I look, to sigh over the ruined fanes
and dismantled castles of old. Children of impulse, they carry their home
in their hearts, and make another Erin round every cross they plant. Sea
kings, but Christians, they take from the Norsemen their daring, and from
their own isle its poetry, and, blending the two, bear the highest gifts
of the Old World to be the heirlooms of the New. To my nation may it well
and fittingly be said, ‘They went out from thee on foot, and were led by
the enemies: but the Lord will bring them to thee exalted with honor as
children of the kingdom.’ ”(208)
These prophetic words were caught up by the numerous followers of the
green‐robed angel, and rang now in grand and now in softened cadence
through the boundless field of space that encircled the heavenly throng.
As the tones died away, the angel wrote his record in the book, and the
bells of earth sounded faintly in the still air.
The old year was passing away, and the angels in silence gathered round
the book. As the last stroke of midnight was heard, the bearer of it
turned the leaf, presenting a surface fair and smooth as the petal of a
lily, and the whole company of blessed spirits intoned the _Veni Creator_.
I heard as it were in a dream, and saw forms of light and beauty disperse
like the fleecy clouds of morning, till the singing died away in faraway
corners of our old, prosaic, yet blessed earth. The songs of heaven were
carried into the uttermost recesses where earthly misery was keenest and
earthly revelry loudest on that fateful night; and, as its echoes passed
over them, the misery grew strangely bearable, the revelry was
unaccountably hushed. Everywhere the new‐born year came in with a blessing
and a promise, reverently gathering its predecessor’s lessons even while
mourning its inevitable shortcomings; and so once more, according to the
patience of God, his ministers went forth to clear for every man a new
field where, past errors being forgotten, he might renew his struggle in
the battle of life, and retrieve himself in the eyes of infinite purity
and infinite justice.
Such was the beautiful death of the old year 1872.
The Nativity Of Christe.
Behould the Father is His daughter’s Sonne,
The bird that built the nest is hatched therein,
The Old of Yeares an hower hath not outrunne,
Eternall life to live doth now beginnn,
The Word is dumm, the Mirth of heaven doth weepe,
Mighte feeble is, and Force doth fayntely creepe.
O dyinge soules! behould your living Spring!
O dazeled eyes! behould your Sunne of grace!
Dull eares, attend what word this Word doth bringe!
Upp, heavy hartes, with joye your joy embrace!
From death, from darke, from deaphnesse, from despayres,
This Life, this Light, this Worde, this Joy repaires.
Gift better than Himself God doth not knowe,
Gift better than his God no man can see;
This gift doth here the giver given bestowe,
Gift to this gift lett ech receiver bee:
God is my gift, Himself He freely gave me,
God’s gift am I, and none but God shall have me.
Man altred was by synne from man to best;
Beste’s food is haye, haye is all mortal fleshe;
Now God is fleshe, and lyes in maunger prest,
As haye the brutest synner to refreshe:
O happy fielde wherein this foder grewe,
Whose taste doth us from beastes to men renewe!
SOUTHWELL.
The Progressionists.
From The German Of Conrad Von Bolanden.
Chapter VIII. Continued.
Once more the bell of the chairman was heard amid the tumult.
“Mr. Seicht, officer of the crown, will now address the meeting,” Schwefel
announced.
The audience were seized with amazement, and not without a cause. A
dignitary of a higher order, a member of the administration, ascended the
pulpit for the purpose of making an assault upon Christian education. He
was about to make war upon morals and faith, the true supports of every
solid government, the sources of the moral sentiment and of the prosperity
of human society. A remnant of honesty and a lingering sense of justice
may have raised a protest in Seicht’s mind against his undertaking; for
his bearing was anything but self‐possessed, and he had the appearance of
a wretch that was being goaded on by an evil spirit. Besides, he had the
habit peculiar to bureaucrats of speaking in harsh, snarling tones. Seicht
was conscious of these peculiarities of his bureaucratic nature, and
labored to overcome them. The effort imparted to his delivery an air of
constraint and a sickening sweetness which were climaxed by the fearfully
involved style in which his speech was clothed.
“Gentlemen,” said Seicht, “in view of present circumstances, and in
consideration of the requirements of culture whose spirit is incompatible
with antiquated conditions, popular education, which in connection with
domestic training is the foundation of the future citizen, must also
undergo such changes as will bring it into harmony with modern enlightened
sentiment; and this is the more necessary as the provisions of the law,
which progress in its enlightenment and clearness of perception cannot
refuse to recognize as a fit model for the imitation of a party dangerous
to the state—I mean the party of Jesuitism and ultramontanism—allow
untrammelled scope for the reformation of the school system, provided the
proper clauses of the law and the ordinances relating to this matter are
not left out of consideration. Accordingly, it is my duty to refer this
honorable meeting especially to the ministerial decree referring to common
schools, in accordance with which said common schools may be established,
after a vote of the citizens entitled to the elective franchise, as soon
as the need of this is felt; which in the present instance cannot be
contested, since public opinion has taken a decided stand against
denominational schools, in which youth is trained after unbending forms of
religion, and in doctrines that evidently conflict with the triumph of the
present, and with those exact sciences which make up the only true
gospel—the gospel of progress, which scarcely in any respect resembles the
narrow gospel of dubious dogmas—dubious for the reason that they lack the
spirit of advancement, and are prejudicial to the investigation of the
problems of a God, of material nature, and of man.”
Here leader Sand thrust his fingers in his ears.
“Thunder and lightning!” exclaimed he wrathfully, “what a shallow babbler!
What is he driving at? His periods are a yard long; and when he has done,
a man is no wiser than when he began. Gospel—gospel of
progress—fool—numskull—down! down!”
“Quite a remarkable instance, this!” said Gerlach to the banker.
“Evidently this man is trying might and main to please, yet he only
succeeds in torturing his hearers.”
“I will explain this man to you,” replied the banker. “Heretofore Mr.
Seicht has been a most complete exemplar of absolute bureaucracy. The only
divinity he knew were the statutes, the only heaven the bureau, and the
only safe way of reaching supreme felicity was, in his opinion, to render
unquestioning obedience to ministerial rescripts. Suddenly Mr. Seicht
heard the card‐house of bureaucracy start in all its joints. His divinity
lost its worshippers, and his heaven lost all charms for those who were
seeking salvation. He felt the ground moving under him, he realized the
colossal might of progress, and hastened to commend himself to this party
by adopting liberal ideas. He is now aiming to secure a seat in the house
of delegates, which is subsequently to serve him as a stepping‐stone to a
place in the cabinet. Just listen how the man is agonizing! He is wasting
his strength, however, and the attitude of the audience is beginning to
get alarming.”
For some time past, the chieftains in the chancel had been shaking their
heads at the efforts of this official advocate of progress. To avoid being
tortured by hearing, they had engaged in conversation. The auditors in the
nave of the church were also growing restive. The speaker, however,
continued blind to every hint and insinuation. At last a tall fellow in
the crowd swung his hat and cried, “Three cheers for Mr. Seicht!” The
whole nave joined in a deafening cheer. Seicht, imagining the cheering to
be a tribute to the excellence of his effort, stopped for a moment to
permit the uproar to subside, intending then to go on with his speech; but
no sooner had he resumed than the cheering burst forth anew, and was so
vigorously sustained that the man, at length perceiving the meaning of the
audience, came down amid peals of derisive laughter.
“Serves the gabbler right!” said Sand. “He’s a precious kind of a fellow!
The booby thinks he can hoist himself into the chamber of deputies by
means of the shoulders of progress, and thence to climb up higher. But it
happens that we know whom we have to deal with, and we are not going to
serve as stirrups for a turn‐coat official.”
The chairman wound up with a speech in which he announced that the vote on
the question of common schools would soon come off, and then adjourned the
meeting.
The millionaires drew back to allow the crowd to disperse. Near them stood
Mr. Seicht, alone and dejected. The countenances of the chieftains had
yielded him no evidence on which to base a hope that his speech had told,
and that he might expect to occupy a seat in the assembly. Moreover, Sand
had rudely insulted the ambitious official to his face. This he took
exceedingly hard. All of a sudden, he spied the banker in the chancel, and
went over to greet him. Greifmann introduced Gerlach.
“I am proud,” Mr. Seicht asseverated, “of the acquaintance of the
wealthiest proprietor of the country.”
“Pardon the correction, sir; my father is the proprietor.”
“No matter, you are his only son,” rejoined Seicht. “Your presence proves
that you take an interest in the great questions of the day. This is very
laudable.”
“My presence, however, by no means proves that I concur in the object of
this meeting. Curiosity has led me hither.”
The official directed a look of inquiry at the banker.
“Sheer curiosity,” repeated this gentleman coldly.
“Can you not, then, become reconciled to the spirit of progress?” asked
Seicht, with a smile revealing astonishment.
“The value of my convictions consists in this, that I worship genuine
progress,” replied the millionaire gravely. “The progress of this
community, in particular, looks to me like retrogression.”
“I am astonished at what you say,” returned the official; “for surely
Shund’s masterly speech has demonstrated that we are keeping pace with the
age.”
“I cannot see, sir, how fiendish hatred of religion can be taken for
progress. This horrible, bloodthirsty monster existed even in the days of
Nero and Tiberius, as we all know. Can the resurrection of it, now that it
has been mouldering for centuries, be seriously looked upon as a step in
advance? Rather a step backward, I should think, of eighteen hundred
years. Especially horrible and revolting is this latest instance of
tyranny, forcing parents who entertain religious sentiments to send their
children to irreligious schools. Not even Nero and Tiberius went so far.
On this point, I agree, there has been progress, but it consists in
putting a most unnatural constraint upon conscience.”
Gerlach’s language aroused the official. He was face to face with an
ultramontane. The mere sight of such an one caused a nervous twitching in
his person. He resorted at once to bureaucratic weapons in making his
onslaught.
“You are mistaken, my dear sir—you are very much mistaken. The spirit of
the modern state demands that the schools of the multitude, particularly
public institutions, should be accessible to the children of every class
of citizens, without distinction of religious profession. Consequently,
the schools must be taken from under the authority, direction, and
influence of the church, and put entirely under civil and political
control. Such, too, is now the mind of our rulers, besides that public
sentiment calls for the change.”
“But, Mr. Seicht, in making such a change, the state despotically
infringes on the province of religion.”
“Not despotically, Mr. Gerlach, but legally; for the state is the
fountain‐head of all right, and consequently possessed of unlimited
right.”
“You enunciate principles, sir, which differ vastly from what morality and
religion teach.”
“What signify morals—what signifies religion? Mere antiquated forms, sir,
with no living significance,” explained Seicht, lavishly displaying the
treasures of the storehouse of progressionist wisdom. “The past submitted
quietly to the authority of religion, because there existed then a low
degree of intellectual culture. At present there is only one authority—it
is the preponderance of numbers and of material forces. Consequently, the
only real authority is the majority in power. On the other hand,
authorities based upon the supposed existence of a supersensible world
have lost their cause of being, for the reason that exact science plainly
demonstrates the nonexistence of an immaterial world. _Cessante causa,
cessat effectus_, the supersensible world, the basis of religious
authority, being gone, it logically results that religious authority
itself is gone. Hence the only real authority existing in a state is the
majority, and to this every citizen is obliged to submit. You marvel, Mr.
Gerlach. What I have said is not my own personal view, but the expression
of the principles which alone pass current at the present day.”
“I agree in what you say,” said the banker. “You have spoken from the
standpoint of the times. The controlling power is the majority.”
“Shund, then, accurately summed up the creed of the present age when he
said, ‘Progress conquers death, destroys hell, rejects heaven, and finds
its god in the sweet enjoyment of life.’ It is to be hoped that all‐
powerful progress will next decree that there are no death and no
suffering upon earth, that all the hostile forces of nature have ceased,
that want and misery are no more, and that earth is a paradise of sweet
enjoyment for all.”
Mr. Seicht was rather taken aback by this satire.
“Besides, gentlemen,” proceeded Gerlach, “you will please observe that the
doctrine of state supremacy is a step backward of nearly two thousand
years. In Nero’s day, but one source of right, namely, the state, was
recognized. In the head of the state, the emperor, were centred all power,
all authority, and all right. In his person, the state was exalted into a
divinity. Temples and altars were reared to the emperor; sacrifices were
offered to him; he was worshipped as a deity. Even human sacrifices were
not denied him if the imperial divinity thought proper to demand them.
And, now, to what condition did these monstrous errors bring the world of
that period? It became one vast theatre of crime, immorality, and
despotism. Slavery coiled itself about men and things, and strangled their
liberty. Matrimonial life sank into the most loathsome corruption.
Infanticide was permitted to pass unpunished. The licentiousness of women
was even greater than that of men. Life and property became mere
playthings for the whims of the emperor and of his courtiers. Did the
divine Caesar wish to amuse his deeply sunken subjects, he had only to
order the gladiators to butcher one another, or some prisoners or slaves
or Christians to be thrown to tigers and panthers; this made a Roman
holiday. Such, gentlemen, was human society when it recognized no
supersensible world, no God above, no moral law. If our own progress
proceeds much further in the path on which it is marching, it will soon
reach a similar fearful stage. We already see in our midst the
commencement of social corruption. We have the only source of right
proclaimed to be the divine state. Conscience is being tyrannized over by
a majority that rejects God and denies future rewards and punishments. All
the rest, even to the divine despot, has already followed, or inevitably
will follow. Therefore, Mr. Seicht, the progress you so loudly boast of is
mere stupid retrogression, blind superstition, which falls prostrate
before the majority of a mob, and worships the omnipotence of the state.”
“Don’t you think my friend has been uttering some very bitter truths?”
asked the banker, with a smile.
“Pretty nearly so,” replied the official demurely. “However, one can
detect the design, and cannot help getting out of humor.”
“What design?” asked Seraphin.
“Of creating alarm against progress.”
“Indeed, sir, you are mistaken. I, too, am enthusiastic about progress,
but genuine progress. And because I am an advocate of real progress I
cannot help detesting the monstrosity which the age would wish to palm off
on men instead.”
The church was now cleared. Greifmann’s carriage was at the door. The
millionaires drove off.
“Pity for this Gerlach!” thought the official, as he strode through the
street. “He is lost to progress, for he is too solidly rooted in
superstition to be reclaimed. War against nature’s claims; deny healthy
physical nature its rights; re‐establish the reign of terror of the seven
capital sins; permit the priesthood to tyrannize over conscience; restore
the worship of an unmathematical triune God—no! no!” cried he fiercely,
“sooner shall all go to the devil!”
A carriage whirled past him. He cast a glance into the vehicle, and raised
his hat to Mr. Hans Shund.
The chief magistrate was on his way home from the town‐hall. He could not
rest under the weight of his laurels; the inebriation of his triumph drove
him into the room where sat his lonely and careworn wife.
“My election to the assembly is assured, wife.” And he went on with a
minute account of the proceedings of the day.
The pale, emaciated lady sat bowed in silence over her work, and did not
look up.
“Well, wife, don’t you take any interest in the honors won by your
husband? I should think you ought to feel pleased.”
“All my joys are swallowed up in an abyss of unutterable wretchedness,”
replied she. “And my husband is daily deepening the gulf. Yesterday you
were again at a disreputable house. Your abominable deeds are heaped
mountain high—and am I to rejoice?”
“A thousand demons, wife, I’m beginning to believe you have spies on
foot!”
“I have not. But you are at the head of this city—your steps cannot
possibly remain unobserved.”
“Very well!” cried he, “it shall be my effort in the assembly to bring
about such a change that there shall no longer be any houses of disrepute.
Narrow‐minded moralists shall not be allowed to howl any longer. The time
is at hand, old lady—so‐called disreputable houses are to become places of
amusement authorized by law.”
He spoke and disappeared.
Chapter IX. Progress Grows Jolly.
The agitators of progress were again hurrying through the streets and
alleys of the town. They knocked at every door and entered every house to
solicit votes in favor of common schools. Thanks to the overwhelming might
of the party in power, they again carried their measure. Dependent,
utterly enslaved, many yielded up their votes without opposition. It is
true conscience tortured many a parent for voting against his convictions,
for sacrificing his children to a system with which he could not
sympathize; but not a man in a dependent position had the courage to
vindicate for his child the religious training which was being so
ruthlessly swept away. Even men in high office gave way before the
encroaching despotism, for in the very uppermost ranks of society also
progress domineered.
One man only, fearless and firm, dared to put himself in the path of the
dominant power—the Rev. F. Morgenroth. From the pulpit, he unmasked and
scathed the unchristian design of debarring youth from religious
instruction, and of rearing a generation ignorant of God and of his
commandments. He warned parents against the evil, entreated them to stand
up conscientiously for the spiritual welfare of their children, to reject
the common schools, and to rescue the little ones for the maternal
guardianship of the church.
His sermon roused the entire progressionist camp. The local press fiercely
assailed the intrepid clergyman. Lies, calumnies, and scurrility were
vomited against him and his profession. Hans Shund seized the pen, and
indited newspaper articles of such a character as one would naturally look
for from a thief, usurer, and debauchee. Morgenroth paid no attention to
their disgraceful clamor, but continued his opposition undismayed. By
means of placards, he invited the Catholic citizens to assemble at his own
residence, for the purpose of consulting about the best mode of thwarting
the designs of the liberals. This unexpected fearlessness put the men of
culture, humanity, and freedom beside themselves with rage. They at once
decided upon making a public demonstration. The chieftains issued orders
to their bands, and these at the hour appointed for the meeting mustered
before the residence of the priest. A noisy multitude, uttering threats,
took possession of the churchyard. If a citizen attempted to make his way
through the mob to the house, he was loaded with vile epithets, at times
even with kicks and blows. But a small number had gathered around the
priest, and these showed much alarm; for outside the billows of progress
were surging and every moment rising higher. Stones were thrown at the
house, and the windows were broken. Parteiling, the commissary of police,
came to remonstrate with the clergyman.
“Dismiss the meeting,” said he. “The excitement is assuming alarming
proportions.”
“Commissary, we are under the protection of the law and of civil rule,”
replied Morgenroth. “We are not slaves and helots of progress. Are we to
be denied the liberty of discussing subjects of great importance in our
own houses?”
A boulder coming through the window crushed the inkstand on the table, and
rolled on over the floor. The men pressed to one side in terror.
“Your calling upon the law to protect you is utterly unreasonable under
present circumstances,” said Parteiling. “Listen to the howling. Do you
want your house demolished? Do you wish to be maltreated? Will you have
open revolution? This all will surely follow if you persist in refusing to
dismiss the meeting. I will not answer for results.”
Stones began to rain more densely, and the howling grew louder and more
menacing.
“Gentlemen,” said Morgenroth to the men assembled, “since we are not
permitted to proceed with our deliberations, we will separate, with a
protest against this brutal terrorism.”
“But, commissary,” said a much frightened man, “how are we to get away?
These people are infuriated; they will tear us in pieces.”
“Fear nothing, gentlemen; follow me,” spoke the commissary, leading the
way.
The ultramontanes were hailed with a loud burst of scornful laughter. The
commissary, advancing to the gate, beckoned silence.
“In the name of the law, clear the place!” cried he.
The mob scoffed and yelled.
“Fetch out the slaves of the priest—make them run the gauntlet—down with
the Jesuits!”
At this moment, a man was noticed elbowing his way through the crowd;
presently Hans Shund stepped before the embarrassed guardian of public
order.
“Three cheers for the magistrate!” vociferated the mob.
Shund made a signal. Profound silence followed.
“Gentlemen,” spoke the chief magistrate, in a tone of entreaty, “have the
goodness to disperse.”
Repeated cheers were raised, then the accumulation of corrupt elements
began to dissolve and flow off in every direction.
“I deeply regret this commotion of which I but a moment ago received
intelligence,” said Shund. “The excitement of the people is attributable
solely to the imprudent conduct of Morgenroth.”
“To be sure—to be sure!” assented Parteiling.
The place was cleared. The Catholics hurried home pursued and hooted by
straggling groups of rioters.
The signs of the approaching celebration began to be noticeable on the
town‐common. Booths were being erected, tables were being disposed in rows
which reached further than the eye could see, wagon‐loads of chairs and
benches were being brought from all parts of town, men were busy sinking
holes for climbing‐poles and treacherous turnstiles; but the most
attractive feature of all the festival was yet invisible—free beer and
sausages furnished at public cost. The rumor alone, however, of such cheer
gladdened the heart of every thirsty voter, and contributed greatly to the
establishment of the system of common schools. Bands of music paraded the
town, gathered up voters, and escorted them to the polls. As often as they
passed before the residence of a progressionist chieftain, the bands
struck up an air, and the crowd cheered lustily. They halted in front of
the priest’s residence also. The band played, “To‐day we’ll taste the
parson’s cheer,” the mob roaring the words, and then winding up with
whistling and guffaws of laughter. This sort of disorderly work was kept
up during three days. Then was announced in the papers in huge type: “An
overwhelming majority of the enlightened citizens of this city have
decided in favor of common schools. Herewith the existence of these
schools is secured and legalized.”
On the fourth day, the celebration came off. The same morning Gerlach
senior arrived at the Palais Greifmann on his way home from the
Exposition.
“I am so glad!” cried Louise. “I was beginning to fear you would not come,
and getting provoked at your indifference to the interests of our people.
We have been having stirring times, but we have come off victorious. The
narrow‐minded enemies of enlightenment are defeated. Modern views now
prevail, and education is to be remodelled and put in harmony with the
wants of our century.”
“Times must have been stirring, for you seem almost frenzied, Louise,”
said Conrad.
“Had you witnessed the struggle and read the newspapers, you, too, would
have grown enthusiastic,” declared the young lady.
“Even quotations advanced,” said the banker. “It astonished me, and I can
account for it only by assuming that the triumph of the common‐school
system is of general significance and an imperative desideratum of the
times.”
“How can you have any doubt about it?” cried his sister. “Our town has
pioneered the way: the rest of Germany will soon adopt the same system.”
Seraphin greeted his father.
“Well, my son, you very likely have heard nothing whatever of this hubbub
about schools?”
“Indeed, I have, father. Carl and I were in the midst of the commotion at
the desecrated church of S. Peter. We saw and heard what it would have
been difficult to imagine.” He then proceeded to give his father a minute
account of the meeting. His powerful memory enabled him to repeat Shund’s
speech almost verbatim. The father listened attentively, and occasionally
directed a glance of observation at the young lady. When Shund’s coarse
ridicule of Christian morals and dogmas was rehearsed, Mr. Conrad lowered
his eyes, and a frown flitted over his brow. For the rest, his countenance
was, as usual, cold and stern.
“This Mr. Shund made quite a strong speech,” said he, in a nonchalant way.
“He rather intensified the colors of truth, ’tis true,” remarked Louise.
“The masses, however, like high coloring and vigorous language.”
A servant brought the banker a note.
“Good! Shund is elected to the assembly! The span of bays belongs to me,”
exulted Carl Greifmann.
“Your bays Seraphin?” inquired the father. “How is this?”
Mr. Conrad had twice been informed of the wager; he had learned it first
from Seraphin’s own lips, then also he had read of it in his diary; still
he asked again, and his son detailed the story a third time.
“I should sooner have expected to see the heavens fall than to lose that
bet,” added Seraphin.
“When a notorious thief and usurer is elected to the chief magistracy and
to the legislative assembly, the victory gained is hardly a creditable one
to the spirit of progress, my dear Carl. Don’t you think so, Louise?” said
the landholder.
“You mustn’t be too rigorous,” replied the lady, with composure. “Rumor
whispers many a bit of scandal respecting Shund which does, indeed, offend
one’s sense of propriety; for all that, however, Shund will play his part
brilliantly both in the assembly and in the town council. The greatest of
statesmen have had their foibles, as everybody knows.”
“Very true,” said Gerlach dryly. “Viewed from the standpoint of very
humane tolerance, Shund’s disgusting habits may be considered
justifiable.”
Seraphin left the parlor, and retired to his room. Here he wrestled with
violent feelings. His father’s conduct was a mystery to him. Opinions
which conflicted with his own most sacred convictions, and principles
which brought an indignant flush to his cheek, were listened to and
apparently acquiesced in by his father. Shund’s abominable diatribe had
not roused the old gentleman’s anger; Louise’s avowed concurrence with the
irreligious principles of the chieftain had not even provoked his
disapprobation.
“My God, my God! can it be possible?” cried he in an agony of despair.
“Has the love of gain so utterly blinded my father? Can he have sunk so
low as to be willing to immolate me, his only child, to a base
speculation? Can he be willing for the sake of a million florins to bind
me for life to this erring creature, this infidel Louise? Can a paltry
million tempt him to be so reckless and cruel? No! no! a thousand times
no!” exclaimed he. “I never will be the husband of this woman, never—I
swear it by the great God of heaven! Get angry with me, father, banish me
from your sight—it would be more tolerable than the consciousness of being
the husband of a woman who believes not in the Redeemer of the world. I
have sworn—the matter is for ever settled.” He threw himself into an arm‐
chair, and moodily stared at the opposite wall. By degrees, his excitement
subsided, and he became quiet.
In fancy, he beheld beside Louise’s form another lovely one rise up—that
of the girl with the golden hair, the bright eyes, and the winning smile.
She had stood before him on this very floor, in her neat and simple
country garb, radiant with innocence and purity, adorned with innate grace
and uncommon beauty. And the lapse of days, far from weakening, had
deepened the impression of her first apparition. The storm that had been
raging in his interior was allayed by the recollection of Mechtild, as the
fury of the great deep subsides upon the reappearance of the sun. Scarcely
an hour had passed during which he had not thought of the girl, rehearsed
every word she had uttered, and viewed the basket of grapes she had
brought him. Again he pulled out the drawer, and looked upon the gift with
a friendly smile; then, locking up the precious treasure, he returned to
the parlor.
He found the company on the balcony. The sound of trumpets and drums came
from a distance, and presently a motley procession was seen coming up the
nearest street.
“You have just arrived in time to see the procession,” cried Louise to
him. “It is going to defile past here, so we will be able to have a good
look at it.”
A dusky swarm of boys and half‐grown youths came winding round the nearest
street‐corner, followed immediately by the head of a mock procession. In
the lead marched a fellow dressed in a brown cloak, the hood of which was
drawn over his head. His waist was encircled with a girdle from which
dangled a string of pebbles representing a rosary. To complete the
caricature of a Capuchin, his feet were bare, excepting a pair of soles
which were strapped to them with thongs of leather. In his hands he bore a
tall cross rudely contrived with a couple of sticks. The image of the
cross was represented by a broken mineral‐water bottle. Behind the cross‐
bearer followed the procession in a double line, consisting of boys, young
men, factory‐hands, drunken mechanics, and such other begrimed and
besotted beings as progress alone can count in its ranks. The members of
the procession were chanting a litany; at the same time they folded their
hands, made grimaces, turned their eyes upwards, or played unseemly pranks
with genuine rosary beads.
Next in the procession came a low car drawn by a watery‐eyed mare which a
lad bedizened like a clown was leading by the bridle. In the car sat a fat
fellow whose face was painted red, and eyebrows dyed, and who wore a long
artificial beard. Over a prodigious paunch, also artificial, he had drawn
a long white gown, over which again he wore a many‐colored rag shaped like
a cope. On his head he wore a high paper cap, brimless; around the cap
were three crowns of gilt paper to represent the tiara of the pope. A
sorry‐looking donkey walked after the car, to which it was attached by a
rope. It was the _rôle_ of the fellow in the car to address the donkey,
make a sign of blessing over it, and occasionally reach it straw drawn
from his artificial paunch. As often as he went through this manœuvre, the
crowd set up a tremendous roar of laughter. The fat man in the car
represented the pope, and the donkey was intended to symbolize the
credulity of the faithful.
This mock pope was not a suggestion of Shund’s or of any other inventive
progressionist. The whole idea was copied from a caricature which had
appeared in a widely circulating pictorial whose only aim and pleasure it
has been for years to destroy the innate religious nobleness of the German
people by means of shallow wit and vulgar caricatures. And this very
sheet, leagued with a daily organ equally degraded, can boast of no
inconsiderable success. The rude and vulgar applaud its witticisms, the
low and infamous regale themselves with its pictures, and its demoralizing
influence is infecting the land.
The principal feature of the procession was a wagon, hung with garlands
and bestuck with small flags, drawn by six splendid horses. In it sat a
youthful woman, plump and bold. Her shoulders were bare, the dress being
an exaggerated sample of the style _décolleté_; above her head was a
wreath of oak leaves. She was attended by a number of young men in masks.
They carried drinking‐horns, which they filled from time to time from a
barrel, and presented to the _bacchante_, who sipped from them; then these
gentlemen in waiting drank themselves, and poured what was left upon the
crowd. A band of music, walking in front of this triumphal car, played
airs and marches. Not even the mock pope was as great an object of
admiration as this shameless woman. Old and young thronged about the
wagon, feasting their lascivious eyes on this beastly spectacle which
represented that most disgusting of all abominable achievements of
progress—the emancipated woman. And perhaps not even progress could have
dared, in less excited times, so grossly to insult the chaste spirit of
the German people; but the social atmosphere had been made so foul by the
abominations of the election, and the spirits of impurity had reigned so
absolutely during the canvass in behalf of common schools, that this
immoral show was suffered to parade without opposition.
The very commencement of this sacrilegious mockery of religion had roused
Seraphin’s indignation, and he had retired from the balcony. His father,
however, had remained, coolly watching the procession as it passed, and
carefully noting Louise’s remarks and behavior.
“What does that woman represent?” he asked. “A goddess of liberty, I
suppose?”
“Only in one sense, I think,” replied the progressionist young lady. “The
woman wearing the crown symbolizes, to my mind, the enjoyment of life. She
typifies heaven upon earth, now that exact science has done away with the
heaven of the next world.”
“I should think yon creature rather reminds one of hell,” said Mr. Conrad.
“Of hell!” exclaimed Louise, in alarm. “You are jesting, sir, are you
not?”
“Never more serious in my life, Louise. Notice the shameless effrontery,
the baseness and infamy of the creature, and you will be forced to form
conclusions which, far from justifying the expectation of peace and
happiness in the family circle, the true sphere of woman, will suggest
only wrangling, discord, and hell upon earth.”
The young lady did not venture to reply. A gentleman made his way through
the crowd, and waved his hat to the company on the balcony. The banker
returned the salutation.
“Official Seicht,” said he.
“What! an officer of the government in this disreputable crowd!” exclaimed
Gerlach, with surprise.
“He is on hand to maintain order,” explained Greifmann. “You see some
policemen, too. Mr. Seicht sympathizes with progress. At the last meeting,
he made a speech in favor of common schools; he sounded the praises of the
gospel of progress, gave a toast at the banquet to the gospel of progress,
and has won for himself the title of evangelist of progress. He once
declared, too, that the very sight of a priest rouses his blood, and they
now pleasantly call him the parson‐eater. He is very popular.”
“I am amazed!” said Gerlach. “Mr. Seicht dishonors his office. He
advocates common schools, insults all the believing citizens of his
district, and runs with mock processions—a happy state of things, indeed!”
“His conduct is the result of careful calculation,” returned Greifmann.
“By showing hostility to ultramontanism, he commends himself to progress,
which is in power.”
“But the government should not tolerate such disgraceful behavior on the
part of one of its officials,” said Gerlach. “The entire official corps is
disgraced so long as this shallow evangelist of progress is permitted to
continue wearing the uniform.”
“You should not be so exacting,” cried Louise. “Why will you not allow
officials also to float along with the current of progress until they will
have reached the Eldorado of the position to which they are aspiring?”
“The corruption of the state must be fearful indeed, when such deportment
in an officer is regarded as a recommendation,” rejoined Mr. Conrad
curtly.
A servant appeared to call them to table.
“Would you not like to see the celebration?” inquired Louise.
“By all means,” answered Gerlach. “The excitement is of so unusual a
character that it claims attention. You will have to accompany us,
Louise.”
“I shall do so with pleasure. When sound popular sentiment thus proclaims
itself, I cannot but feel a strong desire to be present.”
The procession had turned the corner of a street where stood Holt and two
more countrymen looking on. The religious sentiment of these honest men
was deeply wounded by the profanation of the cross; and when, besides,
they heard the singing of the mock litany, their anger kindled, their eyes
gleamed, and they mingled fierce maledictions with the tumult of the mob.
Next appeared the mock pope, dispensing blessings with his right hand,
reaching straw to the donkey with his left, and distorting his painted
face into all sorts of farcical grimaces.
The peasants at once caught the significance of this burlesque. Their
countenances glowed with indignation. Avenging spirits took possession of
Mechtild’s father; his strong, stalwart frame seemed suddenly to have
become herculean. His fist of iron doubled itself; there was lightning in
his eyes; like an infuriated lion, he burst into the crowd, broke the line
of the procession, and, directing a tremendous blow at the head of the
mock pope, precipitated him from the car. The paper cap flew far away
under the feet of the bystanders, and the false beard got into the
donkey’s mouth. When the mock pope was down, Holt’s comrades immediately
set upon him, and tore the many‐colored rag from his shoulders. Then
commenced a great tumult. A host of furious progressionists surrounded the
sturdy countrymen, brandishing their fists and filling the air with mad
imprecations.
“Kill the dogs! Down with the accursed ultramontanes!”
Some of the policemen hurried up to prevent bloodshed. Mr. Seicht also
hurried to the scene of action, and his shrill voice could be heard high
above the noise and confusion.
“Gentlemen, I implore you, let the law have its course, gentlemen!” cried
he. “Gentlemen, friends, do not, I beg you, violate the law! Trust me,
fellow‐citizens—I shall see that the impertinence of these ultramontanes
is duly punished.”
They understood his meaning. Sticks and fists were immediately lowered.
“Brigadier Forchhaem,” cried Mr. Seicht, in a tone of command—“Forchhaem,
hither! Put handcuffs on these ultramontanes, these disturbers of the
peace—put irons on these revolutionists.”
Handcuffs were forthwith produced by the policemen. The towering, broad‐
shouldered Holt stood quiet as a lamb, looked with an air of astonishment
at the confusion, and suffered himself to be handcuffed. His comrades,
however, behaved like anything but lambs. They laid about them with hands
and feet, knocking down the policemen, and giving bloody mouths and noses
to all who came within their reach.
“Handcuff us!” they screamed, grinding their teeth, bleeding and cursing.
“Are we cutthroats?” The bystanders drew back in apprehension. The
confusion seemed to be past remedying. A thousand voices were screaming,
bawling, and crying at the same time; the circle around the struggling
countrymen was getting wider and wider; and when finally they attempted to
break through, the crowd took to flight, as if a couple of tigers were
after them.
Many of the spectators found a pleasurable excitement in watching the
battle between the policemen and the peasants; but they would not move a
finger to aid the officers of the law in arresting the culprits. They
admired the agility and strength of the countrymen, and the more fierce
the struggle became, the greater grew their delight, and the louder their
merriment.
Holt had been carried on with the motion of the crowd. When he dealt the
blow to the fellow in the car, he was beside himself with rage. The
genuine _furor teutonicus_ had taken possession of him so irresistibly and
so bewilderingly as to leave him utterly without any of the calm judgment
necessary to measure the situation. After his first adventure, he had
submitted to be handcuffed, and had watched the struggle between Forchhaem
and his own comrades in a sort of absence of mind. He had stood perfectly
quiet, his face had become pale, and his eyes looked about strangely. The
excitement of passion was now beginning to wear off. He felt the cold iron
of the manacles around his wrists, his eyes glared, his face became
crimson, the sinews of his powerful arm stiffened, and with one great
muscular convulsion he wrenched off the handcuffs. Nobody had observed
this sudden action, all eyes being directed to the combatants. Shoving the
part of the handcuff which still hung to his wrist under the sleeve of his
jacket, Holt disappeared through the crowd.
The resistance of the peasants was gradually becoming fainter. At length
they succumbed to overpowering force, and were handcuffed.
“Where is the third one?” cried Seicht. “There were three of them.”
“Where is the third one? There were three of them,” was echoed on every
hand, and all eyes sought for the missing one in the crowd.
“The third one has run away, sir,” reported Forchhaem.
“What’s his name?” asked Seicht.
Nobody knew.
A street boy, looking up at the official, ingenuously cried, “’Twas a
Tartar.”
Seicht looked down upon the obstreperous little informant.
“A Tartar—do you know him?”
“No; but these here know him,” pointing to the captives.
“What is the name of your comrade?”
“We don’t know him,” was the surly reply.
“Never mind, he will become known in the judicial examination. Off to jail
with these rebellious ultramontanes,” the official commanded.
Bound in chains, and guarded by a posse of police, these honest men, whose
religious sense had been so wantonly outraged as to have occasioned an
outburst of noble indignation, were marched through the streets of the
town and imprisoned. They were treated as criminals for a crime, however,
the guilt of which was justly chargeable to those very rioters who were
enjoying official protection.
The procession moved on to the ground selected for the barbecue. A motley
mass, especially of factory‐men, were hard at work upon the scene. The
booths, spread far and wide over the common, were thrown open, and around
them moved a swarm of thirsty beings drawing rations of beer and sausages,
with which, when they had received them, they staggered away to the
tables. Degraded‐looking women were also to be seen moving about
unsteadily with brimming mugs of beer in their hands. There were several
bands of music stationed at different points around the place.
The chieftains of progress, perambulating the ground with an air of
triumph, bestowed friendly nods of recognition on all sides, and
condescendingly engaged in conversation with some of the rank and file.
Hans Shund approached the awning where the woman with the bare shoulders
and indecent costume had taken a seat. She had captivated the gallant
chief magistrate, who hovered about her as a raven hovers over a dead
carcass. Moving off, he halted within hearing distance, and, casting
frequent glances back, addressed immodest jokes to those who occupied the
other side of the table, at which they laughed and applauded immoderately.
The men whom Seraphin had met in the subterranean den, on the memorable
night before the election, were also present: Flachsen, Graeulich, Koenig,
and a host of others. They were regaling themselves with sausages which
omitted an unmistakable odor of garlic, and were of a very dubious
appearance; interrupting the process of eating with frequent and copious
draughts from their beer‐mugs.
“Drink, old woman!” cried Graeulich to his wife. “Drink, I tell you! It
doesn’t cost us anything to‐day.”
The woman put the jug to her lips and drained it manfully. Other women who
were present screamed in chorus, and the men laughed boisterously.
“Your old woman does that handsomely,” applauded Koth. “Hell and thunder!
But she must be a real spitfire.”
Again they laughed uproariously.
“I wish there were an election every day, what a jolly life this would
be!” said Koenig. “Nothing to do, eating and drinking gratis—what more
would you wish?”
“That’s the way the bigbugs live all the year round. They may eat and
drink what they like best, and needn’t do a hand’s turn. Isn’t it glorious
to be rich?” cried Graeulich.
“So drink, boys, drink till you can’t stand! We are all of us bigbugs to‐
day.”
“And if things were regulated as they should be,” said Koth, “there would
come a day when we poor devils would also see glorious times. We have been
torturing ourselves about long enough for the sake of others. I maintain
that things will have to be differently regulated.”
“What game is that you are wishing to come at? Show your hand, old
fellow!” cried several voices.
“Here’s what I mean: Coffers which are full will have to pour some of
their superfluity into coffers which are empty. You take me, don’t you?”
“’Pon my soul, I can’t make you out. You are talking conundrums,” declared
Koenig.
“You blockhead, I mean there will soon have to be a partition. They who
have plenty will have to give some to those who have nothing.”
“Bravo! Long live Koth!”
“That sort of doctrine is dangerous to the state,” said Flachsen. “Such
principles bring about revolutions, and corrupt society.”
“What of society! You’re an ass, Flachsen! Koth is right—partition,
partition!” was the cry all round the table.
“As you will! I have nothing against it if only it were practicable,”
expostulated Flachsen; “for I, too, am a radical.”
“It is practicable! All things are practicable,” exclaimed Koth. “Our age
can do anything, and so can we. Haven’t we driven religion out of the
schools? Haven’t we elected Shund for mayor? It is the majority who rule;
and, were we to vote in favor of partition to‐morrow, partition would have
to take place. Any measure can be carried by a majority, and, since we
poor devils are in the majority, as soon as we will have voted for
partition it will come without fail.”
“That’s sensible!” agreed they all. “But then, such a thing has never yet
been done. Do you think it possible?”
“Anything is possible,” maintained Koth. “Didn’t Shund preach that there
isn’t any God, or hell, or devil? Was that ever taught before? If the God
of old has to submit to being deposed, the rich will have to submit to it.
I tell you, the majority will settle the business for the rich. And if
there’s no God, no devil, and no life beyond, well then, you see, I’m
capable of laying my hand to anything. If voting won’t do, violence will.
Do you understand?”
“Bravo! Hurrah for Koth!”
“There must be progress,” cried Graeulich, “among us as well as others. We
are not going to continue all our lives in wretchedness. We must advance
from labor to comfort without labor, from poverty to wealth, from want to
abundance. Three cheers for progress—hurrah! hurrah!” And the whole
company joined in frantically.
“There comes Evangelist Seicht,” cried Koenig. “Though I didn’t understand
one word of his speech, I believe he meant well. Although he is an officer
of the government, he cordially hates priests. A man may say what he
pleases against religion, and the church, and the Pope, and the Jesuits,
it rather pleases Seicht. He is a free and enlightened man, is he. Up with
your glasses, boys; if he comes near, let’s give him three rousing
cheers.”
They did as directed. Men and women cheered lustily. Seicht very
condescendingly raised his hat and smiled as he passed the table. The
ovation put him in fine humor. Though he had failed in securing a place in
the assembly, perhaps the slight would be repaired in the future. Such was
the tenor of his thoughts whilst he advanced to the climbing‐pole, around
which was assembled a crowd of boys. Quite a variety of prizes, especially
tobacco‐pipes, was hanging from the cross‐pieces at the top of the mast.
The pole was so smooth that more than ordinary strength and activity were
required to get to the top. The greater number of those who attempted the
feat gave out and slid back without having gained a prize. There were also
grown persons standing around watching the efforts of the boys and young
men.
“It’s my turn now,” cried the fellow who had carried the cross in the
procession.
“But, first, let me have one more drink—it’ll improve the sliding.” He
swallowed the drink hastily, then swaying about as he looked and pointed
upward, “Do you see that pipe with tassels to it?” he said. “That’s the
one I’m going after.”
Throwing aside his mantle, he began to climb.
“He’ll not get up, he’s drunk,” cried a lad among the bystanders.
“Belladonna has given him two pints of double beer for carrying the cross
in the procession—that’s what ails him.”
“Wait till I come down, I’ll slap your jaws,” cried the climber.
The spectators were watching him with interest. He was obliged to pause
frequently to rest himself, which he did by winding his legs tightly round
the pole. At last he reached the top. Extending his arm to take the pipe,
it was too short. Climbing still higher, he stretched his body to its
greatest length, lost his hold, and fell to the ground. The bystanders
raised a great cry. The unfortunate youth’s head had embedded itself in
the earth, streams of blood gushed from his mouth and nostrils—he was
lifeless.
“He’s dead! It’s all over with him,” was whispered around.
“Carry him off,” commanded Seicht, and then walked on.
One of the bystanders loosed the cross‐piece of the mock crucifix; the
corpse was then stretched across the two pieces of wood and carried off
the scene. As the body was carried past, the noise and revelry everywhere
ceased.
“Wasn’t that the one who carried the cross?” was asked. “Is he dead? Did
he fall from the pole? How terrible!”
Even the progressionist revellers were struck thoughtful, so deeply is the
sense of religion rooted in the heart of man. Many a one among them,
seeing the pale, rigid face of the dead man, understood his fate to be a
solemn warning, and fled from the scene in terror.
The progressionist element of the town was much flattered by the presence
at its orgies of the wealthiest property owner of the country.
The women had already made the discovery that the millionaire’s only son,
Mr. Seraphin Gerlach, was on the eve of marrying a member of the highly
respectable house of Greifmann, bankers. But it occasioned them no small
amount of surprise that the young gentleman was not in attendance on the
beautiful lady at the celebration. Louise’s radiant countenance gave no
indication, however, that any untoward occurrence had caused the absence
of her prospective husband. The wives and daughters of the chieftains were
sitting under an awning sipping coffee and eating cake. When Louise
approached leaning on her brother’s arm, they welcomed her to a place in
the circle of loveliness with many courtesies and marks of respect.
Mr. Conrad strolled about the place, studying the spirit which animated
the gathering.
To Be Continued.
ὙΠΝΟΣ
Not now for sleep, O slumber‐god! we sue;
Hypnus! not sleep, but give our souls repose!
Of the day’s music such a mellowing close
As might have rested Shakespeare from his art,
Or soothed the spirit of the Tuscan strong
Who best read life, its passions and its woes,
And wrought of sorrow earth’s divinest song.
Bring us a mood that might have lulled Mozart,
Not stupor, not forgetfulness, not dreams,
But vivid sense of what is best and rarest,
And sweet remembrance of the blessed few;
In the real presence of this fair world’s fairest:
A spell of peace—as ’twere by those dear streams(209)
Boccaccio wrote of, when romance was new.
A Legend Of Saint Ottilia.
Attich, Duke of Alsace, had a lovely wife, with whom he lived in great
happiness, desiring but one thing more than he possessed—this was the
blessing of children. His prayers, however, remained unanswered until he
vowed that, if the Lord would grant his ardent wish, he would dedicate the
child entirely to his service. At length a daughter was born to him, but
the parents’ first joy was turned into sadness, for the child was blind.
Ottilia (thus was she named) grew up a lovely maiden, with rare goodness
and virtues, showing, from her earliest youth, singular piety and
devoutness of character. One of her daily prayers was that God might
bestow on her the gift of sight. By‐and‐by, to the great astonishment of
all, this prayer was answered. Beautiful before, the new expression of her
eyes so enhanced her charms that, whereas previously she had no lack of
suitors, now she was wooed by many and most noble youths. These dazzling
prospects affected the mind of her father, and led him to repent the vow
he had made to give his sweet child to God. Then Count Adelhart, a brave
man, and one who had performed great services for Attich, claimed the hand
of Ottilia, and the duke resolved that his daughter should become his
wife. Ottilia heard this with terror; she told her father how wrong she
believed it to be, and how she feared the vengeance of heaven if they thus
disregarded his vow. Seeing, however, that her entreaties were of no
avail, and that they meant to marry her by compulsion, she fled she knew
not whither. Then Attich called out his servants to pursue her, he
himself, in company with Ottilia’s suitor, taking the lead. They took the
road to Freiburg, in Breisgau.
The day began to decline, and their efforts to find her had been in vain,
when, on riding up a hill from whose top they could overlook the country,
they heard a cry; turning their eyes toward the place from whence the
sound came, they saw her whom they were seeking standing on the summit.
They urged their steeds onward, rejoicing in the certainty of capturing
the fugitive. Then Ottilia threw herself upon her knees, and prayed to
heaven for assistance. The rock opened beneath her feet, and, in the sight
of all, she sank into the yawning depth. The rock closed again, and, from
the spot where it had been reft in twain, a clear well flowed, taking its
course downward into the forest below.
The mourning father returned to his now desolate home. Never again did he
behold Ottilia.
The wonderful tale soon spread far and near. The fountain became a place
of pilgrimage. People drank from its waters, to which a wonderful healing
influence for weak eyes was attributed. A hermit built his hut in its
neighborhood, and “The Well of S. Ottilia” was and is much frequented by
old and young. The mountain itself bears the name of “Ottilia‐Berg.”
Thus runs the simple legend which, even after the lapse of centuries,
brings people to visit this famous spring, partly drawn thither by
religious faith in the curative power of its waters, and partly attracted
by the renowned beauty of the scenery which surrounds the spot where
heaven‐trusting Ottilia had thrown herself upon the intervention of
Providence.
The Year Of Our Lord 1872.
There lurks a grim sarcasm in our title for those who, as the years grow
and die out one after the other, ask each in turn: What have you brought
us? what growth of good and lessening of evil? what new bond to link the
scattered and divided masses of a humanity which should be common—but is
not—more closely and firmly together? Have you brought us a step nearer
heaven, that is, nearer the destiny which God marked out in the beginning
for his creation, or thrown us backward? Years are the days of the world,
of national life; and as each closes, even the superior minds which will
not deign to believe in such old‐fashioned words as a God, a heaven, or a
hell, cannot fail to ask themselves the question, What has the world
gained or lost in this its latest day?
We know that we shall be greeted at the outset by the old cry:—Catholics
behind the age again: it is plain their religion was not made for the
XIXth century; they will drift backward and sigh for the days that were,
the gloom and the mist and the superstition of the “ages of faith”: they
refuse to recognize the century, to understand it and its glorious
enlightenment: they decline to march hand in hand with the great leaders,
the apostles of the day, in politics, science, and religion—the Bismarcks,
the Lanzas, the Mills, the Fawcetts, the Bradlaughs, the Döllingers, the
Beechers, the Huxleys, the Buckles, the Darwins, the novelists, and the
newspapers; the “enlightened” ideas of the age on marriage, education,
civil government, and the rest. We humbly plead guilty to the greater
portion of this charge. Modern enlightenment, as preached by the apostles
above enumerated, and others such, possesses still too few charms to win
us from our benighted ignorance. To us Utopia appears as far off to‐day as
when it grew upon the mind of Sir Thomas More in the shape of a dream too
splendid to be realized; as far off as the fairyland which presented
itself to our youthful imagination, where everybody was goody‐goody, where
all were kings and queens with crowns and sceptres, or lovely princesses
and amiable princes, who loved each other with the most ardent nursery
love, and with only one crabbed old fairy to spoil the scene, whose
witcheries caused the amiable princes to undergo a certain amount of mild
misfortunes, creating a corresponding amount of misery in the bosoms of
the lovely princesses, till at length the old harridan was overridden to
her shame and confusion, truth and virtue triumphed, everybody married
everybody else, and there was peace and joy for ever after. To drop fancy:
the story of the year would not seem to bring happier tidings of the great
joy which was announced at the coming of Christ: of “peace on earth to men
of good‐will.” “Civilized” governments still hold fast by the good old
rule,
That he may take who has the power,
And he may keep who can.
We purpose passing in review a few of the chief events which have moved
the world during the past year and made its annals memorable in all time.
Our review must necessarily be a rapid one, a mere glance in fact, at the
multitude of events which confront us, some like ghosts which we have
summoned from their graves in the buried year, others which accompany us
into the new and the unknown to ripen or wither with us into their measure
of good or of evil.
As the year opened, the eyes of the world were fixed upon the sick‐bed of
the Prince of Wales, stricken down by fever apparently beyond hope of
recovery. The whole thing is long forgotten; but the anxiety which his
illness caused—in view of the possible political complications which might
have resulted from the death of the heir to the English throne—and the
enthusiasm which his recovery evoked from end to end of the land, makes
the event worthy of mention in the record of the year as significant of
the innate as well as outspoken loyalty of the English nation for their
crown and institution—a national trait which it is becoming fashionable to
question.
Our own year opened tragically with the murder of Fisk by Stokes, his boon
companion. The man’s end was in keeping with his life, and his name should
not have sullied our pages, but for the consequent collapse of the long
triumphant Erie Ring. The era of blood thus commenced has flourished
bravely. _Quid novi? quid novi?_ was the daily cry at Athens when S. Paul
entered it. We would not demean the commercial metropolis of the New World
and of the new age by comparing it with the intellectual metropolis of
paganism; but as the cry of the Athenians was each day: What new system,
doctrine, or philosophy is there? the question of our more enlightened and
Christian capital might well be: What new thing in the way of murder?
Scarcely a day passes but some fresh horror greets our eyes in the
morning. Nor is it left to the hand of man alone to take life as he
pleases; the privilege has passed to women, and they make right good use
of this latest form of their “rights.” We read till our blood curdles of
the political poisonings of the XVIth century in Italy; of their secrecy
and the safety of their carrying out. We are a more honest race than the
Italians; we enshroud our deeds of blood in no false Machiavellian veil;
we kill in open day. The lady or gentleman who has just taken away a life
politely hands the pistol to the officer, who escorts him or her with the
utmost courtesy to the police station, where a cell is luxuriously fitted
up according to the exigencies of the case; the murderer stands up in open
court, with the ablest champions to defend him; he calls upon the law to
save him, and the “law” does. In the meantime obtuse people are beginning
to inquire if there be such a thing as law in New York, and in America
generally, and if the present administration of justice be not very
closely allied to administering injustice.
We have felt compelled to touch on this point at some length; for murder,
cool, deliberate, wilful murder, has marked our year with a red stain
which was never dry; the murderers have either escaped or are living at
ease and being “lionized” by the press in their prisons; justice is not
administered among us. So true is this, that outraged public feeling,
which requires a very heavy force to set its inertia in motion, has at
length found it necessary to begin to weed the judiciary. Until it does so
thoroughly, the law of New York is the law of the bullet and the knife.
If we were not above taking a lesson from people for whom we entertain, of
course, a sovereign contempt, we might find something commendable in the
action of the populace in Lima, Peru, on the occasion of the murder of
Colonel Balta, the president, by Guttierez, the minister of war; who, in
order to attain supreme power, caused Balta to be assassinated, having
previously gained over the garrison of Lima, and had himself proclaimed
dictator. The people, finding reason to object to this summary mode of
settling questions, refused to accept this dictatorship; rose in revolt,
overpowered the garrison, hanged the dictator and his brother to lamp‐
posts in the public square, and burned their bodies. We, are far from
advocating the cause of “Judge Lynch”; but a slight touch of the sensible
spirit displayed by the inhabitants of Lima has a wonderfully wholesome
effect on evil doers in power.
Our political life for the past year has been absorbed in the presidential
election and the settlement of the Alabama claims. This latter very vexed
question has come at last to a final, peaceful, and satisfactory solution.
Our claim for “indirect damages” against England was ruled out of court.
An adequate propitiation was made in the final decision, given in our
favor: England was compelled to pay us £3,000,000; she is supposed to have
lost very much in prestige in consequence; particularly as the San Juan
boundary question was also decided in our favor; the whole thing was
settled by peaceful arbitration, and, therefore, no matter which party
lost in prestige, or diplomacy, or pocket, both have good reason to
congratulate themselves on getting out of sight, let us ardently hope, for
ever, a very ugly question which was fast becoming a gangrene, corroding
and eating out all good feeling between the two nations. It is one of the
things which we sincerely trust may be buried with the dead year; and the
two rival claimants we hope to see enter on a new lease of friendship and
good‐will.
General Grant was re‐elected; the opposition arrayed against him under Mr.
Greeley as candidate for the presidency, and such very able secessionists
from the republican ranks as Messrs. Sumner, Schurz, and others, and the
attempted coalescing of Democrats with dissatisfied Republicans, who would
not coalesce, utterly broke down. General Grant’s is undoubtedly a
national election: we trust, therefore, that his future term may
correspond with the confidence placed in his rule by the nation; may be
productive of all the good which we expect of it for the nation at large;
may heal up old wounds still sore, and may lead the country wisely into a
new era of prosperity and peace: the more so that the outer world is fast
pouring in on us the most skilled artisans and law‐abiding, intelligent
citizens of every European race.
Having said so much for ourselves, we turn to the workings of events in
Europe during the past year, which indeed have occupied our attention
more, almost, than our home questions. Our gaze has been riveted with an
interest of almost painful intensity on the two contestants during the
late dread struggle, and the actions and bearing of each have brought out
the inner character of the two nations in such strong relief that we can
think of Germany and France as two individualities. On the one side, we
behold United Germany, the victor in the fight, like a strong athlete
glorying in his great strength, setting on his own brow the laurels which
he plucked from that of his fallen foe; not resting on his honors, and
satiated for the time being with his glory, but anxious, careful, trying
his strength, not letting his arms rust for want of practice, preparing
himself for new glories and new contests to come as though they were to
come to‐morrow, and as a matter of course. On the other, we have France
wounded and bleeding at every pore. We thought its life had ebbed out,
stricken first by the terrible blows of a merciless conqueror, after by a
delirious contest with itself. And what do we behold? No longer a weak
convalescent, sick, sore, and spiritless, but a great nation, infused with
a new life; strong and gaining in strength every day; cautious indeed and
still uncertain, but these are not bad signs in a nation which is
recovering at however rapid strides, and which fell from its overweening
confidence. It has almost exhausted its terrible debt to Germany, and rid
the soil of the foot of the foe. Its loans were eagerly taken up and
covered four times over: its exports for the first six months of the year
were in advance of those for the corresponding six months, esteemed a
period of great prosperity, prior to the war; its army is again on a firm
and sound footing; its children are peaceful, calm and obedient to the law
in the face of the tyranny and unnecessarily harsh measures and dictation
of the conqueror and the rash declamations of Gambetta, biding their time
with a calm good sense which we scarcely expected in the French people. Of
course the nation is taxed and heavily; but the wonder is that a nation
can endure such blows and live; can not only live, but present to the
admiration and astonished gaze of the world, a year after what we
considered its death and burial, so glorious a resurrection into a
powerful and wealthy country. As these two nations have been the centre of
attraction to the whole world during the year, we feel called upon to
touch upon each in a more special manner than on other nations.
On April 7th, the Emperor William delivered a speech from the throne, from
which we cull the following extract:
“Honored Gentlemen: You will share the satisfaction with which the
Confederate Governments look back on the events of the first year of the
newly founded German Empire, and the joyful confidence with which they
look forward to the further national and state development of our internal
institutions. With equal satisfaction you will hail the assurance that the
policy of his majesty, the emperor and king, has succeeded in retaining
and strengthening the confidence of all foreign states; that the power
acquired by Germany through becoming united in one Empire is not only a
safe bulwark for the fatherland, but likewise affords a strong guarantee
for the peace of Europe.”
Now, that sounds so well, at least it did in April last, that it is almost
a pity to spoil it by the inevitable comments which cannot fail to present
themselves to the minds of its readers in December, in the face of one or
two little events which have occurred since April. But before commenting
on it, we must add a further exquisite little piece of irony from the same
speech of Bismarck’s—we mean of the Emperor William: Prince Bismarck only
read it:
“The new administration in, and the consolidation of the affairs of,
Alsace and Lorraine make satisfactory progress. The damage done by the war
is gradually disappearing with the aid of the subvention given in
conformity with the law, dated June 15, 1871.”
As it is not the purport of this article to go extensively into the
various subjects which come under our notice, we think that the best mode
of dealing with the German question will be to read the above speech by
the December light:
Honored Gentlemen: You will share the satisfaction with which the
Confederate Governments look back on the events of the intervening nine
months since his majesty, the emperor and king, first found reason to
congratulate you on the consolidation of the newly founded empire. Those
events are, in brief, as follows:
1. As we consider national education to be the first means in making good,
sound, and efficient citizens of the Empire, and as we consider it,
moreover, to be the great moralizer of the masses in these days, we have
found it necessary to take this education from the hands in which it has
rested for so long, “which the Prussia of the past encouraged, and indeed
enforced; which have had the honor to receive the zealous support of two
deceased monarchs, the father and brother of the present sovereign; which
have received for the last two generations the approbation of all sorts of
thinkers—who believed that the Prussian state could only subsist by a
strict military and religious organization, that a definite church system
must be chosen by the state, and the people drilled in it as they were
drilled for his majesty’s armies.”(210) Notwithstanding the very solid
proofs which our success in the late war gave us of the efficiency of this
system, when our soldiers went to battle under the double panoply of
intelligence and faith in God, we have since found it fit to divorce
religion from education, and place this moralizer of the masses in the
hands of those to whom morality is a thing unknown, or, if it mean
anything, means blind obedience to the state in all things.
2. Holding as we do that marriage is another powerful moralizer of the
masses, and the strongest bond for the welfare, happiness, and power of a
nation, we have thought fit to divorce it also from religion, to strip it
of the sacred character with which Jesus Christ invested it, and which,
even were it false, has been the chief means of restoring woman to her
fitting station in life, of civilizing man, and substituting love and
purity for sensuality and animal passion: being perfectly alive to all
this, we have still seen fit to hand the power of the binding and the
loosing of marriage into the hands of the magistracy, to be dealt with for
the future as a civil contract, thus reducing it to the far more
convenient form of a mere matter of buying and selling at will.
3. Having already testified in the most direct and special manner our
gratitude for the great services rendered us by the Society of Jesus and
kindred orders recently on the fields of France, and in the more lasting
and beneficial fields of intellectual and religious culture under the
educational system which obtained so long and with such profit to us, but
which we have since seen fit to put an end to, we think it fit to prove
their devotion still further to us by banishing them the Empire, breaking
up their communities, closing their churches, appropriating their property
to our own use and imprisoning them if we find them within our territory.
We mercifully spare them the further trial of immediate martyrdom.
4. Having been compelled to meet the demands of two powerful bodies of our
subjects whose interests on religious questions sometimes clash, we have
very wisely, and very satisfactorily to both bodies, met those demands by
special articles in our legislative code which have hitherto answered
their purpose so well that both bodies have been enabled to work
harmoniously though in friendly rivalry together as common children of
fatherland. We have seen fit to erase those laws, at least in the case of
the Catholics. We cannot allow their bishops to excommunicate our
subjects, though we have hitherto allowed it, and though we still allow it
to the Protestants.(211)
Honored Gentlemen: Having thus succeeded in creating a profound and
widespread agitation by outraging the feelings and the conscience of
14,000,000 of our most faithful subjects, an agitation which has spread
from these 14,000,000 to hundreds of millions of their co‐religionists
outside the Empire, and indeed of large bodies and powerful secular organs
opposed to them in faith, the confederate governments, the most powerful
of which is Catholic, may look forward with joyful confidence to the
further national and state development of our institutions. With equal
satisfaction you will hail the assurance that the policy of his majesty,
the emperor and king, has succeeded in retaining and strengthening the
confidence of all foreign states,(212) that the power acquired by Germany
is not only a safe bulwark for the fatherland,(213) but likewise affords a
strong guarantee for the peace of Europe.
The new administration in, and the consolidation of affairs in, Alsace and
Lorraine, have made most satisfactory progress. By careful and well‐
devised management we have succeeded in driving out the population of
these two provinces, two of the wealthiest in the world, in rendering
their cities desolate and their smiling country a desert: in gaining for
ourselves a new legacy of hatred, and arousing the disgust and, what
politically is worse, the suspicion of all governments outside our own.
As a further comment on this speech we must add the dangerous symptoms of
revolt exhibited by the Upper House in the Prussian diet, and the
dubiously constitutional mode adopted of bringing it to submission. The
influx of French gold would seem to have created a South Sea Bubble
commotion in financial circles. Rent in the chief cities and towns has
increased twofold; the cost of living has risen with it. This falls
heaviest, of course, on the middle and lower classes, so that we are not
surprised to hear, that the rate of living having increased 60 or 70 per
cent. for the poorer classes during the last six or seven years, and the
French gold never having filtered down to their pockets, the poor have
been unable to meet their new expenses, and “ever since the conclusion of
peace with France,” to quote the special correspondent of the London
_Times_, April 11th, “the German workmen have been at war with their
‘masters.’ ” As a last comment we see the German people fleeing from this
glorious consolidation of confederate governments in such numbers that the
central government is compelled to call into practice measures as harsh on
the one side to restrain their own people from running away as they used
to force out the inhabitants of Alsace and Lorraine. We believe we have
said enough of German “Unity” on its first two years of lease to show that
its workings, whether internal or external, have been anything but
satisfactory so far, and far from hopeful to the world at large.
The strikes which were successful in Germany were not restricted to that
locality. They spread through the greater part of Europe, and reached out
here to us, with varied success. New York was in many departments of
business at a standstill in what is generally esteemed as the busiest
portion of the year. Fortunately with us and for the greater part
elsewhere, the “strikes” passed off peaceably, and the masters and workmen
succeeded in coming to a compromise at least for the time being. This
uprising of labor against capital formed one of the most significant, we
fear most threatening, aspects of the year. There was a union and a
combination among the working classes of European nations and our own,
which enabled them to offer a persistent, solid, and bold front to their
employers. Funds and a more perfect organization, neither of which seem to
us impossible, would convert trades‐unions into the most formidable power
in the world. Christian education can alone hope to convert this into a
legal power. At present it wavers between the dictates of good sense and
fair demands and the wild and impossible, but, to half‐educated men, very
fascinating, dreams of the Communists. Labor is beginning at last to feel
its power, its numbers, its irresistible force; that the world cannot get
on without it, as little as it can get on without the co‐operation of the
rest of the world. Let the laboring classes receive an education worthy of
the name, plant religion in their hearts while at school, and, when they
come to face the hard problem, the division of wealth, they will be led
away by no fallacious teachings that what is and always must be a
necessity is a wrong done to humanity; but divorce the schools, as
governments seem now resolved to do, from religion, and labor will merge
into Communism.
France has borne her terrible trials with a calmness, a magnanimity, and a
self‐dependence which have regained for her in the eyes of the world more
than she ever lost at Sedan. We speak here of the nation, not of its
haphazard government. Thiers is at present a necessity; and by the aid of
the bogy “resignation” which he has conjured up so often, and whereby he
frightens the still cautious Assembly into submission, he has managed to
hold the dangerous elements in such a state of order that the nation has
been able so far to regain public confidence that its loans were caught up
with avidity; it has almost freed itself from the foot of the foe; it has
frowned down the folly of Gambetta; restored its army to a sound footing,
and won the admiration and good‐will of all by its truly patriotic bearing
in the face of a rapacious, dictatorial, and merciless conqueror. But
Thiers cannot last, and what is to follow? The country would not bear the
rule of “the man of Sedan,” though, undoubtedly, his twenty years of firm
government wrought it up to the pitch of material prosperity which even
its terrible losses have been unable to destroy. The speech of the Duc
d’Audiffret Pasquier on the army contracts, showing a system of finance in
the army somewhat similar to that which has recently greeted our eyes in
the city government, has killed Napoleonism for the nonce. We can only
hope for the best in France from some other and nobler sprout of former
dynasties; we cannot foresee it. We must not forget that the nation has
been kneeling at its altars and shrines. Of course superior people and
“witty” writers have laughed at and insulted a nation for being foolish
enough and so far behind the age as to believe in the assistance of a God
whom they could not contain in their capacious intellects. France has
survived the laughter and disregarded the laughers; but her sons have been
none the less obedient to the laws and constitution established, and thus
restored confidence in their country, by acknowledging the efficacy of
divine worship, and the intercession of the blessed Mother with her divine
Son.
The year has, happily, borne no war stain on its record; for we cannot
dignify the English expedition against the Looshais in India by that
title. Revolts among the natives have of late been cropping up again in
British India, while the silent but steady march of Russia, with all her
vast forces, nearer and nearer to the outline of the British possessions,
threatens at no distant date an inevitable collision between the two
powers, which, in the not very doubtful event of Russia’s victory, would
avenge Sebastopol, and, at the same time more than counterbalance the
present supremacy of Germany in Europe.
While England was all aglow with the gorgeous story of pomp and pageantry
coming from the far East, of reviews of armies, of gallant processions
from end to end of the land, of displays of splendor, and more than royal
magnificence flashing on the bewildered gaze of the Easterns; outshining
in dazzling brilliancy their own “barbaric pearl and gold”—wrought up to
win over their allegiance by giving them some idea of the vast power of
that empire far away, whose representative could muster such a show of
majesty—came a cruel little flash across the world telling us that the
show was ended by the death of the chief performer at the hands of an
obscure assassin. A few feet in advance of his party, in the gloom of
evening, as he is about to step from the pier into his boat, the stroke of
a knife from a hidden assailant, and—Lord Mayo, the great Viceroy, is
slain. England viewed his death as a national calamity. Following close on
the heels of the murder of Mr. Justice Norman by another native, of the
outbreaks of the Kookas and the Looshais, it had a significance which the
nation took to heart.
From a further corner of the East still comes a dread story of famine
devouring 3,000,000 of people in Persia. Small succor was offered them by
their Christian brethren: and such as was sent seems to have reached them
with the greatest difficulty. Horrible tales are told of hunger overcoming
all the ties of nature, and mothers, in their madness, devouring even
their own offspring. The harvest for this season was a very excellent one;
but its effects cannot be felt till the coming year.
The East has not exhausted its romance yet, though this time it wears a
less grim visage. We refer to the discovery of Dr. Livingstone by Mr.
Stanley, a reporter of the _New York Herald_. Everybody believed Dr.
Livingstone dead: Mr. Bennett believed him living: he despatched Mr.
Stanley to interview him somewhere in the middle of Africa, and Mr.
Stanley obeyed as successfully as though he had only been despatched to
one of our hotels to “interview” a political man. Of course nobody
believed either Stanley or the _Herald_; and of course there has been much
consequent laughing at the “easy‐chair geographers,” when white, after
all, turned out to be white and not black, as the learned gentlemen thus
designated demonstrated to a nicety. But we should imagine that the
persistent doubts of these gentlemen were the highest compliment which
could be paid, either to Mr. Stanley or Mr. Bennett, as indicating the
almost utter impossibility of their stupendous and brilliant enterprise.
To the world at large, the finding of a man, whom, with all due respect,
we cannot but look upon as self‐lost, is the least part of the
undertaking. Mr. Stanley’s expedition and disclosures of the horrors of
the slave trade have awakened a new interest in that horrible traffic, and
promises to enlist the sympathies of nations in unison against it.
After a sleep of centuries Japan has reopened her gates to Christian
influences and civilization—gates closed since the work so gloriously
commenced by S. Francis Xavier was marred by the narrowness and
selfishness and unchristian spirit of European traders. The Mikado
despatched an embassy under the leadership of one of his chief statesmen,
Iwakura, in order to study this boasted civilization and see what it was
like. In the meantime, Christians are still suffering persecution and even
death in Japan. But why should Iwakura interfere to stop it when he finds
“civilized” governments, such as Germany and Italy, setting Japan a
brilliant example in the same line of policy?
Correspondents give us reason to dread a fresh outbreak in China similar
to the Tientsin massacre. We trust that the representatives of the
European powers and our own will be alive to this. Nothing of great import
has occurred in the empire beyond the marriage of his Celestial Majesty.
Going back to Europe, we find Spain in much the same state as the opening
year found her; restless, dissatisfied, and disunited. A Carlist rising
was effected in the spring, which at one time threatened to be formidable;
but, after showing itself in fitful bursts at different points, it finally
died out, for the time being at least, with a greater loss of gunpowder
than of life. It was mismanaged. There were and still are a variety of
little eruptions here, there, and everywhere. An attempt on the life of
King Amadeo was got up for the purpose of arousing some loyalty in his
favor. It created a little sensation at first; but people speedily
suspected something, and the subject dropped. All parties in Spain are
still at daggers drawn. Even if Amadeo could, by his influence, which we
very much doubt after his sufficient trial, conciliate them, they would
not be conciliated. We do not expect to find Amadeo’s name at the head of
the Spanish government this day twelvemonth. A good regent, not
Montpensier, might bring about the restoration of Don Alfonso; but where
is such a regent? Don Carlos possesses the greatest amount of genuine
loyalty to his name and cause, and he would be the winning man, could he
only manage his rising in a more efficient manner. Even the _Saturday
Review_, the other day, almost lamented the loss of Queen Isabella.
The state of Italy is perhaps on a par with that of Spain, with the
advantage of the utter lawlessness touched upon in our last number. We are
now informed that a bill for the suppression of religious orders is
introduced. Of course it will pass. A government which shakes hands with
the _Garibaldini_, which is hand and glove with the murderer and assassin
whom it fears, is strong when it comes to the spoliation of religious
houses and the persecution of Christian men who it knows will not resist.
We cannot pass Italy by—alas! what an Italy it has become!—without one
word of admiration for the Holy Father. Men, journalists, all sorts of
people, would have driven Pius IX. from Rome long ago. But the pilot is
still at the helm of the barque of Peter, though pirates tread the decks.
And never during the successive storms which have made his long reign so
dark with trial has our great pontiff presented to the angry world a more
forcible spectacle of a man utterly above all the pettiness, all the
trials, all the misery, which human malice can inflict upon humanity, than
at this moment in his own person; looking afar over the troubled waters
for the calm which shall come from heaven, and bring men back from their
insane mood at the old whisper, “Peace, be still!” He stands there the
truest and purest living protest of justice shackled by injustice, and
around that prisoned throne range the hearts of all true Catholics and all
true men in the world.
In England, the Gladstone Ministry after many threatenings has managed to
hold its own, in consequence probably of the successful termination of the
Alabama claims. The Ballot Bill has at length passed, and in future we
hope to be spared the degrading scenes which were wont to accompany
English elections. The Irish Church Establishment has falsified Mr.
Gladstone’s high hopes of new life, vigor, efficiency, and so forth, on
being deprived of its “temporalities,” which came into act this year. It
has come to a miserable collapse, and is now a pauper asking alms to live.
The agitation for the disestablishment of the English Church is gaining
ground, as is also the Home‐Rule movement in Ireland, which undoubtedly
received a fresh impetus from the attack made by a renegade Catholic judge
on the Irish clergy and on one of their leaders, Archbishop McHale, whose
name is venerated wherever his fame is known. There has been a cry of a
coal failure, and a much more serious one, because better founded and more
immediate, of a potato failure in Ireland as well as England, which,
coupled with the strike of the agricultural laborers and the coming
winter, threatens an ugly season. Serious riots incurring a lamentable
loss of life and property occurred in Belfast on the repeal of the Parties
Processions Act. The rioters held the city in a state of terrorism for
days. “Of course the Orangemen began it,” commented the London
_Spectator_; “the worst murder committed, that of Constable Morton, was
the murder of a Protestant by Protestants, because he upheld the law.”
In Mexico, the death of President Juarez, the murderer of the unhappy
Maximilian, as well as of countless others, whom “people who ought to
know” were never tired of calling the saviour of his country, the true
patriot, and the like, oddly enough put an end to the internecine strife
which was ravaging the country, and everybody suddenly collapsed into
peace: “Yet Juarez was an honorable man.”
In the natural order, there have been terrible convulsions, followed, in
the closing year, by a succession of tempests on sea and land, productive
of dismal disasters. In the spring, an earthquake shook Antioch, and half
the city was gone, with a loss of 1,500 inhabitants. In the same month,
Vesuvius belched forth torrents of burning lava for days, causing a vast
destruction of property and loss of life to a few overcurious sight‐seers.
Later on came the inundations of the Po, accompanied by losses more
grievous still. Then storms swept the country, and, indeed, all Europe,
strewing the shores with wrecked vessels and their crews. Fire touched and
marred, but, fortunately, did not succeed in destroying, two of the
grandest monuments of European art—the Escurial of Philip II. in Spain,
and the Cathedral of Canterbury in England, doubly consecrated—the second
time by the blood of the martyred S. Thomas. It was more successful among
ourselves; and a few hours’ blaze in the month of November destroyed the
finest portion of our most ancient city, Boston.
Among what might be termed the curiosities of the year figured the Boston
Jubilee; an assembling together of European bands and singers, with a
native chorus of 20,000. It was called music. A second curiosity was the
epidemic which recently broke out among the horses, and brought life in
New York to a standstill, or at least to a walking pace, for several days.
It is to be hoped that means of transit may be devised to prevent the
effects of such a casualty in future. A third curiosity was an assembly of
recreant priests and others to the number of 400 at Cologne in order to do
something. What the something was never appeared. They dined, quarrelled,
and separated; while the world was agape to see something arise which
should crush God’s Church. Other curiosities were the great trials, civil
and military, which took place during the year. Among the former class
that of the man known as the “Tichborne Claimant” stands pre‐eminent. The
story is too well known to be commented on here; the “claimant’s” case
broke down; he was committed to Newgate prison, bailed out, and is now
“starring” the country to procure funds for a new trial. The case was
remarkable for the strangest and oddest disclosures of character and
hidden life from the highest almost to the lowest classes, not only in
England, but in many other countries. The trial of Marshal Bazaine for the
surrender of Metz, which is still pending, stands foremost in the rank of
military trials. _Væ victis!_ Many of Bazaine’s comrades were condemned
for premature surrender by the Committee of Inquiry; we shall see whether
the once great marshal will be able to come off with a clear escutcheon.
Other trials were those of the Communists and the murderers of the
Archbishop of Paris and the clergy. As a rule, a more villanous set never
stood face to face with justice. They have had full, fair, and exhaustive
trials; such as could offer any excuse for their crimes escaped; the
others were shot.
Death has been mowing right and left among us with indiscriminating
scythe. In Persia he grew weary of his own grim harvest. Eastern Europe
was threatened with cholera, but escaped. Some tall heads have fallen
among the mean; many whose names are memorable for evil as well as good;
many others whose places it would seem hard to fill. The Catholic Church
has lost Archbishop Spalding, Bishops McGill and O’Connor in America,
Morris and Goss in England, Cardinal Amat in Italy. Their names will live
in the church and in her prayers. Anderson and Meade have gone, Seward and
Morse, and Bennett, the founder of the _New York Herald_, and Greeley, the
founder of the _Tribune_. Persigny, and Conti, and Mazzini, each memorable
in his way, dropped out during the year. Lever, one of the most genial of
Irish novelists, is dead, and his much‐lamented countryman, Maguire, of
Cork. The only surviving son of the Duc d’Aumale, a promising young man,
was snatched away—an important event, as the claims of this branch of the
family to the French throne fall now to the Count de Chambord. Bernadotte,
Charles XV. of Sweden, has gone, and was succeeded on the throne by his
brother Oscar.
And now, passing from the old, we look to the new, not without anxiety.
The war against the church, in reality against the rights of man, the
freedom of conscience, commenced in Germany, has spread thence to Italy,
Switzerland, and Spain, and, under the form of the educational question,
wider and further still. If Catholics would save the souls of their
children, and of their children’s children, from the infidelity and the
moral decay which we see around us, even in this free breathing
atmosphere, they must be firm and united in their resistance to the
encroachment of the state, where states possess no rights—over the
dictates of conscience. The uprise of labor against capital, which was the
real cause of the first French Revolution and its mad excesses, we have
already touched upon. It should be a deep source of anxiety and care to
true statesmen. War looms on the European horizon, gathers in silent
thunder‐clouds all around. A flash is enough to kindle the combustion and
make the thunder speak. Who shall say when or whence it comes? Europe is
arming, and we have good authority for saying that “the next war will rage
over half a century”—Bismarck himself. For the church we foresee an
increase of bitter and severe trials. We can only appeal to that
enlightenment which the age vaunts; to its common sense and common
fairness to allow us the freedom in our own worship which they, if they
possess any, claim for themselves. Public opinion is, to a great extent,
the lever of the age. We must work at that until we shame it into powerful
and persistent action to remove and overthrow the mountain of intolerance,
bigotry, and opposition, which rulers, who are neither Protestant nor
Catholic, are raising up in order to overwhelm all religion, all right,
all freedom.
New Publications.
MY CLERICAL FRIENDS. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.
1873.
We need not say more than that the above is by the author of that
production of exquisite humor and satire, _The Comedy of Convocation_, to
awaken a profound interest in its appearance. This new book from his pen
is somewhat similar. It is a choice compound of argument, history, and
wit. Its object is to represent the English clerical body as it is, with a
special intention of showing the ridiculousness of the claim made by some
of its members to the character of Catholic priesthood. The author is the
son of a clergyman, and was himself a clergyman, and is at home in his
subject. We promise our readers a rare treat in this new and spicy volume.
CONVERSION OF THE TEUTONIC RACE. CONVERSION OF THE FRANKS AND
ENGLISH.
SEQUEL TO THE SAME. S. BONIFACE AND THE CONVERSION OF GERMANY. By
Mrs. Hope. Edited by the Rev. J. B. Dalgairns, of the Oratory.
London: Washbourne. 1872. 2 vols. crown 8vo. (New York: Sold by
The Catholic Publication Society.)
Few readers of English books know much of those most splendid and
important chapters of history, of which these two volumes contain a
summary within a moderate compass. The lady who has written them is a very
competent and graceful narrator of historical scenes and events. She has
given us the cream of authentic and truly scientific historical works with
care and skill, and at the same time she has clothed her narrative with a
flowing and agreeable diction. There are scarcely two volumes to be found
in the whole mass of recent English literature better worth reading than
these. We are delighted, also, to meet again, in the preface of the second
volume, with F. Dalgairns, from whose pen nothing ever comes which is not
choice both in matter and style. His editorship adds a most satisfactory
sanction to the historical and critical accuracy of these volumes, over
which he has exercised a supervision, and some pages of which have been
written by himself. These volumes which have gained great repute and favor
in England will, we trust, have also a wide circulation in this country,
and help to diffuse sound historical knowledge, which, as F. Dalgairns
remarks, is such a powerful auxiliary to religious truth.
LIFE AND TIMES OF SIXTUS THE FIFTH. From the French of Baron
Hübner. By James F. Meline. New York: The Catholic Publication
Society. 1873.
The dying Gregory XIII., worn out with the difficulties and
responsibilities of his position, raised his weary hands to heaven, and
exclaimed: “Thou wilt arise, O Lord, and have mercy on Zion”; prophetic
words that were realized in the election of Pope Sixtus V., who, as Ranke
justly observes, possessed in the highest perfection the moral and
intellectual qualities demanded for the suppression of the prevalent
disorders of the times. Perhaps there is no other pope whose life is of
more universal interest. His striking individuality of character appeals
to the popular mind, and has given rise to a variety of fables respecting
him which fasten themselves on the memory and, though not literally true,
yet embody a certain truth of their own.
His rise from obscurity to become a link of that august dynasty beside
which “the proudest royal houses are but of yesterday,” his ability to
cope with all the difficulties of his position at a critical period in the
political and religious world, his astuteness in dealing with the most
wily diplomatists, his clear notions as to the necessity of balance of
power among different nations, his financial ability and genius for
statesmanship, have all commanded the very admiration of the enemies of
the papacy. “A grand old man,” the _British Quarterly_ styles him, and
with reason. “A great pope, to whom posterity owes a debt of gratitude in
consideration of the whole results of his pontificate,” says the
_Edinburgh Review_.
The extraordinary events of the life of Sixtus V. were the result of his
wonderful energy and persistency. People like decision of character—a man
with a purpose, and the ability of putting it into execution. This is why
all admirers of “self‐made” men like to retrace the upward steps of the
life of this eminent pope, from the rustic boyhood of Felice Peretti on
the shores of the Adriatic; his thirst for knowledge that impelled him to
study by the lamp of the sanctuary; his girding himself with the cord of
the humble Francis while yet a mere boy; his career as a young friar‐
preacher, drawing crowded Roman audiences to listen to his fervid
eloquence, among them such men as S. Ignatius de Loyola and S. Philip
Neri; his promotion to a cardinalship by a sainted pope who was his
benefactor, and whose last moments he had the happiness of witnessing; his
temporary retirement to his villa, where he gave himself up to quiet
observation of the needs of the times, especially of his own country, the
study of architecture and the improvements needed in Rome, and all those
pursuits which tended to fit him for his subsequent elevation to the
papacy. Sixtus V. did not look upon his success in life as solely due to
his own merit. He recognized the finger of Divine Providence, and chose as
his motto: “Thou, O God, hast been my defender, even from my mother’s
womb.”
_The Life of Sixtus V._ by Baron Hübner, though written from a Catholic
point of view, is acknowledged by the _Edinburgh Review_ to be one of the
most valuable contributions to the literature of the age, so rich in
historical biography. Its superiority to the previous lives of that pope
is partly due to his access to the archives of Simancas, not open to
research at the time of Ranke. Though the pontificate of Sixtus V. was
only about five years long, it embraced a rapid succession of
extraordinary and tragical events, as is evident when we remember he was
contemporary with Queen Elizabeth of England, Mary Queen of Scots, Philip
II. of Spain, and Henry of Navarre, whose names recall the persecution of
the Church in England, the execution of Mary Stuart, the Armada, the
overthrow of the League, and the accession of Henri Quatre to the throne
of France, and show us what a weight of responsibility rested upon the
Head of the Church. No wonder he was soon worn out by the pressure. The
tiara is but a thorny crown at the best, as befits him who stands in
Christ’s stead. The very condition of the Pontifical States was an affair
of no slight difficulty. Only a man of extraordinary energy and decision
of character could have surmounted it. Sixtus V. has been called pitiless
from the terrible punishments he inflicted for apparently trivial
offences, but he was personally humane, for at the murder of his nephew he
was the first to entreat the pope (Sixtus being at that time Cardinal
Montalto) to drop his investigations, and when he had cleared the Roman
States of brigandage, he endeavored to conciliate the nobles. His
inflexible severity seemed imperiously demanded. Twenty‐seven thousand
brigands ravaged his dominions; the castles of noblemen were their
strongholds; they were protected by neighboring princes; and the very
streets of Rome often witnessed the attacks of peaceful citizens by armed
bands. Sixtus himself when a cardinal had nearly lost his life in
encountering a band of lawless young nobles as he was going home one
night. He saw the absolute necessity of putting an end to such disorders
and the terror of the inhabitants. Accordingly, one of his first acts
after his election was to forbid the carrying of fire‐arms in the streets,
and, when he found his order disobeyed by four young men, he had them hung
the very next morning.
But he was strictly impartial in administering justice. No clerical
offender was screened by the sacredness of his garments. The friar who
imposed on the piety of the faithful was scourged from one end of the
Corso to the other; the cardinal who was desirous of protecting a guilty
servant was threatened with the Castle of St. Angelo; the traitor‐priest
who gave Queen Elizabeth information of what was occurring at Rome was
executed in such a manner as to strike terror into every treacherous
breast. No wonder Sixtus became a terror to evil doers, and his very name
sufficed to put an end to the brawls in the streets. The time arrived when
he could say with grim humor: “_Fugit impius nemine persequente_”—“The
wicked flee when no man pursueth.”
Sixtus V. left proofs of his genius and energy all over Rome. He kept
thousands of men constantly employed. The dome of S. Peter’s was completed
in twenty‐two months, though the architect said it would require ten
years. He restored a colossal aqueduct that had fallen to ruin, and
brought the Acqua Felice into Rome from a distance of about twenty miles.
He opened great thoroughfares all through the city, built the Lateran
Palace, erected monuments, undertook to drain the Pontine Marshes,
encouraged agriculture and the manufacture of silk, established the
Congregation of Rites and several others, limited the number of cardinals
to seventy, and partly revised the Vulgate with his own hand. His
practical nature by no means made him insensible to softer influences. His
soul was so alive to music that at the exciting time of his election he
lent an ear to Palestrina’s music hastily composed for the occasion, and
remarked that Pierluigi had forgotten Pope Marcello’s Mass—a criticism
that mortified the great composer, but which has since been acknowledged
to be true.
He won the gratitude of the Israelites by his favor. Amazed Rome saw a
Gentile actually scourged on the Corso for insulting a member of that
ancient race. To another Israelite was granted special privileges for his
success in increasing the production of silk.
Col. Meline’s book is not a literal translation of Baron Hübner’s _Life of
Sixtus V._: it is rather a _résumé_, as the preface explains. It consists
of three parts: the first reviews the life of that pope, giving such
details as are of interest to the general reader; the second portrays the
experience of a Transalpine traveller to Rome three centuries ago; and the
third is a vivid picture of Rome at that time: the whole being an improved
edition of three essays already given to the public.
The readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD are already too familiar with Mr.
Meline’s felicitous style and his power of analysis to require any
commendation on our part. And to the public at large he has recommended
himself by his chivalrous defence of Mary, Queen of Scots. The strong
lance he has wielded in the defence of her fair name against that doughty
writer of fiction, Mr. James Anthony Froude, has been too universally
applauded not to secure a general welcome to whatever comes from his able
pen.
THE HEART OF MYRRHA LAKE; or, Into the Light of Catholicity. By
Minnie Mary Lee. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1872.
The enthusiastic author of this charming little story has succeeded in
presenting much logic which is usually dull, in very attractive attire.
The arguments and conclusions are so wonderfully clear, that it is to be
hoped the book will fall frequently into the hands of the class most in
need of it, but, alas! least likely to read it. There is in it much of
quiet humor which is irresistible and very “telling”; as, for instance,
when to the question, “What Catholic books have you read, sir?” the sturdy
Methodist, Abner White, replies: “_Fox’s Book of Martyrs_, _Maria Monk_,
_Six Months in a Convent_, _Romanism at Home_, _Priest and Nun_, etc.” And
again, in the interview between Aunt Ruth and the committee of Methodist
ladies who had come to wait upon her after her husband’s conversion, human
nature, and especially Methodist nature, is painted with a very clever
pen. Who has not known just such spinsters as Miss Nancy and Miss Sarah?
And what a keen dash is this:
“ ‘Then we shall report that you choose to follow your husband, rather
than the goodly rules of our Methodist discipline?’
“ ‘I shall go with my husband certainly,’ was the firm, respectful answer.
“ ‘And may God have mercy on your soul,’ solemnly added the spinster, as
if addressing a person about to be hanged.
“ ‘Thank you!’ absently and innocently responded the quiet Quakeress.
“ ‘I suppose, then, _we need not even pray for you_?’ said one.
“ ‘You always _was_ a little queer, Sister White, you and Brother White,
too, now that we come to think it over,’ said another.
“ ‘Extremely odd it is for one to lose all sense of propriety, and assume
the responsibility of such a fearful step,’ rapidly spoke little Sarah.
“ ‘We pity you, and _would_ help you, but you won’t let us,’ was Mrs.
Sand’s trembling good‐by.
“ ‘We wash our hands of all sin in this matter. It lies at your own door,’
were the last consolatory words of Miss Nancy.”
Many another reader might say with Myrrha, “When I took up that small book
called _A General Catechism of the __ Christian Doctrine_, I little
dreamed upon what a study I had entered. Again, after reading it through,
I as little dreamed upon what a sea of speculation I had launched.” May
the result of such reading prove as fruitful of good to all readers as to
Myrrha! But such results seem to happen oftener in books than in real,
selfish life. The best of this story is its ending, which, this time, is
neither marriage nor death for the lovers.
FLEURANGE. By Mme. Augustus Craven. Translated by M. P. T. New
York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1872.
Rarely, indeed, have we met a work whose author exhibits so many of the
qualities indespensable in a good novelist, as the one under
consideration. Artistic in conception, pure and elevated in style, it is
withal faultless in tone and sentiment.
It is not our purpose to give an outline of the plot of this tale, or to
enlarge on the actors through whom it is evolved, but we shall confine
ourselves to some observations on certain characteristics of the writer as
developed in her work.
The author manifests a high degree of insight and the æsthetic sense, an
intimate knowledge of feminine nature, and more of that of the opposite
sex than its members may dream of—in acquiring which the delicate
intuitions of her own sex doubtless serve a better purpose than the mere
logic and learning of ours. Although the story introduces the reader into
the highest social circles, and its incidents are of the most absorbing
interest, there is no sacrifice of the dramatic unities, or any departure
from the essential simplicity of the narrative. This severity of style, we
may say, is at once the most winning quality of a work of genius, and the
best test of its success; making the latter dependent on inherent
excellence, rather than adventitious aids. In works of this character, art
in letters reaches its highest development—that in which it becomes the
most natural.
A noticeable feature is the epigrammatic conciseness with which a
sentiment or description is finished. The reader is never wearied with
platitudes or over‐minuteness of limning. Whatever idea occurs to the
writer which she is willing to share with the reader is expressed in the
fewest possible words. Is a scene to be presented to the mind’s eye?—a few
touches of the artist’s pencil bring it vividly before us. The reader
finds himself moved alternately to mirthfulness, or tears, or
astonishment, as he encounters an unexpected bit of humor, and exquisite
burst of pathos, or some reflection almost startling in depth or
suggestiveness. Some passages are open to obvious inference, while others
constitute studies if we would probe their philosophy. It was a question
with those who watched the serial progress of the story, how the author
could bring order and harmony out of the complications in which she had
involved her principal characters; and the way this has been accomplished
will be acknowledged as not the least of her achievements. No characters
are interchanged or lose their identity. Each acts his part as naturally,
and retains his individuality, as in real life; so that, when the
_dramatis personæ_ are at length summoned to the footlights for a final
adieu, we feel inclined to protest, in the name of all the delighted
auditors, against the call, as a premature termination of a very pleasant
intercourse.
The reception _Fleurange_ has met with thus far is very flattering. It has
commended itself to the favorable judgment of the London _Saturday
Review_, and other authorities of like critical acumen; has been _crowned_
by the French Academy; and received the general approval of the press and
public, so far as we have learned, while passing through the pages of _Le
Correspondant_ and THE CATHOLIC WORLD. We know of no recent imaginative
work of which we could speak in terms of more unqualified approbation, or
better deserving a permanent place in our literature, both as a work of
art and for the sound principles by which it is pervaded and informed.
On the translation, we do not know that we could bestow higher praise than
to say that it reads like an original work of the first order; while we
are convinced that it is a faithful and conscientious rendering from the
French text.
LEGENDS OF ST. PATRICK By Aubrey De Vere. Dublin: McGlashan &
Gill. London: Henry S. King & Co. 1872. (New York: Sold by The
Catholic Publication Society.)
“If the Ireland of early times is ever understood, it will not be till
after thoughtful men have deemed her legends worthy of their serious
attention.” This remark Mr. De Vere makes in his preface, and not until we
had read through his _Legends_ did we fully realize its truth. It is a
most certain fact that the twilight of Irish history can be changed into
day only by the profound study of its legendary lore. We have read several
lives of S. Patrick, and more than one history of Ireland have we studied,
but from none of them did we get so clear an insight into the character of
the saint and the genius of his people as from Mr. De Vere’s _Legends_,
few and short though they be.
The subjects are beautiful and poetic, and the author’s conception of them
lofty and spiritual. There is indeed a sacred melody about early Irish
song which only a spiritual bard can evoke. Chords there are in Erin’s
ancient harp which a hand of mere flesh and blood may not touch. Mr. De
Vere has sung those songs; he has touched these chords, and they have
given forth their true melody. It is not to his beautiful diction and
varying metres, it is not to his wonderful descriptive powers and high
poetic gifts, that we attribute this success, but it is to those two
passions of his soul which impress themselves on all that he writes—love
of God and love of Ireland. And here an opportunity is afforded us of
speaking of Mr. De Vere as the poet of Ireland. That he is far superior to
any Irish poet of the present day is beyond all question, and that his
equal, in everything save popularity, to any English poet of the day is a
verdict competent judges have not hesitated to give.
We often ask ourselves, How is it, then, he is so little known and read by
his countrymen in America? For twenty years he has scorned “the siren’s
tinsel lure,” and devoted all his talents to sounding the praises of
Ireland and of Ireland’s Catholicity. His sole aim through life has been
to enshrine Ireland’s faith and Ireland’s song in the temple of fame.
Patriotism is his only incentive to labor; he seems indifferent to
popularity, and perhaps this is one reason why he enjoys so little. But
there are other reasons, we think, and they also are in his favor. Mr. De
Vere is too polished, too thoughtful, and too spiritual to be a popular
poet.
If he would descend from his high poetic ideal to sing love songs, he
would soon be popular; but he will never prove a recreant bard. Those for
whom he has so long and so faithfully labored must disenthrall themselves
from the spirit of the age, and ascend to his level; then will they find
in him all they can desire, and proclaim him their laureate. They will not
find in him, it is true, the inimitable sweetness of Moore or the poetic
fire of Davis, but they will find in him the patriotism of both, a polish
superior to either, and, over all and above all, they will find a muse
ennobled by the highest sentiments of religion and morality.
THE TRUTH. By Field Marshal the Duke of Saldanha. Translated from
the Portuguese, by William John Charles Henry. London: Burns,
Oates & Co. 1872. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication
Society.)
This little volume will be found to contain not only some of the most
forcible arguments for Christianity that have ever been advanced, but
particularly a collection (in the first chapter) of testimonials from
ancient heathendom to what is only realized in Christ and his religion.
Nothing can be more interesting, surely, than the study of the great
tradition of expectation which fulfilled the prophecy of the dying Israel:
“And He shall be the expectation of the nations” (Gen. xlix. 10). Our
noble author opens his first chapter with this sentence: “From the east to
the west, from the north to the south, in every language, in the
literature of all nations, with a voice spontaneous, universal, and
unanimous, the entire human race cried aloud for the coming of a Divine
Teacher.” And when we have delightedly perused this first chapter, we as
heartily endorse its concluding sentence: “This we believe to have most
clearly demonstrated that, ... with one voice, unanimous, spontaneous, and
universal, the human race cried out for the coming of a God of
revelation.”
The work is designed for a defence of Christianity against the infidelity
of the day. And we think it a most able and a singularly attractive one.
Let our young men especially read it. It will make them a match for any
sceptical show of learning.
CATHOLIC WORSHIP. A Manual of Popular Instruction on the
Ceremonies and Devotions of the Church. By Frederick Canon
Oakeley. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1872.
Recent converts and inquirers after religious truth frequently experience
some difficulty in understanding the ceremonies of the church and the
various devotional practices of Catholics. We know of no more suitable
book to place in the hands of such persons than this little treatise of
Canon Oakeley. It is concise, clear, and methodical. Nothing is left
unexplained, from the practice of taking holy water upon entering the
church to the consecration of a bishop. This book will be found to be of
great use not only to converts, but to Catholics in general, containing as
it does a thoroughly reliable explanation of everything connected with our
worship. This second edition is an evidence of the favor with which it has
been received by the Catholic public.
THE SHADOW OF THE OBELISK, and Other Poems. By Thomas William
Parsons. London: Hatchards, Piccadilly. 1872.
This modest volume is from the author whose translations from Dante, that
have appeared in our magazine, are attracting deserved attention.
Mr. Parsons’ powers as a lyric poet are considerable. His verse has, for
the most part, the easy and often careless diction of a school which many
think gone out, but which we believe destined to revive. Yet here and
there we see the influence of Tennyson. The lines, “To Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow,” are in the latter style. For strength his sonnets are his
best efforts. We wish he had favored us with more of them.
There is ample variety in the pieces collected. The poet has travelled
much. “The Shadow of the Obelisk” sets us musing in Rome. “The Birthplace
of Robert Burns” takes us to “bonnie Scotland.” “St. James’ Park” tells us
the writer has philosophized in London. While the “Willey House,” “On the
Death of Daniel Webster,” and “Hudson River” are themes from his native
America. The lines, “On a Magnolia Flower,” are fragrant with the
South—the pale, sad South—and one of the gems of the book.
Mr. Parsons is a Unitarian, as he takes care to indicate; but, like
Longfellow, he has Catholic sympathies. However, there is one short
translation from Dante, entitled “A Lesson for Easter,” the last two lines
of which _seem_ to talk Protestantism:
“Ye have the Testament, the Old and New,
And this for your salvation is enough.”
But the preceding lines should throw light on the Catholic poet’s meaning:
“Christians, be staid: walk wisely and serene:
Be grave, and shun the flippant speech of those
Who think that _every_ wave will wash them clean—
That _any_ field will serve them for repose.
Be not a feather to each wind that blows:
There is a _Shepherd_ and a _Fold_ for you:
Ye have a _Leader_ when your way is rough.”
All this is unmistakable orthodoxy; and, therefore, the two lines quoted,
which come next, speak of the evidence of the Old and the New Testament
for the “one Fold and one Shepherd” and the infallible “Leader.”
We conclude by hoping that Mr. Parsons will vouchsafe us another volume of
minor poems, and especially of sonnets.
THE LIFE OF FATHER MATHEW, THE PEOPLE’S SOGGARTH AROON. By Sister
Mary Francis Clare, Author of _The Illustrated History of
Ireland_, _Advice to Irish Girls in America_, _Hornehurst
Rectory_, etc.
The indefatigable Nun of Kenmare could not have employed her pen on a
worthier subject than the life and labors of the Apostle of Temperance.
She will have accomplished a great end if this work serves to keep green
in the hearts of her countrymen and of all Catholics the memory of one who
accomplished more good than many who possessed more brilliant abilities,
yet who neglected to employ their talents in that usurious activity which
wins a blessing.
DAILY STEPS TO HEAVEN. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1872.
This, as well as the preceding work, belongs to a series of publications
by the same author, embracing religious, historical, and miscellaneous
books, which have attained an extraordinary popularity in the old country
and in the United States.
A BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY. By Rev. Reuben Parsons, D.D. New York:
D. & J. Sadlier & Co.
This work has been compiled “for the use of colleges, schools, and
families.” It contains short biographical sketches of the principal
characters of history, together with chronological tables. The subjects
are for the most part well selected, and, as far as we have read, are well
and correctly treated. The style of the author is terse and vigorous, and
well adapted to this kind of composition.
The printing is excellent, the binding neat, but the figure in the
frontispiece has suffered not a little at the hands of the artist—an
accident which mars somewhat the general appearance of the book.
THE NEW GOD. Translated from the German of Conrad von Bolanden, by
Very Rev. Theodore Noethen, V.G. Albany: M. O’Sullivan. 1872.
Our readers have already had a sufficient taste of this author’s quality
in “The Progressionists,” now going through our pages, to desire the
further treat to be found in the new products of his pen. We do not recall
any series of fictitious writings, designed to combat vicious principles
and actions, more admirable as specimens of vigorous and effective
composition. The most obtuse progressionist could scarcely fail to
comprehend the drift of the underlying argument, while the more fastidious
reader will be carried along by the interest of the tale through which it
is conveyed. Father Noethen is performing an acceptable service in making
these works known to the English reader.
Bolanden’s works fairly palpitate with the gravity of themes of living
interest. The new German Government, the burthen of the present tale, has
given evidence of their telling effect by ordering their suppression.
GERALDINE: A TALE OF CONSCIENCE. By E. C. A. New York: P. O’Shea.
_Geraldine_ was one of the first successful religious novels which
followed the revival of Catholic doctrine in England, and bids fair to
hold its own for many a year to come. It enjoys a wider reputation than
either of Miss Agnew’s other works, one of which, _Rome and the Abbey_,
forms a sequel to this.
Mr. O’Shea also issues a reprint of Cardinal Wiseman’s _Lectures on the
Connection between Science and Revealed Religion_; intended, apparently,
as the commencement of an uniform series of the great author’s works.
It is to be regretted that this work had not undergone a thorough revision
by some competent hand before its reappearance, in order to adapt it to
the present state of scientific investigation. Although true science can
never be out of harmony with revelation, its successive developments may
enable us to see the conditions of that harmony and relation in a clearer
light than when the _Lectures_ were originally published.
THE HISTORY OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY. Translated from the French
of the Abbé Orsini, by the Very Rev. F. C. Husenbeth, D.D., V.G.
Boston: Patrick Donahoe. 1872.
This work is already known to many readers in the presentation edition
issued by the Messrs. Sadlier some years since, and the recent English
edition of which the above is a _fac‐simile_. We are glad to see an
edition like this made accessible to the great body of readers, though the
fire in which the publisher was involved, will interfere for a time with
that consummation. It has a number of pictorial illustrations, and there
are appended the letters apostolic concerning the dogmatic definition of
the Immaculate Conception.
LIZA. By Ivan S. Turgenieff. New York: Holt & Williams. 1872.
_Liza_ is another work from the pen of M. Turgenieff, the distinguished
Russian novelist, several of whose works are already familiar to us. His
quiet sarcasm in depicting the Russian of the old school, who needs no
scratching to reveal the genuine Tartar—crafty and brutal, but with a
kindly streak withal—and the Russian of the present generation who has
imbibed foreign habits and theories by no means elevating, is admirably
calculated to correct the evils of a transition state of society. The
former affords us two affecting pictures in this book of women of
repressed lives, who humbly kiss with their dying lips the hand that has
crushed them. One of them leaves a young son, Fedor Lavretsky, who never
forgets his pale and gentle mother, who in turn hardly dared caress him
for fear of the sharp eyes and cutting tongue of her sister‐in‐law,
Glafira, who had taken charge of the child. He is brought up under a
system of repression, and, when his father dies, he goes to Moscow
determined to repair the defects of his education. There he falls in love
with the face of a beautiful girl who regards him as a _schöne Partie_ and
marries him. He gives himself up to the happiness of his new life, and is
induced by his wife to leave his estate, and, after various changes, to go
to Paris, where admiration seems to have intoxicated her. Fedor, becoming
aware of her real character, settles an annuity on her, leaves her, and
returns to his native land. He cannot bear, however, to go to his own seat
where he passed the first happy days of his married life, but betakes
himself to his aunt’s place—the stern Glafira, who had died during his
absence. The desolate house is once more opened, and he stands alone in
the room where she breathed her last, and looks with softened heart on the
sacred icons in their gilded frames in the corner, and the worn carpet,
covered with drippings from the wax candles she had burned before them,
and on which she had knelt to pray. His old servant waits on him, he
drinks tea out of the great cup he had used in his boyhood, looks over the
large book full of mysterious pictures which he had found so wondrous in
childish days. Everything recalls the earlier remembrances of his life.
“On a woman’s love my best years have been wasted,” thought he.
Going to pay his respects to his great‐aunt, who is admirably drawn with a
few vivid touches, he meets with Liza, whom he left a child, but is now
nineteen years of age. There is a natural grace about her person; her face
is pale, but fresh; her eyes lustrous and thoughtful, her smile
fascinating, but grave, and she has a frank, innocent way of looking you
directly in the face. Lavretsky is instantly struck with her appearance,
and the impression is deepened the oftener he sees her. Liza’s mother is
one of those women, _qui n’a pas inventé la poudre, la bonne daìne_, as
one of her visitors ungratefully remarks. Her daughter owes the elevation
and purify of her character to the nurse of her childhood, who gave
herself up to penitential observances. Instead of nursery tales, she told
Liza of the Blessed Virgin, the holy hermits who had been fed in their
caves by the birds, and the female martyrs from whose blood sprang up
sweet flowers. She used to speak of these things seriously and humbly, as
if unworthy to utter such high and holy names, and Liza sat at her feet
with reverent awe drinking in the holy influences of her words. Aglafia
also taught her to pray, and took her at early dawn to the matin service.
Liza grew up thoroughly penetrated with a sense of duty, loving everybody,
but loving God supremely and with tender enthusiasm. Till Lavretsky came,
no one had troubled the calmness of her inner life.
After some time, learning through a newspaper that his wife is dead, he
confesses his love to Liza. She feels drawn towards him, her heart seems
to respond to his love, but it is hardly with genuine passion; it is
rather the agitation of a lily too rudely stirred by the breeze. Not that
she has no depth of feeling; but, as she afterwards acknowledges, when she
did indulge in hopes of happiness, her heart shuddered within her. Love
seemed almost a profanation, as if a stranger had entered her pure maiden
chamber.
Suddenly, the wife, supposed to be dead, reappears. It is all a mistake.
Her husband is stunned. He feels he can never give back his love to one
who has no longer his respect. And Liza is lost to him. After several
attempts, he sees her again. Her eyes have grown dimmer and sunken, her
face is pale, and her lips have lost their color. She implores him to be
reconciled to his wife, and they part without her allowing her hand to
meet his.
Six months later, Liza takes the veil in a remote convent in Russia. The
Greek as well as the Latin convent seems to be the ideal refuge of
startled innocence and purity. Once Lavretsky goes there, hoping to catch
a glimpse of her. He sees her as she is leaving the choir. She passes
close by him with the quick, noiseless step of a nun, but keeps steadily
on without looking at him. But he sees the almost imperceptible tremor of
her eye; she bends her emaciated face still lower, and the hands that hold
the rosary are clasped more tightly together.
But the chief value of M. Turgenieff’s novels to a Catholic lies not in
the stories themselves certainly, but in the delightful pictures of
Russian life and manners they present, and the influence they have had in
softening the rugged manners of the north and changing the condition of
the serfs.
WONDERS OF THE MOON. Translated from the French of Amédée
Guillemin, by Miss M. G. Mead. Edited, with additions, by Maria
Mitchell, of Vassar College. Illustrated with forty‐three
engravings. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1873.
This little book contains a tolerably full account of all that is known
about the moon, and that is of interest to the general reader. Our
knowledge of our satellite is in some respects hardly equal to that which
we have recently acquired of the much more distant sun; though so near,
comparatively, to us, it is still too far away for the telescope ever to
give us as clear a view of it as we need; and the spectroscope is of
little use in its examination. We shall never know much about it, and
especially about its other side, unless we go to see it; and a trip to the
moon, chimerical as it may seem, may not always remain an impossibility
for some adventurous person who is willing to run his chance of finding in
the apparently uncomfortable little place the necessary conditions for
human life. However, not a few of us will be content with the information
given in this book, which is vastly greater than what most persons would
probably acquire by examining the moon with the finest telescope; for a
telescope is of little service to one unaccustomed to use it, and few
things are more provoking to an experienced moon‐gazer than evident
failure of others to see what seems to him so plain. To those, then, who
really wish to get a good idea of the moon, and especially of its physical
constitution and probable scenery, in really the most satisfactory way,
this little volume, notwithstanding a few slight inaccuracies (such as the
placing of Petit’s bolide at 9,000,000 miles from the earth), will be
quite interesting and valuable. These inaccuracies, if in the original,
should have been corrected in the translation.
THE GREAT PROBLEM: The Higher Ministry of Nature viewed in the
Light of Modern Science, and as an aid to advanced Christian
Philosophy. By John R. Leifchild, A.M., author of _Our Coal Fields
and our Coal Pits_; _Cornwall: Its Mines and Miners_, etc., etc.
With an introduction by Howard Crosby, D.D., LL.D., Chancellor of
the University of New York. New York: G. P. Putnam & Son. 1872.
Dr. Crosby introduces this really able and valuable essay with a just and
manly rebuke of the unparalleled absurdity and impudence of our modern
materialistic scientists; and it is high time for him, considering what
balderdash he is obliged to listen to from his chancellor’s chair. The
essay of Mr. Leifchild is a series of arguments on the topics of natural
theology, in which some of the principal manifestations of the power and
wisdom of God in the physical world are pointed out and referred to their
true cause and end. The author most absurdly saws off the limb of the tree
on which grows all the fruit he admires so much and gathers so carefully,
by denying the value of metaphysics. But, in spite of that, his sound mind
holds implicitly the very metaphysics he ignorantly despises, and he is
therefore able to reason very well and conclusively. Most persons who read
books of this kind are more ready to listen to a geologist teaching
theology than to a professed theologian, and they prefer the roundabout
method of coming to a point by induction to the straight road of logical
deduction. This book is likely to be useful, therefore, and is, besides,
printed in very clear, legible type, which makes it a pleasant book to
read, though laboring under the sad inconvenience of having neither index
nor table of contents. There are a good many interesting facts and
statements about eminent writers interspersed, e.g., Spinoza and Leibnitz;
but the author is seriously mistaken in ascribing any pantheistic
doctrines or tendencies to Henry Suso and Tauler. We are happy to welcome
such books from English writers who are adepts in the physical sciences.
For these sciences, and the men who are really masters of them, we have a
great respect in their own sphere. And we consider it a very praiseworthy
and useful task for men of this kind, to undertake to show the conformity
of these sciences with the queen over all the scientific realm—Christian
philosophy.
THE MINNESINGER OF GERMANY. By A. E. Kroeger. New York: Hurd &
Houghton. 1872.
In this little book we have a very charming, as also very learned,
exposition of mediæval art. The Minnesinger or minstrel‐knights of the
latter half of the XIIth and earlier half of the XIIIth centuries are but
little known outside of Germany. In this book we are introduced to the
principal masters of this beautiful and ephemeral school of song,
Gottfried von Strassburg, Walter von der Vogelweide, Ulrich von
Lichtenstein, Hartmann von der Aue, Regenbogen, Conrad von Würzburg, and
Henrich von Meissen, known as “_Frauenlob_,” or “ladies’ praise.” These
poets sang chiefly of religion and love. But foremost among all women, the
great Mother of God chiefly claimed their enthusiastic homage, as we see
by the long extracts given by Mr. Kroeger of some of their glorious “Hymns
to the Virgin.” Here is an example, from “The Divine Minnesong,”
attributed sometimes to Gottfried of Strassburg:
“Thou art the blooming heaven‐branch,
Which blooming, blooms in many a grange;
Great care and strange
God lavished, Maid, on thee.”
We have, unfortunately, no space for a selection of the beauties collected
for us in this book, and can only recommend our readers to procure it for
themselves. It is full of gems, and is especially welcome to us as
evidence of the high degree to which the burning faith of those days had
led and guided lyrical art. Hartmann von der Aue’s “Poor Henry” is, so we
are told, “the original of that sweet story of self‐sacrifice which
Longfellow has made universally known as the ‘Golden Legend,’ (p. 190).”
The same hymn we have already quoted has this allusion to the “living wine
of true remorse” and the following words:
“He whom God’s love has never found
Is like a shadow on the ground,
And does confound
Life, wisdom, sense, and reason.”
Conrad von Würzburg, in his “Golden Smithy,” represents himself as a gold‐
smith working an ornament for the Queen of Heaven, and says, “If in the
depth of the smithy of my heart I could melt a poem out of gold, and could
enamel the gold with the glowing ruby of pure devotion, I would forge a
transparent shining and sparkling praise of thy work, thou glorious
Empress of Heaven.” Walter von der Vogelweide sings these grand words:
“Who slays the lion? Who slays the giant?
Who masters them all, however defiant?
He does it who himself controlleth;
And every nerve of his body enrolleth,
_Freed from passion, under strict subjection_.”
Mr. Kroeger has done a service to art, to history, and to religion in
opening thus before our eyes a few of the treasures of the _so‐called_
dark ages.
COLLEGE JOURNAL. Georgetown College: Dec., 1872, Vol. I., No. 1.
This is as elegant a little paper in outward appearance as we remember to
have seen. The articles are written with taste and correctness, and we
offer a hearty welcome to the young gentlemen of classic Georgetown on
their editorial _début_. We have only one piece of advice to give them,
which is, to be careful that their wit and humor be as classic and
scholarly as their serious pieces. Most papers, especially juvenile ones,
break down on this point. We wish our young friends honor and success in
their enterprise.
The Catholic Publication Society will publish in a few days Wild Times, a
story by Miss Caddell.
Books And Pamphlets Received.
From C. DAREAU, Quebec: Francis Parkman. Par L’Abbé H. R. Casgrain. 18mo,
paper, pp. 89.
From A. WILLIAMS & CO., Boston: The Blazing Star; with an appendix
treating of the Jewish Kabbala. 12mo, pp. 180.
From JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO., Boston: The Masque of the Gods. By Bayard
Taylor. 12mo, pp. 48.
From LEE & SHEPARD, Boston: Humanity Immortal. By L. P. Hickok, D.D.,
LL.D. 8vo, pp. 362.—God‐Man. By L. T. Townsend, D.D. 12mo, pp.
446.—Autobiography of Amos Kendall. Edited by his Son‐in‐law, Wm.
Stickney. 1872.
From ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston: Paul of Tarsus: An Inquiry into the Times
and the Gospel of the Apostle of the Gentiles. By A Graduate, 12mo, pp.
401.
From D. VAN NOSTRAND, New York: A Treatise on Acoustics in Connection with
Ventilation. By Alexander Saeltzer. 12mo, pp. 102.
From J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., Philadelphia: Thoughts on Paper Currency,
etc. By Wm. Brown. 18mo, pp. 240.—Black Robes; or, Sketches of Missions
and Ministers in the Wilderness and on the Border. By Robert P. Nevin.
12mo, pp. 366.
From A. D. F. RANDOLPH & CO., New York: The Scripture Doctrine in
Reference to the Seat of Sin in the Regenerate Man. 18mo, pp. 125.
From DESFORGES & LAWRENCE, Milwaukee: A Religion of Evolution: Letters of
“Internationalist” Reviewing the Sermons of J. L. Dudley, Pastor of
Plymouth Congregationalist Church, Milwaukee, 8vo, pp. 42.
From C. C. CHATFIELD & CO., New Haven: Hints to Young Editors. 12mo, pp.
31.
From CARROLL, Wheeling: Pastoral Letter of the Rt. Rev. Richard Vincent
Whelan, Bishop of Wheeling, to the Clergy and Laity of the Diocese. 8vo,
pp. 12.
Ninth Annual Report of the New York Catholic Protectory. Paper, 8vo, pp.
66.
Constitution and By‐Laws of the Catholic Total Abstinence Union of
America, with the Journal of Proceedings and Address of the First General
Convention held at Baltimore, Md., Feb. 22, 23, 1872. 8vo, pp. 57.
Library Work in the Army. United States Military Post Library Association.
Annual Report, 1871‐2. Paper, 12mo, pp. 57.
The English Inquisition worse than the Spanish. By an English Priest.
Montreal. 18mo, pp. 34.
From Hon. EUGENE CASSERLY: Papers relating to the Foreign Relations of the
U. S. transmitted to Congress with the Annual Message of the President,
Dec. 4, 1871.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XVI., NO. 95.—FEBRUARY, 1873.
Who Made Our Laws?
It is a characteristic of every succeeding century to consider itself much
wiser than any or all that have preceded it. In this respect our beloved
NINETEENTH is no exception; in fact, with a vanity that may be palliated,
if not excused, it considers that, comparatively speaking, the world has
hitherto been in its schoolboy days, and only attained its majority on the
first day of January, 1800. It is true that the great advances made in the
physical sciences, in chemistry, astronomy, and geology, and in the
application of steam and electricity, have marked our age as one of true
progress in a certain direction, and are substantial subjects of self‐
congratulation; but it must also be remembered that very little of the
genuine happiness of mankind in general depends upon any or all of these
discoveries and appliances. Man, being an intellectual as well as an
animal being, must look to spiritual discoveries and mental agencies for
his chief sources of enjoyment; and, as the soul controls the body, as his
main duty in this life is to qualify that soul for an eternity of bliss,
as the unlimited future is superior to the limited present, it follows
that the things merely of this world play a small and insignificant part
in the real drama of the life of a human being. The sad misconception of
this solution of the problem of man’s destiny has been the principal
mistake of materialists, and their consequent punishment here below has
been so marked that the criticism of the charitable is considerately
withheld.
Fortunately for us Catholics, the great desideratum—the law that includes
all laws—is immovably fixed, and no new discoveries, no alleged progress,
no experiment, can disturb it. Immutable as the eternal hills, it stands
to‐day as when promulgated in Judæa over eighteen hundred years ago by its
Divine Founder, and though the heavens and earth may pass away, we have
the assurance that it shall not. But there have sprung out of the
operation of this great law other laws which may be called secondary or
subsidiary, which have long affected the welfare of Christendom, and upon
the observance or rejection of which much of the welfare or misery of
nations has depended and must for ever depend. Political justice, social
order, art, science, and literature, everything which relates to the
relations of man with his fellows, and brightens and beautifies life, have
a great deal more to do with forming the character and insuring the purity
of a people, as well as the regulation of their actions justly, than
railroads, telegraphs, and anæsthetic agents. Respect for the memory of
the dead and charity for the living prevent us from pointing out
individual instances where men, remarkable for their skill and
perseverance in forwarding the latter projects, have neither been
distinguished for their truthfulness, liberality, nor for any moral
quality typical of intelligent Christians. The best of these men are
simply clever mechanists, increasing, it is true, our sum of knowledge of
the effect of certain forces in nature, yet without being able to reveal
the nature of the forces themselves, which seems impossible; but whoever
teaches us true ideas regarding the active agencies that govern ordinary
life is the true benefactor of his species, and is the governor of his
audience or race. Have our discoveries in this science of making mankind
more moral, humane, and refined kept pace with our more intimate
acquaintance with the secrets of nature and the laws of mechanism, or have
we to look back to the despised past for all our ideas of rectitude in
legislation, honesty in the administration of government, and truthfulness
in the plastic arts? We fear that a candid answer to this question would
involve some loss of our self‐esteem. While, like the degenerate Hebrews,
we have been worshipping graven images, the work of men’s hands, we have
been neglecting the Tables of the Law.
All national governments reflect more or less correctly the ideas of the
people governed. The absolutism of Russia is as much the reflex of the
mental status of the inhabitants of that vast and semi‐civilized empire as
that of the United States is of our busy, hasty, and heterogeneous
population. The first is a necessity growing out of a peculiar order of
things, wherein many tribes and barbarous races are to be found struggling
towards light and civilization; the other is the creation of the matured
minds of experienced and profound statesmen, acting as the delegates of a
self‐reliant and self‐sustaining people. Still, though the framework of
the government is _unique_, the ideas of justice and equality which
underlie it are old. In one sense they are not American, but European, for
it cannot be denied that the principles of our constitutions, state and
national, the laws accepted or enacted in harmony therewith, and the modes
of their interpretation and administration, are taken from the civil
polity of the nations of the Old World, as those again have been the
direct and palpable result of the teachings of the Catholic Church. Russia
to‐day is mainly barbarous, and subject to the unfettered will of one man,
because centuries ago the East broke away from the centre of Catholic
unity, and, in losing the Apostolic authority, lost all its vivifying
power, and the ministers of the so‐called Greek Church their capacity and
efficiency as civilizers and law‐givers.
The West was more loyal, and consequently more fortunate. If we consider
for a moment the chaotic condition of the greater part of Europe when the
church commenced to spread far and wide the teachings of the Gospel,
slowly but steadily pursuing her holy mission, we may be able to
appreciate the herculean task before her. Then, in every part of Europe,
from the pole to the Mediterranean, from the Carpathians to the Atlantic,
disorder, ignorance, and rapine prevailed. Wave after wave of Northern and
Eastern hordes had swept over the continent and most of the islands,
submerging the effete nations of the South, and carrying destruction and
death wherever they surged. The old Roman civilization, such as it was,
was entirely obliterated, all municipal law was abolished, the conquered
masses were reduced to the condition of serfs, and, as each successive
leader of a tribe rested from his bloody labors and built a stronghold for
his occupancy, he reserved to himself the exclusive monopoly of plunder
and spoliation in his own particular neighborhood. This of course led to
rivalry and unceasing warfare between rival marauders, and the incessant
slaughter and oppression of their retainers and tenants.
It was with these fierce and lawless _nobles_, as they loved to style
themselves, that the church for centuries waged most persistent and
uncompromising warfare, and against them she hurled her most terrible
anathemas. It was she who taught the sanguinary barons and chieftains that
there was a moral power greater than armed force and stronger than moated
and castellated tower, who took by the hand the downtrodden, impoverished
serf, freed him from his earthly bonds, taught him the knowledge of God’s
law, the principles of eternal justice and the rights of humanity, and
instilled into his heart those ideas of human liberty which have since
fructified and now permeate every free or partially free government in
both hemispheres. Those great results were achieved in many ways, as local
circumstances required; by teaching and exhorting, by persuasion or
threats, by taking the serf into the ministry of the church and thereby
making him the superior of his former master, by introducing gradually
just and equitable laws, and when necessary forcing their adoption on
unwilling sovereigns and reluctant nobles, and, perhaps, most potently by
the example of her own organization, which permitted the humblest of her
children to be crowned by a free election with the tiara of the successors
of S. Peter.
The influence of the church in secular affairs was particularly remarkable
in England, from which we have drawn so many of our political opinions and
principles. The early missionaries to the Britons and Saxons were
doubtless men of high intelligence as well as sanctity; but the Norman and
Anglo‐Norman ecclesiastics who came into the country with William the
Conqueror and clustered around his sons and successors were still more
remarkable for astuteness and breadth of view. For many generations after
the Conquest they may be said to have governed England in so far as they
framed her laws, conducted her ordinary jurisprudence, and mainly directed
her foreign and domestic policy. The most interesting, though by no means
the most impartial, chapters in Hallam and Blackstone are those devoted to
the struggles between the lay lawyers supported or subsidized by the
nobility, and the clerical jurists who defended the privileges of their
order and the natural rights of the oppressed masses. The Great Charter,
of which we hear so much from persons who very probably never read it, was
undoubtedly the work of the latter, though signed by all the barons with
their seal or mark; trial by jury, the germs of which may be traced into
remote antiquity, was systematized and as far as possible perfected under
their auspices; courts of equity, for the rectification of “injustice
which the law from its generality worketh to individuals,” were their
creation, and even until comparatively late years were presided over by
them; and representative or parliamentary government may justly be said to
have been the fruit of their fertile and ever‐active brains. Its founder,
in England at least, was de Montfort, who, though not in orders, was the
follower, if not the pupil, of the great S. Bernard.
It is thus that we, the ungrateful or forgetful eulogists of the XIXth
century, while laying the flattering unction to our souls that we have
done more than put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes, ignore the
long, painful, and continuous efforts of our spiritual forefathers to
christianize, civilize, and make free our ancestors in the order of nature
whom pagan despotism and barbaric cupidity sought to degrade and
brutalize. In our self‐glorification we forget that all we have in
legislation, of which we are naturally so proud and for which we never can
be too thankful, is the product of long years of toil and reflection of
humble priests and learned prelates, whose names are now scarcely
remembered. The ideas of justice and clemency generated in the minds of
those men of the past by the spirit of Catholicity are the same which
govern our daily actions, and regulate the most important affairs of our
lives and of those most dear to us, though we are so occupied or so
ungrateful that we fail to acknowledge the sources from whence they arose.
For instance, the possession of real estate forms one of the principal
attractions for the ambition of industrious Americans, yet how few of them
ever think that the laws regulating its disposition, acquisition, and
inheritance are the very enactments framed by monks, hundreds of years
ago, and recognized by armed laymen after long and at times doubtful
contests with the advocates of the arbitrary feudal system. Personal
liberty, speedy trial by our peers, were first secured in an incontestable
form by an archbishop of the church which some of our so‐called and
“loudly called” preachers are never tired of denouncing as tyrannical.
That the right of the people governed, to elect representatives to make
laws affecting their “lives, liberty, and pursuit of happiness,” was
obtained and carried into practical effect by a Catholic statesman many
centuries before Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin were born, seems to
have been forgotten by our pseudo‐liberals; while the grand principle of
political equality which lies at the foundation of our republic, instead
of being less than a hundred years old, is coeval with Christianity
itself, and in its operation within the church is more expansive and less
discriminating as regards social rank and condition.
But though, in this inconsiderate age, we fail to acknowledge the deep
debt of gratitude we owe to the workers and thinkers of the past for our
laws, civilization, and correct ideas of government, we cannot if we would
deny that we are still ruled by those very ideas, and that none of our
boasted, and in their way valuable, discoveries have had the effect to
give us a new or a better scheme of jurisprudence, whereby mankind can be
made better, wiser, or happier.
The people of the United States are not generally considered a profoundly
reflective people; we are too much engaged with the present to care much
about either the past or future; but we respectfully suggest that, while
we may be justly proud of our laws and system of government, it is hardly
fair or generous to assume to ourselves all the credit for their formation
and existence. We have done enough to secure the liberty of our fellow‐
men, and maintain our authority in the family of nations, not to be able
to be just, if not generous, to the memory of the men who have bequeathed
to us so invaluable a legacy; and let us therefore accord to our Catholic
ancestors due credit for the conception and transmission of the laws under
which we all so happily live. After all, their ideas rule more than our
own, whether we will or not.
Dante’s Purgatorio. Canto Sixth.
When from the game of hazard men depart,
The loser stays, and, casting o’er his throws,
Learns a hard lesson with a heavy heart;
While with the winner all the assembly goes:
One runs before, one plucks his robe behind,
But he delays not, though beside his way
Another comrade calls himself to mind;
And every one perceives that he would say:
“_Press me no more!_” to whom he lifts his hand,
And by so doing keeps the crowd at bay;
Such I was, freeing me from that dense band,
To this and that one bending my survey,
And promising to answer each demand.
Here was that Aretine whose lethal wound
The savage hands of Ghin’ di Tacco made;
Also that knight who in pursuit was drowned.
Here with stretched palms Frederic Novello prayed,
The Pisan, too, at whose defeat his sire,
Good old Marzucco, showed a strength sublime.
I saw Count Orso, and that soul whom dire
Envy and spite, but no committed crime
Tore from his mortal frame, as he declared;
Pierre de la Brosse I mean: so, while she may,
Be that bad woman of Brabant prepared
Lest she go join a far worse flock than they.
When I had freed me from the gathering press
Of shadows praying still that others’ prayers
Might hasten forward their own blessedness,
I thus began: “Thy page, my Light! declares
Expressly, in one text, that Heaven’s decree
To no beseeching bendeth.(214) Yet this race
Prays with such purpose: will their praying be
Without avail? or have I in that place
Misread thy word?” He answered: “It is gross
And plain to reason: no fallacious hope
Is theirs, if thy sound mind consider close;
The topmost height of judgment doth not slope,
Because love’s fire may instantly complete
The penance due from one of these: but where
I closed that point with words which you repeat,
A gulf betwixt the Most High was and prayer:
No praying there could cover past defect.
Yet verily, in so profound a doubt
Rest not, till she who, ’twixt thine intellect
And truth, shall be thy light, herself speak out.
Dost understand me? Beatrice I mean:
Thou shalt behold her in a loftier place,
This mountain summit, smiling and serene.”
“Good Guide,” said I, “then let us mend our pace,
I feel no more my weariness: o’er us
The mountain shadow grows and hides mine own.”
“We will go forward”—he gave answer thus—
“Far as we can, ere this day’s light be gone;
But thy thought wanders from the fact. That height
Ere thou canst gain, thou shalt behold the day’s
Returning orb, who now so hides his light
Behind the hill that thou break’st not his rays.
But yonder look! one spirit, all alone,
By itself stationed, bends toward us his gaze:
The readiest passage will by him be shown”
Sordello.
We came up tow’rds it: O proud Lombard soul!
How thou didst wait, in thy disdain unstirred,
And thy majestic eyes didst slowly roll!
Meanwhile to us it never uttered word,
But let us move, just giving us a glance,
Like as a lion looks in his repose.
Then Virgil, making a more near advance,
Prayed him to show us where the mountain rose
With easier slope, and still that soul replied
Nothing to his demand; but question made
About life, and our country. My sweet Guide
Began to answer: “Mantua”—and the shade
From where it had been, separate from his band,
All rapt in self, sprang up towards him in haste,
Saying: “O Mantuan, I am of thy land,
I am Sordello.” And the twain embraced.
Ah slavish Italy! thou common inn
For woe to lodge at! without pilot, thou
Ship in great tempest! not what thou hast been,
Lady of provinces, but brothel now!
That gentle soul so quickly, at the dear
Sound that recalled his country, forward came
To grace his townsman with a greeting here;
And now thy living children, to their shame,
Are all at war, and they who dwell most near
Prey, each on each, with moat and wall the same!
Search, wretched! search all round thine either coast,
And then look inland, in thy bosom, see
If peace in any part of thee thou know’st!
What though Justinian made new reins for thee,
What boots it if the saddle remain void?
Without his mending thy disgrace were less.
And O ye tribe that ought to be employed
In your devotions, and let Cæsar press
The seat of Cæsar if God’s word you heed,
See, since your hand hath on the bridle been,
How wanton grown and wicked is the steed,
Through want from you of the spur’s discipline.
O German Albert! who abandonest
Her now run wild, unchecked by curb of thine,
When thou shouldst ride her with thy heels hard‐pressed;
May heaven’s just judgment light upon thy line,
And be it something strange, and manifest,
To make him tremble that comes after thee,
Because, for lust of barren fiefs out there,(215)
Thou and thy Father have not shamed to see
The empire’s garden desolate and bare.
Come see the Capulets and Montagues,
Monaldi and Filippeschi, O thou being
Without concern! these wan with fears, and those
Already crushed: come sate thyself with seeing,
Thou cruel man, the outrage that is done
To thy best blood, and make their bruises well!
And thou shalt see too, thou cold looker‐on,
Santafiore’s lords how safe they dwell.
Come see thy Rome that mourning all alone
Weepeth, a widow, calling day and night,
Why, O my Cæsar, dost thou leave thine own?
Come see what love there—how all hearts unite!
And if no pity move thee at our moan
Blush for thy fame beholding such a sight.
And, lawful if I speak, O most high Jove
Who wast for _our_ sakes crucified on earth,
Are thy just eyes who watchest men above
Turned elsewhere?—Or is this before the birth
Of some great good a preparation hid
From us in the abyss of thy intent,
That all the Italian towns are tyrant‐rid,
And every clown that comes on faction bent
Makes as much clamor as Marcellus did?
My Florence! well may’st thou remain content
At this digression; it concerns not thee,
Thanks to thy people, great in argument!
Many with justice in their hearts there be
Who stay the shaft lest, coming to the bow
Without discretion, it might err; but they
On their lips wear it. Many men are slow
To serve the state, and turn from place away;
Thy people do not—every one bends low,
Crying before he’s called for: “I obey.”
Now make thee joyful, who may’st triumph well;
Thou who art rich—so wise! and so at peace!
If I speak true in this—let the truth tell.
Athens and Sparta, that raised civil Greece
To such a height, and framed the ancient laws,
Towards the well‐ordered life made small beginning
Compared with thee, whose legislation draws
Threads out so fine that thy October spinning
Comes before mid‐November to a pause.
How many times hast thou renewed thy men,
Yea, within days that in thy memory dwell,
And changed thy laws and offices, and then
Customs and coins! if thou remember well
Thou wilt behold thyself, unless quite blind,
Like a sick woman, restless, that in vain
Seeks on her pillow some repose to find,
And turns and turns as ’twere to parry pain.
The Church The Champion Of Marriage.
“There is nothing new under the sun,” least of all the continued crusade
the church has headed and now heads against the enemies of Christian
marriage. What marriage is, what duties it involves, what holiness it
requires, what grace it confers, we leave to other pens more learned or
more eloquent to define. What are the Scripture authorities and allowable
inferences concerning the married state, its indissolubility and its
future transformation in heaven, we leave to theologians to state. Those
who may feel curious as to that part of the question, or as to the local
and civil enactments concerning marriage and divorce, we refer to two able
articles published in THE CATHOLIC WORLD of October, 1866, and July,
1867.(216)
But as witnesses are multiplied when a strong case has to be made out in
favor of some important issue, let us turn to the tribunal of history, and
look over the record of the church’s battles. Witnesses without number
rise in silent power to show on which side the weight of church influence
has ever been thrown—the side of the oppressed and weakly. Every liberty,
from ecclesiastical immunities to constitutional rights, she has upheld
and enforced, and it would be impossible that she, the knight‐errant of
the moral world, should have failed to break a lance, through every
succeeding century, for the integrity of the marriage bond.
Take, for instance, the history of the new Frankish kingdom in the VIth
century, at the time when the church was laboriously moulding pagan hordes
into Christian and civilized nations. The times were wild and unsettled,
the very laws hardly established, heathen license barely reined in by the
threatening barrier of solemn excommunication. They were times of great
heroism, it is true, but none the less of great abuses and of startling
crimes. The bishops of the Christian church stood alone in the midst of
the universal depravity, like mighty colossi, defying the civil power and
rebuking royal license. S. Nicetus, the Bishop of Trèves, was one of
these. The young King of the Franks, Theodebert, who was betrothed to
Wisigardis, the daughter of the Lombard king Wakon, had, during a war
against the Goths, taken a beautiful captive named Denteria. He made her
his mistress, and, forgetful of his solemn betrothal, lived with her for
seven years. The bishop never ceased boldly to admonish him and warn him,
but to no purpose. After a while, his powers of persuasion failing to
effect his charitable design, he resorted to the penalties of the church,
and excommunicated him. But, instead of suspending his evil career, the
king persuaded many of his courtiers to follow his example. The holy
bishop excommunicated them all with calm impartiality. Despite the
censures under which they lay, they insolently attempted to assist at High
Mass one Sunday in the bishop’s presence. S. Nicetus turned to meet the
sacrilegious throng, and undauntedly announced that, unless those who were
excommunicated left the church, the Mass would not be celebrated. The king
publicly demurred to this, but a young man in the crowd, possessed by the
devil, suddenly started up, and in impassioned language gave testimony to
the holiness of the bishop and the vicious and debased character of the
king himself. Four or five stalwart men got up to hold him, but were
unable to do so; his strength defied their utmost efforts, and burning
words of condemnation continued to fall from his lips. The king, abashed,
was forced to leave the church, while S. Nicetus caused the young man to
be brought to him. The touch of the holy bishop’s hand, and his
efficacious prayer breathed over him, cured him at once of the grievous
affliction which had beset him for ten years. Finally, the displeasure of
the Franks at the insult offered to the King of the Lombards and his
daughter grew so serious that, with S. Nicetus at their head, they called
a general meeting to denounce his conduct. He listened to their
reproaches, and at last agreed to dismiss his mistress and fulfil his
contract with the Lombard princess.(217)
An eminent French writer, De Maistre, says of the part played by the popes
in the middle ages: “Never have the popes and the church rendered a more
signal service to the world than they did in repressing by the authority
of ecclesiastical censures the transports of a passion, dangerous enough
in mild and orderly characters, but which, when indulged in by violent and
fierce natures, will make havoc of the holiest laws of marriage.... The
sanctity of marriage, the sacred foundation of the peace and welfare of
nations, is, above all, of the highest importance in royal families, where
excesses and disorders are apt to breed consequences whose gravity in the
future none can calculate.”
In the early part of the VIIth century, S. Columbanus, the great Irish
monk who founded the powerful monastery of Luxeuil in Burgundy, began that
opposition to royal license which finally cost him his exalted position,
and made him an exile and wanderer from his chosen abode. Queen Brunehault
was practically reigning in Burgundy under the name of her grandson
Theodoric. She connived at the young sovereign’s precocious depravity, and
herself furnished him with attractive mistresses, thereby preventing his
marriage with a suitable princess, for fear of losing her own influence
over him in public affairs. One day, as S. Columbanus, whose monastery the
king had munificently enriched, came to see Theodoric on matters of
importance, the queen rashly presented the king’s illegitimate children to
the saint, and begged him to bless them. Columbanus refused, turning away
his eyes and saying sternly, “These children are the offspring of guilt,
and they will never sit upon their father’s throne.” Another time, after
many vain threats and remonstrances, the saint again visited Theodoric,
but, instead of accepting the hospitality of his palace, took up his
quarters in a neighboring house. Brunehault and her grandson, keenly alive
to the implied rebuke, and resenting the public slight thus put upon them
before their court and subjects, sent some officers of their household
with costly vases and golden dishes, full of delicacies from the royal
table, to Columbanus, at the same time entreating him to come to them. The
saint made the sign of the cross, and spoke thus to the messengers: “Tell
the king that the Most High spurns the gifts of the unjust; heaven is not
to be propitiated by precious offerings, but by conversion and
repentance.” And as he spoke the vases fell to the earth and broke,
scattering the food and wine that had been brought to bribe the servant of
God. The king, afraid of the divine judgments, promised to amend, but did
not fail to relapse into sin, upon which Columbanus wrote to him again,
and finally excommunicated him. Theodoric then visited the monastery of
Luxeuil, and in retaliation publicly accused the saint of violating his
rule. Columbanus answered, “If you are come here to disturb the servants
of God, and stir up confusion among them, we will relinquish all your aid,
countenance, and presents, O Theodoric; but know that you and all your
race shall perish.” The king retired, awed for this time into silence;
but, being further incensed against Columbanus by his grandmother
Brunehault, he had him exiled to Besançon. The saint’s reputation was such
that no one would venture to guard him, and he of his own accord soon
returned to Luxeuil. Theodoric, growing more obstinate the firmer he saw
his judge become, again ordered him to leave, even threatening force.
Columbanus defied him, and announced that physical violence alone could
drive him from his post; but, upon the persecution of the monastery
continuing unabated, he judged it more perfect and charitable to exile
himself for the peace of his community. Three years after, Theodoric and
his children were all killed, and Clotaire, his relative and ruler of a
neighboring kingdom, reigned in Burgundy in his stead.
The Byzantine Empire also was constantly torn by schisms and dissensions
originating in the unbridled passions of its ignoble sovereigns. In the
VIIIth century, Constantine VI., surnamed Porphyrogenitus, the son of the
Empress Irene, married at his mother’s instigation an Armenian woman of
low birth but irreproachable morals, named Mary. It was not long, however,
before he became enamored of one of his wife’s attendants, Theodota,
whereupon he proceeded to divorce the Empress Mary and force her to take
the veil. The Patriarch of Constantinople, Tarasius, refused to dissolve
the first marriage and perform the second, as required by the dissolute
emperor, who then attempted to blind him by alleging that his wife had
conspired to poison him. This the patriarch firmly refused to believe,
and, moreover, represented to the emperor the scandal of his conduct, the
infamy that would attach to his name in consequence, and especially the
incalculable evil his bad example would cause among his not too chaste
courtiers and people. Constantine lost his temper, and violently replied
that he would close the Christian churches, and reopen the temples of the
heathen gods. The patriarch threatened to refuse him the right of entering
the sanctuary, and of assisting at the sacred mysteries; but when an
unworthy priest, Joseph, the treasurer of the church of Constantinople,
was found willing to celebrate between the emperor and Theodota an invalid
“marriage” in one of the halls of the palace of S. Maurice, Tarasius
hesitated to pronounce the excommunication. At this distance of time, it
is not easy to point out the reasons and excuses which the unsettled state
of things in the Byzantine Empire may have furnished for this act of
seeming compromise; much less should we rashly condemn a holy and zealous
bishop; but it is noticeable that such instances have never been repeated
when it was the popes themselves who were directly appealed to.
As the patriarch had foretold, evil results followed the sovereign’s
licentious example, a frightful laxity of morals prevailed, and
insubordination to the church went hand in hand with the violation of the
marriage bond. Tarasius excommunicated the priest Joseph two years after,
but, although he had refrained from directly and publicly censuring the
principal culprit, he was none the less persecuted by him.
In the following century, a still worse case of the kind took place, the
chief actors in it being Bardas, the ambitious uncle of the wretched
Emperor Michael the Drunkard, and the Patriarch of Constantinople, S.
Ignatius. The former, who had the practical control of the state, and had
induced his sottish nephew to give him the title of “Cæsar” of the
Byzantine Empire, deliberately left his lawful wife, and lived in publicly
incestuous union with the wife of his own son. S. Ignatius indignantly
reproved him, and when the prince, braving his censures, presented himself
in church on the Feast of the Epiphany, the patriarch publicly refused to
admit him to the Holy Communion. Bardas furiously threatened him before
the faithful, but the holy prelate boldly presented his breast to the
blows he seemed about to receive, and in a few solemn words invoked the
wrath of God on the sacrilegious “Cæsar.” He was promptly exiled to the
Island of Teberinthia, where Bardas, partly by threats and partly by
hypocritical promises, induced all his suffragans to repair in a body, and
entreat him to resign the patriarchate. With holy firmness he resisted the
treacherous appeal, whereupon Bardas had him put in irons, deposed, and
replaced on the patriarchal chair by Photius, a creature of his own and a
layman. The famous schism of Photius thus sprang from the same cause as
later heresies, and everywhere we see contumacy to ecclesiastical
authority making common cause with abandoned passion and shameless
license.
The Photian schism was abetted in the West by another rebellious son of
the church, Lothair, King of Lorraine, who was anxious to get rid of his
wife Thietberga. This was one of the most famous cases of the sort during
the middle ages, and was prolonged over many years, breeding not only the
utmost moral disorder, but threatening also to bring about even political
convulsions. Lothair had conceived a criminal passion for one of his
wife’s maids, Waldrade, and to marry her his first endeavor was to prove
the queen guilty of incest before her marriage with him. For this purpose
he summoned his bishops three times at Aix‐la‐Chapelle, in 860, and had
Thietberga condemned to the public penance usually inflicted in those days
on a fallen woman. The time‐serving prelates, after a superficial
examination of the evidence, allowed the divorce on the plea that “it is
better to marry than to burn”; thus giving an early historical proof of
the old saying about a certain person “quoting Scripture.” Widalon, Bishop
of Vienne, who had not concurred in this iniquitous decree, wrote to the
pope for guidance. The pope, Nicholas I., firmly standing by the tradition
of the church, and vindicating the fundamental dogma of the sanctity of
marriage, replied uncompromisingly that the divorce was null and void, the
bishops blamable for their servility, and that even were it proved beyond
doubt that Thietberga had been guilty of incest or any other sinful
intercourse before marriage, yet the marriage itself could never on that
account be legally dissolved. The queen herself then appealed to the pope,
who appointed two legates to inquire into the matter. Baffled in his first
attempt, Lothair now trumped up a second pretext, and pretended that he
had been previously married to Waldrade, and that the queen had therefore
never been his lawful wife. The pope replied that, until this matter was
disposed of, the queen should be sent with all honor to her father, and
suitably provided for from the royal treasury. Thietberga was now
arraigned before a packed and bribed tribunal, and forced to acknowledge
herself an interloper, but found secret means of sending word to the pope
that she had acted under compulsion. Nicholas then wrote an indignant
letter to the king and bishops, annulled all previous decisions, and
commanded a new and _fair_ trial of the case to be held. He then wrote to
the Emperor of Germany, Louis II., and the King of France, Charles the
Bald, as well as to all the bishops of the four kingdoms, Lorraine,
France, Germany, and Provence, whom he ordered to repair to a council at
Metz, where his legates would meet them. He charged them to have more
regard to the laws of God than the will of men, and to protect the weak
and innocent with all the dignity of their influence. Lothair, however,
succeeded in corrupting the legates themselves, and the council merely met
to confirm the previous infamous decrees and condemnations. Two of the
prelates were chosen to report to the pope and bear hypocritical and
falsified messages to him, but in vain. Nicholas, secretly advised of this
treachery, and no doubt also divinely inspired, detected the imposition,
abrogated the decrees of the false council, and canonically deposed the
two guilty prelates from all their functions and dignities. They
immediately took refuge at Benevento with the Emperor Louis II., who,
hotly espousing their cause, marched with his army against Rome, and
surprised the clergy and people in the act of singing the litanies and
taking part in a penitential procession at S. Peter’s. His soldiers
dispersed the people by force of arms, and blockaded the pope in his
palace. Nicholas escaped in disguise, and for two days lay concealed in a
boat on the Tiber, with neither covering for the night nor scarcely food
enough to sustain nature. Thus the conflict between a sovereign’s
unbridled passions and the calm and immutable principles of the Gospel was
carried so far as to entail actual persecution on the sacred and
representative person of the pontiff. The emperor, repenting of his hasty
attack, sent his wife to the pope to negotiate a reconciliation. The two
insubordinate bishops at the same time sent an embassy to Photius, the
sacrilegious successor of S. Ignatius in the See of Constantinople, to
demand his support and countenance. “And thus,” says Rohrbacher, to whom
we are indebted for these graphic pictures of the early struggles of the
church, “did the schism born of the adultery of Lothair in the West join
hands with that born of the incest of Bardas in the East.” Lothair and the
rebellious bishops now quarrelled among themselves, and one of the deposed
prelates, the Archbishop of Cologne, repaired in haste to Rome to reveal
the duplicity, the plotting, and insincerity that had characterized the
whole of the proceedings.
The king himself, however, showed a disposition to submit, most of the
bishops begged the pope’s forgiveness, and the former legate, Rodoaldus,
having been excommunicated for his collusion with the king, a new one,
Arsenius, Bishop of Orta, was appointed. The conditions he was charged to
demand were explicit—either Waldrade must be dismissed, or the
excommunication until now delayed in mercy would be pronounced. Unwilling
to submit entirely, yet dreading the consequences if he did not, Lothair
actually recalled Thietberga to her lawful position, and allowed Waldrade
to accompany the legate to Rome, as a public token of her repentance and
obedience. But although his royal word was plighted, he soon found his
blind appetites too much for his reason and his faith, and, sending
messengers to bring back his mistress, relapsed into his former sins.
Waldrade herself was now publicly excommunicated.
In the meantime, Pope Nicholas died, and was succeeded by Adrian II., who
proved himself no less strenuous an opponent of royal license than his
holy predecessor had been. Lothair, naturally inclined to temporize,
offered to go to Rome and plead his own cause with the new pontiff. In a
preliminary interview held at Monte‐Casino, the pope reiterated his firm
intention of coming to no understanding before the king had made his peace
with Thietberga and finally dissolved his criminal union with Waldrade.
The next day was Sunday, and the king hoped to hear Mass before he left
for Rome, but he could find no priest willing to celebrate it for him, and
was forced to take his departure in diminished state for Rome, where no
public reception awaited him, so that he had to enter the Holy City almost
as a pilgrim and a penitent. In those days of princely hospitality and
profuse pageantry, such an occurrence was rare, and, therefore, all the
more significant of the majestic and practical power of the church.
Lothair, now thoroughly sensible of his sin, and warned by the terrible
dissensions of the past of what further misery to his country and people
his prolonged obstinacy might involve, signified his intention to submit
unconditionally to the pope’s decree. High Mass was then celebrated in his
presence and that of all his noble followers by the pope in person, and
when at the moment of communion the king approached the altar, Adrian
impressively addressed to him the following unexpected adjuration:
“I charge thee, O King of Lorraine, if thou hast any concealed intention
of renewing thy shameless intercourse with thy concubine Waldrade, not to
dare approach this altar and sacrilegiously receive thy Lord in this
tremendous sacrament; but if with true repentance and sincere purpose of
amendment thou dost approach, then receive him without fear.”
The king, evidently moved by this solemn address, knelt down and
communicated, and his retainers and courtiers took their places at the
sacred board. That no pretext might remain for further equivocation, the
holy pontiff warned them also, before administering the Blessed Sacrament
to them, saying:
“If any among you have wilfully aided and abetted the king, and are ready
wilfully to aid and abet him again in his wicked intercourse with
Waldrade, let him not presume to receive sacrilegiously the body of the
Lord; but you that have not abetted him, or that have sincerely repented
of having done so, and are resolved to do so no more, approach and receive
without fear.” A few of them shrank back at these awful words, but the
greater part, whether in sincerity or in contempt, followed the king’s
example and received.
After this, which did not take place till 869, we hear no more of
Lothair’s passion for Waldrade.
Germany, too, had her Lothair, and, in the XIth century, King Henry IV.,
one of the most abandoned sovereigns that ever reigned, brought upon
himself not only the papal anathema, but the displeasure of his electors
and confederated vassals themselves by his shameless trifling with his
marriage vows. His wife Bertha, a beautiful and virtuous woman, the
daughter of Otho, Marquis of Italy, never found favor in his sight; and,
in concert with some of his simoniacal bishops, Siegfried, the Archbishop
of Mayence at their head, Henry held a diet at Worms in 1069 to procure a
divorce from her. Siegfried, however, feeling uneasy at the part allotted
him, sent to the Pope Alexander II. for advice, and received from him a
severe reprimand for having countenanced the dissolute king. The papal
legate, an austere and holy man, Peter Damian, arrived during the session
of a diet at Frankfort, where the king’s cause was to be finally judged.
Despite Henry’s protestations that his divorce would enable him, as he
hypocritically said, to marry lawfully a wife that would please him, and
to abandon his numerous harem of favorites, whom he would have no excuse
any longer to retain, the stern sentence of Rome was passed against
him—either excommunication or reconciliation with his wife. He reluctantly
submitted, but only in appearance, for he refused even to see Bertha, and
soon gave himself up to his former illicit pleasures. His brutal treatment
of his second wife, Praxedes of Lorraine, whom he married according to his
own choice after the death of Bertha, drew upon him further ecclesiastical
censures, and he left a memory justly branded by all historians as more
infamous still than that of the notorious Henry VIII. of England.
At the same time that his passions were revolutionizing the German Empire,
Philip I. of France was showing an equally deplorable example to his
vassals and subjects. He was married to Bertha, daughter of Hugh, Count of
Frisia, by whom he already had two children, one of whom, Louis le Gros,
succeeded him; but, blinded by a sinful affection, he carried off, in
1092, Bertrade, the wife of Fulk, Count of Anjou, and lived with her in a
doubly adulterous union.
Hugh of Flavigny, a contemporary historian, says of this occurrence: “Even
if our book were silent, all France would cry out, nay, the whole of the
Western church would re‐echo like thunder in horror of this crime. It is
truly monstrous that an anointed king, who should have defended even with
the sword the indissolubility of marriage, should on the contrary _wallow
shamelessly_ for years in _intolerable disorder_.” The Blessed Yves,
Bishop of Chartres, immediately lifted his voice against the enormity of
the crime; but though his fervent reproaches fell upon a deadened
conscience, and his letter to the king was in vain, still among the
bishops of France none could be found, at least for a long time, to
perform a scandalous “marriage” between the king and his mistress. At last
the Archbishop of Rouen allowed himself to be blinded, and consented to
unite them, but a prompt and sharp interference on the part of Rome
punished him by a deposition from all his ecclesiastical dignities, which
lasted for several years. The whole of the controversy had now come
clearly to the knowledge of the Pope Urban II.
The Count of Anjou had declared war against the ravisher, and the king had
put the B. Yves in irons under the guard of the Viscount of Chartres. In
the meanwhile, the pope wrote a scathing letter to the metropolitan of
Rheims and the episcopate of France. “You,” he says, “who should have
stood as a wall against the inroads of public immorality, you have been
silent and allowed this great crime; for not to oppose is to consent. Go
now, speak to the king, reproach him, warn him, threaten him, and, if
necessary, resort boldly to the last measures.” From 1092 to 1094 the pope
never ceased publicly and privately to oppose Philip’s unlawful passion,
and, sending as his legate Hugh, Archbishop of Lyons, convoked an assembly
at Autun for the 15th of October, 1094, to decide the matter. The king
insolently attempted to forestall the papal decision by calling a council
for the 10th of September previous, which accordingly took place, and in
which a few contumacious bishops confirmed the king in his obstinate
resistance to the head of the church. As the queen had died a short time
before, Philip presumptuously began to hope that his marriage with
Bertrade would now be legalized; but, since she herself was the wedded
wife of the Count of Anjou, it will be easy to see how vain were his
expectations. The Council of Autun met, and, finding the king determined
to continue in sin, solemnly excommunicated him. Philip then wrote a
threatening letter to the pope, declaring that, if he did not absolve him
from the church’s censures, he would go over to the anti‐pope Guibert,
styled Clement III. Philip now attempted to secure immunity for himself in
another way: he promised all sorts of reforms, both ecclesiastical and
moral, if he could only obtain permission to indulge his guilty passion
undisturbed. To this proposal the B. Yves replied, like S. Columbanus to
Theodoric, that it was impossible to compound for sin by costly gifts,
that God desires ourselves, not our treasures, and that heaven is won by
penance and not by gold.
At length, in 1095, the Council of Placentia was held. Philip pleaded for
a delay, which was granted him, but at the following council, that of
Clermont, he and his concubine were at last rigorously excommunicated. And
here Rohrbacher takes occasion to remark, _à propos_ to the crusade which
was then occupying Christendom: “Indeed, of what use would a crusade
against the Turks have proved if the popes had not, at the same time,
resolutely opposed the introduction of Turkish disorders into Christian
society?”
In 1096, Philip consented to submit, and went in state to the Council of
Nismes to meet the pope, and be absolved from the excommunication, which,
as he found, weighed very heavily on his conscience. Throughout the middle
ages this one trait, a lively faith, proved, indeed, the only barrier
against excesses which, had they been unrestrained by the fear of
ecclesiastical censures, would have simply produced a state of license
worse than that of the latter days of the Roman Empire. But Philip’s
repentance was short‐lived; he recalled Bertrade, and even gave away
benefices and church dignities to her favorites, seculars, and persons of
questionable morality. Urban II. died, and was succeeded by Paschal II.,
who again sent his legates to the king, and, at the Council of Poictiers,
excommunicated the guilty pair a second time. At this council a strange
scene took place. A layman threw a stone at one of the legates, and,
though it missed him, it split open the head of another bishop who was
standing near. This was the signal for a violent attack on the prelates;
the unruly crowd outside the church battered down the doors, and rushed
in, throwing stones and missiles of all kinds among the deliberating
bishops. Of these a very few, seized with panic, hastily made their
escape, but the greater part stood like heroes at their post, and even
took off their mitres that their heads might present a better mark to the
infuriated and partisan mob. Nor was this the only act of violence
perpetrated in the name of Philip and Bertrade. Shortly after this scene,
while staying at Sens, they remained a fortnight without hearing Mass,
which so incensed Bertrade that she sent her servants to break open the
doors of the church, and caused one of her priests, a tool of her own, to
celebrate the Holy Sacrifice in her presence. Philip now noisily
proclaimed that he was going to Rome to receive absolution, but Yves of
Chartres warned the Pope of the king’s insincerity, and the pontiff
remained conscientiously cold to all his advances until he had wrested
from him a solemn oath not only to cease his criminal intercourse with
Bertrade, but also to abstain from seeing her or speaking to her unless in
the presence of a third person. Nevertheless, the solemn absolution was
not pronounced in his favor before the Council of Beaugency, assembled in
1104, _twelve_ years after his first sin in carrying off the lawful wife
of his own vassal and kinsman.
The XIIth century, so stormily begun, was disturbed later on by yet
another controversy of the same kind. It has been noticed by Protestant
writers, says De Maistre, that it was almost invariably marriage, its
indissolubility and the irregularities against its integrity, that have
provoked the “scandal” of excommunication. In this admission, made rather
to criminate than to honor the church, made indeed to throw the obloquy of
schism upon the popes themselves, is there not an unwilling testimony to
the Papacy’s unflinching championship of virtue?
In 1140, Louis VII. of France, surnamed _Le Jeune_, refused to sanction
the canonical nomination of Peter, Archbishop of Bourges, whom Thibault,
Count of Champagne, valiantly defended and upheld. At the same time,
Raoul, Count of Vermandois, a man advanced in years, who had long been
married to Thibault’s niece, wished to dissolve his marriage in order to
contract another with Petronilla, the sister of the Queen of France,
Louis’ wife, Eleanor of Antioch. He succeeded in persuading a few bishops
to grant him this permission on the plea of relationship between him and
his first wife, which, if true, would have made that union illegal from
the first. S. Bernard, in a fervid letter to Pope Innocent II., denounces
his vile conduct, giving a most lamentable picture of the state of the
kingdom of France. “_That which is most sacred in the church_,” he says,
“is trodden underfoot.” The pope, through his legate, Cardinal Yves,
excommunicated the Count of Vermandois, and laid his whole territory under
an interdict. Mass could no longer be said, the sacraments were not
administered, the churches were closed, the bells silent. The king
revenged himself by declaring war on the Count of Champagne, who had given
shelter to the archbishop, and appealed to Rome against the Count of
Vermandois. He devastated Thibault’s territory with fire and sword, and
behaved, says Rohrbacher, rather like a Vandal chief than a Christian
king. In 1142, he arrived before the town of Vitry, sacked it, and set
fire to its church and castle. In the former were no less than 1300
persons, men, women, and children, who had sought safety in the sanctuary.
He ruthlessly closed all avenues to the church, and burnt the miserable
inhabitants as they vainly strove to escape. The town was hereafter called
_Vitry le Brûle_. The Count of Champagne, weakened by this terrible onset,
sued for peace, and promised to exert his influence to have both
excommunication and interdict taken off the person and fiefs of Raoul de
Vermandois. It was, in fact, provisionally suspended, but, as the culprit
still refused to dissolve his criminal union, he was excommunicated for
the second time. S. Bernard was a prominent actor in this controversy, and
powerfully worked for the preservation of peace.
But greater troubles were yet in store for France and the church. In 1193,
Philip Augustus lost his first wife, Isabella of Hainault, and soon
afterwards sent the Bishop of Noyon, Stephen, with great pomp to the King
of Denmark, Canute III., to ask the hand of his sister Ingeburga in
marriage. The request was joyfully granted, and the queen‐elect brought
back to France with all possible honor. The marriage took place at once,
and the king confessed himself much pleased with his new consort. The next
day he caused her to be solemnly crowned, a ceremony to which great
importance was attached in those days; but, strange to say, during the
service itself he was seen to turn pale as if with horror, and to cast
sudden looks of aversion towards the queen. He, however, retired with her
to Meaux, and lived with her a short time, still unable to conquer his
dislike, which many did not fail to attribute to witchcraft, for Ingeburga
was both comely, virtuous, and accomplished. The king now called together
his parliament at Compiègne, his uncle, the Archbishop of Rheims and
legate of the Holy See, presiding. The queen, who did not understand
French, and whose Danish attendants had all been sent away, was present at
the deliberation. Unheard, therefore, and even unchallenged, she was
speedily declared too closely related to the king through his former wife
Isabella to be united to him in lawful marriage. This seems to have been
the favorite pretext for dissolving inconvenient marriages in those times,
as it was also later in the too famous case of Henry VIII. of England and
Catharine of Aragon, but even in this we see the spirit of subordination
to the general authority of the church still underlying the partial
revolts of her unruly sons. When Queen Ingeburga was made acquainted by an
interpreter with the sentence rendered against her, she was painfully
astonished, and, bursting into tears, cried out in her broken French,
_Male France! Male France!_ Some pitying hearts there must have been in
that assembly of lords spiritual and temporal, some remorseful consciences
among that gathering of Frenchmen, who, as Rohrbacher quaintly says,
“forgot even to be courteous to a stranger and a woman.” Ingeburga,
rising, then added, “Rome! Rome!”—sublime appeal of oppressed innocence to
the fountain‐head of justice and honor! Philip had her immured in the
Abbey of Cisoing. Pope Celestine III. sent legates to inquire into the
rights of the case, but the king succeeded in intimidating them, and no
conclusion was arrived at in the council held at Paris. The pope then
wrote an energetic letter to the bishops, concluding by a decision to this
effect, that, having carefully examined the genealogy upon which turned
the question of the alleged close relationship between the king’s first
and second wives, he solemnly annuls the unlawful act of divorce passed at
the Parliament of Compiègne, and decrees that, if the king should attempt
to marry any other woman during Ingeburga’s lifetime, he should be
proceeded against as an adulterer.
This speedily came to pass. Not content with repudiating his wife, he
attempted, in 1196, to marry another, Agnes of Merania (Tyrol). Ingeburga
instantly appealed to the pope, saying that for this outrage her husband
“allegeth no cause, but of his will maketh an order, of his obstinacy a
law, and of his passion _une fureur_,” as Rohrbacher rather untranslatably
puts it.
The Protestant historian Hurter says: “In this instance, the pope stands
face to face, not with the king, but with the Christian. Innocent III. (he
had succeeded Celestine) would not sacrifice the moral importance of his
office even to procure help for the Crusade or to prepare for himself an
ally in his dissensions with the German emperors.”
Pope Innocent remonstrated with the king first through the Bishop of
Paris, Eudes de Sully, then personally by letter, and threatened him with
the last and most awful punishment, excommunication. The king temporized,
and would give no satisfactory answer, until in 1198 the papal legate,
Peter of Capua, was directed to give him his choice between submission
within one month or the imposition of an interdict upon the whole kingdom.
This appalling measure had never before been so sweepingly resorted to,
and the preparations for it were as solemnly magnificent as if they had
portended the funeral of a nation. The council met at Dijon in 1199, and,
during its seven days’ session, once more invited the king to attend and
avert the doom his sin had well‐nigh brought upon the realm. But Philip
remained inflexible, despite the last and urgent letters of the pope, and
the interdict was accordingly pronounced.
Four archbishops, eighteen bishops, and a great number of abbots composed
the august assembly, and on the seventh day of the council a strange and
impressive scene closed the unavailing deliberations. At midnight the
great bell of the cathedral tolled out the knell of a parting soul, the
prelates repaired in silent and lugubrious procession to the high altar,
now divested of all its ornaments, the lights were extinguished and
removed, the figure of Christ on the great rood was veiled in penitential
guise, the relics of the patron saints were removed into the crypt below,
and the consecrated hosts yet unconsumed were destroyed by fire. The
legate, clothed in purple, advanced to the foot of the denuded altar, and
promulgated the awful sentence that was to deprive a whole Christian
kingdom of the consolations of religion. The assembled people answered
with a great groan, and, says a historian of the times, it seemed as if
the Last Judgment had suddenly come upon men. A respite of twenty days was
allowed before the interdict was publicly announced, but after Candlemas
Day, 1200, it was not only announced, but rigorously enforced. The effect
was terrible; thousands flocked to Normandy and other provinces belonging
to the King of England, to receive the sacraments and perform their usual
devotions; the king’s own sister, on the occasion of her marriage with the
Count of Ponthien, had to remove to Rouen to have the ceremony canonically
performed. The king, meanwhile, vented his fury on the bishops, imprisoned
some, confiscated the temporalities of others, and caused many to be even
personally maltreated. Queen Ingeburga was dragged from her convent, and
barbarously imprisoned in the Castle of Etampes, near Paris. Philip’s
wrath extended to all classes; the nobles he oppressed, the burghers he
taxed beyond their means, until his very servants left him as a God‐
forsaken man. The pressure at last became so terrible that he was heard to
exclaim in a transport of rage, “I shall end by becoming a Mussulman!
Fortunate Saladin! he at least had no pope over him!” At a meeting of the
lords and prelates of the kingdom, at which Agnes of Merania assisted,
Philip moodily asked, in the midst of an ominous silence, what he was to
do. “Obey the pope,” was the instant and uncompromising reply of the
assembly; and, when the king further obtained a confession from his uncle
the Archbishop of Rheims that the decree of divorce passed by him had been
invalid from the first, he exclaimed in ill‐concealed anger, “You were a
fool to give it, then!”
At this juncture, both Agnes and the king sent ambassadors to Rome to ask
for a suspension at least of the interdict, but the pope was inflexible,
and would hear of no negotiation before an unconditional submission. This
Philip reluctantly promised; the interdict had now lasted seven months,
and he could no longer withstand the dangerous and threatening attitude of
his dissatisfied subjects. In the summer of the year 1200, Cardinal John
Colonna, Cardinal Octavian, of Ostia, and several others repaired first to
Vezelay, then to Compiègne, where they met the king and received his
overtures. On the eve of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, the assembly
of lords spiritual and temporal met at the Castle of S. Léger, where the
legate insisted on the deliberations being held in public. The anxious
people crowded round the doors of the great hall, eager to watch every
fluctuation in the proceedings. At last, on the legate’s urgent advice,
and in his presence, Philip consented to visit Queen Ingeburga in state.
She had been sent for to be present, but had not yet seen her husband. It
was their first meeting since their separation six years before. At sight
of her, the king recoiled, crying out, “The pope is forcing me to this.”
“Nay, my lord,” replied the injured wife, calmly and meekly, “he seeks but
justice.”
Philip soon afterwards swore by proxy to receive the queen as his only and
lawful wife, and to render her all the honors due to her rank. As soon as
this was done, the bells rang out a joyous peal, and the people knew that
peace had been made. The sacred images were again uncovered, the church
doors were opened, and Mass was everywhere celebrated with great pomp. The
people were frantic with joy, but the king, though he had bent under the
weight of influence that had been brought to bear upon him, still
persisted in asking for a divorce from his wife on the before‐mentioned
plea of relationship. The pope delayed an answer, and, the better to
satisfy the reason of the refractory king, appointed another meeting to be
held at Soissons, six months after the date of the recent one at S. Léger.
To this meeting Canute III. of Denmark sent bishops and learned doctors to
plead his sister’s cause, but, as on the king’s side was arrayed the
best—though servile—talent of France, the case seemed not very hopeful,
until an unknown and obscure ecclesiastic arose, and, towards the end of
the council, which had already lasted a fortnight, modestly asked leave of
the august judges to speak in favor of Queen Ingeburga. His address
startled and moved all who listened, and they agreed with one voice that
this sudden and almost inspired burst of eloquence was surely a sign of
the will of God directly urging the queen’s rights. Philip, anticipating
the papal decision, determined to surprise the assembly by forestalling
it. He accordingly appeared on horseback very early one morning at the
gate of the palace of Notre Dame, the queen’s residence, and in public—and
shall we not say primitive?—token of reconciliation took Ingeburga away
with him, making her sit on a pillion behind him. They rode away quietly
and almost unattended, but soon after it became known that he had again
imprisoned her in an old castle, and that, having thus broken up the
council before a public decision had been rendered, he still considered
himself free to seek the divorce. Soon after the difficulty was lessened
by the death of the unfortunate Agnes of Merania, whose health had been
shattered by the terrible and infamous publicity necessarily brought upon
her during her recent pregnancy. It was not, however, for many years after
her death, not until 1213, that Philip was sincerely and permanently
reconciled to Ingeburga, whom he calls in his will his _dear wife_, and to
whom he left a suitable provision as queen‐dowager.
Hurter and Schlegel both give witness to the admirable conduct of the
mediæval popes in these and kindred struggles. The former says: “If
Christianity was not reduced to a vain formula like the religion of the
Hindoos, or relegated to one corner of the globe like a common sect, or
sunk altogether in the mire of oriental voluptuousness, it was entirely
owing to the vigilance and constant efforts of the popes.” And Schlegel,
in his _Concordia_, speaks thus: “We hardly dare to liken the Guelphs,
with the popes at their head, to anything approaching _liberalism_, so
degraded has the term become in connection with _modern liberals_; yet
they alone, because they had religion and the church on their side, were
the _true liberals_ of the middle ages. Indeed, if we look at the position
of the popes in its highest type, we shall find that they were always
either gentle peace‐makers and arbiters in times of unnecessary and
foolish wars, or stern champions of the oppressed, and austere censors of
morals.”
We pass over a few other less important cases, and come at once to the
last and most fatal, those connected with the Protestant Reformation. In
the XVIth century, the old story of Bardas and Photius was lamentably
repeated in England. Germany was in open revolt; Philip, Landgrave of
Hesse, was extorting shameful permissions for polygamy from the married
monk Luther; religious were trampling their vows underfoot; Wittenberg,
according to the Lutheran chronicler Illyricus, was no better than a den
of prostitution; troops of “apostate nuns,” as Luther himself called them,
were constantly arriving, begging, says Rohrbacher, for _food, clothing,
and husbands_; Luther, their prophet, was hawking his mistress, Catharine
Boris, about among his disciples, offering her as a wife first to one,
then to the other, till he was at last forced to take her himself, to the
no small disgust of his best friends, who remonstrated in the following
graphic words: “If any, at least not _this_ one.” The Germanic world was
crazy with a new revolution, and henceforth the struggle was no longer to
be a partial one, a revolt of the flesh, but a radical onset upon
everything divine, upon revelation and faith, as well as upon moral
restraints and social decencies. Philip of Hesse, petitioning in 1539 for
permission to marry a second wife while the first was living, says that
“necessities of body and of conscience obliged him thereto”; that “he sees
no remedy save that allowed of old to the chosen people” (polygamy); that
“he begs this dispensation in order that he may live more entirely for the
glory of God, and lie more ready to do him earthly services; that he is
ready to do anything that may be required of him in reason (as an
equivalent), whether concerning the property of convents or anything
else.” He also hints that he will seek this permission from the emperor,
“no matter at what _pecuniary cost_,” if it be denied him by the
Wittenberg divines, and alleges as a sufficient reason that it is too
costly for him to take his wife to diets of the empire, with all the
honors due to her rank, and equally too hard for him to live without
female society during such times of gaiety. The permission was granted at
last, reluctantly, it must be admitted, for even the first Reformers, lax
as they were, were not Mormons. Melancthon drew it up, and eight divines,
including Bucer and Luther, signed it, but made secrecy a condition. The
shameful “marriage” was performed on the 4th of March, 1540, between the
landgrave and Marguerite de Saal, and perhaps the most revolting feature
of the proceeding was the consent of Philip’s lawful wife, the Duchess
Christina.
In Chambers’ _Book of Days_, a collection of curious information, we read
that a still more liberal dispensation from the ordinary rules of morality
was in the last century accorded by the Calvinistic clergy of Prussia to
the reigning King, Frederick William, successor of Frederick the Great, to
have three wives at the same time, the Princess of Hesse, the Countess
Euhoff, and Elizabeth of Brunswick. The progenitor of the Prussian dynasty
had already given a similar example of licentiousness. In Luther’s time,
Albert of Brandenburg, Grand Master of the religious order of chivalry,
the Knights of S. Mary, otherwise called the Teutonic Order, broke his
vows and took a wife, having already abjured his faith. Prussia, then only
a province dependent on the Order, he seized as his own, Protestantizing
it, and making moral disorder the rule there rather than the exception.
But we must glance at England, though the story of its defection is so
well known that we will not do more than pencil the outlines of the
conflict on this occasion. After twenty years of married life, without a
scruple to mar his domestic peace, without a breath of scandal to sully
the fair fame of the queen, Henry VIII. suddenly strives to obtain a
divorce from his wife, Catharine of Aragon, that he may marry one who is
already his mistress and the acknowledged head of his court. A faithful
son of the church until a personal test of fidelity is demanded from him,
he had already refuted Luther’s errors, and gained the title of “Defender
of the Faith.” But passion blinds him, and everywhere he seeks a sanction
for his unrestrained license. He applies to Rome and to Wittenberg: the
latter answers in a deprecatory tone, “Rather than divorce your wife marry
_two_ queens”; the former, in the person of Clement VII., urges him to
desist from his unlawful courses. Repulsed the first time, the pope sends
Cardinal Campeggio, his legate, to treat of the matter with Cardinal
Wolsey; they summon the queen to their presence; she refuses point‐blank,
and appeals directly to Rome.
In 1531, Cromwell, the astute and traitorous _protégé_ of Wolsey, suggests
schism to the king as a means to the desired end. Henry, knowing the
corrupt and venal state of the clergy in England, eagerly accepts the
proposals, and instantly attempts to enforce a declaration of his supreme
headship of the English Church by putting in force, against the clergy,
several obsolete statutes of Norman origin, named “præmunire”; the whole
ecclesiastical body is threatened with the punishment of attainder due to
high treason, and to save the rest they offer the king a ransom of
£100,000 (equal at that period to at least four times that sum according
to modern computation). The king only accepts this amount with the
supplementary condition of the “oath of supremacy.” At one stroke the
episcopate is gagged, and schism practically effected. Meanwhile, Cranmer
is sent to Rome to apply anew for the divorce.
His mission proved unsuccessful, and on his return a final council was
held at Dunstable, Bedfordshire, where, however, the queen refused again
to appear, and was therefore condemned as _contumacious_. Shortly after,
at Lambeth, her marriage was annulled, and her daughter, the Princess
Mary, declared illegitimate. Pope Clement VII. threatened to excommunicate
the king; Henry never heeded him. A public consistory, held at Rome in
1534, reversed the Lambeth decision, but the die was already cast, and the
complaisant parliament was ready to confirm Henry in all his desires.
More’s and Fisher’s were the only dissentient voices heard throughout the
kingdom; we know at what cost their courageous protest was raised. A reign
of blood was inaugurated; confiscations enriched the royal treasury, and
the servile episcopate bent to the shameful yoke like one man. Of the
Franciscan friars, Peyto and Elston, who dared to preach to the king’s
face against his adulterous union, the Protestant historian Cobbett says:
“They were not fanatics, as some have said; they were the defenders of
morality and order, and I know of no instance in ancient or modern history
of a greater and nobler heroism than this.”(218)
In 1536, Queen Catharine died, and the same year was performed the
marriage of Henry with Anne Boleyn by a Catholic chaplain, who was ordered
to say Mass early one morning by the king, Henry falsely alleging that he
had in his possession the newly arrived permission from Rome. But passion
is no foundation whereon to build a permanent and happy domestic life.
Anne’s immorality matched Henry’s, and ere long she was accused, vaguely,
it is true, of treason, adultery, and incest. Her supposed accomplices and
lovers were all executed, and she herself, in cruel derision, condemned on
the 15th of May, 1536, to be executed on the 19th, while, on the
intermediate 17th, the Archbishop of Canterbury, according to his royal
master’s orders, declared her marriage annulled, and her daughter
Elizabeth illegitimate. Thus she was first proved to have never been the
king’s lawful wife, and then beheaded for _infidelity_ to the man who had
never been her husband. Of Henry’s subsequent wives and his methods of
disposing of them we need say nothing; the separation from Rome had won
him a sad independence of the only tribunal once recognized by kings, and
divorce, adultery, and consequent murder had already begun the dark record
which has ever since steadily increased in England.
The church was the only bulwark adequate to resist that flood of violent
and powerful passions which kingly supremacy naturally incites and
fosters, and, in breaking with the church, the licentious sovereigns of
the XVIth century acted indeed with the _wisdom_ of the children of this
world. Still the church stood fast, sad but not conquered; the Mosaic law
stood fast, passing into the dicta of society even where it was exiled
from the legal courts—for who does not attach even now some idea of
obloquy to a divorced or impure person?—still history pointed to the
inevitable punishments that fall on the adulterer, and of which the
“churches” so‐called, born of royal adultery, have invariably been
palpable monuments.
In our days, who can doubt that that church alone which guarantees the
sanctity and indissolubility of marriage can hope to become the saviour
and regenerator of modern society; that that church alone which protects
and ennobles woman can remain triumphant in lands where woman’s influence
is slowly leavening the whole social mass; who can doubt that that church
alone which can trace its uncompromising laws back to Mount Sinai can hope
to retain the moral mastery over the unruly ages to come, even to that age
which shall witness the Last Judgment and the final condemnation?
Fleurange.
By Mrs. Craven, Author Of “A Sister’s Story.”
Translated From The French, With Permission.
Part IV.—The Immolation.
LV.
The clock had just struck two. Vera, according to her custom, was waiting
in the ante‐room of the empress’ audience‐chamber. The door was soon
opened by an usher, and the person she was waiting to introduce appeared.
There was an involuntary movement of surprise on the part of both.
Fleurange stopped as if in doubt. Vera’s appearance did not correspond
with the idea she had formed of the lady‐in‐waiting she expected to find
at her majesty’s door, and for an instant she thought she was in the
presence of the empress herself.
Vera, on her side, expected still less to see a petitioner like the one
who now appeared.
The Princess Catherine, with her usual forethought, had, in view of this
important occasion, carefully prepared a dress for her who was to be
regarded as her son’s _fiancée_, and, when the day came, the young girl
opened a coffer which had a special place among her luggage, and followed
with docility the instructions she there found in the princess’ own
handwriting, with the dress she was to wear. It was black, as etiquette
then required, but a court dress, and the princess took pleasure in having
it made as magnificent as possible. Fleurange thus arrayed was dazzling.
Nevertheless, her only ornaments were a gold chain from which was
suspended a cross concealed in her corsage (a precious gift from her
father which she never laid aside), and on her right arm a bracelet the
Princess Catherine had taken from her own wrist the eve of the young
girl’s departure, assuring her it would bring her good luck. She wore no
ornament on her head, but her beautiful hair was turned back and plaited
in a way not common at that time, though so becoming and striking as to
add another peculiar charm to that of her whole person, which was as noble
as if she was entitled to a place at court, but simple enough to show that
she now appeared there for the first time.
The two young girls looked at each other, and, as we have said, their
surprise was mutual. But it was only for an instant. Vera advanced.
“Mademoiselle Fleurange d’Yves, I suppose?”
Fleurange bowed.
“The empress awaits you: follow me.” She turned towards the door, but
before opening it she said: “Take off the glove on your right hand—that is
etiquette—and hold your petition in that.”
Fleurange mechanically ungloved her beautiful hand in which trembled the
paper she held. She stopped a moment, pale and agitated.
“Do not be afraid, mademoiselle,” said the maid of honor to her in an
encouraging tone. “Her majesty is kindness itself. You have nothing to
fear; she could not be better disposed to give you a favorable reception.”
There was not time to utter another word. The door then opened. Vera
entered first. She bowed, and made Fleurange advance; then retired herself
with another profound reverence, leaving the young girl alone with the
empress.
The audience lasted over half an hour, and Vera, though accustomed to
wait, was beginning to find the time long, when the door again opened, and
Fleurange came out. Her face was agitated, her eyes brilliant and tearful.
Perceiving Vera, she stopped, and took her by the hand.
“Oh! you were right,” she said. “Her majesty treated me with wonderful
kindness. But I know how much I am also indebted to you. It was owing to
you she was disposed to be gracious even before I was heard. May God
reward you, mademoiselle, and repay you for all you have done for me!”
Vera replied to this effusion with unusual cordiality, and accompanied
Fleurange to the door. As they took leave of each other, their eyes met; a
common impulse caused them both to make a slight movement: but a little
timidity on one side, and some haughtiness on the other, stopped them, and
the young girls parted without embracing each other.
Vera slowly retraced her steps, and entered the empress’ salon. As soon as
the latter perceived her, she said: “Well, Vera, what have you to say? Did
you ever see a more charming apparition?”
“The young lady was beautiful indeed,” said Vera, with a thoughtful air.
“I never saw such eyes.”
“That is true—eyes that look you directly in the face, with an expression
so innocent, so frank, and almost of assurance, were it not so sweet. I
was not reluctant, I assure you, to take charge of her petition, and
promise to favor it. Here, take it: I would not even read it. I am ready
to grant all this charming girl requests. It is sufficient to know she
loves one of those criminals, and wishes to marry him in order to share
his fate. Such a terrible favor will not be refused, I am sure.”
The empress seated herself in her large arm‐chair. “But what fools men
are,” she continued, after a moment’s silence, “to thus foolishly risk the
happiness of others as well as their own! Really, I admire these women
whom nothing daunts, nothing discourages, and who thus sacrifice
themselves for such selfish beings.”
“Yes,” replied Vera, “their devotedness is certainly admirable; but the
women who implore, who supplicate, and at length avert the punishment of
the guilty, have also a noble _rôle_, madame, and one which the
unfortunate have reason to bless.”
“I understand you, Vera. Your large beseeching eyes have nothing to remind
me of, or reproach me for. I have already told the emperor all I learned
from you yesterday. We must now leave it to his magnanimity, and importune
him no more.”
These words were uttered with a slight accent of authority, and some
moments of silence followed. Vera, with mingled sadness and displeasure,
stood motionless with her eyes cast down, awaiting her sovereign’s order.
In this attitude, she perceived a bracelet on the carpet, which she picked
up to give her mistress, who recognized it. “Ah!” said she, “it is the
talisman that charming creature, just gone, wore on her arm. Keep it,
Vera, you can return it to‐morrow with the reply I promised her.”
Vera examined the bracelet with curiosity. It was a massive gold chain
with a deep‐red cornelian clasp on which was graven some talismanic
figure. It looked natural. She had seen some one wear a similar bracelet,
she was sure; who could it be? For the moment, she could not remember.
While thus examining it, the empress continued: “Take a seat at that
table, and write Prince W—— in my name, without any further delay—in my
name, you understand. Send this petition with your letter, and say it is
my wish it should be granted, and that I beg him to send me an answer—a
favorable answer—to‐morrow morning at the latest. As soon as it arrives,
you will forward it in my name without any delay to that lovely girl. She
is staying at the Princess Catherine Lamianoft’s house on the Grand Quay.”
Vera could not resist a slight start: “The Princess Catherine’s?”
“Yes; but make haste, and do what should be done at once.”
Vera again looked at the bracelet; the princess’ name clearly recalled the
remembrance so vague a moment before. It was hers. She had seen the
Princess Catherine wear the bracelet.
“Come, Vera, what are you thinking of?”
“Nothing, madame; excuse me.”
“Then make haste and write what I tell you, and send the letter and the
petition without any delay.”
Vera obeyed without reply; she took the petition, and went to a table in
one of the deep embrasures of the windows, before which a gilt trellis
covered with a vine formed a genuine screen. As soon as she was seated in
this place where she could not be seen, she eagerly opened the petition,
and glanced over it before beginning the letter. This glance was
sufficient to justify the suspicion just excited. A deadly paleness came
over her face; her features, generally so calm, were suddenly transformed
by a violent explosion of anger and hatred. She crushed the paper, and
remained motionless on the chair into which she had fallen, incapable of
acting, thinking, or realizing where she was and what she had to do.
At length she returned to herself, and made an effort to collect her
thoughts. The moments were passing away; the empress would be astonished
at the time it took to accomplish her wishes. She therefore took up her
pen, but had scarcely written a few words with a trembling hand, when a
noise, unusual at that hour, was heard in the court—the sound of a drum,
and the guards shouldering arms. Vera rose with surprise, and looked out
of the window. The emperor had arrived in his sledge, alone and without
any escort, according to his custom, though this was not his usual time of
coming. Shortly after, the doors of the salon were thrown open—a signal
for Vera to leave the room. She tore up the note, put the petition in her
pocket, and, while the empress was advancing to meet her husband, the lady
of honor disappeared through a side door, and hurried to her room next the
empress’ apartment.
A whole hour passed away, she could not tell how. She had been able to
control and generally to effectually disguise the strong feelings which
pique had not suppressed—feelings which gave her assurance of some day
overcoming all obstacles. And then, what were these obstacles? It was not
long since George, her chosen husband from childhood, plainly testified
the attraction he felt for her, and seemed as much as she to regard the
union arranged in their infancy as the realization of his wishes. It is
true a cloud had since passed across that brilliant horizon, and, when she
met George again, he was not the same.—Why was it so?—She had often sought
the reason, but all she was able to ascertain was that a young girl, an
obscure _demoiselle de compagnie_ in his mother’s service, fascinated him
for a while, and some one had whispered the name of _Gabrielle_, but the
haughty Vera was not disturbed by so trifling an affair. The future was
hers, and she was awaiting it without any fear, when the news of George’s
crime and misfortune came like a thunderbolt, enabling her to estimate the
depth of her affection for him by the very liveliness of her grief. From
that time she had but one thought—to prevail over the emperor, obtain
George’s pardon, and win him back to herself. Her first repulse did not
destroy all hope of success. But while her influence, her passion, and her
efforts were still without any result, another—and what a rival! (for
Vera, in spite of her pride, was not so vain or so stupid as not to
recognize the redoubtable charm against which she had to
struggle)—another, young, as beautiful as herself, and even more so, had
eclipsed in an instant, by an heroic act, all her own devotedness had even
dreamed of, and gone beyond the limits which she dare not cross! How could
she doubt George’s feelings when the young lady she had just seen appeared
in his prison. How could she thwart her? What was to be done? Besides, who
was this girl who suddenly appeared in their midst—who had the air of an
angel, but whom she hated as if she were a demon? All at once an idea
flashed into her mind. “Can this be Gabrielle?” she exclaimed aloud. But
before Vera had time to dwell on this idea, and calm the fresh agitation
which it caused, the sound of the little bell interrupted her painful
reverie. She rose, but with some surprise, for she had not heard the usual
signal of the emperor’s departure, and she was very seldom admitted when
he was present. But her hesitation was only momentary, for the bell again
hastily repeated the summons. Vera hastened to answer it, but, confused at
the sight of the emperor, she stopped at the door, and bowed profoundly.
The empress, with mingled kindness and impatience, exclaimed:
“Why do you not come in, Vera? The emperor wishes to speak to you, and you
are making _him_ wait!”
LVI.
While all we have just related was occurring at the palace, the Marquis
Adelardi was on his way to the fortress, considering as he went what it
was advisable to say to George. After much reflection, he resolved not to
announce Fleurange’s arrival till he knew the result of her interview with
the empress. He must not torture George in his misfortunes with vague
hopes; above all, he must avoid arousing expectations that might prove
vain. This would delay the communication but little, for the young girl’s
audience was the same day, and on the morrow he could act with a complete
knowledge of the case.
Strong apprehensions were mingled with these thoughts as he reflected, on
the new position in which his friend now stood. His fate was decided, the
prolonged excitement of the trial was over, and the time come for him to
resign himself to his lot. In what disposition should he find him? With a
nature ardent and impetuous, but at the same time delicate, sensitive to
the least restraint, and excessively fond of the comforts of life, how
would he endure the horrors of this new prospect—he whose very object in
his studies, and in the gratification of his tastes and passions, was only
enjoyment? Pleasure by means of his intelligence, his affections, his
intellect, and his senses—such had been the sole motive of his actions,
even the best; and, in the dangerous risks that led to his destruction, he
had rather sought to satisfy a thirst for a new sensation than the
realization of a chimerical though generous scheme. How would he, for whom
the words duty, sacrifice, and restraint had no meaning, now bear up in
the presence not of danger, but of misfortune under so merciless a form?
The marquis asked himself these questions with an anxiety founded perhaps
on some resemblance between his own nature and that of him whom he
comprehended so thoroughly. Both were men of the world: one more refined
and cultivated, more captivating; the other with more acuteness, more
sagacity, and more judgment. Both were generous and noble, and, apart from
the political entanglements that had misled them one after the other,
incapable of a base action unworthy of their noble birth. But there exists
in the human soul a chord whose tone is the echo of the divine voice; this
chord gave out no sound in these men, otherwise accomplished; or, if not
voiceless with the elder of the two, at least, according to the expression
of the great poet of his country, inert and feeble from “silence too
prolonged.” This mysterious and hidden chord never resounds very loudly,
it is true, and the tumult of the world with its passions, pleasures, wit,
talent, and glory, often deadens its tone and prevents its being heard;
but when the silent hour of adversity comes, then it awakes to a sweet,
powerful harmony which sometimes transforms the soul it fills. At such a
time its want is felt, and excites a horror, the cause of which is not
comprehended by those who experience it.
George was not confined in a dungeon, but in a narrow cell lighted only by
a high grated window. There was nothing in it but a bed, a table, and two
straw‐bottomed chairs. In his former visits, the marquis had found his
friend sad, but always calm, courageous, and, as it were, contemptuous of
the danger of his position. Though grown pale and thin, his features
hitherto retained their lofty, noble character, and the disorder of his
hair and even of his garments did not at all detract from the aristocratic
appearance which, in the very best sense of the word, characterized his
whole person. But this was no longer the case. He could not have been more
changed by a long illness, or the inroads of time, than he was since they
last met. Seated beside his table in an attitude of deep dejection, he
hardly raised his head at his friend’s entrance. After pressing his hand,
the latter remained some moments too much affected himself to break the
mournful silence. George waited till the warden who ushered the visitor in
had left the cell.
“You have come at last, Adelardi,” said he at length, with an altered
voice. “I have been surprised not to see you since—since everything was
decided.”
“I could not obtain permission to enter any sooner; but, to make up for
it, I am allowed to come every day, till—” He stopped.
“Till I give up the enjoyments of this place for those that await me when
I leave it,” said George, with a bitter smile.—“Adelardi,” continued he,
changing his tone, and rising abruptly, “can a friend like you come to me
to‐day with empty hands? Is it possible you have not divined my wants, and
are here without bringing me the means of escaping my doom, and meeting
death, which they have had the cruelty to refuse me?” He strode up and
down his cell two or three times as if beside himself. “Answer me, then,
Adelardi!” exclaimed he, in a violent manner. “Why have you not rendered
me this, the greatest of services? In a similar position, you would have
expected it of me, and I assure you it would not have been in vain.”
The marquis was not ignorant of the religious principles that should have
inspired his reply, but he had long lost the habit of appealing to them.
He therefore simply replied: “You know well, George, what you ask would
have been impossible.”
“Ah! yes, I forgot.—It is just. They take precautions to prevent their
victims from finding another way out of these walls than that opened by
their murderers; but they do not consider all the resources of despair,”
continued he, with agitation. “When a man is determined to die, they must
be sharper than they are now to prevent him, and oblige him to accept the
odious life they would inflict upon him.”
Adelardi allowed him without any interruption to give vent for some time
to the despair that burdened his heart, but at last he turned to him with
sudden firmness: “George, I have always found you calm and courageous till
to‐day, but now your language is unworthy of you.”
A slight flush rose to the prisoner’s brow, and he resumed his seat. “You
are right, my friend, I acknowledge. I am no longer what I was. I must
indeed astonish you, for I no longer recognize myself.” He remained
thoughtful for some moments, and then continued: “It is strange! for,
after all, Adelardi, in saying that till now I never knew what fear was,
or shrunk in the presence of danger or death, saying I had courage, was
not laying claim to any extraordinary merit, for there are but few men who
lack it. Yes, if any virtue fell to my lot, it was certainly that, it
seems to me. Why, then, am I so weak to‐day?—Courage,” repeated he, after
a pause. “Is it true? Was it really courage, or was I merely brave, which
seems to be another thing? What is the difference between them?”
“I know not,” replied the marquis, as if in a dream; “but there is a
difference, certainly.”
Neither of them possessed the true key to the enigma; neither of them now
thought of searching for it. But Adelardi, glad to see his friend’s
excitement somewhat allayed, continued the subject to which the
conversation had led. Besides, he saw it would afford an opportunity of
touching on a point he did not wish to introduce directly.
“No,” he resumed, “bravery and courage are not the same thing. What proves
it is that the most timid woman can be as courageous as we when occasion
requires it, and often more so.”
“Yes, I acknowledge it.”
“For example,” continued Adelardi, looking at him attentively, “more than
one of your companions in misfortune have had a signal proof of such
courage to‐day.”
“How so?”
“Do you not know that their wives have fearlessly and unhesitatingly
requested and obtained the favor of sharing their lot? Some are to
accompany them in their sad journey; others will follow them.”
“And have their husbands accepted such a sacrifice?”
“They who inspire such great devotedness can generally comprehend and
accept it. It was only yesterday, one of them conversing with a friend
admitted to see him, as I to see you, said: ‘I can submit to anything now;
I can endure my fate without murmuring; I shall not be separated from her.
The only intolerable sorrow in life will be spared me. I am grateful to
the emperor, and will no longer complain!’ I must add that he was recently
married, and adores his wife.”
“The only sorrow,” repeated George slowly—“the only one!—that is really
something I cannot understand. To love a woman to such a degree as to feel
her presence could alleviate such a lot as ours, and that never to behold
her again, would be a misfortune surpassing that which awaits us! No, I do
not understand that, I frankly confess.”
“And yet,” said Adelardi, with some eagerness.—But he stopped and did not
continue his thought—that one can accept and admire heroic affection, but
not suggest it.
“And yet,” continued George, smiling, “how often you have seen me in love,
you were going to say. Yes, I acknowledge it, though perhaps I was
sincerely so but once, only once, and yet—shall I confess it, Adelardi?
Love even then was a holiday in my life; it added to its brightness; it
was an additional enjoyment, another charm. Her beauty; her rare, naïve
intelligence; even her virtue, which gave a mysterious attraction to the
passionate tenderness sometimes betrayed, in spite of herself, by her
eyes, so innocent and frank in their expression; Oh! yes, that time I was
in love and ready to commit a folly I am now glad to have avoided. Poor
Fleurange! If I had married her, what a fate I should have reserved for
her, as well as for myself.”
“For her! Yes, indeed; it was a very different lot your affection promised
her when you displayed it without any scruple; but if she—she, charming,
devoted, and courageous, were there with you, do you not imagine she could
sweeten yours?”
“Mine?—my lot?—the frightful lot that awaits me?” asked George, with a
bitter laugh. Then he resumed the previous tone of their conversation.
“No, no; I am not one of those men whom love alone can suffice—stripped of
all that outwardly adorns and adds to its value. In short, think of me as
you please, Adelardi, but I do not resemble in the least my companion in
misfortune you have just referred to. No human affection could make me
endure the life I lead here; judge how it would be elsewhere.”
He rose, and began again to walk around in an excited manner. Adelardi
remained silently absorbed in anxious, painful thoughts. George soon
resumed, in a kind of fury: “Here, Adelardi, speak to me only of one
thing; give me only one hope—death! death! that is all I desire.” And
touching, with a gesture of despair, the black cravat negligently fastened
around his neck, he said, in a hoarse voice: “This will be a last resort,
if in a week I do not succeed in finding some means more worthy of a
gentleman of escaping from their hands.”
His friend preserved a gloomy silence. What could he say? What reply could
he make at a time when every earthly hope failed, and there was none felt
in heaven? Adelardi was now fully conscious; he had a lively sense of what
was wanting. He was born in a land where the impressions of childhood are
always religious, and the longest period of indifference or forgetfulness
seldom effaces them completely from the soul in which they were profoundly
graven in early life.
“My dear friend,” said he, with a melancholy gravity not habitual to him,
“to be of service to you at such a time, I feel I should be different from
what I am. Yes, George; in the fearful temptation that now besets you, in
your despair in view of the frightful lot that awaits you, there is only
one resource, and but one. I feel unworthy of suggesting the only remedy.”
His voice faltered, as he continued, with emotion: “George, you must
believe—you must pray.”
George was for a moment surprised and affected. After a pause, which
neither seemed disposed to interrupt, he said, in a softened tone: “Well,
Adelardi, let it at least be permissible, in praying, to implore a favor
not refused to a man more guilty than I: Fabiano is dying.”
“I know he cannot recover from his wound.”
“But perhaps he would not be in immediate danger had he not been violently
attacked with typhus fever the day before yesterday. I hoped something
myself from the contagion; but, doubtless afraid of shortening our heavy
chain, they sent him last night to die at a hospital, I know not where.”
At that moment the bolt flew back, the hour had elapsed, and they were
obliged to separate, but with an effort scarcely lessened by the thought
that it was not a final farewell, and that this sad interview would be
repeated more than once before the last.
As the marquis was about to leave the prison, the warden said in a low
tone, as he was opening the last door:
“I do not think I am acting contrary to my duty in confiding this letter
to you, sir. The dying prisoner who was taken away last night gave it to
me one day, begging me to forward it to the address after his departure.
He has gone away, and I wish to fulfil the poor fellow’s request.”
“Give it to me,” said Adelardi, as he took it. “I will see that it is
forwarded.”
After leaving the fortress, he looked at the letter confided to him, and
was greatly surprised to find it addressed to _Mademoiselle Gabrielle
d’Yves, at Professor Dornthal’s, Heidelberg_.
LVII.
The Marquis Adelardi entered the sledge awaiting him at the gate of the
fortress, but gave no orders to his coachman, uncertain where he should
go. Fleurange by this time must have returned from the palace. Should he
go to see her, as was agreed upon the evening before, to learn the result
of the audience, and at the same time remit the letter confided to him?
This was the plainest course to pursue, and, if he hesitated, it was
because his interview with George had left a certain dissatisfaction or,
at least, uneasiness which he feared to betray. In the singular mission
confided to him, he began to feel that the love and courage of the two
parties were unequally divided, and he would have anxiously questioned
whether it was certain that the gratitude of one would finally correspond
to the devotedness of the other, had he not been reassured by several
reflections.
It was not, perhaps, very surprising that George depreciated a happiness
he considered beyond his reach. But if she whom he was by no means
expecting suddenly appeared in his prison, would he then complain that his
bride was too beautiful? The marquis thought not. He knew better than any
one else how Fleurange once charmed him. No woman had ever held such
empire over George’s mobile heart, and he was sure the very sight of her
again would suffice to revive the powerful attraction. As to this, his
perfect knowledge of his friend’s character prevented all doubt, and
therefore, though wounded by his coldness in speaking of Fleurange, he
came to the conclusion his indifference would vanish like snow before the
sun as soon as she appeared. She would never perceive it or suffer from
it. He regarded this as the most important point.
The interest Fleurange inspired him with was one of the best and purest
sentiments he had ever experienced in his life. Without suspecting it, and
without aiming at it, she exercised a beneficent influence over him. A
thousand early impressions, effaced and almost stifled by the world, awoke
in the pure atmosphere that surrounded this young girl, and he welcomed
them with a feeling that surprised himself. Therefore, from the time of
meeting her again, he seriously assumed, more for her sake than George’s,
the quasi‐paternal _rôle_ the Princess Catherine had entrusted to him with
respect to both.
The considerations referred to having, therefore, completely reassured him
respecting George’s probable if not actual dispositions, he returned to
his first intentions, and gave orders to be taken to the house on the
Grand Quay. He had scarcely descended and asked to see Mademoiselle
d’Yves, when he saw Clement crossing the hall. He bethought himself it
might be better to consult him first.
Clement was gloomy and preoccupied. He had just seen his cousin return
from the palace in all the brilliancy that dress and the joy resulting
from success added to her beauty. But the marquis had not time to notice
the young man’s physiognomy, nor the effort with which he replied to the
first questions addressed him as soon as they were alone together in a
room on the ground floor.
“I wish to speak to. you, Dornthal, about an unexpected incident. But
first, has your cousin returned from the palace?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know whether she is satisfied with the audience?”
“Yes; the empress promised to have her petition granted by to‐morrow.”
“I did not doubt it. The empress is always so kindly disposed to grant a
favor; and, were it otherwise, the sight of her who presented the petition
could not fail to ensure its success.”
Clement made no reply to this observation. “You said, Monsieur le Marquis,
that an unexpected incident—”
“Yes, I am coming to it. I must first tell you what perhaps you are
ignorant of.—That miserable Fabiano Dini, who so cruelly compromised
George, and was confined with him—”
Clement, surprised, interrupted him with emotion. “The unfortunate man is
actually dying, Monsieur le Marquis. He was removed from the fortress last
night, and—”
“_Parbleu!_ I know it; that was precisely what I was going to tell you.
But how did you find it out?”
“I made inquiries respecting him.”
“You knew this Fabiano, then?”
“Yes, a little, and was interested in knowing what had become of him.”
“And do you know now?”
“Yes, I know in what hospital he is, and that, thanks to his illness which
makes flight impossible, and the fear of contagion which keeps every one
away from him, he is only guarded by the infirmarians. I hope to get
admittance to him to‐day.”
“You know him?” repeated the marquis after a moment’s reflection. “Then
that explains what seemed so mysterious. Your cousin Gabrielle, in that
case, perhaps knows him also?”
“Yes, she knows him—the same. as I.”
“That explains everything; and, since it is so, here, Dornthal,” said the
marquis, giving him the letter of which he was the bearer, “have the
kindness to give her this.”
At the sight of his cousin’s writing, Clement was unable to conceal his
emotion, and, seeing the marquis’ observant eye fastened on him, it seemed
useless to conceal the truth. Without any hesitation, therefore, he
briefly related all the circumstances of the life of him who was now
expiating his faults by the final sufferings of a miserable death.
“I am not afraid, Monsieur le Marquis, to confide to you the secret of his
sad life. You will keep it, I am sure, and will never forget, I hope,”
added he in a faltering tone, “that it is _Fabiano Dini_, and not Felix
Dornthal, who will be delivered by death from an infamous punishment.”
The marquis pressed his hand. “Rely on my silence, Dornthal.” After a
moment, he continued: “This unfortunate man showed great courage during
his trial, and absolute contempt of danger for himself. He only seemed
preoccupied with the desire of saving him whose destruction he had caused.
God forgive him!”
“Yes, truly, God forgive him!” gravely repeated the young man.
Adelardi again extended his hand, and was about to leave the room when
Clement stopped him. “Monsieur le Marquis, will you allow me now to ask
you a question?”
“Certainly.”
“Well, may I ask if Count George has been informed of Gabrielle’s
arrival?”
“No, not yet.”
“But he is doubtless aware of her intentions?”
“No, my friend, he is likewise ignorant of them. Though I had no doubt as
to Gabrielle’s success in her interview with the empress to‐day,
nevertheless, before giving George such a surprise, I wished to be
absolutely sure there was no uncertainty to apprehend.”
“Oh! yes, I comprehend you. To lose such a hope, after once conceiving it,
would indeed be more frightful than death!” said Clement, with a vivacity
that struck the other. He soon continued in a calmer tone:
“One more question, Monsieur le Marquis—an absurd question, I acknowledge,
but one I cannot resist asking at such a time. You know my position with
regard to Gabrielle is that of a brother. Can you assure me that he whom
she loves, and is thus going to wholly immolate herself for—can you assure
me on your honor that he is worthy of her?—that he loves her?—that he
loves her as much as a man ever loved a woman? I certainly cannot doubt
it, but then I must see her happy in return for so much suffering—I must!”
repeated he almost passionately, “and I beg a sincere reply to my
question.”
The marquis hesitated a moment. Clement’s vehemence struck him, and under
the impression of his recent interview with George, he did not at first
know how to reply. Should he betray his friend? Ought he to deceive him
whose noble, upright look was fastened upon him? He remained uncertain for
some moments; at length, he decided to be frank, and reply as candidly as
he was questioned.
“You ask for the truth, Dornthal. Well, it is not in my power to affirm
that George’s love is at this moment all you desire. According to my
impression, Gabrielle is now only a sweet dream of the past. But be easy,
my dear friend; as soon as this dream becomes a reality, as soon as she
appears before him—is with him—his—oh! then there is no doubt but the
almost extinguished flame will revive and become as brilliant as it once
was, and this charming creature will have no cause to suspect a shadow of
forgetfulness had ever veiled her image. What do you expect, Dornthal? As
to love and constancy, women far surpass us, and they are not the less
happy for that. Adieu! my dear friend, till to‐morrow.”
Clement only replied by taking the hand the marquis again extended before
going out. He listened to him, pale and shuddering, but, as soon as he was
alone, he exclaimed, endeavoring with an effort to suppress the sobs that
stifled his breast:
“Ah! my God!—my God!—Is that love?”
LVIII.
Fleurange, to the great regret of Mademoiselle Josephine, laid aside the
rich dress which seemed to realize the old lady’s dreams of the previous
night, and had just reappeared clad in the simple high‐necked dress of
dark cloth which was her usual costume, when Clement, who had told her he
should not return till late in the evening, suddenly re‐entered the salon
he left only half an hour before. His intention was to consecrate the
remainder of the day to the sad duty he felt he owed his cousin, and
thought it useless to mention it to Gabrielle, from whom he concealed all
he had learned respecting Felix. But the letter just given him altered the
case, and made it indispensable to inform her at once.
He therefore explained to her without much preamble the actual situation
of their unhappy cousin; he informed her of the attempt he was about to
make to see him, and then related what he had learned from the Marquis
Adelardi, giving her the letter of which he was the bearer. It was not
without lively emotion Fleurange broke the seal and hurriedly read it
aloud:
“COUSIN GABRIELLE: I am condemned to the mines for life, but as,
at the same time, I am dangerously wounded, I shall probably have
long ceased to exist when this letter reaches you, if it ever
does. I regret the misfortunes I have brought on so many, and
especially on my last benefactor, and I particularly regret this
on your account, for it will perhaps be a source of suffering to
you. I should have thought of this sooner, but, seeing you
unexpectedly pass by in a calèche one evening at Florence, I
waited at the door of the hotel where I saw you stop, and yielded
to the irresistible desire of making you think of me by throwing
you some lines concealed in a bouquet. A few days after, my
patron, who was very far from suspecting my acquaintance with the
original, imprudently showed me his beautiful Cordelia. I confess
I was seized with a keen desire to tear him away from
contemplating it, which irritated me. Lasko opportunely arrived.
But I did not think that would go so far. As to the rest,
Gabrielle, believe me, my love which you rejected (and I confess
you acted wisely) was perhaps more worthy of you than his; for I
feel if I had met you sooner, and you could have loved me, you
would have made me better, whereas he!—But it is too late to speak
to you either of him or myself!—It is all over. It is to you—you
alone, dear cousin, I address these last words; you must repeat
them to all to whom they are due; uttered by you they will be
heard. _Forgive_ and _Farewell_.
F. D.”
Fleurange wiped away the tears that filled her eyes. The letter affected
her in more than one way, and Clement, it may be imagined, did not listen
to it with indifference. But now one thought overruled all others, and,
after a moment’s silence, he said: “This letter was written when he
expected to die from his wound. Illness is now hastening his end, and
perhaps he is no longer living while we are talking. This evening, at all
events, you will know whether I found him dead or alive.”
Fleurange interrupted him: “Clement, listen to me. If Felix is still
alive, as is by no means impossible, I should like to see him again, and
will go with you.”
“You!—no, that cannot be; the danger from contagion is too great. That
hospital! you cannot go there; it is a place provided for criminals and
miserable creatures of the lowest grade. I cannot expose you to so much
danger. I will not.”
“But, perchance,” said Fleurange, “this preference, this sort of sympathy
he has always expressed for me in his way, might give me the power of
consoling the last moments of his wretched life. Who knows but my voice
might utter some word to soothe the despair of his last agony? Clement,
Clement, do you dare tell me I should not attempt it? Can you
conscientiously venture to dissuade me from it, because thereby I shall
incur some danger?”
“Gabrielle,” said Clement, with a kind of irritation, “you are always the
same! Do you not understand that you are merciless towards those that love
you?”
“Come, reflect a moment,” persisted she, “and answer me, Clement.”
A moment of silent anguish followed these words. Then, with a troubled
voice, he said: “Be quick; lose no time. You may perhaps have an influence
over him no one else could have. Make haste, I will wait for you.”
Before he ended, Fleurange was gone from the room. In less time than it
takes to relate it, she returned wrapped in her cloak, her velvet hat on
her head, her face concealed by a veil, ready to go. They went down
without speaking a word. Clement’s sledge was waiting at the door. He took
a seat beside her, and they set off with the almost frightful rapidity
which is peculiar to that mode of conveyance. It was no longer light,
being after four o’clock, but the brilliant clearness of the night,
increased by the reflection of the snow, sufficiently lighted the way, and
the horses went as fast as in the daytime. The place of their destination
was on the opposite bank of the Neva, much lower down than the Princess
Catherine’s house. They therefore crossed the river diagonally, following
a road traced out by the pine branches which from time to time indicated
the path. They were thus transported in the twinkling of an eye from the
splendor of the city into the midst of what looked like a vast white
desert. In proportion as they descended the river, the palaces, the
numerous gilded spires of the churches, with the immense succession of
buildings whose effect was heightened by the obscurity, were lost in the
distance, and, when they at length stopped at the very extremity of a
faubourg on the right bank of the river, they found themselves surrounded
by wooden hovels, with here and there some larger buildings, but all
indicating poverty, and none more than a story high. Clement aided his
cousin in alighting, and looked around for the person he expected as his
guide. A man approached.
“M. Clement Dornthal?” said he in a low voice.
“It is I.”
“You are not alone.”
“What difference does that make?”
“I have no permission, and a woman—it is forbidden.”
“I suppose, however, more than one has entered the place?”
“Oh! yes, but they must have permission—or else—”
“Here,” said Clement in a low tone, “mine will answer for both.”
The guide seemed to find the reply satisfactory; he pocketed the gold
piece Clement slipped into his hand and made no further objection. They
walked swiftly after him towards one of the buildings just referred to
which was the best lighted. As they approached, they saw the light
proceeded from a large fire kindled in the open air, around which quite a
number were warming themselves, some squatting down, others standing, and
some asleep near enough to the fire not to freeze to death; all lit up
with the wild light which revealed their bearded faces, their angular fur
caps, and their sheep‐skin caftans. Here and there were some venders of
brandy, who furnished them with a more efficacious means of resisting the
cold even than the fire in the brazier.
Clement and his companion passed rapidly by this group, not, however,
without being assailed by some annoying words. A vigorous blow from
Clement sent a curious winebibber flying back who attempted to lift
Fleurange’s veil. This lesson was sufficient, and they arrived without any
further annoyance at the door of the building decorated with the name of
hospital, which was only a long, spacious wooden gallery.
They entered. Passing thus suddenly from the light of the great fire, and
the sharpness of the extreme cold, into the obscurity and warmth of the
ambulance, their first sensations were caused by the darkness and stifling
atmosphere. Fleurange hastily threw back her veil, then took off her hat
and unclasped her cloak, for she could not breathe; she felt nearly ready
to faint from the effects of this sudden transition, but she almost
immediately recovered. Clement was alarmed at first, but soon saw she was
able to continue their sad search. As soon as their eyes became accustomed
to the dim light around them, they saw the long row of pallets on which
lay, in all the frightful varieties of suffering, nearly two hundred human
beings whose mingled groanings rose on all sides like one sad cry of pain,
enough to chill the veins with horror, and excite the pity of the most
courageous and most hardened heart.
That of Fleurange beat painfully as they slowly advanced through the
obstructed space. Clement was remorsefully regretting his consent to bring
her to such a place, when all at once a moan, followed by some words
indicative of delirium, checked every other thought, and kept them
motionless where they stood. They listened—which of these unfortunate
beings had uttered those words? They looked around as well as the poor
light permitted, but on all these sick‐beds so close to each other they
did not perceive one whose features bore the least resemblance to those of
the unhappy man whose voice they thought they recognized.
“I beg you to lend me your light only for a moment,” said Fleurange, in a
low, supplicating tone to an infirmarian to whom she had just heard some
one speak in German, and who was rudely passing by her, lantern in hand.
The infirmarian stopped at hearing his language spoken, and looked at the
young girl with surprise, then, as if softened by her aspect, he gave her
the lantern, saying: “You can have it while I am gone to the other end of
the ward; I will take it when I return.” As Clement took it, the light
flashed across Fleurange’s face and uncovered head. Instantly there was a
cry, an almost convulsive movement, and Gabrielle’s name was pronounced by
the voice they had just heard. This indicated which of the miserable beds
contained him whom they sought. They both approached with full hearts. By
the aid of the lamp they gazed at the dying man. Was it really he?—was
that Felix? His voice and words left no doubt, and yet there was nothing
in that face, disfigured by agony and a horrible wound, to recall him whom
they saw last in all the fulness of strength and the pride of youth. After
his exclamation, he fell back almost lifeless, and Clement trembled as he
bent down to ascertain if he still breathed. His heart was beating, though
feebly and irregularly.
“Felix,” said he, “do you hear me? Do you know me?”
Felix opened his eyes. “What a strange dream!” murmured he. “It seems as
if they were all here. That vision a moment ago, and now this voice—O my
God, would I might never awake!”
Fleurange took the dying man’s hand, and bent over him to catch his words.
Her features thus became distinctly visible in the light, and his eyes
fastened with frightful tenacity on those of the young girl.
“It is impossible!” said he. “But what illusion is this which makes me see
and hear what cannot be?”
“Felix,” said Fleurange, with a penetrating accent of sweetness, “it is
not an illusion. We are here. God has sent us that you may not die alone
without a friend to pray for you, without begging and obtaining pardon and
peace.”
A ray of perfect clearness of comprehension now lit up his eyes, hitherto
fixed or wandering. He seemed to comprehend, but did not reply. Clement
and Fleurange were afraid to break the solemn silence. Felix’s eyes soon
wandered from one to the other, and, taking the young girl’s hand and that
of Clement, he pressed them together upon his heart, saying: “O my God!
what a miracle!” Then he added in a feeble voice: “What a comfort that it
is he, and not the other!”
They both understood his mistake, but were not equally affected. Fleurange
slightly blushed, and withdrew her hand with a faint smile, but Clement’s
face became almost as pale as that of the dying man. But graver thoughts
prevailed over both at such a time. After a short silence, Fleurange again
addressed Felix some words, but he made no reply, and his head, which she
tried to raise, fell on his shoulder. He continued faint for some moments,
then opened his eyes, and saw her beside him.
“God be praised!” said he. “The vision is still here!”
“Yes, I am here, Felix,” said Fleurange in a fervent tone: “I am here to
pray with you. Listen to me,” continued she, speaking softly and very
distinctly. “Say with me that you repent of all the sins of your life.”
“Of all the sins of my life!”—repeated the dying man.
“And if your strength were restored, you would make a complete and
satisfactory avowal of them, with a sincere repentance. Do you understand
me?”
The hand she held pressed hers. A tear ran down Felix’s cheek. A voice
which was a mere whisper repeated the words: “A sincere
repentance”—another faintness seemed to announce his end. “O my God!” said
Fleurange, fervently raising her eyes to heaven, “if the sacred absolving
words could only be pronounced over him!”
At that moment the infirmarian returned and abruptly took the lantern from
Clement’s hand. “Excuse me, I need it for some one who has come to visit a
patient.”
In the narrow space that separated the two rows of beds, there could be
indistinctly seen a person of majestic, imposing appearance, whose long
beard and floating hair, whose ample robes of silk and gold cross, clearly
indicated his character; he was, in fact, a priest of the Greek Church. He
had not, however, come to this sad place to exercise his ministry. One of
the poor men suffering from the contagious disease was the object of his
charity, and he had come to visit him. He was passing along without
looking around, even turning his eyes away as much as possible from the
sad spectacle that surrounded him, when Clement’s hand on his arm stopped
him as he was passing Felix’s bed.
“What do you wish of me, young man?” he asked, with surprise.
“I implore you,” said Clement, “to come to this dying man who is truly
contrite for his sins, with a sincere desire to confess them if he had the
strength. Have the kindness to give him sacramental absolution!”
In spite of the place, the hour, the awful solemnity of the moment, the
young Catholic girl started at hearing these words; her large eyes opened
with an expression of the keenest surprise, and turned towards Clement
with a mute glance of anxiety. He understood her, and, while the
infirmarian was interpreting his words which had been heard but not
understood, he replied: “This is a priest, Gabrielle, invested with all
the authority of Holy Orders. In the presence of death, we can avail
ourselves of it, without regard to anything else.”
He knelt down. Fleurange did the same. The dying man clasped his hands,
and, whilst the word “forgive” once more trembled on his lips, the Greek
priest raised his right hand with a majestic air, and pronounced over him
the merciful, divine words of holy absolution!
To Be Continued.
Cologne.
What is more familiar than the name of Cologne? What is more delicious
than the perfume of the veritable Jean Maria Farina? What is more
delightful than the receipt of a box, with the stereotyped picture on the
cover of the Rhine lazily flowing under the bridges, of the cathedral
looming up to the sky, of the houses clustering around it as though for
protection?
No one need be ashamed to avow his or her love of it; it is acknowledged
to be indispensable. Bishop or priest, sage or philosopher, can use it
without being thought undignified. Imagine a pope, or cardinal, or bishop,
or priest, or senator, or judge scented with “Mille Fleurs,” or “Jockey
Club,” or “Bouquet de Nilsson”! The bare thought is revolting! To be sure,
for some years, “Bouquet d’Afrique” has been the fashion among the
“potent, grave, and reverend seigniors” at Washington who make our laws
and amuse themselves by adding “Fifteenth Amendments” to the highly
respectable and ever‐to‐be‐respected Constitution of the United States.
But that will pass away with Time, the healer and destroyer; the
reconstructionist will make all right; the “Fifteenth” will be amended
with the “Sixteenth”; and, with the sway of lovely woman, Cologne, without
which no well‐bred, well‐dressed woman’s toilette is complete, will resume
its reign over heads and hearts; and “Bouquet d’Afrique” will perhaps
return to the hot and happy home where the indefatigable Stanley recently
discovered the wandering, long‐sought Livingstone—who did not care to be
found, as he certainly appeared perfectly content among dusky dark‐browed
brothers and sisters, hunting lions and tigers, and imagining each little
rivulet and lake the source of the Nile, or Congo, or Niger, or any other
meandering river taking its rise in the great water‐shed by the Mountains
of the Moon.
If mothers are to be judged by the character of their sons, the mother of
Nero, in whose honor Cologne was named, could not have been the mildest
and gentlest of her sex. Says Lacordaire, “The education of the child is
commenced in the womb of the mother, continued on her breast, completed at
her knees.” Sweet must have been the reveries, refreshing the
instructions, edifying the conduct of Julia Agrippina, who brought into
the world the finished despot that drenched the soil of Rome with the
blood of the Christian martyrs, who persecuted unto death the heroes of
the faith that now people heaven.
Cologne owes its origin to a Roman camp established by Marcus Agrippa. The
Emperor Claudius, at the request of his wife, Julia Agrippina, daughter of
Germanicus and mother of Nero, sent a colony of Roman veterans, A.D. 50,
named the town after her _Colonia Agrippina_, and it then became the
capital of the Province of Germania Secunda. Vitellius was here proclaimed
Emperor of Rome, A.D. 69; Trajan here received from Nerva the summons to
share his throne; the usurper Sylvanus was also proclaimed emperor here in
353; a few years later Cologne was taken by the Franks; Childeric made it
his residence in 464; and Clovis was here proclaimed king in 508.
During the reign of Pepin, it was the capital of the kingdoms of Neustria
and Austrasia. Bruno, Duke of Lorraine, was the first of its archbishops
who exercised the temporal power, with which he was invested by his
brother, Otho the Great. From that time the town increased rapidly in
wealth and splendor, and shortly after became one of the principal
emporiums of the Hanseatic League; the commerce of the East was here
concentrated, and direct communication with Italy constantly kept up. In
1259, the town acquired the privilege by which all vessels were compelled
to unload here and reship their cargoes in Cologne bottoms.
At this period it had a population of 150,000, and could furnish 30,000
fighting men in time of war. In the XIIIth century, there was a mutiny
among the weavers; 17,000 looms were destroyed; the rebellious workmen
were banished from the city; and that, together with the expulsion of the
Jews in 1349, did great injury to the town, the number of whose
inhabitants was reduced in 1790 to 42,000, of whom nearly one‐third were
paupers. Then came the devastating wars which succeeded the maelstrom of
the French Revolution, when in the general upheaval empires and kingdoms
disappeared, new political combinations were made which changed the map of
Europe, and the Rhine became the frontier of the French Empire.
Cologne was nominally French, but the hearts of the people were German—as
German as the most ardent worshipper of the “New God,” as Von Bolanden
calls the new Empire, the child of Bismarck and Von Moltke. After
Waterloo, the Holy Alliance made another partition of the kingdoms and
peoples, and Cologne shook off the French yoke, and returned to her
national ways and customs. One great cause of its decay had been the
closing of the navigation of the Rhine, which restriction was removed in
1837, and, since then, trade has greatly revived, and the town been much
improved.
Many of the old streets have been widened and paved, and a considerable
portion of waste ground covered with new buildings. The opening of the
railways to Paris, Antwerp, Ostend, Hamburg, and Berlin has greatly added
to its commercial prosperity, and Cologne bids fair to resume its former
position among the chief cities of Europe. Cologne was formerly called the
“Holy Cologne,” and the “Rome of the North”—titles which she owed to the
number of relics and churches she possessed.
At one time, the city contained 200 buildings devoted to religious uses.
These gradually diminished, until in 1790 their number was reduced to 137.
During the French Revolution, they were shamefully plundered, the convents
suppressed, and their property confiscated; so that at present there are
not more than twenty churches and seven or eight chapels; but many other
ecclesiastical buildings still remain, used as warehouses and chapels.
Maria im Capitol, so named from its having been built on the site of the
Roman capitol, stands on an eminence reached by a flight of steps. The
Frankish kings had a palace close by, to which Plectruda, the wife of
Pepin, retired in 696, having separated from her husband on account of his
attachment to Alpais, the mother of Charles Martel. In 700, she pulled
down the capitol, and erected a church on its site, to which she attached
a chapter of canonesses. Until 1794, the senate and consuls repaired
hither annually on S. John’s day to assist at Mass, when the outgoing
Burgomasters solemnly transferred the insignia of office to the newly
elected, who were each presented with a bouquet of flowers by the abbess.
The convent no longer exists, but there is a large cloister of the XIth
century at the west end of the church, which was restored a few years ago.
In this church, there are mural paintings of the early Cologne school,
representing the wise and foolish virgins, numberless saints, the raising
of Lazarus, and the founders of the church with their children. As in duty
bound, Plectruda is properly conspicuous; her effigy in basso‐rilievo
beneath the great east window is a very interesting work of the Xth
century, and, on one of the towers, her sculptured figure appears between
two angels, who are conducting her to her eternal home.
All the churches are more or less interesting, none more so than that of
S. Gereon, founded in the IVth century. S. Gereon was the commander of a
Roman legion, and he and his companions, 700 in number, were murdered by
order of Diocletian upon the spot where the church was built by the
Empress Helena, the mother of Constantine.
The style is Byzantine, and very singular. The body of the church,
preceded by a large portico, presents a vast decagonal shell, the pillars
of whose internal angles are prolonged in ribs, which, centring in a
summit, meet in one point and form a cupola, one of the latest examples
known. A high wide flight of steps, rising opposite to the entrance, leads
to an altar with an oblong choir behind it, from whence other steps again
ascend to the sanctuary, a semicircular apse, belted, like the cupola, by
an open gallery with small arches and pillars resting on a panelled
balustrade.
The rotunda is surrounded by ten chapels, in which are the tombs of the
martyrs. The walls are encrusted with their skulls, and, in the
subterranean church, the pavement and walls are formed by the tomb‐stones
covering the holy dust. In the lower church is the tomb of S. Gereon, and
in one of the chapels is a mosaic pavement laid in the time of the Empress
Helena. Behind the stalls of the clergy are hangings of Gobelin tapestry,
portraying the history of Joseph and his brethren.
The baptismal font of porphyry, immensely large, was a present from
Charlemagne; and, as the lid is too ponderous for any one to lift, there
is a little machine that takes it off when required. We remained a long
while in this very delightful church, and, by the time we left, what with
Helen and Constantine, Diocletian and Charlemagne, we felt quite like an
animated verd‐antique, so intensely Roman and Catholic had we become.
Afterwards we proceeded to S. Ursula’s, where the cruel Roman emperor was
exchanged for the barbarian Huns. S. Ursula’s history was done in English
by the old sexton, who finished every sentence by assuring us that S.
Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins met with their untimely fate from
the barbarian Huns, who massacred them in cold blood. We made a stride of
a few centuries, became Gothic, and extended our hatred to the barbarian
Huns. As in S. Gereon, the bones of the martyrs are built in the walls for
a space of two feet the whole extent.
In the Golden Chamber we saw the shrine of S. Ursula, the relics of S.
Margaret, a thorn from the crown of Our Lord, and one of the vases used at
the marriage feast of Cana, that witnessed the first miracle of the God‐
man. Link by link we were carried to the days when Our Lord was incarnate
on the earth; we do not need such testimony to assure us of the truth of
our holy faith, but, when we touch the vase that has been touched by Our
Lord, our senses are awed by the thought of the God‐like condescension of
him who became man, who lived like us, who mingled in our joys and
sorrows, that we might become greater than the angels.
The Cathedral of Cologne, the queen of pointed architecture, erected on
the site of a church founded in 814 by Archbishop Hildebold, and more
beautiful than even we could imagine it, familiar as we were with it by
picture and description, was commenced in August, 1248, by Archbishop
Conrad, of Hochstaden. The works were for some years pushed on with great
activity under the direction of Master Gerard von Rile, a builder of whom
nothing more is known than that he died before 1302.
In 1322, the choir was completed and consecrated; then the building went
slowly on until 1357, when the works were discontinued for a long time. In
1796, the cathedral was converted by the French into a warehouse, and it
had very nearly become a ruin in 1807, when the brothers Sulpice and
Melchior Boisserée drew attention to it by their illustrated work on its
history. In 1824, the work of restoration was commenced, but little
progress was made until, in 1842, the idea of completing the cathedral was
conceived, and an association was formed to collect subscriptions for this
purpose; and now the entire edifice will soon be finished if the works are
carried on as zealously as they have been of late.
The glorious roof, arching 150 feet in the air, is magnificent; every day
new beauties are added; four hundred men are daily at work, the stones are
all cut, and in ten years at least this triumph of genius will be ready to
receive the homage of all true lovers of art. The shrine of the Three
Kings is superb—gold adorned with precious stones. There are the heads of
the three men who came in faith, and bowed in all their pride and majesty
before the infant Jesus in the manger; their names, Gaspar, Melchior, and
Balthazar, are encrusted in rubies above the crowns that encircle their
brows. Their bodies were brought from S. Eustorgio, in Milan, by the
Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, after the taking of that city, and presented
by him to Archbishop Rainoldo, who deposited them in the ancient cathedral
July 23, 1164; from whence they were removed into the present chapel in
1337.
Among the treasures of the cathedral is a splendid ostensorium, one of the
finest in the world, presented by some sovereign; another, not so
handsome, sent by Pius IX.; and the cross and ring, given to the present
archbishop by Kaiser William; both are of diamonds and emeralds, the ring,
an immense emerald, surrounded by four circles of diamonds. The man who
showed the church prided himself upon his English; would call the
archbishops architects: “This is the statue of Engelbert, the first
_architect from_ Cologne.” And when we innocently inquired if the
architects wore mitres and copes, he impressively repeated his remark; so
we are still in doubt whether the archbishops built the cathedral or the
architects dressed like bishops!
Wandering one day through the aisles of the cathedral, we paused for a
while to gaze upon something beautiful that attracted our attention. It
was behind the high altar; we were standing between it and the Chapel of
the Magi, when, by chance, we looked down, and on the slab at our feet we
saw in large letters, “Marie de’ Medici”—no date, no epitaph. So much for
human greatness! Under that stone, trodden daily by hundreds, was the
heart of Marie de’ Medici, one of the powerful family that gave to the
church Leo X. and Clement VII., the descendant of Lorenzo the Magnificent,
the widow of Henri Quatre, the mother of Louis XIII., the ex‐Regent of
France. Banished from France, the inexorable hostility of Richelieu
pursued her wherever she sought refuge. No crowned head dared shelter her.
One heart was true, one man was found who remembered in her adversity that
she had favored him in the days of her prosperity. When, in the zenith of
her power, she built the Luxembourg, she sent for Rubens to adorn it with
the creations of his genius; she loaded him with favors, sent him on
diplomatic missions to restore peace between Philip IV. of Spain and
Charles I. of England. Both monarchs responded to her wishes, showered
honors upon the artist‐diplomat, and Charles I. knighted him, and then
presented him with the sword which had been used for the ceremony.
Genius is a power. Richelieu could command kings on their thrones, and the
refugee queen was abandoned by all—by those who should have been bound to
her by the ties of kindred, of position, by the claims of misfortune.
England, Spain, Holland, refused her entrance; only in the free city of
Cologne could she find sanctuary, and that sanctuary was the house of the
noble, chivalric artist, Pierre Paul Rubens, whose brave heart quailed not
before the wrath of the most powerful man of his age.
With loving care and respect he watched over her, soothed her in her dying
agony, and held her in his arms when she breathed her last sigh. The house
of Rubens still remains, and the room in which Marie de’ Medici died is
preserved with the greatest care. When we visited it, we felt as though we
were treading on holy ground, as in a shrine made sacred by a noble deed;
for what more royal, more heroic, more Christian, than the brave, grateful
heart that dared power to shelter misfortune?
Meanwhile that Marie de’ Medici lived and died in poverty in Cologne,
Richelieu was at the apogee of his glory. King, nobles, courts, cowered
beneath his glance. The conspiracy of Cinq‐Mars was quelled; his head had
paid the penalty of his youthful folly. Richelieu, satisfied and avenged,
left Lyons for Paris, carried on the shoulders of his attendants in a kind
of furnished room, for which the gates of the cities through which he
passed were demolished if they were too narrow to admit it. But the
triumph was short‐lived. A few months after the death of Marie de’ Medici,
her relentless persecutor followed her to the tomb, and her poor wearied
body was removed to France and buried in S. Denis; but the heart was left
in the Cathedral of Cologne—a mausoleum sufficiently splendid for any
mortal dust.
Soon after leaving the house of Rubens, we came to another famous in
Cologne; a large building, where, from one of the windows of the third
story, two stone horses were contemplating the busy scene in the Neumarkt
below; and then we heard the legend of the horses. Once upon a time this
house was the residence of the wealthy family d’Andocht. Richmodis, the
wife of Herr Mengis d’Andocht, died during the plague of 1357, and was
buried with great pomp in the Church of the Apostles on the Neumarkt.
Her dressing attracted the notice of the sexton. He fancied he would like
to have some of the gold and silver adornments; so the night after she was
put into the vault he descended into it, opened the coffin, and took off
some of the jewels. One of the rings would not move. To make the task
easier, he cut her finger; she was only in a trance, and this summary
process restored her; she sat up; the man rushed off affrighted. She
managed to get out of the coffin. In his haste he had left his lantern
behind; with it she made her way out of the church, and reached her home
near by.
She knocked at the door; a servant opened it, and scampered off half dead
with terror. She went to her husband’s room. He thought she was a ghost or
devil; she told him she was his wife, as surely as that their horses would
come up‐stairs and jump out of the window. As she spoke, the horses
galloped up‐stairs, threw themselves out of the window; whereupon the
husband acknowledged her to be his veritable wife. She soon recovered her
health, lived for many years, and, to commemorate the wonderful event, the
husband had the two horses done in stone and put in their respective panes
of glass, where they have ever since remained, looking out of the window.
Now the house is a hospital, and we hope the patients are as much amused
as we were at the effigies of the two well‐bred, obedient horses, who were
as good at vouching for identity as Dame Crump’s little dog. In the Church
of the Apostles, a faded Lent hanging is still preserved that was
presented by Richmodis in gratitude for her wonderful deliverance from a
living death.
The Rathhaus or Town Hall is a curious building, erected at different
periods; the Hansa‐Saal is a fine room on the first floor, in which the
meetings of that once powerful mercantile confederation were held; and at
one end of it are nine statues holding escutcheons emblazoned with the
arms of the Hanse Towns.
The _Musée_, a comparatively new creation, erected partly by the
government, and partly by private subscription, contains many works of
art. In the lower story are numerous Roman antiquities, found in or near
Cologne; amongst them are busts of Cæsar, Germanicus, Agrippina, a
statuette of Cleopatra, and a very fine head of Medusa, said to be larger
and more beautiful than the Medusa Rondinini in the Glyptotheca at Munich.
One gallery is filled with exquisite specimens of stained glass; the upper
rooms are devoted to statuary and paintings, many of which are of the
Düsseldorf school.
We were particularly struck with one, the “Triumph of S. Michael over
Lucifer.” S. Michael is radiant, his sword flaming; and Lucifer, who is
sinking into darkness, is terrible. There he is—no horned demon, but the
beautiful fallen archangel, majestic and powerful; profound despair and
gloom on his noble features, as the darkness overshadows him, and hell
opens to receive him.
The people of Cologne are gay and sociable; in the afternoons, the
Zoological Gardens are filled with children and nurses admiring the
giraffes, elephants, and every other kind of animal belonging to earth,
air, or water. An immense lion was a particular object of interest, as he
had distinguished himself the day before we had the pleasure of seeing him
by devouring his keeper. The Flora or Winter Garden is charming—a crystal
palace, filled with fragrant plants, green vines garlanding the sides and
roof, fountains playing, beautiful music well rendered by a good
orchestra, and hundreds of people drinking coffee and smoking, who don’t
bother themselves by receiving at home, but meet and gossip in the Flora,
or the Opera House, to which they generally adjourn.
The Opera House is very pretty but miserably lighted, only two feeble gas‐
lights by the door. Prussian officers, however, abounded, and the
glittering uniform shone in the _clair‐obscur_ like fire‐flies in Florida
on summer evenings. Perhaps it was to add to the effect of “La Dame
Blanche,” which was the opera we chanced to hear, that we were kept in
such gloomy darkness; but, as the music was well executed, the time passed
pleasantly.
One extraordinary event must be chronicled—we did not buy one bottle of
Cologne in Cologne; we left the city of Jean Maria Farina, and only saw
the outside of his shop. What with Gothic churches and relics, Roman
towers and antiquities, time flew, and we found ourselves also flying off
from Cologne on an express train, without one drop of the veritable _Eau‐
de‐Cologne_ in our possession. _Mirabile dictu!_
John.
In beauty, not above criticism; in courage, undaunted; in love, most
generous and most forgiving; in patience, rivalling Job; in constancy,
unswerving; in humility, without an equal.
After the above enumeration of qualities, it should be superfluous to add
that John is a dog. It would be ridiculous to expect so much of a man. He
is, moreover, a Skye‐terrier, well‐born and well‐bred.
To announce to John’s acquaintances that one was about to eulogize the dog
would be to incur and deserve some such reply as that made by the Spartan
to a rhetorician who announced his intention to pronounce an eulogium on
Hercules: “An eulogium on Hercules?” repeated the Spartan. “Who ever
thought of blaming Hercules?”
Our reply would be that we write, not for those who deny, but for those
who never heard.
There is no shifting of scenes in our little drama. The unities are
preserved with almost Grecian strictness; the writer, however, as chorus,
claiming the privilege of being occasionally discursive.
_Scene._—A suburban summer residence in that most magnificent of seasons,
autumn, “in that month of all months in the year,” October; furthermore,
the most perfect of Octobers. The stone‐colored house is the only neutral
bit in the landscape; all else is a glow of color. The fresh greensward
recedes under flower‐bosses of solid brilliancy. A flower carpet, gayer
than any loom of Turkey, Brussels, or France ever wove, lies under the
clump of evergreens in a far corner of the estate. Tapestries of woodbine
hang over balconies, and porches, and bay‐windows; and the noble trees
that stand, two and two, in stately pairs, all about the place, and up the
avenue, are a torchlight procession, which sunshine, instead of quenching,
fires to a still more dazzling blaze. It is that picturesque time when
ladies throw gay scarfs over the summer dresses they still wear; when the
sky shakes out her violet mists to veil the too divine beauty of earth;
that season of exquisite comfort when one has open windows and open fires;
that delicious season when fruit is brought to the table still warm with
the sunshine in which it finished ripening five minutes before. Above all,
it is that season when people who are at all sympathetic are inclined to
silence.
Mrs. Marcia Clay was not at all sympathetic. She was simply herself, a
frivolous woman, with a strong will, and a Chinese wall of selfishness and
self‐complacence built up on all sides of her. The soft “Hush!” on the
lips of the Indian summer, when the soul of Nature plumes her wings for
flight, she heard not. The suspense, the regret, the melancholy, the
fleeting rapture of the season she perceived not. To her it was surely the
fall of the year, when people get ready for the winter, lay in coal, buy
new clothes, and go back to town.
Flounced to the waist in rattling silk, her fair hair furbelowed all over
her head, and, apparently, pounds of gold hanging from her ears, thrust
through her cuffs, dangling at her belt, strung about her neck, and
fastened to the pin that held her collar, this lady sat in one of the
pleasant parlors of her house, and talked as fast as her tongue could run.
The woman who listened was of another kind, one who might have come to
something if she had been possessed of will and courage, but who, having a
small opinion of herself, was only somebody by little spurts, which did no
good, since they were always followed by unusual self‐abasement. She was
not without a despairing sense of this incongruity, and had more than once
bewailed in her own mind the fact that she was neither fish, flesh, nor
fowl, but inclined to each in turn; had little wings which, as she spread
them, changed to little fins, which, as she moved them, became little
feet, that, when she would have walked, collapsed utterly, and left her
floundering—a woman without moral vertebræ, who had been all her life the
prey of people in whom the moral vertebræ were in excess. She was nothing
in particular, physically, either, being gayish, oldish, tallish, weakish,
and dressed in that time‐honored, thin plain black silk gown which is the
infallible sign of genteel poverty, and which, at this instant, adorns the
form that owns the arm that moves the hand that holds the pen that writes
this history.
_Mrs. Marcia Clay._—“It is very provoking, my dear, but it can’t be
helped. If I should intimate to him that our trunks are all packed to go
in town, he would leave instantly. He is the most touchy of mortals. To be
sure, I have invited him here again and again, but I expected him in
summer‐time, not when we were on the point of moving, and had our very
beds half made in the city. There’s nothing for it but to unpack, and
pretend to be delighted. Fortunately, he amuses himself.”
The uncertain person in the black silk gown ventured to suggest that Mr.
Bently might accompany them to town, and was met by a little shriek which
made her jump.
“Fancy him in my blue satin or pink satin chamber! Why, my dear, he
smokes, and—_chews! chews_, dear! Between you and me, he is a bear in his
habits, a positive bear. If you will believe me, I have seen him wear
slipshod shoes and crumpled linen. You should see him at home, in his den.
An inky dressing‐gown that he wipes his pens on, old slippers with holes
in them, books piled all about, and dust that you could write your name
in! In that state he sits and writes hour after hour.”
Ah! Mrs. Clay & Co., who look at littleness through magnifying glasses,
and are blind to all true greatness, the sole of this man’s slipshod shoe
is cleaner than your tongue. There is no dust on his thoughts; there are
no holes in the fabrics his brain weaves; and when he writes, far‐away
lands that know you not, and kindred greatness nearer by, feel the
electric spark that slips from his pen’s point.
“What a shocking person he must be!” says Miss Uncertainty, meaning to
please. “I don’t wonder you won’t have him in town.”
“Goodness gracious, Miss Bird!” cried the lady, coloring up. “What can you
be thinking of! Why, Mr. Bently is famous. He can afford to be eccentric.
It is an honor to have him in one’s house. People have turned and looked
at me when they heard that I am his cousin; and his name opens to me
places that—well, everybody can’t enter. Then it is a very fine thing to
have a gentleman in one’s parlors who can talk to those lions whom one
doesn’t know what to say to, and who can tell what one’s pictures, and
bronzes, and marbles mean, and translate from every language under the
sun. I well remember a time when he won for me a perfect triumph over Mrs.
Everett Adams. It was delicious. Mrs. Everett Adams is always picking up
lions, especially learned and scientific ones, and, when Professor Porson
came here, she monopolized him at once. You cannot conceive how odiously
she behaved, nor what airs she assumed. One heard nothing but Porson,
Porson, till I was sick of the name; and it was impossible to go anywhere,
to theatre, opera, or concert, without seeing her sail down to the most
conspicuous place, after everybody was seated, with Prof. Porson in her
train. Well, one evening she brought him to our house, just to plague me,
and we had half a dozen or so persons to meet him. It was an evening of
torment, my dear. The professor was in the clouds, with Mrs. Everett Adams
fluttering behind him, like a tail after a kite, and all the rest were in
raptures, except me—I was extinguished. The professor knew what every
bronze and marble was, and who made it, and if it was an original or a
copy; and, in short, everything I had seemed as common as possible. As a
last desperate resort, I brought out some old books in foreign languages
that poor dear Clay had picked up. He was always collecting things of that
sort. The professor turned them over with the tips of his fingers, and
read a word here and there. Oh! he knew all about them. Yes; he had read
them when he was a boy. But I had begun to suspect him. My poor husband
used to say that, when a man will not own that there is anything he
doesn’t understand, root and branch, he was always sure that that man was
an impostor. So I took up two of the books that I saw he had passed over,
and asked him to translate a passage for me. They looked about as much
like a printed language as the figures on my carpet do. To my joy, he had
to own that he couldn’t. They were Chaldaic, he said, and he had made but
little study in that language. Mrs. Adams glanced angrily at me, and I
smiled. Just at that moment, as good luck would have it, the door opened,
and in came Cousin Bently. I flew at him with the books. Triumph, my dear!
Never did I have such a rapturous moment. Cousin took the books up in his
slow way, put up his eye‐glasses, and looked them over in such a superior
manner that really my hopes rose. They were Arabic, I’ve forgotten what
about, and he read out some passages, and translated them, all the company
looking on. My dear, the Porson and Adams stock sank to less than one per
cent. in an instant. The professor was red, and Mrs. Adams was pale. I
could have hugged Cousin Bently on the spot, though his boots were not
blacked, and his collar was in a positively shocking state.”
“How charming it must be to have him visit you!” says Miss Bird, wheeling
about as the wind veered.
Poor thing! She did not mean to be insincere. She merely wanted to say the
right thing, and didn’t care a fig about the matter, one way or the other.
“Charming!” repeated Mrs. Clay, with emphasis. “It gives a _tone_.
Besides, it draws some people one likes to know. You should see Madame de
Soi, the most exclusive of women, flutter round him like a butterfly round
a—round a—well, really, I am at a loss for the word. It is impossible to
call Cousin Bently a flower, unless one should make a pun about the seedy
contents of his valise. I studied botany once, and I know a pun can be
made of it. Madame knows no more and cares no more about his learning than
a cat does, but she has tact, and does contrive to smile at the right
time. I never could do that. When I smile, Cousin Bently is sure to push
out his under lip, and stop talking. But she will look and listen with
such rapture that you would positively think he were describing the dress
the empress wore at the last ball; and sometimes she even says something
that he will seem pleased with. That very evening of the Porson collapse
she talked with him half an hour of _molecules_, whatever they are. I
actually thought they were speaking of people. Fancy being called a
molecule! Yes, Cousin Bently is a great credit, and a great convenience to
me. Why, but for him, I couldn’t have gone to those stupid exclusive
lectures of Mr. Vertebrare’s, where I yawned myself to death among the
very cream of society.”
The lady paused for breath, and her companion, feeling obliged to say
something, faltered out that she always feared those very clever persons.
“I should think you would after the experience you had with that dragon,”
replied Mrs. Clay significantly.
Miss Bird colored, and was silent. “That dragon” was a rather difficult
old lady, a Miss Clinton, with whom she had lived and suffered many years,
and who had lately died.
“And so,” Mrs. Clay summed up, “I have Cousin Bently on my hands for a
week or ten days, and must make the best of it. And”—suddenly lowering her
voice—“speak of angels—ahem! Cousin Bently, allow me to make you
acquainted with Miss Bird, an old schoolmate of mine.”
Miss Bird rose with a frightened air, dropped her eyes, blushed deeply,
half extended her hand, and half withdrew it again, and stammered out,
“Good‐morning, sir!” which was not a very felicitous greeting, the time of
day being near sunset.
Mr. Bently acknowledged the introduction with rather a stately bow, gave
the person before him a calm and exhaustive glance, protruded his under
lip very slightly, without meaning to, and walked to the further end of
the room.
“Why need people be such fools?” he muttered, half philosophical, half
impatient. He had been, as all learned and even merely clever people must
be, too much looked on as an ogre by the simple. It was rather provoking
to see people shaking at his approach, as if he were going to compel them
to talk Greek and calculus, or have their lives.
As the gentleman seated himself in an arm‐chair before a delightful bay‐
window, and facing the window, there was another addition to the company,
and—enter our hero!
Reader, John!
A longish, curly‐haired quadruped with bright dark eyes full of merriment
and kindliness, and teeth so beautifully white and even that it would be a
privilege to be bitten by them. Of course he has undergone those
improvements which man finds it necessary to make in the old‐fashioned
plan of the Creator, and his clipped ears stand up pointed and pert, and
his clipped tail is indeed less a tail than an epigram. But the bounding
grace of his motions no scissors can curtail.
Do not imagine that John has entered the room properly, and stood still to
be presented and described. Far from it. He bounced in through the window,
as though shot from a mortar, and, while we have been writing this brief
sketch of his person, has flown into the learned gentleman’s arms, kissed
him enthusiastically a dozen times, pawed his hair into fearful disorder,
made believe bite his nose and hands, with the utmost care not to hurt him
in the least, pulled one end of his cravat out of knot, and threatened to
overturn him, chair and all, by drawing back and rushing at him again like
a little blue and yellow battering‐ram. His manner was, indeed, so
overpowering that Mr. Bently had half a mind to be vexed, and could not
help being disconcerted. His affection for dogs was entirely Platonic, and
he had a theory that bipeds and quadrupeds should have separate houses
built for them; but this creature had struck him as being the most honest
and sensible being in the house, and had, moreover, taken to him.
Miss Bird looked askance at the scene in the bay‐window, and Mrs. Clay
looked askance at Miss Bird, and wondered at her impudence and folly. Bird
had blushed and dropped her eyes when she was introduced to the gentleman,
and she was now watching him out of the corners of her eyes. Bird was an
old maid, with a moderate annuity; Mr. Bently was an old bachelor, with
next to nothing beside brains and a name. Bird must be set to rights. So
much the lady’s actions told of her thoughts.
“I wish I dared send for Marian Willis here,” she whispered
confidentially, watching the effect of her words. “Nothing would please me
better than to bring those two together again. But Cousin Bently would
suspect my drift, and, as likely as not, start off at once. Nothing annoys
him so much as to see that any one is trying to get him married. Marian is
in every way suitable, and between you and me, dear, I think they would
both be glad to have a mediator, only they are too proud to own it.
Everybody thought about ten years ago that they were engaged, and they
certainly were in a fair way to be, when some lovers’ quarrel occurred,
and they parted. You have never seen Miss Willis, have you?”
Yes; Bird had seen her at Miss Melicent Yorke’s wedding, and she was the
grandest looking lady there. She wore a black velvet dress, buttoned up
high with diamonds, and not another jewel about her. She had a pink half‐
open camellia in her bosom, and a wide‐open one in her hair. Clara Yorke
said that the beautiful plainness of Miss Willis’ toilet made everybody
else look all tags and ends. She gave the bride a rare engraving of some
picture of The Visitation, which Miss Melicent didn’t half like, because
the S. Elizabeth was on her knees, and because there was a crown carved in
the frame just over the Virgin’s head. But the bridegroom had reconciled
her to it, saying that motherhood is a crown to any woman. Mrs. Edith
Yorke, Carl’s wife, who is now abroad, was very fond of Miss Willis, and
used to call her “Your Highness.”
“Oh! their intimacy was because Mr. Carl Yorke was a Catholic,” interposed
Mrs. Clay rather abruptly.
When Bird got talking of the Yorkes, she never knew when to stop; and the
subject was not pleasant to her listener. Mrs. Clay had tried to be
intimate with the family, and had signally failed. Always kind and
courteous, there still seemed to be an invisible crystalline wall between
them and her.
“Marian’s religion is her one fault. It may be possible that she and
Cousin Bently disagreed about that, though it would be hard to find out
what he believes, or if he believes anything. He defends every religion
you attack, and attacks every religion you defend.”
“But do you think she would marry him?” asked Bird incredulously; and her
glance toward the window became depreciatory and critical, instead of
awful.
Mr. Bently, as a learned man, was to be regarded with fear and admiration;
but as a bridegroom—that was another thing.
“Why, she is handsome and rich.”
“What if she is?” asked the other tartly. “It only makes her more
suitable. But she is not rich, though she lives with a rich old uncle, who
may leave her something. She is in every way suited to Cousin Bently. He
would never marry an inferior woman.”
This last assertion Mrs. Clay made very positively, for the reason that
she was mortally afraid it was not true. Her private opinion was that Mr.
Bently must have been very lonely in his bachelor lodgings before he came
to visit her, and that he might easily be induced to marry even Bird,
rather than live alone any longer.
Meantime, the object of their conversation, having put the vociferous John
away, and induced him to lie at his feet, instead of pervading his neck
and face, sat gazing out through the window. He certainly was not an
eminently beautiful man, neither was he a pink of nicety in his dress,
though he abhorred untidiness in others, particularly in women. His form
was rather fine, but his features were too strong for grace, his hair was
growing gray, and his teeth were discolored by his odious beloved tobacco.
There was something a little neglected in his appearance. Evidently he
needed some one with authority to remind him, when occasion demanded, that
his cravat was horribly awry, that he had forgotten to smooth his hair
down since the last time he combed it up with his ten fingers, and that,
really, that collar must come off. In fine, he needed an indulgent wife,
who would look out for him constantly, but with discretion, never
intruding the cravat and collar question into his sublime moments.
Was he conscious of something lacking in his life, that his expression was
less the gravity of the man of thought than the sadness of the lonely man?
Something ailed him—physical sickness, no doubt, for his face was flushed,
and his eyes heavy—but some trouble of the mind also. He looked across the
lawn, that was bounded by a dense line of autumn‐colored trees, with a sky
of brilliant clearness arching over. Betwixt sapphire and jasper the low
purple dome of a mountain pushed up, making a background for a shining
cross that might be suspended in air for any support visible to him who
gazed on it. But he had seen that cross before, and his mind, leaping over
the few intervening miles, followed down from its sunlighted tip and
touched a slim gray tower and a vine‐covered church, and, looking through
the gay rose‐window over the chancel, saw a tiny lambent flame floating in
and fed by sacred oil of olives. Mentally he stood before the church door,
saw the grove of beeches that hid it from the road, saw through those
heavy boughs the green slope of a lawn near by and the mansion that
crowned its summit. But in one respect the eyes of the seer were less true
to the present than to the past, for they beheld roses, instead of autumn
colors, wreathing pillar, porch, and balcony.
In this house Marian Willis lived. He sat and recollected all his
intercourse with her, from the first pleasant dawn of friendly regard and
sympathy, growing up to something brighter and closer, yet scarcely
defined, to its sudden extinguishment. His acquaintance with her had been
like a day that breaks in silent and cloudless light, and is shut in by a
cold and smothering fog before its noon. What had been expressed to her of
all that sweetness he found in her society? What to him of the pleasure
she seemed to feel in his? Nothing that had other utterance than silent
looks and actions. What had separated them? A mist, a fog, an impalpable
yet irresistible power. Some tiny wedge had been inserted that gave a
chance for pride to rush in and thrust their lives apart. There had been a
slight reserve that grew to coldness and thence to alienation. Who does
not know how those many littles make a mickle? Possibly a certain gallant
officer, just home from the wars, with his arm in a sling, and a sabre‐
scar across his temple, had had something to do with the trouble.
Certainly the last mental picture Mr. Bently had carried away from his
last visit at Mr. Willis’ was of this same officer walking in the garden
with Marian Willis leaning on his sound arm, and listening to the tale of
his adventures as women always do and always will listen to soldiers who
bring their wounds to illustrate their stories.
On that occasion, Mr. Bently had returned to his cousin’s house and
behaved in what he considered a very reasonable manner. He locked himself
into his chamber, let in all the light possible, placed himself before the
mirror, and critically examined the reflection he saw there. There was no
glorious sabre‐wound across his temple, showing where he had once wrestled
with death, and come off conqueror; but, instead, there were long, faint,
horizontal lines beginning to show on his forehead—mementoes of the silent
combat with time, and of anxious quest in search of hidden truth. There
were no crisp, fair curls shining over his head; the brown hair was
straight and short, and here and there a white hair rewarded the search
for it. The soldier’s large violet eyes flashed like jewels; but these
eyes in the mirror were no brighter than wintry skies, a calm, steady blue
that a planet might look through, perhaps, but that were not used to
lightning. The soldier was clad in a trim uniform that set off well a form
of manly grace, the stripe that glimmered down the leg, the band, like a
lady’s bracelet, that bound the sleeve, the golden eagle outspread on
either shoulder, all helping to make a gallant picture; the raiment
reflected with pitiless fidelity by the mirror before him was decidedly
neutral. No one could call it picturesque nor even elegant of its kind. It
was simply calculated to escape censure.
Having made a full survey and, as he thought, a fair comparison, this
self‐elected judge then pronounced sentence on the person whose reflection
he gazed at.
“You are a fool!” he said, with a conviction too deep for bitterness.
“What is there in you that a fair and charming woman could prefer? Bah!
She prizes you as she does those vellum Platos and Homers that she admires
because others do, but cannot read a word of. When she sinks into her arm‐
chair for that hour of rest before dressing for dinner, does she take with
her a book of Greek or of logic? No; she reads the poet or the novelist.
You have nothing to do with her more intimate life.”
Thus had the scholar decided, gazing at his own reflection in the mirror,
seeing there only the shell of the man, and that not at its best, at its
worst rather. The kindling of intelligence, the scintillating of sharp
intellectual pursuit, the soft radiance which dawning love gave him when
he was shone upon by the beloved object—those he saw not. He saw only a
fool.
So far, so good. But he had not finished the work. A fool may be
miserable, may be ruined by his folly, even while owning it. He must not
only prove the vanity of hoping, but the vanity of loving. He must remove
the halo from his idol’s brow, not rudely, but with all the coolness and
gentleness of reason. What, after all, were beauty and grace, a sweet
voice and smile, and gracious speaking? He set himself to analyze them,
physiologically, chemically, and morally.
So the botanist analyzes a flower, and when he has destroyed its ravishing
perfume, and that exquisite combination which constituted its
individuality—a combination man can separate, but which only God can
form—he points to the fragments, and says, “That is a rose!”
But suppose that, even while he speaks, those withering atoms should stir
and brighten, the anthers should gather again their golden pollen, and
hang themselves once more on each slender filament, the petals blush anew,
and rustle into fragrant crowding circles, and a most rosy rose should
rise triumphantly before him!
Some such experience had Mr. Bently when he had finished his work of
demolition. Turning coldly away from the ruins of what had been so fair,
he walked to the window to take breath, and saw there before him the
living woman complete, her soul welding with immortal fire every
characteristic and mood into a being irresistibly lovely, baffling,
and—disdainful. She stood in the garden where Mrs. Clay had purposely
detained her beneath his window, and she stood there unwillingly. Only a
social necessity had brought her to the house, and she had determined that
she would not, if it could be helped, meet that gentleman who, from being
a daily visitor of her own, had suffered three days to pass during which
he had once or twice talked with her uncle over the gate, but had never
approached her.
Since that hour when, looking from his window, he had seen her sail past
without raising her eyes, Mr. Bently had been haunted at times by two
antagonistic visions—the rose dissected, which he viewed with
indifference, succeeded by the rose full‐blown, triumphant in unassailable
sweetness.
He thought it all over now as he sat looking out of Mrs. Clay’s eastern
bay‐window. And having thought it over once, it began to go through his
mind again, and still again. The various scenes passed, one by one,
slowly, like persons in a procession, and he gazed at them from first to
last; and there was the first again! He had had enough of it, but it would
not stop. His head was aching, and feeling somewhat light besides. He
pressed his forehead with his hands, and tried to think of something else,
even if it were no more pleasant subject than the cold he must have taken
to make him so sore from head to foot. But still that procession moved
with accelerating speed. He spoke to John, tired and annoyed himself a
little with the creature’s antics, then leaned back in his chair, and let
his brain whirl.
Certainly he was ill; but nothing else was certain. Whether to go or stay,
to speak or remain silent, he could scarcely decide. When dinner was
announced, instinct kept him conventional. He ate nothing, but he went
through all the proper forms, with no more abstraction than might be
attributed to his intellectual oddities. But dinner, with its inanities,
over, he made haste to escape to his own room.
“Going out for a walk, cousin?” asked Mrs. Clay, as he passed her.
How the trivial question irritated him! He bowed, afraid to utter a word,
lest it should be an offensive one. His nerves felt bare, his teeth on
edge.
Miss Bird looked more deeply than her friend had, and in the one timid
glance she gave the gentleman saw a painful trouble underneath his cool
exterior.
“I hope he didn’t hear what we were saying of him before dinner,” she
remarked apprehensively.
“No, indeed!” was the confident response. “He scarcely hears what you say
to him, still less what is said of him.”
“But he looked displeased,” persisted the anxious Bird.
Mrs. Clay cast a sarcastic glance on her subordinate. “My dear,” she said
with decision, “the less you occupy yourself with my cousin’s feelings,
the better for you. Your solicitude will be quite thrown away.”
Bird sighed faintly, and resigned herself to being snubbed.
Mr. Bently walked up‐stairs slowly, dreading to be alone, and shut himself
into his room; and, when there, desolation settled upon him. It is not
pleasant to be sick in one’s own home, with loving and solicitous friends
surrounding one with their cares, and taking every task from the weak
hands; it is still less pleasant when, though friends are near, they are
powerless to lift the burden which only those helpless hands can carry;
but how far more miserable, how far more cruel than any other desolation
on earth, is it when sickness falls upon one who must work, and the sick
one is not only oppressed by the burden of duties unperformed, but is
himself a burden, coldly and grudgingly tended, or tended not at all? Mr.
Bently knew well the extent of his cousin’s friendship, and the worth of
her Chinese compliments, and he would far rather have fallen in the
street, and been left to the tender mercies of strangers, than fall ill in
her house.
Morning came, and it was breakfast‐time, by no means an early hour. Mrs.
Clay had put off the meal half an hour on her cousin’s account. “He has at
least one polite habit—he does not rise early,” she said. “But then he is
as regular as a clock in his late hour.”
He was not prompt this morning, however, for they waited ten minutes after
breakfast was on the table, and rang a second bell, and still their
visitor did not appear.
Miss Bird suggested that he had looked unwell the evening before, and
might be unable to come down.
“Really, how thoughtful you are!” Mrs. Clay said with cutting emphasis. “I
had quite forgotten. Perhaps, my son, you will go up and see if Miss Bird
is right.”
“My son” objected to being made a messenger of. “If the old fellar wanted
to sleep, let him sleep. Don’t you say so, Clem?”
Clementina always agreed with her brother; the two prevailed, and the “old
fellar” was left to sleep, or toss and moan, or be consumed with fever and
thirst, or otherwise entertain himself as he or fate should choose, while
the family breakfasted at their leisure.
It is scarcely worth while to put Clementina and Arthur Clay in print.
They are insignificant and, in a small way, disagreeable objects, and
their like is often met with to the annoyance of many. The mental
ignorance and lack of capacity which we lose sight of when they are
overmantled by the loveliness of good‐will, in such as these become
contemptible by being placed on pedestals of presumption and ill‐nature,
and hateful when they are set as obstacles and stumbling‐blocks in the way
of souls who would fain walk and look upward.
Breakfast over, and no Mr. Bently appearing, Mrs. Clay felt called on to
make inquiries, and, accordingly, dispatched a servant to her cousin’s
door, while she herself listened at the foot of the stairs. She heard a
knock, but no reply, then a second knock, followed by the servant’s voice,
as if in answer to some one within.
“Paper under the door, sir? Yes, sir!”
She was half way up the stairs by this time, and snatched the slip of
paper which the man had found pushed out under Mr. Bently’s door. “What in
the world can be the matter? Where are my eye‐glasses? Cousin Bently is
such a frightful writer that, really—”
While the lady is adjusting her glasses, and her children and companion
are gathering about her, we will read this document, for there will be no
time afterward. It is short, and is strongly scented with camphor.
“I am ill, and, it is possible, may have small‐pox. It has been where I
was a fortnight ago. Keep away from me, and send for a doctor.”
Confusion ensued. Screams resounded from the parlor; orders and counter‐
orders were given, only one fixed idea penetrating that chaos—to get away
from the house as quickly as possible. Carriages were got out, silver and
valuables piled into them by Bird, who alone would go upstairs, and who
was made to do everything, and in less than half an hour the whole family
started for the city. The servants, all but the gardener, had already
fled.
“But who is to take care of Mr. Bently?” Bird asked, pausing at the
carriage door.
“I shall give the gardener orders to get a doctor and nurse,” Mrs. Clay
said impatiently, fuming with selfish terror.
“But I’m not afraid,” Bird hesitated. “I’ve been vaccinated. And it’s hard
to leave him alone.”
“Nonsense!” cried the lady. “I shall allow nothing of the sort. It is not
necessary, and, besides, it is not proper. Do get in, if you are going to
town. It really seems to me, Miss Bird, that you are altogether too much
interested in Mr. Bently.”
Then, at last, Bird perceived what was in the speaker’s mind, and, as most
women would in such circumstances, laid down her better impulses at the
feet of meanness. Crushed and ashamed, and, at the same time, weakly and
despairingly angry, she took her place in the carriage, and listened in
silence to the lamentations and complaints of her companions.
“How could Cousin Bently do such a thing? How could he come to me when he
knew he had been so exposed?”
That Mr. Bently had only learned from the paper of the evening before to
what he had been exposed, and had only thought during the night what might
be the meaning of his illness, the lady did not inquire into.
At the garden gate stood James, the gardener. Mrs. Clay stopped long
enough to give him hurried directions to get a doctor and nurse, and do
all that was necessary for the invalid, then ordered the coachman to drive
on.
“I hope John isn’t with us,” one of the young ones said presently. “He was
round Cousin Bently all day yesterday.”
No; Bird, recollecting that fact also, had shut John into one of the
chambers, and left him there. She ventured to hope that he would not be
left to starve, but no one responded to her merciful wish.
The cause of all this terror and confusion had seen the departure of the
family without being surprised at it. He had not undressed, but had lain
on a sofa all night, and, when morning came, had written the warning which
proved so effectual, and then sank into an arm‐chair near the window,
longing for air. He expected the family to keep away from him, and was
neither sorry nor indignant that they had removed themselves still
further. Of course a doctor would be sent, and of course there was some
one to take care of him. He sat and waited for that some one to enter.
Perhaps it was James. He saw the gardener shut and fasten the gate after
the carriage went out, and he heard the locking of the stable door. He
waited, but no one came. Well, the house must be attended to first, and he
would be patient, though thirst, and alternate fever and chills, and
racking pains were tormenting him. He was annoyed, too, by John’s efforts
to escape from the next room, and would have gone to release the creature
but for the fear of spreading contagion.
A distant door opened and shut; he heard a distant heavy step, and thanked
God that relief and companionship were at hand. But the sounds ceased, and
no one came near him. He saw James, the gardener, laden with packages,
hurry down the avenue, and disappear into the public road, and a thrill of
fear shot through him. The scene outside swam before his eyes, and grew
dark for a moment. Could it be that they had all gone away, and left him
to die alone? No; he could not believe it! James had perhaps gone to bring
the doctor. He would wait patiently, since wait he must.
An hour passed, and no one came. There was no sound in the house but that
occasional whining and barking from the next room; no sound outside except
when a carriage rolled swiftly by in the road. He saw no person coming. It
was impossible to endure that thirst any longer. He went into the
bathroom, and wet his hands and face, and drank of the tepid water there.
His head reeled at sight of the stairs, and he did not dare to attempt to
descend. Returning to his chamber, he fell on to the sofa, and, for the
first time in his life, fainted; coming back to life again as though
emerging from outer darkness, but not into light—into a sickening half‐
light, rather. So hours passed, and he knew without a doubt that he was
utterly deserted, and that a lonely and terrible death threatened him.
Could he do nothing to avert it? He recollected that Mrs. Clay had a
medicine closet in the bathroom. Possibly, if he could reach it, something
might be found there to relieve, if not to cure, him. What mountains
molehills can change into sometimes! This man, so strong and full of life
but a day before, now lay and gave his whole mind to planning how he
should save himself a few steps in going to the bathroom again, how he
could avoid the stairs, lest he should fall, and whether he could this
time cross the corridor to release that troublesome, whining dog.
Whenever, weary and confused, he lost himself a moment in a half sleep,
that whining and scratching assumed terrible proportions in his
imagination, and became the fierce efforts of wild beasts to reach him. He
started up now and then, with wide‐open eyes, to assure himself that he
was not in a menagerie; to fix in his mind the picture of that airy
chamber, with its clear tints of green and amber, its open windows showing
the long veranda outside, and the bright perspective of foliage and sky.
But when his eyelids drooped again, and he sank back into half sleep and
half fainting, back came the painful phantoms to torment him till they
were once more chased away for a time.
Toward evening he roused himself to make that difficult pilgrimage of
fifty paces in search of healing and refreshment, bathed eagerly his face
and head, and found his cousin’s medicine closet. But when he had reached
that, his strength was nearly exhausted. He had only enough left to take
down the laudanum bottle, and get back to his room with it. Laudanum might
dull this pain, and quiet the excited nerves. Once more John must wait. He
could not stop to release him.
The room in which the dog was confined had a window on the balcony that
ran past Mr. Bently’s room. That window was open, but the blind was shut,
and John, despairing of escape through the door, had turned all his
efforts toward unfastening this blind, and had several times been near
success, when the spring, flying back, had defeated him.
The invalid’s bath of cold water had refreshed him somewhat. He hated to
take the laudanum. He had never been an intemperate man, and had always
shrunk from swallowing anything which could in the least degree isolate
his mind from the control of his will. He would bear the pain a little
longer.
He lay there and thought, and visions of happy homes rose up before him.
At this hour of early twilight, the lamps were being lighted, or people
sat by firelight, and children, grown languid and sleepy with the long
day’s play, leaned silent on their mothers’ laps. At this hour, men of
thought, intellectual workers, laid aside the weightier labors of their
profession to indulge in an exhilarating contention of wits, so much
happier than other workers, in that their recreations do not retard, but
rather accelerate their work. It is but dancing at evening with
Terpsichore, or pacing with Calliope along the margin of the same road
which he had travelled by day in a dusty chariot, or walked encumbered by
his armor. In their lighter intellectual contests, what sparks were
sometimes struck out to live beyond the moment that gave them birth! What
random beams of light shot now and then into seeming nothingness, and
revealed an unsuspected treasure!
All these scenes of social comfort and delight rose before the sufferer’s
mind with tantalizing distinctness, fairer and fuller in the vision than
he had ever known the reality to be. He felt like a houseless wanderer
who, freezing and starving in the street, sees through lighted windows the
warmth and joy of the home circle.
Mr. Bently was not a pious man. He had a deep sentiment of reverence, and
a firm belief that somewhere there is an inflexible truth that deserves an
obedience absolute and unquestioning. But controversy had spoiled him for
religious feeling, which is, perhaps, too delicate for rough handling, and
in the clash of warring creeds some freshness and spontaneity had been
lost to his convictions. Reaching truth, winning battles for truth, he had
been like a traveller at the end of a long journey, when he scarcely cares
in his weariness for the goal attained, but must needs eat and sleep. He
had spent too much time and strength in wiping away the mire flung on the
garments of religion to be any longer quick in enthusiastic homage. “Pity
’tis, ’tis true.” The butterfly you would save from the net loses the down
from its wings with your most careful handling; the friend you defend from
calumny you dethrone even while defending. The feeling that dictated that
brutal egotism, “Cæsar’s wife must not be suspected,” dwells in a less
arrogant form in most human hearts, and rare indeed is that soul which
sets its love as high, after even the most triumphantly refuted
accusation, as it was before.
Desertion and imminent death chilled this man’s heart, and he had no mind
to turn to God, save in a cold recognition of his power and wisdom. Love
entered not into his thoughts, but despair did.
The pain increased, the dizziness came back. He stretched his hand for the
glass and vial of laudanum, and tried with a shaking hand to pour out what
he could guess to be an ordinary potion. There was no reason why he should
suspect that that bottle might have been standing in the house so long as
to have made even the smallest dose of its contents deadly. As he
measured, and tried to recollect how much he should take, pouring out
unknowingly what would have been for him Lethe indeed, a louder rattle and
bang at the blind of the next room proclaimed the success of the four‐
footed prisoner. There was a scampering on the veranda, a dog’s head,
eager and bright‐eyed, was thrust in at the window of the sick‐room, then,
with an almost human cry of joy, John flew at its occupant.
Away went bottle and glass, breaking and spilling—no laudanum for Mr.
Bently that day. Down went Mr. Bently among the sofa pillows, prostrated
by the unexpected onset; and love, and delight, and absolute devotion, in
the form of an uproarious Skye terrier unconscious and uncaring for risks,
nestled in the breast of the deserted man, were all over his face and
neck, and through his hair, and speaking as plainly as though human speech
had been their interpreters.
When the man comprehended, recovering from his first confusion, reason and
endurance stood aside and veiled their faces, and a greater than they took
their place.
Through a gush of tears which were but the spray of a subsiding wave of
bitterness, this soul raised its eyes, and beheld a new light. It lost
sight of the Almighty in a vision of the Heavenly Father.
The flight that followed was painful, but not unsoothed. The dog,
perceiving at once that his friend was ill, became quiet. He lay with head
pressed close to the restless arm, and, if the sick man moaned, he
answered with a pitying whine. Once he left the room, and wandered through
the whole house in search of help, whined and scratched at every closed
door, and, finding no one, came back with an air of distress and
perplexity. Later, when Mr. Bently seemed very ill, John ran out onto the
balcony, and barked loudly, as if calling for relief.
Morning came again, and the sick man’s pain gave place to a deathlike
faintness, resulting from lack of nourishment. For thirty‐six hours
nothing had passed his lips but water, and that no longer ran from the
faucet when he tried it. He crept down‐stairs, stair by stair, holding by
the balusters, like a little child. There was no water to be seen in the
dining‐room, and he did not know where to find any. He reached the parlor,
lay down on the floor, and prayed for death or for life—anything to put an
end to that nightmare of misery. It seemed that death was coming. His
hands and feet grew cold with an unnatural chill, and, though the morning
sunshine poured through the windows, all looked dim to his eyes. His
senses seemed to be slowly receding, without pain, without any power or
wish on his part to recall them. He lay and waited for death.
And while he waited, as one hears sounds in a dream he heard a door open
and shut, then a quick, light step that ran up‐stairs. John, standing over
his friend, left him, and rushed to the parlor door, barking wildly, but
was unable to get out, the door having swung to. In vain he tried it with
his paws, and thrust his small nose into the crack. It was too heavy for
him to move.
Suddenly, while Mr. Bently gazed with languid, half unconscious eyes at
the creature, the door was pushed wide open, and a woman stood on the
threshold. She was neither young nor old, but simply at the age of
perfection, which is a variable age, according to the person. Her face was
a full oval, but white now as hoar‐frost. All its life seemed to centre in
the large hazel eyes that were piercing with a terrified search. She wore
her fair hair like a crown, piled high above the forehead in glossy coils
like sculptured amber. Over one temple a black and gold moth was poised,
as though it had just alighted there, its wings widespread. The long black
folds of a velvet robe fell about her superb form, sweeping far back from
her swift but suddenly arrested step. Scintillating fringes of gold
quivered against the large white arms, edged the short Greek jacket, and
ran in a single flash down either side of the train. A diamond cross lay
like a sunbeam on her bosom, a single diamond twinkled in each small ear.
There was but an instant’s pause, then she crossed the room quickly, and
knelt by him.
“My God! my God!” she murmured, and lifted his head on her arm. “What
fiendish cruelty!”
Her touch and voice recalled him to himself. He tried to put her away.
“Leave me, Marian, I beg of you! Do not endanger yourself for me!”
But even while bidding her go, every nerve in him grew alive with the
joyous conviction that he would not be obeyed, and that, danger or no
danger, she would not desert him. Here were strength, help, and the power
to command. She brought the world with her, this queenly woman, who had
not even snatched the gloves from her hands since last night’s ball, but
had hurried to seek news of him, after the first confused rumor, to call
doctor and nurse, to rush to him herself with all the speed her panting
horses could make.
“Leave you? Never!”
He asked no questions, but resigned himself. How delightful the sickness,
how sweet the pain, that led to this! How thrice blessed the desertion
that gave her to him!
In half an hour, the doctor had come and given his decision. Mr. Bently’s
illness was merely a violent cold with fever, and a few days of careful
nursing would make all right. In another half hour, he was established in
a pleasant chamber in Mr. Willis’ house, with a nurse in close attendance,
the whole family anxiously ministrant, John an immovable fixture in the
sick‐room; and, later, Mrs. Marcia Clay besieging the house for news of
poor dear Cousin Bently, and protesting and explaining to the very coldest
of listeners, declaring that nothing but her duty to her family, etc.; and
what was the meaning of that broken bottle and glass, and ineradicable
laudanum stain on the carpet in her house? Was it possible that Cousin
Bently had thought of taking any of that terrible stuff that she meant to
have thrown away ages before? And would they bring down John? Arthur had
asked for him.
Some one went to Mr. Bently’s room for John, but came back without him.
The invalid was reported to have flown into something like a passion on
learning the messenger’s errand, and to have held the dog firmly in his
arms.
John was his! No one else should have him. Whatever crime it might be
called to refuse to give him up—stealing, embezzling, false
imprisonment—he was ready to be accused and convicted of it, and would go
to jail for it with the dog in his arms.
Mrs. Clay was enchanted to be able to oblige her cousin in such a trifle,
and would he speak freely when he wanted anything? and then went home and
told all her family in confidence that Mr. Bently was a raving maniac.
Reader, according to our promises at the beginning of this history, we
should stop here. The scene has changed, the time already exceeds twenty‐
four hours, and only the characters remain the same. But we have not done.
There is something more which we are pining to tell. Shall we stop, then,
and perish in silence, rather than transgress rules made by a people “dead
and done with this many a year,” whose whole country, with themselves on
it, could have been thrown into one of our inland seas without making it
spill over? No! Perish the unities!
_Scene II._—Large parlor, rosy‐tinted all through with reflections from
sunset, from firelight, and from red draperies. After‐dinner silence
pervading, open folding‐doors giving a view through a suite of rooms, in
the furthest of which an old gentleman sleeps in his arm‐chair. Or,
perhaps, it is a picture of a library, with an old gentleman asleep in it.
The stillness is perfect enough for that. Mr. Bently, convalescent, first
dinner down‐stairs since his illness, stands near a window looking out,
but watchful of the inside of the parlor, and of a lady who sits at an
embroidery‐frame near the same window. The lady is superficially dignified
and tranquil, but there is an unusual color in the cheeks, and a slight
unsteadiness in the fingers, which tell her secret conviction that
something is going to happen. This is the first time the two have met
since Miss Willis found the deserted man lying half senseless on Mrs.
Clay’s parlor floor.
He is thinking of that time now, and that an acknowledgment is due, and
wondering how it is to be made, half a mind to be angry, rather than
grateful, for the service. Such is man. All the bitterness of his lonely
life rises up before him. Gray hairs are on his head, lines of age mark
his face, but his heart protests against being set aside as too old for
anything but dry speculation and love of abstract truth.
“I have been seeking for some proper terms in which to express to you my
grateful sense of your humanity in coming to me when I was left sick and
alone, but I cannot find them,” he said at length, facing her.
“There is no need to say anything about it,” she replied quietly, setting
a careful silken stitch. “I could not have done otherwise.”
Having begun, the gentleman could not stop, or would not.
“I am sure you meant well, but did you do well?” he went on. “Could you
not have been content to send the doctor, without coming yourself? Did you
reflect that you were apparently incurring peril, and that for a man who
had a heart as well as a head, and, worse yet, for a man whose heart had
for years striven vainly to forget you? You have deprived me of the shield
and support of even attempted indifference. I can no longer try to forget
you, or think of you coldly, without the basest ingratitude.”
Will the reader pardon Mr. Bently for expressing himself so grammatically?
It was through the force of a long habit, which even passion could not
break. It is true that, according to Gerald Griffin, Juno herself, when
angry, spoke bad Latin; but then, Juno was a woman.
_Allons, donc._ We are ourselves interested in this conversation, and are
pleased to observe that, though the speaker’s moods and tenses are not
flagrant, his eyes and cheeks are.
The lady glanced up swiftly with that smile, half shy, half mirthful, with
which a woman who knows her power, and means to use it kindly, receives
the acknowledgment of it.
“Why should you think coldly of me, or forget me?” she asked.
Mr. Bently met her glance with stern eyes. “Does a man willingly submit to
slavery?” he demanded. He had not suspected Marian Willis of coquetry.
She looked down at her work again, the smile fading, but the mouth still
sweet, slowly threaded her needle with a rose‐pink floss, and said as
slowly, “I do not wish you to forget me.”
One who has seen the sun strike through a heavy fog, stop a moment, then
fling it asunder, all in silence, without breath of breeze, but making a
bright day of a dark one, knows how Mr. Bently’s clouded face cleared at
those words, and the look of her who spoke them.
No more was said then. Enough is as good as a feast, and both tasted in
that moment the full sweetness of a happiness the more perfect because
apparently incomplete.
On one point our mind is made up—this story shall not end with a marriage.
A marriage there was, at seven o’clock one spring morning, in the little
suburban church, with only three visible witnesses; and the marriage feast
was—be it said with all reverence and adoration—manna from heaven, the
Bread of Angels!
Mrs. Clay was, of course, shocked at this affair. Where was the
_trousseau_, where the fuss, the presents that might have been, the
rehearsal at a fashionable church, the organ music, the crowd of dear
criticising friends, the reception, cake and wine, journey, what not—all
the parade, weariness, and extravagance which have so often changed a
sacrament into a ceremony? Where, indeed? They had no existence outside of
the lady’s disappointed wishes.
She did not even see what she called this “positively shabby affair,” and
we will not dwell on it. Turn we to the final scene.
Does the reader object that John bears too small a part in the story named
for him? On the contrary, the whole story is because of John. You have,
perhaps, seen a painting of the procession at the coronation of George
IV., pages and pages of magnificent persons, names, and costumes, the
brilliant pageant of the long‐extended _queue_, all because of one person
in it. The figure is rather large, apparently, for use in this place, but
only apparently; for John’s record is better than any king’s, in that it
is unstained.
A year has passed. In the midst of a fair area of gardens and trees stands
a pleasant house. Only a window or two are open, for the spring is not yet
far advanced. Underneath a large old pine, tree not far from the porch, a
hole has been dug, and at one side of it stands Mr. Bently, spade in hand,
and at the other his wife. This little pit is lined with green boughs, and
the lady stoops and carefully and soberly adds one more. On the heap of
earth thrown up rests a box.
This much is visible to a young man who comes strolling up the path from
the gate. He pauses, and looks on in astonishment. He recollects of having
heard somewhere that Cousin Bently’s dog John was accidentally shot, and
that Mrs. Bently cried about it. Can it be possible that they are making a
funeral over John? That would be too funny.
Mr. Bently stooped, took the box in his arms, and placed it carefully down
among the green boughs. Standing upright then, he wiped his eyes, and
muttered a trembling, “Poor fellow!”
“Good‐morning!” said a brisk voice at his elbow. “I’m sorry Johnnie met
with a mishap. Are you burying him here?”
The vapid, mean, supercilious face gave them both such a shock that they
reddened and frowned. No one could have been less welcome at that moment
than Arthur Clay.
Mrs. Bently answered his question with a brief, “Yes.”
“Oh! well, there are dogs enough in the world,” said the young man,
meaning to be consoling.
“There are puppies enough!” muttered Mr. Bently, and began shovelling the
earth savagely into the grave.
“Please go into the house, and wait for us, Arthur,” the lady said, with
polite decision. She had no mind to have this last touching rite spoiled
by such an intrusion.
But young Mr. Clay was in an obliging mood. “Thank you; I’d just as lief
stay, and rather. I never attended a canine funeral before.”
There was a momentary silence, then Mrs. Bently spoke again, with still
more decision and far less suavity: “On the whole, you must excuse us from
seeing you any longer this morning. If you had gone to the door, the
servant would have told you that we do not receive any one to‐day.”
The young man gave an angry laugh. “Oh! certainly! I wouldn’t for the
world intrude on your sorrow. Good‐morning! It’s a pity, though, that dogs
are not immortal, isn’t it? You might have John canonized.”
Mr. Bently flashed his eyes round at the speaker. “What!” he thundered,
“_you_ immortal, and _my_ DOG NOT!”
If they had been two Parrott guns, instead of two eyes and a mouth, Mr.
Arthur Clay could not have retreated more precipitantly.
The grave was filled in and covered over with boughs, two sighs were
breathed over it, then the couple walked, arm in arm, slowly toward the
house.
“He was a perfect creature!” Mr. Bently said, after a silence.
“Yes!” assented the wife. “Only he would bounce at one so.”
“Marian,” said her husband solemnly, “if it hadn’t been for John’s habit
of bouncing at his friends, you would have had no husband.”
It was well meant, but unfortunately worded. The lady pouted, being by no
means an ideal, perfect, pattern woman, but only a natural and charming
one, with varying moods and whims playing, spraylike, over the deeps of
principle and religion. “Don’t be too sure of that!” she made answer to
him.
Mr. Bently never bristled with virtues when his wife made such remarks. He
smiled now, full of kindness. “I meant to say that I should have had no
wife,” he corrected himself.
At that, the pout, which was only a rebellious muscle, not a rebellious
heart, disappeared. “It means the same thing, you most patient of men!”
exclaimed his wife fervently.
They reached the porch, and stood there a moment, looking back to the
mound under the pine‐tree.
“It is a comfort to think,” said the wife, “that for one year of his life
we made him such a happy dog.”
Then they went in, and the door closed behind them.
The International Congress Of Prehistoric Anthropology And Archaeology.
From La Revue Generale De Bruxelles.
The International Congress of Prehistoric Anthropology and Archæology held
its sixth meeting at Brussels, in 1872. The idea of this congress
originated in Italy. Some eminent Swiss, Italian, and French naturalists,
assembled at Spezzia in 1865, resolved to hold the first session the
following year at Neufchâtel. This meeting, entirely confined to
explorations, created no sensation out of the scientific world, but it was
agreed there should be another at the time of the International Exposition
at Paris in 1867. The congress, thenceforth established, appointed a
committee to organize the next meeting. More than four hundred savants
responded to the invitation. At Paris it was decided to meet again the
next year at Norwich, at the same time as the British Association for the
Advancement of Science. The programme of questions proposed for discussion
at Norwich presents a striking similarity to that at Paris. The congress
held at Copenhagen in 1869 was distinguished by a more local and practical
character than the preceding. Finally, the Congress of Bologna, in 1871,
enlarged still more the extent of its programme; according, however, the
first place to objects that particularly interested Italy.
The programme of the Congress of Brussels was, so to speak, determined by
M. E. Dupont’s important discoveries in the caverns of the province of
Namur, and the questions were drawn up from the Belgian point of view, in
order to give our savants an opportunity of acquainting foreign scientific
men with the researches and facts relating particularly to our country.
Similar proceedings had taken place at Copenhagen and Bologna. But the
programme of Brussels by no means excluded points of general interest.
Here is the list of those proposed:
I. What discoveries have been made in Belgium to attest the antiquity of
prehistoric man?
II. What were the manners and pursuits of the people who lived in the
caverns of Belgium? Did their manners and pursuits vary during the
quaternary epoch? What analogy is there between their manners and
pursuits, and those of the troglodyte population in other parts of Western
Europe and of the savages of the present day?
III. What were the pursuits of the people who inhabited the plains of
Hainault during the quaternary epoch? Can it be proved they held any
communication with their contemporaries of the caverns of the provinces of
Liége and Namur, or with the quaternary peoples of the valleys of the
Somme and the Thames?
IV. What characterized the age of polished stone in Belgium? What was its
connection with previous ages, and with the age of polished stone in
Western Europe?
V. What were the anatomical and ethnical characteristics of man in Belgium
during the age of stone?
VI. What characterized the age of bronze in Belgium?
VII. What characterized the appearance of iron in Belgium?
Excursions to the caverns of the valleys of the Lesse, the flint‐works of
Spiennes and Mesvin, and the entrenched camp of Hastedon near Namur,
formed a practical demonstration of the problems discussed at the meeting.
Many illustrious co‐workers responded to the invitation of the Committee
of Arrangements. England was represented by Messrs. Prestwich, Owen, the
great palæontologist, Dawkins, Lubbock, Franks, the Director of the
Department of Antiquities and Ethnography at the British Museum, etc.;
France, by her most eminent anthropologists, archæologists, and
geologists, Messrs, Quatrefages, Broca, Belgrand, Hébert, De Mortillet and
Bertrand of the Musée de S. Germain, General Faid’herbe, the Marquis de
Vibraye, Cartaillac, De Linas, Doctors Lagneau et Hamy, one President and
the other Secretary of the Society of Anthropology, Deshayes, Gaudry,
Gervais, the Abbés Bourgeois and Delauny, one Superior and the other
Professor at the College of Pont‐Levoy, Oppert, the celebrated explorer of
Khorsabat, and many others, among whom we must not omit the inevitable
Mlle. Clemence Royer, at least as a curiosity. The northern countries sent
the founders of prehistoric archæology in the North—Messrs. Worsaœ,
Engelhardt, De Wichfeld, Steenstrup, Waldemar‐Schmidt, from Denmark;
Messrs. Hildebrand, Landberg, Lagerberg, Nillson, D’Oliviecrona, from
Sweden; Italy was brilliantly represented by Messrs. Capellini, Fabretti,
Biondelli, Count Conestabile, Gozzadini, etc.; Spain and Portugal by only
a few; Holland by several, among whom was M. Leemans, Director of the
Museum of Leyden; Austria by Count Wurmbrand; Germany by the Baron de
Ducker, Professors Fraas, of Stuttgart, Schafthausen, of Bonn, the
celebrated Virchow, of Berlin, Lindenschmidt, of Mayence; Switzerland by
Desor, one of the founders of prehistoric archæology. Belgian science was
represented in the committee by Messrs. d’Omalius d’Halloy, the venerable
President of the congress, Van Beneden, De Witte, Dupont, with the élite
of our savants, attended by a constellation of archæologists _de
circonstance_ belonging to the various orders of the literary, artistic,
and political world, and even the commercial; for philosophy does not
daunt M. Jourdain in these days. As for the rest, it was a spectacle of no
slight interest to behold the extraordinary concourse of hearers that
thronged the sessions at the ducal palace, attentively listening to
discussions sometimes very abstract, and again participating in the
excursions of the learned assembly with a genuine interest apart from the
mere pleasure of the excursions themselves. In proportion as man adds to
his knowledge of the globe he inhabits, instead of being satisfied, the
greater ardor and interest he manifests to know more. “The surface of both
land and water explored in every sense of the word; mountains measured;
oceans sounded, and their secrets brought to light; inorganic substances
and organized bodies analyzed and described; plants, animals, and the
human races studied under every aspect; historical traditions investigated
and revised; the dead languages brought into use, and the words derived
from them traced back to their original roots—all this is not enough.
Knowing what he is, and with a thousand theories as to his destination,
man wishes to pierce the mystery of his origin; he asks whence he came,
and how he began the career so laboriously pursued, and into which he was
thrust by a destiny of which he had no consciousness.”(219) The truths
that we grasp in our day were perhaps only guessed at by the ancients.
Lucretius has drawn a very correct picture, for those days, of the
wretched condition of the earlier races, their struggles with the
elements, and even the primitive weapons of stone which they wrought
before the age of bronze and iron. But this is only a poetical conception
to which must be attached no more importance than it merits. The science
of prehistoric ages then had no existence. This science, scarcely known
twenty years ago, has now quite a literature of its own, several reviews,
and an annual International Congress (in future it will be biennial),
splendid museums in all our capitals, and a society whose labors have
contributed not a little to so prodigious a result—the Society of
Anthropology.
Some persons are troubled at the discussion of grave and delicate
questions that seem to set revelation and science at variance. As for us,
who can never admit the possibility of a conflict between the Bible and
nature—those two divine revelations—or that they ought ever to be
completely separated, we deeply regret the complete absence of our clergy
at these great sessions, while those of France and Italy were represented
in a brilliant manner.
“I am well aware,” says M. Chabas, in an able preface, “that the
materialistic tendency of savants of very considerable attainments in
anthropology and other branches of prehistoric research, withholds many
men whose concurrence would be of value to science from entering the arena
where such points are discussed.” But timid minds are becoming more
reassured. Therefore, as the Abbé Bourgeois happily remarked at the
Congress of Paris, “We shall perhaps have to add to the antiquity of man,
but we ought also to detract from that of fossils.” Besides, hitherto, in
spite of so much research, man alone has been found intelligent and with a
moral sense of his acts; and in the animal kingdom there is not a single
proof to confirm even remotely Lamarck’s theory of transmutation revived
by Darwin. When so many are appealing to science to the exclusion of God
from the universe, it would be well for others to endeavor to make him
manifest by the aid of science.
“What!” exclaims Mgr. Meignan, in his brilliant work on _The World and
Primitive Man according to the Bible_, “ought the exegete to make no
account of the progress of human knowledge? Can the savant find neither
profit nor light in the wisdom of Holy Writ? We think otherwise. The
theologian who first studies nature will be better enabled to explain
certain passages of the Bible; and the naturalist and archæologist, in
their turn, will find it advantageous to study the real meaning of
Genesis.” The human mind enters upon a course of examination more or less
legitimate in subjecting religion itself to the trial of controversy; it
is almost a duty imposed on the conscience of all who are not vainly
endowed with reason to enable themselves to give a reason for the belief
that is within them. “The task of the apologist,” says the eminent prelate
just quoted, “is never at an end in our restless age.” The disagreement
that some seem to apprehend only exists in superficial or sceptical minds.
If the Bible is not a scientific revelation, neither does it contradict
science, and especially in the bold outlines drawn by Moses. Science, as
it progresses, sets up its landmarks, so to speak, beside the immutable
bounds of faith; it is so with the laws of light, as well as the
fundamental principles of geology. Revelation assigns no limits to the
antiquity of the world, and allows _the beginning_ in which God created it
to recede to as remote a period as is wished, and geology corroborates the
Scripture account of successive creations. Is not the unity of origin of
the human species, distinctly declared in both Testaments, connected with
all the hypotheses that have excited so much opposition in our day? I do
not mean the unity of the human species, a doctrinal question very
different from the other, and not necessarily connected with it. But the
unity of origin of the human race is now taught and demonstrated by the
greater part of those versed in natural history; it is a scientific truth.
As to the existence of man in the tertiary epoch, it is far from certain,
though sustained by many highly respectable men.(220) M. Evans, the
Secretary of the Geological Society of London, whose name is an authority
on things pertaining to anthropology and palæontology, expressed himself
in these terms at a meeting of the British Association at Liverpool last
year [1871]: “We cannot,” said he, “possibly make any prediction as to the
discoveries that still await us in the soil beneath our feet; but we
certainly have no reason to conclude that the most ancient traces of man
on the earth, or even on the soil of Western Europe, have been brought to
light. At the same time, I must confess that the existing evidence of man
in the miocene period, and even in the pliocene, in France (it will be
seen further on that this has since been asserted in Portugal), appears to
me, after the most careful examination on the spot, very far from
convincing.”
Besides, the word _prehistoric_ has only a relative exactness of meaning.
In Belgium, prehistoric man comes down to the century before the Roman
Conquest. A vast number of the monuments and remains so discussed in our
day might be included in the historic period. In most cases, too absolute
a signification is given to the word prehistoric, conveying an idea of
remote antiquity far beyond the bounds of chronology. It is under the
influence of this preconceived opinion that the most distinguished and
independent investigators have allowed themselves to be carried away with
the apparent revelation of an entirely new world. In hearing of the
millions of ages attributed to quaternary man, one feels greatly behind
the times, and asks himself anxiously if there really is a science that
has a good right to make man so old, and that affords means of
ascertaining, as has been stated, what our ancestors were observing in the
heavens on the 29th of January, 11,542 years before Christ. This feeling
of astonishment must be still livelier in those for whom the insoluble
problems of antiquity extend back to less than two thousand years. We do
not know the site of _Alesia_, and we pretend to know the habitat and
manners of villages of more than three hundred thousand years before the
downfall of the Gallic nationality! It should be confessed that the
science which has so recently sprung up, and which has for its object the
study of human labor anterior to the use of metals, is neither so firmly
established nor so positive in its deductions that we should blindly
accept such bold theories. This is one of the reasons that should
encourage more men of serious pursuits to take a part in these debates, as
to which it is allowable to hope that the truth will some day be
discovered at an equal distance from any exaggeration.
We shall have occasion to return to these questions which occupied the
Congress of Brussels. This preamble appeared necessary as a justification
for confining ourselves to a plain, simple analysis of the proceedings of
the congress—others can review them better than we.
We will only add one word more. The field for discussion had been prepared
in a wonderful manner by the recent publication of the excellent work in
which the learned and active director of our Royal Museum of Natural
History has condensed his researches.(221)
The opening session took place the 22d of August. The day was spent in
receptions, speeches of welcome, replies, the installation of the board,
and other official courtesies which we spare the reader. The following
days there were two sessions a day. The morning of the 23d of August was
devoted to the first question in the programme. There was no one better
fitted to develop it than M. Dupont, the Chief Secretary of the congress,
and the most active of its organizers. He had already given a clear
outline of its history in his discourse at the first session of the day
before. It was started in Belgium in 1829, and kept up by the researches
of Schmerling, who may be regarded as the Champollion of prehistoric
anthropology; but our illustrious fellow‐citizen was not encouraged in his
discoveries, and it may be said that he was, to a certain degree, a martyr
to the scientific prejudices of his time. His labors, occurring at a time
when Cuvier’s authority was at its height, could not counterbalance the
influence of that great genius, who declared that man could not be found
among fossils’ bones, and that the vestiges of the human race in the
caverns came under the general rule. No one then could have dreamed of
referring these remains to the epoch of the mammoth, and it was scarcely
admitted, till within a dozen years, that man was contemporary with the
animals of the geological periods which preceded ours. Schmerling, but
little befriended by circumstances, was deceived as to what caused the
introduction of this _débris_ into the caverns. He attributed it to sudden
inundations. Some years later, Mr. Spring opened the way to the true
theory, which allows the reconstruction of the ethnography of geological
epochs; but he could not continue his researches, and it was not till 1861
that Lartet’s report concerning the caverns of Aurillac at length
established a collection of decisive facts. In 1863, M. Dupont was
appointed to explore the caverns of the province of Namur, which gave
promise of discoveries of unusual interest; it was important that our
country, after having taken so large a part in establishing the first
principles of this new science, should not remain inactive in the movement
to which it had led. The immense result of researches continued without
relaxation for seven years, summer and winter, and the valuable remains
thus found, which are the ornament of our principal museum, prove that the
direction of the task could not have been confided to better hands.
M. Dupont, laying aside the arbitrary classifications that had hitherto
been adopted for determining the antiquity of remains found in caverns,
introduced the geologic method in his researches, which is founded upon
principles almost incontestable and evidences of indubitable truth. The
chronological data furnished by this method are generally of mathematical
exactitude. “With this point to start from,” says M. Dupont, “I was sure
of clearly determining the fauna and ethnographical remains of each epoch
to which the objects discovered in the various subterranean explorations
belonged.”(222) In pursuing the application of this method, our young and
already illustrious savant was enabled to show the evolution of physical
and biological phenomena, and to reconstruct the ethnography of the age of
stone. Whatever may be thought of the reality of the facts brought
forward, it must be confessed that no ordinary mind could have formed such
bold conceptions.
After a communication from Dr. Hamy on the flint‐works of France and
England at the time of the mammoth, the Abbé Bourgeois discussed the
question of tertiary man. The learned professor’s clear, fluent language,
the distinction of his manners, and his open, animated countenance so
completely won the goodwill of the audience that thenceforth, whenever he
spoke, his appearance in the tribune was hailed with unanimous applause.
The Abbé Bourgeois and M. de Launay, his colleague, are the true heralds
of tertiary man. The chronological discussion they so boldly excite seems
to embarrass them but little; on the other hand, they almost banish the
hope some still seem to cling to of finding the man‐monkey. In 1866, M.
Bourgeois described and presented to the Academy of Sciences some wrought
flints found in the tertiary deposits in the commune of Thenay near Pont‐
Levoy (Loir‐et‐Cher). M. Desnoyers had already, in 1863, pointed out bones
found in strata incontestably pliocene, on which were striæ, or very
distinct and regularly marked incisions. Worked flints are beginning to be
found, we are assured, in the bottom of the calcareous deposits of Beauce;
that is to say, in chalk. They are identical in form with those found on
the surface; as in other places, there are utensils for cutting, piercing,
scraping, and hammering. Many of these instruments have been injured by
the action of fire. Finally, says the Abbé Bourgeois, “I find in them
almost every proof of man’s agency, to wit: after‐touches, symmetrical
grooves, grooves artificially made to correspond with natural ones, and
especially the multiplied reproduction of certain forms. This is a
peculiar, unheard‐of fact of the highest importance, but, to me, an
indubitable one.” M. Bourgeois exhibited to the competent judges assembled
at Brussels what he considered the proofs of the authenticity of his
discovery. To him they are convincing, but what he seeks, above all, is
truth, and he asked that a special committee be appointed to elucidate the
question. This committee pronounced a verdict two days after, without
deciding the point. Of thirty‐two specimens presented for examination,
some appeared to them evidently wrought, but most of them were unanimously
rejected. There was no difference of opinion as to M. Bourgeois’ sincerity
of belief, but they were divided as to the authenticity of the deposit.
Those who have seen the place had no doubts; the remainder were
incredulous. M. Capellini proposed that a new committee be appointed to
make researches on the spot. The general conclusion was that no solution
is at present possible.
The existence of prehistoric man in Greece next became the subject of
lively discussion, giving rise to the most contradictory opinions. The
conclusion was that there are no decided proofs. The same doubt was
manifested with respect to a skull from California, said to have been
found in tertiary formation. It is not even certain it is a human skull.
The second session of the day opened with an account from M. Rivière of
the discovery of a complete skeleton in a grotto at Menton, found among
the remains of various animals of the quaternary epoch, such as the lion,
bear, rhinoceros, etc. Then M. de Mortillet gave a detailed description of
the fauna, and the utensils, arms, pursuits, manners, and even the first
manifestation of art, of man in the quaternary period, and he proposed a
still further subdivision of the classes than is now admitted. The speaker
mentioned a very singular circumstance calculated to excite reflection—an
inexplicable hiatus between the last period of the age of cut stone and
the age of polished stone, in which new races appeared of greater industry
and more intelligence, agriculture was developed, the industrial pursuits
were extended, and art disappeared. It is the era of lacustrine villages
and of dolmens. M. de Mortillet’s sketch of prehistoric civilization was
picturesque but far from convincing.
The Abbé Bourgeois did not think M. de Mortillet’s classification correct,
because the progress of civilization in France and Belgium was unequal.
“The Belgians,” he said, “were more advanced.” And the orator added with
charming bonhomie: “I cannot say it is otherwise now.”
M. Fraas, professor at Stuttgart, stated that he had made some
explorations in the grotto of Hollenfelz near Ulm, in Würtemberg. The
_Homo unius cavernæ_ was refuted in his conclusions by M. Hébert, the
celebrated professor at the Sorbonne, and by other savants. M. d’Omalius
was of the opinion that two geologists of different countries, desirous of
identifying beds contiguous to their fields of exploration, were never
able to agree. Between two strata there are always deposits that partake
of the distinctive characteristics of both.
We pass from the grave to the entertaining. The following day, at seven
o’clock in the morning, all the learned assembly, glad, it may be
imagined, to get away from the pretentious paintings of the ducal palace,
took flight by steam for the valley of the Lesse. We would be the first to
confess that, if the country excited the sincere admiration of the
excursionists, the latter were equally a delightful source of curiosity to
the native inhabitants. They will not readily forget the picturesque sight
of our long caravan traversing the good town of Dinant all decked out with
flags, parading in elegant equipages lost among the _coucous_, _fiacres_,
and _calèches_ of wondrous construction, or perched on the imperials of
the most extraordinary vehicles, omnibuses, and _pataches_ truly
prehistoric, filing along the banks of the Meuse towards the valleys amid
laughter, jests, joltings, and the vociferations of our _Automedon_.
Charming landscapes, but detestable roads. This region has been so often
described that I need not attempt to depict it; it is with the pencil and
brush it should be undertaken. Sometimes the road winds around with
disagreeable undulations through the deep ravines bordered by apple‐trees
whose fruit‐laden branches sweep the imperials of the carriages,
endangering the silken hat; sometimes rolling over broad grassy roads
walled in by immense cliffs crowned with ruins and verdure, or affording
vistas through the neighboring valleys, lit up by the sun streaming
through the woods with a mild radiance that recalls the Elysian Fields of
mythological memory. At length we come to the Lesse, which bars the way
with its clear, rapid current. The carriages have to ford the capricious
and petulant waters of the little winding torrent. The horses sheer in the
very middle of the stream, causing a deafening noise of laughter, shouts
of alarm, and blows of the whip. All ends by crossing without any great
difficulty, but the same scene is reproduced five or six times with varied
incidents; for there are that number of fords to cross. It was in one of
these places, where we were obliged to cross the river in boats in order
to reach the grottoes, that we saw the overloaded skiff capsized that bore
among others M. d’Omalius and Mlle. Royer. The apostle of woman’s
emancipation clung with shrill screams to the neck of a small gentleman,
her _chevalier servant_ for the time, and, when she found a footing with
the water up to her chin, she contributed somewhat to save her assistant
by keeping his head out of water—a fine opportunity for quoting La
Fontaine, with a kind variation: “That is nothing; it is not a woman that
is drowning.” The nonagenarian president of the congress was taken out
safe and sound, and it was with extreme difficulty he was induced to
change his _chaussures_, but nothing could prevail upon him to accept dry
garments. Happily, the weather was superb, and the shipwrecked travellers
could get dry in the sun.
We returned by way of the plateaux that overlook the valley. Nothing could
be imagined more fantastically beautiful than that immense panorama bathed
in the purple light of the setting sun. The visitors, under the guidance
of M. Dupont, had been through all the principal caverns described in his
book. His learned explanations were greatly relished, and added a keen
interest to an excursion of which the unexpected and the amusing had
heightened the charm. We will not speak of the banquet that crowned so
delightful a day, or of the ovations that were lavished on the savants and
others. For such details, we refer you to the newspapers that published
the reports.
To Be Concluded In Our Next Number.
The See Of Peter.
Not unto hirelings, Prince of Shepherds, leave
This distant flock. The wolf, long kept at bay,
No longer in sheep’s clothing seeks its prey,
Nor prowls at midnight round the fold’s low eave,
Its weak, unwary victim to deceive;
But rampant in the flock at noon of day,
Careering leaps, to scatter, mangle, slay,
While from afar the banished shepherds grieve.
How long must sycophants wax blandly wise,
And meek‐faced aspirants rebuke the cries
Of outraged faith! On Peter, “Feed my sheep,
My young lambs feed,” the charge benignant lies,
And we whose vigils cheat the night of sleep,
On Peter, still, calm eyes expectant keep.
Atlantic Drift—Gathered In The Steerage.
By An Emigrant.
To most of the sons and daughters of Columbia the few days they pass in
returning from the Old Country represent but a period of wearisome
delay—an interval sometimes nauseous and always irksome between the
pleasures of travel and those of their own fireside, passed perhaps in
recollection of the pleasures of Paris, the classic grandeurs of the
Eternal City, or the picturesque beauties of Switzerland and the Rhine;
not unfrequently, perhaps, by our belles, whose elegance and social value
have received their last gilding in the grand tour of Europe, in
anticipation of the effect of their costumes at Newport or Saratoga, or of
their adventures and experiences in the great circle of their country
friends. All that wealth and skill can do is lavished on the
accommodations of ocean steamers, and nothing is spared to make the
traveller independent of the caprice or ill‐temper of the watery god; and
nowadays a passage from the Mersey to our Empire City is to the ordinary
passenger almost as comfortable and quite as devoid of unusual interest as
a sojourn of so many days at the St. Nicholas or the Fifth Avenue. There
is, however, another class of voyagers whose hard‐earned savings form the
staple of the receipts of the owners of these splendid vessels; they
usually belong to a sphere where literature hardly penetrates and whence
come few who wield a ready pen; hence perhaps the general ignorance that
seems to prevail as to their treatment and accommodation. The cabin
passenger sees them only in squalid groups, encumbering the decks of the
great ship, beyond the middle enclosure reserved to the saloon; and if he
dives into the close and half‐lit steerage, a very brief glance round its
dim precincts satisfies his curiosity. Believing, however, that many of
our adopted countrymen will feel some interest in knowing how the great
army of emigrants who flock in hundreds of thousands to our shores fare on
their ocean transit, one of us lifts a voice from the steerage to relate
some of the realities of life in an emigrant ship. Naught have we
extenuated or aught set down in malice, and, such as it is, our little
narrative is a true history of personal and actual experience.
To the reader it matters little what ill‐fortune cast from his quiet
anchorage a London clerk who had already seen three decades, and whose
life had hitherto run in the tranquil groove of uniform official duty,
sufficiently well remunerated to furnish the comforts of a middle‐class
English home. Unable to regain a similar position in his native land, he
goes to seek his fortune in the West, and, thither wending, finds himself
in the steerage of one of our principal ocean steamers. Candor requires
this avowal, for those interested in the great liners think they dispose
of the numerous complaints as to their treatment of their emigrant
passengers, by retorting that they provide for the working‐classes, and
not for clerks out of place or penniless gentlemen. Hence what is here
stated as to their discomfort deals not with the writer’s own feelings,
but speaks of what he saw endured by others, and he gives voice not merely
to his own opinions, but to the sentiments of the mechanics, artisans, and
farm laborers who were his fellow‐voyagers.
Every emigrant has to provide himself with bedding, plate, basin, drinking
and water can, and a knife and fork. Our first experience of emigrant life
consisted in the purchase of these articles at a Liverpool slop‐shop; some
ten shillings covered the entire outlay, except for the blanket, the most
indispensable of all; for this purpose, the dealer persuaded us to buy a
horse‐rug, which he solemnly assured us was worth double the money across
the Atlantic: as a copy of the _Times_ would give about as much warmth and
shelter as the common covering sold with the bed, we invested in it. An
addition to our comfort it certainly has been in the bunk, and in the long
nights in the emigrant trains, and it still remains our property; no
market have we been able to discover for the article, and we conclude that
a certain spice of Americanism had communicated itself to the mercantile
mind of the seller. Many of the inmates of our steerage dispensed with all
or most of these domestic utensils. One gentleman’s luggage, whose world‐
wide travels we may hereafter refer to, consisted of a limited brown‐paper
parcel; in his subsequent oceanic career his Irish suavity usually
procured him the loan of one of the tins of an acquaintance; that failing,
he borrowed any neighboring utensil whose owner was not for the moment at
hand; or, driven to his last resource, abjured coffee or soup and ate his
portion of meat on a piece of brown paper. Some had but one vessel which
served indifferently for a drinking‐can, soup‐basin, plate, tea‐cup, or
wash hand‐basin, while a few comfort‐loving people, more frequently,
however, in the after or family steerage than in our bachelor quarters,
carried heavy loads of comfortable bedding and neatly‐arranged baskets of
table‐ware.
Nearly all this apparatus of bedding and tin‐ware is thrown overboard or
given to the crew when the vessel arrives at its destination; only the
frugal Germans carefully preserve their vessels, and, shaking out its
straw or moss contents, preserve the ticking of the bed either as a
wrapping for their baggage or some ulterior purpose. It certainly seems
strange that an expenditure of from two to three hundred pounds should be
incurred by every ship‐load of emigrants for articles of such brief
utility. Could not this outlay be converted to the benefit of the ship‐
owners by the permanent provision of requisites of this description at a
moderate charge?
The great landing stage at Liverpool on the morning of our embarkation was
crowded with some two thousand persons—the passengers of three mail
steamers, their friends, and the swarm of porters, carters, and pedlers in
attendance on them. Everything was confusion; here mothers seeking a stray
little one, there the husband anxiously gathering together his motley
property of boxes, bedding, cans, baskets, and packages of every
description, as they were roughly tossed out of the cart from some
boarding‐house. The boxes had to be placed in one tender, the passengers
and lighter luggage in another; porters drove greedy bargains with females
helplessly encumbered with immovable boxes. Women with baskets full of
articles for sale—combs and brushes, knives, scissors, and soap—pushed
their way here and there. To single men, careful of small change, it was a
problem how to move the box or trunk in one direction and yet secure the
safety of the other articles while doing so. We despaired of solving the
problem, and trusted to the honesty of a badge porter, who undertook for
sixpence to place our box on the luggage tender; afterwards, nervous as to
the actual presence there of our little all, we spent two weary hours in
watching the baggage discharged into the hold. A thousand trunks and
chests of every conceivable size, shape, color, and dimensions passed down
the hatchway before us—handsome American boxes, ribbed and gay with bright
nails; immense iron‐bound chests of unpainted deal, containing the whole
household goods of some Swedish or Norwegian family, directed in quaint
letters to some far‐off town in Minnesota or Wisconsin; flimsy papered
trunks, with sides already creaking and gaping, threatening to disgorge
their finery before they touch the ground in Castle Garden; and German
packs of strong ticking or canvas about the size of a small haystack—and,
with a sigh of relief, we at last saw our property shot with a crash into
the hold. Nearly two long hours did we spend on the open stage under a
drizzling rain, that soaked the beds and blankets before the tenders
moored alongside; then all made for the gangways, tugging their luggage
with them; produced their tickets as they passed on, and pushed, tumbled,
and scrambled pell‐mell on board; a similar scene was enacted at the
steamer’s side; and when at last we reached her spacious decks we felt
like soldiers passed unscathed through some hard‐fought field; not all
unscathed, however; a considerable number of missing tins, blankets, and
even beds attested the severity of the struggle and gave zest to the
satisfaction of the more fortunate.
Arrived at last on our floating home for the coming fortnight, we pushed
our way into the steerages to find our berths and enter into possession:
and here let us try to describe. The steamer was a magnificent vessel,
advertised to be of 3,700 tons, and celebrated for the luxury of her
saloon accommodation and her almost unrivalled speed—qualities, as
experience taught us, attained somewhat at the expense of the comfort of
her emigrant passengers. Right aft the forecastle or forward part of the
deck was roofed over with what sailors call a whale‐back, to the entrance
of the forward steerage; a small deck house, with doors on each side, and
on one side a small closet with a half door and a few racks for clothes
served as a deck bar; behind it, that is, towards the stern, was the
forward _fresh_ water pump; walking still sternwards, we next encounter
another small house containing the wash‐house for the forward steerage,
entered from below, and two or three cabins for some of the officers or
petty officers opening on the deck; on one side of this was a hot water
tap; a few feet further is the main deck house, extending about half the
length of the ship; in the street‐like passages between its sides and the
bulwarks—open iron railings in our vessel—are the doors to the galleys,
boilers, engine‐rooms, officers’ berths, and saloon, which, unlike most
other steamships, is in this situated amidships; from the saloon a
handsome double staircase led on to the deck above, which, however, like
the tops of all the other deck houses, was tabooed ground to the
emigrants. At the end of the main deck house was the entrance to the
forward or sternmost steerage, and at the side of it the after fresh water
pump; still further aft another deck house contained the wash‐house
belonging to this steerage, and, as in case of the forward steerage,
entered from below, and one or two officers’ berths, and provided outside
with a second hot water tap; still further, the stern deck house contained
the wheel house, with the engine for working the rudder, the butcher’s
shop, ice and meat house, and vegetable storehouse; and between its
semicircular end and the bulwark round the stern ran a low gallery, always
considered among us as the most desirable place to settle for the day. We
were free to ramble or squat ourselves on the deck where we listed, except
the extreme forecastle forward of the entrance to the sailors’ cabin;
there an incautious intruder paid his footing with the penalty of a bottle
or two of beer to the nearest sailor who could catch him. Under the
whaleback, also, either by custom or some rule of the ship, was forbidden
ground to children or the fair sex, and always the chosen resort of old
hands who liked to smoke a quiet pipe sheltered from the wind, chat with
those of the crew who were off duty, and be comfortably near the deck bar.
Enter the forward or bachelors’ steerage—the after one being reserved to
married couples and single women; leaving the bright day, we can hardly
distinguish the objects in the dim light, and feel our way down the first
flight of steps; this brings us on the main deck; here it is not open to
the sides of the ship, along which run the berths of the saloon
passengers. Entered from the saloons at the fore part, where they
terminate by the hospital, two neat rooms, each with three or four bunks
with bedding, wash‐basins, etc., similar to those of a saloon berth, and
in one of which, in the absence of patients, our two stewards sleep; and
at the other or after end a narrow flight of steps leads up to the wash‐
house on deck. The main deck is lighted only by the stairs and the
hatchway; when the wooden grating covering the latter is in its place, it
is dim; when it is covered with tarpaulin to prevent the entrance of the
rain or spray, too dark to see. We have still another flight of steps to
descend to reach the cavernous abyss of the steerage itself, which is
situated between‐decks; when our eyes grow accustomed to the obscurity, we
see a central open space about ten feet wide, running from end to end; in
this are three narrow wooden tables with benches, two lengthwise and one
crosswise, each capable of seating about twenty people; on each side are
the bunks, reaching to the roof, entered by narrow streets or passages
leading off on either hand, and again benches in the central space all
round the outer side of the bunks.
Each street of bunks contained twenty upper and lower rows of five each,
on either hand; the inmates therefore, lay side by side, parallel with the
ship’s length, with their feet to their own street, and their heads
adjoining those of their neighbors in the adjoining street. The bunks
themselves consisted simply of shelves of unpainted boards, with an
opening of about an inch between each, and were about six feet and a half
wide, and divided into the spaces for each bunk, and fenced at the foot by
upright boards about a foot high; in short, an emigrant’s bunk means a
slightly fenced off space of hard board rather more than six feet by two.
The lower row are about two feet from the ground; the upper about three
feet above the lower, and the same distance from the roof. They are not
attached to the side of the ship, but to a framework a few inches from it,
the interstices of which served to stow hats or tins. Inside this
coffinlike area of the bunks you stow bed, bedding, cans, and all smaller
_impedimenta_, while such boxes as found their way down are pushed under
the lower berths, piled in corners of the central space, or serve in the
streets as seats or footsteps to the upper berths. In our steamer the
bunks seemed to have been just put up; they were free from vermin, the
timbers had nothing dirtier about them than sawdust; indeed, as we
believe, the number of steerage passengers who cross eastwards is much
less than in the other direction, the greater part of the boards are often
knocked down on the ship’s arrival in New York, and the steerage filled
with cargo, and then re‐erected when she is again prepared for the
westward trip. The berths next to the central space were the most in
request, on account of their being nearer the fresh air, and the lower
range everywhere objected to; but nearly all the tickets had a number
affixed, and no liberty of choice was permitted. Ours was in the upper
berth in one corner, and consequently very far removed from any
ventilation; as a slight compensation, being next to the side of the ship,
we could look through the little window over the surging water, with which
it was almost level and frequently covered. The gaps between the planks
were very annoying, as small articles readily fell through them, and if
they fell beneath the lower range it was too dark and the space too narrow
to readily recover them. From about nine till twelve every day the
steerage was closed, all the inmates sent on deck, and the floor brushed
and laid down with fresh sawdust; this process, we think, was confined to
the central space and the streets, and did not extend to the spaces
underneath the bunks; and it was daily inspected or supposed to be
inspected by one of the doctors, of whom there were two on board.
The wash‐house to the forward steerage was of decent size, with tiled
floor, and contained eight closet pans, five wash hand‐basins, each with a
tap of cold water and one with a hot water tap, and four sinks, also with
salt water taps: putting aside the absence of any privacy, the
arrangements were suitable, and the fittings generally clean; but, as in
so many other instances, the carelessness or inattention of the crew made
the admirable equipments of the ship almost useless. Except early in the
morning there was rarely any water in the taps, and in the hot water
cistern, which also supplied the hot‐water tap outside, often none for two
or three days: the engineer, the steward told us, would not waste the
steam by putting his cistern into communication with the boilers; and then
often, when turned on, the tap poured out so much more hot steam than
water that one was likely rather to get scalded hands than a full can.
The after‐steerage was similar in character to that of the single men, but
much larger, occupying both the main and between‐decks; the married men
and women slept on one side, the single women on the other; their privacy
being supposed to be secured by a canvas curtain let down at night the
whole length of the cabin. In the other lines, we believe the men and
women, married or single, are quite separated, but ours put it forward as
one of their attractions that husbands and wives are berthed together; as
this simply means that their bunks are allotted side by side, the wife is
really no more berthed with her own husband than with the spouse of her
next neighbor. Many of the more respectable women complained much of being
misled by the announcement, and of their being unable to undress to rest
during the whole of the voyage, as they might have done if a cabin had
been really and exclusively reserved for children and females. To the
after steerage two wash‐houses were attached, one for the women with
closed private closets, and one for the men similar to ours.
The routine of one day’s life may serve for all. As the mornings were
generally damp and chilly, like most in our steerage we slept till towards
eight o’clock, and did not rise till breakfast was announced; as dressing
consisted in knocking off the rugs and donning coat, waistcoat, and boots,
it was not a long process; then we scramble down into our street, seize
our can and wait; in our corner we are too far removed from the
tables—which would not seat half the number the cabin contains—to try to
obtain seats at them; so we sit in the bunks on the chests in our street,
or stand till the steward comes round to the entrance, and sings out, “Who
is for coffee?” Each holds out or passes on his can, and he ladles into it
about a pint of a boiling hot decoction, sweetened but without milk, and
bearing a distant but still recognizable relationship to the article one
had hitherto known under the name. A few minutes afterwards he comes round
with the fresh bread, and over its distribution there were always much
squabbling and bad language, partly because the bakers disliked the
trouble of baking more than the strictly necessary quantity, and were
given to restricting both the number and size of the loaves, and partly
because many could neither eat the waxy potatoes nor hard sea‐biscuits; so
that all sorts of tricks were resorted to to secure additional loaves for
their dinner or tea. Of all the articles of diet the warm fresh bread
every morning was decidedly the favorite, and any shortcoming in its
supply more resented than any other infliction; both in size and quality
the loaves varied very much according to the caprice of the bakers, but
they were generally good. Great pyramids of butter were placed in tins on
the tables; most of the men would not eat it on account of its tallow‐like
flavor; for our own part, on obtaining our coffee and bread, we cut the
latter open, put a lump of butter to melt inside, and pressed it together
to distribute it equally as it melted, and then proceeded on deck, and
under the influence of the keen sea air rarely failed to eat with a good
appetite this not very luxurious fare in some quiet corner out of the
wind. After breakfast, warmed with the steaming coffee, we obtained a can
full of fresh water from the pump, produced the toilet requisites from our
satchel, and in one corner of our street performed our ablutions; we
always took as near an approach to a sponge‐bath as circumstances
permitted, and found the practice more refreshing even than sleep. Though
the steward never interfered with me, it was, however, we believe, against
the rules to wash elsewhere than in the wash‐house, or to use fresh water
for the purpose. The first day or two we had to wash in the wash‐house
before breakfast, but the crowd there for various purposes was so great
and there was so little convenience for putting down the different
articles that we gave it up; and after breakfast there was rarely water
for the purpose.
The decks always presented a more crowded and busy appearance in the
forenoon than in any other period of the day; the steerages were empty,
and all their inmates perforce on deck, huddled here and there, wherever
the deck houses offer shelter from the winds, in compact groups three or
four deep. The German and Scandinavian mothers perform the ablutions of
their numerous families deliberately and in public—an amusing, if to some
disgusting, process; first, the white‐headed urchin is held between his
mother’s or perhaps his eldest sister’s knees, and his poll carefully and
methodically examined with the fingers—not a comb, and any strangers
summarily executed. Then he is taken to the scuppers by the side of the
ship, his head held over a tin of hot water and lathered till he is red in
the face and his eyes full of soap; then washed and taken back again, his
head combed down into smoothness, and released for the day with a weight
off his mind, the process being varied in the case of a little girl by the
plaiting of her long flaxen locks into ribbon‐adorned tails. The majority,
however, treated their abode on shipboard as a time when the ordinary
rules of civilized life were temporarily suspended, and eschewed washing,
shaving, and all the vanities of dress until they again felt themselves on
terra firma.
Dinner took place at twelve; we mustered as for breakfast, but with a more
careful marshalling of cans, for two, if not three, were necessary, and a
sharp watch was requisite to prevent some hungry but tireless prowler from
summarily appropriating the nearest ware; first came the soup, dealt out
as the coffee at breakfast—a hot compound with a faint reminiscence of
gravy and mutton bones, some grains of barley, and fragments of celery and
cabbage; sometimes, instead, a thick mixture of ground peas; such as it
was, with plenty of salt which one of our street usually fetched from the
table for the general benefit, it was the most reliable part of the
dinner; it was always drinkable, and many came down to obtain it who would
taste no other article provided by the ship beyond the soup and bread.
Next came the meat, cut up into chunks in an immense tin, and shovelled
out by the steward with a saucer on to the tin plates. Sometimes it was
eatable; say, perhaps, on five out of the ten days a hungry stomach and a
stern will could manage it; and once or twice we had fresh beef as good,
allowing for the roughness with which it was served, as any one could
desire; the salt junk and salt fish, however—and the latter, in deference
to the feelings of the Catholic passengers, always appeared on Friday—were
vile; the junk could not be cut with a knife, and had to be torn into
shreds along the grain, while the fish in taste and smell was simply
abominable.
The potatoes were one of our standing grievances; as there were but two
stewards to assist some hundred and sixty people, they had to form a
course of themselves, or the meat got cold while waiting for them; and
instead of being boiled, they were steamed by some hasty process into the
taste and consistency of a tallow candle. To the natives of the Emerald
Isle, accustomed to consider their potato the _pièce de resistance_ of
their humble fare, this misusage of their favorite food was particularly
aggravating, and their complaints were loud and endless. Boiled rice was
generally served after the potatoes with coarse sugar or treacle; as long
as the latter lasted it was palatable, but the sweetening generally bore
the same relation to the rice as did Falstaff’s bread to his sack, and our
ingenuity had to be taxed to procure a double or treble allowance of the
sugar by changing places while the serving took place or holding the plate
over the shoulders of the steward who carried it. On Sundays plum duff, a
heavy pudding pretty liberally supplied with raisins, was dealt out, and
to stomachs accustomed to steerage fare seemed something faintly
approaching the luxuries of the table appropriate to the day. The tea,
which took place at five, may be dismissed in two words: taste it had
none, and its smell was beastly; however, it was always boiling hot, and
in the cold, damp evenings anything warming was grateful. With it we had
biscuits and butter.
Without a detailed notice of that indispensable and omnipresent article
the sea‐biscuit, any account of our food would be incomplete; a barrel of
them always stood at the head of the staircase on the main deck, and any
one could help himself as often and as liberally as he thought proper;
they formed our sole fare at tea, and our _dernier ressort_, when the
dinner was, as it usually was every other day, altogether uneatable. More
fortunate than most of our fellow‐passengers, we could combine recreation
and humble fare by gnawing at their hard sides. Of wooden consistency they
certainly were; to make any impression on their hard edges it was
necessary first to break them with a smart blow of the fist, put a piece
between two sound molars, shut your eyes, hold fast to one of the
stanchions of the bulwarks, and bring your jaws together with a determined
and persevering grind! The result, to our taste, was not unsatisfactory;
they were perfectly sweet, and when once pulverized not ill tasted; and on
several occasions, when we found the other provisions inedible, two or
three biscuits, washed down with a bottle of porter, served us for a
tolerable meal. Few, however, shared our liking or would touch them,
except at the last extremity, and by those whose teeth were not in first‐
rate order they were unassailable. As a souvenir, we pocketed a couple on
leaving the ship, and as we munched them on the following night on the
platform of the emigrant car jolting along the side of the broad and mist‐
clad Hudson, hoped that Dame Fortune would never reduce us in the Far West
to more unpalatable fare.
On the whole, it was possible to subsist on the ship’s provisions,
particularly when the transit was regarded in a purgatorial or penitential
sense; and that statement, too, must be qualified by the admission of the
necessity of malt liquor: without two or three bottles of beer or porter a
day, we could not have survived; they served as a tonic, which made greasy
meat digestible, and biscuits possible to swallow; few, however, lived
entirely on the steerage fare, nor must it be supposed that the grumblers
or discontented were generally those who had, as it is termed, seen better
days. Men of that class were slow to complain, because ignorant of what
they ought to tolerate or endure in their altered circumstances. It was
the well‐to‐do artisans or workingmen who showed the greatest disgust and
were the bitterest in their complaints. Many families were provided with
well‐filled baskets of good bread, ham, and bottles of preserves, and had
their own store of tea and sugar, for which they obtained hot water from
the galley; while others bought the whole of their food.
Buying, begging, and stealing food was one of the most interesting and to
some the most engrossing of occupations; it required a little money, a
deal of diplomacy, and very hardened feelings, and was accomplished in
very various ways. At the commencement of the voyage, little cliques were
formed of four or five people, who made up a purse of two or three pounds
for one of the cabin stewards, who in return sold to or stole for them a
regular supply of cabin provisions; we were asked to join a little party
of this sort, but declined; nor did we observe much of their subsequent
fortune, except that they professed to have plenty of good food, and
seemed to spend most of their time in watching for the opportunity when
their steward could safely convey it to them; others peeled potatoes or
apples and carried water for the galleys, and got fed in return; some
reduced it to a system, bought meat from the butchers, and got it cooked
in the galley, or, for a consideration, got liberty to go in at an idle
time and cooked it themselves; the ordinary way, however, was to buy a
bottle of beer at our deck‐bar, hand it in to one of the cooks with a tin,
and ask him to give you something, the best time being immediately after
breakfast, when the hot scouse or Irish stew—far better food than any
provided for us—was served out for the sailors’ breakfast, or after the
saloon dinner; you then slunk about the galley door, cursed for being in
their way by all the cooks except the recipient of the beer, until that
gentleman saw the head cook or chief steward out of the way, filled the
tin with anything at hand—generally scouse in the morning, cold beef and
chicken in the evening—shoved it under your coat, and told you to clear
out instantly. One’s feelings suffered much in this process; but a few
days of steerage fare blunt the sensibilities and whet the animal appetite
to an extent that requires to be experienced to be appreciated.
Another want that is keenly felt in consequence of the salt food and dry
biscuit is that of something green or succulent. One craves an apple or an
orange or lemon; and so well aware were the experienced travellers among
us of this want that fresh fruit generally occupied a large space in their
well‐stuffed baskets. We had only the slender resource of pulling pieces
of celery through the grating of the vegetable store, peeling them and
eating them as an addendum to the coffee and bread of our breakfast.
Unfortunately either the demand for that cool vegetable was unexpectedly
great in the saloon, or we emigrants were too successful in extracting it
through the bars of the always open store; for before the voyage was half
over the supply was exhausted, we then had raw carrots and onions from the
same source, but the result was not satisfactory.
Many of the passengers who had no money suffered much from their inability
to cope with our daily fate. One young man of about twenty‐two or three
years of age particularly attracted our attention. Short and slight, of
perfectly gentlemanly manners and quiet address, he had little of the
typical American about him, though as we afterwards learned from himself
he belonged to a Western family engaged in commerce and of considerable
means. Some strange star must have presided over his birth, for he had the
rarest of all dispositions in the New World, a dislike to traffic and
money‐making, and an unconquerable yearning for a life of literary labor.
He was returning westward after residing in Dresden and Florence, full of
enthusiasm for Goethe and Schiller, Tasso and Dante, and proudly conscious
of a vocation himself as a dramatic poet. He had shot, he said, in the
lakes of Minnesota, hunted in the Adirondacks, become familiar with the
most beautiful and intellectual of the European capitals, and now felt
that his endowment for his career was enriched by the novel experiences of
the steerage of an emigrant ship. Fine conceptions, except perhaps among
saints or hermits, do not thrive on an empty stomach.
Our poet looked daily more pallid and spiritless. He listened
uninterestedly to everything except prospects of better fare or prophecies
of the speedy diminution of the irksome voyage. One night one of the cooks
in the emigrant galley gave us a tin crammed to overflowing with fragments
of meat and fowl, and, additionally armed with a bottle of porter and a
biscuit, we had settled in a quiet leeward corner to make a hearty supper,
when we thought of the famishing poet. We found him tending a little
singing‐bird he was taking out with him, and invited him to share our
meal; and the enjoyment with which he ate the broken meat—a biscuit
serving for a plate, and a clasp‐knife for an instrument—was quite
refreshing. We took alternate pulls at the porter, and felt pleased with
ourselves and the world. His inner man refreshed, our poet became another
person. The charm of his conversation well repaid our little sacrifice,
and we talked art and literature, music and the drama, until the
loneliness of the deck, the chill night breeze, and the bright moon
mounted high in the star‐spangled heaven warned us of the approach of
midnight. A few hours after we had landed in New York, we met our poet in
Broadway, in all the elegance of clean raiment, and happily conscious of a
well‐lined purse. Though our rough garb assorted ill with his gentility,
he insisted on our drinking glasses together to the memory of our meeting.
As we drank, he expatiated on the advantages of a varied experience of the
many‐sided life of our poor humanity. Nevertheless, we opine, to cross the
Atlantic in the steerage of an emigrant ship with an empty pocket, is one
of those phases of existence which he will never voluntarily again
investigate. Another instance of suffering was that of an Englishman—a
quiet‐visaged, silent man, past middle age, whose velveteen coat and
corduroy trowsers bespoke him a ploughman or gamekeeper from some Old
World country neighborhood. He had with him his little daughter, a fair‐
haired, sweet‐faced little girl of about twelve, genteelly dressed.
Neither he nor his child could eat the ship’s food, and the little girl
used to sit all day quietly pining by her father’s side. They met,
however, worse fortune on shore. Bound to some town in Ohio, he was
apparently ignorant that a long journey separated it from their landing‐
place, and landed in Castle Garden penniless. Too shy or too proud to beg,
the man and his little girl starved for a day, until some fellow‐passenger
accidentally found out their condition and supplied them with food.
No account of a sea voyage would be faithful without noticing the dread
malady, the sufferings of which form the traveller’s introduction to the
domain of Neptune; but it is a life over which we must perforce draw a
veil. To the voyager who has a comfortable berth, every convenience that
wealth can produce, attentive stewards, and the command of each luxury
that his fancy or fears can suggest, the horrors of sea‐sickness are
sufficiently nauseous. What they are in the steerage of an emigrant ship,
where your pangs are intensified by the maladies and filth, the groans and
curses, of some scores of other victims, can be better imagined than
described; it is too disgusting. For the first two or three days, to eye,
ear, and nose our steerage was insufferable; there was no remedy but to
avoid it as much as possible, and either abandon the meals altogether, or
rush down, snatch a hasty portion of whatever came nearest to hand, and
beat a hasty retreat to the fresh air of the deck before your rising gorge
added you to the ranks of the inconsolable.
But this rough initiation had its practical advantage. Many of the younger
passengers of the better class at the commencement of their voyage
endeavored to keep up appearances in spite of all difficulties, and to
present themselves on deck fresh from a careful toilette and in all the
neatness of clean linen and well‐arranged dress; but, when they had once
succumbed to the qualms of the malady, their vanity went overboard.
Languid and weary, they crowded on deck, unwashed and uncombed, muffled in
a waterproof, or huddled in twos and threes in a corner in the warm folds
of a blanket or horse‐rug; and as their spirits revived they thought no
more of struggling against adverse circumstances, and were content to “peg
along” (pardon, kind reader, the expression) until their feminine
instincts revived at the welcome sight of the wished‐for land.
To Be Concluded In Our Next Number.
A Daughter Of S. Dominic.
If she had been condemned to have her life written, and been given the
choice of a name under which to appear before the world, this would
probably have been the one she would have taken. But who could have
persuaded the humble child of the grand S. Dominic that such a fate was in
store for her, or induced her humility to accept it? Well, it matters
little to her now whether men speak of her or for her, she is alike beyond
the reach of their hollow praise and their jealous criticism. But to us it
matters much. The teaching of such a life as Amélie Lautard’s is too
precious to be lost; it is a lesson to be sought out and hearkened to, for
it is full of beauty, and light, and encouragement to those whom she has
left behind.
Amélie was born at Marseilles on the 12th of April, 1807. Her father was a
medical man, eminent in his profession, an honorable man, and a good
Christian. She lost her mother at the age of seventeen. Early in life she
met with an accident which injured her spine so seriously as to render her
by degrees quite humpbacked; the progress of the deformity was slow and
very gradual, but even when it had grown to its worst it never looked
grotesque or repulsive, nor did it, strange to say, take away from the
singular dignity of her appearance or from the grace of her movements. In
person she was tall and dark, not handsome, though her features had so
much charm and expression that most people considered her so. Her
intelligence was of a very high order, and pre‐eminently endowed with that
delightful and untranslatable gift called _esprit_. From her earliest
childhood she began to develop an angelic spirit of piety and a
sensitiveness to the sufferings of others that is generally the outgrowth
of maturer years. The sufferings of the poor claimed her pity especially,
but not exclusively. The range of her sympathies was wide enough to
embrace every kind and degree of sorrow that came within her knowledge.
This characteristic of her charity, as rare as it is attractive, may be
considered as the keynote of her life, and explains, humanly speaking, the
extraordinary influence she exercised over all classes indiscriminately.
After her mother’s death Amélie became the chief delight and interest of
her father, and she repaid his tenderness by the most absolute devotion.
Offers of marriage were not wanting for the accomplished and _spirituelle_
young lady, but Amélie turned a deaf ear to them all; filial duty as much
as filial love had wedded her to her father, and she declared her
intention never to separate from him, or let any other love and duty come
between those she had vowed unreservedly to him. It was probably at this
period of her life that she bound herself exclusively to the service of
God by a vow of perpetual virginity.
During many years Dr. Lautard’s health was such as to require constant and
unremitting care. Amélie nursed him with the tenderest affection, never
allowing her devotions or her work amongst the poor to interfere with her
first duty to him. He expired in her arms, blessing her and declaring that
she had been the model of filial piety, the joy and solace of his
widowhood. Amélie generously made the sacrifice of this one great
affection to God, she drank the chalice with a broken heart, but with an
unmurmuring spirit, and entered bravely on the new life that was before
her. Hers was to be the mission of an apostle, and she must go forth to it
unshackled by even the holiest and purest of natural ties. She had long
been a member of the Third Order of S. Dominic, to whom from her childhood
she had had a great devotion. To her previous vow of virginity she now
added a vow of poverty, which, in the midst of abundance, she observed
rigorously to the end of her life. Dr. Lautard, knowing her propensities,
and suspecting rightly that, if her fortune were left completely in her
own power, she would despoil herself of everything and leave herself
without the means of subsistence, tied it up in annuities which could not
be alienated. But while binding herself henceforth to the practice of the
most rigid austerities, Amélie did not break off from her accustomed
intercourse with her friends. She continued to receive them as hitherto in
her father’s house. Dr. Lautard used to say that hospitality was a virtue
which it behooved Christians living in the world to exercise towards each
other, and he imbued Amélie with the same idea. Mindful of his precepts
and example, she went on inviting her friends, and enjoyed having them
with her, and surrounding them with attentions and seeing them well and
hospitably served; at table she endeavored to disguise her own abstinence
under a semblance of eating, or would sometimes apologize on the plea of
her health, which had always been extremely delicate, for not setting them
a good example.
Some rigid persons, unable to reconcile this frank and genial sociability
with the crucifying life of penance and prayer and unremitting service of
the poor and the sick which Amélie led, ventured to remonstrate with her
on the subject. She replied with unruffled humility that it was a pleasure
to her to continue to cultivate the friendships contracted for her and
bequeathed to her by her father, and that she felt satisfied there was
nothing wrong in her doing so, and that it did neither her nor them any
harm; on the contrary, hospitality was often a means to her of doing good;
a worldly man or woman who would fly from her if she approached them with
a sermon, accepted an invitation to dinner without fear or _arrière‐
pensée_, thus enabling her to bring them under desirable influences in a
way that awoke no suspicion and roused no antagonism, and often led to the
most salutary results; a friendly dinner was, moreover, not unfrequently
an opportunity of bringing people together and reconciling those who were
at variance; in fact, Amélie pleaded so convincingly the cause of
Christian hospitality as it was practised in the Rue Grignan, that the
critics withdrew thoroughly converted and rather ashamed of their
censoriousness. This thirst for doing good was, moreover, so unobtrusive
and so free from anything like an assumption of superiority, that it was
impossible to resent it; the tact and simplicity that accompanied all her
efforts to benefit others prevented their ever being looked upon as
indiscreet or meddling. She had a way of rousing your sympathies in a
charitable scheme, or your indignation against some act of injustice or
cruelty, and drawing you into assisting in the one or redressing the other
without your suspecting that she had laid a trap for you; never preaching,
never dictating, she had that rare grace, whose absence so often foils the
most praiseworthy intentions, of doing good without being disagreeable.
Her conversation was so sympathetic, and, owing to her mind being so
abundantly stored by reading under her father’s direction, could be, when
the opportunity occurred, so brilliant, that the most distinguished men
delighted in it, and flocked to the Rue Grignan, counting it a privilege
to be invited to its unpretending hospitalities. Amongst the many
illustrious men who admired Amélie’s _esprit_ and virtues and who courted
her co‐operation in their apostolic labors, one of the most prominent was
the Père Lacordaire. The history of their first work in common deserves
special record, not only because of its being associated with “the cowled
orator of France,” but because it is peculiarly identified with the
history of Provence, that land so dear to us all as the birthplace and
cradle of the devotion to S. Joseph. “Beautiful Provence! It rose up in
the west from your delightful land like the cloud of delicate almond
blossoms that seems to float and shine between heaven and earth over your
fields in spring. It rose from a confraternity in the white city of
Avignon, and was cradled by the swift Rhone, that river of martyr‐
memories, that runs by Lyons, Orange, Vienne, and Arles, and flows into
the same sea that laves the shores of Palestine. The land which the
contemplative Magdalen had consecrated by her hermit life, and where the
songs of Martha’s school of virgins had been heard praising God, and where
Lazarus had worn a mitre instead of a grave‐cloth, it was there that he
who was so marvellously Mary and Martha combined first received the glory
of his devotion.” We all know the passage by heart, but we quote it not so
much for its sweetness as because it so appropriately introduces the story
of the work in question, viz., the restoration of the pilgrimage of Ste.
Baume, a pilgrimage once so celebrated throughout Christendom, but of late
years fallen into neglect and almost total oblivion. Tradition tells us
the story of its origin, its growth, its glories, and its decay. Its
origin dates from a little bark that eighteen centuries ago came floating
down the sunny waters of the Nile and rode into the blue Mediterranean,
freighted with a legacy from Palestine to France, bearing in its frail
embrace none other than the family who had their dwelling on the shores of
the Lake of Galilee, and whose names have come down to us with the halo of
that simple and unrivalled title, “Friends of Jesus of Nazareth.”
Villagers and the simple folk of the place welcomed the exiles more
kindly, let us hope, than Bethlehem had welcomed the Virgin Mother and
reputed father of their Friend some five‐and‐thirty years before; at any
rate, Lazarus and his sisters remained in Provence. The people gathered
round the dead man whom Jesus had wept over and raised to life, and
hearkened to his teaching; he planted the cross upon their soil, and sowed
the seeds of the Gospel in their hearts, and in return they thanked him as
the Jews had thanked his Master, by putting him to death. Lazarus opened
the first page of the martyrology of France. Martha on her side withdrew
to Avignon, where, on the ruins of a pagan temple situated on the Rocher
des Doms, she built a Christian church, and dwelt there in the midst of a
school of virgins, teaching the Gospel. She died at an advanced age,
venerated as a saint, and renowned as much for her sublime gift of
eloquence and her bountiful hospitality as for the austere sanctity of her
life. We are not told how far, if at all, Magdalen shared the apostleship
of her brother in Marseilles; the only trace of her that remains in that
city is an altar in the vaults of the Abbey of S. Victor. These vaults are
like catacombs, and the most ancient monument of Christian faith that
Marseilles possesses. The legend says that Magdalen, immediately on
landing on the shores of Provence, took up her abode upon the rocky
heights of Ste. Baume and lived there for thirty years, her life divided
between agony and ecstasy, between tears that had never ceased to flow
since that day when at Simon’s house she broke the alabaster vase over the
feet of Jesus, and heard from his lips those words that have been the
strength and the hope of sinners ever since: much had been forgiven her
because she had loved much, and kept long vigils that were but a
continuation of her faithful watch under the cross and at the door of the
sepulchre. It seems strange, when we think of it, that she should have
left the country where Jesus had lived and died, the home at Magdala that
he had hallowed so often by his presence, and whose friendly hospitality
had often been a rest and a comfort to him in his weary journeys round
Jerusalem; that she should, above all, have torn herself from the
companionship, or at least the neighborhood, of his Mother and the
disciple whom he loved; for surely the one remaining solace of her
purified passionate heart must have been to speak of her brother’s Friend
and her own dear Saviour with those who had known and loved him best, to
revisit the places he had frequented, the site of his miracles and his
sufferings, and that hill of solemn and stupendous memories where she and
they had stood together in a common agony of woe, hushing their breaths to
catch the last throb of his sacred heart. But perhaps this voluntary exile
from those beloved associations was the last sacrifice, the crowning act
of renunciation, that Jesus asked of her before he bade her farewell?
Perhaps he expressed a wish that she and Lazarus should be in a humble way
to the West what Mary and S. John were to be to the East, and that they
should forsake the land and the friends of their youth and go forth
bearing the good news of his Gospel to France? He had raised her once to
the rank of an apostle that morning after the resurrection, when he gave
her a message to the disciples and bade her go and tell them and Peter
that he was risen, and before ascending to his Father he may have told her
once more to go and be the harbinger of his resurrection to disciples who
knew him not and were yet dwelling in darkness. We shall one day know,
please God, what her motive was, but meantime we may reverently conjecture
that there was some such understanding between Our Lord and Magdalen which
induced her to leave the country that was so full of the fragrance of his
divine humanity, and where his Immaculate Mother still lingered in
childless desolation. Magdalen came to Provence, and withdrew to a wild
and barren spot, upon a mountain called, in memory no doubt of her first
interview with Jesus, Ste. Baume; it rises above a valley that runs
towards the Alps from the busy city of Marseilles. Here she dwelt in
solitude, communing only with her Saviour, and shut away from cruel men
who had crucified him. Many and beautiful are the legends grouped by the
simple piety of the inhabitants around the lonely watcher of Ste. Baume;
they tell you still in reverent and awestricken tones how seven times a
day the saint was rapt into ecstasy, and carried from her cave in the
mountain side to the summit of the mountain, and held there suspended
between heaven and earth by angels, but seeing more of heaven than of
earth, and hearing the music of the angelic choirs. The peasants show you,
even in these unmystical days of ours, the precise spot of an abrupt sally
of the mountain where the angels used to come every day at their appointed
hours to commune with the penitent and lift her off the earth. For thirty
years she lived here in penance and expectation, then the term of her
exile closed, the day came when she was to be set free from the bondage of
the flesh, and admitted once and for ever into the presence of her risen
Lord. Perhaps Jesus himself whispered the glad tidings to her in prayer;
or perhaps it was only the angels who were charged with the message; but
anyhow, tradition tells us—and who dreams of doubting it?—that Magdalen
knew by divine inspiration when the hour of her death was at hand, and
that she was filled with a great longing to receive the body and blood of
her Redeemer before entering his presence as her Judge. S. Maximin, who
had been the companion of Lazarus and shared his labors and his
pilgrimage, dwelt in the narrow plain which forms the base of the three
adjoining mountains, Ste. Baume, St. Aurelian, and Ste. Victoire—Ste.
Victoire under whose shadow Marius fought and defeated the Teutons and the
Cimbrians. The dying penitent was unable to traverse herself the distance
that separated her own wild solitude from the hermitage of S. Maximin, so
the kindly angels came and performed a last office of love for the friend
of their King, and bore her across the hills and the floods and the
valleys to the oratory of the saint: he too had been warned, and was ready
waiting for her. He heard her confession, pronounced again the words of
pardon that had been spoken first to her contrite soul by Jesus himself,
and gave her the holy communion. Then she died, and S. Maximin laid her in
an alabaster tomb that stood ready prepared for her in his oratory. The
piety of the faithful surrounded the tomb with enthusiastic reverence and
devotion; pilgrims flocked from all parts of the world to venerate the
remains of the queen of penitents, and to visit the grotto where she had
lived and the oratory where she died. Cassian, the monk, who was himself a
native of Marseilles, after graduating in the school of the Egyptian
anchorites, returned to his native city, and raised the Abbey of S. Victor
over the crypt where Lazarus slept. Ste. Baume and St. Maximin soon drew
him with irresistible attraction; he founded two noble monasteries there,
and he and his monks kept vigilant guard for a thousand years, from the
IVth to the XIIIth century, over the ground where Magdalen had wept, and
over the tomb where she rested. At the beginning of the VIIIth century,
the Saracens invaded the fair land of Provence, and for nearly three
hundred years it was a prey to their devastating fury. During this long
period of invasion, the Cassianites, terrified lest the precious remains
of Magdalen should be discovered by the enemy and desecrated, thought best
to remove them from the place where they were known to be to one of
greater secrecy and safety. They took the body, therefore, out of its
famous alabaster tomb and laid it in the tomb of S. Sidonius, having
previously translated elsewhere the relics of the holy bishop. With a view
to future verification, the monks placed on the coffin an inscription
testifying to the two translations, and narrating the manner of their
accomplishment and the circumstances which led to it. The entrance to the
crypt itself was then walled up with plaster, and overlaid further with a
quantity of rubbish. But six centuries were to roll over the arid heights
of St. Maximin before the entrance was to be broken open and the written
testimony of the Cassianites invoked. When the wars of the Saracens were
over, and men began to breathe in peace, and turn their thoughts once more
to the worship of God and the veneration of his saints, the fact of the
translation of the body of Magdalen from its original resting‐place to the
sarcophagus of S. Sidonius had faded from their recollection; it was only
repeated in a vague sort of way that the illustrious penitent had been
removed to a place of safety, which was supposed to be at a distance; some
local coincidences pointed to the Abbey of Vezelay as the spot which had
been privileged to receive and shelter her. By degrees this belief took
root in the public mind, and the stream of pilgrims began to flow once
more and with renewed enthusiasm towards the venerable old Abbey of
Burgundy; crusaders met there to invoke before starting for the defence of
the Holy Sepulchre the protection of her whom the evangelists had handed
down to us as the heroine of the Sepulchre; kings and prelates, warriors
and poets, sinners and saints, flocked to the supposed tomb of Magdalen,
“till,” in the words of a chronicler of the time, “it seemed as if all
France were running to Vezelay.” God is slow to tell his secrets. It was
not until the close of the XIIIth century that the illusion, which had
evoked so much piety and so many manifestations of faith from Christendom,
was dispelled, and the truth revealed. This is how it happened. We will
translate from the Père Lacordaire, whose _Sainte Marie Madeleine_ has
supplied us almost exclusively with the foregoing details:
“S. Louis had a nephew born of his brother, Charles of Anjou, King of
Sicily, and Count of Provence. This nephew, who was likewise called
Charles, and who on the death of his father became king of Sicily and the
county of Provence, under the title of Charles II., had for S. Magdalen a
tenderness which he inherited from his race, and which, though common to
all the chivalry of France, attained in him the highest degree of ardor
and sincerity. While he was still Prince of Salerno, God inspired him with
a great desire to solve the mystery which for six centuries had hung over
the grave of her whom he loved for the sake of Jesus Christ. He set out
therefore to St. Maximin without any display, and accompanied only by a
few gentlemen of his suite, and having interrogated the monks and the
elders of the place, he caused the trenches of the old basilica of Cassian
to be opened. On the 9th of December, 1279, after many efforts which up to
that time had been fruitless, he stript himself of his chlamyde, took a
pickaxe, and began to dig vigorously into the ground with the rest of the
workmen. Presently they struck upon a tombstone. It was that of S.
Sidonius, to the right of the crypt. The prince ordered the slab to be
raised, and it was no sooner done than the perfume which exhaled from it
announced to the beholders that the grace of God was nigh. He bent down
for a moment, then caused the sepulchre to be closed, sealed it with his
seal, and at once convoked the bishops of Provence to assist at the public
recognition of the relics. Nine days later, on the 18th of December, in
the presence of the archbishops of Arles and of Aix, and of many other
prelates and gentlemen, the prince broke the seals which he had prefixed
to the sarcophagus. The sarcophagus was opened, and the hand of the
prince, in removing the dust which covered the bones, encountered
something which, as soon as he touched it, broke with age in his fingers.
It was a piece of cork from which fell a leaf of parchment covered with
writing that was still legible. It bore what follows: ‘L’an de la Nativitè
du Seigneur 710, le sixième jour du mois de Décembre, sous le règne
d’Eudes, très pieux Roi des français, au temps des ravages de la perfide
nation des Sarrasins, le corps de la très chère et venerable Marie
Madeleine a été très secrètement et pendant la nuit transféré de son
sépulchre d’albâtre dans celui‐ci, qui est de marbre et d’où l’on a retiré
le corps de Sidoine, afin qu’il y soit plus caché et à l’abri de la dite
perfide nation.’(223) A deed setting forth this inscription and the manner
of its discovery was drawn up by the prince, the archbishops, and bishops
present, and Charles in great joy, after placing his seals again upon the
tomb, summoned for the fifth of May of the following year an assembly of
prelates, counts, barons, knights, and magistrates of Provence and the
neighboring counties to assist at the solemn translation of the relics
which he had been instrumental in raising from the obscurity of a long
series of ages.”
The news of the event was hailed with a shout of joy by all Christendom;
kings and prelates vied with each other in doing honor to the new‐found
treasure; gold and precious stones poured in in quantities to adorn the
shrine which was destined to replace the alabaster tomb of S. Maximin.
“When the appointed day arrived,” continues the Père Lacordaire, “the
Prince of Salerno, in the presence of a vast and illustrious assembly,
opened for the third time the monument which he had sealed, and of which
the seals were certified to be intact. The skull of the saint was whole
except for the lower jaw‐bone, which was wanting;(224) the tongue
subsisted, dried up, but adhering to the palate; the limbs presented only
bones stripped of the flesh; but a sweet perfume exhaled from the remains
that were now restored to light and to the piety of souls.... The fact had
already been made known of a sign altogether divine having been seen upon
the forehead of Magdalen. This was a particle of soft, transparent flesh
on the left temple, to the right, consequently, of the spectator; all
those who beheld it, inspired at the same moment by a unanimous act of
faith, cried out that it was there, on that very spot, that Jesus must
have touched Magdalen when he said to her after the resurrection, _Noli me
tangere!_ There was no proof of the fact, but what else could they think
who beheld on that brow so palpable a trace of life which had triumphantly
resisted thirteen centuries of the grave? Chance has no meaning for the
Christian; and when he beholds Nature superseded in her laws, he ascends
instinctively to the Supreme Cause—the Cause that never acts without a
motive, and whose motives reveal themselves to hearts that do not reject
the light.... Five centuries after this first translation, the _noli me
tangere_, as that instinct of faith had irrevocably named it, subsisted
still in the same place and with the same characters; the fact was
authenticated by a deputation of the Cour des Comptes of Aix. It was not
until the year 1780, on the eve of an epoch that was to spare no memory
and no relic, that the miraculous particle detached itself from the skull;
and even then the medical men who were called in by the highest authority
in the county certified that the _noli me tangere_ had adhered to the
forehead by the force of a vital principle which had survived there.”
The piety of Charles of Anjou raised a stately temple to the penitent of
Bethany on the site of the oratory of S. Maximin. Boniface VIII., who had
beheld with his own eyes the miraculous presence of the _noli me tangere_,
endowed the basilica munificently, and authorized the king to transfer the
custody of the relics from the Order of Cassianites, who had formerly held
it, to that of the Sons of S. Dominic, since become renowned through the
world under the name of _Frères prêcheurs_. A great number of popes
visited the shrine, and every king of France held it a duty and a
privilege to come to S. Maximin and Ste. Baume, and invoke the aid and
protection of the saint; up to Louis XIV., hardly a sovereign neglected
this public tribute of respect and devotion to her; but with the _Grand
Monarque_ the procession of royal pilgrims came to an end. The red tide of
revolution arose, and waged war against men’s faith, and destroyed its
most touching manifestations and its noblest monuments. It broke, however,
harmless, at the foot of S. Maximin. Not a stone of the grand old pile was
touched, not an altar profaned, not even a picture stolen from the mouldy
and unguarded walls; the most precious part of its treasure, the relics of
Magdalen, which had been carefully concealed, were found intact, and duly
authenticated as before. Ste. Baume was less fortunate; the storm that
respected the tomb showed no mercy to the grotto which had witnessed
Magdalen’s ecstatic communings with her Lord; the hospital, the convent,
and the church adjoining it were completely destroyed; nothing remained
but a barren rock and a portion of the neighboring forest. In 1822, a
partial restoration was effected; the vast and massive monastery was
replaced by a temporary building of the lightest and cheapest materials,
little better than a lath and plaster shed, to keep the monks under cover;
the grotto itself, once so sumptuously adorned by the piety of pilgrims,
was left in a state of nakedness and neglect, its costly lamps once
abundantly fed with aromatic oils were gone, their lights extinguished,
like the faith that had kindled them. The church was rebuilt in the same
superficial style as the convent, and solemnly reconsecrated in the
presence of forty thousand souls assembled in the forest and down in the
plain. But the material temple, great or small, is more easily rebuilt
than the spiritual one; the temple of stone was raised up again, but where
was the temple of the spirit which had animated it? Where was the
architect who would rebuild this, who would collect the scattered
fragments, and breathe upon the dead bones, and make them live, and bind
them as of yore into a body of devout and simple‐hearted worshippers?
Many, remembering the bygone glories of Ste. Baume, wished that a prophet
would arise and work this wonder in Provence. Perhaps the wish took the
form of a prayer in some loving hearts, and so brought about its
accomplishment. The valiant‐hearted son of S. Dominic, the Père
Lacordaire, was to be the prophet of their desires. He rose up and
upbraided the people of Provence for their ingratitude to the memory of
their illustrious patroness, and for their decayed faith, and exhorted
them to stir up the dead embers of a devotion that had formerly been the
edification and joy of Christendom to repair and beautify the deserted
grotto of Mary Magdalen, and rekindle its lamps, and restore the
pilgrimage of Ste. Baume in its ancient fervor. The work was one that
appealed strongly to the sympathies of the Marseillese; but this was not
enough to ensure its success. In order to make the sympathy effectual, the
Père Lacordaire needed a helpmate who would go about amongst the people
and put their good‐will into a practical form for him—some one who would
second his exertions by docile and zealous and intelligent co‐operation.
He looked around him, and his choice fell upon Amélie. He knew her, and
thought she was of all others the person best suited to his purpose. It
was no easy or pleasant task the setting on foot of a movement such as
this; the preliminaries were sure to be full of difficulties, often of the
sort that make self‐love wince and smart; there was plenty of ridicule in
store, a goodly harvest of sneers and snubs to be garnered at the outset,
rude opposition to be endured from those who had no faith at all, and
chilling indifference from those who looked upon anything like a return to
the forms and symbols of the middle ages as poetic enthusiasm not
practicable in the XIXth century. It was just the kind of work to put the
daughter of S. Dominic to. She did not disappoint the Père Lacordaire; but
responded as promptly to the call as his own fiery spirit could have
wished. It was in Amélie’s house that the eloquent Dominican inaugurated
the _œuvre_ of S. Baume, and told the story of the great penitent’s life
and death. From the salon in the Rue Grignan the burning words of the
orator went forth to all Provence and stirred many hearts. A committee was
soon formed for raising the necessary funds towards the restoration of the
grotto as a preliminary to the reopening of the pilgrimage. The Père
Lacordaire, as if the more prominently to record the services Amélie had
rendered in the work so far, and to associate her name with its progress,
desired that the meetings should be held at her house; and so they were,
and continued to be regularly until she left Marseilles for Rome. She
lived to see their joint labors crowned with success; the grotto assumed
gradually something of its ancient beauty; an inn was built on the plain
at the foot of the mountain for the accommodation of travellers who came
from a distance, pilgrims were once more seen toiling in great numbers up
the steep paths of the forest leading to the grotto, and filling the glade
with the sound of canticles, and the feast of S. Magdalen, the 22d of
July, was again celebrated with something of the pomp and fervor of olden
times.
But events of this stirring and, so to speak, romantic interest were rare
in Amélie’s life. Her path lay rather along the valleys than upon the
heights above. The doors of the Rue Grignan were often open indeed to the
wise and learned, and occasionally to the great ones of the earth; but the
visits of these were few and far between compared to those of the poor and
humble, who besieged it at all hours of the day and night. The poor looked
upon it as a centre of their own, where they had a right to come at all
times and seasons and make themselves at home. They did this at last so
completely that Amélie was sometimes obliged to slip out by a back door in
order to escape from their precious but pitiless importunity. But no
importuning, however persistent or unseasonable, could ruffle her
unalterable sweetness, or surprise her into a sharp answer or an abrupt
ungraciousness of manner. Hers was the charity that is not easily
provoked: it made her stern to self, but long‐suffering towards others,
slow to see evil, softly forbearing to the weaknesses of all.
This home work was only an episode in her everyday labors. There was not a
mission, or a hospital, or a refuge, or a good work of any sort in the
town, that she had not to do with in one way or another. Just as we often
hear it said of a woman of the world, “She is of every _fête_,” so it used
to be said in Marseilles of Amélie, “She is of every charity.” One of the
most venerable fathers of the Society of Jesus declared that it was
chiefly to her zeal and intelligent exertions that the Jesuits owed the
establishment of their mission at Marseilles. The Père de Magdalon looked
upon her as his right hand; he enlisted her co‐operation in all his
undertakings, and he used to say that it was to her he owed in a great
measure the success of the Maison de Retraite of S. Barthélémy, the last
work of his apostolate, and which he lived to see blessed with such
abundant fruits. The _Filles de la Charité_ were long the special objects
of her liberality and devoted exertions; then came the Sisters of Hope,
whose services to the sick are so praiseworthy, and whose presence amongst
them was hailed so gratefully by the Marseillese. When the _Petites Sœurs
des Pauvres_ were in any difficulty, they looked to Amélie to help them
out of it, and they speak with effusion still of the many proofs of
generosity they received from her, and of her unfailing readiness to
assist them whenever they appealed to her. She seemed to hire herself out
as a beast of burden to do the work and the bidding of every one who
wanted her. When there was a question of establishing the _Frères
Prêcheurs_ at Marseilles, she multiplied herself tenfold. No obstacles
could deter her in the service of the sons of her beloved S. Dominic; she
found a house for them, and paid all the expenses of their installation.
But whatever the work was that came under her hand, she did it, and as
promptly and earnestly as if it were the one of all others she most
delighted in; there was no exclusiveness, no narrowing of her sympathies
to an _idée fixe_ either in piety or in charity; those who had the
privilege of being her fellow‐laborers for many years declare they never
once knew her charity to flag or fail to answer a fresh demand upon it;
the supply was inexhaustible, and seemed to increase in proportion as it
spent itself. Her health was wretched and kept her in almost constant
physical pain; yet her activity was extraordinary, and, considering the
chronic sufferings she had to contend with for the greater part of her
life, the amount of work she contrived to get through may be regarded as
little short of miraculous. She rose habitually at five, spent several
hours in prayer, and assisted at the Holy Sacrifice before beginning the
active duties of the day. These lay wherever there were sick to be tended,
and sorrowing ones to be comforted, and sinners to be converted. She was a
member of the Congregation of S. Elizabeth for visiting the hospitals, and
gave a good deal of time to this work, for which she had a particular
devotion. Her gentleness and singularly attractive manner fitted her
especially for dealing with aching bodies and sorrowing hearts, and it was
not a very rare thing to see Amélie succeed in melting the heart of some
obdurate sinner with whom the entreaties and repeated efforts of the
chaplain and the nuns had failed. The same sympathetic responsiveness that
she threw into so many different good works marked her intercourse with
individuals; those whom she was tending or consoling or advising always
felt that for the time being they were the chief object of interest to her
in life, and that she was giving her whole heart to them. She made this
impression perhaps more especially on the poor, to whom the sympathy of
those above them has such a charm and such a gift of consolation. An
amusing instance of it occurred once in the case of an old woman whom
Amélie had been nursing for some time; she put so much goodwill into all
she did, and performed the offices of a sick‐nurse so affectionately, that
the poor old soul believed she had inspired her with some unaccountable
personal attachment; she returned it enthusiastically, and was never tired
testifying her gratitude and love. One day, however, Amélie arrived in the
poor little garret—tidy and clean, thanks to her—but, instead of being
welcomed with the usual smiles and embraces, the old woman set her face
like a flint, and preserved a sullen silence. For some time she
obstinately refused to say what was amiss with her, but finally, shamed by
the coaxing and evident distress of her nurse, she confessed that the day
before she had had a bitter disappointment. “I thought,” she said, “that
you loved me, but I find I was under a delusion; you don’t care a straw
for me; they tell me you do for every sick body in the town just what you
have been doing for me.” It was with great difficulty that Amélie was able
to console her and obtain her forgiveness for being so universal in her
charity.
But though her creed dealt in no exclusions, there were two classes of her
fellow‐creatures who above the rest had a decided attraction for Amélie:
these were prisoners and soldiers. She yearned towards the former with the
true spirit of him who loved the publicans and sinners, who gave the
first‐fruits of his death to one of them on Calvary, and who prayed for
them all with his last breath, saying: “Father, forgive them, for they
know not what they do!” The wonders that Amélie worked in the gloomy cells
of the Fort St. Nicholas, the sudden and admirable returns to God that she
obtained from the condemned, are not to be counted; not by men, at least.
Day after day she was to be found in the midst of them, teaching old men
their catechism, comforting and exhorting all, preparing them for death,
washing and dressing their sores, combing their hair, performing
cheerfully and affectionately the most disgusting offices. Her labors in
behalf of the troops are perhaps the most remarkable part of her life. She
had for many years been very zealous in her endeavors to promote religious
instruction amongst the soldiers, but her mission in this direction dates
chiefly from the Crimean war. During this brilliant campaign, which
brought so much glory and cost so much blood to the Allied armies, the
thought of the sufferings of the soldiers in the trenches and on the
battle‐fields filled Amélie’s heart to the momentary exclusion of all
other interests and preoccupations. Her whole time was spent working for
them, and begging and praying for them. She inspired all who came near her
with something of her own ardor and tenderness in the cause. She set up
societies among her friends for making clothes and lint for the sufferers,
and for collecting money to procure all that could comfort and alleviate
them. Her efforts were crowned with abundant success. Now, as on many
other occasions, money flowed in to her from all sides, sometimes from
strangers at a distance, for the fame of her charity had spread much
further than the humble daughter of S. Dominic herself suspected, and many
benevolent people who wished to give, and knew not how to apply their
offerings, sent them to her, satisfied that they would be well and wisely
employed. The way in which large sums of money sometimes dropped into her
lap, as it were from the sky, at some opportune moment when she was in
dire want of it for some case of distress, led many of her humble
_protégés_ to believe that it came to her miraculously. But, while mindful
of their bodies, Amélie’s first solicitude was for the souls of the brave
fellows who were going out to face death in the service of their country;
while working so hard to procure all that could heal and solace their
temporal sufferings, she was laboring still more assiduously in behalf of
their spiritual interests. Nor did her efforts confine themselves
exclusively to the soldiers, they extended to the officers as well, and
much more difficult she often found them to manage than the rough‐and‐
ready men under their command. Many a droll story is still told at
Marseilles of the tricks by which they sometimes evaded her attempts to
catch them in her zealous toils and make them remember that they had
another enemy to fight and to conquer besides the soldiers of Holy Russia.
Once two young officers of good family and fortune, whose lives were not
the most edifying to the community, were pointed out to Amélie by one of
their brother officers, a fervent Catholic, as fitting subjects for her
zeal. He undertook to bring them to the Rue Grignan under the pretence of
introducing them to an old and charming friend of his, if Amélie would
promise to try and convert them. She promised of course to _try_, and the
two scapegraces made their appearance, never suspecting that a trap had
been laid for them. The conversation dwelt upon the great topic of the
day, the war, Amélie carefully avoiding the most distant allusion to the
spiritual condition of her visitors. The young men were charmed with her
affability and _esprit_, and, when she asked them to return with their
friend in a few days and dine with her, they accepted her invitation with
delight. During dinner their hostess alluded to the numerous pilgrimages
that were being performed every day to Notre Dame de Garde; few of the
soldiers or sailors started for the Crimea from Marseilles without
climbing up the hill to salute Our Lady and ask her blessing on their
arms. The young men confessed that they had never made the pilgrimage and
evinced little admiration for their more devout comrades; Amélie seemed
surprised, but not at all scandalized, at the frank admission, and
proposed that they should both make the pilgrimage next morning and hear
Mass there with her at eight o’clock. They assented with ready courtesy,
inwardly treating the expedition as a harmless joke, and took leave of
their hostess, very much delighted with her, and not much terrified by the
salutary projects that might be lurking in her breast with regard to the
morrow. They were at the bottom of the hill punctually at half‐past seven,
and toiled up to the church, where they expected to see Amélie already on
the lookout for them. But they looked round the church and saw no sight of
her. Taking for granted that she was not there, and that something had
interfered to prevent her keeping the appointment, they took themselves
off with the comfortable feeling of having done their duty, and behaved
like gentlemen, and come safe out of it. The morning was raw and cold, and
they were both tired after the long pull uphill, so on their way down they
turned into a little dairy where hungry pilgrims were comforting
themselves with cups of coffee. There was a good fire in the place, and
they sat down to enjoy it, and dawdled a good while over their hot coffee,
wondering what kind trick of Fortune had prevented the enemy from
appearing in the field; when lo! looking up suddenly, they beheld the
truant peering in at them through the window. The pair started as if they
had seen a ghost. But Amélie knew human nature too well to press her
advantage at such a moment; she smiled, shook her finger threateningly,
and went her way down the hill, leaving the two young men less triumphant
than she had found them, and very anxious to clear themselves of having
broken their word to a lady, and eager to redeem it a second time if
Amélie desired. She did desire it, and it was not long before one of the
two blessed her for having done so. He was ordered off with his regiment
soon after, and before setting sail ascended once more to the shrine of
Notre Dame de Garde in a different spirit and with a very different
purpose.
Her intercourse with the troops during this period gave Amélie an insight
into the deplorable ignorance in matters of faith that existed in the
majority of them, and the absence of all religious instruction in the
army; it filled her with surprise and grief, and she determined to set to
work and bring about a change in both.
Reforms are proverbially difficult, and in any branch of the public
service pre‐eminently so. But difficulties only stimulate strong hearts to
more strenuous efforts. Amélie was, owing to her high intelligence, her
well‐known virtue, and her widespread relations, better calculated than
most people perhaps to succeed in the undertaking; besides, whatever the
obstacles were, she never reckoned with human means when God’s work was to
be done; she called him to the rescue, and left the issue in his hands. It
would be impossible to recount all she did and suffered in this most
arduous undertaking, the journeys she took, the petitions she drew up, the
letters she wrote, the disappointments and antagonism that attended it in
the beginning, and the physical and moral fatigue that it involved all
through. The frequent and successive journeys of eighteen hours to Paris
and the same back would have been a serious trial of strength to a strong
person; but to Amélie, whose health was extremely delicate, and who hardly
ever knew the sensation of being without pain, most frequently acute and
intense pain, the wear and tear of those journeys in the sultry heat of
summer and the bitter cold of winter alike must have been terrible. But
she made small account of her body, she drove it on like a beast of
burden, goading it with the ardor of her spirit, and never gave in to its
lamentations until it positively refused to go on. Her own shortcomings
were, however, the lightest portion of her difficulties. She had obstacles
to overcome on every side, especially in quarters where it was most
essential for her to find approval and assistance. Silvio Pellico said it
was easier to traverse a battle‐field than the antechamber of a king, and
the same may be said most likely of the antechamber of a minister. At
least Amélie found it so. Many a brave spirit might well have given up in
despair before the contemptuous rudeness and petty opposition of small
functionaries, and the inaccessible coldness of great ones, and the
disheartening predictions of well‐wishers who had gone through similar
experiences, and knew what it was to want anything, even in the natural
course of things, done at the War Office; but Amélie’s courage never
flagged for a moment. By degrees her perseverance began to meet with some
signs of success. It was known that one military man in high repute
supported her views, and was doing his best to enable her to carry them
out; this converted others. Several who had in the first instance treated
her project as impracticable, or unnecessary, or simply absurd, one after
another came over to her; it was not always because she convinced them,
but she won them; they might resist her arguments, but it was impossible
to come often in contact with her without feeling the contagion of her
earnestness and sincerity of purpose. Her labors were finally crowned with
abundant success. She obtained all the concessions she asked, and every
facility for carrying them out and improving the spiritual condition of
the soldiers. One of her chief anxieties had been for the condemned
prisoners in the Fort St. Nicholas. She obtained permission for one of the
dungeons to be turned into a chapel there, and it was henceforth her
delight to go there on the great feasts and decorate the altar, and make
it gay with lights and flowers for the captives. A chaplain was appointed
to the fort, and he was allowed every facility for the exercise of his
ministry.
The little _enfants de troupe_ whose youth recommended them to Amélie’s
solicitude were provided with the needful means of religious instruction
by the establishment of a school, over which she herself presided from
time to time, cheering on the pupils by good advice, and occasional
presents to the most industrious and deserving. General de Courtigis, who
commanded the garrison for many years at Marseilles, and left behind him a
memory respected by all good men, had been from the first a staunch ally
of Amélie’s in her endeavors to introduce a Christian spirit amongst both
the officers and men. At her suggestion he organized a military Mass every
Sunday at the Church of S. Charles, and there a great number of men, with
the general at their head, assisted regularly at the Holy Sacrifice. It
was a great treat to Amélie, whenever she could find time, to go and
assist at it with them. She enjoyed the martial appearance and reverent
bearing of the soldiers with a sort of motherly pride, and the sharp word
of command, and the clanking of the bayonets when they presented arms at
the solemn moment of consecration, used to send a thrill of emotion
through her frame that often melted her to tears.
“Oh!” she was heard once to exclaim, on coming out of S. Charles’, “what a
grand and consoling spectacle it is, to see our soldiers publicly
worshipping God! One feels that they must be invincible in battle when
they set out with the blessing of God on their arms.”
The troops, on their side, repaid her interest in them by the most
enthusiastic affection. They used to call her _notre mère_ amongst
themselves, and it delighted Amélie to hear a grizzly old veteran address
her by this familiar name. Sometimes the brave fellows’ gratitude
expressed itself in a way that was rather trying to their adopted mother.
A regiment which had been quartered at Marseilles, and received many
proofs of zeal and kindness from Amélie during its stay there, happened to
hear, when passing through Lyons some years later, that she was stopping
there. They started off at once in full force, and gave her a military
serenade under her windows. Amélie, of course, showed herself at the
window, and acknowledged the honor, but this did not satisfy the soldiers:
nothing would do them but she should come out and shake hands with every
man in the regiment.
Much as Amélie shrank from public notice or praise, her humility could not
prevent her extraordinary exertions in behalf of the troops, and the
success which had attended them, from shining out before men. The nature
of the undertaking had necessarily brought her in contact with the most
influential military men of the day, both at Marseilles and in Paris.
These gentlemen had ample opportunity to appreciate her character and
judge of the value of her services; and though so many had opposed her in
the beginning, when they saw her labors triumphant, success raised her so
highly in their estimation that they thought it would be becoming to offer
a public tribute of their esteem and gratitude by decorating her with the
Cross of the Legion of Honor. Accordingly, a letter was despatched one day
from the War Office, informing the quiet, unpretending friend of the poor
soldier that the government, to testify their approval of her conduct,
invested her with the most honorable mark of distinction it was in their
power to bestow. Amélie received the announcement at first as a joke. The
idea of her going about the world with the Cross or the red ribbon
fastened to her black gown, and being greeted with the military salute and
presented arms to whenever the symbol caught the eye of a soldier or a
sentry, while she threaded her way through the busy streets of Marseilles,
struck her as so altogether comical that she could only laugh at it. But
neither the authorities nor her friends saw any laughing matter in it; the
latter combated her refusal so strongly that Amélie was perplexed; she
knew not how to reconcile her deference to their wishes with what appeared
to her little short of an act of treason to Christian humility and common
sense; they argued that, by accepting the Cross, she would excite a good
feeling in the minds of many towards the government, a result which in
those turbulent and antagonistic times was always desirable, and, in the
next place, it would invest her with a half‐official position in certain
circumstances that she might find very useful to others in her relations
with minor functionaries. This last consideration had some weight with
Amélie; she turned it to account, though not in the way her friends
desired. She wrote to the minister, declining gratefully an honor which
she did not feel qualified to accept, but requested that he would reward
what he was pleased to call her services by granting her a _droit de
grace_. This would entitle her to present petitions for a commutation of
sentence in case of military prisoners, and even on certain specified
occasions to commute the sentence herself. The privilege was granted at
once, and, if ever virtue had a sweet reward in this world, it was when
Amélie exercised it for the first time in favor of one of the captives of
Fort St. Nicholas. Her friends rejoiced with her, and almost forgave her
for refusing the sterile honor of the Cross of the Legion of Honor. They
never knew, so carefully did her humility keep its secret, that the
government, when granting her the _droit de grace_, exacted as a condition
that she should submit to become a member of the Legion of Honor. It was
years after that a friend, who had heard something in high quarters which
aroused his suspicions, and who was intimate enough with Amélie to take
the liberty of catechising her on the subject, asked point‐blank if she
was decorated, and under promise of secrecy learned the truth.
To Be Concluded In Our Next.
The Progressionists.
From The German Of Conrad Von Bolanden.
Chapter IX. Progress Grows Jolly. Concluded.
In passing near the tables Gerlach overheard conversations which revealed
to him unmistakably the communistic aspirations and tendencies prevailing
among the lower orders, their fiendish hatred of religion and the clergy,
their corruption and appalling ignorance. On every hand he perceived
symptoms of an alarmingly unhealthy condition of society. He heard
blasphemies uttered against the Divinity which almost caused his blood to
run cold; sacred things were scoffed at in terms so coarse and with an
animus so plainly satanical that his hair rose on his head. It was clear
to him that the firmest supports, the only true foundations of the social
order, were tottering—rotted away by an incurable corruption.
In Gerlach’s life, also, as in that of many other men, there had been a
period of mental struggle and of doubt. He, too, had at one time found
himself face to face with questions the solution of which involved the
whole aim of his existence. During this period of mental unrest, he had
thought and studied much about faith and science, but not with a silly
parade of superficial scepticism. He had resolutely engaged in the soul
struggle, and had tried to end it for once and all. Supported by a good
early training and a disposition naturally noble, instructed and guided by
books of solid learning, he had come out from that crisis stronger in
faith and more correct in his views of human science. The scenes which he
was witnessing reminded him vividly of that turning‐point in his life;
they were to him an additional proof that man’s dignity disappears as soon
as he refuses to follow the divine guidance of religion. Grave in mood, he
returned to the table around which were gathered the chieftains. The marks
of respect shown to the millionaire were numerous and flattering. Even the
bluff Sand exerted himself unusually in paying his respects to the wealthy
landholder, and Erdblatt, whose embarrassed financial condition enabled
him beyond them all to appreciate the worth of money, filled a glass with
his own hand, and reached it to Mr. Conrad with the deference of an
accomplished butler. Gerlach was pleased to speak in terms of praise of
the nut‐brown beverage, which greatly tickled Belladonna, the fat brewer.
Naturally enough, the conversation turned upon the subject of the
celebration.
“I confess I am not quite clear respecting the purpose of your city in the
matter of schools,” said Mr. Conrad. “How do you intend to arrange the
school system?”
“In such a way as to make it accord with the requirements of the times and
the progressive spirit of civilization,” answered Hans Shund. “An end must
be put to priest rule in the schools. The establishment of common schools
will be a decided step towards this object. For a while, of course, the
priests will be allowed to visit the schools at specified times, but their
influence and control in school matters will be greatly restricted.
Education will be withdrawn from the church’s supervision, and after a few
years we hope to reach the point when the school‐rooms will be closed
altogether against the priests. There is not a man of culture but will
agree that children should not be required to learn things which are out
of date, and the import of which must only excite smiles of compassion.”
“Whom do you intend to put in the place of the clergy?” inquired Mr.
Conrad.
“We intend to impart useful information and a moral sense in harmony with
the spirit of the age,” replied Hans Shund.
“It seems to me the elementary branches have been very competently taught
heretofore in our schools, consequently I do not see the need of a change
on this head,” said Gerlach. “But you have not understood my question. I
mean, who are to fill the office of instructors in morals and in
religion?”
The chieftains looked puzzled, for such a question they had not expected
to hear from the wealthiest man of the country.
“You see, Mr. Gerlach,” said Sand bluntly, “religion must be done away
with entirely. We haven’t any use for such trash. Children ought to spend
their time in learning something more sensible than the catechism.”
“I am not disposed to believe that what you have just uttered is a correct
expression of the general opinion of this community on the subject of the
school question,” returned the millionaire with some warmth. “It is
impossible to bring up youth morally without religion. You are a
housebuilder, Mr. Sand. What would you think of the man who would expect
you to build him a house without a foundation—a castle in the air?”
“Why, I would regard him as nothing less than a fool,” cried Sand.
“The case is identically the same with moral education. Morality is an
edifice which a man must spend his life in laboring at. Religion is the
groundwork of this edifice. Moral training without religion is an
impossibility. It would be just as possible to build a house in the air,
as to train up a child morally without a religious belief, without being
convinced of the existence of a holy and just God.”
“Facts prove the contrary,” maintained Hans Shund. “Millions of persons
are moral who have no religious belief.”
“That’s an egregious mistake, sir,” opposed the landholder. “The
repudiation of a Supreme Being and the violent extinction of the idea of
the Divinity in the breast are of themselves grave offences against moral
conscience. I grant you that, in the eyes of the public, thousands of men
pass for moral who have no faith in religion. But public opinion is
anything but a criterion of certainty when the moral worth of a man is to
be determined. A man’s interior is a region which cannot be viewed by the
eye of the public. You know yourselves that there are men who pass for
honorable, moral, pure men, whose private habits are exceedingly filthy
and corrupt.”
Hans Shund’s color turned a palish yellow; the eyes of the chieftains
sank.
“Besides, gentleman, it would be labor lost to try to educate youth
independently of religion. Man is by his very nature a religious being. It
is useless to attempt to educate the young without a knowledge of God and
of revealed religion; to be able to do so you would previously have to
pluck out of their own breasts the sense of right and wrong, and out of
their souls the idea of God, which are innate in both. Were the attempt
made, however, believe me, gentlemen, the yearning after God, alive in the
human breast, would soon impel the generation brought up independently of
religion to seek after false gods. For this very reason we know of no
people in history that did not recognize and worship some divinity, were
it but a tree or a stone, that served them for an object of adoration. In
my opinion, it would be far more indicative of genuine progress to adhere
to the God of Christians, who is incontestably holy, just, omnipotent, and
kind, whilst to return to the sacred oaks of ancient Germany or to adopt
the fetichism of uncivilized tribes would be a most monstrous reaction,
the most degrading barbarism.”
The chieftains looked nonplussed. Earnest thinking and investigation upon
subjects pertaining to religion were not customary among the disciples of
progress. They looked upon religion as something so common and trivial
that anybody was free to argue upon and condemn it with a few flippant or
smart sayings. But the millionaire was now disclosing views so new and
vast, that their weak vision was completely dazzled, and their steps upon
the unknown domain became unsteady.
Mr. Seicht, observing the embarrassment of the leaders, felt it his duty
to hasten to their relief. His polemical weapons were drawn from the
armory of bureaucracy.
“The progressive development of humanity,” said Mr. Seicht, “has revealed
an admirable substitute for all religious ideas. A state well organized
can exist splendidly without any religion. Nay, I do not hesitate to
maintain that religion is a drawback to the development of the modern
state, and that, therefore, the state should have nothing whatever to do
with religion. An invisible world should not exert an influence upon a
state—the wants of the times are the only rule to be consulted.”
“What do you understand by a state, sir?” asked the millionaire.
“A state,” replied the official, “is a union of men whose public life is
regulated by laws which every individual is bound to observe.”
“You speak of laws; upon what basis are these laws founded?”
“Upon the basis of humanity, morality, liberty, and right,” answered the
official glibly.
“And what do you consider moral and just?”
“Whatever accords with the civilization of the age.”
A faint smile passed over the severe features of Mr. Conrad.
“I was watching the procession,” spoke he. “I have seen the religious
feelings of a large number of citizens publicly ridiculed and grossly
insulted. Was that moral? Was it just? You are determined to oust God and
religion from the schools; yet there are thousands in the country who
desire and endeavor to secure a religious education for their children. Is
it moral and just to utterly disregard the wishes of these thousands? Does
it accord with a profession of humanity and freedom to put constraint on
the consciences of fellow‐citizens?”
“The persons of whom you speak are a minority in the state, and the
minority is obliged to yield to the will of the majority,” answered
Seicht.
“It follows, then, that the basis of morality and justice is superior
numbers?”
“Yes, it is! In a state, it appertains to the majority to determine and
regulate everything.”
“Gentlemen,” spoke Gerlach with great seriousness, “as I was a moment ago
strolling over this place, I overheard language at several tables, which
was unmistakably communistic. Laborers and factorymen were maintaining
that wealth is unequally distributed; that, whilst a small number are
immensely rich, a much greater number are poor and destitute; that
progress will have to advance to a point when an equal division of
property must be made. Now, the poor and the laboring population are in
the majority. Should they vote for a partition, should they demand from us
what hitherto we have regarded as exclusively our own, we, gentlemen, will
in consistency be forced to accept the decree of the majority as perfectly
moral and just—will we not?”
There was profound silence.
“I, for my part, should most emphatically protest against such a ruling of
the majority,” declared Greifmann.
“Your protest would be contrary to morals and equity; for, according to
Mr. Seicht, only what the majority wills is moral and just,” returned the
landowner. “And, in mentioning partition of property, I hinted at a red
monster which is not any longer a mere goblin, but a thing of real flesh
and bone. We are on the verge of a fearful social revolution which
threatens to break up society. If there is no holy and just God; if he has
not revealed himself, and man is not obliged to submit to his will; if the
only basis of right and of morals is the wish of the majority, this
terrible social revolution must be moral and just, for the majority wills
it and carries it out.”
“Of course, there must be a limit,” said the official feebly.
“The demands of the majority must be reasonable.”
“What do you understand by reasonable, sir?”
“I call reasonable whatever accords with the sense of right, with sound
thinking, with moral ideas.”
“Sense of right—moral ideas? I beg you to observe that these notions
differ vastly from the sole authority of numbers. You have trespassed upon
God’s kingdom in giving your explanation, for ideas are supersensible;
they are the thought of God himself. And the sense of right was not
implanted in the human breast by the word of a majority; it was placed
there by the Creator of man.”
The official was driven to the wall. The chieftains thoughtfully stared at
their beer‐pots.
“It is clear that the will of the majority alone cannot be accepted as the
basis of a state,” said Schwefel.
“The life of society cannot be put at the mercy of the rude and fickle
masses. There must be a moral order, willed and regulated by a supreme
ruler, and binding upon every man. This is plain.”
“I agree with you, sir,” said the millionaire. “Let us continue building
on Christian principles. As everybody knows, our civilization has sprung
from Christianity. If we tear down the altars and destroy the seats from
which lessons of Christian morality are taught, confusion must inevitably
follow. And I, gentlemen, have too exalted an opinion of the German
nation, of its earnest and religious spirit, to believe that it can be
ever induced to fall away completely from God and his holy law. Infidelity
is an unhealthy tendency of our times; it is a pernicious superstition
which sound sense and noble feeling will ultimately triumph over. We will
do well to continue advancing in science, art, refinement, and industry,
in true liberty and the right understanding of truth; we will thus be
making real progress, such progress as I am proud to call myself a
partisan of.”
The chieftains maintained silence. Some nodded assent. Hans Shund gave an
angry bite to his pipe‐stem, and puffed a heavy cloud of smoke across the
table.
“I have confidence in the enlightenment and good sense of our people,”
said he. “You have called modern progress ‘a pernicious superstition and
an unhealthy tendency of the times,’ Mr. Gerlach,” turning towards the
millionaire with a bow. “I regret this view of yours.”
“Which I have substantiated and proved,” interrupted Gerlach.
“True, sir! Your proofs have been striking, and I do not feel myself
competent to refute them. But I can point you to something more powerful
than argument. Look at this scene; see these happy people meeting and
enjoying one another’s society in most admirable harmony and order. Is not
this spectacle a beautiful illustration and vindication of the moral
spirit of progress?”
“These people are jubilant from the effect of beer, why shouldn’t they be?
But, sir, a profound observer does not ‘suffer himself to be deceived by
mere appearances.’ ”
An uproar and commotion at a distance interrupted the millionaire. At the
same instant a policeman approached out of breath.
“Your honor, the factorymen and the laborers are attacking one another!”
“What are you raising such alarm for,” said Hans Shund gruffly. “It is
only a small squabble, such as will occur everywhere in a crowd.”
“I ask your honor’s pardon: it is not a small squabble, it is a bloody
battle.”
“Well, part the wranglers.”
“We cannot manage them; there are too many of them. Shall I apply for
military?”
“Hell and thunder—military!” cried Hans Shund, getting on his feet. “Are
you in your senses?”
“Several men have already been carried off badly wounded,” reported the
policeman further. “You have no idea how serious the affray is, and it is
getting more and more so; the friends of both sides are rushing in to aid
their own party. The police force is not a match for them.”
Women, screaming and in tears, were rushing in every direction. The bands
had ceased playing, and noise and confusion resounded from the scene of
action. Louise ran to take her brother’s arm in consternation. The wives
and daughters of the chieftains huddled round their natural protectors.
“Hurry away and report this at the military post,” was Seicht’s order to
the policeman. “The feud is getting alarming. One moment!”
Tearing a leaf from a memorandum book, he wrote a short note, which he
sent by the messenger.
“Off to the post—be expeditious!”
Louise hastened with her brother and Gerlach senior to their carriage, and
her feeling of security returned only when the noise of the combat had
died away in the distance.
The next day the town papers contained the following notice: “The
beautiful celebration of yesterday, which, on account of its object, will
be long remembered by the citizens of this community, was unfortunately
interrupted by a serious conflict between the laborers and factorymen. A
great many were wounded during the _mêlée_, of whom five have since died,
and it required the interference of an armed force to separate the
combatants.”
Chapter X. Brown Bread And Bonnyclabber.
Seraphin had not gone to the celebration. He remained at home on the plea
of not feeling well. He was stretched upon a sofa, and his soul was
engaged in a desperate conflict. What it was impossible for himself to
look upon, had been viewed by his father with composure: the burlesque
procession, the public derision of holy practices, the mockery of the
Redeemer of the world, in whose place had been put a broken bottle on the
symbol of salvation. He himself had been stunned by the spectacle; and his
father? Was it his father? Again, his father had accompanied the brother
and sister to the infamous celebration. Was not this a direct confirmation
of his own suspicions? His father had become a fearful enigma to his soul!
And what if, upon his return from the festival, the father were to come
and insist upon the marriage with Louise, declaring her advanced notions
to be an insufficient ground for renouncing a pet project? A wild storm
was convulsing his interior. He could not bear it longer, he was driven
forth. Snatching his straw hat, he rushed from the house, ran through the
alleys and streets, out of the town, onward and still onward. The August
sun was burning, and its heat, reflected from the road, was doubly
intense. The perspiration was rolling in large drops down the glowing face
of the young man, whom torturing thoughts still kept goading on. Holt’s
whitewashed dwelling became visible on the summit of a knoll, and gleamed
a friendly welcome as he came near it—a welcome which seemed opportune for
one who hardly knew whither he was hastening. The walnut‐tree which could
be seen from afar was casting an inviting shade over the table and bench
that seemed to be confidingly leaning against its stem. A flock of
chickens were taking a sand‐bath under the table, flapping their wings,
ruffling their feathers, and wallowing in the dust. Seated on the sunny
hillock, the cottage appeared quiet, almost lonesome but for a ringing
sound which came from the adjoining field and was made by the sickle
passing through the corn. A broad‐brimmed straw hat with a blue band could
be noticed from the road moving on over the fallen grain, and presently
Mechtild’s slender form rose into view as she pushed actively onward over
the harvest field. Hasty steps resounded from the road. She raised her
head, and her countenance first indicated surprise, then embarrassment.
Whom did her eyes behold rushing wildly by, like a fugitive, but the
generous rescuer of her family from the clutches of the usurer Shund. His
hat was in his hand, his auburn locks were hanging down over his forehead,
his face was aglow, his whole being seemed to be absorbed in a mad
pursuit. To her quick eye his features revealed deep trouble and violent
excitement. She was frightened, and the sickle fell from her hand. Not a
day passed on which she would not think of this benefactor. Perhaps there
was not a being on earth whom she admired and revered as much as she did
him. All the pure and elevated sentiments of an innocent and blooming girl
united to form a halo of affection round the head of Seraphin. At evening
prayer when her father said, “Let us pray for our benefactor Seraphin,”
her soul sent up a fervent petition to God, and she declared with joy that
she was willing to sacrifice all for him. But behold this noble object of
her admiration and affection suddenly presented before her in a state that
excited the greatest uneasiness. With his head sunk and his eyes directed
straight before him, he would have rushed past without noticing the
sympathizing girl, when a greeting clear and sweet as the tone of a bell
caused him to look up. He beheld Mechtild with her beautiful eyes fixed
upon him in an expression of anxiety.
“Good‐morning, Mr. Seraphin,” she said again.
“Good‐morning,” he returned mechanically, and staring about vaguely. His
bewilderment soon passed, however, and his gaze was riveted by the
apparition.
She was standing on the other side of the ditch. The fear of some unknown
calamity had given to her beautiful face an expression of tender
solicitude, and whilst a smile struggled for possession of her lips her
look indicated painful anxiety. Mechtild’s appearance soon directed the
young man’s attention to his own excited manner. The dark shadow
disappeared from his brow, he wiped the perspiration from his face, and
began to feel the effect of his walk under the glowing heat of midsummer.
“Ah! why, here is the neat little white house, your pretty country home,
Mechtild,” he said pleasantly. “If you had not been so kind as to wish me
good‐morning, I should actually have passed by in an unpardonable fit of
distraction.”
“I was almost afraid to say good‐morning, Mr. Seraphin, but—” She faltered
and looked confused.
“But—what? You didn’t think anything was wrong?”
“No! But you were in such a hurry and looked so troubled, I got
frightened,” she confessed with amiable uprightness. “I was afraid
something had happened you.”
“I am thankful for your sympathy. Nothing has happened me, nor, I trust,
will,” he replied, with a scarcely perceptible degree of defiance in his
tone. “This is a charming situation. Corn‐fields on all sides, trees laden
with fruit, the skirt of the woods in the background—and then this
magnificent view! With your permission, I will take a moment’s rest in the
shade of yon splendid walnut‐tree planted by your great‐grandfather.”
She joyfully nodded assent and stepped over the ditch. She shoved back the
bolt of the gate. Together they entered the yard, which a hedge separated
from the road. The cock crew a welcome to the stranger, and led his
household from the sand‐bath into the sunshine near the barn.
“This is a cool, inviting little spot,” said the millionaire, as he
pointed to the shade of the walnut‐tree. “No doubt you often sit here and
read?”
“Yes, Mr. Seraphin; but the dirty chickens have scattered dust all over
the bench and table. Wait a minute, you’ll get your clothes dusty.”
She hurried into the house. His eyes followed her receding form, his ears
kept listening for her departing steps, he heard the opening and closing
of doors: presently she reappeared, dusted the bench and table with a
brush, and spread a white cloth over the table. Seraphin looked on with a
smile.
“I do not wish to be troublesome, Mechtild!”
“It is no trouble, Mr. Seraphin! Sit down, now, and rest yourself. I am so
sorry father and mother are not at home. They will be ever so glad to hear
that you have honored us with a visit.”
“Is nobody at home?”
“Father is in town, and mother is at work with the children in the harvest
field.”
“Are you not afraid to stay here by yourself?”
“What should I be afraid of? There are no ghosts in daytime,” she said
with a bewitching archness; “and as for thieves, they never expect to find
anything worth having at our house.”
She was standing on the other side of the table, looking at him with a
beautiful smile.
“Won’t you have a seat on this bench?” said he, making room for her. “You
need rest more than I do. You have been working, and I am merely an idle
stroller. Do take a seat, Mechtild.”
“Thank you, Mr. Seraphin—I could not think of doing so! It would not be
becoming,” she answered with some confusion.
“Why not becoming?”
“Because you are a gentleman, and I am only a poor girl.”
“Your objection on the score of propriety is not worth anything. Oblige me
by doing what I ask of you.”
“I will do so, Mr. Seraphin, since you insist upon it, but after a while.
I would like to offer you some refreshments beforehand, if you will allow
me.”
“With pleasure,” he said, nodding assent.
A second time she hurried away to the house, whilst he kept listening to
her footsteps. The extraordinary neatness and cleanliness which could be
seen everywhere about the little homestead did not escape his observation.
On all sides he fancied he saw the work of Mechtild. The purity of her
spirit, which beamed so mildly from her eyes and was revealed in the
beauty of her countenance and the grace of her person, seemed embodied in
the very odor of roses wafted over from the neighboring flower garden. He
was unconscious of the rapid growth within his bosom of a deep and tender
feeling. This feeling was casting a warm glow, like softest sunshine, over
all that he beheld. Not even the chickens looked to him like other fowls
of their kind; they were ennobled by the reflection that they were objects
of Mechtild’s care, that she fed them, that when they were still piping
little pullets she had held them in her lap and caressed them. He
abandoned himself completely to this sentiment; it carried him on like a
smooth current; and he could not tell, did not suspect even, why so
wonderful a reaction had in so short a time taken place in his interior.
Beholding himself seated under the walnut‐tree surrounded only by
evidences of honorable poverty and rural thrift, and yet feeling a degree
of happiness and peace he had never known before, he fancied he was
performing a part in some fairy tale which he was dreaming with his eyes
open. And now the fairy appeared at the door having on a snowy‐white
apron, and carrying a shallow basket from which could be seen, protruding
above the rest of its contents, a milk jar. She set before him a pewter
plate, bright as silver. Then she took out the jar and a cup, next she
laid a knife and spoon for him, and finished her hospitable service with a
huge loaf of bread.
“Don’t get dismayed at the bread, Mr. Seraphin! I am sorry I cannot set
something better before you. But it is well baked and will not hurt you!”
“You baked it yourself, did you not?”
“Yes, Mr. Seraphin!”
He attacked the loaf resolutely. From the dimensions of the slice which he
cut off, it was plain that both his appetite and his confidence in her
skill were satisfactory. She raised the jar of bonnyclabber, which lurched
out in jerks upon his plate, whilst he kept gayly stirring it with the
spoon. Then she dipped a spoonful of rich cream out of the cup and poured
it into the refreshing contents of the plate.
“Let me know when you want me to stop, Mr. Seraphin.” Mechtild poured
spoonful after spoonful; he sat immovable, seemingly observing the spoon,
but in reality watching her soft plump fingers, then her well‐shaped hand,
next her exquisitely turned arm, and, when finally he raised his eyes to
her face, they were met by a mischievous smile. The cup was empty, and all
the cream was in his plate.
“May I go and fetch some more?” she asked.
“No, Mechtild, no! Why, this is a regular yellow sea!”
“You wouldn’t cry ‘enough!’ ”
“I forgot about it,” he replied, somewhat confused. “To atone for my
forgetfulness, I will eat it all.”
“I hope you will relish it, Mr. Seraphin!”
“Thank you! Where is your plate?”
“I had my dinner before you came.”
“Well, then, at any rate you must not continue standing. Won’t you share
this seat with me?”
She seated herself upon the bench, took off her hat, smoothed down her
apron, and appeared happy at seeing him eating heartily.
“Don’t you find that dish refreshing, Mr. Seraphin?”
“You have done me a real act of charity,” he replied. “This bread is
excellent. Who taught you how to make bread?”
“I learned from mother; but there isn’t much art in making that sort of
bread, Mr. Seraphin. The food which people in the country eat does not
require artistic preparation. It only needs good, pure material, so that
it may give strength to labor.”
“I suppose you attend to the kitchen altogether, do you not?”
“Yes, Mr. Seraphin. That’s not very difficult, our meals are of the
plainest kind. We have meat once a week, on Sundays. When the work is
unusually hard, as in harvest time, we have meat oftener. We raise our own
meat and cure it.”
“You have assumed household cares at quite an early age, Mechtild.”
“Early? I am seventeen now, and am the oldest. Mother has a great deal of
trouble with the small ones, so the housework falls chiefly to my share.
It does not require any great exertion, however, to do it. Plain and
saving is our motto. Mother specially recommends four things: industry,
cleanliness, order, and economy. She advises me not to neglect any one of
these points when once I will have a household of my own.”
“Do you think you will soon set up a separate household?” asked he with
some hesitation.
“Not for some time to come, Mr. Seraphin, yet it must be done one day. If
my own inclination were consulted, I would prefer never to leave home. I
should like things to continue as they are. But a separation must come.
Death will pay us a visit as it has done to others, father and mother will
pass away, and the course of events will sever us from one another.”
Her head sank, the brightness of her face became obscured beneath the
shadow of these sombre thoughts, and, when she again looked up, there
appeared in her eyes so touching and childlike a sadness that he felt
pained to the soul. And yet this revelation of tenderness pleased him, for
it made known to him a new phase of her amiable nature.
For a long time he continued conversing with the artless girl. Every word
she uttered, no matter how trifling, had an interest for him. Besides her
charming artlessness, he had frequent occasions to admire the wisdom of
her language and her admirable delicacy. The setting sun had already cast
a subdued crimson over the hilltops, hours had sped away, the chickens had
gone to roost, still he remained riveted to the spot by Mechtild’s grace
and loveliness.
“Father is just coming,” she said, pointing down the road. “How glad he
will be to find you here!”
His head bent forward, Holt came wearily plodding up the road. His right
hand was hidden in the pocket of his pantaloons, and his head was bowed,
as if beneath a heavy weight. As Mechtild’s clear voice rang out, he
raised his head, caught sight of his high‐hearted benefactor, and smiled
in joyful surprise.
“Welcome, Mr. Seraphin; a thousand times welcome!” he cried from the other
side of the road. “Why, this is an honor that I had not expected!”
He stood uncovered, holding his cap in the left hand, his right hand was
still concealed. Mechtild at once noticed her father’s singular behavior,
and her eye watched anxiously for the hidden hand.
“Your daughter has been so kind as to offer refreshments to a weary
wanderer,” said Gerlach, “and it has been a great pleasure for me to sit
awhile. We have been chatting for several hours under this glorious tree,
and may be I am to blame for keeping her from her work.”
Holt’s honest face beamed with satisfaction. He entirely forgot about his
secret, he drew his hand out of his pocket, Mechtild turned pale, and a
sharp cry escaped her lips.
“For mercy’s sake, father!” And she pointed to the broken chain.
“What are you screaming for, foolish girl? Don’t be alarmed, Mr. Seraphin!
this chain has got on my arm in an honorable cause. I will tell you the
whole story; I know you will not inform on me.”
Seating himself on the bench, he related the adventures of the day.
The mock procession passed before Mechtild’s imagination with the
vividness of reality. The narration transformed her. Her mildness was
changed to noble anger. She had heard of the vicar of Christ being
insulted, of holy things being scoffed at, of the Redeemer being derided
by a horde of wretches. With her arms akimbo, she drew up her lithe and
graceful form to its full height, and with flashing eyes looked at her
father while he related what had befallen him. Seraphin could not help
wondering at the transformation. Such a display of spirit he had not been
prepared to witness in a girl so gentle and beautiful. When her father had
ended his account, she seized his hand passionately, pressed it warmly
between her own hands, and kissed the chain.
“Father, dear father,” she exclaimed in a burst of feeling, “I thank you
from my heart for acting as you did! Those wretches were scoffing at our
holy religion, but you behaved bravely in defence of the faith. For this
they put chains on you, as the heathen did to S. Peter and S. Paul.”
Once more she kissed the chain, then, turning quickly, hastened across the
yard to the house.
“Mechtild isn’t like the rest of us,” said Holt, smiling. “There’s a great
deal of spirit in her. I have often noticed it. But I am not astonished at
her being roused at the mock procession—I was roused myself. I declare,
Mr. Seraphin, it is a shame, a crying shame, that persons are permitted to
rail at doctrines and things which we revere as holy. One would almost
believe Satan himself was in some people, they take so fanatical a delight
in scoffing at a religion which is holy and enjoins nothing but what is
good.”
“It is incontestable that infidelity hates and opposes God and religion,”
replied Gerlach. “The boasted culture of those who find a pleasure in
grossly wounding the most sacred feelings of their neighbors, is wicked
and stupid.”
Mechtild returned with a file in her hand.
“Right, my child! I was just thinking of the file myself. Here, cut the
catches of the lock.”
He laid his arm across the table. A few strokes of the file caused the
lock and remnant of chain to fall from his wrist.
“We will keep this as a precious memento,” said she. “Only think, father,
that wicked official ordered you to be manacled, and he is the
representative of authority. How can one respect or even pray for
authorities when they allow religion to be ridiculed?”
“Pray for your enemies,” answered the countryman gravely.
“I will do so because God commands me; but I shall never again be able to
respect the official!”
Her anger had fled; she appeared again all light and loveliness. He did
not fail to observe a searching look which she directed upon him, but its
meaning became clear to him only when, as he was taking leave, she said in
a tone of humility: “Pardon my vehemence, Mr. Seraphin! Don’t think me a
bad girl.”
“There is nothing to be forgiven, Mechtild. You were indignant against
godless wretches, and they who are not indignant against evil cannot
themselves be good.”
“We are most heartily thankful for this visit,” spoke Holt. “I need not
say that we will consider it a great happiness as often as you will be
pleased to come.”
“Good‐night!” returned the young man, and he walked away.
Deeply immersed in his thoughts, Seraphin went back to town. What he was
thinking about, his diary does not record. But the excitement under which
he had rushed forth was gone—dispelled by the magic of a rural sorceress.
He walked on quietly like a man who seems filled with confidence in his
own future. The recent painful impressions seemed to his mind to lie far
back in the past; their place was taken up by beautiful anticipations
which, like the aurora, shed soft and pleasing light upon his path. He
halted frequently in a dream‐like reverie to indulge the happiness with
which his soul was flooded. The full moon, just peering over the hills,
shed around him a mystic brightness that harmonized perfectly with the
indefinable contentment of his heart, and seemed to be gazing quizzingly
into the countenance of the young man, who almost feared to confess to
himself that he had found an invaluable treasure.
As he stopped before the Palais Greifmann, all the bright spirits that had
hovered round about him on the way back from the little whitewashed
cottage, fled. He awoke from his dream, and, ascending the stairs with a
feeling of discomfort, he entered his apartment, where his father sat
awaiting him.
“At last,” spoke Mr. Conrad, looking up from a book. “You have kept me
waiting a long time, my son.”
“I was in need of a good long walk, father, to get over what I witnessed
this morning. The country air has dispelled all those horrible
impressions. There is only one thing more required to make me feel
perfectly well, dear father, which is that you will not insist on my
allying myself to people who are utterly opposed to my way of thinking and
feeling.”
“I understand and approve of your request, Seraphin. The impressions made
on me, too, are exceedingly disagreeable. The advancement of which this
town boasts is stupid, immoral, detestable. How this state of society has
come about, is inexplicable to me who live secluded in the country.
Society is diseased, fatally diseased. Many of the new views professed are
sheer superstition, and their morality is a mere cloak for their
corruption and wickedness. All the powers of progress so‐called are
actively at work to subvert all the safeguards of society. And what your
diary reports of Louise, I have found fully confirmed. Though it cost the
sacrifice of a long cherished plan, a son of mine shall never become the
husband of a progressionist woman.”
“O father! how deeply do I thank you!” cried the youth, carried away by
his feelings.
“I must decline being thanked, for I have not merited it,” spoke Mr.
Conrad earnestly. “A father’s duty determines very clearly what my
decision upon the matter of your marriage with Louise, ought to be. But I
am under obligations to you, my son, which justice compels me to
acknowledge. Your discernment and moral sense have prevented a great deal
of discord and unhappiness in our family. Continue good and true, my
Seraphin!”
He pressed his son to his bosom and imprinted a kiss on his forehead.
“To‐morrow we shall start for home by the first train. Fortunately your
prudent behavior makes it easy for us to get away, and the final breaking
off of this engagement I will myself arrange with Louise’s father.”
Seraphin Gerlach To The Author.
DEAR SIR: Two years ago, I took the liberty of sending you my
diary, with the request that you would be pleased to publish such
portions of its contents as might be useful, in the form of a tale
illustrative of the times. I made the request because I consider
it the duty of a writer who delineates the condition of society,
to transmit to posterity a faithful picture of the present social
status, and I am vain enough to believe that my jottings will be a
modest contribution towards such a tableau.
The meagre account given by the diary of my intercourse with
Mechtild, will probably have enabled you to perceive the germ of a
pure and true relation likely to develop itself further. I shall
add but a few items to complete the account of the diary, knowing
that poets, painters, and artists have rigorously determined
bounds, and that a twilight cannot be represented when the sun is
at the zenith. I am emboldened to use this illustration because
your unbounded admiration of pure womanhood is well known to me,
and because the brightness of Mechtild’s character, were it
further described, would no more be compatible with the sombre
colorings in which a true picture of modern progress would have to
be exhibited, than the noonday sun with the shadows of evening.
My memoranda concerning Mechtild, which, despite studied
soberness, betrayed a considerable degree of admiration, made
known to my parents, naturally enough, the secret of my heart.
Hence it came that a quiet smile passed over my father’s face
every time I commenced to speak of Mechtild. Holt’s manly deed at
the mock procession had already gained for him my father’s esteem,
and, as I spoke a great deal about Holt’s thoroughness as a
cultivator, my father began to look upon him as a very desirable
man to employ.
“We want an experienced man on the ‘green farm,’ ” said father,
one day. “Offer the situation to Holt, and tell him to come to see
me about it. I want to talk with him.”
“Give the good man my compliments,” said mother; “tell him I would
be much pleased to become acquainted with Mechtild, who
sympathized with you so kindly on that memorable day!”
I wrote without delay. Holt came, and so did Mechtild. But few
moments were necessary to enable mother to detect the girl’s fine
qualities. Father, too, was delightfully surprised at her modesty,
the beauty of her form, and grace of her manner. He visited the
farm accompanied by Holt. The cultivator’s extraordinary
knowledge, his practical manner of viewing things, and the
shrewdness of his counsels in regard to the improvement of worn‐
out land and the cultivation of poor soil, completely charmed my
father. A contract containing very favorable conditions for Holt
was entered into, and three weeks later the family took charge of
the “green farm.”
Upon mother’s suggestion, Mechtild was sent to an educational
institution, where she acquired in ten months’ time the learning
and culture necessary for associating with cultivated people.
Father and mother had received her on her return like a daughter.
This reception was given her not only in consideration of Holt’s
skilful and faithful management of business, but also on account
of Mechtild’s own splendid womanly character—perhaps, too, partly
on account of my unbounded admiration for the rare girl.
“The girl is an ornament to her sex,” lauded my father. “Her
polished manner and ease in company do not suffer one to suspect
ever so remotely that she at any time plied the reaping‐hook, and
came out of a stubblefield to regale a weary wanderer with brown
bread and bonny‐clabber. I am quite in harmony with your secret
wishes, my dear Seraphin! At the same time, I am of opinion that a
step promising so much happiness ought not to be longer deferred.
I think, then, you should ask the father for his daughter without
delay, so that I may soon have the pleasure of giving you my
blessing.”
From my father’s arms, into which I had thrown myself in
thankfulness, I hastened away to the “green farm,” where Mechtild
with maidenly blushes, and Holt in speechless astonishment, heard
and granted my petition.
I am now four months married. I am the blest husband of a wife
whose lovely qualities are daily showing themselves to greater
advantage. Mechtild presides over Chateau Hallberg like an angel
of peace. Towards my father and mother she conducts herself with
filial reverence and never‐ceasing delicate attentions. Mother
loves her unspeakably, and no access of ill humor in father can
withstand her charming smile and prudent mirth. Concerning the
banking‐house of Greifmann, I have only sad things to tell. Carl’s
father had entered into very considerable speculations which
failed and drove him into bankruptcy. Carl saw the blow coming,
and saved himself in a disgraceful manner. There was a savings
institution connected with the bank in which poor people and
servants deposited the savings of their hard labor. Carl
appropriated this fund and made off a short time before the
failure of the house. Thousands of poor persons were robbed of the
little sums which they were saving for old age, by denying
themselves many even of the necessaries of life.
The maledictions and curses of these unfortunate people followed
across the ocean the thief whose modern culture and progressive
humanity did not hinder him from committing a crime which no
Christian can be guilty of without losing his claim to the title.
Carl, however, still continues to pass for a man of culture and
humanity notwithstanding his deed. And why should he not, since
without faith in the Deity moral obligations do not exist, and
consequently every species of crime is allowable? The old
gentleman Greifmann died shortly after his ruin; Louise lost her
mind.
My father felt the misfortune of the Greifmanns deeply, without,
however, regretting in the smallest degree the wise determination
which their godless principles and actions had driven him to.
Formerly he could never find time to take part in the elections.
But now he is constantly speaking about the duty of every
respectable man to oppose the infernal machinations and plans of
would‐be progress. He intends at the next election to use all his
influence for the election of conscientious deputies, so that the
evil may be put an end to which consists in trying to undermine
the foundations of society.
Accept, dear sir, the assurance of the esteem with which I have
the honor to be
our most obedient servant,
SERAPHIN GERLACH.
CHATEAU HALLBERG, Jan. 4, 1872.
[Two chapters have been omitted in this translation of “The
Progressionists.”—ED. C. W.]
F. James Marquette, S.J.
Among the names that have become immortalized in the history of our
country, there are few more certainly destined for perpetual fame than
those connected with the discovery and exploration of that mighty river
which courses so boldly and majestically through this vast continent. Thus
it is probable that there never will be a time when even children at
school will not be familiar with such names as De Soto, Marquette, and La
Salle.
James Marquette was born in the city of Laon, near a small branch of the
Oise, in the department of Aisne, France, in the year 1637. His family was
the most ancient of that ancient city, and had, during many generations,
filled high offices and rendered valuable services to their country, both
in civil and military life. We have accounts of eminent services rendered
to his sovereign by one of his ancestors as early as 1360. The usefulness
and public spirit of the family, we may well suppose, did not expire with
the distinguished subject of this memoir; for we find that, in the French
army that aided our fathers in the achievement of American Independence,
there were no less than three Marquettes who laid down their lives in the
cause of liberty. His maternal name was no less distinguished in the
annals of the church. On the side of his mother, Rose de la Salle, he was
connected with the good and venerable John Baptist de la Salle, founder of
the Brothers of the Christian Schools, so distinguished for their
successful services in the cause of popular religious education. It was
this pious mother that instilled into her illustrious son that tender and
fervid devotion to the Blessed Virgin which so ravished his soul and
adorned his whole life. In 1654, when but seventeen years old, he entered
the Society of Jesus, in which the time of his novitiate, the terms of
teaching and of his own theological studies, consumed twelve years. He had
chosen for his model S. Francis Xavier, and in studying his patron’s life,
and meditating on his virtues, the young priest conceived a holy longing
to enter the field of missionary toil. He was enrolled in the province of
Champagne; but, as this had no foreign missions, he caused himself to be
transferred to the province of France. His cherished object was soon
attained. In 1666, he was sent out to Canada, and arrived at Quebec on the
20th of September of that year.
F. Marquette was at first destined for the Montagnais mission, whose
central station was at Tadousal, and on the 10th of October he started for
Three Rivers, in order to study the Montagnais language, a key to many
neighboring Indian tongues, under that celebrated philologist as well as
renowned missionary, F. Gabriel Druilletes. His intervals of leisure were
here employed in the offices of the holy ministry. F. Marquette was thus
occupied till April, 1668, when his destination was changed, and he
received orders to prepare for the mission on Lake Superior, known as the
Ottawa mission. He accordingly returned to Quebec, and thence set out for
Montreal on the 21st of April, with Brother Le Boesme and two other
companions; and from the latter place he embarked on the Ottawa flotilla.
He was accompanied by other missionaries on this toilsome and dangerous
voyage up the Ottawa, through French River, to and across Lake Huron, and
to the Sault St. Mary. This region had long before been dedicated to God
by the erection of the cross by Fathers Jogues and Raymbault, and twenty
years later, 1660, F. Ménard became the founder of the Ottawa mission; and
when F. Marquette arrived in Canada, F. Allouez was then pushing his
spiritual conquests beyond any points reached by his zealous predecessors.
On the advent of F. Marquette to the shores of Lake Superior, it was found
expedient to establish two missions, one of which should be located at the
Sault St. Mary, and the other at Green Bay. Erecting his cabin at the foot
of the rapids on the American side, F. Marquette opened his mission at the
Sault, where he was joined the following year by F. Dablon, Superior of
the Ottawa mission. These two zealous missionaries soon gathered a
Christian flock around them, and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was now
offered up in that wild region in “a sanctuary worthy of the faith.” “It
is,” says Bancroft, “the oldest settlement begun by Europeans within the
present limits of the commonwealth of Michigan.” So rich was the harvest
which the enthusiastic and apostolical Marquette saw before him that he
writes in one of his letters: “Two thousand souls were ready to embrace
the faith, if the missionary were faithful to his task.” Yet knowing the
uncertainty of the Indian character, he proceeded cautiously and prudently
in his undertakings. Though his ardent hopes were not fully realized, the
harvest was not a fruitless one; and Fathers Dablon and Marquette labored
on with undaunted courage and undiminished zeal, instructing the people,
baptizing such as were in danger of death, and laying the solid
foundations of a future Christian commonwealth.
In August of 1669, F. Marquette was transferred from the Sault to
Lapointe, to conduct the missions of the Holy Ghost among the Ottawas, and
to fill the place recently occupied by F. Allouez, who had gone to Green
Bay. After a perilous and exhausting navigation, amid snow and ice, of a
month’s duration, he reached Lapointe in safety, and full of ardor for the
work before him. A few extracts from the account of this mission, which F.
Marquette gave to his superior in his letter of the following year, will
be more acceptable to the reader than any synopsis we could prepare from
it:
“Divine Providence having destined me to continue the mission of
the Holy Ghost begun by Allouez, who had baptized the chiefs of
the Kiskakonk, I arrived there on the thirteenth of September, and
went to visit the Indians who were in the clearings, which are
divided into five towns. The Hurons, to the number of about four
or five hundred, almost all baptized, still preserve some little
Christianity. A number of the chiefs assembled in council were at
first well pleased to see me; but I explained that I did not yet
know their language perfectly, and that no other missionary was
coming, both because all had gone to the Iroquois, and because F.
Allouez, who understood them perfectly, did not wish to return
that winter, as they did not love the prayer enough. They
acknowledged that it was a just punishment, and during the winter
held talks about it, and resolved to amend, as they tell me.
“The nation of the Outaouaks Sinagaux is far from the kingdom of
God, and being above all other nations addicted to lewdness,
sacrifices, and juggleries. They ridicule the prayer, and will
scarcely hear us speak of Christianity. They are proud and
undeveloped, and I think that so little can be done with this
tribe that I have not baptized healthy infants who seem likely to
live, watching only for such as are sick. The Indians of the
Kinouché tribe declare openly that it is not yet time. There are,
however, two men among them formerly baptized. One, now rather
old, is looked upon as a kind of miracle among the Indians, having
always refused to marry, persisting in this resolution in spite of
all that had been said. He has suffered much, even from his
relatives, but he is as little affected by this as by the loss of
all the goods which he brought last year from the settlement, not
having even enough left to cover him. These are hard trials for
Indians, who generally seek only to possess much in this world.
The other, a new‐married young man, seems of another nature than
the rest. The Indians, extremely attached to their reveries, had
resolved that a certain number of young women should prostitute
themselves, each to choose such partner as she liked. No one in
these cases ever refused, as the lives of men are supposed to
depend on it. This young Christian was called; on entering the
cabin, he saw the orgies that were about to begin, and, feigning
illness, immediately left, and, though they came to call him back,
he refused to go. His confession was as prudent as it could be,
and I wondered that an Indian could live so innocently, and so
nobly profess himself a Christian. His mother and some of his
sisters are also good Christians. The Ottawas, extremely
superstitious in their feasts and juggleries, seem hardened to the
instructions given them, yet they like to have their children
baptized. God permitted a woman to die this winter in her sin; her
illness had been concealed from me, and I heard it only by the
report that she had asked a very improper dance for her cure. I
immediately went to a cabin where all the chiefs were at a feast,
and some Kiskakonk Christians among them. To these I exposed the
impiety of the woman and her medicine men, and gave them proper
instructions. I then spoke to all present, and God permitted that
an old Ottawa rose to advise granting what I asked, as it made no
matter, he said, if the woman did die. An old Christian then rose
and told the nation that they must stop the licentiousness of
their youth, and not permit Christian girls to take part in such
dances. To satisfy the woman, some child’s play was substituted
for the dance; but this did not prevent her dying before morning.
The dangerous state of a sick man caused the medicine men to
proclaim that the devil must be invoked by extraordinary
superstitions. The Christians took no part. The actors were these
jugglers and the sick man, who was passed over great fires lighted
in every cabin. It was said that he did not feel the heat,
although his body had been greased with oil for five or six days.
Men, women, and children ran through the cabins, asking, as a
riddle, to divine their thoughts, and the successful guesser was
glad to give the object named. I prevented the abominable lewdness
so common at the end of these diabolical rites. I do not think
that they will recur, as the sick man died soon after.
“The nation of Kiskakous, which for three years refused to receive
the Gospel preached them by F. Allouez, resolved in the fall of
1668 to obey God. This resolution was adopted in full council, and
announced to that father, who spent four winter months instructing
them. The chiefs of the nation became Christians, and, as F.
Allouez was called to another mission, he gave it to my charge to
cultivate, and I entered on it in September, 1669.
“All the Christians were then in the fields harvesting their
Indian corn; they listened with pleasure when I told them that I
came to Lapointe for their sake and that of the Hurons; that they
never should be abandoned, but be beloved above all other nations;
and that they and the French were one. I had the consolation of
seeing their love for the prayer and their pride in being
Christians. I baptized the new‐born infants, and instructed the
chiefs whom I found well disposed. The head chief having allowed a
dog to be hung on a pole near his cabin, which is a kind of
sacrifice the Indians make to the sun, I told him that this was
wrong, and he went and threw it down.
“Having invited the Kiskakous to come and winter near the chapel,
they left all the other tribes, to gather around us so as to be
able to pray to God, be instructed, and have their children
baptized. They all call themselves Christians; hence in all
councils and important affairs I address them, and, when I wish to
show them that I really wish what I ask, I need only address them
as Christians; they told me even that they obeyed me for that
reason. They have taken the upper hand, and control the three
other tribes. It is a great consolation to a missionary to see
such pliancy in savages, and to live in such peace with the
Indians, spending the whole day in instructing them in our
mysteries, and teaching them the prayers. Neither the rigor of the
winter nor the state of the weather prevents their coming to the
chapel; many never let a day pass, and I was thus busily employed
from morning till night, preparing some for baptism, some for
confession, disabusing others of their reveries. The old men told
me that the young men had lost their senses, and that I must stop
their excesses. I often spoke to them of their daughters, urging
them to prevent their being visited at night. I knew almost all
that passed in two tribes near us; but, though others were spoken
of, I never heard anything against the Christian women, and when I
spoke to the old men about their daughters, they told me that they
prayed to God. I often inculcated this, knowing the importunities
to which they are constantly exposed, and the courage they need to
resist. They have learned to be modest, and the French who have
seen them perceive how little they resemble the others from whom
they are thus distinguished.
“After Easter, all the Indians dispersed to seek subsistence; they
promised me that they would not forget the prayer, and earnestly
begged that a father should come in the fall when they assemble
again. This will be granted, and, if it please God to send some
father, he will take my place, while I, to execute the orders of
my father‐superior, will go and begin my Illinois mission.
“The Illinois are thirty days’ journey by land from Lapointe by a
difficult road; they lie south‐southwest of it. On the way you
pass the nation of the Ketchigamins, who live in more than twenty
large cabins; they are inland, and seek to have intercourse with
the French, from whom they hope to get axes, knives, and ironware.
So much do they fear them that they unbound from the stake two
Indian captives, who said, when about to be burned, that the
Frenchman had declared that they wished peace all over the world.
You pass then to the Miamiwek, and by great deserts reach the
Illinois, who are assembled chiefly in two towns containing more
than eight or nine thousand souls. These people are well enough
disposed to receive Christianity. Since F. Allouez spoke to them
at Lapointe to adore one God, they have begun to abandon their
false worship; for they adored the sun and thunder. Those seen by
me are apparently of good disposition, and they are not night‐
runners, like the other Indians. A man kills his wife if he finds
her unfaithful. They are less prodigal in sacrifices, and promise
me to embrace Christianity, and do all I require in their country.
In this view, the Ottawas gave me a young man recently come from
their country, who initiated me to some extent in their language
during the leisure given me in the winter by the Indians at
Lapointe. I could scarcely understand it, though there is
something of the Algonquin in it; yet I hope, by the help of God’s
grace, to understand and be understood if God by his goodness
leads me to that country.
“No one must hope to escape crosses in our missions, and the best
means to live happily is not to fear them, but, in the enjoyment
of little crosses, hope for others still greater. The Illinois
desire us, like Indians, to share their miseries and suffer all
that can be imagined in barbarism. They are lost sheep, to be
sought amid woods and thorns, especially when they call so
piteously to be rescued from the jaws of the wolf. Such, really,
can I call their entreaties to me this winter. They have actually
gone this spring to notify the old men to come for me in the fall.
“The Illinois always come by land. They sow maize, which they have
in great plenty; they have pumpkins as large as those of France,
and plenty of roots and fruit. The chase is very abundant in wild
cattle, bears, stags, turkeys, duck, bustard, wild pigeon, and
cranes. They leave their towns at certain times every year to go
to their hunting‐grounds together, so as to be better able to
resist if attacked. They believe that I will spread peace
everywhere if I go, and then only the young will go to hunt.
“When the Illinois come to Lapointe, they pass a large river
almost a league wide. It runs north and south, and so far that the
Illinois, who do not know what canoes are, have never yet heard of
its mouth; they only know that there are very great nations below
them, some of whom raise two crops of maize a year. East‐southeast
of the country is a nation they call Chawawon, which came to visit
them last summer. They wear beards, which shows intercourse with
Europeans; they had come thirty days across land before reaching
their country. This great river can hardly empty in Virginia, and
we rather believe its mouth is in California. If the Indians, who
promise to make me a canoe, do not fail to keep their word, we
shall go into this river as soon as we can, with a Frenchman and
this young man given me, who knows some of these languages, and
has a readiness for learning others; we shall visit the nations
which inhabit it, in order to open the way to so many of our
fathers who have long awaited this happiness. This discovery will
give us a complete knowledge of the southern or western sea.
“The Illinois are warriors; they make many slaves, whom they sell
to the Ottawas for guns, powder, kettles, axes, and knives. They
were formerly at war with the Nadouessi, but, having made peace
some years since, I confirmed it, to facilitate their coming to
Lapointe, where I am going to await them, in order to accompany
them to their country.”
Much as he loved his children at Lapointe, and faithfully as he had served
them, the voice of his superior had ordered him to this new, vaster, and
more laborious field, which to his true Jesuit obedience was a task of
love. The Illinois at once become dear to his heart as his future
children; he studies their language, loses no opportunity of learning all
about their country, its tribes and their customs, sends them presents of
pious pictures and the loving messages of a father, welcomes every member
of their nation who might visit Lapointe with open arms, and presses him
to his heart, and devotes every moment of leisure afforded him from his
labors to sedulous preparation for the contemplated mission of the
Immaculate Conception. His intelligent mind fully comprehended the vast
importance of the undertaking in its relations to the church and the
civilized world, and conceived at once the bold and daring project of a
thorough exploration of the great river around which so much mystery,
intermingled with romantic fables and dim traditions, still hung. It is
with equal truth and justice that Bancroft writes: “The purpose of
discovering the Mississippi, of which the tales of the natives had
published the magnificence, sprang from Marquette himself.”
It has already been stated that F. Marquette had sent some pious pictures
to the Illinois, and by the same messenger to the Sioux, whom he expected
to be embraced in his intended mission. The messenger who carried the
father’s presents also bore his request for protection and a safe‐conduct
to such European missionaries as might visit or pass through their
country, and a message, “That the black‐gown wished to pass to the country
of the Assinipoils and Kilistinons; that he was already among the
Outagamis; and that he himself was going in the fall to the Illinois.”
Sad indeed must have been the feelings of the good father, when, early in
the winter, the Sioux returned to him the pious pictures he had sent them,
in which he saw an ominous forerunner of impending war. The Ottawas and
Hurons had by their insolence aroused the indignation of the Sioux, and
the latter had seized the tomahawk and prepared for the bloody and
revengeful strife. His hopes of reaching the cabins of the Sioux by an
overland route now vanished before the approaching storm. The Indians at
Lapointe could not withstand the fierce onsets of the Dakotah war‐parties,
and first the Ottawas, abandoning their village, launched their canoes
upon the lake, and were soon gathered in Ekaentoulon Island. The Hurons
remained alone at Lapointe, and F. Marquette remained in the midst of them
to minister to their spiritual wants, share their dangers, and uphold
their faith and courage. And when they too were forced to depart, the good
father, ever true to his spiritual flock, was content to “turn his back on
his beloved Illinois to accompany his Hurons in their wanderings and
hardships.” The Hurons settled at Mackinaw, a bleak and desolate spot, but
the abundance of fish the neighboring waters afforded was certain to
secure the fugitives from starvation, while the very desolation of the
scene seemed a protection from hostile bands. Scarcely had the Hurons
thrown up their cabins on this dreary shore, when a rude sylvan chapel,
surmounted by a cross, graced and cheered the scene, and became the cradle
of religion at the mission of S. Ignatius. Such was the early origin of
Michilimackinac. Beside the enclosure of cabins and chapel arose a
palisade fort for defence. For several years F. Marquette labored in this
remote and arduous station, cheered only by the consolations which spring
from faith and by the bountiful harvests of souls he reaped.
Though longing to proceed on his mission to the Illinois, as all his
letters so earnestly manifest, F. Marquette found ample work both for his
mind and hands in arranging matters at Lapointe, so that his departure
should cause as little damage as possible to that mission, to which he had
been so faithful and devoted, and which he was now about to confide to the
care of another, and in making the necessary preparations for his
departure; for his time seemed now near at hand. The dreary days of winter
were enlivened by recounting the projected plans of the coming spring, and
in gathering all the information within his reach concerning the
Mississippi and the nations inhabiting its banks. Most of the actual
knowledge then possessed on the subject was derived from the accounts and
relations of the Jesuit missionaries of the Northwest, and from the
reports of the Canadian traders among the Indians. His inquiries of the
more northern tribes were eagerly answered by startling fables of various
hues and contradictory generalities, but nothing definite could be learned
from them as to the course of the great river, its direction or outlet, or
of the natives along its course. All was conjecture and theory. As early
as 1639 the Sieur Nicolet, who was the interpreter of the French colony of
New France, had penetrated westward to the furthest grounds of the
Algonquins, and had encountered the Winnebagoes, “a people called so
because they came from a distant sea, but whom the French erroneously
called Puents.” And we learn from F. Vimont that “the Sieur Nicolet, who
had penetrated furthest into those distant countries, avers that, had he
sailed three days more on a great river which flows from that lake (Green
Bay), he would have found the sea.” And although the Indians called the
Mississippi itself “the sea,” and the Sieur Nicolet may have fallen into
the same error, in either case it seems quite certain that he was the
first to reach the waters of that river. In 1641, Fathers Isaac Jogues and
Charles Raymbaut carried their missionary labors to the Sault St. Mary,
and received distinct accounts of the Sioux, and of the great river on
whose banks they lived. In 1658, after F. Garreau had suffered martyrdom
on the St. Lawrence on his way to renew the Western missions destroyed by
the recent Iroquois war, De Groseilles and another Frenchman penetrated to
Lake Superior, and passed the winter on its shores. They visited the
Sioux, learned with greater clearness and particularity of the course of
the great river on whose banks they stood. Their annalist writes: “It was
a beautiful river, large, broad, and deep, which would bear comparison,
they say, with the St. Lawrence.” The missionaries of the Saguenay had
also “heard of the Winnipegouek, and their bay whence three seas could be
reached.” And war parties of the Iroquois told the missionaries of New
York of their wars with the Ontoagannha, “whose towns lay on a beautiful
river (Ohio), which leads to the great lake, as they called the sea, where
they traded with Europeans who pray to God as we (the French) do, and have
rosaries and bells to call men to prayer.”(225) F. Ménard, the founder of
the Ottawa mission, also heard, in 1660, of the Mississippi and the
nations on its banks, and was only prevented from visiting them by meeting
with a martyr’s death while prosecuting his work. F. Allouez, his
successor, also writes of the great river, “which empties, as far as I can
conjecture, into the sea of Virginia,” and was the first to reveal to
Europeans its Indian name; for, in speaking of one of its tribes, he says:
“They live on a great river called Messipi.” At the time that F. Dablon
was appointed Superior of the Ottawa missions, and F. Marquette appointed
to establish the intended Illinois mission, and the exploration of the
river was about to be undertaken, the latter, as already stated, was for
some time engaged in gathering information concerning its course and
outlet. Three principal conjectures prevailed at this time: first, that it
ran towards the southwest, and entered the Gulf of California; second,
that it flowed into the Gulf of Mexico; third, that it took a more
easterly direction, and discharged itself into the Atlantic Ocean,
somewhere on the coast of Virginia. To F. Marquette belonged the glory of
solving the problem, and thus of opening the interior of the continent to
Christianity and civilization.
The war which was raging in the country rendered it impossible for the
missionaries of themselves to undertake the opening of the long‐desired
mission of the Illinois, and they had accordingly applied for assistance
to the French government to further this great enterprise. F. Marquette,
as we have seen from his letters, remained ever ready at a moment’s notice
from his superiors to advance into this dangerous field. He was not
deterred by a consciousness of his own declining health, already enfeebled
by labors and exposures, nor by the hostile character of the nations
through whose country he would have to pass, nor by the danger of a cruel
death at the hands of the fierce Dakotah. This last only made the prospect
more enticing to one whose highest ambition was to win the glorious crown
of martyrdom in opening the way for his brother Jesuits to follow in the
battle of the faith. The same flotilla that carried his letter to F.
Dablon to Quebec in the summer of 1672, on its return conveyed to him the
joyous news that the petition of the missionaries had found favor with the
government; that the Sieur Jolliet was designated to undertake the
exploration of the Mississippi; and that F. Marquette was chosen the
missionary of the expedition. It was the Blessed Virgin whom, F. Marquette
says, “I had always invoked, since my coming to the Ottawa country, in
order to obtain of God the favor of being able to visit the nations on the
Mississippi River.” It was on the feast of the Immaculate Conception of
the same Blessed Virgin Mary that he received the glorious tidings that
the realization of his hopes and prayers was at hand. He bestowed upon the
great river the name of the Immaculate Conception, which, however, as well
as its earlier Spanish name of River of the Holy Ghost, has since yielded
to its original Indian appellation.
The exploring party, consisting of “the meek, single‐hearted,
unpretending, illustrious Marquette, with Jolliet for his associate, five
Frenchmen for his companions, and two Algonquins as guides, lifting their
canoes on their backs, and walking across the narrow portage that divides
the Fox River from the Wisconsin,” set out upon their glorious expedition.
Mr. J. G. Shea, to whom we are so much indebted for his researches into
this interesting part of the history of our country, describes the voyage
in the following graphic and eloquent manner:
“In the spring they embarked at Mackinaw in two frail bark canoes;
each with his paddle in hand, and full of hope, they soon plied
them merrily over the crystal waters of the lake. All was new to
Marquette, and he describes as he went along the Menonomies, Green
Bay, and Maskoutens, which he reached on the 7th of June, 1673. He
had now attained the limit of former discoveries; the new world
was before them; they looked back a last adieu to the waters
which, great as the distance was, connected them with Quebec and
their countrymen; they knelt on the shore to offer, by a new
devotion, their lives, their honor, and their undertakings to
their beloved Mother, the Virgin Mary Immaculate; then, launching
on the broad Wisconsin, sailed slowly down its current, amid its
vine‐clad isles and its countless sand‐bars. No sound broke the
stillness, no human form appeared, and at last, after sailing
seven days, on the 17th of June they happily glided into the great
river. Joy that could find no utterance in words filled the
grateful heart of Marquette.
“The broad river of the Conception, as he named it, now lay before
them, stretching away hundreds of miles to an unknown sea. Soon
all was new; mountain and forest had glided away; the islands,
with their groves of cottonwood, became more frequent, and moose
and deer browzed on the plains; strange animals were seen
traversing the river, and monstrous fish appeared in its waters.
But they proceeded on their way amid this solitude, frightful by
its utter absence of man. Descending still further, they came to
the land of the bison, or pisikiou, which, with the turkey, became
sole tenants of the wilderness; all other game had disappeared. At
last, on the 25th of June, they descried footprints on the shore.
They now took heart again, and Jolliet and the missionary, leaving
their five men in the canoes, followed a little beaten path to
discover who the tribe might be. They travelled on in silence
almost to the cabin‐doors, when they halted, and with a loud
halloa proclaimed their coming. Three villages lay before them;
the first, roused by the cry, poured forth its motley group, which
halted at the sight of the new‐comers and the well‐known dress of
the missionary. Old men came slowly on, step by measured step,
bearing aloft the all‐mysterious calumet. All was silence; they
stood at last before the two Europeans, and Marquette asked, ‘Who
are you?’ ‘We are Illinois,’ was the answer, which dispelled all
anxiety from the explorers, and sent a thrill to the heart of
Marquette; the Illinois missionary was at last amid the children
of that tribe which he had so long, so tenderly yearned to see.
“After friendly greetings at this town of Pewaria, and the
neighboring one of Moing‐wena, they returned to their canoes,
escorted by the wondering tribe, who gave their hardy visitants a
calumet, the safeguard of the West. With renewed courage and
lighter hearts, they sailed in, and, passing a high rock with
strange and monstrous forms depicted on its rugged surface, heard
in the distance the roaring of a mighty cataract, and soon beheld
Pekitanoui, or the Muddy River, as the Algonquins call the
Missouri, rushing like some untamed monster into the calm and
clear Mississippi, and hurrying in with its muddy waters the trees
which it had rooted up in its impetuous course. Already had the
missionaries heard of the river running to the western sea, to be
reached by the branches of the Mississippi, and Marquette, now
better informed, fondly hoped to reach it one day by the Missouri.
But now their course lay south, and, passing a dangerous eddy, the
demon of the Western Indians, they reached the Waboukigou, or
Ohio, the river of the Shawnees, and, still holding on their way,
came to the warm land of the cane, and the country which the
mosquitoes might call their own. While enveloped in their sails as
a shelter from them, they came upon a tribe who invited them to
the shore. They were wild wanderers, for they had guns bought of
Catholic Europeans at the East.
“Thus, after all had been friendly, and encouraged by this second
meeting, they plied their oars anew, and, amid groves of
cottonwood on either side, descended to the 33d degree, when, for
the first time, a hostile reception was promised by the excited
Metchigameas. Too few to resist, their only hope on earth was the
mysterious calumet, and in heaven the protection of Mary, to whom
they sent up fervent prayers. At last the storm subsided, and they
were received in peace; their language formed an obstacle, but an
interpreter was found, and after explaining the object of their
coming, and announcing the great truths of Christianity, they
embarked for Akamsea, a village thirty miles below on the eastern
shore.
“Here they were well received, and learned that the mouth of the
river was but ten days’ sail from this village; but they heard,
too, of nations there trading with Europeans, and of wars between
the tribes, and the two explorers spent a night in consultation.
The Mississippi, they now saw, emptied into the Gulf of Mexico,
between Florida and Tampico, two Spanish points; they might, by
proceeding, fall into their hands. Thus far only Marquette traced
the map, and he put down the names of other tribes of which they
heard. Of these, in the Atotchasi, Matora, and Papihaka, we
recognize Arkansas tribes; and the Akoroas and Tanikwas, Pawnees
and Omahas, Kansas and Apiches, are well known in after‐days.
“They accordingly set out from Akensea, on the 17th of July, to
return. Passing the Missouri again, they entered the Illinois,
and, meeting the friendly Kaskaskias at its upper portage, were
led by them in a kind of triumph to Lake Michigan; for Marquette
had promised to return and instruct them in the faith. Sailing
along the lake, they crossed the outer peninsula of Green Bay, and
reached the mission of S. Francis Xavier just four months after
their departure from it.
“Thus had the missionaries achieved their long‐projected work. The
triumph of the age was thus completed in the discovery and
exploration of the Mississippi, which threw open to France the
richest, most fertile and accessible territory of the New World.
Marquette, whose health had been severely tried in this voyage,
remained at St. Francis to recruit his strength before resuming
his wonted missionary labors; for he sought no laurels, he aspired
to no tinsel praise.
“The distance passed over by F. Marquette on this great
expedition, in his little bark canoe, was two thousand seven
hundred and sixty‐seven miles. The feelings with which he regarded
an enterprise having so grave a bearing on the future history and
development of mankind may be appreciated from the following
closing passage of the ninth section of his _Voyages and
Discoveries_:
“ ‘Had all this voyage caused but the salvation of a single soul,
I should deem all my fatigue well repaid. And this I have reason
to think; for, when I was returning, I passed by the Indians at
Peoria. I was three days announcing the faith in all their cabins,
after which, as we were embarking, they brought me to the water’s
edge a dying child, which I baptized a little before it expired,
by an admirable Providence, for the salvation of that innocent
soul.’ ”
F. Marquette prepared a narrative of his voyage down the Mississippi (from
which the foregoing quotation is taken), and a map of that river; and on
his return transmitted copies to his superior, by the Ottawa flotilla of
that year. It is also probable that Frontenac, the Governor of New France,
as he had promised, sent a copy of them to the French government. The loss
of Jolliet’s narrative and map gave an inestimable value to those of
Marquette. Yet the French government did not publish them, probably in
consequence of the discontinuance of the publication of the Jesuit
_Relations_ about this time; and thus the great interests involved in the
discovery were neglected. Fortunately, F. Marquette’s narrative fell into
the hands of Thevenot, who had just published a collection of travels, and
such was his appreciation of it that he issued a new volume, entitled
_Recueil de Voyages_, in 1681, containing the narrative and map of the
Mississippi.(226) Mr. Sparks, in his life of F. Marquette, speaks thus of
the narrative:
“It is written in a terse, simple, and unpretending style. The
author relates what occurs, and describes what he sees, without
embellishment or display. He writes as a scholar and as a man of
careful observation and practical sense. There is no tendency to
exaggerate, nor any attempt to magnify the difficulties he had to
encounter, or the importance of his discovery. In every point of
view, this tract is one of the most interesting of those which
illustrate the early history of America.”
Having reached Green Bay, the exhausted voyager sank down under the
effects of his recent travels and exposures. His disease was so obstinate
and protracted that he suffered during the entire winter, though with
patience and resignation, and did not recover before the end of the
following summer. Having received from his superior the necessary orders
for the establishment of the Illinois mission, he started on the 25th of
October, 1674, for Kaskaskia. He was accompanied and assisted by two
faithful and devoted Frenchmen, and by a number of Pottawattomies and
Illinois Indians. They coasted along the mouth of Fox River, and then,
advancing up as far as the small bay breaking into the peninsula, they
reached the portage leading to the lake. As the canoes proceeded along the
lake shore, the missionary walked upon the beach, returning to the canoes
whenever the beach was broken by a river or stream; and their provisions
were obtained from the abundant yield of the chase. On the 23d of
November, the courageous missionary found his malady returning, but pushed
on, amid cold and snow, until, on the 4th of December, he reached the
Chicago River, which was closed with ice. Here again the unpropitious
elements and his own infirmities compelled him to stop and spend the
winter. But his time was not idly spent during this detention, for his
missionary zeal found occupation in the spiritual care of his Indian
companions, whom he instructed as well as he could, and sent them forward
on their journey. His faithful Frenchmen remained now alone with him; but
at a distance of fifty miles was an Illinois village, where there were two
Frenchmen, traders and trappers; and these, hearing of the forlorn
condition of the missionary, arranged that one of them should go and visit
him. They had prepared a cabin for him, and the Indians, alarmed for his
safety, were also anxious to send some of their tribe to convey their
father and his effects to their village. Touched by their attentions, he
sent them every assurance of his visiting them, intimating, however, the
uncertainty of his doing so in the spring, in consequence of his continued
illness. These messages only added to the alarm of the Indians, and the
sachems assembled and sent a deputation to the black‐gown. The presents
they bore were three sacks of corn, dried meat, and pumpkins, and twelve
beaver skins. The objects of their visits were, first, to make him a mat
to sit on; second, to ask him for powder; third, supply him with food;
fourth, to get some merchandise. The good father made answer in
characteristic terms, as follows: “First, that I came to instruct them by
speaking of the prayer; second, that I would not give them powder, as we
endeavor to make peace everywhere, and because I did not wish them to
begin a war against the Miamis; third, that we did not fear famine;
fourth, that I would encourage the French to bring them merchandise, and
that they must make reparation to the traders there for the beads taken
from them while the surgeon was with me.” Presenting them with some axes,
knives, and trinkets, he dismissed them with a promise to make every
effort to visit them in a few days. Bidding their good father to “take
heart,” and beseeching him to “stay and die in their country,” the
deputation “returned to their winter camps.”
The ensuing winter months, though marked by every bodily suffering and
privation, were replete with religious consolation. His whole time was
spent in prayer. Admonished by his disease that his last end could not be
far off, he offered his remaining days entirely to God. He lost sight of
the sufferings of his body in the overflow of heavenly consolations with
which his soul was ravished. Still the recollection that he had been
appointed missionary of the Illinois, and the duty this seemed to impose
upon him of laboring for the conversion of those noble but benighted
souls, filled his heart with the desire of visiting them, if it should be
the will of God, and the establishment of the Illinois mission became the
absorbing thought of his mind and the burden of the prayers which he
addressed to the throne of heaven. His sufferings he bore not only with
patience, but with joy; if he prayed for their cessation, it was only with
the view that he might thus be enabled to encounter the new sufferings,
labors, and hardships of his mission, and that he might devote his
remaining days to the salvation of his beloved Illinois. To obtain this
privilege from heaven, he induced his companions to unite with him in a
novena of prayers in honor of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed
Virgin Mary. Some time after Christmas, 1675, his Patroness in heaven
obtained the desired boon of health for her devoted client; for he soon
began to recover from his disease, and, though still feeble, was enabled
by the 29th of March, when the snow and ice began to melt, and the
inundations compelled them to move, to set out for Kaskaskia, in the Upper
Illinois. He arrived at that Illinois town on the 8th of April, but his
journal was discontinued from the 6th of April, and we have no record of
his movements from that time. He was received by his children as an angel
from heaven, for they scarcely supposed he had escaped alive the rigors of
the winter. It was Monday in Holy Week, and the good man immediately
commenced his work. He visited the chiefs and ancients of the town, and
gave them and the crowds who assembled in the cabins he visited the first
necessary instructions in the Gospel. So great were the throngs that
assembled to hear him preach that the narrow accommodations of the cabins
could not hold them. On Maundy Thursday he called a general assembly of
the people in the open field, a beautiful prairie near the town, which was
decorated after the fashion of the country, and spread with mats and bear
skins. He formed a little rustic altar by suspending some pieces of Indian
taffety on cords, to which were attached, so as to be seen on all four
sides, four large pictures of the Blessed Virgin, under whose invocation
the mission was placed. The assembly was immense; composed of five hundred
chiefs and ancients seated in a circle around the missionary, and around
these stood fifteen hundred young men. Besides these, great numbers of
women and children attended. He addressed his congregation with ten words
or presents, according to the Indian fashion, associating each word or
present, which represented some great truth or mystery, with one of the
ten beads on the belt of the prayer which he held in his hand. He
explained the object of his visit to them, preached Christ crucified—for
it was the eve of Good Friday—and explained to them the principal
mysteries of the Christian religion. The Holy Mass was then celebrated for
the first time in this new mission. On each of the following days he
continued his instructions, and on Easter Sunday he celebrated the great
Feast of the Resurrection, offering up Mass for the second time. He took
possession of the land in the name of his risen Lord, and bestowed upon
the mission the name of the Immaculate Virgin Mary.
His former malady now returned with renewed violence. His strength was
wasting away. To remain would accomplish no good for his children, for he
was unable to discharge the duties of the missionary, and no alternative
was left but to make an effort to reach his former mission, Mackinaw,
where he hoped to die in the midst of his fellow‐members of the Society of
Jesus. He was the more willing now to seek rest in the bosom of his
Redeemer and in the Society of his Blessed Mother in Heaven, because he
had performed his promise, the mission of the Illinois had been founded,
his words had been lovingly received by his people, the good seed had been
sown in their hearts, the Holy Sacrifice had been offered up in their
presence and for their salvation, and future missionaries might now
advance to cultivate the field and reap the harvest he had prepared. His
docile Indians, with the devotion of children, begged him to return to
them as soon as his health should permit. He repeatedly promised them that
he or some other missionary would come to continue the good work amongst
them. The people followed him on his journey, escorted him thirty leagues
on his way with great pomp, showing him every mark of friendship and
affection, and many contended among themselves for the honor of carrying
the scanty baggage he possessed. Taking the way of the St. Joseph’s River
and the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, along which he had yet to travel
over a hundred leagues through an unknown route, his strength soon began
to fail entirely. He could no longer help himself; his two faithful French
companions had to lift him in and out of his canoe when they landed at
night; and so exhausted had he become under his wasting disease that they
had to handle and carry him like a child. In the midst of his sufferings
and the hardships of such a journey in his enfeebled health, his
characteristic equanimity, joy, and gentleness never for a moment left
him. He could even forget his own sufferings to console his companions. He
encouraged them to sustain the fatigues of the way, assuring them that God
would protect and defend them. His native mirthfulness was even in this
extreme crisis conspicuous in his conversations. He now calmly saw the
approach of death, and joyfully and heroically welcome it as the reward of
his toils and sacrifices. He had some time before prepared a meditation on
death, to serve him in these last hours of his life, which he now used
with great consolation. He said his office to his last day. His devotions
frequently assumed the shape of colloquies with his merciful Lord, with
his Holy Mother, with his angel guardian, and with all heaven. He
repeatedly pronounced with fervor the sublime words, “I believe that my
Redeemer liveth”; and again, “Mary, Mother of grace, Mother of God,
remember me.” Perceiving a river on whose banks loomed up a prominent
eminence, he ordered his companions to stop, that he might die and be
buried there. He pointed out the spot on this eminence in which he desired
them to inter his remains. This river, until recent years, bore his name.
His companions still desired to press forward, in the hope of reaching
Mackinaw; but they were driven back by the wind, and, entering the River
Marquette by its former channel, they erected a bark cabin, under which
Marquette, like his great model, S. Francis Xavier, was stretched upon the
shore, and, like him, sighed only to be dissolved and to be with Christ.
So cheerfully did he realize his approaching dissolution that he gave all
the necessary directions to his companions touching his burial. He had a
week before blessed some water, which he instructed them how to use on the
occasion, how to arrange his hands, feet, and head, with what religious
ceremonies to bury him, even telling them that they should take his little
altar bell, and ring it as they carried him to the grave. On the eve of
his death, he told them with a countenance radiant with joy that the
morrow would be his last day on earth. Still mindful of his sacred
ministry, and anxious to be doing good, he administered the sacrament of
penance to his two companions for the last time. He thanked them for their
charity to him during this arduous and eventful voyage, begged their
pardon for the trouble he had given them, and directed them to ask pardon
for him and in his name of all the Fathers and Brothers of the Society of
Jesus in the Ottawa country; he also gave them a paper in which he had
written all his faults since his last confession, which he begged them to
give to his superior, that he might pray the more earnestly for him. He
promised not to forget them in heaven. Ever mindful of others in this
trying moment, and overflowing with charity for his neighbor, he insisted
upon his companions taking some rest, leaving him to commune with heaven,
assuring them that his hour was not yet at hand, and that he would call
them in due time. This he did; summoning them to his side, just as his
agony was approaching. Hastening to him, they fell melting into tears at
his feet. He embraced them for the last time, called for the holy water he
had blessed and his reliquary, and, taking his crucifix from around his
neck, and handing it to one of them, he requested him to hold it up before
him, so that he could behold it every moment he had yet to live. Clasping
his hands, and fixing his eyes affectionately on the image of his expiring
Saviour, he pronounced aloud his profession of faith, and thanked God for
the favor he enjoyed in dying a Jesuit, a missionary of the cross, and,
above all, in dying in a miserable cabin, amid forests, and destitute of
all human consolation and assistance. He then communed secretly for some
time with his Creator, but his devotion from time to time found vent in
the ejaculations, “Sustinuit anima mea in verba ejus,” and “Mater Dei,
memento mei.” These were his last words before he was taken with the agony
of death. His companions frequently pronounced the names of Jesus and
Mary, as he had previously requested them to do, and, when they saw he was
about to expire, they called out “Jesus, Maria,” whereupon he repeated
those enrapturing names several times with distinctness, and then
suddenly, as if his Saviour and Mother had appeared to him, he raised his
eyes above the crucifix, gazing with a countenance lit up with pleasure at
those blissful apparitions. He expired as peacefully and gently as a child
sinking into its evening slumber.
“Thus he died, the great apostle,
Far away in regions West;
By the Lake of the Algonquins
Peacefully his ashes rest;
But his spirit still regards us
From his home among the blest.”
The devoted companions of the illustrious missionary, happy, in the midst
of their bereavement, in the privilege of witnessing one of the most
heroic and saintly deaths recorded in the history of our race, carried out
every injunction of their departed father, and added every act that love
and veneration could suggest, and that their impoverished condition in the
wilderness could afford. They laid out his remains as he had directed,
rang the little altar bell as they carried him with profound respect to
the mound of earth selected by himself, interred him there, and raised a
large cross to mark the sacred spot.
The surviving companions of the deceased now prepared to embark. One of
them had been ill for some time, suffering with such depression of spirits
and feebleness of body that he could neither eat nor sleep. Just before
embarking he knelt at the grave of his saintly friend, and begged him to
intercede for him in heaven as he had promised, and, taking some earth
from the breast of the departed, and placing it upon his own breast, it is
related that he felt his sadness and bodily infirmity immediately depart,
and he resumed his voyage in health and gladness. Many are the pious
traditions of miraculous results attributed to the sanctity of F.
Marquette; many of them are still handed down among the Western
missionaries, and some of them have found a place in the pages of serious
history.
The remains of the saintly Jesuit were, two years afterwards, disinterred
by his own flock, the Kiskakons, while returning from their hunting‐
grounds, placed in a neat box of bark, and reverently carried to their
mission. The flotilla of canoes, as it passed along in funeral solemnity,
was joined by a party of the Iroquois, and, as they approached Mackinaw,
many other canoes, including those of the two missionaries of the place,
united in the imposing convoy, and the deep, reverential chant, _De
Profundis_, arose heavenward from the bosom of the lake until the body
reached the shore. It was carried in procession with cross, burning
tapers, and fragrant incense to the church, where every possible
preparation had been made for so interesting and affecting a ceremony;
and, after the Requiem service, the precious relics were deposited in a
vault prepared for them in the middle of the church, “where he reposes,”
says the pious chronicler, “as the guardian angel of our Ottawa missions.”
“Ever after,” says Bancroft, “the forest rangers, if in danger on Lake
Michigan, would invoke his name. The people of the West will build his
monument.”
The following notice of the character of F. Marquette is from the gifted
pen of Mr. Shea:
“Such was the edifying and holy death of the illustrious explorer
of the Mississippi, on Saturday, the 18th of May, 1675. He was of
a cheerful, joyous disposition, playful even in his manner, and
universally beloved. His letters show him to us as a man of
education, close observation, sound sense, strict integrity, a
freedom from exaggeration, and yet a vein of humor which here and
there breaks out in spite of all his self‐command.
“But all these qualities are little compared to his zeal as a
missionary, to his sanctity as a man. His holiness drew on him in
life the veneration of all around him, and the lapse of years has
not even now destroyed it in the descendants of those who knew
him. In one of his sanctity we naturally find an all‐absorbing
devotion to the Mother of the Saviour, with its constant
attendants, an angelical love of purity, and a close union of the
heart with God. It is, indeed, characteristic with him. The
privilege which the Church honors under the title of the
Immaculate Conception was the constant object of his thoughts;
from his early youth he daily recited the little offices of the
Immaculate Conception and fasted every Saturday in her honor. As a
missionary, a variety of devotions directed to the same end still
show his devotions, and to her he turned in all his trials. When
he discovered the great river, when he founded his new mission, he
gave it the name of the Conception, and no letter, it is said,
ever came from his hand that did not contain the words, ’Blessed
Virgin Immaculate’; and the smile that lighted up his dying face
induced his poor companions to believe that she had appeared
before the eyes of her devoted client.
“Like S. Francis Xavier, whom he especially chose as the model of
his missionary career, he labored nine years for the moral and
social improvement of nations sunk in paganism and vice, and, as
he was alternately with tribes of varied tongues, found it was
necessary to acquire knowledge of many American languages: six he
certainly spoke with ease; many more he is known to have
understood less perfectly. His death, however, was, as he had
always desired, more like that of the apostle of the Indies; there
is, indeed, a striking resemblance between their last moments; and
the wretched cabin, the desert shore, the few destitute
companions, the lonely grave, all harmonize in Michigan and
Sancian.”
Prayer Of Custance, The Persecuted Queen Of Alla Of Northumberland.
Mother, quod she, and maiden bright, Mary!
Soth is that through womanne’s eggement
Mankind was lorn, and damned aye to die,
For which thy Child was on a cross yrent:
Thy blissful eyen saw all his torment;
Then is there no comparison between
Thy woe and any woe man may sustain.
Thou saw’st thy Child yslain before thine eyen,
And yet now liveth my little child parfay,
Now, lady bright! to whom all woful crien,
Thou glory of womanhood, thou faire May,
Thou haven of refute, bright star of the day!
Rue on my child, that of thy gentleness
Ruest on every rueful in distress.
—_Chaucer._
Acoma.
“Mr. S——, would you like to visit Acoma?” asked the commandant.
“Most assuredly,” I replied; “I came out here to see all I could see. But
what or who is Acoma?”(227)
“A town built on the top of a rock rising from a level plain to a height
of over two hundred feet is Acoma—the home of the Acoma Indians, a tribe
of the great Pueblo family. I am ordered thither to have a talk with the
principal men, and induce them to give up some Navajo
children—captives—they are said to have taken in a recent skirmish.”
I had been enjoying the hospitality of the commandant for some days at old
Fort Wingate, near the Ojo del Gallo, in the northwestern part of New
Mexico. Acoma lies about fifty miles to the southeast of the fort, by a
very rough trail across the mountains. It was somewhat further by the
regular trail.
As we started, the sun was creeping over the brow of lofty San Mateo. The
party consisted of the commandant, Don Juan Brown, a Castilianized
American, who speaks Spanish like a native, and went with us as volunteer
interpreter; Messrs. Jim Durden and Joe Smithers, gentlemen loafers; a
sergeant and twenty cavalry as escort in case of unexpected and undesired
rencounters with hostile Apaches or Navajoes; last, the writer, a denizen
of the city of Gotham, general tourist, grand scribe and chronicler.
We all rode on horseback, except Don Juan Brown, who, being a trifle over
225 lbs., divided his weight between a pair of good horses attached to a
light buggy. The order of march was: two cavalrymen five hundred yards in
advance; the commandant, with Jim and Joe and the writer; the main body of
the escort; Don Juan Brown with his buggy, and a rear guard of two
cavalrymen five hundred yards behind.
A brisk trot of three miles brought us to the Puertocito, or Little Door,
which leads from the Valley of the Gallo into the Mal Païs, a petrified
sea of lava, which lies between the Puertocito and the mountains. The lava
stream seems to have been suddenly turned to stone by a wave of some
enchanter’s wand while it was a raging, seething torrent.
We halted and dismounted, tightened girths, etc. Jim and Joe, unused to
the equitating mood, and evidently disliking particularly the trotting
tense, had fallen back to the rear guard, and looked somewhat shaken. The
relief of a walk of some miles was in store for them, as the trail through
the Mal Païs admitted only of that gait and of single file.
The Puertocito is formed by two rocks about twenty feet high. We wound our
way through tortuous passages, through lava spires, at a slow walk. We
could not see more than a few yards ahead. It was a dreary pathway. The
knowledge that it was a haunt for Indians bound on robbery or revenge gave
imagination an opportunity to put her darkest colors on the natural gloom.
An hour’s slow walking brings us to the Bajada, or Descent, where our path
is up and down the steep sides of a lava rock thirty feet high. We
dismount and lead our horses carefully down. Half a dozen men holding on
to the buggy behind make sufficient drag to let it down in safety, though
with some wrenching of the wheels in the channelled surface of the rock.
Thence our way lies on the eastern skirt of the lava, which runs along
with the stream known as the San José through a deep and winding gorge
named Los Rémanzos. I have seen some wild scenery in my time, but never
before nor since so savage a piece of landscape as Los Rémanzos. The
mountains rise perpendicularly on either hand—their barren sides dotted
with huge boulders which seem ready to fall instantly on the traveller
beneath. You wonder why they do not fall. The winding cañon shuts out all
view beyond twenty yards in advance. A trail barely wide enough for one
vehicle to pass creeps between the San José and the mountains on one side;
and from the stream to the mountains on the other the lava piles up its
grim and threatening forms.
We halted at the picket to wait for the escort, the buggy, and Jim and
Joe, beguiling the time by a comforting draught of hot coffee from a
military quart cup which the commander of the picket hospitably offered
us. The laggards soon arrived. Jim and Joe took advantage of the pause
before starting again to enter a solemn protest against trotting:
“For heaven’s sake, commandant!” said they with one voice and in a tone
that showed acute feeling, “either walk or lope; we cannot endure that
confounded trot. We shall be as raw as uncooked beefsteaks.”
A bright thought struck them both simultaneously, and, without any further
ceremony, they rushed to the buggy, leaving their horses to take care of
themselves or be taken care of by some good‐natured dragoon.
Another mile brought us to the crossing of the San José. Here was a check
to our proceedings: the crossing was not fordable. The stream, usually
about two feet wide and three inches deep at the crossing, had in
consequence of recent heavy rains and the melting of snows filled its
steep bed and overflowed its banks for fifty yards on either side. A
powerful eddy made it impossible for a horse to strike ground on the other
side. A dragoon dashed in and tried it, but it was with great difficulty
we saved him and his horse from being carried down the swollen stream, and
got them safe on our side again.
“That settles it, gentlemen,” said the commandant; “we shall have to cross
the mountains—a rough trail, but we have no choice.”
It was now proposed to leave the buggy behind, but Joe would not hear of
it. The commandant was too polite to insist, as he ought to have done.
Crossing a narrow but steep cut, however, the buggy went over, spilling
Don Juan and Jim over the mountain‐side. The buggy stood on its top—wheels
in the air. The horses—good and gentle animals—came to a full stop and
stood perfectly quiet. Otherwise, there would have been as little left of
the buggy as of Dr. Holmes’ one‐horse shay, the last time the deacon rode
in it. Neither the Don nor Jim was hurt, though the latter was somewhat
frightened. Don Juan took the matter with the coolness of an old hand. The
buggy was uninjured; it had merely met with a reverse. It was soon put
upon its legs—or, rather, its wheels—again. Its progress was so
aggravatingly slow when even our fastest possible gait was a walk, that,
dividing the escort, we went on, leaving it to proceed at its leisure.
It was about nightfall when we reached the edge of a precipitous descent
where all marks of a trail disappeared. The descent was probably two
hundred feet in perpendicular height, and alarmingly steep.
“The buggy can never go down there,” was the general remark.
“Confound the buggy, we shall have to sleep out in the cold all night with
nothing but a saddle‐blanket, on account of it,” also translates a very
general sentiment.
“We cannot desert them, however,” said the commandant; “as the buggy has
come with us we must stand by it. We shall wait here until it comes up.”
We had a long and weary wait for that anathematized buggy. At length, as
the shades of night were falling, the long‐looked‐for buggy was seen, its
top bumping up and down like a buffalo with a broken foreleg. The don
walked on one side of the vehicle holding the reins; Joe walked on the
other side as gloomily as a chief mourner. The remainder of the escort
with dismal visages followed behind.
A glance over the steep brink did not give any radiance to their gloomy
countenances. Don Juan expressed his regrets that we should have been
detained by the slow and difficult progress of the buggy. Joe said
nothing, but evidently felt ashamed of himself.
We were still twenty miles from Acoma. Within about five miles, the
commandant said there was a little Indian hut—a sort of outpost of the
Pueblo—the owner of which, old Salvador, was one of the notables of the
Pueblo. The commandant had notified Salvador by courier some days before
of our intended visit. He had proposed to meet us at the ranchito and
guide us over the remainder of the mountain trail. Here we could pass the
night under cover at least, though we should be pretty closely packed.
Joe had resumed the saddle after the steep descent had been accomplished.
He and Jim now led the party, and, as the rest of us stayed with Don Juan
and the buggy, they got considerably in advance. Thus they had reached the
ranchito some twenty minutes before we did. We found them knocking at the
door and calling loudly and indignantly on the inmates to open.
“We have been knocking and shouting here for half an hour, and the
confounded old Indian has not taken the slightest notice of us. I believe
he would let us freeze.”
“Salvador does not know you,” said the commandant. “He is too wise an
Indian to open his doors to strangers in this country after nightfall.
Salvador is reputed wealthy, and it behooves him to be careful what
nocturnal visitors he receives. I think I can get Salvador to open. Is
Señor Don Salvador within?” asked the commandant, in Spanish.
“Is it the Señor Comandante who is without?” asked Don Salvador, in the
same language, with the usual Pueblo peculiarities of pronunciation—the
use of _l_ for _r_, etc.
Being satisfied on this point, Salvador opened the door to receive us.
Salvador was a stout, middle‐sized, gray‐headed Indian of the Pueblo type.
The presence of the commandant being a voucher for the rest, Salvador now
proceeded to shake hands with the whole party—in the order of rank, as he
understood it—taking first the commandant, next the bugler, then the
sergeant and the men of the escort, and then the civilians, Don Brown and
the writer, and lastly Jim and Joe; conscientiously repeating in each
individual case, “_Como le va!_” and “_Bueno!_” Indians believe in
uniforms and brass buttons. They don’t understand official dignity without
outward and visible signs.
The ranchito was a little structure of _tierrones_, or sods, roofed with
poles laid across from wall to wall, and covered with brush and earth.
There were no windows. The door was the only aperture, I think. I am not
quite sure whether there was a hole in the roof to let out a little of the
smoke; there may have been. The edifice was about large enough for a fair‐
sized poultry‐house. It was perched on the steep mountainside, the earth
being cut away on the upper side to give an approach to a level
foundation. There was a small shed for animals, the fodder for whose use
being piled on top of it. There was the usual corn‐crib. Our best horses
were honored with the hospitality of the shed, Salvador’s pony and burros
being turned out to make room for them. The other animals were tied to
logs in front of the ranchito, and a guard placed over them.
It required some stooping to enter Salvador’s residence. This was very
hard on the stout Don, who had not seen his own knee for a number of
years, but he accomplished it as if he had been in the daily habit of
touching his toes without bending his knees. But a further trial still
awaited him. The hut was divided into two rooms. The passage between the
two rooms was a blighted door, cut short in its youth to the proportions
of a small fireplace. We had to come down to all‐fours to get into the
inner chamber. When the commandant, the staunch Don, and the writer had
entered, the place seemed full. But Salvador, on hospitable thoughts
intent, insisted on Jim and Joe entering. Then Salvador wriggled in. The
room was replete.
After a meagre supper and a quiet smoke, we arranged the details of the
morrow’s trip. With our saddles for pillows, and our saddle‐blankets and
overcoats for beds and bed‐covering, we lay down to sleep. Brown, with Jim
and Joe, in the inner room; the commandant, the old Pueblo, and myself in
the outer. Jim and Joe lay perpendicularly to Brown, and Salvador
described a horizontal to the commandant and myself. I slept well,
considering, though I was waked two or three times by a roaring noise,
which seemed to me to be that of the house falling, as I was endeavoring
to force myself through the passage between the two apartments, in which,
more than once during the night, I dreamt that I was stuck fast. On
waking, I discovered that the sound proceeded from the resounding Aztec
nose of our host, Salvador.
We were roused before day by the old Indian. Dressing took no time, as we
had not undressed the night before—a great saving of time, labor, and
discomfort. Breakfast was to be got ready, however. Salvador made the
fire. The commandant detailed himself and myself as cooks for the morning.
At supper‐time, Don Juan, assisted by Jim and Joe, would officiate
culinarily. Slices from a haunch of bacon we had brought with us, cooked
on the end of a stick, with “hard tack” and coffee, made in a camp kettle,
furnished a delicious breakfast. What is there in the odor of unctuous
bacon that makes it so pleasant to the nostrils when one is camping out or
“roughing it”? There are people who cannot abide the smell of bacon within
the confines of civilization. But put them on the Plains, or in the field,
and a daily dose of the appetizing grease is necessary to “settle their
stomachs.” I have known men who, in long trips in the wilds, forsook
chickens and returned to first principles and bacon.
We made an early start. The buggy was left behind. Don Juan saddled one of
his horses. He borrowed from the old Indian a saddle, so angular and so
full of sharp points that it must have been hard even for an Indian’s
seat. But Brown, though heavy, was a good horseman, and he bore the
infliction like a hero.
Salvador was our guide. When we were all mounted, and ready to start, we
looked around for him. After some hunting we saw him above us, mounted,
and seemingly emerging from the roof of the ranchito. He went straight up
the side of the mountain, beckoning to us to come on, and shouting
“_Caballeros! por aquí!_”(228)
An Indian does not understand flank movements. He does not go around
obstacles. He goes straight over them on the direct line of his objective.
We followed our guide, dismounting, however, leading our horses, and
zigzagging up the steep ascent like Christians and white men.
Our course was over mountain and across ravine on a bee‐line of ascent or
descent for Acoma. There was some growling by Jim and Joe, but as our
general gait was a slow walk, and they made much of their progress on
foot, they did not grumble much.
I noticed moccasin tracks in several places where the ground was soft. The
distance between the foot‐prints was very great. It astonished me. I rode
to the commandant’s side, and called his attention to the wonderful
tracks. He pointed them out to Salvador, who said they were the tracks of
a _muchacho_ he had sent to the Pueblo last night with the news of our
arrival at the ranchito. What a stepper that _muchacho_ must have been!
His average bound must have been at least ten feet.
“How long will it take him to go to the Pueblo, Salvador?” asked the
commandant.
“Oh! not long,” replied Salvador, “long as a good horse.”
_Experientia docet._ Before I saw those tracks I used to set down the
accounts I read in my Grecian history of wonderful time made by messengers
to Athens and other classic centres as antique yarns. I now believe in the
fastest Grecian time reported. Thus, the torch of faith is often lit by
the merest straying spark—a lesson to us not to limit our belief to what
is within the scope of our knowledge. We know so little.
Jim and Joe had begun to growl over the continual ups and downs of the
journey when we saw Salvador, who was some three or four hundred yards
ahead, dismount at the foot of what seemed to be the steepest ascent yet.
“This must be a stiff one,” said the commandant. “I see Salvador has
dismounted. It takes a pretty steep ascent to make an Indian or a Mexican
dismount. They hold to the saddle until the animal begins to bend
backward.”
It was a steep and toilsome ascent, winding in and out through huge
boulders just wide enough apart to let a horse squeeze through. It was not
always easy to convince the horses that there was room enough for them to
pass. They would refuse to be convinced, and obstinately draw back, to the
discomfort and danger of those leading them, and more so of those
following.
At last we reached the top of the ascent. The descent on the other side
was a worthy pendant to it. We halted on the crest to enjoy the landscape
before us. From the base of the height a level plain spread away for
miles, unbroken save by a cluster of lofty perpendicular white rocks, each
rising independently from the level plain. On the top of the highest of
these rocks stood a little town, the smoke from its chimneys mingling with
the clouds. This was Acoma.
We descended slowly and carefully. A brisk trot of about two miles brought
us to two lofty natural columns, through which the trail passed. They
seemed the pillars of a gigantic portal—a resemblance which had struck the
Indians, for they named it El Puerto: The Gate. We had now reached the
base of the inhabited rock. An excavation near the base was pointed out to
us by Salvador as the trace of an attempt to mine the position by the
Spanish invaders! I think the story rather a doubtful one.
I judged the rock to be about two hundred and fifty feet in height. The
path up the rocky side to the village was steep and narrow. No wheeled
vehicle has ever entered the Pueblo. The primitive _carreta_, with its
clumsy wheels of solid disks cut from the trunk of some gigantic cotton‐
wood, stopped short at the base—going thus far and no further. Provisions
and other necessaries are packed up on the backs of surefooted donkeys.
Water for drinking purposes is carried up on the heads of the Indians in
large earthen vessels named _tinajas_; for other uses rain‐water is
carefully gathered in natural tanks or hollows in the summit of the rock.
There is a bypath or short‐cut up to the Pueblo which the Acomas generally
use when unburdened or in a hurry. A glance showed us that it was only
practicable for Acoma Indians. This short‐cut is in the most nearly
perpendicular of any of the rocky sides. It consists of holes in the
smooth and vertical side of the rock, in which the Indians place their
hands and feet, and climb up after the fashion of sailors clambering up
rigging, and with no less rapidity.
We returned to the common highway, which now seemed by comparison a
flowery path of dalliance. It was slow and tiresome work, however. After a
rest or two, to breathe our animals and ourselves, we finally reached the
comparatively level space, some acres in area, on the summit of the rock.
Here we were met by Francisco, our guide’s son, the governor, matadores,
alguazils, and other functionaries of the Pueblo. This is as good a place
as any other to say that the governor and all other officials are elected
annually. They were dressed in the usual Pueblo fashion. Their heads were
uncovered. They were draped in large blankets, which gave them a very
dignified appearance.
We received a most cordial reception. The commandant had been a good
friend to the Acomas—had protected them in their little trading
operations, and helped them in the long, hard winters when their granaries
were empty. The entire male population was assembled in the Plaza or
central square. The squaws and children were at their front doors, that is
to say, on the roofs, for the entrance to a Pueblo’s dwelling is from
above.
A fire for the dragoons to cook their rations by was made in the centre of
the Plaza. The horses were picketed around. A contribution of corn and
firewood was levied by the governor for the use of the escort. The Indians
came in cheerful, laughing groups, bearing their _costals_ of corn or
their bundles of wood. The escort being provided for, we went to the house
of Francisco, the most comfortable house in the Pueblo; for Francisco was
the wealthiest member of the little community. The governor’s dwelling was
a poor one, and himself a poor man who was unable to entertain us as
comfortably as Francisco could. He accompanied us thither.
Francisco’s dwelling, like most of the others in the Pueblo, was a two‐
storied adobe building, whitewashed inside and out. The mode of access was
a ladder placed against the outer wall of the lower story. Having reached
the top of this, you walk across the roof and enter the house by a door on
the second story, the façade of which is somewhat retired from the front
line of the first.
Here we found some rosy, apple‐faced squaws, engaged in culinary and other
domestic operations. One was kneeling grinding corn with the primitive
_matata_. They smiled with all their countenances on us; and a half‐dozen
of the whitest sets of teeth, that dentist or dentifrice never touched,
gleamed a bright welcome to us. They wore the usual dark woollen robe,
made of two pieces, about five feet long and three broad, sewed together
at one of the narrow ends, but with an aperture for the head to pass
through. The robe is then gathered round the waist and tied with a string.
Their nut‐brown arms were bare, and encircled at the wrist by from one to
a dozen brass rings; their feet were bare. The thick swathing of buckskin,
with which they wrap their lower limbs when journeying, and which gives
them the appearance of being terribly swollen, were laid aside, much to
the furthering of a graceful effect.
We were invited to descend to the sitting‐room, situated beneath, through
a very narrow trap‐door. Don Juan walked fearlessly toward the aperture.
We begged him to pause before he rushed into a place whence he could never
hope to return. The Indians understood the joke, and enjoyed it hugely.
So the Don entered the aperture, and by judicious squeezing actually
succeeded in passing. His coat‐tails got through about the same time as
his head. The others, being of the lean and hungry‐looking kind, had no
difficulty in descending.
From the room into which we had descended ventilation was completely
excluded. Light was only admitted through one or two small panes of glass
in apertures like port‐holes in the walls.
We took seats on sheep‐skins spread in a circle around the floor. The
commandant made known his business in passable Spanish; the governor
replied, through Francisco, as interpreter. The worthy Don intervened,
from time to time, between the high contracting parties, when there was a
lack of language or danger of misunderstanding. The business was completed
satisfactorily and in short order.
While the floor was being set for dinner—tables not being in vogue here—we
endeavored to obtain the Acoma’s idea of the antiquity of the Pueblo.
Francisco, though he had learned to read and write, had not got beyond the
Indian idea of time, space, or number. There is no medium between “many”
and “few”—very far, _muy lejos_; and near, _cerca_.
“How many years old is the Pueblo?”
“_Muchos años._—Many years.”
“About how many?”
“Who knows, señor?” with a shrug. “A great many.”
“Who is the oldest man in the Pueblo?”
“The cacique.”
The cacique, we were informed, is the official historian of the Pueblo.
His records consist only in oral traditions, which he teaches to a youth
selected for the purpose, who is to succeed him in his office when he
dies.
“Is the cacique very old?”
“Si, señor! Very old.”
It is useless to ask an Indian how old he or any other Indian is, as he
never knows. So we did not ask how old the cacique was.
“Was the cacique he succeeded very old?”
“Yes, sir; very old.”
“Was the Pueblo in existence as long as he can remember?”
“Yes, sir; and as long as the cacique before him and the cacique before
him could remember. But we shall have the cacique here shortly, and then
after dinner we’ll have a good big talk about the many years ago.”
Francisco, the governor, and his father now engaged in an earnest
conversation in their Indian tongue, the result of which was that
Francisco unlocked a vast trunk, of antique form and solidity, and took
therefrom a pile of manuscript, which he handed us with great solemnity.
The Indians looked upon this venerable pile with great reverence. It was
probably the first time it had been touched by “outsiders.” We owed the
permission to examine it to the many kind acts the commandant had
performed for the Acomas.
The first portion of the manuscript examined was a Missal. The Office of
the Mass was copied in Latin in a fair plain hand, the work of some
Spanish missionary. The ink had turned yellow, but the text was clear and
legible throughout. Nothing in the MS. Missal indicated the date of its
writing. A further examination of the venerable pages furnished us some
information. Besides the Missal, they comprised a register in Spanish of
births, marriages, and deaths. The earliest written record of the Pueblo
which we found is the record of a baptism, 1725.
Having gleaned what knowledge we could from the precious manuscripts, they
were carefully and reverently put away in the ponderous chest, and secured
by a padlock nearly as large as a travelling satchel.
Dinner was now served. It was very good. It consisted of a chicken stew,
good white bread, and very passable tea. The stew was made so intensely
hot, however, by _chile colorado_,(229) that I did not enjoy it as much as
I might have done had it been less fiery. I never could relish _chile_
either _colorado_ or _verde_. But on this occasion, I determined to eat it
if it burned me to a shell to show my appreciation of Acoma hospitality!
The cacique—an old, white‐haired, blear‐eyed Indian, at least ninety—came
in toward the close of the meal, accompanied by the youth whom he was
instructing in the historical and legendary lore of the Pueblo. He evinced
no inclination to be communicative, but showed a determination to make a
rousing meal—something to which he was evidently not accustomed. After
dinner he devoted himself to smoking our cigars; but not a word could we
get out of him about the history of Acoma. Joe said that as a story‐teller
he considered the cacique a decided failure.
The governor signified that he was now ready to show us the church. So
thither we proceeded.
The church is, of course, of adobe. It was unused at the time we visited
it. No priest had been attached to the Pueblo for some years. But it was
not suffered to fall into decay. On one side of the altar was a painting
of the Virgin and Child; on the other, one of S. Joseph. On the ceiling
above the altar were large paintings of the sun and moon. Here we got
another chronological glimmer—the last we found. It was an inscription
which stated that the church had been renovated in 1802. The Indians told
us it was done by some artist‐priest who came from far away—probably Spain
or Italy. There are a pair of bells in the belfry. The Acoma tradition is
that these bells were a gift to the Pueblo from a Queen of Spain. Of
course they do not know the date of their reception. They say, however,
that it was some time before the renovation of the church.
We next went to the southern edge of the rock to look at the “short cut”
from above. This was not easy or pleasant pedestrianism. The rock here
ceased to be level, throwing up sharp craggy points. The Indians stepped
from point to point, erect and graceful and without difficulty. The pale
faces were compelled by a due discretion to abandon erect attitudes, and
proceed bending down, and using hands as well as feet. A look down the
rocky side was sufficient. The commandant shook his head, and said in
Spanish:
“That is no way for a white man to come up”—a remark which the Indians
seemed to consider remarkably humorous. They laughed and “how‐how”‐ed
vehemently.
As we returned, we remarked that on one side of the rock it was bevelled
down from the summit about forty or fifty feet, and then resumed its
general steep and vertical character. Some houses were situated near the
superior edge of this bend. A thrill ran through me from head to foot as I
saw a child roll from the front of one of the houses down the incline.
“He will be dashed to atoms!” I cried in horror.
The Indians looked in the direction to which I frantically pointed, and
then united in a good‐humored laugh.
Soon another urchin, and another, and another followed the first, who
picked himself up just at the deadly brink, and mounted the incline, to
roll down again and again, as we used to on a hillside in snow with our
sleds, in our younger days. This was play for the infantine Acomas. They
were “keeping the pot a‐bilin’.”
The Indians told us that no fatal accident had ever happened to any Acoma
either while rolling down the dread incline “in pretty, pleasant play,” or
climbing the steep path the mere sight of which had made us dizzy.
Tradition records that only one Indian ever “went over the side.” He was
saved by a projecting stump catching him by the breech‐clout and holding
him suspended until he was rescued—unhurt.
Our next visit was the _Estufa_. Here the sacred fire was burning. The
_Estufa_ was an underground apartment. We descended through a trap‐door,
which also served as a chimney, and down a smoke‐begrimed ladder. The
chamber was some thirty feet in length and perhaps fifteen in width. We
were informed that it was the general place of meeting—the public hall—the
club‐room of the Pueblo. It was pretty hot and not very sweet down there.
We found four Indians seated around the fire, each with a loom in front of
him, weaving a blanket. Their only covering was the breech‐clout. The
Indians told us, through Don Juan, that these men watched the fire, which
was always kept burning—waiting for the coming of Montezuma. They were
relieved by four others at stated times. We shook hands with the naked
watchers, and “how‐how”‐ed with them in the usual way.
“Do you think Montezuma will come?” asked Joe, through Don Juan, of one of
the vigilants.
The worthy, shrugging his naked shoulders, looked up sidewise at Joseph,
and replied:
“_Quizas? Quien sabe?_—May be! Who knows?”
Joe withdrew. We all followed him. We had now seen all the lions of the
Pueblo of Acoma. “Boots and saddles” and “to horse” were sounded, and with
many hand‐shakes, some embraces, and general “how‐hows,” we bade adieu to
the hospitable Acomas and their rocky home, and began our return march.
New Publications.
THE LIFE OF DEMETRIUS AUGUSTIN GALLITZIN, PRINCE AND PRIEST. By
Sarah M. Brownson. With an Introduction by O. A. Brownson, LL.D.
New York: Pustet. 1872.
Women of talent and cultivation make admirable biographers. In religious
biography we know of nothing more charming than the lives written by Mère
Chauguy. In recent English literature, the Lives of Mother Margaret Mary
O’Halloran, by a lady whose name is unknown to us, and of S. Jane Frances
de Chantal, by Miss Emily Bowles, are among the most perfect specimens of
this very agreeable species of writing which we have met with in any
language. This new and carefully prepared biography of a priest who was
illustrious both by birth and Christian virtue, by a lady already known as
the author of several works of fiction, well deserves to be classed with
the best of its kind in English Catholic literature. It is a work of
thorough, patient, and conscientious labor, and for the first time
adequately presents the history and character of Prince Gallitzin in their
true light. Certainly, we never knew before how truly heroic and admirable
a man was this Russian prince who came to pass his life as a missionary in
the forests which crowned in his day the summit of the Alleghanies in
Pennsylvania. The charm of a biography is found in a certain fulness and
sprightliness of style and manner, a picturesqueness and ideality of
ornament and coloring, a warmth and glow of sentiment, which give life and
reality to the narrative. Miss Brownson still possesses the juvenile
_élan_ which naturally finds its expression in the style we have
indicated, and has also attained that sobriety and maturity of judgment
which give it the rightly subdued tone and finish. In several matters of
considerable delicacy which she has been obliged to handle, we think she
has shown tact and discretion, while at the same time using enough of the
freedom of a historian to bring out the truth of facts and events which
needed to be told in order to make a veritable record and picture of the
life of her subject. The prince is fortunate in his biographer. Would it
were the lot of every great man in the church to find a similar one! Miss
Brownson’s book seems to us the best religious biography which has been
written by anyone of our American Catholic authors. We would like to see
more works of this sort from feminine writers, to whom we are already so
much indebted for works both of the graver and the lighter kind, and
particularly from Miss Brownson, who has fully proved her ability in the
volume before us.
BIBLIOGRAPHIA CATHOLICA AMERICANA. A list of works written by
Catholic authors and published in the United States. By Rev.
Joseph M. Finotti. Part I., 1784 to 1820 inclusive. New York: The
Catholic Publication Society. 1872. 8vo. pp. 319.
It was said of Bartlett’s _Dictionary of Americanisms_ that it was the
first dictionary that a man could read through with pleasure. The same in
the way of bibliography may be said of this; for, if any of our readers
supposes that the title tells the truth, he is mistaken. It is not a mere
_list_, as the author modestly calls it. Some twelve years ago, Mr. Shea
published in one of our Catholic papers a list of titles of “The First
Catholic Books printed in this County,” coming down to the same date and
including the same period as our author, and giving sixty‐eight titles.
This meagre beginning of American Catholic bibliography has in F.
Finotti’s hands grown to nearly five hundred titles, including some few
imprints later than 1820.
It is not merely a collection of titles of Catholic works, but of all
works by Catholic authors printed in the country, with notes of the
highest interest to Catholics who care at all for what was done by our
fathers in the faith in this republic. Biographical notices, notices of
celebrated books, accounts of controversies of the time, anecdotes
illustrative of Catholic life in the earlier days, notes of Catholic
printers and journalists, all find their place in these notes, in which
the abundant knowledge of our earlier men and times, and things acquired
by the patient and loving research of years, fairly bubble out
spontaneously. It is not a history indeed, but to the historian will be
invaluable as an authority and a guide.
On some points this work is absolutely exhaustive. The collection of
pamphlets and works growing out of the Hogan affair in Philadelphia,
considering their perishable nature, is perfectly wonderful, and his
library alone can enable any one to go thoroughly into the history of that
unhappy matter which was destructive to so many souls.
Of the writings and publications of the celebrated Mathew Carey, we have
also here by far the most accurate and comprehensive account ever drawn
up, comprising nearly twenty‐five pages.
Many will be amazed to see how many sterling Catholic books were issued
early in the century, and thus be able to judge of the zeal and true
religious feeling of the little body of Catholics who so generously
sustained the publishers, as well as of the public spirit of a man like
Bernard Dornin—in our mind, as in F. Finotti’s, the type of what a
Catholic publisher should be. Of him as of many other Catholics our author
gives biographical notices that we should look for in vain in all the
cyclopædias and biographical dictionaries. Book notices often end with the
assertion that the book should be in every family; we hardly suppose the
publishers ready to supply every Catholic family in the country with a
copy, for the edition is small, and must be taken up at once. It is by no
means merely a book for the Dryasdust collector or antiquarian. It must
find its place in the libraries of many of our gentlemen who love their
religion and love books, as well as in our college libraries. We trust
that it will impel all to endeavor to have some of the early printed
Catholic books, as matters of laudable pride. If they can even find some
that have escaped the Argus eyes of the reverend collector and his
associate book‐hunters, they will, we trust, be good enough Christians to
bear with equanimity even that severe trial to a bibliographer.
This _Bibliography_ commends itself to those interested in the
bibliography of the country or the history of printing in the United
States.
In the _Historical Magazine_ some months since there was a Bibliography of
works on Unitarianism, but it was silent as to Father Kohlmann’s work, and
to a sermon by a Catholic clergyman of Pittsburg. So, too, Sabin’s
_Bibliopolist_ recently gave a list of books printed in Brooklyn, but was
silent as to a _Catholic Doctrine_ printed there in 1817, as well as of
Coate’s very curious _Reply_ to Rev. F. Richards’ supposed reasons for
becoming a Catholic.
There is one strange point about American bibliography, and that is that
the laborers in it have been almost exclusively from Europe. Ludewig gave
the _Bibliography of Indian Languages_ and that of Local History;
O’Callaghan, that of American Bibles; Harisse, that of the earliest
American; Rich was a pioneer in the same field; and now Finotti gives us
the Catholic element. Where are our native bibliographers?
LE LIBERALISME. LECONS DONNEES A L’UNIVERSITE LAVAL. Par l’Abbé
Benjamin Paquet, Docteur en Theologie, et Professeur à la Faculté
de Theologie. Quebec: De l’Imprimerie du _Canadien_. Brochure, pp.
100. 1872.
Lower Canada, considered both in respect to the condition of the Catholic
Church therein, and to the political well‐being of its people, is an
eminently fortunate region, despite the rigor of its climate. It is
especially pre‐eminent in respect to the Catholic education given to young
men of the leisured classes, and others who go through the intermediate
and higher courses. Laval University is truly a splendid institution among
many others which make Quebec an _unique_ city in Northern America. These
remarks are suggested by the pamphlet before us, which is a specimen of
the sound and opportune instruction given at the Laval University. The
Lectures contained in it give an exposition which is both learned and
clear of that most important portion of the Syllabus which relates to the
errors of modern liberalism condemned in the Pontifical Acts of Pius IX.
When will the Catholics of the United States enjoy privileges similar to
those which are the portion of the Catholics of Lower Canada? The Abbé
Paquet’s Lectures were delivered as a part of his course on the law of
nature and of nations, and were attended not only by his pupils, but by a
numerous and select audience, several of whom requested their publication.
We have already sufficiently expressed our approbation of their doctrine
and style, and they have been favorably noticed in Europe. We are
confident that a considerable number of our readers will hasten to procure
them, and receive great profit from their perusal.
CARDINAL WISEMAN’S WORKS. New Edition, first 3 vols. New York: P.
O’Shea.
This is a reissue of a new London edition which we most cordially commend.
The first two volumes, containing the _Lectures on the Connection between
Science and Revealed Religion_, have already been noticed in these pages.
The third volume contains the splendid treatise on the Holy Eucharist.
Cardinal Wiseman was a great writer, a great prelate, and a remarkably
devout and holy man. His works are among our choicest treasures, and as
such ought to be everywhere circulated and continually perused by those
who wish to imbue their minds with the purest doctrine and the most
valuable knowledge.
THE LIFE OF S. AUGUSTINE, BISHOP, CONFESSOR, AND DOCTOR OF THE
CHURCH. By P. E. Moriarty, D.D. Ex‐Assistant General O.S.A.
Philadelphia: Cunningham. 1873.
This is a popular biography, though proceeding from the pen of a learned
man, and showing marks of erudition. The sketch is a complete one, and
shows great power of generalization and condensation in the writer, with
vigor and impetus of style. It is not, however, minute in respect to the
saint’s public life, or his great work as a philosopher and doctor of the
church. This could not be expected in a work of moderate size adapted for
popular reading. There is, however, a brief summary of the saint’s
writings, with a synopsis, and an account of the Augustinian Order, all of
which are of interest and value to the general reader.
PHOTOGRAPHIC VIEWS; OR, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL TRUTHS REFLECTED IN
THE UNIVERSE. By F. X. Weninger, D.D., S.J. New York: P. O’Shea.
1873.
A handsomely printed volume, with a very ornamental title‐page quite
appropriate to the nature of the book. The views of truth presented in
this book are expressed in aphorisms. Good taste, poetic sensibility,
spiritual wisdom, and the purest Christian feeling are their chief
characteristics. We are disposed to think this the best of F. Weninger’s
works. There are many persons who take great delight in aphorisms of this
kind, and we think all such readers will like this book. It is good also
as a help to meditation, and a treasury of short spiritual readings for
those who have not time for long ones; and will be useful to those who
like to stop occasionally in more laborious occupations of the mind, and
gather a little spiritual nosegay.
MEMOIRS OF MADAME DESBORDES‐VALMORE. By the late C. A. Sainte‐
Beuve. With a Selection from her Poems. Translated by Harriet W.
Preston. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1873.
Madame Valmore was one of those poets of the affections who
“Learn in suffering what they teach in song.”
No one can look for a moment at her portrait as depicted in this touching
book without feeling that the thorn is continually pressing against her
gentle breast. Her poetry and her letters are the very outcry of
impassioned love and grief. “I am like the Indian that sings at the
stake,” she says. One of her volumes is entitled _Tears_, every line of
which is a pensive sigh. Her poems are full of “the charm of that
melancholy which M. de Segur calls _the luxury of grief_.” M. Michelet
says: “She alone among us had the _gift of tears_—that gift which smites
the rock and assuages the thirst of the soul!” M. Sainte‐Beuve calls her
“the _Mater Dolorosa_ of poetry,” but that title, consecrated to a higher,
diviner type of sorrow, is one that most of us would shrink from applying
to ordinary mortals.
It would almost seem as if the highest, purest notes—“half ecstasy, half
pain”—only spring from the soul overshadowed by sorrow, as the eyes of
some birds are darkened when they are taught to sing. Mme. Valmore
herself, in allusion to a brother poet, wonders “if actual misery were
requisite for the production of notes that so haunt one’s memory.”
The tombs among which she used to play as a child in the old churchyard at
Douai seem to have cast their funereal shadows over her whole life—shadows
that lend to her sad muse so attractive a charm. One of her poems thus
begins:
“Do not write. I am sad and would my life were o’er.
A summer without thee?—Oh! night of starless gloom!—
I fold the idle arms that cannot clasp thee more—
To knock at my heart’s door, were like knocking at a tomb.
Do not write.”
Mme. Valmore’s nature was eminently feminine. Her heart was her guide. She
was a being of impulse and sympathy. But her instincts were so delicate
and true that they were to her what reason and philosophy are to colder
natures. Her imagination was thoroughly Catholic. It is only Catholicity
that develops souls of such tender grace and beauty, and she was brought
up under its influences. A cheerful piety, Catholic in tone, seems to have
pervaded her life, and consoled and sustained her in its many dark hours.
She loved to pray in the deserted aisle of some shadowy church full of
mystery and peace. “She had her Christ—the Christ of the poor and
forsaken, the prisoner and the slave, the Christ of the Magdalen and the
good Samaritan, a Christ of the future of whom she herself has sung in one
of her sweetest strains:
‘He whose pierced hands have broken so many chains,’ ”
—a line that appeals to all who have sinned and been forgiven!
In her last years she thus writes: “I see at an immense distance the
Christ who shall come again. His breath is moving over the crowd. He opens
his arms wide, but there are no more nails—no more for ever!”
Her devotion to Mary is constantly peeping out in her letters. After
visiting a church at Brussels, she writes thus to her daughter: “To‐day we
saw the black Virgin with the Child Jesus also black like his mother.
These Madonnas wring my heart with a thousand reminiscences. They are
nothing in the way of art, but they are so associated with my earliest and
sweetest faiths that I positively adore those stiff pink‐lined veils and
wreaths of perennial flowers made of cambric so stout that all the winds
of heaven could never cause a leaf to flutter.”
She writes her brother: “Lift up your hat when you pass the Church of
Notre Dame, and lay upon its threshold the first spring flowers you find.”
One of the most touching features of her life is her devotedness to this
brother, an old soldier and pensioner in the hospital at Douai, whom she
aided out of her own scanty purse, and still more by the moral support she
was continually giving him in the most delicate manner; trying to ennoble
his unfortunate past so as to give him dignity in his own eyes—a thing so
often forgotten in our intercourse with those who are in danger of losing
their self‐respect.
Mme. Valmore’s charity and sympathies were not confined to her own
kindred. They responded to every appeal. The condemned criminal and
prisoners of every degree excited the compassion of her heart. At a time
of great distress at Lyons, she says she is “ashamed to have food and fire
and two garments when so many poor creatures have none.” And yet she seems
not to have had too many of the comforts of life herself. One Christmas
eve she speaks of kneeling on her humble hearth—“a hearth where there is
not much fire save that of her own loving, anxious heart—” to pray.
It is sad to see a woman with such a refined, poetical nature, and a heart
sensitive to the last degree, condemned to a fate so chilling and unkind.
But she never lost courage. Living in narrow lodgings, and on limited
means, she contrived to give a certain artistic air to everything around
her, and received her visitors with polished ease and self‐possession,
hiding her griefs under the grace of her manner and the vivacity of her
conversation. Her courage and fortitude were admirable under adverse
circumstances and such afflictions as the loss of her daughters. No book
not strictly religious could teach a more forcible lesson of patient,
cheerful endurance—how “to suffer and be strong.” The work is elegantly
translated, and is a welcome addition to the lives of celebrated French
ladies already issued by the same publishers.
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. By James Anthony
Froude, M.A. In 2 vols. Vol. I. New York: Scribner, Armstrong &
Co. 1873.
We have here the first volume of a new and very elaborate work by the
adventurous historian of England, and chivalrous champion of Henry VIII.
and his daughter Elizabeth. It might perhaps have been hoped that enough
had been said of Mr. Froude in these columns, and that our readers had
done with him. His reputation as a faithful historian had been sorely
damaged, and indeed irretrievably ruined, by several indignant critics in
England, in Scotland, and in Ireland, as well as in the United States (by
the short, sharp and decisive onslaught of Mr. Meline); so that it has
been an actual surprise to the literary world to find him once more
tempting Providence in a new book, heralded and advertised by a course of
lectures in New York. But this is the nature of the man: he must surprise
and startle, or he dies; he must provoke the most wondering and angry
contradiction and comment, and gratify the small feminine spite that
possesses him, provided he can sting and wound like a hornet. For him, to
scold is to live.
The present volume, although entitled _The English in Ireland in the
Eighteenth Century_, is in fact occupied, for more than two hundred pages,
with an account of the dealings of his country with Ireland during the
XVIIth century, and presents his views of Irish history at the notable
periods of the insurrection—or alleged “massacre”—in 1641, as well as the
short reign of James II. The narrative ends at the time of the small
French invasion under Thurot, shortly after the middle of the XVIIIth
century; leaving Still to be treated the whole era of the Volunteering,
the Insurrection of ’98, and the Union, so‐called. Indeed, if the author
carry forward his subject into the present century, as he has carried it
backward into the one before the last, he will have the great famines to
deal with, and the multitudinous emigration; so that we may expect a vast
picture, covering the whole canvas, portraying from the strictly English
point of view that ghastly history in its full perspective. The Froude
theory is, on the whole, quite simple; nothing can be more easily
understood. It is, in few words, that the English nation having been
“forced by situation and circumstances” to take charge of Ireland and its
people, when it suited the English to change their religion, or to come
back to it, or to change it again, they were bound in duty to compel the
Irish to change along with them each time, by means of pains and
penalties, from heavy fines to transportation and death on the gallows;
also that the English having a strong wish to possess themselves of all
the lands of Ireland, everything was lawful and right to effect that
object. The reader will remark, with surprise (and the more surprise, the
better for Froude), that in his lectures lately delivered in New York,
which were a kind of abstract of the work then in press, he did not
venture _to say_ before an intelligent audience of freemen some of the
things which he has dared to print in the book then just ready to burst
upon the world. For example, he did not say, even before the “Christian
young men,” such words as these which are found in the book (p. 609):
“The consent of man was not asked when he was born into the world: his
consent will not be asked when his time comes to die. _As little_ has his
consent to do with the laws which, while he lives, he is bound to obey.”
This sentiment he perhaps thought it unnecessary to enunciate here;
because, in fact, he intended it solely for the Irish, not by any means
for the Americans, although it reads like a universal maxim for the human
race. Again, he did not think it necessary to say in so plain words what
he has laid down clearly enough in this passage (p. 213):
“No government need _keep terms_ with such a creed [meaning the Catholic
Church] when there is power to abolish it. To call the repression of
opinions which had issued so many times in blood and revolt _by the name
of religions persecution_ is mere abuse of words.”
ELEVATIONS POÉTIQUES ET RELIGIEUSES. Par Marie Jenna. Deuxième
Edit. 2 vols. Paris: Adrien le Clerc et Cie. 1872.
As the eye lingers upon a beautiful landscape, spring clad and fair in the
clear light of the new‐risen sun; as the ear loiters unwilling to lose the
last echoed link of some simple melting melody; as the hand tarries loth
to quit the gentle grasp that speaks unspoken sympathy, so have
we—reluctant to lose such fair pictures, such moving lays, such deep and
tender feeling—lingered and loitered and tarried with Marie Jenna, “the
Poet of the Vosges.” Gifted with the nice perception of a true poet, Marie
Jenna clothes the simplest ideas in language of such rare delicacy, so
fresh, tender, vivid, and withal so musical, that mind, heart, eye, and
ear, all are at once engaged. A bird, a butterfly, a flower, gains new
interest in her hands; she flings a grace around it, she vests it with a
dignity it never had before; she makes it live again. Take, for instance,
the opening stanzas of “Le Papillon”:
“Pourquoi t’approcher en silence
Et menacer mon vol joyeux?
Par quelle involontaire offense
Ai‐je pu déplaire à tes yeux?
“Je suis la vivante étincelle
Qui monte et descend tour à tour;
La fleur à qui Dieu donne une aile,
Un souffle, un regard, un amour.
“Je suis le frère de la rose;
Elle me cache aux importuns,
Puis sur son cœur je me repose
Et je m’enivre de parfums.
“Ma vie est tout heureuse et pure,
Pourquoi désires‐tu ma mort?
Oh! dis‐moi, roi de la nature,
Serais‐tu jaloux de mon sort?
“Va, je sais bien que tu t’inclines
Souvent pour essuyer des pleurs,
Que tes yeux comptent les épines
Où je ne vois rien que des fleurs.
“Je sais que parfois ton visage
Se trouble et s’assombrit soudain,
Lorsqu’en vain je cherche un nuage
Au fond de l’horizon serein.
“Mais Celui dont la main divine
A daigné nous former tous deux,
Pour moi parfuma la colline,
Et de loin te montra les cieux.
“Il me fit deux ailes de flamme,
A moi, feu follet du printemps;
Pour toi, son fils, il fit une âme
Plus grande que le firmament.
“Ecoute ma voix qui t’implore,
Loin de moi détourne tes pas...
Laisse moi vivre un jour encore,
O toi qui ne finiras pas!
“Mon bonheur à moi, c’est la vie,
La liberté sous le ciel bleu,
Le ruisseau, l’amour sans envie:
Le tien ... c’est le secret de Dieu.”
What can be fresher or more charming than this naïve, earnest appeal for
life and liberty? And again, in “Pour un Oiseau,” beginning with:
“Il est à toi, c’est vrai ... Frère, veux tu qu’il meure?
Sa beauté, sa chanson, tout est là ... dans ta main;
Et l’arbuste où sa voix gazouillait tout à l’heure
Au bosquet, si tu veux, sera muet demain.
“Tu le tiens: sa faiblesse à ta force le livre;
Mais aussi ta pitié peut le laisser aller;
Ne le fais pas mourir! il est si bon de vivre
Lorsque l’été commence et qu’on peut s’envoler,”
we find the same delicacy of thought, the same rippling, flowing language;
and what joyousness and how cheery it sounds: _il est si bon de vivre_.
But Marie Jenna strikes deeper chords, awakes more solemn strains, than
these; and through them all, the graver as the lighter, binding them in
one harmonious whole, there sings out the same clear note of firm,
enlightened faith that never wavers; it penetrates each thing she handles,
giving that breadth and largeness to her field of view that it alone can
give. In some beautiful stanzas, “Beati qui lugeant,” she draws near to
one bowed down with sorrow, and fearlessly, yet oh! how tenderly touching
the wound because she knows its cure, she speaks:
“Va, ton sein cache en vain le glaive qui le blesse:
J’ai compris ton silence et j’ai prié pour toi.
Laisse aller ta fierté comme un poids qui t’oppresse,
Et pleure devant moi.
“Il est, je le sais bien, des jours où la souffrance
Trouve en sa solitude une âpre volupté;
Et le monde léger voit passer en silence
Sa pâle majesté.
“Et la main d’un ami s’arrètant incertaine,
N’ose écarter les plis de son voile de deuil.
Il est des maux si grands, que la parole humaine
Expire sur le seuil.
“Mais deux jours sont passés; il est temps que je vienne;
Oh! laisse un front d’ami penché sur ta douleur!
Ne te détourne pas: Mets ta main dans la mienne,
Ton âme sur mon cœur.
“Si je ne t’apportais qu’une amitié fidèle,
Mes pas avec respect s’éloigneraient d’ici.
J’attendrais que la tienne enfin se souvint d’elle,
Mais j’ai souffert aussi...
“Je ne te dirai point cette vaine parole
Que la douleur accueille en son muet dédain.
Non, ce que j’ai pour toi, c’est un mot qui console,
C’est un secret divin.”
Already we seem to see awaked attention, a gleam of hope flit across the
stern, wan face that marks such helpless, hopeless misery; now softening
the hard, cold look that bid defiance to all sorrow, repelled all
sympathy; now changing it to one of anxious longing and of mute entreaty
for the proffered gift, _le mot qui console_. And see, or is it fancy
only, or are there really tears now falling, “gemlike, the last drops of
the exhausted storm”? Space forbids us to give it in its fulness, this
_secret divin_, to curtail it would spoil it: so we send the reader to the
original, and would ask him only if in the last stanza he does not hear
two voices singing:
“Heureux les affligés! dit la Vérité même.
Heureux, c’est vrai, mon Dieu! quand vous avez parlé.
Nous voulons bien souffrir si le bonheur suprême,
Est d’être consolé.”
Then look at this exquisite little picture, “L’Enfant Ressuscité.” Rarely
have we met with one more pathetic. It is very delicately painted, with
shades so subtile that, in the simplicity of the whole, we are apt to
overlook them. And here also we have a glimpse of that reverential love
for childhood that is by no means the least characteristic trait of Marie
Jenna:
“Elle avait tant gémi, sa mère, et tant pleuré!
Tant pressé sur son sein le front décoloré,
Que dans le corps glacé l’âme était revenue,
Et qu’en bénissant Dieu, palpitante, éperdue,
Comme un trésor qu’on cache elle avait emporté
Dans ses deux bras tremblants l’enfant ressuscité!
Trois mois s’étaient passés depuis.....mais, chose étrange!
On eut dit que le ciel avait fait un échange.
L’enfant penchait son front comme un bouton flétri,
Et depuis ces trois mois, jamais il n’avait ri.
Il préférait aux jeux l’ombre silencieuse;
Sa mère en l’embrassant n’osait pas être heureuse....
“Des volets entr’ouverts s’élancent des chansons;
Dans les clochers frémit la voix des carillons.
Ecoute, mon Louis, ces chants, ces joyeux rires....
Vois; c’est le jour de l’an; dis ce que tu désires.
Chaque enfant pour étrenne a des jouets nouveaux.
En veux‐tu de pareils? en veux‐tu de plus beaux?
Veux‐tu ce bélier gris qu’on traîne et qui va paître
Au printemps dans les prés l’herbe qui vient naître?
Mais regarde plutôt; des pinceaux, des couleurs,
Qui d’un papier tout blanc font un bouquet de fleurs.
Oh! vois donc ce ballon de laine tricolore
Qui s’élève et retombe et se relève encore!
Tu n’aimes pas courir..... Que puis‐je te donner?
Dis.....ta mère à présent ne sait plus deviner.
Veux‐tu ce sabre d’or qui déjà ferait croire
Que mon petit Louis médite une victoire?
Aimes‐tu ce chalet d’un long toit recouvert?
Mais non....qu’en ferais‐tu? Veux‐tu ce livre ouvert,
Où près de chaque histoire on regarde une image,
Ou l’on rit, où l’on pleure, où l’on devient plus sage?
Ah! voici des oiseaux! tu les aimerais mieux!
Les oiseaux sont vivants; tu les ferais heureux!
Si tu voulais des lisandes roses fleuries,
J’en saurais bien trouver, Louis, pour que tu ries.
Réponds; je t’aime tant! n’oses‐tu me parler?
Tu pleurais ce matin; je veux te consoler.
Dis‐moi ce doux secret pendant que je l’embrasse.
Que veux‐tu, mon Louis? Et l’enfant, à voix basse:
Des ailes pour m’envoler!”
No one can fail to be struck with the sudden stillness that follows the
mother’s anxious striving to drive away the cloud that would hang over her
little one; with the awe and fear, too, that fill her heart; with the
mystery in the whispered answer of the strange mysterious child given back
from death in answer to her passionate prayer. It sets us thinking of that
other mother whose grief so touched the Master’s heart that he spoke the
word, “and he that was dead sat up and began to speak. And he delivered
him to his mother.” Did that young man go home so grave, with never a
smile to light his face, so strangely altered, that, after the first burst
of gladness, his mother, clasping him to her bosom, dared not rejoice?
Of the more serious pieces, perhaps not one equals in force “La plus
grande Douleur.” It is the old tale, always new though so oft repeated:
the old tale that startles, shocks, and brings sharp pain as for the first
time it comes home to each one, telling that that strong bond which binds
friends closer, draws classes nearer, makes nations firmer, has snapped
and riven two hearts asunder; that the newly‐awakened intellect first
meeting early faith has turned aside, has chosen a road far other than
that on which till now both friends had travelled hand in hand; that that
“little superficial knowledge of philosophy that inclines man’s mind to
atheism” has come between them like an icy barrier, chilling the old
friendship and making everything so dark and strange which before was
warmth and light between them; and with effect so drear, so piercing, too,
and sharp, that the unchanged heart feels any pain than that would be
light to bear:
“Oui mon Dieu! nous pouvons, sans que l’âme succombe,
Laisser notre bonheur à ce passé qui tombe;
Nous pouvons au matin former un rêve pur,
Tout d’amour et de paix, tout de flamme et d’azur,
Puis livrer les débris de sa beauté ravie
A ce vent du désert, qui laisse notre vie
Sans fleur et sans épi comme un champ moissonné;
Meliner notre front pâle et découronné,
Et devenir semblable à cette pauvre plante
Qui n’est pas morte encore, et qui n’est plus vivante,
Nous pouvons voir gisant sur un lit de douleur,
Celui qui nous restait, l’ami consolateur,
Compter chaque moment de son heure dernière,
Poser nos doigts tremblants sur sa froide paupière,
Et baiser son visage, et nous dire; Il est mort!
Nous le pouvons, mon Dieu! Parfois le cœur est fort.
“Mais aimer une autre âme, et la trouver si belle
Qu’on frémit de bonheur en se penchant vers elle,
Puis un jour contempler d’un regard impuissant
Sur sa beauté céleste une ombre qui descend;
De cette âme où passaient les souffles de la grâce,
Sentir parfois monter quelque chose qui glace,
Douter, prier tous bas, pleurer d’anxiété,
Craindre, espérer..... Longtemps marcher à son côté
Sans oser voir au fond.... Puis un jour où l’on ose,
Reculer de partout où le regard se pose,
Où fut le feu sacré toucher de froids débris,
Murmurer en tremblant un langage incompris
Où Dieu passa, chercher sa lumineuse trace,
Et n’y trouver plus rien ... rien! pas même un soupir,
Pas un cri douloureux vers l’aube qui s’efface,
C’est trop souffrir!”
The two volumes before us contain many poems, both short and long, of such
great freshness and beauty, so full of original turns and delicate
touches, that it is difficult to choose from amongst them. However, we
have said enough to give a fair notion of Marie Jenna’s style, and quite
enough to show that it is her own, with its own peculiar charm. And so our
task is done. If it be said that, having uttered only praise and found no
fault, we have but half fulfilled the critic’s task, we answer that we
never meant the tone of criticism. All know that man’s most perfect work
is not without its blemish; but in our first walk through so fair a
garden, meeting new beauties on every side, it would have been ungracious
in us to have sought defects: that task we leave to others. Ours has been
to welcome, and to tell of fresh flowers of much loveliness offered to us
from across the sea, with the certainty that no one can read her
“Elévations Poétiques” without feeling that he is indebted for some real
enjoyment to the charming “Poet of the Vosges.”
THE TWO YSONDES, AND OTHER VERSES. By Edward Ellis. London:
Pickering. 1872.
It takes but a short while to read this thin volume; nor will any one with
a taste for true poetry find the perusal a task. The author undoubtedly
possesses “the vision and the faculty divine,” and belongs to the
subjective school of which Tennyson is king—a school peculiarly capable of
teaching a subjective age. The more the pity, then, say we, that Mr. Ellis
should have made his chief poem, “The Two Ysondes,” hang on the idea that
love is fate. His “Two Ysondes” are the two “Isolts” of Tennyson; but
Tennyson does not attempt to excuse the passion of Mark’s wife for
Tristrem. Our author makes it originate in Tristrem and Ysonde having
“drunk,” “by an evil chance,” a philtre which had been placed “in
Tristrem’s charge” as “a wedding‐gift for Ysonde and King Mark” (p. 7).
Now, it may be said that this does away with the guilty aspect of the
romance, and throws over the whole a veil of faëry. Yes; but we insist
that it is, therefore, the more mischievous, as teaching the doctrine of
fatality.
Neither is this the only, or even the most, objectionable feature of the
poem; for, together with descriptions of emotions and caresses which would
be chaste if the theme were lawful love, all idea of sin is kept away, and
especially as regards its eternal consequences. There is not a word about
remorse during life, or of repentance at death. But Tristrem dies in
despair of beholding the object of his passion; and Ysonde, in turn,
expires on the breast of her dead lover, declaring that she will “go with
him _beyond the bars of fate_.”
Now, we should not have troubled ourselves to make these strictures but
that Mr. Ellis shows powers for the misuse of which he will be very
responsible. Moreover, as is clear from some of his shorter lyrics,
particularly “At a Shrine,” his mind has a religious bent, with (of
course) Catholic sympathies.
With regard to his verse, it is less Tennysonic than his thought. Better
if, while originating metres (with which we have no quarrel whatever), he
modelled both his lines and his diction on the peerless accuracy of
England’s laureate.
Books And Pamphlets Received.
From KELLY, PIET & CO., Baltimore: The Money God. By M. A.
Quinton.
From LYNCH, COLE & MEEHAN, New York: English Misrule in Ireland: A
Course of Lectures. By V. Rev. T. N. Burke, O.P. 12mo. pp. 299.
From J. A. MCGEE, New York: “Thumping English Lies”: Froude’s
Slanders on Ireland and Irishmen. With Preface and Notes by Col.
J. E. McGee, and Wendell Phillips’ Views of the Situation. 12mo.
pp. 224.—Half Hours with Irish Authors: Selections from Griffin,
Lover, Carleton, and Lever. 12mo. pp. 330.
From A. D. F. RANDOLPH, New York: Christ at the Door. By Susan H.
Ward. 12mo, pp. 232.
From J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., Philadelphia: Expiation. By Mrs.
Julia C. R. Dorr.
From J. R. OSGOOD & CO., Boston: The Romance of the Harem. By Mrs.
A. H. Leonowens. 12mo. pp. viii.‐277.
From ROBERTS BROS., Boston: What Katy Did. By Susan
Coolidge.—Thorvaldsen: His Life and Works. By Eugene Plon. 12mo.
pp. xvi.‐320.—The World Priest. By Leopold Schefer. 12mo. pp.
xv.‐371.
From THE AUTHOR: Sermon at the Month’s Mind of the Most Rev. M. J.
Spalding, D.D., Preached at the Church of the American College
(Rome). By the V. Rev. Dr. Chatard, Rector. Paper, 8vo. pp. 30.
From E. H. BUTLER & CO., Philadelphia: The Etymological Reader. By
Epes Sargent and Amasa May.
From S. D. KIERNAN, Clerk, Department of Public Instruction:
Report of the Board of Public Instruction of the City and County
of New York, for the year ending Dec. 31, 1871; with Addenda to
May, 1872.—Manual of the Department of Public Instruction, 1871‐2.
18mo, pp. 262.
From HOLT & WILLIAMS, New York: Sermons by the Rev. H. R. Hawes,
M.A. 12mo, pp. xiv. 347.
From AMERICAN BAPTIST SOCIETY, Philadelphia: The Baptist Short
Method, with Inquirers and Opponents. By Rev. C. T. Hiscox, D.D.
18mo, pp. 216.
From HURD & HOUGHTON, New York: The City of God and the Church
Makers. By R. Abbey. 12mo, pp. xx. 315.
From BURNS, OATES & CO., London (New York: Sold by The Catholic
Publication Society): The Life of Monseigneur Berneux, Bishop of
Capse. Vicar‐Apostolic of Corea. By M. l’Abbé Pichon. Translated
from the French, with a Preface by Lady Herbert.
From JOHN HODGES, London: (New York: Sold by The Catholic
Publication Society): The Lives of the Saints. By Rev. S. Baring‐
Gould, M.A. March.
From J. R. OSGOOD & CO., Boston: His Level Best, and Other
Stories. By Edward E. Hale.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XVI., NO. 96.—MARCH, 1873.
The Relation Of The Rights Of Conscience To The Authority Of The State
Under The Laws Of Our Republic.
(A LECTURE BEFORE A CATHOLIC SOCIETY OF S. PATRICK’S CHURCH, NEW HAVEN,
CONN., OCT. 20, 1872.)
REVEREND GENTLEMEN AND MY FRIENDS: Before I speak particularly of the
relation of the rights of conscience to the laws existing in our republic,
I consider it necessary to make a few preliminary remarks and to lay down
a few principles regarding the nature of law and government in general,
and the relation which they hold to religion. I shall best illustrate the
difficulties which envelop this subject, and also give a clue to the way
by which it may be extricated, by making a supposition.
Let us suppose that a large number of men come together for the purpose of
founding a new state with all its institutions of civil society and
government. Some of these are Christians, among whom are Quakers; others
are Mohammedans, Hindoos, Thugs, idolaters practising human sacrifices,
and communists. It is necessary that they should agree and concur with
each other in regard to the rights which respect life, liberty, property,
the pursuit of happiness in general and particular, and the means of
protecting all these rights, otherwise no society or government is
possible. But this cannot be done by any general consent among these
different parties. The Christian holds the sacredness of life and
property, and the force of the law of monogamy. The Mohammedan rejects
this last, and maintains the right to a plurality of wives. The Hindoo
regards it as a sacred right and duty of a widow to offer herself on the
funeral pile of her husband, that her spirit may rejoin his spirit in
another world. The Thug considers it a most holy and meritorious act to
murder as many persons as possible in honor of the cruel goddess whom he
worships; while the idolater looks on the sacrifice of children or
captives as the means of placating his offended deities and procuring
success in war. The Quaker will not allow of any bloodshed whatever,
either for avenging crime or repelling aggression. And the communist would
abolish all rights of property, reconstruct society on a wholly different
plan from that which has heretofore existed, and banish all religion as
noxious to the well‐being of man.
It is evident, therefore, that society cannot be constituted without
religion, and that society constituted with religion, and on the basis of
religious ideas, requires some agreement in these religious ideas, and the
incorporation of some fixed and definite religious principles into its
very structure and conformation.
If we consult history, we shall find that no state or perfect society has
ever been established on the atheistic principle. Every one that has ever
existed has had a religious basis, and all political and social
constitutions have proceeded from religious ideas and been founded upon
them. The civilization of Christendom in general has received its specific
form from the influence of the Christian religion moulding and modifying
in the Eastern world its previous and ancient laws, and in the West to a
great extent creating a new order out of a pre‐existing state of imperfect
civilization or semi‐barbarism. To this Christendom we belong, and the
laws of our republic are a product of this Christian civilization. This
cannot be denied, considered as a mere historical fact respecting our
origin; for we are the offspring of Christian Europe, and in the beginning
distinctly professed to be a Christian people. But it may be said that we
have changed, have undergone a political regeneration as a nation, and in
the process of transformation have thrown out all religion from our
organic constitution as a republic. By our organic constitution and the
laws of our republic I intend not merely the federal constitution and laws
which bind together the United States, but also the laws and constitutions
of the states, the _tout ensemble_ of our common and statute laws of every
kind, which form the regulating code of our whole society as one political
people. And in regard to this organic law, I affirm that we do not form an
exception among human societies to the universal rule I have above laid
down, that the state in political society is based on religious ideas.
In support of this proposition, I cite the opinion of a most competent and
impartial judge, Prof. Leo, of Halle, and borrow from him a definition of
that which constitutes our state religion. This great historian, in the
introductory portion of his _Universal History_, where he is discussing
the universal principles which underlie all political constitutions,
analyzes in a masterly way the elements of our own system of government;
and he points out that which is the religious element, namely, the rule or
law of morals, derived from the common law of Christendom, or a certain
standard of moral obligation, conformity to which is enforced by the state
with all its coercive power. All churches or voluntary associations which
include this moral code or religion of the state within their own specific
religious law possess complete equality and liberty before the civil law.
With their doctrines, rites, regulations, and practices the state does not
interfere, and gives them protection from any infringement upon their
rights on the part of any private members of the community. But let them,
on pretext of doctrine, of ecclesiastical law, of liberty of conscience,
or even of any divine revelation, violate by any overt acts the rule of
moral obligation recognized by the state, they come into direct collision
with her authority, and must suffer the consequences. So far, therefore,
as concerns that portion of Christian law, namely, the moral precepts of
the Christian religion, which are incorporated into our civil law, all
churches are in vital union with the state. Even Jews, because they hold,
with Christians, the decalogue; and societies based on purely natural
religion, because they hold the law of nature, are in the same vital
union, so far, with the state. And beyond this, within the limits which
this law sanctions or permits, all these churches or societies are in
union with the state, as lawful, voluntary associations over which her
protection is extended. But let a Mohammedan community be formed among
citizens or resident foreigners, and attempt the introduction of polygamy,
our laws require the civil magistrate to interfere and suppress by force
this exercise of the privileges granted by their prophet. Let a community
of Hindoos, Thugs, or idolaters establish itself within our bounds, and
commence any of the murderous practices of those false religions, and the
gibbet or the sword would be called on to execute vengeance upon them. We
have in our borders the sect of Mormons, whose doctrines and practices are
contrary to our fundamental laws and subversive of them. Obviously, we
cannot, consistently with our safety, our well‐being, or our essential
principles of political and social order, tolerate the enormities of
Mormonism, much less permit the formation of a Mormon state. The right to
life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness, must be exercised
in conformity to certain laws, which are to the state as her axioms or
first principles, and are held as inviolable. And the exercise of this
right, in this due and legitimate manner, must not be hindered by force
and violence under any pretext. Therefore no pretence of conscience or
religion can avail to cover any violation of law by an individual or a
society, or any such infringement on the rights of others as has been just
alluded to. All this presupposes that the state recognizes and bases its
laws upon certain fixed ideas concerning the rights which God has really
granted to men, and the obligations which he has imposed upon them. But
this has also been distinctly and expressly declared by a body of men,
representing the whole political people of the nascent republic which was
afterwards developed into the United States of North America. The
declaration was made in the very act which constituted the United Colonies
free and independent states, and which was published to the world on the
fourth day of July, 1776. In the first sentence of this Declaration of
Independence, the Congress affirms that the people of the United States
have judged it necessary “to assume among the powers of the earth the
separate and equal station to which THE LAWS OF NATURE AND OF NATURE’S GOD
entitle them.” This august body then proceeds to lay down the foundation
and basis of the entire argument of the document, as follows: “We hold
these truths to be self‐evident, that all men are _created equal_; that
they are _endowed by their Creator_ with certain inalienable _rights_;
that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to
secure these rights governments are instituted among men.” It then
proceeds to argue that those governments which fail to fulfil this end,
and pursue a contrary end by invading and destroying these rights, forfeit
their powers; and makes an application of this principle to the _casus
belli_ between the colonies and the British crown.
In this most momentous crisis, amid the very birth‐pangs of our infant
republic, the people of the United States solemnly declared that the
origin of all right, all law, all political organization, all government,
and specifically of those which constitute the United States a separate
political people, is to be found in the _lex æterna_, the law of God; that
is to say, it is in religion. For what is religion? According to Cicero’s
definition, it is a bond which binds men to God and to each other. This is
the very meaning of the word, which comes from _ligare_, to bind, whence
we have the terms ligament, ligature, and obligation. Human right is,
therefore, something conferred by God. The right to govern must come from
God, for we are created equal, and therefore without any natural right of
one over another to give him law. The rights of the governed come from
God, and are therefore inviolable; but liberty is the unhindered
possession and exercise of the rights conferred by God, under the
protection of lawful government; and liberty of conscience is freedom to
obey the law of the Creator, and to enjoy the blessings which he has
imparted to the creature by that law. These rights and liberties belong to
each individual man as a grant from the Creator, which he can maintain in
the face of any government, be it that of a monarch, of an aristocracy, or
of a majority of the people. If a monarch, or one who executes by
delegated power the sovereignty of a majority, invades the right of an
individual, he violates a law. This law can be no other than that of the
Sovereign Lord of the universe. There is, therefore, a higher law than
human law, a higher sovereignty than human sovereignty, to which both
governments and the governed are subject and amenable, and which are
acknowledged as supreme by this American Republic of which we are
citizens. And as another proof of this recognition, I may cite the law of
oaths, or the solemn appeal to Almighty God as the Supreme Judge, by which
a religious sanction is given to judicial testimony and the engagements of
public officers.
There is, therefore, in our republic a religion of the state, but one
embodied in civil and political society only, which leaves to citizens
perfect freedom to organize churches and act out what they profess to be
the dictates of their individual consciences, provided they do not violate
the laws which constitute the religion of the state.
Under this law, the Catholic Church possesses in essential matters
theoretical liberty and equality of rights with the various religious
bodies existing in the country, with some trivial exceptions to be found
in the laws of some of the states. To a great extent, this theoretical
liberty is also a practical liberty, really possessed and enjoyed, and
only occasionally invaded. This is a remark which is quite specially
verified in the instance of your own state of Connecticut.
This has not always been the case either here or in other portions of our
country. Catholics have not always enjoyed freedom of conscience and
liberty of religion. If we go back to the early history of the colonies
which became afterwards the United States, we shall find that their
founders did not intend to grant that liberty which now exists. In some of
these colonies, the Church of England, in others the Church of the
Puritans, and in those of Spain and France, which were admitted at a later
period, the Catholic Church was the established religion of the state. In
all the English colonies the Catholic religion was proscribed and
persecuted. The Puritan fathers of New England intended to establish a
theocracy. There was a strict union of church and state under their old
colonial governments. Only professed members and communicants of the
church could vote, and the legislatures regulated the affairs of parishes,
and decided doctrinal questions. Our ancestors therefore had a Christian
ideal of the state before their minds which they attempted to make an
actual reality, and which they dreamed should become the kingdom of Christ
our Lord upon the earth which the prophets and apostles foretold. The
attempt failed from causes which lay within the bosom of the community
itself, and not because of any external force; and the same community
which had by tacit agreement or positive statutes enacted the original law
combining a specific form of religion with the state, repealed the same by
its own free will. In the Puritan state, the first change came about by
the multiplication of baptized persons who never became communicants. The
number of citizens who were thus deprived of the highest rights of
citizenship was felt to be a grave anomaly and inconvenience in a
democratic state, and caused the adoption of the half‐way covenant. By
this arrangement, those baptized persons who publicly acknowledged their
baptism were considered as quasi‐members of the church, entitled to all
political rights. When, in the course of time, the number of unbaptized
persons increased, and other sects of Protestantism began to flourish, new
changes were brought about by which in the end the connection between the
state and the Puritan Church was dissolved. Similar causes produced
similar effects in other parts of the country, and, so far as the federal
union was concerned, there was obviously from the first an utter
impossibility of making any specific form of Christianity the religion of
the entire republic. Thus, by the very law which the necessity of the case
imposed upon the separate states and the entire federal republic, that
liberty of religion became established under which the Catholic Church
could come in upon a footing of perfect equality with the other religious
denominations. Catholics have not come into New England and Connecticut
either to demand religious liberty as a right or to beg toleration as a
favor. We have not obtained our rights or privileges by any agitation or
revolution stirred up by ourselves in our own interest. The work was done
before there was a number of Catholics worth estimating either in
Connecticut or New England. It was done by the old manor‐born citizens for
their own advantage and the welfare of the state.
So also, in regard to the political privileges conceded to foreign‐born
immigrants. These are, in their nature, distinct and separate from the
rights of conscience conceded to Catholics. Yet they have an actual
connection, arising from the fact that so very large a proportion of our
Catholic citizens are of foreign birth, and so large a proportion of our
adopted citizens are of the Catholic religion; and therefore, in the
public mind, these two matters are very much blended together, and even
confused with each other. It is, therefore, quite fitting that I should
speak of the two things in relation with each other. And I remark on this
point that the privileges possessed by the Catholics of this state who are
of foreign birth, by which they are made equal to the native‐born citizens
in regard to both religious and political rights, have not been extorted
by themselves, but freely conceded for the good of the state and of all
citizens generally. The original inhabitants had the power to exclude the
Catholic religion from all toleration. They had the power and the right to
exclude all foreigners from the privileges of native‐born citizens, or to
make the conditions of being naturalized more stringent than they now are.
They took another course, having in view their own good and the well‐being
of the state, and Catholics as well as foreigners have profited by it.
Catholics have profited by the religious liberty conceded to citizens,
which is something essentially distinct from the privileges conceded to
residents of foreign origin. And in point of fact, although the extent and
prosperity of the church in Connecticut have proceeded principally and in
very great measure from the immigration of Irish Catholics into the state,
yet its rights, and liberty, and equality do not depend on anything
necessarily and essentially but the religious liberty granted to citizens,
and which is the birthright of Catholics as well as Protestants who are
born on the soil of the republic.
It would be easy to show, in respect to our country at large, that the
first beginnings of the Catholic Church have an intertwined radical grasp
with the first fibres of national life in our own soil; and that there is
a truly glorious Catholic chapter in the history of the United States. We
can find something of this even in the history of this state. The first
Mass celebrated in Connecticut was said in an open field within the bounds
of Wethersfield, by the chaplain of the French troops who came here to aid
our fathers in fighting the battle for independence. The first Catholic
sermon in English was preached by the Rev. Dr. Matignon, of Boston, in the
Centre Congregational Church of Hartford, at the invitation of the Rev.
Dr. Strong, the pastor of the church. The first Catholic church was formed
at Hartford in 1827, by Mr. Taylor, a respectable citizen of that town,
who was a convert, and who organized the few Irish, French, and German
Catholic residents in the place into a congregation, which assembled on
Sunday for worship. In 1830, Bishop Fenwick, of Boston, a native of
Maryland, purchased and blessed a small frame church, over which he placed
F. Fitton, a native of Boston, who was the pastor of the entire state, and
who is still actively engaged in the duties of the priesthood at Boston.
During the first five years of his ministry at Hartford, F. Fitton
received eighty adult converts, who, with their families, made a
considerable portion of his little flock, since, in 1835, there were only
730 Catholics in the whole state. The first bishop of the diocese of
Hartford was a native of New England. The present distinguished prelate
who rules the church in Connecticut is a native of Pennsylvania; and of
the 150,000 Catholics under his jurisdiction nearly one‐half must be
natives of the state or of the United States. We have, then, some 67,000
native‐born Catholics in this state, most of whom are native‐born
Yankees.(230) If you wish to see a fair sample of these, you have only to
visit St. Patrick’s Church at nine o’clock of a Sunday morning, where you
will see the church filled with them, and to go into the school‐house
behind the church any day in the week, where you will find 1,100 of these
young Catholic Yankees busily conning their lessons, and learning to love
God and their native Columbia. All these have their liberty of conscience
and their other rights as citizens secured to them by their birthright,
and therefore, on this ground alone, the Catholic Church is equal to the
Protestant churches before the law.
And as regards foreign‐born citizens, the state having conceded to them
equal rights to those of native‐born citizens, their conscience or
religion is included among these rights. The original concession was a
privilege, but, having been once conceded, it has become a right. And it
was conceded, as I have said, for the good of the state which conceded it,
and in view of a compensation or equivalent which the party of the grantor
expected to receive. You did not intrude yourselves upon the soil of the
state, or come uninvited to beg food and shelter. You were invited, and
that not from motives of pure philanthropy. Doubtless many had a kind and
philanthropic feeling in the matter, but the prime and urgent motive was
that you were needed and wanted for your labor. You were told that your
services were wanted for the upbuilding of the material prosperity of the
state, and, as an inducement to come, you were offered citizenship, and
with that, freedom to bring your religion with you and enjoy it. This was
a favor to you without question; but not a purely gratuitous one. It was
something advanced to you, but for which you were expected to make a
future compensation. And you have well purchased your rights, not only by
what you have done in the peaceful arts of industry, but by fighting for
your adopted country and shedding your blood for its integrity and the
consolidation of its power. You have fought for the state, and for the
United States, and, therefore, the compact has been sealed and made
inviolable by your blood.
Now, what is the point I have been coming to and have at length reached?
It is this: that you possess the full freedom and equality of your
Catholic religion, not by toleration, but as an absolute right, inhering
in your character as citizens whether by birth or adoption. Catholics are
legally domiciled here by virtue of our laws, which recognize, maintain,
and protect their religious rights as standing on an equal footing with
those of Congregationalists or Episcopalians. No doubt, we should cherish
a kind feeling toward those who have granted these most precious and
valuable rights, and respect their similar rights. But we must not permit
ourselves to be placed in any position of inferiority to other classes of
citizens. We must insist upon the full recognition of our equality in the
state, and maintain with a manly bearing all our rights of conscience to
their fullest extent, claiming and demanding from our fellow‐citizens a
complete respect and observance of these rights, and from the state that
protection in their exercise which it is bound to give.
The Declaration of Independence avows as an article of the national creed
that the right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness has been
conferred by the Creator, and is inalienable, and that government is
instituted for the purpose of securing to us the possession and exercise
of this right. The right to liberty includes freedom to keep the
commandments of God, to observe his law, to make use of all the means
which he has granted to us for obtaining grace, acquiring virtue, and
fulfilling the end of our creation. The right to happiness includes the
undisturbed enjoyment of all the privileges of our religion, which alone
can make us truly happy in this world, and enable us to obtain eternal
happiness. The right to liberty and happiness gives freedom, to those who
choose to do so, to devote themselves to the sacred duties of the altar
and the cloister. It gives freedom to practise all the rites and
ceremonies of religious worship, to dedicate our wealth to the service of
God and our fellow‐men, to constitute and regulate our churches according
to our own canonical law, to establish and hold possession of colleges,
seminaries, convents, and charitable institutions, to educate our
children, to profess and practise the Catholic religion wholly and
entirely. It is the end of government to secure these rights, so that, if
it fails to do so by extending an efficacious protection to their free and
peaceable exercise, it is negligent of its duty; and if it impairs or
violates them by unjust and tyrannical legislation, it commits a positive
act of wrong and usurpation. The government, the sovereign power in the
state from which the government holds its authority, are amenable to the
eternal law, as well as the individual citizen; and they may violate it by
neglecting to secure and protect, or by infringing upon, the rights of
conscience conferred by the Creator. Wherefore it is necessary to keep a
watchful guard over these rights, to proclaim and defend them loudly when
they are assailed or in danger of being impaired, and by all lawful means
to hinder any attempt to interfere with their exercise by unjust
legislation or a tyrannical exercise of authority by the governing power
and its official agents. It is a universal and constant tendency of the
sovereign power in the state to usurp unjust authority and to invade the
rights of its subjects. The liberty of the individual man and of the class
which is governed is always in danger, and, therefore, eternal vigilance
is the price of liberty. This is true where the people retains its
sovereignty, as well as where the sovereignty has been entrusted to a
monarch or an aristocracy. It is a great mistake to suppose that a popular
form of government and republican institutions are a perfect and adequate
guarantee of liberty in general or of liberty of conscience in particular.
The political majority or ascendant party can tyrannize over the minority
or weaker party and over private citizens. Magistrates elected by a
popular vote can misuse their power to oppress those whom they ought to
protect. Legislatures chosen by the people can pass the most unjust and
despotic laws. The Athenian democracy banished Aristides the Just, and
poisoned Socrates, the wisest man of pagan antiquity, the father and
founder of philosophy. In our own day we have seen the most perfidious
violation of guaranteed rights, and the most tyrannical oppression of the
religious freedom of Catholics, perpetrated by the Swiss Republic.
Catholics are always liable to oppression where they are the weaker party,
and have never any sufficient guarantee for the acquisition and
preservation of their full religious liberty, except in their own numbers
and strength, made available by their own energetic activity in their own
cause. According to the principles and spirit of our laws and political
institutions, the Catholic Church possesses in the United States a greater
degree of the liberty which belongs to her by divine right than in most
other countries. And in practice this liberty has been to a great extent
secured to her by the justice of the people at large, and the fidelity of
those to whom the administration of law has been entrusted. We may say of
Connecticut especially that, considering the old and deeply rooted
prejudice of her native inhabitants against the Catholic religion, it is
remarkable with what comity they have received and made place for the new
and mercurial race who have come in to replenish their staid old towns and
quiet villages with fresh life, and with what composure they have beheld
the multiplication of the crosses which gleam in the sunlight, on their
hilltops and in their valleys, over the churches and convents of that
which to them was a new and strange religion. Nevertheless, we cannot and
ought not to be content with anything short of that full and complete
liberty and equality which of right belong to us, and which do not in the
least degree prejudice the same rights in those who profess a different
religion. There are some things in regard to which it is our duty as well
as our right to demand a greater measure of justice than that which has
hitherto been yielded, and to exert ourselves to prevent a still further
diminution of our rights as Catholic citizens.
One of these is the right of those unfortunate persons who are inmates of
prisons, houses of reformation, and similar institutions to enjoy all the
privileges and fulfil all the duties of their religion, if they are
members of the Catholic Church. Closely connected with this is the right
of the Catholic clergy to have access to all the members of their flock,
and to exercise the functions of their sacred ministry wherever their duty
calls them, unhindered, and, if necessary, fully protected by the law and
all official persons.
Another is the complete and untrammelled freedom of Catholic education in
all its departments. The state has no right either to prescribe and
enforce religious instruction beyond those first principles of morality
and civic obligation which are the foundations of our political order, or
to interfere with the religious instruction which the Catholic conscience
demands for those who are in a state of pupilage. Far less has it the
right to prescribe an irreligious and atheistical system of instruction. I
cannot enlarge upon this most important topic in this place. I will here
simply recall what I have said of the possibility and danger of usurpation
over the rights of conscience even in popular governments, and point out a
direction from which we ourselves are threatened by this very danger. I
refer to a project entertained by some persons in high positions of
establishing under the authority of the federal government a national and
compulsory system of education, thus depriving not only Catholics, but
Protestants and Jews also, of their essential right as citizens to give
their children a religious education. I do not attribute this policy to
the party of the administration as a party, but it is most undoubtedly the
policy of a considerable and very active section of what is called the
Republican party, and is part and parcel of a scheme for modifying most
essentially the relations between the federal and the state governments,
for extending the authority of the governing power and restricting the
private liberty of citizens. The men who are possessed by these ideas are
in sympathy with that party in Europe self‐styled the progressive party.
The idea which they have of liberty is their own freedom to drive the
people on the path which they themselves have surveyed and marked out as
the straight road to happiness and well‐being, and this compulsory march
they dignify by the name of Progress. In this country, they are avowedly
not content with existing institutions and laws, but are restless to try
their improving hand upon them. They desire to secure uniformity according
to their own ideal standard, by consolidation, concentration, unification
of the legislative and executive powers in the federal government, and the
reduction of the states into the condition of subordinate, dependent
provinces in a republican empire. Education by the state and for the
state, and in accordance with so‐called progressive ideas, is an essential
part of this Prussianizing plan—an education wholly secular, from which
instruction in positive, revealed dogmas and a positive religious
discipline are wholly excluded, on the plea that all these are sectarian;
and one, of course, which is really anti‐Christian and godless—an
education like that of the University of Paris, which made a whole army of
infidels among the lettered class in France. It is on this ground of
education that the tyrannical and infidel power of the state is waging a
battle with the point of the lance against the church and the Catholic
religion in Europe. In England, also, as I know from those who have heard
it from the lips of the leaders of this party, it is the fixed purpose of
these leaders to work for the establishment of this infidel system by the
coercive power of the state. The necessary sequel of all this is the
_commune_; and, if such a system should prevail here, we have in prospect
the confiscation of ecclesiastical property, the destruction of those
institutions of learning which will not conform to the ideal of the state,
the overthrow of the most essential rights of conscience, and finally the
proscription of religion, followed by the war of the masses upon the
rights of property and upon the order of civil society itself.
We want none of these improvements of Boston _doctrinaires_, and no
meddling of political charlatans with our constitution. Our private rights
we hold from the Creator, and not from any social compact or grant of
government. State rights, the strongest safeguard we have against
usurpations upon our liberty, we hold from the fundamental law which first
constituted us a political people—the law of unity in multiplicity, which
is our strength, and the geometrical principle, of our harmonious and
symmetrical structure. There was a time when our centralizing principle
was in danger; when, so to speak, the centrifugal force threatened to
become too strong, and to make a rupture of our system. Now it is the
opposite danger we have to fear—the increase of the centripetal force. As
we were in danger of flying away from our sun and becoming separated,
wandering political orbs, so we are now in danger of running into our sun,
and thus losing our proper orbits, becoming absorbed into the central
mass, and thereby suffering the extinction of the life of liberty in the
individuals who form our population. Therefore, as the exorbitant demands
of state rights have been repressed, it should now be our study to prevent
the encroachment of federal power upon the just domain of these state
rights, of state power over municipal freedom, and of all these powers
upon the personal and private liberty of the citizen. It is for the
interest of all to do this, but my special purpose has been to show why
Catholics in particular are bound to do it, in order to preserve that
liberty which God has given to them, and their rights of conscience, among
which this right of education is one of the most precious and the most
imperilled.
This leads us to another point. All religious societies being equal before
the law, and entitled to an equal protection, so long as they do not
violate those fundamental principles of morality which constitute the
religion of the state, Catholic institutions have an equal claim to a
share in the distribution of the public money with those which are not
Catholic. In this state, large sums have been granted to institutions
which are under the control of particular denominations; for instance, to
Yale College. The state is bound to be impartial, and whatever it
determines to do in support of education or for the nurture and relief of
the helpless and destitute, and the reformation of the depraved, it is
bound to carry out on this impartial principle. Therefore grants to useful
institutions ought never to be opposed or withheld on the ground that the
Catholic clergy have the control over them, and that within their walls
the Catholic religion is taught and practised. Nor has the state any right
to prefer, much less to enforce, what is falsely called a non‐sectarian
system of religious and moral instruction. This is one of the most patent
fallacies by which the common mind in our time and country is duped and
deluded. If there is one only true church, all other so‐called churches
are sectarian, or sections cut off from the church. The true church cannot
be a sect or have anything sectarian about it. But the state is
incompetent to judge or decide that the Catholic Church is a sect in this
sense; and, therefore, incapable of determining that the public money
which is granted to a Catholic institution is devoted to sectarian
purposes. The state is equally incompetent to decide that there is no one
true church, and that, therefore, all denominations are sections of the
true church, or sects considered in the sense of parts included in a
whole. But if it were competent to decide this point in the sense
indicated, the only just conclusion would be that all should be
impartially treated and protected. The state is also incompetent to decide
that a particular party of men, having a system differing from that of any
one sect, and professing to retain the common elements of all, is not
itself a sect, and that its system is non‐sectarian. It is, in fact, only
another sect. Regular association, government, and special rites are not
essential to the nature of a sect. There were the sects of Pharisees,
Sadducees, and Herodians among the Jews. There are philosophical sects. A
sect is a party of men holding certain particular opinions. Those men who
profess to hold what they call the essential parts of religion and
morality, and to teach the same without any sectarian doctrines, simply
mean that they do not hold the tenets of any of the Protestant sects
around them, by which they differ from each other. But they belong to the
genus Protestant nevertheless, and have their own specific _differentia_.
They cannot discriminate the essential from the non‐essential parts of
Christianity without a criterion, and the criterion which they adopt and
apply makes their specific doctrine, which constitutes them a distinct, if
not a separate, sect. They assume that the specific doctrines and laws of
the Catholic Church are not essential. But in this they deny a fundamental
Catholic doctrine: they place themselves in opposition to Catholics in
respect to the essentials of faith and practice, and thus they are,
relatively to us, a sect. The state cannot decide this question, and
cannot, without injustice, prefer one party to the other. It is,
therefore, a violation of Catholic rights to compel Catholics to listen to
the teaching which calls itself non‐sectarian, or in any way to adopt and
sanction it as a system exclusively entitled to the support and protection
of the state.
The truth is that the state has nothing to do directly with religious
instruction. Formerly, in this state of Connecticut, it had to do with it,
because the Puritan form of Protestantism was the established religion of
the state, and made part of the law. But now the state has only to protect
the religious corporations and societies which have legal existence in the
enjoyment of their vested rights. Grants of money and other legal
provisions must be made in view of the utility to society and the state
which lies in the nature of the object which any institution aims at
accomplishing. Education, the care of the orphaned, the poor, the sick,
and other destitute persons, and the instruction of all classes in moral
and civic virtues and the fear of that Creator who is acknowledged in our
Declaration of Independence as the Author of our natural rights, are
useful to the state and society, and even necessary to their continuance
and well‐being. Therefore the state may exercise a supervision within
certain limits over these things, and grant subsidies for the purpose of
sustaining them. But this must be done in such a way that no violence is
committed upon the rights or the liberty of conscience guaranteed by law.
Religion must be left free, and not interfered with by the state. But non‐
interference is something quite incompatible with exclusion. The state
cannot confiscate the property which it has once granted to Yale College
because the clergy of one particular denomination control the religious
instruction of the college. Nor can it justly refuse to treat Catholic
institutions of education with a favor equal to that which it shows to
others, because the Bishop of Hartford will have control of their
religious teaching.
It is for the interest and well‐being of the state and of all classes of
its citizens that the Catholic Church should fully exercise all its
rights, and enjoy the most perfect freedom of growth and development. The
Catholic Church is fully and unchangeably committed to those essential
principles of morality on which our laws are founded. By the very
principle of the Catholic religion, those who profess it can never abandon
or change these principles, and they thus receive the strongest guarantee
of their perpetuity in the number and the moral power of those citizens
who profess this religion. By our religion we must hold and profess that
human rights are conferred by the Creator, that they are inviolable, and
that civil society has been established by Almighty God, with its
institutions of government, in order that these rights may be secured. We
must profess that peoples and governments are accountable to God for the
just administration of the trust committed to them, and responsible to a
higher law than mere human laws, the eternal law itself, which is written
on the conscience and clearly promulgated by a divine revelation. We must
profess the sanctity of life, of marriage, of the rights of property, of
oaths, contracts, treaties, and civic obligations, and the duty of
allegiance and obedience to the laws and the lawful authorities in the
state. All that I have shown to be the religion of the state, which is
indeed nothing more than a portion of the universal common law of
Christendom, is involved in the religion of Catholics and taught by it
with an authority which they acknowledge as unerring and supreme. Here is,
therefore, a principle of stability to the state, and to the rights of all
classes of citizens, which is involved in the education and popular
instruction which is given by the Catholic clergy. Moreover, as the
pastors of 150,000 of the inhabitants of the state, and wielding a moral
influence over them far superior to that of any other body of clergy, it
is for the interest and advantage of their fellow‐citizens that their
education, training in their special functions, and other qualifications
and advantages for exercising their civilizing power upon such a large and
increasing mass of the population, should be elevated to the highest
possible grade. Therefore the schools, academies, seminaries, and
religious houses in which the clergy are trained are deserving of
encouragement as sources of intellectual, moral, and social benefit and
improvement to society at large, which accrue to the benefit of the state.
The same is true of institutions of religious women, who are a kind of
female clergy in a wider sense of the word, of schools of all kinds, of
orphanages and charitable asylums. In the care of the poor and the sick
especially, the Catholic Church can do a work which cannot be done so well
by any other society, and thus relieve the state of a burden as well as
heal a sore on the body politic which is frequently dangerous as well as
distressing. Besides these more necessary services to humanity, the
Catholic Church contributes to the decoration and embellishment of life,
to the refinement of taste, and to the increase of innocent and elevating
enjoyment. It ornaments towns and villages with specimens of fine
architecture, multiplies statues and paintings, cultivates sacred music,
and by its multifarious ceremonies acts most powerfully not only on the
souls of men to raise their minds to an unseen world, but, in their human
sentiments and manners, to give grace and refinement as well as enjoyment
to a life rendered too dull and prosaic by the everlasting drudgery of an
industrious and material existence.
All this would not weigh a feather with the severe Puritan ancients who
founded this commonwealth. The Catholic religion is a religion of error,
they would have said; error is fatal to the soul, and cannot be tolerated
in a state where laws are framed according to the laws of God. But times
are changed, and both laws and the minds of the descendants of the
Puritans are changed with them. Even a great light among the descendants
of the Scottish Presbyterians, the Rev. Dr. Hodge, has declared that the
Catholic religion teaches the essentials of Christianity, exercises a
wholesome moral influence, and cannot be refused the same countenance and
aid by the state which is given to the Protestant religion, without the
usurpation of an authority to determine what is religious error. Although
the _New York Observer_ has raised an outcry against this candid statement
of a learned and honest man, and has vehemently denounced the Catholic
religion as worse than infidelity, I am persuaded that Yale College will
not be satisfied to take a more illiberal position than Princeton, and
that the general sense of the Protestant people of Connecticut will accord
with that of Dr. Hodge, and reject the contrary extreme of the _Observer_.
The religious people of Connecticut cannot fail to see that they have a
common cause with us against atheism and progressive radicalism, and that
we are a bulwark against a devastating flood which would sweep away their
rights with ours if it once broke over the surface of our society. Our
rights stand upon a common basis. They depend from a common chain, which
is fastened by the same ring. They have nothing to fear from any violation
of their liberty or usurpation of their rights on our part, even should we
obtain power enough to be able to attempt such an enterprise. We always
respect vested rights and established laws, when these are not contrary to
the law of God. The order which is now established is the only one that is
good for a state in which the inhabitants are divided in religion, and it
enables these divided religious communities to live together in political
harmony and social peace. We will not disturb this harmony, and we
denounce those who attempt to stir up the passions of the people to
destroy it as the enemies of the state as well as impious transgressors of
the law of God. The rights of conscience and the liberty of religion which
we possess under our laws are invaluable and precious to all of us. And
there is indeed a common bond between the descendants of the Puritan
founders of this commonwealth and the descendants of the persecuted
Catholics of Ireland who have settled on this soil, of which perhaps you
have not thought sufficiently. It is the bond which has been made by a
conflict which the fathers of both these lines of descendants have
maintained against a common enemy. That enemy was the despotic tyranny of
the successors of Henry VIII. and their ministers. Our ancestors drew the
sword against an invasion of rights which, they avowed, had been conferred
upon them by their Creator, and the issue of the war was the establishment
of this republic, in which the rights of conscience are declared to be
sacred. The ancestors of the “exiles of Erin” who have found a new home in
this republic fought, both with the sword and with the patient resistance
of martyrdom, against the same despotic violence which invaded all their
rights both civic and religious. It is fitting, therefore, that their
descendants should dwell together in the land rescued by the blood of
heroes from tyranny, and that here should flourish the religion rescued
from the same tyranny by the blood of martyrs.
I conclude with the eloquent apostrophe of the Bishop of Orleans to the
Belgians, which came from his mouth like the electric flash, amid thunders
of applause, at the Congress of Malines in 1867, where I had the privilege
of being present. “_Vous avez une patrie, sachez la garder!_”—“You have a
country, _know how to keep it_!”
When we look abroad and see the dark, threatening clouds overhanging older
nations, threatening new tempests to follow those which have lately burst
upon them, and then look at home on the peace and liberty we enjoy; our
church and religion free, priests, bishops, and the Holy Father from his
prison in the Vatican, exercising their lawful jurisdiction without
hindrance, we can esteem at their proper worth the blessings we enjoy. We
learn how to value order, good government, and civilization founded on
religious ideas, as the most precious of all earthly possessions after the
faith and the means of eternal salvation. These advantages we possess in
the laws and institutions which are summed up in the one word _our
country_—our native land, or the land of our refuge and our children’s
nativity. Let us all, therefore, prize, cherish, guard, and loyally serve
it during life; prepared and resolved, if necessary, to give our blood and
our lives in its defence, in emulation of the patriotic bravery of our
noble brothers and ancestors from whom we have received this fair
inheritance.
The Widow Of Nain.
“The only son of his mother, and she was a widow.”
I.
The dust on their sandals lay heavy and white,
Their garments were damp with the tears of the night,
Their hot feet aweary, and throbbing with pain,
As they entered the gates of the city of Nain.
II.
But lo! on the pathway a sorrowing throng
Pressed, mournfully chanting the funeral song,
And like a sad monotone, ceaseless and slow,
The voice of a woman came laden with woe.
III.
What need, stricken mothers, to tell how she wept?
Ye read by the vigils that sorrow hath kept,
Ye know, by the travail of anguish and pain,
The desolate grief of the widow of Nain.
IV.
As he who was first of the wayfaring men
Advanced, the mute burden was lowered, and then
As he touched the white grave‐cloths that covered the bier
The bearers shrank back, but the mother drew near.
V.
Her snow‐sprinkled tresses had loosened their strands,
Great tears fell unchecked on the tightly clasped hands;
But hushed the wild sobbing, and stifled her cries,
As Jesus of Nazareth lifted his eyes.
VI.
Eyes wet with compassion as slowly they fell—
Eyes potent to soften grief’s tremulous swell,
As, sweetly and tenderly, “Weep not,” he said,
And turned to the passionless face of the dead.
VII.
White, white gleamed his forehead, loose rippled the hair,
Bronze‐tinted, o’er temples transparently fair;
And a glory stole up from the earth to the skies,
As he called to the voiceless one, “Young man, arise!”
VIII.
The hard, rigid outlines grew fervid with breath,
The dull eyes unclosed from the midnight of death;
Weep, weep, happy mother, and fall at his feet:
Life’s pale, blighted promise grown hopeful and sweet.
IX.
The morning had passed, and the midday heats burned:
Once more to the pathway the wayfarers turned.
The conqueror of kings had been conquered again:
There was joy in the house of the widow of Nain.
Fleurange.
By Mrs. Craven, Author Of “A Sister’s Story.”
Translated From The French, With Permission.
Part IV. The Immolation.
LIX.
Several hours had passed since Fleurange’s return. Anxiety, horror,
sadness, and emotion, which by turns filled her heart during the affecting
scene we have just described, now gave place to a feeling in which a
sweet, profound sense of gratitude predominated.
Ah! no one could comprehend, without the experience faith alone gives, the
mysterious joy that penetrates the heart when the salvation of a soul
seems assured; when, in a tangible manner, as it were, the abyss of divine
mercy which ever surrounds us, opens and allows us to sound its depths;
when, in answer to our tears, we almost behold the heavens open; when, in
return for _pardon implored_, we are made to comprehend the ineffable
signification of two other words, sweet as mercy and boundless as
infinitude—_pardon obtained_.
Fleurange therefore felt, if not happy—for the impressions of the day had
been too solemn not to have left a veil of sadness on her soul—at least
calm and serene. The sight of that death‐bed had put to flight some of the
dreams she so often abandoned herself to now without scruple—dreams of
passionate joy at her approaching sacrifice, mingled with the perspective
of a brighter future, in which her happiness with George would be
increased and consecrated by the sufferings they first shared together—the
cherished theme on which lingered her imagination, her heart, and even her
soul, which had faith in the efficacy of sacrifice, and instinctively made
it the basis of its hopes. Everything, even this, was forgotten for the
moment. It was as if a graver, purer, holier strain had put to flight the
mingled harmony in which heaven and earth seemed almost confounded.
Hitherto, the idea of immolating herself with and for another had seemed
noble; but at this quiet hour, after a day of so much agitation, a
sublimer thought sprang up in her soul in spite of herself; it was that of
a sacrifice unknown to the person for whom one immolates one’s self!
Was not the greatest of sacrifices—the sacrifice which is our example—of
such a nature? Was it not made for those who were unaware of it? And has
not this very ignorance been regarded by the eternal goodness as a plea
for disarming eternal justice?
Fleurange did not attempt to thus define her confused thoughts; she
allowed them to float in her mind without welcoming or rejecting them. She
was in that frame of mind which unconsciously enfolds a latent disposition
in the depths of the soul, that suddenly develops into efforts and
sacrifices which seem impossible an hour before they have to be made.
She was alone in one corner of a large, white marble fireplace in which
blazed a good fire. She preferred this salon to the others, which were
heated invisibly, though it was the smallest in the house, and it was the
one she habitually occupied. Clement, after accompanying her home, had
returned to the sad place they visited together to obtain, if not an
honorable, at least a separate burial of his unfortunate cousin’s remains.
Mademoiselle Josephine, at her usual hour, had gone to her fine chamber,
which she now occupied with less uneasiness than the first night, and had
been for an hour in the capacious bed, where she had learned to sleep as
comfortably as under the muslin curtains which generally guarded her
slumbers.
It was nearly ten o’clock, and Fleurange in her turn was about to retire,
when the noise of a carriage was heard, the bell rang, and a few minutes
after a card was brought her. She looked at it: “The Countess Vera de
Liningen”—and beneath, written with a pencil: “Will Mademoiselle Fleurange
d’Yves have the kindness to see me a moment?”
“Vera!—the Countess Vera!—”
Fleurange repeated the name twice. It was the first time she had thought
of it since she left Florence. She remembered hearing it once in a
conversation between the Princess Catherine and the marquis, the first
time she ever saw the latter. From that time, Vera’s name had never been
mentioned before her. The marquis instinctively avoided it in talking with
her the day before, as he did that of Gabrielle in conversing with Vera,
and no one mentioned it at the palace. Fleurange’s surprise was therefore
inexpressible. She remained with her eyes fixed on the card, till the
valet de chambre took the liberty of reminding her the Countess Vera was
waiting in her carriage for an answer.
“Certainly. Ask her to come up.” Then she waited, with a mixture of
curiosity and embarrassment, for the entrance of the visitor, without
knowing exactly why. She was almost breathless from agitation; but when
the door opened, and she saw the beautiful maid of honor, she felt
partially relieved.
“Ah! it is you, mademoiselle,” she exclaimed joyfully. “Pardon me for not
having divined it immediately, but I did not know this morning the name of
her who received me so kindly.”
It now occurred to Fleurange that the maid of honor had been sent by the
empress sooner than she expected with the favorable reply promised, but
the visitor’s pale face and silence struck her and checked the words on
her lips.
“You were unaware of my name this morning, but did you never hear it
before?”
Fleurange blushed. “Never would be incorrect,” replied she.—And she
stopped.
“No matter,” continued Vera. “I do not care to know when or how you heard
it. I can imagine they did not say much to you about me. But allow me to
ask you in my turn if you have not another name besides that under which I
had the honor of presenting you to her majesty!”
“My name is Fleurange,” replied the young girl simply, “but it is not the
one I habitually bear.”
“And your other name?” asked Vera, with a trembling voice.
Fleurange was astonished at the manner in which this question was asked,
and still more so at the effect of her reply, which produced a frightful
change in the listener’s face.
“Gabrielle!” repeated she. “I guessed rightly, then.”
An embarrassing silence followed this exclamation. Fleurange did not know
what to say. She awaited an explanation of the scene which appeared more
and more strange. But while she was looking at Vera with increased
surprise during this long silence, a sudden apprehension seized her, and a
faint glimpse of the truth flashed across her mind. Nothing could have
been more vague than the remembrance of the name mentioned before her but
once, but that time it was in a conversation respecting George, and she
bethought herself that she understood it to be a question of a marriage
the princess desired for her son. Was it with reluctance Vera had now
brought the permission for another to accompany him? Such was the question
Fleurange asked herself. Approaching Vera, therefore, she said to her
softly:
“If you have come with a message, how can I thank you sufficiently,
mademoiselle, for taking the trouble of bringing it yourself!”
Vera hastily withdrew her hand, and retreated several steps; then, as if
suffering from an emotion she could not overcome, she fell into an arm‐
chair beside the table, and for some moments remained pale and breathless,
with a gloomy, forbidding air, wiping away from time to time with an
abrupt gesture the tears which, in spite of all her efforts, escaped from
her eyes.
Fleurange, motionless with surprise, looked at her with mingled interest
and astonishment, but, the frank decision of her character prevailing over
her timidity, she came at once to the point.
“Countess Vera,” said she, “if I have not guessed the motive that brings
you here, tell me the real one; there is something in all this which I do
not understand. Be frank; I will be likewise. Let us not remain thus
towards one another. Above all, do not look at me as if we were not only
strangers, but enemies.”
At this word, Vera raised her head. “Enemies!” she said. “Well, yes, at
present we are.”
What did she mean? Fleurange crossed her arms, and looked at her
attentively, trying to guess the meaning of her enigmatical words, and the
still more obscure enigma of her face, which expressed by turns the most
contradictory sentiments; the enigma of her eyes, which sometimes gazed at
her with hatred, and then with sweetness and a humble, beseeching look. At
length Vera seemed decided to continue. “You are right,” she said; “I must
put an end to your suspense, and explain my strange conduct; but I need
courage to do this. To come here as I have, to appeal to you as I am going
to do, I must—I must, without knowing why—”
“Well,” said Fleurange with a faint smile, “continue. You must what?”
Vera went on in a low tone, as if affected: “I must have had a secret
instinct that you were kind and generous.”
This result of so much hesitation did not throw any light on the subject,
but only made it more obscure.
“There has been preamble enough,” said Fleurange, with a calm accent of
firmness. “Speak clearly now, Countess Vera, tell me everything without
reservation. You may believe nothing to fear. Though your words do me an
injury I can neither foresee nor comprehend, speak, I insist upon it.
Hesitate no longer.”
“Well, here,” said Vera, suddenly throwing on the table a paper till now
concealed.
Fleurange took it, looked at it, and blushed at first, then turned pale.
“My petition!” she said. “You have brought it back? It has been refused,
then?”
“No; it was not sent.”
“You mean that the empress, after showing me so much kindness, changed her
mind and refused to present it?”
“No; on the contrary, she ordered me to forward your petition, and to add
her recommendation.”
“Well?”
“I disobeyed her orders.”
“I await the explanation you doubtless intend giving me. Go on without any
interruption; I am listening.”
“Well, first, did you know that George de Walden was the husband promised
me—to whom my father destined me from infancy?”
“Who was promised you!—from infancy! No, I did not know that. No matter;
go on.”
“No matter, indeed; that is not the point, though it is proper to inform
you of it. Neither is it a question of his misfortune, or his frightful
sentence, or that terrible Siberia where you wished to accompany him and
participate in a lot the severities of which you could neither alleviate
nor perhaps endure. This is the point: to preserve him from that destiny,
to save him, to enable him to regain life, honor, and liberty—in a word,
all he has lost. His property, name, and rank can all be restored to him.
It is this I have come to tell you and ask you to second.”
“All can be restored to him?” repeated Fleurange, in a strange voice. “By
what means?—what authority?”
“The emperor’s. I have appealed to his clemency, and my prayers have
prevailed, but on two conditions, one of which is imposed on George, and
the other depends on me. To these two conditions, there is a third which
depends on you—you alone!”
Fleurange’s large eyes fastened on Vera with an expression of profound
astonishment and anguish.
“Finish, I conjure you, if you are not mad in speaking to me so, or I in
listening to you—if we are not both deprived of our reason!”
Vera clasped her hands, and passionately exclaimed: “Oh! I beg you to have
pity on him!” She stopped, choked with emotion.
Fleurange continued to gaze at her with the same expression, and, without
speaking, made a sign for her to continue. She seemed to concentrate her
attention in order to comprehend the words addressed her.
“I am waiting,” she said at last. “I am listening attentively and calmly;
speak to me in the same manner.”
Vera resumed in a calmer tone: “Well, this morning just as I had finished
reading your petition and learned for the first time who the exile was you
wished to accompany—at that very moment the emperor arrived at the palace
and sent for me.”
“The emperor!” said Fleurange, with surprise.
“Yes, and can you imagine what he wished to say to me? You could not, and
I am not surprised, for you are not aware how earnestly I had solicited
George’s pardon, and, to this end, how zealously I had sought out every
circumstance calculated to conciliate his sovereign. Well, what the
emperor wished to inform me was that this pardon would be granted me—_me_,
do you understand?—but on two conditions.”
“His pardon!” exclaimed Fleurange. “Go on, I am listening.—”
“The first, that he should pass four years on his estates in Livonia
without leaving them.—” Vera stopped.
“I hear; and next?” said Fleurange, raising her eyes.
“Next,” said Vera slowly and anxiously, “that the will of my father and
his should be fulfilled before his departure.”
Fleurange shuddered. An icy chill struck to her heart, and her head swam
as if with dizziness. But she remained perfectly motionless.
“His pardon is at this price?” said she in a low voice.
“Yes; the emperor has taken an interest in me from my childhood; he loved
my father, and it has pleased him to make this act of clemency depend on
the accomplishment of my father’s wish.”
There was a long silence. Vera herself trembled at seeing Fleurange’s pale
lips, and colorless cheeks, and her eyes looking straightforward, lost in
space.
“And he?”—she said at last. “He accepts his pardon on this
condition—without hesitation?”
“Without hesitation!” repeated Vera, blushing with new emotion. “That is
what I cannot say. It is this doubt that humiliates and alarms me, for the
emperor would regard the least hesitation as fresh ingratitude, and
perhaps would annul his pardon.”
“But why should he hesitate?” said Fleurange, in an almost inaudible tone.
“Fleurange,” said Vera, in that passionate tone she had used two or three
times during this interview, “let us rend each other’s hearts, if need be,
but let us go on to the end. Have you had permission to see George since
you came?”
“No.”
“But he expects you; he knows you have arrived, and the devotedness that
has brought you here?”
“No, he is still ignorant of all this; he was to be informed of it to‐
morrow.”
A flash of joy lit up Vera’s black eyes. “Then it depends on you whether
he hesitates or not—whether he is saved.—Yes, Fleurange, let him remain
ignorant of your arrival, let him not see you again—let him never behold
you again,” she continued, looking at her with a jealous terror she could
not conceal, “and his life will again become brilliant and happy—as it
was—as it always should be—and the remembrance of the last few months will
disappear like a dream!”
“Like a dream!” repeated Fleurange mechanically, passing her hand over her
brow.
“I have told you everything now,” said Vera. “I have done you an injury I
can understand better than any one else. But,” she continued, with an
accent that resounded in the depths of the listener’s soul, “I wished to
save George, I wished to win him back to me! And I thought, I know not
why, for I am generally distrustful—yes, I thought I could induce you to
aid me against yourself!”
Fleurange, with her hands clasped on her knees, and her eyes gazing before
her with a fixed expression, seemed for some moments insensible to
everything. She was listening, however—she was listening to that clear,
distinct voice which resounded in her soul in a tone so pure—a voice she
had never failed to recognize and obey.
If George were free, if he recovered his name, rank, and former position,
would she not still be in the same position as before? In that case, could
she treacherously usurp the consent obtained from his mother, and that to
the detriment of the one before her—the wife chosen from his infancy?
Would it not be treachery to him to present herself before him at the
moment of recovering his liberty, and thereby endanger its loss with the
momentary favor that conferred it?
She placed her icy hand on Vera’s, and turned towards her with a sweet
expression of resolution. “That is enough,” she said, in a calm tone. “You
have done right. Be easy, I understand it all.”
Vera, astonished at her expression and accent, looked at her with
surprise.
“Do not be afraid,” continued Fleurange, in the same tone. “Act as if I
were far away—as if I had never come.” And, taking the petition lying on
the table, she tore it in pieces, and threw it into the fire! There was a
momentary blaze, which died away, and she looked at the ashes as they
flew.
Vera, with an irresistible impulse, pressed her lips to the hand she
seized, then remained mute and confounded. She had come determined to
prevail over her rival, to convince her, to use every means of contending
if she failed in her first efforts, but her victory suddenly assumed an
aspect she had not anticipated. It had certainly been an easy one, and yet
Vera felt it had left a bleeding wound. She experienced for a moment more
uneasiness than joy, and her attitude expressed no more of triumph than
that of Fleurange of defeat. While one remained with her head and eyes
cast down, the other had risen. A passing emotion colored Fleurange’s
cheek, the struggle of the sacrifice gave animation and an unusual
brilliancy to her face.
“I think,” said she, “you have nothing more to say to me.”
“No—for what I would like to say I cannot, dare not.”
Vera rose and turned towards the door. A thought occurred to her. She
approached Fleurange. “Excuse my forgetfulness,” said she; “here is the
bracelet you lost this morning. I was commissioned to restore it to you.”
At the sight of the talisman, Fleurange started; her momentary color faded
away, she became deadly pale, and, as she looked at it silently, some
tears, the only ones she shed during the interview, ran down her cheeks.
But it was only for an instant. Before Vera realized what she was doing,
Fleurange clasped the bracelet around her rival’s arm.
“This talisman was a present from the Princess Catherine to her son’s
betrothed. She said it would bring her good luck. It no longer belongs to
me. I return it to you; it is yours.”
Fleurange held out her hand. “We shall never see each other again,” she
continued; “let us not bear away any bitter remembrance of each other.”
Vera took her hand without looking at her. She had never felt touched and
humiliated to such a degree; gratitude itself was wounding to her pride.
But Fleurange’s sweet, grave voice was now irresistible, and spoke to her
heart in spite of herself. She hesitated between these two feelings.
Fleurange resumed: “You are right. It is not my place to wait for you at
this time—you have nothing more to forgive me for, I believe, and I
forgive you everything.”
And as Vera still remained motionless with her head bent down, Fleurange
leaned forward and embraced her.
LX.
The Marquis Adelardi often declared he had witnessed so many extraordinary
and unexpected events that he was seldom surprised at anything that
happened. But the day that now dawned brought a surprise of the liveliest
kind, and even a second one in the course of a few hours. He rose late,
according to his custom, and was breakfasting beside the fire when a note
was brought him which put a premature end to the repast just begun. After
reading it, he fell into deep thought, then rose and strode around his
room. Finally he went to the window, and read the following note a second
time.
“MY KIND FRIEND: I have changed my mind. I earnestly beg you when you see
Count George not to mention my name, and, above all, to take the greatest
precaution to keep him for ever ignorant of the plans I formed and the
journey I have made. This will be easy, for no one knows I am here, and
tomorrow, before night, I shall have left St. Petersburg. Everything will
be explained to you, but I only write now what is most essential for you
to know without any delay.”
In vain he read and re‐read. Such were the words, signed _Fleurange_,
which he held in his hands. For once the marquis was completely at a loss.
Nothing—absolutely nothing—could account for this sudden change. The
success of her petition presented the empress the day before was certain.
He recalled every detail of his recent interview with her, during which,
having nothing more to conceal, she naïvely revealed all the depth and
sincerity of her sentiments towards George. He had long been aware of her
firmness and courage, and the idea of her drawing back at the last moment
in view of the trial never occurred to him. There was, then, an
impenetrable mystery, and he impatiently awaited the hour he could go for
the promised explanation. But he must first keep his engagement with
George. Poor George! he inspired him now with fresh pity, though he had
doubted, the evening before, if he was worthy of the consolation in store
for him. It seemed now as if he could not live without it, and that a new
and more frightful sentence had been pronounced against him. The marquis
was about to start for the fortress to fulfil more sadly than ever the
painful duty of his powerless friendship, when another letter was brought
him. The mere sight of this second missive made him start, and he examined
with extreme astonishment the address and the very envelope that bore it,
the impression on the seal, and the slight perfume it gave out. All this
was a source of surprise, and, for once, it was not unreasonable, as it
generally is, to dwell on these exterior signs before solving the mystery
by opening the letter. The reader may judge, after learning that the
Marquis Adelardi recognized his friend’s writing in the address. Since
George’s imprisonment, he had neither had permission to write, nor the
means. In the second place, the paper, the arms on the seal, the
perfume—all these things belonged to a different condition, for certainly
none of these elegances had been allowed him in prison. The mere exterior
of the letter, therefore, had something inexplicable, and, when he opened
it to solve the enigma, he read as follows:
“MY VERY DEAR FRIEND: Perhaps the very sight of this letter has given you
a suspicion of its contents. If not, know that I am free, or, at least, I
shall be so to‐morrow! Meanwhile, I have left the frightful cell where you
found me yesterday, and now, thanks to the governor of the fortress, am
established in his own apartment and surrounded once more by all the
delightful accessories of civilized life of which I thought myself for
ever deprived—accessories which are only a dawn of the delightful day
before me. Yes, Adelardi, free! by the favor of the emperor, against whom
I eagerly pledge myself never to enter into a conspiracy as long as I
live. Free on two conditions: one to live at my home in Livonia four
years; the other—guess what it is! It is not more severe than the first:
it is to return to my first love—to her to whom I owe my pardon. In a
word, to end where I began, by marrying Vera de Liningen! What do you say
to that? Is not this a _dénoûment_ worthy of a romance? You predicted it
once, do you remember it? ‘You will renounce this folly which tempts you,
and keep the promise you made.’ I was far from believing it then, and
perhaps it is well even now that that beautiful siren is seven hundred
leagues off, for I know not what would be the result were I subjected to
the fascination of those eyes which turned my head, whereas I am now
wholly absorbed in the happiness that awaits me. Vera still loves me. She
is also beautiful in her way, and, above all, possesses a charm which
makes me forget all others. She has the beautiful eyes of liberty which I
owe her. Therefore I am not tempted to refuse the hand she is ready to
accept, or even my heart, though somewhat _blasé_, but now filled with
gratitude strong enough to sufficiently resemble the love she has a right
to expect.
“_Au revoir_, Adelardi! Come when you please; I am no longer a prisoner,
though I have pledged myself not to leave here till I go to the empress’
chapel to meet her who is to accompany me into the mitigated exile to
which _we_ are condemned.”
It would be difficult to describe the strange effect of this letter,
coming so soon after the other, upon the person to whom they were both
addressed. It would be impossible to say whether he was glad or sorry,
indignant or affected, relieved or overwhelmed, by such sudden news; and,
though only imperfectly enlightened respecting some of the circumstances
he wished to know, he felt that somehow Fleurange had been informed of
George’s pardon before himself, and the conditions attached to it. This
was the evident meaning of her note, which now seemed to the marquis so
generous, so touching, and even so sublime, that his whole interest
centred, with a kind of passion, in this charming, noble girl. Her letter,
which lay beside George’s before him, displayed the greatest contrast
imaginable to the cold, selfish levity of the latter. At all events, he
had no reason now to be anxious about him on whom everything seemed to
smile, but rather about her who was immolating herself to‐day as much as
yesterday—unsuspected by the object—and with a devotedness a thousand
times more disinterested and more generous than before.
At that moment the door opened, and the marquis uttered an exclamation of
joy and welcome at hearing Clement announced. He was just thinking of him,
and wishing he could see him at once. As soon as he looked at him he
perceived he was unaware of what had occurred. Clement returned home at a
late hour the night before, and had not seen Fleurange since their return
from the hospital. He now came from the burial of his unfortunate cousin
in a distant, obscure spot, to beg the marquis to use his influence to
obtain permission to place a simple stone cross on his forlorn grave. But
he could not find any opportunity of introducing the subject, the marquis
was so eager to enter on that which absorbed him. He informed Clement of
George’s pardon and the conditions on which it was granted; but in his
eagerness he did not at first perceive the effect of the news on his
listener. The latter remained motionless, and for moments his excessive
surprise prevented him from replying. The aspect of everything was so
changed by the intelligence that his mind refused to take it in. He looked
at the marquis with so singular an expression that he was struck by it,
and clearly saw he had unguardedly touched a deeper and more vital point
than he supposed.
“Pardon me, Dornthal, I have excited you more than I wished or expected.”
“Yes,” said Clement, in a strange voice, “I acknowledge it; but does she
know what you have just informed me of?”
The marquis in reply gave him Fleurange’s note. He read it with a still
more lively emotion than he had just experienced; but he succeeded better
in controlling it.
“Poor Gabrielle! This is evidently a generous, spontaneous impulse, worthy
of her. But,” continued he, in quite a different accent, in which trembled
an indignation he repressed with difficulty, “I cannot comprehend how
this—how Count George can unhesitatingly consent to the conditions
_proposed_, for really I can never believe them rigorously _imposed_ by
the emperor, still less that they could be accepted if he appreciates as
he ought the sentiments which I should suppose would prevent him from
accepting them.”
The marquis hesitated a moment, and then said: “Here, Dornthal, time
presses; it is better you should know everything without delay.” And he
gave him George’s letter.
As Clement read it, contempt and anger were so clearly displayed in his
face that the marquis was confounded at the flash of indignation with
which he crushed the letter and threw it on the table. “That is exactly
what I should have expected from the man you told me of yesterday. Poor
Gabrielle!” he continued, in a voice trembling with emotion and
tenderness, “it is thus that the precious treasures of thy heart have been
lavished and wasted!”
He leaned on the table, and hid his face in his hands. For some instants
there was a silence neither sought to break. At length Clement returned to
himself. “Once more pardon me, M. le Marquis. I really do not know what
you will think of me after the weakness I have shown before you. But no
matter, it is not a question of myself, but of her. There is one point I
recommend to you which there is no need of insisting upon: she must remain
ignorant of the contents of this letter. She must never know—_never_, do
you understand?—what kind of a love she thought worthy of hers.”
The marquis looked at him with astonishment. “And it is you, Dornthal, who
are so anxious as to your cousin’s remembrance of Count George!”
This total absence of vulgar triumph and selfish hope added another
notable surprise to those of the morning. Clement neither noticed
Adelardi’s tone nor the kind, affectionate expression of regard which
accompanied the words he had just uttered.
“I wish her to suffer as little as possible,” said he briefly; “that is my
only aim and thought.”
He rose to go out. The marquis pressed his hand with a cordiality he
rarely manifested, and after Clement’s departure he remained a long time
thoughtful. Perhaps at that moment he was thinking how much more
satisfaction there was in meeting and studying such a noble heart than
most of those whose acquaintance he had hitherto sought and cultivated
with so much eagerness.
LXI.
At Clement’s return, he learned that his cousin had asked for him several
times. He immediately went up to the room she occupied. His emotion at
seeing her again, though less sudden than that he had just experienced,
was deeper than he anticipated, for he was unprepared for the change
wrought within so short a time. She was, however, as calm and resolute as
the night before, though she had passed through what might be called the
agony of sacrifice—that hour of inexpressible suffering, not when the
sacrifice of one’s self is decided upon, not even that in which it is
consummated, but the intermediate hour in which repugnance still struggles
against the will. It was this hour endured by our common Master in the
order of his sufferings after he took upon himself our likeness.
Fleurange had only taken a short hour of repose before day. The remainder
of the night she passed wholly in conflict with suffering. She then
allowed the repressed sobs that filled her breast during her interview
with Vera to burst forth without restraint as soon as she was alone for
the night; she gave herself up to the poor solace of tasting at leisure
the bitterness of sacrifice, repelling every consoling thought—almost
allowing the waves of despair to gather round her, and, if not to break
over her, at least to threaten her.
The chamber she occupied was more spacious and sumptuous than Mademoiselle
Josephine’s, being that of the Princess Catherine herself. It was lighted
only by a lamp which burned before the holy images enshrined in gold and
silver in one corner, according to the Russian custom. Fleurange threw
herself on a couch, and there, with her head buried in the cushions, her
long hair dishevelled, and her hands clasped to her face inundated with
tears, she gave vent to her grief for a long time without any attempt to
moderate it.
Once before in her life she had abandoned herself to a similar transport
of grief, though certainly with much less reason. It was when she left
Paris two years before, and it seemed as if she was alone in the world,
and all the joys of life had come to an end. Those who have not forgotten
the beginning of this story may remember that on that occasion the sight
of a star suddenly appearing in the clear sky brought her a message of
peace. God knows, when it pleaseth him, how to give a voice to everything
in nature, and to speak to his creatures by the work of his hands, and
even of theirs. An impression of such a nature now infused the first ray
of calmness into the tempest that completely overwhelmed her soul.
Suddenly raising her head from the attitude in which she had so long
remained, her eyes naturally turned towards the light diffused by the lamp
before the images in the corner of the chamber, the richest of which
sparkled in its ray. In these Greek paintings, as we are aware, the heads
alone on the canvas stand out from the gold and precious stones that
surround them. That which now attracted Fleurange’s attention was the
image of Christ—that sacred face of the well‐known type common to all the
representations of Byzantine art. That long, grave face, those mild eyes,
with their calmness and depth, have a thrilling, mysterious effect which
surpasses a thousand times every reproduction of human beauty. This
impression, which a pious love of art enables every one to comprehend, was
associated with a tender remembrance of Fleurange’s childhood. She had
often prayed before a face of similar aspect in the chapel of Santa Maria
al Prato. She now looked steadfastly into those divine eyes gazing at her,
and it seemed as if that sweet penetrating look pierced to the depths of
her soul, and infused a sudden, marvellous, inexpressible consolation.
Changing gradually her previous attitude, she remained for some time
seated with clasped hands, transfixed. At last, her eyes still fastened on
the holy face, she fell on her knees, bent down her head, and remained a
long time buried in profound recollection. Her immoderate grief seemed to
diminish and change its character. Her tears, without ceasing to flow,
lost their bitterness and changed their object; for in the mildness of
that majestic look she read a reproach which she comprehended!—
“O my Saviour and my God! pardon me!” exclaimed she, with fervor, bending
down till her forehead touched the floor.
Pardon!—Yes, in spite of her purity, her piety, and the uprightness of her
soul, it was a word Fleurange was likewise obliged to utter. In it she
felt lay solace and peace for her heart. She perceived it now for the
first time. A new light began to rise in her soul, like the faint flush of
aurora which precedes day, and her grief seemed a punishment merited for
forgetfulness, her tears an expiation. These thoughts were still confused;
but their influence was already beneficent, and she soon felt really
springing up within her the courage and fortitude which she outwardly
manifested during her interview with Vera. She had always been capable of
action in spite of suffering, and she now sought it, realizing its
benefit. The night was far advanced, but she did not feel the need of
repose, and before seeking it she would give her heart and mind, even more
fatigued than her body, the relief they needed. Under the impression of
all the incidents and varied emotions of the day, she wrote the Madre
Maddalena a letter which was the faithful transcript of all she had passed
through. The joy of the morning, the sacrifice of the evening, her despair
scarcely subsided, nothing was concealed or suppressed, not even a fresh
ardent aspiration towards the cloister which she thought could no longer
be shut against her, and which now seemed the only refuge of her broken
heart.
There is a certain art in reading the hearts of others; but it is as great
a one to be able to read one’s own, and this art Fleurange possessed in
the highest degree when in the presence of that great soul which afar off
as well as near watched over hers. This outpouring soothed her. She
afterwards slept awhile, and, on awaking, courageously despatched the
letter which we have just seen the Marquis Adelardi read and communicate
to Clement.
But such a night leaves its traces. Fleurange’s swollen eyes, her
contracted features, her pale, trembling lips, and her sad expression
indicated suffering which was an insupportable torture to Clement. He
would have spared her this at the expense of his life, as it is allowable
to say he had proved. But now that the arduous duty of earnestly desiring
her happiness through the affection of another was no longer required of
him, the impetuous cry of his own heart became almost irresistible in its
power, and Clement never manifested more self‐control than this morning in
subduing the impulse which prompted him a thousand times to throw himself
at his cousin’s feet, and passionately tell her she loved and regretted an
ungrateful man, and that she herself was even more ungrateful than he! But
instead of that, he silently pressed her hand. Fleurange saw he was aware
of everything, and it was a relief to have nothing to tell. In a few words
they made arrangements for their departure, and Clement promised her to
start within twenty‐four hours.
Meanwhile, Mademoiselle Josephine appeared, and Clement, too preoccupied
to use any circumlocution, simply announced the change in his cousin’s
intentions, without giving her any explanation. But when, in the height of
her joy, mademoiselle exclaimed, “She is going back with us!—O mon Dieu!
what happiness!” Clement frowned and pressed her hand in so expressive a
manner that the poor demoiselle stopped short and, according to her
custom, buried her joy in utter silence, saying to herself that the day
would perhaps come when she would understand all these inexplicable
things, and, among others, why, when she wept at Gabrielle’s leaving them,
it was necessary to conceal her sorrow; and now she was to remain, it was
not permitted to manifest her joy.
“All this is very singular—I always seem to take aim at the wrong moment.
And yet, Clement allow me to say that I suspect that, as to this Monsieur
le Comte, it was I—and I alone—who was right.”
This last reflection did not escape her, it is reasonable to suppose, till
later, at one of those seasons of special unburdening her mind to Clement
which she sought now and then, and we should add that the smile in return
amply repaid her for the frown we have just noted.
The evening passed away almost in silence. The Marquis Adelardi spent it
with them. The frightful alteration in Fleurange’s features did not allow
him to mistake the extent of her sufferings; and her calm, simple manner
redoubled the enthusiasm she had always inspired him with—an enthusiasm
which gradually ripened into solid friendship, and ultimately wrought a
durable, beneficent effect on his life.
Before Clement and his cousin separated for the night, they spoke of
Felix’s sad burial, and its lack of any religious ceremony. The marquis
had promised to obtain the last favor Clement asked—that a cross should
mark the spot where he reposed. The following morning Mass was to be
celebrated for him in the Catholic church.
“We will attend this Mass together,” said Fleurange.
“Yes, Gabrielle, that was my expectation.”
The next morning, at an early hour, Fleurange and her cousin were
prostrate at the foot of the altar in the large Catholic church on the
Nevskoi Prospekt. After all the sorrow that had overwhelmed the young
girl’s soul since the night before, this was an hour of sad consolation
and repose. Her long journey, after all, in spite of the bitter deception,
in spite of the grief and sacrifice at the end, had not been made in vain.
He whose last hours she had consoled, and for whom they were now praying,
had carried away with him the blessed influence of her presence into those
regions to which repentance opens the door! Repentance! the salvation of
the soul that feels it, the benediction of the soul that seconds it, the
mysterious joy of the angels that inspire it and rejoice over it as one of
the delights of their eternal beatitude!
They left the church, and slowly descended the long avenue bordered by
trees called the Nevskoi Prospekt. They found their way impeded by a
numerous crowd in front of the gate of the Anitschkoff Palace, which they
had to pass. Fleurange, lost in thought, was walking slowly along without
looking around, and Clement also was absorbed in his own reflections, when
they were both startled as if by an electric shock.
“The newly married pair are coming out,” said a voice.
“Married!—condemned, you mean,” replied another, laughing. “You know they
are both going into exile.”
They heard no more. Clement’s sudden effort to lead Fleurange away was
powerless. She resisted it, and, leaving his arm without his being able to
prevent it, she swiftly made her way to the front, and leaned against a
tree. She saw the _grille_ open—the carriage appeared; it drew near; at
last she saw him! Yes; she saw Count George’s noble features, his smiling
face, his radiant look, and she caught a glimpse of the black eyes and
golden locks of the bride. Then it seemed to grow dark around her, and
everything vanished from her thoughts as well as from her sight!
Epilogue.
—“No, my Fior Angela, I once more say no, as when you made the same
request at Santa Maria that lovely evening in May while we were gazing at
the setting sun over the cloisters. What has been changed? And why should
God call you now to this retreat if he did not call you then?—Because you
suffer still more? But, my poor child, you were suffering then. Life, you
said, seemed ‘empty and cheerless, unsatisfactory and imperfect.’ And,
indeed, you were not wrong. That is its real aspect when we compare it
with the true life that awaits us. From that point of view nothing truly
can give it the least attraction; but with this kind of disgust there is
no sadness mingled. We are not sad when an object seems poor and valueless
compared with another object wonderful and divine of which we are sure. As
I have already told you, this is the disgust of the world whence springs
the irresistible call to the cloister; but, as I likewise said, this
divine voice, when it speaks to the soul, resounds alone, to the exclusion
of all earthly voices. A flame is kindled that absorbs and extinguishes
all others, even those earthly lights that are attractive and pure. That
divine call has not been made to you. The earthly happiness you dreamed of
has failed you, that is all. And this disappointment for the second time
has inspired you with the same wish as before; but, as on that occasion, I
believe if God claimed your life he would not have permitted such a heart
as that of my Fleurange to be divided for a day!
“This time, it is true, everything is at an end, and without remedy. You
are irrevocably separated from him to whom you gave your heart—allow me to
say now, to whom you gave it unreasonably!—You shudder, my poor child, you
find me cruel, and all the false brilliancy which fascinated you, now
lights up anew the image still present and still dear to your imagination;
nevertheless, I will go on.
“There is an earthly love which, if it lengthens the road that leads to
God, does not, however, turn one from it—which, by the very virtues it
requires, the sacrifices it imposes, and the sufferings that spring from
it, often seconds the noblest impulses of the soul.
“Do you not feel now, Fleurange, that the foundation of such a love was
wanting to yours? I perceived it at Santa Maria as soon as I heard your
story to the end, and looked into the most secret recesses of your heart.
I then understood why God had placed obstacles in your way, and imposed a
sacrifice on you. Your sufferings appeared to me the expiation of an
idolatry you did not realize the extent of.
“If you had shown any doubt or hesitation as to the course to be pursued,
if you had been weakly desirous of sparing yourself and escaping the
sacrifice imposed, perhaps I should at that time have expressed myself
more severely. But you acted with firmness and uprightness, and I deferred
revealing to you the secret malady of your heart till, with time, peace
should be restored to you. Till then, what you suffered seemed to me a
sufficient punishment.
“But it was not to be so. The temptation was to be renewed, and under a
form impossible for my poor child to resist. She yielded to the generous,
passionate impulse of her heart, and found in the very excess of her
devotedness a means of satisfying her conscience which she confusedly felt
the need of. But something more was essential: she must suffer still
more—more than before. In short, the idol must be shattered, and this
destruction seemed to involve the very breaking of her own heart!—
“But it is not so, Fleurange. Across the distance that separates us I
would make my voice heard, and wish it possessed a divine power when I say
to you: ‘Rise up and walk.’ Yes; resume your course through the life God
gives you, and courageously bless him for having snatched you from the
snare of a love not founded on him, which must have proved hollow sooner
or later. Then look around, see whom you can console and aid; see also
whom you can love; especially notice who loves you, and banish from your
heart the thought, equivalent to blasphemy, which you express in saying,
‘My life is stripped of all that made it desirable!’—
“Some day, my Fior Angela, you will again recall these bitter, ungrateful
words, and will, I assure you, see their falsity. If God did not create
you to love him to the exclusion of those lawful affections which reflect
a ray of his love, you were still less created to find rest in a love
deprived of that light—a love whose sudden rending and keen anguish
preserved you from proving its perishable nature and spared you the pain
of irreparable deception!
“Once more, Fleurange, prostrate yourself before God, and give thanks:
then rise up and act. No lingering pity over yourself, no dwelling
regretfully on your deceived hopes and the pain you have suffered.
Courage! Your heart has been weak, it yielded to fascination; but your
volition as yet has never ceased to be strong. However rough the path of
duty, it was enough for you to see it in order to walk in it without
faltering. Courage, I say! You will live. You will do better than live—you
will recover from all this, and recall the time that seemed so dark as
that which preceded the real day that is to illumine your life.
“At first this letter will add to your sadness. You will feel yourself
deprived of everything, even of the consolation you expected of me; but do
not yield to the temptation of burning this letter after reading it. Keep
it to read over again, and be sure that sooner or later the day will come
when a sweet promise of happiness will respond at the bottom of your heart
at reading it. You will then comprehend what were the prayers of your
Madre Maddalena for you, dear Fleurange, for they will on that day have
been heard!—”
This reply to the letter Fleurange wrote during the night of agitation
which followed her interview with Vera we lay before our readers at its
arrival at Rosenheim after her return from her sad journey; but one summer
evening, two years after, the young girl, seated on a bench overlooking
the river, read it over the second time. She was in her old seat, but her
appearance was somewhat changed. A severe illness, resulting from the
emotion and fatigue endured two years before, endangered her life, and to
her convalescence had succeeded a malady slower, deeper, and more
difficult to heal, against which all remedies, though energetically
seconded by a resolute will, long remained ineffectual.
During this period of weakness Fleurange had never known before, life
assumed a new and formidable aspect. For a long time she was unable to
struggle actively against the double languor of illness and depression;
she had to endure inaction without making it an additional torture to
herself and others; in short, she was obliged to be constantly and
silently on her guard against herself. She succeeded, however, accepting
with grateful docility all the care that surrounded her. She did not repel
her friends from her crushed heart, but, on the contrary, endeavored to
convince them that their affection was sufficient, and that, once more
with them, nothing was wanting. By degrees, it required no effort to say
this. As the sun in spring‐time melts away the snow, then warms the earth
and covers it with flowers, so, under the influence of their beneficent
tenderness, everything began to revive in her heart and soul. Was it not
delightful, as she lay half asleep on her _chaise longue_ for long hours,
to hear around her, like the warblings of birds, Frida’s caressing voice
mingled with the tones of her cousin’s little children whom she loved to
hold in her arms and caress when they awoke her? Was it not a consolation
to rest her weary head on a bosom almost maternal? Was it not salutary to
converse with her Uncle Ludwig when he wheeled his chair near the young
invalid, and spoke of so many things worthy of her attention without ever
turning it away from the highest of all? And Hilda? And Clara? And Julian
and Hansfelt? Did they not all come with their constant affectionate
interest, each one bringing, as it were, a flower to add its perfume to
the air she breathed? Finally, was it nothing when she opened her eyes to
meet the kind glance of her old friend who, after fearing to lose her, was
never weary of gazing at her now she was again restored to life?
And what shall we say of him whom we have not yet named—him whose
solicitude for her was not apparently greater than that of his parents and
sisters, but who, during her long convalescence, ended by taking a place
beside her which no one thought of disputing? Clement’s character has been
badly delineated if, after the unexpected occurrence that restored freedom
to his hopes, it is supposed he was prompt to admit them, and especially
to express them. Nevertheless, since it was no longer an absolute duty to
maintain a strong, constant control over himself; since the fear of
betraying himself no longer obliged him to a restraint with his cousin
which had extended to every subject, and ended by frequently obliging him
to partially conceal from her the superiority of his mind and the rare
nature of his intelligence, a change was wrought in him which he did not
realize himself, and now gave to his physiognomy, the tone of his voice,
and his whole person a wholly different character than before in the eyes
of her to whom he thus appeared for the first time. She noticed it with
surprise, and, when he stopped reading to express the thoughts that sprang
spontaneously from his heart when moved, or his mind unimpeded in its
flight, and touched on a thousand subjects hitherto deemed forbidden, she
became thoughtful, and, in spite of herself, compared his eloquence of
soul, whose source was so profound, and whose flight was sometimes so
elevated, with the eloquence of another which once dazzled her, the only
charm of which sprang from his carefully cultivated mind, and his mind
alone. Every day she impatiently awaited this hour for reading or
conversation. She already appreciated her cousin’s devotedness, the
incomparable kindness of his heart, his trustworthiness, his energy, and
his courage. She had given him credit for all these qualities before, and
yet, all at once, it seemed as if she had never known him. She even asked
herself one day if she had ever looked at him, so completely did the
expression of his countenance—which beamed with what is most divine here
on earth—a double nobleness of mind and soul—so fully did his look and
smile atone for the imperfections already alluded to in Clement’s
features, but which time had greatly modified to his advantage. She soon
felt that, though she had always cherished a strong regard for her cousin,
she had been unjust to him and never appreciated his real worth.
But the day, the hour, the moment when she discovered she had been not
only unjust, but ungrateful, and even cruel, we cannot state, and perhaps
she did not know herself. Was it the day when, after reading in a
tremulous tone a passage that expressed what he dared not utter, he
suddenly raised his eyes and looked at her as he had never done before?
Was it on another occasion, when, playing one tune after another on his
violin, he ended with that song without words which Hansfelt called
_Hidden Love_, and suddenly stopped, incapable of continuing? Or was it
when, towards the end of the second spring after their return, she had
fully recovered, and he saw her for the first time in the open air
standing near a rose‐bush with her hands full of flowers? Was it when he
knelt to pick up one that had fallen at her feet, and remained in that
position till she extended her hand and blushingly bade him rise? No
matter. That day came, and not long before the one when we find her seated
on the bench by the river‐side, attentively reading over the letter Madre
Maddalena had written her two years before.
The young girl, as we have said, had changed somewhat since we last saw
her. Her long illness had left some traces, but those traces which are an
additional charm in youth, betokening the complete return of brilliant
health. Fleurange’s form was more slender and supple; her complexion more
transparent; her long hair, cut off during her illness, and now growing
out again, encircled her youthful face with thick, silky curls—all this
gave her something of the grace of childhood, and when she stood beside
her cousin, whose tall stature and manly, energetic expression added the
appearance of several years to his real age, it would never have been
supposed she was not the younger of the two.
Motionless and absorbed, from time to time as she read her face colored
and expressed a variety of emotions. But when she came to her own words:
“My life is now stripped of all that made it desirable,” and what follows,
“Some day, my Fior Angela, you will recall these bitter, ungrateful words,
and will, I assure you, see their falsity,” she stopped short, and,
raising her eyes full of tears to heaven, she said:
“Yes, Madre mia, you were right!” She covered her face with her hands, and
remained a long time absorbed and overpowered by a flood of thoughts. In
the depths of her memory, there were vague recollections of the past
traced as if by lightning; and some almost forgotten scenes now rose
before her like a confused dream.
That violent outburst of grief; the sobs he could not repress when he
learned she was determined to go to George; and, later on, the words
murmured on the ice when he thought the last hour of his life had come,
scarcely heard at the time, and then speedily forgotten, came back to‐day
like invisible writing brought out by the application of heat. The
sentiments she had discovered only within a few days perhaps had long been
experienced by Clement, if not always—and, if so, oh! then, how great had
been his love and constancy, and what sufferings had he not endured for
her sake! Alas! what had she not inflicted on that noble, faithful soul!
“Oh!” cried she aloud, “was there ever a person more blind, more
ungrateful, more cruel than I?”
She stopped, started, and raised her head; she thought she heard her
cousin’s step. She was not mistaken. He sought her in her favorite seat,
and now stood before her in the same place where, three years before, she
unwittingly caused him so much suffering as he looked at her. It was the
same place, and the same season, and also the same hour. Daylight was
fading away, and now, as then, the rising moon cast a silver ray over the
charming face which he was again seeking to read. But this time his
questioning look was comprehended, and the silent response of her
beautiful eyes, as expressive as words, imparted to the heart that
understood it one of those human joys reserved here below for those alone
who are capable of a pure, constant, peculiar love—a love only worthy of
being named after that for God.
We might now end this story, and lay down our pen, without attempting to
describe the joy of the family when, as night came on, they saw the two
absent ones return, and each one divined from their looks the nature of
the conversation which tonight had detained them so long on the banks of
the river. But towards the end of an evening so happy, Mademoiselle
Josephine unintentionally made an exclamation it may not be useless to
add:
“See! see!” she cried, in the exultation of her happiness, mingled with
secret pride at her penetration, “how right I was in thinking Count
George!—” She stopped confounded, suddenly recalling all past precautions,
and fearing she had been imprudent in neglecting them.
But Fleurange unhesitatingly exclaimed: “Go on, dear mademoiselle, go on
without any fear, and boldly pronounce a name I now neither shrink from
nor seek to hear.” And, as she spoke, the remembrance of his past tortures
crossed Clement’s memory, giving him a keener sense of his present
happiness. She asked him, in a calm tone, “Is he still in exile, or has he
been pardoned?”
Clement replied with a smile: “No, he has not been pardoned; he is still
undergoing his sentence to the full extent.” After a moment’s silence, he
added: “I had a letter from Adelardi this very morning which speaks of
him.—Would you like to read it?”
At an affirmative nod from her, he took out his pocket‐book to find the
letter. As he opened it, a little sprig of myrtle fell out. Fleurange
immediately recognized it. “What! you still keep that?” said she,
blushing.
Clement made no reply. He looked at it with emotion; it was a part of a
carefully hoarded treasure, and for a long time the only joy of his hidden
love! “Never, no never!” murmured he. “That was my reply that evening,
Gabrielle, when you promised me a beautiful bride. Do you remember it?”
“Yes, for I had said the same words an hour before, and the coincidence
struck me.”
“What can we think of it, now you are really the _fiancée_ I dreamed of as
impossible?”
“That our presentiments are often illusory—and our sentiments also,
Clement,” added she, turning towards him her eyes veiled with tears which
seemed to implore his pardon.
We will not say what Clement’s reply was; only, that it made them both
completely forget Adelardi’s letter. We will, however, lay it before our
readers, who may be less indifferent to its contents than he to whom it
was addressed was for the moment. It was dated at Florence. The marquis,
whose visits at Rosenheim had become annual, announced his speedy arrival,
after which he continued:
“The poor Princess Catherine, after whom you inquire, has had a return of
her malady, so many times cured, and it is now increased by
dissatisfaction and annoyance more than by age. No one succeeds in taking
care of her so well as she whom she still remembers. Each new attack
renews her regrets, which have found no compensation in the gratification
of her wishes. I have often remarked, however, that there is nothing like
the realization of a desire to efface the remembrance of the ardor with
which it was sought, and even the transport that hailed its fulfilment. It
is certain the princess’ actual relations with her son are by no means
satisfactory; they are affected by the ill‐humor of both parties. George’s
exile would seem enviable to many; for the place he inhabits has
everything to make it delightful excepting the liberty of leaving it, and
this mars the whole. He can enjoy nothing, he says, because everything is
forced upon him. There is reason, therefore, to fear the future he is
preparing for himself and his wife is very ominous.
“The Countess Vera is a beautiful, noble woman, capable of self‐sacrifice
to a certain point, but haughty, high‐tempered, and jealous to the last
degree. She thought the sacrifice she made in marrying George in the
position he was then in, would secure his unsteady heart, and bind him
faithfully to her through gratitude. She saw only too soon it was not so,
and that the comparative liberty he had regained was soon regarded as a
weary bondage. Thence resulted scenes which more than once have disturbed
the life whose monotony they are not allowed to break. Will you credit it?
In one of them, Vera, in the height of her irritation and jealousy,
betrayed the secret hitherto so well guarded, and declared in her anger
that _she regretted not having left him to the fate another was so ready
to share with him_. She afterwards had reason to regret her imprudence,
for George exacted a complete revelation, and the remembrance thus
suddenly revived and clad with the double charm of the past and the
unattainable caused him in his turn to overwhelm her with the most bitter
reproaches. I am not sure but he had the cruelty to tell her he should a
thousand times have preferred the fate she saved him from to that he now
had to endure with her!—There can only be one opinion as to this mirage of
his imagination; but, after all this, you will not be surprised to hear
that they both long with equal ardor for their liberty, which they must
wait for two years longer. According to appearances, it will be as
dangerous for one as for the other. The princess has realized and
predicted this since her visit to Livonia last summer, where I accompanied
her.
“During her stay, George did not spare her any reproaches, and they were
the more keenly felt because she had for a long time seen that the result
of her wishes had been a sacrifice of her own comfort and happiness
through her opposition to what had at once deprived her of her son and the
only companion that had ever satisfied her. And when she is dissatisfied,
she must always vent her anger on some one besides herself. Whom do you
think she reproached the other day before me for all her troubles?
Gabrielle!—who, she said, did not know how to avail herself of her
ascendency three years ago as she should, and to retain it!
“Since she has seen that I by no means sympathize in her regrets—which
will not be shared by you either, I suppose, nor, I like to think, by her
who inspires them—she is offended with me in my turn, and declares in a
melancholy tone that all friends are unfeeling and all children
ungrateful!—”
Clement’s reply to this letter hastened the marquis’ arrival. He had seen
his young friend’s hopes spring up and develop, and would not for the
world have been absent from Rosenheim on the day of their realization.
William and Bertha, the discreet confidant who knew how to console Clement
in his sufferings without questioning him, were the only friends, besides
the marquis, who were admitted that day into this happy family. The
wedding was as gay as Clara’s, but the newly married pair were graver and
more thoughtful. They had both passed through severe trials, which now
gave a certain completeness to their happiness, often wanting here below
in the most joyful of festivals.
And they also, in their turn, set off for Italy, and it may be imagined
that, among the places they visited together, the first to which their
hearts led them was that where awaited the Madre Maddalena’s welcome and
blessing. At their return, Mademoiselle Josephine’s house, improved and
embellished, became their home, on the condition imposed by their old
friend that she should dwell under their roof the remainder of her days.
Was their destiny a happy one? We can safely reply in the affirmative. Was
it exempt from pains, sufferings, and sacrifices? We can deny that still
more positively. But it was, however, enviable; for of all earthly
happiness, they possessed what was most desirable, without ever forgetting
that “life can never be perfectly happy because it is not heaven, nor
wholly unhappy because it is the way thither.”(231)
American Catholics And Partisan Newspapers.
To Catholics, as such, the political discussions of a Presidential
campaign have no special significance. Thus far no issues between the two
chief parties have particularly affected us. Both have generally been
careful not to offend us; and although in local elections questions
touching our schools and charities have sometimes become prominent, in the
larger contest our votes have been fairly divided between the Republican
and the Democratic candidates. If there ever unfortunately arise a
distinctively Catholic party in American politics, it will not be because
Catholics are unwilling to co‐operate freely with their Protestant fellow‐
citizens in secular affairs, but because we have been thrown upon the
defensive by some combination directly and designedly hostile to our
religious interests. None know better than we do that there is no excuse
in this country for uniting religious with political issues. Our
constitution gives equal liberty and protection to all, and we should be
sorry to have it otherwise, for we know that the church makes all the more
rapid progress in the United States by reason of her absolute
independence. Asking nothing of the state but fair play, she gives no
excuse to her enemies for making any discrimination against her children.
Her position has been generally understood and approved; and although
there are fiery bigots at all times who rave about the dangerous designs
of the papists, and affect to dread a crusade with torch and sword as soon
as we get to be a little stronger, the good sense of the American people
has usually treated these sectaries with the indifference they deserve.
We have intimated, however, in former numbers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, that
the chronic anti‐Catholic agitation might assume a new character which
would require on our part a new attitude of resistance. A few years ago,
when the settlement of the issues of the war first seemed to menace the
dissolution of the Republican party, the most active leaders of that party
began to cast about for a “new departure,” and one of their favorite plans
for keeping the organization alive was the scheme of compulsory education
by the general government. Of this project the Hon. Henry Wilson was a
prominent advocate. It has not yet been formally brought into politics,
for the party has been able to get along without it; but it has not been
abandoned, and we need not be surprised if it be strongly pushed within
the next few years. Now, Catholics look upon the question of religious
education as one of paramount importance. They will not surrender the
teaching of their children into the hands of Protestants and infidels;
they will not consent, so far as _their_ young people are concerned, to
the separation of religious and secular instruction. Any party which seeks
directly or indirectly to limit the usefulness or hamper the operations of
Catholic schools, must prepare to encounter in Catholics a united and
determined resistance.
Thus far no such conflict has arisen. We may hope that it never will
arise. And yet, during the canvass that has recently closed, two of the
leading organs of Republican opinion have opened a bitter and apparently
concerted warfare upon the Catholics of the United States which we cannot
help regarding as highly significant. In the midst of a Presidential
campaign, political organs never make such attacks except for political
reasons. The papers to which we refer are in close relations with the
party leaders. _The New York Times_ became for a time, when _The Tribune_
abandoned orthodoxy, the principal Republican newspaper of the principal
state in the Union. It is known to have reflected with tolerable accuracy
the sentiments of the Republican managers in New York, and it has always
said what it assumed to be acceptable at the White House. For a long time
it has been notoriously unfriendly to Catholics. It has amused itself, in
its heavy, witless way, laughing at what they hold sacred and abusing all
that they respect. Until a few months ago, its offensive utterances seemed
to be merely the occasional vulgarities of a bigotry that, did not know
enough to hold its tongue. But when Mr. Francis Kernan was nominated for
Governor of the State of New York, its assaults became more methodical,
more vehement, and apparently more malicious. Mr. Kernan is a Catholic; so
_The Times_ instantly denounced him as “a bigot.” An utterly untrue
pretence was made that Democrats were asking Irishmen to vote for him on
account of his religion, and thus the point was insinuated rather than
openly pressed that on account of his religion Protestants ought to vote
against him. For the first time, to our knowledge, since Know‐Nothing
days, the question of religious belief was dragged into the dirty arena of
politics. Happily, the Catholics as a body kept their temper and their
judgment during these infamous proceedings. They refused to be drawn into
the discussion which _The Times_ wanted to provoke, and even when that
paper surpassed all its former disreputable acts by reproducing in its
columns a forged handbill, showing the name of Francis Kernan surrounding
a huge black cross, and told the public that such were the devices by
which the Democratic candidate sought to inflame the fanatical zeal of his
followers, the Catholics contented themselves with one word of indignant
denial. It would have been a rash display of political courage to which we
do not believe _The Times_ capable of rising, if an open attack had been
made upon the Catholic faith or Catholic morals. _The Times_ was even
frightened at its own frankness in scolding at Mr. Kernan for a bigot. It
professed to be shocked at the introduction of religious affairs into the
discussions of the campaign, and carried on a cowardly anti‐Catholic
warfare under cover of repelling purely imaginary assaults. Of course this
subterfuge was well understood by all parties. The Catholics knew that
they had done nothing to draw this fire; the Protestants also knew it, and
a great many of them were indignant at the transaction. Was _The Times_
itself deceived? That is a question which perhaps we should not attempt to
answer. In its wild bigotry, it is capable of believing almost any
preposterous falsehood against us; but it is equally capable of inventing
one. Some familiarity with the course of political controversies in the
United States has convinced us that in a fight _The Times_ sticks at
nothing. It would rather stab an enemy in the back than kill him in open
battle. It never gives fair‐play; it never makes amends for a wrong‐doing;
it never withdraws a calumny. Everybody who has had a controversy with it
will bear witness that it is not in the habit of telling the truth about
its adversaries. That it is in the habit of consciously, or, to speak more
correctly, deliberately, lying we do not go so far as to say. But there is
a kind of falsehood very common with people of strong prejudices to which
_The Times_ is greatly addicted. It bears about the same relation to truth
that hyperbole bears to historical statement. Let us suppose that _The
Times_ really imagines the Catholic Church to be a dangerous and immoral
organization, and its bishops and supporters in this country to be engaged
in an enterprise which ought to be resisted; with this conviction of the
general wickedness of Catholic principles, it imagines itself justified in
charging upon individual Catholics a variety of specific crimes for which
it has no evidence whatever. Catholics are none too good to commit murder,
we can imagine it saying; therefore let us accuse Francis Kernan of
killing his grandmother. The Pope is an impostor; therefore it cannot be
wrong to call Archbishop McCloskey a thief. Indeed, men who would blush to
tell an untruth in private intercourse with their fellow‐men have no
hesitation in publishing slanderous accusations which they suppose may
“help their party”; and, if we should say that their conduct in doing so
was to the last degree infamous, they would affect to be shocked by our
strong language. The editor of _The Times_ would think twice before he
went into a club parlor, and publicly accused some prominent citizen of a
criminal action, unless he had the strongest possible proof of the
commission of the offence. But he makes such accusations every day in his
newspaper, without knowing, and we presume without caring, whether they
are true or not. Anybody whom he dislikes he regards as an outlaw. Anybody
who comes in his way is a fit subject for the penitentiary. We saw a
striking illustration of his entire insensibility to the demands of truth
and honor in his behavior towards a rival newspaper a few weeks ago. At
the close of the year, _The Times_ made great efforts to secure the old
subscribers of _The Tribune_, who were supposed to be dissatisfied with
that paper’s recent declaration of political independence, and the means
which it took to secure them was one which in any other business would
have resulted in a suit for slander and a verdict in very heavy damages.
_The Times_ first circulated a report that _The Tribune_ had sold itself
to one of the most disreputable stock‐gamblers in Wall Street, and then
assured the public that the circulation of its competitor had fallen away
more than half, and was rapidly going down to nothing at all. Both these
stories were well known to be entirely untrue, and, if the editor of _The
Times_ was not conscious of their falsity when he penned them, he might
easily have learned the truth by a moment’s inquiry. But he did not want
the truth. He wanted to say something damaging, and these were the most
damaging things he could think of.
How much he succeeded in damaging Mr. Kernan by his campaign slanders
against Catholics, we can guess from the figures of the election. Mr.
Kernan received about 5,000 more votes for Governor than Mr. Greeley
received in this State for President; but he received 5,000 fewer than the
candidate for Lieutenant‐Governor on the same ticket. This loss is
probably attributable directly to the anti‐Catholic feeling, for Mr.
Kernan is a gentleman to whom no personal objection could possibly be made
except on religious grounds. No doubt an equally large number of voters
were repelled, by the bigotry _The Times_ fostered, from supporting the
Democratic and Liberal ticket at all; so that we shall not pass the bounds
of probability if we estimate the fruit of prejudice and falsehood in this
case as equivalent to ten thousand votes.
Catholics are used to injustice, and they are not quick to resent it. In
America, the church has prospered under every sort of obstacle and
discouragement short of the direct hostility of the government, and it is
not likely that her course will be stayed by _The New York Times_. But it
is well for us to look at the situation carefully, and judge who are our
friends. If any political party is to make bigotry part of its stock in
trade, we cannot help taking notice of such a declaration of hostilities,
and we shall govern ourselves accordingly.
We have said that _The Times_ and _Harper’s Weekly_ appear in this matter
to have acted in concert. Perhaps it is unfair to hold the party managers
fully responsible for the utterances of these two violent newspapers; but
we cannot forget that both journals are in close communion with the
Republican administration, and that both have been governed during the
campaign by the judgment of the Republican leaders. The editor of _The
Times_ enjoys the most intimate association with the federal organization
popularly known as the “Custom‐house faction” in New York City; the editor
of _Harper’s Weekly_ is the personal friend of the President, and speaks
the mind of the President’s chief advisers in Washington. If, then, these
two papers have made a systematic assault upon the Catholic Church in the
midst of a sharp political controversy, and have taken pains to give their
furious Protestantism a direct political bearing, the party for which they
speak must be prepared to face the responsibility. It should be observed,
however, in justice to the sensible and unprejudiced members of the party,
that _Harper’s Weekly_, though it may have been encouraged in its
bitterness by partisan considerations, did not draw from such motives its
first anti‐Catholic inspiration. It has always been our enemy. A spirit,
of commercial fanaticism, the hatred of a religion which it will pay to
abuse, has distinguished the firm of the Harpers ever since the public has
known anything about them. The political campaign of 1872 made no
difference in the tone of their paper; it merely gave force, and
concentration, and regularity to the attacks which had previously been
spasmodic.
How coarsely it attempted to turn to political account the religious
bigotry upon which it had always traded may be seen in an article entitled
“Our Foreign Church,” published in _Harper’s Weekly_ of the 14th of
September last. The writer starts with the assumption that all religious
denominations in this country, except “the Romish Church,” patriotically
renounced the authority of their European rulers when the American
republic was founded. The Methodists “rejected the control in political
and ecclesiastical matters of their founders”; the Presbyterians
repudiated the General Assembly of Scotland; Episcopalians revolted from
the Archbishop of Canterbury; the Jews “threw themselves boldly into the
tide of American progress”; while the Catholic Church alone stood aloof,
and “refused to separate itself from its European masters,” and conform
its organization to the Declaration of Independence and the constitution
of the United States. Ridiculous as this complaint sounds, it is no
burlesque, but a faithful synopsis of the nonsense which Mr. Eugene
Lawrence is permitted to print in _Harper’s Weekly_. A church of divine
origin, according to this preposterous person, is to change its divine
laws to conform to the requirements of temporary human institutions; and
the political theories of Thomas Jefferson are to govern the ordinances of
Jesus Christ. It is the glory of the true church that she is above all
secular constitutions. She has seen the rise and fall of countless
dynasties and states; she will survive the ruin, if every form of
government now known upon earth shall be eventually overthrown. Empires,
kingdoms, republics, are all alike to her. She was founded for all ages
and all climes; she was not created, as Mr. Eugene Lawrence seems to think
she ought to have been, for the exclusive benefit of the United States of
America. This is a great country; but we presume that our constitution,
amendments and all, occupies but an insignificant place in the divine
order of the universe.
Obeying its heaven‐appointed head, who did not see fit to choose either
Europe or America for the place of his human birth, the Roman Catholic
Church in America, according to _Harper’s Weekly_, is a foreign body, and,
therefore, dangerous (as all foreigners are) to the peace of society. “It
is loud in its denunciations of American civilization;” it “furnishes
three‐fourths of the criminals and the paupers who prey upon the
Protestant community”; it never intermits its “attacks upon the principles
of freedom”; and “its great mass of ignorant voters have been the chief
source of our political ills.” Moreover, “the unpatriotic conduct of the
Romish population in our chief cities during the rebellion is well known.
They formed a constant menace and terror to the loyal citizens; they
thronged the ‘peace meetings’; they strove to divide the Union; and when
the war was over they placed in office their corrupt leaders, and
plundered the impoverished community.” We are almost ashamed to copy, even
for the purpose of denouncing it, this insult to the memory of our dead
Catholic soldiers. There is not a man in the United States who does not
know of the noble share of these outraged “Romish” troops in the terrible
struggles of the civil war; not a man who is ignorant of the splendid
record of the Irish regiments under the Union flag on every hard‐fought
field from the first Bull Run to the last conflict before Richmond. “The
Romish population of our chief cities” furnished the bone and sinew of
more than one gallant army during those four sad years. They gave up their
lives for the country of their birth or their adoption with a heroism that
stirs every sensitive heart. Their priests followed the army on the march
and into the fight. Their Sisters of Charity nursed the wounded and the
sick. The greatest of their prelates, aided by another bishop who is still
living, spent the last remains of his strength in defending the cause of
the Union in hostile foreign capitals. Nothing, in fine, could be more
magnificent than the patriotism with which the adherents of this “foreign
church” sacrificed life and fortune for their country during its hour of
need; and we have no language to define the infamy of endeavoring to make
capital for Gen. Grant by maligning the devoted men whom he led to death
at Shiloh and in the wilderness, and whose bravery, we are sure, he would
be the last man to depreciate.
And now, continues the writer in the _Weekly_, as the Presidential
election approaches, “our foreign church has assumed more openly than ever
before the form of a political faction.” “Romish priests” and “Romish
bishops” have taken the field as the partisans of Mr. Greeley, “the
candidate of disunion _and of religious bigotry_”!—the italics are
ours—and the church is engaged in an attempt “to place the fallen
slaveholders once more in power.” For these statements we deliberately
declare that there is no justification whatever. Mr. Eugene Lawrence
invented them out of his own bigotry and malice; and when he had the folly
and insolence to threaten us, as he did at the close of his article, with
“the vengeance of the people,” he added to his untruthfulness a degree of
hypocrisy which we have rarely seen equalled even in the publications of
the house of Harper & Brothers. We say hypocrisy; but perhaps that is
unfair. Mr. Lawrence may be silly enough to tremble at the bogies of his
own devising. He may imagine that the rest of the world is as much afraid
of the Pope as he is. He may fancy that the whole party of which he is
such a hard‐working member is burning with desire to take the Jesuits by
the throat and hang them on the nearest lamp‐post. If he did not suppose
that a profitable market could be found for his sensational wares, he
probably would not be at the trouble of the manufacture. If the “vengeance
of the people” do not menace the Jesuits, it will certainly not be the
fault of Mr. Lawrence. In the issue of the _Weekly_ for Oct. 12, he had a
furious narrative of “The Jesuit Crusade against Germany,” the points of
which are substantially these: The Jesuits, with the aid of the
Inquisition (of which they are the directors) and of a hired band of
convicts and brigands, obtained the absolute mastery of the city of Rome
and the papal government. The wretched people “cowered before their Jesuit
rulers,” and within the crumbling walls of the guilty capital “priests and
cardinals perpetrated their enormities unchecked and unseen.” They then,
by means of their “lawless police,” overpowered the Œcumenical Council,
and forced it, “by intimidation and bribes,” to accept the doctrine of
infallibility, to curse liberty and education, and to set on foot a bloody
crusade against political and intellectual freedom. This was in accordance
with the Jesuits’ time‐honored policy. “The fierce and fanatical Loyola”
used to burn heretics in Spain and Italy, and taught his followers that no
mercy should be shown to such offenders. It was the Jesuits who set on
foot the persecutions under Charles V. and Philip II., and “excited the
unparalleled horrors of the Thirty Years’ War.” In 1870, they were getting
ready for a new religious war. Napoleon III. was their chief backer. In
fact, the attack upon Germany in 1870 was the result of a conspiracy
between Rome and Paris, concluded at the council, and the purpose of the
war was nothing less than the establishment of the Jesuit Order on the
ruins of prostrate Germany! For this scheme _the Irish Catholics of
Dublin, London, and New York __“__furnished men, sympathy, and possibly
money.__”_ And now that the conspiracy has failed, and that the papists of
France have been beaten (in spite of all the sinews of war so lavishly
furnished by the Irish laborers and servant‐girls of New York), the
Jesuits are getting, up another European convulsion. “The Romish Church,
organized into a vast political faction, is stirring up war in Europe,
calls upon France to lead another religious crusade, and promises the aid
of all the chivalry of Catholicism in avenging the fall of Napoleon upon
the German Empire.” It purposes to involve all the great states of Europe
in a common ruin, “and erect the Romish See upon the wrecks of the
temporal empires.” The pilgrimage of Lourdes is a part of this scheme. The
Catholic Union is another. The International Society of Workingmen (of
which the Jesuits are the secret instigators!) is another. Mr. Lawrence
exhibits the venerable fathers in the unfamiliar garb of communists, and
substitutes the red cap for the beretta with all the effrontery and
_nonchalance_ in the world. The Order which in one column is the detested
safeguard of absolutism becomes in the next the raving propagandist of
social anarchy, revolution, and universal democracy. Can any rational
person after this condescend to dispute with Mr. Lawrence?
As in the other cases to which we have referred, there was a political
moral to this story also. If we would avert this horrible era of blood and
fire, said _Harper’s Weekly_, we must vote for General Grant, and stand up
for the straight Republican ticket. Grant is the firm ally of Germany
against Jesuitism. Grant is the champion of public schools against
religious education. Grant is the enemy of all manner of Romish fraud and
violence. Greeley is the friend of priests and persecutors, the foe of the
Bible and education, the accomplice of that infamous “Jesuit faction”
which “would rejoice to tear the vitals of American freedom, and rend the
breast that has offered it a shelter”; and if he should be elected the
“Jesuit Society” would celebrate the victory “like a new S. Bartholomew,
with bells, cannon, processions, prayers at the Vatican,” and hasten “the
rising of the Catholic chivalry ... in their sanguinary schemes against
the peace and independence of Germany.” Such was the wicked nonsense with
which _Harper’s Weekly_ in the autumn of 1872 attempted to make political
capital out of the ignorance and bigotry of its readers.
But this was not the worst. The Jesuits were not only conspirators against
political and mental freedom, they were the principal enemies of the freed
people of the South. Their society (_risum teneatis, amici_) had “allied
itself with the Ku‐klux of Georgia and Mississippi”! And so infatuated was
the _Weekly_ with the monstrous folly of this tale that week after week it
returned to the same slander. On Oct. 26 it printed a portrait of the Most
Reverend Father‐General, accompanied with one of the most outrageous pages
of falsehood and defamation ever put into type. “In our country,” says the
author of the article, “the Jesuit faction has allied itself with the Ku‐
klux.” “The Jesuit Society assumes the guise of liberalism, and cheers on
the rebel and Ku‐klux in their plots against the Union.” “In America the
Jesuits link themselves with the Ku‐klux.” They do this because they hate
the republic. They denounce, “with maledictions and threatenings, the
course of modern civilization.”
“The world is in danger from the mad schemes of the triumphant
society; it is rousing France to a new crusade with omens and
pilgrimages; it threatens the German Empire with a war more
disastrous and destructive than Europe has ever seen. It summons
its adherents to the polls in Italy; it guides the elections of
Ireland, terrifies Spain, and even disturbs the repose of London;
and in our own country, so recently torn by civil war, the papal
crusaders, linked by the tie of perfect obedience, stand ready to
profit by our misfortunes, and to stimulate our internal
dissensions; to crush those institutions that have ever reproached
their own despotism, and destroy that freedom which is the chief
obstacle to their perpetual sway.”
The picture which the _Weekly_ draws of these dangerous brethren is
horrible enough to throw a child into fits:
“A dreadful mystery still hangs over them. Their proceedings are
secret, their purposes unknown. At the command of an absolute
master, they wander swiftly among the throngs of their fellow‐men,
eager only to obey his voice. Obedience is to the Jesuit the first
principle of his faith, instilled into his mind in youth,
perfected by the labors of his later years; he hears in the
slightest intimations of his chief at Rome the voice of his God,
the commands from heaven; and in the long catalogue of fearful
deeds which history ascribes to the disciples of Loyola, the first
impulse to crime must always have come from the absolute head of
the Order, and its single aim has always been to advance the power
of the Romish Church. Scarcely had its founder gained the favor of
the Pope, and fixed his seat at Rome, when he revived the
Inquisition. Italy trembled before the spectacle of ceaseless
_autos‐da‐fe_; the tortures and the cries of dying heretics, the
ruin of countless families, the flight of terrified and hopeless
throngs from their native land to the friendly shelter of Germany
and Switzerland, were the earliest fruits of the relentless
teachings of Loyola. The Jesuits led the armies of the persecutors
into the beautiful Vaudois valleys, and the worst atrocities of
that mournful example of human wickedness are due to their brutal
fanaticism. Soon they spread from Italy through all the kingdoms
of Europe; everywhere they brought with them their fierce and
cruel hatred of religious freedom, their cunning, their moral
degradation, their bold and desperate policy. They ruled in
courts; they terrified the people into submission; they were the
most active politicians of their time; their wealth was enormous;
their schools and colleges spread from Paris to Japan; and for
three centuries the name of the Jesuits, covered with the infamy
of the massacres of the Vaudois, the Huguenots, the Hollanders,
and the Germans, surrounded by its terrible mystery, the symbol of
a dark and dreadful association, has filled mankind with horror
and affright.”
The practical conclusion to be drawn from all this rhetoric was that
everybody, and especially every German, ought to vote for Gen. Grant and
the straight Republican anti‐Jesuit ticket. It was the Jesuits who
“nominated Mr. Greeley, a person known to be in friendly connection with
the Romish leaders and closely linked to the Papal Church.” The Jesuits
“cover Grant with monstrous calumnies, and celebrate the erratic Greeley.”
“Let every German beware lest he lend aid to the enemies of his country.
Let him shrink from the support of any candidate who is maintained by the
influence of the Jesuits.” “We trust every sincere Protestant ... will
labor ceaselessly to defeat the schemes of the Jesuits, and drive their
candidate back to a merited obscurity.” And in the same number we find the
following wicked paragraph:
“A Jesuit, the Rev. Mr. Renaud, was appointed some time ago by
Archbishop McCloskey to superintend the Romish interest in our
city charities. The result was at once apparent. The Jesuits
excited a revolt in the House of Refuge. One of the keepers was
murdered. One of the convicts was sent to the State prison. The
rebellion was subdued; but the Jesuits still defend the murderer,
and assail with calumnies the House of Refuge, one of the most
valuable and successful of our city institutions. This is a
curious confirmation of that dangerous character of the Jesuit
Society which is painted upon a larger scale in our article in the
present number on ‘The Jesuits.’ ”
The next slander of the _Weekly_ was to identify Tweed with the Jesuits.
“When the Romish priests,” says this astonishing journal (Nov. 2, 1872),
“at the command of their foreign master, began their assaults upon the
public schools, they found a ready ally in the Tammany Society.... Tammany
became the representative of a foreign influence and a foreign church. It
was European rather than American. It teemed with the coarse prejudices,
the dull ignorance, the intense moral blindness that to American sentiment
are so repulsive, with that mental and moral feebleness that belongs to
populations racked by the despot and oppressed by the priest.” An infamous
compact was now struck between Tammany and the Papal Church. The
“Romanists” supported the political leaders in riotous license, gross
vices, and indecent corruption; while an enormous debt was laid upon the
city “to satisfy the demands of the Romish priests.” Thus Tammany, by the
aid of its foreign allies, became despotic master of New York.
“Covered with the ineffaceable stains of treason and of public
robbery, its members attempted to rule by force, and in the spring
of 1871 New York lay at the mercy of rebels, peculators, and
foreign priests. The press was threatened, whenever it complained,
with violence, lawsuits, and the frowns of infamous courts. The
Common Council was imported from Ireland, and foreign assassins
threatened the lives of those ardent citizens who planned reform.”
The overthrow of the Tweed and Connolly Ring was a stunning defeat for the
Pope and his agents. The nomination of Greeley and Kernan (the one openly,
the other secretly; a slave of the Jesuits and the Inquisition) was a
desperate attempt of the Jesuits to recover what they had lost. And then
followed the usual homily, “Vote for Grant,” etc.
In this bitter political campaign against the church the writers for
_Harper’s Weekly_ were zealously assisted by their artist, Mr. Thomas
Nast. This individual has done more to degrade his profession than any
other draughtsman we know of, except, perhaps, the makers of lascivious
pictures for some of the flash newspapers. He has made a practice of
ridiculing the religious belief of hundreds of thousands of honest people
who came to America, as he did, from a foreign land, because America
offers to all immigrants the fullest measure of political equality and
religious freedom. It has been his pleasure to depict the priest
invariably as a sleek, sensual, brutal, and repulsive rogue; the bishop as
a grim, overbearing, and cunning despot, or now and then as a crocodile
crawling with open jaws towards a group of children. In the _Weekly_ of
Oct. 12, he represents Brother Jonathan attempting to sever the tie which
binds an American bishop to the Pope, holding out, as he does so, a
naturalization paper inscribed “This ends the foreign allegiance.” The
Pope has his arms full of papers: “Orders to all state officials that are
Roman Catholics”; “Down with the American public schools”; “The promised
land, U. S.,” etc.; and the bishop carries similar documents: “Orders from
the Pope of Rome to the Catholics in America”; “Vote for Horace Greeley”;
“Vote for Kernan; he is a Roman Catholic, and will obey the orders of the
church.” Another picture, entitled “Swinging around the circle,” was
intended to represent all the disreputable supporters of Mr. Greeley in
company. “Free love and Catholicism” were side by side, in the persons of
Theodore Tilton and a priest, and “Mass and S. C.” figured as a
conventional Irishman with one of the Ku‐klux. Mr. Kernan was drawn (Nov.
2) kneeling, in an abject attitude, at the feet of the Pope (“Our Foreign
Ruler”), and swearing, “I will do your bidding, as you are infallible”; in
the background stood a priest loaded with papal orders against the public
schools; and on the wall was a copy of the forged handbill, with the
legend, “For governor, Francis Kernan,” surrounding a black cross. In a
picture of the “Pirates under False Colors,” a priest with a cross held
aloft in one hand, and a tomahawk half hidden in the other, is a
conspicuous figure in a gang of ruffians. In another cartoon a vulgar‐
looking priest is seen sprinkling the ruins of Tammany Hall with holy‐
water.
Now, we know very well that from one point of view the introduction of
these calumnies into politics was fraudulent. Mr. Greeley certainly had no
leaning towards the Catholic Church and no affiliations with Catholic
leaders, and Gen. Grant, we venture to affirm, is insensible to the
bigotry which his unworthy followers brought up as a reason for his re‐
election. We have nothing to ask of any President, and we give our votes
according to our individual preferences. But while we do not purpose
acting as a religious body in any political movement, we do not purpose
either to be set aside by any political party as an outlawed and degraded
people, upon whom venal pamphleteers and ignorant politicians may trample
at pleasure. If party organs take pains to attack us, and pour out, day
after day, and week after week, their filthy libels upon us, the party
which sanctions such a warfare and tries to reap the fruits of it shall
bear the responsibility. The Catholics of the United States are too
numerous, too intelligent, and too public‐spirited to be treated with
contempt by any faction, whether that faction call itself Liberal, or
Republican, or Democratic. We prefer, as we have often said before, to let
the politicians alone, and go our various ways in quiet, some after one
leader, some after another. But it may as well be understood that, if any
of these parties invite an irrepressible conflict with us, they will find
out, we trust, that we are not disposed to flinch from the defence of our
rights, which are identical with the rights of all other American
citizens.
Brussels.
“There was a sound of revelry by night,
And Belgium’s capital had gather’d then
Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright
The lamps shone o’er fair women and brave men.
A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
Soft eyes look’d love to eyes which spoke again,
And all went merry as a marriage bell;
But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!”
_Childe Harold._
The roar of cannon that ushered in the day of Waterloo—the deadly
Waterloo, big with the fate of empires—the fatal Waterloo, that sealed the
doom of the mighty conqueror, that hurled him on the prison‐island in the
far‐distant ocean, where expiation could be the only consolation of the
proud, haughty heart that knew no law but the iron will, which,
irresistible to all else, was shivered on the Rock of Peter—was not the
first, and may not be the last, sound of fearful strife there heard, as
Belgium has ever been the chosen battlefield of Europe.
And so well is the fact recognized, that the sole condition on which she
now exists as an independent state, is that of perfect neutrality. No
matter what may be her sympathies, what may be her interests, she cannot
take the sword: she can only defend her frontier, and prevent the entrance
of either friend or foe. This it is that gives her importance; her central
position, which makes her the key of the Continent, causes England to
watch over her with tender interest, gives the mistress of the seas a
_pied‐à‐terre_ in case of a general war—a contingency which may arise at
any moment.
The late King Leopold I., the Nestor of the European sovereigns, held an
exceptional position; the head of one of the smallest states, he had
perhaps the largest personal influence. His sagacity and experience made
his advice sought and respected by all. When, in the revolution of 1848,
thrones were tumbling down, and kings flying in every direction, of course
Brussels had to follow the prevailing fashion, and, without knowing
exactly what was wanted, the Bruxellois assembled around the palace; but
before they could state their grievances, Leopold appeared upon the
balcony, told them there was no necessity of any demonstration; he had
come to Brussels at their invitation, and was ready to leave, if his
departure would make them happier. Whereupon they reconsidered the
question, and concluded to let well enough alone.
After the separation of Holland and Belgium, Brussels increased rapidly,
and is now one of the pleasantest capitals in Europe. The new part of the
city, the Quartier Leopold, is a beautiful faubourg, and the boulevards
that encircle the city with a belt of green verdure, furnish a delightful
promenade. The park, a portion of the forest of Soignes, is charming; the
great trees meet in arches, and shade the crowds of ladies and children,
who live in the open air on fine days. On Sundays, the military bands play
from 2 to 3 P.M.; and every summer evening, from the 1st of June to the
1st of September, the orchestra of the Grand Opera gives concerts in the
kiosk of the _Quinconce_, the flower‐garden of the park.
Life in Brussels is very pleasant, easy, and independent; all the
appliances of modern civilization are within reach, botanical and
zoological gardens, picture galleries, theatres; the opera is a permanent
fact, at a reasonable rate; the orchestra led by Hanssens (recently
departed for another world) was admirable; numbered among the violinists
De Beriot, blind, but playing always with rare skill, and the other
artists were of equal merit. Of late years Brussels has become a _foyer_
for discontented spirits—
“Black spirits and white,
Red spirits and gray.
Mingle, mingle, mingle,
You that mingle may.”
And mingle they do without fear of _mouchards_, and air their opinions, no
matter how wild and dangerous. If they go a little too far, the government
or persons attacked interchange a few diplomatic notes with the Belgian
authorities, and then the police politely request them either to be silent
or try another dwelling‐place. Prim was for a long time resident, but one
fine morning was advised to take his departure, as his intrigues were
becoming too open and dangerous, but had been kept secret long enough to
lay the mine that exploded and blew the Queen of Spain into France; and
Henri Rochefort, driven from France, issued his _Lanterne_, which threw
light on many facts then thought to be false, but which events proved to
have been only too true.
Brussels is a paradise for women of taste; for where else can be found
such laces and fairy webs, such garnitures of _point de Bruxelles_, of
Valenciennes, of Malines, of Duchesse? A morning stroll down the Montagne
de la Cour and the Madeleine is a feast for the eye, for lace‐making is
one of the fine arts; the large houses employ three or four first‐class
artists to draw the designs, and, as the competition is great, the efforts
to surpass are immense. In making up a bride’s trousseau, it is etiquette
for the mother of the bride to give the white laces, the happy bridegroom
the black; and the prices where the parties are wealthy run up to an
enormous amount.
The gold embroideries are equally beautiful; in one _fabrique_ we saw a
set of vestments just finished for the Cathedral of Tournai; they were for
Lent, and were violet, with the instruments of the Passion exquisitely
done in raised embroidery. The effect was admirable; on the back of the
chasuble was the cross with the spear and the sponge, and so perfect was
the sponge it seemed as though it could be grasped. The column was on the
front of the vestment. It was a complete set for priest, deacon, and sub‐
deacon, with five copes, so that the artist had full opportunity for the
display of his talent. The same house had recently sent off the dresses
for the Empress of Austria and the ladies of her court, to be worn when
they walked in the procession on the Feast of Corpus Christi. Specimens of
the embroidery, which was of silver on white satin, were shown us, and,
judging by what we saw, the effect of the whole must have been charming.
The Musée Ancien is devoted to the artists of the past. Hubert and Jean
Van Eyck, whose discovery of the use of oil in mixing colors
revolutionized art, are represented by the “Adam and Eve” and the
“Adoration of the Magi.” Holbein’s portrait of Sir Thomas More is worthy
of the subject and the artist. Crayer’s Saints and Martyrdoms abound; one,
the “Apparition of Our Lord to S. Julien,” illustrates the beautiful
legend of S. Julien and his wife, S. Basilisse, who founded a hospital,
where they received and tended the sick poor. One winter night, hearing
sighs and groans at the door, S. Julien went out, and found a man nearly
frozen to death. He carried him in, warmed him before the fire, restored
him to consciousness, and then laid him in his own bed. The next morning
the holy couple went in to see their guest. The bed was empty, and, as
they approached it, Jesus, for it was he who had taken the form of the
poor sick man to try their charity, appeared to them, and said, “Julien, I
am your Lord and Saviour, who announces to you that ere long you and your
wife will repose in God.”
The “Martyrdom of S. Peter,” by Van Dyck, is terrible. The saint is
fastened to the cross, and three men are placing it in the ground. One,
kneeling, is endeavoring to push the end of the cross into the hole
prepared to receive it, another supports the cross on his shoulders, the
third steadies it. Meanwhile, all the blood in S. Peter’s body seems to
have descended into his head and face, which is brick‐dust color, and
looks as though it would burst. Altogether it is a fearful picture, so
lifelike that one waits to hear the thump the cross will give when finally
placed. Such pictures make us appreciate our feather‐bed Christianity, the
comfortable way we try to gain heaven and at the same time keep up an
agreeable acquaintance with the world, and perhaps its friend, the devil.
The finest Rubens in this Musée is “Christ ascending Calvary.” It is when
he is met by S. Veronica and some other women, who are magnificently
dressed, thus making the contrast greater between them and the exhausted,
blood‐stained figure of Our Lord, who is sinking beneath the weight of the
cross, and the agonized face of his blessed Mother, who, supported by S.
John, is advancing with outstretched hands to the assistance of her
beloved One.
The flower‐pieces by Seghers, the famous Jesuit painter, are exquisite;
interiors by Cuyp and Teniers, displaying their delicate care and finish,
are numerous; pictures by Rembrandt, with all his wonderful effects of
light and shade; some charming faces by Velasquez—two lovely little girls
hand‐in‐hand, who look as if they would step out of the frame and speak;
two splendid half‐lengths of Albert and Isabella, by Rubens, whose
portraits are always admirable; and some very good specimens of the
Italian school, among which are a Madonna of Sassoferrato, and a portrait
of a young woman, by Guercina, which is very beautiful.
The Musée Moderne is a collection of the modern Belgian school, which
deservedly ranks among the first. “Hagar in the Desert,” by Navez, is as
touchingly beautiful as any of the masterpieces of the great past; Leys,
Wiertz, Gallait, Portaels, whose “Fuite en Egypte” is found everywhere,
are men whose genius is recognized by all Europe; Van Schendel has
produced effects of light as remarkable as Rembrandt; Willems and Stevens
in finish rival Cuyp and Teniers; and Verboekhoven’s cattle‐pieces are
unsurpassed. Art is encouraged and fostered by the government; every year
there is a grand competition for the “Prix de Rome”; a committee is
appointed by the crown to decide upon the merit of the pictures, and the
successful one receives the Prix de Rome, which is four thousand francs, a
sum sufficient to maintain a student in Rome, in artist style, three
years, while he continues his studies.
Brussels is comparatively modern; it was a mere village when Malines,
Louvain, and other towns had acquired importance. In 1005, it passed by
marriage into the possession of the Comtes de Louvain, under whom it
rapidly increased; in 1040, it was surrounded by massive walls, of which
some portions still remain in the garden of the Curé of S. Gudule. In
1106, Comte Godfrey le Barbu acquired the title of Duc de Brabant, but
Louvain continued the most important town in the duchy, and preserved the
title of capital until the time of Albert and Isabella, who preferred
Brussels on account of its healthful climate and the vicinity of the well‐
stocked forest of Soignies.
The Grande Place of Brussels is unique; any change is forbidden by law; as
it has been for generations, so it must remain; and when one descends
suddenly from the park and boulevards, brilliant and gay with all the
sparkle of modern life, into the Grande Place, it is like another world.
The Hôtel de Ville is on one side; opposite is the Maison du Roi, adorned
with a statue of the Blessed Virgin, beneath which is the legend, _A
Feste, Fame et Bello, libera nos, Maria Pacis_, placed there in 1625 by
Isabella in gratitude to our Lady of Peace, for having delivered the city
from plague, famine, and war. In the place immediately below, is the noble
monument erected in reparation to the memory of the unfortunate Comtes
d’Egmont and de Hornes, on the spot on which, as the inscription runs,
“they were unjustly executed by the decree of the cruel Duc d’Albe.”
It was unjust and cruel, but still we cannot judge the past by the
present. Then, principles were positive facts, not vagaries expected to
give way at any moment to expediency, but realities plain and palpable,
upon which depended not only this perishable present, but the never‐ending
future, with its eternity of weal or woe. As men were expected to live up
to their principles, so were they expected to die for them. It is a high
standard by which to live, but it is the safest. We fancy nowadays that
the cruelty then dealt out for thoughts and opinions was abominable, but
we forget that those ideas, those thoughts, produced the frightful effects
of the ravages of the Gueux, of the orgies of John of Leyden; that from
religious they degenerated into social excesses of the lowest
kind—excesses which, if prolonged, would have reduced Christian Europe to
Vandal barbarism.
And so the brave, unfortunate Comte d’Egmont, the hero, whose valor
contributed so signally to the brilliant victory of Philip II. at St.
Quentin, lost his life for having tampered with the political sectaries,
or rather by being led into the snare by the Prince of Orange; when too
late, he saw his error, which was only political; his faith he ever kept
pure and untarnished. The Prince of Orange, on the eve of leaving Brussels
to join the enemy in Germany, urged him to go, but Egmont refused; the
prince told him if he remained he would be lost; that he was a fool to run
the risk. Friends until then, they parted in anger. Egmont spurned him,
and said, “Adieu, prince sans terre”; the prince replied, “Adieu, comte
sans tête”—words which were too fatally verified soon after. The Maison du
Roi is now occupied by the Cercle Artistique et Littéraire, and it was in
a small room in the second story that Comte d’Egmont passed the night
preceding his death, and wrote those touching farewell letters to his wife
and the King of Spain which reveal the nobleness of his character. The
famous picture by Gallait, “La tête d’un supplicié,” is a portrait of
Egmont. We have seen the original in the _atelier_ of Gallait, and he
assured us it was an accurate resemblance. _Requiescat in pace._
The Hôtel de Ville on the Grande Place is the finest of the municipal
palaces found in almost every city of Belgium. It is built round a
quadrangle, and the oldest part is the wing to the east of the tower,
commenced in 1402, at the angles of which are elegant turrets; the façade
consists of a gallery of open arches, surmounted by the Grande Brétèque, a
balcony from whence proclamations were made; above this are two rows of
windows, and an enormous battlemented roof, pierced with thirty‐seven
dormer windows.
The tower is 330 feet high; the lower half, from the basement to the
summit of the roof, is square; the upper part, built in 1444, is
octagonal, surmounted by a magnificent spire of open‐work, remarkable for
its lightness and delicacy; on its apex is fixed a table of stone, twelve
feet in circumference, and on this stone a globe of copper, supporting a
colossal figure of S. Michael trampling on the devil, thirteen feet high,
made of a number of thin plates of copper‐gilt, in 1454, which serves as a
weathercock, and turns with the least breath of wind. There is a shocking
tradition, currently reported, but not positively confirmed, that the
architect of the beautiful tower hung himself on its completion, because
he had not placed it exactly in the centre of the façade; which certainly
did not remedy the evil, as putting himself out of the world did not put
the tower in the right place.
The first story of the Hôtel de Ville contains a gallery in which are
magnificent full‐length portraits of Philippe le Beau, Charles V., Philip
II., Albert and Isabella, and other dignitaries; the council‐room,
audience‐chamber, and all the other apartments are splendidly ornamented,
the walls hung with Gobelin tapestry, representing scenes in the life of
Clovis and Clotilda. The ceiling of the council‐chamber is a masterpiece
of Janssens, in which the most extraordinary effects of light and shade
are produced; it represents an assembly of the gods, and their majesties
vary in their positions as they are seen from different points.
The remainder of the Grande Place is lined with venerable old houses,
terminating in fantastic gables, most of which were originally the halls
of various guilds and corporations; their façades pierced with numerous
odd little windows and covered with quaint designs, bas‐reliefs,
pilasters, balustrades, and inscriptions; some of the houses are gilded,
which adds to the picturesque appearance of the place, and on the summit
of the Brewers’ Guild is a fine equestrian statue of Prince Charles of
Lorraine—the good prince, as he is still affectionately called. In
mediæval times, the Grande Place was the ordinary scene of tournaments and
executions; here the Knights of the Golden Fleece held their brilliant
_réunions_, and Philip l’Asseuré and Charles V. gave splendid fêtes, which
in the reign of Philip II. were succeeded by very different scenes, under
the stern rule of the Duc d’Albe.
Just behind the Hôtel de Ville, at the corner of the Rue du Chêne and the
Rue de l’Etuve, is the beloved little statue of the “Premier Bourgeois de
Bruxelles.” The present bronze statue, after a model by Duquesnoy, was
made in 1619, and this replaced an old stone statue which is said to have
existed in the IXth century. Its origin is not known, but the favorite
tradition is that it represents a youthful Duc de Brabant, whose father
dying left him an infant of three years under the regency of his mother,
the Duchesse Lutgarde. The neighboring Comte de Malines coveted the fair
inheritance, declared war against the boy‐duc, and approached Brussels,
determined to take it by force of arms. The Brabançons flew to defend the
rightful heir, and, when the decisive day arrived, they besought the
duchesse to let them carry the little fellow in his cradle, and suspend it
from a great oak‐tree that overlooked the battle‐field. The duchesse in
tears consented, accompanied them to the field of Ransbeek, and remained
by the tree, from the highest branch of which the cradle was suspended.
The battle raged with fury; three times the Brabançons were driven back to
the tree, but the sight of the brave little boy, who looked on with
intense interest, never exhibiting fear or impatience, spurred them on to
fresh efforts; at last the day was won, and the cradle carried back in
triumph to Brussels, the duchesse radiant with joy. To commemorate the
event, the oak‐tree was transplanted to Brussels, placed at the corner of
a street, since then called Rue du Chêne, and the statue erected at its
side; in the course of time, the tree has disappeared, but the statue
remains, the object of undying love and interest. To steal it is
considered an impossibility; in 1585, he was seized and carried off to
Antwerp, but was speedily recaptured and brought home in triumph by a
small party of Bruxellois; again he was taken away in a baggage‐wagon by
the English troops after the battle of Fontenoy, and, on being recovered,
was allowed for a short time to delight by his presence the inhabitants of
Grammont, until he was reclaimed by the Bruxellois. In 1747, he was stolen
by some soldiers of Louis XV., and again a few years later by two English
soldiers, who, however, found him too heavy to carry away; the last time
he was disturbed was in 1817, but the same good fortune attended him, and
he was again recovered, to the great joy of the Bruxellois, who look upon
him as the good genius of the city, and consider his loss a public
calamity.
In the XVIth century, Louvain and Brussels gave him two splendid dresses
for fête‐days; Charles V. presented him with a complete suit, and settled
a pension on him. In 1698, the Elector of Bavaria not only gave him a
uniform, but invested him with a military order, and appointed a valet‐de‐
chambre to wait on him. Peter the Great visited him, and added to his
pension. In 1747, Louis XV. made him a knight, and solemnly decorated him
with the Order of S. Louis, at the same time presenting him with a suit of
gold‐laced uniform, a _chapeau‐bros_, and a sword; and in 1780 he was the
first who wore the national cockade of Brabant, hence his present title,
“Le Premier Bourgeois de Bruxelles.”
On national fêtes, and during the _Kermesse_ in July, he is always dressed
in the uniform of the Garde Civique, which he has worn since 1830, his
numerous orders displayed on his infant breast. In addition to these
gifts, several persons have made him presents, while some have actually
remembered him in their wills. He thus possesses a positive revenue which
is regularly paid, a treasurer who is responsible for his disbursements, a
lawyer, and a valet‐de‐chambre; and let any stranger beware of ever
speaking disrespectfully or slightingly to any Bruxellois of the “Premier
Bourgeois de Bruxelles”!
Brussels abounds in charitable institutions and convents of every order;
some are peculiar to the place. There is but one house in the world of the
“Dames de Berlaimont”—an order of canonesses who follow the rule of S.
Augustine—and it was founded by the Comtesse de Berlaimont, whose husband
was one of the great officers of the court of Charles V. It is eminently
aristocratic in its design. Any number of quarterings was required for the
fair candidates in the palmy days of the old régime, but ideas have been
modified by the wheel of the revolution, and now, if the head and heart
are right, whether the blood is more or less blue is not strictly
considered. The convent is splendid, the canonesses charming, and the
education received by the young ladies under their charge leaves nothing
to be desired.
Convents of Poor Clares are now few and far between; one is still found in
Brussels. The rule is very strict—the strictest, we believe, for women in
the world, not even excepting those of the Trappistines and Carmelites. It
is forbidden to see strangers, but the superioress graciously relented in
our favor, drew aside the heavy serge curtain behind double iron grilles
armed with spikes, and told us we could look at her, but not speak. This
announcement was made before the curtain was drawn. We kept profound
silence, and for a few moments contemplated the figure, that stood
motionless and speechless. What could have carried her there, from family,
from home with all its charms? At the moment of solemn choice, the world
enters but little into the thoughts: it is the strong ties that God and
nature have implanted in the human heart that are the hardest to unloose.
She had left all for the rigid rule, for the self‐denying life, of a Poor
Clare; the happy unbroken sleep of youth for the broken night of prayer
and meditation; and, when sleeping, not even to lie down, but to sit half‐
upright; to go barefooted, never to touch meat, never to speak—only
imagine it, a woman, and never to speak!—never to her fellow‐beings—ever
to God. It was for him she had left home and friends, to find her eternal
home and the never‐failing Friend; to be thirteen hours a day in prayer
and adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, to expiate by her life the
sins of the world around her. It is a wonderful life, a supernatural life;
but, when truly desired, supernatural grace is given to lead it
courageously to the grave.
The oldest church in Brussels is Notre Dame de la Chapelle, in the Rue
Haute, which derives its name from having been at first a simple oratory
in which the great S. Boniface, the apostle of Germany, had said Mass. The
style is Gothic, and recently the choir, which is very fine, has been
restored; it had been disfigured by an atrocious high altar in the style
of the Renaissance; but in this reign of good taste it was decided to
remove it, and in making the changes it was found there was a false wall,
which, on being destroyed, disclosed the beautiful circle of the apse,
which is remarkable for having the presbyterium and the credence‐table cut
in the wall, something that has only been found in two other churches—one
in France, another in Germany.
Notre Dame des Victoires—or Notre Dame du Sablon, as it is more generally
called from its situation on the Place du Petit Sablon—is in the form of a
Latin cross, with a polygonal apse to the choir. The Place du Petit Sablon
during several centuries was the favorite residence of the aristocracy,
and is yet surrounded by the Hôtel de Merode, and the palace of the Duc
d’Aremberg, which was formerly occupied by Comte d’Egmont. Consequently in
this church the monuments are very fine, especially the mortuary chapel of
the Princes of Tour and Taxis, in which is an exquisite statue of S.
Ursula, by Duquesnoy, and the tombs of the De Hornes, d’Egmonts, and De
Chimay.
The beautiful collegiate church of SS. Michel and Gudule is built on a
height formerly called Mont St. Michel, and its great towers dominate the
city, and can be seen from every point. Its plan is cruciform. The choir
is entirely surrounded by chapels, from which it is separated by double
rows of columns; on one side is the Chapel du Saint‐Sacrement de Miracle,
on the other the Chapel of the Blessed Virgin, behind that of S. Mary
Magdalen. It is a magnificent church, one of the richest in Belgium, and
the vestments and appointments are superb. The laces are a treasure in
themselves—laces which now cannot be bought, are used in the sanctuary,
and the vestments and antependiums are of corresponding magnificence. One
antependium, which is the Lamb surrounded by the symbols of the four
evangelists, is considered the finest piece of embroidery in Belgium.
But the glory of S. Gudule is not the gold, and silver, and lace, but the
Très‐Saint‐Sacrement de Miracle, which is there preserved, and which is
the object of the profoundest love and veneration. For it did Charles V.
build the exquisite chapel whose four splendid windows were presents from
his sisters, the Queens of Portugal and Hungary, his brother Ferdinand,
King of the Romans, and Francis I. of France. Sovereigns, princes, nobles,
and people for five hundred years have adored the sacred Body of our Lord,
so cruelly profaned and outraged by the Jews, on Good Friday of 1370, who
on that day, the day of Redemption, assembled in their synagogue, and
stabbed the consecrated hosts stolen from S. Catherine’s, and, when they
stabbed them, the blood which had flowed for them on Calvary, flowed again
beneath their sacrilegious hands.
Day and night reparation is offered; the synagogue is now a _chapelle
expiatoire_, attached to which is a community for perpetual adoration, and
the Confrérie du Très‐Saint‐Sacrement de Miracle, established in S.
Gudule, embraces thousands. The Duc d’Aremberg gave the monstrance, which
is a cross of diamonds, surmounted by a triple crown of diamonds, from
which hangs a little ship of the same precious stones, presented by the
captain and crew of a vessel, in gratitude for delivery from shipwreck.
Marie Antoinette sent her wedding necklace of diamonds to be suspended
around it, and the lamps around the sanctuary are kept burning by the
children of the family d’Aremberg.
The great ornament of the nave is the pulpit, elaborately and exquisitely
carved in oak by Verbruggen in 1699, originally in the church of the
Jesuits, in Louvain, and, on the suppression of the Order, given to S.
Gudule by Maria Theresa, in 1776. The lower part represents the expulsion
of Adam and Eve from Paradise by the angel of the Lord, armed with a
flaming sword. On the left is seen Death gliding around with his dart. The
pulpit itself, in the hollow of the globe, is supported by the tree of
knowledge, crawling up which is the serpent, while on the extreme summit
stands the Blessed Virgin holding her divine Son, whom she is assisting to
bruise the serpent’s head with a large cross. On either side the railing
of the steps is formed by a hedge in which numerous birds are enjoying
themselves; on the side of Adam are the eagle, the jay, and a monkey;
while in the vicinity of Eve are the peacock, the ape, and the parrot.
And why these birds are there is the result of a little domestic
disagreement between the artist Henri Verbruggen and his wife Martha Van
Meeren, whom he married, hoping to find a tenth muse, but who only proved
a prosaic everyday somebody, who fretted herself to death because Henri
loved pleasure even more than art, and, while amusing himself with his
friends, forgot there was no money in the house, nothing in the larder,
nothing wherewith to dress Mme. and Mlle. Verbruggen. Poor Martha, who
loved order, and would have been the treasure of some honest burgher, only
provoked and irritated Henri by her occasional plain statement of facts.
Affairs were in this sad condition when the Jesuits of Louvain, knowing
the splendid talent of Verbruggen, ordered a pulpit for their church. The
artist was enchanted. Here was a field for his genius; he immediately
conceived an admirable work, which should contain, as in a book, the whole
history of the Christian religion.
Said he, “I will make a globe, which will represent the earth, under which
I will place Adam and Eve, the moment after their fatal disobedience,
which entailed on us such misery. This globe will be the pulpit, the
canopy of heaven will cover it, the tree of knowledge will overshadow it,
around which will creep the serpent, and above, Mary, crowned with stars,
the moon at her feet, her infant Son before her, will bruise the serpent’s
head with the cross. By the side of the man I will place the cherubim with
the flaming sword; near the woman, young and beautiful, hideous death—that
will be a contrast!”
The artist commenced his work with ardor. The wood grew animated beneath
his fingers. But pleasure for ever distracted him; the more people
admired, the more he amused himself. Martha was miserable; she could see
no hope of order and plenty. Irritated by the complaints of his wife,
Verbruggen determined to revenge himself in his _chef‐d’œuvre_, and so
perpetuate his vengeance. He was making the stairs of the pulpit. In his
angry malice, Verbruggen thought he would punish Martha by placing
satirical emblems to characterize women. On the staircase, by the side of
Eve, who has just sinned, and who still holds the apple, he placed, as
symbols, a peacock for pride, a squirrel for destructiveness, a cock for
noise, an ape for malice—four defects of which poor Martha was totally
innocent.
Man he made with pleasure. On his side he placed, first, an eagle, to
typify genius—but just then Martha bade adieu to the world and her
troubles, and Verbruggen was a happy widower. Too late, the sculptor
understood his loss; the gentle, patient wife was gone, and now he only
remembered her good qualities; his courage and energy forsook him; he
could not work. Months rolled on; his friends pitied him, and tried to
rouse him from his deep despondency.
“You weep for Martha,” said they; “there are others as good; you are only
thirty‐six—marry Cecile Byns. She is joyous and lively like you. She will
be a mother to your daughter, a charming companion for you.”
Verbruggen listened to the good advice; he asked the hand of Cecile Byns,
who was one of those women that rule while laughing, that carry the point
while appearing to submit. Cecile knew her power over Verbruggen, and made
him obey.
“I love you,” said she, “but I will not marry you until the work which
will make me proud of the name of Verbruggen is finished.”
“Only say the word,” replied Henri, “and I will complete it.”
Accompanied by her mother, she visited his _atelier_. She asked the
explanation of the emblems he had placed on the side of Eve. The sculptor
blushed.
“When I made what astonishes you,” he stammered, “I did not know Cecile
Byns.”
“Very well,” replied the young lady; “but after the symbols of our
defects, which perhaps we have not, how do you intend to designate your
own noble sex?”
“I had just commenced,” he answered, blushing redder than before. “You
already see the eagle, perhaps it typifies vanity.”
“Not at all,” interrupted Cecile. “The eagle is a bird of prey, an emblem
of brutal tyranny. What do you intend adding?”
Verbruggen was silent. Cecile continued: “To be just to men, as you
fancied you were towards us, you will place near the eagle a fox, a symbol
of vain gossip; a monkey eating grapes, for drunkenness; a jay, for
foolish pride. You must avow, my dear Verbruggen, these defects belong to
men as much as the faults you have given to us, and which adorn the other
staircase. And now, when this great work is completed, I will accompany
you to the altar.”
The sculptor did not reply. He obeyed, fulfilled faithfully the orders
given, and received for reward the hand of Cecile Byns; since which happy
event he was never known to offer any further insult to the devout female
sex.
And so the pulpit was finished and placed in the church of the Jesuits in
Louvain, where it was the object of universal admiration, as it still
continues to be in beautiful S. Gudule the pride and joy of Brussels.
Sayings Of S. John Climacus.
It is better to displease our relatives than displease God.
Obedience is simply going about anything without any judgment of our own.
Let your conscience be the mirror in which you behold the nature of your
obedience.
A new wound is easily closed and healed; but the old wounds of the soul
are cured, if ever, with great difficulty.
He is truly virtuous who expects his death every day; but he is a saint
who desires it every hour.
Marriage In The Nineteenth Century.
“Heaven and earth shall pass, but my words shall not pass.”—Matt.
xxiv. 35.
It is only truth that is immutable in this world, and only truth’s
representative that dare speak to‐day the same language it spoke eighteen,
twelve, or three centuries ago.
Truth cannot progress, for it partakes of the nature of God’s perfection;
it is not an ideal of our own evolving, susceptible of improvement as our
knowledge grows wider, but a type towards which we are, on the contrary,
making slow stages of assimilation. Of all individual parts of truth,
hardly one of which remains in our day unassailed, none is so fiercely
attacked as the truth about marriage. And yet, as we have shown in a
previous paper,(232) almost every argument against it has repeatedly been
put forward by barbarians and Romans, Byzantine emperors and feudal
chiefs, and borne out by all the imposing display of military force, legal
servility, and even ecclesiastical truculence. One might almost say of the
agitation against marriage in our day, “What has been will be, and what
will be has been.” If it is no longer in the individual passions of kings
and nobles that the conflict centres, it is still a “sovereign” who plays
the part of Philip Augustus or Henry VIII.—the “sovereign people.” Instead
of one mighty colossus, it is a legion of personally obscure individuals
which the church finds opposed to her; but the principle is the same, the
issue is identical. What councils and embassies did formerly is now done
oftener and in privacy; new agencies have widened the possibilities of
communication, of discussion, and of adjustment, and causes are more
rapidly multiplied, as well as more speedily settled. The press has lent
its power to the altar, and redeemed, in part, its too well‐earned
reputation as a pander and a tempter; and besides these new helps, we
have, as of old, all those oft‐tried resources of personal eloquence,
canonical censures, and grievous penances.
Still the question is exactly the same in the nineteenth as it was in all
preceding centuries: Shall passion or reason rule mankind? Shall the most
sacred of all rights of property be protected and maintained, or shall
communism be allowed gradually to extirpate the human race?
The historian Rohrbacher, whom we have often quoted in the paper referred
to above, specially insists upon the confusion which the legalized
disruption or total disregard of the marriage vow would introduce into
society, and supports his opinion by that of De Maistre. He also adduces
the argument that, since the creation of man in the earthly Paradise was a
perfect and complete act, and only one woman was there joined to one man,
therefore the union of one man and one woman was distinctly God’s type of
what he meant all future unions to be. We might speak of many Scripture
proofs of the original institution of marriage being a state of perpetual
monogamy until death, but such proofs would involve too lengthy a sketch
of _one_ portion of the subject, and this aspect has been so often
discussed that we turn with a feeling of relief to any less hackneyed view
of the question.
Speaking broadly, we may say that the Hebrews were the first, as they were
for a long time the only, people whose laws protected both the honor and
the property of women. Because they did so, they were also most stringent
as regards the tie of marriage. Again, with them ancestry and descent were
of paramount importance, and every family jealously guarded its record and
registers; this also implied a strict protection of marriage, and, in
fact, would have been impossible without it. Even when dispensations were
allowed the Jews “because of the hardness of their hearts,” the son of the
first wife was not to be put aside for the son of the second, if the
latter were more pleasing to her husband than the former, and this because
the sacred rights acquired at her betrothal were absolutely
inalienable.(233) In the marriages mentioned in the Old Testament, the
consent of the woman is always formally asked,(234) and she is considered
competent to inherit property and transfer it to her husband.(235)
Among other nations of antiquity, the more truth was obscured in their
religious forms, the more degraded became their ideal of marriage. This is
patent even among such civilized nations as the Greeks and Romans; the
whole of mythology is a deification of the passion of lust, and a
caricature on marriage. Still, where greater genius abounds, there also we
find glimpses of a higher morality. For instance, in Homer’s magnificent
poems, conjugal love and fidelity stand out nobly as the themes of his
especial admiration. It would require a thorough examination of many of
the passages of the _Iliad_, and greater space than we have now before us
(since this idea can only be used here as a collateral one), to bring out
the full force of this striking fact, and some day perhaps it may be our
good fortune to return to this topic; suffice it to say at present, that
any one who reads Homer attentively will be struck by the majestic
attitude of Juno, the constant protectress of the Greeks, and by the
hearty sympathy shown by the poet in a struggle undertaken purely to
vindicate the dignity of marriage and the rights of hospitality. This is
perhaps even more obvious from the fact that even the good personages of
the poem, the self‐sacrificing and devoted Andromache, the noble Hector,
the infirm and guiltless Priam, are all included in the sweeping
misfortune which is the swift and just retribution of the cowardly rape of
Helen. The vindication of the principle of marriage is evident, while in
the _Odyssey_ its glorification is even more obvious. This illustration,
for which we have to thank a very zealous and learned religious whose
kindness put the suggestion entirely at our own disposal, is one which it
is worth while for thoughtful persons to consider, as it gives a far
greater moral importance, and consequently a more perfect artistic
interest, to one of the few colossi of the intellectual world.
The law of Jesus Christ succeeded the preparatory dispensation of Moses,
and perfected all its enactments, marriage among the rest. It gave the
marriage contract an added dignity by making it the image of the
union—single and indivisible—of Christ and the church, and by elevating it
into a sacrament; in other words, a means of sanctifying and special
grace. In this is certainly the secret of the church’s inflexibility with
regard to marriage. Since by it a distinct and sacramental grace was
vouchsafed, it followed that this grace in itself was sufficient to enable
the contracting parties, provided they faithfully corresponded to it, to
remain holily in the state of matrimony until death; so that, whenever any
serious breach took place between them, the church could reasonably argue
that the fault lay with their dispositions, not with the contract itself.
In the old law, marriage, though holy, was not a sacrament, and was
susceptible of greater relaxations; but in the new law, with a higher
dignity added to it, and more abundant grace attached to it, it is too
strong to need concessions and too noble to wish for them.
The Hebrews also, in propagating their own race, used the only means then
in their power of propagating the knowledge of the true God; but in the
new dispensation we have substituted a generation according to the spirit
for the previous generation according to the flesh. Polygamous marriages
among the Jews were a mysterious channel provisionally used for the
increase and maintenance of God’s worship upon earth; but, since the
coming of Christ, men have been won by the Word of God, the preaching of
his servants, the sufferings of his martyrs, and the learning of his
disciples. Those who are now constantly born into his fold are born “not
of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of
God.”(236) Having said so much upon the historical and Scriptural aspect
of marriage, we leave it to others to dispute the particular meaning of
such and such texts, and the particular inferences to be drawn from the
context, and go back to the church’s firm stand upon this matter.
Not only has she been the foremost champion of the integrity of marriage
in past ages, but she is now almost its only one. No body of such force or
numbers exists in the world, which alone gives her the priority among the
upholders of Christian marriage; and when the tenets of the few other
bodies to whom marriage is sacred are examined, they will be found to be
inspired and created by her principles, so far as they refer to this
matter.
Of the Anglican communion, especially in its more advanced branches, it is
sufficient to say that, having better than any other body preserved the
forms, it has as its reward attained to more of the spirit, of a “church,”
and consequently inculcates a higher morality. But the following
testimony, which, from the name of the sheet furnishing it (the _Reformed
Missionary_), we suppose represents some other Protestant body, is more
interesting because more unexpected. A Catholic paper of Nov. 16, 1872,
the _Standard_, has preserved this testimony for us. Under the title of
“The Divorce Question Again,” it discusses church authority and its
relation to the civil law, and uses the following strong language:
“Spiritual interests and spiritual _discipline_ belong to that
supernatural order of grace which has its home in the bosom of the
Christian church.... There are many things besides loose divorce
legislation which the state either tolerates or legalizes, but which the
church cannot sanction or countenance for a single instant without
committing spiritual suicide. And if the state should expressly dictate to
the church a line of action at variance with the plain teaching of Christ,
then it would be our _solemn duty_ to obey God rather than men.... The
_church must interpret God’s Word_, and exercise spiritual discipline in
accordance therewith, no _matter what course the state may take_ in
disposing of kindred questions. As Dr. Woolsey has expressed it:
‘_Whatever be the attitude_ of the state, the church _must stand_ upon the
principles of the New Testament as she expounds them, and apply them to
all within her reach!’ ”
What is here said of the “state” may be applied to the people, the press,
popular license, and all the modern agencies which the evil one has added
to his former royal and learned tools. But if among earnest though
mistaken Christians we find such auxiliaries as the _Reformed Missionary_
and the eloquent sermons of Anglican divines,(237) we have also to
encounter such authorities as the following on the side of passion and
licentiousness: “Dr. Colenso, embarrassed by the obstinate adherence to
polygamy which he observed among the Kaffirs, came to the resolution,
after conference, it is said, with other Anglican authorities of the
highest rank, to remove the difficulty by a process which, though adopted
in a well‐known case by Luther and Melancthon, had not previously received
the official sanction of Anglican bishops. As polygamy would not yield to
Protestantism, Dr. Colenso agreed to consider polygamy ‘a Scriptural mode
of existence.’ Here are his own words: ‘I must confess that I feel very
strongly that the usual practice of enforcing the separation of wives from
their husbands, upon their conversion to Christianity, is quite
unwarrantable, and _opposed to the plain teaching of our Lord_.’ And then
he proves, of course from the Bible, that polygamy is not inconsistent
with the all‐holy religion of the Gospel. Here is the _proof_: ‘What is
the use,’ he asks, ‘of our reading to them (the heathen) the Bible stories
of Abraham, Israel, and David, with _their_ many wives?’ But Dr. Colenso
was not without support in his view on polygamy. ‘The whole body of
American missionaries in Burmah,’ he observes, ‘_after some difference of
opinion_, came to the unanimous decision to admit in future polygamists of
old standing to communion, but not to offices in the church (as if the
last were a greater privilege than the first!)’ ‘I must say,’ he
continues, ‘that this appears to me the only right and reasonable
course!’ ”
At the beginning of this extract, we read that Dr. Colenso was
_embarrassed by the obstinate adherence to polygamy_ among the Kaffirs.
This means, we infer, that he had originally withstood this heathen
practice. Why had he done so? If he believed it sufficiently immoral to
attack it, he was guilty of violating his conscience in ceasing his
attack; if he had always believed it “Scriptural” or allowable, he was
guilty of hypocrisy in attacking it at all. Then, when he asks, “What is
the use of our reading to them the Bible stories of Abraham, Israel, and
David, with _their_ many wives?” he gives us unconsciously another
advantage by tacitly confessing the necessity of a divinely inspired
interpreter of the Bible. If Dr. Colenso had been a Catholic, the
difficulty would not have existed. Does he suppose that Catholic converts
among savage nations do not hear the same stories? But in their case, a
teaching and speaking church comes to their rescue, and explains what
otherwise would seem dark. It is strange to hear a Protestant Christian,
bred up on the rule of “the Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the
Bible,” hesitate as to the effect of certain stories in the Bible. If the
poor Kaffirs were to be evangelized upon the principle that a Bible
precedent was practically a permission for all time, they would soon have
Judiths and Jaels among them, as well as Abrahams, Israels, and Davids.
In the _Times_ (London) of Dec. 20, 1872, on the occasion of a public “Day
of Intercession” for more missionaries, we read the following stringent
criticism upon the body which of all others most nearly approaches the
ideal of a church: “The Church of England,” says the _Times_, “utterly
abandons large regions on the ground that in tropical climes there will be
polygamy or an equivalent disregard of the marriage ties, and that no
preaching can prevail against it”—a confession of powerlessness which
quite coincides with what we have said of Dr. Colenso. Still it is not
fair to class the Anglican communion, despite this weak shrinking from a
difficult task, with the more systematic deserters from the championship
of duty; but, if we are grieved and astonished at her defection under
certain circumstances, what shall we say of the following breach of
ecclesiastical discipline on the part of those whose very names argue in
this case a departure from the path of known duty? In the New York _World_
of the 5th of January, 1873, we read among the announcements of business
transacted in the mayor’s office the previous day this startling
disclosure: “During the day the mayor was waited upon by a wedding‐party,
the principals of which were Michael M’Clannahan and Mary Donovan, who
wished to be united in matrimony without going to the trouble of getting
up a public church celebration. Mr. H—— performed the duty according to
the statute, and the bride and bridegroom went on their way rejoicing.”
It is not for us to judge these persons, nor speculate upon the motives
that led them to take such a step; but the occurrence is nevertheless a
sign of the demoralization which is every day on the increase among our
people.
Polygamy, under the name of Mormonism, is still tolerated and protected in
the United States, and the annals of divorce in the states where Mormonism
is illegal quite make up the deficiency. In Connecticut, according to the
deposition of the Rev. Dr. Woolsey, President of Yale College, made before
the Western Social Science Congress in Chicago, the ratio of divorce is
one in every _eight_ marriages. We were told by a distinguished New
England convert that the Vermont marriage law was practically so lax that
the following “cause” for a divorce was considered legal: A couple, not
very long married, mutually wished for a separation, simply on the score
that they were dissatisfied with their bargain. They went to a lawyer to
ascertain the technicalities of the case, and were told—appearances having
to be saved!—that some specific cause must be alleged. The easiest was
cruelty. But the parties had never been violent; so the lawyer suggested
that the husband should, in his presence, give his wife a “blow.” This was
soon accomplished by a light slap on the cheek of the willing “victim”;
cruelty was pleaded, and the divorce obtained.
In Rhode Island, the proportion of divorces to marriages in 1869 was one
to fourteen, and the law of that state leaves it practically to the
discretion of the courts to annul any ill‐assorted marriage on the ground
of uncongenial temper, desertion, drunkenness, or any sort of bad conduct.
In that year, out of 166 divorces, only 66 were granted on the plea of
adultery, while it must also be borne in mind that this grave charge is
often unjustly and maliciously made to cover some shameful behavior on the
part of the plaintiff, or to gratify his or her revenge. Speaking of a
clergyman who was reported to have married one man successively to five
wives, all of whom were living at the same time, a Protestant paper
comments thus on the story: “It may be true or false. _It is not
altogether improbable._ It suggests very serious reflections, as
indicating what is possible under our laws, and the course things are
taking in American society.” The paper goes on to speak of the clergyman’s
responsibility in such a case, and although advocating the desirability,
“for many reasons,” of the office of solemnizing marriage being “confined
_almost entirely_ to ministers of the Gospel,” does not see that it
stultifies itself directly after by explaining that “the trust is reposed
in them, _not by any right to it on their part, as holding an
ecclesiastical office_, but on account of their position and general
character(!). They are able to guard marriage, and _give it_ a religious
character and sanction. But they act, so far as the law goes, simply as
civil magistrates.”
And let us add that here is precisely the evil, and that as long as
clergymen are lowered to the level of magistrates, loose morals will never
be uprooted.
The _Nation_ of March 2, 1871, has the following:
“We cut from the marriage notices of the _Philadelphia Press_ the
following illustration, omitting names, of the way in which
attempts to reduce human marriages to the level of those of the
lower animals are dressed up in fine language:
“ ‘In Philadelphia, February 23, S—— and S——, the parties
protesting against all marriage laws, whether legal or
conventional, which subject either the wife or the husband to any
control or influence on the part of the other which is not in
accordance with the dictates of pure and mutual love.’
“This is, of course, simple ‘pairing.’ Marriage means the
assumption by a moral agent of an obligation to perform certain
duties, even after they become disagreeable. The arrangement by
which the parties live together as long as they find it thoroughly
pleasant is that common among birds, beasts, and fishes, and has
nothing human about it.”
The _Independent_, a Protestant religious paper, sneers at all barriers to
divorce, Catholic, Protestant, or civil, as “shallow,” and declares that
“no matter with what solemn ceremony the twain may have been made one, yet
when love departs, then _marriage ceases_ and divorce begins.”
A certain unhappy section of those waifs of womanhood, the advocates of
woman’s rights, is known as the champion of “free‐love,” that is, in plain
words, adultery. Mrs. Stanton, one of the leaders, has said somewhere that
“marriage is but a partnership contract terminable at the will of the
parties,” and has advocated marriages for three years.
To this last proposition we have only one objection. Why _three_ years? If
a marriage is based on mere passion, three _months_ or six at the furthest
would be enough to exhaust the cohesive element, for if the adage be true
that “_no man is a hero to his valet_,” it is equally certain that no man
and woman could by any human possibility live together for that time in
the familiar intercourse implied by marriage, without discovering to each
other certain asperities of temper, inequalities of disposition, in short,
all the little meannesses of our poor human nature. This disenchantment,
following the close and daily companionship that is almost inevitable in
married life, is enough to kill passion, though it cannot even daunt
principle. Again, in a marriage based on passion, the satiety that follows
in the train of unlawful love would be reproduced, and would break up the
connection in far less than three years. In fact, when we come to sift the
question, we find that, putting aside the religious spirit presiding over
marriage, that state of life has no appreciable sign to distinguish it
from the score of illicit connections punished by law or branded by
society. We find here almost a parallel to the question lately agitated in
England among Episcopalians, as to the reason why the Church of England
should be called a “church,” and not, like all other independent
Protestant bodies, a “sect.” We ask, What is to distinguish such a
“marriage” as our modern reformers advocate from the “_liaisons_” at which
society pretends to be so virtuously shocked? Where is the intrinsic
difference between a woman who sells her honor to many men at once and one
who surrenders it to a single man at a time for just that period during
which pleasure shall keep her constant to him?
Another form of attack upon the sanctity of marriage is the trade of the
great journals in daily advertisements such as these, which meet our eyes
every morning:
“Absolute divorces legally obtained in different states.
Desertion, etc., sufficient cause. No publicity. No charge until
divorce is obtained. Advice free.
——, _Attorney_, —— Broadway.”
Or, with slight variations, thus:
“Also Commissioner for every State.
——, _Counsellor‐at‐Law_,
—— Broadway.”
Here we see the press and the law conspiring to lend aid—and, more than
that, encouragement—to the loosest and most devastating of passions. Then,
again, the tone of the newspapers with regard to moral irregularities is a
painful sign of the times. Thus we read in a great “daily”:
“Out West they call divorces ‘escapes.’ A speedy and safe ‘escape’
is guaranteed for a very low figure, and, _as usual_, a great many
parties figure for it.”
There is a levity about such remarks that is saddening, when taken in
connection with the future of a great people.
The morbid curiosity of the public is thus excited under the convenient
plea of satisfying it, while, with regard to the institution of marriage
itself, the saying is exemplified, “Give a dog a bad name, and then shoot
him.” Marriage is ridiculed, conjugal affection put down as antiquated,
home‐lovingness pitied as old‐fashioned, family reunions voted dull, and,
as a natural consequence, youth is more or less alienated from the
unfashionable circle. It is easy, then, to turn on marriage as a
principle, remove the stumbling‐block altogether, paint in seductive
colors a substitute for home, and familiarize the public with so‐called
legal but transient unions. Once this principle is established in the
abstract, it will be merely a question of time as to its practical
extension. Granted that a man or woman may change companions as often as
they choose, who is to regulate _how_ often? Like the husband of
Scheherazade in the _Arabian Nights_, every day? Why not? Again, if one
man may have many “wives,” why should not a woman have many “husbands”?
And so on _ad infinitum_ the license might spread unchecked, till there
would be as many conflicting interpretations of marriage as there are
already of the Bible. Absolute communism would be quite a logical
sequence, and, in a society so utterly confused as to parentage, there
could be little question as to inheritance!
Christian marriage, on the contrary, has both a social and a sanitary, as
well as a religious aspect. It creates a strong and healthy race, and at
the very outset of each man’s career gives him a position by investing him
with a responsibility. He feels that the pride which his old father and
mother have in him must not be shamed; that the honor of his family is
bound up in his actions; and that his behavior may influence for good or
for evil both the moral and temporal prospects of his near kindred. A man
so weighted feels a just pride, which, in default of higher motives, may
even yet guide him into greatness; and though such a man may yield to
temptation, fall into vice, and disgrace himself, so much at least of his
early training will survive as to make him feel keenly the shame of his
position. This alone has saved hundreds. It has been the serpent in the
wilderness to many, but it would no longer be an imaginable motive were
the ideal of Christian marriage, with its attendant responsibilities, to
be swept away. There is another aspect under which the frequency of
divorce and the condoned irregularities of intercourse between the sexes
are a constant threat to public security—we mean in provoking murder.
Three parts of the fearful murders committed in New York, and also in many
other parts of the Union, are traceable more or less to ill‐assorted
marriages and a spirit of unchristian rebellion against lawful restraints.
Lately there has been a glaring case in point, the details of which are
fresh in the memory of every one. A man is deliberately shot dead on the
very threshold of what is practically a “Divorce Court”; the murderer is a
brutal husband incensed at the victim’s testimony against himself. In
1872, three of the most famous New York “characters” figured in a terrible
drama ending in death, imprisonment, and disgrace. What was the reason
that set two of the most unscrupulous speculators in the world at deadly
enmity? The disputed favor of a woman who, according to the new code, only
asserts her rights, and claims to change “husbands” as often as she
pleases. God help the age and nation in which such things are daily done,
and where animal passion laughs in the teeth of law! Who does not see how
every right and security hangs by the sanctity of marriage? Marriage, in
the proper sense of the word, implies exclusive and permanent possession,
and represents the first and greatest right of property. If that property
is to be made movable, salable, _takable_, in a word, why not other less
sacred and less valuable property also? “Property is theft,” say the
socialists, and certainly it is, if we can previously agree to consider
marriage so. If all kinds of possessions (life itself included) are to be
thus transferable, every individual will be reduced to protect them
single‐handed against the world, and from this state of things will grow a
monster system of organized murder and legalized rapine. The early
Californian society would be nothing to this imaginary community.
In France, Italy, and Spain, the infamous laws not only encouraging but
actually enforcing _civil_ marriage are sapping the foundations of
society; and in England, a country hitherto held as a model for its
conjugal and homely tendencies, the tenets of “free‐love” are making giant
inroads into social life, and leavening the mass of everyday literature.
Bigamy and divorce are almost worn‐out sensations; they have supplied the
ablest pens with thrilling subjects, and have furnished the best theatres
with the only dramas that really “take.” Something new and more monstrous
yet is needed, and the prurient imagination that shall first succeed in
originating a new version of social sin will become the power of the
moment.
Such is the present situation. We do not know if there ever has been a
worse stage of immorality, except, perhaps, that before the Flood; for at
all times of unparalleled license there have been some extenuating
circumstances, of which we are afraid we must own ourselves bereft. In the
beginning of the Christian era, license was confined to pagans; for in the
tottering Roman Empire the Christians were all soldiers of the cross, and
their watch for the Bridegroom was too eager to allow them time for
temptation; in the transition state that followed, the church’s power
already made itself felt, and though barbarian kings still defied their
pastors, the latter had at hand ecclesiastical terrors that seldom failed
in the end to subdue the half‐converted Goth or Lombard. In the days of
the ill‐starred Renaissance, when a spirit of neo‐classicism threatened
once more to deify sin under the garb of art, the Council of Trent sat in
solemn judgment, and condemned abuses which had unhappily paved an easy
way for heresy: while later on, even in the days of the wicked and
brilliant court of Versailles, there was found a Bourdaloue to rebuke the
public sinners who sat in the high places, and to eulogize Christian
marriage in the midst of a gathering which seemed to have utterly
forgotten its meaning.
Faith still lingered—the faith that made the middle ages what they
were—that faith that condemned public sin to as public a penance, and out
of great excesses drew great examples. Louise de la Vallière was almost
the last representative of this mediæval spirit of generous atonement; and
her heroic words, when told in her cloister of the death of her son, “I
should weep rather for his birth than for his death,” were the genuine
outcome of a faith that could restore a prostitute to innocence, and place
upon a once guilty brow almost a virgin’s crown.
With Voltaire, the work that Luther had begun was perfected, and
henceforth it was not Europe that believed, but only a few scattered
exiles who here and there kept the lamp of the faith dimly alight in the
stifling atmosphere of universal and fashionable doubt. Even among
believers the spirit of ready sympathy, with the slightest indication of
the church’s unspoken meaning was gone, and there remained only the too
self‐conscious effort of unquestioning loyalty. Still, thank God! it did
and does remain, and, though shorn of all poetry, it is none the less
vigorous in self‐defence. But we may now say that indeed the flood has
broken loose, the Philistines are upon us, the whole array of the world’s
newest forces is brought to bear against us, and behind her dismantled
outposts the church retreats to her citadel, the naked Rock of Peter. Men
say that the Council of the Vatican was inopportune, presumptuous, and
imprudent; let the world’s gracefully lapsing course be a living
refutation to such words. Every outward stay is gone; every difficulty in
the way of the reunion of pastors is trebled; every see is hedged about
with physical bars that are insurmountable; nothing remains free but what
cannot be fettered—the tongue. Who can wonder if the church, in this dire
emergency, delegates to one man the power she can no longer collectively
exercise in peace? As in old Flemish cities there sits up in the lonely
belfry of the cathedral a watcher whose duty it is to guard the city
against fire, and to warn the people through a brazen trumpet at which
spot he descries the first appearance of danger, so in the heart of the
City of God there sits now the watchman whose eye and voice are bound to
raise the alarm and direct the remedies through the length and breadth of
listening Christendom.
The Council of the Vatican has made the word of the Pope the brazen
_tocsin_ of the Christian world.
And now, having said so much of the possibilities opened up by the present
lax spirit in morals and equally lax interpretation of what remains in the
shape of legal restraints upon vice, let us speak of what Christian
marriage ought to be. We will be brief, for the position almost defines
itself. Of the indissolubility of marriage under all circumstances, even
in the case of one of the parties breaking the marriage vow, we will not
speak, nor even of the fidelity which marriage requires in every thought
and slightest intention. But we would insist upon that which ensures a
happy and holy union, namely, the preliminary motive. We have seen how bad
marriages and an unworthy idea of this state of life lead to shame, to
socialism, to violence, sometimes to a criminal ending in a common jail;
let us see now what leads to bad marriages themselves. Two motives there
are—one mercenary, and one sensual. We heard a very impressive Jesuit
preacher say a few years ago, in the pulpit of one of the most beautiful
and frequented churches in London, that to make a good marriage _both_
prayer _and_ seemly preparation are necessary. Some parents, he said, in
their pious anxiety to leave all things to Providence, and to avoid that
solicitude for worldly things which the Gospel condemns, neglect to avail
themselves for their children of the allowable means and legitimate
opportunities of social life; but to these he would say, Remember the
words of Christ: “Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter
into the kingdom of heaven.”(238) On the other hand, many parents sinned
far more grievously and—he was loth to say it—more frequently by
altogether leaving the Creator out of the question in the serious matter
of their children’s settlement in life. Which of these two extremes is the
prominent one in this country? We need not answer the question. We know
too well how nine‐tenths of those marriages are made which within a few
months or years are broken in the divorce courts, or otherwise dissolved
by a shameful _esclandre_. We know how wealth especially, position,
associations, beauty, and accomplishments all rank before moral worth in
what is called lightly but too truly the “marriage‐market.” We know how
marriage is looked forward to through girlhood, not as the assumption of a
sacred responsibility, but as the preliminary step to emancipation; we
know how it is heartlessly canvassed by men as an expensive but
advantageous luxury, its cost being in proportion to the social figure it
will enable them to make, but its essence of no deeper moral account to
them than the purchase of one trotter or the undertaking of one
speculation more or less. We do not say that there are no exceptions to
this rule—far from it; but that is just the point: however honorable these
cases are, the fact still remains that they _are_ exceptions. Again, where
the motive is not directly mercenary, it is often selfish; old men will
marry for mere comfort, physical luxury, and the regularity of a well‐
appointed home—things which the presence of a handsome, thoughtful, and
tolerably intellectual woman alone can ensure; women no longer young, but
still hungering for the whirl of fashion, will marry unsuitably for the
sake of an assured position and means to continue the frivolous course of
their former lives; in fact, all shallow disguises of selfishness have
their representatives in the “marriage‐market,” from that of the
millionaire who wants a wife to sit at the head of his table and wear his
diamonds, to that of the day‐laborer who wants one to cook his dinner,
mend his clothes, and eke out his week’s earnings by her own hard work.
Marriages made in this spirit are unblest and always end badly: the
millionaire will divorce his wife, and the laborer murder his in a fit of
intoxication; the end is the same, the means differ only according as
natural temperament and habits of education diverge.
How far otherwise with marriage in the true Scriptural, Christian sense of
the word! In poverty or in riches, alike sacred and full of dignity;
always conscious of its sacramental crown; ever mindful of its holy
ministry, the salvation of two souls, the ladder to heaven of two lives
that without it might have made shipwreck of their eternal interests! A
thing apart from the common unions of earth, different from a commercial
partnership, stronger than a political coalition, holier than even a
spontaneous friendship. A thing which, like the riddle of Samson, is
“sweetness out of strength,” and whose grace is so sublime that in heaven
it can only find one transformation worthy of itself. “You err, not
knowing the power of God; for in the resurrection they shall neither marry
nor be married; but shall be as the angels of God in heaven.”(239) We are
not told that the tie will be like brotherhood or like friendship; we are
left to infer that between husband and wife some more peculiar link will
exist hereafter than will be common to us all as children of the same
Father, and it is plainly foretold that this relation will be as that of
the angels towards each other.
We have only to look into the gospels and the teachings of the Apostle of
the Gentiles to see by what means we may in the married state so sanctify
our lives as to deserve this heavenly transformation; we have only to read
the marriage‐service to learn the plain, straightforward, but most solemn
duties, the performance of which will secure us spiritual peace and joy in
this life or the next. To use the sacrament worthily, we must come to it
with worthy preparation and steadfast intention, first as Christians
resolved never to perjure themselves before God, then as rational beings
willing to abide by whatever unforeseen consequences their deliberate vow
may entail in the future. For it is an idle pretext to allege that, if one
party breaks the engagement, the other is _de facto_ absolved from it.
Where in the formula, Catholic or Protestant, is this proviso? The only
qualifying sentence is this, “Until death do us part.” How, then, can any
reasonable person interpret “death” to mean sin, incompatibility, or any
other incidental unpleasantness? We think that those who are so ready to
foist unwarrantable meanings on the plain and naked oath they have sworn
in full possession of their senses at the altar, would hardly be the
persons we should like to trust as men or women of unimpeachable honor in
the ordinary transactions of life.
If mercenary motives are uppermost in the majority of marriages in this
age and in this nation, sensuality is none the less responsible for a
share of the misery attendant upon modern unions. We have already spoken
of the evil of marriages founded on passion, and of the shameful way in
which the colloquial adage, “Marry in haste, and repent at leisure,” is
thus frequently illustrated. To this also the remedy lies in a serious
Christian spirit of preparation for marriage. The root of all evil
developments in the relations between the sexes lies in the early
education of the contracting parties, and it is here that the only radical
cure can be tried. The church bids her children be especially circumspect
at the juncture of marriage, but she also teaches them to reverence the
sacrament from childhood upward as a type of the union between herself and
her divine Spouse. If, as children, marriage appears to us in the shape of
the angel of home, watching over the existence it has created, and
dignifying the parental authority it has built up; if in youth the goal of
marriage is looked forward to as the _toga virilis_ of life, the reward of
a dutiful childhood, the ennobling badge of our enrolment among the
soldiers of the cross, then and only then will our country find in us
efficient citizens, earnest patriots, and reliable defenders. If among men
there is revived the chivalrous spirit of deference and forbearance
towards women which sealed the middle ages as a charmed cycle among all
divisions of time, and among women there is cultivated that generous and
true womanliness which made SS. Monica and Paula, and Blanche of Castille,
the typical heroines of the wedded state, then may we expect to see “a new
heaven and a new earth.” Marriage means reverence for each other on the
part of the persons married, as representing in themselves the sacrament
typical of Christ’s union with the church; it means reverence for the
children who are entrusted to their care by God and their country, and
whom they are bound by the solemn adjuration of Christ not to scandalize;
it means reverence for themselves, as the tabernacles of a special grace
and the progenitors of new worshippers at God’s feet, new subjects of the
kingdom of heaven. It is the woman especially who is bound to feel and
express this reverence, for woman is, as the French poetically say, the
priestess of the ideal. Besides, the highest perfection ever reached in
the married state was reached by a woman, the Blessed Virgin, Mother of
God. Among married saints there have always been more women canonized than
men. The women of a nation form the men; and, if marriage is to be
reformed, it must be done first through the women. We hope and pray that
it may soon be so, but we fear that outside the church, where the reform
is, in the abstract, not needed, there is not sufficient impetus to ensure
its being made. We say in the abstract, because practically there are many
marriages made among Catholics, celebrated in Catholic churches, and
decorously observed through the course of a blameless life, which yet call
loudly for reform, and sadly lack the noble Christian spirit that made
perfect the unions of Delphina and Eleazar, and of S. Louis of France and
Margaret of Provence. But however deficient in some cases our practice may
unhappily be, our doctrine remains ever unchanged, and our laws ever
inflexible. Thanks to the church, marriage is still recognized as an act
not purely animal nor yet purely civil; and, thanks to the infallibility
of the church and her calm expectancy of eternal duration, it will remain
to the end of time an honored institution. If threatened, it will still
live; if derided, it will nevertheless conquer. Christian marriage is the
mould in which God has chosen to throw the lava of natural passion, and
without whose wholesome restraints we should have a shapeless torrent of
licentiousness, scathing mankind with its poisonous breath, carrying away
all landmarks of ancestry, property, and personal safety, and finally
exterminating the human race long before the appointed time for the dread
judgment in the Valley of Josaphat.
A Pearl Ashore.
By The Author Of “The House Of Yorke.”
If one should wish to enjoy perfectly a fugue of Bach’s, this is perhaps
as good a way as any: listen to it on a warm afternoon, in a Gothic
Protestant church, in a quiet city street, with no one present but the
organist and one’s self. If any other enter, let him be velvet‐footed,
incurious, and sympathetic. It would be better if each listener could
suppose himself to be the only listener there.
The wood‐work of the church is dark, glossy, and richly carved. Rose,
purple, and gold‐colored panes strain the light that enters, full and
glowing up in the roof, but dim below. On the walls, tinted with such
colors as come to us from Eastern looms, and on the canvas of the old
painters, are texts in letters of dull gold—those beautiful letters that
break into bud and blossom at every turn, as though alive and rejoicing
over the divine thought they bear. A sunbeam here and there, too slender
to illumine widely, points its finger at a word, touches a dark cushion
and brings out its shadowed crimson, or glimmers across the organ pipes,
binding their silver with gold, as though Light would say to Song, “With
this ring I thee wed!”
Those clustered, silvery pipes are surrounded by a border of dark, lace‐
like carving, and a screen of the same hides the keyboards. Through this
screen shines the lamp on the music‐desk. Some one is stirring there. You
lean back on the cushions, so that the body can take care of itself.
Mentally, you are quiescent with a delightful sense of anticipation. If
the situation should represent itself to you fancifully, you might say
that your soul is somewhat dusty and weary, and has come down to this
beach of silence for a refreshing bath. Knowing what you are to hear,
watery images suggest themselves; for in the world of music it is the
ocean that Bach gives us, as Beethoven gives us the winds, and Handel the
stately‐flowing streams.
We have made a Protestant church our music‐hall, because, though not the
dwelling‐place of God on earth, it is often the temple of religious art,
and, having nothing within it to which we can prostrate ourselves in
adoration, it can yet, by signs and images, excite noble and religious
feeling. Indeed, we would gladly banish to such concert‐rooms all that
music, however beautiful in itself, which intrudes on the exclusive
recollection proper to the house of God.
This, we repeat, is as good a way as any to hear a fugue of John Sebastian
Bach’s. So also thought Miss Rothsay; and she was one who ought to know,
for she was a professional singer, and as sensitive musically as well
could be.
It was an afternoon in early September, and she had only the day before
reached her native city, after a prolonged residence abroad. Hers had been
that happy lot which seems to be the privilege of the artist: her work,
her duty, and her delight were the same. That which she must and ought to
do she would have chosen above all things as her recreation. Now, with a
perfected voice, and a will to use truly and nobly that gracious power,
she had returned to her native land.
Her first contact with the New World had given her a slight jar. Utility
seemed to mean here something rough and harsh, and the utility of beauty
to be almost unrecognized. She had as yet met with only two kinds of
people: those who regarded her talent as beautiful indeed and useful, in
so far as it brought her money, but otherwise superfluous; and that yet
more depressing class who were enthusiastic in hailing a new amusement, a
new sensation, and who valued the singer as a necessity to elegant
dissipation. As yet, she had met with no serious disciple of music.
Yet, when she stepped from her door to walk about, to renew her knowledge
of familiar scenes, and make acquaintance with changed ones, she was
pleased to perceive some of that tranquillity which, in her foreign life,
had been so conducive to a steady growth in art. The fine streets she
traversed were quiet, distant from the business world, and out of its
track. The September air was golden, and the sun so warm as to make the
shade welcome. Here and there, through openings between the houses, or at
the ends of long avenues, were to be seen glimpses of country; and a thin
haze, so exquisite that it might be the cast‐off mantle of Beauty herself,
half veiled, while it embellished, the landscape. It was quite in keeping
to see an open church door. One who loitered on the steps explained that
there was to be an organ recital, but could not say who the organist was
to be.
Miss Rothsay entered, scarcely seeing her way at first, seated herself,
and looked about. The atmosphere of the place suited her taste. None but
noble and sacred images presented themselves. Art was there in its
sublimity, and in its naïve simplicity. Here was a form full of austere
beauty, there one whose grace verged on playfulness. The scene had the
effect of a sacred picture, in the corner of which one can see children
playing or birds on the wing.
Miss Rothsay, without knowing it, made, herself, a lovely picture in the
place. Her oval, pale face was lighted by liquid gray eyes, now lifted,
and drinking in the upper light. On her fair hair was set a foreign‐
looking black hat, turned up over the left temple with an _aigrette_ and
feather. A slight and elegant figure could be perceived beneath the dark‐
blue mantle.
Wondering a little, while she waited, who the organist might be, she ran
over in her mind those she had known before going abroad. From that,
dismissing the present, her thoughts glanced over those she had known
abroad, and at last rested on one she had not seen nor heard of for eight
years. Eight years before, Laurie had gone to Germany to study, and he was
probably there yet. She recollected his face, more youthful than his
years, and full of a dreamy beauty; the figure, tall and graceful, yet
wanting somewhat in manly firmness. She heard again, in fancy, that
changeful voice, so low, eager, and rich‐toned when he was in earnest; she
met again the glance of his sparkling blue eyes, full of frankness and
enthusiasm. Where was he now?
Had he been a common acquaintance, she would have inquired concerning him
freely; but he was a rejected lover, and she would not, by mentioning his
name, remind people of that fact. Why had she rejected him? Simply because
he had seemed to her not to reach her ideal. It had occurred to her since
that time that possibly his manner and not his character had been at
fault. At twenty years of age, she had been more mature than he at twenty‐
five. She liked an appearance of dignity and firmness, and had made the
mistake often made by those older and wiser than herself, of thinking that
dignity of soul must always be accompanied by a grave manner, and that an
air occasionally or habitually demonstrative and variable, which is merely
temperament, indicates a fickle or superficial mind. Sometimes, indeed,
the strongest and most profound feelings, in reserved and sensitive
persons, seek to veil themselves under an affectation of lightness or
caprice, and the soul looks forth with a sad scorn through that flimsy
mask on the hasty and egotistical judge who pronounces sentence against
it.
“And you must love him, ere to you
He will seem worthy of your love,”
is true of some of the finest natures.
Miss Rothsay, during these eight years of her separation from Laurie, had
more than once felt a misgiving on his account, lest she had done him
injustice. Observing and studying the manners of those she met, she saw
that what passed for dignity was sometimes only the distrustfulness of the
suspicious, the caution of the worldly‐wise, the unsympathizing coldness
of the selfish, or the vanity of the conceited. She had lost not only her
admiration, but her respect for that unchangeable loftiness which chills
and awes the demonstrative into silence; and she had remembered, with a
growing regret, Laurie’s cordial ways, that seemed to expect friendliness
and sympathy from all, and to appreciate the purity of his soul, that
never looked for evil, and turned away from it when it intruded itself,
and thus seemed scarcely aware that evil existed. Still she had been too
deeply engrossed in her studies to give him much thought, and it was only
now that she became conscious of regret.
Meantime, the organist had taken his place, and was arranging his music.
The light of the lamp shone on a face wherein were exquisitely blended
strength and refinement. One could see there passion purified by prayer,
and enthusiasm too deep for trivial excitement. The face showed, too, when
studied, that tranquil reserve, not without sadness, which is learned by
those who have too often cast their pearls before swine, yet who do not
despair of finding sympathy.
He placed the music, sat an instant in fixed recollection, as though he
prayed, then lifted his tapering hands, so nervous, light, and powerful,
and let them fall on the keys. To the listener beyond the screen, it was
as though her reverie had been broken by a burst of thunder. Then the sea
rolled in its waves of sound, strong, steady, a long, overlapping rhythm.
What did it mean, that fugue? Did it symbolize the swift‐coming assaults
of evil that seek to drag the race of man downward, as the persistent sea
eats away, grain by grain, the continents? Was it, perhaps, the ceaseless
endeavor of the faithful will that, baffled once, returns ever to the
charge, and dies triumphantly struggling? Did it indicate the generations
of men flowing on in waves for ever, to break at the feet of God; or the
hurrying centuries, cut short, at last, by eternity? However it might be
interpreted, the music lifted and bore the listener on, and the silence
that followed found her otherwhere than the last silence had left her. She
was the same in nature, but her mood was higher; for music does not change
the listener, it merely intensifies what is positive in his nature,
whether it be good or bad, to its superlative degree.
Vibrating and breathless still with the emotion caused by that grand
composition so grandly rendered, Miss Rothsay perceived a slip of paper on
the cushion, and reached her hand for it. It proved to be a programme of
the Recital. She glanced along the list, and read the name of the organist
at the end—it was Duncan Laurie!
She heard, as in a dream, the soft‐toned Vorspiele that followed, and only
came back to music when the third number, a toccata, began. But the music
had now to her a new meaning. It seemed to triumph over and scorn her. She
heard through that melodious thunder the voice of Nemesis.
But when the closing piece, a noble concerto by Handel, sang out, it
reproved that fancy of hers. There was no spirit of revenge nor mean
triumph in Laurie’s nature.
The audience, small and select, went out quietly. The organist closed the
instrument, and prepared to follow, yet waited a moment to recover full
consciousness of the everyday world he was going to meet. The air seemed
to pulse about him still, and wings of flying melodies to brush his face.
Never had he felt less inclined to meet idle compliment or talk
commonplace. “I hope no one will wait for me,” he muttered, going out into
the vestibule.
But some one was waiting, a pale‐faced, lovely woman, who looked at him,
but spoke not a word. The look, too, was short; for when he exclaimed and
reddened up to the eyes, and held out a trembling hand, her eyes dropped.
There is a commonplace which is but the veil to glory or delight, like
Minerva in her russet gown. The conventional questions that Laurie
properly asked of the lady, as they walked on together, were of this sort.
When did she come home? was as one should say, When did Joy arrive? When
do the stars come? And the steamer that brought her could be as worthy of
poetical contemplation as the cloud that wrapped a descending Juno, or the
eagle that bore away a Ganymede.
Not long after, when some one asked them who was their favorite composer,
each answered “Bach!” and, when alone together, each asked the other the
reason for that answer.
“Because,” said the lady, blushing, “it was on the waves of one of Bach’s
fugues that I reached the Happy Islands.”
“And because,” returned the lover, “when some of Bach’s music had rolled
back into the ocean, it left a pearl ashore for me.”
The Benefits Of Italian Unity.
From The Etudes Religieuses.
Revolution is a dangerous syren. The nations of the earth have yielded to
her seductions, but the day is coming when with one voice they will curse
the great enchantress who has lured them on to apostasy. For a century she
has not ceased to announce an era of prosperity to the rising generation,
but at length we see her promises are as deceptive as her principles are
corrupt. From the heart of all nations rise up groans and maledictions
against her teachings, and against her agents who have betrayed the hopes
of their partisans, brought death instead of life, ruin instead of
prosperity, and dishonor instead of glory. In a word, revolution is in a
state of bankruptcy. This is not acknowledged by the politicians of the
_tiers‐parti_ and their followers. They still continue to proclaim the
sovereignty of the “immortal principles,” declare revolution a success,
celebrate its material and moral benefits, and boast that “real social
justice was _for the first time_ rendered in 1789”—after eighteen
centuries of Christianity! But people are ceasing to be duped by any such
political sophisms; they are beginning to regret profoundly the peace,
order, and security, and all the benefits assured to the world by the
supremacy of religion, and lost through social apostasy. The wisest of
politicians are tired of revolutions. People who have lost their sacred
heritage, and find themselves deprived of the highest blessings of life,
are beginning to remember their baptismal engagements, and to feel the
necessity of putting an end to revolution, and returning to the social
order established of God. The prodigal son, famished with hunger, makes an
energetic resolution: _Surgam et ibo ad patrem!_ Hesitation is no longer
possible. Weary of your modern theories, we will return to our Father’s
house—to Christ and his church!
The man who comprehended most thoroughly the Satanic nature of the
revolutionary spirit—Count Joseph de Maistre—had an intuitive assurance of
the calamities that would avenge the disregard of the laws of order, and
lead future generations back to the sacred principles of their ancestors.
The foresight and warnings of this eminent writer are well known.
Addressing the French, he says: “Undeceive yourselves, at length, as to
the lamentable theories that have disgraced our age. You have already
found out what the promulgators of these deplorable dogmas are, but the
impression they have left is not yet effaced. In all your plans of
creation and restoration you only leave out God, from whom they have
alienated you.... How has God punished this execrable delirium? He has
punished it as he created light—by a single word—_Fiat!_—and the political
world has crumbled to atoms.... If any one wishes to know the probable
result of the revolution, they need only examine the point whereon all its
factions are united. They all desire the degradation, yea, the utter
subversion, not only of the monarchy, but of Christianity; _whence it
follows_ that all their efforts must finally end in the triumph of
Christianity as well as the monarchy.”(240) In these few words the great
philosopher gives us a complete history of the era of revolution in the
past as well as the future. He declares it a widespread overturning of
order, necessarily followed by terrible misfortunes, till a counter‐stroke
turns the nations back to the way appointed by God.(241)
While M. de Maistre was regarding the progress of events from the heights
of his genius, he gave the most minute attention to the ravages of the
revolutionary spirit in every department. In the _Mélanges Inédits_, for
which we are indebted to Count Joseph’s grandson, and which appeared on
the very eve of our great disasters (1870), we find more than a hundred
pages devoted to reviewing the _benefits_ of the French Revolution. They
contain an inventory drawn up by the aid of the republican papers of the
time, in which the moral and material results of revolutionary barbarism
are attested by the avowal of the barbarians themselves. A certain
historian of the Revolution would have done well to examine this catalogue
before officially undertaking, in the presence of the National Assembly,
the awkward apology so generally known. And what if he had continued to
verify the benefits of the revolutionary syren, still beloved of certain
politicians, till the end of the year 1872? How glorious would be the
balance‐sheet of the “immortal principles” in the eighty‐fourth year of
their reign! Every Frenchman knows what it has cost to be the eldest son
of the Revolution!—As statistics are held in such high honor in our day,
why not draw up the accounts of ’89, and establish clearly the active and
passive of the revolutionary spirit now spreading throughout the world?
We lay before our readers some notes that may be of service in this vast
liquidation, taken from two valuable works that have been kindly brought
to our notice.(242) We do not feel at liberty to designate the eminent
person who wrote these _Notes_, which, if we are rightly informed, were
first published in the _Messager Russe_. All we feel permitted to state is
that we can place full confidence in the probity of this traveller. He
belongs to the diplomatic corps, but unfortunately is not of the Catholic
religion. We will let him testify for himself. It will at once be seen by
the frequent quotations we shall make that he is a man of superior mind,
decision and honesty of character, and of an upright and incorruptible
conscience.
“Eleven years ago, I witnessed the foundation of the kingdom of Italy. I
have just seen the work completed—the edifice crowned—Rome made the
capital.—My observations have been made in person, and are impartial, as I
had no preconceived opinions. My numerous quotations are taken in a great
measure from Italian sources, nay, even _the most Italian_. My position as
an independent observer, unbiassed by any feeling of responsibility,
enables me to judge events in a cooler manner than might be done by an
opponent of the various publicists that have treated of the successive
phases of the great Italian drama.”(243)
Here, then, is contemporaneous Italy studied by an observer of
incontestable impartiality—studied on the spot, and from authentic
sources. It is by no means uncommon to hear the correspondents of Catholic
journals accused of exaggeration. Certain newspapers under party
influence, like the _Journal des Débats_ and the _Indépendance Belge_, are
paid to divert public attention from facts that cannot be denied. We are
sure the Italo‐Parisian and the Italo‐Belgian press will not say a single
word about the _Etudes sur l’Italie contemporaine_.(244)
I.
How shall we characterize the Italian crisis as a whole? Is it merely one
of those accidental revolutions which history is full of, or is it a
genuine revolution with its systematic hatred of Christian society? Our
readers must not be astonished at such a question. I know some Catholics—a
little too liberal, it is true—who have not thereon, even in these times,
perfectly correct notions. We remember certain unfortunate expressions
respecting the governments of the _ancien régime_ which committed the
unpardonable fault of injuring Italian liberty, and even respecting that
venerable Christian administration that has been dragged through blood and
fire. Did not the honorable M. Dulaurier recently confess in an ingenuous
manner the illusions he was under before he set foot on Italian soil, and
how he believed in the possibility of a reconciliation between the Pope
and the excommunicated king? He says he heard on all sides a sentiment to
which he gave credence without much reflection: “Why interpose between the
two parties contending for Rome? Pius IX. and Victor Emmanuel are both
Italians: they will end by settling the difficulty, and we shall trouble
ourselves for nothing.” The reality, the sad reality, forces us to a
different opinion.
It was a beautiful illusion—once greatly dwelt upon in official papers—to
think Piedmont sincerely and uniquely preoccupied about the freedom of
Italy; to believe in the Subalpine posture of disinterested chivalry, and
in Napoleon III. going to war in a great cause merely for the glory of
being a liberator. Doubtless there was, for some time, a liberal party in
Italy dreaming at once of a confederacy and of national independence. But
Mazzinism and its ideas of unity prevailed, and it was manifest to those
whose eyes were not blinded that the Piedmontese government superseded
_Giovane Italia_ by taking advantage of the _naïveté_ of honest
liberals.(245) All sincere and upright minds must free themselves from so
illusive a deception. The mask has fallen off, so must the scales from
their eyes. The Italian movement is essentially revolutionary—or Satanic.
It is not one of those transformations so frequent in the political life
of a nation: it is a work of subversion, a war on the church, a religious
persecution, and “pure impurity,” to use Joseph de Maistre’s words.
It has been demonstrated quite recently in this magazine that the whole
tendency of the Italian Peninsula, and its providential destiny, are
opposed to unity; that the Revolution has done violence to nature and
religion, to the institutions and traditions of the past, and to the faith
and morals of the people weighed down by the yoke of unity; and that it
has lied to history, to the world, and to God. _Les Etudes sur l’Italie
contemporaine_ takes a similar view of the case:
“The unity of Italy was not a national necessity; ... the movement
was not spontaneous, but forced.... The Piedmontese government has
shown some shrewdness (unscrupulous shrewdness) in borrowing its
programme from Mazzini. The campaign of 1859 led the way to this
political intrigue. As to the nation, it imagined the promised
regeneration would produce a new era of happiness when the
foreigner was once got rid of. The masses have given in to the
ambition of the minority.
“In the transformation of Italy, we see action precede reflection;
we see what Frederick the Great said of Joseph II.—the second step
taken before the first.... It must be remembered that the
geography of Italy was one of the causes of its division, the
length being so disproportionate to its width, which prevented a
common centre, and led to separate developments and outlets....
Even if railways are now a means of greatly shortening distances,
the union of the remote parts ought to be the result of a natural
and progressive tendency—not revolutionary.
“The first idea of Rome as the capital sprang from the classics.
It was a rhetorical expression (according to Senator Stefano
Jacini).... If official Italy had need of Rome, Rome by no means
had need of Italy.... And what do they wish to do with Rome? The
unionists in favor of a monarchy wish to transform it into a
modern capital that it may become the centre of the general action
and influence which united Italy is ambitious of exercising in the
world. The Mazzinians, the socialist republicans, and the free‐
thinkers wish to make it the centre of the doctrines they are
desirous of substituting for Christianity. These new apostles are
not agreed among themselves, but they are all fighting in the
breach against the Catholic organization, and their real object is
the destruction of Christian principles.”(246)
To effect the unification of Italy, it was therefore necessary to conspire
against the natural inclinations of the inhabitants, against the rights of
local principalities, and against the real interests of the nation, to
conspire not only against the temporal, but the spiritual power of the
papacy. Where they do not find the normal conditions of assimilation, they
do not hesitate to resort to deeds worthy of brigands. Conspirators, alas!
have never been wanting in the country of Machiavelli. In the present age
they superabound. “It has been the misfortune of Italy—its robe of
Nessus—that for twelve years all who have succeeded to power, even the
best, have been conspirators.”(247) Yes; and foremost among them is the
_great_ and _good_ Cavour, whom a French diplomatist—an honest man,
however—has lately depicted, with an enthusiasm that has hardly died away,
as struggling to promote the greatness of his country.(248) We do not
dispute Cavour’s ability, or his perseverance in striving after a certain
end, or his subtleness and patience in the execution of his designs, or
his skill in availing himself of the very passions he pretended to yield
to. He succeeded—is it not a glorious title to fame?—in keeping Napoleon
III. in leading‐strings till a Prussian Cavour is found to continue the
_rôle_ and lead the emperor on to Sedan. But herein Cavour showed himself
crafty, deceitful, and—why should we not say it?—criminal. Has not M.
Guizot called a certain writer a “_malfaiteur de la pensée_?” Besides,
Cavour spoke of himself to his friends somewhat as we do. Our French
diplomatist, M. Henry d’Ideville, in a curious page of his _Notes
Intimes_, lets us into the secrets of the game and those who took part in
it.
“You see, my dear d’Ideville (it is Cavour who is speaking), your
emperor will never change. His fault is a disposition to be for
ever plotting.... With a country as powerful as yours, a large
army, and Europe at peace, what is he afraid of? Why is he for
ever disguising his intentions, going to the right when he means
to turn to the left, and _vice versa_? Ah! what a wonderful
conspirator he makes!”
M. d’Ideville is a man of wit. With all possible courtesy, he replied:
“But, M. le Comte, have you not been a daring conspirator also?”
“I? Certainly,” replied M. de Cavour. “I have conspired, and how
could I do otherwise at such a time?... We had to keep Austria in
the dark, whereas, your emperor, you may be sure, will remain for
ever incorrigible. I have known him a long time! To plot, for ever
plot, is the characteristic of his nature. It is the occupation he
prefers, and he pursues it like an artist—like a _dilettante_. In
this _rôle_ he will always be the foremost and most capable of us
all.”(249)
US ALL! Yes, there it is ably expressed in a word: all conspirators and
accomplices, not to speak of the dupes. On the 24th of March, 1860, M. de
Cavour, after signing the treaty that ceded Nice and Savoy to France,
approached M. de Talleyrand, and, rubbing his hands, whispered in his ear:
“We are accomplices now, baron, are we not?”(250) Alas! wrongfully
acquired, and never any benefit, we now see why we have lost Alsace and
Lorraine!
The entire route from Turin to Rome is marked by the deeds of these
conspirators, by their tricks and intrigues, and by their crimes and
double‐dealings, which have resulted in the profit of Piedmont and
Prussia, and the disgrace of our poor France. M. d’Ideville’s conscience
evidently reproached him at last for having liked Cavour so well, and for
imprudently interesting himself in the Italian scheme. The other
diplomatist, who has anonymously given his _Etudes sur l’Italie_ to the
public, seems never to have had the least sympathy with the iniquitous and
sacrilegious ambition of the Sardinian government. It is true he does not
belong to the French diplomacy infatuated with the ideas of ’89!(251) He
finds nothing seductive in the policy of the conspirators. The fiction
disguised under the attractive title of national rights, the age of
annexations, the trick of the plebiscites, the system of moral agency, the
so‐called exigencies of civilization and progress, and the revolutionary
messianism which constitutes the foundation of the Napoleonic ideas, have
no attraction for him. His style is tolerably forcible when he speaks of
all these stratagems: “Such tactics are nothing new. They have always been
resorted to in order to palliate schemes of ambition and hypocrisy.”(252)
II.
A government given to conspiracy condemns the nation that supports it, as
well as itself, to degradation—to moral and material ruin. If for a while
it flatters itself with the hope of systematizing the revolution and
directing its energies, it soon becomes its slave and finally its victim.
When the hand is caught in machinery, the whole body is soon drawn after
it, the head as well as the rest.
Our diplomatic traveller states some aphorisms in connection with this
subject that are full of significance, and reveal the genuine statesman.
“A government that owes its existence to a revolution is not
viable in the long run unless it has the power and wisdom to
sunder all the ties that connect it with the party to which it
owes its origin.
“Every government that has a similar origin to the Napoleonic
Empire, and, still more, one which owes its existence thereto,
will find itself in danger when traditionary principles once more
assert themselves for the safety of society.
“Governments of a revolutionary origin have been known to become
conservative and renounce their former principles of action. The
Italian government may likewise wish to do this, but it cannot.
“All who have risen to power in Italy have had some connection
with the revolutionary party, and are obliged to favor it. In
particular instances, they have sometimes manifested a certain
firmness towards its factions, but in essentials they have yielded
to the inevitable pressure.
“Revolution leads to disorder, and, when it triumphs, the destiny
of the country is thrown into the hands of its adherents.
Political bias must take the place of capacity and often of honor
itself.”(253)
One of the first material disasters produced by a triumphant conspiracy is
the squandering of the finances. There is an immediate necessity of
enriching itself, repairing all deficiencies, paying traitors, buying
consciences and votes, keeping a secret reserve of ready money to reward
the zeal of journalists, and stimulate or lull the passions according to
the exigencies of the moment. The wretched state of the budgets in United
Italy will become as proverbial as the _marchés_ of the 4th of September
in France. With all the domains Piedmont has received from the annexed
states, it ought to be rich—rich enough to pay the debt its accomplice,
the Empire, has bequeathed to us. The finances of the different states,
especially of Rome, were in perfect order, and, with the exception of the
kingdom of Sardinia, the receipts surpassed the expenses. Now the credit
of Italy is destroyed, and nothing is heard of but duties and taxes, such
as were unknown throughout the Peninsula in 1859, more particularly at
Rome. Figures are eloquent—we must refer to them:
“Previous to 1860, there were seven states in Italy, each with its
court, ministers, administration, and diplomatic corps. All these
governments expended about five hundred millions of francs a year,
and the imposts amounted to nearly the same sum. These seven
states had a debt of about two milliards and a half. At the
present time, without reckoning the interest on the floating debt
to the National Bank, Italy annually pays about three hundred
millions of interest, corresponding to a debt of seven milliards,
and all this notwithstanding the sale of domanial property
amounting to six hundred and fifty millions, notwithstanding the
alienation of the railways of the state and the manufacture of
tobacco, and notwithstanding the seizure of ecclesiastical
property, all of which have amounted _in nine years_ to nine
milliards three hundred and sixteen millions of francs received at
the state treasury. Nevertheless, the public debt amounts to the
aforesaid sum of seven milliards. And yet the army is badly
maintained, the navy poorly organized, and the administration in a
state of chaos and unparalleled demoralization.”(254)
And here is M. Quintino Sella, who has just made known the projected
budget for 1873; he acknowledges a deficit of sixty millions, as had been
anticipated, while the ordinary receipts amount to eight hundred and five
millions. If the kingdom of Italy were administered as economically as in
the time of the seven sovereigns, a budget of eight hundred and five
millions would leave a surplus of three hundred millions. And yet one of
the pretexts of unification was that it would save the expense of so many
courts, which bore hard on the people! Poor people! they know now what to
think of cheap governments, and will soon see that the ministration of the
imposts is leading to bankruptcy, in spite of the fresh confiscations and
appropriation of conventual property about to be made at Rome.(255)
And it must be remembered that, in spite of these great budgets, the army
is badly maintained and the navy poorly organized. Custozza and Lissa had
previously convinced us of this. Austria was well aware of it, and even
the France of M. Thiers suspects that, in spite of the valor of the old
Piedmontese soldiery, and the discipline of the Neapolitan army; in spite
of the aptitude of the Genoese and Venetian sailors, the military forces
of Italy are a mere illusion, particularly on account of the inefficiency
of the leaders of the army and navy. Since the time of M. de Cavour, whose
ability is by no means beyond doubt, there have been only second‐rate men
beyond the Alps—not a statesman, not an orator, not a minister, not a
financier, not a genuine soldier—everywhere and in everything there is the
same disgraceful deficiency. _Facundum sed male forte genus._
“I knew well the men of 1848, some of whom are still remaining,
but they must have degenerated through ambition and the necessity
of sustaining their position, for even in the revolutionary ranks
there was more elevation in 1848 than at the present time.
“Previous to 1860, the armies of the different states, including,
of course, the Piedmontese army, constituted a more powerful and
better organized force than is now under arms. ‘Our army,’ says
General La Marmora, ‘has the traditional reputation of being
disciplined, but it is demoralized by a want of stability in its
organization, and a lack of moral influences.’ La Marmora opposes
among other things the exclusion of chaplains and of the religious
element among the troops.
“The Sardinian and Neapolitan navies greatly surpassed the
Italian. The men were better drilled, and the shipping in better
order. Such is the opinion recently expressed by the English naval
officers in port at Naples who were at the exposition of the
present year.”(256)
And yet the military forces are the only remaining bulwark of order in
Italy—I mean material order, for moral order no longer exists anywhere.
The so‐called conservative party, that is to say, the moderate
revolutionists, rely on the army. But the ultra revolutionary element is
also to be found there, and some day the advanced party will, for its own
designs, entice away the officers that followed the hero of Caprera in his
campaigns. It will not be sufficient to name Cialdini, Cadorna, or even La
Marmora, to counteract the fatal consequences of Castelfidardo and the
Porta Pia. By excluding religious influences from the army, and giving it
a false idea of patriotism, the source of courage and energy is dried up.
After all, revolution will never be friendly to the army, and the genuine
soldier will always execrate revolution, whether instigated by princes,
citizens, or the mob. A soldier who entered Rome through the breach,
lately wrote to the _Libertà_: “The day the King of Italy is satisfied
with mere volunteers, as the Pope was, we shall see whether it is the Pope
or the king that is loved and esteemed the most by the Italian people.”
In opposing the system of territorial divisions on account of the army,
which he considers unsuited to the Peninsula, General La Marmora’s opinion
is founded on a proof that has the misfortune to prove too much. “If there
were small territorial armies,” says he, “in addition to separate
administrations in the various regions of Italy, the unity for which we
have done so much, and Providence still more than we, would incur great
danger.”(257) Why not boldly declare, general, that there are two
Italys—the _Reale_ and the _Legale_, one of which has a tendency to revolt
against the other? And, above all, why utter a blasphemy against the
sovereign providence of God?(258) _Italia legale_ labors in vain; the
revolutionary impulse given to it by Cavour is an accelerated movement; it
will never reascend the declivity that leads _al fondo_. It will always
have against it not only the betrayed interests and the revolted
conscience of _Italia reale_, but, above all, Divine Providence, who will
one day show that the favors and proofs of protection accorded to the
“regenerators” were merely for them, as for Napoleon III., the snares of
avenging justice. _In insidiis suis capientur iniqui._
“As to greatness and political importance, admitting even the
possibility of indefatigable and intelligent effort, Italy will
never equal the glorious traditions of its past history. Italian
glory is the glory of the different states of the Peninsula.... To
acquire fresh glory, there must be, besides unity, a strength of
organization it does not possess, and cannot, because it is a
mirage and not a reality.
“The North invades the South: this cannot be called community of
interests. It is an attempt at absorption on the part of the
North, and at the expense of the South.
“Once at Rome, the programme was to have ended. A new life was to
commence; fresh energy was to be the signal of an era of grandeur
and prosperity; interiorly, there was to be a more perfect
administration; exteriorly, a prudent _national_ policy, that is
to say, the Napoleonic idea of the Latin races that Italy was to
revive. Rome was to be the great centre of liberal influences....
All this had been announced and promised. As for me, I see no
choice between a blind alley and a _politique d’aventure_.
“It seems to me the union, at a critical moment, should find
protection in the wishes of the inhabitants. I can testify that if
the former sovereigns of Naples, Florence, Parma, and Modena could
return, the day would be hailed by a majority of the inhabitants
as one of deliverance. In Lombardy it is different, I acknowledge.
The _noblesse_ say, as I myself heard a personage of great note:
We are badly governed, but at least it is no longer by foreigners.
The middle classes are republicans, and in the country the
Austrian rule is regretted. The people of Venice either aspire to
a republic or regret the unfortunate Archduke Maximilian, whom
they would have liked as an independent sovereign. In the old
pontifical provinces called the Legations, they would not care to
return to the former condition of things as they were, but some
would be satisfied with the Pope and a local autonomy; the
remainder form a sufficiently numerous republican party.”
“In a word, THERE IS EVERYWHERE DISSATISFACTION AS WELL AS
DISAPPOINTMENT, AFTER TWELVE YEARS OF EXPERIENCE.”(259)
It is not astonishing, therefore, that at an audience on the 18th of last
Nov., the Grand Duke Nicholas, nephew of the Emperor of Russia, said to
Pius IX., with all a young man’s frankness: “Most holy Father, since I
have been in Italy, everywhere I go, I hear nothing but evil of King
Victor Emmanuel and his government.”(260)
We need only open our eyes to see the interior condition of united Italy
as soon as there was any question, no longer of conspiring and declaiming,
but of organizing and governing. And its exterior political relations
compare quite as unfavorably with the programme of emancipation. By a kind
of divine irony, Italy has become a mere humble vassal of Germany—of the
Holy Protestant Empire of Berlin—and the future King of Rome was only
acting his part when he proclaimed himself the King of Prussia’s
hussar.(261) It is well known at the Quirinal that, though influenced for
the moment by the dominant party, the authorities may some day return,
even through interest, to traditional principles and the old political
code which does not recognize the revolutionary schemes of nations or
parties. Besides, the Italian princes, who represent the law, are still
living. Francis II. may be found to be a genuine Neapolitan, Ferdinand IV.
a very good Tuscan, Robert I. an excellent Parmesan, and Francis V. the
best of Modenais. And, lastly, is not Pius IX. more of an Italian than the
Savoyard who styles himself the King of Italy?... And if the French, whose
connivance can no longer be expected, even under M. Thiers, should favor
the restoration of the throne to a prince, “_qui a la justice dans le sang
et dans l’âme_,” and would at need have it in his hand, the Italian
framework, which merely stands through toleration, would be threatened
with sudden and ignominious ruin. It is all this that recently induced the
_prince‐héritier_ to mount like a Hungarian foot‐soldier behind the
triumphal chariot of the German Cæsar.
Another evil: the Prussians are not the most scrupulous people in the
world about other people’s property, and their investigations in the
Peninsula have excited suspicions as to the object of their cupidity. Let
M. de Bismarck, more audacious and grasping than the late M. de Cavour,
once succeed in driving the Hapsburgs from Germany, will it not occur to
him to take advantage of the title of the Lombardo‐Venetian kingdom for
the benefit of the Cæsar of Berlin? For it is skilfully demonstrated in
Germany that the Germanic race has the power, and, therefore, the right,
to a powerful navy, and, for the benefit of this navy, an outlet on the
Adriatic. And there is no other possible ally but Prussia to protect what
calls itself the kingdom of Italy!
“Alliances are beneficial when the parties unite their influence
for a common end. (Allies, in our day, no longer seek to know each
other’s principles or origin.) But when they are not formed _inter
pares_, or nearly so, and especially when they are intended to
guarantee the very existence—the vital principle—of the weaker
ally, then the alliance loses its true character, and soon ends in
subjection on the ground of politics or economy, and sometimes
both.”(262)
Such are the glories of Italy _free from the Alps to the Adriatic_! If, in
spite of her presumptuous _farà da se_, she was obliged to have recourse
to a foreign hand in order to rise, and still needs a foreign arm to stand
erect, she will, according to appearances, have need of no one to aid her
in falling: she will topple over of herself. The so‐called free country is
only an enslaved kingdom—a vassal, a satellite without strength and
without prestige.
III.
Of all the Italian formulas that have served to mislead the liberal mind,
there is not one more odiously false and deceptive than the too famous
expression, _A free church in a free country_. History has already
interpreted it, A persecuted church in an enslaved country. The
revolutionary factions that have assumed the authority have imposed
thereon the complete execution of their plan, and we know that the Masonic
lodges, though they denounce Mazzinian deism, have fallen into the atheism
of Renan, _al fondo_!
The sacrilegious frenzy of the Revolution, and the madness of those that
encouraged it, have been stigmatized in forcible terms by the august
prisoner of the Vatican:
“Unbelief assumes an air of authority, and proudly stalks
throughout the length and breadth of the earth, doubtless
imagining it is to triumph for ever.... Woe to those who are
linked with the impious, and dally with the Revolution under the
pretence of directing it! Sooner or later they will be drawn into
the abyss. The recent disasters at Naples may be adduced as an
example. A great number of curious people, heedless and devoid of
all prudence, hastened to get a nearer view of the devouring
flames issuing from the fearful mouth of Vesuvius, and many of
them became victims of mistaken curiosity. So it is with those who
covenant with the Revolution and the revolutionists, hoping to
overrule the former and keep down the latter. Rash people! they
will all become a prey to the flames that surround them on every
side.”(263)
The revolutionary lava floods the streets of Rome and covers the whole
Peninsula. It began in the cities, spread into the country, and will end
by swallowing up the army. The universities and common schools are
invaded, the torrent engulfs the workshops and stalls, and undermines the
walls of palaces. Princes even have opened their gates at its approach. In
vain the Holy Father sounds the cry of alarm; in vain his prime minister
publicly denounces the progress of the deadly current—party spirit seems
to have paralyzed all in authority.
We will not describe the exploits of this new Islamism against the papal
power. The history of its ambuscades and pillages is sufficiently well
known. There never was a richer treasure of dishonor for revolution to
endow a people with. “The title of liberators was all the same retained.”
Yes, all the same!
Joseph de Maistre somewhere refers to an English functionary as saying
that every man who spoke of taking an inch of land from the Pope ought to
be hung. “As for me,” adds the witty writer, “I cheerfully consent, in
order to avoid carnage, that _hung_ should be changed to _hissed_.”(264)
Let us wait. An avenging God will do both: _subsannabit_, _conquassabit_.
Had the plots of the unionists merely aimed at the temporal power, perhaps
divine justice would have been satisfied with a hiss at the hour of some
Italian Sedan, but the gibbet—it is a law of history—is reserved for
persecutors and apostates.
When the Sardinian government knocked at one of the gates of Rome, as it
awaited a propitious moment for battering it down, it bound itself before
all Europe to solve the problem of the separation of church and state
which had puzzled all the doctors of liberalism, and of which it pretended
to have found the key. It was said the Roman question and the Italian
question were to cease to be antagonistic, or, at least, they were to
resemble those rivers that, while mingling their waters, preserve their
own colors, as we see in the Rhône and the Saône. It was promised a
channel should be made wide enough for this double current of opinions.
Hence the origin of the famous law of the Guarantees. This scheme of
conciliation is properly appreciated in the _Etudes sur l’Italie
Contemporaine_:
“How many times I have heard it said that the Papacy and the
Italian government, even though they never came to an agreement,
might at least be like two parallel lines indefinitely and
pacifically prolonged! This is a mistake arising from a judgment
founded on impressions—and when I say impressions, I mean
appearances.
“From the beginning, this law of Guarantees was a one‐sided and
fruitless attempt.... The government and the Chambers never had
any doubt as to the refusal of the Pope. This law was like an
olive branch presented at the point of the sword as a suitable
corrective to palliate the violent occupation of Rome.... I do not
think a single statesman could really have believed in the success
of this law, otherwise than as the decree of the conqueror.
“Besides the moral, juridical, and historic reasons to hinder an
understanding between the Pope and a sovereign master of Rome,
there was also the impossibility of coexisting with a power that
rests on an unstable foundation.
“Even from the point of view of modern but not subversive ideas, A
SEPARATION MORE IMPORTANT THAN THAT OF STATE AND CHURCH IS THE
SEPARATION OF STATE AND REVOLUTION.”(265)
These are golden words. But our diplomatic traveller is forced to
acknowledge that the Italian government cannot break its iniquitous bonds,
that it lacks honesty and force, and that all the factions seek their own
good first and then the evil of others. Our author, though, unfortunately,
too indifferent a spectator to Italian persecution, at least has the
advantage of being an unexceptionable witness.
“Practically, it is not the state, it is society, that modern
Italy separates from the church.... One of the greatest mistakes
the unionists have made since the beginning of the Revolution has
been the war declared against the clergy and the church. It is at
once a political and historical error, and the greater for being
committed at Rome.
“Tolerance (practised from time to time according to orders) has
its reaction, and of the deepest die, in a recrudescence of
insults, sequestrations and confiscations imposed on the ministers
of the sanctuary and even the sanctuaries themselves.
“Anti‐Christianity has established itself with a bold front at
Rome—with its schools of free‐thinkers, speeches in which atheism
is proclaimed without the least reticence, burial without any
religious ceremony, and irreligious books sold at low prices.
“In everything relating to teaching, the choice generally falls on
the unbeliever.
“Materialism is taught _ex cathedra_ in all the universities.
“They have not yet touched on the most vital question—the
suppression of the convents (at Rome) and the incameration of the
property of the clergy. But they will come to that, and
speedily.... The attempt at what is called a conciliation must
sooner or later end in an outbreak.”(266)
They did come to it—to that shameful encroachment of the government on the
religious corporations. The party demanded it, M. de Bismarck advised it,
and the diplomatic corps tolerated it. What will not diplomacy tolerate?
It was, however, clearly demonstrated to the representatives of different
governments the urgent necessity there was of taking under their united
protection the independence of the Sovereign Pontiff so poorly guaranteed
by the usurper, of declaring the inviolability of church property, the
possession of which—and it is a wholly legitimate one—is a _sine qua non_
condition of pontifical independence, without considering that most of
these establishments have a double claim as to their origin and
destination, to be regarded as international property.(267) Nothing was
done. The tolerance of official Europe towards the Piedmontese
filibustering has been unlimited, though unrestricted usurpation has been
followed by open persecution. Pius IX. had good reason to severely allude
to “the so‐called governments” that find amusement in the Revolution.
Europe seems to have sent its diplomatists to the court of the usurper in
the capital of the Christian world, that they might close their eyes to
all the schemes of Freemasonry, and the numberless vexations and
spoliations, that they might play the _rôle_ of stage‐dancers in the
sacrilegious comedy! Such base complacency justifies the expression of a
Catholic writer: “Europe is in a state of mortal sin!”
I am almost ashamed to be obliged to refer to the authority of a
diplomatist who belongs neither to our nation nor our religion. I wish I
could quote some official report of a minister from France! Might not M.
Fournier have employed his time better than in figuring at banquets
offered to a renegade, and in listening to heretical and atrocious
speeches from the professors of the Romano‐Piedmontese university? I will
console myself in transcribing a page from M. Dulaurier, the honorable
member of the Institute, likewise an ocular witness, and a witness worthy
of credit, even from a subscriber to the _Débats_:
“These grievances and many others are aggravated by the excesses to which
the press—the illustrated press, above all—has given itself up, and by the
incessant war it wages against religion. Ignoble caricatures are daily
exposed for sale in the sight of the police, and to their knowledge, in
all the Kiosques and newspaper shops, and on the walls, or are hawked
around by miserable creatures in rags. The _Don Pirloncino_, a humorous
paper, obsequious to the government, diffuses three times a week its
abominations on the most august mysteries of the Christian faith and the
ministers who dispense them. The cross itself—the cross before which
Christians of all communions bow with respect—not only Catholics, but
schismatics, Greeks, and Orientals, and even Protestants—is not safe from
its insults. My heart swells with horror when I recall one of these
pictures—a caricature of the Crucifixion. In the place of the God‐Man is
Dr. Lanza, Minister of the Interior. The words put in his mouth, and on
the lips of his murderers, are untranslatable. Under his feet, at the
lower extremity of the tree of the cross, is fastened transversely an
instrument that I dare not designate otherwise than by saying it is made a
burlesque use of at the end of the first act of _M. de Pourceaugnac_. Our
French revolutionists, in their senseless fury, have broken the cross in
pieces, but it never occurred to them to defile it in such a manner. So
revolting an idea could only spring from imaginations the country of
Aretino alone is capable of producing.
“In the presence of these abominations echoed by the political press
devoted to the advancement of free‐thinking, the Sovereign Pontiff, the
clergy, and the Roman people who are fundamentally religious, can only
veil their faces, resign themselves, and have recourse to prayer. And
prayer rises unceasingly to heaven in expiation of so many horrors. It is
the only consolation left to all these afflicted souls. There is a
constant succession of triduos, announced by blank notices, headed _Invito
sacro_, and signed by Mgr. Patrizi, the Cardinal Vicar. One of these
notices, which I saw affixed to the columns at the entrance to his
eminence’s palace near the Church of Sant’ Agostino, gives an idea, in the
very first line, of the indignation that is fermenting in every Catholic
breast: ‘The earth is full of the most horrible blasphemies. _La terra è
piena della più orrende bestemmie._’ ”
IV.
We will not deny one benefit—and this time a real one!—that has sprung
from the Italian Revolution: it has served to revive the fidelity and
fervor of all true Italians. It can be rightly said of it, as M. Guizot
says of the Reformation of the sixteenth century, It has awakened, even
among its adversaries [we must correct this Protestant writer’s mistake—he
should have said among its adversaries alone], religious faith and civil
courage. Some natures that were formerly nonchalantes, timid, and
delicate, are no longer satisfied with groaning over the evil, but take a
bold stand against the inroads of impiety. Italy, somewhat inclined to the
_far niente_, might of itself have yielded; sustained by the hand of a
great Pope, she is roused to withstand the unloosed tempest. She no longer
falters before the responsibility of a religious manifestation or an anti‐
revolutionary vote. No longer afraid of the threats of the poniard, or of
conciliating, through culpable prudence, her temporary masters, she at
last ventures to show herself openly, as she really is—the cherished and
faithful daughter of the Church of Rome. Roused by provocations and
blasphemies, her filial piety towards the Papacy has become more lively
and aggressive. She protests solemnly against the schemes of the
adventurers who have trampled under foot their faith, honesty, morality,
and honor. At the sight of these sublime outbursts of a spirit at once
Catholic and Roman, the church is consoled, and observant Christendom
begins to hope the reaction will be the more salutary from the extreme
violence of the crisis.
One of our co‐laborers has expressed all this much better than we can:
“If there is a country we have reason to conceive such consoling
hopes of, assuredly it is Italy, in spite of all the scandals and
all the infamy that now degrade it. All who have had a favorable
opportunity of observing the moral condition of the country agree
in declaring the greater part of the inhabitants faithful to their
belief. It is merely the froth and pestilential impurities that
are seething on the surface. Some day it will doubtless be with
this impure froth as with the stagnant waters for which Pius IX.
some years ago made an opening to the sea, giving fresh fecundity
to the old Italian soil. Purified by trials, as by a new baptism,
this nation, in many respects so highly gifted, will once more
have acquired a beneficial discipline of mind and character, the
advantages of a robust and manly training, the practice of
energetic individual action, and especially of great combined
efforts which she is beginning to give us the consoling spectacle
of in the recently formed Catholic associations.”(268)
In France we think lightly, or rather we have an incorrect idea, of what
our brethren in Italy are effecting. The very people among us who only
talk of harmony and compromise reproach the Catholics of the Peninsula for
being inactive and inefficient. They even make them partly responsible for
the national misfortunes and the decay of moral principle beyond the Alps.
We protest against such superficial judgments. We know Italy too well not
to have a right to speak in favor of those who are so unjustly accused.
Catholics in Italy decline public offices, _ne eletti, ne elettori_; and
they do well, because the Sardinian government imposes an oath after the
style of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth. Tell us if it is proper for a Catholic
to take a seat in a parliament established at Rome between the Vatican
where the Pope is imprisoned, and the Quirinal where the Piedmontese has
established himself by the aid of a false key. Does the military career
offer much attraction when he might be ordered to assassinate the
pontifical zouaves, open a breach in the walls of Rome, bombard Ancona or
even the quarter of the Vatican? He might without any great difficulty
present himself at the municipal and provincial ballot‐boxes. The faithful
Neapolitans, at the invitation of their archbishop, formed a majority
there, and this is not an isolated case. But do you, who are the safety of
France, set the example of hastening to the polls?—No; good Christians in
Italy are far from being inert, nor do the clergy inculcate inertness.
Abstaining is quite a different thing from inaction. Is the public aware
that the Catholic press is one of the glories of the Peninsula? There are
a hundred journals and reviews on the other side of the Alps consecrated
to the service of the truth, and some of these publications are of
unequalled merit. It is sufficient to name the _Civiltà Cattolica_, the
_Unità Cattolica_, and the _Voce della Verità_. We confess our admiration
for the courageous journalists who keep their own course in spite of
arrests, law‐suits, fines, imprisonment, and threats of _coltellate_. And
the tone of these papers, with some insignificant exceptions, is healthier
than with us, the union of sentiment stronger, and their adhesion to the
apostolic constitutions more sincere and open. Associations have spread
from one end of the Peninsula to the other, and everywhere produce the
most beneficial results. I need only mention the Society of Catholic Youth
at Bologna, celebrated on account of the generous filial stand it has
taken from the first in favor of Pius IX., and the Roman Society for the
promotion of Catholic interests, which, by its branches and parish
committees, exercises so prodigious an influence over the city of Rome as
to excite the anxiety of those in authority.
But let us once more listen to our unexceptionable witness, whom I think
every one will feel indebted to us for quoting so much at length:
_testimonium animæ naturaliter Christianæ_.
“The religious reaction is more and more decided, even in the
middle and lower classes, owing to the zealous associations that
have assumed the direction. This movement is worthy of study....
At Rome, and throughout Italy, this reaction has given rise to
societies composed for the most part of men still young, whose
object is to oppose all pernicious doctrines. These societies are
to be found at Rome, Florence, Venice, Milan, Naples, Turin,
Verona, Genoa, Lucca, Padua, Pisa, and Bologna.
“In January, 1871, the following statement was made in the
_Riforma_, the organ of Rattazzi: ‘The clerical party is being
more and more reinforced at Rome; the clerical press every day
acquires more strength, its organs increase in number and
boldness.’... The clerical press is really well sustained, and, in
spite of the persecutions and ill‐treatment of all kinds the
editors of these journals have to undergo, they do not cease their
energetic efforts.
“The administering of the oath has caused wholesale resignations
in all the _dicastères_ (at Rome). Many of these functionaries are
left without any means of subsistence.... As early as the year
1871, there were more than four thousand resignations.
“Thousands of Romans go to the Vatican to give their plebiscites,
and to the basilica of St. Peter to offer solemn prayers for
hastening THE DAY OF DELIVERANCE.”(269)
The day of deliverance will arrive, and, in spite of the sneers about our
wailing over disappointed hopes, it will come soon! But how will this
deliverance be effected? United Italy has against it the upper and nether
fires—the Catholic reaction that will never stoop to parley, and the
exertions of the demagogues, which are continually increasing. At present
the nether fires seem like the prelude of the Internationale.
The intermediate party, which would like to consolidate _le fait
accompli_, and which recruits adepts from the very opposers of the _mezzi
morali_, is not sufficiently free from all alloy of party spirit to
constitute a government capable of resistance and of exacting respect from
the league of destruction.
Unhappy but beloved Italy! Great and holy city of Rome! shall we have the
sorrow of seeing the enemy _flamber_ your palaces, your museums, your
churches?
Not long since we were asked at Florence to read the prophecy of Joel, so
applicable to the future of Italy: “Hear this, ... tell ye of this to your
children, and let your children tell their children, and their children to
another generation. That which the palmer worm hath left, the locust hath
eaten; and that which the locust hath left, the bruchus hath eaten; and
that which the bruchus hath left, the mildew hath destroyed. Awake, ye
that are drunk, and weep, and mourn, all ye that take delight in drinking
sweet wine; for it is cut off from your mouth.”—Joel. i. 2‐5.
It is true too large a part of the Italian nation have grown giddy from
the intoxicating draught of liberalism, and it is to be feared they may be
condemned to drink the bitter cup of expiation to the dregs. The
international “locusts” will devour that which the Sub‐Alpine “palmerworm”
hath left. To‐day, the taxes of Sella; to‐morrow, the communism of
Castellani: yesterday, a political revolution; to‐morrow, a radical
revolution: yesterday and to‐day, the hypocrisy of the tribune; to‐morrow,
the bloody scenes of the national Comitia. After the physicians and
lawyers, after the members of the Consorteria and the friends of Rattazzi,
the lowest grade of society—the “bruchus” and the “mildew”—like a
barbarous horde, will overturn, and destroy, and deluge with petroleum.
Italy, more than France or Spain, has abused the divine gift. She has “the
light of Rome and the sun,” but has been ungrateful, proud, impious,
shameless, and reckless. The whole land is now a mere haunt for banditti,
traitors, and buffoons.
Alas! it is so: but Pius IX. still prays for his beloved Italy! Following
the example of its lawful ruler, the nation—at least, the better portion
of the nation—have multiplied their holy prayers, which daily grow more
frequent from the delay of the benefit and the example of France. It has a
clearer sense of equity and justice; it already feels disposed to renew
its former covenant with God, return to the path of order, and take up its
national traditions of glory. It is awakening from its dreams of moral and
social primacy. It will be satisfied with, and glory in, being the _patrie
environnante_ of the Vicar of Christ. Would that France, once more
regenerated, might speedily aid her in breaking loose from the tyranny of
lodges, and shaking off the Prussian suzerainty!
In 1860, the unhappy King of Sardinia said to M. de la Tour d’Auvergne,
the French minister at Turin: “I do not wish you to leave me under false
impressions. I feel sure you regard me as impious—as an infidel, as people
persist in saying. You are wrong.—If I number kings among my ancestry,
there are likewise saints. Here, look around.—Well, do you think that in
yonder world all these sainted relatives of mine have any other occupation
than to pray for me?”(270)
Our Saviour prayed for those who knew not what they did! _Pater dimitte
illis._ May all the saints in heaven and on earth pray for poor Italy! It
has need of it.
Sonnet.
FROM THE ITALIAN OF GIOVANNI BATTISTA ZAPPI, UPON THE MOSES OF MICHAEL
ANGELO IN THE CHURCH OF SAN PIETRO IN VINCOLI, AT ROME.
Whose form there, sculptured in such mass of stone,
Sits like a giant, carrying art so far
Beyond all works most beautiful and known?
On those quick lips life’s very accents are!
That man is Moses: on the awful front
The double ray,(271) the glory of his beard,
Reveal as much: ’tis Moses from the Mount
When much of Deity in his face appeared!
So looked he once when he the vasty fount
Of sounding waters with his one word stayed.
Such was his aspect when the sea obeyed
And swallowed Egypt. O ye tribes that bent
Before the calf! had you an image made
Like this to worship, less were to repent.
Recollections Of Père Hermann.
France has a strange, magnetic power of attracting to herself, and
absorbing into her mould, all the great talent of the world. How many men
there are in Paris, who, from the ends of the earth, come together to lose
their nationality in her appreciative bosom, and to gain there instead a
reflected light of popularity ensured by her endorsement alone! All
countries have adopted citizens, it is true, some by social, some by
artistic, some by political adoption, but no country has a larger share of
adopted intellect than France.
To all intents and purposes, the famous artist‐convert and artist‐monk,
Père Hermann, was a Frenchman, though he was born a German Jew, in the
free city of Hamburg. His biographers have told us all the striking
incidents of his life; they have dwelt on his intoxicating success during
youth, his mad extravagance of opinion, of expenditure, and of depravity,
and, lastly, on his almost miraculous conversion and religious vocation.
His death, which was a fitting crown to his life, and can be dignified by
no lesser title than martyrdom, has endeared his memory still more to all
those who knew him personally and had many secret reasons to admire his
sanctity and feel grateful for his spiritual direction. His was a figure
not easily forgotten, and perhaps a few touches of personal reminiscences
will not be unacceptable to our readers, since all that links us to the
saints, and brings the shadow of their sanctity nearer to our littleness,
can hardly fail to be of interest.
The first time we were brought in contact with him was in the summer of
1862, when he came by special invitation to spend a few days with us in
the country. The house itself had a monastic appearance and origin. It had
been, so said tradition, a rural dependency, half farm, half infirmary, of
a great Franciscan convent. It had been restored in 1849 and 1850, or
thereabouts, and thanks to the good taste of the owner and the talent of
the architects employed, had developed into a gem of Elizabethan Gothic
and of domestic comfort. The little market‐town adjoining, once a centre
of wealthy wool‐merchants and a great mediæval mart, contained several
XIVth century buildings in a state of entire preservation, besides the
later pile of the almshouses (XVIIth century), which, both as a building
and an institution, was the pride of the surrounding country. Twelve old
and destitute people, six men and six women, invariably widows or
widowers, are generously supported on the fund left in perpetuity for this
purpose by Joanna, Lady C——, wife of the great loyalist Baptist, Viscount
C——, who burnt down his manor‐house (opposite the almshouses), rather than
let it fall, with its treasures of plate and furniture, into the hands of
Cromwell’s Roundheads.
It was the yearly custom to feast these good people at the manor, the
restored Franciscan dependency, and thither they were conveyed one day
during the summer in question, in a large covered cart provided with seats
like a French _char‐à‐banc_. Père Hermann had been in the house since the
previous evening, and had stipulated with his cordial host and hostess
that he should wear his Carmelite habit while within the limits of the
private grounds. The sight of this alone had in it something homely; it
was a rest to the eye to see the cowled figure pacing the terrace in the
early morning, Breviary in hand, and to lapse into beautiful day‐dreams of
what might have been had England kept true to the faith. The Carmelite was
delighted at the prospect of seeing this annual feast given to the
almshouse people, and no sooner had they all assembled round the ample
board spread for them on a shady part of the terrace at the back of the
house, than he made his way towards them, and, saluting them, showed how
much he sympathized in their enjoyment. His English was, of course, very
imperfect; indeed, he never grew to any proficiency in speaking that
language, but his interest in the scene was none the less vividly
expressed. The old people still wear the costume appointed by the
foundress of the institution: for the men, gaiters and a long coat of
rough black cloth, with a silver badge or medal; for the women, a narrow,
old‐fashioned dress of the same material, and a similar badge. These
badges, we believe, have never been renewed since the original endowment,
and are handed down from one bedesman to his successor, and so on; the
clothes are renewed every two years. If we mistake not, Père Hermann said
grace for these poor people, who, though all Protestants, seemed not at
all shocked at the “popish” apparition. Indeed, he gained the hearts of
all who ever saw him, his gentleness and recollection inspiring a respect
for his person which was little short of veneration. He seemed as though
he were walking with angels and listening to heavenly converse even while
charitably lending his time and his bodily presence to earth. When he had
enjoyed, with the simplicity of a child, the sight of the innocent sports
and merriment of the old people, he left us for the chapel, where he spent
a great part of his time. We cannot help adverting to a little occurrence
which took place at one of these almshouse feasts (we believe this very
one), and which was certainly very pathetic. A monk might well take
pleasure in such unaffected simplicity and gentleness among those whose
ancestors had been so intimately linked of old with monastic patrons. One
of the old women, speaking to one of her host’s daughters of her little
grandchild, a baby girl who was just dead, said, in the broad dialect of
the county of Gloucester (which, however, we dare not imitate in print):
“When the child was born, my daughter made me notice how long the
little thing’s fingers were, and said, ’Bless its little heart!
they are long enough for the baby to be a waiting‐maid on the
queen.’ And we agreed, laughing‐like, that a waiting‐maid the
child would surely be. But when it died, I said to my daughter,
said I, ‘Jane, we were mistaken about the baby’s fingers, you see.
I tell you the Lord gave her those beautiful long fingers, not to
attend on any great lady or queen on earth, but to play on the
golden harps in his kingdom of heaven.’ ”
No truer nor more reverent poetry can be found anywhere than that simple
utterance of an unlettered old woman who had not even that instinctive
education which belongs to all those who learn the Catholic catechism.
Such women and such poetry used to abound in the England of historic
times, but error and materialism have but too well succeeded during the
last three centuries in making the type rare and not easily discoverable,
save in some forgotten nook of the rural districts.
Père Hermann that evening allowed us to enjoy _our_ treat, after giving
him his among the bedesmen, by playing a little on a cottage piano‐forte
in what we called the oak drawing‐room. The servants were all collected in
the next room (the library), and this seemed to give him particular
satisfaction, as he was ever most fastidiously thoughtful of the comforts
and pleasures of those in inferior station. His playing, though not
comparable to his triumphant successes as an artist nearly twenty years
before, was still admirable, and, above all, so _sympathetic_. He played,
among other things, the “Prayer of Moses” with great solemnity and
expression, and also some of his own _Cantiques_, which for blending
passion with religious earnestness are something unique. He never played
anywhere save in private, and then only to small audiences in an informal
manner, and never touched the organ save by obedience in his own church,
or for the Forty Hours’ Exposition, saying that he wished to have his art
ever sanctified by a religious inspiration. The fascination and temptation
of artistic triumphs must still have been appreciable stumbling‐blocks in
his spiritual career. Therefore, to hear him play at all was no slight
favor, and, while on this visit, he repeated this favor more than once. On
the last day, he said Mass in the domestic chapel, and distributed the
Scapular to the household, enrolling nearly every member in the
Confraternity. He gave a short address on the origin and meaning of this
devotion, the distinctive one of his Order, and which was further made
interesting on this occasion by the fact of the host’s having in former
years rescued a picture of S. Simon Stock in the act of receiving the
first miraculous Scapular. The figures were life‐size, and the painting
after the manner of the later Italian school; the canvas was found riddled
with holes, having been used as a target by ignorant or fanatical
possessors. The restored picture was hung in the drawing‐room, where it
became a great source of interest to the zealous convert Carmelite, our
dear guest. During this visit was laid the foundation of a spiritual
friendship between him and the writer—a friendship which proved a great
benefit and guidance in our after‐life.
Meeting him again in London a few months later, we learnt a singular
occurrence connected with his influence over souls. A young girl, not much
over seventeen, and of a wilful and rebellious nature, who was under Père
Hermann’s spiritual direction, happening to come up to town for a few
days, experienced a strange phase of religious excitement. Careless as she
was about all serious matters regarding the future state, she was
nevertheless seized with a strong feeling of inadequacy in her religious
efforts. She rose suddenly (it was a bright moonlight night), and went to
the window, where the chastened beauty of the moon made even the
monotonous landscape of London roofs and chimneys shine with a weird charm
and take on suggestive shapes of startling vividness. Something—the grace
of God, we ought no doubt reverently to say—seemed to take hold of her
heart and shake her whole being. It was not the fear of punishment, the
blank of unsated frivolity, that moved her; only one cry burst from her
heart—“I have never loved God enough—I have never loved him at all.” If
any but the saints ever feel perfect contrition, she did at that moment;
for in that one sin she saw all others contained. Sobs came from the
depths of her heart; she paced her room with naked feet, unmindful of
discomfort, unheeding the autumn chill that is never long absent from
London atmosphere, repeating again and again, like a dirge, those words,
“I have never loved God enough—I have never loved him at all.” Then came a
wondering feeling as to what this awakening meant; was it conversion, or
the beginning of a vocation, or a sign that some special self‐devotedness
would be required of her through life? She said to herself, “I will see
Père Hermann, and tell him; I wonder if this will last!”
Strange to say, the blessed excitement passed away, and the next morning,
though she tried to revive it, it was impossible. Not a trace of emotion
was left, although the mind recalled distinctly what an ecstasy of sorrow
it had been, and how it had shaken the soul to its very centre. The young
girl, however, saw Père Hermann, and told him of it, and in the parlor of
the nuns of the Assumption, Kensington Square, he gave her the advice of a
father and a saint. She is still living, and none can tell if that
prophetic call may not yet have unexpected fulfilment through the prayers
of one who is now a saint in heaven. This occurrence led to a very
interesting and intimate correspondence, which we have examined ourselves,
and of which we would gladly give some extracts were the letters not
unfortunately beyond our reach at the present moment.
Père Hermann was peculiarly fond of children, as indeed all saints are.
Going one day to the Brompton Oratory, which the finest organ in London
and a very perfect and numerous surpliced choir contribute to make one of
the leading Catholic churches of the English capital, he was prevailed
upon to play a voluntary after the Offertory. There sat a child in that
choir, only a little chorus singer, but whose early dream it had ever been
to become a musician and play upon an organ such as that majestic,
imperial instrument which he listened to with vague awe every Sunday. He
knew the story of the great artist who now sat at the organ in his
Carmelite habit, and he drank in eagerly the grand strains he could but
dimly understand, yet admired so intensively. Things which he never knew
technically till many years after, yet seemed not unknown to his
sympathetic ear, and, if he understood but little of the science that
created those rolling chords and modulations, he could worship the beauty
they expressed.
A few days later, the little chorister, with six or seven companions from
the Oratory School, was taken to the temporary Carmelite chapel in
Kensington. It was all very poor and unpretending, but the spirit of
recollection and peace made an Eden of the temporary refuge of these
“knights of poverty,” and the children were very much impressed. Père
Hermann came to the parlor to see them, and inquired severally after each
one from the Oratorian Father in whose special charge they were. Our
little chorister was dumb with awe and delight, expecting the holy
Carmelite to notice him particularly; but when the Oratorian was
questioned about this boy, he answered laughingly:
“Oh! this fellow is going to be a tinker.”
Père Hermann looked amused but incredulous, and the child grew hot and
uncomfortable under the laughing gaze of his companions. He had long made
up his mind as to what he would like to be, and the tinker suggestion was
peculiarly hateful to him, because systematically used by his wise
instructor to “break his pride.” But the gentle monk saw the boy’s
discomfiture, and came skilfully to the rescue.
“And will you really be a tinker, my little man?” he said, smiling.
“No, father,” readily answered the little one. “A musician.”
“You mean a tinker, Peter,” teasingly suggested the Oratorian, and the boy
blushed with annoyance.
“No, no,” said Père Hermann; “he will be a musician, as he says, and a
good one. And now,” he continued, “it is nearly time for Benediction, and
I am going to play the harmonium; would you like to stay for that?”
The child was speechless with delight, and then the holy monk added:
“You shall pull out the stops for me, Peter,” which was done, and, though
it seemed the acme of happiness to Peter, it probably did not improve the
music.
After the service, the father called one of the lay brothers, and
entrusted the children to his care, saying, with simple glee, and in the
broken accent which all who knew him remember as a characteristic of his
otherwise terse and appropriate language:
“Now, brother, go and feed these little ones, and mind you give them
plenty of good things.”
The order was well obeyed, for the tradition of ample and eager
hospitality has never been lost among religious orders, be they poor and
struggling and even proscribed, or rich, powerful, and influential. Rich
plum‐cake and good wine, with candies of every sort, were set before the
little musician and his friends, but the child was even then thinking
exultingly that Père Hermann had really said he should be an artist. In
later years, when studying his art in Flanders, or earning his bread by it
in England, this saying, that from such holy lips seemed a prophetic
blessing and an earnest of success, often and often recurred to his mind,
and encouraged him in the many dark days through which he had to pass.
To all those who learned to love Père Hermann from personal intercourse
with him, every remembrance of his words, however trifling, is now doubly
treasured; his death, uniting as it did in itself the heroism of
philanthropy, of patriotism, and of divine charity, has already
practically canonized him in the eyes of his friends and spiritual
children; and as we lay this slender wreath of praise among the more
important tributes that literature, art, and religion have heaped around
his memory, we are fain to exclaim, with the wise man of Israel, “Blessed
are they that saw thee, and were honored with thy friendship.”(272)
A Daughter Of S. Dominic.
Concluded.
It was a singular proof, not only of respect for her character, but of
confidence in her judgment and discretion, on the part of the government,
to have entrusted her with this right of mercy; knowing, as no one who
knew anything about her could fail to know, her extraordinary tenderness
of heart and compassion for suffering, especially in the case of the
soldiers. It seemed a risk to invest her with a sort of judicial right to
interfere in their behalf at the hands of law and justice; but they never
had reason to regret it. She showed herself to the last worthy of the
trust reposed in her. In the exercise of a privilege whose application was
one of the keenest joys of her life, Amélie evinced a mind singularly well
balanced, a judgment always clear, and a prudence ever on the alert to
guide and control the impulses of her heart. But when her judgment
approved the promptings of charity, no consideration could deter her from
obeying them. She was by nature very timid, and of late years, owing to
her having quite broken off intercourse with the world, properly speaking,
this timidity had grown to a painful shyness. Whenever there was a
necessity, however, she could brave it, and face a gay crowd or a doughty
magnate with as much ease and cheerfulness as if the act demanded no
effort or sacrifice of natural inclination. Such sacrifices were
frequently required of her. Her name had a prestige that gained entrance
through doors closed to persons of infinitely higher social position and
importance; and when a community, or a hospital, or a family wanted a
mediator in high quarters, they turned quite naturally to Amélie. On one
occasion her courage and good‐nature were put to a rather severe test. It
was in the case of a poor man who had been condemned to a long term of
punishment for some fraudulent act. The circumstances of the case, the
hitherto excellent character of the man, the fierce pressure of want under
which the fraud was committed, and certain points which threw doubts on
the extent to which he had been consciously guilty, along with the misery
his condemnation must entail on a wife and young family, roused strong
sympathy for him, and a general impulse seized the townspeople to appeal
to the emperor for his pardon. But how to do it so as to make the appeal
efficacious—who to entrust with the delicate mission? Every heart turned
instinctively to Amélie. Her name rose to every tongue. The most
influential of the petitioners went to her, and besought her to go to
Paris and obtain an audience of the emperor, and implore of his clemency a
free pardon for the convict. Her first impulse was to draw back in dismay
at the mere contemplation of such a feat; but the petitioners brought out
an array of arguments that it was not in Amélie’s nature to resist. She
called up her courage, recommended the success of her mission to the
prayers of the Marseillese and the protection of N. Dame de Garde, and
started off to Paris. Thanks to her previous relations with the
ministerial world, she was able to obtain, after some delay, an audience
of the emperor. He received her with the most flattering marks of personal
consideration, and granted her at once the pardon she sued for. Amélie
telegraphed the good news to Marseilles on leaving his majesty’s presence,
and was met on her arrival there the following day by her protégé and his
family in tears of joy and gratitude.
On another occasion, she was applied to for a rather large sum of money
for a very pressing charity. She happened for the moment to have exhausted
all her own and her friends’ resources, and knew not where to turn for the
necessary sum. Some enterprising person proposed that she should go and
beg it at the house of a banker who was giving a grand ball that night,
and at which all the wealthy notabilities of the town were to be present.
It was quite an unprecedented proceeding, and one that it required the
humility and the courage of Amélie to undertake. She hesitated as usual at
first, and as usual, seeing that the thing had to be done, and that no one
else would do it, she consented. A preliminary step was to obtain the
host’s permission. This he at first emphatically refused; and, seeing that
it required nearly as much courage on his part to allow his guests to be
waylaid as for Amélie to waylay them, it is not much to be wondered at.
Courage, however, is catching. Amélie pleaded, and the banker gave way. He
opened her list of contributions by a handsome sum, and consented that she
should come the same evening and beg the rest at his house. It was a
strange episode in the brilliant scene—the pale, dark‐eyed woman, in her
homely black gown and neat little black net cap, standing at the door of
the ball‐room; and stretching out her little bag to the votaries of
pleasure as they passed her: “_Pour les pauvres, mesdames! Pour les
pauvres, messieurs!_” The words must have struck in oddly enough through
the clanging of the orchestra, and the rustling of silken robes, and the
hum of laughter as the merrymakers swept round in the mazes of the dance.
But the low, sweet voice of the beggar rose above the music and the din
loud enough to reach many hearts that night; no one turned a deaf ear to
the suppliant; the gentlemen gave money, or pledged themselves to give it;
the women dropped rings and bracelets into the velvet bag that soon
overflowed with its own riches; and when all the guests had arrived, and
the festivity was at its height, Amélie, after admiring, as she was always
ready to do, everything bright and beautiful that was not sinful—the
brilliancy of the scene, the bright jewels and the pretty toilets, and the
artistic decoration of the rooms—bade good‐night to it all and to her
host, and went home with her heart full of love and gratitude towards her
kindly fellow‐creatures.
But we should never end if we were to narrate all the acts of charity and
zeal that she was never tired of performing. The following, however, are
too characteristic to be omitted:
Late one evening, in her rounds through one of those dark centres of
misery and crime that are to be found in all big cities, Amélie heard that
a mountebank was dying in a neighboring cellar, all alone and in great
pain. She made her way to the place at once. The dying man was lying on a
heap of a straw, but he was not alone; a bear and a monkey shared his
wretched abode; they had enabled the poor mountebank to live, and now they
stood by while he was dying, watching his death‐throes in dumb sympathy.
Nothing scared by the presence of his strange company, Amélie went up to
the man and spoke to him gently of his soul. If he had ever heard of such
a thing as an essential part of himself, he seemed to have altogether
forgotten it, but he did not repulse her; he let her sit down beside him
on the live, fetid straw and try to soothe him in his pains, and instruct
him in the intervals, and prepare him to make his peace with God. By the
time her part of the task was done, the night was far spent, but there was
no time to lose. Amélie went straight to the priest’s house and woke him
up. On the road, she told him what he would find on arriving.
The two went in together. Amélie knelt down in the furthest corner of the
place and prayed, and the bear and the monkey looked on while the sweet
and wondrous mystery between Jesus and the good thief was renewed before
their blank, unintelligent eyes. The mountebank made a general confession
of his whole life, and received the last sacraments. Then the priest went
home, and Amélie remained alone with the dying man, who expired a few
hours later with his head resting on her shoulder.
On another occasion, she heard that a woman whose life had been a public
scandal in the town was at the point of death. She rose at once to go to
her, and, in spite of the remonstrances of those present, she did go. The
character of the woman and her associates, and the place where she lived,
were indeed enough to deter a less daring spirit than Amélie, but whenever
an objection was raised on prudential grounds to her visiting here or
there, she would playfully point to her hump, and say:
“With a protector like that, a woman may go anywhere.”
The woman at first repulsed her fiercely and bade her begone, and refused
to hear the name of God mentioned; but Amélie held her ground, pleading
with all the eloquence at her command—and those who have heard it in
moments when her soul was stirred by any great emotion declare that it was
little less than sublime. She caressed the wretched creature, calling her
by the most endearing names, till at last the obdurate heart was softened,
she let Amélie stay and speak to her, and even asked her to come back the
next day. “But,” she added, “you’ll find a _monsieur_ at the door, and
he’s capable of beating you if you try to come in against his will.”
But Amélie was not likely to be deterred by this. She came the following
morning, and found the _monsieur_. He met her with insulting defiance, and
dared her to enter, and, on her attempting to do so, he raised his hand
and clenched it, with a savage oath threatening to strike her.
“Hit here!” said Amélie, coolly turning her hump to him.
Confounded by the words and the action, the man let his arm drop. Before
he had recovered from his surprise, she had passed into the sick room, and
he stood silently looking on and listening in wonder to what was going on
before him. Amélie left the house unmolested, and returned a few hours
later with a priest. The unhappy woman had been a Christian in her youth.
She made a general confession in the midst of abundant tears, and died the
next day in admirable sentiments of contrition and hope. The example was
not lost on her companion; he made a sudden and generous renunciation of
his sinful life, and Amélie had to rejoice over the return of two souls
instead of one.
As we have said before, her charity was essentially catholic, universal in
every sense. She was ready to pity everybody’s troubles, and, with Amélie,
to pity meant to help. The poor widow toiling broken‐hearted for her
children in the courts and alleys of the big town; the father struggling
with adversity in another sphere, trying to educate his sons and marry his
daughters and pay the inexorable debt of decency that society exacts from
a gentleman; the poor, lone girl battling with poverty, or perhaps
writhing in agonized shame at having fallen in the battle; the rich mother
weeping over the wanderings of a son; the poor orphan without bread or
friends; the rich orphan pursued by designing relations, or in danger of
falling into the hands of a worthless husband; high and low, rich and poor
alike, all came to Amélie for sympathy and counsel, and no one was ever
repulsed. Even those difficulties which are the result of culpable
weakness, and which meet generally with small mercy, not to say
indulgence, from pious people, found Amélie full of indulgent pity and a
ready will to help. An officer on one occasion was drawn inadvertently
into contracting a debt of honor which he had no means of paying. In his
despair he thought of Amélie, and, half maddened with shame and remorse,
he came to her to ask for pity and advice. The sum in question was two
thousand francs. Amélie happened to have it at the moment, and, touched by
the distress of the man of the world, she gave it to him at once. There
was no spirit of criticism, no censoriousness in her piety, no fastidious
condemnation of things innocent in themselves, however apt to be dangerous
in their abuse. She loved to see young people happy and amused, and would
listen with real interest and pleasure to an account of some fête where
they had enjoyed themselves after the manner of their age. This simplicity
and liberty of spirit enabled her often to take advantage of opportunities
for doing good that never would occur to a person whose piety turned in a
narrower groove; she was wont to exclaim regretfully against good people
for being so overnice in the choice of opportunities, and thus cramping
their own power and means of usefulness. With regard to the choice of
tools in the same way, she would often deprecate the fastidiousness of
certain pious people, urging that, when there was a work to do, an aim to
accomplish, an obstacle to overcome, we should take up whatever tools
Providence put in our way, not quarrelling with their shape or quality,
but doing the best we can with them, profiting by a knave’s villany or a
fool’s folly to further a just purpose, or a noble scheme, or a kind
action, making, as far as honesty and truth can do it, evil accomplish the
work of good.
Faithfully bearing in mind that we may do no evil that good may come of
it, Amélie had withal an ingenious gift of turning to good account the
evil that was done by others; but she was slow to see the evil, and, when
it was forced upon her, she had always more pity than censure for it. Her
lamp was always lighted, and she was ever ready to help the foolish ones
who go about this world of ours crying out to the wise ones: “Give me of
your oil!” For it is not only when the Bridegroom comes that we need to
have our lamp lighted, we want it all along the road, for others as well
as for ourselves; we must even adapt it to the necessities of the road by
changing the color of its light. This we can do by changing the oil. We
must use the oil of faith when we want a strong, bright blaze to keep our
feet straight amidst the ruts and snares and pools of muddy water that
abound at every step; we must burn the oil of hope to frighten away
despondency and cheer us when our hearts are heavy and our courage ebbing;
but we must be chiefly prodigal of the rich and salutary oil of charity,
for the flame it sends out is often more helpful to others than to
ourselves. Sometimes, when our lamp is so low that it hardly shows the
ground clear under our own feet, it is shedding—thanks to this marvellous
oil of charity—a heavenly radiance on the path of those journeying behind
us; its flame is luminous as a star and soft as moonlight; people on whom
we turn its roseate glow rejoice in it as in sunshine: it softens them, it
heals them, it takes the sting out of their worst wounds. The lamp fed
with this incomparable oil is, moreover, often brightest when we ourselves
are sick at heart, and when it costs us an effort to pour in the oil and
set the wick in order. We do not realize it, but we can believe it by
recalling the effect of kindness on our own souls in some well‐remembered
hour, when it came from one in great sorrow, and who we knew was setting
aside her own grief to enter into ours. Let us be brave, then, to hold up
our lamp arm‐high to the pilgrims who are toiling foot‐sore and faint up
the steep and rugged path of life along with us; its flame soars on to
heaven, and shines more brightly before God than the fairest and loveliest
of his stars.
We mentioned already that Amélie, on her father’s death, made a vow of
personal poverty. She observed this vow with the utmost rigor as far as
was consistent with decorum and the absence of anything approaching to a
display of holiness—a thing of which she was almost morbidly afraid. Her
usual dress was a black woollen gown and a shawl of the same material; her
appearance in the street was that of a respectable housekeeper, but no one
who saw the outward decency of her attire suspected the sordid poverty
that often lay beneath it. She limited herself to a pittance for her
clothes, and she would submit to the most painful inconvenience rather
than exceed it. Once she gave away her strong boots and a warm winter
petticoat to a poor person at the beginning of the winter, and, though the
cold set in suddenly with great severity, she bore it rather than replace
either of them till her allowance fell due. How her health bore the amount
of labor and austerities that she underwent it is difficult to explain
without using the word miraculous.
When, under the pious auspices of Monseigneur de Mazenod, the devotion of
the Perpetual Adoration was established at Marseilles, Amélie at once had
herself enrolled in the confraternity; unable to spare time from her
multiform works of mercy during the day, she entrenched upon her nights,
and used to spend hours in adoration before the Tabernacle. Fatigue and
bodily suffering were no obstacle to the ardor of her soul; her spirit
seemed to thrive in proportion as her body wasted. After a day of arduous
labor, constantly on her feet, going and coming amongst the poor and the
sick, breathing the foul air of hospital wards, and dingy cellars, and
garrets, fasting as rigorously as any Carmelite, and grudging her body all
but the bare necessaries of life, she was able to pass an entire night on
her knees before the Blessed Sacrament, and be apparently none the worse
for it. Such wonderful things are those who love God strengthened to do
for him. Yet this woman was made of the same flesh and blood as ourselves;
she had the same natural shrinkings and antipathies; her body was not made
of different clay from ours, or supernaturally fashioned to defy the
attacks of the devil and the repugnances of nature, to endure hunger, and
pain, and fatigue without feeling them; she had the same temptations to
fight against, the same corrupt inclinations to overcome, and the same
weapons of defence against her enemies that we have—faith and prayer and
the sacraments. What, then, is the difference between us? Only this, she
was generous and brave, and we are mean and cowardly. We bargain and hang
back, whereas she made no reserves, but strove to serve God with all her
heart and all her strength, and he did the rest. He always does it for
those who trust him and hearken unconditionally to that hard saying: “Take
up thy cross and follow me!” For them he changes all bitter things into
sweet, all weakness into strength; for the old Adam that they cast aside
he clothes them with the new, thus rendering them invincible against their
enemies, and repaying a hundred‐fold, even in this life, the miserable
rags that we call sacrifices; he fills the hungry with good things, and in
exchange for creatures and the perishable delights which they have
renounced for his sake he gives them himself and a foretaste of the bliss
of Paradise.
During her solitary vigils before the altar, the thought of the
ingratitude of men and their cruel neglect of our Saviour in his
Eucharistic prison sank deeply into Amélie’s heart, and filled it with
grief and an ardent desire to make some reparation to his outraged love.
We have all read the wonderful chapter on Thanksgiving in that wonderful
book, _All for Jesus_. Most of us have felt our hearts stirred to
sorrowful indignation at the sad picture it reveals of our own unkindness
to God, and the tender sensitiveness of the Sacred Heart to our
ingratitude, and his meek acceptance of any crumb of thanksgiving that we
deign once in a way to throw to him; we have felt our tepid pulses quicken
to a momentary impulse of generosity and passionate desire to call after
the nine ungrateful lepers, and constrain them to return and thank him; we
watch them going their way unmindful, and we cast ourselves in spirit at
the feet of Jesus, gazing after them in sad surprise, and we pour out our
souls in apologies—so bold does the passing touch of love make the meanest
of us in consolations to him for the unkindness of his creatures. Alas!
with most of us it ends there. Next time he tries us we follow the nine
selfish lepers, and leave him wondering and sorrowing again over our
ingratitude. But with Amélie it was different. No inspiration of divine
grace ever found her deaf to its voice; her love knew no such things as
barren sighs and idle mystic sentimentalities. Her whole heart was stirred
by that touching and powerful appeal of Father Faber’s, and she began to
consider at once what she could do to respond to it. The idea occurred to
her of instituting a community, to be called _Sœurs Réparatrices_, whose
mission should be to give thanks and to console our divine Lord for the
ingratitude of the world by perpetual adoration before the Tabernacle, and
at the same time of getting up a regular service of thanksgiving among the
faithful at large, to have short prayers appointed and recommended by the
church to their constant use, for the sole and express purpose of thanking
God for his countless mercies to us all, but more especially to those
among us who never thank him on their own account. Both suggestions were
warmly approved of by many pious souls to whom she mentioned them.
In order, however, to carry them out effectively, it was deemed advisable
that Amélie should go to Rome and obtain the authorization and blessing of
the Holy Father. She had never been to Rome, but it was the desire of her
life to go there; it drew her as the magnet draws the needle; Rome, to her
filial Catholic heart, was the outer gate of heaven; it held the Father of
Christendom, the Vicar of Christ; it held the tombs of the martyrs, its
soil was saturated with their blood, all things within its walls were
stamped with the seal of Christianity, and told of the wonders that it had
wrought. Amélie, glad of the necessity which compelled her to fulfil her
long‐cherished desire, set out for the Eternal City. She received the most
affectionate welcome from the Holy Father, who had been long acquainted
with her by name, and knew the apostolic manner of life she led. With
regard to the community which she desired to found, and of which she was
to become a member, but not superioress, His Holiness approved of it, but
beyond this, of what passed between him and Amélie on the subject, no
details have transpired. She said that the Holy Father encouraged her to
carry out the design and gave her his blessing on it, and promised her his
fatherly countenance and protection; but whether she submitted any rule to
him at this period we have not been able to ascertain. As to the scheme of
general thanksgiving that she proposed to inaugurate, he gave her abundant
blessings on it, and indulgenced several prayers that she submitted to his
inspection. Unfortunately, we have not been able to procure a copy of the
little book which contained them all; this is the more to be regretted,
that some of them were drawn up by Amélie herself and full of the spirit
of her own tender piety; they were also preceded by a preface in which she
appealed very lovingly to the children of Mary and the members of the
Confraternity of the Sacred Heart, and begged their zealous co‐operation
in the service of thanksgiving. We may mention, however, that she was in
the habit, during the few remaining years of her life, of constantly
recommending to her friends the use of the _Gloria Patri_ and the
ejaculation _Deo Gratias!_ as having been particularly commended to her
devotion by the Holy Father himself.
An incident occurred to Amélie during her stay in Rome which she often
narrated as a proof of the extreme need we have of a service of
thanksgiving. She went one morning to an audience at the house of a
cardinal, and while she was waiting for her turn she got into conversation
with the Superior of the Redemptorist Fathers in France. Always on the
watch to gain an ally to the cause, she told him the motive of her journey
to Rome, and begged that he would use his influence in his own wide sphere
to forward its success amongst souls.
“Ah! madame!” exclaimed the Redemptorist, “it was a good thought to try
and stir up men’s hearts to a spirit of thanksgiving, for there is nothing
more wanted in the world. The story of the nine lepers is going on just
the same these eighteen hundred years. I have been forty years a priest,
and during that time I have been asked to say Masses for every sort of
intention, _but only once_ have I been asked _to say a Mass of
thanksgiving_!”
Yes, truly the story of the nine lepers is being enacted now as in the old
days when Jesus exclaimed sorrowfully, “Is there no one but this stranger
found to return and give thanks?”
But for all her clear‐sighted sensitiveness to the sins and shortcomings
of her day, Amélie was full of hope in it; nothing annoyed her more than
to see good people lapse into that lugubrious way so common to them of
always crying anathema on their age and despairing of it; she used to say
that she mistrusted the love and the logic of such; that those who love
God and their fellow‐creatures for his sake never despair of them, but
work for them, trusting in God’s help and in the ultimate triumph of good
over evil; that despair was a sign of stupidity and cowardice. And was she
not right? Surely every age has in its ugliness some counterbalancing
beauty, some redeeming grace of comeliness, in the tattered raiment that
hangs about its ulcers and its nakedness. God never leaves himself at any
time without witnesses on the earth, and it is our fault, not his, if we
do not see them. There are always bright spots in humanity, and those who
cannot discern them should blame their own dull vision, not their fellow‐
men. As poets who have the mystic eye see beauties of hue and color in the
material world where common men see nothing but ruin and decay, so do the
saints and the saint‐like, with the keen vision of faith and hope, alone
penetrate the external darkness and decay of humanity, and discover in the
midst of gloom and evil much that is promising and fair; they see
elemental wines boiling up in the cauldron of travail and suffering, and
they know that their bitterness is salutary and their fire invigorating
unto life.
Amélie returned to Marseilles well satisfied with her visit to the Holy
City, and resumed her labors with renewed zest. But she had left her heart
behind her, and from the day she left Rome she had but one desire, and
that was to return and end her days there. Her health had of late grown so
feeble that it was more and more a subject of wonder to those who
witnessed it how she was able to continue her life of superhuman activity
without flagging for a day. Amélie felt, however, that it could not last
much longer now. She had frequently expressed in the midst of her busy,
active life a longing for a life of contemplation, and in proportion as
the end drew near, the yearning for an interval of silence and solitude
increased. She was often heard to say to her fellow‐laborers:
“It is time I left off looking after other people’s souls, and attended a
little to my own; I feel the want of more prayer, of more time before the
Blessed Sacrament; really, I must begin to get ready.”
In the year 1869, she determined to carry this desire into execution, and
begin to get ready, as she said, by withdrawing into a more solitary life.
Her love for the church had taken a new impetus from her intercourse with
the Holy Father; from the first the Denier de S. Pierre counted her among
its most zealous promoters, but more so than ever now. An abundant
collection which she made just at this time offered a plausible pretext to
her for going to Rome, in order to lay it at the feet of Pius IX. So after
putting her affairs in order, and bidding good‐by to only her immediate
and intimate friends, so as to avoid anything like resistance or a
demonstration on the part of the multitude of people to whom she knew her
departure would be painful, Amélie took leave of the hospitable old home
in the Rue Grignan, and set her face once more toward the Eternal City.
But she had a last work to do for her native town on the road. The
splendid military hospital of Marseilles, in which she had taken so deep
and active an interest, was served by lay nurses, and both the soldiers
and the civil authorities were anxious to have these replaced by Sisters
of Charity. Easy as the thing seemed, up to the present all endeavors to
effect the substitution had failed. It rested with the government to make
the appointment and to grant a certain sum for the maintenance of the
community when attached to the hospital, but, owing either to the case not
being properly represented, or to the ill‐will of certain officials who
put obstacles in the way, every application on the subject had been met by
a refusal. The authorities, seeing all else fail them, turned to Amélie.
They remembered her success on a former occasion, and requested her to
take the affair in hand on arriving in Paris, and get from the minister
the desired concession. The mission was repugnant to her, because she
foresaw it would involve her having to come forward and put herself in the
way of notabilities and magnates; but, as there seemed just a chance of
being able to perform a last service to the soldiers, she accepted, and
promised to do her best.
She had a military friend in Paris, who, though a practical Catholic,
occupied a distinguished position in the service, and was on good terms
with its chiefs. This gentleman procured an audience for her of Marshal
——, who was then in the ministry, and the person to whom she was directed
to apply in the first instance.
The marshal, who had been made aware of the subject of her visit, received
her, according to his custom, in shirt‐sleeves and a towering rage, asked
her a dozen questions, one on top of another, without giving her time to
edge in a word of protest, wondered very much what she or anybody else
meant by interfering with soldiers and their hospitals and the supreme
wisdom of the government, of dictating to them what they ought to do; but
that was the way with women; women were always meddling with what didn’t
concern them; they were the most difficult subjects to govern; for
himself, he would rather have the management of ten armies than a village
full of women, etc. In fact, his excellency bullied his visitor after the
usual manner of his peculiar courtesy, and Amélie was obliged to take her
leave after a very brief audience, during which she had been rated like a
naughty schoolboy and not allowed to say three sentences in self‐defence.
Clearly there was not much to be done in that quarter. Her friend then
proposed getting her without further preamble an audience of the emperor.
Amélie preserved a grateful recollection of the reception she had met with
from his majesty some years before, and the idea of entering his presence
again inspired her with less terror than the prospect of a second edition
of the marshal; she thought, moreover, that there might be a speedier and
better chance of success by applying directly to the emperor than by
beating about the bush with his ministers, admitting even that they were
not all of the same type as the one she had tried. Amélie accepted the
offer, therefore, and, after a shorter delay than any one but a cabinet
minister might have been obliged to undergo, she received a letter from
the Lord Chamberlain notifying the day and hour when she was to present
herself at the Tuileries.
She was shown into the antechamber, where generals, dignitaries of the
state, bishops, and other important personages were waiting their turn to
enter the imperial presence. His majesty was giving audience to an
ambassador when Amélie arrived, and there was rather a long delay before
the door opened. When it did, it was not his chamberlain, but the emperor
himself who appeared on the threshold; he stood for a moment, and looked
deliberately round the room, where he recognized many noble and
influential personages, and then, perceiving an elderly lady in a rusty
black gown sitting at the furthest end of it, he walked straight up to
her, and held out both his hands. “Mademoiselle Lautard,” said his
majesty, “I thank you for the honor you do me by this visit; I am sure I
have only to mention your name for every one present to admit your right
to pass before them.”
There was a general murmur of assent, though it must have puzzled most if
not all of the spectators of this strange scene who this poverty‐stricken,
humpbacked elderly lady was to be thus greeted by Napoleon III., and
handed over their heads to the presence‐chamber. As soon as they were
alone, the emperor drew a chair close to his own, and, inviting his
visitor to sit down, he said:
“Now, tell me if, over and above the pleasure of seeing you, I am to have
that of doing something that can give you pleasure?”
Amélie, in relating the interview to her friend, said that, when she saw
his majesty bearing down upon her before the assembled multitude in the
antechamber, she felt ready to sink into the ground, and wished herself at
Hongkong; but the moment he spoke her terrors vanished, and she had not
been two minutes with him before she felt perfectly at her ease, and
talked on as fearlessly as if he had been an old friend. She told him her
wishes about the hospital, and he promised unconditionally that they
should be carried out. For certain formalities, however, it was necessary
to refer her to his minister.
“You will call on Marshal ——,” said his majesty; “he is the person to do
it.”
“Sire!” exclaimed Amélie, throwing up her hands in dismay, “anything but
that; your majesty must really manage it without sending me again to
Marshal ——.”
“Ah! you have been to him already,” said the emperor, with a quiet smile;
“well, try him again, and this time I warrant you a better reception; he
is _bon enfant au fond_, but you must not let him think that you’re afraid
of him.”
Thus warned and encouraged, Amélie promised to take her courage in both
hands, as the emperor said, and beard the lion once more in his den.
Before letting her go, his majesty questioned her minutely about the
condition of the hospitals and other charitable institutions at
Marseilles, concerning all of which he appeared to be singularly well
informed.
The next day, she presented herself at the _ministère_, and was ushered
into the marshal’s presence. He had his coat on this time; whether the
fact was due to accident, or to a desire to propitiate the lady who had
complained of him to his master, history does not say; but, as soon as
Amélie entered, his excellency accosted her with: “Well, so you were
affronted with me, it seems! What did you say about me to the emperor?”
“Excellency,” replied Amélie, “I told his majesty that I had expected to
find a minister of France, but I found instead a man in a passion.”
The marshal grunted a laugh, and told her to sit down and explain her
business. She did so, this time with perfect satisfaction to both parties,
and they parted the best friends in the world.
This closed her career of usefulness in France; she waited to make the
needful arrangements for the departure of the nuns, their reception at
Marseilles, etc., and then she started for Rome.
On setting out for the Eternal City, Amélie seemed to have had the
presentiment that she had entered on the last stage of her pilgrimage. The
sense of her approaching end, which betrayed itself, perhaps
unconsciously, in conversing both by word and letter with her most
intimate friends, was accompanied by an increase of fervor and a serenity
which struck every one who approached her as something almost divine. The
project which she had formed of founding and entering a community of
_Sœurs Réparatrices_ was still unrealized, but she hoped now to carry it
into effect, to make the remainder of her life a perpetual _Deo Gratias_!
and to die in the outward livery of the religious state whose spirit her
whole life had so faithfully embodied. But God had other designs upon her.
Meantime, in the twilight interval of comparative leisure that she had
looked forward to so long and enjoyed so thankfully, Amélie did not give
up all active work; she prayed more, and lived in greater retirement; but
she still gave a fair proportion of each day to her accustomed service of
the poor and the sick.
These were troubled days that she had fallen upon in Rome. The
sacrilegious hand of parricides had robbed the church of her possessions,
and reduced Pius IX. to the nominal sovereignty of the capital of
Christendom, as a prelude to making it, what it is now, his prison.
Catholic hearts were sad; but, amongst all his children, the Vicar of
Christ had no more faithfully sorrowing heart than Amélie’s, none who
entered more keenly into his griefs or responded with more filial alacrity
to their claim on her sympathy and participation and righteous anger. She
beheld the persecutions of God’s church, the hatred and malice of its
enemies, the cowardice of those who called themselves its friends, but
stood by passive and cold while the crime perpetrated outside Jerusalem
eighteen hundred years ago was renewed before their eyes on the body of
that church which Christ had died to found; she saw pride and materialism
everywhere at work striving to undo his work, to prevent the coming of his
kingdom, and to establish the kingdom of sin upon earth; and the sight of
all this filled her heart with grief, but not with despair. It was indeed
an hour of unexampled grief for Christendom, but it was also an hour for
activity, and zeal, and renewed courage; it was a time for each individual
member to prove himself, for all to put their hand to the plough that was
furrowing the bosom of the church, and to water the travailed soil with
fertilizing tears, and, if need be, blood, thus preparing it for the
future harvest that was inevitable. For even as God’s enemies of old had
stood at the foot of Calvary, and shook their heads at the bleeding victim
of their own hate and envy, and bade him come down from the cross, knowing
not the dawn of the Resurrection was nigh, when the victim would arise
triumphant over death, and compel his murderers to acknowledge that this
man must indeed have been the Son of God—so now the enemies of his church
had their hour of triumph, and clapped their hands for joy to see the
church that he had built upon the Rock, and promised that the gates of
hell should not prevail against, tottering and crumbling under the blows
of progress and an enlightened civilization and the force of arms. But
their triumph was but the hour of the powers of darkness that was not to
endure, but would perish at the appointed time before the manifestation of
the Sun of Justice.
Still, even faithful hearts quailed before the storm, and were scandalized
at the way in which God seemed to forsake his own, not recognizing in this
mysterious abandonment another trait of resemblance between his Vicar and
the divine Model, who cried out in his dereliction, “Why hast thou
forsaken me?”
Amélie was forced to hear and see much that was unutterably painful to
hear as a true child of the church; many who called themselves such, and
who were glad enough to draw upon her magnificent sacramental treasury,
and to praise and serve her in the days of peace, were not stout‐hearted
enough to share her tribulations or even to understand them, and stood
aloof when they ought to have acted, or remained dumb when they ought to
have spoken, or spoke what they had better have left unsaid. But alongside
of this indifference or treachery she witnessed a great deal that was
beautiful and consoling. Pilgrims were flocking from the four quarters of
the globe to lay at the feet of Pius IX. the tribute of their fidelity and
abundant offerings, often collected in perilous journeys at great risk and
sacrifice. Then there were the Zouaves, _nos chers Zouaves_, as Amélie
always called them, presenting a noble example to us all by their heroic
devotion to the cause of God, their spirit of immolation, their chivalrous
valor in action, and the marvellous purity of their lives. These modern
crusaders replaced the suffering soldiers of Marseilles in Amélie’s
solicitude during her stay in Rome. She tended them and worked for them
indefatigably, and dwelt continually in letters home on the consolation
the spectacle of their childlike piety afforded her.
Early in December she wrote to a friend at Marseilles: “Our dear Zouaves
have made their entry into Rome. They passed under my windows. They are
the flower of the French nation. They are full of that energy which
nothing but the spirit of the faith gives. It is beautiful to see them
receive Holy Communion before arming themselves. This morning eighteen
hundred of them, bent on shedding their blood in the cause of God, marched
proudly into the Eternal City with the band playing and colors flying;
they reminded one of the Theban legion. I witnessed a touching sight. The
Holy Father met them on their way, and they fell on their knees like one
man to get his blessing. He blessed them with visible emotion. How could a
father not be moved at seeing the devotion of his children? The Flemish
and the Bretons are particularly conspicuous; ancient traditions have been
preserved amongst them, and have come down from the fathers to the sons.
This evening they accompanied His Holiness to the Vatican, where they
cheered him with the enthusiasm of Christian hearts. It was impossible to
withhold one’s tears as one beheld the venerable Pontiff rest his loving
and gentle gaze on all this youth, so devoted to him, and burning to prove
their fidelity. In these days, the position of the Zouaves amongst
Christian soldiers is a noble one. Oh! if the idle youth of France knew
what a happiness it is to serve God, how many families would be happy and
blest even in this world as well as the next! I see here numbers of young
men who had strayed away from the right path for a time, but who had the
grace to return to it, and are now as happy as children, pure as angels,
attached to the church and the Vicar of Christ. Their sole ambition is
martyrdom; their joy is to look forward to it. Oh! I see here admirable
things. Adieu, dear friend. Let us pray always.”
Sinister reports and wild alarms, sometimes the result of malice,
sometimes of fear, were constantly starting up in Rome, terrifying the
weak, and stimulating the brave to greater vigilance and courage, but
keeping every one on the _qui vive_ from day to day. In the midst of the
general excitement of expectation or terror, the serene confidence of Pius
IX. remained unshaken, like the rock on which it rested. Amélie, who was
admitted frequently to the honor and happiness of speaking to the Holy
Father, was lost in wonder at it—at the unearthly peace that was visible
in his countenance and pervaded every word of his conversation. Shortly
before the date of the foregoing letter, she wrote to the same friend:
“The most contradictory stories are current here, but the peace, the calm,
the _abandon_ of the Holy Father are indescribable, and go further to
inspire confidence than the most sinister conjectures to create terrors.
The daughters of Jerusalem followed our Redeemer to Calvary: a sort of
filial sentiment holds me in Rome. I cannot go away.... Let us pray! The
power of prayer obtains all things.”
Let us pray! This had been the lifelong burthen of her song, and the cry
grew louder and more intense as she drew near the close. It was not the
shrill cry of those who say, Lord! Lord! but the irrepressible voice of a
soul whom the spirit of prayer possessed in the fulness of its availing
power, and side by side with whose growth grew the spirit of sacrifice,
the thirst for self‐immolation. She clung firmly to hope as the anchor of
courage and resignation in the present trials of the church, but the sense
of the outrages that God’s glory was enduring in the person of His Vicar
increased in her soul to positive anguish. The consideration of her own
nothingness and utter inability to lighten the cross that was pressing on
the saintly Pontiff, pursued her day and night with the mysterious pain
that is born of the love of God.
What a wonderful thing the soul of a saint or even a saintlike human being
must be! How one longs to go within the veil and get a glimpse of the life
that is lived there! It is so strange to us to see a creature take God’s
cause to heart, and pine and suffer about it as we do about our personal
cares and sorrows. It sets us wondering what sort of inner life theirs can
be, and through what process of grace and correspondence and mysterious
training they have grown to that state of mind when the things of God and
his eternity are poignant realities, and the things of earth hollow
phantoms that have lost the power to charm, or terrify, or touch. We see
them hungering after justice as we hunger after bread, pining actually for
the accomplishment of God’s will as eagerly as we pine for the success of
our puny enterprises and the triumph of our small ambitions; and we are
astonished, as it behoves our stupidity and hardness of heart to be, at
the incomprehensible character of their faith and love. When life presses
heavily upon us, and the cross is bruising our shoulders, and all things
are dark and dreary, we catch ourselves occasionally sighing for death.
This is about our nearest approach to that homesick yearning expressed in
the words of the apostle: “I long to die, to be dissolved, and to be with
Christ!” What an altogether different feeling it must be with these
saintlike souls when they long for death! They are not impatient of life,
or, like tired travellers, angry with the dust and sun of the road, and
disgusted with the uncomfortable wayside inn where they put up; they are
impatient of heaven and of the vision that makes the bliss and the glory
of heaven. Too jealous of their Creator’s rights to rob him even in desire
of one year, or day, or hour of their poor service while he sees good to
employ them, they are willing to go on toiling through eternity if he
wishes it; but they are homesick, they long to see him, they yearn after
his possession with a sacred unrest that we who have but little kinship
with their spirit cannot understand. They are saddened by their exile and
by the sight of sin and of the small harvest their Lord’s glory reaps
amidst the great harvest of iniquity that overruns the world. They watch
the sea of humanity rolling its waves along time, moaning with conscious
agonies of sin, storm‐lashed and terrible, breaking in billows of impotent
rage against the Rock of redemption, and dashing headlong past it into the
gulf, where it is sucked down into everlasting darkness; and seeing these
things as God sees them, and as they affect his interests, they are filled
with sorrow, and call out for the end, that this mighty torrent may be
stayed. They call out to the stars to rise on the far‐off heights, that
loom dim and gloomy through the swirl and vapor of the storm. They would
fain hush the winds and the waves, and hasten the advent of the Judge
before whose splendor the dark horizon will vanish, and whose glory will
outshine the sunrise and fill the universe with joy. It is not their own
selfish deliverance or the world’s annihilation that they long for, but
its consummation in man’s happiness and the Creator’s glory.
Amélie longed with all the strength of her generous heart to do something
for her Lord, to help ever so little towards hastening the coming of his
kingdom before he called her away. One morning, after communion, as she
was praying very fervently for the Holy Father, whose health just then was
a source of great anxiety amongst the faithful, this longing came upon her
with an intensity that she had never felt before; she was seized with a
sudden impulse to make the sacrifice of her life in exchange for his, and
to offer herself as a victim that he might be spared yet awhile to guide
and sustain the church through the trials and temptations that were
afflicting her. The impulse was so vehement that it was with difficulty
she restrained herself from obeying it on the spot; the desire, however,
to obtain the blessing of obedience in her sacrifice enabled her to do so.
She quietly continued her thanksgiving, and, on leaving the church, went
straight to the Vatican. There, kneeling at the feet of the suffering
Vicar of Christ, she told him of the desire that had come to her, and
begged him to bless it, and to permit her to offer herself up next day at
Holy Communion as a victim in his place if it should please God to accept
her.
Pius IX. was silent for some moments, while Amélie, with uplifted face and
clasped hands, awaited his reply. Then, as if obeying a voice that had
spoken to him in the silence, he laid his hand upon her head, and said,
with great solemnity: “Go, my daughter, and do as the Spirit of God has
prompted you.” He blessed her with emotion, and Amélie left his presence
filled with gladness and renewed fervor. She spent the greater part of the
day in prayer. In the afternoon she wrote two letters: one of them, of too
private a character to be given at length, contained the foregoing account
of the morning’s occurrences; the other we transcribe. It is a revelation
beyond all comment of the state of her soul as it stood on what she
believed to be the threshold of eternity.
SATURDAY, Dec. 15—ROME.
“We still continue in the greatest calm. _Nos chers Zouaves_ have
the courage of lions; they draw their strength from the blood of
the martyrs. Generally speaking, they are pious as angels. You see
them constantly during their free hours slipping off their
knapsack and their arms to go and kneel at the feet of the priest
in the confessional, or to pray at the shrine of the queen of
martyrs; they are truly the children of the church, and—”
Here the letter broke off.
The next morning was Sunday. Amélie repaired, as usual, to early Mass at
S. Peter’s. She received Holy Communion, and then, with the Eucharistic
Presence warm upon her heart, she offered up her life to him who had been
its first and last and only love. The words were hardly cold upon her
lips, when she was seized with sudden and violent pain, and fell with a
cry to the ground. She was surrounded immediately, and carried home.
Priests and religious of both sexes who were in S. Peter’s at the moment,
and knew her, filled with alarm and distress, accompanied her to the
Strada Ripresa dei Barberi. Medical aid was sent for, but it was soon
evident that her illness was beyond the reach of human skill. All that day
and the next she continued in agonizing pain, unable to speak or to thank
those about her except by a smile or a pressure of the hand. Early on the
following morning, Wednesday, she grew calmer, the pain subsided, and
Amélie asked for the last sacraments. She received them with sentiments of
ecstatic devotion, and for some time remained absorbed in prayer. Her
thanksgiving terminated, she took leave tenderly of those friends who
surrounded her, and then begged they would begin the prayers for the
dying; they did so, and she joined in the responses with a fervor that
went to every heart. When they came to those grand and solemn words with
which the church speeds her children into the presence of their merciful
Judge, “Depart, Christian soul, in the name of the Father who created
thee, in the name of the Son who redeemed thee, in the name of the Holy
Ghost who sanctified thee,” Amélie bowed her head and died.
The news was conveyed at once to the Vatican. When Pius IX. heard it, he
evinced no sudden surprise, but raised his eyes to heaven, and murmured
with a smile:
“_Si tosto accetato!_”(273)
The announcement of Amélie’s death was received with universal expressions
of dismay and sorrow. It was not only the poor, who had been her chief and
most intimate associates in Rome, that mourned her, all classes of society
joined in a chorus of heartfelt regret, and proved how well they had
appreciated the gentle French sister who had dwelt humbly amongst them
doing good. The house where she lay in her beautiful and heroic death‐
sleep was besieged by people from every part of the city; all were anxious
to gaze once more upon her face, to touch her hands with crosses and
rosaries, to kneel in prayer beside the victim who had offered herself for
the sins of the people, and been accepted by him who delighteth not in
burnt‐offerings, but in the sacrifice of a contrite heart. To her truly it
had been answered: “O woman, great is thy faith: be it done unto thee
according to thy word!”
The miraculous circumstances of her death were soon proclaimed. In the
minds of those who had known her well they excited no surprise. From all
they called out sentiments of admiration and praise. Tears flowed
uninterruptedly round the austere court where the virgin tabernacle rested
from its labors, but they were tears sweeter than the smiles and laughter
of earth; prayers for the dead were suspended by common impulse, and the
spectators, exchanging the _De Profundis_ for the _Te Deum_ and the
_Magnificat_, broke out into canticles of triumph and hymns of rejoicing.
The Zouaves, her beloved Zouaves, hurried in consternation to the house as
soon is the news reached them that the gentle, devoted friend of the
soldier was no more; and it was a beautiful and stirring sight to see them
sobbing like children beside her, touching her hands with their sword‐
hilts and their rosaries, and swelling in broken but enthusiastic voices
the hymns of thanksgiving.
The Holy Father, wishing to pay his tribute to the general testimony of
love and admiration, commanded that the child of S. Dominic should be
carried to her grave with a pomp and splendor befitting the holiness of
her life and the heroic character of her death. The remains were conveyed
accordingly first to the Basilica of the Apostles in solemn state,
escorted by a vast concourse of people, priests and religious, and exposed
there throughout the morning to public veneration; a requiem Mass and the
office of the dead were chanted; in the afternoon, the body, followed by
all that Rome held of greatest and best, was transported to the Church of
Santa Maria in Ara Cœli. The Zouaves claimed the privilege of bearing the
precious remains upon their shoulders, and it was granted them. By special
permission of His Holiness, Amélie was interred in Santa Maria; but her
death was no sooner known at Marseilles than the townspeople spontaneously
demanded that the body should be returned to them. But Pius IX. replied
that Rome had now a prior claim to its guardianship; Amélie had made the
sacrifice of her life at Rome and for Rome; it was fitting that the ashes
should remain where the holocaust had been offered and consumed.
Marseilles yielded to the decision of the Sovereign Pontiff, and the
daughter of S. Dominic was left to sleep on under the august dome of the
Ara Cœli, there to await the angel of the resurrection, whose trumpet
shall awake the dead and bid them come forth and clothe themselves with
immortality.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
The following is the authentic record of this miraculous death, as copied
from the original, legalized by Cardinal Patrizi, Vicar of His Holiness:
“Je soussigné, curé de la trèssainte basilique constantinienne des douze
saints apôtres de Rome, certifie que dans le registre XII. des défunts,
lettre N, page 283, se trouve l’acte dont l’extrait mot à mot suit:
“Le vingt‐deux décembre mil‐huit cent soixante six.—Mademoiselle Claire‐
Françoise‐Amélie Lautard de Marseille, fille de M. Jean Baptiste Lautard,
vierge très pieuse, pendant quelle offrait Dimanche dernier à Dieu sa
propre vie pour le salut du souverain Pontife, Pie IX. de Rome et de la
sainte église, a été saisie sur le champ par la maladie, et ayant reçu
très pieusement les sacraments de l’église, jouissant de la plenitude de
ses facultés, en prière, entourée de plusieurs prêtres et vierges, a rendu
son âme a Jésus Christ son époux, avec la plus grande sérénité, le
Mercredi dix‐neuf à neuf heures et demie du matin dans la maison Rue
Ripresa dei Barberi 175, l’âge de cinquante neuf ans; son corps, le
lendemain vingt, après le completuum a été conduit accompagné par un grand
nombre de religieuse en cette basilique et y a été exposé pendant la
matinée suivant l’usage des nobles, l’office et la Messe ont été dit, dans
l’après‐midi le corps a été transporté à l’église de Sainte Marie in Ara‐
Cœli, òu il a été enseveli dans le tombeau des Sœurs de St. Joseph de
l’Apparition.
“Donné à Rome,” etc.(274)
The International Congress Of Prehistoric Anthropology And Archæology.
From La Revue Generale De Bruxelles
Concluded.
The sessions of August 25 began with fresh discussions concerning the
troglodytes of Menton and the so‐called tertiary skull from California
already spoken of. M. Desor entered into extensive details concerning the
hatchets of nephrite and jade found in the Alps, and apparently of
Oriental origin. “I do not believe,” said he, as he ended, “that these
hatchets were utensils, but merely objects of display, like the
dolmens(!)—precious memorials and relics of the first ages of humanity.”
M. de Quatrefages thought these hatchets a proof of ancient commercial
relations with the East. A great deal was said in this discussion of the
use of stone knives by the Egyptians in embalming the dead, and among the
Jews for circumcising. Only one thing was forgotten—neither the Egyptians
nor the Jews ever attached any religious importance to the use of stone,
and they likewise made use of bronze and iron knives in these operations.
The instrument of circumcision at the present day is a steel blade.(275)
M. Leemans, director of the museum at Leyden, thought these hatchets came
from Java. He reminded us that there has always been constant intercourse
between Switzerland and that island, and that the majority of the soldiers
of the East India Company were traditionally recruited in Switzerland. The
Abbé Delaunay refuted M. Desor’s opinion by merely referring to the
collection at Pont‐Levoy, where there are fourteen hatchets of jade found
in that vicinity. It was thought desirable to ascertain the as yet unknown
source of jade. They now returned to the _hiatus_ mentioned by M. de
Mortillet at the previous session, in order to oppose it by bringing
forward an intermediary race, for whom M. Broca was the sponsor, though
without flattering it much. He engaged in a long, subtile argument on the
way tertiary flints were introduced into the valleys and caverns. They
were not agreed on this question, which is one we can only regard with
speculative interest.
The excursions to the _ateliers_ of Spiennes and Mesvin were not as
pleasant as the one to the Lesse. For that, the country around Mons should
be as charming as that of the Meuse—and the people likewise. There is a
very complete work by M. Dupont concerning these excavations, in which
have been found millions of rough flints, to which he does not hesitate to
assign a quaternary origin of the mammoth period. When one has a taste of
the mammoth, he cannot get too much of it. I know of sceptics and
controversialists who through speculations of another kind are plunged
into foolish incredulity. Here is an instance: from time immemorial our
forefathers made use of flints for striking fire, and many of us can still
remember the custom, which may not have wholly disappeared. For centuries,
households had to be supplied with flints for the tinder‐box, and in
abundance, for this stone is soon worn out by iron; it becomes furred and
smooth, and is soon unfit for use. If we compare the considerable traffic
in flints that must have been carried on with the enormous consumption
that supports the fabrication of chemical matches, we can easily see that
the sites of the workshops where flints for striking fire were cut must
have been heaped with millions of rough ones—nodules, chips, and _débris_
of all kinds; that excavations must have been made by pits, which
necessarily extended to considerable depth, and crossed very old geologic
strata, for silex is found imbedded in chalk at a depth of thirty or forty
metres in some places; that to argue from the stratification of
surrounding formations, in order to decide on the synchronism of the
excavations, would expose us to conclude _post hoc, ergo propter hoc_. And
I have not mentioned all the common uses made of flints in a household.
For many years they were used for firearms, and silex is still used in
ceramic manufactures, the origin of which is lost in the darkness of ages.
A great many of the flints that appear cut are only fragments that may
have been owing to spontaneous fracture. Now, whence came all the flints
used for striking fire during the historic periods that go back from our
time to the middle ages and to antiquity? Has it been proved that these
remains, so‐called prehistoric, do not come within the domain of history;
nay, even of modern history? At all events, the age of the quaternary
deposits is by no means established, and it is on the mere presence of
human remains, or of the productions of human labor among these deposits,
that certain anthropologists found the millions of ages they attribute to
our species. These remains do not indicate the site of ancient
settlements; they have been washed away from those settlements by currents
of water, and the question is, What epoch produced these changes?—a
question not solved, and perhaps never will be.
Besides, the primary defect of the whole prehistoric system is the
indissolubly confounding of two orders of very evident facts, but which
may by no means have any correlation as to time. Wrought flints show
evident traces of human labor, and there is no unprejudiced person who
cherishes the least doubt about it. The evidence of design shown by the
examination of two or three specimens is in itself a proof of some value,
but this proof makes an irresistible impression on the mind when, in
addition, we see an accumulation of specimens. It is, then, no longer
possible to attribute the uniform shape of the flints to a mere accident.
But were they fashioned at the time of the formation of the _terrains_ in
which they are embedded? That is another problem, the solution of which is
liable to controversy. Mr. Taylor, who is very respectable authority in
such matters, declares, after much conscientious research, that the
gravel‐beds of St. Acheul were deposited in the earlier part of the
Christian era. People of the historic period, such as the first
inhabitants of Umbria and the Egyptians, made flints precisely like those
of St. Acheul. The prodigious antiquity of man must be greatly shaken by
these observations. At Sinai, flint has been used to effect immense
excavations in the rock; it is again utilized under the form of hammers
and chisels in the ancient copper mines of the Aztecs, in Canada, Spain,
Wady‐Maghara, and Bethlehem, as well as on Lake Superior, in Tuscany, and
in Brittany. The Bedouins of Africa and the Indians of Texas still make
use of them; and M. Reboux, who gave the Congress a practical
demonstration of the mounting and use of the utensils of the stone age,
received his inspiration from those savages. They make the handles out of
the sinews of the bison, covered with a wide strip of the animal’s skin
recently taken off. This band is wound around grooves made in the middle
of the hammer. The skin, as it dries, contracts, and the stone, the
extremities of which alone are uncovered, is enclosed in a sheath so tight
that it cannot be drawn out.(276) It must be acknowledged, then, that the
authenticity of these beds at Spiennes, as prehistoric _ateliers_, appears
exceedingly doubtful, and there is a tinge of similar incredulity in the
behavior of the people around the _Camp des Cayaux_: “Countrymen, and even
little peasant girls,” says a reporter of one of our principal journals,
“were selling the finest stones to the travellers, making superhuman
efforts to repress smiles that threatened to explode into loud laughter. A
singularly ironic expression was legible in the large eyes of these
_fillettes_ and broke through their pretended seriousness. It was very
evident that the benighted villagers in the vicinity of Mons were not
sufficiently initiated into the new gospel of science, and by no means had
implicit faith in it. The irreverence of the population was still more
evident at the entrance of the hamlet, where a group of young women
manifested quite an uncivil merriment at the sight of some of the princes
of science who were toiling along under the heavy burden of quaternary
flint.” As an example of moral contrasts, I will merely allude to Hennuyer
and the peasant of Furfooz, one sceptical and contemptuous of everything,
and the other with genuine respect for the traditions of his beloved
valleys.
The morning of the twenty‐seventh was mostly taken up with a report from
General Faid’herbe on the dolmens of Algeria. A burst of applause greeted
the illustrious and genial hero of Lille. Popular sentiment seemed an
embodiment of the
“_Placuit victrix causa diis, sed victa Catoni_”
in the very teeth of the Borussians.(277)
General Faid’herbe assigned a historic epoch to the origin of the dolmens.
These monuments, which are tombs, were the work of one race found on every
shore from Pomerania to Tunis, and which, according to him, proceeded from
the north to the south. The dolmens of Africa are like those of Europe.
But what race was this? A blonde race from the shores of the Baltic, as
the speaker proved by three facts: 1. Blondes are still to be found in
Barbary. 2. Ancient historians speak of the blonde people who lived there
before the Christian era. 3. Fifteen centuries before Christ the blonde
inhabitants of that country attacked Lower Egypt. M. Faid’herbe stated
that when he lived in Senegal there were two powerful negro tribes in the
countries on the upper Niger having a political organization of relative
advancement. The complexion of the royal family was somewhat clear, and
they prided themselves on their descent from white ancestors. Etymological
indices lead us to believe that this dynasty descended from the blonde
race of the dolmens.
M. Worsaae opposed the general’s opinion, and maintained that the builders
of the dolmens, on the contrary, proceeded from the south to the north,
where they attained the height of their civilization. M. Cartailhac,
however, stated an important fact that weakens this objection: the dolmens
of the South of France contain metallic objects whose place of fabrication
could not have been far off; those of the interior and the North only
contained articles of polished stone.
A small man now sprang into the tribune, fierce as Orestes tormented by
the Eumenides, with black eyes, long streaming hair, and a person of
incessant mobility. It is one of the princes of oriental philology—M.
Oppert, who began a demonstration of the chronology of remote historical
times, which he continued in the afternoon session. He assured us, as he
began, that he did not intend to offend any one’s religious convictions,
or to discuss the chronology of the Bible, which, in his eyes, is
eminently respectable. In his opinion, the difference of the dates pointed
out in different chronological tables can be explained without any
difficulty. M. Oppert showed us how the chronologies of Egypt and Chaldea,
which were calculated by cycles of unequal length, begin with the same
date—the 19th of January, Gregorian (the 27th of April, Julian), of the
year 11542 B.C.!
He therefore concluded that the people of those regions must have observed
the important astronomical phenomena of that time, the risings of Sirius
perhaps, which would indicate a degree of civilization somewhat advanced
for a period _still ante‐historic_. I like to recall the very words he
used; they are full of meaning.
M. Ribeiro had made researches in Portugal that appeared to him conclusive
as to the existence of pliocene man, and he produced tertiary flints which
he believed to be cut. The Abbé Bourgeois, who could not remain
indifferent to any proof of tertiary man, allowed an unexpected
declaration to escape his lips. “I should like,” said he, “to consider
these fragments as authentic proofs of the truth of my theory, but the
truth obliges me to declare that I cannot discover any evidence of human
labor in them.” M. Ribeiro sank into his seat under this _coup de hache‐
polie_, and tertiary man was properly buried, after a later correction
from M. Bourgeois, who admitted that one of M. Ribeiro’s flints bore marks
of human labor, but he had doubts as to its bed.
Anthropology and ethnography had the honors during the greater part of
this session.
M. Lagneau said the researches made in Belgium showed there were three
perfectly distinct species of men in this country, and he opposed M.
Dupont’s opinion that the skulls of Furfooz belong to the Mongoloid race.
M. Hamy demonstrated anatomically that a particular race, the Australioid,
is spread throughout Europe. The jaw from Naulette appears to belong to
this race; the skull from Engis belongs to another. M. Hamy thought he
discovered some of the characteristics of the Australioid race in certain
inferior types in Belgium and France. These primitive races are not
extinct. They still peep out in isolated cases of atavism, and he
exhibited a curious instance—the hideous portrait of a boat‐woman of the
neighborhood of Mons, with all the characteristics of the Australioid race
of the mammoth period. In this selection of a Montois type there was a
spice of revenge evident to every one. M. Virchow found a manifest
difference between the skulls at the British Museum and those of criminals
in the collection at the university. The Flemish skulls present the same
prognathism as those of Furfooz, and certain types have characteristics
that might cause them to be classed with the Mongoloid race.
As to the size of the skull, it is not owing to the development of the
psychical faculties, and we should be cautious about drawing premature
conclusions concerning the primitive races of this country. M. Virchow
cited the example of the two skulls found in a Greek tomb of the
Macedonian epoch, the form and size of which induced him to class them
unhesitatingly with the Mongoloids of the caverns of the Lesse. Now, one
of these skulls was that of a Greek woman of great distinction, both as to
her social condition and intellectual culture. The learned professor from
Berlin expressed a doubt as to the Germanic origin of the Flemings. M.
Lagneau also thought we should not decide too hastily about the races that
first inhabited Belgium. He could not see why the Flemings and Germans
should have the same origin. In Germany, Belgium, and France the races are
excessively mixed up. Germany was repeatedly invaded by people from Gaul.
Prognathism alone is not typical any more than the temperament, color of
the hair, etc.
M. Vanderkindere thought the Flemish of Germanic origin, and the Walloon
of Celtic. Blondes do not belong to the Aryan races. Prognathism is more
common in them than in the dark people of the country, in which the
speaker finds Ligurian traces, as in the basin of the Loire (Liger‐
Liguria). Now, the blonde race, has always thought itself superior, and
this belief was so strong in Flanders in the heart of the middle ages that
the mother of Berthulphe de Ghistelles, displeased at the alliance her son
had contracted with the beautiful Godelive, a native of Boulonnais, whom
her contemporaries reproached solely on account of her black hair and
eyebrows, expressed her contempt in these significant terms: “_Cur,
inquit, cornicem de terra aliena eduxisti?_” She thought it disgraceful to
defile the pure blood of her antique Germanic race (_alti tui sanguinis_)
by such an alliance.
In a subsequent session, this question of races came on the carpet again.
M. Dupont, combining the observations made in the three excursions (that
to Namur had taken place the day before), established a filiation between
the different peoples who inhabited Belgium in different periods of the
stone age. The people of Mesvin, the Somme, the Tamise, and the Seine were
contemporaries. The race of Mesvin inhabited Hainault at the same time as
the troglodytes, whom they did not know. It might have been the people of
Mesvin and the Somme, who, gradually attaining to polished stone, invaded
the country occupied by the less advanced people of the caverns. M.
Virchow could not recommend too much prudence to those who are
investigating the science of anthropology. In prehistoric times, as in our
day, there were variations of the same race, but that is not accounted for
by atavism. It must be concluded that men were simultaneously created or
born in several places, and different types sprang from the commingling of
the actual races. We take pleasure in collecting these indirect
acknowledgments from the lips that dared say, “There is no place in the
universe for a God, nor in man for a soul.” M. de Quatrefages thought,
like M. Virchow, that all the various races cannot be owing to atavism.
Crossing has a good deal to do with it. It is allowable to refer the
variety of types to the more or less commingling of the ancient races, as
they are everywhere mingled now. We can hardly deny, however, that the
present population partly descended from the troglodytes. The people of
Furfooz must still have some representatives in Belgium, especially among
the women. Science proves that woman retains the type of the race to which
she belongs longer than man. At a later day we shall doubtless succeed in
deciphering the origin of the human races. In these researches we must
also consider the action of _les milieux_. Mlle. Royer expressed a
disbelief in the unity of the human species. Unfortunately, the inevitable
crossing is always obstructing her observations. She absolutely refuses to
admit that the white man is Aryan, or at least Asiatic. She hopes,
however, some day to obtain a solution of these great problems. How far,
madame, your knowledge extends, and how astonishingly you have retained
the persistent type of _madame la guenon_ from whom you flatter yourself
to have descended! After other discussions concerning the bronze utensils
found in various parts of Europe, and the influence of Etruscan art, which
extended even to the North, M. Baudre undertook the demonstration of a
point singular enough. Primitive man, he said, doubtless possessed the
musical faculty, and it is impossible with his knowledge of the flint he
daily used that it should not have occurred to him to apply the
sonorousness of that stone to some practical use. No one can positively
declare this was so, but who can deny it? M. Baudre has constructed an
instrument composed of accordant flints—a prehistoric piano—on which he
executed a _brabançonne_ that would have excited the envy of the
_Moncrabeaux_. It is neither more nor less insupportable than the modern
instrument of torture of which some unideal creature, with bent body and a
prey to convulsive jerks, strikes the senseless ivory with his skinny
phalanges till it shrieks under the touch.
Of the excursion to Namur we will only allude to what bore on the
scientific labors of the Congress; that is, the visit to the Camp of
Hastedon. The delightful, cordial reception given us in that pleasant
town, the banquet and concert which followed, will not soon be effaced
from the memory of the excursionists. The plateau of Hastedon, close to
Namur, rests on a solid mass of dolomite, and is surrounded by a bastion
composed of fagots calcined—it is not known how, huge boulders, and a
thick layer of earth and stones. The Romans occupied it for a certain
time, but the parapets that surround it are much more ancient. It is an
immense plain, eleven hectares in extent, strewed with flints, both
wrought and polished, that came from Spiennes, while those of the caverns
of the Lesse came from Champagne. The troglodytes of the Lesse and the
people of Spiennes were contemporaries in the age of cut stone, but there
was no intercourse between them. During the age of polished stone, on the
contrary, the importation of flints from Champagne ceased in the region of
the caverns, and the flint of Spiennes was diffused among the plateaux of
upper Belgium. The inhabitants of Spiennes extended their former bounds,
penetrated to that region, and fortified it. According to M. Dupont, the
Camp of Hastedon must have been one of their fortresses.
The final _séance_ of the Congress opened with a very interesting and
animated discussion as to the first use of bronze and iron. Where did the
bronze come from? M. Oppert thought it of European origin. The Phœnicians
went to England for tin rather than to the East. M. Worsaae was convinced
it came from Asia, and that a bronze age will be discovered in Egypt. M.
Leemans was of the opinion that the iron age preceded the bronze in India
and Ceylon. M. Conestabile was inclined to think the Phœnicians obtained
their tin from the Caucasus rather than England. M. Franks said they might
have found it in Spain and Portugal, and M. Waldemar‐Schmidt thought the
Egyptians obtained theirs from Africa.
M. de Quatrefages afterwards summed up the character of the Congress of
Brussels: it appears from scientific evidence in every direction that
certain existing types have an incontestable resemblance to the people of
the quaternary period. In the second place, it now seems established that
man of the stone age travelled much more than has been supposed.
The close of the session was marked by two occurrences that produced a
strong impression on the assembly. The two workmen who so ably assisted M.
Dupont in the exploration of the caverns had, at the solicitation of the
committee, the _décoration ouvrière_ conferred on them by Messrs. de
Quatrefages and Capellini. Then a letter from M. G. Geefs was read,
stating that he had made a bust of M. d’Omalius unbeknown to the latter,
which he offered as a mark of homage to the Congress. This bust, concealed
at the end of the apartment, was uncovered and presented to the venerable
president, old in years but youthful in feeling, whose fine noble career
M. de Quatrefages retraced in an address sparkling with wit. Then, after
some isolated communications, the Congress passed a resolution to hold its
seventh meeting at Stockholm, in 1874, under the effective presidency of
Prince Oscar of Sweden, and the Congress was declared adjourned.
We cannot better end this report, which I should have liked to make more
complete, than by quoting M. Dupont’s _résumé_ (a little indefinite, in my
opinion) of the labor of the Sixth International Congress of Prehistoric
Anthropology and Archæology:
“After the weighty discussions that have taken place at the Congress of
Brussels,” says M. le Secrétaire Général, “it is proper to lay before the
public the chief problems discussed by the learned assembly. These
problems have not all been definitely solved. That was not to be expected,
for the result of such scientific meetings is seldom the decision of
questions, but rather stating them with clearness and precision. The
discussions at such meetings lead to the opening of new paths, and
preparing the way, by throwing new light on it, for calm and persevering
labor in the study. There alone is it possible to weigh the value of
arguments, elucidate obscure points, and arrive at conclusions. In this
spirit six principal points have been drawn up:
“1. Did man really exist in the middle of the tertiary period? Several of
the specialists present at the Congress declared in the affirmative. But
it appeared, especially from the flints discovered by the Abbé Bourgeois,
that further researches should be undertaken before science can decide on
a point so important in the history of mankind. The bed of the flints in
question was ultimately regarded as incontestable.
“2. The formation of the valleys and the filling of the caverns were
regarded as the result of fluvial action. The study of these phenomena may
be considered as the fundamental point of research respecting man of the
quaternary epoch.
“3. The bones of goats, sheep, and oxen, discovered in the deposits of the
mammoth age in the Belgian caverns, were acknowledged to be similar to our
goats, sheep, and certain species of our domestic cattle. An opinion was
advanced that perhaps they originated these domestic species, whose origin
has often been sought in vain.
“4. Communications between different tribes of the stone age in Western
Europe were for the first time distinctly stated. The people of the
quaternary epoch were divided into two classes, one of which, by the
regular development of its industrial pursuits, arrived at such a degree
of progress that it was thought they must have invaded the region of the
Belgian caverns in the age of polished stone, and subjugated our
troglodytes.
“5. The discovery at Eygenbilsen gave occasion for recognizing the
Etruscan influence in our region previous to the Roman conquest. There was
a disposition to admit that the intercourse between Italy and the
Scandinavian countries must have been much later.
“6. The opinion that the anthropological types of the quaternary epoch
have survived, and constitute an essential element of existing European
nations, was admitted in principle by all the anthropologists who
expressed any opinion on the subject. The problem of the origin of
European races is thus placed in an entirely new light.”
Atlantic Drift—Gathered In The Steerage.
By An Emigrant.
Concluded.
The generally fortunate voyage of our vessel was varied by two or three
days of very rough weather, and the miseries of our first night at sea
were intensified by a violent gale. The fast steamer, built with lines
calculated for excessive speed, cut through rather than breasted the
waves. Tons of clear water washed over the whaleback, knocking over one or
two hapless wights, and drenching many others. Her wind‐ward side was
incessantly swept by blinding showers of heavy spray. To pass from the
shelter of the main deck to the entrance of our steerage was a veritable
running the gauntlet. You watched till the ship rose, and then ran at full
speed for the shelter of the whaleback, happy if you reached it without
being rolled by a sudden lurch into the scuppers, or losing your balance
and clinging to the nearest rope or stanchion, being soused by the spray
from the next wave that struck her.
The storm raged more fiercely as the evening advanced, and from timid lips
came stories of the lost _City of Boston_ and the hapless _London_, while
more experienced hands regretted their precipitancy in selecting a vessel
of a line in which every other quality was said to have been sacrificed to
that of excessive speed, and indulged in uncomfortable surmises as to the
consequences of the shaft snapping or the engines breaking down. When the
damp and chill of the advancing night drove us to our bunks, we clambered
down‐stairs, and, staggering away into our respective streets, crawled in.
To realize my first impression of the steerage of our vessel at night,
when its cavernous space was lit, or rather its grim darkness made
visible, by a single lantern, would require the pen of Dickens or the
graphic pencil of Gustave Doré. Crouching between those bunks and the roof
grotesque forms, dimly seen in the obscure light, threw weird shadows on
the cabin sides. Here one busily engaged, under innumerable difficulties,
in making up a neat bed of sheets and blankets, into which he afterwards
burrows by an ingenious backward movement, like a shore crab hiding
himself in the sand left uncovered by the receding tide; while his next
neighbor retires to rest by the simple process of kicking off his boots,
pulling his battered night‐cap over his eyes, and stretching himself on
the bare boards, with a muttered string of curses on the ship, the
weather, and the world in general, for his evening orisons. At a corner of
one of the tables appear a group of players poring over their cards in a
_chiaro‐oscuro_ that recalls a scene of Teniers or Van Ostade, while at
another a group are gathered round a young vocalist who quavers out in a
dull monotone a curious medley of sentimental ditties and music‐hall
vulgarities. Gradually all drop away into their bunks, and everything is
still, save the deep breathing of some hundred souls, and the groans of
the sufferers from the malady of the sea. Occasionally the heavy plunge of
the ship, as she dashes into some mountainous wave, extinguishes the lamp
with the shock, and buries the little windows under water, leaving the
cabin for a few seconds in profound darkness. In the gale during the first
night of our voyage, one tremendous billow struck the ship, burying us in
black night, and rolling trunks, tins, and clothes cluttering to leeward
with the lurch of the vessel, and awakening all in a moment from their
slumbers. A general consternation prevailed, and while some called in
angry tones for the lamp to be relighted, others could be heard muttering
the unfamiliar words of a half‐forgotten prayer. As the great ship shook
in her conflict with the raging sea, and we heard overhead the rush of
many feet and the swash on deck of a heavy mass of water, I felt nervous
enough till she rose again and, creeping to the little window, I could see
the cold moon throwing a silvery track across the waste of raging, wind‐
lashed surges.
I thought of the great ships that had gone down, crowded with hundreds of
unprepared and unthinking souls, into the cruel bosom of the great ocean;
perhaps their unknown fate was to sink in the darkness of the night,
crushed in a moment by an iceberg, or, maimed and helpless, battered to
pieces and submerged by the angry waves. What a horrible death‐agony must
be that of the doomed, who, after the sudden crash of a collision, or
battened down in their dark prison in a raging storm, heard the cataract
of water roar down the hatchway, greedy to engulf them! For a few moments
what fearful struggles would take place in the crowded cabin to mount the
bunks and gain the last mouthful of the retiring air, until the flood
buried all in the bosom of the deep, in a silence to be broken only by the
trumpet of the Judgment Day! Should I, I pondered, in such a dark hour,
have the strength of mind or grace of God to lie still on my bed and let
the rising water cut short the prayer on my lips, or, hoping against hope,
with angrily raging heart die fighting to breathe a few seconds longer the
vital air? Of a truth, to die suffocated in the darkness, without a last
look at the great vault of heaven, a last breath of the pure air, seemed
to me to be to doubly die.
If I suffered some discomfort and perhaps a little anxiety from the
occasional anger of the mighty main, it was far more than compensated for
by its aspect in its calmer and more peaceful moods. I cannot understand
how in a few days voyagers can learn to complain of the monotony of the
sea; to me, its different moods in calm and storm, the snowy crests of the
dancing waves, the foaming and often phosphorescent wake of the great
steamer, and the ever‐changing aspects of the cloud‐laden heavens, were
objects of untiring interest. If I had the magic pen of the author of the
_Queen of the Air_, I would write a book on the cloud‐scenery of the
Atlantic. Never, even in the purest Italian sky or the cloudless heavens
above the vast expanse of a Western prairie, have I seen Diana so purely
fair, Lucifer so bright, or Aurora clad in such varied garments of purple
and rose; such a wonderful vault lined with innumerable flakes of spotless
wool left by the dying wind; such masses of cumulus, sometimes as solidly
white as Alpine summits, sometimes before the rain‐storm luridly gray‐
black with the gathered water, like the massive bulk of Snowdon seen
through a driving rain; and, once or twice, the pall of the thunder‐storm
rising over the leeward heaven and advancing towards us, its ragged edge
momentarily lit up with the blazing tongues of the lightning, until it
rolled over, deafening with its dread artillery and hiding all around in
mist and blinding rain. The grandeur of sunset and of sunrise, when not
obscured by the mistiness of a moist atmosphere, was indescribable. Every
night, with renewed pleasure, we watched the god of day sink beneath the
western horizon. Turner, in his wildest dreams of those gorgeous heaven‐
pictures that he had not seen on earth but felt that he would love to see,
imagined no greater luxury of gold, carmine, purple, crimson, rose, and
rose‐tinged snow, than was afforded by some of the spectacles of the
setting sun. One evening still holds my memory entranced: the heavy
curtain of dull gray mist that all day had lain low over the sea rolled
eastward before the evening breeze; the emerging sun, low on the horizon,
dyed the receding masses of cloud with a thousand shades of livid purple;
the peaks and shoulders of the eastern range of mountains of dark vapor
caught the light, while between them sank valleys and depths more sombre
by the contrast. Westward, below the rosy, almost blood‐red sun, ran two
long narrow filaments of purple cloud, dark across the glow of the
heavens, like bars across a furnace. A few moments, and the shining orb
sinks beneath them, fringing their edges with refulgent gold, then falls
into a sea of liquid fire. A little longer the crimson hues linger on the
eastern curtain of clouds, then grow fainter and fainter, and die away
into the gray hues of a moonless night.
Among the five hundred emigrants our good ship carried there were, it is
needless to say, many men of different speech, and almost every diversity
of occupation and character. Besides the four nations of Great Britain, we
had Germans, Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians in considerable numbers, a few
French, Poles, and Russians, a Levantine Jewess and her children, and a
solitary American. With the Teutons my ignorance of their language
prevented me holding further converse than to learn their nationality and
their destination—generally Illinois, Minnesota, or Wisconsin. Unlike the
Irish, with whom New York seemed to fulfil all their notions of America,
the Germans and Scandinavians appeared all westward bound, in large
parties, organized for agricultural life; and while they were in a
considerable minority on the vessel, they formed much the larger
proportion of the passengers in the emigrant cars. The amount of their
baggage was something prodigious. Nearly all apparently peasants in their
native land, they seemed on leaving it to transport everything they
possessed except the roof over their heads to their adopted country. What
would not break they enclosed in immense bags of ticking and rough canvas,
and the residue of their property in arklike chests, the immense weight
and sharp iron‐bound corners of which moved the sailors to multiform
blasphemy. For my part, I had read so much of the contented prosperity of
the peasantry in Norway and Sweden that I speculated not a little as to
what cause could lead them to make the long and expensive migration from
Christiania or Gottenburg to the so far off shores of the Mississippi.
With the Germans, who came principally from the neighborhood of Mannheim,
the case was different. Several of them could speak a little French, nor
were they reticent as to the principal cause that led them to desert their
fatherland: it was the man tax, levied by the empire of blood and iron on
their youth and manhood, that drove them from their farms in the sweet
Rhine valley to seek abodes in the new and freer world. Several of them
had followed the Bavarian standard under Von Tannen through the hardships
and carnage of the Franco‐German war; but to the shrewd sense of the
peasant the halo of military glory and the pomp of wide empire meant but
conscription and taxation, fields untilled, and wife and children
starving, while the blood of father and son was poured out to indite a new
page in the gory annals of warlike fame.
By the way, one of them assured us that never in the fiercest time of that
deadly strife, even when, in long forced marches, driving Bourbaki’s
broken bands through the snows of Jura, had they fared so badly as he did
then, to which I may add the experience of an Englishman—whose sinister
countenance and shabby attire gave increased weight to his testimony—who
averred that we fared little better than in a workhouse and worse than in
a jail.
Amongst us there were many mechanics, principally Irish, who were
returning from visits to their friends; nor can I omit to chronicle their
uniform and emphatic testimony as to the benefit they had received from
their emigration. In New York, Philadelphia, Boston, or Chicago, they were
sure of work, could live and dress comfortably, and lay by a large
proportion of their earnings, while in England, and still more in Ireland,
they were happy when their earnings kept them in lodging, food, and
clothing, and saving was neither thought of nor possible. From what I
could learn, the position of the unskilled laborer appeared by no means so
bright. The different system of hiring in America made the nominally
higher wages more precarious than in the old country; and I suspect that
everywhere the untaught man, who, ignorant of any distinct branch of
industry, brings only his thews and sinews to market, is, and will ever
be, but “a hewer of wood and drawer of water”—an ill‐paid and little
valued drudge.
For one class of the Irish emigrants, of whom we had a certain number on
board, their countrymen entertained a profound and not unfounded contempt.
Youths from Cork or Dublin shops or offices, whom dissipation or
misconduct had thrown out of place, or the desire of novelty or adventure
had attracted to the New World—unfit for manual labor, and without any
special qualification for commerce—their heads were turned with tales of
the giddy whirl of New York life, in their notions of which gallantry,
whiskey, politics, calico balls, and rowdy patriotism made a curious
medley. Their general ambition was to be bar‐tenders, and with some
exceptions their usual behavior showed them to be little fitted for any
better avocation.
One of the characters that most attracted my attention, though I elicited
but little response to my advances from his taciturn nature, was a miner
from Montana—a man of short stature but powerful build, with, a
determined, weather‐beaten face, and a decidedly sinister squint, who had
rambled over the greater part of California, Nevada, Utah, Washington, and
Montana, and apparently returned no richer from his wanderings. Having
been a seaman before he took to a mountain life, his gait had acquired an
indescribably curious mixture of the out‐kneed walk of a man constantly on
horseback with the roll of a sailor, while he had, too, a curious habit of
involuntarily working the fingers of his right hand as if they held a six‐
shooter. He usually restricted himself to the bachelor society under the
whaleback, and, chary of his words, amused himself with an amateur
surveillance of the operations of the men, or occasionally exchanged
reminiscences in brief sentences with two or three other returned
Californians: how he and his mates had killed a grizzly at the foot of
Mount Helena; how he had made £1,200 in eight months from a claim in
Siskiyou County, and lost it all in working another in El Dorado County,
at which he persevered fruitlessly for three years, while the claims on
each side brought heavy piles to their workers; how he had seen twenty‐six
“road agents” hanged together in Montana; and other tales of far West
mining, murder, and debauchery. Once only his hard face relaxed into a
laugh at a story he told of two men who quarrelled in a California saloon,
and, dodging round the table, while the rest of the company made for the
door or skulked behind the beer barrels, emptied their revolvers at each
other with no worse effect than one slight scratch. That twelve barrels
should go off and no one be killed seemed to be too ridiculous, and his
risible faculties overcame him accordingly. Strangely enough, while he
spoke with the most hearty enthusiasm as to the pleasures of a
mountaineering life, which he declared, with a good horse, a trusty rifle,
and staunch mates, was the finest in the world, and to judge from
appearances had certainly not made his pile, he never intended to return
westward, but was bound for some city of the South. Possibly some episodes
in his checkered existence had caused him to bear in mind the shortened
career of the twenty‐six road agents with a distinctness that determined
his preference for this side of the Rocky Mountains.
The most lively time of the day was the evening after the five o’clock
tea; the sailors during the dog‐watches—from four to eight—do not turn in,
but remain on deck, and they amused or persecuted the female passengers
with a coarse gallantry that generally made the more modest women remain
below; the cooks, engineers, and firemen stood at their doors in the deck‐
house and greeted with horse‐banter the passers‐by; while on the open
space before the wheel‐house a few couples danced to the music of an
accordion, or tried to tire each other out to the whistled tune of an
Irish jig. A pair of professional singers, husband and wife, to whose
retinue I usually attached myself, used to sit at the door of the saloon
and favor us with selections from their repertory, often with a success
that brought metallic appreciation from the gentlemen in the neighboring
smoking‐room; till after sunset—generally interpreted with extreme
liberality—one of the stewards of the after‐steerage literally hunted the
women down‐stairs; and then often on fine nights the sailors would cluster
round the open hatchway and sing for or banter with their favorites below.
The behavior of the sailors towards the women was the subject of constant
complaint by the more respectable of the passengers throughout the voyage;
in the evening, no woman without her husband was safe from their
persecution, and not always with him at her side; as they stood by each
other, and always had the sheath‐knife at their side, the men were not
very ready to commence a quarrel with them; if their advances were
resented, they were apt to change from coarse good‐humor to the most
revolting and obscene abuse. Hence, as I have mentioned, many of the women
would not return to the deck after the evening meal. In short, if other
steamers are like the one in which we made the passage, no young woman
could cross in the steerage without her modesty being daily shocked, and,
if she was unprotected, running great risk of actual insult. I have
mentioned that the deck bar was at the head of our staircase and
consequently near the sailors’ cabin; one night it was broken open and
cleared of its contents; whether the culprits were either sought for or
detected, I never heard; but certainly the seamen next day were in a state
of extreme conviviality: and, under the emboldening influence of liquor,
one lively young mariner put his arm round the waist of a very handsome
young Englishwoman, whose ladylike dress and appearance had so far
prevented her from being molested in this way. A fight between her husband
and the delinquent was with difficulty prevented by the bystanders, and
the former went to complain to the chief officer; he mustered the watch
and read them a lecture on their not interfering with the female
passengers, and told the culprit he would hand him over to the authorities
at Castle Garden on his arrival at New York, who would certainly send him
for six months to prison. The latter did not seem much discomposed at the
intimation, and the day I landed in the Empire City he appeared at our
boardinghouse on Washington Street in a state of great hilarity and beer,
and informed us with much blasphemy that he had cut his connection with
the ship.
The emigrant passengers on board our ship suffered much annoyance and
discomfort; but I do not hesitate to say that most of our troubles arose
from the crew and attendants rather than the arrangements of the ship
itself. Much of the accommodation provided—for instance, in the case of
the wash‐houses and fresh‐water pumps—was made useless by the negligence
or surliness of the men by whom they were controlled; the victuals seemed
generally to be of good quality, and, except in the case of the fresh
bread and sugar, were provided with lavish if not wasteful abundance, but
they were usually carelessly cooked, if not actually uneatable, and served
in the roughest and most heedless manner. The crew were a most disorderly
set—quarrels were of constant occurrence. I saw two fights—one between the
interpreter attached to the after‐steerage and one of the stewards; and
another, which took place between the head‐cook and the butcher in the
saloon galley; and I heard of several others. The cooks and bakers in the
steerage galley were changed once or twice during the voyage, but no
change for the better resulted. I attribute this want of anything like
discipline or attentiveness to their duties to the constant change of the
men on board these steamers; they only sign articles for the run out and
home, rarely remaining more than one or two voyages in the ship, and many
go the westward voyage merely to get to New York and desert the ship the
moment they arrive there. I was told the chief officer called the _milors_
together and promised them, as the ship was short‐handed (she had seven
less than her complement of 28 seamen), they should receive £5 10_s._ per
month instead of the £4 10_s._ for which they had shipped; but in spite of
this, nearly half of them would desert when the ship came to her moorings.
The cooks, bakers, and stewards are engaged in the same way, and the
consequence is, before they can all be got to understand their positions
and work well together, they are paid off and a new set come on board. If
the companies could form a permanent staff for their vessels, and go to
the same care and expense over their organization as they give to the
material equipment of their splendid vessels, an immense change for the
better would be effected in the comfort and convenience of the emigrant.
As to the distribution of provisions, the passengers might be arranged in
messes of ten or twenty, some of whose number would fetch their food from
the galley for allotment among themselves, and thus give them an
opportunity of eating their meals at table in a more Christianlike and
less piggish manner than the majority are at present compelled to do. Nor
do I see any great difficulty or additional expense in a different
arrangement of the bunks, by which, at the sacrifice of the wide space in
the middle of the steerage, they could be grouped on each side of a
central table, so that each twenty or thereabouts would form a partially
separated room, with its own table and its own mess.
At last, early on the second Sunday morning, the thunderlike roll of the
cable paid out over our heads awoke us as the ship came to anchor off
Staten Island, and later in the day she moored alongside the company’s
wharf in New Jersey. In sight of the promised land, the fatigue and
annoyance of the voyage were soon forgotten. A liberal meal of fresh and
unusually well‐cooked beef and plum‐duff, eaten undisturbed by the
vessel’s motion, made the memory of the disgusting messes we had endured
or revolted at less poignant. The entire passengers went on shore in the
forenoon, but none of the emigrants were allowed to leave, or any one to
come on board the ship. Boatfuls of friends of the passengers came
alongside, and the word passed along the deck that Mrs. Brady’s husband or
Mary Cahill’s brother was seeking her. Numberless inquiries were shouted
as to Mike, or Mary, or the children, until the gray twilight hid the
spires and streets of the great city across the river. The chief officer
came round early with a lantern, and summarily dismissed all the women
below, and all went quietly to rest. Often, I believe, the last night on
board the emigrant ship is a scene of wild revelry, if not actual
debauchery; but the want of liquor—none was sold after the vessel came to
her moorings—and the absence of the fairer sex, effectually quenched any
convivial tendencies.
At an early hour next morning the luggage was run out of the hold, and
tumbled pell‐mell on deck; and the youth of either sex, hitherto contented
with the shabbiest and most negligent of attire, watched eagerly for their
boxes, dragged them to a convenient corner, and made an elaborate
toilette, either for the benefit of their American friends or to give the
_coup de grâce_ to the sweethearts they had encountered on the voyage. It
was like the transformation scene in a pantomime, and I could hardly
recognize my lady acquaintances in their gay bonnets and neat dresses.
Much of their finery, however, suffered serious damage before they emerged
on the Bowery. In the afternoon, the custom‐house officer came on board
and took his place near the gangway, alongside of which lay a tender for
the passengers and a barge for the luggage. The boxes were scattered all
over the deck, and to get them examined one had to drag them to the
officer, open them and close them, obtain a Castle Garden check from an
official at the head of the gangway, and then they went over the side on
to the barge, and the passenger on to the tender. Every one was anxious to
be off, and all scrambled at once towards the gangway, dragging boxes and
bundles with them. Never did we see such a scene of tumult and confusion.
Such a babel of tongues; such despair at boxes that either would not open,
or more frequently, being opened, would not shut; such lamentations over
their often hopelessly shattered contents—the married women imploring some
one to mind their children while they dragged their boxes to the gangway;
the single ones begging quondam admirers to help them to move their heavy
trunks—appeals to which the latter, sufficiently engrossed with their own
struggle to be off, generally turned a deaf and unkind ear. The custom‐
house officer seemed to discharge his duty with as much good‐humor as the
necessity of examining some thousand boxes in a limited time would allow.
We got off with the first tenderful, and after waiting an hour or two in
Castle Garden, where we at once cleared the refreshment stall of what we
then thought delicious coffee and pies, we were told to fetch our luggage
on the following day, and then passed out into Broadway to seek our
various fortunes.
In the boarding‐house where I spent the night in New York, I met
passengers from most of the other lines. All complained of their
accommodations, and affected to believe that they had unfortunately
selected the most uncomfortable service. For my own part, I believe that
on the whole there is but little to choose between the accommodations and
provisions supplied by the different companies, and that the description I
have given of the arrangements of one line would generally apply to the
rest.
Martyrs And Confessors In Christ.
Nor let any of you be sad, on the ground that he is less than those who,
before you having suffered torments, have come by the glorious journey to
the Lord, the world being conquered and trodden down. The Lord is the
searcher of the reins and heart, he sees the secret things, and looks into
things hidden. The testimony of him alone, who is to guide, is sufficient
for earning the crown from him. Therefore each thing, O dearest brethren,
is equally sublime and illustrious. The former, namely, to hasten to the
Lord by the consummation of victory, is the more secure; the latter is
more joyful, to flourish in the praises of the church, having received a
furlough after the gaining of glory. O blessed church of ours, which the
honor of divine condescension thus illumines, which in our own time the
glorious blood of martyrs thus makes illustrious! Before, it was white in
the works of the brethren; now, it is made purple in the blood of martyrs.
Neither lilies nor roses are wanting to its flowers. Let all now contend
for the most ample dignity of both honors. Let them receive crowns, either
white from their works, or purple from their martyrdom. In the heavenly
camp peace and war have their respective flowers, by which the soldier of
Christ is crowned for glory. I pray, bravest and most blessed brethren,
that you be always well in the Lord, and mindful of us. Farewell.—_S.
Cyprian._
The Roman Empire And The Mission Of The Barbarians.
Third Article.
So the great Roman world sinned on to the last. Christianity, with a cry
of fear and alarm, pointed to the stormful North, and exhorted to
repentance; but her voice was drowned in the mad shouts of revelry and the
wild din of reckless passion. The mistress of nations would not consent to
show signs of fear or alarm. She cast her far‐seeing eye over her wide,
rich provinces towards the frowning horizon, and she had some knowledge of
what sort of elements were hidden behind the black cloud‐wall there. Never
yet had the whole terrible ferocity of latent wrath burst forth; but
still, from time to time, as she had watched for some centuries back, the
storm‐cloud had opened for a moment, and the low thunder‐peal had been
heard, and the lightning‐fires had scathed her frontiers, and sometimes
even had touched the very heart of some of her outlying provinces. But the
fiery sword had been sheathed. The rent seemed to close again, and the
thunder‐murmurs died away. Still no brightness tinged the angry North. But
darker, wilder, more fiercely threatening the storm‐cloud grew. There was
an angry God behind it, with his warrior hosts, hidden, and biding the
solemn, predetermined moment. If the queen of empire felt, at times, a
thrill of alarm, she tried to shake it off again. For proudly she gazed
around on her widespreading dominions, and counted her almost countless
monuments of conquest and glory, and appealed to the long past for her
claim to live on immortally; and then took consolation and confidence to
herself that the pillars of the firmament would crumble to dust, and the
heavens fall, before she could be moved from her everlasting foundations.
But still there were hearts that trembled for fear, conscious that
something terrible was coming upon the world. The cry of the rapt seer of
Patmos seemed still to be rising from the bosom of the Ægean Sea, and
ringing in the ears of those who had faith in a God of justice. All those
terrible woes foretold in the sixteenth and seventeenth chapters of the
Apocalypse seemed about to be accomplished. With strange wailing sound, as
of a warning archangel’s trumpet, the prophetic voice appeared to repeat:
“Thou art just, O Lord, who art, and who wast, the holy one, because thou
hast judged these things: for they have shed the blood of saints and
prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink.... And great Babylon
came in remembrance before God, to give her the cup of the wine of the
indignation of his wrath.” Louder still that voice seemed to rise in tones
of merciful warning: “Go out from her, my people; that you be not
partakers of her sins, and that you receive not of her plagues. For her
sins have reached unto heaven, and the Lord hath remembered her
iniquities.... She saith in her heart: I sit a queen, and am no widow; and
sorrow I shall not see. Therefore shall her plagues come in one day,
death, and mourning, and famine, and she shall be burned with fire;
because God is strong, who shall judge her.” So appeared to sound out
clear the sad, wailing voice of the prophet in these sorrowful days. And
the people of God took warning. Full of fear and dread, they fled from the
“great Babylon” and the other principal cities of the empire, and hid
themselves from the wrath that was to come. Those who remained behind
laughed with mocking incredulity at their fears, and, as if in defiance of
a mighty God, drained the sparkling goblet with an intenser relish, and
the din of revelry waxed louder, and the Circensian games were applauded
with a wilder joy. Countless numbers of Christians, who still had faith in
God’s Word and fear of his justice, hurried with rapid steps from these
scenes of reckless dissipation and pleasure. They went to kneel with
uplifted hands amid the sands of the Libyan Desert, or the wooded
mountains of Lebanon; to implore mercy on a wicked world, amid the islets
of the Tyrrhenian Sea, or in the rocky caves of the Thebaid.
At intervals another warning voice is heard, sounding, with the vehemence
of the Baptist’s cry, from the holy precincts of Bethlehem. S. Jerome is
meditating and commenting, in his convent cell, on the prophecy of
Ezekiel. As he ponders on the judgments of God on Jerusalem of old, he
cannot but think of Rome in his own day. As the images of ruin and
destruction grow before his mind, and his great heart burns with
compassion for sinful, sinning man, he pauses in his reading, and lifts
his voice in warning of the vials of wrath that are about to be poured out
upon the empire. Through the voluptuous palaces of Rome which he once knew
so well, the loud warning voice of the holy anchoret of Bethlehem pierces
with an awakening sound, and helps to persuade many a patrician beauty “to
exchange the dream of pleasure, so soon to be interrupted by the clangor
of the Gothic trumpet, for the sacred vigils and austerities of the Holy
Land.” “Read,” he cries out, “the Apocalypse of S. John: mark what is
written of the woman clothed in scarlet, with the mystic inscription on
her forehead, and seated upon seven hills, and of the destruction of
Babylon. ‘Go out of her, my people,’ saith the Lord; ‘that you be not made
partakers of her crimes, and partners in the plagues that shall afflict
her.’ Leave the proud city to exult in everlasting uproar and dissipation,
satiating her bloodthirstiness in the arena, and her insane passion in the
circus. Leave it to her to trample under foot every sense of shame in her
lascivious theatres.” After these words of startling vehemence, he attunes
his voice to gentler accents. And pours out his enthusiastic soul in
language of sweetest music, winning and captivating both ear and heart. He
throws a ravishing fascination and sweetness around his life at Bethlehem
that must have been irresistible to souls in which yet lingered any purity
of sentiment or love for the holy and beautiful. “How different,” he
exclaims, “the scenes that invite you hither! The most rustic simplicity
is characteristic of the natal village of our Redeemer, and sacred hymns
and psalmody are the only interruptions of the heavenly stillness and
serenity which reign on every side. Walk forth into the fields: you
startle with mingled astonishment and delight to find that ‘Alleluia’ is
the burden of the ploughman’s song; that it is with some inspired canticle
the reaper recreates himself, in reposing at noontide from his
overpowering toil; and that it is the royal Psalmist’s inspiration that
attunes the voice of the vine‐dresser, as, scroll in hand, he plies his
task all day.” Thus does he paint in charming colors the immediate
neighborhood in which he lived so happily. His words take us back to the
days of Eden, and make us realize what unfallen and sinless mankind would
have been. Then he passes on to those scenes and names which are
interwoven into the history of our Lord’s life, and round these again he
casts the fascination of his poetical outpourings. We are carried on as by
a magic spell, and we feel ourselves drawn captives after the mighty heart
that glows with such a fiery heat of love in that grotto of Bethlehem. We
cannot wonder that many souls felt the wondrous spell of that clear, sweet
voice, as it broke with its music‐tones of penetrating power into the
palaces of Rome. The loud‐wailing trumpet‐tones of the Apocalyptic seer,
as they rose with terrific warning from the bosom of the Ægean, and the
melodious music of the anchoret of Bethlehem, as it was carried westward
on the breeze, both conveyed a message from a merciful God to the children
whom he yet loved. But we will listen again to that winning voice from
Bethlehem, as it pleads on, trying to draw Christians from the perils that
were so near: “Oh! when shall that blessed day arrive,” it continues,
“when it shall be our own delight to conduct you to the cave of the
Nativity; together to mingle our tears with those of Mary and of the
Virgin Mother in the sepulchre of our Lord; to press the wood on which he
redeemed us to our throbbing lips; and, in ardent desire, to ascend with
him from Mount Olivet?” We will hasten thence to Bethany to see Lazarus
come forth in his winding‐sheet, and to the banks of that blessed stream
sanctified by the baptism of the Word made flesh. Thence to the huts of
the shepherds who heard the canticle of “Glory to God on high” and
“Tidings of great joy,” as they were keeping their night‐watch over their
flocks. We will pray at the tomb of David, and meditate under the steep
precipice where inspiration used to come on the prophet Amos, until we
hear again the living clangor of his shepherd‐horn. In Mambre, we shall
commune in spirit with the great patriarchs and their consorts who were
buried there; visit the fountain where the eunuch was baptized by Philip;
and in Samaria honor the relics of S. John the Baptist, of Abdias and
Eliseus, and devoutly explore the caverns where the choirs of the prophets
were miraculously fed, in the days of famine and persecution. We will
extend our pilgrimage to Nazareth, and, as the name implies, behold the
_flower_ of Galilee. Hard by is Cana, where he changed water into wine.
Thence to Mount Tabor, where our prayer shall be that our rest may not be
with Moses and Elias, but in the eternal tabernacle, where we shall enjoy
the beatific vision of the Father and the Holy Ghost. Thence returning, we
shall see the Lake Genesareth, and the wilderness where the merciful Jesus
feasted the multitudes; and Naim shall not be passed by unheeded, where he
gave back to the disconsolate mother “her only son.” Hermon shall be
pointed out, and the torrent of Endor where Sisera was overcome; and
Capharnaum, the theatre of so many miracles. Thence going up to Jerusalem,
as it were in the retinue of our Lord, as the disciples were wont to do,
we will pass through Silo and Bethel; and having made the circuit of so
many scenes, consecrated by the presence, the preaching, and the miracles
of the Son of God, to that grotto where he was born to us a Saviour, we
shall at last return; perpetually to hymn his praises, to deplore our
trespasses with frequent tears; to give our days and nights to holy
orisons, as if smitten with the same love which exclaimed, “Him whom my
soul hath yearned for, have I found. I will hold him, and will not let him
go.”(278) Such wondrous music did the spiritual enchanter pour forth from
his lonely grotto. In such words as these, throbbing with love and holy
zeal, did the great heart of the worn ascetic of Bethlehem gush forth. And
they depicted in such vivid colors the sweet peace and purity and
happiness of a new earthly paradise far away in the Eastern land, that
many souls were lured away by the charmer’s voice out of the great Western
Babylon in time to escape the tempest that was just about to descend upon
it. Many illustrious names appear among the fugitives. Paula forgot her
lofty pedigree and her more than princely fortune, and fled eastward, and
S. Melania and many others of patrician rank hurried away to Bethlehem to
escape the impending doom. And there, whilst the mighty God thundered, and
hurled his flaming arrows of vengeance, and the great sinful empire
tottered and crashed under the awful blows of his wrath, did those favored
Christians tremble and pray amid holy scenes and sweet associations, round
the grand spiritual figure of S. Jerome.
But it was not only among the believers in God’s Word, and those who
observed the signs of the times from their watch‐towers in the heart of
the empire, that the belief in the imminent catastrophe had taken a strong
hold. The idea that vengeance was close at hand was agitating with fierce
intensity the barbaric nations themselves. Whence that idea came, they
themselves could not have told. It had long been working in their minds
like a living fire; it had gone on inflaming their souls till they felt
their whole being on fire with an ungovernable passion for destruction and
vengeance. They had been kept for long centuries by an overruling power in
their northern forests, waiting for an unknown moment in the future. But
that moment, they felt, was now at hand. They were ready for it, for they
knew they were the scourges of wrath in the hands of a mighty God.
But before that fierce, black storm‐cloud up yonder in the North pours out
its fiery wrath upon the doomed empire, we will try to get a glimpse
behind it to see what elements are hidden there.
Let the reader open his historical atlas, and follow with his eye the
boundaries of the Roman Empire in the West. He will see that the east,
west, and south of Europe are lying at the feet of Rome, the heart and
centre of the world. As he casts his glance over his chart, he will be
struck by the countless names that cover the face of Italy and Gaul and
Spain, and all those countries that are comprehended within the rule and
civilization of the great capital of the empire. But as he raises his eye
northwards, he marks the outlines of Roman power. He might say that the
Rhine and the Danube are the boundaries in that direction of imperial
dominion. And what does he see beyond? Nothing that denotes that
civilization has ever set a firm foot there. The great Hercynian forest
begins at the Rhine, and stretches far away, with its dense, impenetrable
blackness, as far as the Vistula. It looks like a long, broad line of
fortification thrown up by nature to guard the North from Roman ambition.
Beyond this, again, is a wild unknown land. The student becomes bewildered
as he tries to gain an accurate knowledge of it. It is a dreary wilderness
of forest, and swamp, and vast tracts of land that have known no tillage.
He finds no name of city or town, but only the hard names of countless
barbaric tribes. These seem to fill, without order or defined limit of
dominion, the vast area from the borders of the Rhine and Danube to the
Baltic Sea, and the mainland and innumerable islets of Scandinavia. If he
cast his eye towards the North‐east, the prospect is of a land still less
known, and, at the same time, less thickly peopled. But the barbaric names
are there, though few in number, and the wild waste seems to stretch away
interminably into the darkness. The map calls it Scythia, and that is
almost all the student can gather from looking at it; but it seems to him
that it is the high‐road by which the countless barbarian tribes have come
into Europe. We may well believe Gibbon when he tells us that this vast,
unknown northern land, cut off from the Roman Empire by the Rhine and the
Danube, and shrouded in gloom and darkness by its widespreading forests,
extended itself over a third part of Europe.(279) Tacitus describes it as
a country under a gloomy sky, rude, dismal in aspect and cultivation; more
humid than Gaul, more stormy than Noricum and Pannonia.(280) It was a
country where the waters were often covered with thick ice, and the
mountains with snow, where the air was cold and sharp, and the storms blew
fierce and strong. It was, in a word, a country where no delicate, soft
races could have lived, but where only men of stalwart frame and hardy
natures could have their home; men who could bound up the snowy mountain
heights with a feeling of luxury, could hunt with delight among the frozen
swamps, and run in the teeth of the sharp blast through thick forests
where the warm sun‐rays never penetrated. And what was this strange,
unknown land, so dark and impenetrable, so vast in its extent, so defended
by rivers and ocean and far‐reaching fortification of Hercynian forest, so
wild and uncultivated, so dismal and cold, and overhanging with its
savage, frowning aspect the empire of Rome? It was the camp of the God of
battles. With a divine purpose of his own, he had kept it free from Roman
conquest. He had marked it off for himself by those wide rivers and stormy
seas, and planted that thick long line of forest trees on its frontier,
and shrouded its vast area in secrecy and mystery by widespreading woods.
And under the shadow of these thick forests he had, for long generations,
been gathering his warrior‐bands. The great empire had been growing for
centuries in power and riches, and had piled up her monuments to tell the
ages of her glories, and had come to think herself everlasting; but whilst
she thus developed her power so mightily, her destroyers were being
gathered together in secret in that Northern land. It was not by chance
that the Roman Empire had built herself up in such glory and imposing
magnitude on the ruins of the great empires that had preceded her, and not
for a barren purpose. God had marked with his finger the boundary‐line of
her dominions long before she extended her power so far, and he had
appointed her the work which she was to do for him. But he had marked out,
also, the term in the future whereunto she should endure, and had chosen
beforehand the instruments which he would use for her destruction. As she
was to be the most mighty of all empires which the world had ever seen, so
would her destroyers have to be mighty and terrible in their powers of
destruction. And those destroyers God will have ready at the right moment.
No human eye could see what was going on under that dense darkness in the
North; its mysterious depth was impenetrable to mortal kin. It was the
secret laboratory of God, where he was fashioning his instruments of
wrath. He had long been there amidst the terror and gloom beckoning the
wild races of the earth to come to him, and they had obeyed his call,
though they knew not why. Far back in the ages of time, before history had
taken up her pen, there was a great breaking up of the Aryan family in the
Eastern land, and they divided themselves into two great sections. They
moved in opposite directions, one towards the East, the other towards the
West. Though that breaking up seems, at first sight, to have nothing
providential about it, yet it was no accidental separation. Bringing our
Catholic principles to bear upon it, we soon see that it was the work of
God. The wild tribes wandered on, they knew not whither. But they had a
guide as real and definite as the Israelites in after‐times. It was,
perhaps, no pillar of fire nor mysterious moving cloud, but yet as
unerring in its leading. The Eastern Aryans took possession of Persia,
and, invading India, gradually made themselves masters of the country as
far as the Ganges. In this rich and fertile region they soon advanced,
with rapid steps, to a high state of civilization. When we first meet them
in history, they are a powerful nation, with well‐disciplined armies, and
arts and sciences highly cultivated. Of those who took the westerly
course, some settled down in the southern parts of Europe, and at the
opening of history are found in a state of civilization. One section of
them, wild, bold, and free, remain in a nomadic state. They wander on
towards the Northwest, never settling down, ever restless. They feel
themselves drawn ever onward, as by some mysterious power which they
cannot resist. That strange, unseen power is he who dwells amid the
darkness of the Scandinavian and Suabian forests. And as they pour into
that weird gloom, band after band, they are lost to view. God wants them
there for a time. They are one day to rush forth again, at his bidding,
wild and fierce as ever, to do their appointed work.
Of these multitudinous tribes, hidden under the dark covering of those
Northern forests, we cannot undertake to give any detailed account. The
student who has ever pored over his historical chart representing the home
of the barbarians, knows well how impossible it is to obtain accurate
ideas about them. He is simply bewildered with the number of tribes, and
the hard names by which they are designated. He is content to let Dr.
Latham and Mr. Kingsley dispute at their pleasure as to whether the Goths
were Teutons or a separate tribe. Some authors, with Gibbon, would make
the Teutons the great tribe which included and absorbed almost all the
rest, whilst Dr. Latham insists that they were far less in numbers than is
commonly supposed. It is not now our purpose to enter on a question of
this nature. Our view of them is simply as a _fourmillement des nations_,
confused, indistinguishable, undefinable. We cannot pretend to speak with
accuracy as to what territory was occupied by each tribe. What they do we
can only guess at. They do not regard themselves as in their settled home.
They wander about restless, and unsatisfied in their wild forest lands.
They have only an indistinct idea whence they came, but they have a
mysterious instinct whither they are to go when the appointed day comes.
At one time they are on the Baltic shore, at another on the Danube bank.
They never think of marching back Eastward, whence they came; their faces
are turned towards the South, and they dream of a rich, golden city in
which they are one day to revel and feast to their heart’s content.
It is something bewildering to pause over and think upon, in our
historical studies, is this Northern land of darkness, with its hidden
millions of wild savages silently wandering about in their gloomy forest,
under the eye of God, and waiting for the signal to rush forth upon the
sin‐laden empire of Rome! There never was anything more mysterious in
history. They hang for long years, like a suspended curse, over a sinful
world. They would have come down thundering like a crushing avalanche long
before they did, if God had not held them back. It is wonderful to think
how really they were in the hand of the great Over‐ruler. Suddenly it had
entered into their minds, as we have seen, to break up their home in the
far East, in prehistoric times, and they had obeyed the instinct. They
moved away from their native land, and set out upon their wanderings. They
knew no land beyond their own, nor had they reason to expect that they
would discover anything better than what they enjoyed in the country of
their birth. But still they wandered on. Whither they were journeying they
had no knowledge, but they were obeying an overmastering power. They found
themselves, at last, gathered together in a mysterious land of darkness,
and there they paused. They felt they were at the rendezvous to which they
had been called. They were at the feet of him who had beckoned to them to
leave their homes in the Eastern land. Their instinct now was to remain
hidden there for a time behind the great fortification of the Hercynian
forest. From beginning to end all through their history these barbarians
are in the hand of God, under his generalship, and used to execute his
designs. Such teaching as this will, no doubt, appear puerile to the
sneering atheism of men like Herbert Spencer. He and those of his school
have discovered that God has nothing to do with the course of human events
or the government of the universe.(281) Social Science has led them far
beyond the old‐world ideas of God and divine government; but, thanks to
the sound and safe teaching of Catholic principles, there are yet men in
these days who refuse to run after the _ignis fatuus_ of Spencerian
philosophy.
But when we consider how the great civilized world of the Roman Empire and
this world of the barbarian tribes bordered so close on one another for so
long a time, and when we think what conquests Christianity had made
wherever civilization had set its foot, we wonder how that dark Northern
land could remain still heathen. Were not the citadels of the Christian
religion planted all along the borders of the Roman Empire? Did no gleams,
then, of Christian light shoot forth into the darkness beyond? We know
that such certainly was the case in the Northwestern portion, where the
Goths dwelt, for we read of Ulphilas and his apostolic labors among that
tribe. But for the most part, the darkness was unpenetrated, and we are
struck by the sight of two worlds running so close up to one another and
yet remaining so isolated in a religious point of view. The fact was, the
time for the conversion of the Northmen had not yet come. Their apostles
were to be a race of heroes born on the mountain‐heights, and nourished in
the pure, bracing air of monastic solitude. The barbarians were waiting
for the monks. It is true that these wild tribes had already a worship of
their own, and deeply religious in their way they certainly were. It was a
religion quite in keeping with their wild, free character. Men who were so
restless and active in their disposition, who delighted in storm and
mountain and roaring torrents, would have no temple of wood or stone for
their place of worship. Their temple was out in the open air, under the
driving clouds, within hearing of the tumbling waterfalls, in sight of
nature’s face; for nature to them was God. They saw him in the great
mountain towering up on high, in the rocking forest‐trees, in the wide‐
stretching plain, in the flowing river, in the gushing fountain. He was in
every object around them; in every speck of light in the overarching
heavens; in the glistening streamlet; in the variegated flowers bedecking
nature’s face; in the rock that stood out to break the power of the
rushing sea‐waves; in the very stones scattered around them on the plain.
There was a divinity of some kind in everything they saw.(282) It would,
perhaps, be more true to say that their religion was polytheism rather
than pantheism. We find, moreover, that the tendency of their religious
belief was to keep alive in their souls the warlike spirit. The greatest
and highest of their gods were beings of mighty power and terrible
violence. “Woden, or Odin, as he was called in Scandinavia, was the
omnipresent, the almighty creator, the father of gods and men; who ruled
the universe, riding on the clouds, and sending rain and sunshine; in whom
were centred all godlike attributes, of which he imparted a share to the
other gods; and from whom proceeded all beauty, wisdom, strength, and
fruitfulness, the knowledge of agriculture and the arts, the inspirations
of music and song, and all good gifts. He was the giant hunter, who in the
darkest nights rushed through the air on his white charger, clad in a
brown mantle, his white locks streaming from beneath his slouching hat,
followed by a train of wild huntsmen, the horses snorting fire, the
bloodhounds baying, announcing war and carnage, danger and distress, as he
passed along with lightning speed. But he was in a more special way the
god of war, revelling in blood and slaughter, giving courage and victory
to his votaries, and admitting to his Valhalla, or hall of bliss, none but
those who died by the sword.
“Next to him was his son Thor, who rode on the thunder‐cloud and
whirlwind, whose hammer was the thunderbolt, whose arrows were the
lightning flashes, and whose wagon dashed through the heavens with
crashing noise and ungovernable fury.”(283)
Then there was Saxnôt, another son of Woden, who occupied the third place
among the gods. His name is afterwards associated with those of Woden and
Thor in the abjuration of paganism made by those who were converted to
Christianity. He is designated under many different names. He is Eor, or
Are, or Ere, or Cheru, Tyr, Zio, Tuisco, or Tuis. He was the god of war,
fierce and terrible, rushing to battle, at Woden’s side, and bearing down
whole hosts with his mighty sword of iron or stone.
War, blood, and violence, then, were ever, in the minds of the barbarians,
associated with the greatest of those beings whom they worshipped and
admired. The character and the deeds of these gods were the highest and
the noblest they could conceive. To be mighty in battle like them; to
wield their war‐weapon as Thor wielded his huge hammer; to mow down
enemies as Tuisco did with his terrible sword, would be the grand object
of their soul’s desire. We may judge how little there was in their
religious worship to tone down their fierce natures. Everything symbolized
war; their deities were almost all warlike. Even Freyja, the Northern
Venus, was pictured to their imagination as delighting in war. She was
believed to be ever present in the battle‐field, wielding her flaming
sword, with frantic joy, over the heads of their enemies, and ready to
bear off the souls of the slain to Odin’s Valhalla. In that imaginary
Elysium the joys of their fallen heroes were also of a warlike and savage
character. They revelled there in “constantly massacring visionary foes,
and drinking without satiety, out of the skulls of the slain, brimming
ale‐cups presented by lovely Valkyrja.” What shall we expect, then, when
these wild warriors are turned loose upon the Roman Empire?
But is it possible to obtain a further glimpse behind that vast, dark line
of pine‐trees? Can we, by any means, get a glance at the wild indwellers
of the mysterious land beyond? What are those men like whom God has so
long kept hidden there? From time to time they have come forth from their
forest homes and stood on the boundaries of the civilized world, and
rolled their glaring eyes around over the rich empire that was to be their
booty. But that has been, as it were, only for a moment. They have plunged
again into their native darkness. Yet such writers as Apollinaris and
Ammianus Marcellinus have told us something of them. By their aid we can
picture to ourselves what those terrible hosts of avengers will be like,
who will presently come down with such a headlong sweep upon the doomed
empire of Rome.
All that we can imagine savage and terrible and extraordinary in figure
and habit is found in real fact among those barbaric hordes. There are
among them tribes who are small of stature, and thin and brawny, but quick
and fierce as the wild‐cat. There are, too, men of giant height and
strength, who can wield their huge clubs like playthings, and shiver the
hard rock like glass. They have blue, flashing eyes, and bathe their
flaxen hair in lime‐water, and anoint it with the unsavory unguent of
rancid butter. Some of them roam about nude and uncovered as the wild
animals of the forest, proud of their iron necklaces and golden bracelets;
others are partially clothed with the skins of savage beasts, cut and
shaped after the most odd and fantastic fashions. Some give additional
terror to their appearance by wearing helmets made to imitate the muzzles
of ferocious beasts. Plutarch tells us that all the Cimbrian horsemen wore
helmets made in the form of the open jaws and muzzles of all kinds of
strange and savage animals, and surmounted these by plumes shaped like
wings, and of a prodigious height. This gave them the appearance of
monstrous giants. They were armed with cuirasses of most brilliant metal,
and covered with bucklers of uniform whiteness. Some shaved their chins,
and, what must have added much to their hideousness, the back of their
heads, whilst their hair was drawn to the front and hung down over their
eyes like the forelock of a horse. So says Apollinaris,
“Ad front em coma tracta jacet, nudata cervix
Setarum per summa nitet.”(284)
Others, again, allowed their hair to grow, and wore long mustachios and
beard. Their weapons of war were various and strange as their own
appearance. Some fought on foot, wielding with savage fury the huge club,
or crushing mallet, or heavy‐headed hammer; or they did fierce work with
their rude sword, or long javelin with its two points, or double‐edged
hatchet; or they were skilful in the use of the sling or the arrow pointed
with sharp pieces of bone. Others rushed to battle on high war‐steeds
barded with steel, or on small horses, ugly and wretched to look at, but
swift as eagles in their course. If they fought on the level plain, these
barbarians were sometimes scattered over a large space, or they formed
themselves into cuneiform bodies, or they pressed together into compact,
impenetrable masses. If the contest was waged in the forests, they clomb
the trees, which they worshipped, with the agility of monkeys, and there
combated their enemies with wild ferocity, thus borne on the shoulders and
in the arms of their gods. If they were conquerors in the battle, they
abandoned themselves to acts of the most savage cruelty. To illustrate
this we need only think of the tragic deeds that were done amid the swamps
and the wooded hills of the Teutoberger Wald in the latter days of
Augustus. It is sad, indeed, to read in Tacitus and the pages of Dio of
the fate of that noble Roman army over which Varus held command. Yet we
cannot regret to see the well‐concerted rising of the German tribes, under
the splendid military genius of Arnim, to throw off the Roman yoke. We
hold in deepest horror the wrongs, the oppressions of the Romans from the
first ravages of Cæsar to the judicial murders of Varus. We think with
feelings of indignation of the treachery and the bloody cruelty of Cæsar
when the Usipetes and the Teuchteri were all but annihilated on the banks
of the Rhine, and the Roman general rejoiced at his own unprovoked
atrocity. We recall with sorrow all that the barbarians had had to suffer
from their Roman conquerors through succeeding years, and our souls are on
fire at the recollection of it. When, then, we see that the day of
deliverance is at hand, we carrot but rejoice with Arnim and his brother
Adelings at the prospect of future freedom. Our sympathies are with the
Germans, not with their Roman oppressors. Whilst the Romans, then, are
hungry and starved in the long, boggy valley between the sources of the
Ems and the Lippe, and the rain falls in torrents through the cold night,
and the soldiers’ spirits sink as they find themselves hemmed in by the
enemy on all sides, we are, meantime, in imagination and feeling with the
barbarian chiefs holding high festival as they recall the memory of
ancient freedom and the deeds of former days, and we join in the war songs
as they echo among the wild, dreary hills, and swell above the howlings of
the storm. And when the morning breaks ominously and darkly over the
Teutoberger Wald, and the tempest rises higher, and the heavy‐armed Romans
cannot advance, and find it difficult, even, to keep their footing in the
wet and slippery swamp; when we see their bows now useless from the wet,
and their spears and shields no longer glittering in military pride, and
their entire armor and clothing drenched and made too heavy for the poor
benumbed and hunger‐stricken soldiers to bear, we can scarcely feel one
pang of sorrow. On the contrary, our heart leaps with gladness when Arnim
from his watch‐eminence gives the signal, and the trumpets ring out and
the war‐weapons clang, and the terrible Barritum described by Tacitus(285)
is heard rising above the howlings of the storm. We know how that tragic
day ended, and how the evening saw the Roman host covering, with their
dead bodies, the length and breadth of the battle‐field. Never had there
been, in the annals of military warfare, such a terrible massacre of Roman
legions. The news of it seized upon Augustus like a madness, and the old
man, during the short remainder of his life, wandered sad and disconsolate
through the apartments of his palace, sometimes dashing his white head
against the walls, and murmuring, _Quintili Vare, legiones redde!_(286)
But the barbarians were not content with such terrific slaughter as nearly
annihilated the Roman army; their wild ferocity and cruelty showed
themselves in their treatment of the captives. Tacitus in his _Annals_
tells us(287) that in the neighboring woods the barbarians had altars
erected to their gods, and there the surviving Roman tribunes and the
centurions of the first class were offered in sacrifice. Around Varus’s
camp Roman heads were fixed, in cruel mockery, on the trunks and branches
of trees, and in the midst arose a huge mound of Roman bones, left to be
stripped of their flesh by the wild birds of prey, and then to whiten
under that northern sky into a long enduring monument of a great barbarian
victory.
If, on the contrary they were conquered, their fury was boundless, and was
even turned against each other. When Marius overcame the first Cimbrian
league, those who composed it were found on the field of battle bound fast
to each other, so that they could not fall back before the enemy, and thus
were compelled to conquer or die. Their wives were armed with swords or
hatchets, and, shrieking and gnashing their teeth with rage and grief,
they struck both Cimbrians and Romans. They rushed into the thickest of
the fight, snatching with their naked hands at the sharp‐cutting Roman
sabres; they sprang upon the legionaries like tigers, tearing from them
their bucklers, and thus purposely drawing upon themselves their own
destruction. It was a dreadful sight also to witness some of them when the
fortune of the day had turned against them, rushing to and fro with
dishevelled hair, their black dresses all torn and bloody, or to see them
mounted like mad fiends on the chariots, killing their husbands and
brothers, fathers and sons, strangling their new‐born infants and casting
them under the horses’ hoofs, and then plunging the dagger into their own
bosoms.(288)
Some of the barbarians delighted in eating human flesh. Ammianus
Marcellinus gives us a picture in his history which freezes our blood and
haunts us with its horrid memory. He tells us that, after the defeat of
Valens under the walls of Constantinople, a barbarian was seen rushing
among the imperial troops, naked down to his waist, sword in hand, and
uttering a hoarse, lugubrious cry. He sprang with savage fury upon an
enemy whom he had slain, and, applying his lips to his throat, sucked out
his life‐blood with a wild beast’s relish. The Scythians of Europe were
amongst those who showed this same instinct of the weasel and the hyena.
We have the authority of S. Jerome for believing that the Atticoti also
were accustomed to feed on human flesh. When they were wandering about in
the woods of Gaul, and happened to meet herds of swine or other cattle,
they cut off the breasts of the shepherdesses, and large pieces from the
bodies of the shepherds, and ate them as dainty bits.(289) The Alans tore
off the heads of their enemies, and caparisoned their horses with the
skins of their bodies. The Budini and Geloni were accustomed to do much
the same, being particular in reserving their enemies’ heads for
themselves. The appearance of the Geloni was a sickening sight to look
upon. They were accustomed to have their cheeks cut and gashed; and their
proudest distinction was a face all covered with wounds that were scaly,
and livid and crowned with blood‐red crests.
But if there is something terrible in the appearance and customs of the
barbarians whom we have mentioned, it is surpassed by what we are told of
the Huns. We shall not be able to form a true idea of the dreadful
avengers who are to come down out of that Northern gloom, unless we look
for a moment at this most terrible of the barbaric tribes. The Goths
themselves, the stalwart giants of the Scandinavian forests, who knew no
fear of men, could not but be terrified when they first fixed eyes on the
hideous forms of the Huns. Jornandes, the Gothic historian, tells us that
“the livid color of their skin had in it something shocking to the sight;
theirs was not a face, but a deformed mass of flesh, provided, instead of
eyes, with two black sinister spots. Their cruelty wreaked itself even
upon their own new‐born offspring, whose cheeks they lacerated with iron
before they had tasted their mother’s milk; and from this cause no down
graced their chin in youth, no beard gave dignity to their old age.” We
are told by Ammianus that “they looked not like men, but like wild beasts
standing on two legs, as if in mockery of the human species.” They were,
in truth, the wildest and most savage of all the barbarian hordes. They
loved to be free and unrestrained as the wandering blasts of their native
solitudes. They ate and slept on the ground under the open sky. They took
their food raw and uncooked, like the tigers of the forest. No temples of
worship had they; their God was a naked sword fixed in the ground. They
were devoured by an insatiable thirst for gold, which they were ever ready
to procure through blood, and smoke, and wholesale ruin. But the
characteristic of their race was a ferocious delight in cruel massacre,
and they gloried in pillaging, burning, and levelling down to the ground
every monument of civilization that came in their path, till the regions
over which they swept bore a resemblance to their native deserts. The rest
of the barbarians were amazed at their inhumanity, and looked upon them as
fiends under the likeness of men.
But we need say no more. We have caught some few glimpses of what is
behind the dark storm‐cloud, and we can form some idea of the horrors that
are hidden there. Well may men tremble as they look northwards in the Vth
century. Well may Christians think they hear now again, ringing out more
clearly than ever, the warning voice of S. John, and flee to far‐off
hiding‐places. The sinful empire herself feels, at times, as if under the
horrors of a nightmare; in her frightful dreams she thinks she is trampled
upon, and crushed under the feet of fierce, wild men of terrible aspect,
and torn and hacked by their strange weapons of war. As the tempest lowers
over her darker and darker, and threatens to become all‐enveloping in its
wrath, a deep shudder runs through her mighty frame. And well may she
stagger and quake for fear. The reckoning‐day is close at hand, so long
waited for by the holy martyrs of foregone centuries. And a day of
dreadful destruction it will be.
But lo! the hour has already struck. God has given the signal to his
warrior‐hosts. The Goth has given a ringing blast on his horn, and the
German has shouted the first notes of his terrible war‐song, and the pine‐
trees of the Hercynian forest are trembling at the sound. The avengers of
the martyrs and the Christian name are coming, and the whole North is
shaking under their tread. At last the storm‐cloud bursts, and fiery
destruction sweeps down upon the doomed empire of Rome.
New Publications.
IRELAND’S CASE STATED: IN REPLY TO MR. FROUDE. By the Very Rev. T.
N. Burke, O.P. New York: P. M. Haverty. 1873.
Ireland’s case has been stated, argued, vindicated, and, so far as the
verdict of the American people is concerned, adjudicated. Mr. Froude has
given his last scowl and his last growl, and gone back to his own
country—which he has damaged by his foolish escapade—the most badly beaten
man of the present decade. It is rather late in the day to revert to the
topic of F. Burke’s combat with this obstinate champion of bad characters
and bad causes, and we will, therefore, let it pass with these few words.
We are hoping to see soon issued Mr. Haverty’s promised second volume of
F. Burke’s _Discourses and Lectures_, and we once more express our regret
that any should be found so unmindful of propriety and courtesy, to say
the least, as to interfere with F. Burke’s control of the publication of
his own works. The eloquent Dominican preacher may be assured that the
respect and sympathy not only of all Catholic Irishmen, but of all other
Catholics of the United States, will be his while he remains here as our
honored guest, and will follow him when he returns to his native land, or
to his own beloved and imperial Rome.
KEEL AND SADDLE: A RETROSPECT OF FORTY YEARS OF MILITARY AND NAVAL
SERVICE. By Joseph W. Revere. Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co. 1872.
We are so often disgusted, in reading books of entertainment, with a
revelation of positive rascality and impiety, or at least of a want of
high moral and religious principle in the author, that it is a relief to
meet sometimes with a happy disappointment. This is a lively, entertaining
book of varied adventures on field and flood. Yet we always find the
author, when his personality comes into view, not only a bold and brave
soldier, but a gentleman, an honorable man, and a frank, staunch Catholic
Christian, who never obtrudes yet never hides his faith and his principles
of virtue. His views of Spanish affairs strike us as rather defective, and
occasionally there is a narrative concerning persons of depraved morals
which would have been better omitted for the sake of his youthful readers.
The “Golondina” episode in chapter xxiv. relates an adventure whose
lawfulness, we suspect, though perhaps admitted by quarter‐deck theology,
would not stand the test of a strict examination. Sometimes we are at a
loss to discover whether the author intends us to understand his narrative
as historical, or is merely relating a _conte_ for our amusement. In his
own personal adventures and the descriptions he gives of what he has seen,
we discover at once that his narrative is real as well as picturesque. And
it is certainly most interesting. The off‐hand, unstudied, and unaffected
style reveal the character of the true, genuine, frank sailor and soldier;
while at the same time, the refinement of taste and the cultivation of
mind which are manifest throughout give these sketches from the diary of a
long and adventurous life the literary finish which belongs to the work of
a scholar. Notwithstanding certain exceptions we have made, we reiterate
our commendation of the high tone of moral principle, the unaffected
religious reverence, and the generally healthful and invigorating spirit
which pervades the book which the gallant General Revere has given to the
public as the retrospect of his forty years of naval and military service.
HYMNS AND POEMS: ORIGINAL AND TRANSLATED. By Edward Caswall, of
the Oratory. Second Edition. London: Burns, Oates & Co.;
Pickering. 1873. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication
Society.)
Father Caswall’s hymns are as well known as Father Faber’s. Indeed, if we
mistake not, many of them are popularly attributed to the departed writer.
In the present volume we have a complete collection of the Breviary hymns,
in the first place. This is especially valuable as the only one in the
language (as far, at least, as we are aware). And the author deserves the
more praise for this labor of love, because of the great difficulty of
rendering the terse, stiff Latin. Then, secondly, we have “Hymns and
Sequences of the Roman Missal”; followed by “Hymns from Various Offices
and other Sources.” Thus the translated portion of the volume is quite
sufficient to make it worth possessing. The execution, too, is very happy,
on the whole. No one who has attempted to translate these hymns himself
will insist overmuch on the absence of phrases commonplace or prosaic.
The second portion of the volume, “Original Hymns and Meditative Pieces,”
also contains much that entitles it to a place in every household. The
devout Catholic, and more especially the convert, will find many things
said for him which have come into his mind, but without his being able to
express them. Moreover, several pieces turn on topics which are generally
supposed themes for the dryest meditation. They are here proved suggestive
of true poetry.
The only fault we have to find with Father Caswall’s verse is the same
that we find with Wordsworth’s: the too frequent sacrifice of poetic
diction and the use of too many long Latin words. But this defect is
unimportant compared with the value of the thoughts and teachings
conveyed, and we fervently thank Father Caswall for his contribution to
our scanty Catholic poetry.
THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST‐TABLE. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.
1872.
“Once I wrote because my mind was full;
But now I write because I feel it growing dull,”
or,
“I have lived long enough,”
or,
“Poor old man, thou prun’st a rotten tree
That cannot so much as a blossom yield
In lieu of all thy pains and husbandry,”
or some such saw, this Poet at the Breakfast‐table should have affixed to
these four hundred pages of incomparable drivelling.
“I talk half the time,” says the poet, in his opening paragraph, “to find
out my own thoughts, as a schoolboy turns his pockets inside out to see
what is in them.”
And what does the schoolboy find there?
Rusty nails, old shoe‐strings, copper pennies, dead bugs, crumbs of bread,
broken knives, and other trash neither beautiful nor useful. The
similitude is just. The contents of the Poet’s brain are as precious as
those of the boy’s pocket; and if we wish to push the comparison further,
the wares of both are often of doubtful ownership. The only serious thing
in the book is its humor.
“I don’t suppose my comic pieces are very laughable,” writes this poet,
philosopher, sage; “at any rate, the man who makes a business of writing
me down says the last one I wrote is very melancholy reading; and that if
it was only a little better, perhaps some bereaved person might pick out a
line or two that would do to put on a gravestone.” He has a most
infallible instinct for the right comparison; as, for instance: “I love to
talk, as a goose loves to swim. Sometimes I think it is because I _am_ a
goose.” This is the first evidence of intelligent thought in the whole
book. “My book and I,” he informs us, “are pretty much the same thing.
Sometimes I steal from my book in my talk, without mentioning it, and then
I say to myself: ‘Oh! that won’t do; everybody has read my book, and knows
it by heart.’ And then the other _I_ says: You know there are two of us,
right and left, like a pair of shoes! The other _I_ says: ‘You’re
a—something or other—fool.’ ” The other _I_ is evidently a sensible
fellow. “They haven’t read,” continues the other _I_, “your confounded old
book; besides, if they have, they have forgotten all about it.”
Again, the other _I_ says: “What a Balaam’s quadruped you are to tell ’em
it’s in your book; they don’t care whether it is or not, if it’s anything
worth saying; and if it isn’t worth saying, what are you braying for?”
This is the question the reader asks himself all along, as the evidence
that the poet has nothing to say worth the saying becomes more and more
overwhelming. This kind of criticism, we know, is little better than
trifling; but the performance deserves no other treatment, for we candidly
think that a sorrier book could not proceed from a mind untouched.
Why did this Poet, when he meant to write a book, seat himself at the
breakfast‐table? Did he not know that a full stomach does not argue a mind
replete? Had not Shakespeare said long ago that fat paunches have lean
pates, or was he not physician enough to know that the _mens divinior_ is
not to be found in hot rolls and coffee?
We shall conclude with one other brief quotation from the Poet:
“What do you do when you receive a book you don’t want from the author?
said I: ‘Give him a good‐natured adjective or two if I can, and thank him,
and tell him I am lying under a sense of obligation to him. This is as
good an excuse for lying as any, I said.’ ”
As we do not believe there can be an excuse for lying, and as we are
certain that in this case there is no obligation under which to lie, we
cannot give the author “a good‐natured adjective or two”; but we shall
thank him to give us no more such nonsense.
YOUNG AMERICA ABROAD. Second Series: Cross and Crescent; or, Young
America in Turkey and Greece. A Story of Travel and Adventure. By
William T. Adams (Oliver Optic), author of “Outward Bound,”
“Shamrock and Thistle,” “Red Cross,” “Down the Rhine,” etc.
Boston: Lee & Shepard, Publishers. New York: Lee, Shepard &
Dillingham. 1873.
This is the third volume of the second series of _Young America Abroad_,
and, like all the rest of the series, is most instructive and
entertaining.
THE TREASURE OF THE SEAS. By Prof. James De Mille, author of “The
B. O. W. C.,” “The Boys of Grand Pre School,” “Lost in the Fog,”
“Fire in the Woods,” “Among the Brigands,” etc. Illustrated.
Boston: Lee & Shepard, publishers; New York: Lee, Shepard &
Dillingham. 1872.
This is one of the best of the “B. O. W. C. Series,” and will certainly be
a favorite with the boys.
THE POLYTECHNIC: A Collection of Music for Schools, Classes, and
Clubs. Compiled and written by U. C. Burnap and Dr. W. J. Wetmore.
New York: J. W. Schermerhorn & Co.
THE ATHENÆUM: A Collection of Part‐Songs for Ladies’ Voices.
Arranged and written by U. C. Burnap and Dr. W. J. Wetmore. New
York: J. W. Schermerhorn & Co.
The best criticism of both these musical publications is found in the
preface to the first one cited:
“Collections of school music are already sufficiently numerous and bulky,
but too often they are found to contain very little that is available for
the ordinary or the extraordinary occasions of school life.”
HART’S MANUAL OF AMERICAN LITERATURE—A MISTAKE CORRECTED.—Since
writing the brief notice of this really valuable work which
appeared in our December number, we have observed a very serious
misstatement in it respecting a distinguished convert to the
Catholic faith, the late Dr. Ives, formerly Protestant Bishop of
North Carolina. Prof. Hart states that he _returned to the
Episcopal Church_. He never dreamed of such an act of superlative
folly. He died, as he had lived, a most fervent and devout
Catholic, we might almost say—a _saint_, and was buried with all
the rites and all the honors of solemn obsequies in St. Patrick’s
Cathedral, New York. Prof. Hart, who always endeavors to be fair,
and whose notices of Catholic writers are marked by their
courtesy, would never have made this incorrect statement unless he
had been misled by some false information, and we rely on his
rectifying it in his next edition.
The following circular has been sent to us, and we publish it
because we think there is nothing more hostile to such nefarious
projects than free and early ventilation. Why does not Mr. _Abbot_
renounce his popish name, in his zeal to abolish every vestige of
Christianity? Our readers will not fail to see how apposite an
illustration this document furnishes of some of the remarks in our
first article. We have also received an article from the
_Cincinnati Gazette_ advocating the persecution of Catholics in
this country, with a trenchant reply by F. Callaghan.
(_From_ THE INDEX, _January 4, 1873_.)
Organize!
Liberals Of America,
The hour for action has arrived. The cause of freedom calls upon
us to combine our strength, our zeal, our efforts. These are
The Demands Of Liberalism.
1. We demand that churches and other ecclesiastical property shall
no longer be exempted from just taxation.
2. We demand that the employment of chaplains in Congress, in
state legislatures, in the navy and militia, and in prisons,
asylums, and all other institutions supported by public money,
shall be discontinued.
3. We demand that all public appropriations for sectarian,
educational, and charitable institutions shall cease.
4. We demand that all religious services now sustained by the
government shall be abolished; and especially that the use of the
Bible in the public schools, whether ostensibly as a textbook or
avowedly as a book of religious worship, shall be prohibited.
5. We demand that the appointment, by the President of the United
States or by the Governors of the various states, of all religious
festivals and feasts, shall wholly cease.
6. We demand that the judicial oath in the courts and in all other
departments of the government shall be abolished, and that simple
affirmation under pains and penalties of perjury shall be
established in its stead.
7. We demand that all laws directly or indirectly enforcing the
observance of Sunday as the Sabbath shall be repealed.
8. We demand that all laws looking to the enforcement of
“Christian” morality shall be abrogated, and that all laws shall
be conformed to the requirements of natural morality, equal
rights, and impartial liberty.
9. We demand that not only in the constitutions of the United
States and of the several States, but also in the practical
administration of the same, no privileges or advantage shall be
conceded to Christianity or any other special religion; that our
entire political system shall be founded and administered on a
purely secular basis; and that whatever changes shall prove
necessary to this end shall be consistently, unflinchingly, and
promptly made.
Liberals! I pledge to you my undivided sympathies and most
vigorous co‐operation, both in _The Index_ and out of it, in this
work of local and national organization. Let us begin at once to
lay the foundations of a great national party of freedom, which
shall demand the entire secularization of our municipal, state,
and national government.
Let us boldly and with high purpose meet the duty of the hour.
Rouse, then, to the great work of freeing America from the
usurpations of the church! Make this continent from ocean to ocean
sacred to human liberty! Prove that you are worthy descendants of
those whose wisdom and patriotism gave us a constitution untainted
with superstition! Shake off your slumbers, and break the chains
to which you have too long tamely submitted.
FRANCIS E. ABBOT.
TOLEDO, OHIO, Jan. 1, 1873.
Liberals Of New York,
Shall the coming “National Association to secure a Religious
Amendment to the United States Constitution,” to be held in New
York in February, find us unorganized for resistance? Let us at
once form a “Liberal League,” in which we may arrange a campaign
offensive and defensive for our liberties. Send me at once the
addresses of those who sympathize with us, that a meeting may be
called at an early day: remember that “he who is not for me is
against me,” and that our liberties are threatened.
E. F. DINSMORE,
36 Dey Street, New York,
Agent of _The Index_.
[Transcriber’s Note: Obvious printer’s errors have been corrected.]
FOOTNOTES
1 Alfred de Musset.
2 _The Life and Labors of S. Thomas of Aquin._ By the Very Rev. Roger
Bede Vaughan, O.S.B., Cathedral‐Prior of S. Michael’s, Hereford. 2
vols. London: Longmans; Hereford: James Hull. 1871‐2.
3 Proverbs vi., vii.
4 _Adv. Prax._, c. 2.
5 Bishop Wilson, _Sacra Privata_.
6 _Homil._, in S. Ignat., vii. p. 593.
7 Οὐχ ὡς Πέτρος καὶ Παῦλος διατάσσομαι ὑμῖν· ἐκεῖνοι Ἀπόστολος Ἰησοῦ
Χριστοῦ, ἐγὼ δὲ ἐλάχιστος.
8 Κλήμης ἐν ἕκτῳ των Ὑποτυπώσεων παρατέθειται την ἱστορίαν·
συνεπιμαρτυρει δὲ αυτῷ καὶ ὁ ἱεραπολίτης ἐπίσκοπος ὀνόματι Παπίας.
Τοῦ δὲ Μάρκου μνημονεύειν τὸν Πέτρον ἐν τῇ προτέρᾳ ἐπιστολῇ, ἦν καὶ
συντάξαι φασὶν ἐπ᾽ αὐτῆςς Ῥώμης· σημαίνειν τε τοῦτο αὐτὸν τὴν πόλιν
τροπεκώτερον Β βυλῶνα προσειπόντα, διὰ τούτων· Λοπαζεται ὑμᾶς,
κ.τ.λ.
9 Eusebius’ _Eccl. Hist._, l. 2, c. 25.
10 Τοῦ Πέτρου καὶ τοῦ Παύλου εν Ρώμηλ εὐαγγελιζομένων καὶ θεμελιούντων
τὴν ἑκκλησιαν.—_Eusebius_, l. 5, c. 8; also, S. Irenæus, _Adv.
Hæreses_, l. 3, c. 3.
11 Ἐγω δε τα τρόπαια των Ἀποστόλων ἔχω δεῖζαι, κ.τ.λ.—_Eusebius_, l. 2,
c. 25.
12 _Eusebius_, l. 3, c. 1.
13 “Edant ergo origines ecclesiarum suarum; evolvant ordinem
episcoporum suorum, ita per successiones ab initio decurrentem, ut
primus ille episcopus aliquem ex apostolis, vel apostolicis viris,
qui tamen cum apostolis perseveraverit, habuerit auctorem et
antecessorem. Hoc enim modo ecclesiæ apostolicæ census suos
deferunt: sicut Smyrnæorum Ecclesia Polycarpum ab Joanne collocatum
refert; sicut Romanorum, Clementum a Petro ordinatum
itidem.”—_Tertulliani_, _De Præscriptione Hæreticorum_, c. 32.
14 “Si autem Italiæ adjaces, habes Romam, unde nobis quoque auctoritas
præsto est. Ista quam felix ecclesia, cui totam doctrinam apostoli
cum sanguine quo profuderunt! ubi Petrus passioni Dominicæ
adæquatur; ubi Paulus Joannis exitu coronatur.”—_Tertulliani_, _De
Præscriptione Hæreticorum_, c. 36.
15 “Videamus quod lac a Paulo Corinthii hauserint; ad quam regulam
Galatæ sint recorrecti; quid legant Philippenses, Thessalonicenses,
Ephesii; quid etiam Romani de proximo sonent, quibus evangelium et
Petrus et Paulus sanguine quoque suo signatum
reliquerunt.”—_Tertulliani_, _Adv. Marcionem_, l. 4, c. 5.
16 1 _S. Peter_ v. 13: “The church that is at Babylon, elected together
with you, saluteth you; and so doth Marcus, my son.”
17 _S. John_ xxi. 18: “Verily, verily I say unto thee, when thou wast
young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldst: but
when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and
another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldst not.”
Also, 2 _S. Peter_ i. 14: “Knowing that shortly I must put off this
my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath showed me.”
18 “Seven Roman cities strove for Homer dead
Through which the living Homer begged his bread.”
19 “Veteres omnes in errorem abrepti sunt.”
20 _Instit._, l. 4, c. 6, n. 15.
21 “De Babylone dissident veteres et novi interpretes. Veteres Romam
interpretantur, ubi Petrum fuisse nemo verus Christianus dubitavit:
novi, Babylonem in Chaldea. Ego veteribus assentior.”
22 Prof. Stuart, Andover _Biblical Repository_, Jan., 1833, vol. iii.
p. 153.
23 _Lectures on Ecclesiastical History._
24 _Introduction to the Study of the Holy Scriptures_, vol. ii. p. 361.
25 _A New Literal Translation, from the Original Greek, of all the
Apostolic Epistles; with a Commentary and Notes._
26 Prior Vaughan, _S. Thomas of Aquin_, i. 464.
27 _S. Thomas of Aquin_, Introduction.
28 _Christian Schools and Scholars_, ii. 20, 21.
29 _S. Thomas of Aquin_, i. 369.
30 _Christian Schools and Scholars_, ii. 325.
31 _Ibid._
32 _Christian Schools and Scholars_, i. 9‐11.
33 _S. Thomas of Aquin_, i. 134.
34 Montalembert, _Monks of the West_, i. Edin. ed.
35 _Monks of the West._
36 _Ibid._
37 _Monks of the West._
38 _Christian Schools and Scholars_, ii. 426.
39 _Monks of the West_, ii.
40 _Christian Schools and Scholars_, i.
41 _Ibid._
42 _Ibid._
43 _Christian Schools and Scholars._
44 _Christian Schools and Scholars_, i.
45 Montalembert’s _Monks of the West_, iii. 195, 197.
46 _Monks of the West._
47 _Monks of the West._
48 _Monks of the West._
49 _Monks of the West._
50 _Ibid._
51 _Christian Schools and Scholars._
52 _Christian Schools and Scholars._
53 _Ibid._
54 _Christian Schools and Scholars._
55 _Christian Schools and Scholars._
56 _Ibid._
57 _Ibid._
58 _Christian Schools and Scholars._
59 _Monks of the West._
60 _Gladstone._
61 _Christian Schools and Scholars._
62 _Monks of the West._
63 _Monks of the West._
64 _S. Thomas of Aquin._
65 _Christian Schools and Scholars._
66 “All the more reason.”
67 Term for the peasants and workingmen.
68 “Go, my son, there are now no Pyrenees.”
69 The queen’s bed‐chamber.
70 The king’s bed‐chamber.
71 “I am the state!”
72 “An instant more, and I should have had to wait!”
73 “The king is dead, long live the king.”
74 The Duchesse de Polignac.
75 Louis only knew how to love and to forgive; had he known how to
punish, he would have known how to reign.
76 Bancroft.
77 Bancroft.
78 Shea.
79 Lake George.
80 Caughnawaga.
81 _Christian Schools and Scholars_, i. 327.
82 _Ibid._
83 _Ibid._
84 _Christian Schools and Scholars._
85 _Life of S. Thomas of Aquin._
86 _S. Thomas of Aquin._
87 _Ibid._
88 _S. Thomas of Aquin._
89 _Christian Schools and Scholars._
90 _Ibid._
91 _Christian Schools and Scholars._
92 _Ibid._
93 _Christian Schools and Scholars_, ii. 370.
94 See _S. Thomas of Aquin_, i. 42.
95 Montalembert, _Monks of the West_, v. 159.
96 _Ibid._, v. 97.
97 _Christian Schools and Scholars._
98 _Ibid._
99 _Christian Schools and Scholars._
100 For all these and the following details, see _Christian Schools and
Scholars_.
101 _Christian Schools and Scholars._
102 _Ibid._
103 _The Condition of the Catholics under James I. Father Gerard’s
Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot._ Edited, with his Life, by John
Morris, Priest of the Society of Jesus. London: Longmans, Green &
Co. 1871. New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.
_Her Majesty’s Tower._ By William Hepworth Dixon. Second series.
Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1869. Reprinted.
104 “The great house then rising at Charing Cross was said, in reference
to these gifts, to be plated with King Philip’s gold. Much of Don
Juan’s money passed in Cecil’s pocket.... Northampton and Suffolk
also obtained the most princely sums.”—_Her Majesty’s Tower_, pp.
59, 60.
105 _History of England_, ix. 36.
106 _Statutes of Elizabeth_, chap. i., v., xiii., xxi., xxiii., xxvii.,
xxviii., xxix., xxxv.
107 _The Life of Father John Gerard_, xcvii.‐ix.
108 Fifth Examination of Fawkes, November 9th and 10th, _State Paper
Office_, No. 54.
109 _Life of Father John Gerard_, p. clxxviii.
110 Page 221.
111 _A Narrative, etc._, pp. 76‐77.
112 Told to the writer as a fact.
113 This incident is authentic, and occurred at No. 13 Rue Royale.
114 _The Life and Labors of S. Thomas of Aquin._ By the Very Rev. Roger
Bede Vaughan, O.S.B. 2 vols. London: Longmans; Hereford: James Hull.
1871‐2.
115 xiv. 15, 16.
116 “Stop, traveller.”
117 “Behold, traveller.”
118 “Farewell,” or “Hail, for ever.”
119 _Sit tibi terra levis._
120 _Locus_, _loculus_.
121 Matt. xii. 32.
122 1 Cor. iii. 13, 15.
123 1 Pet.
124 Apocalypse xxi. 27.
125 2 Mach. xii. 43‐46.
126 xvi. 14.
127 xxxv. 19, 20.
128 2 Chron. xxi. 19.
129 “_Les morts ne sont pas les oubliés: ils ne sont que les absents._”
130 Sismondi, _His. Ital. Rep._
131 See CATHOLIC WORLD, vol. xiii., No. 73, April, 1871, p. 1.
132 _The Following of Christ_, b. iii. chap. v.
133 _Following of Christ_, b. iii. chap. v.
134 The Marquisate or March of Ancona was then governed by Charles of
Valois, who held Naples.
135 That is, in the territory of Padua, founded, as the student will
remember, by the Trojan Antenor, whose tomb is shown in Padua to
this day.
136 That is to say, the hermitage of the Camaldolites in Milton’s
Vall’ombrosa.
137 _Oriental and Linguistic Studies. The Veda; The Avesta; The Science
of Language_. By William Dwight Whitney, Prof. of Sanskrit and
Comparative Philology at Yale College. One vol. 8vo, 416 pp. New
York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1873.
138 _Oriental and Linguistic Studies. The Veda; The Avesta; The Science
of Language_. By William Dwight Whitney, Prof. of Sanskrit and
Comparative Philology at Yale College. One vol. 8vo, 416 pp. New
York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1873.
139 Title of the work given at head of this article.
140 Still stronger in the original: “Vielleicht ist noch kein Europäer
so tief in diese Sprache eingedrungen als er.”—_Mithridates_, vol.
i. p. 134.
141 Sidnarubam seu Grammatica Samscrdamica, cui accedit dissertatio
historico‐critica in linguam Samscrdamicam, vulgo Samscret dictam,
in qua hujus linguæ existentia, origo, exarati critice recensentur,
et simul aliquæ antiquissimæ gentilium orationes liturgicæ paucis
attinguntur et explicantur autore Paulino a S. Bartolomæo. Romæ,
1790.
142 _Catalogo de las Lenguas de las Naciones conocidas._ Madrid,
1800‐1805. Six large 8vo volumes.
143 These lectures, printed in book‐form at London, were soon after
first published in the United States by the Presbyterian College of
Andover.
144 “Wouldst thou the young year’s blossoms and the fruits of its
decline,
And all by which the soul is charmed, enraptured, feasted, fed,
Wouldst thou the earth and heaven itself in one sole name combine?
I name thee, O Sakuntula, and all at once is said.”
145 _L’Aryanisme, et de la trop grande part qu’on a faite à son
influence, etc._
146 How such information could have been had from the _Fasti Consulares_
is difficult to say; the suppression was probably a _lapsus memoriæ_
for Josephus Flavius. The date of S. Paul’s coming to Rome is too
uncertain to be fixed at 61, yet we accept this year on the
authority of those who put it forward in the discussion.
147 See _Op. S. Irenæi_, Ed. Cong. S. Mauri, Ven. an. 1734.
148 _De Viris Illustribus_, c. i.
149 _Ap. Eusebium_, H. E. lib. iii. c. i.
150 _Via Appia da Porta Capena a Boville._ Descritta dal Commendatore L.
Canina. 2 vols. Roma. 1853.
151 _La Roma Sotterranea Christiana._ Descritta ed illustrat dal Cav. G.
B. de Rossi. Roma. 1864.
152 _Defense de l’Esprit des Lois_, 3e partie.
153 Aringhi, _Roma Subterr._ lib. iii. c. 2.
154 _Ner._ 48.
155 _Pro Cluent._ 13.
156 _I cimeteri sotteranei di Roma sono stati scavati dai cristiani
fossari tranne pochissime eccezioni, le quali importanti per la
storia, nell’ampiezza però della sotteranea escavazione scompajono;
e possono veramente dirsi quello, che i matematici appellano una
quantitià infinitesima e da non essere tenuta a calcolo._—App. p.
39.
157 Psalm xxiii.
158 S. John x. 14‐16.
159 _O præclarum diem, cum ad illud divinum animorum concilium cœtumque
proficiscar, cumque ex hac turba et colluvione discedam! Proficiscar
enim, non ad eos solum viros, de quibus ante dixi, sed etiam ad
Catonem meum._—_De Senectute_, 25.
160 Coleridge’s _Piccolomini_, scene iv.
161 xii. 40.
162 Newman’s _Church of the Fathers_, Introduction.
163 Jonas iv. 2.
164 S. Augustine says:—“Love the men, destroy the errors: be bold
without pride in the maintenance of truth; strive for the truth
without harshness; pray for those whom you rebuke and
confound.”—_Contra lit. Petiliani_, l. i.
165 xx. 23.
166 Romans vi. 3, 4.
167 S. Augustine, _Serm._ 296, p. 1195, tom. v.
168 Tertullian, _Scorpiace_, p. 628.
169 1 Epist. iii. 2.
170 Am. ed. p. 82.
171 _An Eirenicon_, Eng. ed., p. 101.
172 “If there be one writer in the Anglican Church who has discovered a
deep, tender, loyal devotion to the Blessed Mary, it is the author
of _The Christian Year_. The image of the Virgin and Child seems to
be the one vision upon which both his heart and intellect have been
formed; and those who knew Oxford twenty or thirty years ago say
that, while other college rooms were ornamented with pictures of
Napoleon on horseback, or Apollo and the Graces, or Heads of Houses
lounging in their easy‐chairs, there was one man—a young and rising
one—in whose rooms, instead of these, might be seen the Madonna di
Sisto or Domenichino’s S. John—fit augury of him who was in the
event to do so much for the revival of Catholicism.”—Newman’s
_Essays_, vol. ii. p. 453.
173 _Memoir of Keble._ By Sir J. T. Coleridge, Eng. ed., p. 305.
174 Dr. Nevin, one of the leaders of religious thought in the German
Reformed communion, of which the _Mercersburg Review_ is the organ,
has said: “The man cannot be right at heart in regard to the faith
of the Incarnation, whose tongue falters in pronouncing Mary Mother
of God!”
175 _A Letter to Dr. Pusey on his recent Eirenicon_, p. 59.
176 The late Dr. Faber, when an Anglican, said: “Thus I hold it pious to
believe that in pagan times many a wandering beam, many a pitying
angel, many a rent in heaven, many a significant portent, many an
overflow of the appointed channels of grace, were vouchsafed,
whereon a poor glimmering faith might feed, and grow, not wholly of
itself, into a feeble yet steady light, acceptable for his sake who
sent such faith its food.”—_Foreign Churches and Peoples_, p. 535.
177 Horace, _De Arte Poetica_, 391.
178 Keble’s _Christian Year_—Easter Eve.
179 Lib. iv. c. 4.
180 _A Hist. de l’Art._
181 Page 36.
182 Page 30.
183 The scourge used by one of the executioners at the pillar was
amongst the number, and is now to be seen in the cathedral of
Aachen. It is composed of narrow leathern thongs, terminated by an
iron point, the whitish color of the leather bearing manifest stains
of the precious blood that bespattered it. Constantine’s signet, the
eagle and ciphers, is distinctly visible on the time‐worn, faded
seal, that looks like a sort of hard chalk. The reliquary is a
crystal vase, encased in gold and gems.
184 It is not within the limits of this sketch to follow the “Saint
Suaire” through its subsequent translations, but it may interest
such of our readers as are not acquainted with the fact, that it is
now at Aix‐la‐Chapelle, where _every seven years_ it is opened by
the chief prelates of Catholic Germany, and in the presence of
princes and bishops exposed to the veneration of the faithful for
three days, the church bells ringing all the time, and the cathedral
crowded day and night.
185 _The Russian Clergy._ Translated from the French of Father Gagarin,
S.J. By Ch. Du Gard Makepeace, M.A. London: Burns & Oates. 1872.
(New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
186 “L’ouvrage s’ouvre par une introduction majestueuse sur le treizième
siècle.”
187 _Memoir of Count De Montalembert, Peer of France, Deputy for the
Department of Doubs._ A Chapter of recent French History. By Mrs.
Oliphant, author of _The Life of Edward Irving_, _S. Francis of
Assisi_, etc. In two volumes. William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh
and London. 1872.
188 The Anitchkoff Palace, on the Nevskoi Prospekt.
189 In 1859, _Le Second Empire_; in 1860, _La France, l’Autriche et
l’Angleterre_; in 1865, _France et l’Allemagne_.
190 _Particularism_ here means the tendency and policy on the part of
Bavaria and the Southern States of Germany to resist absorption of
their autonomy in certain matters by Prussia.—_Translator._
191 The town where Henry IV., of Germany, performed a penance imposed by
Pope Gregory VII.—_Trans._
192 In the work, published in 1865, which procured me the honor of being
made the subject of a parliamentary debate, I had dwelt upon the
two‐fold danger to be feared, whether from an alliance which might
reopen the Belgian question, or from a war on our frontiers, it
might be, on our invaded territory. I advised appeasing our
political discords, the better to resist this double peril. This
sums up in a few words the purport of my pamphlet.
My adversaries in the tribune and in the press denied the existence
of these dangers which they asserted were merely imaginary; they
charged me with having got up a sham Belgian question, and with
having, in that way, spread the knowledge of it abroad.
“With what have I charged the Honorable M. de Champs?” said M.
Dolez. “It is with having pretended that our nationality was
environed by perils, and that a Belgian question was on foot in
which our independence might be taken away from us.”
M. Frère‐Orban ridiculed in a pleasant way my forebodings. He said
that I was “a lookout man who, in his tower, descries that which no
one else can possibly see, ... who imagines that he has discovered
that which nobody had seen before. To‐day,” he added, “when there is
_nothing, absolutely nothing_, of a nature to cause uneasiness to
the country, we are told, in consequence of a party scheme: Let us
hold our tongues and appease our discords. The liberal party must,
in order to save Belgium from a _danger which does not exist_, cease
resisting the pretensions of the clerical party.”
Well, what does M. Frère‐Orban think now? While he, as minister, was
uttering in the tribune the above quieting and optimist statements,
M. Benedetti had entered with M. von Bismarck into a parley, the
subject of which was the Belgian question. This was the diplomatic
peril. The other peril has been clearly revealed to us after Sedan.
General de Wimpfen has stated to General Chazal that the question of
invading or not the territory of Belgium had been earnestly
discussed at Sedan. This would have been bringing the war on our
violated soil.
193 Priests and religious, men and women, numbering together 1,909, have
given corporeal and spiritual attendance to 21,000 sick and wounded,
and this only out of love for God and their neighbor.
194 Referring to the very bitter attack on the definition of
infallibility and the doings of the council which appeared about
that time in pamphlet form from a writer under the _nom de plume_ of
Janus.—_Translator._
195 The bien‐aimé of the Almanac is no more the bien‐aimé of France,
He does everything ab hoc and ab hac, puts all in the same sack,
Justice and finance, this bien‐aimé of the Almanac, etc., etc.
196 Zamore was a negro who repaid by the basest treachery the favors
lavished on him by Madame du Barry; he was the immediate cause of
her execution, having betrayed her hiding‐place to the convention.
She is the only woman of that period who died like a coward,
struggling to the last.
197 “Let our hearts be light and gay,
Glory’s hour is here to‐day;
The blood‐red blade is raised on high,
We conquer when we die—
Rally to victory.
’Neath the flag of a dying God!
We tread the path he trod;
We run, we fly
To glory nigh.
Behold our ardor rise,
Our hearts are in the skies,
Arise, arise!
The scaffold mount—and God’s the victory.”
198 Blue is the color of knowledge.
199 _Der liebe Gott_, the received formula in Germany, as the “good
God,” _le bon Dieu_, in French, and Almighty God in English.
200 Exod. xv. 11.
201 Matt. vi. 33.
202 Eccl. xx. 9.
203 Lam. iii. 31.
204 Is. xxix. 18.
205 Matt. v. 10.
206 Rom. xi. 33.
207 Ps. xlii. 1.
208 Baruch v. 6.
209 The Arno, Chiana, and Mugnone.
210 London _Times_, Feb. 3.
211 As was shown in THE CATHOLIC WORLD last month, excommunication is
not only recognized by the law in the case of Protestant
excommunicators, but has been sanctioned and confirmed by law, on an
actual case being brought into court. Of course we shall be met by
the objection that the formal declaration of Papal Infallibility has
altered the connection between the Catholic Church and the state.
Unfortunately for this easy method of explaining away difficult
matters, excommunication has not been a whit altered in force,
relation, or form from the days of the Apostles to Pius IX.
212 In proof of which read the declaration of Count Andrássy to the
Austrian Parliament that, notwithstanding the friendly assurances
with which the three emperors parted at the breaking up of their
recent conference at Berlin, he could not guarantee peace even up to
Christmas. Observe also the significant rearming of all the great
European powers and the recent order from Berlin of 3,000,000 rifles
of a new pattern.
213 Witness Bavaria’s remonstrance, which was disregarded, at the sudden
imposition of the severe military code of Prussian service without
allowing it time to recover. As a more recent comment on that, read
the very able and interesting letters which appeared in the _New
York Herald_, Nov. 22, on the European situation, a short extract
from which, of a Bavarian view on German unity, we give: “Germany
accepts it, because it in some respects realizes the German dream of
unity. That, of course, every German wants. But no one wants a
united despotism, a military code that turns the whole nation into a
camp, and takes half a million able‐bodied men away from the farms
and industrious callings. We want a Germany for the good of the
fatherland, not for the glory of a little upstart Prussian prince
whose name is not much older than the Bonapartes’ crown.”
214 “Desine fata deûm flecti sperare precando.”—_Virg. Æn._ vi. 376.
215 In Germany.
216 “Divorce Legislation in Connecticut,” and “The Indissolubility of
Christian Marriage.”
217 For this and the following references, see Rohrbacher’s _Histoire
Universelle de l’Eglise Catholique_. This work is so comprehensive,
and so full of the most learned and accurate researches, that we
have relied entirely upon its lengthened narratives for the facts
mentioned in this article. The work is excessively voluminous (28
vols 8vo), and to verify personally each separate reference given by
the author would be almost impossible, besides being a very tedious
undertaking. We have preferred, therefore, to rely upon the single
authority of one who is confessedly the best modern church
historian.
218 _History of the Reformation._
219 E. Dally.
220 “It is an error to suppose that the Catholic faith limits the
existence of man to about six thousand years. The church has never
decided this delicate question, and this abstention is full of
wisdom. Nothing positive, in fact, has been revealed to us on this
point. The various chronological systems are the work of man; they
rest on bases often hypothetical. Nevertheless, we cannot admit even
the possibility of the arbitrary theories of several distinguished
geologists who date the appearance of man on the earth twenty and
even thirty millions of years back. Good‐sense alone should incline
one to be moderate on this point.”—Mgr. Meignan, _Le Monde et
l’Homme primitif_, chap. vi.
221 _L’Homme pendant les Ages de la Pierre dans les Environs de Dinant‐
sur‐Meuse._ 2e édition. Bruxelles: Muquardt. 1872.
222 This is true, at most, of the formations previous to the quaternary
deposits; in the latter, the synchronism of the fauna becomes wholly
uncertain, and only founds the emigration or disappearance of
certain species of animals on inductions that have a hypothetical
basis. As to their emigration, we have had too many instances in the
historic period, as M. Chabas justly observes, to make us regard
that necessarily the index of vast chronological intervals. Where
are the elephants that abounded in Mauretania Tingitana, according
to Solinus’ _Polyhistor_; the hippopotami of Lower Egypt, the boas
of Calabria, the lions, aurochs, and bears of Macedonia, the beaver,
etc.? In the XVIIth century of our era, the stag, roebuck, wild
boar, wolf, and bear still formed a part of the fauna of the
Cevennes. The reindeer lived in the Black Forest in the time of
Cæsar, who describes this animal from hearsay, but characterizes it
sufficiently by the peculiarity of the male and female having the
same kind of horns. M. Lartet is also inclined to the opinion that
_the age of the reindeer is perhaps not so ancient as was once
supposed_. The mammoth is no longer found alive, but has been
discovered with its flesh and skin still remaining, embedded in ice,
and affording nourishment to dogs and other animals. Struck with
this preservation, M. d’Orbigny expresses a doubt as to the
antiquity of the mammoth. He thinks it may have existed five or six
thousand years ago, and believes it may still live in some
unexplored locality. At least, it lived in America till a
comparatively recent period. Its remains, and those of the mastodon,
have been found in the auriferous deposits of California, among
remarkable traces of human labor. At the Congress of Copenhagen, M.
Schaffhausen expressed the opinion that the lost species should
rather be regarded of a more recent date than that the antiquity of
man should be extended to hundreds of thousands of years. As to the
wretchedness and inferiority evident from the primitive pursuits of
man and the conformity of his organs, the enemies of Christianity
triumph over the discovery. We believe with Mgr. Meignan that “a
proof of the authenticity of the Bible has been lightly transformed
into an objection against it. The revolt and disobedience of man
explain the wretched state in which he at first lived; and the
hardships he underwent during the period he inhabited caverns and
lacustrine dwellings prove to all who believe in the goodness of God
that a great crime must have armed His justice.”
223 “In the year of the Nativity of our Lord 710, the sixth day of the
month of December, under the reign of Eudes, most pious King of the
French, during the ravages of the perfidious Saracen nation, the
body of the most dear and venerable Marie Madeleine was secretly and
by night transferred from its alabaster sepulchre into the present
one, which is of marble, and whence the body of Sidonius has been
withdrawn, in order that the other may be better concealed and be
beyond the reach of the above‐named perfidious nation.”
224 Seven years later, when the head was taken to Rome by Charles,
Boniface VIII. sent to S. John of Lateran for a relic which had long
been venerated there as the maxillar bone of Magdalen; on adjusting
it to the broken part, it fitted in so exactly as to leave no doubt
as to where it had originally been taken from.
225 Shea.
226 See the narrative and map in Shea’s _History of the Discovery and
Exploration of the Mississippi_.
227 Pronounced Ac‐o‐ma—the accent on the first syllable.
228 “This way, gentlemen.”
229 Red pepper; _chile verde_, green pepper.
230 This estimate, which was considered as too high by some of the
clergymen present, is given only as conjectural. It is based on the
census of 1870, according to which there are in the state, in round
numbers, 203,000 persons of foreign parentage at least on one side,
of whom 113,000 are foreign‐born. It would seem probable that we
might allow out of this number 83,000 foreign‐born and 67,000
native‐born Catholics. It is certain, from other evidence, that the
number is over 100,000, and, whatever the correct number may be,
nine‐twentieths is very near the proportion of the native‐born to
the whole number. The entire population of the state is 537,000.
Nearly two‐fifths of the whole are, therefore, of foreign parentage.
231 Eugénie de la Ferronnays.
232 “The Church the Champion of Marriage,” CATHOLIC WORLD, February,
1873.
233 Deut. xxi 16, 17.
234 Gen. xxiv. 39, 57, 58.
235 Numb. xxvii. 8; xxxvi. 3, 8.
236 S. John i. 13.
237 Jeremy Taylor’s “On the Marriage Ring,” besides many modern ones,
especially by the Rev. Dr. Morgan Dix, New York.
238 Matt. vii. 21.
239 Matt. xxii. 29, 30; Mark xii. 24, 25.
240 _Considérations sur la France_, chapter x. _et alibi passim_.
241 M. de Maistre is sometimes quoted as taking a different view; for
example, in an article in the _Correspondant_ for Nov. 10, Joseph de
Maistre declared revolution an epoch and not an event. But this by
no means signifies that the illustrious publicist meant that
revolution was about to prevail. He says: “The French Revolution is
an important epoch, and its manifold consequences will be felt far
beyond the time of its outbreak and the limits of its original
sphere.... If there is not a moral revolution throughout Europe, if
the religious spirit is not strengthened in this part of the world,
the bonds of society will dissolve.” The clergy of France, in
particular, are called to “the essential work” of reacting against
the influence of the _Goddess of Reason_. See _Considérations sur la
France_, chap. ii.
242 _Etudes sur l’Italie contemporaine_, and _Notes d’un Voyageur_.
_Première Etude_, June, 1871; _Seconde Etude_, July, 1872. Paris:
Amyot.
243 _Première Etude_, p. 3.
244 “Except the _Univers_, which has a correspondent at Rome, and keeps
up constant communications with that city in other ways, and, on the
other side, the _Journal des Débats_, which is supplied with
information by the Italian government, and, as we have been assured,
receives a handsome subsidy for the patronage accorded, most of the
French papers have no other source of supplying their readers with
news than the conjectures, more or less unreliable, of the Havas
agency, a _succursale_, as to what concerns Italy, of the Stefani
agency at Florence. It is supposed, however, that nothing is easier
than to obtain information about a country at our very doors.”—M.
Ed. Dulaurier, member of the Institute, “Impressions et Souvenirs de
Rome,” in the _Gazette du Languedoc_ for Sept. 19. I take the
liberty of recommending to M. Dulaurier, and all who wish to know
the state of affairs in Italy, the valuable _Correspondance de
Genève_. The _Journal_ of Florence, recently combined with the
_Cattolica_ of Rome, affords instructive reading. Besides
information peculiar to itself, this paper reproduces in each number
interesting extracts from various Italian journals.
245 “The French, under Napoleon I., introduced the idea of
centralization into Italy and the code of the Revolution which the
restored princes had the want of foresight to retain. The old
municipalities were destroyed, and never recovered their former
independence even in the States of the Church. Piedmont, of all the
states of the Peninsula, was the longest under the poisonous
influence of foreign ideas. Hence it became the centre of the
Revolution.”—_Quel est l’Avenir de l’Europe?_ pages 40‐41. Geneva:
Grosset, 1871. The author of this remarkable work is of the school
of the Count de Maistre, and worthy of his master.
246 _Première Etude_, pp. 6, 12, 13, 15; _Seconde Etude_, pp. 4, 10, 11.
247 _Première Etude_, p. 10.
248 _Journal d’un Diplomate en Italie._—See the _Etudes_ for July, 1872.
249 _Journal d’un Diplomate en Italie_, pp. 305, 306.
250 _Journal d’un Diplomate en Italie_, pp. 116, 117.
251 _Les Diplomates Français sous Napoléon III._, by B. d’Agreval.
Paris: Dentu. 1872. A work we recommend to all publicists who wish
to add to their knowledge.
252 _Première Etude_, p. 10.
253 _Première Etude_, pp. 5, 10, 11; _Seconde Etude_, p. 4.
254 _Première Etude_, p. 7.
255 The minister has laid before the Parliament the account of the
expense of opening the breach in the walls of Rome. This crime cost
nearly forty‐eight millions.
256 _Première Etude_, p. 11; _Seconde Etude_, p. 12.
257 Cf. _Première Etude_, p. 10.
258 See a forcible and eloquent article in the _Civiltà Cattolica_ on
the _Caresses de la Providence_. Sér. viii. vol. v., No. 519, Feb.,
1872.
259 (_Première Etude_, pp. 7, 8, 27; _Seconde Etude_, pp. 11, 12.) “The
invaders take the stand of masters, but the people have not joined
them. They remain isolated in their midst in the position of a
military and administrative colony, about as favorably regarded and
received as the Prussians in those departments of our country where
they are still encamped. The Romans, it cannot be denied, love their
Pope.”—M. Ed. Dulaurier, _loc. cit._
260 _Union_, Nov. 26.
261 “We continue to be regarded at Berlin with the most favorable
dispositions, as the demonstrations of which our princes were the
object prove.”—_Speech of M. Visconti‐Venosta_ in the Chamber of
Deputies, Nov. 27, 1872.
262 _Seconde Etude_, p. 13.
263 _Address_, April 28, 1872.
264 _Correspondance Diplomatique_ in the year 1815.
265 _Première Etude_, p. 17; _Seconde Etude_, pp. 4, 14, 15, 16, 17.
266 _Première Etude_, pp. 25, 26; _Seconde Etude_, pp. 15, 16, 26.
267 See, in the _Etudes_ for Oct., 1871, the article by Fr. Ch. Clair,
who, in an address to the government of M. Thiers, carries on a
vigorous argument _ad hominem_ respecting the “necessary liberties”
of the Pope.
268 P. Toulement, _La Providence et les Chàtiments de la France_, ch.
xvii.
269 _Première Etude_, pp. 24, 25, 26: _Seconde Etude_, pp. 17, 22, 34.
270 _Journal d’un Diplomate en Italie_, pp. 17, 18.
271 This alludes to the indication of superhuman power by the budding
horns which Michael Angelo has represented upon the head of Moses,
adopting the Jewish symbol of strength so frequent in Scripture.
272 Ecclus. xlviii. II.
273 So soon accepted!
274 “I, the undersigned, parish priest of the most holy Constantinian
Basilica of the Twelve Apostles of Rome, certify that in Register
XII. of the dead, letter N, page 283, is to be found the deed of
which the following is the copy, word for word.
“The twenty‐second of December, eighteen hundred and sixty‐six,
Mademoiselle Claire‐Françoise‐Amélie Lautard, of Marseilles,
daughter of M. Jean Baptiste Lautard, a most pious virgin, while
offering last Sunday her life to God for the Holy Father, Rome, and
the church, was seized on the spot by illness, and having received
most piously the sacraments of the church, in the full possession of
her faculties, in prayer, and surrounded by several priests and
virgins, gave up her soul to Jesus Christ, her spouse, with the
greatest serenity, Wednesday the 19th, at half‐past nine in the
morning, in the house Rue Ripresa‐dei‐Barberi 175, at the age of
fifty‐nine years. The following day, the 20th, her body was carried,
after the completuum, accompanied by a great number of religious, to
this basilica, and was here exposed during the morning after the
manner of nobles, the office of the dead and a solemn Mass being
performed; in the afternoon it was conveyed to the Church of Santa
Maria in Ara Cœli, and there interred in the tomb of the Sisters of
St. Joseph of the Apparition.
“Given at Rome,” etc.
275 This mistake is awing to a wrong meaning given to a word in the Book
of Joshua in the Septuagint; where the word _tsorim_ is translated
_knife of stone_, when it also means _a sharp knife_; _tsor_ only
means _stone_ in the sense of _rock_ or _block_.
276 Simonin, _La Vie Souterraine_.
277 Ancient name of the Prussians.—Trans.
278 S. Jerome’s _Epist._ 44, 45.
279 _Hist. of Decline and Fall of Rom. Emp._, vol. iv. ch. ix. p. 262,
1st ed.
280 _Germania_, i. 5.
281 “The Study of Sociology,” by H. Spencer, in the May No. of _The
Contemporary Review_, 1872.
282 See Mrs. Hope’s _Conversion of the Teutonic Race_, ch. i.
283 _Conv. of Teut. Race_, p. 20.
284 Apollin., _Paneg. Major_.
285 _Germania_, iii.
286 Suet., _in Oct._ xxiii.
287 I. 61.
288 Plutarch, _Vita Marii_.
289 S. Jer. _adv. Jovin._ ii.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Catholic World, Vol. 16, October 1872-March 1873" ***
Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.