Part 10

From this it is clear that there were occasionally gay doings at the monastery, and that those at least who had borne arms, were not addicted to close their eyes in the presence of ladies. Among the most remarkable of the knightly members of the brotherhood, was a certain Robert Graham, whose father, Colonel Graham, was first cousin to Montrose. Robert was born, we are told, in the “Chateau de Rostourne,” a short league (it is added by way of help, I suppose, to perplexed travellers), from Edinburgh. By his mother’s side he was related to the Earl of Perth, of whom the Trappist biographer says, that he was even more illustrious for his piety, and for what he suffered for the sake of religion, than by his knighthood, his viceroyship, or his offices of High Chancellor of England, and “Governor of the Prince of Wales, now (1716) rightful king of Great Britain.” The mother of Robert, a zealous protestant, is spoken of as having “as much piety as one _can_ have in a false religion.” In spite of her teaching, however, the young Robert early exhibited an inclination for the Romish religion; and at ten years of age, the precocious boy attended mass in the chapel of Holyrood, to the great displeasure of his mother. On his repeating his visit, she had him soundly whipped by his tutor; but the young gentleman declared that the process could not persuade him to embrace Presbyterianism. He accordingly rushed to the house of Lord Perth, “himself a recent convert from the Anglican Church,” and claimed his protection. After some family arrangements had been concluded, the youthful protégé was formally surrendered to the keeping of Lord Perth, by his mother, and not without reluctance. His father gave him up with the unconcern of those Gallios who care little about questions of religion.

Circumstances compelled the earl to leave Scotland, when Robert sojourned with his mother at the house of her brother, a godly protestant minister. Here he showed the value of the instructions he had received at the hands of Lord Perth and his Romish chaplain, by a conduct which disgusted every honest man, and terrified every honest maiden, in all the country round. His worthy biographer is candid enough to say that Robert, in falling off from Popery, did not become a protestant, but an atheist. The uncle turned him out of his house. The prodigal repaired to London, where he rioted prodigally; thence he betook himself to France, and he startled even Paris with the bad renown of his evil doings. On his way thither through Flanders, he had had a moment or two of misgiving as to the wisdom of his career, and he hesitated while one might count twenty, between the counsel of some good priests, and the bad example of some Jacobite soldiers, with whom he took service. The latter prevailed, and when the chevalier Robert appeared at the court of St Germains, Lord Perth presented to the fugitive king and queen there, as accomplished a scoundrel as any in Christendom.

There was a show of decency at the exiled court, and respect for religion. Young Graham adapted himself to the consequent influences. He studied French, read the lives of the saints, entered the seminary at Meaux, and finally reprofessed the Romish religion. He was now seized with a desire to turn hermit, but accident having taken him to La Trappe, the blasé libertine felt himself reproved by the stern virtue exhibited there, and, in a moment of enthusiasm, he enrolled himself a postulant, bade farewell to the world, and devoted himself to silence, obedience, humility, and austerity, with a perfectness that surprised alike those who saw and those who heard of it. Lord Perth opposed the reception of Robert in the monastery. Thereon arose serious difficulty, and therewith the postulant relapsed into sin. He blasphemed, reviled his kinsmen, swore oaths that set the whole brotherhood in speechless terror, and finally wrote a letter to his old guardian, so crammed with fierce and unclean epithets, that the abbot refused permission to have it forwarded. The excitement which followed brought on illness; with the latter, came reflection and sorrow. At length all difficulties vanished, and ultimately, on the eve of All Saints, 1699, Robert Graham became a monk, and changed his name for that of Brother Alexis. King James visited him, and was much edified by the spiritual instruction vouchsafed him by the second cousin of the gallant Montrose. The new monk was so perfect in obedience that he would not in winter throw a crumb to a half-starved sparrow, without first applying for leave from his spiritual superior. “Indeed,” says his biographer, “I could tell you a thousand veritable stories about him; but they are so extraordinary that I do not suppose the world would believe one of them.” The biographer adds, that Alexis, after digging and cutting wood all day; eating little, drinking less, praying incessantly, and neither washing nor unclothing himself, lay down; but to pass the night without closing his eyes in sleep! He was truly a brother Vigilantius.

The renown of his conversion had many influences. The father of Alexis, Colonel Graham, embraced Romanism, and the colonel and an elder son, who was already a Capuchin friar, betook themselves to La Trappe, where the reception of the former into the church was marked by a double solemnity--De Rancé dying as the service was proceeding. The wife of Colonel Graham is said to have left Scotland on the receipt of the above intelligence, to have repaired to France, and there embrace the form of faith followed by her somewhat facile husband. There is, however, great doubt on this point.

The fate of young Robert Graham was similar to that of most of the Trappists. The deadly air, the hard work, the watchings, the scanty food, and the uncleanliness which prevailed, soon slew a man who was as useless to his fellow-men in a convent, as he had ever been in the world. His confinement was, in fact, a swift suicide. Consumption seized on the poor boy, for he was still but a boy, and his rigid adherence to the severe discipline of the place, only aided to develop what a little care might have easily checked. His serge gown clove to the carious bones which pierced through his diseased skin. The portions of his body on which he immovably lay, became gangrened, and nothing appears to have been done by way of remedy. He endured all with patience, and looked forward to death with a not unaccountable longing. The “infirmier” bade him be less eager in pressing forward to the grave.--“I will now pray God,” said the nursing brother, “that he will be pleased to save you.”--“And I,” said Alexis, “will ask him not to heed you.” Further detail is hardly necessary: suffice it to say that Robert Graham died on the 21st May, 1701, little more than six months after he had entered the monastery, and at the early age of twenty-two years. The father and brother also died in France, and so ended the chivalrous cousins of the chivalrous Montrose.

The great virtue inculcated at La Trappe, was one of the cherished virtues of old chivalry, obedience to certain rules. But there was no excitement in carrying it out. Bodily suffering was encountered by a knight, for mere glory’s sake. At La Trappe it was accounted as the only means whereby to escape Satan. The knight of the cross purchased salvation by the sacrifice of his life; the monk of La Trappe, by an unprofitable suicide. With both there was doubtless the one great hope common to all Christians; but that great hope, so fortifying to the knight, seemed not to relieve the Trappist of the fear that Satan was more powerful than the Redeemer. When once treating this subject at greater length, I remarked that there was a good moral touching Satan in Cuvier’s dream, and the application of which might have been profitable to men like these monks. The great philosopher just named, once saw, in his sleep, the popular representative of the great enemy of man. The fiend approached with a loudly-expressed determination to “eat him.” “Eat me!” exclaimed Cuvier, examining him the while with the eye of a naturalist. “Eat me! Horns! Hoofs!” he added, scanning him over. “Horns? Hoofs? _Graminivorous!_ needn’t be afraid of you!”

And now let us get back from the religious orders of men to chivalrous orders of ladies. It is quite time to exclaim, _Place aux Dames!_

FEMALE KNIGHTS AND JEANNE DARC.

Mein ist der Helm, und mir gehört er zu.--SCHILLER.

“Orders for ladies” have been favorite matters with both Kings and Queens, Emperors and Empresses. The Austrian Empress, Eleanora de Gonzague, founded two orders, which admitted only ladies as members. The first was in commemoration of the miraculous preservation of a particle of the true cross, which escaped the ravages of a fire which nearly destroyed the imperial residence, in 1668. Besides this Order of the Cross, the same Empress instituted the Order of the Slaves of Virtue. This was hardly a complimentary title, for a slave necessarily implies a compulsory and unwilling servant. The number of members were limited to thirty, and these were required to be noble, and of the Romish religion. The motto was, _Sole ubique triumphat_; which may have implied that she only who best served virtue, was likely to profit by it. This was not making a very exalted principle of virtue itself. It was rather placing it in the point of view wherein it was considered by Pamela, who was by far too calculating a young lady to deserve all the eulogy that has been showered upon her.

Another Empress of Germany, Elizabeth Christiana, founded, in the early part of the last century, at Vienna, an Order of Neighborly Love. It consisted of persons of both sexes; but nobody was accounted a neighbor who was not noble. With regard to numbers, it was unlimited. The motto of the order was _Amor Proximi_; a motto which exactly characterized the feelings of Queen Guinever for any handsome knight who happened to be her neighbor for the nonce. “Proximus” at the meetings of the order was, of course, of that convenient gender whereby all the members of the order could profit by its application. They might have had a particularly applicable song, if they had only possessed a Béranger to sing as the French lyrist has done.

There was also in Germany an order for ladies only, that was of a very sombre character. It was the Order of Death’s Head; and was founded just two centuries ago, by a Duke of Wirtemburg, who decreed that a princess of that house should always be at the head of it. The rules bound ladies to an observance of conduct which they were not likely to observe, if the rule of Christianity was not strong enough to bind them; and probably many fair ladies who wore the double cross, with the death’s head pending from the lower one, looked on the motto of “Memento Mori,” as a reminder to daring lovers who dared to look on _them_.

France had given us, in ladies’ orders, first, the Order of the Cordelière, founded by that Anne of Brittany who brought her independent duchy as a dower to Charles VIII. of France, and who did for the French court what Queen Charlotte effected for that of England, at a much later period. Another Anne, of Austria, wife of Louis XIII., and some say of Cardinal Mazarin also, founded, for ladies, the Order of the Celestial Collar of the Holy Rosary. The members consisted of fifty young ladies of the first families in France; and they all wore, appended to other and very charming insignia hanging from the neck, a portrait of St. Dominic, who found himself in the best possible position for instilling all sorts of good principles into a maiden’s bosom.

The Order of the Bee was founded a century and a half ago by Louisa de Bourbon, Duchess of Maine. The ensign was a medal, with the portrait of the duchess on one side, and the figure of a bee, with the motto, _Je suis petite, mais mes piqueures sont profondes_, on the other.

In Russia, Peter the Great founded the Order of St. Catherine, in honor of his wife, and gave as its device, _Pour l’amour et la fidélité envers la patrie_. It was at first intended for men, but was ultimately made a female order exclusively. A similar change was found necessary in the Spanish Order of the Lady of Mercy, founded in the thirteenth century by James, King of Aragon. There were other female orders in Spain, and the whole of them had for their object the furtherance of religion, order, and virtue. In some cases, membership was conferred in acknowledgment of merit. Who forgets Miss Jane Porter in her costume and insignia of a lady of one of the orders of Polish female chivalry--and who is ignorant that Mrs. Otway has been recently decorated by the Queen of Spain with the Order of Maria Louisa?

The Order of St. Ulrica, in Sweden, was founded in 1734, in honor of a lady, the reigning Queen, and to commemorate the liberty which Sweden had acquired and enjoyed from the period of her accession. Two especial qualities were necessary in the candidates for knighthood in this order. It was necessary that a public tribunal should declare that they were men of pure public spirit; and it was further required of them to prove that in serving the country, they had never been swayed by motives of private interest. When the order was about to be founded, not less than five hundred candidates appeared to claim chivalric honor. Of these, only fifty were chosen, and decree was made that the number of knights should never exceed that amount. It was an unnecessary decree, if the qualifications required were to be stringently demanded. But, in the conferring of honors generally, there has often been little connection between cause and effect; as, for instance, after Major-General Simpson had failed to secure the victory which the gallantry of our troops had put in his power at the Redan, the home government was so delighted, that they made field-marshals of two very old gentlemen. The example was not lost on the King of the Belgians. He, too, commemorated the fall of Sebastopol by enlarging the number of his knights. He could not well scatter decorations among his army, for that has been merely a military police, but he made selection of an equally destructive body, and named eighteen doctors--Knights of St. Leopold.

These orders of later institution appear to have forgotten one of the leading principles of knighthood--love for the ladies--but perhaps this is quite as well. When Louis II., Duke of Bourbon, instituted the Order of the Golden Shield, he was by no means so forgetful. He enjoined his knights to honor the ladies above all, and never permit any one to slander them with impunity; “because,” said the good duke, “after God, we owe everything to the labors of the ladies, and all the honor that man can acquire.” One portion of which assertion may certainly defy contradiction.

The most illustrious of female knights, however, is, without dispute, the Maid of Orleans. Poor Jeanne Darc seems to me to have been an illustrious dupe and an innocent victim. Like Charlotte Corday, the calamities of her country weighed heavily upon her spirits, and her consequent eager desire to relieve them, caused her to be marked as a fitting instrument for a desired end. Poor Charlotte Corday commissioned herself for the execution of the heroic deed which embellishes her name--Jeanne Darc was evidently commissioned by others.

The first step taken by Jeanne to obtain access to the Dauphin, was to solicit the assistance of the proud De Baudricourt, who resided not far from the maid’s native place, Domremy. However pious the young girl may have been, De Baudricourt was not the man to give her a public reception, had not some foregone conclusion accompanied it. She needed his help to enable her to proceed to Chinon. The answer of the great chief was that she should not be permitted to go there. The reply of the maid, who was always uncommonly “smart” in her answers, was that she _would_ go to Chinon, although she were forced to crawl the whole way on her knees. She _did_ go, and the circumstances of a mere young girl, who was in the habit of holding intercourse with angels and archangels, thus overcoming, as it were, the most powerful personage in the district, was proof enough to the common mind, as to whence she derived her strength and authority. The corps of priests by whom she was followed, as soon as her divine mission was acknowledged or invented by the court, lent her additional influence, and sanctified in her own mind, her doubtless honest enthusiasm. The young girl did all to which she pledged herself, and in return, was barbarously treated by both friend and foe, and was most hellishly betrayed by the Church, under whose benediction she had raised her banner. She engaged to relieve Orleans from the terrible English army which held it in close siege, and she nobly kept her engagement. It may be noticed that the first person slain in this siege, was a young lady named Belle, and the fair sex thus furnished the first victim, as well as the great conqueror, in this remarkable conflict.

I pass over general details, in order to have the more space to notice particular illustrative circumstances touching our female warrior. Jeanne, it must be allowed, was extremely bold of assertion as well as smart in reply. She would have delighted a Swedenborgian by the alacrity with which she protested that she held intercourse with spirits from Heaven and prophets of old. Nothing was so easy as to make her believe so; and she was quite as ready to deny the alleged fact when her clerical accusers, in the day of her adversity, declared that such belief was a suggestion of the devil. I think there was some humor and a little reproach in the reply by Jeanne, that she would maintain or deny nothing but as she was directed by the Church.

Meanwhile, during her short but glorious career, she manifested true chivalrous spirit. She feared no man, not even the brave Dunois. “Bastard, bastard!” said she to him on one occasion, “in the name of God, hear me; I command you to let me know of the arrival of Fastolf as soon as it takes place; for, hark ye, if he passes without my knowledge, I give you my word, you shall lose your head.” And thereon she turned to her dinner of dry bread and wine-and-water--half a pint of the first to two pints of the last, with the quiet air of a person able and determined to realize every menace.

It is very clear that her brother knights, while they profited by her services, and obeyed (with some reluctance) her orders, neither thought nor spoke over-well of her. Their comments were not complimentary to a virgin reputation, which a jury of princesses, with a queen for a forewoman, had pronounced unblemished. She even risked her _prestige_ over the common rank and file, but generally by measures which resulted in strengthening it. Thus, on taking the Fort of the Augustins from the English, she destroyed all the rich things and lusty wine she found there, lest the men should be corrupted by indulgence therein. It may be remembered that Gustavus Vasa highly disgusted his valiant Dalecarlians by a similar exhibition of healthy discipline.

The Maid undoubtedly placed the work of fighting before the pleasure of feasting. When she was about to issue from her lodgings, to head the attack against the bastion of the Tourelles, where she prophesied she would be wounded, her host politely begged of her to remain and partake of a dish of freshly-caught shad. It was the 7th of May, and shad was just in season; the Germans call it distinctively “the May-fish.” Jeanne resisted the temptation for the moment. “Keep the fish till to-night,” said she, “till I have come back from the fray; for I shall bring a Goden [a ‘God d--n,’ or Englishman] with me to partake of my supper.”

She was not more ready of tongue than she was quick of eye. An instance of the latter may be found in an incident before Jargeau. She was reconnoitring the place at a considerable distance. The period was more than a century and a half before Hans Lippershey, the Middleburg spectacle-maker, had invented, and still more before Galileo had improved, the telescope. The Duke d’Alençon was with Jeanne, and she bade him step aside, as the enemy were pointing a gun at him. The Duke obeyed, for he knew her acuteness of vision; the gun was fired, and De Lude, a gentleman of Anjou, standing in a line with the spot which had been occupied by the Duke, was slain--which must have been very satisfactory to the Duke!

I have said that some of the knights had but a scanty respect for the gallant Maid. A few, no doubt, objected to the assumption of heavenly inspiration on her part. One, at least, was not so particular. I allude to the Baron De Richemond, who had been exiled from court for the little misdemeanor of having assassinated Cannes de Beaulieu. The Baron had recovered his good name by an actively religious exercise, manifested by his hunting after wizards and witches, and burning them alive, to the delight and edification of dull villagers. This pious personage paid a visit to Jeanne, hoping to obtain, by her intercession, the royal permission to have a share in the war. The disgraced knight, who brought with him a couple of thousand men, when these were most wanted, was not likely to meet with a refusal of service, and the permission sought for was speedily granted. Jeanne playfully alluded to her own supernatural inspiration and the Baron’s vocation as “witch-finder.” “Ah well,” said De Richemond, “with regard to yourself, I have only this to say, that it is difficult to say anything; but if you are from Heaven, it is not I who shall be afraid of you; and if you come from the devil, I do not fear even him, who, in such case, sends you.” Thereupon, they laughed merrily, and began to talk of the next day’s battle.

That battle was fought upon the field of Patay, where the gallant Talbot was made prisoner by the equally gallant Saintrailles. When the great English commander was brought into the presence of Jeanne, he was good-humoredly asked if he had expected such a result the day before. “It is the fortune of war,” philosophically exclaimed the inimitable John; and thereby he made a soldier’s comment, which has often since been in the mouths of the valiant descendants of the French knights who heard it uttered, and which is frequently quoted as being of Gallic origin. But, again, I think that “fortuna belli” was not an uncommon phrase, perhaps, in old days before the French language was yet spoken.

And here, talking of origin, let me notice a circumstance of some interest. Jeanne Darc is commonly described as Jeanne D’Arc, as though she had been ennobled. This, indeed, she was, by the King, but not by that name. To the old family name was added that of _du Lys_, in allusion to the Lily of France, which that family had served so well. The brothers of Jeanne, now Darc du Lys, entered the army. When Guise sent a French force into Scotland, some gallant gentlemen of this name of Lys were among them. They probably settled in Caledonia, for the name is not an uncommon one there; and there is a gallant major in the 48th who bears it, and who, perhaps, may owe his descent to the ennobled brothers of “The Maid of Orleans.”