Chapter 5

"The guilt is mine," said he; "for I did not trust you, and did by stealth what your nobility would have suffered openly. The guilt is mine." And he offered to raise her, but she rose unaided, asking with choking voice:

"Is she dead?"

"She is dead," said the prince; and Osra, hearing it, covered her face with her hands, and blindly groped her way back to the chair, where she sat, panting and exhausted.

"To her I have said farewell, and now, madam, to you. Yet do not think that I am a man without eyes for your beauty, or a heart to know your worth. I seemed to you a fool and a churl. I grieved most bitterly, and I wronged you bitterly; my excuse for all is now known. For though you are more beautiful than she, yet true love is no wanderer; it gives a beauty that it does not find, and weaves a chain no other charms can break. Madam, farewell."

She looked at him and saw the sad joy in his eyes, an exultation over what had been that what was could not destroy; and she knew that the vision was still with him, though his love was dead. Suddenly he seemed to her a man she also might love, and for whom she also, if need be, might gladly die. Yet not because she loved him, for she was asking still in wonder: "What is this love?"

"Madam, farewell," said he again; and, kneeling before her, he kissed her hand.

"I carry the body of my love," he went on, "back with me to my home, there to mourn for her; and I shall come no more to Strelsau."

Osra bent her eyes on his face as he knelt, and presently she said to him in a whisper that was low for awe, not shame:

"You heard what she bade me do?"

"Yes, madam, I know her wish."

"And you would do it?" she asked.

"Madam, my struggle was fought before she died. But now you know that my love was not yours."

"That also I knew before, sir;" and a slight, bitter smile came on her face. But she grew grave again, and sat there, seeming to be pondering, and Prince Ludwig waited on his knees. Then she suddenly leant forward and said:

"If I loved I would wait for you to love. Now what is the love that I cannot feel?"

And then she sat again silent, but at last raised her eyes again to his, saying in a voice that even in the stillness of the room he hardly heard:

"Now I do dearly love you, for I have seen your love, and know that you can love; and I think that love must breed love, so that she who loves must in God's time be loved. Yet"--she paused here, and for a moment hid her face with her hand--"yet I cannot," she went on. "Is it our Lord Christ who bids us take the lower place? I cannot take it He does not so reign in my heart. For to my proud heart--ah, my heart so proud!--she would be ever between us. I could not bear it. Even though she is dead, I could not bear it. Yet I believe now that with you I might one day find happiness."

The prince, though in that hour he could not think of love, was yet very much moved by her new tenderness, and felt that what had passed rather drew them together than made any separation between them. And it seemed to him that the dead lady's blessing was on his suit, so he said:

"Madam, I would most faithfully serve you, and you would be the nearest and dearest to me of all living women."

She waited a while, then she sighed heavily, and looked in his face with an air of wistful longing, and she knit her brows as though she were puzzled. But at last, shaking her head, she said:

"It is not enough."

And with this she rose and took him by the hand, and they two went back together to where the Bishop of Modenstein still prayed beside the body of the lady.

Osra stood on one side of the body, and stretched her hand out to the prince, who stood on the other side.

"See," said she, "she must be between us." And having kissed the dead face once, she left the prince there by the side of his love, and herself went out, and turning her head, saw that the prince knelt again by the corpse of his love.

"He does not think of me," she said to the bishop.

"His thoughts are still with her, madam," he answered.

It was late night now, and they rode swiftly and silently along the road to Strelsau. And on all the way they spoke to one another only a few words, being both sunk deep in thought. But once Osra spoke, as they were already near to Strelsau. For she turned suddenly to the bishop, saying:

"My lord, what is it? Do you know it?"

"Yes, madam, I have known it," answered the bishop.

"Yet you are a churchman!"

"True, madam," said he, and he smiled sadly.

She seemed to consider, fixing her eyes on his; but he turned his aside.

"Could you not make me understand?" she asked.

"Your lover, when he comes, will do that, madam," said he, and still he kept his eyes averted. And Osra wondered why he kept his eyes turned away; yet presently a faint smile curved her lips, and she said:

"It may be you might feel it, if you were not a churchman. But I do not. Many men have said they loved me, and I have felt something in my heart--but not this!"

"It will come," said the bishop.

"Does it come, then, to every one?"

"To most," he answered.

"Heigho, will it ever come to me?" she sighed.

And so they were at home. And Osra was for a long time very sorrowful for the fate of the lady whom the Prince of Glottenberg had loved; but since she saw Ludwig no more, and the joy of youth conquered her sadness, she ceased to mourn; and as she walked along she would wonder more and more what it might be, this great love that she did not feel.

"For none will tell me, not even the Bishop of Modenstein," said she.

MADONNA AND CHILD IN ART.

BY WILL H. LOW.

When shepherds watched their flocks by night, and the angel appeared, bringing the tidings of good-will, a new vocation, until then unknown, was given to men. Tradition has it that one of the earliest of the followers of the Child born that night was a painter, and in the pictures of the primitive Dutch and Italian schools a not uncommon subject is St. Luke painting the Virgin and Child, while in more than one church in Europe the original(?) picture may be seen. Perhaps the most notable of these is the beautiful though quaint picture by Rogier van der Weyden, now in the Old Pinakothek, in Munich. And the tradition is a pleasant one, showing how early the services of the painters were enlisted in spreading abroad the new gospel of peace on earth.

When we consider that, even stripped of divinity, the birth of a child, its first dawning intelligence, its flower-like tenderness of aspect, are one and all motives which excite the best that is in man, there is little wonder that the Christ-child should have been and should still be the best subject that a painter could demand. In many forms, in fact, do we of a later day and of less fervent faith celebrate the beauty of mother and child. How much more ardently, therefore, in the days when faith and the painter's craft were so intimately linked, have the painters approached their task. Almost transfigured to divinity is the woman with the child at her breast that shines upon us in so many galleries; quite divine in the devout painter's thought it was as he wrought.

"Fair shines the gilded aureole In which our highest painters place Some living woman's simple face."

sings Rossetti; and the "highest painter," pious monk, as in the case of Fra Angelico, and stately courtier, as was Peter Paul Rubens, meet, extremes though they are, on the same ground when they approach this sacred subject. The pictures reproduced here, it may safely be said, are all celebrated, and yet they represent but a small part of the pictures of the same subject which are known to be by men of importance, and of which every museum in the world has a goodly number. If we add to these the pictures in private collections, and then take into account the tens of thousands of pictures of the same subject which, everywhere throughout the world, especially in Europe, are to be found in the churches, it is safe to say that no other subject has so often given its inspiration to the painter.

Nor in any other case has a subject given such variety of inspiration. The elements are few and simple, and though occasionally there are accessory figures, the concentration of interest, the reason for the existence of the picture, is centred on the Mother and Child. A survey of these pages will suffice to show that of these two principal elements a great variety of pictorial effect, of expression, of sentiment, of composition of line, and of light and shade, is possible. We can go back to the splendid Byzantine churches, with their wealth of mosaic, their subdued splendor of dulled gold covering arch and pillar as a background for the glow of color with which the artists of Constantine worked,--in a rigid convention as to form which gives their figures an impressive air, but which is ill-suited to the representation of the divine Mother and Child. Hence, in this, the earliest manifestation of Christian art, it is the remembrance of the majesty of a prophet, of the benign dignity of the mature Christ, that I we carry away with us. Giotto, however, had no sooner freed himself from the hampering conditions under which his predecessors worked, than we begin to feel the human element enter into art. Down through the centuries until to-day, the long procession of artists comes to us: those of Italy first of all, birthplace of modern art, land where time has touched everything with so reverent a hand that all has been rendered beautiful.

First come the men whose names are those of their works or of their birthplace: Master William of Cologne, Master of the Death of Mary, Master of the Holy Companionship. Then the Van Eycks, Hubert and Jan, Rogier van der Weyden, Hugo van der Goes, Hans Memling, Quentin Massys, Lucas van Leyden, the two Hans Holbein, elder and younger, Burgkmair, Wolgemut, and then, master of them all, Albrecht Dürer. Something of their honesty of purpose must have been mixed with their pigments, for the works of these fortunate painters of the early Dutch and German schools shine on us to-day from the gallery walls with undiminished splendor; and brave with vivid reds, with blues as rich and deep as an organ chord, and yellows rich as the gold with which they embroidered their Virgin's robes, their pictures show, with touching lapses in some of the details, a large technical mastery, coupled with an intensity of sentiment which has remained unapproachable.

The next of these northern painters who can claim the first rank is he who is in some respects the greatest of all from a painter's standpoint, Rembrandt van Ryn. There is little of the primitive Italian here, little of the painter who worships his Madonna through the medium of his craft as some great lady, "empress of heaven and of earth." Rembrandt's picture, lacking this mysticism, gains, however, in humanity; and however far even from our modern point of view it may be as a creation embodying the divine Motherhood, it throbs with tenderness. The homely interior, the good mother, the almost pathetic _abandon_ of the sleeping child--surely no painter ever wrought better, nor, we may be sure, more devoutly!

Then the giant Peter Paul Rubens, with his facile brush, his acres of canvas, covered with the virile arabesque by which he has transmitted to us the record of a temperament so full of life that it needs no great effort of imagination, before one of his crowded canvases, to imagine the doughty Fleming back in our midst, and taking his place as Jupiter upon his painted Olympus, reawakened to life. Yet, when he in turn approaches this natal subject, his pagan brush touches the canvas lightly, and all its deftness is given to the praise of Our Lady and Our Lord. With him, as with the painters of all and differing nationalities, both Mother and Child bear the strong impress of the painter's surroundings. It is as though the miraculous birth had, by some mysterious dispensation, taken place in each of the countries of the world, the better to insure the comprehension of the message of divine love to all peoples.

With Van Dyck, a little later, the Child is a young patrician; the quality of the painter's imagination, influenced by his frequentation of the princes of the earth, making him conceive the young Christ as a magnificent man-child, fit to be called later to the high places of the world, a serene and noble leader.

Somewhat differently did the Italians of the great epoch of painting, Raphael, Titian, Veronese, even Bellini, who was earlier, conceive their subject. While both Mother and Child with them were merely what painters call a "bit" of painting, directly founded on close study of a living woman and child, there was always present a religious feeling, different, but almost as intense as that of the primitive Italian painters. Throughout the many Madonnas on which the fame of Raphael is founded we feel that, through a certain variety of type, the research was always the same--a desire to realize the maid-mother, and to presage, in the lineaments of the child, his future character. This sentiment, everywhere present, is approached reverently, and the too short-lived painter in his work at least utters a constant prayer. With Bellini, with Titian, and with Veronese the effort is not dissimilar, though something of the sumptuosity of Venetian life has crept in, and it is to a queen of earth as much as of heaven, and to a prince of the church temporal, that their service is rendered.

In the Spanish pictures, particularly those of earlier date than any Spanish picture reproduced here, we feel the strong impress of the Church. In the picture by Alonso Cano there looks out from the eyes of the Mother the sentiment of the cloistered nun; and though, with the Murillos, we catch a glimpse of Spain outside of the Church, even with him there is a sense of subjection from which the memories of the Inquisition are not altogether absent.

Our modern art has become so complex, the demands on the modern painter are so different from those which the older masters met, that our latter-day painting offers fewer examples of the Mother and Child. Dagnan-Bouveret, in France, however, has treated the subject in such a way as to show that there yet remains new presentations of the world-old theme. To-day the painter has to retain the sentiment of his subject through a network of technical difficulties, and the gracious virginal figure which Monsieur Dagnan-Bouveret has painted does this measurably well; while he has triumphed technically in painting a figure in white, lit by reflected light filtered through a network of green leaves. Another picture of the Virgin and Child, where the outline of the Child is seen through the cloak by which his mother shelters him, was exhibited not long ago in New York, and is reproduced here.

In Italy, sadly fallen from her former greatness in art, many painters render their service to the Church and to their ancient faith, and there are numerous pictures of the divine Mother and Child. The best of these, however, are characterized by novel arrangement of the figures rather than by any sentiment in keeping with theme--a criticism applicable also to most the modern French examples. Modern Germany gains in sentiment while losing decidedly in pictorial value, and it is a question whether it is possible, in these times, to avoid a mere repetition of what has already been so well done, and produce more than a picture which, with pictorial and technical qualities, is laboring in the messages of "peace on earth, good-will to men."

CHAPTERS FROM A LIFE.

I.

BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS,

Author of "The Gates Ajar," "The Madonna of the Tubs," etc.

Has it not been said that once in a lifetime most of us succumb to the particular situation against which we have cultivated the strongest principles? If there be one such, among the possibilities to which a truly civilized career is liable, more than another objectionable to the writer of these words, the creation of autobiography has long been that one.

Yet, for that offence, once criminal to my taste, I find myself hereby about to become indictable; and do set my hand and seal, on this day of the recall of my dearest literary oath, in this year of eminent autobiographical examples, one thousand eight hundred and ninety-five.

"There is ----, who has written a charming series of personal reminiscences, and ---- ----, and ----.

"You might meet your natural shrinking by allowing yourself to treat especially of your literary life; including, of course, whatever went to form and sustain it."

"I suppose I _might_," I sigh. The answer is faint; but the deed is decreed. Shall I be sorry for it?

It is a gray day, on gray Cape Ann, as I write these words. The fog is breathing over the downs. The outside steamers shriek from off the Point, as they feel their way at live of noon, groping as though it were dead of night, and stars and coast-lights all were smitten dark, and every pilot were a stranger to his chart.

A stranger to my chart, I, doubtful, put about, and make the untried coast.

At such a moment, one thinks wistfully of that fair, misty world which is all one's own, yet on the outside of which one stands so humbly, and so gently. One thinks of the unseen faces, of the unknown friends who have read one's tales of other people's lives, and cared to read, and told one so, and made one believe in their kindness, and affection and fidelity for thirty years. And the hesitating heart calls out to them: Will _you_ let me be sorry? Thirty years! It is a good while that you and I have kept step together. Shall we miss it now? If _you_ will care to hear such chapters as may select themselves from the story of the story-teller,--you have the oldest right to choose, and I, the happy will to please you if I can.

* * * * *

The lives of the makers of books are very much like other people's in most respects, but especially in this: that they are either rebels to, or subjects of, their ancestry. The lives of some literary persons begin a good while after they are born. Others begin a good while before.

Of this latter kind is mine.

It has sometimes occurred to me to find myself the possessor of a sort of unholy envy of writers concerning whom our stout American phrase says that they have "made themselves." What delight to be aware that one has not only created one's work, but the worker! What elation in the remembrance of the battle against a commercial, or a scientific, or a worldly and superficial heredity; in the recollection of the tug with habit and education, and the overthrow of impulses setting in other directions than the chosen movement of one's own soul!

What pleasure in the proud knowledge that all one's success is one's own doing, and the sum of it cast up to one's credit upon the long ledger of life! To this exhilarating self-content I can lay no claim. For whatever measure of what is called success has fallen to my lot, I can ask no credit. I find myself in the chastened position of one whose literary abilities all belong to one's ancestors.

It is humbling--I do not deny that it may be morally invigorating--to feel that whatever is "worth mentioning" in my life is no affair of mine, but falls under the beautiful and terrible law by which the dead men and women whose blood bounds in our being control our destinies.

Yet, with the notable exception of my father, I have less than the usual store of personal acquaintance with the "people who most influenced me." Of my grandfather, Moses Stuart, I have but two recollections; and these, taken together, may not be quite devoid of interest, as showing how the law of selection works in the mind of an imaginative child.

I remember seeing the Professor of Sacred Literature come into his dining-room one morning in his old house on Andover Hill which was built for him, and marked the creation of his department in the early days of the seminary history. He looked very tall and imposing. He had a mug in his hand, and his face smiled like the silver of which it was made.

The mug was full of milk, and he handed it ceremoniously to the year-old baby, his namesake and grandson, my first brother, whose high-chair stood at the table.