CHAPTER I.

MR. GODFREY AND HIS FAMILY.

About the time the events of the era 1792 were creating a panic throughout the European world, an English gentleman sat at breakfast with his wife and children in a noble mansion on the south eastern coast of his native island. The newspaper was unfolded with more than usual interest, for the Honorable Mr. Godfrey's sister had married a French nobleman, and the daily accounts from France struck every day new terror to the heart of this gentleman. Until now, he had been what is termed a liberal in his politics, and, alas! an unbeliever in his religion, and had prided himself on bringing up his family free from all bigotry and superstition; he had kept up correspondence with men of science all over the world, and fondly hoped that the reign of intellect "would emancipate the world from evil." His children had been brought up under all these influences, and thus far with success to his scheme. Accustomed from infancy to refinement, elegance, domestic happiness, and intellectual culture, these young people felt that in their case goodness and happiness were synonymous. All that was beautiful they loved, for they had cultivated tastes; all that was noble in sentiment they admired, for their father prided himself, and taught them to pride themselves, on their noble ancestry, whose deeds of daring and renown he was never weary of recounting. Fame, honor, and glory were their idols. Brought up among such genial influences as foster agreeable manners and bring out the most lovable of earth's dispositions, together with an intellectual expression of beauty, and a poetic appreciation of nature's charms, it was little wonder that they mistook strong impulses for principle, thought themselves firm in integrity of purpose, and were disposed fearlessly to launch their vessel on the ocean of life, secure that intelligence and high aims would guard them for ever against shipwreck. But now a change seemed pending. The fear engendered by the French Revolution had somewhat revolutionized Mr. Godfrey's mind, he was becoming more cautious in his theories, and more morose in his temper than he had ever been before. His wife hesitated ere she asked: "Any news of the countess to-day?"

"No; though affairs are getting more desperate every hour. Would she and the count were safe in England."

"But, in that case, their estates, would be confiscated, would they not?"

Mr. Godfrey rose uneasily and paced the room. "What is the world coming to?" he said.

A loud ring at the outer gate prevented reply; it was early for visitors at the front entrance. They paused, and listened; soon a servant announced "M. de Villeneuve."

"M. de Villeneuve! why, what can bring him here? Where have you shown him to?"

"He is in the library, sir."

Mr. Godfrey hastened to receive his visitor. "I thought you were in America," he said, after the first greetings were over.

"I went back to France to finish arranging some affairs for my father; {31} and well for me that they were settled before these scenes of blood had crazed the populace, or we should have lost everything."

"And now------"

"Now, everything of ours has been favorably disposed of, and my father and his family are settled in America without loss of property; my father is delighted at the prospects of the new world, where every man is to be EQUAL before the laws; you know he is an enthusiast."

"Yes, but it is an untried experiment yet, and France is presenting a very fearful spectacle at this moment in endeavoring to follow in the track."

"It is of that I came to speak to you. You have relations there?"

"My sister--do you know anything about her?"

"I and some other friends brought her and her husband's daughter across the Channel last night."

"Last night! across the Channel! And her husband----"

"Has perished by the guillotine!"

"Great God!" Mr. Godfrey hid his face in his hands. "My poor sister! how did she bear it? where is she? how did you come?"

"We came over in an open fishing boat--the Countess de Meglior, Euphrasie, the priest of the old chateau, and myself; it was all we could do to escape detection. I, of course, passed unnoticed, as an American citizen; but the Countess of Euphrasie and M. Bertolot had to disguise themselves and to suffer many hardships. The countess now lies ill in the little inn at New Haven; she sent me on to tell you of her situation."

"My poor sister! My poor sister! Has she lost all?"

"Nearly so. The estate is confiscated, and save a little money and a few jewels she was able to save nothing; indeed she was too much terrified to think. Mademoiselle de Meglior had been sent for on the first alarm from the south of France, where she had been educated; she arrived in time to throw herself into her father's arms as the officers were taking him from his house; and in less than a week he was no more. Secret intimation was sent to the countess that she and her daughter were both denounced, and they fled, as I have told you."

To hasten to his sister's aid was, of course, the first thing to be thought of. It was some days before the countess was sufficiently recovered to be able to be removed to her brother's house; and even after removal she was for a long time confined to her room.

Euphrasie, her step-daughter, tended her most assiduously, but the poor lady could scarcely be comforted. To have, lost everything at once--husband, estate, wealth, power, and position, and to be reduced to depend upon a brother's bounty--it was not wonderful that she should feel her situation acutely. She had lived exclusively for this world's honors; every duty of domestic life had given place to her love of the court and its pleasures. Euphrasie, brought up at the convent and under the guardianship of her paternal grandmother, was almost as much a stranger to her as the nieces to whom she was now newly introduced.

. . . . . .

It was a long time ere the Countess de Meglior rallied sufficiently to appear in the drawing-room of the mansion, and meantime her step-daughter, Euphrasie, was simply her slave. Madame never considered her welfare, or seemed to think she was in any way concerned in the misfortune that bad overtaken them; yet never, perhaps, was a child more fondly attached to a father than had been our heroine. Although since the death of her own mother she had for the most part resided away from him, yet her father's frequent visits to his ancestral chateau, and the still more frequent correspondence with his mother and daughter, had kept up a warm interest. At the death of her grandmother she had received her education at a neighboring convent, for her step-mother {32} declined taking charge of her. She was summoned home at last in consequence of the troubles of the times; arrived in time to be torn by force from the arms of her father, into which she had thrown herself; passed days of agonizing suspense, which were terminated only by hearing of his death.

Paris was no longer safe; advertised of her own proscription, Madame de Meglior, almost in a state of frenzy, excepted the kind offices of M. de Villeneuve, and, with the old family chaplain, had fled the country, taking with her Euphrasie, with whom she so suddenly became aware she was connected, though a stranger alike to her character and disposition.

Euphrasie, though overwhelmed by the blow, was constrained to hide her own emotions, the better to console one who seemed so inconsolable as the countess, her step-mother. Truly, the poor girl did feel she was as a stranger in a strange land. Until the storm broke forth which drove the nuns from the convent, and let infidelity and irreligion like "the dogs of war" loose over the fated kingdom, Euphrasie had dwelt in happy ignorance of all grosser evil, and with light and merry heart, chastened by earnest piety, pursued her innocent way; but suddenly awakened by such horrors to the knowledge of crime, vice, and their concomitant miseries, she shrank from entering into a world which contrasted with the abode she had left, seemed to her over-excited imagination filled with mysterious terrors, and fraught with indescribable dangers.

She met, then, the advances of her entertainers with constraint; kept the young people absolutely at a distance, and would more willingly shut herself up in the apartment of her peevish, unloving stet-mother, to whom she manifested the affection and paid the respect of a daughter, than join with Adelaide or Annie either in study or amusement.

Adelaide, the eldest daughter of Mr. Godfrey's family, was within two months of her eighteenth year--Eugene, the only son and heir, was then sixteen--while her sister Annie was but a year younger; and the merry, laughing Hester had scarcely counted thirteen years. With the compassionate eagerness of youth they crowded round Euphrasie, whom they persisted in saluting as "cousin," and were not a little chagrined to find their advances met in so chilling a manner; they spared no pains to distract her from her moodiness, or hauteur, or ill-temper, or whatever it might be, that made her so different from themselves. Yet moodiness it scarcely could be, for the young French girl was cheerful in society, so far as the expression of her countenance went; and when surprised in solitude, a calm serenity sat on her youthful brow, and she bore the ill-temper of the countess with wonderful sweetness; her mother's impatience, indeed, seemed but to increase her patience, and the harshness she underwent served but to make her more gentle. She was a mystery to her animated young friends, who, loving a life of excitement and intellectual progress, could not understand how Euphrasie could exist in so stupid and monotonous a course.

Yet was the young French girl far from being deficient in those branches of accomplishments which are especially feminine. She played and sang with taste and feeling, but I the airs were generally of a solemn character. She loved, also, to exercise her pencil, but it was to delineate the head of the thorn-crowned Saviour, of the penitent Magdalene, or of, "Mary, highly favored among women." Earthly subjects and earthly thoughts had no attraction for her, yet there were moments when, as if unconsciously, she gave utterance to fancies which startled her young companions. She would walk with them by the sounding shore, and while they were busy gathering and classifying shells and sea-weed and geological specimens, she, too, would seem to study' and listen and learn a lesson, but a far {33} different lesson from the one they sought. The young ladies Godfrey were scientific, though in a playful way; there was aim, object, utility, in short, in all their seekings. "Knowledge is power," was the axiom of the family; and the members of it might fairly challenge the world for the consistency with which they sought to carry that axiom into practice. But Euphrasie would wonder and ponder, and philosophize unconsciously. She did not decompose the fragments of the mighty rocks with acids as her young friends did; she did not classify and dissect the lovely flower; but she stood in mute wonderment at the base of the rocks, and heard their disquisitions on its strata having been once liquid and gradually consolidating, and said: "What a wondrous history! what a sight for the angels to behold the atomic attraction forming the worlds grand order! A true theory of geology would be like a chapter of the _life of God_--a true revelation of his spirit to man."

"Yes," said Adelaide; "science will yet and if superstition from the earth."

"Superstition!" said Euphrasie. "Yes! if superstition means false views of God's relation to the human soul. True science is mystic, and must reveal God interiorly; but true science can scarcely be attained by guesses or dissection. You destroy a beauteous flower by pulling it to pieces, but I do not see how its separate petals and crushed leaves can speak so plainly to the soul as the living plant on the stem, or how your anatomy is a revelation."

"Nay, we discern the uses of the different parts thereby, and admire the structure, seeing how each organ fulfils its office duly, in minuteness as in grandeur."

"But your long words," said Euphrasie; "do they too reveal God? To me they hide him in a cloud of dust. I feel the order, I love the beauty, I am elevated by the grandeur of creation, because nature is a metaphor in which God hides himself and reveals himself at once, but I distrust a mere human key. How can we be sure of systems, unless we spend a life in verification? Did not Pythagoras teach astronomy in the Copernican fashion? and yet the world did not receive the teaching till centuries after. The world receives the theory of Copernicus now on trust; would it be wise to spend a life in verifying it?"

"Have you any other key?" asked Annie.

"There is a key to the lesson which nature teaches," said Euphrasie, in a low tone; "but not so much as to its formation as to its being a manifestation of God. We must not speak of these things; they are too high for us."

"Nay," said Eugene; "they are the very things to speak about, especially if, as you say, they lead to higher things; my idea of science is utility. The old Magian astrologers, the Chaldean sages and Eastern sophists, studied cloudy myths and wrapped up their theories in a veil of obscurity; but the modern idea is usefulness; an abridgment of man's toil, and promotion of his comfort. Do you reject all human research?"

"I reject nothing that God has given," said Euphrasie; "but truth is one, error is many. The science first to be taught, is how to discover truth--the next, how to apply it. You say the ancients applied science to other purposes than we; if they applied it to learn the qualities of their own souls, and we apply it to the comfort of our bodies merely, which is the highest object?"

"What, then, would you do?" said Adelaide, a little impatiently; "shut up our books, and sit and dream on the sea-shore on matters beyond all practical use?"

Euphrasie answered very gently, as she rose to walk to the seaside, "I am not a teacher, _ma cher cousine_, but I think mind has its laws as well as matter, and as on the government of our minds so much depends, even in {34} our researches after material knowledge, it is likely that the science of mind is more important than that of matter, and necessary for the truth-seeker to study first. But I am getting quite out of my depth; let us go and throw pebbles into the sea."

. . . . . .

Mrs. Godfrey was a kind-hearted and very reasonable woman, in the way in which she understood reasoning. She was bent on rousing her young inmate to energy and action. She was but a _girl_, she said--a girl of seventeen could not have been so spoiled by the insipidities of a convent as to be beyond reclaiming for the tangible world surrounding her; or was it that her thoughts were with the dead, and that the deep sorrow she had undergone had penetrated to the depths of her being? Whatever the cause, Mrs. Godfrey was dissatisfied with the result, and her motherly warmth of heart yearned to comfort the young orphan in her desolation. She let a few weeks pass away in hopes of witnessing a change, but when none came, or seemed likely to come, she thought it her duty to remonstrate with Euphrasie, the more so as the countess being now recovered sufficiently to join the family circle, Euphrasie had no plausible excuse for passing hours together in the solitude of her own chamber.

"It is not good for you, my dear, to be so much alone," said Mrs. Godfrey to her, as one day she intruded on the young girl's privacy. "Rouse your energies to some good purpose, and employ your mind in some definite pursuit; it is very injurious, I assure you, to let your faculties lie dormant so long."

Euphrasie laid aside the embroidery on which she had been employed, and answered meekly, "What shall I do to please you, my dear madam?"

"Why, exercise your mental faculties--study."

"I am most willing to do so, madam; but what shall I begin?"

"Why, languages if you will; but you know enough of these, perhaps; your own language and that of this country may content you. Or will you study German and Italian?"

"I will, if you wish it, though I confess I have no great inclination. It seems to me as if to learn different names for the same thing were not very profitable; and unless I had occasion to visit the countries in which these languages are spoken, I think it would be time thrown away."

"How time thrown away? Could you not read the literature of the languages? That will expand your mind."

"Literature? Do you mean poetry and fiction--such as your daughters read? I do not care for them. I want to study truth."

"Truth? Yes, but fiction may be covert truth. Tales show us mankind as they are. Literature has a refining tendency, and gives us elegance of taste."

"I should defer to your opinion, madam," replied Euphrasie, with a resigned air; "and when you wish, I will begin."

"Yes," said Mrs. Godfrey, "but not as a punishment; it is as a source of attraction, of interest, that I wish you to cultivate literary tastes."

"I cannot feel interest, madam, in that which will unfit me for my duty."

"Unfit you for your duty! what do you mean?"

"Pray, madam, pardon me; I, of course, defer to you."

"I want no deference, child, save what your reason gives. Explain your meaning."

"I only mean, dear madam, that too much refinement and elegance might make us forget our inherent weakness; teach us to set too high a value on exterior accomplishments, and to forget the tendency to sin ever abiding within us."

"The girl is raving! Now, Euphrasie, do you honestly believe in the corruption of your heart?"

{35}

"I know I am prone to evil in many ways, and that I must keep a constant watch over all my dispositions. I suppose I do not know the extent of evil in my own heart--that were a rare grace, vouchsafed to few--but I see nothing in myself to lead me to suppose that I am naturally better than the men who murdered my father."

"Do you feel disposed to murder, then?"

"No; but the very indignation I often feel at their crimes teaches me not to trust myself. Did we give way to our passions, and had we power, who can tell what we should do? Nero showed good dispositions when he began his reign. Alfred the Great was a licentious youth till Almighty God chastened him by adversity, and humbled him through life by inflicting him with an incurable disease, which kept him ever mindful of his former delinquencies."

"Do yon think that disease was a good to Alfred?"

"Decidedly; it helped to keep him mindful of the ever-present Deity whom his former life had offended, and probably prevented his relapsing into sin."

"You foolish child! his disease was probably occasioned by the hardships he had undergone during his campaign; it was the natural consequence to damp and wet and bad living. You must study science, Euphrasie; that will rid you of all these foolish notions."

"I will study what you please, madam," replied Euphrasie.

But Mrs. Godfrey's endeavors to make her young _protégé_ comprehend results as _inevitable_ signally failed, to her own great astonishment. The girl pursued easily and willingly the course of study marked out for her; was somewhat amused by chemical and other experiments, but could never be brought to declare them necessary results in the absolute sense. "The action of the same spirit that established these relationships" said she "might at will disturb them; even as the chemical relationship between two substances is disturbed by the presence of a third substance more potent in its affinities."

"What, then, is a natural law?" demanded Mrs. Godfrey.

"A natural law," replied Euphrasie, "is the ordinary mode in which Divine Providence causes one portion of insentient matter to act on another portion of insentient matter."

Her instructor would object to this. "Nay, but there are natural laws affecting mind also."

"Doubtless," said Euphrasie, "there are ordinary modes of acting upon mind, both by the action of matter and by the action of other minds; but as the special object of this life is to reunite, to re-bind man to his Creator, supernatural means are ever at work to effect this object, and of these we can predicate nothing certain."

"Supernatural nonsense, child--who put this precious style of reasoning into your head?"

"Does not religion mean re-binding, madam? Was not man severed from God by disobedience? Was not the whole spirit of religion, both before and since our Lord's advent, founded on the fact that the mercy of God wished to provide a remedy for that fatal act of Adam and Eve? And has not insentient nature ever been made to depart from her ordinary rules, when such departure could forward the cause for which Christ died?"

Mrs. Godfrey was silenced. She did not wish to avow her scepticism and infidelity, but in secret she rejoiced that her own children were free from such a bar to improvement.

The arrival of a box of books as a present to Euphrasie from M. de Villeneuve, who, in a note addressed to the countess, asked her permission "to be allowed to present to the daughter of his departed friend a few works which, he believed, would suit her taste, and which she would be scarcely likely to find in Mr. Godfrey's library, valuable as that library was in many respects," came to help the enemy's {36} cause in Mrs. Godfrey's view of the case, for among the works were selections from St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, from Bede, St. Thomas Aquinas, and others of the fathers of the church. "I did not know you read Latin, cousin," said the girls in surprise. "Nor do I, except church Latin," said Euphrasie. "I learnt church Latin on purpose to study these books, which my father had promised me as soon as I could read them. M. de Villeneuve must have heard of this promise from M. Bertolot. It was very kind in him to send them to me."

"I wonder you did not say 'it was a special providence'," bantered Annie; but Eugene looked at her beseechingly and reprovingly, so she said no more.

In spite of the new attraction, Euphrasie continued to study the course appointed by Mrs. Godfrey, but in learning thus there was so evidently a want of appreciation of the importance of the study--science seemed to her so very little higher than a game of ball with a little child--that her instructors were fairly discomfited, and inclined to turn her over to the musty old fathers she had the bad taste to prefer to their intelligent elucidations.

The young people, too, were annoyed, for they could not attribute to stupidity the indifference she manifested, and that indifference seemed felt as a tacit reproach of their own eagerness.

"She is not only not stupid,"' said Adelaide, the oldest of the girls; "she is absolutely clever; she intuitively comprehends what it takes me hours to make out. I began to explain algebra to her, and before a month was up, she knew more of it than I did myself; and when I spoke to her of this new discovery of locomotive power, which has taken us so long fully to comprehend, she gave me what she calls the course of the ordinary sequences of matter, in proof that the invention must succeed, if this course of sequences be properly applied; and that then we may travel without horses as fast as we can reasonably wish; 'but,' she added, 'it will be worth no one's while to perfect such an invention, for, travel as fast as we may, we cannot run away from ourselves by any material means.'"

"She is a monomaniac," said Mr. Godfrey; "sensible on all points but one."

"Unless," urged Eugene, "it be true, as she once said, that there is higher science than the science of matter, and that that science is the necessary one for us to study."

"_Et tu, Brute_," shouted the father indignantly. "Now, children, let us have no such trash in my own family. Pity your young friend, and withhold your censure. Remember, she was brought up in superstition and ignorance. It cannot be expected that her mind should awaken at once to the beauty of the physical law. But for yourselves, after the pains that have been taken to keep your minds unfettered by the trammels of superstition, it were a disgrace indeed to see you yield to any such worn-out fancies. The close of the eighteenth century must witness higher thoughts."

"The close of the eighteenth century has witnessed terrific doings over the water," said Eugene.

"Yes, and see there the effects of superstition," answered his father. "Had those poor wretches been taught an enlightened philosophy instead of an abject superstition, the reaction would not have produced such awful results."

"Do you then believe, father, that when Euphrasie throws off her religion, she will become such as these men are?"

"No; Euphrasie is better educated already, even from her intercourse with us; besides, she is refined and elegant."

"But so they say is Robespierre. A Frenchman, and one not friendly to him, said to me the other day that his house is the very picture of simple elegance. Besides, the Roman emperors were excessive in their luxurious magnificence at the very time they {37} were murdering by wholesale. Nero sang to his lyre the Siege of Troy while Rome was burning. What if it were true that he set the city on fire merely to revel in the luxury of a new sensation, and to realize the emotion he deemed he ought to feel at such a catastrophe?"

"Why, Eugene," said Hester, laughing, "you, too, are growing metaphysical. What will come next?"

"Why, next we will inquire how far metaphysics are true when they teach that mental sensation and moral power are distinct from each other, and that a man may be consequently imaginatively great--capable of every grand mental sensation--and be morally weak; nay, the very slave of his lowest propensities. We have many examples of this."

"So says Euphrasie; and therefore she insists that what we call mental culture is at best but of secondary value, well enough as an assistant agent, but not to be considered as a principal means in attaining the ultimatum of life."

"Euphrasie is a simpleton," said Mr. Godfrey.

Eugene rose to quit the room. He was considering within himself whether Euphrasie were not in the right.