PART XI.

I.

Let us return to Lourdes. Time had passed, and human industry had been at work. The surroundings of the Grotto, where the Blessed Virgin had appeared, had changed their former aspect. Without losing anything of its grandeur, this savage spot had put on a pleasing aspect. Yet unfinished, but fairly alive with workmen, a superb church, proudly crowning the Massabielle rocks, was rising joyously to heaven. The lofty heights, so abrupt and uncultivated, where formerly the feet of the mountaineers could scarcely descend, were covered with a greensward and planted with shrubs and flowers. Among dahlias and roses, daisies and violets, beneath the shade of acacias and cytisuses, a path, broad as the highway, wound in sinuous curves from the church to the Grotto.

The Grotto was enclosed like a chancel by an iron railing. From the roof a golden lamp had been suspended. On the rocks, which had been pressed by Mary’s sacred feet, clusters of tapers burned day and night. Outside the enclosure the miraculous spring fed three bronze lavers. A canal, screened from sight by a little building, afforded a chance for those invalids who wished to be bathed in this blessed water. The mill-race of Savy had changed its bed, having been led into the Gave, further up. The Gave itself had withdrawn somewhat, to give room for a fine road which leads to the Massabielle Rocks. Below, on the banks of the river, the ground had been levelled, and formed an extensive lawn and walk, shaded by elms and poplars. 109

All these changes had been accomplished and were still going on amid the incessant concourse of the faithful. The copper coin, thrown by popular faith into the grotto--the _ex-votos_ of so many invalids who had been cured, of so many hearts who had been consoled, of so many souls reawakened to truth and life, alone defrayed the cost of these gigantic labors, which approaches the sum of two million francs. When God, in his bounty, vouchsafes to call men to co-operate in any of his works, he does not employ soldiers, or tax-gatherers, or constables to collect the impost--he accepts from his creatures only a voluntary assistance. The Master of the universe repudiates constraint, for he is the God of free souls; he does not consent to receive anything which is not spontaneous and offered with a cheerful heart.

Thus the church was gradually rising, thus the river and the millstream gave way, hillsides were levelled, trees were planted, and pathways traced around the now famous rocks where the Mother of Christ had manifested her glory to the eyes of mortals.

II.

Encouraging the laborers, superintending everything, suggesting ideas, sometimes putting his own hands to the work to set a misplaced stone or straighten a badly-planted tree, recalling, by his ardor and holy enthusiasm, the grand figures of Esdras and Nehemiah, occupied, by God’s order, with the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem, a tall man, of marked features, seemed to make himself everywhere present. His powerful stature and black cassock rendered him conspicuous to all eyes. His name will be speedily guessed. It was the chief pastor of the town of Lourdes, the Abbé Peyramale.

Every hour of the day he thought of the message which the Blessed Virgin had addressed to him; every hour he thought of the miraculous cures which had followed the apparition; he was a daily witness of countless miracles. He had devoted his life to execute the orders of his powerful Queen, and raise to her glory a splendid monument. All idleness, all delay, every moment wasted, seemed to his eyes a token of ingratitude, and his heart, devoured by zeal for the house of God, often broke forth in warnings and admonitions. His faith was perfect, and full of confidence. He had a horror of the wretched narrowness of human prudence, and scouted it with the disdain of one who looks upon all things from that holy mount whereon the Son of God preached the nothingness of earth and the reality of heaven, when he said: “Be not solicitous ... seek first the kingdom of heaven, and all these things shall be added unto you.”

One day, while standing before the miraculous fountain amid a group of ecclesiastics and laymen, the architect offered him a plan for a pretty chapel which he proposed to build above the Grotto. The curé looked at it, and a flush rose to his cheek. With a gesture of impatience he tore the drawing into bits, and tossed it into the Gave.

“What are you doing?” cried the astonished architect.

“Look you,” answered the priest, “I am ashamed of what human meanness would offer to the Mother of my God, and I have treated the wretched plan as it deserved. We do not want a country chapel to commemorate 110 the great events which have taken place here. Go, give us a temple of marble as large and as high as these rocks can sustain--as magnificent as your soul can conceive! Go, and do not check your genius till you have given us a _chef-d’œuvre_; and understand that, if you were Michael Angelo himself, it would all be unworthy of her who has appeared in this spot.”

“But, _monsieur le curé_,” observed everybody, “it will cost millions to carry out your ideas!”

“She who has made this barren rock send forth its living stream--she will know how to make faithful hearts generous,” answered the priest. “Go, do what I tell you. Why are you afraid, O ye of little faith?”

The temple rose in the proportions designed by the man of God.

The good pastor, as he watched the progress of the various works, often used to say:

“When will it be granted me to assist, with my priests and people, at the first procession which goes to inaugurate in these hallowed precincts the public worship of the Catholic Church? It seems to me that then I could sing my _Nunc dimittis_, and die of joy.” His eyes filled with tears at the thought. Never was there a deeper or warmer desire than this innocent wish of a heart given wholly to God.

Sometimes, at hours when the crowd was thin at the Massabielle Rocks, a little girl used to come and kneel before the place of the apparition, and drink of the miraculous spring. She was a poor child, and meanly clad--nothing marked out from the common people about. And if the pilgrims were all strangers to the place, no one suspected that it was Bernadette. This privileged soul had withdrawn into silence and concealment. She went daily to the sisters’ school, where she was the simplest, and strove to be the most unnoticed. The numerous visitors whom she was called upon to receive never disturbed her peace of mind, which ever retained the memory of its glimpse at heaven and the incomparable Virgin. Bernadette kept all these things in her heart. People came from all quarters, miracles were being worked, the temple was rising. Bernadette and the holy pastor of Lourdes awaited, as their crowning joy, the day which was to bring to their eyes the sight of priests of the true God leading their people, with cross advanced and flying banners, to the spot of the apparitions.

III.

In spite of the bishop’s decree, the church in fact had not yet taken possession, by any public ceremony, of this spot, consecrated for ever. It was not till the 4th of April, 1864, that this was done, by the inauguration and blessing of the superb statue of the Blessed Virgin, which was placed with all the pomp customary on such occasions in the rustic niche, bordered with wild flowers, where the Mother of God had appeared to the child of man.[39]

The weather was magnificent. The young spring sun had risen, and advanced in a blue and cloudless sky.

The streets of Lourdes were adorned with flowers, banners, garlands, and triumphal arches. The bells of the parish church, the chapels, and the churches of the neighborhood, rang out joyous peals. Immense 111 numbers of people flocked together to this great festival of earth and heaven. A procession, such as had never been seen by the oldest inhabitant, moved from the church of Lourdes to the Grotto. Troops, in all the splendor of military attire, led the way. Following them were the confraternities of Lourdes, the societies for mutual aid, and other associations, with their banners and crosses; the Congregation of the Children of Mary, whose long robes were white as snow; the Sisters of Nevers, with their long black veil; the Daughters of Charity, with their great white hoods; the Sisters of St. Joseph, in dark mantles; the religious orders of men, the Carmelites, the Brothers of Instruction and of the Christian schools, and prodigious numbers of pilgrims, men and women, young and old--fifty or sixty thousand persons in all--wound along the flowery road leading to the Massabielle rocks. Here and there, choirs and instrumental bands gave a voice to the popular enthusiasm. Last, surrounded by four hundred priests in choir dress, his vicars-general, and the dignitaries of his cathedral chapter, came his lordship, Mgr. Bertrand-Sévère Laurence, Bishop of Tarbes, in his mitre and pontifical robes, with one hand blessing the people, and bearing his crosier in the other.

An indescribable emotion, an exaltation of feeling, such as only Christian people assembled before God can know, filled every heart. The day of solemn triumph had at last come, after so many difficulties, struggles, and disasters. Tears of joy, enthusiasm, and love ran down the cheeks of the people, moved by an impulse from God.

What indescribable joy must have filled the heart of Bernadette on this day, as she led the Congregation of the Children of Mary! What overwhelming happiness must have inundated the soul of the venerable curé of Lourdes, who was no doubt at the side of the bishop, singing the hosanna of the victory of God! Having both had to labor, the time was certainly come for them to enter into their reward.

Alas! one would have sought in vain among the Children of Mary for Bernadette: among the clergy surrounding the bishop, the Abbé Peyramale would not have been found. There are joys too sweet for earth, which are reserved for heaven. Here below, God refuses them to his dearest children.

At this time of rejoicing, when the bright sun was shining on the triumph of the faithful, the curé of Lourdes, laboring under a disease which was expected to result fatally, was a victim to intense physical sufferings. He was stretched on his bed of pain, at the head of which two religious watched and prayed night and day. He wished to rise to see the grand cortége pass, but his strength failed him, and he had not even a momentary glimpse of its splendor. Through the closed shutters of his room, the joyous sound of the silvery bells came to him only as a funeral knell.

As for Bernadette, God showed her his predilection, as usual with his elect, by giving her the bitter trial of pain. While Mgr. Laurence was going, accompanied by countless numbers of his flock, to take possession of the Massabielle rocks in the name of the church, and to inaugurate solemnly the devotion to the Virgin who had appeared there, Bernadette, like the eminent priest of whom we have just spoken, was prostrated by illness; Providence, perhaps, fearing for this well-beloved child a temptation to vainglory, deprived her of the 112 sight of this unprecedented festivity, where she would have heard her name on the lips of thousands, and extolled from the pulpit by the voice of enthusiastic preachers. Too poor to be taken care of in her own home, where neither she nor her family would ever receive any gift, Bernadette had been carried to the hospital, where she lay upon the humble bed provided by public charity, in the midst of those poor whom the world calls unfortunate, but whom Jesus Christ has blessed in declaring them the possessors of his eternal kingdom.

IV.

Eleven years have now elapsed since the apparitions of the most Holy Virgin. The great church is almost finished; it has only to be roofed, and the holy sacrifice has long since been celebrated at all the altars of the crypt below. Diocesan missionaries of the house of Garaison have been stationed by the bishop near the grotto and the church, to distribute to the pilgrims the apostolic word, the sacraments, and the body of our Lord.

The pilgrimage has taken dimensions perhaps quite without precedent, for before our day these vast movements of popular faith did not have the assistance of the means of transportation invented by modern science. The course of the Pyrenees Railroad, for which a straighter and cheaper route had been previously marked out between Tarbes and Pau, was changed so as to pass through Lourdes, and innumerable travellers continually come from every quarter to invoke the Virgin who has appeared at the Grotto, and to seek at the miraculous fountain the healing of all their ills. They come not only from the different provinces of France, but also from England, Belgium, Spain, Russia, and Germany. Even from the midst of far America, pious Christians have set out, and crossed the ocean to come to the Grotto of Lourdes, to kneel before these sacred rocks, which the Mother of God has sanctified by her touch. And often those who cannot come write to the missionaries, and beg that a little of the miraculous water may be sent to their homes. It is thus distributed throughout the world.

Although Lourdes is a small town, there is a continual passing to and fro upon the road to the grotto, a stream of men, women, priests, and carriages, as in the streets of a large city.

When the pleasant weather comes, and the sun, overcoming the cold of winter, opens in the midst of flowers the gates of spring, the faithful of the neighborhood begin to bestir themselves for the pilgrimage to Massabielle, no longer one by one, but in large parties. From ten, twelve, or fifteen leagues’ distance, these strong mountaineers come on foot in bodies of one or two thousand. They set out in the evening and walk all night by starlight, like the shepherds of Judea, when they went to the crib of Bethlehem to adore the new-born infant God. They descend from high peaks, they traverse deep valleys, they cross foaming torrents, or follow their course, singing the praises of God. And on their way the sleeping herds of cattle or of sheep awake, and diffuse through these desert wilds the melancholy sound of their sonorous bells. At daybreak, they arrive at Lourdes; they spread their banners, and form in procession to go to the Grotto. The men, with their blue caps and great shoes covered with dust from their long night march, rest upon a knotty stick, and usually carry upon their shoulders the provisions for their journey. The women wear 113 a white or red capulet. Some carry the precious burden of a child. And they move on slowly, quiet and recollected, singing the litanies of the Blessed Virgin.

At Massabielle they hear Mass, kneel at the holy table, and drink at the miraculous spring. Then they distribute themselves, in groups according to family or friendship, upon the grass around the Grotto, and spreading out on the sod the provisions they have brought, they sit down upon the green carpet of the fields. And, on the bank of the Gave, in the shade of those hallowed rocks, they realize in their frugal repast those fraternal agapes of which tradition tells us. Then, having received a last blessing and said a parting prayer, they set out with joyful hearts upon their homeward way.

Thus do the people of the Pyrenees visit the Grotto. But the greatest numbers are not from there. From sixty or eighty leagues’ distance come continually immense processions, brought from these great distances upon the rapid wings of steam. They come from Bayonne, from Peyrehorade, from La Teste, from Arcachon, from Bordeaux, and even from Paris. At the request of the faithful, the Southern Railroad has established special trains, trains of pilgrimage, intended exclusively for this great and pious movement of Catholic faith. At the arrival of these trains, the bells of Lourdes ring out their fullest peals. And from these sombre carriages the pilgrims come out and form in procession in the square by the station; young girls dressed in white, married women, widows, children, full-grown men, the old people, and the clergy in their sacred robes. Their banners are flung to the breeze; the crucifix and the statues of the Blessed Virgin and the saints are displayed. The praises of the Mother of God are upon every lip. The innumerable procession passes through the town--which seems, on such occasions, like a holy city, like Rome or Jerusalem. One’s heart is elated at the sight; it rises toward God, and attains without effort that elevation of feeling in which the eyes fill with tears and the soul is overwhelmed by the sensible presence of our Lord. One seems to enjoy for a moment a vision of paradise.

The hand of the Almighty does not weary in shedding all kinds of graces at the spot where his Mother has appeared. Miracles are still frequent. Not long ago Fr. Hermann recovered his sight there.

V.

God has accomplished his work.

He says to the flake of snow, resting hidden upon the lonely peak, “Thou must come from Me to Me. Thou must pass from the inaccessible heights of the mountain to the unfathomable caves of the deep.” And he sends his servant the sun with its brilliant rays to collect and draw along this shining dust, changing it first into limpid pearls. The drops of water run through the snow, they roll down the side of the mountain, they leap over the rocks, they break upon the pebbles, they reunite, they collect in a mass, and run together, now gently, now rapidly, toward the wonderful ocean, that striking image of eternal movement in eternal rest--and thus they reach the valleys where the race of Adam dwells.

“We will stop these drops of water,” says this race of man, as proud now as in the days of Babel.

And they undertake to dam up this weak and quiet stream as it gently crosses their fields. But the stream laughs at their dikes of wood, 114 earth, and pebbles.

“We will stop these drops of water,” the fools repeat in their delirium.

And they heap up enormous rocks; they join them together with impenetrable cement. And notwithstanding, the water does leak through in a thousand places. But the men are numerous--they have a force greater than the armies of Darius. They stop up the thousand fissures, they fill up the cracks, they replace the fallen stones; and at last a time comes when the stream cannot pass by. It has before it a barrier higher than the pyramids, and thicker than the famous walls of Babylon. Beyond this gigantic obstacle, the pebbles of its dry bed are shining in the sun.

Human pride shouts its pæan of triumph.

Meanwhile the water continues to descend from those eternal heights where it has heard the voice of God; and millions of drops, coming one by one, stop before the barrier and rise silently against this granite wall which millions of men have built.

“Look,” say the men, “at the immense power of our race. See this enormous wall. Raise your eyes to its summit; admire its astonishing height. We have for ever conquered this stream which comes from the mountains.”

At this moment, a thin sheet of water passes over the cyclopean barrier. They run up; but the sheet has thickened--it is a river which is now falling, scattering on all sides the upper rocks of the wall.

“What is the matter?” they cry on all sides in the doomed city.

It is the drop of water to which God has spoken, and which proceeds invincibly on its way.

What has your Babel-like wall accomplished? What have you done with your herculean efforts? You have changed a quiet stream into a formidable cataract. You tried to stop the drop of water; but it now resumes its course with the violence of Niagara.

How humble was this drop of water, this word of a child to which God had said, “Pursue thy course!” How insignificant was this drop of water--this shepherdess burning a candle at the Grotto--this poor woman praying and offering a bouquet to the Blessed Virgin--this old peasant on his knees! And how strong, how apparent, impassable, and invincible was this enormous wall, upon which all the force of a great nation, from the policeman and the gendarme to the prefect and the minister, had labored for eight months!

But the child, the poor woman, the old peasant, have resumed their course. Only now it is not a stray candle or a poor bouquet that testifies to the popular faith; it is a magnificent monument which the faithful are erecting; they are spending millions upon this temple, already celebrated throughout Christendom. Their opposers thought to put down some scattered believers; but now they come in crowds, in immense processions, displaying their banners and singing their hymns. There is a pilgrimage without precedent; whole peoples now come, borne upon their iron roads by chariots of fire and steam. It is not now a little neighborhood which believes--it is Europe; it is the Christian world which is coming from all directions. The drop of water which men tried to stop has become a Niagara.

God has finished his work. And now, as on the seventh day, when he entered into his rest, he has resigned to men the duty of profiting by this work, and the formidable responsibility of developing or 115 compromising it. He has given them a germ of abundant grace, as of other things; the burden remains on them of cultivating and maturing it. They can multiply it a hundredfold by walking humbly and holily in the order of his providence; they can make it unfruitful by refusing to enter into this order. Every good thing from on high is entrusted to human liberty, as the terrestrial paradise was at the outset, on the condition of laboring for and keeping it--“_ut operaretur et custodiret illum_.” Let us beseech God that men may not reject what he has done for them, and that they may not by earthly ideas or irreligious acts break in their guilty or awkward hands the sacred vessel of divine grace which they have received in trust.

VI.

Most of the persons mentioned in the course of this long history are still alive. The prefect, Baron Massy, Judge Duprat, Mayor Lacadé, and Minister Fould are dead.

Some of them have made several steps in advance on the road to fortune. M. Rouland has left the Ministry of Public Worship (for which he does not seem to have been well fitted), to take care of the Bank of France. M. Dutour, the procureur-imperial, has become counsellor of the court; M. Jacomet is the chief commissary of police in one of the largest cities of the empire.

Bourriette, Croisine Bouhohorts and her son, Mme. Rizan, Henri Busquet, Mlle. Moreau de Sazenay, the widow Crozat, Jules Lacassagne, and all those whose cures we have recorded, are still full of life, and testify by their recovered health and strength to the powerful mercy of the apparition at the Grotto.

Dr. Dozous continues to be the most eminent physician of Lourdes. Dr. Vergez is at the spring of Barèges and attests to the visitors at this celebrated resort the miracles which he formerly witnessed. M. Estrade, whose impartial observations we have several times given, is receiver of indirect contributions at Bordeaux. He lives at No. 14 Rue Ducau.

Now, as formerly, Mgr. Laurence is Bishop of Tarbes. Age has not diminished his faculties. He is to-day what we have represented him in this work. He has near the Grotto a house to which he sometimes retires, to meditate in this spot, beloved by the Virgin, on the great duties and the grave responsibilities of a Christian bishop who has received so wonderful a grace in his diocese.[40]

The Abbé Peyramale recovered from the severe illness of which we spoke above. He is still the venerated pastor of this Christian town of Lourdes, where his record is left in ineffaceable characters. Long after he is gone, when he rests under the sod in the midst of the generation which he has formed to the Lord; when the successors of his successors live in his house and occupy the great wooden chair in his church, his memory will be living in the minds of all; and when the “Curé of Lourdes” is mentioned, every one will think of him.

Louise Soubirous, the mother of Bernadette, died on the 8th of December, 1866, the very day of the feast of the Immaculate Conception. In choosing this festival to take the mother from the miseries of the world, she who had said to the child, “I am the Immaculate Conception,” seems to have intended to temper the 116 bitterness of the loss to the heart of her survivors, and to show them as a Certain pledge of hope and of a happy resurrection the sign of her radiant appearance.

While thousands go to the Grotto to contribute to the splendid church, Bernadette’s father has remained a poor miller, subsisting with difficulty by manual labor. Mary, the daughter, who was with Bernadette at the time of the first apparition, has married a good peasant, who has become a miller and works with his father-in-law. The other companion, Jane Abbadie, is a servant at Bordeaux.

VII.

Bernadette is no longer at Lourdes. We have seen how she had, on many occasions, refused gifts freely offered, and repelled the good fortune which was knocking at the door of her humble cottage. She was dreaming of other riches. “We shall know some fine day,” the unbelievers had said at the outset, “what her pay is going to be.” Bernadette had in fact chosen her pay, and put her hand on her reward. She has become a Sister of Charity. She has devoted herself to tend in the hospitals the poor and the sick collected by public benevolence.

After having seen with her own eyes the resplendent face of the thrice holy Mother of God, what could she do but become the compassionate servant of those of whom the Virgin’s Son has said: “As long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me.”

It is among the Sisters of Charity and Christian Instruction at Nevers that Bernadette has taken the veil. She is called Sister Marie-Bernard. We have lately seen her in her religious habit at the mother-house of this congregation. Though she is now twenty-five, her face has kept the character and the charm of childhood. In her presence, the heart feels moved in its better part by an indescribable religious sentiment, and one leaves it embalmed in the perfume of this peaceful innocence. One understands that the Holy Virgin has specially loved her. Otherwise, there is nothing extraordinary, nothing which would make her conspicuous, or would make one suspect the important part she has filled in this communication from heaven to earth. Her simplicity has not been touched by the unexampled interest which has been taken in her. The concourse and enthusiasm of the multitude have no more troubled her soul than the turbid water of a torrent would tarnish the imperishable purity of a diamond.

God visits her still, not now by bright visions, but by the sacred trial of suffering. She is often ill, and suffers cruelly; but she bears her pains with a sweet and almost playful patience. Sometimes they have thought her dead. “I shall not die just yet,” she would say, smiling.

She never speaks, unless questioned, of the favors which she has received.

She was the Blessed Virgin’s messenger. Now that she has given her message, she has retired into the shade of religious life, wishing to be unnoticed among a number of companions.

It is a trouble to her when the world comes to seek her in the depth of her retreat, and when some circumstance obliges her to appear before it again. She fears the glory of this life. She lives in the humility of the Lord, and is dead to the vanities of the earth. And this book which we have written, and which speaks so much of Bernadette, Sister Marie-Bernard will never read.

[39] This statue, made of fine Carrara marble, of life-size, was presented to the Grotto of Lourdes by two noble and pious sisters of the diocese of Lyons, Mesdames de Lacour. It was executed according to Bernadette’s particular instructions, by M. Fabish, the eminent Lyonnese sculptor. The Blessed Virgin is represented as Bernadette described her, with scrupulous regard to the smallest details, and rare talent in execution.

[40] Mgr. Laurence died at the Vatican Council in the winter of 1869-70.

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THE RIOT OF THE TWELFTH. 117

We are late in our comments on the riot of the 12th of July last in this city, occasioned by the Orange procession in commemoration of the Battle of the Boyne; but as what we have to say relates to general principles rather than to particular facts, our remarks will have suffered little from the delay, and will stand a chance of being more carefully read and duly weighed than if made at an earlier day. The tragic event is not likely to be soon forgotten.

The secular press of the city have, as far as we have observed, with scarcely an exception, taken the ground that, however ill-advised might be the Orange procession, it was a right of the Orangemen, and the liberty of the citizen was infringed by the police order prohibiting it. The order was also an act of cowardice, as dictated by fear of a Catholic mob; and hence its revocation by the governor, and his excellency’s resolution to sustain the majesty of the law, and to protect the Orange procession by all the force, if necessary, at his command, was a firm and manly interference in behalf of liberty and law. The sectarian press of city and country see in the police order prohibiting the procession--dictated, it is assumed, by the Catholic clergy--only a proof of the hatred of the Catholic Church to liberty and republican institutions, and in the action of the governor, and the bravery of the military in firing on the crowd, and killing and wounding a large number of citizens, for the most part innocent, except of idle curiosity, an assurance much needed, that Protestants have as yet even in this country some rights which Catholics are bound and can be compelled to respect.

The view taken by the sectarian press is ridiculous, as well as malicious. The Catholic Church was the victim of the riot, but her only responsibility for it was in warning her children against it, and bidding them to let the procession alone, and not to go near it. If she had been heeded, there would have been no riot, no disturbance. The question was not a Catholic question, and the church had nothing to gain by preventing the procession, still less by a riot to break it up. The pretence that the rights of Protestants are in danger from Catholics in this country, where the Protestants outnumber the Catholics as eight or ten to one, is too absurd to be even a passable joke. Do the sectarian journals count one Catholic more than a match for eight or ten Protestants? That were a greater compliment to us than we deserve. We are afraid the sectarian leaders have bad consciences, which make them cowards. Catholics cannot show the least sign of vitality, or make the slightest move for the practical possession of the equal rights guaranteed them by the constitution and laws, but they take fright, tremble in their shoes, and cry out: “Liberty is in danger!” the Pope is going to suppress American republicanism, strip Protestants of their rights, cut their throats, or reduce them to be “hewers of wood and drawers of water” to--the Jesuits. They are dreadfully alarmed, or affect to be, and create a 118 panic throughout the whole country. But, dear frightened souls, there is no occasion for your alarm, unless you suppose you cannot be free if everybody else is not enslaved. Even if we were the majority of the American people, as we are not, nor likely to be to-day, to-morrow, or the day after, you would be in no danger, for we understand liberty as well as you do, appreciate it more highly, love it better, and have made greater sacrifices for it than you can imagine. Not a few of us have fled hither from the tyranny and oppression of Protestant governments, expatriated ourselves for the sake of liberty, and do you believe us such fools as to destroy it the moment we have found it?

This talk about the hostility of the church to liberty and American republicanism, when not malicious, is sheer nonsense. The acts Protestants allege to prove that the church is hostile to liberty, prove the contrary; for they were acts done against tyrants and despots in defence of liberty, both civil and religious. What were her long struggles against the Franconian and Suabian emperors, but struggles on her part for the freedom of religion, the basis and principle of all true liberty? Why did the popes deny to kings and emperors in the middle ages the right of investiture by the cross and ring, but because to have conceded it would have enslaved the church to Cæsar, and destroyed the independence of religion and the freedom of conscience? Know you not that it was under the fostering care and protection of the church that grew up the freedom and independence of all modern nations? What nation, state, or people has she ever deprived of independence or liberty? If she has asserted the rights of sovereigns, and condemned sedition, turbulence, conspiracies, insurrections, rebellions, on the part of the people, she has been equally prompt and determined in asserting the rights and franchises of subjects, and in censuring, excommunicating, and even deposing, when professing to be Catholic, the tyrant who despoiled and oppressed them. The great principles of justice and equality on which American republicanism is founded were taught by hooded friars in their monasteries, and proclaimed from the Papal throne ages before the landing at Plymouth of the Pilgrims from the _Mayflower_, or the settlement of English colonists on the banks of the James. Do, dear friends, read and try to understand a little of history, and dismiss your idle fears, or, if fear you must, fear for the salvation of your own souls hereafter.

The fact is, we are a little impatient when we hear Protestants expressing in grave tones and with a serious face their apprehensions that the spread of Catholicity will tend to the destruction of American liberty. Considering what Protestantism is, and by what means it was introduced and has been sustained, it is too much as if Satan should express serious apprehensions that the spread of the Gospel may tend to the destruction of Christian piety and humility. We find among Protestants men, and not a few, who, when they speak of liberty, mean liberty for all men, for Catholics as well as for non-Catholics; but your true-blue Protestant, who is imbued with the original and genuine spirit of Protestantism, would seem unable to understand by liberty anything but his right to govern, or by religious liberty anything but his right to reject the papacy, abuse the Pope, calumniate and despoil the church, and exterminate or enslave Catholics. Who has not heard of 119 Tyburn, and who went there--of the infamous penal laws against Catholics of England and Ireland, to say nothing of other countries? And were not these same penal laws enacted and enforced in the colony of Virginia, and was it not a capital offence in Massachusetts for a priest to set his foot within the colony, or for an inhabitant to harbor or give him even a meal of victuals? Did not Massachusetts fit out and send from Boston an armed body of men, who shot down Father Rasle, a missionary to the Norridgewock Indians, at the head of his congregation as they came forth from Mass, and massacred them? Did not an American Provincial Congress enumerate among their grave charges against George III. the fact that he had granted freedom of worship to Catholics in the neighboring province of Canada? Was not Guy Fawkes’ Day celebrated in Boston with the usual anti-popery demonstrations down to the epoch of the Revolution, until protested against by some French officers, who came with the army from France to aid us in gaining our national independence? Yet Protestants do not blush to call Protestantism the friend, and Catholicity the enemy, of liberty!

Protestants have very short memories if they have forgotten these things, or else they suppose that Catholics have no memories at all if they suppose that we can permit them to claim, unchallenged, to be and always to have been the party of liberty. It is not, however, the strangest delusion of Protestants, and is only of a piece with their delusion that Protestantism is Christianity and sustained by the Holy Scriptures. But let this pass. We yield to no one in our devotion to liberty or in our readiness to defend the rights of the citizen. We have no sympathy with the rioters of the Twelfth of July and not one word to offer in their defence. They broke both the law of the church and the law of the land, sinned against God, and committed a crime against the state. But we venture to deny that the police order forbidding the Orange procession infringed the liberty of any citizen or deprived the Orangemen of any right they had or could have on American soil. No men or class of men have the right, in the performance of no civil or religious duty, but for their own pleasure or gratification of their own passions, to do any act or make any display in the judgment of the police certain or very likely to provoke a riot or breach of the peace. This is common sense, and, we presume, common law.

The Orangemen were required by no duty, civil or religious, to celebrate the battle of the Boyne by a public procession in the streets of our city, nor were they called to do it by any sentiment of patriotism--not of Irish patriotism, for the battle of the Boyne resulted in the subjugation, not the liberation, of Ireland--not American patriotism, for the event was foreign to American nationality. No foreign patriotism has any right on American soil. The event commemorated is wholly foreign to our patriotism. It occurred in a foreign country before our nationality was born, and has no relation whatever to any American sentiment. No precession not in honor of religion or some religious event, and wholly disconnected with American interests or sentiments, has any right on American soil, and can only take place by courtesy or sufferance, indifference or connivance. The prohibition of the Orange procession by the police would have 120 deprived the Orangemen of no right which they had or could pretend to have in this country; and if the procession was designed or even likely to irritate a portion of our citizens, and to provoke a riot, it was not only the right but the duty of the police, as conservators of the peace, to prohibit it, and as far as possible to prevent it.

But the right and the duty of the police do not stop here. There is another side to the question. Every peaceable citizen has the right to walk the streets without being insulted or having his feelings outraged. Processions, banners, songs, tunes offensive, and really intended to be offensive, to any portion of the community, and in commemoration of no American event, in satisfaction of no American sentiment, or in the performance of no civil, military, or religious duty incumbent on American citizens, are never allowable, for the insult and outrage offered to the feelings and sentiments, no matter of what class of the population, is purely wanton, malicious, and wholly unjustifiable. Of this sort is manifestly the insult and outrage offered by Orange processions, banners, songs, and tunes to all of our Irish fellow-citizens not of the Orange party; and these fellow-citizens of Irish birth or extraction, though they have no right to take the law into their own hands, have undoubtedly the right, on American soil, to be protected by the American authorities from insult and outrage to their feelings and sentiments, just as much as persons have the right to be protected from indecent sights in the public streets, or the display of obscene pictures and images in the shop-windows.

But these Orangemen--very few, if any, of whom, we are told, are American citizens--outrage American as well as Irish manhood. Their celebrations here are an insult to every true American, for they are in honor of principles and deeds abhorrent to every American heart. For them to bring their old quarrels hither from a foreign land would be reprehensible, even if their quarrels were not utterly disgraceful to them, but they become a gross outrage when the real character of their quarrel with their loyal countrymen is considered. The deeds of the party in Ireland they represent are such as are condemned by every distinctive American principle, and a more infamous party it would be difficult to find in any country on earth. They represent the party that in Ireland fought for a foreign invader and a chief of rebels against their own country, and were at once traitors to their king and nation. They represent the party that enacted the infamous and brutalizing penal laws which deprived the loyal Irish--who in the battle of the Boyne fought for and at the command of their rightful king against rebels, traitors, foreign invaders, and enemies--of every vestige of civil and religious liberty, even making it a crime for a father to teach his own child letters, and doomed their descendants, till within our own memory, to the most cruel, heartless, and hopeless oppression ever endured by any people in the world; they represent the party that, after the Presbyterian and Jacobin movement of 1798, into which some Catholics had been inveigled by the promise of freedom for their religion, and left to do the fighting and to bear almost alone the penalty of defeat, were the authors of the savage butcheries inflicted by the Orange yeomanry on the Catholic peasantry, even on those who had taken no part in the movement, and were innocent of all offence except that of sighing to be delivered from bondage, and treated as men made in God’s image, not as wild beasts, whom it is a 121 merit to hunt out and shoot down wherever they can be found. They commemorate in their processions, their banners, their songs and tunes, the triumph of treachery, baseness, bigotry, persecution, oppression, murder, rapine, and wholesale massacres, unsurpassed in the history of the most barbarous and heathenish nations.

Never was there a more cruel and bloodthirsty party, one redeemed by fewer virtues or blackened by more or greater crimes, or more deserving the execration of mankind, than that which these Orangemen represent and delight to honor. Is it no insult to us free-born Americans for them to come here and flaunt in our faces their banners stained with the blood of the innocent and the good, branded by the widow’s curse, and wet with the orphan’s tears--symbols of ages of wrong, oppression, and religious intolerance and persecution? Is it here, in free America, they dare come to boast in public of their crimes, and glory in their infamy? Do not we Americans profess to abhor persecution, tyranny, and oppression? Do we not, as a sovereign people, proclaim to the world that we have opened an asylum to the wronged, the oppressed, the downtrodden of every land and of every belief? Where, then, is our manhood when we allow the tyrant, the oppressor, the persecutor, to come here and insult and outrage his victims in the very asylum we profess to have opened to them? What greater insult to all that is noble and manly can be offered Americans than to be even asked to protect those who will not respect even the right of asylum?

No, no; the press has taken only a one-sided view in calling the prohibition of the Orange procession a violation of freedom and a cowardly yielding to Irish or Catholic dictation. It was no such thing. The Orangemen had no right on their side, and were entitled to no protection. Liberty was on the other side, and its vindication and the right of asylum required us as Americans to protect the victims of the Orange party who had sought refuge with us from Orange insult and outrage on our own soil. His excellency the governor of the state also took only a hasty and a very incorrect view of the case in revoking the very proper order of the police. We are as far as he can be from yielding to the dictation of the mob. When a mob has collected, it must be admitted to no parley, and the only answer to be given to its demands is the reading of the riot act, and a whiff of grape-shot or a shower of musket-balls. But no threats of violence should ever deter authority from doing what is right, and, in this case, right was not on the side of the Orangemen. Authority must be just as well as firm. The threats of violence were wrong, but they did not put the Orangemen in the right. Authority was bound to protect the Orangemen from actual violence, but it was not bound to protect them in the performance of acts which they had no moral or legal right to perform, and which it was foreseen, if permitted, would lead to violence. One wrong is not redressed by permitting another that must provoke it.

His excellency’s revocation of the order of the police prohibiting the Orange procession, and promise to protect the procession by all the force at his command, cannot be defended on the ground that the party opposed threatened violence in case the procession took place, unless it be assumed that the Orangemen had a perfect moral or legal right to march in procession through our streets in their regalia, and with 122 their insulting banners flying and bands playing offensive marches. But they had no such right, as we have seen, and the party making the threats, however wrong the threats were, had the right to be protected from the insult and outrage offered to their feelings by such a display. The vindication of liberty did not require the procession to take place, for liberty is not infringed where no right is violated or abridged; and the assertion of the majesty of the law never requires protection of a wrong because they who would be aggrieved by it have threatened, if permitted, they will attempt by violence to right themselves. Neither American liberty nor law required the Orange procession to be permitted, and if both liberty and law required a mob, when collected, to be dispersed and the violence suppressed, they both also required the protection of American citizens from public insult and outrage. His excellency forgot the duty of protecting American citizens from wrong, and thought only of protecting a foreign and wholly un-American party in committing it.

Yet we have no doubt that the mistaken conduct of the governor--an able man, a good lawyer, and for the most part a worthy chief magistrate of the state--was chiefly prompted by the clamor against Catholics, and the charge brought against his party by its opponents of acting under the dictation of Catholics, who, of course, it is assumed, act always under the dictation of their clergy, and was intended to refute the charge by showing his readiness to protect even Protestant Orangemen, and shoot down their hereditary enemies, though Catholics. The charge, we know, was made against the party now in power in this state; but his excellency should not have allowed it to move him. It is no doubt true that, but for the votes of citizens who happen to be Catholics, he would never have been governor of the state, and his party would be, at least for the present, in a hopeless minority; but we cannot allow that Catholics have presumed upon the fact, or asked anything not their right as simple American citizens, and we know that they have obtained less than their equal rights, even in this city, where they can probably count not much less than one-half of the population. But the charge is a mere party trick, designed, through the sectarian prejudice against Catholicity, to throw the party now in out of power. The governor seems to us to have fallen into the trap his political enemies set for him, and has not unlikely damaged the political prospects both of himself and of his party.

The clamor against the party on account of its Catholic leaders and supporters means only that the _outs_ are anxious to become the _ins_. The party out of power in the State would as willingly receive the votes of Catholic citizens as does the party in power, and when in power it did, we believe, more for Catholics than the party now in power has ever yet done, though it, doubtless, promised less. Catholics have never had any reason for giving their votes to the Democratic party but that, in doing so, they followed, very disinterestedly, their honest political convictions.

The pretence of Protestants that Catholics in or out of office act politically under the dictation of their clergy, and in reference to Catholic interests as such, is too notoriously false to mislead anybody. Those prominent politicians, in or out of office, who happen to be Catholics, are the last men in the world to listen to the 123 dictation of the clergy or to act in obedience to the orders of their church, and they take infinite pains to prove that their religion has nothing to do with their politics, in order, we suppose, to escape the suspicion of being influenced in their political conduct by regard for Catholic interests. Their party standing is more to them than their Catholic standing, and they consult rarely the wishes or interests of their church, and usually only the wishes and interests of their party and its leaders. All the offices in the state or nation might be filled by Catholics, the constituencies remaining unchanged, without any more advantage accruing to the church than if they were all filled by Protestants. Catholics and Protestants alike, when in office, consult their constituencies, and act in the way and manner they judge most likely to secure votes to themselves or their party.

The fact is, Catholicity has never placed any man in city, state, or nation in office, and never yet has any man in our country been elected to office because he is Catholic. The Catholics who are in office under the municipal, state, or federal government, in congress, in the state senate, or the assembly, are there not because they are Catholics, but because they are Democrats or Republicans, or because they are of Irish, German, or some other foreign origin, and have or are supposed to have influence in securing the so-called “Irish vote,” the “German vote,” or the “foreign vote”--distinctions which should have no place in American politics--not because they are Catholics, and supposed to be devoted to Catholic interests. There is an “Irish vote,” a “German vote,” a “foreign vote,” but no “Catholic vote,” and, the constituencies remaining the same, Catholic interests would be just as safe in the hands of American Protestants as in the hands of Catholics elected to office, not for their Catholicity, but for their real or supposed influence with our naturalized fellow-citizens; and perhaps safer, because Protestants would be less likely to be suspected of acting under Catholic influence, and therefore could act more independently.

It is, we think, a mistake on the part of our politicians who are Catholics, whether in or out of office, to be so anxious not to be suspected of acting under Catholic influence and in view of Catholic interests. The church asks only what is just, only to be protected in the possession of the equal rights before the state, guaranteed to her by the constitution of the state, and which are not always respected by the popular sentiment of the country. The care which politicians take to show themselves independent in their political action, if Catholics, gains them no credit, and a frank, open, straightforward, and manly course would gain much more respect for themselves and for their religion. Indeed, their sensitiveness and over-caution on this point tend to excite the very suspicion they would guard against, or the suspicion that their conduct is diplomatic, and that they have some ulterior purpose in reserve which they artfully and adroitly conceal. The church is supposed by Protestants to be the very embodiment of craftiness and dissimulation, always and everywhere intriguing to get the control of the secular power, and to wield it in her own interest regardless of all rights and interests of the citizen who happens not to be Catholic. Hence, every Catholic politician is suspected beforehand of craft, intrigue, of crooked and underhand ways, lacking frankness, openness, and straightforward honesty. The 124 only way to repel this false and unjust suspicion is for such Catholics as are politicians to show in an open and manly manner that neither they nor their church have any sinister purpose, and that in being devoted to her interests and acting under influence as good Catholics, they have nothing to conceal, and no ends to gain for her incompatible with their plain duty as American citizens, or which they fear or hesitate to avow in the face of all men. The best way to quell a wild beast is to look him steadily in the eye, and show that you do not fear him.

But to return to the question more immediately before us. If the press and the executive had looked at the subject from the point of view of common sense, as a simple question of right and wrong, without prejudice against Catholics or in favor of Protestants, and without any wish to charge or acquit any party of being under Catholic influence, they could not, it seems to us, have failed to see that liberty was violated in permitting, not in prohibiting, the Orange procession. Party or sectarian prejudices obscured the judgment, and many lives of innocent persons were lost in consequence.

It is contended by some that if a procession of Catholic Irish in honor of St. Patrick is allowed, the Orange procession of the Protestant Irish should also be allowed; either permit both, or prohibit both. The celebration of St. Patrick’s Day as a festival of the Catholic Church, which it is, even by a public procession through our streets, if peaceable and orderly, is a right guaranteed in the freedom of the Catholic religion under our constitution and laws, and so far differs totally from the Orange procession. As a purely Irish national festival, it can be celebrated here only by courtesy, as is St. George’s Day by the English, St. Nicholas’s Day by the Dutch, or St. Andrew’s Day by the Scotch; for no foreign nationality has any right on American soil; otherwise, American nationality would not be independent and supreme on American territory. No foreign national festivals in commemoration or honor of events and interests or sentiments foreign to American nationality and interests and sentiments, can be publicly celebrated here except by indifference, courtesy, sufferance, connivance, national comity, or international treaty.

This rule, however, does not apply to religious festivals and celebrations, whether Catholic or Protestant, because in the eye of the state all religion is catholic, and not national, and, therefore, never a foreigner in any nation. Protestants cannot claim Orange celebrations as a right, though the Orangemen are all good Protestants, because the event celebrated is a foreign political, not a religious event; yet they have the right to institute and celebrate festivals in honor of Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, and other Protestant reformers; for these being the founders of their religion are as such not foreigners. Catholics may also celebrate here any of the festivals of the church in the way and manner she prescribes, because they are religious festivals, and the right to celebrate them is included in the freedom of conscience; so may they celebrate publicly the birthday of the Holy Father, his return to Rome from his exile at Gaëta and Portici, the completion of the twenty-fifth year of his pontificate, or his liberation, when effected, from his present imprisonment, and the recovery for the Holy See of the possessions of which she has been sacrilegiously despoiled--because, as the chief of their religion, he is no foreigner in America.

The German peace celebration, as it was called, but really the 125 celebration of the German conquest and humiliation of France, our ancient ally, was by sufferance, not by right. The Fenian organizations, marches and countermarches, parades and processions in honor of victories not won, are absolutely illegal, and take place only by the connivance--we might say the culpable connivance--of the government, if Great Britain, against whom they are directed, did not herself allow demonstrations on her own soil against foreign sovereigns. The celebrations of Italian unity, since effected by fraud, violence, sacrilege, and robbery, the spoliation of the Holy See, and the imprisonment of the Pope, perhaps should be regarded as the celebrations of the successes of Protestant principles, and therefore, by a right secured in the civil freedom of Protestantism, and if peaceable and orderly, not prohibitable by the police. They may be annoying to Catholics, but so is Protestantism itself; but Protestants have, so far as the secular authorities go, the same right to be Protestants that we have to be Catholics.

We have already shown that it is ridiculous to attempt to hold the church responsible for the riot. The rioters may have been nominal Catholics; but, if so, they were bad Catholics, for they acted contrary to the principles of their church, and the advice and direction of their pastors, and the church cannot be held responsible for acts done contrary to her orders and in violation of her principles. The rioters, themselves, knew and owned that they were disobeying their church, and defended themselves on the ground that the question was a national not a religious question, and, therefore, not within the jurisdiction of the clergy. Their defence was a lame one, and proved they were no true Catholics; for the church, without assuming to decide the national, party, or political question, had full jurisdiction of the morality of their acts, and was quite competent to condemn the passions of anger and revenge that actuated them and their riotous proceedings, as condemned by the law of God.

But there are Catholics in this city of fifteen or twenty different nationalities, and yet the rioters were exclusively of Irish origin, which is full proof that the riot was not Catholic, but Irish. Had it been a Catholic riot, inspired by the church and for a Catholic object, for which the church could be held responsible, Catholics, irrespective of their nationality, would have been engaged in it, and it would not have been confined to persons of one nationality alone. It was, as everybody knows, an Irish riot, occasioned by an old Irish feud between two Irish parties, not an American or a Catholic riot. These hot-headed, disobedient Irishmen, even if Catholics, could not commit the church to their disorderly and criminal proceedings.

It is only fair to add that this handful of Irish rioters could not any more commit the great body of our Irish fellow-citizens. According to the last census, there were 201,000 souls in this city who were born in Ireland, to say nothing of their children and grandchildren born here. There probably was not over five hundred, if so many, actively engaged in the riot; but double the number, say there were a thousand, and they are quite too few, even if they were of reputable character, which they were not, to commit so large a body as that of our Irish population, most of whom remained quietly engaged in their ordinary avocations. That the Irish furnish their full quota of rowdies, roughs, and disorderly persons in our large towns, nobody 126 denies; but we must remember that there are plenty of the same class not of Irish origin, and there have been riots, and riots of a very grave character, in which the Irish had no hand, though of some of them they were the victims. We have seen more than one American mob in which the chief actors were respectable, well-dressed Protestant American citizens.

There are Irishmen who are wealthy and wear fine clothes that are no credit to their race or their religion, but the Catholic Irish as a body constitute a sober, quiet, peaceable, intelligent, religious, industrious, and thriving portion of our population, and no American-born citizen has any right to say a word in disparagement of them. Indeed, we may say of the Catholic population of the city generally, that it is that portion of the population that it can least afford to spare. Were the city to lose them, it would lose the very population that has contributed, and contributes, the most to its high moral and religious character, to its industry and wealth, and on which its prosperity chiefly depends. With all their faults, and they are many, and many more in the eyes of the Catholic than of the Protestant, they are, as they should be, decidedly the best people going. Their vices are on the surface; their virtues lie deeper, and are many, solid, and durable. We bless God that we are permitted to call them brethren, and that we are with them in the unity of faith and communion, though we happen to be an American of the seventh generation, and it was our misfortune to be reared a Protestant.

We think the conduct of the Democratic party towards their Catholic supporters is discreditable. Any party may feel itself honored that secures the votes of the great body of our Catholic citizens, whether naturalized or native-born citizens, and no party will suffer in the end by insisting on justice to Catholics and to Catholic interests. Any party, by frankly and fearlessly sustaining the equal rights of Catholics with Protestants, and maintaining the freedom and independence of religion, will not only serve truly their country, and respond to the demands of American patriotism, but they will best ensure its own permanent prosperity, power, and influence. They who scorn and trample on the church may flourish for a time like the green bay tree, but in the end they will wither and die, and their places be sought, and not found. It is well for every political party to remember that God reigns, and that they who scorn his church, whom he hath purchased with his own blood, will in turn be scorned by the “King of kings, and Lord of lords.”

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THE PLACE VENDOME AND LA ROQUETTE. 127

THE BEGINNING AND THE END OF THE COMMUNE.

FROM LE CORRESPONDANT.

It would be difficult to find in the history of human revolutions a spectacle at once as burlesque and terrible as that just presented by the too celebrated Commune of Paris. It began with a long trail of blood at the entrance of the Place Vendôme, and signalized its wretched end by the horrible massacre of La Roquette. A witness of these two bloody scenes, I shall depict them with but few comments, but with perfect exactness of detail. At the risk of being incomplete, I shall only relate what I saw. In speaking of the confinement at Mazas and the massacres at La Roquette, I shall barely add some incidents, the truth of which was vouched for by the companions of my cruel captivity. Comments would only weaken the impressiveness of these facts. I leave my readers to draw their own conclusions from a moral and social point of view, only remarking that the first account, relating to the events that transpired in the Place Vendôme during the latter half of March, was drawn up a few days after they occurred.

Though the first essays of the Commune were not marked by the nameless horrors that drew upon its end the reprobation of all civilized nations, I have thought it right not to alter my first account. Perhaps some observations may not appear sufficiently severe, and others not wholly justified by the events. I give them to the public as they were noted down at the time. By comparing the account written at the end of March with that of the end of May, an exact idea may be formed--I was going to say a faithful photograph may be had--of the revolutionary condition of Paris at the beginning and the end of the Commune. We may thereby be enabled to judge of the development, during this short interval, of a brutal revolution--the implacable enemy of all institutions, human and divine.

In spite of the mingled emotions of horror and disgust I feel in recalling the men and the deeds I speak of, I may be permitted to manifest two feelings that prevail over all others in the depths of my soul--a redoubling of constant sympathy for the unhappy city of Paris, only rendered dearer by its misfortunes, and an ardent gratitude for the infinite mercy of God, which preserved me, contrary to all human expectation, from the bullets of a herd of assassins more shameless and lower than their predecessors of 1793.

I.

THE PLACE VENDÔME ON THE NIGHT OF THE TWENTY-FIRST OF MARCH.

I passed a great part of Tuesday, the twenty-first of March, in discussing with some political friends the intolerable situation of things at Paris, effected by the triumphal mob of Saturday, the eighteenth. We all deplored and denounced that unjustifiable attempt 128 at the national sovereignty which suddenly drew on us the danger of Prussian occupation of the city and the horrors of civil war--perhaps both of these scourges. Our indignation was profound. One blamed the government for having too readily abandoned Paris to the danger of insurrection; another maintained that by establishing itself at Versailles with the national assembly, and defending the environs of Paris, it saved France. Another declaimed with bitterness, sometimes against the culpable indifference of the national guards, which left everything to be done, and sometimes against the audacity and wickedness of the leaders of the mob that, without any pretext, was dragging France, all bleeding from the wounds incurred in war, into a bottomless abyss. We all felt there was something beneath all this: it was the shameful defection of a part of the troops of the line which had rendered such cruel misfortunes possible. If the army were to countenance the insurrection, that would decide the fate of France--_Galliæ finis!_

It was easier to deplore the gravity of the evil than to point out a practical means of remedying it. There was great diversity of opinion respecting the latter. Should recourse be had to material force or to a spirit of persuasion and conciliation? The use of material force might inflame the rebellious party still more, and cover Paris with blood and ruins. The success of moral influence was hardly possible with insurgents who began by assassinating Generals Lecomte and Clément Thomas, and deliberately advocated a social revolution.

At three o’clock, a well-known inhabitant of the Place Vendôme, who had already distinguished himself by his courage in the insurrection of June, 1848, in which he was one of the first wounded, came to announce to me the formal intention of the national guards of his battalion to retake the place from the insurgents come from the faubourgs. He thought that by a bold stroke they might effect their object without a shot. It is sure that the friends of order wished by all means to avoid the shedding of blood. Some moments after, one of my friends, who bears one of the great political names of France, and is destined to render his country eminent service, after the example of his family, because he is at once a man of superior intelligence and disinterestedness, very liberal and very religious, announced to me that the national guards of his arrondissement were animated with the best intentions, and comprehended the urgent necessity of maintaining order in the midst of the inextricable chaos into which we had fallen. He was himself a powerful example of the resolution and self-sacrifice inspired by an enlightened and generous patriotism. A retired officer from the time of his marriage, he had organized, at the beginning of the war, the national guards of that section of the country in which his estate was. Later, when the army of General Chanzy made his evolution from the Loire toward the Sarthe, he resumed his military life, and took an active part as captain of the staff in the operations and struggles of the army of the west. The very day he returned to civil life, he took the cars to spend some days at Paris, where several members of his family awaited him. He arrived there on the eve of the eighteenth of March. Instead of returning to the country, like so many other Parisians, he enrolled his name the following day as a simple member of the national guards, resolved to recede before no danger or fatigue, and to serve the cause of order at 129 Paris as he had been serving the cause of the national honor in his province. We should not despair of the future prosperity of a country in which there is still a great number of examples of similar devotedness. He did not think of returning to the country till the day after the mayors and deputies of Paris, doubtless unwittingly serving the interests of demagogism much more than the demagogues themselves, thought they were making a conciliatory move by yielding to their wishes, inviting the Parisian electors to illegal elections, disbanding the battalions of the national guard, wholly devoted to the cause of order, and thus destroying the sole material and moral support that still remained to the better portion of Paris. These mayors and deputies, whose imprudence and want of foresight no human tongue could express, declared they had saved everything, and they had lost everything. They ascended to the Capitol as in triumph, and they had led us to the Tarpeian Rock. They pretended to avoid the shedding of blood, and chose the surest means of shedding it in torrents. My friend agreed with me that next to the hideous stand of the battalions of the line that had entered into a pact with the mob, nothing could be more disastrous than the inexplicable compromise entered into by these mayors and deputies. There was not a day on which I did not apply to them the dilemma that I formerly applied to the government of the emperor in the _guêt-à-pens_ of Castelfidardo: “Either dupes or accomplices.”[41]

At five o’clock, an old deputy who had been brutally excluded from the legislative body in the favorable time of official candidature, because he would not renounce his opinions of freedom and control, gave me some interesting details respecting the pacific manifestations that had just met with an unhoped-for success. A great number of citizens, of all ages and of every rank, had traversed the principal quarters unarmed, crying, “_Vive l’Ordre! Vive la France! Vive l’Assemblée Nationale!_” They everywhere meet with cordial sympathy. The battalion that guarded the Bourse presented arms as they passed. The battalions of the faubourgs, that held the Place Vendôme, endeavored in vain to prevent their passing, and the person who from the balcony of the staff wished to address them in order to justify the insurrectionary movement, was interrupted by enthusiastic acclamations in favor of order and the national assembly.

The central committee at the Hôtel de Ville understood so well the bearing of this manifestation that they hastened to take energetic measures to remain masters of the Place Vendôme, and not to allow in it any new manifestations from the friends of order. They sent thither several battalions. Travel was forbidden there and in the neighboring streets; the approaches were rigorously guarded: four pieces of cannon, with cannoneers ready to fire, were set up in the Rue de la Paix and the Rue Castiglione.

At nine o’clock, the wife of one of the employees of the minister of 130 justice came to beg me to carry to her brother the final consolations of religion. I had seen him some days previous, and his end seemed near. It was with the greatest difficulty she had left the Ministère and the Place Vendôme, and she feared it would be impossible for me to return with her. But, unwilling her brother should die without the sacraments of the church, she succeeded by her prayers and tears in reaching me, and was willing to brave everything again in order to enable me to go to him.

I assured her I would unite my efforts to hers, and, though conscious that the ecclesiastical costume had, since the downfall of the empire, been disagreeable to the Parisian revolutionists, I added that we should succeed. I set out that very instant with one of the employees of the church.

The Place and the Boulevard de la Madeleine were quiet and nearly deserted. The Rue Neuve-des-Capucines was livelier. At the entrance of the Place Vendôme, I found myself in presence of the national guards, who did not much resemble those belonging to that quarter. They were very numerous. Their language was in the main rather noisy than threatening. The words “citizen” and “republic” were constantly on their lips. They allowed no one to stop, and showed themselves severely rigid towards the passers-by that wished to contemplate a spectacle so new in this pacific and wealthy quarter.

I had not yet arrived at the angle of the Rue Neuve-des-Capucines and the Place Vendôme, when an outpost of the national guards, arms in hand, cried to me in somewhat rough tone: “Citizen, no one is allowed to stop!” It was the very place and the time to stop to accomplish my holy mission. I explained briefly, but politely, the motive that led me to the Place Vendôme: it was a question of giving a dying person the last succor of religion; and, to leave no doubt of the truth of my statement, I pointed out the lady, bathed in tears, at my side, and the employee of the Madeleine. “It is impossible, citizen,” was uttered on all sides, “the _consigne_ has forbidden it.” I asked to see one of the officers, for I saw plainly I should be obliged to parley, but, in view of a duty so grave and urgent, I resolved to use every means. A sergeant presented himself with that important and somewhat ridiculous air which carries the conviction among the lower ranks that public affairs could not be sustained without him. I explained my wish. “You cannot pass.” I mildly insisted. “The _consigne_ has forbidden it, and to-day he is very rigorous.” I asked the reason of this exceptional severity. “It is, you see, citizen, because the bourgeoisie of this quarter have been making a racket to-day, and this must not be repeated.”

This observation, one of the most characteristic I ever heard in my life, was made with a seriousness which would have dispelled mine at another time less distressing to my heart as a priest and a Frenchman.

Convinced that nothing was to be effected with this sergeant, who was more self-sufficient than wicked, I asked to see the captain. He came to me with a dry and lofty air that the mildness of my language and doubtless the sad motive also that led me to the Place Vendôme speedily modified. After refusing me, and listening to renewed entreaties, he gave me permission to enter the Place Vendôme, on condition that I should remain all night. That was the extent of the right allowed him by the _consigne_. Tired of constantly hearing of a 131 _consigne_ who, according to the graphic avowal of the sergeant, was only influenced by his dissatisfaction at the racket that the bourgeoisie of the quarter had been making that day, I replied that I could not accept the condition, that I was very sorry not to be able to understand a refusal which affected a dying person and a family in affliction, and that I would leave the public to judge this fact, since there was no other authority to appeal to.

These words, uttered with an emotion but little restrained, changed the mind of the captain, who vainly sought plausible pretexts to oppose me. He appeared, besides, to be greatly preoccupied with the command he exercised: others were constantly coming to him for orders, and it was evident from his embarrassed manner that he had been more accustomed to receive than to give orders. He ordered one of the national guards to accompany me to the house of the minister of justice, not to lose sight of me for an instant, and to bring me back to the entrance of the Rue Neuve-des-Capucines. Notwithstanding the pacific character of my costume, I was treated like one of the suspicious bourgeoisie of the quarter, who could not be pardoned for having made a racket during the day. The insurgents had strengthened their position in the Place Vendôme, to prevent henceforth the manifestations of honest people. They appeared resolved to allow it to be entered only with extreme circumspection, and by persons who resided here.

I proceeded, accompanied by my national guardsman, who was armed.

The Place was poorly lighted. We had scarcely left behind us the group of national guards that barricaded the entrance, than he addressed me these words in a confused but very respectful tone: “How sad all this is, monsieur l’abbé, and how wrong not to arrange everything so every one can remain at home and quietly attend to his business!” I evidently had with me one of the too numerous workmen of Paris who love order and peace, but who dare not, or who do not know how to, resist the bold ringleaders who take them from their work and lead them astray. The fear of not speaking with sufficient calmness and caution, while I was at once afflicted and exasperated, induced me to be reserved. I merely replied that I shared his sentiments, and that very probably reason would prevail in the end.

Every moment we met armed groups. As far as I could judge, from rapid glances over the Place, some were discussing with vivacity the events of the day: others, like mercenaries, without dignity and without conscience, appeared to have no other care than to smoke and drink. The insurgents I met did not conceal the suprise that the presence of a priest in their midst during the night caused them. Those who thought I had been arrested, and was on my way to the post of the _état-major_, where I had seen more than one spy or Prussian led during the siege, did not deprive themselves of the pleasure of aiming a joke or an insult at me. Those who thought I was going to fulfil the duties of the holy ministry saluted me with respect. They were far from resembling in their equipments and deportment the national guards of the quarter of St. Roch or the Madeleine, but when I compared them with those I found the next day in the same place, after the criminal and bloody fusillade upon citizens only guilty of calmly expressing their love of order and their devotedness to the national assembly, they were comparatively disciplined and civilized. 132

The ante-room of the minister of justice’s residence was guarded by insurgents, who allowed no one to enter or go out without particular scrutiny. I quickly made known to the leader the object of my mission. He listened to me with evident curiosity and self-sufficiency, and, after affecting to consider, he motioned me to proceed. The court was occupied by another post that watched the entrance to the offices and hôtel of the minister, and the avenue that led through the gardens to the Rue de Luxembourg. No light was to be seen in the apartments. A profound silence reigned everywhere. No other employee remained at the minister’s than the brother-in-law of the young man to whom I was carrying the last consolations of religion. He received them with more calmness and serenity than might have been expected, humanly speaking, of a young man of twenty-two years of age, when one looks forward to a long life; but what a double grief for a family to find themselves at once in the presence of death and a band of insurgents!

A quarter of an hour after, I left the _ministère_ with my national guard, who treated me with a respect more and more deferential. The lady who had gone to the Rue de la Ville-l’Evêque to find me was also struck with his excellent appearance, and commissioned me to give him a small sum of money. I begged him, as delicately as possible, to accept it in aid of his family, who might be in need for want of employment. He seemed very much touched by this generous attention, and, as much to satisfy my curiosity as to prevent the difficulty of expressing his gratitude at a time when he was officially charged with guarding me, I concluded to address him some questions.

“From what quarter of Paris are you?”

“I am from Bercy, monsieur l’abbé. They sounded the rappel this evening. I set out with my company. They told us we were appointed to a very important patriotic mission. Arrived at the Place Vendôme, we were ordered to guard it rigorously.”

“But why so rigorous a guard in a quarter where there are only very excellent people, who love order and peace above all things?”

“Ma foi, monsieur l’abbé, I know nothing at all about it. Bercy is perfectly quiet. This quarter is no less so. I do not understand it. They ordered us to come, and we had to obey.”

“But did you not at Bercy have confidence in M. Thiers as well as we? Do you prefer Assi, Flourens, Blanqui, and Felix Pyat to him?”

“Our employers have always spoken very highly of him. The good workmen call him a great patriot, and not a mere pretender like so many others. He promised us liberty and work, and would certainly have kept his word. So we have committed a great piece of foolishness in allowing him to go to Versailles. God grant it may not be for a long time!”

“But what becomes of your work all this time? Do you think this state of thing favorable to the interests of the workman?”

“Ah, monsieur l’abbé, work is a thing but little thought of now, and yet the longer we delay resuming it, the more unfortunate we are. There are among us so many sluggards and madcaps!...”

My excellent guard was explaining to me in his own way how the bad workmen, who wished in 1848 to obtain the right to labor, had, since the siege of Paris, wished to retain the right of doing nothing, when 133 I found myself at the spot whence we had set out. Immediately resuming his most official and patronizing air--“Citizen,” said he to the patrol that guarded the entrance to the Place Vendôme, “let this citizen pass!”

I had promised the family of the poor sick man to visit him again in two or three days. Complicated as the situation of Paris was, and in particular that of the Place Vendôme, treated and occupied as a place taken by storm, in defiance of all right and all decency, by the national guards of the faubourgs in revolt against the laws, I was far from anticipating that I should hasten the next day to the same place in the midst of all the horrors of civil war, to carry the consolations of religion to the honorable inhabitants of Paris, smitten down without any provocation, without any motive, by the bullets of their fellow-citizens.

II.

THE PLACE VENDÔME ON WEDNESDAY, THE TWENTY-SECOND OF MARCH.

The next day, the twenty-second of March--henceforth one of the saddest dates in the history of Paris--I was on duty at the church of the Madeleine--that is to say, appointed to receive, from six o’clock in the morning till ten at night, those persons who sought the religious or charitable ministry of the priest, and to afford them all the satisfaction within the limits of possibility.

As the pacific manifestations on the eve had produced a favorable moral effect, it was proposed to renew them during the day, as I learned from some of my friends, known to be devoted to the cause of liberty and order, so strangely compromised. The aim they had in view and the means to which they had recourse were not only incontestably legal, but also in conformity with the interests and dignity of all the inhabitants of Paris. Therefore, far from concealing them, they openly discussed them, hoping they would be understood and appreciated as they deserved to be. They desired to promote, by means of persuasion and conciliation, respect for order and the laws, disregarded by the bold ringleaders and a part of the national guards led astray. In the midst of ruins accumulated by an unfortunate war, they wished to declare the assembly of the representatives of the country in session at Versailles to be the sole power charged to watch over our destinies, that we should rally around them and await their solution of the inextricable difficulties of the moment. The inhabitants of the Place Vendôme and the neighboring streets, wounded, and not without reason, at seeing their quarter invaded and occupied by the national guards from other quarters, who prevented travel, terrified their families, and paralyzed all commercial transactions, proposed to claim their rights, as inhabitants of the first arrondissement, to become the police of their own quarter. They violated no right, they were not lacking any propriety, in begging the citizens of the arrondissements of Montmartre and Belleville, who were installed there without any notice, to leave it to their own care. Not only are those who live in the Place Vendôme Parisians as well as the inhabitants of Belleville and Montmartre, but it was evident to those who knew Paris that four-fifths of the national guards that held possession of the Place Vendôme on the twenty-first, and especially on the twenty-second of March, had never seen Paris three years 134 previously. Paris is rather the theatre than the author of the revolutions that take place there.

Revolutionists and rioters belong to all parts of France and Europe, and in disastrous times they hasten to Paris, hoping to catch fish in the troubled waters.

I have studied all the large cities of Europe from a political and social point of view. For reasons too extended to be enumerated here, not one is like Paris, the rendezvous of all suspicious and corrupt characters--of the unfortunate who are at variance with the laws of their own country, and of men of no class who are ready to become revolutionary agents--and these are the worst of all. After the siege it had endured, the state of agitation and prostration resulting from so great a struggle, so much suffering, and so many deceptions, could not fail to attract the leading charlatans and rogues of all parts of Europe. It is not to the honor of the popular class at Paris, the most frivolous and the most credulous in the world, that these new-comers met with a success beyond their expectations, for they became in a moment our masters. Thanks to this cosmopolitan invasion, and also to the departure of too large a number of genuine Parisians who feared the Prussian bombardment less than the mob of international agents, Paris, the brilliant centre of elegance, art, and of intellect, as well as a financial and political centre, became, according to the expressive comparison of the _Times_, an infernal caldron, which terrified all Europe, and in which mingled and seethed all human passions.

The party that was playing its part at Paris was not Parisian or French, but exclusively social. It was a flock of birds of prey, a herd of roaming wild beasts, who had hastened from the four cardinal points to fall on the capital of France, which a five months’ siege had weakened. The International agents wished to found the Commune, and, to realize the idea of the Commune, which especially clings to locality, home, the fireside, the steeple, the associations and traditions of domestic interest, they summoned to Paris all their boon companions of the Old and the New World, and forced the real inhabitants of Paris to take refuge in the provinces or abroad. It was a revolting cynicism, pregnant with disaster.

At half-past two, some persons, filled with terror and indignation, entered the Madeleine to inform me of a sinister catastrophe. The agents of the pacific manifestation, who had proposed on the eve to traverse the principal streets of the city, crying, _Vive la République! Vive l’Ordre! Vive l’Assemblée Nationale!_ had become the victims of a horrible ambuscade. After passing through the Rue de la Paix, a large number of respected citizens of Paris, unarmed, and influenced only by the patriotic desire of securing, by the most inoffensive means and for the benefit of all good citizens, the triumph of equity, law, and a spirit of conciliation, had been met at the entrance of the Place Vendôme by a murderous fusillade from the insurgent national guards. The reports of the number of the killed and wounded varied, but it must have been considerable.

At the same time, I saw from the outer colonnade of the Madeleine the shops hastily shut up and people fleeing in disorder from the direction of the Place Vendôme. Every face expressed wrath and consternation. Some national guards of the eighth arrondissement hastened to rally around the church to watch over the public security.

I made inquiries about the condition of the wounded, and was told 135 they were being carried home, and that several belonged to the parish of the Madeleine, which includes the Rue de la Paix and the Place Vendôme. As I did not know the address of the victims, and knew from an experience of ten years that the members of the parish had the Christian habit of summoning the priest to the aid of the dying, I waited with emotion for them to have recourse to my ministry.

At four o’clock no one had come, and I was ignorant of the name and address of any of the wounded. At half-past four there was a report that some of the killed and wounded remained on the Place Vendôme, and that there were detained there some of those engaged in the pacific manifestation, among others, the father of a young man from the Rue Tronchet, whose skull had been fractured by a ball, and whom the insurgents refused to deliver up. Other details were added of such a revolting character that I could scarcely credit them. I ordered the Madeleine to be closed--took with me all that was necessary for the administration of the sacraments, and went by way of the boulevards towards the Place Vendôme, resolved, as on the preceding night, to recede before no obstacle to my reaching the victims who might need religious aid. The Boulevard de la Madeleine, generally so lively and brilliant, was almost deserted. The inhabitants were inquiring in a low tone, and in terror, about the incidents of the bloody drama that had just taken place in the neighborhood. Some soldiers only, who had joined the insurgents four days previously, were passing along with a careless and almost satisfied air. If these unhappy men were aware of the frightful event that then preoccupied all Paris, they only retained a glimmering of moral sense. Already unworthy to bear the name of a soldier, they would no longer merit to bear that of man.

At the entrance of the Rue Neuve-des-Capucines, which leads from the Boulevard de la Madeleine to the Place Vendôme, I was stopped by a group of people, who from a distance were regarding with mingled sentiments of curiosity and terror the patrols of the mob scattered along the street. “Do not go any further, monsieur l’abbé,” cried several persons to me in trembling voices, more charitable than brave. “If you go among those wretches, you are lost! We have seen them fire upon inoffensive men who were bearing away the wounded at the entrance of the Rue de la Paix.” I made no reply to what was dictated more by fear than reason, and came to the first patrol stationed before the Crédit Foncier. All the houses of the Rue Neuve-des-Capucines were closed, and this street, one of the liveliest of the quarter, seemed like a tomb. The head patrol, a jolly young fellow, with a face as red as blood, advanced towards me, and, solemnly raising his sabre to attest his authority, which I had no intention of disputing, ordered me to stop. I explained to him, without concealing my sadness, the object of my mission: “I am going as a priest belonging to the parish of the Madeleine to see the wounded on the Place Vendôme.” He immediately motioned with his sabre for me to pass; this was his only reply. Was he aware of the effect of this sinister beginning of civil war upon the condition of Paris? I doubt it--to parade and appear important seemed to be his principal care. The other national guards, vigilant and with their hands on their loaded arms, resembled sentinels in face of the enemy, without their discipline and proper carriage.

The second patrol, stationed in the middle of the street, allowed me 136 to pass without objection. It was composed, like the first, of national guards of all ages, but not of all conditions: they were from the most uncivilized class of the faubourgs. Their accoutrements were not uniform or neat. Some appeared quite satisfied; they were the youngest; others had a less blustering manner; but all felt an instinctive joy to rule over the most brilliant part of Paris, and inspire the citizens with a lively terror.

Before I came to the third patrol, placed at the opposite end of the street, I noticed on the pavement many stains of blood. It was in fact only a few steps distant that, only a short time before, the victims of the fusillade fell. I will not attempt to describe the anguish that filled my soul at the sight of this blood of my countrymen, shed by insurgents without country and without God. In the midst of my great distress I recalled the sublime cry of Monseigneur Affre: “Let my blood be the last shed!” I ardently prayed in my turn that the blood of these innocent and peaceful victims might be the last poured out, but it was to be feared that the revolutionary and social crisis, that weighed on Paris like a horrible nightmare, would only end, as it had commenced, by a terrible effusion of blood.

There was no difference between this patrol and the preceding, except that it was more actively vigilant. The chief of the national guards that formed it, and who seemed surprised to behold me, having asked where I was going, and what I was going to do, sent two men to conduct me to the post that guarded the entrance to the Place Vendôme. During the siege of Paris, I one day passed along the formidable defences of the Point-du-Jour at Auteuil. The consigne there was of a different degree of mildness and condescension from that at the entrance of the Place Vendôme, which the insurgents evidently wished to make their headquarters, and where they were entrenching themselves. The national guards that defended the entrance were less blustering, but more numerous and more decided, than those of the evening before. They allowed me to pass without hindrance; many of them must have felt that where the dead and dying are to be found is the proper place for a minister of Jesus Christ. A sentinel was ordered to accompany me to the Ministère de la Justice, where I intended to go first. He possessed neither the intelligence nor the politeness of the national guard that escorted me the night before. He was rather an animated machine than a man. Not a word, not a gesture, not a change in his features! After wondering what he was thinking of, I ended by doubting if he thought at all. I should render him this justice--that, from a material point of view, he discharged his commission with irreproachable exactitude.

I experienced an undefinable impression in the Place Vendôme, produced by a twofold contrast, the remembrance of which will not be effaced to the latest moment of my life.

This Place, with which Louis XIV. adorned Paris, was first called the Place des Conquêtes, to recall the brilliant victories which had secured to France the fine provinces which we have just lost a large part of, after most lamentable reverses. The sumptuous edifices, built according to Mansard’s plans, which form the contour, render it in an architectural point of view the finest Place in Europe. Destined by Louis XIV. to bring together the royal library and imprimerie, the academies, the mint, and the hôtel of foreign ambassadors; now 137 inhabited by wealthy families, rich travellers, and some of the government officials; situated between the garden of the Tuileries and the Boulevards des Capucines and des Italiens; entered at its two extremities by the Rues de Castiglione and de la Paix, through which pour wealthy merchants and elegant promenaders, it became on the twenty-second of March the theatre of uproar and civil war: it was covered with blood, and occupied by an armed crowd, in which prevailed the most sinister faces from the worst quarters of Paris.

The national guards of Bercy that I had seen the night before were models of civilization and distinction compared with these. Some were rather boys than men. They appeared to be only sixteen or seventeen years of age. As proud as they were surprised to carry a gun, they only sought for an opportunity or a pretext to use it. Those who have witnessed the revolutions of Paris know that armed children are capable of atrocious misdeeds. Sprung from the lowest grades of society, destitute of all moral sense, they care but little what cause they have to defend or what enemy to attack: their highest ambition is to display their audacity and to fire off their guns. As I am only relating the things I witnessed myself, I shall not speak of the fiendish part taken, according to some spectators, by a boy in the fusillade which had just shot down too great a number of pacific and honorable citizens. Many of the insurgents were in a state of overexcitement, proceeding less from their political and social opinions than from a too copious absorption of wine and other liquors: this is on days of revolutionary storms another category of insurgents capable of everything because they have lost all moral sense. There was but little care and uniformity about their accoutrements. Some had on only a part of the uniform of the national guards: others wore a képi and a blouse. A great number of the képis were not numbered. Here and there were to be seen some red sashes.

In this nameless multitude might also be remarked men of fifty or sixty years, whose ferocious and degraded faces excited the worst suspicions respecting their moral instincts and their previous relations with the legal authorities. I at once saw that many of them were foreigners, particularly Italians and Poles. What a contrast between such insurgents, hardly to be found in June, 1848, in the lowest parts of Paris, and the imposing architectural splendor of one of the finest squares in the world! I could not express the effect of this mingling of poetic beauty and foul deformity upon me.

Another contrast no less sad rent my heart. The side of the Place Vendôme toward the Rue de la Paix was sprinkled with blood; now and then the wounded and dead were carried by; and over these spots of human blood, by the side of these unfortunate victims of civil war, a great number of insurgents, perhaps the very ones who without any motive or provocation had shot them down, were laughing, eating, drinking, and amusing themselves, as if they were celebrating the happiest event of their lives.

In going to the Ministère de la Justice, I had to pass through several groups of varied physiognomy. They were generally astonished to see the ecclesiastical garb among them. I acknowledge that, if I had not had a mission of sacerdotal obligation to accomplish, I should hardly have procured them this surprise, notwithstanding my natural love of 138 observation. Some--a small number, however--received me with coarse insults and horrid laughter. A few steps from the Ministère de la Justice, a national guardsman, who was talking and gesticulating with uncommon vivacity, stopped to address me, while shaking his fist at me, this singular apostrophe: “When shall we be delivered from those wretches?” I will not relate other pleasantries of this nature of which I was the butt: this one is only too much. Their authors had doubtless learned to know and judge the clergy by the violent diatribes of citizens Blanqui and Félix Pyat.

Others, on the contrary, saluted me with a respect and cordiality which I was careful to return politely. They were honest workmen who had doubtless had intercourse with their parish priests, or whose children attended the catechism classes or the schools of the religious congregations, and received a benefit which they understood how to appreciate. There were strange contrasts in this mixture. Not to forget a single characteristic detail, I caught some observations that denoted on the part of their authors serious regrets for the dreadful catastrophe which terrified the whole city.

If, among the insurgent battalions chosen to fire on the inoffensive inhabitants of Paris, there were some to deplore the horrors of civil war, how many might not have been found in the other battalions! If the ringleaders could be separated from those whom they lead, and the deceivers from the deceived, the number of the latter would be considerable, and the former somewhat modified. One of the most serious faults of the workman of Paris is the incredible facility with which he enters into all the hollow schemes of the rogue and the charlatan who tempt him, and sacrifices to their mad ambition and culpable projects his peace, his property, his honor, and his life.

My guide, or rather my guard, appeared insensible to the insults as well as to the salutations I received on the way. Arms in hand, always impassible and solemn, it was only now and then he cast toward me an inquisitorial glance, as if to assert his authority and my dependence.

I made known the object of my mission to the leader of the post at the Ministère de la Justice. He was a young and well-bred officer. He listened to me with attention, and replied, after saluting me twice with a politeness full of respect, that I was at liberty to do all I wished.

I found the sick person I had seen the evening before in the hôtel of the minister of justice, exhausted by excitement that was hastening his end. He could see from his sick-bed all that occurred on the Place. In one corner of the apartment his sister, endowed with the higher Christian virtues, and an aged lady whom I did not know, but who was probably their mother, were weeping over the public as well as their own private woes. I had promised the sick person the night before to visit him again in three or four days, but as I could not enter the Place Vendôme without indicating the precise place I wished to go to, and could not have a better means of ascertaining where the victims of the fusillade had been transported, I briefly explained the reason of my unexpected call and gave him some religious encouragement, which was to be the last. I learned that the dead and wounded removed from the Place had been carried to one of the neighboring houses occupied by the administration and the ambulance 139 of the Crédit Mobilier. I hurried thither.

The Ministère de la Justice was as silent and deserted as on the preceding night. Four sentinels were posted between the court and garden; a fifth at the door of the hôtel had the air of guarding most conscientiously an absent excellency.

In going out, I sought with a discreet glance for my solemn guard, to become anew his prisoner. The officer who had received me a few moments before informed me he had sent him back to his post. From that moment I could go where I pleased.

At the Crédit Mobilier I met two bodies that were being carried to their relatives. I was told that one was M. Molinet, one of the most pious and exemplary young men of the parish. He had been shot down by the side of his father, who, notwithstanding his inexpressible grief, had been torn from the body of his only son and carried as a prisoner to the staff-officer of the Place. After offering up a prayer for these two unfortunate victims, I inquired for the apartment to which the wounded had been carried.

The consternation and terror that reigned among the inhabitants of the Place Vendôme may be imagined from the sinister events that had occurred before their eyes, and the dangers of all kinds with which they were threatened. Stupor was depicted on the faces of the concierges of the Crédit Mobilier. These good people were hardly willing to half-open the door of their lodge, and muttered something vague which was not an answer to my question. At last they sent with me to the _salle_ of the wounded a charming child of eight or ten years of age. He examined with more curiosity than fear the strange features of the citizens of Montmartre and Belleville who occupied the vestibule.

The number of the wounded in the ambulance was six. They were still on the litter on which they had been brought. Two infirmarians, who wore the red cross of the International society, were zealously attending to them: a _cantinière_ of somewhat free manners also manifested an equal desire to aid them. The insurgents that frequented the rooms behaved with propriety; they spoke in low tones, and instead of the care which they were not fitted to bestow, the most of them manifested a sympathy mingled with curiosity. Beyond this, their faces displayed no emotion; my presence did not astonish them; they discreetly retired when I approached the sufferers. No one appeared to me mortally wounded. Nevertheless, I administered religious aid to one of them at his own request, and confined myself to giving the rest as much encouragement as possible, for which they earnestly thanked me. They all belonged to the bourgeoisie. The last to arrive lived in the Rue Meyerbeer, and did not appear to be more than thirty years old. He told me he was to have set out that very evening to join his wife and children in the country, but wished before leaving to perform the part of a good citizen by joining in the manifestation. He had been wounded three times, but not dangerously.

At the entrance of the room a young man seized with frightful convulsions had been laid down on the parquet. He was partly dressed as a soldier of the line, and partly as a national guardsman. He was doubtless one of the too numerous soldiers who had united with the insurgents, and been drawn into serving their sad cause. The fusillade from the ranks of his new colleagues, and the numerous victims they had just shot down, must have caused a violent fit of remorse. He 140 was not wounded, but only had a sudden nervous attack, that affected him in a manner painful to behold. He did not appear to understand anything, and was suffering from contractions and contorsions of a truly frightful character. I approached him--tried to calm him with some kind words, and then recommended him aloud to the care of the two infirmarians of the International society. The national guards who surrounded him appeared touched to see manifested for one of their number an interest equal to that I had just shown for the victims of devotedness to the cause of law and order.

Before leaving the Place Vendôme I wished to ascertain if any of the victims had been taken to the ambulance of M. Constant Say. This was one of the six ambulances I was appointed to visit during the siege, to administer religious aid and awaken the moral sense of the soldiers who were sick or wounded. This ambulance was kept in perfect order. More than once, in observing the meals of the wounded, I envied them the healthful and abundant nourishment served up to them during the interminable months of December and January. They were treated as real members of the family, and were truly the spoiled children of the house. They were daily visited by one of the most celebrated physicians of Paris, who lavished on them the most intelligent care, and by the minister of Jesus Christ, who no less kindly spoke to them of God, their souls, their absent mothers, and of their temporal and eternal welfare. It could not be otherwise in a family whose extensive industrial establishment and inexhaustible charity are such a benefit to the laboring classes of Paris. I had the consolation of seeing all the soldiers who were taken to this ambulance leave it better Christians and better Frenchmen.

As to the rest, during the entire siege, the solicitude of the Parisians for the sick and wounded soldiers was truly admirable, and the praise I am bound in justice to accord to the ambulance of M. Constant Say, may be equally given to the rest I was appointed to visit: the ambulances of M. Frottin, formerly mayor of the first arrondissement, in the Rue St. Honoré; that of M. Jourdain, a member of the Institute, in the Rue du Luxembourg; of Dr. Moissenet, a physician of the Hôtel Dieu, in the Rue Richepanse; of Madame Dognin, of the Point-du-Jour at Auteuil; and, finally, the ambulance bravely founded and directed at Grenelle by some laboring women of ardent faith, and a devotedness that works wonders, and transferred after the bombardment of Grenelle to the magnificent hôtel of M. le Comte Mercy d’Argenteau on the Rue de Suresne.

I was also aware that there were still some wounded soldiers in M. Say’s ambulance. The brutal invasion of the Place Vendôme had prevented me from visiting them the two days previous. To go there, I was obliged to cross the entire Place. It seemed more like a field of battle than a Place. Here were stacks of arms, there were caissons full of supplies, further on were delegates of the central committee of the Hôtel de Ville, who where transmitting orders with feverish haste, and everywhere were the insurgents who had just fired, and who were ready to take fresh aim.

I had no longer an armed guard to accompany me. During my walk, which I frankly acknowledge would have seemed much shorter on ordinary occasions, I was again an object of insult and sarcasms not highly seasoned with wit from some, of respect and sympathy from others, and 141 of astonishment or indifference from the greatest part. I had never seen so great a number of persons eating and drinking. Their appetite only gave out after complete exhaustion of the means of gratifying it. It is true that, to the demoralized workmen who abound in Paris, the word riot signifies the time for good eating, and still better drinking, and no work at all.

Against the railing that surrounds the column were squatting several national guardsmen, to whom a _cantinière_ dealt out liquor. The oldest was certainly not eighteen. At my approach one of them, who had doubtless been a chorister in some church, instinctively made a respectful bow. A second, who made some pretensions to delicate wit, pointed at me with his sabre, uttering a laugh more stupid than malicious. A third, and this became more serious, loaded, or pretended to load, his musket, which he pointed at me. At the same time the _cantinière_ encouraged him with atrocious words, that no delicate ear would pardon me for relating. I had had for seven months so many occasions to recommend my soul to God, that I thought it opportune to do so once more. Nevertheless, not to take things too seriously, I recalled the amusing reply made me by an excellent man, from the neighborhood of St. Sulpice, who was obliged, after the three first days of bombardment on the left side by the Prussians, to seek refuge in the vicinity of the Madeleine. When I approved of his prudent decision, he replied, “In fact, I could not reasonably pass every night in recommending my soul to God!”

I arrived at my ambulance without any harm but a momentary fright. None of the victims of the fusillade had been brought here. I found my dear wounded ones in a fair way to be healed, but very much depressed by what was passing around them, and humiliated especially by the shameful defection of a part of the troops on the deplorable day of Saturday, the eighteenth.

My sacerdotal mission was ended. In returning across the Place Vendôme, I was not the witness or the object of any occurrence that merits attention. The dense line of insurgents that guarded the entrance of the Place from the Rue de la Paix opened for me to pass. The patrol, who remembered having allowed me to enter, asked no questions in permitting me to go out. I met a man in the Rue Neuve-des-Capucines who was covering a real pool of blood with sand. There was no change in the manner of the patrols: the street was still like a tomb. Nearly in front of the Crédit Foncier, a shop-keeper of respectable appearance timidly opened one of the doors of his shop, and asked permission to pass from the last patrol toward the boulevard, which was not more than fifty yards from me. He appeared so alarmed, and his face was so extremely pale, that the patrol, proud of the fear he inspired, did not fail to avail himself of so favorable an opportunity of amusing himself at the other’s expense. He questioned him with an affected solemnity which would have excited my laughter in less tragical times, addressed him a long and severe recommendation, and when the man turned, more dead than alive, toward the boulevard, the youngest of the band, who hid the malicious hilarity of a _gamin_ under the gravity of a judge, took his gun, and pointing it toward the shop-keeper, who happily was not aware of such a salute, had the air of saying: “If the rest of the bourgeoisie resemble this 142 one, Paris is certainly ours.”

I was as much saddened at the dejected and disconcerted appearance of most of the inhabitants of this quarter, as I had been alarmed by the boldness and audacity displayed on the Place Vendôme by the workmen of the faubourgs, old criminals and revolutionists from all countries, who held possession of it. There was more stupor than indignation among the former. They hardly ventured to the doors of their houses, they spoke in low tones for fear of being compromised. This unfortunate attitude of the lovers of order only encouraged the energy and boldness of the enemies of society. I comprehended for the first time how a handful of factionists had been able in 1793 to terrify and decimate the better part of the community, who were ten times as numerous. The very day when the lovers of order will say to those of disorder, with the same energy and firmness as God to the waves of the sea, “Thou shalt go no further!” Paris will have no more to fear from anarchy and revolution, and France will no longer oscillate between the equally deplorable extremes of despotism and license.

If this simple and impartial account, intended to cast a little light upon one of the saddest and most execrable episodes of the revolution of the eighteenth of March, could also have the effect of calling the more particular attention of the lovers of order and stability, of whatever nation and party, to the dark aims of the International league of demagogues who, under the mask of workingmen’s associations, prudential interests, and mutual protection, aim at the denial of God, the destruction of family and country, of public capital and private savings, of the domestic and political hierarchy--in a word, the destruction of all those principles which are the foundation of society; and also of thoroughly convincing the better classes of Paris and all the larger cities of France, that the promoters of disorder and anarchy, though now recruiting from the lowest social grades of Europe, are only strong in consequence of their own inaction and regard for self; that such power is only derived from their own want of discipline and energy; that they would only have to enroll, organize, and assert themselves to utterly destroy it--I shall have realized one of my most ardent wishes, and labored in my sphere of action for the consolidation of the social edifice and of public order, so profoundly shaken.

It was nearly six o’clock when I reached home. I had passed a little more than three-quarters of an hour among the insurgents and the wounded of the Place Vendôme. God alone knows with what emotion and earnestness I implored him that I might never be subjected again to such a trial to my heart as a priest and a Frenchman.

Here ends my first account, drawn up at the end of March. I need not add that my prayer was not granted. The Commune was founded in blood and terror, and was to end in a fiendish debauchery of madness and crime.

TO BE CONTINUED.

[41] Here is what, according to the _Paris Journal_ of Versailles for the 18th of May, citizen Raoul Rigault wrote from the préfecture of police to citizen Floquet, one of the unhappy instigators of this pretended compromise:

“My dear Floquet, you have decided then to set out with Villeneuve and the prefect Lechevalier for Bordeaux. We are too much united in our sentiments for you not to feel the importance of your mission. The league of the republican union, in pleading its own cause, pleads ours. As to your 9,500 francs, I will endeavor to furnish them, though it is difficult to procure remittances.”

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NEW PUBLICATIONS. 143

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF MOTHER MARGARET MARY HALLAHAN, O.S.D. 1 vol. 12mo. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1871.

The great success of the original life of Mother Margaret Mary Hallahan, foundress of the Third Order of Dominican Nuns in England, and the edification it has given to thousands of readers everywhere, have induced her sisters and admirers to prepare an abridged life for more general reading.

The abridgment is in every respect a creditable performance. In beauty of diction, as well as in the subject-matter treated, superior ability in biographical style is very discernible. The paper, printing, and binding are also of the first class.

All who are interested, either from motives of faith or even of curiosity, in the surprising revival of the Catholic religion in England within the last half-century, will be cheered and delighted by the perusal of this new edition, as it may be called, of the life of one of the greatest agents in this wonderful work of God. The cheapness of the work, moreover, puts it within easy reach of all Catholic readers.

SCHOOL-HOUSES. By James Johonnot. Architectural Designs by S. E. Hewes. New York: J. W. Schermerhorn & Co. 1871.

Undoubtedly the subject treated in this work is one of considerable importance, involving, as it does, the health and future prospects as well as the present comfort of the rising generation. No doubt, also, there is immense room for improvement in the internal arrangements of the buildings in which so large a portion of the time of the young, and especially of children, is to be passed; above all, as regards the points of light, heating, and ventilation. The construction particularly of country school-houses is also certainly open to change for the better, and many good suggestions are made and designs furnished by the authors. Some of these designs, however, strike us as being unnecessarily ornate. The latter part is occupied with the questions of furniture, apparatus, grounds, etc., and with many illustrations of chairs, desks, globes, and other appliances, which will be found useful and interesting. The book is finely printed, and beautifully bound.

OF ADORATION IN SPIRIT AND TRUTH. Written in four books. By John Eusebius Nieremberg, S.J., native of Madrid, and translated into English by R. S., S.J., with a Preface by the Rev. Peter Gallwey, S.J. London: Burns, Oates & Co. 1871.

This beautiful volume forms the first of a series of works, under the title of “St. Joseph’s Ascetical Library,” undertaken by the Fathers of the Society of Jesus in England. It is no novelty in itself, though it will probably be new to almost all who see it in its present form. The author was born at Madrid in 1590, and died in 1658; and this translation of his work was made nearly two hundred years ago, in 1673, and has that charm of quaintness and simplicity which it is now in vain to imitate.

The title might convey the idea that the treatise before us was a very abstract and mystical one, unsuited to the generality of readers. But such an idea would be soon dispelled by a glance at some of the headings of its chapters, such as, “How Incommodious a Thing Sleep is,” “How Penances and Corporal Afflictions help Us,” and “That we must rise Fervorously to our Morning Prayer.” It is practical enough 144 for any one, perfectly clear, intelligible, and interesting; and, at the same time, no one can find in it any want of devotion or spirituality.

It is divided into four books, as stated in the title; the first, second, and fourth treating of the purgative, illuminative, and unitive ways respectively; the third being concerned with “What Belongs to a most Perfect Practical Performance of Our Actions,” which illustrates in detail the general principles laid down in what precedes.

We are under great obligations to the editors for having brought into notice, and into general use, as we trust, this treasure of Catholic piety. It will be of inestimable value to all who desire to lead a really spiritual life and to practice the “adoration” of which it treats, which is nothing else than complete self-renunciation and devotion, in the true sense of the word, to God and to his service.

IGNATIUS LOYOLA, AND THE EARLY JESUITS. By Stewart Rose. London: Longmans, Green & Co.

We have several excellent biographies of St. Ignatius in the English language, but the present one is likely, we think, to become the most popular. It is carefully compiled, written in that literary style and with those graphic sketches of surrounding circumstances which modern taste demands, and published in an elegant manner. Its principal distinctive excellence consists in the portraiture of the early life of Ignatius as the accomplished, valiant, and Christian knight, whose noble and chivalrous character formed the basis of his future heroic sanctity. We welcome any work which may make the illustrious founder of the Society of Jesus and his Institute better known both to Catholics and Protestants, and we hope for a wide circulation for this ably and charmingly written biography.

MOUNT BENEDICT; OR, THE VIOLATED TOMB. By Peter McCorry. Boston: Patrick Donahoe.

The burning of the convent in Charlestown, and the accompanying horrors of that fearful night, are subjects worthy of a graphic description, well calculated to point a moral and adorn a tale. We confess our disappointment in this volume, written, no doubt, with a good design. The conversations are weak and pointless, and too much of the book is occupied with the irrelevant talk of the “conspirators.” We protest against the introduction of oaths into story-books. The interest of the story is marred by these faults.

MR. P. DONAHOE, Boston, announces as in press an account of the “Passion Play” at Oberammergau, Bavaria, from the pen of the Rev. George W. Doane, Chancellor of the Diocese of Newark. It will be dedicated to the Rt. Rev. J. R. Bayley, D.D., Bishop of Newark.

The Catholic Publication Society will publish, early in November, _Mary, Queen of Scots, and her Latest Historian_, by James F. Meline. This book will contain the articles which appeared in THE CATHOLIC WORLD on Mr. Froude, as well as a great deal of new matter. In fact, the articles as they appeared in THE CATHOLIC WORLD are almost entirely rewritten, and many new facts produced. It will be a complete refutation of Mr. Froude’s romance of history.

* * * * *

ERRATUM.--In the article on “The Reformation not Conservative,” p. 733, 1st column, 16th line from the bottom, for _French_ sovereigns read _Frank_ sovereigns. Christendom was founded some centuries before there was a French sovereign or a French kingdom, in the modern sense of the word _French_, or France. The Franks were a Germanic race, and the German was their mother-tongue.

THE 145

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XIV., No. 80.--NOVEMBER, 1871.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by REV. I. T. HECKER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

AUTHORITY IN MATTERS OF FAITH.

The question we propose to discuss in this article is opened in the note we introduce, answering an objection to the infallibility of the church, made by a lawyer through a third person, and by an elaborate note from the lawyer in reply, and urging another and, in his judgment, a still more serious objection. The editor’s note is:

“The objection of your friend against the _infallible_ Bible interpreted by a _fallible_ reason, as a sure rule of faith, is unanswerable. Nothing stronger could be said against the Protestant position.

“His objection against the church, _so far as it goes_, if I understand it correctly, is also unanswerable. It is quite evident that no agglomeration of fallible men can make an infallible church, either by the personal authority of the individuals or in virtue of their agglomeration. But that is by no means the question with us.

“We deny that the church is simply an agglomeration of men; and we deny that the infallibility comes by the authority of its members in any way.

“As Christ is a Theanthropical person, so also the church is a Theanthropical society, of which Christ is the head, the Holy Ghost the soul, and the regenerated men the body. The infallibility comes from the Holy Ghost, through Christ, to the body.

“_If it is so_, it is evident that the infallibility will remain as long as the union shall last. And in that supposition the learned lawyer cannot fail to see that infallibility does not, in any way, come to the body by the authority of its members, but from God, the only authoritative and absolute power in the world, which can bind the minds as well as the wills of men.

“That is the Catholic question, and the real position we maintain.

“If each man is his own authority, according to the preceding remarks in this book (and that is conceded), then an authoritative church is impossible, because it presents an authority external to me, and then asks me to accept it. I admit that, if there is to be _any_ church, it must be of divine origin. Even were the Bible inspired and infallible, I, being fallible, must interpret it fallibly, and therefore it must be the same _to me_ for all intents and purposes as if it were a fallible book. The same argument applies to the church as a divine, authoritative institution--what is _outside_ of the man--that is, the so-called fact is not an authority for him; but he is the authority for it; if not an absolute authority, at any rate, the only authority possible. The trouble arises from the Baconian philosophy, which has attempted to build up a system on _facts_ so-called--without rejecting the _authority_ for those facts--_as if the authority were in the fact itself_.”

This speaks for itself, and the position it takes is not controverted. 146 But the lawyer says it does not meet the question, that is, we presume, the question as it is in his mind, though he had not previously expressed it. He says:

“The note given me does not meet the question. It is claimed that the church is infallible because a divine institution--that is, because established by God.

“Now, admit it to be a divine institution, if it is to be presented for our acceptance, it must be for the acceptance of our fallible reason.

“For example, when the missionary carries the church to the heathen, does he not present it for their rational acceptance? And if so, does he not ask their finite judgment to pass upon and accept the infinite and the absolute?

“Now, the point is this: if the thing or truth presented be infinite and absolute, and the person to whom it is presented be imperfect, fallible, and conditioned, how can the truth--or the church, if you please--appear otherwise to him than according to his finite and partial interpretation of it?

“The question in respect to the absolute is, not whether it be _really_ true and absolute or not, but to what extent does the normal affirmation go respecting it. In short, must not the same argument obtain against the church as against the Bible?

“It comes to the question of _authority_; and, if all intelligent authority resides in _the person_ (and certainly each one must, from the nature of his constitution, be his own authority), then it follows that no authority whatever can reside in the state, the church, or in any mere institution or being _outside_ of the person, whether that church or institution assume divinity or not.

“The authority is not in the _so-called fact_, but in _the person_ to whom the so-called fact is presented, and who is called upon to pass upon it.

“The Baconian system is false, because it makes the so-called fact the authority for itself; when plainly the very existence or comprehension of the so-called fact depends wholly on the _person_ to whom it is presented.”

The objection is, apparently, the objection we ourselves bring to the Protestant rule of faith, namely, the Bible interpreted by private judgment. The Bible may be the word of God and infallible, but my interpretation of it, or my private judgment in interpreting it, is fallible, and therefore I have in it and with it only a fallible rule of faith. So the church may be a divine institution, and by the assistance of the Holy Ghost infallible; but her teaching is addressed to my intelligence, and must be passed upon by my private judgment, which is finite and fallible, therefore incompetent to pass upon the infinite and absolute. Hence, the Catholic rule no more gives infallible faith than does the Protestant rule. The principle of the objection the lawyer urges is that authority is intrinsic, not extrinsic; comes not from without, but from within, from the mind, and can never be greater than the mind itself; and as that is fallible, there is and can be no infallible authority for faith or belief. The objection is simply that an infallible authority for the mind in matters of faith is impossible, because the mind is not itself infallible, and therefore incapable of an infallible act or assent. This, we believe, is the objection in all its force.

The objection rests on two principles, neither of which is tenable: first, that the mind or intellect is universally fallible; and, second, that the authority in matters of faith is in the mind itself, not out of it, and, therefore, belief in anything on extrinsic authority is impossible.

1. The intellect is not universal or infinite, and does not and cannot know all things; but it is never false in what it knows, and in its own sphere is infallible; that is, the intellect is not false or fallible in what it knows, for every one who knows knows that he knows. The judgment is false or fallible only when and where, and so far as knowledge fails. Thus, St. Augustine says,[42] _Omnis qui 147 fallitur, id quo fallitur, non intelligit_. The error is not in the intellect or intelligence, but in the ignorance or non-intelligence. Doubtless, we can and do err in our judgment of matters of which we are ignorant, of which we have only an imperfect knowledge, or when we undertake from what we do know to judge of things unknown, which is all that St. Thomas means when he says, “_Falsitas est in intellectu_.”[43] To deny this is to deny all human knowledge, and to assert universal scepticism, and then the lawyer could not assert his objection, and would be obliged to doubt even that he doubts. If the intellect is universally fallible, we may as well close the discussion at once, for nothing can be settled. If it, in its own province, where it really does know, is infallible, then the only question is, whether, in passing judgment on the facts that establish the infallibility of the church, the intellect is obliged to go out of its own province, and judge of matters in regard to which it is confessedly incompetent and fallible?--a question we shall consider in its place.

2. We join issue with the lawyer on his assertion that the authority is intrinsic in the mind itself, not extrinsic, either in the object or the authority that affirms it. He says in his note that “no authority whatever can reside in the state, the church, or any mere institution or being _outside_ of the person, whether that church or institution assume divinity or not. The authority is not in the so-called _fact_, but in the _person_ to whom the so-called fact is addressed, and who is called upon to pass upon it. The Baconian system is false, because it makes the so-called fact the authority for itself; when plainly the very _existence_ or comprehension of it depends wholly on the person to whom it is addressed.” So we do not know facts because they exist, but they exist because we know them or judge them to exist! But how can so-called facts be addressed to the person before they exist? The lawyer goes farther than his argument against the church requires, and consequently proves, if anything, too much, and therefore nothing. He makes not only all knowledge, but, unintentionally, we presume, all existences, depend on their being known, and therefore makes them purely subjective, and falls into Fichteism or pure egoism.

The lawyer’s rule excludes not only faith, but knowledge of every sort and degree; for all knowledge is assent, and in the simplest fact of knowledge the intellectual assent is given on authority or evidence extrinsic to the person, though intrinsic in the object. Knowledge is either intuitive or discursive. In intuitive knowledge, the evidence or motive of the intellectual assent is intrinsic in the object, but extrinsic to the assenting mind. The immediate presence of the object motives or authorizes the assent, and the mind has simply the power or faculty of apprehending the object, or judging that it is, when presented; for, without the object affirming its presence to the mind, there can be no fact of knowledge or intellectual assent. In discursive knowledge the authority or evidence, as in intuitive knowledge, is intrinsic in the object, but it is implicit, and can be placed in immediate relation with the intellectual faculty only by discursion--a process of reasoning or demonstration. But demonstration does not motive the assent; it only removes the _prohibentia_, or renders explicit what is implicit, for nothing can be asserted in the 148 conclusion not already implicitly asserted in the premises; yet the assent is by virtue of the evidence or authority intrinsic in the object, as in intuition. All this means that we know objects because they are and are placed in relation with our cognitive faculty, not that they are because we know them, or because the mind places them, or makes them its object. If the lawyer’s rule, that authority is not in the object but in the mind or person, were true, there could be no fact of knowledge, either intuitive or discursive, because the mind cannot know where there is nothing to be known.

Faith or belief agrees with knowledge in the respect that it is intellectual assent, but differs from it in that it is mediate assent, by an authority extrinsic, as authority or evidence, both to the object and to the person. The authority or evidence mediates between the mind and the fact or object, and brings them together in a manner somewhat analogous to that in which the middle term in the syllogism brings together the two extremes and unites them in the conclusion. If the evidence or the authority is adequate, the belief is reasonable and as certain as any conclusion of logic, or as the immediate assent of the mind in the fact of science or knowledge. I am as certain that there is such a city as Rome, though I have never seen it, that there was such a man as Julius Cæsar, George Washington, or Napoleon Bonaparte, as I am that the three angles of the triangle are equal to two right angles. It is on this principle the lawyer acts and must act in every case he has in court. He summons and examines witnesses, and relies on their testimony or evidence to obtain a conviction or an acquittal, except in a question of law; and then he relies on the judge or the court. If there is no authority _outside_ the person, that is, no authority not in his own mind, why does he summon and examine and cross-examine witnesses or consult the judge? Why does he not work the facts and the law out of his own “inner consciousness,” as do most modern historians the facts they give us for history? As a lawyer, our friend would soon find his principle, if he carried it into court, operating as an effectual estoppel to the practice of his profession.

The lawyer asks, “When the missionary carries the church to the heathen, does he not present it for their rational acceptance? And if so, does he not ask their finite judgment to pass upon and accept the infinite and absolute?” We are sure our friend would argue better than this if he had a case in court on which anything of importance depended. When presented by his brother lawyer opposite with the decision of the court of appeals barring his case, would he attempt to judge or pass upon the judgment of the court before accepting it, or would he not be content with simply verifying the fact that the decision has been rendered by the court of appeals or court of last resort? We feel quite sure that, if he were on the defensive, and adduced the decision of the court of last resort barring the action, he would be very far from allowing his brother opposite to question the judgment. Nor would he as a lawyer dream of rejecting the decision because his own mind had not passed upon its merits; but, when once assured that the court had rendered it, he would accept it and submit to it as law, not on his own judgment, but on the authority of the court itself. All he would allow himself to do would be to verify the powers of the court, in order to ascertain if it is a court of 149 competent jurisdiction, and to be sure that it had rendered the decision. The decision itself he would not, as a lawyer, think of examining any farther than to ascertain its meaning. He would take it as final, and submit to it as law, whether for him or against him.

The objection fails to distinguish what, in the case supposed, the heathen are required to pass upon in order to act rationally in accepting the church. They would be required to pass on the sufficiency of the evidence of her divine institution and commission to teach and govern all men and nations in all things pertaining to the kingdom of God on earth. That evidence, called by theologians “motives of credibility,” found complete, all the rest follows as a logical consequence, and there is no calling upon “the finite to pass upon the infinite and absolute, any more than there is upon the counsellor to pass upon the merits of the judgment of the court of final resort after being certified that the court has actually rendered it. All that one has to believe of the infinite and absolute, after he has established by evidence appropriate in the case the divine institution and commission of the church, he believes on the authority of the church herself.

The missionary, no doubt, presents the church to their rational acceptance, and must, therefore, present to them the motives of credibility, or the facts which accredit her as divinely instituted and commissioned, and these motives, these facts, must be addressed to their understanding, and be such as their reason can pass upon and accept or reject. But the question is, Supposing reason has passed upon these facts or the motives, and found them sufficient to accredit the church, as a teacher come from God, and commissioned or authorized by him to teach his word, is not the acceptance of that word on her authority as the word of God a “rational acceptance,” and all the most rigid reason does or can demand?

The lawyer says no; and because all authority is in the person, and resides nowhere _outside_ of him, and therefore it is necessary that reason should pass upon the contents of the word, that is, upon the doctrines and mysteries contained in the word the church professes to teach, which is impossible; for it requires the finite to pass upon the infinite and absolute, which exceeds its powers; therefore, faith is impossible. But this simply implies that no belief is admissible that is not science, and faith must be swallowed up in knowledge, and thus cease to be faith, before the human mind can rationally accept it.

The trouble with the lawyer’s objection is that it assumes that faith is irrational, unless it is science or knowledge. His statement goes even farther than this. He not only denies that there can be any rational belief on extrinsic authority, but that there is or can be any such authority, or that any state, church, or _being_ has or can have any authority _outside_ of me, or not derived from me. This, as far as words go, asserts that God himself has no authority over me, and his word has no authority for my reason or will, not dependent on me. We do not believe he means this, for he is not divested of the reason common to all men. He means, we presume, simply that no state, no church, not even God himself, has any authority on which I can rationally believe anything which transcends the reach of my reason, or which is not intrinsically evident to my reason by its own light. 150 But what is evident to me by the light of my own reason, I know, and not simply believe. As belief is always on extrinsic authority simply accredited to reason, this goes so far as to deny that any belief is or can be rational, and that any authority or any amount of testimony is sufficient to warrant it, which, as we have seen, is much farther than the lawyer can go in the practice of his profession, or any man in the ordinary business of life.

We do not think our legal friend has duly considered the reach of the principle he lays down. Even in the so-called positive sciences, the greater part of the matters accepted by the scientist are accepted on extrinsic authority, not on personal knowledge. No geologist has personally observed all or even the greater part of the facts he uses in the construction of his science; no geographer, however great a traveller he may have been, has visited and personally examined all parts of the globe which he describes; the botanist describes and classifies more plants, the zoölogist more forms of life, than he has personally seen, and the historian deals almost entirely with facts of which he has no personal knowledge. Eliminate from the sciences what the scientist has not observed for himself, but taken on the reported observation of others, and from the garniture of every mind what it believes or takes on extrinsic authority, not on his personal knowledge, and there would be very little left to distinguish the most learned and highly educated man from the untutored savage. In all the affairs of life, we are obliged to rely on extrinsic authority, on evidence neither in the subject nor in the object, on the observations and testimony of others, and sometimes on the observations and accumulated testimony of ages, especially in wise and prudent statesmanship; and if we were suddenly deprived of this authority evidence, or testimony, and reduced to our own personal knowledge, intuitive or discursive; society would come to a standstill, and would soon fall below the level of the New Hollander, for even he inherits some lessons from the past, and associates with his observations some observations of others.

We presume our friend the lawyer means nothing of all this, and his mistake arises from not sharply distinguishing between the motives of credibility and the authority, on the one hand, and the authority and what it authorizes, on the other. The existence of God is a fact of science, though discursive, not intuitive, science. That God is, as the theologians say, _prima veritas in essendo, in cognoscendo, et in dicendo_, is also a truth of science--is a truth we not simply believe, but know or may know, for it can be proved with certainty by natural reason prior to faith. God is truth; it is impossible for him to lie, since he is _prima veritas in dicendo_, the primal truth in speaking, and can neither deceive nor be deceived, for he is _prima veritas in cognoscendo_, or the principle of all truth in knowing.

This granted, the word of God must be true, infallibly true. So far we can go by science or certain knowledge. Now, suppose the lawyer to have full proof that it really is God’s word that is announced to him, would he not be bound to believe it true, nay, could he in the exercise of his reason help believing it true, prior to and independent of any consideration of its contents, or what it is that God says? God can neither deceive nor be deceived, therefore his word must be true, and cannot possibly be false. God’s word is the highest 151 and most conclusive evidence conceivable of the truth of what is asserted in his word, and, if the truth, then reasonable, for nothing is more reasonable than truth or unreasonable than falsehood. It would, therefore, be as unnecessary as irreverent and impertinent to examine God’s word to see if what he asserts is reasonable before yielding it our assent. We know beforehand that it is true, or else God could not affirm it, and that whatever conflicts with it is false and unreasonable; and the lawyer himself will admit, we presume, that the highest possible reason for believing is God’s word, in case we have it. Let us consider so much settled.

The next step is the proof or certainty that what is alleged to be the word of God really is his word. His word is his revelation. Suppose, then, that he made his revelation, and deposited it with the apostles whom he commanded to go forth and teach it to all men and nations. The apostles would, on this supposition, be competent and credible witnesses to the fact that God made and deposited his revelation with them. Suppose, farther, that the apostles transmitted to their successors, or, rather, that the church is the identical apostolical body, continued without any interruption or break down to our time, the church would then be a competent and credible witness to the fact of revelation and to what is revealed. Being the eye-witness of the facts which proved our Lord a teacher come from God and authorized to speak in his name, and the depositary of the revelation, her testimony is conclusive. She saw with her own eyes the facts, she knows what has been deposited with her, and the commission she received, and therefore her testimony or evidence cannot be gainsaid. She is the living and contemporary witness, and every-way credible, as we have shown in the article _The Church accredits Herself_.[44]

The infallibility follows necessarily from her commission from God to teach all men and nations. This commission from God commands all men and nations in his name to believe and obey what she teaches as his word. If she could err in teaching, then all men and nations might be required by God himself to believe error or falsehood, which is impossible, since God is truth, and can neither deceive nor be deceived. The divine commission to the church or apostolic body to teach carries with it the divine pledge of infallibility.

Now, supposing the church to be what she claims to be, reason itself requires us to accept and obey as the word of God whatever she teaches as his word, since his word is true, and the highest possible evidence of truth. Nothing is or can be more reasonable than to believe the word of God, or to believe God on his word. Equally reasonable with it is it to believe that what the Apostolic Church declares to be his word, really is so, if she is instituted and commissioned by God to keep, guard, teach, interpret, declare, and define it. The only point, then, to be proved is the divine institution and commission, both of which, if the apostolic body, she is herself the authority for asserting, as the supreme court is the authority for asserting its own legal constitution, power, and jurisdiction. This leaves, then, only a single point to be proved, namely, the historical identity of the body calling itself the Catholic Church with the apostolic body with whom the revelation was deposited.

We need not now go into the historical proofs of the identity of the 152 Catholic Church with the apostolic body, for that is easily done, and has been done over and over again; besides, it lies on the very face of history, and Pius IX., the Pontiff now gloriously reigning, is as easily and as certainly proved to be the successor of Peter as Ulysses S. Grant is proved to be the successor in the presidency of the United States of George Washington, the schism of Jefferson Davis to the contrary notwithstanding. Moreover, if the lawyer doubts, as we presume he does not, the identity, we hold ourselves ready to adduce the proofs whenever he calls for them. Assuming, then, the case to be as stated, we demand what in the whole process of acceptance of the faith the missionary proposes to the heathen is irrational, or not satisfactory, to the fullest demands of reason? In fact, the points to be proved are exceedingly few, and those not above the reach of private judgment, or difficult. The authority of our Lord as a teacher come from God was proved by miracles. These miracles the church witnessed and testifies to as facts, and so far her testimony is unimpeachable. Their supernatural and miraculous character we can ourselves judge of. Whether they prove the divine authority of Jesus or not, is also a matter of which we are competent to judge. His divine authority proved, his divinity, and all the mysteries of his person can be rationally accepted on his word, and what his word was, the church who received it is competent to declare. There really, then, is nothing to be proved which the church herself does not either prove or supply the means of proving in order to render belief in what she claims to be, and in what she teaches, as rational or reasonable as belief in any well-ascertained fact in natural science. The motives of credibility which she brings with her and presents to the understanding of all men who hear her accredit her as the divinely appointed depositary and teacher of the revelation God has made to men, and all the rest follows of itself, as in the syllogism the conclusion follows from the premises.

The lawyer does not admit it, and rejects the whole, because he rejects all belief on extrinsic authority. But is not this because he mistakes the meaning of the word _authority_ as used by theologians and philosophers? We have generally found that the men who object to belief on authority understand by authority an order or command addressed to the will, without including anything to convince the reason or to motive the assent of the understanding. This is not precisely the theological sense of the term. The theologians understand by authority in matters of faith authority _for_ believing as well as an order _to_ believe. It is the reason which authorizes the belief, and is therefore primarily authority for the intellect, and furnishes it an ample reason to believe.

Authority addressed simply to the will ordering it to believe, and giving the intellect no reason for believing, can produce no rational belief, and induce no belief at all, and this we presume is what, and all, our legal friend means. Taking authority in his sense, we entirely agree with him, except a command from God is always a reason for the intellect as well as an order to the will, since God is _prima veritas_, and can command only what is true, reasonable, just, and right. His command is his word, and an order from him to the will is _ipso facto_ a reason for the understanding, since no higher evidence of truth than his word is possible. With this reserve, the 153 lawyer is right in his objection to belief on authority, as he understands it, for there is no belief where there is no intellectual conviction. But he is mistaken in supposing that theologians mean only authority in his sense, authority commanding the will, and giving no reason to the understanding; they mean primarily by authority in matters of faith or reason authority for believing, and commanding it only through conviction to believe, which it must do if convinced.

The authority, then, which we assert, is the reason for believing; it is the _medius terminus_ that unites the credible object and the creditive subject, and renders the belief possible and an intellectual act, and so far assimilates it to knowledge. Belief without authority is belief without any ground or reason for believing, and is irrational, unfounded, mere credulity, as when one believes a rumor for which there is no authority. When the authority is worthy of credit, the belief is warranted, and when it is infallible, the belief is infallible. In believing what the church teaches me is the word of God, I have infallible authority for my belief, and cannot be deceived, be mistaken, or err. This is all so plain, and so fully in accord with the demands of reason, that we are forced to explain the repugnance so many people manifest to believing on authority, by supposing that they understand by authority simply an order of a master to believe, without accompanying it with anything to convince the understanding, thus making the act of faith an act not of faith at all, but of mere blind obedience. This is all wrong. Faith as an intellectual act cannot be blind any more than is the act of knowledge, and must have a reason that convinces the understanding. Hence, the church does not censure unbelief in those who know not the authority or reason there is for belief, and, if at all, it is only for their neglect to avail themselves with due diligence of the means of arriving at belief within their reach.

The authority or command of God is indeed the highest reason the mind can have for believing anything, and it is therefore that unbelief in those who have his command or authority becomes sinful, because it implies a contempt of God, a contempt of truth, and practically says to him who made us, from whom we hold all that we have, and who is truth itself, “We _will_ not take your word; we do not care what you say; we are the masters of our own thoughts, and will think and believe as we please.” This is not only irreverent and disobedient, indicating a wholly indefensible pride and self-will, but denies the very principle asserted by unbelievers in justification of their refusal to believe at the order or command of authority, namely, that it is not in one’s power to believe or disbelieve at will, nor as one wills.

These explanations suffice, we think, to show that private judgment or individual reason is not required by the Catholic to judge “the infinite and absolute,” or to pass upon any matter that lies out of the province of natural reason, and exceeds its competence or finite capacity. It is required to pass only upon the motives of credibility, or the facts that prove the church is a divine institution, commissioned to teach all men and nations through all time the divine revelation which she has received, and of these we are able by our own light to judge. The authority to teach established, all the rest follows logically and necessarily, as we have just said, as in the syllogism the conclusion follows from the premises. The authority being addressed to the intellect as well as to the will, and a 154 sufficient reason for believing as well as obeying, the lawyer’s principal objection is disposed of, and the acceptance of the faith is shown to be a rational acceptance.

But, conceding the infallibility of the church, since her teaching must be received by a fallible understanding, why is belief on the authority of the church less fallible than belief on the authority of an infallible book, interpreted by the same fallible understanding? You say to Protestants: The Bible may be infallible, but your understanding of it is fallible, and therefore even with it you have no infallible rule of faith. Why may not the Protestant retort: Be it that the church is infallible, you have only your fallible private judgment by which to interpret her teachings, and, therefore, with your infallible church have only a fallible faith?

More words are usually required to answer an objection than are required to state it. We do not assert or concede the fallibility of reason, intellect, or private judgment in matters which come within its own province or competence. Revelation presupposes reason, and therefore that man is capable of receiving it; consequently of certainly knowing and correctly understanding it, within the limits of his finite reason. We do not build faith on scepticism, or the incapacity of reason to know anything with certainty. Reason is the preamble to faith, and is competent to receive and understand truly, infallibly, if you will, clear and distinct propositions in their plain and obvious sense when presented to it in words spoken or in words written. If it were not so, all writing and all teaching, all books and all sermons, would be useless. So far the Protestant rule and the Catholic are the same, with this difference only, that, if we happen to mistake the sense of the church, she is ever present to correct the error and to set us right, while the Protestant rule can give no further explanation, or add a word to correct the misapprehension. The teachings of the church need to be understood, but not ordinarily to be interpreted; and, even when they do have to be interpreted, she is present to interpret them, and declare infallibly the sense in which they are to be understood. But the Bible, from beginning to end, must be interpreted before it can be understood, and, while private judgment or reason may be competent to understand it when it is interpreted or explained, it is yet only a fallible interpreter, and incompetent to explain to the understanding its real sense.

The church interprets and explains herself; there are books, also, that carry their own explanation with them, and so need no interpretation or further explanation; but manifestly the Bible is not such a book. It is inspired; it is true; it is infallible; and is, as St. Paul says of all Scripture, divinely inspired, “profitable to teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct in justice, that the man of God may be perfect, furnished to every good word and work” (2 Tim.