CHAPTER XXVII.

CARL YORKE’S ORBIT.

As Dick Rowan gained strength in those first days of convalescence, Edith perceived that he had changed toward her. The manifestations of this change were slight, she was not sure that he was himself conscious of them, but they were decided. It was not that he showed any unkindness, or even indifference, but his being seemed to be--scarcely yet revolving round, but--brooding round a new centre. He frequently became absorbed in contemplation, from which he recalled himself with difficulty, though always cheerfully. Not a tinge of pain marred the peaceful silence of his mood. It was like that exquisite pause we sometimes see in the weather, when, after a violent storm, the winds and blackness withdraw, and there comes an hour of tender, misty silence before the sunshine breaks forth. His eyes would turn upon her kindly, and, still looking, forget her, and she saw that something of more importance had usurped her image.

He was decided and self-reliant, too, in some things, and seemed rather displeased than grateful for too much solicitude on the part of others. He put aside entirely the usual sick-room inquiries. “I am getting well,” he said, “and need not count how often I stumble in learning to walk again. My miserable body has received attention enough. Let us forget it, now that we may.”

Edith began to read, in obedience to Father John, but the books she chose at first did not quite suit the listener. Even the _St. Theresa_ and _The Following of Christ_, which she found on his shelves, did not seem to be what he wanted then. She brought some of her books, but could see that his own meditations were more agreeable to him.

“I do not like to find fault with a pious writer,” Dick said uneasily. “They are all good, but I have thought that some of them sometimes--” He broke off abruptly. “Edith, is there such a word as _platitudinize_?”

“I do not think that it is in the dictionary,” she replied, smiling.

“It is, then, an omission,” said Dick.

“Try the Gospels,” Father John said, when Edith told him her difficulty. “Different states of mind require different reading, just as different states of the body require different food and medicine. I frequently advise people, whom I find having a distaste for spiritual reading, to read the Gospels, and refresh their memory of all the events recorded there by the simply-told story. I always find that they return with delight and profit to the meditations of those holy souls whose lives have been spent in the study of these mysteries. These writers assume that the reader has freshly in his mind that of which they treat. You cannot meditate on a subject, nor follow clearly the meditations of another, when the facts are not familiar to your own mind.”

Edith read the Gospels, therefore, and was astonished at their effect on Dick. Either his perceptions had been sharpened during his illness, or some obstructions had been cleared away from the passage to his heart. This was not to him an old story, worn and deadened with much telling, and slipping past his hearing without leaving a trace, but a tragedy newly enacted, none of its edge gone, every circumstance as sharp as a thorn, tearing in the telling. While Edith read the story of the Lord as told by the four great witnesses, and added the outpourings of those fiery Epistles, the listener’s agitation was so great that she was often compelled to stop. At the chapters which related to the passion, Dick’s hands trembled and grew cold, and his head dropped back against the cushions of his chair. The Epistles of St. Paul stirred him especially.

“Now, Dick, if you don’t behave I won’t read you another word!” Edith exclaimed, one day, when he had started out of his chair, and begun to walk about.

He came back with a stumbling step, and seated himself, wiping the perspiration from his forehead.

“I believe I shall have to postpone St. Paul till I am able to go out-doors,” he said breathlessly.

Observing his eyes frequently wander to the St. Ignatius, she remarked: “He looks as though he were present when our Lord was crucified, and could not forget the sight.”

“We were all present!” he exclaimed. “How can we forget it?”

Long and intimate as their acquaintance had been, Edith thought now that she had not known Dick Rowan well. She had praised, defended, and loved him with sisterly fondness, but always, involuntarily, almost unconsciously, from a higher plane than his. Now she looked up to him as her superior. But, in truth, she had know him well, and done him full justice. The difference now was that the full current of his nature was turned into a higher channel.

One day Hester sent the carriage to take Edith to see the family house, which was as complete as it could be before the arrival of the family. Hester herself was detained at home by company, but she sent a line: “Carl will be there, and the man who is putting up the curtains, and the woman who is cleaning the closet in your room. So you will not be lost, nor want for information.”

Edith had just begun her reading when the note was given to her. She handed it to Dick to read.

“That settles the question,” he said, holding out his hand for the book. “While you read to me yesterday, the thought occurred to me that I could do it for myself, and I meant that this should be your last reading. Go and take the air, Edith. You have been too much shut up. This is your last day but one with me as an invalid.”

She looked at him with a startled expression.

“Because,” he answered smilingly to her look, “to-morrow I drive out, the day after I shall sit down-stairs, and the next day I shall forget that I have ever been sick.”

He looked thoroughly contented and cheerful. There was no lurking sadness, nor reluctance to have her go. Dick was too transparent to hide it if there were. As well might the lake show a smooth surface while waves were rolling below. His soul had, indeed, always been more placid than his manner.

Before Edith had left the room, he was turning over the leaves of the book, a new one to him; and when she stepped into the carriage at the curbstone, he was so absorbed in reading as not to know that she was looking up at the window where he sat. The book rested on the wide arm of his chair, his elbow near it, the hand supporting his forehead. His hair had been cut off, and thus his full brow and finely shaped head were clearly displayed. His hands were beginning to look alive, his cheeks to get back their color. So he leaned and read, and she drove away.

She was going to meet Carl, and she was glad of it, though at Seaton she had thought that she must not see him again. The second thought had shown her how unnecessary and Quixotic this resolution had been, made in the first shock and confusion caused by Dick Rowan’s distress, and her own discovery of the depth of her own affection for Carl. She had since then put aside her own imagination and that of others, and examined her heart as it was, not as it might become under circumstances which she no longer expected to find herself in. She and Carl were nearly related by marriage, and he had been her teacher, and kind and delicate friend. She had lived in the same house with him seven years, a longer time than she had been associated intimately with Dick Rowan, and her intercourse with him had been such as to call out all that was most amiable in his character, and that at a time when her own mind was maturing, and capable of receiving its most profound impressions. She asked herself what the charm had been in her intercourse with him, and the answer was immediate: a quick and thorough sympathy in everything natural. For the supernatural, so careful had he been not to offend her conscience, and so highly had he appreciated religion in her, she had felt no sense of discordance, but only that he lacked a faith which she hoped and expected he would one day possess. Carl had never intruded his scepticism on her. What, she asked herself then, had she wished regarding him? and the answer was no more doubtful; she had wished to be his most confidential and sympathizing friend, and had shrunk with pain from the thought of any one coming nearer to his heart than herself, or as near. Even of these wishes she had been almost unconscious till others had forced them on her attention. Of Dick Rowan’s friendships she could never have been jealous, and she could never have suffered from them. Here she stopped, and set her Christian will and her maiden reserve as a firm barrier against her own imagination or the intrusive imaginations of others taking one step further. She was ready to fling her _Honni soit qui mal y pense_ in the face of any evil speaker.

“Dick Rowan was a good friend to my childhood,” she said, “and protected me from all physical danger and insult, and petted me with childlike fondness; and I have been grateful to him beyond the point of duty, and to my own hurt. Carl Yorke helped to form my opening mind, and patiently and carefully strove to endow me with his own knowledge, and my debt to him is a still higher one. I have a right, when he is going away, to bid him a friendly good-by, and I should be ashamed of myself if I were afraid to!”

Carl stood in the door of his old home, and came down the steps, hat in hand, to assist her. She saw in his face that he felt doubtful whether his presence might not displease her.

“I am glad to see you, Carl,” she said cordially. “I could not believe that you meant to go away without bidding me farewell.”

“I would not have gone away without seeing you,” Carl replied quietly; and they went into the house together. His face had lighted at her greeting. Evidently he liked its frank kindliness, and the entire setting aside of all embarrassing recollections. He had been in the cruel position of a man who, with a high natural sense of honor, has suffered himself to be betrayed into an act which he cannot justify, and is ashamed to excuse. Silence was best.

Edith was delighted with the home-like look of everything in the house, and the good taste displayed in its arrangement.

“I can easily understand,” Carl said, “why you and my mother wished to have as little new furniture as possible. I think we all prefer that which has friendly or beautiful associations.”

He lead her to a portrait, conspicuously placed in the sitting-room.

“I hung dear Alice’s picture here,” he said, “because I thought that her place was in the family-circle.” He sighed. “It is astonishing how cruelly selfish men can sometimes be, without knowing it. Poor, dear Alice thought of me, and I thought of myself. Well, she is safe dead, with no more need of me, and I am left with an unfailing regret.”

Edith was grieved and touched by his self-reproach, and was about to say some comforting word, when he turned to her with a smile. “And I am committing again the same fault which I confess,” he said. “Edith comes out of a sick-room, weary and depressed, and I sadden instead of cheering her. Shall we look about the house?”

They went up-stairs, and he showed her the different chambers. “But we all concluded that you would prefer the one I used to have for my painting-room,” he said. “It is up another flight of stairs, but well repays you for the climbing. You are an early bird, and there you will have the morning sunshine. It is the largest chamber in the house, and has the best view. How do you like it?”

Edith exclaimed with delight. Nothing could have suited her better. Through the windows were visible a wide sweep of sky and a pretty city view. Inside, the room was large, charmingly irregular, with alcoves and niches, and the partial furnishing was fresh and of her own colors. Sea-green and white lace made it a home fit for a mermaid. It was evident that a good deal of care had been used in preparing the place for her.

“You are so kind!” she said rather tremulously.

He affected not to notice her emotion. “All I have done in this house has been a labor of love and delight,” he said, and led her to a picture which bore the mark of his own exquisite brush, the only picture on the walls. “This is to remember Carl by,” he said. “It is painted partly from nature, partly from a description of the scene. It is a glimpse into what was called the Kentucky Barrens.”

An opening in a forest of luxuriant beech, ash, and oak trees showed a level of rich green, profusely flower-sprinkled. The morning sky was of a pure blue, with thin flecks of white cloud, and everything was thickly laden with dew. The fringe of the picture glittered with light, but all the centre was overshadowed by a vast slanting canopy of messenger-pigeons, settling toward the earth. The sunlight on their glossy backs glanced off in brilliant azure reflections, looking as though a cataract of sapphires was flowing down the sky. Here and there, a ray of sunshine broke through the screen of their countless wings, and lit up a flower or bit of green. An oriole was perched on a twig in the foreground, and from the hanging nest close by, his mate pushed a pretty head and throat. Startled by the soft thunder of that winged host, they gazed out at it from the safe covert of their leafy home.

The two went down-stairs into the sitting-room again. “Now, I want to tell you all my plans,” Carl said.

They seated themselves, and he began: “I have thought best to make now the tour which I contemplated years ago. It must be now, or never, and I am not willing to relinquish it entirely. But I am not sorry that I was disappointed in going when I first thought of it, for I was not then prepared to derive the benefit from the journey which I now hope for. I should have gone then for pleasure and adventure; now I make a pilgrimage to gather knowledge. I tell you of this, Edith, but I have concluded not to tell my mother. It seems cruel, and there has been a struggle in my mind, but I cannot do otherwise. I well remember how hard it was to win her consent before, and I believe she was truly glad of our loss of wealth, since it kept me at home. If I should tell her now, the struggle would be renewed, and she would be ill. I am afraid, too, that I might be impatient with her, for I have no more time to throw away. So I shall let her suppose that I am going to make a short visit in England, which is true. Once there, she will not be disturbed at my going over to France for a few weeks. After France, Switzerland follows of course, Italy is next door, and the East is not far from Italy. I have always observed that, when a thing is done, my mother makes up her mind to it with fortitude; but, if it is left to her to decide on anything painful, she is unable to decide, and the suspense is terrible to her. My father knows that. When he really means to do a thing, he is prompt, and makes no talk about it. And, Edith, I shall not tell my sisters nor father, because it will seem more unkind if she is the only one who does not know, and it might compel them to practise evasion. I tell you alone, and I want you to promise me that, if my mother should begin to suspect, you will at once tell her all, and do what you can to quiet her.”

“I promise you, Carl,” Edith answered.

“You can also tell Mr. Rowan, if you have occasion to, if you wish to,” he said, looking at her attentively.

She merely bowed.

“I think that you will approve of my plans,” he went on with earnestness. “I have found what I believe to be my place and work in this vortex of the nineteenth century, and I wish to fill that place and do that work in the best manner I can. I have been offered a position as _attaché_ at one of our embassies, but I am not ready for that yet. I am not fit for anything that I wish to do.”

Warming with his subject, Carl stood up, and leaned on a high chair-back opposite Edith while he talked. His face became animated, his manner had a charming cordiality and frankness. When his time should come for speaking or writing, or taking any part in the affairs of his country, he wished to be considered an authority, and to deserve that consideration. To that end, he must have more knowledge, not of courts, or camps, or books, though these were worth knowing, but of people as they live in their own homes, in their own lands, under laws strange to us. He wanted to know the world’s poor, and the world’s criminals, and the world’s saints, wherever he could find them. “You have observed, in drawing faces,” he said, “how one little line will alter the whole expression. It is the same with arguments. A great, loose, sophistical generalization may be as completely upset by one sharp little fact, as Goliath was by David. I want to have a sling full of those facts. A plain hard truth may be made attractive by a single beautiful illustration; and I wish to gather illustrations from the whole world. I hate a sour patriotism, and I would not think, nor speak, nor write narrowly on any subject.

“I can perceive, Edith, that we have much to learn in this country, and I wish to be first taught myself, then to do my part in helping to teach others. We need to learn that the order of society, as well as of the heavenly bodies, depends on a centripetal, no less than a centrifugal force. At present we are all flying off on tangents. We need to learn that there is beauty and dignity in obedience, as well as in independence. We should see that it is better for a people to be nobler than their laws, than for laws to be nobler than the people; and that the living constitution of a living nation is not found on any parchment, but is the national conscience brought to a focus. Why, Edith, those very persons who boast themselves the most on the glorious fathers of our country are, perhaps, the persons of whom those same fathers, could they behold them, would be most unutterably ashamed. I do not mean to be presumptuous, dear; but I see which way my influence should go, and I mean to do my best to make that influence great, first by leading an honest life, and next by polishing my weapons to the utmost. I am talking confusedly. I give you but a rough sketch of my design. Two years, I think, will be the limit of my stay. I am so well prepared by my studies that I shall lose no time, and I have every facility of access to all places I wish to visit. What do you say to it, Edith?”

“I say God-speed, with all my heart, Carl! Your aims are noble. I like to see you in earnest.”

“I am in earnest, dear,” he said. “I feel as a new planet might, that has been turning on its own centre without progress, and is all at once set spinning off on its orbit.”

In the momentary silence that followed, Edith went to a book-shelf filled with pamphlets, and looked them over. “O Carl!” she said brightly, “do you read these?”

They were the numbers of _Brownson’s Review_.

“I have read them more attentively than anything else,” he answered, “and learned more from them. An American best understands the American mind. Pure reason is, of course, cosmopolitan; but reason is seldom so pure but a colored ray of individual or national character intrudes; and I like to choose my color. I think,” he said, smiling, “that I have been quoting that _Review_ to you. I leave them for my father to read.”

Edith’s eyes sparkled. “I thank God that you are on this track, Carl!” she said. “The first I ever read in this _Review_ was an article on De Maistre, and it solved for me a great difficulty. The fragments of truth that I had seen in the mythologies of different nations, and the beautiful Christian sentiments I had found among the pagans, had been a stumbling-block to me; but, when I read that, all became plain. You make me very happy, dear Carl!”

“I do not think that I am pious,” he said, after a moment. “My mind is clear on the subject, but my heart is unmoved. I do not wonder at that, and I am not sure but I prefer it so; to have light pour over my mind till my heart melts underneath, rather than have a mind imperfectly illuminated, and a heart starting up at intervals in little evanescent flames, which die out again, and leave ashes. The former is light from heaven, the latter suggests the lucifer-match to me. As soon as the time shall come, which I calmly await, when I have a clearer realization of the necessity of baptism, I shall ask to be baptized. Till then, I wish my intellectual convictions to be getting acclimated. My sacrifice must be ready before I invoke upon it fire from heaven.”

“Oh! you remind me of St. John of the Cross,” Edith said. “He says, ‘Reason is but the candlestick to hold the light of faith.’”

“Precisely!” Carl replied. “Behold me, then, illuminated by a candlestick, instead of a candle, but--aware of that lack. A friend of mine, a convert, told me lately that he had always regretted having hurried into the church, and to the sacraments, as he did. He did not realize anything, but received supernatural favors like one in a dream. He said that, though he was sincere, and would have given his life for the faith that was in him, he was, for a long time, tormented by the habit of doubt. When, at length, that habit was broken, he used sometimes to long to receive baptism over again, or wished, at least, that his first communion had been postponed to the time of peace. A strong movement of the heart might, perhaps, have saved this trouble; but neither he nor I have been so favored.”

“And yet,” Edith said thoughtfully, “I should have supposed that the first conviction of truth would have moved your feelings. When my mind pointed that way, my heart followed quickly, and pretty soon took wings, and flew along by itself, and left my thoughts behind. I am not sure that I have any intellect in religion. I can think of reasons for everything, if I try, but it does not seem to me worth while, unless some one outside of the church wishes to know.”

“That is a woman’s way,” Carl said, pleased with her pretty earnestness. “A woman goes heart first, or her head and heart go hand in hand, and her finest mental power is the intellect of noble passions. A man goes head first, and his highest power is reason.”

The silvery bell of a clock warned them how long their interview had been. Edith rose. “I must say good-by to you for two years, then, Carl; but you have taken away the sting of parting. While you are on the road to truth, I am not afraid of any road for you on sea or land.”

She gave him her hand. Large, bright tears stood in her eyes.

“Dear Edith, good-by!” he said, and could not utter another word.

They went down the steps together. The carriage-door opened and closed, there was one last glance, and they lost sight of each other.

They parted with pain, yet not unwillingly; for duty and honor yet stood with hands clasped between to separate them. Dick Rowan’s pale face, as they had seen it that night sinking backward into the river, could be forgotten by neither.

When we have wronged a person, though it were unconsciously, we can no longer take the same delight in that pleasure which has given him pain. The pleasure may be no less dear to us, but the thought that it is to be reached only through the sufferings of one who has even a fancied claim on us makes renunciation seem almost preferable to possession.

THE DUTIES OF THE RICH IN CHRISTIAN SOCIETY.

NO. III.

SOCIAL DUTIES.

Under this head we include duties toward certain classes or individuals who are dependent on the rich for their well-being and happiness. The rich furnish employment to those who live by labor. By their wealth, their knowledge, their power of various kinds, they set agoing and direct those great branches of human enterprise and industry in which the majority of persons in civilized society are the workmen. The welfare and happiness of the majority depend, therefore, in a great measure upon the right discharge of their duties by the minority, in whose hands the direction is placed. In order that these duties may be rightly discharged according to Christian principles, the small number who possess the largest portion of wealth and power must be stimulated and governed by the motive of true philanthropy, the love of their fellow-men, Christian charity. Those who are dependent need, on their part, the spirit of resignation to the will of God, contentment with their lot, respect and affection toward those who are in a superior position. Where this mutual charity, springing from Christian principles, does not exist in great strength, binding all classes together, sooner or later the rich will despise and oppress the poor; and the poor will hate the rich, biding their time to revolt against and destroy them. The rich ought, therefore, to devote all their thoughts and energies to such an administration of the trust committed to them as may produce the greatest possible amount of well-being and happiness among the dependent classes in society, and earn for themselves the respect, love, and gratitude of all.

We will now leave off generalizing, and descend to some particulars. Merchants and others in similar positions ought to take more interest than they do in the welfare and happiness of their clerks. Those who know something of the hardships, privations, and moral danger to which this class of young men are exposed in New York will not dispute the assertion we have made.[13] It may be extended to the corresponding class of young women. And we have here the opportunity of citing the example of a work undertaken by one of our merchants, which illustrates our thesis much better than pages of explanation. We refer to the great institution contrived, and now almost completed, by Mr. Stewart, which may be seen, and is worth being seen by every one, on the corner of Fourth Avenue and Thirty-third Street. This princely undertaking is a sample of that benevolent and magnanimous effort in behalf of a numerous and interesting class of the employees of the rich which we are aiming to recommend.

The need of looking after the interests of those who are engaged in the harder and rougher kinds of labor is much more stringent. The tenements and daily surroundings of the laboring class of people in great cities, the many squalid discomforts and miseries which invest their lot in life, have been the frequent theme of those who, either from real or pretended philanthropy, concern themselves with social questions. Here again, we may cite the example of another princely merchant, Mr. Peabody, as an illustration of what might be undertaken and accomplished, if the whole body of wealthy men had the same spirit and would make similar efforts. The condition of the laboring class is too hard. They are too much neglected. It is not safe to leave them in this condition, and, more than this, it is not right to do so. Let us specify some particular instances of the ill-treatment or neglect of certain classes of workingmen. There are not a few who are most unreasonably and cruelly overworked both by day and by night, especially such as fill the most arduous kinds of employments about railroads. The life of the Southern negro slave was paradisaic, compared to that of the miserable drudges who work in the stables of our horse railways. The conductors and drivers of our city cars and omnibuses are worked to death on a pay so meagre that stealing has become a kind of recognized necessity of their situation. How can these men go to church on Sundays, approach the sacraments, or enjoy an innocent holiday? There is a wonderful amount of breath and ink expended in our enlightened city upon our religious rights and liberties. Yet the men who are employed to take care of the Central Park cannot find even a single half-hour on a Sunday morning to go to Mass.

Let any one who wishes to appreciate the blessing of living in this nineteenth century, in this land of light and liberty, and enjoying the fruits of that advanced civilization which communicates the greatest amount of happiness to the greatest number, take a tour of the New England factories. He will there see spectacles to rejoice his heart, if he is both a wealthy and a righteous man, and cause him to exclaim: “God, I thank thee that I am not as other men, _especially as these Irishmen_, and that my wife and children are not like theirs!” The writer of these articles has had a long and extensive experience as a missionary among the Catholic population of the factory towns of New England. In almost every instance, the persons who have had charge of the factories have been extremely polite and obliging during the continuance of the missions. Often they have manifested an interest in their success, and have granted facilities to the operatives to attend the exercises. So, undoubtedly, has it been with the masters of slaves on the Southern plantations. These things cannot, however, make slavery to be freedom, or the condition of operatives in factories one that is fit to exist in a society which pretends to be Christian or civilized. There are plenty of kind-hearted, philanthropic men among New England capitalists. We do not suppose that all those who give so largely to foreign missions and Bible societies have either made their fortunes by selling opium and rum to the heathen, or are seeking merely to salve over a remorseful conscience and gain applause from men by their liberality. Yet even those who are conscientious and benevolent are carried along by a system which is bad and cruel. We do not mean that it is bad and cruel by accident merely. Many of its crimes and cruelties are purely accidental, and prove only the wickedness of particular persons. If a building is put up in such a slight manner that it falls and crushes hundreds, this is the crime of those particular persons who caused it to be built in such a manner. If the superintendent of a factory abuses his power to corrupt those who are under him, that is his own sin. But if the principles and laws of the system produce moral and physical misery independently of the individuals who carry it on, the system is essentially vicious. It is even the cause of the accidental and exceptional villanies which occur under it, because it tends to produce a cruel and tyrannical spirit.

The essential vice of the system lies in this. Capitalists seek to make exorbitant profits, without regard to anything but their own selfish interests. They care not for their operatives. These are, consequently, overworked, and employed at too tender an age, and to a great extent are underpaid. They are regarded and treated as working machines, and not as moral and religious beings. There is something repulsive, gloomy, and uncivilized about the aspect and surroundings of a factory or a factory town. The life which is led there has the most stern and sombre elements of the monastic institute, without the compensating charms and attractions. It has something also of the state-prison discipline, something of the poor-house, and a great deal of the _Commune_. There is a dismal and frightful regularity, like that of a treadmill, in the existence of the population of our factory towns of New England. Everything is arranged both in the mills and the boarding-houses with such clock-work regularity, and with such scanty allowance for any other functions of life except those which are physical, that the place would suit much better for a variety of apes with sufficient intelligence to work machines than for human beings. Sunday is free, it is true, thanks to the small amount of Christian law which still survives in our country. Catholics can therefore go to Mass and sermon, as they do in thousands, crowding the vast churches which they have built for themselves, in spite of the weariness of their week’s labor. But as for confession, it is made almost impossible, and without that they cannot enjoy the greatest of their Sunday privileges, holy communion. We will not enlarge on the obvious fact that the regular amount of work exacted is excessive. But what is to be said of those who take even more than the regular and excessive number of hours in the day from their overworked rational animals? At Manchester, N. H., during a mission in which the writer was engaged, the operatives of one factory were employed until half-past nine in the evening. Some of them, who made a desperate effort to snatch what they could of the advantages of the mission, complained to us that they were half-dead with fatigue, and too jaded to care whether they had souls or not. We asked if the extra hours of work were not voluntary. The answer was, that they were so in appearance and in pretence, but that they did not dare to refuse volunteering for extra work, for fear of being punished by the ill-will of their overseers, and even discharged at the first convenient opportunity.

At another New England town, West Rutland, Vermont, we found that for a considerable time the workmen in the marble quarries had been forced to take _store-pay_ for their wages. All the land, the houses, the different branches of business, were in the hands or under the control of a few capitalists, who would not permit any of the Irish laborers to acquire property or gain a permanent and independent footing on the soil.

These are scattered instances, but they tell a great deal, and well-informed readers will know how to fill up the picture for themselves. Many persons engaged in the system of which we are speaking will admit its evils and hardships. They excuse themselves, however, by the plea that they can personally do nothing toward changing it for a better one. Private efforts, they say, would only injure those who made them, by enabling the merciless and unscrupulous to fill up the market and sweep up all the profits. Legislation, they say, is hopeless, because controlled by these very unscrupulous capitalists. Senator Wilson has made this assertion in regard to New York. He says it is controlled by what he calls a feudal moneyed aristocracy. Others would probably extend the observation to a much wider sphere than New York. We do not generally agree in opinion with Senator Wilson. But we agree with him most heartily in condemning and denouncing such a regime as this. Only, we would suggest that a more appropriate name for it would be, instead of _feudal_, FOODLE ARISTOCRACY. It is not only cruel, but despicable. Mammon was the “meanest spirit that fell,” and the worship of the golden calf is the most degrading of all idolatries.

The miserably poor, the helpless, the suffering, and even the morally degraded and vicious classes of the community have also their claims on the charity of the rich. We have no wish to deny that these claims are very generally acknowledged in modern society, and a great deal done to acquit them, both by organized and by individual liberality and effort. We occasionally see extraordinary instances of generous philanthropy towards one or another suffering class of men. Very lately, we have seen the Roosevelt Hospital opened, an extensive institution founded by one of the old Knickerbocker gentlemen of New York, who left $900,000, the bulk of his fortune, for this purpose. The miseries of our social system are nevertheless so vast and fearful that the remedies furnished by either public or private care are wholly inadequate. Perhaps many persons will say that they are remediless. There are those who look on the world and life with cold and merciless eyes. It is a struggle of animals for their selfish enjoyment. Let each one look out for himself, and the unlucky take their chance. When such persons are prosperous and powerful, they scorn and oppress the weaker individuals who are dependent on them. Knowing their own depravity, they believe in that of all other men. They are therefore perfectly pitiless toward their fellow-men. “The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.” Others who are not cruel are sad and disheartened. Although they mourn over the appalling miseries of life, they look on them as the inevitable destiny of the human race, and do not believe it is possible to help them. The philosophy of the first class is diabolical, that of the second is unworthy of Christians. We do not mean that they err in respect to the point of fact that these miseries have always existed and will exist. But we do say that they err in ascribing them to the essential order of the world, to the constitution of society, to human _destiny_, and not to the wilful sins and negligences of men; they err in not believing that God has provided a remedy which on his part is sufficient and adequate for these miseries; and, therefore, they err practically, if they do not endeavor to apply that remedy as far as they can to those miseries with which they come in contact. Does one of these ask what hope there is of a fundamental reformation in society which will remedy the crying evils all benevolent persons see and deplore? We answer, that, with all its faults, the nineteenth century is really remarkable on account of the general interest which is felt in the improvement of the condition of the working and suffering classes. What is wanted is the knowledge and application of the right principles and means for accomplishing the result. Communism, secularism, and every kind of system which denies or ignores Christianity, is a remedy worse than the disease, which can only produce death. Imperfect or sectarian Christianity, although capable of producing partial and limited improvement, is too weak for the task which its more generous and enterprising professors exact from it, and endeavor to stimulate it to undertake. It is only the Catholic Church which is competent to such great and universal works. She alone has the wellspring of divine charity, and the supernatural agencies for distributing its health-giving, fructifying streams. Therefore, the hope of a thorough application of the divine remedy to the dreadful diseases of humanity is precisely commensurate with the hope of a return of the whole people of nominal Christendom to true Catholic Christianity.

Meanwhile, the duty of each individual is to do what he can for the benefit of those who are within the sphere of his own efforts or influence. Let him pay attention to his own dependents, and to the poor and suffering who are immediately around him. No one who has wealth, power, or influence of any kind will have any reason to complain that he lacks the opportunity of doing good to his fellow-men, if he is really desirous of doing it. Even if his position is altogether that of a private person, he can do his part, and that a good and noble one, in the general work of human redemption. If he has the power and the opportunity to act upon society, as a public man in a greater or lesser sphere, let him remember that he is a Christian, and act accordingly, and he will be doing precisely what those great and good men did in former times who were the creators and improvers of our Christian civilization.

FOOTNOTE:

[13] An incident has been related to the writer of this article, within a few days, which may serve as a sample of some of the grievances, and these not the worst, of this class of young men. Complaint was made to the head of a large house that the clerks were obliged to stand up during the whole day, and the reply was made that they must keep on standing if they died for it. One more fact which we have heard reported is worth recording: that in certain places, deduction is made from the wages of clerks for Christmas and New-Year’s Day. We cannot help wishing that a New York Douglas Jerrold may start up from behind some counter, or out of some comfortless sleeping-bunk, to do justice to this fruitful theme.

EASTER EVE.

The midnight chimes had just done ringing, and the old church was very still. All day long there had been comers and goers, and the altar had been wreathed, the stone church carpeted, the clustered pillars entwined with flowers and with evergreens. Round the altar, that stood among the carven stalls like a May-shrine in a dark forest-glade, was an amphitheatre of blossoming verdure; boys’ hands had piled up the lilies, the violets, the roses, the fuchsias; and monks’ hands had reared up the pyramid of palm, and ivory magnolia, and many-colored rhododendron beyond. The palms were golden, not green it is true, but they were very precious, and could not be spared to-day from the festive decoration, for they had come from Palestine, and only last Sunday had been offered to the church. An Eastern guest had walked in the procession on Palm Sunday, and had dedicated these lovely foreign boughs to the God of East and West alike.

Everything was ready for the early celebration of the Paschal Mass--even the golden chalice lay under its pall of satin upon the altar of sculptured cedar-wood. Perhaps the transverse timbers of the rare wood had not forgotten the time when the sea-breezes blew on them on Lebanon’s heights, and when the voice of the young crusader, Hugh of Devereux, had bidden them fall in the service of God and help to build him another sepulchre in a Christian land.

“The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars!”

And now there was no one in the old church but the youngest chorister, Benignus, the nephew of the monk Cuthbert. The child was never happy save by the altar, and had no friend but Cuthbert, because he was of the blood of the lords of Devereux, and his poor betrayed mother was no more.

Midnight chimes are sweet, and the child had a weird passion for their sound, and would sit entranced while they slowly rang out an old well-known church-chant. But when they had done, and he thought there was silence, he heard a sound he knew not growing out of the chimes, but different from them, something graver than his childish companions’ prattle, something sweeter than the monks’ low tones, something that seemed like his own soul speaking to itself.

It came from the belfry, straight like an arrow of sound, and muffled itself in a faint echo among the flower-forest round the altar.

And presently he could make out the words:

“I have spoken to God, and offered him the last vows of dying Lent, and woven into song the speechless prayers breathed over and yet trembling on thy jewelled brim.”

And the child knew it was the angel of the bell who spoke.

And presently there rose a sound from the dim-robed altar, and the voice of the angel of the chalice made answer: “My cup is as a bell uplifted, with its song of joy hushed in the very words of God, and drowned in the flood of ruby light that quivers, living and sensitive, within my golden walls.”

“And my cup,” returned the voice of the bell, “is as a chalice inverted, with its saving wealth outpoured in strains that reach the human ken; endowed with a speaking, living tongue that can touch the human heart.”

“I speak of men to God, while my fragile stem bears the wondrous purple flower of the precious blood, and while I am reared aloft with the divine burden weighing on me, even as the cross was reared up high over Jerusalem’s walls.”

“And I speak of God to men while my brazen clangor is heard afar like the trumpets of Israel before the crumbling walls of Jericho.”

And here the soft breeze from the open lancet-windows rustled among the sweet-smelling shrubs around the altar’s base, and, as the night-wind passed over them, their voices seemed to be blended into its sighs, and to have found an interpreter in its fitful sound.

“We are children of many climes, and some of us are exiles in this land, but under this roof we are at home again, and at this festival none of us are strangers. We too, in all our variety, have scarce one blossom among us that is not a chalice or a bell; that holds not high its crimson cup towards heaven to receive the crystal dew, or hangs not its white or purple bell with golden tongue towards the unheeding earth. On the altar of green turf, on the swaying columns of interwoven boughs, on the storm-tossed belfries of vine-surrounded trees, in southern swamp or northern forest, in tropical wilderness or rosy-tinted orchard, everywhere is stamped the semblance of the church, with chalices upreared, with bells anxiously bent human-ward. O brothers of the altar and the tower, let us sing together the same hymn.”

And the child Benignus said softly to himself:

“O God! make _my_ heart a chalice, and _my_ lips a Christian bell.”

The voices of the flower-chorus spoke again, and the lilies of the valley sang a silver peal behind their grass-green curtains:

“Every day we die by thousands, but our seed is borne afar, and drops in some fair nook at last, beside a running brook or beneath a spreading beech, even as the last echo of the unwearied bell that knocks at some heart’s door, far away in the mountains of worldly care, and strikes a well-known, long-silent chord, and draws the exile back to the fruitful plains of God’s own church.”

The voice from the wind-rocked steeple came in swift and loving answer:

“Even so, my blossom-sisters, for to us the word was given to increase and multiply and fill the earth, and at every step bring forth fresh glory and conquer fresh realms for the God of our creation.” Then the living gems stirred again under the breath of the still midnight breeze, and the voice came forth anew as the royal cactus and the purple morning-glories flashed like sun-touched clouds in the dusky foliage:

“Every day our lives are drained and our treasures rifled to adorn with living beauty the banquets of great men, and to strew the halls of marble palaces, and yet every day, as the sun comes forth again, our parent stem is laden once more with exhaustless riches and a more abundant harvest of loveliness, even as the lavished treasures and the scattered wealth of the daily chalice are ever being shed without intermission from the altar into the hearts of thankless men.”

And the sweet low voice came back from the shrouded altar: “Yes, dear emblems of God’s loving prodigality, for hath he not said: ‘Cast your bread upon the waters, and after many days it shall return to thee‘’?”

The scarlet fuchsia shook its clusters of purple bells, planted on a blood-red cross, as if it would say to men that none could proclaim God save they proclaimed him from Calvary. The tall Nile lily, whose cup is as a spotless shroud wrapped round a golden nail, swayed in the night air as if whispering that the way to the resurrection lay across the instruments of the passion: the ivory-tinted roses, the first-born among their kind, whose clustering, half-blown buds made a sculptured reredos of living alabaster behind the altar-cross, wept tears of dew when the midnight breeze shook their curled petals, as if weeping like sinless virgins over the wrongs they knew only by name. A carpet of violets was spread below, the last offering of Lent, the fringes of the sweet pall of penance under whose folds the church spends her yearly vigil of reparation.

The heart of the child Benignus was breaking with joy and love, and he longed to be a flower himself, that he might sing the hymn the living grove had sung.

The voice of the angel of the bell answered his unspoken wish:

“Wish not that thou wert other than that thou art, for Jesus said, ‘Unless ye become even as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.’”

And the flowers sighed, and gave forth a sweeter fragrance, because they longed to be little children, and could not.

Then Benignus wished he might be an angel, if he could not be a flower, and the voice from the altar sounded very softly, so low he thought no one could hear it but himself:

“This wish will I put into my cup, and when to-morrow dawns, and Jesus finds the first-fruits of this new Easter laid at his feet, thou shalt have thy answer.”

Then came a soft chorus of welcome and congratulation, breaking forth among the flowery worshippers, but the angel of the bell held his peace.

And in the morning, when the sun flung his golden curtains across the east window and crowned the saints and virgins thereon with richer gems than living monarchs wear, the Paschal procession came winding through All Hallow’s church, and no one missed the little chorister Benignus. But when his turn in the anthem came, a voice seemed to float from some unseen corner, and a shower of bell-like crystal tones rang in triumphant cadence to the very roof, and no one could tell if it were Benignus or an angel singing. The organ ceased, and the monk Cuthbert looked anxiously along the lines of white-robed choristers, but the child was not there. Still the voice sang on, and it seemed as if it floated now from the chalice on the altar to the distant belfry-tower, and then back again to the fragrant forest of exotics in the choir. And Cuthbert, looking up among the half-opened buds of the early roses that were piled up directly over the tabernacle, thought he saw one more lovely than the others just break gently from the frail green stem, and fall in showering petals around the pall-covered chalice, at the very minute the wondrous voice ceased in one long reverberating “Alleluia.”

Then Cuthbert knew who had been singing and where Benignus was, and he sang the “Gloria in Excelsis” as he had never done before.

But the angel of the bell was sad, because the child would have helped him to bear abroad the message of God’s truth to men.

THE TWENTY-FIRST CATHOLIC CONGRESS IN MAYENCE.

FROM DER KATHOLIK.

It is evident that we have reached a turning-point in the history of the world; that a crisis of terrible interest for the church, for Christian Europe, for peoples, and for nations, is at hand. It must, indeed, soon be decided whether Christianity shall continue to be, in the life of the nations, what from its very nature and design it is intended to be; whether it shall remain what it has been acknowledged to be since it overcame the heathenism of old, the light of the world, the supernatural leaven permeating all the relations of life, purifying and ennobling them; or whether it shall be cast out of public life as an illusion, and at most--and who knows how long even that?--be tolerated as a species of superstition. The nations--and especially the recently founded German Empire--must soon decide whether they shall accept as their basis the laws of eternal justice, whose root is in the holy and personal God, and in him alone; whether they will hold to that Christian civilization which reposes on the public recognition of Christianity, of the church as a divine institution not subject to the arbitrament of man; in fine, whether they will respect as sacred those prescriptive rights of mankind which every one must respect who believes in the divine government of the world--rights of which history is the evidence; or whether they will yield to the pressure of the revolution and of false science, throw Christianity and Christian civilization overboard, proclaim the present will of the dominant political powers or party the only and highest law of the state, and, having done this, to use their immense power to infuse this “modern” spirit and these “modern” principles into the life of the people, and force it on them by every means at their disposal, through legislation, government patronage, their system of public instruction, and the whole organization of society; in short, whether they will place naturalism and rationalism instead of Christianity, the vital principle of national and popular life, and thereby--no intelligent person can doubt it, for reason and experience conspire to teach it--hasten for the nations the inevitable catastrophe of which the burning of Paris was only a premonitory symptom.

And precisely at this fatal moment in the history of the world it is that, in Germany, a number of men, among them a few who have deserved well of the church, blinded to a degree which it seems hard to account for, have raised the standard of rebellion against their mother, the church, because the Œcumenical Council did not think fit to decide as they thought best, because it decided as it pleased the pastors of the church and the Holy Ghost. The foundation-stone of the church, laid by Christ himself, to preserve unity and love within it for ever, has become a stumbling-block to them. They have made shipwreck of the faith, and burst the bonds of love that held them in union with their brethren in the faith. Following the example of those who before them rebelled against the church, they call themselves defenders of the faith, while denying the very principle on which all faith reposes. Proclaiming human science the supreme authority in matters of religion, placing it above the highest authority in the church, above the Pope and the council, above the assent of the whole Catholic world, they have ceased to be servants of God and of his church; they have gone over to the rationalism and naturalism which are striving so hard to do away with Christianity entirely, and to constitute themselves in its place a new cosmopolitan religion.

The turpitude of their rebellion against the church is equalled only by that of the means which they have adopted to defend it and to spread its principles. Repeating the worst and most perfidious slanders of the past against the church, and giving them out as the result of science, they proclaim to the world that the Apostolic See has for a thousand years been the seat of well-concocted fraud and deceit, and that in the most sacred of matters; that the Catholic Church is dangerous both to the state and to morals; and that the decree solemnly proclaimed by the Œcumenical Council, that Christ will for ever preserve his visible representative on earth from all error in faith and morals--a belief which has always been the key-stone of Catholic faith, Catholic life, and Catholic practice--is a doctrine inimical to the rights of the state. Under these pretexts, they require the state to deprive the Catholic Church of its rights, and of the liberty which has been guaranteed to it by the state, and not to recognize the church represented by the bishops and the Pope, but themselves, who have renounced all allegiance to it, as the legal Catholic Church, the only one recognized and promised protection by the state. Moreover, they desire that those Catholics who have remained faithful to the church shall be looked upon as recreant to the state, accusing them of want of patriotism. Designating all those peoples embraced in the Catholic Church by the name of the _Romanists_, they, in the name of what they designate Germanism, demand their oppression and extirpation.

And, we are sorry to say, these attempts have not been without some success. Individual governments have been induced to take steps against the church which, a short time ago, it was supposed it would be impossible to take, and which the Catholics living under those governments did nothing to warrant.

During this condition of affairs, the one hundred and twentieth Catholic Congress met in the second week of September in Mayence, to give expression in no weak or ambiguous terms to their faith, and to their views on the condition of things; and they did it with that unanimity and certainty which Catholic faith alone can give--a faith neither anxious nor troubled with doubt, or weakened by the spirit of the age.

This they did by their resolutions on the Roman question, on the Vatican Council, and on the more recent opposition that has been made to its decrees--and rightly; for, in the Roman question, the question of all external Christian law and order reaches its culminating point, as do theirs the constitution of the church itself, and the whole of Catholic faith, in the decrees of the Vatican Council.

The occupation of Rome is simply robbery--a crime against the church, against every individual Catholic which nothing can justify, which no principle of international law can excuse or cover, which no prescription can make valid. The so-called guarantees made to the church by the Italian government can never be accepted, because they are based upon the false principle that the state alone has the right to declare under what conditions the church and its pastors shall exercise their functions as teachers, priests, and shepherds of the flock--functions which they exercise in virtue of the power conferred upon them by Jesus Christ himself; because these laws do not by any means guarantee to the Pope the free discharge of his supreme authority as chief pastor, and, moreover, because there is not the least security that these guarantees will be respected. The occupation of Rome and of the Quirinal is the culmination of the policy of the Italian revolution, and the success of that policy the disgrace of this age. That the governments of European nations have done nothing to defend the Pope is an injustice to their Catholic subjects, a violation of the law of nations, and paves the way, necessarily, to the violation of all law and the overthrow of all order. And this is why it is that Catholics must for ever discountenance all these acts, and oppose them by all legitimate means. And their opposition cannot be rightfully construed as insubordination to the powers that be, or as a want of patriotism on their part. On the contrary, Catholics may be sure that in so acting they will be doing their government and their country the greatest possible service. Such service has been rendered by the resolutions of the Catholic Congress in Mayence.

It was well that, at the first general meeting of the society after the occupation of Rome, its members should give expression to their thought on the wicked act by which, for the third time in this century, it was attempted to destroy the work founded by divine Providence since the christianizing of the world, in order to secure to the head of the church his liberty and the efficient discharge of the duties of his high office. Nor could the members of the society express themselves concerning this crime otherwise than in bold words of truth and justice--in words becoming an occasion when the interests of God and man are alike at stake--in words such as nature itself puts into the mouth of those who have been the victims of great injustice or great misfortune. Worldly policy may wait, and consider itself justified in waiting, to take account of circumstances; but for us Catholics there is but one thing to do when the question is simply this--whether Christ or Antichrist shall reign, namely, what the martyrs did under circumstances still more aggravating, what God himself has commanded us to do, what we see his representative on earth doing--to proclaim the truth to those in power before kings and peoples.

It was, if possible, yet more necessary that the Catholic Congress should make a public profession of its faith in the decrees of the Œcumenical Council of the Vatican, that it should raise its voice against those proceedings of the government which have no object but to hinder the Catholic Church in the declaration of its doctrines, and to lead or force Catholics into heresy. And on these points again the association, in its resolutions, speaks the truth, and expresses the Catholic view on them, in the plainest and most direct manner, without any show of diplomacy or of pedantry. We joyfully profess, say they, our faith in everything which the church requires, particularly in the infallibility of the Pope teaching the universal church, and in the very sense in which the Vatican Council has defined it, do we believe it. And we are convinced that the definition of this truth in our time is no evil, but the work of a kind and good Providence, intended to strengthen the church, to preserve unity, to reclaim the erring. We reject with horror the caricature of the doctrine of Papal infallibility which the opponents of the Vatican Council have drawn, and we repudiate the slander that this doctrine or any other article of our faith is in conflict with our duties as subjects of our government, or with the allegiance which we owe our fatherland. We protest against the course of those governments which have endeavored to hinder the propagation of Catholic doctrine within their territories, and to favor the opposition to the church by their protecting the rebellion against it. In this manner, they have overstepped the bounds of their rightful authority, infringed the rights of conscience of their Catholic subjects, and made themselves responsible before God for a host of evils. The political principles which have led to these things are in conflict with the law of God, in fact with all law and order, and can never be recognized by Catholics as right or just. Yet are we not without the hope that the governments which have been guilty of these things will at no distant future forsake the unholy path upon which they have entered.

But the members of the Catholic Congress did not confine themselves to professing the Catholic faith, to raising a protesting voice against the encroachments on their liberties and on their rights--rights which should be ever inviolate; they pointed out the fertile source from which have flown as well the most recent evils as the more ancient ones which have done so much injury to the Catholic life of Germany. The source of all these evils, past as well as present, is in a science grounded on false principles, and which appropriates to itself exclusively, but not with any show of reason, the name of German science. These evils can be healed only by the cultivation of real Catholic science in Germany, and the most recent events demand absolutely that the reign of such a science should be inaugurated at once. But so long as the ancient institutions founded for Catholic purposes ignore, for the most part, the object of their being; when they have gone over, to a great extent, to infidelity or to secular management, it is extremely important, both to pastors and people, that new seats of science, of education, of real science and Christian education, should be established.

Such are the principal resolutions of the Catholic Congress held during the present year. What these resolutions contain is only the echo and essence of the thought of the assembly expressed in the orations and sayings of the members--the deep, unanimous, and undoubted convictions of all. These same thoughts found expression also in their addresses to the Holy Father, to the Bishop of Ermeland, to the Bavarian Episcopate, to the Bishops of Switzerland, as well as to the defenders of the Catholic faith in Italy and Austria. But is it right to assume that the voice of all Catholic Germany has been heard, and is heard, in the voice of this general meeting of Catholics? True it is that they would entirely misunderstand the essence and the spirit of the principles of the members of those meetings who would invest their doings or their sayings as a society with any authority; but they would err no less grossly who would consider these meetings as mere party meetings, or as meaning nothing as merely the coming together of a few private individuals. From the very significance of this year’s meeting’s resolutions, it may not be amiss to examine the question somewhat more closely--how much importance is to be attached, what significance and authority such Catholic meetings may have.

These general meetings are nothing more than the coming together of believing Catholics. They do not assume to have any power or authority ecclesiastical or political. They have nothing in their own right that entitles them to be considered as possessed of such power or authority, nor have they a power of attorney of any kind to represent any one else in these meetings.

In the church no one has any power whatever except those to whom Christ has granted it, and only such power as he conferred upon them. But he has granted no power to any one in the church but to Peter and the apostles. On this account the Catholic Church recognizes no representatives, save only the pope and the bishops. There is no such thing among Catholics as lay-participation in the government of the church. Laymen have no power in church government that is theirs of right, and they in no manner take the place of or represent even the inferior clergy. Every tendency in that direction is heretical and schismatical.

The society in question, and all other societies of the same nature, have recognized, acted upon, this principle from the beginning. Being Catholics and wishing to remain Catholics, they have never interfered in the government of the church. On the contrary, they consider it their duty to show to others the example of the most religious submission to the Pope and the bishops in matters relating to faith and ecclesiastical discipline. They, therefore, represent no party in the church. The church wants no parties and recognizes no parties within its bosom. Following the church, the general meeting of Catholics negatives every division in the body of the church. Its only desire is to find itself always one with the church in all things, to be simply Catholic and nothing else.

There is no use in wasting words to show that the Catholic Congress and other Catholic societies claim no power of any kind whatever in the state. They neither represent a political party, nor do they belong to any, nor will they ever constitute themselves a political party in the state.

True, the members of the societies are very far removed, as they ought to be, from an unreasonable, unmanly, unchristian, and un-Catholic indifference in matters pertaining to the nation. They are by no means of opinion that it matters nothing to a Catholic to which party in the country he belongs. They believe firmly that it is the duty of Catholics, as well as their right, to watch over the rights of the church and of its members, and to defend them by the exercise of their political franchises. They do not, however, doubt that it is perfectly legitimate for Catholics, wherever they are, to organize themselves into a party for the exercise of their political rights. But as the political life of every individual Catholic is different from his religious life, and that, although he may be guided in his politics by the principles of Christianity, in like manner these associations of Catholics, inasmuch as they are Catholic, are something higher and broader than mere political associations. Their objects are not the political, but the religious and ecclesiastical rights of Catholics. This has been the universal understanding of the members of these associations from the very beginning of their organizations. These have been the principles which have always guided them, and which they have found it well to be guided by. These associations have never allowed themselves to forget these principles. They have never forgotten them, not even in times of the greatest political excitement. And in the last general meeting, the members of the association did not swerve from these principles by as much as a hair’s breadth.

And precisely because these associations have held to their principles as Catholics, to the very principles we have been mentioning above, are they entitled to attention. They manifest, in a manner that can be relied upon, the mind and conviction, the determination and feeling, of those who are true to the church and to the faith. It thus happens that this general meeting of Catholics has given expression to the thought and feeling of the Catholic clergy and Catholic people. And hence it is that those who would learn what Catholics think and feel on the stirring questions of the present must turn their attention to the resolutions of this Catholic Congress. There is unmistakable evidence that these general meetings express the feeling and ideas common to all Catholics. For twenty-three years they have enjoyed the complete confidence of the bishops of the church. The Holy Father and the bishops of Germany have never hesitated to bless and to approve the efforts of the Catholic association. This were impossible if these meetings did not give expression to the Catholic mind on the questions of the day, if there were any danger in them of a departure from the principles of the faith or of the church. Moreover, we may ask, Who are they that take part in these meetings? They are precisely those persons who with living faith partake of the sacraments, and are in habitual attendance at the services of the church, and in the life of the church generally. During the twenty-three years of their existence, these Catholic associations have in every German diocese and everywhere been one with the clergy on all subjects. Zealous and true Catholics of every social position have been largely represented in them. Hither have come the Catholic nobleman, the Catholic of the middle class, the Catholic peasant, the physician of souls--the priest himself sprung from the people--the Catholic _savant_, the teacher, author, and publicist. Here, too, have been represented those Catholic societies made up of those who really love the church. In short, in those societies are represented those even who are most despised and seldom represented anywhere else. The members of the Catholic Congress are not representatives of their individual opinions; they seek no worldly interest. It were more than folly for any one to come to those meetings with any such intention. Neither do these meetings represent any party on which they are dependent. They represent no majority or minority to whom they are responsible. Their faith and Catholic feeling it is that bring them to these meetings, and those they have in common with the hundreds and thousands from whose midst they come. There is a yet stronger argument to show that these general assemblies really represent the mind of all true Catholics. It is their unanimity on all questions bearing on religion and on the church--a mark which belongs to Catholics exclusively.

After all this, we feel ourselves warranted to say that these meetings express decidedly the feelings and convictions of those Catholics who are _worthy_ of the name.

But these general assemblies not only give expression to the principles and sentiments of Catholics on the questions of the day, they also tend to keep Catholic life awake and active. And just here is the great use of Catholic societies. There never was a more senseless saying than this: “We need no special societies; our society is the Catholic Church.” Precisely because the Catholic Church is a divine and all-embracing society, the society of societies, does it from its inexhaustible fertility call forth from its own bosom, in all times, other smaller societies--societies calculated to meet the peculiar wants of the time. The life of Christian societies, of church societies, is, indeed, a standard by which Catholic life at any particular time or place may be measured. And in our own day, when the spirit of evil more than ever seeks the destruction of the church, mimicking it as he does after his own fashion--to leave the power which societies are calculated to wield entirely to the enemies of Christianity, to those governed exclusively by the spirit of the world, would be to be more than blind.

At the general meeting held at Düsseldorf, Dr. Marx agreed to take upon himself the difficult task of collecting the statistics of the Catholic societies of Germany. At the assembly held this year, he presented the results of his labors. His work is imperfect, it is true, but it is a foundation on which others may build. It embraces the statistics of most of the German dioceses, and of a number of those of Austria.

The amount of vitality in anything or anywhere cannot be made to appear in a table of statistics, and the best things often thrive in secret. Hence it is that the Catholic life of Germany is much greater than even these tables or any others would give one reason to believe. On the other hand, much that appears on paper in statistics of this kind is of no importance whatever, or of almost no importance. Yet the statistical tables before us demonstrate that numerous live Catholic associations, and of the most varied character, have arisen during the last twenty-three years, and that each general assembly has made itself felt--now in one place, now in another--furthering the creation of such local associations. Societies purely religious, such as brotherhoods, sodalities, congregations, are not at all or scarcely at all referred to in these tables. It was part of the plan of the work that they should be excluded from its tables. Yet they are of the very first importance to the life of the church. Well-conducted societies and sodalities for young people and of adults like those which, thanks be to God, are springing up on every side, and particularly in the Rhine lands, are the best nurseries of real Catholics. Rightly, therefore, do these general assemblies continue to commend such societies, as the general assembly did this year the “Society of Young Merchants,” which was so worthily represented at the meeting. Neither have our Christian social societies and associations been noticed in these tables. And for this reason, again, are we much richer in associations than we should suppose from these tables. On the other hand, these statistics combine with daily experience to show that we are yet only in the beginning of the development of this society-life; that, much as we have to be thankful for, the time has not yet come when we can repose upon our laurels. Rather must we work with all our strength, with inexhaustible patience and devotion at the establishment of Catholic societies. In many parts of Catholic Germany there are no, or scarcely any, Catholic societies, that is, live societies, while in others those which have been begun are now neglected. It is so convenient to allow things to go on in the old way, and so hard--for the most modest association demands some sacrifice on the part of individuals--to establish anything new. Yet a thing which in the great struggle between the church and Antichrist is one of the most powerful means of victory is really worth the highest sacrifice. Is it not time to see that all Christian men should organize themselves into societies, when infidels and free-thinkers so-called are organizing on every side to draw everything to themselves? Our indolence would be all the worse, all the more inexcusable, were we to yield the field to our adversaries, since we, whenever there is a question of real live associations, possess so great an advantage over every other body, not on account of our own merits, but because of the spirit and strength of Catholic Christendom. Let the world surpass us in material means, let it be far above us in its appeal to worldly interests; it is wasting the vital power of faith and Catholic love, which alone are able to establish and to develop associations possessed of real life--associations which can be productive of real good.

How true this is, is shown by the history of the Catholic association founded by the departed but never-to-be-forgotten Kolping. Based only on Catholic faith and relying for support on the very simplest of human means, it has during the past twenty-five years had a steady growth and accomplished untold good. And it will ever be so, so long as it holds to the simple Catholic principles of Kolping. To these associations of young people founded by Kolping others have been joined recently--associations in which the masters of these young people meet. To complete the good work, there is nothing now needed but similar societies for apprentices.

What Kolping did for young mechanics must, with suitable modifications, be now done for those of both sexes occupied in factories and other such establishments. This is the most important step that can be taken by Catholics, to solve certain social questions, and which can be solved only on Catholic principles. Indeed, the greatest social danger of the age is the dechristianization and demoralization of the laboring classes of mechanics and the employees in manufacturing establishments. This dechristianization and demoralization are, to a great extent, the cause of the wretchedness of these classes, and make that wretchedness, even under the most favorable circumstances, incurable. What enormous dimensions has this evil assumed under the, in part at least, so unnatural, social, and economic relations which modern liberal political economy has brought about! But even the evils resulting from this condition of affairs might be healed, if the laboring classes could be restored to Christianity. The Society of Young Mechanics, founded by Kolping, demonstrates that, even under the most unfavorable circumstances, the laboring classes can be redeemed from evil and reclaimed to right, provided they can be made to enter the atmosphere of Christianity in which the members of these societies live. Let us work unanimously and for the same object, and we shall see the number of Christian laborers increase. We shall see them living more and more in one another, associating with one another, and being strengthened by that association. When we have such men, and not before, it will be possible to make those associations really useful in the improvement of the material condition of the laboring classes. So long, indeed, as the laboring classes themselves remain unchristian and immoral, it will be impossible to do anything for their material improvement; for they will never be satisfied. Only by strengthening the spirit of Christianity in all classes of society can legislation itself be made Christian, and it will become Christian just in proportion as the several classes of society become Christian.

Let us now examine in brief the most important movements which the general assembly of this year has initiated toward the establishing of Catholic societies.

For a number of years, the principal subject that has engaged one section of the Catholic Congress is the Christian solution of the so-called social question. Through the efforts of the assembly, the question has been fairly brought before the clergy and the laity. The session of this year has, under this head, recommended the establishment of Christian social associations, the raising of helping funds, the encouragement of appropriate literature, the circulation of the _Christian Social Journal_, and the erection of dwellings for the laboring classes. They have pointed out how important it is to study on every hand the condition of the laboring classes, in order to discover the principles on which we must proceed, in order to legislate concerning labor and the laboring classes in a just and Christian manner.

The general assembly has, moreover, recommended the Catholic missionary associations in the most emphatic manner. Among these, the first place belongs to the Society of St. Francis Xavier for Foreign Missions, and the Society of St. Boniface.

Considering the terrible blows that have fallen upon France and upon Rome, it has become our duty to redouble our efforts in behalf of the missions to foreign parts, and in behalf of the Society of St. Francis Xavier; for on those efforts must depend, in a great measure, the permanency and spread of Catholic missions the world over. Unfortunately, the Society of St. Francis Xavier has gone backward rather than forward, in Germany, during the last ten years. In many places it has ceded to other societies. And yet it should not be so. The Society of St. Francis Xavier is and must remain the first and most important of all missionary associations. It embraces the missions to all parts of the world, and they all look to it for support. Even Germany has been helped by it more than by any other association; and now, although the Society of St. Boniface has extended so widely, it cannot be dispensed with. Therefore it is that all Catholics, and, above all, the clergy, who are always in all matters pertaining to Christianity the divinely appointed leaders of the people, should take the deepest interest in the Society of St. Francis Xavier. The Society of St. Boniface will suffer nothing from this. On the contrary, the more the Catholic spirit is strengthened, the more will this and every other Catholic society thrive. As truly as the church embraces the whole world, so truly can we not be real Catholics if we feel an interest only in the missions of our own country, but none in the missions to other parts of the world.

True it is that charity demands us to look first to the wants of those who are our nearest neighbors. And on this account the Society of St. Boniface cannot be too strongly recommended to our benevolence. The general meeting has done its duty in this matter. It has recommended the society in very earnest terms.

Besides these great societies, there are other smaller ones with special objects of charity in view--smaller, but by no means unimportant. The Society of the Holy Sepulchre is, independently of its religious object, the most powerful auxiliary of the missions in the East. The Society of St. Joseph is doing the work of the Society of St. Boniface among the large and exposed Catholic German population in large and foreign cities, and especially such cosmopolitan cities as Paris and London.

A work of the highest importance is to care for the emigrants to America. Here it is possible to do a great deal with little means. The Committee on Emigration, presided over by Prince von Isenburg, has placed its cards of recommendation at the disposal of all parish priests, in order that emigrants presenting those cards to the agents of the Catholic Emigration Society in America may receive proper advice and direction in their new homes, and--who would have imagined it?--those cards of recommendation have been used much less than one might rightfully expect.

How great is sometimes our ignorance or indifference concerning the interests of religion! It was, certainly, only right that the general assembly of this year should have approved the founding of an association, that of the Archangel Raphael, whose sole object it is, besides the saying of a few prayers for the success of this movement in behalf of the emigrants, to defray the heavy expenses of the same, and thus to relieve the president of the committee of that charge. We hear many exclaim just here, We have too many associations, too many meetings! We know very well that, when societies increase beyond measure, even when those societies are benevolent ones, there may be danger. But that there may be danger is no reason why we should not encourage the organization of such societies when they may be necessary or useful. We do not, however, wish to blame the taking of steps to prevent too great a competition of societies having charitable or other objects in view.

The Catholic Congress this year could not well help--as, indeed, all those which preceded it did--considering the school question. There can be no question that the anti-Christian party in the state is straining every nerve to do away, by means of legislation, with the right of Catholic parents to a Catholic education of their children in Catholic schools--with the right of the church to instruct her people in a Catholic manner, and to found institutions for that purpose. The members of the assembly spoke on these matters in no ambiguous terms, and took, besides, into consideration what they should do in case the state, siding with the liberalism of the day, should banish the Catholic religion, the Catholic Church, from the schools of the nation. Should this happen, there was nothing left but to appeal to the consciences of parents. It then became the duty of bishops to tell their people that it was not allowed them to send their children to unchristian schools. Liberty of education must be defended to the utmost, and every sacrifice made in order to give Catholic children opportunities for a Catholic education from the primary schools to the university. But the impression is not hereby intended to be conveyed that in this Catholics see the salvation of the church, of her children, and of the nation. No; they will always remind princes and states that it is their solemn duty to govern a Christian people in a Christian manner, and, leaving out of consideration the sacredness of the foundations and the right of the church to teach, to give their Catholic subjects Catholic schools--schools standing in proper relations with the church.

Yet, on account of the more universal questions, and the great contests which the church is waging for her most important possessions, for the independence and for the integrity of its faith, the school question, even at this meeting, was held somewhat in the background.

The general assembly was content with adopting a few resolutions, embodying the simple principles which must guide Catholics, should the state break with the church on the school question, and, violating the natural and prescriptive rights of Catholics, introduce a system of non-Catholic schools--principles not sufficiently recognized by even well-meaning Catholics. These resolutions are worded thus: “The monopoly of the school system by the state is an unwarranted restriction of liberty of conscience, and therefore to be opposed by all Catholics. Very many of the schools have notoriously been founded by Catholics, and it is only just that they should continue to accomplish those ends for which they are established. In these schools, and in all Catholic schools yet to be established, the Catholic Church must possess perfect and unrestricted liberty in its capacity as a teacher.” Thus, while the school question was not the most prominent before the general assembly, the words spoken at that meeting will not, we hope, be without beneficial results in the province of Catholic education.

All rights and liberties avail nothing in the end if Catholic education itself is not what it ought to be. And the great battle that is waging, that education may not be deprived of its Christian character, can be won by us only on condition that teachers and educators themselves, as well as parents and the clergy, understand precisely the full bearing of the question.

It was, therefore, a happy thought to unite teachers, clergy, and parents into one grand society, in order to further the great matter of Christian education--a matter on which our whole future for weal or woe depends. The association of teachers founded in Bavaria, approved by the bishops, embracing among its members many distinguished men, and directed by one evidently called by God to fill that very position, Ludwig Aner, has sought and is seeking to carry this thought into practice. The Catholic Congress held at Düsseldorf had already called attention to the importance of establishing similar societies elsewhere, only modified in their character by the different nature of place or other circumstances. The realization of this thought was a matter for the meeting at Mayence to consider more closely yet. There was here assembled a goodly number of educators and friends of youth from every part of Germany, among them a number of the most widely known teachers in the country; and they took occasion to most earnestly confer on this matter each day of the meeting. They gave a general plan, and threw out some very practical hints for the organization of Catholic educational associations.

We give them here with the hope that they may prove as fertile in blessings as did those thrown out on a former occasion, and which resulted in the Society of St. Boniface, and in the Catholic Association for Young Men, so often recommended by those meetings since.

The matter is one of at least as much importance, and the general plan of the organization of these societies at least as simple and practical. Here are the broad outlines of the plan: “The task of education, rendered more than ever before difficult on account of the times in which we live, and the school question, now everywhere looming into such immense proportions, render the foundation of Catholic educational institutions imperative.”

The Mayence Association of Teachers--pointing to the association already existing in Bavaria--suggests the following as the ground principles of the new associations:

I. The Catholic educational associations recognize as their foundation, first and last, the faith of the Catholic Church.

II. Excluding all party issues, their only object is the furtherance of the temporal and eternal welfare of youth.

III. The Catholic educational associations desire that the youth of the age should profit by all that the world has of good, and that in their education all that it has of evil should be avoided.

Therefore, they are ready to accept and to use all that there is of real worth in the educational systems of the age, all that can promote real progress.

IV. These associations consider the proper education of youth in the family, the schools, and later in life, that is, after the youth have left the schools, as their exclusive object.

Therefore is it that they accept as members, parents, teachers, the clergy, and all who, in any manner, are interested in the education of youth.

V. They recommend to these associations, 1. The defence and propagation of Catholic principles in education by word, writing, and action. 2. The defence of the rights of parents to the Christian education and Christian instruction of their children. 3. The improvement of the family education of children, of schools, and the providing of means for the continuance of education after children leave schools. 4. The furtherance of the interests of teachers, to support them in their efforts in the direction of education, and particularly to help to elevate their material and social position; the collecting of funds to aid in the education of teachers, and in the support of their widows. 5. The encouragement of literature bearing on the interests of education. 6. Founding and caring for educational institutions of all kinds--schools for children, boys, girls, apprentices, etc.

VI. The means for attaining the objects of these associations are, besides the means suggested by the very nature of our holy religion, 1. Periodicals; 2. Appropriate publications for teachers and for families; 3. The establishment of libraries and literary associations; 4. Co-operating with other associations--the pecuniary assistance needed in any case to be obtained by regular fees from the members, presents, etc.

VII. The getting up of particular by-laws to be left to the associations from each separate province, but the by-laws to be got up in such a manner that the above principles be not ignored.

The elevation of the tone and the support of the Catholic press must ever be one of the principal objects of all Catholic associations, and of the general meetings.

This year a great number of Catholic publishers and editors came together at this meeting. All the principal organs of the Catholic daily press were represented. The principal object gained was that they became acquainted with one another, which is the first step towards their understanding and appreciating one another.

As far as the press is concerned, we Catholics have nothing to do but to look at things just as they stand. It is certain that the unrestricted freedom of the press, which every one is ready to abuse, and which allows every one to constitute himself a teacher of the public, can be defended neither on principles of reason nor of faith. It is certain, too, that the rank growth of periodicals which has followed with all its attendant evils, and the heterogeneous character of the reading of a great many people, is a deplorable evil. But as, unfortunately, an unchristian press is guaranteed the fullest liberty and the evils that flow from that liberty, are widely spread, it becomes not only our privilege, but our solemn duty to combat the unchristian by a really Christian press--a matter on which the church and the head of the church have spoken in an unmistakable manner. Yes, it is absolutely necessary to call a Catholic journal into existence on every hand, and to spare no sacrifice to do so. The beginnings of the Catholic press have been everywhere small, and those who have interested themselves in it have everywhere had to contend with untold difficulties. This is true particularly of the larger journals, which, to enable them to compete with other journals, need support from other sources besides that derived from subscriptions and advertisements. It is certainly the duty of Catholics, out of pure love for God and for the church, to establish Catholic press associations, in order to provide means for the support of Catholic papers, just as the government and political parties find funds to support their own organs. The financial difficulties which the larger journals have to fear consist sometimes only in the apprehension of too great a competition on the part of smaller or other journals. There may be such a thing as a reprehensible competition, when, for example, as in the same locality attempts are made to found or establish new journals of the same nature as those already existing, when those already existing are sufficient to supply the demand. But, on the whole, we have by no means thus far enough Catholic papers. There was a time, and it is not yet entirely over, when Catholic Germany had very few papers among the daily press of the country. And almost every one of these few papers had an equal prospect, and it naturally enough seemed to be the ambition of the editor or proprietor of each to make his paper the central organ of the whole of Catholic Germany.

Naturally enough, too, those pecuniarily or otherwise interested in these journals looked with a rather jealous eye upon all attempts to found other Catholic journals. Whenever a new paper was established, the old ones lost a number of subscribers, and sometimes fears were entertained for the existence of the older papers themselves. But experience has shown that these fears were unfounded. Wherever and whenever a paper was properly managed and ably edited, it has contrived to live and to do well. Thus competition has, on the whole, worked advantageously rather than otherwise.

If we look at the matter closely, we will see that it is quite an abnormal state of affairs that Catholic Germany should possess so few of the larger political papers. Compared with the time when Catholics had no press at all, the existence of even one good paper through which they can give expression to their thoughts is a great blessing and a great gain; but that certainly does not enable them to give their voice that weight in the questions of the day to which it is entitled. Besides, it must be remembered that, if Catholics have not this class of papers, they will take periodicals which are not Catholic. Experience teaches, and it might be expected from the very nature of things that a paper can rarely obtain a very large circulation outside of the locality in which it is published. Outside of these bounds it will find only a few isolated subscribers. Hence it follows that every large city ought to have its own Catholic paper, one that will worthily represent it.

These papers outside of the place of their publication will thus find a number of subscribers--a number which will always depend upon the ability with which they are edited, the reliability of the views they advocate, and the interest which on other grounds they may awaken. We cannot, however, be satisfied with a so-called central organ, or with a small number of large papers. No, every large city should have its Catholic paper, and support it, cost what it may. We thank God that such papers have, during the past year, been established in many parts. That such a journal should be established in the capital of the new German Empire, at the seat of government, was an evident necessity; and it is one of the most pleasant events in the history of our time that a paper like the _Germania_ should have in a short time taken its position as a first-class and widely circulated Catholic journal.

All our already existing Catholic journals, and all those to be hereafter established, instead of hindering, will help one another, and that from the very fact that they exist; for, the stronger the Catholic press becomes, the more the attention of the nation is called to it, the more secure must become the existence of each individual journal. Therefore, we hope that there will be no jealousy between those interested in different Catholic journals; that, on the contrary, they will help support one another at all times. Still more important is it to take a proper view of the smaller local press. It would be a great absurdity were Catholics to neglect the establishment of smaller Catholic journals lest they should interfere or compete with the larger ones. This competition is not dangerous; but it is dangerous to put no antagonist in the field to meet and to oppose the unchristian press in smaller places. The large journals can neither be paid for nor read by the vast majority of the inhabitants of such places--and does it not seem wrong to leave them, or the Catholics among them, to the evil influence of a press totally antagonistic to the faith? The establishment and support of such papers is not hard, and the financial difficulties which stand in the way of the larger papers for the larger cities are not to be here encountered. Wherever the matter of the establishment of such papers has been rightly taken in hand, it has proved successful. If the clergy only take the matter under advisement, they will find those willing and able to carry the matter through. It is not a very hard matter to purchase a press and find subscribers in such places. A feature which will contribute not a little to aid in the matter is the finding of the proper person to carry the papers around and to canvass for subscribers and advertisements. By being thus practical, Catholic men have established Catholic papers in localities where one might have despaired of ever establishing them; and not only have they been established, but they have succeeded. No matter what the condition of our press, it is far from being in a state to despair of. Oh! if the children of light were only as wise as the children of the world, we should witness wonders. It is true that evil makes its way in this world better than goodness does; but it is also true that goodness does not prosper, because those who represent it take the matter too lightly, or do not go about it as they should. More is often done for the worst cause than men are willing to do or to sacrifice for the best. A great deal has of late years been done for the local press, and we sincerely hope that a great deal more will be done and more universally, and need requires us not only to pray, but to act and make sacrifices.

Other proposals were made at the general meeting to carry out projects, which of course the general meeting itself could neither undertake nor perfect, as, for instance, the furtherance of this or that literary undertaking; yet these proposals are not without their use. They suggest something or call attention to something already existing. Thus, at the present general meeting the establishment of a journal as the organ for the various associations of young Catholics was recommended. The proposer of the resolution was informed that there already existed a journal of that character, and a very good one; that it was published by the associations of young Catholics in Austria, and edited in a very able manner, under the name of the _Bund_ in Vienna; and the general meeting, therefore, recommended it for the purpose named. Many other things relating to the press were touched upon. We feel assured that the general meeting has done much for the Catholic press of the whole country.

We pass over many things bearing on Catholic charity, which ever engages anew the attention of the general meeting. We can only mention that the members of St. Vincent’s Association held a special meeting.

May the blessing of God, which has never failed the Catholic Congress, bless their efforts of this year!

FLEURANGE.

BY MRS. CRAVEN, AUTHOR OF “A SISTER’S STORY.”

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH, WITH PERMISSION.

PART FIRST.

THE OLD MANSION.

VII.

Fleurange’s education did not allow her to yield to her feelings without bringing herself to an account for them, and it was surprising she had thus unresistingly allowed herself to be swayed so long by a vague and unreasonable preoccupation. And could there be one more so than this about an unknown person--a stranger she had only had a glimpse of, with whom she had not exchanged a single word, and whom she would probably never behold again? This was the third time she had heard him spoken of since the day she saw him in her father’s studio, and each time she felt agitated and disturbed. When questioned by Dr. Leblanc, her first emotion was overpowered by surprise, and especially by the sad remembrances awakened. Afterwards, when Julian Steinberg mentioned Count George at the Christmas dinner, his name gave her a thrill, but she attributed this keen sensation to a natural interest in the hitherto unknown individual who purchased the picture which had played so important a _rôle_ in her life. But this time the quickened pulsations of her heart and the ardent curiosity with which she listened to every word that was uttered were succeeded by a prolonged reverie which almost merited the name of madness. “Yes, Julian was right! That is really what he looks like!” she exclaimed aloud. And every hero with whom history, poetry, or old legends had peopled her imagination, passed one by one before her, but always under the same form. Then, as there is no hero without heroic feats, and no heroism without combats and perils, a series of terrible events succeeded each other in her waking dream--battles, shipwrecks, desperate enterprises, and dangers of all kinds, in which the same person was the chief actor, and in all these phantasmagoric adventures she saw herself enacting an inexplicable and indistinct part.

A whole hour passed thus, but the declining day recalled a habit contracted in childhood which changed the current of her thoughts and brought her to herself. It was sunset--in Italy, the hour of the Ave Maria. Fleurange never forgot it. Every evening at that hour, a short prayer rose from her heart to her lips.

Every one is aware of the power of association. We have all felt the influence of a tone, a flower, a perfume, and even things more trifling, in recalling a host of remembrances of which no one else could see the connection. What a natural and touching thought, then, to associate a holy memory with the hour that links day with night!--the hour of twilight, when the dazzling sunlight is fading away, work is suspended, and propitious leisure brings on long, sweet, and sometimes dangerous reveries! In such a case, it is not surprising the evening star becomes a safeguard. Has not the effect it had on Fleurange been experienced a thousand times by others?

A sudden clearness of perception, strength to prevail over all earthly phantoms, an aspiration towards heaven, an instantaneous revival of early impressions, an influx of salutary thoughts dispelling the confused, illusory ideas floating in her mind--such was the effect now produced by the remembrance indissolubly associated with that evening hour. She resolutely got up. Her attitude, that had been languishing, her look lost in space, were now transformed. She awoke to a sense of duty, and the feeling was not a transient one. What was this madness that had overpowered her? Putting this question to herself brought a blush of confusion to her face, and made her resolve to resist and overcome reveries so vain and absurd. And to this end she would cut them short. She reopened her note-book, and began by tearing out the page on which was the name but just written; then, with no further examination of her thoughts, even for the purpose of self-reproach, which would have been another way of prolonging them, she seated herself at her table, and took up a volume of Dante which lay there. She had promised Clement to mark some passages of the canto they read together the evening before, and to add some notes from her own memory. She at once set herself to work, and endeavored to give her whole mind to the occupation. It is often easier, we all know, to abstain from an act than to repress a thought. Perhaps the volition is at fault in the latter case; but Fleurange was so firmly resolved to obtain a victory of this kind that, at the end of half an hour’s effort to keep her mind on her work, she thought herself successful. She would have been more sure of herself had she foreseen all that was so soon to come to her aid, and banish from her mind for a long time all vain illusions, vague reveries, and especially all exclusive self-preoccupation.

It was quite dark when she rose from the table. She heard the clock strike, and felt ashamed of remaining so long in her room by herself, at a time she should have been unusually attentive to others. This was the last evening Clara would spend at home previous to her marriage, and it ended a period of unalloyed happiness in the Old Mansion. One place in the family was about to be vacated, a beloved form disappear, a cherished one cease to make part of their daily life. They would probably see each other again, but it would not be as before. The happiness of her who was to leave them would change its nature, but even her mother hoped she would be so happy as never to regret the paternal roof. Clara’s smiling face was grave and tearful to-day, as her tender glances wandered from her parents to her brothers and sisters, and lingered lovingly on the old walls she was about to leave. Julian was terrified by her melancholy appearance, but felt reassured when Clara, smiling and weeping at the same time, said to him naïvely:

“Julian, it is you that I love! To-morrow I shall leave them all for you, and I truly feel I never could give you up for them. Is not this enough?”

“No. If I do not see you calm and full of trust, I shall not enjoy my happiness.”

“My trust in you is boundless.”

“And yet you tremble, and your eyes are turned away.”

“Because the unknown happiness of a new life makes me anxious, and terrifies me in spite of myself.--I tremble, I acknowledge, but I do not hesitate. I am afraid, but I wish to be yours, and no fear would induce me to resume the past or repulse the future--for the future is you!”

It may surprise some to learn that this young girl, in speaking to her betrothed of their approaching union, expressed unawares the sentiments death inspires in those souls whose love extends beyond the grave, and who, triumphing over their weakness and limited knowledge, ardently long, in spite of their fears, for the eternal union that awaits them.

One of these beings, holy and gifted, being asked, as her life was ebbing away, what impression the prospect of death made on her, hesitated, and then replied:

“The impression that the thought of marriage produces on a young girl who loves, and yet trembles--who fears union, but desires it.”

Fleurange, when she left her chamber, went down to the gallery, where she expected to find her cousins, but it was empty. The preparations for the morrow caused an unusual disorder throughout the house, generally so quiet and well-ordered. Clara was doubtless with her mother, but where was Hilda? The latter, she knew, would have another sad farewell to utter the following day, and she reproached herself for having so long lost sight of this fact. She passed through the gallery and opened the door of the library, where she found her whom she was seeking. Ludwig Dornthal and Hansfelt were talking together, and near them Hilda, mute, pale, and motionless, was listening, without taking any part in the conversation that was going on before her.

Hansfelt was talking to this friend of his departure, and spoke as one who was never to return. He was apparently thinking of nothing but their long friendship, their youth passed together, and the end of their companionship, but his accents were profoundly melancholy, and all the harmony of his soul seemed disturbed.

Ludwig, however, was extremely agitated, and, while replying to his friend, looked attentively and anxiously, from time to time, at his daughter. Fleurange softly approached her; Hilda’s cold hand returned her pressure. “I am glad you have come,” she said in a low tone, “very glad.” Fleurange did not venture to make any reply, and scarcely looked at her, for fear of increasing her emotion by appearing to observe it. Seeing an open jewel-case lying on the table, she exclaimed--glad to find something to say: “What a beautiful bracelet!”

“It is a wedding present Hansfelt has just brought Clara,” said the professor.

“Yes, a wedding present, and a parting gift which Ludwig has allowed me to offer one of his daughters,” said Hansfelt. “As for the other,” continued he in a troubled tone, “the time for her wedding presents will doubtless soon come also, but the time for a parting gift has already arrived. Ludwig, in memory of the pleasant years during which I have seen her grow up, and as a souvenir of this last day, will you allow me to give Hilda this ring?”

The professor made no reply.

Hansfelt continued: “In truth, a departure like mine is so much like death, that it gives me a similar liberty to say anything. Hilda, why should I not acknowledge it to you now in his presence? It will do no harm. Well, you shall know, then, that the old poet, whose forehead is more wrinkled than your father’s, would perhaps be foolish enough to forget his age were he to remain near you. It is therefore well for him to go.”

He took the young girl’s icy hand in his. “If he were younger,” he continued, forcing himself to smile, “he might perhaps obtain the right to give you a different ring than this.”--He stopped alarmed. Hilda’s face had become frightfully pale, and she leaned her head against Fleurange’s shoulder. She seemed ready to faint.

“Hilda, good heavens!”

“Zounds, Karl,” cried the professor, rising abruptly. “You try my patience at last. Where are your wits?”

“Ludwig!”

“Yes, where, if you cannot see that you are yet young enough to force me to give you my daughter, if I would not behold her die with grief?”

“Ludwig!” repeated Hansfelt, quite beside himself.

“Of course I am displeased with her for her folly, and I am angry with you too, but I suppose I must forgive you both because--because she loves you.”

“Beware, beware! Ludwig,” said Hansfelt, growing pale. “There are hopes that prove fatal when blasted!”

“Come, now, you must not die yet, nor she either!” Then he tenderly folded his daughter in his arms, and, as she opened her eyes and looked around in confusion, he said in a low tone:

“Hilda, my child, I give my consent. May you be as happy as you desire. You have your father’s blessing.--Come, now,” said he to Fleurange, “let us go to your aunt, and leave them to make their own disclosures.”

VIII.

Madame Dornthal was affected but not surprised at hearing what had just taken place. She had never been deceived as to her daughter’s sentiments, and for a long time had endeavored to open her husband’s eyes. But he was incredulous, and persisted in declaring it was impossible for his friend, his contemporary, his “old Karl,” even to win the heart of a girl of twenty. “It is a mere fancy, which will pass away as soon as she meets a man of her own age who is worthy of her,” he obstinately repeated.

“Perhaps so, but that is the difficulty,” replied the sagacious, clear-sighted mother. “Between you and Hansfelt, Hilda has become accustomed to live in a rarer atmosphere than generally surrounds youth. Whether this is fortunate or unfortunate, I know not; but as long as I perceive only pure and noble sentiments in her heart, which I read like an open page, I do not feel I have a right to oppose them. Believe me, we must not think too much of our children’s happiness, and, above all, we must not plan for them to be happy according to our notions. The important thing, after all, is not for them to be as happy as possible, but to fully develop their worth. Let their souls, confided to us, bear all the fruit of which they are capable. Is not this the chief thing, Ludwig?”

The more worthy one is to hear such language, the less easy it is to reply, and this conversation, which took place the evening before, made Ludwig waver at the interview in the library, and drew from him unawares his consent.

“We shall now lose them both,” said the professor sadly.

“I should rather see them happy, as we are, than happy for our benefit,” courageously replied his wife, with a greater effort than she wished to appear.

All misunderstanding being now cleared away, and the consent of every one obtained, it was at once decided that Hansfelt’s departure should be delayed a fortnight, and at the end of that time he should go, but not alone! The last evening the two sisters spent together under the paternal roof became therefore, doubly memorable; but they were all calmer than might have been expected. The professor, in spite of the suggestions of his reason, in spite of the evident wisdom of his opinion and opposition, could not look at his daughter without feeling that the profound and tranquil joy which beamed from her eyes was permanent and satisfying, and the reflection of that joy on Hansfelt’s inspired brow and softened look involuntarily showed the secret of her affection for him.

“Well, my venerable Karl, it must be acknowledged you look quite youthful to-night!”

“How could it be otherwise? I was withering away, and now my freshness has returned; my life seemed hopeless, and now it is lit up. This resurrection, this new existence, is like the restoration of youth, and, more than that, it elevates and ennobles. If _noblesse oblige_, so does happiness, and what would I not do now to merit mine?”

The following day, the bright sun cast a brilliancy around the form of the young bride, which was declared a lucky omen, in addition to many others carefully noted by the superstitious affection of those who surrounded her.

The Mansion, as we have said, was very near the church, and the wedding procession was made on foot, to the great satisfaction of those who composed it, as well as of the curious spectators. Clara, crowned with myrtle and clad in white, was as lovely a bride as one could wish to see, but there was no less admiration for the two young girls who, followed by several others, two by two, walked immediately behind. It will be guessed they were Hilda, whose beauty was now radiant, and Fleurange, whose black hair and general appearance distinguished her from the rest. The latter, as she passed along, might have noticed more than one look, and heard more than one word, calculated to satisfy her vanity, but she was wholly occupied in observing all the details of the wedding array which surrounded her for the first time in her life. They found a great crowd in church, and as the _cortége_ slowly approached the altar, Fleurange, casting her eyes around, suddenly met a friendly look, accompanied by a respectful salutation. She bowed slightly in return, but without recognizing the person who saluted her, though his face was familiar. Nor did she know the fresh young woman leaning on his arm. A few steps further on, and she recalled her travelling companion, and Wilhelm, her husband, who was her uncle’s clerk. It was he, she felt sure, and she eagerly turned to look at him. She even stopped. At that moment she heard Felix Dornthal’s name mentioned, followed by these words: “They say that is his intended who has just passed by.” Fleurange felt they were speaking of her, and she blushed with displeasure. Then she heard Wilhelm’s reply: “Would it might be so! She might, perhaps, yet save him from--” The rest escaped her as she was borne along by the throng. She did not see Wilhelm or his wife again, and for the present thought no more of this incident.

The ceremony, the return, and the wedding dinner, all passed off with joyful simplicity. At the end of the repast, Clara took off her myrtle wreath, and divided it among her young companions, wishing that they too, in their turn, might find good husbands, and a happiness equal to her own.

It was Hilda who was first honored in this distribution. This signified she would be married before the rest. She took the myrtle from her sister’s hand without any embarrassment, as if she were not ashamed to let others see she joyfully accepted the offering, and regarded it as more than a mere omen.

After Hilda, came Fleurange, and then all the others down to little Frida, who had joined them with several other companions of her age.

“In your turn, Gabrielle!” said Hilda, as Fleurange fastened the sprig of myrtle in her belt. “Your turn will soon come also to wear this crown.”

Fleurange shook her head, and replied with a seriousness she herself could not have accounted for: “That day will never come for me--no, never!”

“Why do you say so?” said Hilda, astonished.

“I do not know.” And then she laughed.

An hour after, she perceived the myrtle had fallen from her belt. She searched for it, having been charged by her cousin to wear it the remainder of the day, but she could not find it.

At nightfall the newly married couple left the Old Mansion, escorted over the threshold and down the steps by all the family, who, with kind wishes and congratulations, there bade them adieu with more affection than sadness, for they were not to be widely separated, or for any great length of time.

Clara’s father and mother accompanied her to her new home. It was a modest, pleasant house in one of the faubourgs of the city, which Julian, with loving interest, had been preparing more than a year for her who was now to take possession of it. Her parents took leave of her at the threshold. Madame Dornthal embraced her daughter, and, while clasping her in her arms, said: “Remember you are now beginning a new life. Continue to give us our share of your affection; but let nothing henceforth prevail over the love which is now your duty.”

“I shall merit a severe penalty,” said Julian, “if this duty ever becomes a burden--if she ever regrets the day she joined her lot to mine.”

The father and mother stood looking at them a moment as they paused at the entrance of the house. They observed the moved and respectful look of the bridegroom. They saw, too, the confiding glance of the bride amid her tears, and they left them without fear under the protection of God!

On their way homeward, the poor father, breaking the long silence, said: “Years hence, when she in her turn is separated from a child, she will understand all we have suffered to-day!”

“Yes, my Ludwig,” said Madame Dornthal, wiping away her tears; “and Heaven grant she may then have, like us, a stronger feeling in her heart than that of grief, which will enable her to bear it!”

They pressed each other’s hands. Never, even in the brightest days of their youth, had this old couple felt so tenderly, so closely united!

They found the Old Mansion brilliantly lighted up. The gallery and library, illuminated and ornamented with flowers and wreaths, were filled not only by the customary friends and relatives, but the two brothers’ whole circle of acquaintance in the city.

It was the custom at that time to end the wedding day with a _soirée_, but a delicate sentiment forbade the newly-married pair taking a part in the festivities, their happiness being considered too profound, too concentrated, to enjoy the noisy gaiety. But here, the unrestrained gaiety was natural, infectious, and wholly exempt from an ingredient too often found in the corrupting influences of society--a sad and fatal ingredient, which inspires ill-toned pleasantries whose effect is to excite smiles and blushes, and a gaiety as different from the other as the laughter of fiends from the smiles of angels! The gaiety here did not profane by a word, a glance, or even a smile, the end of the day which had witnessed a Christian espousal.

Felix Dornthal himself seemed less disposed to jest than usual. He was even grave, absent-minded, and gloomy to such a degree as to excite attention in the morning at church, where he arrived late, and at the wedding dinner, where, appointed to propose the health of the newly married pair, he acquitted himself of the duty with ease, but only to resume afterwards a complete silence. Family festivals were doubtless little to his taste, and perhaps it was _ennui_ that produced so gloomy an aspect. Such, at least, was the supposition of his cousins, who, after declaring him disagreeable, left him to himself. He disappeared at the end of the repast, and now in these crowded rooms he alone was wanting. His absence, noticed by several persons, greatly excited his father’s impatience, who, to-day more than ever, ardently desired to witness before he died the marriage of his son. Illness had brought on the irritability of old age, and Heinrich Dornthal could no longer bear contradiction.

“Where can he be?” repeated he for the tenth time to his neighbor, who, with his look fastened on the door, seemed to share the uneasy expectation of the banker. At that instant Fleurange passed by. She stopped as she saw Wilhelm Müller again, at her uncle’s side. This time she recognized him at once, and, with the natural grace that gave a charm to her every movement, she approached and renewed her acquaintance with him. She learned in a few words that he had been absent, that his wife was restored to health, and had not forgotten her. Fleurange, in return, sent her many affectionate messages. Then she passed on, while her uncle, gazing at her, felt an increased regret, which she was as far from imagining as sympathizing with.

The piano was open. Several pieces had already been played with great success, and now all the younger members of the party were seized with the unanimous desire of dancing, which is so contagious, and in youth often a kind of necessary manifestation of joyousness. The Germans are all musicians, and Clement excelled. He at once divined the general feeling, and seized his violin. Hilda seated herself at the piano. Hansfelt took his place at her side, and the gaiety she fully participated in did not inspire her, like the rest, to leave her place. She was, therefore, in the best mood possible to acquit herself of the _rôle_ which Clement with a glance assigned her in this improvised orchestra. The brother and sister struck up a waltz, and played with that skill, perfect time, and particular animation which, like the waltz itself, is peculiar to the German nation. In an instant there was universal animation.

Fleurange had occasionally danced with her cousins in the winter evenings, but she had never experienced, as on this occasion, the inspiriting effect of so much liveliness and so general an impulse. She involuntarily rose up with a desire to take a part in it, and at that very moment she heard these words addressed her: “Will you favor me with this waltz?”--an invitation so in accordance with the wish of the moment that she replied in the affirmative, and left the place before realizing it was her cousin Felix who was her partner. They danced around twice. Poor Heinrich Dornthal saw them sweep by, and uttered a joyful exclamation--the last that a feeling of hope or of paternal joy would ever draw from him again in this world!

Felix conducted Fleurange back to her seat. She was breathless, pale, and annoyed. While waltzing, he had uttered words she wished had never been said. Scarcely seated, her first impulse was to leave the spot where he stood, and even the room, but she could not. Felix’s hand, placed on hers, forced her to sit down again. Then Fleurange rose above her embarrassment. She comprehended that the time had come to be firm, calm, and decided--not a difficult thing when the heart and the will are perfectly in accord. That was the case in this instance, and Fleurange almost coolly awaited what her cousin had to say.

“I only beseech you for one word, Gabrielle,” said Felix, with more emotion and respect than usual--“one word, and, if you understood me, an answer.”

“I heard you,” said Fleurange.

“And understood?”

“Yes; and with regret, Felix.”

“Tell me plainly, Gabrielle, do you understand that I love you?”

Fleurange blushed and made no reply.

“That I love you to such a degree, my happiness, my future prospects, and my life are in your hands?” continued he vehemently. “And this is true, literally true.”

Fleurange frowned. “Do you wish to frighten me?” she said coldly, turning her large eyes toward him.

“No; I have told you the truth without thinking I could frighten you; but, since you ask the question, here is my sincere reply: Only promise to accept my hand, promise it through fear or love, terror or joy, I will be satisfied, and ask for no more.”

“Then,” said Fleurange slowly, “it is all the same to you whether I esteem or despise you, love or detest?”

“No woman can for ever detest a man who endeavors to win her love--when that man is her husband, and could be her master, but only wishes to be her slave.”

“There is great fatuity in your humility, Felix; but you are frank, and I wish to be so too. I shall never--mark my words--never be your wife!”

Felix turned pale, and his face assumed a frightful expression. “Take more time, Gabrielle,” said he--“take more time to think of it. But, first, listen to me. I am going to say something that may touch you more than a threat or a declaration--” He stopped an instant and then continued: “If you saw a man on the edge of a precipice, would you stretch forth a hand to save him?”

“What do you mean?” said Fleurange, affected in spite of herself, and suddenly recalling the words she heard that morning in the church.

“I ask if you would put out your hand to aid a man in such peril?” He had, in truth, found the means of making her hesitate, but it was only for a moment.

“You are speaking figuratively, I suppose,” said she at length; “and it is a question of a soul in peril, is it not?”

“A soul in peril? Yes,” replied Felix, with a bitter smile.

“Well, I tell you, in a danger of this kind, I would offer no assistance that would inevitably lead to my own destruction.”

Felix rose: “And is this your final decision?”

“Yes, Felix, a decision unhesitatingly made, but not without sorrow, if it afflicts you.”

His only reply was a loud laugh which made Fleurange shudder. She turned towards him, but there was no longer in his look the respect, or the sadness, or the emotion he had so recently shown. His face had resumed its habitual expression of irony and proud assurance.

“I thank you for your frankness, cousin. That is a trait I trust you will retain. It somewhat detracts from the charm you are endowed with, but it will preserve you from some of the dangers to which your eloquent glances expose you. Adieu!”

“Felix, give me your hand as a token you bear me no ill-will,” said Fleurange softly.

“Ill-will?” replied Felix. “Oh! be assured I am too good a player not to bear bad luck cheerfully. Besides, one is not always, and in everything, unfortunate. Certain defeats, they say, are pledges of victory. Come, Gabrielle, forget it all. Give me your hand, and wish me _good luck_.”

Before Fleurange could make any reply, he was gone. This conversation had been so rapid that the waltz was not yet ended. The noise, motion, and music, added to Fleurange’s agitation, made her dizzy. She went to an open window near the piano. At that moment the music ceased, and all resumed their places. Fleurange found herself nearly alone. Clement was still near, and, observing her, quickly laid down the violin he held in his hand.

“You are very pale. Are you ill?”

“No, no, let me go out. I only wish to take the air a moment.”

Clement cast a rapid glance around the room, and then followed her into the garden:

“You were dancing just now?”

“Yes, and I did wrong.”

“Your partner left you before the waltz was over?”

“Yes.”

Clement remained thoughtful a few moments, and then said: “Gabrielle, pardon me if I am indiscreet, but I wish I dared ask you one question.”

“What a preamble! Did we not agree to speak freely to each other?”

“Well, will you tell me why Felix went away?”

“Yes, Clement, and I think you will be surprised. He asked me to marry him. What do you think of that?”

“And you gave him his answer?”

“Assuredly. I said no, without hesitating.”

Clement started so abruptly that Fleurange looked at him with surprise. She saw an expression of joy on his countenance which he could not conceal.

“I see you are no fonder than I of our cousin,” she said, “and are delighted with his ill-success.”

“Delighted? No. Were he my worst enemy, I should pity him at such a moment; but I am very glad of--glad of--” Clement hesitated, contrary to his usual practice, which was to go straight to the point. “I am very glad of a decision,” said he at length, “which will dispense me from ever speaking of him again to you.”

“What would you have done if I had accepted him?”

“What I am glad not to be obliged to do.”

“Now you are talking enigmatically in your turn.”

“No; enigmas are intended to be guessed, and I beg you to forget what I have just said.”

It is uncertain what answer Fleurange was about to make Clement, who was less candid than usual, and therefore provoking, but at that instant she noticed a sprig of myrtle in the button-hole of his coat.

“What! you with myrtle?” she said. “I thought it was only worn by young maidens on such a day.”

Clement blushed, and snatched the myrtle from his coat: “It is yours, Gabrielle. Pardon me. I saw it fall from your girdle, and picked it up.”

“Mine? Indeed!”

“Yes; here, take it, unless,” said he, hesitating a little--“unless you will consent to give it back to me.”

“Very willingly, Clement; keep it as a gift from me. It is a good omen, they say, predicting a fair bride when your turn comes.”

Clement replaced the myrtle in his coat, and gravely said: “That day will never come for me; no, never!”

“Never; no, never! Oh! how strange!” cried Fleurange, in a tone that surprised Clement.

“What is it?”

“Nothing.”

What struck her as strange was that Clement, _à propos_ of this piece of myrtle, had, without being aware of it, uttered precisely the same words she herself had said some hours before.

On the whole, this _soirée_ she found so pleasant at its commencement, ended in a painful manner. She returned to her chamber less cheerful than she left it, but with the satisfaction of feeling she had had no difficulty throughout the day in banishing from her mind the fantastic image she had formed the evening before of Count George.

IX.

More than a fortnight had elapsed. Hilda was married and gone from the paternal roof. Clara and her husband were on their way to Italy, where they intended to remain till spring. Those who remained in the Old Mansion were suffering from the reaction that always follows the confusion and agitation of any event however pleasant--a reaction always depressing even when there is no real sadness in the heart. But this was not exactly the case with Fleurange. Her cousins were both married and happy. She loved them too sincerely not to rejoice at this, but it was not the less true that the house seemed to have grown more spacious, the table around which they gathered enlarged, the library immense, and the garden deserted. The least to be pitied was Fritz, who still had his brother, and was not so much affected by the change; but little Frida mourned for her sisters, and clung more than ever to Fleurange, whose talent for amusing and diverting children was again brought into exercise. Fleurange, on her part, greatly appreciated this distraction as a benefit. The child seldom left her cousin’s room, and they became almost inseparable. One day, while there as usual, Fleurange singing a long ballad in a low tone, and Frida listening with her head against her cousin’s shoulder, a knock at the door made them both start. And yet it was but a slight rap, that gave no cause for the alarm with which she put the child down and hastily ran to the door. She found her kind of presentiment justified.

It was Wilhelm Müller, Heinrich Dornthal’s clerk, who knocked. It was quite evident from the expression of his countenance and his agitated manner, as well as his unexpected appearance at such an hour, that something unusually sad had occurred.

“Excuse me, mademoiselle,” he said hurriedly. “I was not looking for you; but M. Clement has gone out, and the professor also, they tell me. Do you know where they are to be found?”

“I do not know where Clement is, but my uncle and aunt are gone to M. Steinberg’s. They have charge of the garden during his absence.”

“Steinberg’s! It would take more than an hour to go there. What is to be done! What is to be done!”

“What has happened, Monsieur Wilhelm? For pity’s sake, tell me what misfortune has occurred.”

“Misfortune!” he replied, after a moment’s hesitation. “Ah! yes, mademoiselle, a great misfortune has befallen us--but I cannot stop an instant. Pray send for M. Ludwig with all possible speed, and tell him his brother--his brother is dying!”

“Dying!” cried Fleurange. “Uncle Heinrich! Oh! take me to see him while they are gone for his brother.”

“No, no, mademoiselle, you must not go. I cannot consent to it.”

Fleurange insisted, and had already left her room when she met Clement, who had just returned, and heard his uncle’s clerk was in search of him.

“Uncle Heinrich is dying!” exclaimed Fleurange, before he could ask a question. “Let us go to him instantly, Clement, while they are gone for your parents.” And she drew him toward the stairs. Meanwhile, Wilhelm approached and whispered a few words in Clement’s ear. The latter turned pale, but, instantly surmounting his violent emotion, he took Fleurange by the hand.

“Remain here,” he said. “You must not go. Believe me, you must not. When it is suitable, I will come for you.” And he led her back kindly, but firmly, into her chamber, and then went out, closing the door behind him. In less than two minutes the street door was heard to shut in its turn. Fleurange was left alone, or, at least, with only little Frida, who, frightened, was crying. She tried to soothe her, endeavoring at the same time to be calm herself, and patiently bear the torture of waiting anxiously, without the power of action.

It was about five o’clock when Wilhelm came to her door, and of course still light, as it was summer. But day declined, and night came on, finding Fleurange still waiting. Frida, after crying a long time, had gone to sleep in her arms. Fleurange, in spite of her usual activity, wished to remain where she was, that Clement might find her at once when he returned. She heard him order the carriage as he went out, and knew he had sent for his father and mother. She looked at the clock, and counted the hours. Not a third of the time was required to go to the faubourg, and yet they had not returned. They had evidently gone directly to the dying man’s house. And what was now taking place there? Why had Clement dissuaded her from going? She joined her hands in silent prayer: then began to listen again with a feverish and ever-increasing anxiety.

At last she heard the rumbling of a carriage. She softly placed the sleeping child on the bed, and was about to go down-stairs to meet her uncle and aunt, whom she supposed to have arrived. But before she had time, she heard Clement ascending the stairs in great haste. An instant more and he opened the door. Before she could ask the question on her lips, he said:

“Gabrielle, poor Uncle Heinrich is no more!” Then he added after a moment’s silence: “A dreadful shock caused his instantaneous death.”

“Ah! my heart told me I should hear sad news.”

“Yes, sad indeed,” said Clement. And in spite of himself he seemed for a moment suffocated by an emotion too violent to be surmounted.

Fleurange looked at him. There was something besides the shock and grief caused by this sudden death. “Clement, what else has happened? Tell me everything. Tell me at once, I implore you!”

“Yes, Gabrielle,” he said, making an effort to command his voice, usually so firm and mild. “Yes, I am going to tell you everything. I came on purpose to spare my poor father and mother this additional pain. Listen, or, rather, read this yourself!”

Fleurange with a trembling hand took the letter he offered her, and read as follows:

“FATHER: I have abused your confidence. Your name, which you allowed me to make use of, has hitherto enabled me to conceal my losses. With the hope of repairing them, I rashly aimed at an immense prize which chance seemed to offer me. Had I obtained it, all would have been saved. I have been unsuccessful. Ruin has fallen not only on us, but on all whose property is in our hands. Farewell, father, you will never see me again. Do not be afraid of my taking my own life. That would only be another base act. But there are lands where they who seek death can find it. I hope to have that good luck. May I speedily expiate what I can never repair! “FELIX.”

Fleurange silently clasped her hands. Pity mingled with the repugnance, now so well justified, with which Felix had always inspired her, and she could not utter a word. Clement continued:

“This letter, imprudently given to my unhappy uncle this morning, immediately brought on one of the attacks to which he was liable, and which (perhaps happily for him) has proved fatal. He had not time to realize the blow that had befallen him.”

Fleurange herself hardly comprehended its extent. “But where is Felix, then?” she said at length.

“He has been gone a fortnight.”

“A fortnight!” she exclaimed, with a painful remembrance of their last interview.

“He left the day after the _soirée_ at the time of Clara’s marriage.”

“That evening,” she said with emotion, “he spoke of an abyss into which my hand would prevent him from falling. O God!” she continued with the greatest agitation, “could I really have saved him by consenting? Would the sacrifice of my life have prevented this terrible disaster?”

“No; the great stake he made that night was his sole resource against ruin. Why did he talk to you in such a manner? Was it through madness or perversity? It must have been madness, the unfortunate fellow loved you without doubt. I pity him, but--” Clement hesitated and then rapidly continued: “Listen to me, Gabrielle. I am going to tell you something it might be better to keep to myself, but I must justify myself and reassure you, and it cannot injure him now. I regarded Felix with contempt because,” and for a moment there was a flash in Clement’s eye--“because he wished to make me as despicable as himself, and once played the vile _rôle_ of a tempter to me who was then but a boy--because he would, if he could, have drawn me after him into the path which to-day has ended so fatally. Therefore, cousin,” he continued with still more emotion, “had he succeeded in winning your hand, I should have felt it my duty to have warned you of his unworthiness, of which I was too well aware, for I have never forgotten you called me your brother. But I was reluctant to denounce him, and glad, oh! so glad, that evening, not to be obliged to do so--glad you were saved by your own self! And if I tell you all this now, it is to put an end to the fears you have just expressed.”

“And I am grateful to you for banishing them. But, Clement, tell me once more--here, in the presence of God, have I nothing to reproach myself with?”

“Nothing, on my honor, Gabrielle, believe me!”

Clement, as we have remarked, possessed great firmness of character, and a kind of premature wisdom which gave him great ascendency over others. When this trait is natural, it is manifest at an early age, and a day often suffices for its complete development. That day had arrived for Clement, and henceforth no one would ever dream of calling him a boy.

X.

Ruin!--a word at once positive and yet extremely vague--very plain in itself, and yet conveying the idea of a multitude of undefined consequences, often more alarming than actual misfortune, and sometimes suggesting chimerical hopes. And it has a deeper signification when it happens to a person unaccustomed to the calculations of material life, given up to thought and study, and moreover delivered from the necessity of exertion through long years of prosperous ease.

Such was the nature, and hitherto such the position, of Professor Ludwig Dornthal. Of all the misfortunes in the world, that which had now befallen him was the last he would have dreamed of, and he was less capable of comprehending it than of supporting it courageously. Besides, the word _ruin_ may also be taken in a relative sense which mitigates its severity, and this was the way the professor regarded it. With only a faint idea of the extent of the catastrophe, he remained inactively expectant of something to partially remedy what merely related to his finances, being more preoccupied about his nephew’s shameful flight and its fatal consequence--the death of his brother.

Meanwhile, Clement, with the aid of Wilhelm Müller, examined the state of affairs with a promptitude and sagacity that greatly edified the honest and intelligent clerk who initiated him into this new business. Seeing him so quick of comprehension, so firm in decision and prompt in action, he exclaimed with despair in the midst of their frightful discoveries:

“Alas! alas! if your unfortunate cousin had only had your head on his shoulders!”

“My head! It is not equal to his,” responded Clement to one of his companions. “No, no, it is not that, but something else, he lacks. Why have not I, on the contrary, his capacity and wit! Then I might be capable of retrieving our fortunes, whereas my only talent is that of knowing how to endure poverty. Oh! if it threatened me alone, how little I should dread it!”

“Poverty!” interrupted Wilhelm. “But do you not understand all I have explained to you?”

“With respect to my uncle’s creditors?”

“Yes. Do you not see that the principal creditor, the first of all on the list, is M. Ludwig Dornthal, whose whole fortune nearly can be saved from shipwreck?”

“Yes, on condition of the ruin of the remainder.”

“But their claims are not equal to his: he was not his brother’s partner. He had only entrusted his property to him, like so many others.”

Clement made no reply. After a short silence he observed: “The entire renunciation of my father’s property would enable us to repay all the creditors without exception, would it not?”

“Yes, all.”

“Would there not be a single debt in this case?”

“No,” replied Wilhelm, smiling; “not a debt--not a penny.”

Clement again took up one of the papers on the table, and silently read it over once more with the most profound attention.

“Yes, it is really so,” said he rising. “Everything is plain now. I must leave you, Wilhelm. It is after four o’clock, and I am expected at home. I shall see you again this evening, and we will decide on some definite course of action.”

This conversation took place in a lower room of the banker’s house, which had been Wilhelm Müller’s office for many years. He pressed the young man’s hand, and Clement proceeded rapidly towards home.

It was their dinner hour, and his parents were waiting for him. The habits of the family had resumed their ordinary course. The sad routine of life is seldom interrupted more than a day even by the most overwhelming disaster, and this exterior regularity, however painful a contrast to the grief that has changed everything interiorly, helped restore calmness to the soul, and with calmness the courage and strength to act.

Clement was a quarter of an hour late. He went directly to the dining-room, knowing his father’s punctuality. As he supposed, the family were at dinner, and he took his place after some hasty words of apology at his entrance, and then fell into a profound silence.

The fine, spacious room in which they were was one of the pleasantest in the house. Rare old china lined the _étagères_, and the dark panels were relieved by old portraits, all original and of great value, and the most celebrated part of the professor’s collection. The open windows commanded a view of the garden. Verdure refreshed the eye, and the perfume of the flowers pervaded the room. The glass and silver reflected the rays of the sun, though there was a large awning before one of the windows. An air of quiet, opulent comfort everywhere reigned.

Clement look around. All these things, to which he was daily accustomed, now made a new impression on him. He noticed to-day the objects he often forgot to observe, but this examination did not have the effect of weaning him from his sad thoughts. On the contrary, it only increased them, and Clement was deeply plunged in gloomy reverie when he was aroused by his little sister’s voice:

“Papa,” said Frida, “we shall start for the sea-shore in a week, shall we not?”

“Yes, my child,” replied the professor.

“And then we shall go to see Hilda?”

“Yes, she expects us in a month.”

“And after that?”

“We shall return home. It will be time, I think, after two months‘’ absence.”

In fact, that was the longest time the professor had ever been absent from his cherished home.

These few words produced an expression of suffering on Clement’s face which he could not conceal. His mother observed it and questioned him with a look. But Clement turned his eyes away, and did not raise them again till the end of the silent meal, though he keenly felt another look besides his mother’s fastened on him.

“Clement, I have something to say to you,” said his mother as soon as dinner was over. He rose instantly, and followed her into the garden, but before leaving the room he said:

“Father, will you allow me a few minutes‘’ conversation with you afterwards? I have several things to tell you.”

“Yes, my dear son, I will wait for you.” And the professor turned towards the library, where he always spent an hour after dinner.

“Come, tell me everything now,” said Madame Dornthal, leading the way to a bench where they could not be seen from the house.

“Yes, mother, dear mother, it is to you I will refer a decision which my honor and my conscience tell me is required. You shall decide whether we ought to evade or submit to it.”

He began his account, and, while she was attentively listening without interrupting him once, laid before her the details, in all their reality, of the situation in which his uncle’s death and his cousin’s flight had left them.

Madame Dornthal, more accustomed to the practical details of life than her husband, had not shared his illusions. She was much better prepared than he for the sad consequences of a reverse of fortune, but had been far from anticipating its extent. They would be much less wealthy than before, have some privations to endure, and for a time be obliged to practise considerable economy; such had been the extent of her fears. But all this did not appear to so excellent a manager a trial beyond her strength. During the past week she had declared, as often as her husband, that the loss of money was the smallest part of the misfortune that had befallen them.

Now she realized that this loss was something real, something almost as appalling as death, for it involved the end of the life she had been accustomed to for twenty years--an end she must face and at once accept. And she was courageous enough not to hesitate. She embraced her son, and said:

“God be blessed for giving me a son like you! Yes, dear Clement, yes, you are right--a thousand times right.”

“Then you agree with me, mother, that the ruin of the Dornthals should not cause the ruin of any one else?”

“Yes, my child.”

“Our name must remain without reproach, and nobody in the world have a right to curse it?”

“Certainly, Clement, whatever be the consequence.”

“Whatever be the consequence!” repeated Clement firmly. “Thanks, dear mother. I must leave you. It is not my place, but yours, to inform my father.”

“Yes, Clement, it is my place.” She put back her son’s thick hair, and gazed silently at him for a moment with profound attention and emotion. Never had Clement’s eyes expressed more clearly than now the firmness, integrity, and energy of his nature.

“No!” thought she, “there is not among those who effect great things in the world, and leave behind them a glorious and illustrious name, a nobler or more courageous heart than yours, my son! God be praised! Your life will be blessed, even though your worth and all the faculties you possess remain hidden and for ever unknown but to him alone!”

Such were Madame Dornthal’s thoughts, as she gazed with maternal fondness into her son’s eyes, but she did not give them utterance. She pressed her lips once more to his brow, and placed her hand on his head as if in benediction. Clement in return kissed her hand with grave and tender respect. Then he rose and left the garden at once, and, soon after, the house.

He remained absent several hours. It was nearly nine o’clock when he returned. His mother was waiting in the entry for him, and opened the door when he rang. He was very pale, and held a pile of papers in his hand.

“Well,” said Madame Dornthal, “is everything arranged?”

“Yes, mother, everything! These papers only lack my father’s signature. He is willing to give it, is he not?”

“You cannot doubt it, I think.”

“No, but my poor father was so far from supposing--”

“Yes, that was it, I did not fear any hesitation on his part, but only the complete illusion he was under. I only dreaded the effect of surprise and the shock. O Clement! I know not what terror came over me from the frightful remembrance of the other day! My poor Ludwig!”

Madame Dornthal stopped a moment to brush away her tears, then smiled as she continued:

“But be easy, he knows everything now. He comprehends the state of affairs, and feels as we do. It is better, however, that I alone should see him this evening. Give me those papers. And you, my boy, see after your brother and sister. I have not had time to think of them. Ah! and Gabrielle, poor child, perhaps it would be well to look for her also and tell her all. We have nothing to conceal from any one, above all from her.”

Without awaiting a reply, Madame Dornthal abruptly left her son to rejoin her husband in the library, where she remained the rest of the evening.

THE LAST DAYS OF OISIN, THE BARD.

BY AUBREY DE VERE.

IV.

OISIN’S QUESTION.

“O Patrick! taught by him, the Unknown, These questions answer ere I die:-- Why, when the trees at evening moan, Why must an old man sigh?

“No kinsmen of my stock are they, Though reared was I in sylvan cell: Love-whispers once they breathed: this day They mutter but ‘farewell.’

“What mean the floods? Of old they said, ‘Thus, thus, ye chiefs, ye clans, sweep on!’ They whiten still their rocky bed: Those chiefs and clans are gone.

“What Power is that which daily heaves O’er earth’s dark verge the rising sun, As large, the Druid, Alph, believes, As Tork or Maugerton?

“A woman once, in youthful flower, An infant laid upon my knee: What was it shook my heart that hour? I live--Where now is he?

“What thing is youth, which speeds so fast? What thing is life, which lags so long? Trapped, trapped we are by age at last, In a net of fraud and wrong!

“I cheated am by Eld--or cheat-- Heart-young as leaves in sun that bask: Is that fresh heart a counterfeit, Or this gray shape a mask?

“Some say ‘tis folly to be moved. ‘The dog, he dieth--why not thou?’ They lie! We loved! The ill reproved!-- Is Oscar nothing now?

“O Patrick of the crosier staff, The wondrous Book, the anthems slow! If thou the riddle know’st but half, Help those who nothing know!

“Who made the worlds? the Soul? Man’s race? The man that knoweth, he is Man! I, once a prince, will serve in place Clansman of that man’s clan!”

AFFIRMATIONS.

“Instead of considering the physical condition of a nation determining its moral character, we must always regard the moral as determining, as well as moulding and modifying, the physical.”

“As the divine modifies the moral, so the moral modifies the physical, or external.”

“In education all sight has been lost of the _reality_ which is regeneration, and only when this is brought into the soul, will it be fit to receive the spirit.”

“As the body grows older, the mind grows younger, when the will conceives with the divine will in the permanent ground.”

“Christ is desirous to divorce the soul from Satan, and to do this he begins by making the soul uneasy.”

“There are thousands who have been taught to think from learning have yet to be taught to think from the living basis within the will that sustains the thinker.”

“Know thyself is a false maxim. _Be whole_--_or one_--and one with thy Lord.”

“Only does the Jesus spirit in the soul make the soul exhibit the divine essence.”

HOW THE CHURCH UNDERSTANDS AND UPHOLDS THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN.

FIRST ARTICLE.

AGES OF MARTYRDOM.

Women are receiving just now, at the hands of a certain class of agitators, a degree of attention which may be flattering to some, but which certainly is not only intrusive, but unnecessary with regard to many. They are told that their rights are trampled upon, that they must assert and defend themselves, and take their place in the great battle of life. Now, these exhortations have generally been met by copious references to all the undoubted precepts of old, which made the domestic life woman’s own sphere, and consecrated her the minister of all man’s comforts. This sphere of home duties is incontestably theirs; and what is more, while they can help man in his avocations, man, on the other hand, can scarcely help them in their own. But in addition to this, their inviolable territory which they intend never to abandon, let them boldly claim a share of man’s kingdom, and let them make good their claim. People have listened to many women and to a few men on the subject of the so-called “Women’s Rights:” let them listen with indulgence to one woman more, who comes claiming far greater things than they dream of, and yet showing that her claims are but long-established and real _rights_, recognized, defined, limited, and protected by an older code of jurisprudence, and a longer tradition of immemorial custom, than they have as yet been told of by the press or in the lecture-room.

The existence of woman is a fact: it is equally a fact that everything that exists has some work to do in the order of the universe. God himself, in a few simple words, stated what her work was: “Let us make him a help like unto himself” (Gen. ii. 18). The words indeed are so simple that they hardly arrest attention, yet in them lies the whole relation of woman to man. She is to be _a help_; but no restrictive detail is added, so that it is clearly open to her to help man intellectually, religiously, morally, as well as domestically. She is to be _like_ unto him; that is, emphatically not masculine, not a creature that is a _mere_ copy or reproduction of himself, but _like_ unto him, that is, sufficiently like to understand him, sufficiently unlike to love him. Again, no precise relation in which she is to stand to man is defined: she may therefore be a help as a wife, mother, sister, in the domestic circle; she may be a help as a consecrated virgin, as an adviser, as an intercessor, in the religious order; she may be a help as a governor, a regent, a queen, in the political order: lastly, she may be a help as a friend and confidant in the social order.

Now, having seen that God distinctly gave woman a mission, as he has to every animate and inanimate creature, we must suppose that he has also provided her with the means of fulfilling it. We look around us to see how he has done so, and whether, when the means were at hand, woman used them to her own distinction and advantage. In one place and under one set of circumstances alone do we find that it was so, and this not by exception, but by rule. This place is the Catholic Church; these circumstances are her laws and her history. The reason why it remained for our times to form “_women’s rights_” associations, is simply that women’s wrongs have, under the influence of the Reformation, been so shamefully multiplied. The present movement is a reaction against the Protestant atmosphere of repression which has suffocated woman’s highest aspirations for three hundred years. The tribute unconsciously paid to the Catholic Church by the Anglican communities of monks and sisters is a proof of the wisdom of the old church in regard to its treatment of women. Sensitive, enthusiastic, earnest souls found themselves without the outward means of satisfying their craving after a more perfect life; others with superabundance of energy and devotion, with the gift of tending the sick or instructing the young, found themselves confined to the circle of their own unaided efforts and unorganized activity. They hailed “sisterhoods” as the newly opened gates of heaven, not knowing that sisterhoods were no new invention, but had their source in the very beginnings of the days of which the then unwritten Gospels became the after-history.

In a sermon recently delivered by one of the most popular preachers of New York, and reported in the columns of a widely-read journal, occur the following words, which are a singular corroboration of what we have just said: “There is nothing more dangerous than an educated community with nothing to do. There are thousands of educated women who do not work.... I do not wonder the bold, eagle-like natures fret in their limits and detest life, or that the great hearts dash themselves out in waste. There must be outlet for these immense forces, or society will go on getting worse and worse to the end.” A few days after these words were spoken, the following appeared in a letter referring to the attempt made by a woman to drop her vote in the ballot-box, at the New York City election of the 7th of November, 1871. She gives a lamentable account of woman’s world, as it has grown to be under the shade of Protestantism. “The condition of involuntary servitude is favorable to the cultivation of all the vices of secrecy and deceit. As women, we have been schooled in hypocrisy and duplicity, until our deep souls revolt against the oppression that so compels us to belie our sincere and earnest natures. The most docile wife has that latent fire in her heart which only needs the air of freedom to fan into a flame. Many seemingly contented wives would almost risk the salvation of their souls to make their masters feel for one day the humiliation they have endured uncomplainingly for years. If this is true of the favorites of fortune, what may not be said of the great crowd of women who rush into every folly, or are doomed to severest trial by stringent laws and the oppressive customs growing out of them--laws and customs that disfranchise them, prescribe their pleasures, limit their fields of labor, and curtail their wages, all on the plea of sex? We have, gentlemen, very generally arrived at the knowledge that sex is a crime punishable by law.” The writer of this subscribes herself “Mary Leland,” and is, no doubt, a fair representative of the indignant champions of indiscriminate equality between men and women. If the slumbering volcano she describes is really hidden beneath the frivolous life of ordinary women, what a fearful responsibility lies at the door of the system whose effect it is! This spirit of rebellion can only exist as a reaction against the forced inactivity of woman’s mind and will, and against the torpor induced by the delicate flattery of those who would make her a sultana, or the brutality of those who would fain turn her into a beast of burden. Both alike are forms of slavery; both alike are anti-Christian; both are contradictions against nature, and will inevitably bear their evil fruit. Since their true rights have been denied them by the spirit of the Reformation; since the education of their children is taken out of their hands by the state; since nothing but a savory meal and a pleasant face are expected from them--what wonder that the displaced pendulum of their mind should sway violently aside, and thus come in rude contact with the more arduous sphere of man?

But it is not our purpose to give a lecture on the abstract principles concerned in the question of the rights of women; facts speak more loudly and more convincingly than the most eloquent arguments, the most fascinating pleas: we aim only at giving a few of these facts to our sisters of the present day, and showing them how the church has ever regarded, and has long ago settled, the question now agitating them so painfully.

Our only difficulty is in the mass of evidence from which to make selections, the matter that is to serve us as a witness being simply the history of the church, and its abundance so rich that we hesitate which of the countless examples to draw forth for the admiration of _woman_-kind, and which to leave in undeserved oblivion. If we take a cursory glance at the infant church on the shores of the Lake of Galilee, we shall find woman already in a conspicuous and honorable position. It is a remarkable fact that no nation of antiquity, save the Jews, had any respect for the female sex, beyond that which included women in the _possessions_ of their husbands and fathers, and consequently could make no difference between an insult to a virgin or a wife and a theft of any other precious chattel. The Jews--that is, the people whom God himself guided and taught, and whose laws were his immediate decrees--hedged in the chastity of women with the most stringent safeguards, and defended it by the severest penalties. They allowed women to inherit from their parents and perpetuate their own name, and to be preferred before the male relations, that is, the brothers or nephews of their father (Numb. xxvii. 8). Not only were the wives and daughters of the Israelites inviolable; their hired servants, whether Jew or Gentile, and their captives, were equally protected from the licentiousness of man. The Old Testament has numberless chapters consecrated to the praises of women, and to the precepts necessary for the education of their sex. In Genesis, chap. xxxiv., we find the sons of Jacob making war upon the Sichemites, to revenge the insult done to their sister Dina by the prince Sichem; in the Book of Judges, chap. xx., we read of a bloody and protracted war waged by the Israelites against one of their own tribes, the Benjaminites, to revenge the Levite’s wife, outraged by strange men in the town of Gabaa; in the Second Book of Kings, chap. xiii., we see how promptly and fearfully Absalom resented the wrong done to his sister Thamar by their brother Amnon. In the Book of Judith, we are astounded at seeing the high and solemn eulogium pronounced upon this valiant woman. She speaks to the elders of Bethulia as one having authority, yet, with such humility as befits even the most highly favored servant of God, she comforts them and bids them hope, so that they acknowledge that her words are true, and ask her to pray for them (chap. viii. 29). Her own prayer for guidance and success is full of wisdom, of poetry, of confidence in God and the right: her speech to Holofernes is conspicuous for tact, and the heathen general himself exclaims, “There is not such another woman upon earth ... in sense of words.” When the great deed is done and Judith returns to the besieged city, she sings a noble canticle, a true poem, full of grave beauty and deep meaning, and we are then told how highly she was honored by the high-priest Joachim, who came from Jerusalem, with all his elders, to see her and bless her. He calls her the “glory of Jerusalem, the joy of Israel, and the honor of the people” (chap.