PART II.

Concluded.

Late in the afternoon, Bessie went down and leaned on the bars again, looking up and down the road, looking at the tracks left by Father Conners’ carriage‐wheels—the smooth curve of their turning; looking to see the shadows creep across the road as the sun went down. The sadness of a lonely evening was upon her, and, though she had not lost her morning resolution, she had lost the joyous hopefulness with which those resolutions were made.

At her left, and quite near, a fringe of young cedars made a screen between the ground that belonged to her house and the farmer next to it, where her uncle Dennis had lived when John Maynard had wooed and won her.

Pain came with that recollection, and almost the old bitterness. “I must go home again, and put my resolutions in practice right away, or I shall lose them,” she said to herself. “It won’t do for me to stay here and brood over my troubles. I cannot bear loneliness; and how terribly lonely it is here! I wish I had some one to speak to besides poor Aunt Nancy.”

She started, hearing a soft, clear whistling not far away. The strain was familiar, not to this region, but to her city life. While she listened, the sound ceased, or rather broke off suddenly.

Bessie’s eyes were wide open, her face flushed. Was there more than one person who could whistle so marvellously clearly and sweetly?

Some one began to sing then more sweetly still, and coming nearer while he sang words written by the most melodious of poets:

“Hark! a lover, binding sheaves, To his maiden sings; Flutter, flutter go the leaves, Larks drop their wings. Little brooks, for all their mirth, Are not blithe as he! ‘Tell me what the love is worth That I give thee.’

“Speech that cannot be forborne Tells the story through: ‘I sowed my love in with the corn, And they both grew. Count the world full wide of girth, And hived honey sweet; But count the love of more worth Laid at thy feet.

“ ‘Money’s worth is house and land, Velvet coat and vest! Work’s worth is bread in hand, Ay, and sweet rest. Wilt thou learn what love is worth? Ah! she sits above, Sighing, ’Weigh me not with earth. Love’s worth is love!’ ”

The singer had come yet more near, and would have been visible to her had not Bessie Maynard’s looks been downcast and her head drooping low. When the song ended, and the step paused, she lifted her eyes, and saw James Keene standing before her smiling and waiting for the greeting she was so slow to give.

Surprise, and perhaps fear, deprived Bessie for a moment of her self‐ possession. “What! you here!” she exclaimed, without the least sign of courtesy; and with that exclamation broke down the barrier of silence that had existed between them.

“Why should I not be here?” he asked quietly. “May not I also have memories connected with this place? It was here I recovered health, after an illness that nearly cost me my life. It was here I shot my first bear. And it was here I first saw you.”

Bessie perceived at once that, if the old reserve was to be maintained, she must immediately assume an air of decisive politeness. For an instant she wavered. Silence may be best for those who are doubtful of themselves, and, not willing to commit any flagrant wrong, are still not resolved to be absolutely honest. But when we are strong in the determination to be sincere, and to let the light of day shine not only on our actions, but on our inmost thoughts, then, perhaps, by speech we may most nobly and effectually establish our position.

Bessie Maynard, therefore, waited for the words which would give her an opportunity to put an end to the tacit and vague understanding existing between them.

He read her silence rightly; it was a command for him to speak; and he obeyed it, though the pale face and large, downcast lids gave little hope of any such answer as he might wish to receive.

“In those old days, so long ago, when I came here to try what a half‐ savage life would do for me, and was astonished to find a delicate human flower in the wilderness, I was a prophet.”

He leaned on the cedar bar that separated them, and looked dreamily off toward the woods. He would not surprise in her face any involuntary expression she might wish to conceal from him; he would take advantage of no impulse. If she came to him, she must come deliberately. For, setting aside Christianity—and he did not pretend to believe in it—James Keene had an exceptionally honorable nature. He would gladly have taken this woman away from a husband who, he believed, knew not how to value her, and who made her miserable by his neglect, but he held that it would be no wrong for him to do so.

“Yes, I was a prophet,” he continued; “for I believed then, what I am sure of now, that your marriage was a most unwise one. Give me credit, Bessie, for having been sincerely pained to see that, as years passed away, you had reason to come to the same conclusion. Whatever selfish wishes I may have had, I would at any time have renounced them could I have seen you happy with the man you chose to marry, knowing no other.”

Bessie lifted her eyes, and looked at him with a steady, tearful gaze. “People might say that you are wicked to speak so to me,” she said; “but I think that, according to your belief, you are very good; only you have no faith in religion. I esteem you so highly that I am going to make a confession which, perhaps, you may think I ought not to make. There have been times during these last few years when, if I had not had some little lingering faith, I would have welcomed from you an affection which I have no right to receive. There have been times when you might have spoken as lovingly as you could, and I should not have been angry. I tell you this partly because you must have at least suspected that it was so. And more than this. If I had seen you here a few days ago, my impulse would have been to welcome you more ardently than I ever yet welcomed any friend. You can understand how it all has been, without my explaining. I was so lonely, so neglected! I was so lonely!”

She had spoken with a sad earnestness, and there was something touchingly humble yet dignified in her manner; but, at the last words, her voice trembled and failed.

He was looking at her now. Excitement and suspense showed in the sparkling of his clear blue eyes, in the slight flush that colored his usually pale face, in the lips firmly compressed.

“All is changed now,” she went on. “I have been recalled to my religion, to my duty. I do not think that you should any more show me that sympathy which you have shown, and I do not think that you should see me frequently. I thank you for your kindness toward me. It has often been a comfort. But I am a wife”—she lifted herself with a stately gesture, and for the first time a wave of proud color swept over her face—“and the sadness which my husband may cause me no other man may ever again soothe.”

There was silence for a moment. The gentleman’s face had grown pale. There was a boundless tenderness in his heart for this fair and sorrowful woman, and he was about to lose the power to offer her even the slightest comfort, while at the same time he must still retain the knowledge of her suffering.

“I shall respect your wish and your decision,” he said, with emotion. “Forgive me if I have trespassed too much in the past. It seemed to me very little; for, Bessie, if I had not known that you had a religious feeling which would have held you back, or would have made you miserable in yielding, I should long ago have held out my hand to you, and asked you to come to me. If I had felt sure of being able to convince you beyond the possibility of subsequent regret, I should not have kept silence so long. But I respect your conscience. I should esteem myself a criminal if I could ask you to do what you believe to be wrong.”

Bessie Maynard’s face was covered with a blush of shame. Her thought had never gone consciously beyond the length of tender, brotherly kindness, and it was cruelly humiliating to see in its true light the position in which she had really stood. At that moment, too, she first perceived what a gulf lay between her soul and that of the man who had seemed always so dangerously harmonious with her. In principle, in all that firmly underlies the changeful tide of feeling, they were antagonistic; for he could speak calmly and with dignity of a possibility from which she shrank with a protesting tremor in every fibre of her being.

“I am going back to my husband,” she said, “and I shall never again forget that his honor and dignity are mine. I have been weak and childish, and more wicked than I knew or meant, and it all came because I loved my husband too much and God too little. But I trust”—she clasped her hands, and lifted her eyes—“I trust that I shall have strength to begin now a new life, and correct the mistakes of the past.”

She forgot for a moment that she was not alone, and stood looking away, as if there stretched before her gaze the new and loftier pathway in which she was to tread. Her companion gazed at her unchecked, with searching, melancholy eyes, not more because she was dearer to him in her impregnable fortress of Christian will than she ever had been in her human weakness, than because there rose from the depths of his restless soul a cry of longing for that firm foundation and trust which can hold a man in the place where conscience sets him, no matter how the tempests of passion may beat upon his trembling heart.

“There is, then, nothing left me but to say farewell.”

The poignant regret his voice betrayed recalled her attention.

“It has come to that,” she said gently. “But if you could know all I mean in saying farewell to you, it would not seem an idle word; for I hope and pray that you may fare so well as to come before long into the church. It is a refuge from every danger and every trouble, and I have only just found it out! Good‐by.”

She gave him her hand, and they separated without another word. But Bessie did not stop to look after this visitor. Whatever regret she might otherwise have felt was swallowed up in the one thought—it had seemed to him possible that she might leave, not only her husband, but her sacred, sainted babes, and go to him! To what a depth had she fallen!

When she had disappeared in the house, he strolled slowly down the road. Unless you had looked in his face, you would have taken him for a man who was calmly enjoying the contemplation of nature in that forest solitude. But from his face looked forth a spirit weary and hopeless that hastened not, because it beheld nowhere a place worth making haste to reach. Once only the gloom of his countenance lifted, and then it was with no cheering brightness, but as the cloud is momentarily illuminated by angry lightning.

A man was coming up the road, not such a man as one usually sees in these wild places, but one who bore the marks of city training and habits. The uniform gray clothing, the wide Panama hat, even the unobtrusive necktie, belonged to the city. This man was taller and broader‐shouldered than he whose eyes flashed out so scornfully at sight of him. His face was dark, vivid, and clean‐shaven, the forehead was wide, the dark‐brown hair closely cut, the gray eyes clear and penetrating. It was a face fitter to carve in stone than to paint, for its color and expression were less noticeable than its fine, strong outlines.

Yet now there shone a soft and eager light over that granite strength. There was a look of glad surprise, mingled with a certain amused self‐ chiding, as though of one who comes back from a long and gloomy abstraction, and finds a half‐forgotten delight still waiting at his side.

At sight of this man, James Keene’s first emotion had been one of anger, his first impulse to meet him boldly and with scorn. But scarcely had he taken one quickened step before he stopped, with a revulsion of feeling as unsuspected as it was confounding. Reason as he might, emancipate himself as he might from what he considered the superstitions of religion, he found himself now overwhelmed with confusion. He strove to call up to his mind all those arguments on which he had founded himself, but they fell dead. Whether it was the instinct of a noble heart that would not betray even an enemy, or an irradicable root of that religious faith which had been implanted in his childhood, or the strangeness of one who for the first time acts on principles long maintained in theory, or only a sensitive perception of the esteem in which the faithful world would hold his action, he could not have told. He only knew that, instead of standing, lofty and serene, in the dawn of this new light before which superstition and oppression were to pass away, he felt as if he were surrounded by a baleful glare from the nether fires. Sudden and scathing, it caught him, and burned his courage out like chaff.

In his eagerness and preoccupation, John Maynard had scarcely observed the person who approached; and, when the stranger turned aside into a wood‐ path, he gave him no further thought.

There was the little crooked house squinting at him out of its two windows, with the boards he had nailed, the chimney he had built, the door he had hung; there was the whole wild, rude place, with everything askew, that had once seemed a paradise—that had been a paradise—to him. With his hands and eyes educated, as they were now, to the utmost precision of outline and balance, the sight made him laugh out; and yet the laugh expressed as much pleasure as mockery.

He was taking his first holiday since he had left this house, and everything was delightfully fresh and novel yet familiar to him. He did not see the beauty that a poet or a painter would have found in that unpruned rusticity, for he was an artist of the exact; but the wabbly frame‐house, the reeling fences, the road that wound irregularly, the straggling trees that leaned away from the northwest, made a good background against which to contemplate the trim and shining creatures of his hands, regular to a hair’s breadth, unvarying and direct.

Coming to the bars, he threw himself over instead of letting them down, and found that he had grown heavier and less lithe than he was when last he performed that feat. He walked up the rocky path, his heart beating fast as he thought of the old time, and of the slim, bright‐faced girl he had brought there as a bride. If she could stand in the doorway now, as she was then, and smile at him coming home, he felt that he could be the old lover again. He had a vague idea that Bessie had grown older, and sober, and pale. Come to think of it, he hadn’t known much of her lately, and she had been dissatisfied about something. Why had she allowed him to get his eyes and ears so full of machinery? Surely he had lost and overlooked much. He had a mind to complain of her, only that he felt so good‐natured.

At sound of a step, Aunt Nancy went to the door; but at that sound Bessie took her sewing, and bent over it. Had James Keene repented their hasty parting?

“Does Miss Bessie Ware live here?” asked the gentleman, with immense dignity.

“Bessie Ware?” repeated Aunt Nancy, in bewilderment; then, as the recollection of Bessie’s confessions flashed into her mind, she stiffened herself up, and answered severely: “No, sir, she does not!”

“The idea of his refusing to give her her husband’s name!” she thought indignantly.

“Why, John!” exclaimed Bessie, over the old lady’s shoulder.

Aunt Nancy gave a cry of delight. She would at any time have welcomed John rapturously; but his coming now made her twice glad. Of course he and Bessie would make it all up.

The exuberance of her welcome covered, at first, the wife’s deficiency. But when the excitement was over, and they had gone into the house, Bessie’s coldness and embarrassment became evident.

“I am very much surprised to see you here,” she said, when her husband looked at her. She did not pretend to be glad.

“Are you sorry?” he asked, with a laugh.

“I am too much astonished to be anything else,” she replied quietly. “What made you come?”

John Maynard was disappointed and mortified. That for years he had met his wife’s affectionate advances as coldly he did not seem aware. Other things had occupied his thoughts. He did not recollect, as he had not noticed at the time, that her manner was now just what it had long been.

Supper was over, eaten in an absent way by the husband, who glanced every moment at his wife. He found her very lovely, though different enough from the glad, girlish bride who had once brightened this humble room for him. He could not understand her. Had she no recollection of those days?

She did not seem to have, indeed, for she made no reference to them by look nor speech, but talked rapidly, and with an air of constraint, of things nearer in time, and listened with affected interest while he told the latest city news, and the latest news of his own work; how high the engine spouted; of the tiny model locomotive he had built, all silver, and gold, and fine steel; of the money he expected to make by his new patent; of an accident that had happened in his shop—a German organist, with two or three others, had come to look at his machinery, and got his hand crushed in it, which would put a stop to his playing.

Bessie looked up with an expression of pain. “Poor man!” she murmured. “How miserable he must be!”

“Yes; I was sorry for him,” the husband replied. “They say he cared for nothing but music. His name is Verheyden.”

“Poor man!” Bessie sighed again, looking down. “Those machines are always hurting some one.”

“It was his own fault,” the machinist said hastily. “Did he suppose that the engine was going to stop when he put his forefinger on it? Why, that machine would grind up an elephant, and never mismake its face. But it is the first time any one was ever hurt by a machine of mine.”

He did not understand the glance she gave him. It was not pleasant, but what it meant he knew not. She was thinking: “It is not the first time one has been hurt so.”

Aunt Nancy found business elsewhere, and left the couple to themselves.

“I forgot you were coming away that day, Bessie,” her husband said hastily, the moment they were alone. “I never thought of it till I was five miles off, and then I concluded that you must have changed your mind, or you would have told me not to go.”

“You know I never tell you not to go anywhere,” she replied coldly.

He colored. “But you know that I didn’t mean to have you go to the depot alone. When I read what you wrote to Jamie, I felt sorry enough.”

In all the long years that were past, how generously would she have met an apology like this! How quickly would she have disclaimed all sense of injury, and even have tried to find some fault in herself! But now her heart, with all its impulses, seemed frozen. She only gave him a glance of surprise, and a quiet word. “There was no need of company, I knew the way.”

There was silence. Gradually, through the deep unconsciousness and abstraction of the man, came out incident after incident of their late life, slight, but significant. Each had seemed a detached trifle at the time, but now as he sat there, abashed and ill at ease, they began to show a connection and to grow in importance. It was as when, in a thick fog, the sailor sees dimly a black speck that may be only a floating stick, and another, and another, till, looking sharply, as the mist grows thinner, he finds himself caught among rocks at low tide.

John Maynard tried to throw off with a laugh the weight that oppressed him. “Come, Bessie, let the late past go, and remember only the life we lived here. Let’s be young people again.”

He went to her side, bent down, and would have kissed her, had she not evaded his touch, not shyly, but with a crimson blush and a quick flash of the eyes.

“Don’t talk nonsense, John!” she said, in a low voice that did not hide a haughty aversion. “Let us speak of something sensible. I have been thinking that some of our ways should be changed at home. I shall begin with myself, and attend strictly to my religion. Besides, I am not doing rightly in allowing James to grow up without any discipline, and I think he should be placed in a Catholic school, where he will be taught his duty. He is quite beyond my control.”

Her morbid humility and diffidence were gone. The feeling that had made her give up all rights rather than ask for them did not outlive the moment of her reconciliation with the church.

“I am willing he should go to any school you choose,” her husband replied gravely, impressed by the change. “I suppose the boy is going on rather too much as he likes. Do whatever you think best about it, and I will see that he obeys.”

She thanked him gently, and continued: “I shall go to High Mass after this, and I should be glad to have you go with me, if you are willing. It would be a better example for James than to see you go to the shop on Sundays. He is becoming quite lawless. We have no right to give our children a bad example. I would be glad to have you go with me, if you will.”

John Maynard’s face was glowing red. He felt, gently as she spoke, as if he were having the law read to him. “I am willing to go with you, Bessie,” he said. “I am not a Catholic, but I am not anything else.”

She thanked him again, earnestly this time, for it was a favor he had granted her, and she knew that he would keep his word. “You are good to promise that,” she said.

He laughed uneasily. “Have you anything else to ask?”

“I do not think of anything,” she replied, and there was silence.

The husband got up, and went to the door. The sun was sinking down the west. He looked at the glow it made, and remembered how he had seen it there in the days that were past, how quiet and peaceful his life had been, how much happier, had he but known it, than in the turmoil of later years. Then the days had been full of healthful employment, the nights of rest and refreshment, untroubled by the feverish dreams that now swarmed in his sleeping hours. And what was it that had made his life so happy? What had been the motive, the delight of everything? Nothing but Bessie, always Bessie, his help and his reward.

He turned his face, and saw her still sitting there, her head drooping, her hands folded in her lap. Those hands caught his glance. They were pale and thin. They looked as though she had suffered.

He went to her impulsively as his heart stirred, and put his arm about her shoulder. “Bessie, forget the last years, and let’s be as we were in the happy old time.”

She did not look angry; but she withdrew herself gently from him.

“John,” she said, “that is too much to expect at once. Years of pain cannot be forgotten in a moment. When you came to‐day, you asked if Bessie Ware lived here. She does not. The Bessie Ware you married is dead. I scarcely know yet who or what I am. I only know that I shall try to do my duty by you, and repair some of the faults and mistakes of the past. But, John, I must warn you that it is harder to reconcile an estranged wife than to win a bride.”

One piercing glance, angry and disappointed, shot from his eyes; then he went to the outer door. He stood a moment on the threshold, then stepped on to the greensward. Another pause, and he walked slowly back through the garden, seeming not to know whither he went.

Aunt Nancy, anxiously awaiting signs of reconciliation, saw him wander about aimlessly, then go and lean on a fence next the woods, his back to the house.

She went into the front room at once. She was on John’s side now.

“Bessie,” she said decidedly, “you mustn’t stand too much on your dignity with John. Men are stupid creatures, and do a good many hard things without meaning or knowing; and, if they come round, it isn’t wise to keep them waiting too long for a kind word.”

Bessie Maynard laid down the work she was pretending to do, and her hands trembled. “I am not acting a part, Aunt Nancy,” she said, “and I cannot be a hypocrite. I feel cold toward John. And I feel displeased when he comes and kisses me, as if he were conferring a favor, and expects me to be happy for that. I could not give up if I would, I ought not if I could. There is something more required than a little sweet talk.”

A half hour passed, and still John Maynard stood motionless, with his elbows leaning on the fence, and his head bowed. If Bessie had seen his face, it would have reminded her of the time when he first studied mechanics, and became so absorbed in the one subject as to be dead to all else. But there was the difference that he studied then with a vivid interest, and now with gloomy intentness.

An hour passed, and still he stood there; and the sun was down, and the moon beginning to show its pearly light through the fading richness of the gloaming. The birds had ceased singing, and there was no voice of wild creatures in the woods. It was the hour for prayer and peace‐making.

John Maynard started from his abstraction, hearing his name spoken by some one. “John!” said Bessie. She had been watching him for some time from the door, and had approached slowly, step by step, unheard by him.

He turned toward her a pale, unsmiling face. “How late it is!” he said. “I must make haste.”

She spoke hesitatingly, something doubtful and wistful in her face. “I have been thinking that I might have received you better, when you came on this long journey. Won’t you come in now and rest? I didn’t mean to turn you out of the house that you made—for me.”

He turned his eyes away. “And I’ve been thinking, Bessie, that I’d better go right back again; I can go down to the post‐office to‐night, and take the stage to‐morrow morning.”

“You will not go!” she said.

“I should only spoil your visit,” he went on. “I don’t want you to begin to ‘do your duty’ by me just now. I know, Bessie, that you had a good deal to complain of; but I swear to you that I did not mean to be hard. You know I had twenty‐five years to make up; and I was always looking for better times. I was so blind that I was fool enough to think you would be glad to see me here, and that we could begin over again where we began first.”

She did not answer a word. There is something confounding in the sudden humiliation of a man who has always been almost contemptuously dominant.

He looked at his watch. “I must make haste, or they will be in bed,” he said. “Make some sort of an excuse to Aunt Nancy for me. And when you want to come back, let me know, and I will meet you at the depot or come after you.”

He started, and she walked beside him down the path to the road. He seemed hardly able to hold his head up.

She walked nearer, and slipped her hand in his arm, speaking softly: “I said a little while ago that the pain of years cannot be forgotten in a moment. But I was wrong. I think it may.”

He looked at her quickly, but said nothing, and they reached the bars. Neither made any motion to let down the pole. They leaned on it a minute in silence.

“The fact is, Bessie,” the husband burst forth, “I’ve been like a man possessed by an evil spirit. I’m sorry, and that is all I can say.”

“No matter, Jack! Let it all go!” his wife exclaimed, clasping her hands on his arm, and holding it close to him. “You weren’t to blame!” (Oh! wonderful feminine consistency!) “Let’s forget everything unpleasant, and remember only the good. How you have had to work and study, poor, dear Jack! You must rest now, and never get into the old drudging way again.”

Aunt Nancy raked up the fire, and put down the window, looking out now and then at the couple who leaned on the bar below. Each time she looked, their forms were less distinct in the twilight. “That’s just the way they used to do fifteen years ago,” she muttered contentedly.

She sat a few minutes waiting, but they did not come in. Aunt Nancy sighed and laughed too. “It beats all how women do change their minds,” she said. “I did think that Bessie would hold out longer. Well, I may as well go to bed.”

By‐and‐by she heard them come into the kitchen.

“Now, I shut the doors and windows, and you rake up the fire,” Bessie said. “Do you remember it was always so, Jack?”

“Of course I do, little one,” was the answer. “But Aunt Nancy has got the start of us to‐night.”

“Aunt Nancy!” repeated Bessie, in a lower voice. “I declare, Jack, I forgot all about her.”

“I’ll warrant you did!” says Aunt Nancy to herself, rather grimly, perhaps.

“We will be sure to keep all our good resolutions, won’t we?” Bessie said.

“All right!” says John.

The door shut softly behind them, and there were silence, and peace, and hope in the house that Jack built.

A Retrospect.

Concluded.

Nothing of interest presented itself during the reign of Philip the Bold, except the council held there in 1278. In 1383, the unfortunate Charles VI., wearied with state troubles that he was so ill fitted to cope with, fled in despair from the Louvre to Compiègne. But he was not to find peace here more than in the busy turmoil of the city. Soon after his arrival he was attacked with insanity; at first it was considered of no moment, the natural consequence of a violent reaction or a weak and nervous temperament; great pains were taken to conceal the fact from the public, but after a time the symptoms became alarming, and it was impossible to keep the secret. After the festivities which followed his ill‐starred marriage with Isabeau de Bavière, the disease broke through all bounds; everything seemed to conspire to exasperate it: the assassination of Clisson by the Baron de Craon, the apparition of the phantom in the forest that seized the king’s bridle and uttered the mysterious message as it disappeared, the bal masqué when the Duke of Orleans inadvertently set fire to the king’s Indian costume—a skin smeared with a tarry substance and stuck all over with feathers—all these shocks, coming at short intervals, irritated the disordered imagination to fury, and the attacks became frequent and ungovernable. The king’s illness was imputed by popular superstition to the malefices of Valentina of Milan, Duchess of Orleans, who, if she lacked the power, no doubt had strong motives for evoking the powers of darkness to destroy the king’s reason, and thereby his authority. The demon which had taken possession of Charles’ brain does not seem to have invaded his heart or changed the natural goodness of his disposition. He was removed from Compiègne in one of his fits of madness, and when some years later he re‐entered it, it was by force of arms; the Bourguignons held the place. Charles laid siege to it; after a desperate resistance it surrendered, and he entered in triumph; nothing however could induce him to punish the rebels, he said there was blood enough upon the ground, and he would take no vengeance on his subjects except by forgiving them. Compiègne was soon to be the theatre of a more momentous struggle than these rough skirmishes between Charles and his people. Shortly after the mock peace signed there by Bedford, it was attacked by the Duc de Bourgogne and the English with Montgomery at their head. Jeanne d’Arc on hearing of it evinced great sorrow and alarm, but she flew at once to the rescue, and appeared suddenly in the midst of the king’s troops, with the oriflamme of S. Denis in one hand, and her “good sword of liege” in the other. The sight of her whom they looked upon as the angel of victory raised the drooping spirits of the soldiers and filled them with new ardor; they raised a cry of victory the moment they beheld Jeanne. Enguerrand de Monstrelet, who was an eye‐witness of the siege, describes her attitude and the conduct of the troops throughout as “passing all heroism ever before seen in battle.” But, alas! the star of the maid of Orleans was destined to set in darkness at the hour of its greatest splendor; her own prediction, so often repeated to Charles and those around him, “Un homme me vendra” (A man will betray me), was about to be fulfilled. On the 24th of May, 1429, there was a formidable engagement between the two armies. Jeanne, at the head of hers, performed prodigies of valor; after a brilliant sortie in which the enemy were repulsed, she was re‐entering the town by the Boulevard du Pont, and had almost reached the barrier through which hundreds of her own victorious soldiers had already passed, when, lo! the gates swing forward on their hinges, and are closed against her! The maiden’s cry of despair as she raised her sword and stretched both arms towards the gates was echoed by a yell of fiendish joy from the enemy; in an instant she was surrounded, disarmed, and taken captive by Montgomery. Guillaume de Flavy, governor of Compiègne, was accused of having committed this act of treachery, bribed by Jean de Luxembourg. If the accusation be true, and it has never been seriously challenged, the traitor’s punishment was as fitting as it was merited; he was immediately destituted of his office and revenues by the Connétable de Richemont, and driven to hide his base head in private life, where the Nemesis who was to avenge Jeanne d’Arc awaited him in the shape of his wife; she was jealous of her husband, who, it would seem, fully justified the fact; after leading him a miserable life and failing to convert him by slow torture from his evil ways, she bribed the barber to cut his throat one morning while shaving him, and finished the operation herself by smothering him under a pillow. For many years de Flavy’s effigy was burnt regularly at Compiègne on the 24th of May.

Louis XI. was liberated from the English, and came to Compiègne time enough to embitter the last days of his father, Charles VIII., who let himself die of hunger there from terror of being poisoned by his son. Comines says that his dutiful son and most amiable of men was so irritated by his courtiers for mocking “his boorish manners, his uncouth dress, and his taste for low folk,” that to spite them he published an edict forbidding them to hunt or touch the game in the forest of Compiègne, a prohibition against all precedent, nor did he ever invite them to join him there in the chase. But the pretty palace open to the four winds of heaven soon grew distasteful to him, and he forsook it for the more congenial retreat of Plessis‐les‐Tours, where, surrounded by spies and quacks and a moat filled with vipers and venomous snakes, he ended in terror and suffering a life which presents a strange mixture of shrewdness and credulity, bonhomie and ferocity, impiety and the grossest superstition.

Francis I. took kindly to Compiègne, which had been deserted by his two predecessors. His first act on coming there, as king, was to do public homage to the Holy Shroud. Louis, Cardinal de Bourbon, grand‐uncle to the king, and abbot of S. Corneille, exposed it to the veneration of the king and the people amidst great ceremony and prayer of thanksgiving. “He took the holy relic, and laid it on the grand altar with sentiments of great devotion and tenderness, which he expressed by abundant tears.” Francis added to the shrine “twenty‐two rose‐buds of pure gold, enriched with precious stones and pearls, and attached to twenty _fleurs‐de‐lys_ of gold,” says Cambry, in his _Déscription de l’Oise_. There is also a letter of Francis’ giving a naïve account of the ceremony, quoted at length in the _Histoire du Saint Suaire de Compiègne_. Francis passes from the scene, and we see “the noble burgesses of Compiègne,” as he was fond himself of calling them, making great stir to receive his successor, Henri II., on his return from Rheims. Two years more, and there is the same merry hubbub, and the town is in gala dress to welcome Catherine de Medicis on her marriage. This abnormal type of a woman fell ill not long after her arrival, and vowed that if she recovered she would send a pilgrim to Jerusalem to give thanks for her; he was to start from Compiègne, and perform the journey all the way on foot, making for every three steps forward one step backward. Cambry says the vicarious pilgrimage was “faithfully executed according to the queen’s vow.”

Charles IX. was only a flying visitor at Compiègne. An odd story is told by D. Carlier and others as occurring there during his time. A man was discovered in the forest who had been brought up by the wolves, and taken so completely to their way of life that he had nearly turned into a wolf himself. “He was hairy like a wolf, howled, outran the hounds at the hunt, walked on all fours, strangled dogs, tore and devoured them.” For a time he made sport for the people, who hunted him like other game, but having shown a propensity to deal with men as he did with dogs, they laid a trap for him, chained him, and took him before the king. Charles, more humane than the noble burgesses, refused to have him killed, but ordered him to be shorn and confined in a monastery. “What reflections,” naïvely exclaims D. Carlier, “does not this incident suggest on the danger of bad example, and the pernicious effects of evil society!” It would be interesting to hear how the novice behaved himself in his new position, whether he developed any latent dispositions for the mystic life, and quite left behind him the habits of his early education which had corrupted his good manners; but of this D. Carlier says nothing.

Henri III., who lived at St. Cloud making omelets, expressed a wish to be buried near the Holy Shroud at Compiègne, in the church of S. Corneille; and as soon as Henri IV. became master of his “good town of Paris” he faithfully carried out this wish. Owing, however, to the dilapidated state of the finances, he could not do so with the proper ceremonial. “It was pitiful,” says Cheverny, in his _Memoirs_, “to see the greatest king of the earth in a _chapelle ardente_ with only one lamp, one chaplain belonging to the late king, named La Cesnaye, and a few shabby _écus_ to keep up a shabby service.” Instead of being removed to S. Denis after a temporary rest near the Holy Shroud, the body remained on in the vaults of S. Corneille, on account of a prophecy which said that Henri IV. would be buried eight days after Henri III.; a prediction which was actually accomplished, “though not,” says Bajin, “in a manner apprehended by the king”. When Henri IV. fell by the hand of Ravaillac, the Due d’Epernon advised Marie de Medicis to have the obsequies of the late king performed before those of her husband. Henri IV. was therefore kept waiting till his predecessor’s grave was filled. The first ceremony was performed quietly, almost in secret; and then the “good Béarnias” was taken to S. Denis, all France weeping and refusing to be comforted.

Louis XIII. was attracted to Compiègne solely by the pleasures of the chase. We see him watching the meet from a window giving on the Cour d’honneur, and whispering to the Maréchal de Praslin, “You see that man down there? He wants to be one of my council, but I cannot make up my mind to name him.” “That man” was Richelieu. The words were repeated to Marie de Medicis, as all her son’s words seem to have been, and she, counting on the prelate’s influence in supporting her against the king and her other enemies, vowed that he should be named, and so he was. A few days later we see Louis, equipped in his hunting costume, stride into the room of the queen‐mother, and proclaim in a boistering manner, meant to vindicate the independence of his choice, that he “had named the Bishop of Luçon member of his council as secretary of state.” Marie de Medicis looks coolly surprised, and bows her approval. By‐and‐by we have the Earl of Carlisle and Lord Holland presenting themselves at Compiègne to solicit the hand of Henriette of France for the Prince of Wales. They are received with every mark of cordial good‐will on the part of Louis and entertained with great splendor; but Richelieu looked askance on their mission; it was his way to begin always by mistrusting an offer, whether it came from friend or foe; in this case his piety was alarmed for Henriette’s faith, and he suspected England of some sinister design in seeking alliance with France. Louis, however, overruled his fears and scruples, and the minister contented himself with taking extraordinary precautions to ensure to the princess by contract the free exercise of her religion, stipulating that she should have in all her chateaux a chapel “large enough to hold as many people as she pleased.” The marriage was celebrated by proxy at Notre Dame, Buckingham representing the Prince of Wales, and from thence the court escorted the bridal party on their way as far as Compiègne. Louis XIII., though he made but short sojourns at the palace, kept up close and friendly intercourse with the inhabitants, writing to them himself when any important event took place. He announced to them, for instance, the siege of Rochelle, the war with the Spaniards, the peace with England, and many other events in which the honor and safety of the state were interested.

Louis XIV. was only eight years old when he paid his first visit to Compiègne, accompanied by his little brother the Duc d’Anjou and the Queen Regent; they were obliged to seek hospitality from the monks of S. Corneille, because the Carmelite nuns were at the palace, which had been lent to them while their monastery was being repaired, and Anne of Austria would neither intrude upon them nor suffer them to be disturbed. What a checkered space intervenes between this first appearance of the _grand monarque_ at Compiègne and his last, when we see him passing the troops in review for the amusement of Madame de Maintenon! He stands uncovered beside her _chaise à porteurs_ and stoops down to explain the various evolutions, while she raises three fingers of the glass to catch the explanation without letting in the cold; the Duchesse de Bourgogne and the Princesse de Conti, and all the train of princes and princesses, are grouped round the poles of the Widow Scarron’s chair, listening respectfully while the king speaks; but he addresses none of them.

Louis XV. made his entry into Compiègne preceded by a troop of falconers with birds on their wrists, and accompanied by cannon and music of fife and drum, and every demonstration of popular joy. He was just eighteen then; his life was like the beginning of a stream, bright and clear to its depths; soon it was to grow troubled, darkening and darkening as it reached its middle course, till at last the waters ceased to flow and there was nothing but a loathsome swamp. Compiègne was associated with the brightest and happiest incidents of his life. In 1744, after he had commanded the army with the Maréchal de Saxe, taken Ypres, Furnes, and Menin, and performed that series of brilliant feats of arms that raised him to the rank of a demi‐god in the eyes of the people, Louis was marching to Alsace when he was suddenly stricken down with a malignant fever and obliged to lay up at Metz. The news of his illness was received as a personal calamity all over France. Never before nor since was such a spectacle given to the world of a nation wrestling with its agony beside the death‐bed of a king. The churches were filled day and night, the people weeping as if every man were trembling for a wife, every woman for a son; unable to control their grief they wept aloud, “filling the streets with lamentations”; public prayers were everywhere offered up; processions were formed in every town and village, and a universal concert of supplication was going up to the divine mercy for the life of the king. When it was known that their prayers were heard, and that he was restored to them from the jaws of death, the reaction was like a national frenzy. “The nation,” says Bajin, “thrilled with joy from one end to another.” They christened their new‐found prince _le bienaimé_ and henceforth he was called by no other name; he entered Paris like a conqueror bringing home the spoils of half of the world; at every step his progress was impeded by the people falling at his horses’ feet and struggling to clasp the hand of their beloved; mothers held up their babes to kiss him, and strong men clung to his hands and covered them with kisses and tears. Louis, overcome by this great tide of love that was sweeping round him from his people’s heart, was heard to repeat constantly while the tears streamed down his cheeks, “O mon Dieu, qu’il est doux d’être aimé ainsi!” (O my God! how sweet it is to be thus loved!) It was a manifestation the like of which history has never chronicled. Another not less ardent, though on a smaller scale, awaited the king at Compiègne. The town, deeming itself entitled to make a special family rejoicing, invited him to a _Te Deum_ to be sung in the time‐honored abbey of S. Corneille. The king went and joined with deep emotion in the solemn hymn of thanksgiving. A monster bonfire was lighted on a hill above the town, a rainbow of colored lamps, stretching over an enormous space, symbolized the fair promise of delight which had risen upon France, fountains of red and white wine flowed copiously on the great Place, and a ball was given at night to which every inhabitant of the town was invited, and came; gentle and simple, rich and poor, old and young, all welded by a common joy without distinction of class into one kindred. The victor of Fontenoy responded nobly to this magnificent testimony of his people’s trust. Alas! that he should have outlived this glorious morrow, and turned from his brave career into a slough of selfishness and vice to become a byword to the tongues that blessed him, and accursed of the nation that had lavished such a wealth of love upon him! The title of Bienaimé, which had been spontaneously bestowed on him by the people, and been regularly prefixed to his name in the almanac and elsewhere, became a butt for squibmongers, and was applied to the king only in mockery and scorn. The following is a specimen:

“Le Bien‐aimé de l’Almanach, N’est plus le Bien‐aimé de France, Il fait tout _ob Loc et ab Lac_. Le Bien‐aimé de l’Almanach: Il met tout dans le même sac, La justice et la finance, Le bien‐aimé de l’Almanach N’est plus le bien‐aimé de France,” etc.(195)

When Marie Antoinette came to France as the bride of the Dauphin, it was at Compiègne that their first meeting took place. Louis Quinze greeted her with the most paternal affection; but his great, his sole preoccupation was, not how the Dauphin would like his fair young bride, or how she would take to the timid and rather awkward youth who blushed to the roots of his hair when the king, after raising her from her knees and embracing her, desired him to do the same, but how this pure young creature, who was entrusted to his fatherly care, would receive the Marquise du Barry. He presented her after all the other ladies of the court, and with a trepidation of manner that he was not able to conceal; but the incident had been foreseen and discussed at Vienna as well as at Compiègne. Marie Antoinette, sustained by her proud but polite mother, proved equal to the occasion; “she showed neither _hauteur_ nor _empressement_,” but met the difficulty in a manner which put the king at ease, and impressed the court with a high sense of her tact and discretion. Nor was this first impression belied by her subsequent conduct; the Dauphine proved, on many trying occasions, that her good sense and judgment were a match for the nobility of her spirit and the goodness of her heart; the busybodies who worked so diligently to embroil her in a quarrel with Madame du Barry were foiled by her straightforward simplicity and the dignified reserve which she maintained alike towards them and towards the favorite. An instance of this occurred a few weeks after her marriage. The son of one of her women of the bedchamber, a Madame Thibault, killed an officer of the king’s guard in a duel; Madame Thibault threw herself at Marie Antoinette’s feet, and besought her to implore the king for her son’s pardon; the Dauphine promised, and after a whole hour’s supplication she obtained it. Full of gratitude and delight the young princess told everybody how good the king had been, and how graciously he had granted her request; but one of the ladies of the court, thinking to spoil her pleasure and excite her jealousy, informed her that Madame Thibault had also gone on her knees to Madame du Barry to intercede for her, and that the marquise had done so. Marie Antoinette, without betraying the slightest vexation, replied very sweetly: “That confirms the opinion I always had of Madame Thibault, she is a noble woman, and a brave mother who would stop at nothing to save her child’s life; in her place I would have knelt to Zamore(196) if he could have helped me.”

Charles V.’s old chateau, which had been patched, and mended, and added to till there was hardly a stone of the original building left, was thrown down by Louis Quinze, and rebuilt as we now see it. It was just finished in time to receive Louis Seize on his accession to the throne. The new king came here often to hunt, but he seldom stayed at Compiègne, though it was dear to him as the place where he first beheld Marie Antoinette. When the Revolution broke out, Compiègne suffered like other towns; some of its churches were destroyed, others pillaged; the Carmelites, whose convent had been the prayerful retreat of so many queens of France, were imprisoned in the Conciergerie, after appearing before Fouquier Tinville on a charge of having had arms concealed in their cellars. To this preposterous accusation, Mère Térèse de S. Augustin, their superioress, drawing a crucifix from her breast, answered calmly: “Behold our only arms! They have never inspired fear but to the wicked.” But what did innocence avail against such judges? The Carmelites were condemned to death, and executed at the Barrière du Trône. They ascended the scaffold singing the _Veni Creator_, and had just reached the last verse as the last victim laid her head on the guillotine. While awaiting in prison the day of their deliverance, those valiant daughters of S. Teresa amused themselves composing a parody on the Marseillaise, of which the following is a couplet:

“Livrons nos cœurs à l’allégresse! Le jour de gloire est arrivé; Le glaive sanglant est lévé, Préparons nous à la victoire; Sous les drapeaux d’un Dieu mourant Que chacun marche en conquérant; Courans et volons à la gloire! Ranimons notre ardeur, Nos cœurs sont au Seigneur: Montons, Montons, A l’échafaud, et Dieu sera vainqueur!”(197)

Napoleon I. furnished Compiègne for his young Austrian bride, Marie Louise; she was on her way thither when he met the carriage in the forest, and, jumping in, scared her considerably by the abrupt introduction.

At Compiègne took place Alexander of Russia’s famous interview with Louis XVIII.; the king entered the dining‐room first, and unceremoniously seated himself; his courtiers, scared at the royal discourtesy, began to murmur amongst themselves, which, the czar noticing, he observed with a smile: “What will you? The grandson of Catherine has not quarterings enough to ride in the king’s coach!”

Charles X. received at Compiègne Francis and Isabella of Naples, and gave for their entertainment a hunting _fête_, at which 11 wild boars, 9 young boars, 7 stags, 56 hind, 10 fawns, 11 bucks, 114 deer, and 20 hares fell victims to the will of the royal sportsmen. Charles, who was on the eve of losing a more serious and brilliant royalty (1830), was, by common consent, proclaimed king of the hunt.

The last circumstance of note connected with Compiègne is the camps held there by Louis Philippe in 1847, and commanded by the Duc de Nemours.

Under the Empire the chateau was inhabited for a short time by the court every autumn, and was the centre of brilliant _fêtes_ and hospitalities.

The Cross Through Love, And Love Through The Cross.

Concluded.

The next morning he went to the _Juden‐Strasse_ before the hour of the synagogue service, and walked up unannounced into old Zimmermann’s room. As he had hoped, so it proved—_she_ was there, reading the Psalms to the old man. He wondered if she remembered him, if she had noticed him when he had stood upon the landing last Sabbath morning. Zimmermann greeted him with a nod that had not much recognition in it, but said:

“Maheleth, give the stranger a chair. _Mein Herr_, this is my good little nurse.”

Holcombe bowed, and the girl looked at him in silence for a few seconds.

“I remember,” she then said, “you picked up my music for me in a storm, nearly a month ago.”

“I thought you would not have known me again,” Holcombe stammered.

“Oh! yes, I am not forgetful. You have been very good to my patient, and I am very grateful, for he has eaten more this week than he has for a whole month.”

“I think I heard your father was ill, fräulein?”

“Oh! he has been so for many months. Is your English friend gone?”

“Yes; he has gone home to be married. I wish, fräulein, if you could suggest anything, I could be of some use, besides bringing fruit and flowers to this house. Do you know, since I have been in Frankfort, I have never found anything to do?”

“Do you mean,” she asked very gravely, “you wish to be of use to _us_?”

“I mean, if I could come and sit with Herr Löwenberg, and read or write for him, while you are away; for they tell me you are out all day, and it must be lonely for him.”

“That is very kind of you,” she answered, looking at him in calm wonder; “it is true he has no society, for the little girls hardly count.”

“Has he any books?” asked Holcombe. “Because _I_ have plenty, and they might amuse him; and I have English newspapers, too, coming in regularly. Does he speak English?”

“He understands and reads it; but you are a stranger, and why should we place our burdens on your shoulders?”

“Oh! you must not mind my way; this sort of thing is a mania with me, you know.”

“It is a mania seldom found,” croaked out the old man.

“I think,” put in Maheleth, “it is time for me to leave you. How can I thank you, Mr. Holcombe? Perhaps, when you leave my friend here, you will stop at the next landing, and go in and see my father?”

“I will, and you must not think I am in a hurry.”

The ice thus broken, many visits followed, and at night, when Maheleth was at home, Henry read to the family in the little plain room that was so beautiful in his sight. More than once had he again seen the girl in the cathedral, always standing, and separated from the worshippers, always with that same sad, anxious look. One night, he noticed a certain constraint in the father’s and daughter’s manner, and Löwenberg was less cordial to him than usual. After that, Maheleth seemed yet more troubled, and grew paler and thinner. He asked old Zimmermann if he knew of any fresh trouble in the family, but he could learn nothing from him. Rachel, who always answered the bell, detained him one evening, and said:

“I would not go in to‐night, if I were you. Don’t be offended, _mein Herr_.”

“Why, Rachel, what is the matter?”

“Fräulein Löwenberg went to the Catholic Church last night, and her father found it out, and he said it was your fault.”

“Well, I _will_ go in all the same; I had nothing to do with it, and my friend must not be angry with his daughter.”

Löwenberg was alone, and the room had a tossed look about it, very different from the cosy aspect it usually wore. The invalid lay on a couch, with a discontented expression on his dark, thin face.

“Are you worse to‐night?” gently asked Holcombe.

“Ay, worse indeed, and _you_ must add to my troubles after I had treated you as a son!”

“_I!_ My friend, do you think that of me? Don’t you know me better?”

“Ah!” said the invalid irritably, “don’t try to deceive me. You know I have nothing left to care for but my daughter, and you have been trying to convert her. I know _why_, too, but you shall not see her any more.”

“You wrong me, Herr Löwenberg. I have never spoken to your daughter about religion, because I did not know whether it might be agreeable to her or not, and she never started the subject.”

“You know she goes to your church?”

“Yes, I have seen her there several times; she never saw me, however, and I never hinted to her that I had seen her.”

“You speak very fairly about it; but I know how unscrupulous you Christians can be in this matter. You would think it a grand thing to convert her.”

“Undoubtedly, if I could do it by sheer conviction. But you should know me too well to believe I would do it by any undue or secret influence.”

“You do not know how dear she is to me; you do not know how her defection from our ancient faith would break my heart; how I should have to renounce her for my other children’s sake!”

“And how you would stain your soul with the blackest ingratitude, Herr Löwenberg, if you did!” interrupted Henry excitedly.

“So you think _that_, do you? You don’t know who she is, and how such a thing would be so unpardonable in her that no consideration could influence me. I never told you before, but she is of another blood than you are—she is the descendant of martyred rabbis, and her race is as pure as that of the old Machabees. We are not Germans. We are Spaniards, and, though ruined, our family pride is as great as it ever was—as great, too, as our love for our faith.”

“How long ago was it you were ruined?”

“Only a year and two months, and I fell ill six months ago; my wife died almost as soon as we came here, and my Maheleth has earned our daily bread, and taught her sisters, and managed the housekeeping, all alone. It is enough to make one curse God!”

“Hush, hush!” said Holcombe. “You do not mean that—you know you have too many blessings to thank him for.”

“And the best and only one you are seeking to take from me.”

“I swear to you that much as I should wish and pray for it—for that I will not conceal from you—yet I have never influenced your child in any way.”

“You have, because you love her.”

Henry was staggered at the suddenness of his words.

“You cannot deny it,” continued the invalid.

“No,” answered the young man; “I have no desire to deny it, but your daughter never heard it from my lips, and never would.”

“Never would!” echoed Löwenberg, firing up. “And do you, too, despise her for her race—she that is as far above you as you are above your lowest peasant!”

“God forbid!” said Henry solemnly; “for I think of her as of one of whom I am not worthy. But _my_ faith forbids our union, and, love her though I shall to my dying day, my love should never cross my lips to stir and wound her heart.”

“You shall see her no more; you have seen her too much already; if you love her, as you say, desist at least now.”

“Do you mean that she knows—perhaps returns—my love?”

“I have said enough, and shall not gratify your vanity. But promise me you will not see her again, and I will even believe that you did not try to proselytize her.”

“No; I cannot promise that. Circumstances might arise under which it would be death to keep that promise, and yet I should have no hope of inducing you to give it me back.”

“You mean she might become a Christian?”

“Even so, as I pray she may.”

“And you will marry her then, and she feels it, and yet you pretend you use no influence!”

“I would marry her if she would not think me unworthy.”

“I need say no more. You have been my friend, and I thank you for your kindness; but henceforth our paths are separate. If I lose my child, I shall know you robbed me of her. I only ask you now to consider what I told you of our family and fortunes as a sacred confidence.”

“My friend,” said Henry sadly, as he rose, “I will obey you, and you may consider your secret as sacred as if it were my own. But remember this is your own act, and, if ever you wish to call on my friendship again, my services will be as willingly yours as though this breach had never been. God bless you and your daughter Maheleth!”

He left the room as in a dream; Rachel scanned his face curiously as she let him out at the crazy door.

“So,” he thought, “thus ends my connection with that house; and yet God knows how true my intentions were. I dare not seek her, still I know she may need me. God grant it be true that Maheleth is a Christian at heart!”

Unconsciously he bent his steps towards the cathedral; a few people were collected about the confessionals. The stained windows were dark and blurred in the uncertain light; only a lamp here and there hung from the pillars.

Perhaps his prayers were more fervent in intention than full in form, and mechanically he watched the shrouded confessionals. Suddenly from behind the green curtain of one of them issued the figure of the Jewish girl, a calm look lighting up her features, and her deportment altogether unlike that which he had so often and so painfully noticed.

Her eye fell upon him instantly, and, far from shunning him, gave him a long glance of recognition and sympathy. She knelt for some time, then rose and walked down the nave. He followed her, and at the entrance door she paused as if to wait for him.

“I have seen your father, Fräulein,” Holcombe said, “and he told me a great many things.”

“I hardly think he quite knows how far things have gone,” she answered gently. “I could give up anything for him except my soul, and for some months I have known that only by becoming a Christian could I save it.”

“I have often seen you in church.”

“Have you, indeed?”

“Your father accuses _me_ of converting you.”

She blushed, and was silent for a few minutes.

“You have helped me by your prayers, I am sure,” she said at last.

“Tell me,” he asked, “are you a Catholic yet?”

“No; I only went into the confessional to speak to the priest; in a few days I shall be baptized.”

“I have a favor to ask you—will you let me be present?”

“Certainly, it will make me very happy, believe me.”

“Do you know that, when your father hears of it, he will turn you out of your home?”

“He said so—did he tell you so?”

“He did, but he could not have meant it.”

“Oh! yes,” she said sadly, “he would do it; he would think it a duty, a matter of principle.”

“It would be very ungrateful.”

“Ungrateful! Was I not bound to work for him who gave me life? He worked hard for us, and in the time of trouble we owed it to him.”

“But if he throws you off, what will become of _him_?”

“That is the saddest part; but I know God will take care of him.”

“Remember, Maheleth, that either for yourself or for him (for your sake) you must never hesitate to call upon me. Promise me that.”

It was the first time he had called her Maheleth. She blushed and looked down, saying:

“You have been very generous and very kind to my father; but surely now you have parted friendship with him?”

“No, I have not, as I told even him; but, were it not so, for _your_ sake it should be.”

“I have God to look after me, Herr Holcombe.”

“But I want to be his instrument.”

“His Raphael, as you have been to us through this desert of want and poverty.”

“And will you not be my Sarah?” he asked suddenly, but in a soft, low voice.

Her whole frame shook; then she looked up in his face, silent.

“I have loved you since I knew you,” he went on to say; “I mean since I _saw_ you first; but I never meant to tell my secret, for you know I could not wed a Jewess. But now, thank God! the bar is gone, and I can be happy without sin.”

She did not answer yet.

“Have I deceived myself, then?” asked the young man sadly. “And do you not love me, as I hoped?”

“I do,” she answered, quickly looking up. “God knows I do, but I cannot marry you.”

“Why, why, Maheleth? You torture me.”

“Because it would break my father’s heart, and because it would give him reason to say I had changed my faith for you.”

“But how could he?”

“I could not leave him in misery, and my little sisters alone, and go and live in peace and earthly comfort which they could not share.”

“They are most welcome to share it, Maheleth.”

“You are too good, too noble,” she said; “but it cannot be.”

“And you love me, you say?”

“Must we not love God better, dear, dear friend? Henry, do not be angry with me. You will be my dear brother in the faith always.”

Holcombe was too overcome to speak. She stopped and entreated him to leave her.

“I am paining you beyond necessity,” she said; “you will be happier and calmer if you do not see me till the day of my baptism. All things are God’s will, and, bitter as the trial may be, he gives us strength to bear it, if we look to him. Farewell, Henry.”

He wrung her hand in silence, and saw the drooping figure pass quickly out of sight. He felt how much harder her trial was, and how selfish his own words had been, yet he did not try to see her again until the day of her baptism.

The ceremony was to take place at the cathedral, at four in the morning. The sun had just risen, and the quiet streets were golden with his light. Holcombe was watching at the door. She came very soon, wrapped in a long black cloak, looking radiant and calm, as if nothing more could be of any consequence to her, nor stir her heart confusedly. She held out her hand to her friend with a “God bless you!” that left him dumb. Her cloak was laid on a carved bench, and her white robe gleamed under the rainbow from the great stained‐glass window above her. More beautiful than ever she seemed, and more angel‐like. The priest poured the saving waters upon her head, and performed all the holy mystic ceremonies of the sacrament, and she, as if in a heavenly trance, followed him throughout with her eyes and her lips. Mass was said directly after, and she and Henry knelt together at the altar‐rails to receive the Bread of Angels. A long time passed after Mass, and when at length Maheleth, now Mary, rose from her knees, it was only to go to the distant Lady‐chapel, and there offer up a golden brooch of Spanish workmanship, one of the few treasures saved from the wreck of her father’s fortune.

As she left the church, Henry followed her.

“Are you going _home_?” he asked timidly.

She turned her dark eyes upon him very softly, but with no sadness in them.

“I have no home now,” she said slowly. “Last night I bade my father farewell; I am going to the convent.”

A look of terror came into Henry’s face.

“To stay there always?” he asked.

“As God wills—I do not know,” she replied.

“But are you not sorry about your father and sisters?”

“It was a hard trial,” she answered, with radiant calmness in her eyes, “but God has taken the sorrow out of it now.”

“And shall I not see you again, now your faith is mine? I saw you often when there was a gulf between us!”

“It is better you should forget me. But that shall be as God wills; I leave it to him, and will make no arrangements.”

“Thank you for that, anyhow; remember all I told you, dear Maheleth; so far, at least, you can make me happy.”

“I will _remember_ it always, and bless you for it, but I do not promise to act up to it.”

“Never mind, you cannot help God protecting you, no matter through what instrument.”

And with these words he left her.

For some weeks they did not meet, but Henry was busy at correspondence with his English agents and bankers. In the meanwhile, regular remittances arrived at Herr Löwenberg’s house, which he at first refused to accept, not knowing whether they came from his daughter whom he had thrown off, or his friend whom he had insulted, and not wishing to be beholden to either for his daily pittance. But starvation was the alternative, and, had not Rachel kindly shared her meals with his children, and sent him little inexpensive dishes now and then, hunger would have made him yield long ago. As it was, he missed his daily sustenance sorely, and at last, under protest, and promising himself prompt repayment of these _loans_ as soon as he should be well again, he began to use the money sent to him. Many a time Holcombe came to the door to inquire after him from the good‐natured Rachel; and every day, in the dusk of the evening, came his daughter, almost always bearing a basket that held some little delicacy.

One night it happened that Henry and Maheleth met at the door. She was the first to speak.

“You see I am not yet immured in my convent!” she said gayly. “I have to thank you so much for coming here to look after my dear father. I shall be leaving Frankfort soon, and then there will be no one to be so good to him as you.”

“But _I_ shall not leave. Do you really mean you are going?”

“Yes; the good nuns have got me a governess’ situation somewhere in Bohemia with Catholics. I shall go next week.”

“May I come and bid you good‐by?”

“Oh, yes! come on a visiting day, Thursday. Have you seen my sisters? How are they looking?”

“I saw them a week ago; they looked tired, I thought.”

“Oh! they don’t know how to nurse him, and he tires them, I am afraid. But God will see to them and him too.”

“Will you be able to come back here for a vacation?”

“Perhaps in a year—not before.”

“Your father may be well again by that time.”

“God grant it! But I must not stay any longer now.”

And having made some inquiries of Rachel, she left the house.

Henry Holcombe longed for Thursday. He wanted to ask leave to write to Maheleth, to give her news of her father, he would say. When the time arrived, the parlor at the convent was full, and he hardly relished making his adieus in a crowd. He was relieved to find a nun come and beckon him away, and show him into a quiet little room, with a polished floor, a Munich Madonna, and a few plain chairs round a dark table.

In a few minutes, a pleasant‐looking old religious came in, followed by Maheleth.

The girl reached her hand to Henry, saying:

“Sister Mary Ambrose knows you by name very well.”

The talk was general for a short time, then the old nun got up and walked to the window.

“I wanted to ask you if I might write to you, Maheleth,” said the young man, much relieved by the prospect of a comparative _tête‐à‐tête_.

“If you wish to do so, by all means.”

“And you don’t wish it?” he said, in disappointment.

“I meant it might be painful to you after all. What I wish is of no moment.”

“Maheleth, how can you say so, when you know I shall always feel for you the same love I do now?”

“Well, my friend, let that pass. Write to me, then; you know your letters will be welcome.”

“I will always let you know about your father.”

“You will not always stay in Frankfort?”

“Not quite, but I shall be here again this time next year.”

She smiled and said:

“I might not be here myself.”

“Then I shall see you wherever you are, and I shall ask you the same question you have answered once.”

“Ah! Henry, do not trust to accidents! It may never be; forget me, as I already told you.”

“We’ll not argue about it; we will wait and see. Look, I have brought you something,” he added, taking a tiny velvet case from his breast‐pocket. “It is not an engagement‐ring, do not be afraid,” he said, as she seemed troubled; “it is only a souvenir, and I want you to promise me to wear it for one year, till I see you again. After that, you shall do as you like about keeping it. You know what a rosary‐ring is?” he asked, as he showed her the broad yellow band notched by tiny bubbles of gold. “And here is the cross laid upon it, and the cross is of pearls, the emblem of innocence. You read what is inside now.”

She took it and read the device on the interior rim: “Crux per amore; Amor per cruce.”

“The cross through love; Love through the cross,” he explained.

She replied by kissing the ring and handing it to him, as she said:

“Put it on my finger, Henry, and only you or God himself shall ever draw it off.”

“You do not mean—”

“Hush! how can you question him? But I fear he will not call me in that way. Who knows, perhaps we shall meet next year? I leave my father to God and you.”

The old nun came back from the window.

“My child, I am afraid I cannot stay any longer,” she said.

The girl rose, and took Henry’s hand in both her own.

“God bless and reward you, my dear, dear friend. You know all I would say and yet cannot.”

He kissed her hand, and, with an ineffable look of holy calm, the Jewish convert left the room, still glancing back at him.

Two months passed, and Löwenberg grew better. One morning, a large letter was brought to him, with the Madrid post‐mark. He opened it hastily, and scanned its contents. The letter fell from his hands as he read, and a dizziness came over him; he lay back on his couch, deadly pale.

“Is it anything bad about Maheleth?” timidly asked little Thamar.

“No,” he said, momentarily roused to anger. He took up the letter again and muttered, “A million dollars!” The children thought he was worse, and looked on with scared faces.

The letter was from a banker at Madrid, saying that he was authorized by a person deeply in Señor Cristalar’s debt, but who wished to remain nameless, to apprise him of a certain sum, a million dollars, lying in ready money at his command in Hauptmann’s bank at Frankfort. The person had long been wishing to make this restitution, but had not till now been able to ascertain his hiding‐place. The invalid was in a fever; he could not help thinking of the young Christian he had spurned, yet he tried to persuade himself it was not he, but the man to whose knavery he had owed his total ruin.

Several days passed, and at last he wrote to Holcombe at the hotel he had been staying at. In ambiguous terms, he spoke of a generous service undeserved by him, and of his desire to see him, if only once. But the Englishman was gone and had left no address. He then wrote to his Madrid correspondent, urging him to try and discover the person from whom the money had been sent; but the banker wrote word that the whole transaction had been kept very secret, and that, before it had become known to him, it had passed through so many hands that it was impossible to find out the first person concerned. There was a hint of some American bank connected with it, and the money had been originally paid down in American gold; but beyond this there was no clue. Cristalar thought the Spanish banker had been probably bribed to keep silence, and a few more weeks sped by without his taking any active measures about his newly‐found wealth. He received and acknowledged a letter of advice from Hauptmann’s bank, telling him of the sum at his disposal, and Hauptmann himself came to call upon him and offer him his congratulations. The Spaniard, who still called himself by his German name, received the visit of his former employer as a mere conventional act of courtesy, and seemed in no wise elated by the sudden good‐fortune he was being congratulated upon. He did not change his lodgings, but he hired a servant, and sent his daughters to the best Jewish school in the town. As soon as he got well, which was by rapid degrees, after he had received the letter that once more made him a millionaire, he left his children in charge of Rachel, and proceeded to London, where he advertised daily for information of Henry Holcombe. The weekly supplies in small sums had never discontinued, but he felt assured that, notwithstanding all these blinds, he could not be mistaken as to the name of his benefactor.

Meanwhile, Maheleth in her Bohemian home heard from Rachel of her father’s fortune, his restoration to health, and his journey to England. She, too, wrote to Henry, and asked him to tell her if it were he that had thus returned good for evil. He simply said in reply that he was free to do as he liked with his money, and that he thought Señor Cristalar knew better how to use it than he did.

Summer came again, and with it Henry Holcombe; the old _Juden‐Strasse_ was once more before him, and then he learnt that Herr Löwenberg had gone three months ago to Madrid. He had been travelling in Italy and Greece, and had never gone home to his old English country‐house, which now was let to good and steady tenants. He went to the convent; _she_ was not there, but they expected her. So there was nothing for it but to go and chat with Rachel and old Zimmermann about old times and old friends.

A week later he called again at the convent, and the portress told him to wait. In the same little parlor, unchanged and clean, he waited for a quarter of an hour, hoping and dreading to see Maheleth. She came in this time alone. He took her hand in his, and looked a hungry look into her eyes. She said to him, smiling:

“Do you see I have kept my promise? I have the dear ring on my finger, and every day I have said the rosary with it for you. And now, you know, I _must_ thank you.”

“I cannot bear it; don’t, for my sake, Maheleth! Have you heard from your father?”

“No; he never _will_ write, I knew that; but I have heard _of_ him; he is in Spain. He will begin again as a banker, I feel sure, and never rest till he has repaid you.”

“I don’t want to be repaid, except _with interest_, and you know it is not from _him_ I can ask that. Do you remember that I was to ask you the same question I asked once already?”

“Yes, Henry, but think what you are doing.”

“I shall ask it first, and then think.”

“Well, Henry, if I should say that, I will answer it as you wish, provided you can gain my father’s consent?”

The young man looked blank.

“I believe that is what God would wish me to do, Henry. My father has no further need of me, and he or I owe you a debt of gratitude we can never pay; yet I should like his distinct permission, if I could have it, and you can obtain it more easily than I can.”

“I shall not rest till it be done,” said Holcombe excitedly. “Shall I write to him? Maheleth, you have had ‘Crux per amore’; now God will give us ‘Amor per cruce.’ ”

He wrote that very day to Madrid, asking the hand of his daughter from the wealthy Jewish banker, and pleading as hard as though he were some poor outcast, with never a roof to his head, begging for the favor of a royal maiden’s love. Cristalar was overjoyed at knowing at last where to find the man he owed health and fortune to, and, instead of a letter, he sent a telegram to say he would be in Frankfort in a week.

Henry took the telegram to the convent; Maheleth turned very pale as she read it.

“It is all right, surely, darling, is it not?” asked Holcombe.

“I have never seen him since the eve of my baptism.”

“And,” interrupted the young man, “please God, you will see him again the eve of our marriage.”

She hid her face in her hands. “God grant it!” she murmured, under her breath.

Ephraim Cristalar, for he called himself by his own name now, went to the hotel where Holcombe used to live, and inquired for the young Englishman. He had not long to wait.

“Mr. Holcombe!” he exclaimed, as he caught him in his arms, “I cannot speak to you—you are master of all I am and have; can you but forgive me, say?”

“My friend and father!” replied Holcombe, “you must not give way like this! I only asked you a simple question, a great favor, it is true, but that is all we have to speak of.”

“Oh! I know better than that, Henry. What have you to _ask_ of me, when all I have is yours?”

“There is one thing I want, you know what; and my only other request is that you will see your daughter.”

Cristalar drew back. “She is yours, Henry Holcombe,” he said solemnly, “as far as she is mine to give; but she is an alien to my faith, and to my home.”

“No, no, it must not, shall not be. Remember how she fed you, worked for you, brought up your little ones, and sent you the little she earned, even though you had cast her off.”

“It is cruel, Holcombe, to remind me of that,” said Cristalar reproachfully. “Perhaps as your _wife_ I may see her—as the wife of my benefactor, not as my daughter.”

“I want to take her from _your_ hands. And think how she has wearied for you all this time!”

“I know—and do you think I have not missed _her_? I have only _half_ lived since she left me; and I love her beyond description even yet, but that is an unhallowed love.”

“Say, rather, an unnatural delusion; I mean your refusal to see her. You will, for my sake, for your son‐in‐law’s sake?”

“Leave me now, Henry, I must think.”

Need we tell the end? How his better nature triumphed; how prosperity had softened his heart, and gratitude had bent his pride; how at last his father’s love could stand no longer the knowledge of his child’s great sorrow; and how Henry’s prophecy that Maheleth should see her father on the eve of her marriage was anticipated by many weeks? Her sisters and Señor Cristalar accompanied her to the cathedral, and, after the ceremony, the banker put into the hands of the officiating priest a check for $10,000 for the Catholic poor of Frankfort.

Holcombe House was made ready soon after for the bride’s reception, and Señor Cristalar established a branch bank in London, of which his son‐in‐ law was partner and responsible head. In a very few years, the Holcombe income was the same it had been before the appalling drain the agents had spoken of, when the young possessor had drawn the £100,000 of ready money left him by his father, and added to it an equal sum raised on the estate.

The old Spaniard could never be induced to abandon the faith that was as much a part of his family pride as of the tradition of his race; but Thamar and Agar, Maheleth’s two sisters, were baptized two years after the marriage, under the names of Elizabeth and Magdalen, and, when they in their turn married into noble English houses, their father certainly showed no sign of disapproval of their change of religion, in the princely fortunes he allotted to each.

Europe’s Angels.

It was night, and the old year was passing away. The angels had sung their anniversary strains of gladness, and had announced anew the coming of the Prince of Peace, only a week ago, yet there was a solemn silence now in their serried ranks, as they pressed around a group of their representatives.

I can hardly tell you _where_ this was, or whether it was “in the body or out of the body” that I fancied I saw the glorious vision; I only know that it seemed as if infinite space were around them, and an amphitheatre of angelic faces, like living stones, were making a barrier between them and space, as the rainbow does between clouds.

There were many of those whom I have called representatives, and each bore some strange emblem, which I understood to be the badge of the nation over which he was set. Around each stood a host similarly distinguished, the guardian angels of each individual soul composing the nation. There was an awful stillness on this the last night of the year, as the conclave of angels sat brooding over the events of the immediate past. A few, more prominent among their brethren, presently stood forward, while a figure of marvellous beauty, but calm austerity of aspect, presented a book to them, which it supported as a deacon against its head. The book was closely written on one side, while the opposite page was blank.

An angel, crowned with an iron crown, and robed in a wonderful garment of deep azure,(198) curiously wrought in gold with stars and signs of lore and art, such as only one land in Europe can boast of being able to interpret, taking a pen in his hand, spoke to the assembled multitude.

“Brethren,” he said, in a deep, musical voice whose tones indicated both gravity and conscious strength, “before I write my brief record of the year we have now added to our experience, let me speak to you, as fellow‐ watchers over our God’s earthly treasures. My trust has been a bitter and a heavy one, yet withal a glorious vindication of faith and truth. We have risen among nations like a comet that for a moment eclipses the steadier and more lasting glory of the older planets, but in our course there were obstacles which have now become almost the monument of martyrs. Unmindful of the lion‐hearted men to whom Wilfrid, and Boniface, and Lioba preached, and of whom the strongest bulwark of intellectual faith was built by their later and more national saints, our new rulers have sought to renew the persecutions of the XVIth century, and the absolutism of a State Church. But our God, the ‘dear God’(199) of our people, knew how to raise up defenders for himself in the fearless pastors of his flock; knew how to inspire them with a bravery that scorned imprisonment and laughed at death, that made them raise their voices against presumptuous and intrusive authority on the one hand, and barefaced heresy on the other. We have triumphed in persecution; we have re‐echoed the _non possumus_ of our earthly father and Pontiff; we have shown to our God the will of martyrs after having displayed before our sovereign the deeds of patriots. He thought to weld a mighty nation into one empire; he has riven it in twain in his unblest attempt, and has called up against his puny military power the anger of that God who, on the shores of the Red Sea, did punish Pharaoh and his host. ‘Who is like to thee, among the strong, O Lord? Who is like to thee, glorious in holiness, terrible and worthy of praise, doing wonders?’ ”(200)

Those that wore robes like that of the mighty angel who had spoken took up his last triumphant words, and chanted them forth in two alternate choirs, and the voice that came from this host of choristers seemed like the voice of the sea thundering amid caves and rocks. It surged up and died away in long reverberating echoes, a hymn of strength and defiance, a prophecy of a magnificent and almost endless future.

Then the angel who had spoken wrote a few words in the book, and, turning, presented the pen to one who stood close beside him, tall, stately, and calm, in white raiment, with the historical _fleur‐de‐lis_ broidered thickly over his robe. On his brows shone the same emblem, wrought in gold and pearls, while in his left hand he held a flame‐colored standard, the oriflamme of the Crusades.

“My brethren,” he began, “this year has been a silent one compared with its last two predecessors; but none the less a year of sacrifice, of heroic expiation, of patient humility of spirit. We have lived amid perils as deep as religious persecutions; amid the perils of a civilization that is unchristian, and of refinements worse than heathen. The worship of the false gods has come back, and we are surrounded with a corruption as terrible as that of imperial Rome or effeminate Byzantium. Our name is no longer supreme, our escutcheon no longer unstained, our sword is broken in the hands of others, our missions are unprotected, and our influence no longer paramount among barbarians and plunderers, and still our corruption flourishes as unblushingly and undauntedly as ever, and our rivals, nay, our very captors, come to learn it at our feet. This is now our shameful supremacy; but, in the midst of these Capuan revels, is there still a hope for the nation? Yes, my brethren, the same hope that our glorious iron‐ crowned compeer has told us was his hope—the church, the faith, the truth. If our rulers, like those of our whilom foes, forget the Christian heroes whom we call our forefathers, the men who at the field of Tolbiac vowed our nation to the God of armies, and in a thousand fields in Palestine, Syria, and Egypt redeemed that holy vow, _we_ do not and cannot forget it. Sons and daughters of the Crusaders, heirs and heiresses of the Kings of Jerusalem and the Knights of Rhodes and Malta, many of our nation are now in the holier army, the holier knighthood of religion; their habit is their coat of mail, their swift prayers and their swifter sacrifices are their battle‐axes, their spears, their maces; in every land they are fighting the battle of their own, in every breach defending the honor of their fallen country. All eyes are still upon their acts; their land, like a magnet, compels the glance of Europe and the world. The saviours who are working hiddenly at the regeneration of ‘the eldest daughter of the church’ are of no party, own no secret master, work for no wages, and seek no reward; they are soldiers of the cross, children of God, who, in the hospitals, the prisons, the galleys, the schools, the Chinese stations, the Canadian missions, the cloistered monasteries, under the names of Sisters of Charity, Order of Preachers, _Missions Etrangères_, Christian Brothers, Benedictines of Solesmes, Jesuits, and _Sulpiciens_, work for God, in God, with God. ‘Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you.’ ”(201)

The choir of white‐robed angels that clustered round the one who had ceased speaking took up the grave refrain, and chanted it as their brethren had done before, and the song swelled majestically as it seemed to reach the uttermost bounds of the living barrier of angel faces round the central groups. Ere yet it had subsided, the last of the heavenly speakers wrote his record in the book, and gave the pen into the hand of a third angel who stood in grave expectancy by his side.

This one was tall and stalwart‐looking, a warrior‐angel, one would involuntarily be sure to think, yet his long trailing robe of crimson was woven not with dragons or golden leopards, but with miniature cathedrals, abbeys, and priories. The heaviness of this golden embroidery seemed to drag the garment into yet more statuesque folds, as the mighty wearer drew himself slowly up and took the pen, letting go, as he did so, his hold upon a silver shield bearing a blood‐red cross. His fair waving locks were uncrowned, and he bent his head towards the two who had spoken before.

“My brethren,” he began, and his voice sounded clear and clarionlike, “you have each of you sought in the continuation of the traditions of the past a pledge of the regeneration and safety of the future. I, too, looked to the early past for the golden age I would fain see revived among us, but, unlike you, it is neither persecution nor bloodshed that I have to record. Our nation is not eclipsed in power or in influence; and although our rulers are hardly worthy of their chivalric forerunners, yet there are yet among them some who are heirs to their fathers’ greatness of soul, though not to the integrity of their faith. Still, our race has kept more unblemished than others that reverence for authority without which no faith is sure, no empire stable. Our life flows more calmly on in our island‐home than does the troubled stream of our brethren’s days beyond the sea. Still, amid benefits without number, amid the march of science and the progress of art, things that in exchange for the ancient gift of faith our second fatherland every day gives us in return, we have one fruitful source of dread and danger—the sordid love of gain which makes our people restless during life, and leaves them hopeless in death. To strive against this demon of the air—for we seem to breathe his spirit in the very atmosphere—is the constant endeavor of my being. To knit art to God as it was joined to him in the olden days, to put honor before wealth, and conscience before success, to raise principle triumphant over interest, is my daily, necessary, but most wearisome task. Many voices erstwhile charmed our nation—that of the warrior, the bard, the monk; the voice of glory, the voice of learning, the voice of holy love. Now one cry alone harshly calls our children together—the cry of gain. Our country has forgotten its ancient fanes of learning, its island monasteries, its townlike abbeys, its glorious cathedrals, colleges, libraries, and halls, it has forgotten its tournaments of science, its chants, its liturgies, even its earthly pageants, and has run after the abject golden calf of these latter days. Not the poor alone, but the noble and great have with less excuse come down into the new arena, and lowered themselves to the level of money‐seekers, till the chivalry of our race has become a forgotten dream, a talisman that has lost its charm, a thing as out of date as a crowded abbey with its holy pomps of daily service would be among the darkened, busy streets of a modern gold‐coining city. And yet in many a nook, in many an obscure street of a little town, in many a shady, peaceful country home, are rising the fair progeny of our statelier fanes of old, and beneath groined roofs and before carved altars rise prayers as beautiful and as divers as the trefoils and roses on capital and pillar. In prayer, whether petrified into fair churches standing for ever, or moulded into golden altar‐plate rich with chasing and with gems, or flying straight to God’s feet in ardent, winged words of love, we place our last hope, the hope of the only true conversion our land can ever know; for ‘there is a success in evil things to a man without discipline, and there is a finding that turneth to loss.’ ”(202)

Here a countless host of angels, as gravely radiant, yet with the same solemn shade of sadness in their aspect, as the last speaker, took up his parting words, and chanted them slowly. I thought they caught unconsciously the ring of the holy words chanted so often through the ages of faith, in that land of cathedrals and cloisters. Indeed, the angel choir and their stately leader seemed none other than monastic champions turned into bright heavenly spirits, so akin is everything in that isle to the claustral ideal from which sprang its life—civil, collegiate, ecclesiastical, feudal, and social.

As the chanted dirge grew less and less distinct, another angel advanced to take the pen his predecessor had just laid in the folds of the book, after having written his year’s record within. This one had stood so far in the background as to have escaped my awed notice until now. He wore a long, loosely‐falling robe of black, and bowed his head as if in grief; his hands were clasped, and a golden and a silver key were held between his fingers; in his step there was no elasticity, and in his eye no gladness. All those who followed him seemed equally sorrowful, but soon I heard why it was, and no longer marvelled at it.

“Brethren,” he said, in mournful tones, “brethren of all climes, who once envied me my proud position of warden over the land which holds the father of all Christians, envy me no longer the sad honors I must yet bear. When I look at my nation, I can see nothing through my tears. Once I saw treasures of art and beauty; I can take pride in them no longer. I saw fair landscapes, the envy of the world, the garden of Europe, the beautiful God’s‐acre of a past of heroic deeds, buried in honorable oblivion as the seedlings of a more glorious crop of Christian heroism—I can take pleasure in these no more. I saw a people mild, inoffensive, believing, loving; now I see them corrupted, deluded, led away, and turned into furies. I saw churches gorgeous with the many gifts of fervent piety and grateful wealth; I see ruins now, sacrilegiously used for godless purposes, in derision and contempt of their lofty dedication. I saw one city, the jewel of the universe, the city of sanctuary and refuge, where faith reigned, and grief was comforted, and weakness was made strength; a ‘city of the soul,’ where God held court mid thousands of earthly angels, and where he found again the mingled worship of the mysterious Hebrew temple and of the holy, silent house of Nazareth. But now, brethren, rude men have scattered our treasures, profaned our churches, seized our cloisters, driven away learning and charity to put lewdness and brutality in their place, and have renewed, with far more blasphemous intention, the horrors of the barbaric invasions. I see the father of the faithful with the crown of martyrdom surmounting his tiara, waiting, like the _Ecce Homo_ eighteen hundred years ago, the final verdict of an infuriate mob, while other nations, Pilate‐like, wash their hands of the sacred, helpless charge it were their first duty to defend. My brethren, weep with me, weep for me, and yet rejoice; ‘for the Lord will not cast off for ever.’(203) ‘And in that day the deaf shall hear the words of the book, and out of darkness and obscurity the eyes of the blind shall see.’ ”(204)

Many were the eager voices that took up the words of hope and sang them with a fervor which only guardian spirits can know. As the strain swelled and spread, then fell into a gentle murmur, as if the singers were loth to leave off the prayer of faith and hope, the angel had written his short record for the passing year, and looked around to welcome his next successor. There was a pause, and among the angelic conclave a swaying to and fro denoted that some suppressed feeling was at work. Those who had spoken stood apart in a conspicuous group, conferring among themselves; but I looked with awe and interest at those who had hitherto been silent.

The old year’s span was very short now. On earth the snow was falling, preparing a fitting shroud for the departing guest, and a fitting cradle for the coming stranger; there were revellers in many houses, heedless sleepers in more, and watchers in only a few; there were monastic choirs filing into silent churches for the coming office of matins; and there were also miserable outcasts, some voluntary slaves of the world, others unwilling watchers, poverty‐stricken, hunger‐smitten, desperately tempted creatures who might murmur at and even curse their fate, yet would not begin the year by breaking God’s commandments; there were many sinners doing penance, many happy death‐beds, many freed souls rushing on the wings of long‐repressed desire towards the goal that weary years of purgatory had hardly hidden from their longing gaze; and well might the angelic host thrill with holy delight as all these sights and sounds struck upon their consciousness. The good surely outweighed the bad!

Just then an angel stepped from among the hitherto silent throng—an angel with a face full of suffering, sweetness, and patience, yet withal a look of something deeper and stronger than mere patience; and his black robe was sown with silver stars, while a star glittered also on his forehead. In quick accents, full of strength, he addressed his companions, holding the pen in his hand.

“Brethren!” he said, “the march of events, as the world calls it, has passed over and by our nation, but in God’s eyes we are not so soon forgotten. The civilizer of Eastern Europe, the bulwark of Christianity against the Moslem faith, we have nevertheless suffered by the hands of Christian princess and been annihilated in the name of civilization. A martyr‐nation, a victim to false diplomacy, we stand in Europe with the chains still about our feet, while empires change hands and dynasties come and go; exiled and dispersed like the Hebrews of old, we are known, like them, by our indomitable faith and ever hopeful patriotism. Within this year, a gigantic empire has manacled us more cruelly, gagged us more closely, than before, but we are steadfast yet, for ‘blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ ”(205)

The words were caught up and re‐echoed by the angel throng around their star‐crowned leader, while he wrote the brief record of another year’s bitter wrongs still so heroically and silently borne. He passed the pen to another clothed in purple, who looked at him with angelic sympathy before he spoke. His voice was still and low, but clear as a silver bell.

“My brethren,” he said, “my task is hard and dreary; a mist of prejudice hangs over those vast steppes which form my dominions; a false civilization educates our nobles to a pitch of unnatural and seeming polish in which all truth is killed, and all natural kindness crushed; like the apples of the Dead Sea, our country is fair to the eye of the world, but ashes to the taste of God. We have all to hope, it is true, but much to fear; and, while the desolate semblance of the true faith spreads its outward and deceptive gorgeousness before the barren and fettered nation, the souls of our brethren perish of thirst, as it were, within sight of the Fountain of Life. Brethren, pray for my unhappy charge, and thou, O God! enlighten my people! ‘How incomprehensible are thy judgments, and how unsearchable thy ways!’ ”(206)

The purple‐robed choir around him took up the angel’s last words, and slowly chanted them, as if in awe and expectation, while their leader wrote a few brief words in the book.

Another came forward, gathering his golden robe together, the hem of which was broidered with figures of ships and charts, somewhat faded now, but this was redeemed by the effulgent brightness of the scroll he held on his outstretched hand a scroll bearing the divine motto, _Ad majorem Dei gloriam_. Looking swiftly around, he began thus:

“My brethren, my provinces are narrowed and my nation lessened since her ships explored the ocean, her fleet sent forth armadas, and her leaders conquered new continents, but the spirit of the missionary and the martyr has not followed that of the less successful and less lasting investigator. Chivalry still lives in the land of the Cid, and fires the hearts in whose veins flows the blood of the Crusaders of Granada. Saints took up the warrior’s shield, and won their spurs in distant, dangerous services, till the names of Xavier, Loyola, Gaudia, and Teresa became the household words of a whole universe. Unbelief has poisoned our present position, and for our sins we have suffered dire misfortune and perennial disturbance. Still, our people are unchanged; faithfully the sons of the Visigoth martyrs keep the trust of their fathers, and, secure amid their mountain fastnesses, within the last year have raised the standard of the cross wreathed with the golden lilies of a national and well‐beloved dynasty. We have had triumphs of the soul and heroic deeds of patriotic daring mingled together in the annals of our peasant soldiers; the spirit of another Vendée has spoken to our nation; and God has rejoiced to find at last a human bulwark against human unbelief. ‘Judge me, O God, and distinguish my cause from the nation that is not holy; deliver me from the unjust and deceitful man.’ ”(207)

And while the angel wrote his record in the book, his followers echoed his last words in tones of mingled triumph and supplication, chanting them, as all the others had done before them, in two alternate choirs. And now there was again a pause, while the first groups of angels who had spoken drew closer to the book, and gazed at the last records written in it. One more representative came forward, an angel robed in softest green, and bearing a harp in his hand. Turning to the west, he spoke in a voice full of deep emotion: “My brethren, I look towards the sea, and gaze at the land of the setting sun. I see my people spreading over the earth, so that I have more children in far‐away lands than on my own soil. I see them, the pioneer nation of whom Brendan was the first leader, planting the cross and the shamrock in unfailing union, wherever they go. Long ages of suffering have not reft them of the gift of faith, the treasure of art, or the strength of enterprise; their arm hath upreared every throne and stayed every altar; their women make a Nazareth of every home and a tabernacle of every hovel; their race links two worlds, that of the past and that of the future, that of culture and civilization, to that of enterprise and freedom. I look with pride on the ocean darkened by the barks of my people, and forget, as I look, to sigh over the ruined fanes and dismantled castles of old. Children of impulse, they carry their home in their hearts, and make another Erin round every cross they plant. Sea kings, but Christians, they take from the Norsemen their daring, and from their own isle its poetry, and, blending the two, bear the highest gifts of the Old World to be the heirlooms of the New. To my nation may it well and fittingly be said, ‘They went out from thee on foot, and were led by the enemies: but the Lord will bring them to thee exalted with honor as children of the kingdom.’ ”(208)

These prophetic words were caught up by the numerous followers of the green‐robed angel, and rang now in grand and now in softened cadence through the boundless field of space that encircled the heavenly throng. As the tones died away, the angel wrote his record in the book, and the bells of earth sounded faintly in the still air.

The old year was passing away, and the angels in silence gathered round the book. As the last stroke of midnight was heard, the bearer of it turned the leaf, presenting a surface fair and smooth as the petal of a lily, and the whole company of blessed spirits intoned the _Veni Creator_.

I heard as it were in a dream, and saw forms of light and beauty disperse like the fleecy clouds of morning, till the singing died away in faraway corners of our old, prosaic, yet blessed earth. The songs of heaven were carried into the uttermost recesses where earthly misery was keenest and earthly revelry loudest on that fateful night; and, as its echoes passed over them, the misery grew strangely bearable, the revelry was unaccountably hushed. Everywhere the new‐born year came in with a blessing and a promise, reverently gathering its predecessor’s lessons even while mourning its inevitable shortcomings; and so once more, according to the patience of God, his ministers went forth to clear for every man a new field where, past errors being forgotten, he might renew his struggle in the battle of life, and retrieve himself in the eyes of infinite purity and infinite justice.

Such was the beautiful death of the old year 1872.

The Nativity Of Christe.

Behould the Father is His daughter’s Sonne, The bird that built the nest is hatched therein, The Old of Yeares an hower hath not outrunne, Eternall life to live doth now beginnn, The Word is dumm, the Mirth of heaven doth weepe, Mighte feeble is, and Force doth fayntely creepe.

O dyinge soules! behould your living Spring! O dazeled eyes! behould your Sunne of grace! Dull eares, attend what word this Word doth bringe! Upp, heavy hartes, with joye your joy embrace! From death, from darke, from deaphnesse, from despayres, This Life, this Light, this Worde, this Joy repaires.

Gift better than Himself God doth not knowe, Gift better than his God no man can see; This gift doth here the giver given bestowe, Gift to this gift lett ech receiver bee: God is my gift, Himself He freely gave me, God’s gift am I, and none but God shall have me.

Man altred was by synne from man to best; Beste’s food is haye, haye is all mortal fleshe; Now God is fleshe, and lyes in maunger prest, As haye the brutest synner to refreshe: O happy fielde wherein this foder grewe, Whose taste doth us from beastes to men renewe!

SOUTHWELL.

The Progressionists.

From The German Of Conrad Von Bolanden.