CHAPTER III.

The spiritualists who protest against the attribution of spiritualistic phenomena to the devil may be divided into two classes: 1st, Those who believe there is no such being as the devil; 2d, Those who, believing him to exist, think it unreasonable to attribute such phenomena as those under consideration to such a being.

To these first I can but admit that there is no demonstrating the devil; but, on the other hand, I would remind them that, in denying his existence, they are opposing themselves, 1st, to the religious instinct of the great mass of mankind, who are persuaded that life is a warfare, that there is an enemy. 2d, To the unwavering, explicit tradition of the Christian church. It is impossible to read the Gospels and the other records of the early church without having the idea of a battle, and an enemy against whom it is waged, brought prominently before you. Our Lord came to break the power of Satan, and to take away "the armor in which he trusted"; and the church was instituted for his detailed discomfiture. Every soul that is saved is regarded as a spoil snatched from the hand of the enemy; every one who is cast out of the church is delivered over to Satan.

Some of the earliest words of the church's ritual are words of defiance and adjuration of the enemy upon whom it was her mission to trample. Her exorcisms, for instance, in the baptism service testify to a consciousness of the devil's presence which is simply startling in its realism. He is never forgotten from the moment when, gently breathing on the child's face, she charges the unclean spirit to give place to the Holy Ghost, to the moment when he is cast out headlong, followed by the renunciations of his rescued victim.

The extreme antiquity of these exorcisms is sufficiently vindicated by the poetic paraphrase of Prudentius in the IVth century:

Intonat antistes Domini: fuge callide serpens Mancipium Christi, fur corruptissime vexas Desine, Christus adest humani corporis ultor Non licet ut spolium rapias cui Christus inhœsit Pulsus abi ventose liquor Christus jubet, exi.[192]

Moreover, though the devil is expelled in baptism, the church never lets her children lose sight of him. She is ever warning them in the words of S. Augustine: "Take care, afflicted mortals, take care that the evil one defile not ever this house of the body; that, introduced by the senses, he debauch not the soul's sanctity, nor cloud the intellectual light. This evil thing winds through all the inlets of the senses, moulds itself in forms, blends with colors, weds with sounds, lurks in anger and guileful speech, clothes itself in scents, transfuses itself in savors, and by a flood of troublous movement obscures the mind with evil desires, and fills with vapor the channels of the understanding, through which the soul's ray might shed the light of reason."[193] Voltaire was quite in the right when he set down a priest who would fain compromise with infidelity by throwing up the devil, in this wise: "Belief in the devil is an essential point of Christianity: no Satan, no Saviour."

Those who, admitting the devil to exist, deny that spiritualistic phenomena are diabolical, urge various pleas which I purpose to examine in detail. They insist upon, 1st, the innocent and friendly character of the phenomena. 2d, The difficulty of believing that the devil would be allowed to take so great a liberty with respectable persons without some sort of understanding on their parts. 3d, The fact that spiritualism is a great and most efficient exponent of the immortality of the soul and the existence of God in a materialistic generation.

Now, as regards the first plea, I simply deny the fact of the innocence. I submit that pantheism and the non-existence of eternal punishment are immoral doctrines, the spread of which is calculated to make the world worse; and that these are pre-eminently the doctrines of spiritualism, taught always indirectly, and standing out more and more clearly in proportion as the pious twaddle in which they are incorporated for the sake of weak brethren is laid aside, and the spiritualistic element can give itself free way.

Demoralizing, also, is the distaste which spiritualism creates for all religion, inasmuch as religion lives by faith. An example of this is given in _Experiences with D. D. Home_, p. 60. The party of spiritualists had been conversing, as they imagined, with the spirit of the child of one of them, lately dead, the body, in its coffin, being in the room in which they were sitting. After the burial, we are told, "On our way home, every one remarked that the burial-service, which is, in general, so impressive, had that day, while in church, sounded strangely flat and unprofitable. Mrs. Cox asked how it was that the clergyman had not used the words, 'dust to dust, ashes to ashes, earth to earth.' We assured her that he had; but she declared she had not heard them, although standing as near to him as any of us."

In other respects spiritualism is by no means innocent. It is impossible to set aside the strong testimony, not merely of medical men, who might be supposed prejudiced, but of so many who have either practised spiritualism themselves, or had spiritualist friends, as to the gradual exhaustion of the vital powers which it produces when persevered in to any extent. And, again, it is by far the most efficacious destructive of the barriers of propriety, particularly between the sexes. No one can read much even of the most respectable séances without feeling that the worthy persons who take part in them, whilst securing, may be, the perfect propriety of the particular séance in which they are engaged, are lending the cloak of their respectability to an institution especially marked out for the dissemination of corruption. My contention is that the devil has in spiritualism the prospect of an excellent harvest of evil, of which he has received a very sufficient earnest.

With regard to the gentle behavior, which is supposed to be inconsistent with the character of one who is spoken of as "a roaring lion," I would observe that this gentleness on the part of the spirits is by no means invariable; see the violent scene (_Experiences_, p. 154) in which Home is tormented and screams; or, again, where the company is struck by the "disagreeable and fearful glowing" of his eyes (_Rep._, p. 208). However, it must be confessed that the general character of the manifestations is gentleness itself; but of this sort of gentleness there are plenty of examples in accounts of mediæval magic, when spirits have persevered for a considerable time in gentle, not to say pious, behavior, and, indeed, only came out as devils when worried by the church. The following is taken from the _Gloria Posthuma S. Ignatii_.[194]

A little girl of nine, the daughter of an artilleryman at Malta, was made quite a pet of by spirits, who were always bringing her little presents of jewelry and fruit, at one time giving her fresh figs in January. She was frightened just at first; but they talked so charmingly of their being creatures of the good God as well as she, and seemed to know so much about the inside of churches, that the child could not but think well of them. They did her a wonderful number of kind services of various sorts. For a long time the child's parents, who never saw the spirits, but only the effects they produced, acquiesced, and seemed to think it rather a good joke. There was only one thing that troubled them, and which ultimately made them call in the priest, and this was that the spirits, who showed themselves amiably enough disposed towards the family in general, had an exceptional spite against one little boy. They never saw him come into the room without showing disgust and saying all sorts of unpleasant things about him to their little _protégée_. There was nothing peculiar about the boy, except that he served Mass every morning. When the priest was sent for, and the house exorcised, the amiable spirits, as is invariably the case under these circumstances, lost their temper, and went off in ugly shapes, vomiting fire; in fact, to borrow the spiritualist expression, showing themselves very unformed spirits indeed.

With this account we may compare Mr. Fusedale's extraordinary letter (_Rep._, p. 255), in which he says that the spirits habitually play with his children and amuse them by showing them pretty scenes in a polished globe. He tells us that he has himself seen one of these scenes--a ship hemmed in by ice in an Arctic sea--and that he has often witnessed his little boy shoved across the room in a chair, his legs being too short to reach the ground, and "no human agency near." The two accounts are not unlike, except that in the second story the materials for playing out the last scene are wanting.

As regards the second plea, no doubt there is something odd, at first sight, in so many respectable persons having got into such intimate relations with the devil without knowing anything about it; and though there are not wanting individual instances in the history of _diablerie_, I must confess that I have met with nothing of the sort on so large a scale. But then, we must remember that there never has been a time when respectables as a body were so irreligious, and it is religion that is the great obstacle to such unconscious intercourse with Satan. No Christian who knows anything of the way in which the ancient world was exorcised need be surprised at the devil's being able considerably to enlarge his sphere, as the church has been compelled to narrow hers.

At first, indeed, it seemed as if this was not to be the case. The philosophy of the last century boasted, with some plausibility, that it had done what the church, with all her exorcisms, had never succeeded in doing--that it had swept away Satan altogether, along with his great adversary. Church and devil had gone down together; and for a time people persuaded themselves that the devil, anyhow, had gone. In the solemn obsequies of the whole caste of superstition, as the world fondly thought it, the devil was carried out first, dead, hopelessly dead, free-thinking priests, such as Voltaire rebuked, bearing up the pall. Though many a mocking _requiescat_ has been chanted over his grave, like that of the church, it has proved to be a cenotaph; and now that he appears again, we can hardly wonder if he finds himself more at home than ever since Christianity came into the world.

Satan has ever been, as the schoolmen called him, God's ape (_simius Dei_), reproducing in the mysteries of the "Sabbath" the rites, and even the organization, of the church; but now, after the world's reiterated rejection of Christ, it would seem that the enemy has been permitted to carry the parody a step further. Not only wherever two or three are gathered together in his name is he in their midst, but, good shepherd-wise, he is allowed to seek the sheep that had been lost. Uninvited he seeks them in the unromantic circle of XIXth-century life, entrenched as this is amongst elements the least promising, one should think, for mysticism of any sort. In bright, cheerful, modern rooms, amongst the rustle of innocent commonplaces, he finds his opportunity and his profit, and gently and genially weans his victims from what fragments of dogmatic religion they may still retain to the liberty of his children. At least, there is nothing unnatural in this view.

The third plea is, in the spiritualist's mind, irresistible, and it has had, doubtless, considerable influence in preventing various religious persons from condemning spiritualism. The great evil of the day is materialism; now, then, it is asked, is it conceivable that the devil should appear as the advocate of the two great spiritual doctrines of the immortality of the soul and the existence of God; nay, should actually convert numbers to a belief in these doctrines? I answer, 1st, that when the devil first came forward as the champion of human liberty, he certainly did preach both the immortality of the soul and the existence of God. "Ye shall not die." "Ye shall be as gods." True, he was denying in one breath the death of the body and the death of the soul; but this is quite in the fashion of spiritualism, which invariably denounces any use of the word "death." 2d, That the doctrine of the immortality of the soul loses all disciplinary force when converted into that of endless, inevitable progression. The possibility of a miserable finality has been accepted by the noblest philosophers as a necessary phase in that melody of a future life which, to use the expression of Socrates (_Phædo_, cap. 63), it is "so necessary for each man to sing to himself." There are some, he had said (cap. 62), whom "a befitting fate casts into Tartarus, whence they never come out." And in the last book of the _Republic_, where human life is described as going on in an indefinite series of metempsychosis, we are shown, as the generations sweep round, a pit into which the very bad fall out of the circle, never to join it again. Nor is the doctrine of the existence of God when converted into pantheism of more avail. A deity who is the mere _terminus ad quem_ of necessary evolution can neither be feared as judge nor worshipped as God.

Long experience has taught the evil one that man cannot do without religious sentiment; so he aims at getting its circulation into his own hands by coming forward boldly as the advocate of its cardinal points. He is determined to risk no more disappointing losses, by striving to feed men on the dry husks of materialism, which are insufficient to support life, and are sure, sooner or later, to provoke nausea and repulsion. As to those who have been really converted from scepticism by the spirits, nay, have been landed, as has sometimes been the case, in the bosom of the Catholic Church, I can only say, Blessed be God! who has ever exercised seignorial rights upon the devil's fishing.

So much for the spiritualist amendment. I shall now proceed to consider the positive arguments and evidence tending to show that spiritualism is diabolic.

1st. I notice its shrinking and disgust for all active Catholicism which extends to the use of fragments of Catholic truth in the hands of zealous sectarians. This antipathy, I contend, is invariable; but I must guard against being misunderstood. I admit that the spirits have indulged from time to time in a considerable amount of Catholic, or, I should rather say Ritualist, talk. Several instances may be found in Mr. Home's séances in which holy-water and crucifixes are spoken of with a certain amount of unction. I admit, too, that though sometimes the spirits are discomfited by the mere presence of a religious object--a medal, relic, etc.--this is by no means ordinarily the case. It is quite possible for religious objects to be so presented as in no way to embarrass the spirits, who have been sometimes permitted to carry them about with apparent tenderness, even as Satan was allowed to carry our Lord and set him on a pinnacle of the temple. A sword requires to be handled with a certain amount of vigor and intention if it is to avail as a weapon. If holy objects are brought out simply as so many Catholic testimonials and orders of merit for the spirits, I know nothing in the nature of things or in the promises of God to prevent the devil wearing them in his button-hole. On the other hand, a man uncertain of the spirits' character, but with an honest and lively intention of rejecting them so far as they are God's enemies, "fugite partes adversæ," if he adjures them in his name, will either reduce them to silence and impotence, or extort the confession that they are devils.

It would be easy to produce numbers of instances of the extraordinarily hostile sensitiveness of the spirits in regard to the use in their presence of Catholic prayers, medals, relics, etc. In fact, in order to avoid being a non-conductor, if not an obstructive, a certain undogmatic attitude of mind is required. We need not, indeed, reject Christ, but we must be prepared to look for another beside him, if not in his place. Mr. Home (_Rep._, p. 188) says that, for the medium's success, "the only thing necessary is that the people about should be harmonious." He explains that "the 'harmonious' feeling is simply that which you get on going into a room and finding all the people present such as you feel at home with at once.... Scepticism is not a hindrance; an unsympathetic person is." I have no doubt that this account is perfectly accurate so far as it goes. A Christian's hatred of what he suspects to be the devil, and Professor Tyndall's contemptuous disgust for what he considers a piece of cheating, are both no doubt _natural_ impediments to spiritualistic manifestations; although, in the former case, it may well be that it is something more.

The following scene from Prudentius (_Apoth._, 460-502) illustrates what I have said as to Christian rite and formulary availing against sorcery, not as a charm, but as a weapon of faith. It must be remembered that Julian had been baptized, but his baptism had no effect in breaking the magic rites. We venture thus to render it:

"To give great Hecatè her glut of blood, Whole troops of cows and lowing heifers stood About her altar, every frontlet crowned With shadowy cypress twisted round and round. And now the priestly butcher drives his brand Into the victims, and with bloody hand Gropes keenly in the entrails chilling fast, To count each fluttering life-pulse to the last. When suddenly he cries, dead-white with fear, 'Alas! great prince, some greater god is here Than may suffice these foaming bowls of milk, The blood of victims, flowers, and twisted silk. Yon summoned shades are scattering in dismay, And scared Persephonè glides fast away, With torch averted and with trailing scourge, Thessalian charms are powerless to urge The troubled gods to face the hostile thing. In vain our spells and mystic muttering; The flame has withered in yon censer's core, The blinking embers shrink in ashes hoar. The server with the plate can scarcely stand, The rich balm dripping from his trembling hand. The flamen feels his laurel chaplet go, The victim leaps, and shuns the fatal blow. Assuredly some Christian youth has dared To enter here, and, as their wont, has scared The assembled gods, and of their rites despoiled. Avaunt! avaunt! thou that art washed and oiled! That so anew fair Proserpine may rise.' He shrieked, and swooning fell, as though his eyes Had seen Christ angry and in act to slay. In a like fear the prince now thrusts away His royal crown, and gazes all about; For the fond youth had dared his spells to flout By bearing on his brow the Christian sign. Lo! one, dragged forward from the brilliant line Of royal pages, flaxen-haired and bright, Resigns his arms, and owns that they are right: That he is Christian, that his forehead bears The wondrous sign that every witchcraft scares. The startled monarch, leaping from his seat, Upsets the pontiff in his swift retreat, And flees the chapel, while the rest atone Their impious deed, seeing their master gone, And bowing low their heads in awe and shame, In faltering accents call on Jesu's name."

The fathers have the completest confidence in the efficacy of Christian weapons in Christian hands, and even, when used honestly, in hands not yet Christian, to defeat sorcery.

Tertullian (_Apol._, c. 23) throws out this bold challenge: "Let any one, known to have a devil, come before your tribunal. That spirit, if bidden speak by a Christian, shall as truly confess himself a devil as he has elsewhere falsely declared himself a god. Or bring forward some one of those who are thought to be divine patients, who, sniffing up the altar's deity, conceive of the steam, violent retchers with panting utterance; the heavenly Virgin herself, the promiser of rain, Æsculapius too; ... if they do not all confess themselves devils, not daring to lie to a Christian, then and there shed that insolent Christian's blood."

Nor is it only the passionate Tertullian who can speak thus. S. Athanasius (_De Incarn._, num. 48) is hardly less energetic: "Let any one come who wishes to test what we have said; and let him, in the midst of the manifestations of demons, and the guiles of oracles, and the marvels of magic, use the sign of the cross, which these mock at, or merely name Christ, he shall soon see how quickly the demons are routed, the oracles silenced, the whole magic art and its charms utterly wiped out."

The instances of modern spiritualist manifestations being stopped by religious adjuration are very frequent.

Mr. Glover (_Rep._, p. 205) had been asking the spirits about the time of our Lord's coming; they had answered glibly enough, and had pointed out several texts in the Bible, when, apparently on a sudden impulse, "he made a cross in a circle, and asked, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, if the communications were of God, and the answer was 'No.' He then asked if they were of the devil, and the answer was 'Yes.'"

Mr. Chevalier (_Rep._, p. 218) says that, after having received several communications purporting to come from his recently-lost child, "One day the table turned at right angles, and went into a corner of the room. I asked, 'Are you my child?' but obtained no answer. I then said, 'Are you from God?' but the table was silent. I then said, 'In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I command you to answer; are you from God?' One loud rap--a negative--was then given. 'Do you believe,' said I, 'that Christ died to save us from sin?' The answer was, 'No.' 'Accursed spirit!' said I, 'leave the room.' The table then walked across the room, entered the adjoining one, and quickened its steps. It was a small, tripod table. It walked with a sidelong walk. It went to the door, shook the handle, and I opened it. The table then walked into the passage, and I repeated the adjuration, receiving the same answer. Fully convinced that I was dealing with an accursed spirit, I opened the street-door, and the table was immediately silent; no movement or rap was heard. I returned alone to the drawing-room, and asked if there were any spirits present. Immediately I heard steps, like those of a little child, outside the door. I opened it, and the small table went into the corner as before, just as my child did when reproved for a fault. These manifestations continued until I used the adjuration, and I always found that they changed or ceased when the name of God was used."

Miss Anna Blackwell (_Rep._, p. 220) gives her evidence immediately after Mr. Chevalier's. Whilst admitting the fact that the spirits often call themselves devils, she suggests a twofold explanation: 1st. That they are coarse, undeveloped spirits. 2d. That they are vexed at the rude treatment they have received. She is speaking of her sister's mediumship: "The spirit would use her hand to write what communication had to be made. The spirits wrote what was good and bad. One wanted to sign himself Satan and Beelzebub; but," continues Miss Blackwell, "my sister did not believe in the existence of any such a spirit, and she said, 'No; if you are permitted to come to me, it is not to tell such outrageous lies. If you persist in trying to impose upon me, you sha'n't write.' I have been present at many such little fights. She would resist the spirit, and, when she saw the capital S of Satan being written, would twist her hand. The spirit has then written, 'I hate you, because I cannot deceive you.' ... We never begin without prayer. We say to the spirits that wish to deceive us, 'Dear spirits, we are all imperfect; we will endeavor to benefit you by our lights, in so far as they are superior to yours.' Sometimes they would overturn and break the table; yet they were rendered better by our kindness. We would never dream of addressing one as an 'accursed spirit.' From one who was very violent, and by whom I have been myself struck, we have received progressive messages, saying, 'We are going up higher now; we have, through your help, broken the chains of earth, and we leave you.' When my sister found the S being written, or the capital B for Beelzebub, she would say with kindness, but firmness, 'Dear spirit, you must not deceive; it is not for such tricks, but for a good end, that you are permitted to come.'"

It is often said that the education question is the question of the day; but I was hardly prepared to find that it embraced the spirit-world. I know not which to pity most, those to whom the responsibility has been brought home of having to educate a vast number of imperfect spirits, who are, as Miss Blackwell admits, "all in a manner devils," or the wretched spirits who have thus to begin all over again as day-scholars at a dame's school.

According to Miss Blackwell's theory, the church is evidently responsible for the existence of the devil. So far as he can be said to exist at all, he is the church's creation; for, instead of doing her best to instruct and humanize the rude but well-meaning spirit Arab thrown upon her hands, she has goaded him to desperation by addressing him as "_Maledicte damnate_." Oh! if she had only called him "dear spirit," with Miss Blackwell, he might ere now have comported himself conformably, instead of masquerading under such uncomfortable names as Satan and Beelzebub and doing a world of mischief.

My second argument is the similarity between spiritualism and mediæval witchcraft. I have already noticed incidentally several points of resemblance, and would now draw attention to what is, perhaps, the most important point of all. Of course, such similarity has no argumentative force if Miss Blackwell's theory be admitted.

As I have before remarked, one of the most prominent characteristics of mediæval magic was its being a parody of the church. The principal ceremony of the "Sabbath" was a diabolical burlesque of the Mass, in which the devil preached, and the celebrant stood on his head, and the servers genuflected backwards. Now, amongst modern spiritualists I have discovered no such violation of decency; the parody is not so complete, and, on the whole, it is a decorous one; but it unmistakably exists, and is on the increase. It is by no means uncommon to assemble the spirit circle before an altar with crucifix and candles. In _Experiences with D. D. Home_ we find that that gentleman has quite a craving in this direction. He baptizes with sand, he stretches himself in the form of a cross, imitates the phenomena of Pentecost, the rushing wind, the dove, the tongues of fire, and is perpetually anointing his friends with some mysterious substance, which apparently emanates from his hands.

Against what has been said on behalf of the devil hypothesis the spiritualist can urge nothing, except the by no means unwavering testimony of the spirits themselves, and the spiritualist's own recognition of the identity of his departed friends. As to the spirits' testimony, it is worth just nothing. Evil spirits have always personated the dead, as philosophers, fathers, schoolmen with one accord testify. As to the recognition of friends, I should wish to treat with all due consideration the natural craving of friends to obtain some intelligence of their departed friends; but, on the one hand, minute imitations of manner are certainly not beyond the devil's power; on the other, affection is anything but keen-sighted, and the rapture of a communication at all, when once the idea is admitted, is apt to throw all minor details into the shade. Was not Lady Tichbourne able to trace the features of her drowned boy in the Claimant's photograph?

Wherever the spirits have represented persons of known character and ability--men, for instance, who have left a gauge of their mental qualities in their writings, like Shakespeare or Bacon--the personation has been invariably a lamentable and most palpable failure. That the spirits of clever men do not at all talk up to the mark is notorious and generally admitted by candid spiritualists. Mr. Simkiss (_Rep._, p. 133) says, "Beyond solving the important question, 'If a man die, shall he live again?' by the very fact of spirits communicating and proving their identity, there is to me little that is consistent or reliable in what is revealed through different mediums." Mr. Varley (p. 168) endeavors to explain the feebleness of spirit-talk by want of education and development on the part of the mediums by which their communications are conditioned. I do not say that there is not something in this; but surely the communications of genius would, under the most adverse circumstances, take the form rather of broken sense than fluent twaddle.

The extreme irritation invariably manifested by the spirits towards anything like suspicion, particularly if it take the form of trying to subject them to a religious test, is surely grotesquely unnatural in the case of spirits who have shuffled off the coil of mortality, with whom life's fitful fever has passed. We have at least some right to expect that persons who in their lifetime had a reasonable amount of dignity and patience should have increased rather than diminished their stock of virtue with their enlarged experience, unless, indeed, they have so lost God as to have lost themselves.

It is difficult to conceive a justification for the spiritualist who, believing that he is dealing with spirits, refuses to entertain the idea that these may be devils, and makes no attempt to bring them to a test. His best excuse, perhaps, would be that the world has to such an extent lost its standard of faith and morals wherewith to test anything.

Spiritualists may object that some thing, at least, of what I have urged against them avails as much, or even more, against the devil hypothesis. Thus, if the spirit of Bacon is too nonsensical for Bacon, _à fortiori_ he is too nonsensical for Lucifer, who must needs be the cleverer spirit of the two. Upon this I observe that the retort shows a complete ignorance of the devil's character and position. "The character of a myth," some one interposes. Well, I am not now discussing his existence. Even a myth must be in keeping. You have no right to give Cerberus four heads, or make him mew instead of bark, for all he is a myth. I suppose people have been seduced by Milton's grand conception of the "archangel fallen" and the splendid melancholy of his solemn rhetoric; but the devil of theology never says anything wise or fine. He is, indeed, understood to retain the natural powers with which he was created; but he is wholly averse from the God whom all wise and fine utterances do, in their measure, praise. Wherefore all such are in the highest degree repugnant to Satan. Neither are such costly and uncongenial deceits necessary to beguile man. Selfinterest and curiosity may be gratified at a cheaper rate.

The concessions of spiritualists themselves in reality reduce the difference between us very considerably. I have gained all that I care for, if it be conceded that these spirits may be the spirits of the damned, who are equivalently devils; and Miss Blackwell admits that these spirits are "in a manner devils," and Mr. Home (_Experiences_, p. 167) says of some of them: "I tell you you do not know the danger, they are so fearfully low--the very lowest and most material of all. You might almost call them 'accursed.' They will get a power over you that you cannot break through." The one great difference between us is that consistent spiritualists hold that there is no finality; that these irrepressible devils--for they are always obtruding themselves amongst the respectable spirit guests--may be reformed. But even so, would it not be well to consider whether the chances are not in favor of our being ruined before they are restored? Once and again it may be that a spirit speaks to them who is from God, even as God spake sometimes in the high places of Baal.[195] But God is not wont to reward imprudence, and, on their own showing, spiritualists stand convicted of the most extraordinary rashness in thus exposing themselves to the whirlwind of spirit influence without having a spiritual constitution, so to speak, or any canons or habits of spiritual life wherewith the influence can be tested.

Man, as Alvernus finely says, is a being created "upon the horizon of two worlds"--the world of sense and the world of spirit. But in the sensible world only is he at home, wherein his material nature is sufficiently developed for him to hold his own; whereas, in the spirit-world, with which he is also in contact, the God of both worlds must be his guide, or, horsed upon his excited imagination, he may easily be lost in the wilderness, and fall a prey to lawless spirits. Nothing can be more striking than the contrast between the sobriety of the Catholic Church in her dealings with the spirit-world and the rashness of spiritualists. The church has always recognized as a reality spirit communications of various kinds, good and bad; but she has always tested most rigidly the character of the spirits; and even when these have satisfied every test, she has only allowed their sanctity to be highly probable; she has never, so to speak, granted them her _testamur_. They are ever on their trial, inasmuch as she insists that the lessons they communicate shall be in strict subordination to the rule of faith and morals; in other words, to the ordinary duties of life. The church has ever shown herself keenly alive to the dangers of supernatural intercourse. She has been jealously on her guard against overwrought sentimentalism, vanity, or any strained or undue development of one part of the patient's moral nature at the expense of the rest.

Whilst she prizes amongst the choicest of her devotional treasures the private revelations of her saints, such as those of S. Bridget, S. Gertrude, S. Catharine of Sienna, and many more, yet if one consults the great masters of Christian spiritualism, if I may so speak--such as S. John of the Cross, for example--who have themselves experienced the favors of which they treat--the ecstasy, the vision, and the prophecy--one is more struck than by anything else by the stern common sense of their precautions against deception, and the sad sobriety of their confession that, after all, you can hardly ever be quite sure that you are not the victim of an illusion.

That a certain moral discipline is necessary in order not to be deceived, even when you are dealing with one who has a true spirit of prophecy, is implied in the words of Ezechiel, cap. xiv.: "For every man of the house of Israel, and every stranger among the proselytes in Israel, if he separate himself from me, and place his idols in his heart, and set the stumbling-block of his iniquity before his face and come to the prophet to inquire of me by him: I the Lord will answer him by myself.... And when the prophet shall err and speak a word, I the Lord have deceived that prophet.... According to the iniquity of him that inquireth, so shall the iniquity of the prophet be."

S. Augustine (_De Gen. ad Lit._, lib. xii. c. 13, 14) might be warning those spiritualists who place their security in the peacefulness and truthfulness of their communications: "The discernment of spirits is very difficult. When the evil spirit plays the peaceful (_quasi tranquillus agit_), and, having possessed himself of a man's spirit without harassing his body, says what he is able, enunciates true doctrine, and gives useful information, transfiguring himself into an angel of light, to the end that, when persons have trusted him in what is clearly good, he may afterwards win them to himself. I do not think he can be discerned except by means of that gift of which the apostle saith when speaking of the diverse gifts of God: 'To another discernment of spirits.' It is no great thing to discover him when he has gone so far as to do anything against good morals or the rule of faith, for then he is discovered by many; but by the aforesaid gift, in the very beginning, whilst to many he still appears good, his badness is found out forthwith."

Again (_Confess._, lib. x. c. 35), he speaks of the danger of seeking supernatural communications: "In the religious life itself, men tempt God when they demand signs and marvels, not for any one's healing, but simply for the sake of the experience. In this vast wood, full of snares and dangers, what have I not had to drive away from my heart! What suggestions and machinations does not the enemy bring to bear upon me, that I may ask for a sign! But I beseech thee that even as all consent thereto is far from me, so it may be ever further and further."

Amort, _De Rev. Priv._, p. 20, from Gravina, says: "It is often easier to establish the certainty of the deceitfulness of an apparition than of its truthfulness, because bad angels have their own characteristics, which good angels never imitate; on the other hand, the bad often imitate the appearance and manner of the good."

Amort, _ibid._, p. 104, from S. John of the Cross, says: "All apparitions, visions, revelations, consolations, sweetnesses, sensations, etc., which are received by the external senses, should ever and always be refused by the soul as much as in it lies.... In most cases they are diabolical.... When they are from God, they are sent in order that they may be despised, and that the soul, by means of the victory wherewith it overcomes these pleasures of the senses, divine though they be, may be led to the things of the understanding."

_Ibid._, p. 115: "When the words in any supposed revelation take the form of a process of reasoning after the application of the soul in contemplation, God, the natural reason, and the devil may all three concur in the same process."

No test of the holiness of a manifestation is considered quite satisfactory save that of a continued increase in virtue, especially in humility, in degrees corresponding to the increase of the favor; for the devil will not consent to be a master of virtue. When S. Teresa had scruples as to the source of her favors, it was thus her director consoled her.

So cautious is Catholic mysticism; whilst spiritualists are not afraid to keep a sort of spirit-ordinary, where

"White spirits and black, red spirits and gray, Mingle, mingle, mingle; those that mingle may."

I repeat it, spiritualists who think they are communicating with spirits, and take no pains to test their character, as though the hypothesis of a devil were absurd, are inexcusably silly.

I must now consider some objections in the mouth of persons who, without pretending that they have found any satisfactory solution of the question in the theories of unconscious cerebration or psychic force, are nevertheless exceedingly impressed by the strong psychic element in the phenomena of spiritualism--the apparent necessity for the presence of one or more persons of a peculiar nervous organization, for a certain harmonious mixture, or rather melodious articulation, of the company, in order to produce the desired effect. "Surely," they say, "such law, _i.e._, such regular alternation of cause and effect, as can be discovered is psychic. So far as we can subject the phenomena to ordinary scientific tests, everything points to their being the product of the psychic force of a certain peculiarly constituted company." This is the tone of Mr. Cox's recent letter to the _Times_, and Mr. Edwin Arnold's letter in the _Report_ is quite in the same key.

My answer is that I admit all that they say. Of course, so much of law as is detected is psychic. There is no other law at work within the sphere of our discovery. The question is whether there are not indications of an influence at work which is irreducible to psychic laws, whilst using, in a partially abnormal manner, psychic force.

Mr. Lewes will urge (letter, _Rep._, p. 264): "I might propose as an hypothesis that the chair leaped because a kobold tilted it up; ... but you would not believe in the presence of a kobold, because his presence would enable you to explain the phenomena." Most indubitably I should, if no less an hypothesis would explain the phenomena; particularly if I had otherwise reason to believe in the existence and operation of kobolds. I should hold the likelihood of the hypothesis of his action in the particular case as steadily increasing in proportion as the other hypotheses tended to break down.

"No guess," Mr. Lewes insists, "need be rejected, if it admits of verification; _no guess that cannot be verified is worth a moment's attention_." The last part of this trenchant dictum _is_ worth a moment's attention. If it simply mean that it is not worth a scientific man's while to attempt a direct scientific examination of what clearly admits of no such treatment, I can only say that, however much the scientific man may sometimes need the lesson, it is neither more nor less than a truism. If it mean that no hypothesis is to be regarded by any one as "worth a moment's attention" which science can never hope directly to verify, it is conspicuously untrue. Even a _terra incognita_ is not without scientific interest as marking a boundary; nay, it may be scientifically proved to contain a place known to exist and proved not to exist in any known lands.

Of course, the devil, or kobold, if Mr. Lewes prefers it, cannot be verified in the sense of caught and handed over to scientific men as a specimen of spiritualistic fauna. Neither do I suppose he can be really detected, except by the standard of Catholic truth, by Catholic tests, and Catholic weapons; and even then, in the eyes of unbelievers, he will be no further identified than as an adverse intelligence in a very bad temper. But surely this is enough, where men's minds have not been reduced to mere machines for registering rigid scientific results, to secure the devil hypothesis something more than "a moment's attention."

What law we detect in spiritualistic phenomena I conceive to be the working of the conditions in subordination to which the devil is able to communicate with man. This subordination is probably owing, in part, to the nature of things which compels certain things to accost certain other things in one way and not another, in part to the merciful reservation of God. It would seem as if the spirits were, on the whole, prevented from being more irreligious than the prevailing tone of the company, or at least of the most irreligious portion of it. It may very well be that the conditions limiting diabolical intercourse are more complex and imperious, where the spirit "_quasi tranquillus agit_, without harassing the body." In mediæval _diablerie_, the demon is often represented as hindered or assisted by instruments of a purely physical character; thus Coleridge makes Christabel lift the enchantress over the threshold. A crowd, by neutralizing individual resistance, may present fewer obstacles to the devil--nay, may supply a medium of its own; just as frightened cattle huddled-together in a thunder-storm are said, by the steam-column arising from their tightly compacted bodies, to furnish a conductor for the lightning.

I have indicated in several places of these essays what I conceive to be the objects the devil has in view in lending himself to spiritualism. His main object, I can hardly doubt, is to do with religious sentiment what we are told Mr. Fisk tried to do with the gold currency of America--"corner it," get its circulation into his own hands. In the numberless cases where religion is nothing more than sentiment, he is only too likely to succeed; second-sight is so much more satisfying to the imagination, and at the same time so far more modest in its demands upon the will, than faith. The spread of spiritualism in the last few years is notorious, and there is every prospect of its continuing. Whether it will ever enter upon a new phase of existence, and become a fact publicly acknowledged by scientific men, is a question. It has never been so recognized amongst civilized nations. Whatever miracles, divine or diabolical, were meant to effect, it was not to overbalance the general sway of purely human power, of which this world is the appointed stage. As a general rule, the brilliant series of miracles by which the Christian martyr has baffled death in the presence of admiring crowds has ended in quiet decapitation at a convenient mile-stone. Many a time, doubtless, has the Roman headsman flattered himself that his good straight-down blow effectually upset that fine story made up out of a drugged lion and a fagot of green wood, which had somehow imposed upon so many stupid people. Not, of course, that I am denying that there have been miracles which imperiously asserted themselves over all obstacles, like the series which ended in Pharao's drowning; but, as a general rule, God has spoken once and again, and then prosaic obstinacy has been given its way. On these occasions, God has no doubt submitted himself to a general law which he has made for all direct spiritual interference, and which he mercifully enforces with especial strictness in the case of the devil.

Any civilized nation engaged in active pursuits will always be likely to contain, one should think, a majority among its scientific men who will be unfitted to experience, and indisposed to believe in, and still more to acknowledge, the phenomena of spiritualism. But it is impossible to say; the spiritualistic system as developed by Allan Kardec (see Miss Blackwell's communication, _Rep._, p 284) seems to lend itself in a remarkable way to some of the most prominent scientific tendencies of the day. If ever Darwinists should stand in need of the consolations of religious enthusiasm, they might find a congenial home in spiritualism. In the vast system of metempsychosis to which Miss Blackwell introduces us, we have all the Darwinian stages and to spare. First in order comes the "primordial fluid," "containing all the elements of derived existence," "the first substantiation of creative thought." "There are three orders or modes of substantiality"--"psychic substance," and "corporeal substance," and "dynamic substance, or force," which last is stated to partake of the nature of the two other modes, and to be the intermediary between them.

(P. 300) "Every state of the psychic element determines corresponding vibrations of the dynamic element, which, effecting corresponding aggregations of the atoms of the material element, produce the substance or body which is the material expression of that state." The soul's magnetic envelope, "perisprit," is at once its first garment and the instrument by which it aggregates to itself the elements of its body.

This system embraces a twofold metempsychosis--that of formation and that of reformation. The first is the process by which the impersonal psychic element is gradually prepared for individualization or the attainment of conscious personality by being transfused progressively through the mineral, vegetable, and animal worlds--the same process, but with a different final cause, it would seem, as that described by the poet:

"Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus, Mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet."

The psychic element is presented, not as feeding, but as feeding on successive worlds, like a silk-worm on mulberry-leaves, leaving geological strata behind it, for instance, as the refuse of its mineral sojourn.

Souls are first individualized in the fluidic or atmospheric world; and if they are docile to the instruction of that world, they never "incur the penalty of incarceration in bodies of planetary matter, and consequently never become men," but remain in this or that fluidic world until ripe for the highest or "sidereal order." On the other hand, the spirits who are indocile enter upon the second series of metempsychosis, "having brought upon themselves the penalty of exile in a planet corresponding, in the compactness or comparative fluidity of its material constituents, to the degree of their culpability."

(P. 309) "The moral and intellectual state of the soul decides the corresponding magnetic action of the perisprit, and thereby decides the nature of the body which is formed by that action."

(319) "While accomplishing the new series of incorporations in progressively nobler forms, in higher and higher planets, the spirit goes back, at each disaggregation of its material envelope, into the fluidic sphere of the planet in which its last material embodiment has been accomplished."

(322) "The fluidic world being the normal world of souls, we remain in intimate (though usually unconscious) connection with the fluidic sphere of the planet, while incarnated on its surface. We return to it during sleep, when, through the elasticity of the perisprit (which has been seen by clairvoyants elongated into a sort of luminous cord connecting the soul with the sleeping body), we are enabled to visit our friends in the other life."

(326) "The more extended vision of the fluidic sphere shows (its inhabitants) a wide range of human actions and intentions, and thus enables them to forecast with more or less correctness, and, when permitted to do so, to predict the same with more or less exactness, according to the flexibility of the medium."

S. Augustine has a fine passage in his _De Divinatione Dæmonum_, cap. iii., comparing the keenness and swiftness (_acrimonia sensûs et celeritas motûs_) which the devils possess in virtue of their fluidic state (_aerium corpus_) to the vulture's knowledge, who, "when the carcase is thrown out, flies up from an unseen distance; and to the osprey's, who, floating aloft, is said at that vast height to see the fish swimming beneath the waves, and fiercely smiting the water with outstretched legs and talons, to ravish it."

I can conceive the attractions of such a system, combining, as it does, the ingenuity and fulness of Platonism with something of the color and rhythm of modern science. If any concordat is to be made between religious enthusiasm unattached and science, I do not think the chances of spiritualism are to be despised. Just at present, however, although some scientific men have taken up spiritualism, there can be no doubt that, on the whole, spiritualism and science are at daggers drawn. There is no mistaking the utter loathing expressed in Professor Huxley's letter (_Rep._, p. 229), in which he declines to take any part in the committee's investigation, on the ground that, "supposing the phenomena to be true, they do not interest me." He has a perfect right to compare spiritualistic talk to "the chatter of old women and curates in a cathedral town"; but his anger has made him quite miss the logical point of the position. The privilege he declines as worthless is the opportunity, not of listening to such conversation, but of examining and testing the hitherto ignored faculty; and this no man can seriously reject as uninteresting.

There is no difficulty in understanding the bitterness with which modern science regards spiritualism. It had been for so long carrying everything before it; it had weighed so many things on earth and in the heavens; it had reduced so many apparently eccentric phenomena to law; its discoveries had been so brilliant, and its still more brilliant projections were so plausible, that it flattered itself that all idea of the supernatural was fairly relegated to the obscure past or to the obscurer future. The philosophy of the XIXth century was being fast reduced to a bare statement of the contents of sensation, and the philosophers of the day were looking for an easy victory over the most respectable of dogmatic traditions, when, lo! full in the calm scientific light, the singularly grotesque form of spiritualism lifts its head, and the warrior who had so loudly challenged the king to mortal combat finds himself set upon by the court fool. When earth, according to the poet's dream, should be "lapped in universal law," up starts a mass of phenomena not merely inexplicable by any known law, but, in popular estimation at least, incompatible with any hypothesis but that of supernatural agency. It has been the more intolerable that spiritualism had affected an imposing vocabulary of scientific terms, recommending itself to its audience by an appeal to partially known laws, such as magnetism and electricity, whilst really indulging in the most unblushing necromancy. Thus the scientific formulæ have been given somewhat the _rôle_ of captives in the triumph of superstition. No wonder scientific men are angry. But whilst they "do well to be angry," I think they do by no means well to refuse to investigate the subject because on various accounts it is offensive to them.

Scientific men frequently complain that spiritualists will not submit their séances to the test of a public examination in broad daylight. Now, this is really not a fair statement of the case. Spiritualists say that they have found by experience that a certain class of phenomena require dark or twilight; but a vast number of independent physical manifestations do take place in broad daylight. On the other hand, when the scientific investigator insists upon interfering with the constituents of the séance, the arrangement of the circle, etc., the spiritualist answers, fairly enough, that, since under the most favorable conditions the success of the séance cannot be reckoned on, it would be absurd to allow the abandonment of what experience has shown to be a necessary condition of success. "With the phenomena of magic we can experimentalize but little; neither can we evoke the least of them at our good pleasure. We can but observe them where they present themselves, gather them into corresponding groups, and discover among them common features and common laws." (Perty, _Mystisch. Erscheinungen--Vorrede_, p. xi.) This being understood, spiritualists invite the representatives of science to make what observations they please in broad daylight, when, at least, they will be able to discount such disturbing conditions as they may not eliminate. It is an _onus_, certainly, for the investigator to have to form a part of what is going on; but this is no more than the detective undergoes when he plays the accomplice in order to discover the thief. Say that spiritualism is a folly, a disease, what you will, it is at least of the highest scientific interest and practical importance that we should understand its conditions and action as thoroughly as possible. If scientific men have no more serious scruple to keep them aloof than the dignity of their order--for, after all, this is what Mr. Huxley's excuses come to--the exigencies of the case require that it should be put aside. If the mountain will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet must go to the mountain.

Nothing is more calculated to bring out the inherent diversities of the human mind than the investigation of spiritualism; for it not only involves an examination of some of the most difficult problems relating to evidence, but, indirectly at least, an examination of the whole process by which each individual concerned rejects or assimilates his mental pabulum. Hence the extraordinary difficulty of conducting such an inquiry without incessant wrangling. The Committee of the Dialectical Society, to whose _Report_ I have so often referred, is quite a case in point. Its _Report_ is the record of a schism, of an irreconcilable clash of opinions. If the committee had waited until these had been reduced to harmony, the _Report_ would never have been published. One of the principal members--Dr. Edmunds--was, I think, exceptionally tried. His own opinion was and is that spiritualism is a mixture of trickery and delusion; but his own dining-room table habitually took sides against him, and this in the most treacherous manner. It used to wait until he had left the room, and then, in the presence of the other investigators, run around with nobody touching it.

You might almost as well meddle with a man's digestion as with his belief. Prove that his convictions are groundless, and he feels as outraged as though you had affixed a register to his waistcoat which showed the world that his favorite dish had disagreed with him. Dr. Garth Wilkinson (_Rep._, p. 234) is by no means singular in his experience "that nearly all truth is temperamental to us, or given in the affections or intuitions, and that discussion and inquiry do little more than feed the temperament." And what a variety of temperaments will inevitably be found in any committee of investigation--men who, like Mr. Lewes, consider the possibility of an hypothesis which cannot be rigidly tested unworthy of consideration, or like Mr. Grattan Geary (_Rep._, p. 95), who, on finding that many eminent men are spiritualists, is simply impressed by the number of eminent men who are enjoying an unmerited reputation for sanity. After all, men make more account, as a general rule, of one little bit of experience, the real force of which is incommunicable, and which, when put into words for another's benefit, is often to the last degree trivial, than of all the arguments in the world. A charming example of this is given by Dr. H. More in a letter to Glanville, published at the beginning of the latter's _Sadducismus Triumphatus_: "I remember an old gentleman in the country of my acquaintance, an excellent justice of the peace, and a piece of a mathematician; but what sort of a philosopher he was you may understand from a rhime of his own making, which he commended to me on my taking horse in his yard, which rhime is this:

An _ens_ is nothing till sense find out, Sense ends in nothing, so naught goes about;

which rhime of his was so rapturous to himself that, at the reciting of the second verse, the old man turned himself about upon his toe as nimbly as one may see a dry leaf whisk'd round in the corner of an orchard-walk by some little whirlwind. With this philosopher I have had many discourses concerning the immortality of the soul and its distinction. When I have run him quite down by reason, he would laugh and say, 'That is logick, H.,' calling me by my Christian name. To which I replied, 'This is reason, Fr. L. (for so I and some others used to call him), but it seems you are for the new light and direct inspiration,' which, I confess, he was as little for as for the other; but I said so only by way of drollery to him in those times. But truth is, nothing but palpable experience could move him; and being a bold man, and fearing nothing, he told me he had tried all the ceremonies of conjuration he could to raise the devil or a spirit, and had a most earnest desire to meet with one, but never could do it. But this he told me: when he did not so much as think of it, while his servant was pulling off his boots in the hall, some invisible hand gave him such a clap on the back that it made all ring again. So, thought he, now I am invited to the converse of my spirit; and therefore, so soon as his boots were off and his shoes on, out he went into the yard and next field to find out the spirit that had given him this familiar clap on the back, but found none neither in the yard nor field next to it. But though he did not feel the stroke, albeit he thought it afterwards (finding nothing come of it) a mere delusion, yet, not long before his death, it had more force with him than all the philosophical arguments I could use to him, though I could wind him and nonplus as I pleased; but yet all my arguments, how solid soever, made no impression upon him. Wherefore, after several reasonings of this nature, whereby I would prove the soul's distinction from the body, and its immortality, when nothing of such subtile considerations did any more execution on his mind than some lightning is said to do, though it melts the sword, upon the fuzzy consistency of the scabbard, well, said I, Fr. L., though none of these things move you, I have something still behind, and what you yourself acknowledged to me, that may do the business. Do you remember that clap on the back when your servant was pulling off your boots in the hall? Assure yourself, said I, Fr. L., that goblin will be the first that will bid you welcome into the other world. Upon that his countenance changed most sensibly, and he was more confounded with this rubbing up of his memory than with all the rational and philosophical arguments I could produce."

Whilst admitting that the _Report_ of the Dialectical Society indicates a very considerable initial success, I cannot but feel the undiminished importance of W. M. Wilkinson's rather caustic warning (_Rep._, p. 231): "The first thing in such an investigation is to assume nothing, not even that a committee of the Dialectical Society can 'obtain a satisfactory elucidation of the phenomena.' No committee has ever done so yet. A committee of professors of Harvard University, amongst whom was Agassiz, after they had made an examination, did not think proper to publish their report, though they had published their intention to do so, and were frequently and publicly asked for it." The London Society has, at least improved upon the example.

I have maintained throughout that neither the hypothesis of trickery nor of delusion can be sustained for a moment as an adequate explanation of the phenomena of spiritualism, on grounds which may be thus summarized: 1. Many of these phenomena outdo all conjuring. 2. They take place where the possibility of trickery has been eliminated. 3. The exhibition of imaginative excitement is, on the whole, inconsiderable, and there is no appreciable proportion between the degrees of excitement and the phenomena. But, at the same time, I am far from maintaining that there is no trickery amongst the mediums, and no predisposition in the company tending more or less to disqualify them from detecting it. I am inclined to think that more or less trickery forms part of the stock in trade of most mediums, but that its share in the production of phenomena is comparatively slight.

Mr. Browning's marvellous conception of _Sludge the Medium_ is based, I admit, upon a real, existing unscrupulosity on the one side, and on a real, existing gullibility on the other; but these are magnified into colossal and perfectly unreal proportions so far as Sludge is to be taken as a representative of his class. In many cases a single fraud may fairly be taken to vitiate the whole projection. If in a chemical demonstration, for instance, we were to discover the secret substitution, by the operator, of an ingredient not in the programme, we might fairly conclude that the whole thing was a pretence; that there was nothing in it. But this is not necessarily so in the case of spiritualism; the lie or trick does not always imply the total absence of other force, but may be an initial ceremony, preparing the company by quickening their expectations, and propitiating the evil influence by an acceptable sacrifice of human honor.

It must be confessed that there is something very suggestive of trickery, and of silly trickery, in the attempts made from time to time by the spirits to flatter into good-humor the anti-spiritualistic critic of the company; as when Professor Tyndall was dubbed "Poet of Science,"[196] and when Dr. Edmunds' portrait was given in such glowing colors that, except in the character of a sceptic, he would have been ashamed to reproduce it (_Report_). Again, that something like systematic trickery has sometimes been attempted would seem to be established by the very remarkable evidence of Mr. W. Faulkener Surgeon (_Rep._, p. 125): "He said that for years he had been in the habit of supplying magnets for the production of rapping sounds at spiritual séances.... Some of these magnets--as, for instance, the one he had brought with him--were made for concealment about the person; while others were constructed with a view to their attachment to various articles of furniture.... He had never himself fitted up a house with these magnets, and he only knew of one house, Mr. Addison's, that is so fitted up. He also stated that he had not supplied any of these magnets for two or three years."

As regards the company's predisposition to believe in spiritualism, I admit that a sufficient predisposing reaction against materialism has taken place, giving room for a man to constitute what "Sludge" calls

"Your peacock perch, pet post To strut, and spread the tail, and squawk upon, Just as you thought, much as you might expect, There be more things in heaven and earth, Horatio."

Nay, I admit that the following fiercely graphic catalogue of the medium's patrons only sins by omission:

1. "Fools who are smitten by imaginary antecedent probabilities.

2. ... "their opposites Who never did at bottom of their hearts Believe for a moment--men emasculate, Blank of belief, who played, as eunuchs use, With superstition safely.

3. "The other picker-up of pearl From dung-heaps, ay, your literary man, Who draws on his kid gloves to play with Sludge Daintily and discreetly; shakes a dust Of the doctrine, flavors thence he well knows how The narrative or the novel--half believes All for the book's sake, and the public stare, And the cash that's God's sole solid in this world.

4. "There's a more hateful kind of foolery-- The social sage's Solomon of saloons And philosophic diner-out, the fribble Who wants a doctrine for a chopping-block To try the edge of his faculty upon; Prove how much common sense he'll hack and hew In the critical minute 'twixt the soup and fish: These were my patrons...."

And far stronger than any such predispositions is the intense and widespread feeling, so pathetic even in its uncouthest manifestations, to which Dr. Edmunds refers (_Rep._, p. 57): "Prior to the experience gained in this inquiry, I never realized the vast hold which the supernatural has upon mankind. Minds which have broken away from the commonplace lines of faith, and thrown overboard their belief in revealed religion, have not cast out the longing after immortality." And I may add, that when all religious assurance of what the soul must needs desire is absent, the longing for some visible, palpable witness becomes proportionably intenser. And so just now, from the very lack of faith, there is an exceptionally vehement desire that some one should come with unmistakable credentials from beyond the grave, and make us see, and feel, and know what we cannot help longing for; and it is difficult to say to what extent the wish may not be father to the thought.

I admit that all this constitutes an adverse momentum of antecedent probability. But, after all, spiritualists, as a whole, are not persons who have given any indications that this yearning has so wholly overbalanced their critical faculty as to make them incompetent witnesses. Moreover, we have, as witnesses to spiritualistic phenomena, not merely the spiritualists proper, but persons who, as regards the predominance of this sentiment, are their extremest opposites--viz., the advocates of psychic force. It must be admitted that these persons are either without the yearning for evidence of a future life, or at least hold it in complete subordination to the critical faculty.

It may easily be contended that I have been overrating the progress and prospects of spiritualism, for that the public prints as a rule make fun of it. I may be reminded that Mr. Browning has exposed it, in the region of poetry, in his _Sludge the Medium_; Professor Tyndall in that of prose, in his delicious account of a séance, in which he discomfits the medium and plays spirits himself, to the great edification of the company, who rebuke him solemnly for his want of faith in his own make-believe; that the keen critics of the _Saturday_ and the _Pall Mall_ invariably treat spiritualism as unmitigated humbug.

In reply, I point to the _Report_; to the testimony of an antagonist like Mr. Geary, as to the number of eminent men who believe in spiritualism; to the notorious fact that scientific men, as a whole, in Germany and America have ceased to regard spiritualism as a mere delusion; to the recent correspondence in the _Times_, and particularly to the article of December 26, 1872, wherein the writer, after reviewing the _Report_, exclaims that "it is high time competent hands undertook the unravelling of this gordian knot. It must be fairly and patiently unravelled, and not cut through. The slash of the Alexandrian blade has been tried often enough, and has never sufficed. Scientific men forget that, in the matter of spiritualism, they must make themselves fools in order that they may become wise." The writer then proceeds to relate how he went off to examine for himself. He tells us that he and his friend enter a room, the furniture of which consisted of a table and a few cane-bottomed chairs, which he previously examines; that in an inner room, during a dark séance, in which the medium's hands and feet have been carefully secured, a chair is lifted up and thrown upon the table; that afterwards, in the outer room, "the furniture became quite lively, and this in broad daylight; a chair jumped three or four yards across the carpet, our hat fell to our feet, and numerous other phenomena occurred"; but the mediums are free, and he is nervous about them. In another séance, the same writer, whilst the medium's hands and feet are in custody, has various things thrust into his hand, and once "felt distinctly the touch of a large finger and thumb." Several times during the séance he takes the opportunity, freely accorded, of carefully searching under the table with a lamp. He confesses there was nothing during the whole evening, except the phenomena themselves, to suggest imposture. "We tried our best to detect it, but found no trace of it." And then he ends with "a slash of the Alexandrian blade," after all, and suggests that still trickery it must be.

Spiritualism indubitably affords, and in all probability will continue to afford, an abundant and legitimate field for the satirist of human folly, even when its substantial reality has been admitted; for it is a condescension to a great vulgar want, and its supplies are detailed, for the most part, through the unwashed fingers of very scurvy fellows indeed. Neither is there anything in the discipline necessary for the development of a medium, so far as I know, which makes his refinement as a class probable.

Educated men are naturally shy of admitting their connection with anything involving so much that is low and disagreeable, except as a sort of "casual ward" experience; just as men are usually shy of its being known that they eat strange meats, such as rats, out of siege-time. But once let an heroic rat-eater come forward, impelled by a sense of public duty, to tell the world what a noble viand it is neglecting, when, lo! it appears, from confessions on this side and on that, that numbers know all about it, and have been secretly indulging in the rat feast. So it is with spiritualism and its adherents; it is only now and again that the curtain is lifted up, and we are enabled to appreciate the hold which it is steadily making good on the public imagination.

As to the line taken by the _Pall Mall_ and the _Saturday_, the question is whether the critics who write in these periodicals could, under any circumstances, adapt their method and style, I will not say to the support, but to the fair discussion, of an uncouth, ill-conditioned, sensational enthusiasm like spiritualism. As it was the Crusader's boast that he never touched the unbeliever save with the sword, so, it would seem, some of our critics plume themselves upon never touching enthusiasm but with a sneer. Our present school of critics is the result of a reaction from the enthusiastic Young England school of forty years ago, who were romanticists, patronizing religious enthusiasm as one of the many forms of romance. We can hardly expect that a school which is inclined to regard all religious sentiment as something essentially weak and finikin; which can talk of Joan of Arc as a "crazy servant-girl,"[197] should be civil to an exhibition of enthusiasm much weaker, and vulgar to boot. Neither do I see how it would be possible to write a trenchant _critique_ of such a nondescript medley, except by treating it as a form of mania. It admits of no precise scientific treatment, for it falls under no one category. Spiritualism, to discuss, not to banter, would be as uncongenial a subject for the _Pall Mall_ or the _Saturday_ as a case of chronic bronchitis for a brilliant public operator.

When the "Jupiter" of the latter days is engaged in duly chronicling, for the edification of the public, the splendid spiritualistic phenomena with which Antichrist will dazzle the world, should the _Pall Mall_ and _Saturday_ still exist, we should not look for them even then amongst the enthusiastic crowd. Though employed in the government interest, they will surely be allowed to do their old work in their old way, and we shall find them engaged in the congenial task of mocking the last miracles by which Enoch and Elias are gathering in the remnant of the elect.

It may be insisted that the one effectual way of repressing spiritualism is to pooh-pooh it. Surely it is too late; you must give its many sober adherents some better reason against trusting their own senses than its making other people laugh.

Assuredly spiritualism can never be safely despised until its reality has been discounted and its author recognized.

FOOTNOTES:

[192] _Apoth._ l. 409.

[193] _Lib. de Divers. Quæst._, qu. 12.

[194] See Görres, _Mystik_, tom. iii. p. 346, French trans.

[195] St. Aug., _De Unit. Eccles._, c. 19.

[196] Tyndall, _Scientific Scraps_.

[197] This was in the _Spectator_, but surely not of it.

THE FARM OF MUICERON.

BY MARIE RHEIL.

FROM THE REVUE DU MONDE CATHOLIQUE.

XII.

The Sunday after the last day of the harvest, M. le Marquis invited all the boys up to the château, where a magnificent banquet was prepared, and they were expected to remain until the evening. He ordered a splendid repast, and music besides; the principal barn, which ordinarily was crammed full at this season, but that, owing to the bad season, was comparatively empty, was decorated for the occasion. Our master desired that nothing should be spared to make the _fête_ a great success. All the fine linen of the château--and the closets were heaping-full of it--the china, and silver were put into requisition, so that there never was given a more superb banquet to great personages than to our delighted villagers. As for the _fricassée_, it is remembered to this day; it was composed, to commence with, of a dozen kinds of poultry, so well disguised under different sauces that one ate chicken in confidence as chicken, because it was so written on little strips of paper laid beside each plate, but without being positive that it was not turkey or pigeon; and every one agreed in acknowledging that such a delicious compound had never passed down country throats, and that the wines, if possible, surpassed the eating; so that the good fellows commenced to be merry and perfectly happy when the roast appeared.

Of this roast I will say a word before passing to other things, for I fancy you have seldom seen it equalled. With all respect, imagine a huge hog, weighing at least a hundred pounds, roasted whole, beautifully gilded, and trimmed with ribbons, and reposing so quietly on a plank covered with water-cresses you would have thought him asleep.

It was really a curious and most appetizing sight, and sufficiently rare to be remarked; but see how stupid some people are! On seeing this superb dish, whose delicious perfume would have brought the dead back to life--that is to say, if they were hungry--some of the fellows said that M. le Marquis might have better chosen another roast, as pork was something they ate all through the year. Whereupon Master Ruinard, the head-cook of the château, made a good-natured grimace, and apostrophized them as a heap of fools, but without any other sign of displeasure; and then seizing his big knife, that he sharpened with a knowing air, he cut the animal open, and out tumbled snipe, woodcock, rennets, and partridges, done to a turn, and of which each one had his good share. As for the hog, no one touched it, which proved two things--first, that you must not speak too soon; secondly, that when a great lord gives an entertainment, it is always sure to be remarkably fine.

At the dessert, which was abundant in pastry, ice-cream, and fresh and dried fruits, they served a delicate wine, the color of old straw, the name of which I don't know exactly, but which was sweet and not at all disagreeable. At this time, M. le Marquis, accompanied by mademoiselle, Dame Berthe, and Jeannette, entered and mingled with the guests, who rose and bowed low. Our good master thanked the young men for the great service they had rendered him; and as he could not drink with each one, he touched his glass to that of Jean-Louis, saying it was to the health of all the commune. They cried, "Long live M. le Marquis!" until the roof shook; and as their heads were as heated as the boilers at the big yearly wash, they whispered among themselves that it would be well to carry Jean-Louis again in triumph, as much to please the master as to render justice to him who was the cause of all this festivity.

Now, our Jean-Louis was the only one who remained composed after all this eating and drinking. He had eaten with good appetite, and fully quenched his thirst, but not one mouthful more than was necessary. He heard all that was said without appearing to listen; and when others might have felt vain, he was displeased; he therefore watched his chance, slid under the table, and, working his way like an eel between the legs of his comrades, who were too busily occupied to notice him, in three seconds was out of the door, running for dear life, for fear of being caught.

He was delighted to breathe the fresh air, and did not slacken his pace until he had gone a good quarter of a league, and was near Muiceron. Then he stopped to take breath, laughing aloud at the good trick he had played.

"Thank goodness!" thought he, "I have at last escaped. They can run as fast as they choose now; there is no chance of catching up with me. What would M. le Marquis and the family have thought to have seen me hoisted up on the shoulders of those half-tipsy fellows, and paraded around the court, like a learned beast on a fair-ground? Not knowing that I had come to the château only to oblige the master, who had besides given me a valuable watch, it would have looked as though I wished to receive in vain applause what I refused in money. None of that, none of that for me; there is enough nonsense going on, without my mixing myself up in it. They can drink and dance until sunrise to-morrow, if they so please, it is all the same to me; and I will go home to bed, after having told all to my dear mother, who will not fail to approve of my conduct, and laugh heartily at my escape."

As he said this to himself, he entered the wood, of which we have already spoken, that skirts La Range and throws its shade nearly to the fir-trees which surround Muiceron. It was such a delightful spot, either by night or day, that it was difficult to pass through it without feeling a disposition to loiter and meditate, particularly for such a dreamer as Jean-Louis. After all, now that he was safe, there was nothing to hurry him home for at least half an hour. He therefore put his hands in his pockets, and strolled along, resting both mind and body in a dreamy reverie for the benefit of the one, and walking slowly to the great good of the other.

Really, the evening was delicious. The great heat of the day had been succeeded by a fresh breeze, which, passing over the orchards around, brought into the wood the sweet odor of young fruit, mingled with that of the foliage and bark of the trees, damp with the August sap. The hum of insects was heard, and not far off the joyous murmur of the stream leaping over the stones. As the ground had been thoroughly soaked for several weeks past, quantities of wild flowers strewed the soil, and added to the balmy air a taste of spring, entirely out of season. You surely must have felt, at some time or other, how such nights and such scenes enervate the brain. The will cannot resist the bewitching influence; insensibly we become dreamers, and feel a strong desire to converse with the stars. August nights especially are irresistible, and I imagine no one, unless somebody depraved by wicked deeds and thoughts, or a born idiot, can fail to understand and acknowledge the effect.

Judge if our Jean-Louis, with his pure soul and young heart of twenty years, was happy in the midst of these gifts of the good God. He was like a child who hears for the first time the sound of the bagpipes; and I beg you will not sneer at this comparison, for the reveries of an innocent heart have precisely the same gentle effect on the soul as the grand harmonies that roll through vast cathedrals on the great festivals of the church.

Doubtless, that he might better listen to this music, he seated himself on the moss at the bottom of a birch-tree, rested his head against the trunk, and looked up at the leaves, shaken by the wind, his feet crossed, and in the most comfortable position possible, to dream at his ease. Now, whether he was more fatigued than he imagined, on account of his week's hard labor, or whether the unusual feasting at the château made him drowsy, certain it is that he first closed one eye, then both, and ended by falling as soundly asleep as though he were in his bed at Muiceron.

It happened that, during this time, a storm arose behind the hill of Chaumier, to the right of the river that runs through the parish of Val-Saint and Ordonniers--something which our sleeper had not foreseen, although he was very expert in judging of the weather. Ordinarily, the river cuts the thunder-clouds, so that this side of La Range is seldom injured by storms; but this time it was not so. At the end of an hour or two that his sleep lasted, Jean-Louis was suddenly awakened by a clap of thunder which nearly deafened him; and in an instant the rain commenced to fall in great drops that came down on his face, and of which he received the full benefit as he lay stretched out on the grass.

He rose at a bound, and started off on a gallop, that his best clothes might not be injured. Muiceron was not far distant, and the storm had just commenced; he therefore hoped to reach the house in time to escape it. Not that he thought only of his costume, like a vain, effeminate boy, but because his mother Pierrette was very careful, and did not like to see his Sunday suit spoiled or spotted with the rain.

But the storm ran faster than he; the rain fell as from a great watering-pot in the trees, lightning glared on all sides at once, and one would have said that two thunder-clouds were warring against each other, trying to see which could show the greatest anger.

In the midst of this infernal noise, Jean-Louis suddenly saw what he thought, by the flash of lightning, to be a little brown form trotting before him in the middle of the path. He was not a boy to be alarmed by the raw-head-and-bloody-bones stories with which we frighten children to make them behave, and which many grown-up men, with beards on their chin, half believe to be true; but, nevertheless, the thing appeared quite unusual. He hastened his steps, and, as sometimes he could see in the lightning-glare as well as at noonday, he soon recognized the costume of the women of the country, or at least the cloak they throw over their clothes when the weather is threatening.

"Oh!" said the kind-hearted Jeannet, "here is a poor little thing half frightened to death on account of the storm. I must catch up with her, and offer to take her to the village."

For Jean-Louis, although he had very little ever to do with girls, was so kindly disposed he was always ready to be of service to his neighbors, whether they wore blouses or petticoats.

But as he hurried on, that he might put in practice his charitable thought, there came a flash of lightning that seemed to set the woods on fire, and, immediately after, a terrible clap of thunder as loud as though the heavens were rent asunder. Jeannet involuntarily closed his eyes, and stopped short, fastened to the ground like a stake. It was what the _savants_ call--an electric shock. But don't expect me to explain that expression, for I know nothing about it, and, besides, I don't worry my head about such things.

When our boy opened his eyes, after one or two seconds, which appeared to him very long, his first care was to explore the path, in order that he might discover the unknown country-girl; but there was nowhere to be seen a trace of a girl, a cloak, or anything that resembled a human being.

"Well, this is at least singular," said he very uneasily. "Has my sight grown dim? No; I would stake my head that I saw before me a flesh-and-bone woman. I saw it--that I am positive and sure. If she has been hurt by this stroke of lightning, which must surely have fallen near here, she must be lying on the ground; for I have never heard that the storm kills people by making them melt like snow under the March sun."

This sudden disappearance excited him to such a degree that, without thinking of the rain, which was pouring down in torrents, and had drenched his new coat of Vierzon cloth, he resolved to enter the copse, at the risk of losing his way, and search around until he would discover the lost girl. But before leaving the beaten path, by a sudden inspiration, he cried out with a loud voice:

"If there is any one here who needs assistance, let her speak. I will bring two strong arms to the rescue."

Instantly a faint voice, stifled and weeping, replied, "Oh! for S. Sylvain's sake, good people, have mercy on me!"

"Holy Virgin Mary!" cried Jean-Louis, "is not that the voice of my sister Jeannette? She is the last person for three leagues around I would have expected to find in such a plight at this hour of the night. But I must be mistaken; it can't be possible."

And with that, more dead than alive from the violent palpitation of the heart which suddenly seized him, Jean-Louis rushed towards a thicket of young chestnut-trees that bordered the path, and from which seemed to come the weak, mournful voice that implored pity. He pushed aside the branches with a vigorous hand, and soon discovered a girl, in cloak and hood, crouched upon the ground, and so doubled up in a heap she could have been mistaken at first sight for a large ant-heap or bundle of old rags left there by some passing beggar.

"For the love of our Lord and Saviour, tell me who you are, and don't be afraid of me," said Jeannet, leaning over the poor little thing.

She raised her head, and instantly let it fall again on her knees, around which her hands were clasped; but as the lightning continued without ceasing a moment, the movement sufficed for Jean-Louis to recognize her.

It was really Jeanne Ragaud, but so paralyzed with fear, so wet and fainting, she seemed about to breathe her last. Her piteous moans were enough to break one's heart. Her whole body trembled, and thus huddled up in the middle of the mud in the dense underbrush, her situation was so perilous I verily believe she would have met her death in that lonely spot, but for the assistance sent by Heaven.

"Jeanne, Jeanne!" cried Jean-Louis, coming close to her, "keep up your courage, my darling. Rouse up, I beg of you. Be brave; you are already chilled through. It is dangerous to remain in the woods in such a storm."

But the poor little creature did not move. The fright and cold of the terrible tempest had totally bewildered her. Jeannet vainly shook her by the shoulders, trying to raise her on her feet, and to unclasp her hands, which had stiffened around her knees. He could not make her change her position in the least. What could be done? He did not know precisely how long she had wandered in the wood before falling down; and although he had just heard her speak a moment before, he feared that she was about to die, as perhaps she had been struck by lightning.

He made the sign of the cross, and invoked the angels of paradise. Immediately he remembered that not far from this grove was a miserable cabin, used by the wood-cutters, half tumbling down, but still sufficiently sound to shelter a Christian. This thought gave him fresh strength; and taking the little thing, doubled up as she was, in his arms, he raised her from the ground, and carried her, without stopping, to the wretched hut.

Well was it that he thought of this retreat, and, still better, that it was not far distant; for Jeannette, although slender and not tall, was in a dead faint, and consequently so heavy that Jeannet was perfectly exhausted when he reached the shelter.

By a still greater mercy, he had his flint in his pocket, and, luckily, it had not been injured by the dampness. He thus was able to strike a light, after having laid the poor girl on the dry earthen floor. He quickly lighted some handfuls of brush and straw that strewed the ground, and by their smoky light discovered, in a corner of the cabin, a good moss mattress, which the wood-men used when they came to sleep in the place, and near by a little board, upon which laid a packet of _auribus_--little resin candles very much used in our province.

"May God be praised for helping me!" thought the brave boy, delighted at having found poor little Jeannette. "It is a poor bed-room in comparison with the fine apartments at the château, but worth a palace when we think of the thicket just now."

He unfastened his sister's cloak, with a thousand respectful precautions, just as he would have touched the veil that covers the statue of Our Lady, and in the same manner took off her shoes and stockings, which he found very difficult, as, owing to the dampness, the fine thread stockings clung tightly to the skin. That accomplished, he built up the fire with all the rubbish he could find, and, turning the moss mattress in such a manner that Jeannette's feet were in front of the fire, he stretched her gently upon it, and seated himself beside her, waiting for her to recover her senses.

Thus passed half an hour without the little one stirring; fortunately, her cloak was very thick, so that the rest of her clothes were not wet, and he could thus hope for the best. But it was the first time Jeannet had ever watched by the side of a fainting girl; and, not knowing by experience what to do in such a case, the time seemed to him very long before she revived. He himself was dripping wet, and, although he scarcely gave it a thought, he shivered as one who might soon have the chills-and-fever.

"It would be very queer if I also should have an inclination to faint; what then would become of us?" thought Jean-Louis, who really began to feel very uncomfortable.

As this idea entered his head, Jeannette moved her little feet before the fire, and began to sigh, and then to yawn, which was the best sign that there was no danger of dying, as there is always hope as long as a sick person can yawn. A minute afterwards, she raised herself, and looked around with astonished eyes that asked an explanation.

"Well," said the happy Jeannet, "how do you feel, my poor little sister?"

"Is it you?" she asked, still trembling. "O Jeannet! how frightened I was."

And as she spoke, she tried to throw her arms around his neck, like a child who seeks refuge in his mother's breast. Jean-Louis drew back--something which was entirely different from his usual manner of receiving her caresses.

"Are you angry?" said she. "I have done nothing wrong, except to venture out to-night to return home; but the weather was not bad when I started, and I did not dream of such a storm."

"I angry? Why should I be?" cried Jean-Louis, kissing both her hands. "No, no, my pet; on the contrary, I am most happy to see you a little restored. But I am thoroughly drenched with the rain; that is the reason I don't wish you to touch me."

"That is true," said she; "I did not notice it before. What were you doing before this good fire, instead of drying yourself?"

"I was looking at you," replied Jeannet innocently.

"Big goose!" cried the little thing laughing heartily with her usual good humor. "Hadn't you any more sense than that? And now you are just ready to catch the ague."

"Don't be uneasy, Jeannette; it is not the first time I have had a check of perspiration. What I hope is that you will not suffer by this adventure, any more than I. But tell me, why did you run away from the _fête_ at the very moment the dancing was about to commence?"

"I cannot say why," replied Jeannette. "Sometimes we have ideas we must follow, whether or no. It is as though some one stronger than we were pushing us by the shoulders the way he wished us to go. To speak frankly, I saw you leave hastily, and I instantly became more serious, and felt less desire to be amused. I said to myself, Doubtless Jeannet, who is better than I, knows that father and mother are alone waiting for him at Muiceron, and he cannot bear the thought of their sitting up for him until late at night. And I, what am I doing? Am I not also a child of the house? Jeannet will relate all that happened at the dinner, and they will ask, 'And Jeannette?' 'Oh! yes, Jeannette; does Jeannette think of anything else but amusing herself and talking nonsense far away from her parents?' At these thoughts my heart throbbed so I nearly burst into tears; just then mademoiselle was busy replying to the compliments every one was offering her; so I left the barn, and went after my cloak, and, without further reflection, started for Muiceron. You know how afraid I am of thunder and lightning; when I saw the storm coming up, I became bewildered, and don't know which way I went, but I suppose it was the wrong one. When I regained what I thought was the right path, the storm was still raging, and I would have died of fright, but for you, my old fellow."

"Thank God you escaped this time!" said Jean-Louis, very much touched by the simple recital, which showed the good heart of the little girl; "but, nevertheless, you ran a great risk. Now, Jeannette, let us hurry home; we must quit this place, as it must be late."

"I suppose it is," said she. "Haven't you your watch to see what time it is?"

"I left it hanging up in my room," replied Jeannet. "I did not wish to wear it when at dinner in the château, for fear it might look as though I wished to display it before those who had none; and it is well I did not take it, as it would have been ruined by the rain."

"How can I walk barefooted?" asked Jeannette. "I can't put on my wet stockings."

"And your shoes still less," replied her brother, laughing. "But if you will let me, Jeannette, I can carry you."

"Poor Jeannet! Not at all; it would be too much for you," said she. "Go to Muiceron, and bring me my wooden shoes. It is all quiet now outside; I don't hear any noise, and I will not be afraid to remain here alone for a little while."

It was really the best and shortest way of getting over the difficulty. Jean-Louis opened the door of the cabin, and saw that the sky was clear and bright; not this time with the lightning's glare, but with the soft rays of the moon and beautiful stars of the good God. All was quiet and peaceful, except that great drops fell from the trees, still wet with the heavy rain, and that the ruts in the road were filled with water, that made them look like little rivulets.

"Watch the fire, Jeannette, and be patient ten minutes," said he; "and in two strides I will be there and back again."

It took a little longer time than that to return, as on entering the farm he met Ragaud, who was looking to see if the storm had injured the palings around the barn-yard, and was therefore obliged to stop and in a few words relate the night's adventure.

The good man, while grumbling and scolding at the imprudence of his daughter, who, he said, had no more sense than a child six years old, felt fearfully anxious, as was easily shown by the rapid questions he asked Jean-Louis. To assure himself that nothing was kept behind, and that the boy, from kindness of heart, had not disguised the truth, he hastily took down his big woollen scarf from the hook, and hurried off.

"I will lecture the giddy child well," said he. "Go before, Jeannet; I will follow you. It is not far, so hurry."

"Mother will be anxious," said Jeannet. "Let me go alone; I will be back the sooner."

"Your mother has been asleep a long time," replied Ragaud, "or else she would have been on our heels before this, and we would have had to carry her back also. Fasten the bolt, without any noise, and let us be off."

With that they started. Ragaud was quick and light for his age, and they proceeded at a rapid rate, which soon brought them to their journey's end. Jean-Louis carried a bright lantern and a bundle of woollen stockings and wooden shoes he had taken at random out of the chest; for it was all-important that Jeannette's feet should be well warmed, and that she should be in her comfortable bed as soon as possible, so as to prevent fresh chills.

It was nearly midnight when they reached the hut, which enables us to see what a long time had elapsed since Jean-Louis' flight from the château, what a good sound sleep he had had in the wood, and proves that the storm and Jeannette's swoon were not slight affairs.

As soon as they entered--Jeannet the first, Ragaud behind him--they saw that the lantern was a wise precaution. The heap of brush-wood was burnt up, and there was no light, except from a little pile of red ashes, as even the resin candle glued to the wall was flickering and falling in big drops, which announced its speedy death.

"Here we are, my Jeanne," cried Jean-Louis from the threshold of the door. "Father is with me, and we have brought fresh lights."

No answer. The child was so weak and faint, it looked as though she had swooned again. Ragaud, at this sight, forgot the scolding he intended giving his daughter by way of welcome, and, leaning over her, placed his hand on her forehead, which was icy cold.

"She is very ill, I tell you," murmured the good man. "Bring the lantern here, Jeannet. God have mercy on me, how pale the poor child is!... Jeanne, Jeanne, don't you know us?"

"Ah! yes, my father," she whispered, looking languidly at him. "I hear you, but I am so sleepy ... so sleepy ... I can't talk."

"But you must wake up, and leave this place," said Ragaud. "Try and rouse yourself, my child; in five minutes we will be at the house."

She made the effort, and tried to stand on her feet; but for Jeannet, who was near and caught her, she would have fallen down.

"I am so tired!" she said again, closing her eyes.

"Shall we carry you on _a chair to see the king_?" asked Jean-Louis. "Perhaps that will be the best way."

"Yes, yes," said she, smiling at this remembrance of her childhood; "that will be fun."

Undoubtedly you know what is _a chair to see the king_? It is a child's play, which generally is done by three persons--two boys and a girl; the boys clasp hands in such a manner that a good seat is made for the girl, who thus, without any fatigue to the bearers, can be carried as easily as in a carriage.

Ragaud highly approved of the idea. Jeannet, who thought of everything, tied the lantern to a piece of cord, and suspended it to Jeannette's neck, who recovered enough strength to laugh; and thus, well lighted and very happy, they started on their return to the farm, which they soon reached safe and sound.

They entered Muiceron by the kitchen door, so softly that Pierrette, who was sleeping in the big front room, did not hear the slightest noise. Jeannette appeared perfectly restored; she was gay, although still pale and shivering; but she assured them the warmth of the bed would soon make her feel better. So they embraced, and, after many good-nights, retired to their rooms.

The next morning Ragaud told Pierrette all the events of the preceding night, but forbade her entering Jeannette's room, for fear she might be awakened too soon after her great fatigue; but at the same time, unable to restrain his own curiosity, he took off his wooden shoes, softly lifted the latch, walked on tiptoe to the bed, and peeped between the curtains, just to see, for a second, how the child was resting.

Alas! poor Jeannette was sitting up in bed, her face on fire, her eyes wandering in delirium, her whole body burning with fever. She knew no one. Her excitement was so great she beat the air with her bare arms, while her throat was so choked up the voice was nearly stifled. Ragaud thought she was dying; he uttered a loud cry, which brought Pierrette to the bedside, where the poor mother fell down, half fainting with grief and fright.

In an instant the whole farm was in a tumult. Big Marion set up a blubbering, crying that the child was dying; the cow-herds and stable-boys burst into the room, and, seeing every one in tears, began to whine in their turn without exactly knowing why. Jean-Louis alone, when he saw his sister's dreadful condition, did not shed a tear or make a sound, but, darting out of the room like an arrow, leaped on a horse's bare back, and galloped off for the doctor, who lived half a league beyond Val-Saint, towards the large town of Preuilly.

By good fortune, he found him at home, as it was quite early; and, while explaining the pressing case that brought him, spied the doctor's wagon under the shed, and quickly harnessed to it the horse which he had ridden, so that, in less time than it takes to say it, doctor, wagon, horse, and Jean-Louis were on the way to Muiceron, and reached there before any one else had thought that, before such great lamentation, no matter what was the trouble, it would have been better to have run promptly for assistance.

And here you will excuse me if I add, by way of advice, that presence of mind, which is not counted among the virtues, is one nevertheless, and not at all to be disdained in the life of this world; and, therefore, I beg of you always to keep a good share in reserve, for I do not doubt you may soon find use for it, if not to-day, perhaps to-morrow, and you will always do well to remember what I say.

XIII.

The doctor, on seeing the room of the patient filled with people lamenting from useless tenderness of heart, instead of doing something for her relief, began by being very angry. He was a good man, rather rough and coarse in manner, but skilful in his profession, and understood perfectly how to manage peasants, for he had always practised in the country, and was himself of the upper class of villagers.

"What is such a lot of noisy, lazy bawlers doing around a sick girl, who needs air and quiet?" he cried. "Get out of here, the whole of you, and don't one dare come within ten yards. You, Ragaud, can stay if you choose, but keep as quiet as you are now, and don't look as if you were more dead than alive, with your miserable face a foot long; you, Mme. Ragaud, stop hugging your daughter. Let her go; don't you see you are smothering her? And above all, don't be dropping your tears on her face; she don't know you. Jean-Louis, don't stir from here; you are reasonable and courageous, and will be useful to me. And now open the window, and let out this smell of the stables brought by those abominable cow-herds, who ought to have been driven out with a pitchfork. Good. Now tell me what has happened to this child."

All being thus quieted, and the room purified by the fresh morning air, which came freely in through the open window, a slight change for the better was soon seen in Jeannette. She let them lay her head on the pillow, and, although she was still insensible, her pretty face, crimson and swollen with the fever, looked less excited. The doctor counted her pulse while he listened to the night's adventure, which was correctly related by Jean-Louis, as neither the father nor mother could have put two ideas together at that particular moment.

"Just as I thought," said the doctor; "a violent fever brought on by exposure to the cold, and wet feet. All the danger is in the head, and I do not deny that it is very great. The child has a cerebral fever; do you understand? Cerebral means _of the brain_. Now the brain is the inside of the head; so the sickness is there, under this beautiful blonde hair, which you must instantly cut off. I hope, Mme. Ragaud, you will not hesitate to sacrifice your daughter's hair to save her life?"

"O my God!" cried poor Pierrette, sobbing. "Do what you please, my dear doctor; if it would be of any use to cut off one of my arms, I would willingly allow it."

"Yes, my good woman, but that would not help you much, and her not at all; so keep your arms, we will need them for something else. Come, we must relieve her. Jump in the wagon, Jeannet, and go to the château, and tell them to send me some ice, mustard, and other things that I will write on this slip of paper; and remember to tell mademoiselle not to be uneasy, and not to put her foot in this house short of a week. While waiting for the return of Jean-Louis, Mme. Ragaud, draw a bucket of water from the well, and bring it to me immediately."

Poor Pierrette obeyed without saying a word, which was very beautiful in her; for hearing it announced that her daughter was ill from cold, the words ice and well-water confused her terribly. She had already been horrified when commanded to open the window. Indeed, Dr. Aubry was no fool, as had been well proved for twenty years; and the best way was to think that he knew what he was about, no matter how unreasonable his words might sound.

Jean-Louis performed his errand with his usual promptitude; he brought back what was needed for the first applications. During his absence, the doctor had constantly applied bandages, soaked in very cold water, to Jeannette's head; but that was not effective enough, and, as soon as the ice was brought from the château, he prepared to use it. It was the moment to accomplish the sacrifice of Jeannette's beautiful hair, which was still dressed as for the previous night's dance. To tell the truth, the thick, heavy braids were enough to weigh down the poor sick head. Pierrette showed great courage; she only cared for the relief of her child. As for the doctor, he thought no more of cutting off this splendid hair than of pulling up a bunch of nettle out of the flower-beds in his garden.

Ragaud sat as though nailed to his chair, and seemed neither to hear nor see anything passing around him. You would have pitied the poor old man. But our Jeannet, so brave until then, could not look on indifferently at the murderous play of the scissors around that dear head, which would so soon be shorn of its crowning beauty. As the doctor cut off a tress and threw it on the floor, as if it were a noxious weed, he picked it up and smoothed it with his hand, as though to repay by caresses the condemnation it had received. Thus he soon had all the fair hair in his hands; and then, as he thought that soon--too soon, perhaps--it might be the only living vestige of Jeannette, his courage vanished; he sank on a chair near the window, hid his face in the mass of hair, that was still warm, and sobbed as though his heart would break....

This touched Dr. Aubry, who was kind-hearted under his rough exterior. He never talked sentiment, being too much accustomed to tears and lamentations around sick-beds; but he loved Jeannet, and thought him more refined and superior in tone to the surrounding boys. So he approached the poor child, and, tapping him on the shoulder, he said by way of consolation: "Bah! you big ninny, that will improve her hair; in one year it will be handsomer and thicker than ever, and you will have enough of this to make a hundred yards of watch-chain."

"In one year!" cried Jean-Louis, who only heard this word of all the fine consolation. "Then you don't think she will die?"

"What are you talking about? Die? A beautiful young girl of seventeen, who has always been healthy and good, don't die from having got her feet soaked on a stormy night. Be reasonable, follow my orders, keep everything around quiet and fresh, don't fatigue her with words and embraces when she recovers her senses, and, with the help of God, I will answer for her."

"Oh!" said Jean-Louis, throwing his arms around the doctor's neck, "may Heaven listen to you, M. Aubry!"

These cheering words brought old Ragaud back to life; big tears rolled from his dry, fixed eyes, and relieved him greatly. Pierrette fell on her knees by the bedside; for, before thanking the doctor, it was right to raise her heart to God, who saw further still than he.

M. Aubry again repeated his orders, which he always did--oftener six times than once with his village patients; for it must be acknowledged we are very stupid about nursing, and, outside of the common remedies, which are purgatives, emetics, and quinine to break the fever, all the rest of the medical gibberish appears to us very strange, and often rather contrary to good sense. That is the reason those who are cured burn a candle to S. Sylvain. But for his kind protection, there would be as many deaths as sick people; and if you find fault with that expression, I will tell you that I am very sorry for it, but that is the way we talk, and I cannot express myself differently or more delicately than I was taught.

The doctor drove off in his wagon, to which the farm-horse was still harnessed, and he had the privilege of keeping it several days, which was a great convenience to him, as his own beast was out at pasture. He took care to pass by Val-Saint, where he found mademoiselle very anxious and sad about her god-daughter's accident. As soon as she heard it was a serious illness, she rushed to the bell, crying that she must have the carriage immediately to go to her darling; but M. Aubry, who had his own way with every one, caught her by the arm.

"I beg your pardon," said he; "but you are not going there at all."

"Why not?" she asked. "I cannot stay here without seeing my Jeanne, when I know she is suffering."

"You shall not go," repeated M. Aubry firmly. "It would be dangerous for you; and I am your physician as well as hers."

"What nonsense!" said mademoiselle, who, gentle as she was, did not like him to oppose her. "You will never make me believe a brain fever is contagious."

"That is yet to be seen," replied M. Aubry, who could lie when necessary as well as any dentist; "and, if you should get sick, I declare that, daughter of a marquis as you are, I would not have the time to take care of you. At this moment I have more sick people--maimed, wounded, and down with fever--than I can manage, and I don't want another case; without counting that your château is perched up as high as the devil, and, to get up here, I would lose half a day."

"You horrid man!" said mademoiselle, who could not help smiling, for she knew the doctor's way, and never took offence at what he said. "You talk like a car-driver; but you are perfectly capable of doing as you say, so I dare not risk it. But when can I go?"

"We will see about that; neither to-morrow nor next day, nor for several days after. I will come and bring news of her."

"But how will you find time, with all your patients?" asked mademoiselle, delighted to catch the doctor in a little falsehood.

"You give me the change for my money," said M. Aubry, laughing in his turn. "I see you are as malicious as ever. Well, then, to speak frankly, it is not the contagion that I fear, but your chattering and gabbling, which never stop. If La Ragaudine recovers, it will depend upon quiet and repose. Not even the buzzing of a fly must be heard in her room for a week; therefore, it would be useless for you to go there. But now you can act as you think proper."

"You should have told me this at first," said mademoiselle. "I will not go; but promise me you will always tell the truth about her, and never conceal any danger."

"My God! no," said the doctor quietly; "and, to commence, since you do not wish me to disguise the truth, I will tell you that, if Jeanne Ragaud does not recover her senses to-night, she will be dead to-morrow at twelve o'clock."

"But you are a monster!" cried mademoiselle, the tears streaming from her eyes. "How can you be so hard-hearted as to tell me such news without any preparation?"

"There!" said the doctor, "you are off again. I thought you wished me to tell you the whole truth."

"My poor Jeanne! Dead to-morrow!" sobbed mademoiselle.

"One moment--pay attention to what I say--if she does not recover her senses to-night; but she will, for she was already a little better before I left Muiceron."

"Oh! I wish you would go away!" cried mademoiselle. "I hate to hear you talk; you will set me wild.... Come now, doctor, speak seriously: is poor dear Jeannette really in danger?"

"I tell you yes, but I have great hope. And now I am going away; you are not angry with me, dear mademoiselle?"

"I will have to forgive you," said she, giving him her hand; "but know well that I detest you from the bottom of my heart, and, when I am sick, I will send for another doctor."

"Bah! I bet you won't," replied M. Aubry, perfectly unmoved; "you are so amiable and gentle when the fever comes on!"

Mademoiselle laughed through her tears; she knew from experience it was not easy to have the last word with M. Aubry, and she let him go without further discussion.

The good God showed that he loved Muiceron. For three days Jeannette was very ill, after which her youth and good constitution overcame the disease. M. Aubry declared he would answer with his head for hers, and soon the dear child recovered strength and color. But this was the moment to be careful; for convalescence is very uncertain and dangerous, they say, in such a case, and the least imprudence will suffice to cause a relapse. Therefore the doctor for ever repeated:

"Attend to what I say; because she is better, that is no reason to think she is cured. Don't let her stir any more than you would let loose a chicken among the fir-trees; these affections of the brain are terrible if there is a relapse."

That word, _affections_, was another that Pierrette could not manage to understand; each time he said it she was terribly perplexed, and looked intently at the doctor, to see if he could not use a more appropriate one in its place.

"For," thought she, "I see nothing affectionate in such a wicked fever that nearly brought my daughter to the threshold of the grave. Whoever does or speaks ill is always called a great enemy; and I don't think an enemy can ever be affectionate, or friendly, or anything else of the sort."

And you will acknowledge the argument was not bad for a good countrywoman, who knew nothing except to read her Mass-prayers by force of habit.

It is not necessary to inform you that all the people around were very much interested in Jeannette's illness; and if there is a consolation that softens the bitterness of grief, it is surely that which is given by friends who offer to share trouble. Many of the neighbors were anxious to relieve Pierrette by taking her place at night; but you understand that a mother is always mother, and, unless she had fallen dead at her daughter's bedside, she would yield her post to no one. Happily, the great danger which demanded such extreme care did not last long; and as at the end of a week the fever left Jeannette, and she then slept tranquilly the greater part of the night, Pierrette consented to lie down, without undressing, on a little bed temporarily placed in the sick-room by Jean-Louis, and thus was enabled to obtain some rest.

But many weeks elapsed before Jeannette was strong enough to resume her accustomed life; and as she daily felt herself improving, the great difficulty was to keep her quiet in bed, and furnish her amusement, so that she would not get up too soon, at the risk of falling ill again; and here, again, Jean-Louis, with his devotion and thoughtfulness, provided a remedy.

Not far off lived a beautiful young girl, a year or two older than Jeannette, and the friend of her childhood, named Solange Luguet, the sister of Pierre; she was tall, rather thin and pale, like Jean-Louis, whom she somewhat resembled in features and character. This will not astonish you, as I have already told you they were first-cousins without knowing it; and, whether legitimate or illegitimate, near relatives generally have a certain family resemblance.

Solange led a retired life, some said from piety, others from shyness. She was a skilful seamstress, and embroidered beautifully; consequently, she never wanted work, and passed her time by her little window, sewing from morning till night. Jean-Louis was very fond of her. He often wished Jeannette's tastes and habits were as quiet, and he sometimes held up Solange to her as a model. But Jeannette's character was entirely different, and what seemed to Solange the perfection of happiness would have been miserably tiresome for her; nevertheless, the two girls were great friends, and were always happy to meet.

It was, therefore, Solange Luguet whom Jeannet thought of as a means of distracting Jeannette during her convalescence. He went to her, and begged that she would come and pass several hours every day with Jeannette. Solange willingly consented, as she could take her work with her, and whether she embroidered at home or at Muiceron was all the same to her; and, besides, she could be useful to her friends, especially Jean-Louis, for whom it was easy to see she felt a great preference.

Now, Solange, in spite of her reputation for piety and shyness, was very lively and bright. The first day she came to the farm Jeannette was quite subdued; without saying it, she was afraid her companion would be very serious and frown at the least joke. But it was just the contrary; Solange amused her so much with her stories, and gossip--which was never ill-natured--and songs, that Jeannette never let her go until she promised to return next day. This pleasant arrangement suited everybody. Ragaud and Jean-Louis gradually resumed their outdoor work, and Pierrette was less tied down. We all know that weariness of mind is the worst of ills, as it renders one sad, and sadness makes both body and soul sick: so this little spoiled Jeannette, who laughed and chatted from morning till night, recovered four times as rapidly, thanks to Solange's agreeable company, and was soon able to sit up an hour or two about noon.

Who had caused all this happiness? Even he who never gave it a second thought, and to whom it was so perfectly natural to serve others that it seemed a part of his everyday life; for the excellent Jeannet spoke so seldom of himself, neither Jeanne nor the Ragauds ever dreamt of thanking him for having brought Solange, seeing that they knew nothing, and simply thought the Luguet girl came of her own free will, which certainly she never would have done, if even the idea had ever entered her head.

As soon as mademoiselle received permission, she hastened to Jeannette's side. Every other day her beautiful carriage was seen coming down the road, and, a minute after, she alighted, accompanied by Dame Berthe, who always brought a little basket filled with dainties and delicacies fitted to tempt an invalid's stomach.

Poor mademoiselle found the days very long since Jeanne had left, and was very impatient for her complete recovery, that she might carry her back to the château. She did not hesitate to express her desire at each visit before the Ragauds, never remarking that neither ever replied to her proposition. The reason was that Ragaud had received such a severe shock by the narrow escape of his daughter, he had promised and sworn never again to expose the child to such a fearful risk, which had so nearly proved fatal. He saw in this terrible sickness a warning from the good God; and, as he felt it in the bottom of his heart, he acknowledged in the end that if Jeanne had not led a life above her position, nothing like it would have happened.

Between ourselves, mademoiselle, who was much better informed than Ragaud, should have even more clearly understood it. Still further, as M. le Curé, who you can well imagine came constantly to Muiceron since the accident, had been confidentially told by Ragaud of his good resolutions, which he highly approved, and cautiously approached the subject whenever an opportunity offered of conversing with mademoiselle. But "none are so deaf as those who will not hear," said this good pastor; "and even without a scene mischief will come of taking Jeannette from the château. Her acquaintance there is too long formed."

It did not happen precisely so. Jeanne, without scenes or difficulty with any one, had been forced to seek refuge under the paternal roof, and should have remained there until the present time from her own free will and accord; but when one has strayed ever so little from the right path, it is not easy to return to it, even when it has not gone as far as mortal sin; and you will see this time again that I have strong proofs to support what I have advanced, as Jeanne Ragaud had to undergo severe and bitter trials before she could entirely give up the half-noble position she had involuntarily filled, and resume fully the simple peasant life.

XIV.

One day, when mademoiselle was making her accustomed visit, after she had talked and laughed, and played dinner-party with the fruits and delicacies she had brought to Jeannette, she suddenly exclaimed:

"You are looking admirably, my child--as pretty as a picture; your color is more brilliant than even before you were sick, and your short hair, which made me feel so sad the first time I saw it, is more becoming than the way in which you formerly wore it; but you are very badly dressed. What have you done with all the dresses I gave you?"

"They are still at the château, godmother," replied Jeannet. "I have not needed them for a long time. If you will send me some of them, I will try and look better at your next visit."

"You are very much thinner, poor little thing, so that none of them will fit you; besides, it will be a long while yet before you can go out. What you want is a dressing-gown, and I will have one made for you, if you will promise me to wear it."

"When you come, I will," answered Jeannette, who knew well such a dress did not suit her position, and that her parents would not like it.

"No, I wish you to wear what I will send, and not only when I am here, but every day; do you understand, child? I wish it."

"O godmother!" said Jeannette, "I beg you will not insist upon it; such a dress is very well at the château, but here I cannot dress differently from my mother."

"I do not wish to transform you into a princess," replied mademoiselle; "but neither do I like to see you dressed, as you are, in serge. I have my own reasons for it."

Jeannette bowed her head, although at heart she was very much dissatisfied. Pretty Solange, who was silently working away in her corner by the window, gave her an encouraging glance, to keep her firm in her good resolution; but for ten years Jeannette had given in to all her godmother's whims and caprices, and dared not answer.

Two days afterwards, a large bandbox, directed to Jeannette, was brought to Muiceron. She was still in bed, and was quite curious until it was opened; and there was the promised dress, made of beautiful blue cashmere, so fine and soft it looked like silk. As to how it was made, I really cannot describe it; but it is enough to know that mademoiselle herself could have worn it without impropriety, so that it can easily be understood it was not suitable for Jeanne Ragaud.

"Isn't it beautiful?" exclaimed Jeannette, admiring the dress, fit for a marchioness. "But I will never wear it; do you think I should, Solange?"

"No, indeed," said Solange. "Don't do it for the world, Jeannette; it would be very wrong for you to wear it, and the neighbors would laugh at you."

"Help me to get up," replied Jeanne. "It will be no harm to try it on once; it will amuse us. Can I?"

"Yes, to be sure," said good Solange; "I should like to see you for once dressed as you were at the château."

Jeannette jumped quickly out of bed, and Solange, to amuse her, brushed her short hair in such a way that she looked like a little angel; then she put on some fine white petticoats, and, last of all, the beautiful robe, which fitted her splendidly. Thus dressed, Jeannette was one of the prettiest young ladies you can imagine; and I rather think she looked at herself in the mirror with great satisfaction.

She sat down in the big arm-chair her godmother had sent her from the château as soon as she was convalescent, and it was easy to see she was not ill at ease in her beautiful present, but that, on the contrary, was infinitely satisfied, and not at all anxious to take it off.

However, she feared the arrival of her parents, and did not wish them to see her in such a costume. Solange, from the same thought, had not resumed her work, and remained standing before her, ready to undress her. You see the will was good, but the devil was upon the watch. At the very moment that Jeannette, with a little sigh of regret, was about to put off her gay trappings and don her peasant dress, the big white horses of mademoiselle were heard pawing the ground in the yard.

"It is my godmother!" said Jeannette, blushing. "Well, I am not sorry; she will see that I do honor to her present."

Mademoiselle entered immediately after, and, seeing Jeannette so pretty and so stylish in her beautiful dress, kissed her heartily, and loaded her with praises.

"You are perfectly lovely," said she; "and for the penalty, I have prepared a great surprise. There is a handsome gentleman, who has come with me, and wishes very much to see you."

"Will you please tell me who it is?" asked Jeannette.

"No; I wish to see if you will recognize him. Come in, Isidore," cried mademoiselle to some one who was waiting outside the door.

The said Isidore immediately appeared--a tall young man, well made, and dressed in the latest Parisian style. His hair was elaborately curled, and his cravat, gloves, and shoes were so elegant he looked as though he had just been taken out of a bandbox. He made a low bow to Jeannette, and paid her a compliment such as we read in books.

Jeannette, much amazed, rose without speaking, and, as her astonished look showed she did not recognize him in the least, mademoiselle laughingly relieved her embarrassment.

"What!" said she, "you don't remember Isidore Perdreau, the son of Master Perdreau, my father's notary, and the playmate of your childhood?"

"You must excuse me," said Jeanne, "but he is so much changed."

"In size, perhaps," said M. Isidore, "but not in beauty, as you most certainly are."

"He has returned from Paris, and will in future live at Val-Saint. It is very good in him," said mademoiselle, "for his life will be very different; but his father wishes to associate him with himself in business."

"To all true hearts one's native place is dear," replied M. Isidore, placing his hand on his waistcoat.

"Don't you remember the young girl by Jeannette?" asked mademoiselle.

"Not precisely," he replied.

"I am the sister of Pierre Luguet, with whom you used to go hunting for blackbirds."

"Pierre Luguet? Ah! yes, little Pierre; and where is he now?"

"Always in the same place," replied Solange, without stirring.

M. Isidore did not condescend to continue the conversation with one so little disposed to talk, and, turning towards Jeanne, lavished upon her some more foolish compliments, which, without being exactly to the taste of the child, were not displeasing to her vanity.

It was evident that mademoiselle encouraged Isidore, and thought him very charming. It was not because she was wanting in sense or penetration, but the custom of living alone in her big château, where she rarely saw any one but country people, and the new distraction of carrying out a plot that she had concocted, and which you will soon guess, made her see things dimly; and whilst Solange, simple girl as she was, saw at the first glance that young Perdreau had become an insolent, ridiculous fop, this high-born young lady, who had read so many books, was ready to faint at the least word of that simpleton--for simpleton was the name he well deserved until after-circumstances proved that he was worthy of a still more odious title.

Dame Berthe behaved just like her mistress; but, as the good creature had scarcely any common sense, that can very easily be understood. Isidore, since his return three days before, had never ceased to flatter her and relate long stories about Paris, principally his own inventions, but to which, nevertheless, the old governess, with eyes, ears, and mouth wide open, listened with devoted attention. So, when Solange showed such coldness to her old school-fellow, mademoiselle looked at her with anything but a gentle expression, and Dame Berthe instantly shrugged her shoulders and made big eyes at her.

But Solange remained perfectly indifferent; in the first place, because her back was turned to the ladies, and, secondly, because she worked away as though she expected to be paid a franc an hour.

Meanwhile, Pierrette and Ragaud came back from the pool Saint-Jean, where they had commenced to soak the hemp, and Jean-Louis soon followed. When they saw such fine company in the room, they all three stopped, rather ashamed of their working-clothes, which was doubtless the reason they did not observe that Jeannet, in her elegant costume, was a great contrast to them.

Ragaud, as you already know, was rather given to vain-glory, and his vanity was easily tickled. It was the only defect of this good man, but it must be acknowledged this defect clung to his heart as a tree is tied by its root to the ground; so that in Isidore Perdreau he only saw the favorable side--to wit, a young man, brought up in the capital, very rich and handsome, who could be received in the best houses, and who did not disdain to hasten to greet old friends so far beneath him. Pierrette, without further reasoning, was very sensible of what she likewise considered a great honor. So the excellent couple, whose honest souls were rather stupefied for the moment, quite overwhelmed Perdreau with the warmth of their reception, and pressed him so earnestly to repeat his visit you would really have thought they were welcoming the return of their own son.

Mademoiselle was in a gale of delight, and, when she re-entered the carriage with her attendants, the lackeys' faces were in a broad grin at seeing her so gay, and even the horses made two or three little jumps on starting, as though they, too, participated in the good-humor of their mistress.

"Well, what did I tell you?" asked mademoiselle of Isidore, who was seated opposite to her. "Is she pretty enough, well-bred enough? And, in spite of all your Parisian acquaintances, do you think she is a woman to be scorned?"

"O mademoiselle!" cried Perdreau, "she is adorable, delightful! But you brought her up; isn't that enough?"

"She will make a lovely bride," said mademoiselle; "and it will be the happiest day of my life when I shall see you both leave the church arm-in-arm."

"How becoming the wreath of orange-blossoms will be to her!" cried Dame Berthe.

"But will she have me?" asked Isidore in a hypocritical tone.

"Bah! be assured she will be most happy, and her parents immensely honored," replied mademoiselle; "besides, I have only to say a word, as you know."

"You are an angel!" said M. Perdreau, as he kissed mademoiselle's hand; "and if I had not seen you again before Jeanne Ragaud, my happiness would make me crazy. I can only say that you are the most beautiful and graceful woman in the world, and she is the second."

Poor mademoiselle, who was humpbacked and anything but handsome, and, besides, nearly thirty, smiled nevertheless at this insolent speech, so out of place from the mouth of her notary's son; so true is it that compliments are swallowed as easily as ripe strawberries, no matter how false they may be, if the mind is not properly balanced, and cannot rise above the frivolity and nonsense heard on all sides in this world.

While the carriage rolled away to the château, each one at the farm had something to say, and Perdreau was there, also, the subject of conversation.

"He is a very pleasant fellow," said good Ragaud, "not at all proud, and much better-looking than when he left home. He must have studied very hard in Paris, and his dear, good father will have a worthy successor."

"When I think," replied Pierrette, "how readily he accepted your invitation to supper, never raising the slightest difficulty, that proves he has a good heart."

"We won't know what to say to him," remarked Jeannette, "he is so much more learned than we."

"Yes, but very simple with it all," said Pierrette. "I will not be the least embarrassed. I am sure he will like to talk over all his boyish tricks and adventures--how he stole apples from Cotentin's garden, and how he would keep M. le Curé waiting when it was his turn to be altar-boy."

"He was always full of fun," replied Ragaud, "and is so still; but that is no defect."

"Oh! certainly not," cried Jeannette.

"For what evening have you invited him?" asked Jean-Louis, who had not yet expressed an opinion.

"Next Sunday," said Ragaud; "that will not take us from our work, and we can bring him back with us in the wagon after Vespers."

"What a beautiful dress you have on!" said Jeannet, looking at his sister.

"Mademoiselle gave it to me," she replied, looking down. "I put it on to receive her; but I will not wear it again."

"Until Sunday?" asked Jean-Louis.

"Certainly," said Pierrette, "Jeannette must be prettily dressed in honor of Isidore."

Jean-Louis said nothing; he walked to the window where Solange was sitting, and leaned on the back of her chair, apparently absorbed in watching her embroider.

"Jeannet," said Solange, without raising her eyes, "what do you think of all this?"

"It makes me sad," he replied.

"You have reason to feel so," said she. "That smooth-tongued Isidore has turned all their heads. Mademoiselle is even more carried away than the others; and, from the way things are going on, there will be trouble before long."

Jean-Louis sighed. As they had spoken in a low tone, and the Ragauds were conversing with Jeannette, their little conversation had not been remarked.

"Will you go home with us after Mass next Sunday?" continued Solange. "Pierre will be glad to see you, and Michou has promised to dine with us at noon, and taste our boiled corn."

"Thank you," said Jeannet, "I will go with pleasure."

This was on Tuesday; the four following days Isidore Perdreau came constantly to Muiceron, sometimes with mademoiselle, sometimes alone, and was most cordially received by the Ragauds, and Jeannette also, I regret to say.

If you are of my opinion, you will allow that nothing is pleasanter than to listen to a story when there is only question of good people and happy events. It makes our hearts glad, and we forget for a little while that life is like the clouds in the sky, streaked with white, gray, and black, and that often the dark clouds overshadow the light; but as truth must be loved above all, I am very sorry to tell you that for the present I have nothing good to relate. You must pardon me, then, if I am obliged to sadden you by the recital of sinful and criminal acts, and believe me that, if it is painful for you to have to listen to them, it is not less so for me to recount them to you.

When mademoiselle once became possessed with the charming idea of marrying her god-daughter to Isidore, never was the caprice of a woman without occupation more obstinately pursued and more firmly fastened in the very bottom of her brain. Very true, she only sought the happiness of her beloved Jeannette, and thought she had thereby secured it. She incessantly repeated to Dame Berthe that it would be the greatest misfortune if Jeannette should marry a peasant, that after all the care she had lavished upon her for ten years she could not bear to see her milking the cows, and hardening her hands by washing and working in the fields. On the other side, she would not risk the happiness of her pet by marrying her to a man she did not know; consequently, she should marry some one in the neighborhood; and Isidore was the only person around who united all the requisites desired by mademoiselle, as the other young men were only of the laboring class. She communicated her idea to M. le Marquis, who, without making any objections, thought the project might be attempted. He himself went to see M. Perdreau, the father, and announced to him his wishes upon the subject, and Isidore was immediately recalled from Paris.

Old Perdreau, the notary, passed for one of the most honest men in his profession. For thirty years M. le Marquis had closed his eyes and left him the entire control of his affairs, which, truth to say, were not very complicated, as the principal wealth of the château consisted of fertile land, woods, meadows, and vineyards, the revenues of which he received and controlled.

More than that--and this was the worst--our master made him the special confidant of his most secret expeditions. Thus, when he left home on one of his mysterious journeys, where he expected to encounter great dangers, Perdreau alone knew exactly the hiding-places of M. le Marquis, the plots that were there concocted--in a word, the great conspiracies that monsieur and his friends thought legitimate in their souls and consciences, although they could scarcely be called such in my opinion.

This was very astonishing, it must be acknowledged, as it bound M. le Marquis hand and foot to his notary. But what could you expect? My late beloved father, who had been an enthusiastic _Chouan_, contrary to most of the people of his province, who did not care a fig for all that fuss, said that perfectly honest souls can never think ill of any one, and that is the reason they are often duped and vilified without their even dreaming of it.

For it is time to let you know that Master Perdreau, the notary of Val-Saint, was, and had been always, the most cunning rascal, not only of our neighborhood, but of the whole country for twenty leagues around, including all the towns, little and big. His only idea was to make money, and for that he would have sold his master, his conscience--in case he had one--his best friends, his soul, and even the sacred vessels of the tabernacle. In the way of hypocrisy, deep wickedness, theft, stinginess, and falsehood he had nothing to fear from any rival, saving, perhaps, his only son, Isidore, who was rapidly learning to play the knave, and promised, with the help of the devil, to become very soon the true pendant of monsieur, his father.

In order to perfect this shameful education, Isidore had finished his studies in Paris, and Master Perdreau, I need not say, had chosen a college for him where he would neither learn virtue nor the fear of God.

For the consolation of good people, evil-doers seldom profit by their crimes. Thus, at this period of our story, Master Perdreau was on the eve of reaping the fruits of thirty years of criminal conduct, and it was precisely the opposite of what he had sought all his life that was about to happen to him.

Holding in his hand the secrets of M. le Marquis, he had used them to obtain large sums from the poor deluded man, under the pretence of advancing his interests; and with this money, added to other thefts, he had first supplied his son with means for continuing his dissipation in Paris, and then speculated so often and so well in a place not very Christian--called, I believe, the Exchange--that he had nothing left he could call his own but his little country office and debts enough to drive him crazy. Judge, then, if he thought himself favored by fortune when M. le Marquis came and proposed Jeanne Ragaud to him for daughter-in-law. Never did a drowning man grasp more eagerly at the plank held out to keep him from death. The girl's fortune was well known. Muiceron and the adjoining property was worth at least one hundred thousand francs; and to rightly estimate the money good Ragaud laid by every year, one would have to count on his fingers a tolerably long while. Further, Jeannette was an extremely pretty girl, brought up as a young lady, and there was no doubt her godmother would leave her--perhaps might give her at her marriage--a very handsome present. All being thus arranged to the satisfaction of this scoundrel of a notary, he had only to rub his hands and chuckle at the idea of having fooled everybody during his whole life.

I will not sadden you by relating what was the conversation on the subject between father and son on the evening of Isidore's arrival in the village, and the means which they proposed to accomplish their ends, which was to wheedle old Ragaud into giving up all the property to his daughter, only reserving for himself a modest annuity. As for the shameful way in which these arrant swindlers held up to ridicule M. le Marquis, whom they called "old fool," and mademoiselle, whom they stigmatized as the "yellow dwarf," on account of her crooked figure, it would make me sick to relate all they said. However, in saying that Perdreau deceived everybody, I have rather exaggerated, for two men in the village saw through his villany, and, thank God, they were two of the most worthy--namely, Jacques Michou, and our dear, holy _curé_. The first, who, as you know, had never been drawn into the promising conspiracies of his good lord, had always suspected Perdreau for catching so readily at the alluring bait. He had watched him closely, and, to fully unravel his plans, pretended to become very intimate with M. Riponin, the steward, who was scarcely any better than the notary, but who owed Perdreau a grudge for his having duped him in some knavish trick they undertook together. Since then, Michou, who knew how to play one against the other, in order to serve his master, made one thief steal from the other, and fully succeeded in his design. As for our _curé_, he knew both the good and the bad, and looked out for a squall. The great misfortune was that mademoiselle was so fully possessed with her idea of the marriage she neglected to consult him and ask his advice.

Alas! I am bound now to avow that poor little Jeannette, whose sin was more of the head than the heart, allowed herself to be very quickly caught in the net held out to her. Never did a giddy, inconstant little fish make the leap as willingly as she. In a village marriages are soon arranged. The parties are supposed to be well acquainted. At the first proposition, when the interests agree, they have only to say yes; and so it happened no later than the second Sunday after the arrival of Isidore Perdreau.

Every one assisted to hurry up the affair with lightning speed. Jeanne solemnly believed all the nonsense poured into her ear by Isidore, thought herself adored by him, and regarded him as infinitely superior to all other men in style, manner, and fine speeches. Ragaud and Pierrette were puffed up with pride; monsieur and mademoiselle did not conceal their satisfaction; and the people around, with the sole exception of Michou, who was looked upon as a cross, peevish old fellow, hastened to congratulate the fortunate couple.

Sickness was no longer thought of. Jeannette, happy and triumphant, rapidly regained her strength. The poor silly child only thought of her new dresses and of the promised visit to Paris after her marriage, the delights of which Isidore dwelt upon in glowing terms, which would have turned a stronger head than hers. Never, in fact, did a family rush blindfolded and more willingly into a bottomless abyss.

However, there was one person at Muiceron whose presence tormented M. Isidore, and whom he had hated from the first day. You can guess it was Jean-Louis. Each time that he entered the house and saw that tall figure, the face pale and serious, silently seated in a corner, the only one who did not receive him with joy, his eyes flashed with anger, and he would turn his back on him in the most contemptuous manner--something which the Ragauds would certainly have resented in any one else; but the poor people were so bewitched they were unjust enough to be angry with Jean-Louis, and even to fancy that he was jealous, whilst he was only very properly grieved at what had happened.

His life had become very different. No more friendly talks, no more watching for him, no more tender caresses; not that they had ceased to love him, but there was no time for these innocent family recreations, and, besides, it would have embarrassed them to make a display of affection before M. Isidore, who thought all such country performances beneath him. Poor Jean-Louis, who for so many years had always entered Muiceron with joyful heart at the thought of embracing his dear mother, now came in with sad and troubled brow. Pierrette always appeared busy and worried. She would rapidly say "good-evening" in reply to Jeannet's gentle salutation whispered in her ear, and immediately go on with her work; for there were always sauce-pans to overlook, or orders to give to Marion, who was not the least bewildered of them all. As for Jeannette, the cold manner in which Jean-Louis always treated her intended, and, above all, the wicked insinuations Isidore made against him, aroused her displeasure; and, if Pierrette was always absorbed in her household cares, Jeannette pained him still more by her frigid manner, bordering on sullenness.

Jean-Louis felt all this most keenly. He was not a person who liked to complain or ask explanations; besides, what would he have gained by it? He knew too well the reason of their conduct to be obliged to ask why. In a moment he could have changed all by appearing as delighted as the rest; but that was precisely what he would not do. In truth, when we see those we love at the point of drowning, how can we applaud?

Still worse was it when the family circle of Muiceron was increased by the presence of old Perdreau, who nearly every evening showed his weasel-face at the table, and drank with great friendliness to the health of the good people whose ruin he was mercilessly plotting. Jean-Louis two or three times bore it patiently; then he felt he could take himself off, and be missed by no one; so one fine evening he mustered up courage, left the farm before supper, and went off to the house of his friends, the Luguets.

As usual, he found the little house quiet, clean, and shining with neatness. Pierre was reading aloud the life of a saint, while Solange, always employed, was sewing by the lamp. Their old parents and Jacques Michou, seated around the fire, listened in silence, and the dog lay snoring on the warm hearth-stones. Jeannet on entering motioned with his hand for them not to stir, and seated himself by Solange, who nodded to him.

"My friends," said Jean-Louis when the reading was over, "I have come to ask for my supper this evening, and perhaps I may again to-morrow."

"Whenever you please, my boy," said Luguet.

"Things don't please you at Muiceron, eh?" asked Michou.

"Ah!" replied Jeannet sadly, "perhaps I am unjust and wrong; but I cannot bring myself to help in that marriage."

"What difference does it make to you?" said Pierre; "when people are possessed, they will do as they please. You are too sensitive, Jean; after all, you will not have to marry Perdreau."

"I am so sure," replied Jeannet, "that poor child will be unhappy."

"No one forces her!" said Pierre. "She wishes it, so do the Ragauds, so do M. le Marquis and mademoiselle. All agree; well, then, let them run the risk!"

"Be still, Pierre," said Solange; "you speak as though you had no heart. Remember that Jeannette has been from her infancy like a sister to Jean-Louis; would you like to see me marry Isidore?"

"Ah!" cried Pierre, "I would sooner cut his throat; but you are not like Jeannette."

"Don't say anything against her," replied good Solange with warmth. "She is the best girl in the world; and because her head is rather light and giddy, that does not prevent her having an excellent heart. I understand Jean-Louis' feelings, for, certainly, Isidore Perdreau's reputation is not very good. But who knows? Perhaps, when he is married and settles down, he may make Jeannette a good husband."

"Thank you, Solange," said Jeannet, taking her hand, "it is so kind in you to defend her; it makes me feel happy. If I could only show a little friendship for Isidore, I think I would be less miserable; but I cannot conquer myself; I cannot change...."

"It is not worth while trying to do it, boy," said Michou; "when we see misfortune coming, and cannot prevent it, the best we can do is to keep at a distance, and not meddle."

"Then, M. Michou, you really think trouble will come of it?" asked Jeannet.

"Yes, my son, such overwhelming trouble," answered the game-keeper, "that until the day I see them standing before the mayor and the _curé_, I shall hope the good God will work a miracle to prevent it. The Ragauds at present are like men who have taken too much brandy--that is to say, they are as tipsy as a beggar after the vintage. They can neither hear nor understand. But mind what I say; you others who are in your senses. I will tell you what sort of men they are, that infamous notary and his rascal of a son, and then you will see whether Jean-Louis is right or wrong."

Thereupon he recounted to his astonished friends what we already know, but went into greater details than I have thought necessary.

"We can only pray to God," said Solange when he had ended. "Alas! poor Jeannette, what will become of her? M. Michou, you must warn the Ragauds."

"You think that would be easy?" said Michou. "In the first place, they would not believe me. Monsieur and mademoiselle would be indignant. The Perdreaux are too thorough scoundrels not to have at hand a crowd of proofs and protestations which would make them appear as white as snow. Every one is against us, up to that obstinate Jeannette, who is dead in love with Isidore, so they say--hare-brained little fool!"

"It is only too true," said Jeannet, much overcome.

"As for you," resumed Michou, "in consequence of your peculiar position, you can say less than any one else; but if I were in your place, I would not remain an indifferent spectator of such a sad affair."

"What can I do?" said Jeannet. "How can I abandon them?"

"Come and stay with me a while. I am clearing a part of the wood; you can overlook the workmen, and we can manage to keep house with Barbette, if you are not very difficult to please about the cooking."

"Oh! I would like it very much, M. Michou, and you will do me a great favor. But I must ask my father about it; will you see him, and get his consent?"

"To-morrow we will have it all arranged," replied Michou.

"Jeannet," said Solange, "the wood of Val-Saint is not very far from here; when your day's work is over, you must remember there is always a place at our table for a friend. Come, and we will console you. Don't worry yourself too much about all this affair; often the storm is so terrible we expect every moment to be struck with lightning, and then the clouds break, the sky clears, and, after all the fright, nobody is killed."

Jean-Louis, notwithstanding his sadness, could not help smiling at these hopeful words, spoken by this good and beautiful girl, so reasonable in all things, and still always so cheerful. He pressed her hand, and helped her set the table for supper. Michou, reflecting on these words of Solange, wisely remarked that the future being in the hands of God, who always concealed it from us through mercy or to grant us agreeable surprises, it was unbecoming in us to torment ourselves too much about it.

At which speech good Pierre, who never liked trouble, loudly applauded; and then, the repast being served, all sat down to table, and, while eating, conversed on various topics not the least connected with Muiceron.

XV.

According to his promise, Michou the next day paid an early visit to the Ragauds, accompanied by his old blackened pipe, which he always kept firmly between his teeth when he feared he might become impatient or angry in conversation. He said that, without it, the big words would rush out of his mouth before he had time to prevent them; but that, with it, while he smoked, shook it, or relighted it, he regained his composure, and gathered time to arrange his ideas. And never was _puffer_--as he called his pipe--more necessary than on this visit to Muiceron. Seeing his friends on the point of throwing themselves into the enemy's clutches, and knowing that remonstrance would avail nothing, he felt that anger and sorrow might carry him to any extremity--in words only, let it be well understood.

He found Ragaud seated before the door, shelling gray peas, while Pierrette was washing dishes; for, since she had commenced to feed the Perdreaux, all the crockery was in use, and they went to bed so late half the work remained for next day.

"I wish you good-morning," said Michou to his friends. "I see you are very busy, but I have only come to remain a few moments."

"Come in," said Pierrette.

"No, I prefer to remain outside," replied Michou. "I like the fresh air. Ragaud, do you feel inclined to do me a favor?"

"What a question!" said the good man. "I am always ready for that, my old friend."

"Thank you, it is not a very great request. Can you spare me Jean-Louis for a fortnight? I have twenty men at work in the wood of Montreux, and no one to oversee them. The young fellow can help me a great deal."

"Very willingly," said Ragaud; "the hemp is nearly ready, and I do not want Jeannet just now."

"He will take his meals with me," replied Michou, "and sleep at my house the nights. He will be obliged to work late; so you need not be uneasy if he does not return home sometimes."

"Agreed," said Ragaud. "Do you employ the wood-cutters of the neighborhood?"

"Deuce take it, no!" replied Michou. "I hire them right and left, and truly they are the stupidest asses. The way they talk makes one's hair stand up under his cap."

"Bah! what do they say?"

"Devilish nonsense! Why, they talk of nothing but revolution, overthrowing everything and everybody, massacring the nobility, and theft. I remember how my father, long ago, told me about the people before the Reign of Terror, and I imagine these men must be something of the same stamp. Some of them disappear sometimes; when they return, they speak in whispers, and, when I order them to go to work, you should see the way they glare at me. It is very well I don't know what fear means; but, reinforced by Jeannet, all will go well."

"Take him right away," said Ragaud; "and if he is not enough, well, send for me; I will give you a helping hand."

"You?" replied Michou, who commenced to mumble over his pipe. "You are too busy in this house with the wedding."

"Oh! it is not going to be to-morrow," said Ragaud; "the day of betrothal is not yet fixed. I leave all that to good M. Perdreau. He is taking a great deal of trouble; and I am glad he is, for I know precious little about legal matters."

"So, then, you don't bother yourself with anything?--very pretty conduct on your part."

"What should I do?" asked Ragaud innocently. "Each one has his part to play. M. Perdreau was brought up among books, and I at the plough. When he has the papers ready, he will tell me where to sign my name."

"And you will sign it?"

"Undoubtedly, after he has read them to me."

"All very nice," said Michou. "If I were in your place, I would sign without reading them; it would be more stupid...."

"What do you say?" asked Ragaud.

"I say," replied Jacques, "if you will allow me to offer a word of advice, you will not only make them read your daughter's marriage contract to you, but also have it read to others--to M. le Curé, for example; he is learned also--that he is."

"That would be insulting to M. Perdreau."

"Not at all. Two such learned men would soon understand each other. After all, you know, you must do as you think best. Good-morning! Thank you for Jean-Louis; send him to me quickly. I must hurry off to my rascally wood-cutters in the wood of Montreux."

And the game-keeper turned his back without waiting for an answer, puffing away at his pipe so tremendously his cap was in a cloud of smoke.

Ragaud continued to shell his peas, but it was easy to see he felt rather anxious. Nevertheless, when he had ended his work, he re-entered the house without showing any discomposure.

Jean-Louis left home that morning to spend a fortnight with Michou, depressed in spirits, but still hoping the best. On passing through Val-Saint, he stopped at M. le Curé's, who confirmed all that Michou had said about the Perdreaux. That dear, good man was much distressed, but could not think of any remedy for the evil; but he promised Jeannet to say Mass for the family, and highly approved of his leaving Muiceron for a time.

Meanwhile, the Ragauds acted as though they were bewitched. During the first week after the departure of Jeannet, his name was scarcely mentioned, even by Pierrette. They appeared to have lost all recollection of the services the excellent-hearted boy had rendered his adopted parents. No one thought of him or noticed him when he returned sometimes late at night from his hard day's work; and, had it not been for the good Luguets, poor Jean-Louis would have been as isolated in the world as if he had been brought up in a foundling asylum--his first destination. But God did not abandon him, and, although always very sad, he did not lose courage. Every evening, whether he returned or not to Muiceron, he visited his friends, and there, with Pierre and Solange, he recovered his good-humor, or at least maintained his gentleness and resignation. His friendship for Solange increased day by day. He suspected nothing, nor she either; for although very friendly and intimate, they only felt toward each other like brother and sister. However, all was known in the village--better, perhaps, than elsewhere--and the gossips commenced to say that the devout Solange jumped at marriage as quickly as any other girl. Several of the girls even commenced to tease her about him; all of which she received gently, and smiled without being displeased, contenting herself with the remark that, after all, she might choose worse; and her work was continued more faithfully than ever.

One evening, when Pierre and his parents remained rather late at the fair at Andrieux, which is three good leagues from Ordonniers, and which is only reached by roads very difficult to travel in the bad season, Jeannet, as usual, went to the Luguets, and was surprised to find Solange all alone. She blushed slightly when she saw him, not from embarrassment, however, but only, I imagine, because she remembered the reports that were circulating in the village. Jeannet took his usual seat, which was always near hers. The month of November was nearly ended, and that morning Michou had told Jean-Louis that Jeannette's betrothal would take place a little before Christmas, and the marriage soon after. The poor fellow was overwhelmed with sorrow; he poured all his grief into Solange's ear, and so great was his confidence in her that he allowed himself to weep in her presence.

"You have lost your courage and become thoroughly hopeless," said Solange gently. "I don't like that in a man, still less in a Christian."

"How can I help it? Am I made of stone?" replied Jeannet, his head buried in his hands. "Alas! alas! Solange, I believed your words. I thought that God would have mercy on us, and that this unfortunate marriage would not take place."

"I don't see that it has yet," replied Solange. "In the first place, they only speak of signing the contract a month from now, and up to then the mill will turn more than once; and, after all, does not God know better than we what is good for us, poor blind things that we are?"

"That is true; but to see Jeannette the wife of that man, without faith or fear of God or law; to see my old father and dear, good mother reduced to want; to be obliged to leave the country, and never see Muiceron again! For think, Solange, that Jeannette, when she signs her marriage contract, will know that I am not her brother! I will not wait to be told that my place is outside of the house. God knows I have worked for my parents, and their tenderness never humiliated me, but to receive a benefit from Isidore--no, never!" cried Jean-Louis, raising his eyes that flashed with honest pride.

"You are right in that," said Solange quietly; "but listen a moment, ... and first sit down there," she added, gently placing her hand on his arm. "Come to your senses. There, now, can you yet listen patiently to me?"

"Go on," said Jean-Louis obediently; "you need not talk long to calm me."

"Well," resumed Solange, resting her elbow on the table in such a manner that her sweet face nearly touched Jeannet's shoulder, "I will repeat again that the story is not yet ended; but as this good reason is not weighty enough for your excited brain, I beg you will tell me why you think Jeannette will despise you when she will learn that you are not her brother."

"But how can you expect it to be otherwise, my dear friend? Is it not against me that I seem to be installed in her house for life? that I have had half the hearts of her parents? Do you think that Isidore, who detests me, will not tell a thousand falsehoods to prejudice her against me? Ah! Solange, I have suffered terribly during the last month; but to see Jeannette regard me as an intruder; to have her crush me with her scorn, and make me feel that I am a foundling, picked up from the gutter--it is beyond all human strength, and the good God will not compel me to endure such agony. I will not expose myself to such a trial."

"But what can you do? You cannot get work in the country without running the risk of meeting her at every turn."

"I will manage it," said Jean-Louis. "France is a kind mother, Solange, and has never refused food to one of her sons, even though he had no name but the one given in baptism. I know that my dear father intended to procure a substitute for me; but, in the present situation, I can no longer accept a cent of Jeannette's inheritance, which will one day be Isidore's."

"Good," said Solange. "But wait another moment. All this is still in the future, since you can only be drawn next year; so put that aside. I will only say that you have spoken like a good-hearted fellow, for which I don't compliment you, as I knew you were that before. But, to return to what we were speaking of, why do you think you will be scorned by Jeannette? Come, now, tell me all. You love the little thing? and ... more than a brother loves a sister?"

"Ah!" cried Jeannet, hiding his face, which he felt crimsoning, like a young girl surprised, "you drag the last secret from my heart. Yes, I love her, I love her to madness, and that adds to the bitterness of my despair. May God pardon me! I have already confessed it, but with my great sorrow is mingled a wicked sentiment. Solange! I am jealous; I know it well. What can you expect? I was so before I knew it, and I cannot drive it from me. Did I ever feel that she was not my sister? No, not once until the day that there was question of her marriage; and yet," added he clasping his hands, "God, who hears me, knows that if she had chosen one worthy of her, I would have had the strength to conquer it for the sake of her happiness. But so many misfortunes have made me what I am, and--what I only avow to you--incapable of surmounting my jealousy and dislike."

While he spoke thus, beautiful Solange smiled, not like a scornful woman, who has no pity for feelings to which she is insensible, but like a mother who is sure of consoling her sick child. Her clear, tranquil eyes rested upon Jean-Louis, who gradually raised his, that he might look at her in his turn; for everything about this girl of twenty years was so gentle and calm, and at the same time so good, one always expected to receive consolation from her.

"You wish to scold me?" said Jean-Louis. "If so, do it without fear, if you think I am in fault."

"Not at all," she replied; "there is nothing wrong in what you have confided to me, Jeannet. I pity you with my whole heart, only I scarcely understand you."

"Why so, Solange? You are, however, very kind, and certainly have a heart."

"I hope so," said she; "but when a creature is loved so dearly, she should be esteemed in every respect."

"Don't I esteem Jeannette? O Solange! why do you say that?"

"But I only repeat what you first said, my child," she replied in her maternal tone, which was very sweet in that young mouth. "You think her capable of despising you, and imagine that she will disdain you when she learns the misfortune of your birth; therefore, you do not esteem her, and so, I repeat, I can't understand such great affection."

"You can reason very coolly about it," said Jeannet; "but if your soul were troubled like mine, you would not see so clearly to the bottom of things."

"It is precisely because you are so troubled that the good God permits this conversation to-night," she replied. "Let me tell you now why I still hope. Jeannette at this moment sins by the head, but her heart is untouched; and here is the proof: the secret you so dread her knowing she has known as well as either of us for more than three months. Have you seen any change in her manner?"

"Oh! is it possible?" cried Jeannet. "And who told her?"

"I myself," answered Solange. "She had heard at the château some words dropped by Dame Berthe, which excited her curiosity. After her sickness, when I went to stay with her, she one day asked an explanation of her doubts; and as I feared, if she questioned others, she would not be properly answered, I told her all."

"You did right; and what was her reply?"

"She threw herself in my arms, and thanked me," said Solange. "For more than an hour she spoke of her great affection for you, which time had augmented instead of diminishing. She wept for your misfortune, and thanked God that her parents had acted so well, as by that act they had given her a brother; and never did I see her so gentle, tender, and kind. She made me promise I would never tell you that she knew your secret; but the poor child did not then foresee the necessity that compels me to speak to-night on account of your wicked thoughts."

"Dear, dear Jeannette!" said Jean-Louis, with tears in his eyes.

"I have heard lately," continued Solange, "that she came near sending off Isidore, because he presumed, thinking she knew nothing, to make some allusion to the subject. She declared that she considered you her brother, and those who wished to be friends of hers must think the same."

"Say no more," said Jeannet. "I will love her more than ever."

"No," replied she, "it is useless. Only don't despair. Take courage, for there is always hope when the heart is good; and the moment this poor child, who is now acting without reflection, will know she should despise Isidore, she will dismiss him and drive him away as she would a dangerous animal."

"But will she ever know it?" said Jean-Louis.

"Hope in God," replied the pious girl. "Has he ever yet abandoned you?"

"Beg him to make me as confident as you," said he, looking at her with admiration. "What good you do me! How can I repay you, Solange, for such kind words?"

"Perhaps," said she seriously--"perhaps, one day, I may ask you to do me a great service."

"Really! Let me know it now. I will be so happy to serve you."

"Yes? Well, then, I will," replied Solange, after a moment's hesitation. "You have laid bare your heart to me; I will return your confidence. Jean-Louis, I also have a secret love in my soul, and I will die if I do not obtain what I desire."

"You!" said Jeannet, astonished; "you, dear Solange! I always thought you so quiet and so happy in your life."

"It is true," said she, sighing. "I look so, because I cannot let people see what they could not understand. But with you, Jean-Louis, it is different; I can tell you everything."

"I hope, at least," said Jeannet, smiling, "that he whom you love is worthy of your esteem."

"Oh! yes," she replied, crossing her arms on her breast, while her pale, beautiful face crimsoned with fervor--"oh! yes, for he whom I love is the Lord our God. I wish to be a Sister of Charity, Jeannet, and until then there will be no happiness on earth for me."

Jean-Louis for a moment was dumb with surprise at this avowal; then he knelt before her, and kissed her hands.

"I might have suspected it," said he, much moved; "you were not made to live the ordinary life of the world. God bless you, dear Solange, and may his holy angels accompany you! But what can I do to aid you in your holy wishes?"

"Much," she replied; "you can inform my parents, and afterwards console them; reason with Pierre, who will be half crazy when he hears of my departure; and perhaps you can even accompany me to Paris, for I am afraid to go alone. I have never been away from home, and I would not dare venture on that long journey."

"But, dear Solange, you will need a great deal of money for that."

"Oh!" said she, laughing, "do you think me a child? For two years I have deprived myself of everything, and I have more than enough. See," she added, opening a little box, which she kept hidden under a plaster statue of the Blessed Virgin, which stood near her bed. "Count!"

"Three hundred francs!" said Jeannet, after having counted; "and ten, and twenty, and thirty more--three hundred and sixty, besides the change. There are nearly four hundred francs."

"There will be when I am paid for what I am now embroidering," said she. "Is that enough?"

"Ten times too much," replied Jeannet. "Poor dear Solange! what happiness to think that I shall see you until the last moment!"

"And afterwards again," said she gaily; "the white cornets are made to go over the world. We will meet again, don't fear!"

It is truly said that example is better than precept. Jean-Louis became a man again before that beautiful and pious girl, so brave and so good. His heart was comforted, his soul strengthened. He would have blushed now to weep about his sorrows, when Solange was about to sacrifice her whole life to the sorrows of others. She commenced to play her part of Sister of Charity with him, and God doubtless already blessed her; for never did balm poured into a wound produce a more instant effect.

They finished their little arrangements just as the Luguets returned home. Pierre was rather gay, as he could not go to the fair without drinking with his friends; and when a man's ordinary drink is water colored with the skins of grapes, half a pint is enough to make him feel jolly.

Therefore, when he found Solange and Jeannet in conversation, looking rather more serious than usual, he commenced to look very wise, whistled, winking from one to the other, to let them know he understood what was going on. Jean-Louis was seated near the fire, and pondered over the mutual confidences made that evening. He paid little attention to Pierre's manœuvres; but Solange saw them, and, while laying the cloth for supper, begged her brother to explain, in good French what was on his mind.

"Yes, yes, my pretty one!" said he, trying to put his arm around her waist, something which she did not permit even in him; "we know something about you."

"Nothing very bad," she replied, laughing; "here I am before you in flesh and blood, and you see I am not at all sick."

"Don't be so sly," he answered; "this is not the time. We returned from the fair with lots of acquaintances, and every one told us you were going to be married, and that your bans would be published next Sunday."

"It is rather too soon," said Solange quietly; "the consent of the parents will be needed, and I don't know yet whether it will be given. And to whom shall I be married? Those people who are so well informed should have told you that."

Thereupon Pierre, without answering, struck Jean-Louis on the shoulder.

"Look up, sleepy-head!" cried he in his ear. "Can you tell me who is going to marry my sister Solange?"

"Who? What?" answered Jeannet, like one coming out of a dream. "What are you talking about?"

"I say that you and Solange can keep a secret famously," said he, rather spitefully. "It is well to keep it secret, when you are only thinking of marriage, and I don't object to your first arranging it between yourselves; but now that everybody knows it except us, it is rather provoking for the family."

"You are crazy," said Jean-Louis.

"A big baby, at least," said Solange, shrugging her shoulders.

"All very well," said Pierre; "we know what we know. We say nothing further. When you choose to speak of your affairs, well, we will be ready to listen to you."

Jeannet was about to reply, but Luguet and his wife, who all this while had been in the barn, giving a look at the cattle, to see that all was safe for the night, re-entered the room, and Solange motioned to Jean-Louis not to continue such a useless conversation before her parents.

But whether Pierre was more obstinate than usual that night on account of the wine in his head, or whether his great friendship for Jeannet inflamed his desire for the alliance, certain it is he would not give up his belief in the approaching marriage, and continued throughout supper to make jokes and clack his wooden shoes underneath the table; in fact, he acted like a boy who is sure of his facts and loves to torment people. Jean-Louis several times was on the point of telling him to be quiet, but Solange, with her gentle smiles, always prevented him.

You can well perceive this confirmed Pierre in his belief that they understood each other, as honest lovers have the right to do; so that, if he was a little doubtful on his return from the fair, he was no longer so at the end of the supper, and went to bed so firmly persuaded that he would soon have Jeannet for brother-in-law, they could easier have cut off his right hand than make him believe to the contrary.

TO BE CONTINUED.

EPIGRAM.

TO DOMITIAN, CONCERNING S. JOHN, COMMANDED TO BE CAST INTO A CALDRON OF BURNING OIL.

Thou go unpunish'd? That shall never be, Since thou hast dar'd to mock the gods and me. Burn him in oil!--The lictor oil prepares: Behold the saint anointed unawares! With such elusive virtue was the oil fraught! Such aid thy olive-loving Pallas brought![198]

--CRASHAW.

FOOTNOTES:

[198] The allusion is to wrestlers anointing themselves to prevent their adversaries grasping them.

NANO NAGLE:

FOUNDRESS OF THE PRESENTATION ORDER.

There is no fact more apparent or more full of significance in the history of the church than the constant acting and reacting upon each other of races and nations in the perpetual struggle between civilization and religion with barbarism and infidelity, light with darkness. While the faith seems dimmed and its professors the victims of persecution in one land, in another the torch of learning and piety is slowly but surely kindling into brilliancy, and the ardor of apostolic zeal is being awakened, even by the supineness and apostasy of its neighbors. That this should be permitted or ordained by divine Providence is a mystery to all, but its effects can easily be perceived by any ordinary student of history.

For proof of this mutation and transition we need not go beyond our own day and generation. Europe of the XIXth century presents a spectacle, if not alarming, at least discouraging to many who have the cause of Christianity sincerely at heart. In one country we perceive a direct attack on the Sovereign Pontiff, wholesale spoliation of his temporal possessions, restriction of his personal liberty, and a general onslaught on the religious orders--those most efficient agents for the propagation of morality, charity, and intelligence--which surround him--and that, too, by a prince of Catholic origin and education, who claims the right to govern twenty millions of subjects. In another we have a stolid, sordid _imperator_, instigated by a more intellectual but not less arbitrary minister, not only claiming complete dominion over the lives and property of twice that number, but assuming also the right to dictate the terms upon which they shall worship their Maker, what shall be their faith, and who may be their teachers and guides in the way of salvation.

Again, in such countries as Austria, France, Spain, and Belgium, until very recently considered the bulwarks of Catholicity on the Continent, indifferentism, communism, and open infidelity, if not yet triumphant, have certainly of late made rapid strides towards power and authority, and to the human eye seriously threaten the very existence of society, of all order and all law, human and divine, in those distracted nations. And still, a prospect such as Europe now presents, though seemingly gloomy, is actually full of hope and promise. While the hitherto supine Catholics of the Italian peninsula are being aroused into earnestness by the outrages daily perpetrated on the Holy Father and the religious orders, and their co-religionists of Germany are forming themselves into a solid, compact, and energetic array in defence of their rights, elsewhere the cause of the church is progressing with a rapidity and uniformity that equally astonishes and alarms her enemies.

Take our own republic, for example, with its seven archbishops, its forty-nine bishops, thousands of priests, and millions of earnest and obedient spiritual children, where a century ago a priest was an object of curiosity to most of the people, and a Catholic was generally regarded with less favor than is now shown the Chinese idolaters. Now, what has wrought this change; what has scattered broadcast over this vast continent, and engrafted in the heart of our vigorous young republic the doctrines of the church, but the persecutions which our co-religionists have endured and are still enduring, in the Old World? To the irreligious maniacs of the French Revolution, to the penal code of Great Britain, and now to the mendacity of Victor Emanuel and the truculent tyranny of Bismarck, are we mainly indebted, under Providence, for the origin, growth, and increase of Catholicity among us. Like a subterranean fire, the spirit of the church can never be repressed. Subdued in one place, it will burst forth in another with redoubled force, intensified by the very attempts made to confine it.

Then let us look at England--England which among the nations was the land of the Reformation; who not only stoned the prophets, but whose annals for nearly three centuries are the most anti-Catholic and intolerant to be found in the records of modern history. She, also, as in the early ages of her conversion, felt the effect of continental barbarism and persecution. At the very time when the faith seemed to have been utterly extirpated within her boundaries, the French Revolution drove to her shores many Catholics, lay and clerical, of gentle birth, cultivated manners, and varied accomplishments, and to those exiles does she owe primarily the revival in her bosom of the religion planted by S. Augustine. She has now sixteen archbishops and bishops, sixteen hundred priests, over one thousand places of worship, where assemble large congregations, including many of the most eminent and distinguished of her sons.

The Catholics of Ireland, always true to the faith and loyal to the head of the church, were common sufferers with their co-religionists across the Channel, and, though in a different manner and at an earlier period, they were equally the gainers with those of England, and from causes almost similar. The property of that cruelly tried people was not only confiscated by the penal laws, their clergy outlawed, and their persons subjected to all sorts of pains and penalties, but they were denied the poor privilege of acquiring the principles of the commonest education. The consequences of such persecution, continued generation after generation, were what might have been, and no doubt was, expected to be--that the people, persistently refusing to yield to cajolery or threats in matters of conscience, within two centuries after the "Reformation" had almost universally sunk into abject poverty and secular ignorance. In fact, had it not been for their traditional knowledge of the great truths of religion, and the instruction sometimes stealthily given them by some fugitive priest in remote mountains and the fastnesses of the bogs, they must inevitably have degenerated into something like primitive barbarism.

However, such an anomalous state as this could not last for ever. All Christendom was about to cry out against it, and an incident occurred in 1745, under the administration of the celebrated Lord Chesterfield, which awakened at home general attention to the wretched manner in which four-fifths of the inhabitants of the country were obliged to worship their Creator. It happened that in that year a small congregation was assembled secretly in an old store, in an obscure part of Dublin, to hear Mass, when the floor gave way, and the entire body was precipitated to the ground below. F. Fitzgerald, the celebrant, and nine of his parishioners, were killed, and several others severely injured. The viceroy, who, whatever may have been his other faults, was certainly less bigoted than his predecessors, thereupon took the responsibility of allowing the Catholics, under certain restrictions, to open their chapels, and worship in public. This limited concession was the commencement of a new era in the affairs of the Irish Catholics. The number of priests began to increase; churches, rude and small of necessity, sprang up here and there, generally in secluded localities, as if afraid to show themselves; and incipient efforts for the education of the masses of both sexes were soon noticed.

In this latter great work of benevolence the most zealous and efficient was the lady whose name heads this article. She seems to have been endowed by Providence with all the gifts, mental and moral, necessary to constitute her the pioneer of that host of noble women who, since her time to the present, have devoted themselves to the education and training of the females of Ireland. Born of an ancient and thoroughly Catholic family of considerable wealth and wide popular influence, she grew up amid home scenes of comfort, peace, and charity, a devout believer in the sanctity of religion, and in perfect accord with the instructions of indulgent but watchful parents. The position her father held among his poorer and less fortunate neighbors, his charity to the needy, and his protection to the helpless, afforded her, even in her extreme youth, many opportunities of studying the wants of the distressed, and of sympathizing with their afflictions: principles which, then perhaps nourished in her heart unconsciously, were in after-years destined to grow and fructify into those nobler deeds of charity that have made her memory so cherished and revered.

Honora, or, as her friends and beneficiaries loved to call her, Nano Nagle, was the daughter of a gentleman named Garret Nagle, of Ballygriffin, near Mallow, in the county of Cork, where she was born A.D. 1728. Through both parents she was related, not only to many of the old Catholic houses, but to several of the most influential Protestant families in the South; which is only worthy of remark as furnishing a clew to the fact of her parents' wealth and social standing in times when those of the proscribed religion were not only disqualified from accumulating or holding property in their own right, but were personally objects of contempt and contumely to the dominant class. It may also, perhaps, account for the impunity with which Mr. Nagle, despite the numerous statutory enactments, was enabled to send his favorite child to the Continent to complete an education the rudiments only of which could be obtained in the privacy of her family.

Accordingly, at an early age, Nano quitted her pleasant and cheerful home by the Blackwater for the retirement and austerity of a convent on the banks of the Seine, in which institution she acquired all the accomplishments and graces then considered befitting a young lady of position.

Having entered school a mere girl from a remote part of a semi-civilized country, untutored, undeveloped, and, it is even said, a little petulant and self-willed, she now, at her twenty-first year, emerged from the shadow of the convent walls into the sunshine of Parisian life, an educated, beautiful, and self-sustained woman. Her family had many friends in the French capital, particularly in the households of the Irish Brigade officers and other Catholic exiles, and her entrance into the best society was unimpeded, and was even signalized by rare scenes of festivity and mutual gratification. Her native _naïveté_ and buoyancy of spirits, tempered with all the well-bred courtesy and dignity of a French education under the old _régime_, made her a general favorite; and though it does not appear that she was in the least spoiled by the admiration and adulation that everywhere awaited her, there is little doubt that she participated in the fashionable dissipations of the gay capital with all the ardor and impetuosity latent in her disposition. Admitted to such scenes, it is little wonder that for a time she forgot the land of her birth, its persecutions and tribulations, its degraded peasantry and timid and degenerate aristocracy. One so young and so capable of appreciating the refinements and elegancies of the most cultured city in Europe, might well have been excused if she found it difficult to exchange them for the obscurity and monotony of a remote provincial town.

But the spell which at this time bound her was soon to be broken. The still, small voice of duty and conscience was soon to find a tongue and speak to her soul with the force almost of inspiration. The circumstances of this radical change in her life are thus graphically described in a very valuable book recently published:

"In the small, early hours of a spring morning of the year 1750, a heavy, lumbering carriage rolled over the uneven pavement of the quartier Saint Germain of the French capital, awakening the echoes of the still sleeping city. The beams of the rising sun had not yet struggled over the horizon to light up the spires and towers and lofty housetops, but the cold, gray dawn was far advanced. The occupants of the carriage were an Irish young lady of two-and twenty, and her chaperon, a French lady, both fatigued and listlessly reclining in their respective corners. They had lately formed part of a gay and glittering crowd in one of the most fashionable Parisian _salons_. As they moved onward, each communing with her own thoughts, in all probability reverting to the brilliant scene they had just left, and anticipating the recurrence of many more such, the young lady's attention was suddenly attracted by a crowd of poor people standing at the yet unopened door of a parish church. They were work-people, waiting for admission by the porter, in order to hear Mass before they entered on their day's work.

"The young lady was forcibly struck. She reflected on the hard lot of those children of toil, their meagre fare, their wretched dwellings, their scanty clothing, their constant struggle to preserve themselves and their families even in this humble position--a struggle in many a case unavailing; for sickness, or interruption of employment, or one of the many other casualties incidental to their state, might any day sink them still deeper in penury. She reflected seriously on all this; and then she dwelt on their simple faith, their humble piety, their thus 'preventing the day to worship God.' She contrasted their lives with those of the gay votaries of fashion and pleasure, of whom she was one. She felt dissatisfied with herself, and asked her own heart, Might she not be more profitably employed? Her thoughts next naturally reverted to her native land, then groaning under the weight of persecution for conscience' sake--its religion proscribed, its altars overturned, its sanctuaries desolate, its children denied, under grievous penalties, the blessings of free education.

"She felt at once that there was a great mission to be fulfilled, and that, with God's blessing, she might do something towards its fulfilment. For a long time she dwelt earnestly on what we may now regard as an inspiration from heaven. She frequently commended the matter to God, and took the advice of pious and learned ecclesiastics; and the result was that great work which has ever been since, and is in our day, a source of benediction and happiness to countless thousands of poor families in her native land, and has made the name of Nano Nagle worthy of a high place on the roll of the heroines of charity."[199]

Miss Nagle then set out for Ireland, firmly determined to commence the noble work so suddenly contemplated and so maturely considered; but on her arrival in Cork, she found her friends exceedingly lukewarm, and the amount of ignorance and destitution in that city so appalling that she shrank from the very magnitude of the difficulties to be overcome, and began to fear that she had, in a moment of enthusiasm, overrated her ability and mistaken her vocation. This was natural. What could a young lady, scarcely entered on womanhood, delicately nurtured, and hitherto accustomed only to the society of the most fastidious--what could such a frail scion of aristocracy do to remove even an infinitesimal part of the incubus of poverty, ignorance, and crime, the result of centuries of misgovernment, which then weighed so heavily on the people?

She therefore resolved to visit the French capital again to consult eminent clerical friends, and to lay before them all her doubts and difficulties. They heard her explanations and arguments with attention, weighed her objections with proper gravity, and finally, having dispelled her doubts and strengthened her self-confidence, assured her that in their opinion--and it was a unanimous one--God had evidently called her to be the succor and comfort of her afflicted countrywomen--a decision which subsequent events proved to have been little short of prophetic. Thus reassured, and casting aside once for all the allurements of life, the rational pleasures which youth, beauty, and wealth might reasonably command, Miss Nagle resolved to eschew the things of the world for ever, and devote herself heart and soul to the self-imposed duties from the performance of which she had lately shrunk, more from a consciousness of the weakness of her position than from any lack of intention to perform them faithfully. The resolve she so solemnly made then she kept till the day of her death, thirty years afterwards, with unflinching fortitude and fidelity.

In 1754 we find her back in Cork, steadily but quietly, almost secretly, as the spirit of the times demanded, initiating her crusade against squalor and ignorance. With what precocious circumspection she commenced her labors is best shown in a letter to a friend, Miss Fitzsimmons, then in the Ursuline Convent at Paris. The extract is long, but it will repay perusal, as it may be considered an exact reflex of the working of her strong, simple, but thoroughly earnest mind. She writes under date July 17, 1769:

"When I arrived, I kept my design a profound secret, as I knew, if it were spoken of, I should meet with opposition on every side, particularly from my own immediate family; as, to all appearances, they would suffer from it. My confessor was the only person I told of it; and as I could not appear in the affair, I sent my maid to get a good mistress, and to take in thirty poor girls. When the little school was settled, I used to steal there in the morning. My brother thought I was in the chapel. This passed on very well until, one day, a poor man came to him, to speak to me to take his child into my school; on which he came in to his wife and me, laughing at the conceit of a man who was mad and thought I was in the situation of a schoolmistress. Then I owned that I had set up a school; on which he fell into a violent passion, and said a vast deal on the bad consequences that may follow. His wife is very zealous, and so is he; but worldly interests blinded him at first. He was soon reconciled to it. He was not the person I most dreaded would be brought into trouble about it; it was my uncle Nagle, who is, I think, the most disliked by the Protestants of any Catholic in the kingdom. I expected a great deal from him. The best part of my fortune I have received from him. When he heard it, he was not at all angry at it; and in a little time they were so good as to contribute largely to support it. And I took in children by degrees, not to make any noise about it in the beginning. In about nine months I had about two hundred children. When the Catholics saw what service it did, they begged that, for the convenience of the children, I would set up schools for children at the other end of the town from where I was, to be under my care and direction; and they promised to contribute to the support of them. With this request I readily complied, and the same number of children that I had were taken in; and at the death of my uncle, I supported them all at my own expense. I did not intend to take boys, but my sister-in-law made it a point, and said she would not allow any of my family to contribute to them unless I did so; on which I got a master, and took in only forty boys. They are in a house by themselves, and have no communication with the others."

This letter, it will be observed, was written fifteen years after the first school was founded, and already there were in active operation, in various parts of the city, two schools for boys and five for girls, all under the supervision of Miss Nagle, and supported from her private purse, or by a contribution of one shilling per month, which she was in the habit of collecting from a few of the more wealthy of the citizens. In these nurseries of intelligence and morality--model schools, in fact--the children of both sexes were taught to read and write, to say their daily prayers, learn the catechism, and, in the case of the older girls, to acquire a familiarity with such useful work as befitted their condition. Those who were of sufficient age heard Mass every morning, went to confession monthly, and to communion as frequently as their confessor considered advisable.

In supervising so many schools, and constantly instructing hundreds of pupils, whose moral as well as mental culture had been neglected hitherto most wofully, this heroic woman's self-imposed labors, it may well be imagined, were of the most arduous description, and we are not surprised to find that her health began to show signs of giving way. "In the beginning," she says, "being obliged to speak for upwards of four hours, and my chest not being so strong as it had been, I spat blood, which I took care to conceal, for fear of being prevented from instructing the poor. It has not the least bad effect now. When I have done preparing them at each end of the town, I feel like an idler that has nothing to do, though I speak almost as much as when I prepare them for their first communion. I find not the least difficulty in it. I explain the catechism as well as I can in one school or other every day; and if every one thought as little of labor as I do, they would have little merit. I often think that my schools will never bring me to heaven, as I only take delight and pleasure in them. You see it has pleased the Almighty to make me succeed when I had everything, I may say, to fight against. I assure you I did not expect a farthing from any mortal towards the support of my schools; and I thought I should not have more than fifty or sixty girls until I got a fortune; nor did I think I should in Cork. I began in a poor, humble manner; and though it has pleased the divine will to give me severe trials in this foundation, yet it is to show that it is his work, and has not been effected by human means. I can assure you that my schools are beginning to be of service to a great many parts of the world. This is a place of great trade. They are heard of; and my views are not for one object alone." The fortune here so delicately alluded to was left her by her uncle Nagle, who, profoundly penetrated with a sense of her discretion and of her devotion to the friendless, bequeathed her the bulk of his property. It was a very considerable sum, and was unstintingly devoted by her to further the great objects she had ever in view.

As her schools multiplied, and the attendance on each increased, with a rapidity that astonished every one, Miss Nagle saw the absolute necessity of calling in other and, if possible, organized assistance, that thus, by making her system more perfect, she might perpetuate the good work already so auspiciously begun. She therefore resolved on a bold measure--one that could have entered only the mind of a dauntless spirit, fortified by implicit faith in the protection of Providence. She determined, in fact, despite the many inhuman and ingenious penal statutes against monastic institutions, to establish a convent in Cork.

For this purpose, some time previous to the date of the above letter, four young ladies, representing some of the best families in the neighborhood, were sent to the Ursuline Convent of S. Jacques, in Paris, to enter their novitiate, while Miss Nagle, with her usual generosity and prudence, set silently to work to build a suitable house for their reception on their return. That event took place in 1771, and marks a new era in the history of the church in Ireland and England. The young novices who thus not only abandoned the allurements of the world, home, friends, and future, to serve God, but braved the terrors of the penal laws and the sneers of the anti-Catholic rabble, deserve to have their names handed down for the admiration and homage of their sex in every age and clime. They were "Miss Fitzsimmons, the special friend and correspondent of the foundress; Miss Nagle, her relative; Miss Coppinger, of the Barryscourt family, and cousin of Marian, Duchess of Norfolk; and Miss Kavanagh, related to the noble house of Ormonde." They were accompanied by Mrs. Margaret Kelly, a professed sister of the Ursuline Convent of Dieppe, none of the sisters of S. Jacques being willing to undertake so hazardous an enterprise.

They arrived in May, and on the 18th of September following took formal possession of their convent, and from that day may be dated the reintroduction of the conventual order into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.[200]

Thus in the wise designs of God, while the Encyclopedists and the secret societies of the Continent were maturing their plans of attack on the church and her institutions, when monasteries, convents, colleges, and hospitals from one end of Europe to the other, already feeling the premonitory symptoms of that monstrous earthquake of immorality and infidelity which was soon to be felt throughout Christendom, were shaking to their very foundations, in an obscure little city in the South of Ireland were planted the seeds of religion and Christian instruction which have since grown up and produced such marvellous fruits. The incident becomes even more interesting when we consider that the five ladies who commenced this beneficent work were all educated in that country and city, which ere long were to furnish the deadliest enemies of Catholicity.

It is not to be supposed that so daring an act as that of the intrepid Nano could pass unnoticed. Though the sisters studied the greatest seclusion, it was at one time proposed by the local authorities to enforce the laws against them; but better counsels prevailed, and the humble community grew rapidly in popularity and usefulness. A few months after its establishment, a select school, with twelve young ladies as pupils, was founded, and this number was quickly augmented by children from the more wealthy Catholic families of the adjoining counties. There are now five houses of this order in Ireland.

At first Miss Nagle lived in the convent; but her impatient soul, her burning love for the children of the lowly, was not yet satisfied; for though the good Ursulines devoted all their available time to the instruction of the poor, while perfecting in the higher branches of education those destined in turn to become teachers, she felt that another and a more comprehensive organization was necessary to combat so vast an array of popular error, ignorance, and destitution. A society that would devote itself, as she had so long done, individually, exclusively, and gratuitously to the service of the impoverished and untrained masses was what she desired, and what she felt called upon to form and direct. With that indomitable energy which I ever characterized her, though enfeebled in health, reduced in fortune, and prematurely old from incessant labor, at the age of forty-four she retired from the companionship of her friends and _protégés_, the Ursulines, to a house adjacent to the convent, purchased by herself, and, gathering around her some pious women, formed a society that was to be known as "Of the Presentation of Our Blessed Lady in the Temple." The objects of this association were: "Going through the city, looking after poor girls; inducing them to attend school, and instructing them in their religion; and, further, visiting, relieving, and consoling the sick poor in their own homes and in the public hospitals--duties analogous to those now discharged by the Sisters of Charity and Sisters of Mercy."[201] Being approved by the bishop of the diocese, the Rt. Rev. Dr. Moylan, it began its pious labors on Christmas day, A.D. 1777, by entertaining at dinner fifty poor persons, the foundress being the presiding genius, or rather angel, of the entertainment. She also established, in connection with the home, an asylum for aged females.

This was the origin of what is now known as the _Presentation Order_, and was the last and crowning glory of Nano Nagle's remarkable career. Though of exclusively Irish origin, and notwithstanding that the original design of its foundress has been somewhat changed, and its field of labor circumscribed and partly occupied by other orders or congregations, the institution founded by her with such limited means and materials has, with God's blessing, flourished with amazing rapidity, and has spread its influence, not only over the native land of the foundress, but to Great Britain, the lower provinces of North America, and even to India and Australia. In Ireland alone there are at least fifty convents of the order, with poor schools, industrial schools, and asylums for the aged attached.[202]

In 1791 the society was reorganized and founded into a congregation at the request of the Bishop of Cork. The brief of Pope Pius VI. granting the prayer, directed that the members should observe as near as possible the rules governing the Ursulines, taking, after proper novitiate, simple vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience. Sixteen years later the congregation was changed into an order by brief of Pius VII., under the title and invocation of the "Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary." The rules and constitutions governing the congregation and order were, at the request of His Holiness, drawn up by Dr. Moylan, approved by the archbishops and bishops of Ireland, and upon being forwarded to Rome, and upon proper examination, received the Papal sanction.

The six or seven years spent by Miss Nagle as head of the Society of the Presentation were perhaps the most useful of her life; for not only did she create and perfect a plan of practical instruction and discriminating charity which has since been of infinite benefit in promoting the cause of religion and industry in other parts of Ireland; not only did she inculcate in others who were to survive her, principles of order, charity, and self-denial, but she organized a system of relief and a scheme of instruction which were of infinite benefit to the deserving poor of Cork, and which were afterwards applied with equal advantage by other religious bodies in other cities and towns. None knew so well as she did to whom to give and whom to refuse, though it may be well imagined that her gentle heart, when it erred, leaned in favor of the latter.

Nor must we suppose that the early years of what might be called her missionary labors were devoted exclusively to the instruction of her little waifs. On the contrary, much of her time--all, in fact, that could be spared from her private devotions and her beloved schools--was devoted to the visitation of the sick and the relief of the starving; for starvation, be it remembered, was even then chronic in the South of Ireland. On her return from France, she at first mingled occasionally in society, as much to conceal, perhaps, her immature plans as in deference to the wishes of her friends; but gradually she withdrew from all association with those of her own station, and devoted her entire time to acts of practical charity. Even the most inclement winter weather could not deter her from her duty; and it is said that before daylight she might be noticed wending her way to the little North Cork chapel, to hear Mass as the commencement of a long day's labor, and that far into the night, in the unlighted streets of Cork, a female figure, closely enwrapped in a cloak and bearing a lantern, could be seen hurrying to the death-bed of some poor sufferer, regardless of rain or snow or the cutting night-blast. So familiar had this apparition become to the citizens, and so well her errands of mercy were known, that the vilest of both sexes passed her with respect, and she trod the lanes and alleys of the worst parts of the city with perfect safety. At the sight of that little lantern in the distance, the drunken brawler, as he reeled home, ceased his ribald song or stayed the half-uttered oath; and the ill-starred wanderer, the pariah of her sex, fled to some hiding-place, or came forth for a few words of gentle admonition, which fell like healing balm on her wounded, sinful soul; for Nano Nagle, in humble imitation of her Redeemer, had charity for all, even for the most degraded of mankind.

It is unnecessary to say that, in all her toils and struggles, Miss Nagle enjoyed the respect and esteem, and, when required, the assistance, of all the more wealthy and respectable of the citizens of Cork, Protestant as well as Catholic; but it was amid her children and in the hovels of the poor that she was best beloved, because best known. Where famine hollowed the cheek and glazed the eye, she was to be found, with her brave words of comfort and hope, and, better still, with her well-filled basket and open purse; where sickness and disease lurked, and the atmosphere of the miserable dwellings of the fever-stricken was laden with almost certain death, her place was at the bedside of the dying, consoling and solacing; now administering the cooling draught to the poor patient's burning lips; now, by prayer and spiritual instruction, endeavoring to smooth the path to a better world of the soul that was struggling to be free. No danger daunted her, no sight, however repulsive, stayed her persistent charity; and it is even said that the once brilliant and accomplished favorite of the Rue St. Germain did not hesitate, when she considered herself called upon to do so, to perform the most menial of domestic offices for her sick or aged pensioners.

Thirty years of such unremitting labor was more than a constitution of ordinary strength could well bear; and even Miss Nagle, buoyed up as she was by intense devotion to the poor, felt that the hand of death was upon her, and that she was about to receive the eternal reward of her virtues, her charity, and her zeal in the service of God. Early in 1784 her health completely broke down, and, thus timely warned, she prepared, with Christian sincerity and humility, to leave the scenes of her earthly labors, and pass through those portals which, for the just, open to an infinity of happiness. In the house of the society, and surrounded by its members, her spirit calmly took its upward flight on the 26th of April, 1784. Her last advice to her little community was: "Love one another as you have hitherto done."

Such, in brief, were the life and labors of one whose name even is seldom heard, and of whose heroic efforts in the cause of religion and education so little mention is made beyond the boundaries of the locality in which she wrought and which she sanctified. Judging her by the sacrifices she made, there may be found many even of our own day equally meritorious; but considering the age in which she worked, the dangers and difficulties which constantly beset her path, the invincible energy with which she surmounted all obstacles, and the widespread and beneficent character of the results of her thirty years' toil, we may assuredly place her among the most remarkable and most devoted of the daughters of the church.

FOOTNOTES:

[199] _Terra Incognita; or, The Convents of the United Kingdom._ By John Nicholas Murphy. London: 1873.

[200] There are now in England and in Wales alone two hundred and thirty-five convents, containing about three thousand nuns of various orders and congregations. Among these is the Presentation Convent in Manchester, to which is attached a female orphanage, a poor school attended by four hundred and seventy-five day and five hundred Sunday-school scholars.

[201] _Terra Incognita._

[202] The convents are those of the city of Cork, South, opened in 1777, in which is also an asylum for aged women; the city of Cork, North; Bandom, Doneraile, Youghal, Midleton, Fermoy, Michelstown, Limerick, Killarney, Tralee, Dingle, Milltown, Cahirciveen, Millstreet, Listowel, Castleisland, Thurles, attached to which is an industrial school; Cashel, with an orphanage and an industrial school; Fethard, Ballingary, Waterford, Dungarvan, Clonmel, Carrick-on-Suir; Lismore, George's Hill, Dublin; Roundtown, near Dublin, Maynooth, Clondalkin, Lucan, Kilkenny, Castlecomer, Mountcoin, Carlow, Maryborough, Kildare, Bagnalstown, Clane, Stradbally Portarlington, Mount Mellick, Wexford, Enniscorthy, Drogheda, Rahan, Mullingar, Granard, Tuam, Galway, and Banmore.

GRACE SEYMOUR'S MISSION.

In a small village of New England, elm-shaded and far from the resorts of travellers, there lived, a great many years ago, two people in easy circumstances, the owners of a lovely cottage--a father and his only daughter.

They were well descended, and fully showed it; moreover, the girl's mother had been an Englishwoman of high birth, the daughter of a great house which, in the past, had also been allied to that of the man she married. Edward Seymour had once been the pastor and the favorite of the village of Walcot, an upright, believing, uncompromising Calvinist, a kind of Cromwell with all the ambition turned heavenwards, and all the hardness tempered by a warm, generous nature. His wife also had been a vigorous believer in the same theology. Sprung from a family noted for its "Low Church" views in England, she had been strongly interested in the narrative of the American missionary, in the days when he, fresh from the university, and filled with vehement but practical enthusiasm, had gone to the "mother country" on a tour of alms-asking and receiving. From interest sprang attraction; then love, with its impulsive and whole-hearted logic, rushed in and pleaded the cause of the disciple with that of the religion, and suggested forcibly that a fortune thrown at the feet of the minister would eventually find its way to the feet of God. Sweet argument of the heart! though in this case an argument misapplied.

So it fell out that, despite warnings and shakings of heads and holding up of hands, Elizabeth Howard and her fortune (not a princely one, though) crossed the seas, and Edward Seymour presented a fair young foreign enthusiast to his congregation as his beloved and hard-won bride, under the fire of a rude battery of eyes belonging to the startled maidens whose charms had long since (in their own individual minds, at least) been destined for the minister's solace and support. She won her way into the hearts of all, this young English Calvinist, full of pure-hearted sincerity, gentle yet steadfast as "Priscilla, the Puritan maiden," courageous in self-denial that the poor might profit by her privations, a confidant the most unhappy ever found sympathetic, and the most guilty, indulgent. Her husband used to say of her that the Scriptures had never received a more fitting and perfect fulfilment, a more ideal accomplishment of true womanhood, as set forth in the many sentences where wise and holy women are depicted, than Elizabeth had proved herself to be.

In household matters she was no less at home than in those graver concerns of the parish and the soul-life of her husband's spiritual people. A good deal of the old earnestness regarding religious truth remained in the little favored community of Walcot, and serious, intelligent investigation was one of the many sturdy though reverential habits of thought that yet lingered with these world-forgotten villages. To Seymour himself the place was a paradise; the work was not such as to overtax his bodily strength to that degree that leaves but little energy for the intellectual requirements of his calling; neither was the stress upon his imagination so unwholesomely great as it is with too many of his successors, whose brain, in order to froth up according to their Sunday audience's expectations, must be in a moral ferment for the previous six days of the week. His wife, no frivolous gossip to whom tea and petty scandal are dear, no mere drudge from whom household cares have worn away the bloom of poetry and the freshness of early enthusiasm, was to him a living guide, a true helpmate, bearing his burdens and sharing his joys, a gospel-law written in sweetest, most natural human characters, and a most winning, womanly embodiment of the stern and glorious word "Excelsior."

Was it a reward for _her_ many virtues, or a trial for _his_ strong and faithful nature, that God should call her hence, and close the book abruptly which had been to her husband a living commentary on the divine law? Yet it happened so, but not at the outset of their purified love-career; for when Elizabeth Seymour came to die, she saw not only her husband near her, with faith subduing sorrow in his inspired eyes, but two children, one a girl of fifteen, the other a boy of four years, the only ones she had had, but upon whom she had lavished the holy mother-love that would have been intense still for each had her children numbered as many as the sons of Jacob.

Grace--she had been called so because it was through earnest prayer alone that her mother had survived her birth--was holding her father's hand, while his other one and her own were clasped in the dying woman's wasted fingers; and as the little one at her feet pulled unconsciously at her long dress, she felt her heart throb strangely, solemnly, when her mother said:

"Grace, I leave you my place; be a helpmate to your father, be a mother to little George. Bring him up a brave, Christian man, like _his_ father--like _my_ father, for whom he is named. Never let him do wrong, though the greatest worldly advantages might be the result. Remember that, my child; offer your life to the Lord sooner than see your brother offend him. God bless you, my precious Grace!"

The sick woman turned her longing eyes earnestly upon her husband, and he, half kneeling, sank on the floor, and supported her head on his shoulder. The burden was featherlight, but the strong man shook and swayed as in mortal weakness, and his voice was low and broken. Grace took the child's hand, and turned away. Those last moments were too sacred even for a daughter's eye to gaze upon; angels alone listened to the secret heart-speech of those two, whose lives had been as the two strands of one rope. They had been all in all to each other. The husband's love, if the greatest, had not been the less faithful; but the burden was now for him, the reward for her. Strange dispensation--and yet one that no lover would alter if he could--that the deepest love should be but an earnest of the deepest suffering; that the higher the heart goes in its sublime learning, the greater should be its privilege of agony. And yet this thorny path is a very Via Triumphalis, and those who tread it would not give one drop of the royal purple that dyes their weary feet for all the kingly mantles of rare and costly hue that grace the throne of the earthly monarch or strew the path of the earthly victor. Edward Seymour had a double right to this brotherhood of sublimest sorrow; for in his heart his love had grown so strong that not once, but many times, it had held unholy struggles with the higher, wider Love, to whom he had vowed himself from his childhood, and he had had to wrestle mightily with its strength, and had only overcome because, after all, the enemy he fought was human, and the weapons he used were of God's eternal fashioning. In Elizabeth's calmer, more even nature, love had never risen to that height; it had flowed a tranquil stream in the channel of duty, and, if deep, had never been turbulent. The trial had never come to her which had threatened shipwreck to her husband; she had never even known of it, for it had been the _one_ secret of his frank and pure life. The awful moment came at last; Grace and little George had come nearer again, and all three said afterwards that "Jesus" was the last sound that passed the dying woman's lips. For a few minutes a trembling stillness reigned; it was as if those left behind were listening to the feet of the bearer-angels that had come to carry their mate away. Could they but have listened at the same time to the wondrous revelation of lightning-like truth that flashed from those angels' solemn eyes, and transformed the blind belief of the living woman into the exultant faith of the heaven-illumined Catholic! Strange and awful thought! that those from whose mortal sight the scales have only just been taken by death should, on the instant, enter into such communion with the unknown, unsuspected truth, and be borne so far deeper in its blessed knowledge than those who spend lives of long and humble search on earth. Elizabeth Seymour knew now where truth had always been, and yet she must look with spirit-eyes on her loved ones bending over her beautiful, senseless body, all unconscious of that truth, all unknowing of their dark and dangerous pathway. Would her agonized prayers ever bring them to her new resting-place? Would God ever allow them to join her in the other world? And meanwhile, the minister, with his dear burden still in his clasped arms, lifted his head, and poured forth a prayer into which his very life was breathed, ending with a passionate flinging of his whole nature into the bosom of the all-knowing, all-loving Father--"Thy will be done, not mine!"

As he lifted the inanimate form gently on the pillows, closed the eyes, and pressed a kiss of all but despairing grief upon the white, warm forehead of the lost one, his daughter, letting the child go, seized his hand, and pressed it to her bosom, kissing it passionately, as if, from the very instant of her mother's departure, she was taking possession of the precious trust made over to her on the same spot only a few short moments before.

He, ever mindful of others before himself, felt his child's signal, and pressed her hand in return, leading her gently from the room, while the old nurse, his wife's attendant from her early childhood by the sunny brooks and fragrant meadows of Gloucestershire, performed the last necessary duties towards the loved remains.

Day after day the dead lay in a darkened room, with flower-wreaths framing her simple coffin, a queen in death as she had been in life, with a touching court about her of widows and orphans, of mourners comforted, of children and old men, of strong young laborers whose minds she had turned soul-wards, and whose reverence for her had been little less than that--so misconstrued by those very men--of Catholics for a patron saint. At night, when the stream of villagers would cease, the husband and the daughter watched hand-in-hand by the one they could not think of as really gone from them while her sleeping form lay so near their own resting-place. Now and then the minister would say a few words, half in soliloquy, half to his companion, and she, with her clear, pitying gray eyes upturned, would look at him in dumb sympathy, and a pang would shoot through his heart, as he read the mother's expression in the daughter's face. They renewed the flowers and rearranged the internal draperies of the coffin; they spoke in whispers, as one does in a sick-room, fearing to wake the happy dreamer whom the first sleep has just come to relieve from a load of burning pain and constant restlessness; little George was even allowed to bring his quiet toys, and crawl over the floor round the strange bed where he was told his mother was sleeping--at first sight of the coffin, he had asked gravely, Was that a cradle, and had a new baby come to play with him?--and, in a word, the death-veiled chamber seemed more like home than any other part of the cottage. Then came the last day, and the lid was to be fastened over the white-robed, white-crowned sleeper. Grace brought her father a bunch of heliotrope to lay in her mother's hands; it had been her own and her husband's favorite flower in life; and just over her heart, together with a heart-shaped paper, on which the name "Jesus" was illuminated in red and gold, was placed a triple tress of hair, and attached to it a scroll with the names of "Edward--Grace--George." Thus something living, something of her earthly treasures, went down with her to the tomb; and on the day of the great awakening, who shall say that those tokens will not make the wife and mother's heart throb with a deeper joy, as she rouses herself to meet those whose last pledge of undying love she will find thus laid on her breast?

Slowly the procession moved to the meeting-house, and slowly on to the churchyard; a neighboring minister performed the simple service, and the three bereaved ones walked immediately behind the coffin. The villagers were more awed by the face of the husband than by the black-palled coffin of the wife; and some one remarked, "It was more as if the minister had been walking between two angels to the judgment-seat of the Almighty than as if, a father and a widower, he was leading his orphan children to a new-made grave."

The silent cottage, buried under its wealth of flowering creepers, seemed very cold and desolate when the mourners returned; tea was laid in the cosey library, the blinds were drawn up, and the little birds twittered in the veranda; everything was ordinary and as usual again, the same it had been just one week ago, the day before _she_ died; but it seemed so different! Mr. Seymour threw himself in an arm-chair by the window, and took up a paper-knife mechanically; little George had been taken up-stairs, and the third chair at the tea-table was for the kind clergyman who had come to help his brother in his affliction.

Grace had taken off her bonnet and shawl, and was making tea in the tea-pot that, together with the high, old-fashioned English urn, had been one of her mother's most cherished wedding-gifts. Tears came to her eyes and blinded her, and her hand shook as she touched the tea-caddy of old English oak and wrought iron. Still, with all these homely mementos rendering her sad inauguration of new duties sadder still, she bravely thought of her trust, and struggled successfully to be calm, at least in outward seeming. Her father's friend now came in, and sat down in silence in a low chair opposite Mr. Seymour. Grace laid her hand on her father's arm:

"Will you have your tea here by the window, on the little, low table?" she said tremulously.

"No, my pet," he answered, taking her hand, and stroking it gently; "let us sit down together, as usual." And he led her to her new place at the head, as if he wished her to see that he would not shrink from the everyday details of sorrow that each triviality of life would be too certain to throw into relief.

They made no pretence of talking beyond the few necessary questions of even the smallest assemblage at tea; but when Mr. Ashmead, their guest and the minister of the neighboring parish, said that he thought he must leave on the morrow early, both his host and his young, grave hostess begged he would stay for a few more days, till next Sunday even, if he could.

And so the new life began--the life we meant to start with at the beginning of our story, but which has seemed so to need its introduction, to be so much more interesting through it, that we could not help putting in this long, explanatory prelude.

* * * * *

The long days of winter passed, and a year was gone since the day that saw Elizabeth Seymour's burial. Grace was growing tall and womanly, and had taken her mother's place with as great seriousness as success. She it was who taught her little brother all he was capable of learning at his age; she who helped the worn-out teacher in the school; she who copied out her father's sermons, and looked out his texts and quotations.

The father and daughter, now knit together by a doubly tender tie, and fully realizing all its happy solemnity, turned to the welcome occupations of study to fill the many vacant hours their duties allowed them. Mr. Seymour's library was extensive, and every month brought from Boston some valuable and interesting additions. Of course, theology figured mainly among the subjects treated of in these old and new books; but not alone the theology of his own sect, for he had the early fathers' magnificent works, those Thebaids of literature where the vastness of the seemingly endless desert is only a veil for the innumerable caves of deepest science, and hidden recesses filled with most beautiful dogmas. The councils, too, were not unrepresented on his shelves, though the earlier ones were to him the best known and the least obnoxious. Among them was a dusty little book, in ancient type, evidently a very hermit of a book, whose solitude had not been disturbed since, by some accident, it had once made its way there among the miscellaneous collection of a small library purchased nearly twenty years ago. We may have occasion to refer to it again.

Mr. Seymour, confident of the truth of his own doctrines, never hesitated to simulate doubts and ask questions, or propound religious problems for the further mental training of his daughter's inquiring disposition; but this habit of constant investigation at last produced in her a tumult of the brain which she found she no longer had the power to quell. Questions forced themselves upon her, doubts wrestled for mastery in her mind, all things began to take strange, hitherto undreamt-of shapes, and truths, elusory yet alluring, seemed to rise out of axioms which she thought she had long ago laid aside as proved and dangerous errors. She strove to hold on to her once blind and unreasoning acceptance of her father's teaching. She would have welcomed any superstition, could it only have promised her peace; but the restless spirit, once roused in her, hurried her remorselessly, till at last, in sheer despair, she turned to sweeping and systematic denial of everything she had been taught to look upon as truth.

At first she did not speak to her father about these strange experiences; she clung to the idea that it was physical excitement, a fever of the brain, which would subside and let her see her landmarks plainly once more. But the tempest grew wilder and more hopeless; questions rose up, and would not be crushed out of existence--faced her and mocked her, and would not be answered by the catechism formulas she strove to oppose to them; her life seemed resolving itself into an eternal, tormenting, unspoken, but ever suggested "why?" that rose and took the shape of a demon she could not lay nor yet would listen to. Importunate voices were all around her, chasms opened on every side; and while she taught her little brother, and wrote out her father's sermons, it seemed as if a stern and pitiless query sounded within her very heart, demanding why she abetted the enslaving of other minds to codes of which she herself felt the utter insufficiency. The keenest misery to her was that this mocking voice, whose every vibration pulled down a stone of her former religious temple, and sent it echoing in hollow tones of fiendish triumph down the recesses and depths of her torn heart--this voice never suggested one idea upon which she might have seized and made the corner-stone of a new organization of truth. The strange demon that beset her seemed, to her agonized mind, the spirit of heartless destruction only, not even of the most perishable and paltry substitution. Hollow, empty, heartless, seemed life to her; faith gone, or proved an illusion good only for those whose weak brain could not bear the spiritual loneliness of unbelief; the world a charnel-house, in which death-doomed fools quarrelled about precedence in another world, whose very existence was a myth of their own miserable creation; life a journey aimless and useless, and the faiths men carried through it only so many wind-threatened torches they bore for their own deception--was this all, was this the beginning and the end? Blindly her heart cried out, "Somewhere there must be a God, somewhere there must be happiness!" and the fiend within her brain made answer: "There is no God save the one the coward imagines; there is no happiness save that which the fool finds in ignorance."

One day, after many months of this life-wearing struggle, Grace spoke of her state to her father; and strange indeed was the shock to the earnest, clear-thinking minister. Grave and tender, he tried to handle the wounded child, but Grace was not to be soothed into faith; it was conviction she required. Firmly yet patiently she heard him, and answered:

"All that I have said to myself, but it is of no avail."

He tried to speak to her of her mother--of her belief, her unwavering hope in God, her sure knowledge of Jesus, her feeling of rock-bound security at the moment of her death; but to all this Grace answered: "I know it all, but I cannot feel it; tell me something else, something more."

Then the father, roused out of his half-hopeful state as to her difficulties, and out of his hitherto so sweet reliance upon her kindred strength, turned to the dogmatic aspect of his faith, and prayed fervently that the Lord would open his child's eyes once more, and draw her in out of the cold desert where her soul wandered, a shivering stranger. But, alas! those apparently clear-cut arguments, those knife-like dogmas, so trenchant, so uncompromising, those technicalities of crystallized religion, so satisfying to the old exiles and first settlers of New England, fell unheeded on the ear of Grace, who, had she believed them, would have been as competent a teacher of them as her own father, as far as her thorough knowledge of their slightest details went. Mr. Seymour was trying to do God's work; he was trying to _create_, to give life to a lifeless organization, to put a quivering human soul into a shapely but ice-cold form.

Grace had once said she did not want example nor personal experience, but clear, frigid demonstration. She was right as to the seeming want in her soul--the want of absolute, incontrovertible truth; she was wrong as to the fire from heaven, which was her real want--the purely personal gift of faith, direct from God, which only can descend and strike the waiting soul as a sacrifice, and enkindle it for ever, no more to be extinguished by error or by doubt.

Another year passed, and things were unchanged. No, not unchanged, for Mr. Seymour, in his great anxiety to bring his daughter back to the old belief in which he and his ever-remembered wife had been so carefully reared, had explored hitherto sealed books and commentaries in the vain hope that, since none of the old arguments touched her, some newly suggested ones might. He did not expect to find anything in these works which would strike _him_ as either proving or disproving his settled belief; still, he thought chance might throw into his hands some demonstration that would have the desired effect upon Grace. She seemed to be inclined to magnify beyond his utmost powers of toleration the absolute independence and free will of man; she proudly took her stand on human reason, insisting that if there were a creative God, and if it were really he who had given reason to man, it followed that this regal gift must be allowed full play in determining the object of faith. His Calvinism rebelled and retreated to its old entrenchments, denouncing reason as the natural enemy of faith, as an inventive principle ever actively evil and godless. But he once read in a work of one of the "great" reformers these strange and somewhat coarse words:

"The devil's sole occupation is to get the Romish priests to measure God's will in his works, with reason."

He was staggered. He searched his book-shelves for some work of Catholic theology. As he was passing his hand along the volumes, and running his eye down their titles, the little, dusty book we have mentioned fell down. He picked it up, and, looking at it carelessly, saw its name, _Catechism of the Council of Trent_. Curiosity at once made him forget the first motive of his expedition among the books, and he sat down to examine the newly-found volume. By and by he got interested, and from page to page his eyes ran eagerly, now sparkling with defiance, now widening in astonishment, and anon his brow contracting with intense earnestness, as clear dogmas revealed themselves from out the ancient text--dogmas directly opposite to his own, it is true, yet at every moment appealing to rational and unbiassed human nature.

Here man was represented as a grand monument of God's glory, a being worth redemption in the eyes of God, a creature endowed with intellectual gifts to lead him rationally towards faith and virtue, even as he was provided with feet to carry him to the clear mountain-spring, and with hands wherewith to till the yielding, fruitful soil. Here he beheld a humanity not degraded to brutishness by the fall, but redeemable through the very qualities God's grace had yet left to it; here he saw reconciled man's dignity and God's majesty; here, in a word, a religion which, claiming to be divine, was consequently not afraid to acknowledge and to guide the good tendencies whose very humanness put them beyond the pale of competition with herself. Mr. Seymour had always been taught to adhere to the Bible as the one infallible rock of salvation; he now saw the Bible merged into a system he had once called idolatrous, but could not at present stigmatize as such. He determined to read the Bible from the point of view of the Council of Trent, for pure intellectual curiosity's sake, he said to himself. Alone and almost hiding from his daughter's still hopeless but always eager inquiries, he began this study, with what result would be almost useless to mention. The Council of Trent had seemed plausible when studied by itself; but when referred to the book he had always called the rule of faith, this council was irrefutable. Could he have been mistaken all his lifetime? could it be that God had purposely left him in ignorance so long? Or was not his belief at least as good as the faith of the Council of Trent? But then came his clear philosophical training to the rescue; for, it said, how can contradictory axioms both be true? Hitherto he had unhesitatingly held the Catholic doctrines to be intrinsically, nay blasphemously untrue, and it followed that his own, their direct contradictories, must be right; but if, upon examination, the reverse was evidently the case, then his former opinions--for doctrines he could no longer call them--must be radically, irredeemably false. One day he spoke to Grace about it, and was surprised at the calm manner in which she received a communication whose mere rudiments had been such a shock to him. To her mind, this curious development of her father's researches was a really interesting study, quite apart from its religious bearing, and considered principally as a logical _passe-temps_. But to her father it was a heart-stirring reality, which he pursued with all the hitherto pent-up passion that his cold creed had forced to run in such narrow channels. Once he said to his child:

"Grace, I used to believe the Bible was the only rule of faith; but I never saw that the Bible presupposed a church, a heaven-ordained society to shelter it from the conflicting explanations and interpolations of men; presupposed, also, a willing obedience on the part of the faithful to believe it as it is written, not a desire to shrink from its plain teachings and explain away its doctrines. How could we, without a church to interpret it to us, be sure that we were not following some far-fetched human adaptation of its teaching, or pandering to some cowardly modification of its code of morals? No; the Bible presupposes the church, and, without it, would be more of a dead letter than the Hebrew is a dead language."

Grace was silent, and wondered. Her own feelings were as unsettled as ever, but she tried to live less in her own hopeless struggle than in the noble, fruitful, self-forgetting life that was dawning for her father. As his convictions grew deeper and took stronger root, his anxiety for his child waxed more and more terrible. Would the grace of God that had come to him through the yellow pages of an old book never touch her with its rod of power? Had reason no influence on her logical-seeming mind, had sentiment no power on her undoubtedly loving heart? She went about her self-imposed duties as usual, bringing consolation wherever she went, cheering others with words that were powerless to cheer her own heart, kind and considerate to the poor, amiable to all. Her father, smitten with dread as to her bodily as well as spiritual welfare, asked himself how he could expose her at this moment to the poverty that must result from the only step he knew he ought to take. To leave Walcot as a convert meant to throw himself and his children--Grace especially--into the most absolute penury. He could endure it, George would hardly feel it, but his daughter, brave and affectionate as she was, could her shattered heart bear up under so unexpected a necessity? So he cheated himself and hesitated yet; but the evil spirit was to be defeated soon. God could not allow his returning son and no longer blinded servant to wander long in human weakness outside the holy fold.

Grace was sitting at a reading-desk in her father's library one Sunday evening in June, the purple sunset streaming in and giving the lilacs a deeper hue, and the laburnums a more burnished shade, when a young man swung open the garden gate, and, with free and unfettered step, almost ran up to the house-door.

Seeing he was a stranger and a gentleman, Mr. Seymour opened the library window, and leaned out, saying in a courteous tone:

"I am Mr. Seymour, if you are looking for me. I'll let you in directly."

The young man paused with his hand on the door-knocker, and waited till his host came round.

"You must excuse my abruptness," he said pleasantly, as he handed his card to Mr. Seymour. "I am already presuming on a relationship you may choose to ignore."

"Why ignore it? The nephew of my dear wife is as welcome to my house as if he were my own son," answered Mr. Seymour, laying the card on the table. "Come," he continued, "let us be at home at once. I'll introduce you to my daughter, your cousin."

They went into the library together, and the father, turning to Grace, said:

"Here is a cousin from over the sea, child--George Charteris."

Grace had heard her mother talk of her younger sister's marriage to a Mr. Charteris years before she herself was married, so the name was familiar to her.

"I wish, my boy," said the host, "that God had spared your dear aunt to see you here; but he knows best. And you have come to stay with us a little before you go home again, I hope? Have you seen anything yet?"

"I only landed in Boston yesterday," answered the young man, "and have had hard work to get here so soon. I came on business, to tell the truth."

"Really!"

"You see, letters are very uncertain; and I just felt in the humor, so I came across myself. I have got important papers for you. My uncle, George Howard, died five weeks ago at his place in Gloucestershire, and, as he left no children, the estate goes to the next of kin--your son, George Seymour."

Grace and her father looked at each other in solemn, strange wonderment.

"My son!" he said slowly, "my son!"

"Yes, the son of the eldest sister. My mother was the younger sister, you know. And so I came over about it; I am supposed to be a lawyer, but the fact is, business is not overpowering with us young fellows, and, as I had enough money to spare, I thought I would sooner go myself than pay a man to make a mess of it. You and my father are appointed guardians during the minority of the heir."

"And they will expect him to go and live in England?" said the father thoughtfully.

"Of course; will there be any difficulty about that?"

Seymour did not reply; he only glanced at his daughter with an awed expression about his face. She was looking at him intently. Young Charteris noticed how ill she seemed.

The rest of the evening passed very sociably, and, having shown his young guest his room, Seymour returned in his dressing-gown and slippers to the library. Grace stole in softly, still dressed, and looking anxious. She drew a chair beside him, and, taking his hand in her own, said solemnly:

"Dear father, it was ordained we should leave this place."

"Was such _your_ idea also, my child?" her father asked.

"Of course; and if I have not spoken of it before, my dear father, it was only because I was waiting for _you_ to mention it first."

It seemed a reproach! Was God using this blind instrument to show him more forcibly where his duty lay?

"I know, father," continued Grace, "what that means for you in the circumstances you newly stand in. It means that you will not be allowed to be guardian to your son, that you will be denied access to him, that he will be brought up a Protestant before your eyes, and that practically you will be as homeless as the outcast you would have made yourself from this village and this church. But remember, whatever happens, Grace is always with you--will always be, whether she believes or not, happy or wretched, poor or rich, until it shall be your own pleasure to drive her from your side. Although thy God may not be my God, yet thy people shall be my people, and we will stand or fall together!"

"My brave child!" was all the father could answer through his tears.

"But, father dearest," she resumed in a quick, decided voice, "if George is to be brought up as you wish, the first thing to secure is his being rightly baptized; and you can do that this very next day. I shall be allowed to see George, and thus my mother's trust will be in my hands yet."

"O my girl! it is hard, you cannot tell how hard."

"I have lost what you have won, father. Think you the loss of faith a lesser evil than the changing of it?"

"Poor child! poor child! God grant you may see it one day."

"God grant I may," she answered frankly, "if it be the truth."

They spoke far into the night, and Seymour determined to announce from the pulpit next Sunday his unshaken conviction of the truth of the Catholic faith, and to take a final leave of his congregation. Young Charteris knew nothing of it. George was baptized the following morning. The week passed by, and the young English cousin was more than ever attracted by the strange, silent, preoccupied manner and the serious, anxious beauty of his girl-companion. A gay young man, with hardly any surface of religion about him, he yet had that deep observative faculty which renders some men's perceptions so acute and true in the field of religion. Half an unbeliever himself for fashion's sake, he was yet quick to detect how really far from unbelief the seemingly cold, doubting girl's heart was; and he smiled to himself as he shrewdly thought how both Puritanism and this present phase of feeling would be rudely shaken when brought face to face with the hot-pressed life of wealthy, bewildering London. But something whispered to him that neither father nor daughter would allow the brilliant world to stand between them and their convictions, whatever those might be. Meanwhile, Charteris romped with little George, who was wisely kept in ignorance as to his new honors, and the days sped fast towards the eventful Sunday which was to have so strange and stormy an ending.

The Saturday previous, Mr. Seymour sat at the window of his library, in his favorite arm-chair, his daughter leaning her head upon his knee, and holding one of his hands clasped to her bosom. For a long time there was a silence; then, like the evening breeze just born among the tree-tops, a faint whisper of conversation began to stir the quiet of the darkened room. The sun was gone down, and the crescent moon was rising in white mistiness behind the shrubbery.

"It was just such a night, Grace," said the minister, "that we sat here with Ashmead more than two years ago--the day we began our new life without your dear mother; and now we have turned another leaf already, and are on the threshold of another new life!"

"Yes, my own darling," said his child; "but it is not without me that you are going to begin it. In any case, I shall never leave you. And if we are parted from little George, why, what can we do but cling more and more to each other?"

"Have you thought, Grace, that it may be a life of toil that we are going to meet?" asked her father earnestly.

"Father dearest, would my mother have shrunk from entering it with you? And do you think _I_ love you less than she did?"

"My brave girl!" he answered, with a soft light coming into his dreamy eyes. Presently he said: "But, Grace, you will have little consolation, little support, for my principles are leading me; but you?"

"My love for you is _my_ guide!" she said fervently.

"Truly, my child, you are even as Ruth, who clung to Naomi for very love, and thereby reaped the reward of faith. God grant you may be led to the same end through my humble instrumentality."

There was a pause. The father, after a few moments' earnest thought, spoke again.

"Grace, darling," he said, and she started, as if collecting her runaway thoughts.

"Yes," she answered, with a loving look.

"Do not blame me for speaking abruptly, Grace," her father resumed; "for circumstances are such as allow us little spare time for forms of speech. Has it ever struck you that you will most likely marry? And have you noticed your cousin's manner towards you?"

At the first hint of marriage Grace had lifted her great, startled eyes to her father's face; then, on the second and more personal question, she looked quickly down, and a burning blush came like sunset hues over her usually pale cheeks. But she never hesitated nor wavered in her answer, for the blush was more that of surprise than consciousness.

"I never thought of my cousin in that way. Did _you_? And I have thought vaguely some day I might be a good man's wife--a minister's, most likely; but now these strange doubts have come to me, I could have no peace in any new relation in life. In conscience, my father, I could enter upon none."

"Well, child, I am glad so far. But if your cousin had many opportunities, depend upon it he would love you. I only say this to caution you. You know your own heart; you know I could approve such a marriage under certain circumstances, always provided you do not come to the happy truth I have reached. Now, you can act as your conscience and your reason impel you; but it is always better, I think, to work in the full daylight."

"I could not marry as I am now. Besides, I could not leave you."

"You might have to leave me."

"Father!" cried the girl, startled.

"Never mind," he said soothingly, but not offering to explain himself, and then went on: "Supposing a thing to be possible, still, in the case that you remained out of the church, would you let your cousin be your helpmate and your protector?"

"If you wish it, I will think of it, and question my own heart," said Grace; but the words were measured, and the tone was cold. Her father felt it.

"Grace, I did not wish to hurt you, child. I cannot tell you all I meant, for I hardly discern yet what is God's voice within me, and what the voice of my own earthly enthusiasm, perhaps even ambition. But, my own precious daughter, our hearts will always be one; and after God, there is no one on earth more dear to me than you are."

Grace laid her head on her father's knee again.

"So if your cousin Charteris should speak to you on the subject of marriage before your views of religion are changed, you will answer deliberately and calmly, will you not, having searched your innermost feelings well?" said the father.

"I will," said Grace firmly.

The next day dawned fair and bright; the very air had a holiday feel about its quiet, fresh-scented crispness; the birds sang softly in the vivid-painted trees, and it seemed as if nature had reserved a very jubilee of delights for the lovely summer afternoon. Crowds came soberly to church, the children glancing longingly at the tempting hedges, the young people now and then looking into each other's eyes the things they dared not put in words, and would have spoilt in the saying had they done so; to some, older and more spiritually-minded persons, came, on the fragrant breeze, faint suggestions of the fabled millennium, in which they believed with the grasping faith of disappointed souls; to all came, on the wings of this Sunday morning, impressions of peace, of happiness; perceptions of a life holier and higher than that of the present; vague stirrings of the soul, as if some mystery, both dread and beautiful, were coming out to meet them from the unusual radiance of this never-to-be-forgotten day.

Very solemn indeed did the day's brightness seem to the earnest minister; a new bridal, far different from the bridal eighteen years before in the very country for which he was now again bound--a bridal of the soul with sorrow and with sacrifice, a taking up of the crown of thorns and the cross of dereliction. He would walk into the old meeting-house, a hero among his people; he would leave it, an outcast and a leper among his brethren. He would meet his flock a revered pastor, an acknowledged guide; he would go out of that pulpit, his no longer, an exile, a suspected impostor, an accursed and condemned man. And not there only was the sting; beyond and far above it was the human sense of deep humiliation at having to unsay his teaching, to renounce the doctrines he had taught for twenty years, to warn his people of the very faith he had believed in from his cradle. It is no slight thing for a man, learned and looked up to, an eager and practical theologian, to stand before a congregation of intelligent, sharp-witted hearers, and say, "I was mistaken!" For when you feel that every word you speak is changed, as it falls on their ears, into a barbed weapon against yourself, and will be handled by remorseless and unsympathizing fellow-men until twisted into meanings you never dreamed of and deceptions you would scorn, then it is that the painful, human side of the great and heroic sacrifice is revealed, and that our fleshly weakness has to turn perforce in helpless and blind reliance upon God.

Solemn also, and far sadder, seemed the glorious beauty of that Sunday morning to Grace Seymour by her open window, through which came the scent of lilacs and blossoming horse-chestnuts; her books ranged in melancholy silence on the shelf above the mantel, the old family Bible lying solitary and unopened on a little table by itself, an air of desolateness hanging over the simple, innocent-looking room, with its chintz hangings and two or three old prints and faded pictures. Some were of sacred subjects, and these, unless this were the spectator's fancy, seemed more forlorn than any others; Grace herself thought so sometimes, as she would give a pathetic survey to the room that had known no change since her childhood, save when the great change of death had wafted into it some of the old mementos of her English mother's youth.

On the eve of this last change, that was almost another death, the young girl sat with clasped hands on the wide window-sill, and gazed with sad yet steadfast eyes on the beauty of the breaking day. To her it was indeed a setting forth on a journey without scrip or staff, without guide or compass. In her love for her father, she gloried in his grand, manly act, though it drove her forth into the desert world; but though she rejoiced at his stern following of principle, as at a deed of heroism in itself, yet what comfort was there for her in the dreary waste of an untried world? To set out on the road to heaven, leaving the paths of men, was one thing; but to leave the known for the unknown, the real life of human sympathy for a dark, companionless one among things that were only shadows and mocking figures of mist--what was that? And would human love carry her through? Could she follow, by the glow-worm light of an earthly though hallowed feeling, the same path in which a fiery pillar preceded her father's soul, and angels guided his footsteps? But come what might, she would try; so she had resolved from the beginning. Besides, was it not she who had, according to the instinct of her true nature, decided for her father the step his own conscience had counselled, but from which his human love still weakly recoiled? And, therefore, was she not bound to share his fortunes, even though love had not impelled her to do so? She could not pray that this day's work might end in good, she could not pray for strength or guidance; she could only helplessly gaze upon the familiar home-scene she had watched so often from that window--the spread of orchard and garden and meadow-land beyond, the golden lights flickering among the shrubs, and playing with the soft, changing shadows--all the beauty that had been her soul's book for years, and was now the only book she could still read and love as of old. A sort of dumb prayer was that wistful gaze, the hopeless, half-conscious murmur of paralyzed lips striving to form once more sounds that long ago, they remember, used to mean _something_ to the understanding. Little George at this moment ran across the lawn after a yellow butterfly, and looked up fearfully at the library-window, as if expecting to be reproved for such unwonted exercise on the sacred day.

Grace started and looked at her watch. It was time; the bells had been ringing some minutes, and the hour was drawing nigh. She stole down to her father's side, very solemn and quiet, and took his hand. He turned and clasped her in his arms.

"God will bless you yet, my little one," he said, with an earnest look into her brave eyes, "for all you are to me."

Hand-in-hand they walked the short distance between their cottage and the meeting-house. The great trees stood protectingly round the little church, shading it like a temple, with broad shadows flung like curtains before its doors, as if to supplement the bareness in which human hands had left it. The people were crowding in; some stepped aside as the minister passed, making room for him; others nodded to him, and were startled at the unwonted look in his far-searching eyes. Grace, on the contrary, seemed almost defiant, as if she thought of nothing save the storm which one short hour would bring about her darling's head. The congregation seated themselves with that undertone of quiet rustling peculiar to country audiences. Grace sat directly facing her father; but she had turned herself so that her features were visible to those who sat in the nearest pews behind. Edward Seymour slowly came up the pulpit stairs, and stood before his people. One long, sweeping glance he gave them, then his eyes went upward, and a light came into them, as of something more than human.

The crowd was thrilled, and men and women gazed at each other inquiringly.

Then he began: "My friends, I have come to say farewell to you. This is no sermon, but an explanation which is due to you. I am not going to leave you for the city, nor for another flock, nor for the retirement of a college-life. It is not a man who has called me, it is not the world or my own interests that have bidden me leave you; it is God.

"Truly, 'God's ways are not our ways, nor his thoughts our thoughts.' If you will bear with me, I will show you how this has been borne in upon me, and will give you, what you have a right to hear, the brief history of the change which is calling me away from you."

The interest of his hearers was acutely, if not painfully, awakened; every one waited breathlessly for the novel experiences of one who had always seemed so strong in the belief he taught. Some thought he had turned to the Methodist views, some suspected him of Episcopalian leanings; of the truth, not one had the slightest inkling, for, to their minds, such a change was more irrational than suicide, and more awful a judgment than insanity.

Step by step, with clear, sharp-cutting words, he developed the doubts and fears of his soul; he dissected his life for the last year, and showered Bible texts upon his hearers in his rapid way that would have been impassioned had he let it be; and when, one after the other, he had sapped all the axioms his former teaching had rested on, and had carried the mind of his audience, against its will, out of the sphere of certainty, he then paused a moment, and said in a more gentle voice than he had used in his dogmatic course:

"And now, my friends, what remains to be said? This: to confess my mistake before you all, to humble myself at the feet of God, whom I have so long misunderstood and mistaught, and to ask your forgiveness for having given you, in my ignorance, stones when you asked for bread, serpents when you cried for food. You know the church which alone teaches all that God has now shown me to be true; you know that it is a church flouted and condemned, persecuted and poor--none other than the Holy Roman Catholic Church (here the stir was like an electric shock among the rapt audience, and Grace half rose up in her seat, and looked defiance from her flashing eyes upon her nearest neighbors), none other than was founded in the poverty of Bethlehem, the ignominy of Calvary, the secrecy of the catacombs.

"I have but few words left to say to you, my friends. We have walked together for many years, seeking God. I knew not that I had not found him; _now_ I know that I walked in darkness and in the shadow of death. I pray that each of you, in God's appointed time, may be led, like me, to find him. I thank him that this grace should come with sorrow, exile, and poverty in its train. I take up the cross willingly, and leave home and country, and a beloved grave, and a people to whom my soul was knit, to follow humbly where God shall lead me. And now, once again farewell, and may God bless you, every one, and reward you for all that your friendship and your fidelity have ever done for him who was once your pastor."

With a grave and simple salutation, he went down the pulpit stairs, passed out of the church, his daughter eagerly joining him and linking her arm in his. Her English cousin, who had come in late to the service, hastened after them, and frankly expressed his astonishment at the sudden turn of affairs. The people, who streamed out after them in hurried groups, as if anxious to get into the air, that they might talk over this extraordinary event, eyed them askance as they walked home; the deacons spoke together in shocked whispers, and the older men and women quoted texts about wolves in sheeps' clothing. Some of the younger church members were scared and disturbed more by the uncompromising arguments than by the tangible result; while others, the reckless and the more "unregenerate," boldly said they admired the minister's "pluck."

George Charteris dwelt very seriously on the exclusion from the guardianship of his son which this course of Mr. Seymour's would inevitably entail; but the father only answered sadly: "The Lord did not speak to me of such things; those affairs are in his hands, and his secrets are not for us to inquire into. So far as I saw my way clear, I have answered the call of God."

Several friends called in the evening to speak to the minister about the incredible announcement he had made that morning; they found him the same as ever, patient, kind, and courteous, and his young daughter more beautiful and more attractive than before; for the determined way in which she supported her father's conduct gave her a touch of the heroine.

Late that night the two visited the moonlit grave near the little church. Great elm-shadows veiled it, and the night-wind rustled the violet and primrose leaves that bordered it all round. In the summer a cross of heliotrope grew at its head, but as yet it had been too cold to put the plants out. In his new-found faith, the husband could now kneel and pray, and speak to the angel guardian of his lost wife, and send messages to the soul that knew all he had so lately learnt, and knew it so much better than he. But the great thing of which he spoke was the future of his children and hers, praying that they too, especially Grace, should be brought to the same knowledge and saved through the same faith. Grace stood like a statue, her hands clasped and resting on her father's shoulder, her slight form bending forward as he knelt. When he rose, she pressed his arm and drew him towards her, looking up into his tear-veiled eyes with looks of hungry love. It was a rare and a piteous sight to see the strong man weep, to see the wave-like emotion of this solemn hour bow the head of the deep thinker, the calm and kingly scholar. It made him more sacred in her sight, and kindled her rapturous feelings to that degree that she could gladly have died, that he might be spared one pang more in his future path of thorns.

He hardly suspected _all_ that he was to his child; for great though his love was, broad, and deep, and still, it was silent as the great ocean that sleeps round the islands of coral, beneath the changeless radiance of southern constellations. But few outward signs passed between father and daughter, for his grand, noble nature was self-contained and grave; and for that very reason Grace honored him in her heart, calling him to herself a hero among men. Was it strange that, by his side, other men seemed dwarfed, that their virtues seemed shallow, and their very vices more contemptible than horrible? Was it strange that his intellect, so far-reaching, and his practical business abilities, so clear and straight-forward, should make other men seem only half men, with one side of their nature alone monstrously developed, till it grew to overbalance the other, and make the whole into a grotesque travesty of humanity, a moral satyr, more beast than man, and more fool than either?

I do not say that such ungracious thoughts came to her when she noticed her cousin, George Charteris; but something hollow and unreal suggested itself to her, as she listened to his brilliant, frivolous talk or his cynical, off-hand observations. She thought, if that is what modern fashion breeds in men, the world of to-day is no better than a smelting-furnace, obliterating all but the changing current of mingled ore and dross constantly running with aimless speed through its many channels. She looked forward to any contact with it as a trial, and only stayed herself with the idea that everything noble and pure and dignified was embodied in her father's life, in which she would always be wrapped up. Yet she had promised to think of marriage!

The day following this eventful Sunday the Seymour family left Walcot. Their cottage, which was their own property, was to be let for a year, as their affairs were still unsettled and their plans quite undecided. From that day Edward Seymour again felt that a new journey had begun for him; and where his soul would be landed he knew not, nor cared to know, so God was before him and his daughter at his side.

TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.

CUI BONO?

Pale star, if star thou be, that art So fain to shine, though far apart From all thy stately peers; Thou whom the eye can scarce discern-- Oh! who hath set thee there to burn Among the spheres?

Thou com'st too late: the firmament Is full, and thou wast never meant For yonder gorgeous steep; The night hath counted all her pearls, And, pillow'd on her casket, furls Her wings in sleep.

The night needs not thy tardy ray; Thou canst not usher in the day, Nor make the twilight fair; What sailor turns to thee at sea? What mourner doth look up to thee In his despair?

Mournful or glad, no eye shall chance To light on thee; no curious glance Thy motions shall discern; No lonely pilgrim pause to catch Thy parting ray, nor lover watch For thy return.

Oh! leave the world that loves thee not-- For who shall mark the vacant spot? Oh! drop into the cloud That waits to take thee out of sight, Beyond the glare of yonder bright And chilly crowd!

"I may not, if I would, return Into the dark, or cease to burn My spark of light divine: For he that in my lamp distils The sacred oil, he surely wills That I should shine.

"I fret not at the blaze of spheres, The distant splendor that endears The night to men; but strive-- Finding strange bliss in perfect calm-- To keep with these few drops of balm My flame alive.

"It may be that some vagrant world, Or aimless atom, toss'd and whirl'd Through windy tracts of space, Perceives by me the Hand that tends It ever, and the goal that ends Its tedious race.

"I know not: me this only care Concerns, that I for ever bear My silver lamp on high, Nor lift to God a laggard flame, Because on earth I cannot claim A partial eye."

THE JANSENIST SCHISM IN HOLLAND.

JANSENISM IN THE CHURCH OF UTRECHT.

FROM LES ETUDES RELIGIEUSES. BY C. VAN AKEN.

I.

I shall not undertake to write the history of Netherland Jansenism. I have a more special purpose in view; it is to demonstrate the actual existence of that heresy in the so-called Church of Utrecht. To this end, I shall, after showing what the principles of Jansenism are, make it clear that the errors of Baius, as developed, or, so to say, amended, by Jansenius, are reproduced by Quesnel, and are to be found in the false Synod of Pistoia. This assembly, held in 1786, under the authority of Leopold II., Grand Duke of Tuscany, and presided over by Scipio Ricci, Bishop of Pistoia and Prato, merits our attention; for the principal documents I shall make use of in this paper concern the official adhesion given by the schismatical clergy of Holland to the synod.[203] As to the events which are related and admitted by all historians, I shall only refer to them in order to point out their significance, or to dissipate the obscurity in which the recent promoters of the schism have sought to envelope facts.

"Jansenius had been a great reader of S. Augustine; but he brought to the study of this author far more of zeal than of prudence or real knowledge. In some passages he renders the thoughts of the Doctor of Grace well enough; almost everywhere else, and even in the most important points, he is grossly in error. An extensive reader he was not; one author alone absorbed his whole life, and the more he dwelt upon his author, the less he understood him. His posthumous work is bad, impious, and truly heretical. Calvin, as Jansenius presents him, is no longer Calvin."

Thus writes F. Denis Petau (author of _Dogmes Théologiques_ and _Doctrine des Temps_) to F. Bollandus, August 9, 1641, shortly after the publication of the celebrated _Augustinus_. The Calvinists of Holland have taken the same view as F. Petau; for them Jansenius is an ally, a friend, whose opinions are less opposed to theirs in substance than in form. Did not the Bishop of Ypres candidly acknowledge that he "almost entirely" approved the Calvinist Synod of Dordrecht? The Abbé of Saint-Cyran, another patriarch of Jansenism, remarked: "Calvin thought justly, but expressed himself ill--_bene sensit, male locutus est_." However, there are important differences between the two heresies; but it would take us too much out of our way to indicate them in detail. These words of the false Synod of Pistoia perfectly express the germinal idea of Jansenism: "In these latter days a general obscurity prevails in regard to the most important truths of religion.... It is necessary, therefore, to remount to the pure source of the principles which have been obscured by novelties, in order to establish a uniformity of doctrine which shall be a subject of edification for the faithful, and gratify the wishes of our most religious prince.... To establish this unity of principles, the enlightened sovereign suggests to the bishops to take for their rule the doctrine of S. Augustine against the Pelagians and the semi-Pelagians, who, through their system, have destroyed the spirit of the Christian religion, and preached a new gospel."[204] It must needs follow from this that the authority of the church is not an efficacious remedy against error, since it was possible for the general belief of the faithful to be obscured for centuries in regard to the most important truths.

Is this in any wise different from what the reformers of the XVIth century pretended? Did not Calvin, especially, have always in his mouth the name of the great Bishop of Hippo? Jansenius develops the same thought in his preliminary work, _De Ratione et Auctoritate_.[205] Baius had prepared the way for him.[206] For the authority of the teaching church, always youthful and full of life, as S. Irenæus says, the Jansenists substituted S. Augustine, who was no longer at hand to protest against the abuse that had been made of his words--words often rugged and obscure. So much for the general ground; let us now enter into detail.

Following Baius, Jansenius sets out with this fundamental axiom, which is, as it were, the culminating point whence one takes in his whole system: The complete man is not a compound of body and soul only (as the Catholic doctrine declares, in consonance with sound philosophy); but a third principle, the Holy Ghost, the sole source of all wisdom, of all charity, is necessary, in order to complete the rational being, and to render him worthy of his Creator and of his natural destiny.[207] Without this grace--for so Jansenius considered it--body and soul constitute only a sensual and animal being, defenceless against all evil desires, and incapable of rising to the knowledge and love of good. The immediate consequence of these principles is that God could not create man without bestowing upon him the Holy Ghost and all the other gifts which faith manifests to us in our first parents.[208]

These were, no doubt, so many graces, says Jansenius; but these graces were none the less due to human nature, which without them would have been incomplete.[209]

"The first man was created in a state of _perfect_ innocence, and could not come forth otherwise from the hand of God. The idea of any other state whatever is a chimera which would degrade humanity and openly conflict with the perfections of a sovereign Providence. Faith teaches us that Adam was established in justice and charity. He therefore loved his Creator, and had within himself no perverse inclination."[210] Thus speak the sectaries of Pistoia, faithful interpreters of Jansenist thought. The church has condemned this conclusion; she teaches us that God could have created man as he is born at present, without sin, to be sure, but still without that _perfect_ innocence which consists in the supernatural and purely gratuitous gifts of charity and integrity.[211]

However, sin entered into the world, and at one blow man lost all the gifts of the Holy Ghost: he had fallen into that abnormal state of incompleteness in which God could not have established him in the beginning. "He hastened from darkness to darkness, from error to error, from sin to sin: powerless to deliver himself from that love which held him attached to himself."[212] But "the infected root must (by a physical necessity, as Jansenius says)[213] produce defective and corrupt fruit. He transmits to his children, therefore, in the order of generation, ignorance of good and a vicious inclination to evil."[214] This is original sin, according to the Jansenists.

The Catholic Church, in whose eyes sin is above all a moral disorder, teaches that ignorance and concupiscence are not sins, but the consequence of the first transgression, and the occasion to man in his fallen state of voluntarily committing new sins.

Jansenius exaggerates from the first the extent of the wound which ignorance caused in us. The fallen man, according to him, is no longer possessed of organs for perceiving the truths which concern the higher interests of the soul; God, the future life, natural right, are so many closed books, which revelation alone can open for us.[215] This is a sort of religious scepticism, often revived since, and always rejected by sound theology. It is the real source also, we may be sure, of the peculiar mysticism which has flourished among the Jansenists from the beginning. By a natural consequence, Jansenius treats reason and science as enemies of faith; he would have them banished afar from theology. It is not intelligence, says he, but memory, and, above all, the heart, which penetrates revelation.[216] Is this the same as to say that the adversaries of the _Augustinus_ have opened the door to modern rationalism, as Sainte-Beuve insinuates? By no means. Between the two errors lies the truth as proclaimed by the Scriptures and the fathers, maintained by the sovereign pontiffs, and definitely decided in the Holy Council of the Vatican.[217]

Ignorance, the fruit of sin, is itself imputed as sin, say the Jansenists; in other words, we are guilty before God of the faults into which ignorance causes us to fall unwittingly and in spite of ourselves.[218] This is also the teaching of Scipio Ricci's false synod. Pelagius, we are told by it, "could not understand why the ignorance of good which is born with us, which is _necessarily_ transmitted to us in the order of generation, and by which man falls into error without wishing to, and in spite of himself--_invitus ac nolens_--ought not to excuse sin."[219]

Pelagius, who denied the fact of the original fall, would not admit that ignorance, the consequence of the fall, was an evil or a weakness, especially in view of man's supernatural end; but faith, equally with good sense, forbids our maintaining that one can be guilty without willing to be so--_invitus ac nolens_.

The second wound of man in his fallen state is denominated concupiscence. In the system of Jansenius "it is a movement of the soul which leads to the enjoyment of self and of other creatures for some other end than God. It is, therefore, an affection of the soul contrary to order, and _bad in itself_. Hence it is that man without grace (that is, deprived of grace), and under the slavery of sin, since cupidity reigns in his heart, whatever effort he may make to withdraw himself from its influence, refers everything to himself, and by the general influence of the love which dominates him, _spoils and corrupts all his actions_."[220] This error of Jansenius has been stigmatized as it deserves in the bulls directed against Baius and Quesnel.[221] These writers present the error under forms the most various; for example, "All that man does without grace is sin. All the works of infidels are sins. The sinner, without grace, is free only for evil."

According to Catholic doctrine, man by his fall has become the slave of sin, and has from himself only sin and falsehood, in the sense that of himself he is for ever incapable of justifying himself from the stain of original sin and from the sins he has voluntarily committed; he can do nothing, absolutely nothing, towards his supernatural destiny; his weakness is so great that, without assistance from on high, he cannot but fall frequently and grievously, especially when assailed by powerful temptations. In these truths there are motives enough for humbling our pride, without needing to go so far as the Jansenists, and say that the necessity of our sinning is an absolute and continual necessity. This theory would be less repulsive if, with the fathers, the abundance of grace were also proclaimed. Christ's redemption, the latter tell us, embraces all time; but his grace is more palpable to us in these days, and more generally diffused. Divine assistance is always at hand, say they unanimously, at the moment it is wanted; so that man can at least call upon God for help, and thus obtain the strength of which he stands in need. Jansenius, on the contrary, pitilessly restrains the measure of liberating grace. Let us hear what the Synod of Pistoia has to say on this subject:

"The Lord willed that, before this plenitude of time [the time of our Saviour's appearance upon earth], mankind should pass through different states. It was his will that man, _abandoned to his own lights_, should learn to distrust his _blind reason_, and that his wanderings should thus lead him to desire the assistance of a superior light. This was the _state of nature_ in which man knew not sin, and suffered himself to be drawn by concupiscence without being aware of it."[222] Thus, then, there was a long series of centuries in which mankind in general were abandoned to ignorance and cupidity, and when, without knowing it, without wishing it, they fell from sin to sin. Is this not frightful? But what follows is still more cruel: "God then gave him a law which brought him to a knowledge of sin. But man, being POWERLESS to observe it, became a prevaricator under the law. Sin became even more widespread, either because the law forbidding it heightened the desire for it, or because prevarication--that is, contempt of the law--was added to its violation.... The law, therefore, was given by God, ... not to heal the wounds of mankind, but to acquaint him with the malady and with the necessity of a remedy."[223] Thus viewed, the law of Sinai is an injustice and a subject of derision.

Finally, "The Son of God descended from the bosom of his Father and brought salvation."[224] Now, at least, grace, like a current of life, will pass into the veins of languishing humanity! Alas! no; the further we advance the more disheartening becomes the doctrine of Jansenius. He acknowledges at the outset that progress in the individual follows the same course as in the species. I will explain his thought: many men, even under the Christian law, have not the gift of faith--they are in the _state of nature_; others are enlightened by the rays of divine revelation or by the interior light of grace--they are in a state analogous to that of men under the law. "While earthly love reigns in the heart, the light of grace, if it be alone, produces the same effect as the law.... It is necessary, therefore, that the Lord should create in the heart a holy love, that he should inspire it with a holy delectation, contrary to the love which reigns there. _This holy love, this holy delectation, is, properly speaking, the grace of Jesus Christ_; it is the grace of the New Testament.... Dominant love is a holy passion which operates in man, in regard to God, the same effects which dominant cupidity operates therein in regard to the things of earth."[225] Millions of men are thus excluded from all participation in redeeming grace. Jansenius says distinctly that the graces indispensable to salvation are not accorded at all times except to the small number of the elect; all others receive nothing, or only temporary and insufficient helps, which serve but to render them more guilty. In this sense, the Jansenists refuse to admit that Christ died for the eternal salvation of all men; the predestined alone were comprehended in the great contract by which Jesus, in dying, offered his life, and the Eternal Father accepted his stainless oblation as the price of justifying grace. It is in this sense, also, that the fifth proposition of Jansenius has been condemned as heretical: "It is a semi-Pelagian error to say that Christ died or shed his blood for all men in general."[226]

Hence arose that horrible Jansenist doctrine of predestination, borrowed from Calvin, in which God is made to appear pitiless even in his mercies, the reprobate as a victim less guilty than unfortunate, and the elect one as a spoiled child who ought to blush at his immortal crown.[227]

I shall return to this latter point hereafter. Meanwhile, let us point out another consequence of the doctrine here laid down. If it be true that man is often abandoned by grace, and if, in consequence of his impotence, he necessarily violates the divine commands, must we, then, believe that God orders what is impossible? No doubt of it, reply the Jansenists; Pelagius first dared to deny this consequence--that the just themselves do often lack necessary grace.[228] This monstrous error is expressed in the first proposition of Jansenius, as follows: "Some of God's commandments are impossible to the just in the state of their present strength, whatever will they may have, and whatever efforts they may make; and the grace through which these commandments would become possible to them is wanting."[229] Catholics, with the Council of Trent (session vi. chap. xi.), say quite the contrary. It is a doctrine universally held in the church, and borne out by the unanimous consent of the fathers, that no one is deprived of the graces indispensable to salvation, except through his personal fault. Theologians also, for the most part, teach, with reason, that God confers the grace of conversion on sinners the most obstinate and hardened.

How is it that Jansenius was unable to perceive one of the clearest points of Christian revelation--the infinite mercy of God towards the sinner? It was the inevitable consequence of his doctrine concerning liberty.[230] In his eyes, the equilibrium of the human will has been irreparably lost; man naturally follows the attraction which dominates him.

Without grace, our poor will tends irresistibly to the depths of sin; an evil cupidity dominates it. But let the delectation of divine love take possession of this entirely passive and powerless heart, and it will be drawn to good by an equal necessity. Now, we see but too well that this holy passion which operates in man, in regard to God, the same effects which the dominant cupidity operates in regard to the things of earth, is the privilege of but a small number. One only explanation is possible--all the rest are without grace. Be it observed that, according to the Jansenists, every grace is charity, irresistible, victorious delectation. The _Augustinus_, it is true, speaks of certain _little_ graces which do not at once carry the soul to the heights of perfection. Such as they are, they are none the less efficacious; if their power is not greater, it is because God has not given them more force than they in effect possess. The grace called by the theologians _sufficient_ is held in aversion by the Jansenists; it is a grace which has for them the demerit of not being efficacious.[231] The three following propositions from Jansenius on liberty and grace have been pronounced heretical:

"In order to merit or demerit in the state of fallen nature, it is not necessary that man should have a liberty opposed to necessity (as to willing); it suffices that he should have a liberty opposed to constraint."[232] "In the state of fallen nature, we never resist interior grace."[233] "The semi-Pelagians admitted the necessity of an interior and preventing grace for all actions, even for the beginning of faith; they were heretics in so far as they assumed that grace to be such that the human will could resist it or obey it."[234]

Quesnel renewed every one of these errors,[235] and the Synod of Pistoia gives Quesnel's book an unreserved approbation.[236] Ricci and his adherents tell us, with Jansenius, that the equilibrium of the human will is lost, and that "this idea of equilibrium is a rock against which the enemies of grace" (that is, Catholic theologians) "have dashed themselves." They themselves ignore every grace from Jesus Christ, except that which _creates_ in us a holy love, a holy delectation.[237]

The efficacy of grace, say they, "does not depend on our will, but produces it by changing us from not willing to willing, _through its all-powerful force_.... Far from waiting our consent, grace creates it in us."[238] In the synod's whole body of doctrine, by means of which it aims to bring back the faith to its primitive purity, we find not a word in contradiction of the heretical system of Jansenius; it everywhere follows, on the contrary, the spirit of that system, but carefully avoids reproducing literally any one of the famous five propositions. But we do find in the acts of the synod that celebrated conclusion which concentrates in itself the poison of the Jansenist heresy in its full force: "There are in man two loves, which are, as it were, the two roots of _all_ our actions--cupidity and charity; the first is the bad tree, which can produce only bad fruit, and the second the good tree, which alone produces good works. Where cupidity dominates, charity reigns not; and where charity dominates, cupidity reigns not."[239] As if there were not, remarks Pius VI., lying between culpable love and divine charity, which conducts us to the kingdom of heaven, a legitimate human love![240]

When our common humanity is thus debased and disparaged, a distance is necessarily placed between it and its sole mediator, Jesus Christ, himself man also, but evidently incapable of taking upon himself a nature as incomplete as ours. Hence, the disciples of Jansenius have generally manifested an antipathy to devotions which bring us into intimate relations with the sacred humanity of our Saviour. The tender and Christian devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is especially intolerable to them.[241] As to the Blessed Virgin Mary, her title of Mother of God, so solemnly defined in the Council of Ephesus against Nestorius, hardly finds favor among them. To the Jansenists, Mary is certainly not the Immaculate One who crushes the head of the infernal serpent. They represent her the most frequently as the Virgin depicted by Michael Angelo, trembling and almost hiding before the glance of Christ the judge, on the last day.[242] _Her greatness is terrible_, said the Abbé de Saint-Cyran to Mère Angélique. Could it be otherwise? Could Jansenist fatalism give more room for confidence than for intercession?

May I be permitted to add a last word to this already long analysis? It is said that Jansenism has had the merit of recalling Catholics to a respect for the sacraments.[243] Is this said seriously? Luther had made all spiritual life centre in faith; the sacraments were thus nothing but ceremonies proper to excite this principal sentiment. In place of faith, Baius and Jansenius have substituted charity. Redeeming grace, the divine adoption, justice, holiness, all these they identify with love, as Luther identified them with faith. Now, I ask, what is it that renders the sacraments so worthy of veneration? Christian tradition replies with one accord: it is their efficacy; the sacraments are truly the causes and the instruments of grace and charity; they are, as it were, vases filled with redeeming blood. But the Jansenists do not so regard them. According to them, the sacraments do not confer sanctity; they suppose it.[244] Before baptism, and before penance, the adult must have _dominant_ charity in his heart; without this, his repentance, and even his prayers, would be but movements of the dominant cupidity, and, consequently, new sins. It may be thought that I exaggerate; I subjoin, therefore, passages from the Synod of Pistoia, in which Quesnel and Jansenius speak again: "When we have unequivocal signs that the love of God reigns in a man's heart, we may with reason judge him worthy of participation with Jesus Christ in the reception of the sacraments. This is the rule which should be observed in the tribunal of penance (in the question of granting absolution). Works alone afford a morally certain proof of conversion. When the love of God takes possession of the soul, it becomes active and efficacious."[245] Again: "The first disposition for praying as we ought is a perfect detachment from all created things and a kind of disgust for all earthly consolations."[246] Until the sinner has received this grace of the Holy Ghost, he is unworthy of absolution quite as much as of communion. The words of Saint-Cyran to poor Sister Mary Clare are well known: "It is necessary to come, living, to penance. This is why I have kept you waiting so long. I have left you to live; for five months you have been living a spiritual life." So far no sacraments. The practice was still worse than the theory, as we well know. And this is the way in which Jansenism would recall Catholics to a respect for the sacraments! It has, at one blow, narrowed Christ's functions and those of the church.[247]

TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.

FOOTNOTES:

[203] De Potter, in his _Life of Scipio Ricci_, points out the identity of the Netherland schismatics with the Jansenists of Pistoia. The Marquis of Ricci's whole collection of documents was open to him; but he has not published those which we give further on.

[204] _Synode de Pistoie_, translated by Du Pac de Bellegarde, and approved by the Schismatics of Utrecht, p. 239 _et seq._ Pistoia, 1788.

[205] See, especially, chapters xii., xiii., xvii., xxi., xxii., xxiii.

[206] Edition Gerberon, pp. 489, 240, etc. In his first reply to Philip Marnix de Sainte-Aldegonde Baius thus expresses himself: "But because Holy Scripture, which can neither deceive nor be mistaken, contains within itself truth itself; and the church is not enlightened _except_ by the truth written in the sacred books, and, _left to herself_, could easily fall back into her darkness; _therefore_, it is more suitable to say that Holy Scripture gives authority and dignity to the church of Christ, than the reverse." We know that the project of Jansenius was first to publish only the _Vindiciæ Michælis Baii_. The _Augustinus_ took its source from this.

[207] Baius, _De Prima Hominis Justitia_, b. i. Jansenius, _De Gratia Primi Hominis_, c. 1; _De Statu Primæ Naturæ_, b. i. c. iii. _et seq._; b. ii. c. i. _et seq._

[208] _Loc. cit._, Quesnel _in II. Cor. 5_, etc.

[209] Jansenius, _De Statu Puræ Naturæ_, b. i. c. xx.

[210] _Synode de Pistoie_, p. 242.

[211] _Bull of S. Pius V. against Baius_, prop. 21, 55, 78, 34, 26. _Bull of Clement XI. against Quesnel_, prop. 35. _Bull Auctorem Fidei against the False Synod of Pistoia_, Nos. 16, 17.

[212] _Synode de Pistoie_, p. 243.

[213] _De Statu Pur. Nat._, b. i. Calvin, _Institut._, b. ii. c. i; Luther _in Psalm LI_.

[214] _Synode de Pistoie_, p. 244.

[215] _De Ratione et Auctoritate_, c. iv., vii., _et seq._ Baius, _De Prima Hom. Just._, b. i. c. viii.; _De Charitate_, c. v.

[216] _Ibid._ For consistent Jansenists, science in the natural order, especially in what appertains to man, is impossible. When one has only an incomplete being to study, all of whose harmonies are in disorder, how can we have any certitude as to the nature of that being?

[217] Session III. _De Fide._

[218] Jansenius, _De Statu Naturæ Lapsæ_, b. ii. c. ii.-vii. Quesnel, _in Rom._ i. 19 and _II. Thessal._, iii. 18. _Prop. Condemned_, 40 _et seq._ _Prop. Condemned by Alexander VIII., 7th December, 1690._

[219] _Synode de Pistoie_, p. 246.

[220] _Ibid._ p. 247.

[221] Jansenius, _De Statu Nat. Laps._, b. ii. c. vii. _et seq._; b. iii. c. ix. _et seq._; b. iv. c. xviii. Quesnel, _in Luc._, xvi. 3; _in Joann._, viii. 34, 36; _Prop. Condemned_, 38, 39, 41, 45, 46, 48, etc. Baius, _De Virtut. Impiorum_, c. vi. _Prop. Condemned_, 16, 25, 27, 30, 35, 36, 37, 40, 61 _et seq._

[222] _Synode de Pistoia_, p. 249 _et seq._ _Prop. Cond._, 18, 19, 21. Jansenius, _De Gratia Christi Salvatoris_, b. i. Quesnel, _in Hebr._, viii. 7; _Galat._, v. 18; _Marc_, xii. 19, etc. _Prop. Cond._, 6, 7, 64, 65.

[223] _Synode de Pistoie_, _loc. cit._

[224] _Ibid._

[225] _Ibid._, p. 251, 259. _Prop. Cond._, 21, 25. Baius, _De Charitate_, c. v. _Prop. Cond._, 16, 38, etc. Jansenius, _De Gratia Christi Salvat._, b. v. Quesnel, _passim. Prop. Cond._, 40, 44, 45-67. _Protestation du P. Quesnel_ (1715, without any other date), p. 190, _et seq._

[226] Jansenius, _De Gratia Christi Salvat._, b. iii. c. xx., xxi. Quesnel, _Prop. Cond._, 32, 29. _Causa Quesnelliana_, p. 188 _et seq._

[227] Calvin, _De. Prædestinat._, b. iii. v.; _Instit._, b. ii. c. v. Jansenius, _ibid._, b. ix.

[228] Jansenius, _ibid._, b. iii. c. vii. _et seq._; _De Hæresi Pelag._, b. iv. c. xvi. _Baius, Prop. Cond._, 54.

[229] Jansenius, _De Gratia Christi Salvat._, b. iii. c. xiii.

[230] Baius, _De Libero Hominis Arbitrio_, c. ii. iv. _et seq._ _Prop. Cond._, 39. Jansenius, _De Statu Nat. Laps._, b. iv. c. xxi. _et seq._ _De Gratia Christi Salvat._, b. vi. c. v. _et seq._, xxiv. to the end. Quesnel _in Luc_, viii. 24, etc. _Prop. Cond._, 10, 22-25, 38, etc.

[231] Jansenius, _De Gratia Christi Salvat._, b. ii. and vi. Quesnel, _in Matth._, viii. 3, etc.; _Prop. Cond._, 9, 10, 11, 19, 20, etc. _Protestation du P. Quesnel_, p. 102 _et seq._

[232] Jansenius, _De Statu Nat. Laps._, b. iv. c. xxi. _et seq._, cited above.

[233] Third proposition. See _De Gratia Christi Salvat._, b. ii. and vi.

[234] Fourth proposition. See _De Hæresi Pelag._, b. vii., last chap.; b. viii. c. vi., viii. _De Gratia Christi Salvat._, b. ii. c. xv.

[235] See preceding notes and _Causa Quesnelliana_, p. 163-193.

[236] Edit cit., pp. 196 and 547; Appendix (v. ii.), p. 340 _et seq._

[237] _Synode de Pistoie_, p. 242.

[238] _Ibid._, p. 252.

[239] _Synode de Pistoie_, p. 252. _Prop. Cond._, 23, 24, 25. Baius, _De Charitate_, c. vi. _Prop. Cond._, 38, etc. Jansenius, _De Gratia Christi Salvat._, b. v. c. iii. _Protestation du P. Quesnel_, p. 190 _et seq._ _Prop. Cond._, 44, etc.

[240] Bull _Auctorem Fidei_, No. 24.

[241] _Synode de Pistoie_, p. 521, 528. _Prop. Cond._, 61 _et seq._

[242] Rivière, _Le Nestorianisme Renaissant_, 2d part (1693). Van der Schuur (Utrecht, 1699), _De Kleyne Getyden_. _Synode de Pistoie_, p. 259 _et seq._ _Prop. Cond._, 69.; _Ibid._, appendix, p. 121 _et seq._ Baius, _Prop. Cond._, 73. We know that the Jansenist bishops of Holland loudly protested against the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. See _Port Royal_, vol. i. p. 233.

[243] _Port Royal_, vol. i. p. 446; vol. ii. p. 189 _et seq._, 154, etc.

[244] Baius, _De Sacramentis in Genere_, c. iii. v. _Prop. Cond._, 33, 43, 70, 10, 12, 31 _et seq._, 57, etc. Saint-Cyran in _Aurelius_ follows the principles of Baius on this point.

[245] _Synode de Pistoie_, p. 257 _et seq._, 376-397. _Prop. Cond._, 25, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, etc.

[246] _Ibid._, p. 516. See Quesnel, _Prop. Cond._, 59 _et seq._

[247] On this point, to which I can only refer _en passant_, see Linsenmann, _Michael Baius und die Grundlegung des Jansenismus_, c. v. (Tubingen, 1867).

AN ENGLISH MAIDEN'S LOVE.[248]

The third Crusade had commenced. The cry, "God wills it," had gone forth from many a manly breast, and already Frederic of Germany, Henry II. of England, and Philip Augustus of France had received the cross from William, Archbishop of Tyre. But a more powerful monarch than Saladin, against whom their combined strength was to be directed, struck Frederic before he reached Palestine, and called Henry II., whom domestic difficulties had detained in England. Death gives not back that which he takes, and, for the want of a leader, the German army was broken up.

Richard, the brave Cœur de Lion, took his royal father's place, both on the throne and in the Crusade, and, with Philip of France, started on his glorious mission. Among those brave men who gathered around England's standard, joying to be led by so bold a king, who, with his lion's heart, dared every danger of sea, land, or fierce and cruel Moslem, was one of the oldest and proudest of Norman blood. His forefather, who had fought by the side of William the Conqueror, had distinguished himself by many a daring deed, and had won from his royal master, in recognition of his bravery, an earlship over a fair and smiling province of "merrie England"; then, renouncing his Norman title in behalf of a younger son, and marrying his eldest to the daughter of a Saxon knight, he established his right to the soil of his adopted country. Much of his fearless nature seemed to have come down with the blood of Robert de Bracy, who, at the ripe age of fifty-five, had found himself unable to resist his monarch's call, and to whom Cœur de Lion himself owed much of wise counsel. Robert de Bracy was a man of stern aspect, but withal so compassionate and forbearing, that he won the love of every one who came in contact with him. His bravery had already been proved when, as a young man, he fought beside Henry II, during the war against France; and, later, in that most dreadful invasion of Ireland--dreadful, because of the blow it gave to Irish independence, and for the gradual sinking of her people, from that time, from the eminence in erudition and lore for which they were renowned among the nations, and which, be it to their credit said, they are using every effort to regain. A man perfectly incapable of the least dishonorable action, he was revered as a knight "without stain or reproach." A fervent Catholic, his religion was his pride, and he never was ashamed of kneeling in church beside the poorest beggar, nor felt insulted because poverty's rags touched his velvet robes. But the good earl's heart received a terrible blow when he heard of the murder of Thomas à Becket. His faith in his king was shaken, and nothing but the stern duty of allegiance could have induced Robert de Bracy to remain in England. So when the Crusade was preached, he gladly seized the opportunity to show his love for the crucified King--for him whose throne was a cross, and whose crown was of thorns--and enrolled himself among the Crusaders. He was joined by his only son and Sir John de Vere, who, like himself, was of Norman blood--a brave, honest man, of strict integrity, whose character will be better seen in the unfolding of the story. The earl was deeply attached to the young knight, and the highest proof he could give of his love was in his willing consent that, on their return from Palestine, Sir John should wed his daughter, Agnes de Bracy, whose heart was no less pure than her face was lovely. "An' we'll make an earl of thee, my lad!" cried the impetuous King Richard when the betrothal was announced to him.

The court of the earl's castle was crowded with armed retainers, knights, and esquires, who formed the retinue of De Bracy and De Vere. Even on and beyond the lowered drawbridge might be seen bands of neighing steeds, their impatience checked ever and anon by their riders, who awaited the earl to head and lead them to the rendezvous of the Crusaders. Court and castle alike resounded with the clank of steel and tread of armed men, while buxom waiting-maids and merry lads hastened to and fro in the bustle attendant on such a departure. Here and there stood a page giving the finishing polish to his master's sword, and, again, others assisted in the girding on of the armor. Every now and then might be heard the wailing of some fond wife or mother, contrasting somewhat strangely with the jests of those who had no tie to make the parting a sacrifice in the good cause. Apart from all this, in one of the inner rooms of the castle, were gathered the earl and his family. Lady de Bracy's loving eyes wandered sadly from her honored husband to the manly features of her son, kneeling by her side, and back again to the earl, who was soothing the grief of his youngest child, Mary, just old enough to know that her father was going over land and sea, and that she might never see him again. In the deep embrasure of one of the windows, partly concealed by heavy curtains, stood Sir John and his betrothed. Agnes had been weeping, but being calmed by Sir John, whose grief partook more of the nature of joy than fear, since on his return he was to claim her as his bride, she rested her head quietly against his breast, both her hands clasped around his neck, while her uplifted eyes sought to read every expression of his noble face.

"Beloved," he said in a low tone, "it will not be for long, please God, though I would that thou wert my wife e'en ere I go. And," he added, continuing his whispered tones, "I were no Christian knight to doubt thy faithfulness. I'll prove thee mine on our return from the holy wars."

Agnes looked steadily at the face so lovingly bent over her, and, unclasping her hands, she drew from her girdle a scarf, such as was worn in those days, and bound it on Sir John's sword-belt. Then, returning her head to its resting-place, and feeling his arm drawing her tightly to him, as though by the very motion to thank her, she said:

"An' there is thy love's guerdon; thou shalt wear it in battle, and, when thine eyes fall on it, remember that _one_ is praying for thee in bonnie England."

Any further discourse was prevented by the earl, who cried:

"Sir John, we have no time to lose; the men are ready, the steeds drawn up, and our presence alone is needed for immediate departure. Come, Agnes, my daughter." And as he placed one arm around her, with the other he drew his wife gently to him. Raising his eyes to heaven, he exclaimed: "O God! protect these dear ones while I am fighting the good fight in thy name and for thee. And this child," he added, as, tenderly kissing his wife and Agnes, he loosened his hold and took Mary in his arms--"this child, Mother of God, belongs to thee; keep her pure, that thy name, borne by her, may be ever spotless!" Then, calling the knights, he hastily quitted the apartment, not daring to look back. The son tore himself from his mother's farewell embrace, and quickly followed; but Sir John still lingered. At last, summoning his courage, he strained Agnes to his breast:

"Farewell, my beloved! God have thee, my own, in his keeping for so long as it seems best to him that we be parted."

As the drawbridge was raised behind the retreating soldiers, Agnes stood at the loophole of the main turret, where, with her mother, she watched till the men, horses, and banners disappeared, shut from sight by the declivity of a distant hill, when she sank on her knees, and prayed fervently for the loved ones who had started on their perilous journey.

We have said that Agnes de Bracy was lovely; that word can hardly convey the true nature of her charms. Personal beauty she had, and much: dark eyes, a clear complexion, a perfect mouth, disclosing perfect teeth, and breaking into a smile of winning beauty, together with a graceful form; a character of womanly sweetness, and great strength of will. But as Spenser hath it:

"Of the soule the bodie forme doth take; For soule is forme, and doth the bodie make."

It was the soul in Agnes de Bracy, rich in God's sweet grace, which gave her that wonderful expression; the pure heart, "without guile," which caused her eyes to gleam with a look that made Sir John once exclaim, "Methinks, Agnes, thine eyes would soften the stony heart of the Mussulman himself, and e'en make a Christian of him."

Nor was Sir John deficient in those qualities which would be apt to win the admiration and love of such as she. Like the earl, he was a most devout Catholic. With a full, heartfelt appreciation of his holy faith, he could not--as many, alas! do--put it on and off with holiday attire, but every word and action proved how thoroughly it was a part of himself, and how, without it, in spite of great natural talents, he would be--nothing.

To follow the Crusaders on their journey, every step of which was fraught with danger; to watch the course of events as they shaped themselves during the march of the two armies, is not the province of this story. About three years later, the earl, with wounds scarcely healed and a heavy heart, stood before the drawbridge of his castle, which was being rapidly lowered at the unexpected blast of his bugle. The clanking of the heavy armor was a joyful, long-looked-for sound to the inmates of the castle, who had assembled in the court to welcome back the earl and his followers. Weary and dust-laden, they passed under the portal of the gateway, a sad remnant of their former numbers, greeting those who stood expectant with joy or fear. Suddenly a loud wailing arose, as many a mother looked in vain for the well-remembered form of her brave lad, who died fighting the Saracen; and the sounds of glad rejoicing were hushed in the presence of the angel of sorrow. The earl and his son made their way rapidly to the same room that had witnessed their farewell, and there their loved ones awaited them. A thrill of terror passed through Agnes' frame as she missed the features of Sir John; and, seeing a strange look in her father's eyes, which were fixed so tenderly but sorrowfully on her, she clasped her hands tightly, and cried out: "My God! my God! thy will, not mine, be done; but, oh! if _he_ is dead!"

"Agnes, my child, my precious child!"--and Robert de Bracy drew his daughter to him--"God knows my heart is heavy enough with the story I have to tell thee, yet it is not what thou dost expect. Sir John is living, strong and well, but"--and his lips quivered with emotion--"but he is Saladin's prisoner; and I fear me greatly that neither gold nor silver will ransom him."

"Saladin's prisoner, my father? Saladin's prisoner? And will nothing ransom him?" And bowing her face in her hands, she wept bitterly. But her violent grief was not of long duration; her nature was too thoroughly schooled. She checked its first outburst; and, trusting to Him who had always given her help in her troubles, she breathed a short, fervent prayer. Then, raising her head, she turned to the earl, and in her sweetest voice:

"Forgive me, my father," she said, "for that I have not been thy daughter, and, in my selfish sorrow for what God has ordained, I have forgotten to bid thee welcome home."

"Agnes! Agnes!" And the old earl nearly broke down under the weight of his sorrow--sorrow all the keener for the suffering of his daughter. "Agnes, we will not give up all hope. I would have begged of Saladin on my knees for _his_ ransom, but it could not have been; I was ordered away, and no respite granted."

"Give up all hope? No, indeed, my father. Far from me be such a thought! God will help us, and my beloved shall be ransomed if it is his will; for he gave him to me, and he can take him away."

* * * * *

Lo! Damascus is rising before us; not the Damascus of to-day, but the quaint, beautiful Oriental city of the XIIth century. The golden crescents of her domed mosques flash in the light of the Eastern sun. Her thoroughfares are crowded with men in their Turkish garb, and women veiled after the manner of their nation. Her shops are resplendent with jewels, pearls, and jacinths; fragrant with the perfumes of musk, ambergris, and aloes-wood; glittering with rustling silks and heavy brocades, interwoven with gold, and scarlet, and silver. Houses, beautiful in their quaint architecture, meet the eye at every corner, together with palaces, the residences of emir and vizier. But with naught of these have we to do. Our story takes us into the heart of the city to the palace of Saladin, Sultan of the Turks. As we enter, we behold banners unfurled. Shields, helmets, every species of armor decorate the main hall, along whose sides are ivory benches, where the eunuchs wait their master's orders. A great dome is overhead, and the sun, pouring down through its latticed windows, floods the hall with light, and causes the steel of the armor and the jewels of the hall to sparkle and flash with brilliancy. At the further end is a heavy curtain of brocade, richly wrought with various kinds of embroidery in white, red, and gold. Two tall armed men guard the corners. We will imagine the curtain lifted for us, and enter. There sits Saladin on his throne. His followers are around him. Rich are the robes which fall from his shoulders, well befitting the Sultan of the East. If the hall was gorgeous in its beauty, the room of the throne is no less so. The hangings on the walls are figured with various wild beasts and birds, worked with silk and gold. The sandal-wood work gives out its own peculiar perfume. In fact, all betokens a royal presence. And of what sort is Saladin? Great talents in him combine for mastery; great activity and valor. The severity and rigor, so inflexible as to make the bravest heart quail with fear before him, was often replaced by such kindness, such generosity, that the poor, the widowed, and orphaned did not hesitate to appeal to his mercy. And as he sits before us, we must draw back and continue our story.

An eunuch has presented the bowl and vase, and, having performed the ablution, Saladin turned slowly round, gazing steadily at the stern faces before him. "By Allah!" he exclaimed, as his eyes rested on the one nearest him--"by Allah! I trow, Moslem chiefs, you are brave, yea, very brave and very skilful. You have beaten back the Christians. You have proved yourselves true sons of Mahomet; but, for all that, I know a braver man than you. Eunuch! bid the Christian slave come forth." At his sultan's orders, the eunuch made a low bow, and retired behind one of the hangings. In a few moments he returned, followed by a guard of men, and Sir John de Vere in their centre. As they approached with him, Saladin waved them back, and bade the Christian only to remain before the throne. Then suddenly he made a sign--a sign dreaded alike by vizier and eunuch. It was obeyed, and a soldier, stepping forward, waved a sharp and gleaming scimitar over the head of the captive; but he did not flinch, nor move a muscle of his face, but continued gazing with stern, unshrinking eye straight forward. The sultan, as if satisfied with the courage the prisoner evinced, motioned the soldier back. Then he said:

"John de Vere, thy father's land, thine ancient home, thou shalt see no more; but I have great need of men like thee. I command thee, forsake thy Christian faith; and, if thou wilt adore Mahomet and God, there is no favor thou shalt ask, by my royal word, that shall not be granted thee. I will set thee above all men. I alone will be above thee. I will make thee my son. I will give thee palaces, gold, and precious gems; and from all the queenly maidens thou shalt choose one and wed her as thy bride. Thou canst not refuse that which my caliphs strive for years to obtain, and which to thee is given in one day. I bid thee reply."

As Saladin finished, he sank back on his throne, and a quiet smile played around his lips as he awaited his captive's answer. Sir John listened to him calmly and patiently. Then having bowed low, he raised his head erect, and made the Christian's mark--the sign of the cross--upon himself.

"Saladin," he said, "Sultan of the Mussulmans, since thou dost bid me reply, I will first return thanks for all the favors I have received at thy hands. From the first day of my captivity till now thou hast loaded me with kindnesses; for these I am grateful, though gratitude may not seem to be in the answer I make thee. Know, then, I, a Christian, cannot renounce my faith. I am a sworn soldier of my God--of him who died for me. Dost thou think that I, who bear the cross upon my shoulder, could on that cross bring scorn? Thou dost promise me a Moslem wife. In that far-off land--which God grant I may see before I die!--I have a love, whom as my very life I love. To her sweet heart I will not be false. Saladin, I cannot bear a Moslem name nor wed a Moslem maiden."

"Ah!" cried the sultan, "thou dost not know woman's heart. Perchance she whom thou lovest so fondly is the bride of another; nor doubt me, that heart, fickle and false as any woman's, which swore such fealty to thee, belongs now perhaps to thy rival. Never yet was woman known to be constant. Ah! John de Vere, thou hadst better remain with me."

As he ceased, the curtain was raised, and two by two came those holy men vowed to ransom Christian captives from the hands of the Turks. They approached Saladin's throne, and, opening their bags, they poured out with lavish hand an untold treasure at his feet.

Then the chief monk said:

"The bride of Sir John de Vere, O Sultan Saladin! sends all she hath, gold and gems, and bids thee take them, but to restore to her her betrothed."

"The other captive knights may go with thee," replied the sultan; "but as for all these gems and gold, his lady-love would give them for a dress. Sir John de Vere may not go with thee. No wealth can ransom him, for I love him with a more than brother's love, and hope to win his in return. Why, I would give a hundred slaves, if he would renounce his Christian faith. So thus to thy lady this answer; for I will prove how Christian maidens love. Tell her that, before I yield my thrall, she must cut off her own right arm and hand, and send it hither to ransom John de Vere!"

"Saladin," said the captive, "thy permission for one word to say to these monks before they go. I bid you, brothers," he added, turning to them, "to speak of me as dead. For, O sweet-heart! my betrothed bride, well do I know that not only arm and hand, but even life itself, thou wouldst willingly give for me; and I cannot prove thy death, that I may live. Do not tell her the sultan's cruel words. O brothers! I beg you do not!"

As sole reply, they gathered up the useless treasure, and, returning to their ships, they sailed for England. With mournful hearts they landed on the shore, and travelled day and night till they reached De Bracy's castle. There they laid down their full bags, and told Agnes that for neither gold nor silver could Sir John be ransomed; but if it was still her heart's wish that he should see his native land again, the sultan had promised that for one gift her betrothed should go free.

"And that gift?" said Agnes.

"Is," replied the head monk slowly, "thine own right arm and hand, cut off for his sake. This is the ransom asked. Thou canst not prevail on Saladin to take a meaner thing."

Every face grew white at these cruel words. They shuddered as they listened to the monk; only Agnes preserved her usual calmness. The earl clutched his sword, and could hardly refrain from vowing death to every man of the Moslem race. Little Mary cried out, clasping her sister tightly, "Sure, Agnes, such a wicked man cannot be found." But quieting the child, she looked at Lady de Bracy. The face of the mother was marked with keen suffering. It was a dreadful moment for the brave spirit of Agnes; she knew she must make answer, and that at once. But how could she tell those, who suffered so much at the very thought of the deed, of her resolution? "My God! it is hard; but as we love in thee, thou must help me to do what is right," was the prayer which rose from her heart, as with her lips she framed her answer.

"My dear ones, your daughter need not say how much she grieves for your sakes that she must suffer. Cruel is the ransom asked; who could know it better than I? But God loves us, and did he not, because of his love, give his own beloved Son? And do we not see every day how churls and nobles give their lives for their king? 'Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends.' That, my father, we know from the holy Gospels. Wouldst thou have thy daughter shrink duty, thou, my lord and father, who hast bled by Cœur de Lion's side?" She hesitated a moment, then, her sweet voice growing clearer and stronger, she continued:

"I am John de Vere's betrothed, and to him I owe my fealty, even though it should cost my life. My lord and father, what is my life? Long years spent in pleading with God to end the banishment of my love. And at last he has heard, at last my prayer has been granted. Only it must be proved that my love is pure; so he sends me pain, and I will take it, grateful to endure; for is not the reward great?"

* * * * *

Once again the holy friars found themselves in the beautiful city of Damascus. Eagerly they threaded their way through its broad but devious thoroughfares till they reached the palace of the sultan. Within, in the room of the throne, sat Saladin in royal state. By his side stood Sir John de Vere. He still retained the badge of slavery, for he was too true to give up his faith; but to Saladin's councils he was often summoned. When any measure to be taken against the Christians was the theme of debate, he remained respectfully but firmly silent. Against his brothers he could not in conscience speak; to do so for them he knew would prove more than useless. But yet many were the subjects on which his knowledge and fine sense of justice could be brought to bear; and Saladin was not the man to fail in taking advantage of his wise judgment.

Some such serious business had called around the sultan his advisers, and, as usual, Sir John stood foremost among them. They had all but finished the subject under consideration, when the folds of the curtain were lifted, and a herald entered the royal presence.

"Sultan, our lord," he said, "the monks appointed to ransom the Christians stand without. They crave an audience again."

"Let them enter," was the command given, and swiftly obeyed. Again the curtain was lifted upon the holy men, and again it fell, shutting them from the outer hall, as they stood in the presence of Saladin. The superior stepped forward:

"We thank thee, sultan, for the favor thou hast accorded us in this audience. But we bid thee learn, O monarch! a lesson we bring thee--a lesson of how great, in a nobler faith than thine, is love's purity and power." A dim foreboding seized Sir John at the monk's words, and his whole form shook with ill-suppressed emotion, as he listened to the conclusion:

"Monarch! what are women to thee? Slaves, toys of an idle hour, the playthings of passion. What women of thine would do for thee as Agnes de Bracy hath done for him who stands beside thee--him whom thou callest thy slave? Thy cruel words have been heeded. Lo! the answer." And he laid at Saladin's feet a casket, richly wrought in gold and silver. Sir John looked as one frenzied, then seizing the casket pressed it to his heart:

"Why did you tell her, O cruel monks? Did I not ask you to speak of me as dead? O fair arm! O dear, sweet hand! that thou shouldst cut it off, my beloved, and for my poor sake!"

Saladin stretched out his hand to take the casket; but Sir John only pressed it the tighter, and sobbed aloud. At this, the superior of the monks, coming forward, said something in a low voice, which caused the young knight to lift up his face and look at the brother. Then, turning to the sultan, he placed the casket reverently before him. Saladin took it and opened it; as he raised the lid, the perfume of aromatic spices escaped therefrom. Lifting the linen, he looked steadily for a moment, then large tears were seen to escape from his eyes and roll down his cheeks. All the higher nature of the man seemed to be aroused. Calling his nobles around him, he held the casket silently for their inspection. Within it lay embalmed the lily-white right arm and hand of Agnes de Bracy. There was no mistaking the delicate form of the arm, the shape of the tapering fingers. Severed from the shoulder of that noble girl, they lay in all their beauty, a reproach to the cruelty of the sultan. In that throne-room not one man but was moved to tears. Then Saladin closed the casket, but, still keeping a firm hold on it, he cried out:

"Mahomet and God witness for me! with a deep brother's love I love John de Vere, and I thought I might retain him by me if I asked this ransom. But now I would give my kingdom to recall those words. Haste, John de Vere, haste to thy noble love. O fair arm! O fair hand! True, brave heart! Oh! that I could claim such love as thine! John de Vere, tell that noble woman that Saladin yields his selfish love. Take to her gold, gems; load the ship with all of wealth and beauty I have; but they would vainly prove Saladin's grief. She who has proved thee such a noble love will make thee a noble wife, John de Vere. But thou canst not take with thee this precious casket. Among my treasures I shall store it away. It will prove to future ages how Christian maidens keep their troth, and how pure is their love."

* * * * *

More than this the legend tells us not. But it is said that in a church in England may still be seen a statue of the knight and his noble, one-armed lady.

FOOTNOTES:

[248] Some years ago, a poem appeared in an English weekly with the same title, "An English Maiden's Love." The author stated that, when a mere girl, she read the incident in a very stupid old novel founded upon the same subject, and which she never could succeed in meeting with again. We have not seen the novel, but have ventured to borrow the incident, and offer it to the readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD in its present form.

OUR MASTERS.

Freedom is the boast of half the civilized world, and the envy of the other half. It is the embodiment of the desires of our age, the goal of the individual, as well as the collective life of nations. It is a treasure jealously guarded or a prize passionately longed for, the pretext for riot and disorder, the burden of diplomatic messages, the ostensible object of all civic government. England records in the words of a national song, "Britons never will be slaves," her proud determination to grasp it; America asserts elasticity of personal liberty as the chief attraction of her territory; everywhere the cry is, "We will do as we like, and accept no dictation from any man." It is a somewhat strange commentary on this fierce vindication of one man's rights that they invariably clash with the rights of all other men, provided the latter happen to differ in the interpretation of freedom. Again, it is a curious psychological phenomenon that this much-vaunted freedom generally ends in a frantic appeal to the state to force one particular set of principles upon a large majority to whom these principles are repulsive. In some countries "freedom" means expulsion from a quiet retreat deliberately chosen years ago by men and women in full possession of their senses: witness the depopulated monasteries and the poor religious thrust out to starve or beg. In others it means the minute supervision of state officials over the educational and religious interest of thousands--a sort of domestic inquisition in perpetual session on moral subjects, which the individual inquisitors do not pretend even to have studied. In conjunction with this species of freedom we have the ravenous appetite for unbelief of all shades, for laxity of morals, for the elasticity of the marriage-tie, for a pleasant and dignified way of losing our souls, for decorous but unrestrained indulgence of our passions--in short, for the manifold attractions of the "broad road." This is the serious side of the question--the one to be dwelt upon by preachers and philosophers, and that which the heedless actors in the world's drama are apt to pass by as a matter of course--a thing taken for granted long ago.

But there is another aspect, more personal and more intimate, in which this question appears to us. We boast of being free, and at every turn the commonest circumstances of our daily life belie us. Free! why, we are tied as fast as we can be to a perpetual pillory; like the prisoner of Chillon, we can just walk round and round our post at the length of our chain, and wear a groove into the hard stone of our surroundings. Free! with a hundred masters: the gout, dyspepsia, the doctor, the cook, society, the weather. Free! with the newspaper to dictate our ideas and opinions, to choose, recommend, and puff our candidates, to lay down the law in criminal cases, to patronize the jury and pass sentence on the prisoner!

It would be hard to find a condition in life which is not eminently a bondage, and a bondage the more galling because the bonds are so insignificant. It is almost equally hard to know where to begin the record of our abject submission to external trammels. You are tired, and want to sleep an extra hour in the morning. Of course, you think you have only to will this, and it is done. But you are not allowed to sleep; the noise in the street increases; the bells of the cars mingle in determined clangor with the whistle of the steamboat; an organ-grinder takes up his position under your window, and serenades you into madness; the "horn of the fish-man is heard on the hill" (Murray Hill); presently the fire-alarm sounds, and the clatter of engines follows close upon it; while all the time the flies are industriously reconnoitring your face, walking over your eyelids, losing themselves in your hair, and, despite your half-unconscious protest, you must own after all that you are awake.

Then the whole tenor of your mind for the day may depend upon the exact degree of tenderness in the customary beefsteak or on the extra turn given to the crisp buckwheat. So the wire-pulling is done in the kitchen, and your vaunted independence as a man and a citizen goes down ignominiously before the fiat of the cook. This kind of thing is interminable. You are at the mercy of your tradesmen, and, for the sake of peace, you pay the bills and submit to be cheated with inferior provisions while paying the price of superior ones. The newspaper is not always ready to your hand when you feel inclined to look at the news of the world, and straightway your mind becomes uneasy, your temper rises, and you have again surrendered your freedom. You order your horse, but find he is lame, and so you must forego your plans for the day; you make up your mind to start by the early train to-morrow, and enjoy a day in the country, and find, when you open your window in the morning, that the rain is pouring with dismal steadiness, and promises to do so for many hours to come. Sometimes your wife keeps you waiting fifteen minutes for dinner, and, on sitting down, you find the soup cold and the _entrées_ spoiled; and it is well known that not even Job could have stood that! The wind and tide wait for no man; and so you are hurried out of bed against your will at unseasonable hours of the night or morning, and packed on board the steamer bound for Europe while yet half asleep and as sulky as a bear, your free-will practically gone as much as if you were a bale of goods being shipped and checked for Liverpool.

Social customs are no less a hidden tyranny. If you would not appear eccentric, you must do as others do--wear a dress-coat when you would fain be in your shirt-sleeves, and a smile when you are dying for an opportunity to yawn. If you are a silent man, you must nevertheless join in the gossip of your fellow-guests, and laugh at unmeaning jokes, for fear people should call you a misanthrope, and avoid you as a "wet blanket" to conversation. If you have any decided opinion, you must keep it to yourself, and avoid the vacant stare of astonished good-breeding which is the penalty of any energetic statement. It is vulgar to be too demonstrative or to have any settled opinions; enthusiasm is out of fashion, and indifference has at least the advantage of never committing you to anything. If a little deviation in manner from the recognized standard is not reprehensible, then it is voted amusing, and the self-asserting individual is considered a good butt; but no one dreams of asking his advice or even crediting him with common sense. All his real qualities are lost sight of, and he is judged by the mere accident of "originality." No one takes the trouble further to investigate his character; he is "odd," and people either drop him as a bore, or run after him as a lion.

If a man has a hundred invisible masters, a woman has five hundred. From the cook to the dressmaker, from the nurse to the baby, she is surrounded by tyrants. She is at the mercy of the _coiffeur_, who comes in an hour behind time, and tumbles her hair into shape in a violent hurry, so that she is late at the ball; she lives with the sword of Damocles above her head in the shape of the dressmaker, who _will_ send in a ball-dress so loosely sewn together that it splits in many places before the evening is over; if she is poor, she is the slave of desire, perpetually tantalized by the splendors she cannot reach, eating her heart out because Mrs. Jones has got a new bonnet so far finer than her own, or Mrs. Smith's rich uncle gave her a cashmere shawl impossible to outrival; if she is married, the regulating of the domestic atmosphere will cost her many an anxious thought, a curtailed hour of leisure, an uneasiness regarding a possible storm when Harry comes home and finds his new hat mangled by the pet puppy; if she is single, she will be always scheming for an escort, and fretting lest she should be overlooked, and so on through every variety of possible female situations. To this picture there is a companion. See the unhappy bachelor of moderate means, in a forlorn boarding-house, pining for the simplest luxuries or the innocent liberty of stretching at full length on a lounge without taking off his working-clothes; sighing for a variety in the round of his monotonous meals, and for the possibility--without hazard of starvation--of an occasional morning snooze when the inexorable breakfast-bell calls him to the renewed treadmill of existence. But woe to the man who rashly turns to matrimony, and surrenders, without mature deliberation and cogent reasons, the liberty--such as it is--which still remains to him. His change may be from the "frying-pan into the fire," and the nightly fate of the wretched Caudle, of curtain-lecture memory, may claim him for life. Is the rash Benedict "free," when the irreproachable wife begins to make her hand felt, and, together with the immaculate table-linen, the punctual and succulent meals, the orderly household, the never-failing newspaper always at hand at the right moment, yet silently conveys to him the awful impression that she is heaping coals of fire on his head? A man may be in prison, and, if he can pay for them, may yet enjoy every luxury and attention; still, it would be rather stretching the point to say that he was therefore free. So both sexes know how to tighten invisible bonds around each other's claims, and "freedom" is practically as meaningless as the apparent life of a still green tree woven round by the graceful and fatal vine.

The majority of mankind are quite debarred from any tangible freedom by the lack of means with which to procure it. A poor man cannot, physically speaking, be a free agent; but, in compensation, the richer and higher placed a man is, the more social and moral trammels will he encounter. Excess of want and excess of possession often end by producing the same result. The poor man cannot move from his post, because he has not the money to do so; the rich man cannot move from it, because he has too much money to watch over. Wealth, too, brings its responsibilities; and a conscientious man, in whose hands lie the life and comfort of hundreds of his fellow-creatures, cannot leave his post because his tenants or operatives would suffer through his absence. In fact, no one, in a certain sense, can be "free," except an unprincipled man and an unbeliever. Selfishness is the only road to such animal freedom as would content a sensualist. A Christian, be he poor or rich, cannot aspire to this worldly freedom, because his religion tells him that he is _not_ free to desert those with whom God has linked his fortunes. Family circumstances fetter one to an incredible degree; conscience is a perpetual trammel; and even the exigencies of position are sometimes a legitimate restraint on our actions. Many persons of narrow minds, not particularly influenced by moral forces, fall a prey to Mrs. Grundy, and dare not face the opinion and comments of their neighbors. In the most trivial things we are slaves to the verdict of society. Who would not rather have danger than ridicule? How many things, whether lawful or unlawful, are we not ashamed to do, because of what "people would say," quite irrespective of the intrinsic right or wrong, expediency or uselessness, of the thing itself? It may well be said that it is less a sin in the eyes of the world to break every one of the Ten Commandments than to enter a room with your hat on, or ask a girl to marry you on nothing a year. It would require more pluck to stand up for an unfashionable religion, or defend an unpopular person in a cultivated assemblage arrayed on the opposite side of the question, than it would to storm a citadel or rescue a sinking ship. To contravene one-quarter of an article of the impalpable code of society entails downright ostracism; and the lynch-law administered to social delinquents effectually keeps people in this imaginary groove, where the invisible penalties of religious codes are unavailing to enforce good morals. How hollow the system is which thus intrenches itself behind such paltry defences we need not say; but how infinitely more galling and more belittling is this servitude than the yoke of God which men fly from! Absolute hardships, real privations, men will cheerfully undergo, provided it is with a worldly object; nobody minds being a slave when the devil is master and the livery is cloth-of-gold.

One of the axioms of the day is that marriage should be a profitable speculation. To what lengths do not men and women proceed in order to fulfil this inculcation to the letter? The writer once heard the hunt after wealthy marriages likened to the vicissitudes of S. Paul on his journeys. The likeness was forcible, though hardly elegant; but, at any rate, it was earnestly and not irreverently meant. The best of it was that it was so startlingly true, and that no part of the world, no system of society, could escape the allusion. Perils by sea and land, perils by robbers, perils by false brethren, watchings and hunger, cold and nakedness--there was not one detail which did not find its counterpart in the modern race after matrimonial advantages. People undergo for the world more hard penances than would suffice to bridge over purgatory, did they suffer them for God. Wolsey, in his disgrace, cried out that if he had served his God but half so well as he had served his king, he would not now be reaping a meed of contempt and ingratitude. So with the world; it despises those who toil for it, and no one is less respected by it than the very man who has sacrificed principle to win its life-homage. As to the marriage lottery, there is very little that is not staked for a lucky throw of the dice. Health is ruthlessly sacrificed; delicate girls brave the night air, the draughts in the corridor, the sudden change from a fetid heat to intense cold, the unwholesome meal at abnormal hours, the loss of actual rest, all for the questionable pleasure of attending a ball every night in the week, and being seen "everywhere." Economy is disregarded, and reckless outlay on flimsy, temporary dress indulged in without a murmur; delicacy and modesty are tacitly put by as unfit considerations in the present, however useful they may prove in the future; underhand inquiries as to a young man's habits and associates, his fortune and his prospects, are unblushingly made, quite as a matter of business; snares and pitfalls are judiciously contrived for the coroneted or gilded victim; pride of birth, of which, at any other time, the practised diplomatists of the _salons_ are so tenacious, is pocketed at the approach of some plebeian prize, and the son or daughter of a self-made man is welcomed with admirably simulated rapture when duly weighted with the parent's hardly-earned money. Stranger than all, this mania of gambling in marriage--for it is nothing less--seizes even persons whom you would naturally suppose would, by instinct or principle, be averse to any such transactions; but though you will find them proof against every other meanness, the very shadow of this one will unsettle their minds. Good people seem impelled to join this race as by an irresistible fatality, and will actually blind themselves to the repulsiveness of such a course by glossing it over as an outgrowth of a sacred instinct, parental love, and solicitude. Needy and idle men, seeking a fortune by marriage with an heiress, are not a whit better--nay, a shade more despicable--than mercenary women on the same lookout.

But it must be confessed that there is a healthier and nobler side to human nature which is too often obscured by the supposed requirements of our worst tyrant--society. There are women who, being rich and high-minded, view this pursuit of themselves with disgust; and there are men, equally high-minded, but poor, who love these women, but, for fear of being classed with interested suitors, and sometimes for fear of a contemptuous refusal, never come forward and acknowledge their love. The woman who sees this may love such a man, but maidenly dignity forbids her making it too plain; and "society" thus manages to make two honest hearts wretched for years, sometimes for life, and perhaps in the end to efface in them even the belief in true and disinterested affection. And we dare to call ourselves "free"!

Business and our material interests are so many burdens and trammels to our liberty. Say that we are easy-going and indolent, fond of sedentary pleasures; but a long and uncomfortable journey becomes necessary, and, under the penalty of material losses, we are obliged to choose the lesser of the two evils. Or reverses swoop down so suddenly upon us that, having been used to elegant leisure and comparative security, we are incontinently thrown on our own resources, and obliged to work, if we would not starve. Even the choice of work is not always open to us, or we may happen to choose some unremunerative work, which fate and our hard-hearted neighbor will persist in making useless to us. Even with prosperity work itself becomes a tyrant; and when the lucky worker thinks of enjoying his earnings in peace and retirement, the restless demon of habit steps in to make his very retirement wretched. He is allowed no peace, but sighs for the counting-house or the workshop; and one has heard of such haunted men going about disconsolately beneath the weight of fortune, until solaced by a miniature feint of the old work--a place where, far from the satin, gilding, and ormolu of the fashionable mansion, they can plane and turn common chairs and tables, or sit in a leathern apron, cobbling their own boots. Poor millionaire! are you "free"?

Other men are slaves not so much to their passions as their tastes. Such an one undergoes tortures if another's collection of china is better than his own, or if a rival bids higher than he can afford to do for an old Italian or Flemish picture. This man would give himself more trouble to secure an old carved _secrétaire_ of English oak or Indian ebony than he would to promote some work of charity; another has a hobby about sumptuous bindings, or rare lace, or any _bric-a-brac_ of the kind; inartistic furniture is an eyesore to him, inharmonious colors upset his equanimity, and everywhere, even in church, any defect of form irritates and repulses him. He is hardly master of his own thoughts, and is apt to form hidden prejudices; he lives in the clouds, and often makes himself disagreeable to those who do not.

The tyrannous custom of making funerals and weddings an occasion of useless pomp is perhaps one of the most reprehensible of all. The fashion has insensibly grown till one's perverted sense of what is "fitting" has almost acknowledged it to be a necessity. So the mourners are disturbed, their privacy broken in upon, delicacy outraged in every possible way, the curiosity of strangers gratified, an unseemly hubbub substituted for the solemn stillness natural to the presence of death--all in order that the world's fiat may be duly obeyed. People pretend that all this fuss is to honor the memory of the dead. No such thing; it is to feed the vanity of the living. It must not be said that Mr. S--- did not provide as good a table, as handsome any array of carriages, as great a profusion of flowers, as richly ornamented a coffin, for his wife's funeral, as did Mr. R---- last year on a similar "melancholy occasion," any more than in the lifetime of the two ladies could it have been suffered to have gone abroad that Mrs. S----'s rooms were not as uncomfortably crowded for a reception as Mrs. R----'s, or her carriage not of the same irreproachable build.

The world has undertaken to decide for us, in the privacy of home as well as beyond its walls, exactly the degree of outward respect to be shown to the dead. Such and such a particular texture, and crape of such and such a particular width, is the measure of the widow's, the daughter's, or the sister's grief; less would be indecorous, more would be eccentric! The milliner tells us in a subdued voice how much jet is allowable, and how soon the world expects the appearance of a white collar in place of a black one, just as the world dictates the exact length of a court-train, and mentions the appropriate number of feathers to be worn in the hair. In England, a widow's cap is _de rigueur_, and not to wear it would be to brand one's self with the mark of a flirt and a questionable character. In other countries in Europe, it is not in use, and the character of French and Italian widows is not dependent on an extra frill of white crape. How a poor and proud woman, unwilling to be behind her neighbors in respect of decorous mourning-robes, can manage the enormous expense of a thing so perishable and so dear as crape, in such quantities as to entirely cover a dress, is a mystery which the peremptory laws of society do not care to enter into and do not pretend to solve.

Weddings are hardly, under the iron hand of custom, what one might reasonably expect them to be--_i.e._, family festivities. They are not occasions of personal rejoicing over the happiness of your nearest and dearest--oh! no, that is humdrum and "slow"; so the wedding-day is turned into a gorgeous manifestation of your worldly wealth--a day of hollow ostentation and often of hidden sadness. The extravagance of your floral decorations, and the judicious display of the bride's presents, cost you more thought than the solemn covenant about to be made; the adjustment of the pearl necklace, the graceful folds of the bridal veil, the perfect fit of the white kid glove, are of far more importance than the vow pronounced so lightly at the altar. It is the reception, not the sacrament, that predominates in most minds. Instead of a family gathering, reverently waiting in prayer for the happy consummation of a very solemn and awful contract, you have a mob of slight and careless acquaintances, down to the very scourings of your visiting-list, assembled to stare and gape at the show, to talk slang and make unseemly jokes, to criticise your hospitality, and make bets as to how soon the marriage may be followed by a separation. Everybody asks how much money has the bride, what is the standing of the bridegroom, what are the settlements, etc. When they go away, they do not even thank you for the lavish expense, whose fruits they, and they alone, have enjoyed; but, instead of that, they abuse your champagne and rebuke your extravagance. Privacy--a necessary condition of domestic happiness--is impossible on this great day; prayer is almost out of the question; reflection is scared away. It might be hoped that the young couple would now be allowed to retire into private life, after this free exhibition of themselves as the central figures of a puppet-show. But, no; fashion pronounces otherwise. A wedding-trip, though not deemed quite indispensable by the code of society, is still favorably looked upon, and, if possible, is a still worse thing than the wedding itself. Dissipation is the order of the day; the change of toilets becomes the all-absorbing topic of the bride's thoughts and conversation; the tour must include the showiest watering-places; perpetual motion and a full meed of frivolity are ensured, a kaleidoscope of discreet admirers provided, little mild triumphs of flirtation enjoyed, with the added zest of perfect security from embarrassing proposals, and equal immunity from the new-made husband's wrath, since he could not thus early begin to lay down the law; and a most miserable foundation is laid for the after-comfort of home. Besides, what does a wedding-trip imply? That life is a drudgery, and a respite is necessary before taking up the burden. The home is thus made a vision of imprisonment--scarcely a wise preparation. Then the foolish and utterly useless expenditure probably cripples the young couple, in ordinary cases, for some time to come. The month's trip has swallowed what would have covered half the year's expenses, and "going home," instead of holding out a bright prospect, is connected with dulness, retrenchment, and monotony. This is what society and its tyranny have succeeded in making of marriage. Are such couples "free" agents?

Who _is_ free on this earth? Who is not the slave of petty caprices, even if he escapes the worse servitude of degrading vices? The drunkard, the sensualist, the gambler, are victims of low passions that destroy health and sap vitality, while they surely lead to a lonely or a violent end; but with such aberrations we do not propose to deal. But even those who pride themselves on their freedom from any vice or bad habit, what are they, often, but puppets swayed by absurd influences radiating from such sources as the loss of a night's rest, the delay of a meal, the failure to reach a certain train?

Children and pets are well-known tyrants, not only to the mother or the maiden aunt, but to the male creation in general and the old generation in particular. The grandfather is ready at all times to be made a hobby-horse, the grandmother to drudge for king baby. The children's dinner is the event of the day; Harry's destructiveness of his first pair and all following pairs of trousers is the burden of the household lament; little Cissy's first tooth is a matter of deep interest; baby Maggie is allowed to pull mother's hair down just before dinner, unrebuked--nay, even encouraged. Pet poodles and favorite parrots, and, indeed, all tame companions of mankind, absorb a wonderful amount of human interest and attention, and often demand it at unseasonable hours; compelling idleness, or at least encouraging loss of time. In fact, our time and mind are ever occupied with supplementary things, forced upon us by custom or caprice; and we secretly but helplessly rebel, incapable, we think, of either resistance to our own follies, or courage to laugh in the face of Mrs. Grundy.

It is impossible to stand absolutely free in the world, but there is freedom and freedom. Of all freedoms, that of the free-thinker is the narrowest. Uncertainty is a grievous spirit, doubt a bad master; and the poor free-thinker finds that his mental companion and philosophic guide offers him but slight comfort under misfortune. Moral restraints are to him but chaff in the wind, religious forms mere dust shaken off his shoes; but what remains? He deems himself king of the world of thought, but he finds his kingdom turned into a desert; he acknowledges no ties or duties, undertakes no responsibility, works (if he works) for himself alone, and then finds that what he earns he cannot enjoy unshared. Temporary human companionship on earth has no charms for him; for he reflects that annihilation follows death, and it is therefore useless to make bosom friends of men who will so soon be less than nothing, and whose only memento will be in the richness of the crops grown over their graves. The mental solitude of the free-thinker is not an agreeable or a soothing one; much less is it fruitful in high thoughts or heroic actions.

If any ask in an earnest spirit, where are the fewest masters, and where freest men?--we would answer, in the cloister.

A startling answer to the worldling; a suggestive one to the thinker. Let us examine it, and see whether it can be substantiated. Religious are the men supposed to be the most subjected to authority in the world--those whose duty it is to have not only no will of their own, but even no individual thought, no opinion of any kind. Even so, in a sense; and on that account, not despite it, _but because of it_, are they the freest men on earth. The secular clergy are comparatively free, because they have one object only; that is, one Master. Priests are not burdened with family and household cares, scarcely with social necessities; but none the less are they sometimes vexed by circumstances which they cannot control, and are made to pay the tithe of that slavery which any contact with the world, even for the world's good, and by men who are not of the world, necessarily entails. Religious even of active orders are still freer, because they are less of the world; but the man who stands before God in silent contemplation, as the eagle pauses before the sun and looks into its depths, is the freest of all. A purely contemplative order, whose mission, higher yet than that of the captains of Israel, is that of Moses praying with uplifted arms for the triumph of the people of God--such is the home of the highest and truest freedom.

The ascetic has found the secret that philosophers seek for in vain, that attitude of godlike calm in the midst of all transient storms of life. The supremest exercise of freedom is to surrender that freedom itself, with full confidence that the person into whose hands it is surrendered is the representative of a higher power. A king would not be free were he prevented from abdicating his kingship; the religious vow is the abdication of a kingdom greater than is constituted by so many thousands of square miles. This renunciation once made, no earthly event can be of the slightest interest to the disenthralled man. No care for his body, no solicitude for his reputation, remains; he has disrobed himself of his earthly belongings, and let slip every vestige of the garments of worldliness. A spirit--practically almost disembodied--he looks above for inspiration, comfort, guidance, knowledge. The miseries of earth, if poured into his ear by some despairing fellow-mortal, gain from him the divine pity of an angel rather than the passionate sympathy of a man; he is raised above the wants of nature, the wrangles of society, even the perplexities of the intellect. Taught no longer by men or by books, he speaks face to face with God in his long prayers and meditations, and no human interest ever distracts his mind from this exalted colloquy. Insensible to the influences of time, place, and circumstance, he is still as free as air when hunted from his retreat by men to whom his whole life is an enigma; the oracle speaks to him in the midst of a crowd, and he no more hears the murmur of those around him than if he were at sea, a thousand miles from land; a palace, a prison, or a scaffold are all reproductions of his cell, for the same all-filling Presence surrounds him, blinding him to all else. His indifference is so galling to his enemies, his freedom so mysterious and so provoking, that they would rather put him to death than witness the unutterable calm they can neither disturb nor emulate; but that death is only the one more step needed for his perfect bliss--the one veil to be yet lifted between the ascetic philosopher and the freedom that taught him his philosophy.

Serene land of passionless perfection, which men call the monastic life! How many, even among religious, scale thy furthermost heights? Yet it is a consolation to mankind to know that there _is_, even on earth, a sanctuary where human nature, be it only represented by ever so few, can reach to that ideal state of perfect communion with God and perfect contempt of all trammels which alone should be dignified with the name of philosophy.

A LOOKER-BACK.

"For as he forward mov'd his footing old So backward still was turn'd his wrinkled face."--_Faerie Queene._

There are some people in the world who, like the sad mourners that come up through Dante's hollow vale with heads reversed, have not the power to see before them. Their eyes are always peering into the past, they go groping in the dim twilight of bygone days; they wander off the highway of ordinary life, till they lose their place in its sphere; they have no knowledge but legendary lore, no wisdom but that of past generations. And when, by some accident, they cross the current of the present age, they grasp at the very first relic of the past as a link with the receding shore.

It was such a one that found himself adrift on the high tide at Charing Cross--which Dr. Johnson so loved; and, amazed and confused by the incessant, tumultuous flow of a life in which he had no part, took refuge in the thousand sanctuaries of the past to be found in London. Belonging by a peculiar grace, as one born out of due time, to the ancient church--for ever ancient, for ever new!--he turned particularly to those old Catholic foundations around which cluster so many associations, at once religious, historical, and poetic. Having read of them from childhood, and learned to connect them with the past glory of the church, and familiar with all the romantic and legendary lore concerning them, when he found himself in their midst his heart and soul and imagination were at once aflame. It was then to such places as Westminster Abbey, Christ's Hospital, the Charter-House, and the Temple that his heart instinctively turned on his arrival in London.

Not that he actually visited them first. The Divine Presence, alas! no longer dwells in them incarnate; and it was of course, as became one with pilgrim-staff and scallop-shell, to the foot of the Tabernacle he hastened, the first time he issued from his lodgings, to offer up his prayer of thanksgiving to _Jésus-Hostie_ for a safe voyage across the Atlantic. But at his very threshold he could see a spot associated with many terrible memories, marked by a stone: "Here stood Tyburn Gate." Here the last prior of the Charter-House was executed, and Robert Southwell, the Jesuit poet of Queen Elizabeth's time, whose last words were expressive of his attachment to the Society of Jesus and his happiness to suffer martyrdom. Many others, too, of religious and historic memory, ascended here from earth to heaven. Close beside the spot is the Marble Arch of Hyde Park. "Beyond Hyde Park all is a desert!" said our pilgrim with Sir Fopling Flutter, glad to be diverted from memories too sad for one's first impressions of a foreign city. Two serene-looking "Little Sisters of the Poor," providentially crossing the path, directed him to the French chapel--a modest sanctuary, but where such men as Lacordaire, De Ravignan, and other distinguished French pulpit-orators have been heard. The way thither was through Portman Square, once the property of the Knights of S. John of Jerusalem. Here the celebrated Mrs. Montague once lived. In one corner of the square stands apart--in a large yard, a square old-fashioned brick house with an immense portico in front, and a two-story bow window at the end--one of those houses that we at once feel have a history. This is Montague House, where Mrs. Montague used to give an annual dinner to the London chimney-sweeps, "that they might enjoy one happy day in the year"--a house frequented by the literary celebrities of the time--where Miss Burney was welcomed, and Ursa Major grew tame.

A short distance from the French chapel is the Spanish church, dedicated to S. James, with its S. Mary's aisle lighted from above, giving a fine _chiaro-oscuro_ effect to the edifice. It was pleasant to find an altar to the glorious Patron of Spain in a city where he was once so venerated, and whose name has been given to one of its social extremes. The devotion of the English to S. Jago di Compostella was extraordinary in the Middle Ages. So general was it, that the Constable of the Tower, in the time of Edward II., used to receive a custom of two-pence from each pilgrim to Spain going or returning by the Thames. Rymer mentions 916 licenses to visitors to that shrine in the year 1428, and 2,460 in 1434. And here, in this modern English church, is a statue of the saint, with the scallop-shell on his cape, first assumed by pilgrims to Compostella as a token that they had extended their penitential wanderings to that sainted shore. English Catholics of the olden time seemed to have had a special love for pilgrimages, and we hail a renewed taste for such a devotion as a revival of the spirit of the past.

It was the good fortune of our modern pilgrim to hear the Archbishop of Westminster preach a few days after in the Spanish church on the state of the soul after death--a preacher that harmonizes at once with the past and the present--full of sympathy with the present, full of the spirit of the past. A S. Jerome from his cave, a S. Anthony from the desert! is the first thought, and his wonderfully solemn style of preaching is in harmony with his ascetic appearance. Nothing could be more impressive and affecting. Neither did our wanderer forget the ivy-clad oratory at Kensington, still perfumed with holy memories of F. Faber. He felt the need of thanking him here for the thousand precious words he had spoken to his soul through his beautiful hymns and invaluable works on the inner life; soothing it in sorrow, and arming it against the transitory evils of life. Such evils follow every one, even the pilgrim, and it was good to repeat here Faber's lines:

"These surface troubles come and go Like rufflings of the sea; The deeper depth is out of reach To all, my God, but thee!"

What a round of sweet devotions in this church, with the taper-lighted oratory of Mary Most Pure! Oh! how near to heaven one gets there!--the beautiful shrine-like chapel of S. Philip Neri, and the solemn Calvary where, between the two thieves, the Divine Image is outstretched on the huge cross, embalming the wood--

"Image meet Of One uplifted high to turn And draw to him all hearts in bondage sweet."

Many pious hearts seem drawn here to meditate on the Passion, and, one after another, go up to kiss the blood-stained cross. Oh! how many ways the church has of leading the soul to God! Guido declared he had two hundred ways of making the eyes look up to heaven. The church has many more with its multiplied popular devotions, each peculiarly adapted to some cast of soul. It would be heaven enough below to have a cell somewhere near this sweet school of S. Philip's sons and the beautiful altars they have set up.

While thus gratifying the devotional instincts of his heart, some religious monument of bygone ages was constantly falling in our pilgrim's way. How could he pass S. Pancras-in-the-Fields without falling into prayer, as Windham in his diary tells us Dr. Johnson did, recalling the Catholic martyrs burnt here at the stake in Queen Elizabeth's time? The bell of S. Pancras--O funeral note of woe!--was the last to ring for Mass in England at the time of the so-called Reformation. A wonder it did not break in twain as it sounded that last elevation of the Host! Has it ever uttered one joyful note since that sad morn, when the altars were stripped, the lights one by one put sorrowfully out, and the Divine Presence faded away? No, no; it has the saddest tone of any bell in London, at least to the Catholic ear. As it was here he was laid away, it is no wonder that faithful Catholics, down to the present century, were in the habit of coming to S. Pancras at early morning hour to seek some trace of their buried Lord. Perhaps he sometimes appeared to such devout souls, as of old to his Mother and Magdalen. It is certain that, at least, he spoke to their hearts as they lingered here to pray--pray that he might rise again! And here they wished to rest after death, till they were again allowed to have a cemetery apart. This was the burial-place of the Howards and Cliffords, and others of high lineage, both foreign and native. One old friend lies here, John Walker--well known from his _Dictionary_, once extensively used in America, a convert to the Catholic Church, and a friend of Dr. Milner's, who calls him "the Guido d'Arezzo of elocution, who discovered the scale of speaking sounds by which reading and delivery have been reduced to a system."

S. Pancras was once a popular saint. The boy-martyr of Rome, whose blood was shed in the cause of truth, was regarded in the middle ages as the avenger of false oaths. The kings of France used to confirm treaties in his name. The English, with their natural abhorrence of lying, so honored him as to give his name to one of the oldest churches in London. Cardinal Wiseman has popularized his memory in these days through _Fabiola_.

Again, what a flood of recollections comes over the pilgrim in passing through Temple Bar, or going across London Bridge, first built by the pious brothers of S. Mary's Monastery in 994. The old bishops and monks were truly the _pontifices_ of the middle ages--not only as builders of

"The invisible bridge That leads from earth to heaven,"

but good substantial arches of stone over stream and flood. The Pont Royal over the Seine was built by a Dominican. So was the Carraja at Florence. The old bridges of Spain were mostly due to the clergy.

Bridge-building was esteemed a good work in those times, and prayers were offered for those engaged in it. At the bidding of the beads, the faithful were thus invited: "Masters and frendes, ye shall praye for all them that bridges and streets make and amend, that God grant us part of their good deeds, and them of ours."

London Bridge was rebuilt of stone nearly two centuries later. Peter of S. Mary's, Colechurch, began it. Henry II. gave towards it the tax on wool, which led to the saying that "London Bridge was built on wool-packs." Peter did not live to complete it. That was done by Isenbert, master of the schools at Xainctes--a builder of bridges in his own country. He finished London Bridge in 1280. Near the middle of it was a Gothic chapel, dedicated to S. Thomas à Becket, and under the wool-packs--that is to say, in the crypt--a tomb was hollowed out of a pier of the bridge for Peter of Colechurch. When this pier was removed in 1832, his remains were found where they had lain nearly six hundred years. On the Gate-house of London Bridge was hung the head of Sir William Wallace. Bishop Fisher's (of Rochester) was hung here the very day his cardinal's hat arrived at Dover; and two weeks after, that of his friend, Sir Thomas More. Here, too, were suspended the heads of F. Garnet, of the Society of Jesus, and scores of Catholic priests in Queen Elizabeth's time.

Yes, London is full of Catholic memories. Bridewell, Bedlam, Mincing Lane, Tooley St., and many more are names of Catholic origin, now corrupted, the derivation of which it is pleasant to recall as they meet the eye. One strolls through Paternoster Row, and Ave Maria Lane, and by Amen Corner, out of love for their very names, reminding us of the Catholic processions around Old S. Paul's. Shall it be confessed?--profaner thoughts here mingle with such memories. Passing through Paternoster Row, one naturally looks up, expecting to see the splendid Mrs. Bungay come forth to take her drive with a look of defiance at the chaise-less Mrs. Bacon at the opposite window!

Not far from here is Christ's Hospital, so familiar to us all through Lamb, Coleridge, and Leigh Hunt. It is at once recognized by the bust of Edward VI. over the entrance. It is pleasant to be allowed to wander through the arcades and quadrangles at one's pleasure, with no guide to disturb the delightful memories evoked by such a place. Going into a quadrangle, surrounded by a kind of cloister hung with memorial tablets, the first thing noticed is a marble slab on the wall to the right, inscribed:

"In memory of the Rev. James Boyer, who for many years was head grammar-master of this Hospital. He died July 28, 1814, aged seventy-nine years."

One could not help pausing to read and copy this tribute to so old an acquaintance. To be sure, "J. B. had a heavy hand," which was rather too familiar with a rod of fearful omen, but he ground out some fine scholars, and has been immortalized by the great geniuses that expanded under his tuition. I can see Master Boyer now, as Charles Lamb describes him, calling upon the boys with a sardonic grin to see how neat and fresh his rod looked!--see him in his passy, or passionate wig, make a precipitate entry into the school-room from his inner den, and, with his knotty fist doubled up, and a turbulent eye, single out some unhappy boy, roaring: "Od's my life, sirrah! I have a mind to whip you"; and then, with a sudden retracting impulse, return to his lair, and, after a lapse of some moments, drive out headlong again with the context which the poor boy almost hoped was forgotten: "And I _will_, too!"--treating the trembling culprit to a sandwich of alternate lash and paragraph till his _rabidus furor_ was assuaged.

Lamb, in his delightful essay, _Recollections of Christ's Hospital_, dwells on some of his fellow-pupils whose memory one cannot help recalling while lingering under these arches. And chief among them, "Samuel Taylor Coleridge, logician, metaphysician, bard--who in these cloisters unfolded in deep and sweet intonations the mysteries of Jamblichus or Plotinus, or recited Homer in his Greek, or Pindar, while the walls of the old Grey Friars re-echoed to the accents of the inspired charity boy." He tells us, too, of Thomas Fanshawe Middleton, "a scholar and a gentleman in his teens," but said afterwards to have borne his mitre rather high as the first Protestant bishop of Calcutta, though a more humble and apostolic bearing "might not have been exactly fitted to impress the minds of those Anglo-Asiatic diocesans with reverence for home institutions and the church which such fathers watered." There is a monument to the memory of Bishop Middleton at S. Paul's, where he is represented, in his robes of office, in the act of confirming two East Indians, but the hand raised over their heads has all the fingers broken off but one. Let us hope what apostolic authority he possessed was centred in that digit!

Above all, at Christ's Hospital one recalls the gentle Elia himself. Perhaps in yonder dim corner he furtively ate the griskin brought from the paternal kitchen by his aunt. "I remember the good old relative," he says (in whom love forbade pride), "squatting down upon some odd stone in a by-nook of the cloisters, disclosing the viands (of higher regale than those cates which the ravens ministered to the Tishbite), and the contending passions of L. at the unfolding. There was love for the bringer, shame for the thing brought and the manner of its bringing."

Under these pillared arches, so shadowy to-day with the heavy London fog, Richardson perhaps conceived his first dramatic scenes, and Leigh Hunt began to weave the delicious fancies that have since charmed us all. Yonder was the dormitory the young ass was smuggled into, which waxed fat, and proclaimed his good fortune to the world below, setting concealment any longer at defiance.

While thus musing, an instalment of the eight hundred boys at the Hospital came out to their sports in their quaint costume of black breeches, long yellow stockings to the knees, and a dark-blue gown down to the heels, garnished with bright buttons bearing the likeness of Edward VI., and confined by a leather belt. White bands at the neck give them a clerical look by no means at variance with so monastic a place. They had innocent, open faces, such as we find in our monastic schools, reminding one of Pope Gregory's well-known exclamation: "_Non Angli sed angeli._" They tucked up their skirts and betook themselves most heartily to their sports. It was queer to see their long yellow-stockinged legs flying across the quadrangle. They have caps, it is said, about the size of a saucer, which they dislike so much that they prefer going bare-headed, but they did not mind the fog, now almost amounting to rain. Children, we all know, are, as Lamb says, "proof against weather, ingratitude, meat under-done, and every weapon of fate." One of them stopped to pump some water for the visitor to offer as a libation to the memory of Charles Lamb.

"Pierian spring!" scornfully shouted Master Boyer to a young writer of a classical turn: "the cloister pump, you mean!"

The school-room visited bore marks that would have done credit to a Yankee jack-knife, and revived pleasant reminiscences of youthful achievements in a New England school-house. The chapel, too, with its mural tablets, and flag tombstones, and painted window, of Christ blessing little children, is interesting. At the right of the chancel is a remnant of old monastic charity. An inscription in yellow letters on a claret-colored ground announces that "the bread here given weekly to the poor of the parish of S. Leonard's is from a bequest of Sir John Trott and other benefactors," and on the other side in equally glaring characters: "Praise be to thee, O Lord God, for this thy gift unto the poor!" There is rather a more amusing inscription of a similar nature at S. Giles', Cripplegate, opposite the monument to Milton:

"This Bvsbie, willing to reeleve the poore with fire and withe breade, Did give that howse whearein he dyed then called ye Queene's heade, Fovr fvlle loades of ye best charcoales he wovld have brovght each yeare, And fortie dosen of wheaten breade for poore howseholders heare: To see these thinges distribvted this Bvsby pvt in trvst The Vicar and Chvrch wardenes thinking them to be IVST: God grant that poore howseholders here may thankfvll be for svch, So God will move the mindes of moe to doe for them as mvch: And let this good example move svch men as God hath blest To doe the like before they goe with Bvsby to there rest: Within this chappell Bvsbie's bones in dvst a while mvst stay, Till He that made them rayse them vp to live with Christ for aye."

The said Busby is represented above this curious inscription, in bold relief, as a be-ruffed man of jovial type, holding a bottle in one hand, and a death's-head in the other, so that one does not know whether to laugh or cry. It would be more reasonable to cry over the grave of that dreadful prevaricator Fox, called the Martyrologist, said to be buried in the same church, only one does not know where to weep, as the precise spot is not known. So one has to be satisfied with sighing before a huge stone set up to his memory at the end of the church, and thinking with Lessing that "if the world is to be held together by lies, the old ones which are already current are as good as the new." What a pity Fox had not belonged to S. Pancras' parish! However, that saint seems to have kept an eye on him, and avenged the cause of truth. We do not suppose there are many now who are credulous enough to accept Fox as reliable authority concerning the history of those sad times. And if we stop to look at his tablet here, it is with something of the same feeling that we turn down Fetter Lane to see where "Praise God Barebones" and his brother "Damned Barebones" lived, and wonder how any one house could hold them both.

But to return to Christ's Hospital. It must not be supposed that, meanwhile, it has been forgotten that this institution was originally a Catholic foundation. It was the first thought at entering, nor could the pleasant associations of later years prevent a regret that so monastic a building is no longer peopled by the old Grey Friars. Keats' lines recurred to memory:

"Mute is the matin bell whose early call Warned the Grey fathers from their humble beds; Nor midnight taper gleams along the wall, Or round the sculptured saint its radiance sheds!"

It was on the second of February, 1224, during the pontificate of Honorius III. and the reign of King Henry III., S. Francis of Assisi being still alive, that a small band of Franciscan friars landed at Dover. There were four priests and five lay-brothers. Five of this number stopped at Canterbury to found a house, and the remainder came on to London. The simplicity of their manners and mode of life made them popular at once, and they speedily acquired the means of building a house and church. Among other benefactors, John Ewin, or Iwin, a citizen of London, gave them an estate, as he says in the deed of conveyance, "for the health of my soul, in pure and perpetual alms," and became a lay-brother in the house, leaving behind him, when he died, a holy memory as a strict and devout observer of the rule. A large church adapted to their wants was completed in the year 1327, and dedicated to "the honor of God and our alone Saviour Jesus Christ." It was three hundred feet long, eighty-nine feet broad, and seventy-four feet high. Queen Margaret gave two thousand marks towards it, and the first stone was laid in her name. John of Brittany, Earl of Richmond, and his niece, the Countess of Pembroke, gave the hangings, vestments, and sacred vessels. Isabella, the mother of Edward III., and Philippa, his queen, also gave money for its completion. The thirty-six windows were the gifts of various charitable persons. The western window, being destroyed in a gale, was restored by Edward III., "for the repose of the soul" of his mother, who had just been buried before the choir. In 1380, Margaret, Countess of Norfolk, erected new stalls in the choir, at a cost of three hundred and fifty marks. Many nobles were buried here--four queens, four duchesses, four countesses, one duke, two earls, eight barons, thirty-five knights--in all, six hundred and sixty-three persons of quality. Among them was Margaret, the second wife of Edward I., and granddaughter of S. Louis, King of France. She was buried before the high altar. In the choir lay Isabella, wife of Edward II.--

"She-wolf of France with unrelenting fangs, Who tore the bowels of her mangled mate"--

beneath a monument of alabaster, with the heart of her murdered husband on her breast! Near her lay her daughter Joanna, wife of Edward Bruce of Scotland. Here too was buried Lady Venitia Digby, so celebrated for her beauty, the wife of Sir Kenelm Digby, who erected over her a monument of black marble.

In the middle ages the great ones of the world, at the approach of death, the all-leveller, feeling the nothingness of earthly grandeur and riches, often sought to be buried among Christ's poor ones, and not unfrequently in their habit, not thinking "in Franciscan weeds to pass disguised," but as an act of faith in the evangelical counsels, and a recognition of the importance of being clothed with Christ's righteousness. It was a public confession that the vain garments they had worn in the world had been as poisonous to them as the tunic Hercules put on. Dante laid down to die in the cowl and mantle of a Franciscan. Cervantes was buried in the same habit. Louis of Orleans, who was murdered by the Duke of Burgundy, was buried among the Celestin monks in the habit of their order. Anne of Brittany, twice Queen of France, wore the scapular of the Carmelites, and wished it to be sent with her heart in a golden box to her beloved Bretons.

The Grey Friars' church was destroyed at the great fire, and the monastery greatly injured. There are still some portions of it remaining, however, which are at once recognized. Some of the books of the old monastic library are still preserved--a library founded by Sir Richard Whittington, thrice Lord Mayor of London, the hero of the nursery rhyme, to whom the Bowbells sounded so auspiciously. He laid the foundation of this library in 1421, and gave four hundred pounds towards furnishing it. The remainder of the books were given, or collected by one of the friars.

It seems that, after all, Edward VI. was not the founder of the modern institution of Christ's Hospital. He merely gave it its name, and added to the endowment. When the monastery was suppressed by his father, it was given to the municipality of London, and the city authorities conceived the idea of converting it into a refuge for poor children. It was chiefly endowed by the citizens themselves, though aided by grants from Henry VIII. and Edward VI.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

THE LIFE OF S. ALPHONSUS LIGUORI. By a Member of the Order of Mercy. New York: P. O'Shea. 1873.

THE LIFE OF THE SAME. By the Rt. Rev. J. Mullock, D.D., Bishop of Newfoundland. New York: P. J. Kenedy. 1873.

S. Alphonsus has never found a perfectly competent biographer, and perhaps never will. F. Tannoja has written full and minute memoirs, containing all the facts and events of his life, but he wrote under the fear of the Neapolitan censorship, and could not speak openly of the miserable infidel Tanucci and the other Jansenists and infidels, or faithless Catholics, of the wretched period in which the saint lived, and the corrupt court with which he had to contend. Moreover, Tannoja had not a sufficiently elevated and comprehensive mind to be able to appreciate and describe the life and times of S. Alphonsus in their higher and broader relations. The Oratorian translation of his life is a most wretched and shabby affair in respect to style and accuracy. The religious lady who has prepared the first of the lives placed at the head of this notice has therefore done a very great service to the Catholic public by compiling a careful and readable biography from the other earlier works of the kind, and adding some interesting particulars concerning the history of the modern Redemptorists.

Bishop Mullock's life of the saint is quite brief and compendious, but of the best quality so far as it goes. The publisher has made a great blunder in omitting the title of Doctor of the Universal Church, which has been given to S. Alphonsus since Dr. Mullock's life was first published, on the title-page.

Archbishop Manning, who has given, though in brief form, the best appreciation of the character and work of the great doctor which we have seen, truly says that S. Ignatius, S. Charles, and S. Alphonsus are the three great modern leaders of the church in her warfare. As one of this great trio, S. Alphonsus deserves to be universally known and honored among the faithful, and we rejoice in the publication of the biography compiled by the accomplished Sister of Mercy as the best we have in English, wishing it a wide circulation, as a means of promoting devotion to the latest of the doctors and one of the greatest of the saints.

LIVES OF THE IRISH SAINTS. Vol. I., No. 1. By Rev. John O'Hanlon. Dublin: Duffy & Co.

It is not often that we have the privilege of noticing such a work as this--the labor of a lifetime, the history of a whole nation's sanctity. Since Alban Butler, no such hagiographer as F. O'Hanlon has appeared, nor has any work on hagiology so full of interest and importance been given to the world. Up to this time the saints of Ireland, with few exceptions, were hidden saints; of the three or four thousand souls who have shed upon her the light of their sanctity, and earned for her the glorious title of the "Island of Saints," the world knew scarcely anything. It was in vain that the ancient annalists compiled voluminous records for the benefit of posterity; those that escaped the hands of the spoiler were left unexamined, and the learned of the nation seemed to have forgotten that their country had a holy and heroic past, whose history it was their sacred duty to look into and perpetuate. No attention was given to traditions of bygone days; no light was thrown upon them; they were fast becoming dim and obscure, and what was, in reality, fact, the rising generation was beginning to regard as fable. This neglect, so ruinous, and even criminal, might have gone on till it became irreparable, had not this learned and devoted priest undertaken the great task of redeeming the past of Erin's sanctity from the oblivion into which it was rapidly sinking. How carefully he prepared himself, and how well qualified he is to perform this labor of patriotism and love, the first number of his work gives ample proof. His acquaintance with Irish lore, his erudition and research, his fine style, all combine to make him the fittest person that could have engaged in so great a work.

Were we disposed to find fault with him at all, we should say he is rather critical; at least, we fancy we perceive in him a tendency to conform to the critical spirit of the age, which perhaps is prudent, after all, and may enhance the historical value of the work, though it will mar somewhat, we think, the poetic beauty it ought to possess.

No literary effort has yet been attempted that appeals so strongly to the national and religious sentiments of the Irish people; and none should receive so large a share of their interest and support. F. O'Hanlon's _Lives of the Irish Saints_, when completed, will be a noble monument to Erin's faith and Erin's glory, to which his countrymen in every land should feel proud to contribute; the appreciation that he meets with may encourage others to enter the comparatively unexplored mine of Irish history, and bring to light the treasures it contains.

We learn that F. O'Hanlon, who is a citizen of the United States, has copyrighted the work here, and it is to be hoped will make arrangements for its reissue in this country. Meanwhile, intending subscribers may address the author directly, or order the book through "The Catholic Publication Society," New York. It will be published serially, and the American price is fifty cents per number.

JESUITS IN CONFLICT; OR, HISTORIC FACTS illustrative of the Labors and Sufferings of the English Mission and Province of the Society of Jesus in the Times of Queen Elizabeth and her Successors. By a Member of the Society of Jesus. London: Burns & Oates. 1873. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

Another publication throwing light on the period of the Elizabethan persecution of Catholics, and more especially on the part borne by the Jesuits themselves in this heroic struggle. So many books have appeared lately on this subject that we may almost say that a new branch of Catholic literature has been opened in the English language. The "getting up" of this book is worthy of the subject, and we rejoice that it is so; for, to take a simile from a passage in this very volume, we may say with truth of the outward appearance of a book in these times what the holy lay-brother, Thomas Pounde, considered his rich dress in prison to be: "A means of inspiring Catholics with greater courage, and conciliating authority" (p. 42). The history of the three confessors of the faith, Thomas Pounde, George Gilbert, and F. Darbyshire, is very interesting. In the two former we have examples of lay sanctity and constancy, as distinguished from that of priests, though both saints were in heart members of the Society of Jesus, to which one was affiliated by extraordinary dispensation of the ordinary novitiate, and the other received the habit and pronounced his vows _in articulo mortis_. Thomas Pounde, of Belmont, a man of old family and high connections, had all the burning zeal of a convert whose soul had narrowly escaped the everlasting infamy of the life of a court minion. Not only his fearlessness and constancy, but his high intellectual attainments, claim our attention. Thirty years of perpetual imprisonment had not enfeebled his mind, and his one desire was a public disputation with his adversaries, nay, "with Beza and all the doctors of Geneva," if it pleased his foes to reinforce themselves with such noted aid. In a lengthy paper, written in 1580 to show that the Bible alone is not the true rule of faith, he brings forward the same reasons which we hear so much about in our day, and after specially dwelling on the many articles of universally held Christian faith that are _not_ directly and plainly traceable to Scripture, he says pointedly: "Do not these blind guides, think you, lead a trim daunce towards infidelitie?" He could not have spoken otherwise had he meant his apology for the XIXth instead of the XVIth century.

George Gilbert, also of a good English family, was one of those rich men who, in truth, make themselves the stewards of the Lord. With him originated the useful and ingenious Catholic Association, in which young men of the world bound themselves to become the temporal guides, helpers, couriers, furnishers of the priests who labored spiritually for the conversion of England. The companion of F. Parsons, as Pounde had been of F. Campion, he, too, was a convert not only from courtly vanities, but from actual Calvinism. Ardently desiring martyrdom, he nevertheless embraced obediently and lovingly the cross of a "sluggish death in bed"; but at least the pain of exile had been added to imprisonment, for he was banished from his native land, and died at Rome in 1583. His whole substance was offered to the service of God, and what little remained at his death he left to the Society for the spiritual needs of his country. It was not till he lay upon his death-bed that he pronounced his vows.

F. Darbyshire was as learned as he was zealous. While in France preparing for his perilous English mission, he refused the honors of the pulpit and the professorial chair, and confined himself to giving catechetical instruction; but God so rewarded his humility that grave scholars and theologians would flock to hear him, and make notes of the wonderful learning he displayed, while they admired the eloquence he could not hide. He and his friend, F. Henry Tichborne, might well congratulate themselves, later on, on the holy efficacy of persecution, which had caused the "confluence of the rares and bestes wittes of our nation to the seminaries," and of the happy increase in the number of fervent inmates of the foreign seminaries They descant, too, on the unwise policy of persecution, and the fact that no religion was ever permanently established by the sword. The faith might have been reft of one of its greatest glories in England had not a short-sighted fanaticism resorted to violent means to uproot it. F. Darbyshire died in exile in France in 1604, in the very same place, Pont-à-Mousson, where he had so signally distinguished himself for learning and for modesty in the beginning of his apostolate.

This book is written in simple, Saxon style. The author trusts rather to facts than to rhetoric, just as of old the acts of the martyrs were chronicled without much comment, whether descriptive or panegyrical. The volume bears "First Series" on its title-page, as a promise that it is but the prelude to other biographies as interesting. Let us hope that the promise will be speedily fulfilled.

THE LIFE OF THE BLESSED JOHN BERCHMANS. By Francis Goldie, S.J. (F. Coleridge's Quarterly Series, Vol. VII.) London: Burns & Oates. 1873. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

At last we have in English a biography of this angelic imitator of S. Aloysius, as charming as himself. The other lives we have seen are edifying but tedious. This one is equally edifying, but as fascinating as a romance, and published in an attractive style. It is specially adapted for the reading of young people.

LECTURES UPON THE DEVOTION TO THE MOST SACRED HEART OF JESUS CHRIST. By the Very Rev. T. S. Preston, V.G. New York: Robert Coddington. 1874.

We cannot do more than call attention to the publication of this work, just issued as we go to press. It embraces stenographic reports of four extempore lectures by the pastor of St. Ann's, New York, upon a subject of special interest at this time. In an appendix is given the pastoral of the archbishop and bishops, announcing the consecration of all the dioceses of this province to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus; together with a Novena, from the French of L. J. Hallez.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XVIII., No. 108.--MARCH, 1874.[249]

JOHN STUART MILL.[250]

In 1764, Hume met, at the house of Baron d'Holbach, a party of the most celebrated Frenchmen of that day; and the Scotchman took occasion to introduce a discussion concerning the existence of an atheist, in the strict sense of the word; for his own part, he said, he had never chanced to meet with one. "You have been unfortunate," replied Holbach; "but at the present moment you are sitting at table with seventeen of them."

Whether or not the leading men among the positivists and cosmists of England to-day are prepared to be as frank as the Baron d'Holbach, we shall not venture to say; at all events, John Stuart Mill, to whom they all looked up with the reverence of disciples for the master, has taken care that the world should not remain in doubt concerning his opinions on this subject, which, of all others, is of the deepest interest to man. Among those who in this century have labored most earnestly to propagate an atheistic philosophy, based on the assumption that the human mind is incapable of knowing aught beyond relations, he certainly holds a place of distinction, and, as a representative of what is called scientific atheism, the history of his opinions is worthy of serious attention.

It was known some time before his death that he had written an autobiography; and when it was announced that his step-daughter, Miss Taylor, whom he had made his literary executrix, was about to publish the work, the attention of at least those who take interest in the profounder controversies of the age was awakened.

As an autobiography, the book has but little merit; though this should not be insisted on, since success in writing of this kind is extremely rare. If it is almost as difficult in any case to write a life well as to spend it well, when one attempts to become the historian of his own life, there is every probability that he will either be ridiculous or uninteresting. Mill, too, it must be conceded, had but poor material at his command. His life was uneventful, uninviting even, in its surroundings; and when the patchwork of his philosophical opinions is taken away, there is little left in it that is not wholly commonplace.

He was born in London, in 1806, and was the eldest son of James Mill, who was a charity student of divinity at the University of Edinburgh, but, becoming disgusted with the doctrines of Presbyterianism, gave up all idea of studying for the ministry, and in a short while renounced Christian faith, and became an avowed atheist, though his atheism was negative; his belief in what is called the relativity of knowledge not justifying him in affirming positively that there is no God, but only in holding that the human mind can never know whether there be a God or not. He, however, did not stop here, but, scandalized by the suffering which is everywhere in the world, forgot his own principles, and maintained that it is absurd to suppose that such a world is the work of an infinitely perfect being, and was rather inclined to accept the Manichean theory of a good and evil principle, struggling against each other for the government of the universe. But of God, as revealed in Christ, he had a hatred as satanical as that of Voltaire.

"I have a hundred times heard him say," writes his son, "that all ages and nations have represented their gods as wicked, in a constantly increasing progression; that mankind have gone on, adding trait after trait, till they reached the most perfect conception of wickedness which the human mind can devise, and have called this God, and prostrated themselves before it. This _ne plus ultra_ of wickedness he considered to be embodied in what is commonly presented to mankind as the creed of Christianity."[251] In other words--for Mill can mean nothing less--he held that the character of Christ, as portrayed in the Gospel, is the highest possible conception of all that is depraved and repulsive; that Christ, instead of being incarnate God, is the essence of wickedness clothed in bodily form; that, compared with him, or at least with the God whom he called his father, Moloch, Astarte, Jupiter, Venus, Mars, and Bacchus are pure divinities; and from the manner in which the son narrates these opinions of his father, he evidently desires that we should infer that they are also his own.

The elder Mill, who seems to have been a natural pedagogue, took the education of his son exclusively into his own hands, and was most careful not to allow him to acquire any impressions contrary to his own sentiments respecting religion. Instead of teaching him to believe that God created the heavens and the earth, he taught him to believe that we can know nothing whatever of the manner in which the world came into existence, and that the question, "Who made you?" is one which cannot be answered, since we possess no authentic information on the subject.

To show, however, his father's conviction of the logical connection between Protestantism and infidelity, he records that he taught him to take the strongest interest in the Reformation, "as the great and decisive contest against priestly tyranny for liberty of thought."

"I am thus," he adds, "one of the very few examples in this country of one who has not thrown off religious belief, but never had it; I grew up in a negative state with regard to it."[252]

How he could grow up in a negative condition with regard to religion is not easily understood when we consider that his father instilled into his mind from his earliest years the doctrine that the very essence of religion is evil, since it is, and ever has been, worship paid to the demon, the highest possible conception of wickedness; though he was at the same time careful to impress upon him the duty of concealing his belief on this subject; and this lesson of parental prudence was, as the younger Mill himself informs us, attended with some moral disadvantages.[253]

These moral disadvantages, in his own opinion at least, were without positive influence upon his character, since through the whole book there runs the tacit assumption of his own perfect goodness. I am an atheist, he seems to say, and yet I am a saint; and he is evidently persuaded that his own life is sufficient proof that the notion that unbelief is generally connected with bad qualities either of mind or heart is merely a vulgar prejudice.

"The world would be astonished," he informs us, "if it knew how great a proportion of its brightest ornaments, of those most distinguished even in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue, are complete sceptics in religion.... But the best of them (unbelievers), as no one who has had opportunities of really knowing them will hesitate to affirm, are more genuinely religious, in the best sense of the word religion, than those who exclusively arrogate to themselves the title."[254]

This is probably not more extravagant than the assertion that the God of Christianity is the embodiment of all that is fiendish and wicked.

We cannot, however, pass so lightly over this portion of Mill's book, or dismiss without further examination the assumption that the best are they who refuse to believe in God, and hold that man is merely an animal.

The real controversy of the age, as thoughtful men have long since recognized, is not between the church and the sects. Protestantism, from the beginning, by asserting the supremacy of human reason, denied the sovereignty of God, and in its postulates, at least, was atheistic. Hence Catholic theologians have never had any difficulty in showing that rebellion against the authority of the church is revolt against that of Christ, which is apostasy from God. To this argument there is really no reply, and the difficulties which Protestants have sought to raise against the church are based upon a sophism which underlies all non-Catholic thought.

The pseudo-reformers objected that the church could not be of Christ, because in it there was evil; many of its members were sinful; as the deists hold that the Bible is not the word of God, because of the many seeming incongruities and imperfections which are everywhere found in it; as the atheists teach that the universe cannot be the work of an all-wise and omnipotent Being, since it is filled with suffering and death; and that love cannot be creation's final law, since nature, "red in tooth and claw with ravin," shrieks against this creed.

If the imperfections and abuses in the practical workings of the church are arguments against its divine institution and authority, then undoubtedly the "measureless ill" which is in the world is reason for doubting whether a Being infinitely good is its author.

Hence the traditional objections of Protestants to the church are, in the ultimate analysis, reducible to the atheistic sophism, which, because there is evil in the creature, seeks to conclude that the creator cannot be wholly good; not perceiving that it would be as reasonable to demand that the circle should be square as to ask that the finite should be without defect.

The church is, both logically and historically, the only defensible Christianity; as Jean Jacques Rousseau long ago admitted in the well-known words: "Prove to me that in matters of religion I must accept authority, and I will become a Catholic to-morrow." There is no controversy to-day between the church and Protestantism which is worthy of serious attention. All that is important has been said on this subject, and Protestants themselves begin to understand that it is far wiser for them to try to hold on to the shreds of Christian belief which still remain to them than to waste their strength in attacks on the church, which, as they are coming to recognize, is after all the strongest bulwark of faith in the soul and in God.

The ground of debate to-day is back of heterodoxy and orthodoxy; it lies around the central fact in all religion--God himself.

The scientific theories of the present time, if they do not deny the existence of God, are at least based upon hypotheses which ignore him and his action in the world; and the few attempts which have been made to construct what may be called a philosophy of science all proceed upon the assumption that, whether there be a God or not, science cannot recognize his existence.

The faith which the elder Mill taught his son--that of the manner in which the world came into existence nothing can be known--is that which most scientists accept. The desire to organize society upon an atheistic basis is also very manifest and very general.

"Reorganiser, sans Dieu ni roi Par le culte systematique de l'Humanité."

The idealistic philosophy of Germany, invariably terminating in pantheism, is another proof of the atheistic tendency of modern thought.

Mill, in his _Autobiography_, has of course made no attempt to prove that there is no God. On the contrary, as we have already stated, he has admitted that this proposition cannot be proved; but he believes there is no God, fails to perceive any evidence of design in the universe, and, from a morbid sense of the evil which abounds, feels justified in concluding that the cosmos is not the work of an infinitely good and omnipotent Being.

Dr. Newman, in his _Apologia_, a work of the same character as the _Autobiography_ of Mill, but which will be read with delight when Mill and his book will have been forgotten, has seen this difficulty, and given expression to it in his own inimitable manner. "To consider the world," he writes, "in its length and breadth, its various history, the many races of man, their starts, their fortunes, their mutual alienation, their conflicts; and then their ways, habits, governments, forms of worship; their enterprises, their aimless courses, their random achievements and acquirements, the impotent conclusion of long-standing facts; the tokens, so faint and broken, of a superintending design; the blind evolution of what turn out to be great powers or truths; the progress of things, as if from unreasoning elements, not toward final causes; the greatness and littleness of man, his far-reaching aims, his short duration, the curtain hung over his futurity, the disappointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of evil, physical pain, mental anguish, the prevalence and intensity of sin, the pervading idolatries, the corruptions, the dreary, hopeless irreligion, that condition of the whole race so fearfully yet exactly described in the apostle's words, 'having no hope, and without God in the world'--all this is a vision to dizzy and appall, and inflicts upon the mind the sense of a profound mystery which is absolutely beyond human solution."[255]

But, as Dr. Newman expresses it, ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt. Difficulty and doubt are incommensurate. When we have sufficient reasons for accepting two seemingly contradictory propositions, the fact that we are unable to reconcile them should not be a motive for rejecting them. The human race has accepted, in all time, the existence of God with an assent as real as that with which it has believed in the substance that underlies the phenomenon. To a countless number of minds, the difficulty to which Mill has given such emphasis has presented itself with a force not less than that with which it struck him.

Millions have approached the mystery of evil, and have asked themselves

"Are God and nature, then, at strife, That nature lends such evil dreams?"

But they have not weakly refused to believe in God because they could not comprehend his works. They saw the evil; but the deepest instincts of the soul--the longing for immortal life, the craving for the unattainable, the thirst for a knowledge never given, the sense of the emptiness of what seems most real; the mother-ideas of human reason--those of being, of cause, of the absolute, the infinite, the eternal, the sense of the all-beautiful, the all-perfect--made them fall

"Upon the great world's altar-stairs That slope through darkness up to God,"

and stretch hands of faith, and trust the larger hope.

We do not propose to offer any arguments to prove that God is, or to show that his existence is reconcilable with the evil in the world, since Mill has not attempted to establish the contradictory of this; but we wish merely to state that his apprehension of the difficulties which surround this question is not keener than that of thousands of others who have seen no connection between apprehending these difficulties and doubting the doctrines to which they are attached. Whilst admitting that science can never prove that there is no God, Mill evidently intended his _Autobiography_ to be an argument against the usefulness of belief in God for moral and social purposes; "which," he tells us, "of all the parts of the discussion concerning religion, is the most important in this age, in which real belief in any religious doctrine is feeble and precarious, but the opinion of its necessity for moral and social purposes almost universal; and when those who reject revelation very generally take refuge in an optimistic deism--a worship of the order of nature and the supposed course of Providence--at least as full of contradictions and perverting to the moral sentiments as any of the forms of Christianity, if only it is as fully realized."[256] Confessing the inability of the scientists to prove that there is no God, he thinks that they should devote their efforts to the attempt to show that belief in God is not beneficial either to the individual or to society. We shall, therefore, turn to the question of morality, which is enrooted in metaphysics, out of which it grows, and to which it is indebted both for its meaning and its strength.

Can the atheistic philosophy give to morality a solid basis? To deny the existence of an infinitely perfect Being is to affirm that there is no absolute goodness, no moral law, eternal, immutable, and necessary, no act that in itself is either good or bad, no certain and fixed standard of right and wrong.

Hence atheistic philosophy can give to morality no other foundation than that of pleasure or utility:

"Atque ipsa utilitas justi prope mater et aequi, Nec natura potest justo secernere iniquum."

And, in fact, this has been the doctrine, we may say, of all those who have denied the existence of God.

Epicurus, Lucretius, Hobbes, Helvetius, Volney, and the whole Voltairean tribe in France, have all substantially taken this view of the question of morality; and Mill's opinion on the subject did not, except in form, differ from theirs. His father was the friend of Bentham, an advocate of the utilitarian theory of morality, which he applied to civil and criminal law; and young Mill became an enthusiastic disciple of the Benthamic philosophy.

"The principle of utility," he writes, "understood as Bentham understood it, and applied in the manner in which he applied it through these three volumes, fell exactly into its place as the keystone which held together the detached and fragmentary component parts of my knowledge and beliefs. It gave unity to my conceptions of things. I now had opinions, a creed, a doctrine, a philosophy; in one among the best senses of the word, a religion; the inculcation and diffusion of which could be made the principal outward purpose of a life."[257]

Bentham sought to save the ethics of utility by generalizing the principle of self-interest into that of the greatest happiness; and it was this "greatest-happiness principle" that gave Mill what he calls a religion. Though less grovelling than the theory of self-interest, yet, equally with it, it deprives morality of a solid foundation, substitutes force for right, and consecrates all tyranny.

If there be no God, and interest is the sole criterion of what is good, in the name of what am I commanded to sacrifice my particular interest to general interest? If interest is the law, then my own interest is the first and highest. If happiness be the supreme end of life, and there be no life beyond this life, in order to ask of me the sacrifice of my happiness, it must be called for in the name of some other principle than happiness itself.

And if "the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns,

"What is that to him that reaps not harvest of his youthful joys, Tho' the deep heart of existence beat for ever like a boy's?"

Besides being false, this "greatest-happiness principle" is impossible in practice. Who can tell what is for the greatest good of the greatest number? It is very difficult, often impossible, when we consider only our individual interest, to decide what actions will be most conducive to our happiness, in the utilitarian sense of the word. How, then, are we to decide when the interests of a whole people, of humanity, and for all future time, are to be consulted? Would any atheist of the school of Mill, who is not wholly fanatical, dare affirm that the greatest number would be happier, even in a low and animal sense, without faith in God and a future life? And yet, according to his own theory, unless he is certain of this when he attempts to destroy the religious belief of his fellow-beings, his act is immoral.

Was it not in the name of, and in strict accordance with, the principles of this theory that Comte planned what Mill calls "the completest system of spiritual and temporal despotism which ever yet emanated from a human brain, unless, possibly, that of Ignatius Loyola--a system by which the yoke of general opinion, wielded by an organized body of spiritual teachers and rulers, would be made supreme over every action, and, as far as is in human possibility, every thought of every member of the community, as well in the things which regard only himself as in those which concern the interests of others"?[258]

There is yet another vice in this system. If the good is the greatest interest of the greatest number, then there are only public and social ethics, and personal morality does not exist. Our duties are towards others, and we have no duties towards ourselves. Thus the very source of moral life is dried up.

Let us come to considerations less general and more immediately connected with Mill's life.

Of his father's opinions on this subject he says: "In his views of life, he partook of the character of the Stoic, the Epicurean, and the Cynic, not in the modern but the ancient sense of the word. In his personal qualities the Stoic predominated. His standard of morals was Epicurean, inasmuch as it was utilitarian, taking as the exclusive test of right and wrong the tendency of actions to produce pleasure or pain. But he had (and this was the Cynic element) scarcely any belief in pleasure, at least in his later years, of which alone, on this point, I can speak confidently.... He thought human life a poor thing at best after the freshness of youth and of unsatisfied curiosity had gone by.... He would sometimes say that if life were made what it might be by good government and good education, it would be worth having; but he never spoke with anything like enthusiasm even of that possibility."[259]

This certainly is a gloomy, not to say hopeless, view of life, and one which, in spite of Mill's attempt to produce a contrary impression, pervades the whole book. The thoughtful reader cannot help feeling that Mill's state of mind was very like that described by the apostle: "having no hope, and without God in the world." A deep and settled dissatisfaction with all he saw around him, the feeling that all was wrong--society, religion, government, the family, human life, the philosophic opinions of the whole world except himself, together with an undercurrent of despair, which made him doubt whether they would ever be right, gave a coloring of melancholy to his character which he is unable to hide. Life was no boon, and not even the faintest ray of light pierced the black gloom of the grave.

Of his father he writes: "In ethics, his moral feelings were energetic and rigid on all points which he deemed important to human well-being, while he was supremely indifferent in opinion (though his indifference did not show itself in personal conduct) to all those doctrines of the common morality which he thought had no foundation but in asceticism and priest-craft. He looked forward, for example, to a considerable increase of freedom in the relations between the sexes, though without pretending to define exactly what would be, or ought to be, the precise conditions of that freedom."[260]

Here we have an instance of the truth of the inference which we have already drawn from the principles of the utilitarian ethics--that they take no account of personal purity of character, and teach that man's duties are towards others, and not towards himself. There is a still more striking example of this in Mill's _Autobiography_.

He early in life made the acquaintance of a married lady, for whom he conceived a very strong affection. He spent a good deal of his time with her, and says: "I was greatly indebted to the strength of character which enabled her to disregard the false interpretations liable to be put on the frequency of my visits to her while living generally apart from Mr. Taylor, and on our occasionally travelling together"; though their relation at that time, he tells us, was only that of strong affection and confidential intimacy. The reason which he assigns for this is certainly most curious: "For though," he says, "we did not consider the ordinances of society binding on a subject so entirely personal, we did feel bound that our conduct should be such as in no degree to bring discredit on her husband, nor therefore on herself."[261]

In other words, Mill recognizes no obligation of personal purity, even in the married, but holds that unchastity is wrong only when it brings discredit on others; though he was unfaithful even to this loose ethical code, since, according to his own account, his conduct was such as to be liable to misinterpretation, and, therefore, such as might bring disgrace upon the husband of the woman with whom he was associating.

His hatred of marriage and of the restraints which it imposes is seen in several parts of the work before us.

Of the Saint-Simonians he says: "I honored them most of all for what they have been most cried down for--the boldness and freedom from prejudice with which they treated the subject of the family, the most important of any, and needing more fundamental alterations than remain to be made in any other great social institution, but on which scarcely any reformer has the courage to touch. In proclaiming the perfect equality of men and women, and an entirely new order of things in regard to their relations with one another, the Saint-Simonians, in common with Owen and Fourier, have entitled themselves to the grateful remembrance of future generations."[262]

A man who puts himself forward as the advocate of free-love should not, one would think, insist especially on the moralities, or give himself prominence as a proof that belief in God is not useful either to the individual or to society.

Mill's social ethics are of the same character. He is a socialist of the most radical type, and considers the great problem of the future to be how to unite the greatest individual liberty of action with a common ownership in the raw material of the globe, and an equal participation of all in the benefits of combined labor; though the "uncultivated herd who now compose the laboring masses," as well as the mental and moral condition of the immense majority of their employers, convince him that this social transformation is not now either possible or desirable. Still, his ethics lead him to hope that private property will be abolished, and that the whole earth will be converted into a kind of industrial school, in which every man, woman, and child will be required to do certain work, and receive in remuneration whatever the controllers of the general capital may see fit to give them. Thus, in the name of the greatest good of the greatest number, personal purity, the family, private property, society, are all to be no more, and the human race is to be managed somewhat like a model stock-farm, in which everything, from breeding down to the minutest details of food and exercise, is to be under the control of a supervisory committee.

As we have already seen, Mill, after reading Bentham, got what he called a religion: he had an object in life--to be a reformer of the world.

This did very well for a time; but in the autumn of 1826, whilst, as he expresses it, he was in a dull state of nerves, he awakened as from a dream. He put the question to himself: "'Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions to which you are looking forward could be effected at this very instant; would this be a great joy and happiness to you?' And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, 'No!' At this my heart sank within me; the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down.... I seemed to have nothing left to live for.

"At first I hoped that the cloud would pass away of itself; but it did not.... I carried it with me into all companies, into all occupations. Hardly anything had power to cause me even a few minutes' oblivion of it.... The lines in Coleridge's 'Dejection'--I was not then acquainted with them--exactly describe my case:

"'A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear, A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet or relief In word, or sigh, or tear.'"[263]

He now felt that his father had committed a blunder in the education which he had given him; that the habit of analysis has a tendency to wear away the feelings and dry up the fountains of pleasurable emotions; that it is a perpetual worm at the root both of the passions and of the virtues; and, above all, fearfully undermines all desires and all pleasures which are the effects of association.

"My education, I thought, had failed to create these feelings in sufficient strength to resist the dissolving influence of analysis, while the whole course of my intellectual cultivation had made precocious and premature analysis the inveterate habit of my mind. I was thus, as I said to myself, left stranded at the commencement of my voyage, with a well-equipped ship and a rudder, but no sail; without any real desire for the ends which I had been so carefully fitted out to work for; no delight in virtue or the general good, but also just as little in anything else.... I frequently asked myself if I could, or if I was bound to, go on living, when life must be passed in this manner. I generally answered to myself that I did not think I could possibly bear it beyond a year."[264]

This sad state of mind was the protest of the soul against the skeleton of intellectual formulas into which it had been cramped. A man is not going to live or die for conclusions, opinions, calculations, analytical nothings. Man is not and cannot be made to be a mere reasoning machine, a contrivance to grind out syllogisms. He is a seeing, feeling, contemplating, believing, acting animal. We cannot construct a philosophy of life upon abstract conclusions of the analytical faculty; life is action and for action, and, if we insist on analyzing and proving everything, we shall never come to action. Humanity is a mere fiction of the mind, and can be nothing, whilst God, to most men at least, is a living reality, to be believed in, hoped in, loved. Were it possible for us to accept the doctrines of Stuart Mill, we should feel the same interest in his humanitarian projects that we do in Mr. Bergh's society for the prevention of cruelty to animals. We pity the poor brutes, but we butcher them and eat them all the same. If there is nothing but nature and nature's laws, it is perfectly right that the few should live for the many, and that thousands should sweat and groan to fill the belly of one animal who is finer and stronger than those he feeds upon. Neither the law of gravity, nor that of the conservation of forces, nor that which impels bodies along the line of least resistance, nor that which causes the fittest--which means the strongest--to survive, can impose upon us a moral obligation not to do what we have the strength to do. These infidels talk of the intellectual cowardice of those who believe. Let them first be frank, and tell us, without circumlocution or concealment, that there is nothing but force; that whatever is, must be; and that nothing is either right or wrong. If we are permitted to swallow oysters whole, to butcher oxen and imprison monkeys in mere wantonness; and if these are our forefathers, why may not the strong and intelligent members of the human race put the weak and ignorant to any use they may see fit; or why may we not imitate the more natural savage who roasts or boils his man as his civilized brother would a pig?

It is easy to make a show of despising the argument implied in this question; but, admitting the atheistic evolutionary hypothesis, it cannot be answered.

Cannibals hold that it is for the greatest happiness of the greatest number that their enemies should be eaten; and, after all, what is happiness, in the utilitarian and animal sense, but an affair of taste, to a great extent even of imagination? Have not slave-owners in all times held that it was for the greatest good of the greatest number that slavery should continue to exist? Or has the greatest-happiness principle had anything to do with the abolition of slavery among the Christian nations or elsewhere?

Men appealed in the name of right, of justice, of the inborn dignity of the human soul, of God-given liberty, and the conscience of the nations was awakened. They gave no thought to the idle theories of brains, from which the heart and soul had been strained, about a greatest-happiness principle. What have atheists ever done but talk, and mock, and criticise, and seek their own ease whilst discoursing on the general good?

Mill takes the greatest care to record, in more than one place, that he and his father occasionally wrote articles for the _Westminster Review_ without receiving pay for them; thinking it, evidently, worthy of remark that an atheist should even write except for money. Here we may note a vice inherent in atheism, which proves at once its untruth and its impotence. It leaves man without enthusiasm, without hope, without love, to fall back upon himself, a wilted, shrunken thing, to mix with matter, or to vanish in lifeless, logical formalism. It has no heroes, no saints, no martyrs, no confessors. Its advocates either abandon themselves to lust and the senses, or, making a divinity of their own imagined superiority, worship the ghost they have conjured up, whilst looking down upon the rest of mankind as a vulgar herd still intellectually walking on four feet. Mill makes no effort to conceal his contempt for the mass of mankind; and contempt does not inspire love, which alone renders man helpful to man.

The gloom which settled around the life of John Stuart Mill, when he once fully realized that, holding the intellectual opinions which he held, nothing was worth living for, and that he was consequently left without a motive or an object in life, never really left him. He tells us, indeed, that the cloud gradually drew off, and that, though he had several relapses which lasted many months, he was never as miserable as he had been; but it is quite evident, from the whole tone of this _Autobiography_, that his disappointed soul, like the wounded dove, drew the wings that were intended to lift it to God close to itself, and, hopeless, sank into philosophical despair. Happiness he considered the sole end of life; and yet he says that the enjoyments of life, which alone make it worth having, when made its principal object, pall upon us and sicken the heart. "Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life."

In other words, in Mill's philosophy, the end of life is happiness, which can be possessed only by those who persuade themselves that this is not the end of life. The doctrine of philosophical necessity, during the later returns of his despondency, weighed upon him like an incubus: "I felt as if I was scientifically proved to be the helpless slave of antecedent circumstances; as if my character and that of all others had been formed for us by agencies beyond our control, and was wholly out of our own power. I often said to myself, What a relief it would be if I could disbelieve the doctrine of the formation of character by circumstances!"[265]

He tries to escape from the fatal web in which his soul hung helpless; but sophisms and quibbles of the brain cannot minister to a mind diseased or pluck sorrow from the heart.

But the saddest part of Mill's _Autobiography_ is the portion devoted to the woman whose friendship he called the honor and chief blessing of his existence. The picture which he has drawn of his childhood is at once painful and ludicrous.

He does not even incidentally allude to a single fact which would lead one to suppose that he had a mother or had ever known a mother's love.

The father, as described by the son, was cold, fanatical, morose, almost inhuman, acting as though he thought children are born merely for the purpose of being crammed with Greek roots and logical formulas. John Stuart was put at Greek vocables when only three years old. His father demanded of him not only the utmost that he could do, but much that it was utterly impossible that he should do. He was guilty, for instance, of the incredible folly of making him read the _Dialogues_ of Plato when only seven years old. He never knew anything of the freshness or joyousness of childhood, or what it is to be "boy eternal." He grew up without the companionship of children, blighted and dwarfed by the abiding presence of the narrow and unnatural man who nipped the flower of his life in the bud, and repressed within him all the sentiments and aspirations which are the spontaneous and healthful product of youth. He was not taught to delight in sunshine and flowers, and music and song; but even in his boyish rambles there strode ever by his side the analytical machine, dissecting, destroying, marring God's work with his lifeless, hopeless theories. The effect of this training was, as we have already seen, that when the boy became a man, he found himself like a ship on the ocean without sail or compass, and there gathered around his life the settled gloom of despair, which his philosophical opinions tended only to deepen.

Without a mother's love, without a father whom it was possible to love, without friends of his own age, without God, dejected, despondent, hopeless, he met the wife of a friend of his father, who, from the manner in which she controlled her first and second husbands, must have been a clever woman, and he became an idolater, giving to her the adoration which his father had taught him to withhold from God. That there is no exaggeration in this statement every one who will take the trouble to read the seventh chapter of Mill's _Autobiography_ will be ready to confess.

He married this woman in 1851, when he was forty-five and she but two years younger, and seven years later her death occurred. Mill wishes the world to believe that this woman was the prodigy of the XIXth century, surpassing in intellectual vigor and moral strength all men and all other women; that to her he owed all that is best in his own writings; and that he is but the interpreter of the wonderful thoughts of this incomparable woman, whom others have deemed merely a commonplace woman's rights woman.

"Thus prepared," he writes, "it will easily be believed that when I came into close intellectual communion with a person of the most eminent faculties, whose genius, as it grew and unfolded itself in thought, struck out truths far in advance of me, but in which I could not, as I had done in those others, detect any mixture of error, the greatest part of my mental growth consisted in the assimilation of those truths; and the most valuable part of my intellectual work was in building the bridges and clearing the paths which connected them with my general system of thought."[266]

Mill seems to have been incapable of a healthful sentiment of any kind. The same quality in his stunted and warped moral nature which caused him to have a false and exaggerated sense of the evil that is in the world, leading him to atheism, made him a blind and superstitious worshipper of the imaginary endowments of his wife. But one must read the book itself to realize how far he carried this idolatry.

When she dies, he again sinks into the gloom which his superstition had seemed to cause him partially to forget; and if he continues to work, it is only with the feeble strength "derived from thoughts of her and communion with her memory." Her death was a calamity which took from him all hope, and he found some slight alleviation only in the mode of life which best enabled him to feel her still near him.

She died at Avignon, and he bought a cottage as close as possible to the place where she was buried; and there he settled down in helpless misery, feeling that all that remained to him in the world was a memory.

"Her memory," he writes, "is to me a religion, and her approbation the standard by which, summing up, as it does, all worthiness, I endeavor to regulate my life."[267]

He did not believe in God, in the soul, in a life beyond life; he had scarcely any faith in the practical efforts of the age to improve the condition of the masses, upon whom he looked as the common herd; his own countrymen especially he despised as selfish and narrow above all other men, grovelling in their instincts, and low in the objects which they aim at; happiness he held to be the sole end of existence; and at the close of his life, an old man, in a foreign land, in immedicable misery, he stood beside a grave, and sought with feeble fingers to clutch the shadow of a dream, which he called his religion; and so he died.

We have never read a sadder book, nor one which to our mind contains stronger proof that the soul longs with an infinite craving for God, and, not finding him, will worship anything--a woman, a stone, a memory.

FOOTNOTES:

[249] Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by Rev. I. T. HECKER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

[250] _Autobiography._ By John Stuart Mill. New York: Holt & Co. 1873.

[251] P. 41.

[252] P. 43.

[253] P. 44.

[254] P. 46.

[255] _Apologia_, p. 268.

[256] P. 70.

[257] P. 67.

[258] P. 213.

[259] P. 48.

[260] P. 107.

[261] P. 230.

[262] P. 167.

[263] P. 134.

[264] P. 140.

[265] P. 169.

[266] P. 243.

[267] P. 251.

THE FARM OF MUICERON.

BY MARIE RHEIL.

FROM THE REVUE DU MONDE CATHOLIQUE.

XVI.

However, our good friends at Muiceron had not become, believe me, so entirely perverted by vanity as to lose all remembrance of the past. They could not have lived twenty years with a boy as perfect in conduct and affection as Jean-Louis without missing him as the days rolled on.

I acknowledge, nevertheless, that the first week passed so quickly in the midst of the flurry and fuss of the marriage contract and presents--bought on credit--that the absence of the good child was scarcely felt; but, towards the end of the second week, one evening Pierrette asked Ragaud if the time had not nearly expired that Jean-Louis had been lent to Michou for the clearing of the forest of Montreux; "for," said she, "I cannot live any longer without him, he was of so much use to me, and the house is so empty without him."

"I gave him for a fortnight," replied Ragaud, "and I would not disoblige Michou by reclaiming him before; but I think we will see him next week, and then I hope he will be over his little miff."

"What miff?" asked Pierrette.

"Bless me! wife, you are a little too simple if you have not noticed long before this how sullen the boy has become."

"He never says much," replied Pierrette, "and we have all been so very busy lately, it has made him more silent even than usual."

"That is precisely it," said Ragaud. "You have petted him so much, he fancied everything was his; and when he saw us so occupied with Jeannette's marriage, he took it in dudgeon, and became offended."

"That would be very wrong in him," replied La Ragaude, "and I don't believe Jeannet capable of such wicked sentiments. Jealousy is not one of his faults; on the contrary, he always thinks of others before himself."

"That may be, that may be, but you cannot judge of wine, no matter how old you may know it to be, before tasting; and, in the same way, you cannot answer for any quality of the heart until it has been tried. So it was very easy for Jeannet not to be jealous when there was no subject for jealousy; but, if you were not always blind and deaf to his defects, you would acknowledge that from the day that Isidore put his foot in this house he has changed as much as milk turned into curds."

"That may all be," said Pierrette, who could not answer her husband's objections.

"That may all be so easily that it is positively so," replied Ragaud, "and Jeannet will not re-enter this house until I have spoken very plainly to him, and made him promise to treat Isidore as a brother."

"That is just what I think," replied good Pierrette, who loved peace above all things, "and you always speak wisely."

Jeannette, for her part, had a little secret annoyance that she carefully concealed, but which made her more irritable and less docile than usual, greatly to the astonishment of Pierrette, who thought her to be at the summit of happiness. After being rather sullen with Jeannet, because he did not appear delighted with her marriage, and, above all, with her intended, she was now displeased to see Isidore parading before every one--and to her the first--his great satisfaction at the departure of Jean-Louis. He even seemed to seek every occasion to speak injuriously of him before her parents, and allowed no one to praise him in his presence. The child was not very patient, we already know, and, as Solange truly said, her head alone was dazzled; her heart was not spoiled enough to make her lose her good sense. Still further, she began to feel very uneasy on a subject which she wished to understand clearly before finally engaging herself--it was that of religion. She had felt the ground around Perdreau, and, although he was as hypocritical as the devil, he had attempted several very disagreeable jokes about the church and her ceremonies which, I must say, provoked Jeannette to such a degree, she openly showed her displeasure. Thereupon Isidore, seeing that he had gone too far, and that he must be more careful or he would lose her dowry, tried to play the part of a saint in his niche; but it was a comedy in which he was not well skilled from want of practice, and Jeannette, more and more worried and unhappy, commenced to regret that the good and wise Jeannet was no longer at her side to aid her with his advice, of which she had never before felt such urgent need.

So she, in her turn, hazarded the same request as Pierrette, and asked her father when they might expect the return of Jean-Louis.

Ragaud made her nearly the same reply as he had done to his wife, without mentioning his ideas in relation to Jeannet's supposed jealousy; and Jeannette patiently awaited him.

But the fortnight went by without any sign of the boy, and it could be easily perceived that Jeannette was becoming nervous--a kind of sickness little known in the country even by name, but which mademoiselle's example had taught Jeannette to attempt whenever things did not go on exactly as she wished. However, affairs went on precisely as those rascally Perdreaux desired. The marriage-contract was prepared, and, after an immense scrawl of big words, which Ragaud did not understand, it concluded by making the good man abandon all his personal and landed property to his daughter, only reserving for himself a moderate annuity. Ragaud was ashamed to avow that all this waste paper was entirely above his comprehension. He tried to look very wise, but proved by his questions that he was caught in a trap; for, after the reading of the knavish document, which stripped him of everything, he innocently asked if he would retain the right to manage Muiceron, and live there as master during his life.

"Undoubtedly," replied the notary; "your children would be unnatural to let it be otherwise. I have done all for the best, for I suppose you do not wish to oblige my son to marry under the _dotal law_?"

"What is the _dotal law_?" said Ragaud.

"It is the greatest disgrace that can be imposed on a man," gravely replied the notary.

"Oh! I beg pardon, M. Perdreau; and so in your paper there is no question of that?"

"Certainly not," said the notary. "I have drawn up the papers for the good father and honorable man that you are."

"Then it is all right, and I have nothing more to do but to thank you," said the honest farmer.

"We could both sign it this evening," said the head rascal.

"There is no hurry," said Ragaud; "we will do that when all the family are present, before my wife and the children. I wish Jeannet to sign it also."

"Sign? Your Jean-Louis can't sign it," said the notary, "as he has no name; the law, M. Ragaud, does not recognize illegitimate children."

"Really! That is cruel for the boy, monsieur; at least, I would like him to hear the paper read."

"For what reason?"

"To please him, that is all; he has been like a child to us for twenty years, and has never deserved to be driven from the family."

"As you please; I think it useless. In business, you see, there is no such thing as sentiment; however, if you prefer it...."

"I certainly do prefer it," replied Ragaud firmly. "I have been a just man all my life, monsieur, and I do not wish now to act unjustly toward a child who has always served me so faithfully."

The notary did not reply, but his ugly weasel-face showed such bitter displeasure that Ragaud, already dissatisfied with the conversation, suddenly remembered Jacques Michou's remarks, and promised himself to keep his eyes open.

Fortunately, the good God gives to honest men a sense of distrust which is easily sharpened. The peasant, in particular, is never entirely at ease when spoken to in more difficult language than two and two make four. Now, Ragaud, on account of his vanity, did not wish to acknowledge before others that he understood nothing of all the fine writing on the stamped paper, but he avowed it to himself, and, putting on a perfectly innocent air, he said to Perdreau:

"Will you have the kindness to let me have the papers for a few days? I would like to read them over again when I have time."

"Very willingly," replied the notary, well convinced--and there he was right--that good Ragaud could not decipher the handwriting, and that it would be all Greek to him. "I was even going to propose it to you. Take them, M. Ragaud, and read them at your leisure; but I need not tell you that it must remain a secret between us until the day the contract is signed."

"I understand," replied Ragaud. "I know how to be discreet, monsieur, and I am not more desirous than you that my daughter's affairs should be known all over the neighborhood."

He did not speak falsely in promising it; for to a Christian the word of a priest is sacred, and he only intended to let the _curé_ read the contract under the seal of confession.

The next day it so happened that M. Perdreau went to the city, where he expected to pass two days, to plan an affair still worse than the rest, which you will know in due time. Ragaud, thus having the field clear, hurried off to Val-Saint, with the papers carefully folded under his blouse.

That morning Jeannette was not in good humor. Three weeks had gone by without any news of Jeannet, who did not even return to sleep at Muiceron. She received her loving Isidore like a spoiled child, shrugged her shoulders when he told her she was charmingly pretty, and ended by telling him he must find out something about Jean-Louis, and bring him back to her as quickly as possible, or else she would not believe he loved her.

Isidore, who had every defect--above all, the silly vanity to think that he was fully capable of turning the heads of all the girls, which is, in itself, a proof of presumptuous folly--pretended at first to take it as a joke, imagining that Jeannette wished to provoke his jealousy. But seeing her serious and resolute, he replied in an angry tone that such a commission was not to his taste.

"In that case," she replied, "it is not to mine to talk to you to-day."

"Then I will take my leave," said he, touching his hat.

She did not detain him, and contented herself with smiling, which he thought another little coquettish trick.

"You are like all women," said he slowly, "who do not mind sacrificing their hearts for a whim."

"What do you call a whim?" replied Jeannette. "Is the desire to see my brother again a whim? Very well, then, I declare to you that I will regard nothing decided as to our marriage until Jean-Louis has returned home."

"Do you think, my little beauty," said he, turning red with anger, "that I will let you call that vagabond of a foundling brother after you become my wife?"

"We will see," replied she; "but, meanwhile, I do not intend to change, and neither will I allow Jeannet to be insulted in my presence; it is not the first time I have told you so, M. Isidore."

"And so you are capable of becoming seriously angry with me, who adores you, on account of your pretended brother?"

"If you are unreasonable and unjust," said she resolutely, "I will no longer love you."

"You scarcely love me now," said he sullenly. "I did not believe that the day would ever come when you could think so little of me."

"I have always thought," she replied, "that husband and wife should agree upon all points. Ever since I can remember, I have always had a respect and friendship for Jean-Louis, and never has he behaved otherwise than well in this house, where he is looked upon as a son. I don't know why my marriage should change my feelings in regard to him; and that is a question I confess we had better settle at once before going any further.

"Very well," said M. Isidore, speaking like one who had suddenly decided upon some plan. "I am very sorry to be obliged to pain you, but I will not bother myself about this bast--about this Jean-Louis, and that because it is time you should know the truth about him; he is far from being worthy of your esteem, my dear Jeanne."

"Oh! indeed!" said she. "Here is something very new; and the proof, if you please?"

"You insist upon knowing it?"

"Absolutely and quickly," replied Jeannette, who began to grow impatient.

"You will certainly be grieved, and there is reason for it," said Isidore in a sad tone. "Know, then, that this Jean-Louis, whom you fancy dying with grief because he no longer sees you, is all the while enjoying himself immensely."

"How can he amuse himself?" asked Jeannette. "You are telling stories. Jeannet is in the wood of Montreux, where he has too much to do, in clearing out the forest, to think of anything else; besides, he is not naturally very gay, poor boy!"

"_Poor boy!_ Don't pity him so much; he would laugh if he heard you. Clearing the wood of Montreux--he? It is a mere pretence to hide his game; he wishes to be more at ease to court Solange Luguet.

"M. Isidore," cried Jeannette, starting up, pale with anger, "keep on speaking ill of Jean-Louis--he is a man, and can defend himself; but to speak thus of my cousin Solange is a cowardly falsehood!"

"How pretty you look!" said Isidore insolently. "Anger is so becoming to you, I would always like to see you so, if it were not so painful to me to excite you thus. No, Jeanne, I do not lie. M. Jean-Louis, who owes his life to your parents, and whom you call brother, at this very instant ridicules the whole household. He is going to marry Solange, and I don't believe he will even inform you of it."

"Who told you so?" asked Jeannette, amazed. "People will gossip so."

"I had it from Pierre Luguet. It is true it is common talk, but I would not have believed it, if Solange's own brother had not said it."

"Can you swear it to me?" said she.

"I can swear to it positively. Ask Pierre; you see I am not afraid of being proved a liar."

"I believe you," said Jeanne, who sought in vain to keep back the tears that filled her eyes. "Never, I confess, would I have believed that of Jean-Louis."

"You understand now why I did not care to start in search of that gentleman. I am indignant at his conduct; it is frightful ingratitude. To think that he had here a father, a mother, a sister, and that he abandons all to go off and be secretly married! Is it not proof in itself that he renounces and despises you?"

"Oh! it is very wrong, very wrong!" said Jeannette, much excited. "You were right--I can no longer call him brother."

"I hope not; it would be affection very badly bestowed, and which would make you the laughing-stock of the village. Are you still angry with me, my dear Jeanne?"

"Pardon me," said she, extending her hand; "you see, I have had good reason for sorrow."

And then she burst into tears, no longer able to restrain them, but without exactly knowing the cause of so real a pain.

Isidore did not expect to succeed so well. This time he had not lied; he really believed Jeannet would be married, as that giddy-brained Pierre had announced the fact to him. And yet he did not like to see Jeanne weep for such a little thing. It made him think that the affection of these two children, who had lived together as brother and sister for so many years, was much stronger than he had believed, and he was more determined than ever to put a stop to it after he was married, and even before, if he could.

He left Muiceron very much dissatisfied. Jeannette was sad; she let him go off without scarcely noticing him. When she was alone, the wish to seek some consolation led her to go after her mother, to see if she had heard the news, and to talk with her about it.

But, behold! just as she left the room she ran against some one, and who should it be but Jean-Louis, who had come after some changes of clothes to carry off to the wood, and who, knowing that she was with her intended, did not wish to disturb her.

At the sight of her brother all the readiness of her character came back and took the place of her vexation. She assumed an air so haughty that Jeannet, all ready to embrace her, stepped back, dumb with astonishment.

"_You there?_" said Jeannette, with a frown on her brow.

"You there? Why do you speak so to me?" asked he, astonished.

"You must not forget," continued Jeanne, who proudly raised her head as she spoke, "that I am engaged to Isidore Perdreau."

"Yes, I know it," said Jean-Louis.

"Consequently," she replied, "it is no longer possible for me to treat you as formerly. You know why?"

"I know it," answered he, lowering his head.

"It is no longer proper," said she, "for us to behave as brother and sister, since we are not so really."

"That is true," said Jeannet, his heart aching with mortal agony.

"That is all I have to say," added Jeannette in a still haughtier tone; "and now, Jean-Louis, I wish you much joy and happiness--this I say in remembrance of our friendship!"

"Are you bidding me farewell?" asked he.

"I will see you later--and--and your wife also; but you understand?"

"My wife?" said Jeannet.

"Enough," replied Jeanne; "I do not wish to know your secrets. It is useless for you to seek my father and my mother."

And with that she rapidly crossed the room, and hurried off; for, between ourselves, this great anger was not very real, and the longer she looked at the pale, beautiful face of her brother, whom she had not seen for such a long time, the more she felt like throwing her arms around his neck, instead of ill-treating him. But her words had been too cruel; they had entered the soul of Jean-Louis like so many sword-thrusts. It was all ended for him. Proud as he was, and always overwhelmed with the secret grief of his birth, to have it recalled to him by so dear a mouth was deadly suffering. He remained an instant as though his senses had left him, not knowing what to do or to think; then all at once his reason returned. He had just been driven out, and, after all, they had the right to do it. He made the sign of the cross on his heart, and left the house, with the intention of never returning.

He went back to Michou, and passed the evening with him at the Luguets'. He said nothing of what had happened to any one. Dear, good Solange noticed that he was sadder than usual, but that was not astonishing; she knew he had been that day to Muiceron, and she very truly thought he had possibly heard things which could not contribute to lighten his heart and make him gay.

It is now time to tell you that old Perdreau was one of the leaders of a band of ruffians who assembled in a lonely field every week in our city of Issoudun, where, after taking the most frightful oaths, they plotted, murder, arson, and the robbery of the châteaux and churches. It was what is called a secret society, and was known by the name of _la Martine_; and some weeks afterwards, when the Revolution of 1848 broke out, which caused such havoc among us, there was a well-known man, so I have been told, who bore the same name, and who placed himself at the head of the insurgents, believing them, in good faith, to be the most honest men in the world. This man, who was as good as any one you could find, and even a passable Christian, my father assured me, bit his thumbs until the blood came when he saw himself despised and his counsel disregarded. But it was too late; the evil was done. Undoubtedly you know much more about it than I, and so I scarcely dare venture to say any more on the subject. You must only know that the cursed notary had used all the money of M. le Marquis to pay the rabble of _la Martine_, with the understanding that, when they pillaged the château, he should have half the estate, including the dwelling-house.

As for Isidore, he was fully up to the business, and worked at it assiduously, as much at Paris as elsewhere. The men who worked in the wood of Montreux belonged to the gang; he knew them all by name, and kept them all near Val-Saint, so as to be ready for the contemplated insurrection. But in case the thing should not succeed, or would be delayed, he did not think it beneath him to provide himself with a pear to satisfy his thirst, and that was his marriage.

Our good Ragaud returned from his interview with M. le Curé rather depressed in spirits. The contract, as read by the holy man, did not appear to him as captivating as when explained by the notary. He had learned still further, from a few words discreetly uttered, that it would be well not to place implicit faith in Master Perdreau, and believe him the personification of honor, as until then he had innocently imagined. What now could be done to arrange, or rather disarrange, affairs so far advanced? The poor man was devoured with care and anxiety. He dared not speak to his daughter, whom he thought to reduce to desperation at the mere mention of the word rupture; and then to withdraw from the contract now would lower him tremendously in the eyes of the world around. No longer able to see clearly, Ragaud kept quiet, locked the documents safely in his chest, and waited--which, in many circumstances, is the wisest policy.

A long week passed; then came the festivals of Christmas and New Year. Old Perdreau was half dead with impatience, but nevertheless dared not say a word, or even appear too anxious. What bothered him, besides, was that the rascally gang in the wood of Montreux were constantly receiving messages from their infernal society to hurry up affairs, and, therefore, they threatened to commence the dance before the violins were ready, which would have spoiled all the plans. Pushed to extremity, he determined, one fine day, to send his son secretly to allay the storm by speaking to his worthy companions in roguery.

Isidore, who feared nothing and no one, ridiculed his father's anxiety. He promised to quiet them that very night, and about eleven o'clock, in spite of the bad weather--for it was snowing, and the wind was very high--he left for Val-Saint.

The place they were clearing was quite far from M. Michou's little house, where Jean-Louis slept, together with the game-keeper. The men, as is customary among wood-cutters, had constructed a large retreat formed of the trunks of trees, cemented with mud and moss. It was towards this spot that young Perdreau directed his steps; and never did a stormier night fall upon an uglier traveller.

XVII.

It is not difficult to conjecture that Jeannet, in spite of his heart-troubles and sorrows, had not been--sharp as he was--blind to the character of the men who worked under his orders in the wood of Montreux. In the first place, Michou warned him from the beginning to be watchful, and not to allow the slightest infringement of discipline or drunkenness among men, who were unknown and of decidedly doubtful appearance. One warning sufficed; he observed for himself, and caught at random more than one stray expression which he chanced to overhear. And then, what could be expected from men who seemed to be without family or friends, who never frequented the church, and shunned the places where the honest people of the commune were accustomed to assemble? Certainly, our good Jean-Louis was not wanting in penetration, and old Michou, who prided himself upon seeing very far into everything, was as distrustful as he; consequently, they agreed that every night one or the other should take a turn around the retreat of the wood-cutters, and see what was going on in this nest of mischievous rascals. To do this, Jeannet had skilfully managed to make an opening in the angle opposite to that where the men had established their fireplace, so that, the room being well lighted inside, everything could be clearly seen outside.

Usually, and for many nights, all was quiet and orderly; the greater part of the band of _la Martine_, tired out with the day's labors, slept soundly all the evening, stretched pell-mell upon heaps of dried leaves strewed over the floor of their bivouac. Only a few remained drinking by the hearth; so that the watchers, after a glance around, went off to sleep in their turn.

On the night of which I speak, Michou should have made the round, but Jean-Louis, who since the scene at Muiceron had been miserably unhappy, and could not sleep, asked leave to fulfil the extra duty.

"It is very stormy," said he to his old comrade. "Remain at home, M. Jacques; I will go to Montreux in your place."

"Be off, then," said the keeper, without waiting to be asked twice, "you are young and not rheumatic; and I will smoke my pipe while waiting for you."

Jeannet threw over his shoulders a heavy brown wrapper, and was off in a flash.

When he reached the retreat, he was surprised to see light shining through the two or three little windows under the roof, and a big column of smoke coming out of the chimney. Just at this moment Isidore entered from his side; he made them open the door, by means of a signal well known among men of that stamp; they received him with much honor, and rekindled the fire, which was burning rather low.

Jeannet looked through the opening; judge of his astonishment when he recognized Jeannette's intended, and saw the cordial welcome extended to him by the men, who grasped him by the hand, and made room for him among them. He was dumfounded, almost fancied himself in a dream, but, at the same time, shook with anger, shame, and sorrow.

But this was only the beginning of his surprise. If the inside could easily be seen, the conversation was as plainly heard through the wooden walls, lined with moss; and what he heard froze the blood in his veins. Isidore first spoke, and made an eloquent discourse, which was several times interrupted by the bravos of his audience; in which speech he showed precisely what he was--a pagan, an agrarian, a complete villain, without either faith or justice. He encouraged his friends, the ruffianly crew before him, to proceed to arson and pillage--to murder, if necessary--for the one purpose, said he, of gaining the triumph of the _holy cause_. This word _holy_, which he did not scruple to repeat, sounded so horribly in his blasphemous mouth that poor Jean-Louis shuddered while listening to him; not from fear, but from the furious desire to avenge the name of holy, which he had dared to pollute with his tongue.

"O my God!" thought he; "that the husband of Jeannette! And is it on account of such a vagabond that I have been treated so harshly? Poor, poor Jeanne!"

After Isidore had finished his frightful speech, his companions began to curse and swear all at once. Glasses of brandy were passed around, and their heads, already heated by wicked passions, became still more excited; so that they began to dispute among themselves as to whom should belong this and that piece of the estate of Val-Saint. This one wanted the fields, another the wood, a third such or such a farm, and so on with the rest, until Isidore, commanding silence, reminded them, with threats and oaths, that the château should belong to his father, and that whoever failed to comply with his promise would be answerable to him personally.

"Come, come," said one of the men, "we will see a little about that; he is going rather too far. Is it because he is going to marry a devotee--eh, Isidore?"

Perdreau turned livid with anger at being thus addressed--not that he respected Jeannette or her principles, but because he was as proud as a peacock; and as he held every one around him in sovereign contempt, he did not recognize their right to meddle in his private affairs.

"I will marry whom I please," said he haughtily; "and the first one that finds fault has only to speak."

"Bah! bah! Isidore, don't be angry," said an old wood-cutter, who went by the name of _Blackbeard_, on account of his savage look. "What they say is only for your good; we have heard tell of your marriage, and it alarms us. The truth is that if the thing is true, you will be tied for ever to that Ragaud, who belongs to the sacristy clique."

"Ha! ha!" replied Isidore, somewhat pacified; "the moment you talk sense, I am willing to answer. Tell me, then, what would you do if a chestful of gold came under your hand?"

"What nonsense even to ask such a question! Why, I would pick it up, of course."

"That is just what I am doing," replied Isidore, laughing; "and as for the piety and all that stuff, I don't bother myself. When I will have the principal, I am capable of regulating the rest."

"Do it, and joy be with you," said Blackbeard; "we understand each other. So no one will be allowed to interfere with Isidore; he is worthy of our esteem!"

The rascals applauded, and recommenced their shameful jokes and infernal proposals. Isidore, once more master of the assembly, spoke at greater length, and ended by exacting an oath that no one should move in the cause until a given signal from Paris. They all swore as he wished, and, as the night was far advanced, honest Perdreau took leave of his good friends, fearing that daylight might surprise him before he could regain his house.

Jean-Louis needed all the strength mercifully granted by the good God in such a trying moment to listen until the end to all these horrors. The blood boiled in his veins; he felt neither the snow, nor the biting north wind, and more than once his indignation was so great, he stepped forward and clenched his fist, as though he would throw himself in the midst of those demons, without reflecting that a solid wall separated them from him. Happily, he restrained himself; for courage is not imprudence, and, if he had failed in coolness, he would have lost all the results of the important discovery he had just made. He went back to Michou's cabin, whom he found awaiting his return, according to his promise, and who had commenced to feel very anxious about his long absence.

"M. Jacques," said he, on entering, "I came very near not returning...."

And in a few words he recounted all he had heard and seen.

Michou said not a word. He relighted his pipe, and paced the floor, plunged in thought.

"I knew the Perdreaux were famous scamps," said he at last, "but not quite so bad as that!"

"Oh!" cried Jeannet, "if my death could have saved Jeannette from that rascal, I would have broken in the door and fallen in the midst of them without hesitation."

"A very stupid thing you would have done, then," replied Michou; "they would have killed you, and to-morrow announced that you had fallen from a tree. That would have been a lucky thing for Perdreau."

"God watched over me," replied Jean-Louis. "And now, what shall we do?"

"That little Ragaud," said Michou, "deserves it all for her frivolity and vanity; and, as a punishment, we should let her go to the end of the rope with her Isidore."

"Never, never!" cried Jean-Louis. "You are not speaking seriously? The daughter of your old brother-in-arms?"

"Ha!" replied the old fellow, "my old brother-in-arms! Ten years ago I predicted what would be the end of his nonsense."

"This is not the time to wish it now," replied Jeannet. "Let us save them, M. Michou; I can do nothing without you."

"Why not? You have a tongue like me; more than that, you saw and heard all; go to-morrow to Muiceron."

"Impossible," said Jeannet, much embarrassed.

"Impossible? There is something behind that!"

"But was it not you yourself who made me promise not to return to my parents?"

"Most certainly, my child; but the case is urgent, it seems to me, and they should know in time, so as to change their minds before it is too late."

"I will lose my self-control if I meet Isidore face to face."

"Jeannet," said Michou, "you have a good heart. I know all, my boy; they drove you from Muiceron. Marion heard that little magpie of a Jeannette dismiss you, and she related the story to me, weeping all the while, good fat girl that she is. I wished to see how far your generosity would carry you. Evil be to them who treated you in that manner; they deserve what has happened."

"No," said Jean-Louis, "they are blinded, that is all; and now I have forgotten those words, said without reflection. M. Jacques, I beg of you help me to save Jeannette."

"You will have a fine reward, eh?"

"Oh! what is it to me? After all, can I, for a few cruel words, lose the memory of twenty years of tenderness and kindness?"

"If you do not have your place in heaven," said the keeper, raising his shoulders and voice at the same time, to conceal his emotion, which was very visible, "I think our _curé_ himself cannot answer for his. Come, let us see what we can do to save this hare-brained Jeannette. In the first place, to-morrow, at the latest, I intend that M. le Marquis' place shall be cleared of those rascals that encumber it. The thing is easy; I will tell them that, owing to the bad weather, we will postpone the clearing of the forest until spring, as the work advances too slowly, and give them two weeks' pay ... no, I won't; one week is enough. And then you--you must write; do you hear? _Write._ Writing remains, and scenes and conflicts are avoided; you will therefore write six lines, carefully worded, to Perdreau. You will tell him you were at the meeting in the wood that night. How? That is none of his business--it is enough that you were there; then you will add: 'I give you three days to disappear, after which I will warn the police.' And for the explanation at Muiceron, I will see to it."

Jean-Louis saw at once the good sense of this arrangement, and obeyed immediately. In reality, it was the only means of bringing things to the best possible conclusion.

The next day Michou went to the wood, as usual. He found the men at their work, as though nothing had happened, and taking aside old Blackbeard, who appeared to have some control over his companions, he told him very quietly of his intention. Now, you will have no difficulty in seeing that for men who reckoned upon dividing a domain worth five hundred thousand crowns in a few days, to be free from work and receive a week's pay was a clear and enticing advantage. Michou was applauded; and, but that it went against the grain, he would have had the happiness of shaking hands with the whole crew. But as he was not very desirous of that pleasure with such a set, he was entirely rewarded for his pains by seeing them file past him arm-in-arm, and watched them as they went down the road, singing at the top of their lungs.

That same morning Jean-Louis' letter left for its destination, and in the evening the letter-carrier deposited it at the notary's house.

It has been remarked that villains are not brave. The good God, who protects honest men because they scarcely think of defending themselves, has put cowardice in the hearts of their enemies, and it serves as a rampart always raised before virtue, which prevents the wicked blows of vice from piercing it to death. Do not be astonished at that beautiful phrase; I acknowledge I am not capable of inventing it; but, in order that I might repeat it to you, I carefully copied it from a big book, full of wise sayings, formerly lent to me by the Dean of Aubiers.

If the lightning had fallen upon the notary's house, it would not have produced a greater shock than Jeannet's simple letter. The Perdreaux, as they were better educated than the mass of the poor people, whom the ringleaders of the revolution use for their own purpose, did not doubt but there would be great trouble and an overthrow of thrones, but were not the less sure of the universal division of property, which they looked forward to with such eagerness. But the safest and strongest plank of salvation for them was the marriage of Isidore, and it was most important that it should take place now, or else the prison-doors would soon be opened. Old Perdreau was annihilated. For thirty years he had had the boldness to calumniate his neighbors on every occasion; he was on the eve, if he could, of causing the ruin, and perhaps the death, of our good lord by delivering up his property and betraying his secrets; but before this paper, which contained only a few lines without threats or anger, written by a foundling, he turned livid and trembled with fright, and his ugly face, ordinarily so bold, was covered with a cold sweat. Isidore also was as pale as he; from time to time he read Jean-Louis' letter, crushed it in his hand, trampled it under foot, swore by the holy name of the Lord, and struck the tables and chairs with his clenched fist. But that did not help the matter. The father and son dared not speak to each other. At last Isidore took the paper up again; and as if that scare-crow, by disappearing, could mend affairs, he tore it into a thousand pieces.

"We are lost, lost!" repeated old Perdreau, clutching his gray hair with both his hands.

"That remains to be seen!" cried Isidore. "Father, instead of sinking into such despair, you had better think of some plan. It was by your order I went to Montreux. I knew there was no need of such hurry."

"What could I do?" asked the unhappy old man, ready to humiliate himself before his son. "We were menaced on all sides."

"It was only you who saw all that," replied Isidore harshly; "I always listened to you too much."

"We can deny it all," ventured Perdreau.

"That is easy to say. But I am not sure of our men, if they should be questioned. That cursed foundling will be believed before all of us."

"Lost! lost!" repeated the notary, in the last state of despair.

"We won't give up," said Isidore. "Go to bed, father; you are in no condition to talk. I will reflect for both."

"Ah! think of something, no matter what; we must avert the blow," said old Perdreau, as he staggered to his room.

"Avert the blow!" repeated Isidore; "the devil himself would not succeed--unless--unless...."

He paused, as if some one would listen to his thought. A frightful idea entered his head, and all that night the notary, who groaned and shivered with fever in his bed, heard him walking about, taking great strides across the floor, whilst he uttered disconnected words.

The next day the servant found her masters in a sad state; one sick, almost delirious, the other asleep, all dressed, in a chair, with a face haggard from the effects of the terrible night that had just passed.

But two hours afterwards, affairs resumed their accustomed train. Isidore bathed and changed his clothes, drank a bowl of hot wine, in which he poured a good pint of brandy. He swallowed this comforter, ate a mouthful, and appeared fresh and well. But an experienced person would easily have seen that his eyes looked like balls of fire under the red lids, and that every moment he made a singular movement with his shoulders; you would have thought he shuddered, but doubtless that was owing to the heavy frost the night before.

He went to see Jeannette, as usual, and was wonderfully polite; the little thing was sad, but gentle and quiet. She willingly spoke of the marriage, of the contemplated journey, and the presents she wished. But yet it was easy to see that each one of the betrothed was playing a part in trying to appear at ease, and scarcely succeeded. Jeannette, in the midst of a fine phrase, would stop and look out of the window, and Isidore would profit by the opportunity to fall into a reverie, which certainly was not suitable at such a time. The reason was that the slight friendship that was felt on one side had taken wings and flown away; whilst on the other that which perhaps might begin threatened to be cut short by circumstances: but whose fault was it?

"As you make your bed, so you must lie," said our _curé_, and Isidore, who had stuffed his with thorns, should not have been surprised if he felt them. No one can describe, because, very fortunately, no one can understand, the disordered state of this unhappy young man's mind. He had formed a resolution whose result you will soon see; and on whatever side he looked, he saw a bottomless abyss open before his eyes. He was afraid--this yet can be said in his favor, for indifference to crime is the state of finished scoundrels--and he would not now have gone so far, if, as we hope, he had not previously lost his senses.

He prolonged his visit to Muiceron as long as he could. Little Jeannette was tired out and did not attempt to conceal it, which sufficiently showed how much pleasure she took in the presence of her future husband. She even yawned two or three times, which any other day he would have resented; but now it escaped his notice.

At nightfall he at last decided to leave, and then it could be seen, by his pallor and the manner that he passed his hand across his brow, that the great deep pit of which I spoke caused him a greater vertigo than ever.

Nevertheless, he started resolutely on the road for the wood of Montreux, and, when he was near the wood-cutters' retreat, he looked as if he wished to enter it; but suddenly he retraced his steps, and afterwards appeared so absent and buried in his own reflections, he did not notice that the cabin was empty, and no work going on inside.

One man, however, was walking among the huge piles of timber, half ready for delivery; it was Michou. He at once perceived Isidore, and followed him with his eyes a long distance; but it was not necessary to accost him, and he let him pass on, with the idea that he was seeking the high-road to Issoudun, in obedience to the letter of Jean-Louis.

"The hawk is caught," said he to himself. "Well, let him go in peace, that he may receive his last shot elsewhere."

During this time, Perdreau directed his steps towards the game-keeper's house. He easily entered, as the door was only closed by a latch; Michou, in his isolated abode counting more on his gun, which he always kept loaded at his bedside, than on the protection of bolts.

Isidore knew that each night Jeannet came to eat and sleep in the little house; but he also knew that he worked until late in the night, and that there was no risk of meeting him at this early hour.

As he expected, he found the idiot Barbette alone in the house. The poor girl was preparing the soup Jean-Louis was accustomed to eat on returning home, and near her was her dog, who never left her, not even at night, when both went out together to sleep with the sheep.

She knew Isidore, as she had seen him roaming around the country. Except to say good-morning and good-evening, she scarcely knew how to speak, and therefore showed neither astonishment nor fear, as is the case with children deprived of reason, who are not conscious either of good or evil.

Isidore sank into a chair without speaking; Barbette nodded to him, and continued stirring her stew-pan.

"What are you making there?" asked Perdreau, after a few moments' silence.

The idiot burst out laughing, as though the question was very funny.

"Soup," she replied, still laughing loudly.

"Is it for your uncle?"

"No, my uncle has dined."

"Who is it for, then?"

"For the other one."

"The other one? Is it for Jean-Louis?"

"Yes."

"You are very sure?"

"Yes, yes!" said she, laughing louder than ever.

"Very good," muttered Isidore between his teeth. He suddenly arose, and gave the dog a furious kick.

Barbette uttered a shrill scream. Her dog was her only friend; she threw herself between Isidore and the poor beast, which she clasped in her arms.

During this movement, which was very quick, the wretched Perdreau sprang towards the stove, threw into the soup a paper of white powder, which he had kept hidden in his hand, and disappeared in a second, like one who feels his clothes catching fire.

Soon all was again quiet and silent. Little Barbette understood nothing, except that the wicked man who had beaten her dog without any cause had left, and that she could return to her cooking. She recommenced stirring her soup, laughing softly to herself, but taking care, however, that her dog was close to her side.

Michou entered about a quarter of an hour later. He was fatigued with his day's work, and thought no more of Isidore, whom he believed far away. Besides, if he had given him a thought, the idea would never have entered his head to question Barbette, who was not in a condition to render an account of anybody or anything.

The game-keeper had his bed and Jeannet's also (straw mattresses, laid on trestles) placed in a recess at the end of the room, so that, upon retiring, they could draw the curtains, and be as private as though in another room. He undressed quietly, and stretched himself upon the bed to take his much-needed rest, knowing well that Jean-Louis often came in late, but made so little noise he was never disturbed.

A long time passed. Michou was sleeping soundly, when he heard Barbette call him.

"What do you want?" he asked, raising himself up in his bed.

"Uncle," said the poor idiot, "Jean-Louis has not returned."

"Well, what of that?"

"I am hungry," she replied, for she never ate supper until her work was finished.

"Eat," said Michou. "What is there to prevent you?"

"Can I eat Jean-Louis' soup?" she asked.

"Faith," thought the game-keeper, "he must have supped with the Luguets. Yes," said he aloud, "eat, and be off to bed."

Barbette did not wait to be told twice. She emptied the soup into a bowl, swallowed half of it with a good appetite, and gave the rest to her dog.

Then she went out, fastening the latch as well as she could, and Michou turned over in his bed, where he was soon asleep again, and nothing else happened to disturb him, as Jeannet that night did not return home.

XVIII.

The night was terribly cold, and the following morning the sky was dark and heavy from the snow that fell unceasingly; so that our superb wood of Val-Saint, so delightful in summer, looked horrible and desolate enough to make one think of death and the grave, all around was so still and quiet in its white winding-sheet. Michou, who had nothing to do after he sent off the workmen, rose later than usual, and was rather astonished to see Jeannet's bed still vacant. It was the first time the dear boy had slept away from home without giving warning. He knew him too well to think that it was from want of attention: what could have happened?

He thought again of Perdreau, whom he had seen roving around the premises the night before; and for the first time in his life the game-keeper felt a thrill of terror.

"The good-for-nothing is capable of anything," thought he; "he may have watched for Jean-Louis in some out-of-the-way place to harm him."

But after this reflection, he reassured himself by thinking of Jean-Louis' extraordinary strength and great height, which surpassed Isidore's by at least a head.

"That puppy has no more nerve than a chicken," said he. "Jeannet could knock him down with one blow; and as for drawing a pistol, he would be afraid of the noise."

However, good Jacques hurried with his dressing, so that he might go to the Luguets', to inquire after Jean-Louis. While doing so, he looked at his big silver watch, which hung on a nail by his bedside, and saw with astonishment that it was nine o'clock.

"This is something strange!" said he; "it is the first time in ten years I have slept so late."

He went to the door, but, as he put out his head, he was driven back by a whirlwind of snow which struck him in the face, and at the same time a man presented himself upon the threshold.

"M. Michou," said the new-comer, who was no other than the letter-carrier of the commune, "it is unfortunate you have some correspondent in this awful weather."

"That is true! You are not very lucky," replied the game-keeper; "for this is the first letter you have brought me in two years."

It was from Jean-Louis, and contained but a few words:

"M. JACQUES: Do not be uneasy about me. I am in good health, but I will not return before three days, as I am going to Paris on important business.

"Your ever-faithful "JEAN-LOUIS."

"What the devil can that child have to do in Paris?" thought Michou. "Never mind, this letter is a great relief; I would rather know he was off there than here."

He gave the carrier a warm drink, and conversed with him some time before the hearth, upon which burned a good armful of vine-branches. Then, when he had taken his departure, the thought of Barbette suddenly entered his head.

"What is she doing?" said he. "The poor child has forgotten my breakfast; I suppose she has also slept late."

He opened the door; the snow was not falling quite so thick and fast, and the sky appeared less sombre.

He left the house, and went to the sheepfold, to see what had become of his idiotic niece.

Alas! If you have listened to me until now, you can well guess what had taken place in that gloomy night! And yet, upon entering the enclosure, nothing at first foreboded the misfortune which was about to startle the good game-keeper. The sheep bleated and tumbled pell-mell, climbing on one another's backs, browsing contentedly upon the hay scattered here and there; but down at the end of the sheepfold, in a little corner, poor Barbette was extended, stark dead and already cold, the mouth half-opened and the face rigid from its terrible struggle. Close to her, with his head laid across her feet, her dog also slept, never more to be awakened.

It was evident the innocent child had suffered fearfully. Her poor body seemed longer by three inches than before, as though the limbs had been stretched in her dreadful death-struggle. Her little, shrivelled hands still clutched bunches of wool that she must have torn from the sheep in her agony. With all that, she looked tranquil and at peace, as if an angel of the good God had come at the supreme moment to bear away her soul, exempt from sin.

Michou fell on his knees beside the little dead body. He tried to raise her, but she was so stiff he had to move her like a wooden statue. Certainly, many hours must have elapsed since her death; the dog, also, was frozen to the touch, and as hard as stone. There was no doubt these two creatures, so attached to each other during life, had met together a violent death. Nothing more remained to be done but to make the necessary declarations and hold the inquest usual in such cases. The good man bent over the agonized face of the child a few minutes; one or two tears fell upon his gray beard, and, while wiping them off with his coat-sleeve, he recited a Pater and a De Profundis; then he brought several planks and bundles of straw, which he placed around the poor corpse, so that the sheep should not injure it while playing around. He left the dog lying on the feet of his mistress, Barbette; and mere creature, without soul, as the good God had made him, he deserved this respect, having died faithful as he had lived.

Jacques Michou left the sheepfold, his otter-skin cap in his hand, and on the threshold turned again and made another sign of the cross. His old heart was heavy with pain from the shock; but he did not dream for an instant of what we know, and at that you must not be too much astonished. The good man was perfectly honest, and could not at first conjecture that a great crime had caused this extraordinary death. He rather imagined that Barbette, who had been given to wandering around like all innocents, had gathered some poisonous weed, or drank by mistake from a vessel in which remedies were prepared for the sheep when afflicted with the mange, which are always composed of a decoction of tobacco or other noxious preparation; which cures, if applied externally, but is certain death when taken internally, if the directions are not followed. Thus plunged in sad and bitter meditation, he arrived, almost before he knew it, at the village of Val-Saint, and thought to continue still further, to warn Dr. Aubry. "He will be able to tell me," thought he; "with his learning he can say what killed the poor child."

Just then he raised his head, and saw that he was before the notary's house, and recognized the doctor's horse and wagon before the door.

"This is lucky!" thought he. "I will find out all the sooner."

He entered without having to knock, probably because M. Aubry, who was always absent-minded, had neglected to close the door, ordinarily shut tight; so that the game-keeper found himself standing in the middle of Perdreau's dining-room before any one had given notice of his entrance.

Isidore was there, so wan, and haggard, and wild-looking, you would have doubted, at the first glance, whether it was himself or his shadow. There was nothing terrifying in Michou's aspect; he appeared sad and quiet, and only wished to meet the doctor, that he might relate his lamentable story. But criminals see in every one and everywhere justice and vengeance ready to fall upon them. Isidore no sooner recognized the honest game-keeper, than he uttered a cry of terror, and endeavored to escape.

That movement, the terrified face, and, still further, we must believe, the inspiration of the good God, made Michou divine, in the twinkling of an eye, what he had not even suspected the moment before. You will understand me if you will only recall some remembrances of the past; for surely you must once or twice in your life have experienced the same effect. An event takes place--no one knows which way to turn; all is dark; suddenly a light breaks forth, shedding its brilliant rays on all around, and in an instant everything is clear to the mind: is it not so? To explain how this great secret fire is lighted I cannot, but to affirm that it happens daily you must acknowledge with me, no matter how poor your memory may be.

The presence of Perdreau the evening before in the neighborhood of the wood of Montreux, his sombre and agitated look at the time, the preceding letter of Jean-Louis, finally, that soup, destined for another than Barbette, and eaten by her--all this passed in a second before the eyes of the game-keeper, like so many actors playing in the same piece. As the truth, in all its horror, flashed before him, his face became terrible, and Isidore, whose eyes, starting from his head with terror, glared fixedly upon him, saw this time, without mistake, his judge and the avenger of his crime.

The two men looked at each other a moment. Isidore advanced a step, in the vague hope of reaching the door. Michou stepped back, his arms crossed, and barred his passage.

"Let me go out," at last gasped Isidore between his closed teeth.

"Wretch!" said the game-keeper in a deep voice, "whom did you come to poison at my house last night?"

"Michou, you are crazy!" replied Isidore; "let me out, or I will call."

"Call as loudly as you please," answered Michou, standing straight and firm with his back against the door; "call Dr. Aubry, who must be somewhere about. You will tell him that I have come in search of him to prove the death of Barbette, whom you killed, cowardly villain that you are!"

"Barbette! What do you mean? You are drunk, Michou," stammered Isidore, becoming each moment more and more livid.

"Neither drunk nor crazy, you know well, accursed wretch," replied Jacques. "Your insults do not harm me. Ha! you were not very skilful in your crime, but you were also mistaken. Jean-Louis is safe and sound; you only killed a child deprived of reason, and you will finish on a scaffold; for if I were allowed to kill you with my own hand, I would not, so as not to stain the hand of an honest man."

"Michou," said Isidore, his teeth chattering with fear, "have mercy on me; I will explain myself later. I am sick.... My father is dying.... You are not cruel.... Let me go out."

"Ha! ha! you are a coward.... Faith, I am glad of it; it takes from me the slightest compassion for you. Traitor! scoundrel! you were not so much afraid yesterday, when you thought of killing a brave, defenceless boy. To-day it is not repentance that makes you tremble, but the justice of men, who will not spare you. You feel them on your heels; you are not deceived. I have you; try to stir."

And he seized him by the arm with so vigorous a hand, the wretch felt his bones crack.

"You hurt me; let me go!" yelled Isidore, writhing under that iron hand.

"Shut up! Avow your crime; did you come, yes or no, to poison Jean-Louis?"

"He had provoked me. I was wild, I was mad--let me go...."

"You avow it, then; what poison was it?"

"I don't know; I know nothing further.... Michou, in the name of God, let me go...."

"Do you dare pronounce the name of God?" cried Michou, grasping him still more firmly. "Do you believe, then, in him, whom you have blasphemed since you were able to speak? You don't know what poison you used? After all, it matters little; M. Aubry will know--yes, he and the judge also. The case is clear, and, if I could drag you myself before the police, I would only leave hold of you at the door of the prison."

Isidore, prostrated and speechless from pain--for Michou, whose strength was trebled, crushed his arm with redoubled force--fell to the ground in the most miserable state that can be imagined.

"There," said Michou, pushing him aside with his foot, "if I did not still respect the mark of your baptism, I would wish to see you die there like a dog. Ah! you can weep now! See to what your life of debauchery and idleness has brought you; but you are not capable of understanding my words. Listen; it is not you that I pity, but the remembrance of an honest girl, who, to the eyes of the neighborhood, was your betrothed, the unfortunate creature! In the name of Jeanne Ragaud, I will save you from the scaffold that you deserve; but on one condition...."

"Speak, speak! I will do whatever you wish," cried the wretch, raising himself upon his knees. "I promise you, Michou; but save me!"

"Miserable coward!" said the game-keeper with disgust, "your prayers and your tears cause me as much horror as your crimes. You have not even the courage to play the part of a murderer! But what I have said I will do. Get up, if you have still strength to stand on your legs. Mark what I say. You must disappear. I give you, not three days, like Jean-Louis, but two hours, in which I will go and remove the body of your victim, and warn the police. In two hours I will have declared on oath that Barbette was poisoned by you, and the proofs will not be wanting. Do what you please--hide yourself in a hole or fly. In two hours, I repeat, the police will be on your track, and, if the devil wishes to save you, that is his affair."

"Thanks," said Isidore, rising.

"Your thanks is another insult," said Michou. He opened the door himself, and pushed the wretch outside with such a tremendous blow of his fist that he stumbled and fell across the threshold.

Owing to the bad weather, the village street was deserted. Michou saw Isidore disappear with the quickness of a deer. He closed the door again, and sat down, resting his head upon his hands, to gather together his ideas.

"My God," said the excellent man, raising his eyes to heaven with the honest look of a Christian, "perhaps I have done wrong, but thou art powerful enough to repair the effect of my too great mercy, and I have saved from a disgrace that could not be remedied thy servants, the poor Ragauds."

All this had not taken much time, and Michou was meditating upon the events of that terrible night, when he felt some one strike him on the shoulder; it was M. Aubry.

"It is you, M. Jacques?" said the doctor. "What are you doing here, old fellow?"

"I was waiting for you, monsieur," replied he quietly, for he had entirely recovered his self-possession. "Is any one sick here?"

"Eh?" said the doctor. "It is the old man, who was seized with a fever yesterday, and is now delirious. His brain is affected. It is an attack which I anticipated; I don't think he will recover."

"So much the better!" said Michou.

"What do you say? So much the better? It can be easily seen he is not in your good graces. Faith! I must say, if I were not his physician, I would think the same. I don't generally believe all the gossip floating around; we can take a little on credit, and leave the rest; but, in my opinion, M. le Marquis did not place his confidence within the pale of the church when he gave it to that old ape; he may yet have to repent of it. Well, and you--what can I do for you?"

"Come with me to the wood of Montreux," said the game-keeper, "and I will tell you on the way."

"Is the case urgent? Between ourselves, Michou, if your patient is not in danger I would like to put it off until to-morrow. My carriage is open, and Cocotte is not rough-shod. It is beastly weather to go through the forest."

"Alas! monsieur," replied Jacques, "the patient who requires you can wait until the last judgment, for she is dead. But I must carry you off all the same, as this death does not seem natural to me, and I wish your opinion."

"Let us be off," said M. Aubry, without hesitating; "you can tell me the whole story as we go along."

Which Jacques Michou did, whilst Cocotte, with her head down, trotted along, not very well pleased to receive the snow full in her face.

The poor beast excepted, neither of the travellers in the wagon felt the horrible weather. The doctor, while listening to the game-keeper, looked serious and severe, which was not at all his usual custom. Michou had nothing to hide. He related every detail of the mournful story, without omitting any fact or thought necessary to enlighten M. Aubry. When he came to speak of his terrible explanation with Isidore and the wretch's crime, the doctor swore a round oath, which marked his disapproval, and Cocotte received such a famous cut with the whip, she started off on a furious gallop.

"I did not think you were, at your age, such a snivelling, sentimental baby as that," said he in a rage. "What were you dreaming about? To have had your hand on the villain, and then to let him go! You deserve to be locked up in his place!"

"Monsieur," replied Michou, "what I did I would do again. Have you thought that it would also have been a frightful trial for the Ragauds? Would they not all have been called upon to testify? And think for a moment what a disgrace it would have been for that unfortunate young girl, who was on the eve of marrying the scoundrel. No, no, M. Aubry, in the bottom of your soul you cannot blame me. Believe that the good God will bring it all right; but such a scandal in our province, an execution, perhaps, in the square of Val-Saint--what shame, what misery!"

"Jeanne Ragaud and her family owe you a fine taper," replied the doctor, a little softened. "There is some truth in what you say; but, for all that, I would have been better pleased to have seen that dangerous animal caged!"

"Be easy," replied Michou; "he will never hurt any one else unless himself. Without wishing to excuse him, I am inclined to believe he was out of his mind--pushed to extremity by the great danger in which Jeannet's discovery had placed him. When a man is accustomed to crime, monsieur, he bears the consequences more boldly. I saw Isidore Perdreau so completely demoralized, his crime was written on his brow, where I read it at the first glance, and which any one else could have done as easily in my place. So be convinced, neither God nor man can blame me for letting him go, and I certainly do not regret it."

"All very well," said the doctor; "but that would not prevent me from acting very differently if I should catch him this evening."

"Nor I either," replied Michou; "for if he should fall under my hand this evening, I would see clearly that the good God did not wish him to be saved, at least in this world."

As he finished speaking, they stopped before the sheepfold, and the doctor, together with Michou, entered, their heads uncovered. All was as Michou had left it, only that the cold and the hours which had elapsed had rendered the little body still stiffer than at the moment of discovery. The effects of the poison began to appear, as great black spots were visible on the face of the dead girl, which gave her such a suffering and pitiful look, the tears fell from their eyes.

M. Aubry had not to examine very much to be convinced that the poor idiot had been poisoned by taking a dose of arsenic capable of killing three men. As this poison is infallible against rats, nearly all the country people obtain permission to keep a small quantity on hand; and nothing had been easier than for Isidore to take a little from his father's own kitchen, where the servant complained of the ravages of the mice among the cheeses and other provisions. Thus, step by step, everything was terribly brought to light, and yet with much simplicity, as is always the case with events incontestably true; therefore, it was easy for M. Aubry to prepare his statements, affirmations, and declarations according to his conscience, in the report which he read before the official authorities.

One very sad thing, but which they scarcely thought of at the moment, was to give a rather more decent bed than the straw of the sheepfold to the poor innocent victim. But this they could not do, as they were obliged to let her lie as she was until the arrival of the district attorney, the sheriff, and the chief of police.

Michou would willingly have watched by her side, but this was not possible either. M. Aubry aided him to construct a solid barrier of planks; then they covered the body with a blanket; and on the breast the game-keeper placed, with profound respect, a cross made of branches. This devout duty accomplished, Jacques Michou locked the sheepfold, put the key in his pocket, and left with the doctor to warn the authorities.

You can imagine that in all this coming and going much more time had elapsed than the two hours accorded to the fugitive. Michou, who desired it from the bottom of his heart, for the good reasons we already know, and which he did not regret, was not sorry at the delay. M. Aubry, on the contrary, growled and stormed, whipped Cocotte with the full strength of his arm, and tried to hurry up affairs with the greatest diligence. But impossibilities cannot be performed, and, with all his efforts, the usual formalities in these sad circumstances were not fulfilled until late in the afternoon.

Then the news spread from mouth to mouth as rapidly as the waves of our river during an inundation. The curious assembled in the public square, where the servants of M. le Marquis, who never were bothered with too much work, were the first to appear. They talked, they gesticulated, said heaps of foolish things, mixed with some words of common sense. Our master learned from public rumor that young Perdreau was suspected, and that he had disappeared. It can be easily understood that he was indignant at such a calumny, and generously offered to guarantee his innocence. Mademoiselle wept, Dame Berthe imitated her, and these two excellent ladies wished immediately to rush off to Jeannette, to console her in this great trial. But poor mademoiselle had to be content with her benevolent wishes, for neither coachman nor footman, nor even a simple groom, could be found; all had run off to the wood of Montreux in search of news.

As they were obliged to pass Muiceron to reach the wood, you may well imagine that more than one of the hurried crowd lagged behind to talk to the Ragauds, and thus they, in their turn, heard of the terrible affair. The consternation was unparalleled, for there, as at the château, no one would believe the wicked rumors afloat concerning Isidore. Jeannette, who cared but little for her intended husband, and had desired to be freed from her engagement, was indignant as soon as she thought he was in trouble, and defended him warmly, which made people believe she loved him devotedly. The truth was, this little creature's soul was generous and high-strung, and, like all such natures, she defended him, whom she willingly would have sent off the night before, only because she thought he was unfortunate.

But days passed, and each one brought new and overwhelming proofs of the truth. The police searched the neighborhood in vain, and soon all hope of seeing Isidore reappear (which would have pleaded in his justification) faded from the eyes of those who wished to defend him. M. le Marquis, after having conversed with M. Aubry, Michou, and the judicial authorities, was overcome with grief, and acknowledged that he could not conscientiously mix himself up with the affair. As for old Perdreau, he never recovered his consciousness, and died shortly after. They placed the seals on his house, where, later, they discovered the documents and correspondence which revealed his wicked life; and now you can judge if there was anything to gossip about in a commune as peaceable and tranquil as ours. In the memory of man there had never been such a terrible event, and nothing will ever happen again approaching to it, I devoutly wish.

Mademoiselle, who was not very well, was seriously injured by all this trouble; and as M. le Marquis loved her dearly, and, besides, heard the rumbling of the revolution in the capital which he had so long ardently desired, packed up, and was soon off, bag and baggage, for Paris, where he hoped to distract poor mademoiselle, and drive off mournful recollections.

TO BE CONTINUED.

THE LITTLE CHAPEL.

It stands within a narrow, quiet street, And well-worn steps ascend at either side, Where, all day long till twilight, pious feet Softly and silently forsake the tide Of feverish life, to rest a little space Within its calm, and gaze upon his face.

The dead Christ, lying on his Mother's breast, May not uplift those lifeless, closed eyes: O helplessness divine! O sweet behest! Rigid and white beneath the cross he lies, That here, before this holy altar-stone, Our miserable pride be overthrown.

The dull, gray walls with simple Stations hung, The stainèd windows, blending liquid rays Of red and gold in lucent amber, flung Across the chancel like a hymn of praise From spirit-voices flowing--all of these Make endless peace and wondrous harmonies.

And when at evening hour the solemn strain Of some quaint _Tantum Ergo_, strange and sweet, Tunes the full soul to perfect chords again, And from the beaten pathway weary feet Turn heavenward once more, unchained and free, It is a dear and blessed place to be.

Slowly the heavy waves of incense rise, Parting amid the arches overhead. Start, fervent tears of peace from burning eyes! Mount, happy prayers! Despair, lie prone and dead! Open, ye perfumed clouds, and give them room, While _Benedicite_ pierces the gloom.

It is a quiet spot--the busy feet Of toil and turmoil pause before its gates, And turn aside, with reverent steps, to greet The Holy One of Ages--him who waits, With patient hands outstretched, to love and bless The lowliest soul that craves his tenderness.

PHILOSOPHICAL TERMINOLOGY.

III.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE CATHOLIC WORLD:

In my last letter, while criticising an incorrect definition of the word _act_, I made the remark that "the gravity of bodies is not a _power_, as some unphilosophical scientists imagine."[268] When writing these words, I had to confine myself to a mere statement of the scientific error; but it occurs to me that in an age in which most of the so-called men of science are so little acquainted with philosophy as to mistake effects for causes, and yet so proud of their achievements as to aspire to the leadership of the public mind, some precautions must be taken, lest our philosophical terminology be infected with such improprieties as are now too leniently tolerated in the language of science. It is the abuse of one word that does the greatest mischief in the department of physics. This word is _force_. Its frequent misapplication tends to confound and falsify the whole doctrine of physical causation. It is therefore of great importance, even in a scientific point of view, to determine within what limits the use of such a word should be restricted in accordance with the laws of philosophical terminology. Such is the main object of my present communication.

The theory of physical causation deals with natural causes, powers, actions, forces, movements, and the results of movements. When these terms are properly defined, all relations between agents and patients, between causes and effects, and consequent phenomena, can be easily expressed with philosophical precision; but when the causes, the powers, the actions, and the movements themselves are all confounded under one common name of _force_, as it is now the fashion in the scientific world to do, no one need be surprised if such a course ends in philosophical inconsistencies. To show what great proportions this evil has taken, innumerable passages of modern writers might be adduced. But, not to perplex the reader with conflicting quotations from different sources, I will give only a few extracts from one of the best representatives of modern science. I have before me the _Correlation of Physical Forces_, by Mr. Grove. It is a well-known little work, much esteemed by physicists, and one which certainly transcends the average merit of many modern productions of the same kind. Now, what is Mr. Grove's notion of cause, of force, of power, as compared with one another and with the phenomena of nature? The following passages will show. He says:

"In each particular case, where we speak of cause, we habitually refer to some antecedent power or force; we never see motion or any change in matter take effect, without regarding it as produced by some previous change" (p. 13).

Here _force_, _power_, and _cause_ are taken as equivalent; moreover, _motion_, or a change in matter, is considered as "produced" by a previous change; which implies that a previous change or movement is the efficient cause of a subsequent change or movement. Hence, according to such a terminology, movement, force, power, and cause should be accepted as synonymous. But philosophy cannot admit of such a wholesale confusion.

"A force," says he, "cannot originate otherwise than by devolution from some pre-existing force or forces.... The term 'force,' although used in very different senses by different authors, in its limited sense may be defined as that which produces or resists motion.... I use the term 'force' as meaning that active principle inseparable from matter, which is supposed to induce its various changes" (p. 16).

Here _force_ is again confounded with _power_ and with _cause_, inasmuch as "active principles" are _powers_, and "that which produces or resists motion" is a _cause_. We are told at the same time that the active principle is not a primordial and essential constituent of material substances, but an accidental result of devolution from other active principles residing in other substances. Philosophy cannot admit of such a phraseology; for, as the active principle of a substance is a constituent of its nature, if the active principle of any substance were thus communicated to it by accidental devolution, such a substance would have no definite nature of its own, and would be nothing; and, in spite of this, it would also be capable of becoming anything, according as its active principle might originate from different pre-existing forces. Now, we know that the first elements of any given substance have a definite nature, and a definite active principle independently of devolution from other substances; and that, according to the results of a constant and universal experience, they are not liable to exchange their nature for anything else, but keep it permanently and unalterably amidst all the vicissitudes brought about by the interference of surrounding bodies. It is, therefore, plain that the "active principle inseparable from matter" cannot originate in devolution from other pre-existing forces. But let us proceed.

"The position which I seek to establish in this essay," says Mr. Grove, "is, that the various affections of matter which constitute the main object of experimental physics--viz., heat, light, electricity, magnetism, chemical affinity, and motion--are all correlative, or have a reciprocal dependence; that neither, taken abstractedly, can be said to be the essential cause of the others, but that either may produce, or be convertible into, any of the others" (p. 15).

Every one, of course, will admit that heat, light, electricity, etc., are "correlative." I also admit that they are not "essential causes" of one another; but the fact is that they are no causes at all; since heat, light, electricity, etc., are only modes of motion and "affections of matter," as the author acknowledges, and are therefore to be considered as mere phenomena or effects, of which the one can be the condition, but not the cause, of the other. I know that the popular language admits of such expressions as "heat causes dilatation," "light causes an impression on the retina," "chemical affinity causes combination," "movement causes a change of place." But these and other similar expressions, though used by scientific writers, and even by philosophers, are by no means philosophically correct. We shall see presently that substances alone have efficient powers, and therefore no mode of being and no affection of matter can display efficient causality. Hence light, heat, electricity, and the rest, are neither efficient causes nor efficient powers; and, inasmuch as they are affections of matter, they cannot even be called _forces_ in a philosophical, but only in a technical, sense, as we shall explain hereafter.

As to the mutual "convertibility" of these various affections of matter into one another, I would observe that, although the expression may be correctly understood, yet, as interpreted by Mr. Grove and by other physicists, it cannot be admitted. What do we mean when we say that progressive motion, for instance, is converted into heat? We mean that in proportion as the progressive movement of a body is resisted and _extinguished_, a correspondent amount of heat, or of molecular calorific vibrations, is _produced_ by mutual actions and reactions. In this sense the conversion of one mode of being into another is perfectly admissible, no less indeed than the passage from a state of rest to one of movement. But Mr. Grove does not understand it so. He thinks that the progressive movement of a body is never extinguished, but only transformed by subdivision into molecular calorific vibrations; and, therefore, that the same accidental entity which was to be found in the progressive movement is still to be found _identically_, though subdivided, in the calorific motion. Let us hear him:

"It is very generally believed that, if the visible and palpable motion of one body be arrested by impact on another body, the motion ceases, and the force which produced it is annihilated. Now, the view which I venture to submit is that force cannot be annihilated, but is merely subdivided or altered in direction or character" (p. 24). "_Motion_ will directly produce _heat_ and _electricity_, and electricity, being produced by it, will produce magnetism" (p. 34). "Lastly, _motion_ may be again reproduced by the forces which have emanated from motion" (p. 36).

Such is Mr. Grove's theory of the "convertibility of forces." It is nothing but a wrong interpretation of the old theory of the "conservation of _vis viva_" by the modern conception of "potential energy," which admits "forces stored up" in bodies, and ready to show themselves in the form of velocity, heat, light, or any other kind of movement. This notion and others of a like tendency constitute the marrow of the new physical theories, and are the pride of our men of science. Let us hope that a time will come when these able men will see the vanity of such fashionable doctrines, and blush for their adoption of them in their scientific generalizations.

The conservation of _vis viva_ is, within certain limits, that is with regard to ponderable bodies impinging on one another,[269] an established fact; but its interpretation as given by advanced physicists is a huge blunder. "It is very generally believed," says Mr. Grove, "that if the visible motion of one body be arrested by impact on another body, the motion ceases." Of course, it is believed; and, what is more, it is demonstrably true, whatever Mr. Grove may say to the contrary. Yet it is not true, nor is it very generally believed, that "the force which produces it (the motion) is annihilated." When the movement of a body is arrested, its velocity is _extinguished_; but that velocity was not the force which _produced_ the movement. When a stone falls to the ground, its movement is produced, not by its velocity, but by the action of the earth on it. Velocity is only the formal principle of movement, and is itself included in movement as a constituent, not as an efficient power. To say that velocity produces movement is, therefore, to confound formal with efficient causation, and to admit that movement produces itself. This is one of the conclusions for which I hope, as I said, physicists will blush hereafter.

But the force, we are told, "is not annihilated, but merely subdivided or altered in direction or character." This cannot be. The word _force_ here means a quantity of movement, which is nothing but the product of the velocity into the mass of the body. Now, the velocity of a body is not subdivided when the movement is arrested, but is really extinguished. I say _extinguished_, not _annihilated_; because annihilation, as well as creation, regards substances, not accidents. Velocity is an accident; it is therefore neither created nor annihilated, but originates in a determination produced by an agent, and ends by exhaustion or neutralization under the influence of an antagonistic agency. I say, then, that the movement of the body, though not annihilated, is extinguished and not subdivided. It is impossible to conceive of divisions where there is nothing divisible. On the other hand, nothing is divisible which has no extension and no material parts. Now, where are the material parts or the extension of velocity? Velocity in each primitive particle of a body is a simple actuality, which can increase or decrease by degrees of intensity, but cannot be taken to pieces in order to be apportioned among the other particles of the body, and therefore the pretended subdivision of velocities is a mere absurdity.

Nor does it matter that force can be "altered in direction or character." We must not forget that _force_ is here a sum of velocities, and accordingly cannot change direction or character unless such velocities are intrinsically changed. But they cannot be changed with regard to either character or direction without some new degree of velocity being produced or extinguished by some efficient cause. For the character of velocity is to actuate the extension of the movement in proportion to its own intensity. This, and no other, is its character; and, therefore, velocity cannot be altered in character without its intensity being increased or diminished by action. And the same is to be said of the change of direction, which cannot be conceived without action. Now, if action can modify motion, and diminish to any extent its velocity, it remains for our scientists to explain how a certain action cannot stifle movement and velocity altogether.

They will say that the "indestructibility of force" is the only hypothesis consistent with the theory of the conservation of _vis viva_, and consequently that the two must stand or fall together. But the truth is that the conservation of _vis viva_ needs no such hypothesis, since it depends on a quite different principle, viz., on the equality of action and reaction.

When two billiard-balls impinge on one another, they act and react. Their molecules urge one another (by their mutual actions of course, not by their velocity), and become compressed. All the work they do up to the _maximum_ of compression is styled _action_. But reaction soon follows; for, as compression brings the neighboring molecules into an unnatural position where they cannot settle in relative equilibrium, the molecular exertions tend now to restore within the bodies the original molecular distances; which work of restoration is properly called _reaction_.[270] And since reaction must undo what the preceding action had done, hence the amount of the reaction must equal the amount of the action, and thus no energy is lost; for the same quantity of movement is produced in one ball as is extinguished in the other.

I do not wish to enlarge on this topic, which is of a physical rather than metaphysical nature. I only repeat that the mistake of our physicists lies in supposing that the quantity of movement which is lost by one body still exists in nature, and passes _identically_ into another body; whilst the fact is that the quantity of movement lost by the first body is altogether extinguished, and the quantity acquired by the second body is a new production altogether. To send an accidental mode, such as velocity, travelling about from one substance to another without support, as an independent and self-sufficient being, may be a bright device of modern progress; but when the time comes for repenting of other scientific blunders, this bright delusion will, I am sure, be reckoned among the most grievous philosophical sins that science will have to regret and to atone for in sackcloth and ashes.

These remarks go far to show that the terminology of our modern scientists concerning physical causation is philosophically incorrect. I have more to say on this same subject; but to make things plainer I wish to give beforehand what I consider to be the true distinction between cause, power, action, and force, as implied in the causation of natural phenomena. To do this in the most simple and intelligible manner, I lay down the following propositions:

I. It is a principle philosophically certain that the substance of all natural things has been created by God for his extrinsic glory--that is, for the manifestation of his power and other perfections. Accordingly, every created substance has received a natural aptitude and fitness to manifest in some manner and in some degree the power and perfection of its Creator.

II. Therefore, every creature naturally, _per se_, not accidentally, but by the very fact of its creation, is destined to act; for manifestation is action, and consequently possesses permanently and intrinsically such an _active power_ as is proportionate to the kind and degree of the intended manifestation. In other terms, every created substance is destined to be the _efficient cause_ of determined effects.

III. The power of created substances is finite, and its exertion is subject to definite laws. All finite power, according as it is exerted under more or less favorable conditions, gives rise to effects of greater or less intensity. Hence different effects may proceed from one and the same cause, and equal effects from different causes, acting under different conditions.

IV. The exertion of power is called _action_, and its intensity, in the material world, depends on the distance of the agent from the patient.

V. The amount of the exertion, or the quantity of the action, is measured by its true effect, which is the only true exponent or representative of the degree of the exertion; for, all matter being equally indifferent to receive motion, the amount of its passion must always agree with the amount of the action received; and thus the one is the natural and necessary measure of the other.

VI. The amount of the exertion, as measured by the effect it is able to produce, is what in the scientific language can be styled _force_ properly.

VII. The amount of the effect, as measuring the amount of the exertion from which it arises, or by which it is neutralized, is again called _force_, but improperly, and only in a technical sense, as it is in fact a mere measure of force.

These propositions are so logically connected with one another that, the first of them being admitted, all the others must follow. I might, therefore, dispense with all discussion with regard to them; yet, to help the scientific reader to form a philosophical notion of forces, I will endeavor to throw some additional light on my sixth and seventh propositions.

And, first, I observe that since forces can only be measured by their effects, the mathematical expression of a force always exhibits the quantity of the effect which such a force is competent to cause; and as such an effect is a certain quantity of movement, hence forces are mathematically expressed in terms of movement. So long as physicists preserved their old philosophical traditions, a distinction was kept up between force and movement. A quantity of movement was indeed called _a force_, inasmuch as it was the true measure of the action from which it had originated, or by which it could be destroyed; but such a _force_ was not confounded with the action itself. The action was called _vis motrix_, a motive force, whilst the quantity of movement was called _vis_ simply, and was not considered as having any efficient causality. Thus before Dr. Mayer's invention of "potential energies," the word _force_ was used with proper discrimination: 1st, as a quantity of action actually producing movement; 2d, as a quantity of action actually opposed by a resistance sufficient to prevent the production of movement; 3d, as a quantity of movement and a measure of action.

A quantity of action followed by movement was called a _dynamical_ force, and was measured by the quantity of movement imparted in the unit of time. Its mathematical expression in rational mechanics was, and is still, a differential coefficient of the _second order_ representing the product of the mass acted on into the velocity which the action, if continued for a unit of time, would communicate to it. As instances of _dynamical_ force, we may mention the action of the sun on the planets, of the planets on their satellites, of the earth on a pendulum, on a drop of rain, etc.

A quantity of action not followed by movement was called a _statical_ force, and was measured by the quantity of movement into which it would develop, if no obstacle existed. Its mathematical expression in rational mechanics is a differential coefficient of the _first order_ representing the product of the mass, whose movement is neutralized into its virtual velocity. By _virtual_ velocity we mean the velocity which the mass would acquire in a unit of time, if all resistance to the movement were suddenly suppressed. As instances of _statical_ force, we may mention the action of a weight on the string from which it hangs, or on the table on which it lies.

A quantity of movement, or the dynamical effect of all the actions to which a body has been subjected for any length of time, was called a _kinetic_ force. As kinetic forces cannot be destroyed except by actions producing equal and opposite quantities of movement, hence every kinetic force can be taken as a measure, not only of the amount of action from which it has resulted, but also of the amount of action by which it can be checked. The mathematical expression of a _kinetic_ force is the product of the moving mass into its actual velocity. As instances of this force, we may mention _the momentum_ of a cannon-ball, of a hammer, of wind, falling water, etc.

To obviate the many abuses which this notion of kinetic force has engendered, and to cut the ground from under the feet of those blundering theorists who reduce all forces to movement, it is important to remark that kinetic force could be defined as "that quantity of action which a moving body can exercise against an obstacle until its velocity is exhausted." This definition would change nothing in the mathematical expression of kinetic forces; for the quantity of the action which a moving body can exercise against the obstacle is exactly equal to the quantity of movement, or momentum, by which the body is animated. The only change would be in the terminology, which, instead of technical, would become philosophical. As instances of kinetic force thus defined, we might mention _the quantity of action_ of a cannon-ball, of the hammer on the anvil, of the wind on the sails, etc.

The division of forces into dynamical, statical, and kinetic has been long recognized by all competent judges as very good and satisfactory. But our men of progress, in the innocent belief that, before they appeared on the scene, everything in this world was darkness, have changed all that. All forces are now stated to consist in nothing but "mass animated by velocity." Dynamical forces are rejected, it would seem, because they imply what modern science cannot, or will not, understand--_i.e._ real production (they call it _creation_) of movement. On the other hand, statical forces are not masses animated by velocity, and thus are set aside because they originate no real movement. Such is the consistency of our progressional friends.

Yet so long as all effect will need a cause, there can be no doubt that statical forces must be real forces. Two weights balancing one another at the ends of a lever certainly act on one another, as every one must admit who observes the change produced by taking away one of the two. A weight which actually prevents another weight from falling surely exerts a positive influence on it, and therefore displays power and brings forth an amount of action. So also, when a weight is at rest on a table, gravity does not remain dormant with regard to it, but urges it toward the table with unyielding tenacity. Hence the table must continually react in order to keep the body at rest. It is evident, therefore, that the weight, while at rest on the table, exerts its powers and is engaged in real action; for nothing but real action can awaken real reaction. Again, when we try to raise a weight, we feel that we must overcome a real resistance; and when we support a weight, we feel its action upon our limbs. Hence pressure is a real force, though it be not mass animated by velocity; and the same is evidently to be said of traction, torsion, flexion, etc. It is, therefore, impossible to ignore statical forces.

That dynamical forces are likewise indispensable in science I think it would be quite superfluous to prove. Rational mechanics is wholly based upon them, and no phenomenon in nature can be explained without them. If modern science finds it difficult to understand the production of local movement, let her consider that, after all, it would be less damaging to her reputation to confess her philosophical ignorance than to deny what all mankind hold and know to be a fact.

From this short discussion we may safely conclude, with the old physicists, that there are in nature dynamical and statical as well as kinetic forces, and that the word _force_ should be uniformly used in philosophy as expressing a quantity of action measured by the quantity of its effect, or by something equivalent. But we have not yet done with our advanced theorists.

It is curious that, after having reduced all forces to "mass animated by velocity," they have not hesitated to introduce into science a force which is neither mass animated by velocity nor a common statical force, but something quite different, to which they gave the name of "potential energy." The first to imagine this spurious force was, if I am not mistaken, the German Dr. Mayer, one of the great leaders of modern thought, who, considering that a body raised from the floor would, if abandoned to itself, fall down and acquire a momentum calculated to do an amount of work, conceived the raising of the body as equivalent to a communication of latent energy destined to become visible at any time in the shape of movement as soon as the body is left to itself. Such an energy, as still unevolved, was called "potential energy."

"If we define 'energy' to mean the power of doing work," says a well-known English professor, "a stone shot upwards with great velocity may be said to have in it a great deal of actual energy, because it has the power of overcoming up to a great height the obstacle interposed by gravity to its ascent, just as a man of great energy has the power of overcoming obstacles. But this stone, as it continues to mount upwards, will do so with a gradually decreasing velocity, until at the summit of its flight all the actual energy with which it started will have been spent in raising it against the force of gravity to this elevated position. It is now moving with no velocity--just, in fact, beginning to turn--and we may suppose it to be caught and lodged upon the top of a house. Here, then, it remains at rest, without the slightest tendency to motion of any kind, and we are led to ask, What has become of the energy with which it began its flight? Has this energy disappeared from the universe without leaving behind it any equivalent? Is it lost for ever, and utterly wasted?... Doubtless the stone is at rest on the top of the house, and hence possesses no _energy of motion_; but it nevertheless possesses _energy_ of another kind _in virtue of its position_; for we can at any time cause it to drop down upon a pile, and thus drive it into the ground, or make use of its downward momentum to grind corn, or to turn a wheel, or in a variety of useful ways. It thus appears that when a stone which has been projected upwards has been caught at the summit of its flight and lodged on the top of a house, the energy of actual motion with which it started has been changed into another form of energy, which we denominate energy of position, or potential energy, and that, by allowing the stone again to fall, we may change this energy of position once more into actual energy, so that the stone will reach the ground with a velocity, and hence with an energy, equal precisely to that with which it was originally projected upwards."[271]

Such is the theory. It is scarcely necessary to say that the whole of it is a delusion. First, the velocity imparted to the stone is not a working power, but only a condition for doing work, as I shall presently show; and, therefore, it cannot be styled "energy."

Secondly, when the stone is caught at the summit of its ascent, and (according to the strange phrase of the author) _is moving with no velocity_, it possesses nothing more than it possessed when lying on the ground. Its elevated position is only a new local relation, which confers no power, either actual or potential. It is indeed possible to let the stone drop down; but then its fall will be due to the action of the earth, and consequently to extrinsic causation, not to anything possessed by the stone on account of its elevated position.

Thirdly, the words "potential energy" cannot be coupled with one another without absurdity; for "energy," according to all, means _power to act_, whilst "potential" means _liability to be acted on_. Hence "potential energy" would mean either a power to act which is ready to be acted on, or a power which is to be acquired by the body through its being acted on. The first alternative confounds act with passive potency, and action with passion; the second assumes that the velocity to be acquired by the body is a real working power, which it is not.

Fourthly, it is against reason to admit that "the energy of actual motion is changed into another form of energy." For where is the causality of the change? The only causality concerned with the modification of the upward movement of the stone is the action of gravity; and this, being directly antagonistic to the ascensional velocity, tends to destroy, not to transform, it.

Fifthly, a stone created originally on the brink of a precipice would be ready to fall into it, although it has never been thrown up; on the contrary, a stone thrown up to such a height as to reach the limits of the moon's effectual attraction would never come down again, notwithstanding the enormous amount of pretended "actual energy" expended in the mighty ascent. Hence the upward flight has nothing whatever to do with any so-called "potential energy." It is, therefore, a gross delusion to hold that by allowing the stone again to fall, "we may change the potential energy into actual energy," it being evident that the actual velocity of the falling stone is not a result of transformation, but the product of continuous action.

We cannot, then, adopt the phrase "potential energy" in metaphysics. The phrase means nothing; for there is nothing in nature which can be designated by such a name. _Energy_ is synonymous with _power_; and power cannot be in a potential state. To be in potency to receive any amount of velocity is not energy, but passivity. On the other hand, the power of doing work is not a mere _force_, as assumed by the modern theory, but is something much higher and better. Forces are only variable quantities of action; the power, on the contrary, in one and the same body is always the same, and yet is competent to do more or less work, according as it is exerted under more or less favorable conditions. The stone that is hurled against a pane of glass exerts, in breaking it, the very same power which it exerted before being hurled; only the conditions of the exertion are quite different, inasmuch as its velocity brings it against the glass at such a rate that, before its movement can be checked by the action of the glass, the stone has time to outrun it, dashing it to pieces. Yet it is _by its action, not by its velocity_, that it does such a work. Of course, its action is proportional to its velocity, and its work is proportional to the square of its velocity; and thus the velocity serves to measure both the work and the action, but it does not follow that the velocity is the active power. Velocity is an accidental mode of being; and _nothing accidental is active_. This important philosophical truth can be easily established as follows:

In all things the principle of being is the principle of operation, as philosophers agree; whence the axioms, "By what a thing is, by that it acts," and "Everything has active power inasmuch as it has being." Now, all substance has its being independently of accidents; therefore, all substance has its active power independently of accidents. On the other hand, accidents give to the substance a _mode_ of being, and nothing more; therefore, they also determine its _mode_ of acting, and nothing more. But as to be in this or that state presupposes _being_, so also to have a power ready to act in this or that manner presupposes _power_. Hence no accident gives active power to the substance of which it is the accident; or, in other terms, accidents are nothing more than conditions determining the mode of application of the active powers that pre-exist in the substance.

Again, all natural accidents[272] are reducible to three classes; as some of them are _accidental acts_ produced by some agent and passively received in some subject, others are _intrinsic modes of being_ resulting from the reception of such accidental acts, and, lastly, a great many are _mere relativities_ or relative modes. Now, that relativities can act no one has ever pretended to assert. That intrinsic modes of being can act, is implicitly assumed by all who consider velocity as an active power; for velocity is an intrinsic mode of being. Yet if we ask them whether the _existence_ of things is competent to act, they will certainly answer _no_; and they will be right. But, I say, if existence cannot act, still less can a mere mode of existing act. For a mode of existing is a reality incomparably less than existence itself. Accordingly, since they concede that not the existence, but the thing existing, is a principle of action, they must also _à fortiori_ concede that the thing modified, and not its mode, is a principle of action. Finally, with regard to the accidental act, it is evident that its reception in the substance cannot impart to it any new activity, since its formal effect simply consists in a new mode of being, which, as we have just seen, is not active. It is clear, then, that no natural accident has active power.

Omitting other reasons drawn from theoretical considerations, and which might be usefully developed in special metaphysics, I will only add an _à posteriori_ proof, which physicists will probably find more congenial to their habit of thought. It consists in the fact that bodies act on one another without being animated by velocity, or without their velocity having any share in the production of the effect. Thus a book at rest on a table acts on the table; and a liquid, or a gas, at rest in a jar acts on the jar. On the other hand, the earth, though not at rest, attracts bodies, not by its diurnal rotation or by its annual revolution, but by a power dependent only on its mass; and the same is to be said of the sun and the planets. This shows that the power from which the motive action of bodies proceeds is not their velocity; whence it follows that velocity is only an affection of bodies, and has no bearing upon the active powers of the same, but only on the mode of their application. Now, since all the accidents which have been supposed to involve active power can be resolved into kinds of movement, it must be owned that such accidents have no real activity; for all kinds of movements consist of velocity, and velocity does not act.

Hence, whatever scientists may say to the contrary, heat, light, electricity, etc., are not efficient powers, but modes of movement, on which the mode of acting of bodies depends. When heat was thought to be a subtle imponderable substance, philosophers could consistently call it an efficient power; but since it is now decided that heat is only "a mode of motion," how can we still attribute to it what is the exclusive property of substances? If heat is only a mode of motion, a bar of iron, when hot, has no greater powers than when cold; it has only a greater movement. So also, if light is only a mode of motion, luminiferous æther has no greater power when undulating in the open air than when at rest in a dark room. In the same manner air, when perfectly still, has the same powers as when actually propagating any variety of sounds. When, therefore, physicists speak to us of such movements as powers, let us not be imposed upon by their phraseology, if we wish to be consistent in our reasonings, and avoid useless and troublesome disputes.

Yet it was to be expected that our physicists in their technical language would confound heat, light, and other modes of movement with forces and powers. The correlation between such movements and the actions of the bodies subjected to them is, in fact, such as to allow of the former being taken for measure of the latter. Thus a given amount of mechanical action may give rise to a definite amount of heat, and _vice versa_; hence the one can be technically considered as the equivalent of the other, inasmuch as the one is the measure of the other. But does it follow that action and heat belong to the same category? Certainly not. It is not the action itself, but its mechanical effect, that should be taken as the true equivalent of the heat generated. And when we are told that "heat is expended in generating mechanical movement," we must not fancy that calorific movement _causes_ another kind of movement, as the phrase seems to imply, but only that, while the calorific movement is diminished by a given cause, the same cause generates the mechanical movement. We should always bear in mind that the language of modern science, though correctly expressing the correspondence of effects to effects, is very far from expressing as correctly the relation of effects to causes. Physicists should learn to distinguish between efficient causes and conditions determining the mode of their causation. Heat is one of such conditions, and to call it a _force_ is to endow it with efficient causality; for the term _force_ always conveys the idea of causation. They should either cease to describe heat as a force, or, if this cannot be done, explain more explicitly than they do the technical restrictions modifying the philosophical meaning of the word. We can hardly expect that they will follow our advice; but, at any rate, it is to be hoped that philosophers at least will take care to follow it, and guard against the corruption of their own terminology.

Besides heat, light, electricity, and magnetism, there are many other modes of being technically called _forces_. Centrifugal force is one of them; for, in fact, centrifugal force, in spite of the name, is nothing more than "that quantity of movement which is extinguished by centripetal action in the unit of time."

The force of inertia--_vis inertiæ_--is another technical or conventional force. For it is plain that inertia cannot act; and thus it is impossible to conceive any true force of inertia. But, technically, _vis inertiæ_ means "the quantity of the effort by which a body, when enduring violence from without, resists compression, traction, or any other alteration of its molecular structure." This effort proceeds, not from inertia, but from the active powers residing in the molecules of the body; and yet it has received the name of _vis inertiæ_, because it develops itself in the lapse of time during which the body, _inasmuch as inert_--_i.e._ incapable of leaving its place before the whole mass has acquired a common velocity--is still loth to start, and thus compelled to struggle against the invading body. Philosophers, by keeping in sight this definition of _vis inertiæ_, will be able to solve many sophisms of modern scientific writers.

Again, the weight of a body is called a _force_, and is represented by the product of the mass of the body into a velocity _which it has not_, but which it would acquire through the action of gravity in a second of time, if it were free to fall. If the mass be called _M_, and the velocity which it would acquire _g_, the product _Mg_ will represent the weight of the body. Now, when the body is at rest on a table, the pressure exercised by it on the table is said to be _Mg_. Does this mean that _the weight_ of the body acts on the table? Not at all; for the body does not act by its weight, which is not an active power. The truth is that the table by its resistance prevents the body from acquiring the momentum _Mg_; and since this resistance of the table must be equal to the pressure exercised on it by the body, hence the pressure itself is also equal to _Mg_; and thus a true force--a quantity of pressure--is technically identified with the weight of the pressing body. This identification tends to give a false idea of the nature of the fact, and therefore should be carefully avoided in philosophy.

Modern physicists have laughed at a philosopher of the old school (Arriaga), who, as late as 1639, "was troubled to know how, when several flat weights lie upon one another on a board, any but the lowest should exert pressure on the board." It would have been more prudent on their part to ask themselves whether the question was one which the modern school could answer at all. If we ask how two equal weights can exert equal pressures on the board from _unequal_ distances, what can they answer? If they wish to be consistent with their notions, they can only answer that "the actions are transmitted from one weight to another till they meet the board." Now, this is a great philosophical blunder; for actions are accidents, and therefore cannot travel from one subject to another. Neither action nor active power are ever transmitted; not even movement is properly transmitted, but only propagated by a series of successive exertions from molecule to molecule. Were we to admit in philosophy any such transmission, we would soon be entangled in innumerable contradictions.

Mechanical work also is often styled a _force_, though it is nothing but the process by which a _force_ is exhausted. The notion of _work_ is very simple. A body moving through space against a continuous resistance is said _to do work_. Work is therefore so much the greater according as a greater _mass_ measures a greater _space_ under a greater _resistance_; and thus the work which a given body can perform may be represented by the product of three factors, viz., the mass, the mean resistance, and the space measured. This is the philosophical and analytical expression of _work_; and mathematicians show that this expression in all cases (viz., whether the resistance be constant or variable) is equal to half the product of the mass into the square of its initial velocity. Now the question comes: Is _work_ a force? It is not difficult to anticipate the answer. Since the adoption of the so-called "living forces," or _vires vivæ_, of Leibnitz, physicists have called _vis viva_ the sum of the works of two conflicting bodies; and consequently the work done by either of the two was said to be one-half of the _vis viva_. But, with all the respect due to the memory of Leibnitz, I would say that neither the work nor the so-called _vis viva_ is a force in the philosophical sense of the word. When a mass, _M_, animated by a velocity, _V_, encounters a resistance and begins its work, its momentum is _MV_. This momentum, while the work is being done, is gradually reduced till it is finally destroyed by the resistance. The resistance is, therefore, equal to the momentum _MV_. But the resistance, according to the law of impact, is always equal to the exertion of the impinging body. And therefore the amount of the exertion of the impinging body is also equal to _MV_; that is to say, the force by which the work is done is an ordinary dynamical force represented by the usual dynamical momentum, and not by the amount of the work done.[273]

And here I must close this rather long excursion into the field of mechanics. But I cannot conclude without calling the reader's attention to the reckless tendency of the phraseology which I have above criticised. It seems as if the object of a class of scientific writers in these late years has been to banish from science all secondary causes, no doubt as a preliminary step (in the intention of the most advanced among them) for the banishment of the First Cause itself. The words _cause_, _power_, _force_, and others of the same kind, have indeed been maintained, as they could not be easily dispensed with; but they receive a new interpretation: they have become "kinds of motion," and have been identified with the phenomena--that is, with the effects themselves. Thus "movement" is now everything; its boasted "indestructibility" makes it independent of all secondary causes; and we are told that the existence of "essential causes" can no longer be proved by the phenomena, and that "science" has the right to reject them as metaphysical dreams. Let us hear Mr. Grove again:

"Though the term (force) has a potential meaning, to depart from which would render language unintelligible, we must guard against supposing that we know essentially more of the phenomena by saying that they are produced by something, which something _is only a word_ derived from the constancy and similarity of the phenomena we seek to explain by it" (p. 18).

And again: "The most generally received view of causation--that of Hume--refers to invariable antecedence--_i.e._ we call that a cause which invariably precedes, that an effect which invariably succeeds" (p. 10).

And again: "It seems questionable not only whether cause and effect are convertible terms with antecedence and sequence, but whether, in fact, cause does precede effect.... The attraction which causes iron to approach the magnet is simultaneous with, and ever accompanies, the movement of the iron" (p. 13). Yet he adds: "Habit and the identification of thoughts with phenomena so compel the use of recognized terms that we cannot avoid the use of the word 'cause,' even in the sense to which objection is taken; and if we struck it out of our vocabulary, our language, in speaking of successive changes, would be unintelligible to the present generation" (_ib._)

And lastly: "In all phenomena, the more closely they are investigated, the more are we convinced that, humanly speaking, neither matter nor force can be created or annihilated, and that _an essential cause is unattainable_. Causation is the will, creation the act, of God" (p. 218).

It is not Mr. Grove alone that entertains such views; I might quote other English authors, and many German, Italian, French, and American writers whose opinions are even more extravagant. But a theory which pretends to ignore efficient causality, no matter how loudly trumpeted by scientific periodicals, no matter how pompously dressed in scientific books, no matter how constantly inculcated from professorial chairs, in the long run is sure to fail. It bears in itself and in its very phraseology its own condemnation. It is vain to pretend to explain away its inconsistencies by alleging that "the habits of the present generation compel the use of recognized terms;" the simple truth is that the abettors of modern thought reap in their inconsistencies the reward of their vanity. Mankind will never consign created causality to the region of dreams, and we would remind our scientific friends who have not received a thorough philosophical training of the old adage, "Let the cobbler stick to his last."

A FRIEND OF PHILOSOPHY.

FOOTNOTES:

[268] CATHOLIC WORLD, November, 1873, page 187.

[269] This limitation is necessity. A stone thrown up vertically soon loses its _vis viva_ without compensation. The case is one in which there is no impact. An imponderable body, as luminiferous æther, if it forms, as it is most probable, an unresisting medium, acquires _vis viva_ without interfering with the _vis viva_ of the celestial bodies.

[270] Physicists sometimes give the name of action and reaction to the opposite efforts of two conflicting bodies. But, properly speaking, the two efforts are two actions; the reaction only begins at the end of compression, and takes place mostly within each body separately.

[271] Balfour Stewart, _Lessons in Elementary Physics_, P. 101.

[272] I say _natural_ accidents. The species of bread and of wine in the Holy Eucharist are _supernatural_ accidents, and have no less active power than the substances themselves. The reason is that they imply in their constitution "the act and the activity of the substance"--_actum et vim substantiæ_--as S. Thomas teaches, and "all that which belongs to matter"--_omne illud quod ad materiam pertinet_. See the _Summa Theol._, p. 3, q. 77, a. 5.

[273] In the _New American Cyclopædia_, edited in 1863 (_v. Mechanics_), after the statement that "to overcome all the inertia of a body moving with a certain velocity, or to impress on it at rest such a velocity, the same whole quantity of action must in either case be exerted and expended upon the body," we are given to understand that this quantity is equal to half the product of the mass of the body into the square of the given velocity. From what we have just shown, it is evident that this conclusion is false.

LATE HOME.

Mother, I come! Long have thine arms, outspread In mercy and maternal majesty, Been waiting to receive me. Long have I Heard thy low, summoning voice in wistful dread: A truant child, who yearned, yet feared, to tread The threshold of its home, while still on high Blazed the broad sun within the noonday sky; But, when the shadows of the evening came, And darkness fell, was fain to seek the flame Of its own hearthstone and its mother dear, And meet her greeting, loving, if severe, Her frown, which could not hide the secret tear, Her gaze compassionate, though sad and stern, Her fond forgiveness of that late return.

GRAPES AND THORNS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE HOUSE OF YORKE."